Francisco Daum Flowers outside of CBGB in 2001, after Joey Ramone died of lymphatic cancer.

The CBGB brand — and the merchandising empire that comes with it — changed hands three months ago, a representative of the new owners told The Local.

“We bought the entire estate, the physical assets of the former club. They dissembled it as a theatrical unit so in theory they could put it back together — say, 80 percent they salvaged,” said the spokesman for the new owners, who wished to remain anonymous in anticipation of an announcement in the coming weeks regarding the return of the legendary club. “There are all kinds of tapes, photos, and the global trademarks and licensing.”

The spokesman added that his group bought the CBGB estate from Lisa Kristal, the daughter of the founder of the club, Hilly Kristal. A man who answered the phone at Ms. Kristal’s number had no comment regarding the transaction.

“In negotiating the sale, Lisa Kristal was motivated much more by preserving the legacy of CBGB than she was by money,” said the spokesman in an e-mail. “We had to court her for seven months, proving to her that we would be the best guardians of the name. She wanted to know our plans. I would stay up until two in the morning, night after night listening to her wonderful stories and telling her about the ways in which we were going to keep CBGB alive through loud music and by supporting new bands.”
Read more…

Gloria Chung The Nuyorican Poets Cafe at 236 East Third Street.

Several visits from city inspectors have led to the temporary closing of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Daniel Gallant, the executive director, told The Local.

The cafe tweeted the news earlier today, and Mr. Gallant clarified — a little — over the phone.

“The building is quite old. Some of the space we’re hoping to renovate,” he said. “We’ve had a few different city inspectors come in since the end of the year — we just figured it’s probably the best thing to do repairs.”

Mr. Gallant did not wish to go into further details before again meeting with city inspectors.

The Nuyorican building does not show any recent violations or complaints on the Department of Buildings website. Mr. Gallant said he should know when the cafe will reopen by Wednesday.

Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

The news that both Bleecker Bob’s Records and the Holiday Cocktail Lounge would close amounted to a brutal double-whammy for many locals living around the Village. But there’s a silver lining: Jennifer Kitzer, a longtime partner of Bleecker Bob’s, told The Local that if worst comes to worst, the store will move to the East Village or Lower East Side.

For now, though, she and the staff are focused on remaining in their current location. “We’re not closing permanently — we’re not running out of there anytime soon,” said Ms. Kitzer, who later added, “I’m not looking to shut the name down, shut the store down. There’s going to be a fight in us.” Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown Louis Fugazy kept the drinks coming last night at Holiday Cocktail Lounge.

Word had gotten around by the time the regulars started arriving: after 47 years, the Holiday Cocktail Lounge will close on Saturday. Not surprisingly, the shots just kept coming.

“Everybody that ever stepped foot in this bar is going to come through in the next three days,” said bartender Louis Fugazy. Over the years, those characters have included W. H. Auden, Leon Trotsky, and Allen Ginsberg, when they lived on the block. And urban legend has it that Madonna named “Holiday” after the bar (this much is certain: punk-pop band the Bouncing Souls immortalized the dive in a song that shares its name).

Over drinks, many of the regulars sitting around the semicircular bar bemoanded the state of the neighborhood, which recently has endured the loss of Mars Bar, another beloved dive. “Gentrification is moving out all the old standbys,” said Jeff Tendler, who was working the door. “The neighborhood is becoming full of chains, and the little guy is getting pushed out.” Read more…

First John Legend put his pad up for sale and now The Observer reports that Scottish singer-songwriter K.T. Tunstall has sold her duplex at 525 East 11th Street for $1.5 million, about $75,000 less than what she bought it for in 2008. The 2-bedroom, 2.5-bath home with 540-square-foot terrace went to one Farsad Golnaz.

The above teaser for “The Angelheads” was just posted to YouTube, and a bit of internet sleuthing reveals there will be a fundraiser for the “romantic serio-comic independent feature film” at Phoenix Bar tonight at 7 p.m. True to the titular Ginsberg line about angelheaded hipsters, the film’s four protagonists seem to be burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night – mostly in cramped East Village apartments, though occasionally they get some air on a sun-splashed tenement rooftop or in Tompkins Square Park.

Per the film’s Twitter stream, shooting locations also included the Ninth Ward and East Side Ink, and the poster (tagline: “Love. Art. Ink.”) was shot at the Astor Place cube. We’ll have more about this local production as it nears its summer release date; in the meantime, enjoy the first look.

Related: More on ‘The Angelheads,’ a Film About Relationships in the East Village

Stephen Rex Brown A member of the Just For Kicks adult softball league (left) testifies at today’s hearing.

The proposed changes to the system governing ball fields in city parks drew around 140 people today, many of whom expressed concern that a new priority for youth leagues would end up pushing adult games out.

If the reforms by the Parks Department are approved, youth leagues will be given priority when considering new ball-field permit applications.

“It’s silly to think this can’t lead to adult leagues being pushed out entirely,” said David Nierenberg, who plays in the Mundys Softball League in Brooklyn. “I don’t think that’s fair.” Read more…

The plot thickens: Another intriguing sign has gone up in the window of the law office of Zenon B. Masnyj, on East Seventh Street between Second and Third Avenues. The Local is still trying to get to the bottom of these leading questions; in the meantime, click on our photo to read the latest.

Stephen Rex Brown Jeff Greenberg, the owner of Elan Antiques.

Elan Antiques stayed in business for 23 years, but it couldn’t survive the ailing economy.

“2008 was really the death knell,” said Jeff Greenberg, the owner of the store at Bleecker and Lafayette Streets, just a few blocks away from the temporarily shuttered Billy’s Antiques. “I wasn’t able to recover. It kept getting worse — I really haven’t seen it get better.”

Mr. Greenberg, 58, said that he had been on a month-to-month lease for several years, and that a new tenant — it’s not certain who — had made a large offer on his space. “I can’t bear ill will — that is business,” he added, noting that his current rent is under the market rate. Read more…

Matt Rosen Mosaic Man’s latest.

The East Village’s most ubiquitous street artist is in the midst of a particularly prolific period, and he shows no signs of slowing down.

Matt Rosen Jim Power, alongside Porchetta co-owner Matt Lindemulder.

This morning, “Mosaic Man” Jim Power alerted The Local to his new pig mosaic, which he had just delivered to to Porchetta on East Seventh Street.

Recently, Mr. Power unveiled signage for Tompkins Square Bagels and the new location of The Bean.

The Local will probably get a firsthand look at the porcine mosaic any day now. We just finished off a punch-card for a free sandwich, and those burnt ends are irresistible.

This nugget of news from an online auction house fits right in with the upscaling of The Bowery. City Room reports that a leather jacket once worn by drummer Marky Ramone (of The Ramones, obviously) is currently going for $3,146. An employee at the auction house says that it does not come with any lingering odors of stage sweat. Meanwhile, a more affordable option for Ramones fans: the new Dee Dee and Johnny Wacky Wobblers.

View full graphic

Recently released 311 complaint data reveals a veritable who’s-who in the neighborhood’s ongoing struggle with nightlife.

An analysis of commercial noise complaints submitted to 311 between January 2010 and October 16, 2011 finds that some familiar faces like La Vie, Sin Sin Lounge and Nublu are near the top of the list. The data, which represents the most recent 311 complaints available on NYC Open Data, shows that the undisputed champion of noise complaints in the East Village is Sutra Lounge. The hip-hop lounge had a whopping 265 complaints during the 22-month stretch — 116 more than the runner-up.

“We have the number one most vigilant neighbor, that’s what it really means,” said Ariel Palitz, the owner of Sutra and a member of Community Board 3. Read more…

Drawing by Bill Beckman, Nov. 1966.

I first knew Walter Bowart around 1963 or ’64 when he was a bartender at Stanley’s Bar, located at 12th Street and Avenue B. Bowart was an artist who did some design work in early 1965 for LeMar, the Committee to Legalize Marijuana, which operated out of my Peace Eye Bookstore located in a former Kosher meat store on East 10th Street between Avenues B and C.

Allen Katzman I had known since 1961 when he helped run open readings at various east-side coffee houses, such as Les Deux Magots on East Seventh, and later the Cafe Le Metro on Second Avenue. Katzman was known at the time mainly as a poet.  (During his time at EVO, Katzman spelled his first name Allan.)

During the summer of 1965, Bowart, Katzman and others, including the artist Bill Beckman, Ishmael Reed, Jaakov Kohn, and Sherry Needham, decided to found a newspaper. Poet Ted Berrigan, as I recall, came up with the name, The East Village Other, with “Other” coming, of course, from Rimbaud’s famous line of 1871, “Je est un autre,” I is an Other. Another account has Ishmael Reed coining the name. (The participants in the Dada movement argued for 50 years over who first thought of the name “Dada.”) Read more…

Illustration: Ethan Persoff and Scott Marshall

How did you know Walter Bowart?

When I went to Japan to revise my book, “Japan on $5 a Day,” I had been dating Sherry Needham. When I returned, he was dating her.

Did you fight?

Of course not. I was just worried that she wouldn’t fulfill her promise to bare a breast in the fourth picture of a story I wanted to tell in one of those-25 cent photo machines.

And did she?

Yes, Walter came along and we had a high old time, assisted, as I remember, by the benevolent herb. Walter told me he was starting a new paper and I agreed to write for it. My first column was about how forgery had been a constant presence on the art scene for centuries. I called it “Art & Other Scenes” but Walter eliminated the “Art &.” The appearance of the column in EVO infuriated Ed Fancher [Village Voice founder and publisher] who insisted I choose between the two papers. Read more…

Fred W. McDarrah/Getty Images From left: Dan Rattiner, Walter Bowart, and brothers Allen and Don Katzman. Jan. 14, 1966.

Little is it known that Dan Rattiner, doyen of Dan’s Papers, helped launch the East Village Other alongside its more celebrated founders, the late Walter Bowart and the late Allen Katzman. In 1964, having abandoned graduate school in architecture at Harvard, Mr. Rattiner, in between gigs producing a summer newspaper in Montauk, rented an apartment in a brownstone on West 10^th Street in Greenwich Village. A year later, in the fall of 1965, something amazed him on the newsstand at Eighth Street and Sixth Avenue. He picks up the story from there.

It cost 15 cents and was an enormous piece of newsprint all folded up into tabloid size. The four pages, when unfolded looked more like a work of modern art than a newspaper. A new way to print a newspaper was on the market. It involved using scissors and rubber cement to put together a proof of a page, then making a plate from a photograph of it and then printing from that. But I had never seen anyone make use of the new process like this before; most people just used it to mimic the old.

As for the content, it was also revolutionary. The lead headline read: “TO COMMEMORATE THE GLORIOUS NEWSPAPER STRIKE THE HERETOFORE UNDERGROUND ‘OTHER’ EXPANDS ITS PATAREALISM.” In huge black type, the words coiled along the perimeter of the page and ended with a half-tone photograph of a half-closed eye. “Peace Rally Breeds Strange Bedfellows,” was the headline below. “Generation of Draft Dodgers” read another headline below that.

I bought it. And I looked for, and found the name, address and phone number of the publisher and editor, Walter Bowart. Read more…

Daniel Maurer Police outside of the store on Jan. 6.

A cell phone store on East 14^th Street near First Avenue was robbed again last night, two weeks after a pair of men held it up at gunpoint.

A police officer was seen dusting for prints inside of the Metro PCS store at 350 East 14th Street last night. The police said that shortly before 7:10 p.m., a black man wearing all-black clothing walked into the store, demanded money while keeping a hand in his pocket, and fled with an undisclosed amount of cash. No further details could be revealed because the investigation is ongoing.

Two weeks ago (also on a Friday evening) two men entered the same store, flashed a gun, and left with around $4,000. The police released surveillance camera footage of that incident.

Police are searching for a suspect who locked a local woman in her bathroom while he ransacked her apartment on Jan. 16.

The 31-year-old victim told police that the suspect got in the elevator with her, followed her, and then forced his way into her apartment. He then locked her in the bathroom while searching in vain for valuables in the bedroom. The victim screamed for help, perhaps leading to the suspect leaving empty-handed.

The suspect is described as a white or Hispanic man in his 20s with brown eyes who was last seen wearing a long jacket, hooded sweatshirt, dark jeans and black-rim glasses.

Daniel Maurer Lucky Cheng’s at 24 First Avenue.

The end of the East Village’s biggest drag destination is just around the corner.

Lucky Cheng’s will move to 240 West 52nd Street in May or June, and owner Hayne Suthon says that club-kid turned designer Richie Rich, formerly of Heatherette, will sell a new fashion line in the space.

“He wants to put his new designs for clothing on the upper floor,” said Ms. Suthon of her new collaborator. “It’s kind of a wild venue, and he’s a wild guy.” Read more…

Joel Raskin

Less than a week after 12-year-old Dashane Santana was killed crossing Delancey Street, a new report finds that intersections near public housing complexes are by far the most dangerous for children.

In the East Village, Lower East Side and Chinatown, “a person struck by a car is nearly two times more likely to be a child than a crash victim on the Upper East Side,” according to the new report released by the advocacy group Transportation Alternatives. The data, culled from statistics from the state Division of Motor Vehicles from 1995 to 2009, also highlights intersections on East Houston Street and Delancey Street as high-crash areas.

According to the figures, Ms. Santana, a resident of the Jacob Riis Houses, was disproportionately exposed to dangerous intersections on the east side compared to her peers in other parts of the city. Read more…