Looking at "Fear in Alphabet City"

Matt Harvey's cover story this week in NYPress -- titled "Fear in Alphabet City" -- provides a more detailed account about the murder of Eric "Taz" Pagan on Avenue A this past Aug. 23. For instance, according to the article, Louis Rodriguez, the man police have charged with the murder, had been tossed out of Forbidden City by Pagan, a former bouncer there, earlier in the evening. (Someone from Rodriguez's East Harlem neighborhood describes him as "a cold-blooded fucking idiot.")



As the article points out, the shooting shouldn't have been a surprise: "Bullets are more common in the neighborhood than most people want to believe."

Craig Lopez, one of the first people who came upon the murder scene, has lived in the East Village since the early 1990s.

Back then the moniker for the 45-square-block area south of 14th Street and east of First Avenue sent shivers down middle-class spines, conjuring up images of drug zombies and muggers. During the last decade, the term fell into disuse as wealthy new arrivals arrived, along with college bars and bistros. When the term finally ceased to register any fear, the rich claimed the Alphabets for themselves. In its 2007 Best 'Hoods issue, Time Out awarded Alphabet City the dubious honor of being the "#1 Best Hood."

Here's more from Lopez:

Despite the turnaround, Lopez says he preferred the lonely streets and coke bodegas to the loud "frat boy" parties that have invaded his neighborhood. "On Thursday, Friday and Saturday, it's really bad," he says, before breaking into an almost-apologetic smile. "I prefer the old way. I felt safer."

Lopez's crack about frat boys, however, masks darker fears. "Was I concerned that someone got killed?" he asks rhetorically, then shrugs. "Yeah. But I can’t say I was really surprised. There are shootings around here all the time."

Other highlights from the article include an interview with Bob Arihood, who has chronicled the East Village longer than anyone.

Arihood paints a perfect storm of social, economic and political factors, which combine to insure that successive waves of incoming NYU students, and upper-middle class tenants, remain ignorant of how bad things are in the 'hood — thereby continuing to splurge on tuition and "million-dollar condos."

Previously.

At the Mars Bar: "It's a weird portal to Hell"

Matt Harvey checks in on the latest art exhibit -- Hell Purgatory or Paradise -- at Mars Bar. As he wrote in NYPress.

Lucille Bignon, who rocks a 1960s-era soul-girl look, complete with beehive hairdo, said: “Everyone here is crazy, you don’t know when they’re going to snap,” Her eyes widening beneath heavily shadowed black lids, she added, “It’s a weird portal to Hell.” A regular sitting on a barstool countered that, “there are no frat boys, so its heaven.”

So, all is well.

Confirmed: LES overrun by idiots at night

Matt Harvey delves into the horror show also known as the LES nightlife scene in this week's NYPress cover story. God help us.

In what was once the center of the gentrification goldrush — the section between the Bowery and Essex Streets north of Delancey — most of the businesses left from the boom are nightspots catering to less-sophisticated outer-borough and beyond patrons. Fat Baby, Mason-Dixon and R Bar, along with restaurants that serve over-priced drinks, like Stanton Social or Spitzer’s Corner, dominate. Residents recently suffered the final affront when Zagat ranked the Lower East Side the city’s “hottest nightlife neighborhood,” replacing its more upmarket rival, the Meatpacking District, already renowned for its annoying nightlife clientele.

Susan Stetzer, the district manager for Community Board 3 and a long-term resident of the Lower East Side, says that the area is now an “entertainment center” for the bridge-and tunnel set. “Residents have given up if they still live there,” says Stetzer. She and other residents complain that the streets, shorn of businesses, are empty during the day because the tenants couldn’t pay rents inflated by the influx of nightlife money. Then, at night, it’s wall-to-wall yokels from the suburbs, which, according to Stetzer, “is really depressing.” She’s an advocate of vanishing mom-and-pop shops and dive bars, and says no one who lives in the LES goes to the clubs and lounges. “If they do, they don’t tell me,” she says. Others claim it’s impossible to find a quiet place to have a conversation and a drink.

Cabin fever

Matt Harvey's "Bash Compactor" column in this week's NYPress looks at the not-so-secret, secret speakeasy on Avenue A... Before heading Down Below, he asks a fine question:

Last Saturday night on Avenue A, post-college boozers were spilling out onto the sidewalk from a jam-packed Niagara. Watching drunken couples falling over each other in an attempt to snag a cab, I wondered, if the recession is so deep, why aren’t these people on Greyhound buses back to Rochester?