There are 39 community gardens in the East Village, with one located on nearly every street between East Houston and 14th Street. Ranging from tiny outdoor nooks overflowing with tulips to wide double lots large enough to hold amphitheaters, the gardens offer welcomed botanical getaways from the grit of the city.

But today, urban green spaces face a new threat as lawmakers in Washington D.C. continue to mull over budget cuts to federally funded community development programs including Green Thumb, which provides New York City community gardens with workshops, tools and other necessary supplies.

“Unfortunately, it’s a possibility in all aspects of the government,” said Larry Scott Blackmon, deputy commissioner of community outreach for the NYC Parks Department.

It is a crisis some gardens may be unprepared to face. Grace Tankersley, author of “Community Gardens of the East Village,” said Green Thumb has been a valuable resource for years.

“I don’t know what would happen to the gardens without Green Thumb if it was seriously cut back or destroyed,” Ms. Tankersley said. “At the moment it seems to be a little bit up in the air. Green Thumb is funded totally through the federal government so if they lose their funding the parks department may come through with funding, although they’ve had to cut back on their budget too.”
Read more…

nyc.gov

I recently attended a Community Board meeting where a representative from the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DOITT) shared one of the newest updates to the 311 Online Services. An online service map, updated daily, shows residents the total amount of complaints made to 311 in any given area. In addition to being able to click on the complaint marked on the map by a yellow circle (relative in size to the amount of complaints per area), you can receive the status of the request.

Using this map, you can search by address, intersection, community board, city council district, or zip code. You may also narrow down the categories by using a pull-down menu to search for topics such as ‘sanitation’ or ‘public safety’. The map keeps information for up to 3 months, or using the advanced settings, data is stored for up to one year.

What’s the difference between a “call” and a “complaint?” Nick Sbordone of the DOITT explained that with a call, there is usually no follow-up required by the city. A complaint usually involves a service request, where the caller’s information and complaint is recorded and an action by one of the City’s Departments will follow.

It may be useful, or at least interesting, to track your own requests, those of your neighbors, or just to remain informed about any particular area’s happenings. Follow this link to search for the East Village’s Community Board 3 district, type in your own address or any intersection, and stay updated with what’s up in your area!

Phillip Kalantzis Cope

Our goal here at The Local is to expose our readers to as many different kinds of blogs as possible – but we can only do so if we hear about them. So we’d like to issue another call for you to submit the neighborhood’s best blogs to our blogroll.

Just visit the comments section below, leave the URL and we’ll consider adding it to the roll.

jdx

Would-be messages from the East Village, in 140 characters or less.

Welcome To The East Village: This is Your Demented Realtor Speaking

Here is your sofa. Studio prices are available on the
Web, or via consultation with your Personal Real Estate
Provider. Please &#8212 sit down

& be comfortable. That is garbage on the street, & you
might want to avoid that rat. Sadly, rentals are a bit high
right… Look, don’t frown,

we’ve got planeloads of Japanese heading this way very
keen to escape the recent ‘troubles,’ if you see what I
mean, you underfunded clown,

& we do need to impress upon them that this is NY, NY,
with lots of people just like them, that it’s dynamic,
diverse, & a helluva town.

(It’d be one thing if you were a minority, but you’re not
a minority, you’re not even drunk, so get off that sofa or
the cops come round)
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Crystal Bell >Inside the Fan Cave, Mr. O’Hara, with two visitors, watch the game on 12 32-inch TV screens and three other 60-inch screens for optimal fan-viewing experience.

If you’ve passed the corner of Broadway and East Fourth Street recently, you’ve probably noticed a new installation

Crystal BellCelebration champagne bottle from 1994. Once a week, visitors can come in and have their MLB memorabilia appraised for free.

occupying the former home of Tower Records. It’s called the MLB Fan Cave, an interactive space for baseball fanatics, and it also doubles as a summer home for Mike O’Hara, 37, and Ryan Wagner, 25, the two superfans who were chosen by Major League Baseball to live there and watch every single game this season.

“An interactive fan space like this has never been done before, “ said Mr. Wagner. “We want this space to be a place with music, art and performers, where baseball would be the common thread. We want there to be something for everyone. We want to entertain the people of this city.”

“It should mirror the East Village,” adds Mr. O’Hara. “We want pop culture meets baseball. We want to bring in baseball players and legends but also actors, musicians and comedians because they all watch baseball too. It’s the American sport.”
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Adrian Fussell

A sampling of reader reactions to posts that have appeared on The Local.

Several commenters weighed in on our post about the closure of Mara’s Homemade, a Cajun style restaurant on East Sixth Street. Many readers took exception to the assertion by the owner of the restaurant, Mara Levi, that – in addition to higher taxes and rents – the restaurant’s bottom line was affected by the installation last summer of bike lanes along First Avenue, which limited available street parking.

Michael wrote:

“Uhm, the neighborhood is exploding with crowded restaurants and bars and Missus blames the bike lanes for her business failure? Lame!”

“East Villager” added:

“This is not the fault of the bike lanes; it’s the fault of people who think they have a ‘right’ to street parking everywhere.”

“Trizzlor” wrote:

“If you’re in the East Village and your business goes DOWN because of bike lanes then you don’t understand your client base.”

Read more…

Ian Duncan A musician plays outside Kenka, a popular Japanese restaurant on St. Marks Place. Census figures show Asians to be the fastest growing ethnic group in the neighborhood.

Richard Lan’s family moved to the Lillian Wald Houses 14 years ago when he was just a baby. His mother still works in Chinatown as a janitor in a drug store, but his two older sisters led the move to the public housing in search of more space.

City statistics suggest Richard’s family is just one of many who have made the move. Data provided to The Local by the housing authority show that Asians make up almost 20 percent of East Village public housing tenants, and figures from the 2010 census show Asians to be the fastest growing ethnic group in the neighborhood. In the streets immediately north of Houston, the number of Asian residents almost doubled. Is this the beginnings of a China Village to complement Chinatown? Perhaps, but interpreting the numbers is difficult.
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Adrian Fussell

Good morning, East Village.

Hope your Easter weekend was grand. In honor of the holiday, The Local posted a video of Sofika Zieylk, demonstrating the traditional Ukrainian art of “Pysanky” (egg painting) in her Seventh Street apartment. You can find the video, which was produced by NYU Journalism’s Rachel Ohm, by visiting the right column of the blog’s homepage or by clicking this link.

What does an Easter Sunday look like at Mars Bar? Well pretty much like any other day, but see if you can spot the one Easter-related item in the pics.  The hunt’s on, at Nadie Se Conoce.

Last week, The Times reported on the budding crop of Evangelicals taking root in the East Village. Trinity Grace Church opened its fifth New York branch at 59 Cooper Square, in the First Ukrainian Assembly of God, earlier this month.  The new addition points to the rising expansion of evangelical churches across Manhattan, but also to a change in strategy. In the article, Pastor Guy Wasko emphasized the importance of finding acceptance in the East Village through acknowledging former pain caused by Christian leaders during the AIDS epidemic, and by opening his doors to a congregation that he hopes will be “multigenerational and multiethnic.”

And finally, a new detail has emerged about the red-tailed couple nesting on the 12th floor ledge of Bobst Library. Evidently, the pair enjoys waking up to the morning paper. The Time’s City Room Blog reported that Bobby, the male hawk, was spotted early Friday morning carrying a crumpled page of newspaper back to Violet in the nest. Potential subscribers? Doesn’t look like it, the paper the hawk scooped is suspected to have been amNew York.

Adrian Fussell on capturing energy and color in the city.

“Houston and Lafayette. The Village is always full of bright colors at night.”

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The author executes a human flag pose on a signpost. Warmer weather provides new opportunities to workout on scaffolding and other public spaces.

The East Village has so many great places to work out for free – you just have to be creative. For those of you who have a hard time fitting exercise into your day, remember that fitness and life are one in the same. You don’t need a gym to work out when the whole world is a playground.

I’ve got nothing against working out in a gym, but with spring finally blooming after a long, snowy winter, my brother Danny and I couldn’t wait to venture back out to the streets of Manhattan to do another scaffolding workout.

We all have the opportunity to better our bodies every single day. Instead of sitting around waiting for things in your life to magically fall into place, go out and make opportunities for yourself. Learn to improvise with whatever’s in front of you – it’s a helpful skill in the world of fitness, but it’s an even greater asset in everyday life.

Al Kavadlo is a personal trainer, freelance writer and author of the book, “We’re Working Out! A Zen Approach to Everyday Fitness” (Muscle-up Publications, 2010). For more information visit www.AlKavadlo.com.

A Spring Scaffolding Workout

Ian Duncan The author, one of the preservationists trying to forestall the demolition of 35 Cooper Square, issues a call to the developer of the site to cover the roof to prevent further damage. Below: A detail of the roof shortly after work began in February.

The recent article, “Developer Cited for 35 Cooper’s Roof” had some readers curious re what’s so important about the roof. The history of this building has been well-told, but the roof and dormers as essential structural elements and character-defining features, are currently compromised by partial demolition and exposure to the elements. Any effort to save this building, at this point, needs to start with the basics: putting a tarp back on the roof.

Over the winter, roofing material was removed by workers hired by the new owner under a permit for asbestos abatement, a prerequisite for obtaining a demolition permit. The dormers were similarly stripped of their protective roofing, and non-historic skylights were removed, exposing not only the roof structure but the upper floors of the building to the elements. The old wooden shingles, part of the historic fabric of the building, are now visible, but so too are the gaping holes in the roof. The rain and snow of the past few months are surely accelerating any decay and rot in the 185-year-old structure smacks of demolition by willful neglect.
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Elizabeth Vulaj The owner of Mara’s Homemade, who recently announced that the restaurant is closing its doors, cited bike lanes that were installed last summer as part of the reason that the restaurant saw a decline in business.

Taxes and the rent have gone up but Mara Levi mostly blames the bike lanes for having to close Mara’s Homemade, her authentic New Orleans-style restaurant on East Sixth Street near First Avenue. If the customers come from all over the tri-state area and even beyond, she said, a restaurant has to have parking.

Ms. Levi said that she now pays double for taxes than she did when she opened seven years ago, but that the addition of the bike lanes, which opened in July and reduced the number of available street parking spaces, have significantly contributed to the business’ decline.

“We saw a drop in business the day those lanes came in,” said Ms. Levi. “When you go from twelve parking spaces per block to three, that makes a difference.”

In January, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg conceded that city officials should have notified residents when they decided to install the lanes. Levi said she was not even aware of any plans until one evening, where she saw construction workers toiling away on First Avenue.

“One night we come out, and they were marking lanes and paving,” said Ms. Levi. “It was a total surprise. There was no input from the community and it upset me a lot.”
Read more…

Michelle Rick

Good morning, East Village.

It’s Good Friday. CBS New York has word of an Easter egg walking tour – walking tour meaning ‘hunt’ but less frenzied and with a knowledgeable guide rather than cryptic clues. The jaunt will include chocolate pizza at Max Brenner and a stop in at Black Hound.

It’s also Earth Day. In the spirit of things, EV Grieve published the announcement that the St. Mark’s Church Greenmarket at East 10th Street and Second Avenue will return for the summer May 3.

NYU Local has an interview with a dope dealer at the school. According to the post business is good, despite the highly publicized bust of a Columbia University drug ring and its East Village supplier late last year.

Blockshopper reports that political consultant John Del Cecato has bought a condo in the neighborhood. Mr. Del Cecato, an associate of former presidential advisor David Axelrod, was obviously not put off by Chico’s Barack Obama mural becoming instead a plain blue wall covered in tags. Perhaps most interestingly, the Blockshopper post adds that 71 East Village condos have been sold in the last 12 months at an average price of $750,000.

Among a flurry of preservation news, DNAinfo reports that the Landmarks Preservation Commission is considering a new historic district in the neighborhood. It could include up to 300 buildings in an area bounded by East Second Street, Bowery, East 10th Street and Second Avenue. The commission will hold a meeting for property owners on April 26.

As for the weekend’s weather forecast: Today a high of 55 degrees with some clouds, Saturday 62 degrees and wet with more of the same on Sunday. Not the nicest, but try to enjoy yourselves.

This post has been changed to correct an error; an earlier version misidentified the greenmarket that is opening next month.