Giant Robot, the Los Angeles-based gift shop and art gallery, is closing the doors of its East Village store Sept. 23. Paintings by Susie Ghahremani and Kelly Tunstall, two of Giant Robot’s most popular featured artists, were selected for the gallery’s last show called “Out and About.”

Rachel Wise

Hello, East Village.

We wanted to let you know that the Ninth Precinct will be holding a Community Council meeting tonight at 7 at the Ninth Precinct station house, 321 East Fifth Street.

NYU Journalism’s Timothy J. Stenovec spoke with Jeremiah Shea, the president of the Community Council, who anticipates a large crowd because it is the first council meeting since June. Mr. Shea recommends that people arrive early to get seats.

Tonight’s meeting does not have an agenda – although such topics as last month’s shooting outside the Sin Sin Lounge are likely to be discussed. The Neighborhoodr blog posted a flier calling on members of the community to attend the meeting and rally around the issue of violence in the East Village.

The Community Council sessions offer those who attend a chance to speak during the public comment period. “It’s a community expressing their opinions, their problems,” Beth Neuman, the council’s first vice president, told Mr. Stenovec. “It’s a place for them to vent.”

In other neighborhood news, in case you missed it, here’s a link to our earlier post about Monday night’s meeting of the liquor authority committee for Community Board 3.

There are several stories about the East Village resident who was killed in a hit-and-run accident on Canal Street. You can find them here and here.

And The Observer weighs in on the Sukkah City architecture competition up in Union Square. And here’s another image of it via Neighborhoodr.

Stephanie Butnick Angry neighbors of Table 12 hold up signs in protest of the East Village diner’s application for a liquor license. The application was denied.

Amid protests from angry neighbors, a Community Board panel refused Monday night to recommend that a new liquor license be granted to an East Village diner.

The diner, Table 12, a 24-hour eatery at 188 Avenue A, had applied to the State Liquor Authority committee for a new wine and beer license. The committee regulates liquor licenses in the East Village for Community Board 3.

But those who live near the bar – including about a half dozen residents who held up red signs reading “No More” – asked the committee to reject the request citing concerns about, noise, vandalism and alcohol-related violence.
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On Sunday afternoon, indie rock pioneers Superchunk hit Other Music, performing an acoustic set between sold-out shows during the weekend at Bowery Ballroom and Music Hall of Williamsburg. The group’s setlist included “Everything At Once,” a video of which appears above.

A line to enter the shop began wrapping around the corner of Lafayette Street and East 4th Street an hour in advance of the band’s 1 p.m. performance. The crowd was comprised of noticeably few Gen Y fans, who were largely outnumbered by die-hard, middle-aged rockers and a handful of flannel-clad toddlers. (“Are you excited for your first rock show?” one indie Dad asked his daughter.)

Performing sans bassist Laura Ballance, the trio—frontman Mac McCaughan, guitarist Jim Wilbur and drummer Jon Wurster—powered through seven songs. Included were “Slow Drip,” and “Digging for Something” from the band’s ninth studio album “Majesty Shredding,” out last week via Merge Records, the label founded by Ms. Ballance and Mr. McCaughan in 1989.

Other Music regularly pushes their CD shelves aside for in-store performances and special events. The shop hosts Maximum Balloon on Sept. 27 and Cursive’s Tim Kasher on Oct. 5.

Every day, dozens of people line up in front of Key Food Supermarket at Fourth Street near Avenue A, waiting to redeem hundreds of tin cans for cash in the redemption machines outside. They carry their business in large plastic garbage bags and rusty shopping carts. Some of the regulars say they scrape by on their recycling income alone; others say they use it to supplement whatever other money they make by doing odd jobs.
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Hannah Rubenstein The owners of the iconic Ukrainian restaurant Veselka are planning a new restaurant on the Bowery.

In a few months there will be a new Veselka Restaurant on the Bowery. Whispers about construction on a Second Avenue subway line prompted Tom Birchard, owner of the iconic East Village Ukrainian restaurant, to take out an unconventional “insurance policy” on his investment: Nine blocks south, in the same building as DBGB Kitchen & Bar, Veselka Bowery is taking shape behind closed doors.

The second Veselka, located on Bowery and First Street, won’t be a carbon-copy of the original — Mr. Birchard said that he hopes the new restaurant will allow him to explore Ukrainian food “at a slightly higher level.” Mr. Birchard’s son Jason will take over the day-to-day operation of the original location at 144 Second Avenue.

The owners of Veselka already operate a café, Little Veselka, near East First Street and First Avenue, which essentially features an abridged version of the Veselka menu — coffee, sandwiches, breakfast food. But Veselka Bowery will be its own restaurant with an entirely different menu and a plan to serve alcohol.
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Claire Glass Coffee shop owners wonder if eliminating free WiFi access can reduce scenes like this, at Ninth Street Espresso, and improve their bottom lines.

When we East Villagers head to the coffee shop we claim the table, the nook, and the dent in the sofa as our own for hours on end because, well, it seldom costs more than the price of a cup of Joe. And what keeps us there? Often it’s the free WiFi.

But now local coffee purveyors are starting to re-think WiFi because offering unlimited access in exchange for a $3 cup of coffee draws enough Web-hungry customers to threaten their shops’ vibes and, sometimes, their bottom lines.

“It was a question of managing the Internet,” said Aaron Hagedorn, co-owner of Ost, a shop at 12th Street and Avenue A, explaining why he and his partner adopted a no-computer policy after 7 p.m. and eliminated WiFi after 11 a.m. on weekends at the start of the summer. “And we had to do just that — manage it — all the time. It would have been hard to stay in business if we didn’t.”

Not everyone was thrilled with the compromise.

“I don’t know how you can disconnect the use of Internet and coffee shops,” Ost customer Braden Smith said while enjoying an espresso. “They’ve always been places where you come and sit to work for hours.”
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Amanda Schupak

Good morning, East Village.

Lots of news and good reads from around the neighborhood this weekend and we’d like to start by presenting a tool that we hope can help with the process of sorting through it all. Dave Winer, a visiting scholar at NYU Journalism and a pioneer in all things digital, has developed an aggregator of East Village blogs. It’s another way, thanks to Mr. Winer’s good offices, that we’ve added a little more value to the local blogosphere. Here is his post on how it works and why he built it.

In other neighborhood news, EV Grieve has posts about the shuttering of Bull McCabe’s back garden and compelling images of a pedestrian who was struck by a car on Third Avenue Saturday night.

We’d like to remind you that the State Liquor Authority (SLA) and Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA) Licensing Committee is convening tonight at 6:30 at 200 East Fifth Street (at Bowery). This committee, a part of Community Board 3, which covers the East Village, Lower East Side and parts of Chinatown, makes recommendations regarding appeals for new liquor licenses as well as renewals, alternations, transfers and upgrades. We’d also like to call your attention to some comprehensive community board reporting about both the East and West Village on the Eater blog.

There’s a nice neighborhood-related read from Saturday’s Times by Colin Moynihan about one artist’s very distinctive tag. And with the news that another store was forced to close over the weekend because of bedbugs, we’d like to renew our call for your stories about the critters in the East Village.

Strong images of the East Village here and here and the above photo, by community contributor Amanda Schupak, is a shot of the Mary Help of Christians flea market, which re-opened this weekend at Avenue A and 11th Street and was also covered by EV Grieve and others.

Artist Harumi Ori Thursday unveiled her latest work, a 4-foot by 24-foot installation erected on a sliver of scaffolding titled “I Am Here.” The work, a three-dimensional depiction of various street scenes cut from orange safety mesh and hand-sewn by Ms. Ori, will appear outside 70 E. Fourth Street until Jan. 9.

Meredith Hoffman Jane Kwett gazes down at 12th Street from her new home, Allen Ginsberg’s apartment.

Jane Kwett, a marketer for Yelp who prefers Kerouac to Ginsberg, is the new tenant in Allen Ginsberg’s old apartment.

After the landlord raised the rent in her West Village residence, she found the Ginsberg apartment online and thought it looked like a great deal for $1,700 a month. She moved into the apartment at 437 E. 12th Street, last Thursday. Now Ms. Kwett, 26, often writes by the very window where Ginsberg sat, but the books he wrote are missing from her shelf. She said her favorite part of the apartment is the light that comes in through that window, which is “very iconic Ginsberg.” Calling the space “my apartment,” she admitted she thinks less about Ginsberg now than when she first moved in a week ago.

“I do think it’s funny that people are so interested in the apartment, but I can understand, I mean it’s the East Village. It’s the ultimate hipster apartment and I’m not at all a hipster. Though I don’t know if there are too many ‘angelheaded’ hipsters in the neighborhood anymore,” said Ms. Kwett, quoting Ginsberg’s “Howl.” 
With her light blonde hair and relaxed California demeanor, Ms. Kwett could hardly strike anyone as a hipster.
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Singer-songwriter and Nashville native Justin Townes Earle may be a country boy at heart, but his new album, Harlem River Blues, which was released earlier this week, celebrates the neighborhood he lives in now: the East Village. Before recording Harlem River Blues this summer, his tour brought him home, where he and his band performed at the Bowery Ballroom. Here are some shots that The Local was able to snag during that show.

Rachel Wise

Good morning, East Village.

Much of the city is still cleaning up from Thursday night’s powerful storm, which downed trees in Brooklyn and Queens; our neighborhood was relatively unscathed. As always, though, we’d like hear your stories or see your images.

This morning we noticed a post in The Bowery Boogie about a non-profit group that plans to apply white paint to the rooftop of the Bowery Mission, part of a broader citywide effort to reduce the heat retained by dark surfaces, which scientists believe could have an adverse effect on the environment.

Before the launch of The Local, NYU Journalism student Michelle Regalado reported on a similar effort by another program, NYC Cool Roofs. Ms. Regalado found that painting a roof white could lower its surface temperature by about 30 degrees. “If we end up shaving 1 or 2 degrees, that may not sound like a lot, but that is actually a climate change, ” Stuart Gaffin, a Columbia University researcher, told Ms. Regalado.

In other neighborhood news, EV Grieve has an item about a showing at The Film Forum of a newly restored print of the iconic 1956 documentary “On the Bowery.”

And Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York has an interview with photographer Ted Barron, who discusses his work in the East Village and throughout the Lower East Side.

Sophie Hoeller The Continental, 25 Third Avenue.

Whether you’re broke, a student, or just plain stingy, here’s how to mooch your way through the week in the East Village, a neighborhood known for its cheap (but good) eats.
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Pete Hamill.

We hope that you will join us Sept. 23 for a night in which we at The Local, as the new blog on the block, celebrate the rich history of the East Village with a reception and lecture by NYU Journalism’s own Pete Hamill.

Mr. Hamill, a resident of East Ninth Street and Second Avenue back in the day, will discuss ways that storytellers – from student journalists to community contributors to professionals – can bring tales from the neighborhood’s hidden past into the present.

The celebration begins at 6 p.m. at 20 Cooper Square, 7th Floor with music, food and libations to follow. Please come.

C.C. Glenn

Good morning, East Village.

The Neighborhoodr blog has very worthwhile links to stories about a proposed extension of the restaurant smoking ban and a new form that landlords are required to give potential tenants disclosing earlier infestations of bedbugs, one of the most vexing – and cringe-inducing – issues in the neighborhood.

The news about the disclosure form prompts The Local to refer you the video below, which was created during the summer by NYU journalism students, who moved out in front of the bedbug story before The Local East Village launched.

We’d like to hear your stories about bedbugs – where you’ve found them in the East Village (with enough reporting from the community, we can map them for future reference) and whether you think landlords should be required to disclose prior infestations.

And here’s another a link that might resonate deeply for the nostalgic: EV Grieve posted photos of Junk, the new clothing store that now occupies the site of the former De La Vega Museum. The Local spoke with Mr. De La Vega about the museum’s closing in one of our inaugural posts.

Kelly Knaub The wall at Bowery and Houston.

Two new curators hope that the large piece of “extreme tagging” on the cement wall at Bowery and Houston will quell concerns about over-sized street art from some members of the community.

Produced by San Francisco painter and graffiti artist Barry McGee, the wall is a collage of simple but striking tags, referring by name and writing style to various intergenerational graffiti artists.

Mr. McGee’s work is the fourth formally curated project at Bowery and Houston since May 2008, and the first for the space’s new curators: 29-year-old East Village residents Kathy Grayson and Meghan Coleman, both alumni of now defunct Deitch Projects.

“Barry McGee is the ultimate smoother over,” Ms. Grayson said, explaining her hope that Mr. McGee’s mural would “smooth over the Shepard Fairey mess,” referring to the previous, controversial mural. (For a comprehensive play-by-play of destruction to the Fairey mural, which lived from April to August, see here via Bowery Boogie and here via ArtsBeat.)
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Investigators first released photos of the men on Aug. 31.

Have you seen these men? Then the police would like to talk to you.

Homicide detectives Wednesday issued a second call for the public’s help in finding the pair, who are wanted for questioning in connection with a fatal shooting last month outside an East Village nightclub.

Devin Thompson, 37, was shot on Aug. 22 outside the Sin Sin Lounge, on Second Avenue and Fifth Street, and died of his injuries eight days later.