DNA Info, EV Grieve, and Runnin’ Scared have more on the temporary closing of Billy’s Antiques. Billy Leroy tells Runnin’ Scared, “Everyone’s like, ‘Oh my God, the tent is closing! Sniff, sniff.’ But try sitting in here in winter. The conditions are rough, and I think it will be nice to have heat, maybe air conditioning. But will it be a tent with everything splattered on the sidewalk? No.”
According to the Wall Street Journal, Foursquare has outgrown its office at 36 Cooper Square and has signed a 10-year deal at 568 Broadway near Prince Street.
According to the Lo-Down, times are tough at the flea market behind the struggling Mary Help of Christian’s Church. One vendor used to make $300 to $350 per weekend, but “today, she said, she is lucky if she reaches $100. Add the $80 it costs to rent her table and the $5 to $10 in equipment storage fees, and she is essentially breaking even.”
A couple of changes on First Avenue: Yesterday, The Local spotted new signage (above) indicating that the former Quantum Leap space will become a Vietnamese restaurant, Sao Mai. Today, EV Grieve notices that Kebab Garden, near St. Marks Place, is becoming Mediterranean Grill.
Last night, members of the Cooper Square Committee attended a party celebrating the rent reduction at the St. Mark’s Bookshop. According to DNA Info, the Committee has now turned its attention to the possibility of tuition at Cooper Union: “[Joyce] Ravitz and others from the committee met with the university’s president Jamshed Bharucha last Monday to talk about the tuition proposal. Among other ideas, Bharucha discussed making tuition free only to those with no means to pay for an education, according to Ravitz.”
City Room has more on the lawsuit that Bikram Yoga NYC filed against Yoga to the People, including a copy of the lawsuit itself. “We sent an investigator to take the classes,” says Bikram Choudhury’s lawyer. “The classes were virtually mirror images and the dialogue was consistently the same.” Read more…
Stephen Rex BrownWork 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…
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…
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”
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.
In case you missed it, The Local reported late last night that the police announced the arrest of a man suspected of attacking a woman in her First Avenue apartment building Sunday morning. 35-year-old Imre Meszesan of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn has been charged with burglary and attempted rape.
The Daily News reports that Ai Weiwei, the artist known partly for his photographs of the East Village in the 1980s, has deposited $1.3 million into a Chinese government account while he contests charges that his design firm (which he says does not own) owes $2.4 million in back taxes. Read more…
Three months after Occupy Wall Street started to take hold, in part after a planning meeting in Tompkins Square Park, the N.Y.P.D. began clearing Zuccotti Park of protesters and their property around 1 a.m. this morning. The Times reports that 70 protesters, some of whom had chained themselves together, were arrested for defying orders to leave the park. Gothamist had updates throughout the night, and linked to an Observer report that Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez was arrested (according to the press secretary of Councilman Jumaane Williams, he was bleeding when he was taken away). The Post reported that at least one police officer was injured: “He was seen being taken out of Zuccotti Park on a stretcher, his eyes closed and with several lacerations on his face.”
Mayor Bloomberg explained in a statement that he and the park’s owner, Brookfield Properties, felt the encampment was “coming to pose a health and fire safety hazard to the protestors and to the surrounding community.” His complete statement is reprinted on City Room, which also posted a photo of Zuccotti Park at 7:22 a.m., completely cleared of protesters. Read more…
The police have released surveillance camera footage, posted by NBC New York, of their suspect in an attempted rape. The Local reported yesterday that around 3:20 a.m., a man pretending to have a gun pushed a woman to the ground in the stairwell of her First Avenue apartment building.
If you enjoyed last week’s story about the return of a stolen bicycle, you’ll love this one: Gothamist points to a post by Jayson Elliot, who noticed a man suspiciously walking a $3,094 bicycle out of a Soho bike store. Mr. Elliot followed the man to Pinche Taqueria, where he says he saw the bike being sold to a delivery boy, and then to a secondhand clothing store on East 10th Street, where he got the police to arrest the suspect.
You may be seeing more gun-toting nuns on the subway: The Post reports that the N.Y.P.D. is upping the number of decoy officers on trains after a 16 percent increase in thefts. Read more…
Suzanne RozdebaFree samples outside of NY Tofu House during its first night.
Good morning, East Village.
Why was it so easy for Edward Minskoff to secure a $160 million construction loan for his futuristic office building at 51 Astor, despite not having a single tenant? Mark Edelstein, the chair of Morrison & Foerster’s Global Real Estate Finance Group, explains to Globe St. that “it is adjacent to Cooper Union, mass transit hubs and NYU. It’s a funky area. Edward Minskoff has an amazing knack of finding locations ahead of its time and being extremely successful.”
The Post and DNA Info report that John Martinez, an ex-con who robbed women with an ice pick in Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town, will likely have his sentence reduced by two years, to 18 years, since he returned an engagement ring to one of his victims.
Meanwhile, more on the outcry over the ice skating rink that’s coming to the Stuy Town. A Website advertising the rink promises that it will be solely for tenants and their guests, but Stuy Town Living writes that “these events are often attended by the public and a growing base of tenants feel they are for the public, a dog and pony show to attract new tenants with seemingly little regard for the current tenants.” Read more…
Michael Sean EdwardsOutside of Life Cafe earlier this year.
Good morning, East Village.
Addressing accusations that Cooper Union hasn’t been forthcoming enough about its financial troubles until now, the school’s former president George Campbell Jr. tells The Times that the current administration is perhaps being too forthcoming about the possibility that it will begin charging tuition. He says, “Frankly, I think it’s a mistake to have this discussion now in the public domain, before doing all the hard work to see whether there are viable alternatives.”
The Times reviews a production of “King Lear,” starring Sam Waterston and directed by James Macdonald, that opened at the Public Theater on Tuesday. Bill Irwin delivers “an enlightening new interpretation of a well-worn character.”
Though some were all atwitter about Veselka’s Bowery’s newcocktails last night, the restaurant itself tweets that it will open for dinner tonight, with extended hours to come. And look: Menupages has the menu! The Local first took you inside Veselka Bowery, where Michael Sullivan is chef, in August.
The Observer hears that Edward J. Minskoff Equities has secured a loan from Bank of America valued between $165 and $200 million, for construction of its office tower at 51 Astor Place. The Observer paraphrases Mr. Minskoff as saying the building “promises to be among the most technologically advanced buildings erected in Manhattan in the past decade.”
The Villager discovers that Mike Falsetta, a friend of Bob Arihood, has taken control of the photographer’s two blogs along with Mr. Arihood’s brother: “As for Arihood’s voluminous photo archives of East Village street life, Falsetta said the hope is to give it to someplace where it will be publicly accessible, such as the New York Public Library. There are also plans in the works for a photo show sometime next year.” Read more…
Yesterday when The Times reported that Cooper Union agreed to give St. Mark’s Bookshop a rent reduction of $2,500 per month, we mentioned that Manhattan Borough President Scott M. Stringer promised a formal announcement at 11 a.m. today. Now a press release from Mr. Stringer’s office informs that he’ll be doing so at the Bookshop along with Cooper Union’s president, Jamshed Bharucha, and the store’s co-owners.
According to the Post, a woman got a photo of the man who she said groped her on the subway platform at Union Square. “He went on the train and sat down as if nothing happened. I was hysterical. I yelled that he just groped me. I literally started punching him in the head,” City College senior Shyane DeJesus tells the paper.
The Huffington Post has a great interview with Billy Leroy of Billy’s Antiques, who tells a classic “Bowery story” about the time he bought a preserved tiger from a drunk man for $1,200 and turned around and sold it to the Museum of Natural History for $16,000. He says that the “old New York” is dwindling and becoming a gated community. “We have a sense of pride because we’re holding on,” he says of his antiques and oddities tent on Houston Street. “We’re the old New York. We’re really holding on by our fingernails.” Read more…
How ’bout a little trance music to start your day? Sutra, a thriving destination for old-school hip-hop, sent over the above video celebrating its seven years on First Avenue, along with a flyer stating, “Back in 2004 when Sutra first opened its doors it was publicly accused of being the ‘#1 loudest bar in New York’ and it hasn’t quieted down since.”
Meanwhile MyBlockNYC has far less groovy video, picked up by Gothamist and Huffington Post yesterday, of an officer macing an angry group crowding a police car on Avenue A on Halloween night. One member of the group is eventually tackled.
Robert Christgau profiles Jeffrey Lewis, an anti-folk singer-songwriter who grew up in the East Village and is described as “the lifetime bohemian as likable supernerd, neurotic and vulnerable in a rather universal way.” His latest song, which you can listen to on N.P.R.’s site, is “a dystopian yet tongue-in-cheek reflection on consumerism, evolution, mortality and the tiny place of life itself in the cosmos.” Read more…
Alexander Kok10th Street and First Avenue on Saturday.
The Times interviews the mother of Pvt. Danny Chen in her East Village apartment. The soldier, whose death in Afghanistan is still under investigation, was “a child of Chinatown who, amid self-doubt about his physical abilities, strived to succeed in the military.”
Last week it was reported that 68-70 Second Avenue, also known as 86 East Fourth Street, went for $8.7 million. Now a tenant tells EV Grieve that “the new owner and management are declining to offer new leases as current tenant leases expire.” Also according to a banner spotted by an Grieve reader, a complex of full-floor lofts is coming to 222 Seventh Street near Avenue C.
The Bowery, which already boasts Hair Date and (at Cooper Square) Hair Mates, has a new tenant: Takamichi Hair is moving from 35 Great Jones, into a space at 263 Bowery that, per a press release sent to Bowery Boogie, “has the feel of a chic, modern, art-collector’s home.” Read more…
Jamie LarsonYesterday, Cooper Union students tried to run a string from the school’s newest building to its oldest building across the street, but their plans were disrupted. This was the scene shortly after a bus drove into the string and brought it down.
After yesterday’s disappointing developments, Jeremiah’s Vanishing wants to send Cooper Union a message: It has launched a petition stating, “If St. Mark’s Bookshop is forced to close due to Cooper Union’s high rent, we will boycott any business that moves into its space at 31 Third Avenue in New York City.” As of this writing, the petition had garnered more than half of its desired 50 signatures.
Per an obituary in The Times, Swami Bhaktipada, a controversial ex-leader of the American Hare Krishna movement, has died near Mumbai at the age of 74. A Times article from 2004 tells more: “Mr. Bhaktipada was one of the first American followers of A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, an Indian holy man who opened a temple in the East Village in 1965. His organization, the International Society of Krishna Consciousness, was seen by young members of the counterculture as a thrilling novelty. Known as Hare Krishnas, his followers were famous for dancing around Tompkins Square Park in saffron robes, beating drums and chanting.”
The Post reports that a man was arrested after posing as a realtor and getting a woman to hand over $3,500 for the key to an East Sixth Street apartment. Problem was, the apartment was occupied and the key didn’t work.
Yes, that’s a mummy on Avenue B. The Local spotted it on a balcony at 295 East Eighth Street. Meanwhile in the park, there was some “blood wrestling” this weekend. Grieve and Melanie have photos.
EV Grieve spots signage indicating that two bars have been temporarily closed by the NYPD for “illegal sale of alcoholic beverages.” A photo on Neighborhoodr indicates Krystal Cafe met the same fate. Meanwhile the Mermaid Inn is taking some voluntary time off to renovate.
According to a review in The Times of “A Felony in Blue, or Death by Poker,” the new play by Daniel Gallant, the executive director of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, serves as a good excuse to gather some of the cafe’s founding members, including Lois Elaine Griffith and Rome Neal. Read more…
The Fine Fare on Fourth Street near Avenue C has agreed to fence off the recycling center that neighbors have complained about, but that isn’t good enough for one resident, who tells DNA Info that the fence is a potential eyesore. 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 »
Brendan Bernhard
Abe Lincoln’s Jr.’s sidewalk art; Artist Alley at Extra Place.
