Sarah Tung

Good morning, East Village.

EV Grieve has an informative post about some of the memorials that are planned for Michael Shenker, the homesteader and longtime neighborhood activist who died Saturday. Later today, we’ll feature a post by NYU Journalism’s Dyan Neary, who offers a personal perspective on Mr. Shenker.

In other neighborhood news, Grieve also describes a noise dispute at a restaurant that has escalated into a lawsuit. Second Ave. Sagas has a post about this morning’s MTA meeting. And, while a little west of us, this post from Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York is worth checking out because it explores what might be “the perfect, ‘undiscovered’ New York street.”

Ben Chislett

Good morning, East Village.

We’ve written quite a bit about the effects of recently installed bike lanes in the East Village. Neighborhoodr has a link to an interview with Paul Steely White, executive director of Transportation Alternatives, who talks about biking in the city.

We’re still collecting your stories about bedbugs and wanted to make sure that you saw this piece from Fox New York, which is a solid roundup of bedbug do’s and don’ts.

Tania Barnes The owners of Whatever Tattoos, at 17 St. Marks Place, installed new, energy-efficient bulbs in April.

A push by Con Edison to reduce energy consumption across the city is placing a special emphasis on the East Village.

The Avenue A Project is a program sponsored by the utility that offers local businesses free energy-efficient bulbs and other upgrades to reduce power usage. But, according to Con Ed officials, the response so far has been less than stellar.

In 2008, Con Ed asked energy consultants with Comverge Inc. to help reduce power consumption in the neighborhood by about 5 megawatts by 2012. That’s roughly equivalent to the energy that would be used if a 60-watt incandescent light bulb were placed in every seat at the New Meadowlands Stadium.

Despite such inducements as the lightbulbs and upgrades to heating and cooling systems, local businesses have mostly deflected the overtures of consultants. After two years, Comverge has managed to shave off 1.4 megawatts of power usage in the area.

Washington Teran, a consultant with Comverge, attributed the unenthusiastic response to mistrust by some business owners.

“It’s a lot of rejection,” Mr. Teran said, describing his efforts to canvass the neighborhood. “People think it’s too good to be true.”
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Gloria Chung

Good morning, East Village.

Here’s a quick look at a handful of pieces that we’re reading today from around the blogosphere.

Eater and EV Grieve have more on the closing of the “world’s largest paint party” at Webster Hall Saturday night. For history buffs, Ephemeral New York has a worthwhile post looking at a rediscovered chronicle of East Village history from the 1960s. And over at Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York, there’s a snapshot of the lunch crowd at McSorley’s.

Stephanie Butnick Longtime East Village resident and community gardener Carolyn Ratcliffe speaking during the meeting.

East Village community gardeners attended a town hall meeting Saturday to express their concern that that recently revised rules governing community gardens don’t do enough to protect the green spaces from the threat of developers.

“This puts gardens in jeopardy,” Charles Krezell, a gardener who attended the meeting, said of the new rules. “We want all gardens protected for as long as they’re standing.”

In an interview before the meeting, Mr. Krezell, of the De Colores Community Yard on East Eighth Street, between Avenues B and C, said that many gardeners are worried that the new regulations don’t grant sufficient legislative protection to community gardens.

Indeed, some worry that East Village gardens may especially be at risk as area real estate continues to lure developers. Community gardeners fear that the wording of the new rules may leave gardens vulnerable.
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Gloria Chung

Good morning, East Village.

A few interesting reads from the neighborhood over the weekend.

EVGrieve offers some memories of homesteader Michael Shenker and also has photos of an event billed as “the largest paint party in the world” at Webster Hall Saturday.

Neighborhoodr presents a video assessment of how people use — or don’t use — bike lanes. This column on bike culture is worth checking out over at The Villager.

After spending part of the past week in the East Village, the cast and crew of “Gossip Girl” have moved a little bit farther south, according to Bowery Boogie.

And slightly west of our neighborhood, the Washington Square News reports on a vigil for young suicide victims who were bullied because of their sexual orientation.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission recently announced that it has issued a landmark designation for Eleventh Street Methodist Episcopal Chapel on 11th Street between Avenues A and B. Still unresolved is the status of a proposal to extend a similar designation to the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of the Holy Virgin Protection on Second Street near Second Avenue, a move so far opposed by church officials. NYU Journalism’s Gabriella Bass and Amir Shoucri report on the debate over the merits of “landmarking.”

Rachel Wise

Good morning, East Village.

Our community is filled with writers whose bylines are recognized well beyond the boundaries of our neighborhood. Today, we’re proud to note that James Traub, a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine who is equally adept at writing about foreign policy or regional governors in Afghanistan or baseball royalty in the Bronx, is bringing his talents to The Local.

Mr. Traub, who has an office on Second Avenue, sought us out for the opportunity to explore the neighborhood he loves in print. He will be writing about the East Village’s extraordinarily diverse food culture in a series of idiosyncratic reported posts that we’ll be featuring over the coming weeks and months. We hope that he will be the first of many of our neighborhood’s authors who choose to share their voices with The Local’s readers.

In other neighborhood news, we wanted to let you know that there is a town hall meeting Saturday afternoon to discuss the new rules on community gardens. The NYC Community Garden Coalition is hosting the meeting at the New School in Wollman Hall, 66 West 12th Street, fifth floor from noon to 4.

NYU Journalism’s Stephanie Butnick will attend the meeting and offer her report Monday. In the meantime, you can read more about the recently enacted rules here.

EVGrieve has a nice interview with sketch artist Terry Galmitz, whose new show “My East Village” opens this weekend. And if you think bedbugs are a big deal here in the East Village take a look at what they have to deal with up the road a piece.

Sarah Tung

We wanted to bring your attention to four features here on the site that we think can help you learn more about what’s happening in our community.

To find the first, just look up. There, on the blue bar at the top of the page, is a new heading “News River.” It opens directly onto an aggregator of links from the East Village blogosphere that was developed by Dave Winer, a visiting scholar at NYU Journalism.

We briefly mentioned a second addition earlier this week: a series of links that provide comprehensive real estate data about the East Village. You can find them if you scroll down the column along the right side of this page or by following these links.

• Market Snapshot Data
• Building Permits Data
• Sales Activity Data
• Building Directory Index

And directly below the real estate links in the right column is a special pull-down menu that provides test score information about public elementary and high schools that serve the East Village.

Below the schools data is the final feature that we’d like to bring to your attention: our pull-down menu of East Village restaurants drawn from data at The Times.

These are just a few more of the collaborative ways that we’re bringing value to the blogosphere through the talents of Mr. Winer and our colleagues at The Times.

Liquor licensing is the hot topic in the East Village, with some residents railing against the noise and violence that they say booze brings.

But cafe owners looking to put alcohol on their menus to make money said that applying for a license is a head-spinning process that often ends with them being painted as villains.

Take the Case of Table 12, the 24-hour diner on Avenue A and East 12th Street. On Sept. 20, the liquor authority committee for CB3, which represents the East Village, refused to recommend Table 12’s application to the State Liquor Authority to sell beer and wine. On Sept. 28, the full board upheld the committee’s decisions on a number of East Village liquor license applicants, including the denial of Table 12.

A brother of Table 12’s owner, who identified himself only as Tarik, said that the diner’s license application was submitted to help give patrons a “better dining experience” and also for the profit potential.

“It’s why the place is open for business,” he said. “A cafe is not open for non-profit.”
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Rachel Wise

Good morning, East Village.

There’s a piece in Capital today about Alicia Hurley, the NYU vice president charged with explaining the intricacies of the university’s hotly debated expansion plan to members of the community.

Seeing this piece prompts us to remind you all about our intention to cover news coming out of the university as fairly and as comprehensively as we can.

To that end, Kim Davis, our community editor whose work you might have already read on the site, will take a lead role in shaping our coverage of the university.

None of us is naïve about the nature of the debate about the university’s role in the community. This is an issue about which we at The Local have given a great deal of thought and planning and we certainly invite your comments and questions about how we intend to manage our relationship with the university.

It should also be noted that when The Local was being developed, one of the first steps that we took was contacting the university administration to inform them that we planned to vigorously exercise our independence as journalists. The university expressed no objection and has made no effort to influence the blog’s editorial content.

This blog is not the voice of the university – it is, as we’ve said from the outset, an experiment in journalistic collaboration, born of the efforts of faculty and students of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute who then reached out to The New York Times as a media partner.

We’ll talk more about this in the days and weeks to come but, again, we’d like to hear from you about this.

Meredith Hoffman Amy Ferrera, 5, enjoys a cupcake from the food pantry at Tompkins Square Park.

After a fire last November that destroyed their giant kitchen and drew national attention, Long Island-based Hope for the Future Ministries plans to begin serving hot meals again next month in Tompkins Square Park.

“We’ll have a grand reopening,” said Pastor Diane Dunn, who has been providing food and household items to people in the park for the past 22 years.

Since the fire, Pastor Dunn and her church have continued coming to the park on Wednesday evenings with groceries from the food bank, hot dogs and other donations from a neighboring restaurant. On Saturdays next month they will start serving full hot meals, everything from Salisbury steak to cake.

Over 200 people come each week to “the line,” in the park, with the seniors given priority to get their food first. But the faces on the “the line” have changed, she said.

“I’ve seen a change in the population who comes here—more middle class unemployed, who’ve run out of their unemployment,” Ms. Dunn said. “Numbers were down for a while and then when the recession hit—Boom! They increased.”
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Dan Nguyen

Good morning, East Village.

On Tuesday night, Community Board 3 voted overwhelmingly to pass a measure that would restrict the number of concerts using amplified sound at Tompkins Square to one day per weekend.

Although the proposal passed without debate, Susan Stetzer, the district manager of Community Board 3, told NYU Journalism’s Timothy J. Stenovec that she was surprised by the level of vitriol about the measure in the blogosphere.

Ms. Stetzer took particular exception to the characterization by one commenter on EVGrieve who described her as “a self-appointed sound-nazi.”

“You don’t call people Nazis,” Ms. Stetzer told Mr. Stenovec after the meeting.

Ms. Stetzer also denied that there was any political motivation behind the measure.

“No one’s against concerts, no one’s against any type of concerts, no one’s against political activity,” Ms. Stetzer told Mr. Stenovec. “All that’s asked is that certain concerts that are very loud, and we’re not saying which ones, just take it down a notch.”

In other neighborhood news, there are a lot of reads about the 67-year-old East Village man who was injured when an air conditioner fell from the sixth floor of a walk-up on Second Avenue. Check out The Post’s account here, EVGrieve’s here and the Daily News here.

There’s another fine read about an effort to feed the homeless in The Times. We’ll have a story later today by NYU Journalism’s Meredith Hoffman about another plan to help the homeless.

And here’s an interesting link from Guestofguest about one bar’s unusual attempt to connect with its neighbors.

Jenn Pelly Notices about the death of Ms. Wasserman, also known as Annie, were posted this weekend along East Fourth Street.

Annie is gone.

Gloria Wasserman, who sold newspapers at the Fulton Fish Market for decades and became a fixture in the East Village known and beloved as “Annie,” died last Wednesday morning at her daughter’s home in Los Angeles, friends and neighbors said. She was 85.

Notices about Ms. Wasserman’s death were posted on East Fourth Street over the weekend by the Cooper Square Mutual Housing Association. It was on East Fourth Street, especially outside the Eastville Comedy Club, near Second Avenue, where Ms. Wasserman could usually be found holding court in recent years, uttering what became known as her catchphrase — “Leave ‘em laughing.”

Ms. Wasserman was best known for her work at the Fulton Fish Market where she spent 35 years selling newspapers and cigarettes and earning the nickname “South Street Annie.”
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Rachel Wise

Good morning, East Village.

The State Liquor Authority Committee and Department of Consumer Affairs Licensing Committee for Community Board 3 met for three hours Monday night and the discussion centered on two of the neighborhood’s hot-button issues: the granting of liquor licenses and noise complaints.

NYU Journalism’s Molly O’Toole reports that many of the roughly 30 people who attended the meeting asked committee members about whether more restrictions should be placed on provisions for transferring liquor licenses from one business to another.

Currently, the holders of liquor licenses may sell them like any other asset. And Ms. O’Toole reports that Susan Stetzer, the district manager of Community Board 3, said that landlords — and previous owners — are using the lure of those licenses to demand high selling prices and higher rent for incoming tenants who want to open businesses that sell alcohol. Under the current rules, new tenants in that situation can immediately acquire a temporary license and begin operating.

“Transfers is the single issue that has this committee and our community in its vice grips,” one resident said, noting the public opposition last week to the granting of a license to Table 12, a diner on Avenue A.

Ms. O’Toole also reports that some residents believe that the high volume of noise complaints in the neighborhood — 2,324 complaints have been called in to the 311 hotline for city services as of June, the most from any community board district in the city – may be partly attributed to the city’s smoking ban in restaurants. Smokers, who go outside to light up, are sometimes the source of noise complaints.

“The community is paying for what Bloomberg should have thought out,” said David Mulkins, a frequent critic of licensing rules who lives on East Fifth Street near Second Avenue. Mr. Mulkins directed his ire at Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who recently proposed broadening the smoking ban.

Peter Bradley, another resident of East Fifth, expressed frustration that not enough was being done to address the concerns of community members.

“We’re like a dog with no teeth,” said Mr. Bradley. “We bark a lot, but not much seems to change.”

We’d also like to remind you that residents will have another chance to be heard when Community Board 3 holds a full board meeting tonight at 6:30 at P.S. 20, 166 Essex Street (between East Houston and Stanton Streets). Besides issues related to alcohol, EV Grieve notes that the board may also consider a measure to limit the number of concerts in Tompkins Square Park.

Stephen Harausz Christopher Thomasson enjoys a smoke in Tompkins Square Park.

Smokers in the East Village have gotten used to being a drag on society. They cried tyranny eight years ago, when the Health Department banished them from bars and restaurants. They vowed to quit when recent taxes pushed the price of a pack near $15. Now City Hall wants to ban them from parks, beaches, boardwalks and pedestrian plazas.

So how does the proposal strike denizens of Tompkins Square, the only major park in the neighborhood? Judging from a random Sunday afternoon sampling of smokers and non-smokers, the diverse crowd has its reservations.
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Rachel Wise

Hello, East Village.

We begin this morning with a look back.

On Friday, we wrote about the neighborhood’s history as a former enclave for German immigrants. One reader, Steve, reminds us that we would be remiss if we did not acknowledge one of the saddest chapters in neighborhood history – the fire aboard the General Slocum ferry, which killed more than 1,000 people on June 15, 1904.

The disaster, which was the deadliest in New York City until 9/11, is a well-known and heart-breaking part of neighborhood lore: members of St. Mark’s Lutheran Church boarded the steamship for a run up the East River to a church outing. A fire broke out. Many of the victims, particularly women and children, did not know how to swim. And many of the life jackets and lifeboats were ineffective.

Days after the blaze, The New York Tribune reported on the first bulletins it received about the fire. “The steamer General Slocum, carrying a Sunday school excursion from the East Side, is on fire in the East River opposite One-hundred-and-thirty-eighth-st. Women and children are jumping into the water, some with their clothing on fire.”

Sophie Hoeller The memorial to the victims of the General Slocum disaster in Tompkins Square Park.

Although determining the precise number of the dead proved elusive, it is generally agreed that 1,021 of the 1,342 of those aboard perished. A memorial to those who were lost stands in Tompkins Square Park.

In 2004, the last survivor of the disaster, 100-year-old Adella Wotherspoon, died at a New Jersey convalescent home. Mrs. Wotherspoon offered her own explanation for why the General Slocum might not be as widely remembered as other maritime disasters such as the sinking of the The Titanic, in which about 1,500 died. “The Titanic had a great many famous people on it,” she said. ”This was just a family picnic.”

In the East Village, though, the General Slocum will always sadly be remembered as so much more.
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The Department of Parks and Recreation last week finalized its Community Garden Rules amid growing tumult at gardens in the East Village and across the city. But despite the department’s publicized goal of addressing community concerns over the long-term preservation of the green spaces, the new rules have left some gardeners and activists continuing to pick bones, not flowers.

What do you think about the new rules for community gardens?

Steven Hirsch Pete Hamill at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.

Earlier today, we mentioned how grateful we are for the strong turn-out at NYU Journalism Thursday night for a talk by Pete Hamill titled, “Down the Block.”

We’re now happy to be able to make available a complete video of Mr. Hamill’s remarks here.
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