The old maxim goes that when hemlines fall, so does the economy. But what are we to make of widening trousers? Perhaps we could say that as the temperature rises, the leg gets less lean? The look on the street these days is not skinny jeans and jeggings but pants that billow and bend in the breeze, keeping us cool while looking hot.

The Local investigates ways wide-leg pants are being worn in the Village — from 70’s retro bell-bottoms to lightweight polyester boyfriend trousers and cargos.

NYU Journalism’s Rachel Ohm reports.

Ian Duncan Caracas Arepa Bar, 93½ East Seventh Street.

Caracas Arepa Bar, at 93½ East Seventh Street, between First Avenue and Avenue A, is just about the only restaurant in the East Village which is crowded at lunch — at least the only one worth eating at. This came as a huge surprise to the owner, Maribel Araujo, who told me the other day that she never thought the place would develop a lunch crowd. I said, “There’s no mystery — you’re the only place that’s that good and that cheap.”

Caracas is a tiny, clattering little restaurant which specializes in arepas, the soft corn-flour pocket bread eaten all over Venezuela. The arepa at Caracas has always struck me as the perfect combination of pliability — to hold the filling — and crispness. Maribel explained that while all arepas are cooked on a griddle, Caracas puts theirs in an oven for an additional 10 minutes, so that the dough on the underside fully cooks without losing its springiness, while the outside reaches the proper state of crunchiness. I have no source of comparison, but I once brought arepas from Caracas to Penelope Cruz, and she pronounced them completely authentic. To be strictly factual, I shared them with an extremely beautiful woman from Caracas who looks as much like Penepole Cruz as a mortal can. She was very impressed. And that was recommendation enough for me.
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Chelsia Rose Marcius Nick Corbin, 24, of Hoboken, during the race.

Grab, bite, chomp, chew, drink, swish, swallow, run.

That was Miriam Weiskind’s strategy today at the second annual New York City Pizza Run in Tompkins Square Park.

“I took really quick bites and washed it down with a little water,” she said, raising an imaginary slice to her mouth, showing just how she did it. “People who shoved the entire thing in just choke.”

Nearly 100 runners registered for the 2.25-mile run that required three pit stops for one slice of Margherita pizza, said race founder Jason Feirman, 26, of the East Village.

Ms. Weiskind, 31, of Park Slope, came in first for the women, clocking in at 18 minutes and 6 seconds. Peter O’Rourke took men’s title with a time of 15 minutes and 24 seconds.

While a dim weather forecast kept some participants from showing, those who live for saucy pieces of dough had no problem wolfing down 40 pizza pies from Pizza by Certe in Midtown.

To prepare for inhaling mouthfuls of basil leaves and mozzarella, triathlete Jonathan Blyer, 29, of Park Slope, spent three weeks chewing saltine crackers without water. He said what ruined him last year was a dry pallet.

“My main problem was getting my salivary glands going,” he said.

Most runners gave the choice of pizza a standing ovation — except perhaps Erin McInrue, 27, of the West Village.

“It was good but a bit crusty,” Ms. McInrue said. “That’s no good when I’m trying to eat for speed.”

Rachel Citron on life and benches in the city.

“The great equalizer – benches afford both natives and visitors free space to mingle while simultaneously allowing each of us to sit down, lie down, or simply have a moment to ourselves. The NYC Bench has continued to thrive in spite of a world consumed by Twitter updates and blog postings that could have rendered the bench obsolete, even quaint. That being said, today’s New Yorker is just as likely to be found reading a book as she is to reading text on her Blackberry.”
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Khristopher J. Brooks Teofilo Olivieri is an artist who uses discarded hardcover books as a canvas. Below: One of his pieces adorns a copy of James A. Michener’s “Chesapeake.”

As a child, Teofilo Olivieri practiced drawing by sketching comicbook superheroes. Today, Mr. Olivieri uses hardcover books as a distinctive canvas for his art.

Mr. Olivieri, 46, has no formal training in art, but his paintings are becoming popular in the East Village because of their unusual presentation.

“I’ve been very visible in New York City for the past 10 years, but the book covers have gotten the most response of any of the things I’ve worked on in my entire career,” Mr. Olivieri said.

He sells his work near an office building at University Place and East 11th Street but he can also be found at Union Square, along the Bowery and near Sixth Avenue and West Fourth Street.

Mr. Olivieri moved to New York City in 2001 after working as a commercial illustrator in Boston. The Hoboken native moved to Manhattan to focus on creating art from scraps and throw-aways found across the city. “When I was little, I used to sit by the river and look over and dream of me, one day, living in New York,” Mr. Olivieri said.
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Ian Duncan A 1930’s farm thermometer.

With predictions flying of record-setting temperatures this week, I wanted to test some thermometers. Not just any temperature gauges, though, I was looking for veterans which, if they had memories, would remember the sweltering June of 1933. With that goal in mind, I dropped in to Archangel Antiques on East Ninth Street (thank you Yelp). Inside, the little store was crammed with all manner of trinkets and a handsome collection of pocket watches.

“Bit of a weird one,” I told Michael Duggan, one of the store’s proprietors, “I’m looking for a thermometer from the 1930’s.”

Mr. Duggan screwed his face up slightly in an expression that suggested I might be out of luck. “That’s tough,” he said, before quickly rounding up three different instruments: one from the 1930’s, one from the 20’s and another from the 1870’s.

That last was beautiful. Enclosed in a case of tortoise shell and with a bone back plate, the bulb and column of the thermometer measured the temperature using real mercury. “People would travel with these to see how miserable they would be,” Mr. Duggan explained.
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We took to the towpaths of Tompkins Square Park this week to ask locals about their new and offbeat summer reads.

Kim Fuerth, 21
Student, New York University
Reading: Ishmael

“It’s about a man having a conversation with a gorilla about nature. I studied abroad in Ghana and all of my friends there recommended it. I’ve been really into reading in shady parks lately like Tomkins; it’s good because you don’t sweat.”

Hank Dreve, 62
Jeweler
Reading: Bob Dylan Chronicles

“I’m saddened by the fact that the world he describes no longer exists. Right now I’m reading a part that takes place in New Orleans; he writes it so colorfully that I feel like I got to see it before the hurricane.”
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Chelsia Rose Marcius Jorge Ortiz, 65, of the East Village, wipes his forehead with a washcloth to keep cool. Temperatures are expected to reach 95 today, which would match the hottest June 8 in the city’s history.

As we mentioned earlier, today is supposed to be a scorcher, and East Villagers are heading to the shade for what could be the hottest June 8 ever in New York City. Accuweather predicts a high 95 degrees, which would match a city record set in 1933.

Not surprisingly, perhaps, locals seem to be taking it all in stride.

“Not much you can do about it,” said Ivory Brown, 22, who keeps a mesh covering over the stroller of her 8-month-old daughter as they walk along Avenue A. She packs a towel and frozen bottles of water to keep cool, asking passerby to direct her to the nearest pool.

For those who can’t take an afternoon dip, cooling centers citywide will be open for the first day this season.  Here is a list of the centers in the East Village.

Ella Konarska, a caseworker at John Paul II Friendship Center at 103 East Seventh Street between First Avenue and Avenue A, one of the East Village cooling centers, said she expects a few more people to stop by for water or a cold glass of juice.

“It’s hard to tell how many, but we’ve had as many as 10 to 20 people in previous years,” she said, noting that the center serves about 70 older East Villagers daily.

Chelsia Rose Marcius Pigeons wet their feet in a Tompkins Square Park puddle – one of the few that has not evaporated in the heat.

Yet some locals are leaving the East Village altogether.

Maximo Pantoja, 69, ventures out to Coney Island when his favorite bench in Tompkins Square Park gets too hot.

“Not even my hat can help me now,” he said, pointing to his fedora. He’s just hoping that there’s a cool breeze by the waterfront.

So, what are you doing to beat the heat?

Leonardo Mendez presents a series of black and white images of the weekend’s Howl! Festival.

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.

Ian Duncan A discarded and graffiti-tagged mattress.

Looks like those discarded mattresses have become just another spot for graffiti artists to display their work. This was spotted outside Twigs salon on East 11th Street between Avenues A and B yesterday afternoon. A woman who identified herself as Kristy Q. who works in the salon, said she saw someone tag the discarded piece of furniture sometime Monday afternoon. The work, apparently executed in marker pen, depicts bed bugs taking over the mattress but she said that she doesn’t know whether it’s infested or not.

Closer inspection revealed that the work bears the inscription “La Roc Lower East Side” — La Roc being a nom de pen of Angel Ortiz. Mr. Ortiz told The Local last week that he was done tagging , but he seems to have made an exception for this piece.

“I just stopped to write,” Mr. Ortiz said in a phone conversation. “It was garbage. I always tag people’s garbage, it’s nothing new for me.”

“It was sitting out for two days,” he added, referring to the mattress. “Sanitation didn’t pick it up so I thought I’d paint some bed bugs and maybe they would.”

John Satin, a friend of Mr. Ortiz who manages some of his correspondence, told The Local, “He can’t stop. He’s like a drummer who drums his fingers when he’s not playing.”

Ian Duncan The tag also depicts bed bugs taking over the mattress.

Peter Boothe

A few weeks ago, NYU seniors from Avenue D to West Fourth Street washed their greasy hair and used their parents’ credit cards to buy something nice-looking for the penultimate of college events — graduation. For what seemed like way too many days I stood in line behind glossy moms in white ankle pants at H&M, mingled with round, red-faced Dads on the F train, and dodged double decker tour buses barreling through my streets, working overtime to accommodate all of the neglected aunts and uncles.

I wanted to run and hide, not because I was jealous of all the checks being picked up by parents at Mercadito, nor because those parents then gave their little graduates some “beer money” before they stepped into a cab to retire to their Times Square hotel. Not even because I’m scared of other people’s grandmas (which I am).

No, I wanted to get the hell out of the East Village during those days because from what I could see, all parties involved with the occasion seemed extremely unhappy and unhopeful, both for their own futures and for the futures of everyone around them. Yes, even commencement speaker Bill Clinton.

It reminded me of the misery of my own college graduation. My Dad cried, which I thought was sweet, but my mother assured me he was having a reaction to looking at his bank account. Last week, when I saw a silver-haired man in a Pebble Beach baseball cap painfully clutching the brunch menu while waiting in a throng of other silver-haired men outside of Peels, I assumed it was a similar situation.
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Gloria Chung, Vivienne Gucwa, jdx, Susan Keyloun, Bruce Monroe, Mario Ramirez, Joel Raskin, Michelle Rick, and Tim Schreier — all members of The Local East Village Flickr Group — share their images of the weekend’s Howl! Festival.

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.

Mario Ramirez on capturing images of discarded objects in New York.

“On the cusp of the East Village, standing there, like a monument, for everyone to see. Objects are like people, with wrinkles, accessories, and dysfunctions. Disconnected and off the hook, but to the man there, its keeper, it seemed plugged in and of great importance.”

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Michelle Rick

It happened several weeks ago, during a hard day’s night.

There was the usual raucous disturbance in the street below, when the bars begin closing and their liquored-up patrons spill out all drunk and disorderly. The area in question, lower First Avenue, leads uptown from that gauntlet of traffic lights that intersects Houston. Nearby, police cars almost always lay in wait, not to regulate barflies, mind you, but to collar motorists for traffic violations.

Such was the case that very night: the siren’s wail drew me up to the window. The squad-car’s bullhorn then came alive and demanded that the hapless driver shut off the motor and put his keys on top of the car. Considering how many drunken souls were out at this hour, it seemed a smart precaution.

But the driver was cogent, in fact, and had his license ready when the two officers strode up to meet him. What the policemen didn’t expect was the presence of three drunken young bravos who had just shambled out of the corner pizza joint.

They called out to the police from the crosswalk: first with whistles and catcalls, then appellations of the more insulting variety. This included one term which describes an orifice at the opposite end from our mouth, and an old-English noun which usually designates a female dog. These epithets were repeated again and again, just in case the two policemen hadn’t heard them the first time.
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Kenan Christiansen Jeff Gurwin commissioned this mural at Avenue A and Second Street as a way to propose to his girlfriend, Caitlin Fitzsimons.

In a gesture of urban romance, East Village resident Jeff Gurwin, 28, proposed to girlfriend Caitlin Fitzsimons, 27, by commissioning a mural for her on Avenue A and Second Street.

“I knew I wanted to propose this way because we’re always taking pictures of graffiti. I wanted to integrate things into the wall that were special to her,” Mr. Gurwin told The Local in a phone interview.

The wall is covered by images of Ms. Fitzsimons family dog Parkey, her favorite flowers (yellow roses) and a cherry blossom tree modeled after a tree the couple often visit in Central Park.

The question itself is spelled out in stenciled Scrabble tiles, as the game is the couple’s favorite pastime.

Painted by graffiti artists Tats Cru, the mural took five hours to finish. This process and the subsequent proposal were taped for a stop motion video that has become a viral sensation on YouTube.

Click above to view a video of the mural’s creation.

Ms. Fitzsimons discovered the mural on her way to meet Mr. Gurwin, who told her he was food shopping. Instead he was waiting for her at the corner.

“She saw it and was so surprised. It was more than I expected. We were both just floating,” he said. In response to the romantic street art, Ms. Fitzsimons happily said yes.

For those who want to swoon over the mural in person it will be on display for the next month.