Lauren Carol Smith

Good morning, East Village.

The Associated Press tells us that Gavin DeGraw, who was attacked by at least two men in the East Village on Monday night, has been released after a night’s stay at Bellevue Hospital. A police source tells the Post that the singer was too drunk to remember the attack clearly, but his brother Joseph insists he was drinking nothing but cranberry juice.

If that incident isn’t keeping you away from the nightlife, the folks at DNA Info remind us that the first-ever AlphaBet City Dolly Film Festival starts tomorrow. Thirty independent films will be screened at bars and restaurants between Avenues A and C, from First Street to 14th Street.

Two new Bowery restaurants are coming along: Yesterday EV Grieve noticed that Veselka Bowery was readying its tables, and now Bowery Boogie notes that the Bowery Diner, from the owners of Peels, has put up some signage. Read more…

Joel Raskin

Authorities are looking for two men who are believed to be involved in a robbery at the Baruch Houses, just below Houston Street. A police spokesman said that two men robbed a 75-year-old Hispanic male at gunpoint around 10:30 p.m. on Monday at 105 Baruch Drive. “The victim states that he was robbed and made to give up money,” the spokesman said. The suspects were described as about 25 years old and about 5-foot-11. This isn’t the only crime involving a septuagenarian victim in recent weeks. A 18-year-old male was arrested last week and charged with grand larceny after police say he snatched the purse of a 78-year-old woman in a wheelchair. The purse contained $15 and medication.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR. Photos: Noah Fecks.

The closing of Elvie’s Turo-Turo a couple of years ago left East Villagers starved for Filipino food, but earlier this summer Sa Aming Nayon opened across from where Elvie’s once stood, and now Maharlika, the brunch pop-up that was first at Resto Leon and then briefly at 5 Ninth, has found permanent residence at 111 First Avenue. Noel Cruz, a partner in the operation along with Nicole Ponseca, Enzo Lim, and chef Miguel Trinidad (all have family ties to the Philippines except for the chef, who is Dominican but has traveled the country extensively) tells us that dinner and brunch service quietly started a week ago. In the next weeks, lunch will also be added and the menu, below, will expand to include a mix of “really approachable things and really deep-rooted traditional items.” Read more…

Grub Street brings word that Masak, a Singaporean restaurant from a former Alias chef who admits his cooking is “not going to be entirely authentic,” will open later this month at 432 East 12th Street. Cocktails are by Jeremy Hawn of Mayahuel.

Lyn Pentecost, Executive Director of The Lower Eastside Girls Club, came across what some fashion lovers might consider the ultimate Craigslist find: 50 never-worn vintage wedding gowns, each with its original price tag. Looking to purchase one or two last fall, Ms. Pentecost contacted the seller (a lawyer representing the estate of a wealthy woman) who told her it was an all-or-nothing deal— 50 dresses for $2,500. She declined at first, only to hear back from the lawyer a few months later with an offer of $500 for the entire lot.

Within weeks, two boxes arrived on her doorstep stuffed with mint-condition gowns—garments that a group of teenage girls have since ripped, cut, and spray painted, putting an individual, modern twist on fifties style. Read more…

Gothamist has a nice long chat with Alex Gibney, director of “Magic Trip,” now playing at Cinema Village. The film documents Ken Kesey’s legendary 1964 road trip to New York. At the time, Allen Ginsberg, who makes an appearance partying with Jack Kerouac, was living at 704 East Fifth Street. “Ginsberg is still on fire,” Gibney says of the footage, “You can see him; just exploding with vitality and ideas and charm. Kerouac is a broken man at that point.”

Laura E. Lee Union members on strike in front of Verizon offices

This morning, the blare of horns and cheering at the corner of 13th Street and Second Avenue marked East Village participation in the largest strike in the U.S. since 2007.

Dressed in bright red t-shirts and carrying signs, about 60 members of two nationwide unions (the Communication Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) again protested in front of Verizon offices today after contract negotiations with the company broke down on Sunday.

“Unfortunately, it looks like an atmosphere of rewinding the clock to a time when there was no union,” said Peter D’Esposito, a Verizon employee and member of CWA Local 101. Read more…

Christina Jean Chambers A scene from “Ambrosia” by Kelley Nicole Girod.

A pair of upcoming plays at the Red Room aim to turn notions of “black theater” upside down.

“Ambrosia” (about an elderly southern woman deciding to die happy) and “Breakfast” (about a middle-class black family dealing with a gay son) will run as a double feature starting August 10.

Both playwrights said that they sought to avoid the clichés of their genre. Read more…

Michelle Rick

Good morning, East Village.

The Post reports that singer Gavin DeGraw was attacked by a group of men on First Avenue between Fifth and Sixth Streets around 4 a.m. Monday. He was scheduled for a concert in Saratoga Springs today, but instead Mr. DeGraw, who owns The National Underground with his brother Joey, is under observation at Bellevue Hospital.

The “outlook is dim” for the last of the lighting businesses along the Bowery. “Store owners point to gentrification, the downturn in the local housing market and the rise of online shopping as having taken a toll on their businesses,” writes The Wall Street Journal.

More change on the Bowery: The folks at Bowery Boogie and The Lo-Down recap last night’s CB3/SLA meeting. According to The Lo-Down, a “slightly more affordable” version of midtown steakhouse Quality Meats has been green-lighted for liquor at 199 Bowery. Bowery Boogie reports that the owners of Peels at 325 Bowery were given the nod for some alterations.

Correction: August 12, 2011

An earlier version of this blog post misstated the name of a neighborhood blog. It is The Lo-Down, not The Lo-Side.

Khristopher J. Brooks Francesca Manisco and her favorite filing system

Today on The Local East Village, it’s all about cleaning house. First Brendan Bernhard recounted the epic task of clearing out his apartment after it was infested by bed bugs. Now a professional organizer (yes, they exist) tells how to avoid all that clutter in the first place.

For nearly a decade, Francesca Manisco was a radio and television producer for Italian broadcast programs. An avid cook, she also contributed a chapter on regional Italian food to “All Italy: The Book of Everything Italian.” She moved to New York in 1980 and found her true calling a little over a decade ago after reading a story in the New York Daily News about professional organizers. Ms. Manisco says she was fascinated to learn that she could “get paid to nag people on where to put their things.”

These days Ms. Manisco works out of her East Village apartment on East 4th Street, a one-bedroom unit that holds thousands of books and hundreds of CDs, but is still quite tidy. A dozen mugs hang from hooks that are screwed underneath her kitchen cabinets; her books are stacked two rows deep; her art supplies are tucked into a canvas box in a corner; and she keep documents in an antique secretary desk.

The Local sat down with Ms. Manisco to gather a few tips on organizing, including how to get more space in a studio apartment. Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown Tommy McKean says that the whir of the air conditioning units directly above his apartment is a constant nuisance.

This time of year, the whir of an air conditioning unit is usually reassuring. But for several tenants living at East 13th Street and First Avenue, two industrial-strength air conditioning units on the roof of their building are instead a constant torment.

“It’s like a helicopter hovering overhead all day,” said Tommy McKean, who lives directly below the units on the fifth floor of the building. “For ten minutes, it’s not so bad. But for 24 hours a day it’s awful.” Read more…

Laura Lee Katie Holmes exits the American Felt Building

Is Joey Potter the East Village’s new Joey? The Local caught Katie Holmes emerging from the apartment she and husband Tom Cruise share in the American Felt Building on 13th Street this morning. The actress is in town to promote her latest work, “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark,” set to release August 26.

One of the two police officers who was acquitted of raping an intoxicated East Village woman in 2009 has been sentenced to one year in jail for official misconduct, the Daily News reports. The officer, Kenneth Moreno, 43 was immediately taken away in handcuffs to begin serving his sentence as his accuser looked on. A jury found Mr. Moreno not guilty of rape in May, but did find him and his partner, Franklin Mata, guilty of misconduct for entering the woman’s apartment without permission. Mr. Mata is expected to be sentenced later today as well.
Update: The sentencing of Mr. Mara has been postponed until Wednesday because his lawyer could not be present, the Daily News reports.

In the bars and restaurants of the East Village, immigrant workers, many undocumented, toil behind the scenes cooking food, waiting tables, and doing whatever else they can to keep the nightlife abuzz. Felipe Baeza is one of them. He serves food and drinks in a hopping East Village restaurant. For Mr. Baeza, 24, the job was to be a mere stepping stone into an exciting art career, which was to begin three years ago when he graduated with a degree in art from The Cooper Union.

But Mr. Baeza, who as a young boy left Mexico for the United States, doesn’t have a work visa or Social Security number, so he cannot legally work in the U.S. Under current federal law, the jobs he studied to perform are not available to him because of his status.

As Mr. Baeza looks from beyond a bar lined with moist beer bottles and cocktail glasses, he sees his classmates finding success in the art world, at home and abroad. In a word, he is frustrated.

“My options are very limited,” he said. “I couldn’t work in a print shop. I couldn’t even assist an artist.”
Read more…

Brendan Bernhard

Today on The Local East Village, it’s all about cleaning house. First, from Brendan Bernhard, the second and final chapter of his harrowing tale about fighting bed bugs. And later, a professional organizer tells how you, too, can make a clean sweep.

If you thought bed bugs were bad enough (I certainly did), wait until you deal with exterminators – bed bug exterminators, that is. Let me tell you, they (or their bosses) are a demanding lot.

Evil sneaky blood-sucking nocturnal mattress-and-sofa infesting predatory vamps-without-glamour they may be, but bed bugs, unlike exterminators, don’t make you wash, dry, and dry clean every article of clothing in your possession. They don’t insist you empty your closets, drawers, file cabinets, and bookshelves, clean the contents therein, and then box them up in airtight containers before they will deign to submit your apartment (which must also be spick and span) to blasts of steam followed by potent doses of poison. In short, those foul vampiric insects that have infested New York do not force you to upend your life and take a good hard look at all the stuff you have accumulated despite spending half your time throwing things out in the interminable war against clutter. Read more…

Scott Lynch

Good morning, East Village.

East Village cyclists have been put on notice. City workers plan to discard several abandoned bikes near East First Street between Avenue A and First Avenue, according to a Department of Transportation sign spotted by EV Grieve. Better pick yours up by the end of the day.

The New York Daily News profiled former CBGB bartender Jane Danger, owner of Jane’s Sweet Buns. The shop, at 102 St. Marks Place, features baked goods with hints of alcohol, like a Rum Runner bun with nutmeg, cinnamon, raisins, brown sugar, Galliano liqueur and aged rum.

Finally, Neither More Nor Less, Marty After Dark, EV Grieve, and Gothamist have photos from Saturday’s protest against East Village gentrification. Activist John Penley and his crew started at East Third Street, found its way to the BMW Guggenheim Lab and ended at what used to be Mars Bar. A poem was read. A cigarette was lit. Signs were waved, and then the protestors went home.

Phoenix Eisenberg on capturing the complexity of limitations.

“I want to give people a reason to be interested in the things they would normally dismiss– by making the unattractive look beautiful, the crazed look understandable, or the pristine seem imperfect. I want people to understand that it is the imperfections in our lives that make us so interesting.”
Read more…

Meghan Keneally Jimmy McMillan is facing eviction from his rent stabilized apartment on St. Mark’s Place, though when working, he spends much of his time in his car.

This morning, The New York Post reported that the city’s most memorable gubernatorial also-ran, Jimmy McMillan, says he is facing eviction because, according to his landlord, his St. Marks apartment is not his main residence (it’s said he works largely in Brooklyn, where the headquarters of The Rent is Too Damn High party are also located.) Mr. McMillan has reportedly lived in the East Village apartment since 1977, but when The Local contacted him (perhaps he, too, would share some of his favorite brunch spots?), he didn’t seem eager to show off his East Village bona fides.

“As an independent undercover investigator, I need to be careful about my family’s safety,” Mr. McMillan said. “I will not give out information about my rent or location. I have a constitutional right to privacy and I will not tell you or anyone where I slept last night or where I am going to sleep tonight.” Read more…