jdx, a community contributor to The Local East Village, discusses working the streets with a camera.

“Most of these images are captured on the streets of the East Village with a mobile, edited in-device and uploaded. A lot of their inspiration is sourced from writing and literary studies, album covers and underground novels, beat poetry and outsider art. I try not to get hit by cars.”
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Phillip Kalantzis Cope

Good morning, East Village.

There’s more news on Grace Farrell, the homeless woman who died last weekend near St. Brigid’s Church. Yesterday, The Daily News tracked down Ms. Farrell’s 12-year-old son, Oliver, and Al Muniz, her former fiancé. Upon learning of his mother’s death, Oliver vowed to stay clear of the drugs and alcohol that he and Mr. Muniz said doomed Ms. Farrell. Oliver also spoke of his dream to become a detective when he grows up and recalled seeing his mother last on Feb. 11. Ms. Farrell likely died Saturday night, the same night her son was baptized at East Village’s Holy Redeemer Church.

Eater NY reports that today marks the opening of a new restaurant at The Cooper Square Hotel, named The Trilby. The Trilby is the hotel’s third restaurant since opening in spring 2009.

For many East Village residents, the new restaurant’s opening may only exacerbate existing pain and nostalgia. EV Grieve reports that yesterday, the Department of Buildings issued a permit to the developers of 35 Cooper Square, which will allow them to complete a city-mandated fence repair. Once that work is completed, the developers are expected to continue moving to demolish the historic site, which was most recently used as an Asian Pub.

And according to The Weather Channel, high winds and rain should spoil today’s predicted high of 53. Expect a sunnier, colder Saturday, as highs will only reach about 40.

Tim Schreier

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

Consumer

Noodles, nails, hair, massage, hookahs, bank, vintage,
tattoos, tacos, bar, bank, espresso, antiquities, massage,
hair, nails, noodles

Sour Ginsberg

I saw the best minds of my generation staring into
iPhones flipping thru texts & tweets & pics ordering
ramen on Ave. A

Winter Doggerel

The hedgehog has seen its shadow. Snow was welcome,
but now must go. Birds must sing and leaves come out.
That’s what I’m talking about!

East Village Blues

He would like to have a big, noble, devoted dog, who
would wait for him patiently outside cafes and stores,
but his apartment is too small

Spring Awaits Them

Winter: The girls with the tattooed limbs have
undergone a double hibernation: not just of
flesh, but of ink

Astor Place

Mr. Li is a Personal Banker but it is against corporate
policy to keep personal items on his desk. His cubicle
must be kept impersonal.

…Soon he will be transferred to another branch of the
same bank, far uptown, and we will never see him again.
Goodbye, Mr. Li!

Angels In the Airshaft

OMG OMG OMG OMG that is so funny… ha ha ha ha
ha ha ha OMG OMG OMG OM… did he really? that is
so… ha ha ha ha ha ha funny

Together Through Life

On the other side of the bathroom mirror he hears his
neighbor of 20 yrs gargle & spit. Thru the bedroom wall
he hears him groan and snore

Roku

Jobless, he sleeps by day and streams French movies on
Netflix all night. If he were a cat, which he should be,
everything would be A-OK

Bourgeois

Panting, the super arrives with (yet again) the wrong
part, the incorrect screw. To save face, we discuss his
recent trip to Paris & tip $5

Geography

Broadway marks the outer limit of the East Village. One
block over, on University Place, the real money begins

Vivienne Gucwa A selection of bottles at Mars Bar.

Earlier this week, Community Board 3 voted to amend the policies for transferring liquor licenses when local businesses are bought and sold.

Save the Lower East Side said that the move “may be the most significant vote” that the board has ever taken.

The blog theorized that the move might reverse a trend that has seen rents rise and created a dense cluster of bars in the neighborhood.

“If prospective bar owners know that they must face the community to get license approval, they will be less likely to buy that business, especially here in areas of bar density, where there will be the most community objection. If bars are reluctant, landlords can’t count on high-rent bars for their commercial spaces, and will have to settle for lower-rent businesses. That will lower commercial rents and bring commercial diversity.”

We’d like to hear your thoughts about the board’s decision. Is it a good thing that prospective bar owners may now have to think twice about coming to the East Village? Or are those businesses being unfairly targeted? Let us know. Put your response in the comments section below.

Rachel Citron

Good morning, East Village.

For many bars in our neighborhood, this week marks the start of a new era.

As we reported Wednesday, Community Board 3 voted to overhaul the liquor licensing process in the East Village and Lower East Side. Before the vote, when a bar underwent a change in management, new owners could essentially buy the liquor license from the former owner. This morning, commenters in the blogosphere have been weighing in with their reactions to the vote. Save the Lower East Side characterized the move as a “momentous vote” and wondered if it will eventually lower rents and bring more commercial diversity to the neighborhood. The Lo-Down and DNAinfo also have posts on the decision.

EV Grieve reports the famed East Village bar, Coyote Ugly, reopened last night after being shut down for over a week following a surprise Feb. 15 visit by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. After scoring a 90 (an ideal score would be 13 points or fewer), the bar was ordered to remain closed following a second inspection on Friday. Coyote Ugly was finally given the green light upon third inspection on Wednesday after spending the weekend completing tasks like re-painting the walls and installing a new floor in the basement.

In today’s forecast, Accuweather predicts a high of 46. It is expected to rain through the night into tomorrow, though temperatures will climb into the 50s.

Colin Moynihan

Various forms of street art and graffiti, of course, are a familiar part of the East Village landscape, enjoyed by some, deplored by others and impossible to eradicate. Magic marker tags, murals, stickers and spray-painted shapes can be seen adorning walls, doors and sometimes even lampposts and fences in the neighborhood.

But some of the improvised canvases used by graffiti writers and painters are mobile. While roaming the streets of the neighborhood over the past few days The Local has kept an eye out for tagged vehicles. They have not been particularly difficult to find. It does turn out, though, that vans appear to be a more popular graffiti and mural target than any other type of vehicle.
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Courtesy of Gene Kaufman Architect The Salvation Army building at the corner of Bowery and East Third Street. Right: A rendering of what the corner will look like when Gene Kaufman’s Bowery boutique hotel is completed.

Much has been said about the design for the new boutique hotel and restaurant that is expected to take the place of the vacant Salvation Army building on the corner of the Bowery and East Third Street.

Several local blogosphere commentators have made it clear that this addition is not welcome in their neighborhood. Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, jokingly referred to the 11-story, 72-room hotel as the “red tumor building” in reference to a series of asymmetric balconies that will protrude from the building and glow red at night.

“It’s totally inappropriate and I think it will be another unfortunate, unwanted intrusion into the Bowery,” said Mr. Berman. “The scale is wrong, the design is wrong. It almost seems designed to offend.”

Gene Kaufman, the architect hired by the Paris-based Louzon Group to design the hotel and restaurant, is aware of the East Village’s reaction to the renderings published by The New York Observer last month, but is hoping it might not be permanent.

“The neighborhood sentiment in the beginning is the start of a process,” said Mr. Kaufman, who has designed other controversial hotels in New York. “It’s not necessarily reflective of what’s going to happen in the long term.”
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Vivienne Gucwa

Good morning, East Village.

With each passing day, more details surface about Grace Farrell’s life, and death, near Tompkins Square Park. It’s reported that last Thursday, when a friend, Danielle, overdosed in Tompkins Square Park, Ms. Farrell assisted in CPR while waiting for an ambulance to arrive.  If Ms. Farrell’s own death turns out to be from the cold, she would officially be the first to freeze to death in city streets this winter.

Last night’s protest at 35 Cooper Square, in which dozens of demonstrators congregated to protest its planned demolition, might have been too little, too late. EV Grieve reports that a Feb. 13 stop work order has been resolved, and that work leading to the building’s demolition could resume today.

Looking to catch Carmelo Anthony’s debut?  Your best bet may be an East Village bar. Following the N.B.A. superstar’s move to the New York Knicks in a blockbuster trade on Monday night, The Daily News reports that ticket prices have tripled in anticipation of tonight’s Madison Square Garden clash against the Milwaukee Bucks. Tipoff is at 7:30 p.m.

And today’s weather? Pretty manageable, all things considered. The Weather Channel predicts a sunny high of 43.  Temperatures Thursday are also supposed to reach the mid-40s, but rain is possible.

Ian Duncan Members of Community Board 3 debated changes to the liquor licensing process Tuesday night during a meeting at P.S. 20.

Ending months of debate, Community Board 3 Tuesday night approved a sweeping overhaul of the way it makes recommendations to the State Liquor Authority for alcohol license applications.

As the motion passed, by a vote of 37 to 1, attendees made hasty moves for the exit. When board members were asked toward the end of the three hour meeting at P.S. 20 whether they wanted further time to debate, there were groans and calls of “No!”

The vote ended five months of consultation and debate, some of it acrimonious, about the new policies, which are aimed at providing applicants with clarity and guidelines to follow if they are awarded a license.

Much of the debate focused around so-called “transfers” or the ability to pass liquor licenses on to new owners following the sale of business. Bar and restaurant owners had argued this increases the value of the business and any moves to change the policy would hurt them financially.

Under the policy adopted Tuesday night, the board’s State Liquor Authority committee will review transfers of licenses as though they are new applications. In the past they had been automatically approved. The committee does not have the final say over licensing decisions but passes on recommendations to the State Liquor Authority.
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Greg Howard About three dozen demonstrators turned out to protest the planned demolition of historic 35 Cooper Square. Below: The journalist Pete Hamill (left) speaks with David Mulkins of the Bowery Alliance of Neighbors.

Braving freezing temperatures and acknowledging long odds, about three dozen demonstrators took part in a protest tonight calling for a halt to the planned demolition of 35 Cooper Square.

The demonstration, described as a vigil by organizers, represented what preservationists characterized as their last-ditch effort to stop the destruction of the 185-year-old Federal-style structure, which is the oldest building in Cooper Square.

After a months-long fight between preservationists and developers of the site, the fate of 35 Cooper Square is all but certain. Nevertheless, protesters tonight brandished picket signs and defiantly chanted “Keep alive 35!” while organizers gave speeches about the historical significance of the site.

“The city wants to develop, that’s what this is all about,” Rob Hollander, a co-founder of the East Village History Project told the crowd. “It’s our community. It really belongs to us.”

The sense of community ownership, and of loss, pervaded the atmosphere on the blustery night. David McReynolds, 81, said that he has lived in the East Village for 50 years and has many fond memories of 35 Cooper Square.

“I knew Diane di Prima decades ago,” said Mr. McReynolds, referring to the poet priestess who lived in the house in the 1960’s. “She used to stuff envelopes for me at Liberation Magazine.”

The journalist Pete Hamill, who’s 75 and a former resident of the East Village, was one of the most recognizable faces at tonight’s protest.

“It’s an example of failure,” Mr. Hamill, who’s also a member of the faculty at NYU Journalism, said of the impending demolition of the building. “There are people not yet born who won’t get to see what New York was. This is our inheritance. We have to keep this place alive.”

Many demonstrators said that they recognize the futility of trying to stop new construction altogether. “We’re not saying we’re against development,” said Richard Moses, of the Lower East Side Preservation Initiative. “We’re for sensitive development. This place has cultural and historic significance.”

And in the blistering winter cold, under the metal scaffolding, in front of the boarded up, doomed little brick house on 35 Cooper Square, East Village residents continue to protest for the preservation of what they call “The Old New York.”

“It’s the eleventh hour,” Mr. Moses said. “But we’ve got to fight.”

Kathryn Kattalia

During the 20 years that she has lived on East Fourth Street, Frances Bush has seen dozens of accidents involving pedestrians rushing across the Bowery — a wide avenue stretching roughly a mile from Chatham Square in Chinatown to Cooper Square in the East Village.

“You have cars coming off of Houston onto Bowery and they’re going quite rapidly,” said Ms. Bush, 50. “With the construction and the bike lanes, people get confused. A lot of safety has to do with that.”

With traffic running north and south, the Bowery is one of the main arteries of the East Village. It is also one of the deadliest.

Of the 109 pedestrians hit and killed on Manhattan’s streets between 2007 and 2009, seven fatalities took place on the Bowery, making it the fourth most dangerous road for pedestrians in the borough, according to a newly released report by the Tri-State Transportation Campaign.

For a longtime Bowery observer like Ms. Bush, that comes as no surprise.

“People don’t abide by the law,” she said. “They don’t follow the lights, they don’t follow directions. It gets real crowded here and people get distracted.”
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Ian Duncan

On a recent afternoon, Sumana Ramakrishnan, a 21-year-old student with her eye on a pink frosted cupcake, stepped up to a cash register inside Butter Lane and reached into her pocket. But instead of pulling out her wallet she tapped on her smart phone and showed it to the knowing cashier. There would be no charge, it turned out, for Ms. Ramakrishnan’s cupcake. Hers was one of more than 800 that had been given away in February by means of a promotional website.

The site, Tenka, is among the newest of a host of such sites seeking traction in the East Village. It was started in October by Nhon Ma, a former Google operations manager, who said he targeted the East Village because of its density of small businesses and population of Web savvy young people.

“The East Village is fiercely competitive relative to other areas,” said Mr. Ma. “Tenka deals really resonate with merchants because they are able to see the power of social recommendation.”

Tenka is a cell phone-based online service that lets customers redeem coupons for free items at participating stores. Tenka charges merchants to create a deal. The merchant chooses how many coupons they want to offer, and Tenka promotes it on its site and across its users’ Facebook pages.

Many of the small business owners who turn to deal sites, and other forms of social media, do so because they don’t want to spend money on other forms of advertising.

“From the beginning our strategy was, what kind of marketing can we get for free?” said Maria Baugh, co-owner of Butter Lane. “Having no marketing budget, a lot of social media opportunities were great for us.” Read more…

Rachel Citron

Good morning, East Village.

We start the day with news on Grace Farrell, the homeless woman who was found dead on Sunday morning near Tompkins Square Park.  The Daily News reports Ms. Farrell, 35, was an aspiring artist who emigrated from Ireland at 17 to attend art school. Police are now trying to track down her family. Ms. Farrell was said to tell friends that her mother lived in the Bronx.  It is also reported that she was once married, and is survived by an estranged son who is about 9 years old.

Preservationists from various New York City organizations are expected to gather at 35 Cooper Square tonight from 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. in a last-ditch effort to prevent the demolition of the 185-year-old building, Nearsay reports.  The two-and-a-half story brick house is the oldest building in Cooper Square but was not granted landmark status by the Landmarks Preservation Commission.  On Jan. 28, a similar rally in front of 35 Cooper Square garnered more than 1,000 signatures asking for the landmarks commission to protect the building, but demolition plans are still underway.

Meanwhile, the weather is looking up. Sort of. According to Accuweather, today will be cold, with highs around 30, but milder the rest of the week, with temperatures creeping toward the mid-40s.

J.B. Nicholas For many of the neighborhood’s homeless, the death of a woman who was sleeping outside St. Brigid’s Church on Sunday underscored the perilousness of life on the streets.

Greg Howard Top: A man known as El Presidente who frequents Tompkins Square Park. Below: The makeshift alcove where a woman’s body was found Sunday.

It’s been a day since Grace, the homeless woman who was a regular around Tompkins Square Park, was found dead under a scaffolding outside of St. Brigid’s Church. The layers of cardboard that she slept and died on are still on the ground, wet and wrinkled from the morning’s snow. Several rubber gloves, once worn by paramedics are strewn about. A single candle burns, a memorial to Grace’s lonely demise.

Tony, the homeless man who found Grace’s body, was unavailable for comment, but was said to still look shaken up this morning at The Bowery Mission from the loss of his friend, who he said had “a beautiful heart.”

Across the street in Tompkins Square Park, however, life is a bit more cheerful as dozens of homeless and needy New Yorkers line up for helpings of soup, bread, fruit, and vegetables that volunteers from The Bowery Mission are passing out. Men and women chat amicably, greeting familiar faces as they wait in the cold for the meal.

One of those in line, who identified himself only as “El Presidente,” 75, says he used to sleep at The Mission’s headquarters on the Bowery every night. Now, he says, he mostly spends the nights around Tompkins Square Park with a small band of younger men.

“They’re like my family,” El Presidente says. When asked about Grace, he scratches his head before conceding, “I don’t know her.” Disappointed, he asks for more physical detail, knowing that in the small Tompkins Square Park community, the likelihood of the two crossing paths was very high.

The sense of community extends to the volunteers of The Bowery Mission, as well. Marcus Nicholls, 25, has volunteered for just five months, but is familiar with a lot of the locals, greeting some by name.

“A lot of these people feel like people don’t care about them,” Mr. Nicholls says. “But we support them, we try to help them out.”

Matt Krivich, 37, director of operations at The Bowery Mission, is only too familiar with the constant uphill battle that the city’s neediest face. An ex-addict and homeless at one point himself, Mr. Krivich said he was saddened by Grace’s death.

He is not the only one to feel regret over her departure. Late on Monday afternoon people from the neighborhood stop at St. Brigid’s to gaze at the spot where Grace slept and died. The single candle has been joined by a second one and by handwritten messages.

“May the gods and goddesses bless you,” one reads. “You won’t be forgotten; your soul is at rest.”

jdx

Good morning, East Village.

We begin the week with word of a grim discovery.  A woman was found dead outside St. Brigid’s Church Sunday morning; the authorities are not treating her death as crime. EV Grieve has details about a spontaneous memorial that’s developed at the scene.

Two police officers are set to go on trial next week after being accused of raping an East Village woman, according to The Post.  Kenneth Moreno, 43, and Franklin Mata, 28, patrolmen of the Ninth Precinct, both face up to 25 years in jail for rape, burglary and official misconduct. The Village Voice notes that both officers are still on the city’s payroll.

Meanwhile, there are apparently more shake-ups on the local restaurant scene. Grieve reports that Tonda, the Fourth Street pizzeria originally famous for its $30,000 brick oven, seemed to be open for the first time in two weekends. Upon closer inspection, however, its gates were down, and the restaurant appeared to be closed. And though Olympic Deli on First Avenue has shut down, it’s being replaced by Hamptons Market Place, an upscale grocery and deli that already boasts two locations on the West Side.

And it turns out the weekend was a false alarm, East Village. After a beautifully warm day on Friday and a feel-good hangover this weekend, Mother Nature is reminding us that it’s still winter. According to The Weather Channel, we should expect between three and five inches of snow today, highs in the mid-30s, and more snow tomorrow.

Vivienne Gucwa on photographing the art and architectural details that exist overhead in the East Village.

“The East Village is home to some brilliant historic and contemporary architecture that often gets overlooked since it is above the street level. Some of this architectural detail can be viewed simply by looking up.”
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Richard G. Jones Ballaro, 77 Second Avenue.

When many of us hear “Palermo,” we think “Mafia,” or possibly “the guy who cuts my hair.” To Giusto Priola, Palermo, on Sicily’s northern coast, conjures up almondola, a chewy cookie made of boiled almonds, sugar and egg white, or the soft, pulpy pizza dough known as sfingione. Giusto was born in Misilmera, a little town 15 minutes outside of Palermo, and is now the master of a mini-empire of Second Ave Italian restaurants — Cacio e Pepe at 182 (between 11th and 12th); Cacio e Vino at 80 (between Fourth and Fifth); and Ballaro, across the street at 77.

Giusto is a warm-blooded fellow with close-cropped black hair on a rather round head. He left Italy 14 years ago to work for a friend in the commissary of the Pier 59 studio, where he made pastry for photographers and models. In 2004, he opened Cacio e Pepe, a Roman-style restaurant where the signature dish, a simple and traditional Roman pasta, is served in a hollow carved into a giant block of pecorino. He began to slip a few Sicilian specialties into the menu, like tuna with agua dolce. Giusto says that his customers asked him where he was from. When he told them, they said he had to open up a new place. “They invited me to open a Sicilian restaurant,” says Giusto with a sparkle in his eye. “This was my dream.” Thus was born Cacio e Vino, which serves classic Sicilian dishes like arancina —rice balls mixed with ground beef, peas, ham and bechamel — as well as pizza and schiacciate, a kind of stuffed pizza.
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From fox to Mongolian lamb to tiger print, fur fashions can be seen all over the East Village this winter. PETA lovers need not fear because it doesn’t even have to be real to be warm, stylish and a great transitional piece as we head into spring.

NYU Journalism’s Claire Glass and Rachel Ohm report.