Stephen Rex Brown The door to Martha Fedorko’s apartment.

East Village landlords often make for easy villains. Just ask State Senator Thomas Duane about Benjamin Shaoul, the Shalom family, and Alistair Economakis. But the residents of 510 East Sixth Street face a particularly vexing situation.

Stephen Rex Brown 510 East Sixth Street.

By most accounts their landlord, Martha Fedorko, was once a generous owner and accomplished doctor who helped out tenants when she could. Luc Sante wrote all of “Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York,” in the building, and thanks her in the acknowledgements of the book published in 1992. “She was absolutely the best landlord I ever had,” said Mr. Sante, who now lives in Kingston, N.Y.

But residents say that as she has grown old, Ms. Fedorko has started cutting their electricity for no reason, telling them to vacate their apartments at random times, menaced one of them with her cane, and left inscrutable letters in the hallway. Read more…

Daniel Maurer

Just a block or two from where his Kiss mural may soon disappear, Antonio “Chico” Garcia added what he called “a brush of color” to the back wall of Arena Eco-Friendly Salon last night.

Rena Anastasi, the owner of the salon at 189 Orchard Street, said the hot pink touches came out “even brighter than I thought,” but she’s feeling it. “It’s definitely fun, LES fun.”

Chico said he’s headed back to his new home in Tampa, Florida in a couple of weeks. Until then, he’ll be repairing his work in the area, including the murals outside the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, which got a touch-up yesterday afternoon. “I’m just doing something for the community before I leave,” he said.

Photos: Noah Fecks.

Yesterday, The Local showed you a mural (possibly 80 years old) excavated during renovations of the former Holiday Cocktail Lounge space. If that got you feeling nostalgic for the old dive, by all means indulge in the slideshow above. Back in February, our photographer Noah Fecks found time – in between cooking meals from every issue of “Gourmet” magazine in his East Village apartment – to wander into the Holiday just days after The Local published photos from the final night of service. These postmortem shots, published here for the first time, are a fine tribute to the St. Marks stalwart.

Courtesy of Underworld Productions. A dance performance in the garden last year.

You’ll have your pick of outdoor concerts tomorrow.

At 3 p.m., a group of opera performers will take the stage at La Plaza Cultural Armando Perez to delight local kids with songs about cats, dogs and rhinos, as the Underworld Productions Opera Ensemble presents “Animals in the Plaza,” a collection of operas performed in their original Spanish, French, English or Italian languages. “We believe children respond to opera in its true form, not watered down,” director Gina Crusco said. Songs include “The Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat,” “Wynken, Blynken and Nod” and “El Rinoceronte/The Rhinoceros.”

Also tomorrow, the Cooper Square Committee presents its annual Third Avenue Festival: from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. 150 vendors and non-profits will dot the avenue from Sixth Street to 14th Street. Performances will take place at East Ninth Street from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. by singer-songwriter Michelle Fury, The St. Marks Ensemble, Kate Vargas, Filthy Rotten System, Marcel Van Dam et Paul, The Dan Piccoli Trio, and The JewelTones.

Sarah Darville Tommy McKean in the air shaft of his building.

This feud over an air conditioning unit certainly isn’t cooling off.

Employees of a Hamptons Market Place at 356 East 13th Street switched off power to their entire building this morning, leaving 16 apartments without electricity for about an hour. Outraged tenants said it’s only the latest disruption that has been inflicted on them by the deli, which installed an air conditioner and ventilator unit on the roof that has bothered them to no end.

The owner of the deli, who has grown weary of a year of noise complaints, is so fed up that today he raised the possibility of a harassment suit against the tenants.

“I can’t get a psychiatrist to come into their apartments but I wish I could,” the owner, Victor Nagi said, later adding, “The tenants are harassing me. They’re complaining every other day and getting me these fines.” Read more…

Nice Guy Eddie’s just announced on Facebook that after 16 years it will close on Sunday. News that the Avenue A sports bar owned by Community Board 3 member David McWater would shut down broke in April when it was revealed that the owner of Ella and Gallery Bar, Darin Rubell was taking over the space. Meanwhile, the staff of the bar popular among football fans tells customers, “We’re throwing a huge party Sunday, so stop by and wish us farewell!” Still no word on whether the Kiss mural by Chico will remain.

Photos: Lauren Carol Smith.

The old CBGB is ready for its close-up, and The Local was on hand as a section of the bar, the phone booth, a urinal, pieces of wall and founder Hilly Kristal’s desk hit the road yesterday for Savannah, Georgia, where they will be used in the upcoming CBGB movie.

The assorted items still have hints of the glory days at 315 Bowery. The beat-up old desk has a list taped to it of phone numbers for old staffers at the club that closed in 2006. The toilets are still filthy and showed no signs of scrubbing (a latrine and a urinal from the women’s room are shown in our slideshow). Most surfaces are covered in band stickers, and the cash register still has a cut-out image of Mr. Kristal alongside a photo of Shakira.

Yesterday it had all been packaged with care in storage near the Brooklyn Navy Yard and loaded into a moving van bound for south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Read more…

The Ex-Villagers: they loved the East Village and left it. Mara Levi closed her East Sixth Street restaurant last year. With the Long Island outpost of Mara’s Homemade now a year old, we checked in to see how she’s doing.

Lauren Carol Smith Mara Levi at the new Mara’s Homemade in
Syosset, N.Y.

When the building that occupied our Union Square coffeehouse, Java N Jazz, was sold and all the tenants were asked to leave we started looking for a new space in the neighborhood, for a new type of restaurant. We found one, but lost out when a celebrity chef also started negotiations for it. The search started again and we found a place in the East Village. We opened there a month after Java N Jazz closed.

The space was not ideal. We were forced out in three months, but were lucky to find another location three doors down. The rent was $5,000 a month for 750 square feet. With the failing of the first location we had changed our focus to the foods of New Orleans. We started out with the basics: jambalaya, shrimp Creole, etouffee, and of course the live crawfish boil.

The customers started coming and requested dishes they had eaten at Jazz Fest. My husband was waiting tables and I was in the kitchen. He would describe dishes and I would prepare them and the customers would tell me if I was on the mark. Then we’d add them to the menu.

My husband has a love for barbecue; he found a smoker that would fit in the kitchen and we started serving Arkansas barbecue. The neighborhood took a liking to what we were doing. Read more…

Lauren Carol Smith

First the “Legends of the Lower East Side” were immortalized in coloring-book form, and now the “Saints of the Lower East Side” have been painted onto scaffolding on Fourth Street, between Bowery and Second Avenue.

Tom Sanford, known for his portraits of cultural and historical figures, painted some local heroes on scaffolding above 70 East Fourth Street Cultural Center, where the future home of the Downtown Art and Alpha Omega Theatrical Dance Company is under construction. The portraits, from left to right, are of Martin Wong, Joey Ramone, Miguel Piñero, Ellen Stewart, Charlie Parker, Arthur “Weegee” Fellig and Allen Ginsberg.

Lauren Carol Smith 107-113 Second Avenue.

The artist got some help from Graham Preston, who will present his own works, depicting cultural heroines of the area, on June 26 at 6 p.m. at FAB Café. Both exhibits, which are presented by FABnyc and are part of the ArtUp program that recently brought a new mural to the La MaMa building, will be up till Sept. 5.

And speaking of scaffolding, The Local spotted the scaffolding that was expected to obscure the new Metropolitan Citymarket (formerly Met Foods) going up earlier today. As previously reported, N.Y.U. is renovating its classrooms in the former Saul Birns Building at 107-113 Second Avenue, and the scaffolding is expected to come down in the fall.

Photos: Philip Ross.

The Lower Eastside Girls Club will field two new softball teams with the help of a $5,000 check, but the check itself disappeared before it could be presented at East River Park yesterday afternoon.

SportsNet New York planned to turn over an oversized $5,000 check to the Girls Club, to go toward uniforms and equipment for its new Avenue D Sluggers. But before that could happen, the car containing the giant check was towed away, all but kiboshing the presentation ceremony. But there’s no crying in baseball, or softball, either – so the folks at SNY gave the Girls Club 100 tickets to a Mets game on July 24 and promised to present the check then.

The donation is being made in honor of the 40th anniversary of Title IX, which bans gender discrimination in educational programs receiving federal assistance, and will allow two teams of girls aged six to 12 to play at East River Park every Saturday. It’s the first sports team that the Girls Club has fielded in a few years. Read more…

Photos: Daniel Maurer

The Patricia Field store, which was on East Eighth Street for many years and then moved to a former kitchen supply store at 302 Bowery, moved a couple of doors over last week and has reopened at 306 Bowery in the designer’s former home.

Ms. Field, who has outfitted everyone from drag queens to club kids to Carrie Bradshaw, first made a home at 306 Bowery in 2005, after many years of living above her previous store in Greenwich Village. She eventually acquired the ground floor of the building behind her apartment, at 298 Elizabeth Street, knocked down its exterior wall, and connected it to her home by building a skylight between the two buildings.

Now that Ms. Field has moved to a smaller place in the Seward Park area, her former Bowery digs are serving as the new location of her boutique. At 4,000 square feet, the bi-level space is nearly twice the size of the previous location, leaving space for more inventory from brands like Boy London, M.Y.O.B., and Noir. Read more…

Nick DeSantis

After nearly losing its liquor license last September, Heathers Bar is up for sale.

Heather Millstone confirmed her eponymous bar was on the market after The Local received a listing from Steven Kamali Hospitality indicating that it’s available for a $150,000 fixture fee plus $6,850 per month in rent.

“It’s been a rough year for me on a lot of different levels, so I’m exploring my options,” she wrote in an e-mail. “I don’t think anyone should rejoice or mourn just yet, Heathers will probably still be around for some time, just not forever.”

Ms. Millstone said her reasons for seeking a new operator were “solely personal” and had nothing to do with her recent experience in front of Community Board 3. In September, neighbors complaining of late-night noise and unlimited drink specials convinced the board to recommend that the State Liquor Authority reject the bar’s application for a liquor license renewal, but the S.L.A. granted it anyway.

At the time, signs on the bar’s door read, “SAVE HEATHERS.”

Philip Ross Alfa Diallo at the Dias Y Flores Community Garden

A vendor at the flea market at Avenue A and 11th Street is suing a former N.Y.U. Tisch School of the Arts student who disappeared after filming a short documentary about him. The t-shirt designer, Alfa Diallo, is demanding $5,000 in small claims court.

Mr. Diallo said that he agreed to show Matthew Swenson his t-shirt making process after Craig Atkinson, who is also named in the suit, approached his booth last summer and asked if he would participate in his friend’s graduate thesis project.

Mr. Diallo, a relaxed and amicable 60-year-old who was born in Senegal and educated in France, handcrafts the t-shirt designs using a French curve, a tool that creates curly, looped, and elliptical patterns. Mr. Swenson filmed him for two days, said Mr. Diallo – one day at the flea market and another at his apartment on 13th Street and Avenue A.

“They did all this shooting without me being able to see anything,” he said. “Matt said to me, ‘I’ll send you things by e-mail, you should be able to open it and see.’ But I was not able to see it.” Read more…

The CBGB Festival just added a few big names. Superchunk, Wyclef Jean and Fishbone will play shows during the frenzy of rock music, conferences, and movies on the weekend of July 4. The former bass player of Nirvana, Krist Novoselic, will also deliver the keynote address on “association and how it can transform politics,” according to a press release.

The new names join other bands like Guided By Voices, War On Drugs, MxPx, the Pains Of Being Pure At Heart that will play the festival taking place at around 30 venues around Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. Local joints like Lit Lounge, Webster Hall, Bowery Electric and Otto’s Shrunken Head are slated to host.

For every East Village business that’s opening or closing, dozens are quietly making it. Here’s one of them: Igor’s Clean Cuts.

Shira Levine Igor Iskiyev tends to a customer while Imanuel (Manny) Ibragimov looks on.

Five years ago Igor Iskiyev left his gig cutting hair at Neighborhood Barber on East Ninth Street and became commissar of his own chop shop at 20 First Avenue. The Azerbaijan native had dabbled with hair-cutting back home after serving as an anti-aircraft gunman. Igor’s reputation for detail and perfection precedes him: good Yelp reviews, affordable prices ($15 for a haircut, $15 for a shave) and, let’s face it, the occasional offer of a beer have been key to his success. The Local recently spoke with Mr. Iskiyev and his right-hand man, Imanuel (Manny) Ibragimov about Mr. Iskiyev’s decision to go solo and his distaste for small talk.

How is business?

Igor: Right now it is slow, but not very bad. It was not good in 2008. Customers didn’t come as much. Some moved because they couldn’t afford to stay. We didn’t see many of our old customers for a while. Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown

Someone made a failed attempt to rob the Emigrant Savings Bank at 105 Second Avenue around 45 minutes ago, a police officer and bank employee confirmed. The pair would only add that the suspect did not flash a weapon. Just last Wednesday a man robbed the HSBC three blocks to the north.

Sandy Berger The view out of Sandy Berger’s window.

I’m not averse to bacon. I used to make it, on very rare occasions. But ever since the International House of Putrid Odors opened and its ventilation fans began pumping out the smell of recycled bacon through my bedroom windows, a mere whiff of it is enough to make me ill.

Last August, before IHOP opened on East 14th Street, two gigantic air conditioners suddenly appeared on its second floor roof (they must have been crane lifted). At night, when it used to be pretty quiet, they sounded like 100 antiquated air conditioners running simultaneously.

It took several 311 complaints before a Department of Environmental Protection inspector found them in violation of the law. The inspector told me he knew he’d be back once the restaurant opened: he predicted there would be odor complaints, and he was so right. Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown Outside of the shuttered restaurant.

Tables, chairs and old plates from Kate’s Joint were being tossed in a dumpster at the corner of Avenue B and East Fourth Street this morning. The For Rent signs are still up at the old vegetarian standby, which closed for good in April.

Stephen Rex Brown The sidewalk outside Fine Fare was a bloody mess Sunday morning.

Wondering why there was pool of blood outside the Fine Fare on Avenue C Sunday morning? Here’s your answer: One of the men injured during Saturday night’s stabbing in East River Park was arrested outside of the grocery store.

The neighborhood’s top police officer, Deputy Inspector John Cappelmann (he was promoted from captain last week) confirmed the sequence of events, saying that the perp fled the park and was found at Avenue C and East Fourth Street. Initially, the police reported that only the suspect found at Fine Fare was arrested, but Inspector Cappelmann revealed that the 59-year-old “victim” ended up in handcuffs, as well.

“It was two people who are acquaintances. They got in a dispute in the park, wound up assaulting each other and both were charged,” Inspector Cappelmann said.

Meanwhile the blood, which was a hot topic of discussion on EV Grieve and Gothamist, has washed away in the rain.