For a period of time this evening, 12th Street was “frozen,” to use the police parlance, as President Obama’s motorcade came and went from a fundraising dinner at Gotham Bar & Grill between Fifth Avenue and University Place.

Around 7 p.m., The Local couldn’t get any closer to the restaurant than the southeast corner of 11th Street and University Place, where N.Y.P.D. barricades prevented pedestrians from passage.

A woman who claimed to be a resident of 12th Street was told she would have to wait behind the barricade or at a nearby business until the freeze was lifted. Meanwhile, a delivery worker from nearby L’Annam Vietnamese Cuisine was not only allowed through the ersatz blockade, but escorted by a uniformed officer to the next corner where it appeared he was handed off to another officer and allowed to continue. Read more…

A familiar sight inspires some to make art, and others to wax poetic.

Brendan Bernhard

Garbage is but a flower
Which garbage trucks devour;
Darkness falls from the air,
Stars have died young and fair,
Dust hath closed Amy’s eye.
We are sick, we must die.
Lord, have mercy on us!

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In rural New South Wales, Australia, where Amy Chaplin grew up, Thanksgiving was a non-event. But at the vegan institution Angelica Kitchen, where she was executive chef from 2003 until 2010, it was a very big deal. “It was the biggest day of the year for us,” she said, adding that she and her staff would work for days roasting and stuffing squash, preparing homemade chutneys, heirloom beans, pickled vegetables, flatbreads and their signature nut-and-seed brittle for a five-course feast.

Today, Ms. Chaplin, 37, works with large food companies to help them develop recipes featuring whole grains and legumes, and cooks privately for clients like Natalie Portman, whose spindly figure she helped maintain throughout the filming of “Black Swan.” An East Village resident since 2000, she seemed like just the person to tell us how to recover from the turkey-day binge. Read more…

Amber Tamblyn While shooting “House.”

Amber Tamblyn may be known to many for playing an angst-ridden teen in “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” and med student Martha Masters on “House,” but after 15 years as an actress, she’s branching out. These days, she’s performing with her mother, Bonnie Murray Tamblyn; co-producing a show for Fox with Katie Jacobs, an executive producer of “House”; and working on her third book of poetry. She has also written her first screenplay (adapted from the novel “Paint It Black” by Janet Fitch) and runs a non-profit, Write Now Poets, dedicated to finding creative programs to support poetry. “And lastly,” she told The Local over e-mail, “I’m hoping to end world hunger by Wednesday. Fingers crossed!”

Ms. Tamblyn divides her time between Los Angeles and the East Village, where she has lived for three years. She also performs in the neighborhood – most recently at “The Inspired Word,” an open mic night at One and One. “I never liked any other neighborhood,” she told The Local. Although, here’s a secret: She and her fiancée, the comedian David Cross, are moving to Brooklyn. Before she leaves us, we asked her about her favorite spots in the old neighborhood. Read more…

For “1,150 Days,” I’ve photographed elements of day-to-day life in New York City to create a daily record of the environment I call home. It’s interesting how many different versions of New York have surfaced: a city centered around parked bicycles, a city of colorful lights and abstract shapes, and a city where pigeons try to fit in, too. Each of these seemingly mundane perspectives reveals a sense of levity and wonder; a reminder that the background of our daily lives is comprised of many unexpected and often missed details. What draws me to shoot in the East Village is the area’s culture, its fascinating people, and the living history of each block. Like JR’s TED-prize-winning Inside Out Project in Cooper Square, featuring portraits of local citizens. Read more…

Courtesy of Jim Meehan.

To some, it’s the best bar in the world. To others, it’s that spot where they can never seem to land a reservation. To Jim Meehan, it’s his place. Though PDT has built its reputation partly on exclusivity, owner and chief mixologist Meehan now shares the secret to his success in The PDT Cocktail Book, out this month.

“The book is actually in keeping with the spirit of the bar in trying to advance this culture,” he says, explaining that while some locals might find his reservation policy restrictive (reservations are taken same-day only at 3 p.m.), it’s more about making a relaxed, unique experience for the few customers who make it inside the compact space on any given evening. “Part of our concept is that it’s limited edition,” says Mr. Meehan, “What I’ve tried to do… is guarantee the rights of all the people who are in here.”

Raised in Illinois, Mr. Meehan began tending bar to support his African-American and literature studies in college. Nine years ago, he arrived in the East Village, tenuring at some of the neighborhood’s restaurants before opening PDT in 2007. The Local asked Mr. Meehan to share some of his favorite spots. Read more…

Who’s this walking south on First Avenue, just one face among thousands enjoying the East Village on a crisp fall evening? Here’s a hint: The native New Yorker (recently seen at Café Orlin) got her start as an actress at La MaMa before going on to achieve global fame alongside Matt Damon in the Bourne trilogy. Global fame or not, Julia Stiles went largely unnoticed as she waited at a traffic light on 12th Street and First Avenue at about 8:30 p.m. on Saturday night.

“As someone whose history with photography consists of shooting street, photojournalism, and fashion, I’ve always looked at photography as a way to see reality. Some people think that all photography is art. I feel that art is only one aspect of photography. A sub-genre if you will.” Read more…

Happy Halloween, East Village. Still looking for a costume? Maybe this will inspire you: Contributor Tim Milk, an East Villager who remembers the subway system as a very scary place, recalls a peculiar incident in the late 1990s.

Rachel Citron The subway system today: A very different place.

Robbery, brutality, even death used to haunt the New York City transit system during that time many now choose to call “the bad old days.” The manifold horrors that lurked below street level still comprise an indelible legend. If you, alone and vulnerable on the desolate platform, survived the long, long wait for the chronically delayed and broken-down trains, things more loathsome still awaited you on board. Flashers, muggers, rapists – these were the least of your worries. Also riding with you were the bogeymen – the monsters who earned the most fearsome monikers. “The Finger Man” stalked the Lexington line with wire cutters, snipping off the digits of his victims to more quickly steal their diamond rings. That his story was probably just an urban myth was irrelevant – it was well understood that a trip to an outer borough such as Brooklyn could very well be your last.

And so I never went there. The districts outside of Manhattan lay beyond the pale – like lost, forbidden kingdoms. But by 1997, all of this had changed. Through certain deft law enforcement strategies, crime on the subway had vanished.  How exactly this was accomplished was not entirely clear, but no matter: people at last felt safe riding anywhere and everywhere.  For me it meant happy excursions to all ends of town without the inconvenience of sheer mortal terror.

One fine Sunday I made just such an outing, boarding the Brooklyn-bound F at the Second Avenue stop. 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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Pooches strutted their stuff at the 21st Tompkins Square Halloween Dog Parade Saturday afternoon in one of the East Village’s most highly anticipated annual events. Among the hundreds of costumed canines: doggie versions of Yoda, Lady Gaga and the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz, which might have been the most popular of the bunch. The contest’s “best in show” winner: A corgi dressed as a M23 bus. Watch our video for more.

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The Local has more Halloween treats for you! Just click on any of the stories below:

We’re a little late celebrating National Hispanic Heritage Month (it ended last week), but it’s never too late to celebrate Loisaida. To take you into the weekend: Amanda Plasencia’s recent photos from east of A.

Stephen Rex Brown Cafe Orlin at 41 St. Marks Place.

Ajay Naidu isn’t the only celebrity who enjoys Cafe Orlin. A reader spotted Julia Stiles lounging with a friend in the terrace of the restaurant on St. Marks Place at around 12:30 a.m. on Wednesday. “Why couldn’t she be alone?” our reader joked. “Why wasn’t she seated there in mournful solitude with an expectant look on her face? I guess it’s because… she’s a movie star!”

He added that the star of “The Bourne Ultimatum” and “10 Things I Hate About You” did have a certain aura about her. “She looks like the girl next door. The wholesome farmer’s daughter who, thankfully, didn’t have the gap between her teeth fixed.”

Stephen Rex Brown A camera dolly at East Fourth Street and Avenue D.

Stephen Rex Brown

An overturned motorcycle, an ambulance, and a fire truck would normally be cause for concern. Rest assured, the scene at Fourth Street near Avenue D was all part of a shoot of the new CBS drama, “A Gifted Man.” The show, starring Patrick Wilson (he was in “The Watchmen”) tells the story of “A brilliant, charismatic surgeon whose life changes forever when his deceased ex-wife begins teaching him the meaning of life from the hereafter,” according to its website.

Earlier today we heard from John Penley and other longtime East Villagers spending time at Zuccotti Park. Now contributor Sarah Shanfield, a more recent arrival to the neighborhood, writes about an early encounter with the movement at Tompkins Square Park last weekend.

Rachel Citron

I first heard about Occupy Wall Street when a friend sent me a YouTube video of girls in crop tops being maced while they let out blood curdling screams. My reaction: complete horror. What the hell was going on? And where were they, so I could go and watch?

In the beginning, it didn’t seem these protests would end in compromise, especially because it was unclear who the interested parties even were. And yet these people spent their precious New York time going down to Wall Street, to sit and protest for a change that they couldn’t define.

At first, I simply wanted to watch these people, with their matted hair, cutoffs, and the checkered Israeli keffiyehs that were in style several years ago. They hoisted signs with witty sayings and held dazzlingly intelligent conversation. But they frightened me because they were so angry. I didn’t identify with them, because I didn’t feel angry at all. Read more…

Before the mystery of the cryptic skywriting was solved last week, The Local cast its lens upward and asked perplexed onlookers for their theories. For an end-of-day moment of zen, watch our audio slideshow and relive that time of innocence and anticipation, before we knew it was all just an art project.

Noah Fecks

The city’s Department of Transportation confirmed late yesterday what seemed obvious: you can’t claim a bike rack on a sidewalk as private, even if you installed it yourself.

The Local submitted the oddball inquiry yesterday after reporting on the mystery of the “private” rack on East Fourth Street. A local plumber told The Local he installed the rack at the request of Flash Courier Service, and assumed it would be available to the public. But as it turned out, someone has claimed the rack as his own, and left notes warning that the “trespassing” bikes will be forcibly removed.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Transportation said that the rack did not appear in city records. “Still, even if a permit is issued for installation, that does not mean the bike rack is for the exclusive use of the owner if it is installed on a public sidewalk,” the spokeswoman added. Read more…

Noah Fecks

Someone is leaving menacing messages on a bike rack on East Fourth Street, warning cyclists that they are not allowed to park on the u-shaped steel he claims as his own.

Four days ago, photographer Noah Fecks sent a snapshot to The Local, of two bikes parked at the rack between Avenues A and B with notes attached to them saying “This is a private rack — remove your bike or it will be done for you!” Yesterday, one of the bikes remained, bearing the same note.

But this is not just a run-of-the-mill case of an over-assertive cyclist claiming a parking space. A longtime local who identified himself as a plumber and welder, but asked not to be named, told The Local that he installed the bike rack for the landlord of 211 East Fourth Street, who he said ran Flash Courier Service out of the building. (The courier service indeed has an East Fourth Street address on Foursquare, but is said to be located on East Fifth Street on YellowPages.com and elsewhere; today, an employee who said he did not have time to speak to The Local brusquely told us the company was located on Lenox Avenue before hanging up.) Read more…