Jay HukahoriIntersection of West Broadway and Grand Street, after the storm.
Good morning, East Village.
Three weeks after his attack, Gavin DeGraw talks to AOL Music Blog about what he calls “a rumble in the Bronx but it was Manhattan.” He says, “I guess some people could walk away from [it] and could be like, ‘Forget New York, I do so much targeted toward adding to the New York scene and it didn’t love me back,’ but I really don’t have that attitude about it.”
The Times profiles Taavo Somer of Freemans and Peels, who is opening Isa in Williamsburg, and reveals that the so-called “patron saint of hipsters” is “getting sick of New York. Yes, one of downtown’s most imitated tastemakers of the last decade is itching to leave the very place where he made his mark.”
Those flashy “jeggings” that rapper Lil Wayne wore at the MTV Music Video Awards? The Daily News discovers they were created by an East Village designer, TrippNYC.
According to The Post, two teenagers and a 21-year-old were arrested for sneaking into an East Fifth Street apartment around 2 a.m. on Sunday and making off with an iPod, iTouch, and some cash. Read more…
Workers with the city Department of Environmental Protection are pumping water out of a ditch in the middle of Second Avenue near St. Marks Place, blasting water into the bus lane and diverting another lane of traffic. The noisy water pumps drew many onlookers. The Local has a call into D.E.P. regarding the nature of the work; we’ll update as soon as we know more.
Update | 3:48 p.m. Here are the details from a D.E.P. spokeswoman: “A D.E.P. crew observed that a four-foot diameter brick sewer was broken. A D.E.P. contractor is excavating to repair it. We will place a plate to make the area safe while working. It will take a few days.”
New timers have been installed at intersections of Delancey Street, Bowery Boogie reports. The countdown clocks, stretching from Kenmare to Clinton Streets, come two weeks after a cyclist was run over by a truck at Chrystie Street, reinforcing Delancey Street’s dangerous reputation.
Rebecca HamiltonAnother scene from yesterday’s Eid ul-Fitr prayers at Madina Masjid, the mosque on 11th Street and First Avenue.
Good morning, East Village.
Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jennifer Egan, who now lives in Brooklyn, returns to her old neighborhood for a sit-down with the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Despite her new zip code, she’s still “at ease among the eccentrics sunning on benches in nearby Tompkins Square Park, eying them as if one might inspire her next protagonist.”
The Mirror checks in with Mike Kehoe, a firefighter at Engine 28 on East 2nd Street who survived the World Trade Center attacks. Roy Chelsen, the colleague who helped save him, has since died owing to what Mr. Kehoe heard was a 9/11-related illness.
According to Playbill, “Silence! The Musical,” a parody of “The Silence of the Lambs” that won the 2005 FringeNYC award for Outstanding Musical, will end its run at Theatre 80 on St. Marks Place next month. Read more…
El Sol Brillante, Sr. isn’t the only community garden that lost a tree during the storm. As noted earlier, gawkers gathered at La Plaza Cultural de Armando Perez on Sunday to mourn a fallen willow tree. City Room explains why the decades-old tree was iconic in the garden’s fight against developers, and reveals that gardeners may leave part of its trunk in hopes that it will take root again.
Stephen Rex BrownMatt Rosen manages the web presence of two of the neighborhood’s most revered characters.
Ray Alvarez may not remember Matt Rosen’s name or understand his social networking wizardry, but there is little doubt that the 30-year-old’s efforts have been a boon for the iconic and oft-embattled Ray’s Candy Store.
Since 2009, Mr. Rosen, has managed Mr. Alvarez’s @RaysCandyStore Twitter account, which boasts 1,064 followers, as well as the eatery’s pages on Yelp, Urbanspoon, Foursquare, and Café Press. Last month, Mr. Rosen added Jim Power, the Mosaic Man, to his stable of online accounts.
Not that Mr. Alvarez knows much about all that stuff.
“He does advertising for me — it’s really high-tech. I still don’t have a television — I don’t know what Twitter is,” said Mr. Alvarez, 78, when asked about Mr. Rosen. “I didn’t know his name is Matt.” Read more…
On the heels of her Times profile, Budd Mishkin visits the apartment of Vashtie Kola, the “East Village ‘it’ girl” (look out, Chloe Sevigny) who directs music videos, plans parties, blogs about fashion, and is “the first woman to design an Air Jordan sneaker.”
The Lo-Down has posted the September agenda for Community Board 3’s SLA & DCA Licensing Committee. Ichibantei is applying for wine and beer and Heathers is seeking to renew its license despite a complaint history.
Neither More Nor Less spotted workers cleaning up trees in Tompkins Square Park yesterday.
The Local spotted this sinkhole on Sixth Street between First Avenue and Avenue A. Steer clear, and if you see street scenes like this one, e-mail them to us; or better yet, contribute them to The Local’s Flickr Group.
Good morning, East Village, and good night, Irene.
Actually, The Local will have the last of its hurricane coverage for you later today (stay tuned!), but now that the neighborhood’s subways are running smoothly again, we’ll refrain from exacerbating your Irene fatigue and tell you what else is going on.
If that’s not gross enough: A sculptor that developed a six-story condo at 259 Bowery is feuding with his next-door neighbor, the Sperone Westwater Gallery, and according to The Post he is accused of flinging feces at the gallery. Read more…
Angela Cravens, a community contributor at The Local, has shared her photos of the neighborhood preparing for Hurricane Irene earlier today, and we want to see yours, as well. (By the way, she tells us a sign posted at Villa Della Pace tells Irene, in Italian, to go do something very not nice.) If you have anything to share with your neighbors now that the rain has driven you indoors (Gothamist has the latest on what to expect now that the Category 1 hurricane is 300 miles away), leave your comments below. Have a longer story that you’d like The Local to post? E-mail the editor. Have photos? Join The Local’s Flickr group, and we’ll add them to the gallery above. And feel free to alert us to any developments (no matter how large or small) via our Twitter page, if that’s your preference. We’re listening.
Elsewhere around the Internet, everyone from the Guardian in the U.K. (which noted lines down the block at Trader Joe’s) to the usual neighborhood blogs were eying local supermarkets today: EV Grieve reported that the Associated on Avenue C was primed to set a single-day sales record, and posted photos from Key Food and Fine Fare. A manager at Key Food told the Wall Street Journal of “chaos” there (the store was already running low on certain supplies when we checked in on grocery stores yesterday). Read more…
Getting ready to brawl over the last flashlight in the hardware store like the folks at the Village Voice? The Local is here to help. In the last few minutes we called up grocery stores in the neighborhood and asked for the rundown of bare essentials still in stock. Our very informal survey was conducted with whomever answered the phones at around 4:30 p.m. Read more…
At a press conference addressing Hurricane Irene this afternoon, Mayor Bloomberg issued a mandatory evacuation order for residents of Zone A, which as this PDF map indicates, includes areas of Alphabet City (Bowery Boogie has an East Village and Lower East Side detail of the map). All affected residents are ordered to evacuate by 5 p.m. tomorrow. Subways, buses, the Long Island Railroad, and Metro-North will cease operation at noon tomorrow as well.
According to DNAinfo and other sites, including NYC.gov’s slow-moving Office of Emergency Management page, parts of the East Village are among the “Zone A” areas most at risk should Hurricane Irene strike Manhattan: “In the East Village, Zone A extends to Avenue D from East 4th Street to East 8th Street. From there, it extends to Avenue B up to 14th Street.” If evacuations are called for, shelters opening at 4 pm on Friday include Seward Park High School (350 Grand Street) and Baruch College (East 23rd Street and Lexington Avenue). Hurricane or no hurricane, the Tompkins Square Park leg of the Charlie Parker Jazz Festival, on Sunday, has been canceled, according to a press release picked up by Brooklyn Vegan.
Both the Villager and EV Grieve have the latest on what the Parks Department is doing to fight the Tompkins Square Park rats. NY1 also ran a story, and shortly before 11 p.m. last night, The Local spotted “Inside Edition” filming a segment that a crewperson said would air in about two or three weeks. Neither More Nor Less has photos.
Police officers, construction workers, and The Local had their cell phones out for a photo op just minutes ago. The driver of a TNT Transportation bus taking an advertising firm on a company outing attempted to make a turn from Crosby Street onto Houston Street. Road barriers made the move tricky, so the driver improvised. A 29-year-old employee of the advertising company, who declined to give his name or the name of the firm, said, “The driver tried to take a shortcut. Because of the construction, he couldn’t make a turn and he got stuck. He looks like an idiot.” Have another look at the scene below and see if you agree. Read more…
The suspect in the July slaying of a homeless man in Union Square is expected to be cleared of charges, DNA Info reports. The 29-year-old man, Keenan Bryce, was charged with brutally beating the homeless man to death with a bike lock and chain. But Mr. Bryce’s brother refused to accept that his mentally ill sibling was guilty, and through a good deal of research was able to prove that Mr. Bryce was in New Jersey during the time of the murder.
If caffeine just isn’t cutting it, dive into the above homage to Erasure that East Village resident Jason Stein, a founding partner in Laundry Service Media, created with kids from The Hetrick-Martin Institute (home of Harvey Milk High School on Astor Place). This video has been floating around for a while, but only gets better with age.
While Zagat Buzz hears that a Williamsburg pizzeria, Forcella, plans to open its outpost at 334 Bowery on September 15, Eater gets word that St. Marks stalwart Café Mogador (a celebrity hangout of sorts) may open its Williamsburg offshoot in September as well.
According to Bowery Boogie, 87 East Houston Street will soon house Bowery Coffee, serving Counter Culture coffee, brownies, and cookies. Meanwhile another coffee shop, Fab Café, got some nice exposure on ABC7’s Eyewitness News, which strangely thinks the East Fourth Street business is in SoHo.
Finally, EV Grieve has a daytime and then a nighttime look at signage for the new Ihop, now glowing on 14th Street.
State Senator Daniel Squadron and City Councilwoman Margaret Chin urged the Department of Transportation to improve safety on Delancey Street today in the wake of last week’s deadly accident that killed a 52-year-old cyclist. As the Lo-Down reports, the thoroughfare had a reputation for danger prior to the most recent tragedy. Earlier this month, The Local reported that a significant number of the city’s dangerous intersections are on the Lower East Side — of those, most are on Delancey Street.
A couple of jazz fixtures are back in Tompkins Square Park: While DNA Info previews this weekend’s Charlie Parker Jazz Festival (Sunday’s East Village installment will be headlined by Archie Shepp), EV Grieve notes that Giuseppi Logan, who recorded for the legendary ESP label and went on to live a life checkered with homelessness, is back to playing sax on his bench after hip surgery. The Local caught up with Mr. Logan last November, as you can see in the video above.
Ephemeral New York points to an entry in “The Inside Guide to Greenwich Village” indicating that the fabled St. Marks club The Dom only made it six months before it was invaded by “another element” with “absolutely no cool whatsoever.”
Gothamist points out that “On The Bowery,” Lionel Rogosin’s vérité portrait of the Bowery circa 1957, will return to Film Forum in November.
Stephen Rex BrownThe Merchant’s House Museum, seen from The Local’s window.
At 1:39 p.m. today, I got on the phone with Mikel Travisano of New York City’s Historic House Trust. Next Tuesday he’ll speak at the Hudson Park Library at 66 Leroy Street about his role overseeing the $598,000 restoration of the Merchant’s House Museum. Mr. Travisano told me that small cracks in the house’s exterior bricks and stucco are being sealed in order to prevent rainfall infiltration that has damaged the interior plaster over time. The rear windows, which are over 100 years old (the house itself was built in 1832), will be meticulously restored off-site. In addition, radiators will be given new thermostatic valves (better for heat control) and the house’s electrical system will be upgraded. As Mr. Travisano spoke of all this in detail that I won’t go into here, the floor underneath me began shaking, and then my desk shook as well. Read more…
The Local was a journalistic collaboration designed to reflect the richness of the East Village, report on its issues and concerns, give voice to its people and create a space for our neighbors to tell stories about themselves. It was operated by the students and faculty of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University, in collaboration with The New York Times, which provides supervision to ensure that the blog remains impartial, reporting-based, thorough and rooted in Times standards. Read more »
Jay Hukahori Intersection of West Broadway and Grand Street, after the storm.
