Gloria Chung Curry-Ya, 214 East 10th Street.

I don’t like Japanese food. What’s worse, I suspect that I like not liking Japanese food.

Still, here I am in a neighborhood rife with Japanese restaurants, grocery stores, sake bars and, at least in the evenings, young people. In jaunts along East 10th Street between Second and First Avenue, I had often noticed a string of Japanese restaurants along the south side. I had a dim recollection that one of them included in its name a word with which I had positive food associations. When I returned to the block last week, there it was — Curry-Ya (214 East 10th Street). I adore Indian food. Maybe this would be Indo-Japanese.

Curry-Ya is a brightly lit, scrupulously neat place with a counter and a dozen or so wooden stools. I asked the young woman behind the counter if the curry was like Indian curry. She wasn’t sure. “Indian curry is like soup, yes?” Sort of, I said. She suggested we order the Berkshire Pork Cutlet Curry, which was everybody’s favorite. We did. A breaded pork chop, along with a beautifully mounded hillock of rice, came with a gravy boat. This was the curry. I would have called it gravy, though I recognize that I might not have walked into a restaurant called Gravy-Ya.
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It’s the final day to buy Four Loko.

After today, it will be illegal for any retailer to sell the alcoholic energy drink in New York, and other states are following suit.

In the final week of Four Loko sales, fans of the beverage have been emptying their wallets to stock up and clearing East Village bodegas of their supplies in the process. Beer distributors and the Chicago-based Four Loko manufacturer, Phusion Projects, were asked to stop restocking the product as of Nov. 19. Retailers who fail to unload the product by today will have to pay a fine.

Why all the fuss? One 24-ounce can of Four Loko contains approximately the same amount of alcohol as five beers, plus the caffeine content of three cups of coffee. In the East Village, most cans, which boast 12 percent alcohol by volume, were selling for $3 or $4.

NYU Journalism’s Claire Glass reports.

Vivienne Gucwa

Good morning, East Village.

With many in the neighborhood still reeling from the expected temporary closure of Mars Bar, EV Grieve notes the loss of a natural neighborhood landmark, a willow tree on Eighth Street near Avenue C.

On the subject of Mars Bar, DNAinfo has a post with more details about how the bar could close as early as the spring and might remain shut for as long as three years. That timeline, DNA notes, “could make it difficult for the diminutive dive to see new life.”

Instead of pondering the future of Mars Bar, Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York re-visits the past through a series of vivid photographs documenting early 20th century life at the intersection of Second Avenue and First Street where the bar stands now. There are some other interesting takes on Mars Bar at The Gog Log and Blackbook.

In other neighborhood news, The Times reports on Thursday’s City Council meeting where one of our community’s most contentious issues – bike lanes – took centerstage. A highlight: Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz borrowing a page from “The Sound of Music” to sing his self-penned “These are a few of my favorite lanes.”

Marlis Momber, a German-born photographer, has documented the dramatic evolution of Loisaida, her home, for decades.

South of 14th Street and north of Houston, east of Avenue A to the East River, Loisaida is all but unknown to some late-coming East Villagers. Though time and gentrification have transformed the neighborhood, Loisaida’s streets still reflect its distinct culture and history.

Many of the murals that are a signature of Ms. Momber’s photographs have faded, but her body of work helps explain the Loisaida we see today.

During a walk through Loisaida, Ms. Momber describes a community that is more than a sign tacked onto Avenue C; Loisaida — a community, a culture, a past not forgotten.

NYU Journalism’s Molly O’Toole reports.

The Local East Village invites you to a Saturday morning group event featuring the use of SeeClickFix to log neighborhood concerns.

On Tuesday, we announced a new collaboration between The Local East Village and SeeClickFix, an organization that offers a variety of platforms to report local non-emergency concerns, such as potholes and broken street lights.

SeeClickFix relies on citizen reporting, and to kick things off, we plan to hold a walk through the East Village to log concerns.

We will meet Saturday morning at 9:30 outside 20 Cooper Square and spend an hour walking the East Village area to report issues.

If you are interested in joining this event, please e-mail me on seeclickfixlev@gmail.com. If you have a smartphone, please download a free SeeClickFix app and bring it with you to log concerns.

We look forward to seeing you there, and please remember that you can log issues at any time on the map page on this site.

You can also post to SeeClickFix while on the go using mobile devices and you can follow posts within the East Village area via @SeeClickFixLEV on Twitter.

Michelle Rick

Good morning, East Village.

On Wednesday, we wrote about how many in the neighborhood were lamenting how the iconic Mars Bar might close for two years because of a plan to renovate its space and other properties along Second Avenue.

The housing committee of Community Board 3 Wednesday night pushed the process one step further by endorsing the development plan. Bowery Boogie has more details.

Earlier this week came news that a New Jersey woman has filed a lawsuit after she said she was attacked by the pet cat at McSorley’s Old Ale House. EV Grieve has landed an interview with the cat in question, Minnie, who now has her own Facebook page and a growing legion of friends.

Stephanie Butnick The housing committee of Community Board 3 approved a plan to renovate a string of properties at 9 and 11-17 Second Avenue. The next step is a vote by the full community board Dec. 21.

The housing committee of Community Board 3 tonight endorsed a proposal to renovate a string of properties along a stretch of Second Avenue and turn them into a new mixed-income development.

The move also brings the temporary closure of the iconic Mars Bar, which is located on one of the properties, a bit closer to becoming a reality. The bar, a fabled East Village haunt, would likely remain closed for the two years it will take to renovate the property.

Representatives from the project’s developer, BFC Partners, and the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board explained the project, which would rebuild properties at 9 and 11-17 Second Avenue – currently in various states of disrepair and in some cases, code violation – into a single 12-story building offering both permanently affordable housing and market-rate units.

A tenant from 11-17, Gretchen Green, spoke in support of the project, saying “It’s going to give me an apartment where I can close the windows, and a safe place for my daughter and grandson to visit.”

The existing tenants of both buildings will be offered space in the new building – with the option to buy the new apartments for $1. A low fee to be sure, but – under the terms of the renovation agreement – the apartments will never be allowed to be offered at market rate (the re-sale price for the units is about $180,000).

Not all tenants are as optimistic as Ms. Green. John Vaccaro, a resident 11-17 Second Avenue for more than three decades who did not attend the meeting, told The Local afterward, “I don’t support them taking down what should be a landmarked building.” And, at 81, he is not keen to be relocated for the roughly two years it would take for the project to be completed.

Nevertheless, the committee voted to recommend the project, with one committee member abstaining – Val Orselli of the Cooper Square Mutual Housing Association declined to vote, citing a past professional relationship with the developers.

And what of the Mars Bar? It’ll be resurrected in the renovated space, owner Hank Penza says: “bigger and better, but with the same attitude.”

The next step is a Dec. 21 meeting, where the full Community Board will vote on the project.

The Space At Tompkins is a recently formed organization designed to work with transient and homeless individuals who hang out in Tompkins Square Park.

The goal is to link people to services they request — food, clothing, a phone call home, clean syringes, access to shelters, help finding a job and information about drug rehabilitation programs. Many of the group’s members are too old to receive help at youth-based organizations but don’t feel comfortable at agencies tailored to adults, according to Andrea Stella, the executive director of The Space At Tompkins. Ms. Stella said her organization’s programs are not age-based.

NYU Journalism’s Liz Wagner reports.

Maya Millett A group of artists gather at East Fourth Street’s WOW Cafe Theater and study the “Haves” and “Needs” wall they created at a networking event hosted by bartering website OurGoods.org. Bartering has enjoyed a resurgence in the neighborhood in the wake of the recession.

The concept of bartering often conjures an aura of myth: Jack’s storied magic beans, as it turned out after all, was a pretty fortuitous trade for the cow he handed over to the butcher in exchange.

In the wake of the recession, bartering has captured a renewed interest among the cash-strapped or habitually thrifty. In its most recent incarnation, bartering thrives on the Internet. Craigslist, that great Wild West of an online forum, is a barterer’s goldmine. And niche websites like Swap Tree, Neighborgoods, ThingHeap, and countless others are tailored to specific trade interests like tools, books, electronics, furniture and other miscellany.

While the web has ushered bartering into a new era of resource exchange, in artistic communities like the East Village, swapping creative work or services has long been an inherent part of the culture.

“Probably everyone in the low-budget artist class in the East Village has bartered,” says Ayun Halliday, an author and Bust magazine columnist who in 1996 created the cult-coveted “East Village Inky” zine, which chronicles her adventures in motherhood.

Though Ms. Halliday and her family moved to Boerum Hill in 2000, she’s still entrenched in the East Village’s creative scene. Zine publishers, she says, are some of bartering’s most famous traders. Zine making “is definitely a labor of love — and barterers are often purveyors of that.”
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Ruth Spencer Leonie Graham looks through her collection of photos of the Goldmeier family. Mrs. Graham has been out of work since July when she was let go as the family’s housekeeper.

It is an unusual tradition at the Goldmeier household: during celebrations of the Jewish New Year during Rosh Hashanah the family serves jerk chicken.

“We’ve all grown to love Caribbean food, because of Leonie,” says Debbie Goldmeier, referring to Leonie Graham, a Lower East Side resident who worked as the Goldmeier family’s live-in nanny for 15 years.

In July, Mrs. Goldmeier sat Mrs. Graham down at the kitchen table and delivered some tough news – the Goldmeiers would no longer be keeping her. Mrs. Graham would need to find another job.

“I was sad, you know, but I understood,” Mrs. Graham recalled in a recent interview. “I miss them so much.”

As the nation suffers through its worst economic recession in decades, an increasing number of New Yorkers are finding themselves unemployed. Last week, the Labor Department reported that the national unemployment rate increased to 9.8 percent. New York state’s unemployment rate is 8.3 percent. Experts note that these trends hardly occur in a vacuum. Unemployment reverberates through populations like falling dominos. One layoff leads to another, with negative impacts felt by individuals and families of various economic levels – like Mrs. Graham and the Goldmeiers.
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Phillip Kalantzis Cope

Good morning, East Village.

Much of the discussion in the blogosphere centers around the possibility that the iconic Mars Bar would temporarily close if developers are able to move forward with a plan to renovate a row of properties along Second Avenue.

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,” read the headline on EV Grieve’s post. Grieve also takes a retrospective look at the bar’s place in neighborhood lore, and offers an amusing list of similar bars to visit if the closure occurs. There’s more at Curbed and Bowery Boogie.

And in other neighborhood news, congratulations are in order for EV Grieve, which Tuesday night won Best Neighborhood Blog at the Village Voice Web Awards. We at The Local tip our hats to Grieve and to Bowery Boogie, another locally produced blog that was also a finalist for the award. Bravo to both blogs.

You know what they say – it’s all about location, location, location. Why worry about where to go on a first date, when you should be worrying about what to wear? Here’s a list of the best first date bars in the East Village that won’t disappoint, just in case the person you’re meeting there does.

Allison Hertzberg Big Bar, 73 East Seventh Street.

Big Bar
73 East Seventh Street, 212-777-6969
This bar is tiny, and reminds me of an 80’s disco – only one that’s been shrunk down to the size of an East Village studio apartment. It never gets too busy at Big Bar, and most nights you can occupy one of their four booths for hours.
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An East Village man has been named by the authorities as a supplier to five Columbia University students who were arrested earlier today and charged with running a drug ring. The police said that Miron Sarzynski, and his girlfriend, Megan Asper, were arrested Oct. 27 in Mr. Sarzynski’s apartment on East Sixth Street. In addition to drug charges for the pair, Mr. Sarzynski also faces kidnapping charges after the authorities said that he tried to hire an undercover officer to abduct a rival drug dealer.—Meredith Hoffman

The Local East Village announces a new collaboration with SeeClickFix.

Today we have launched a new feature on The Local East Village – a collaboration with SeeClickFix, an organization that offers a variety of platforms to report local non-emergency concerns, such as potholes,
graffiti and broken street lamps.

Using SeeClickFix, we hope to raise awareness about different issues in the East Village. This collated information is directly available and can be viewed from the East Village watch area on this blog.

You can also use the page to post your concerns about the neighborhood.

Anyone, including local government officials, neighborhood groups and private individuals, can sign up to receive notifications about posted concerns.

As journalists, we also hope to use the information to help us report more effectively on community concerns and draw attention to them.

We would like to invite you to take a look at SeeClickFix on The Local East Village and encourage you to report neighborhood issues.

You can do this from the main map page on The Local East Village. The information you enter there will appear both as a report on the map and on the main SeeClickFix site.

If you have any problems posting or tracking issues, please visit the SeeClickFix help section.

You can also post to SeeClickFix while on the go using mobile devices and you can follow posts within the East Village area via @SeeClickFixLEV on Twitter.

We look forward to hearing what you think most needs fixing in the East Village.

Stephanie Butnick The buildings at 9, and 11-17 Second Avenue, which will be renovated as part a new development featuring low-income apartments that would be available for as little as $1.

Developers are expected to seek Community Board approval Wednesday for a plan to renovate a row of properties along Second Avenue, and sell some of the apartments to low-income families for as little as $1.

The mostly low-income families who currently live in the two buildings at 9 and 11-17 Second Avenue are guaranteed units in the proposed development, which would combine the two structures into one larger building.

The project, run by development firm BFC Partners, is operating under the Department of City Planning’s 2009 amendment to the inclusionary housing program, which creates permanently affordable housing, now with the option to buy. According to Juan Barahona of the development firm, tenants will be able to buy the new apartments for between $1 and $10.

The project will also take advantage of new zoning laws that allow developers to build more square footage on a lot, provided they allocate 20 percent of the building’s total area to affordable housing.

In this case, the 12-story, 4,000 sq. ft. building will house approximately 12 low-income units (available to those making 80 percent or less of the area’s median income ̶ approximately $63,000), dispersed throughout the complex, and about 48 market rate units. The development’s market-rate units, which make up the majority of the building, will offset costs.
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Shawn Hoke

Good morning, East Village.

We begin this morning with a look at a detailed report in The Times on the Ross Global Academy Charter School on East 12th Street, which received one of the worst grades in a recent report card on schools and is among three city schools slated for closure. DNAinfo and The Wall Street Journal have details, too.

In other neighborhood news, EV Grieve re-visits a Times article on Seventh Street and ponders a hypothetical, the-end-is-nigh scenario: What if a Shake Shack opened in Tompkins Square Park?

EV Transitions offers up a history lesson on the neighborhood’s place as a focal point for shipbuilding in the 19th century, including how the industry shaped such community institutions as St. Brigid’s, which was named for the patron saint of boatmen.

And the Village Voice has a humorous account of a brief evacuation at NYU Journalism Monday that was caused by heavy smoke after a mechanical failure. The evacuation occurred in the middle of a panel on influential media figures. The Voice’s headline: “This Discussion Panel Is On Fire.”

Timothy Krause on taking portraits of subway riders.

“I’ve been shooting subway pictures with a camera app for my smartphone. I love the intimacy that this affords, as smartphones are near-ubiquitous these days, and few seem to notice one more person playing with one on the subway.”
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Anthony Rhoades Anthony Donovan.

For a man who says he isn’t religious, Anthony Donovan sure does spend a lot of time in churches. “I love entering these creative, beautiful spaces,” said Mr. Donovan. “I love the art.”

Mr. Donovan is the facilitator of Local Faith Communities, an ecumenical consortium of a dozen East Village religious leaders – from Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Catholic, Jewish, Russian Orthodox traditions among others – that meets periodically to discuss issues facing their congregations and how they can work together to solve them.

On Tuesday evening, the group will host Spiritual Sounds, a free concert featuring music from different religious traditions, at 7 p.m. at the Catholic Church of the Most Holy Redeemer on East Third Street.

Mr. Donovan, who is 58 and has lived in the East Village since 1990, has no formal religious training yet believes strongly in the importance of people finding their common bonds through divergent faiths. His hair is more salt than pepper, and he speaks and listens with the measured calmness of a therapist. He recently sat down with The Local to talk about Local Faith Communities and how living in the East Village has informed his work.

Why did you start Local Faith Communities?

This all started because I’m tired of what goes on in the name of religion — the hate crimes that are happening in the world because of religion, the wars in the name of religion. Religion seems to be a very easy way to mobilize people for or against something.
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At 155 Avenue C, a seemingly ordinary five-floor walkup bears an unusual handmade sign: “This Land Is Ours. See Co-Op Squat. Not For Sale.”

This is See Squat, one of 11 remaining squatters’ buildings in the East Village. Now technically a co-op, the building has retained its character as, in the words of one resident, “the countercultural squat.”

Many of the residents at See Squat view one another as a family that has come together from varied pasts – including drug addiction and homelessness – to build and maintain a community on Avenue C with their own hands.

NYU Journalism’s Robyn Baitcher reports.