Time for some more fun at the run. Here’s this week’s dog-run duo.
Nicole Guzzardi
Nicole GuzzardiGus jumps the fence.
The Master: Joanie Koveleskie, 40, visits the dog run every day with her “life-saver.” Before him, she was a self-proclaimed loner who rarely left her East Village apartment. At the park, she’s made many a friend, both human and canine.
Pet Tricks: Rather than getting fur all over the house, Ms. Koveleskie brushes her dog at the park. He spreads out on the ground and lets her go to town, no problem.
The Dog: Augustus Gloop, a 15-month-old Siberian Husky, is also known as Gus. He loves to chase his two cat siblings around the house, just for fun. “I have to tell him sometimes, ‘Leave your brother and sister alone,’” Ms. Koveleskie said. Read more…
Scott Lynch photographed the latest mural on the side of the Ideal Glass building. For more of Felix Morelo’s “Mad Supper,” see The Local’s Flickr pool.
The office of Margaret Chin sent The Local a press release, reproduced on The Lo-Down, announcing that the City Council Subcommittee on Planning, Dispositions and Concessions and the Committee on Land Use voted to approve the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area application. The Lo-Down has a rundown of concessions that were made – including additional housing and possibly a new school – in the Lower East Side development project’s latest iteration, as it heads toward a final City Council vote. DNA Info has more on the possibility of the school.
The organizers of the DayLife festival tell The Local that the annual street fair, this Sunday from noon to 6 p.m., will boast “over 35 vendors of food and fashion, a full line-up of top-tier DJs, and games such as Twister, badminton and urban croquet.” The event will take over Orchard Street, between East Houston and Delancey Streets. More details here.
Off the Grid reports that “Board of Standards and Appeals recently decided in favor of developers seeking to build rooftop additions at 329-335 East 9th Street and to allow illegally built additions to remain at 514-516 East 6th Street.” You can read the backstory on The Local.
Pat Ivers and Emily Armstrong continue sorting through their archives of punk-era concert footage as it’s digitized for the Downtown Collection at N.Y.U.’s Fales Library. In this edition: the discovery of a lost Philip Glass recording.
Gary Reese
In 1687, Newton’s third law of motion explained that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. For punk rock, that reaction was the Artists Space 1978 music festival. With a line-up featuring the Contortions, DNA, Mars, and Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, it spawned the No Wave scene. The sound was atonal, abrasive and utterly new, combining elements of funk, jazz and just plain noise. As Lenny Kaye of the Patti Smith Group observed, “the edge that originally attracted people to punk rock, that splintered sound, was almost gone by the late ‘70s. No Wave kinda picked up the artistic banner.”
In 1980, the pendulum swung again for four of No Wave’s most influential musicians. Jody Harris, Donny Christensen and George Scott III were veterans of the Contortions and Pat Irwin had performed with George in 8-Eyed Spy with Lydia Lunch. They were done with moody lead singers and wanted to try another way. They formed The Raybeats. Read more…
One of the neighborhood’s iconic storefronts was marred last week when the cover of the “E” went mysteriously missing from Gem Spa’s sign. (Or maybe it’s an improvement? Those lights do look appropriately gem-like.)
An employee at the egg cream mecca on the corner of Second Avenue and St. Marks Place told The Local today, “The ‘E’ blew off last week in the wind. It just came off.” But rest assured, order will soon be restored. “We still have it,” said the worker, sliding the E, cracked in two places, out from its temporary home on top of a refrigerator in the back of the store.
And so, the E won’t be missing for nearly as long as the one over at Moishe’s Bake Shop. “It got a little cracked, but it’s O.K. We should have it up again by today.”
A Southern-grub joint on East Fourth Street will finally begin pouring whiskey on Monday – an accomplishment its owner said was “no small feat.”
The Cardinal has been serving beer and wine since it opened last August – something owner Curtis Brown perceives as a handicap. When customers find out the restaurant doesn’t serve hard stuff, they often go elsewhere. “For brunch people just say, ‘Oh, you don’t have booze? Oh sorry, we really wanted a Bloody Mary,’” he said.
Now the restaurant will begin serving “a nice Bloody Mary,” in addition to specialty cocktails that will likely contain infused and small-batch liquors as well as ingredients made in-house (the onions will be hand-pickled and the Marsciano cherries will also be made on-site).
The road to a liquor license was a rocky one, due to the community board’s resolution against supporting license applications on side streets, said Mr. Brown. Read more…
For every East Village business that’s opening or closing, dozens are quietly making it. Here’s one of them: Shape of Lies.
Shira Levine
Collage artist and jewelry designer Peggy Yunque has been living and working at 127 East Seventh Street with her husband, a sculptor and filmmaker, for almost 33 years. That means when customers walk into her shop, Shape of Lies, during its fairly limited hours (Thursday and Friday, 3 p.m. to 8 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday, noon to 8 p.m.) they’re standing in her living room. That card table tucked behind a display case? It’s actually their dinner table.
“People in the neighborhood know we live there, so if they have a gift emergency and the gate is down, or the lights are off, they knock,” Ms. Yunque told The Local. “I think we might be one of the only stores in the neighborhood living where we work. It’s sad how much things like that have changed in the city.” Ms. Yunque pulled out the table, some grapefruit juice from the fridge, and we sat by her fireplace surrounded by a dozen collections of locally made accessories and talked about how she ended up “breaking even since 1979.”
Q.
What exactly is The Shape of Lies?
A.
We are a studio, a workshop and a shop. We only carry designers who produce their products in New York. That’s different from just carrying local designers. Many local designers produce their work in China or Thailand. We don’t do that. We use only the casters, sauterers, and finishers on 47th Street because we have so few of them left. Read more…
Workers continued removing bricks this morning from the wall of the school building at 420 East 12th Street. Today is the first day that students of the evacuated schools will be relocated uptown.
ArtsBeat notes that Anne Hathaway is doing a night at Joe’s Pub. It’ll be an “unforgettable celebration of the score of Cabaret, beloved as both a smash Broadway musical and Oscar-winning movie,” and she’ll be joined by special guests.
City Guide notes that the Bowery House’s “gorgeous landscaped roofgarden” will host a movie night, featuring Tim Burton’s “Batman,” tonight. Read more…
Suzanne RozdebaMargaret Hearn in the room where Josephine Ruta slept, and died.
Margaret Hearn pays just $291 per month to live in a sprawling, three-bedroom apartment on East 12th Street, surrounded by a dizzying clutter of church relics, purses, minks, and souvenir ashtrays that once belonged to the former tenants.
It’s one of two apartments Ms. Hearn keeps: for 20 years, she has also had a 300-square-foot alcove studio in Gramercy, where she pays $747 per month.
Before you get jealous of this enviable arrangement: Ms. Hearn claims she doesn’t live in the rent-stabilized Gramercy apartment. She has merely been keeping it as security. That’s because the landlord of her rent-controlled apartment in the East Village is attempting to evict her. In fact, she might just lose both apartments. Read more…
Check out the newly released video for “New York City,” off of Joey Ramone’s posthumous album “…Ya Know?” It starts with a stroll down 10th Street, from Avenue D to Third Avenue, rounds the corner at the St. Mark’s Bookshop, and heads all the way down the Bowery and eventually all the way up to Times Square and into Joey’s native borough of Queens. A slew of well-known New Yorkers make appearances, starting with Joey’s brother Mickey Leigh. At one point, Ramones drummer and producer Tommy Ramone pops up holding a “Joey Ramone Place” sign, as does celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain.
You’ll also spot Godlis, whose photos of the Ramones and St. Marks apartment have appeared on this site; Ed Stasium, producer of Ramones albums, and John Holmstrom, illustrator of their covers; Suzy Hotrod of Gotham Girls Roller Derby; actor-comedians Reggie Watts, Kristen Schaal, John Lutz, and Scott Adsit; and musicians Andrew W.K., Tim Harrington of Les Savy Fav, Jonathan Pierce of The Drums, Tish and Snooky Bellomo of the Stilletto Fads, J.P. Patterson and Andy Shernoff of the Dictators, Ricky Byrd of Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, Sonya Balchandani of the Big Sleep, Erick Arc Elliott of the Flatbush Zombies, and Matt and Kim.
The Pyramid Club and bygone after-hours Save the Robots also get shout-outs – and look out for a clay model of the Astor cube. Recognize anyone or anything else in the video? ID them in the comments.
Last night Havaar, a self-described “Iranian Initiative Against War, Sanctions and State Repression,” took the Illuminator out for a spin, projecting messages like “Peace = Freedom from state repression, foreign and domestic” on the side of a building at East 14th Street and Broadway. The group, which had earlier protested the Iranian government’s policies outside of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s hotel during his visit to the U.N. General Assembly, describes itself as a grassroots organization of Iranians, Iranian-Americans and allies (including Occupy Wall Street) opposing military action and U.S.-led sanctions against Iran.
The first New York Oyster Week, celebrating our city’s special history with the salty bivalve while examining preservation efforts, is upon us. Until Sat. 29, there’ll be “oyster-centric” events in and around the city. But these East Village oyster specials can be had year-round.
Mermaid Inn 96 Second Avenue, near Fifth Street; (212) 674-5870
At this neighborhood fixture, you can pledge allegiance to the East Coast or West Coast: Barcat oysters, from the east, are offered for $1 each while Chefs Creek oysters, from the west, are $1.75 each during the “Happy Hour and a Half”: Monday through Thursday from 5.30 p.m. to 7 p.m. and Friday through Sunday from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Desnuda – Winebar & Cevicheria 122 East Seventh Street, near Avenue A; (212) 254-3515
It’s happy days at the Bourgeois Pig’s dark and sexy sister bar, which serves Beau Soleil oysters on the half shell with ginger shallot, relish and chipotle mignonette, Sunday from 2 p.m. to midnight and Monday 6 p.m. to midnight. Order a glass of wine from their selection of South American varieties and you can get a dozen oysters for $1 each. Read more…
Jim Power sends over the above photo of his tilework at the Economakis home on East Third Street. According to the Mosaic Man’s Website, “The owners of the building, Alistair and Catherine Economakis, commissioned Jim to build the decorative mosaics after they saw his work at The Bean next door. Alistair actually assisted with the design and Jim used some of the leftover marble tile that remained following the Economakis’s gut renovation of the building.”
The Times reports that eleven groups are suing the city over N.Y.U.’s expansion plans, having filed a lawsuit that “accuses government decision makers, including both the City Planning Commission and the City Council, of illegally turning over public land to facilitate the university’s plans. It also claims that the approval process lacked transparency and denied the public a chance for meaningful input.”
The Observer profiles Robert “Toshi” Chan, who went from operating controversial rentals on Airbnb.com to going legit on First Avenue: “The East Village Hotel is a self-service, apartment-style vacation rental at 147 First Avenue, on the corner of East Ninth Street. There are no concierges; guests check in via iPad. Rooms are small—280 square feet each—but there is a kitchen, and more importantly, they go for only $289 a night.”
Interior shots: Alexa Mae Asperin. Food shots: Zandy Mangold.
“I’m sick of everyone doing pork belly,” says Leah Cohen, the former Centro Vinoteca chef best known as a contestant on “Top Chef.”
That’s why, at her new Clinton Street restaurant, she’s staying away from it. “We eventually want to do pork brains, ears and just everything,” she said.
Pig and Khao, her project with the Fatty Crew Hospitality Partners (Fatty Crab, Fatty ‘Cue) opened for dinner tonight, with a Thai-Filipino menu (below) inspired by the year Ms. Cohen, whose mother is Filipino, spent in Asia.
“Most of the cuisine that I had when I was traveling in Asia, like in Thailand or in the Philippines, the main staples were pork and rice,” said Ms. Cohen. At Pig and Khao (“khao” means “rice” in Thai), she’ll be braising, air drying and frying pork cuts such as head, face, butt and leg – with Thai accents of cilantro, lemongrass, basil and mint. Read more…
Now the trend moves over to Avenue B. Manny Haimovich, the owner of 15 Avenue B, told The Local today that the building on the corner of Second Street will be home to a dessert shop.
He wouldn’t give up the goods as to what exactly will be served, but said ice cream will be on the menu and it will be the first of its kind to hit the area. Dessert lovers can expect a grand opening in the next two months.
After yesterday’s evacuation, the building on 12th Street that holds East Side Community High School and Girls Prep Lower East Side Middle School remains deserted, and it may stay that way for a while.
Today a general contractor at the site, who did not want to be named, told The Local that the building would most likely be off limits for at least a month as workers repair a wall that separated from the rest of the structure.
East Side students spent the day at P.S. 19, Asher Levy School, around the corner on First Avenue, and Girls Prep students were relocated to Lower East Side Elementary School on East Houston Street. But starting Thursday, they’ll have to travel farther to get to classes. Read more…
As noted yesterday, the inaugural NYC’s New Music Festival will see over 130 acts across 24 stages around the East and West Village. The performers are coming in from all over the country, but a few, like folk-rock musician Ramzi Khoury, are based in the East Village.
Mr. Khoury, 33, grew up in California – playing trumpet in elementary school and picking up guitar in high school – and came to the East Village because, he said, “it’s got a lot of good arts and music.” His debut album was “Color”; a subsequent EP, “Champagne and Cigarettes,” yielded the above video, for the song “2nd Avenue,” in which an actor is jerked around the East Village at the whim of Google maps (and you thought the iPhone 5’s maps were maddening). The Local spoke to the musician in Unions Square Park.
Q.
Do you have a day job?
A.
For the longest time I didn’t, but six months ago I started working for a technology company. Does it interfere with my music? More so than I thought it would. But I do play my guitar every night when I get home. Read more…
The Daily News reports that Raul Barrera pleaded guilty to stabbing his girlfriend to death during an argument in their Clinton Street apartment last year.
In much happier couples news, DNA Info has the story of a local man who popped the question at a “really special” coffee shop. “Eighteen months to the day after meeting his girlfriend on a blind date at popular East Village java joint the Mudspot Café, Daniel Chan returned to the East Ninth Street coffee shop to pop the question to her Sunday morning.”
And still more romance: City Room brings a happy tale from the infamous “pepper-spray cop” incident at Occupy Wall Street. “Kaylee Dedrick, Inspector Bologna’s co-star in a viral video in which he wields his lachrymatory canister, is about to have a baby with the fellow protester who came to her aid.” Read more…
While other hip-hop open mics have come and gone, Freestyle Mondays has been one of the scene’s staples for over a decade. Launched in 2002 at the now defunct Sin Sin, its doors were open to any rapper who wanted to grab the mic and perform, with a live band supplying the beats. When the club closed in 2010, the party migrated to Bar 13 and then to 116 MacDougal Street, until noise complaints resulted once again in the search for a new venue. Tonight, Freestyle Mondays returns to the East Village with an inaugural 16-MC battle at Ella Lounge at 9 Avenue A.
We spoke to co-host Corey Lima, better known as iLLspokinn, about coming back to the neighborhood, the challenges of having a weekly hip-hop event in New York City and new plans to broadcast online in high definition.
Q.
How does it feel to return to the East Village where Freestyle Mondays started?
A.
It’s kind of nostalgic to get off on the same train to hit Freestyle Mondays again. I used to live in the East Village, so I’m hoping it brings out my East Village friends who just like to walk up the stairs or down the street. Read more…
Class was dismissed early today at East Side Community High School and Girls Prep Lower East Side Middle School due to structural issues with the school building.
The schools, co-located at 420 East 12th Street, were evacuated, and entrances on East 11th and 12th Streets were cordoned off by police tape.
Marge Feinberg, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education, told The Local, “There was some structural damage to the school so we had to evacuate the building,” adding, “We saw that the east wall was separating from the building.” Read more…
The Local was a journalistic collaboration designed to reflect the richness of the East Village, report on its issues and concerns, give voice to its people and create a space for our neighbors to tell stories about themselves. It was operated by the students and faculty of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University, in collaboration with The New York Times, which provides supervision to ensure that the blog remains impartial, reporting-based, thorough and rooted in Times standards.
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Nicole Guzzardi
Nicole Guzzardi Gus jumps the fence.
