Ria Chung

Good morning, East Village.

Ellen Moynihan, who penned a history of the 1990 May Day riot in Tompkins Square Park and also photographed marches last week, tells Gothamist how she feels about anarchists trying to obstruct photographers. “The idea that people who are anarchists can tell me what to do is ridiculous. If you’re going to create a public spectacle in a public street you’re out of your mind if you think people aren’t going to photograph you.”

Speaking of demonstrations, film critic J. Hoberman, on his Movie Journal blog, says that Sara Abruña, the Cooper Student student who was arrested during Jesse Kreuzer’s stand-off atop the Peter Cooper monument, was merely trying to get to Mr. Hoberman’s class inside of the school’s Great Hall. The student “apparently thought she had the right to walk from one Cooper building to another. Not so: She was thrown to the pavement, handcuffed, arrested, charged with ‘harassment, disorderly conduct and obstructing governmental administration,’ and spent the night in custody.”

Runnin’ Scared points out that Abe Haruvi, the landlord who is refusing to renew leases at 50 and 54 East Third Street has been in the news before, for attempting to reclaim an apartment building from rent-stabilized tenants. Read more…

Francisco Daum Flowers outside of CBGB in 2001, after the death
of Joey Ramone.

Yesterday, The Local posted news, which appeared in The Times today, of the upcoming CBGB music festival. In a follow-up interview, we spoke with the two bookers of the upcoming festival, Louise Parnassa-Staley, who held the same job at the old CBGB, and Diane Gentile, who also handles booking at Bowery Electric.

So what’s the state of the local music scene that CBGBs will be returning to?

Ms. Parnassa-Staley: The music scene is still there. You just go down the block from where CBGB used to be and you have Bowery Electric. A lot of future CBs bands will be playing there. I don’t think since the original CBs closed that the music has stopped.

Ms. Gentile: I’ve been at Bowery Electric for about four years. When I first got there, there was no music on the Bowery because CBs had closed. We started to book bands and it was a little slow-going in the beginning. It just started to build. We had a tremendous response from bands in New York City and Brooklyn who wanted to play. And it built up to the point where we started getting calls from booking agents and bands that were from out of town. Read more…

A jury convicted a 35-year-old electrician from Queens today of punching a woman in the face and leaving her in a coma following a dispute over a parking space on East 14th Street.

Oscar Fuller could face up to a year in prison for the brutal blow on Feb. 25 of last year, but he avoided the more serious charge of felony assault. The verdict hinged on the perception that the victim, Lana Rosas, was knocked into a week-long coma as a result of her head striking the pavement — not the punch to the face, according to The New York Post.

“This was a brutal and unjustified act of rage,” said Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance in a statement. “That a petty argument over a parking space could escalate into physical violence is shameful.” Read more…

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

Shira Levine

Before she started teaching people to knit, Rita Bobry owned a flower shop, but ultimately she found that the business was no bed of roses. “You have to deliver flowers. There are so many deadlines. There is a lot of stress and pressure,” she said. She sold the store and spent some time working for somebody else, until she decided she wanted to be her own boss again, partly to spend time with her new puppy, Frankie. The knitting enthusiast discovered a vacant space at 45 Avenue A and opened Downtown Yarns at 45 Avenue A. Eleven years later, she says she made the right choice, especially since her landlord still keeps her 300-square-foot space affordable.

I’ve walked down this block and never realized you were here. Given the possibility of others overlooking your charming little yarn shop, how do you think you’ve been able to make it all these years?

We have a fair rent. We don’t have to struggle to meet our rent. I keep my expenses low so I can pay the rent and I can actually save money. Read more…

Natalie Rinn The Economic Development Subcommittee.

New zoning meant to encourage retail diversity in the East Village might not go far enough, Community Board 3 considered last night. Speaking to the board’s Economic Development Subcommittee, an urban planner urged attendees to consider forming a group that would gather consumer data used to encourage landlords to let the butcher and baker move in — instead of the barkeep or “Sandwich Artist.”

The more aggressive — and costly — approach to retail diversity is also the most effective, said Larisa Ortiz, the head of Larisa Ortiz Associates, a consulting firm for commercial districts.

Only by collecting hard data that demonstrates that a fishmonger or cobbler (for example) can prosper in the neighborhood will landlords let them move in, Ms. Ortiz said. Read more…

Laura Edwins

Councilwoman Rosie Mendez joined around 50 tenants of three buildings on a stoop at 50 East Third Street yesterday evening to protest the unexpected non-renewal of their leases.

Last month, the Local reported that roughly 17 market-rate tenants from 50, 54 and 58 East Third Street received letters demanding that they move out when their leases expire over the summer. Their landlord, Abart Holdings, is in negotiations to sell the buildings.

Yesterday the tenants, some strumming guitars and singing protest songs, assembled outside of their buildings along with the councilwoman and representatives from activist organizations Good Old Lower East Side and the Cooper Square Committee. Read more…

Scott Lynch

Good morning, East Village.

Flaming Pablum isn’t getting behind the news we posted yesterday about CBGB being revived as a summer festival. The site writes, “While, yes, seemingly all vestiges of the East Village’s once-thriving musical character and legacy have gone the way of the stegosaurus, I can’t help thinking that naming these new ventures after CBGB is simply an inorganic way of cashing-in.”

Speaking of musical legacy, the late Adam “MCA” Yauch of the Beastie Boys has already been immortalized via a mural on East Seventh Street spotted by EV Grieve.

Another man went missing in the East Village, but only briefly. Yesterday the police sent out notice that they were looking for a man, Victor Rivera, who was last seen on Avenue D on Sunday. The 70-year-old man spoke only Spanish and was wearing a medic alert bracelet when he disappeared. Just hours after the bulletin went out, the missing man was found. Read more…

Godlis A 1977 photo of CBGB, which operated on the Bowery from 1973 to 2006. Owners of the club’s assets are now planning a festival and seeking to revive it at a new site.

For the last six years the name CBGB has been little more than a logo on T-shirts for young people in the East Village. Now a group of investors has bought the assets of that famous punk-rock club, which closed in 2006, and plans to establish an ambitious music festival this summer, with an eye toward reopening the club at a new downtown location.

The new owners of the club’s assets — some with ties to the original Bowery establishment — say they hope that the festival will revive the wide-open artistic aesthetic associated with CBGB, which in its heyday served as an incubator for influential acts like Television, the Talking Heads, the Ramones, Blondie, Sonic Youth and Patti Smith. Read more…

The Greenwich Village Society for Historical Preservation reports that a nine-story hotel is bound for 27 East Fourth Street in NoHo. But first, the developer must get the blessing of the Landmarks Preservation Commission during a hearing tomorrow. The one-story garage that’s currently on the property dates back to 1945 and perhaps more importantly, is next to the Merchants House Museum.

Sitting on their couch one Saturday night while in college, Roni Jesselson and his roommate Mike Dabah started talking about how much they missed hockey. They had played in Jewish youth leagues, and discussion soon turned to how they could re-connect with the game they loved. They decided to organize a casual pick-up hockey league at Tompkins Square Park.

“We were like, ‘We have to do this’,” said Mr. Jesselson, 26, a documentary filmmaker who lives in Greenwich Village. “And from there it bloomed.”

At first, they used garbage cans instead of a net and goalie. Mr. Jesselson and Mr. Dabah would call friends late into the night trying to scrap together enough players for a game of three-on-three. But gradually, the scrimmages increased in organization, and in popularity. Today, five years later, the league’s mailing list boasts 45 people from as far as Queens or New Jersey.

The players are an “eclectic mix” of Jews (both religious and non-practicing, Mr. Jesselson said) and the game takes on a uniquely Jewish twist. Read more…

Daniel Maurer The flyer for the stolen cycle.

Remember the guy who recovered his stolen bike after posting flyers around the neighborhood? Rich Minkoff is hoping he’ll be so lucky. The Greenpoint resident’s custom-built bike, estimated to be worth $2,000, disappeared from Avenue A last week, and now he has papered the area in an effort to get it back.

Mr. Minkoff said that around 10:30 a.m. Thursday, he met his girlfriend, who lives in Stuyvesant Town, at Table 12, the coffee shop at Avenue A and 12th Street. He rested his bike against a table outside of the café and walked in to fetch his girlfriend. Within two minutes, it was gone. Read more…

Kwanwoo Jun A man prays at the grave of a relative who
was buried in 1830.

Two of the New York Marble Cemetery’s vaults may soon be reclaimed and put up for sale for the first time since 1830.

The cemetery hasn’t seen a new burial since 1937. But that may soon change. On July 15, its operators will ask the New York State Department of Cemeteries if they can reclaim two of its graves. In New York, a vault may be reclaimed if it is empty, if there has been no contact with the owners for over 75 years and if no owners can be found after diligent searching and advertising. Read more…

Daniel Maurer The mural-in-progress this morning.

Ray LeMoine David Nordine on Saturday.

Last week it was The Bean’s forthcoming location, and this week an Avenue A newcomer makes itself known with a mural. On Saturday, David Nordine, 27, was painting what he said would be “a cameo of a man and woman facing each other” on the wall that Amor y Amargo shares with its forthcoming sister establishment, Gin Palace. (The building at Avenue A and Sixth Street also houses Cienfuegos, a cocktail bar by the same owners.)

Mr. Nordine, who lives on Third Street, has done other work in the neighborhood, including murals on the walls of Mama’s Food Shop and the Lower East Side People’s Federal Credit Union.

Created with Photos: Tim Schreier

A handful of new exhibits opened at the New Museum last week. Click through our slideshow to preview three of them: Phyllida Barlow’s “Siege” (slides 1 through 4; showing through June 24) is the British sculptor’s first New York solo exhibition. “Five Americans” (slides 5 and 6; through July 1) showcases British filmmaker and photographer Tacita Dean’s portraits of dancer Merce Cunningham, art critic Leo Steinberg, and visual artists Julie Mehretu, Claes Oldenburg, and Cy Twombly. And “The Parade” (slides 7 through 13; through Aug. 26 in the Studio 231 space adjacent the museum) pairs the films of Nathalie Djurberg with bird sculptures that the Swedish claymation artist created from wire, clay, and canvas.

Also showing: “Bodies of Society,” an installation by Ms. Djurberg’s compatriot, Klara Linden, and Ellen Altfest’s “Head and Plant,” collecting the New York artist’s recent oil paintings of male anatomy.

Phillip Kalantzis-Cope

Good morning, East Village.

For its profile of Ed Sanders, NPR spoke to Claudia Dreifus at The Local’s “Blowing Minds” event celebrating The East Village Other. The Times writer says of the East Village in the ’60s, “It didn’t take much money to live. You could live poor, you could have a lot of fun.” Standing across from the former location of his Peace Eye Bookstore on Avenue A, Mr. Sanders says, “The bookstore became pretty famous. It was the stopping off point for all visiting librarians and professors because I had a lot of well-known writers hanging out there — William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg.”

The Times reports that bar denizens of the East Village and Lower East side took the death of Adam Yauch especially hard. In addition to the impromptu memorial outside of Bad Burger, 2A projected Beastie Boys concert footage on a wall across from the bar.

Handsome Dick Manitoba sees a lesson to be learned from Yauch’s death at 47: “PLEASE, ENJOY EACH DAY AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE!” Read more…

David X Prutting/BFAnyc.com The Hole’s dinner for Dior Vernis.

After blurring the line between art and landscaping, The Hole is now bending the boundaries between art and food. Last night, the Bowery gallery held a dinner party that introduced attendees to the medium of “pour painting,” and this summer, The Local has learned, it will open a pop-up “artist cafe,” cheekily dubbed Hole Foods.

The pop-up cafe is in part the vision of The Hole’s founder, Kathy Grayson, who described herself as an arm-chair restaurant critic and food blogger. “I had never seen an artist-designed restaurant, only restaurants with a few sad paintings on the walls,” she told The Local. “I thought that the artists I represent are all interdisciplinary and are capable of doing not just painting and drawing but sculpture, video, design, installation, furniture, you name it.”

On Wednesday, the Meatball Factory temporarily closed on 14th Street and Second Avenue so that Brooklyn-based artist Joe Grillo could install a mural on its walls, ceilings, and floors. Read more…

HiFi Bar and B.A.D. Burger both set up somber shrines to the neighborhood’s past today. The bar at 169 Avenue A just announced on Twitter that the vintage photo booth from the recently-closed Lakeside Lounge now has a new home. And just next door, a tipster tells EV Grieve that a candle is burning in honor of Adam “MCA” Yauch of the Beastie Boys, who died today. Back in 1982 the Beastie Boys recorded “Polly Wog Stew” in the B.A.D. Burger space, which once was a studio.

Stephen Rex Brown One of the many students at yesterday’s rally against the cuts to after-school programs.

A panoply of politicians blasted Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s proposal to slash funding for after-school programs citywide yesterday, saying the cuts would have a particular impact on the Lower East Side.

“It’s outrageous,” said Councilwoman Margret Chin, whose district would lose seven out of 10 of its after-school programs if Mr. Bloomberg’s budget proposal is approved in its current form. “He needs to look at these kids and say, ‘You don’t count.'” Read more…