Suzanne Rozdeba

The young man who was shot in the leg at Campos Plaza has come forward to identify himself and to describe the horror of being stalked by a gunman in the early hours of Monday morning.

David Cruz, 24, told The Local that he and a friend were walking back to his apartment on East 13th Street, between Avenues B and C, shortly after midnight when he noticed “a navy blue or black car creeping,” and then saw it double parked. “We looked towards the car, and I noticed somebody jump out the car with an all-black hoodie on, covering his face,” he said.

The man quickly approached. “He started to run towards me and my friend. We ran towards East 12th Street, when he shot the first fire at me. My friend proceeded to run towards the basketball court and I proceeded to run towards the 635 East 12th Street tunnel when he shot the second fire that hit me.” The shooter wordlessly fired another two or three rounds that missed their target, said Mr. Cruz.

“When I got shot, it went in through the back of my thigh, and the bullet left the front of my thigh,” he said. “It was half an inch away from my artery and about an inch away from the main bone on my thigh.” Read more…

When we last checked on the status of Andrew Carmellini’s hotly anticipated mezzanine lounge at the Public Theater, the chef was hoping to open in time for the theater’s re-dedication ceremony this Thursday. The opening date has now been set for next Tuesday, Oct. 9, as designer David Rockwell finishes the job.

To tide you over til then, we’ve scored the lounge’s menu. Created by Mr. Carmellini with the help of Michael Oliver (who has worked under him at Cafe Boulud and Locanda Verde), mixologist Tiffany Short, and beverage director Josh Nadel (also of Locanda as well as Mr. Carmellini’s other restaurant, The Dutch), it will be available at both The Library and Joe’s Pub from 5:30 p.m. to midnight, after which a late-night menu will be served until 2 a.m.

Mr. Carmellini and the team at Joe’s Pub will also be operating a full-service lobby bar where snacks, cheese plates, cookies, cupcakes, Stumptown coffee, wine on tap, and seasonal punches will be served.

The Library at the Public is now accepting reservations at 212-539-8777. The menu…

Courtesy Scott Kenemore What passes for fun in the Midwest.

We have 7-Eleven stores here in Chicago, thank you very much.

I was supposed to come to New York this month to give a reading from my new novel about a zombie attack on the Windy City. I bought myself a plane ticket (not that expensive on JetBlue, but still) and was all but eagerly clutching it in anticipation. (If you’re not from the Midwest, you might not have a sense of how excited I was: a reading in the East Village, in a cool bar, and as part of the Guerrilla Lit Reading Series was something to look forward to.)

But then the venue — Bar on A — was closed, reportedly to make way for a new 7-Eleven. This development was was harder to swallow than a KZ3™ Battle Fuel Slurpee.

When you’re a writer living in Chicago, you think of New York City as “headquarters.” It’s where your agent and publisher are, where important stuff happens, and where you occasionally get to go for meetings or readings or whatever. It’s fun and cool and inspiring, and filled with interesting things. It’s awesome for writers in ways the metropolis of the Midwest is often not.

Being a writer in Chicago can feel like trying to meet women at a party thrown by a church. I am not the first person to have observed this. In “Chicago: City on the Make,” Nelson Algren bemoans “a city whose pleasures are so chaste” and laments the “hipless biddies entitling themselves ‘Friends of Literature’” who stand ever-ready to throw a stuffy daytime function where the punch is non-alcoholic and the conversation is polite.

Writers don’t want this.

Writers want to go to places like the East Village and womanize and get drunk and meet interesting, daring, wonderful, terrible people. Read more…

Suzanne Rozdeba Eva Audit.

First Avenue Pierogi & Deli reopened yesterday with a new look and a new owner.

Eva Audit, 31, has taken over the family business from her mother, Wieslawa Kurowycky, 70, who opened the shop in 1985. “I grew up in this store. I worked here in the summers and I know how to make everything,” Ms. Audit, an East Village resident, told The Local. “I don’t have a cooking background, but I do have a big Polish eating background,” she laughed. Her uncle owns Kurowycky Meat Products down the street.

The deli was closed for two months while the owner installed new floors, a small counter that will soon have stools, and a new awning. That last change perturbed some regulars, said Ms. Audit. “We had a really old sign out there, but we didn’t want to throw it out,” she said. “We’re going to refinish it and hang it inside.” Read more…

“I believe our food is the best in this neighborhood because I know that quality best,” said Aidin Zekirovski of the Italian-French dishes he’ll serve at Entrez Bar & Grill when it opens in the former Pomodoro Pizzeria space tomorrow.

It’s a bold claim, but the restaurateur – who recently moved here from Copenhagen, Denmark, where he owns an Italian restaurant, Sdessanos – said he and his business partners conducted three months of market research before deciding to settle in the East Village.

Mr. Zekirovski’s online questionnaires and on-the-street interviews with neighborhood residents revealed that East Villagers were looking for “healthy and affordable” dishes in a casual setting. “We found out people who live in the neighborhood, most of which are students, they require and want something like this,” he said. “Somewhere they can hang out and socialize.” Read more…

Bev Grant Kathie Sarachild with photo of Shulamith Firestone.

Acquaintances of Shulamith Firestone want the rent-stabilized apartment where the author and activist died this summer to be preserved as a residence for a low-income feminist, according to a petition obtained by The Local.

The petition, which can be read below, outlines a plan to earmark her fifth-floor walk-up at 213 East 10th Street for tenants doing “important” feminist work, who cannot afford current market rates in the rapidly gentrifying East Village. The rent would be no more than $1,000 a month.

Women’s liberation stalwarts like Kate Millett along with East Village literary agent Frances Goldin and Annette Averette, co-director of Sixth Street Community Center, are among those who have signed the petition directed at landlord Robert Perl, owner of Tower Brokerage.

Written by Fran Luck, executive director of the WBAI radio program “Joy of Resistance: Multi-Cultural Feminist Radio,” it notes that owners and developers of housing in formerly working-class neighborhoods have for decades “set aside” affordable rentals. Ms. Firestone paid about $400 a month, according to Mr. Perl, who said he had been planning to increase the rent of the next tenant in order to offset rising taxes imposed by the Bloomberg administration. A one-bedroom in the building, between First and Second Avenues, was recently leased for $2,095, according to StreetEasy. Read more…

Sasha Van Olderhausen

Good morning, East Village.

A tipster notes that a 99-cent store has opened in the ground floor of the tony Copper Building at Avenue B and East 13th Street, where the penthouse suite went for over $1.8 million.

A Fine Blog wonders how tall Karl Fischer’s building at 84 Third Avenue will be: “That cannot be the correct rendering as it depicts a 13 story building, not the 9 story building approved for the site according to DOB records.”

The Post notes that Raul Barrera’s police confession was heard in court for the first time. The paper also reprints a transcript of Mr. Barrera admitted to killing his girlfriend in her Lower East Side apartment. Read more…

Daniel Maurer Police vehicles at Campos Plaza last night.

The gunshots that rang out near the corner of Third Avenue and East Ninth Street last night followed a dispute at The Central Bar, The Local has learned. That altercation ultimately led to an early-morning shooting in Alphabet City that sent a man to the hospital, according to residents of Campos Plaza.

A source who reviewed Central Bar’s security tapes, but who did not want to be named, said the fight broke out at last night’s “Rock Da Blok” competition, staged by a longtime bouncer at the East Ninth Street sports pub. According to the source, there were about 30 to 40 people in the bar’s upstairs events space when a fight broke out around 10:40 p.m. “The fight lasted about a minute. I didn’t see anyone with a gun or anything like that,” he said. “The bouncers came in, broke it up, and the guys were thrown out. There were three or four people involved and it broke up quickly. I didn’t see anyone getting very badly hurt.”

Barry Feeney, a manager at Central Bar, told The Local that the organizer of the event was a “good guy and works hard.” He said, “One of my employees asked if he could use the upstairs for an open mic. There were 20 people there, mostly his friends, hanging out and singing at six, seven o’clock in the evening.”

After the men were ejected, shots were reported near the corner of East Ninth Street and Third Avenue. The bar was closed “as soon as there were cops on the corner,” said Mr. Feeney. “We were advised to shut everything down.” Read more…

SchoolBook

The city released its annual school Progress Reports today and SchoolBook has conveniently mapped out the results, with green dots indicating improvement and red dots indicating a lower grade. A quick glance at letter grades for East Village and Lower East Side schools revealed that 16 of them held steady, 5 of them dropped a letter grade from last year, and 10 of them showed improvement, with P.S. 34 Franklin D. Roosevelt and P.S. 137 John L. Bernstein being the only ones that improved beyond just one letter grade (from C to A and from F to C, respectively).

According to SchoolBook, the progress reports are based on “student progress (60 percent), student performance (25 percent) and school environment (15 percent). Environment includes student attendance, as well as feedback from parents, students, and teachers about their schools.” The site also explains that “75 percent of a school’s score comes from comparing it to a ‘peer group’ of about 40 other schools with similar demographics. The remaining 25 percent is based on a comparison with all schools citywide serving the same grades.” Here, now, are this year’s results.

BETTER (from best 2012 grades to worst)
TOMPKINS SQUARE MIDDLE SCHOOL
600 East 6th Street
2010-11 Grade: B
2011-12 Grade: A

P.S. 034 FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
730 East 12th Street
2010-11 Grade: C
2011-12 Grade: A Read more…

Alexa Mae Asperin

Here’s your latest look at the east wall of the school building on East 12th Street that was evacuated last week due to structural damage.

Several rows of bricks have been dismantled, but a construction worker told The Local that it would be another two weeks until the wall, which had started separating from the building, is demolished. Construction of the new wall will begin immediately thereafter and is expected to be completed in a month. That’s a bit longer than the three-to-four-week estimate that the Department of Education gave The Local on Friday.

Today a Department of Education spokeswoman said the condition of the remaining walls is still being investigated.

After a brief stint at P.S. 19, students of East Side Community Middle School reported to 8 Henry Street today for their first day of being co-located with students of P.S. 1 Alfred E. Smith. According to a parent-run Website, they will have their own floor in the school building, and a separate entrance. Read more…

Daniel Maurer

Susan Stetzer may have her detractors (it’s still uncertain who posted flyers last month assailing her as an “unelected meddler” and “assassin of New York’s creativity”), but she also has her admirers, including the personnel committee of Community Board 3, whose August resolution asking that she receive a $1,500 “discretionary” raise was approved by the full board during its meeting last week.

As district manager, Ms. Stetzer is not a voting member of the board, but the resolution noted that she is “on call 24 hours, seven days a week,” and added that the proposed increase in her $71,000 annual salary was “not representative” of her “high level of performance.”

Reached for comment, Ms. Stetzer said the money for her raise would come out of her “very small” operating budget and that she had asked for that amount when appearing before the personnel committee. “We couldn’t afford more,” she added. “However, this was a month ago. Since that time we have received a proposed very large cut and all raises are on hold. So the vote (by board) was amended to be implemented when we are fully funded.” Read more…

Sasha Von OldershausenThe shoot at 7B.

A couple of blocks from where a real-deal crime occurred in the wee hours of the morning, a make-believe one was filmed for CBS’s forthcoming series “Golden Boy.”

The crime drama was shooting at Percy’s Tavern on the corner of Avenue A and East 13th Street this morning, with equipment being stored at the landmarked St. Nicholas of Myra Orthodox Church a few blocks down on the corner of East 10th Street. In the scene shown here, an actor dressed as a busboy runs out of the restaurant only to be thrown against the hood of a car, tossed to the sidewalk (actually a cushy faux-cement mat), and cuffed by a comely detective.

Just another day in the hood?

Update | 1:50 p.m. The Local also spotted a crew outside of (you guessed it!) 7B, which was rechristened Lehane’s Tavern for the shoot.

Daniel Maurer

Good morning, East Village.

In case you missed The Local’s report earlier this morning, a man was shot in the leg near Avenue C and 12th Street around 12:20 a.m. The shooting occurred hours after gunshots were heard near Ninth Street and Third Avenue. We hope to have more on this later today.

Also published over the weekend: The Local discovered that Alphabet City-based lawyer Stanley Cohen gave a speech to none other than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during the Iranian president’s trip to New York last week.

On Saturday, we spotted new signage for the East 10th Street Historic District at the corner of Avenue A and East 10th Street. You can see it above. Read more…

Daniel Maurer Police vehicles at the corner of Avenue C and East 12th.

A man was shot in the leg around 12:20 a.m. this morning near the corner of East 11th Street and Avenue C, the police said. He was taken to Beth Israel Hospital in stable condition and was not thought likely to die.

The police couldn’t confirm the victim’s age or the circumstances of the shooting, and said that no arrests were made.

Though a police spokesperson said the shooting occurred near East 11th Street, investigators were seen early this morning at the corner of East 12th Street and Avenue C, outside of Campos Plaza I. A section of the public housing complex’s courtyard was taped off.

The shooting came a few hours after police received a report of shots fired at 115 East Ninth Street, near Third Avenue. Read more…

Melvin Felix

Stanley Cohen has had a busy week.

Not only is he defending Mona Eltahawy, the commentator arrested Tuesday after defacing a provocative pro-Israel poster, but the Alphabet City-based lawyer spoke his mind about U.S.-Iranian relations to none other than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, The Local has learned.

Asked if it might have been unwise to meet with the oft-condemned Iranian president and other government officials during a time of heightened international tension – and on the eve of Yom Kippur, no less – Mr. Cohen said, “I don’t worry about crossing lines.”

That’s evident from his client list, which includes members of the hacker group Anonymous and Occupy Wall Street as well as alleged terrorists. His latest cause, Ms. Eltahawy, an Egyptian-American columnist, faces misdemeanor graffiti charges after spray-painting an anti-jihad ad in the Times Square subway station – an act that Mr. Cohen told the Daily News was an exercise in free speech.

On the day Ms. Eltahawy was arrested, Mr. Cohen was making some bold statements of his own: he was among a handful of U.S.-based speakers invited to the midtown hotel where Mr. Ahmadinejad was staying to share their views of the Middle East with the Iranian president. Also in attendance were Iran’s Foreign Minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, and its Ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammad Khazaee. Read more…

Suzanne Rozdeba

First Sidewalk Cafe, and now another neighborhood joint has ditched 24/7 service.

Yesterday, The Local spotted a “SORRY!” sign on the door of B.A.D. Burger indicating it will no longer be open around-the-clock Monday through Thursday. The new weekday hours: 11 a.m. to 5 a.m.

“The neighborhood doesn’t rock the way it used to,” explained Perry “Pee Wee” Masco, who opened the burger joint with her brother, Keith, last November. “Business in the summer was difficult. We would go four or five hours without an order. Between staff and electricity, it was hard.”

For now, they’ll stay open 24-hours only on weekends, with the hope of going back to 24/7 service if business picks up.  

Meanwhile, on the other side of Houston Street, Bowery Diner hasn’t found around-the-clock service to be a challenge, according to owner Mathieu Palombino. Read more…

Courtesy of New York Shakespeare Exchange Rehearsals for “Island.”

A luckless, drenched, and thoroughly confused batch of modern folks is shipwrecked on an obscure isle populated by loonies who think they’re living in a Shakespeare play and speak and behave accordingly. The setup is a stretch, but you won’t mind that while enjoying “Island: or, To Be or Not To Be.” Directed by Ross Williams and produced by the New York Shakespeare Exchange, this fun-filled result of a well-publicized Kickstarter campaign is now playing at the Connelly Theater.

Plot-wise, all the Bard’s heavy hitters are in the rotation: evil brothers, murdered fathers, gals disguised as lads, separated twins (plus a pair of very un-separated ones for good measure), best bros in love with the same babe, malapropistic cops, psychedelic witches, and everybody neatly paired off at the buzzer.

Female lead Katelin Wilcox as the shipwrecked Julia is endearingly believable as the starry-eyed romantic who grows accustomed to the island’s zany magic – thanks largely to the torch she carries for the dreamy “Prince” Palamon (Brad Lewandowski). The exasperated attempts of her cynical brunette bestie K (Evelyn Spahr) to snap her out of it provide some of the best laughs. Read more…

The New York City Housing Authority signed an agreement with the City Council Wednesday to provide quarterly updates about how it spends taxpayer money. According to the Daily News, the agreement, acquired by The Local, requires N.Y.C.H.A. to issue regular reports about projects that use council funding, starting no later than Jan. 15. State Senator Daniel Squadron, who last week helped issue a report decrying a lack of safety in the Housing Authority’s East Village and Lower East Side buildings, told The Local the move was a “good step forward,” adding, “I hope N.Y.C.H.A. will also make real-time data on the installation of security cameras available to the public on its website.”