The Tompkins Square Park and Playgrounds Parents’ Association (the group behind last summer’s uproar over the rats in Tompkins Square Park) is deciding how to address concerns such as “reduction of pigeon/rat feeding, sand box cleanliness and increasing the number of garbage cans on the Avenue A side of the park,” according to a Facebook post. Meanwhile, a tipster spotted a flyer in the park for a missing 16-year-old who “likes parks and street musicians,” according to the notice.

Kevin Farley

Good Morning, East Village.

In case you missed it over the weekend, there was a shooting in Alphabet City early Saturday morning. The victim refused to identify the person who shot him in the leg near Avenue D and East Sixth Street and the matter is still under investigation, precinct commander John Cappelmann told The Local.

Gothamist and EV Grieve caught wind of a “hostage situation” at 514 East 12th Street on Saturday morning. But Captain Cappelmann told The Local there was no hostage: an emotionally disturbed person barricaded himself into an apartment and was removed without injuries.

The Post reports that in order to prevent further gun thefts, two officers are patrolling the Ninth Precinct’s locker room, which now boast more locks and a security camera at the entrance. Read more…

Suzanne Rozdeba A police car outside of the Wald Houses after gunshots back in January.

A man walked into Bellevue Hospital with a gunshot wound to his right leg around 1 a.m. this morning, the police said. The victim refused to provide a description of the person who shot him in the vicinity of Avenue D and East Sixth Street, due to what a police spokesperson said was his uncooperative nature.

In January, gunshots were heard in the same area near the Lillian Wald Houses, a month after a 19-year-old was shot in the leg further up Avenue D, in the courtyard of Campos Plaza II.

Know anything else? E-mail us.

Update | May 13, 7:45 p.m. Captain John Cappelmann said the shooting was “the result of an unknown dispute. We don’t have a solid motive at this point.”
Asked whether it was gang-related, he said, “That’s one angle that we’re looking at.”

The city’s Landmark Preservation Commission will consider whether to designate the former horse auction house at 126-128 East 13th Street a landmark on Tuesday. The former Van Tassell & Kearney Auction Mart “is one of the last remaining in the city that was constructed for staging horse auctions,” a commission spokeswoman wrote in an email. The building also served as sculptor Frank Stella’s studio and was the subject of much lobbying by preservationists when developers revealed plans to replace it with a seven-story building in 2006. (That plan fell through). The vote on the auction house was originally slated for June 26 — the same day as the vote on the larger 330-building historic district in the neighborhood — but was moved up due to a packed agenda.

Department of Transportation

The city just released it’s plans for bike share locations in the city, and the East Village has 27 stations as far east as East Sixth Street and Avenue D.

Ray LeMoine A bike-share display at Tompkins Square Park.

The Department of Transportation said that the map is a draft, and could change. At each location, dubbed Citi Stations thanks to a $41-million sponsorship deal with Citibank, cyclists can rent a ride and then drop it off at any other station. Astor Place, Tompkins Square Park, and three blocks of East Seventh Street are all slated for shares.

The base price is $9.95 per day, $25 per week, or $95 per year for an unlimited number of half-hour rides. Users who want to sign up for longer rides pay an additional $4 for hour-long trips, or another $13 for trips of an hour and a half. And so on.

Since late last year the city has solicited opinions on where the share locations should be built.

The first bikes should hit the streets by late July, and next summer 10,000 bikes should be docked at 600 stations.

Stephen Rex Brown

Good morning, East Village.

Above, another newspaper box in peril. We spotted this one with a laundry bag stuffed into it on East Sixth Street. No wonder some people consider these things an eyesore.

Over at Blackbook, nightlife insider Steve Lewis is doubtful that a revived CBGBs will be the same without its original owner. “CBGB’s without Hilly is like Casablanca’s Rick’s Café American without Humphrey Bogart’s Rick.” Closing thought: “I can’t see neighborhoods in Manhattan relishing this type of venue near their bedrooms and suspect Greenpoint or Williamsburg will provide the answers. Manhattan and certainly the Bowery are not the creative cauldrons that fed the CB’s scene. Brooklyn can provide that.”

Gothamist combs the newly digitized NYC Municipal Archives for “21 photos of the Lower East Side before you were born.” Read more…

For all the hubbub, might developer Benjamin Shaoul’s rooftop extension to 315 East 10th Street not be such an eyesore? The Lower East Side Preservation Initiative seems to think so. “Now that work is ending, the final result could have been much worse, and we’re very glad to see the facade including the lovely cornice intact,” the preservationist group writes on its Facebook page. Back in January the block of East 10th Street along Tompkins Square Park was designated a historic district by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, but Mr. Shaoul got the green light for the extra story on his building literally hours before the vote.

Suzanne Rozdeba

Good morning, East Village.

According to a tipster, signage for an “Italian restaurant bar,” Litro, has gone up in the old Zerza space at 308 East Sixth Street. Stay tuned for more.

Paper reports that Max Fish is opening an outpost on the Asbury Park boardwalk. “Max Fish at the Beach Bar, located on the boardwalk, will be open weekends starting this Saturday through Memorial Day, and then open every day after that.”

In The Times, Winnie Varghese, the priest in charge of St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery, argues that churches should be tax-exempt. “Moderate and progressive religion is overwhelmingly formed in the U.S., and it is an essential voice in national and international discourse,” she says. “We are an important moral and ethical voice for society as a whole, a voice that has to be religious to respond to other kinds of religious movements.” Read more…

Ria Chung

Good morning, East Village.

Ellen Moynihan, who penned a history of the 1990 May Day riot in Tompkins Square Park and also photographed marches last week, tells Gothamist how she feels about anarchists trying to obstruct photographers. “The idea that people who are anarchists can tell me what to do is ridiculous. If you’re going to create a public spectacle in a public street you’re out of your mind if you think people aren’t going to photograph you.”

Speaking of demonstrations, film critic J. Hoberman, on his Movie Journal blog, says that Sara Abruña, the Cooper Student student who was arrested during Jesse Kreuzer’s stand-off atop the Peter Cooper monument, was merely trying to get to Mr. Hoberman’s class inside of the school’s Great Hall. The student “apparently thought she had the right to walk from one Cooper building to another. Not so: She was thrown to the pavement, handcuffed, arrested, charged with ‘harassment, disorderly conduct and obstructing governmental administration,’ and spent the night in custody.”

Runnin’ Scared points out that Abe Haruvi, the landlord who is refusing to renew leases at 50 and 54 East Third Street has been in the news before, for attempting to reclaim an apartment building from rent-stabilized tenants. Read more…

A jury convicted a 35-year-old electrician from Queens today of punching a woman in the face and leaving her in a coma following a dispute over a parking space on East 14th Street.

Oscar Fuller could face up to a year in prison for the brutal blow on Feb. 25 of last year, but he avoided the more serious charge of felony assault. The verdict hinged on the perception that the victim, Lana Rosas, was knocked into a week-long coma as a result of her head striking the pavement — not the punch to the face, according to The New York Post.

“This was a brutal and unjustified act of rage,” said Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance in a statement. “That a petty argument over a parking space could escalate into physical violence is shameful.” Read more…

Scott Lynch

Good morning, East Village.

Flaming Pablum isn’t getting behind the news we posted yesterday about CBGB being revived as a summer festival. The site writes, “While, yes, seemingly all vestiges of the East Village’s once-thriving musical character and legacy have gone the way of the stegosaurus, I can’t help thinking that naming these new ventures after CBGB is simply an inorganic way of cashing-in.”

Speaking of musical legacy, the late Adam “MCA” Yauch of the Beastie Boys has already been immortalized via a mural on East Seventh Street spotted by EV Grieve.

Another man went missing in the East Village, but only briefly. Yesterday the police sent out notice that they were looking for a man, Victor Rivera, who was last seen on Avenue D on Sunday. The 70-year-old man spoke only Spanish and was wearing a medic alert bracelet when he disappeared. Just hours after the bulletin went out, the missing man was found. Read more…

Daniel Maurer The flyer for the stolen cycle.

Remember the guy who recovered his stolen bike after posting flyers around the neighborhood? Rich Minkoff is hoping he’ll be so lucky. The Greenpoint resident’s custom-built bike, estimated to be worth $2,000, disappeared from Avenue A last week, and now he has papered the area in an effort to get it back.

Mr. Minkoff said that around 10:30 a.m. Thursday, he met his girlfriend, who lives in Stuyvesant Town, at Table 12, the coffee shop at Avenue A and 12th Street. He rested his bike against a table outside of the café and walked in to fetch his girlfriend. Within two minutes, it was gone. Read more…

Kwanwoo Jun A man prays at the grave of a relative who
was buried in 1830.

Two of the New York Marble Cemetery’s vaults may soon be reclaimed and put up for sale for the first time since 1830.

The cemetery hasn’t seen a new burial since 1937. But that may soon change. On July 15, its operators will ask the New York State Department of Cemeteries if they can reclaim two of its graves. In New York, a vault may be reclaimed if it is empty, if there has been no contact with the owners for over 75 years and if no owners can be found after diligent searching and advertising. Read more…

Phillip Kalantzis-Cope

Good morning, East Village.

For its profile of Ed Sanders, NPR spoke to Claudia Dreifus at The Local’s “Blowing Minds” event celebrating The East Village Other. The Times writer says of the East Village in the ’60s, “It didn’t take much money to live. You could live poor, you could have a lot of fun.” Standing across from the former location of his Peace Eye Bookstore on Avenue A, Mr. Sanders says, “The bookstore became pretty famous. It was the stopping off point for all visiting librarians and professors because I had a lot of well-known writers hanging out there — William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg.”

The Times reports that bar denizens of the East Village and Lower East side took the death of Adam Yauch especially hard. In addition to the impromptu memorial outside of Bad Burger, 2A projected Beastie Boys concert footage on a wall across from the bar.

Handsome Dick Manitoba sees a lesson to be learned from Yauch’s death at 47: “PLEASE, ENJOY EACH DAY AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE!” Read more…

The conflicts over the future of two of the city’s most revered academic institutions rage on. Over in Greenwich Village, add Bloomberg’s architecture critic to the list of people not fond of N.Y.U.’s expansion plans. “For a while I thought these expressionless shapes were simply cartoon placeholders for real buildings that could be developed with a great deal more sensitivity,” reads the hard-hitting review. And over at Cooper Union, students have begun a petition drive in support of an alternative plan, dubbed “The Way Forward,” that suggests ways to raise revenue without charging students tuition.

Scott Lynch

Good morning, East Village.

And happy birthday to Keith Haring. As you may have noticed, Google has revamped its logo in honor of the artist.

According to The Villager, the Anshe Mezeritz synagogue on East Sixth Street is attempting to prove in court that a Brooklyn rabbi who was convicted of stealing a Torah was lying when he claimed to be an assistant rabbi at the East Village synagogue.

Bowery Boogie takes us on a spirited tour of St. Marks Place. Typical nugget: “Friends, there’s only one building in NYC that can boast Teddy Roosevelt as a speaker and the Grateful Dead as performers, and it is Arlington Hall.” Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown The scene at 152 Second Avenue at around 1:30 p.m.

Workers building a three-floor extension to 152 Second Avenue put out a minor fire at around 1:30 p.m.

A pair of workers at the site said that the fire was little more than a spark from an open gas line.

“They had a fire extinguisher handy and it went out right away,” said Battalion Chief Jim Tracy.

Daniel Maurer An abandoned bike in the East Village.

The East Village and Lower East Side aren’t just a hotbed of bicycle accidents: they’re also where most of the city’s abandoned bikes are, if a new map is any indicator.

A project launched by WNYC’s Transportation Nation on Tuesday asks users to submit geo-located photos of unclaimed bicycles. The site aims to come up with a citywide tally of clunkers that have been chained to sign posts for months (or even years) at a time.

So far, 250 photos have been sent in across the five boroughs: the Lower East Side comes in first with 17 jalopies spotted, and the East Village follows close behind with 16. Read more…

Bahram Foroughi

Good morning, East Village.

According to DNA Info, the northbound lanes of the FDR were closed from 11th Street to 14th Street following a car accident this morning. The site has no information about the crash itself.

Following a mistrial, The Post reports that a second jury has started hearing testimony in the case of a man accused of punching a woman into a coma on East 14th Street.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Neighborhood School’s library has been saved thanks in part to a $10,000 donation from the Standard East Village. “We should be raising money for extras—like the trampoline,” says Marjorie Ingall, a parent. “Not the library and the arts program. But this is the new reality. We have to get better at fundraising.” Read more…