Phillip Kalantzis-Cope

Good morning, East Village.

The Times looks back on what made Lakeside Lounge so special (“once, while Joey and Dee Dee Ramone played, audience members watched the police raid a nearby crack house and line suspects up against the picture window beside the stage”) and gives a clue as to why it’s closing at the end of the month: “[Owner Eric] Ambel said rent and expenses had more than quadrupled since the mid-1990s, forcing him and Mr. Marshall to face the prospect of deviating from the formula that had served Lakeside, its musicians and its patrons so well.” According to WNYC, the rent was $9,000 a month.

Flaming Pablum uses the closing of Lakeside as an excuse to look back on five other bygone dive bars, including Alcatraz on St. Marks Place, an “endearingly seedy joint that catered to acolytes of all things loud, boozy and rude.”

With the average rent in Manhattan at $3,418 a month and the vacancy rent at just 1 percent despite the lagging economy, The Times lays down some real talk: “For those who find buying a home in New York City is not an option — whether because of bad credit, tougher lending standards or lack of a down payment — the choices are limited and often unappealing.” If you are buying, the Daily News points out that there are still deals to be found in the Lower East Side. Read more…

Daniel Maurer Firefighters wheel this morning’s fall victim to an ambulance after hoisting him over the front fence.

A man fell off of the roof of the five-floor building that houses Girls Prep and East Side Community High School around 4 a.m. this morning, the fire department said. The man, whose identity is unknown, was transported to Bellevue Hospital in serious but stable condition. The fire department was unable to reveal more about the circumstances of the incident, but a representative of the police department said criminality was not suspected.

Firefighters used a ladder to gain access to the school’s courtyard on East 11th Street and hoisted the fall victim, strapped to a gurney, over its front fence. The man, who appeared to be in his 20s, was conscious when he was wheeled toward Avenue A. “My head is so uncomfortable right now,” he groaned on his way to a waiting ambulance.

Daniel MaurerLucille Carrasquero, a resident, speaks
as BP Stringer looks over
her shoulder.

Earlier this morning, Borough President Scott M. Stringer gave away 16 energy-efficient refrigerators to low-income residents of Cooper Square – part of a “model block” initiative meant to promote environmental sustainability on Fourth Street between Second Avenue and Bowery.

The free fridges are the first in a series of appliance upgrades for participating residents of the Cooper Square Mutual Housing Association, a low-income housing management company that oversees 23 buildings in the area. Other measures include improved weatherization and lighting as well as new boilers.

With a stroller at his side (it was “daddy Friday,” Mr. Stringer explained), the Borough President described the greening efforts as a community-led campaign. Read more…

Rachel Citron

Good morning, East Village.

In The Villager, the neighborhood’s radical comic book artist, Seth Tobocman, describes the arrest of two men at the Sixth Street Community Center on Saturday. “They unquestionably had been beaten,” he says. “They looked totally f—– up. They’d been on the ground with a bunch of guys on top of them for about 10 to 15 minutes. They got beat up. You would not want to be them.”

By the way, anarchists aren’t anything new: Studio 360 puts in a good word for the East Village poetry tour created by one of its former producers, Pejk Malinovski, and posts a snippet in which “at St. Marks Church, we hear the ‘benefit shooting’ of 1968, when Allen Van Newkirk and some fellow anarchists interrupted Kenneth Koch with a fake gun, seizing poetry for the revolution.”

Perhaps surprisingly, the East Village doesn’t make Curbed’s list of the 10 neighborhoods with the highest number of rent-regulated units. The Lower East Side and Chinatown place tenth on the list. Citywide, the number of rent-controlled units has gone down from 285,733 in 1981 to 38,374 in 2011. Read more…

Laura Edwins The director of First Steps, Luz Whetstone, teaches a youngster. The daycare has struggled to attract parents in the aftermath of another preschool’s abrupt closing in the same location.

A new daycare on Clinton Street is struggling to attract parents who remain wary thanks to the previous occupant: the notorious Love A Lot preschool.

After eight months in operation, First Steps only has 12 preschool students, and director Luz Whetstone said parents and city officials are still asking questions about Love A Lot. “We still get the residuals of it, I guess,” Ms. Whetstone said. “The Labor Department came by and we had to show them our tax ID and show them that we have no affiliation with Love A Lot. We didn’t just change the name. We’re really a legit business.”

But parents still remember the mess that led to the Clinton Street location of Love A Lot closing in July due to financial struggles and a variety of Department of Health violations including the lack of an educational director, the inability to provide documentation of staff medical records, and failure to screen staff. Read more…

Scott Lynch

Good morning, East Village.

The Daily News reports that Michael McManus, a.k.a. the White-Glove Bandit, was arrested near Tompkins Square Park yesterday afternoon. The F.B.I. believes he’s the man who robbed the HSBC branch at Broadway and East Ninth Street on Monday, along with three other banks.

Dwyane Wade wasn’t spotted at Tompkins Square Park on Sunday, despite the Post’s report that the NBA star played a game of pick-up basketball with some kids there (The Observer points out that he was at Thompson Street Playground in SoHo). But another celeb was spotted in the East Village: Rachel Weisz checked out a $8.5 million townhouse at 238 East Fourth Street, between Avenues A and B. The Post calls the townhouse “gorgeous” — you be the judge!

Speaking of which, Real Estate Weekly reminds us that it’s harder to score an East Village apartment than some people think. One group is having trouble finding a true four-bedroom for $5,500 a month, and their broker “recently convinced another college student, who was bent on living by herself in the East Village on a budget of $1,700 a month, to search for cheaper apartments on the Upper East Side.” Ouch. Read more…

Daniel Maurer Campos Plaza.

Narcotics officers arrested nine people inside an apartment in Campos Plaza that contained a loaded 9-millimeter, cocaine, marijuana, shotgun shells and scales.

A police spokesman said that the investigators served the warrant at an apartment at 641 East 13th Street around 5 p.m. on Sunday following a longterm investigation. Three men caught there face charges of criminal possession of a weapon, possession of a controlled substance, and criminally using drug paraphernalia. They are Andrew Hudson, 20, Jose Perez, 21, and Demetrius Blas, 17. The trio all have criminal records, according to a criminal complaint. The others busted in the apartment were released. Read more…

Jared Malsin Author Wayne Price, left, makes a comment.

Three days after alleged anarchist protesters ran amok in the East Village, an anarchist meeting on Sixth Street was disrupted by a verbal altercation between an organizer of the event and a man he later accused of being a police spy.

Nine people were in attendance at Tuesday’s Anarchist Forum at the Sixth Street Community Center. The meeting featured coffee in paper cups, vegan cucumber sandwiches, and a polite discussion of how health care services might be organized in a future anarchist society.

The forum is a social event that has taken place once a month since November, according to organizers Evan Courtney, 36, who works in an import-export business, and Walter Williams, 60, a retired software developer residing in Washington Heights.

The tension occurred during its second hour when Mr. Courtney confronted an attendee named Leo, who had arrived over an hour late. Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown Capt. John Cappelmann

Last night’s meeting of the Ninth Precinct Community Council featured several interesting details regarding recent crime in the neighborhood. Here’s a roundup, and check back later for more detailed posts about other recent arrests.

Capt. John Cappelmann, the new commanding officer of the Ninth Precinct, reported that four new officers started patrolling the neighborhood on Monday, as he promised in January. Four to six more officers should start in the next couple of weeks, some of whom will focus on quality of life issues. “It’s a tremendous boost for us in personnel numbers,” Capt. Cappelmann said. Read more…

Suzanne Rozdeba

Good morning, East Village.

The Local snapped the above shot a day before longstanding vegetarian spot Kate’s Joint was seized by its landlord yesterday, presumably due to the back rent it owed.

Gothamist reports that a National Lawyers Guild observer is suing the NYPD for wrongfully arresting him on Second Avenue between East 12th and 13th Streets during an Occupy Wall Street march back in the early hours of New Year’s Day.

A real estate broker tells The Voice that you can still get a deal in the East Village. “You could get a small, two-bedroom apartment [in a walk-up], with a kitchen you could cook in for $3,000 a month,” she says. “I’m not saying the rooms are going to be the size of Texas, but I think that’s a bargain. And you have fantastic restaurants.”
Read more…

A study commissioned by opponents of N.Y.U.’s expansion finds that the city’s economy would be better served if it were built outside of Greenwich Village. The report, released today by the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, states that the Financial District, Downtown Brooklyn and Long Island City could all better accommodate the amount of construction required for N.Y.U. 2031 while also reaping the benefits of the influx of students and scholars. The analysis comes only weeks after the Greenwich Village-Chelsea Chamber Commerce released its own study highlighting the economic benefits of the expansion in Greenwich Village, as well as its support among local merchants.

Stephen Rex Brown Investigators outside of the HSBC.

A robber flashed a gun and stole an undetermined amount of cash from the HSBC at Broadway and East Ninth Street at around 9 a.m. this morning.

A police spokesman said the suspect, a white man in his 40s carrying a blue knapsack, was last seen running west on East Eighth Street.

At 10:30 a.m. investigators were still mingling outside of the bank, which was closed.

Jared Malsin

Local anarchists are planning to hold an “Open Forum” at the Sixth Street Community Center Tuesday night, just days after alleged anarchist demonstrators broke a window at a 7-Eleven on St. Marks Place.

According to a flyer spotted by The Local on Avenue A last week, the New York Anarchist Forum is “a gathering where we meet other anarchists and discuss anarchist ideas, events projects and whatever else comes up.” Past notices for the forum indicate the meeting is a monthly event.

Police arrested three people after Saturday night’s violence, in which demonstrators also attempted to break windows at the Astor Place Starbucks using metal pipes. At least one of those arrests took place outside the Sixth Street Community Center, where an after party for the NYC Anarchist Book Fair was taking place. Two police officers suffered minor injuries while scuffling with protesters.

Yesterday, the owner of the 7-Eleven that’s due to open on St. Marks Place tomorrow jokingly offered Saturday’s vandals a “peace treaty Slurpee.”

Stephen Rex Brown Scaffolding went up at Second Avenue and Sixth Street yesterday.

Good morning, East Village.

If you missed our coverage earlier this morning of Community Board 3’s S.L.A. committee meeting last night, well then here it is. The Standard East Village didn’t show up to pitch its dining overhaul, but a couple of iconic bars, Joe’s and Nice Guy Eddie’s, got nods of approval for new ownership.

The Mosaic Man tipped us off to his latest work outside of the Bean on Second Avenue. This one is a tribute to the building’s notorious “crazy landlord.”

While organizers of the Anarchist Book Fair disavowed Satuday’s violence, Salon tackled the question of just how much the mayhem had to do with Occupy Wall Street. Natasha Lennard witnessed the impromptu march: “It was rowdy, energetic and fast. Barricades and trash cans were dragged into the street to stop traffic and impede the police cars that eventually arrived on the scene. At one point, two young women watching the surge of people winding through stalled traffic asked me whether this was an ‘Occupy thing.’ I answered ‘yes.’ But, as I soon appreciated, it’s more complicated than that.” Meanwhile, the Daily News digs in to one suspect’s arrest record.  Read more…

Kevin Farley A fake letter reported that Cooper Union had leased its new building to N.Y.U.

The student behind the hoax that duped Gothamist and EV Grieve into writing that Cooper Union had leased its gleaming new building to N.Y.U. told The Local that he pulled the prank out of frustration that the university had not yet pledged to remain a tuition-free institution.

The fake letter from Cooper Union President Jamshed Bharucha described 41 Cooper Square as “a reminder of past ill-planning and fiduciary neglect,” and said that the top administrator would leave his home on Stuyvesant Street for academic housing on Third Avenue as a cost-cutting measure.

Alan Lundgard, the 23-year-old student council president of the school of art who wrote the letter and designed the site where it appeared, told The Local, “The community feels they’ve been excluded from the decision-making processes at a time when it’s so crucial to have input from the community.” Read more…

Rob Miller performs.

Anarchists weren’t the only oft-maligned political group to convene in the East Village this weekend. The Socialist Party USA, which has about 1,000 members nationwide, hosted a regional conference that drew a modest 15 people from New York City, Long Island and New Jersey to the party’s third-floor offices in the building known as the Peace Pentagon.

The Muste Building, a rundown three-story loft structure on Bleecker and Lafayette Streets, was named after a Dutch-born Pacifist clergyman, and has gone by its alternate name since the 1970s. Radical groups like the Granny Peace Brigade, Global Revolution TV, and the War Resisters League (which once owned the building) are among about 10 non-profits currently maintaining low-rent offices plastered with posters, announcements and pictures of New York anarchist icons like Emma Goldman.

On Saturday, entry into the Socialist Party USA’s quarters was $5, which got attendees music, a talk from a French leftist, dinner, a protest rally and plenty of lively conversation. Read more…

Suzanne Rozdeba

Good morning, East Village.

New Music Daily reports that Avenue B fixture Lakeside Lounge has been sold and will close at the end of the month. The bar joins Nice Guy Eddie’s in closing after a 15-year run. “To a generation of pampered, status-grubbing white invaders from the suburbs, Lakeside made no sense,” the site laments. “The place wasn’t kitschy because its owners were genuinely committed to it, and to the musicians who played there. It had no status appeal because it was cheap, dingy and roughhewn, and Ambel refused to book trendy bands.”

Handsome Dick Manitoba isn’t happy about Lakeside’s impending closure. “Sad news. For US, OUR neighborhood, and OUR culture,” he writes on the Maniblog. “Manitoba’s has has been having a terrible time trying to stay intact and not disappear into a sea of 7-11’s, Subways, Starbucks, and, name your BANK.”

Speaking of 7-Elevens: After taking the neighborhood’s pulse about the one that’s coming to St. Marks Place on Friday, The Daily News asks a Chinatown deli owner how he’s dealing with the 7-Eleven that recently opened a block away from him. “It’s definitely going to affect my business and I’m trying to be separate from what they’re carrying,” says the shopkeeper. Read more…

Daniel Maurer The Starbucks at Astor Place, hours
before the attack.

Last night’s riotous atmosphere resulted in a sergeant and lieutenant suffering minor injuries while scuffling with anarchist protesters at the Astor Place Starbucks, the police said.

According to police, around 25 people tried smashing the windows of the cafe with eight-foot long steel pipes at around 8:45 p.m. after attending the Anarchist book fair earlier in the day. “Patrons fearing that they would be hit by flying glass hid under tables,” the police said in a statement. “Several” officers were assaulted with pipes and bottles, the police added.

Eric Marchese, a 24-year-old from Brentwood, N.Y., and Nicholas Thommen, a 30-year-old from Salem, Oregon were arrested at the scene. The former was charged with criminal mischief and disorderly conduct, the latter faces a variety of charges, including inciting to riot, criminal possession of a weapon and assault. Read more…

The police closed down Tompkins Square Park tonight after a window of a 7-Eleven was smashed, seemingly by protesters.

Around 9:20 p.m., Tim Pool, a livecaster of Occupy Wall Street events, filmed police cars blocking off Tompkins Square Park. In the video embedded above, Mr. Pool reports hearing that, after the Anarchist Book Fair earlier today, a “black bloc” formed and “there was a lot of property destruction, a few windows broken. We heard a few people tried to smash some Starbucks windows and ‘some Mafioso-looking guys came out with big poles and started swinging them.’” Read more…