Tim Schreier

Six protesters were arrested yesterday during Occupy Wall Street’s “Occupy the Dream” protests held at Union Square, reports The New York Observer. About 150 protesters marched around Union Square before entering several stores, according to AM New York. Around four protesters were arrested after being warned to leave a Bank of America lobby. The Wall Street Journal reports that protesters marched from the African Burial Ground to the Federal Reserve in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. “He set the benchmark,” protester Ted Actie said. “He set the blueprint as far as what Occupy Wall Street is talking about.”

In The Daily News, two Alphabet City moms sound off on Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to grade teachers. “A lot of the teachers are acting like the children. You can tell there are teachers who shouldn’t be teaching yet, and I think it should be known who they are,” Tracy Gomez, who has an 11-year-old at P.S. 34, told the paper. Yvette Hernandez, whose 6-year-old daughter attends Success Charter School, disagreed: “They shouldn’t be graded. They know what they’re doing. It’s not always the teacher’s fault.”

The Daily News also gives a shout out to Yerba Buena on Avenue A and Indochine on Lafayette Street as spots to hit up during Restaurant Week. Read more…

Delancey Street has claimed another victim, resulting in further outcry regarding one of the city’s deadliest thoroughfares.

Police said that Dashane Santana, a 12-year-old resident of the Jacob Riis Houses, was crossing Delancey Street at Clinton Street at around 2:36 p.m. when a minivan traveling towards the Williamsburg Bridge struck and killed her. The 58-year-old driver stayed at the scene and has not yet been charged with a crime, the police said.

Both Borough President Scott Stringer and State Senator Daniel Squadron once again urged the city to make Delancey Street safer for drivers and pedestrians alike.
Read more…

Suzanne Rozdeba A police car at East Fourth Street and Avenue D.

Two gunshots were fired in the Lillian Wald Houses at around 2:45 p.m., a convenience store employee told The Local.

“I didn’t see anything other than people running when they heard the shots,” said Mohamed Sidi, who works at 33 Best Deal on Avenue D. “People were scared.”

A pair of police officers were lingering at the entrance to the Lillian Wald complex at East Fourth Street at around 4 p.m., but would not comment, citing an ongoing investigation. An employee at the nearby Ave. D Candy Store, Ahmedou Ould-Dahya, also told The Local he heard a pair of gunshots.

A spokesman for the police department did yet not have any information on the possible incident.

3rdTiger A scene from the Lower East Side.

Mehdi Kabbaj, the owner of 20 Peacocks, a men’s clothing boutique on Clinton Street, died yesterday after being struck by oncoming traffic on the F.D.R. drive on Wednesday night, The Daily News reports. The paper writes that Mr. Kabbaj, 45, was drunk, got out of the cab in frustration at gridlock and was struck by a minivan.

The cabbie accused of raping a 26-year-old East Village woman at knife point on May 6 has “no idea” how his DNA was recovered from the woman, writes The New York Post. According to statements read at Gurmeet Singh’s Brooklyn arraignment on Wednesday, he initially told cops he “never” had sex in the back of his taxi, but then said, “Sometimes I pick up women, call girls, off the street and have sex with them.”

The Villager reports that local advocates are pushing to have the trials of soldiers accused of abusing Private Danny Chen held in the U.S. A coalition including Councilwoman Margaret Chin and Mr. Chen’s parents are in discussions with the Army to suggest reforms to its diversity training and recruitment policies.
Read more…

Scott Lynch

Good morning, East Village.

A mural on East Second Street has infuriated a neighborhood activist, reports The Lo-Down. “Not only is it racist but it is also sexist and it is upsetting,” says Ayo Harrington. The artist sent a letter to Lo-Down, defending the work: “My name is Adam (Sirois) and I am the designer and commissioner of the apparently infamous Second St. Mural. The mural is part of a marriage proposal to my girlfriend and love of my life, Marisha. Fortunately, Marisha does not have the same myopic and antiquated notions as the community activist referenced in your article, and I am now fortunate to call her my fiancé.”

Rent is rising as apartments become scarce, according to The New York Post: “Manhattan rents soared 8.6 percent last year, while vacancy rates plummeted.” A sidebar photographed by EV Grieve indicates that an average East Village apartment now rents for $3,027. At least you can land your décor for less – according to The Times, you can decorate your pad with dollar-store deals.

Meanwhile Jimmy McMillan of The Rent Is Too Damn High fame makes The Voice’s list of “100 Most Powerless New Yorkers,” as do the employees of the St. Mark’s Bookshop. Read more…

Jared Malsin, a student of NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute who reports for The Local, was arraigned this morning on two charges of disorderly conduct after he was arrested near Zuccotti Park while covering the park’s clearing on Nov. 15.

“They’re both violations, not crimes,” said Gideon Orion Oliver, an attorney with the National Lawyers Guild who is representing Mr. Malsin. “These are the vanilla, typical protester-esque charges.” Mr. Oliver said his client is accused of “blocking vehicular pedestrian traffic with intent to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm” and “refusal to comply with a lawful order of police to disperse with the intent to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm, or recklessly creating a risk thereof.” Read more…

Clint McMahon

Good morning, East Village.

The Post reports that a cabbie, Gurmeet Singh, is accused of raping a 26-year-old East Village woman at knife-point after she fell asleep during a ride home from Williamsburg on May 6. The woman was also robbed of $20 and her phone.

With the Landmarks Preservation Committee set to consider landmarking a portion on East 10th Street on Tuesday, Off the Grid digs up a photo of the block in 1934 and notes that it has “changed very little. Cornices, stoops, window hoods and original materials are all very much intact.”

Eater reports that The Wayland will open in the former Banjo Jim’s space this Friday, offering “a slew of cocktails made with housemade bitters, jams, and syrups” as well as a “menu of oysters, bone marrow, steak tartar, and smoked trout.” Read more…

Suzanne Rozdeba

The sight of a man huddled under a makeshift canopy of umbrellas and plastic sheets might have been unremarkable on the old Bowery, but the avenue’s new breed of night crawlers have surely noticed William Hernandez’s slapdash shelter, positioned steps away from DBGB and just across the street from another glitzy eatery, Pulino’s. A block to the east and west, respectively, are the vanishing sites of Mars Bar and Billy’s Antiques. Some might call this a crossroads of gentrification. For the past two weeks, Mr. Hernandez has called it something like home.

Mr. Hernandez, 59, said he had been sleeping against the fence of a community garden that abuts the Avalon Bowery Place apartments for the past 15 days.

“I don’t have a home,” he told The Local yesterday in Spanish. “I’m Cuban. I’m a refugee,” he said, adding that the rest of his family still resided in Cuba.

“I’ve been [in the U.S.] for 30 years and I’ve been homeless since I got here. I was in Florida and in Jackson Heights [Queens] before I came here. I’ve been in New York a long time.” Read more…

The police have released the above surveillance camera footage of two men accused of robbing a Metro PCS store at gunpoint Friday night.

As The Local reported, the men, now said to be around the age of 40, entered the store at 350 East 14th Street shortly before 7 p.m. One of them (thought to be 6 feet tall and about 160 pounds) displayed a black revolver as the other (5-foot-6, 150 pounds) went behind the counter and took what a police representative said was around $4,000 in cash. The store’s two employees were told to wait in the basement as the men fled.

Last week, The Times pointed out that Metro PCS stores were “low-hanging fruit” for robbers such as the Brooklyn couple who last year committed a dozen or more hold-ups at the wireless stores.

Modestmerlin

Good morning, East Village.

DNA Info reports that the East Village has dropped off of the city’s “target” list of neighborhoods in need of after-school funding. The move jeopardizes The Educational Alliance’s program at P.S. 64, University Settlement’s program at P.S. 63, and Henry Street Settlement’s Boys & Girls Republic at the Lillian Wald Houses.

The Times reports that prosecutors have dropped charges against 21 people who were arrested during an Occupy Wall Street march to Union Square on Sept. 24. Fifty other cases are headed to trial.

EV Grieve points to an empty lot on East Third Street near Avenue D that just hit the market for $6 million. Read more…

Clint McMahon

Good morning, East Village.

The Local received a letter from a tenant mourning the loss of East Village native Andrew Kowalczyk, the landlord, super, and tenant of a building on East Seventh Street that has been seen in the “Godfather II” and other productions. EV Grieve also received the eulogy and reprinted it:  “Andrew wasn’t a rich guy. He could have hiked the rents every time an apartment changed hands but he didn’t. A friend recommended us and that was good enough for him. ‘I just want local people we know,’ he would say whenever an apartment came up and we would get another friend in there.”

Speaking of landlords, The New York Post reports that an heir of William Gottlieb, “perhaps the biggest private landowner in Greenwich Village,” is selling off some of his property. Among his properties are an East 10th Street townhouse selling for $5.6 million and two vacant lots on East Houston going for $9.5 million. The sales could “remake downtown in the process.”

Save The Lower East Side rails against NYU’s plan to build in Community District 3, but is surprised to see the animosity against NYU: “Hasn’t NYU already transformed the commercial character and the residential demographic of the EV? Is there anything left to lose to NYU? NYU has already wrought its worst on real estate values and rents. What is the complaint against them? They are, on the whole, much more agreeable than the yuppies. They party less and they have more intellectual curiosity. What are East Villagers protecting?” Read more…

Daniel MaurerPolice officers outside of Metro PCS
last night.

Two men robbed a wireless store at gunpoint on 14th Street last night, forcing two employees into the store’s basement while they made off with what police said was $4,000 in cash.

An employee at the Metro PCS store at 350 East 14th Street said that two black men wearing black leather jackets, hoodies, and shades also made off with his personal cell phone.

The police said that one of the men, thought to be in his 40s or 50s, with a salt-and-pepper beard and a black stocking hat (the employee described it as a ski hat), displayed a black revolver while another man thought to be in his 30s or 40s, who wore white latex gloves, went behind the counter to remove money from the register. That’s when the employees were ordered into the basement. Read more…

Scott Lynch

Good morning, East Village.

The family of Private Danny Chen learned from Army investigators new details about allegations of mistreatment by his comrades. The New York Post reports that investigators said that “on the day of his death, he was forced to crawl 100 meters on gravel with his equipment on as his comrades threw rocks at him. It’s alleged that Chen was mistreated shortly before he committed suicide in an Afghanistan guardhouse.” Eight former comrades face charges ranging from dereliction of duty to involuntary manslaughter.

In his column for The Villager, Clayton Patterson remembers how the 1988 riots in Tompkins Square Park turned him into an activist: “I regret little, and to say both Elsa and I learned a lot about police corruption, the damaging role that gentrification plays on the downwardly struggling middle class, and the adversity that the poor and the disadvantaged face, as well as, how outsourcing has affected the economy in New York City would be a gross understatement.”

Real estate sales firm Massey Knakal sent The Local an email yesterday detailing the sale of 73 and 75 East Third Street, steps away from the Hells Angels Clubhouse. An Italian buyer purchased the property for $15.5 million. Read more…

Ruth Spencer Steve Cannon, founder of Gathering of the Tribes.

An eviction notice has been served to Gathering of the Tribes, but the revelry will go on at least until the end of the month.

Steve Cannon, the founder of the eclectic art collective on Third Street, has a bash planned for tonight and Jan. 14. The announcement comes less than a week after the landlord, Lorraine Zhang, told Mr. Cannon he would have to leave his headquarters by Jan. 31.

“I’m not going to stop what I’m doing, I’m going to see how I can fight her,” Mr. Cannon said of his landlord.

Ms. Zhang isn’t backing down either, and it seems likely the litany of complaints that she and Mr. Cannon have against each other (which are long standing) are bound to be aired in court. “I do what I got to do as a landlord to protect my other tenants,” Ms. Zhang said today. “He doesn’t clean up the backyard for weeks after he uses it. He left me no choice. He doesn’t own the property.”

Tonight’s party commemorates the final night of the “Where Am I” exhibit, which takes inspiration from Mr. Cannon’s blindness. The next exhibit, “Zero, Infinity and the Guides” showcases “archetypes present in the inner life” of artist and CUNY student Erin Cormody. “These eight paintings also portray the phases of the moon. Also, she paints the ‘words’ of an internal universal voice, which wants to share the paradox of truth,” according to a press release.

Phillip Kalantzis-Cope

Good morning, East Village.

First, the celebrity news: The New York Post mentions that Uma Thurman was at Liquiteria buying an all-greens juice as well as a fruit-and-wheatgrass mix.

The Daily Mail has action shots of “American Idol” star Katharine McPhee filming scenes for “Smash” in the East Village. The Local warned parkers that the NBC show, also starring Anjelica Huston, would be filming.

EV Grieve finds Department of Buildings records indicating that the latest outpost of Subway will occupy a space on First Avenue between Sixth and Seventh Streets, right near the shuttered Polonia restaurant. Read more…

The police arrested a man suspected of robbing a convenience store on First Avenue, but his accomplice — who is wanted for at least 16 other heists — is still at large.

The police said that 30-year-old Duwayne Bascom and another man entered the store at 111 First Avenue on Nov. 21 at around 8:40 p.m., demanded an unknown amount of money and then fled with the cash. But Mr. Bascom has not yet been tied to any of the other robberies, three of which occurred around the East Village.

In the first, the suspect entered a Subway on Second Avenue between St. Marks Place and Ninth Street on Nov. 9 at around 2:25 a.m., brandished a knife and demanded money from the cashier. Police did not say how much money he received.
Read more…

Bowery Boogie spotted the renderings of a new hotel planned for Orchard Street between Rivington and Stanton Streets — and the blog’s reaction isn’t too favorable. They call the design, which towers over neighboring buildings, “gut-wrenching, vomit-inducing.” Boogie also notes that the long-stalled property is already up for sale for $26 million and is being marketed as having a hotel that will be “delivered complete” in 2013.

>Phillip Kalantzis-Cope

Good morning, East Village.

The Post reveals the identity of the man who, as The Local first reported, was struck by a motorcycle in the early hours of the new year. Daniel Hiwale, 33, was said to be intoxicated when he fell into the street.

Around the same time on Sunday, reports The Post, a man pushed a woman into her apartment building on East Seventh Street and tried to force her up the stairs, but was stopped after witnesses flagged police officers. Anthony Griggs, 42, is charged with attempted rape, burglary, strangulation, robbery and sexual abuse.

DNA Info and The Post report that on Dec. 24, the police caught a man at an East 12th Street building with a bag full of laptops, fur coats, and digital camera. According to DNA Info, Reginald Qualls, 19, is also being eyed in connection with a string of Greenwich Village burglaries, and was arrested along with two others for assaulting a 76-year-old man in Union Square ten days earlier. Read more…

Daniel Maurer Medics treat the motorcycle accident victim.

Two incidents marred New Year’s celebrations in the East Village during today’s early morning hours. At Second Avenue and 13th Street, around 3 a.m., dozens of police officers moved to detain Occupy Wall Street protesters as helicopters circled over the neighborhood; about an hour later at 12th Street between Avenues A and B, a man was struck by a motorcycle and taken to the hospital in critical condition.

The motorcycle accident occurred around 4:20 a.m. When The Local arrived on the scene, a man lay facedown, bleeding onto the street, having been struck by a BMW with Maine plates as he crossed the street well away from the intersection at Avenue A. Paramedics transported him to Beth Israel Hospital, where the police said he arrived with severe head trauma and is currently in critical condition. The driver of the motorcycle, a 38-year-old male, is not suspected of criminality.

The earlier incident at Second Avenue and 13th Street occurred after protesters clashed with police at Zuccotti Park shortly before midnight. The Post reported that one officer was stabbed in the hand with a pair of scissors then, and City Room reported that just before 1:30 a.m., police officers entered the park to clear it of about 150 people, five of whom were led off in handcuffs. After a group marched north, 60 to 100 people, eyewitnesses told The Local, arrived at Second Avenue and East 13^th Street around 3 a.m. There, their progress was stopped by a wall of police officers. Read more…