Clip from “Million Dollar Menu”

The latest hip-hop act to bust out of the East Village didn’t come out of the Bowery Poetry Club, the Pyramid, or any of those other hallowed spots. Buckwheat Groats emerged from… McDonald’s?

The comedic rap duo’s “Million Dollar Menu” is a tribute to the decadent rap videos of the early 2000s: members Lil’ Dinky (a.k.a. “Def Janiels”) and Penis Bailey, who asked that their real names not be printed as a condition of an interview (they’re shy, see), traded the imagery of the mansions and yachts of yesteryear for something significantly more accessible to most viewers.

Shooting at McDonald’s locations all over the city, the two found some of the best footage emerging from the fast-food chain’s East Village locations. The outlandish, not-safe-for-work video kicks off with the duo striding into the McDonald’s on 14th Street.

“The East Village held it down for the Groats, and we appreciate that,” said Bailey. Read more…

Scott Lynch Inside the new Forbidden Planet.

The Post doesn’t just hate the new water cafe on East 10th Street. A pair of reporters got wind of an $18 entree at Northern Spy Food Co. that consists of carrots with wild spinach, freekeh, and almonds — and they are outraged. The pricey plate, like the water cafe, is a signal that New York’s dining scene is spiraling out of control, according to the paper. (“Even Bugs Bunny would balk.”) The restaurant doesn’t seem too concerned, though. “The fact that we’ve teed off the NY Post could stand as a point of pride,” it writes on Twitter.

By the way, The Voice joins The Post in criticizing the water cafe, calling it a “snake oil factory.”

DNAInfo reports that Bleecker Bob’s won’t be at its current location for much longer, as the landlord is actively dealing with potential tenants. “We’re letting them stay there until we get somebody, so it works for both of us,” the landlord said. “There’s no timeline, but they should be finished very shortly though.” Read more…

eBay

Mars Bar closed and all you can get is this lousy t-shirt.

It’s been a year (plus a couple of days) since the dive was shuttered, and the former regular who designed the “Marz Bar” shirts is selling the very last of them. “This building has been marked and stocked as a fallout shelter,” the t-shirt reads.

“I thought I had sold out of them last year but this one turned up in a box of records for some reason,” writes the designer (who goes by the name of Ecto-Glow) in an eBay listing, adding that he won’t be reprinting the shirt. The size-small is going for $25 and at the time of posting, a little over 4 and a half hours were left on the auction.

In an earlier blog post, the shirt’s designer, who says he grew up on Lafayette Street, explained that he first designed a “DEFEND MARZ BAR” shirt because “everyone wanted a shirt, including me. I asked someone to ask Hank [Penza, the owner] for me and he was cool with it so the first lot came out and sold out fast.” The fallout shelter shirts followed, and a little under 300 shirts were sold in the end.

“I’ve been to tons of Bars in NYC,” wrote Ecto-Glow, “but the only place I’ve been to at least triple digits was Mars (stoops and 40s don’t count) and I could probably fill a book with stories about the place (as I’m sure most could).”

If you’re not a size small or the auction’s over, don’t worry: Sergey Aniskov’s drunken Santa shirts are also still available for purchase.

N.Y.U. Red lines indicate the reduction of the boomerang
buildings on the northern block.

At a meeting attended by Rosie Mendez and Margaret Chin last night, members of Community Board 2 spoke out against the scaled-back version of N.Y.U.’s controversial expansion plan that the two City Council members supported earlier this week.

Ms. Chin said she wanted to explain the “compromise” she helped work out, which she said reduced above-ground space associated with N.Y.U. 2031 by an additional 17.4 percent, or 212,000 square feet.

The modified plan would cut the Mercer Street building from 11 stories to four, and shrink the height of towers in the Zipper Building. Over all, according to Ms. Chin’s newsletter for her district, it represents a reduction of 26 percent or 352,000 square feet from the original proposal that was certified in January.

Residents last night were clearly disappointed that the City Council’s land use committee had approved the plan by a vote of 19-1, with the Council’s subcommittee on zoning also voting in favor of it. “I know people aren’t happy,” Ms. Chin said, to sardonic laughter. “It’s a compromise. But I want you to look at what we’ve been able to achieve with density and open space, because the City Council will vote on this issue.” Read more…

Melvin Felix

Melvin Felix

An electrical fire at the Union Square subway station led to the temporary closing of one block of 14th Street at around 2 p.m.

EV Grieve rounded up photos of the small blaze, which is in a grate beside a subway entrance on the south side of 14th Street between Broadway and Fourth Avenue. The fire was caused by a “service box failure,” a spokesman for Con Edison told The Local. A spokesman told Gothamist, which gathered tweets about the fire, that the cause was “a failure of electrical cables.” No injuries were reported. Read more…

Sarah Darville Postal and other businesses on East Fourth.

Store owners already struggling to get by are worried about a significant rent increase planned by their landlord, the Cooper Square Mutual Housing Association.

The Local spoke to about a half dozen shopkeepers on Third and Fourth Streets, between Bowery and Second Avenue, who said they were grappling with a sluggish economy as well as challenges unique to their blocks. Some worried they would follow in the footsteps of La Sirena, which earlier this week announced that it would be closing, should they too face rent hikes of what is expected to be around 30 percent.

At Postal, a packing and shipping store on Fourth Street, owner Gary Patick said he alternates between busy days and days when “nothing happens,” and doubted he’d have any room to negotiate when his lease expires in two years. He described his profits, which in 2010 and 2011 were their lowest in a decade, as “a real roller coaster” and said that one-third of them go toward rent payments.  Read more…

Hunter Canning Phoebe Silva and Michael Criscuolo in “Decompression.”

Tickets go on sale for the Fringe Festival today, meaning the explosion of cutting edge, experimental and just plain out-there theater is right around the corner. It also means that a mountain of intriguing press releases have once again landed in The Local’s mailbox. Here are our 10 favorite excerpts from the 61 releases accompanying next month’s annual celebration of the avant garde.

I Married A Nun: “Recounts the wild life adventures of 78-year-old, ukulele playing, world traveling, bisexual, Bostonian, Jewish gal — Ms. D’yan Forest. Through her tales of fun with the nun, their tragic divorce, forbidden nights in the demimonde of Paris, humorous mishaps of falling off a camel in Tibet, the courageous Ms. D’yan Forest exposes her inner self for all to see. Throughout the show, the story is interspersed with meaningful parodies performed on her uke.”

Alice & The Bunny Hole. Josiah DeAndrea and Michelle Wood in “Alice.”

BANG! The Curse of John Wilkes Booth: “Features one actor playing 30 roles in this twisted shocker performed in verse, song, magic, sideshow antics and stand-up comedy. You’ll be astonished at how your American History books lied to you about Booth in this theatrical extravaganza that was banned from performance in Booth’s hometown of Baltimore! Plus, there’s a mummy involved! Was Booth really captured and killed by Federal troops in a burning barn in 1865, or did he escape, aided by a secret society, and live under various aliases until he committed suicide in Enid, Oklahoma Territory, in 1903? Prepare to be amazed!”
Read more…

Courtesy La MaMa Preliminary work on La MaMa’s white roof.

The building that houses La MaMa got a new mural back in May, and now it’s getting another paint job – but not in the name of art.

The White Roof Project laid down a first coat of white paint on the theater’s rooftop on Wednesday, adding another 7,000 square feet of solar-reflective white roof to the neighborhood in an ongoing effort to reduce carbon emissions and encourage energy efficiency.

Juan Carlos Piñeiro Escoriaza, the project’s founder, told The Local that the Lower East Side is one the heaviest energy users in the city. “Our efforts there get you more ‘bang for your buck’ every time a roof is coated white,” he said, adding that he wanted to have contiguous rooftops along East Third and Fourth Streets between Bowery and Second Avenue painted white by the end of 2013. Read more…

Earlier this week, Jose “Cochise” Quiles recounted his time as a member of the Satan’s Sinners Nomads, and told The Local that gangs such as the Bloods, Latin Kings, and Money Boys are still very much prevalent in the neighborhood.

Today, we hear more about the problem from a few of the people who are fighting it at Henry Street Settlement and the Boys’ Club of New York’s Harriman Clubhouse, on East 10th Street. They join others like Aida Salgado and the D.A.’s office in promoting alternatives to street violence.

Dante Lawson, assistant group leader at Grand Street Settlement, says he sees gang activity on an almost daily basis. In this video, he explains why he has resisted the temptation to join his own family members in some of the neighborhood’s many “sets.”

Scott Lynch

Life Cafe’s most storied artifact is headed to Jersey. The owner of the shuttered cafe, Kathy Kirkpatrick, writes on her blog that the bench where Jonathan Larson wrote “Rent” is now at Adelphi University. According to Ms. Kirkpatrick, Mr. Larson is an alum of the university in Garden City. “I felt a heaviness in my heart as I watched the boys lift the bench into the truck. It felt like a big part of my life was being taken away,” she wrote.

The Daily Beast tries to get to the bottom of Jennifer Sultan’s finances. Ms. Sultan, who was swept up in the arrests related to the missing guns from the Ninth Precinct, was reported to have made millions of an Internet company in 2000.

The Post reports that Carl Knox has pleaded not guilty to murder, and is claiming he was the victim of a gang assault when he stabbed Corey Capers to death on East Fifth Street last month. DNA Info has more. Read more…

Joel Zimmer Lakeside’s photo booth.

When it was reported that Lakeside Lounge would close at the end of April, New York Music Daily wrote, “the bar that defined oldschool East Village cool will be replaced by a gentrifier whiskey joint, no doubt with $19 artisanal cocktails and hedge fund nebbishes trying to pick up on sorostitutes when their boyfriends are puking in the bathroom – or out of it.”

Not so fast?

A liquor license application questionnaire submitted to Community Board 3 indicates that the space on the corner of Avenue B and 10th Street is being taken over by one of Lakeside’s partners, Laura McCarthy, who is also an owner in Bowery Electric, HiFi, and Niagara – all rock’n’roll spots that aren’t exactly known for catering to “hedge-fund nebbishes.” As if that trifecta doesn’t make for enough cred, Ms. McCarthy also opened Brownies, the rock club on Avenue A that was widely mourned when it was transformed into HiFi. Read more…

No word on when Long Island’s Yogurt Crazy will open on Third Avenue, or when the gelato joint on Second Avenue will start scooping (though we did notice it just got a new awning), but here’s some good news if you’re scouring for something cold and comforting.

Only U, the neighborhood’s latest frozen yogurt spot, opened yesterday at 159 First Avenue. According to owner Jason Chen, a Brooklyn resident who, until recently, owned a Chinese restaurant in the Bronx, the yogurt flavors will vary each week, though classics such as vanilla and chocolate will always be ready to serve.

This afternoon, the do-it-yourself stations were dispensing banana, sweet coconut, cheesecake and red velvet; there were more than 20 topping choices, including honeydew, kiwi, blueberries, Gummi Bears and low-fat granola.

The frozen treats go for 49 cents an ounce.

Only U, 159 First Avenue (East 10th Street), 212-254-8886.

Daniel Maurer

Suzanne RozdebaJune 21.

There’s trouble on Avenue A today, as the Fares Deli-Grocery has been seized by the state. A notice on the shutter cites nonpayment of taxes. It’s only the latest attention-grabbing sign to be slapped on the bodega between St. Marks Place and Seventh Street: last month a tipster noted that the police department had put notice of a restraining order on the front door prohibiting the illegal sale of alcoholic beverages. Two unfortunate setbacks for a spot that recently gussied up its old-school bodega signage. We’ve asked the state Department of Taxation and Finance as well as the Liquor Authority for information about specific violations. We’ll let you know what we hear.

Update | 4:10 p.m. A spokesperson for the Department of Taxation and Finance said the business was seized today as a result of a tax warrant filed with the New York County Clerk on June 5, related to $218,000 of unpaid sales tax from the years 2006 to 2008. “What we’re talking about here is sales tax that was collected from customers but not remitted for state and local government purposes,” said Geoff Gloak.

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.

Village Voice ad.

The East Village was a very different and much more dangerous place in 1978. But it was still a shock to everyone on the Downtown scene when Johnny Blitz, the Dead Boys’ drummer, was stabbed in a fight on Second Avenue. Street violence isn’t quite what it was in those days, but one thing hasn’t changed: the problem of musicians and medical insurance, or the lack thereof. To help meet Blitz’s mounting medical bills, the CBGB community rallied with a four-day event, the Blitz Benefit (please, don’t call it “Punk Woodstock”). With a t-shirt created by the Ramones’ design guru, Arturo Vega, and more than 30 bands performing, it was a heartfelt outpouring of help and money for one of our own.

Billy Blitz, Johnny’s brother, recalled being just a teenager when his brother was stabbed. “I was in Cleveland so it was all new to me,” he said. “When I got to New York for the benefit, Stiv Bators [lead singer of the Dead Boys] and Tish Bellomo picked me up. They were shooting moons out the car window on the way to the club. I couldn’t believe it!” Read more…

At the very least, the water store on East 10th Street, Molecule, is a hit with reporters. “I mean it’s subtle, but if you have a sensitive palate you can totally tell” co-owner Adam Ruhf tells The Wall Street Journal. “It was sweet and tasted good,” a customer tells DNAInfo. “Who’d waste money on Molecule? Those who belong to the High Holy Church of Culinary Rectitude,” writes the always warm and fuzzy Steve Cuozzo in The Post.

Has Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver gone rogue? He tells The Daily News he won’t be campaigning exclusively for Democrats in the Senate this year.

Second Avenue has its noodle nuts, Jersey Street has its sneaker fiends. Bowery Boogie has shots of people queuing up for the release of limited edition Nike sneakers. Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown Dina Leor’s Mexican memorabilia store, La Sirena, may have to move due to a 30-percent rent increase.

A low-income housing association in the East Village is planning substantial rent hikes for its commercial tenants — a move that has already forced the Mexican trinket shop La Sirena to notify its customers that it will close.

Cooper Square Mutual Housing Association’s executive director Val Orselli explained that the rent increases will pay for $400,000-worth of renovations to some of its 25 buildings over the next couple of years. The Association’s tenants include familiar names like the 4th Street Food Co-op, East Village Music Store, Rivington Guitars, Bond Street Chocolate, and FAB Café. As many as 24 will face rent hikes once their leases expire.

“We tried as much as possible to use our reserve funds, instead of increasing the rents of the tenants through big increases that tenants cannot afford,” said Mr. Orselli. “So either the cost has to be borne by residential tenants, who are very low-income, or the commercial tenants.”

“We don’t have a choice,” he added.

The owner of La Sirena, Dina Leor, faces a rent increase of around 30 percent, according to Tower Brokerage president Bob Perl, who will be negotiating the new lease. “Their mission is to have affordable housing,” he said of the Association. “The board has decided to make good use of the retail values in the area.” Read more…

Curbed reports that the Landmarks Preservation Commission gave architect Richard Metsky the green light for a significant enlargement of 45 Great Jones Street yesterday. The approved plans call for two additional floors on the three-story building, as well as a penthouse recessed from the street. The building, which originally housed a lumber company, will have a commercial space on the ground floor.

Chelsia Rose Marcius

Mary Help of Christians may soon have a new owner, and the long-standing flea market next to the church is preparing to permanently fold up its tables.

John Matcovich, the manager of Immaculate Conception Parish, which has overseen the church on 12th Street since 2007, said that a couple of months ago the Archdiocese of New York found a buyer for the church as well as the adjacent school building and parking lot; the deal is expected to be made official in September.

Joseph Zwilling, director of communications for the Archdiocese, declined to confirm that a contract was in the works, citing a policy of not discussing real estate dealings until they are finalized. “The process is not over with Mary Help of Christians,” he said. Read more…