Jamie Larson Owner of St. Mark’s Bookshop Terrence McCoy, along with Borough President Scott Stringer, Cooper Union President Jamshed Bharucha and others.

Cooper Union has eased the St. Mark’s Bookshop financial burden — somewhat.

A day after students from the school protested the possibility that they would have to pay tuition for the first time in more than a century (we’ve now added video of that demonstration to our initial post), politicians, community activists, school officials and the bookshop’s owners officially brought the two-month rent dispute to an end at a press conference this morning.

Under the agreement for the next year, Cooper Union will, as reported by The Times last night, cut the bookshop’s rent by $2,500 from its current rate, $20,000 a month.

Cooper Union will also forgive $7,500 of the shop’s debt and send a team of students to work with the owners on creating a new business plan. The agreement, which only last week seemed dead in the water, should save the store $40,000 over the next year, according to Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, who took credit for bringing an end to the standoff.
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Khristopher J. Brooks

It looks like the saga of the St. Mark’s Bookshop may have come to an end. Earlier tonight, the Manhattan borough president, Scott M. Stringer, stopped by a meeting of Community Board 3’s Economic Development committee to tell members of the board to expect an announcement about the bookstore tomorrow at 11 a.m. When Richard Ropiak, co-chair of the committee, asked Mr. Stringer if they should bring picket signs or champagne to the announcement, he replied, jokingly, “Bring both.”

Now the cat is out of the bag. The Times reports that at a meeting with Mr. Stringer, Cooper Union agreed to reduce the Bookshop’s rent, though not by $5,000 per month as the store had hoped: “At a meeting in Mr. Stringer’s office, the college agreed to reduce the store’s rent to about $17,500 a month from about $20,000 for one year, and to forgive $7,000 in debt. The school will also provide student help with revising the store’s business plan.” The school’s president, Jamshed Bharucha, tells The Times, “The relief that we’re providing is so that the bookstore can come up with a viable and sustainable business plan not dependent on further subsidies.”

We’ll have more on this tomorrow.

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Suzanne Rozdeba Inspectors look for signs of the longhorned beetle.

Climbers from the federal Department of Agriculture were spotted today inspecting trees on Avenue A for signs of the dreaded Asian longhorned beetle, an invasive species that virtually guarantees the death of any tree it infests.

The Parks Department confirmed that the climbers were between Fourth and Fifth Streets at around 11:30 a.m. inspecting the trees for the circular, pencil-diameter holes that indicate the presence of the Chinese beetle that first appeared in the city — and in the U.S. — in 1996.

Since then, the beetle has been spotted in Central Park, Staten Island, parts of Brooklyn, and even as far away as Chicago. Typically, when a tree is found to be infested it is cut down, chopped up and burned. Trees in its immediate vicinity may also be felled in an attempt to quarantine the pest. Trees within a wider radius may be treated with an insecticide, as well. Read more…

Daniel Maurer

The Local just spotted “Mosaic Man” Jim Power outside of Tompkins Square Bagels, where a sign he spent three or four weeks working on is being hoisted this afternoon. Flanked by his right-hand social-media man Matt Rosen, who had put out a tweet about the store’s christening, Mr. Power revealed that he is talking to The Bean about doing a sign for their forthcoming store.

Also on the scene was Tompkins Square Bagels owner Chris Pugliese, who gave us a tour of the space (later, we’ll have shots from inside). Mr. Pugliese, who is an owner of Court Street Bagels in Cobble Hill but lives in the East Village, said some of the pastries, including vegan items, would be provided by Babycakes and Butter Lane – for the bagels and bread, he purchased and refurbished a used Cutler oven to the tune of $15,500, and installed it in an open kitchen so that customers can watch the bagels being made. Read more…

Photos: Lauren Carol Smith.

After more than ten years, Adria Petty – the photographer and commercial, documentary, and music video director –  is selling her condo at 325 East Ninth Street. The three-bedroom, 1,500-square-foot unit, at the ground floor of a building that dates back to 1905, is going for $1.995 million.

Since 2008, Ms. Petty – daughter of rock star Tom – has spent most of her time in her native Los Angeles, shooting music videos (most notably Beyonce’s “Countdown” and “Sweet Dreams”) and advertisements, including spots for Clorox and McDonald’s. But yesterday at a meeting in her East Village kitchen, she told The Local that she has moved back to New York in the interest of “inspiration and good people.” In February, she bought a small apartment off of Washington Square Park. Her Ninth Street digs hit the market last week. Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown The Cabrini Center at 542 East Fifth Street.

The six-story building that houses a medical center catering to the elderly is on the market, raising concerns that a new landlord will give low-income patients the boot before the center can build a new location.

Last night, Community Board 3 sounded the alarm on the possible closure of the Cabrini Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation, sending a formal letter to the lawyer of the mystery buyer of the building at Avenue B and Fifth Street. Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown Board Member Alexandra Militano discussed October’s applications for liquor licenses.

Community Board 3 approved Jane’s Sweet Buns application for a beer and wine license last night, paving the way for the bakery to pair alcohol with its desserts.

“Literally 75 percent of our clientele that comes in after 8 p.m. wants to have a glass of wine with their sweet bun or tart,” said Ravi DeRossi, the owner of the business on St. Marks Place between First Avenue and Avenue A. “Wine and dessert go so well together.”

The business was met with skepticism by some members of Community Board 3, however.

“I hear we’re all dying to receive this: A bakery that sells booze,” joked board member Joyce Ravitz.
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Eater sits down with Jason Wang, the manager of Xi’an Famous Foods (a favorite around The Local’s offices) and gets the latest on plans for the popular noodle joint’s expansion. Mr. Wang said that a new location should be opening in East Williamsburg soon, and that an expansion into Washington D.C. or Boston is likely. Given Mr. Wang’s grand ambitions for Xi’an, it should come as no surprise that one of his idols is the man behind McDonald’s, Ray Kroc.

Suzanne Rozdeba

A scuffle at 7A reported by EV Grieve earlier today resulted in a shattered window at the cafe, which remodeled earlier this year. William Day, an employee there, told The Local that the fight broke out at around 5:30 a.m. “It happens every now and then – it’s a 24-hour restaurant,” he said. A police spokesman had no further information regarding the incident. The window had already been fixed by 4:30 p.m.

Stephen Rex Brown St. Joe’s.

Soon after legendary folk singer Loudon Wainwright III finished performing for cheering protesters in Zuccotti Park yesterday afternoon, telling them that the Occupy Wall Street encampment reminded him of the 1968 “Summer of Love,” a Catholic Worker band called the Filthy Rotten System showed up.

Bud Courtney, who plays banjo in the group, said its decidedly unholy name came from the late Dorothy Day, who started the Christian-anarchist Catholic Worker Movement 78 years ago with Peter Maurin during the Great Depression. She is now being considered for sainthood by the Catholic Church.

“Dorothy observed that all of our problems come from our acceptance of the filthy rotten system,” said Mr. Courtney, 61, a former actor who served on a Christian Peacemaker Team in Iraq last year and now lives at one of two Catholic Worker hospitality houses in the East Village. With the help of several bandmates as well as protesters who sang along, he belted out Woody Guthrie’s classic, “My Land is Your Land.” Read more…

I’ve never crossed an empty Cooper Square — there are always people coming up out of the entrance for the 6, in line at the Mud Truck, messing around with the cube. Homeless guys, fruit cart guys, drunk college students. It’s not where I would have thought to look for a clean, minimalist image, but a few weekends ago when I was standing at the corner of Eighth Street, across from the Starbucks, I pointed my camera down and found an abstract geometry in the lines formed by crosswalk paint and the edge of the curb. Then the light changed and there were people walking through my photograph.
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Stephen Rex Brown The blinds are drawn at the preschool, which abruptly closed earlier this month.

When Devon Eisele took her 4-year-old daughter to Love A Lot preschool on Clinton Street on July 1 and Con Edison had cut the power, that was the last straw. While teachers did their best to improvise, taking the tykes to playgrounds and out for lunch, Ms. Eisele and her husband decided to withdraw their child from the financially struggling school.

As it turned out, they left at just the right time. Days later, the Clinton Street space closed, and the school was consolidated into the original location on Suffolk Street.

On October 5, that location abruptly closed, leaving parents scrambling to find a new preschool, and teachers fuming about months of unpaid wages. That day, the Department of Health revoked Love A Lot’s operating permit, citing “lack of an educational director, inability to provide documentation of staff medical records, and failure to screen staff,” according to a spokeswoman. Previously, the same location had been cited by city health inspectors for a variety of violations, including not having a staff member trained in CPR on site, lack of working fire and carbon monoxide alarms, and problems with hot and cold water — all of which were resolved, according to the spokeswoman.

The owner of Love A Lot, Olga Bosio, is named in two lawsuits, one from a former teacher seeking $6,500 in back wages, and another from former parents seeking $10,500 for tuition paid up front, as well as deposits for the school year. (According to Ms. Eisele, tuition at the school was around $2,000 a month.)
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Last night, just a couple dozen people braved the rain and cold to help kick off the first Greenpoint Film Festival with the premiere of Jonas Mekas’s new documentary, “My Mars Bar Movie.” The film, which Mr. Mekas, 88, said he had recorded during trips to Mars Bar over the course of fifteen years at Anthology Film Archives across the street, begins with a close-up of the archivist and filmmaker’s first name carved in the bar, followed by admiring shots of an insect-ridden fly strip and then the first of countless clinking tequila glasses.

Throughout the documentary, Mr. Mekas’s camera darts frenetically – almost kaleidoscopically – from the graffiti on the walls to the ceiling fan to the pinball machine to a cigarette perched in an ashtray (later in the movie, after years have passed, bar-goers complain about having to smoke outside), stopping only occasionally to concentrate on the stoney-eyed female bartenders and the international array of fellow filmmakers and artists that serve as Mr. Mekas’s drinking companions. Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown The shuttered store at 64 East Fourth Street.

Sara’s Vintage and Handmade Jewelry on East Fourth Street closed over the weekend, and the landlord says it is being evicted.

The store, which opened in 2008, sold vintage and antique jewelry as well as handmade jewelry by local designers, according to Yelp.

The store’s landlord said that it was far from an ideal tenant.

“They didn’t pay the rent for roughly the last six months,” said Valerio Orselli, the executive director of the Cooper Square Mutual Housing Association. “They are being evicted.”
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Okay, so we were a little surprised to hear that Beyoncé gets her nails done in the East Village, but Brendan Bernhard might not have been. In his latest essay, he points out that ours is a neighborhood that caters to the body.

Susan Keyloun The nail paint at Susan Nail & Spa at 149 Avenue A.

It’s one of the things I love about the East Village (and miss when I’m gone): the amount of attention to which your body can be paid (if you’re willing to pay for it) on almost any street.

Take the venerable Russian & Turkish Baths on East Tenth Street between First Avenue and Avenue A (forever and ever the hottest place in the neighborhood in the literal sense), where in under twenty minutes, a lifetime’s worth of clogged pores can be brutalized into unleashing rivers of salt.

Susan Keyloun

On weekdays after work the place can be as packed as a subway car, filled with the Ordinary and the Beautiful. You see boxers and dancers and models and performance artists and India-rubber yogis and other aristocrats of the physique, not excluding exhibitionists, dowsing themselves with ice-cold water in rooms ramped up to temperatures Satan would balk at. There are people who spend hours there almost every day of the year; after a decade or so, they start to look like steamed fish. In the afternoon it can be quite empty: I once shared the “Turkish Room” with a heat-loving rat. Read more…

Jamie Larson St. Mark’s Bookshop owners Terrence McCoy and Bob Contant say Cooper Union will not reduce their rent. The university, however, says no decision has been made.

The St. Mark’s Bookshop’s fate may still hang in the balance — at least according to Cooper Union. Though the beloved bookstore’s owners have abandoned hope of getting a $5,000 rent reduction, a Cooper Union spokeswoman insisted today that no official decision has been made.

After a meeting yesterday with top administrators from the school, bookshop co-owner Terrence McCoy was left with the clear impression that a reduction of the $20,000-a month rent was not in the cards.

“They said they couldn’t do anything — that all they could do was defer one month’s rent,” Mr. McCoy said. “I don’t want to have more debt.” Read more…

The East Village boasts the city’s oldest non-sectarian graveyard, its oldest ghost, its biggest costume store, its coolest Goth and Day of the Dead shops, and (let’s face it) its very best doggie costume parade. Obviously, this is the place to be on Halloween, so click any of the stories below to see how to celebrate this year.

Late last month, Community Board 3 left supporters of Heathers stunned by voting nearly unanimously to recommend a denial of the bar’s liquor license renewal. But was the whole process a waste of time? Two weeks later, the State Liquor Authority — the true arbiter of the fate of businesses that sell booze — renewed the bar’s license with little fanfare, raising doubts about whether it had heeded the board at all.

Just how much stock does the S.L.A put in the community board’s recommendations, anyway? For all the blogosphere’s feverish coverage of dramatic and often-controversial community board rulings, the question is rarely addressed. To answer it, The Local combed through a year’s worth of liquor authority license applications going up to Feb. 2011 (we ignored applications after that date, since many of them are still under review). In that year, we found that the State Liquor Authority consistently granted licenses to bars and restaurants that Community Board 3 had recommended for denial.

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Jamie LarsonJamshed Bharucha and Joyce Ravitz.

With the aid of some fortunate timing, the petition asking Cooper Union to grant a $5,000-per-month rent break to the St. Mark’s Bookshop was delivered right into the hands of the school’s president, Jamshed Bharucha, shortly after noon today.

According to Joyce Ravitz, president of the Cooper Square Committee, the group’s phone calls to set up a time to meet with Mr. Bharucha today had not been returned, but when they walked into the lobby of the Cooper Union Foundation Building, they found him walking towards the door. Ms. Ravitz flagged down the president and handed him a box full of comments as well as 43,789 signatures. Mr. Bharucha invited Ms. Ravitz, a couple of her supporters and The Local up to his office for an impromptu discussion. Read more…