Nicole Guzzardi

San Matteo Panuozzo couldn’t cut it on St. Marks Place. Literally. The pizza-dough-sandwich shop has closed (and, contrary to a sign in the window, won’t be reopening) because it wasn’t allowed to serve proper pies.

Vincenzo Scardino, an owner of San Matteo Pizza and Espresso Bar on the Upper East Side, said that he and is two partners decided to close its downtown spin-off at 121 St. Marks because the landlord wouldn’t allow them to sell pizza, fearing it would interfere with the business of his other tenant, Nino’s, a couple of doors down.

“They thought it would take business from the guy on the corner, even though our product is completely different,” said Mr. Scardino. The restaurateur added that San Matteo had always planned to start serving pizza, just like its uptown location does, once it obtained its liquor license. But when the owners went back and asked their landlord about it, he put the kibosh on the plan. Read more…

Pat Ivers and Emily Armstrong continue sorting through their archives of punk-era concert footage as it’s digitized for the Downtown Collection at N.Y.U.’s Fales Library. 

Time’s a funny thing, especially where musicians are concerned. If the upcoming 50th anniversary of the Rolling Stones doesn’t scare you, perhaps the realization that we’ve shared nearly 36 years with Bono and 29 with Madonna will.

Still, it’s a little surprising that a mere 21 years separates the release of “Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely” in 1958 and the above video of Iggy Pop covering the LP’s iconic track, “One for My Baby,” at Hurrah’s in 1979. At first glance, the culture wars of the ’60s would seem to render irrelevant the bars, broads and bruisers ethos that Ol’ Blue Eyes represented. But for the generation that made up the original punks, those childhood memories of cigarette smoke, parents’ late nights and Sinatra’s music ran deep. Read more…

Richard Moses (right) at LESPI’s birthday bash.

At a meeting on Tuesday, the Landmarks Preservation Commission may well create a new East Village/Lower East Side Historic District encompassing over 300 buildings. But the Lower East Side Preservation Initiative isn’t waiting till then to celebrate: the group marked its fifth anniversary last night with bubbly and birthday cake at Smart Clothes Gallery on Stanton Street. Since preservation architects Richard Moses and Britton Baine – inspired by a screening of “Slumming It: Myth and Culture on the Bowery” – started the organization in 2007, they’ve gone on to become instrumental in the creation of a 10th Street Historic District and have led countless tours and discussions about neighborhood history and architecture. The Local chatted with Mr. Moses as he prepared for last night’s birthday bash.

You’ve garnered opposition from religious groups in the community in regards to landmarking. Have others opposed your projects and how do you handle the situation?

There were a few property owners who were opposed. They came out and expressed their opposition, but there wasn’t a huge number of them by any means; I would say a few.

It’s a tricky situation because emotions tend to run high on both sides. Certainly we’re sympathetic to concerns of religious institutions on the idea that they want their congregation to be thriving and we certainly want them to be thriving – we don’t want them to burdened. We feel sometimes that there’s a misunderstanding of some of the requirements of the Landmarks Commission and that there’s a different focus on short-term versus long-term goals. Read more…

The Public Theater showed off some $40 million in renovations yesterday, as The Local reported. City Room also covered the rededication ceremony, and ArtsBeat reported that Meryl Streep gave $1 million to the theater’s renovation. Now, for your viewing pleasure, here’s video of Vanessa Redgrave, Mayor Bloomberg, and others celebrating the theater’s relaunch, with Shanta Thake, director of Joe’s Pub, telling us more.

If you’re looking for an excuse to check out the new digs in person, remember that Andrew Carmellini’s mezzanine lounge launches next week (he’s also bringing musical performances, top mixologists, and chefs Marco Canora, Seamus Mullen, and Karen DeMasco to the space as part of the New York City Wine & Food Festival). And the Daily News notes that Colman Domingo’s new play, “Wild With Happy,” will premiere Tuesday. And, of course, there’s a big ol’ block party Saturday.

A tipster spotted this sign affixed to Spanky & Darla’s. The health department notice, dated Oct. 3, indicates the bar was closed for operating without a permit.

It’s not the first time the dive at 140 First Avenue has been forcibly shut down. In 2010, the bar’s predecessor, Cheap Shots, was closed after underage drinking busts and fighting caused it to be declared a “public nuisance,” a police department attorney told NYC the Blog.

During its time as Cheap Shots, the bar had to pay a total of $11,000 for offenses that included sales to minors, unlicensed security guards, and unlimited drinks specials, according to State Liquor Authority records.

The Liquor Authority’s Website indicates that a liquor license for the establishment was recently renewed, and activated on Oct. 1, 2012. The premises name and trade name are listed as Cheapshots rather than Spanky & Darla’s.

In May, Big Apple Reviews called the bar “a great place to go for a low-key night to just get some drinks, or get plastered before painting the town red.”

Dana Varinsky The ceremony today.

Mayor Bloomberg showed off his Shakespeare this morning as the Public Theater celebrated the completion of a four-year, $40 million renovation.

Addressing a crowd of city officials, theater big-ups, and community members in the redesigned lobby, Mayor Bloomberg requested a round of applause for the taxpayers who helped make the renovations possible. “This public-private partnership is really putting the public in The Public,” he said, referring to the city funding that footed over two thirds of the project. “It takes a village, if you pardon the pun, and this one certainly did.” he said, adding that the community is still being repaid in free renditions of the classics.

The Public has presented Shakespeare in the Park since 1962. Joe Papp opened the theater in 1967, paying $1 a year to take over the building that once housed New York’s first public library.

“This building has always served a public purpose,” Oskar Eustis, the theater’s artistic director, told this morning’s crowd, adding, “The greatest art belongs to everybody and it is made greater when it belongs to everybody.” Read more…

For every East Village business that’s opening or closing, dozens are quietly making it. Here’s one of them: Sixth Street Pilates.

Courtesy Sixth Street Pilates

Pilates used to be more of an Upper East Side thing, but for nine years, Sixth Street Pilates at 525 East Sixth Street has quietly been aligning and providing intense, balancing workouts to those who don’t dare travel above 14th Street. Of course, the East Village is also a Mecca for yoga students, but co-owner Jeremy Laverdure doesn’t sweat that. “I am much more worried about spin and spin hybrid classes,” he said. “SoulCycle keeps me up at night more than Bikram. There are also five million other Pilates teachers out there and while there aren’t many in the neighborhood, there are a lot of teachers out there who are not working for us.” The Local spoke to Mr. Laverdure about the core strength of Sixth Street Pilates and how the roughly 1,000-square-foot studio has made it for nearly a decade.

You’ve been surviving as a business owner in the East Village for almost a decade.

We’ve been in business for nine years in one way or another. Our first year we were in a little studio apartment across the street. My friend Abby started the studio and I was the first person to work there for her. After a year and a lot of flooding – we were in this kind of ground level subterranean unit – we moved to where we are now. After another three years Abby moved to Texas and sold the business to me. I was the sole proprietor for four years until I made Anula Maiberg a partner about a year ago. Read more…

Courtesy “Bayside! The Unmusical!” The students of Bayside, with Mr. B.

It’s not every musical that has even the house band cracking up, but last night at a packed Kraine Theater, “Bayside! The Unmusical!” did just that with its raunchy, irreverent send-up of “Saved by the Bell.”

The zippy one-hour production – back after an earlier run in May – starts by reintroducing the archetypes of the early-90s sit-com: Zack Morris (JD Scalzo) is the naïve “cool guy” in acid-wash jeans who thinks his ditzy cheerleader girlfriend, Kelly (Caitlin Claessens), is a virgin even though a giant, er, “zit” on her stomach keeps her from going to homecoming. Slater (Israel Viñas) is the “greasy, sexy stud-muffin” who just wants to be respected: “I want to go to collage someday,” he mispronounces. Lisa (Shamira Clark) is the bubbly token black girl who does nothing but shop and gossip while fending off Screech, the nerd who, appropriately enough, is played by lanky comedienne Rachel Witz. And Jessie, well, she’s another story entirely.

The stereotypes quickly come undone like a defective Trapper Keeper: for all its Disney Channel-esque cheeriness and its “uncomfortably Christian creator” (per “Bayside’s” program), “Saved by the Bell” is the show whose cast members went on to get naked in “Showgirls” (Elizabeth Berkley) as well as in an honest-to-goodness porno (Dustin Diamond). “Bayside” revels in that, via an almost Benny Hill-like parade of slapstick hormones and homoeroticism: the kids need to raise an “unreasonable” amount of money (a whole $500!) to save their favorite diner, The Max, and their ideas range from gay prostitution to stripping to pornography. Read more…

Hi! Just wanted to quickly clear something up. The Local will not be attending Café Khufu’s “Burlesques Bitches and Gents” costume party this weekend. Yes, yes, we know there’s going to be a lap dance competition and a high heels contest, but unfortunately we’re just not going to be able to make it.

So why does the latest invite say “NY Times attending this weekends event!”? We assume it’s because, when we saw the initial e-flyer suggesting that female guests come dressed like this (not safe for work) and male guests come dressed like this (perfectly safe for work), we thought: wait a minute, is this the same quiet cafe that, despite the community board’s policy against supporting side-street liquor licenses, got a rare show of support when it applied for a beer and wine license earlier this year? And now it’s advertising an “I’ll Lychee Lick Me” cocktail and a “Sexual Healer” hookah?

Back in January, the board, which had thrice declined to get behind the coffee shop’s application, finally voted to support it after much debate, in part because operator Lisa Buriss was a longtime neighborhood resident and a former director of organizing at Good Old Lower East Side. (And also because the board is loosening up about beer-and-wine licenses.)

And so, one of The Local’s reporters e-mailed the owner of Café Khufu to ask whether another lap dance contest (there had also been one advertised for Sept. 29) was the wisest way to make use of its new license, which went into effect in July. (After all, city records show that at least one person called 311 to complain of an “adult establishment” at 103 Avenue B back when Casimir launched a burlesque night.) We never heard back – that is, until the e-flyer below went out today, announcing that The Times would be in the house!

We didn’t mean to cause any confusion, Café Khufu – maybe catch you next time? Read more…

Lauren Carol Smith

JapaDog, the Japanese hot dog joint that opened on St. Marks Place in January, is giving ’em away in Union Square.

Nodding to its humble origins as a Vancouver food stand, the brand set up a cart outside of Best Buy this morning and gave away beef and veggie dogs, topped with cherry mayo. They’re now going for $3.

Same deal tomorrow: free dogs from 10 a.m. till noon, then $3 dogs till 6 or 7 p.m.

Joshua Heeki, a chef and manager at the St. Marks location, said JapaDog hopes to eventually launch a more permanent cart somewhere in the city, but this one is mostly a publicity ploy. “We want the public to know about us a bit more,” he said.

In other wiener news, Bowery Boogie hears that Links is set to open tomorrow at 188 Allen Street, with another hot dog spot, Los Perros Locos, opening soon across the street.

Nicole Pasulka A recent dress rehearsal.

While developing “Micro-Mini Maxi Mystery Theater: En Total,” Jessica Dellecave asked the five dancers in the cast to recall their most embarrassing protest moments. With their help, she created a show that explores the often cringe-inducing intersection between activist fervor and queer young love.

The work, premiering tomorrow tonight at Dixon Place, grew out of three 10- to 15-minute studies the playwright, who goes by J. Dellecave, wrote between 1999 and 2010: one was about her experiences as a young, queer activist in the late ’90s, another about her frustrations with activism in 2005, and the other dealing with her mixed feelings about the Occupy Wall Street movement.

In a controlled frenzy, Ms. Dellecave and her “pod” of dancers travel to space, find love at the protest march, and belt out Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Ms. Dellecave humps the floor in a pink mini skirt while delivering a monologue on love and activism. “Isn’t this romantic, going out in the street and smashing the state?” she asks.

It’s not romantic at all, but it is familiar. Like love, first experiences of activism can be both nostalgic and awkward to remember ten years, or even ten hours, later. Ms. Dellecave, whose full first name is Jessica, pokes fun at her history as a queer activist and, in doing so, pushes audiences to examine their own experiences. Read more…

Suzanne Rozdeba

The young man who was shot in the leg at Campos Plaza has come forward to identify himself and to describe the horror of being stalked by a gunman in the early hours of Monday morning.

David Cruz, 24, told The Local that he and a friend were walking back to his apartment on East 13th Street, between Avenues B and C, shortly after midnight when he noticed “a navy blue or black car creeping,” and then saw it double parked. “We looked towards the car, and I noticed somebody jump out the car with an all-black hoodie on, covering his face,” he said.

The man quickly approached. “He started to run towards me and my friend. We ran towards East 12th Street, when he shot the first fire at me. My friend proceeded to run towards the basketball court and I proceeded to run towards the 635 East 12th Street tunnel when he shot the second fire that hit me.” The shooter wordlessly fired another two or three rounds that missed their target, said Mr. Cruz.

“When I got shot, it went in through the back of my thigh, and the bullet left the front of my thigh,” he said. “It was half an inch away from my artery and about an inch away from the main bone on my thigh.” Read more…

When we last checked on the status of Andrew Carmellini’s hotly anticipated mezzanine lounge at the Public Theater, the chef was hoping to open in time for the theater’s re-dedication ceremony this Thursday. The opening date has now been set for next Tuesday, Oct. 9, as designer David Rockwell finishes the job.

To tide you over til then, we’ve scored the lounge’s menu. Created by Mr. Carmellini with the help of Michael Oliver (who has worked under him at Cafe Boulud and Locanda Verde), mixologist Tiffany Short, and beverage director Josh Nadel (also of Locanda as well as Mr. Carmellini’s other restaurant, The Dutch), it will be available at both The Library and Joe’s Pub from 5:30 p.m. to midnight, after which a late-night menu will be served until 2 a.m.

Mr. Carmellini and the team at Joe’s Pub will also be operating a full-service lobby bar where snacks, cheese plates, cookies, cupcakes, Stumptown coffee, wine on tap, and seasonal punches will be served.

The Library at the Public is now accepting reservations at 212-539-8777. The menu…

Courtesy Scott Kenemore What passes for fun in the Midwest.

We have 7-Eleven stores here in Chicago, thank you very much.

I was supposed to come to New York this month to give a reading from my new novel about a zombie attack on the Windy City. I bought myself a plane ticket (not that expensive on JetBlue, but still) and was all but eagerly clutching it in anticipation. (If you’re not from the Midwest, you might not have a sense of how excited I was: a reading in the East Village, in a cool bar, and as part of the Guerrilla Lit Reading Series was something to look forward to.)

But then the venue — Bar on A — was closed, reportedly to make way for a new 7-Eleven. This development was was harder to swallow than a KZ3™ Battle Fuel Slurpee.

When you’re a writer living in Chicago, you think of New York City as “headquarters.” It’s where your agent and publisher are, where important stuff happens, and where you occasionally get to go for meetings or readings or whatever. It’s fun and cool and inspiring, and filled with interesting things. It’s awesome for writers in ways the metropolis of the Midwest is often not.

Being a writer in Chicago can feel like trying to meet women at a party thrown by a church. I am not the first person to have observed this. In “Chicago: City on the Make,” Nelson Algren bemoans “a city whose pleasures are so chaste” and laments the “hipless biddies entitling themselves ‘Friends of Literature’” who stand ever-ready to throw a stuffy daytime function where the punch is non-alcoholic and the conversation is polite.

Writers don’t want this.

Writers want to go to places like the East Village and womanize and get drunk and meet interesting, daring, wonderful, terrible people. Read more…

Bev Grant Kathie Sarachild with photo of Shulamith Firestone.

Acquaintances of Shulamith Firestone want the rent-stabilized apartment where the author and activist died this summer to be preserved as a residence for a low-income feminist, according to a petition obtained by The Local.

The petition, which can be read below, outlines a plan to earmark her fifth-floor walk-up at 213 East 10th Street for tenants doing “important” feminist work, who cannot afford current market rates in the rapidly gentrifying East Village. The rent would be no more than $1,000 a month.

Women’s liberation stalwarts like Kate Millett along with East Village literary agent Frances Goldin and Annette Averette, co-director of Sixth Street Community Center, are among those who have signed the petition directed at landlord Robert Perl, owner of Tower Brokerage.

Written by Fran Luck, executive director of the WBAI radio program “Joy of Resistance: Multi-Cultural Feminist Radio,” it notes that owners and developers of housing in formerly working-class neighborhoods have for decades “set aside” affordable rentals. Ms. Firestone paid about $400 a month, according to Mr. Perl, who said he had been planning to increase the rent of the next tenant in order to offset rising taxes imposed by the Bloomberg administration. A one-bedroom in the building, between First and Second Avenues, was recently leased for $2,095, according to StreetEasy. Read more…

SchoolBook

The city released its annual school Progress Reports today and SchoolBook has conveniently mapped out the results, with green dots indicating improvement and red dots indicating a lower grade. A quick glance at letter grades for East Village and Lower East Side schools revealed that 16 of them held steady, 5 of them dropped a letter grade from last year, and 10 of them showed improvement, with P.S. 34 Franklin D. Roosevelt and P.S. 137 John L. Bernstein being the only ones that improved beyond just one letter grade (from C to A and from F to C, respectively).

According to SchoolBook, the progress reports are based on “student progress (60 percent), student performance (25 percent) and school environment (15 percent). Environment includes student attendance, as well as feedback from parents, students, and teachers about their schools.” The site also explains that “75 percent of a school’s score comes from comparing it to a ‘peer group’ of about 40 other schools with similar demographics. The remaining 25 percent is based on a comparison with all schools citywide serving the same grades.” Here, now, are this year’s results.

BETTER (from best 2012 grades to worst)
TOMPKINS SQUARE MIDDLE SCHOOL
600 East 6th Street
2010-11 Grade: B
2011-12 Grade: A

P.S. 034 FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
730 East 12th Street
2010-11 Grade: C
2011-12 Grade: A Read more…

Sasha Von OldershausenThe shoot at 7B.

A couple of blocks from where a real-deal crime occurred in the wee hours of the morning, a make-believe one was filmed for CBS’s forthcoming series “Golden Boy.”

The crime drama was shooting at Percy’s Tavern on the corner of Avenue A and East 13th Street this morning, with equipment being stored at the landmarked St. Nicholas of Myra Orthodox Church a few blocks down on the corner of East 10th Street. In the scene shown here, an actor dressed as a busboy runs out of the restaurant only to be thrown against the hood of a car, tossed to the sidewalk (actually a cushy faux-cement mat), and cuffed by a comely detective.

Just another day in the hood?

Update | 1:50 p.m. The Local also spotted a crew outside of (you guessed it!) 7B, which was rechristened Lehane’s Tavern for the shoot.

Daniel Maurer Police vehicles at the corner of Avenue C and East 12th.

A man was shot in the leg around 12:20 a.m. this morning near the corner of East 11th Street and Avenue C, the police said. He was taken to Beth Israel Hospital in stable condition and was not thought likely to die.

The police couldn’t confirm the victim’s age or the circumstances of the shooting, and said that no arrests were made.

Though a police spokesperson said the shooting occurred near East 11th Street, investigators were seen early this morning at the corner of East 12th Street and Avenue C, outside of Campos Plaza I. A section of the public housing complex’s courtyard was taped off.

The shooting came a few hours after police received a report of shots fired at 115 East Ninth Street, near Third Avenue. Read more…

Melvin Felix

Stanley Cohen has had a busy week.

Not only is he defending Mona Eltahawy, the commentator arrested Tuesday after defacing a provocative pro-Israel poster, but the Alphabet City-based lawyer spoke his mind about U.S.-Iranian relations to none other than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, The Local has learned.

Asked if it might have been unwise to meet with the oft-condemned Iranian president and other government officials during a time of heightened international tension – and on the eve of Yom Kippur, no less – Mr. Cohen said, “I don’t worry about crossing lines.”

That’s evident from his client list, which includes members of the hacker group Anonymous and Occupy Wall Street as well as alleged terrorists. His latest cause, Ms. Eltahawy, an Egyptian-American columnist, faces misdemeanor graffiti charges after spray-painting an anti-jihad ad in the Times Square subway station – an act that Mr. Cohen told the Daily News was an exercise in free speech.

On the day Ms. Eltahawy was arrested, Mr. Cohen was making some bold statements of his own: he was among a handful of U.S.-based speakers invited to the midtown hotel where Mr. Ahmadinejad was staying to share their views of the Middle East with the Iranian president. Also in attendance were Iran’s Foreign Minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, and its Ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammad Khazaee. Read more…