New York Police DepartmentSurveillance footage of the suspect.
The police are on the hunt for a man suspected of a string of four robberies at knife-point, two of which occurred within the span of 20 minutes.
The police said that on March 13 at around 4:30 a.m. the suspect robbed a 41-year-old man at Seventh Avenue and West 12th Street. Less than a half-hour later he struck again at East 14th Street and First Avenue, robbing a 24-year-old man. In both cases the victims handed over their cash and cellphones.
The man is also wanted in connection with two other similar incidents. The first occurred on Feb. 25 at West 26th Street and Broadway. The other March 17 on the platform of the 23rd Street station of the F train. None of the four victims were injured, the police said.
The pews of Middle Collegiate Church were packed on Sunday morning as more than 400 people worshiped in hooded sweatshirts in honor of slain Florida teen Trayvon Martin.
“We are wearing hoodies in solidarity with all those who seek justice,” associate minister Chad Tanaka Pack told the group at the beginning of the “Wear A Hoodie to Church” service, urging those with hoods to put them on.
The sight of worshipers dressed similarly to the demonstrators who flooded Union Square last Wednesday might have been disconcerting if not for Middle Collegiate’s credo: “Welcoming. Artistic. Inclusive. Bold.” The church on Second Avenue espouses a commitment to economic, social and LGBT justice, and was one of the houses of worship that opened its doors to Occupy Wall Street protesters after Zuccotti Park was cleared by police in November. Read more…
The Times follows Matt Green, the man who walked from Rockaway Beach, N.Y. to Rockaway Beach, Ore., as he strolls through the East Village during his epic quest to walk every single street in New York City.
Daniel MaurerPolice move protesters away from the park.
The police barricaded Union Square Park and its southern esplanade shortly after midnight, triggering a standoff with Occupy Wall Street protesters who had once again gathered on the park’s steps.
After announcing that resisters would face arrest, police officers, some in riot gear, swept about 75 people to the park’s western sidewalk by moving forward en masse and setting up metal barriers incrementally until the entire sidewalk on the south side of the park – along with the subway entrance – was blocked off. At Union Square Park West and 15th Street, around 50 officers coolly stood guard behind barricades while several protesters hurled expletives and insults at them. Read more…
Jared MalsinVideo depicting the arrest of Mesiah Hameed. Note: explicit language.
Daniel MaurerA woman protests the arrest of Mesiah Hameed earlier in the day.
Multiple arrests – five of which were witnessed by The Local – occurred this afternoon during a march protesting police brutality organized by the Occupy Wall Street movement. The arrest of a teenager drew outrage when she was carried to a police van with her bra exposed.
Susan Howard, the New York City chapter coordinator for the National Lawyers Guild, said that an estimated 21 people were arrested during Occupy-related activities throughout the day, with “about a dozen” arrested during the march from Zuccotti Park to Union Square. The police were not yet able to confirm a number of arrests.
Videographer Paul Davis, who witnessed the arrest of Mesiah Hameed on Mott Street below Prince Street around 2:50 p.m., said the teenager was obstructing police movement before she was detained. “She was blocking the scooters from going,” he said. “Civil disobedience. Somebody grabbed her, one of the deputy inspectors.” Read more…
On Monday, just a couple of weeks after Occupy Wall Street’s Illuminator rolled through the East Village, the neighborhood’s walls were lit up once again. This time the art wasn’t political: it was created by Dawn of Man Productions, a collective specializing in guerrilla projections. Check out their far-out, far-up work in The Local’s video.
She’s been called “NYC’s biggest killjoy,” and now she’s looming larger than ever. Last Tuesday at Community Board 2’s S.L.A. Licensing meeting, longtime activist Zella Jones publicly unveiled the NoHo-Bowery Stakeholders, a group of heavy-hitters that will act as a united front in helping to determine the course of the historic neighborhood – with Ms. Jones as President and Chief Operating Officer.
Two years in the works and modeled after similar organizations in Baltimore and San Francisco, the non-profit 501(4)c consists of 250 paying members, including residents of NoHo, local real estate and business owners, and non-profits such as the Merchant’s House Museum and La MaMa.
At Community Board 2 meetings, where Ms. Jones and her loose coalition of concerned neighbors were once the neighborhood’s scrappy watchdogs, they’ll now be part of what Ms. Jones likens to “A Team of Rivals,” Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book about President Lincoln’s cabinet.
“We have some really powerful people – some of whom traditionally have squared off against each other for a variety of reasons, from out-of-scale development to landmarking to nightlife proliferation – all involved for the benefit of NoHo,” she said, adding that the group’s members range from “purist” property owners who began their NoHo careers in artist-in-residence lofts to the more recent arrivals living in the sleek new properties on Bond Street. Read more…
The plot thickens. A new note (at leastthe fifth of its kind) posted in the window of the law office of Zenon B. Masnyj details a board meeting of an undisclosed credit union in which members were pressed to disclose charitable donations. “As elderly people subjected to two dozen introductions, financial reports and calls for applause that would make a Tupperware hostess blush, testily waited to get their free lunch he read off the names of dozens of charities that the credit union claims to have given money to,” the item in all-caps reads. And the mysterious credit union critic isn’t done yet: the note hints at a trip by board members to Europe may have been an unnecessary expense.
Go enjoy the lovely weather in International Bar’s backyard and you’ll be surprised to find a wooden fence splitting it in half. The divider is the result of a court battle roughly a year ago that pitted the owners of the bar against the neighboring German sausage and beer joint.
A co-owner of International Bar, Shawn Dahl, said that the landlord of both businesses, Steven Croman, had rented the whole backyard to International when it opened after its renovation, and subsequently rented half of it to Wechsler’s when it opened in 2009.
“When Wechsler’s came along it turned out that the landlord had rented them the backyard as well,” Ms. Dahl said, later adding, “I blame the landlord.” Read more…
It may be too late to buy the CBGB name, but you can now snag Life Cafe’s. A few weeks after the failure of negotiations to bring the legendary corner spot back from the brink, its trademark is now up for grabs.
A Craigslist posting offers up the right to use the name of the cafe – “immortalized in the Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway musical ‘Rent’” – for restaurants, t-shirts, cups, and marketing material.
To sweeten the deal, the ad says the “current East Village liquor license may be available” and offers up the services of John Sunderland, the artist responsible for much of Life’s branding and its fanciful chalkboard menus.
Hey, if you want to own a piece of East Village restaurant history, it’s either this or those Ratner’s buttons.
The head of the organization that spent $20,000 rebranding a part of Vancouver as The East Village says the name isn’t a rip-off of our East Village. “People have said we’re copying the East Village in New York, when we’re not,” Tricia Barnes of the Hastings North Business Improvement Association tells Canada’s News1130. “There are East Villages around the world.”
The Daily News notes that city officials “will be watching like a hawk Saturday” as Occupy Wall Street protesters rally in Union Square Park. Police once again barricaded the park last night – according to @OccupyWallStNYC, four people were handcuffed. The Occupied Wall Street Journal chimes in with a photographic history of Union Square demonstrations, from suffragettes to anarchists to war protesters.
The Daily News has a closer look at the penthouse apartment in the A Building at 425 East 13th Street featuring a shiny metal slide connecting its two floors. The apartment’s owner, professional poker player Phil Gafford, left the US after the enforcement of laws regarding the playing of online poker became more stringent. Prospective buyers can go all in on the four-bedroom apartment for $3.99 million. Read more…
A few weeks after filming at Hopper House the Coen Brothers are back, and taking advantage of NoHo’s cobblestone for their 60s flick “Inside Llewyn Davis.” A flyer on Bond Street between Lafayette and Bowery indicates they’ll be shooting Tuesday through Friday of next week. Cars must be moved by Monday at 9 p.m.
Mere hours after opponents of N.Y.U.’s expansion plan rallied on the steps of City Hall, they get a big boost from Michael Kimmelmann, the architecture critic of the Times. “Common sense and the billions of dollars that the project would cost suggest the university would be hard pressed to build half of what it’s outlining during the next decade or two,” Mr. Kimmelmann writes, calling for a scaled-back version of the project that would build only two of the proposed buildings and include additional green space. Meanwhile, The Daily News ran an editorial earlier this week strongly in favor of N.Y.U., as well as an op-ed last week by former Mayor Ed Koch that supported the plan.
As if blind dates aren’t awkward enough. A 20-something man stole a 50-year-old woman’s cell phone and wallet after going on a date with her in the Lower East Side on March 9, the police said.
The victim reportedly arranged a night out with the alleged thief — who may be named Hayden — over the internet. The pair parted ways at the Second Avenue station, and then the victim realized her items were missing. The police described the suspect with corn rows in his hair as roughly six-foot-one and around 165 pounds.
Earlier this week The Local’s crime blotter, “Police and Thieves,” reported two cases of victims taking their dates home for the night, only to be robbed in the morning.
A day after Good Old Lower East Side hosted a public workshop on combating rats (flyer at left), The Villager reports that Chad Marlow, the founder of the Tompkins Square Park and Playgrounds Parents Association, has declared victory in the fight against the rats in the park. He says, “Hopefully, the time where rats would run over your foot is passed” – in Tompkins, anyway: Bowery Boogie notices that gardeners at the Children’s Magical Garden de Carmen Rubio are working with Lower East Side restaurants to combat rats inside of their community garden.
Stephen Rex BrownAndrew Berman, the executive director of the Greenwich Village Society, opened the press conference today.
Around 90 opponents of N.Y.U.’s controversial expansion urged Borough President Scott Stringer to disapprove of the plan, reiterating their longstanding claims that it would overwhelm the neighborhood and destroy much-needed green space.
“This kind of development is character-defining in all the wrong ways,” said Simeon Bankoff, the executive director of the Historic Districts Council and one of over a dozen speakers at the rally this afternoon. “This plan will not build up this section of the Village, it will destroy it.” Read more…
The police say they have arrested an East Village man accused of forcibly touching an 11-year-old girl. Kerry Abrams, 54, allegedly fondled the child at a Dunkin’ Donuts in Gramercy on March 7, then fled the scene. Police were able to retrieve surveillance camera footage of the suspect, who now faces charges of sexual assault.
The Local was a journalistic collaboration designed to reflect the richness of the East Village, report on its issues and concerns, give voice to its people and create a space for our neighbors to tell stories about themselves. It was operated by the students and faculty of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University, in collaboration with The New York Times, which provides supervision to ensure that the blog remains impartial, reporting-based, thorough and rooted in Times standards.
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