Though it didn’t have its paperwork in order at C.B. 3’s liquor-licensing committee meeting earlier this week, Porchetta has managed to snag a beer-and-wine license from the State Liquor Authority, according to the Authority’s Website and to a tweet from co-owner Sara Jenkins: “Coming soon to a Porchetta stand near you, beer and wine finally! Only two years from Start to finish.”

Gothamist reports that two Occupy Wall Street protesters were arrested for unknown reasons as the police again closed Union Square Park this morning. “We passed by Union Square from the north just before midnight, and the first thing that caught our eye were the dozens of police cruisers and vans parked in the bike lane along the entire east side of the park,” Gothamist complains. “This creates an obvious hazard, forcing bikers out into the two lanes of traffic zooming down Park Avenue.”

Daniel Squadron’s office has issued a press release indicating that the State Senator and other politicians are calling on Macy’s to move its fireworks, which have been launched off of the Hudson River since 2009, back to the east side. Sounds good, as long as the Hells Angels don’t revive a Fourth of July tradition described in “Alphaville” by former undercover officer Michael “Rambo” Codella: “On Third Street the Hells Angels took shopping carts and fifty-gallon oil drums, dumped hundreds of dollars in contraband fireworks into them, doused the whole thing with gasoline and, like it says on the package of Black Cats, would ‘light fuse, get away.'” The celebration turned deadly in 1990 when a 14-year-old boy was killed by shrapnel from the eruption.

Daniel Maurer Police move protesters away from the park.

The police barricaded Union Square Park and its southern esplanade shortly after midnight, triggering a standoff with Occupy Wall Street protesters who had once again gathered on the park’s steps.

After announcing that resisters would face arrest, police officers, some in riot gear, swept about 75 people to the park’s western sidewalk by moving forward en masse and setting up metal barriers incrementally until the entire sidewalk on the south side of the park – along with the subway entrance – was blocked off. At Union Square Park West and 15th Street, around 50 officers coolly stood guard behind barricades while several protesters hurled expletives and insults at them. Read more…

A day after Good Old Lower East Side hosted a public workshop on combating rats (flyer at left), The Villager reports that Chad Marlow, the founder of the Tompkins Square Park and Playgrounds Parents Association, has declared victory in the fight against the rats in the park. He says, “Hopefully, the time where rats would run over your foot is passed” – in Tompkins, anyway: Bowery Boogie notices that gardeners at the Children’s Magical Garden de Carmen Rubio are working with Lower East Side restaurants to combat rats inside of their community garden.

Jessica Bell

Parents are constantly called upon to chip in for school supplies, whether it’s through the P.T.A. or through the fundraising Website that two teachers at the Neighborhood School favor. Sometimes, it gets ugly. Last week, The Times pointed to tension in certain schools where well-to-do gentrifiers have more to spend on increasingly expensive bake-sale cupcakes and auction items than their less privileged counterparts have. One example: At the East Village Community School, “which serves the children of architects and artists as well as those of housekeepers and handymen,” a backlash broke out when the Parent Association sent out a letter telling parents “we can do better” even though it had reached its $20,000 fundraising goal.

With the “season of asking” now in full swing, SchoolBook wants to know how much you spend on your child’s public education. Go here to tell the site.

Michael Natale

Good morning, East Village.

As The Times reported, scores of people were arrested as protesters converged on Zuccotti Park to mark the six-month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street. Gothamist notes that among the 73 people detained was a man who, in a video, appears to have had his head slammed into a glass door on East 10th Street. The Post has a better video clip of the incident.

EV Grieve points to a campaign aiming to raise $30,000 to save Kate’s Joint, the vegetarian restaurant on Avenue B that has been female-owned and operated since 1996. According to the Indiegogo plea, “Kate is currently in arrears with the landlord. Eviction notices have been sent, court appearances have been made, and if a substantial amount of money is not raised by April 11th, the next court date, the doors will shut permanently at Kate’s Joint.”

Local resident (or is he?) Jimmy “The Rent Is Too Damn High” McMillan has lost his bid for a recount of gubernatorial votes, according to The Daily News: “Brooklyn Federal Judge John Gleeson ruled that an expensive and time-consuming recount could be justified if there was a serious question about whether the wrong person was declared the winner. But Gov. Cuomo won in a landslide.”

Read more…

N.Y.P.D. The suspected slashers.

The police are on the hunt for two men who they say sliced two other guys outside of IHOP on March 3.

According to the police, the dispute between the men began at around 6:20 a.m. at the house of pancakes on 14th Street. That’s when things escalated and the 25-year-old and 27-year-old victims were cut with an unknown object.

Both suspects, who are thought to be 20 to 25 years old, then fled the scene.

Another interesting piece in The Villager today: Bill Weinberg, the former WBAI host who spoke with us a couple of weeks ago, pens a personal history of the East Village’s transformation “from a fecund past to a sterile future,” noting something that’s especially cogent in light of the forthcoming squatting museum: “One bitter irony is that the squatters of Alphabet City were themselves the vanguard of the very social process they sought to resist,” he writes. “They helped make the neighborhood fashionable for the artists who followed them, as radical chic gave way to bourgeois chic. The yuppies shortly followed the artists, and the process of cultural cleansing is now nearly complete.”