East Village Thai reopened Monday for the first time since a gas leak forced it to close in late September.

Paul Euiud put his restaurant’s losses at around $10,000, but said, “We’re just happy to be open.” He added that his landlord hadn’t yet offered to discount his rent, but he intended to negotiate with them.

Joann Pan Signs on the shutter last month.

The tiny takeout joint was shuttered for two months while leaky gas pipes at 32 East Seventh Street were repaired. Residents had to cook with hot plates until the gas was turned back on last Wednesday.

There was little fanfare when East Village Thai reopened four days later, but customers were glad to have it back. Before it closed, Jake Lee, a fifth-year architecture student at Cooper Union, got takeout once or twice a week. “This is definitely a regular lunch spot. We’re all happy that it’s back,” he said of his fellow students. “This is always good variety and good food.”

This holiday season, support local artisans with gifts that are made right here in the East Village.

1. Feature Articles Stamp & Colorin’ Zine by Keat, $35
Casey Rubber Stamps
322 East 11th Street, between First and Second Avenues
Keat Teoh, an artist who works at Casey Rubber Stamps, designed and produced this set of facial-features stamps and coloring book with blank faces.

2. Spike Chain Bracelet by Nishi, $315
Duo
337 East Ninth Street, between First and Second Avenues
Duo is a boutique owned by sisters Wendy and LaRae Kangas. They stock young, emerging designers such as East Village based Joanna Bengo of Nishi.

3. Large Briefbag 2 Lock, $500
Village Tannery
7 Great Jones Street, between Broadway and Lafayette Street
Leather goods are handmade onsite at this tannery, where clients can custom design their own bags to their specifications.
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Scott Lynch Smoker delivery at the incoming Mighty Quinn’s.

Good morning, East Village.

“A pill-popping dirty cop was sentenced yesterday to 15 years in prison for stealing guns from his East Village station house and selling them to his drug dealer.” [NY Post]

“The Exxon Mobil station on 2nd Street and Avenue C became an impromptu movie theater last night, as a coalition of climate-change activists projected a short film about Hurricane Sandy recovery onto the wall above it.” [Runnin Scared]

The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation gives us a head’s up about a special event involving “a film screening of ‘Get Crazy’ (1983), a panel discussion moderated by Jesse Kornbluth about the Fillmore East and East Village 1960s-70s music scene with Joshua White (creator of the Joshua Light Show) among others, and an after party at Velseka Bowery.” [GVSHP]
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Time for some more fun at the run. Here’s this week’s Dog-Run Duo.

Nicole Guzzardi

Nicole Guzzardi Flipping out.

The Master: David Phillips-Grant, 45, an East Villager and owner of the Seahorse Tavern on the Upper East Side, takes his pooch to the park twice a day.

The Dog: Faye Raye, an eight-year-old “Muttweiler,” is also known as Booger or Fatty. She was a Christmas present years ago from Mr. Phillips-Grant’s sister-in-law.  “I told her you shouldn’t give pets as presents,” he said, laughing. “We joke about it now.”

Best Friend: A French bulldog, Ju-Ju, who lives in the neighborhood and sometimes stays over as a house guest.

Pet Tricks: Flipping in the air. Faye Raye majestically hurls her body in the air to catch sticks. “She showed me how to do this, not the other way around,” Mr. Phillips-Grant said.

Claim to Fame: Faye Raye loves steak scraps from Seahorse Tavern, but she’s also a well-known customer at Ray’s Candy Store on Avenue A. As you can see in the video below, she likes to wait for slices of cheese at the counter. “When I go to get my coffee in the morning, that’s our routine,” said her owner.
See the video…

Yep, it’s that time of year again: the Christmas tree vendors are back, the holiday decorations are up, and Phil Kline has set a date for “Unsilent Night,” the roving boombox orchestra that has ambled through the East Village blasting an ethereal 45-minute composition every year since 1992. Mark your calendars: this season’s strolling soundscape will occur Dec. 15. (And hey, if you want to keep it old-school instead of downloading the iPhone app, this man has your boombox.)

In the meantime, enjoy another carol that’s not exactly from the canon. Kyona Watts, an East Villager, penned the above ditty — in which a lonely Mrs. Claus seeks the company of a guy in a Santa mask — with her Strega bandmate Stephen Vesecky, who has also lived in the neighborhood. We’re told a video is in the works.

Suzanne Rozdeba

Annie FairmanEarlier this month.

After a month of exile, neighborhood kids are once again climbing the jungle gym at the East Ninth Street playground in Tompkins Square Park.

Last week, Melanie Kletter, a reader, told us that local parents were befuddled by a sign indicating that one of the park’s three playgrounds was “closed for repairs starting October 22, 2012.”

“We are all wondering what is going on with the playground and when it will reopen and why it’s taking so long,” she wrote. At the time, a parks department spokesperson explained that a contractor was replacing safety surfacing.

By Friday, the playground had reopened. Yesterday, the spokesperson clarified that the “damaged safety surfacing” consisted of rubber mats.

Laurie Gwen Shapiro John Cannizzo at Village Green.

During a recent dinner at the temple of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, at 25 First Avenue, a middle-aged man outfitted as Jesus, complete with crown of thorns, zealously preached the virtues of homegrown produce. In between bites of a spicy lentil salad, Laksmi Nrsimha, director of the East Village branch of the Krishnas, tilted his shaved head to listen.

Among Mr. Nrsimha’s guests at the weekly pay-what-you-wish dinner were volunteers at Village Green, an urban grange somewhat unbelievably located smack in the crossroads of Seventh Avenue and West 12th Street. For the last year, more than a dozen unpaid gardening enthusiasts have been providing a solid supply of free homegrown fruits and vegetables to the Krishnas, who cook them and distribute them at the sliding-scale dinners as well as at food lines in Tompkins Square Park.

But that arrangement has come to an end: this week Village Green closed so that its landlord, Rudin Management, could replace it with a more traditional public green space. Now Mr. Nrsimha is contemplating hydroponic gardening on the temple’s roof.

Gary Rissman, the 53-year-old dressed as Jesus (it was Halloween-time, after all), was the first of the agronomists to hear about the Krishna meals. At a Freegan meet-up early last year, he heard mention of the Krishna’s Annual Mountain of Food Festival, put on by their Krsma-Bhakti Vegan Cooking Club.

At that event, held at NYU’s Kimmel Center, the self-described “free-thinker” was inspired by the Krishnas’ culinary prowess, and saw it as a continuation of his own work. “I died a little inside when I saw our Village Green harvest when dropped off at other shelters, all going into one pot without any love,” he said at last month’s dinner. “An eggplant should be treated like filet mignon. I saw instantly that the Krishnas would know what to do with vegetables, that they would respect the vegetables, cook them right.”

Mr. Rissman, a gregarious speed-talker, convinced his farming pals to begin donating their harvests to Mr. Nrsimha and his fellow Krishnas.
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Sasha von Oldershausen

Sasha von Oldershausen

Post-Sandy sinkholes have appeared in the Rockaways as a result of damage to water and sewer lines; is it possible one has opened up on Avenue C?

Last week, we noticed this sizable gash and sprawling cracks in the middle of the road, between Seventh and Eighth Streets. The hole isn’t yet big enough to swallow a moving truck, and of course it pales in comparison to the chasm over on the corner of Sixth Street, but take a closer look and you’ll see it’s deep enough to leave a cyclist in need of Recycle-a-Bicycle, at the least.

Have you noticed any post-Sandy sinkholes around the neighborhood? Or any other dents and dings still in need of attention?

Kim Davis

Smoked meat returned to Mile End Sandwich’s menu last week, for the first time since Hurricane Sandy destroyed its Red Hook commissary. Today, the shop returned to its regular hours, and it’s also delivering again. But it’s not exactly business as usual.

Noah Bernamoff, an owner, said he’s been smoking the meat upstate, at his friend Josh Applestone’s celebrated butcher shop, Fleisher’s — as a result, the sandwich is a couple of dollars more expensive, to the chagrin of some customers.

A few weeks ago, Mr. Bernamoff began preparing the first 1,400 pounds of meat at the Kingston, N.Y. butcher shop. It had to be cured for 12 days, soaked for a day, re-rubbed with a spice mixture, and smoked for eight to 11 hours before it could be brought back to the Bond Street sandwich shop, where it’s steamed and sliced.
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Near Great Jones Street, the former home of Steve’s on the Bowery was gutted today. A construction worker confirmed that a “retail store” would replace the deli, which closed in September, but wouldn’t say whether an Intermix was on the way, as rumored.

In August a spokesperson for the boutique told The Local it was bound for the Bowery, but wouldn’t say where, exactly.

Sasha von Oldershausen

Sasha von Oldershausen

This morning, EV Grieve asked, “Why is 41 Cooper Square dented?”

Here’s the answer: Claire McCarthy, Director of Public Affairs at Cooper Union, told The Local the dent in the new academic building’s armor was caused by Hurricane Sandy.

The damage occurred when the conical top of a wooden water tower attached to a nearby residential building on the eastern side of 41 Cooper broke loose and hit the building.

“There were no injuries, and our crew got rid of the debris,” said Ms. McCarthy.

Mary Reinholz

Neighbors and fellow skateboarders gathered Saturday night to mourn Kyle Larson, who was struck and killed while longboarding near Union Square on Tuesday. The candlelight ceremony on 14th Street and Broadway was organized by skateboarder John Rios and the New York Longboard Association.

Yesterday afternoon at Union Square West, near East 17th Street, where the 20-year-old N.Y.U. student was hit by a box truck, passersby stopped to gaze at a makeshift memorial consisting of a photo of the victim, a bouquet of fresh white roses and candles. Chalked messages read “Ride on forever!”, “Love you Kyle” and “Let us never forget the perils of New York Streets.”

Mr. Larson hailed from Manhasset, Long Island, where he was a well-liked drummer for his high school marching band, NYU Local reported. The musician, who also played saxophone and clarinet and sang with an a capella group, was rushing to school to turn in a term paper when he was struck, according to Newsday. Gothamist posted video, released by the police, of a cyclist who was riding the wrong way on Union Square West when the incident occurred.

Daniel Maurer

26 units and 84 firefighters rushed to a fire at the Jacob Riis Houses Saturday night.

The blaze broke out shortly before 9:30 p.m. on the eighth floor of a 14-story high-rise at 108 Avenue D, near East Eighth Street, the fire department said. It was under control within half an hour, but not before one firefighter was sent to New York Presbyterian with minor injuries.

The cause of the fire (the second in two days) was not immediately known.

A man was in critical condition after being stabbed at the Lillian Wald Houses this afternoon, the fire department said.

Around 2:40 p.m. the man, whose identity was not immediately available, was stabbed in the chest at 950 East Fourth Walk, near Avenue D; he was taken to New York Presbyterian in critical condition, the fire department said. The police said he was not likely to die.

In a separate incident, a fire broke out in the basement of 409 East Sixth Street, near First Avenue. The blaze was reported at 1:13 p.m. and was under control by 1:25 p.m., with no injuries reported.

Last week, Amadeus Bogner, a partner in the hand-pulled-noodle shop Hung Ry (and owner of Heidi and Extra Place nearby) reopened the Bond Street space as a French restaurant, Le Philosophe. We spoke to chef Matthew Aita, formerly of Jean-Georges, about his “classic French bistro” menu, which you can peruse below.
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Suzanne Rozdeba Sign outside of Obscura.

Two of the neighborhood’s celebrity misanthropes were at it earlier this week.

On Wednesday morning, a small crowd of “Oddities” fans stood outside Obscura, on Avenue A, while the show filmed inside. Mike Zohn, an owner of the store, told The Local that the show’s fourth season was being filmed, and would start in January after a best-of retrospective and a holiday episode.

Meanwhile, another trafficker in antiques and oddities, Billy LeRoy of “Baggage Battles” (also in the midst of a new season) e-mailed us the above photos of his coffin finally being removed from the Houston Street lot where his antiques tent used to stand.

In the weeks since Hurricane Sandy, downtowners have pitched in to help victims in harder-hit areas, and they’ve also continued to reach out to their closest neighbors. Last Thursday, Marissa Lippert of Nourish NYC and Allison Beale of George PR teamed up to raise $7,000 for the Red Hook Initiative and two of their favorite restaurants, Governor in Red Hook and the storm-battered Arcane on Avenue C. The Local spoke to organizers and attendees of the “FUNdraiser” at Pouring Ribbons, a cocktail den on Avenue B that escaped flooding because it was on the second floor and had no basement storage. Later, we caught up with Arcane’s owner, Ben Alter.