You’ve heard one former NYU student’s memories of working the door at Limelight (the documentary about the club opened tonight at Sunshine Cinema); now let Jane Bernstein, an NYU alum of an earlier era, regale you with stories of working the box office at a still more legendary club – the one and only Fillmore East.

Amalie R. Rothschild A crowd gathered in May 1970 when tickets went on sale for Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.

As I prepare for the Fillmore East’s fortieth reunion on Saturday night, I wish I could remember more about all the music that played there. From opening night on March 8, 1968 to the final concert on June 27, 1971, the best-known performers of the era (The Doors, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Santana, Joni Mitchell, Elton John, The Allman Brothers) were on the stage twice each Friday and Saturday night, at 8 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. Only the Rolling Stones and the Beatles bypassed the legendary theater on Second Avenue and Sixth Street for stadium-sized audiences.

I heard nearly all of these performances because I worked at the Fillmore, first as a “candy chick,” then in the main office, and then as a “box office crazy.” I spent five days a week in our narrow “shoe-box office,” with its graffiti-covered walls and 50-pound boxes of Hershey’s Kisses, which we distributed by the handful to customers. Read more…

Joyce Manalo

Last month, Fourth Arts Block, a nonprofit public arts organization, approached the New York City Department of Design & Construction about an art project. They wanted to transform a row of drab storage containers that had been parked on 4th Street between Bowery and Second Avenue for about two years – a byproduct of water main work that was expected to go on for yet another year. The group got city approval on September 12th, and today, the containers boast vivid street art. Read more…

City Room sits in on a film class taught by the star of “127 Hours” and “Milk” at NYU, and the first-time professor’s curriculum is as avant garde as one would expect. Soon the nine graduate students will travel to Detroit to shoot a collaborative film with the themes of “rejuvenation and memory.” Of course, the class has its fair share of perks, too. The students’ films will likely get attention from film festivals, and then there’s just the thrill of spending time with Mr. Franco. “I got over being star-struck,” one student said. “But handsome, yes, he is handsome.”

Ray LeMoine

Last night, Anthony Pappalardo celebrated the publication of “Live…Suburbia!” at Nike’s Bowery Stadium. The book of photos and essays, co-authored with Max G. Morton, documents post-1960s youth subcultures, from the Kiss Army to the hardcore punk and skateboarding scenes that Mr. Pappalardo, 36, became a part of while growing up north of Boston. (Mr. Pappalardo, whose first book was “Radio Silence: A Selected Visual History of American Hardcore Music,” toured the world during the 1990s playing with bands like Ten Yard Fight and In My Eyes.) In the book, Mr. Pappalardo documents his own transition from suburbanite to Manhattanite. Over e-mail, we asked him how the East Village, which he considers a mecca for suburban dreamers, shaped that transformation, and how the neighborhood itself has transformed since he first came here to attend shows at clubs that are now long gone. Read more…

Bowery Boogie spotted the Yankee second baseman — and 2011 home run derby champ — playing a game of stickball on Bond Street yesterday. The game, complete with adoring kids playing the outfield, was part of a promotion by the MLB Fan Cave, which is nearby on Broadway. No word on whether Mr. Cano’s power and smooth swing were in full effect on the mean streets of Bond.

Courtesy of HBO.

“I first visited New York City when I was 17 years old, and it was love at first sight,” explains actress Heather Burns. Though she plays Leah, the quintessential Brooklynite (and the girlfriend of Zach Galifianakis’s character) on HBO’s “Bored to Death,” the East Village has been her home for 18 years. When she became a student at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, the Chicago native landed a rent-stabilized apartment on St. Marks Place and never left. These days, she’s engaged to fellow “Bored to Death” actor Ajay Naidu and gearing up for the third season of her hit show — premiering Sunday, October 10 — by visiting plenty of local hotspots. Read more…

Dominique Zonyee Scott

With rats potentially on the wane in Tompkins Square Park, another war against rodents is being waged – without nearly as much hoopla – several blocks south. Residents of Max Meltzer Tower, a senior citizen development at 94 East First Street near First Avenue say that rats are running wild in the complex’s courtyard.

“At night they all come out and have a party,” said Harry Baron, 71. “Now I try to go upstairs before 7 p.m., because that’s when they come out.”

Thelma Yearwood, 82, president of the tenants association, said that holes drilled during the Houston Street Corridor Reconstruction Project, which started this spring, brought the rats out from underground. Since then, she said, she has seen several of them run through the courtyard almost every evening. Read more…

Robert Schmunk The Parks Department has begun placing rat poison in Tompkins Square Park, a measure it previously declined to use because of the presence of red- tailed hawks.

The city has unleashed a new weapon in the fight against the rodent menace in Tompkins Square Park.

After destroying rodent hideouts and deploying mint-scented trash bags, new garbage cans, and “Feed a pigeon, breed a rat” signage, this week the Parks Department began baiting the park with poison.

Previously, the Parks Department had said it did not use rat poison due to the danger it posed to the red-tailed hawks that dine on the critters. But now, new Parks Department policy allows the agency to use poison when hawks are not in the fledgling season, which is roughly from February to August. Read more…

Jamie Larson

Yesterday, St. Mark’s Bookshop co-owner Bob Contant told The Local that he hoped to hear from Cooper Union today about his request for a $5,000 per month rent reduction, but knew nothing for sure: “They could table the whole thing.”

The Board of Directors has been holding regular committee meetings all week. Earlier in the week, Director of Public Affairs Claire McCarthy said the issue would likely be discussed at a meeting of the entire board on Wednesday; beyond that, she said, there was no new information.

She added that school officials are well aware of the Bookshop’s support but there is no timeline on a decision.

Meanwhile, Mr.Contant said, “All of this publicity has really helped us.” The number of signatures on the petition (now over 35,900) spiked over the weekend following a New York Times story.

Until a decision is made, the pressure remains on Cooper Union.

“Trying to look at it objectively,” Mr. Contant said, “the longer it goes on, the worse they look.”

Update | 8:07 p.m. It now appears that the story will not see it’s conclusion until the end of next month. Mr. Contant said that Cooper Union Vice President T.C. Wescott told him earlier today that the store’s request was being sent to the board’s Finance and Business Affairs Committee, and their report on the rent dispute is expected to be completed in late October. “Nobody wants to be pressured into making a decision,” Mr. Contant told The Local.

Michelle Rick

Good morning, East Village.

After The Local revealed yesterday that Neal Essex, the man accused of raping a woman on Eighth Street, had a lengthy jail record and history of mental illness, The Post now weighs in with more details. In 1991, years after bludgeoning his mother to death in 1984, he was found not guilty due to insanity, and spent time in mental institutions until he was released in 2005. The victim on Saturday was in her 60s.

DNAinfo reports that the police are on the lookout for a man who robbed an Upper East Side convenience store and then, an hour later, pulled a gun on an employee at a convenience store on First Avenue and Ninth Street.

ArtsBeat stops in to the Antifolk Festival at Sidewalk Café before it ends on Sunday. The “harder edge and social anger of some the early songwriters – Roger Manning, Brenda Kahn, Cindy Lee Berryhill – has given way to more angst and soul-searching,” and the atmosphere surrounding the scene has changed, since “the neighborhood’s gotten too expensive for starving artists and many of the musicians live out in Brooklyn these days.” Read more…

Photographs by Dominique Zonyee Scott and Güney Cüceloğlu.

Armed with posters that read “I am Troy Davis” and “Enough is Enough, Stop the Legal Lynching,” protesters walked from Washington Square Park to Union Square and points west tonight in protest of the execution of Troy Davis.

Shortly after a 4:30 p.m. meeting time, a group of about ten protesters at the corner of Washington Square Park and University Place used a plastic crate as a podium in order to entreat passersby to “join the cause for change and fair justice” and “say no to the death penalty.”

“NYU students need to stand up to the bigoted government,” said one.

“This is a human issue – we are all Troy Davis,” said another. Read more…

Today, dear readers, is the last day of summer. Before you bust out the pumpkin ale and slip into some corduroy, won’t you pay your respects to one of the true boys of summer, Manuel Apreu, who has been selling piraguas (a version of snow cones) in Loisaida for the past twenty-three years? The Local recently caught up with him before he retired to the Dominican Republic for the season, in search of warmer weather and cheaper rent. Join us in wishing him a fond (if temporary) farewell.

Christine Jenkins

After quietly hitting the streets of Williamsburg a few weeks ago, the Palenque Homemade Colombian Food truck made its Astor Place debut for lunch today. Nena Sierra, 42, said she and her partner Viviana Lewis, 47 (both natives of Colombia) plan to park across from the Walgreens at Astor and Lafayette from 11:30 a.m. till 6 p.m. daily, while continuing to put in nightshifts on Bedford Avenue across the river.

The truck is an offspring of Hecho en Casa, the catering company that Ms. Lewis opened in Williamsburg four years ago after her career as a restaurant owner in Colombia. In June, the company was tapped to serve arepas at the Renegade Craft Fair in McCarren Park. Ms. Sierra, a filmmaker who has produced commercials for the Colombian market (she teamed up with Ms. Lewis after hiring her as a caterer), said they went through 3,000 of them over the course of the two-day event. That’s when they decided to start building out a truck. Read more…

Daniel Maurer The alleged rape occurred outside of 303 East Eighth Street.

The 51-year-old accused of the brutal and brazen rape of a woman on Eighth Street on Saturday morning spent seven years being shuffled between city jails and state mental health institutions.

Neal Essex, who was scheduled to appear in criminal court today, spent a total of 1,350 days behind bars over the course of seven separate jail bids; all of which were related to a second-degree murder charge in 1984 (The Local was unable to confirm the victim or verdict in the case, but The New York Post reported that Mr. Essex was accused of killing his mother.) Despite all the jail time, Mr. Essex did not end up serving time in the New York prison system, according to a Department of Correctional Services spokeswoman. And, until the alleged rape, he had not been to jail or prison since 1991. Read more…

Runnin’ Scared has the harrowing tale of an actress and NYU professor, Cynthia Wright, who was nailed by a speeding cyclist while crossing Third Street at Avenue A. She didn’t file a report, but realized days later that she has several visits to the orthopedist on the horizon for damage to her face, jaw, knees and tibia. A friend then posted a sign in the neighborhood asking that the cyclist listen to his conscience, call Ms. Wright and help with the expenses. As it so happens, Andrea Peyser’s column today mentions an East Village man, Jack Brown, who was also injured by a bike but failed to go to the hospital.

Thanks to our AMC Eagle-eyed readers, we’ve added over a dozen new contenders to our gallery of the East Village’s sweetest rides, including a vintage fire truck, two green monsters (a Ford Fairlane 500 and a Dodge Dart Swinger) and not one but two lemon-yellow Minis (one of them old-school, the other new-school). Which of the cars in the newly expanded slideshow will replace the defunct Free Willie Nelson as the unofficial vehicle of the East Village? (The Free Willie, by the way, posted a rather hilarious letter to its fans soon after its unfortunate demise.) Voting starts Monday, which gives you one more weekend to nominate your own favorites by adding them to The Local’s Flickr pool.

Carly Okyle Part of the memorial to Nelson Perez, an East Village resident who died on September 10.

In a recent photograph, Nelson Perez is sitting on a bicycle that he had built himself, looking cool and confident. Around the East Village, he was known as Monster Rock (or “Monstro”), as well as the Gentle Giant. Bicycles and motorcycles were his passion. It was a passion that would eventually kill him, and he knew it.

“He would say, ‘I’m gonna ride to die,’” said Sandra “Sin” Mercado, a friend of Mr. Perez’s who was with him on the early hours of Saturday, September 10, when the fatal accident took place. Read more…

Phillip Kalantzis-Cope

Good morning, East Village.

While Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York offers up another post in support of St. Mark’s Bookshop, it looks like the troubled Heathers may be the latest neighborhood cause célèbre – L magazine’s blog, The Measure, thinks the bar’s liquor license should be renewed because “it is a bastion for a diverse mix of gay and straight creatives who are looking for a drink in an increasingly frat-like East Village bar scene.”

Voice critic Robert Sietsema eats cow tongue at Prune, but that’s hardly his most disconcerting dispatch today: After making light of the “ridiculous amounts of hoopla” over the 14^th Street IHOP and pointing out that the place was half-empty around lunchtime, Mr. Sietsema stuffs some pancakes with sausages in an attempt to reproduce a childhood favorite. They’re “still superb.”

Still not sold on IHOP? Jimmy’s No. 43 will start serving brunch on Saturday. According to Zagat Buzz, items will include “‘black and tan’ griddle cakes (complete with ale batter, bananas, salted stout-caramel sauce, curry spiced pretzels, cocoa and powdered sugar).” Grub Street has still more East Village food news, including special meals at Hearth and JoeDoe. Read more…