Ian Duncan The site of the incident on 11th Street.A Con Ed worker was treated by paramedics this afternoon after inhaling gas from a broken line, the authorities said. The incident occurred outside a seven-story residential building on 11th Street between Avenues A and B.
The Fire Department evacuated the building, according to staffers with the office of emergency management who were at the scene.
A private contractor was working on the line when it started to leak. But Con Ed is responsible for responding to emergencies of this kind.
The area was closed to vehicle traffic but open to pedestrians at 3:20 p.m. At 3:33 p.m., an ambulance was still parked on the street. The injured Con Ed worker was inside. He emerged from the front seat of the ambulance unaided, clutching his heavy blue work jacket and a half-empty bottle of orange Gatorade.
This post has been changed to correct an error; an earlier version misstated the site of the leak.
Top row (from left) Khristopher J. Brooks, Joshua Davis, Ian Duncan. Second row (from left): Meghan Keneally, Laura E. Lee, Chelsia Marcius.Earlier, we told you about the arrival of Todd Olmstead, who today starts work as The Local’s assistant editor for digital and community outreach.
We’d also like to welcome the members of the 2011 New York Times/NYU Hyperlocal Digital Reporting Internship class, who start work today.
You will see their faces in our community, and their bylines on our posts and we encourage you to follow them all on Twitter.
The interns are:
And follow The Local on Twitter @nytlev.
Lauren Carol Smith A sampling of reader reactions to recent posts that have appeared on The Local.
Brendan Bernhard’s post about aging in the East Village — particularly his contention that our neighborhood is “one of the more trying places in which to grow old” — prompted a good deal of discussion in the blog’s forums.
Amelie wrote:
“I completely disagree with you. My father is 87 and has lived in the East Village all of his life. My father and his friend (who are old folks so called wondering around in the east village)… happen to love it here… they love the small cafes, they feel young and a lot of them do not want to accept their age. Being surrounded by young folks makes them feel young.”
Joelle Morrison said:
“I’m 72, a Lower East Side expatriate living in the wilds of Staten Island, but when I’m really old I intend to head back to my old nabe. If you can’t drive and want access to food, culture, books, parks, doctors, etc., you need Manhattan or Brooklyn. There are lots of older people living in my old nabe, you just don’t see them all over or out at night because they have a LIFE! They’re not tourists or students or dilettantes clogging the streets and barfing all over on weekends. They bring a sense of reality, solidity and presence to a neighborhood now in sore need of those things.”
Read more…
Peter BootheA few weeks ago, NYU seniors from Avenue D to West Fourth Street washed their greasy hair and used their parents’ credit cards to buy something nice-looking for the penultimate of college events — graduation. For what seemed like way too many days I stood in line behind glossy moms in white ankle pants at H&M, mingled with round, red-faced Dads on the F train, and dodged double decker tour buses barreling through my streets, working overtime to accommodate all of the neglected aunts and uncles.
I wanted to run and hide, not because I was jealous of all the checks being picked up by parents at Mercadito, nor because those parents then gave their little graduates some “beer money” before they stepped into a cab to retire to their Times Square hotel. Not even because I’m scared of other people’s grandmas (which I am).
No, I wanted to get the hell out of the East Village during those days because from what I could see, all parties involved with the occasion seemed extremely unhappy and unhopeful, both for their own futures and for the futures of everyone around them. Yes, even commencement speaker Bill Clinton.
It reminded me of the misery of my own college graduation. My Dad cried, which I thought was sweet, but my mother assured me he was having a reaction to looking at his bank account. Last week, when I saw a silver-haired man in a Pebble Beach baseball cap painfully clutching the brunch menu while waiting in a throng of other silver-haired men outside of Peels, I assumed it was a similar situation.
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Todd Olmstead.We at The Local are pleased to announce the arrival of Todd Olmstead, who today begins work as the news blog’s assistant editor for digital and community outreach.
In this newly created role, Mr. Olmstead will help to facilitate a neighborhood-wide conversation through the blog’s social media presence on Facebook and Twitter. He will also be a regular presence in the neighborhood and engage with the site’s readers on a one-on-one basis.
Mr. Olmstead is a student in the Studio 20 master’s degree concentration at NYU Journalism where he studies the Web and innovation in journalism. Since coming to NYU, he has served as a community intern at Mashable and managed Explainer.net, home of Studio 20’s Building a Better Explainer project.
A graduate of Colby College, Mr. Olmstead previously lived and worked in Iowa City, where he covered the local music scene. His writing on music has appeared on Crawdaddy, Tiny Mix Tapes, Daytrotter, and his own site. Last fall, he was a member of The Local’s social media team.
“Todd has a natural understanding of the ways that we can use social media to extend the reach of our journalism and we’re thrilled to have him on our team,” said Richard G. Jones, the editor of The Local. “We hope that he’ll be a conversation leader and that he’ll help fundamentally change the way that the blog interacts with its readers in both the digital space and out on the streets of the community that we all share.”
Follow Mr. Olmstead on Twitter at @toddjolmstead.
Gloria Chung, Vivienne Gucwa, jdx, Susan Keyloun, Bruce Monroe, Mario Ramirez, Joel Raskin, Michelle Rick, and Tim Schreier — all members of The Local East Village Flickr Group — share their images of the weekend’s Howl! Festival.
Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.
If you’d like a chance to see your best shots appear on The Local, join The Local East Village Flickr Group.
Vivienne GucwaGood morning, East Village.
Don’t worry if you missed the Howl! Festival over the weekend; neighborhood bloggers have enough coverage for you to re-live the event virtually. The Local’s Flickr pool members were on the case. Melanie of Melanie Musings was a seemingly unstoppable photographic force, so check in with her and start scrolling down. EV Grieve has a few choice shots here and here. Gamma Blog has some video clips, too. DNA Info also has a round up.
On Friday, EV Grieve noted an epidemic of mattresses left out on the curb (and possibly coined a collective noun in the process). Some of his commenters mused that it was probably because of June leases being up, but others worried about a new bed bug outbreak.
DNA Info has an update on the errant bee colony that decided a Little Italy mailbox would make a good home. The 7,000-odd drones have been integrated with another swarm from Washington Heights at a hive in Queens. Beekeeper Elie Miodownik said the bees are at work, despite their own queen being seized by the NYPD. Her whereabouts are unknown at this time.
Looking ahead, it’s Internet Week. Techies will gather in New York to discuss the future for the series of tubes. Most of the fun is happening over in the heart of Silicon Alley –- the area north of Union Square — but the Post has news that Mayor Michael Bloomberg is throwing a party in honor of East Village start up Foursquare. The paper reports that the Mayor has become close with Dennis Crowley, the site’s 26-year-old founder.
Tim Schreier A scene from this weekend’s Howl! Festival. Below: The cover of “Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: The Letters.”Paul Rosenfeld, the critic, once wrote that, “Complex works of art speak not through individuals but ensembles.” In the early 1940s, on the steps of Columbia University, the original members of what became known as the “Beat Generation” — Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Lucien Carr, William Burroughs — would form such a group.
The early Beats would strike off in several directions, on paths that would volley between the coasts and across the world, but they often returned to the Lower East Side where they got their start, and where their contribution to modern culture is celebrated in events like the Howl! Festival, named for Ginsberg’s game-changing 1955 poem. Ginsberg would have turned 85 years old last week — sufficient reason to look again at the passage of the Beats through our neighborhood and the influence they left.
The cheap apartments in the East Village in the 1940’s and 1950’s and the bohemian coffee houses and bars of downtown were a fecund soil for creative energy and experimental art. Ginsberg had the deepest connections among the group: his mother Naomi had been raised on the Lower East Side.
“Although I’m sure they were drawn to downtown New York by the existing art scene, we also have to bear in mind they were drawn to that sector for the rent. Which is why the art scene existed down there already,” said Kim Davis, associate editor of The Local and avid collector of bohemian literature. “The two things go together, artists and cheap rent, they converge.”
Read more…
Jesse FishThe Yippie movement started in the basement of this building at 30 St. Marks Place.“New York is naturally fantastic — especially where I live — just one gigantic happening,” wrote the young 1960’s political activist, Abbie Hoffman, while living on Avenue C and 11th Street. Hoffman, the counterculture, anti-war advocate had recently arrived in the city divorced, jobless and estranged from his family in Worcester, Mass. Feeling free and ambitious, Hoffman promptly set out to organize political and spiritual movements which he believed would change the warring Western world.
Hoffman, along with Jerry Rubin, went on to establish the Yippie — short for Youth International Party — political group while residing in a basement apartment at 30 St. Marks Place, until recently home to the Japanese restaurant Go. In Hoffman’s mind, the Yippies would be an answer to the hippie movement, which he believed was aimless and too drug-centered to accomplish any real change in United States policy.
Hoffman once affirmed that a “Yippie is a hippie who’s been beaten up by the cops,” and thought that the neighborhood was the perfect launching pad for his alternative faction. Abbie spoke of the East Village as “the real hip underground, the successor to Greenwich Village as the heartland of bohemianism.”
Read more…
Mario Ramirez on capturing images of discarded objects in New York.
“On the cusp of the East Village, standing there, like a monument, for everyone to see. Objects are like people, with wrinkles, accessories, and dysfunctions. Disconnected and off the hook, but to the man there, its keeper, it seemed plugged in and of great importance.”
Read more…
We’ve learned more details about the unpaid taxes that forced the closure of Luca Bar. The owners of the bar, Vito DiTomaso and Christophe Mazuel, owe state tax officials a grand total of $31,385.49, not including interest and penalties, said Susan Burns, a spokeswoman for the State Department of Taxation and Finance. Ms. Burns, who declined to discuss what would have to occur for the bar to re-open, said that the bar has six open warrants for unpaid taxes dating to November 2009; Mr. Mazuel did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment.
Stephen Rex Brown Luca Bar, 119 St. Marks Place.State officials have seized Luca Bar, the upscale bar and restaurant at 119 St. Marks Place, for non-payment of taxes. The bar, known for its European flavor, was seized last night, according to those who work on the block; a bright orange sign announcing the seizure had been taped to the bar’s front window. The Local has reporters working on the story and we will provide more information as it becomes available.
eastvillagedenizen A scene from last year’s Howl Festival.Allen Ginsberg first moved to the East Village in October 1952, renting apartment 16 of 206 East Seventh Street, for which he paid $33.60 a month rent. He lived in the neighborhood for the rest of his life, staying in a number of tenements until his death in 1997.
This evening at 5, the eighth annual Howlfest kicks off in Tompkins Square Park with a reading of his epic poem “Howl” by a host of noted poets including John Giorno, Hettie Jones, and Ed Sanders. The reading will be emceed by Bob Holman of the Bowery Poetry Club. The reading should have added impact, as today would have been Ginsberg’s 85th birthday.
This annual extravaganza of local creative energy continues throughout the weekend with a full calendar of events. In addition to poetry, local musicians, dancers, actors and artists will all be presenting their work. Perhaps the world’s longest canvas will be erected on the park fence and you will have the opportunity of viewing 140 artists work on their creations in their section.
The beautiful weather forecast for the weekend is sure to draw crowds and you should head over to Tompkins Square to join in the celebration.
Michelle RickIt happened several weeks ago, during a hard day’s night.
There was the usual raucous disturbance in the street below, when the bars begin closing and their liquored-up patrons spill out all drunk and disorderly. The area in question, lower First Avenue, leads uptown from that gauntlet of traffic lights that intersects Houston. Nearby, police cars almost always lay in wait, not to regulate barflies, mind you, but to collar motorists for traffic violations.
Such was the case that very night: the siren’s wail drew me up to the window. The squad-car’s bullhorn then came alive and demanded that the hapless driver shut off the motor and put his keys on top of the car. Considering how many drunken souls were out at this hour, it seemed a smart precaution.
But the driver was cogent, in fact, and had his license ready when the two officers strode up to meet him. What the policemen didn’t expect was the presence of three drunken young bravos who had just shambled out of the corner pizza joint.
They called out to the police from the crosswalk: first with whistles and catcalls, then appellations of the more insulting variety. This included one term which describes an orifice at the opposite end from our mouth, and an old-English noun which usually designates a female dog. These epithets were repeated again and again, just in case the two policemen hadn’t heard them the first time.
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Illustration by Tim MilkLast night saw the opening of an exhibit at LaMama Galleria, curated by John Chaich for Visual AIDS, a contemporary arts organization dedicated to HIV prevention and AIDS awareness. Entitled “Mixed Messages,” the show hosts a bevy of star names, among them Yoko Ono, John Giorno, Gran Fury and General Idea. It features the seminal provocation piece by David Wojnarowicz, “Untitled” (1990), more popularly known as “One Day this Kid…”.
Much of the work recalls the typographic-heavy message art which prevailed in the 1990’s. Indeed, one could say that this exhibition is in part a retrospective of that period.
The exhibition is accompanied by associated talk and benefit events. More information can be found on the La Mama website.
Kenan Christiansen Jeff Gurwin commissioned this mural at Avenue A and Second Street as a way to propose to his girlfriend, Caitlin Fitzsimons.In a gesture of urban romance, East Village resident Jeff Gurwin, 28, proposed to girlfriend Caitlin Fitzsimons, 27, by commissioning a mural for her on Avenue A and Second Street.
“I knew I wanted to propose this way because we’re always taking pictures of graffiti. I wanted to integrate things into the wall that were special to her,” Mr. Gurwin told The Local in a phone interview.
The wall is covered by images of Ms. Fitzsimons family dog Parkey, her favorite flowers (yellow roses) and a cherry blossom tree modeled after a tree the couple often visit in Central Park.
The question itself is spelled out in stenciled Scrabble tiles, as the game is the couple’s favorite pastime.
Painted by graffiti artists Tats Cru, the mural took five hours to finish. This process and the subsequent proposal were taped for a stop motion video that has become a viral sensation on YouTube.
Click above to view a video of the mural’s creation.Ms. Fitzsimons discovered the mural on her way to meet Mr. Gurwin, who told her he was food shopping. Instead he was waiting for her at the corner.
“She saw it and was so surprised. It was more than I expected. We were both just floating,” he said. In response to the romantic street art, Ms. Fitzsimons happily said yes.
For those who want to swoon over the mural in person it will be on display for the next month.
Stephen Rex Brown Angel Ortiz, the street artist known as LA II, has decided to stop producing street graffiti after a recent stint on Rikers Island on vandalism charges. Below: Mr. Ortiz with a recent piece.LA II is taking his art off of the streets.
Angel Ortiz, the iconic graffiti artist known as LA II, told The Local that he’ll now only spray his paint cans in legal settings after spending more than a month at Rikers Island for a frenzy of tagging all over the East Village.
Mr. Ortiz said that his time in jail had essentially scared him straight — though the old-school graffiti artist who collaborated extensively with Keith Haring confessed that putting down his markers and cans would be tough.
“I’m hanging up the gloves,” said Mr. Ortiz, who’s 44. “No more spray painting in the streets. I don’t know how I’m going to do it.”
Read more…
Tim SchreierGood morning, East Village.
DNAinfo reports that the former location of the Sin Sin Lounge, known for its rowdy atmosphere and late-night drunken brawls that culminated in a fatal shooting last summer, is planning to re-open as an upscale bakery. Yes, it will still serve drinks. But the ownership appears to be going to great lengths to demonstrate that the location wants to change its reputation. The new bakery will feature flakey pastries and swanky upstairs dine-in seating. It even had that old prison tattoo of a name blotted over and tentatively replaced with “Sweet Boutique.”
Last week, we brought you a post in which some of the founding members of P.S. 122 shared their memories of the performance space’s early years. An article by the BBC describes the space’s role in the fight against AIDS. The BBC details the history of the red ribbon, from its origin as a reaction to global indifference concerning the HIV outbreak, to its rise as a universally recognized emblem of support – much of which began at P.S. 122.
On Wednesday, we described the neighborhood-wide reflections about the 20th anniversary of the 1991 Memorial Day riot at Tompkins Square Park. The Times checks in with an assessment of how the riot was a turning point for our community.
And finally, the Howl! Festival will begin today with a reading of its namesake poem in Tompkins Square Park at 5 this evening. A number of poets will lend their voices to reading, including Miguel Algarín, who we mentioned on the blog yesterday. It’s a small world among poets: Hettie Jones once said she could fit the entire beat generation into her living room. Ask her, she’ll be there.
Michelle RickYou notice them everywhere in Manhattan, but perhaps particularly in a slightly out-of-the-way neighborhood such as the East Village — middle-aged or older New Yorkers who look as if they have remained in the city that doesn’t sleep way past the limits of insomnia or common sense.
They seem a little lost in this International House of Cupcakes, among i-Stoned youth, galvanized immigrants, packed bars, and cafés where the music is always played at a volume whose message might as well be posted on a notice board outside — Adults Permitted, But Youth Preferred.
Aging is a delicate, unrewarding business at best, and some people — as a result of genes, outlook, resolution, and money — manage it better than others. To judge by the relative lack of oldsters in the East Village (anyone over 40 is a rarity on the streets after 9 p.m., and most of those are either homeless, comatose, or possibly dead), it’s obvious that this is one of the more trying places in which to grow old. Those who hang on must also confront the irony of living in an era in which they are constantly scolded that it is within their power to remain “young,” while being made to feel ancient almost all the time.
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