A woman was struck by a car while trying to cross FDR Drive last night, authorities said.
The incident, which occurred in the southbound lane at East Houston Street, was reported at 6:45 p.m., a fire department spokesperson said. The woman was found bleeding from the head and was rushed to Bellevue Hospital.
No criminal activity is suspected, the police said.
This is the second case in a week of a pedestrian being struck on FDR Drive. On Feb. 3 at 5:30 a.m., a 28-year-old man drunkenly tried to sprint across the freeway, the New York Post reported. He suffered a “severe leg injury and head trauma.”
Chloe Sevigny just launched a clothing line inspired by Occupy Wall Street, and she isn’t the only East Villager taking fashion cues from the protest movement. On Saturday, as an antidote to Fashion Week, the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space held a Direct Action Fashion Show aimed at celebrating “how activists use costumes, puppets, and props to draw awareness to various environmental, social, and political issues and create positive, sustainable change.” Making appearances were Rude Mechanical Orchestra, Earth Celebrations, Time’s Up!, and others. Check out Konstantin Sergeyev’s photos, below, to see what went down. Read more…
Saturday we asked you to send us your photos from the storm. Boy, did we get a flurry of them. Our favorite may have been the one of rat tracks in Tompkins Square Park. “If you look close, you can see impressions left by the tails,” wrote Brian Reardon. “Lovely.” But let’s face it, it was next to impossible to top the NSFW snowman in Tompkins Square Park. And so Francisco Valera is the winner of our contest. Now check out some of the best photos posted to The Local’s Flickr group, below. And send us your rain/slush photos! Read more…
District 1, which includes the Lower East Side and East Village, is “one of the only places in the city where parents can send their children to any elementary school in the area, rather than being guaranteed a seat in a local zoned school.” [DNA Info]
And we also have a lot of cafes: “The East Village ZIP code of 10003 has the highest number of shops with 49, closely followed by Midtown/Hell’s Kitchen (10019) with 47. Midtown East (10017) and SoHo (10012) each have 41, and Tribeca/Chinatown (10013) has 40.” [NYC EDC]
Christina Tosi of Momofuku Milk Bar made a cooking demo parodying an 80s workout video. [Eater] The sweets shop is now offering baking lessons. [Gothamist] Read more…
Photographer Francisco Valera sends us what might be the photo of the storm. “Last night in the middle of the snow storm a group of kids made this very funny sculpture in the middle of Tompkins Square Park,” he said. “It was a sensation as every one that passed by laughed and took pictures of it.”
Got some snow photos of your own? E-mail them to us, or better yet share them with The Local’s Flickr group, where Vivienne Gucwa, Bahram Foroughi, Joann Jovinelly and beau-dog have already shared photos from last night and this morning. We’ll post them here later and the best shot gets $150.
Earlier today the Bowery Mission and Catholic Worker told us they were gearing up for an influx of homeless men and women seeking shelter from the storm. Andrea Stella started The Space at Tompkins in 2009, to serve “travelers” that were too old for the city’s youth drop-in centers and who normally don’t take advantage of adult shelters. She said many would be staying at squats or group apartments in Brooklyn tonight. “We got two people a motel room because they had nowhere to go,” she said. “There’s not too many people in town right now.”
Ms. Stella’s volunteer organization helps transient individuals secure a variety of goods and services, including mental health counseling, clean needles, GED prep, college counseling, cell phones, medical care, methadone, and food stamps. We asked her where “travelers” and “crusties” go during cold weather, and what the difference is between the two, anyway.
Q.
Where do the people you work with go in the winter?
A.
Most people travel south or west, but the ones who stay are still on the streets. We’ve been able to move our PBJ dinner inside from Tompkins Square Park to Judson Memorial Church on Thursday nights (thank god they donated the room for free, it’s saving us). The people who stick around are mostly people who want to stay in New York, and it’s nice in the winter because without as many people, we can make some headway with individuals (like housing). Read more…
The storm has claimed one of its first victims: S’mac, on East 12th Street. The city’s most popular delivery joint (per Delivery.com) stopped taking orders a little over half an hour ago. “We’re closing because of the weather,” an employee told The Local. Next door, Motorino is still delivering, but telling customers to expect waits of 45 minutes to an hour. And on the same block, John’s of 12th Street is only delivering to a limited radius. The wait is also “at least 45 minutes” at Grand Sichuan.
As reported earlier today, Luke’s Lobsters tweeted that it was suspending delivery. And Katz’s Deli, which just recently started delivering, tells us it too has chained up its bikes.
Earlier this evening, Seamless, the popular online-ordering site, sent out an alert to customers: “Please be patient with your orders and stay safe!”
Meanwhile, pretty much everyone else we called said they were still delivering tonight: Blue Nine, El Camion, La Lucha, La Palapa, Rai Rai Ken, Sidewalk Cafe, Stromboli, The Smith, Veselka and Odessa.
Enjoy ’em while they’re still on wheels, and tip well.
While Sandy’s unforgiving surge forced dozens of Chelsea gallerists into frenzied damage control, Brooklyn-based artist Ray Smith, whose own Gowanus studio held five feet of water, made the best of a bad situation.
Tonight, a series of ten ink-on-rice paper drawings formed by Mr. Smith, his assistants and a loose network of around fifteen fellow artists and friends will go on display at Parade Ground gallery on the Lower East Side. Most of the work was exposed to Sandy.
“To begin with, the idea was already sort of damaged,” said Mr. Smith of the paintings, which evolved thanks to a process of “organic chaos.”
From a distance, the bursts of images and text on white backgrounds resemble the jumbled composition of Picasso’s “Guernica.” But up close, the viewer sees something different: the artists’ reactions to social and political news fodder, and musings on their daily lives over the course of two years. Succinct insights on Occupy Wall Street are pitted against lewd fart jokes and reflections on a breakup. Read more…
As you probably know by now, a major storm is expected to intensify in the next hours and could leave 10 to 14 inches of snow by early Saturday afternoon. During a press conference this afternoon, Mayor Bloomberg urged New Yorkers to go home early today and stock up on supplies and medicine. Low-lying areas may experience moderate coastal flooding as the tide rises a foot or two, he said. Underground subway service should run “close to normal,” though bus service will be reduced as the storm picks up. Alternate-side parking is suspended citywide through Sunday.
With the white stuff coming down fast, The Local called up establishments around the East Village to see how they were preparing for the storm. If they were preparing at all.
N.Y.U.
All classes, activities, offices, and operations are cancelled after 4 p.m., with the exception of this evening’s events at Skirball and Kimmel. The school will reopen tomorrow at 9 a.m., according to an e-mail.
Associated Supermarket
Norman Quintanila said they were well-stocked and hope to stay open through the weekend.
Whole Foods Market
Shaquarry Williams said people are picking up “more items than usual, but nothing serious.”
CHP Hardware
According to Monica Pedreros, “it’s not, like, crazy.”
La MaMa E.T.C.
After some initial bravado on Twitter (“What’s a little snow compared to the life long memories that you will acquire from coming to La Mama??”), the theater canceled tonight’s performance of “Four Beckett Shorts.” Read more…
Underground cartoonist Yossarian (a.k.a. Alan Shenker, Captain Stanley, Mr. Buddy) died on Jan. 14 at Beth Israel Hospital. He had a rare cardio-pulmonary condition known as pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). “Only about 900 cases of PAH are diagnosed in the US each year,” he had told me. “So the pharmaceutical company, specialty pharmacy, and pulmonary clinic all treat you as a big fish that they’ve caught and don’t intend to let go. This means they are highly motivated to keep you going, but it’s an all encompassing program that feels sometimes like joining Scientology.”
A few years ago a PAH sufferer had only about a 15 percent chance of survival for five years, and it amused Yossarian that the drug they used then was Sildenafil—Viagra. “It was PAH patients taking sildenafil having erections that caused Viagra to be prescribed for erectile dysfunction.”
Yossarian was switched to a new drug, Tracleer, which raised the survival rate to 64 percent. But it too had side effects. Although it was keeping him alive, it also made him feel awful most of the time. His head was constantly swimming from the drug’s effects. When he got a pacemaker last summer, he had to stop taking Tracleer and things seemed to go downhill from there.
He wasn’t complaining, though. “Too many people we knew didn’t get to live in my state of disrepair,” he wrote in an e-mail.
Yossarian lived on St. Marks Place for the last 35 years, and before that on Second Street, between B and C, for several years. An audacious and sharp-witted cartoonist for the East Village Other (EVO), New York Ace, Screw and many other underground papers in the late ’60s and ’70s, he had stopped drawing several years ago—but he was writing. He wrote a piece last year about One-Legged Terry for The Local in honor of the East Village Other (EVO) exhibit at NYU. Read more…
The Lower East Side Tenement Museum has opened its long in-the-works exhibit, “Shop Life,” which recreates a German saloon that used to be in the basement of 97 Orchard Street. “The neighborhood was then called Kleindeutschland (Little Germany), and New York had the third-largest German-speaking populace in the world (after Vienna and Berlin). There are brass musical instruments on shelves (John played in a Union Army regiment), beer steins ready for the opening of a keg, plates heaped with ersatz sausages and cheeses. (Food came with the purchase of lager.)” [NY Times]
The Blueway plan proposes to protect the Con Ed plant at 14th Street by “building a new, green pedestrian bridge that would also serve as a flood wall, preventing water from inundating the plant. The plan also calls for shoring up the thin concrete bulkhead that now runs underneath the FDR with protective wetlands and new drainage to try to minimize a future surge.” [DNA Info]
Prompted by the latest exhibit at New Museum, “NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star,” Walter Robinson recalls the early ’90s art scene on the Lower East Side. [Gallerist] Read more…
Casa Gusto has now opened on Avenue A, selling Venchi chocolate, macarons (look out, Macaron Parlour), and eight flavors of gelato, all imported from Italy. Christine Huynh, who previously ran a business importing greeting cards with her husband, says she is a major food lover, and has always dreamed of opening a shop where she could sell exactly what she likes to eat.
Asked if she was worried about potential “dessert overload” in the neighborhood, Ms. Huynh, a Staten Island resident, said people have different tastes and preferences, and the quality of her sweets will make her stand out.
Casa Gusto will be open from noon to 9 p.m. during the week, and until 10 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. When the weather warms up, Ms. Huynh plans to open later and expand her gelato selection.
Forget the impending snow storm: tonight on Clinton Street, it’ll be “Summer.” That’s the name of a multi-venue exhibition of paintings by Leah Tinari, owner of neighborhood hangout Fatta Cuckoo. Her art — along with food, drinks, and music by DJ Vlad & DJ Cles — will be showcased at her restaurant as well as at Kupersmith, and at shops JnrlStr and Blake Scotland.
Part gallery opening, part block party, the event is the brain child of Doug Jaeger and Kristin Sloan, who have recently expanded their creative studio, JaegerSloan, into a gallery and retail shop called JnrlStr. The partners became fast friends with Ms. Tinari and her husband, Martin Kirchoff, when they first popped into Fatta Cuckoo a few years ago. Read more…
The Bowery’s latest nightspot is a nod to a steakhouse that used to be in Chinatown.
When Christina Chin discovered that the Orange Valve was closing and the storefront underneath her apartment of 12 years was becoming available, she approached her landlord about the space.
Her idea, hit upon while she was leafing through a family photo album, was to open a bar that nodded to the Original Wise Men, the “meat and martini bar” that her parents opened on the corner of Mulberry and Bayard Streets after they emigrated from China in 1969. The bar, said Ms. Chin, got a “mix of fashionable Chinese people in the ’70s and whiteys.”
Yesterday she opened Wise Men, a quirky cocktail bar that nods to its Chinatown predecessor via a “Kobe-beef meat mural” (an image of beef manipulated to resemble flock wallpaper), a marbled bar, and, of course, steak on the menu of small plates, served till 3 a.m. on weekends. The bar’s façade is a blown-up photo of Ms. Chin’s parents celebrating the Original Wise Men’s opening. Read more, and see the menu…
Borough President Scott M. Stringer has announced proposals for the East River Blueway that include “development of a new public beach and kayak launch directly beneath the Brooklyn Bridge, where a naturally occurring sand beach forms a rock-strewn crescent that is now fenced off; the creation of two boat launches at Stuyvesant Cove at the ends of 20th and 23rd Streets; the installation of marshlands and sea walls in especially vulnerable flood zones, and the planting of trees and greenery all along the F.D.R. Drive to provide shade and absorb storm water runoff. ” The bike path at 14th Street would also be elevated. [NY Times]
“Thousands of residents in Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village are flummoxed by a lease clause that allows their landlords to hike their rent in the middle of their lease, the Wall Street Journal reported.” [Real Deal]
An elderly woman was in critical condition after being hit by a minivan at Bowery and Bayard. [Gothamist] Read more…
Earlier this week we caught wind that Brooklyn Brine would be teaming up with Dogfish Head Craft Brewed Ales in north Williamsburg. Now we can reveal the mystery project will be a sandwich joint specializing in fried pickles. It will open in Williamsburg in May.
At a tasting at La Birreria at Eataly today, Shamus Jones of Brooklyn Brine and Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head said the collaboration had been a long time coming.
The two brands last worked together on a Hop-Pickle made with Dogfish Head’s IPA. Here, they’ll serve those hop-infused pickles as well as “a whole menu of grilled sandwiches with different rotating seasonal pickles and pickles infused in beer and an a la carte menu for pickles,” said Mr. Jones. All of it will amount to “a house built around a fried pickle environment, with quality ingredients and products.”
“This restaurant is going to be used as a pickle beta-testing area for food products and whatnot,” said Mr. Calagione. “It’s going to be more of a test kitchen.” At play will be Randall the Enamel Animal, a custom-made device that infuses beer with the taste of whatever hops, spices, herbs, and fruit are added.
Mr. Jones said he first started frying pickles while working at a high-end vegetable restaurant in Seattle. “As cooks and fat kids, we said, ‘Hey, let’s fry Snickers, let’s fry this, let’s fry that, and eventually we fried pickles. And pickles and beer just worked so well, clearly,” he said.
As 51 Astor Place nears completion, Cooper Square is getting another dose of minimalism, and the Bowery is getting another chain retailer: Muji, a Japanese home supplies and knickknack store, is moving into 52 Cooper Square.
This will be the international chain’s fifth New York City location, including stores on Broadway in SoHo, and at JFK. The brand is also carried at MoMA’s Design Stores.
According to Yoko Kaku, a corporate representative, the outpost near Astor Place will open in mid-April.
The total cost of the renovation, which includes the ground floor and the cellar, is estimated to be $233,120, according to a construction permit application filed with the Department of Buildings.
Muji has stores in 23 countries throughout the world, according to its Website.
In the latest chapter of an ongoing saga, a lawyer representing Faculty Against the Sexton Plan is asking N.Y.U. professors to come forward if they’ve been harassed or intimidated by the school’s administration.
“Some faculty members believe that their promotions have been blocked or stalled since speaking out against the Sexton Plan,” wrote Jim Walden, an attorney at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, in an e-mail encouraging victims to come forward. “Others have reported sudden interference with their plans to move their families into larger faculty apartments. Such retaliation is inappropriate and potentially illegal. The surest way to stop such tactics is to expose them.”
Mark Crispin Miller, a professor of Media, Culture and Communication at N.Y.U. and a spokesperson for Faculty Against the Sexton Plan, said the e-mail was intended to encourage open discussion. “It’s all the more difficult to have that rational conversation when people are afraid to disagree with their superiors,” he told The Local. “We would like people to break this nervous silence and talk honestly and openly about this kind of intimidation, which I think affects people on a broad range of issues.”
Though the e-mail, sent yesterday, doesn’t identify the school’s president as the source of the alleged intimidation and harassment, Mr. Miller was more blunt in conversation with The Local. “It obviously comes from John Sexton,” he said. “Who could it come from but the leader of the institution?” Read more…
A tribute in the window of the Strand quotes remarks that the late Ed Koch made at the bookstore’s 80th anniversary: “I have lived in the Village since 1956, so I grew up with the Strand,” he said with his usual aplomb. “I am actually two years older, so I am in a sense their mentor.”
Fred Bass, owner of the bookstore, told The Local that Mr. Koch was only an occasional visitor, but his appearance in 2007 was a memorable one. “You don’t have to be born in New York City to be a New Yorker,” he told the crowd. “If you lived here for six months and at the end of six months you find that you walk faster, you talk faster and you think faster, you’re a New Yorker.”
Mr. Koch was quite the New Yorker, and quite the Villager, as the Times, the Post, and Off the Grid have pointed out. We can recall seeing the mayor-turned-movie-critic alone at Cinema Village, catching a showing of “The Extra Man,” and then alone again at the Regal Union Square. We spotted him dining at Japonica. In 2011 we filmed him reading his children’s book, “Eddie Shapes Up,” to a group of East Village schoolchildren.
The mayor told students of P.S. 64 that the East Village had gone from an “awful” place that was “very sad,” to a “marvelous place” that was “one of the neighborhoods people want to live in and pay a lot of money to live in,” DNA Info reported. An interactive graphic produced by The Times shows the degree to which the neighborhood’s population grew wealthier in the years since he took office in 1978.
On Facebook, East Village residents didn’t give Koch much credit for that change.
Feminist and journalist Susan Brownmiller called him “a creepy Mr. Magoo who sold out New York to real-estate developers. He was a hater, a baiter.” Read more…
The Local was a journalistic collaboration designed to reflect the richness of the East Village, report on its issues and concerns, give voice to its people and create a space for our neighbors to tell stories about themselves. It was operated by the students and faculty of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University, in collaboration with The New York Times, which provides supervision to ensure that the blog remains impartial, reporting-based, thorough and rooted in Times standards.
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