Daniel Maurer Miguel Gutierrez of Nino’s

A couple of businesses on the corner of Avenue A and St. Marks Place have taken longer than most to reemerge from Sandy.

EV Grieve noted Friday that Nino’s, the corner pizzeria, had closed, causing commenters to go into mourning mode. So imagine The Local’s surprise to find it open last night.

Pointing to a spot above the front window, Miguel Gutierrez, a manager, explained that the ceiling leaked during Sandy and the owner decided to use it as an excuse to strip the place down. Now the walls consist of wood beams, and the pies sit on a wooden front counter sans glass display.

Other than that, Mr. Gutierrez assured, “the place is going to be the same,” open 20 hours a day with the same menu.

Next-door, Flea Market — no stranger to temporary closures — remains dark. A sign on the window reads: “We are closed for post-Sandy renovations.”

Ria Chung

Good morning, East Village.

The management of beleaguered Knickerbocker Village announced yesterday that it was attempting to connect electricity generators to the complex’s internal grid. Meanwhile power was restored to 250 apartments Saturday, aid has been stepped up and tenants are contemplating a rent strike. [The Lo-Down]

A 101-year-old woman died in the complex last Monday. She was one of about 700 seniors living there without heat since the hurricane. [NY Times]

Governor Cuomo is seeking $30 billion in federal storm relief aid, estimating that businesses lost $13 billion after being forced to close for days. [NY Times]

“Perhaps not surprisingly, it turns out that the storm struck the city’s trees like a chain saw on methamphetamines, toppling more than 8,000 street trees and destroying thousands more in parks and woodlands.” [NY Times]

Tree stumps and discarded branches are still evident in East River Park. [Blah Blog Blah]
Read more…

Sixth Street Specials wasn’t the only bike shop hit by Hurricane Sandy.

On Avenue C, Recycle-a-Bicycle lost power, but it was up and running during the blackout, and doing swift business. Without reliable public transportation, locals dusted off their Schwinns and Treks and brought them to the non-profit’s storefront for a tune-up.

“A lot of people are coming in for flat fixes, because they’re just pulling their bike out of the basement,” said shop manager Patrick Tomeny last Thursday.

It’s no secret that bikes (and bicycle-powered generators) came in handy during the storm. Watch our video to find out why Mr. Tomeny thinks they’re the way of the future.

Dana Varinsky Margaret Zomzely and Sheron Tomlinson talk to Karlin Chan.

Dana Varinsky Volunteers gather supplies to distribute.

Tan Suan Chang, a 90-year-old diabetic, is supposed to receive dialysis two times a week. Usually, his wife wheels him to the elevator of his building on Monroe Street and a transport service vehicle takes him to the hospital. But that became impossible after Knickerbocker Village lost power during Hurricane Sandy. Mr. Chang was too weak to walk down the stairs from his 11th-floor apartment, especially in the dark.

“I didn’t want him to get into a worse situation,” said his son, John Tan. “He missed dialysis for a week so I didn’t want him to go into some kind of kidney shock.” Sunday, Mr. Tan took his father onto his back and carried him down a dark stairwell, then trudged back up for his wheelchair. He brought both of his parents to his apartment in the East Village, where they are now staying.

“My father-in-law was scared. He’s fragile,” said Mr. Tan’s wife, Florence Eng. “He knows that physically he’s very vulnerable and he didn’t even want his own son picking him up and bringing him downstairs.” Ms. Eng’s mother also lives at Knickerbocker Village; she’s staying with another daughter until utilities are restored.

At the moment, it’s uncertain when that will happen. On Saturday, Con Edison returned electricity to most of the Lower East Side housing complex, which houses 1,600 low- and middle-income residents, many of them seniors. But an electrical fire broke out and plunged it into darkness again. “Resulting from the fire, Con Edison imposed new power restoration procedures that govern our process and progress,” the building’s management, Knickerbocker Village, Inc., said in a statement today. Read more…

Nicole Guzzardi

Courtesy Liz Wolff Piano outside of Ms. Wolff’s family’s home.

Cure Thrift Shop usually donates proceeds from its earnings to diabetes research, but this week it has a new cause: the Rockaways, where residents – about 31,000 of them still without power – are cleaning up demolished homes and struggling for food and warmth.

Liz Wolff, the store’s owner, has a personal connection to the devastation: she grew up in Rockaway Beach, and her parents’ home was badly damaged by Hurricane Sandy, as were those of friends and family. The wreckage, she said, was incredible.

“Homes are either tumbled to the ground, or just unlivable,” she said.

To help out, she decided to turn her store into a donation center. “A lot of people in the city can’t get out to Rockaway and they want to be able to help and do anything they can,” she said, “but of course gas is an issue now, so we’re collecting everything here.” Read more…

Hugh Mackie has spent the past weeks cleaning up damage in the basement of his motorcycle repair shop, including six wrecked bikes.

“It’ll take more than a hurricane to get rid of me,” he told The Local.

Indeed his shop, Sixth Street Specials, has been a fixture since it opened in 1986. Even before Avenue C became Zone B, Mr. Mackie was a “neighborhood savior,” according to his son and co-worker, Keith. “People are always coming by the shop with their microwaves or their irons,” he said. “Some woman just came by on her electric wheelchair. She couldn’t get the wheelchair working so my dad just fixed her wheelchair for her.”

Watch our video to see the Sixth Street Specials crew in action.

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

Courtesy Peter McCaffrey.

Thirty years ago, artist Peter McCaffrey transitioned from painting his own pieces in a subterranean studio to operating a retail store. Mascot Studio, at 328 East Ninth Street, isn’t just any old frame shop: Mr. McCaffrey pays expert attention to the array of materials and textures that can enhance fine art. Add to that an annual dog show and you can see why the 250-square-foot space is such a little gem. We spoke to the owner about how the business is holding up post-Sandy.

How did Sandy affect things?

I am feeling extremely lucky I didn’t suffer any physical damage or flooding. There is a concern about starting up and getting going again. My business deals with aesthetic and not necessary goods and services, which is not at the top of people’s priority list. I find myself asking how I will keep the ball rolling, but I think my saving grace will be the coming holidays. Read more…

Scott Lynch

Good morning, East Village.

The two police officers who were acquitted of raping an East Village woman were sentenced yesterday: “a jury found the duo guilty of three counts of official misconduct for each time they returned to the petite fashion exec’s East 13th St apartment. Moreno, the supervising officer, was sentenced to one year in prison in Aug. 2011 and Mata got 60 days.” [Daily News]

The Queens-Midtown Tunnel reopens today, and the mayor has instituted odd-even gas rationing. [NY Post]

More about the gas rationing. [NY Times]

It could be weeks before the west side of Knickerbocker Village is back to normal. “On Tuesday, a 105-year old woman died after her oxygen machine malfunctioned. The woman, who did not live at Knickerbocker Village but was staying with her son, could not call for help because there was no phone service.” [The Lo-Down]
Read more…

Dana Varinsky Miguel Paula carts garbage out of the Lavanburg Homes.

Formerly homeless families were displaced once again when Sandy drove them out of their Lower East Side apartments, and it’s uncertain when they’ll be allowed back in.

The Lavanburg Homes, located just west of FDR Drive on Baruch Place, have sat empty since Saturday. The buildings, owned by the New York City Housing Authority, are home to Henry Street Settlement’s Urban Family Center, a 95-unit apartment-style shelter for homeless families with children.

This afternoon, Lisa Pellot tried to get into her apartment to retrieve some belongings, but was told she couldn’t enter. “They’re saying it’s not safe,” she told The Local. Ms. Pellot and her three children are currently staying with family, in an apartment that usually houses five and is now home to nine. They haven’t been told when, exactly, they’ll be allowed to return to their home.

Dana Varinsky Dumpster outside of Lavanburg
Homes.

On Saturday, the complex’s residents were evacuated in preparation for the storm. Some went to a temporary shelter set up by the Henry Street Settlement, while others stayed with friends or family. Ms. Pellot said that when she left, she only brought enough clothing for a few days. She hadn’t prepared for the colder weather. “My kids gotta go to school,” she said, adding, “They’ve been absent. I have no clothes for them.”

As she waited outside, frustrated, Ms. Pellot’s mail was brought out to her by a caseworker. “They’re keeping us in the dark here,” she said.

Yesterday, the New York City Housing Authority released an accounting of its buildings indicating that the Lavanburg Homes were the last in Manhattan without power. Today, an updated list indicated that electricity had been restored. But Miguel Paula, a member of the building’s maintenance staff, said that because of water damage in the basement, only some apartments had electricity.

This afternoon, Mr. Paula and other workers wore face masks as they carried trash out of the building, filling a dumpster bag by bag. “We have a big-time flood in the basement,” said Mr. Paula. “We were draining water for four to five days.”

The building is also without heat. At the time of today’s update, the only other Manhattan housing complexes still in the cold were the Samuel Gompers Houses, at 50 Pitt Street, and Lower East Side Rehab V, at 89 Avenue C. Those buildings were expected to receive temporary boilers so that their heat could be restored within the week, the authority said.

Citywide, the authority said it had restored power to 331 of the 402 buildings affected by Sandy and heat and hot water to 272 out of 386 buildings.

Micah Kaplan Arthur.

Last Monday, just before Sandy hit, Micah Kaplan lost his newly adopted Beagle mix when it escaped its leash and ran away. Saturday morning, Arthur was found dead on a ramp of the BQE, at Atlantic Avenue.

“It was very hard,” Mr. Kaplan said. “The worst part was, his previous foster mother was the one who spotted his body and notified me where he was.”

Mr. Kaplan is one of many who were separated from their pets during the storm. “People were impacted and animals were impacted, too,” said Sandra DeFeo, executive director of The Humane Society of New York.

Animal Haven, in Little Italy, was without power for five days; once it recovered, the facility began taking in animals from all over the city, including a number of cats from Staten Island’s Animal Care And Control Center, which closed in the wake of Sandy. Read more…

Molly Socha

After a tough week, tenants of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village have caught a break: they won’t have to pay rent for the days they were without electricity, heat, and elevators, according to an e-mail from Andrew MacArthur, managing director of CWCapital.

Residents who were unable to move into or out of the complex while elevators were down will also get a rent abatement, said the letter from management, sent Wednesday.

Todd Gibson, who rode out Hurricane Sandy and the subsequent blackout in Stuy Town with his family, said the offer to apply a credit to December or January bills was “very generous”: “It wasn’t really necessary for them to do and I was very impressed that they did it,” he said. Read more…

Photo Illustration: Lauren Carol Smith

Subway tunnels flooded with 15 feet of water Monday are carrying trains again.

L trains began running between Rockaway Parkway, in Brooklyn, and Eighth Avenue, in Manhattan, at 3 p.m. today, the MTA announced.

Rush-hour delays are likely, as trains are running at 10 minute intervals, but Twitter users wasted no time rejoicing, with varying degrees of irony.

“THE L TRAIN IS WORKING AGAIN, HALLELUJAH!!!!!” wrote @Jaysilv.

“The L train is back on service!” tweeted @tsardad. “Never thought that statement would make me happy. But it does.”

And BradCCohen wrote: “At first I was all, ‘The L train is back! The L train is back!’ And then I was like, ‘Why do I really need to leave Brooklyn anyway?'”

Crews have spent the past days pumping water and making repairs to the Canarsie tunnel’s signaling and communications systems – footage of which the MTA released yesterday.

There is still no timeline for restoration of A and S service to the Rockaways, N service from Eighth Avenue to Coney Island, and R service into Manhattan.

Suzanne Rozdeba Michael Spitz

Yes, that’s Michael Jordan posting up on East Ninth Street.

He’s part of the display window at Mr. Throwback, a “funky little crazy store in the East Village” that may soft-open tomorrow, according to its owner.

Michael Spitz, a 30-year-old Murray Hill resident with a background in sports management, said his shop at 428 East Ninth Street is inspired by his childhood in Bellmore, Long Island.

In January, he began peddling some of his old clothing, which he had been selling online, at the Hell’s Kitchen Flea Market, and then at the Dekalb Market in Brooklyn.

At the storefront, between First Avenue and Avenue A, he’ll sell vintage Starter jackets, acid-wash Levis jeans, concert tees, army jackets, and vintage toys and video games. Read more…

Joann Pan Signs warn residents: “Do Not Drink the Water.” Cases of bottled water are available to all residents living in Haven Plaza.

For nearly 11 days, Isa Gonzalez and her two young children have been living in the dark, without heat or running water.

To get to their apartment at One Haven Plaza, they climb 17 flights of unlit stairs. The federally subsidized high-rise at Avenue C and 13th Street was one of the many buildings that lost power after Hurricane Sandy hit last Monday.

Electricity started flowing to the apartments in Two and Three Haven Plaza this week, though  – like many other buildings in Alphabet City – they are still without heat or water. But at One Haven Plaza, where electrical equipment in the basement was badly damaged by flooding, the situation is worse. Signs reading “Do Not Drink the Water” are posted in the hallways, next to elevators at a standstill.

Daisy Lopez, site manager of the three buildings, believes power may not be restored for a week. “We are telling everyone one week, but we are hoping sooner than that,” she said, wearing a scarf and hat in her unheated office yesterday.

Some of the building’s elderly tenants and families with young children had the option to take a limited number of vacant rooms at the Grand Street Guild housing development, affiliated with the plaza’s management company. But half of the residents remain, Ms. Gonzalez estimated. Read more…

Ria Chung

Good morning, East Village.

Council Member Margaret S. Chin has sent a letter offering a list of Sandy resources. You can find it below.

The Grompers Houses on the Lower East Side are among those without heat. ““I am mostly concerned that I have been freezing,” says a 79-year-old resident. [DNA Info]

Some Village businesses are unhappy that “Smash” is filming on their block while they’re still recovering from Sandy. [NY Post]

“Russ & Daughters, quite possibly NYC’s most famous appetizing store, will be hosting a Red Cross fundraiser tonight in conjunction with the Astor Center. There are two 75 minute tastings (starting at 6:00 & 7:30 this evening).” [East Village Eats]
Read more…

NYPD Hockeem Smith

Over a year after Hockeem Smith was charged in the murder of Keith Salgado, the 25-year-old is still awaiting trial.

The victim’s mother, Aida Salgado, had hoped a trial date would be set at a court hearing today, but Assistant District Attorney Janine Gilbert told the judge that 911 calls from the night of the shooting have yet to be found and submitted as evidence. As a result, the date won’t be set until Dec. 11 at the earliest.

Dressed in an orange prison uniform, with black-rimmed glasses, Mr. Smith was silent during today’s brief court appearance, his eleventh so far. He did not look back into the gallery where Ms. Salgado sat.

In the last year, the grieving mother has struggled to piece together the details of the night her son was killed.

At a recent memorial, friends and family said that over 40 people were in the courtyard where the shooting took place during an early-morning dice game on Oct. 16 of last year. Not enough of them have come forward, said the victim’s cousin, Christy Cortes, 21.

“Anybody can I.D. him,” said Ms. Cortes of the shooter. “Anybody can point a finger and say, ‘Oh he did it,’ but who’s going to say what actually happened at that moment, at that place in time?”

She added, “Nobody wants to talk but everybody wants to claim Keith as family.”

Both Ms. Cortes and Ms. Salgado believe that the murder was premeditated, orchestrated by those who professed to be lifelong friends with the 18-year-old. On the night of the murder, said Ms. Saldago, her son came home with about $1,500 in winnings from a dice game; friends encouraged him, via text message, to return to the game to try to double his money. He was later shot in the courtyard where the dice game was being held.

According to Ms. Cortes, the teen’s life had been threatened three months prior, shortly after a group from Campos Plaza attempted to jump her boyfriend, a resident of the Alfred E. Smith Houses. “At that moment they told me that Keith was a dead man, that Keith and my boyfriend were dead men.”

For Ms. Salgado, reliving the murder is a daily, and intensely emotional, experience. In recent months, she found a handwritten letter in her son’s backpack addressed “to anyone who cares,” in which the teen wrote that his mother was the only one who truly treated him with respect.

“I would be so devastated if they were to release him,” she said of the suspect.

Last month, at the Ninth Precinct Community Council’s annual awards ceremony, Detective Robert Ronne was recognized for his work interviewing the “numerous witnesses to the crime” and identifying Mr. Smith as the suspect.

Things looked pretty grim on Monday when the MTA told us it had “no sense of any timeline” for restoration of G and L train service. But lo and behold, G train service was up and running again this morning – granted, with “considerable delays due to ongoing work to repair damaged communications and signal equipment inside the Greenpoint tube under Newtown Creek,” according to the MTA. In addition, the F train is now running to Coney Island again.

As for the L train, a spokesman told The Local he still had no estimate on restoration of service. Asked whether it could resume today – as MTA chairman Joe Lhota told The Times might happen – he said “anything is possible.”

In the meantime, crews are hard at work checking signals in the Canarsie tunnel, as shown in footage released by the authority today. Watch the video above and you’ll see crews inspecting the third rail, looking for corrosion, and checking signals. You’ll also see that the tracks are looking a heck of a lot drier than they did earlier this week.

CREDIT

With another storm coming, you may want to print this one out.

On Monday night, at a seminar at Graffiti Community Ministries, about 100 people – including a man whose basement was flooded with ten feet of water – learned how to stave off mold.

“We’ve been here 26 years, and I’ve never had my basement flooded,” said Taylor Field, a pastor at the Baptist church on East Seventh Street, as he introduced Randy Creamer, an Atlanta-based contractor with Southern Baptist Convention Disaster Relief. Of course, that all changed last week.

Among locals who attended the seminar was Anne Edris, owner of East Village Bed & Coffee on Avenue C. She expressed concern about mold, and about her basement, which completely filled with water during Sandy. “Our basement is a mud pit,” said Ms. Edris, whose first floor was also submerged in eight inches of water.  She was grateful for the information, and asked the church for more help.

The next day, volunteers from the Disaster Relief group came by her bed and breakfast and told her mold was spreading, and that they could smell it.  The group doesn’t usually work with businesses, but since she also lives there, they agreed to “shovel mud” for free.

Here’s what do if your home gets flooded, per Mr. Creamer.

• Empty the flooded area of water, mud, and dirt.
• Clear out personal items. “If it was in the water, it was contaminated by the water,” Mr. Creamer said. Anything with foam in it, mattresses, cloth, material, and upholstery cannot be salvaged. Same with “electronics, computers, speakers, anything with a cord attached.”
• Remove the affected area of the wall, and the foot or two above it. “When you start taking your walls out, think rebuild – don’t put it back,” said Mr. Creamer. “If you had two-and-a-half feet of water, you’re going to need to take out four feet of your wall out.”
• Sweep, vacuum, and then power-wash the floor, and work downward to the basement.  Also use wet vacuums, mops, squeegees, and brooms to get rid of the water.
• Use fans and dehumidifiers for the drying process. Then disinfect the area, and allow it to dry again before repairs.

Other advice:

• Protect yourself with a disposable respirator such as N95, not a dust mask, and wear gloves and boots, both rubber if it’s wet.
• If necessary, use eye protection, goggles or safety glasses, as well as a hard hat.
• Avoid using only fans to dry out damaged walls after flooding, even though the water may have receded in a few hours. “The greatest risk and danger to you are the things you can’t see,” said Mr. Creamer.  Odors and coughing are the first indicators of a mold issue.
• Flooring, linoleum or vinyl will have to come up. “Once it warps it will buck and not go back into place,” he said.
• Use EPA-registered disinfectants like ShockWave. “What will not work is Clorox. We’ve stopped using bleach,” he said, “It does not work on porous surfaces.”
• The colder temperatures of fall are a bonus, since mold thrives in 60-degree heat with humidity.

Approximately 700 people from Mr. Creamer’s organization, some of whom are sleeping in their vehicles, are in affected areas of New York and New Jersey to help out. Monday’s lecture will be repeated this week on Staten Island and Long Island.

Scott Lynch

Good morning, East Village.

As if you couldn’t tell by the fireworks last night, Barack Obama was reelected president. U.S. Representatives Nydia Velazquez and Carolyn B. Maloney were also reelected, in the 7th, and 12th districts, respectively. Brian Kavanagh won his uncontested bid for State Assemblyman in District 74, and Brad Hoylman, also uncontested, is the new State Senator in District 27. [NY 1]

Yesterday, in the morning and then again during our liveblog, we noted long waits at East Village polling sites; the same was true throughout the city. [NY Post]

“Assemblyman Brian Kavanagh, a Manhattan Democrat, said he thought the complications caused by the storm had reverberated throughout the election system, exacerbating longstanding problems. He said that at a poll site in his district, two poll workers had gotten into a fight when the polls opened and had to be sent home and replaced.” [NY Times]

But things went smoothly in the Lower East Side, considering. [NY City Lens] Read more…