A neighbor of IHOP passes along word that last night someone was inspecting the new ventilator equipment and ventilator unit that several people said is making a loud mechanical hum around the clock. A Department of Environmental Protection inspector is also expected to check out the equipment today. Yesterday the owner of the restaurant said that the new machinery, which cost more than $40,000, may need some adjustments to alleviate the noise. Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this post referred to the ventilation unit as a “smog-hog.” That reference has been deleted since the term is a brand name and Smog Hog says that it did not manufacture the unit in question.
DNAInfo reports that Il Laboratorio del Gelato has a strict two-sample limit on ice cream flavors. With all the exotic flavors, some folks tend to try lots of ice cream before making a decision, an owner says. The excessive sampling creates a long line, and also costs money. “”If a group of eight people come in, that is still 16 samples,” the owners of Il Laboratrorio tells the Web site. “”If any of my staff break it, I flip out.”
EV Grieve notes that a water cafe — that’s right, a water cafe — is open on East 10th Street. It sells “hyper-filtered, perfectly pure, eco-conscious” agua.
Booker & Dax, Death & Co., and Summit Bar are featured in Eater’s roundup of the city’s best cocktail bars. Read more…
Sandy BergerThe ventilation unit on the roof of IHOP.
Out of the bacon frying pan, into the din of the ventilation unit.
Earlier this month, neighbors of the IHOP on East 14th Street were thrilled when the smell of bacon was greatly reduced by a new ventilator unit on the roof of the restaurant. But the elation quickly gave way to frustration as they realized that the odor-eater causes an around-the-clock ruckus.
“It looks like a locomotive and sounds like a locomotive,” said Sandy Berger, who documented her life as an IHOP neighbor in The Bacon Diaries. Read more…
If you’re the type to slurp ramen on the off-season, take note: Ramen Setagaya on St. Marks is closed until July 26. The Local spotted workers hauling bags of debris out of the restaurant this morning; head contractor Tom Kim said they were replacing the cracked wooden floor with new tile.
So where can you get your ramen fix in the meantime? Tomorrow at Momofuku Noodle Bar, Ivan Orkin will take over for the night. Mr. Orkin, originally from Long Island, made his name at his own noodle shops in Japan. Noodle Bar will serve three of his creations – including one featuring pork neck, pork fat, chicken feet, and bacon – along with a smaller selection of their normal dinner food. The menu might be a sign of what’s to come at Mr. Orkin’s planned New York City restaurant; Grub Street reported last month that he’s looking to open a U.S. outpost by the end of the year.
The “Invader from Planet Ramen” goes from 5:30 p.m. “till the ramen runs out” and is first come, first slurp (no reservations), so get there early.
Despite the recent badnews, there are still plenty of great record stores in the East Village where you can walk in and get down with some new sounds. That’s why each week we’ll ask the clerks at our favorite shops what they happen to be listening to. Here’s what’s spinning at Turntable Lab.
Tim SchreierLeft to Right: Carson DeYoung’s piece, Yok, Sheryo and Beau
Here it is! Cycle 4 of the Centre-Fuge Public Art Project, wherein curators Jonathan Neville and Pebbles Russell (a.k.a. Pebbles van Peebles) bring new art to a construction trailer on East First Street every other month. No celebrity cameos this time around, except of course for the artists themselves. Tim Schreier shot them at work between First and Second Avenues over the weekend. Read more…
The economic woes at St. Mark’s Bookshop continue, but Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York refuses to bow to the ailing print industry. The blog has planned a cash mob on Saturday at 3 p.m. To hear the owners (and Jeremiah) tell it, the stakes couldn’t be higher. “We’re in the midst of some serious summer doldrums and could use a little lift….a shot in the arm,” one of the owners writes.
The fallout from the theft of guns from Ninth Precinct locker rooms continues. The Post reports that one of the suspects in the ring is a woman who sold her web streaming company for $70 million in 2000. She then blew through her fortune and got caught up — allegedly — in last week’s bust involving the guns and “large-scale drug deals.”
Grub Street has more analysis of the images spotted at the location of Andrew Carmellini’s new French restaurant. According to the blog, the mysterious images at 380 Lafayette Street harks back to famous silk-screened posters that “went up all over Paris after De Gaulle left France in May of 1968 during the protests.” Read more…
Jose Collado is planning to open Yankee Pizza next to his current operation, Yankee Deli at Avenue C and East 11th Street, as well as a food market across the street. The 40-year-old Mr. Collado, who grew up on 14th Street and also owns Yankee Two Deli along with a couple of others in the neighborhood, said that New York Healthy Choice, in the former Monk Thrift Shop space at 177 Avenue C, would concentrate on fresh greens, meat and seafood as well as the usual canned goods.
Meanwhile, Rob Ceraso, co-owner of The Wayland, said his cocktail bar will expand next-door, into the former home of the Bite Me Best pizza parlor, so that it can add a proper kitchen, six more bar seats, and a handful more table seats. Once gas ovens replace the electric induction ovens that are currently behind the bar, the menu will expand and the bar will also begin opening earlier, at 5 p.m. Mr. Ceraso said he hoped to be able to show off the upgrades next month.
It’s not the closing of Mars Bar, or the opening of another 7-Eleven, but Community Board 3 reached a milestone yesterday as the Landmarks Subcommittee held its first public hearing on proposed renovations to buildings in a historic district.
The new protocol — in which the subcommittee votes on a “certificate of appropriateness” for renovations to protected properties before sending them to the parks committee and then the full community board — will be applied to the 330 buildings in the East Village-Lower East Side Historic District if the district is approved by the Landmarks Preservation Commission.
“When Landmarks decided they were going forward with the two historic districts, we started looking at the increased responsibility because of the sheer number of buildings,” said Carolyn Ratcliff, chairwoman of the subcommittee.
But don’t expect the meetings to become as epic as the board’s S.L.A. committee meetings. Read more…
The Police Department canvassed the 179 apartments in the Seward Park Houses on Essex Street today, a show of force in the ongoing search for the suspect in last week’s shooting of an officer on patrol. The reward for information leading to the arrest of the suspect has also been raised to $22,000, as indicated in the video above.
For every East Village business that’s opening or closing, dozens are quietly making it. Here’s one of them: Best Housekeeping.
How has Best Housekeeping managed to stay in business since 1924? “Old-fashioned, corny customer service,” said Fred Stern, whose father bought the building that houses the wholesale appliance store at 17 Avenue A for a mere $110,000 some 34 years ago (the store’s original owner, Bernie Hymowitz, chose the name Best Housekeeping to honor his own initials). Mr. Stern, who inherited the role of president from his father Martin ten years ago, said that over the past few years business has improved 25 percent, in part because competitors have gone under. Now, he’s hustling to get the enterprise ready for the next generation to take over: he has six boys and one girl. “I will consider myself lucky if two of them go into the business,” he said. “Let’s just say I don’t think I’m busting my chops for nothing to make it.”
Q.
You do kitchen appliances and cabinetry; most businesses do one or the other.
A.
Actually, it was initially a furniture store with a little bit of appliances on the side. My father dropped about half the amount of furniture and upped the appliances. When I took over I dropped all the furniture to focus on just appliances and cabinetry. We kept the name, though. We like the old sign. Read more…
The bike rack on East Fourth Street that a scofflaw cyclist claimed as his own has been removed.
Kyle, the East Fourth Street resident who had his bike stolen from the rack last weekend, noticed that the rack was gone this morning. Sure enough, where once was an arched beam with “Private Bike Rack” painted on it there is now nothing more than six bolts in the sidewalk.
“It’s obviously a bummer that the bike rack had to go, but it’s better than having to put up with someone’s abuses,” said Kyle, who did not wish to give his last name for fear of a confrontation with the rack’s “owner.”
He added, “That guy probably wasn’t going to relent. If it were the bike rack or the guy, the only thing that would have changed is the rack.”
The Local is awaiting a response from The Department of Transportation, regarding whether it removed the rack between Avenues A and B. Back in October the department confirmed that it hadn’t installed the rack, and that it was illegal to claim it as one’s own. In fact, the department can bill whoever installed the rack for the expense of removing it. Of course, that seems unlikely given that the owner has never come forward, though rumors abound.
Update | 4:31 p.m. A spokeswoman for The Department of Transportation confirmed that workers removed the rack today, and that it had received no complaints about it since October. Read more…
Melvin FelixOutside of BRC Senior Services Center last night.
Skate or die! But only between the hours of noon and 8 p.m.
A Community Board 3 committee has recommended new hours of access that will limit the amount of time skateboarders can ride the ramps at Open Road Park. The public park, jointly operated by the neighboring East Side Community High School and the parks department, was closed last summer and then again over the winter due to concerns about drug use and noise.
At a meeting of the Parks, Recreation, Cultural Affairs, Landmarks, & Waterfront committee last night, those issues resurfaced. “Neighbors had concerns with people climbing the fence late at night and using it to skateboard and making a lot of noise,” said Susan Stetzer, district manager of Community Board 3.
Residents of the block on 12th Street between First Avenue and Avenue A said they didn’t mind skateboarding so long as it was regulated. Genevieve, a neighbor of the park who did not want to give her last name, complained that skaters show up as early as 7:30 a.m. and don’t leave until late at night. “The noise it creates rebounds like an echo chamber,” she said. “When you have 50 kids skateboarding back and forth, it’s just an incredible noise.”
Monique Flores, director of University Settlement’s Beacon program at East Side Community High, worried that the 250 children she regularly takes to the park were being exposed to foul language and drug use. “I’m responsible for anything that happens to those kids,” she said. “Scary things have happened there. There has to be a solution and there has to be someone who monitors.”
The schedule proposed last night would allow skateboarding on weekdays from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. and on Saturdays from noon to 8 p.m., but not on Sundays. Read more…
The Police Department just confirmed that Officer Nicholas A. Mina is the man investigators believe is behind the missing guns from the Ninth Precinct. He was arrested last night. The Post has the exclusive on the details. In April Mr. Mina, 31, was assigned to guard the locker room where the guns were stored following the initial thefts, and dared to swipe another gun, according to the paper’s sources. Mr. Mina and three civilians allegedly sold the guns on the street. “To rob a gun that could be used against a fellow cop someday. There’s nothing lower,” a source tells the paper.
The Times has a dispatch from Whiskers Holistic Pet Care. “Whiskers may be the pet world’s closest approximation of the Park Slope Food Co-op.” Sure, but do they carry pet care products from Israel? And the store has more good publicity on the way: Chico is planning to do a mural dedicated to Whiskers on the old Nice Guy Eddie’s wall.
The developer behind Bushwick’s Third Ward just put his NoHo penthouse on the market for $8.95 million, The Real Deal reports. Read more…
New signage went up today at 380 Lafayette Street (Great Jones Street), where Chinatown Brasserie recently closed. Last month, Diner’s Journal reported that Andrew Carmellini, Luke Ostrom and Josh Pickard, who own The Dutch and Locanda Verde, are opening a French restaurant in the bi-level space.
It’s a return to form for Mr. Carmellini, who received acclaim cooking French cuisine under Daniel Boulud of DBGB, and the chef’s second project on Lafayette Street. He and his partners are also opening The Library at Joe’s Pub, just a block away.
Sarah DarvilleYael Carmel (center) tries out a bike.
The 7,000 bicycles that will hit the road when the city’s bike share program launches at the end of summer were meant to be sturdy and hard to topple. “They’re a bit like a tank,” remarked a Citi Bike employee who showed some of them off at Tompkins Square Park today.
So when Yael Carmel wobbled and nearly fell off of one of them, she had to laugh. It was one of her first times on a bike after recently learning to ride, she admitted. The employee steadied her and she was off toward Avenue B.
“I really like it,” she said as she got off the bike. “I need to get used to the idea of riding in the city. But I will.”
Ms. Carmel’s test ride might terrify those who worry the city’s bike share program will flood the streets with inexperienced riders, but today’s preview attracted more experienced cyclists as well. Read more…
Ray LemoineMr. Flanagan shows off his wound outside of court today.
Speaking for the first time since his arrest at Webster Hall last Saturday, former Cro-Mags bassist Harley Flanagan insisted he was acting in self-defense during a brawl that landed two of the band’s current members in the hospital with knife wounds. A grand jury trial was scheduled for Sept. 27 during a hearing at Manhattan Criminal Court today.
“DMS jumped me, man,” Mr. Flanagan told The Local outside of the courtroom, upon recognizing this reporter as the roadie for an opening band who bunked with him on a Cro-Mags tour in 2000. Mr. Flanagan said he was attacked by members of the Doc Marten Skinheads, a gang with a history of violence that grew out of the 1980s hardcore scene and is still active today (graffiti around the Lower East Side reads “Demonstrating My Style” and “Drugs Money Sex.”)
“You know this scene – a bunch of loser bullies,” said Mr. Flanagan, who appeared in court along with three fellow Hare Krishna devotees and his attorney. “Seven or eight guys kicked me to a bloody mess.” Read more…
A 24-year-old man was sliced across the face for no apparent reason after leaving Famous Hakki Pizza at Essex and Rivington Streets this morning. A police spokesman said that the victim had just bought a slice and stepped onto the sidewalk when the unknown assailant cut him from his left cheek to the bottom of his chin at around 2:15 a.m. with a sharp object and then fled. The victim was treated at Bellevue Hospital. Check back later for further details.
Somebody call Michael Moore: there’s been a Factory closing on 14th Street.
The mysteriously-closed Meatball Factory is a goner and will become a seafood restaurant next month, its new owner said today. Miha Khondoker, who previously owned the West Village’s now-closed Mixx Lounge, said he’s busy deciding on a name and finalizing the new restaurant’s menu and decor.
“It’s going to be very different,” he said. Read more…
Jamie K.A shot from the D Generation show at Bowery Electric last weekend.
Gothamist has the scoop of the summer (if you have money to burn): The one-of-a-kind timeshare backyard on Ludlow Street is back for a second season. Love partying outdoors, but can’t stand rubbing elbows with the hoi polloi in Tompkins or along the East River? For a mere $100 you and 30 friends can party in an authentic backyard in the Lower East Side. Added bonus: “BBQ grill, picnic benches, loungers, sun umbrellas, coolers, and a bathroom on site.” Believe it or not, reservations are being sold.
By the way, for free fun, The Fantastic Mr. Fox is screening tonight at sundown in Tompkins Square Park. Live music will kick off a half-hour prior.
EV Grieve notes that the conversion of the Cabrini Center For Nursing & Rehabilitation to a residential building is underway. A commenter on one of The Local’s previous stories on the shuttered nursing home left a stern words for the building’s new owner, Ben Shaoul, just last night: “I wish him the misery he has forced onto many elderly men and women who called the Cabrini House their home.” Read more…
The Local was a journalistic collaboration designed to reflect the richness of the East Village, report on its issues and concerns, give voice to its people and create a space for our neighbors to tell stories about themselves. It was operated by the students and faculty of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University, in collaboration with The New York Times, which provides supervision to ensure that the blog remains impartial, reporting-based, thorough and rooted in Times standards. Read more »
