THE VILLAGER, APRIL 9, 2015

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The Paper of Record for Greenwich Village, East Village, Lower East Side, Soho, Union Square, Chinatown and Noho, Since 1933

April 9, 2015 • $1.00 Volume 84 • Number 45

Planning chief downplays upzoning’s impact; Critics are still all hitting the roof

BY LINCOLN ANDERSON

T

he de Blasio administration’s stated plan to “modernize” contextual-zoning districts by boosting their building-height caps would simply create “better housing,” according to Carl Weisbrod, the city’s planning czar.

In addition, the scheme would help spur the creation of more affordable senior housing for the city’s growing older population, as well as affordable housing in general, Weisbrod and other officials say.

Because seniors need elevators, which are not ecoZONING, continued on p. 6 PHOTO BY BOB KRASNER

A.G. investigates Cooper Union’s tuition decision

BY ZACH WILLIAMS

A

new legal front recently emerged in the fight over the future of The Cooper Union with the revelation that state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is investigating the financial pressures that led the East Village school to implement tuition

last fall.

The investigation encompasses the finances surrounding $100 million in new construction and a $175 million loan approved by the school’s board of trustees, executive compensation, financial reporting and management of real estate assets, The Wall Street COOPER, continued on p. 5

Reunited at last, Yvonne Collery and Lulu are trying to put the Second Ave. disaster behind them.

Catastrophe cats, part II: The amazing return of Lulu

BY YVONNE COLLERY

D

o miracles come in clumps, like M15 buses? They do.

After the remarkable return of Laszlo, I was still praying for a second miracle, as I couldn’t stop thinking about Lulu and the terror that she must be living through.

As of last Wednesday, a full week had gone by since the fire, and I knew that even if Lulu were somewhere inside my apartment at 125 Second Ave., time was running out.

Lulu is a tiny cat and she was already a full week without food or water.

Most of my neighbors in my building got the goahead to go back into their apartments last Wednesday for the first time. My neighbor Bob called me at 2:20 p.m. and told me that we could go into our apartments and stay until 3 p.m. I was only a block away, and I eagerly scampered to the corner of St. Mark’s Place and Second Ave. where Office of Emergency Management person-

nel would take me to my building.

I showed my ID but O.E.M. informed me that my apartment was not on the list since it was still too unsafe to enter. O.E.M. informed me that it would probably be several more days at least until my apartment would be on the safe list.

I was as frantic as a mother cat — I needed to get into my apartment if I had any hope of ever seeing my Lulu again.

LULU, continued on p. 12

Sting, Patti Smith pitch in for fire victims.....page 2 Bodega bandit targets East Village................page 8 Editorial: Clamp down on gas tapping...........page 15 Female directors in Tribeca Film..page 19

www.TheVillager.com

“Do, do, do donate to da relief effort,” Sting says.

STING AND STYLER STEP IN: The “King of Pain” wants to help ease the anguish of the victims of the horrific East Village explosion and fire. Sting and his wife, Trudie Styler, are pitching in to contribute in the wake of the devastating March 26 disaster on Second Ave. The 16-time Grammy Award winner and Styler, who heads Maven Pictures, have already donated $36,000 to a relief benefit for residents affected by the calamity, which brought down three buildings, killed Nicholas Figueroa and Moises Locon, and left 144 families displaced. The gala benefit performance will be held at Theater 80 St. Mark’s, at 80 St. Mark’s Place, on Sun., April 12, at 8 p.m. Writer Alan Kaufman, author of “Drunken Angel” and “Jew Boy,” who is spearheading the event, said Stone Gossard, the rhythm guitarist for Pearl Jam, has also given a generous donation, as has the Boris Lurie Foundation. Other celebs of “megastar proportions” have also contributed cash, but their names can’t be made public, Kaufman said. He said rocker Patti Smith is the evening’s confirmed head-

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ed people. They’ve been in the neighborhood. And they’re a nonprofit, so they’re set up for this.” Every single penny from the event will go to GOLES, he said. Rock on!

READY, STEADY...ANNOUNCE! Democratic District Leader Jenifer Rajkumar, is getting ready to throw what she tells us is “a major Ready for Hillary event” on Saturday evening in Battery Park.

“It’s expected to be the last one before she announces, and over 250 people from all five boroughs are coming,” Rajkumar told us. (We hear Hillary Clinton’s announcement e-mail will self-destruct after 10 minutes. Just kidding!) She is co-chairperson of the Ready for Hillary National Finance Council. Rajkumar also continues to be ready for the small screen, on the PBS show “To The Contrary.” She’ll make another appearance on the all-woman “Crossfire”-style forum this weekend, this time with Donna Brazile, vice chairperson of the Democratic National Committee.

DIG IT! DIGITAL ARCHIVE! The manager of the Jefferson Market Library, Frank Collerius, told us some great news this week. He said that the Village branch, thanks to a $2,500 Innovation Grant it recently received from the New York Public Library, will be able to digitize nearly the first 50 years of The Villager’s archive, without any charge to us.

Only 20 city library branches were able to snag one of these coveted grants, which are intended just for these kind of projects. The historic library, a former courthouse, at Sixth Ave. and W. 10th St., has the newspaper on microfilm and in print from The Villager’s beginning in 1933 during the Great Depression up through around 1980. The grant should cover digitizing all of that. After Superstorm Sandy sadly washed away about 90 percent of our archives — which had been preserved in big black bound volumes in our former Canal St. office’s basement — we had spoken with Collerius about our hope of doing this. And now that the cash has been earmarked, it’s a go. “We received a grant for this purpose and can start production soon!” he told us. “I really look forward to this exciting project!” As for digitizing the rest of The Villager’s archive up to the present date, Collerius added that, once they get the ball rolling on this first batch, he’s sure he’ll be able to secure the needed funding to finish the whole job. The archive will have fully functioning search capabilities, by key words, or by Page One for a particular issue, and so forth.

And Collerius said, as the project progresses, he’ll SCOOPY’S, continued on p. 12

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liner, and will play at least a 20-minute set. While Sting and Gossard won’t be performing at Theater 80, many excellent artists will be, the writer said.

The lineup includes Molly King, who has opened for Bob Dylan, singer Dev Hynes of Blood Orange, Chris Riffle, lead singer Blake Lively of the band Mothxr and “Gossip Girl” TV fame, and local favorites David Peel and the Lower East Side (“Have a Marijuana” / “Die Yuppie Scum”), and guitar virtuoso On Ka’a Davis. The evening’s emcee will be none other than Randy Jones, the original Cowboy of the Village People. “This is starting out as a tight concert and is going to end up as a festival,” Kaufman predicted. “Really, the headliner is the East Village,” he said. “What happened in the East Village is like a mini-9/11 for the whole neighborhood.”

Tickets were going for from $20 to $150. All proceeds will go to GOLES (Good Old Lower East Side), the local tenant-advocacy group that has been working closely with the fire victims. Kaufman said he got the idea for the benefit when he walked past the blast site and spoke to someone who related how a friend was lying in the hospital recovering from the disaster. This hit home for Kaufman, who in the ’90s was homeless and hanging out on a bench in Tompkins Square Park and, at rock bottom, drowning his sorrows in the bottle, he said, which makes him able to relate to the fire’s victims who have lost everything.

Initially, he hoped to raise maybe $5,000 from the event, but now it looks like they’ll pull in more than ten times that. Tickets for the 200-seat theater have been scooped up insanely fast. “By the time people read this, there probably won’t be any left,” he said. In addition to Kaufman, Jim Storm, a longtime East Village resident and visual artist, is working on the event, as are model Jennifer Pugh and Roderick Romero of the band Sky Cries Mary. Lending important support has been L.E.S. documentarian Clayton Patterson. The theater space and other costs have been donated by Lorcan Otway, whose venue has become a hub of community culture and activism in the East Village. A community rally is planned for 5 p.m. in the theater, and will run for the three hours before the event. For more information contact 212-388-0388. For tickets (if any are left... good luck) go to https://www.vendini.com/ticket-software.html?t=tix&e=0490ce09893307b21710db2a9546939a. For information on how to donate to GOLES, contact Damaris Reyes, executive director, 212-358-1231. As for why the money is being given to GOLES and not the victims directly, Kaufman said, “These people are shell-shocked. GOLES is serving as the conduit and is taking 5 percent, which is much less than these type of groups usually take.

GOLES is boots on the ground. They’re very trust-

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PHOTOS BY CLAYTON PATTERSON

Cross crossing on Easter on E. Houston St. On Sunday, congregants from St. Mark’s Church re-enacted the Stations of the Cross on their way back to the church, at Grand St. near Pitt St.

Last Passover on L.E.S. as Streit’s set for exodus

PHOTOS BY TEQUILA MINSKY

Aaron Gross with a portrait of great-great-grandpa Aron, Streit’s founder.

BY TEQUILA MINSKY

A

aron Gross is a fifth-generation member of the famed Streit’s matzoh family. His great-great-grandfather Aron was the company’s founder.

Today, Gross runs Streit’s with his cousins Alan Adler and Aron Pagoda. Eleven family members are in the TheVillager.com

business, and they all get along.

“We are not the Durst family,” Gross quipped.

Four old buildings on Rivington St. currently house the factory, where it has been since 1925. However, the buildings’ age makes them hard to modernize to increase the place’s efficiency. Plus, there is simply the high cost of doing business in Manhattan.

As a result, Streit’s will soon relo-

Strips of the unleavened matzo dough before baking.

cate from its longtime Lower East Side home to New Jersey. The exact new location hasn’t been announced yet.

They will be baking on the Lower East Side through the summer, though.

“We want to have sufficient inventory to make the transition seamless,” Gross said.

Fifty percent of their sales take place for Passover. The factory employs 40. Some workers will be retiring,

while some are still deciding whether they will make the commute and follow the business to Jersey.

Jennifer Karan, who lives on Grand St. by the F.D.R. Drive, stopped in to Streit’s the other week to load up on matzoh, macaroons and other items for Passover.

“This is an institution in the neighborhood,” she said. “I feel terrible that they’re leaving.”

April 9, 2015

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The feathers (and polyester filling) were flying at Washington Square Park on Saturday afternoon at the 10th Annual International Pillow Fight Day. It began at 3 p.m. and went on for hours...and hours. People would leave — arms worn out, faces battered from combat — only to be replaced by scores more who joined the fray. There were children, teens and parents, some in pajamas. One man, after giving it his all, dropped to the ground in utter exhaustion, top, where, lying amid clumps of torn polyfill, he got a kiss of concern from a pint-sized pillow warrior. It was silly, for sure, but a welcome relief from months of cabin fever. Of course, a drone was on hand to film it all.

TheVillager.com

PHOTOS BY MILO HESS

JACK AGLIATA ALEXIS BENSON ALLISON GREAKER JENNIFER HOLLAND JIM STEELE JULIO TUMBACO

A.G. investigates Cooper Union tuition decision COOPER, continued from p. 1

Journal reported on March 24, citing “people familiar with the probe.”

That news followed the release of dueling assessments on the college’s condition in the months before an expected ruling in State Supreme Court on the legality of having tuition at the 155-year-old institution.

College spokesperson Justin Harmon told The Villager that The Cooper Union has been proactive in its interactions with the attorney general’s office.

A spokesperson for Schneiderman declined to comment on the reported investigation.

“We have engaged in regular briefings with the A.G.’s office since realizing that The Cooper Union’s financial circumstances would likely require us to change its financial model,” Harmon said in an e-mail. “We initiated contact with the office again after the lawsuit was filed, so as to be available to answer any questions the allegations in the lawsuit might raise. We are cooperating fully and providing as much information and perspective as we can.”

School officials have said that long-term financial strains required that students pay for their education — with a so-called “half-tuition” of

$20,000 per year — or else the school would reach a fiscal cliff. Opponents charge that the move reflects financial mismanagement leading to a corporatization of the nonprofit institution.

Among the hotly disputed decisions by college leaders was the loan that put the school’s interests in the Chrysler Building up as collateral.

The school owns the land beneath the iconic skyscraper. A tax deal with the state allows the school to avoid property taxes on the parcel and receive annual payments from the leaseholder equal to what they would be, about $28 million per year. Some members of the Cooper Union community have said the school could raise needed funds by selling the East Midtown property.

Members of the Committee to Save Cooper Union — a group of faculty, students and alumni behind last year’s lawsuit over tuition — were quick to celebrate on social media the news of Schneiderman’s investigation. But further scrutiny could be warranted, according to Barry Drogin, a prominent critic of the college administration.

“It is for the attorney general’s office to determine what is incompetence and what rises to the level of prosecutable charges,” he said. “Lying to the media, the local community, donors and students may or may not be prosecutable.”

The committee alleges that fiscal mismanagement and an incorrect interpretation of the school’s founding documents led to tuition. Legal arguments were heard in court in August.

Since then, the committee has continued its public-relations offensive against the board and college President Jamshed Bharucha.

The latest sparring followed the March 15 release of a report by Bharucha that expressed optimism about the school’s future and satisfaction that some negative impacts of tuition were mitigated. Applications in some fields at the school increased this past year, academic offerings are expanding and the college will have a balanced budget by 2019, according to the report titled, “The State of Cooper Union.”

“We have stabilized the institution, which was on the verge of a fiscal cliff,” Bharucha states in the report. “Our results are positive to date, but there is no question that hard work remains.”

The report does not mention the ongoing lawsuit or its potential impacts on the school moving forward.

The committee soon released its own rebuttal of that report. Assertions

by Bharucha that academics, finances and the college community, in general remain, strong are “hogwash,” according to the rebuttal. SAT scores for

freshmen are lower than years past, while acceptance rates to the exclusive school have nearly doubled, according to the committee.

A 33 percent jump in Engineering School applications occurred because the college now accepts the Common Application, which allows prospective students to apply to multiple schools at once, according to the committee.

“The desperate imperative to grow the numbers of paying ‘customers’ is undermining the integrity of the institution,” the committee’s report states.

“Faculty oversight of students, faculty hiring, tenure and proper academic program oversight are circumvented in the rush to revenue and ‘reinvention.’ ” In an April 1 statement, Bill Mea, Cooper’s vice president for finance and administration, said that proposed new charges for “overloading” on courses will not be implemented in the 2015-16 school year. Overloading — or taking more than 19.5 credits per semester — is something many Cooper students traditionally have done.

Reactions from the campus community and the current campus climate make the idea currently infeasible, Mea said.

“This is certainly not the time to implement such a policy and it may never by the right time to do so,” he said.

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5

Planners play up upzoning’s potential positives ZONING, continued from p. 1

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April 9, 2015

Carl Weisbrod, director of the City Planning Department, called the proposed height changes “very, very modest.”

PHOTOS BY LINCOLN ANDERSON

nomically efficient to install in small buildings, the buildings would need some added height and so have to be at least four to six stories to accommodate the lifts, city planners say.

Over all, though, the proposed changes “are very, very modest,” in Weisbrod’s view.

However, the administration’s new plan — called Zoning for Quality and Affordability — has sparked a firestorm of protest from local community activists and preservationists. These critics say the proposal, if approved, would undermine the entire point of hard-won contextual districts — namely, their already-existing height caps.

In short, this plan basically would be an “upzoning” of building heights by up to 15 feet (for market-rate housing) to 25 feet or more (if senior or affordable housing makes up 20 percent of the project), or from two to three stories, for wide swaths of the city, opponents charge.

About 15 percent of New York City is currently covered by contextual zoning. All of that area, under this proposal, would be rezoned in one fell swoop.

In an informational meeting with members of the local media on Monday, Planning Director Weisbrod and other top Department of City Planning officials, laid out what they described as the proposal’s benefits, then answered reporters’ questions.

Howard Slatkin, deputy executive director for strategic planning, gave a powerpoint presentation of the scheme.

Partly driving the plan, the officials said, is that by 2040 it’s predicted the city will have 400,000 more seniors than today.

Due to current conditions for new construction — such as the standard width of prefab concrete floor slabs and the need to pack in more utilities in between floors — ceiling heights over the years in contextual districts have shrunk by a few feet, while it’s more convenient to make new buildings only 60 feet deep rather than the allowable 65 feet deep.

Combined with the strict height caps of contextual districts, this all somehow translates into developers currently not being able to use all of the available F.A.R. (Floor Area Ratio) — or the maximum square footage allowable under the zoning — in their projects.

As developers struggle to squeeze enough floors into their heightcapped projects, what often gets squeezed out is affordable and senior housing, the agency representatives argue. And that kind of housing is

A chart shown by City Planning at last week’s informational meeting shows how much the existing contextual zones’ height caps in the Village and East Village — R7A and R8A zones — would increase under the plan for both market-rate and afforable or senior housing.

always a challenge to get built, due to the lower profit margin, they note.

Also, Slatkin said, the city’s proposed zoning change would correct a current “issue” where first-floor apartment windows are at pedestrians’ eye level, meaning some residents “keep their blinds shut all day.”

Similarly, having retail at street level isn’t as good as when a store is up about 5 feet above street level, he said.

As a result, the scheme calls for boosting the first floor up by this amount.

According to the planning bigs, un-

der the plan, for straight market-rate projects, 75 percent of the city’s contextually zoned districts would see a height-cap increase of from zero to 5 feet. But the other 25 percent could see a bump-up in height of 15 feet or higher.

Residential districts that are zoned R7A — and equivalent commercially zoned areas — which would potentially have among the greatest increases for straight market-rate projects, predominate in the Village and East Village.

The zoning tweaks would also allow for street-wall setbacks, such as to allow small courtyard-like entrances for buildings, which haven’t been allowed for some years in contextual districts.

The city’s zoning was put into place in 1961, while contextual zoning — with height caps and uniform street-wall regulations — went into effect in 1987.

Tobi Bergman, chairperson of Community Board 2, has warned that the new zoning could lead to “teardowns” of old buildings in contextually zoned areas that are not also included landmarked historic districts.

However, Weisbrod countered that this would not happen.

“We don’t see teardowns now,” he said. “We’re in no way increasing F.A.R. We’re in no way increasing development rights. We’re making affordable and senior housing more profitable. That’s not why people tear down buildings — to create senior and affordable housing.

“We’re building better housing,” Weisbrod stressed. “We’re building affordable housing — and that’s a major difference.”

(Another Planning official later said that the only places where demolitions might happen would be “soft sites,” properties built to less than 50 percent of their potential F.A.R.) “I think that the changes here are very, very modest,” Weisbrod stated.

“And, frankly, they are intended to make contextual districts more contextual. You get [a few] more feet for a much nicer building. No historic districts get changed at all by this.

“You’re not going to see much in the way of changes,” Weisbrod assured of the overall plan.

Much of the Village is protected by historic districts.

Also, so-called “special districts” — Chelsea has one — would not see any changes in their height caps, he noted.

In short, this plan is in line with Mayor de Blasio’s goal of creating 200,000 units of affordable housing over 10 years, the planners said. And, they further argued, it would help make contextual areas economically diverse, by creating housing with a range of income levels — assuming the senior and affordable housing actually would get built. It would allow older residents in areas like the Village to age in place in their neighborhoods.

As for the criticism that the city seems intent on ramming the plan through as quickly as possible, Weisbrod dismissed those fears. Nevertheless, a scoping hearing for the ZONING, continued on p. 27 TheVillager.com

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POLICE BLOTTER Ticket scam didn’t play

Police arrested a former employee of the Gansevoort Hotel last week amid accusations that she had pocketed about $70,000 over the course of two years. Charysse Jonas, 31, allegedly used an ex-exployee’s personal information to deposit checks into Jonas’s personal bank account from January 2012 until November 2014, police say.

Law enforcement tracked Jonas down on April 1 and charged her with felony grand larceny. The money has not yet been returned to the Meatpacking District hotel, at 18 Ninth Ave., according to a police report.

Shifting his sights a few blocks farther downtown, on Sun., April 5, at 2:16 p.m., he robbed I.Q. Decor, at 242 E. 14th St., snagging $366.

He then made off with $600 on Mon., April 6, after striking at I Green Market, 271 First Ave., at 3 a.m.

In a fifth reported store robbery, at around 5:05 p.m., later that same day, A surveillance-camera he entered 66 Avenue A, image of the alleged and fled with $200. bodega bandit.

In the third job he pulled on Mon., April 6, at 9:05 p.m., he cleaned out the New Up and Up Laundry, at 13 Avenue A, fleecing them of $250.

Finally, on Tues., April 7, at 1:45 a.m., he tried to find easy pickings at East Village Fruit and Vegetable, at 229 Avenue B, but fled without taking any cash, according to police. Police have released a photo and video of the suspect.

Anyone with information is asked to call the Police Department’s Crime Stoppers Hotline, at 800-577TIPS. Tips can also be submitted by logging onto the Crime Stoppers Web site, www.nypdcrimestoppers. com, or by texting them to 274637(CRIMES) and then entering TIP577.

E.V. bodega bandit

Bank robbery bust

A 39-year-old man eager to attend a performance

by The Decemberists fell victim to an online scam on April 2. The alleged perpetrator arranged to meet the mark that day in front of 175 Fifth Ave. at about 5 p.m. after the rock fan saw an offer for two tickets for $150 on Craigslist. But the next day, the victim saw the same offer on the Web site, leading him to believe that he had been duped, according to a police report.

Police said they found Theron Rhodes, 45, on April 3 and searched him upon arrest. He was in possession of duplicate copies of the tickets sold to the victim on April 2. Rhodes was arrested and charged with criminal possession of a forged instrument.

70 grand Gans scam

Police are asking for the public’s help in tracking down a man wanted in connection with seven recent armed robberies of East Village-area stores, including delis and a laundromat.

Police say the suspect, a gaunt white man in his 40s, enters the locations, either displays a knife or simulates a firearm, demands money, removes cash from the registers, and flees on foot.

On Thurs., April 2, at 3:25 a.m., the suspect struck at One’s Fruit and Grocery, at 315 First Ave., near E. 18th St., and stole $400, according to police.

On Sat., April 4, at 10:20 p.m., he reportedly hit the same store again, this time swiping $950.

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22-year-old man with a bruised face and injured right wrist, police said.

Alphonso Hawkins, 60, allegedly shoved the victim down the stairs, and punched him to boot, at about 10:20 a.m., just 20 minutes after the victim had entered the subway system in Brooklyn. Just why Hawkins would do this was not mentioned in a police report.

He was charged with misdemeanor assault.

Not too sharp Helping a friend get on the subway cost one man more than $2.75 on Thurs., April 2. Police said they observed Trevor Colvil, 26, open an emergency exit to allow another person to enter the station at W. 14th St. and Sixth Ave. just before 11 p.m. that day.

A search of Colvil following his arrest led police to find a “spring-assisted gravity knife” in his possession. He reportedly told police that he carried the switchblade for his protection. This was at least the second time he was charged with felony criminal weapon possession, according to police.

Stealthy subway thief

Police reported that they have made an arrest in a robbery in the Bank of America ATM, at 390 Sixth Ave., on March 30, in which the perpetrator allegedly displayed a silver blunt instrument and told the victim, a woman, 35, he would cut her unless she withdrew money for him. She gave him $400 and he fled without harming her.

On April 3, police arrested Melvin Johnson, a 49-year-old homeless man, and charged him with robbery in the third degree.

A Staten Island straphanger was so deep in sleep that she missed her South Ferry stop and was only awakened when a thief took her bag. The suspect got away with $850 worth of stuff, police say.

The 25-year-old dozed off on the 1 train going to South Ferry at 3:30 a.m. on Fri., Apr. 3, police said.

The train started going back uptown again when she felt a “lush worker” — police lingo for thieves that prey on people who are inebriated or asleep on trains — remove her bag from her arm. Inside the purse was a $150 Michael Kors wallet, a $300 gold iPhone, gold rings worth $60 and Alex and Ani bracelets worth $300.

After she woke up, she looked around the train to see if anyone had her bag, but saw no one. She exited the train at Houston St. in Soho and immediately called police to report the crime.

E.M.T. needs treatment

Herve Leger hit

An emergency medical technician was transporting a patient to the LenoxHill HealthPlex, at Seventh Ave. and W. 12th St., on Sat., April 4, when the medic was attacked en route, requiring him to seek medical care there. Chase Dwyer, 21, kicked the 37-year-old E.M.T. at about 1:41 a.m. causing a bit of swelling, redness and pain, according to police.

A police report did not state possible motives for the attack nor where the ambulance picked up Dwyer, who was charged with felony assault.

High-end Herve Leger got hit by shoplifters twice in four days, police said.

The first incident at the shop at 409 Broadway in Soho was on Sat., Mar. 28, at noon when a man grabbed a Herve Leger dress, valued at $5,990, put it under his jacket and left.

Then on Tues., Mar. 31, at around 2 p.m., a man stole a dress, this time priced at $8,090, concealed it inside his jacket and left.

The same male employee, 42, reported the thefts.

Police did not say if the incidents were connected nor was a description of the suspect released.

Subway stairs shove The steps to the F Train at the W. Fourth St. station were the scene of a Sun., April 5, attack that left a

Zach Williams, D u s i c a S u e M a le s ev i c a n d L i n co l n A n d e rs o n TheVillager.com

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To renew your coverage each year, call 1-866-435-9521 April 9, 2015

9

Students keep the energy and the dialogue going

BY ZACH WILLIAMS

H

10

April 9, 2015

PHOTO BY ZACH WILLIAMS

undreds of students at Bard High School Early College discussed and confronted issues of race at a teach-in organized by students inspired by the ongoing #BlackLivesMatter movement.

The event did not only concern issues of police-community relations, though, but also a range of topics, including social bias, the role of art in activism and ongoing challenges to making society more equitable.

The idea at the March 18 event was to channel the energy from the movement from the preceding months into a welcoming space at the high school, at E. Houston and Mangin Sts. near the F.D.R. Drive.

But what began in December as an effort to quickly organize a teach-in about police brutality evolved into something much more robust, according to student-activists.

“It’s different than what we were originally thinking about, but I think it’s amazing,” said senior Mojique Tyler, who was an organizer of the event at the roughly 600-student school.

Back in December, Principal Michael Lerner told the event’s organizers that they would need to take

At a teach-in last month, B.H.S.E.C. students participated in a “Rap Music and Politics” discussion session on March 18. Because signed release forms weren’t obtained for all the students — which are required by the Department of Education for photos on school grounds — their faces aren’t shown in this photo.

their time to organize a teach-in.

They also needed support from faculty as well as the student union in order to broaden the event’s scope beyond issues directly linked to the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in Staten Island at the hands of police.

Teacher Meghann Walk — a sea-

soned activist herself — became the student organizers’ faculty adviser.

“They had to make this transition from being an activist out there to being political in here, which means working with other students who have different ideas,” Walk said.

Students also had to confront the notion that, for many of them, organizing is not the most inspiring element of engineering social change but necessary nonetheless, said Walk. She taught one student, for example, how to use software to assign hundreds of students to the teach-in’s 29 scheduled discussion sessions rather than doing so manually. And serving food at the event would not only assuage hunger, she explained to the students, but also create an additional forum for community-building among them.

At the same time, she said, there were concerns among some faculty members, at first, that an event focused on race could be divisive.

Other faculty members coached about 60 student moderators, as well as other teachers, on how to negotiate discussions of race in a positive manner, Walk noted. Guidance staff offered perspective on how to spur ongoing conversations beyond just one day, she added.

By the time March 18 came, the event was ready to reflect the underlying mission of the school itself, according to Walk.

“We’re not just a high school,” she explained. “We’re a high school-early college, and that takes seriously that you don’t just discuss ideas, you don’t just learn about history: You make history by yourselves being engaged with the world.”

The keynote speaker was Ibrahim Abdul-Matin, an intellectual whose focus is Islam’s role in environmen-

talism, who now works for the city’s Department of Environmental Protection. He roused the students with a speech emphasizing the importance of team building while pursuing social change.

Abdul-Matin’s words resonated with activists eager to expand their advocacy beyond marches on city streets, students said later. Following his address, students then participated in more than two dozen discussion sessions, such as “Self-Segregation,” “Burn Baby Burn: Property Destruction & Protest” and “Once You Go Black: Exploring America’s Fetishization of Black Sexuality.”

The event fit into the academic schedule as “Community Day,” an annual event at the school, which in previous years focused on other issues, Lerner said. Passion remained high among students at the end of the day when they assembled for a final discussion of the event. Some students reflected on the new lines of communication created by the event, while others stressed that more needs to be done within the school to deconstruct barriers between students of different backgrounds.

What remained the same after the event, though, is the level of engagement among students at the school, with an ongoing national debate on the role of racism in American society.

This month, Bard students planned once again to take to the streets — just as they did almost four months ago, when grand juries in Missouri and New York City announced that the police officers who killed Brown and Garner would not face charges.

(In January, a U.S. Department of Justice investigation yielded insufficient evidence to support criminal charges against the officer who fatally shot Brown.)

Lerner said that activism is nothing new at the school. Yet he could not recall another time in his 13 years at Bard when passions ran as high as they do now.

Fully fledged discussions on racial issues require patience, as much in the long term, as they did during the discussion sessions, according to the student-activists. But just as important, Tyler said, the right kind of space is needed in which these issues can be worked through, as well as a sense that all viewpoints are welcome. Along with another student, he co-moderated a workshop, “Black Until Proven Innocent: Police Brutality in America.”

“The first five minutes were slightly quiet,” Tyler said. “People were processing a lot and it was nerve-wracking. But after that, people really opened up... . It’s not just people at the front of the room talking.”

TheVillager.com

Marie Bartone, 97, nurse whose husband was doctor OBITUARY

BY ALBERT AMATEAU

M

arie Bartone, a Greenwich Village resident with eight great-grandchildren, died on March 24 surrounded by her extended family. She was 97, and had been in ill health for the past year.

A registered nurse, she worked part time with her husband, the late Dr. Joseph Bartone, in his practice at 10 Downing St. “My mother and dad met when she was a nursing student and he was a doctor at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Staten Island,” said a daughter, Jackie Bartone. “They were married in 1942, and my dad was in the Coast Guard during World War II.”

Marie Bartone.

Born in the Fordham section of the Bronx to Lena and Anthony Speroni, Marie and her two brothers, both now deceased, went to high school there.

“My dad’s family were Villagers from way back,” her daughter said.

“They lived on MacDougal St.” In addition to working part time with her husband, she was on the nursing staff at the old St. Clare’s Hospital on W. 51st St. That hospital merged with St. Vincent’s in the Village and finally closed in 2007.

The couple moved in 1958 to an apartment on W. Houston St. just off Sixth Ave., where they raised their family. Dr. Bartone died in 1963, and Marie began working as a nurse for AT&T. She retired in 1983 and spent the rest of her long life helping to raise her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

“Nursing was not just a profession

with her, it was a way of life. She was that kind of person, caring in that way for everyone she met,” said her sister-in-law, Pat Speroni. “No matter how busy she was, she always made huge Sunday dinners for her family and friends. Her hobby was people,” said Speroni.

“She was also an amateur astrologist — she enjoyed lining up the planets.”

In addition to her sister-in-law and her daughter, Jackie, another daughter, Carole Opedal, survives, as well as her three grandchildren, Cristina Porfidio and Lars and Joseph Opedal, along with six great-granddaughters and two great-grandsons. A devoted niece, Jackie Barton, also survives.

Perazzo Funeral Home, 199 Bleecker St., was in charge of arrangements.

The funeral was March 30 at St. Anthony’s Church, at Carmine and Bleecker Sts.

Peter Lombard, 79, stage actor and longtime Westbeth resident

OBITUARY

A

veteran actor of the Broadway stage, Peter Kirk Lombard, 79, died March 28 after a long illness.

Lombard was born in Spokane, Washington, in 1933. A longtime West Village resident, he moved to New York in the late 1950s to pursue an acting career, and married Peggy Anne Watson in 1960.

He worked steadily on Broadway through the 1960s and ’70s, appearing in many plays, including “Generation” (opposite Henry Fonda), “Carnival,” “Promises, Promises” (as Jerry Orbach’s understudy), “Conquering Hero” (directed by Bob Fosse), “Pretty Belle” (opposite Angela Lansbury) and “1776” (as Thomas Jefferson).

He also appeared in Las Vegas in “Sweet Charity” (opposite Juliet Prowse), Off Broadway at BAM, and in many regional and summer stock productions.

He appeared at the White House twice in musicals and performed for two presidents.

After his successful stage career, Lombard opened The Salvage Barn, an antique store on Hudson St., known as much for its Broadway soundtracks and theater lore as its furniture.

An original tenant of Westbeth, Lombard was involved in many tenant councils during his 22 years there.

TheVillager.com

Peter Lombard.

In 1992, Lombard and Peggy Anne opened a B&B in Upstate New York where he worked as a real estate broker until 2010. In 2011, they returned to New York City to be closer to their daughter, Jennifer, and her family.

Peter Lombard is survived by his wife of 55 years, Peggy Anne Lombard, his daughter, Jennifer Lombard, his son, Kirk Lombard, and three grandchildren. For condolences or information on the memorial, please contact thelombardsnyc@gmail.com.

Contributions in Peter Lombard’s name can be made to The Nature Conservancy.

April 9, 2015

11

Lulu’s amazing return, and not a moment too soon LULU, continued from p. 1

PHOTO BY BOB KRASNER

I knew that she was in a desperate situation and that time was running out.

I had Fire Chief Quinn’s number and I sent him a text. “The police and the OEM won’t let me into my apartment,” I said. “Can you help me?”

Only a few minutes went by before I received a return text: “Let me do some investigating.”

Five minutes later I got another text: “Can you meet me on the corner of St. Marks and Second at five?”

“Sure,” I texted back.

At five o’clock on the nose I saw Captain Quinn waiting on my corner.

He opened the police barricade where I was not let in before.

“Follow me,” he said.

We entered my building, now both familiar and unfamiliar as the halls were covered in soot and filled with broken glass. The formerly rather dark halls were now flooded with sunlight, since no buildings were left standing beside it.

As we negotiated the rubble-strewn stairs, Captain Quinn asked, “Are you sure you are prepared for this? It will be a shock. Are you sure you want to go in?”

Lulu is reportedly still freaked out from her experience, but is getting better, bit by bit, every day.

“I was actually prepared for this,” I replied, sweeping my hand toward the ruins of demolished buildings seen out of the stairwell window. “And besides, I have to find my cat.”

I could see an odd look creep across his face as he said, “The guys have looked all over for your cat these past

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April 9, 2015

two days.” His look warned me that I would be sorely disappointed.

As we entered my apartment, I tried hard not to look as stunned as I felt. It seemed as though my legs would go out from under me at any second or that I would vomit. It was awful. I saw that there were two cat traps set out in two different rooms. They were both empty. I also noticed that things had been taken out of closets and storage areas, so that one could see that no cat was there.

I started calling “Lulu! Lulu! Lulu!

Lulu!” to no avail.

Captain Quinn and the commander watched me as I went from room to room. I had a sinking, sickening feeling in my gut as I fruitlessly looked for Lulu. I went into the last room, my studio, and saw that the ceiling had fallen in, leaving water and wet plaster covering everything.

I remembered one remote hiding place between a work desk and a filing cabinet. I got down on my hands and knees and crawled over the wet filth and stuck my head into the soaked tiny space. No Lulu.

Feeling utterly hopeless and dejected, I returned to my bedroom where I saw all the knocked-out windows stacked against my bureau. Since Lulu

is so tiny, she was always able to get into the drawers through a small space in the back of the bureau. I pulled all the windows toward me and quickly opened a drawer.

As I was opening it, I saw Lulu looking up at me with her intense green eyes as if she were asking, “Where were you?”

I just as quickly shut the drawer and excitedly squealed, “I found her!

I found her!”

Unbelieving, both Captain Quinn and the commander both said almost simultaneously, “No way! No way!”

I was so scared that Lulu would just slither out the back of the drawer and slink off to another hiding spot, as I shouted excitedly, “Go get the cat carrier, it is on the top shelf of the closet in the back room!”

Captain Quinn ran and got the carrier and put it on the table. I quickly opened the drawer and pulled Lulu out in one firm, quick movement. It took all three of us to put her in the carrier and zip her in.

Thanks to the F.D.N.Y. and the Kindness of the Universe, I have my two cats back. The black cloud that has been the last two weeks is gently lifting. Spring is in the air and all things new are eagerly awaited.

SCOOPY’S, continued from p. 2

son, Rebel and Photographer, Plans to Leave the Lower East Side for Europe,” announced that the L.E.S. documentarian was planning to emigrate to Austria. Regardless of whether or not they think Patterson really is the “last bohemian,” people keep asking us when or if he’s still going. So, how’s it looking? we asked him last week. “It turns out that it costs a lot to go over there,” he told us. “And another thing, I’m worried about is the European politics are starting to turn rightwing.

And so many people asked me not to leave the Lower East Side, it makes it hard to leave. It’s a real hardship to take my whole archive over there. If I were 20, it would be no big deal.”

All of that said, Patterson still would like to relocate. He’d settle in Bad Ischl, a spa town in the Alps where he has friends from his frequent trips to Europe for the Wildstyle and Tattoo Messe sideshow-style events that he helps run. His wife, Elsa Rensaa, has some health issues, and Patterson feels a “safe European home,” as the Clash put it, would be best for her. “If I had someone to sponsor me, I’d do it,” he said. “It’s safer. It’s better for Elsa.

The food is better, it just seems more natural. If we stay in America, we’ll stay on the Lower East Side.”

be back in touch with us about how the digital archive can be further customized with any desired “bells and whistles.” In truth, those preserved early bound volumes from the 1930s, ’40s and even ’50s were so brittle, you couldn’t even handle them without the yellowed pages immediately crumbling to tiny bits in your fingers.

So this will be a fantastic way to preserve the paper, while also allowing all the back issues to be widely read, enjoyed and, if desired, used for research. And we didn’t have to sell our soul to Google, either. The grant needs to be allocated by June 30, after which the work will start, so this will all happen pretty soon. Wow! This is just one more reason why we LOVE our local public libraries!

AUSTRIA OR BUST? Some readers, no doubt, after seeing Clayton Patterson’s name in this week’s lead Scoopy item, wondered to themselves, or perhaps even proclaimed aloud, “Is Clayton going to Austria or isn’t he!?”

Almost exactly a year ago, a New York Times article, “Last Bohemian Turns Out the Lights: Clayton Patter-

TheVillager.com

Howl! gallery will blend punk and performance art

BY TINA BENITEZ-EVES

S

TheVillager.com

PHOTO BY TEQUILA MINSKY

andwiched between Extra Place — where bands once unloaded equipment through CBGB’s back-alley door — and the Bowery, a new art space, Howl! Happening, is supporting emerging artists and salvaging some of that oldschool, East Village sense of community.

Conceived by Howl! Arts, a nonprofit supporting local art and artists, the gallery, at 6 E. First St., officially opened March 29, showcasing former Bowery resident — and designated the Fifth Ramone — Arturo Vega.

“It wouldn’t be a gallery without Arturo,” said Ted Riederer, Vega’s longtime friend and collaborator and visual curator for Howl! Happening. “Not only did he provide a safe harbor to The Ramones, but he helped artists like me. He fostered this sense of family in the community.”

“Arturo Vega American Treasure,” which runs through April 25, features one of the artist’s paintings depicting an outstretched hand holding a 1972 silver dollar. Like many of Vega’s pieces, the American eagle held a different meaning for the artist, who moved from a repressive Mexico to the U.S. in 1971. It was the Vietnam War era, a time when many Americans questioned their patriotism, but for Vega, the symbol encapsulated freedom.

In the East Village, he found a place where there was open sexuality, where you could be who you wanted to be and dress the way you wanted to dress. Vega later designed one of the most recognizable band logos: the black-and-white Ramones’ eagle emblem.

“Arturo Vega is a catalyst,” said Bob Holman, vice president of Howl! Arts and founder of the Bowery Poetry Club. “He’s an icon of what Howl! is about, an artist who was, in his own right, known more for his work with The Ramones — who, in their own right, are the essence of punk and the essence of the Lower East Side. Vega being their biggest support system is like how Howl! is the biggest support system for the Lower East Side.”

The gallery is more than 1,500 square feet in size.

Holman’s late wife, artist Elizabeth Murray, has a wall dedicated to her paintings and sculpture (which will be an ongoing installment throughout the year), which premieres with “Stay Awake,” inspired by the song by Dumbo’s mother in the animated classic.

Murray’s piece complements what Riederer believes is the underlying message behind Vega’s work, particularly in the last decade of his life: love.

“I was tired of the state of commercial art where this has been declared the age of the art fair, and galleries are forced to sell, which really pollutes the art itself,” Riederer said. “This project is really about love. I know that’s sort of a sentimental word, but how many people are talking about that — love —now?”

In addition to the Elizabeth Murray Wall, Howl!

Happening will also introduce some never-before-seen works by Vega every 15 to 16 months, pulling from the artist’s collection of more than 150 pieces, in addition to capturing new emerging artists throughout the year.

“We want to show great art from artists who make their careers in the East Village and Lower East Side,” said Jane Friedman, a member of the Howl! board of directors and executor of Vega’s estate. “That’s the Howl! mission, to give exposure to neighborhood artists.”

In the spirit of Allan Kaprow’s “Happenings” of

Quintan Ana Wikswo will have a book signing followed by an exhibit June 11-14. This will be followed by a show from June 19Aug. 14 by “outlaw artist” Clayton Patterson, who is known for using a handheld video camera to capture and expose police brutality during the 1988 Tompkins Square riots.

“The idea of making this idea a physical place is what is happening,” said Holman. “And using the word ‘happening,’ in the verb form as an actual place, is the approach we are taking. It’s not a static establishment.”

The Howl! Emergency Life Project (H.E.L.P.), which offers artists emergency financial assistance and social-service support, is another layer to Howl!’s mission. An ongoing series of workshops at the gallery, H.E.L.P. will cover everything from how to fill out housing applications, deal with landlords, rent-regulation issues and evictions, to how to buy real estate, as well as get affordable healthcare. The program will be held through an ongoing partnership with The Actors Fund and other groups.

“That’s a very important part of the mission that sets us apart One of the late Arturo Vega’s paintings from the “American Treasure” from other galleries,” Riederer show at the new Howl! Happenings gallery. The untitled work is said. “You would never see a galacrylic and silkscreen on canvas, 76 inches by 60 inches. lery opening doors to artists in this way.”

Above all, there’s always a sense of survival, which is the East Village way and the true spirit of Howl! according to Holman. He recited the opening line of “Howl!” Allen Ginsberg’s famous 1955 poem: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness.” The “Beat anthem” inspired the creation of the Howl! Festival back in 2003, and the same spirit embodies the new gallery space.

“That’s what this Howl! Happening wants to be,” said HolBob Holman — here being the high-energy emcee of the Second Annual Acker Awards for avant-garde artists — has high hopes man, “so that the best minds of this generation will not be defor Howl! Happenings. stroyed by madness but find that the 1960s, spontaneous gatherings that opened the they have a home. That’s Allen’s legacy and what he world of art to movement through audience partic- left to the Lower East Side.”

Now a fancier mercantile row, Extra Place, where ipation, the Howl! Happening space will also cater to more performance art, including Vangeline The- the other four Ramones propped themselves against atre, a Japanese Butoh dance company, bringing the a mound of garbage for a band photo, is now a neattraditional dance form to the 21st century, running ly paved walkway. And CBGB was forced out in October 2006 and John Varvatos eventually moved in. from April 30 to May 3.

“There’s an attempt at remembering, an attempt “It blurred the line between art and viewer,” said Friedman of Kaprow’s “Happenings,” which is also at continuing this vibe,” Holman said. “It doesn’t what she envisions for the Howl! gallery. “Anybody just start with punk, of course. The Bowery itself was the street of populous art. That’s why I wantcould be an artist.”

Also moving into the performance space, Lydia ed to put The Bowery Poetry Club here, and that’s Lunch, dubbed “an everyday internal rebel in a sea of why the New Museum is here. There are elements blandness” by Holman, will occupy the Howl! space, of the Bowery and its relationship with art, and from May 9 to June 5, for “So Real It Hurts,” an in- Howl! Happening is one of the great signs that stallation and performance by the artist and friends. even in 2015, it continues.”

April 9, 2015

13

Clamp down on gas tapping and the crooks who do it

EDITORIAL

T

he disastrous, fatal East Village explosion and fire on March 26 has left a huge hole on Second Ave., two men dead and one huge question unanswered — namely, how could this tragedy ever have been allowed to happen in the first place?

The investigation is focusing on suspected gas siphoning involving 121 Second Ave., where the explosion occurred, and possibly also 119 Second Ave., a building that was owned by the same landlord.

Back in August, Con Ed inspectors found that the gas line servicing Sushi Park, the Japanese restaurant on 121 Second Ave.’s ground floor, had been illegally tapped with flexible hoses that were reportedly diverting gas to residential apartments upstairs.

Smelling gas and finding multiple leaks in the jury-rigged system, Con Ed shut off the gas until the dangerous situation was fixed. A master-plumber self-certified that the situation had been remedied. The gas was then turned back on — but city inspectors never subsequently returned to check if the illegal practice

had recurred.

Often, when a convicted felon gets out of prison, he or she is on parole for a while. People who knowingly — or even unknowingly — illegally divert highly combustible gas, similarly, should be monitored to ensure they are not continuing to do so as soon as the inspectors look the other way.

Currently, tough, the Department of Buildings has no such safeguards.

Con Ed merely alerts D.O.B. when it shuts off gas to a building — but the utility needs to provide much more detailed information to the city, in terms of why the gas was locked, specifically if it was due to a highly dangerous condition that could potentially recur. After all, if a person taps a gas line once, wouldn’t they just do it again given the chance — especially if there’s little-to-no follow-up?

Con Ed, for its part, maintains it did its job properly at 121 Second Ave., but the utility now also says it is going to cooperate with the city to tighten up this process.

In a statement to The Villager, Con Ed said: “We followed procedure by turning off the gas on Aug. 6 after finding the rigged-up hosing and finding leaks. We then notified D.O.B. within 90 days (Sept. 4, in fact). Also, we will be working with the city to see what other changes in the process

they want to make.”

As for whether it should have raised red flags to Con Ed inspectors two weeks ago that the upstairs apartments at 121 Second Ave. didn’t have any gas service, the utility deflected that question; Con Ed was there only to check on the metering systems for a new second gas line to the building, but found that the new meters had been placed in too tight of a space, and so didn’t turn the gas on for the new line, the utility said.

“Our inspectors who went to 121 Second Ave. the afternoon of March 26 were there to inspect work that was done in connection with the installation of the new service,” the utility told us. “They were not there to conduct a survey as to who had gas and who didn’t.”

The city increasingly has been moving toward natural gas for heating. Yes, it’s better environmentally than heating oil — but what about safety?

“Natural gas is a clean, safe source of energy,” the utility told us. “The delivery of any form of energy poses risks.”

Con Ed also sent us a fact sheet about natural-gas conversions, but we didn’t find anything specific about safety in it.

The city, not Con Ed, is conducting

the investigation into the explosion, the utility added.

A recent New York Times article, “East Village gas explosion reveals problems in city’s inspection system,” reported that Deputy Mayor Anthony Shorris says the city will now be trying to follow up “in a more focused way” regarding “people who have a history of problematic behavior.”

Meanwhile, in the wake of the disaster — which felled three buildings, killed two young men and displaced scores of local families — landlord Maria Hrynenko, contractor Dilber Kukic and a plumber — who had been doing the actual work on the new gas-metering service in the basement — are all said to be frantically pointing fingers at each other as to who was ultimately responsible for the gas tapping at 121 Second Ave. It’s suspected that after Con Ed’s inspectors left on March 26, someone may have promptly tried to hook up the illegal system again, but botched the job, leading to the disastrous explosion and fire.

Criminally negligent homicide charges are now likely, according to police sources, the Daily News reported. And these charges are entirely justified — two lives were taken, and many, many more could have been lost. Someone now must pay.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Natural gas vs. heating oil To The Editor: Re “Illegal gas tapping eyed in deadly E.V. explosion” (news article, April 2): My building recently switched to natural gas as opposed to heating oil, for whatever reason. Then the gas was shut off, more than a year

ago. Somebody smelled something. We have heat and hot water, but no gas for stoves. We’ve had endless changes and inspections. Heating oil is a liquid and safer? Natural gas is a gas and therefore more volatile, especially in our old Lower East Side buildings?

The Villager might serve a community service by finding out how many buildings in the L.E.S.

have gas shutdowns. There are many. What’s going on?

It seems some folks, perhaps meaning well, or not, just don’t know how dangerous and flammable the technology being forced on them is.

Thomas Walker

Nice job!

EVAN FORSCH

To The Editor: Re “Illegal gas tapping eyed in deadly E.V. explosion” (news article, April 2): There have been many articles written about the East Village catastrophe. Lincoln Anderson’s story is one of the most well-written, thoughtful and in-depth, covers many perspectives and raises possible solutions. It also celebrates the Village’s indomitable community spirit. Thank you.

Jeanie Chin

LETTERS, continued on p. 16

14

April 9, 2015

TheVillager.com

Matthew’s wake: A Soho super is laid to rest NOTEBOOK

BY MINERVA DURHAM

F

TheVillager.com

PHOTO BY MINERVA DURHAM

or years I was curious about the four sisters of Matthew McGuigan, the redheaded Irish super at 226 Lafayette St. in Soho. Were they graceful and charming, I wondered? Redheads, like him? Did they have, in the words of Thackeray, “something better than beauty?”

Matthew also had two brothers, but I didn’t wonder about them.

Matthew’s parents met in America, each one having come here alone, his father from County Tyrone and his mother from County Wexford. They married, worked and brought up their seven children in extreme poverty in the housing projects near the 59th St. Bridge on the Queens side. Not until their youngest son, Patrick, got a job with TWA did the family move out of the projects.

Matthew, the middle brother, was one-of-a-kind. He could fix anything.

He couldn’t read or write well, so his sisters would write up invoices, fill out forms and compose letters for him.

One sister spoke on the phone with him on the same day of the week and at the same hour every week, like a clock.

His siblings seemed to have a protective attitude toward him, perhaps because he was a premature baby, weighing only one pound at birth, according to one of his sisters. Not even the doctors thought he would live.

As an adult he was handy, solitary, self-sufficient, good-natured and seemingly incapable of ever harming anyone or of ever even suspecting that anyone might harm him.

Matthew died on March 8 at age 76. His wake at the Romanelli Funeral Home on Rockaway Boulevard in Ozone Park on March 13 was the sad occasion that allowed me to meet three of his sisters. Noor (she changed her name from Catherine) flew from Holland where she has lived for 40 years.

Sheila and Joanne flew from Texas where they have lived for most of their adult lives. The oldest sister, Mary, also a resident of Texas, could not attend, but her daughter and granddaughter were there.

I met Noor first. She spoke with a keen spark of wit. Her face resembled Matthew’s. Her complexion and hair were somewhat ruddy, her body agile and athletic. She was not the oldest sister, but she seemed to be the dominant sister, the one who kept everyone in line and made sure that things got done. Matthew had visited her in Holland a few years earlier, and on the second day of his visit he had suggested that he might re-hang the doors in

Matthew McGuigan was the superintendent of 226 Lafayette St. for 40 years.

her house. They were badly aligned, he said.

So eager was she to have the doors fixed, and so hoping not to jinx the project, she hid her excitement from Matthew until the job was all done and the doors opened and closed properly.

Joanna’s face had the sort of beauty that many people might miss. It was made up of ideal medieval forms, a good strong chin, very thin and shapely lips, a long thin nose, kind eyes and a tall forehead. A special-education teacher, Joanna had an air of exhaustion and disappointment about her, perhaps just an expression of her deep grief. Matthew was a year older than Joanna, and he was especially close to her. Before he got sick, he had been planning to retire to Texas and live near her.

The baby sister, Sheila, moved gracefully and dressed glamorously. She admitted to bleaching her hair. She was the adventurous one. The first sister to go to Texas, she had accepted a job there on the spur of the moment and never returned to live in New York. She married a Chinese man. Her grown son was proof of the union. His eyes were Asian, but his bushy black beard and tall, muscular body suggested that his Irish genes had overpowered others.

Everyone was waiting for Owen, the firstborn of the seven siblings. I was warned that he might say something unusual and playful and perhaps shocking. Indeed when he met Sandy Rheingold, a plumber who had

worked with Matthew in Soho for nearly 40 years, Owen asked Sandy, “Are you dandy?” Then he turned to me and said that he admired my name.

I must be a goddess, he said, or maybe a witch.

Owen was a storyteller, right away mentioning that Matthew worked for Bob De Niro Sr., the father of the famous actor, saying that they had met on 35th St. when Bob lived there. Like most old stories, Owen’s had some facts reversed, some details distorted and important parts left out. Matthew had worked first, not for Bob De Niro Sr., but for Bob’s ex-wife, Virginia Admiral, at 226 Lafayette, and he continued to work there after Virginia’s death in 2000 until he was too sick to work anymore.

Patrick reversed the facts of his story, too. He told us about Matthew’s vivid memory of the thrill of seeing Virginia’s famous son exiting a helicopter in Montauk with his girlfriend. But I was there with Matthew and Virginia on that trip in 1989, and we had watched the couple boarding, not exiting the helicopter.

Matthew, Virginia and I went to Montauk together for a week because Virginia needed Matthew to do repairs on the house there and she wanted me to do the cooking. We boarded at the W. 30th St. shoreline heliport on the West Side and had a short, glorious trip to Montauk. After we exited the chopper, we watched the famous couple run under its spinning blades, climb up and board it, and ascend in it as it

flew to Manhattan.

At that moment Matthew and I were onlookers, sharing our worker status on the sidelines, outside of the circle of fame and glamour that Virginia’s son lived in. Don’t think, though, that we were unhappy with our lot. When we were with Virginia, we were part of the community that she had helped to create while she turned four cast-iron buildings into artist live/work cooperatives.

Early on, most of the artists who moved into Soho did the plumbing, carpentry and electrical work in their own lofts, hopefully overseen by licensed workers. Many took jobs constructing other artists’ lofts. They saw themselves as workers participating in an artistic revolution with socialist underpinnings.

Virginia had been an anarchist, pacifist and communist in Berkeley when she was young. In New York she followed the social ideas of George Maciunas, a Lithuanian-born Fluxus artist who sought to create a community of artist co-ops and to destroy High Art and bourgeois culture by displacing Art with everyday activities.

Everyone became equal during the growth of Soho, including Matthew McGuigan. He was respected as a craftsman and enjoyed easy social exchanges with everyone. The super of 226 Lafayette for almost four decades, he was a Soho treasure.

Patrick had grown to be the tallest McGuigan sibling and the one to assume the role of protector. It was he who stayed in constant touch with Matthew’s friends and employers throughout his illness. It was he who greeted everyone at the wake. After he made sure that Owen had met Matthew’s friends, it was time for the deacon to speak.

The deacon was dressed in a long, white tunic, a little tight around the waist. Despite the fact that he had never met Matthew, the deacon pleased the mourners with his humor and warmth. As he led us in prayer responses, the room was as one being, with one voice and one thought, solid and solemn, saying goodbye to Matthew.

Zaire Schoenholt, an owner of Spring Street Natural restaurant, arrived late, at nearly 5 p.m., just as the wake was ending. While Zaire sat weeping, Noor stood next to Matthew’s open coffin and read a poem.

Then Noor invited all of us to touch Matthew, whose hands were wrapped in a rosary. It was our last chance to grasp his hands, kiss his face and say a final goodbye, Noor said.

Sandy, Zaire and I returned to Manhattan driven by Robert Haisley in his old Honda Civic. Robert and I had visited Matthew after his operation MATTHEW, continued on p. 27 April 9, 2015

15

Salmagundi Club keeps it real with modernization

BY ALBERT AMATEAU

T

he Salmagundi Club, located in a landmarked 160-yearold Fifth Ave. brownstone in Greenwich Village, is a blend of Victorian elegance and state-of-the-art 21st-century technology.

The club, founded in 1871 as a drawing class for artists, has recently completed a top-to-bottom modernization of its main gallery.

“We spent three years raising money for the project,” Robert W. Pillsbury, club president, told a visitor from The Villager recently. Funding for the $1.5 million renovation included foundation grants, proceeds from auctions of artworks by club members and a New York State grant for the restoration of historically eligible buildings.

“We’re in the last brownstone townhouse on Fifth Avenue,” Pillsbury noted.

Whimsically named either for a stew of different kinds of meat, or maybe from “The Salmagundi Papers,” a collection of humorous 19th-century essays written by Washington Irving, the Salmagundi Club began in the studio of sculptor Jonathan Scott Hartley. For its first 23 years of existence, the club met in various galleries, public halls and artists’ studios.

In 1894, the club, which had become one of the nation’s premier arts organizations, acquired its first permanent home, at 14 W. 12th St. In 1917, the club bought its current location, the former Irad and Sarah Hawley mansion at 47 Fifth Ave. A

The Salmagundi Club’s renovated main gallery.

year later the club built a two-story gallery addition in the garden of the four-story mansion.

“We’re standing in what used to be the garden of the building,” said Pillsbury. “Over the years it had various owners — it was a hotel for a time.”

The first floor of the gallery addition is a large billiard room (including three billiard tables that date from the 1890s) that also serves as a gallery for shows by Salmagundi artists. Recently, the room was devoted to a show of monotypes, small oneof-a-kind works printed on one of two monotype presses that the club keeps in the billiard room.

The addition’s second floor is the club’s main gallery, which reopened

last November after the renovation, which included a new floor, walls and state-of-the-art lighting.

Claudia Seymour, Salmagundi Club president from 2007 to 2013, began the process that included fundraising, input from club members and a final design by Lisa Easton, a preservation architect and head of the firm Easton Associates.

The new gallery opened with Salmagundi’s winter auction in November and is where the club’s spring auction recently took place on successive Friday evenings in March.

“This project was the beginning of an overall restoration,” said Tim Newton, chairperson of the club’s board of trustees. “We’re working on

the rest.”

Salmagundi has 871 members, an increase of about 200 over the past few years. Under club rules, 60 percent of the members must be artists, and the remaining 40 percent are what the club calls “lay members.”

Honorary members over the years have included Winston Churchill, Buckminster Fuller, Al Hirschfeld and Thomas Hoving.

“We have members from all over, including England and Holland,” said Charles Yoder, head of the club’s art committee, which decides on works to be included in club shows and also judges works of artists applying for membership. “Most of us are local. Those of us who live in a 75-mile radius are designated as ‘resident members,’ ” said Yoder, a painter whose studio is in a Tribeca loft.

Preservation of the building’s original architecture and furnishings is paramount, as might be expected from a club devoted to representational, or realist, art. The library, on the building’s second floor, is essentially the same as it was in 1917. The parlor on the main floor still resembles its Victorian original.

Guy Wiggins, a club member who hosted the recent visit by The Villager, embodies that tradition. Wiggins, 94, who served in World War II and took part in the occupation of Japan, lives and works in the Village.

“My grandfather, Carleton Wiggins, was president of the club from 1911 to 1913,” he said. “My father, Guy C. Wiggins, was a member. He was noted for his paintings of New York winter scenes.”

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR LETTERS, continued from p. 14

Committed to her cats To The Editor: Re “How one cat survived the Second Ave. catastrophe” (news article, April 2): There are many heroes in this disaster, as the writer points out, not the least of which are the F.D.N.Y. rescuers who went the extra mile to even provide Laszlo with a can of tuna!

But surely there is another hero (modestly unacknowledged here): Laszlo’s owner — or should I say Laszlo’s human? — Yvonne, who worked tirelessly to find him and the other cats as well, never giving up for days, up to the

16

April 9, 2015

point she wrote this article.

She obviously has as big a beating heart as Laszlo! And thanks to her, we have at least one happy-ending story to this terrible event.

lives of so many of our young people.

Congratulations, Tony, on receiving this award. Syracuse University is proud to have participated each year in the Latino College Expo.

Katherine Cole

Lonnie Morrison Morrison is director of admissions, New York metro area, Syracuse University

He shoots! He scores!

To The Editor: Re “Knicks award winner has had countless assists” (sports article, March 26): Tony had a vision that has resulted in many young individuals finding their way to college. We need more individuals like Tony who are attempting to make a difference in the

A few facts on Knight To The Editor: Re “Robert Knight of WBAI is remembered at memorial” (memorial, March 2): Thank you for your coverage of the tribute to Robert Knight. Just to correct the record: With the WBAI

layoffs, Knight was officially dropped from “The Five O’clock Shadow,” but continued with his volunteer “Earthwatch” program. Also, he was never a Jesuit seminarian, but at one point had considered becoming a Franciscan brother.

Pamela Somers 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, 1 Metrotech North, 10th floor, Brooklyn, NY, NY 11201. Please include phone number for confirmation purposes. The Villager reserves the right to edit letters for space, grammar, clarity and libel.

Anonymous letters will not be published.

TheVillager.com

Tribeca Film Fest trending west At 14, TFF returns to its Below Canal roots

COURTESY OF TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL

Red carpet glam can be found at every Tribeca Film Fest screening venue, April 15-26.

BY SCOTT STIFFLER

O

ld enough to assert itself but young enough to learn new tricks, the 14th edition of the Tribeca Film Festival is back where it started.

Here we go round again — this time with a new multi-screen venue,

TheVillager.com

a sprawling events hub and prestige premieres all taking place on the west side, below Canal St. It’s a conscious effort to reconnect with the festival’s initial purpose: make lower Manhattan a cultural destination, and give a much-needed boost to an area struggling to recover from 9/11.

During its 2002 debut, this mission was a rousing success — but as the

years went by, righteous grumblings were heard that the festival was becoming increasingly disassociated from its namesake neighborhood.

That feeling was understandable, especially among ticketholders who found themselves trekking to Third Ave. and 11th St. for screenings at AMC Loews Village 7, or finding the red carpet located in Chelsea.

Still, two out of three ain’t bad in the name and deed department, considering that the Tribeca Film Festival has presented 1,600 films from more than 80 countries, attracted 4.9 million attendees, delivered $900 million into New York City’s economic coffers and distinguished itself as a destination PREVIEW, continued on p.18 April 9, 2015

17

Tribeca Film Festival recommits to its namesake neighborhood PREVIEW, continued from p. 17

COURTESY OF TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL

for festival devotees and foreign tourists.

This year, from April 15-26, several notable changes will once again link the brand name to the physical location it invokes. The Regal Cinemas Battery Park Stadium 11 facility replaces Loews Village 7. The School of Visual Arts’ two-screen SVA Theater remains, along with the nine-screen Bow Tie Cinemas Chelsea (both are on W. 23rd St. near Eighth Ave., in eyeball distance of one another).

While the Chelsea venues will continue to host premieres, Regal will also be a place to find celebrity-infused red carpet glam. Add the return of BMCC Tribeca PAC as a screening venue and the popular free outdoor Drive-In series (right behind the Regal), and the festival is poised to offer its most downtown-centric iteration in years.

“To keep the primary players in one area was a formula that worked from the beginning,” notes festival director Genna Terranova, who connects the 2015 edition’s geographic density to a desire to “create an environment where people feel like they’re part of the event; that sensation of community — and the best way to do that, we felt, was in our own community downtown. We always wanted to centralize the festival, because of our namesake, and also because we want to bring people together.”

But you can’t do that without a hub, Terranova notes — and they’ve found one at 50 Varick St. (btw. Beach & Laight). The 150,000-square-foot Spring Studios facility will provide ample space for multimedia installations, screenings, industry discussions (“Tea Talks”) and a “live+ mobile + social media experience” that has A$AP Rocky sharing the stage with journalist Elliott Wilson for a conversation about how storytelling influenced his growth as a rap artist and style icon.

That April 21 event, filmed to air on

TFF’s free April 25 Drive-In screening of “Back to the Future” includes a sneak peek at a documentary about the franchise and photo ops with a DeLorean.

WatchLOUD.com, is indicative of the festival’s ongoing effort to reach wider audiences and embrace new platforms.

“You can walk into the space and really feel like you’re part of the festival,” says Terranova of Spring Studios, which will host the hacking conference DEFCON. Its founder, Dark Tangent, will be on hand to launch their April 23–25 event. “It’s all good white hat-type stuff,” Terranova assures, noting that DEFCON will allow festivalgoers to participate in handson hacking activities, addressing both current events and issues connected to the subject matter of festival films.

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mourn the day that Virtual Reality overtakes 3D — and while the current state of technology isn’t exactly up to Star Trek holodeck standards, the Spring Studios facility has an April 24/25 event that offers a palpable glimpse into VR’s potential to radically alter moviegoing.

Taking place in a 15x15 unit, “Lost” is a 6.5-minute real-time interactive VR narrative created by the Oculus Story Studio. After being placed in a moonlit forest with an “unusual guest,” your 360° world becomes fraught with danger. Terranova says use of horror movie tropes in “Lost” is a significant leap for the VR medium, which has evolved to a point where it’s able to ask (and answer), “How do we incorporate this new technology into telling stories?”

Virtual Reality has a presence elsewhere at Spring Studios, as part of the “Storyscapes” program. Its five interactive events — which promise to inject “empathy and immersion” into the storytelling experience — include a 6,000-square-foot sensory depriva-

tion labyrinth and the opportunity to become digital friends with life coach Karen. Her unhealthy curiosity about your personal life mirrors concerns brought up in another Storyscapes experience: “Do Not Track,” which reveals the extent to which your online activities are tracked. Additionally, the work of large-scale installation artist (and 2013 Storyscapes alum) Chris Milk will be featured, through a number of VR projects including “Evolution of Verse” and “Clouds Over Sidra.”

For audiences accustomed to simply sitting back as the film unspools and occasionally gripping their cup holders during a tense moment, Terranova says the VR wow factor “is almost as if when you first saw cinema and everyone was afraid the train was coming off the screen. There’s a new grammar, a new language being created. The technology is here — but the challenge for the next generation of storytellers is, how do we apply it?

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April 9, 2015

TheVillager.com

Female directors well-represented at Tribeca Film Fest

BY DUSICA SUE MALESEVIC

W

Celebrated cinematographer Reed Morano makes her directorial debut with “Meadowland,” which looks at how a couple copes with the their son’s disappearance.

Roster includes candid docs, narrative debuts

PHOTO BY MOLLY SCHWARTZ

TheVillager.com

PHOTO BY JOHN JOHNSON

hile Hollywood continues its trend toward a dearth of female directors, the Tribeca Film Festival has bucked it — featuring work from 30 women, in a lineup unspooling April 15–26.

Cara Cusumano, senior programmer, said that the festival has always been supportive of female directors and noted that it was co-founded by a female producer, Jane Rosenthal.

The influx of female directors into TFF’s upcoming fourteenth edition, she said, is part of the festival’s broader mission to promote a diversity of voices in filmmakers “and that’s across the board, in terms of ethnic diversity, very young filmmakers, female directors, folks from different parts of the world.”

“It’s really interesting to us to kind of put all those voices together and see where they’re telling the same story or maybe where the stories are different,” Cusumano said in a phone interview, “and there’s an interesting conversation to be had. Female directors are not well-represented in Hollywood or in a lot of major festivals, so we felt like there was space to celebrate the work being done.”

The percentage of women directors working on top-grossing films has actually declined over the last 17 years or so — from nine percent in 1998 to seven percent in 2014, Dr. Martha M. Lauzen, executive director for the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University, wrote in an email to Chelsea Now. Lauzen, a professor of television, film and new media, said that there has been no improvement in the employment of women directors on the top 250 domestic grossing films.

The percentage of women directing documentary films over the last seven years has remained stable at 28 percent while the percentage of women directing independently-produced narrative features has increased slightly from 15 percent in 2008-09 to 18 percent in 2013-14, she said. “[It’s] definitely good news to us, when we crunched the numbers and realized how strong the representation of female directors we actually had. That’s something that we want to celebrate and highlight and continue into next year for sure,” said Cusumano.

This will be the eighth festival for Cusumano, who said she watches half a dozen movies a day each season.

“You really do start to see a lot of

the same tropes and a lot of the same ideas, so any time there’s somebody doing something fresh it really does stand out and announce itself,” she said.

The festival’s mandate, she noted, is quality first. “We always looking for the strongest films, most interesting new voices, whether that’s in terms of the content or the storytelling style, the form,” she said. “We just want a program that’s really diverse and well rounded and represents what we think is the most interesting work being created each year.”

Additionally, there are 12 films that are eligible this year for the Nora Ephron Prize, said Cusumano, an award created in honor of the late writer, screenwriter and director that was inaugurated in 2013. The $25,0000 prize will go to a female screenwriter or director.

“We wanted to do something to commemorate [Ephron’s] voice and her legacy and everything she did for female voices on film,” she said.

Candidates include Reed Morano, a celebrated cinematographer, who makes her directorial debut with “Meadowland,” a feature that looks at how a couple copes with the their son’s disappearance. Kate Lyn Sheil, an actress who also co-wrote a Civil War film called “Men Go to Battle,” is also a contender. On the international side, French actress-writer Helene Zimmer directed “Being 14,” or “A 14 ans.”

Cusumano also highlighted some documentary premieres. Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg will show a new piece about hip-hop artist Che “Rhymefest” Smith and his relationship with his father called “In My Father’s House.”

Abigail Disney is debuting as a director with her documentary “The Armor of Light,” which delves into the connection between gun culture and the Christian right. There is also the world premiere of “Code,” which Cusumano called a “timely important work from a female director,” Robin Hauser Reynolds, about the paucity of women and minorities in the tech industry, specifically as software engineers.

In addition, there are strong women — Misty Copeland, Mary J. Blige and Roseanne Barr — anchoring documentaries this year as subject matter, she said.

This reporter watched “A Courtship,” a beautifully shot and thought-provoking documentary that explores Christian courtship

Admiral Dr. Grace Murray Hopper (1906-1992) is among those featured in “Code,” Robin Hauser Reynolds’ documentary about the paucity of women and minorities in the tech industry.

WOMEN, continued on p.21

April 9, 2015

19

Two cults, one night: RiffTrax lampoons ‘The Room’

Mike Nelson & Tommy Wiseau on their work and the future RIFFTRAX LIVE: THE ROOM At the Tribeca Film Festival Friday, April 17, 9:30 p.m.

At SVA Theater 333 West 23rd St. (btw. 8th & 9th Aves.)

Tickets: $38.50 COURTESY OF RIFFTRAX

Visit tribecafilm.com/festival Call 646-502-5296 Artist info at rifftrax.com

BY SEAN EGAN

M

ike Nelson and Tommy Wiseau are men intimately familiar with devoted cult followings — the former for aiming his wry comedic voice at cinematic detritus, and the latter for being the multi-hyphenate behind one of the most notorious “bad movies” of all time. On April 17, their sensibilities will collide at the Tribeca Film Festival, for a one-night-only event: “RiffTrax Live: The Room.”

For fans of both entities (of which there is undoubtedly overlap), the pairing is a natural fit. Written, directed, produced by and starring Wiseau, “The Room” drew attention for its strange stylistic decisions, bizarre plotting and stilted acting — making the 2003 film an instant contender for the worst movie ever.

Naturally, a cult sprang up around it and Wiseau, with the film becoming a midnight-movie staple boasting

20

April 9, 2015

L to R: Bill Corbett, Michael J. Nelson and Kevin Murphy riff “Manos: The Hands of Fate” at a 2012 RiffTrax Live in 2012.

“Rocky Horror” levels of audience interaction — fans present in either ironic or sincere appreciation (or a mixture of both).

Nelson first made his name as a writer and host on the cult-classic, B-movie lampooning television program “Mystery Science Theater 3000” (MST3K).

RiffTrax is a project created by Nelson after the show’s end, featuring Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett (voices of MST3K’s Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot, respectively). RiffTrax utilizes specially recorded audio commentaries, on which the crew “riffs” on movies, from older obscuro oddities to contemporary blockbusters. In recent years, the crew has expanded to doing live, in-theater riffs — usually broadcast to theaters nationwide via Fathom Events — which is where “The Room” comes in.

Though the collaboration seems like a no-brainer, the RiffTrax crew actually had some trepidation approaching the infamous film at first.

“We sort of stayed away from [“The Room”] for a while just because it seemed like it had its own thing,” says Nelson, who claims he and the guys were a little stumped when first confronted with the film. Ultimately, the sincerity of the project is what sold them on going forward, with Nelson noting, “You could not create something like this if you were trying to be pulling one over on the audience.”

“A few years back we did it as a RiffTrax,” explains Nelson. “And then we were thinking about great movies that we loved, and had kinda been in touch with the Tribeca people and they mentioned [“The Room”], and we thought it probably wouldn’t be possible,” he continues. But after getting in touch with Tommy Wiseau himself, the RiffTrax crew found pulling the event together surprisingly easy, even setting up a larger scale 700-screen Fathom presentation to follow on May 6 (with a May 12 encore).

“He’s just given us the blessing,” Nelson says. “He’s been willing, he gets it, and he thinks it’s funny. I mean, you know, he knows what he’s got — he’s savvy about what he does.”

Wiseau certainly seems excited for the forthcoming presentation, and with his signature peculiar turns of phrase, dubs it “different entertainment.”

“They [RiffTrax] do have a good following, people, a group of people who like to making fun of any movie,

and I don’t think there’s nothing wrong with that,” Wiseau intones in his distinctively non-descript, Eastern-European sounding accent. “I support that, and I say this openly, that there’s nothing wrong when you criticize, for example, ‘The Room’ — as long as you say in a sincere way,” he continues. “I think it’s a different concept and I think, I am pro-freedom, so I like it, what they’re doing, basically.”

Wiseau and Nelson are in agreement that “The Room” offers a lot of material to work with, but for the RiffTrax crew it presents the challenge of finding new spins on a welltrod work. They even went so far as to scrap most of the script of their pre-existing RiffTrax commentary of the movie.

“We wrote jokes before and we can write new ones, so we’ll try it again.

That’s kind of our approach, to just keep going at the thing with fresh eyes,” Nelson reveals. These “fresh eyes” certainly apply to the film’s formidable cult as well. “We kinda know some of the rituals, but we pretty much avoided them because that is a different thing, and what we do is our thing,” he asserts.

Obviously, the RiffTrax guys aren’t ones to take the easy route or rest on their laurels. Indeed, this upcoming event is just one of many in the works. After a successful Kickstarter campaign, “We lined up kind of our dream lineup of movies for the CULT, continued on p. 22 TheVillager.com

Tribeca Film Fest stresses quality, values diversity

PHOTO BY EVAN EAMES

BAD STUFF HAPPENS

Buy with Confidence.

While home for the holidays in Alabama, Kelly discusses courtship with her spiritual mother. The documentary “A Courtship” is Amy Kohn’s directorial debut.

WOMEN, continued from p. 19

through the Wright family. Ron and Dawn Wright are raising their two daughters to adhere to this type of arranged courtship, where a woman and man save their first kiss for each other until they are wed. Ron would work as the intermediary between the two girls and their potential suitors, vetting them before they would meet.

The Wrights also have a spiritual daughter, Kelly Boggus who found Jesus later in life and was now planning to save her next kiss for her husband, explained the director Amy Kohn.

Kohn, who has a background in reality shows and documentaries as a producer and showrunner, makes her debut as a director. She was doing research for a reality show when she came across Christian courtship and Ron’s website, beforethekiss.com.

“I was really surprised,” she said in a phone interview. “I had absolutely no idea that something like this existed in the United States.”

It took her five to six months of talking on the phone and via Skype about what filming would entail, before the Wrights and Boggus agreed.

Kohn filmed for a year and it took four years to complete the documentary.

Funding the film was a huge challenge, she said. She launched an Indi-

egogo campaign for finishing funds and several people who worked on the film did so for less than their normal rate.

“Otherwise, what I did was I was basically working to pay for the film,” she said. “I would work and work and work and save up money.”

“A Courtship” will have its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival.

“I’m absolutely thrilled to be part of the Tribeca Film Festival,” said Kohn.

“I’m honored to be a part of something that’s showing so many interesting films with so many amazing filmmakers. When I started out the project, I don’t think I even imagined that it would come this far.”

Kohn said that she appreciates and is happy to be part of a festival that recognizes so many female directors.

There are challenges for women filmmakers and it is more difficult for women to succeed in the entertainment industry, she said, but that is certainly not limited to just this one industry.

Having confidence in one’s work is important, she said. Being at several pitch meetings, she said, “A lot of time men tend to exude just more automatically a sense of confidence about their work, which may or may not be related to the quality of the work.”

For more information, visit tribecafilm. com/festival or call 646-502-5296.

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Riffing on ‘The Room’ with Wiseau’s blessing CULT, continued from p. 20

COURTESY OF RIFFTRAX

live year,” Nelson comments of the other forthcoming Fathom events.

In addition to “The Room,” the team will tackle modern-day schlock-fest “Sharknado 2,” 80s martial-arts disaster “Miami Connection” and something called “Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny” — which Nelson says with a laugh, “I think every human should see before they die. It’s the greatest movie ever.”

For his part, Wiseau declares, “I work very hard, and I like to work hard.” Most recently, he’s been working on “The Neighbors,” a comedy series currently streaming on Hulu, which deals with sitcom tropes and American culture in what could only be accurately described as a uniquely Wiseau-ian way. The busy shooting schedule for “The Neighbors” inhibits Wiseau’s ability to make it to the Tribeca Film Festival, but fans can take comfort in the fact that Wiseau is currently contracted for at least eight more episodes of the series (though he wishes to make more).

A bit further off in the distance for the filmmaker is “The Foreclosure,” a feature concerning a man named

L to R: Bill Corbett, Kevin Murphy and Michael J. Nelson riff “The Room.” Pictured onscreen, L to R: Tommy Wiseau as Johnny, Greg Sestero as Mark.

Richard whose house is foreclosed on by the bank. Wiseau says he has a 100page script prepared and aims to begin shooting in May, in hopes of creating a unique film that provides some laughs and educates people. Further

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April 9, 2015

still down the pipeline is a currently untitled vampire movie, which he claims will make people “not fall asleep for two weeks.”

“There will be good and bad vampires at the same time, who actually conquer the world,” he divulges of the plot, elaborating, “Usually we associate vampire with the drama and the killing. And somewhat killing exists — but it’s different dimension.

So it will be something special, something different.”

Looking out to the future as well, Nelson considers live events the crew may like to undertake, if licensing pans out. “A lot of those 80s movies, big blockbusters, are starting to age in a way that would make them fun,” Nelson says — expressing a particular interest in “Road House.”

“I don’t think it’s out of the realm of possibility,” he says of those kinds of movies. Citing a precedent Sony established with their successful live presentation of “Starship Troopers,” Nelson thinks that more studios might be willing to work with RiffTrax. “They saw the sky did not fall, and they quite enjoyed it, so hopefully we’ll do more movies from Sony, so hopefully that unlocks other studios as well.”

Nelson and the RiffTrax crew, it seems, have managed to get a lot of mileage out of an elegantly simple and funny idea, and continue to push forward. When asked to reflect on the staying power of MST3K and the continued vitality of the style of comedy it and RiffTrax pioneered, Nelson offers, “Mostly I just think it’s good joke writing and, you know, it’s dumb,

goofy stuff meant to just entertain. We kind of did what we wanted. We had a ton of fun and I think that comes through,” he ends simply.

Wiseau, when similarly inquired about the ability of “The Room” to continue drawing audiences, likens his film to a building in an earthquake.

“I always say that if you have a good foundation you will survive whatever obstacles — and I believe very strongly that ‘The Room’ has built that foundation.”

“Why people come back?” he muses aloud. “Because I think they want to yell,” he concludes. “How many places you have actually on the street, where people can sing or just express themselves — and people say ‘Oh you crazy,’ or whatever? With ‘The Room’ I actually encourage people. I say, ‘Say whatever you want.’ Scream, yell — you could maybe meet someone! The bottom line is, what I discovered in the past few years, is ‘The Room’ actually connects people, you know? Directly or indirectly. Because maybe they criticize ‘The Room’ because ‘it’s so bad,’ or criticize ‘The Room’ because they enjoy themselves — and again I encourage that, because, again, there’s nothing wrong with it. Contrary, you know, you may discover yourself, and you may be better person.”

Which is why, to Wiseau, the upcoming RiffTrax event is such an appealing idea. “I am very happy that RiffTrax actually approached us,” he says. “They find some kind of different, I would say, entertainment, that actually appeals to a few thousand or maybe one million people more, and I think this cannot be discredited.”

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Despite assurances, critics are down on upzoning ZONING, continued from p. 6

rezoning held two weeks ago was packed with dozens of extremely concerned community activists and preservationists, who fear the public isn’t being given an opportunity to weigh in on the proposed changes.

“We have to go through a very elaborate public approval process,” Weisbrod assured.

That process will take about six months, he said. The public can still comment on the project’s scope — basically meaning its size — until the end of this month.

Furthermore, Weisbrod and the planners maintained that the mechanism for building senior housing and affordable housing — and getting a height bonus for it — already exists.

For affordable housing, this program is known as “inclusionary zoning.”

However, Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, said that, under the city’s new proposal, R7A districts and commercially zoned areas that are “R7A equivalents” would see allowable heights go up 31 percent for inclusionary housing (including senior housing) and 20 percent for strictly market-rate housing.

In 2004, G.V.S.H.P. successfully pushed to get R7A contextual zoning put in place for two areas in the far West Village, including a section of W. 14th St. Meanwhile, G.V.S.H.P. is currently leading the effort to get contextual zoning for the South Village, as well as along the University Place corridor, where developer Billy Macklowe is now building a 23-story skyscraper on the old Bowlmor lanes site — which was the impetus for the G.V.S.H.P. effort.

C.B. 2 and local politicians are all supporting these zoning modifications — to R7A and R8A — Berman said.

“If this goes through,” he warned of the city’s plan, “that would no longer be an option. We would only be able to get the new ones with the much more permissive height limits.”

Plus, Berman added, “What you get currently for building senior housing is a bulk increase and not a height increase.”

More to the point, Berman added, the zoning envelope shouldn’t be expanded upward for straight market-rate projects just to accommodate developers’ whining.

“I don’t know why it’s such a priority for City Planning to ensure that every luxury condo developer gets to squeeze out every single inch of lux-

A Soho super is laid to rest MATTHEW, continued from p. 15

for brain tumors last September. An artist, architect and carpenter, Robert, like Matthew, could fix anything. For years the two had shared information as well as tools.

While we were stuck in slow traffic on the Williamsburg Bridge, Zaire asked Sandy, “Do you have any children?”

“Impudent,” I thought, but the loss felt at someone’s death makes people do and say funny things. Sandy answered the question. “Yes. I have one grown son.”

Six-year-old Etan Patz had disappeared when Sandy’s son was young, so we talked about the recent developments in the famous Soho case, until Zaire described a movie she had watched the night before when she couldn’t sleep. The movie was about a poor woman with many children who had fixed up a house in the Southwest.

During the telling, it dawned on me that Zaire’s story was not interesting.

I began to tell her, “That movie is so boring,” but I began to laugh midsentence and I couldn’t speak at all for laughing so hard. I kept trying to speak until tears filled my eyes and then all the grief in me spilled out and I began to cry.

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“Oh mean and angry God,” I wailed silently. “Why have you taken him? An innocent, too young, too good, too kind.

No sooner did I accuse my God than a voice swelled up inside my head. “Just who do you think you are, Old Lady? Who are you to question me?” the voice boomed. “Have you forgotten your catechism? Tell me, Old Lady, why did I make you?

“Now,” the voice became soft, “in answer to your questions, I made sure that my own son suffered as much as any human could suffer. I betrayed him and humiliated him. His suffering is an example to all humanity that everyone will suffer. It’s a lesson, a warning and a promise.

“About Matthew McGuigan. I need him here in heaven more than you artists in Soho need him on earth. The gates of heaven need alignment. He will know how to re-hang them.”

The Honda Civic, drunk with grief, rocked over the bridge and up Delancey, turned right onto Centre St., and stopped at Spring St. where Robert left us off. We kissed each others’ cheeks, tasting the salt of each others’ tears. ...

In a postcript, Sheila reported that the funeral Mass was beautiful. Matthew had served in the Army, and at the end of the service, his coffin was draped with the American flag, which was then folded and presented to his brother Patrick.

ury condos in every development,” he stated. “In the R7A zone — which is our most common zone — it’s a 20 percent height increase, and it will be noticeable.”

“A lot of the components of this plan have been on the real estate industry’s wish list for years,” he added.

In 2008, more than 100 blocks of the East Village and Lower East Side were contextually rezoned, meaning they now have height caps, with an 80-foot maximum height (R7A) for much of the area, or 120 feet (R8A) along the bigger streets if affordable housing is included.

“The entire East Village, with a few small exceptions, is a contextual zoning district,” Berman said.

In other words, under the city’s plan, compared to what’s currently allowable, East Village construction would be able to be built from 5 to 15 feet taller for 100 percent market-rate projects, or from 20 to 25 feet taller if senior or “I.Z.” affordable housing is included.

In Chelsea, parts of the Special West Chelsea District would be immune to the new plan’s changes, Berman said.

“But there are other parts where it would apply,” he said, “and huge parts of Chelsea where it would.

“The Chelsea Plan — that took 15 years to achieve and would be completely upended by this,” he said of the neighborhood’s existing zoning, which was approved in 2000. Plus, to win the Chelsea Plan, the community had to accept upzoning in other areas, he noted.

What about City Planning’s contention that the rezoning would relieve future first-floor residents from the annoyance of having to keep their drapes drawn all day long?

“Of all the problems facing New York,” he said, “I haven’t found keeping your blinds shut to be a major problem that New Yorkers have.”

Berman sharply disagreed with Weisbrod’s denial that the rezoning plan is being rushed through by the city.

“They’re fast-tracking this,” the preservationist accused. “They’re moving from the scoping to the public-review process really fast — and this is a plan that has such broad ramifications. And there’s no analysis on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis on what the impact would be.

“The irony is,” he continued, “these areas are parts of the city where it was felt there was a special character

to be preserved, and this proposal would upend those rules.”

Would community activists and organizations sue to stop these changes?

“I think it’s too early to say,” Berman offered. “But this is of enormous concern. And if this is adopted as is, we would look at all of our options.

But I hope it doesn’t get to that point.

Some very, very serious changes need to be made before this could even be considered,” he said of the city’s zoning proposal.

C.B. 2 Chairperson Bergman was among the group of concerned community members who packed the plan’s recent scoping hearing to voice their concerns, and to call for slowing down the process.

“The contextual zoning that was put into place was the result of years of community planning,” he told The Villager.

On the other hand, he said, this new rezoning is being driven, not at all by the community — but by the developers.

On that point, Bergman said he attended a “borough board” meeting at City Hall in February, at which leading members of Manhattan’s community boards got their first presentation of the proposed zoning scheme.

“They kept saying, ‘Practitioners tell us...,’ ” Bergman recalled with a wry chuckle. “By that, they don’t mean neurosurgeons — they mean developers.

“The scoping shouldn’t have been done only with ‘practitioners.’ ” The board chairperson added that the “give” the city is offering the community right now simply isn’t enough. In other words, who’s to say that the senior or affordable housing — part of the whole justification for the plan, but which is only voluntary on developers’ part — will even get built? Other local affordable housing schemes haven’t panned out.

“If this is truly about creating better buildings and affordable housing in contextual zones, let’s make sure we really get the affordable housing,” Bergman emphasized. “The Hudson Square rezoning turned out to be a bonanza for developers of luxury housing but the affordable housing isn’t getting built.

“This plan allows a 20 percent height increase in R7A zones for developments with no affordable housing. That’s just a big mistake,” he said. “There has to be a give to get.”

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