Susan Keyloun 200 Avenue A, earlier this summer.

The owners behind a proposed art gallery and restaurant at the former site of Superdive, one of the most controversial East Village bars in recent memory, will soon formally go before the State Liquor Authority, a spokesman confirmed yesterday. The last time 200 Avenue A was on the radar, Michael Taub, the owner of the building, was met with skepticism by Community Board 3 and Councilwoman Rosie Mendez after pitching the art gallery idea, which would feature a D.J., full service bar and stay open until 4 a.m. on weekends.
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Dan Glass Saxophonist Darius Jones and Kirk Knuffke on cornet lead the Kirk-Jones Quintet during a less controversial performance at the University of the Streets.

The executive director of University of the Streets has broken her silence regarding a brawl that occurred at her long-standing Seventh Street venue earlier this month. According to Saadia Salahuddeen, the scuffle stemmed from a dispute over $50 that she said the band, Talibam!, owed the University because no one showed up for its show.

That’s when things got heated, according to a statement by Ms. Salahuddeen posted on the University’s Facebook page. A member of Talibam!, Kevin Shea, allegedly said to her, “You think we’re acting crazy? I am crazy — let’s get crazy.” He then allegedly lunged at Ms. Salahuddeen, leading to the fisticuffs. Read more…

If the air smelled a little different today, it wasn’t a recurrence of the maple syrup incident. It’s because Manhattan’s second IHOP finally opened at 235 East 14th Street. Yesterday, The Local hit the streets to find out how Villagers felt about the dawn of the 24-hour Rooty Tooty Fresh ‘N Fruity (available for takeout!). Watch the video and tell us how you feel.

Sick of that vacant lot? Tired of that dead tree? Now you can clean them up using grant money from the Citizens Committee for New York City. The Love Your Block grant offers up to $1,000 for any community group looking to improve a street in a variety of ways (trash cleanup, bicycle parking — the sky’s the limit). The city also chips in by offering the help of the transportation, parks, and sanitation departments, as well as other agencies. Here’s the application. An informational session is today at 6:30 p.m. in Lower Manhattan.

Daniel Maurer “Mosaic Man” Jim Power visits the Bean’s new truck.

About an hour ago this morning, a city marshal entered the storefront that until yesterday was home to The Bean. It will soon be occupied by a Starbucks. Across the way, on Third Street near First Avenue, the Bean’s manager Guy Puglia was selling drip coffee out of a rented cupcake truck that had been found on Craigslist. Mr. Puglia said the truck will stay here, or at least nearby (“it’s hard getting a parking spot in the same place every day in this neighborhood”) from about 7 a.m. till 7 p.m. daily, until the Bean’s new store opens a block south in about a month.

“We’re not doing this to make money,” said Mr. Puglia. “We’re getting killed.” Mr. Puglia would not disclose the price of the truck rental, but indicated it was “a good amount of money.” Still, by moving four wooden benches across the street and eventually setting up a wireless hotspot, he and owners Ike Escava and Sammy Cohen hope to remind customers that they’re still in the espresso business. Read more…

Daniel Maurer

While we have our lens trained on Cooper Square today: The Local was shocked to see that the price of a spicy chicken sandwich went up by 25 cents at Cafe Zaiya — a sign that even one of the neighborhood’s cheapest eateries isn’t recession-proof.

Yesterday, the Japanese cafe raised the price of a pre-packaged onigiri with salmon (a triangle-shaped rice cake) by 25 cents to a whopping $1.75. And the spicy chicken sandwich — a favorite around the Local office — is now $4.25, up from $3.95.

“Gas is up. We have to pay tolls a lot,” said Fabian Lima, an employee at the cafe. “We haven’t raised the price since 2003.”
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From first to last: Gallery exterior, Nikki Milavec, Karen Hakimi, cafe, and art.

The New Museum recently announced a spin-off gallery at 231 Bowery, and now a pair of pop-up curators have opened the strip’s latest – just a little above the Bowery, actually, in the iconic Cooper Union New Academic Building at 41 Cooper Square. The Milavec Hakimi Gallery opened with a group show, “Hello World!” last Thursday. In two or three weeks, it will be joined by an adjacent cafe selling espresso, pastries, and tea.

The gallery’s founders, Nikki Milavec and Karen Hakimi, both 29, previously worked together at a pop-up gallery, Volume Black (before that, Ms. Milavec, a graduate of the Sotheby’s Institute of Art in London, ran another pop-up, Milavec Green, with a partner Adam Green). During the course of their two-plus years as colleagues, they decided to collaborate on a permanent space – preferably on the Bowery. Read more…

Scott Lynch

Good morning, East Village.

André Balazs’s takeover of the Cooper Square Hotel isn’t the only news today.

DNAinfo has more on the rape that occurred on East Eighth Street Saturday morning. The victim’s attacker is described as “choking her so viciously that she lost consciousness.”

Elsewhere in Alphabet City, Off the Grid takes note of the Bullet Space gallery at 292 East Third Street – one of eleven buildings (this one dating back to 1867) that the city turned over to squatters for $1 each. Read more…

62-64 4th, Before Renovation

Next Saturday the artistic haven on Fourth Street between the Bowery and Second Avenue will mark a major milestone, as two newly renovated buildings will be officially opened, and crews will break ground on a Latino cultural center.

Fourth Arts Block, the group overseeing the development of the Fourth Street arts district, is hosting the ribbon cuttings and groundbreakings, which will coincide with the FAB! Festival of performances, food and other street-fair fare.

Tamara Greenfield, the executive director of FAB, heralded the upgraded facilities — which were renovated with $10 million in public financing, as well as some private funds — as vital new spaces for artists and their audience.
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Daniel Maurer 303 East Eighth Street

A 51-year-old man was arrested for raping a woman on Saturday morning, an N.Y.P.D. spokesman said.

The victim told the police that the suspect threw her to the ground outside of 303 East Eighth Street at around 8:19 a.m. and attacked her. The suspect was arrested at the scene between Avenues B and C. The victim — whose age was not available — was treated at Bellevue Hospital and had bruising to the face, according to the spokesman.

A resident in the area commented on EV Grieve that a person walked out of a building nearby, saw the crime and called 911.

According to the latest crime statistics, the incident is at least the tenth rape this year in the Ninth Precinct, which covers the East Village.

One of my favorite parts of street photography is that I never have any idea what I’m going to shoot when I go out walking around. For the most part, it’s about turning a corner and getting hit with something goofy, or beautiful, or one-in-a-million. You can go just about anywhere in New York City and expect the unexpected, of course, but somehow the East Village just seems to generate more of those moments. Here are a few recent shots that took me by surprise.
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Lauren Carol Smith Wendy Barrett’s store may soon be evicted by city marshals.

Another longstanding business in the neighborhood is on the brink of closing its doors.

The Village Scandal, a 16-year-old hat shop, is facing eviction from its space on Seventh Street, and the owner is pointing the finger at her property management company.

Wendy Barrett, the milliner who owns the popular shop, has become so desperate that she has written a message on a sandwich board in front of her store asking sympathizers to petition the management company, A.J. Clarke, to stop the eviction.
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Daniel Maurer

It’s a little known fact – but no surprise – that Bill Hicks, the insightful and iconoclastic comedian, once lived in the East Village. His first apartment after moving to New York City in 1988 was at 29 Avenue B near the corner of East 3rd Street. In a postcard to his brother Steve, the acerbic stand-up described apartment 3F as “a studio, but rather large, with a full bath and full kitchen. It’s a new building with an elevator and laundromat. What a find.”

Mr. Hicks had a history of substance abuse problems, but arrived in New York from his native Houston eager to focus on his career. His brother told The Local about that time, via e-mail. Read more…

Courtesy of Robert Sestok. “First St. Iron.”

What will happen to the BMW Guggenheim Lab once it packs up its video screens and moves on to Berlin? Members of First Street Green – the community group that for years lobbied the city to renovate the lot at Houston Street and Second Avenue – held a brainstorming event at the Lab on Saturday to answer just that. This much is certain: They’ve secured approval from the Parks Department, which owns the land, to install a new sculpture by Robert Sestok, a Detroit-based artist who has been visiting New York for three decades.

Mr. Sestok, who said he has been involved with Detroit’s influential Cass Corridor art movement since the 1970s, called “First St. Iron,” his welded steel sculpture, “a tribute to my past associations with the city of New York.” The piece was inspired by the wrought iron fences lining the streets near a friend’s house in the East Village. Read more…

Rachel Citron

Good morning, East Village.

According to the Greenwich Village Society for Historical Preservation, the Landmarks Preservation Commission has rejected a hearing about 316 East Third Street, the 177-year-old rowhouse the GVSHP has been fighting to save from demolition. In a letter to the preservation group, the LPC writes, “The changes to the building are too numerous and from many different periods, resulting in a lack of architectural significance necessary to be considered an individual landmark.”

Preservationists, take comfort: To celebrate its 160^th birthday, Kiehl’s is introducing a “Limited Edition New York Heritage Collection” of scents that date back over fifty years. The Star, out of Malaysia, has a Kiehl’s history lesson.

EV Grieve sneaks a peek inside Tompkins Square Bagels. Still no sign of the Mosaic Man’s artwork.

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A new citywide bike share program will debut next summer, and the Department of Transportation is asking for input regarding where the distribution stations should be set up. The map, which went live today, shows that people have already suggested bike share spots at Tompkins Square Park, Cooper Square, and Sixth Street at Avenue C. Where would you like to see stations in the neighborhood (if anywhere at all)?

Mark Burton Mike Iveson, Frank Boyd and Ben Williams

After their highly acclaimed production of “Gatz” (based on “The Great Gatsby”) at the Public Theater last year, Elevator Repair Service has returned to the stage with Ernest Hemingway’s “The Select (The Sun Also Rises)” at New York Theatre Workshop. The group’s third adaptations of a classic of American literature (William Faulkner’s “The Sound and The Fury” was the first) tells the story of expatriates living in Europe after World War I. They’re members of Gertrude Stein’s “lost generation” – left numb by the atrocities of war. Read more…

Daniel Maurer A damaged police car near Cooper Square.

The Local spotted a damaged police cruiser being hauled away on a truck bed this morning at Cooper Square and Sixth Street. The side air bags had been deployed, and the passenger-side of the car was dented. A spokesman for the police department said that the car was involved in a crash with a black car at around 5:20 a.m. There were no major injuries from the accident, and no one was arrested. The spokesman had no further information. Do you? <a href=”mailto:leveditor@nytimes.com”>E-mail The Local</a> whenever you see something like this and give us the what, who, where, and when.