Nicole Guzzardi One of the scuffles took place outside of Veselka.

Two men were arrested on Third Avenue and St. Marks Place after brawling in the streets Sunday morning, the police said.

Imer Skepi, 25, and Adem Radoncic, 24, were apprehended on the bustling block around 3:30 a.m. after a man said he was hit and pushed.

A witness told The Local that a gang consisting of three men – one of whom seemingly escaped – tangled with as many as eight bystanders as they roved from Avenue A to Third Avenue.

The first attack came on St. Marks Place, near Crif Dogs, the witness said. “There were three guys hitting one guy, but then there were other random guys trying to help, so it became a big melee,” said Angelo, who insisted his last name be withheld.
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A couple of weeks ago we introduced you to Michael Spitz.

But Mr. Throwback has to be seen to be believed, so now that his new store on East Ninth Street is up and Hammer-dancing, we came back with a video camera.

In the market for a Beetlejuice doll or a jacket that might just have been worn by LL Cool J? Mr. Throwback is your man.

Scott Lynch

Good morning, East Village.

Borough President Scott M. Stringer has decided to run for comptroller. [Politicker, NY Post, NY Daily News]

A new book, “Sasha and Emma: The Anarchist Odyssey of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman” is in part a biography of the East Village’s own Emma Goldman. [NY Times]

Death & Co. and PDT are among the local gin joints that will participate in the New York Bartenders Ball, a Sandy fundraiser at the Bowery Hotel. [Bartenders Ball]
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Alexa Mae Asperin

Alexa Mae Asperin

Artichoke aficionados, rejoice: cousins Francis Garcia and Sal Basille have opened Chubby Mary’s a few steps away from their 14th Street pizzeria. The signage promises “The Best Heros In Town!”

In the space where Led Zeppole once served fried Oreos and cannolis, this new venture offers a variety of sandwiches, all under $8, that can be ordered as heros or small rolls. The menu is below.
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For every East Village business that’s opening or closing, dozens are quietly making it. Here’s one of them: Peter Jarema Funeral Home.

Alexa Mae Asperin

As an abandoned coffin reminded us this week, the East Village still has its share of funeral parlors, though some have become stores and others have become construction sites. Peter Jarema Funeral Home, on 129 East Seventh Street, is among the remaining ones. Robert Buzzetta bought into the 106-year-old family business back in 1987. In 2010, his son Danny became a partner, after 15 years as a pallbearer. We spoke to the younger Buzzetta, the home’s vice president and managing funeral director, about the business of dying.

How did your family get into the funeral business?

My father was making funeral arrangements for his mother in-law in 1986 and began a relationship Mr. Lou Nigro who was working for the Jarema Family as a funeral director for many years. Mr. Nigro was interested in purchasing the business and building from the Jarema family and needed a financial partner. My father Robert Buzzetta and Lou Nigro purchased the funeral home and building in September 1, 1987. I purchased Lou Nigro’s share on March 1, 2011. Read more…

Carrie Leonard Clyde Fitch and Elsie de Wolfe, played by Jody Flader

At Lady Mendl’s Tea Salon, a glass flute and tulip-adorned sugarcube is placed before each guest. An amuse bouche is served, along with tea. The Gilded Age farce begins. Elsie and Bessy enter, chittering aphoristic secrets of success with a telling grace. Elsie performs a headstand, her poofy knickers signaling the Mad Hatter-like atmosphere that enlivens the rest of “The Bachelors’ Tea Party.”

These are, it should be noted, the representations of real-life early-20th-century New York socialites Elsie de Wolfe, an actress turned trailblazing interior designer who counted the Duke and Dutchess of Windsor as clients, and Elisabeth Marbury, the pioneering play broker who represented Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. They are theatrical, to say the least (Ms. de Wolfe, a.k.a. Lady Mendl, actually did perform headstands, at times to scandalous effect) and Jody Flader and Liz Eckert caricature them expertly: they’re every bit as charmed by their competitive, backhanded compliments as the audience is.

Good thing, because they carry the show de facto. Although the other characters are equally charming, they are silent — being puppets. The humor derived from this ingenious set-up is hard to describe: no analysis of narcissism will feel as outrageously perfect as seeing Elsie asking a question of a red-cheeked, smiling porcelain doll, waiting a couple seconds, and then exclaiming, “I knew you’d say so!” In another scene one of the dolls, representing the then-popular playwright Clyde Fitch, “tells” a droll story that has the two ladies all but cracking up. Read more…

East Yoga, which was destroyed after a fire ripped through it earlier this month, is asking locals to attend a benefit and silent auction at Pouring Ribbons on Sunday. The studio has been holding classes at temporary spaces like Alphabet City Sanctuary on East Sixth Street, and is still seeking volunteers for rebuilding efforts. “We’ll need some elbow grease, painting, and a lot more!” it wrote. “We’re still waiting to get the word back from insurance agents and contractors to get this in motion, but will let you know when we do.”

Nicole Guzzardi

Wendy Barrett, the owner of Village Scandal, failed to make a court-ordered payment of almost $22,000 in back rent to her landlord Tuesday, and was “scared to death” of getting thrown on the street. But yesterday, she secured a small victory when a civil court judge granted a stay of eviction until a Nov. 27 hearing.

“I’m working on raising the money,” said Ms. Barrett, adding that she had secured about $6,300 so far. The hat shop’s landlord claims Ms. Barrett owes close to $130,000 in back rent and real estate taxes, according to her lawyer. She vigorously disputes the amount, and is suing her landlord and management company for $10 million in State Supreme Court.

Ms. Barrett said she needed two or three weeks to raise the court-ordered amount. “This is my last hope,” she said.

Her lawyer, Jonathan Zimet, remains confident in her case. “There’s every reason to believe that Village Scandal will not be evicted for non-payment of rent, since the facts indicate she has paid rent that covers its obligations well into the future,” he said.

Dana Varinsky New glass over Astor Place.

A little over a month after Edward Minskoff’s office tower at 51 Astor was topped off, its Astor Place facade began getting glass panels yesterday. With the building taking shape, we hit the streets with a rendering of architect Fumihiko Maki’s design and asked passersby what they thought. The “black box” has been described as a “much hated” “local punching bag,” but the folks we spoke to didn’t seem to mind it so much: of 50 surveyed, 18 said they mildly liked the design, while 12 said they mildly disliked it; three strongly liked it and five strongly disliked it.

Moira Barrett, 19, who works in the area, said she would usually be against the idea of such a building, but was indifferent to this one because there were already similar ones nearby.

Juan Vallejo, 46, who studied architecture in Colombia, said he thought the building “disrespects the context of the neighborhood” in its historic sense, but believed the modern edifice worked well enough with those around it. “It’s not an isolated monster,” he said, “the buildings start to speak to each other.”

Others weren’t as forgiving. Matt Adams, 34, who has been living and working in the neighborhood for six years, said it’s not the building itself he minds so much, but the idea that it won’t help to preserve the area. “The influx of people and a huge office space, in terms of the neighborhood: that I don’t like,” he said, complaining that Second Avenue has turned into a “tourist trap.”

Raymond Dejesus, a Williamsburg resident who frequents the neighborhood, said he really disliked the idea of the building. “It looks like a shark,” he said of the design. “I don’t think buildings should look like predatory animals.” He went on to say that he thought it was a way of “The Man” saying, “Look at me, I’m a business man.”

Watch our video to hear more, and weigh in yourself, via the comments.

Yuyu Chen contributed reporting.

Alexis Lamster

A few years ago, Jennifer Sanford was enjoying brunch with a friend at Veselka when she bit into, well, something that allegedly broke her tooth. The incident left a bad taste in her mouth: she recently filed a lawsuit against the Second Avenue standby.

According to Ms. Sanford’s lawyer, Michael F. Rubin, she was eating an egg breakfast when she bit down on something hard and spit it out into a napkin. Her tooth broke immediately. She called the manager over, the table was promptly bussed, and Ms. Sanford left.

“There is no way of knowing what it was, because the table wasn’t preserved,” Mr. Rubin said of the object in question.

Ms. Sanford’s broken tooth had to be replaced with an implant, her lawyer said. As a result of the surgery, a neighboring tooth was harmed and she must now have follow-up work done on that. “The poor lady is without her natural tooth,” he said. Read more…

Joann Jovinelly

Good morning, East Village.

Restaurants hit by Sandy continue to receive attention. A worker at Paprika lost a week’s wages — about $300 — while it was closed. [LA Times]

At St. Mark’s Church, “Danspace Project continues its 50th-anniversary tribute to Judson Dance Theater by bringing in curators who have recently performed in the work of Judson artists.” [NY Times]

“Cabaret Showdown” at Under St. Marks is a must-see “if you’re a singer who deserves some recognition, a musical connoisseur looking for a new haunt, or a a New Yorker who loves to laugh and cheer.” [Inside New York]
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Joann Pan

Power has been fully restored to Knickerbocker Village, the Lower East Side housing complex where low-income residents — many of them elderly — remained in the dark long after service was restored to their neighbors.

Electricity flowed into the last of the complex’s 1,600 units at 4 p.m. today, ending a “painstaking process that involved rebuilding circuits and other equipment destroyed by the East River salt water,” a statement said.

The complex’s 12 buildings aren’t fully back to normal: many units are still without heat (it’s expected to return fully tomorrow or Saturday), hot water is in limited supply (it too will be fully restored by Saturday), and “a small handful of units” might still be without power if they weren’t plugged into the main circuit properly. In addition, there may be outages of several hours as “electrical service is weaned off the temporary generators and back onto Con Edison’s grid,” the statement said.

Last Friday, The Local reported that residents such as 104-year-old Margaret Zomzely were living in the dark and cold, as only 450 of the complex’s 1,600 units had regained electricity, and none had heat. One of those residents, 101-year-old Pao Chu Hsieh, died during the blackout, The Times reported. By Tuesday, power had been restored to all but 400 units.

That day, James Simmons, Vice President of Knickerbocker Village, Inc., told residents they wouldn’t have to pay rent for the days they were without essential services. “Discussions between building management and various elected officials and governing bodies will determine how that will occur, with credits on future rent among the processes under consideration,” today’s statement said.

Dana Varinsky Ouenisongda Sawadogo and his wife Najm.

A couple of changes to note on St. Marks Place, in addition to the closure of 2 Bros Plus: first, trash bags have covered the windows of Yogurt Station, at 18 St. Marks Place, for some days now. It’s uncertain whether the closure is temporary or permanent.

The good news: Waga, the African gift shop at 22 St. Marks Place, has jumped into the coffee game. Ouenisongda Sawadogo, the store’s owner, said he had wanted to serve African coffee for some time. With the economy still in the doldrums, his rent on the rise, and the tough months of January and February ahead of him, he decided now was the time to open up a sidewalk to-go window.

“We sell mostly artifacts, but people right now are hurting. They don’t want to spend for this kind of luxury,” he said, nodding at his subterranean sliver of a store stocked with west African masks, bags, clothing, and jewelry. “I had to come up with an idea to add a little bit of cash.”

The idea: an array of espresso drinks made from organic, fair-trade Arabica beans roasted by Brooklyn Roasting Company. The beans, Mr. Sawadogo said, are harvested by a female farming cooperative in countries like Kenya and Tanzania.
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Isaiah Tanenbaum Adina Taubman plays Rae.

Time is passing Rae by, no matter what she has to say about it. At least, that’s the sense we get as the exposition in Susan Bernfield’s “Barking Girl,” now at 4th Street Theatre, shuffles from the discussion of a baby, to pregnancy, to her first argument with her husband.

Played with an acerbic bite by Adina Taubman, Rae is fiercely self-reliant, and reluctant to begin her current period of “settling down.” Her deepest worry is conveyed in an anecdote about a museum visit that was ruined because a seemingly mentally disabled girl kept barking “ART!”: Rae is living, not quite fully, a solipsistic fantasy, and she is terrified of having a “different” child.

This isolated mental world is portrayed to great effect by Carolyn Mraz’s stripped-down but still fantastical set, as well as the writing. Rae’s husband Gil, a quintessentially perfect sitcom dad played by Max Arnaud, is everything she’s not. He is incomprehensible to her, and his goofy naiveté is refreshing in the face of Rae’s all-encompassing dissatisfaction. (Rae, a bit of a “barking girl” herself, is a fascinating and enjoyable character, but people like that rarely make good company in real life.)

Gil is genuinely a good father, and points out the theatricality of parenthood precisely when Rae is wont to rhapsodize about being Sylvia Plath. That these metatextual comments come from such a likeable character, innocently, lends them a certain playfulness.

Amazed at Rae’s unhappiness despite Gil’s innate parenting skills, Rae’s sister Becca (perhaps the realest character in terms of dialogue and demeanor) serves as somewhat of a psychologist for her sibling. She’s no seductress, however: she’s a lesbian with prospects of parenthood herself. There is some turbulence when she propositions Gil to be the sperm donor. Meanwhile, Rae runs into a certain charming man more and more while her husband is away on business trips…

It’s hard to believe Mrs. Bernfield wrote this piece around ten years ago. The claustrophobic culture around parenting seems to be even more pronounced now than it was a decade ago, and Rae’s predicament seems not unlike a particularly gloomy Park Slope transplant of the past couple years. But the funny, heartfelt “Baking Dog” isn’t just for the double stroller crowd— those with Organic Spirits in their canvas bags are equally sure to find themselves in this anti-mom.

“Barking Girl,” through Dec. 2 at 4th Street Theatre, 83 East Fourth Street (between Second Avenue and Bowery); tickets $18 at www.chrysalistheatrecompany.com or (866) 811-4111.

Daniel Maurer Toys we’ve had to fetch at Stuyvesant Station
over time.

Food stamps aren’t the only thing compromised post-Sandy: regular stamps are hard to come by, as well. This morning, while picking up a package at Peter Stuyvesant Station we noticed a sign informing customers that the walk-up windows were closed because Internet service was down. The line for the package pick-up window, meanwhile, was long as ever: 10 people strong.

That got us to thinking about how the 14th Street Post Office branch has a one-star rating on Yelp. Yes, that’s a solid star and a half less than Guy Fieri’s joint, and some of the criticism of Stuyvesant Station reads like it came out of this week’s Times review. Here now, some choice excerpts.

“Guys, I think I did. I found the mouth of hell — it’s hear, between First and A, in the Peter Stuyvesant Post Office. I literally want to cry when I get one of those package slips, cursing my aunt for thinking of me and sending a care pack.” –Tracy W.

“Today’s experience was the ultimate trifecta of pure hell: long line, crying baby, and senile old lady yammering and complaining throughout my wait.” —Marina K.

“EVERYONE WHO WORKS HERE HATES YOU. THEY HATE LIFE. ALL THEY WANT IS TO SPREAD THE DARKNESS.” —Chris B.
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Sasha von Oldershausen

Sasha von Oldershausen

There’s never a shortage of pizza news in the neighborhood.

Yesterday, Joey Pepperoni’s opened at 245 14th Street, just a couple blocks away from the location that opened on First Avenue in August. The latest outpost is right next to the IHOP and 7-Eleven, and across from another $1 slice joint, Krust.

And while we’re talking dollar slices — a bold experiment in $1.50 slices has apparently failed: 2 Bros. Plus, which had been serving $1.50 slices a couple of doors over from the dollar-slice original on St. Marks Place, has been closed for a few weeks now.

Annie Fairman Rosa’s Deli and Grocery

At the Rosa Deli and Grocery Corp, handwritten signs greet customers at nearly every turn: “Food stamps out of service.”

Like many other businesses that have reopened in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, the bodega’s phone lines remain down, zapping potential revenue from credit card purchases. In addition, it can’t process payment through the government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, more commonly referred to as food stamps.

Hector Martinez, a manager at the store on Avenue D, estimates it’s losing thirty percent of its sales each day without phone service. Recipients of SNAP use an Electronic Benefits Transfer card, which functions like a debit card, to purchase items, and the amount is electronically deducted from their account. Retailers are then credited the amount of the purchase within two business days, according to the program’s Website.

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, the U.S. Department of Agriculture extended the period in which beneficiaries must recertify their household to continue receiving SNAP benefits, and agreed to automatically credit a half-month’s worth of benefits to those living in New York City’s hardest hit zip codes, including Alphabet City. But many neighborhood retailers who accept this form of payment remain without a functioning phone line to process the transaction.
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