Dec. 25, sometime around 9:30 p.m.

Seventh Street and Avenue B...



12th Street and Avenue A...



Trying to remember the last Saturday night like this one...

Holiday meal in Tompkins Square Park today

Photos via EV Grieve roving photographer Bobby Williams

Dec. 25, East Ninth Street

The holiday tree of Tompkins Square Park

Several readers have asked about history of the Tompkins Square Park holiday tree... there's a new sign, unveiled during last Sunday's tree-lighting ceremony, that provides the detail.



Per The Villager:

The event also marked the installation of a sign designating the tree as an East Village AIDS memorial. The Parks Department donated the spruce in 1992, at the request of former Community Board 3 Chairperson Albert Fabozzi, in remembrance of Glenn Barnett — an advocate of the park’s restoration — also in observance of neighbors’ continuing efforts to maintain the park, and in commemoration of community members lost to AIDS.

[Sign photo courtesy of Bobby Williams]

Things that aren't Jesus: St. Lazarus of Avenue B

My apologies... yesterday (twice!) I misidentified this statute on Avenue B and 13 Street as Jesus. I didn't mean to be flip about this — I secretly thought this was a stunt for the spring/summer line from Freemans Sporting Club.



Anyway! Several readers have pointed out that this is Lazarus, aka Lazarus of Bethany, St. Lazarus, the skinny guy with the two dogs.



So it's St. Lazarus now chained to a fence on Avenue B. This is an obstacle on the sidewalk. I have informed the Community Board and DOT to have the statue fined.

[Image via. Interesting this item is sold out!]

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the gas station...

Second Avenue and First Street last evening. Photos by Bobby Williams.

[Updated] Jesus is now chained to a fence on Avenue B

Well, I did go back to Avenue B and 13th Street tonight to see if the statue of Jesus on the market for $50 (plus $5 delivery!) was still there...

He is... I thought he was there for the taking, but there is a thick chain and padlock holding him to the fence...

Updated: Per a reader:

"This isn't Jesus, folks. Most likely a statue connected to Santeria, not a Catholic icon. From a website describing important Santeria statuary: 
Babaluaye: Patron of the sick, especially diseases. Leprosy, gangrene and skin diseases. Saint Lazarus. White and purple beads. Old man on crutches accompanied by dogs."

Comfort and joy

The Casualties at Coney Island High from 1995. Gets me in the holiday spirit. (I could have used "Kill Everyone" from their pre-Christmas show at CBGB in 1997.)

Going rate for Jesus today: $50 (plus delivery fee)

Avenue B at 13th Street. Chino is asking $50 for it ... throw in an extra $5 and he'll deliver it.

Fined Christmas tree vendor leaves early; plenty of trees left elsewhere

Here's the scene today on Second Avenue along the St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery...



As Patrick Hedlund reported at DNAinfo yesterday, Roger Baust, who has sold Christmas trees along here the past six years, packed it in early. The city fined him $1,500 for keeping a "warm-up hut" on the sidewalk to shelter his staff from the cold.

"I'm just calling it quits because I just can't go on any further," said Baust ... adding the combination of fatigue and dealing with the city forced him to pack it in early.

"I usually stay there until Christmas Day."

We're told that Christmas Eve day is one of his top-selling days of the season. We still have questions about this story, as mentioned yesterday. The disconnect between the alleged complainant(s) and the sudden summons by DOT a few days before Christmas is creepy.

And his crew left this behind... (and some trash, according to a commenter here).



Meanwhile, a quick survey of neighborhood tree stands revealed... there are plenty of trees left...

In front of the St. Mark's Market...



Houston in front of Whole Foods...



Rite-Aid on First Avenue...

Who is this dagger-carrying mystery man arrested in the East Village?

From the Post today:

Authorities have two questions for a bushy-bearded mystery man found wandering the East Village with a giant dagger poking out of his backpack back in March:

Who is he? And why did he (allegedly) have a loaded pistol, three more daggers, a stun gun, and a total of 305 additional rounds of ammo in his South Street storage locker?

James Edward O'Donnell, 39 -- that's the name and age he gave cops -- insists he's an American and a war veteran, but when his prints were run after his arrest on St. Marks, he came back with not only no rap sheet, but no drivers license, no Social Security number, nothing.

"This is a very strange case, in that this defendant has been accused of all forms of weapons charges and the people are absolutely uncertain as to his identity or whereabouts," Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Lewis Stone said today, as O'Donnell sat before him at the defense table.

Someone has to know this fellow...

Heavily armed cops spotted on the Bowery

We spotted four heavily armed NYPD officers this morning — decked out in riot gear and whatever kind of heavy artillery that they carry — on the Bowery between Second Street and First Street... it gave the tourists walking by something to talk about... One tourist nervously approached one of the men, who responded they were just on "routine patrol." Uh-huh.

When a cab ride will (nearly) cost you an arm and a leg (well, at least an arm)

From the NYPD Daily Blotter in the Post today:

A hack from hell rolled up the window on the arm of a man and dragged him for several blocks through the East Village, law-enforcement sources said.

The victim had accidentally left his cellphone in Eddy Brizard's cab on East Houston Street early Saturday morning, the sources said.

Brizard, 56, somehow tracked him down and brought back the phone, but then demanded $20, the sources said.

The man said he didn't have the cash and tried to snatch the phone back through the window -- but the driver allegedly raised the window and snagged the victim's arm.

Brizard was charged with robbery, assault and reckless endangerment, and his hack license was suspended, said a Taxi and Limousine Commission spokesman. The victim was not seriously hurt.

Le Souk is back open and loud as ever

We know that Le Souk is throwing a New Year's Eve bash at their old space on Avenue B ... Perhaps the Le Soukers were giving the space a test run last night... As one resident said, "it was so loud tonight all night after, say 11 pm. Around 2:30 am, I finally got up to see what the problem was ... Surprise! Le Souk."

Indeed.




The State Liquor Authority terminated Le Souk's liquor license in October 2009.

A very Billy Christmas

Here's the photo that accompanied Billy Leroy's holiday e-mail this year... (sent to us by a friend)



The note reads:

Wishing you a Scary Mary Christmas
from all the folks at Billy's Antiques

3 old-timey scenes from the holidays

Oh, just three old-timey holiday scenes from the Museum of the City of New York archives....

First, Macy's from 1944 (no photographer listed)...



And Sixth Avenue looking south from 22nd Street circa 1902 (by Byron Company) ...



Also on Sixth Avenue from 1902 (by Byron Company)... no address given, but that's certainly the Episcopal Church of the Holy Communion that later became the Limelight...

McDonald's gets festive for the holidays

First Avenue near Sixth Street tonight.

Arlo and Esme closing on East First Street after 3 years

The cafe/club combo is closing... at the former site of the universally reviled East Village Yacht Club.

Onetime Tompkins Square Park crusty found murdered in Virginia

[Photo by Steven Hirsch, reprinted with permission]

The Local East Village brings word that Robert Edwards Dyck — known as Yardsale around the Park — was found murdered last month in Virginia.

Per the Richmond Times-Dispatch from Nov. 23:

The beating death of a homeless man whose body was discovered last week near a Henrico County railyard ended his companion's dreams of a happy life together.

Robert Edwards Dyck, 37, and Lucille Obarzanek, a 28-year-old University of Vermont graduate, were hopping freight trains south from Pennsylvania to New Orleans when Dyck turned up missing and then dead, the victim of blunt-force injuries to his head and chest.

"We were going to try to make a go of it. To get to Louisiana and find work and raise a family," Obarzanek said yesterday.

Dyck and Obarzanek had been in the Richmond area for about three weeks, she said, living in a shantytown near the Acca Yard that the train-jumpers call Valhalla.

But sharing a tarp roof, a fire pit, and a pine-tree-studded junkyard of garbage and empty beer and wine bottles, Obarzanek said, were two men who carried ominous nicknames, "Satan" and "Roofless."

The two men — Samuel E. Gase, 32, aka Satan, and Brandon Thomas Geissler, 21, aka Roofless — appeared in Henrico General District Court yesterday and are being held without bond. Both are charged with voluntary manslaughter in Dyck's death.

As Yardsdale told Steven Hirsch's Crustypunks blog:

I'll probably die of alcoholism. I only drink beer, but I don't know. I'm not going to guarantee my demise. Sometimes I don't feel so right here. Thirty seven. Yeah it's hard core man. No I'm just getting started. The guy that give me my name is like in his sixties and he's got a freight train tattooed on his forehead. I'm just getting started. I ride the sunset. This is my first time in New York but I mainly ride the sunset which is LA to New Orleans.

Visit Crustypunks here.

Counter closing in February

As Eater reported on Nov. 16, wd~50 pastry chef Alex Stupak received the OK from the CB3/SLA for Empellon, "a fine-dining Mexican restaurant," at 105 First Ave. ... Which must mean current 105 First Ave. tenant, the vegan eatery Counter, will be calling it a day soon...



Indeed. Owner Deborah Gavito sent word yesterday that the eatery will be closing in February. She told Gothamist: "they were not priced out of the East Village, but rather she 'decided to simplify' her life and 'the day to day grind of running a restaurant became less and less appealing.'"