According to the weights and measures sticklers over at The New York Post, a number of city bars are shortchanging customers by serving pints in twelve to fourteen ounce glasses, instead of the standard sixteen ounce glasses.

The rigorous scientific study determined that 9 out of fifteen bars in the East Village, West Village and Williamsburg serve pints in glasses less than sixteen ounces. Some culprits include Three Sheets Saloon and Blind Tiger in the West Village, Vbar St. Marks and the Village Pourhouse in the East Village, and No Fun on the Lower East Side.

“If you order a pint, you expect to get a pint — not less. It’s not cool,” said Village Pourhouse customer Marcos Rodriguez. According to The Post, the Pourhouse’s pints measured a paltry twelve ounces. Not cool, guys.

Pourhouse co-owner Erika London claimed that while her beers were proper pints, “some of the signature glassware that the beer distributors provide us with look smaller than the average glass, but we are instructed to use them by the distributor.”

Personally, we blame the Imperial System. And Bloomberg, just cause.

Introducing Toilets of New York, a Tumblr devoted the the peculiar artistry of the dive bar toilet. (Finally!) The site features dozens of photographs of the gross, the graffitied, the ugly—and in some rare occasions, the clean.

The blog is the brainchild of Ian MacAllen and largely features hipster spots in Brooklyn and the East Village. The Observer reached out to the toilet traveler and asked him how, exactly, he came to chronicle crappers.

“I realized someone was taking a whole lot of time on these bathrooms. They’re really delicately curated, both the objects in them and the wallpaper,” he told The Observer.

But when does inspiration strike? Mr. MacAllen said he choses his "subjects" based on where he happens to be hanging out. And while he doesn’t go to bars solely in search of the next flush, he admitted to taking a leak just to check out the facilities. And after two months of toilet touring, he’s starting to notice patterns.

“To me, the graffiti in the bathroom is something kind of in itself interesting,” he said. “Some [bathrooms] have the classic New York City subway tiles, some have this black and white theme from the 1920s.”

Now, next time you drunkenly stumble into the bathroom at Duck Duck or Cherry Tavern after one too many PBRs, you’ll know what you’re in for. Which is, in some cases, toilet paper all over floor, empty glasses on the back of the tank, red mood lighting or our favorite: a sign that reads “PLEASE, PLEASE PEE ON THE TOILET AND NOT ON THE SEAT."

Click through the slide show for a sampling of the Toilets of New York’s photos. Just don’t forget to wash your hands.

A popular amenity. (Marianne O'Leary/Flickr)

Hurricane Sandy turned Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village into hell in Manhattan for almost a week after the power went out. Sure, much of downtown was a disaster zone, to say nothing of the devastation in the outer boroughs, but Stuy Town had some particular, peculiar problems. Most notably, all the hallways are interior, with no windows, so it was impossible to get around. What's worse, the locks on all the doors are electronic, so anyone could have been lurking in the darkness.

Fortunately, Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village have returned to a sense of normalcy now that the power is back, as the management has been detailing in a serious of lengthy email updates to residents. Unfortunately, one of the things tenants might have hoped Superstorm Sandy would have washed away is still coming: the ice rink.

Rinks have become all the rage in recent years, not only in Central Park and Rockefeller Center, but everywhere from the Standard Hotel and W Downtown to McCarren Pool in Williamsburg. Stuy Town was no exception, and last year the management installed a rink, too. They saw it as an amenity for tenants, but naturally those persnickety residents, many of whom have been in full-on revolt ever since the complex was sold to Tishman Speyer, hated it.

There were the crowds, the noise and fumes from the generators and the loudspeakers blaring music at all hours. It was anything but a winter wonderland.

Well, now, just as the lights and locks are back, so, too, is the ice rink, as a note near the bottom of the latest resident update explains.

PCVST Ice Rink: PCVST's seasonal ice rink, operated by Ice Rink Events, will open this Saturday, November 17th at 11am. Residents are invited to enjoy free admission all day this Saturday. For operating hours, lessons, and other details, please visit pcvst.com. For additional information, please contact icerink@pcvst.com.  The completion of the ice rink was accomplished using separate outside contractors and did not impact any of our on-going restoration efforts.

So please, don't complain that those outside contractors could have been put to better use putting the complex back together. The rink is an important part of the complex, and it is here to stay, so it needs just as much resources as the boilers and the grounds.

Update:As a number of commenters have pointed out, the utilities are indeed spotty for some residence, meaning those outside contractors might well have been put to better use than building an ice skating rink. That is one frigid move, Stuy Town.

What's good for bicyclists is good for business? (Kristine Paulus, flickr)

The city has a love-hate relationship with its cyclists, but at least a few savvy Village business owners have embraced the city's two-wheeled denizens for fun and profit.

Last month, Transportation Alternatives, the pro-transit advocacy group, in collaboration with Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez, opened the city's first Bike Friendly Business District on the Lower East Side. The district, a network of some 150 businesses and institutions now dedicated to better bike infrastructure, was proposed as way to increase customer traffic to local businesses. It’s an idea that has, according to the latest study, worked remarkably well.

The East Village Shoppers Survey came to the rather self-evident conclusion that people on foot and bike spent more overall and per capita at local businesses than those who drove. It also found that more women bike regularly in the neighborhood than in New York City as a whole.  A fact easily confirmed by The Observer’s impromptu survey while drinking coffee outside Think Coffee on Bowery and Bond—yet another personal sacrifice in the name of journalism. But the presence of more female cyclists is no accident. Woman are, according to the report, more inclined to ride a bike because of the protected bike lanes than their male counterparts.

And what business in its right mind wouldn't want to cater to all those coffee-swilling hipsters cycling through the neighborhood?

"For me, bikes mean business,” Tom Birchard, the owner of Veselka restaurant in the East Village, told The Observer. “Bike lanes make our neighborhood more vibrant and safe and bring customers directly to our restaurant. Since bike lanes were installed outside, I've seen a huge increase in the number of bicyclists going by Veselka, and it's been great for our bottom line. The Bike Friendly Business District will help bring even more customers though our doors."

Although the city still has a lot of work to do to make the city more bike friendly (besides bike share).  The survey notes that the biggest barrier to riding in the neighborhood is the lack of dangerous driving enforcement, with 42% of those surveyed marking it as their biggest worry.

For a city driven by business, and a Mayor seemingly obsessed by metrics, bike-friendly business districts might be biker's best hope of securing more coveted green lanes in the future.

“Streets that promote bicycling and walking mean more business for local shops and restaurants,” said Paul Steely White, Executive Director of Transportation Alternatives. “When it comes to the impact bike lanes have on local businesses, it’s a case of ‘if you build it, they will come.’ It’s no surprise that in the East Village, which is home to some of the city’s best street safety improvements, bicyclists and pedestrians play a critical role in the local economy.”

kdillon@observer.com

Screengrab. From left: Andrew Warren, Serena Marron, Peter Brant II, and Nick Gruber.

Friday, opening night at pop-up club Chez André at The Standard, East Village, found teenage dandy Peter Brant II and ex-porn star Nick Gruber, who was apparently taking a night off from writing a book and developing a TV show about his two-year relationship with Calvin Klein, on stage. The duo, joined at the mic by Andrew Warren and model Serena Marron, sang and mumbled their way through a live-band karaoke rendition of "Born to Be Wild." We have the video evidence. Arguably, it is the best version of the song ever performed. Arguably!

Great for weddings or funerals. (The New York Marble Cemetery)

Green space in New York is at a premium. Graveyards have it in spades. It was only a matter of time before some enterprising cemetery started offering itself as an event venue. The New York Marble Cemetery in the East Village has already hosted weddings, a Stella McCartney show and a Vogue fashion shoot, reports The New York Times.

Sure, you might literally be dancing on someone's grave, but not, you know, spitefully. And the bodies are in catacomb-like compartments—156 vaulted rooms of marble, connected by passageways—so at least there is a bit more remove than a mere six-feet of dirt between the coffins and the grass. Also, having walls with the names of the dead inscribed on them rather than headstones makes the space a lot more accommodating than most graveyards.

The trustees of the the Marble Cemetery, who are the descendants of those buried in the vaults, faced a problem familiar to many aging cemeteries—decades after the cemetery ended its "active" life, i.e. stopped accepting new burials, they desperately needed money for upkeep.

Trustee Caroline S. DuBois told The Times that the trustees mulled ways to make the cemetery pay for itself before deciding to rent it out as a venue, at New York prices, of course—the fee for a wedding is $2,500.

It "has morphed into a business," she said.

From a historical perspective, it's not all that weird. New Yorkers have long played above former potter's fields, including Washington Square Park, Madison Square Park and Bryant Park. But apparently there are some lines that cannot be crossed—a promotional tequila event, for example, was turned down.

As for starting a new life together amid the dead, the prospect apparently doesn't spook couples as much as the brutal battle for coveted outdoor event space. Of course, now that it's been written up in The Times, it will probably be as hard to get into the Marble Cemetery as it is to get into, well, heaven.

kvelsey@observer.com

St. Mark's Last Stand: the bookstore turns to crowdfunding (full-stop.net)

After trying just about everything everything else to survive, St. Mark's Bookshop is finally turning to crowdfunding. It was about time. From Brooklyn's Broken Angel house to the Lower East Side's Cake Shop, crowdfunding has become a favorite of beloved but penurious institutions and not-quite-lost causes.

St. Mark's, hoping to help fund a move to a cheaper location, has launched a Lucky Ant campaign to crowdsource $23,000, according to Crain's. Like so many other stores and people who have long called Manhattan home, the book store can't afford to pay its rent and needs to relocate. With its rent reduction of $2,500 a month from landlord Cooper Union set to expire in November, the store is now trying to marshal funds for a move.

A long-time haven of writers, intellectuals, punks and college students, St. Mark's simply can't afford the $23,000  a month in rent it will have to pay come January. In fact, it's having trouble affording its current rent—which is about $18,700 a month, according to Crain's.

Last Saturday, Jeremiah's Vanishing New York organized a cash mob to try to give the store an infusion to make it through the slow summer months.

“We’re in the midst of some serious summer doldrums and could use a little lift,” co-owner Terry McCoy told Vanishing New York.

Besides the crowdfunding campaign, which offers gift cards and price reductions in exchange for donations, the store has also applied for a competitive $250,000 grant from Chase Bank to finance its move.

Mr. McCoy tells Crain's that they are looking for a smaller space in the East Village, something that is about 2,000-square-feet as opposed to the current shop's 2,700. The owners hope to pay no more than $12,000 a month in rent—an amount they say would allow them to put their finances back in order—but might be hard to find in the bastion of bohemia turned bastion of the banking class.

kvelsey@observer.com

Grab a tattoo and a slurpee on Saint Mark's! (Courtesy of California Examiner)

Saint Mark's is about to become trashier – if that's even possible.

Big Gulps and Slurpees and other 7-Eleven goods will be taking over Saint Mark's Place in the East Village, the Daily News reports. Though it isn't the first chain business to open on the street. Within the past decade, other notable food shops like Chipotle and Pinkberry have opened on Saint Mark's.

The street has changed from "some alternative lifestyle, anything goes, place to a more mainstream, citified street that's almost like any other," Gary Steinkohl told the Daily News.

“Our whole idea was keeping out big business," said Richie Livan, owner of Anthony Aiden Opticians on Saint Marks, "We got rid of The Gap 15 years ago; we can get rid of 7-Eleven."

7-Eleven has responded by opening more restaurants in the city. Its recent opening on Bowery on 3rd Street will be accompanied by a few on Broadway later this summer.

The company, which has over 46,000 locations worldwide, plans to add twenty new locations every year until 2017, the Daily News noted.

Enough is enough of this stuff! (West Side Rag)

The storefront crusade, which has gained immense support and traction over the past few weeks, might be spreading to a few other neighborhoods in the city.

Community boards in the East Village, Tribeca, and on the Upper East Side have looked into expanding the anti-big box policies in their own territory, Crain's reports:

Lower Manhattan's CB1 intends to examine the Upper West Side proposal as it contemplates storefront restrictions in north TriBeCa. Discussions held by the Upper East Side's CB8 in February have led the board to plan to examine potential zoning changes aimed at protecting mom-and-pops.

Businesses are not quite as happy and claim that the legislation is "endangering not just chain stores but small businesses looking to expand." Some have suggested compromises that will only limit new or expanding buildings, but Gale Brewer, councilwoman on the Upper West Side pushing the bill, said that such a compromise will not protect small stores, Crain's noted.

But critics stand firm that such legislation is harmful to the city. A real estate industry source commented to Crain's that "The Department of City Planning is going to have difficulty putting this genie back in the bottle. Squelching the growth of successful small retailers may be a lasting legacy of the Bloomberg administration."

Smaller storefronts? Smaller profits! Or something like that.

mewing@observer.com

Like any good story, the home was pitched by a PR pro, Jean Way Schoonover, a pioneer in the industry who ran Hunter PR with her sister after their earlier firm was acquired by Olgivy & Mather. She died last spring, and her gorgeous redbrick townhouse, designed by James Renwick, Jr., came on the market shortly thereafter, asking $4.5 million. Renwick designed St. Patrick's Cathedral on Fifth Avenue and the original Smithsonian, among other landmarks.

The artist and author did not rush into this deal, and they were rewarded for their patience—after nearly a year on the market, the home sold for $3.7 million, according to city records, a 17 percent discount. It is a worthy price, given the exquisite condition of the home. The perfect refuge, one hopes, from the NYU students and fratty bankers streaming this home in the heart of the East Village on Friday night. Perhaps an escape to the brick-walled garden out back, where a Budha watches over the premises, would help leave the city behind.

Inside, a grand spiral staircase connects the six compact floors. Four fireplaces warm the living room, library and two of the five bedrooms. "Retaining its elegant and thoughtful single-family floor plan, 25 Stuyvesant Street is approximately 3380 square feet inside," Brown Harris Stevens broker Paula Del Nunzio writers in her listing. She notes that the street was laid out by Petrus Stuyvesant, a descendent of the Dutch governor, whose son Peter founded the New York Historical Society and grandson Hamilton Fish, born on the block, would serve as governor and Secretary of State.

Ms. Munk and Mr. Soriano are themselves descendents of greatness. Her father made the acclaimed Clairtone sound systems, about which Ms. Munk wrote a book. His father ran a Phillipino mining concern, his grandfather served as the minister of finance for the island nation during World War II. The couple previously called a co-op at 242 East 19th Street near Gramercy Park home.

It can be tough keeping up with the Carters.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC