Lauren Carol Smith The A.H.R.C. group home on East Fifth Street
where Alonzo Eason lived

The death of a severely disabled man who lived in a group home on East Fifth Street has been ruled a homicide, the Medical Examiner’s office has confirmed. The police are investigating the case but have yet to make an arrest, according to a spokesman.

On the morning of Aug. 2, Alonzo Eason was wheeled out of the group home and loaded into the back of a Ford Econoline van. He was then driven uptown to a day program on Lexington Avenue near 125th street.

While the other residents were taken inside for their classes, Mr. Eason was left behind. Due to brain damage caused by a fever he had contracted as a baby, he was unable to communicate. As the temperature outside climbed above 90 degrees, Mr. Eason’s absence went unnoticed. When he was finally discovered at 3:30 p.m. that afternoon, he was unresponsive and paramedics declared him dead at the scene.

The group home and day program are both run by A.H.R.C. New York City, a large private provider of services for developmentally disabled people.

Mr. Eason’s older brother, Leroy, confirmed that he had hired a lawyer and private investigator to pursue a civil action against A.H.R.C. “Here we are dealing with a case of pure neglect,” he said. “I’m irate at the things that have occurred.” Read more…

Lucyna Mickievicius, the owner of Lucy’s on Avenue A, has lived in the East Village for over 30 years. In 1981, she tended bar at Blanche’s on St. Marks Place while putting in weekend shifts at Blue & Gold bar. Blanche’s moved to Avenue A, and became known as Lucy’s after Ms. Mickievicius made a trip to Poland to visit her son.

“People were asking what happened to me,” she said. “The owners got frustrated telling the same story, so they made the Lucy’s sign outside to show I was still there. I came back from Poland and saw the sign. It didn’t look so bad.”

“What was I supposed to do?” she laughed. “It would be a shame to destroy it. And it’s stayed that way ever since.” Indeed, Lucy’s took over the dive 15 years ago and still spends her nights behind the bar – barring the occasional vacation.

Before one of Lucy’s recent breaks, The Local’s Suzanne Rozdeba spent the day with her, visiting some of her favorite haunts, including Ray’s Candy Store, and speaking to her in her native Polish about how she came to work at the bar.

Scott Lynch

According to The Lo-Down, U.S. Rep. Nydia Velazquez, City Councilmember Margaret Chin, and community advocates are scheduled to meet with Pentagon officials on Wednesday regarding the mysterious death of Private Danny Chen. There will be a vigil and march on Thursday demanding more transparency in the investigation. In a separate post, The Lo-Down posts a video in which friends and family of Mr. Chen demand an answer to the question, “What happened to Danny?”

Gay City News reports that Davawn Robinson, who is accused of murdering a man in his Avenue C apartment in 2009, testified in court yesterday that he was engaged in sex play when he accidentally killed Edgard Mercado with a rope.

Jeremiah’s Vanishing recalls the time when the Lucky Cheng’s building was home to Club Baths, a tropical-themed gay bathhouse, and then Cave Canem, a Roman-themed restaurant that was called “a real hot spot for the chic-est of the yuppies” and “the place for downtown’s hip art scene.” Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown Dina Leor holds a statue of La Virgen de Guadalupe.

As devoted Catholics all over the world celebrate the Virgin of Guadalupe, one local has a unique reason to rejoice. Dina Leor, the owner of the Mexican memorabilia store La Sirena, had a religious experience with the icon 19 years ago while traveling in Mexico City.

Stephen Rex Brown One of the many images of La Virgen inside La Sirena.

“I still feel the same connection that I did in Mexico City,” said Ms. Leor. “I’m getting goose bumps now telling it.”

It all began when Ms. Leor decided to drop into a church in the capital city. While sitting in the pews, a light at the end of a nearby hallway caught her eye. She followed it, and at the end of the hallway was a painting of La Virgen de Guadalupe. The rays of light around the figure began to radiate and then emerged from the picture to surround Ms. Leor. The experience happened in a flash, but it has never left her.
Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown The poet at work.

A 20-year-old itinerant poet was offering up stanzas on the cheap today, and she even penned an ode to St. Marks for The Local.

Abigail Mott had set up at St. Marks Place and Third Avenue with a typewriter and a sign saying, “Name a price, pick a subject, get a poem.” A four-person film crew shot her every move. Read more…

Photos: Daniel Maurer

On Saturday, Michael “Bao” Huynh, the chef-owner of Baoguette as well as the short-lived D.O.B. 111 – both on St. Marks Place – was putting the finishing touches on his latest endeavor. The notoriously prolific restaurateur told The Local that BaoBQ would open at 229 First Avenue, between 13th and 14th Streets, this Wednesday.

Mr. Huynh said he had designed his latest menu around three proteins – pork, beef, and chicken – that will be prepared in three ways. The Korean-style pork spare ribs, for instance, will be cooked in a smoker, as will the Laos-style beef jerky. The spicy Vietnamese-style chicken will be smoked over apple wood and then grilled over charcoal. The Thai-style rotisserie chicken will be grilled over wood. There will also be a few seafood dishes. Read more…

Daniel Maurer Sign boards at Bar Kada and Maharlika on Sunday afternoon.

Maharlika has received its share of attention since it went from being a roving pop-up to a proper brick-and-mortar restaurant on First Avenue back in August. “Could it be that Filipino food, the underdog of Asian cuisines, is having its moment at last?”, asked The Times in its $25 and Under review. It would seem so: Recently, yet another Filipino pop-up quietly opened up in the East Village – on the very same block as Maharlika.

Few seem to have noticed, but last month, Bar Kada took up a Sunday residence at Ugly Kitchen at 103 First Avenue, just a few doors down from Maharlika between Sixth and Seventh Streets. The pop-up is the brainchild of Aris Tuazon, 37, who was until recently the chef at another nearby Filipino restaurant, Krystal’s Cafe 81. Yesterday, Mr. Tuazon said he planned to serve a Filipino menu at Ugly Kitchen every Sunday from 11 a.m. till midnight while he looked for a permanent space in the neighborhood.  Read more…

Photos: Daniel Maurer

Less than a month after Quantum Leap closed, its successor, Sao Mai, has opened at 203 First Avenue between 12th and 13th Streets. Ronny Nguyen, the executive chef, told The Local that he opened Saturday.

The chef, who migrated from South Vietnam in 1984, said he was eager to test the East Village waters after five years at Xe Lửa on Mulberry Street. “There are more American people here,” he said. “In Chinatown, there’s a restaurant on every corner. Over here, I don’t see many Vietnamese restaurants.” Read more…

Chelsia Rose Marcius Alex Diaz, 13, of the Lower East Side, skates
on the dismantled ramps.

Open Road Park was recently closed until further notice, but its wooden skate ramps lingered. On Saturday, they were finally removed from the lot on 12th Street between First Avenue and Avenue A and put out on the curb for trash pickup. That didn’t stop local skateboarders from using them one last time, as Jose Morales and a few friends reassembled a pile of dismantled planks into a makeshift skate park along 12th Street.

Mr. Morales, 13, of the Lower East Side, said school officials were already breaking down the ramps by noon on Saturday when he arrived at Open Road. He said he asked one official what he was doing, but was quickly dismissed.

“He said, ‘Don’t touch these ramps, they’re garbage,’” recounted Mr. Morales. But he and his friends set two ramps back up against the wall of East Side Community High School and continued to skate. Read more…

Photos: Noah Fecks

And here you have it: After closing its First Avenue digs back in September, the Bean reopened today at 54 Second Avenue, on the corner of Third Street – down the block from its original home, where a Starbucks is still under construction. The Local showed you Jim Power’s sign going up last week; now click through our slideshow to see how the long vacant “Crazy Landlord” space was looking this morning. Not bad. The Bean will be open from 7 a.m. till 11 p.m. daily; the menu remains the same, as you can see below. And don’t forget: A location at First Avenue and Ninth Street is also in the works. The Local spotted work going on there over the weekend. Read more…

Dominique Zonyee Scott

Yuletide cheer spread through Tompkins Square Park on Sunday evening at the twentieth annual Holiday Tree lighting. About 75 locals sang along to “Jingle Bells” and “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” while sipping hot cocoa provided by Veselka.

The Theater for the New City’s Carolers of Olde New York quieted just before dusk, and the crowd counted down to the moment that bright white lights illuminated the park.

Albert Fabozzi, president of the Tompkins Square Park Neighborhood Coalition, said, “We have been doing this for 20 years, but this year was tough because I did it alone, without Kevin.” Kevin Dowd, the former vice president of the Neighborhood Coalition, died of lung cancer on March 8.

Mr. Fabozzi and Mr. Dowd met in the 80s, when Mr. Dowd was a New York University film graduate and Mr. Fabozzi was a hair stylist turned interior designer. The men shared a passion for the arts and an investment in the growth of Alphabet City. Read more…

Nick DeSantis

The Local’s Nick DeSantis took the above photo on Saturday. Downtown Traveler, Zoon, EV Grieve, and East Village Corner also got shots of the SantaCon merriment.

DNA Info reports that Gregory Gumucio, the founder of Yoga to the People, filed papers in court on Friday that “cited a decision from the U.S. Copyright Office that indicates that yoga exercises aren’t protected by current law,” in hopes that a judge would throw out the lawsuit brought against him by Bikram Yoga. Metro quotes an e-mail from the chief of the Performing Arts Division of the U.S. Copyright Office: “We determined that exercises, including yoga exercises, do not constitute the subject matter that Congress intended to protect as choreography.”

Composer Phil Kline’s roving holiday boom box orchestra, Unsilent Night, will return on Dec. 17, and guess what? There’s an app for it! According to the Times, participants who don’t have a portable cassette player can now blast the score on their iPhones. Read more…

Daniel Maurer The burnt-out apartment on the fifth floor.

Firefighters battled an apartment fire at 14 Stuyvesant Oval, in the northeast section of Stuyvesant Town, earlier this afternoon. According to a spokesperson for the F.D.N.Y., a report of a fire on the high-rise’s fifth floor came in around 12:39 p.m.; it was extinguished by 1:14 p.m. One civilian and two firefighters were sent to Beth Israel with minor injuries. The cause of the blaze was unknown.

It wasn’t the only incident in the Stuyvesant Town area this afternoon. Around 2:30 p.m., The Local spotted firefighters, including a Haz-Mat unit, at work securing what the fire department said was fuel leaking from a pickup truck parked on 14th Street near First Avenue.

A police helicopter circled over Alphabet City earlier this morning as officers looked for evidence of an apparent shooting. Around 12:45 a.m., police that were working in the cordoned-off courtyard of N.Y.C.H.A.’s Campos Plaza II complex at 641 East 13th Street as well as the street in front of the Pedro Albizu Campos Community Center at 611 East 13th Street – both between Avenues B and C – were unable to confirm reports of a shooting, and a N.Y.P.D. representative did not yet have details of the incident, but The Local’s Blair Hickman reported hearing “something like a firecracker sound” near Seventh Street and Avenue A. Another Twitter user, Stephanie Begg, also reported hearing a “loud firecracker noise.”

We’ll share more information as it becomes available. If you know anything about the incident, please e-mail The Local.

Update, 11:35 a.m. | The police now confirm that around 12:15 a.m. they received reports of shots fired in the courtyard of Campos Plaza II. A 19-year-old Hispanic male was shot in the leg and taken to Beth Israel hospital, where he remains in stable condition. No arrests have been made, no suspect has been identified, and the investigation is ongoing.

1st Avenue near 12th Street

These photographs are excerpted from a series called “The Paradox of Identity.” It is a work in progress and it has been for a while (since 1985). It is first referred to in my journal as “The Pigeon Project” and later on became “If You Can Name It…”

I am naturally suspicious of grand names for things, so I need to explain: We don’t have a big sky in New York City, so the intersection of sky and city is a big part of looking up around here. I have for some reason been drawn again and again to the sight of a patch of sky etched out by the buildings enclosing it, and the fleeting glimpse of a pigeon entering or leaving. I always feel a brief pang of want when I see it: “If I could only fly like a bird; if I could only be free…of myself.” Read more…

Earlier this week, The Local interviewed Ed Sanders, who is often associated with the Yippies. How’s the movement doing these days? Quite well, if its new cafe is any indication.

The Yippie Museum Café at 9 Bleecker Street hadn’t been on anyone’s party map recently, but after closing over the summer and reopening with a renovated basement, a new paint job, and new menu items such as vegan cookies and empanadas, the longtime Youth International Party headquarters is hopping once again. Next spring, it will host its first comprehensive exhibit of Yippie artifacts.

Part of the credit goes to Michael McKenna, who was called in last spring to give the café a makeover. The manager cleared out the front of the room, so passersby could get of glimpse inside, and found good homes for 30 cats living upstairs (there had been complaints of a weird smell). Mr. McKenna is still sprucing up the place, but said he had already seen an increase in interest among daytime customers as well as organizations wishing to use the cafe for events. Read more…

Meredith Bennett-Smith A hallway in the “permanents” wing (left) is much less colorful than one in the “transient,” or youth hostel wing.

Lisa Grossman has big dreams for a tiny space in the Whitehouse Hotel, one of the last of the old Bowery flophouses still sheltering permanent residents. The personal trainer, a Brooklyn native who now lives in New Jersey, hopes to open a fitness studio catering to the transient backpackers that pay $30 per night to stay in the boarding house’s 4-foot-by-6-foot cubicles. It’s just one of the recent improvements that former owner and current operator Meyer Muschel hopes will drum up business at the Whitehouse.

Ms. Grossman, a wiry, enthusiastic mother of five, said she has been training people ever since she began charging her dorm-mates at Syracuse University $5 each for workouts that consisted of Jane Fonda moves and track running. Seventeen years later, she tailors regimens to the individual needs of her clients. But Studio Fit will cater to the youth-hostel guests of the Whitehouse – many of them Asian and European tourists and students.

“A lot of people come there from all over the world,” Ms. Grossman said. “The rooms are so small, but the Europeans think they’re great. They want to see the city, and the city is a place to be fit.” Read more…

In a sweep of citywide school closings, the Department of Education has announced the impending closure of two schools near the East Village. SchoolBook reports that Washington Irving High School, at 16th Street and Irving Place, and the Legacy School For Integrated Studies, at 14th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, are among the 19 schools that the city will begin to phase out starting next year.