Daniel Maurer Workers removed kitchen items today.

Friend House, an Asian restaurant and lounge that brought in a weekend party crowd, has closed amid a bankruptcy filing, lawsuits, and mounting debt. The deathblow came Monday when a city marshal turned possession of the space over to the landlord.

The eatery at Third Avenue and 13th Street applied for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last June, court papers show. At the time, it cited $675,995 in liabilities, including over $491,200 in rent arrears, more than $86,206 owed to Renaissance Development Corp., and smaller debts to food and wine vendors. According to papers filed last week, the company also owes about $87,000 to the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance and about $24,000 to the city Department of Consumer Affairs. Read more…

Department of Transportation

The city just released it’s plans for bike share locations in the city, and the East Village has 27 stations as far east as East Sixth Street and Avenue D.

Ray LeMoine A bike-share display at Tompkins Square Park.

The Department of Transportation said that the map is a draft, and could change. At each location, dubbed Citi Stations thanks to a $41-million sponsorship deal with Citibank, cyclists can rent a ride and then drop it off at any other station. Astor Place, Tompkins Square Park, and three blocks of East Seventh Street are all slated for shares.

The base price is $9.95 per day, $25 per week, or $95 per year for an unlimited number of half-hour rides. Users who want to sign up for longer rides pay an additional $4 for hour-long trips, or another $13 for trips of an hour and a half. And so on.

Since late last year the city has solicited opinions on where the share locations should be built.

The first bikes should hit the streets by late July, and next summer 10,000 bikes should be docked at 600 stations.

Courtesy of Cruisin’ Kitchen

CBGB will be all over the place this summer, and so will a new truck bearing the name of one of the club’s legends. Marky Ramone’s Cruisin’ Kitchen hit the streets about two weeks ago, and the owner, a former East Villager, plans to feed the neighborhood’s late-night hordes.

Keith Album, a French Culinary Institute grad who has worked in catering, as a personal chef, and most recently at Whole Foods, describes his concept as “worldwide balls,” with Marky Ramone’s signature marinara sauce slathered over the Italian variety.

Not only that: the former Ramones drummer’s name and likeness are plastered on the side of the truck.  Read more…

Stephen Robinson Danielle Mastrion with her art.

Stephen Robinson Fumero with his work-in-progress.

Less than a week after the death of Adam Yauch, a mural of him and his fellow Beastie Boys appeared on East First Street yesterday, part of “phase 3” of the Centre-fuge Public Art Project.

The painting by Brooklyn native Danielle Mastrion joined new works by five other artists – Fumero, Michael DeNicola, Jade Fusco, CRAM Concepts and Bishop 203 – on a metal construction trailer between First and Second Avenues. Since the street-art initiative was launched in January, the modular unit has served as a canvas for a new batch of artists every other month.

One of them, Fumero, recently painted a mural on the walls of The Strand. See another photo.

Stephen Rex Brown

Good morning, East Village.

Above, another newspaper box in peril. We spotted this one with a laundry bag stuffed into it on East Sixth Street. No wonder some people consider these things an eyesore.

Over at Blackbook, nightlife insider Steve Lewis is doubtful that a revived CBGBs will be the same without its original owner. “CBGB’s without Hilly is like Casablanca’s Rick’s Café American without Humphrey Bogart’s Rick.” Closing thought: “I can’t see neighborhoods in Manhattan relishing this type of venue near their bedrooms and suspect Greenpoint or Williamsburg will provide the answers. Manhattan and certainly the Bowery are not the creative cauldrons that fed the CB’s scene. Brooklyn can provide that.”

Gothamist combs the newly digitized NYC Municipal Archives for “21 photos of the Lower East Side before you were born.” Read more…

The Neighborhood School The library in the Neighborhood School.

A local school’s library narrowly avoided the chopping block this year, and now The Bean is hosting a fundraiser to help get a head start on the next inevitable fight to keep it open.

On May 23 students from the Neighborhood School will sell raffle tickets, art and lemonade at the coffee shop on Second Avenue to benefit the library and its librarian. Cafe customers who buy travel mugs with art designed by students will get free coffee refills for a week, and The Bean will match the money raised by the students by up to $1,000.

“It’s been great to see community businesses jump on board and say it’s something they want to support,” said Amy Richards, a parent at the Neighborhood School with kids in kindergarten and the third grade. Read more…

Courtesy of Hot Sugar

Plenty of great music has come out of the East Village, but on an album due out May 14, the East Village is going into the music. On “Moon Money,” Nick Koenig, who records under the name Hot Sugar, changes the way we hear the neighborhood by manipulating sounds from its streets – an experimental process known as associative music.

“Familiar sounds represent a location or experience, triggering a mood you’ve grown to feel towards that place or experience,” Mr. Koenig explained. “I try to incorporate sounds familiar to New York City inhabitants in my music, hoping to subtly provoke those moods in my audience.” The musician recently broke down one of his tracks for The Local, to show how he puts his listeners in an East Village state of mind. Read more…

Jonathan Slaff Dain Alexandra (l) as the ghost of Molly Picon.
Jennifer Koller (r) as Lily Field.

With the Living Theatre having raised less than half the money it’s seeking in order to stave off eviction, it’s a fitting time for a play about the woes of a theater company.

“155 First Avenue (The Epic Adventures of the Theater for the New Syzygy),” now showing at Theater for the New City, portrays a theater company in New York struggling against financial strains and decades of neighborhood change. Playwright Toby Armour has made the theater itself the main character through his strong and versatile writing, and the actors in the play are facets of the artistic community.

The lifeblood of the theater is a woman named Lily Field, smartly played by Jennifer Koller. The first act presents her reminiscing in the basement of 155 First Avenue. Her guides through the past are ghosts: Molly Picon, Caroline Astor, Walt Whitman, Peter Stuyvesant, and Jake, a Jewish peddler who, starting from the beginning of time itself, recounts the series of “miracles” that led to the theater’s current location. Read more…

For all the hubbub, might developer Benjamin Shaoul’s rooftop extension to 315 East 10th Street not be such an eyesore? The Lower East Side Preservation Initiative seems to think so. “Now that work is ending, the final result could have been much worse, and we’re very glad to see the facade including the lovely cornice intact,” the preservationist group writes on its Facebook page. Back in January the block of East 10th Street along Tompkins Square Park was designated a historic district by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, but Mr. Shaoul got the green light for the extra story on his building literally hours before the vote.

Courtesy Christina Tosi

If anyone in the culinary world still hasn’t noticed the abundance of unique and delectable dessert shops that sprinkle the East Village, they will now: earlier this week, Momofuku Milk Bar’s chef-owner Christina Tosi clinched a Rising Star Chef of the Year medal at the James Beard Foundation Awards, widely considered “the Oscars of the restaurant industry.” The honor usually goes to savory chefs, but Ms. Tosi is one of a handful of pastry practitioners in the neighborhood that are getting wider recognition.

“I believe in what we do at Milk Bar and it’s incredibly rewarding to know that others do, too,” Ms. Tosi told The Local. Read more…

Suzanne Rozdeba

Good morning, East Village.

According to a tipster, signage for an “Italian restaurant bar,” Litro, has gone up in the old Zerza space at 308 East Sixth Street. Stay tuned for more.

Paper reports that Max Fish is opening an outpost on the Asbury Park boardwalk. “Max Fish at the Beach Bar, located on the boardwalk, will be open weekends starting this Saturday through Memorial Day, and then open every day after that.”

In The Times, Winnie Varghese, the priest in charge of St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery, argues that churches should be tax-exempt. “Moderate and progressive religion is overwhelmingly formed in the U.S., and it is an essential voice in national and international discourse,” she says. “We are an important moral and ethical voice for society as a whole, a voice that has to be religious to respond to other kinds of religious movements.” Read more…

Ray LeMoine

Bishops and Barons has literally rolled out the red carpet for an exclusive preview party this evening, but firefighters, despite their lack of “ambassador” credentials, had no problem getting into the new nightspot.

Around 6 p.m., smoke from the lounge’s kitchen brought red engines to 14th Street near Second Avenue. Fortunately, there was no serious fire. And the place can now claim to be a hotspot from day one.

Gavin Doyle Zac Posen and Susan Kirshbaum

Tonight at 6 p.m. at the Bowery Poetry Club, Susan Kirschbaum will read from her debut novel, “Who Town.” The book is drawn from Ms. Kirschbaum’s experiences over the past 15 or so years in New York: after moving from a middle-class Philadelphia suburb, she covered the downtown scene for The Times, The New York Observer, The Huffington Post and others. Now in her late 30s, Ms. Kirschbaum is the rare reporter who became part of her stories, dating band members and artists and hanging out with the crowd she was supposed to cover. She told The Local about her downtown-centric writing life, and how Candace Bushnell, the author of “Sex and the City,” started it all.

When you came to New York, what was the Lower East Side and East Village scene like?

I got to New York in the late ’90s, when the Beahver parties were raging at Don Hills and junkies still roamed Alphabet City. A lot of young artists still lived in the East Village and bars like 7A and 2A raged late at night. I also remember going to poetry slams in Tompkins Square Park. Read more…

Daniel Maurer Outside of T.S.B. earlier today.

Chains aren’t just an East Village issue. Our neighbors to the south are grappling with them as well.

A group of Seward Park Co-Op residents have convinced the Lower East Side housing complex’s board of directors (at least for the moment) not to lease out a pair of Grand Street storefronts to a Dunkin’ Donuts and 7-Eleven, according to an e-mail sent out today. But the e-mail’s joyful opening – “We Won!!!!!!! Congratulations! WOO-HOO!  Yipeeee!” – is followed by sobering words: “Now it’s time for the hard work.”

Auguste Olson, a shareholder of the Co-Op who started a petition asking the board of directors not to take on the corporate behemoths as tenants, sent the e-mail to fellow residents. During a special meeting last night, it said, the board voted to give the group of shareholders three weeks to “find other strong businesses that would meet the communities [sic] needs and wants.” The message goes on to say, “This proves that when like minded individuals come together, we can achieve great things!” Read more…

Suzanne Rozdeba Construction workers at the space eyed by the owner of Angelina Cafe.

The owner of Angelina Cafe, Rafik Bouzgarrou, is considering crossing the street to new digs.

Suxanne Rozdeba

A construction worker renovating the interior of 37 Avenue A (just next door to Essex Card Shop) told a tipster that the small restaurant was moving in. Reached by telephone, Mr. Bouzgarrou made it clear he would rather not be talking about the possibility of a new location.

“It’s not a sure thing,” he said. “A deal is not done. Please don’t ruin it.”

Meanwhile, construction workers at a salon slated to open next door to the possible Angelina location — that’s a busy block! — say that Joyful Nail should be open in about a week.

Illustration: Lauren Carol Smith

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There’s been much ado about chain stores lately: last month, anarchists targeted a new 7-Eleven; earlier this week, Community Board 3 continued its discussion on retail diversity; and now a petition calls for a halt to the perceived chain invasion in the East Village. But just how many chains are in the neighborhood, anyway? The Local pounded the pavement to find out.

The petition claims that “zip code 10003, which we all know as the East Village, now has the most national retail stores of any zip code in NYC (except for one that has a huge shopping mall).” Not exactly true: a recent study by the Center for an Urban Future found 169 chain retailers in the zip code, actually the third-most in the city. Since the 10003 zip includes parts of the Flatiron District and Gramercy (and only part of the East Village), the question remains: how much of the East Village do chain stores own?

Here’s what we found: if one were to place every national chain store, bank, restaurant, and movie theater in the East Village side-by-side, they would span 16 city blocks, and that’s with stores on both sides of the street. Read more…

Daniel Maurer

A quirky “ambassador” program that failed because its cool members weren’t cool enough for the Chelsea nightclub they were representing will be implemented in a new bar on East 14th Street.

The owner of Bishops & Barons, which is celebrating its opening tonight in the old Hype Lounge space, expects that his roughly 150 ambassadors will invite their friends to the restaurant and cocktail lounge that evokes the days of “showgirls, movie star gangsters and supper clubs,” according to a press release.

“It’s all about creating a foundation for the place,” said owner Danny Kane of his ambassadors. “That way, when people walk in it’s not empty and there’s energy.” Read more…