Susan Keyloun

Good morning, East Village.

DNA Info reports that Imre Meszesan, the man accused of attempting to rape a woman in her First Avenue apartment building, is being held on $100,000 bail. PIX 11 interviews the victim on camera and reports that Mr. Meszesan, a Hungarian immigrant working as a handyman, was arrested for public lewdness in Suffolk County in July.

The Post discovers that there are still deals to be had in the Lower East Side. One apartment hunter says she looked at a couple of places in the East Village, “but they were small. You could be lying on your bed and cook spaghetti at the same time.”

The Village Voice’s Runnin’ Scared blog reports that about 50 protesters gathered outside of the Voice’s offices in order to express their view that the Backpage.com ads that run in the paper facilitate sex trafficking.

Read more…

Daniel Maurer

A fire broke out on the fourth floor of 218 East Sixth Street between Second Avenue and Taras Shevchenko Place around 8:14 p.m. tonight, a spokesperson for the F.D.N.Y. said. Two people – said to be tenants of apartment 10, where the spokesperson said the fire started due to a cooking oil inflammation – were taken to the hospital (at least one of them to Beth Israel) with minor injuries, one with a burn and the other with a laceration. The fire was under control by 8:57 p.m.

When The Local arrived on the scene around 8:45 p.m., smoke was billowing out of the building’s upper windows as firefighters broke glass and searched apartments. Read more…

Amanda Plasencia

The Local recently spotted this cryptic message taped to the window of the law office of Zenon B. Masnyj, on East Seventh Street between Second and Third Avenues. It’s not the first time we’ve seen such a sign. A previous one read: “Real Interest Every Day Not Free Pierogies Every Year.” Is this the East Village equivalent of the rants in the window of Old Town Bar?

Asked about the notes, Mr. Masnyj only added to the mystery. “The messages aren’t up there by mistake,” he said, but declined to elaborate.

If any new ones go up, let us know, and add photos to our Flickr pool.

Daniel Maurer

Two restaurants on First Avenue near 12th Street (where at least one news truck was still parked earlier today) are in trouble. As mentioned earlier, EV Grieve noticed that Sahara East, which has for years lured a young set to its back garden, has been seized by authorities for nonpayment of taxes. A spokesman for the state Department of Taxation and Finance now reveals that the hookah spot owes $393,773.41 in “open tax warrants” (unpaid taxes). The Local hasn’t yet been able to contact the restaurant’s owners to find out whether they will try to reopen.

One block north, a reader told Grieve that Quantum Leap, a vegetarian restaurant, might close this week. A hostess at the restaurant, Elizabeth Perez, told The Local that indeed it would close tomorrow in the wake of a recent rent increase. Read more…

The Post reports that a pair of Bulgarian nationals accused of getting bank account information from 1,500 unwitting debit card users (and bilking them out of $300,000) pleaded not guilty today. According to prosecutors, Dimitar Stamatov, a limo driver, and Iordan Ivanov, a mechanic, set up pinhole cameras and skimming devices at four Chase bank ATMs around Union Square and Astor Place.

Photos: Noah Fecks

Yesterday evening, Joe Dobias, the chef-owner of JoeDoe on First Street, opened a spin-off sandwich shop, JoeDough, at 135 First Avenue between St. Marks Place and Ninth Street. Slicing bread in a 4-seat nook decorated with personal tchotkes, Mr. Dobias said, “This place is for the customers. It’s about what they want. My other restaurant is about my ego and what I want.”

That said, at least a couple of JoeDough’s $10 sandwiches are carryovers from JoeDoe: The Conflicted Jew consists of chicken liver, bacon and onions on challah bread; the JoseDoe Cubano is made with roasted pork shoulder, shoulder bacon, Swiss cheese, mustard sauce and house-made pickles. Read more…

A landmarked building on Bond Street will get two additional floors and major renovations to the entrance and backyard thanks to an approval from the Landmarks Preservation Commission. Curbed reports that the plan comes after a previous proposal was rejected by the commission for being too out of context with its surroundings between Bowery and Lafayette Street. The building, which was built in 1890, fared better than a planned addition to the nearby Puck Building, which was rejected yet again by the commission yesterday.

Photos: Noah Fecks

After a couple of preview dinners for friends and family, the East Village outpost of Williamsburg’s B.A.D. (“Breakfast All Day”) Burger will open for 24-hour, seven-days-a-week service at 7 p.m. tonight. Perry “Pee Wee” Masco, who owns the restaurant with her brother Keith, said she hoped to honor the history of its address, 171 Avenue A, as a rock-and-roll destination. In the 1980s, the late Jerry Williams, after briefly using the space as an after-hours club, turned it into a rehearsal and recording studio where the Bad Brains and other punk and hardcore legends performed. Read more…

N.Y.P.D. The suspects in the burglary.

The police are searching for two men suspected of stealing cash from Souen restaurant on East 13th Street.

The duo broke into the macrobiotic eatery near University Place sometime between 11 p.m. on Nov. 13 and 6:30 a.m. the next day and stole an undisclosed amount of money, the police said. The suspects are depicted in a surveillance image released by the police.

Souen, which also has a noodle restaurant on Sixth Street in the East Village, specializes in Japanese food and encourages — according to its website — chewing.

Last month, a group of residents living near University Place raised concerns about crime in the area after an early-morning stabbing outside of a pizzeria.

Brendan Bernhard

Good morning, East Village.

In case you missed it, The Local reported late last night that the police announced the arrest of a man suspected of attacking a woman in her First Avenue apartment building Sunday morning. 35-year-old Imre Meszesan of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn has been charged with burglary and attempted rape.

Middle Collegiate Church on East Seventh Street is among the churchs that DNA info says have offered to take in Occupy Wall Street protesters. NBC New York adds that the church served a pizza dinner last night.

The Daily News reports that Ai Weiwei, the artist known partly for his photographs of the East Village in the 1980s, has deposited $1.3 million into a Chinese government account while he contests charges that his design firm (which he says does not own) owes $2.4 million in back taxes. Read more…

Surveillance footage released by N.Y.P.D.

The police have arrested a suspect in Sunday’s early-morning attempted rape, Lieutenant Patrick Ferguson of the Ninth Precinct announced tonight.

Mr. Ferguson said that he had just heard about the arrest shortly before addressing around 25 attendees at a Ninth Precinct Community Council meeting and had no further information. A police spokesman had not yet received any information regarding the arrest of the suspect, either. [See update below.] Read more…

“Where Am I?”, an exhibit that opened at A Gathering of the Tribes last week, is the latest (after “Blind Light” last month) to take inspiration from the Third Street gallery’s owner, Steve Cannon.

Attendees enter a dark room filled with fog and are guided through a labyrinth of sculptures that they cannot see but are encouraged to touch. The intention is to mimic the way that Mr. Cannon experiences art despite having been diagnosed with glaucoma in 1991 (that same year, he retired from teaching at the City University of New York and started “A Gathering of the Tribes” as a literary journal). Read more…

Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation A rendering of the rooftop addition to the Puck Building that was shown at a public hearing.

For the third time, the owner of the historic Puck Building was sent back to the drawing board because his plans for a new rooftop penthouse were deemed too obtrusive.

“It’s too tall, it’s much too visible and what you see is too aggressive,” said Frederick Bland, a commissioner with the Landmarks Preservation Commission.

Jared Kushner, the owner of the New York Observer and the principal of Kushner Companies, which owns the building at Houston and Mott Streets, has tried to gain approval for the proposed condominium since September. In October, the company returned to the landmarks commission with a more modest design, and was rejected again. Today, even more modest designs met the same fate.
Read more…

The police arrested some 200 people, including this reporter, in and around the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park early Tuesday.

While some officers, many in riot gear, moved into the park, others blocked access to the park within a one- to two-block radius, also closing subway stations in the area as well as access to the Brooklyn Bridge.

At around 1:45 a.m., finding all routes to the park blocked, this reporter filmed scuffles between the police and a crowd of more than 100 demonstrators near the intersection of Broadway and Cortlandt Street, about one block north of Zuccotti Park. As shown in the video above, protesters chanted “Shame!” and “This is a peaceful protest!” while occasionally jostling with police. Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown The Second Avenue location.

At a meeting last night, the Bean asked Community Board 3’s S.L.A. & D.C.A. Licensing to support its application for beer and wine licenses at two forthcoming locations. It was successful in one instance, but not in the other.

Ike Escava, co-owner of the coffee shop that is famously being replaced by a Starbucks at its former First Avenue location, said customers had been asking for wine at The Bean for a while, but their previous landlord had not allowed it.

Alexandra Militano, the chairwoman of the committee, voted along with other committee members to support a beer and wine license at a location at Second Avenue and Third Street, which is still under construction, but not before chiding Mr. Escava for failing to come with more community support. “I’m a little disheartened,” she said. Read more…

Daniel Maurer

In an at times vitriolic give-and-take of accusations and counter-accusations, neighbors came out in force last night to oppose a liquor license renewal for Diablo Royale Este, a Mexican establishment on Avenue A that has been plagued with complaints since its opening in May of 2010.

At a meeting of Community Board 3’s S.L.A. & D.C.A. Licensing committee, Andrew Coamey accused Diablo Royale of “contributing to turning Avenue A into a booze-filled entertainment zone.” The neighbor, who is a frequent attendee of the meetings, distributed a packet of materials to committee members detailing numerous complaints against the restaurant, complete with photographs of drunken revelers outside of the establishment on Halloween. One photograph showed a man urinating on the door of Mr. Coamey’s building. “Cleary they are not running the family-friendly Mexican restaurant this board approved,” he said.

“My concern is more the impact [Diablo Royale] has on all of us,” said longtime East Village resident Judith Zaborowski, 68. “I think that an operating license in the neighborhood is a privilege. I think that the fallout from an operation being permitted to continue when it has a history of complaints and non-compliances, will have an impact on us in our own space.” Read more…

Abe Lincoln’s Jr.’s sidewalk art; Artist Alley at Extra Place.Scott Lynch

Three months after Occupy Wall Street started to take hold, in part after a planning meeting in Tompkins Square Park, the N.Y.P.D. began clearing Zuccotti Park of protesters and their property around 1 a.m. this morning. The Times reports that 70 protesters, some of whom had chained themselves together, were arrested for defying orders to leave the park. Gothamist had updates throughout the night, and linked to an Observer report that Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez was arrested (according to the press secretary of Councilman Jumaane Williams, he was bleeding when he was taken away). The Post reported that at least one police officer was injured: “He was seen being taken out of Zuccotti Park on a stretcher, his eyes closed and with several lacerations on his face.”

Mayor Bloomberg explained in a statement that he and the park’s owner, Brookfield Properties, felt the encampment was “coming to pose a health and fire safety hazard to the protestors and to the surrounding community.” His complete statement is reprinted on City Room, which also posted a photo of Zuccotti Park at 7:22 a.m., completely cleared of protesters.  Read more…

Brendan Bernhard

While we’re peering into forthcoming Italian restaurants, here’s a shot that contributor Brendan Bernard took inside of Zi’ Pep, the Southern Italian restaurant that Gerard Renny of Stuzzicheria and Pane Panelle is bringing to 424 East Ninth Street. As mentioned in The Day this morning, The Feed posted a write-up of the restaurant along with photos of a few dishes. Grub Street posted the menu last week. An employee tells us that Zi’ Pep is serving friends and family tonight and will open to the public tomorrow at 5 p.m.

Noticed a new business opening? Snap a photo for The Local’s Flickr pool, and tip us off via e-mail.

Lauren Carol Smith

Co-owner Greg Barris told us a little about the menu at L’asso’s forthcoming East Village outpost after a Halloween party at the pizzeria’s construction site. Though the space is still a work in progress (as our snapshots show), the menu is a done deal. Feast your eyes on it below.  Read more…