Photos by Tim Schreier. Second photo: Veng. Third photo: Moise Joseph. Seventh photo: Sofia Maldonado and Carlo McCormick of Paper. Eighth photo: Mista Oh and Sofia Maldonado. Ninth slide, left to right: Chris Serrano, Mista Oh (Jerry Otero), H Veng Smith, Sofia Maldonado, Moise Joseph, Crystal Gonzalez, Robin Cembalest (editor Art News), Alicia Prieto

The group that scored a $5,000 check from street artist Retna has added a new mural to the East Village, and The Local helped make it happen.

Jerry “Mista Oh” Otero, who runs Cre8tive YouTH*ink, said that a resident of East Fifth Street, Liezl Van Riper, contacted him after seeing our piece about Retna’s donation, and asked his Gowanus-based organization to create a new mural for a wall that was once the domain of Chico.

“The wall directly across from her building was inadvertently painted by the city’s anti-graffiti program,” said Mr. Otero. “It was done by Chico – an outdoor scene of some sort. It was up for 10 years.” Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown The scenes at Bistro Cafe & Grill and Joyful Nail, both of which opened today.

As The Local predicted yesterday, the Bistro Cafe & Grill is now open and serving a wide range of deli fare, plus gyros, kebabs, falafel and hummus. The new eatery at First Avenue and East Second Street is owned by the same folks behind Tompkins Finest Deli. And just a block away at 35 Avenue A, Joyful Nail also opened today. It’s the second nail salon to open in recent weeks. See what they’re offering below. See the menus for both…

Daniel Maurer

The smell of bacon on East 14th Street will soon be snuffed out.

Following more complaints of a greasy odor emanating from IHOP, The Local contacted the owner of the eatery to get the latest on the installation of a ventilation unit to neutralize the smell.

“As an IHOP franchisee, we are committed to being a good neighbor,” owner Ed Scannapieco wrote in an e-mail. “We are awaiting delivery of the equipment within the next 10 days, and we have a commitment from the contractor that it will be installed seven to 10 days after delivery.”

That will come as good news to neighbors of the restaurant who have complained since late last year about a nauseating smell that lingers around the clock.

“The odors and noise are still a problem, and the so-called ‘roof’ still looks like a garbage dump,” wrote Sandy Berger, who recently posted flyers asking her neighbors to join an IHOP victims committee.

“I had hoped that the owners would have corrected the problem by now, but right now I’m gagging on bacon fumes,” wrote another neighbor, Mary Beth Powers, to Community Board 6.

If you happen to spot the installation of the most intriguing ventilator unit since that noisy air conditioner on East 13th Street, send us a photo.

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.

Jum Mum, a restaurant specializing in steamed buns, has opened in the former Hottie space at 5 St. Marks Place.

The business, which sells two pork belly buns for $5.50, is run by the owners of Spot Dessert Bar a few doors down. Several other varieties of buns and rice dishes are available as well.

Jum Mum is open from noon to midnight Sunday through Thursday, and noon to 2 a.m. on Friday and Saturday. See the menu…

Julia Pasternak Diana Beshara as Cavale and Geoffrey Pomeroy as Slim in “Cowboy Mouth.” The roles were originally filled Patti Smith and Sam Shepard.

The building housing Lucky Cheng’s will get a “Sleep No More”-style makeover. “Cowboy Mouth,” a play written by Patti Smith and Sam Shepard during their whirlwind romance in a ransacked room in the Chelsea Hotel, will be revived in a room in which the audience sits on sofas next to needles, trash, liquor bottles and a drum kit. The roughly 25 audience members will even have to “find” the room by inquiring at the bar of Lucky Cheng’s and then being directed to an out-of-the-way set of stairs.

“It’s going to have an apartment-feel,” said Leah Benavides, the director. “There’s not going to be a definitive line between the audience and the stage. The audience is going to be really in it.” Read more…

Last week we clued you into the “I Love Vinyl” parties. Today, meet one of the DJs behind the parties, Jon Oliver, also the host of “The Main Ingredient,” Tuesdays from midnight to 2 a.m. on East Village Radio. This video kicks off a week-long tribute to the neighborhood’s Party People: the DJs, bartenders, waitresses, musicians, and drag queens who keep the East Village popping.

Photos: Daniel Maurer

Laurie Gwen Shapiro Hermann at Bagel Cafe & Ray’s Pizza

At Bagel Café and Ray’s Pizza, on the corner of St. Marks Place and Third Avenue, a mural depicts nearly 25 scenes of the East Village. One panel features Telly Salavas in front of the Ninth Precinct stationhouse. Another depicts Deanna’s, a popular early-90s jazz club on East Seventh Street that catered to bebop lovers on a budget. The largest of them, running across the entire back wall, is an East Village cityscape watched over by the World Trade Center’s twin towers.

And then there’s the one that includes a tranquil scene in Tompkins Square Park, also in the early 90s, when the park was shedding its scars from the riots. The signature at the bottom right of the panel reads: H Platschka. Next to the autograph, strangely enough, is a phone number.

Call that number and Hermann Platschka will pick up. He calls himself Hermann the German. The artist, “76-years young,” recently accepted The Local’s invitation to tell the story of the murals.  Thickset, with a short-cropped beard, he arrived at the Bagel Cafe clad entirely in black, from his shoes to his beret to his black leather jacket to his black-framed glasses.

His tour started with the first panel he painted, of Gem Spa. “The East Village was a dangerous place then,” he said, pointing to a fair-haired night watchman standing outside the candy store: “The ladies’ favorite, a cop with movie-star looks. It was dicey then, and he was the law.” Read more…

Photos: Tim Schreier

The annual New York Dance Parade brought pretty much the entirety of the East Village over to St. Marks Place this afternoon to gawk at a colorful cacophony of fantastic attire, expert moves, and in the case of the Webster Hall float, scantily clad ladies escorting one of the parade’s grand marshals, DJ Jonathan Peters. In case you escaped to Rockaway Beach, where Caracas opened its boardwalk outpost today, these photos should give you an idea of what you missed. If you have your own shots, add them to our Flickr group.

Philip Ross The swarm capture on Wednesday.

Before Bee Week concludes here on The Local, we should mention that Timothy O’Neal, the beekeeper who tends to the bees on the rooftop of the 308 Bowery, got back to us today to tell us why exactly he thinks the bees that swarmed near Bleecker Street on Wednesday likely came from a neighboring hive rather than those belonging to Bowery Poetry Club owner Bob Holman.

According to the beekeeper, swarms don’t leave a hive until developing queens are properly nursed and are a day or two from emerging as adults. “When I inspected his hives, I found signs that they were preparing to swarm by creating queen cells, but that they were not far enough along for the swarm to have departed, and the population density was very high,” Mr. O’Neal wrote in an e-mail to The Local.  Read more…

There’s an air of serenity about Anna Sheffield as she works at a small desk in her studio on Lafayette Street. On a recent Thursday evening, the jewelry designer spoke to The Local over a cup of tea, away from the buzz of her workroom and kitchen, in a well-lit corner room filled with her designs, art books and warmly worn wooden furniture. Her hair was pulled back and tattoos of hearts, flowers and birds covered both her arms.

Ms. Sheffield started her Bing Bang line (available at Cloak & Dagger, Warm, and Reformation) in 2002 in San Francisco and launched her fine jewelry line, Anna Sheffield, (available at Love, Adorned and coming to ABC Carpet & Home in a couple of weeks) in 2007. Before that, she grew up Catholic in northern New Mexico. Her influences are evident in the Madonna, crucifixes and feathers that adorn some of her works. Read more…

Shira Levine

For every East Village business that’s opening or closing, dozens are quietly making it. Here are two of them: Village Kids and Foot Gear Plus.

While in high school, Tony Scifo worked part-time for a shoe guy. In 1980, at the tender age of 19, he bought Foot Gear, the shoe shop across the street at 131 First Avenue. Two and a half years ago, he and his big sister Linda Scifo-Young opened Village Kids, selling children’s kicks just a block away at 117 First Avenue. Ms. Scifo-Young used to work in corporate real estate, so she wasn’t scared of going into business during a financial crisis. “As a real estate broker, I knew that the only time I could get a decent lease for the second store was when the market was bad,” she said. The Local spoke to her at Village Kids about whether her gamble paid off.

What influences your business the most?

The funny thing is that in actuality we’re in the weather business. If the weather cooperates, we’re good. If it’s cold when it’s supposed to be cold, then we have a good season. If it’s hot when it’s supposed to be hot, then we have a good season. If any of those things don’t work, you have no season. This year was hard with how the weather cooperated. Read more…

Photos: Daniel Maurer

The Sixth Street Community Center got approximately 15,000 new tenants yesterday: about three and a half pounds of bees that may make honey for its café, opening next month. The hives on the community center’s rooftop are among many in the East Village, according to the beekeeper who brought the swarm down from Central Park.

On Wednesday (the same day he dealt with a mass of bees on the Bowery), Andrew Cote helped capture another swarm attached to a lamppost near Harlem Meer Lake, near 110th Street. He offered them up on the New York City Beekeepers Association’s Facebook page. Ray Sage, a member of the Sixth Street Community Center CSA who has tended to four hives on the former synagogue’s roof for the past three years, was the first to respond. Read more…

Yesterday we profiled Food Not Bombs, which feeds East Villagers such as the homeless group we visited on Wednesday. Street Life Ministries also helps the needy in Tompkins Square Park. This is the story of one of the group’s volunteers.

A decade ago, police officer Glenn Ferro’s life fell apart. Caught in the grips of alcoholism and clinical depression, he was forced to resign from his job, went through a divorce, and lost his home. Today, the 61-year-old volunteers with Street Life Ministries in Tompkins Square Park, assisting homeless individuals with their everyday needs. His mission is to change the live of those who suffer from addiction, like he did.

Yesterday, The Local visited a homeless encampment on Avenue A. Just a block away, in Tompkins Square Park, several groups – like this one, this one, and this one – are working to feed the needy. Here’s one of them.

Stirring a shiny mix of Portobello mushrooms, sweet yellow peppers, and other vegetables, Su Wang scooped up a piece of white radish for a taste. “Five more minutes,” she said.

During the week, Ms. Wang is a 19-year-old student of political science at Hunter College. On weekends, she serves as a member of the Manhattan chapter of Food Not Bombs, a group that feeds the homeless with surplus food rescued from grocery stores and dumpsters.

The anti-poverty movement, which encourages countries to cut the amount they spend on war in order to insure that food is available to all, has more than 1,000 active chapters around the world, including a dozen sub-organizations in New York State. The Manhattan chapter rescues 50 to 100 pounds of food per week, to serve mostly as vegan and vegetarian meals. Read more…

The East Village lost one record store this month and is losing another, but several remain. The Local visited a couple of them, A-1 Records and Turntable Lab, to talk to DJs from the spin-centric “I Love Vinyl” party, which celebrates its third anniversary at Le Poisson Rouge in Greenwich Village on May 26. Watch the video to hear why vinyl will never die.

Philip Ross Norman Isaacs

Norman Isaacs, the owner and namesake of Norman’s Sound and Vision, said that he’s moving his record store from the East Village to Williamsburg because (you guessed it) his landlord is raising his rent.

The 65-year-old, who opened the shop at 67 Cooper Square in 1994, said that he received a call from the building’s management company, Levites Realty, informing him that his rent of $7,000 a month would go up to $11,000 once his 20-year lease expired.

“They called and said, ‘We’re raising the rent,’ and I said, ‘Can you come down at all?’ and they said no, and I said ‘I’m leaving,'” recounted Mr. Isaacs, who said his initial rent at the shop was around $4,000. Read more…

Gothamist catches wind of a Beastie Boys fan who’s organizing an “MCA Day” in celebration of the late Adam Yauch. No word on what exactly the May 19 event in Union Square will entail, or whether State Senator and Beastie Boys fan Daniel Squadron will be rocking the mic.

The New York City Beekeepers Association Officers of the Ninth Precinct with Andrew Cote.

The bees that swarmed on the Bowery yesterday will find a new home in Queens today. But where did they come from in the first place? The beekeeper that relocated them points to the rooftop of the Bowery Poetry Club.

Andrew Cote, a founder of the New York City Beekeepers Association who tends to around fifty bee hives around the city and sells honey at the Union Square Greenmarket, said he was summoned to Bowery and Bleecker Street yesterday by Anthony “Tony Bees” Planakis, the police department’s go-to guy for bee incidents.

After Mr. Planakis removed the swarm from a tree branch and placed it into a bucket, he and Mr. Cote received a police escort to a fenced-off area of Tompkins Square Park. There, Mr. Planakis transferred the bees from his container to Mr. Cote’s, so the beekeeper could transport them first to the Upper West Side, where he spent the night, and then to the hives of a wine distributor and novice beekeeper in Queens, who will be their new owner.

Mr. Cote, who said he had assisted in 12 similar incidents in the past five days, thinks the bees belonged to the Bowery Poetry Club. “They were bees who were mistreated, I’ll say, and who became in a sense homeless,” he said, pointing to a May 6 incident during which a neighbor of the literary bar reported a swarm above her building. Read more…

Jared Malsin D, right, and other members of her encampment.

Half a dozen homeless people have taken shelter under the awning of the shuttered East Village Farm, and police are allowing them to stay even as neighbors complain of unsanitary and potentially dangerous conditions on Avenue A.

Outside of the former grocery store, which closed in February, the group of black, white, and Latino men and women in their 30s to 50s makes do with a handful of blankets and a couple of sheets of cardboard laid on the sidewalk. They pass cigarettes to each other and sometimes pool small amounts of money, most of it acquired through panhandling. “We’re a family,” said one man.

“D,” a 49-year-old former clerical worker from Brooklyn, who like other members of the group wished to remain anonymous, said the police had tentatively allowed them to remain on the stretch of sidewalk between Sixth and Seventh Streets, provided they keep the area in order. Read more…