You know what they say – it’s all about location, location, location. Why worry about where to go on a first date, when you should be worrying about what to wear? Here’s a list of the best first date bars in the East Village that won’t disappoint, just in case the person you’re meeting there does.

Allison Hertzberg Big Bar, 73 East Seventh Street.

Big Bar
73 East Seventh Street, 212-777-6969
This bar is tiny, and reminds me of an 80’s disco – only one that’s been shrunk down to the size of an East Village studio apartment. It never gets too busy at Big Bar, and most nights you can occupy one of their four booths for hours.
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Colleen Leung The author at the end of the East River esplanade construction project just south of Delancy Street. The project is expected to be completed in July.

The East River Waterfront Esplanade and Piers Project was conceived in 2002 as part of Mayor Bloomberg’s “Vision for Lower Manhattan,” yet almost 10 years later, the plan to extend the esplanade from East River Park down to the Battery Maritime Building on the southern tip of the city, creating attractive open space and exercise opportunities for East Village and Lower East Side residents, has not made much progress.

With estimated completion dates that continually get pushed back, the completion of the East River Waterfront Esplanade sometimes seems like a mere pipe dream.

The mayor’s plan promised new bike paths, more seating areas and even a dog run along the water. Yet during a recent excursion to East River Park, I instead noticed a sign with a new projected completion date: July 2011.

According to the official government Web site, Phase I of the the project was scheduled for completion in fall 2010. However, sticking the small piece of paper on the sign over the old scheduled completion date seems to be the only work that has actually gotten done lately.

I proceeded to walk alongside the torn-up rubble next to the water for over a mile, hoping to possibly speak to some workers about the project, but there wasn’t even anyone there.

Perhaps one day the mayor’s plan will allow runners and cyclists to go all the way around lower Manhattan along the east side without taking a detour around the construction. Until then, I’ll get my exercise doing scaffold pull-ups and running back and forth on the small section of Esplanade that ends just South of Delancey Street.

Al Kavadlo is a personal trainer, freelance writer and author of the book, “We’re Working Out! A Zen Approach to Everyday Fitness” (Muscle-up Publications, 2010). For more information visit www.AlKavadlo.com.

Jenn Pelly Josh Korda meets with a participant after leading a meditation session at Dharma Punx, a free, walk-in meditation class that fuses the tenets of Buddhism and punk rock. Below: The Dharma Punx logo.

In late October, my stress levels hit an all-time high. I wanted to escape, but no fancy spa for me. Being the sort of girl who wears vegan combat boots and listens to Bikini Kill while steaming kale, I decided to hone inner peace at Dharma Punx. The free, walk-in meditation class fuses the tenets of Buddhism and punk rock every Tuesday at 7 p.m.

While some may question whether these sessions confuse achieving Nirvana with listening to it, participants note that there are common threads running between the Buddhist faith and the punk movement. Like Buddhism, punk music and lifestyles are centered on streamlining and simplification: three-chord Ramones-like song structures, straight-edge lifestyles, and Do-it-Yourself work ethics that cut out the middleman.

Led by Josh Korda, a tattoo-covered Buddhist Brooklynite with gauged ears, the 25-minute sessions at Lila Yoga, Dharma, and Wellness, 302 Bowery attracted a variety of practitioners. On that particular Tuesday night, a young beret-clad woman sat in front of me, and a grey-haired man in a yellow polo to my right, along with many tattooed 20 and 30-somethings. Mr. Korda opened wide the front windows, surrounded by tiny portraits of Buddhist gods, and in floated sidewalk sounds, cabbie screeches, and ambient New York noise.
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The “How did you meet?” question is almost as loaded as the “How did he propose?” question. Proposals you can plan, meeting your future girlfriend/boyfriend is usually left up to chance. To me, the meeting cycle of most single New Yorkers starts out at a house party, graduates to a bar, ends up online and after a self imposed break from dating altogether, your great aunt Esther fixes you up with a “nice young man” she met at services…or maybe that’s just me.
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Clint Rainey Pianos, 158 Ludlow Street.

As I was making my way down Avenue A last week, a young girl in combat boots asked me for a light. I stared at her, confused. It was obvious to me that before she left the house that morning, she had remembered to smear her eyes with liquid liner, wrap her hips in enough metal belts to refurbish a John Deere machine, and carefully paint each of her nails a different shade of black – but she forgot her lighter?

“Here,” I gave her a neon pink Zippo I’d had since the last time I was hounded by Marlboro promoters at ACE bar.

“Thanks,” she said, and after using it threw the lighter into the dark depths of Tompkins Square Park, provoking the muffled sounds of an annoyed rat. Maybe she thought it was a large, cold, match. Read more…

Clint Rainey Frank Restaurant & Vera Bar, 88 Second Avenue.

Frank Prisinzano opened Frank’s, a trattoria on Second Avenue between Fifth and Sixth Street, in 1998, a time when the East Village was not yet a byword for funky cosmopolitanism. “I was the first of the small restaurants in the neighborhood,” Frank said, exercising perhaps a bit of poetic license. “People said we’d never make it. My ex-wife was out front, my father and I did the prep work.” They made it. Today the restaurant is the foundation of the Frankish empire, which also includes Lil’ Frankie and Supper, both on First Avenue between First and Second. And Frank himself is wreathed in glory, his restaurants celebrated in The Times, the Michelin Guide and elsewhere. Try getting a table at Supper on short notice.

Frank’s serves serious food in a self-consciously non-serious setting, which is to say that is very Lower East Side. On my first visit, I had a kind of galette made of an oozing straciatella the texture of crème fraiche on top of two thick slabs of tomato. Then I had fabulous beet ravioli. “It’s kind of a teenage-girl color,” my friend Nancy said — the purple of a scrunchy. It was a lovely summer day, and Nancy and I were sitting outside behind the white picket fence, which Frank has incongruously built out on to the sidewalk. Liesl Schillinger, the crackerjack book reviewer for The Times, walked by on her way to the Ottendorfer Public Library to return some books. That’s one of the nice things about sitting outside at Frank’s. Liesl was dressed for the season — vivid pink and lime green. “Her shirt was. . .” “The color of your lunch,” Nancy finished for me.
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Meredith Hoffman A line form at Tompkins Square Park to await food distribution by the volunteers of Bowery Mission.

Beyond serving as a green refuge, Tompkins Square Park offers a wide range of eating experiences. A recent food tasting in the park allowed area restaurants to serve up their creations. Locals frequent the Sunday morning farmers’ market where artisanal cheese from Hudson Valley farms and apples from nearby orchards are among a host of organic produce.

Saturday mornings, around 8 o’clock, a lengthy line reminiscent of Coxey’s Army begins to form along Avenue A. A broad ethnic mix of people, many aged or infirm wait patiently alongside mothers with their children in strollers. Most are wheeling shopping carts. Some on crutches, in wheel chairs form a separate line.
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Robyn Baitcher Wechsler’s Currywurst & Bratwurst, 120 First Avenue.

It was the second-to-last day of Oktoberfest at Wechsler’s, a midget wursthaus — more like a wurstkiosk — at 120 First Avenue, between Seventh Street and St. Marks Place. Andre Wechsler, the eponymous owner, had his barman/waiter/busboy pour a draft of Schneider Weisse beer and another of Radeberger Pilsener. Each arrived in a glass from its own brewery. It would be an insult to Andre to say the foam on each was just so — of course it was. Still, my friend Birte Kleemann, who ran an art gallery in Berlin before becoming director of The Pace Gallery in Chelsea, had a probing question: “Are these German strength, or American?” The typical alcohol level of German beer, Birte explained to me, was 5.45 percent, slightly above the strength of the dishwater served in this country. Andre solemnly averred that the provenance of both was pure German. “Actually,” he added, “the Schneider Weisse is 6.2 percent—special for Oktoberfest.”
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Darren Tobia Angelo Cabrera, 19, from the East Village performs “the flag” in Tompkins Square Park. He is a member of the NYC Parkour team, which performs gymnastic maneuvers against an urban backdrop.

The Local East Village takes a look at the fitness phenomenon known as parkour through a pair of reports. First, Community Contributor Al Kavadlo, a personal fitness trainer, offers a first person account where he tries out some parkour moves. Then, NYU Journalism’s Lesley Messer and Suemedha Sood report on four neighborhood teenagers who’ve formed a bond through their practice of the sport.

What began with a group of teens in France running and jumping through the city streets has turned into a worldwide fitness movement, with the East Village as one of NYC’s primary hubs. Tompkins Square Park has had a reputation for many different things over the years. You can now add parkour to the list.

Parkour involves training to overcome physical obstacles by adapting to the environment. If there is a ledge, you vault over it, if there is a tree, you climb it and if there is a gap, you jump it.
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Photo by Fly Michael Shenker.

Michael Shenker, a homesteader and long-time community activist in the East Village, died Saturday of liver failure at the age of 54. NYU Journalism’s Dyan Neary, a friend of Mr. Shenker’s, prepared this first-person recollection of his life and the morning of his death.

I wake with a start at 7:25 a.m., sucking air through my lips with a slow whistle and blowing it out again. Nikita is waving at me from her crib. I feel reinvigorated somehow.

It is 7:25 a.m. and I want to apologize to everyone I have ever harmed, even in the smallest of ways. I write an e-mail to Brian, a masterful exercise in humility and accountability. For being a stress case and for being difficult when I was pregnant. I read several books to my daughter.

At 10:30 I gently unroll the down comforter to reveal Brian’s sleeping face. Out the window, I can see so much of the skyline, buildings stacked upon buildings and the Empire State climbing higher than all of them now, the centerpiece to a misshapen staircase like a three-dimensional collage of various shades of tawny overlapping tan.

I’m going to see Michael in the hospital, I tell Brian. Nikita has been changed, fed, read to. I place a kiss on his forehead. Check your e-mail.
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C.C. Glenn A kasha knish at B & H Dairy & Vegetarian, 127 Second Avenue.

Traditionalists argue whether a knish should be round or square, baked or fried, but what about blueberry or chocolate cheese? Is a knish truly a knish if it’s not a savory potato snack?

In search of a culinary adventure on Tuesday night, a couple dozen knish veterans, newbies and plain epicurious folks met in Tompkins Square Park to embark on NYC Food Crawl’s newest installment – a quest for the perfect knish.

Like a giddy camp counselor, Amanda Gilmore organized teams with captains, doled out maps of knish stops and gave out tips to crawlers while standing atop a gate post. “It’s all about going at your own pace,” said Ms. Gilmore, one of the founders of NYC Food Crawl. “Patience is generally key.”
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