(Photo: Phillip Kalantzis Cope/Flickr)
With a little help from Mayor de Blasio, Jerry Delakas is back at his Astor Place newsstand after the Department of Consumer of affairs dropped his fines from $37,000 to $9,000. [NY1, NY Times]
The House Committee on Natural Resources has approved an $8 million expansion of the Tenement Museum, two doors down from its current location. [Crain’s]
Kara Walker will create an art installation inside of the Domino Sugar refinery in May. [Gothamist]
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Police say the man in the above video forced his way into a woman’s East Village apartment and raped her.
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(Photo courtesy of Whitney Museum)
In conjunction with the Whitney Museum’s Rituals of Rented Island, Anthology Film Archives is presenting Further Rituals of Rented Island. During the 1970s performance art flourished in what performance artist/filmmaker Jack Smith dubbed “Rented Island” — better known as downtown Manhattan. Artists took to working in unconventional spaces like lofts, storefronts and even Anthology way back when it was in SoHo. They created new forms of art and expression while posing the question, who needs commercial art?
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(Photo: Daniel Savage)
Many of us are still mourning the loss of Max Fish, hopelessly wandering the gentrified streets of the Lower East Side for a watering hole to call home. However, we musn’t lose sight of what made Max Fish what it was. No, it wasn’t the revolting bathrooms, the overambitious lighting or even the refreshingly affordable beverages. It was the people, and many of those people are still kicking around downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn, serving drinks, playing in bands and turning up at various dive bars to grab a beer.
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Welcome to Girls Talk, in which two of our favorite New Yorkers share the text messages they sent during this week’s episode of Girls.
(Photo: Jessica Miglio/Courtesy of HBO)
Elna and Jena. (Photo: Jena’s Instagram)
The text in green belongs to Elna Baker. Based in Greenpoint, she is the author of The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance, and has appeared on This American Life. On the last Wednesday of each month, she hosts The Talent Show at Littlefield.
The text in white belongs to fellow comedian Jena Friedman. She’s a former writer for The Late Show with David Letterman, who lives in the East Village.
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(Photos by Amy Lombard)
If the streets of the East Village seemed eerily deserted last night, it’s because everyone was packed into Professor Thom’s to watch the season premiere of (cue Santigold riff) GIRLS. And over in Greenpoint — at Alex “Ray” Karpovsky’s favorite bar, Greenpoint Heights — the audience was equally rapt. That’s where we chatted up 15 of Hannah Horvath’s neighbors to find out what they thought of the first episodes, and what they’re looking forward to this season.
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(Photo: Scott Lynch)
De Blasio says finding Menachem Stark’s killer is a high priority. [DNA Info]
The House of Yes has found a new space in Bushwick. It’ll have a larger stage and seating area, a smokehouse restaurant, a bar, and an outdoor lounge. [Brooklyn Paper]
Mellow Pages explains why they fibbed about turning down a $50,000 loan from Exxon: “We did it for the survival of the library. But we’re OK with the reality of the situation, that people will hate us now.” [Brokelyn]
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Unleashing 2,000 ping-pong balls can only do so much.
Cooper Union’s Board of Trustees announced this evening that it will go ahead with a plan to cut its full-tuition scholarships in half.
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Amiri Baraka reads the words to songs by Curtis Mayfield as William Parker and Leena Conquest perform Parker’s “Inside Songs of Curtis Mayfield” on the final evening of Vision Festival at Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center in 2008. (Photo by Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images)
In the 1950s, before LeRoi Jones would change his name to Amiri Baraka, the poet soaked up the sounds of jazz in bars throughout the East Village. Clubs like the Five Spot Café, where Jones was a regular patron, featured jazz legends like John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk and Charles Mingus. Their performances helped inspire Jones to write Blues People, the 1963 groundbreaking study of African-American music.
To further honor LeRoi’s time in the East Village, we spoke to three members of the era’s jazz scene.
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Zach Wolfe
Last month I had the glorious opportunity to see Atlanta-based band Mood Rings open for Cults but I didn’t because I was too busy getting drunk or straightening my hair (or getting drunk while straightening my hair). At any rate, this is now a deeply felt regret as yesterday evening they opened for Connan Mockasin at Mercury Lounge and they were just swell — despite being down their synth player, who could not make the 14-hour drive for personal reasons. Luckily, his absence was well compensated for with generously used effects and a setlist consisting largely of songs they had written back when they were a four-piece.
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