Daniel Maurer Andy Koszewski at the cafe’s front counter.

The Bowery Poetry Club’s front café, which went dark after Bowery Beef closed last summer, is once again brewing coffee, this time under the eye of a former manager at Think Coffee’s Mercer Street location (not the Bowery location just a block away – that would be awkward).

Andy Koszewski, the café’s new operator, opened shop earlier today, and is pouring drip coffee ($2.50, refills $1.50) from Anodyne Coffee Roasting Co., a stylish small-batch roaster from his hometown of Milwaukee, Wis. Once the La Marzocco machine is back from the repair shop later this week, he’ll be pulling espresso ($2.50) for cappuccinos ($3.75), mochas ($4.25) and the like. Also on offer: Chai lattes, hot chocolate, and eventually croissants and quiches from Ceci Cela Patisserie, salads from Choice Greens, and cookies from Salt of the Earth Bakery. Read more…

Courtesy of Doubleday

Luckily for East Villagers, James Wolcott’s memoir of his days as a young culture critic in a now nearly vanished city, “Lucking Out: My Life Getting Down and Semi-Dirty in Seventies New York,” places much of its meat and potatoes (along with plenty of gravy) right here in our very own backyard. Steering a middle course between the sometimes overly concentrated, every-word-counts prose of his Vanity Fair columns, and the more loosey-goosey style he deploys in his blog at the same publication, Mr. Wolcott reconfirms his position as New York’s wittiest critic.

Despite its pleasing portability (the book, out later this month, comes in at about 270 pages), “Lucking Out” covers plenty of ground, bopping from Mr. Wolcott’s mice-ridden “man-cave” on East 12th Street, down to CBGB, and back up to the Village Voice, where he made his name. It slides west for a gawk at the gay heyday of the West Village, then uptown for some quality time among the balletomanes of Lincoln Center (with a pause for skuzzy “Taxi Driver”-era Times Square porn along the way), and includes countless screening room séances with his mentor and muse, the late New Yorker film critic, Pauline Kael, to whom large portions of the book can be seen as an extended and touching valentine. Read more…

Tim Schreier

Would-be messages from the East Village, in 140 characters or less.

Sunday Morning on Avenue C

The joy of it the sting of it the bells of it the glare of it
the birds of it the eyes of it the prayers of it the drugs of
it the it of it

Sidewalk Encounter

The rat crossed his path with such nonchalance the damn
thing might as well have been wearing shades &
smoking a bidi

The British Lawyer

…Surveyed our sunken roofs, loose bricks, black
spaghetti of dangling phone wires, & declared, “In
London, this would all be illegal!”

Personal Trainer

I met it at downtown’s trendiest gym
could never ascertain: her or him?
never saw it change or shower or swim…
but now I’m toned and trim

P.S. 122

Should artistes shovel snow like normal people? Please.
Pratfalls are aesthetic (Tati, etc.), and black ice is a
frozen film noir…

Middle Age (Paging Lou Reed)

O it’s such a perfect day (though I barely slept) I’m so
glad I spent it with you (whoever you are) where is the
damn zoo, anyway?

Disappointment

At the Immaculate Conception Church, the priest offers
bread, but no wine. The blood of Christ is available only
on Sundays

Beautiful Girl at the Nail Salon

She worked in TV and sounded like TV so he pretended
she was TV and returned his gaze to the mute black hair
of the Asian woman at his feet

Tech-Tock

Even when you refuse to believe them, memes can cling
like cellophane: This bookstore is a dying thing,
empty an hour before closing

Lunch Date

The Loneliest Man in the East Village took the Second
Loneliest Man to lunch. They ate mostly in the silence of
silverware. Both agreed

that they were failures, that their erotic prospects were
risible, that their Linked-In profiles were musty tombs,
and that they rarely met

anyone not connected to the service industry except in
movies, books, and dreams

Discuss

The fact people can be left to die on the sidewalk has
always made the East Village viscerally exciting to
young Europeans