Grace Maalouf

A critical hearing to determine whether a large swath of the neighborhood will be designated a historic district has been set for June 26, a spokeswoman for the Landmarks Preservation Commission just revealed.

The news sets the stage for another clash between local preservationists and the religious leaders who oppose the district on the grounds that it would create burdensome additional expenses. The public hearing is the final step before the Commission votes on the proposed district, which has Second Avenue south of St. Marks Place as its spine. The exteriors of all the 330 buildings within the district would essentially be preserved as-is.

Last month, a much smaller district on East 10th Street along Tompkins Square Park was approved with minimal opposition. However, the developer Ben Shaoul was able to get approval for a controversial rooftop addition to a building on the block literally hours before the district was given the green light.

The Commission spokeswoman added that on June 26 the former auction house at 126-128 East 13th Street will also face a separate vote to determine whether it should be designated an individual landmark. Here is the Commission’s write-up regarding the building. Read more…

Courtesy Travel Channel Billy Leroy on the set of “Baggage Battles.”

Billy Leroy, the proprietor of Billy’s Antiques & Props, said the goodbye bash that was originally planned for late January probably won’t happen until next month, and it’ll be followed by a proper burial.

“We’re going to have a monster party. It’s going to be in March, most likely on the tenth. I’m confirming the date this week,” said Mr. Leroy, who just got back from filming in Atlanta and Indianapolis for the Travel Channel show, “Baggage Battles.” Read more…

What says romance better than hot dogs? Crif Dogs just unveiled over Twitter a new line of condoms featuring a variety of puns on the wrapping that The Local need not reprint. (You can probably guess.) The condoms will be available for free at the Williamsburg location of Crif Dogs on V-Day. What, no love for St. Marks?

Stephen Rex Brown The scene at Cooper Square today at noon.

Stephen Rex Brown Peter Cooper, minutes before being donned with the wreath.

Under the shadow of Peter Cooper, students are celebrating the founder of their university while also protesting the possibility that future scholars at Cooper Union will have to pay tuition.

The wreath-laying ceremony is an annual event that honors Cooper’s birthday. Today at around 12:30 p.m., students were using the event as an opportunity to remind the president of the school, Jamshed Bharucha, of their opposition to any tuition hike. Many of the roughly 75 attendees held balloons that read “110 years free.”

“Once,” the well-received musical that recently ended its run at the New York Theatre Workshop, is headed for Broadway, but the cast hasn’t left the East Village far behind: A video posted to YouTube shows a photo shoot and hootenanny at Swift Hibernian Lounge. If you missed the show’s local run, tickets for the Broadway reprise, starting Feb. 28, can be purchased here.

And if you’d rather keep it local, the New York Theatre Workshop’s next production, “An Iliad,” opens Feb. 15. The adaptation of Homer’s classic, by Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare, will feature Mr. O’Hare (“True Blood,” “American Horror Story”) and Stephen Spinella (“Angels in America”) in alternating performances. More information here.

Michelle Rick

Community Board 3 may reverse its hardline stance against new beer-and-wine licenses in booze-heavy areas of the East Village and Lower East Side. In a letter to residents, the board will ask whether it should be more lenient to those seeking such licenses within resolution areas, so long as the businesses agree to operate primarily in the daytime and close at midnight or earlier.

The move comes just a few months after The Local unleashed a sobering study showing that the State Liquor Authority regularly disregards the board’s recommendations regarding who should or shouldn’t be allowed to serve wine and beer (as opposed to hard liquor) in resolution areas – nightlife-heavy strips such as St. Marks Place where the board has recommended a moratorium on new licenses.

At a meeting of the SLA task force last night, board member David Crane described the motivation behind the potential policy shift. “The SLA generally is going to grant a beer-wine license,” he said. “Since that’s a reality, we’re interested in preventing problems. We want to work with the SLA given that that’s a fact.”  Read more…

The Local’s Facebook wall is an opportunity to sound off regarding anything in the neighborhood (noisy neighbors, beloved bar closing, missing squirrel, whatever). Bertha Freundlich — one of our many, many readers in New Delhi, apparently — posted a question on our wall today about the film “Bed of Roses.” Here’s Ms. Freundlich:

Has anyone seen the movie ‘Bed of Roses’ (1996) which shows, besides the love story, the Ottendorfer Branch library? Well there is also this flower shop in the movie, sort of hidden and in front of an open square or something. Any clue if this was also filmed in the Village?

We have no idea. Anyone else know? Tell us in the comments or “like” The Local on Facebook to answer Ms. Freundlich directly.

Chris Palmer Ryan Morningstone showed up at 10:30 a.m.

So how did all those Patriots fans who blitzed Professor Thom’s take the Giants win last night? Not too well, as you can imagine.

“This sucks,” said Melissa Garcia, 26, in barely more than a whisper.

Ms. Garcia, from Country Club, Bronx, had lost her voice from screaming during the game. After Tom Brady’s last-second Hail Mary pass fell to the turf in the end zone, ensuring a Giants’ victory, she slumped down onto a barstool and cupped her head in her hands while leaning onto a table littered with half-empty beer bottles.

The crowd exited quickly and quietly after the final whistle, turning Professor Thom’s into an island of heartbreak in a citywide sea of celebration.

“This one hurts,” said Jeffrey Tente, 24, standing outside the bar.

Mr. Tente, an East Village resident, grew up in Rhode Island. His dad has been a Patriots season ticket holder since before Mr. Tente was born, and the two attended the last two Patriots playoff games before this Super Bowl.

“I’ll give the Giants credit, they played a better game,” he said, sporting an oversized jersey of Devin McCourty, a Patriots cornerback.  “But it sucks to be in this situation.” Read more…

Jared Malsin 50 East First Street.

A storefront space on First Street is empty but for a stylized mirror in the shape of Babe Ruth – one of the few odds and ends left over from the previous tenant, a mirror and glass designer. The owners of the former studio are looking for a new tenant – and not a bar. But the space has a boozy past: it once held a tavern that Emma Goldman, the influential anarchist who counted herself a regular, called “the most famous radical center in New York.”

During the turn of the 20th century, 50 East First Street was the home of Justus Schwab’s saloon. Just 8-foot wide by 30-foot deep, it was described as a “bier-höhle” (or “beer-cave”), a pun on “bierhalle.” Though small in size, the tavern was a “mecca for French Communards, Spanish and Italian refugees, Russian politicals, and German socialists and anarchists who had escaped the iron heel of Bismarck,” according to Goldman, who spent so much time there that she had her mail sent there.

Christin Couture and William Hosie, who are members of the board that owns the building, said that the space had been vacant for a year. (The asking rent is between $3,000 and $3,500 per month.) Mr. Hosie said they were “not about steep rent hikes” and suggested they might be looking for someone unable to afford the ever-rising rents elsewhere in the neighborhood. Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown Owner Lalita Kumut, along with her friend Daphne Blake (left) and her cousin, Maka Inthraphuvasak, pack up the Aromatherapy store on East Seventh Street.

After 20 years, a fragrance shop on East Seventh Street is moving three blocks south, and the owner of Porsena is considering expanding into the vacated space.

Lalita Kumut, the owner of Aromatherapy Bath and Body Oils, said that her lease had expired in December, but that she’d been holding out for a new location. “My customers told me to wait until another lease came up — I’m a good tenant,” Ms. Kumut said. “Finally, I found something nice.” Read more…

Last month, the club-kid turned designer Richie Rich told The Local that he would be opening a studio on the fourth floor above the new location of Lucky Cheng’s, which will be departing the East Village in May.

Recently, Mr. Rich gave The Local a tour of his new digs near Times Square at 240 West 52nd Street. He and Lucky Cheng’s owner Hayne Suthon have visions of a Warhol-esque fashion factory where new merchandise for the drag destination will be cranked out on the regular. The pair are planning cosmetics, clothes, and of course, fake eyelashes bearing the Lucky Cheng’s brand.
Read more…

One of the gun-toting thieves who allegedly held up a Metro PCS store on Jan. 6 had the audacity to return and rob it again two weeks later, the police said.

In the first heist on Jan. 6 — which is depicted in surveillance footage released by the Police Department — the duo entered the Metro PCS store at 350 East 14th Street at around 6:45 p.m., flashed a gun and removed cash from the register and a safe.

On Jan. 20 one of the suspects returned at around 7:10 p.m., simulated a gun and demanded cash from a Metro PCS employee, the police said. The employee complied and the suspect fled with an undisclosed amount of money. Read more…

NYPD Deputy Inspector Kenneth Lehr

Captain John Cappelmann has replaced Deputy Inspector Kenneth Lehr as the top police officer in the Ninth Precinct, which covers the East Village.

Detective Jaime Hernandez of Community Affairs at the Ninth Precinct confirmed the move, and said that Captain Cappelmann came over from Public Service Area 6, which covers public houses in Harlem and the Upper West Side.

The new commanding officer will be formally introduced at the next community council meeting on Feb. 21 at the Ninth Precinct station house on East Fifth Street. Read more…

Hannah Thonet The executive director of the Nuyorican, Daniel Gallant.

The Nuyorican Poets Cafe should reopen soon after being shuttered by the Health Department for a variety of violations in its East Third Street building.

“Our repairs are moving along smoothly, and if all goes well, we should be able to reopen by this weekend,” wrote the executive director of the cafe, Daniel Gallant, in an email.

On Monday the cafe announced on Twitter that it would temporarily close after a visit from city inspectors. Turned out, the cafe had several violations of the health code, including evidence of rodents, unclean surfaces, and improper storage of food.

N.Y.P.D. A surveillance image of the suspect.

The police are on the hunt for a man who allegedly robbed an Apple Bank on Feb. 1.

The police said that the man walked into the bank at Irving Place and East 14th Street at around noon and passed a note to the teller demanding money. The bank employee complied and the suspect fled with an undisclosed amount of cash.

The suspect is said to be around 55 to 60 years old, around 5-foot-8 and roughly 150 pounds. Judging by the surveillance image, he is also a Mets fan.

Ruth Spencer Steve Cannon, founder of Gathering of the Tribes.

Tribes is fighting back.

The landlord attempting to evict Gathering of the Tribes has no right to do so, and actually owes the founder of the quirky arts group at least $8,400, a new lawsuit alleges.

In December, Lorraine Zhang, the landlord of 285 East Third Street, served Steve Cannon, the blind poet, playwright and founder of Tribes with a notice that he must leave the building by Jan. 31.

The lawsuit, filed on Friday in State Supreme Court and reprinted below, says that the notice is “invalid” and that “Cannon is entitled to remain as an occupant of the second floor of the premises subject to the terms of the agreement” that the pair signed when Mr. Cannon sold the building to Ms. Zhang in 2004. Read more…

Daniel Maurer The horror!

Remember the family of pumpkins that took up residence inside of a fenced-in lot behind P.S. 19 Asher Levy School – presumably in October? Last week, as you can see above, they were still camping out, and sinking into a sorry state that made one wonder if they were some sort of biology-class experiment.

After devoting so much attention to their plight, we were beginning to feel hopeless about the power of journalism vegetable voyeurism to affect genuine change – but also ghoulishly fascinated to see just how long they’d continue to decompose as the students of Asher Levy played kickball right next to them. And now, as you can see below: the pumpkins are gone – presumably the work of an intrepid hazmat team trained in squash removal. Orange’ya sad about this? We kind of are. Read more…

Suzanne Rozdeba

East Village Farm, the convenience store that’s leaving the corner of Avenue A and Seventh Street, has announced that it’s “going out business” on Feb. 5, with the flower man lingering until Feb. 14 – Valentine’s Day. Now we know where we’ll be buying our roses.

Ray Lemoine Work was being done inside of Life earlier today.

There may be a light at the end of the tunnel for Life Cafe.

Owner Kathy Kirkpatrick and landlord Bob Perl have been in talks with potential business partners who would pave the way for the shuttered cafe at East 10th Street and Avenue B to finally reopen, much to the relief of “Rentheads” everywhere.

“There are other parties who want to partner with Kathy and I am talking to them,” said Mr. Perl. “There is a possibility it could go on — whether it does I’m not sure.”

Ms. Kirkpatrick confirmed the discussions, but had little to add. “It has to do with the landlord agreeing to work together and cooperate,” she said. Read more…