Erica Min “Cho H Cho” featuring Daniel Irizarry.

With arts funding getting slashed and donors pinching pennies, 11 downtown theater companies have joined forces for an avant garde festival next month. What space will serve as host? The Living Theatre, of course, which narrowly avoided shutting down weeks ago.

The month-long undergroundzero festival will open June 29 with a sit-down interview with Judith Malina, the revered founder of The Living Theatre. Ms. Malina will also fill the role of Mary in a production of “The Gospel of St Matthew” — a victory lap of sorts for the 85-year-old woman who nearly saw her life’s work come to an end due to debt.

“This is part of preserving one of the city’s treasures: Judith,” said Brad Burgess, who cares for Ms. Malina and helps run the theater. “If she’s not supported — the founder of the movement — what do the rest of us have? If she’s taken care of then there’s hope.”

Of course, The Living Theatre’s financial woes are far from unique. According to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, 50 of New York City’s 200 performance venues with 99 seats or fewer closed between 2003 and 2010. Read more…

Daniel Maurer

Good morning, East Village.

A parent at the Neighborhood School writes in to remind us that today’s the day when students will team up with The Bean to raise money for the school’s library. The kids will sell lemonade and artwork, and The Bean will match whatever funds they raise. See more here.

The folks at the Centre-Fuge Public Art Project tell us they’re hosting a fundraiser on Sunday, across the street from the project at Tuck Shop. From 6 p.m. to 10 p.m., public art supporters can enjoy meat pies, beer specials and raffles. More information here. Centre-Fuge will also reveal a brand new mural by previous contributor Ben Angotti which will cover the façade of Tuck Shop.

The Times and The Post report that N.Y.U. Langone Medical Center may merge with Continuum Health Partners, which operates Beth Israel and other hospitals. The result could be “a new academic health-care system in the City of New York.” Read more…

Mary Reinholz Ms. Millett accepts a Pioneer
Award from activist Eleanor Pam.

Kate Millett, a feisty icon of radical feminism best known for her groundbreaking 1970 work “Sexual Politics,” described herself as “just a farmer” during the 24th Annual Lambda Literary Awards Monday night. She was honored, along with Armistead Maupin, as a Pioneer for her writing and activism on behalf of women, gays, mental patients and the elderly.

Ms. Millett had traveled to the event at CUNY’s Graduate Center from her farm in Poughkeepsie, a 30-acre spread that also serves as a women’s artist colony and a summer retreat from her digs in the East Village. The writer and artist moved to the Bowery in the late 1950s. She also spent several years in Japan, where she met her husband of two decades, the late sculptor Fumio Yoshimura Fumio Yoshimura, in 1965. After her first Bowery residence was razed, she and Mr. Yoshimura shared a two-floor loft at 295 Bowery, a late-19th century building once known as the infamous McGurk Suicide Hall, where several teenage prostitutes were said to have committed suicide by lacing their last drinks with carbolic acid.

A day after receiving her “Lammy,” Ms. Millet sat down for an interview at her fifth-floor loft on East Fourth Street, just off of the Bowery. The city relocated her to the 1,662-square-foot space, managed by the Cooper Square Mutual Housing Association, in 2004 after she lost a protracted battle to retain her residence of 38 years. She spoke to The Local about life, art, sexual politics and the changes in her neighborhood.

You used to pay $500 a month when you lived at 295 Bowery and that was for two floors – how much is your rent here?

They upped it, but not a lot. It’s more than $500. We’re going to buy it. It’s supposed to be a [condo] but it never seems to become one. Read more…

Sarah Darville The empty Milavec Hakimi Gallery space.

There’s one less gallery along the Bowery.

After opening in September, the Milavec Hakimi Gallery has closed for good, leaving a darkened corner in Cooper Union’s imposing new academic building.

The gallery shared the ground floor of 51 Cooper Square with two other newcomers, Au Breve Espresso and the Preschool of the Arts, which may take over the space.

“We couldn’t really manage the rent,” said Karen Hakimi. “I think it was a little tough for a gallery, since it’s separate from all the other galleries. A lot of people thought it was a part of the school, and didn’t understand it was an independent gallery, not student work.” Read more…

Melvin Felix Chef Paul Gerard outside his future restaurant, Exchange Alley.

A touch of the bayou is coming to East Ninth Street, in the space that was briefly home to Zi’Pep. Paul Gerard, formerly chef at SoHo House, will open Exchange Alley in September along with investors John Harris, the acclaimed chef-owner of Lilette in New Orleans, and Billy Gilroy, a partner in West Village hotspot Employees Only. (Peter Herrero, who used to own Cafe Central on Columbus Avenue, is also helping out.) The trio has enlisted Sisha Ortuzar, the executive chef at Tom Colicchio’s Riverpark, to help build an herb and vegetable garden resembling a “ramshackle New Orleans courtyard,” said Mr. Gerard.

The restaurant’s name is taken from a picturesque cobbled lane in New Orleans, where Mr. Gerard lived until Katrina ravaged the city in 2005. The menu, said the 42-year-old chef, would be “New York with a New Orleans flair,” with additional influences from other places he had lived and worked, including South America and Puerto Rico. Read more…

Sarah Darville The City Planning Commission.

New York University reined in its expansion plans further today by eliminating a controversial hotel and accommodations for retail, paving the way for an easy approval from the City Planning Commission.

“The N.Y.U. proposal for the superblocks will provide important new and needed space to one of the city’s most important institutions of higher learning,” said commission chair Amanda Burden, referring to the two blocks south of Washington Square Park that will be the sites of construction.

The green light from the commission did not come as a surprise — Ms. Burden had praised the plan just last week. Only one of the 13 members of the commission voted against the proposal. Read more…

Laurie Gwen Shapiro Gita Reddy.

The Ex-Villagers: They loved the East Village and they left it. A couple of days ago, actress Gita Reddy grabbed a hot dog and an egg cream at Ray’s Candy Store on Avenue A, and during one last walk around, shared her memories of twenty years in the neighborhood.

Now that I’m leaving for Los Angeles I keep running into random people I haven’t seen in ages. When I hadn’t slept for 48 hours, and had just done a big part of my move, I put on lipstick and concealer to look like a coherent human being and I ran into Arjun Bhasin, a hot costume designer in Mumbai (he’s working on “Life of Pi”) who I knew when he was a fellow student back in Cinema Studies at NYU. He looked me up and down and declared, “Gita Reddy, you are aging well!”

It’s a little embarrassing to realize the students who live here now give me the same dismissive looks I once gave the old-timers when I moved here as a student. But I’m proud to leave as a true old-timer myself. It even feels vaguely cool to have lived here longer than them.

I’ve lived in the same apartment the whole time, with so many roommates over the years: Debbie, Jennifer, Erin, then that Brazilian male flight attendant, Rina, then Daniel, Leah and most recently Sabrina, a middle school teacher I’ve been rooming with for over two years. Read more…

Suzanne Rozdeba

Good morning, East Village. As you can see above, plywood just went up at 37 Avenue A. Angelina Cafe is moving there from across the street.

The CBGB festival got some new additions yesterday and now the Hollywood Reporter announces that the CBGB movie got some new cast members as well: Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins will play Iggy Pop, Evan Alex Coe will play Richard Hell, and Steven Schub will play Dee Dee Ramone.

Flaming Pablum is disturbed by the site of Trash & Vaudeville, the CBGB-era boutique, devoid of its longtime coat of flyers, stickers, and graffiti.

But worry not, there’s still the occasional punk on the Bowery: a mohawked man wandered into a photoshoot with Shalom Harlow at the Bowery Hotel and got flashed by the supermodel. Fashionista has the photos to prove it. Read more…

Melvin Felix Salon Eco Chic

After Natalie Esfandiari is done using the shampoo bottles that line the wall at her new hair salon, she’ll bury them in the ground somewhere. Then they’ll grow into trees.

The bottles at Eco Chic, which opened last month, are made of a biodegradable plastic that serves as compost for seeds that are plugged into the bottom of the container. They’re part of a number of ecologically-friendly products that make Eco Chic one of the most environmentally-conscious hair salons in the East Village.

“Everything here is 100 percent organic certified,” said Ms. Esfandiari, a 34-year-old Iranian who grew up in Denmark and worked at a Japanese hair salon elsewhere in the neighborhood before striking out on her own. Read more…

The CBGB Festival just added a few big names. Superchunk, Wyclef Jean and Fishbone will play shows during the frenzy of rock music, conferences, and movies on the weekend of July 4. The former bass player of Nirvana, Krist Novoselic, will also deliver the keynote address on “association and how it can transform politics,” according to a press release.

The new names join other bands like Guided By Voices, War On Drugs, MxPx, the Pains Of Being Pure At Heart that will play the festival taking place at around 30 venues around Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. Local joints like Lit Lounge, Webster Hall, Bowery Electric and Otto’s Shrunken Head are slated to host.

Melvin Felix

Less than a week after the opening of Mediterranean Grill and Tapas on First Avenue last Friday, another “Mediterranean grill” is getting ready to welcome customers. The folks at Reyna Turkish Restaurant and Mediterranean Grill are setting up tables and chairs and expect to open for business this weekend at 82 Second Avenue, between Fourth and Fifth Streets, in the old Mission Cafe space. Stay tuned for updates and the restaurant’s menu.

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

Shira Levine Igor Iskiyev tends to a customer while Imanuel (Manny) Ibragimov looks on.

Five years ago Igor Iskiyev left his gig cutting hair at Neighborhood Barber on East Ninth Street and became commissar of his own chop shop at 20 First Avenue. The Azerbaijan native had dabbled with hair-cutting back home after serving as an anti-aircraft gunman. Igor’s reputation for detail and perfection precedes him: good Yelp reviews, affordable prices ($15 for a haircut, $15 for a shave) and, let’s face it, the occasional offer of a beer have been key to his success. The Local recently spoke with Mr. Iskiyev and his right-hand man, Imanuel (Manny) Ibragimov about Mr. Iskiyev’s decision to go solo and his distaste for small talk.

How is business?

Igor: Right now it is slow, but not very bad. It was not good in 2008. Customers didn’t come as much. Some moved because they couldn’t afford to stay. We didn’t see many of our old customers for a while. Read more…

Melvin Felix The school today.

The University Neighborhood High School was briefly evacuated today due to a bomb threat, a tipster told The Local. A person who answered the phone at the school at 200 Monroe Street confirmed the story, saying students and administrators were led to an auditorium in the nearby University Neighborhood Middle School this morning. The high school’s principal referred inquiries to the Department of Education, which declined to comment.

Update | 3:22 p.m. The police said that at 8:47 a.m., someone phoned in a threat claiming there was a bomb inside of a soda machine. The building was evacuated, searched, and it was determined that there was no bomb. The students then returned to class.

Chris O. Cook Mara Mayhem, Ashley Bad, Maya Sinstress, DJ Xris Smack, DJ Jeffo!

The Howl! Festival wasn’t the only extravaganza of eccentricity to take the neighborhood this past weekend, and even with Low Life in full effect, maybe not even the most outlandish one. That honor, as you might have guessed from Thursday’s “Beat and Greet,” may have gone to the New York Fetish Marathon. But on Friday night, the festivities were hampered just a bit, as frisky fetishists were spanked by rain and disciplined by bouncers at Webster Hall.

Despite a posted start time of 9 p.m. and showers that began at 10 p.m., ticketholders weren’t admitted until nearly 11:30 p.m., meaning that waiting fetishists were sitting ducks for the occasional snide remark from spiky-haired gawkers hitting the neighborhood from Jersey and elsewhere. Still, the rubber-clad types kept their chins up as event workers repeatedly materialized in the doorway to announce that they would be ready “any minute now.”

Once fetishists were finally admitted, though only intermittently in groups of five, they made their way up to the venue’s top floor where pumping music, a stage set for performances, and plentiful “prayer benches” for spanking play implied that the evening would be worth the wet wait. Read more…

Scott Lynch Memorial to Roxi Sorina

Good morning, East Village.

The Hole tells us that at its latest show, “Portrait of a Generation,” opening June 7, “over 100 artists who make up the art scene here will pair up and exchange portraits with each other.” Erik Foss, the owner of Lit Lounge and Fuse Gallery tells us he’ll exchange portraits with Clayton Patterson, and other participants include Glenn O’Brien, Yoko Ono, Olivier Zahm, Jim Joe and more.

Chloe Sevigny’s home may be up for sale, but she still loves the East Village, apparently: The Daily Mail spotted her strolling the neighborhood with an Obscura bag on her shoulder.

Elsewhere in celebrityville, The Post hears that model Jessica Hart, who also lives in the East Village, is moving in with Stavros Niarchos. Read more…

The self-described climax of the Howl! Festival this weekend was the sixth annual Low Life event, led by East Village husband-and-wife team Johnny Dynell and Chi Chi Valenti of legendary 1990s clubs Jackie 60 and Mother. This year, the spectacle paid tribute to the neighborhood as it was during The East Village Other’s glorious run from 1965 to 1972. (Between this and The Local’s retrospective of The Other, the underground paper might just be making a comeback.)

On stage, performers and personalities like Heather Litteer, Zoe Hansen, and Tabboo! of nearby Pyramid Club paid tribute to counterculture icons like Ed Sanders and the Fugs, the Slum Goddesses, the Yippies, Jackie Curtis, filmmaker Jack Smith, and others. Watch The Local’s video and you’ll see it was anything but a drag.

Melvin Felix The crime scene at Union Square East.

A man was slashed with a razor blade in Union Square this afternoon by an attacker who fled the scene, the police and witnesses said.

The police said that around 2:30 p.m., across from Beth Israel’s Phillips Ambulatory Care Center at Union Square East near 15th Street, a 37-year-old man was slashed in the face by a man who wore a white t-shirt and is said to be around five-foot-eight and 170 pounds.

Melvin Felix Robin Stewart was spotted by the victim’s blood.

Robin Stewart said she saw the alleged attacker approach her acquaintance, whom she named only as Mr. P, from behind and then use a razor blade to stab him in his head and neck. The slashing, she said, was in retaliation for an altercation between the two men yesterday in the same area.

Ms. Stewart described the victim as “a good hard-working man who’s in between jobs,” and the incident as “a senseless act of brutality.”

Tyrone Curry, another witness, said, “It cut him so deep and hard that the blade broke.” Shortly after the attack, the blade lay on the ground in an area cordoned off by police tape. Read more…