It’s two of the most common sights in Tompkins Square Park: rats and two guys ready to fight. Justin Bagley, who was on vacation from Milwaukee, was shooting a video on Monday of the scurrying rodents when he spotted two men nose-to-nose and ready to throw down. The brawl was over before it started: as you can see in the graphic video Mr. Bagley posted to YouTube, one swing led to a knockout.

“Totally random – it was crazy,” said Mr. Bagley, 28, who was back in Milwaukee today. “I was thinking, ‘Those are ratholes?’ Then, out of nowhere, all of a sudden the guy blasts him.” Read more…

A vigil in honor of Bob Arihood, the East Village photographer who died on Sept. 30, included notable neighborhood characters like Ray Alvarez of Ray’s Candy Store, Jim “Mosaic Man” Power, graffiti artist Chico, L.E.S. Jewels, activist and photojournalist John Penley, and documentarian Clayton Patterson.

Friends first packed into Lucy’s bar on Avenue A at 7 p.m., where Mike Falsetta, Mr. Arihood’s close friend, raised a glass. “To Bob,” he said, to which people cheered, “salud!” and “rest in peace,” and “you will be missed.” Friends and acquaintances of Mr. Arihood shared stories and expressed shock over his death. An hour later, the crowd moved down to Ray’s Candy Store, where about 60 people surrounded the candles and photos of Mr. Arihood placed at the storefront. Read more…

Liv Buli

Good morning, East Village.

If you’re looking for a not-so-humble abode, EV Grieve points to a 4-story townhouse on East 12th Street going for $18,500 a month.  It may not be John Legend’s old apartment, but it’s still impressive.

If you’re in the market for a bargain, you may be out of luck: According to a study cited in Washington Square News, rents in the East Village have jumped up 7.7 percent since Sept. 2010.

After some renovations, Joe’s Pub is back in action. It reopened yesterday, and CBS explains that more seats and better sight lines will make it easier to enjoy the Country Music Association Songwriter Series tomorrow and Friday. Read more…

Dan Kendmey Nancy Schreiber (left) and Katarzyna Swidzinski
review records of their noise complaints.

According to city regulations, noise from a bar should not exceed 42 decibels, which is somewhere between a whisper and a laugh. According to Nancy Schreiber, the noise from the Cloister Cafe is loud enough to shake her walls.

Four years ago, the cafe erected a party tent in the patio beneath Ms. Schreiber’s bedroom window. Since then, she says she has had to endure an escalating barrage of noise over the course of a given night. Around 10 p.m., the noise of the crowd begins to swell. At 11 p.m., the disco lights start flashing on the windowpane. Next comes the music, the singing, and occasional accordion playing. It is channeled through a PA system, which sometimes plays until 4 a.m.

Ms. Schreiber said she had tried running the air conditioner, wearing earplugs, and taking Tylenol PM. On especially loud nights she will blow up an air mattress and sleep on the other end of her apartment. “My neighbor, who is five months pregnant, has called me up at 3 a.m. in tears because of the noise,” she said.

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Ian Duncan The Puck Building with its gold mascot

Puck, the mascot of the building of the same name on the corner of Houston Street and Mulberry Street, is facing the prospect of some shiny glass condos above his shiny gold top hat. Kushner Companies, the building’s owner, wanted to stick apartments on the roof of the landmarked structure. The Landmarks Preservation Commission told it no back in September. Today, it again said no to revised, more modest designs.

In an e-mail, a spokeswoman for the commission said, “The Commissioners did not approve the proposal as presented. They commented and voiced a variety of concerns about the bulk, scale and design of the proposal.” Read more…

Lorcan Otway

Tonight at 7:15 p.m., friends of Bob Arihood and admirers of his work documenting the daily life of the East Village will gather at Lucy’s, with a candlelight vigil to follow at 8 p.m. at Ray’s Candy Store. Today, his body is being returned to his hometown of Lafayette, Indiana. According to Leslie Arihood, his younger brother, funeral arrangements have been tentatively set for Sunday at the Soller-Baker Funeral Home.

In the days since Mr. Arihood was found dead in his apartment, bloggers have paid tribute to him, but few personal details have emerged about the man who Wah Mohn, 21, a Columbia student and acquaintance of the photographer, called a “super loner.”

“What made Bob special was that he listened to people,” said one of the three men who found Mr. Arihood’s body on Friday, adding that Mr. Arihood was more inclined to hear someone’s life story than to tell his own.

It was just that kind of warmth that drew people to him as he canvassed the neighborhood, and last week, his conspicuous absence from his usual local haunts around Tompkins Square Park was cause for concern. So was the surgical appointment he missed on Tuesday. Read more…

Tickets are on sale for the Fourth Arts Block East Village Eats Tasting Tour on October 22. According to East Village Eats, $29 buys around $50 in food, drink and discounts. Participating restaurants include Cucina di Pesce, Hecho en Dumbo, Jimmy’s No. 43, Luke’s Lobster, Oaxaca and others. In June the tasting tour was canceled due to poor ticket sales. Hopefully, appetites will be stronger this month.

Bowery Boogie points to an interesting piece on This Recording about “authentrification.” Author Alexandria Symonds defines it as “seizing on elements that represent the area’s past and repurposing them as a design scheme,” in the way the John Varvatos store nods to CBGB and its neighbor DBGB nods to kitchen supply stores. Needless to say, local bloggers aren’t exactly big fans of authentrification, even calling it “ghoulish,” but a neighboring shopkeeper insists that “John Varvatos is the best thing that could have happened to CBGBs.”

Scott Lynch

Good morning, East Village.

Sure enough, the Astor cube got stripped of its sweater yesterday. Luckily its installation was videotaped for posterity so we can remember the Alamo in crocheted form – Bowery Boogie has the footage.

On Untapped New York, “Downtown Doodler” Bernadette Moke goes on an Urban Design Week tour of the Bowery and offers up a history of the buildings complete with sketches.

Elsewhere on the Bowery, EV Grieve finds an online listing of crooner John Legend’s apartment at East Fourth Street. Amenities include a “landscaped building entrance, parking garage, roof deck and an exterior spa-swimming pool.” Read more…

A grassy field that was once the site of a demolished building in the Lillian Wald housing complex has been transformed into a park. Planters Grove, which was funded by the Planters company, opened earlier today with a ribbon cutting ceremony and a day of planting, mulching and peanut munching. Representatives from Planters handed out black top hats, one of which Assemblyman Brian Kavanagh donned during a speech praising the “greening of the New York City Housing Authority.”

The park’s centerpiece is a trellis (shaped like a peanut, naturally) that in the spring will hold clematis and climbing roses. “I like that it is kind of subtle and you can’t really tell it is a peanut,” said Lisbeth Shepherd, the founder and executive director of Green City Force, one of the two non-profits that worked with Planters and the New York City Housing Authority on the park’s construction. (The other was the national Corps Network.) Read more…

Photo illustration: Lauren Carol Smith

State Senator Daniel Squadron has announced that the Metropolitan Transit Authority will increase the number of trains running on the L line around June of next year. Mr. Squadron said that the authority had analyzed data and found a “meteoric” increase in ridership on the line. “Weekend ridership on the L train has increased by 141 percent since 1998, while service has only increased by 58 percent on Saturdays and 52 percent on Sundays,” Mr. Squadron said in a press release. Unfortunately, straphangers on the F train aren’t so lucky. The M.T.A. studied the line and determined that an increase in F trains on the weekend is not currently feasible, according to the release. City Room has more on the story.

A man’s foot was lodged between the 5 train and the subway platform at the Union Square station at 9:55 a.m. this morning. A spokesman for the fire department said the man was taken to Bellevue Hospital, but no further details were available. This is at least the second near-miss at the station in the last two days. Yesterday, a drunk man fell onto the tracks of the Q train and narrowly avoided being run over, according to the New York Post. Last week, Joe Pan Millar wrote about an apparent suicide that occurred a couple of stops over on the L line.

Kathy Kirpatrick, the owner of Life Cafe, is apparently pretty peeved that her business is still shuttered as a result of a dispute with her landlord. In a series of messages posted on Facebook, the owner considers converting the cafe at 10th Street and Avenue B into a space that would host “events around the theme Art Against Greed.” Two days prior to that post, Ms. Kirkpatrick noted, “It’s been three weeks this weekend since I had to close with a hope and a dream to be able to reopen. I, a single woman warrior, am fighting two Goliaths with deep pockets for Life.”

The dressing of the Cube wasn’t the only conspicuous thing that happened at Astor Place over the weekend. Yesterday, around 40 musicians rocking strings, drums, bagpipes, and even a harp convened for what an organizer said was a photo shoot for The New York Times Magazine. As you can see from our video, passersby really dug it.

Stephen Rex Brown The cube this morning.

Around 5 a.m. today, Agata Olek, the artist and “yarn bomber” behind this little number and others, pulled off what may be her masterpiece by wrapping the Astor Place cube. She told Runnin’ Scared the piece is her response to Wall Street, and its name is “I’m still proud to say what i do for a living.”

Around 1,000 people gathered in Union Square on Saturday for “SlutWalk,” which seeks to highlight violence against women, as well society’s perception of the crime. The Local was on the scene and spoke with the diverse group of protestors.

Phillip Kalantzis-Cope

Good Morning, East Village.

Villagers continued to mourn the passing of photographer Bob Arihood on Friday. EV Grieve shares a collection of Mr. Arihood’s photographs, and Runnin’ Scared offered its own tribute over the weekend. A vigil is planned for Tuesday night in front of Ray’s Candy Store, one of Mr. Arihood’s favorite haunts.

From one artist to another, Antonio “Chico” Garcia completed a mural for The Children’s Workshop School on East Twelfth Street over the weekend. NY1 reports that the veteran graffiti artist now plans to “cap his spray cans for good.”

Garcia began his painting career 34 years ago — not long before the band Blondie started playing CBGB. The San Francisco Chronicle writes that the band has stayed true to its East Village roots with its latest release.
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