Marco Ventura and Giovanni Bartocci. (Photo: Lindsay Smith)
“It’s been a long two and a half weeks,” City Council Member Rosie Mendez said today at a meeting with owners of East Village businesses affected by the gas explosion of March 26. Among those who’ve survived the aftermath of the tragedy are the owners of Italian restaurant Via Della Pace on East 7th Street, just across from the blast site.
(Photo: JustSklute’s Instagram)
Dozens of fundraising campaigns have netted well over $600,000 for victims of the March 26 gas explosion in the East Village. In addition to the online fundraisers we told you about previously, including one for a Jim Henson puppeteer that has brought in almost $40,000, yet another one — for Jimmy’s No. 43 — launched over the weekend.
Last time we saw Patti Smith do “People Have the Power,” she was on stage with Miley Cyrus, Laurie Anderson, Debbie Harry and pretty much every other New York City music legend — and before that she was belting it out with Michael Stipe and James Franco. But she and Lenny Kaye kept it lean and mean at last night’s benefit at Theatre 80 for the victims of the East Village explosion. Check out the above footage posted to YouTube by Sandy Bachon.
Today it was announced that Smith will release a sequel to her memoir, Just Kids, on October 6. Here’s the publisher Knopf’s description, via the Amazon page.
The corner of St. Marks and Second Avenue was once again abuzz this afternoon, as a Small Biz Crawl brought much needed cash and customers to businesses adjacent the March 26 gas explosion.
From left, Roop Bring, Mariann Marlowe and Tarun Kundg (Photo: Jaime Cone)
Business owners affected by the Second Avenue gas explosion met Thursday morning, some of them for the first time, at Cafe Mocha, across the street from where three buildings collapsed two weeks ago today. There was talk of struggles with insurance companies, frustration over not being able to reopen, and despair over lost businesses, but many said they feel lucky things didn’t turn out worse.
The medical examiner has identified the second body pulled from the rubble of three collapsed buildings as that of Moises Locon, CBS News and other sites report. The 26-year-old busboy had been working 12 hours a day, six days a week at Sushi Park in order to save up money for a return to Guatemala, according to the Wall Street Journal. He planned to return to a girlfriend there, family members told the Times. A coworker told NY1 about his final moments with Locon.
The Illuminator’s work during Occupy Wall Street.
The future of Bushwick Inlet Park looks bright — or at least, it will be on Friday night. North Brooklyn residents will push for the conversion of the CitiStorage site into a park by projecting “light graffiti” on the building’s charred remains.
(Photo: Daniel Leinweber of Razberry Photography)
State Assemblyman Joseph R. Lentol is the latest to express concern about the possible health impact of the massive blaze that erupted on the Williamsburg waterfront early Saturday morning.
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Photo: Jaime Cone
A fire caused the evacuation of an East Village building shortly before 11 a.m. this morning. The fire at 133 East 4th Street, between First and Second Avenues, was contained to the basement, and no one was injured. FDNY Battalion Chief Philip Tufano said a gas line in the basement appeared to have been tampered with, but the fire marshal has yet to determine whether that was a contributing factor to the blaze.
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Scene of the underground fire. (Photo: Mary Reinholz)
It seems a manhole fire is what sent a person on Avenue C to the hospital with serious burns Monday, but the exact circumstances of the incident remain unclear.
A security guard at Village East Towers, the Mitchell-Lama complex at 170 Avenue C, confirmed that two men had been working at a manhole outside of the 21-story towers when one suffered burns “over 40 percent of his body.”
Deirdre Sinnott, who lives across the street, posted a comment on our initial story about the fire and said she heard an “explosion” and “screams which drew me to the window.”
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