The police have announced an arrest in the case of a man said to have inappropriately touched himself while staring at a woman on an L train bound for Union Square last week. Kyle Brown, a 23-year-old Bushwick resident, has been charged with public lewdness. The train rider who is alleged to have taken a photo up a woman’s dress on the same day is still at large.

Suzanne Rozdeba

May Day is almost upon us, and with it will come a citywide carnival of Occupy Wall Street demonstrations.

But what will May Day actually look like in New York City and in the East Village? Will we see orderly marchers proceeding peacefully between police barricades? Or will Wall Street burn, as the graffiti on Avenue A warns? Or should we expect, as Jerry Rubin predicted for the 1972 Democratic National Convention, “ten thousand naked hippies” marching on Wall Street?

Asked to predict the size of the demonstrations, Occupy organizer Marisa Holmes, 25, told The Local that May 1 will be on par with the movement’s fall protests or larger. “It won’t be a general strike but it will be substantial,” said the freelance film editor and graduate student at Hunter College. Read more…

Daniel Maurer Bob Rosenthal in the hallway of
437 East 12th Street, with Ginsberg
over his shoulder.

With just a few days left of National Poetry Month and a movie about the Beats in the works, it seems an appropriate time for Bob Rosenthal, former secretary to Allen Ginsberg, to share some memories of his former employer. After all, Mr. Rosenthal, an East Villager and a poet in his own right, recently completed a memoir titled “Straight Around Allen” (it’s being shopped to publishers) and he appears in “Passing Stranger,” a recently released audio tour of the neighborhood’s poetic landmarks.

It just so happens that the editor of The Local lives in Allen Ginsberg’s former apartment on East 12th Street – or rather, the portion of the apartment that contained the poet’s bedroom, bathtub, and the home office where Mr. Rosenthal worked alongside the literary legend for nearly two decades. Yesterday, Mr. Rosenthal, who these days teaches Beat literature to high schoolers, paid his first visit to his old workplace in some years, and spoke candidly about his time there.

Bob Moves to 437 East 12th, Allen Follows
My wife and I moved to New York from Chicago in 1973. We were living on St. Marks Place and met people in this building [437 East 12th Street]: Rebecca Wright, a poetess who was actually living with John Godfrey upstairs, was going back to somewhere in the Midwest where she’s from with her son and she was leaving me the apartment. It was like $125 per month and she said, “I’ll leave you these books” – all of them Allen Ginsberg books. She said, “I don’t need them anymore.” That’s when I started reading him. It was serendipitous. Read more…

Lauren Evans, Cafe Press The CBGB jersey spotted at REI and the snuggie from Mosaic Man’s Cafe Press line.

While rumors continue to swirl about the return of CBGB, we recently spotted a way to indulge one’s punk nostalgia and comfortably ride a bicycle. A CBGB cycling jersey is on sale at REI.

Here’s the write-up for the jersey: “The retro image CBGB performance bike jersey takes you on a ride down memory lane to the days when punk rock ruled high and mighty at New York’s famous CBGB underground rock club. Polyester mesh fabric wicks away sweat and dissipates it for quick drying-airy mesh weave allows excellent breathability.”

So, what’s more bizarre? This punked-out polyester that’s only $70? Or the warm and cuddly Mosaic Man snuggie?

Students and faculty opposed to Cooper Union charging tuition for the first time in 110 years have released a detailed 32-page document dubbed “The Way Forward” that proposes a variety of methods to get the cash-strapped institution out of debt. “We would like to propose here that to consider introducing tuition is to consider selling out Cooper’s most precious asset: its ethos of equality and equity. There are alternatives,” it reads. The document’s release comes only hours before a “community summit” regarding the future of Cooper Union, which university president Jamshed Bharucha is expected to attend. Given yesterday’s protests, the meeting could get interesting.

Kathryn Doyle Toby Salkin painted these religious Jews, which
she calls “Boychicks,” based on a photo she took
in JFK two years ago

Every year in April, Allen Salkin, a onetime East Village resident and former staff writer for The New York Times, throws a spring frolic for an eclectic group of friends and colleagues. This year, it will double as his 70-year-old mother’s downtown art-world debut.

Mr. Salkin, who now lives on Forsyth Street, asked a friend who owns a gallery in his building if he could use it to give his mother a one-woman show. Yesterday, Toby Salkin filled the walls of the modest space with as many of her oil paintings as would fit. Among the bright blues and rusty oranges was the face of a conspicuously mustachioed cowboy: Randy Jones of the Village People. Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown A tag on the crane outside of what’s said to be David Schwimmer’s future abode.

The star of “Friends” sure isn’t getting a friendly welcome to the neighborhood. Someone tagged “a butcher” on the crane outside of what’s said to be the future home of David Schwimmer — a likely reference to the townhouse built in 1852 that used to sit on the site.

A previous tag at the site referenced the “destruction of an irreplaceable historic building” to make way for “another ugly, yuppie, ghetto catering to monied transients.”

Of course, close followers of proceedings at 331 East Sixth Street will recall that this isn’t the first time the crane has made headlines. Earlier this month the contraption knocked over scaffolding, injuring a pedestrian below.

Evan Bleier

The former home of Vishwa Dharma Mandalam, a Hindu temple, may soon be getting some less austere residents. The two-story mixed-use building at 96 Avenue B will double in size if an application filed on Tuesday with the Department of Buildings is approved, and the two additional floors will house a duplex apartment with a penthouse overlooking Avenue B.

Armand Pierro, an owner of the building, said the units would be strictly rentals, although he has no takers as of yet. “They’re going to be high-end rentals, whatever that means,” he told The Local. Read more…

Daniel Maurer

Community Board 3 just released its new agenda that, as always, is chock full of tantalizing tidbits regarding new restaurants and bars bound for the neighborhood. A few highlights from the State Liquor Authority licensing committee: a new “Empanadas Bar” is seeking a beer and wine license in the space formerly occupied by Itzocan Cafe on East Ninth Street. Shervin’s Cafe on East Seventh Street near Avenue A will also seek the board’s approval for beer and wine, though its Facebook page is already advertising new summer cervezas.

One of the neighborhood’s most frequented bars, the 13th Step, will seek approval for a renewal of its liquor license. On several occasions at least two neighbors of the popular bar have pleaded with officers at the Ninth Precinct Community Council meeting to do something about the boisterous behavior of its customers. Read more…

Natalie Rinn

Critics and supporters of N.Y.U.’s planned expansion in Greenwich Village pleaded their cases before the New York City Planning Commission yesterday. The exchange was a critical one, since the controversial project must be approved by the Commission and then by the City Council before construction can begin.

For more than seven hours at the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian, speakers gave three-minute testimonies in response to the university’s pending build-out of the school’s core campus south of Washington Square Park. With the museum’s stadium-style seating filled to capacity, President John Sexton faced hissing and intentional coughing as he explained why the university was in “desperate” need of additional space, and why so much of it needed to be located in Greenwich Village. Read more…

Photos: Tim Schreier

The Cooper Union student who climbed atop the Peter Cooper monument earlier today is still there, and has attracted the attention of a couple dozen police officers who have placed a ladder against the monument and are telling him to get down. “I’m just trying to bring attention to a cause,” he said while holding a sign reading “No Tuition It’s Our Mission.” The student assured officers, “I’ll come down eventually” as his fellow students cheered from a balcony of the school’s Great Hall. The police have taped off the area in front of the hall facing the statue and have told crowds to stand back. One bystander yelled his support to the student: “Epic scene, dude!” We’ll update as the situation unfolds.

Update | 6:48 p.m. Jesse Kreuzer, a 23-year-old graduate of the school, has now been taken into custody. He voluntarily stepped into a police cherry picker around 6:44 p.m. The Local spoke to Mr. Kreuzer via cell phone just minutes before he was taken by police. He told us he had reached the top of the monument by scaling the bronze statue of Peter Cooper. There, he shuffled to music while wearing headphones and made telephone calls as police officers told him to come down and students occasionally erupted in applause. Mr. Kreuzer told us that he was making the stand because he very much appreciated the free education he got at Cooper Union and wanted others to experience the same. He said he had never been arrested before.

Stephen Rex Brown

Sylvan Solloway Man on a monument.

A couple of hours after our initial report from Cooper Triangle, where Cooper Union students were getting ready to join a 4 p.m. protest in Union Square, we spotted the Peter Cooper monument being wrapped in red fabric. How’d they get that top corner?, you ask. Well, one student actually climbed to the very top of the granite canopy, 25 feet above the ground – a feat possibly more impressive than mounting George Washington’s horse. The red tape (a commentary on school bureaucracy?) is already gone.

The monument, carved by former Cooper Union student Augustus Saint-Gaudens and featuring columns designed by Stanford White, turns 115 on May 29.

Update | 5:44 p.m. An “epic scene” (according to one bystander) is playing out at the statue right now, as police and firefighters try to convince the protestor to get down from the top of the statue. Check here for further updates.

For every East Village business that’s opening or closing, dozens are quietly making it. Here’s one of them: Avenue A Laundry King.

Shira Levine

When Grace Sull, or, Eun Sook Han as she’s known to her Korean friends, had the first of her two daughters, she and her husband, a computer programmer, realized one income wasn’t enough. So she quit her job as a secretary at a travel agency and opened Avenue A Laundry King at 97 Avenue A. Twenty-one years later, she still loves what she does.

“It’s a very good business making people’s clothes clean, because we also clean their mind,” she told The Local. “I have no special skills, but I like doing laundry. It calms me; I like keeping things clean and organized for people. I like all these young people who come in, especially all the good-looking beautiful people, the handsome men and the beautiful models.” We asked the laundry queen to come clean about how she’s managed to make it all these years. Read more…

Cooper Union students outraged at the university president’s decision to charge tuition to graduate students are staging a walk-out of classes that coincides with nationwide protests of the country’s massive student debt.

At around 4 p.m., students from Cooper Union will march to Union Square and join others from N.Y.U., CUNY, the New School and other nearby universities who are commemorating today’s milestone of $1 trillion in student debt.

Just before noon today around 30 students were mingling in Cooper Square, occasionally chanting “No tuition is our mission” and “Hey hey, ho ho, student debt has got to go,” and snacking on fresh veggies and bread. Read more…

The cafe is closed, but at least there will be an online refuge for “Rent” fanatics. Owner Kathy Kirkpatrick announced yesterday on Life Cafe’s Facebook page that she is nearing a “soft launch” for Rentheadregisters.com, a digital version of the tomes full of the signatures of “Rent” fanatics who made a pilgrimage to the restaurant where the musical was written. “An estimated 10,000 ‘Rent’ and Life Cafe fans left messages in these books. We will eventually have all the pages scanned and available to read on the site,” Ms. Kirkpatrick wrote.

New York Police Department The suspect

On the same day that a man is alleged to have taken a photo up a woman’s skirt as their train pulled into Union Square, another man is said to have been photographed inappropriately touching himself on his way to the same station.

The police said that on April 18, a man thought to be in his early twenties boarded an L train at Montrose Avenue and, sometime before deboarding at the Union Square station, fondled himself while staring at a 34-year-old woman. The victim snapped a photo of the man and showed it to police officers.

The suspect, who is thought to be around 6-foot-tall and 175 pounds, is wanted for public lewdness.

A housing court judge ruled last week that the eviction of Gathering of the Tribes should be settled in State Supreme Court. The decision led the founder of the homegrown art and performance space, Steve Cannon, to express guarded optimism that he could reach an out-of-court settlement with his landlord, Lorraine Zhang, because the scope of the case now goes beyond a standard eviction proceeding. Ms. Zhang had no comment on the latest development in the case, which hinges on the validity of a written agreement she signed when Mr. Cannon sold her the East Third Street building that houses Tribes in 2004.

New York Police Department The suspect.

A man took a photograph up a passenger’s skirt while they rode a southbound 4 train arriving in the Union Square station on April 18, police said.

The 24-year-old victim approached officers in the station at around 4:10 p.m. and showed them a photo she had taken of the voyeur. The suspect, who is said to be around five-foot-five and 150 pounds, is wanted for unlawful surveillance.

Karl Fischer The building bound for 74-84 Third Avenue.

Stephen Rex Brown The site at Third Avenue and East 12th Street.

Karl Fischer may be many armchair architecture critics’ favorite target, but in the eyes of the developer behind the nine-story building bound for Third Avenue, he’s a consummate professional.

“I think he’s a tremendous value-add to our developments,” said Eli Weiss, a partner in YYY Third Avenue, the company behind the new building. “From a developer’s point of view, an architect offers so much more than the façade: making sure that the building is efficient, structurally sound, that it’s livable. The façade is one very small aspect of what an architect does, and in some ways the most subjective.” Read more…