Stephen Rex Brown Workers with the city Department of Environmental Protection are pumping water out of a ditch in the middle of Second Avenue near St. Marks Place, blasting water into the bus lane and diverting another lane of traffic. The noisy water pumps drew many onlookers. The Local has a call into D.E.P. regarding the nature of the work; we’ll update as soon as we know more.
Update | 3:48 p.m. Here are the details from a D.E.P. spokeswoman: “A D.E.P. crew observed that a four-foot diameter brick sewer was broken. A D.E.P. contractor is excavating to repair it. We will place a plate to make the area safe while working. It will take a few days.”
Daniel Maurer Mark your calendars: A call to IHOP HQ reveals that the outpost at 235 East 14th Street will open on Sept. 20. Earlier today, a visit to the location (the city’s second) found boxes of newly delivered spray bottles on a counter and a “WE ARE NOT OPEN” sign on the door, which didn’t dissuade flapjack fanatics from walking in. One bystander, upon being informed of the opening date, told another, “Maybe I’ll see you here in three weeks.” Will you too “make it an IHOP day,” as the pancake house’s slogan goes, or do you agree with the bloggers and tweeters who think a Rooty Tooty Fresh ‘N Fruity in the East Village spells the end of civilization?
New timers have been installed at intersections of Delancey Street, Bowery Boogie reports. The countdown clocks, stretching from Kenmare to Clinton Streets, come two weeks after a cyclist was run over by a truck at Chrystie Street, reinforcing Delancey Street’s dangerous reputation.
Scott Lynch If you don’t feel like fighting the crowds down on Houston Street to hear David Simon (writer and producer of “The Wire” and “Treme”) speak at the BMW Guggenheim Lab tonight, why not watch the event stream live, right here at The Local? Grab some popcorn (of the praline variety, of course) and check back here as the 7 p.m. start time nears, to watch Mr. Simon talk about capturing cities on film.
Good morning, East Village.
Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jennifer Egan, who now lives in Brooklyn, returns to her old neighborhood for a sit-down with the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Despite her new zip code, she’s still “at ease among the eccentrics sunning on benches in nearby Tompkins Square Park, eying them as if one might inspire her next protagonist.”
The Mirror checks in with Mike Kehoe, a firefighter at Engine 28 on East 2nd Street who survived the World Trade Center attacks. Roy Chelsen, the colleague who helped save him, has since died owing to what Mr. Kehoe heard was a 9/11-related illness.
According to Playbill, “Silence! The Musical,” a parody of “The Silence of the Lambs” that won the 2005 FringeNYC award for Outstanding Musical, will end its run at Theatre 80 on St. Marks Place next month. Read more…
Rebecca Hamilton Earlier today, Muslims from Madina Masjid, the mosque on 11th Street and First Avenue, came together for Eid ul-Fitr, marking the end of Ramadan.
The Bean isn’t the only local enterprise in expansion mode; Crain’s discovers that Ippudo, the oft-mobbed ramen joint, will open a Theater District location (its first outside of the East Village, not counting the Japanese originals) at 321-323 W. 51st Street in January.
El Sol Brillante, Sr. isn’t the only community garden that lost a tree during the storm. As noted earlier, gawkers gathered at La Plaza Cultural de Armando Perez on Sunday to mourn a fallen willow tree. City Room explains why the decades-old tree was iconic in the garden’s fight against developers, and reveals that gardeners may leave part of its trunk in hopes that it will take root again.
Stephen Rex Brown Matt Rosen manages the web presence of two of the neighborhood’s most revered characters.Ray Alvarez may not remember Matt Rosen’s name or understand his social networking wizardry, but there is little doubt that the 30-year-old’s efforts have been a boon for the iconic and oft-embattled Ray’s Candy Store.
Since 2009, Mr. Rosen, has managed Mr. Alvarez’s @RaysCandyStore Twitter account, which boasts 1,064 followers, as well as the eatery’s pages on Yelp, Urbanspoon, Foursquare, and Café Press. Last month, Mr. Rosen added Jim Power, the Mosaic Man, to his stable of online accounts.
Not that Mr. Alvarez knows much about all that stuff.
“He does advertising for me — it’s really high-tech. I still don’t have a television — I don’t know what Twitter is,” said Mr. Alvarez, 78, when asked about Mr. Rosen. “I didn’t know his name is Matt.” Read more…
Ever wonder how the designers of stylish spots like The Breslin, The Dutch, and The Standard’s 18th floor bar outfit their own apartment? A listing posted on Curbed offers up the “famous” 25 East 4th Street loft belonging to Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch, better known to interior design hounds as Roman and Williams. Two bedrooms (and the furniture!) can be yours for $3.5 million.
Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.
The East Village got a new Filipino spot earlier this month, and now Larry Reutens, a former executive chef at Alias on the Lower East Side, is paying homage to a neighboring island, his native Singapore. Mr. Reutens arrived in New York in 2004 with plans to continue his career in finance, but he ended up going to culinary school while awaiting a work permit and decided to stick with cooking. He scored a gig in the kitchen at Aquavit, moved on to be sous chef of the defunct Tasting Room, and now, at Masak – his first solo venture – he’ll bring Asian ingredients into the New American sphere. Read more…
It’s happening. It’s finally happening. After much teasing, the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck has announced, via Twitter, that it will open its shop at 125 East 7th Street this Saturday at noon.
Alice Gao 9th Street Community GardenGood morning, East Village.
On the heels of her Times profile, Budd Mishkin visits the apartment of Vashtie Kola, the “East Village ‘it’ girl” (look out, Chloe Sevigny) who directs music videos, plans parties, blogs about fashion, and is “the first woman to design an Air Jordan sneaker.”
The Lo-Down has posted the September agenda for Community Board 3’s SLA & DCA Licensing Committee. Ichibantei is applying for wine and beer and Heathers is seeking to renew its license despite a complaint history.
Neither More Nor Less spotted workers cleaning up trees in Tompkins Square Park yesterday.
According to EV Grieve, the Ave. A Mini Market stayed open during Irene but is now mysteriously closed and empty. Read more…
Stephen Rex BrownThe Local spotted this sinkhole on Sixth Street between First Avenue and Avenue A. Steer clear, and if you see street scenes like this one, e-mail them to us; or better yet, contribute them to The Local’s Flickr Group.
Vladi Radojicic Ilhan Ersahin, the owner of Nublu, plays the keyboards at the club’s temporary space on First Avenue alongside Shawn Pelton on drums and Tina Kristina on bass.The owner of Nublu, the hip club on Avenue C that was shuttered for being within 200 feet of a Jehovah’s Witnesses Kingdom Hall, told The Local today that a return to his Avenue C location was not imminent, and that it was possible he might have to look for a new space outside of the East Village.
Ilhan Ersahin, who opened the club in 2002, said that he thought it was unfair that he lost his liquor license after years of being in business across the street from the house of worship.
“How can they come nine years later and then say I made a mistake?” said Mr. Ersahin, 45. “It can’t be just up to me to investigate whether a place is 100 percent a house of worship.” Read more…
Now that Ryan Gosling has left town, Astor Place needs a new viral-video vigilante, and rapper Kid Lucky might just be him. Check out Daily News footage of the street performer meting justice out to a man who tried to swipe his donation box.
Phoenix EisenbergSaturday was a day of closed stores, empty streets, and shortages of D batteries, but one movie theater kept its doors open. At 22 East 12th Street stands Cinema Village, a charming three-screen arthouse theater built in 1963. The marquee (a throwback to an era of cinema that has come close to extinction) was free of letters on Saturday, but inside were two committed cinephiles, Genevieve Havemeyer and Matthew Reichard, who braved the storm on their bicycles so that customers could see movies like “Mozart’s Sister,” a French film that imagines Maria Anna Mozart’s friendship with the children of Louis XV. Read more…
The eagle-eyed EV Grieve noticed construction plans for a 7-Eleven convenience store inside the window of 351 Bowery – another sign of the onetime hardscrabble strip’s increasingly “suburban feel.” Gothamist confirmed that the store is expected to open on October 5.
Tim Schreier“The world is too much with us,” claimed William Wordsworth, but he didn’t know the half of it. The Weather Channel is too much with us, would be more to the point. Mayor Bloomberg is too much with us. Anderson Cooper is too much with us. Fox News is too much with us. Warnings and dire threats of all kinds are too much with us — e.g. those surrounding “Hurricane Irene,” who/which would have been more accurately described as “Subtropical Depression Irene” by the time she managed to waddle her way up the East Coast in her rain-soaked skirts and finally “hit” New York with the soft, wet slap of a gloved hand. As trees swayed gently and reporters valiantly swallowed their disappointment, we were all far too invested in the story to evacuate the portion of our brain in which she’d taken up residence.
Well, she did rain a great deal. And knocked down some trees and flooded this highway and that subway, but a “hurricane” she was not. Nonetheless she managed to take up most of my weekend – mentally speaking. And by the time she finally cleared town I was flat-out exhausted by her. For two days I had obsessively followed the event-to-come, watching TV, scanning Internet sites, constantly checking The Times’ “Hurricane Tracker” and all the latest updates from FEMA, only to discover that it was all foreplay and no conclusion. Read more…
If Hurricane Irene threw a wrench in your plans to attend the final performances of Fringe Festival, fear not: The lineup of encore productions has just been announced. The 18 shows, set to run from September 9 to September 26, include “Facebook Me,” which was well received by The Lo-Down last week. Update: Some of the shows canceled over the weekend have been rescheduled for September 1 through September 4 at the Laurie Beechman Theater in Midtown.
