Meagan Kirkpatrick

Good morning, East Village.

According to a letter sent to Bowery Boogie, Agata Olek, the crochet artist who yarn-bombed the Astor cube, has been arrested in London after what she describes as “an incident with a drunk and aggressive male who behaved reprehensibly.” Fans can contribute to her legal fees here.

Meanwhile, the Astor cube got another makeover today.

DNA Info reports that Shanna Spalding, the so-called “Cat Woman Burglar,” has been found guilty of robbing an Astor Place shoe store in June 2010 while disguised as, yes, Catwoman.

The Post reports that deliberations will begin tomorrow in the case in which Davawn Robinson is accused of strangling CUNY professor Edgard Mercado to death in his East Village apartment. Read more…

The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation 285-287 East Third Street. Preservationists would like to see it landmarked, and a local poet would like to keep holding events in it.

It’s been 10 months since the building housing Gathering of the Tribes was put on the market, and the relationship between the artistic space’s founder, Steve Cannon, and his landlord is as tense as ever.

The latest dispute revolves around the regular art events organized by Mr. Cannon that take place at the federal-style townhouse on East Third Street.

“He’s made assurances that he wouldn’t do anything that would disturb other tenants in the building,” said Simon Chow, a partner of the building’s landlord. “If other people are complaining about noise, am I supposed to give him consideration over the tenants in the buildings?”

Mr. Cannon countered that only one person in a neighboring building had complained about the noise. Nevertheless, he said, the landlord, Lorraine Zhang, had threatened him with eviction. Read more…

Daniel Maurer A sign posted at 13th Street and Avenue C.

In an apparent response to a shooting in the courtyard of Campos Plaza II on Saturday morning, signs have been posted around the housing complex advertising rewards of up to $2,000 for tips leading to the solving of a crime. The police are said to have upped their presence at the complex (yesterday evening, a cruiser was stationed on 13th Street between Avenues B and C) and have also announced the reward via a roving bullhorn. Meanwhile, a source close to the 19-year-old who was shot in the leg said that the unnamed teen is walking again, and was due to be released from the hospital yesterday.

The police said today that the case remains open and there have been no arrests. A representative of the N.Y.P.D. also revealed that at 12:20 a.m., just five to ten minutes after the gunfire was said to have erupted, a 32-year-old woman, Frances Rodriguez, was arrested at the location of the incident, outside of 641 East 13th Street. She is alleged to have been fighting with others when she assaulted a police officer. It was unclear whether or not the incident was connected with the shooting or the events leading up to it. Read more…

Nick DeSantis

The first event at the former site of the BMW Guggenheim Lab got off to an unlucky start on Saturday.

Volunteers from First Street Green – the neighborhood organization that helped transform the park from a rat haven to a community event space – put together their “visioning wall” in the shape of a tall arch. Shortly afterward, the afternoon breeze brought the colorful sculpture crashing to the ground in a heap of foam tiles.

Undeterred and in good spirits, the group broke the sculpture apart and continued with the real business of Saturday’s gathering: soliciting ideas from neighbors about the park’s future, which remains in question since the Guggenheim Lab’s departure.

John Bowman, a member of First Street Green, said the two biggest hurdles facing the group are logistics and funding. They plan to use the wintertime, when the park is dormant, to work out permitting and scheduling details. The installation of a sculpture garden has been delayed till spring. Read more…

Lauren Carol Smith The A.H.R.C. group home on East Fifth Street
where Alonzo Eason lived

The death of a severely disabled man who lived in a group home on East Fifth Street has been ruled a homicide, the Medical Examiner’s office has confirmed. The police are investigating the case but have yet to make an arrest, according to a spokesman.

On the morning of Aug. 2, Alonzo Eason was wheeled out of the group home and loaded into the back of a Ford Econoline van. He was then driven uptown to a day program on Lexington Avenue near 125th street.

While the other residents were taken inside for their classes, Mr. Eason was left behind. Due to brain damage caused by a fever he had contracted as a baby, he was unable to communicate. As the temperature outside climbed above 90 degrees, Mr. Eason’s absence went unnoticed. When he was finally discovered at 3:30 p.m. that afternoon, he was unresponsive and paramedics declared him dead at the scene.

The group home and day program are both run by A.H.R.C. New York City, a large private provider of services for developmentally disabled people.

Mr. Eason’s older brother, Leroy, confirmed that he had hired a lawyer and private investigator to pursue a civil action against A.H.R.C. “Here we are dealing with a case of pure neglect,” he said. “I’m irate at the things that have occurred.” Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown Dina Leor holds a statue of La Virgen de Guadalupe.

As devoted Catholics all over the world celebrate the Virgin of Guadalupe, one local has a unique reason to rejoice. Dina Leor, the owner of the Mexican memorabilia store La Sirena, had a religious experience with the icon 19 years ago while traveling in Mexico City.

Stephen Rex Brown One of the many images of La Virgen inside La Sirena.

“I still feel the same connection that I did in Mexico City,” said Ms. Leor. “I’m getting goose bumps now telling it.”

It all began when Ms. Leor decided to drop into a church in the capital city. While sitting in the pews, a light at the end of a nearby hallway caught her eye. She followed it, and at the end of the hallway was a painting of La Virgen de Guadalupe. The rays of light around the figure began to radiate and then emerged from the picture to surround Ms. Leor. The experience happened in a flash, but it has never left her.
Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown The poet at work.

A 20-year-old itinerant poet was offering up stanzas on the cheap today, and she even penned an ode to St. Marks for The Local.

Abigail Mott had set up at St. Marks Place and Third Avenue with a typewriter and a sign saying, “Name a price, pick a subject, get a poem.” A four-person film crew shot her every move. Read more…

Daniel Maurer Sign boards at Bar Kada and Maharlika on Sunday afternoon.

Maharlika has received its share of attention since it went from being a roving pop-up to a proper brick-and-mortar restaurant on First Avenue back in August. “Could it be that Filipino food, the underdog of Asian cuisines, is having its moment at last?”, asked The Times in its $25 and Under review. It would seem so: Recently, yet another Filipino pop-up quietly opened up in the East Village – on the very same block as Maharlika.

Few seem to have noticed, but last month, Bar Kada took up a Sunday residence at Ugly Kitchen at 103 First Avenue, just a few doors down from Maharlika between Sixth and Seventh Streets. The pop-up is the brainchild of Aris Tuazon, 37, who was until recently the chef at another nearby Filipino restaurant, Krystal’s Cafe 81. Yesterday, Mr. Tuazon said he planned to serve a Filipino menu at Ugly Kitchen every Sunday from 11 a.m. till midnight while he looked for a permanent space in the neighborhood.  Read more…

Photos: Daniel Maurer

Less than a month after Quantum Leap closed, its successor, Sao Mai, has opened at 203 First Avenue between 12th and 13th Streets. Ronny Nguyen, the executive chef, told The Local that he opened Saturday.

The chef, who migrated from South Vietnam in 1984, said he was eager to test the East Village waters after five years at Xe Lửa on Mulberry Street. “There are more American people here,” he said. “In Chinatown, there’s a restaurant on every corner. Over here, I don’t see many Vietnamese restaurants.” Read more…

Chelsia Rose Marcius Alex Diaz, 13, of the Lower East Side, skates
on the dismantled ramps.

Open Road Park was recently closed until further notice, but its wooden skate ramps lingered. On Saturday, they were finally removed from the lot on 12th Street between First Avenue and Avenue A and put out on the curb for trash pickup. That didn’t stop local skateboarders from using them one last time, as Jose Morales and a few friends reassembled a pile of dismantled planks into a makeshift skate park along 12th Street.

Mr. Morales, 13, of the Lower East Side, said school officials were already breaking down the ramps by noon on Saturday when he arrived at Open Road. He said he asked one official what he was doing, but was quickly dismissed.

“He said, ‘Don’t touch these ramps, they’re garbage,’” recounted Mr. Morales. But he and his friends set two ramps back up against the wall of East Side Community High School and continued to skate. Read more…

Photos: Noah Fecks

And here you have it: After closing its First Avenue digs back in September, the Bean reopened today at 54 Second Avenue, on the corner of Third Street – down the block from its original home, where a Starbucks is still under construction. The Local showed you Jim Power’s sign going up last week; now click through our slideshow to see how the long vacant “Crazy Landlord” space was looking this morning. Not bad. The Bean will be open from 7 a.m. till 11 p.m. daily; the menu remains the same, as you can see below. And don’t forget: A location at First Avenue and Ninth Street is also in the works. The Local spotted work going on there over the weekend. Read more…

Nick DeSantis

The Local’s Nick DeSantis took the above photo on Saturday. Downtown Traveler, Zoon, EV Grieve, and East Village Corner also got shots of the SantaCon merriment.

DNA Info reports that Gregory Gumucio, the founder of Yoga to the People, filed papers in court on Friday that “cited a decision from the U.S. Copyright Office that indicates that yoga exercises aren’t protected by current law,” in hopes that a judge would throw out the lawsuit brought against him by Bikram Yoga. Metro quotes an e-mail from the chief of the Performing Arts Division of the U.S. Copyright Office: “We determined that exercises, including yoga exercises, do not constitute the subject matter that Congress intended to protect as choreography.”

Composer Phil Kline’s roving holiday boom box orchestra, Unsilent Night, will return on Dec. 17, and guess what? There’s an app for it! According to the Times, participants who don’t have a portable cassette player can now blast the score on their iPhones. Read more…

Daniel Maurer The burnt-out apartment on the fifth floor.

Firefighters battled an apartment fire at 14 Stuyvesant Oval, in the northeast section of Stuyvesant Town, earlier this afternoon. According to a spokesperson for the F.D.N.Y., a report of a fire on the high-rise’s fifth floor came in around 12:39 p.m.; it was extinguished by 1:14 p.m. One civilian and two firefighters were sent to Beth Israel with minor injuries. The cause of the blaze was unknown.

It wasn’t the only incident in the Stuyvesant Town area this afternoon. Around 2:30 p.m., The Local spotted firefighters, including a Haz-Mat unit, at work securing what the fire department said was fuel leaking from a pickup truck parked on 14th Street near First Avenue.

A police helicopter circled over Alphabet City earlier this morning as officers looked for evidence of an apparent shooting. Around 12:45 a.m., police that were working in the cordoned-off courtyard of N.Y.C.H.A.’s Campos Plaza II complex at 641 East 13th Street as well as the street in front of the Pedro Albizu Campos Community Center at 611 East 13th Street – both between Avenues B and C – were unable to confirm reports of a shooting, and a N.Y.P.D. representative did not yet have details of the incident, but The Local’s Blair Hickman reported hearing “something like a firecracker sound” near Seventh Street and Avenue A. Another Twitter user, Stephanie Begg, also reported hearing a “loud firecracker noise.”

We’ll share more information as it becomes available. If you know anything about the incident, please e-mail The Local.

Update, 11:35 a.m. | The police now confirm that around 12:15 a.m. they received reports of shots fired in the courtyard of Campos Plaza II. A 19-year-old Hispanic male was shot in the leg and taken to Beth Israel hospital, where he remains in stable condition. No arrests have been made, no suspect has been identified, and the investigation is ongoing.

1st Avenue near 12th Street

These photographs are excerpted from a series called “The Paradox of Identity.” It is a work in progress and it has been for a while (since 1985). It is first referred to in my journal as “The Pigeon Project” and later on became “If You Can Name It…”

I am naturally suspicious of grand names for things, so I need to explain: We don’t have a big sky in New York City, so the intersection of sky and city is a big part of looking up around here. I have for some reason been drawn again and again to the sight of a patch of sky etched out by the buildings enclosing it, and the fleeting glimpse of a pigeon entering or leaving. I always feel a brief pang of want when I see it: “If I could only fly like a bird; if I could only be free…of myself.” Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown Mosaic Man’s “fellow conspirator,” Al Bonsignore, sports the signage.

Stephen Rex Brown Jim Power supervises the installation of the new sign.

The Mosaic Man Jim Power is currently presiding over the installation of the new signage for The Bean cafe at Second Avenue and Third Street.

The letters, along with an abstract tiling, look to be one of the larger works Mr. Power has done recently.

“Man, we’ve been working round the clock for days,” said Mr. Power, who showed no signs of exhaustion, as usual. “We had tiles coming in from Texas!”

A sign on the window of the cafe says it is opening on Monday. Read more…

Daniel Maurer Lucky Cheng’s at 24 First Avenue.

The neighborhood’s top drag destination, Lucky Cheng’s, will be moving to a location near Times Square in the next six months, the owner revealed today.

Citing dwindling tourist traffic, Hayne Suthon, who has run the First Avenue cabaret restaurant since 1993, said that the operation would move to a more desirable location on 52nd Street.

“The phone used to ring off the hook, but as Times Square became a magnet for tourists — we just can’t get them down here,” said Ms. Suthon. “We’ve tried back flips, standing on our heads; they want to stay up there now.”

Ms. Suthon would not give an address for the new location because she had yet to sign a lease. But that didn’t keep her from singing the new space’s praises. If all goes as planned, the location will have two tiers of drag performances, an all-you-can-eat buffet, a more high-end menu and seating for around 350 people. (Yesterday, Grub Street reported that the current location was on the market.)

“Walking by the space, and looking at the people, we said, ‘This is our demographic,” Ms. Suthon said, later noting that her clientele is “the kind of customer that wants to go see ‘Jersey Boys,’ and tourists from Missouri.” The bachelorette and birthday partiers will just as easily go to Times Square as the East Village, she added. Read more…

Daniel Maurer 53 Bond Street

As Noah Bernamoff, an owner of Mile End, expected might happen when The Local spoke to him before Tuesday’s meeting, Community Board 2’s S.L.A. Licensing Committee has voted, 8-0, to recommend that the State Liquor Authority deny the Boerum Hill delicatessen’s application for a beer-and-wine license at its forthcoming sandwich shop at 53 Bond Street.

“Generally, there were concerns about over-saturation in the area,” said C.B. 2 District Manager Bob Gormley, who attended the meeting. Mr. Gormley added, “There were some questions raised as to whether it was even allowable to have a liquor license at that location,” and said that the board is writing a letter to the Department of Buildings asking for clarification about the building’s zoning. Read more…