Michelle Rick

If you don’t live here in the East Village, you all naturally assume that we collectively get up around 10:30 a.m., rearrange our dreadlocks, drink coffee while sitting on a fire escape, admire the worn painted ads on the sides of our buildings, and then begin our long day of dance auditions before our bartending gigs start at 5 p.m.

You imagine that our clothes are beautifully tie-dyed and that our jewelry looks like we sprinkled a Tibetan souvenir shop onto ourselves. You picture us writing poetry on a bed of leaves in Tompkins Square Park, only raising our heads to drink wheatgrass smoothies. You are not wrong about any of this, and we are ALL like this.

However, it has recently come to my attention that real estate in the East Village is incredibly expensive.

Expensive to the point where if a group of roommates were to live in a two-bedroom apartment overlooking Pommes Frites and live the lifestyle described above, said group would need to be about 10 people to afford this kind of East Village abode, and that is not including the upkeep of dreads.
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Michael Pearce on photographing scale and motion.

“The multitude of neighborhoods that make up NYC and the surrounding boroughs allow for an endless number of photographic opportunities. If the scene calls for it, I try to include the human form to add a sense of scale or motion. As NYC is a giant melting pot, there is never a shortage of interesting characters to capture in the frame.”
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Street Style: Tucked In from rachel ohm on Vimeo.

Sometimes style isn’t what you wear but how you wear it. Tuck a blouse or a tank top into a skirt or dressy shorts and voila! you’ve created a slimming silhouette. As The Local wandered the streets of the East Village, we noticed that “the tuck” is both work and weekend appropriate. It lends a touch of femininity to any skirt and top combo and instantly polishes up summer-time shorts. It’s also a great way to test the waters of color blocking, as these stylish locals showed us.

The Local’s Rachel Ohm reports.

Calgary Municipal Land Corporation The planned tower — in another East Village.

It’s a familiar story in the East Village — the once-grungy neighborhood made cool attracts new investment marked by glittering glass condo towers. Here’s the latest project by developer Embassy Bosa: a 700,000 sq. ft. mixed-use development. The deal was done in late 2010 and sales are expected to begin early next year.

Before you take to the comments in a paroxysm of anti-yuppie fervor, I should let you know something. These three towers will rise not in The East Village, New York, New York but in East Village (no The), Calgary, Alberta. Yes, there’s a shadowy doppelganger of our neighborhood stirring to life in Western Canada.

The neighborhood’s boosters are not shy about playing up to the reputation of its New Yorker sister. This week a competition to name the Embassy Bosa condos came to a close and the winner will be whisked down to The East Village, New York for a vacation.

“The East Village started in a similar way: a rough derelict area that needed a bit of love and care,” said Susan Veres a spokeswoman for the Calgary Municipal Land Corporation, referring to our neighborhood. The hope is the prize will link the two neighborhoods in the minds of Calgarians and show them what their East Village could be like in the future.

The irony, though, is that the sorts of buildings going up in Calgary — multifamily, mixed-use, to use the language of developers — are the sorts of things that would no doubt be the subject of multi-hour, mixed-opinion Community Board 3 debates were they to appear here. In Calgary, the rejuvenation of the neighborhood has been greeted with near-universal acclaim.
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Courtesy Ajay NaiduAjay Naidu.

To some, he’ll always be Samir, one of the disgruntled heroes of “Office Space,” or more recently, Vikram from HBO’s “Bored to Death.”

They know him by his real name, however, in the East Village, the neighborhood that actor/writer/director Ajay Naidu has called home for over 16 years. Back in the day, he was a self-described “club kid,” and though he still frequents the neighborhood’s live music venues, he’s just as likely to be found on set these days as he is on the scene. Naidu has several notable projects in the pipeline, including Sacha Baron Cohen’s upcoming “The Dictator” (about which he’s been sworn to secrecy) and his own directorial debut, “Ashes”, a 10-year labor of love that has been touring the festival circuit (catch it next month at the New York International Latino Film Festival).

Naidu took a timeout to share some of his favorite places with his fellow Villagers.

Best Location for People-Watching

“My fire escape on Saint Mark’s. It has the perfect angle because it’s just above the crowd and you can watch everyone and hear everything.”

Best Live Music Venue

“That’s a really tough one because I go out a lot to music. The best place to go hear music right now is Santos Party House and has been for a while.”
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Jim Kiernan

Jim Kiernan Images of last year’s ride.

Among some hardcore cyclists, wearing a helmet is considered a little square. For this Sunday’s nude bike ride, wearing anything at all might seem a bit prudish.

Like modern-day Lady Godivas, local bikers will strip down and pedal around town as part of New York City’s third annual World Naked Bike Ride.

“It really is about environmental consciousness, first and foremost,” said Paul Nocera, one of the ride’s organizers.

Biking in the buff promotes cycling as a safe and fun mode of transportation while offering a visual demonstration of the vulnerability of cyclists, both in terms of bike safety and larger environmental concerns, he said.

The event began in 2004 with two nude cycling groups protesting dependence on oil but the message has evolved to include support of the struggles in the Arab World, solidarity with the people of Japan and protest against vehicular dominance, police harassment and nuclear energy, according to the group’s Facebook page.

But photographs from previous events show the ride isn’t all serious political action. Participants are encouraged to ride as “bare as you dare” and to decorate themselves with brightly colored body paint.

Only one person was ticketed last year for blocking traffic and no one received citations for nudity, Mr. Nocera said.

Participants will meet in the East River Park at Delancey Street at 4 p.m. when the full route will be disclosed. The ride concludes with an afterparty at Time’s Up, an environmental organization in Brooklyn.
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Vivienne Gucwa

I walk into B&H Dairy and squeeze myself along the narrow aisle between the tables lining the wall and the stools lining the counter. The small deli restaurant is loud with people, the radio and the clattering of plates and bowls.

As usual, Raffi, the cook and maître d’ of sorts, an immigrant from Pueblo, Mexico, has a few things going at once on the grill: an omelet, a grilled cheese sandwich and some breakfast potatoes. While it cooks, he covers the food with a large aluminum foil container, which he then covers with a plate—he has a system in place. Up and down the counter are couples and friends laughing or in eye-locked huddles.

“You!” Raffi puts his hands out in a simulated hug. He wears a black Yankees cap turned to the back.

“Hey!”

“Where you been?”

“Oh, you know, around. I don’t come to this neighborhood that much anymore. I’m so glad you are here. I came in not too long ago and a guy was here I’d never seen before so I thought maybe you quit.” I throw my backpack under the counter on the tiny dirty ledge, and take out my notebook and pencil.

“Naw, I didn’t quit. That was my boss.”
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Susan Keyloun

What is it? The name that’s missing from the East Village?

Think. It’s a name you would expect to hear, but don’t. A name you would expect to encounter in cafes and bars, on street corners and buses, in parks and in shops, in the lobbies of movie theaters and the changing rooms of gyms, on subway platforms and in supermarket lines, and wherever else East Villagers congregate.

The name, still so visible on the Web and audible on TV and radio, has vanished from the neighborhood. Yet it is (surely) the most famous name in the world. It begins with an “o,” and it ends with an “a”: OBAMA! Once it was on everyone’s tongue. Now, it seems, tongues would rather utter any name but that one. The name has been replaced by silence, by the absence of a name. It is a void people no longer know what to do with except to circle around it cautiously while naming other names — Palin, Beck, Murdoch, Cantor, Tea Partiers — as if warding off an evil spell.

There are other people besides Obama you rarely hear discussed these days. For instance, Clinton, Geithner, Bernanke, Biden, Pelosi. The names of those who hold the highest offices in the land are spoken aloud almost as rarely as those of Party officials in a Communist dictatorship. It’s as if merely whispering their names were a crime. It isn’t, of course, but somehow it feels inappropriate.
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Julie Turley, Shawn Hoke, Kenan Christiansen and Lindsay Wengler, members of The Local East Village Flickr Group, share their images of a murals outside Mars Bar in recent years.

Shawn Hoke

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Phillip Kalantzis Cope Mars Bar closed its doors Monday.

It happened a little before 4 p.m. The patrons were let out, the door was shut. And with the resignation of a whimper in place of the much anticipated bang, Mars Bar closed, forever.

On any other afternoon, the iconic bar — a symbol of a time gone by for a neighborhood experiencing an era of commercial development — would be sprinkled with regulars yakking away about the day’s gossip with a sympathetic young bartender.

Debates over the distinction, if any, between bands like Foreigner and Journey would be overheard as music from John Fogerty to Wesley Willis bounced off the bar’s graffiti-laden walls. Glasses of whiskey and discount red wine would be filled to the top, and the beer was always served ice cold.

But by late Monday afternoon, Mars Bar had finally served its last drink.

Raymond Bell, 60, a longtime regular with a taste for red wine, described being on the scene Monday afternoon when the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene closed the bar down — only a few weeks before the building’s demolition to make way for a new 12-story condo.

“I didn’t even get to finish my last drink,” he said. While other customers lingered outside, Mr. Bell said he “just walked away.”
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Roey Ahram, Clark Carr, Rachel Citron, Phillip Kalantzis-Cope, Joshua Davis, Dave DiRoma, Vivienne Gucwa, Shawn Hoke, Meghan Keneally, Scott Lynch, Clint McMahon, Michael Natale, Michah Saperstein and Lindsay Wengler — all members of The Local East Village Flickr Group — share their images of Mars Bar through the years.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

If you’d like a chance to see your best shots appear on The Local, join The Local East Village Flickr Group.

Scott Lynch

Would-be messages from the East Village, in 140 characters or less.

Out of Office Tweet (Automated Response)

Obviously we am very concerning among the flowers.
Ditto says ‘Go Home Now’ but what about the hours?
 212-555-4444 but it’s déclassé to phone

or text weekends, and dubious at best Mon. & Fri. & as
 for Tues.-Thur. why it’s impossibly busy here at our loft
 on Lafayette I really

don’t know what you should do my advice is buy a fat
 novel for a couple of bucks from one of those Avenue A
 vendors and get on a bus

and stay on it until you finish it could be weeks if it’s
 Proust have you read Proust I haven’t but they say he’s
 good & takes a lot of

Time you seem to have a lot of Time that’s your
 problem you see we’re all tremendously busy I mean we
just don’t have Time so do read Proust
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Scott Lynch on capturing his love affair with New York.

“I’ve been in New York City for more than 30 years now, since the late 1970’s, and have always had such a huge crush on this town. Street photography, the (sometimes a bit obsessive) shooting of anything and everyone that catches my eye, or makes me smile, or suddenly seems fresh and new even if I’ve walked by it a thousand times before, has been an amazing discovery for me, the most immediate and satisfying way I’ve ever found to express my affection for this beautiful city and its never-ending parade of people, and to share it all with my daughters, my friends (especially New Yorkers in-exile… LOVE making them homesick!), and, thank you Internet, tons of strangers.”
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Laura E. Lee Jack’s, 101 Second Ave.

Jack’s Luxury Oyster Bar, at 101 Second Avenue, is in the East Village, but not of the East Village. Jack’s introduces itself with the false modesty of a neighborhood speakeasy: The plain white door bears no sign, and the chief adornment of the facade is the air conditioner’s ventilation unit. The word “Luxury” is a sly joke as it applies to décor; it is meant to be taken with deadly seriousness, however, when it comes to food.

Jack’s has the most refined cuisine in the East Village, save for Degustation, around the corner on East 5th and also owned by restauranteur Jack Lamb, and perhaps also David Chang’s several Momofuku restaurants. The format at Jack’s, as at Degustation, is small-scale plates, though Jack’s is surely one of the city’s few seafood tapas places. The combination of small plates and a small menu means that a party of four can eat practically everything Jack’s serves, though a sounder approach might be to order two or three each of five or so dishes.

My wife and I invited our friends Roberta and Jerry, who say proudly that they never eat out. Jack’s, consequently, blew their minds. The first dish to arrive was the roasted oysters, which are served in their shell on a bed of peppercorns in a tureen, thus creating the momentary illusion that you have much more to eat than in fact you do. The oysters are made with chorizo, setting up a glorious battle between plump brininess and sharp smokiness. But there was much more. “I just got a whiff of something,” Jerry said. “I think it’s some kind of cheese.” Read more…