Monday, September 28, 2026 · No. 46
A new week, and the paper opens with genuinely fresh news from First Avenue: a Southern Italian restaurant is setting up shop near 88th Street. Also today: high-school application season gets its starting gun on Tuesday, October 6, October 18 is quietly becoming the fall Sunday to plan around, and a correction on yesterday's briefly published lead.
The Lead
Southern Italian is coming to First Avenue: meet Pepe & Vera
A new Italian restaurant called Pepe & Vera is planned for 1712 First Avenue, between 88th and 89th Streets, from chef Caterina Pepe, previously of the Long Island City pastry shop Cerasella, per Upper East Site's preview, with Hoodline reporting the same address and concept. The team has filed for a liquor, beer and wine license, per the coverage; no opening date has been announced, so file this under coming-soon rather than book-a-table. East Side Feed noted the project earlier, in its early-September business roundup.
via Upper East Site
Schools & Kids
High-school application season opens Tuesday, October 6
For families of current eighth-graders: the DOE's Fall 2027 high-school admissions timeline has the high-school application, the LaGuardia application and Specialized High Schools Admissions Test registration all opening Tuesday, October 6, per the DOE's own admissions page. SHSAT registration closes Friday, October 30, and offers go out March 3, 2027. As always with admissions dates, the DOE's page is the final word — check it before you plan around it.
via NYC Public Schools
This Week
Circle Sunday, October 18 — the Lex fair returns and the park goes to the dogs
Three weeks out, one Sunday is stacking up. October 18 now holds the Lexington Avenue UES Festival — the 92NY-organized street fair running 79th to 96th, postponed from its original Sunday, September 27 date, per Patch — plus two at Carl Schurz Park: the Conservancy's Harvest Festival on the Mayor's Lawn, 1 to 3 p.m., per its events calendar, and the Halloween Howl & Healthy Hound Fair, the annual dog-costume gathering at the basketball and hockey court off John Finley Walk, also 1 to 3 p.m., per the Conservancy's calendar and multiple event listings. Nearer term: NYC Parks' free Kids in Motion pop-up is back in Carl Schurz Park tomorrow, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. — details in yesterday's paper and on our events page.
via Carl Schurz Park Conservancy
Corrections
For the record: yesterday's briefly published lead
Sunday's edition (#45), as first published — live on the site and in the morning's social captions for roughly five minutes — led with the closure of Munchies Korner at 1505 Third Avenue and a planned mid-October opening for Giacomo's Pizza in its place. Both events are years old: Munchies Korner closed in October 2022, and Giacomo's has operated at that address since shortly afterward, as Upper East Site reported at the time. The item was pulled in the same-morning standards pass. We regret the error.
via The Yorkville Ledger
Yorkville, Remembered
The Yorkville church that took in the General Slocum's congregation
The neo-Gothic church at 339-341 East 84th Street, between First and Second Avenues, went up in 1888 as the Deutsche Evangelische Kirche von Yorkville — its cornerstone laid June 3, 1888 before a crowd of roughly 200 — and became Zion Lutheran Church in 1892. In 1946 it took in a second, grief-stricken congregation: St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church, whose Ladies' Aid Society had chartered the steamship General Slocum for the 1904 East River excursion that burned and killed more than 1,000 people, most of them its own members. The merged Zion-St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church held services on East 84th Street for another 80 years, closing with a final service of Holy Closure on February 1, 2026.
source: Wikipedia
Monday admin, done right, is mostly calendar defense: one Southern Italian storefront to watch, one application portal to remember next week, and one October Sunday worth leaving empty now. Consider today's paper your excuse. See you tomorrow.