As if Blind Barber’s “Tompkins” candle weren’t enough, Runnin’ Scared points out that Oak has introduced a “St. Marks+First 85” candle. According to Oak’s promo copy, “the East Village candle is inspired by… metallic, trash & vaudeville, incense, sweat, concrete, booze, and vintage clothing stores.” If the $68 price tag is too steep, a new scratch-n-sniff book, “New York, Phew York,” reproduces the smells of a Lower East Side subway station for half the price.

DNAinfo reports from the scene of the Bean, where after ten years on First Avenue, owners Ike Escava and Sammy Cohen were packing up this morning to make way for a Starbucks. While the shop prepares to reopen a block south, it’s launching a food truck, according to its Twitter feed: “Starting Tuesday, the EV Bean food truck will be parked at 49 1/2 1st Ave. instead of the storefront being open. Check us out!”

Just a reminder, folks: We’re still looking for the sweetest ride in the East Village. Contributors Scott Lynch and Susan Keyloun have added their nominees to the Local’s Flickr Group, and we’ve slotted them into our growing slideshow. If you see others, upload them to the pool before we start taking votes later this week.

62-64 4th, Before Renovation

Next Saturday the artistic haven on Fourth Street between the Bowery and Second Avenue will mark a major milestone, as two newly renovated buildings will be officially opened, and crews will break ground on a Latino cultural center.

Fourth Arts Block, the group overseeing the development of the Fourth Street arts district, is hosting the ribbon cuttings and groundbreakings, which will coincide with the FAB! Festival of performances, food and other street-fair fare.

Tamara Greenfield, the executive director of FAB, heralded the upgraded facilities — which were renovated with $10 million in public financing, as well as some private funds — as vital new spaces for artists and their audience.
Read more…

Daniel Maurer

After “Greetings from Tim Buckley” took over a stretch of East Fifth Street last week, “Law & Order: SVU” is stepping out of its Chelsea Piers set and has put orange cones down the entirety of East Seventh Street between Avenues A and B, as well as a stretch between A and First Avenue. The show will be filming starting at 6 a.m. tomorrow, according to tow-away signs.

Seen something like this? Tell The Local.

Daniel Maurer 303 East Eighth Street

A 51-year-old man was arrested for raping a woman on Saturday morning, an N.Y.P.D. spokesman said.

The victim told the police that the suspect threw her to the ground outside of 303 East Eighth Street at around 8:19 a.m. and attacked her. The suspect was arrested at the scene between Avenues B and C. The victim — whose age was not available — was treated at Bellevue Hospital and had bruising to the face, according to the spokesman.

A resident in the area commented on EV Grieve that a person walked out of a building nearby, saw the crime and called 911.

According to the latest crime statistics, the incident is at least the tenth rape this year in the Ninth Precinct, which covers the East Village.

“Don’t eat the brown acid,” quipped Lane Steinberg, 50, to several dozen East Villagers — many of them children and young parents — watching his rock-infused salsa group Cracked Latin on Ninth Street between First Avenue and Avenue A on Saturday. An afternoon-long party, sponsored by the Ninth Street A-1 Block Association, helped local businesses like Whitman’s, Good Beer and Dorian Grey Gallery re-introduce themselves, and offered residents the chance to hawk their homemade crafts. Read more…

Phillip Kalantzis-Cope

Ahoy, East Village! And happy Talk Like a Pirate Day.

The Times has more on the state of St. Mark’s Bookshop: Over time, the owners have had to halve their inventory from about 43,000 titles. Fun fact: The store’s rent when it opened at 13 St. Marks Place in 1977 was $375 per month. And some good news: according to Jeremiah’s Vanishing, this past weekend was one of the shop’s busiest.

Another St. Marks institution, Cafe Mogador, gets yet another celebrity endorsement: David Carp, founder of Tumblr, tells the Times that it’s his standard brunch spot.

The Times’s “At The Table” column visits Edi & the Wolf, the Austrian spot on Avenue C that “plays host to a mix of funky young Lower East Siders and buttoned-down diplomats.”

Read more…

One of my favorite parts of street photography is that I never have any idea what I’m going to shoot when I go out walking around. For the most part, it’s about turning a corner and getting hit with something goofy, or beautiful, or one-in-a-million. You can go just about anywhere in New York City and expect the unexpected, of course, but somehow the East Village just seems to generate more of those moments. Here are a few recent shots that took me by surprise.
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Courtesy of Theater for the New City

The final performance of “Bamboozled, or, The Real Reality Show” (the Theater for the New City’s 25th summer street-theater tour) will be staged outside St. Mark’s Church this Sunday at 2 p.m. With puppets, masks, hand-painted backdrops, a five-piece band, and 30 actors ranging from 7-year-olds to seniors, the hour-plus-long musical will take humorous stabs at everything from Anthony Weiner to Lindsay Lohan. Read more…

Now that the Free Willie Nelson is out of commission, the question arises: which East Village ride should replace the venerable shaggin’ wagon as the neighborhood’s unofficial “pimpmobile.” There’s the obvious answer: “Old Flat Top,” the RV that Free Willie’s owner, Ron Britt, purchased earlier this year. But there are many dark horses – or rather, electric yellow and lime green horses – in this race. We snapped photos of some of the contenders while (enviously) biking around the neighborhood just now. If you’ve seen others, or see them over the weekend, upload photos of them to our Flickr pool so that we can best determine which Villager has the sweetest ride.

Lauren Carol Smith Wendy Barrett’s store may soon be evicted by city marshals.

Another longstanding business in the neighborhood is on the brink of closing its doors.

The Village Scandal, a 16-year-old hat shop, is facing eviction from its space on Seventh Street, and the owner is pointing the finger at her property management company.

Wendy Barrett, the milliner who owns the popular shop, has become so desperate that she has written a message on a sandwich board in front of her store asking sympathizers to petition the management company, A.J. Clarke, to stop the eviction.
Read more…

As mentioned earlier, Manhattan Borough President Scott M. Stringer has circulated a letter addressed to Cooper Union president Jamshed Bharucha, describing the embattled St. Mark’s Bookshop as a “35-year-old independent bookstore with deep significance to the neighborhood.” Read it here.

Rachel Ohm Verne Oliver talks to a student in the new St. Brigid School library.

For years, St. Brigid School on Seventh Street and Avenue B didn’t have a library. Books were spread out across classrooms and strewn on shelves in the faculty room. Then Verne Oliver came to visit. With the help of the Gilder Foundation, a private philanthropy, the former teacher has spent her retirement remodeling and building libraries at Catholic schools across the city. She has completed over 100 – her latest, at St. Brigid, will host its first class on Monday. Read more…

Phillip Kalantzis-Cope

Good morning, East Village.

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer is the latest pol to voice his support for the St. Mark’s Bookshop, according to NY1. Meanwhile Runnin’ Scared wonders how many of the 27,000+ people who’ve signed the petition have actually dropped into the store to buy a book recently.

Borough President Stringer was also cheering on the new Lillian Wald Playground on East Houston Street between Avenue D and Lillian Wald Drive at a ribbon-cutting yesterday. The Lo-Down has a photo. According to a press release sent to The Local and others, renovations came as a result of $893,000 in capital funding allocated by Council Member Rosie Mendez and $361,000 allocated by Mayor Bloomberg.

Have there been playground improvements in Tompkins Square Park as well? One parent tells NY1 she has seen fewer rats. Others “say the rat problem is not entirely gone and there are still frequent rat sightings.” Read more…

Daniel Maurer

It’s a little known fact – but no surprise – that Bill Hicks, the insightful and iconoclastic comedian, once lived in the East Village. His first apartment after moving to New York City in 1988 was at 29 Avenue B near the corner of East 3rd Street. In a postcard to his brother Steve, the acerbic stand-up described apartment 3F as “a studio, but rather large, with a full bath and full kitchen. It’s a new building with an elevator and laundromat. What a find.”

Mr. Hicks had a history of substance abuse problems, but arrived in New York from his native Houston eager to focus on his career. His brother told The Local about that time, via e-mail. Read more…

According to ArtsBeat, Elizabeth Swados has created “The La MaMa Cantata” using words spoken by the late Ellen Stewart over the course of her career as founder of La MaMa Experimental Theater. The musical will be staged on Nov. 7 and 8, after the theater launches its 50^th season with a block party (Oct. 16) and gala performances by Patti Smith and Bill Irwin (Oct. 17).

The Villager has more on Life Cafe’s (temporary?) closing. Owner Kathy Kirkpatrick is upset that scaffolding has loomed over her sidewalk cafe for over a year, even though – owing to a dispute between two landlords – exterior repairs to the building have yet to commence. But there’s hope from one of the landlords: “We’re in the process of trying to work this out. Life Cafe is an iconic and great restaurant, and I’d love to see it be a part of the East Village for the next 30 years.”