Daniel Maurer The old and new homes of Village Dream

There’s a lot of action on St. Marks Place today, and we’re not just talking about the incoming Han Joo.

First, our lunch plan was thwarted when we noticed Baoguette was closed, and looking rather emptied out. Michael “Bao” Huynh confirmed to Eater today that he has shuttered the Vietnamese sandwich shop’s location at 37 St. Marks Place.

Daniel Maurer Interior of Baoguette.

Down the block, piercing and tattoo parlor Village Dream is moving from its current cubbyhole at 3 St. Marks Place to 128 Second Avenue, where the Village II smoke shop got new signage today. In the next week or so, Village II will officially reopen as Village Dream, with less tobacco accessories and a new focus on piercing and tattoos. Giesh Heidel, who is a partner in both stores, said he was moving because his lease was up after seven years and his partner planned to move the gem shop adjacent to Village Dream into the space at 3 St. Marks Place. The gem shop’s space, meanwhile, will soon be home to what Mr. Heidel thought would be an Asian food joint. Read more…

The Big Gay Ice Cream Shop is taking a day off after a fun-filled weekend: Stephen Merritt played a few songs during the shop’s anniversary party yesterday (as you can see in video posted by co-owner Doug Quint, the Magnetic Fields frontman was backed by an advertisement for the ice cream shop’s cookbook, out in spring of 2014). A sign on the shop’s roll-down gate explains the temporary closure: “We have a big staff meeting, a major store cleaning, and then a staff karaoke party.”

Daniel Maurer

Susan Stetzer woke up to an unpleasant surprise this morning – the “Wanted” flyers you see here were posted all along her walk from home to her office on East Fourth Street, where she is district manager of a community board that has become entangled in many a controversial bid for a liquor license.

Ms. Stetzer told The Local it could’ve been one of those hearings that drove someone, whose identity is unknown, to post the flyers. “Most of the complaints that come into the office are liquor license related,” she said. “C.B. 3 has more than any other community board and I don’t know of any other issues that people are so upset about.”

Ms. Stetzer said her building’s superintendent took down some of the postings describing her as an “unelected meddler” and an “assassin of New York’s creativity,” as did workers near the community board’s offices on East Fourth Street between Bowery and Second Avenue (The Local spotted the flyer shown here on Second Avenue). She said she didn’t care to try to ascertain the identity of the poster. “It’s someone who obviously has some problems and issues and they’re dealing with it personally and in a very destructive manner instead of seeing how it can be resolved in constructive manner,” she said.

It’s curious that Ms. Stetzer has been singled out as Public Enemy #1. As she pointed out, she doesn’t vote on community board issues. “I implement board policies and I’m the person who gives information about relevant legal issues,” she said. “I don’t vote. I don’t give suggestions on how people should vote – what I do is maybe bring up zoning issues and that sort of thing.” Read more…

Joann Jovinelly Spotted at East 13th Street and Avenue B.

Good morning, East Village.

NY1 takes a closer look inside the two new restaurants next door to each other on Extra Place that share the same owner but completely different concepts. “I found the space, we designed the layout and then the space next door became available, and I thought ‘why not make it two restaurants in one,'” the owner, Amadeus Bogner, said. So now Mr. Bogner is managing a restaurant serving traditional Turkish street food, as well as a Swiss fondue joint.

Speaking of restaurants, The Times chatted with two customers at Upstate and gave a shout-out to the beer-and-oysters spot’s happy hour deal.

Eater notes that a pizzeria dubbed “Famous Artichoke Pizza” in Hoboken eliminated the “Artichoke” from its name. The owner of the original Artichoke Pizza was none too happy about the imitator. Read more…

Daniel Maurer

As promised yesterday, here’s a look at the near-complete Grace Jones mural going up just a block away from Joe Strummer, on St. Marks Place near Avenue A. Looks like it’s already time to make plans for October, but before that, we’re going to enjoy one last weekend of summer. Barring any breaking news, we’ll see you back here Tuesday. Have a great Labor Day weekend, East Village.

Noah Fecks

Can we tell you about a couple of completely insane additions to the menu?

Daniel Maurer Cheesesteak on a bagel

First off, Tompkins Square Bagels is running a “Philly cheesesteak on a bagel” special today. As impressive as it looks (at right), it’s to be expected of the place that brought you the infamous bagel burger. What really blows are minds and will probably pop our buttons is this: L’asso EV, itself no stranger to experimental bagels, is adding a trio of Chicago-style deep-dish pizzas to its menu, and one of them, called the Big Muff, is the pizza version of that New Orleans meat monster, the muffuletta.

We happen to have a soft spot for the muffuletta, and apparently so does L’asso’s owner Robert Benevenga, who after his last trip to N’awlins, came up with the idea of a pizza version of the sandwich. Of course, New Orleans-inspired pizza is nothing new (Two Boots, anyone?) but this is really something special: a two-inch pie formed in a buttered deep-dish pan in the following calorific manner: layers of soppressata, caciocavallo cheese, mortadella, and capicola are covered by a bed of mozzarella and then a slathering of the obligatory giardiniera, consisting of pickled olives, carrots, celery, red onions, cauliflower florets and peppers. The process is repeated all over again and then – “to add color,” says chef Joseph Lee – the pie is topped off with yet more mortadella.

The Big Muff, $16, debuts at L’asso EV on Tuesday along with a deep-dish meatball pie. You can see that one in The Local’s Flickr pool.

Shortly after Labor Day, Alan Teigman will close Teigman Press, the print shop that four generations of his family has operated over the course of 101 years. In early August he let go of his only employee, his son, who after an extended apprenticeship had decided to return to school for an accounting degree.

In the 1970s and ’80s, when Mr. Teigman was the apprentice and his uncle ran the shop, the business flourished by printing brochures and charts for the fur industry. As fur became less fashionable and printers became more affordable, customer demand dwindled. Lately Mr. Teigman, a part-owner of the building in which his press is located, had taken on whatever business he could get, including local pizzeria menus and bargain boxes of business cards.

In the end, he decided it would be more lucrative to lease the bottom floor and basement to “fancy Bushwick restaurateurs.” Paperwork filed with Community Board 3 and spotted by Bowery Boogie indicates those restaurateurs will be Jessica Lee Wertz and Ted Mann, owners of Lone Wolf bar. Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown

Stephen Rex Brown

Today construction workers were installing a new awning above the entrance of 46 Cooper Square, which will welcome the Grace Church School’s inaugural class of high school students next week. According to the school’s Web site, 59 students will be in the first ninth grade class. In four years, the school hopes to have maxed out enrollment with 320 students. Next year, the school will expand into the adjacent Village Voice building when the alt-weekly’s lease expires.

Daniel Maurer

Daniel Maurer The truck has a skylight, swinging front doors,
and a sliding brick wall.

Last night a moving truck pulled up in front of Pinkberry on St. Marks Place and put its blinkers on. But it wasn’t there to unload Ikea furniture: this was a pop-up art gallery. Or, more accurately, a pull-up gallery.

In 2008, Adeel Usman, a onetime aspiring actor who bears a striking resemblance to Aziz Ansari, and John Herbert Wright, his friend since high school, made yet another unsuccessful bid to get Mr. Wright’s artwork placed in a Chelsea gallery. While they grabbed lunch at a nearby taco truck, they had the idea of building an art gallery of their own – one that, unlike their Harlem studio, could rove around the city like a food truck.

They acquired a Moishe’s moving van that was bound for the junkyard and, without knowing much about construction, installed plexiglass windows on its sides and roof, plus sliding and swinging doors. Last summer, the project they call 83rd Anomally was born. Read more…

Scott Lynch

Good morning, East Village.

Earlier this week, Gothamist featured a video of a nasty beating of a man in Union Square. The report yielded a flood of complaints about “Tyrone,” a tall man allegedly bullying Occupiers and homeless people in the park. He claims to be a member of the Crips, and has allegedly threatened to kill Matthew Silver, the goofball often dancing around Astor Place with underwear on his head. (There’s video of a confrontation between them, as well). Park advocates tell the site that Tyrone’s unchecked behavior is an example of neglect by the Parks Department.

Shulamith Firestone, a reclusive and influential feminist writer, died in her East Village apartment on Tuesday, apparently of natural causes, The Times reports. At 25 Ms. Firestone wrote “The Dialectic of Sex,” which “extended Marxist theories of class oppression to offer a radical analysis of the oppression of women, arguing that sexual inequity springs from the onus of childbearing, which devolves on women by pure biological happenstance.” Following the publication of the book, she withdrew from public life.

USA Today is a big fan of “Dirt Candy,” the comic-book cookbook that tells the story of the vegetarian restaurant on East Ninth Street. “If you’ve ever wondered what it’s really like to start a restaurant from scratch, Cohen doesn’t glaze over the details here: Shady contractors, piles of money and a temperamental staff factor in to Dirt Candy’s evolution.” Here’s a trailer for the book.
Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown

A mural of onetime Warhol muse Grace Jones has started going up on the side of Sushi Lounge, on St. Marks Place, just a block from Niagara’s Joe Strummer wall. We’ll show you the finished work when she’s ready.

The Lexus Project. An image posted on Facebook of Lexus Project staff with Star.

Here’s your hourly update on Star, the pit bull shot in the head by a police officer on 14th Street.

The miracle mutt is now in the care of the Lexus Project, which describes itself as “a law firm for dogs” that provides “legal defense on a case by case basis for dogs we believe are improperly or unfairly facing dangerous dog designations or euthanasia.” The organization, based in Kew Gardens, Queens, writes on Facebook that the dog, after losing an eye in surgery yesterday, is bound for a rehabilitation facility “where she can rest and be pampered on until she goes for her behavior assessment. From there, she will be placed into her forever home.”

That means that all the folks clamoring to bring the perseverant pooch into their homes need to hold off. Instead, the Lexus Project urges people to adopt another dog “on death row.” “If everyone of the people who contacted me adopted a dog on death row, there would be 60 — yes 60 — dogs alive at the end of today instead of a lonely and frightening death,” the organization wrote on Facebook. Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown A Department of Health worker drops rat poison into the sewer.

The rats might be returning to Tompkins Square Park (depending on who you ask) but don’t think the city is waving the white flag. While walking the beat today we came upon two health department employees dropping poison into a sewer grate at East Seventh Street and Avenue A. One of them confirmed that the bait was meant to thin the hordes of rodents that last year became a media sensation.

While Martin Scorsese’s upcoming project, “Wolf on Wall Street,” makes headlines, one of the director’s early classics, “Mean Streets,” is also back in the public eye, as it was finally released on Blu-ray last month.

The 1973 film was set mostly in the Little Italy (the gang’s seedy clubhouse was at 23 Cleveland Place), but it has its East Village moments, too: in one scene, a squeegee man annoys Charlie (Harvey Keitel) and Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro) while they’re stopped at Bowery and Bleecker Street. When the light turns, they glide past 310 Bowery, which was then Bowery Lumber Co. and is now Crime Scene Bar and Lounge.

As it turns out, another scene is tied to the neighborhood, as well. During a 25th anniversary screening at Film Forum in 1998, Scorsese revealed that the pool-hall brawl was based on an actual incident on Sixth Street and Second Avenue.

In this video of that talk – newly edited for The Local to include footage from the film – the director reveals that he and his star, Robert De Niro, first met when they were 16 years old, when Scorsese was growing up a stone’s throw from the East Village. Read more…

Daniel Maurer Load-in at Mary Help of Christians.

With one last mass set for next Sunday, Mary Help of Christians is being used for film fodder again. A crew member overseeing a load-in this morning wouldn’t reveal the project’s name because its producer wanted to keep a low profile, but she described it as a small independent endeavor. (Speaking of low profiles, there’s still no word on the identity of the party said to be buying the church: a call to an Archdiocese spokesperson this morning has not yet been returned.)

Meanwhile, around the corner on Avenue A, “Blood Bloods,” a USA Network crime drama starring Tom Selleck and Donnie Wahlberg, is filming today, according to a flyer spotted outside of Tompkins Square Bagels. The show is said to have contemplated a move to Toronto a couple of years ago but everyone knows you can’t get a good bagel burger in Hollywood North.

The latest two pitches to come in via The Local’s Virtual Assignment Desk are wonderfully high fallutin. Want to look to the future and attend a conference about integrating art and the Web? Or look to the past by experiencing a reenactment Emily Dickinson’s life? Ruckus NYC is coming on Sept. 29 and before that, on Sept. 15, NYC Lit Crawl once again brings a host of literary-minded events to bars (and laundromats!) across the East Village. See here for the full schedule (including a Philip K. “Dick-a-thon,” a poetry smackdown, literary trivia, and appearances by Molly Ringwold and Irvine Welsh) and see below for details about the time warp with Emily Dickinson.

Ruckus NYC comes to Cooper Union
Ruckus NYC (http://kck.st/PFds5F and http://ruckusnyc.tumblr.com/) is a one-day conference & concert about art & the internet happening on September 29th at Cooper Union. During the day working artists will present their art and their experiences building a career in the new digital economy. At night, there will be a show with over a dozen widely varying performances. Ruckus NYC is designed to help artists connect with audiences, and to build that audience.

Read more…

Daniel Maurer

STA Travel has followed Atlas Barber School in leaving the building at Third Avenue and East Ninth Street, across the street from the rising 51 Astor office tower.

An employee who did not want to give her name because she wasn’t authorized to speak for the travel agency said that its lease at 30 Third Avenue was up after about 10 years. It moved to a former Sprint PCS store at 722 Broadway, between Waverly and Washington Places, earlier this month.

“We generally target N.Y.U. students and we found it to be a good opportunity to be located a little closer to them,” said the employee, adding that 70 percent or more of the location’s business comes from students. Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown These two construction workers at 51 Astor Place put on a show yesterday that would make Philippe Petit proud.

Good morning, East Village.

Yesterday, two of the owners of CBGB sent along word that they had just returned from Russia, where they hand delivered a letter in support of the band Pussy Riot to the office of the prosecutor general in Moscow. Tim Hayes and Louise Parnassa Staley convened with the band’s family members, legal defense team and others, according to a press release. The letter, in support of the three women found guilty of hooliganism and sentenced to two years in prison, was signed by the likes of Roger Waters of Pink Floyd, Peter Gabriel, and Anthony Bourdain. “They are punks and CBGB felt a need to support punks in trouble,” Mr. Hayes wrote in an e-mail. “We spent very intense days with their families, lawyers and friends. The environment in Moscow is much more heated than we ever expected.” He added, “Pussy Riot is the most dangerous band in the world; without question. They are also the most important band in the world today.”

A reader complains to EV Grieve that the scaffolding beside Solas has turned into a raucous after-party zone. Earlier this month a neighbor of the nightclub ended up in handcuffs after taking pictures of a boozed up club-goer passed out on the street.

Bowery Boogie doesn’t seem too keen on couples taking wedding announcement photos in front of Aiko’s wall. Read more…

Animal Care and Control Star chews on a toy, undeterred by her missing eye.

The pit bull who took a bullet from a police officer on 14th Street and lived to tell the tale had surgery today to remove her left eye, as well as metal fragments still lodged in her skull.

“Star had suffered soft tissue, bone, head trauma, and eye damage as a result of her wounds,” said Richard Gentles, a spokesman for the city Animal Care and Control, which handled care for the dog, Star. “She suffered a significant degree of hearing loss, but her hearing is coming back and the vision in her right eye also seems to be improving.” Another photo…