Top 10 Newcomer Restaurants Beyond the Hype, #9

In the shadow of the old Jewish Forward building, Broadway East seeks to point the way toward the future of dining. The menu is vegetarian-focused, with organic fish and poultry slipped in among seasonal, sustainable, locally sourced ingredients. Water is filtered and carbonated in-house. The cooking oils live on as biodiesel. The sleek redwood ceiling, tabletops, and main bar are recycled from a neighborhood water tower. Into this eco-aware realm the kitchen sets out to prove that healthy and flavorful need not be contradictory notions. A fennel and blood orange salad bursts with olives, crumbles of seitan chorizo, and a cashew Manchego “cheese.  read more »

Borough President Scott Stringer has endorsed the city's proposed rezoning of the Lower East Side, giving a boost to a plan that would allow for more residential development while adding restrictions to other types, including dorms.

His endorsement of the plan, issued today, comes as the City Planning Commission gears up for a mega-hearing Wednesday, with throngs of community members expected to deliver testimony on proposed rezonings of the Lower East Side, the planned middle income-intensive Hunters Point South development near Long Island City, and the proposed redevelopment of Willets Point by Shea Stadium.

The Lower East Side rezoning cuts back on a density bonus given to "community facilities," which include dorms and buildings with medical offices and other uses, while allowing developers in parts of the neighborhood to build bigger if they include below-market rate housing.  read more »

On Tuesday, in the waning daylight, a small line formed outside Webster Hall in the East Village. The crowd, as likely to sport zebra-striped jeans and Mohawks as flannel shirts and grizzled beards, had come for a special screening of Captured--a film that examines the life and work of Canadian street photographer and artist Clayton Patterson as he followed the Lower East Side's transition from junkie-town to condo-city--to mark the twentieth anniversary of the Tompkins Square Park Police Riot.

Inside, Machine and Alden Pact, members of rap group Team Facelift, bought drinks at the bar with Captured's art director Paul Lawrence and fellow former Mass Appeal mag writer PrettyLew. The scent of marijuana wafted across the theatre, as two hundred fifty people searched for a seat among the folded plastic chairs.

"In my day I seen some acrobatic junkies," read John Joseph from Evolution of the Cro-Magnon Man, a book he wrote about his days as a homeless kid in the LES. He rambled on about imagined marketing meetings where executives brainstormed different dope names and reminisced about a dealer named "Cool Man" who sold drugs from an ice cream truck parked near Tompkins Square Park.  read more »

Folk singer David Peel was leading a crowd of protesters in a singalong of his charming ditty “Die Yuppie Scum” on Friday evening, when suddenly the rebellious crooner experienced a moment of clarity.

“What are we doing over here?” Mr. Peel asked. “Where are the apartments?”

A few doors down, it turned out.

Demonstrators had intended to gather outside an apartment building at 47 East 3rd Street, owned by controversial landlord Alistair Economakis, who has been trying to uproot its rent-stabilized tenants for years in order to create a sprawling manse for himself and his family.  read more »

The aggrieved rent-stabilized tenants of 47 East 3rd Street are not giving up their fight against landlord Alistair Economakis, whose efforts since 2003 to convert his East Village building into a grand mansion for his family continue to be stymied by nine pesky renters who won't budge.

Earlier this month, in the third appeal since Mr. Economakis first began mass eviction proceedings five-a-half-years ago, the state's highest court sent the case back to housing court and a final verdict could be two years away. Under the owner occupancy clause of the rent law, the Economakis family still needs to prove to the court that they really plan to convert their 60-room, 11,575-square-foot East Village tenement into a single-family residence--tenants fear that their real agenda is to charge market-rate rents.  read more »

In a signed editorial by Francis X. Clines in today's New York Times, we learn that gentrification is changing the Lower East Side. While Mr. Clines concedes that this is an old story—"Hasn’t that been the case ever since this sliver of Manhattan was laid bare more than a century ago as the crammed tenement haven for immigrants?" he asks—he does seem to feel that the changes in the neighborhood are once again a pressing crisis:

As gentrification rushes in, the neighborhood is fortunate to have the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, so tourists can still walk through the way things were. A preservationist urge is also evident on the streets — from demands for tighter zoning to an “egg rolls and egg creams” block party this Sunday by The Museum at Eldridge Street.

As coincidence would have it, the blog EV Grieve recently posted a scan of Craig Unger's May 28, 1984 New York Magazine cover story "The Lower East Side: There Goes the Neighborhood." (This comes via Gothamist.)  read more »

For those of you who have always wanted to go see the Coney Island Circus Side Show or the Mermaid Parade but are too lazy to trek out to Brooklyn, tonight is your night.

The amusment park's motley crew of underbelly performance artists is coming to the Lower East Side from 7 to 11 p.m. for Coney Island USA’s annual Spring Gala at the Angel Orensanz Foundation. Lady Luck and the Suicide Kings are performing, and the Brooklyn Bombshells will kick off the night with swing dance lessons.  read more »

At 6 tonight, the Coalition to Protect Chinatown and the Lower East Side plans to rally against what now appears to be the inevitable rezoning of the East Village just to the north.

The group has labeled the rezoning a "racist" plan to limit building heights and essentially abolish the community benefits incentive in 110 blocks of the East Village and Lower East Side. Last week, the Department of City Planning certified the proposal, giving Community Board 3 60 days to review it before it goes to the borough president and the City Council. The Coalition wants to send the rezoning plan back to the drawing board to include the area south of Delancey Street and East of Avenue D.  read more »

The Department of City Planning is forging ahead with its plan to rezone 114 blocks of the East Village and the Lower East Side to limit the height and density of future development, despite allegations of racism from community groups in the Bowery and Chinatown, which were not included in the rezoning.  read more »

"This is a venue with a lot of history," said Tom Morello, the Harlem-born guitarist for political rock-rap group Rage Against The Machine, standing onstage at 315 Bowery early Friday morning. He was referring to CBGB, the legendary rock club that used to occupy that address.

"We can take it higher than it's ever been before," said Mr. Morello, who was joined onstage by a number of big-name musicians, including Jerry Cantrell, Perry Farrell and an openly smoking-ban-flouting Slash, in celebrating the grand reopening of the hallowed music hall. Concerts like these will happen only occassionally now, however, as the venue has become a high-end rock-themed clothing boutique.

"We're gonna jump the fuck up and down," Mr. Morello told the packed crowd, many of whom had shelled out $75 per ticket to attend the charity concert, which also included performances by Ronnie Spector, Ian Hunter and Joan Jett. "I wanna see everybody jump," he said, including "the guy selling $300 T-shirts."

That guy was John Varvatos, the fashion designer who now operates the former CBGB space.  read more »