Photos: Lauren Carol Smith.

The old CBGB is ready for its close-up, and The Local was on hand as a section of the bar, the phone booth, a urinal, pieces of wall and founder Hilly Kristal’s desk hit the road yesterday for Savannah, Georgia, where they will be used in the upcoming CBGB movie.

The assorted items still have hints of the glory days at 315 Bowery. The beat-up old desk has a list taped to it of phone numbers for old staffers at the club that closed in 2006. The toilets are still filthy and showed no signs of scrubbing (a latrine and a urinal from the women’s room are shown in our slideshow). Most surfaces are covered in band stickers, and the cash register still has a cut-out image of Mr. Kristal alongside a photo of Shakira.

Yesterday it had all been packaged with care in storage near the Brooklyn Navy Yard and loaded into a moving van bound for south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Read more…

Rebecca Prusinowski Stella McCartney (fifth from right) and models.

Last night at the New York Marble Cemetery, fashion designer Stella McCartney (daughter of Sir Paul) presented her 2012 Resort collection to a crowd of revelers that included Anne Hathaway, Jim Carrey, Amy Poehler, Emily Mortimer, Solange Knowles, and Lauren Hutton, among other Stella-heeled models and children.

“It’s an incredible space and a lot of people have no idea about it,” Ms. McCartney said of the lush lawn hidden away from the bustle of Second Avenue. “I had no idea about it until my friend who works with me came across it himself and told me about it. Read more…

Melvin Felix Corey Capers’s nephew Freezy at the memorial earlier today.

Earlier today, friends and family gathered to remember Corey Capers, a 31-year-old resident of Baruch Houses who was fatally stabbed early Saturday morning. They stood, some weeping, at a memorial full of loving messages set up paces away from where his body was found with a knife wound in the chest, under scaffolding on East Fifth Street, between Avenues C and D.

“I remember him always being a strong person, a laughing person,” said Jonathan Winston, the victim’s brother. “I’m really hurt, but at the end of the day, my little brother, he was a soldier. He went out like a soldier. He went out like a man, and I’m proud of him and I will always be proud of him.”

“I am too,” said Denise Alexander, the victim’s older sister. “You’re my hero, Corey Capers.” Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown The Cabrini Center.

This week, dozens of residents and employees of the Cabrini Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation will receive bottles of holy water with which to bless their new homes or offices.

The bottles are a parting gift to the 85 remaining residents of the nursing home at Fifth Street and Avenue B who will have to vacate by July 1 so that the building’s new owner, Benjamin Shaoul’s Magnum Realty Group, can go ahead with redevelopment plans.

Last month, Cabrini closed the adult daycare center that it operated on the Lower East Side, which gave nearly 40 seniors and some adults with developmental disabilities a place to eat, socialize and receive medical attention as needed during the day. Lorraine Horgan, a spokesperson for Cabrini, said that those people had been easily transferred to other programs; but a group of board members and employees is still working to ensure that English lessons, weekly food allotments, and legal services remain available to the 16,000 people who use yet another program, Cabrini Immigrant Services, each week. Read more…

Chris Caporlingua The characters quaffed beer in “Claire Went to
France.” Now you can, too.

Having trouble getting the boyf to take in some local theater? This might convince him. “The Vitology,” a new three-act comedy from Ben Clawson, Artome Yatsunov, and Scott Cagney – playwright, director, and actor from “Claire Went to France” – involves a drinking game: audience members pick a character and every time the character drinks, they drink, too. The play, which runs July 5 to 14 at Under St. Marks, spans “a decade in the lives of the world’s worst best friends,” per a press release, so expect to take many a sip from the free beer you get with the $18 cost of admission.

And the Strange Dog Theatre Company isn’t the only one plying theatergoers with drinks. Bowery Boogie attended “Speakeasy Dollhouse,” Cynthia von Buhler’s new play about the murder of her saloonkeeper grandfather and found that upon arriving at the former Lower East Side speakeasy where the play takes place, audience members are offered cannolis and “special coffee.”

The Ex-Villagers: they loved the East Village and left it. Mara Levi closed her East Sixth Street restaurant last year. With the Long Island outpost of Mara’s Homemade now a year old, we checked in to see how she’s doing.

Lauren Carol Smith Mara Levi at the new Mara’s Homemade in
Syosset, N.Y.

When the building that occupied our Union Square coffeehouse, Java N Jazz, was sold and all the tenants were asked to leave we started looking for a new space in the neighborhood, for a new type of restaurant. We found one, but lost out when a celebrity chef also started negotiations for it. The search started again and we found a place in the East Village. We opened there a month after Java N Jazz closed.

The space was not ideal. We were forced out in three months, but were lucky to find another location three doors down. The rent was $5,000 a month for 750 square feet. With the failing of the first location we had changed our focus to the foods of New Orleans. We started out with the basics: jambalaya, shrimp Creole, etouffee, and of course the live crawfish boil.

The customers started coming and requested dishes they had eaten at Jazz Fest. My husband was waiting tables and I was in the kitchen. He would describe dishes and I would prepare them and the customers would tell me if I was on the mark. Then we’d add them to the menu.

My husband has a love for barbecue; he found a smoker that would fit in the kitchen and we started serving Arkansas barbecue. The neighborhood took a liking to what we were doing. Read more…

N.Y.P.D. Carl Knox.

The police have named a suspect in a stabbing that occurred early Saturday morning.

Carl “Abdul Hakim” Knox, 47, is wanted for stabbing Corey Capers, a 31-year-old resident of the Baruch Houses. Around 3 a.m. Saturday, Mr. Capers was found with a knife wound to the chest outside of Mr. Knox’s residence at 737 East Fifth Street, between Avenues C and D, the police said. He was declared dead on arrival at Beth Israel hospital.

Police sources told The Daily News that Mr. Capers was killed as he tried to prevent Mr. Knox from beating his girlfriend (the victim’s aunt, according to The Post). Mr. Capers had been at a barbecue nearby, per CBS New York.

As Alphabet City copes with its second stabbing in a week, many are still talking about a chaotic incident last weekend that is said to have increased tension between residents and the police.

A fight involving a father, his son, and a police officer last Saturday grew into a melee that took over Avenue D and spilled into a police station house, said residents of the neighborhood. Videos obtained by The Local offer a glimpse into the clamorous street scene.

The Local spoke with several people living in the Jacob Riis Houses or nearby who said they had heard that a 14-year-old boy and his father were stuck in the head by a police officer. Ashley Serrano, another 14-year-old who was involved in the tussle, said that the father’s face was bruised and cut. “They made his whole face bleed,” she said.

“It was a hot night out there,” said Lieutenant Steve Nusser, one of the officers of Police Service Area 4 who responded to the incident. “There was a fight between a couple people, a crowd of people came over, and the cops I’m sure did something to halt that action, and it escalated from there,” he said. “When the crowd surged, some people came to the PSA [station house] and we had to control the crowd. Some were out of order.” Read more…

A man was stabbed to death on East Fifth Street early this morning, the police said.

The police said that at 3 a.m., they responded to a report of a 30-year-old man stabbed in the chest in front of 737 East Fifth Street, between Avenues C and D.

The victim, who could not be identified as his family had not yet been notified, was found unconscious and was pronounced dead on arrival at Beth Israel hospital; there have been no arrests in the ongoing homicide investigation, the police said.

Update | 6:30 p.m. The victim has now been identified as Corey Capers, a 31-year-old resident of the Baruch Houses, the police said.

Kevin McLaughlin

This past weekend, the Lower East Side Preservation Initiative hosted a walking tour of the long-gone Jewish Rialto, formerly one of the preeminent theater districts outside of Broadway. The marquees touting lively music, comedy, and burlesque acts are no longer aglow, but during the three-hour stroll, theater historian Cezar Del Valle noted architectural remnants of the Yiddish theater era’s early-1900s heyday.

The district was ample, stretching from Second Avenue to Avenue B, and from Houston Street to 14th Street. Smaller stages nestled on side streets also hosted Jewish, Shakespearean, and original plays, as well as vaudeville, burlesque and musical shows.

Beginning at 143 Houston Street, Del Valle opened the tour with the story of the Houston Hippodrome, which was “a wooden ‘worm eaten building'” and a German evangelical church in the late 1800s until the General Slocum steamboat disaster in 1904. The Minksy family of real estate investors funded a reconstruction and in 1909 the space reopened, “presenting movies and vaudeville. Short plays were added circa 1912,” said Mr. Del Valle. It’s now the home of the Landmark Sunshine Cinema. Read more…

Melvin Felix Paul Yanchyshyn and Diana Carulli give new color to a painted labyrinth in East River Park.

After five weekends of weeding, mulching and painting, the women of the New York Junior League will unveil upgrades at East River Park tomorrow. The Playground Improvement Project, a committee of the league, volunteered its time throughout the spring to beautify 57 acres of riverfront between East 12th Street and Montgomery Street.

Visitors will now find new benches, fresh coats of paint on playground equipment and fences, as well as a brand new flower garden near the tennis courts at Houston Street.

The improvements are likely to be folded into the Blueway project, a proposal to make the shore along the East River, from the Brooklyn Bridge north to East 38th Street, as accessible and pleasant as Hudson River Park to the west.

Assemblyman Brian Kavanagh, one of the promoters of the Blueway, said the improvements to the park were welcome during the project’s early planning stages. “I saw first hand how they’ve been working hard getting the park ready for the summer for residents to enjoy,” said Mr. Kavanagh. Read more…

Lauren Carol Smith

First the “Legends of the Lower East Side” were immortalized in coloring-book form, and now the “Saints of the Lower East Side” have been painted onto scaffolding on Fourth Street, between Bowery and Second Avenue.

Tom Sanford, known for his portraits of cultural and historical figures, painted some local heroes on scaffolding above 70 East Fourth Street Cultural Center, where the future home of the Downtown Art and Alpha Omega Theatrical Dance Company is under construction. The portraits, from left to right, are of Martin Wong, Joey Ramone, Miguel Piñero, Ellen Stewart, Charlie Parker, Arthur “Weegee” Fellig and Allen Ginsberg.

Lauren Carol Smith 107-113 Second Avenue.

The artist got some help from Graham Preston, who will present his own works, depicting cultural heroines of the area, on June 26 at 6 p.m. at FAB Café. Both exhibits, which are presented by FABnyc and are part of the ArtUp program that recently brought a new mural to the La MaMa building, will be up till Sept. 5.

And speaking of scaffolding, The Local spotted the scaffolding that was expected to obscure the new Metropolitan Citymarket (formerly Met Foods) going up earlier today. As previously reported, N.Y.U. is renovating its classrooms in the former Saul Birns Building at 107-113 Second Avenue, and the scaffolding is expected to come down in the fall.

Trips towards Williamsburg will soon be a little less cramped. In two days the Metropolitan Transportation Authority will add seven round-trip trains on Sundays, 16 peak and off-peak round-trip trains on weekdays, and 11 round-trip trains on Saturdays, according to State Senator Daniel Squadron. It was Mr. Squadron who pressed for the increased service last year following the release of a study that found a “meteoric” increase in ridership along the L. He’ll officially commemorate the new L trains on Monday at the Bedford Avenue stop.

Photos: Philip Ross.

The Lower Eastside Girls Club will field two new softball teams with the help of a $5,000 check, but the check itself disappeared before it could be presented at East River Park yesterday afternoon.

SportsNet New York planned to turn over an oversized $5,000 check to the Girls Club, to go toward uniforms and equipment for its new Avenue D Sluggers. But before that could happen, the car containing the giant check was towed away, all but kiboshing the presentation ceremony. But there’s no crying in baseball, or softball, either – so the folks at SNY gave the Girls Club 100 tickets to a Mets game on July 24 and promised to present the check then.

The donation is being made in honor of the 40th anniversary of Title IX, which bans gender discrimination in educational programs receiving federal assistance, and will allow two teams of girls aged six to 12 to play at East River Park every Saturday. It’s the first sports team that the Girls Club has fielded in a few years. Read more…

Daniel Maurer

A woman was attacked with a hammer outside of the Catholic Worker’s Maryhouse at 55 East Third Street this morning, a resident of the facility said.

Amy Nee, who has lived and worked at the Maryhouse for three months, said she didn’t witness the attack, which occurred shortly after 7 a.m., but detectives told her about it as the victim waited in an ambulance. She said the woman, whose first name was Katie and whose last name she did not know, often came to the Maryhouse for lunches and showers. A police representative was unable to confirm the incident for The Local, but DNA Info reported that the victim, 39, was struck in the head and taken to Bellevue Hospital in stable condition.

Maryhouse, which houses mostly women and is run in a communal fashion by volunteers committed to poverty, was opened in the 1970s by Catholic anarchist Dorothy Day. As The Local has reported, it has served as a refuge for members of the Occupy Wall Street movement, among others in need of food and shelter. Read more…

Photos: Daniel Maurer

The Patricia Field store, which was on East Eighth Street for many years and then moved to a former kitchen supply store at 302 Bowery, moved a couple of doors over last week and has reopened at 306 Bowery in the designer’s former home.

Ms. Field, who has outfitted everyone from drag queens to club kids to Carrie Bradshaw, first made a home at 306 Bowery in 2005, after many years of living above her previous store in Greenwich Village. She eventually acquired the ground floor of the building behind her apartment, at 298 Elizabeth Street, knocked down its exterior wall, and connected it to her home by building a skylight between the two buildings.

Now that Ms. Field has moved to a smaller place in the Seward Park area, her former Bowery digs are serving as the new location of her boutique. At 4,000 square feet, the bi-level space is nearly twice the size of the previous location, leaving space for more inventory from brands like Boy London, M.Y.O.B., and Noir. Read more…

Nick DeSantis

After nearly losing its liquor license last September, Heathers Bar is up for sale.

Heather Millstone confirmed her eponymous bar was on the market after The Local received a listing from Steven Kamali Hospitality indicating that it’s available for a $150,000 fixture fee plus $6,850 per month in rent.

“It’s been a rough year for me on a lot of different levels, so I’m exploring my options,” she wrote in an e-mail. “I don’t think anyone should rejoice or mourn just yet, Heathers will probably still be around for some time, just not forever.”

Ms. Millstone said her reasons for seeking a new operator were “solely personal” and had nothing to do with her recent experience in front of Community Board 3. In September, neighbors complaining of late-night noise and unlimited drink specials convinced the board to recommend that the State Liquor Authority reject the bar’s application for a liquor license renewal, but the S.L.A. granted it anyway.

At the time, signs on the bar’s door read, “SAVE HEATHERS.”

Philip Ross Alfa Diallo at the Dias Y Flores Community Garden

A vendor at the flea market at Avenue A and 11th Street is suing a former N.Y.U. Tisch School of the Arts student who disappeared after filming a short documentary about him. The t-shirt designer, Alfa Diallo, is demanding $5,000 in small claims court.

Mr. Diallo said that he agreed to show Matthew Swenson his t-shirt making process after Craig Atkinson, who is also named in the suit, approached his booth last summer and asked if he would participate in his friend’s graduate thesis project.

Mr. Diallo, a relaxed and amicable 60-year-old who was born in Senegal and educated in France, handcrafts the t-shirt designs using a French curve, a tool that creates curly, looped, and elliptical patterns. Mr. Swenson filmed him for two days, said Mr. Diallo – one day at the flea market and another at his apartment on 13th Street and Avenue A.

“They did all this shooting without me being able to see anything,” he said. “Matt said to me, ‘I’ll send you things by e-mail, you should be able to open it and see.’ But I was not able to see it.” Read more…

Erica Min “Cho H Cho” featuring Daniel Irizarry.

With arts funding getting slashed and donors pinching pennies, 11 downtown theater companies have joined forces for an avant garde festival next month. What space will serve as host? The Living Theatre, of course, which narrowly avoided shutting down weeks ago.

The month-long undergroundzero festival will open June 29 with a sit-down interview with Judith Malina, the revered founder of The Living Theatre. Ms. Malina will also fill the role of Mary in a production of “The Gospel of St Matthew” — a victory lap of sorts for the 85-year-old woman who nearly saw her life’s work come to an end due to debt.

“This is part of preserving one of the city’s treasures: Judith,” said Brad Burgess, who cares for Ms. Malina and helps run the theater. “If she’s not supported — the founder of the movement — what do the rest of us have? If she’s taken care of then there’s hope.”

Of course, The Living Theatre’s financial woes are far from unique. According to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, 50 of New York City’s 200 performance venues with 99 seats or fewer closed between 2003 and 2010. Read more…