Daniel Maurer

Last night, a doorman guarded a private friends-and-family dinner at a forthcoming restaurant in the former David’s Bagels space at 228 First Avenue, between 13^th and 14^th Streets. The sign over his head read Agave Azuré (a permutation of the restaurant’s original name, Agave Azul), but the illuminated “Agave” lettering was dark. According to a partner in the cantina and taqueria, that’s because a restaurant in the West Village, Agave, sent a cease-and-desist letter just days before opening night.

Evangelos Gavalas, 36, said that when the restaurant opens for dinner tomorrow (followed by lunch and brunch service in the coming weeks), it will be called Tepito, after the chef’s native town in Mexico. Executive chef Adrian Ramirez, he said, was born and raised in Mexico before coming to Austin, Texas and then to Manhattan to work at Le Cirque and eventually Dos Caminos.

“Tepito in Mexico is a badass place, just like the Lower East Side,” said Mr. Gavalas. “It’s not a culinary destination – more of a drug destination.” Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown Work at the Mars Bar building yesterday.

The Times runs a slideshow of photos by Harvey Wang. They’ll be exhibited at “Out Harvey Wang’s Window,” opening Wednesday night at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum’s new gallery space on Orchard Street. “I miss a New York that was affordable and a little rougher,” says the photographer. “I found it more interesting. I’d rather see an old kosher butcher chop than a big blue hotel.”

While mentioning that a pair of lawyers have bought a condo on East Ninth Street, Blockshopper notes that “there have been five condo sales in [the] East Village during the past 12 months, with a median sales price of $850,000.”

Off The Grid turns its attention to backhouses, the gritty tenement-world equivalent of carriage houses: “There are literally scores of these structures throughout our neighborhoods, but almost none are visible from the street, and therefore most are virtually unknown to anyone other than their residents and immediate neighbors.” Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown La Vie Lounge.

The police have arrested a 31-year-old man involved in the post-Thanksgiving brawl at La Vie Lounge that left three people with knife wounds.

A police spokesman said that Jamar Jones was charged with third-degree assault in the donnybrook in front of the nightclub on First Street near First Avenue. According to a criminal complaint, a witness observed a group of seven or eight people surrounding a 23-year-old man on the ground at around 3:45 a.m. on Nov. 25. The witness said that Mr. Jones kicked the victim numerous times. Mr. Jones later admitted that he “bloodied him up,” according to the complaint.

The police are still searching for the culprits responsible for cutting two others during the brawl.

A receptionist at La Vie said no one was available to comment on the incident.

DNA Info reports that around 4:20 p.m. today, a man was caught in between the platform and a train at the Union Square subway station. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

Next month’s calendar for Community Board 3 meetings was just released, and a variety of familiar businesses will try their luck before the liquor license committee. Nublu, which has temporarily set up shop beneath Lucky Cheng’s, is again on the agenda for a possible new location on Avenue C. Japa Dog, the hotly anticipated hot dog chain, is also once again on the agenda. Nevada Smith’s will apply for a liquor license at its new home, 100 Third Avenue, as well. One other item caught The Local’s eye, too: A “request to support legislation to reclassify Alcopops (malt sweet pre-mixed alcoholic beverages), as spirits to be sold only in liquor stores.” Anyone ever tried an Alcopop?

Two adjacent lots on East Houston Street near Attorney Street have recently gone on the market for $9.5 million, The Lo-Down reports. The lots, at 327-329 East Houston Street, are part of the portfolio of the deceased William Gottleib, who was “legendary for hoarding his estimated $1 billion worth of NYC properties,” according to the blog. Following an inter-family struggle, Mr. Gottleib’s nephew is now selling much of the real estate empire piece by piece.

Mary Beth Powers often awakes to the overwhelming odor of bacon wafting from the IHOP 11 stories beneath her apartment.

“There can be times at three or four in the morning when you feel like you’re in the kitchen with them,” said Ms. Powers, who lives on 15th Street. “There is no relief.”

The smell is at times so pungent, she said, that it clouds her thinking.

“It smells like rancid bacon. I just imagine it: a film of crap on my furniture, on my rugs, on my walls. I actually wonder, is this being soaked up in my apartment?” said an exasperated Ms. Powers. “Is it in my hair? Do I smell like IHOP now?” Read more…

The police have arrested a suspect for an attack on a woman at the Broadway-Lafayette Station on Nov. 10.

Police say that 50-year-old Samuel Mangum of Staten Island snuck up behind the woman at around 10 a.m. as she was boarding an M train and assaulted her. No injuries were reported. Mr. Mangum faces one count of sex abuse in the third degree.

DNA Info reports that in the past month, two dogs have been attacked by pit bulls from Social Tees, the animal shelter on East Fourth Street. A pug-shih tzu mix suffered puncture wounds and lacerations on his neck, and the owner of a Shepherd mix predicts her veterinary bills will amount to between $2,000 and $4,000. Robert Shapiro, the owner of the no-kill shelter (which The Local profiled last year; see video above), says the responsibility lies with the pit bull owners.

Yesterday The Times, along with a dozen other organizations, sent a letter to the N.Y.P.D. protesting that “the police actions of last week have been more hostile to the press than any other event in recent memory.” Referring to incidents similar to the arrests of Jared Malsin, a reporter for The Local, and Tim Schreier, a contributing photographer for The Local, Michael Powell writes in The Times, “At least since the Republican National Convention of 2004, our police have grown accustomed to forcibly penning, arresting, and sometimes spraying and whacking protesters and reporters.” Read more…

An assortment of locals want one of the East Village’s largest vacant buildings to once again host community groups — it’s just unclear whether they have the leverage to force the owner’s hand.

After a discussion on Friday night at Theatre 80, roughly 20 residents decided they would press the owner of the old P.S. 64 building, Gregg Singer, to designate as much as two stories of the six-story building as public space. (On Friday, The Local posted interior shots of the building in its current state, as well as renderings of its potential redevelopment.) The group — still very much in the planning and strategizing phase — leaned towards making one floor a community facility that would be open to anyone living within a boundary to be determined. The other floor would accommodate local groups. To entice Mr. Singer, the coalition would present him with a list of potential tenants for the other floors in his 100-year-old building. Read more…

Scott Lynch

Good morning, East Village.

On his blog, Dick Manitoba, owner of Manitoba’s, takes some swipes at his old Dictators bandmate, Andy Shernoff. Seeming to refer to comments Mr. Shernoff made in an interview with The Local, Handsome Dick writes, “IRONY?…A man who puts BALDING 50 year old people down for trying to re-capture THEIR youth by playing in those silly rock and roll bands, and playing the oldies circuit. SOOOOOO, for a man nearing 60, trying to re-capture HIS youth with hair plugs and preaching to the converted, by playing in tiny clubs, and for self congratulatory hipsters watching 70 year old men from 60’s garage bands is cooL?…HA HA HA”

The Union Square Holiday Market is back, as Runnin’ Scared points out.

East Village Arts gets wind of a victory celebration and 34th birthday party for the St. Mark’s Bookshop. Read more…

N.Y.P.D. The suspect.

The police are searching for a man suspected of sexually assaulting a woman while she got on the subway at the Broadway-Lafayette station at 10 a.m. on Nov. 10.

The 42-year-old victim told the police that she was boarding an M train when the man came up from behind and assaulted her. The man then fled the station. No injuries were reported.

Police say the suspect is 35 years old, and is seen in surveillance footage wearing framed glasses and a backpack. Anyone with information should call the Crime Stoppers hotline at 800-577-TIPS.

Singer Financial Corp and Stephen Rex Brown.

Less than an hour before a meeting at Theatre 80 regarding the long-vacant building that once housed P.S. 64, The Local has obtained new images of what its future could be. A flyer commissioned by the building’s owner, Gregg Singer, states that the 100-year-old building on East Ninth Street between Avenues B and C “will soon undergo a cutting-edge, comprehensive redevelopment and historic restoration to transform this turn of the century, New York City landmark into a modern community facility use such as a new school, medical, hospital or health-related use, college or school dormitory, museum, non-profit organization with or without sleeping accommodations or any other use as defined as a ‘Community Facility Use'” by city zoning laws.

The flyer, which depicts the former school building’s courtyard being used as an outdoor cafe, then goes on to raise the possibility of condominiums in the 152,075-square-foot building, or the separate leasing of its six stories. Lastly, the flyer notes that a gymnasium, pool, auditorium or theater could be built on the ground floor. Read more…

Tim Schreier, one of The Local’s community contributors, was among a group of journalists who were rounded up at Duarte Square and thrown in jail on Tuesday. He was released yesterday morning.

Now the photographer, who was shooting a group of religious leaders staging a prayer vigil at the park among the protesters, is going to take his charge of criminal trespassing in the third degree to trial.

Tim Schreier The crowd at Duarte Square on Tuesday.

“Basically, it’s the N.Y.P.D. gone crazy and based on fear,” Mr. Schreier said yesterday, shortly after getting his first bit of rest since around noon on Tuesday. “This was an interfaith service that the cops came and disrupted.” Read more…

Scott Lynch

Good morning, East Village.

While Bowery Boogie and EV Grieve take a look at the “Groundbreak” installation at Artist Alley @ Extra Place (The Local linked to Scott Lynch’s photographs of the street art earlier this week), FABnyc’s blog, East Village Arts, interviews the owners of Misha Nicole, a shop on Extra Place that sells items such as a newspaper box that has been converted into an aquarium.

Off The Grid toasts the twentieth anniversary of Blue Man Group’s opening in the Astor Place Theatre.

Grub Street brings word that Spina has a new chef and Black Market has started a two-for-one happy hour as well as late-night deals.

Thousands of students converged on Union Square this afternoon as part of the Occupy Wall Street “Day of Action,” which was planned to celebrate the movement’s two-month anniversary today. Some of the students marched to Union Square from the steps of New York University’s Stern School of Business, where they earlier castrated a purple-and-gold bull piñata named Wally – a symbol, the protesters said, of their school’s complicity in a financial downturn that has left so many students unemployed.

After the march lurched up University Place to the north side of Union Square, students from several local universities – Cooper Union, N.Y.U., and C.U.N.Y. among them – addressed the crowd with stories of insurmountable debt and lingering joblessness. Taylor Hand, a 21-year-old Cooper Union student, criticized her school’s recent announcement that it may begin charging tuition. Read more…

A job listing for a historian? In this economy? That’s right, the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation is looking for a director of preservation and research, according to a new post on Histpres. Among the many job responsibilities: Coordinating historic buildings research, preparing draft requests for the Landmarks Preservation Commission, and responding to questions from the public regarding landmarking. (And one recommended qualification from The Local: A strong tolerance for lengthy community board meetings).

Susan Keyloun

Good morning, East Village.

DNA Info reports that Imre Meszesan, the man accused of attempting to rape a woman in her First Avenue apartment building, is being held on $100,000 bail. PIX 11 interviews the victim on camera and reports that Mr. Meszesan, a Hungarian immigrant working as a handyman, was arrested for public lewdness in Suffolk County in July.

The Post discovers that there are still deals to be had in the Lower East Side. One apartment hunter says she looked at a couple of places in the East Village, “but they were small. You could be lying on your bed and cook spaghetti at the same time.”

The Village Voice’s Runnin’ Scared blog reports that about 50 protesters gathered outside of the Voice’s offices in order to express their view that the Backpage.com ads that run in the paper facilitate sex trafficking.

Read more…

Daniel Maurer

A fire broke out on the fourth floor of 218 East Sixth Street between Second Avenue and Taras Shevchenko Place around 8:14 p.m. tonight, a spokesperson for the F.D.N.Y. said. Two people – said to be tenants of apartment 10, where the spokesperson said the fire started due to a cooking oil inflammation – were taken to the hospital (at least one of them to Beth Israel) with minor injuries, one with a burn and the other with a laceration. The fire was under control by 8:57 p.m.

When The Local arrived on the scene around 8:45 p.m., smoke was billowing out of the building’s upper windows as firefighters broke glass and searched apartments. Read more…