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The Day | What’s the Anarchist-Occupy Connection?

IMG_3229Stephen Rex Brown Scaffolding went up at Second Avenue and Sixth Street yesterday.

Good morning, East Village.

If you missed our coverage earlier this morning of Community Board 3’s S.L.A. committee meeting last night, well then here it is. The Standard East Village didn’t show up to pitch its dining overhaul, but a couple of iconic bars, Joe’s and Nice Guy Eddie’s, got nods of approval for new ownership.

The Mosaic Man tipped us off to his latest work outside of the Bean on Second Avenue. This one is a tribute to the building’s notorious “crazy landlord.”

While organizers of the Anarchist Book Fair disavowed Satuday’s violenceSalon tackled the question of just how much the mayhem had to do with Occupy Wall Street. Natasha Lennard witnessed the impromptu march: “It was rowdy, energetic and fast. Barricades and trash cans were dragged into the street to stop traffic and impede the police cars that eventually arrived on the scene. At one point, two young women watching the surge of people winding through stalled traffic asked me whether this was an ‘Occupy thing.’ I answered ‘yes.’ But, as I soon appreciated, it’s more complicated than that.” Meanwhile, the Daily News digs in to one suspect’s arrest record.  Read more…


The Day | Williamsburg Is East Village East

Occupy Wall StreetSuzanne Rozdeba L.E.S. Jewels and John Penley at Occupy Wall Street.

Runnin’ Scared interviews the bloggers behind EV Grieve and Save The Lower East Side to get their thoughts on why, as Save The Lower East Side pointed out yesterday, Grieve’s commenters are so dismissive of John Penley’s plans to occupy Tompkins Square Park this weekend.  Says Grieve, “Some of the newer residents seem to be more interested in finding the perfect drunk brunch, tweeting about cupcakes and going out and watching, say, the Oklahoma-Texas game in sweatshirts and jerseys. Social movements are for the history books.”

Brooklyn Based notices, as have we, that Williamsburg is becoming “East Village East,” with outposts of Mama’s and Vanessa’s Dumpling House due to open later this month, and an offshoot of Cafe Mogador planned as well. “The recession really hit the East Village pretty hard and we saw our clientele dropping,” explains Jeremiah Clancy, the owner of Mama’s. “It pushed the last notion of young people out because the rents were so high.”

Speaking of Mama’s, the southern food trend continues: EV Grieve notices a Facebook update indicating that Double Wide, a “bar and southern kitchen” will open this weekend at 505 East 12th Street. Their sloppy Joes “bear only the finest ingredients.” Read more…


Constance Zimmer’s East Village

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Though she plays a high-powered studio exec on that most L.A. of television programs, “Entourage,” Constance Zimmer’s heart really belongs to the East Village. Ms. Zimmer — along with her husband, the director Russ Lamoureux, and their three-year-old daughter — divide their time between the West Coast, where work typically calls, and the East Village, a neighborhood that she feels “still has what makes New York New York.”

Here, she loves finding and frequenting “those little shops that have been there for years, and thrive because they’re local.” Though her sharp-tongued character Dana Gordon takes a bow along with the final season of  “Entourage,” look for Ms. Zimmer on the season finale of “Royal Pains,” and in the bawdy comedy “The Babymakers,” due next year. Until then, you just might find her at one of these favorite spots. Read more…