Carol Vinzant Drayton Michael, a dog trainer, discourages pet owners from carrying weapons to fend off dog attacks. He spoke to pet owners Sunday at the Tompkins Square Dog Run.

Leave the knife, take a bottle of water.

That’s the advice Drayton Michael, a dog trainer known as the “pit bull guru,” is offering to the citizens of the East Village who are concerned about a series of attacks at the Tompkins Square Dog Run.

After a series of serious dog fights, to which some dog owners reportedly responded by carrying knives to the park to protect their dogs, the community was worried — though not all were sure these fights were anything new in a neighborhood that only a decade or so ago had more pit bulls than the toy breeds that now frolic in the specially segregated small dog run.

“Don’t worry,” said the dog run manager and dog trainer, Garrett Rosso, introducing Mr. Michael to the crowd of about 80 who gathered at an information session at the park on Sunday. “He knows that we’re not the type of dog run where people sit around on the edges and are afraid of certain breeds.”
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The Space At Tompkins is a recently formed organization designed to work with transient and homeless individuals who hang out in Tompkins Square Park.

The goal is to link people to services they request — food, clothing, a phone call home, clean syringes, access to shelters, help finding a job and information about drug rehabilitation programs. Many of the group’s members are too old to receive help at youth-based organizations but don’t feel comfortable at agencies tailored to adults, according to Andrea Stella, the executive director of The Space At Tompkins. Ms. Stella said her organization’s programs are not age-based.

NYU Journalism’s Liz Wagner reports.

For the past six months, Steven Hirsch has used a combination of photography, video, and monologue to document the tribe of tattooed denizens who hang out on Crusty Row in Tompkins Square Park.

“There has been an evolutionary change in Crusty subculture. It’s a much darker scene now than it was even two or three years ago. Many of the kids today are heroin addicted. From my interviews, I realize most come from the suburbs or rural areas, leaving behind broken homes or parental abuse. That’s not necessarily a recent trend, obviously, but the level of despair seems to be higher than ever.”—Steven Hirsch
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On a nice day, it is not uncommon to hear a soulful rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” resonating across Alphabet City. A regular at Tompkins Square Park and an East Village resident, Giuseppi Logan continues to play his saxophone well into the fall season. But, it might soon be too cold for him to perform.

During a break between songs, Mr. Logan told The Local East Village that he will continue to man his post near Ninth Street and Avenue A as long as the weather is tolerable.

Many of the New Yorkers who walk by know nothing about Mr. Logan’s legendary career. A well-known free jazz musician in the 1960s, he has played with his fair share of “cool cats,” such as John Coltrane, Don Pullen, Eddie Gomez and Milford Graves. After a mysterious decades-long hiatus, Mr. Logan remains optimistic about a musical comeback with his new band.

NYU Journalism’s Sarah Tung reports.

Toby Nathan Jerry Levy, one of last night’s few protesters.

Tompkins Square Park was more or less empty Sunday night, save for a few extra auxiliary police vehicles and a rag-tag bunch of seemingly bewildered protesters, all in search of a protest that did not happen, despite lively online previews and last-minute reminders.

“Jerry The Peddler,” the “Slum Goddess,” and one or two other local characters showed up to protest Community Board 3’s new policy designed to implement a “better management of scheduling” and control some “volume issues,” according to Susan Stetzer, the board’s district manager. She told The Local by e-mail that the repercussions of the policy have been “exaggerated greatly,” but Jerry Levy, 56, who’s lived in the East Village for 33 years, said Sunday night that he thinks the issue isn’t the volume, but the changing guard of the community.

“If people who live there” – on Seventh Street between Avenues A and B “have issues with the volume, then they shouldn’t have moved there,” he said. “The community overwhelmingly supports the concerts. This” – the noise proposal – “just comes from a few people who are speaking to a receptive ear of a few reactionary members of the community board.”

He says that the community wants “nice, quiet smiley-faced type of events that are geared toward children,” and that the community board “doesn’t represent the community.”

The community did not, however, turn out in overwhelming numbers to support that point of view. Indeed, John Penley, the longtime East Village activist and photojournalist who organized the protest, was nowhere to be found when the time came to demonstrate. Mr. Penley had not returned earlier calls from The Local about the event.

Clint Rainey Pianos, 158 Ludlow Street.

As I was making my way down Avenue A last week, a young girl in combat boots asked me for a light. I stared at her, confused. It was obvious to me that before she left the house that morning, she had remembered to smear her eyes with liquid liner, wrap her hips in enough metal belts to refurbish a John Deere machine, and carefully paint each of her nails a different shade of black – but she forgot her lighter?

“Here,” I gave her a neon pink Zippo I’d had since the last time I was hounded by Marlboro promoters at ACE bar.

“Thanks,” she said, and after using it threw the lighter into the dark depths of Tompkins Square Park, provoking the muffled sounds of an annoyed rat. Maybe she thought it was a large, cold, match. Read more…

Leslie Koch, a contributor to The Local East Village, visited the 20th annual Dog Parade at Tompkins Square Park Saturday and turned her lens on the costume competition.

Karen Biehl, of the Upper West Side, posed with her Chihuahua Eli. Their Egyptian costumes were created by pet fashion designer Roberto Negrin.
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Michelle Rick

Good morning, East Village.

Start the day by casting envious eyes in the direction of Jimmy McMillan, the “Rent is Too Damn High” gubernatorial candidate who – according to Gothamist – is renting an East Village apartment for his son at a cost of only $900 per month.

In other news, like the rest of the city we can’t help noticing that the CMJ Music Marathon is underway with over 1,200 live performances, mainly in downtown New York and Brooklyn. Lit Lounge and the Bowery Poetry Club are among the East Village venues hosting performances, but the musicians and fans are everywhere. The festival runs through Saturday, so there’s still time to catch a few dozen shows.

Speaking of music, especially of the loud variety, EV Grieve updates on us on the planned Halloween protest against pressure from Community Board 3 to reduce the quantity and volume on live music in Tompkins Square Park. We plan to be there.

Finally, a striking piece of visual history. It’s easy to walk by Alphabet Café on the corner of East 14th and Avenue B without giving the building a second thought. Vanishing New York has photographic evidence today that it has survived as a one-story structure for decades. How did the developers not notice this? And does anyone have an idea how old that first photo is?

A Memorial for Michael Shenker from The Local East Village on Vimeo.

With chants, signs and a New Orleans-style brass band, about 100 friends of community activist Michael Shenker honored his life with a parade-like procession Saturday through the streets of the East Village.

The procession, which began near Mr. Shenker’s home on the southeast side of Tompkins Square Park, wound its way past some of Mr. Shenker’s favorite places in the neighborhood and ended several hours later with a memorial service at The Catholic Worker on Second Avenue and First Street.

Mr. Shenker, who died earlier this month of liver failure at the age of 54, was a squatter and activist known for his advocacy on housing issues and the preservation of community gardens.

With chants of “Long live Michael,” members of Saturday’s procession – led by Aresh Javadi, a puppeteer who knew Mr. Shenker for a dozen years – spontaneously pulled weeds at a garden on Avenue C (before the space’s perplexed owner asked them to leave) and stopped at such locations as 319 East Eighth Street.

It was there that Fran Luck first met Mr. Shenker 25 years ago, when Mr. Shenker was working to turn what was then an unoccupied and neglected building into a popular squat. Today, the building is fully renovated with modern amenities.

“The gathering today shows the power, not only of Michael, but of an era we went in together for our neighborhood against gentrification,” said Ms. Luck.

Meredith Hoffman A line form at Tompkins Square Park to await food distribution by the volunteers of Bowery Mission.

Beyond serving as a green refuge, Tompkins Square Park offers a wide range of eating experiences. A recent food tasting in the park allowed area restaurants to serve up their creations. Locals frequent the Sunday morning farmers’ market where artisanal cheese from Hudson Valley farms and apples from nearby orchards are among a host of organic produce.

Saturday mornings, around 8 o’clock, a lengthy line reminiscent of Coxey’s Army begins to form along Avenue A. A broad ethnic mix of people, many aged or infirm wait patiently alongside mothers with their children in strollers. Most are wheeling shopping carts. Some on crutches, in wheel chairs form a separate line.
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Darren Tobia Angelo Cabrera, 19, from the East Village performs “the flag” in Tompkins Square Park. He is a member of the NYC Parkour team, which performs gymnastic maneuvers against an urban backdrop.

The Local East Village takes a look at the fitness phenomenon known as parkour through a pair of reports. First, Community Contributor Al Kavadlo, a personal fitness trainer, offers a first person account where he tries out some parkour moves. Then, NYU Journalism’s Lesley Messer and Suemedha Sood report on four neighborhood teenagers who’ve formed a bond through their practice of the sport.

What began with a group of teens in France running and jumping through the city streets has turned into a worldwide fitness movement, with the East Village as one of NYC’s primary hubs. Tompkins Square Park has had a reputation for many different things over the years. You can now add parkour to the list.

Parkour involves training to overcome physical obstacles by adapting to the environment. If there is a ledge, you vault over it, if there is a tree, you climb it and if there is a gap, you jump it.
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Dan Nguyen

Good morning, East Village.

On Tuesday night, Community Board 3 voted overwhelmingly to pass a measure that would restrict the number of concerts using amplified sound at Tompkins Square to one day per weekend.

Although the proposal passed without debate, Susan Stetzer, the district manager of Community Board 3, told NYU Journalism’s Timothy J. Stenovec that she was surprised by the level of vitriol about the measure in the blogosphere.

Ms. Stetzer took particular exception to the characterization by one commenter on EVGrieve who described her as “a self-appointed sound-nazi.”

“You don’t call people Nazis,” Ms. Stetzer told Mr. Stenovec after the meeting.

Ms. Stetzer also denied that there was any political motivation behind the measure.

“No one’s against concerts, no one’s against any type of concerts, no one’s against political activity,” Ms. Stetzer told Mr. Stenovec. “All that’s asked is that certain concerts that are very loud, and we’re not saying which ones, just take it down a notch.”

In other neighborhood news, there are a lot of reads about the 67-year-old East Village man who was injured when an air conditioner fell from the sixth floor of a walk-up on Second Avenue. Check out The Post’s account here, EVGrieve’s here and the Daily News here.

There’s another fine read about an effort to feed the homeless in The Times. We’ll have a story later today by NYU Journalism’s Meredith Hoffman about another plan to help the homeless.

And here’s an interesting link from Guestofguest about one bar’s unusual attempt to connect with its neighbors.

Timothy J. Stenovec Harry Greenberg retires today after 22 years as the supervisor of Tompkins Square Park.

Harry Greenberg remembers the moment Tompkins Square Park changed.
 It was the winter of 1992, and the Friends of Tompkins Square, a now defunct civic organization, planted a pine tree on the eastern side of the park’s central lawn. In the first of what has become an annual caroling celebration, community members adorned the tree with lights and decorations. If recent history were any indication, that tree and its ornaments should have been stripped down and hocked by the park’s homeless, the fate countless park plants had already suffered.
 But miraculously, the tree—and the decorations—remained, day after day.

“Nobody ripped the lights down, and that’s when you knew people enjoyed it,” Mr. Greenberg said.

Indeed, Tompkins Square Park today is a far cry from the park that Mr. Greenberg found when he arrived here as a fresh-faced parks supervisor in 1988. “I’d have to crawl over people that were sleeping out here with their dogs,” Mr. Greenberg said, describing what it was like to come into his office at five o’clock each morning.
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Stephen Harausz Christopher Thomasson enjoys a smoke in Tompkins Square Park.

Smokers in the East Village have gotten used to being a drag on society. They cried tyranny eight years ago, when the Health Department banished them from bars and restaurants. They vowed to quit when recent taxes pushed the price of a pack near $15. Now City Hall wants to ban them from parks, beaches, boardwalks and pedestrian plazas.

So how does the proposal strike denizens of Tompkins Square, the only major park in the neighborhood? Judging from a random Sunday afternoon sampling of smokers and non-smokers, the diverse crowd has its reservations.
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Samantha Ku Drenched but undaunted, two young spectators at the Howl! Festival in Tompkins Square Park.

Over the last three days, poetry and spoken word, music and theater, performance art and visual art combined in Tompkins Square Park for the annual Howl! Festival.

Samantha Ku Models for the Hemma collection applaud the designers.

Howl! Arts board member Bob Perl estimated that around 20,000 to 30,000 attended the festival this weekend. Saturday drew the most people because of a mix of programming and pleasant weather. But the sun didn’t last. “Whether it’s the weather or inclement rain coming, today so far is quiet,” said Mr. Perl of Sunday’s performances.

The festival started on Friday night with a group of local poets reading Allen Ginsberg’ epic poem “Howl.”

From 1952 until his death in 1997, Beat poet Ginsberg lived and worked in the East Village.

Holding the event in the East Village adds “a sense of roots,” said Anne Waldman, the poet laureate of this year’s festival.

“In the spirit of continuity or a sense of lineage of honoring all the arts that have gone on here, it’s important to remind people of that at this site.”

Were you there?

Please share your stories of the Howl! Festival.

This post has been changed to correct an error.

Samantha Ku Master of ceremonies Bob Holman encourages audience members to join in the howl.