Daniel Maurer

Hussein Elhage will be without a powerful competitive edge when a 7-Eleven opens a couple of doors down from his convenience store. The State Liquor Authority has suspended his license to sell beer.

Back in December, St. Marks Convenience was one of several East Village stores caught up in a series of underage sales busts. The shopkeeper, who has owned the store since 1990, told The Local he was being unfairly targeted.

The State Liquor Authority wasn’t all that sympathetic: In late February, the Authority imposed a 30-day suspension and a $10,000 fine on the store. Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown Investigators outside of the HSBC.

A robber flashed a gun and stole an undetermined amount of cash from the HSBC at Broadway and East Ninth Street at around 9 a.m. this morning.

A police spokesman said the suspect, a white man in his 40s carrying a blue knapsack, was last seen running west on East Eighth Street.

At 10:30 a.m. investigators were still mingling outside of the bank, which was closed.

Jared Malsin

Local anarchists are planning to hold an “Open Forum” at the Sixth Street Community Center Tuesday night, just days after alleged anarchist demonstrators broke a window at a 7-Eleven on St. Marks Place.

According to a flyer spotted by The Local on Avenue A last week, the New York Anarchist Forum is “a gathering where we meet other anarchists and discuss anarchist ideas, events projects and whatever else comes up.” Past notices for the forum indicate the meeting is a monthly event.

Police arrested three people after Saturday night’s violence, in which demonstrators also attempted to break windows at the Astor Place Starbucks using metal pipes. At least one of those arrests took place outside the Sixth Street Community Center, where an after party for the NYC Anarchist Book Fair was taking place. Two police officers suffered minor injuries while scuffling with protesters.

Yesterday, the owner of the 7-Eleven that’s due to open on St. Marks Place tomorrow jokingly offered Saturday’s vandals a “peace treaty Slurpee.”

Stephen Rex Brown Scaffolding went up at Second Avenue and Sixth Street yesterday.

Good morning, East Village.

If you missed our coverage earlier this morning of Community Board 3’s S.L.A. committee meeting last night, well then here it is. The Standard East Village didn’t show up to pitch its dining overhaul, but a couple of iconic bars, Joe’s and Nice Guy Eddie’s, got nods of approval for new ownership.

The Mosaic Man tipped us off to his latest work outside of the Bean on Second Avenue. This one is a tribute to the building’s notorious “crazy landlord.”

While organizers of the Anarchist Book Fair disavowed Satuday’s violence, Salon tackled the question of just how much the mayhem had to do with Occupy Wall Street. Natasha Lennard witnessed the impromptu march: “It was rowdy, energetic and fast. Barricades and trash cans were dragged into the street to stop traffic and impede the police cars that eventually arrived on the scene. At one point, two young women watching the surge of people winding through stalled traffic asked me whether this was an ‘Occupy thing.’ I answered ‘yes.’ But, as I soon appreciated, it’s more complicated than that.” Meanwhile, the Daily News digs in to one suspect’s arrest record.  Read more…

Daniel maurer

“Are you keeping the Kiss mural?” That’s what David Conn of Community Board 3’s S.L.A. Committee wanted to know last night about the restaurant that will replace Nice Guy Eddie’s.

“We’re discussing; it depends on the windows,” said Darren Rubell, the co-owner of Ella and Gallery Bar who plans to turn the 16-year-old bar into a comfort-food restaurant with large windows. Mr. Rubell pledged to take the sentimental value of Chico’s longstanding mural into consideration before making a final decision. “It’s been blogged about,” he said, “I’m keeping an eye on it. It’s iconic.” Read more…

Kevin Farley A fake letter reported that Cooper Union had leased its new building to N.Y.U.

The student behind the hoax that duped Gothamist and EV Grieve into writing that Cooper Union had leased its gleaming new building to N.Y.U. told The Local that he pulled the prank out of frustration that the university had not yet pledged to remain a tuition-free institution.

The fake letter from Cooper Union President Jamshed Bharucha described 41 Cooper Square as “a reminder of past ill-planning and fiduciary neglect,” and said that the top administrator would leave his home on Stuyvesant Street for academic housing on Third Avenue as a cost-cutting measure.

Alan Lundgard, the 23-year-old student council president of the school of art who wrote the letter and designed the site where it appeared, told The Local, “The community feels they’ve been excluded from the decision-making processes at a time when it’s so crucial to have input from the community.” Read more…

Rob Miller performs.

Anarchists weren’t the only oft-maligned political group to convene in the East Village this weekend. The Socialist Party USA, which has about 1,000 members nationwide, hosted a regional conference that drew a modest 15 people from New York City, Long Island and New Jersey to the party’s third-floor offices in the building known as the Peace Pentagon.

The Muste Building, a rundown three-story loft structure on Bleecker and Lafayette Streets, was named after a Dutch-born Pacifist clergyman, and has gone by its alternate name since the 1970s. Radical groups like the Granny Peace Brigade, Global Revolution TV, and the War Resisters League (which once owned the building) are among about 10 non-profits currently maintaining low-rent offices plastered with posters, announcements and pictures of New York anarchist icons like Emma Goldman.

On Saturday, entry into the Socialist Party USA’s quarters was $5, which got attendees music, a talk from a French leftist, dinner, a protest rally and plenty of lively conversation. Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown Norman Jemal, the owner of the soon-to-open 7-Eleven on St. Marks Place, is ready to bury the hatchet with whoever smashed the window of his store.

The soda machine is already operating, the fridge is getting stocked with Gatorade, and the 14 coffee dispensers are in place. The new 7-Eleven on St. Marks Place is set to open on Wednesday with a new window pane on its storefront, following vandalism during Saturday night’s anarchist-fueled mayhem.

Stephen Rex Brown The cracked window.

“People have the right to express themselves, hopefully non-violently and without property damage,” said the owner of the convenience store, Norman Jemal. “Everyone has the right to their own opinion — though I’m not exactly sure what their opinion is.”

Mr. Jemal had heard rumors about the rowdy goings-on at Astor Place and off of Washington Square Park that likely led to his window getting cracked, but said he was unaware of the details. After hearing about the attack on Starbucks, he sought to distance himself from other corporate businesses. “This is not a standard powerhouse chain store. They’re all franchised to people like me,” he said, adding that the replacement window is “not cheap.” Read more…

Noah Fecks

Thought the bagel burger was unorthodox? L’asso EV is getting into the bagel business, and the restaurant and pizzeria plans to offer hemp-seed, gluten-free, and even vegan varieties.

The ingredients aren’t the only thing of note: the all-organic orbs will be baked for 10 to 12 minutes in the restaurant’s wood-fired oven at the beginning of the day and then toasted in the same oven, to order. Greg Barris, a co-owner of the restaurant, said the bagels will be a whole different story from the traditional kettle-boiled variety. “They’re not as puffy and they have that wood flavor to them,” he told The Local, going on to liken them to harder, flatter Montreal-style bagels. Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown Ronald Bell, seated in a Swedish throne used in an opera, must close his 10-year-old business by April 20.

Ronald Bell is having a going out of business sale, but the feud with his landlord may not be going anywhere. Following a lengthy dispute over money owed to the co-op at 48 Great Jones Street, Mr. Bell is closing Art & Industry, his 10-year-old store packed with mid-century modern furniture, art and knick-knacks.

At the entrance is a Swedish throne with wheels, used in an opera, that’s marked down to $3,500. An old console like the ones used at Remote Lounge, the voyeuristic drinks den that used to be around the corner on Bowery, is a mere $500. A disco vision player (a precursor to Laserdiscs) is also $500. (See below for photos of the stuff on sale.) Mr. Bell said that merchandise he hasn’t been able to get rid of for 30 years is at last flying off the shelves thanks to the sale — even Jude Law dropped in on Thursday to check out the bargains. Read more…

Kathryn Doyle A beach under the Brooklyn Bridge is
inundated with sewage waste and runoff
from South Street in rainy weather

Swimming pools in the East River? Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer floated the idea in a video introduction to the Blueway, a project that would revitalize a stretch of the East River from the Brooklyn Bridge to Midtown East. And it’s not as farfetched as you’d think: the historically polluted waterway is perfectly swimmable by Environmental Protection Agency standards. There’s just one problem: sewage overflows.

Dan Tainow, education director at the Lower East Side Ecology Center, explained the issue to local residents yesterday during a tour of the East River that doubled as a discussion of the Blueway project. Due to the age of New York City’s sewer system, he said, wastewater from household sinks, showers and toilets shares the same set of pipes as runoff from city streets.

Most of Lower Manhattan’s wastewater travels through this pipe system to the Newtown Creek plant in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, where it is cleaned, filtered and released into the East River. But during the fifty to sixty rainy days per year when gushes of street water could overwhelm the pipe system and force sewage back up into homes, the sewage is diverted directly into the East River by Combined Sewage Outflows, or CSOs. Read more…

Suzanne Rozdeba

Good morning, East Village.

New Music Daily reports that Avenue B fixture Lakeside Lounge has been sold and will close at the end of the month. The bar joins Nice Guy Eddie’s in closing after a 15-year run. “To a generation of pampered, status-grubbing white invaders from the suburbs, Lakeside made no sense,” the site laments. “The place wasn’t kitschy because its owners were genuinely committed to it, and to the musicians who played there. It had no status appeal because it was cheap, dingy and roughhewn, and Ambel refused to book trendy bands.”

Handsome Dick Manitoba isn’t happy about Lakeside’s impending closure. “Sad news. For US, OUR neighborhood, and OUR culture,” he writes on the Maniblog. “Manitoba’s has has been having a terrible time trying to stay intact and not disappear into a sea of 7-11’s, Subways, Starbucks, and, name your BANK.”

Speaking of 7-Elevens: After taking the neighborhood’s pulse about the one that’s coming to St. Marks Place on Friday, The Daily News asks a Chinatown deli owner how he’s dealing with the 7-Eleven that recently opened a block away from him. “It’s definitely going to affect my business and I’m trying to be separate from what they’re carrying,” says the shopkeeper. Read more…

Daniel Maurer The Starbucks at Astor Place, hours
before the attack.

Last night’s riotous atmosphere resulted in a sergeant and lieutenant suffering minor injuries while scuffling with anarchist protesters at the Astor Place Starbucks, the police said.

According to police, around 25 people tried smashing the windows of the cafe with eight-foot long steel pipes at around 8:45 p.m. after attending the Anarchist book fair earlier in the day. “Patrons fearing that they would be hit by flying glass hid under tables,” the police said in a statement. “Several” officers were assaulted with pipes and bottles, the police added.

Eric Marchese, a 24-year-old from Brentwood, N.Y., and Nicholas Thommen, a 30-year-old from Salem, Oregon were arrested at the scene. The former was charged with criminal mischief and disorderly conduct, the latter faces a variety of charges, including inciting to riot, criminal possession of a weapon and assault. Read more…

The police closed down Tompkins Square Park tonight after a window of a 7-Eleven was smashed, seemingly by protesters.

Around 9:20 p.m., Tim Pool, a livecaster of Occupy Wall Street events, filmed police cars blocking off Tompkins Square Park. In the video embedded above, Mr. Pool reports hearing that, after the Anarchist Book Fair earlier today, a “black bloc” formed and “there was a lot of property destruction, a few windows broken. We heard a few people tried to smash some Starbucks windows and ‘some Mafioso-looking guys came out with big poles and started swinging them.’” Read more…

Woo hoo! We’re looking at highs of 79 degrees this weekend. Will the Tompkins Square Park drummers come out to play? Here’s hoping! The Local stopped by one of the longstanding group’s recent jam sessions: here’s our video to warm you up for the weekend.

Jared Malsin Occupy Wall Street protesters denounce Bank of America.

Earlier today, local Democratic Party official Paul Newell and three other people closed accounts at Bank of America with plans to move their money to local banks as part of a protest organized by Occupy Wall Street activists.

Mr. Newell, the Democratic district leader for New York’s 64th Assembly District, Part C, which includes parts of the East Village, wore a blue athletic headband with a pin displaying a version of the Bank of America logo altered to read “FU.”

As Mr. Newell and his girlfriend Marissa Brostoff, a doctoral student in English at the CUNY Graduate Center and instructor at Brooklyn College, approached a Bank of America branch across from Zuccotti Park on Broadway, a security guard asked them if they were involved with Occupy Wall Street and locked the door, refusing them entry. Read more…

No more bumping elbows with the person next to you while gobbling noodles. The new location of Rai Rai Ken is open and roughly double the size of the previous space just a couple doors down on East 10th Street between First and Second Avenues.

Acting manager Yo Katsuse said that the restaurant was in soft-opening mode, and that the official opening date is April 29. “We need to get used to operating in a place this size,” said Mr. Katsuse, 35.

The previous location, which has now closed, only had room for 15 seats at the counter facing the kitchen. The new Rai Rai Ken still has a counter — a feature popular with many customers, Mr. Katsuse said — but also has tables for larger groups. All told, the place can seat 31 people. Read more…