View the complaint

Two former tenants of a building owned in part by controversial real estate developer Ben Shaoul are suing the owners and managers of the walkup for failing to snuff out bedbugs.

The complaint, filed last month, alleges that the landlords of 508 East 12th Street were “willfully, wantonly, deliberate and grossly negligent” in dealing with the infestation, causing “pain, shock, mental anguish.”

Lauren Wilms, 24, and Alexandra Sanchez, 25, told The Local that they moved into the building in June 2011; within six weeks, bedbugs had infiltrated their home. During the three-month infestation, they woke up with bites on their bodies and faces, and had to evacuate repeatedly for exterminators, the plaintiffs said.

P.V.E. Associates proved difficult to deal with throughout the process, according to the roommates. “We were traumatized and broken down ourselves from dealing with this situation, but we were being yelled at by the management company,” Ms. Sanchez said.
Read more…

Time for some more fun at the run. Here’s this week’s Dog-Run Duo.

Nicole Guzzardi

Nicole Guzzardi Flipping out.

The Master: David Phillips-Grant, 45, an East Villager and owner of the Seahorse Tavern on the Upper East Side, takes his pooch to the park twice a day.

The Dog: Faye Raye, an eight-year-old “Muttweiler,” is also known as Booger or Fatty. She was a Christmas present years ago from Mr. Phillips-Grant’s sister-in-law.  “I told her you shouldn’t give pets as presents,” he said, laughing. “We joke about it now.”

Best Friend: A French bulldog, Ju-Ju, who lives in the neighborhood and sometimes stays over as a house guest.

Pet Tricks: Flipping in the air. Faye Raye majestically hurls her body in the air to catch sticks. “She showed me how to do this, not the other way around,” Mr. Phillips-Grant said.

Claim to Fame: Faye Raye loves steak scraps from Seahorse Tavern, but she’s also a well-known customer at Ray’s Candy Store on Avenue A. As you can see in the video below, she likes to wait for slices of cheese at the counter. “When I go to get my coffee in the morning, that’s our routine,” said her owner.
See the video…

Yep, it’s that time of year again: the Christmas tree vendors are back, the holiday decorations are up, and Phil Kline has set a date for “Unsilent Night,” the roving boombox orchestra that has ambled through the East Village blasting an ethereal 45-minute composition every year since 1992. Mark your calendars: this season’s strolling soundscape will occur Dec. 15. (And hey, if you want to keep it old-school instead of downloading the iPhone app, this man has your boombox.)

In the meantime, enjoy another carol that’s not exactly from the canon. Kyona Watts, an East Villager, penned the above ditty — in which a lonely Mrs. Claus seeks the company of a guy in a Santa mask — with her Strega bandmate Stephen Vesecky, who has also lived in the neighborhood. We’re told a video is in the works.

Suzanne Rozdeba

Annie FairmanEarlier this month.

After a month of exile, neighborhood kids are once again climbing the jungle gym at the East Ninth Street playground in Tompkins Square Park.

Last week, Melanie Kletter, a reader, told us that local parents were befuddled by a sign indicating that one of the park’s three playgrounds was “closed for repairs starting October 22, 2012.”

“We are all wondering what is going on with the playground and when it will reopen and why it’s taking so long,” she wrote. At the time, a parks department spokesperson explained that a contractor was replacing safety surfacing.

By Friday, the playground had reopened. Yesterday, the spokesperson clarified that the “damaged safety surfacing” consisted of rubber mats.

Courtesy East Village Wines

A little over a block away from where the neighborhood’s newest wine shop recently opened, East Village Wines, at 138 First Avenue, opened its doors after prohibition, in 1933. Bangladeshi owner Imran Ahmed was the shop’s manager for 12 years before he took over three years ago. He believes that what sets East Village Wines apart is its neighborly customer service (he gives discounts to locals and accepts packages for them, too) and his affinity for smaller production wines over the big-brand giants. We spoke to him about how the palate of the East Village has changed over the decades.

Were you interested in wine when you first started?

When I was managing the store, I was also the wine buyer and got really into wine and learning them and drinking more of them. I started really studying about the regions that wines come from. While I was managing the store we went from selling generic wines to me being very picky and selecting some really special high-end wines. I upgraded the inventory a lot. It was good that I was studying all of this as the clientele began changing. I have people who seriously drink wine so being more educated about wine is very important to my business. The customer today is more educated but at the same time they don’t want to spend a lot of money. Read more…

Michael Natale

Good morning, East Village.

The Lower Eastside Girls Club sent us a flier indicating that its ovens were damaged by Sandy. DNA Info has more about how the Astor Center donated its kitchen for holiday baking. [DNA Info]

In the current issue of The Real Deal, brokers and market analysts discuss “the boon in residential development in the neighborhood and about the changes in the makeup of buyers and renters calling the area home. (Think fewer recent college grads and more young families.)” [TRD]

An off-duty police officer was arrested on the Lower East Side after punching a man in the face. [DNA Info, NY Post]
Read more…

At the tiny coffee bar that opened on St. Marks Place yesterday, the beans aren’t the only thing that have been imported: the counter, front door, and other fixtures were designed and assembled in Lombardy, Italy by architect Beppe Riboli, and shipped over in boxes.

Giovanni Finotto and Caterina Musajo, the owners of I Am Coffee, wanted the 65-square-foot space that once held Another Wireless Shop to look and feel like an Italian terrazza. Beyond the sliding-glass front door, four people (and no more) can stand comfortably at a counter that resembles a balcony. There are toy birds by the handwritten menu, water pipes holding up shelves, exposed brick walls and Italian stone flooring — just the sort of touches you’d expect from the stylish proprietors of I Am Wine, an online artisanal wine shop.
Read more…

Laurie Gwen Shapiro John Cannizzo at Village Green.

During a recent dinner at the temple of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, at 25 First Avenue, a middle-aged man outfitted as Jesus, complete with crown of thorns, zealously preached the virtues of homegrown produce. In between bites of a spicy lentil salad, Laksmi Nrsimha, director of the East Village branch of the Krishnas, tilted his shaved head to listen.

Among Mr. Nrsimha’s guests at the weekly pay-what-you-wish dinner were volunteers at Village Green, an urban grange somewhat unbelievably located smack in the crossroads of Seventh Avenue and West 12th Street. For the last year, more than a dozen unpaid gardening enthusiasts have been providing a solid supply of free homegrown fruits and vegetables to the Krishnas, who cook them and distribute them at the sliding-scale dinners as well as at food lines in Tompkins Square Park.

But that arrangement has come to an end: this week Village Green closed so that its landlord, Rudin Management, could replace it with a more traditional public green space. Now Mr. Nrsimha is contemplating hydroponic gardening on the temple’s roof.

Gary Rissman, the 53-year-old dressed as Jesus (it was Halloween-time, after all), was the first of the agronomists to hear about the Krishna meals. At a Freegan meet-up early last year, he heard mention of the Krishna’s Annual Mountain of Food Festival, put on by their Krsma-Bhakti Vegan Cooking Club.

At that event, held at NYU’s Kimmel Center, the self-described “free-thinker” was inspired by the Krishnas’ culinary prowess, and saw it as a continuation of his own work. “I died a little inside when I saw our Village Green harvest when dropped off at other shelters, all going into one pot without any love,” he said at last month’s dinner. “An eggplant should be treated like filet mignon. I saw instantly that the Krishnas would know what to do with vegetables, that they would respect the vegetables, cook them right.”

Mr. Rissman, a gregarious speed-talker, convinced his farming pals to begin donating their harvests to Mr. Nrsimha and his fellow Krishnas.
Read more…

Kat Yen Ming Peiffer in “The ABC’s Guide to Getting Famous”

Ming Peiffer — her face powdered white, to contrast her suggestive red kimono — leaps onto the stage at the Red Room, promising to teach Asians how to get famous. It’s easy to incite pity, she assures: just play up your immigrant background and describe how your family lived in poverty before coming to America. It’s because of this tragic past that you are entitled to make art — regardless of quality!

The farce should be obvious by now. An exposé of systematized racism against Asians in the theater industry, “The ABC’s Guide to Getting Famous” is part of a well-established tradition in American literature. It’s no “Invisible Man,” but this ingenious solo show cum documentary doesn’t claim to be. Instead, it uses projections of Ms Peiffer’s interviews with contemporary Asian actors and actresses to form a sociological foil to her blaring embodiment of the Asian stereotype.

These two viewpoints are particularly well-suited to disentangling the paradoxes and difficulties of fitting into a larger culture. Ms Peiffer, or ABC, says immerse yourself in Asian clubs, societies, meeting groups, while the interviewees say this is just as alienating as being the only Asian around; ABC says accentuate your eyes and audition for the kung fu master, the ninja, or the prostitute, while the actors on screen testify that they feel like caricatures daily, yet have a hard time finding work. Ms Peiffer, of half-Asian descent, offers herself as a demonstration in the end, since her other half is routinely neglected at auditions searching for stock characters.
Read more…

Sasha von Oldershausen

Sasha von Oldershausen

Post-Sandy sinkholes have appeared in the Rockaways as a result of damage to water and sewer lines; is it possible one has opened up on Avenue C?

Last week, we noticed this sizable gash and sprawling cracks in the middle of the road, between Seventh and Eighth Streets. The hole isn’t yet big enough to swallow a moving truck, and of course it pales in comparison to the chasm over on the corner of Sixth Street, but take a closer look and you’ll see it’s deep enough to leave a cyclist in need of Recycle-a-Bicycle, at the least.

Have you noticed any post-Sandy sinkholes around the neighborhood? Or any other dents and dings still in need of attention?

Scott Lynch

Good morning, East Village.

According to the executive director of the Lower East Side Ecology Center, the damage that Sandy caused to East River Park could’ve been less extensive. “This storm is an opportunity to think about waterfront parks and what ecological function they provide,” says Christine Datz-Romero. [NY Press]

EyeLevel, a “highly specific and evolving step-by-step learning program crafted around the needs and goals of individual students,” will open at 437 East 12th Street. [NearSay]

A new iPhone app lets users hear the stories of former worshippers at the Eldridge Street Synagogue. [DNA Info]
Read more…

Kim Davis

Smoked meat returned to Mile End Sandwich’s menu last week, for the first time since Hurricane Sandy destroyed its Red Hook commissary. Today, the shop returned to its regular hours, and it’s also delivering again. But it’s not exactly business as usual.

Noah Bernamoff, an owner, said he’s been smoking the meat upstate, at his friend Josh Applestone’s celebrated butcher shop, Fleisher’s — as a result, the sandwich is a couple of dollars more expensive, to the chagrin of some customers.

A few weeks ago, Mr. Bernamoff began preparing the first 1,400 pounds of meat at the Kingston, N.Y. butcher shop. It had to be cured for 12 days, soaked for a day, re-rubbed with a spice mixture, and smoked for eight to 11 hours before it could be brought back to the Bond Street sandwich shop, where it’s steamed and sliced.
Read more…

Near Great Jones Street, the former home of Steve’s on the Bowery was gutted today. A construction worker confirmed that a “retail store” would replace the deli, which closed in September, but wouldn’t say whether an Intermix was on the way, as rumored.

In August a spokesperson for the boutique told The Local it was bound for the Bowery, but wouldn’t say where, exactly.

Joann Pan Opening on Friday, Zen 6 will serve New York-style ramen and succulent gyoza dumplings.

The owners of Noodle Cafe Zen on St. Marks Place and Sushi Lounge on Avenue A plan to open a ramen joint on Curry Row by the end of the week.

Hideyuki Okayama said Zen 6, in the former Chiyono space on East Sixth Street, will serve “New York City-style ramen,” meaning steaming bowls of house-made noodles set in a rich broth and topped with unconventional ingredients such as soft-shell crab, oysters and spicy fried calamari.

Traditionalists can order miso ramen with corn, meat, egg and vegetables; shio ramen with chicken broth, salt, meat and egg; or tsukemen ramen with tender meat and baby bamboo.

Next month, the eatery will give away an order of pan-fried gyoza (dumplings stuffed with beef, pork or vegetables) with any order of ramen.

Zen 6, 328 East Sixth Street (between First and Second Avenues); (917) 318-5298

Sasha von Oldershausen

Sasha von Oldershausen

This morning, EV Grieve asked, “Why is 41 Cooper Square dented?”

Here’s the answer: Claire McCarthy, Director of Public Affairs at Cooper Union, told The Local the dent in the new academic building’s armor was caused by Hurricane Sandy.

The damage occurred when the conical top of a wooden water tower attached to a nearby residential building on the eastern side of 41 Cooper broke loose and hit the building.

“There were no injuries, and our crew got rid of the debris,” said Ms. McCarthy.

Mary Reinholz

Neighbors and fellow skateboarders gathered Saturday night to mourn Kyle Larson, who was struck and killed while longboarding near Union Square on Tuesday. The candlelight ceremony on 14th Street and Broadway was organized by skateboarder John Rios and the New York Longboard Association.

Yesterday afternoon at Union Square West, near East 17th Street, where the 20-year-old N.Y.U. student was hit by a box truck, passersby stopped to gaze at a makeshift memorial consisting of a photo of the victim, a bouquet of fresh white roses and candles. Chalked messages read “Ride on forever!”, “Love you Kyle” and “Let us never forget the perils of New York Streets.”

Mr. Larson hailed from Manhasset, Long Island, where he was a well-liked drummer for his high school marching band, NYU Local reported. The musician, who also played saxophone and clarinet and sang with an a capella group, was rushing to school to turn in a term paper when he was struck, according to Newsday. Gothamist posted video, released by the police, of a cyclist who was riding the wrong way on Union Square West when the incident occurred.

Bahram Foroughi

Good morning, East Village.

Mayor Bloomberg has announced a $5.5 million grant for small businesses affected by Hurricane Sandy. [NY Post]

Two teens are wanted in a strong of local robberies: “The suspects, believed to be 14 years old, have been going into local businesses under the guise of raising money for a youth basketball team and then swiping phones and computers, police said.” [NY Post]

Stogo has closed after four years in business. The vegan ice cream shop was having trouble paying the rent and then lost $6,000 in sales and $6,000 in inventory during Sandy. [NY Times]
Read more…

Daniel Maurer

26 units and 84 firefighters rushed to a fire at the Jacob Riis Houses Saturday night.

The blaze broke out shortly before 9:30 p.m. on the eighth floor of a 14-story high-rise at 108 Avenue D, near East Eighth Street, the fire department said. It was under control within half an hour, but not before one firefighter was sent to New York Presbyterian with minor injuries.

The cause of the fire (the second in two days) was not immediately known.