Jessica Bell Yingling Chen and Gerard Gomez, a program leader at University Settlement.

The Houston Street Center of University Settlement, which has provided community services to the East Village and Lower East Side since 1886, has started a new after-school program for high school students – an extension of the center’s three-year-old STRIDE program for middle schoolers.

“There already isn’t that much option out there for middle schoolers after school, and it’s even worse for high school students,” said Susan Haskell, director of the Houston Street Center.

Compared to the recreation-focused middle school program, the high school offshoot is more academically oriented: from 3:30 p.m. until 5:30 p.m., a participant’s time is divided between tutoring or homework help as well as activities like swimming, film club and BookUp NYC – a book club organized by the National Book Foundation. Read more…

Google Maps The Jacob Riis Houses, where Mr. Brown lived, at FDR Drive and Sixth Street.

The death of a man fleeing police across FDR Drive last week has led to aggression toward officers patrolling Avenue D, with some angry residents even tossing objects from the rooftops at them.

Lieutenant Patrick Ferguson of the Ninth Precinct revealed that the environment on Avenue D has taken a turn for the worse at a meeting of the Ninth Precinct Community Council last night.

“It’s been hostile,” said Mr. Ferguson. “We don’t have the best of friends there right now.” Read more…

According to a rep of Daniel Squadron, the senator has sent a letter to Cooper Union President Jamshed Bharucha seconding Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer’s earlier call for a rent decrease for St. Mark’s Bookshop. You can read the letter, which warns that the store’s closing would be “a significant loss for the East Village community,” here.

GrubHub just set up outside of Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream at 48 1/2 East Seventh Street, near Second Avenue – from now till 10 p.m., an ice cream cone is just one cent if you order it through the site and pick it up at the store before the supply of 2,000 runs out. Plus, they’re handing out these free t-shirts. More info at GrubHub’s Facebook page.

Susan Keyloun 200 Avenue A, earlier this summer.

The owners behind a proposed art gallery and restaurant at the former site of Superdive, one of the most controversial East Village bars in recent memory, will soon formally go before the State Liquor Authority, a spokesman confirmed yesterday. The last time 200 Avenue A was on the radar, Michael Taub, the owner of the building, was met with skepticism by Community Board 3 and Councilwoman Rosie Mendez after pitching the art gallery idea, which would feature a D.J., full service bar and stay open until 4 a.m. on weekends.
Read more…

Dan Glass Saxophonist Darius Jones and Kirk Knuffke on cornet lead the Kirk-Jones Quintet during a less controversial performance at the University of the Streets.

The executive director of University of the Streets has broken her silence regarding a brawl that occurred at her long-standing Seventh Street venue earlier this month. According to Saadia Salahuddeen, the scuffle stemmed from a dispute over $50 that she said the band, Talibam!, owed the University because no one showed up for its show.

That’s when things got heated, according to a statement by Ms. Salahuddeen posted on the University’s Facebook page. A member of Talibam!, Kevin Shea, allegedly said to her, “You think we’re acting crazy? I am crazy — let’s get crazy.” He then allegedly lunged at Ms. Salahuddeen, leading to the fisticuffs. Read more…

Scott Lynch

Good morning, East Village.

Some new details about the rape that occurred on East Eighth Street on Saturday morning: DNAinfo finds out that the victim didn’t know her alleged attacker, 51-year-old Neal Essex, and the Post discovers he was previously arrested for allegedly killing his mother in 1984.

Jeremiah’s Vanishing notices a “for sale” sign indicating that playwright, poet and performance artist Edgar Oliver no longer lives at the townhouse at 104 East 10^th Street that inspired his one-man show, “East 10th Street: Self Portrait With Empty House.”

Off The Grid takes a look at the history of Third Avenue between 10^th and 11^th Streets. The block was once home to Sig Klein’s Fat Men’s Shop, which counted Babe Ruth as a customer, and is still home to New York Central Art Supply, which opened in 1905. Read more…

Lauren Carol Smith

Bob’s Grinding Service made a stop on the corner of 10th Street and Fourth Avenue yesterday evening. Should you find yourself charmed by a similar scene, add your sepia-toned photo to The Local’s Flickr Group.

If the air smelled a little different today, it wasn’t a recurrence of the maple syrup incident. It’s because Manhattan’s second IHOP finally opened at 235 East 14th Street. Yesterday, The Local hit the streets to find out how Villagers felt about the dawn of the 24-hour Rooty Tooty Fresh ‘N Fruity (available for takeout!). Watch the video and tell us how you feel.

Nick DeSantis

Before André Balazs and his Cooper Square Hotel associates breezed through Community Board 3’s SLA Licensing Committee meeting last night, the committee members heard vocal complaints from neighbors about Heathers Bar on East 13th Street. Members of the East 13th Street Residents’ Association accused Heathers of repeatedly violating numerous stipulations of its Sept. 2009 liquor license renewal.

After a long debate, the committee voted to recommend a denial of the bar’s application to renew its license. Read more…

Daniel Maurer

The price hike at Café Zaiya wasn’t the only surprise The Local got while stopping into a zed-happy cheap-eats standby yesterday – upon squeezing into the narrow Zaragoza Mexican Deli and Grocery for a spicy beef tongue burrito, we were dismayed to see empty boxes in the coolers where six packs of Estrella Damm beer had recently beckoned. The tables packed near the jukebox in the grocery’s back corner were empty. We were told the taqueria’s beer license had lapsed and a new one was expected shortly. A look at the State Liquor Authority’s Website confirms that the old license expired at the end of July, however a SLA spokesman told The Local that Zaragoza “did not send in for a renewal,” and there is no new license application pending at its address, 215 Avenue A. Which means it may be some time before you can enjoy your carnitas tacos with an ice-cold Negra Modelo again.

This isn’t the only liquor license hiccup the family-operated canteen has faced of late. Read more…

Sick of that vacant lot? Tired of that dead tree? Now you can clean them up using grant money from the Citizens Committee for New York City. The Love Your Block grant offers up to $1,000 for any community group looking to improve a street in a variety of ways (trash cleanup, bicycle parking — the sky’s the limit). The city also chips in by offering the help of the transportation, parks, and sanitation departments, as well as other agencies. Here’s the application. An informational session is today at 6:30 p.m. in Lower Manhattan.

Daniel Maurer “Mosaic Man” Jim Power visits the Bean’s new truck.

About an hour ago this morning, a city marshal entered the storefront that until yesterday was home to The Bean. It will soon be occupied by a Starbucks. Across the way, on Third Street near First Avenue, the Bean’s manager Guy Puglia was selling drip coffee out of a rented cupcake truck that had been found on Craigslist. Mr. Puglia said the truck will stay here, or at least nearby (“it’s hard getting a parking spot in the same place every day in this neighborhood”) from about 7 a.m. till 7 p.m. daily, until the Bean’s new store opens a block south in about a month.

“We’re not doing this to make money,” said Mr. Puglia. “We’re getting killed.” Mr. Puglia would not disclose the price of the truck rental, but indicated it was “a good amount of money.” Still, by moving four wooden benches across the street and eventually setting up a wireless hotspot, he and owners Ike Escava and Sammy Cohen hope to remind customers that they’re still in the espresso business. Read more…

Daniel Maurer

While we have our lens trained on Cooper Square today: The Local was shocked to see that the price of a spicy chicken sandwich went up by 25 cents at Cafe Zaiya — a sign that even one of the neighborhood’s cheapest eateries isn’t recession-proof.

Yesterday, the Japanese cafe raised the price of a pre-packaged onigiri with salmon (a triangle-shaped rice cake) by 25 cents to a whopping $1.75. And the spicy chicken sandwich — a favorite around the Local office — is now $4.25, up from $3.95.

“Gas is up. We have to pay tolls a lot,” said Fabian Lima, an employee at the cafe. “We haven’t raised the price since 2003.”
Read more…

From first to last: Gallery exterior, Nikki Milavec, Karen Hakimi, cafe, and art.

The New Museum recently announced a spin-off gallery at 231 Bowery, and now a pair of pop-up curators have opened the strip’s latest – just a little above the Bowery, actually, in the iconic Cooper Union New Academic Building at 41 Cooper Square. The Milavec Hakimi Gallery opened with a group show, “Hello World!” last Thursday. In two or three weeks, it will be joined by an adjacent cafe selling espresso, pastries, and tea.

The gallery’s founders, Nikki Milavec and Karen Hakimi, both 29, previously worked together at a pop-up gallery, Volume Black (before that, Ms. Milavec, a graduate of the Sotheby’s Institute of Art in London, ran another pop-up, Milavec Green, with a partner Adam Green). During the course of their two-plus years as colleagues, they decided to collaborate on a permanent space – preferably on the Bowery. Read more…

Scott Lynch

Good morning, East Village.

André Balazs’s takeover of the Cooper Square Hotel isn’t the only news today.

DNAinfo has more on the rape that occurred on East Eighth Street Saturday morning. The victim’s attacker is described as “choking her so viciously that she lost consciousness.”

Elsewhere in Alphabet City, Off the Grid takes note of the Bullet Space gallery at 292 East Third Street – one of eleven buildings (this one dating back to 1867) that the city turned over to squatters for $1 each. Read more…

Nick DeSantis

Famed hotelier André Balazs was rewarded for his cameo at Community Board 3’s SLA Committee meeting last night, as the group voted unanimously to support his application to transfer the Cooper Square Hotel’s liquor license to his name.

Mr. Balazs’s high-profile establishments – the Mercer Hotel in Soho and the Standard in the meatpacking district – are magnets for celebrities. His Cooper Square Hotel takeover raised questions that the party atmosphere of the Boom Boom Room (his nightclub in the Standard) could soon migrate to the East Village. But Mr. Balazs ameliorated those fears by addressing residents directly. Read more…

Daniel Maurer

Saxon + Parole, the restaurant from design firm AvroKO that replaces their earlier effort at Bleecker Street and the Bowery, Double Crown, is open as of tonight. Check out the interior shots posted by Eater, and the menu on the restaurant’s Website. For what it’s worth, a letter to friends and family – intercepted by The Local – brags that “early tastings have garnered glowing praises for dishes like the Portabello mushroom mousse pots with whiskey & truffle jelly (DO NOT MISS THESE), and ‘the best we’ve ever had’ Berkshire pork chops topped with a touch of quince and apple sauce.” The cocktail and dessert menus are not yet on S+P’s site, but you can see them below. Read more…