Daniel MaurerPolice officers outside of Metro PCS
last night.

Two men robbed a wireless store at gunpoint on 14th Street last night, forcing two employees into the store’s basement while they made off with what police said was $4,000 in cash.

An employee at the Metro PCS store at 350 East 14th Street said that two black men wearing black leather jackets, hoodies, and shades also made off with his personal cell phone.

The police said that one of the men, thought to be in his 40s or 50s, with a salt-and-pepper beard and a black stocking hat (the employee described it as a ski hat), displayed a black revolver while another man thought to be in his 30s or 40s, who wore white latex gloves, went behind the counter to remove money from the register. That’s when the employees were ordered into the basement. Read more…

Suzanne Rozdeba

For 12 years, H. Song helped run East Village Farm with his wife and his mother, a grandmotherly woman known to sneak candy into customers’ bags at the counter. But this will be the last month of business for the grocery store on Avenue A near Sixth Street.

“We’re closing at the end of the month,” said Mr. Song, 56, who first identified himself as a partner in East Village Farm Plus Inc., which owns the deli, and then said he is now a manager. “I came with a dream to America. I started with a small store, and then I dreamed of something bigger. But I lost everything. I give up,” he said.

Rumors that the store was closing first surfaced on EV Grieve today. Read more…

In one of The Local’s most commented stories of 2011, the owner of Mara’s Homemade blamed bike lanes for the closing of her restaurant. The owners of The Toucan and The Lion, which quietly opened in the former Mara’s space on East Sixth Street last month, say they’re just fine with them.

“Having a bike lane on First Avenue creates a lot of order,” said Craig Dagata, 33. “It makes the neighborhood so much more convenient for everybody traveling.”

Mr. Dagata – who has worked in the restaurant industry as a manager, bartender, and events planner – and his partner, Tabitha Tan, 29 – a freelance food-and-lifestyle writer turned events organizer – gutted the old Mara’s space and built a marble 6-stool bar and communal table on one side of the room. On the other side, a small dining room holds 30 seats. Read more…

Daniel Maurer

Just how excited are some East Villagers about the Starbucks that’s replacing the Bean at First Avenue and Third Street? Well, in addition to the crude messages that were affixed to construction plywood at that location last month, The Local spotted the flyers at left attached to the plywood at the Bean’s soon-to-open location at First Avenue and Ninth Street, and the message at right chalked onto the exterior of Khufu, the coffee shop and hookah lounge around the corner from the ‘bucks. Not that any of this is delaying the inevitable; as you can see below, workers were putting scaffolding up at the Starbucks site this morning.  Read more…

Puddin’ by Clio, a new dessert shop offering pudding, parfaits, cakes and pies, will open on St. Marks Place today at 11 a.m. Clio Goodman, 23, the founder and executive chef, has enlisted her mom, Hevra, as sous chef. “We’ll be here until midnight,” said mom as she made preparations days before opening, making phone calls and taking orders from her daughter.

Puddings, which cost between $5.50 and $12.50, include creamy butterscotch (made with actual scotch), vanilla (made with Madagascar vanilla beans), chocolate, and vegan coconut. There are also parfaits like the “Banana Cream Dream,” made with banana pudding, graham cracker crumbs, banana cake and a dollop of whipped cream. Watch The Local’s video to see the mother-daughter duo in action, and check out the menu below. Read more…

Daniel Maurer

JapaDog’s takeout menu boasts a photo of a line down the block at one of its original hot dog stands in Vancouver, Canada, but no such line has formed outside of its first stateside outpost, which opened at 30 St. Marks Place, between Second and Third Avenues, earlier today. We’ll give the place credit for the shortest soft-opening period in history: Yesterday, a tweet announced, “Opening ceremony is going to be held at 2:40 pm on 5th Jan! And GRAND OPENING is at 3:00 pm!”

When The Local spoke to Noriki Tamura, the mini chain’s owner, back in November, he promised a special dog made with Kobe beef – turns out, it’s topped with caviar and costs $13.04 (other dogs range from $7.99 to $9.55). Have a look at JapaDog’s interior below, and ponder the takeout menu if you care to find out what the Love Meat hot dog consists of. Hours are 11 a.m. to midnight Sunday through Wednesday and till 2 a.m. Thursday through Saturday. Read more…

Photos: Noah Fecks

A couple of months after its roll-down gate was painted by Chico, Bobwhite Lunch & Supper Counter opened at 94 Avenue C, near Sixth Street, last night. Keedick Coulter, the restaurant’s 33-year-old owner, said he hoped the menu would evoke the home-cooked meals he enjoyed at the family table while growing up in Roanoke, V.A.

Mr. Coulter described his menu as “more Old Dominion than deep south,” adding, “People come in sometimes and say, ‘Where are you from?’ and when I say, ‘Virginia,’ they have this disappointed look on their faces because they’re from Mississippi or Alabama and Virginia doesn’t count in their minds.”

Don’t expect to see barbecue and mac and cheese on the menu – at least, not very often. The specialty – executed by chef Amanda Beame, a recent graduate of the Culinary Institute of America – is fried chicken, made with free-range organic meat (white or dark) and paired with biscuits and a side salad consisting of produce from upstate farms. Read more…

Ruth Spencer Steve Cannon, founder of Gathering of the Tribes.

An eviction notice has been served to Gathering of the Tribes, but the revelry will go on at least until the end of the month.

Steve Cannon, the founder of the eclectic art collective on Third Street, has a bash planned for tonight and Jan. 14. The announcement comes less than a week after the landlord, Lorraine Zhang, told Mr. Cannon he would have to leave his headquarters by Jan. 31.

“I’m not going to stop what I’m doing, I’m going to see how I can fight her,” Mr. Cannon said of his landlord.

Ms. Zhang isn’t backing down either, and it seems likely the litany of complaints that she and Mr. Cannon have against each other (which are long standing) are bound to be aired in court. “I do what I got to do as a landlord to protect my other tenants,” Ms. Zhang said today. “He doesn’t clean up the backyard for weeks after he uses it. He left me no choice. He doesn’t own the property.”

Tonight’s party commemorates the final night of the “Where Am I” exhibit, which takes inspiration from Mr. Cannon’s blindness. The next exhibit, “Zero, Infinity and the Guides” showcases “archetypes present in the inner life” of artist and CUNY student Erin Cormody. “These eight paintings also portray the phases of the moon. Also, she paints the ‘words’ of an internal universal voice, which wants to share the paradox of truth,” according to a press release.

Sarah C. Tung Sign at EV Shoe Repair

After drafting a letter to landlords promoting retail diversity in the face of a nightlife glut, Community Board 3 has formed a subcommittee that may take some of its cues from San Francisco legislation.

On Tuesday, Community Board 3 announced that it had drafted a letter to local landlords asking them to respond to a “high demand for more daytime retail business such as grocers, butchers, shoe stores, stationery stores and other businesses that serve our local residents” rather than moving further in the current direction of “too many bars and eating/drinking businesses.”

During a meeting of the Economic Development committee last night, Mary DeStefano, an urban fellow for the board, outlined several strategies to insure such growth, including formula business restrictions, a measure that she said had proved successful in San Francisco. The move would limit the amount of chains by requiring a “formula business,” defined as “a restaurant or store that has 11 or more locations nationally,” to apply for a special permit, she said. Read more…

Gabrielle Lipton A performance at the Moldy Fig.

After opening in May, the Moldy Fig quickly made a mark on the East Village-Lower East Side jazz scene. By booking both highly regarded veterans like Bertha Hope and swashbuckling newcomers like Zachary Lipton, it revived a local tradition of mainstream jazz clubs with an openness to experimentation. But on Nov. 23, a posting on the club’s Facebook page announced that Charles Brown, the owner, was ill and in the hospital, and the club would be closed while he recuperated.

It’s uncertain when the Fig will reopen, but its closure puts venues like Mona’s, The Stone, and Nublu at the center of the jazz scene in the East Village – a neighborhood that has often been overlooked in the conventional histories of New York City jazz, but has played a vital role. Read more…

Daniel Maurer East Village Meat Market

At the East Village Meat Market on Second Avenue, tiny firs, pots of poinsettias and ringing bells greet customers gearing up to celebrate the birth of Christ on Jan. 7 (which corresponds with Dec. 25 in the Julian calendar) – evidence that in the neighborhood once known as Little Ukraine, Christmas is coming.

Andrew Ilnicki, the store’s 50-year-old manager, spoke as customers shopped for smoked meats, breads, borscht mixes, pierogi, and jellied pigs’ feet. “On Christmas Eve,” he said, meaning Jan. 6, “people serve non-meat food, which can be dairy; a lot of fish; and kutya, which is a pearled wheat with poppy seeds.”

“You can make kutya richer with honey and walnuts and raisins,” he said, describing one of 12 dishes that make up a traditional Ukrainian Christmas Eve supper. “On Christmas, there will be hams. They’re very popular with people. We cure them, smoke them, bake them and sell them.” Read more…

The police arrested a man suspected of robbing a convenience store on First Avenue, but his accomplice — who is wanted for at least 16 other heists — is still at large.

The police said that 30-year-old Duwayne Bascom and another man entered the store at 111 First Avenue on Nov. 21 at around 8:40 p.m., demanded an unknown amount of money and then fled with the cash. But Mr. Bascom has not yet been tied to any of the other robberies, three of which occurred around the East Village.

In the first, the suspect entered a Subway on Second Avenue between St. Marks Place and Ninth Street on Nov. 9 at around 2:25 a.m., brandished a knife and demanded money from the cashier. Police did not say how much money he received.
Read more…

Renata Jurczyk spent Dec. 29 with her family, cleaning out Polonia, the restaurant she had owned for 28 years and shuttered on Christmas Eve.

“I feel bad for the people who came here. They felt like this is their home and it’s a big part of their lives. And it’s gone,” she said.

Ms. Jurczyk abandoned her career aspirations to run the restaurant, which first opened at 126 First Avenue (it moved a block down six years later). “I finished law school in Poland,” she said. “I never dreamed about having a restaurant. I came here when I finished school. I started to go to school here to become a paralegal, but I didn’t finish because I had too much work in the restaurant and small kids.  It was too much.”

The Local spoke to Ms. Jurczyk and her daughters as they packed up last week.

Photos: Noah Fecks
In this week’s “Off the Menu” column, Florence Fabricant announces a couple of local openings – L’asso EV at 107 First Avenue and Bobwhite Lunch and Supper Counter at 94 Avenue C. When The Local alerted you to L’asso’s opening last week, we promised a look at the interior and at the menu. Enjoy the former above, and the latter below. And, of course, a close-up look at the pies. Read more…

On Sunday, Billy Leroy shuttered Billy’s Antiques & Props, the tent on East Houston Street that will be replaced by a two-story building. The store’s most expensive item in the days before it closed was a $3,500 Coney Island boardwalk sign, but its keeper said he would sell some pricier merchandise at the new location: “The tent limits the price we can charge. You can’t charge $5,000 for something a boutique could easily get. It’s going to change. It’s going to be an upscale Billy’s.”

Before packing up and heading off to vacation in Paris (he’s half-French), Mr. Leroy showed The Local his five favorite relics of the old neighborhood – places that might just be considered oddities or antiques in what he said was a new era of mom jeans and flip-flops.

Kathy Grayson

The owners of Bowery Beef, the sandwich shop inside the Bowery Poetry Club that closed during the summer, are returning to the neighborhood and opening a café at 125-127 First Avenue, near St. Marks Place. Ray LeMoine and Michael Herman are teaming up with Jamie Manza, an architect who also runs an upstate farm with his father, to open a restaurant that may source some of its ingredients from the farm, as well as shellfish from Gloucester, Mass. A former Bowery Beef customer, Mitch Zukor, will also be involved in the project.

Mr. Manza, 32, said that he and Mr. LeMoine, who is an East Village resident and a contributor to The Local, were previously business partners in a t-shirt company, started in 1999, that sold “Yankees Suck” shirts at Fenway Park. The business proved lucrative, and the duo traveled the world together – an experience that helped turn Mr. Manza into a confessed foodie.

“In 2000 we went to Paris,” he said. “We saw a restaurant where there was $100 lobster on the menu. We were standing outside this place and we were like, ‘Oh my God, there’s such a thing as $100 lobster. We have to eat $100 lobster from now on.”

Still, Mr. Manza said he wanted the as-yet unnamed café, where he will be the general manager, to be an “every-day eatery,” adding, “we want writers to be able to read and write and work in there during the day.” Read more…

Bowery Boogie spotted the renderings of a new hotel planned for Orchard Street between Rivington and Stanton Streets — and the blog’s reaction isn’t too favorable. They call the design, which towers over neighboring buildings, “gut-wrenching, vomit-inducing.” Boogie also notes that the long-stalled property is already up for sale for $26 million and is being marketed as having a hotel that will be “delivered complete” in 2013.

Patti Smith completes a trio of local performances tonight with a reading from her recently released book, “Woolgathering,” at the St Mark’s Bookshop.

On Saturday, the writer and musician, who had turned 65 the previous day, helped rock in the New Year at her fourteenth annual series of concerts at the Bowery Ballroom, where it was announced that she was ending what had become a tradition. “It’s just time to move on,” said Lenny Kaye, her longtime lead guitarist and collaborator.

The next day, she joined a lengthy roster of poets at the 38th annual St. Mark’s Poetry Project New Years Day Marathon Reading. Last February, she marked the fortieth anniversary of her first reading at the venue by returning for a rousing event.

Tonight at the St Mark’s Bookshop, she’ll read from “Woolgathering,” her phantasmagorical record of episodes from her distant past. Much of this new edition was originally published in 1992, as part of Hanuman Press’ influential series of miniature books. The event starts at 7 p.m.; if you’re hoping to get in and snag a signed copy, you better get there early.

Daniel Maurer Medics treat the motorcycle accident victim.

Two incidents marred New Year’s celebrations in the East Village during today’s early morning hours. At Second Avenue and 13th Street, around 3 a.m., dozens of police officers moved to detain Occupy Wall Street protesters as helicopters circled over the neighborhood; about an hour later at 12th Street between Avenues A and B, a man was struck by a motorcycle and taken to the hospital in critical condition.

The motorcycle accident occurred around 4:20 a.m. When The Local arrived on the scene, a man lay facedown, bleeding onto the street, having been struck by a BMW with Maine plates as he crossed the street well away from the intersection at Avenue A. Paramedics transported him to Beth Israel Hospital, where the police said he arrived with severe head trauma and is currently in critical condition. The driver of the motorcycle, a 38-year-old male, is not suspected of criminality.

The earlier incident at Second Avenue and 13th Street occurred after protesters clashed with police at Zuccotti Park shortly before midnight. The Post reported that one officer was stabbed in the hand with a pair of scissors then, and City Room reported that just before 1:30 a.m., police officers entered the park to clear it of about 150 people, five of whom were led off in handcuffs. After a group marched north, 60 to 100 people, eyewitnesses told The Local, arrived at Second Avenue and East 13^th Street around 3 a.m. There, their progress was stopped by a wall of police officers. Read more…