Suzanne Rozdeba

Looks like Christmas trees have come to East Village Farm on Avenue A near the park. You can add this tree stand to the ones EV Grieve and Gothamist have spotted.

Meanwhile, a flyer advertising the 20th annual tree lighting at Tompkins Square Park promises music from the Mandel & Lydon Trio as well as the Theater for the New City’s Carolers of Olde New York, plus refreshments from Veselka and Life Cafe. (Yes, that Life Cafe.) The event, co-hosted by the East Village Parks Conservancy, the Third Street Music School Settlement, and the Tompkins Square Park Neighborhood Coalition, will take place at the southeast corner of the central lawn on Dec. 11 from 4 p.m. till 5 p.m.

Tweet

Stephen Rex Brown Workers on a cherry picker chipping away at the mural this morning.

While trudging through this morning’s nasty weather, The Local spotted a pair of workers peeling away the Shepard Fairey mural on the building adjacent to the recently rechristened Standard Hotel.

Later in the day, a spokeswoman for Balazs properties, Lucy McIntyre, confirmed that the mural depicting a monk was coming down. “Having discussed with Art Production Fund that the piece was originally intended to be a temporary mural, and given its condition was peeling off the wall, we opted to remove it,” Ms. McIntyre said. Read more…

Daniel Maurer

Demolition work continues at 25 East First Street. Today, protective netting shrouded the scaffolding that The Local spotted yesterday, and a gap in the construction barrier offered a glimpse of the bygone dive known and loved as Mars Bar. On Second Avenue, a dumpster was being filled with debris, and the storefront next to Mars Bar was a gaping hole. Asked when demolition of the bar itself would occur, a construction worker said in about a week.

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 23, 2011

An earlier version of this article misidentified the avenue where the construction dumpster was located.

A man in his 20s was removed from under an M train at the Broadway-Lafayette Station at around noon, according to a spokesman for the Fire Department. The man, whose name was not available, was taken to Bellevue Hospital with “multiple traumas,” the spokesman said. The police did not yet have further information regarding the incident. DNA Info reported that witnesses saw the victim bleeding but conscious.

The housing advocates at Good Old Lower East Side will host a workshop next Wednesday on how to use the state Department of Housing and Community Renewal to one’s advantage in the fight against neglectful landlords. The talk will cover how to best to combat “harassment, rent overcharges, reduction of services” and other common tenant woes. A lawyer will be on hand to answer questions beginning at 7 p.m. at the Perseverance House at 535 East Fifth Street.

Daniel Maurer

Last night, a doorman guarded a private friends-and-family dinner at a forthcoming restaurant in the former David’s Bagels space at 228 First Avenue, between 13^th and 14^th Streets. The sign over his head read Agave Azuré (a permutation of the restaurant’s original name, Agave Azul), but the illuminated “Agave” lettering was dark. According to a partner in the cantina and taqueria, that’s because a restaurant in the West Village, Agave, sent a cease-and-desist letter just days before opening night.

Evangelos Gavalas, 36, said that when the restaurant opens for dinner tomorrow (followed by lunch and brunch service in the coming weeks), it will be called Tepito, after the chef’s native town in Mexico. Executive chef Adrian Ramirez, he said, was born and raised in Mexico before coming to Austin, Texas and then to Manhattan to work at Le Cirque and eventually Dos Caminos.

“Tepito in Mexico is a badass place, just like the Lower East Side,” said Mr. Gavalas. “It’s not a culinary destination – more of a drug destination.” Read more…

Philip Kalantzis-Cope The Theater for the New City at 155 First Avenue.

The Theater For The New City is in the final stages of a 24-year fundraising drive to pay off its debt.

In 1986 the theater’s mortgage was $717,000. Now, it’s down to $90,000, and administrators are orchestrating a big push to ensure its political, avant garde and always-colorful productions continue at the location on First Avenue.

“Our building, our permanent home, is the basis of our ability to produce new art,” said Crystal Field, the theater’s executive director in a press release. “The economic difficulties coming our way, indeed, to the whole of the art world, will best be met by a strong foundation.” Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown Workers packed up at Hottie on Monday night.

Stephen Rex Brown Hottie at 5 St. Marks Place.

Employees were spotted packing up the inventory at Hottie on St. Marks Place on Monday night.

Aurora Berdejo, a sales associate at the gaudy jewelry store between Second and Third Avenues, would only say it was closing for “personal reasons.” Another employee, Olivia Lee, said that the store had been open for four years, and that the rent was $10,000 per month.

A “For rent” sign was already up in the window.

Stephen Rex Brown Work at the Mars Bar building yesterday.

The Times runs a slideshow of photos by Harvey Wang. They’ll be exhibited at “Out Harvey Wang’s Window,” opening Wednesday night at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum’s new gallery space on Orchard Street. “I miss a New York that was affordable and a little rougher,” says the photographer. “I found it more interesting. I’d rather see an old kosher butcher chop than a big blue hotel.”

While mentioning that a pair of lawyers have bought a condo on East Ninth Street, Blockshopper notes that “there have been five condo sales in [the] East Village during the past 12 months, with a median sales price of $850,000.”

Off The Grid turns its attention to backhouses, the gritty tenement-world equivalent of carriage houses: “There are literally scores of these structures throughout our neighborhoods, but almost none are visible from the street, and therefore most are virtually unknown to anyone other than their residents and immediate neighbors.” Read more…

Lauren Carol Smith The now-closed location of Nevada Smiths.

The popular soccer bar Nevada Smiths served its final beer last night, but there’s no need to behave like a hooligan: the staff will be showing games at Webster Hall until the bar reopens at its new location.

Owner Patrick McCarthy told The Local that he planned on showing his first game at Webster Hall this weekend. A staffer at the nightclub and concert hall confirmed the arrangement.

“It’s perfect in there,” said Mr. McCarthy, who was cleaning out his old space on Third Avenue between 11th and 12th Streets. “I want to stay in the neighborhood, naturally. This all worked out great.” Read more…

Lauren Carol Smith The display cabinet in question.

On Black Friday, while the rest of the country shopped for legitimate deals and steals, a team of five individuals placed their own five-finger discount on four vaporizers at a St. Marks Place tattoo parlor and smoking accessories store.

Earlier today, while The Local spoke to Albert Dashevsky about the sign he recently installed over his shop, Smoking Tattoos, he let slip that on Friday, Nov. 25, the store was robbed of four vaporizers that he estimated were worth somewhere between $1,300 to $1,500 in total.

The police confirmed that around 9:20 p.m., five unknown individuals entered the store and made off with the vaporizers. Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown La Vie Lounge.

The police have arrested a 31-year-old man involved in the post-Thanksgiving brawl at La Vie Lounge that left three people with knife wounds.

A police spokesman said that Jamar Jones was charged with third-degree assault in the donnybrook in front of the nightclub on First Street near First Avenue. According to a criminal complaint, a witness observed a group of seven or eight people surrounding a 23-year-old man on the ground at around 3:45 a.m. on Nov. 25. The witness said that Mr. Jones kicked the victim numerous times. Mr. Jones later admitted that he “bloodied him up,” according to the complaint.

The police are still searching for the culprits responsible for cutting two others during the brawl.

A receptionist at La Vie said no one was available to comment on the incident.

Daniel Maurer

Oh, and speaking of flashy signs: When writing about the Village Pourhouse, the wordily worrywarts at The Local always face the same question: Is it Village Pourhouse (one word) or Pour House (two)? The sign seems to say Pour House and yet the bar’s Website indicates Pourhouse. Well, last night, thanks to a glitch in the neon, the matter was finally settled: Let’s just call this place Our House from now on.

St. Marks Place has long been a bastion of the bawdy and gaudy – from Kenka’s giant tanuki to Dr. Brendan’s Fiat 500 to the psychedelic goblet that used to grace 12 St. Marks Place. Now Albert Dashevsky, the owner of Smoking Tattoos, has added still more color to the block. A whole rainbow of them, in fact.

Back in June, Mr. Dashevsky opened the tattoo parlor and smoking accessories store at 18 St. Marks Place, in the nook that formerly housed a sex shop, Cherries. Scaffolding prevented him from putting up a proper sign – until last weekend, when he erected the one you see in the video above. Read more…

Henry Huggins, 51, has been charged in the recent muggings of two septuagenarians in Stuyvesant Town. According to The Daily News, he is “a career criminal with 11 prior arrests for robbery, forgery, selling drugs and criminal trespassing, among other counts, records show.”

Alexander Kok

Good morning, East Village.

The Daily News reports that a “nut went wild” outside of La Vie Lounge around 4 a.m. Friday: “A 27-year-old man and a 21-year-old woman had left the club and were standing down the block, on the corner of First St. and First Ave., when a man slashed her face and her companion’s face and chest, a police source said.” A 23-year-old was also slashed by a suspect that was brought in for questioning. The Local will have more information as it becomes available.

According to NY1, the police are looking for a man in his 40s who is said to have attacked two elderly men – one of them 71 and the other 77 – in Stuyvesant Town earlier this month. A resident still considers it “one of the safest places you could live in New York City.” Update | 10:25 a.m. Arrest in Stuyvesant Town Muggings.

In case you missed the news Thursday: Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly has issued an internal memo to N.Y.P.D. officers stating, in the words of the Daily News, that “officers should permit media as close to the activity as possible and that media should not always be restricted from entering private property.” The memo followed the controversial arrests of journalists covering the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, including a reporter and photographer for The Local. Read more…

In rural New South Wales, Australia, where Amy Chaplin grew up, Thanksgiving was a non-event. But at the vegan institution Angelica Kitchen, where she was executive chef from 2003 until 2010, it was a very big deal. “It was the biggest day of the year for us,” she said, adding that she and her staff would work for days roasting and stuffing squash, preparing homemade chutneys, heirloom beans, pickled vegetables, flatbreads and their signature nut-and-seed brittle for a five-course feast.

Today, Ms. Chaplin, 37, works with large food companies to help them develop recipes featuring whole grains and legumes, and cooks privately for clients like Natalie Portman, whose spindly figure she helped maintain throughout the filming of “Black Swan.” An East Village resident since 2000, she seemed like just the person to tell us how to recover from the turkey-day binge. Read more…

Helen Zhang Preparations for Thanksgiving at the Bowery Mission last year.

Here’s hoping you’ve done all your shopping and you’re set to have a rockin’ Thanksgiving. We’re off till Monday, barring any breaking news – oh, and whether you’re cooking at home or feasting at a local restaurant, you might want to check back with us after the big meal for some expert advice on how to shed the pounds you’re certain to pack on. Amy Chaplin, an East Villager and a former Angelica Kitchen chef who helped Natalie Portman stay slim during “Black Swan,” will be here to help. Till then, throw caution to the wind and enjoy the holiday.