Ken Collins Ken Urban, the man behind “Fizz Play.”

Even playwrights have to take a breather every once in a while.

Six writers working intensely on full-length plays over the course of 18 weeks will relax on Monday through freewheeling 10-minute productions riffing off of the word “fizz.”

“We find that everyone has a good time taking a break in their full-length play process and quickly conceiving these 10-minute plays. It’s like a writing exercise where you get a prompt and just go with it,” said Jessi Hill, who is directing the aptly titled “Fizz Play” by Ken Urban.

Each year, the terraNova Collective selects one word from a long list of homophones and gives it to their playwrights-in-residence. Last year, the word was “bug.” In 2010, it was “speed.”
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The neighborhood is getting a new fried chicken joint, and this one has a colorful past that goes far beyond secret recipes. Pudgie’s Famous Chicken, which EV Grieve noted is replacing the shuttered King Gyro on First Avenue between Third and Fourth Streets, was once run by a former chairman of the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce who was accused of embezzlement. The New York Post reported in August of last year that Jeffrey Bernstein abruptly resigned his post at the Chamber after he was accused of embezzling more than $2.3 million from the non-profit Albert Ellis Institute while serving as its president. In an article from 2003 in Chain Leader, a magazine for restaurant executives, Mr. Bernstein was described as a “turnaround artist” who bought the troubled Pudgie’s chain and made it profitable.

The Local asked Kim Davis, the food maven behind At the Sign of the Pink Pig, to find the neighborhood’s best brunch biscuit. Luckily, he didn’t flake.

Noah Fecks The biscuit at Bobwhite Lunch and Supper Counter.

The East Village  – traditionally a neighborhood of pierogies and kielbasa – has lately reached below the Mason-Dixon line for comfort foods. Suddenly, we can’t get enough biscuits! Witness the appearance of Bobwhite Lunch and Supper Counter on Avenue C. Its excellent dark-meat fried chicken with a brittle crust comes with impeccably fresh salad and a warm, buttery biscuit ($9.50). It’s a small, naked biscuit, though, and only made me hungry for that brunch-only delight: biscuits and gravy, just like somebody’s grandma – not mine – probably used to make.

Kim Davis A biscuit with fried chicken and gravy at the Cardinal.

The Cardinal, another relative newcomer, is primarily a barbecue joint on two levels, with a kind of Creole junkyard look, and cheerful servers in beards and baseball caps. One of the painted slogans on the walls warns of “lard biscuits,” but these biscuits were nothing special – flat, crumbly and completely upstaged by their fried chicken topping. The ivory-colored gravy distinguished itself by being warmly spiced, as was the house-made sausage freely crumbled into it. The biscuit with fried chicken is $15; it’s big enough to serve two.
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3rdTiger A scene from the Lower East Side.

Mehdi Kabbaj, the owner of 20 Peacocks, a men’s clothing boutique on Clinton Street, died yesterday after being struck by oncoming traffic on the F.D.R. drive on Wednesday night, The Daily News reports. The paper writes that Mr. Kabbaj, 45, was drunk, got out of the cab in frustration at gridlock and was struck by a minivan.

The cabbie accused of raping a 26-year-old East Village woman at knife point on May 6 has “no idea” how his DNA was recovered from the woman, writes The New York Post. According to statements read at Gurmeet Singh’s Brooklyn arraignment on Wednesday, he initially told cops he “never” had sex in the back of his taxi, but then said, “Sometimes I pick up women, call girls, off the street and have sex with them.”

The Villager reports that local advocates are pushing to have the trials of soldiers accused of abusing Private Danny Chen held in the U.S. A coalition including Councilwoman Margaret Chin and Mr. Chen’s parents are in discussions with the Army to suggest reforms to its diversity training and recruitment policies.
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Phillip Kalantzis-Cope Odessa is still standing.

In 1986, a New York magazine article coined the term “blintz-krieg” while reviewing over a dozen Polish and Ukrainian coffee shops and restaurants then crowding the neighborhood. In light of Polonia’s recent closing, it seems a fitting time to remember some of those Eastern European haunts.

Suzanne Rozdeba 111 Avenue A, former home of Leshko’s.

In 1966, Andy Warhol came upon the ballroom of the Polish National Home in a row of St. Marks Place townhouses when searching for a venue for a nightclub he hoped to create. The Polish National Home had taken over 19-25 St. Marks Place back in the 1920s. In the 1880s, when the area was known as Little Germany, the buildings had housed the Arion Society, a German music club. Warhol took part of the Polish Home’s name (Polski Dom Narodowy) for his club, The Dom, in which he showcased a then unknown band he managed, The Velvet Underground. (Yesterday, The Post reported that the band is suing the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.) Read more…

The embattled art space Gathering of the Tribes gets the “Place of the Month” treatment on Place Matters. The website recounts founder Steve Cannon’s heyday as a professor by day and “professional heckler” at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe by night. “The man is the space is the art is the man,” according to the profile, which also addresses recent landlord troubles. Mr. Cannon and his followers remain optimistic despite the looming legal showdown: “It seems that many, including Cannon, believe that he may have the last word.”

Suzanne Rozdeba A chef and his puddin’.

A week after opening, Puddin’ by Clio has already shut its doors – temporarily. A sign in the window reads: “Closed until Friday 4 p.m. We are cooking and cooking…good ole’ pudding.”

“We are slammed,” explained Clio Goodman, an owner and the executive chef. “It’s been the craziest couple of days ever. We sold out in an hour and a half on our first day.”

Hevra, Clio’s mom and sous chef, said her daughter was already considering opening a second production kitchen. “Because we’re so tiny, we’re limited in how much we can produce here,” she said. Read more…

The Times reviews “Fug You,” Ed Sanders’s recently published ’60s memoir about his time as frontman of the Fugs and owner of the Peace Eye Bookstore in the East Village. “His interest in chaos always had a firm limit, for himself and for others,” writes Ben Ratliff. “Probably that’s why he’s alive, and why we can read this funny, instructive, nourishing book.” Mr. Sanders, who spoke with The Local last month, is due to appear at our event, “Blowing Minds: The East Village Other, the Rise of Underground Comix and the Alternative Press, 1965-72.”

Scott Lynch

Good morning, East Village.

A mural on East Second Street has infuriated a neighborhood activist, reports The Lo-Down. “Not only is it racist but it is also sexist and it is upsetting,” says Ayo Harrington. The artist sent a letter to Lo-Down, defending the work: “My name is Adam (Sirois) and I am the designer and commissioner of the apparently infamous Second St. Mural. The mural is part of a marriage proposal to my girlfriend and love of my life, Marisha. Fortunately, Marisha does not have the same myopic and antiquated notions as the community activist referenced in your article, and I am now fortunate to call her my fiancé.”

Rent is rising as apartments become scarce, according to The New York Post: “Manhattan rents soared 8.6 percent last year, while vacancy rates plummeted.” A sidebar photographed by EV Grieve indicates that an average East Village apartment now rents for $3,027. At least you can land your décor for less – according to The Times, you can decorate your pad with dollar-store deals.

Meanwhile Jimmy McMillan of The Rent Is Too Damn High fame makes The Voice’s list of “100 Most Powerless New Yorkers,” as do the employees of the St. Mark’s Bookshop. Read more…

Rachel Citron A 2007 exhibition at Milk Studios.

Residents who are fighting eviction from the the Hotel Chelsea were baffled by an invitation they received to a Thursday evening concert by Patti Smith in the hotel’s ground-floor ballroom. Commenters on Living With Legends: Hotel Chelsea Blog wondered whether the writer and musician, who recounted her time as a resident of the hotel in her 2010 memoir “Just Kids,” was being paid by Joseph Chetrit, the real estate investor who recently purchased the landmark 23rd Street building and is renovating its interior. Today, the songstress, in a statement reprinted by the blog, said she was not being compensated for the performance, which was her idea. Read more…

Jared Malsin, a student of NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute who reports for The Local, was arraigned this morning on two charges of disorderly conduct after he was arrested near Zuccotti Park while covering the park’s clearing on Nov. 15.

“They’re both violations, not crimes,” said Gideon Orion Oliver, an attorney with the National Lawyers Guild who is representing Mr. Malsin. “These are the vanilla, typical protester-esque charges.” Mr. Oliver said his client is accused of “blocking vehicular pedestrian traffic with intent to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm” and “refusal to comply with a lawful order of police to disperse with the intent to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm, or recklessly creating a risk thereof.” Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown The owner of Ame Ame, Teresa Soroka.

A new store on Ninth Street takes the term “specialty shop” to the next level.

Ame Ame caters to the stylish New Yorker caught in the rain who also happens to have a sweet tooth. The name for the store comes from the Japanese word “ame,” which means — that’s right — both “rain” and “candy.”

“I want to put an end to those disposable, cheap, ugly black umbrellas,” said owner Teresa Soroka, 30, who opened the store on Nov. 16. “They’re bad for the environment, and in a fashionable city they’re a disgrace.”

So, why all the candy? “What’s better on a rainy day than a bag of candy?” Ms. Soroka explained. “I wanted a colorful, cheerful experience when shopping.” Read more…

From 1965 to 1972, it revolutionized ‘The Good News,’ and shook the foundations of the existing print and visual media. After seven years, it went just as it came – in a hail of livingness. In true American phantasmagoria, it was a legend in its own time.

Initiated by poets, painters, artists, seers, perverts and prophets, it shared its pages with the likes of Buckminster Fuller, Timothy Leary, Robert Crumb, Ishmael Reed, Allen Ginsberg, Lenny Bruce, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Baba Ram Das, Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman  – the conspiracy of the 1960s.

The East Village Other had a consciousness which was created. The News needing a shoe-up to come alive was new to an unconscious civilization. It was more than Print, it was Imprint. An indelible biologue, the East Village Other made even The New York Times seem to come alive. Headlines, columns, advertisements, propaganda and prosletyzing made the “form of the newspaper an adjunct of reality . . .”

The above was written by the late Allen Katzman, poet and co-founding editor of the East Village Other, one of the pioneering underground newspapers. Over the next six weeks, The Local will journey back to the East Village of the mid-1960s and early 1970s with special weekend editions, culminating in an exhibit and party on Tuesday, Feb. 28. We hope you’ll join us for “Blowing Minds: The East Village Other, the Rise of Underground Comix and the Alternative Press, 1965-72.” Full registration details for this free event are at EastVillageOther.org, where you’ll soon also be able to find archival material, ephemera, photographs, and EVO issues. Read more…

Clint McMahon

Good morning, East Village.

The Post reports that a cabbie, Gurmeet Singh, is accused of raping a 26-year-old East Village woman at knife-point after she fell asleep during a ride home from Williamsburg on May 6. The woman was also robbed of $20 and her phone.

With the Landmarks Preservation Committee set to consider landmarking a portion on East 10th Street on Tuesday, Off the Grid digs up a photo of the block in 1934 and notes that it has “changed very little. Cornices, stoops, window hoods and original materials are all very much intact.”

Eater reports that The Wayland will open in the former Banjo Jim’s space this Friday, offering “a slew of cocktails made with housemade bitters, jams, and syrups” as well as a “menu of oysters, bone marrow, steak tartar, and smoked trout.” Read more…

Jessica Bell

B.A.D. Burger wasn’t the only restaurant that went before members of Community Board 3 last night: at the meeting of the S.L.A. and D.C.A. Licensing committee, Gyula Bertok, 42, and Attila Draviczki, 43, received support for their bid for liquor at a new address. The partners plan to take over the former home of Angels & Kings on East 11th Street and serve sausages and other Hungarian fare.

The Local reported in December that neighbors opposed Keybar’s previous plan to relocate to 14 Avenue B. “We were here a month ago and the community opposition was huge,” Mr. Bertok admitted. “We understand the concern, but we are part of the community as well. We think we can change this for the better, and they supported us finally.”

Neighbors spoke out against the proposed 11th Street location as well, issuing the usual pleas that the area was already too congested with nightlife; but at least one neighbor welcomed the idea of Hungarian cuisine. Read more…

Suzanne Rozdeba

The sight of a man huddled under a makeshift canopy of umbrellas and plastic sheets might have been unremarkable on the old Bowery, but the avenue’s new breed of night crawlers have surely noticed William Hernandez’s slapdash shelter, positioned steps away from DBGB and just across the street from another glitzy eatery, Pulino’s. A block to the east and west, respectively, are the vanishing sites of Mars Bar and Billy’s Antiques. Some might call this a crossroads of gentrification. For the past two weeks, Mr. Hernandez has called it something like home.

Mr. Hernandez, 59, said he had been sleeping against the fence of a community garden that abuts the Avalon Bowery Place apartments for the past 15 days.

“I don’t have a home,” he told The Local yesterday in Spanish. “I’m Cuban. I’m a refugee,” he said, adding that the rest of his family still resided in Cuba.

“I’ve been [in the U.S.] for 30 years and I’ve been homeless since I got here. I was in Florida and in Jackson Heights [Queens] before I came here. I’ve been in New York a long time.” Read more…

Vivienne Gucwa East River Park

During football season, Julian Swearengin’s Downtown Giants have three practices each week at three different parks: Chelsea Waterside Park, the Battery Park ball fields and Pier 40. Games take place at East River Park on Saturdays. Confused parents frequently end up at the wrong location and players complain about the hectic schedule. Just to add insult to injury, Mr. Swearengin sees a solution to the problem most nights from his apartment with a view of East River Park.

“There are many nights when soccer and football fields are empty. On the same night, my kids are wedged into a corner on Pier 40,” said Mr. Swearengin, the founder of the team for kids up to 15 as well as a former coach. “There’s certainly an overall frustration that there’s no consistency with the permits.”

But soon, the system that maddens Mr. Swearengin and many others will likely be reformed. For the first time since 1999, the Parks Department has proposed changes to its permit system, raising hopes that the vise-like grip many leagues have over coveted ball fields may be loosened.

If the laws are approved, youth leagues applying for new permits will be given priority over all other applicants. The Parks Department will also have the right to reduce the hours of field time for adult leagues that dominate a particular park.

The proposals are in part a response to complaints from an assortment of league administrators at meetings around the city. In Community Board 3, around 20 league operators have bemoaned a permit system that they described as obscure and ripe for abuse. Read more…

The police have released the above surveillance camera footage of two men accused of robbing a Metro PCS store at gunpoint Friday night.

As The Local reported, the men, now said to be around the age of 40, entered the store at 350 East 14th Street shortly before 7 p.m. One of them (thought to be 6 feet tall and about 160 pounds) displayed a black revolver as the other (5-foot-6, 150 pounds) went behind the counter and took what a police representative said was around $4,000 in cash. The store’s two employees were told to wait in the basement as the men fled.

Last week, The Times pointed out that Metro PCS stores were “low-hanging fruit” for robbers such as the Brooklyn couple who last year committed a dozen or more hold-ups at the wireless stores.