Add Parkside Lounge to the long list of neighborhood mainstays that are soliciting donations to keep afloat. The East Houston Street bar seeks $10,000 to overhaul its performance space to include a new bar and better sound equipment. “With all the stuff that’s going on in the neighborhood right now, sometimes I get nervous. Some places have just completely changed their identities. I don’t want to do that,” operating partner Christopher Lee says in the video, filmed by the local fundraising company Lucky Ant.

The longstanding bar serves up cheap booze and an eclectic array of musical acts, much like Lakeside Lounge did before it shuttered at the end of April. Read more…

Vivienne Gucwa Last year’s Howl! festival.

Happy Howl! Festival, everyone. At 4:30 p.m. in Tompkins Square Park, Bob Holman, poet and beekeeper, will kick off the annual group reading of Allen Ginsberg’s epic poem, and to celebrate the bard’s birthday weekend, The Local is offering up something special: a chance to visit Ginsberg’s former apartment on East 12th Street with his longtime secretary, Bob Rosenthal, as your host.

Mr. Rosenthal recently shared some memories of his nearly two decades working alongside Ginsberg at 437 East 12th Street, and he’ll share more during an intimate chat in the poet’s old living room. (Naturally, borscht will be served.) All you have to do is subscribe to The Local’s newsletter and you could be one of five lucky attendees. And you’ll be getting East Village news and events delivered straight to your inbox daily, for free! Just sign up here. The contest ends June 15.

Plus, if you’re interested in writing for The Local, have suggestions for coverage, or just want to hear more about us, look for our table at Howl! Festival over the weekend. We’d love to meet you.

Daniel Maurer Nicoletta

Restaurant-construction voyeurs may have noticed a couple of new developments: the plywood that has long obscured Nicoletta, Michael White’s forthcoming pizzeria on the corner of Second Avenue and East 10th Street, came down yesterday. Today, a banquette was awaiting installation; a representative for the restaurant said it’s aiming to open in the next two weeks, pending Department of Buildings inspections and liquor license approval. “The chef wants to get in and make sure he gets to do some work as well,” said the rep.

Daniel Maurer Gin Palace

And over at Gin Palace, the forthcoming cocktail lounge from Ravi DeRossi of Death & Co., Mayahuel, the Bourgeois Pig, and Cienfuegos, antique-style lighting has just been installed over the mural that David Nordine is working on. A worker on the scene told The Local that the Victorian gin joint is aiming to open June 11.

Daniel Maurer Chef Carlos Chusan in the mirror.

Maybe, just maybe you noticed last night that yet another bonkers illuminated sign has joined the flashy Mediterranean Grill and Tapas signage on First Avenue? If not, do watch the color-changing magic in our video above. It’s enough to give the light show at Smokin’ Tattoos a run for its money.

The Turkish takeout joint opens its next-door tapas lounge at sundown tonight, and your first wine is on the house.

Late last night, while Chinese-Ecuadorian chef Carlos Chusan helped decorate the narrow dining room with Turkish and Moroccan trinkets, he told The Local he planned to serve “a little bit of everything for everybody, because the Lower East Side is American, Chinese, Polish, German – so there’s a little bit of everything.” As you can see below, the pan-Mediterranean menu includes nods to Mexico (quesadillas) and Ecuador (ceviche).

The 40-seat tapas lounge will be open from about 5 p.m. till as late as 2 a.m. on weekends. Care to see the menu?

Clayton Patterson Jessie Mac

At 23, Jessie Mac is one of New York’s youngest curators. Tonight at 9 p.m., her third show at Gathering of the Tribes, “’93 Til Infinity,” closes with a party featuring a screening of “Captured,” the 2008 documentary about photographer, curator, and local historian Clayton Patterson. The exhibition features Mr. Patterson’s early-90s photos of the Lower East Side amid floor-to-ceiling graffiti work by Mint&Serf of the Peter Pan Posse art collective. Ms. Mac spoke with The Local about working with Steve Cannon, the founder of Tribes who is fighting to hold onto the space.

How did you wind up as curator of Tribes?

I started working at Tribes a year ago as an intern when I met Steve Cannon. We cut a deal: if he taught me to curate I would dedicate my time to Tribes. It’s a non-profit so Steve is always in need of an extra hand. I never thought a blind man would be my artistic mentor, but I honestly would not be a curator without him. He taught me everything I know in the New York art scene. When people ask how he feels about not knowing what’s on the walls in his own space he says I’m his eyes. But I would have no direction without him. Read more…

Vivienne Gucwa The original. Nuff said.

Remember how the Hastings-Sunrise neighborhood of Vancouver spent $20,000 re-branding its business district as the East Village? Well, according to the Vancouver Courier, residents haven’t exactly taken a shine to the new name. Some think it sounds like “a reference to New York City instead of celebrating what’s indigenous to Vancouver,” and in a recent survey of more than 450 Hastings-Sunrisers (East Villagers?), 81 percent of them preferred the old name.

Of course, Hastings-Sunrise is hardly the fist to poach the monicker. An area of Des Moines, Iowa, was renamed the East Village sometime around 2000. Todd Dorman, a columnist at The Gazette who was there when it happened, notes that the move “drew plenty of derision. Common reactions: ‘Can’t we even think of our own name?’ ‘Do we have to steal one from New York?'” But that isn’t stopping the City Council of Cedar Rapids, a couple of hours from Des Moines, from naming a flood-damaged commercial area of the city the West Village. (The Gazette has the story today.) Read more…

Philip Ross 118-122 East Fourth Street

It costs a pretty penny to throw down with the East Village’s elite.

A swank benefit for the United Jewish Appeal of New York on June 6 will be co-chaired by Benjamin Shaoul, who owns numerous properties all over the neighborhood, and will feature a performance by another local: John Legend. Questlove of the Roots will also spin records.

Tickets for the gala at Capitale on Bowery start at $360, and go as high as $20,000 for the “Legend package” that includes a meet-and-greet with the piano-playing crooner, as well as a listing on a “Scroll of Honor as ‘Legend.'” Lesser donations yield designations as a “producer,” “promoter,” or “performer,” among others. Read more…

Scott Lynch

H. Veng Smith (a.k.a. Veng), last seen painting a mural with schoolkids on Avenue D, was one of several artists who redecorated the construction containers on East Fourth Street over the weekend. See more shots at The Local’s Flickr group.

The Appellate Division of State Supreme Court has affirmed the city’s decision to evict the longtime operator of a newsstand at Astor Place — though a strongly-worded dissenting opinion has given the Greek immigrant a glimmer of hope.

The latest blow to Jerry Delakas’s livelihood comes as the result of an arrangement made in 1987 with his friend, Katherine Ashley. Ms. Ashley was the owner of the license for the newsstand, and Mr. Delakas paid her $75 a week to work there. When Ms. Ashley died in 2006, she wrote in her will that Mr. Delakas should inherit the license. It subsequently passed to other family members while Mr. Delakas continued to operate the stand. Last year, the Department of Consumer Affairs refused to let Ms. Ashley’s estate and then Mr. Delakas renew the license on the grounds that the deal was illegal.

The appellate division of the State Supreme Court concurred with that argument in a ruling filed late last month. Mr. Delakas “had to be aware of the illicit, under the table arrangement he facilitated by his payments to three separate owners beginning as far back as 1987,” reads the ruling, which is below. Read more…

We last called upon Kim Davis, the East Villager who writes At the Sign of the Pink Pig, to judge the new porchetta sandwich at Il Buco Alimentari e Vineria against the classic version at Porchetta. Now that another buzzy sandwich shop has opened in NoHo, we asked him to referee another meat match. Will the Canadian underdog, Mile End, prevail over the reigning champion, Katz’s?

Kim Davis The smoked meat sandwich at Mile End.

The East Village, like it or not, may be gentrifying, but one might have been forgiven for thinking that some things would never change. The supremacy, for example, of the pastrami sandwich at Katz’s as an iconic New York dish, a plated symbol of deli history, and the one thing any visitor to the neighborhood has to eat.

Yet here comes Canadian Noah Bernamoff, with a trimmed down version of his modernist Brooklyn deli Mile End, opening on Bond Street just off the Bowery, no more than a ten-minute walk from the self-proclaimed “Best Deli in New York.” Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown

New York Police Department The suspect.

The police are searching for a man who allegedly robbed the HSBC at Second Avenue and East Ninth Street around 45 minutes ago.

An officer at the scene provided The Local with a surveillance image of the suspect, who is seen wearing a black cap and a long-sleeved white shirt. The investigation had just gotten underway, but the police officer said that the suspect passed a note demanding cash, did not show a weapon, and escaped with under $200.

A tipster notes that renovations are underway at 98 Avenue B, the future home of the Alphabet City mainstay Gruppo, which has served thin crust pies for the last 11 years. Last week Community Board 3 voted in favor of the transfer of Gruppo’s beer and wine license, provided it agree to several pro forma stipulations related to quality-of-life concerns. An employee said that the restaurant would open in its new location sometime this summer.

Daniel Maurer Henry Barrial (right) supervises camera set-up.

A little over a month after “Girl on the Train” transformed the former Mary Help of Christians school into an after-hours club, a film crew is shooting inside the church itself today. Henry Barrial, the director of “Some Body” and “Pig,” described his latest film, “The House That Jack Built,” as an “ultra low-budget” production about a young man who buys a tenement in the Bronx using money saved up from dealing drugs out of his bodega.

So how does Mary Help of Christians come into all this? Well, it’ll stand in as a church in the Bronx where a baptism takes place in the beginning of the movie and a wedding takes place at the end. Other scenes are being shot in Jackson Heights and the Boogie Down.

Mr. Barrial found the church through Caryl Pierre, a production coordinator on the “Girl on the Train” shoot who also recommended the church for this one. The director, who is Cuban-American, said the movie will star Puerto Rican up-and-comer E.J. Bonilla as well as Saundra Santiago, best known for playing Det. Gina Calabrese on “Miami Vice.” The screenplay was written by Joseph Vásquez, the Bronx-born filmmaker who wrote “Hangin’ with the Homeboys,” starring John Leguizamo, before he died of AIDS-related complications in 1995.

Mark Nickelsburg, a longtime East Village resident, will debut “Harry Grows Up” tonight at the inaugural New York International Short Film Festival at Sunshine Cinema. The 12-minute film is about a toddler, Harry (played by Mr. Nickelsburg’s son Lucas) who loses his babysitter (Elizabeth Elkins) when she heads off to college. The tot sinks into the kind of deep depression that results in empty baby bottles strewn about the house, leading narrator Josh Hamilton to quip, “I’m not the first heartbroken New Yorker to turn to the bottle.” But then along comes Zoey, a love interest closer to Harry’s age. Mr. Nickelsburg, 41, described the short as a “romantic comedy for adults, starring babies.” The Local spoke with him about filming his own son in the streets of the East Village.

One of the major characters in your film is the East Village. Was that intentional?

Yes. The experiences that Harry is going through and some of the locations that he’s going to I drew from my own experiences. Like the storefront that figures prominently in the movie, that was around the corner from where I used to live. Moonstruck is the diner on Fifth and Second where Harry drowns his sorrows. I went there all the time. Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown The scene of a similar incident last summer.

Someone shot a 19-year-old in the back with a BB gun at around 7 p.m. near the Campos Plaza houses, the police said.

The teenager was on East 12th Street between Avenues B and C when he was hit, according to the police. He was taken to Beth Israel Hospital in stable condition and no arrests have been made, according to a police spokesman.

The incident comes less than a week after a pair of teenagers were arrested for spraying a corner near PS 2 in the Lower East Side with BBs. Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown Cook Nicola De Mori behind some of the meats at Porchetta.Hog.

Porchetta may no longer be hogging the spotlight where herbed roast pork sandwiches are concerned. First there was the $16 porchetta sandwich at Il Buco Alimentari & Vineria, and now a new contender by the name of “Porchetta.Hog” has entered the swineosphere.

The takeout spot opened earlier this month at 309 East Fifth Street, just a few blocks away from Porchetta, and it too is serving $10 porchetta sandwiches, as well as $8 hamburgers and a handful of other dishes (the full menu is below). Read more…

For every East Village business that’s opening or closing, dozens are quietly making it. Here’s one of them: Pageant Print Shop.

Lauren Carol SmithRebecca Solomon

It’s been nearly two decades since Michael Caine and Barbara Hershey perused the Pageant Book Shop for a copy of E. E. Cummings in “Hannah and her Sisters,” but the store’s history goes back farther than that. In 1946, Sidney B. Solomon and Henry “Chip” Chafetz joined the ranks of Book Row, a stretch of mom-and-pop bookshops along Fourth Avenue from St. Marks Place to 14th Street. One of Mr. Solomon’s two daughters, Shirley, took over after her father died and then moved the store to West Houston Street after a rent hike in the 1990s.

Pageant became an online-only enterprise in 1999, only to reopen at 69 East Fourth Street after Shirley’s sister Rebecca moved back to the city. Nearly seven years later, the siblings are still selling hard-to-find items, though now maps and prints rather than rare books. “Some are old, some are very old, some are very, very old,” said Shirley during a recent conversation with The Local.

How does a shop that sells old maps stay in business?

Shirley: I focus on the unique and affordable. I have things from $1 to $100, to $1,000. There’s an original David Roberts lithograph that is $3,000 framed. We get lots of foot traffic and sell a lot of things in the $1 to $4 range, which adds up. Read more…

Introducing a new column written by those who loved the East Village and left it. Today: Rachel Trobman tells us why she crossed the bridge to Brooklyn.

Rachel Trobman in her 13th Street apartment, 2005.

Williamsburg is teeming with babies. That was my first reaction to my new neighborhood. I’d been lured from the East Village after seven years there by the increased space, a price that would allow me to buy, and the likelihood there would not be a man singing opera at 3 a.m. outside of my window.

Moving across the river, I knew I could expect a slightly longer commute, no yellow cabs, less college students, more facial hair.

What I didn’t see coming was the prevalence of young children. There were five pregnant women in my building when I moved in. Now there are five infants and several toddlers. There are babies in the restaurants, strollers in the parks and tiny humans in the subway.

I first moved to the East Village, from the West Village, when I graduated New York University. My sister, and roommate, was a sophomore there and wanted to be close to campus. I didn’t want to be too far from Chelsea and the news network where I had just gotten a job. We found a reasonably priced “two bedroom” walk-up on St. Marks Place – more like a one bedroom made out of a living room, with a second bedroom made out of a closet. Read more…

Tim Schreier

Hermann the German isn’t the only pizza-parlor painter in the neighborhood. After doing the wall of The Bean’s forthcoming location (with an assist from Mosaic Man), Walker Fee scored a gig across the street. This past weekend, we spotted the muralist painting the facade of East Village Pizza. The owners, we were told, wanted to bring balance to the block. And apparently, Mr. Fee will bring still another mural to the block after this one.

Meanwhile, a block away on St. Marks Place, there’s a newish mural of “Mister Shoetree” on the side of Foot Gear Plus. The artist, Robert Gardner (a.k.a. Robare), brought it to our attention in the comments of our “Making It” interview with shopkeeper Linda Scifo-Young.