Today at the Howl! Festival, still

First three photos via Allen Semanco ...

Remaining photos via Bobby Williams...

S'MAC taking over for Veselka at the First Avenue/Houston kiosk

An outpost of macaroni-and-cheesers S'MAC is replacing Veselka in the First Avenue/Houston kiosk, Patrick Hedlund reports this morning at DNAinfo.

Veselka, which will vacate at the end of June, has manned this space the last five years. The city’s Parks Department put out a request for proposals in January for a new food vendor, Crain's reported.

Previously.

The road to Enlightenment?

At the Howl! Festival in Tompkins Square Park today...Where Meditation Walk takes you...

...to Vendor Village, reports Dave on 7th...

Chalk vandals strike Tompkins Square Park ping pong table

Art near the Park

Avenue A near 11th Street this morning. Part of the sale items at the Mary Help of Christians flea market.

Abandoned kitty on East 11th Street?

From a reader:

There's an absolutely amazing young cat hanging around on East 11th b/n B & C. He/She's way too friendly, well behaved, and clean to be a stray. He's either lost or abandoned. Seems like a young adolescent.

Anyone? Been spotted in the 600 block...

Today in important trend stories

East Village salon featured in report on: Feather Hair Extensions Eating Away at Fishing Lure Supply

The start of Howl!

Until tomorrow.

[Photos by Bobby Williams]

The Bowery, 5:11 p.m., June 3

Wild Youth

Reagan Youth in Tompkins Square Park, Aug. 13, 1988.

This week in discarded mattress epidemics in the East Village

If I took a photo of every discarded mattress that I spotted this past week, well, then I'd have a lot of photos of discarded mattresses to share...

Still, with these, you get the idea...

Dave on 7th sent these next three shots along... And Dave on 7th said, "never seen so many discarded mattresses as I have in the last week."

Seconded.

And I only spotted one mattress that had been wrapped in plastic per the City's wishes...this one of Avenue C at Second Street...

Inside the fire-damaged laundromat on Avenue B

On Tuesday night, a fire started inside the Laundry & Dry Cleaners at 44 Avenue B. Now residents want to know what what happened. Laundromat management believes some "oil-filled clothes" from a nearby restaurant were left behind in a dryer.. and were the cause of the blaze. Nothing conclusive, just a theory... Stacie Joy sends along some photos from the damaged laundromat...

Bold Bowery bums burglarize Bowery Beef

Grub Street has news that Bowery Beef has been robbed several times of late... Here's part of the email to Grub Street from Bowery Beef's Ray LeMoine, who says that since opening, "we've seen some spectacular bum crime."

Most notably, in the last week nights our register has been robbed three times. By the third attempt the take was approximately $6 in coinage--pretty baller. Last night they just took the whole register. This morning, just after opening, another cool junkie snatched aniPod from behind the counter while our barrista used the bathroom. In the last seven days crime has cost us over $1000. Of course, we are a unique operation. Our cafe is the entryway to the Bowery Poetry Club, known for open mic poetry slams, sweet late-night funk fusion concerts and "Ladies in Free B4 11"-style ragers. But they post a security guard in the cafe. So these are some bold junkies.

20 years later: An East Village riot and the closure of Tompkins Square Park

Paul DeRienzo presents the story of a riot on May 27, 1991 (Memorial Day) that was the pretext used by NYC officials to close Tompkins Square Park and evict a tent city of homeless people on June 3. The Park remained closed for the next 14 months...

DeRienzo created the following via his reports on WBAI radio (with images by Bob Arihood). He posted all these this week on the 20th anniversary of the events.









You can find more of his segments here. The Times has an article today on the anniversary here.

This weekend, the Howl! Festival; plus Allen Ginsberg photos

You can visit the Howl! website for schedules and stuff. There are more details at the East Village Howler blog.

Meanwhile, Allen Ginsberg was born on this date in 1926.

And here are two photos Ginsberg took of Jack Kerouac in 1953... you may have seen other shots from this series on Seventh Street...

...and in front of Vazacs on Avenue B and Seventh Street...

... and lastly, Ginsberg walking on, according to the Getty Images caption, 10th Street at Avenue B in June 1966.

2 views of Tompkins Square Park — from 1936 and 1942

Well, with the attention on Tompkins Square Park this weekend... here are some archival photos via the Parks & Recreation website.

First!

Looking southeast on Jan. 14, 1936... with St. Brigid's in the background...

And!

Looking northwest from Seventh Street and Avenue B, July 29, 1942

If you look closely on the bottom right of the photo, then you can see someone tagging "yuppies go home" on the entrance way...

An idea for Tompkins Square Park circa 1879

Continuing along... via the Parks & Recreation website, here is a rendering from 1879 of a music pavilion for the Park.

And what the bandshell, built in 1966, looked like at the time of its demolition in 1991.


[Bandshell photos via Flickr]

And the Big Finish

Lastly, from Parks & Rec, a photo simply titled:

'The Finish, Tompkins Square Park' Manhattan, 1906 Annual Report

Were these motorcycles torched because of a parking-space dispute?

Yesterday morning, someone apparently torched the two motorcycles that are always parked along the 200 block of East Third Street...

EV Grieve reader Gregory Patrick notes that the owner of the bikes often shuffles the motorcycles around to ensure himself a permanently available parking spot in front of his house.

And according to Gregory, it "looks like someone did not approve of such greed in these times of increasingly difficult available parking."

This would not have happened on another block of East Third Street...