wSuzanne Rozdeba 104 East Seventh Street

A pair of East Village walk-ups were sold as part of a $73 million portfolio that also included 14 properties in the West Village, Upper East Side, and downtown Brooklyn.

Paul Smadbeck, Senior Vice President of Sales at Massey Knakal, described the buyer, Stone Street Properties, as “a relatively young, new company that has been very active. Their main expertise is doing lovely renovations and really improving these 100-year buildings, and bringing them into the 21st century.” He added that the investment company is “very sensitive” to the community.

Suzanne Rozdeba 440 East 13th Street

The Real Deal reported that Stone Street, founded last year by Jeffrey Kaye and
Robert Morgenstern, acquired the entire portfolio from Manhattan landlord
Robert Koppelman.

One of the East Village buildings, at 104 East Seventh Street, stands right up against newly-opened Tink’s Restaurant and across the street from Saint Stanislaus Church. It holds landmark status, as part of the East Village/Lower East Side Historic District that was approved last month. The other property is located at 438-440 East 13th Street.

Annie Fairman Ms. Ramos and Mrs. Rodriguez in the flooded apartment.

Annie Fairman Water line.

Ursula Ramos spent more than a decade asking the New York City Housing Authority for a transfer from her dark basement apartment on East Tenth Street. Earlier this month she finally got it, after Sandy flooded the unit with roughly three feet of water and destroyed nearly all of her possessions.

For twenty-two years, Ms. Ramos, 78, and her adult son shared a two-room basement unit at 384 East Tenth Street, in the Lower East Side Apartments. She spent eleven of those years asking for a transfer to another Section Eight apartment, but was told each time nothing was available.

“This isn’t an apartment, this is like a basement,” said Aurora Rodriguez, Ms. Ramos’ daughter while standing in the apartment in the days after Sandy hit. “But they make it an apartment.”
Read more…

Daniel Maurer The earlier incidents took place next
to 437 East 12th Street.

East 12th Street was the site of an armed robbery for the third time in a month, despite a continued decline in crime in the Ninth Precinct.

In the early morning hours of Nov. 5, two men in a light-colored car pulled up to 529 East 12th Street and robbed a man at gunpoint, Deputy Inspector John Cappelmann said at last night’s Ninth Precinct Community Council Meeting. The victim had stepped out and was smoking a cigarette in front of his apartment when he was confronted.

It’s believed the suspects had committed another robbery roughly twenty minutes prior on West 12th Street, in the Sixth Precinct. Police were able to trace one of the stolen phones to 145th Street and Broadway, and are said to have strong leads in the case, including a description of the suspects and their car.  Read more…

Mary Reinholz A firetruck involved in cleanup.

A skateboarder was struck and killed in Union Square this morning, the police said.

The incident occurred shortly before 11:15 a.m. near Union Square West and East 17th Street, where police said a 24-year-old man fell off the skateboard he was riding and was struck by a box truck that was also traveling southbound. The victim was pronounced dead on arrival at Beth Israel Hospital.

Mary Reinholz

The driver of the vehicle, a 2004 Mitsubishi box truck, remained at the scene. No criminality is suspected, but the investigation is ongoing, the police said.

A fireman on the scene said the skater “bled out” on the street. A large stain on the road had been wiped clean by this afternoon. Around 3 p.m., pedestrians seemed oblivious to the earlier tragedy; a young, bearded skateboarder was seen gliding gracefully toward Broadway and East 17th Street.

Mary Reinholz contributed reporting.

Update | Nov. 26, 2012, 10:50 a.m. The victim was not 24, as the police initially reported; he has since been identified as a 20-year-old N.Y.U. student, Kyle Larson.

Suzanne Rozdeba

Should you stay or should you go? It’s a dilemma with which ol’ Joe Strummer can sympathize. If you are staying in the East Village for Thanksgiving and you’re not into the whole cooking for days thing, here’s this year’s list of neighborhood spots that’ll be serving up prix-fixe feasts. We’ve arranged them from cheapest to most lavish. So gobble gobble!

ODESSA
$15.95
Glass of wine
Cup of cream of turkey soup
Turkey with stuffing, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, and fresh vegetables
Pumpkin pie
Tea or coffee

LITTLE POLAND
$21.50
(May be slight variations to menu)
Turkey, white & dark meat stuffing
Cranberry sauce
Sweet potatoes
Cup of soup
Pumpkin pie
Coffee or tea

or $14.95
Turkey with two vegetables and stuffing
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Suzanne Rozdeba Nublu’s current home.

A little over a year after it was shut down because it was too close to a Jehovah’s Witness Kingdom Hall, Nublu has been redeemed. At last night’s meeting of Community Board 3’s liquor licensing committee, the club managed to win support for a proposed move up the street. Another high-profile applicant with ties to the legendary Beatrice Inn also went home happy, but Westville East, L’Asso EV and others failed to emerge unscathed.

Ilhan Ersahin, the owner of Nublu, plans to move the club a handful of blocks, from 62 Avenue C to 151 Avenue C, near 10th Street. Mr. Ersahin repeatedly referred to the new space — currently an unused car garage — as a “box within a box,” due to its structure as well as how it will presumably stop the sound of live music from emanating into the surrounding neighborhood.

Though neighbors spoke out against a license at Nublu’s current address just two months ago, the testimony was mostly positive this time; the committee voted to support a full liquor license by a relatively slim margin of two. Board member Ariel Palitz once again spoke in favor of the club, calling it an “exceptionally popular venue” and a “bastion of success” that is one of a dying breed.

Once the garage space is renovated and opened, the new license will be good until 2 a.m. Sundays through Tuesdays and until 4 a.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays, assuming it’s approved by the State Liquor Authority.

Yesterday’s most controversial case involved a sidewalk cafe rather than a liquor license. Neighbors complained of lengthy lines and loitering deliverymen at popular brunch destination Westville East, on the corner of Avenue A and East 11th Street, and said that barriers separating the cafe from the rest of the sidewalk were too tall. Some said Westville and its sidewalk monopoly “completely blocks the corner” (others shouted it).
Read more…

Sanna Chu Workers removing traffic cones from Cooper Square

Time for another overhaul update.

Construction workers were removing orange traffic cones at Cooper Square today, after completing long in-the-works water-main repairs. The $10.8 million undertaking was slated to be completed last winter, but was delayed by the “tangled web of wires” underground.

Meanwhile, a couple of blocks north, neighborhood conversation piece 51 Astor Place got still more glass panels. Here’s what it looked like earlier today. Read more…

Daniel Maurer Plywood came down at Mary Help of Christians last week.

It’s official: the owner of Steiner Studios has purchased the East 12th Street lot that includes Mary Help of Christians Church for $41 million. Douglas C. Steiner told The Local he was planning a residential project that would include some affordable housing units.

The deal was closed Friday, according to John Matcovich, the parish manager of Immaculate Conception, where Mary Help of Christians parishioners were relocated in September. “The keys were relinquished,” he revealed to The Local, confirming that Mr. Steiner purchased a lot that includes the church, the school building at 436 East 12th Street, the rectory at 440 East 12th Street, and the parking lot at 181 Avenue A that was formerly home to the flea market.
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A mob of Supreme-clad skateboarders lined up outside of Sunshine Cinema on Sunday for the New York premier of “Pretty Sweet,” the latest skateboarding video from the Girl and Chocolate brands. The premiere, hosted by East Third Street shop DQM, drew the likes of Kanye West, Mike D of the Beastie Boys, actor Michael Rappaport, and actor, DJ, and East Village resident Leo Fitzpatrick, star of the forthcoming “Doomsdays.”

The highly anticipated film was introduced by Rick Howard, Mike Carroll, and Spike Jonze, co-owners of Girl Skateboards. Mr. Jonze is best known as the director of features such as “Being John Malkovich” and “Adaptation,” but he cut his teeth photographing skaters, and in 1991 directed “Video Days,” a landmark skateboarding short that established a formula of cutting-edge editing techniques paired with humorous skits.

“Pretty Sweet,” filmed in HD and boasting gratuitous slow-motion steady-cam shots, is the most evolved of the videos that Mr. Jonze has released with Girl, and no wonder: it took five years to complete – a time span longer than most pro skateboarders’ careers.

Girl was formed in 1993 in Torrance, CA, in part as an escape from the increasingly high-pressure, competitive direction of skateboarding. It was meant to be a “fun little thing,” in the words of Mr. Carroll, who along with Mr. Howard is still a talented skater in his own right. But after releasing “Goldfish” in 1993, the brand has managed to build an increasing amount of buzz around each of its subsequent works.

Packed with special effects and even an Owen Wilson cameo, “Yeah Right!” (2003) was the first of the videos to pair the cinematography and editing of Ty Evans with Mr. Jonze’s whimsical skits.
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Nick McKinney Neighbors charge electronics at 7BC.

6BC, a community garden located on East Sixth Street between avenues B and C, has been running solely on solar power since 1994. After Hurricane Sandy plunged the neighborhood into darkness, the garden’s six solar panels, used mostly to power weed whackers and a small ornamental waterfall, found use elsewhere.

“Everyone was dying for some news,” said Karen Tighe-Izzo, president of the garden’s board of directors. “We went in there and plugged in to listen to Bloomberg’s speech.”

Nick McKinney, a member who lives across the street from the garden, entered 6BC the morning after the hurricane to assess any damage. “I was fussing around the garden, and suddenly I realized that we not only have a solar system, but we also have an inverter,” Mr. McKinney said. That meant that the direct current power produced by the solar panels could be converted into alternating current power — the standard electrical current used by electronic devices.

Eventually, members of the garden and the community at large filtered in to charge their cell phones and listen to the news.
Read more…

Nicole Guzzardi One of the scuffles took place outside of Veselka.

Two men were arrested on Third Avenue and St. Marks Place after brawling in the streets Sunday morning, the police said.

Imer Skepi, 25, and Adem Radoncic, 24, were apprehended on the bustling block around 3:30 a.m. after a man said he was hit and pushed.

A witness told The Local that a gang consisting of three men – one of whom seemingly escaped – tangled with as many as eight bystanders as they roved from Avenue A to Third Avenue.

The first attack came on St. Marks Place, near Crif Dogs, the witness said. “There were three guys hitting one guy, but then there were other random guys trying to help, so it became a big melee,” said Angelo, who insisted his last name be withheld.
Read more…

A couple of weeks ago we introduced you to Michael Spitz.

But Mr. Throwback has to be seen to be believed, so now that his new store on East Ninth Street is up and Hammer-dancing, we came back with a video camera.

In the market for a Beetlejuice doll or a jacket that might just have been worn by LL Cool J? Mr. Throwback is your man.

East Yoga, which was destroyed after a fire ripped through it earlier this month, is asking locals to attend a benefit and silent auction at Pouring Ribbons on Sunday. The studio has been holding classes at temporary spaces like Alphabet City Sanctuary on East Sixth Street, and is still seeking volunteers for rebuilding efforts. “We’ll need some elbow grease, painting, and a lot more!” it wrote. “We’re still waiting to get the word back from insurance agents and contractors to get this in motion, but will let you know when we do.”

Nicole Guzzardi

Wendy Barrett, the owner of Village Scandal, failed to make a court-ordered payment of almost $22,000 in back rent to her landlord Tuesday, and was “scared to death” of getting thrown on the street. But yesterday, she secured a small victory when a civil court judge granted a stay of eviction until a Nov. 27 hearing.

“I’m working on raising the money,” said Ms. Barrett, adding that she had secured about $6,300 so far. The hat shop’s landlord claims Ms. Barrett owes close to $130,000 in back rent and real estate taxes, according to her lawyer. She vigorously disputes the amount, and is suing her landlord and management company for $10 million in State Supreme Court.

Ms. Barrett said she needed two or three weeks to raise the court-ordered amount. “This is my last hope,” she said.

Her lawyer, Jonathan Zimet, remains confident in her case. “There’s every reason to believe that Village Scandal will not be evicted for non-payment of rent, since the facts indicate she has paid rent that covers its obligations well into the future,” he said.

Dana Varinsky New glass over Astor Place.

A little over a month after Edward Minskoff’s office tower at 51 Astor was topped off, its Astor Place facade began getting glass panels yesterday. With the building taking shape, we hit the streets with a rendering of architect Fumihiko Maki’s design and asked passersby what they thought. The “black box” has been described as a “much hated” “local punching bag,” but the folks we spoke to didn’t seem to mind it so much: of 50 surveyed, 18 said they mildly liked the design, while 12 said they mildly disliked it; three strongly liked it and five strongly disliked it.

Moira Barrett, 19, who works in the area, said she would usually be against the idea of such a building, but was indifferent to this one because there were already similar ones nearby.

Juan Vallejo, 46, who studied architecture in Colombia, said he thought the building “disrespects the context of the neighborhood” in its historic sense, but believed the modern edifice worked well enough with those around it. “It’s not an isolated monster,” he said, “the buildings start to speak to each other.”

Others weren’t as forgiving. Matt Adams, 34, who has been living and working in the neighborhood for six years, said it’s not the building itself he minds so much, but the idea that it won’t help to preserve the area. “The influx of people and a huge office space, in terms of the neighborhood: that I don’t like,” he said, complaining that Second Avenue has turned into a “tourist trap.”

Raymond Dejesus, a Williamsburg resident who frequents the neighborhood, said he really disliked the idea of the building. “It looks like a shark,” he said of the design. “I don’t think buildings should look like predatory animals.” He went on to say that he thought it was a way of “The Man” saying, “Look at me, I’m a business man.”

Watch our video to hear more, and weigh in yourself, via the comments.

Yuyu Chen contributed reporting.

Alexis Lamster

A few years ago, Jennifer Sanford was enjoying brunch with a friend at Veselka when she bit into, well, something that allegedly broke her tooth. The incident left a bad taste in her mouth: she recently filed a lawsuit against the Second Avenue standby.

According to Ms. Sanford’s lawyer, Michael F. Rubin, she was eating an egg breakfast when she bit down on something hard and spit it out into a napkin. Her tooth broke immediately. She called the manager over, the table was promptly bussed, and Ms. Sanford left.

“There is no way of knowing what it was, because the table wasn’t preserved,” Mr. Rubin said of the object in question.

Ms. Sanford’s broken tooth had to be replaced with an implant, her lawyer said. As a result of the surgery, a neighboring tooth was harmed and she must now have follow-up work done on that. “The poor lady is without her natural tooth,” he said. Read more…

Dana Varinsky Ouenisongda Sawadogo and his wife Najm.

A couple of changes to note on St. Marks Place, in addition to the closure of 2 Bros Plus: first, trash bags have covered the windows of Yogurt Station, at 18 St. Marks Place, for some days now. It’s uncertain whether the closure is temporary or permanent.

The good news: Waga, the African gift shop at 22 St. Marks Place, has jumped into the coffee game. Ouenisongda Sawadogo, the store’s owner, said he had wanted to serve African coffee for some time. With the economy still in the doldrums, his rent on the rise, and the tough months of January and February ahead of him, he decided now was the time to open up a sidewalk to-go window.

“We sell mostly artifacts, but people right now are hurting. They don’t want to spend for this kind of luxury,” he said, nodding at his subterranean sliver of a store stocked with west African masks, bags, clothing, and jewelry. “I had to come up with an idea to add a little bit of cash.”

The idea: an array of espresso drinks made from organic, fair-trade Arabica beans roasted by Brooklyn Roasting Company. The beans, Mr. Sawadogo said, are harvested by a female farming cooperative in countries like Kenya and Tanzania.
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Isaiah Tanenbaum Adina Taubman plays Rae.

Time is passing Rae by, no matter what she has to say about it. At least, that’s the sense we get as the exposition in Susan Bernfield’s “Barking Girl,” now at 4th Street Theatre, shuffles from the discussion of a baby, to pregnancy, to her first argument with her husband.

Played with an acerbic bite by Adina Taubman, Rae is fiercely self-reliant, and reluctant to begin her current period of “settling down.” Her deepest worry is conveyed in an anecdote about a museum visit that was ruined because a seemingly mentally disabled girl kept barking “ART!”: Rae is living, not quite fully, a solipsistic fantasy, and she is terrified of having a “different” child.

This isolated mental world is portrayed to great effect by Carolyn Mraz’s stripped-down but still fantastical set, as well as the writing. Rae’s husband Gil, a quintessentially perfect sitcom dad played by Max Arnaud, is everything she’s not. He is incomprehensible to her, and his goofy naiveté is refreshing in the face of Rae’s all-encompassing dissatisfaction. (Rae, a bit of a “barking girl” herself, is a fascinating and enjoyable character, but people like that rarely make good company in real life.)

Gil is genuinely a good father, and points out the theatricality of parenthood precisely when Rae is wont to rhapsodize about being Sylvia Plath. That these metatextual comments come from such a likeable character, innocently, lends them a certain playfulness.

Amazed at Rae’s unhappiness despite Gil’s innate parenting skills, Rae’s sister Becca (perhaps the realest character in terms of dialogue and demeanor) serves as somewhat of a psychologist for her sibling. She’s no seductress, however: she’s a lesbian with prospects of parenthood herself. There is some turbulence when she propositions Gil to be the sperm donor. Meanwhile, Rae runs into a certain charming man more and more while her husband is away on business trips…

It’s hard to believe Mrs. Bernfield wrote this piece around ten years ago. The claustrophobic culture around parenting seems to be even more pronounced now than it was a decade ago, and Rae’s predicament seems not unlike a particularly gloomy Park Slope transplant of the past couple years. But the funny, heartfelt “Baking Dog” isn’t just for the double stroller crowd— those with Organic Spirits in their canvas bags are equally sure to find themselves in this anti-mom.

“Barking Girl,” through Dec. 2 at 4th Street Theatre, 83 East Fourth Street (between Second Avenue and Bowery); tickets $18 at www.chrysalistheatrecompany.com or (866) 811-4111.