The Post reports that Madonna Badger was a former East Villager. The fashion marketing executive lost her parents and three children in a Christmas-morning fire in her Stamford, C.T. home.
DNA Info reports that firefighters extinguished a blaze at Jacob Riis Houses II on Monday afternoon.
According to CBS New York, Matt Sky, an East Village resident, was among those celebrating Christmas at Zuccotti Park.
CBS News also reports, along with the Post and DNA Info, that an East Village housing officer, Rafael Casiano, is facing drunk driving and vehicular assault charges after his car flipped over on the Bronx River Parkway, leaving his partner in a coma. Read more…
Well folks, it’s about time for The Local to close down shop at 20 Cooper Square and head off for the long weekend. So go ahead and grab some egg nog from the new 7-Eleven, and if your apartment is too small for a Christmas tree or a fireplace, well then at least light some Douglas fir incense and curl up to our video recreation of the Bowery Hotel’s lobby hearth. Barring any breaking news (Santa’s sleigh crashing into an illegal rooftop addition, etc.), we’ll see you Tuesday. Have a wonderful holiday.
A woman was attacked by a man who attempted to rob her iPhone on the morning of Dec. 10, the police said.
According to the police, the incident occurred around 11:30 p.m. in front of 167 Essex Street, near Rivington Street. A man thought to be in his 30s and 6′, 1″ rode up behind the 25-year-old victim on a white bicycle. The man, who wore an orange hat, is said to have punched the woman in the face and chest. He then attempted to grab her iPhone, but she held on to it during a struggle and he eventually fled on his bike toward East Houston Street.
The Seventh Precinct is looking for the suspect shown here in connection with the attempted robbery.
In Timeout’s roundup of the best restaurants of 2011, associate editor Chris Schonberger writes that when guests come to town, his “secret weapon” is to offer them a seat at Robataya NY’s counter, where the chefs “leap in front of you to pluck raw ingredients from the bountiful, market-style mise-en-place — a whole red snapper, maybe, or earthy eryngi mushrooms — then hop back to their prep stations, where they work their minimalist magic.” Tip from The Local: Keep an eye out for fried fugu (or blowfish) on the specials menu.
Yesterday, City Room reported that “the picture of crime in New York City in 2011 is shaping up as virtually a mirror image of the year before, according to police statistics.” In the East Village, statistics released this week (tracking incidents reported to the Ninth Precinct in the period ending Dec. 11) show that crime complaints were almost universally down with three weeks left in the year. Petit larceny (theft of property valued at $1,000 or less), grand larceny auto, and misdemeanor sex crimes were the only categories that saw increases in reported crime following Deputy Inspector Kenneth Lehr’s appointment as precinct commander in January. Below, our chart comparing this year’s numbers with last year’s, and comparing the percentage of change in the Ninth Precinct to the same citywide.
The Post and Gay City News report that a mistrial has been declared after a jury weighing second-degree murder charges was unable to decide whether Davawn Robinson intended to kill CUNY professor Edgar Mercado in his Avenue C apartment.
Skaters who’ve been shut out of Open Road Park may be curious to see the renderings for the forthcoming Coleman Skate Park on the Lower East Side. Bowery Boogie has its doubts about the project: “Judging by the proposed renderings, it appears the area will become just another corporate haven to sell advertising.”
The Times reviews “Accidentally, Like a Martyr,” the play at Paradise Factory Theater that’s set at a local gay bar: “Though these men are only sometimes good to one another, they are good company for 80 minutes in the theater, especially Mr. Blasius’s warm, wounded Edmund.” Read more…
Of the many historical scavenger hunts that Watson Adventures conducts across the country, one of founder Bret Watson’s personal favorites is “Secrets of the East Village.” With winter upon us, The Local thought you might prefer to go on the hunt from the comfort of your warm and toasty apartment, by having a look at the clues below. Need more? After hearing Mr. Watson introduce the tour at Cooper Square, click on the points in the above map to hear him share more history about each location (you can view a larger version of the map here). The answers to his questions are at the bottom of this post. Read more…
As Mars Bar disappears, an artist who lived across the street from the dive and was regularly featured on its walls is honoring its memory by selling t-shirts. Last year, Sergey Aniskov marked Christmas at Mars Bar by painting a mural of a booze-swilling anarchist Santa Claus (see it below). This year, he has printed the image on limited-edition t-shirts that are going for $22.99 on eBay and will also be sold, said the artist, at Reason Clothing at 436 East Ninth Street.
“I was a regular at Mars Bar for ten years,” said Mr. Aniskov, 41, who came to New York from Moscow in the 1990s and now works at Animation Collective. “It was the place where you went when you were really having problems. You knew you’d find good company and get good feedback from the real people and the real East Village. I felt like I had to do this as a memory.” Read more…
Emma Goldman may have been the East Village’s most famous radical. For ten years she published the magazine “Mother Earth” out of her 13th Street residence, where she housed transient intellectuals of every stripe. At one point she listed her return address as 50 East First Street, where the tavern of Justus Schwab, an anarchist who was among those charged with inciting the Tompkins Square Riot of 1874, served as “the most famous radical center in New York.”
The tavern, she wrote, was “a mecca for French Communards, Spanish and Italian refugees, Russian politicals, and German socialists and anarchists who had escaped the iron heel of Bismarck.” Interestingly, a storefront at the address is currently for rent. Invoking Ms. Goldman in a Craigslist posting, the landlord seeks “a thriving local business forced to relocate because of a steep rent hike.”
Indeed, Emma Goldman’s theories are more than just an interesting relic of the neighborhood’s past. Her deeds and words have gained renewed notoriety among Occupy Wall Street protesters, one of whom, Miriam Rocek, has even taken to impersonating her. Watch her spread the late radical’s spirit and ideas in a video that also features Vivian Gornick, author of the recently published “Emma Goldman: Revolution as a Way of Life,” about the anarchist’s life in the East Village at the turn of the twentieth century.
This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: February 1, 2012
An earlier version of this post misidentified the address of Justus Schwab’s tavern. It was at 50 East First Street, not 10.
Just a couple of weeks after State Assemblyman Brian Kavanagh announced a new basketball program operated by the Police Athletic League at the Campos Plaza housing complex, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office has announced that it is teaming with P.A.L., the police department, and the D.E.A. to bring a similar program to the Henry Street Settlement’s Boys & Girls Republic at 888 East Sixth Street next month.
At a Community Board 3 meeting Tuesday night, Linda Jones-Janneh of the District Attorney’s Community Affairs Unit announced that the Pro Hoops L.E.S. Free Basketball Training Camp would start Jan. 6, and would include two Friday evening sessions for boys (one for ages 12 to 14, the other for ages 15 to 19) and a Saturday evening session for girls aged 15 to 19. The program will run through Feb. 25. Read more…
The Times has more on the charges against eight soldiers in the apparent suicide of Private Danny Chen. “It’s of some comfort and relief to learn that the Army has taken this seriously,” says Private Chen’s mother, who lives in an East Village housing project.
According to City Room, some oppose the diesel-fuel generators at the Union Square holiday market because they say they emit fumes that can be harmful to children as well as those with lung and heart ailments. Read more…
Now that you’ve crossed the guys, the girls, and the geeks off your holiday shopping list, here’s what to get the wee ones.
Above:
1. Fly vs. Frog mittens, $28 – JellyFish New York (244 East 13th Street)
2. Boite à Outils children’s tool box, $32.99– Dinosaur Hill (306 East Ninth Street)
3. Franklin fat tie tee, $38 – Pink Olive (337 East Ninth Street)
4. Princess and The Pea bed set, $124 – Pink Olive (337 East Ninth Street)
5. Mr. Robot Head, $33 – Dinosaur Hill (306 East Ninth Street) Read more…
Keith Masco, the owner of B.A.D. Burger and once an outspoken critic of Community Board 3, will try to get approval for a beer and wine license at his restaurant at next month’s meetings. Mr. Masco’s reappearance before the board comes over a year after he tried to obtain a liquor license for a seafood restaurant and fishmonger at the same location. The board’s denial of his efforts resulted in Mr. Masco colorfully writing to EV Grieve, “I see no reason to bow to the communists at the community board.”
Other burger joints are on the just-released agenda, as well. BareBurger, which has been under construction for several months on Second Avenue will also push for a beer-wine license. Lastly, Five Napkin Burger on 14th Street will seek approval for a sidewalk cafe. The yet-to-open chain joint was previously a bodega.
And there’s one more location with a rocky history with the community board. Goat Town will ask the board for approval of an upgrade to its space on Fifth Street. The previous restaurant there, Butcher Bay, sued the board for denying an upgrade to its liquor license.
Lastly, new owners are apparently getting involved in the nightclub La Vie under undesirable circumstances: there was a knife-fight there on Thanksgiving.
After four years of whetting the whistles of wine drinkers in the far East Village, David Hitchner, co-owner of In Vino Winebar & Restaurant and Alphabet City Wine Co., is striking out on his own. This time, he’ll be tapping kegs instead of popping corks, as he plans to open Alphabet City Beer Co. at 96 Avenue C next February. Mr. Hitchner recently took The Local on an early tour of the space.
Leave your mink scarf at home when you head out to Revision Lounge on Avenue B: the owner doesn’t allow any animal fur inside his bar. DNAInfo reports that doormen check the authenticity of patrons’ pelts and have infuriated a few of them in the process. Johnny Barounis, a vegetarian who also owns bars in the Lower East Side and Upper East Side with the same policy, said that “the fur thing is basically what I can do to help change some behavior.”
In September, Bikram Choudhury, the founder of Bikram Yoga, filed a $1 million lawsuit against his former student Greg Gumucio, founder of the wildly popular Yoga to the People chain. Mr. Choudhury copyrighted his series of 26 poses and two breathing exercises in 2002, and he’s been known to sue people who infringe on it. The Bikram guru has said the poses were designed in a series for health benefits, and to effectively teach the courses, instructors must become certified, which costs $10,000. The million-dollar question: Can yoga be owned?
The landlord of Gathering of the Tribes says she will now make good on her longstanding threat to send the freewheeling artistic space into exile.
The relationship between Steve Cannon, the blind poet who founded Tribes, and his landlord, Lorraine Zhang, seems to have been contentious virtually from the moment he sold the building at 285 East Third Street to her in 2005 for $1.2 million.
The space regularly hosts gallery openings and music shows; a magazine is put together there, as well. But all the foot traffic, artistic exploration and revelry comes at a price Ms. Zhang says she can’t afford.
“My attorney is going to send him a notice that he must remove all the events from the building or remove himself,” she said. Read more…
The Washington Post reports that the army has charged eight soldiers in the death of Pvt. Danny Chen. Though it’s unclear whether the death of Pvt. Chen, who grew up in Chinatown and the East Village, is still being considered a suicide, the charges include involuntary manslaughter, negligent homicide, dereliction of duty, making a false statement, maltreatment, and assault.
Bowery Boogie points out that thanks to some new projects from meatpacking district restaurateurs, the Lower East Side has been increasingly referred to as the Lower Eastpacking District, a term The Local’s editor coined back in 2006.
The Local was a journalistic collaboration designed to reflect the richness of the East Village, report on its issues and concerns, give voice to its people and create a space for our neighbors to tell stories about themselves. It was operated by the students and faculty of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University, in collaboration with The New York Times, which provides supervision to ensure that the blog remains impartial, reporting-based, thorough and rooted in Times standards.
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