Hannah Rubenstein Carol Green, a religious instructor at the Town and Village Synagogue, teaches Hebrew to a group of adult bat mitzvah students. Although becoming a bar or bat mitzvah as an adult is hardly novel, the synagogue’s program is distinct because its participants undergo the ceremony as a group rather than independently.

In the basement of the synagogue on a windy Monday evening, a group of students hunch over prayer books, tracing ancient words from right to left with the tips of their fingers. At the end of the table, a woman stands at a whiteboard, writing large letters in careful, deliberate strokes. Because this is a beginning Hebrew class, the progress is halting. But the students are focused. No one glances around the room or shifts in her seat. Together, slowly, their voices chant:

“Baruch atah Adonai… elohaynu melech ha’olam… asher kidshanu… bemitzvotav vetzivanu… l’hadlik ner… shel Shabbat.”

After the last syllable fades away, the teacher breaks into a wide smile. At this rate, the students will surely be ready when the time comes to stand at the bimah and read the Torah in front of the whole congregation. Years of study have prepared them to become bat mitzvahs, to be recognized and welcomed into the Jewish faith as independent adults.

There is only one difference between these students and others around the world studying to become bar and bat mitzvahs — these are not boys and girls, nervously approaching their 13th and 12th birthdays, respectively. These are women between the ages of 20 and 80. This bat mitzvah class is for adults only.
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Some employees of the souvenir shops on St. Marks Place near Cooper Square say they are relying on Christmas sales to boost their revenue before the end of the year.

Business at Village Tattoo is so bad, says one employee, that the store might have to close its doors after 15 years.

Jason Smith, an employee at First Rich Gift Shop across the street tells The Local that revenue so far this December is less than half of what it was at the same time last year.

Vendors say the stores traditionally do well around the holidays and they hope that a break in the weather will bring shoppers into the streets – and maybe even motivate them to spend.

NYU Journalism’s Liz Wagner reports.

Michelle Rick

Good morning, East Village.

At a moment when many people who live in our community are intensely focused on changes brought about by development and the loss of local institutions, The Times offers a fascinating look at new Census data showing how the demographics of neighborhoods in the New York region have shifted over the past decade.

The Lower East Side is cited in the piece as one of the locations in the region where the non-Hispanic white population has surged. The data comes from a five-year survey of neighborhoods across the country; the full Census report is expected to be released early next year.

The story also describes how segregation in city neighborhoods persists. “Most whites in the metropolitan area and most blacks in the city still live where a majority of their neighbors are of the same race,” the article notes. An interactive map also let’s you take a look at the data at the census tract level.

In other neighborhood news, EV Grieve, who last week was outraged by the apparent demise of a local willow tree near Eighth Street and Avenue C, re-visits the block this week and finds that the damage to the tree might not be as bad as originally feared.

The uniformed students of Girls Prep Lower East Side Elementary walk quietly in single file through neon orange hallways, under banners with slogans for the school’s four “core values”: sisterhood, scholarship, merit and responsibility. Since opening in 2005 as the first all-girls charter school in the city, it has been part of an ongoing experiment to boost performance in public schools. And for years now, students there have been quietly defying conventional wisdom about the link between income and academic performance.

At Girls Prep, where 98 percent of students are minority and almost three-quarters come from families with such low incomes that they qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, test scores have exceeded the state median the past few years – one of only a handful of schools in the East Village to do so.

NYU Journalism’s Andre Tartar reports.

Gloria Chung

Good morning, East Village.

We awoke this morning with a dusting of snow coating much of the neighborhood. It seems to have done little, however, to soothe the spirits of many in the neighborhood who fear the passing of some local iconic institutions.

Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York offers long take on the temporary closure of Mars Bar and some then-and-now photos that show how much the neighborhood has changed during the past seven years.

“When people talk about how the city is ‘always changing,’ I tell them this story,” the post reads. “The story of a historic, culturally relevant neighborhood sold down the river, demolished to the roots, and rebuilt into an unrecognizable playground for people passing through with money to burn. All in less than a single decade.” There’s more on Mars Bar at The Wall Street Journal and EV Grieve.

In other neighborhood news, Grieve also has a look at how a local artist traced the oddly-shaped buildings at the intersection of Bowery and Houston to property lines of 19th century farmers.

And The Athenaeum has a photo of Allen Ginsberg taken on the roof of his East Village apartment by William Burroughs in the fall of 1953.

Phillip Kalantzis Cope

‘Tis the season and we at The Local would like to hear your favorite memories about spending the holidays in the neighborhood.

In a place as distinct and atypical as the East Village, we’re sure that our readers have more than their share of holiday stories that are humorous or poignant, sad or bittersweet or even a little bawdy (within the bounds of good taste, of course) – and we’d like to hear them.

If you want to share your favorite holiday memory, e-mail us your stories in 400 words or less until Dec. 24 and we’ll publish some of the best ones.

Bruce Monroe

Good morning, East Village.

We begin the week still trying to process many of the sights, sounds and, yes, smells of Santacon. During the weekend, hundreds of revelers dressed as St. Nick descended on East Village bars in an event that seemed to underscore neighborhood tensions around such issues as noise and alcohol. And, as if on cue, The Post offered two pieces over the past few days examining some of those very issues.

One article, headlined “Lower East Side Is Losing It” mourns the loss of Mars Bar, Max Fish and Pink Pony. “There are no neighborhoods in Manhattan anymore,” The Post quotes the author Richard Price saying. “South of Harlem, it feels like a bunch of districts where rich people can crash.”

The second piece took a wildly divergent view citing the recent Capital piece on Superdive to describe how “bohemian snobs” are driving “frat boys” out of the neighborhood. “The story of the East Village might be how little things have changed,” the author writes. “It’s still a cramped little hipster Vatican suspicious of outsiders.” Two pieces very much worth reading.

When the temperature turns arctic, outerwear is the best way to show off your personal style. On a recent frigid morning, The Local braved the elements to check out how East Villagers are bundling up this season. Classic double-breasted coats and perenially popular down jackets were seen on every corner, but quirky residents donned everything from a houndstooth tweed coat and a plush faux-fur vest to an animal print trench and a trendy army jacket.

NYU Journalism’s Sophie Hoeller and Sally Lauckner take a look at the neighborhood’s most distinctive winterwear.

Meredith Hoffman Shaniqua Pippen said that she was denied admittance to the Continental bar by a bouncer who said “Your kind don’t know how to act.” Ms. Pippen joined a demonstration tonight at the bar.

Yelling “down with racism,” a group of 30 demonstrators gathered tonight outside the Continental Bar to protest what they said was a pattern of bias by the bar’s owners against African-American patrons.

“This is the first protest,” said Shaniqua Pippen, one of the demonstrators. “And I feel like if we continue more people will come, and something will change.”

Ms. Pippen, who is African-American, said that she was turned away from the bar in June when a bouncer, who is also African-American, told her “Your kind don’t know how to act.”

The owner of the Continental, Trigger Smith, denied that there was anything improper about the way that the bar screened its patrons.

“I’m not going to be politically correct and just let anybody in,” Mr. Smith said in an interview earlier this week. “I look at things in the long run — my bar’s been here 19 years — and I’ll turn away people if they don’t meet my dress code.”

Mr. Smith, who is white, said that patrons were not being turned away because of the color of their skin but because the bar has a policy against admitting patrons who do not adhere to its unwritten dress code.

“It just so happens that more people of a certain minority wear these things than others,” Mr. Smith said. “But I don’t want white trash either, or Jersey Shore boys.”
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Nicolina Marie is one of those fortunate East Villagers who are able to make a living with their art.

This holiday season, she is decorating 40 city stores with snowflakes and sleighs throughout the city. On Tuesday at The Bean, a coffee house on Third Street and First Avenue, she painted overnight and into the next day, when customers came in for their morning coffees.

Ms. Marie considers her work at The Bean, B-Cup Cafe, and Two Boots, among others, a commercial form of public art. “I get paid, which is great,” she said. “But I also get to reach a lot of people, which is ideal.”

Ms. Marie has also done projects worldwide, and this December’s sparkly windows are the last of her work before she heads to Chile to complete a public art piece.

She also runs a non-profit group, The Free Art Society, through which she creates public art with her friends. A Seattle native who’s lived in New York for the past four years, Ms. Marie is already well known in the neighborhood, and in November her Free Art Society hosted an Art Explosion of free outdoor art.

NYU Journalism’s Meredith Hoffman reports.

Gloria Chung Curry-Ya, 214 East 10th Street.

I don’t like Japanese food. What’s worse, I suspect that I like not liking Japanese food.

Still, here I am in a neighborhood rife with Japanese restaurants, grocery stores, sake bars and, at least in the evenings, young people. In jaunts along East 10th Street between Second and First Avenue, I had often noticed a string of Japanese restaurants along the south side. I had a dim recollection that one of them included in its name a word with which I had positive food associations. When I returned to the block last week, there it was — Curry-Ya (214 East 10th Street). I adore Indian food. Maybe this would be Indo-Japanese.

Curry-Ya is a brightly lit, scrupulously neat place with a counter and a dozen or so wooden stools. I asked the young woman behind the counter if the curry was like Indian curry. She wasn’t sure. “Indian curry is like soup, yes?” Sort of, I said. She suggested we order the Berkshire Pork Cutlet Curry, which was everybody’s favorite. We did. A breaded pork chop, along with a beautifully mounded hillock of rice, came with a gravy boat. This was the curry. I would have called it gravy, though I recognize that I might not have walked into a restaurant called Gravy-Ya.
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It’s the final day to buy Four Loko.

After today, it will be illegal for any retailer to sell the alcoholic energy drink in New York, and other states are following suit.

In the final week of Four Loko sales, fans of the beverage have been emptying their wallets to stock up and clearing East Village bodegas of their supplies in the process. Beer distributors and the Chicago-based Four Loko manufacturer, Phusion Projects, were asked to stop restocking the product as of Nov. 19. Retailers who fail to unload the product by today will have to pay a fine.

Why all the fuss? One 24-ounce can of Four Loko contains approximately the same amount of alcohol as five beers, plus the caffeine content of three cups of coffee. In the East Village, most cans, which boast 12 percent alcohol by volume, were selling for $3 or $4.

NYU Journalism’s Claire Glass reports.

Vivienne Gucwa

Good morning, East Village.

With many in the neighborhood still reeling from the expected temporary closure of Mars Bar, EV Grieve notes the loss of a natural neighborhood landmark, a willow tree on Eighth Street near Avenue C.

On the subject of Mars Bar, DNAinfo has a post with more details about how the bar could close as early as the spring and might remain shut for as long as three years. That timeline, DNA notes, “could make it difficult for the diminutive dive to see new life.”

Instead of pondering the future of Mars Bar, Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York re-visits the past through a series of vivid photographs documenting early 20th century life at the intersection of Second Avenue and First Street where the bar stands now. There are some other interesting takes on Mars Bar at The Gog Log and Blackbook.

In other neighborhood news, The Times reports on Thursday’s City Council meeting where one of our community’s most contentious issues – bike lanes – took centerstage. A highlight: Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz borrowing a page from “The Sound of Music” to sing his self-penned “These are a few of my favorite lanes.”

Marlis Momber, a German-born photographer, has documented the dramatic evolution of Loisaida, her home, for decades.

South of 14th Street and north of Houston, east of Avenue A to the East River, Loisaida is all but unknown to some late-coming East Villagers. Though time and gentrification have transformed the neighborhood, Loisaida’s streets still reflect its distinct culture and history.

Many of the murals that are a signature of Ms. Momber’s photographs have faded, but her body of work helps explain the Loisaida we see today.

During a walk through Loisaida, Ms. Momber describes a community that is more than a sign tacked onto Avenue C; Loisaida — a community, a culture, a past not forgotten.

NYU Journalism’s Molly O’Toole reports.

The Local East Village invites you to a Saturday morning group event featuring the use of SeeClickFix to log neighborhood concerns.

On Tuesday, we announced a new collaboration between The Local East Village and SeeClickFix, an organization that offers a variety of platforms to report local non-emergency concerns, such as potholes and broken street lights.

SeeClickFix relies on citizen reporting, and to kick things off, we plan to hold a walk through the East Village to log concerns.

We will meet Saturday morning at 9:30 outside 20 Cooper Square and spend an hour walking the East Village area to report issues.

If you are interested in joining this event, please e-mail me on seeclickfixlev@gmail.com. If you have a smartphone, please download a free SeeClickFix app and bring it with you to log concerns.

We look forward to seeing you there, and please remember that you can log issues at any time on the map page on this site.

You can also post to SeeClickFix while on the go using mobile devices and you can follow posts within the East Village area via @SeeClickFixLEV on Twitter.

Michelle Rick

Good morning, East Village.

On Wednesday, we wrote about how many in the neighborhood were lamenting how the iconic Mars Bar might close for two years because of a plan to renovate its space and other properties along Second Avenue.

The housing committee of Community Board 3 Wednesday night pushed the process one step further by endorsing the development plan. Bowery Boogie has more details.

Earlier this week came news that a New Jersey woman has filed a lawsuit after she said she was attacked by the pet cat at McSorley’s Old Ale House. EV Grieve has landed an interview with the cat in question, Minnie, who now has her own Facebook page and a growing legion of friends.

Stephanie Butnick The housing committee of Community Board 3 approved a plan to renovate a string of properties at 9 and 11-17 Second Avenue. The next step is a vote by the full community board Dec. 21.

The housing committee of Community Board 3 tonight endorsed a proposal to renovate a string of properties along a stretch of Second Avenue and turn them into a new mixed-income development.

The move also brings the temporary closure of the iconic Mars Bar, which is located on one of the properties, a bit closer to becoming a reality. The bar, a fabled East Village haunt, would likely remain closed for the two years it will take to renovate the property.

Representatives from the project’s developer, BFC Partners, and the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board explained the project, which would rebuild properties at 9 and 11-17 Second Avenue – currently in various states of disrepair and in some cases, code violation – into a single 12-story building offering both permanently affordable housing and market-rate units.

A tenant from 11-17, Gretchen Green, spoke in support of the project, saying “It’s going to give me an apartment where I can close the windows, and a safe place for my daughter and grandson to visit.”

The existing tenants of both buildings will be offered space in the new building – with the option to buy the new apartments for $1. A low fee to be sure, but – under the terms of the renovation agreement – the apartments will never be allowed to be offered at market rate (the re-sale price for the units is about $180,000).

Not all tenants are as optimistic as Ms. Green. John Vaccaro, a resident 11-17 Second Avenue for more than three decades who did not attend the meeting, told The Local afterward, “I don’t support them taking down what should be a landmarked building.” And, at 81, he is not keen to be relocated for the roughly two years it would take for the project to be completed.

Nevertheless, the committee voted to recommend the project, with one committee member abstaining – Val Orselli of the Cooper Square Mutual Housing Association declined to vote, citing a past professional relationship with the developers.

And what of the Mars Bar? It’ll be resurrected in the renovated space, owner Hank Penza says: “bigger and better, but with the same attitude.”

The next step is a Dec. 21 meeting, where the full Community Board will vote on the project.

The Space At Tompkins is a recently formed organization designed to work with transient and homeless individuals who hang out in Tompkins Square Park.

The goal is to link people to services they request — food, clothing, a phone call home, clean syringes, access to shelters, help finding a job and information about drug rehabilitation programs. Many of the group’s members are too old to receive help at youth-based organizations but don’t feel comfortable at agencies tailored to adults, according to Andrea Stella, the executive director of The Space At Tompkins. Ms. Stella said her organization’s programs are not age-based.

NYU Journalism’s Liz Wagner reports.

Maya Millett A group of artists gather at East Fourth Street’s WOW Cafe Theater and study the “Haves” and “Needs” wall they created at a networking event hosted by bartering website OurGoods.org. Bartering has enjoyed a resurgence in the neighborhood in the wake of the recession.

The concept of bartering often conjures an aura of myth: Jack’s storied magic beans, as it turned out after all, was a pretty fortuitous trade for the cow he handed over to the butcher in exchange.

In the wake of the recession, bartering has captured a renewed interest among the cash-strapped or habitually thrifty. In its most recent incarnation, bartering thrives on the Internet. Craigslist, that great Wild West of an online forum, is a barterer’s goldmine. And niche websites like Swap Tree, Neighborgoods, ThingHeap, and countless others are tailored to specific trade interests like tools, books, electronics, furniture and other miscellany.

While the web has ushered bartering into a new era of resource exchange, in artistic communities like the East Village, swapping creative work or services has long been an inherent part of the culture.

“Probably everyone in the low-budget artist class in the East Village has bartered,” says Ayun Halliday, an author and Bust magazine columnist who in 1996 created the cult-coveted “East Village Inky” zine, which chronicles her adventures in motherhood.

Though Ms. Halliday and her family moved to Boerum Hill in 2000, she’s still entrenched in the East Village’s creative scene. Zine publishers, she says, are some of bartering’s most famous traders. Zine making “is definitely a labor of love — and barterers are often purveyors of that.”
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