U.S. Department of Agriculture A package of hot dogs that contained glass shards, according to a federal food inspector.

If you’re stuck in town this Labor Day weekend without so much as a roof to grill on, wipe that hangdog look off your face: Maggots, worms, metal, plastic and even a razor were just a few of the objects that horrified callers said were in their hot dogs in complaints lodged with the U.S. Department of Agriculture between 2007 and 2009.

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Back in 2009, this reporter filed a Freedom of Information Act request asking the U.S.D.A. to give up its dirty-dog logs. The 64 case files finally came in this week, just in time for the holiday! Consider them food for thought if you’re planning to grill during these last dog days of summer.

The documents (viewable here) tell numerous cringe-inducing tales of foreign objects disrupting all-American meals. Band-Aids, a rubber glove, and even a lock washer (used to secure a bolt) are all described in snappy detail.

One report told of a “winged insect that resembled a dragonfly inside the package of hot dogs,” and noted that the insect’s “head, eyes, and wings are visible. Insect is black in color, over 1-inch long.” Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown

Workers with the city Department of Environmental Protection are pumping water out of a ditch in the middle of Second Avenue near St. Marks Place, blasting water into the bus lane and diverting another lane of traffic. The noisy water pumps drew many onlookers. The Local has a call into D.E.P. regarding the nature of the work; we’ll update as soon as we know more.

Update | 3:48 p.m. Here are the details from a D.E.P. spokeswoman: “A D.E.P. crew observed that a four-foot diameter brick sewer was broken. A D.E.P. contractor is excavating to repair it. We will place a plate to make the area safe while working. It will take a few days.”

New timers have been installed at intersections of Delancey Street, Bowery Boogie reports. The countdown clocks, stretching from Kenmare to Clinton Streets, come two weeks after a cyclist was run over by a truck at Chrystie Street, reinforcing Delancey Street’s dangerous reputation.

Stephen Rex Brown Matt Rosen manages the web presence of two of the neighborhood’s most revered characters.

Ray Alvarez may not remember Matt Rosen’s name or understand his social networking wizardry, but there is little doubt that the 30-year-old’s efforts have been a boon for the iconic and oft-embattled Ray’s Candy Store.

Since 2009, Mr. Rosen, has managed Mr. Alvarez’s @RaysCandyStore Twitter account, which boasts 1,064 followers, as well as the eatery’s pages on Yelp, Urbanspoon, Foursquare, and Café Press. Last month, Mr. Rosen added Jim Power, the Mosaic Man, to his stable of online accounts.

Not that Mr. Alvarez knows much about all that stuff.

“He does advertising for me — it’s really high-tech. I still don’t have a television — I don’t know what Twitter is,” said Mr. Alvarez, 78, when asked about Mr. Rosen. “I didn’t know his name is Matt.” Read more…

Vladi Radojicic Ilhan Ersahin, the owner of Nublu, plays the keyboards at the club’s temporary space on First Avenue alongside Shawn Pelton on drums and Tina Kristina on bass.

The owner of Nublu, the hip club on Avenue C that was shuttered for being within 200 feet of a Jehovah’s Witnesses Kingdom Hall, told The Local today that a return to his Avenue C location was not imminent, and that it was possible he might have to look for a new space outside of the East Village.

Ilhan Ersahin, who opened the club in 2002, said that he thought it was unfair that he lost his liquor license after years of being in business across the street from the house of worship.

“How can they come nine years later and then say I made a mistake?” said Mr. Ersahin, 45. “It can’t be just up to me to investigate whether a place is 100 percent a house of worship.” Read more…

The eagle-eyed EV Grieve noticed construction plans for a 7-Eleven convenience store inside the window of 351 Bowery – another sign of the onetime hardscrabble strip’s increasingly “suburban feel.” Gothamist confirmed that the store is expected to open on October 5.

If Hurricane Irene threw a wrench in your plans to attend the final performances of Fringe Festival, fear not: The lineup of encore productions has just been announced. The 18 shows, set to run from September 9 to September 26, include “Facebook Me,” which was well received by The Lo-Down last week. Update: Some of the shows canceled over the weekend have been rescheduled for September 1 through September 4 at the Laurie Beechman Theater in Midtown.

Good evening, East Village.

Angela Cravens, a community contributor at The Local, has shared her photos of the neighborhood preparing for Hurricane Irene earlier today, and we want to see yours, as well. (By the way, she tells us a sign posted at Villa Della Pace tells Irene, in Italian, to go do something very not nice.) If you have anything to share with your neighbors now that the rain has driven you indoors (Gothamist has the latest on what to expect now that the Category 1 hurricane is 300 miles away), leave your comments below. Have a longer story that you’d like The Local to post? E-mail the editor. Have photos? Join The Local’s Flickr group, and we’ll add them to the gallery above. And feel free to alert us to any developments (no matter how large or small) via our Twitter page, if that’s your preference. We’re listening.

Elsewhere around the Internet, everyone from the Guardian in the U.K. (which noted lines down the block at Trader Joe’s) to the usual neighborhood blogs were eying local supermarkets today: EV Grieve reported that the Associated on Avenue C was primed to set a single-day sales record, and posted photos from Key Food and Fine Fare. A manager at Key Food told the Wall Street Journal of “chaos” there (the store was already running low on certain supplies when we checked in on grocery stores yesterday). Read more…

Tim Schreier

Getting ready to brawl over the last flashlight in the hardware store like the folks at the Village Voice? The Local is here to help. In the last few minutes we called up grocery stores in the neighborhood and asked for the rundown of bare essentials still in stock. Our very informal survey was conducted with whomever answered the phones at around 4:30 p.m. Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown Jim Power works on a new mosaic for the soon-to-open Tompkins Square Bagels.

The Local spent some quality time with Jim Power yesterday, and the  Mosaic Man let us in on a few of his upcoming projects. Mr. Power is in the process of designing mosaics for Porchetta, the new Tompkins Square Bagels coming to Avenue A, and the soon-to-reopen Exit 9.

The neighborhood’s beloved public artist was as humble as ever.

“I’m doing the city a favor with all this stuff,” Mr. Power said while taking a break from work in his basement studio. “I’m making this neighborhood one of the biggest landmarks in the world.”

That might sound arrogant, if it wasn’t for the fact that many people agree with him — including his customers. Read more…

The suspect in the July slaying of a homeless man in Union Square is expected to be cleared of charges, DNA Info reports. The 29-year-old man, Keenan Bryce, was charged with brutally beating the homeless man to death with a bike lock and chain. But Mr. Bryce’s brother refused to accept that his mentally ill sibling was guilty, and through a good deal of research was able to prove that Mr. Bryce was in New Jersey during the time of the murder.

Angelo Fabara David Yow

Fuse Gallery, behind Lit Lounge, has seen its share of musicians moonlighting as artists. Among others, the space has hosted artwork by the likes of Hank Williams III, Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers, Nick Zinner and Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Conrad Keely of …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead.

Last night, David Yow held court at an opening reception that drew J.G. Thirlwell, the lead singer of industrial band Foetus, as well as other admirers of Mr. Yow’s bands, The Jesus Lizard and Scratch Acid. Mr. Yow, best known for vocals that alternate between mumbling and shrieking as well as onstage antics that at one point got him arrested for indecent exposure in Cincinnati, was polite and soft-spoken. He was dressed down (or perhaps up — he has been known to favor the shirtless look, after all) in a button-down shirt and spectacles.

When Erik Foss, the owner of Fuse Gallery, bought a painting titled “Go Figure,” depicting an erect penis, Mr. Yow texted his girlfriend, “I have tears in my eyes.” She responded, “I love you. Stop crying.”

The Local sat down with Mr. Yow to talk about his new calling.
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NYPL The Bowery in 1895.

Lately, the Bowery has started to look more like Dubai and a whole lot less like a poor man’s Broadway. But for at least three hours on Sunday, old-time songs will echo on the street once again, as a connoisseur of vaudeville songs and a historian lead a walking tour of music from the Bowery’s heyday. Bree Benton, accompanied by a viola and accordion, will sing songs like “My Brudda Sylvest,” and “Yiddle On Your Fiddle, Play Some Ragtime” (which was written by one of the former Lower East Side’s most famous sons, Irving Berlin.)

“The songs are so full of life, they really speak to the people — the common people,” said Ms. Benton, who will play the character of Poor Baby Bree, a down-and-out kid from the Lower East Side. “People who couldn’t afford to be entertained on Broadway; they went to the Bowery.” Read more…

State Senator Daniel Squadron and City Councilwoman Margaret Chin urged the Department of Transportation to improve safety on Delancey Street today in the wake of last week’s deadly accident that killed a 52-year-old cyclist. As the Lo-Down reports, the thoroughfare had a reputation for danger prior to the most recent tragedy. Earlier this month, The Local reported that a significant number of the city’s dangerous intersections are on the Lower East Side — of those, most are on Delancey Street.

A posh condo at 40 Bond is cited in a $50 million lawsuit involving Sly Stone and his ex-manager, Curbed reports. The $7.5 million condo, which will be foreclosed next month, is used in court documents as an example of the former manager’s alleged mismanagement of the music legend’s assets. Mr. Stone — yes, of Family Stone fame — sued his ex-manager back in January for $50 million, charging that he had used music royalties to fund an opulent lifestyle.

Stephen Rex Brown The rowhouse at 316 East Third Street.

Last week, preservationists doubled down on their last-minute effort to protect a 177-year-old row house that the owner hopes to demolish and replace with a seven-story, 33-unit apartment building.

A quartet of local preservation groups began pressing the city Landmarks Preservation Commission early this month. In a letter you can read below, the coalition cited the building’s historic qualities, which are reminiscent of 35 Cooper Square, another Federal-style row house that was demolished in May amid much controversy.

“The significance of this and the handful of other surviving pre-Civil War rowhouses to Alphabet City cannot be underestimated,” the preservationists wrote in a letter to the commission on August 2, referring to 316 East Third Street. “Built for merchants associated with the East River’s thriving shipbuilding industry, they recall the neighborhood’s formative years and are all that remain from its heyday as the dry dock neighborhood.”

The letter also noted that the commission had singled out the property as being “eligible for historic designation” in a 2008 study assessing the impact of rezoning in the area. Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown The incident occurred at the Lower East Side II Houses.

Five people taking target practice with a BB gun on Friday night were arrested for accidentally shooting a passerby in the leg, police reported.

The 44-year-old victim told the police that she was walking by 716 East Sixth Street at around 8:15 p.m. when she was struck, according to an NYPD spokesman. Police then canvassed the area and found a broken window on the third floor of the building between Avenues C and D, as well as a bottle on the windowsill, leading them to conclude that an errant BB had struck the woman.
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Photographer David Schmidlapp shares photos (his own as well as a couple by Marlis Momber) from the archives of El Jardin del Paraiso on East Fourth Street between Avenue C and Avenue D, where he has volunteered for nearly 30 years. His work can currently be seen in the Nepenthes New York Gallery on 38th Street.

Marlis Momber The garden in the winter of 1982 or 1983.

They demolished a lot of buildings in the neighborhood around the mid-1970s. This is how it looked east of First Avenue back then. You could see all the way to Seventh Street, and from Seventh Street you could see all the way to the Con Edison plant. There was plenty of parking back then. Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown Bad news for lovers of $3 Schaefer and cigarettes.

Falling bricks from a neighboring building have forced the International Bar to close its backyard, eliminating a haven for locals who enjoy cigarettes with their cheap beer.

According to a spokesman for the Department of Buildings, an inspector slapped the bar with the vacate order last month after noting the plummeting masonry from 93 East Seventh Street.

A bartender at the popular dive told The Local over the phone that the blocked backyard was only temporary, and that any barflies who were looking to drink outdoors should go to sister bar the Coal Yard nearby. Read more…