Suzanne Rozdeba The sign from last week, alongside this week’s new name.

First it was Bea’s Cafe, now it’s La Betola. On Thursday The Local noted that Bea’s Cafe was coming to 514 East Sixth Street, a building with a controversial rooftop extension that is owned by Benjamin Shaoul. Now, a new sign in the window says that the cafe will be called La Betola. The concept hasn’t changed, apparently: the sign still advertises “an espresso bar and more.” Anyone have a clue to the story behind this cafe crisis that’s piqued our interest almost as much as the mysterious messages on East Seventh Street?

Today EV Grieve shared a photo of two men and a minivan inside the lot at 35 Cooper Square. Naturally, the prospect of a surveying crew prepping for construction at the high profile site led us to ask its owner, Arun Bhatia, what was going on. His spokeswoman’s response only added to the intrigue: “I spoke to Arun and we do not know who those men were. We are trying to find out. We are not doing anything on the site.”

Racked opens its citywide survey of bodegas in the East Village, and an employee of First and First Finest Deli shares a funny story about a regular customer with bipolar tendencies. “It’s the weirdest thing,” the unnamed worker says. “Like in the morning she will come in and yell at everyone and then later that afternoon she will come in and be very peaceful and sweet, saying things like ‘Jesus is good.'” Oh, and he says customers are always trying to convince him to order fancy juices that end up sitting on the shelves.

Noah Fecks The bagel burger at Tompkins Square Bagels did not get a warm reception from our local expert.

When we got wind of the bagel burger at Tompkins Square Bagels, we knew just the person to try it. So we called Josh “Mr. Cutlets” Ozersky, the East Villager who wrote “The Hamburger: A History.” Would the bagel burger replace the one at Veselka as his favorite? Or would it be too sacrilegious for a burger purist?

The Bagel Burger at Tompkins Square Bagels has the distinction of combining the worst hamburger in the East Village with one of the most disappointing bagels; but that’s not why I hate it so much. At first, it struck me that the clownishly oversized bagels, as puffy and bloated as parade floats, would actually serve a burger well.

A traditional bagel, which is what I had hoped for, would have been far too dense and chewy for any form of ground beef: a single bite would have sent the meat squishing out to the sides, or swallowed up all its juices entirely.

But one of these augmented, airy confections might be OK. And so they might have been, had not the place chosen to cheap out and serve a gray, pasty puck of meat that woudn’t look out of place in a convenience store refrigerator. Thin as a cat’s ear, without even a hint of taste or moisture, this thing would have been overwhelmed by a slice of wonder bread.
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The Local is following progress at the soon-to-open NoHo outpost of Mile End with an eager appetite. Today we spotted a sign noting that the Montreal smoked meat Mecca is hiring cooks and servers. A co-owner of the restaurant, Noah Bernamoff, recently told Grub Street that he was hoping to open this month. One thing is for certain: Katz’s will be facing some of its stiffest competition since the days of the Second Avenue Deli once Mile End does open.

Suzanne Rozdeba The Cut, at 120 East Seventh Street.

A new barbershop, The Cut, is opening up at 120 East Seventh Street, next door to the Turntable Lab and across the street from Butter Lane and the Big Gay Ice Cream shop.

The shop was still closed at 1 p.m. today, with no word yet on when its touted grand opening will occur. But shiny new chairs, barber’s tools and mirrors could be seen neatly in place inside the store.

There’s also no indication whether pricey cuts and Sweeney Todd cocktails — a la the Blind Barber on East 10th Street — will be on the menu, or whether it’ll be as social of a spot as Perfection on Avenue C, where co-owner Hubert Phillip said it best: “A haircut is 80 percent of where the night will take you.”

Following the recent gun battle near the Baruch Houses and the arrest of an alleged armed member of the Money Boys gang, The Lo-Down reports that State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver is calling for a gun buy-back program in the Lower East Side. “Far too many of my constituents live in fear of violence. We must take proactive steps to take guns out of the hands of criminals so that our streets are safer,” Mr. Silver wrote in a letter to Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance. A recent buy-back program in Crown Heights netted 29 semi-automatics.

Suzanne RozdebaPolice officers at the scene of a bank robbery this morning.

While taking photos for an upcoming story about the loss of parking spaces that will result from N.Y.U.’s proposed expansion (check back soon!), The Local was alerted to a robbery at CitiBank on Laguardia Place near West Third Street.

A police officer at the scene said that at around 9:30 a.m. a white male wearing a black hat, sunglasses and a black jacket flashed a gun at the bank and then fled. A police spokesman did not yet have information regarding whether the suspect escaped with any money.

An hour after the incident officers were still lingering at the scene and barring any customers from entering the bank.

Heather Hollland These little dogs may be romping, but one local found that they, and their owners, are generally a sensitive bunch.

Tompkins Square Park has two dog runs: one for large dogs and another for small and timid ones. And it’s not just the dogs that are different – their owners seem to make up two distinct communities.

I recently took my friend’s Boston terrier, Chuck, to the small dog run (Chuck is not a big dog. I’ve seen bigger cats). It’s a serene place where most of the owners sit on a deck under a beautiful old American Elm. A man wearing white jeans and pink sunglasses spoke into a pink cell phone with a Hello Kitty bauble hanging from it. A woman sang a song about “all the little animals” (it’s refrain was about veganism) and handed out fliers depicting animal abuse at slaughterhouses.

Michael Clemens The gate that separates the big dogs from the toys.

The dogs in this area are precious. The Yorkies, Maltese and Chihuahuas don’t pick up toys as much as gently lick them. Some have coats more brilliantly white than the bleached teeth of their owners. Occasionally they play or wrestle with each other in the sand, but it’s a pretty civil affair.

Chuck didn’t exactly fit in this environment. He tore into the park like a kamikaze pilot, blazed around it twice, and tackled a Yorkie. As he held the dog’s paw in his mouth and forced it into submission the vegan stopped singing, Hello Kitty looked at Chuck in disgust and the Yorkie’s owner began yelling at me.
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As we noted on Saturday, Billy Leroy planned to fold up his tent following a late night funeral bash and place it in a casket. Tim Schreier, a community contributor for The Local, was there to snap photos of the somber scene. According to him, the casket was on loan from a friend, which raises the obvious question: what lucky stiff will be laid to rest in the box that once held Mr. Leroy’s storied tent?

Tim Schreier

Top of the morning to you, East Village.

Our community contributor Tim Schreier snapped the above photo while attending a Code Pink protest that culminated in Union Square on Saturday. The group of under 100 protesters marched from Zuccotti Park in recognition of International Women’s Day. To see more photos from the scene check out Mr. Schreier’s photostream.

A tipster tells EV Grieve that Artichoke Pizza has expanded into the neighboring storefront that was occupied by Curly’s Vegetarian Lunch only two weeks ago. Grieve also notes that a tile bearing the “R” from the long gone Ratner’s restaurant has finally been removed thanks to renovations in Met Foods. If you’re feeling nostalgic you can still buy buttons from the waiters’ uniforms.

Following up on our coverage of Billy Leroy’s goodbye bash on Friday night, The Times attended the funeral procession for the tent “that had been patched so many times it was now more plastic than canvas.” Check back shortly for some more photos from the solemn ceremony.
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The hand in formaldehyde, the dusty Styrofoam mannequins and the subway signs for sale were long gone. But last night Billy Leroy and around 200 friends celebrated the now-closed antique shop on the Bowery a final time, raising their beers inside the iconic tent that will soon be six feet under.

“It’s sad, but it’s a new beginning,” said Mr. Leroy, patting the coffin like an old friend as neighborhood characters like Clayton Patterson, director Jim Jarmusch and writer Anthony Haden-Guest mingled with the crowd. “It’s an outpouring of love. All of my friends are here. It’s really amazing. I didn’t realize how much people love this place.”

The love was not in short supply because Mr. Leroy’s eponymous shop on East Houston Street at Bowery, which he ran for 10 years, had to close on Jan. 1. In the place of the store will go a two-story development, though the story isn’t entirely tragic. The tent will be gone, but the landlord, Tony Goldman, has assured Mr. Leroy his store will have a space in the building when complete.

By 8 p.m. the tent was at capacity as old friends and the crew from Mr. Leroy’s upcoming film rocked out to the bands The Naked Heroes and The Virgins. Two hours later the funeral bash had spilled out to the sidewalk.

At one point Mr. Leroy — a raconteur if there ever was one — grabbed the mic and shared a tale from his tent’s glory days. “A homeless dude came into the store and he brought me some pieces of junk. I said, ‘Dude, I don’t want this crap. Bring me like a human head or something,’” he recalled. “The next week, he was on 12th Street and saw a beautiful trunk. He was going to bring me the trunk, but it smelled funny. Inside the trunk was a young lady, dead. He was going to bring her to me, but he freaked out, and the cops took the trunk. His name is Spider, and he’s probably slithering around here somewhere.”

Not surprisingly, that wasn’t the only example of gallows humor last night.
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If you’re looking to take in some art this weekend, head uptown to The Art Show at the Park Avenue Armory, where admission goes towards the Lower East Side-based Henry Street Settlement.

And if the Upper East Side isn’t your thing, the Brucennial is on Bleecker Street at Thompson Street. Tim Schreier, a community contributor for The Local, recently snapped some photos of that show as well.

Would you like to shoot photos for The Local? Join our Flickr group.

OK dear readers, what the heck are these blind items all about? A fourth intriguing message has appeared in the window of the law office of Zenon B. Masnyj on East Seventh Street that hints at questionable goings-on at a credit union. Mr. Masnyj has told us in the past that he prefers to let the notes speak for themselves — the most recent one, pictured to the left, vaguely hints at “our money, their secrets.” Any East Village gumshoes have an idea what’s going on? Let us know in the comments or E-mail us.

Add Max Brennan to the long list of East Village business owners who have opened outposts in Williamsburg. Gothamist reports that Mr. Brennan, an owner of Lit Lounge, will open a new “swinging 60s-type jazz club” called The Flat on the other side of the East River later this month. Mr. Brennan, whose fellow Lit-owners celebrated the bar’s 10-year anniversary last week, will join familiar East Village eateries like Max, Crif Dogs, Mama’s and Cafe Mogador that have followed the L train east.

N.Y.P.D. The suspected slashers.

The police are on the hunt for two men who they say sliced two other guys outside of IHOP on March 3.

According to the police, the dispute between the men began at around 6:20 a.m. at the house of pancakes on 14th Street. That’s when things escalated and the 25-year-old and 27-year-old victims were cut with an unknown object.

Both suspects, who are thought to be 20 to 25 years old, then fled the scene.

Jared Malsin MoRUS founders Laurie Mittelmann, left, and Bill
DiPaola, right.

After seven months of negotiations, the creators of the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space have finally signed a lease and are busy fundraising, compiling photos and video, and renovating the storefront inside the legendary collective building C-Squat, where the East Village’s first squatting and homesteading museum will be housed.

The signing of the lease on Thursday with the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board marked the formal launch of the project, which is already staging what organizer Laurie Mittelmann calls “spontaneous tours” of squats, community gardens and other sites of street-level confrontation with police and developers over the control of urban space in the East Village since the 1970s.

On Tuesday, The Local visited the Museum’s dedicated video compiling facility (we were asked not to disclose its location), where two of the project’s 30 volunteers were hunched over computers logging video onto hard drives. (Time’s Up has donated over 400 hours of footage to the museum.) On one video, police were issuing a ticket to performance artist Reverend Billy during a 2006 demonstration.

During our visit, Ms. Mittelmann and co-director Bill DiPaola spoke about their vision and plans for the new museum. Read more…

A new play at Theater for the New City about a bicycle shop encourages the audience to arrive by bike and then park their rides on the stage. “Bike Shop” is a one-woman musical about Bobby, a bike mechanic who tries to get back on her ride after a nasty cycling accident. According to the theater, Bobby “builds and fixes real bicycles onstage while backed up by a four-piece ‘Bicycle Band.'” If you do end up riding to the show, which premieres on Thursday, just be careful when you make turns out of the bike lane. You don’t want to end up getting a ticket like cyclist Evan Neumann, who was so outraged by the citation he received while riding in the Lower East Side that he is suing the state Department of Motor Vehicles.

Courtesy of Katrina Bowden

Katrina Bowden will no doubt be recognizable to her East Village neighbors as 30 Rock’s resident hottie Cerie, who has been known to school her boss Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) on the nuances of social networking. Though she is originally a Jersey Girl, Ms. Bowden, 23, says she was drawn to her home of the past two years “because I like the neighborhood and everything it has to offer: great restaurants, intimate wine bars and a fun downtown vibe.” It’s shaping up to be a thrilling year for the actress, who has three films coming out, including screamer “Piranha 3DD.” Even more exciting? She recently got engaged to her high school sweetheart, rocker Ben Jorgensen. Let’s hear where the happy couple likes to hang out.

Favorite people-watching
Pretty much anywhere! I guess a good place to do it though is at a corner coffee shop like Think Coffee or The Bean. Also, Tompkins Square Park is pretty incredible for people-watching (and cute-dog-watching!). They have a dog park within the park and I often stop to watch the dogs play. It’ll have to do until I finally get a dog of my own. Read more…