LOHO HISTORY Isaac Ludlum House by Don Cruise Built about 1829 at 281 East Broadway, as one of a group of three for Isaac Ludlam, a New York City surveyor, the house occupies a twenty-foot wide lot on the south side of the street. Two-and-a-half stories high and three bays wide, the house has characteristic features of the Federal style including Flemish bond brickwork, brownstone lintels and sills at the window openings, and a sloping roof with two pedimented dormers containing arched window openings... Read more at NY Architecture...

REMEMBER WINTER? Extreme Cold to Hit New York City by Don Cruise On Thursday, January 25, the coldest airmass of the season has gripped New York City, bringing sub-zero wind chills and temperatures in the teens. OEM reminds New Yorkers to dress warmly when they must go outside — layer clothes to capture warm air, wear mittens, scarves and hats, and keep clothes dry... Read safety tips...

LARCE NY Con Man: I Preyed on Priests by Don Cruise A Lower East Side con man copped a plea to ripping off hundreds of thousand of dollars from more than 60 priests around the country by claiming he needed the money to get his mother out of a desperate situation. Robert Riggio 'fessed up to wire-fraud charges for giving his lucrative sob story to clergy members he cold-called after finding their numbers in a directory at the New York Public Library... Read more in the NY Post...

RUNNING IN GROUPS 1/24/07 Idiotarod 2007 This Saturday by Don Cruise The Iditarod is the famous long-distance race in which yelping dogs tow a sled across Alaska. The Idiotarod is pretty much the same thing, except that instead of dogs, it's people, instead of sleds, it's shopping carts, and instead of Alaska it's New York City. The fourth annual event happens January 27, 2007. Teams of five will race for cash prizes and glory... Read more...

CLOSINGS 1/23/07 Diocese Catches Holy Hell by Don Cruise Parishioners mourning the planned closing of their Lower East Side church bitterly complained yesterday that the decision would displace what has been a close-knit religious family and community anchor... Read more in the NY Post...

EAT AND RUN 1/22/07 Marathon Runner Suing Katz's Deli by Don Cruise A marathoner is suing Katz's Deli, claiming a busboy at the famed Lower East Side eatery brought her running days to an end with an accidental pushcart to the knee. "The bottom line is the busboy was not watching where he was going," said her lawyer, Thomas Lavin... Read more in the NY Post...

LOCAL ANGEL'S VOICE 1/21/07 Norah Jones, Now in Her Own Words by Don Cruise Sometimes she visits Lower East Side karaoke bars and belts out songs by Shakira or Guns N’ Roses. She’s also a member of various bands — the Sloppy Joannes, the Mazelles, the Little Willies — who show up as opening acts at no-cover-charge places like the Rodeo Bar. But she’s far better known by her own name: Norah Jones. In a few days Ms. Jones, 27, would resume her main career: the one that has sold millions of albums and made her almost too popular... Read more in the NY Times...

LOCAL SPACE 1/21/07 The Sky's the Limit for Students Thanks to NASA Lab at LES School by Don Cruise A flight simulator was just one of 13 stations in a special lab housed in a Lower East Side school designed for kids from all over the city in grades four - 12. "This is the first aerospace education laboratory in a New York City public school," said NASA educator Frank Salzo... Read more in NY1...

FEELGOOD STORY OF THE WEEKEND 1/18/07 Oy! Seinfeld Shells Out $100K for Violating Sabbath by Don Cruise A Manhattan judge ruled today that the comedian owes $100,000 to a New York real estate broker, Tamara Cohen, who helped him find a nearly $4 million townhouse on the Upper West Side... Read more in TMZ...

LA MANGE 1/18/07 Le Vrai Francais? Close Enough by Jules I've visited Casanis a few times, most recently on a Saturday night around 7:30 p.m. My friend the acupuncturist and I wanted a low-key place. We both commented appreciatively on the music selection, the sort of lounge-y soundtrack you hear on Buddha Bar compilations. The waiter was familiar from a previous visit -- a young, shy Frenchman who smiled when I ordered in his native language... Read more in Eat at Jules'...

SURRENDER 1/17/07 Lawyer Who Had Sex With Prostitutes He Employed Surrenders at 7th Precinct by Don Cruise A New Jersey lawyer indicted on charges of running a former client's brothel, had sex with women he employed and also brought friends in law enforcement from the Garden State to the brothel for freebies, surrendered at the 7th Precinct on the Lower East Side around 9 AM Tuesday... Read more in WNBC...

CEREMONY 1/17/07 Rep. Maloney Sworn In to 8th Term in Congress by Don Cruise Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney (D-Manhattan, Queens) was ceremonially sworn in to her eighth term in Congress at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria. During the ceremony, Maloney placed her hand on a bible held by her husband, Clif, while Queens Borough President Helen Marshall administered the oath of office... Read more in Hellenic News of America...

SOY DOUGHNUTS? 1/16/07 Next stop in trans-fat war: Doughnut shops by Don Cruise When he first started frying up all-natural doughnuts a dozen years ago, Mark Isreal had a tough time getting consumers to bite. After all, who counts calories before grabbing a jelly-filled with their morning cup of joe? These days, Isreal's Doughnut Plant on Grand Street supplies everyone from upscale grocery stores to "dive coffee shops" around the city. He's also got a licensing deal for nine Doughnut Plant stores in Tokyo, where he sells to Starbucks... Read more in the Clarion-Ledger...

BREAKFAST SUPERIOR 1/15/07 A Knack for Stacks by Don Cruise At the Clinton Street Baking Company, the lower East Side eatery known for fluffy pancakes, bodacious biscuits and other excellent comfort food, the kitchen trick, according to chef Neil Kleinberg, is whipping the egg whites separately and folding them in at the end... Read more in the NY Daily News...

SPORTS 1/09/07 Pillow Fight League by Don Cruise Founded in Canada in 2004, the PFL numbers 22 female fighters, all hell-bent on fluffy pugilism. The rules are UFC-like in their brutal simplicity: most anything goes, as long as the pillow is used at the point of contact. Fri Jan 19 at Galapagos Art Space/Bar, 70 N 6th St, between Kent and Wythe, Williamsburg. $15 at SmartTix.com Read about the PFL...

OLD ART 1/07/07 Recent Acquisitions: American and European Prints by Don Cruise Rounding out the American section are several lithographs from the 1920s and 30s, including a somewhat humorous depiction of a drawing class by Mabel Dwight, a rolling Midwest landscape by Grant Wood, and two radically different views of the lower East Side by Glenn O. Coleman and Raphael Soyer... Read more in Art Daily...

SCHOOL SEX 1/07/07 Mom Sues over School Sex Molest by Don Cruise A 12-year-old girl was sexually assaulted by a middle-school classmate and later forced to re-enact the event in front of her classmates, a bombshell lawsuit alleges. The girl was then forced to transfer to another school - even as her alleged assailant was allowed to return to the Technology, Arts and Sciences Studio MS on the Lower East Side... Read more in the NY Post...

NAUGHTY 1/05/07 LES Slips New Bar by the SLA by Don Cruise It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a Lower Eastpacking District bar opening with full liquor license! Naked Earth coffee-shop owner Shuki Kazaz has teamed up with first-timer Stephen Schuler to open a “classy dive” with a fifties pinup-theme in the diminutive space that once housed Lulu’s Gourmet Coffee. Nurse Bettie, 106 Norfolk St., nr. Delancey St.; 917-434-9072. Opens fully January 18... Read more @ Grub Street...

TO DO TO DAY 1/02/07 Stripped Stories by Don Cruise There's no finer art than the telling of a ribald sex story -- and nothing worse than a lout who thinks he's mastered that art by merely sharing that, one time, he enjoyed The Ultimate (penis-in-vagina). To hear naked tales told right, hit "Stripped Stories", a monthly showcase starting up tomorrow night at Mo Pitkin's... Read more in Thrillist...

DARK NOSTALGIA 1/02/07 Stripped Stories by Don Cruise Every now and again I'd make the trip down to the Lower East Side to visit my aunt and uncle, who had raised me after my parents died when I was 15. Though I took the subway there, by the time I left it was dark and my aunt insisted that I take the bus across the street rather than walk to the subway. They'd watch anxiously from the window to make sure I was okay... Read more in BC Culture...

MOO 1/01/07 Memories of Food Past by Don Cruise Long Island surf food (Ditch Plains) struggled to ride the wave of Manhattan; the much ballyhooed E.U. European Union survived endless problems; and two little cheese shops that could (Formaggio Essex and Saxelby Cheese) made a profound impact on dairy consumption on the Lower East Side... Read more by Chef Pierre...

IMPORTED HATE 1/01/07 What Turned Sayyid Qutb Against America? by Don Cruise Fully a fourth of the 8 million New Yorkers were Jewish, many of whom had fled the latest European catastrophe. Hebrew letters covered the signs for the shops and factories on the Lower East Side, and Yiddish was commonly heard on the streets. That would have been a challenge for the middle-aged Egyptian who hated the Jews but, until he left his country, had never met one... Read more on the History News Network...

UGLY HISTORY 12/28/06 New York Was a Pro-Slavery City by Don Cruise Although slavery in New York ended in 1827, the city profited from slave-grown cotton. Economic interest slanted New York politics and public opinion toward the South. White newspaper editors praised slavery as a benevolent system of labor and the only fit condition for people of African descent in America... Read more on the NY Historical Society website...

HISTORY TODAY 12/26/06 Low in the Lower East Side by Francis Morrone In the 1860s, 97 Orchard Street was in "Kleindeutschland," the German immigrant neighborhood. A tailor named Lucas Glockner built the structure, which was part of the first generation of purpose-built "tenant houses" or "tenements," the multiple-family dwellings built to serve an immigrant influx that had previously had to make do with subdivided single-family houses... Read more in the NY Sun...

BACKSIDE COMMENTARY 12/25/06 Benches by Yori Yanover Some of the old benches in my little shul came from other shuls which had either upgraded to newer furniture or became defunct. Some of those benches bore distinct marks of a former use by a competing monotheistic religion. None of those old benches were in what you might term “good shape...” Read more...

POOR & POORER 12/25/06 The Biggest Threat to America: The Dollar Store! by Jane Stillwater Why are people suddenly giving gift baskets instead of the usual stuff. I'll tell you why. Because suddenly there are lots of things that are available to put INTO gift baskets. Because in the last six months at least FOUR new dollar stores have opened up in my neighborhood alone... Read more...

UNOBSERVER 12/24/06 Shul Is Not What You Might Think by Uzi Silber Every Saturday morning I take my two children to a traditional orthodox synagogue, or 'shul', on the Lower East Side. But praying we're not. Sitting or standing, we gossip shamelessly, whisper about politics and women, or rehash tales of off-color elementary school mischief... Read more on OpEdNews.com...

YES-TALGIA 12/21/06 Urban Memories: New York City, Early Eighties by Marianne Villanueva I lived in New York City. It was a different city from today. It was dirty, I’ll never forget the assault on my nerves of standing on a platform and watching the subway cars roar into a station, sides screaming with graffiti. I think my son would not have been comfortable in the city I used to know... Read more...

INTER CULTURE 12/19/06 The Jews Who Wrote Christmas Songs by Don Cruise Every year the American Society of Composers and Publishers publishes a list of the 25 Most Popular Holiday Songs. Among the songs picked this year, 13 to 14--were composed, co-written or performed by verifiably Jewish artists... Click for a rundown...

WHERE'S MY TIGHTS? 12/14/06 The Renaissance in Our Backyard by Tibi Z. Singer "Manhattan's Lower East Side Enjoys a Renaissance," declares the Sun's Michael Stoler this morning. This while other areas may be in their rococo or neo-classicist phases. His editorial in praise of the 22-story phallic monsters rising in our midst is positively Shakespearian. But not the comedies... Read more in this morning's NY Sun...

WEB CITE 12/12/06 Wikipedia Does LoHo by Juda S. Engelmayer LoHo (an acronym for "Lower Houston Street") is the name of a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It encompasses a section of the Lower East Side south of Houston Street, from Christie Street on the at the western point, to the FDR Drive at the Eastern point stretching to the East River line at South Street... Read and edit...

ESSEX MARKET HITS THE BIGTIME 12/06/06 A Market Grows on the Lower East Side by Don Cruise Some months ago, a friend told me about the Essex Street Market, the 15,000-square-foot enclosed food hall on the lower East Side of Manhattan, and I felt as if I were a soprano hearing the name Donizetti for the first time. Five years ago the market was only 60 percent full, but 26 vendors now occupy every square foot of selling space... Read more in the NY Times...

IN THE ZONE 12/05/06 Everything You Wanted to Know about the New East Village & Lower East Side Zoning Plan by Jennifer Torres, DCP The Department of City Planning has presented a draft proposal, for public discussion, to rezone approximately 114 blocks in the East Village and Lower East Side neighborhoods in Manhattan Community District 3. The proposed zoning map and text amendments would allow for the continued development of residential buildings and neighborhood-oriented retail, at densities and heights consistent with the existing scale of a neighborhood where most buildings are four to seven stories. It would also offer an incentive for the creation and preservation of affordable housing... Check out our website...

SERIOUSLY 12/05/06 Author Thoroughly Examines the Jewish Roots of Punk Rock by Don Cruise "Punk is Jewish." In this history of the jarring music that rose from New York's battered Lower East Side in the 1970s, that opening line comes across, at first, as overreaching, even absurd. Yet by the end of this agile, well-researched book, author Steven Lee Beeber's proclamation seems not only obvious, but something of an understatement... Read more in the Boston Globe...

TALK IS CHEAP 11/29/06 Introducing the New LoHo10002 Message Board by Yori Yanover, Editor We debated for some time whether we wanted to launch our own messge board, seeing as there have been several substitutes (but, sadly, not replacements) for Joel Raskin's fabled neighborhood forum. Our idea is to offer a discussion board that's open not just to the local co-op community, but to many different groups around the 10002 zip code area. Try it out, see if you can add ideas, it'll be a bit clanky at the beginning, but we think you'll find it very useful. Go play...

TOTALLY LEFT BEHIND 11/28/06 Yori Does Lehrer by Yori Yanover Yesterday WNYC's Brian Lehrer had on Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye, co-authors of the Evangelical Christian sci-fi books Left Behind. Their message is that if Jews (and everyone else on the planet) do not embrace Jesus as their savior, they'll be condemned to eternal hell. I called in to set the record straight. My apologies to Mozilla users - your browser will autostart the audio file, despite my most sincere coding. IE users won't be subject to the same abuse. Click to listen to the entire show...

CRANKY VOICES 11/28/06 Online Warrior by Yori Yanover To be completely honest, this has been a totally new experience for me. All my professional life until three years ago I had been entangled in multiple-front wars, juggling my leftist politics with my religious-Jewish convictions and making great friends and great enemies at a moment’s notice. Not any more... Read more...

CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE 11/26/06 Protest Proposed Police Infringements by Rob Hollander There will be a demonstration tomorrow, Monday, 10:30 AM, at 1 Police Plaza (near City Hall/Brooklyn Bridge), to protest the police proposal to further curb rights of assembly in New York City. The Constitution says nothing about getting a NYPD permit for public assembly... Read more...

LOCAL WORSHIP 11/26/06 Saint Augustine's Church and the Slave Galleries by Don Cruise Perhaps the most interesting feature in Saint Augustine's are the two slave galleries at the rear of the balcony on each side of the tower. The congregation worships in the shadow of these two galleries: Haunting, box-like rooms above the balcony where African Americans were forced to sit... Read more...

FUN & MISERY 11/25/06 For Bargains, Can't Beat the Street by Robin Shulman More than a century ago, Italian and Jewish peddlers sold their wares from pushcarts on Manhattan's Lower East Side. Unlike those immigrants, today's vendors barely get by, according to a recent report by the Urban Justice Center's Street Vendor Project. The vendors have to deal with often-confusing regulations, arbitrary enforcement and, sometimes, heavy fines, said the report, based on interviews with more than 100 vendors... Read more in the Washington Post...

SOME FOLKS HAVE MORE THANKFULS 11/24/06 Thanksgiving by Don Cruise I went out yesterday and it was a great night out. Following a tasty dinner – which included 3 bottles of red wine for the 7 of us and that’s why by the time we left the place I was pretty tipsy – at an Argentinean restaurant located in the Lower East Side (I must highlight that for the first time in weeks we had a majority of girls – good fun and pretty ones, actually – in the group) we headed to the East Village where beers, tequila shots and spirits helped us to stick around until around 4 AM... Read more on the New Life City blog...

MUST HAVE MORE BLUE BUILDING REVIEWS 11/24/06 The Thick Blue Line by James Gardner Perhaps it was the satisfying lunch I had just consumed at Katz's Delicatessen, or the unusually fine weather for a mid-November afternoon. In either case, I found myself better disposed than I would ever have expected to Blue, Bernard Tschumi's all but completed 16-story residential tower at 105 Norfolk St., right off of Delancey... Read more in the NY Sun...

YOUR BIDNESS 11/23/06 Purple Tues, Yellow Weds, Orange Thurs by Lower East Side BID Who needs black Friday? Every day is a new hue on the LES. Let the fun begin! The Lower East Side is brimming with amazing finds for the holiday season. Now's your chance to scoop them up. Pop on by to absorb some culture and pick up some of the hottest gift items (for yourself of others) around. Start up top or begin below to explore everthing we have to offer... Read more...

Daniel Greenberg, Tina Carr and their boy, Sam Carr Photo: Grand Street News TRAGEDY 11/22/06 Lower East Side Toddler killed in two-car crash by Don Cruise A two-year-old boy from the Lower East Side was killed Tuesday afternoon in a collision on Route 6 near Route 293 in Woodbury, NY. State Police said a Subaru driven by Daniel Greenberg, a resident of Seward Park Housing, drifted off the right shoulder and as he attempted to bring it back to the road, he lost control, crossed into the opposite lane and was struck by a minivan driven by Lorraine Anderson. On impact, the rear end of the Subaru was torn off and the occupants in the rear of the vehicle – Tina Carr, 34, one-year-old Nico Greenberg, and two-year-old Samuel Greenberg – were all thrown into a wooded area. Greenberg, Carr and Samuel Greenberg all sustained head injuries; Nico Greenberg was not injured. All four were flown to Westchester Medical Center where Samuel Greenberg died a short time later. Read more...

ETHNO-SCHMENDRIK 11/22/06 Red, White & Jew! by LD Beghtol We babble insanely about Uncle Jody's Jewface, a lusciously curated new disc of archival recordings of blackface's kissing cousin, out now on Reboot Stereophonic. This is a perfectly hideous, non-PC and often hysterically funny homegrown (in New York's humble Lower East Side) vaudeville of ethnic caricatures strutting their stuff and lovin' it, circa 1900. Got it? Read more in the V.Voice...

PEACE & LEARN 11/17/06 A Sense of Peace as PTA Is Elected at NEST+m by Don Cruise On Thursday night, as elections were held to replace the PTA officers who quit en masse last month to protest the principal's leadership of the Lower East Side gifted and talented school, the meeting went relatively smoothly. The frequent whooping and shouting in the filled auditorium was mostly celebratory, and the security guards intervened only once, when one father lunged at another he accused of making a disparaging remark about his wife. Read more in the NY Sun...

PICKS 11/16/06 New Valley on the Lower East Side by Don Cruise Valley, a new retail space in New York City's Lower East Side, aims to create a living room-style atmosphere with a one-stop shopping experience incorporating apparel, a nail and waxing salon and a cafe. It was conceived by sisters Julia and Nina Werman, a former social worker and a member of the Lower East Side Community Board, respectively... Read more in Cool Hunting...

LITTLE FOOD 11/13/06 Zucco: Le French Diner by Andrea Thompson Don’t despair if, in looking through the windows of this tiny restaurant on the Lower East Side, it appears completely full. Zucco, the wiry and goateed owner, might size you up (girth plays a factor) and ask a couple at the bar to slide over and open up a space. There’s room here for about twenty (there are three small tables), and the tight quarters force a sense of camaraderie: anytime a guest needs to walk toward the back, to the rest room, patrons along the bar cheerfully lean forward to make way... Read more in the New Yorker...

A LITTLE BIT COUNTRY 11/12/06 Rabbi Meir Kahane Was Arlo Guthrie's Bar Mitzva Coach by Don Cruise Arlo Guthrie remembers his boyhood Hebrew tutor as "a sweet guy, a nice guy." Every week for an hour or so, the young rabbi would travel to the Guthrie’s home in Queens to teach Torah to the boy and his younger brother and sister. It was many years later that Arlo Guthrie heard the name of his rabbi again. By this time, Meir Kahane was no longer the gentle teacher... Read more on Jewsrock.com...

TENEMENT READ 11/10/06 Celebrate the Downtown Literary Scene, 11.15.06 by Amy Silberman The New York Book Club invites you to celebrate the publication of Up is Up, But So is Down: New York’s Downtown Literary Scene, 1974-1992. We are thrilled to celebrate the first book to capture the spontaneity of the Downtown literary scene in its most vital period... Read more...

CONSTITUENCY THIS 11/10/06 A day in Latin 'Nueva York' by Beth J. Harpaz Begin with breakfast in the Dominican Republic: cafe con leche and mashed plantains. Lunch at a Brazilian buffet. Snack on a Colombian fruit shake, then stop at a Mexican taqueria for dinner. After dark, hit a salsa club. Tour Latin America all day, without ever leaving New York City. Nueva York: The Complete Guide to Latino Life in The Five Boroughs shows you how... Read more in the Courier News...

DEMS WIN 11/08/06 Everything Is Beautiful; It's Morning in America by The Morning Line While bleary-eyed Democrats are gloating like Posties on circ day, let's go over the entirely unsurprising results of local races. Hillary made quick work of John Spencer (Blues Explosion! Get it?), Spitzer is your new and already boring governor, Cuomo crushed Pirro, and Alan Hevesi is back, uh, behind the wheel... Read more in the NY Mag Intelligencer...

NOSTALGIA 11/07/06 Joel's Excellent Virtual Bar Brawl by Jack E. Dell As our local message board is slated for final shut-down by its owner/operator, here's a taste of what it was like more than two years ago, when the earth was young and full of hope... Read more in the Grand Street News...

DRINK THIS 11/06/06 Set the twilight reeling by Michael Thaler He's a poet, a painter, a photographer, a bon vivant. He watches time melt into eternity from his seat at an outdoor cafe. "I've been an alcoholic and a tobacco smoker for 60 years. And you know, I haven't been to a doctor since I got back from Korea in '56..." Read more...

BATTLE OF THE NEST 11/04/06 Chancellor Cites Favoritism at a New York School by Elissa Gootman Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein said the New Explorations Into Science, Technology and Math school’s practices were a "stark and different" example of the kind of favoritism that he has been trying to eliminate from the city’s array of coveted schools and gifted programs. Officials say an examination of the school’s most recent kindergarten admissions documents shows that school officials were looking not only at students’ performance, but also at how involved their parents were likely to be... Read more in the NYT...

METRO RACES 11/03/06 The Best and Worst Bus: M14A by Don Cruise There appears to be a total disagreement between passengers on the buses which clog the poor arteries of our Grand Street every hour of every day. Read the following entry from the Village Voice's Elizabeth Zimmer and decide for yourself whether you've ever read a more near-climactic review of a bus line before... Read more...

BAGEL WARS 10/31/06 Krakow: home of the bagel by Don Cruise Bagelmama, a bagel shop located in the heart of Kazimierz, one of Kraków’s oldest and most venerated districts, is now reliving history by introducing the bagel back onto Polish streets. Nava De Kime, an American who has lived in Poland for 6 years and who is the owner of the bagel store, tells more... Read and listen on Polskie Radio...

ANGRY NEST 10/28/06 Fury of Booted School Parents by David Andreatta Tensions rose yesterday at a Lower East Side school that has caused headaches for the city Department of Education, after the principal had police toss more than 300 people out of a parents' association meeting. Cops were summoned to New Explorations for Science, Technology and Math School, known as NEST+M, on Thursday night following the resignation of high-ranking members of the association's executive board. "The middle school is in shambles and the upper school is like 'Lord of the Flies,' " said Emily Armstrong, one of the parents at the kindergarten-to-12th-grade school. "Kids are unhappy, teachers are sobbing in the office." Read more in the NY Post...

GHOST SUBWAY 10/26/06 The Line That Time Forgot by Greg Sargent Beloved, believed in, glimpsed fleetingly only to disappear again for decades, the Second Avenue subway has long seemed to be New York City’s version of the Loch Ness monster, on the drawing board since 1920, derailed by the Great Depression, and despite a string of vigorous efforts the plan just never got back on track. That may be about to change. The Second Avenue subway is surfacing again, and this time the vision of a new line just may finally be realized... Read the NY Magazine piece...

WEB ALERT 10/26/06 Gods of Chinatown by Don Cruise Isabel Chang is a Lower East Side web artist who was born in Taipei, lived in Bolivia, then immigrated to Texas when she was 13. Her mesmerizing new site, Gods of Chinatown, a project of The Tenement Museum's Digital Artists in Residence Program, invites you to drag Chang (and her doggie, Chewie) across panorama images of three local streets, clicking on a few points of interest. We wish there were more points... Visit...

DEPT. OF DEMOGRAPHICS 10/25/06 Worst Nightmares by Michael Schulman “No one’s really afraid of Frankenstein,” Timothy Haskell said the other day. Last Halloween, Haskell, a theatre director, staged a public haunted house on the Lower East Side, and so many people showed up that hundreds never made it inside. “We realized that we had to turn away a lot of local people,” Haskell said. So this year he put up haunted houses in all five boroughs, tailored to prey on the fears peculiar to each one.... Read More in the New Yorker...

WEB ALERT 10/24/06 New York Babe-Zone by Josh J. Holinaty Ok. You want a damn New York story? I'll tell you one. Actually, it's more of an observation. So listen up and please, sit down, grab some warm maple syrup and or tortierre, and I'll tell you about the outside world.... Read More...

WEB ALERT 10/23/06 Cory, the Shar Pei Buddha by Michael I met Cory outside the Lower East Side boutique where her owner let her out to get some air. Cory was so perfectly motionless as I approached that I thought she was a very clever, very realistic statue... Read More...

BOOK ALERT 10/21/06 Lower East Side story by Charles McNulty Stardust Lost - The Triumph, Tragedy, and Mishugas of the Yiddish Theater in America Stefan Kanfer Alfred A. Knopf: 326 pp., $26.95. Impossible as it is to imagine contemporary music without African Americans, try picturing American theater without Jews. Where, for example, would serious drama be without Clifford Odets, Arthur Miller, Tony Kushner and David Mamet? Comedy without Neil Simon and Wendy Wasserstein? Acting without Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler and Sanford Meisner, the teachers who bickeringly transformed Stanislavsky's method into the Method? Read More... Purchase the book

WEB ALERT 10/19/06 Valley girls by Don Cruise At the newly opened Valley, on the lower East Side, you can shop and get an eyebrow wax in one stop. The two-floor boutique carries fashion-forward brands like Grey Ant, Sass & Bide and J Brand jeans, with a nail and waxing salon nestled among the racks. Sisters Julia and Nina Werman give a nod to Brazil with cutting-edge beauty techniques and complimentary bowls of acai berries. 48 Orchard St. (212) 274-8984. Read about it in the NY Times...

HI INFO 10/18/06 All Roads Lead to the Lower East Side by Don Cruise We are compulsive searchers for Lower East Side (Call me LoHo) websites, and were astonished to discover that someone out there (the South Manhattan Development Corporation) sat down and created a complex page of all the possible routes one could take to get down here. Bookmark this page whenever your relatives from anywhere, really, are asking for directions... Check it out...

ORGANIZING 10/13/06 Check Out SPURA.org by Yori Yanover Here’s the next step in our efforts to create an educated, on-going discussion about the Seward Park Extension Urban Renewal Plan. It’s just gone up, so some of the areas are under construction... Read More...

DO'S & DOT'S 10/12/06 DOT Announces Year-Long Closure of the Lower Roadway on the Manhattan Bridge by Kay Sarlin The New York City Department of Transportation today announced that beginning Sunday, October 15th, the lower roadway of the Manhattan Bridge will be closed for the next year. During these twelve months all three lanes of the lower roadway will undergo a complete rehabilitation. While the upper level of the Manhattan Bridge will remain open, DOT recommends that motorists use an alternate route to cross the East River during this closure... Read more...

WEB ALERT 10/9/06 New Yorkers Who Live On High Traffic Streets Have A Measurably Lower Quality-Of-Life by Karla Quintero "Traffic's Human Toll" finds that New Yorkers living on streets with high volumes of traffic spend less time outside and are more likely to restrict their children's outdoor play compared to people who live on "medium" and "low" traffic streets. The study also finds that compared to residents on low traffic streets, residents on high traffic streets are twice as likely to be disrupted by traffic while they are walking, talking, eating, playing with kids and sleeping... Read More...

WEB ALERT 10/8/06 Loving Liev - The New Yorker Festival by savvycrone It was worth sitting by my computer with a cell phone in my hand at exactly noon the day tickets went on sale to see the actor/director Liev Schreiber interviewed by critic John Lahr. Schreiber is heavily family-connected, having been raised by a single mother on the Lower East Side and citing his late grandfather as his "male role model." His grandmother was in the audience. He uses ticks and rituals to get himself free of preconception before a play or filming a scene, and he told a wonderful story about his grandfather. Read More...

CELEBRATE THIS 10/3/06 Bragging Rights by Pat Arnow Here's an entertaining website about creating entertainment in New York City. Click on dots on the map, and a balloon will pop up with information about what moviemakers shot there. The site comes from the Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting... Read More...

NEWSREADER 9/29/06 Screenwriter, 73, gets 5 Years for Lower East Side Child Molestation by Don Cruise An elderly former screenwriter was sentenced to five years in prison yesterday for sexually violating a 5-year-old girl in her Lower East Side bedroom last year as her transsexual dad, who set up the tryst, sat, in drag, watching... Read More...

LEGALITIES 9/27/06 The Story Behind Timothy's Law by Don Cruise Timothy's Law is named after Timothy O'Clair, a Schenectady boy who committed suicide in 2001, seven weeks before his 13th birthday. His suicide was attributed to the discrimination that he faced at the hands of his parent's insurance company, discrimination that exists throughout every private insurance plan in New York State... Read More...

MEMORY AS IDENTITY 9/25/06 The Invention of the Lower East Side by Beth S. Wenger In the 1920s and 1930s, the Lower East Side became a nostalgic center for New York Jews, a living reminder of an idealized immigrant world as well as a mirror of the past that reflected the extent of Jewish progress. By the interwar years, the Lower East Side was already a popular site for Jewish tourism and a place that Jews invested with cultural meaning... Read More...

1903 CLIPPED 9/22/06 Real Old Movies by Pat Arnow A fascinating four-minute film from the Thomas Edison Company in 1903 shows the opening of the Williamsburg Bridge. You can see tenements, press guys in bowlers lugging big cameras, dignitaries in top hats... Read More...

LABOR LEGENDS 9/06/06 The ILGWU’s High Holidays Strike by Nancy L. Green The 1909-10 strike began over the issue of whether the company union at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company would distribute ten dollars in aid to needy families as the Jewish high holidays approached. The company refused, and the workers at Triangle turned to the umbrella organization of United Hebrew Trades for help. Read More...

POLITICAL SANDWICH 8/31/06 Kitchen Dish by Bret Thorn, NY Sun Miss-Spoken Fans of ironically named food should stop by 41 Essex, between Grand and Hester streets, where each week Jacob Goldman, who owns the kosher deli, offers a weekly "Foot (oops I mean FOOD) in your mouth" special named after a famous person who said something stupid. Read More...

LITTLE DOG, BIG DOG 8/28/06 Diary of an Art Star by Reverend Jen I scored my most aboveground gig yet when Moby hired me to direct a music video. One day I was walking my Chihuahua, Reverend Jen Junior, down Rivington Street and Moby recognized us... Read More...

LOCAL TRUST 8/28/06 Provocative and Meaningful Recall by Don Cruise Nicolas Dumit Estevez is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily in performance and has exhibited and performed internationally. In an interview with NY Arts this month, he recalls organizing a communal meal with groups throughout the Lower East Side. Read More...

TRAINSPOTTING 8/28/06 F-Trainology by Don Cruise The Straphangers Campaign website has become more complex and useful, and includes standalone websites for each subway line. With three local stops, this neighborhood uses the F-train more than any other subway, let’s see how the F is doing. Turns out it's a mixed bag. Read More...

FOREIGN ENTRY 8/27/06 China's LoHo by Eric Ho I'm living in Beijing and my father is in Qin huangdao, China. Loho means "Lao He," my father's nickname in Chinese. The content of this web is provided by my father and I. Read More...

REALITY CHECK 8/26/06 Rent Rant by Ronald I just watched Rent the motion picture and i'm sorry to say that i've had a severe pejorative reaction. I don't follow. Mark and Roger live in that preposterously spacious lower east side industrial loft for free? And NOW they have to pay rent?? Read More...

LoHo SPAWN 8/25/06 NAME Ribbon by Don Cruise NAME Ribbon was born in a tattoo parlor on the Lower East Side, NYC. The tattoo artist had simply left the word 'NAME' on their sample drawing of the distinctive 'I love Mom' tattoo. Read More...

LoHo BooGIE WooGIE 8/25/06 New York will you have me..? by Tracey K After meeting my friend Denise on lower east side for a mohito got another hours sleep and went to The Shelter with Anthony at 3.30am to meet Quentin Harris. Talked music and had a lil' boogie. At this point I should explain that Anthony's glasses broke earlier that day and he was literally blind... Read More...

IMPATIENCE 8/24/06 What's With Whole Foods on Houston? by Co-op Village Online Community They pulled a scam where they secure the space and don't open right away. Pissed alot of people off in the process. Read More...

BLOG ALERT 8/20/06 Crazy, Crazy Weekend by Christopher We went to the Lower East Side, had some fantastic German food and walked all over the place, trying to imagine that 100 years ago, this was the most densely populated area in the world (over 542,000 people in 1.45 square miles in 1910), packed with people everywhere. Read More...

BLOG ALERT 8/20/06 A World of Tequila Pain by Nikki-Elbows Pesce: i am in a world of tequila pain Kim: thats what you get Kim: tequila makes your clothes fall off Pesce: i puked on a sidewalk in the Lower East Side Pesce: i am everything you hate about the city Read More...

MESSAGE BOARD CRISIS 8/17/06 Message Board Reluctant to Move by LoHo10002 Staff CVer Forum Admin, 8/15/06 11:01 pm: LESonline, the Co-op Village Online Community is on the move. It's time to move and grow. troubleiner, 8/16/06 12:20 pm: I am sorry Cver, but I think it's a dumb move... Read More...