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…

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…

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…

Emily J. Hara The Squeeze truck.

A new food truck will hit the streets of the East Village next week. According to its creator, The Squeeze will be the only bio-diesel-fueled, pressed juice truck in the city. It’ll certainly be the only one selling vegan “Funyons.”

When Karliin Brooks turned vegan at the age of 16, she craved more than just granola bars. She went on to graduate from N.Y.U. with a degree in Nutrition and Broadcast Journalism and then attended the The Natural Gourmet Institute. Now the 38-year-old caterer has reconditioned a onetime UPS truck and will use it to serve buckwheat popcorn and “Twix” bars made with dates and soybean in lieu of caramel.

“We are food alchemists,” said Ms. Brooks, whose partner in The Squeeze is Jen Gatien, producer of “Limelight.” “We convert high-energy raw food into something that people can recognize and would consume.” 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…

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…

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…