Bowery Boogie spotted the Yankee second baseman — and 2011 home run derby champ — playing a game of stickball on Bond Street yesterday. The game, complete with adoring kids playing the outfield, was part of a promotion by the MLB Fan Cave, which is nearby on Broadway. No word on whether Mr. Cano’s power and smooth swing were in full effect on the mean streets of Bond.

Daniel Maurer

After “Greetings from Tim Buckley” took over a stretch of East Fifth Street last week, “Law & Order: SVU” is stepping out of its Chelsea Piers set and has put orange cones down the entirety of East Seventh Street between Avenues A and B, as well as a stretch between A and First Avenue. The show will be filming starting at 6 a.m. tomorrow, according to tow-away signs.

Seen something like this? Tell The Local.

“Don’t eat the brown acid,” quipped Lane Steinberg, 50, to several dozen East Villagers — many of them children and young parents — watching his rock-infused salsa group Cracked Latin on Ninth Street between First Avenue and Avenue A on Saturday. An afternoon-long party, sponsored by the Ninth Street A-1 Block Association, helped local businesses like Whitman’s, Good Beer and Dorian Grey Gallery re-introduce themselves, and offered residents the chance to hawk their homemade crafts. Read more…

One of my favorite parts of street photography is that I never have any idea what I’m going to shoot when I go out walking around. For the most part, it’s about turning a corner and getting hit with something goofy, or beautiful, or one-in-a-million. You can go just about anywhere in New York City and expect the unexpected, of course, but somehow the East Village just seems to generate more of those moments. Here are a few recent shots that took me by surprise.
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Now that the Free Willie Nelson is out of commission, the question arises: which East Village ride should replace the venerable shaggin’ wagon as the neighborhood’s unofficial “pimpmobile.” There’s the obvious answer: “Old Flat Top,” the RV that Free Willie’s owner, Ron Britt, purchased earlier this year. But there are many dark horses – or rather, electric yellow and lime green horses – in this race. We snapped photos of some of the contenders while (enviously) biking around the neighborhood just now. If you’ve seen others, or see them over the weekend, upload photos of them to our Flickr pool so that we can best determine which Villager has the sweetest ride.

Daniel Maurer

This’ll blow your mind, man: This morning, The Local spotted this groovy telephone booth on East Fifth Street near Avenue A, where a scene for “Greetings from Tim Buckley” is being shot.  A look inside Sophie’s revealed that the bar had been redecorated to evoke what a location assistant said was 1966 – the year of Tim Buckley’s debut album (Penn Badgley of “Gossip Girl” fame will play the hippie-era singer in the biopic). Across the street were extras wearing bellbottoms, turtlenecks, Afros, and other period attire. According to the location assistant, who asked not to be named, the film will be shooting there for the rest of the day, and shot at A-1 Records last week. (That scene was set in 1991, the time of Tim’s son Jeff Buckley.)

Next time you see something like this around the neighborhood, tell The Local.

The death of Liz Hooper – the cause of which has still not been determined – rattled the Tompkins Square Park transient community this week. “Things like this scare me,” said Jocelyn, 33, a mother of three who lives on the streets of the East Village. “It makes me really want to change the way I live. It could have been me.”  The Pasadena, Calif. native grew up in New Orleans; like Ms. Hooper, she entered the transient community after she began dabbling in drugs. She now spends most of her days panhandling on Second Avenue, in Tompkins Square Park and around Union Square – at night, she sleeps on East 4th Street and occasionally stays in a squat house in Brooklyn.  Her two daughters (7 and 4) stay with their grandmother in New Orleans while her 4-month-old son is in foster care. “I want to change my life so that I can be with them,” she said. “The fact that I am not with them is so painful.” Last month, The Local asked Jocelyn to tell us about a typical day.

On Friday, we shared John Vaccaro’s memories of September 11, 2001. Because he isn’t the only the one looking back on that day, The Local asked other Villagers some of the same questions that The Times posed to its readers: What was their strongest memory of 9/11? How did it change them, and America? What did they lose – or gain – because of it? Share your own reflections or reactions here, and if you’ve posted a video to the New York Times YouTube channel, leave that link in the comments.

In a city where the streets double as runways, Michelle Rick shares her experience capturing local fashionistas.

“Like any girl with a TV set in New York during the 1970s and 80s, I formed my first impression of “high” fashion watching the Ritz Thrift Shop commercial. It evoked everything glamorous about that time: mother dabbing Givenchy perfume on her wrist, and Bloomingdale’s, which was the height of chic. I return to my comfort zones almost every day to take pictures; a red wall where I know how the light hits at 5 p.m., for example.”
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Back in June, The Local visited the home of John Vaccaro, one of the residents above Mars Bar who was being temporarily relocated so that his building could be replaced by condos. It wasn’t the first time the retired theater director had been displaced. On September 11, 2001, he was living just a few blocks from the World Trade Center while also keeping his loft on Second Avenue. In this video, Mr. Vaccaro describes fleeing ground zero and making an unexpected return to the East Village. Nearly ten years later, on July 21, he would officially move back to John Street, with a clear memory of that fall day.

For much of America’s Muslim community, the 9/11 terrorist attacks changed their relationship with the rest of American society – for the worse.  Broad government surveillance and discriminatory law enforcement policies, combined with an increased suspicion of Muslims by the general public, left many feeling that daily worship had suddenly become synonymous with terrorism. But a decade on, Imam Abu Sufian tells a different narrative.

The Imam, a 35-year old American of Bangladeshi origin, sat on fading jade-colored carpet upstairs at Madina Masjid – the redbrick mosque with an unobtrusive turquoise minaret on the corner of First Avenue and 11th Street. Speaking softly and holding a worn, leather-bound copy of the Koran in his hands, he wanted to highlight positive developments in the mosque’s relationship with East Villagers in the ten years since the terror attacks.  “I would actually say that since 9/11, we have had a greater relationship with the local community than we did before,” he said. “Everyone realized that we needed to get to know each other better.” Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown Part of the film crew outside of Cafe Orlin today.

Film crews have entirely overtaken Cafe Orlin (no stranger to cinema stars) and parts of St. Marks Place for the shoot of an upcoming NBC drama that takes a (fictional) behind-the-scenes look at the production of a Broadway musical.

A crew member outside the cafe near Second Avenue told The Local that they were shooting “Smash.” According to IMDB, the new series will depict the ups and downs of the cast and crew preparing a show about Marilyn Monroe’s life. Anjelica Huston is the biggest star in the cast, though she was not spotted today at around lunchtime. (There were few opportunities for paparazzi-style photos; the rain had forced most of the crew indoors.)

The show is set to premiere on February 6.

As a bassist for the indie and art rock group Les Savy Fav, Syd Butler wasn’t satisfied simply touring the globe. In 1999, he founded Frenchkiss Records so the band could release its own recordings, and has since launched the careers of Passion Pit, The Drums and Local Natives. These days, he divides his time between the Lower East Side, where he lives with his wife and two children, and Frenchkiss headquarters in Union Square. Having lived in the area for a decade, Butler says he feels most at home on downtown’s east side. “There’s so much creative energy and the history is really supportive of the arts and expression,” he explains, though that doesn’t necessarily make hometown audiences the easiest to perform for.

“New Yorkers’ expectations are higher,” he says. “When you play New York you’ve got to give it your all.” Expect all that and more when Les Savy Fav perform at the Music Hall of Williamsburg’s 4^th Anniversary Celebration on Tuesday, September 6. Until then, on to Butler’s favorites! Read more…

U.S. Department of Agriculture A package of hot dogs that contained glass shards, according to a federal food inspector.

If you’re stuck in town this Labor Day weekend without so much as a roof to grill on, wipe that hangdog look off your face: Maggots, worms, metal, plastic and even a razor were just a few of the objects that horrified callers said were in their hot dogs in complaints lodged with the U.S. Department of Agriculture between 2007 and 2009.

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Back in 2009, this reporter filed a Freedom of Information Act request asking the U.S.D.A. to give up its dirty-dog logs. The 64 case files finally came in this week, just in time for the holiday! Consider them food for thought if you’re planning to grill during these last dog days of summer.

The documents (viewable here) tell numerous cringe-inducing tales of foreign objects disrupting all-American meals. Band-Aids, a rubber glove, and even a lock washer (used to secure a bolt) are all described in snappy detail.

One report told of a “winged insect that resembled a dragonfly inside the package of hot dogs,” and noted that the insect’s “head, eyes, and wings are visible. Insect is black in color, over 1-inch long.” Read more…

I Love EV spotted Kim and Kourtney Kardashian exiting the Healthfully Organic Market on East 4th Street earlier today, with a phalanx of paparazzi outside to greet them. Apparently the sidewalks were also clogged over at the not-so-healthful Crif Dogs this afternoon, where Gothamist heard about “a line out the door.” No celebs involved, though: customers have been cashing in a Scoutmob coupon for a free hot dog today.

Rebecca Hamilton

Earlier today, Muslims from Madina Masjid, the mosque on 11th Street and First Avenue, came together for Eid ul-Fitr, marking the end of Ramadan.

Tim Schreier

“The world is too much with us,” claimed William Wordsworth, but he didn’t know the half of it. The Weather Channel is too much with us, would be more to the point. Mayor Bloomberg is too much with us. Anderson Cooper is too much with us. Fox News is too much with us. Warnings and dire threats of all kinds are too much with us — e.g. those surrounding “Hurricane Irene,” who/which would have been more accurately described as “Subtropical Depression Irene” by the time she managed to waddle her way up the East Coast in her rain-soaked skirts and finally “hit” New York with the soft, wet slap of a gloved hand. As trees swayed gently and reporters valiantly swallowed their disappointment, we were all far too invested in the story to evacuate the portion of our brain in which she’d taken up residence.

Well, she did rain a great deal. And knocked down some trees and flooded this highway and that subway, but a “hurricane” she was not. Nonetheless she managed to take up most of my weekend – mentally speaking. And by the time she finally cleared town I was flat-out exhausted by her. For two days I had obsessively followed the event-to-come, watching TV, scanning Internet sites, constantly checking The Times’ “Hurricane Tracker” and all the latest updates from FEMA, only to discover that it was all foreplay and no conclusion. Read more…