Forget bedbugs. East Village storekeepers said they’ve been dealing this summer with a persistent case of sticky fingers.
While the New York Police Department reported 100 robberies and burglaries in the area during the steamy summer months, storekeepers say it’s not only gun-wielding intruders they’re concerned about — it’s shoplifters.
From 2002-2009, the number of arrests for shoplifting in the city has increased to 23,237 from 13,826, according to NYPD reports.
“We see a lot of the professional shoplifters,” said Dwijen Byapari, 52, an assistant manager at Stuyvesant Stationery at 438 East 14th Street. “They come wearing a hood, they cover their face.” They know the stores have surveillance cameras, he said. “They are very professional.”
Mr. Byapari has worked behind the counter of the small, cluttered shop for eight years. It stocks everything from Hallmark greeting cards to decorative tchotchkes to Silly Bandz.
Strangely, Mr. Byapari said the most commonly shoplifted item is a Masterlock brand combination lock — an item that sells for $6.99. Other commonly stolen items are Gelly Roll pens and Hallmark cards, all easily shoved in a pocket or hidden under an oversize jacket.
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In this final look back at Primary Day 2010, The Local East Village spends some time with poll workers at P.S. 34 who describe how they get through a long, uneventful day.
Matt PanuskaBroadway to the East River, 14th Street to Houston.
That’s how we define the boundaries of the East Village and the coverage area of this blog.
Do you think we’re on the mark or way off? What boundaries would you use to define the East Village?
Sophie HoellerHello, East Village!
Author Salman Rushdie was at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute earlier this week for a wide-ranging conversation with NYU Journalism Professor Suketu Mehta for the Institute’s Primary Sources webisode series. Mr. Rushdie offered an interesting perspective of the Park51 mosque controversy. A link to an excerpt from the video can be found on the Institute’s homepage. We’ll alert you when all of the webisodes from the conversation are posted. In the meantime, you might enjoy the previously recorded pairings on the Primary Sources site.
We’re still assessing the ripples after eventful Primary Day, which saw East Village resident Reshma Saujani fail in her bid to unseat nine-term incumbent Carolyn Maloney for the 14th Congressional district seat. In case you missed it, here’s a link to our earlier post detailing the results of the other major races.
In other neighborhood news, EV Grieve offers a comprehensive look at the impact of the new community garden rules. It’s one of an eclectic mix of posts on that blog this morning and is definitely worth checking out.
Reshma Saujani isn’t focusing on the fact that she lost the battle for the 14th Congressional district seat against incumbent Carolyn Maloney. She’s already planning her next run for the position.
“I’m definitely running again. What we built was a movement,” she told The Local East Village at The Press Box bar on the Upper East Side, where she held her election night party yesterday. “There’s no way I’m going to be one of those folks who runs, loses, and you never see them again. We started something, and we’re going to finish it.”
Suzanne Rozdeba Reshma Saujani.Ms. Saujani, 34, who rents in the East Village, took 19 percent (6,231 votes) of the vote to 81 percent (26,303 votes) for Ms. Maloney, a long-time incumbent.
Ms. Saujani said she was proud and moved by yesterday’s experience.
“One of the things we spent time on was getting out the Bangladeshi community,” said Ms. Saujani, who is Indian-American. “To see people who’ve never voted before go to the polls was amazing.”
About 200 people cheered loudly when she walked into her election night party around 11:30 p.m. She fought tears during her concession speech.
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Reshma Saujani, a hedge fund lawyer and East Village neighbor, attracted only a small fraction of the Democratic vote last night in her bid to defeat United States Representative Carolyn Maloney.
At the end of a day marked by problems with New York’s new optical scanner voting machines and poll workers, Ms. Maloney took 81 percent of the vote in New York’s 14th Congressional district to Ms. Saujani’s 19 percent.
Ms. Maloney has represented this district for 18 years. In November, she faces Republican candidate, Mr. David R. Brumberg.
The big surprise of the night in New York was the nomination of Carl P. Paladino by Republican voters. Mr. Paladino, a real estate developer from Buffalo, is a political novice who left New York’s Republican Party reeling by defeating former Congressman Rick A. Lazio.
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Maybe you’ve seen Bruce Lanterman sitting in a blue folding chair in Union Square Park handing out fliers with a photograph that now makes his heart ache.
For almost a year and a half, Mr. Lanterman has been handing out information in Union Square and on the streets of the East Village looking for leads into the disappearance of son, Douglas, a former resident of the neighborhood.
“I feel like I owe it to Doug,“ he said. “I owe it to myself to give it the best shot I can this year to find him.”
Courtesy Lanterman Family Douglas Lanterman.Doctors diagnosed Mr.’s Lanterman’s son with bipolar disorder in December 2007. Over the next two years, he alternated living with his parents in Hackettstown, N. J., and with his brother in an apartment on East 11th Street that they had shared since 2003.
But investigators said that on March 13, 2009, the younger Mr. Lanterman boarded the wrong bus when he was returning to Hackettstown from his job in the Financial District and ended up in Pennsylvania. Mr. Lanterman said that the next day his son called and asked to be picked up.
But Mr. Lanterman said that when he and his wife, Carole, arrived to pick up their son, he refused to get into the car and they have not seen him since. “He just seemed like it wasn’t him, like he was being motivated by something else,” Mr. Lanterman said.
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Sophie HoellerGood morning, East Village.
Today is primary day in New York and, in case you missed it, one of our first posts contained a summary of some of the major races and a link to help identify your nearest polling place.
In other neighborhood news, EV Grieve has an eye-opening post about the ongoing dispute over the Sin Sin Lounge, on Second Avenue and Fifth Street.
The Local’s arrival in the neighborhood prompted a considerable amount of discussion. The perspectives in the conversation have ranged from friendly to neutral — to not so neutral. In any case, we appreciate the reads by our neighbors and our neighbor blogs.
One of the most interesting posts related to The Local was this one by Curbed NY, which prompts us to encourage you to please nominate your suggestions for our blogroll. We should also note that you can access the blog at an abbreviated URL, www.localeastvillage.com.
Suzanne Rozdeba James De La Vega.The closing of the De La Vega Museum on St. Marks Place isn’t the last the city will see of James De La Vega. He said he is going to make a New York City comeback, just not in the East Village.
“There will be another museum in New York City,” said Mr. De La Vega, whose colorful and comfortably claustrophobic museum was filled with the street art and inspiring messages that made him famous. “I don’t know yet what neighborhood, but the ones that make sense to me are Latin neighborhoods. My stepfather shared the culture of Puerto Rico with me. I have an interest to build those people up, listen to their stories, their powerlessness and frustrations.”
He also has plans to write a book filled with his observations on corruption, gentrification, poverty and love, he said.
Mr. De La Vega, 38, said he has his reasons for saying goodbye to the museum after five years in the East Village.
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East Village resident Reshma Saujani, right, is a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the 14th Congressional District. Only days before the Sept. 14 Democratic primary, Reshma Saujani knew she still had a big hill to climb in her bid to unseat Representative Carolyn Maloney from the 14th Congressional District seat that she has held for 18 years.
Ms. Saujani, 34, is a lawyer who lives in the East Village. Because she is a neighbor, The Local East Village sat down with her last week, and discussed her views on issues affecting East Village residents, as well as her stance on building a mosque near Ground Zero; Bill Clinton’s support of her opponent (Ms. Saujani is a former fund raiser for Hillary Rodham Clinton); her stance on a Florida pastor’s plan to burn the Quran; and her claims that Ms. Maloney hasn’t done enough for 9/11 first responders.
Ms. Maloney’s record and views can be found on her official Congressional Web page and her campaign Web site.
Q.
Many East Village residents are concerned about the increasing number of high-rise apartment buildings being built. What is your stance?
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Looking for child-friendly options as summer turns to fall in the East Village?
Community contributor Rachel Goldman surveys some of our neighborhood’s playgrounds.
Is our playground map complete? What is your favorite neighborhood playground, and why?
As if getting New Yorkers to the polls on Primary Day wasn’t difficult enough, the city’s new voting machines may make it harder. Although New York managed to hold on to its lever machines longer than any other state in the country, tomorrow’s primaries will mark the debut of the controversial modernized system.
Alexandra DiPalma Janet Virgil and Jacquie Tellalian on First Avenue.“I read all about the new machines and have seen the commercials, but I still don’t really get it,” said Jacquie Tellalian, 56 of Midtown, who was strolling on St. Marks Place recently. “They look like a nightmare from hell. It’s like, isn’t there an easier way?”
Rather than simply pulling a red lever, voters use pens to mark bubbles on paper ballots. These ballots are then fed through an optical scanner.
On Aug. 31, the city Board of Elections launched a campaign intended to familiarize voters with the new process, which replaces the machines that have been used since the 1960s.
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Are you missing?
We’ve added many of our neighbor bloggers to our Blogroll but tell us: who have we missed?
Which blogs should everyone in the East Village be reading?
Feel free to nominate your own site, a neighbor’s or a favorite. Here’s how to do it.
The city’s latest report tells us our payphones are clean and that most of them work. But in the East Village many are either broken, disgusting or both.
Think crusty gum stuck to receivers, lewd drawings of body parts scrawled across metal enclosures or slime from sweaty hands glistening on plastic handles.
There are 13 payphones on 13th and 14th Streets near Avenues A and B alone. Most are pretty grungy — and recently many were not functioning. Six of the 13 payphones on that small stretch of East Village pavement were broken. The one outside Stuyvesant Grocery and Deli on Avenue A near 14th Street had no dial tone; the one outside Alphabet Café on 14th Street at Avenue A had wires ripped from the receiver; and the one outside the East Village Café on Avenue B near 13th Street had a sticker that read: “This public pay telephone is temporarily out of service,” dated July 30, 2010.
It’s amazing that anyone ever uses them, but they do.
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