The heat must be getting to a few peoples' heads. At around 9pm last night, a loose pack of around 50 to 60 protestors took to the streets, looting and vandalizing storefronts and property in the East Village. Their targets: the windows of the Starbucks on Astor and the newly opened 7/11 on St. Mark's. More >>

www.lakesidelounge.com

www.lakesidelounge.com

The East Village must be getting used to all these closings by now. First, it was Mars Bars on East First Street; then Banjo Jim's on East Ninth Street; and, now, the Lakeside Lounge on Avenue B will see its doors close for good. In an e-mail message to Runnin' Scared, co-owner Eric Ambel confirmed that, "after 16 years on Avenue B, our last night will be April 30." What a shame.More >>

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Party favors. Ivanka called them "amazing!!!"

This afternoon EV Grieve posted about a party that really takes the cake, or rather, the pastrami sandwich.

A couple had their black tie wedding reception yesterday at Katz's Delicatessen. Ivanka Trump tweeted about the event including pictures of the menu and the party favors. We talked to Kevin Albinder, the manager of Katz's, who said that weddings and other such events (Bar Mitzvahs, anniversaries) aren't that unusual at Katz's. "The party we had yesterday was kind of a big party, and we were closed for a good part of the day," he said.

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Boozers and bars are just ruining the East Village, neighborhood residents claim.

So the NYPD Ninth Precinct, which patrols the area, will deploy eight to 10 additional cops in the next month to combat "nightlife-related problems," according to DNAinfo.

The team will be sent out during the evening, to fight noise and unruliness (which apparently threaten the very fabric of East Village life.)

At a recent public safety meeting, Capt. John Cappelmann, who runs the Ninth Precinct, promised residents that the additional patrolmen will prevent people from having fun.

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via Wikimedia Commons

Looks like East Village residents aren't happy with their newest celebrity neighbor. The New York Post was able to confirm that David Schwimmer, one-time Friends star, is the owner of a historical East Village townhouse which was recently demolished to make way for a six-story mansion. As can be expected, fellow Sixth Street denizens are not pleased about it.

Schwimmer bought the building, at 331 E. 6th St., in 2010 for $4.1 million. Built in 1852, it was one of the oldest structures on the block.

Of course, old buildings are bought and sold and remodeled in the Village all the time. The area is hugely popular with students and celebrities, and developers and real estate agents know they can get more money for a nicer building.

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Mia Yoo, Artistic Director of La MaMa E.T.C. (Experimental Theatre Club), responded to our story about Millenium Film Workshop being served an eviction notice from La MaMa on Wednesday night with this statement:

Since December 2010 La MaMa has been talking and meeting with Millennium Film to try and understand how we can help them as they continue to find ways to stablize their organization. We will continue to do so. We believe and support the mission of Millennium Film and consider it a very important cultural institution.

Tamara Greenfield, the Executive Director of Fourth Arts Block who has been mediating between Millenium and La MaMa over the past many months (including a long meeting yesterday) explained what the process has been like for the two non-profits, her belief that La MaMa wants to keep Millenium in its home (under a different configuration, where some of their current real estate can be rented out to increase revenue), and why she thinks there may have been an "overreaction" from Millenium to the eviction notice.

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An interesting story out of the East Village tonight: Millenium Film Workshop, the legendary film collective founded by director Ken Jacobs in 1966 (whose Seeking the Monkey King was just screened at Sundance and won an award from the National Society of Film Critics) is being evicted from the building it has occupied on East 4th Street since 1975.

The cause (a failure to pay rent for "about ten months," according to board member Jay Hudson) is not an unusual one leading to an eviction. Nor would the fact Millenium has had drastic cuts from the New York State Council for the Arts be an excuse a landlord would typically accept for such a large sum of unpaid rent.

But this is somewhat unusual: the party evicting Millenium is not a speculator, nor an investment firm, nor a international bank. In no way do they match the typical description of a profit driven greedy landlord.

Quite the opposite, in fact: the evicting landlord is another not-for-profit: it's La Mama E.T.C. (Experimental Theatre Club), Millenium's neighbor since it, too, set up on East 4th Street.

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EV Grieve's Twitter pic.

Today is a special day. One of our favorite neighborhood blogs (and Village Voice Web Awards judge), the excellent EV Grieve, turns four today. We've seen other local blogs come and go, but Grieve has stuck around and become an indispensable source for anyone interested in the rapidly changing East Village. We read the site every day and it's led us to some of our favorite local stories.

On the blog today, Grieve explains how the sausage gets made:

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Sigh. It's that time of year again. The extra special holiday time when a some people dress up in Santa costumes and frolic through the streets spreading holly-jollies and wreaking havoc, a/k/a, Santacon, "a non-denominational, non-commercial, non-political and non-sensical Santa Claus convention that occurs once a year for absolutely no reason." Whee. If you are not planning to join in the fun, be prepared to be fully annoyed when you meet with the inevitable pile of Santa debris tomorrow.

But annoyance is so last year! We've enlisted the help of East Village blogger EV Grieve, who's weathered many a Santacon, for his tips for coping. "My advice would be to start drinking heavily now and sleep through tomorrow in a boozy stupor and catch up on the Three Colors trilogy you bought during your Kieślowski phase," he says.

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Shepard Fairey's mural on East Fifth and Cooper Square has been taken down, the Local: East Village reported yesterday. It was that one of a monk on the side of the Cooper Square Hotel, recently renamed the Standard East Village by new owner Andre Balazs. The mural had been on the side of the building since April of last year.

Here's a photo of the mural being taken down yesterday:

Stephen Rex Brown

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