Tania Barnes Under the proposed legislation, this 26-story NYU dorm on East 12th Street would be too tall by half.

In the latest turf battle, it looks like the preservationists are winning.

City Council is set to vote today – and expected to approve — a measure that will cap building heights at 120 feet or roughly 12 stories on the eight blocks between Third and Fourth Avenues and 13th and Ninth Streets. That’s a pretty major shift: under current regulations, the area has practically no height restrictions. (For a case in point, look no further than the NYU dorm on East 12th Street, at 26 stories.)

Originally, the Department of City Planning considered the area, with its wide avenues, better able to accommodate tall buildings, and therefore chose to leave it out of the rezoning plans that affected the rest of the East Village in 2008. That rezoning capped buildings at 75 feet along the streets, 85 feet along avenues, and 120 feet along Houston Street.

But in September, city planning officials changed their tune, agreeing to support building caps for Third and Fourth Avenues. It’s not altogether clear what prompted the change of heart. A spokeswoman for the Department of City Planning would not elaborate on the motives for the reversal. But the support of Councilwoman Rosie Mendez and the continuous campaigns of groups like the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation have undoubtedly played a role.

For preservationists, the failure to include this region in the 2008 rezoning was always an omission and so they don’t necessarily view the pending legislation as a win. Rather, they see it as merely getting the area up to the zoning standards that apply elsewhere. In an interview with The Local, Andrew Berman of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation called the new legislation “a compromise of a compromise.” The preservation group, he said, had hoped the building cap would be set at 85 feet, 35 feet less than what was ultimately agreed upon.

The new zoning laws will also theoretically raise the allowable height of residential buildings in the area by increasing what’s called their floor-to-area ratio. Still, Berman says the preservation group is happy with the change: “The advantage of that is if there’s going to be new development, it will be more residential. Right now, new development is all dorms and hotels.”

What do you think about the proposal to limit building heights in the East Village?

Gloria Chung

Good morning, East Village.

We start today with a glance below Houston where a report by Bowery Boogie of three people injured in a shooting on Stanton Street adds to the week’s bad news, although the injuries are described as “non-life-threatening.” The New York Times called the location of the incident, “a corner where luxury developments and turn-of-the-century tenements meet.”

The Daily News briefly covers the arraignment of Jairo Pastoressa, the 25 year old accused of fatally stabbing Christopher Jusko in an East 7th Street apartment building on Monday morning.

The mobile police command center established near Tompkins Square Park seems to have been busy already. EV Grieve has a tip that police appeared “in numbers” to arrest an alleged cellphone snatcher yesterday evening.

Our last word today – you can’t keep a good blogger down. Brooks of Sheffield announced in June. “I am ending Lost City. Most of the City is lost after all—the good parts, anyway—so you could say the course of history has put me out of a job.” But there was a stray post here and there, and then the stray posts kept coming – six in October. Lost City is a great citywide history source, and we hope Brooks keeps adding to it.

Rachel Wise

Good morning, East Village.

Reporting by dnainfo on the arrest of Jairo Pastoressa as a suspect in the East 7th Street stabbing describes him as an assistant to well-known East Village muralist Antonio “Chico” Garcia. A video, “Termanology-Circulate,” posted on several websites including YouTube is described as a video showing Pastoressa working on a painting with Garcia.

Turning to robberies, EV Grieve has a story on a police command post established near Tompkins Square Park, apparently in a response to a recent spike in muggings.

Finally, knowing what it’s like to be editors, we sympathize with the author of this MTA poster whose grammatical error is posted up and down Second Avenue and reproduced here by Bowery Boogie.

Timothy J. Stenovec Detectives at the scene of the stabbing Monday morning. Jairo Pastoressa, 25, a resident of the East Seventh Street tenement where the stabbing occurred, faces murder charges.

A 25-year-old East Village man was charged with murder last night in the fatal stabbing of another man early yesterday morning, the authorities said.

The suspect, Jairo Pastoressa, lived in a tenement at 272 East Seventh Street where the police said that Christopher Jusko, 21, was stabbed around 5:30 a.m. Monday. The authorities said that Mr. Pastoressa surrendered to the police shortly after the attack.

While detectives did not immediately provide details about a possible motive, Mr. Pastoressa’s neighbors said that the killing occurred after a dispute over a woman in whom both had a romantic interest.

The arrest of Mr. Pastroressa was confirmed by The Local this morning. It has also been reported by other news organizations.

One of Mr. Pastoressa’s neighbors, John Bonilla, said that a friend of Mr. Pastoressa’s family indicated that Mr. Pastoressa told investigators that he was acting in self-defense.

Mr. Bonilla described Mr. Pastoressa, his neighbor of about four years, as a “personable young man” and said that he “generally kept to himself.”

“We’d exchange hello and goodbye when he’d go out and walk his dog,” said Mr. Bonilla.

Mr. Bonilla said that neighbors along the stretch of East Seventh Street where the stabbing occurred were jolted by the crime.

“It’s very unnerving,” said Mr. Bonilla. “It doesn’t give you a good sense of security, and makes me wonder about staying in New York.”

Timothy J. Stenovec Detectives have continued working at the crime scene along East Seventh Street through the afternoon.

The authorities this afternoon identified the victim of a fatal stabbing on East Seventh Street even as detectives were still trying to determine a motive for the crime.

Police said that the victim, Christopher Jusko, was stabbed once in the neck about 5:30 this morning inside an apartment at 272 East Seventh Street. Mr. Jusko, who was 21, was pronounced dead at the scene.
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Timothy J. Stenovec Detectives are continuing their investigation into a fatal stabbing that occurred this morning on East Seventh Street.

Detectives are investigating a fatal stabbing that occurred this morning on East Seventh Street between Avenues C and D.

The police said that the victim is a 21-year-old man who was stabbed in the neck around 5:30.

The authorities have a taken another man into custody in connection with the incident.

Reporters from The Local are on the scene and we will post a full report as soon as we have more details.

The Local’s QR code.

Many New Yorkers have started to notice the odd square bar codes that are popping up on signs and advertisements around the city. These are called ‘QR codes’ which stands for Quick Response. QR codes provide a link between the physical world and the virtual world of the Internet. When you use your smartphone to scan a QR code you are often taken to a website with more information on a product or special offers. So while you use your mouse to click links on the computer you can now use your phone to ‘click’ QR links you find on the street. QR codes have been popular for years in Japan but are just now catching on in the United States.

We here at The Local East Village wanted to know how many people in our community were using QR codes. To find out, over the next several days we will be distributing Local East Village flyers – on brightly colored paper – to local businesses. When the code is scanned, your smart phone visits a site that we run so we can keep a tally of visitors and then is directed to The Local East Village. We are distributing four different versions of our flyer so that we can see how many people are using QR codes in different areas. We’ll publish our findings in a few weeks and share our data with you. If you see one of our flyers be sure to scan it so you can take part.

Have a smart phone but don’t know how to read QR codes? Simply go to your favorite app store and look for ‘qr reader’ – you’re sure to find a number of free programs to use.

Gloria Chung

Good morning, East Village.

The ongoing debate over bike lanes in the neighborhood took a new twist this week when Deputy Inspector Kenneth Lehr, the head of the Ninth Precinct, announced that his officers were stepping up efforts to ticket cyclists who flout traffic laws. The Times reports today on a similar effort by police across the city.

In other neighborhood news, we’d like to remind you, courtesy of Neighborhoodr, that Saturday will feature the 20th annual Halloween Dog Parade at Tompkins Square Park starting at noon. The Halloween Parade prompts us to tell you about our recurring feature, Beyond The Dog Run, in which we display photos of neighborhood pets here on The Local. If you’d like to contribute your photos, please join our Flickr Group.

While on the subject of photos from the neighborhood, we’d also like to tell you about a new feature on The Local’s photo contributors. Later today, we will showcase the work of Gloria Chung, who contributed the image above and whose work has often been featured here in our morning roundup.

And this morning the Village Voice posted an item from its archives about Sammy’s on the Bowery, the bar and music hall on the Bowery at East Third, which closed its doors in 1970 after 36 years.

Hannah Rubenstein Iana Di Bona (top) has been scrawling chalk messages on East Village sidewalks calling for civil rights for the gay community. Her effort is part of larger effort that includes a 24-hour vigil outside the offices of Senator Kirsten Gillibrand on West 26th Street.

Iana Di Bona crouches low near the corner of St. Marks and First Avenue scrawling a chalk message that she would repeat on sidewalks across the East Village: “Gay Civil Rights! QueerSOS.com!” Her electric blues and purples are defiant against the monochromatic city streets.

“Some people don’t want to stop and take a flyer,” Ms. Di Bona says, explaining the chalk that now stains her fingers. “This is a graffiti tactic that brings attention and awareness to the cause.” She places the chalk in a tattered plastic bag and continues walking, searching for the next blank slate.

Graffiti activism is only the latest action that Ms. Di Bona and the group she represents, QueerSOS, have taken in recent days in hopes of promoting gay rights. Two months ago, the 30-year-old Ms. Di Bona quit her job as an office manager in an East Village medical office and began living off of savings, dedicating herself to social activism full-time.

Since Sept. 27, she has been part of a daily vigil outside of Senator Kristen Gillibrand’s campaign office on West 26th Street. For the past nine days, she and her best friend and fellow activist Alan Bounville, a 34-year-old former NYU student, have been sleeping on the sidewalk outside — an act of “political homelessness,” Ms. Di Bona says. QueerSOS, which stands for Standing OutSide, has only one mission: pressuring Senator Gillibrand to introduce the American Equality Bill.
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Joan Heffler Warren Redlich.

Warren Redlich is a Libertarian who hates the war on drugs, supports gay marriage, thinks college loans harm more than help students, and wants to cap bureaucrat pay and pensions.

Mr. Redlich, 44, is the Libertarian party candidate for governor and his longshot campaign received a moment in the spotlight after his participation in the gubernatorial debate on Monday at Hofstra University.

If nothing else, Mr. Redlich, a lawyer from Albany, does not lack for confidence: he believes Carl Paladino is going to take third place in the Nov. 2 election – after he comes in first and Andrew Cuomo places second. Mr. Redlich spoke with The Local East Village on Wednesday about why voters should choose him, what they should know about him, and his love of East Village Korean food.

What do you think of Carl Paladino?

Carl Paladino is done. He’ll come in third place, if he’s lucky. After the debate, Carl’s campaign manager said it looked like I hadn’t taken my Prozac. They weren’t satisfied offending blacks, gays, women, Jews – I’m Jewish – now they’ve offended mental health patients. I think they’re going to stop on Nov. 3, when he comes in third place in the election.
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Michelle Rick

Good morning, East Village.

Start the day by casting envious eyes in the direction of Jimmy McMillan, the “Rent is Too Damn High” gubernatorial candidate who – according to Gothamist – is renting an East Village apartment for his son at a cost of only $900 per month.

In other news, like the rest of the city we can’t help noticing that the CMJ Music Marathon is underway with over 1,200 live performances, mainly in downtown New York and Brooklyn. Lit Lounge and the Bowery Poetry Club are among the East Village venues hosting performances, but the musicians and fans are everywhere. The festival runs through Saturday, so there’s still time to catch a few dozen shows.

Speaking of music, especially of the loud variety, EV Grieve updates on us on the planned Halloween protest against pressure from Community Board 3 to reduce the quantity and volume on live music in Tompkins Square Park. We plan to be there.

Finally, a striking piece of visual history. It’s easy to walk by Alphabet Café on the corner of East 14th and Avenue B without giving the building a second thought. Vanishing New York has photographic evidence today that it has survived as a one-story structure for decades. How did the developers not notice this? And does anyone have an idea how old that first photo is?

My report on New York University’s expansion plans and implications for the East Village, which at this stage remain frankly unclear, drew extra attention, doubtless because this is one of those curious cases of a news source reporting on itself.

More or less, anyway. As our banner makes clear, The Local East Village is produced by NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute (in collaboration with The Times). Could NYU report on its own controversial development strategy without bias? This was the focus of commentary by Tom McGeveran at Capital, a New York news website which was covering the story before we were even launched. “How’d they do?” he asked, answering, “I don’t detect any bias in the piece.”

It’s a curious feeling to be under such close scrutiny, and maybe it’s worth repeating that I’m working for The Local as a consultant to the Journalism Institute rather than as an employee of the university (or the Times) and with an assurance of complete editorial independence on stories about the university. Skeptics might expect nothing else, but I may as well say that the university was entirely hands-off in the development of the piece.

On the one hand, it’s important to see the story as the beginning of The Local’s reporting on the plans and not any kind of conclusive summary. At the same time, covering the story highlighted for me one of the challenges facing hyperlocal news coverage. Some of the people I spoke to for the story told me they didn’t really have much to say about NYU’s plans as they affect the East Village – the main focus, after all, being the neighborhood around the existing Greenwich Village campus. Commenting on the story, Andrew Nusca of SmartPlanet.com wanted to put the story in the broader context of contentious developments uptown by Columbia University, and beyond that to encroachments by “any large institution of higher education that’s located within a major city.”

That’s certainly a story and someone should write it. Our remit, however, is to cover the East Village – hyperlocally. It’s difficult when a story spills naturally across neighborhood boundaries – which are, after all, largely an invention of habit and realtors. But readers can expect further, unbiased reporting here if and when we learn more about NYU’s intentions for our particular backyard.

Kim Davis is the community editor of The Local East Village.

Timothy J. Stenovec Deputy Inspector Kenneth Lehr, pictured at a police ceremony earlier this month, told the Ninth Precinct Community Council Tuesday night that cyclists who violate traffic laws in bike lanes will receive tickets just as motorists do.

The head of the Ninth Precinct issued a stern warning to East Village cyclists at the Community Council meeting Tuesday night – traffic laws don’t just apply to vehicles.

“They are under the same rules and will get a moving violation just like a motorist would,” said Deputy Inspector Kenneth Lehr, referring to neighborhood cyclists. “They’re required to adhere to the same rules as the road.”

Much of the council meeting focused on enforcing traffic laws in the re-designed bike lanes that were introduced this summer along First and Second Avenues from Houston to 34th Streets.

Kurt Cavanaugh of Transportation Alternatives called bike lanes the “new hot button issue” and asked the Ninth Precinct to step in to prevent bike lanes from being blocked by vehicles, delivery trucks and even pedestrians.

“We ask the local precinct to increase the bike lane blockage enforcement,” he said. “There’s still a lot of bike lane blockage, which is really unsafe for all parties.”
Read more…

Michelle Rick

Good morning, East Village.

NYU Local has photos of the rapper Lil’ Jon and the actor Gary Busey selling pizzas Tuesday afternoon at Eighth Street and Broadway. Neighborhoodr has a post about a new exhibit by the photographer Cary Conover. (While you’re at Neighborhoodr these images are worth checking out, too.) Nice photograph here over at EV Grieve. The Villager offers up a story about one man’s theory on those explosives that were found in a cemetery earlier this month. And I Love East Village has a Halloween-themed sketch by the artist Terry Galmitz.

Portrait of An Artist from The Local East Village on Vimeo.

Last week, we told you about our video storytellers at The Local and the space that is reserved for weekly features on the right side of the page.

Over the past month, NYU Journalism’s Bolanle Omisore has explored the world of extreme tattooing, Sarah Tung has described the world of Japanese culture that exists in the East Village and Damon Beres took viewers inside the world of Toy Tokyo.

Other pieces have included Timothy J. Stenovec’s look at a commuter mosque and Maya Millett’s profile of the Social Tees Animal Rescue. In this week’s feature, which also plays above, NYU Journalism’s Steven McCann interviews the artist Andrew Castrucci.

You can find these videos and others at The Local East Village’s Vimeo page.

And if you’re interested in submitting your visual stories to The Local, please contact Kim Davis, The Local’s community editor.

Gloria Chung

Good morning, East Village.

On Monday, The Local’s Kim Davis wrote about NYU’s expansion plan. This morning, the Washington Square News describes the debate a bit west of our neighborhood where many residents questioned the plan at a Community Board 2 meeting Monday night.

Another one of our Monday posts offered a patron’s perspective on the closing of the Sin Sin lounge. EV Grieve reports on another sign that the end is near for Sin Sin: the club’s website is down. (Grieve also has a humorous item demonstrating that concerns about noisy students are hardly a new development.) And Bowery Boogie has a post about the neighborhood’s star turn in a new Samsung commercial.

Chaz Kangas.

Last week, The Local confirmed reports that the Sin Sin lounge would be closing at the end of the month and revising its format. Sin Sin, the scene of a fatal shooting in August, has been a source of complaints about noise and violence in the neighborhood. Chaz Kangas, a frequent patron of Sin Sin, offers his perspective on the club and its closing.

The absolute safest, most welcome and happiest I’ve ever felt in my adult life was at a bar in the East Village called Sin Sin. It’s a spot I’ve been loyally attending for almost five years. It’s where I’ve brought close friends, classmates, dates, co-workers and visitors, and they’ve all been given a lasting memory that will stay with them the rest of their lives. The end of October will see its doors close permanently, and in a climate where New York’s landscape is changing more than ever, I feel like I’m losing another connection to what first made me fall in love with the city. This is what Sin Sin means to me.

I began attending the club during my sophomore year of college in November 2005. I had always heard about their “Freestyle Mondays” Hip-Hop open mic since even before I had moved to the city a year prior. Word-of-mouth around the NYU campus was that it was next-to-impossible to get into. It wasn’t until the evening’s host iLLspokinN extended an invitation to me after he heard me rap at an NYU event that – after promising not order from the bar until I turned 21 – I made my Sin Sin debut. Stepping into that dim red room with a live band reinterpreting classic rap instrumentals next to a lineup of MCs eager to perform awakened a feeling inside me that was as exciting as it was validating. Here was a room full of people, whether performers or listeners, who felt the exact same passion that I did, and they’d been meeting there for the past four years for the same reason – the love of rap music.

The vibe of Freestyle Mondays at Sin Sin would remain the same from its 11:30 start-time until the lights came on at 3:30. I began attending every Monday and, after I moved to the East Village, would often stop by there to cap off other nights for its pleasant feeling of familiarity. Over the years, its accessibility and safe, comfortable atmosphere has allowed me to take countless friends, acquaintances and associates to Sin Sin for their first rap show. As a child I was always taught the importance of including others in things I loved and my time at Sin Sin was the adult realization of that virtue. More importantly, my experiences under those red lights really shaped me as a person. Most of the close friends I’ve ever had in the city, some who’ve moved away and even some no longer with us, have stepped through those doors. While Freestyle Mondays will continue and thrive at another location, the East Village will have lost a historic and important venue for young artists.

Chaz Kangas is a resident of East Harlem. He blogs at popularopinions.wordpress.com.

A Memorial for Michael Shenker from The Local East Village on Vimeo.

With chants, signs and a New Orleans-style brass band, about 100 friends of community activist Michael Shenker honored his life with a parade-like procession Saturday through the streets of the East Village.

The procession, which began near Mr. Shenker’s home on the southeast side of Tompkins Square Park, wound its way past some of Mr. Shenker’s favorite places in the neighborhood and ended several hours later with a memorial service at The Catholic Worker on Second Avenue and First Street.

Mr. Shenker, who died earlier this month of liver failure at the age of 54, was a squatter and activist known for his advocacy on housing issues and the preservation of community gardens.

With chants of “Long live Michael,” members of Saturday’s procession – led by Aresh Javadi, a puppeteer who knew Mr. Shenker for a dozen years – spontaneously pulled weeds at a garden on Avenue C (before the space’s perplexed owner asked them to leave) and stopped at such locations as 319 East Eighth Street.

It was there that Fran Luck first met Mr. Shenker 25 years ago, when Mr. Shenker was working to turn what was then an unoccupied and neglected building into a popular squat. Today, the building is fully renovated with modern amenities.

“The gathering today shows the power, not only of Michael, but of an era we went in together for our neighborhood against gentrification,” said Ms. Luck.

This image from NYU’s 2031 expansion plan depicts a proposed tower near Houston and Mercer Streets. It is still unclear how the plan will affect the East Village.

New York University’s so-called “2031 plan” for expansion contains detailed proposals for what it calls its “Core” around Washington Square. What concerns many East Village residents is a larger boundary that the university has drawn around the Core.

University officials call it “the Neighborhood,” and on maps published about the expansion plan it clearly contains the East Village. The Neighborhood figures in the university’s long-term plans, but the specifics remain unknown.

“We can’t live in a world where everything is no, no, no.” That’s New York University spokeswoman Alicia Hurley’s reaction to the welcome she received from the East Village’s Community Board 3.

“We have heard you, and we’re very conscious of your concerns. Our most recent dorm purchase was at 23rd and Third, well outside the Neighborhood.” But in response to discussions with East Village residents she says, “Help us to understand which areas are most sensitive. Are there sites which are under-performing. Are certain types of use acceptable?”

She wonders whether an extension of the Tisch School of the Arts would be welcome in the area. “If you want to just say no, and be afraid, there’s not much I can do. We’re happy for you to coach us.”

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