Last week, we noted that Liberated China, the surf-and-streetwear label, would open a pop-up store between Second Avenue and Cooper Square. Well, here’s a look inside Panda Diplomacy, now doing business at 206 East Sixth Street.

Customers who mention an Instagram photo or Facebook post by Panda Diplomacy or Liberated China can get 20 percent off their purchase.

Sanna Chu Construction was recently completed near
the intersection.

A young woman was in serious condition after being hit by a car on Cooper Square Sunday, the fire department said.

The incident happened near East Seventh Street shortly before 5 p.m. The victim, thought to be in her 20s, was taken to New York Presbyterian Hospital with a head injury.

According to a reader who used our Virtual Assignment Desk to tip us off to the incident, the woman was struck by a cab.
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Back when the now-open Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space took us on a tour of former squats, we met Siobhan Meow, a Bullet Space resident who at one point kept 100 cats at home.

Since the mid-nineties, the artist has rescued felines and used them as muses for paintings, ceramics, and photography. She even collaborated with one of them, Jupiter, by combining his organic material — fur, urine, and yes, poop — with her paints. After his passing this October, she is dedicating her current collection to him.

Ms. Meow’s paintings, which start at about $1,500, will be showing at “Masterpieces: A Fact-Filled Coloring Book” this Friday at ABC No Rio. In our video, she talks about her beloved Jupiter and his talent for “thinking out of the litter box.”

Dana Varinsky

Good morning, East Village.

More on the settlement between Bikram and Yoga to the People: the St. Marks studio “is working on a new sequence that will also be offered in a super-heated room and incorporate some poses from the sequence popularized by Bikram’s founder, Bikram Choudhury, but will also include other poses.” [City Room]

“A body was found on the tracks at the First Avenue subway station early Monday, officials said.” The man or cause of death has not been identified. [DNA Info]

A restaurant supply store that has been on the Bowery for 40 years has left for Brooklyn because the Bowery “was changing into high-end apartments, restaurants, bars and galleries,” according to a broker on the transaction. [Commercial Observer]
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Sasha von Oldershausen

A new building is coming to the site of a long-empty lot on Avenue C, according to Department of Buildings records.

A building permit filed Dec. 6 indicates that 13 Willow Avenue Realty Co. LLC will erect a six-story, 14-unit residential building at 699 East Sixth Street, where a 12-foot-by-10-foot hole, at one point infested by rats, has lingered conspicuously since 2007.

Morton Kriger, a member of 13 Willow Avenue Realty, has been trying to develop the lot since as early as 2003. He had plans to build a four-story building there in 2007, but they never came to fruition.

Israel Rosenbaum, the partner listed on the more recent application, was unavailable for comment about this latest attempt to bring housing to the 2,362-square-foot corner parcel.

Sasha von Oldershausen A student occupier embraces his friend after emerging from eighth floor.

After a week of sleeping on yoga mats, eating food cooked on hot plates and accepting pizza deliveries via floating balloons, the Cooper Union occupiers have left the eighth floor of the Foundation Building and are going global with their initiatives.

“The problems at Cooper Union strike a nerve with millions of others struggling with student debt, administrative bloat, and expansionist agendas,” said student organizer and occupier Kristi Cavataro during a press conference held outside the school’s Foundation Building.

The eleven occupiers who barricaded themselves into the Peter Cooper Suite saw daylight again as they congregated with community members, supporters and faculty to discuss their unmet demands and the bigger picture.
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Joann Pan Ame Ame

Shops on East Ninth Street are pulling an all-nighter and hoping to make back some of the thousands of dollars in business they lost in the weeks after Hurricane Sandy.

On Wednesday, at least 11 boutiques that usually close their doors around 6 p.m. or 7 p.m. will encourage the after-work crowd to “Shop Until Midnight.”

Hurricane Sandy’s negative effect on business has been very well documented. Devorado NYC — a vintage store selling Emilio Pucci, Yves Saint Laurent and classic Dior — saw an extreme dip in sales after the storm.

Carmen Ruiz-Davila, who opened the store just five months ago, panicked when she noticed the slump. “I didn’t sell anything for three weeks, not a single thing,” she said. “After we regained power, people were not in the mood to shop; they were helping people in need.”

On Wednesday Devorado and other participating shops will offer special 30-to-40 percent sales on select items.
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Suzanne Rozdeba A burger from Aaron’s Grill.

Katz’s isn’t the only restaurant that recently started delivering via Seamless: in recent months, Aaron’s Grill began using the online ordering service to deliver organic Bison burgers, salmon burgers, and fried pickles.

Never heard of it, right?

And yet its Seamless listing said it was located right in the East Village, at 92 Third Avenue.

But go to that address, between East 12th and 13th Streets, and you won’t find Aaron’s Grill: you’ll find Blue 9 Burger, the chowhound favorite known for its classic fast-food-style burgers (and certainly not for fancier fare like the wood-fired turkey burgers at Aaron’s Grill).

We got to wondering: did Blue 9 create Aaron’s just so it could top Seamless’s alphabetical list of delivery joints?
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Rev. Billy preaching.

As The Times and DNA Info reported, the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space, which we first told you about in March, opened on Saturday. The Local was there with cameras rolling, but before we show you our footage, here are some photos by Konstantin Sergeyev, a C-Squat resident who documented the museum’s recovery from Sandy.

MoRUS, at 155 Avenue C, is open daily (except for Mondays and Wednesdays) from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.; admission is free.
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Scott Lynch

Good morning, East Village.

“Greg Gumucio, founder of the popular, budget-priced Yoga to the People chain, agreed to end his studio’s $8 “hot yoga” classes in a settlement of a $1 million lawsuit by his ex-mentor, Bikram Choudhury.” [NY Post]

“An examination by The New York Times has found that while the [New York City Housing Authority] moved aggressively before the storm to encourage residents to leave, particularly those who were disabled and the needy, both it and the city government at large were woefully unprepared to help its residents deal with Hurricane Sandy’s lingering aftermath.” [NY Times]

“Dozens of students, alumni, and supporters of design school Cooper Union’s free degree programs marched from Washington Square Park to the college’s Astor Place campus to protest the school’s plans to adopt a tuition-based model.” [DNA Info]
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Dana Varinsky

Cooper Union students, along with members of the Bruce High Quality Foundation, held a “Free Umbrellas for Free Education” event this evening outside of the school’s Foundation Building, where anti-tuition protesters continue their occupation of the Peter Cooper Suite.

The spirited dance party was a prelude to more activism tomorrow: The Students for a Free Cooper Union have called on students and faculty of high schools and colleges around the city to gather at Washington Square at 11 a.m. for a series of lectures and “speak-outs,” followed by a Casseroles march to Cooper Union at 3 p.m.

Today, Cooper Union released a press statement asserting that “the administration has asked the [students] to leave on several occasions and they have not,” and calling for “a civil process as we attempt to resolve critical issues relating to the institution’s future and survival.” The statement notes that “The Board of Trustees voted unanimously on Dec. 5 to support President Jamshed Bharucha and the planning process he is leading,” and points out that the school’s president invited a group of students to the Rose Auditorium after they demanded to meet with him immediately. “However, most of the protesters declined and left the building,” the statement says.

Dana Varinsky contributed reporting.

For every East Village business that’s opening or closing, dozens are quietly making it. Here’s one of them: St. Mark’s Bookshop.

Jamie Larson Terry McCoy and Bob Contant.

St. Mark’s Bookshop might seem like an odd choice for this column: given all the to-do about its struggles with landlord Cooper Union, and its subsequent fundraising for a new location, it’s hard to say the store has been “quietly making it.” But last month, owners Terry McCoy and Bob Contant celebrated 35 years in business — and if that isn’t Making It, what is? In light of the anniversary, we spoke to Mr. McCoy about what the future holds. As it turns out, he has a new space in mind, and it’s right here in the neighborhood.

How did St. Mark’s Bookshop come about?

We were originally five guys who knew each other from working at a store on St. Marks Place called East Side Books and it was struggling. We felt like we could do a better bookstore so we opened our own. We didn’t have much money and borrowed a small amount. Read more…

Dana Varinsky

Dana Varinsky

St. Brigid’s Roman Catholic Church, at Avenue B and East Eighth Street, has pushed back its reopening yet again.

“The process has simply taken longer than we originally thought,” said Joseph Zwilling, a spokesperson for the church’s owner, the Archdiocese of New York.

The church’s main building, built in the 1840s by Irish immigrants fleeing the potato famine, closed in 2001, after a back wall that had been slowly pulling away from the main structure for two decades began to accelerate its separation. The building was slated for demolition until an anonymous benefactor donated $20 million in 2008.

Today, the initial cause of the closure continues to be a challenge. “The damage on the back wall has taken longer to resolve,” said Mr. Zwilling. “It has been a complex issue to repair in order to make sure it is not a running problem in 20 years again.”
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Daniel Maurer Thankfully these weren’t stolen.

The East Village saw a spike in auto thefts last month, according to a police source.

The first theft, of a 1994 Honda Civic, was reported on Nov. 4, with another following on Nov. 16 and a third reported on Nov. 24. The three Hondas (two Civics manufactured in the 1990s and one Accord manufactured in the 2000s) were stolen from East Third and East Fourth Streets, in the area between First Avenue and Avenue B. The theft of models manufactured in this period was most likely for car parts, our source said.

While not a significant percentage of overall crime, the automobile larceny pattern “sticks out,” according to the source, because it is rarely observed. The police estimate that 70 percent of grand larceny auto cases are motorcycle-related. Three motorcycles were also stolen during the 28-day period.

Mary Reinholz Wednesday’s meeting.

Heat and electricity is once again warming a formerly flooded basement in Knickerbocker Village, but some of the 100 tenants who met there Wednesday night continued to express fury and frustration over what they said was mismanagement in the wake of Sandy.

A little over a month after Sandy struck the 1,590-unit housing complex, power has been restored but telephones are still down for many of the 3,500 people who live in the modestly priced rentals.

Before the meeting, a 79-year-old resident named Nettie fumed about Verizon’s failure to restore service to her land line. “I’ve got nothing — it’s back and forth with them and then nothing,” she told The Local. Other tenants complained of slow garbage pickup.

The meeting was attended by representatives from the offices of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, State Senator Daniel Squadron and Councilmember Margaret Chin along with 20 out of about 72 elected representatives from the dozen 13-story buildings.

Bob Wilson, a leader in the Knickerbocker Village Tenants Association, moderated.
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CHKA

A martial arts academy and a cigar store are the latest to score grants that will allow them to become more eco-friendly.

The Lower East Side Ecology Center awarded the grants Wednesday night to the Chinese Hawaiian Kempo Academy and Maraya Cigar.

Rebecca Krauss, manager of EcoBizNYC, said the Ecology Center program assesses businesses in order to recommend environmentally friendly changes. “We focus on changes that are free, low-cost, or can potentially save money for businesses, and our program takes only a brief amount of time for the business owner,” she told The Local. Participants become eligible for grants of up to $1,000. Read more…

Scott Lynch

Good morning, East Village.

An online real estate listing for the former Mars Bar space indicates it’s being prepared for restaurant use. [EV Grieve]

Units at the new 250 Bowery building will go from 925,000 to $6,893,600. [Curbed]

“Anna Corinna is the co-founder of the handbag and ready-to-wear brand Foley + Corinna. Though she’s a resident of Brooklyn, her favorite spot to shop is the East Village, particularly on the two-block stretch that makes up East 1st Street.” [Racked]

From mini ice cream sandwiches to knitwear, some Lower East Side gift ideas. [The Lo-Down]

Latex designer The Baronness tells us she and her elves will head to Macy’s to sit on Santa’s lap on Dec. 11. Check out last year’s field trip here. A “lubricated shopping” holiday cocktail party follows on Dec. 14, with discounts of 20 percent.

Dana Varinsky

Plywood has come off the windows of the former Vandaag space on East Sixth Street, where Mighty Quinn’s Slow-Smoked Barbeque will open in about two weeks, according to co-founder Micha Magid.

Pitmaster Hugh Mangum draws his barbecue expertise from his Texas upbringing, and got the fast-casual joint’s name from his son, Quinn. He’ll be smoking naturally raised meats over cherry, oak and apple wood from local farms.
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Sasha von Oldershausen

While one home furnishings shop prepares to move into a larger space, another is closing.

Cafiero Select, the design firm and antique shop that was replaced by the Panda Diplomacy pop-up, is set to reopen on Second Avenue.

The new location at 39 Second Avenue, at East Second Street, is around the corner from Cafiero Lussier, an event design and catering business also co-owned by David Cafiero. The catering offices will share the space with Mr. Cafiero’s shop when doors open to the public in February.

Meanwhile, after nearly 14 years of business on Avenue B, Amaran is closing.
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