Tomorrow, a public hearing by the Landmarks Preservation Commission will determine the future of East 10th Street along Tompkins Square Park. Over the weekend, The Local spoke with Andrew Berman, the executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, about the history of the strip.

293 East 10th Street

G.V.S.H.P. 293 East 10th Street

This building, like a lot of buildings in the East Village, shows in a very material way the evolution of the neighborhood from a place of single-family homes for the merchant class to the locus of immigration to New York City. It was built at the corner of East 10th and Avenue A in 1845 for James French, a boot-maker.

Only five years later it was sold to a gentleman named Joshua Varian and a Haraim Chandler leased it from him. Chandler lived with seven other families. This building very quickly became a multi-family home, or a tenement. By the late 1890s it was owned by Charles J. Smith, whose name still appears on the top left-hand side of the building. The top floor of the building was probably added by Smith as part of the tenementi-zation of it.

Interestingly, we know that Chandler worked for the N.Y.P.D. very early in its existence; it was only founded in 1845. Chandler worked as a detective and was injured during the 1863 draft riots. He died in 1881.
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Suzanne Rozdeba Joey Barbosa

In November, Andrea Truden, the adult-film actress turned singer who, as Andrea True, had a disco hit with “More, More, More,” died at the age of 68. She left no survivors, but on St. Marks Place, her musical legacy lives on in the form of Joe Barbosa, who toured the world with her as part of her backing band, the Andrea True Connection.

For years, Mr. Barbosa has sold vinyl outside of Rockit Scientist Records, first in front of the store’s former location on Carmine Street and for the past several years, on the St. Marks Place strip. Passersby who see him hawking records next to a sign that reads “Joey’s Vinyl” have no idea that he himself has a place in music history.

Mr. Barbosa, 61, began playing guitar in the ’60s. In 1976, at the age of 26, he was living in his parents’ apartment in Washington Heights and playing in a barroom cover band when Ms. Truden’s manager, through a mutual acquaintance, recruited him to play in her touring band. At the time, “More, More, More,” with its hook of “how do you like it?”, hadn’t yet risen to #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

“When we first auditioned for her, it was going up the charts and her manager said this was going to be a big hit,” said Mr. Barbosa. “Andrea wasn’t much of a showperson, so she hired four dancers that had all these disco moves to make it into a disco show. We traveled all over the country.” Read more…

Delancey Street has claimed another victim, resulting in further outcry regarding one of the city’s deadliest thoroughfares.

Police said that Dashane Santana, a 12-year-old resident of the Jacob Riis Houses, was crossing Delancey Street at Clinton Street at around 2:36 p.m. when a minivan traveling towards the Williamsburg Bridge struck and killed her. The 58-year-old driver stayed at the scene and has not yet been charged with a crime, the police said.

Both Borough President Scott Stringer and State Senator Daniel Squadron once again urged the city to make Delancey Street safer for drivers and pedestrians alike.
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“I find the East Village to be a difficult place to take photos. Difficult because our visual world is saturated with images of these blocks. Thus, you can feel trapped in a cliché — a cliché based in an idealized past, or a gentrified, dystopian vision of what is to come. Nevertheless, I love to photograph the East Village to participate in this negotiation. The negotiation is, for me, encapsulated in this idea of ‘Everyday Abstractions.'”
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Suzanne Rozdeba The new signage at the Thai restaurant.

An outpost of Lantern Thai Kitchen, which has locations in Gramercy Park and Brooklyn Heights, opened last Thursday at 85 Avenue A, the former home of Cafetasia, another Thai restaurant.

Lantern co-owner Chris Sirisunat, 33, said that changes were in order. “I think Lantern is a better fit for this neighborhood, and the food is tastier. We have a new chef — he’s very Thai. We have more authentic Thai food.” His partner in the new restaurant also happens to be a partner in a Cafetasia location in Greenwich Village.

Still, the overhaul made sense to Mr. Sirisunat, who was actually helping manage the location before he re-christened it Lantern. “I run two other Lantern locations, and I know the food very well,” he said.
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Suzanne Rozdeba A police car at East Fourth Street and Avenue D.

Two gunshots were fired in the Lillian Wald Houses at around 2:45 p.m., a convenience store employee told The Local.

“I didn’t see anything other than people running when they heard the shots,” said Mohamed Sidi, who works at 33 Best Deal on Avenue D. “People were scared.”

A pair of police officers were lingering at the entrance to the Lillian Wald complex at East Fourth Street at around 4 p.m., but would not comment, citing an ongoing investigation. An employee at the nearby Ave. D Candy Store, Ahmedou Ould-Dahya, also told The Local he heard a pair of gunshots.

A spokesman for the police department did yet not have any information on the possible incident.

Eater has a write-up of one of The Local’s favorite watering holes, Lucy’s. The article examines the revered bartender who has gotten plenty of attention on this site, but it’s the photographs that caught our attention; has Lucy’s ever been so…bright? It appears likely that the photographer brought in lights for his shots, giving the dive a whole new look. Regardless, it’s a timely primer for happy hour, which is just around the corner.

Ken Collins Ken Urban, the man behind “Fizz Play.”

Even playwrights have to take a breather every once in a while.

Six writers working intensely on full-length plays over the course of 18 weeks will relax on Monday through freewheeling 10-minute productions riffing off of the word “fizz.”

“We find that everyone has a good time taking a break in their full-length play process and quickly conceiving these 10-minute plays. It’s like a writing exercise where you get a prompt and just go with it,” said Jessi Hill, who is directing the aptly titled “Fizz Play” by Ken Urban.

Each year, the terraNova Collective selects one word from a long list of homophones and gives it to their playwrights-in-residence. Last year, the word was “bug.” In 2010, it was “speed.”
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The neighborhood is getting a new fried chicken joint, and this one has a colorful past that goes far beyond secret recipes. Pudgie’s Famous Chicken, which EV Grieve noted is replacing the shuttered King Gyro on First Avenue between Third and Fourth Streets, was once run by a former chairman of the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce who was accused of embezzlement. The New York Post reported in August of last year that Jeffrey Bernstein abruptly resigned his post at the Chamber after he was accused of embezzling more than $2.3 million from the non-profit Albert Ellis Institute while serving as its president. In an article from 2003 in Chain Leader, a magazine for restaurant executives, Mr. Bernstein was described as a “turnaround artist” who bought the troubled Pudgie’s chain and made it profitable.

3rdTiger A scene from the Lower East Side.

Mehdi Kabbaj, the owner of 20 Peacocks, a men’s clothing boutique on Clinton Street, died yesterday after being struck by oncoming traffic on the F.D.R. drive on Wednesday night, The Daily News reports. The paper writes that Mr. Kabbaj, 45, was drunk, got out of the cab in frustration at gridlock and was struck by a minivan.

The cabbie accused of raping a 26-year-old East Village woman at knife point on May 6 has “no idea” how his DNA was recovered from the woman, writes The New York Post. According to statements read at Gurmeet Singh’s Brooklyn arraignment on Wednesday, he initially told cops he “never” had sex in the back of his taxi, but then said, “Sometimes I pick up women, call girls, off the street and have sex with them.”

The Villager reports that local advocates are pushing to have the trials of soldiers accused of abusing Private Danny Chen held in the U.S. A coalition including Councilwoman Margaret Chin and Mr. Chen’s parents are in discussions with the Army to suggest reforms to its diversity training and recruitment policies.
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Phillip Kalantzis-Cope Odessa is still standing.

In 1986, a New York magazine article coined the term “blintz-krieg” while reviewing over a dozen Polish and Ukrainian coffee shops and restaurants then crowding the neighborhood. In light of Polonia’s recent closing, it seems a fitting time to remember some of those Eastern European haunts.

Suzanne Rozdeba 111 Avenue A, former home of Leshko’s.

In 1966, Andy Warhol came upon the ballroom of the Polish National Home in a row of St. Marks Place townhouses when searching for a venue for a nightclub he hoped to create. The Polish National Home had taken over 19-25 St. Marks Place back in the 1920s. In the 1880s, when the area was known as Little Germany, the buildings had housed the Arion Society, a German music club. Warhol took part of the Polish Home’s name (Polski Dom Narodowy) for his club, The Dom, in which he showcased a then unknown band he managed, The Velvet Underground. (Yesterday, The Post reported that the band is suing the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.) Read more…

The embattled art space Gathering of the Tribes gets the “Place of the Month” treatment on Place Matters. The website recounts founder Steve Cannon’s heyday as a professor by day and “professional heckler” at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe by night. “The man is the space is the art is the man,” according to the profile, which also addresses recent landlord troubles. Mr. Cannon and his followers remain optimistic despite the looming legal showdown: “It seems that many, including Cannon, believe that he may have the last word.”

Suzanne Rozdeba A chef and his puddin’.

A week after opening, Puddin’ by Clio has already shut its doors – temporarily. A sign in the window reads: “Closed until Friday 4 p.m. We are cooking and cooking…good ole’ pudding.”

“We are slammed,” explained Clio Goodman, an owner and the executive chef. “It’s been the craziest couple of days ever. We sold out in an hour and a half on our first day.”

Hevra, Clio’s mom and sous chef, said her daughter was already considering opening a second production kitchen. “Because we’re so tiny, we’re limited in how much we can produce here,” she said. Read more…

Rachel Citron A 2007 exhibition at Milk Studios.

Residents who are fighting eviction from the the Hotel Chelsea were baffled by an invitation they received to a Thursday evening concert by Patti Smith in the hotel’s ground-floor ballroom. Commenters on Living With Legends: Hotel Chelsea Blog wondered whether the writer and musician, who recounted her time as a resident of the hotel in her 2010 memoir “Just Kids,” was being paid by Joseph Chetrit, the real estate investor who recently purchased the landmark 23rd Street building and is renovating its interior. Today, the songstress, in a statement reprinted by the blog, said she was not being compensated for the performance, which was her idea. Read more…

Jared Malsin, a student of NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute who reports for The Local, was arraigned this morning on two charges of disorderly conduct after he was arrested near Zuccotti Park while covering the park’s clearing on Nov. 15.

“They’re both violations, not crimes,” said Gideon Orion Oliver, an attorney with the National Lawyers Guild who is representing Mr. Malsin. “These are the vanilla, typical protester-esque charges.” Mr. Oliver said his client is accused of “blocking vehicular pedestrian traffic with intent to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm” and “refusal to comply with a lawful order of police to disperse with the intent to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm, or recklessly creating a risk thereof.” Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown The owner of Ame Ame, Teresa Soroka.

A new store on Ninth Street takes the term “specialty shop” to the next level.

Ame Ame caters to the stylish New Yorker caught in the rain who also happens to have a sweet tooth. The name for the store comes from the Japanese word “ame,” which means — that’s right — both “rain” and “candy.”

“I want to put an end to those disposable, cheap, ugly black umbrellas,” said owner Teresa Soroka, 30, who opened the store on Nov. 16. “They’re bad for the environment, and in a fashionable city they’re a disgrace.”

So, why all the candy? “What’s better on a rainy day than a bag of candy?” Ms. Soroka explained. “I wanted a colorful, cheerful experience when shopping.” Read more…

Suzanne Rozdeba

The sight of a man huddled under a makeshift canopy of umbrellas and plastic sheets might have been unremarkable on the old Bowery, but the avenue’s new breed of night crawlers have surely noticed William Hernandez’s slapdash shelter, positioned steps away from DBGB and just across the street from another glitzy eatery, Pulino’s. A block to the east and west, respectively, are the vanishing sites of Mars Bar and Billy’s Antiques. Some might call this a crossroads of gentrification. For the past two weeks, Mr. Hernandez has called it something like home.

Mr. Hernandez, 59, said he had been sleeping against the fence of a community garden that abuts the Avalon Bowery Place apartments for the past 15 days.

“I don’t have a home,” he told The Local yesterday in Spanish. “I’m Cuban. I’m a refugee,” he said, adding that the rest of his family still resided in Cuba.

“I’ve been [in the U.S.] for 30 years and I’ve been homeless since I got here. I was in Florida and in Jackson Heights [Queens] before I came here. I’ve been in New York a long time.” Read more…

Vivienne Gucwa East River Park

During football season, Julian Swearengin’s Downtown Giants have three practices each week at three different parks: Chelsea Waterside Park, the Battery Park ball fields and Pier 40. Games take place at East River Park on Saturdays. Confused parents frequently end up at the wrong location and players complain about the hectic schedule. Just to add insult to injury, Mr. Swearengin sees a solution to the problem most nights from his apartment with a view of East River Park.

“There are many nights when soccer and football fields are empty. On the same night, my kids are wedged into a corner on Pier 40,” said Mr. Swearengin, the founder of the team for kids up to 15 as well as a former coach. “There’s certainly an overall frustration that there’s no consistency with the permits.”

But soon, the system that maddens Mr. Swearengin and many others will likely be reformed. For the first time since 1999, the Parks Department has proposed changes to its permit system, raising hopes that the vise-like grip many leagues have over coveted ball fields may be loosened.

If the laws are approved, youth leagues applying for new permits will be given priority over all other applicants. The Parks Department will also have the right to reduce the hours of field time for adult leagues that dominate a particular park.

The proposals are in part a response to complaints from an assortment of league administrators at meetings around the city. In Community Board 3, around 20 league operators have bemoaned a permit system that they described as obscure and ripe for abuse. Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown The electrifying scene at last night’s meeting.

The always-colorful Community Board 3 liquor license committee recommended on Monday night that one of its more outspoken critics not be allowed to serve beer and wine at his restaurant.

The board denied the beer-wine license for Keith Masco’s 24-hour B.A.D. Burger, citing the proximity of other booze-selling establishments, similar restaurants that operate without licenses, and “consistent community opposition.”

“B.A.D. Burger, bad neighbor. Deny them,” said Shawn Chittle, who lives above the restaurant at 171 Avenue A.
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