August 15, 2013 The Villager

Arch A-team, p. 18

Volume 83, Number 11 $1.00

West and East Village, Chelsea, Soho, Noho, Hudson Square, Little Italy, Chinatown and Lower East Side, Since 1933

August 15 - 21, 2013

Corey Johnson crafts a Council bid; East Village raises C.B. 4 leader vies to succeed Quinn $18,000 for florist

BY DuNCAN OSBORNE There is something about Corey Johnson that is carefully crafted. Or perhaps it’s everything.

The 31-year-old is vying with Yetta Kurland, a civil rights attorney, for the City Council seat that Speaker Christine Quinn has held for 14 years. For an interview with the editorial staff of NYC Community Media, he arrived with his hair freshly cut, his light beard artfully trimmed and his suit neatly pressed.

Johnson’s presentation was practiced, which is not surprising since he has been campaigning for months. He was wellversed in the intricacies of city laws on housing and development. That is also not surprising because he has served on Community Board 4, which covers Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan, since 2005 and has wrestled with some controversial development projects.

“You do not spend eight years on a community board because it’s sexy,” Johnson said.

But some people do spend eight years on a community board because it can be a stepping stone to elected office.

Johnson believes he is prepared to hold the seat representing the roughly 180,000 New Yorkers who live in a district that runs from W. 55th St. to Canal St. and from Fifth Ave. to the Hudson River.

“I’ve never worked for an elected official,” he said. “I didn’t come out of a Democratic club.”

He will be a “councilmember who is community-minded,” Johnson said, adding that he wants to be part of “progressive change” in the city. A significant issue is how the city approves real estate development plans.

For the past 12 years, the Bloomberg administration has favored large-scale projects, with some local residents objecting that they obliterate neighborhoods and favor market-rate housing at the expense of affordable housing. The city’s approval process — the uniform land use review procedure, or ULURP, as it is known — favors developers, critics say.

C.B. 4 approved the expansion of Chelsea Market, a 300,000-square-foot project atop the historic structure that occupies an entire block between Ninth and 10th Aves. and W. 15th and 16th Sts. Johnson opposed the expansion. Just as Continued on page 4

CATS For MAYOR

hurt by drag racer

BY LINCOLN ANDERSON In the wake of the horrific incident two months ago when local florist Akkas Ali, 63, was critically injured by a drag-racing driver high on drugs who careened up onto the sidewalk, the community has rallied together to raise funds to help the stricken man’s family.

Last week, Chad Marlow, a member of Community Board 3, presented Ali’s son

Rukanul Islam, 22, with a check for $18,047.32. The cash was collected through the GiveForward crowdsourcing Web site, under a campaign initiated by Marlow.

Two hundred and ninety people contributed amounts ranging from $5 to $500 during the one-month-long effort. Many of those who

Continued on page 19

B&B’s got tucked into illegal hotel regs, try to survive Photo by Lincoln Anderson

How Weiner rolls Weiner whips it out: Anthony Weiner displayed his Citi Bike annual-membership key during an interview with The Villager on Fri., Aug. 9. See article, Page 5.

BY HEAtHER DuBIN Crackdowns on illegal hotels and short-term rentals in the city have left owners of small bed and breakfasts — who pay taxes — in the lurch.

Under a new law, it’s now prohibited to rent out an apartment in a “Class A” residentially zoned building for less than 30 days. Passed in July 2010, this law was

designed to eliminate shortterm rentals and illegal hotels in residential or single-roomoccupancy (S.R.O.) buildings, both of which have exploded since 2006.

Contributing factors, such as the economy, the ease of using the Internet and owners’ inability to sell buildings, prompted some landlords of

Continued on page 9

JOHN CATSIMATIDIS FOR MAYOR A New Yorker for all New Yorkers

cats2013.com Paid for by Catsimatidis 2013

5 15 C A N A L STREET • N YC 10 013 • C OPYRIG HT © 2013 N YC COMMU NITY M ED IA , LLC

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August 15 - 21, 2013

DON’T BLINDFOLD

OUR POLICE!

The Community Safety Act is nuts and should be called the Community UNSAFETY Act. If somebody robs a bank in your neighborhood, You can’t say if the suspect is ASIAN, BLACK, WHITE, or HISPANIC You can’t say if the person is MALE or FEMALE. You can’t say if the person is 20 OR 60 YEARS OLD. THIS MAKES NO COMMON SENSE. Leave Law Enforcement up to COMMISSIONER RAY KELLY - John Catsimatidis and the professionals of the NYPD.”

IMATIDIS FOR MAYOR

This Makes No Sense!

These Council Members Voted To Make Your Streets Unsafe!

Call Speaker Quinn & These Members And Tell Them To Uphold Mayor Bloomberg’s Veto Of The Community Safety Act! Maria Del Carmen Arroyo Charles Barron Gale A. Brewer Fernando Cabrera Margaret Chin Leroy G. Comrie, Jr. Inez Dickens Daniel Dromm Mathieu Eugene Julissa Ferreras Helen D. Foster

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Vote For John Catsimatidis In The September 10th Republican Primary!

www.CATS2013.com Paid for by the CATS2013 Committee

@ JohnCats2013

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August 15 - 21, 2013

sCooPY’s

NoteBooK SEXtON Out AFtER ’16: Embattled New York University President John Sexton has announced that he won’t be staying on after 2016. The Daily News Wednesday evening reported that school officials made the announcement in a memo to students and staffers earlier in the day. Sexton, 70, has worked for N.Y.U. since 1981. He was previously head of N.Y.U. Law School and became president of the university in 2002. He earns $1.5 million per year plus bonuses — including, notably, as The New York Times exposed a few months ago, a $1 million loan he got to buy his Fire Island summer house. In the campus-wide memo, the N.Y.U. board of trustees made it clear that Sexton’s departure was his decision. A faculty member forwarded us the missive, from the trustees’ Special Committee. “The Special Committee notes that the Board is extremely satisfied with the direction and leadership of the University,” it states, in part. “John Sexton’s agreement with the University to serve as President extends to 2016 and he has made clear that he will not serve beyond that. With that as a backdrop, sometime within the next three years the Board will begin a search for a new president. That process will include faculty and student representation on the search committee. It is premature to establish the precise procedures for the search, but a clear role for the faculty and the student communities is something to which the Board is fully committed.” Yet, as the memo states, the trustees now are saying they do want to end the university’s loan program for star faculty (including Sexton) to finance their summer homes.

The loans will still be available, but only for primary residences.

The loans definitely didn’t sit well with many, especially since, as the News noted, excluding for-profit universities, N.Y.U.’s Class of 2010 owes more than any other graduating class at any other university, $659 million. Sexton will still be getting a $2.5 million

“length of service” bonus in 2015, plus $800,000 annually in retirement benefits. On the other hand, he hasn’t exactly been a slouch in the fundraising department, raking in more than $1 million a day for the school during his tenure, and doubling its endowment.

And he has raised N.Y.U.’s international profile as what he likes to call a truly “glocal” (global and yet simultaneously local) university.

“Locally” speaking, of course, things are quite combative, as the university is being sued by its own faculty, the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation and assorted other Village community groups over the N.Y.U. 2031 expansion project on its two South Village superblocks. So, it’s hard to view Sexton’s departure outside the context of what many see as an unprecedented and massive overreach by the university while on his watch. One member of N.Y.U. Faculty Against the Sexton Plan, however, told us: “This isn’t news. No one ever expected Sexton to stay beyond 2016. He’s over 70, and has been in place for going on 10 years.

This is a P.R. gambit, to make it seem as if they’ve made a big concession, when in fact the faculty want Sexton out A.S.A.P., before N.Y.U.’s meltdown goes even further.” In March, faculty cast a vote of “no confidence” in Sexton’s leadership. Meanwhile, on the court challenge to N.Y.U. 2031, everyone is awaiting the decision of Judge Donna Mills, who indicated after last month’s court date that she is not interested in hearing more oral testimony. Model and TV host Padma Lakshmi turned out at the Centre St. courtroom last month to support the plaintiffs, but ducked the media after reportedly being freaked out by a New York Post reporter who bum-rushed her. Attorney Randy Mastro was “mastroful” in his arguments that the four strips on the superblocks’ edges have been “implicitly” if not “explicitly” parks for decades, and thus should formally be considered as such. And if you’re talking “explicit,” even the manhole covers in these strips are embossed with the official Parks Deparment logo, and there are similar official Parks identifiers plastered all over the strips, Mastro maintained. An N.Y.U. attorney rebutted that way, way back in the 1950s when the streets were widened for highway-style roadways, these strips were mapped as de facto roadbed. But, dude — they’ve never been used as streets since! Suffice to say, “Perry Mason” had nothing on this courtroom drama, but it’s all resting on Mills’s decision.

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Johnson defends decision not to list jobs on Web site Continued from page 1 controversial was the Hudson Yards development, a 17-million-square-foot project on 26 acres that includes 20,000 apartments over the rail yards in the West 30s.

“We won some things and we didn’t get everything we wanted,” Johnson said, adding that he increased affordable housing units in that project from 20 percent to 26 or 27 percent. In her campaign for Manhattan Borough President, however, Julie Menin, a former Community Board 1 chairperson, pegs that number as low as 16 or 17 percent.

Ostensibly, ULURP begins at a community board then gets approval from a borough president and is then formally approved by the City Planning Commission and the City Council.

The community board and borough president opinions are advisory only. Critics say that developers meet with the commission and city councilmembers first and begin the ULURP procedure only after getting informal approval.

The process is “in need of major reform,” Johnson said. But it is defined in the city’s charter so that reform would have to be approved by the voters, he said.

When discussing his hopes for the City Council, Johnson emphasized plans to build more affordable housing, reduce class size in city schools, increase parks in the district, and bring a hospital to Lower Manhattan to replace

‘You do not spend eight years on a community board because it’s sexy.’

Corey Johnson the now-closed St. Vincent’s Hospital. At least some of those plans do not square with his recent employment.

Johnson previously worked for GFI Development, a real estate developer that built two luxury hotels in Manhattan and an office

Photo courtesy of Gay City News

Corey Johnson, center, with Congressmember Jerrold Nadler, to the left of him, and District Leader Jonathan Geballe, to the right, who have both endorsed Johnson, in the June LGBT Pride March.

building in Brooklyn. He did not mention that job publicly or on his campaign Web site until it was disclosed by citycouncilwatch.net, a Web site.

“I put none of my work history on my Web site,” Johnson said, noting that campaign experts told him that was not what the public wanted to read on such sites.

According to citycouncilwatch.net, Johnson boasted at a campaign event that 20 percent of the units in the Brooklyn building were affordable housing units. Those units have not been built. The project is not completed, Johnson said, but a “restrictive declaration” requires GFI to build those units.

“Whenever the project is built, they must abide by it,” he said. “My role was to make sure that whatever was done, it was done in a

community-minded way.”

Johnson first entered public life when he came out as gay to his teammates on the Masconomet High School football team in Massachusetts in 1999. The next year, his story went national with a 2,000-word profile in The New York Times and appearances on major TV shows. After high school, Johnson spent a year traveling across the country — 130,000 miles, he said — speaking at schools and meetings and to the media about his experience.

Johnson then held a series of jobs at gay groups and on political campaigns, with some keeping him in the public eye. His campaign for City Council began in 2012 and he quickly raised roughly $168,000 from more than 600 people, achieving the maximum he is allowed to spend in the Sept. 10 Democratic primary.

Like any politician, he has put together a campaign that relies on a particular image. He is an advocate for affordable housing, so his GFI job and his current part-time work at the Sydell Group — a real estate development firm founded by former GFI senior staff — were omitted from his campaign material until citycouncilwatch.net reported them.

His image management, as a transplanted Massachusetts native who fell in love with the Big Apple, also ignores the year he spent living in San Francisco. He praised that city, just as he praises New York City now, in a 2001 profile in San Francisco magazine.

None of this is unusual for a politician, but Johnson can go to extremes. When Gay City News, The Villager’s sister paper, requested a copy of his campaign schedule, he refused to turn it over, saying he feared Kurland would disrupt his events. He then made repeated prom-

ises to release his schedule, but never did. Most politicians routinely release their schedules.

This reporter had a chance encounter with Johnson at a West Village diner where he described the difficult relationship he has had with Quinn. Moments later, the candidate disclosed personal details about his life that he said were “off the record,” so he understood he was talking to a reporter. Days later, he bristled, saying he was “disappointed,” when Gay City News said it might use the comments about Quinn in this story.

In an obviously choreographed story in May in the Times, Johnson said that he was H.I.V.positive and had known his status for more than eight years. It is not clear if the piece was meant to minimize the disclosure or maximize attention on it.

Other than having Board 4 call for increases in AIDS funding in the city budget, Johnson has no record on H.I.V. matters. Asked what were his notable achievements on AIDS issues, Johnson said, “I actually think me being honest and telling my friends and me being a role model.”

Some of the paranoid tinge within the Johnson and Kurland campaigns may arise from the particularly aggressive nature of the race. The campaigns and their surrogates have charged each other with violating city campaign finance laws, using physical violence against volunteers and other bad acts. Allegedly, it is the Kurland campaign that is whispering to voters that Johnson has no college degree.

“My life experience has been a rich one,” Johnson said, referring to his decision to end his formal education after high school. “I’m proud of my life experience.”

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Please bring your original parking receipt and proof of residency to NYU’s Office of Government and Community Affairs, Monday to Friday, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm, for reimbursement. You may also mail us the original receipt and a copy of your proof of residency.

Please keep a copy of the receipt for your records.

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NYU’s Office of Government and Community Affairs 25 West Fourth Street, 5th Floor New York, NY 10012-1119 212.998.2400 • community.affairs@nyu.edu www.nyu.edu/ogca

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Our freshman class will begin arriving early on the morning of t uth S Sunday, August 25, and will be moving into freshman residence halls all day. We are sensitive to the effect this has on parking and traffic in the neighborhood, and, for your convenience, NYU would like to offer parking reimbursement to residents of the area designated by the darker-shaded section of the map above — from 15th Street to Houston Street, between Sixth Avenue (Avenue of the Americas) and Second Avenue — to help alleviate potential difficulties. If you put your car in a garage on Saturday night, August 24, or Sunday, August 25, we will pay for the cost of a stay of up to 24 hours. (Offer not valid for NYU students.)

If you have any additional questions, please contact:

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“Broadway is ridiculous,” he said. “It went from two lanes to one lane. Trucks can’t make deliveries. If they have to deliver wine to a restaurant, they either have to park in one lane of traffic or park on the sidewalk.”

Weiner’s brother, Jason, is the executive chef at Almond restaurant, at 12 E. 22nd St., just east of Broadway.

“There is also this jihadist attitude that’s not going to work with me,” the mayoral candidate further declared. “If I have an administration that makes a mistake, we’ll address it.”

Weiner then repeated his comments about the Broadway bike lane and “jihadist” attitudes — and again flashed his bike-share key — a few days later, on Monday, during an online interview with Ben Smith on Buzz Feed.

On other issues, for example, asked about his position on development, Weiner acknowledged, “I am a pro-development Democrat — I want to grow the city, I want to create jobs. … New York City zoning can’t be white rice,” he said. “It has to be Pad Thai.”

Weiner complained he’s getting treated unfairly by the big media and powerful institutions, noting that, “The Times has already told me five times to drop out.”

“It’s fairly clear I make the big institutions of the city baffled,” he declared. “That I’m in the running makes them apoplectic.

Because I basically said, ‘Whatever you think of my circumstances or my candidacy, I don’t give a s---.’ These are the same forces that gave us a third term. The fact that I make them so crazy is proof positive of why I should be mayor.”

The Villager will be providing fuller coverage of the Weiner interview, as well as interviews with the other mayoral candidates, and other local races in the upcoming weeks’ issues.

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BY LINCOLN ANDERSON During a wide-ranging interview with the editorial staff of The Villager and NYC Community Media last Friday morning, The Villager at one point asked mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner about his position on bike lanes and bike-share.

Weiner said he’s all for bike-share, a.k.a.

Citi Bike, and supports expanding the program to all five boroughs. In fact, he has an annual membership to the program, and whipped out his blue Citi Bike key to prove it — then posed for a photo with it.

However, he’s more cautious on bike lanes, saying that “there are good bike lanes and there are bad bike lanes.”

Asked about his well-reported crack about bike lanes that he made at an event with Mayor Bloomberg four or five years ago, he said it was a joke, and that people don’t seem to have a sense of humor.

Weiner was reported saying to Bloomberg, and has admitted saying, that the first thing he would do when elected mayor was to “have a ribbon-cutting when I rip out all of your f——- bike lanes.” But this was a joke, Weiner said, adding that some people just didn’t seem to get that.

As for bike-share, he said he really enjoys riding the blue bikes back and forth from his home in the Gramercy area to Chelsea Piers when he plays his ice-hockey games there.

And he likes the fact that he can just park the cycle on the street, since he doesn’t have space in his apartment for a bike.

Bicycle attorney Steve Vaccaro, a board member of the new group StreetsPAC, said that Weiner has previously publicly specifically criticized the bike lane on Broadway in the Gramercy area, saying that he doesn’t like the bike lane near where he lives. Asked about his feelings on that bike lane by The Villager on Friday, Weiner reiterated his disdain for it.

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Anthony Weiner was spotted riding off on a Citi Bike on LaGuardia Place on July 11 after he participated in a mayoral forum on senior issues at New York Watts St University. Last Friday, he told The Villager he has since replaced this old-school, Desbrosses St circa 1980s helmet with a new free one handed out by the city. Better tighten Vestry St up that chin strap, too!

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August 15 - 21, 2013

Opponents go postal over Chin’s real estate PAC mailings

BY LINCOLN ANDERSON Spurred by a slew of recent mailings by the real estate industry endorsing Margaret Chin for re-election, a local political club has gone postal — as in, firing back with a spoof mailing of its own.

Sean Sweeney of the Downtown Independent Democrats recently created the anti-Chin piece while on vacation in Wisconsin, with the help of Penelope Grill, a friend from Soho who has some good computer design software. D.I.D. has endorsed Jenifer Rajkumar, Chin’s opponent.

The spoof mailing was sent to 15,000 people in Lower Manhattan’s First Council District, and hit people’s mailboxes this Mon., Aug. 12.

The design, printing and mailing of the piece cost $6,500 total, paid for out of D.I.D. funds.

But that sum doesn’t come close to the nearly $80,000 that the new Jobs for New York PAC has spent on pro-Chin mailings in the past month and a half.

In late June and early July, the new PAC sent out at least eight mailings backing the incumbent councilmember for re-election, according to the city’s Campaign Finance Board. These mass mailings fall under the category of “independent expenditures,” since the money was not contributed directly to Chin’s campaign.

The PAC is backing Chin, one another Council incumbent and six challengers for other seats.

The Chin mailings have each focused on a different issue, or, as they are described in their entries on the C.F.B. Web site: “Chin Education,” “Chin Jobs & Economy,” “Chin

A spoof mailer created by Sean Sweeney replaces the photos of local politicians endorsing Margaret Chin, like Sheldon Silver and Nydia Velazquez, on a Jobs for New York PAC mailer with photos of developers who are leading members of REBNY, a member of the PAC.

Meet Margaret,” “Chin Tough Negotiator,” “Chin’s Record,” “Chin Affordable Housing.”

The PAC’s pro-Chin materials cost about $12,500 per mass mailing to send out.

One of the Jobs for New York pieces declares Chin will fight to create affordable housing.

Another touts her record on creating new schools and reducing class size. A third proclaims, “Margaret Chin is Rebuilding New

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York’s Middle Class.” The mailings highlight that she is endorsed by the likes of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, Councilmember Rosie Mendez and Congressmember Nydia Velazquez, with small head shots of each.

However, many Downtown residents are outraged that Chin has not rejected the support — and prolific mailings — of Jobs for New York, since one of the PAC’s leading members, the Real Estate Board of New York, has consistently fought to weaken rent-regulation protections for middle- and lower-class residents.

Chin has refused to publicly reject the PAC’s efforts on her behalf, saying that, well, she can’t really do anything about it since it’s an independent expenditure.

Nevertheless, with the upcoming primary election now just a month away, her rival Rajkumar is challenging Chin to rebuff both the real estate group’s support and its mailings on her behalf. The upstart Democratic district leader called on Chin to do so at a recent debate sponsored by the League of Women Voters.

But, again, Chin said she couldn’t do anything about it, due to the nature of it being an independent expenditure.

In a recent interview with the editorial staff of The Villager and NYC Community Media, Chin reiterated that she really can’t do much about an outside group if it wants to support her and send out mailings in praise of her.

“Probably, I have already said that this kind of expenditure is not good,” she told The Villager. “We can send them a stronger message, but it’s an independent expenditure.”

She quipped that she wished the mailings had better photos of her.

She stressed that people instead should look at her “track record” and her endorsements by elected officials, like Congressmembers Jerry Nadler and Velazquez and the Working Families Party. And she pointed to her efforts to save affordable housing at 505 LaGuardia Place, a Mitchell-Lama co-op on New York University’s southern superblock in the South Village.

She noted, “505 LaGuardia was separate from the ULURP,” referring to the public review of N.Y.U.’s 2031 mega-development plan, “but

it was going on in the background — to preserve it for affordable housing. You’re talking about 175 families, and a lot of them are seniors.

“We’re going back to our track record,” Chin stated. “Look at my history — for my constituents. I’ve been there for them.”

She added that she was disappointed at not being able to get 100 percent affordable housing for the SPURA (Seward Park Urban Renewal Area) project, and had to settle for 50 percent, which nevertheless is still a very high percentage. And whether a school is part of the project still needs to be settled, she added. But she said that she did push for more affordable housing and was able to win 21 Spring St. in Nolita as a site for it.

Chin, in turn, lashed back at Rajkumar, taking exception with the district leader’s base of support, telling The Villager, “You should ask my opponent — why are a lot of her constituents from out of state? And what about her contributions from wealthy South-Asian friends?”

Chin said she’s used to being mischaracterized, recalling her early days as an activist.

“Back then, they called me a communist,” she said.

“You just have to look at where her support is,” Chin charged, referring to Rajkumar again and her backers. “I’ve been here for 50 years.

This is the community that I love.”

Meanwhile, Rajkumar, in an interview with The Villager and NYC Community Media, pulled no punches when asked about Chin and the Jobs for New York mailings.

“This is an attempt to buy the Council seat — just as the Council seat has been up for sale the last four years,” she asserted. “Chin said, ‘I can’t stop them.’ … We need a real leader in the Council who actually stands up for the community. She couldn’t stop N.Y.U., she couldn’t stop the [South St.] Seaport plan, she couldn’t stop the [Jobs for New York] PAC… .”

A spokesperson for the PAC explained, in a statement, why they feel that Chin is the right woman for the job.

Continued on page 7

August 15 - 21, 2013

A Soho resident recently created a parody political flier, below, for Margaret Chin, riffing on one supporting her sent out by the new Jobs for New York PAC, above.

Sean Sweeney of Downtown Independent Democrats separately has created a piece spoofing the pro-Chin Jobs for New York mailings. Fifteen thousand of them were mailed out and arrived at residents’ homes on Mon., Aug. 12.

Continued from page 6 “Jobs for New York and its members believe strongly that New York City needs to create jobs, strengthen the local housing market and create more affordable housing options in order to make the local economy grow,” he said. “Margaret Chin’s time in public service makes it clear that she shares this view. She’s the kind of leader New York City needs in office right now.”

He praised Chin for her “balance.”

“She has amassed a very balanced record over the years,” he said, “creating jobs…a happy balance.”

He noted that Jobs for New York isn’t just composed of REBNY, but also includes the likes of the mason tenders and carpenters unions.

The economic recovery is still pretty tepid,

and the PAC doesn’t want to see things backslide, he added. Plus, due to term limits, there will be a big turnover next year in the Council, with about 20 new members, he said. So, they are targeting a few Council races they feel are “competitive” — with Chin vs. Rajkumar clearly being one of them.

The PAC spokesperson argued that it’s incorrect to say that REBNY “takes issue with affordable housing.”

Practically the only new affordable housing being created in Manhattan below 96th St. is being built by REBNY members, he noted. These units are part of the 421-a program, or “80/20,” under which 80 percent of a building’s apartments are market rate but the remainder are affordable, in return for which the developer gets a tax break.

However, generally, these units are not permanently affordable.

7

8

August 15 - 21, 2013

Paternity-testing RV rolls out results in one week

By Heather Dubin Questions of paternity are often whispered about behind closed doors. But when “Who’s Your Daddy?” is emblazoned on the side of a nearly 30-foot-long, bright-blue recreational vehicle, the conversation gets a little louder.

The roving mobile unit is the brainchild of Jared Rosenthal, owner and operator of Health Street, a Bronx-based DNA- and drug-testing company. They have two vans that go all over Manhattan, from the Village to the Upper East Side, as well as the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens.

Parked on Avenue A near Seventh St. on Monday, Rosenthal spoke about the tests he conducts in the van, and the real-life stories that come with the job. Numerous passersby interrupted as they burst into laughter, asked questions, and took photos of the RV, which was repainted by graffiti artist Tats Cru last year.

A woman walking by with two young children inquired about paternity testing for a man she knows.

“We do it right on board,” Rosenthal explained. “The cost is $350. You need the two people you’re testing, along with a photo ID from the dad, and an Rx from a doctor,” he added.

During the five-minute process, a cheek swab is taken, which is then sent to a DNA diagnostic center with an accredited lab. The results are returned within a week.

“I know who my ‘daddy’ is” (as in “baby daddy”), the woman said, declining to give her name. But she said she was trying to convince someone else to see if he was the father of a young baby.

“Every day you miss out,” Rosenthal told her. “Now is the time.”

Once she was out of earshot, Rosenthal explained that some people stop by with questions for “friends” only to come back later to take the test themselves.

Rosenthal’s RV has had a makeover since its original incarnation a few years ago as a drug-testing entity. It used to have a large urine cup painted on the side, during which he referred to it as “The Piss Mobile.” They still do accident drug and alcohol testing around the clock.

“We do work with the M.T.A. and can be

Photo by Heather Dubin

The Health Street van can answer the question “Who’s Your Daddy?” be it one’s actual father or the father of one’s children, i.e. “baby daddy.”

called to do a Breathalyzer test in the middle of the night,” he said.

He has also pulled the van up to an office building and had about 30 employees file in, one at a time, to use the on-site bathroom for drug testing.

An immigration DNA test is also offered in the RV, at a cost of $425 for two people, plus $100 for each additional person. This test is administered to immigrants from specific countries sponsoring family members to come to the States, who must prove they are related. Rosenthal ships the kit to the United States consulate in that particular country, and after the family members there take the test, it is processed with Immigration Services.

“A lot of people don’t know where to go to do this,” he noted. “We go out into different immigrant communities to educate

people and help them with what they need to know.”

Many people unload their emotional baggage when they get into the RV. “We get involved in transitional moments in people’s lives,” Rosenthal said. “It’s crazy.

Inside, it’s more intimate, and they tell us a whole story.”

However, what would seem to have all the makings of a Maury Povich television talk show is “really a lot more common than you think,” he said.

“Daytime talk shows have created this stereotype, and the reality is very different than that,” Rosenthal said of DNA testing.

He admits to rooting for the guy, and recalled a man who came in with a one-week old baby. When the man found out he was not the father, he did not want anyone to know, since he had already bonded with the

child, and wanted to be the dad.

According to Rosenthal, “Ninety-eight percent of the time the dad is hoping he’s the father, and is involved with the kid’s life.”

He teaches his staff of 10 to take these situations seriously, and “give the people the dignity they need.”

Rosenthal has been trained to New York State standards in testing technique, which “is not a complicated process,” he noted, and he, in turn, schools his staff.

A “heritage study,” a percentage breakdown of a person’s ancestry for $500, is also advertised on the RV. Yet it seems a bit pointless, since it’s not allowed by the New York State Department of Health.

“Their rationale is it has to be through a doctor,” Rosenthal said.

Continued on page 14

August 15 - 21, 2013

9

B&B’s being crippled by new law, trying to survive Continued from page 1 S.R.O. and residential buildings to choose to rent out units on a nightly basis. Permanent tenants complained about what was happening in their buildings. Those complaints, plus concerns about unsafe conditions due to overcrowding and fire code violations, caused legislators finally to take action.

However, formerly legitimate bed and breakfasts in Manhattan, all in “Class A” residentially zoned buildings, are now also subject to this broad definition of the law, making their very livelihoods illegal.

After the law went into effect in May 2011, the Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement created a task force comprised of a police officer, a firefighter and a Department of Buildings representative, to do enforcement against illegal hotels. As of April 2012, this unit had issued nearly 1,900 violations to landlords for illegally converting buildings into hotels, and had vacated 51 instances of illegal occupancy.

In addition, three bed and breakfasts in this borough have been targeted by the task force, and have been slapped with a total of $63,000 in fines, not including the cost of legal fees and an expediter.

One of these three is Ivy Terrace Bed and Breakfast, on E. 58th St., owned by Vinessa Milando.

Milando founded StayNYC, a small trade association of owners of bed and breakfasts in the city who want an exemption to allow them to offer short-term rentals legally. The group began with less than 10 members — mostly women and minority-owned businesses. Other than Milando, they all remain anonymous to avoid detection by the task force.

The handful of bed and breakfasts are scattered throughout Manhattan, with one in the West Village and another in the East Village, the latter which sustained extensive damage from flooding from Hurricane Sandy.

“I was very, very careful,” Milando said in a phone interview last week, describing how she assembled members for the group. “All of our members have an average of five rooms, and we are all licensed with New York City as small-facility operators,” she added.

They also pay New York City hotel and occupancy tax and New York State and City sales tax.

According to Milando, their small buildings have no residential tenants, and are exclusively used as bed and breakfasts. Her business, at 15 years old, is the youngest in their association.

When the city requested that bed and breakfasts pay hotel tax in 2002, many of them opted not to and went underground.

“Everyone in our group all gave the city our names and addresses, and agreed to pay the charges and hotel tax,” she said, adding that that was how they all originally met.

Rather than enforce hotel zoning regulations against these businesses, the city’s Department of Finance allowed the bed and breakfasts to be classified as small-facility operators — each member has less than 10

Photo by Tequila Minsky

Vinessa Milando, who operates Ivy Terrace Bed and Breakfast, in a room featuring a kitchen, which allows guests to cook for themselves during their visit.

Other members of StayNYC, an organization of B&Bs in Manhattan, guard their identities for fear of raids from a city task force and accompanying steep fines.

rooms. It might not seem like a lot of units, but it’s how these small business owners survive.

“That’s how we pay our taxes, and that’s who we are,” Milando said.

“We understand and sympathize with the city and the problem,” she added. “We’re not looking to repeal the entire law — we just want to continue business.”

‘We’re not looking to repeal the entire law — we just want to continue business.’

Vinessa Milando StayNYC businesses do have a positive impact on the city’s bottom line, in that they contributed more than $4 million to the local economy in 2010.

This past January, a StayNYC member was hit by the task force for the second time in six months.

“Within two weeks, he realized he could not stay open anymore,” Milando said. “He’s since shut down and is trying to sell his building.”

A second member of the group also called it quits that same month after sustaining only one enforcement raid.

“They were following the letter of the law and could not afford to keep their building,” Milando said. The owners had raised their child in that building — which had been passed down through their family — but

ended up leaving Manhattan. Both of the above former members owned their buildings for longer than 25 years.

“I lost two members in a 10-day period,” Milando said. “That’s money I don’t have to continue to fight with.”

Milando claims legislators had assured her the law would not affect StayNYC members — that large buildings and landlords with tenant complaints were top of the list for the task force. Unfortunately, this has not been the case.

To comply with the new law, a number of the bed and breakfasts have stopped taking short-term guests. While they can legally have guests for a 30-day stay, that reality is difficult.

“I can’t pay my bills for a 30-day guest. My taxes are almost 100,000 bucks,” Milando said.

Since May 2011, when the new law went into effect, she has lost more than $180,000 in business. This figure includes fines, legal fees and refunds, plus the cost of a lobbyist to advocate for their cause.

Some StayNYC members have removed their Web sites, unsure if they will be open to commit to future reservations, while others are taking guests so they can pay bills. Fines have recently increased, making business even riskier.

“What we’re all doing is living in fear,” Milando said, “No one is doing business as usual, and no one is comfortable. We’re all above-board-type people.”

Milando and StayNYC members have met with local city politicians, as well as several assemblymembers, to facilitate action for what they consider a “very small fix.” They have a petition on their Web site with 3,000 signatures, and have received donations to help them in their plight.

Last December, Milando met again with

city and state lawmakers, but while “they did want to help us, they did not know quite what to do,” she said. A meeting of the bedand-breakfast group with the Department of Buildings followed that was “not fruitful,” she said, adding, “We’re not in the codes.”

According to Milando, the department was unaware that the law had even changed, and as a result, “They were not going to spend anytime defining us.”

She met with a zoning attorney this May and learned it was beyond their means as small businesses to try to change the zoning resolution.

“They had some ideas, but they all cost over $50,000, and none were guaranteed,” she said.

“All of it was maybe, all of it was political, and we have the political landscape changing.”

City Councilmember Daniel Garodnick has sat down with Milando more than once to hear her concerns.

However, she said, “While he wanted to help us find a way out, no one has been able to find a way out.”

Garodnick, though, did set up the meeting with Buildings for her with a phone call.

Milando also met with mayoral candidate City Council Speaker Christine Quinn’s staff.

Like with D.O.B., the bed and breakfasts were under the radar of Quinn’s representatives.

“I have not met with any resistance, but they didn’t know anything about it or that our businesses existed,” she said.

Options on the table from the December meeting with D.O.B. involve two different potential permits.

Yet, Milando said, “We may or may not be allowed to apply for them. A special permit per person would be over $50,000, and we would have to go through several city agencies, which would take about two years.”

None of the StayNYC members can afford that amount.

The other permit is for members in a historic district, but the departure of two members has made that alternative cost prohibitive as well.

“At the moment, having a lot of money is the only way out of this,” she said.

“We are still hopeful, because it does seem we have the support of the politicians,” Milando added. “But someone needs to take our hand, if they care enough, and lead us through this labyrinth.”

Last year StayNYC members lost $1.1 million in business, and about 3,850 guest beds were empty between September and New Year’s.

According to NYC & Co., the city’s marketing and tourism association, there are about 52 million tourists in Manhattan annually. With tourism booming, StayNYC members say there is a need for their services.

Milando encourages her guests to support local restaurants and neighborhood businesses. As a small business owner herself, she identifies with mom-and-pop shop owners.

“We’re not the big guy, we’re the small guy,” she said. “Small businesses in New York City are totally disappearing.

Continued on page 10

10

August 15 - 21, 2013

PoliCe Blotter Village senior bashings Aug. 10 was a tough day for senior citizens in the West Village, as two residents in their 60s were reportedly attacked by younger perpetrators in separate incidents.

First, a 65-year-old man said he was strolling through Washington Square Park around 8:45 a.m. when he was blindsided by a stranger — later identified as Robert Burton, 34. The victim told police that, although he never said a word to the alleged attacker, Burton kicked him in the ribs and then punched him in the face, leaving him lying on the ground with cuts and bruises.

Fortunately for the victim, a police officer outside the park eventually saw the incident and called for paramedics, who treated the elderly man at the scene. And while Burton tried to flee on foot toward Sixth Ave. when he saw the officer approaching, the officer was able to chase down and arrest him, charging Burton with assault.

Later that day, around 5:45 p.m., witnesses told police they saw an argument break out between a 69-year-old man and Bernard Roxbury, 45, near the corner of Christopher and Bleecker Sts. The witnesses said, Roxbury then punched the senior square in the face, knocking him down.

The bystanders called police, and Roxbury was arrested at the scene minutes later, while the victim was treated for minor injuries to his head. Roxbury was charged with assault.

Attempted Jones St. rape Police arrested a man who allegedly assaulted and attempted to rape a 23-yearold woman behind a West Village building early on Sun., Aug. 11.

Cory Reid, 33, was arrested immediately after the incident, which police said took place around 8:45 a.m., behind 27 Jones St., between Bleecker and W. Fourth Sts. Reid is believed to have forcibly inserted his fingers into the woman’s vagina, as well as forcibly performing oral sex on her, according to a criminal complaint filed by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.

Police said they initially charged Reid with attempted rape, assault and sexual misconduct, but the D.A.’s office is currently charging him with committing a criminal sexual act in the first degree, and sexual abuse in the first degree.

Police sources declined to provide any further information about the alleged victim at this early stage, and did not say whether or not she lives in the Jones St. building.

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This perp tried to pull off a sidewalk phonesnatching in broad daylight — but instead of grabbing the goods, he ended up in cuffs.

The victim, a woman, 44, told police the incident began as she was exiting up the stairs of the West Fourth St. subway station at the corner of Waverly Place and Sixth Ave., around noon Aug. 12. She said that once she reached street level, an unknown man — later identified as Jimmy Bostick, 23 — came from behind and tackled her to the ground, while trying to rip her cell phone out of her hand.

The woman screamed for help, which apparently caused Bostick to give up and flee the scene without ever actually taking the phone, police said. But as Bostick started running westbound on Waverly Place, a male bystander stepped in and took him down, and detained the suspect until police arrived to arrest him.

Bostick was charged with attempted robbery.

Found on fare beater A turnstile jumper got more than he bargained for on the afternoon of Aug. 10, when a police officer caught him in the act and found some incriminating material in his pockets.

Vernon Driskell, 56, was stopped and searched by officers after jumping the turnstile at the F train station at the corner of

W. 14th St. and Sixth Ave., around 1 p.m., police said. Driskell was reportedly carrying an illegal knife and two glass pipes coated with alleged crack cocaine residue — felony offenses that far outweighed his initial crime.

Officers arrested Driskell at the scene and charged him with criminal possession of a weapon and criminal possession of a controlled substance.

Employee goes Right Guard A shoplifter wanted to smell fresh, but his methods were certainly foul.

An employee at the CVS convenience store at 307 Sixth Ave. told police he saw Quashawa Taylor, 18, enter the store around 7:30 p.m.

Aug. 9, pull a deodorant stick off a shelf, put it in his shoulder bag, and then walk right back out the door without paying, the employee said.

The employee, 21, explained to police that he then followed Taylor outside and confronted him, demanding the alleged thief give back the stolen deodorant. Taylor reportedly responded, “I’m gonna mace you,” and reached threateningly into his bag, which caused the employee to fear for his safety and let him go — after which he called police.

Officers quickly responded, and tracked down and arrested Taylor minutes later, at which time they said they recovered both the stolen deodorant and a can of pepper spray that the perpetrator had hidden in his sweatshirt.

Taylor was charged with robbery.

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B&B’s being hurt by new law Continued from page 9 “If you want to save small businesses it can be done,” Milando said. “I believe we were unintended consequences [of the new law], and they have to fix the problem. I hope they do it soon.”

Meanwhile, several guests of one of the B&B’s interviewed by The Villager shared why they prefer the experience to staying in a traditional hotel. The owner asked that the name and location of the B&B not be published.

Susan E. Mennacher and Jan-Soren Woermer and their two children, from Munich, Germany, have been annual guests at the B&B for the past decade.

“We immediately grew attached to the owner and her place,” Mennacher said in an e-mail. “There is not a hotel in the city that can offer the personal warmth, the cleanliness and the wealth of creativity of her bed and breakfast.”

The place features living rooms and kitchens, allowing guests to cook in a homey

atmosphere, and is also cost effective.

“I am originally from New York, and this is the perfect place to ‘play house’ with my children for two weeks a year,” she explained.

Her kids have told her that the B&B is what they like best in New York City.

A neighbor of the B&B, Andre Lucien, recently sustained damage to his apartment from a fire and wound up staying at the B&B for a month and a half.

“It’s a great resource in the neighborhood because she’s my neighbor, and she has helped me out in a time of need because I was displaced,” he said.

Lucien welcomed the opportunity to meet people from “the far-flung corners of the world,” saying that guests end up hanging out together.

“It’s communal, which makes the whole vacation experience a lot more personal,” he noted. “You’re interacting with people instead of just the lobby. You also get a flavor for the neighborhood instead of being in a big ol’ hotel. You’re right there in the ’hood.”

August 15 - 21, 2013

11

Amid Village’s changes, their love has been a constant

BY BOB KRASNER There are people who will tell you, no matter where you are, that the neighborhood ain’t what it used to be. Of course, they are probably right.

And if they have been around long enough to remember what the neighborhood used to be like, chances are they are not what they used to be, either.

But you won’t hear any complaints from 90-year-old Mel London or his wife, Sheryl, who have been married for 67 years and have lived in the same East Village apartment since 1958. Sheryl was a 17-year-old Cooper Union art student in pigtails when they first met in 1944. She was from Brooklyn and he came from the Bronx. “A mixed marriage,” Mel quipped.

They spent the first two years of marriage in Salzburg and Berlin, where Mel was an officer in command of “black troops in a segregated army — a marvelous, remarkable experience,” he said.

On their return to the States in 1948, they lived with family for nine years on the Upper East Side.

“Hated it — it was deadly,” they agreed.

They found their permanent residence in the East Village, close to where Sheryl had previously lived on St. Mark’s Place.

“It was a Jewish and Italian neighborhood — still part of the Lower East Side,” she recalled.

The Yiddish theaters were going strong on Second Ave. and the local beat cop, who knew everyone, used to bring sandwiches to the musicians who played outside St. Mark’s Church and took kids to see the ballet. The stores were all of the “mom and pop” variety, and on the Fourth of July the rooftops were full of families watching the fireworks because no one had a second home to run off to.

Mel had transitioned from his gigs as a radio sportscaster, a writer for Skitch Henderson and “The Morning Show” on NBC and a production assistant to a new position directing live television for PBS, where Sheryl joined him as an art director.

The Fifties gave way to the Sixties and the flower children began to show up.

“But they didn’t live here,” said Mel. “They lived in Queens and Brooklyn,” Sheryl chimed in. “They came here and changed their

clothes to walk down St. Mark’s Place.”

If one is going to be jealous of something other than the couples’ beautiful, enduring relationship, then it would be their front-row seat on the incredible show put on by the counterculture. The original production of “Hair” at the Public Theatre and Jimi Hendrix and the Jefferson Airplane down the street at the nowdefunct Fillmore East were just a few of the shows they attended. And then there was the never-ending performance in the streets: antiwar riots, hippies, art and music everywhere.

Sheryl remembers a young woman at the laundromat across the street, chanting Hare Krishna as she took off her orange robe and underwear. She continued chanting as she sat there in the nude, waiting for the clothes to wash.

The Seventies came along and eventually punk rock replaced flower power. A severe crack epidemic settled in and low-rent hookers began to populate to the neighborhood, but the Londons never considered leaving. Film work took them all over the world, shooting documentaries and corporate promotional films, but they never tired of coming home to Second Ave., where they began to produce a popular series of cookbooks.

According to Mel, the diversity of “ethnicity, professions and lifestyles” and the energy of the streets has had a profound effect on them.

The pair can be seen almost daily walking the streets, arm in arm. Through the changes of the Eighties, Nineties and the recent years, they still feel the same about their home.

“What a remarkable city!” Mel said passionately. “When I walk through the streets, however slowly, it keeps me alive.”

While one listens to the Londons, it is not the facts and figures and memories that one walks away with. You can add it all up: 67 years of marriage, 55 years in the same apartment, jobs in 60 countries, 43 documentaries, an Academy Award nomination, 18 cookbooks, a James Beard Award and a 1966 Cadillac that they bought when it was new and only recently let go.

No, what really sticks with you is the fact that there they are: laughing together, tweaking each others’ noses, helping each other to remember what might have been forgotten.

There is no reason to pine for the good old days.

They are still living them.

Villager photo by Bob Krasner

Sheryl and Mel London in their East Village apartment.

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12

August 15 - 21, 2013

editorial

A Downtown champion There might be people who love Lower Manhattan as much as Liz Berger did, but we doubt anyone loved it more. Berger had an enthusiasm for Downtown that was infectious, and her dedication to our community made it a better place to live and work. Like many others, we were saddened to learn of her death from cancer last week at the far too young age of 53.

Berger was the president of the Downtown Alliance business improvement district for the last six years. She had been a Community Board 1 member prior to that, and also served the city in many other capacities over the years. A hardworking woman of great intelligence, she and her work live on in the many people she led, touched or inspired to do more for our neighborhood and for the world.

Last fall after Hurricane Sandy ravaged parts of our community, the Alliance BID, led by Berger, rushed in with help to small businesses, a mere three weeks after the storm hit, and long before any other financial help came.

She had so many great ideas or projects she championed. One of our favorites is “Re:Construction.”

It typifies what we admired most about Berger, her ability to take a negative — Lower Manhattan’s ubiquitous construction sheds and scaffolding post-9/11 — and make something better of it: namely, art to hide the eyesores so as to brighten the day for hundreds of thousands of workers and residents.

Her accomplishments are particularly remarkable considering her 10-year battle against pancreatic cancer. We are also grateful to another leader in the community, Madelyn Wils, for sharing her insights into her friend Lizzie’s inspiring attitude in the face of death — making every moment count for her husband and children, her friends and for Lower Manhattan.

We offer our condolences to her family and friends.

Berger was not the first to move to the Financial District, but she came Downtown a decade or two before most residents and long before it was called “FiDi.” She was often writing and commenting in our sister paper, Downtown Express, about important developments, and we close with some of her words from columns she wrote in 2010: “I moved to Lower Manhattan almost three decades ago. It was the frontier, and only my banker friends knew how to get here, but I loved living Downtown. Fred [her husband] followed the next year. It was an adventure. We loved living off the (street) grid, the huge buildings on the tiny streets, being close to the water and, back in the day when walking across the Brooklyn Bridge was a novel experience, knowing in some powerful, visceral way that Manhattan was an island. We loved the views, how all the subway and bus lines came together and the feeling that we were at the center and beginning of everything… .

“The happy truth is that Lower Manhattan, home to some of the world’s biggest businesses and tallest buildings, is also a little village, a place where neighbors know each other, shopkeepers wave and everyone gets together on the ball fields.”

Alas, our village has lost one of its pioneers and genuine and true leading members in Liz Berger.

letters to the editor REBNY’s disconnect with reality To The Editor: Re “Don’t buy REBNY hype: Landmarking helps affordability” (Andrew Berman, talking point, Aug. 8): One of the statements in REBNY’s recent report was that the Landmarks Preservation Commission bars modifications in historic districts. A remarkable comment. The fellow who wrote that should get out more. If he did, he would see scaffolding, permit signs and construction all over the place. Within 150 feet of my apartment on E. 10th St. in Greenwich Village, for instance, there are five townhouses undergoing modifications, all of them major jobs and all of them approved after review by L.P.C. Somebody should let that fellow at REBNY out of his cage.

Penelope Bareau

REBNY’s hypocrisy is rich To The Editor: Re “Don’t buy REBNY hype: Landmarking helps affordability” (Andrew Berman, talking point, Aug. 8): The Real Estate Board of New York has been consistently wrong about historic preservation since the landmarks law was passed in 1965. In opposing the law, the executive secretary of REBNY was quoted in The New York Times, warning that the law would “seriously impede the modern expansion and progress of the city.” In reality, New York City’s historic districts have been a boon to the city! Thanks to Andrew Berman for making that point, and for exposing the hypocrisy of REBNY’s anti-affordability attack on preservation.

Anthony Wood

A bad combo for landmarks To The Editor: Re “Don’t buy REBNY hype: Landmarking helps affordability” (Andrew Berman, talking point, Aug. 8): Community Boards 1, 2 and 3 have among the greatest number of historic districts in the city, and the Real Estate Board of New York is funneling a small fortune into Margaret Chin’s re-election campaign.

Chin already made a mockery of the landmarks law, when she pushed through legislation at the City Council to help demolish 135 Bowery, an 1817 Federal gem, at the behest of an international bank that has contributed an additional

EVAN FORSCH

$6,000 to her Council campaign.

Were she to be elected, preservation would grind to a halt in Lower Manhattan.

Sean Sweeney

W.V.H. article was wonderful To The Editor: Re “Renters hoping to remain at West Village Houses” (news article, Aug. 1): On behalf of the Renters Union at West Village Houses, I want to thank Clarissa-Jan Lim for her wonderful article about our complicated and tenuous situation. The R.U. board members all felt that the article was well-written and we appreciate that you included many points of view.

There was one point mentioned in the article that we think is inaccurate, though. The article states: “The 2006 agreement did commit the co-op to establishing a subsidy fund to protect low-income residents who did not buy their apartments from overwhelming rent increases.”

As far as we know, this is not true! A subsidy fund was mentioned in one of several “red herrings” offered before the co-op conversion, but it was not part of the final offering plan that was accepted and put into effect in 2006.

Despite this small factual error, we are grateful for the article’s fair and balanced presentation, and for its bringing attention to the plight of the renters remaining here at West Village Houses.

James W. Lister Frania Zins Wendy DeRosa Jessica Tomb Lister and Zins are co-presidents of the board of the West Village Houses Renters Union; DeRosa is the board’s secretary / treasurer; Tomb is the board’s renter / owner liaison

In defense of Tania Grossinger To The Editor: I very much resent your continuous presentation of letters regarding Jerry Tallmer’s “Peeling the Layers of Tania Grossinger’s cocoon” (V Lit, July 25).

You were aware the day after publication that among many of his other mistakes, I had been totally misquoted

Continued on page 14

August 15 - 21, 2013

13

Wounded Weiner just a symptom of society’s isolation talKiNG PoiNt

BY K WEBStER Men are set up to be isolated. Thus they are often plagued by a seemingly endless quest to staunch insecurity and loneliness through some version of sexual contact. Too often, the search winds up landing them in the arena of the sexual exploitation of women. Lots of guys are derailed by the billion-dollar sex industry (or by self-driven intrigues) while seeking the very real human need for touch. Usually it ends in settling for the illusion of contact — a numbing or briefly satisfying relief.

Anthony Weiner got busted for his oddly disconnected effort at connection. Although self-driven, it happened in the context of a highly sexualized society that keeps men manipulated and preoccupied.

Profit seekers deliberately and increasingly entwine sex with the hardwired need for closeness. It sells. It tantalizes. It promises excitement in a seemingly dreary landscape.

But despite the ads, commerce really doesn’t belong in between two people’s liking/loving/ wanting each other. And trying to use the act

His compulsive actions are rightly questioned, yet never about the tragedy they reveal. itself or hints of it to avoid loneliness is a bit of a dodge. In a better world, the use of sex as a weapon of mass distraction would be seen for the aberration it is. Sex can give us back our sense of closeness, the goodness of life and passion. But really, when the sex is good, it almost wasn’t the point.

Men are set up to be “on their own” from very early on. Male babies and boys are held far less than female babies and girls. Boys are mercilessly humiliated if they show caring or the need to be close. It’s brutal, and the accumulating isolation leaves men sitting ducks for anything that looks like an offer of reprieve.

The problem is from long ago and can’t be solved without looking at the conditions that created it. That early loss of connection

can only be grieved. Guys are required to go it alone at a too-tender age and they go it alone ever after. The desperate pull to quench that isolation with a counterfeit fix isn’t easily resisted — “Maybe this one will end this lousy feeling.” And the omnivorous sex industry is always ready to help.

Women are set up from early on to take care of every human problem. Survival of the human race demands that we erase ourselves constantly. We’ve been told it is our only worth. We are vulnerable to giving our all without regard for our own real interests — we don’t take ourselves into account. There is a terrible insecurity in being female in a male-dominated world that men usually fail to fathom.

I have been thinking it would help if men and women could try not to take advantage of one another where we have been “used” by oppressive institutions. Men have one version of sacrifice (cannon fodder in war, working themselves to death) and women have another (centuries of unpaid, disrespected labor as caregivers or as men’s sex tools).

Women resort to trying to make men feel better — by any means. Or, since women have no institutional power, we might try to absorb it through men of influence. We might try to take on male patterns of disconnection to try to avoid the vulnerability wrought by sexism. It’s all pretense, but it can supply that momentary feeling of pseudo-power men are encouraged to indulge in.

Men will do anything to feel even the pretense of closeness (hence prostitution — you don’t believe the woman actually likes you, but “it’s close enough”). And men are deluded thinking they can live with that ruse.

They lose all integrity pretending it doesn’t damage real humans who are female.

We live in a society that gives us very few options for closeness. We grow up in this confusion and then try to find partners. All that past loneliness is supposed to magically vanish — solved by our true love. And when it doesn’t, we despair: We give up on closeness or hunt for someone who will make the bad feelings go away.

So, as Anthony Weiner is targeted as a sexual deviant, a progressive voice is weakened, his family is embarrassed, the exploitation of women goes unchallenged, and men’s very real struggles are belittled. His compulsive actions are rightly questioned, yet never about the tragedy they reveal. Really, in our culture, it just means that men will go further under-

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ground, hiding the places they feel lost and alone: trying to mend a societal problem with private solutions, exploiting women and girls (or boys) in the process.

Don’t get me wrong, some of the jokes have been funny. They give us a chance to laugh at these foibles. But maybe there’s more than letting it be reduced to a sound bite, the butt of jokes or self-righteous punch lines?

It is past time to stop the exploitation of women and girls by men, to stop allowing boys

to grow up so isolated that they self-destruct and / or destroy others, and to stop blaming one another for our struggles around closeness. We need to hold sex as kind of sacred, a chance to challenge what Einstein called the “separation delusion” we’ve been saddled with.

Maybe we need to start finding ways to make it possible for all of us to admit how badly separated we got from one another and try to find ways to make that different.

Photo by Lincoln Anderson

sCeNe

Aminifu Williams, 72, lately from New Jersey, was in Washington Square recently, enjoying the park scene. A jewelery artist, he sported elaborate, self-fashioned arm sleeves of shells, beads and shark teeth, which he called real. “Now that’s what I call style, ” one passerby remarked admiringly. “Peace, brother,” Williams responded, adding, “I get that all the time.” A lifelong activist, Williams said he was formerly a member of a Los Angeles group, Us, doing security for Stokely Carmichael. A sort of Zelig of the civil rights and arts scenes, he recalled nervously dancing with a beautiful, young Angela Davis, enjoying Martin Luther King Jr.’s laid-back humor, meeting a “very polite” Malcolm X, and hanging with jazz musicians Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard and Jimmy Heath. “I never try to please other people,” he said of his glance-inducing gauntlets. “Just go with your instincts, you know? Conventional people never have a lasting impression on history. It’s the people who step outside the box who push society forward.”

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14

August 15 - 21, 2013

Paternity-testing RV rolls out results in one week Continued from page 8 About 10 tests a week are done on the RV — “usually paternity or sibling studies,” he noted. Rosenthal shared some sobering and positive tales of those who have come for answers to, what he called an “an in-thecloset type of the thing.”

For a paternity test, the cost increases by $100 per person.

“The most we’ve had for paternity testing was three,” he said. “And in that instance, all three [children, ages 1, 3, and 5] came up negative for the man who thought he was the dad.”’

In terms of siblings, some people find long-lost ones in their 30s or 40s. There is a recent case involving a woman who believes she was kidnaped when she was a baby.

“Now we’re testing them, and I’ve been talking to them,” Rosenthal said. “The stories we hear are just nuts.”

Another story involves a 24-year-old woman with three daughters and pregnant with a fourth, who thought her father was

in prison for killing her mother when she was just 3 years old. Recently, someone told her that man is not her father, but that a different man in the neighborhood is.

“She was raised by her grandmother, and the kids could have a grandfather down the block,” Rosenthal said.

As opposed to amniocentesis, a prenatal blood test, costing $2,000, also can now reveal paternity, but the blood must be taken in a lab.

A woman who is married and nine weeks pregnant called about her test, saying she had, in fact, slept with two men. The men were different ethnicities, and that made her particularly nervous, Rosenthal said.

The second man was a no-show for the appointment. When it was rescheduled, the woman then said she wanted to test a third candidate.

“The came out of nowhere,” Rosenthal said.

“People say they know who the dad is, but it’s far from perfect,” he said.

Rosenthal noted that men base their assumptions on the children’s looks, while

women think they know the paternity based on whom they were with.

A favorite story of his is about four sisters in Brooklyn who found out they had a fifth in Atlanta. That sister had previously lived in New Jersey, and when her father died, her grandmother handed her an envelope. It turns out her real father had abandoned her and raised her four sisters without her.

Although they don’t look alike, “They were like sisters, talking over each other,” Rosenthal said.

The women now visit each other, but the birth order has been usurped. Rosenthal said that the former eldest in Brooklyn joked that the new sibling, who is the oldest, is really the youngest because they did not know about her.

“The most important thing we do is bring closure to stuff,” he said. “It’s amazing how long people have had these unanswered questions.”

Rosenthal stays in touch with some of his clients. While he was elusive in his answer, he said there has “been interest” from TV in a show on his van.

letters to the editor Continued from page 12 regarding what I never said about Avital D’Lugoff during his interview with me. Never once did I describe her as “troubled” or “in a world of her own” and you knew that.

I e-mailed my reservations about his article to you. Yet you repaid me by embarrassing me in more than one issue of The Villager.

Tania Grossinger

‘Unbearably’ good article!

To The Editor: Re “Poet riffs on life’s ironies in his ‘Divine Comedy’ ” (V Lit, July 25): Lael Hines has done an excellent job in capturing Ron Kolm’s stream-of-consciousness style of thinking and speaking, and provides some useful context for appreciation of “Divine Comedy” — which is, indeed, quite possibly a unique piece of prosody. Well done!

Vivid picture of perseverance

Mike Lindgren

To The Editor: Re “The birth of new Morton St. school is long overdue” (talking point, by Keen Berger, Aug. 8): Blow by blow, step by step, Keen Berger gives a vivid picture of endurance and patience. An accomplishment to be proud of and a wonderful, descriptive article.

Slices of life cut like gems

Mary Jo Robertiello

Another labor of love To The Editor: Re “The birth of new Morton St. school is long overdue” (talking point, by Keen Berger, Aug. 8): Judson Memorial Church is so proud of our member Keen Berger, who gives birth over and over again, this time to a school that will make our whole community proud! Congratulations, Keen. You’ve done it again.

Fertility is your middle name.

Donna Schaper

To The Editor: Re “Poet riffs on life’s ironies in his ‘Divine Comedy’ ” (V Lit, July 25): Great piece. Ron’s a witty, amicable guy that anyone would love to hang out with. He’s also genuinely selfless and super-generous. His poems are dazzling — cut like gems out of the ordinary surreality that surrounds us.

Bravo, Villager, for spotlighting one of our underground literary lions.

A woman walking by with two girls and a man inquired Rosenthal about paternity testing.

“He doesn’t think my son is his. He’s blond,” she said of the boy. Rosenthal patiently answered her questions, and handed the man a paper with information.

He doesn’t get annoyed with people, and is O.K. with their questions 99 percent of the time. People are always snapping shots of the RV. “It never stops making me laugh when people take pictures,” he said. “We’re surrounded by cameras.”

Rosenthal has been pulled over three times this year by police officers to take a picture of the RV. Firefighters on a fire truck did the same thing one day when they all jumped out to take a photo.

As the interview was concluding, a group of Argentinean tourists walked by, then doubled back to ask incredulously, “This is real?”

“It’s the only one in the world,” Rosenthal proudly boasted.

For more information about Health Street and the RV visit health-street.net.

oped a personality. He didn’t know how to love.”

I really wish people would stop repeating ridiculous antiracing statements such as this one. I am sure this greyhound’s adopters are lovely people, but they just believe the false information that an anti-racing group passed along.

If you want to take an anti-race stance, fine. But do some research and base it on truth, not the lies that have been perpetuated ad nauseam! Take a stand, but stand on facts and truth!

Collen Pluta

A very moving photo To The Editor: Re “Bathroom humor in the park” (photo, Aug. 8): In what at times seems to be a humorless world, a little “bathroom” fun can go a long way. Keep up the good work!

Jim Sulen E-mail letters, not longer than 250 words in length, to news@ thevillager.com or fax to 212-229-2790 or mail to The Villager, Letters to the Editor, 515 Canal St., Suite 1C, NY, NY 10013.

Please include phone number for confirmation purposes. The Villager reserves the right to edit letters for space, grammar, clarity and libel. The Villager does not publish anonymous letters.

Jeff Wright

Rap on greyhound racers ridiculous To The Editor: Re “A racing school dropout, Lancer loves his new life” (Pet Set, Aug. 8): The article states: “As racers, they don’t have a relationship with a human, and over the past three years he’s devel-

Sound Off! Write a Letter to the Editor!

August 15 - 21, 2013

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Truck is getting mileage out of Weiner sext scandal A marketing company is on a roll with a truck poking fun at Anthony Weiner’s serial sexting issues. The company — which, for a fee, encases one or both of its two trucks in plastic wrap displaying commercial advertisers’ messages — has been rolling this vehicle out in Union Square lately to showcase its services.

Representatives say the “Weiner Truck,” which has been giving out free wieners, as in, hot dogs, has been getting a rise out of passersby. Currently, the company’s other truck is sheathed in Poland Spring advertising.

August 15 - 21, 2013

17

Photos by Lincoln Anderson

Call her a swinger, but it’s just the way she hangs Ivy Haldeman hung out in a hammock on Friday in the new 12 x 12 Project at First Street Green park, at Houston St. and Second Ave. The project takes place in a perfectly square wooden structure 12 feet wide, tall and long. A Cooper Union graduate living in East Williamsburg, Haldeman set up her installation last Thursday and it closed Sunday. She was the first of three artists who will get to design the space during the month of August. Her exhibit included real sod she brought in for the floor, audio loops of birds chirping, photos of ancient sculptures and artifacts from the Met that she darkened with shadows through Photoshop — and two hammocks. The structure was open for anyone to come in and enjoy and pretty much do whatever they wanted. “I haven’t given it a title,” she said on Friday. “The theme of this is sleeping as a form of consciousness. I wanted to make a place to breathe, relax — maybe, like, harmonize a little bit.” On second thought, she said, “You know what I call this? ‘We’re Going To Sleep Our Way to Eco-Revelation.’ ” She was reading Annie Dillard’s “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,” which she said was a perfect fit for the project.

18

August 15 - 21, 2013

Arch deluxe: Conservation team does a monumental job

Photos courtesy the Parks Department

Above left, from left, conservation apprentices Chad Shores, Molly Moser, David Espinosa and Gerrit Albertson. Above right, Christine Djuric and Molly Moser raked mortar joints on the arch’s parapet.

The Parks Department’s Citywide Monuments Conservation team spent the month of July doing a preservation project at the Washington Square Arch.

The team conducted assessments of the 1895 Stanford White-designed monument’s preservation, and did some preventative care as part of the world-famous

landmark’s stewardship. logical growth. The arch’s upper stories Working on two 80-foot lifts, the con- have been cleaned, and the parapet’s servators examined all masonry, decora- mortar joints repointed. Ambient nighttive and sculptural stonework, and selec- lights attached to the moldings are being tively tested the Tuckahoe marble. replaced, and new bird netting is being The lower sculptures of Washington installed at the attic story. (as commander in chief and as states-T:9.75” The conservation team took inspiration man) have been gently cleaned of bio- from an inscription on the arch’s south

parapet bearing Washington’s words at the Constitutional Convention: “Let us raise a standard to which the wise and the honest can repair.”

A public-private partnership, Parks’ Citywide Monuments Conservation Program provides hands-on training to advanced conservation students.

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August 15 - 21, 2013

19

East Village raises $18,000 for florist hit by driver Continued from page 1 gave live on E. Fourth St. and in the East Village and Downtown area. But a couple of people from as far away as Australia also gave — one of the ID’s said, “A Villager reader from Australia,” according to Marlow.

Ali worked for 22 years at East Village Farm deli, at Second Ave. and Fourth St., doing everything from making freshsqueezed juices and salads to manning the flower stand.

However, his daily work routine — and his life — were shattered early on the morning of June 19. That’s when Shaun Martin, 32, a Queens resident, came speeding and swerving down Second Ave. in a white Nissan, reportedly at around 80 miles per hour, lost control and went flying up onto the sidewalk. Ali was one of three of the deli’s workers to be injured, and was the most seriously hurt.

Martin was allegedly high on PCP and methamphetamine, according to Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance. A grand jury indicted Martin last month on charges including aggravated vehicular assault and driving while impaired.

Last Friday, Marlow handed over the check to Islam — who lives nearby on E. Fourth St. with his mother — inside the Starbucks on First Ave. at E. Third St. The C.B. 3 member invited The Villager along to cover the story, saying he wanted to give the newspaper the exclusive.

Islam’s father is still recovering, and is currently at the Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation in West Orange, N.J. It’s the same top rehab facility where “Superman” actor Christopher Reeve was treated after injuring his spine in a horse-riding accident, and also where Marlow’s own father was treated after he — just like Ali — was critically injured by an intoxicated driver in 1995.

Islam, who goes by the nickname “Rinku,” said his father is conscious, and will open his eyes if someone is in the room and talking to him. He can turn his head and point to people with his right arm, and can raise his right leg. But his left leg and ankle are injured, and he’s not moving that leg or his left arm, either.

He is also intubated — periodically put on a ventilator to help him breathe — and because the tube crosses over his vocal chords, he cannot currently talk.

In addition, as a result of brain injury suffered from the force of the impact, he

Photo by Lincoln Anderson

Chad Marlow, rear, presented a check with the crowdsourcing funds to Akkas Ali’s son Rukanul Islam last Friday.

has completely lost his memory, and currently doesn’t even recognize his own family members.

Describing how doctors explained the brain injury, Islam said, “They gave the example of eggs — when you shake the egg. … He lost his whole memory. They don’t want to give a guarantee. They’re not 100 percent sure if he’ll get his memory back.”

Islam is the youngest of five children, four brothers and a sister. However, he said, they recognize that it’s their father’s life partner, their mother, who is most affected by his situation.

“We’re just worrying about my mom,” Islam said.

Nevertheless, Islam said of his father, “His condition is getting better.”

Marlow encouragingly said that the brain is a funny thing, and that it can suddenly and unexpectedly snap back after a traumatic injury. For example, after his own father suffered brain injury after being struck by a drunk driver, his dad at one point had a brief personality change and began cursing, which he had never done before. But then, just as suddenly, he stopped doing it.

However, Marlow’s dad never fully recovered from his injuries, and it was devastating for the entire family.

Islam said it’s not known when his dad will be released from the rehab facility.

But Marlow said, again speaking from the experience of having his father go through a similar recovery, that even after Ali comes home, he’ll need to continue rehabbing for some while.

Among the many who gave funds to the campaign for Ali was Veselka restaurant, which made one of the biggest contributions at $500. The Lower Eastside Girls Club gave $100. Bob Holman of the Bowery Poetry Club also gave, with the encouraging message posted on the GiveForward site, “Strength.” Activist and journalist Bill Weinberg, who leads tours for the new MoRUS museum on Avenue C, donated. Also giving was State Democratic Committeewoman Rachel Lavine, who lives in the West Village. (Lavine’s partner is attorney Roberta Kaplan, who represented Edie Windsor in the recent historic Supreme Court case overturning the Defense of Marriage Act.) “I was kind of the catalyst for this thing,”

Marlow said. “But I was one of 290 who gave. At the end of the day, a bit of the money is from me, just a bit. [Marlow gave $100.] I’m very grateful for having this opportunity to help. It’s been a bit of a healing experience for me. I walked past [the site of the crash], and it was all I could think about. I was really gratified that I could play a role. But it was really the East Village that did this.

“There were people of the East Village that have limited ability to pay, that don’t have bank accounts or credit,” Marlow added, “that literally came to my building and gave me $5 and $10 bills.”

Islam works at Soho House in the Meatpacking District as a food runner, taking food from the kitchen to the servers.

He attended P.S. 19. His family immigrated from Sylhet, Bangladesh’s second largest city, settling in the East Village, where there was a sizable Bangladeshi community. Due to the economy, the size of that community has waned a bit in recent years, he said.

The money, he said, will go to help his mother. Meanwhile, his father’s insurance is paying for his medical care.

Asked what he’d like to see happen to the driver who so severely harmed his dad, nearly killing him, Islam didn’t express a desire for extreme vengeance.

“He’s in jail right now. But...,” he said, and paused, “...I don’t know if I have anything to say. He was drunk and driving. His mind was on drugs.”

“I feel the same,” added Marlow, recalling his feelings about the driver who injured his own father. “It’s not going to make things better, whatever happens to the guy.

It doesn’t matter. If this guy going to jail for 20 years could have helped my father...,” he said, his voice trailing off.

Asked if he had anything to say to the people who funded the crowdsourcing campaign for his dad, Islam said, “I want to tell the people that care about us and are fans of my father, that we are happy. They really care. So we are very happy. I want to say thanks to everybody.”

He shook hands with Marlow, then embraced him in a hug.

“I’m glad I could help,” said Marlow.

20

August 15 - 21, 2013

Don’t take a short-term view of a long-term problem CLAYTON

By Clayton Patterson “The latest from LES Dwellers (@ LESdwellers). Our mission is to restore community with focus on livability, sustainability, balanced economic development… . “[Recently], a high-profile Soho House supporter, LES documentarian Clayton Patterson, softened his endorsement of the club somewhat. In his column in The Villager [“Soho House has my support, but won’t get Acker Awards,” May 16], Patterson wrote that Soho House is the ‘lesser of what could be so much worse.’

By this, he means that the building could become a boisterous nightclub or restaurant masquerading as nightclub, like so many other Lower East Side nightlife venues.”

If LES Dwellers is going to speak on my behalf, they should talk to me. I am a neighbor. No, I have not softened my opinion on SoHo House. I still believe it is the lesser of what it could be. And to be clear, I have no connection to Soho House. I am not, nor have I ever been a member, nor am I interested in being a member.

In my opinion, the building, as it stands, is not all that functional as a commercial piece of property. I can see it working for a Soho House private club. Soho House is different from the other developers in the ’hood. They are after only one piece of property. The other developers — including some international corporations — are taking over blocks, rows of tenements, doing land grabs. And that is another of my fears if Soho House sold its Ludlow St. building to a developer.

Normally, the first floor is for a commercial business. But this building is not set up for that. It was a funeral parlor. To open up the first floor for a storefront would mean destroying the facade. If lucky, maybe a bluechip gallery would buy the space.

I have gotten the ear of a group called Friends of the Lower East Side. F.L.S. is intent on saving Lower East Side architecture by working with leaders like Andrew Berman of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, and groups like the East Village Community Coalition, to save notable buildings by securing landmark status. F.L.S. has been in negotiations with Soho House about the feasibility of the building being given landmark status. It seems they are leaning toward doing this.

If the building becomes a landmark, it will be, as far as I know, the only landmarked building on the L.E.S. between Houston and Delancey Sts. If we want to save the ’hood, then saving a little architecture is important.

The economic balance is gone.

Gentrification is moving forward at an accelerated rate. Low-income people are being forced out. Soon, within two blocks of 137 Ludlow St., the Soho House building, there will be two more zoning-busting luxury hotels, on top of the already-existing two expensive hotels, the high-rent Ludlow apartments, and the newly renovated mar-

ket-rate tenements sharing the same block.

Where is the economic balance?

What about all the drunks? the opponents ask. In my quest to find out what Soho House is about, after visiting and spending time in the Soho House in the Meatpacking District, I see the Soho House drunks as closer to Stanton Social Club, Sons of Essex, Beauty and Essex. Most of the drunks are older, and a little more mature. Drunk, yes.

Stupid, not so much. And it is a private club, so will not have the lines waiting to get in, or people hanging on the street. At least that was not the case around the Meatpacking Soho House.

Another reason I am supportive of Soho House is I have a bit more of a long-term view, which is different from LES Dwellers.

My prediction is, with the continual influx of massive amounts of development money into this part of the L.E.S., the noisy, youthoriented bars — the ones that are respon-

The Soho House drunks are closer to Stanton Social Club, Sons of Essex, Beauty and Essex — older, a little more mature.

Drunk, yes. Stupid, not so much. sible for the name Hell Square — will be priced out. Just take, for example, the recent closings of Max Fish, Motor City, St. Jerome, White Rabbit, and rumor has it that Lolita on Broome St. will close.

And all of the quality-of-life violations LES Dwellers speak of, with the police’s help, will be quashed with the higher standard of living in the ’hood. This follows the pattern of other gentrified communities — Greenwich Village, Soho, Tribecca, the Bowery, and the after-dark streetlife in the northern end of the West Village.

Let’s not forget, in order to turn our area into an Entertainment Zone, it did not take long for the cops to end the drug trade that used to be so prevalent on every block of the ’hood. Like a miracle, with all the new money flowing into the ’hood, the decadesold street drug trade ended in a few months.

The State Liquor Authority will take a couple of months to decide if Soho House will be granted a liquor license. Last week, LES Dwellers staged a protest at the S.L.A., demanding that it not approve the license.

However, instead of just fighting with Soho House, in the interim, I would suggest making some defensive moves. I’m not saying drop the protest — if that is in your heart, then do it — but be prepared. Find a pro bono lawyer, develop a list of demands, then see what you can negotiate. By engaging in

Photo by Clayton Patterson

Closing night at Max Fish on Ludlow St. at the end of last month.

negotiations with them, you learn more about who they are, and you can help set rules.

Make a list of demands: no roof usage, soundproofing the walls, some community usage, landmark status and so on. Then write up an agreement. The negotiations have to be with Nicholas Jones, Soho House’s owner, and not Rachel White or Pierre Antoine Dourneau, the underlings. Go to the top. Period.

Instead of depending on the politicians who have sold you out, be a player at the table, as well as on the street. You have time to develop a more meaningful role, and to get deeper into the struggle. If the negotiations turn out to be pointless, then you still have the protest going on.

In the bad old days when drugs controlled the streets, an individual had a way of protecting oneself. If you were local and known in the ’hood, since it was a neighborhood business, the dealers seldom bothered you. It was possible to secure your apartment from robbers. Gates on the windows, triple locks on doors and so on. The drug sales were illegal. People in the trade went to jail. I see this tsunami of new money gentrifying the neighborhood as much more destructive to the community, and more deadly to our culture and local businesses than drugs ever were.

The big-money people can go around the rules, break the laws and do whatever they want. Our billionaire mayor overturned the will of the people and bought a third term.

At 47 E. Third St., the Economakis family legally cleared out all 15 long-term tenants in the doublewide, five-story tenement, so they could have a single-family mansion. On the same block, a developer with total disregard for the zoning laws, put up a building that was taller than the surrounding buildings and out of context with surrounding buildings.

Instead of having to take down the illegal extra height, the company was able to fish until they got a dorm tenant and conformed with the law. Dorms can build higher.

What happened to 88-year-old Taylor Mead was, if not criminal, then certainly cruel and inhuman treatment of a legal tenant. He died soon after he was moved out. How were the developers able to clear the tenants out of so many apartments on Ludlow St.? Makes one wonder where the politicians are. Again, my advice is be proactive: Do not just depend on the politicians.

Just take Ludlow, between Houston and Delancey Sts., from the 1990s till today, as an example of the purging of businesses in this area. Yavarkovski paper business, which opened in 1898, closed in 2007. Dickers party supplies, Spitzers Corner, Barrittos flooring, Bunny’s, Zito, Amy Downs Hats, Mary Adams The Dress, 555 Soul, the Pink Pony, Motor City, Earth Matters, Los Venus, Dare Devil Tattoo, the fortune teller, the laundromat, the church, Torch, Le Pere Pinard, Collective:Unconscious, Lost Shoe, the original Pianos, Piano’s Theater, Todo Con Nada and so on. All gone. How could this happen?

Yes, my neighbors, it is not that I want to see Soho House come here. I wish none of it was here. I prefer the old ’hood. With today’s cost of living, I could never come to New York City and do what I did again. Very few of us could. My world is gone.

But I am still here and I do not intend to be pushed out. If I leave, it will be on my terms. Again, if I was fighting Soho House, I would expand my defense. And if Soho House sells its Ludlow building, then I would prepare for what comes after. The struggle never ends.

It’s the money that keeps pouring in that is making all of us unsafe. The rules and laws favor the money and trump tenants’ rights.

LES Dwellers, I am not your enemy; I am not pleased at how much of our community has been destroyed by gentrification. To suggest that somehow I am a supporter of the Entertainment Zone is lunacy.

August 15 - 21, 2013

21

villager arts & entertainment Bullies, Body Issues and Black Pride FringeHIGH speaks to teens, and lets them talk back

Photo by Chris Gill

Photo by Dixie Sheridan

Amontaine Aurore navigates the 1970s, in “Free Desiree.”

KINEMATIC Dance Theater contemplates perfect body aesthetics — and insects.

BY SCOTT STIFFLER With back to school season upon us, it’s as good a time as any for high school students to lay off those “Walking Dead” marathons and start acclimating themselves to activities more suited for brain stimulation than digestion. But cerebral doesn’t have to be boring — and it certainly doesn’t have to take place within the confines a TV set’s two-dimensional borders. As luck would have it, North America’s largest multi-arts festival offers the chance to get out of the house and broaden one’s horizons without having to give up air conditioning.

FringeHIGH is a collection of boundary-stretching plays (drawn from the general roster of FringeNYC shows) that will resonate with young adults. Topics include confronting school violence, claiming your own identity, challenging sexual labels and stereotypes and negotiating the twists and turns of love.

One performance of each FringeHIGH show will have a post-performance TalkBack — your chance to discuss the show with members of the cast or creative team. Some of the Talk-Back opportunities have already happened by now, but we’ve noted those occurring after this paper’s run date.

Tickets ($15 in advance, $18 at the

TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA: A SWASHBUCKLING COMEDY

door) can be purchased online (fringenyc. com), by phone (866-468-7619) or in person at FringeCENTRAL (27 Second Ave., btw. First & Second Sts., open 12-8pm daily). Check out fringenyc.org for more information on all 185 FringeNYC shows.

The festival runs through Aug. 25.

BULLY

Fresh from its run at the Capital Fringe Festival in DC, Lee J. Kaplan’s multi-character solo show takes its inspiration from his sixth-grade journal entries — and takes the notion of confronting your tormenters to a highly theatrical, appropriately metaphorical, extreme. In an effort to rise above the damage inflicted by those who subjected him to unrelenting attacks, Kaplan calls his past and present-day bullies into the boxing ring. Less a revenge fantasy than a journey to peace of mind and empowerment, “Bully” revisits the pivotal moments, and people, in Kaplan’s life — allowing him to find out what it takes to grow up and deal with the demons of the past.

Wed., Aug. 14 at 6pm (followed by a Talk-Back), Fri., Aug. 16 at 2:30pm, Sun., Aug. 18 at 1:45pm. At The Steve & Marie Sgouros Theatre (115 MacDougal St., btw.

W. Third & Bleecker Sts.).

Queens-based director and choreographer Michael Hagins took the text from one of Shakespeare’s earliest plays, filled in some missing plot holes and then added swordfights, crazy chase scenes and random violence — while, he says, managing to keep the integrity of the language and the powerful theme of love to conquer all.

Thurs., Aug. 22 at 7pm and Sat., Aug. 24 at 2:15pm (followed by a Talk-Back).

At CSV Flamboyan (107 Suffolk St., btw.

Rivington & Delancey Sts.).

FREE DESIREE

A slammin’ Seattle funk soundtrack accompanies the exploits of Desiree and Shauna — two rebellious 1970s sisters growing up in a blue collar suburb, searching for their identities amidst cultural revolution.

That means navigating Black pride, the Funky Chicken and a personal challenge. Desiree is trying to make the move from geek-girl to revolutionary. Meanwhile, Shauna is tempted to split from life as a professional cheerleader when Hollywood comes calling. Will Shauna become Blaxploitation star Pam Grier’s successor, and will Desiree get it together and resolve the crisis at her high school?

Thurs., 8/15 at 7:45pm, Sun., 8/18 at

9:15pm, Thurs., 8/22 at 3pm & Sat., 8/24 at 7:15pm. At Jimmy’s No. 43 (43 E. Seventh St., btw. Second & Third Aves.). For more info, visit tenauras.com.

KINEMATIK

Choreographed by Svea Schneider, this two-part performance from KINEMATIK Dance Theater begins with a comedic and surreal comment on the representation of women in popular culture.

“Perfect Prototype” explores our mediasaturated society’s obsession with perfect body aesthetics, celebrity worship and plastic surgery. Six “fierce female” dancers combine their own limbs with those of display mannequins, to challenges existing notions about the fragmentation of beauty. The second dance piece, “Insekta,” was created in collaboration with technology artist Cheng-I-Wang. It fuses the movement vocabulary of breakdance, house and modern dance with motion detection projections in order to explore the bustling world of beetles, spiders, ants and fireflies.

Sat., 8/17 at noon, Sat., 8/24 at 9:30pm & Sun., 8/25 at 1:45pm (followed by a Talk-Back). At The Theater at the 14th Street Y (344 E. 14th St., at First Ave.). Visit kinematikdance.com.

22

August 15 - 21, 2013

A story emerges through careful subtraction Edoga’s ‘Beyond’ is nuanced and complex FringeNYC review

BY SERGEI BURBANK We are forever tweaking the checklist that determines how parents provide spotless childhoods in order to create perfectly well-adjusted adults. While opinions continue to change on how to feed, dress and otherwise protect children against this dangerous world, a constant ingredient is a loving and trusting relationship between parent and offspring. Yet even this basic ingredient is more complex and elusive than it first appears.

“A Step Beyond the Rain,” written and performed by Miata Edoga, unfolds in the form of short vignettes as three women — a mother and her two daughters — reconcile themselves to one daughter’s severe illness and the reverberations that illness has across all of their lives. As we are brought deeper and deeper into each character’s inner world, a complex portrait emerges, and even seemingly straightforward questions have nuanced answers. Is a parent’s role to swaddle a child in unconditional love, or must a parent hold a child to strenuous high

Photo by Adam Martin

Writer and performer Miata Edoga bravely examines why no one can be crueler than one’s own flesh and blood.

All around Downtown:

FringeNYC venues VENUES

Venue #1 Teatro SEA 107 Suffolk St., btw. Rivington & Delancey Sts. Venue #2 CSV Flamboyan 107 Suffolk St., btw. Rivington & Delancey Sts. Venue #3 CSV Kabayitos 107 Suffolk St., btw. Rivington & Delancey Sts. Venue #4 Teatro LATEA 107 Suffolk St., btw. Rivington & Delancey Sts. Venue #5 The Celebration Of Whimsy 21 Clinton St., btw. Houston & Stanton Sts. Venue #6 Connelly Theater 220 E. Fourth St., btw. Aves. A & B Venue #7 Theatre 80 80 St. Marks Place, btw. First & Second Aves.

Venue #8 The Theater at the 14th Street Y 344 E. 14th St., at First Ave. Venue #9 Jimmy’s No. 43 43 E. Seventh St., btw. Second & Third Aves.

Venue #10 The Kraine Theater 85 E. Fourth St., btw. Bowery & Second Ave. Venue #11 Teatro Circulo 64 E. Fourth St., btw. Bowery & Second Ave.

Venue #12 The Ellen Stewart Theatre at La MaMa 66-68 E. Fourth St., btw. Bowery & Second Ave. Venue #13 SubCulture 45 Bleecker St., downstairs, btw. Bleecker & Lafayette Sts. Venue #14 The Lynn Redgrave Theater 45 Bleecker St., at Lafayette St. Venue #15 The White Box at 440 Studios 440 Lafayette St, 3rd Floor, btw. Astor Place & E. Fourth St. Venue #16 Robert Moss Theater at 440 Studios 440 Lafayette St., 3rd floor, btw. Astor Place & E. Fourth St. Venue #17 The Players Theatre 115 MacDougal St., btw. W. Third & Bleecker Sts. Venue #18 The Steve & Marie Sgouros Theatre 115 MacDougal St., 3rd floor, btw. W. Third & Bleecker Sts. FringeAl FRESCO First St. Green Cultural Park, at 33 E. First St., corner of Houston St. & Second Ave. FringeCENTRAL 27 Second Ave., btw. First & Second Sts., open 12-8pm daily

TICKETS

$15 in advance, $18 at the door Visit fringenyc.org, call 866-468-7619

standards in order to prepare them for an unforgiving world?

Edoga’s portrait of a childhood home steeped in fear of a mother who demands a strict adherence to work and achievement, and a demanding near-invalid sister broadens beyond an initial catalog of wrongs visited upon the healthy daughter. As she delves into the minds and souls of each member of this triangle, she bravely examines exactly why no one can be crueler than one’s own flesh and blood.

The script, quite astutely, never attempts a full reconciliation between these women, as Edoga’s purpose is far more subtle: she broadens the frame of the hard-as-tacks mother’s portrayal just enough to allow a glimpse into the source of that resolve, complicating the portrait without fundamentally changing it (or its consequences).

We may not agree with her actions, but we understand them far better. The audience shares a parallel journey to her daughter’s — not far enough to forget or forgive, but perhaps enough to move forward. This is a story that emerges through careful subtraction. Like the characters themselves, we learn more by what is not said than what is.

One-person shows often devolve into a showcase of a given performer’s dexterity, prioritizing virtuosity over story. But under the able direction of Ashley Crow, this production veers away from strong delineation between characters, and presents a largely consistent tone. The point here is not to exhibit Edoga’s versatility as a performer, but rather to examine the tension between three powerfully driven women. A positive consequence is the lack of competition between the text and performer. The sparse set, sound design and performance all work towards a shared goal to serve the text. This approach does have its shortcomings, as the plot unfolds without much emotional differentiation. For fraught scenes of despair in a hospital, this works.

It is less successful for moments which are described as being experienced with near giddiness, but are communicated with a sense of barely suppressed rage.

This restraint extends to all aspects of the overall production design. David Forest’s musical compositions help maintain a sense of continuity as the short scenes follow one upon the other, but otherwise sound is used only selectively (albeit effectively) to convey a sense of place. We are otherwise closely tied to this room and this woman as she struggles with her pain, her loss, and her hopes.

At The Steve & Marie Sgouros Theatre (115 MacDougal St., 3rd floor, btw. W. Third & Bleecker Sts.). Fri., 8/16 at 6pm, Wed., 8/21 at 3:45pm & Sat., 8/24 at 4:15pm. Tickets: $15 in advance, $18 at the door. Call 866-468-7619 or visit fringenyc.org. Also visit astepbeyondtherain. com. Note: This review first appeared on nytheatre.com (founded by Martin Denton, this paper’s Downtown theatre columnist).

August 15 - 21, 2013

23

In Penn Station, connections missed & made Gasps trump guffaws on ‘Track Twelve’ FringeNYC review

BY SCOTT STIFFLER Packed like sardines into rows that allowed little if any room between chairs, a sold-out audience waiting to see “Track Twelve” marked time by getting to know the person next to them.

Countless niceties were exchanged after knocking knees or invading a neighbor’s personal space, as a new arrival squeezed by in order to reach that one spare seat at the end of the row.

When you’re in close quarters with a bunch of strangers, with nothing to do but play the waiting game, you either shut down or open up.

Fortunately, for this audience, the characters in “Track Twelve” are a chatty, if somewhat contentious bunch — and they all have a story to tell and a life-altering decision to make. That they do so in consistently believable and universally recognizable ways is what makes this tight, fourperson play soar above and beyond the story arc set in motion by its familiar sitcom premise.

A slight variation on getting locked overnight in a bank vault (or a storage locker or a meat freezer), “Track Twelve” strands its characters in Penn Station during a blizzard. Secrets will be revealed, old wounds will be reopened and new alliances will be formed.

As the action (such as it is) begins, everybody’s just found out they’re going nowhere for the foreseeable future. A series of announce-

ments puts the kibosh on regional trains (delayed due to frozen tracks) and all New Jersey lines (signal problems).

“Making a connection?”

“No, unfortunately.”

That’s the first exchange between corporate honcho Mike (Charlie Gorrilla) and free spirit Jenny (Keelie A. Sheridan). As opening lines go, it wasn’t very encouraging. Quickly followed by a casual pop culture reference, I fully expected this to be the general tone of things to come.

Not to worry. Whether that metaphor alert was a clever bluff or an early misstep, playwright Emily Comisar soon established herself as a confident grand designer of complex dynamics and unexpected narrative choices.

It turns out Jenny is a wedding photographer, en route to her mother’s nuptials (for which she’s not been invited to serve as a bridesmaid). She’s soon joined by her older, more successful yet socially awkward brother Simon (Leo Goodman). On his way to a meeting that could make or break the business he’s poured his life into, Mike’s traveling companion is preoccupied colleague Lindsay (Sarah Sanders), with whom he has a fragile professional and personal relationship.

Everybody is hiding vital information from their significant other — and as such, the play’s core appeal flows from watching how Comisar develops the bonds between Jenny and Mike, Lindsay and Simon — so that by the time they

Photo by Matthew Reber

Mike (Charlie Gorrilla) and Jenny (Keelie A. Sheridan) bond over a beer.

actually board their train (and end up in adjoined seats), each freshly minted confidant knows something the old friend is about to find out.

Four deeply affecting and nuanced performances ground the unexpected turn of events, as the characters react to their new reality in alternately funny, tragic, admirable and maddening ways. A series of high-stakes conflicts earn their share of laughs — but in addition to that barometer of approval (which every playwright and actor craves), the audience I saw “Track Twelve” with greeted several plot twists with gasps — pure signs of validation that a three-dimensional portrayal has been realized

by the actors who play the parts and the writer who pulls the strings. The knee-jerk reaction of an inhaled breath, upon recognizing something on the stage we’ve seen in ourselves, is the final destination that many plays set out to reach, but few ever arrive at. “Track Twelve” makes that trip, time and time again.

At Teatro Circulo (64 E. Fourth St., btw.

Bowery & Second Ave.). Thurs., 8/15 at 8:45pm, Sun., 8/18 at 8:45pm, Wed., 8/21 at 5pm & Fri., 8/23 at 2pm. Tickets: $15 in advance, $18 at the door. Call 866-468-7619 or visit fringenyc.org.

Bard meets Bram ‘Nightmare Dream’ is a bloody good romp FringeNYC review

BY MAEVE GATELY Equal parts literary fusion and dramatized gothic hilarity, “The Nightmare ‘Dream’ ” presents a darkly comedic take on both “Dracula” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

Making good on its vow to deliver a “puckishly ‘biting’ woodland mashup where no ruffled neck is safe,” the Bloody Shakespeare Company has crafted a clever, fast-paced hybrid whose dialogue is composed entirely of lines from the two original texts — so that Shakespeare aficionados and vampire fans alike will find themselves mouthing the words to certain familiar scenes, only to be derailed at the next line. It’s an experience that proves both satisfying and slightly off-putting.

In a plotline that draws heavily from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” four lovers find themselves in a darkened wood on the eve of St. George’s Day (a time when, according to Stoker, “all evil things in the world have full sway”).

When Titania and Oberon, the fairy king and queen who have been transformed into dark rulers of the vampire underworld, begin to vie for the alliance of the mortals, what begins

Photo by Neal J. Freeman

They did the mash: “The Nightmare Dream” deftly fuses horror and farce.

as a love story devolves into an orgy of hissing and biting necks.

Meanwhile, Renfield, the asylum patient from “Dracula” who has a dark obsession

with immortality and a penchant for devouring insects and rodents, jaunts across the stage in leaps and bounds, quoting lines from Shakespeare’s Puck as the two doctors studying

his condition shout out hilariously overblown diagnoses accompanied by thunderclap sound effects. The characters stare out into the audience at exactly the right moments, self-referential and lightly aware of their own ridicule, so that every dramatic moment becomes a point of raucous laughter for the onlookers.

Above all, the production is light and amusing, rife with literary allusions and playful asides that keep the audience from attempting to take its premise too seriously. By the last scene, neither plot from the two source texts remains, and the audience is left amused and slightly confused as the lights snap on to Oberon’s tacit recital of Puck’s closing monologue.

Profound, the play is not. But it certainly makes the best of a quirky and unorthodox pairing.

And with a total runtime that clocks in at under an hour, you can get your dose of Elizabethan neck biting, then head to the next Fringe play!

At The Theater at the 14th Street Y (344 E. 14th St., btw. First & Second Aves.). Thurs., 8/15 at 9:30pm, Fri., 8/16 at 3:45pm & Sun., 8/18 at 4:15pm. Tickets: $15 in advance, $18 at the door. Call 866-468-7619 or visit fringenyc.org.

24

August 15 - 21, 2013

Get the sense you’ve done time in Texas Lone show scores a considerable success for its star FringeNYC review

BY MARtIN DENtON I’ve only spent about 24 hours of my life in Texas, and just about all of them were spent inside a hotel or at the DFW airport. But after spending just one hour with playwright/actor Molly Montgomery at her vivid and colorful solo show “Snakes I Have Known,” I feel as though I’ve done a good deal of time in the Lone Star State.

“Snakes” premiered last fall at United Solo, where it was chosen by curator Omar Sangare for inclusion in Indie Theater Now’s collection of outstanding solo scripts from that edition of the festival. Now, Montgomery and her director Jim Shankman have brought the show to FringeNYC — in the snug and intimate space at Jimmy’s No. 43, where I think it will score a considerable success for its creator.

Montgomery is a lovely young woman with blonde hair and a lively, expressive face. The show is a series of vignettes about how she grew up in and eventually got out of Texas, a place that is apparently riddled with snakes of both the reptilian and human kind. The show feels more like a succession of (possibly tall) bar tales than the angsty confessional that too many one-woman shows turn out to be. It certainly gives us a gutsy and determined young heroine in Molly, who accompanies her dad and two older brothers on a hunting trip when she’s just 11 years old, and later runs off alone to the Big Apple at the age of 16.

Montgomery doesn’t shy away from stuff that might distance us from her, like the fact that her family is kind of colossally rich or that she has done her share of stupid teenage things such as drinking four blue Jello shooters in rapid succession at a friend’s housewarming party.

She’s got a charming and sunny stage presence and she delivers all the stories about herself and her family, loaded with warts (and occasional venom), with such simplicity and matter-of-factness that whatever immaturity or unpleasantness

Photo by Rachael Grace Patten

Molly Montgomery takes aim, and hits her mark.

might emerge from the telling doesn’t stick to the assured and confident young woman we see before us. It’s actually a pretty neat accomplishment.

I don’t want to give too much of the details of “Snakes” away, but I will sketch a basic outline for you. The story begins with Molly’s first encounter with snakes, at just six months, and moves through her childhood and teenage years. We meet her parents, her Italian NYC boyfriend Anthony, a lecherous doctor and a biblethumping nurse at the local hospital and, most memorably, Molly’s grandmother — a formidable old girl who is called “Cuckoo”

by her family (for good reason!).

We learn about Molly’s first abortive move to New York City and about the momentous Thanksgiving celebration that turned her life around.

Montgomery portrays all these characters (and her younger selves) with great aplomb. The staging is simple, with occasional costume changes to punctuate the scenes and just one principal prop — a big, lighted sign bearing the word “Texas” that Montgomery switches on and off to help us keep track of where she is at each particular moment in the show.

“Snakes I Have Known” may not be for

everyone, but it serves as an exciting introduction to a smart young writer/performer who we will likely hear much more from in the future.

At Jimmy’s No. 43 (43 E. Seventh St., btw. Second & Third Aves.). Thurs., 8/15 at 7pm, Sat., 8/17 at 7:15pm, Sun., 8/18 at noon, Thurs., 8/22 at 9:15pm & Fri., 8/23 at 5pm. Tickets: $15 in advance, $18 at the door. Call 866-468-7619 or visit fringenyc.org. Note: This review first appeared on nytheatre.com (founded by Martin Denton, this paper’s Downtown theatre columnist).

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The Next Five Shows are: Fri, August 16th - 6:30pm - Coney Island Boardwalk at W. 10th St., Brooklyn Sat, August 17th - 2pm - Wise Towers, W. 90th St bet. Columbus & Amsterdam, Manhattan Sun, August 18th - 2pm - Central Park Bandshell, 72nd Street Crosswalk, Manhattan Sat, August 24th - 2pm - Sunset Park, 6th Avenue & 44th Street, Brooklyn Sun, August 25th - 2pm - Travers Park, 34th Ave & 78th St., Jackson Heights, Queens TNC’s Programs are funded in part by the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts

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TAP x BALLET music

dance

Weekly music and dance instruction, for all ages Beginner Group Classes and Individual or and levels, after school and on Saturdays.

Partner Lessons.

Third Street Preschool full- and half-day programs. Toddler/Baby & Me Music, Dance and Movement classes.

B r i n g i n g

t h e

A r t s

Ensemble activities such as jazz and rock bands, choirs, orchestras, dance, chamber music and more!

t o

L i f e

s i n c e

1 8 9 4

August 15 - 21, 2013

25

Tune in, turn up, drop beats Massive moombahton and dark disco in Brooklyn and Manhattan

BY VONYX (soundcloud.com/mikawvawn) Club promoting is a slimy business. It’s easy to get ripped off, chewed up and spat out by promotion companies trying to look cool and make an extra dollar. Yet, when you’re young, you have no idea how the clubbing business works. This is how I got involved in DC’s clubbing scene.

My first club experience was when I was 17. Armed with an older friend’s ID, I made it into the club, past the lead-heavy Persian mercenary who bounced the door part-time.

The lounge was sexy, with couples wearing tight-fitting Armani outfits and holding neon cocktails. Perfume left a wake on the dance floor.

This scene was more than alluring. It was a playboy model whose lusty pad happened to be next door to my suburban brick rambler.

Outside, under the umbrella cabanas and in front of the sleek leather couches, I whipped out a cigarette so I wouldn’t look like a tweeny bopper. Someone dressed like a mild tool approached me and proceeded to argue that the scene in California was much better.

Having recently caught the House music bug, I exploded into a paragraphical argument of why the DC scene was cutting edge. Small clubs. Big lineups.

Friendly people. The pre-law student was taken aback by my recitation of the club’s “about us” page. He sucked in the rest of his cig and bounced back down into the club, excited.

The man next to him, a grade-A sleazebag, turned around and said, “Dude, talk game like that again and I will make you money like you can’t believe.”

From then on, I lost money like you wouldn’t believe. I became a wide-eyed seventeen-year-old club promoter.

Don’t do what I did. Just go dance.

music attitude of Output, this show should terrorize eardrums.

Thurs., Aug. 24. At Output (74 Wythe Ave., btw. N. 11th & 12th Sts., Brooklyn).

Doors at 10. Tickets are $18. Buy online at ticketfly.com. Info: outputclub.com.

Verboten + Fixed presents Maxxi Soundsystem, Bicep and Pional

Photo courtesy of Steez Promo

Dave Nada (left) created moombahton at a DC basement party by mixing reggaeton and Dutch house.

Warm up: Caribou and Pional

Moombahton Massive: Nadastrom & Sabo

Being from DC you get a hefty dose of moombahton. High school parties are often catered to the music of highpitched synth squeals and dudes howling along in snapbacks. If you go out dancing, the best club in DC, U Street Music Hall, is owned by Tittsworth — a moombahton heavyweight. While moombahton may not be my favorite, it’s not often that city exports much besides politicians and dysfunctional sports teams. So big ups, DC. Nadastrom is a duo consisting of moombahton creator Dave Nada and his partner, Matt Nordstrom. Their scorchingly massive moombahton tracks are played all over festivals in the US and abroad. With releases on Diplo’s Mad Decent label, as well as Fool’s Gold, they’re the pioneers of moombahton’s commercial success. Well at home with the bangin’ sound system and just-the-

This a group of European imports who embody the across the pond sound right now. They’re all young, innovative and love mixing disco with cold cuts of house grooves.

Bicep is an Irish duo making a dark brand of heavy house with UK Garage influences. Their hi hats are ominous and veiny. There lead melodies are pure testosterone. While they like to brag about their biceps, the two that make up Bicep are rather skinny dudes with an unusually large sound. Maxxi Soundsystem was raised in Brighton, England. His warm analogue synths work wonders in the contexts of his grooves. Think Nicolas Jaar minus the art gallery influences. Pional is dope. He worked on a few tracks with John Talabot for his most recent album.

His live sets are raved about, featuring him singing and playing drum machine.

Fri., Aug. 23. At Highline Ballroom, (431 W. 16th St., btw. 9th & 10th Aves.)

Doors at 11pm. Tickets are $15 in advance, $20 at door. Info: verbotennewyork.com.

Photo courtesy of the artist

Ireland’s Bicep is enjoying a wealth of success across the pond.

Photo courtesy of the artist

Caribou is the only DJ who can make a dance track that sounds remarkably like the Beatles.

Caribou is a psych rocker stuck in the body of a house DJ. He is one of the most original songwriters in the game, frequently challenging the norms of structure and melody. He, along with the previously mentioned Spaniard, Pional, will be rocking art installations at MoMa PS1.

If you haven’t been to Warm Up yet this year, give it a go. There is a massive installation on display by CODA, a group that won the Young Architect’s prize this year. It is a rollercoaster of wood that extends 50 feet high. At its base, there is a rack of sprinklers gently misting passersby while at its end a geyser blasts water 20 feet in the air. The MoMa PS1 experience is surreal, as the audience below the DJ is facing away from the booth back into the mass of the dancing crowd. Yet the weirdness subsides as soon as the sun sets and the audience gets gradually blastoise drunk. Then, it’s a certified rager.

Sat., Aug 25. MoMa PS1 (22-25 Jackson Ave. Long Island City, next to Court Sq. Take the G train). Tickets: $15 advance, $18 at door. Doors at noon. Show from 3-9pm. For tickets and info: momaps1.org/warmup.

26

August 15 - 21, 2013

Notice of Formation of LA VOCE D’ITALIA USA, LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 08/06/13. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the LLC, 1120 Ave. of the Americas, 4Fl., NY, NY 10036. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Vil: 08/15 - 09/19/2013 Notice of Formation of EAST SIDE DENTAL SMILES, PLLC Arts. of Org. was filed with SSNY on 8/8/13. Office location: NewYork County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC whom process against may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: c/o The LLC, 47 Boulder Ridge Rd., Scarsdale, NY 10583. Purpose: to engage in the practice of Dentistry.

Vil: 08/15 - 09/19/2013 NOTICE OF FORMATION of TFS2, LLC Articles of Organization filed with Secretary of State of New York (SSNY) on 03/21/13. Office location: NY County. SSNY has been designated as an agent upon whom process against the LLC may be served. The address to which SSNY shall mail a copy of any process against the LLC is to: Laura Nuter, TFS2, LLC, 58 Montgomery Place, #3, Brooklyn, NY 11215. Purpose: To engage in any lawful act or activity.

Vil: 08/15 - 09/19/2013 Notice of Qualification of TENSILE CAPITAL GP LLC Authority filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 07/09/13. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 02/08/12. Princ. office of LLC: 150 E. 52nd St., 17th Fl., NY, NY 10022. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the LLC at the princ. office of the LLC. DE addr. of LLC: c/o Corporation Service Co., 2711 Centerville Rd., Ste. 400, Wilmington, DE 19808. Arts. of Org. filed with DE Secy. of State, Div. of Corps., John G. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Vil: 08/15 - 09/19/2013 NOTICE OF QUALIFICATION OF HARDER MIRELL & ABRAMS LLP Certificate filed with Secretary of State of New York (SSNY) on 07/31/2013. Office location: NY County. SSNY has been designated as an agent upon whom process against the LLP may be served. The address to which SSNY shall mail a copy of any process against the LLP is to 1801 Avenue of the Stars, Suite 1120, Los Angeles, CA 90067. Purpose: practice the profession of law.

Vil: 08/15 - 09/19/2013

NOTICE OF FORMATION OF LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY NAME: ABI SIX LLC Articles of Organization were filed with the Secretary of State of New York (SSNY) on 06/12/06. The latest date of dissolution is 12/31/2099.

Office location: New York County. SSNY has been designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail a copy of process to the LLC, c/o Lawrence P. Wolf, Esq., Six Hemlock Hills, Chappaqua, New York 10514.

Purpose: For any lawful purpose.

Vil: 08/15 - 09/19/2013

NOTICE OF FORMATION of Tailor Dot Com LLC Articles of Organization filed with Secretary of State of New York (SSNY) on 03/31/2012. Office location: Manhattan County. SSNY has been designated as an agent upon whom process against the LLC may be served. The address to which SSNY shall mail a copy of any process against the LLC is to: Tailor Dot Com LLC 152 East 48th Street, New York, NY 10017. Purpose: To engage in any lawful act or activity.

Vil: 08/08 - 09/12/2013

Notice of Formation of Picasso Jetpack LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 11/14/12. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: c/o Buchbinder and Warren, One Union Square West, 4th Fl., NY, NY 10003.

Purpose: any lawful activity.

Vil: 08/15 - 09/19/2013

Notice is hereby given that license #1272605 has been applied by the undersigned to sell alcoholic beverages at retail in a restaurant under the alcoholic beverage control law at 11 East 47th Street, New York, NY 10036 for on-premises consumption. MATSUYA NEW YORK INC. d/b/a KATSUHAMA RESTAURANT Vil: 08/08 - 08/15/2013

Notice of Formation of AG OOT LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 8/2/13. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: 142 Greene St., Ste. 4N, NY, NY 10012. Purpose: any lawful activity.

Vil: 08/15 - 09/19/2013

Notice is hereby given that an on-premises license, #TBA has been applied for by 344 Restaurant Group LLC & Bottomz Up Bar and Grill Inc, as Co-Licensees d/b/a Bottomz Up to sell beer, wine and liquor at retail in an on premises establishment. For on premises consumption under the ABC law at 344 Third Avenue New York NY 10010.

Vil: 08/08 - 08/15/2013

Notice of Formation of Babeth’s Feast E-Commerce, LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 8/2/13. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: 19 W. 12th St., NY, NY 10011. Purpose: any lawful activity.

Vil: 08/15 - 09/19/2013 Notice of Formation of CA 2952 Third Avenue LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 8/1/13. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: c/o The LLC, 1407 Broadway, 41st Fl., NY, NY 10018. Purpose: any lawful activity.

Vil: 08/15 - 09/19/2013 Notice of Qualification of Optima Securities LLC Authority filed with NY Dept. of State on 7/29/13. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in DE on 7/25/13.

NY Sec. of State designated agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served and shall mail process to: 10 E. 53rd St., NY, NY 10022, Attn: General Counsel. DE address of LLC: 1209 Orange St., Wilmington, DE 19801. Cert. of Form. filed with DE Sec. of State, 401 Federal St., Dover, DE 19901.

Purpose: all lawful purposes.

Vil: 08/15 - 09/19/2013

Notice is hereby given that an on-premises license, #TBA has been applied for

by Here & Now Inc. d/b/a Miss Korea to sell beer, wine and liquor at retail in an on premises establishment. For on premises consumption under the ABC law at 10 W. 32nd Street, 2nd Floor New York NY 10001.

Vil: 08/08 - 08/15/2013 Notice is hereby given that an on-premises license, #TBA has been applied for by 210 Tenth Avenue LLC to sell beer, wine and liquor at retail in an on premises establishment. For on premises consumption under the ABC law at 210-212Tenth Avenue New York NY 10011.

Vil: 08/08 - 08/15/2013 NOTICE OF FORMATION OF Miedel & Mysliwiec LLP Certificate filed with Secy of State of NY (SSNY) on 6/21/13. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent upon whom process may be served and shall mail copy of process against LLP to principal business address: Trinity Centre, 111 Broadway, Ste 1401, NY NY 10006. Purpose: any lawful act.

Vil: 08/08 - 09/12/2013

Notice of Qualification of Hercules Technology SBIC Management, LLC Authority filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 7/26/13. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 11/17/03. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: 400 Hamilton Ave., Ste. 310, Palo Alto, CA 94301. Address to be maintained in DE: 160 Greentree Dr., Ste. 101, Dover, DE 19904. Arts of Org. filed with the DE Secretary of State, 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: any lawful activities.

Vil: 08/08 - 09/12/2013 Notice of Qualification of LD Acquisition Company 11 LLC Authority filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 7/29/13. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 1/26/12. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: National Registered Agents, Inc., 111 Eighth Ave., NY, NY 10011.

Address to be maintained in DE: 160 Greentree Dr., Ste. 101, Dover, DE 19904. Arts of Org. filed with the DE Secretary of State, John G. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901.

Purpose: any lawful activities.

Vil: 08/08 - 09/12/2013 Notice of Qual. of 2 Rector Kushner Manager LLC Auth. filed Sec’y of State (SSNY) 6/3/13. Office loc.: NY County. LLC org. in DE 5/30/13. SSNY desig. as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of proc. to Kushner Co., 666 Fifth Ave., 15th Fl., NY, NY 10103, the Reg. Agt. upon whom proc. may be served.

DE off. addr.: 160 Greentree Dr., Ste. 101, Dover, DE 19904.

Cert. of Form. on file: SSDE, Townsend Bldg., Dover, DE 19901. Purp.: any lawful activities.

Vil: 08/08 - 09/12/2013 NOTICE OF FORMATION OF LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY. NAME: CHANCELLOR STREET MANAGEMENT LLC. Articles of Organization were filed with the Secretary of State of New York (SSNY) on 07/24/13. Office location: New York County. SSNY has been designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served.

SSNY shall mail a copy of process to the LLC, 290 Sixth Avenue, Apt 3D, New York, NewYork 10014. Purpose: For any lawful purpose.

Vil: 08/08 - 09/12/2013 110 E. 40th ST. LLC, a domestic LLC Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 7/19/13. Office location: NewYork County. SSNY is designated as agent upon whom process against the LLC may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: Richard Nejat, 401 E. 60th St., Ste. 3D, NY, NY 10022. General Purposes.

Vil: 08/08 - 09/12/2013

Notice of Formation of HBS 15B LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 07/26/13. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the LLC, 505 Park Ave., 8th Fl., NY, NY 10022.

Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Vil: 08/08 - 09/12/2013 Notice of Qualification of 385 GOLD INVESTORS IIA, LLC Authority filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 07/24/13. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 07/02/13. Princ. office of LLC: 10 E. 53rd St., 37th Fl., NY, NY 10022. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co. (CSC), 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543, regd. agent upon whom and at which process may be served. DE addr. of LLC: c/o CSC, 2711 Centerville Rd., Ste. 400, Wilmington, New Castle Cnty., DE 19808. Arts. of Org. filed with DE Secy. of State, Div. of Corps., John B. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901.

Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Vil: 08/08 - 09/12/2013 Formation of Prof.

Service LLC (DOMPROF.LLC). SHARON L. PATRICK, MD LLC Arts. of Org. filed with the Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 7/5/13. Office loc.: New York Co. SSNY is designated as agent of DOM-PROF.LLC upon whom process against it may be served. The principal bus. loc. and address SSNY shall mail copy of process to is 800-A 5th Ave., Ste. 503, NewYork, NY 10021.

Mgmt. shall be by one or more members. Purpose: The practice of medicine.

Vil: 08/08 - 09/12/2013 Application for Authority of Avenue Realty Capital LLC filed with the Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 2/22/13.

The LLC was formed in DE 10/11/12. Office loc.: New York County. SSNY is designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. The principal business loc. and address SSNY shall mail copy of process is 100 Park Ave., 16th Fl., New York, NY 10017. The office address in DE is 1209 Orange St., Wilmington, DE 19801.

Cert. of Formation filed with the Sec. of State, Div. of Corporations, Townsend Bldg., Federal & Loockerman Sts., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Vil: 08/08 - 09/12/2013 Notice of Formation of Babeth’s Feast 1422 3rd Avenue, LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 7/24/13. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: 19 W. 12th St., NY, NY 10011. Purpose: any lawful activity.

Vil: 08/08 - 09/12/2013

Notice of Formation of SUMNER, LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 5/6/13. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: The LLC, 1740 Broadway, NY, NY 10019, Attn: Gregg Brochin, the registered agent upon whom process may be served. Purpose: any lawful activity.

Vil: 08/08 - 09/12/2013 Notice of Formation of ZD Productions, LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 7/17/13. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: The LLC, 601 West 26th St., Ste. 1762, NY, NY 10001. Purpose: any lawful activities.

Vil: 08/01 - 09/05/2013 Notice of Formation of WLP 2021 86TH STREET, LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 05/06/13. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Vil: 08/01 - 09/05/2013 Notice of Qualification of LASCAUX RESOURCE CAPITAL PARTNERS LLC Authority filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 07/22/13. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 06/06/12.

SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served.

SSNY shall mail process to c/o Corporation Service Co. (CSC), 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. DE addr. of LLC: c/o CSC, 2711 Centerville Rd., Ste. 400, Wilmington, DE 19808. Arts. of Org. filed with DE Secy. of State, 401 Federal St., Dover, DE 19901.

Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Vil: 08/01 - 09/05/2013

23 Koral Drive LLC, a domestic LLC Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 6/6/13. Office location: New York County.

SSNY is designated as agent upon whom process against the LLC may be served.

SSNY shall mail process to: The LLC, 1165 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10029. General Purposes.

Vil: 08/01 - 09/05/2013 Notice of Formation of Sherwin LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 5/7/13. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: c/o Fensterstock Law PLLC, 521 Fifth Ave., Ste. 1700, NY, NY 10175. Purpose: any lawful activity.

Vil: 08/01 - 09/05/2013 Notice of Formation of BOTKIER NY, LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 6/19/13. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: Kane Kessler, P.C., 1350 Ave. of the Americas, 26th Fl., NY, NY 10019, Attn: Darren S. Berger, Esq. Purpose: any lawful activity.

Vil: 08/01 - 09/05/2013 Notice of Formation of 40 RSD LLC Arts. of Org. filed with NY Dept. of State on 5/31/13.

Office location: NY County.

Sec. of State designated agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served and shall mail process to: c/o Ellyn Roth Mittman, Esq., 110 E. 59th St., 23rd Fl., NY, NY 10022. Purpose: any lawful activity.

Vil: 08/01 - 09/05/2013 Notice of Formation of Vocon NYC LLC Arts. of Org. filed with NY Dept. of State on 7/3/13.

Office location: NY County.

Sec. of State designated agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served and shall mail process to: ACFB Incorporated, 200 Public Square, Ste. 2300, Cleveland, OH 44114. Purpose: all lawful purposes.

Vil: 08/01 - 09/05/2013

Notice of Formation of 228E58STR LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 07/18/13. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 115 W. 29th St., Ste. 801, NY, NY 10001. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the LLC at the addr. of its princ. office. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Vil: 08/01 - 09/05/2013

Notice of Qualification of NYCTL Brownfield LLC Authority filed with NY Dept. of State on 6/11/13.

Office location: NY County.

LLC formed in DE on 5/9/13.

NY Sec. of State designated agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served and shall mail process to: CT Corporation System, 111 8th Ave., NY, NY 10011. DE address of LLC: c/o The Corporation Trust Co., 1209 Orange St., Wilmington, DE 19801. Cert. of Form. filed with DE Sec. of State, 401 Federal St., Dover, DE 19901.

Purpose: all lawful purposes.

Vil: 08/01 - 09/05/2013

CREATIVE DESSERTS LLC Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 05/21/2013. Office loc: NY County. SSNY has been designated as agent upon whom process against the LLC may be served.

SSNY shall mail process to: Zheng Wang, 61-19 230th Street , Oakland Gardens, NY 11364. Purpose: Any Lawful Purpose.

Vil: 08/01 - 09/05/2013

Notice of Formation of YMBJ LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 07/19/13. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 111 Wooster St., Apt. 4D, NY, NY 10012. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the LLC at the addr. of its princ. office. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Vil: 07/25 - 08/29/2013

Notice of Qualification of 208 CANAL STREET LLC Authority filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 07/16/13. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 07/15/13. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207. DE addr. of LLC: 2711 Centerville Rd., Ste. 400, Wilmington, DE 19808.

Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of the State of DE, 401 Federal St., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Vil: 07/25 - 08/29/2013 Notice of Qualification of Hudson Bay Credit Management LLC App. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 7/11/13. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 6/12/13.

SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served.

SSNY shall mail process to: 777 Third Ave., 30th Fl., NY, NY 10017. DE address of LLC: 615 S. DuPont Hwy., Dover, DE 19901. Arts. of Org. filed with DE Secy. of State, P.O. Box 898, Dover, DE 19903.

Purpose: any lawful activity.

Vil: 07/25 - 08/29/2013 Notice of Formation of 200 Merry LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 7/5/13. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: 307 Seventh Avenue, Ste. 407, NY, NY 10001, Attn: Lance Howard. Purpose: any lawful activity.

Vil: 07/25 - 08/29/2013 Notice of Formation of B&T Global LLC Arts. of Org. filed with NY Dept. of State on 4/11/13.

Office location: NY County.

Sec. of State designated agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served and shall mail process to: 116 E. 61st St., NY, NY 10065, principal business address. Purpose: any lawful activity.

Vil: 07/25 - 08/29/2013 163 EAST 63RD STREET, LLC a domestic LLC, Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 4/29/13. Office location: New York County. SSNY is designated as agent upon whom process against the LLC may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: A. Charles Baillie, 163 E. 63rd St., NY, NY 10021.

General Purposes.

Vil: 07/18 - 08/22/2013 Notice of Qualification of Vivint Solar Mia Manager, LLC Authority filed with NY Dept. of State on 7/8/13. Office location: NY County. Princ. bus. addr.: 4931 N. 300 W., Provo, UT 84604. LLC formed in DE on 7/2/13. NY Sec. of State designated agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served and shall mail process to: c/o CT Corporation System, 111 8th Ave., NY, NY 10011, regd. agent upon whom process may be served. DE addr. of LLC: 1209 Orange St., Wilmington, DE 19801. Cert. of Form. filed with DE Sec. of State, 401 Federal St., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: all lawful purposes.

Vil: 07/25 - 08/29/2013

August 15 - 21, 2013

caPtaN coNteNt aND taXoNomY LLc a domestic LLC, Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 6/5/13. Office location: New York County. SSNY is designated as agent upon whom process against the LLC may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: The LLC, 457 FDR Dr., #A801, NY, NY 10002.

General Purposes.

Vil: 07/18 - 08/22/2013 75 eaSt LLc, a DomeStic LLc Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 6/26/13. Office location: NewYork County. SSNY is designated as agent upon whom process against the LLC may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: Brady Klein & Weissman, 501 5th Ave., 19th Fl., NY, NY 100176185. General Purposes.

Vil: 07/18 - 08/22/2013 LimiteD LiaBiLitY comPaNY Notice of Formation of Limited Liability Company (LLC) Name: FLOWER DISTRICT LLC. Articles of Organization filed by the Department of State of New York on: 03/19/2013 Office location: County of New York. Purpose: any and all lawful activities. Secretary of State of New York (SSNY) designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail a copy of process to: 845 Third Avenue, Suite 1400 New York, NY 10022 Vil: 07/18 - 08/22/2013 reaL miND oPeNerS, LLc a domestic LLC, Arts. of Org. filed with the SSNY on 5/30/13. Office location: New York County. SSNY is designated as agent upon whom process against the LLC may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: Teresa Gallo, 711 West End Ave., #5-DN, NY, NY 10025. General Purposes.

Vil: 07/18 - 08/22/2013 Notice of formatioN of tHe New DeVeLoPmeNt ProJect 2 LLc Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 6/26/13. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: Jason E. Burritt, Esq., Seyfarth Shaw LLP, 620 Eighth Ave., 33rd Fl. NY, NY 10018. Purpose: any lawful activities.

Vil: 07/18 - 08/22/2013 Notice of formatioN of SoHo Start LLc Articles of Organization filed with Secretary of State of New York (SSNY) on 02/25/13. Office location: NY County. SSNY has been designated as an agent upon whom process against the LLC may be served. The address to which SSNY shall mail a copy of any process against the LLC is to: SoHo Start LLC, 15 W. 139th Street, New York, NY 10037. Purpose:To engage in any lawful act or activity.

Vil: 07/18 - 08/22/2013

Notice of formatioN of 50 weSt eQUitieS iNVeStor LLc Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 07/05/13. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 55 Fifth Ave., 15th Fl., NY, NY 10003-4398. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Robert Kantor at the princ. office of the LLC, regd. agent upon whom and at which process may be served. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Vil: 07/18 - 08/22/2013 Notice of QUaLificatioN of rGN-New York XLViii, LLc Authority filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 06/28/13. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 06/07/13. Princ. office of LLC: 15305 Dallas Pkwy., Ste. 400, Addison, TX 75001. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. DE addr. of LLC: 2711 Centerville Rd., Ste. 400, Wilmington, DE 19808.

Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of DE, Div. of Corps., 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Vil: 07/18 - 08/22/2013 Notice of QUaLificatioN of PermaNeNS NoN-aGeNcY rmBS aLLocatioN fUND LP App. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 6/27/13. Office location: NY County. LP formed in Delaware (DE) on 6/26/13.

SSNY designated as agent of LP upon whom process against it may be served.

SSNY shall mail process to: 315 Park Ave. South, 18th Fl., NY, NY 10010. The registered agent upon whom process may be served is: John J. Regan, c/o Permanens Capital Advisors LLC, 315 Park Ave. South, 18th Fl., NY, NY 10010. DE address of LP: 615 S. DuPont Hwy., Dover, DE 19901. Name/address of each genl. ptr. available from SSNY. Cert. of LP filed with DE Secy. of State, 401 Federal St., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: any lawful activity.

Vil: 07/18 - 08/22/2013 Notice of formatioN of mo’ motioN VeNtUreS, LLc Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 6/4/13. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: Maureen Holohan, 203 W. 109th, 2W, NY, NY 10025. Purpose: any lawful activity.

Vil: 07/18 - 08/22/2013 Notice of formatioN of 230 ceNtraL Park SoUtH treetoPS LLc Arts. of Org. filed with NY Dept. of State on 6/27/13.

Office location: NY County.

Sec. of State designated agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served and shall mail process to: 230 Central Park South, NY, NY 10019, principal business address. Purpose: any lawful activity.

Vil: 07/18 - 08/22/2013

Name of LLc: SoHo caPitaL maNaGemeNt, LLc Arts. of Org. filed with NY Dept. of State: 6/25/13. Office loc.: NY Co. Sec. of State designated agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served and shall mail process to: c/o Charles Petersen, 132 Greene St., Apt. 3F, NY, NY 10012, regd. agt. upon whom process may be served. Purpose: any lawful act.

Vil: 07/18 - 08/22/2013 Notice of formatioN of Voot LLc Arts of Org filed w. Secy of State of NY (SSNY) on 5/16/13. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent upon whom process may be served and shall mail copy of process against LLC to business address:The LLC, 124 W 30 St, Rm 303, NY NY 10001. Purpose: any lawful act.

Vil: 07/11 - 08/15/2013 Notice of formatioN of DUrSt VerNoN LLc Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 07/01/13. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Rosenberg & Estis, P.C., Attn: Gary M. Rosenberg, Esq., 733 Third Ave., NY, NY 10017. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Vil: 07/11 - 08/15/2013 Notice of formatioN of GreeNe LiViNG LLc Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 07/02/13. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 254 Greene St., Ground Fl., NY, NY 10003. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the LLC at the addr. of its princ. office. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Vil: 07/11 - 08/15/2013 Notice of formatioN of m&a BeDforD ProPertieS, LLc Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 06/12/13. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the LLC, 1344 Lexington Ave., NY, NY 10128.

Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Vil: 07/11 - 08/15/2013 Notice of formatioN of StoNYBrook caPitaL oNe, LLc Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 06/17/13. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Deutsch, Metz & Deutsch, LLP, Attn: Jeremy E. Deutsch, 18 E. 41st St., 6th Fl., NY, NY 10017. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Vil: 07/11 - 08/15/2013 Notice of formatioN of rUDraBHiSHek (US) LLc Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 06/26/13. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 10100 Old Columbia Rd., Columbia, MD 21047. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. Purpose: Business consulting.

Vil: 07/11 - 08/15/2013

Notice of formatioN of 21B LLc Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 06/26/13. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 300 E. 74th St., Apt. 36G, NY, NY 10021. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Barbara Gural, 38267 Ranch Garden Rd., Park City, UT 84098. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Vil: 07/11 - 08/15/2013 Notice of QUaLificatioN of 1006 maDiSoN LLc App. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 5/9/13. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 5/7/13. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: c/o Thor Equities, LLC, 25 W. 39th St., NY, NY 10018. DE address of LLC: c/o National Registered Agents, Inc., 160 Greentree Drive, Ste. 101, Dover, DE 19904. Arts. of Org. filed with DE Secy. of State, 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901.

Purpose: any lawful activity.

Vil: 07/11 - 08/15/2013 Notice of QUaLificatioN of 354 BowerY – BaZBaZ LLc App. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 6/25/13. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 6/21/13.

SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served.

SSNY shall mail process to: c/o FB Strategic Partners, 299 Park Ave., 42nd Fl., NY, NY 10171. DE address of LLC: c/o United Corporate Services, Inc., 874 Walker Road, Ste. C, Dover, DE 19904. Arts. of Org. filed with DE Secy. of State, Townsend Bldg., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: any lawful activity.

Vil: 07/11 - 08/15/2013 Notice of QUaLificatioN of a. aNtHoNYaBmfS, LLc Authority filed with NY Dept. of State on 6/19/13. Office location: NY County. Princ. bus. addr.: 8101 W. Sam Houston Pkwy. S., Ste. 150, Houston, TX 77079. LLC formed in DE on 3/2/12. NY Sec. of State designated agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served and shall mail process to: c/o CT Corporation System, 111 8th Ave., NY, NY 10011, regd. agent upon whom process may be served. DE addr. of LLC: c/o The Corporation Trust Co., 1209 Orange St., Wilmington, DE 19801. Cert. of Form. filed with DE Sec. of State, 401 Federal St., Dover, DE 19901.

Purpose: all lawful purposes.

Vil: 07/11 - 08/15/2013

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August 15 - 21, 2013

Sophie sports camp scholarships are a moving tribute

By Lincoln Anderson The benefits of physical fitness, sports and dance for young people was something Sophie Gerson avidly promoted her entire life. A public school physical education teacher who rose to become president of the local community school board and whose son, Alan, was city councilmember for Lower Manhattan’s District 1 for two terms, Sophie died at age 88 at the end of last year.

In her memory, Alan Gerson and others have set up the Sophie Gerson Healthy Youth Program to provide scholarships to sports and dance summer camps for local youth who would otherwise not have the opportunity. This summer, the program sent several teens to a monthlong dance camp, and several others to tennis and basketball sleepaway camps for a week.

The students come from M.S. 302 in the South Bronx, where Sophie began her teaching career, as well as P.S. 126 on the Lower East Side. One of the students lives in a homeless shelter, according to Alan.

The program will also work with these two schools during the year to enhance their physical education programs with tennis and dance, and will collaborate with the National Dance Institute, headed by Jacques d’Amboise. The plan is also to fund a girls sports team, in volleyball or basketball, where there is currently none.

“We’re going to start with these schools, and hopefully we’ll expand,” said Alan. “But that depends on our fundraising.”

Alan heads the foundation. A board has been comprised of local activists and school advocates Lois Rakoff, Ayo Harrington, Aixa Torres, Alice Cancel and Po-Ling Ng. Sophie Gerson grew up in the Bronx during the Sophie Gerson didn’t need Air Jordans to play some mean defense, as seen in this 1993 photo from when she was on the community school board.

A campaign flier for Sophie Gerson, who was running on the “ABC Slate” of candidates, for a school board election.

Depression, the child of struggling Romanian immigrants. Her parents toiled in the sweatshops.

Then, one day, Alan said, “She saw people playing tennis in St. James Park and it enthralled her — it was an escape. She was dirt poor, but here were people dressed in white. They were polite, but they were athletic. She went to the library, got a book and taught herself how to play tennis. With a hand-medown racket from a cousin, she started playing tennis.”

But her father wanted her to be a secretary and her mother wanted her to go to college and become a French teacher. Sophie did love French, yet she had discovered a love for sports, physical fitness and movement, and went on to combine that with a dedication to teaching inner-city youth, first in the South Bronx and later in Hell’s Kitchen, at the old LaSalle Junior High School on W. 48th St. She eventually rose to become a member of Community School Board 2 for seven years, including a stint as board president. Active in Democratic politics, she ran as a delegate for presidential candidate Al Gore in 1988.

She knew everyone in the community, especially at 505 LaGuardia.

Sophie Gerson fought the good fight, and did good work, said Father Louis Gigante, a longtime neighbor of Sophie and Alan’s at the Mitchell-Lama co-op.

“For many, many, many, many years, we had a kind of affinity in politics,” Gigante said. “I admire her because she lived to serve and to be a servant to others.”

Gigante, who was a councilmember and priest simultaneously, renovated 250 tenement houses for affordable housing in the southeast Bronx through his group, SEBCO. “Exactly what I was doing, she was doing,” Gigante said. “Most of the people she taught in her class were low-income Puerto Rican kids.”

(One of Father Gigante’s brothers, Vincent “Chin”

Gigante, was also well known, as former head of the Genovese crime family.)

Another good friend of Sophie’s at 505 LaGuardia Place was Connie Masullo, who was the first resident of the building to receive her key from architect I.M. Pei when it opened. Masullo was the secretary for 10 years of Tony Dapolito, former chairperson of Community Board 2.

“We would always eat together at Ennio & Michael’s every Friday,” Masullo recalled of her meals with Sophie at the since-shuttered LaGuardia Place restaurant.

Alan has been reaching out far and wide for funding and sponsorship for the Sophie Gerson Healthy Kids Program, and has spoken to everyone from tennis great Billie Jean King to Gristedes.

Alan had previously told The Villager he was considering a political comeback.

“I was contemplating. People were urging,” he said.

But then Sophie died, and he decided that, at that time, he just couldn’t do it.

Alan lived with Sophie and his father, Herman, at 505 LaGuardia, on New York University’s southern superblock, and he and his father still share the apartment.

Asked how he thinks things have been going in the Council district during his absence the past four years, Alan, referring to the Council’s approval of the university’s 2031 mega-development plan last year, said, “I think the N.Y.U. [plan review] was terribly mishandled.”

He said he’ll likely eventually return to the law, since that’s his profession. But the pain of the loss of his mom still hurts deeply.

“She was my chief adviser and strategist,” he said.

“The big mystery is how she did it all — raising her kids, involved in the community, involved in politics. For everything she did, I just miss her company. She was my best friend. I’ll love her forever.”

August 15 - 21, 2013

29

Photo by Claire Flack

Some think Missy looks a bit like a manatee.

Madcap Missy; An Ori Pei, she’s always looking to wrestle and play PET SET Sophie Gerson taught her students, here creating a human pyramid, always to reach for the stars.

With her husband, Herman, on the beach in Southampton in autumn 1975, Sophie Gerson showed her winning form.

By Heather Dubin Missy is an Ori Pei, a Shar Pei / pug mix, and at seven months, she’s quite a handful.

“She’s all crazy because she’s little,” said Brett Ellison, her owner. “I don’t know how much that’ll go away.”

She explained that Shar Peis are known as Chinese wrestling dogs, and “they have a lot of playful instincts.”

And while the breed can also be “very aggressive,” she said, Missy “has more of the pug personality” — and yet, she still loves to wrestle.

“It’s all about wrestling,” Ellison said.

“She provokes other dogs by biting their ears and runs away,” Ellison explained of Missy’s M.O. at the dog run. “She does it to me at home, too — she wants us to chase her.”

Ellison, who lives at Christopher and Bleecker Sts., and works for Fortress Investment Group, brings Missy to the Leroy St. dog run in Hudson River Park or the private-membership West Village Dog Owners Group (D.O.G.) run on Little W. 12th St. for at least an hour a day.

“She’s a devil child at home when she doesn’t get her exercise,” she deadpanned.

As Ellison explained, a Shar Pei is a rare breed and there are only two dogs per litter.

Missy is well known in the neighborhood due to her distinctive appearance.

“People say she looks like an otter or a manatee,” Ellison said.

Ellison grew up with dogs, and has wanted one since she lost her last one — a poodle that lived until age 19.

“I gave in when I saw Missy,” she said.

She got her from a pet shop and considers that a form of liberation.

“She’s not a rescue dog, but I feel like you rescue them from a pet shop,” she said of the store-bought pooches. Ellison expressed concern about pet shop dogs that are not bought and continue to grow while still being kept in the store.

Missy loves grass, but Ellison likes her to steer clear of dirt.

“She’s white and it gets everywhere,” she said. “She likes Washington Square Park, but it’s too dirty there,” she added. The special surface at Washington Square’s new run leaves pooches’ paws a yellowish tan.

The Leroy St. dog run is a favorite for Missy, though Ellison is a member of the West Village D.O.G. run and is content to go there.

“All dogs have updated shots and you must clean up after your dog,” she said of the Little W. 12th St. run. “The Brass Monkey bar is next door, where you can get cocktails and go in the dog run.”

Missy is named after Miss Piggy because of her snorting, but it just as well might be because of her omnivorous appetite. Her favorite thing to eat is bananas.

However, Ellison joked, “I don’t think there’s anything she wouldn’t eat.”

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August 15 - 21, 2013

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Mika and LES went at it in the Tom Boston Memorial Classic championship.

‘He was always about the kids’; Tourney honors late park manager sPorts

BY DANIEL JEAN-LuBIN Although Tom Boston is no longer with us, his legacy of supporting youth sports continues.

The fourth annual Tom Boston Memorial Classic wrapped up on the courts of the Hamilton Fish Recreational Center last Wednesday with the championship game pitting LES versus Mika, with LES taking home the title by the final score of 26-24.

The tournament was created to honor former park manager Boston, who tragically died of a heart attack in 2010.

The girls’ basketball tournament uses a single-elimination playoff format with eight local teams, spanning three weeks to crown a champion.

Tom Boston began at the Ham Fish Rec Center in 1995 and quickly developed a reputation for being a charismatic man who was always open to new ideas in the hopes of making the Pitt St. athletic facility a better place.

“He had a passion for children and

being active, with a general passion for life,” said tournament director Bill Lynch.

“I was going to have to call this game off due to the rain, but no way Tom would have allowed it if he was still around.”

Said Oklahoma, a frequent spectator of games in the park, “Tom was a great man.

He always had a minute to help you out if you needed it. Mr. Boston was all about the kids. He probably spent over a hundred hours going over ways to get these local kids into the park and get more active.”

After the championship game, Lynch and other park officials held their customary award ceremony to hand out the Tom Boston Classic Trophy and some individual hardware to the tournament participants and the winning team. Afterwards the Boston family, who make the journey Downtown for the memorial classic every year, were presented with a life-sized portrait of Tom Boston, painted by some of the tournament participants and other rec center-goers who knew Tom. “It’s a pleasure to see them honoring my son like this,” said his mother. “As long as they continue to host this great event, we’ll continue to trek down here.”

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