Carl Knox, the 47-year-old who allegedly stabbed a man to death on East Fifth Street last week, turned himself in to police and is in custody, Deputy Inspector John Cappelmann announced at last night’s meeting of the Ninth Precinct Community Council.
Mr. Knox, who turned himself in on Sunday at the 44th Precinct near Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, faces a charge of murder in the second degree. Inspector Cappelmann shared a few additional details about the dispute that led to the death of 31-year-old Corey Capers. Mr. Knox, who was staying at 737 East Fifth Street in the Lower East Side II houses, got in a dispute with the goddaughter of his girlfriend over the fact that she was watching television. The argument escalated to the point that Mr. Knox began abusing his girlfriend, and the goddaughter alerted a group outside of the building. The group then chased Mr. Knox to scaffolding in the front of 709 East Fifth Street, where he allegedly stabbed Mr. Capers. Read more…
Melvin FelixKerry Bright in what will be his new showroom.
When Kerry Bright designed and built custom audio and video systems in the basement of 205 Avenue A, passersby would note the name of his company – Bright Home Theater – and buzz to ask about improv shows or to try to drop off their acting resumes. He’s hoping to clear up that confusion by opening a proper showroom across the street, under the name Bright Audio.
After working as a general contractor specializing in home theaters for about 15 years, Mr. Bright spent eight years at 205 Avenue A, showing products by appointment only. He signed a 10-year lease across the street at 202 Avenue A, previously the studio of artist M. Henry Jones, and moved out of his old digs last week. His current clients, he said, range from do-it-yourself audiophiles in search of components to “very, very wealthy people,” including a couple of celebrities he couldn’t name. One of the high-end speakers featured on BHT’s website retails for $13,995 per pair.
The new showroom, set to open in four to five weeks, will display high-end audio systems as well as gadgets that control anything from speakers to projection screens and shades. The store’s eight employees will continue to provide installation services ranging “from hanging a TV on a wall to creating a custom home theater,” said Radek Nesnidal, an employee. Read more…
Tonight is the last meeting of the Ninth Precinct Community Council this summer, and one subject is sure to come up: the recent uptick in crime in the East Village.
According to the latest crime statistics compiled by the Police Department, felony assaults have increased by 33 percent in the last 28 days in comparison with the same period last year. Robberies are up 29 percent when comparing the same time frames.
In the year to date, overall crime is up by roughly 3 percent when compared to 2011, according to statistics.
The spike comes amid recent high-profile incidents in the neighborhood, including the first homicide of the year, as well as a stabbing in East River Park. Read more…
Stephen Rex BrownThe door to Martha Fedorko’s apartment.
East Village landlords often make for easy villains. Just ask State Senator Thomas Duane about Benjamin Shaoul, the Shalom family, and Alistair Economakis. But the residents of 510 East Sixth Street face a particularly vexing situation.
Stephen Rex Brown510 East Sixth Street.
By most accounts their landlord, Martha Fedorko, was once a generous owner and accomplished doctor who helped out tenants when she could. Luc Sante wrote all of “Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York,” in the building, and thanks her in the acknowledgements of the book published in 1992. “She was absolutely the best landlord I ever had,” said Mr. Sante, who now lives in Kingston, N.Y.
But residents say that as she has grown old, Ms. Fedorko has started cutting their electricity for no reason, telling them to vacate their apartments at random times, menaced one of them with her cane, and left inscrutable letters in the hallway. Read more…
“It’s going from a crappy, super dive bar to a more appealing one,” said Fred Brown yesterday as he helped turn Joe’s Bar into Josie’s.
Kirk Marcoe, a new co-owner of the longstanding bar on East Sixth Street near Avenue B said it would reopen with a slightly cleaner look and a new name in mid-July. “We all appreciate a good dive bar, but that doesn’t mean it can’t have clean restrooms,” he said.
Mr. Marcoe and Rich Corton, who together also own Mona’s and Sophie’s, said they both had a special appreciation for Joe’s. They spent much of the late 1980s and ’90s playing pool there, and still live blocks away. And Mr. Brown met a woman at the bar who’s still with him 17 years later.
Mr. Marcoe’s story about a former girlfriend wasn’t quite as romantic: “She broke up with me in this bar, right over there,” he said, pointing to a spot near the front windows. Read more…
Community Board 3 may have set a record last night: with 27 items on the agenda – including Ninth Street Espresso’s bid to serve beer, a pitch for a German beer hall on the Bowery, and a Starbucks location’s attempt to win back its sidewalk seats – the board’s State Liquor Authority committee meeting ran past 2 a.m.
The main event: the owners of B-Side are hoping to open a spot at East Broadway and Clinton Street that would be “totally different” than the punk bar on Avenue B and would include a chip shop purveying “the best fish, chips and falafel you’ve ever had,” according to owner Sivan Harlap.
In an e-mail, Ms. Harlap called the new venture a “grown-up version of B-side,” explaining that “there are things I am interested in now that I wasn’t that all interested in when I was 22 – craft beers, cocktails, thoughtful food, this new place will reflect those new interests.”
Speakers lined up to argue in favor and against the new watering hole that would be catty-corner to the Seward Park Cooperative. Some neighbors said they looked forward to having a place to grab a drink or a bite in an area that isn’t laden with bars and restaurants. But opponents, some of whom were concerned about loud noise, had collected over 600 signatures, partially through churches and schools nearby. Read more…
Melvin FelixChef and owner Levent Akyol at Reyna Turkish Restaurant and Mediterranean Grill.
Reyna Turkish Restaurant and Mediterranean Grill opened in the former Mission Cafe space on Second Avenue over the weekend. Owner and chef Levent Akyol, a veteran of many a Mediterranean kitchen, plans to concentrate on the food of western Turkey, which he said was more Greek influenced and seafood-heavy than its eastern counterpart.
Mr. Akyol has been in the restaurant business since he was 10 years old. Back then, he cooked fish in his family’s restaurant in the city of Izmir, one of Turkey’s primary port cities. He moved to the United States in 1999 and was the owner of Marmaris Restaurant in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, until it closed in February. Here, he’ll serve a similar menu: seafood casseroles, char-grilled fishes, meat kebabs, cold appetizers such as cod caviar salad and hot appetizers such as cheese rolls and stuffed mushrooms. True to Reyna’s name (it means “new again”), there will also be new dishes like Turkish chicken wings.
Check out the new restaurant’s menu below. It’s B.Y.O.B. while it awaits a license to sell wine and beer, and will begin delivery soon. Read more…
Brian Rose’s new book, “Time and Space on the Lower East Side,” juxtaposes street scenes from 1980 with images from 2010. The Local asked him to share some of his favorites from the book – as well as some more recent photos – along with his thoughts about the world of change he has documented.
East 4th Street – 1980
In 1980, shortly after graduating from Cooper Union I began photographing the Lower East Side, which includes the East Village, in collaboration with Ed Fausty. Walking in the footsteps of photographers Jacob Riis and Berenice Abbot, and inspired by new developments in color photography, we documented the neighborhood over the course of a year with a 4×5 view camera. It was, perhaps, the neighborhood’s darkest, but most creative moment. While buildings crumbled and burned, artists and musicians came to explore and express the edgy quality of the place.
After moving on to other projects and living in Amsterdam for 12 years, I decided to return to where I first made my stand in New York – the Lower East Side, where so many Americans trace their roots: the old neighborhood tucked beneath the bridges, lying at the feet of the pinnacles of power, would serve as a barometer of change and continuity. Read more…
Just a block or two from where his Kiss mural may soon disappear, Antonio “Chico” Garcia added what he called “a brush of color” to the back wall of Arena Eco-Friendly Salon last night.
Rena Anastasi, the owner of the salon at 189 Orchard Street, said the hot pink touches came out “even brighter than I thought,” but she’s feeling it. “It’s definitely fun, LES fun.”
Chico said he’s headed back to his new home in Tampa, Florida in a couple of weeks. Until then, he’ll be repairing his work in the area, including the murals outside the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, which got a touch-up yesterday afternoon. “I’m just doing something for the community before I leave,” he said.
Yesterday, The Local showed you a mural (possibly 80 years old) excavated during renovations of the former Holiday Cocktail Lounge space. If that got you feeling nostalgic for the old dive, by all means indulge in the slideshow above. Back in February, our photographer Noah Fecks found time – in between cooking meals from every issue of “Gourmet” magazine in his East Village apartment – to wander into the Holiday just days after The Local published photos from the final night of service. These postmortem shots, published here for the first time, are a fine tribute to the St. Marks stalwart.
Courtesy of Underworld Productions.A dance performance in the garden last year.
You’ll have your pick of outdoor concerts tomorrow.
At 3 p.m., a group of opera performers will take the stage at La Plaza Cultural Armando Perez to delight local kids with songs about cats, dogs and rhinos, as the Underworld Productions Opera Ensemble presents “Animals in the Plaza,” a collection of operas performed in their original Spanish, French, English or Italian languages. “We believe children respond to opera in its true form, not watered down,” director Gina Crusco said. Songs include “The Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat,” “Wynken, Blynken and Nod” and “El Rinoceronte/The Rhinoceros.”
Also tomorrow, the Cooper Square Committee presents its annual Third Avenue Festival: from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. 150 vendors and non-profits will dot the avenue from Sixth Street to 14th Street. Performances will take place at East Ninth Street from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. by singer-songwriter Michelle Fury, The St. Marks Ensemble, Kate Vargas, Filthy Rotten System, Marcel Van Dam et Paul, The Dan Piccoli Trio, and The JewelTones.
Sarah DarvilleTommy McKean in the air shaft of his building.
This feud over an air conditioning unit certainly isn’t cooling off.
Employees of a Hamptons Market Place at 356 East 13th Street switched off power to their entire building this morning, leaving 16 apartments without electricity for about an hour. Outraged tenants said it’s only the latest disruption that has been inflicted on them by the deli, which installed an air conditioner and ventilator unit on the roof that has bothered them to no end.
The owner of the deli, who has grown weary of a year of noise complaints, is so fed up that today he raised the possibility of a harassment suit against the tenants.
“I can’t get a psychiatrist to come into their apartments but I wish I could,” the owner, Victor Nagi said, later adding, “The tenants are harassing me. They’re complaining every other day and getting me these fines.” Read more…
Michael White, the oft-lauded chef-owner of three-star seafood palace Marea, fine-dining Italian spot Ai Fiori, and SoHo’s Osteria Morini, will open Nicoletta, his first pizzeria, for dinner tomorrow, and the pies will be a touch different from the ones at all those other East Village parlors. (A Midwestern touch, to be exact.)
The crust, formed in a wood-burning brick oven (imported from… Long Island) was inspired by Mr. White’s teenage years slinging dough at Domenicos in Beloit, Wis., and is said to be a bit chewier than the Neapolitan norm. Pies, said to cost an average of $21, will come in 12-inch and 16-inch varieties, and can be topped with bacon lardons, egg yolk, truffled mushrooms, and more. Shown in our slideshow: the Calabrese (fennel sausage, pepperoni, red onions, and Pecorino Romano) and the Patate (mozzarella, crushed potatoes, pann, bacon, and charred scallions). Read more…
The Bean finally opened its outpost at First Avenue and Ninth Street this morning. When The Local stopped in, manager Guy Puglia was busy setting up the WiFi and co-owner Ike Escava was anticipating a shipment of outdoor benches.
Daniel MaurerJames Wechsler’s art.
The coffee spot’s third location (and its last one for now, said Mr. Escava) is the same size as the Second Avenue cafe that opened in December, though it has 10 more seats (60 in all). It’s offering the same array of muffins, danishes, espresso drinks, smoothies, and – oh, yes! – frozen hot chocolate, but won’t be in the beer and wine business anytime soon: the owners decided not to go for a license after neighbors voiced opposition.
Despite the lack of that particular competitive edge, Mr. Escava said he wasn’t concerned that a Starbucks is opening just a few blocks up First Avenue. Read more…
Daniel MaurerMary Help of Christians earlier today.
After serving as an after-hours club for one film and then a church in the Bronx for another, Mary Help of Christians is now being taken back to 1920s Little Italy, for a scene in “Boardwalk Empire.”
The Local spotted a film crew loading wooden panels into the church this morning, and Don Angst, an electrician, said that filming for the HBO show’s third season would occur Tuesday. But first, he said, carpenters will make adjustments to the endangered house of worship so that it resembles a church in Little Italy, circa 1923. The rounded pews, which are 1950s in style, will get more traditional caps, he said, and marbleized flats will be used to change the look of the altar.
“We usually make the place look better than it actually is,” said Mr. Angst.
So will the show’s star, Steve Buschemi, be making an appearance in his old neighborhood? Workers wouldn’t cough up any details about the scene, but we’ll keep an eye out as set-up continues tomorrow and Monday.
After opening in September, Krust Pizzeria has reduced the price of its slices from $2.50 to $1 for the next month, and likely for good.
“Pizzerias are getting competitive in New York,” explained Pemba Sherpa, the owner of the pizzeria at 226 East 14th Street, between Second and Third Avenues, just a block from Artichoke. “Even if you have a good pizza it doesn’t guarantee you’re going to do good.”
Mr. Sherpa said that on Monday, he began selling a “little bit of a smaller pizza” with “somewhat modified” ingredients in order to appeal to the N.Y.U. crowd. The new business model, mastered by 2 Bros. on St. Marks Place, has paid off: Mr. Sherpa said he was already doing four times the business as he was before.
After asking local food maven Kim Davis to suss out the neighborhood’s tastiest biscuits, porchetta, and smoked meat, we sent him to find out how a pork bun newbie stacks up against a couple of heavyweights.
Noah FecksPork buns at Jum Mum
There’s a pork bun bonanza in the East Village this summer, with Baohaus now located on East 14th Street, and newcomer Jum Mum joining the gua bao stakes on St Marks Place. I set out to compare these aspirants with Momofuku’s gold standard product, and ended up satisfied, sticky-fingered, and not too much lighter in the wallet.
Eddie Huang’s Baohaus built a wildly enthusiastic following for Taiwanese pork buns, in a basement space on Rivington, now home to Pok Pok Wing, before opening on 14th Street last year. Baohaus dresses its “Chairman Bao” with traditional Taiwanese garnishes – pickled mustard greens, fresh coriander, crushed peanuts and red sugar. It’s a sweetish snack, and also embraces Taiwanese tradition by preserving the jelly-like cap of fat on each slice of belly. If you’re averse to pork fat, get the crunchy fried chicken bun instead. $3.50 apiece. Read more…
If our look back at the Jewish Rialto made you long for the days of Yiddish music on Second Avenue, rest assured that on Thursday at 12:30 p.m. Metropolitan Klezmer will play a free concert at Abe Lebewohl Park, in front of St. Mark’s Church (right across from the Yiddish Walk of Fame at East 10th Street and Second Avenue). Consider the hour-long rain-or-shine event, co-sponsored by Third Street Music School Settlement, a tribute to the city’s booming Jewish population: The Times reported Monday that it has grown to nearly 1.1 million after decades of decline.
If you thought the lost episode of “Fear Factor” that Gawker recently excerpted was Too Much Donkey Information, you may want to steer clear of this week’s installment of the New Filmmakers’ Fest at Anthology Film Archives. At 6 p.m., the program kicks off with “Donkey Love,” about men in northern Colombia who have sex with donkeys. (Seems those secret service agents didn’t see the half of it.) The film’s premise (and trailer, above) left us with more than a few questions. So we spoke with the film’s director, Daryl Stoneage, to find out – among other things – if he wasn’t just making it all up.
Q.
Is this real?
A.
This is 100 percent real. Some days when I Google search my name or talk to my girlfriend’s parents, I wish it wasn’t, but it truly is. Read more…
Nice Guy Eddie’s just announced on Facebook that after 16 years it will close on Sunday. News that the Avenue A sports bar owned by Community Board 3 member David McWater would shut down broke in April when it was revealed that the owner of Ella and Gallery Bar, Darin Rubell was taking over the space. Meanwhile, the staff of the bar popular among football fans tells customers, “We’re throwing a huge party Sunday, so stop by and wish us farewell!” Still no word on whether the Kiss mural by Chico will remain.
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. Read more »
N.Y.P.D. Carl Knox
