One Animus Arts Collective artist constructs a Flaming Cactus Saturday night

The “WALK MAN” that was erected in Tompkins Square Park over the weekend has already been vandalized (DNA Info has the story), but another art installation is still standing. Over the weekend, a group of roughly ten artists calling themselves the Animus Arts Collective transformed fourteen East Village lampposts into “Flaming Cactus” displays.

You may have seen some of the lampposts at Astor Place; four similar lampposts, festooned with fluorescent cables to resemble cacti, are located on Governor’s Island.

Officials with the New York City Department of Transportation commissioned the project in order to mark the route of the D.O.T.’s fourth annual Summer Streets program. Read more…

Karl Fischer An exclusive rendering of the new building bound for 427 East 12th Street

When the news first broke that a new six-story residential building at 427 East 12th Street would be designed by controversial architect Karl Fischer, speculation immediately ensued about its appearance.

Now, The Local has obtained a rendering of the building, which is marked by floor-to-ceiling windows and a penthouse that sits two stories above its neighbors. The developer of the building, Shaky Cohen, said that he and Mr. Fischer had strived to make the building fit into the neighborhood.

“We try to blend in to the neighborhood. We try not to be a focal point,” Mr. Cohen said. “Obviously it’s a modern building — we’re not going to replicate a design from the 1930s.”

He added that the building will feature a pair of one-bedroom apartments on floors two through five, with the ground floor accommodating an apartment with a backyard, and the top floor a penthouse. The building will also include perks like a virtual doorman and a communal roof deck.

But two local preservationists scoffed when they saw Mr. Fischer’s design.

Read more…

Marit Molin Sherwin Zabala stands in front of the construction that he says is hurting his Downtown Floor Supplies store on Lafayette Street.

Three business owners at the corner of Lafayette and Bleecker Streets say that construction on a new subway passage is warding off customers, leading to their revenue plummeting by as much as 50 percent. Workers for the Metropolitan Transit Authority have been busy since 2009, building a passageway between the uptown 6 train at Bleecker Street and the Broadway-Lafayette station. Unfortunately for the businesses at the entrance to the downtown 6 train, the latest phase of work, which according to an M.T.A. spokesman started four weeks ago, requires a construction zone that occupies parking spaces in the area and forms a barrier in front of the three store entrances. Read more…

Over the weekend, the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck (which is following in the footsteps of Van Leeuwen in adding an East Village store to its mobile enterprise) updated its blog readers on the progress of its hotly (coolly?) anticipated brick-and-mortar debut. Pending some electrical upgrades, the storefront at 125 East Seventh Street should finally open in mid-August with Oslo coffee, baked goods from The Treats Truck, and a store-only Choinkwich (chocolate ice cream and bacon sandwiched between chocolate cookies).

Cristobal Rey

The East Village lost a raw food store when Jubb’s Longevity shuttered in 2008; more recently, it lost a vegetarian spot when Counter closed. Now, two doors down from the former Jubb’s, another raw food spot (this one a Los Angeles transplant) has opened its doors. Euphoria Loves Rawvolution soft opened at 504 East 12th Street last Thursday. Its grand opening is today, and in two weeks it will begin offering a weekly cleanse that can be supplemented with “emotional shamanic journeys” and colonics.

Read more…

Adrian Fussell on the beauty of taking photographs in an urban setting.

“People on the street give me endless fleeting moments of beauty. In capturing them, I try to make the viewer feel the irony of a scene, feel empathy for the subject, or show a unique juxtaposition. I’m training myself to be ready for those decisive moments in the random chaos of people going about their daily lives.”
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Phillip Kalantzis Cope

As my last day as editor of The Local draws to a close, I wanted to take a moment to thank all of you who have joined our experiment in collaborative journalism over the past year.

Since our launch in September, many of our neighbors have accepted our invitation to tell their own stories about the community that we all share and the blog has served as a showcase for the richness of voices and images and perspectives that makes the East Village what it is. Even more of you have visited the blog or paused to leave a comment in our forums or speak with us via Facebook and Twitter. We are grateful to you all.

The hard work that we have put into the site speaks for itself — and by “we” I mean community contributors, NYU students, and everyone else who has generously shared their talents in this effort.

And happily that work will continue under the exceptional leadership of Daniel Maurer, who on Monday will formally assume the editorship of the blog with all of my best wishes.

To my neighbors and friends here in the East Village, to the extraordinary students whom I’ve had the pleasure of teaching, to my wonderful colleagues at NYU and The New York Times, again, thank you all.

Vivienne GucwaSupporters of same-sex marriage during a parade last month. An anticipated spike in business for wedding planners, florists and others because of the new law has so far failed to materialize.

The legalization of same-sex marriage in New York meant many things to many people. It meant freedom to marry for lesbian and gay couples who had been waiting to do so in their home state. It meant a landmark civil rights victory for New York legislators. And to many in the wedding industry, it meant cash.

But they may have seen the dollar signs a bit too soon.

There were 659 marriage licenses issued to same-sex couples who wed on Sunday, the first day that the law was put into effect, but those numbers have not led to a bump in profits.

Wedding planner Jeannie Uyanik, executive director of C&G Weddings, thought that the expectations of business owners were overblown from the outset, making the lackluster increases seem even more disappointing.

“Even before the law was enacted, there were people who were going to get married no matter what. It didn’t matter if they had to go to Canada or Amsterdam or Massachusetts: where there’s a will there’s always been a way,” Mrs. Uyanik said. “This in and of itself is not going to change the wedding industry. There’s going to be that small blip — probably of just a year — but at that point its really going to normalize.”
Read more…

Chelsia Rose Marcius

Our recent posts on bodegas in the East Village that continue to sell caffeinated Four Loko struck a nerve. Many readers took time to write in and express their thoughts on our investigation, and Gothamist picked up the story and republished similar articles twice.

The action wasn’t limited to the blogosphere either: The Local’s Chelsia Rose Marcius revisited the subject after the commotion, reporting that the State Liquor Authority planned to investigate the bodegas in question.

A common label, used both in the comments section and the Gothamist posts, was “narcs” and “snitches.”

“tacony palmyra” started off the name calling:

“Well, thanks East Village Narc! I’m sure the SLA or whatever authority is going to make sure these bodegas you individually identified will be in trouble if they find any, and now we get no more old school Four Lokos. Do journalistic ethics require that you play fun police?”

Read more…

Adrian Fussell

Good morning, East Village.

The Times reported that the police conducted an undercover sting operation in the East Village trying to find people who would purchase stolen bikes. The sting targeted bike messengers, specifically mentioning those at S’MAC on 12th Street and Haveli on Second Avenue. Gothamist said that the sting, which lead to three arrests, should be called “Operation Bark Up The Wrong Tree.” Sting operations are not uncommon, and the Department of Consumer Affairs is currently recruiting public participants to help them catch supermarkets who are overlooking basic requirements.

The most publicized bar in the neighborhood — Mars Bar — is set to be demolished next month. The owner, Hank Penza, and his associates are taking bricks from the walls and the cinderblocks from the exterior wall to use in his rumored new bar.

While Jeremiah continues to lament the loss of the “Chow Mein” sign, Off The Grid has a really lovely post on the oft-overlooked fire escapes that greatly impact our urban landscape. In addition to taking a serious look back at the history and need for fire escapes at the turn of the century, the post also includes pictures of some of the more artistic instances of such “iron in the sky.”

Even though the rats in Tompkins Square Park may be over-publicized at the moment, the issue is still alive and well in the East Village. Rat traps were spotted by an EV Grieve reader outside of the new BMW Guggenheim lab which is set to open next Wednesday. The public’s distaste for rats is so evident that it has lent the sentiment to a new reality series: The Animal Planet is going to air a six-part reality series called “Rat Busters NYC” which focuses around two managers of an extermination company that “tackle rat families bigger than their own, and other metropolitan pests like roaches, mice, bedbugs, raccoons and pigeons.”

Susan Keyloun takes a look at a subway station that’s been closed for more than six decades.

“When I catch a glimpse of Old New York on my peripatetic jaunts throughout this fascinating city, I can’t help but celebrate her history. My most recent glimpse: the abandoned 18th Street Subway station, which was opened to the public in 1904 and shuttered in 1948. I visited the station, at 18th Street and Park Avenue South, with an accommodating MTA employee who took photos of the station since I was not allowed to go below ground.”

Read more…

Adrian Fussell

Good morning, East Village.

Ratstravaganza is taking over! The seemingly massive rat population in Tompkins Square Park, which Neither More Nor Less has given an apocalyptic nickname, has hit all of the mainstream New York media outlets at this point. Photographers and reporters from The Post, Fox, WABC, and NY1. The takeaway from a handful of the reports was that the decision by the Parks Department to stop using rat poison in order to protect the local red-tailed hawks, coupled with parkgoers who litter, has led to the rise in our furry foes.

DNAinfo reports that popular mac-and-cheese eatery S’MAC will be opening a second locale at the hut on Houston Street and First Avenue this fall. The original store, which also has an attached sit-down area, is located on 12th Street and First Avenue. Their Ukrainian neighbor, Veselka, is also expanding and will be opening its second restaurant on First Street near Bowery in four to six weeks.

Jeremiah called in experts to talk about the removal of the longtime neon “Chow Mein” sign that used to hang on Second Avenue between 12th and 13th Streets. The sign originally came down on Monday as a construction crew is renewing the façade of the building that was Jade Mountain until 2007. Jeremiah goes on to worry about the safety of the Jade Mountain sign, since it is currently “popped up, like a body suddenly sitting upright in its coffin.”

While the historic significance of the neighborhood is well established, the new architectural gems that have been sprinkled in are the ones gaining attention from realtors. One relatively recent arrival, 40 Bond Street, located between Lafayette Street and Bowery, was named the seventh best building of the last decade. Luckily for those who are particularly flush, there are still units for sale- and one just lowered its price tag to $7.5 million.

Meghan Keneally St. Mark’s Comics, 11 St. Marks Place.

This summer, the posters lining the walls of movie theaters could just as easily have been found in a teenager’s bedroom as comic books are hitting the big screen. “Thor” came out in May, “Green Lantern” in June, “The Green Hornet” in July, “Captain America: The First Avenger” debuted last weekend and new teaser trailers for the prequel to Spider Man and the return of “The Dark Knight” franchise were recently released.

Gossip Web sites and fashion magazines splash pictures of Hollywood stars greeting enthusiastic fans at Comic Con, the comic book trade show which finished Sunday in San Diego.

The public attention and adoration that equals big bucks for movie studios — “Captain America” brought in $65.8 million in its first weekend — does not necessarily translate into traditional book sales.

“Good movies help, and bad movies hurt,” said Mitch Cutler of St. Mark’s Comics, one of the oldest comic book retailers in Manhattan.
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Brendan Bernhard

It is said, on one of the many Web sites dealing with the subject, that bed bugs, when they attack their sleeping victims, leave a trail of “dark fecal spots (which are partly digested blood) on their host, mattresses, clothes, bedding, walls, ceiling, and every place you can imagine in a room.”

Except, it seems, when they don’t. Except when you are preyed upon by bed bugs who come equipped with their own federally funded clean-up crew — bugs which don’t feed but tidy up after the other bugs — ensuring that the dawn will reveal absolutely no sign of their vampiric brethren except for the clusters of hideous, madly itching welts on your legs and arms and torso.

This is the situation as I lie awake in bed at three in the morning, a copy of George Eliot’s “Middlemarch” propped up on a small cushion in front of me. I’m about 420 pages in, with about 420 pages to go, but it’s a challenge to concentrate. I keep swiveling around thinking I’ll catch a bug scooting purposefully toward me on the pristine sheet. I turn a flashlight on the curls of peeling paint behind the heating pipe and under the window sill, looking for anything that scurries…. Surely there must be something moving somewhere. After all, it’s feeding time.
Read more…

Adrian Fussell

Good morning, East Village.

In your daily round up of the food scene, Upstate had a soft opening on First Avenue near Sixth Street, debuting with a better name than one that had been initially proposed: “Marry The Ketchup.” And Sidewalk, the bar and restaurant on Avenue A and Sixth Street, is still on schedule for its proposed reopening
Aug. 5.

After news spread that more than 50 New York City Post Offices would be closed because of budget cuts, the tiny post office on Third Street near Avenue C seemed a likely target. EV Grieve confirmed otherwise this morning.

Seeing how two areas of the East Village were recommended for landmark status Tuesday night by the Community Board, a number of blogs were looking back at the older institutions in the area. Off The Grid had a lovely look back at All Saint’s Ukrainian Church on 11th Street near Fourth Avenue, with pictures dating back to 1928. Jeremiah noted that Moishe’s Bake Shop on Seventh Street and Second Avenue was getting “a facelift,” which makes him nervous about what, if any, changes would be made to the nearly 100-year-old facade.

Finally, Grieve waxes poetic about the loss of the mural on the wall that formerly belonged to Russo’s on 11th Street and First Avenue.

Community Board 3 tonight approved the creation of two historic districts in the East Village, paving the way for official consideration by the city. The proposal was divided into two separate motions with a 23 to 9 vote in favor of the Second Avenue district and unanimous support for the Tenth Street district. Preservationists reiterated that the measures were the only way to protect the neighborhood from what they consider excessive development while opponents from the religious community, some of whom walked out of the meeting in protest, countered that they could not bear the financial burden of renovations under the landmarking requirements.
—Laura E. Lee and Stephen Rex Brown