Joel ZimmerThe Police Department just confirmed that Officer Nicholas A. Mina is the man investigators believe is behind the missing guns from the Ninth Precinct. He was arrested last night. The Post has the exclusive on the details. In April Mr. Mina, 31, was assigned to guard the locker room where the guns were stored following the initial thefts, and dared to swipe another gun, according to the paper’s sources. Mr. Mina and three civilians allegedly sold the guns on the street. “To rob a gun that could be used against a fellow cop someday. There’s nothing lower,” a source tells the paper.
The Times has a dispatch from Whiskers Holistic Pet Care. “Whiskers may be the pet world’s closest approximation of the Park Slope Food Co-op.” Sure, but do they carry pet care products from Israel? And the store has more good publicity on the way: Chico is planning to do a mural dedicated to Whiskers on the old Nice Guy Eddie’s wall.
The developer behind Bushwick’s Third Ward just put his NoHo penthouse on the market for $8.95 million, The Real Deal reports. Read more…
Jamie K. A shot from the D Generation show at Bowery Electric last weekend.Gothamist has the scoop of the summer (if you have money to burn): The one-of-a-kind timeshare backyard on Ludlow Street is back for a second season. Love partying outdoors, but can’t stand rubbing elbows with the hoi polloi in Tompkins or along the East River? For a mere $100 you and 30 friends can party in an authentic backyard in the Lower East Side. Added bonus: “BBQ grill, picnic benches, loungers, sun umbrellas, coolers, and a bathroom on site.” Believe it or not, reservations are being sold.
By the way, for free fun, The Fantastic Mr. Fox is screening tonight at sundown in Tompkins Square Park. Live music will kick off a half-hour prior.
EV Grieve notes that the conversion of the Cabrini Center For Nursing & Rehabilitation to a residential building is underway. A commenter on one of The Local’s previous stories on the shuttered nursing home left a stern words for the building’s new owner, Ben Shaoul, just last night: “I wish him the misery he has forced onto many elderly men and women who called the Cabrini House their home.”
Read more…
Scott Lynch Good morning, East Village.
The organizers of the CBGB Festival are putting all that attention they got to good use: A Twitter war with Dial 7 car service. Bowery Boogie got the full story on the salty tweets that encourage followers to retweet the anti-Dial 7 message to get a free poster from the festival.
EV Grieve has a picture of an old lady trying to cross the Bowery at East Fourth Street that pretty much says it all. The short countdown clocks, he writes, simply do not give slow pedestrians enough time to cross the street. “She started moving the moment the ‘walk’ sign started flashing. And she wasn’t dawdling. The woman simply didn’t have enough time to cross a treacherous intersection.” The intersection of Bowery and Houston Street was targeted for safety improvements recently. Might the Department of Transportation give this intersection four blocks north a look as well?
The Cooper Square Committee sends word about an important public hearing on SPURA before the City Planning Commission beginning today at 10 a.m. on the sixth floor of 22 Reade Street. The Lo-Down has more information.
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Philip Kalantzis-Cope Good morning, East Village.
DNAInfo chats with the new chairwoman of Community Board 3, Gigi Li. The 30-year-old, who was born in Hong Kong, grew up in Long Island and moved to Chinatown in 2009, tells the Web site she plans to continue the board’s focus on retail diversity. One initiative she’s considering: a way for the board to oppose the combination of multiple storefronts into one larger store.
Kyle Brincefield, the owner of the fashion line Studmuffin NYC, tells Racked that one of his favorite thrift stores is Search & Destroy on St. Marks Place. “From heavily studded jackets and vests to brightly colored lucha libre masks, S&D quickly became my go-to spot for a hot piece in a pinch.”
New York Magazine has its annual cheap eats list, and Mile End and Bobwhite earn mentions. A roundup of the “cheap eat of the year,” the steamed bun, features plenty of familiar local spots, as well.
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Scott Lynch The artist Aiko at work on the famed wall at Houston and Bowery.Good morning East Village.
The Times followed up with more details on the alleged attack by Harley Flanagan on his ex-bandmates in the Cro-Mags. Turns out the conflict has been brewing for years. “This dude has been a negative thorn in the side of this band forever,” said John Joseph, the band’s lead singer. “I hope he gets what’s coming to him.”
The brawl didn’t mar the larger CBGB Festival, however. (In fact, maybe it lent it a little punk authenticity?) In a review of the weekend-long series of shows, The Times’ Jon Pareles writes, “The festival also preserved the CBGB legacy on Thursday and Friday nights by extending into dozens of clubs, large and small, where even newer bands were playing for fellow musicians and for the curious — hoping, perhaps, for an early glimpse of the kind of paradigm-shifting music once nurtured at CBGB.”
Occupy East 4th Street details a pair of tense encounters with brokers. “They were rude and refused to identify themselves, so I refused them entry.”
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Phillip Kalantzis-Cope Good morning, East Village.
Bob Holman, owner of the Bowery Poetry Club, tells EV Grieve that rumors that the site has posted about the club are “greatly exaggerated”: “By spending the summer renovating and working out a partnership with a restaurant (rumors of Duane Park as our collaborators are sweet and the two entities surely do share a love for the populist arts of the Bowery, but nothing is signed yet folks), we hope to reopen come fall and be SUSTAINABLE with a neighborhood (Loisaida/Earth) focused poetry schedule, utilizing other neighborhood resources as well as the Club.”
The Post has more details about the shooting of a police officer in the Seward Park Houses.
The Wall Street Journal visits the set of the CBGB movie in Savannah, Ga. And Sound of the City has photos from the shoot. Meanwhile, The Observer recommends five CBGB Festival events not to miss, including a panel discussion about “Tales from the Club,” and ArtsBeat has the lineup for the free show in Times Square. Read more…
Scott Lynch East River ParkGood morning, East Village.
And congrats to the neighborhood’s own Tim “Eater X” Janus, who placed second in the Nathan’s Famous International Hot Dog Eating Contest, downing 52.25 dogs in 10 minutes. His roommate Crazy Legs Conti ate 20. Meanwhile at the Crif Dog Classic, Takeru Kobayashi downed 68.5 dogs, which would’ve edged out Joey Chestnut’s 68 had he been competing in the Coney Island contest.
The Daily News and The Lo-Down report that a police officer was shot during a confrontation in the Seward Houses. He was saved by his bulletproof vest and the suspect is at large.
The Daily News spotted Katie Holmes with daughters Suri at Sundaes and Cones on Tuesday. Read more…
Scott Lynch Good morning, East Village.
According to Crain’s, St. Mark’s Bookshop is looking to move on despite its recent rent break. The embattled bookstore “is hoping to move out of its current home when its rent goes up toward the end of this year.” Co-owner Bob Contant says, “We’d like to stay in the East Village. We understand the print book business has declined, but we’re still doing enough business to keep going, if we had a smaller space with less rent.”
Fear not: even if the Bookshop moves, we’ve still got The Readery! Billy Farrell Agency posts some shots from the party at the Standard East Village for the hotel’s new book nook. Socialites like Tinsley Mortimer, Kristian Laliberte, and others were in attendance.
The Lo-Down takes a nice long look at the issue of chain stores in the Lower East Side, and Meghan Joye, co-chair of the Community Board 3’s economic development committee gives some indication of what the board is thinking as far as the rezoning measures they’ve discussed. She “said most members of the panel are uneasy about using zoning to limit national chain stores. A better solution, she suggested, might be taking some inspiration from those Seward Park residents. A first step would be conducting a large-scale community survey to find out what types of stores people need and want.”
Clayton Patterson tells Animal he regrets the time he drove a gunshot victim to the hospital and failed to photograph his wound. “So I look back at Tony… It’s about the size of my little finger, this burnt hole — like a cigarette burn in a white sweater, white acrylic sweater. I thought, “Ohhhh, I should take a photograph.” And I just never did it.”
Mary Reinholz Good morning, East Village.
Above, workers who were locked out by Con Edison picketed outside of company headquarters at 4 Irving Place this morning. The Times reported that “the workers, members of the utility’s largest union, were locked out after their contract expired at 12:01 a.m. Sunday, and talks broke down less than two hours later. About 5,000 managers, including some former union members, will step in to keep the utility running, Con Ed said.”
A cab trying to avoid a biker plowed into the cyclist and then through the window of a Staples at East Eighth Street and Broadway yesterday: ABC 7 Eyewitness News has footage of the damage. Eight were injured.
Meanwhile on 16th Street and Avenue C another cab driver was stabbed by a man who was upset that the cabbie cut him off. “He stabbed me in my right side four to five times and he stabbed me in my shoulder,” Etzer Jerome tells CBS New York. Read more…
Scott Lynch Good morning, East Village.
The folks at N.Y.U. Faculty Against the Sexton Plan send word that actor Matthew Broderick will testify at today’s City Council meeting regarding the school’s expansion plans. He’s described as “a Village resident and a staunch opponent of the plan.” We’ll have coverage of the meeting as news develops.
The Villager reports that Davawn Robinson, who was accused of strangling a man to death during the course of a robbery in the man’s East Village apartment (the defendant said the strangling was consensual and occurred during sex) has been convicted of second-degree manslaughter.
The Villager also reports that St. Emeric’s Church will close and its parish will be merged into that of the new St. Brigid. Father Lorenzo Ato, who will be the priest of the new parish, says there’s “no decision yet on the disposition of the St. Emeric’s church building or the two-story parochial school built in 1952 next door on E. 12th St. and Avenue D. ‘The first preference is always to see if another Catholic agency wants it,’ Zwilling said.” Read more…
Joel Raskin Good morning, East Village.
Photographer Joel Raskin got this shot of a mural on East 10th Street and Avenue C. In the caption of the photo he posted to The Local’s Flickr group, he writes, “I saw Chico working on this from the bus either late last week or early this week.”
Bowery Boogie heard from “sources” that the Ace Hotel was headed for the Jarmulowsky Bank building at 54 Canal Street, but The Lo-Down batted down the rumor before it could cause any more of a stir: “Today a source with knowledge of the Jarmulowsky project tells The Lo-Down that the creative team consists solely of Ron Castellano, the developer of The Forward Building, and Taavo Somer, who’s behind Lower East Side restaurants Freemans and Peels.”
Capital New York takes a look at what Erik Dilan’s loss to Nydia Velazquez means for Brooklyn’s county chairman Vito Lopez. “Dilan’s poor showing could throw a wrench into the Lopez’s reported plan to challenge Velazquez over the course of two cycles. The first was supposed to weaken Velazquez and put her on the ropes for an even tougher fight in 2014.” Read more…
Stephen Rex Brown Good morning, East Village.
Nydia Velazquez beat out her opponents in the Democratic primary, according to DNA Info, The Lo-Down, and Runnin’ Scared. “With 97 percent of the districts reporting, Velazquez had a commanding lead with 58 percent of the vote, compared to City Councilman Erik Martin Dilan’s 31 percent,” reports DNA Info. “The other two challengers, Dan O’Connor and George Martinez, received just 8 and 3 percent of the vote respectively.”
The Lo-Down reported from yesterday’s Community Board 3 meeting, where a bar that the owners of B-Side are planning for 221 East Broadway received more scrutiny. The board eventually voted to support its liquor license application after it agreed to close its windows at 9 p.m.
East Village Corner spots some workers fixing the sinkhole on East Seventh Street. Read more…
Daniel MaurerGood morning, East Village.
It’s Primary Day and Nydia Velazquez got a last-minute boost from Comptroller John Liu, Politicker reports. As mentioned yesterday in our profile of challenger Erik M. Dilan, you can find your nearest polling location here. Polls are open till 9 p.m.
Those who were nervous about potential cuts to after-school programs can breathe easy. The Times reports that Mayor Bloomberg and the City Council have passed a budget that does not include layoffs, and Gotham Schools points out that “instead of losing 6,500 child-care spots and 30,000 after-school spots, the city will actually have more spots next year than this year.”
DNA Info reports that Community Board 2 has named a new chair after Brad Hoylman stepped down to start his campaign for State Senate. 36-year Villager David Gruber “has served as chair of CB2’s committee on land use and business development and its working groups on the NYU expansion and Hudson Square rezoning.” Read more…
Ria ChungGood morning, East Village.
The Post reports that a man is wanted for two robberies in the Bleecker Street subway station (one with a butter knife) and one in an East Third Street vestibule last month.
The fate of Jerry Delakas’s newsstand remains uncertain, but according to The Post, the Department of Consumer Affairs has reversed its decision about a 35-year-old Bowery newsstand and is giving the owner a brand-new stand that’s two feet farther from the curb.
The NoHo Bowery Stakeholders has released a guide that “lists the location, phone and website of every art gallery, interior design merchant, theater/performance venue, fashion designer/boutique, food and beverage purveyor, institution or landmark in NoHo,” according to NoHo News. Read more…
Scott Lynch Good morning, East Village.
Above, Scott Lynch got a shot of Malcolm D. MacDougall III’s “Microscopic Landscape 2010,” a 24-foot long, 7,500-pound sculpture that “finds its inspiration in the multi-faceted structures and activities seen on the molecular level,” according to a press release. It will be on display in Union Square’s Triangle Park through January 2013.
The folks at the CBGB Festival send word that they’ve finalized the lineup for their summer festival, and tickets for film screenings go on sale Monday. Among the 300 bands playing are Agnostic Front, Fishbone, Superchunk, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, JD Samson & MEN, MXPX, Reggie Watts, The Dirty Pearls, LA Guns, David Johansen, Guided By Voices, Pains Of Being Pure at Heart, Cloud Nothings, War on Drugs, The Virgins, D Generation, and The Cro-Mags. More info here.
DNA Info reports that at a heavily protested meeting at Cooper Union yesterday, the city’s Rent Guidelines Board voted to increase rents by 2 percent or $20 (whichever is higher) for one-year leases and 4 percent or $40 (whichever is higher) for two-year leases. The Post points out that the increases were the lowest in a decade. Read more…
Scott Lynch Good morning, East Village.
With the primaries on Tuesday, the race between Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez and City Councilman Erik Martin Dilan is heating up, according to the Times: “Ms. Velázquez and Mr. Dilan plan to debate on NY1 on Friday, but they are already sparring. They have traded barbs over which one has more effectively delivered money to local projects. And Mr. Dilan accused Ms. Velázquez of inadequately supporting Israel, prompting her to bring forth a torrent of endorsements featuring Jewish Democrats, including former Mayor Edward I. Koch.”
Meanwhile, The Post endorses Ms. Velázquez for reelection: “Frankly, we’d be hard pressed to come up with even a scanty list of issues on which Velázquez agrees with us. But anyone who gives Vito Lopez (Brooklyn political boss who’s backing Velázquez’s opponent) that much agita can’t be all bad.”
Dangerous Minds reminds us that the Philip Glass Ensemble is playing a free concert in Battery Park tonight. Capital New York is very excited. Read more…
Daniel Maurer Good morning, East Village.
As expected, “Boardwalk Empire” has started shooting inside of Mary Help of Christians Church. Above, at left: a man in 1920s attire checks his cell phone.
Anthony Planakis, the officer who was called to control that swarm of bees on the Bowery tells The Times he’s been quite busy lately. “Since mid-March, he said, he has tended to 31 jobs in the five boroughs, more than twice the number he handled last season, which is normally mid-April through July.”
The Times reports that Adrian Benape, the parks commissioner who “got his start as a teenager cleaning locker rooms at a city pool in the East Village and picking up litter in East River Park, and ended up overseeing the most ambitious program of building and refurbishing New York City’s parks since the era of Robert Moses,” is leaving the department. Read more…
Ria Chung Good morning, East Village.
The shooting at the Riis Houses wasn’t the only bit of weekend news.
As The Local reported four days ago, “Boardwalk Empire” is filming in the neighborhood tomorrow. We spotted a pulpit being loaded into Mary Help of Christians church earlier this morning.
Speaking of churches, Neighborhoodr points to a Slavs of New York post about St. Mary’s Byzantine Catholic church, “one of the most unusual religious buildings in Manhattan.”
And speaking of “Boardwalk Empire,” Gothamist notes that at the annual benefit for Anthology Film Archives tonight, a $25 raffle tickets gets you the chance to attend a film shoot for the show. Read more…
Good afternoon, East Village.
N.Y.U. Faculty Against the Sexton Plan tells The Local that on June 18 at the York Theater Workshop, Rev. Billy, E.L. Doctorow, David Amram, and others will perform at a fundraiser to fight NYU’s expansion. RSVP to nyu.fasp@gmail.com and pay $200 or whatever you can afford at the door.
Speaking of fundraisers, Neighborhoodr reminds us about a fundraiser for the Neighborhood School at Beauty and Essex that will allow attendees to “feel like a glamorous jet-setter instead of a tired ol’ parent” thanks in part to “FREE CHAMPAGNE IN THE BATHROOM!”, per the invite.
East Village Arts announces some of the raffle items that will be given away at Fourth Arts Block’s fundraiser at The Standard East Village (including tickets to Cirque du Soleil and The Daily Show) and also touts an upcoming performance at Duo: “Confessions of a Cuban Sex Addict” is a theatrical installation involving “actors, video, and smoke” by Michelango Alasa.
DNA Info writes about a new iPhone app that doubles as a theater performance and, according to its creator, is “is part scavenger hunt, part love story, part walking tour” of the Lower East Side.
Gathering of the Tribes announces that “Brain Melt, which opens tomorrow, will be “a rare glimpse into the secret worlds within the heads” of artists from Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Oakland.
Read more…
Scott LynchGood morning, East Village.
The Observer notes that Bret Easton Ellis’s apartment in the American Felt Building on East 12th Street (which has also been known to play host to Katie Holmes) is for rent. If you’ve got five grand a month to spare, there’s an open house Friday and Sunday.
DNA Info reports that Odetta Hartman, the daughter of Two Boots founder Phil Hartman, has recorded songs influenced in part by her time growing up with the pizza parlor, which she describes as “a gathering place where everyone could listen to music and eat funky food.” Ms. Hartman recently filmed a music video outside of her family home in the East Village, but admitted of the neighborhood, “It is not feasible for me to be here financially.”
East Village Arts raves about East Village Dance Project’s annual concert, featuring 10 performances by dancers ranging in age from four to 18. One ocean-inspired dance was set to the Talking Heads’ “Same As It Ever Was.”
Joonbug rounds up some cheap eats around St. Marks Place, including Mamouns and X’ian Famous Foods.
Chekmark Eats likes what it tastes at macrobiotic standby Souen: “You could eat here every night probably get something different with all the different combinations and still love it. Souen is your girl when you want reliable, feel-good ingredients.”
And a couple of religious moments: City by Cell posts a photo of some wooden Jesuses, and East Village Corner snaps a photo of a “Madonna” in Tompkins Square Park.
