Sad news from friends Jenny and Charlie: Robert Clark, operator of recently closed East Village gallery 23Project, whose holdings included a Basquiat sketchbook, Stockhausen music boxes and works by aktionist Hermann Nitsch, passed away on Saturday, June 21. A service will be held at La Muse—where he could often be found—on Monday.

Scenes from the East Village’s Tour Des Artistes

PHOTO by JENNY STOCKDALE
Through the poppies painted on the windows at Zephyr Vegetarian Cafe, young things and art buffs drifted off into a Wizard of Oz-like daze last Saturday night, fueled by some intense, short-skit theatrics and compounded by good, cheap wine and an entire day spent trekking [...]

Spa Grace’s Jeremy Grace will have you at hello

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
He had me at “Miss Ellen.”
Had Jeremy Grace greeted me any other way—“Hello!” “Ellen?” “May I help you?”—I’m sure it would have been fine (the man defines charm), but it was a simple “Miss Ellen?” that brought a wide grin to my face, always [...]

Pâtes Fraîches pushes past the red sauce set

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
Circle a block or two in the East Village and you’re bound to pass by at least a few empty windows. It starts slowly, but it’s a vacant trend that grows at each turn, corner shops and cafes blocked out by butcher paper and leasing [...]

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES
I had single-handedly killed a bottle of wine when some friends invited me to meet them at Utopia, and although I’d never stepped inside the East Village restaurant, the chianti buzz obliged. Now, common sense would dictate that I should have stuck with wine—but common sense was nowhere to be found. Instead, [...]

PHOTO by DANIEL DE BOOM
Happier news from East Village: landmark Americana restaurant at Atlantic and Broadway (landmark now more remarkable with the big Hank Williams stained-glass on the side) got their beer-and-wine permit two weeks ago and now have a nice chilly selection of domestics and imports for you to cuddle with beneath Hank’s glittering [...]

Tiny blog to alert goodbye for E. Village’s Broadlind Cafe, where I saw Year Zero and Moedog Darling and in the Blue Nile days Blackbird and the Technicali guys grabbing coffee plus Will from Jah Fellowship, too. They never really lifted off as a venue but the potential seemed just about there (especially after some [...]

I just checked this out. Half is elaborate Lincoln fetishism—giant paintings and really custom skateboards and lots of stuff—and the other half is cutesy tentacle monsters rubbin’ suckers, and the other half isn’t up yet. Anyway: Theo and Ellen should go to this. You should to, reading human. And you know what? I have a [...]

PHOTO by LONNIE NGUYEN
@ EAST VILLAGE ARTS DISTRICT
SAT | SEPT 22
Two monks with bells and horns glided out of the East Village Art Park, and said, “Follow us!” And so I did, as stragglers from the Bicycle Bell Ensemble pedaled past to practice, and the monks (later greeted as members of the hop-frog kollektiv) honked [...]

FLOOD’s SoundWalk: City as Art, City as Instrument

PHOTO by RUSS ROCA
A survey of the usual audio ecology of Long Beach’s East Village Arts District: traffic growls, bus hydraulics puff every 20 minutes, skateboards clatter over loose sidewalk grates, bike bells twinkle—police, fire and ambulance sirens chop through everything—somebody shuffles around on a drum set—helicopters thump [...]