Daniel Maurer

STA Travel has followed Atlas Barber School in leaving the building at Third Avenue and East Ninth Street, across the street from the rising 51 Astor office tower.

An employee who did not want to give her name because she wasn’t authorized to speak for the travel agency said that its lease at 30 Third Avenue was up after about 10 years. It moved to a former Sprint PCS store at 722 Broadway, between Waverly and Washington Places, earlier this month.

“We generally target N.Y.U. students and we found it to be a good opportunity to be located a little closer to them,” said the employee, adding that 70 percent or more of the location’s business comes from students. Read more…

The Public Theater and Fourth Arts Block are both celebrating themselves with outdoor blowouts involving food trucks, musical and theatrical performances, and more. Here are the details, just announced. 

September 22
FAB! Festival
East Fourth Street between Bowery and Second Avenue, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.
This year, Fourth Arts Block’s annual fete will include Japanese Taiko drumming, hula dancing, cooking demonstrations, Miguel Pinero poems set to live Latin music, storytelling (and a marketing workshop) by Slash Coleman, dance performances and classes, a “Bowery Artist Tribute Scavenger Hunt” courtesy of the New Museum, and a Vaudeville Hour courtesy of Brigham Mosley. For food, there’ll be a banana-pop stand, a “granola lab,” and an appearance by the Mexicue truck. And of course there will be a host of off-off Broadway performances. Take a look at the lineup here. Read more…

Yesterday a smoking manhole rattled rush-hour commuters in Union Square – some said it was an explosion, ConEd said no. Then The Local’s commenters chimed in: “I was there – there was definitely some sort of explosion that blew the manhole cover off,” wrote Mike.

“I was there and there definitely was a loud boom,” added Melissa.

For what it’s worth, Karim Zidane, an employee at the Rafiqi’s halal cart, had a front-row view of the action at Broadway and 17th Street and sent us the video above.

Gamma Blog

Gamma Blog shared this striking photo with The Local’s Flickr group. Head over to Gamma for more about the felling of a giant oak in Tompkins Square Park.

The Ex-Villagers: they loved the East Village and left it.

Shira Levine

I moved to New York when I was 17. I didn’t end up there on purpose. I was on my way to Europe to backpack with my friend. We drove across the country and when I arrived I had only $189 to my name: I wouldn’t be able to backpack around Europe for three months. My friend left and I stayed.

New York was crazy intense. I never thought I’d live there. The day I arrived I walked down Thompson Street in SoHo to Girl Meets Boy salon, a kind of punk place with chemical haircuts. Grace Jones would go and a lot of Madonna’s friends. It was a whole rock n roll scene. I come from a salon family and was already cutting hair back west, but I went in and said I would do anything. So I shampooed hair and swept floors.

I was introduced to the whole East Village world of subletting and got a cockroach-infested place on East Third between B and C. You could see rats between the floorboards. I had to pile chloric acid around my bed to protect me. I was living out of a little box then – from sublet to sublet I’d carry around my few things and my chloric acid.

I lived in one studio where the bathtub had a dripping faucet, which was where the roaches would hang around. It was basically like squatting, but we were all actually chipping in to pay rent. Read more…

Daniel Maurer

According to Michael Musto today, there’s only six weeks left till Lucky Cheng’s moves to midtown. So you may not be seeing many more of these in the neighborhood. This, good friends, is the Heart Breaker party bus, spotted outside of the restaurant moments ago; as you can see here, it contains light-up stripper poles, a heart-shaped automated door, a back patio, smoke machines, strobe lights, and a freaking slot machine. Hope your weekend is half as good as this one’s gonna be.

Andres Serrano has been keeping busy since his controversial work, “Piss Christ,” made him the political and cultural cause célèbre that Pussy Riot has become two decades later. (Like the band that was sentenced to two years in prison today, the photographer’s unorthodox use of religious symbolism led to a controversial court battle, rankled the powers-that-be, and practically made him a household name around the world.) In May, the longtime East Villager put on a show at the Havana Biennial.

During a conversation with The Local at his monastic East 12th Street loft, Mr. Serrano corrected a misconception that he’s anti-Christian and that he courts controversy, and showed off his collection of mostly Judeo-Christian icons, paintings, sculptures, and furniture from the 16th and 17th centuries. He also spoke about his latest project, a forthcoming book of photographs that nods to his Cuban heritage.

Back in 2010, Amanda Cohen, the chef-owner of Dirt Candy, announced that she was writing a comic-book cookbook with artist Ryan Dunlavey and her husband, journalist Grady Hendrix. Eater got a sneak peek in June and described it as “a clever comic book retelling (with recipes) of Cohen’s experiences opening and running her vegetarian New York restaurant Dirt Candy, from dealings with shady contractors to appearing on Iron Chef America.”

Whelp, the trailer hit YouTube yesterday and boy, is it special. If it moves you to buy the book when it goes on sale Tuesday, just note the fine print at the end: “You may have heard that we were offering a bamboo windchime as part of a promotional package. Whatever you heard is a complete fabrication.”

Two weeks ago, the police announced the arrest of 33 people suspected of being involved in a crime ring that stole motorcycles from the East Village and other neighborhoods. If such things give you pause about parking your vintage Puch on the street, we’ll let you in on a quasi-secret: the Rising Wolf Garage. For 15 years, the motorcycle-only garage has been hiding within plain view on East Ninth Street. Watch our video to have a look inside.

Yes, the city’s bike share program has been delayed, but here’s some good news if you’re already riding: Gothamist notes that the fancy new bike paths on Allen Street from Hester to Delancey are open after months of construction, and they’ll soon be extended. We’ve also noticed that Avenue B, which for some time was perilously bumpy (seriously: there were smoother roads in “The Hurt Locker”), was recently paved over with fresh asphalt, meaning you can finally traverse it without spilling that iced coffee from Ninth Street Espresso. Whee!

Here, now, is the latest from Dean Peterson, whose video of New Yorkers tripping on subway stairs became a viral sensation (over one million views in a little over a month). This one, starring Brian Sturgill, was filmed around the East Village.

Sarah Darville Rolando Politi at La Plaza Cultural

East Ninth Street residents are used to seeing Rolando Politi’s trash art decorating La Plaza Cultural’s garden on the corner of Avenue C. Next year, the artist and “trash worship” advocate hopes that his flowers — made of bottle caps, plastic cups and aluminum cans — become as common in a part of Delhi, India.

Mr. Politi is raising funds to start a cooperative with 17 rag pickers in Delhi, who collect and sell trash by the pound for meager pay. His goal is to teach them how to transform the trash into one-of-a-kind flowers to sell to tourists. By spending less time collecting and more time creating, he said, workers could make 10 to 100 times their current wages at a lower risk to their health and safety.

“If it’s successful, the customers will be supporting ‘upcycled’ products directly from the rag pickers,” he said. “It would mean the rag pickers were getting respect and support.” Read more…