Before today’s May Day festivities kick off, let’s turn the clock back 22 years, to May 1, 1990. That’s when an affordable-housing festival in Tompkins Square Park ended in a riot in which 28 police officers were injured and 29 people – some of them activists, anarchists, and squatters who had participated in the better known riots two years earlier – were arrested.
Community Board 3 just released its new agenda that, as always, is chock full of tantalizing tidbits regarding new restaurants and bars bound for the neighborhood. A few highlights from the State Liquor Authority licensing committee: a new “Empanadas Bar” is seeking a beer and wine license in the space formerly occupied by Itzocan Cafe on East Ninth Street. Shervin’s Cafe on East Seventh Street near Avenue A will also seek the board’s approval for beer and wine, though its Facebook page is already advertising new summer cervezas.
One of the neighborhood’s most frequented bars, the 13th Step, will seek approval for a renewal of its liquor license. On several occasions at least two neighbors of the popular bar have pleaded with officers at the Ninth Precinct Community Council meeting to do something about the boisterous behavior of its customers. Read more…
Gothamist reports that a National Lawyers Guild observer is suing the NYPD for wrongfully arresting him on Second Avenue between East 12th and 13th Streets during an Occupy Wall Street march back in the early hours of New Year’s Day.
A real estate broker tells The Voice that you can still get a deal in the East Village. “You could get a small, two-bedroom apartment [in a walk-up], with a kitchen you could cook in for $3,000 a month,” she says. “I’m not saying the rooms are going to be the size of Texas, but I think that’s a bargain. And you have fantastic restaurants.” Read more…
The police closed down Tompkins Square Park tonight after a window of a 7-Eleven was smashed, seemingly by protesters.
Around 9:20 p.m., Tim Pool, a livecaster of Occupy Wall Street events, filmed police cars blocking off Tompkins Square Park. In the video embedded above, Mr. Pool reports hearing that, after the Anarchist Book Fair earlier today, a “black bloc” formed and “there was a lot of property destruction, a few windows broken. We heard a few people tried to smash some Starbucks windows and ‘some Mafioso-looking guys came out with big poles and started swinging them.’” Read more…
Woo hoo! We’re looking at highs of 79 degrees this weekend. Will the Tompkins Square Park drummers come out to play? Here’s hoping! The Local stopped by one of the longstanding group’s recent jam sessions: here’s our video to warm you up for the weekend.
Heather HolllandThese little dogs may be romping, but one local found that they, and their owners, are generally a sensitive bunch.
Tompkins Square Park has two dog runs: one for large dogs and another for small and timid ones. And it’s not just the dogs that are different – their owners seem to make up two distinct communities.
I recently took my friend’s Boston terrier, Chuck, to the small dog run (Chuck is not a big dog. I’ve seen bigger cats). It’s a serene place where most of the owners sit on a deck under a beautiful old American Elm. A man wearing white jeans and pink sunglasses spoke into a pink cell phone with a Hello Kitty bauble hanging from it. A woman sang a song about “all the little animals” (it’s refrain was about veganism) and handed out fliers depicting animal abuse at slaughterhouses.
Michael ClemensThe gate that separates the big dogs from the toys.
The dogs in this area are precious. The Yorkies, Maltese and Chihuahuas don’t pick up toys as much as gently lick them. Some have coats more brilliantly white than the bleached teeth of their owners. Occasionally they play or wrestle with each other in the sand, but it’s a pretty civil affair.
Chuck didn’t exactly fit in this environment. He tore into the park like a kamikaze pilot, blazed around it twice, and tackled a Yorkie. As he held the dog’s paw in his mouth and forced it into submission the vegan stopped singing, Hello Kitty looked at Chuck in disgust and the Yorkie’s owner began yelling at me. Read more…
Katrina Bowden will no doubt be recognizable to her East Village neighbors as 30 Rock’s resident hottie Cerie, who has been known to school her boss Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) on the nuances of social networking. Though she is originally a Jersey Girl, Ms. Bowden, 23, says she was drawn to her home of the past two years “because I like the neighborhood and everything it has to offer: great restaurants, intimate wine bars and a fun downtown vibe.” It’s shaping up to be a thrilling year for the actress, who has three films coming out, including screamer “Piranha 3DD.” Even more exciting? She recently got engaged to her high school sweetheart, rocker Ben Jorgensen. Let’s hear where the happy couple likes to hang out.
Favorite people-watching
Pretty much anywhere! I guess a good place to do it though is at a corner coffee shop like Think Coffee or The Bean. Also, Tompkins Square Park is pretty incredible for people-watching (and cute-dog-watching!). They have a dog park within the park and I often stop to watch the dogs play. It’ll have to do until I finally get a dog of my own. Read more…
Tompkins Square Park looked something like Zuccotti Park in its heyday yesterday, as a giant Statue of Liberty puppet shimmied to a beat thrashed out by a cohort of drummers. Next to them were the People’s Library, a Ben and Jerry’s ice cream cart, and a “Parents for Occupy Wall Street” station crawling with children.
Activists said the single-day occupation – the third to be organized by the group Occupy Town Square – was part of the movement’s process of reorganizing in the wake of the police eviction of the original Occupy encampment.
“We lost a few things when we lost Zuccotti,” said Jonathan Jetter, one of the event’s organizers. “We lost a place where the movement could come together to network amongst itself.” Read more…
In honor of Black History Month, The Local tours the former home of a jazz legend whose spirit is still alive on Avenue B.
The Charlie Parker Residence at 151 Avenue B has played a vital part in East Village music history. Parker, the legendary alto saxophonist, lived there during the final years of his life in the 1950s (he died in 1955, in Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter’s suite at the Stanhope Hotel). After Judy Rhodes bought the building in 1979, it became the focal point for more East Village jazz lore. Ms. Rhodes, who booked many of jazz’s leading ensembles in the early 1980s, allowed her clients to rehearse in the parlor room.
Jazz greats like pianists Cecil Taylor, Mal Waldron and Don Pullen, saxophonists Dewey Redman and George Adams, tumpeters Bill Dixon and Don Cherry and bassist Charlie Haden practiced in what was once Bird’s home. The walls are covered with photos that Ms. Rhodes took of the musicians both in rehearsal and on the stages of key venues like the Village Vanguard and Sweet Basil in the West Village and the Third Street Music School Settlement and the St. Mark’s Church in the East Village.
Ms. Rhodes worked hard to get the home on the National Register of Historic Places, and have the corner of 10th Street and Avenue B named in Parker’s honor. Now every August since 1992, the Charlie Parker Jazz Festival is held within earshot of her front door.
Watch The Local’s video for a rare glimpse inside of the home.
From 1980 until 1996, John Leguizamo, the actor, comedian, writer and producer behind such hits as “Mambo Mouth” and “Ghetto Klown,” lived on East Seventh Street. He now resides in the central Village, but he still has roots in Alphabet City: his production offices are headquartered in his old brownstone there; and last month his wife Justine, who sits on the board of the Greenwich Village Society For Historic Preservation, spoke at a hearing that resulted in the landmarking of a block on East 10th Street.
Mr. Leguizamo told The Local that the East Village “will always hold a special place in my heart.” Of course, things have changed since the days when “you’d see Eric Bogosian at the bodega, Steve Buscemi buying a coffee, Iggy Pop at the health food store, Quentin Crisp tottering down the street,” as he wrote in his memoir. Over e-mail, he said, “The neighborhood used to be alive with all different kind of artists. Musicians, poets, painters, actors, singers, dancers. But the rich came in and all the squatters left and went to Brooklyn.”
So what’s there still to love about the “East Vill”? Mr. Leguizamo reflected on some of his past and present favorites. Read more…
In a show of solidarity for Occupy Wall Street protesters arrested in Oakland, a group marched from Washington Square Park, as far north as 29th Street, and then back south to Tompkins Square Park – with a symbolic stop at the former Charas/El Bohio community center. Witnesses reported smashed bottles and arrests in the East Village last night.
Shortly before 10 p.m., protesters who had gathered at Washington Square Park three hours earlier made their way to the former P.S. 64 building on East Ninth Street, which was at the center of demonstrations last month. As The Local has reported, some residents want the developer who owns the vacant building to use it as a community center again.
After hearing a few words about the building’s history, the group – escorted by a column of police officers in the street – walked down Avenue C, then Eighth Street, and then Avenue B before stopping at East Seventh Street, at the entrance of Tompkins Square Park. Read more…
Pooches strutted their stuff at the 21st Tompkins Square Halloween Dog Parade Saturday afternoon in one of the East Village’s most highly anticipated annual events. Among the hundreds of costumed canines: doggie versions of Yoda, Lady Gaga and the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz, which might have been the most popular of the bunch. The contest’s “best in show” winner: A corgi dressed as a M23 bus. Watch our video for more.
Hundreds of people protesting police brutality have marched from Union Square, down Broadway, down East 8th Street and St. Marks Place, and through Tompkins Square Park heading toward Avenue D. Follow The Local and its editor on Twitter as we tweet minute-by-minute updates from the scene. Tweet us your own updates and add photos to our Flickr pool as you take them. We’ll have more from the scene as this unfolds.
Update | 7:15 p.m. The event was the October 22nd Coalition’s 16th Annual National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation. Similar marches were planned in 27 other cities today. The march ended with a gathering at Avenue D and East Sixth Street, outside of the Jacob Riis Houses, where a group of about 350 – including members of the Communist organization Ignite, Occupy The Hood, and others – listened to short call-and-response speeches.
Among those who took the bullhorn were Carl Dix of the Revolutionary Communist Party and the Stop Mass Incarceration Network (which spearheaded a “Stop and Frisk” protest that ended in the arrest of Cornel West and others in Harlem yesterday) as well as the parents of Elijah Foster-Bey, a teenager who was involved in a shootout with police in Brooklyn a year ago. “Shoot first, ask questions later is not right,” said Mr. Foster-Bey’s mother, Ellen Cross.
About 65 police officers lined Avenue D, many of them riding motor scooters and some of them surveying the scene from rooftops as demonstrators chanted, “Come down and face the truth, no hiding on the roof.” Their number had dwindled to about 20 community affairs officers by 6 p.m., when the crowd began thinning. The Stop Mass Incarceration Network will organize their next demonstration against “stop and frisk” policies during a meeting at St. Mary’s Church in Harlem, tomorrow at 2 p.m.
Update | Oct. 23, 12:45 a.m. We’ve now posted video from the demonstration. Watch it here.
Suzanne RozdebaL.E.S. Jewels and John Penley at Occupy Wall Street.
Runnin’ Scared interviews the bloggers behind EV Grieve and Save The Lower East Side to get their thoughts on why, as Save The Lower East Side pointed out yesterday, Grieve’s commenters are so dismissive of John Penley’s plans to occupy Tompkins Square Park this weekend. Says Grieve, “Some of the newer residents seem to be more interested in finding the perfect drunk brunch, tweeting about cupcakes and going out and watching, say, the Oklahoma-Texas game in sweatshirts and jerseys. Social movements are for the history books.”
Brooklyn Based notices, as have we, that Williamsburg is becoming “East Village East,” with outposts of Mama’s and Vanessa’s Dumpling House due to open later this month, and an offshoot of Cafe Mogador planned as well. “The recession really hit the East Village pretty hard and we saw our clientele dropping,” explains Jeremiah Clancy, the owner of Mama’s. “It pushed the last notion of young people out because the rents were so high.”
Speaking of Mama’s, the southern food trend continues: EV Grieve notices a Facebook update indicating that Double Wide, a “bar and southern kitchen” will open this weekend at 505 East 12th Street. Their sloppy Joes “bear only the finest ingredients.” Read more…
Lauren Carol SmithFor Sale signs in the window of Zee’s Pet Store on Avenue B, between 9th and 10th.
The space housing Zee’s Pet Store, the pet supply shop closest to Tompkins Square Park, is up for grabs. The owner, Zee, who declined to give a last name, said his rent had been raised, and a sign in the window solicited a hair or nail salon for the storefront on Avenue B between Ninth and Tenth Street.
At the Tompkins Square Dog Run, reactions varied. Read more…
At 6 a.m., before the sun had cleared the horizon, the members of U TOUGH Bootcamp met around the jungle gym at Tompkins Square Park. Their trainer, a former army sergeant known as Sergeant D-Train, laid his equipment out on the pavement: hooks, ropes, carabiners, and resistance weights that looked like gigantic rubber bands.
Over the next hour, the students strained themselves in a series of army-style drills, while Sergeant D-Train offered firm instructions.
“Kate, you’re moving like pond water,” he said to one sprinting student. “Pond water don’t move! Let’s go!” Read more…
Justin BagleyCareful! There is some foul language in this video (originally picked up by Deadspin).
It’s two of the most common sights in Tompkins Square Park: rats and two guys ready to fight. Justin Bagley, who was on vacation from Milwaukee, was shooting a video on Monday of the scurrying rodents when he spotted two men nose-to-nose and ready to throw down. The brawl was over before it started: as you can see in the graphic video Mr. Bagley posted to YouTube, one swing led to a knockout.
“Totally random – it was crazy,” said Mr. Bagley, 28, who was back in Milwaukee today. “I was thinking, ‘Those are ratholes?’ Then, out of nowhere, all of a sudden the guy blasts him.” Read more…
Ian GordonA street performance by the Theater for the New City.
Good Morning, East Village.
Hot on the heels of Michael Moore’s rallying cry for St. Mark’s Bookshop, the East Village book scene notches another victory. The New York Post reports that East Village Books owner Donald Davis helped apprehend a notorious New York City library thief in a sting that included the use of wrestling moves. This would make a great movie or, well, book.
City Room has run a collection of photographs by Leland Bobbe, a regular in the Downtown scene of the 1970s who shot the likes of Patti Smith, Mink DeVille and The Ramones.
The International Business Times takes a look at the Occupy Wall Street protests and finds a few similarities with the Tompkins Square Park Riot of 1988. Do you think the two have much in common? Read more…
The Local was a journalistic collaboration designed to reflect the richness of the East Village, report on its issues and concerns, give voice to its people and create a space for our neighbors to tell stories about themselves. It was operated by the students and faculty of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University, in collaboration with The New York Times, which provides supervision to ensure that the blog remains impartial, reporting-based, thorough and rooted in Times standards. Read more »
John Penley
