Philip Ross 118-122 East Fourth Street

It costs a pretty penny to throw down with the East Village’s elite.

A swank benefit for the United Jewish Appeal of New York on June 6 will be co-chaired by Benjamin Shaoul, who owns numerous properties all over the neighborhood, and will feature a performance by another local: John Legend. Questlove of the Roots will also spin records.

Tickets for the gala at Capitale on Bowery start at $360, and go as high as $20,000 for the “Legend package” that includes a meet-and-greet with the piano-playing crooner, as well as a listing on a “Scroll of Honor as ‘Legend.'” Lesser donations yield designations as a “producer,” “promoter,” or “performer,” among others. Read more…

Chris Caporlingua Aliee Chan (l) as the Real Girl, Scott Cagney (c)
as the Dog, and Tony K. Knotts (r) as Johnathon.

“Well. At least I can always kill myself,” says Johnathon, the everyman protagonist of “Claire Went to France,” at the beginning of Ben Clawson’s new play. His anthropomorphic dog ignores the comment and keeps watching TV, and his grandpa continues to play solitaire after complaining about “jokes about things that aren’t funny.”

Much of this play, which turns the cellar-like Under St. Mark’s into Johnathon’s living room and the prism through which we view his dreary life, is exactly that: Johnathon’s ex-girlfriend barrages him with spectacular insults from the closet, his dog tries to convince him to masturbate to waste time, and the grandpa, like some Judge of History, spews grand truths which contradict from moment to moment. Read more…

Nadja Popovich

Good morning, East Village.

The above photo was taken during “casserole night” yesterday, part of what organizers hope will be an ongoing international movement to show solidarity for students protesting tuition hikes in Quebec. According to a reporter for The Local, over 100 protesters made their way from Washington Square Park to Union Square and then uptown, some of them banging pots and pans as they headed up Broadway.

Crain’s reports that the Jehovah’s Witness Hall that was such a headache for Nublu is now on the market. “The 3,050-square-foot, two-story property located at 67 Avenue C, at 5th Street, is up for grabs, according to Robert Knakal, chairman of Massey Knakal Realty Services, which was retained to market the building on behalf of the Witnesses.”

The Post reports that one of the men accused of attaching skimming devices to ATMs in Astor Place and Union Square has been sentenced to three years in prison. His brother and alleged accomplice remains at large. Read more…

Scott Lynch

H. Veng Smith (a.k.a. Veng), last seen painting a mural with schoolkids on Avenue D, was one of several artists who redecorated the construction containers on East Fourth Street over the weekend. See more shots at The Local’s Flickr group.

The Appellate Division of State Supreme Court has affirmed the city’s decision to evict the longtime operator of a newsstand at Astor Place — though a strongly-worded dissenting opinion has given the Greek immigrant a glimmer of hope.

The latest blow to Jerry Delakas’s livelihood comes as the result of an arrangement made in 1987 with his friend, Katherine Ashley. Ms. Ashley was the owner of the license for the newsstand, and Mr. Delakas paid her $75 a week to work there. When Ms. Ashley died in 2006, she wrote in her will that Mr. Delakas should inherit the license. It subsequently passed to other family members while Mr. Delakas continued to operate the stand. Last year, the Department of Consumer Affairs refused to let Ms. Ashley’s estate and then Mr. Delakas renew the license on the grounds that the deal was illegal.

The appellate division of the State Supreme Court concurred with that argument in a ruling filed late last month. Mr. Delakas “had to be aware of the illicit, under the table arrangement he facilitated by his payments to three separate owners beginning as far back as 1987,” reads the ruling, which is below. Read more…

We last called upon Kim Davis, the East Villager who writes At the Sign of the Pink Pig, to judge the new porchetta sandwich at Il Buco Alimentari e Vineria against the classic version at Porchetta. Now that another buzzy sandwich shop has opened in NoHo, we asked him to referee another meat match. Will the Canadian underdog, Mile End, prevail over the reigning champion, Katz’s?

Kim Davis The smoked meat sandwich at Mile End.

The East Village, like it or not, may be gentrifying, but one might have been forgiven for thinking that some things would never change. The supremacy, for example, of the pastrami sandwich at Katz’s as an iconic New York dish, a plated symbol of deli history, and the one thing any visitor to the neighborhood has to eat.

Yet here comes Canadian Noah Bernamoff, with a trimmed down version of his modernist Brooklyn deli Mile End, opening on Bond Street just off the Bowery, no more than a ten-minute walk from the self-proclaimed “Best Deli in New York.” Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown

New York Police Department The suspect.

The police are searching for a man who allegedly robbed the HSBC at Second Avenue and East Ninth Street around 45 minutes ago.

An officer at the scene provided The Local with a surveillance image of the suspect, who is seen wearing a black cap and a long-sleeved white shirt. The investigation had just gotten underway, but the police officer said that the suspect passed a note demanding cash, did not show a weapon, and escaped with under $200.

A tipster notes that renovations are underway at 98 Avenue B, the future home of the Alphabet City mainstay Gruppo, which has served thin crust pies for the last 11 years. Last week Community Board 3 voted in favor of the transfer of Gruppo’s beer and wine license, provided it agree to several pro forma stipulations related to quality-of-life concerns. An employee said that the restaurant would open in its new location sometime this summer.

Daniel Maurer Henry Barrial (right) supervises camera set-up.

A little over a month after “Girl on the Train” transformed the former Mary Help of Christians school into an after-hours club, a film crew is shooting inside the church itself today. Henry Barrial, the director of “Some Body” and “Pig,” described his latest film, “The House That Jack Built,” as an “ultra low-budget” production about a young man who buys a tenement in the Bronx using money saved up from dealing drugs out of his bodega.

So how does Mary Help of Christians come into all this? Well, it’ll stand in as a church in the Bronx where a baptism takes place in the beginning of the movie and a wedding takes place at the end. Other scenes are being shot in Jackson Heights and the Boogie Down.

Mr. Barrial found the church through Caryl Pierre, a production coordinator on the “Girl on the Train” shoot who also recommended the church for this one. The director, who is Cuban-American, said the movie will star Puerto Rican up-and-comer E.J. Bonilla as well as Saundra Santiago, best known for playing Det. Gina Calabrese on “Miami Vice.” The screenplay was written by Joseph Vásquez, the Bronx-born filmmaker who wrote “Hangin’ with the Homeboys,” starring John Leguizamo, before he died of AIDS-related complications in 1995.

Mark Nickelsburg, a longtime East Village resident, will debut “Harry Grows Up” tonight at the inaugural New York International Short Film Festival at Sunshine Cinema. The 12-minute film is about a toddler, Harry (played by Mr. Nickelsburg’s son Lucas) who loses his babysitter (Elizabeth Elkins) when she heads off to college. The tot sinks into the kind of deep depression that results in empty baby bottles strewn about the house, leading narrator Josh Hamilton to quip, “I’m not the first heartbroken New Yorker to turn to the bottle.” But then along comes Zoey, a love interest closer to Harry’s age. Mr. Nickelsburg, 41, described the short as a “romantic comedy for adults, starring babies.” The Local spoke with him about filming his own son in the streets of the East Village.

One of the major characters in your film is the East Village. Was that intentional?

Yes. The experiences that Harry is going through and some of the locations that he’s going to I drew from my own experiences. Like the storefront that figures prominently in the movie, that was around the corner from where I used to live. Moonstruck is the diner on Fifth and Second where Harry drowns his sorrows. I went there all the time. Read more…

Scott Lynch

Good morning, East Village.

After the departure of David Cross, it looks like the neighborhood is losing another longtime celebrity resident. Remember that $1.7 million apartment that had been featured in House & Garden? Maison 21 notes that it belongs to actress Chloe Sevigny and posts photos of the listing along with the magazine spread.

Paper magazine has new details on the CBGB movie. Malin Akerman will play Debbie Harry and Joel David Moore will play Joey Ramone. Meanwhile The Guardian talks to Joey Ramone’s little brother, Mickey Leigh, about the rocker’s new album. “Downtown New York had been on the decline since the 50s,” he recalls. “Alphabet City was a notorious drug haven, the Bowery was all hookers and alcoholics – it was dangerous. It took an area like that for something like [Ramones] to be able to happen. CBGBs was a place where you could make your own character. Everything else was discotheques and rich people.”

The Post has more on the woman who was struck and killed by a dump truck while crossing Broadway near 14th Street last week. Roxana Sorina Buta was a 21-year-old aspiring actress who was heading home from her waitressing job that day. Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown The scene of a similar incident last summer.

Someone shot a 19-year-old in the back with a BB gun at around 7 p.m. near the Campos Plaza houses, the police said.

The teenager was on East 12th Street between Avenues B and C when he was hit, according to the police. He was taken to Beth Israel Hospital in stable condition and no arrests have been made, according to a police spokesman.

The incident comes less than a week after a pair of teenagers were arrested for spraying a corner near PS 2 in the Lower East Side with BBs. Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown Cook Nicola De Mori behind some of the meats at Porchetta.Hog.

Porchetta may no longer be hogging the spotlight where herbed roast pork sandwiches are concerned. First there was the $16 porchetta sandwich at Il Buco Alimentari & Vineria, and now a new contender by the name of “Porchetta.Hog” has entered the swineosphere.

The takeout spot opened earlier this month at 309 East Fifth Street, just a few blocks away from Porchetta, and it too is serving $10 porchetta sandwiches, as well as $8 hamburgers and a handful of other dishes (the full menu is below). Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown

First, the good news: Just a week after its paint job, Calliope has opened in the former Belcourt space. Grub Street has a look inside, and you can find the menu at Menupages.

Now, the bad. A couple blocks up on Second Avenue, Vandaag has become the latest ex-Villager. Thursday morning, The Local spotted a sign on the window of the darkened Dutch restaurant indicating that it was closed due to plumbing problems. Today, a new sign regretfully informs patrons of a “recent decision to close Vandaag.” The note concludes, “Fortunately, we were able to move most of our team to new digs, in Brooklyn,” meaning Woodland in Park Slope.

Vandaag opened in the former Bounce Deuce space at Second Avenue and Sixth Street and garnered two stars from The Times and then another favorable review from The Local (“Perhaps Vandaag, too, will disappear before long,” worried James Traub back in November of 2010. “I hope not; it’s the only Dutch-Danish restaurant in the neighborhood.”) Unfortunately, it was under-performing even before it lost its chef back in August.

Anyone know where to go now for a nice shot of aquavit?

For every East Village business that’s opening or closing, dozens are quietly making it. Here’s one of them: Pageant Print Shop.

Lauren Carol SmithRebecca Solomon

It’s been nearly two decades since Michael Caine and Barbara Hershey perused the Pageant Book Shop for a copy of E. E. Cummings in “Hannah and her Sisters,” but the store’s history goes back farther than that. In 1946, Sidney B. Solomon and Henry “Chip” Chafetz joined the ranks of Book Row, a stretch of mom-and-pop bookshops along Fourth Avenue from St. Marks Place to 14th Street. One of Mr. Solomon’s two daughters, Shirley, took over after her father died and then moved the store to West Houston Street after a rent hike in the 1990s.

Pageant became an online-only enterprise in 1999, only to reopen at 69 East Fourth Street after Shirley’s sister Rebecca moved back to the city. Nearly seven years later, the siblings are still selling hard-to-find items, though now maps and prints rather than rare books. “Some are old, some are very old, some are very, very old,” said Shirley during a recent conversation with The Local.

How does a shop that sells old maps stay in business?

Shirley: I focus on the unique and affordable. I have things from $1 to $100, to $1,000. There’s an original David Roberts lithograph that is $3,000 framed. We get lots of foot traffic and sell a lot of things in the $1 to $4 range, which adds up. Read more…

Introducing a new column written by those who loved the East Village and left it. Today: Rachel Trobman tells us why she crossed the bridge to Brooklyn.

Rachel Trobman in her 13th Street apartment, 2005.

Williamsburg is teeming with babies. That was my first reaction to my new neighborhood. I’d been lured from the East Village after seven years there by the increased space, a price that would allow me to buy, and the likelihood there would not be a man singing opera at 3 a.m. outside of my window.

Moving across the river, I knew I could expect a slightly longer commute, no yellow cabs, less college students, more facial hair.

What I didn’t see coming was the prevalence of young children. There were five pregnant women in my building when I moved in. Now there are five infants and several toddlers. There are babies in the restaurants, strollers in the parks and tiny humans in the subway.

I first moved to the East Village, from the West Village, when I graduated New York University. My sister, and roommate, was a sophomore there and wanted to be close to campus. I didn’t want to be too far from Chelsea and the news network where I had just gotten a job. We found a reasonably priced “two bedroom” walk-up on St. Marks Place – more like a one bedroom made out of a living room, with a second bedroom made out of a closet. Read more…

Tim Schreier

Hermann the German isn’t the only pizza-parlor painter in the neighborhood. After doing the wall of The Bean’s forthcoming location (with an assist from Mosaic Man), Walker Fee scored a gig across the street. This past weekend, we spotted the muralist painting the facade of East Village Pizza. The owners, we were told, wanted to bring balance to the block. And apparently, Mr. Fee will bring still another mural to the block after this one.

Meanwhile, a block away on St. Marks Place, there’s a newish mural of “Mister Shoetree” on the side of Foot Gear Plus. The artist, Robert Gardner (a.k.a. Robare), brought it to our attention in the comments of our “Making It” interview with shopkeeper Linda Scifo-Young.

Susan Keyloun

As anticipated, the 17th annual L.E.S. Festival of the Arts, organized by Theater for the New City, returned to East 10th Street this past weekend, bringing with it excerpts from current works by La MaMa E.T.C., Horse Trade Theater Group and other local companies; a performance by the EDG Experimental Dance Group, from The Children’s Workshop School; and poetry jams, art shows, flamenco and belly dance recitals, and more.

And on Sunday, the fifth annual Veggie Pride Parade, featuring the lovely legume Penelo Pea Pod, made its way from the meatpacking district to Union Square Park, where vegan and animal-rights activists and authors did their best to convince the masses not to throw burgers on the barbie. If you were out of town, check out our slideshow to see what you missed.