Downtown Express

VOLUME 29, NUMBER 7

April 7 – April 20, 2016

Clock block Towers of babble Judge nixes plans for clock tower penthouse

BY YANNIC RACK The bell has tolled for developers’ penthouse plans involving the historic clock atop a landmarked Tribeca building.

A judge ruled last week that the owners of 346 Broadway can’t replace the ancient mechanism inside the building’s clock tower with an electric motor to make room for a triplex penthouse.

Manhattan Supreme Court judge Lynn Kotler overruled a controversial 2014 decision by the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission on Mar. 31, delivering a huge win to preservationists who had fought a legal battle to keep the 119-year-old clock at 346 Broadway from going silent.

“In a world where developers run our city in a kind of tragic oligarchy, it is nice to be reminded that justice against the developers can sometimes still prevail,” proclaimed a statement from the Tribeca Trust, one of the plaintiffs that filed the lawsuit against the developers and the city.

The controversial chronometer sits atop the 14-story former New York Life Insurance Company Building, which the city sold to the Peebles Corporation and Elad Group three years ago.

The owners announced in 2014 their plans to convert the landmark into luxury apartments, and after a contentious hearing the landmarks panel issued a certificate of appropriateness for the project, which included renovating the clock-tower suite and electrifying the clock — whose ancient mechanism has been hand-wound by a city-appointed “clock master” for decades.

Marvin Schneider, a former city employee who has operated and maintained the clock once a week for the past 35 years — until the developer locked him and his colleagues out of the building last spring — said the ruling was a huge victory.

“I’m thrilled that the judge came out with this decision, and I feel vindicated,” Schneider said after the ruling, adding that he advocated for the building to be landmarked in the mid-1980s because he expected exactly this kind of scenario. “I anticipated something like this happening many years ago.

My concern was, should the city sell it at some future date, what protection would there be? And I found clock Continued on page 14

Pols push for public comment at BPCA board meetings

BY YANNIC RACK Members of the Battery Park City Authority’s board would never be bored at their meetings again, if local pols get their way.

An open letter to BPCA board chairman Dennis Mehiel from a who’s who of local representatives urged the agency this week to allow Battery Park City residents into its meetings to weigh in on proposed actions by the board before they come up for a vote.

“Allowing public comment is an important part of public engagement,” wrote the officials, including state Sen. Daniel Squadron, Congressman Jerrold Nadler, Borough President

Gale Brewer, Assemblymember Deborah Glick and City Councilmember Margaret Chin.

But some residents of the neighborhood think the request is a long shot, since it would likely turn the board meetings into shouting matches between residents and the board — as was the case at a public forum organized by the authority in December.

“I think they should expect it to be loud, because people are angry,” said Justine Cuccia, who has lived in the neighborhood for 18 years. “But also, the best way to actually combat that is to give the community a voice.”

Downtown pols have long called for a stronger community role in the authority’s decision-

making, most recently by calling on Gov. Andrew Cuomo to appoint a majority of local residents to its board. Currently, only one of its members, Martha Gallo, actually lives in Battery Park City.

“The only way for a community member to voice concerns about agenda items would be to be on the Board itself,” the reps wrote to Mehiel in their most recent letter. “[But] as you know, only one member of the Board resides in the local community.”

Senator Squadron and Assemblymember Glick also introduced legislation in January that would require a majority

Hello Dalai!

bpca Continued on page 15

Photo by Tequila Minsky

A group of Tibetan Buddhist monks are creating a sand mandala at the Winter Garden at Brookfield Place this week as part of the two week exhibition “Transcendent Arts of Tibet and India.” For more, see page 6.

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‘Matzapalooza’ at MJH Turn your passable Passover into a sensational Seder on Sunday

BY COliN MiXSON Just when you thought Passover couldn’t get any better.

Observers of the Jewish holiday will have the unique opportunity to re-imagine the sacred festival at “Matzapalooza,” an event being held at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Battery Park City on Apr. 10.

The palooza of matzo will feature music, crafts, and classes for kids and adults, all designed endow Passover partygoers with the tips and tricks they need to craft the Seder festival of their dreams.

“We’re giving people the tools to make their own family Seder special and unique,” said Motl Didner, associate artistic director at the National Yiddish Theater, which is pitching in to help organize the event.

The Hebrew heritage hoedown takes its inspiration from Passover trends spanning the last few decades, in which revelers have riffed on the standard Maxwell House Haggadah — a sort of how-to manual explaining the story of Passover

and how to organize your Seder Plate — in an effort to modernize the ancient festival, according to Didner.

“Most people grew up with the Maxwell House Haggadah, the book you use to guide you through the Passover Seder,” he said. “But within the last 20 or 30 years, we’re seeing more variance — a tradition of Haggadah that embraces different points of view.”

Furthermore, Didner cited the recent “foodie revolution,” with zesty new variations on traditional kosher dishes, in leading Jewish families to experiment with new ways of doing the Seder.

“Now we’re in the midst of a foodie revolution, which includes kosher and seasonal food products, so we’re bringing that all together,” he said.

Matzapalooza will kick off at 10:30 a.m. with activities geared towards kids, including crafting stations, where children can create anything from custom Seder plates and matzo covers, to plague puppets fashioned in the image of the various

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National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene / Yuliya Levit

A “Build Your Own Seder” station will give families the chance to combine traditional and modern customs for their Passover meal.

plagues God visited upon the land of the pharaoh, such as frogs and locusts.

Starting at noon, the event shifts gears and will begin featuring workshops for grown-ups, including classes on how to build your own “modern” Seder menu.

Various vendors will also be on hand offering Kosher foods, and include Acme Smoked Fish, Brooklyn Seltzer Boys, Danny Macaroons, Fox’s U-Bet, Gefilteria, Holy Schmitt’s, and Horman’s Best Pickles.

Throughout the day, ticket hold-

ers will be treated to music courtesy of the Folksbiene Youth Academy Ensemble, and will have the opportunity to take family tours through the museum’s core exhibition.

Matzapalooza, Sunday Apr. 10, 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, 36 Battery Pl. Tickets are $8 per person, free for children and grandchildren of MJH/WC/NYTF members.

For details and tickets, visit www.mjhnyc. org/diyseder or call 646-437-4202.

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Pushing Tin Preservationists blast city’s approval to move Seaport’s historic Tin Building

BY COLIN MIXSON Downtown preservationists say the city’s landmarks commission is all wet for allowing a historic Seaport building to be moved because the developer said it was necessary to protect it from flooding.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission ruled on Mar. 22 that Howard Hughes Corp. could uproot and relocate the landmarked Tin Building, after the developer told the panel that the move is necessary to raise the 1907 structure above the flood plain. But opponents say that argument is misleading and that the developer likely harbors ulterior motives for relocating the venerable building, which housed the Fulton Fish Market until 1995.

“The Tin Building has a very simple shell and was always meant to flood.

It was designed to withstand flooding,” said Gina Pollara, president of the Municipal Art Society of New York, which provided testimony opposing the

Tin Building’s relocation. “So, they claim they had to move it … because it had to be raised, and that’s not entirely correct.

They’re moving it because they want to move it — not because it has to be.”

To prove her point, Pollara pointed to St. Ann’s Warehouse, a performing arts institution in Brooklyn, which is based in a Civil War-era tobacco warehouse. The building — smack in the middle of a flood zone on the borough’s waterfront — was adapted to weather intense floods and includes a cheap, plywood finishing on its walls, which can be ripped out and easily replaced if any water damage occurs, Pollara said.

“They got building permits, they’re in the flood plain, and they just built it so it’s floodable,” she said. “It’s existed there for so long because it was designed to flood and shed water — that was the whole point. So, the idea that [the Tin Building] has to be moved out of the flood plain is nonsense.”

SHOP Architects

The Landmarks Preservation Commission signed off on the plan by Howard Hughes Corp. to move the historic Tin Building so it can be raised above the flood plain, but preservationists say the move is unnecessary.

Howard Hughes praised the commission’s ruling allowing the developer to dismantle the Tin Building and relocate it farther east, away from the waterfront, so the structure can be raised without hitting the elevated FDR Drive nearby. Once the building has been shipped out and shored up, the developer plans on converting the space into a food hall run by celebrity chef JeanGeorges Vongerichten.

“We’re pleased to have support from both Community Board 1 and the Landmarks Preservation Commission on our plans to reconstruct the historic

Tin Building into a 21st-century center for food and commerce,” the company said in a statement.

Besides concerns about storm resiliency, Howard Hughes expects the move to the inland side of the FDR Drive to increase the building’s visibility and accessibility to the public.

But in addition to arguing that the structure can be made flood-resistant without relocation, opponents of the move also told the commission that the building’s waterfront location is an Tin building Continued on page 13

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Riven house Locals outraged by developer’s dubious deal on rivington house BY liNCOlN ANDErSON Incensed local politicians and the head of Community Board 3 gathered across the street from the former Rivington House on Forsyth St. Wednesday morning to decry a stealth deal that has seen the former Lower East Side nonprofit AIDS hospice sold to a private developer who plans to convert it into luxury condos.

To allow the deal, a deed restriction on the Rivington House property — requiring it to be used as a nonprofit nursing home — first had to be lifted by the Department of Citywide Administrative Services. The deed restriction had been in place since 1992, when the former public school was taken over by VillageCare, which turned the building into the country’s first residential AIDS treatment facility.

The deed restriction was quietly lifted this past November. The only notice was a small listing for an opportunity for public comment in the City Record.

The city received a $16 million payment from Allure Group in exchange for lifting the deed restriction, after which Allure then flipped the property to a condo developer for $116 million.

At the Apr. 6 press conference, Borough President Gale Brewer, Councilmember Margaret Chin, and Gigi Li, the chairwoman of CB3, called on Mayor Bill de Blasio to “compensate” the Lower East Side community for the loss of Rivington House. They were joined by state Senator Daniel Squadron, Councilmember Rosie Mendez, and local low-income seniors who are struggling to find adequate housing.

Brewer and Chin called for reforms to prevent similar losses of community assets by creating transparency requirements for when the city is considering lifting any deed restriction. They said advance public notice must be given to local community boards, borough presidents and councilmembers. In addition, they said a searchable online database of all properties subject to city-imposed deed restrictions must be created.

“Mayor de Blasio has said he’d have blocked the city actions that led to the loss of Rivington House if he’d known about them, and I take him at his word,” Brewer said. “But admitting to a mistake is only the first half of owning up to it. If this deal is not reversed, we want the money in the community, to create a new community DowntownExpress.com

facility and replace the beds lost in the sale of Rivington House.”

The community had been aware that VillageCare was trying to lift the deed restriction before the building’s sale.

However, many were under the impression that it would become a for-profit nursing home — not a luxury condo project. A for-profit nursing home was something the community, in fact, supported.

Before Allure Group’s sale of the property to Slate Property Group was announced, Brewer, Chin and CB3 all expressed concerns to de Blasio administration officials regarding the lifting of the deed restriction — wanting assurances that it would not allow market-rate residential development.

The former AIDS facility is in Chin’s district and she expressed her disappointment with the secret real estate deal.

“At the beginning of last year, we were celebrating,” Chin said. “We thought we had kept Rivington House. To hear now that Rivington House [has been sold to a developer]... . The community has the right to know why and how this happened.”

Chin and Brewer have called for the city to give them all documents relating to the lifting of Rivington House’s deed restriction and the circumstances surrounding the sale. City Comptroller Scott Stringer previously subpoenaed all of these documents, and is now doing an investigation. In addition, state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and the Department of Investigation have opened their own inquiries.

Brewer and Chin say they just want the same documents that were provided to Stringer. But they’ve been stonewalled.

“I will continue to fight for the answer,” Chin vowed. “But I am also focused on getting back what we lost. We don’t need an apology! We need action! That’s why I am introducing legislation to make sure this never happens again,” she said.

Brewer and Squadron both stressed that this certainly didn’t have to be an “either or” situation, where the only options were a nursing home or high-end housing.

“You can sell it to another nonprofit or a for-profit that could have beds for others uses,” Brewer explained. “It could be for assisted living, not just people with AIDS.” riViNgTON HOUSE Continued on Page 10

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5

Winter Zen Garden Buddist monks crafting sand mandala at Brookfield Place

BY COLIN MIXSON If you love something, set it free.

The Winter Garden at Brookfield Place is hosting a group of Tibetan Buddhist monks, where they are laboring for a week to create an intricate sand mandala made from millions of particles of finely ground marble, before ultimately sweeping the result of all their hard work into the Hudson River.

That final act of destruction, according to the monks, is a demonstration of the impermanence of human existence, which even they admit is a heartbreaking step on the road to Nirvana.

“It’s not very easy to dismantle,” said Geshe Thupten Loden, a Buddhist monk and spokesman for the Drepung Loseling Monastery in India. “After so much effort, it’s very hard. But you soon get used to it.”

The monks began their labors on Apr. 4, clustered in a circle around their budding work of traditional art for up to seven hours a day, pausing only briefly to perform throaty tantric chants, as part of the twoweek “Transcendent Arts of Tibet and India” exhibition sponsored by Arts Brookfield.

The Tibetan sand mandalas are magnificent works of craftsmanship and patience, with every grain placed with precision to create an exquisitely detailed image symbolizing the Tibetan Buddhist cosmos. The sand is crushed marble, dyed in the faith’s five primary colors — white, green, yellow, red, and blue, representing the elemental components earth, wind, fire, water, and air — with a full color palette created by overlapping fine layers of the different hues.

Beyond its aesthetic grandeur, the mandala possesses an even greater spiritual beauty, according to Loden, which the monks believe contains the power to enrich the lives of all who pass through Brookfield’s Winter Garden during its making.

“We believe that by making the mandala it brings harmony and balance into nature,” Loden said.

Visitors are free to observe the monks as they work, but they’ll have to stand beyond a rope barrier — the mandalas are so fragile that even the gentle whiff of a sneeze could ruin

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April 7 – April 20, 2016

Photos by Tequila Minsky

(Top) The monks use fine-pointed funnels to deposit the colored sand with exquisite precision to create the richly detailed images on the mandala, which symbolically depicts the Tibetan Buddhist cosmos. (Above left) The sand mandala is created with finely ground marble dyed in various colors. (Above right) Visitors to the Winter Garden at Brookfield Place can watch the monks at work until 1 p.m. on Apr. 9, when they will take their creation out to the waterfront and dump the sand into the Hudson River.

hours of work, according to Loden.

“We need a special area,” he said.

“If the wind blows we can’t do it. The sand is laid down grain-by-grain and it’s very delicate and fragile, so even a light sneezing could destroy it.”

Don’t expect the monks to be especially talkative as they work either.

The monks take advantage of the ritual creation as time of meditative contemplation, helping them along the eight-fold path to enlightenment.

“We maintain a meditative mindfulness on the purpose of its creation, to benefit the area and its inhabitants,” Loden said.

In addition to helping the Buddhists achieve a state of sublime bliss, the single-minded focus on their endeavor also helps the monks ignore the agony of stooping over their creation for many hours at a time.

“It’s physically very painful, especially in the shoulder and back,” Loden

explained. “We have to bend down while working on it, so it’s very hard.”

The monks will carry on their work until Saturday Apr. 9, when the finished mandala will exist for the brief span of an hour before the monks lead a procession to the Hudson River at 1 p.m., where they will sweep the meticulously placed multi-colored sand into a pile, and dump it into the flowing mandala Continued on page 19

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Seaporters hoping for Peck Slip slip-up After enjoying open piazza at Peck Slip, locals hope city’s 2007 park plan fizzles

BY YANNIC RACK Green space is usually a welcome addition in any city community, but residents in the Seaport historic district are hoping a Parks Department plan to plant on a plaza in their neighborhood will wilt and die — so they can preserve the space as a European-style piazza instead.

Locals are rallying to make sure Peck Slip Plaza, which the city wants to rebuild as a green strip studded with large sculptures evoking the ribs of a burned-out ship, remains empty as a much-needed flexible open space.

“We’re trying to push for an open plan, so the neighborhood can use this space, which is so unique,” said Jason Friedman, who lives on nearby Beekman St. and sends one of his kids to The Peck Slip School right next to the plaza.

Community Board 1 passed a resolution at its full board meeting last month, asking Parks and the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., the city-state agency that awarded the $4 million for the

project, to work with the community to find “a more historically appropriate design” that is “resilient, low maintenance and flexible.”

“We’re not proposing something that will cost more money, to the contrary,” said Friedman, an architect and CB1 member who drafted the resolution. “We should take that money and use it somewhere else in the neighborhood, for parks that need maintenance programs. They built five parks and playgrounds in the past 10 years — this is not needed anymore today.”

But a Parks spokesperson confirmed this week that the department is moving ahead with the controversial plan, which will reconstruct Peck Slip between Water and Front Sts. If everything goes according to plan, the city hopes to finish the design phase

by July, put the project out for bid in the fall, and finally start construction early next year — more than a decade after the project was first proposed.

Parks Department

This 2007 rendering shows what the Parks Department wants to build at Peck Slip Plaza — whether locals want it or not.

“As directed by the LMDC, we are proceeding with the historically appropriate Peck Slip design, previously approved by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, State Historic Preservation Office and the community board,” the Parks spokesperson said.

www.burnerlaw.com

Yes, that’s right: CB1 actually approved the design — in 2007.

At the time, a majority of board members favored adding trees and grass to the plaza, although there was also opposition to changing the rustic peck Slip Continued on page 14

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April 7 – April 20, 2016

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BROKEN BONES An employee at Nobu on Hudson St. landed in the hospital with a broken jaw this week, after an argument with a customer at the pricey eatery turned violent, according to police.

The 48-year-old worker told police that he got into a fight with the 27-yearold diner at 5 p.m. on Monday Apr. 4, and was punched in the face repeatedly by his attacker.

He was taken to Bellevue Hospital with a fractured jaw and underwent surgery, according to a police report, which noted that he would have to eat through a straw for the next few weeks.

SUBWAY SLASHING A 63-year-old Long Island man was slashed in the face inside a Downtown subway station last week, after he told a robber that he didn’t have any money, police say.

The man told police that he was on his way to work around 4:30 a.m. on Friday Apr. 1, when a man came up behind him inside the A-train Chambers St. stop and demanded money, according to police.

When the victim told him he didn’t have any cash on him, the robber pulled out a blade and cut the man on the right side of his face, police say.

The victim was treated at his workplace on Vesey St. and refused further medical attention, according to a report.

CULINARY CRIME Thieves with a taste for Apple — the brand, not the food — broke into a Tribeca restaurant last weekend to raid a cash safe and steal thousands of dollars worth of electronics, police say.

An employee at Estancia 460, an Argentinian bistro on Greenwich St., told police that she arrived at work on the morning of Sunday Apr. 3, to find a kitchen window ajar and a cash register pried open.

In addition to $1,586 in cash taken from the register and a lock box, the burglars bagged a $1,500 Macbook, a $500 iPad and a $200 iPod, according to police.

Surveillance footage from the restaurant puts the time of the break-in at 1:45 a.m. that morning, cops say.

BAR FIGHT Two club promoters got into a handson argument inside a Tribeca nightclub on Saturday, according to police.

One of the two — known by the DowntownExpress.com

moniker Ar_List, according to a police report — allegedly punched his colleague in the face, causing a cut above his right eye, as the 26-year-old victim from Queens was talking to a woman inside the Haus NYC club on West Broadway at 4 a.m. on Apr. 2.

Rather than hit back, the victim headed outside to alert a bouncer, but was hit again from behind — which finally caused him to lose his cool and put his attacker in a headlock, police say.

The other promoter then allegedly bit the victim in the stomach and also swiped a $500 Luis Vuitton bracelet from the man’s wrist before bolting, according to a police report, which notes that the accused attacker was arrested later that day.

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The 31-year-old tried to force himself on a 20-year-old acquaintance at the Conrad New York Hotel on North End Ave. around 6:40 a.m. on Sunday Mar. 27, but was fought off by the woman’s female friend, according to police.

After a struggle, which left one of the women with minor injuries, the fiend fled from the hotel, but later that morning returned to retrieve his phone — only to encounter the women along with a group of cops, who promptly arrested him, according to reports.

He was charged with attempted rape, attempted grand larceny — for trying to steal cash and one of the women’s phones — attempted unlawful imprisonment, assault and criminal mischief, according to police.

The New York Post reported that the three knew each other and had been out partying before crashing at the hotel.

EARLY-MORNING HOLDUP Three perps robbed a woman in Tribeca in the wee hours of Saturday Mar. 26, police say.

The 29-year-old victim from Queens told police that the men surrounded her in front of Sophie’s Restaurant, a Cuban eatery on Chambers St., as she was walking by shortly after 1 a.m.

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“The idea that it’s that or this — it just doesn’t pass the laugh test,” Squadron said, referring to the AIDS hospice and the expected market-rate development.

Squadron said that, yes, he and C.B. 3 had supported lifting the deed restriction — but with modifications, so that the property would not become market-rate housing.

“VillageCare was working with us,” Squadron noted.

Press reports indicate that both de Blasio officials and state officials believe they were misled by Allure Group, which apparently made representations that it planned to run a for-profit healthcare facility at the Rivington House site — before it flipped the property.

De Blasio, however, has been criticized for not seeming to be sufficiently outraged about what transpired.

Asked about that, Brewer said, “I hope he’s outraged — particularly in this neighborhood, where gentrification is so rampant.

“It’s essentially affordable housing,” Brewer said of the former 200-bed AIDS hospice, adding that a public-private partnership also could have been an option to preserve a community use at the property.

Photo by Lincoln Anderson

Councilmember Margaret Chin, speaking at Wednesday’s press conference outside the former Rivington House, called for reforms to ensure that the community is notified when the city is considering lifting deed restrictions.

K Walter, president of the Sara Roosevelt Park Community Coalition, said her group — which includes local nonprofits, residents and businesses — had worked diligently on the Rivington House issue.

“The building was given to VillageCare with the understanding it would continue this mission,” she said. “That’s why you have a deed restriction.”

She said it was her understanding that VillageCare wanted to sell to the highest bidder.

Walter said that during Wednesday’s

press conference, an elderly local man who has dementia walked up and listened in.

“He’s getting kicked out of his apartment. We thought he was going to live here,” she said of Rivington House. “He helped build up the community in the 1980s, when the Parks Department didn’t even want to come here.”

Walter said it was tough seeing the AIDS patients moved out of the facility toward the end of its operation. She’s often in the park, where she is an active member of the M’Finda Kalunga Garden.

“The AIDS guys used to come to the turtle pond,” she said of the garden.

“They have a plot in there.”

Also in the crosshairs of the viral news story has been Jim Capalino, City Hall’s top lobbyist and a friend of de Blasio’s. Capalino was hired by VillageCare to get the city to lift the building’s deed restriction.

Capalino noted that the building had been underutilized. Due to advances in AIDS treatment, the place was only filling about one-eighth of its beds. VillageCare also wanted him to get the city to waive a payment in return for lifting the deed, he noted. The normal procedure is for the city to require a payment, since the property’s value soars after the restrictions are lifted. This money, in turn, goes

toward the city’s general finances.

Meanwhile, 100 percent of the money VillageCare reaped from the property’s sale would be used to deliver health services throughout the Lower East Side community, Capalino explained.

However, he was unable to get the city to lift the restriction before the end of the Bloomberg administration, leading VillageCare to become frustrated with him and end its contract with him on Oct. 31, 2014, he said.

Capalino said that after that date, he had no involvement whatsoever with the Rivington House property, its sale or the lifting of the deed restriction.

“If I don’t have a contract with you, the engagement comes to an end,” he explained of how he operates. “And we did not have any engagement afterward.”

Capalino said he was as in the dark about the building’s sale as anyone.

“I read about the sale in the newspaper,” he said.

The property’s new owner, Slate, has been a Capalino client, though involving Brooklyn properties.

“We have had three separate engagements with them,” Capalino said.

“None of them involved properties in Manhattan. We were never involved with Slate with this building.”

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DowntownExpress.com

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April 7 – April 20, 2016

11

Market makers Fulton Stall outdoor market brings local farmers to Lower Manhattan

BY COLIN MIXSON Downtowners will soon have the opportunity to mingle with local growers and purchase farm-fresh fruits and veggies in their own backyard with the seasonal opening of Fulton Stall’s outdoor market on Apr. 10.

The weekly open-air green market will feature up to 20 vendors hailing from orchards and farms no more than 250 miles outside of the city, ensuring that any produce purchased at the alfresco fair is as fresh as it comes, according to one farmer.

“It doesn’t get any fresher than this — not at Whole Foods, not anywhere,” said Elizabeth Ryan, owner of the Breezy Hill Orchard. “We are literally picking and making this stuff, and a lot of times people get it there 24 to 48 hours later.”

The market, open Sundays between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m., will host a revolving lineup of local growers hawking products ranging from meats, cheeses and

12

April 7 – April 20, 2016

produce, to craft beer and what’s become some of Breezy Orchard’s most popular goods: hard cider and cider doughnuts.

Unlike the year-round indoor market, the farmers will be on hand to talk shop with the locals, giving city-dwellers a taste of what it’s like to live off the land, according to Phillip St. Pierre, senior general manager for the South Street Seaport at Howard Hughes Corp., which organizes the event.

“Here you can talk to the farmer who produced the product, and have a conversation about not just the food, but what motivates them,” he said. “It’s really a very special experience.”

In addition to buying fresh, Howard Hughes Corp. has plans to invite local chefs to offer cooking demonstrations for community members, along with bringing kids from nearby schools to meet the farmers who stock the aisles at their local grocery store, according to St. Pierre.

Photo by Jane Kratochvil for the Seaport District

With spring comes the Fulton Stall Market’s weekly outdoor fair, where farmers hailing from in and around the city will convene to sell some of the freshest produce Lower Manhattan has to offer.

“It’s been a great vehicle for us to connect with our community,” he said.

To celebrate the season opener on Sunday, Howard Hughes Corp. has invited the Sam Barnes Bluegrass Band and will have craft stations to keep the kids busy while parents peruse the market for tasty treats, St. Pierre said.

“To make sure we kick the season off with a bang, we’ll have a bluegrass band, arts and crafts for the kids, 15 to

20 vendors lined up,” he said. “It will be a nice, fun day.”

The Financial District and surrounding neighborhoods have enjoyed a booming influx of new residents of late, but certain amenities, including grocery stores and farmer’s markets, have been slow to follow. But despite being one of the area’s only sources fulton stall Continued on page 19

DowntownExpress.com

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essential aspect of its historical value. “Moving a landmark is kind of antithetical to the notion of what a landmark is,� said David Sheldon, a preservationist with the Save Our Seaport group. “So we’re opposed to it on principle.�

For some, the Tin Building’s position adjacent to the highway is a part of its charm, and a historically valuDowntownExpress.com

able example of the city’s haphazard development throughout the century, according to Pollara. “Part of how the Tin Building derives its authenticity is its location.

And people say its slammed up against FDR Drive, but I kind of like that incongruous juxtaposition,� she said. “I think that brutal relationship between FDR Drive and the Tin Building is a part of the story.�

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Tin Building Continued from page 4

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April 7 – April 20, 2016

13

clock Continued from page 1

out that even if something is a designated landmark, there’s no guarantee.”

In 1987, the commission landmarked the exterior of the building and also designated parts of the 13th and 14th floors, including the clock machinery, as an interior landmark.

At the LPC meeting in 2014 when the condo conversion was approved, the commissioners reached the conclusion that, while they had authority to ask the developer to keep the clock in operation, they had no power to mandate how.

“There’s nothing in the landmarks law that requires or gives the commission the power to require that this mechanism remain operable,” the commission’s general counsel, Mark Silberman, said at the time, according to The New York Times.

“Whether it’s electrified or someone is allowed to wind it, that is not something the landmarks commission can require.”

But the judge annulled parts of the certificate in her ruling last Thursday, calling the LPC decision “irrational and arbitrary.”

“There can be no dispute that the internal mechanism by which the clock operates is a significant portion of the clock itself,” Kotler wrote in her decision. “If the commission can issue a violation for its removal or alteration, the legislature [also] intended to give the commission the power to compel the owner to maintain the clock’s mechanical operation.”

peck slip Continued from page 8

historic street, where trucks served the Fulton Fish Market in recent decades, and where ships slipped in to dock with their catch two centuries ago.

But today community board members say that the neighborhood was different ten years ago, and argue that the community had not yet realized the plaza’s potential when they signed off on the 2007 plan.

“Back then, when it was approved, it was a parking lot — of course people were like, ‘Well, anything’s better than a parking lot,’ ” said Friedman.

The site was later used as a construction staging area for various capital projects, including the repaving of Peck Slip around the plaza with cobblestones.

But when it was finally opened up two years ago, some residents and local businesses quickly realized what they would lose if the plaza is filled in — even with

14

April 7 – April 20, 2016

She also said the tower should remain accessible to the public, calling access “a specific characteristic of an interior landmark.” This had been another sticking point for preservationists, who emphasized that the clock tower had been open for tours in recent years and housed a renowned art gallery for four decades before the developers bought the building.

“There’s so much effort to appropriate public space in the city,” said Lynn Ellsworth, founder and chair of the Tribeca Trust. “We’re delighted about the ruling. I think that it clarifies important powers of the landmarks commission over public access.”

The preservationists who fought the electrical conversion also think it is unlikely that the city will appeal the decision, since such a move would put it in an awkward position.

“If the city were to appeal, it would be resigned to arguing against its own jurisdiction and asserting that it lacks the power to protect the interior landmarks entrusted to its care,” said Michael Hiller, the attorney who represented the plaintiffs in the suit, which also included the Historic Districts Council and Save America’s Clocks.

Neither LPC nor the city’s Law Department responded to requests for comment.

Hiller said the certificate of appropriateness was only annulled with respects to claims that were made in the lawsuit, which means the conversion project can still move ahead — although no work can be done that would close off the clock tower and prevent it from being serviced in the future.

green space, but especially with sculptures and permanent benches.

“People got to see how useful that open space was for play and recreation,” said Paul Hovitz, another CB1 member who lives at nearby Southbridge Towers. “Everybody in the community said, ‘Hey, wait a second, this is really a much better idea.’ But at the time [of the first vote], we were pressed to either take it or leave it.”

CB1 passed its first resolution asking for an open design just a few months after the plaza was opened in 2014. The Old Seaport Alliance, a neighborhood association, is also opposed to the city’s plan.

Today, the two portions of the blacktop plaza are framed by rows of boulders, barrels and planters, and a Citibike station occupies one portion.

Last year, the restaurants that line the plaza used it to set up tables and chairs, and Friedman thinks it could even host

Beyer Blinder Belle

(Above) The Peebles Corporation and Elad Group wanted to gut the mechanical clock atop 346 Broadway and turn the space into a grand penthouse. The Landmarks Preservation Commission signed off on the plan in December 2014, but a Supreme Court judge overruled it on Mar. 31.

The project will create 144 condominiums in the tower and a restaurant in the two-story former banking hall of the building, as well as some sort of community space.

Community Board 1 just last month also renewed its call for the clock to be preserved in its manual state — as well as for a long-lost globe sculpture to be recreated at the top of the clock tower — when the project’s architects presented the board’s Landmarks Committee with a proposal to amend their original plans by installing an elevator and relocating a grand staircase into

the restaurant. Both CB1 and LPC approved those changes.

As for Schneider, he said his services were still on offer — and he hopes the developer would put the lawsuit behind them and focus on what’s right for the treasured timepiece.

“He may be a little miffed that he lost the case. But I feel that a thing like that should be put aside, and that we should work for the common good,” he said. “I bear no ill will, and I hope that he doesn’t either.”

The developers did not respond to requests for comment, and it is unclear whether they plan to appeal the decision.

a regular market of some kind — which the surrounding street did in the late 18th century, as he pointed out. He also sees lots of potential uses for local events and school activities, and worries that the 2007 design would be too restrictive.

“We’ve had a ton of great events there, and the new school is only just starting,” he said. “Once you go put some benches in the middle of it, you define it.”

But the city fears it would risk losing its funding for the project if the design was changed now, which would mean the whole process would have to start anew — not just at Parks, but also at the city and state preservation agencies that have to sign off on projects in the historic district.

LMDC president David Emil told the community board last summer that the only option would be to reevaluate the site elements if the original plan turns out to be too costly — which is not guaranteed.

“Parks’ strategy now is, ‘We have to see what comes back during the bidding process, and if it comes in over budget, then we can start talking about what elements we can remove to simplify the design,’” said Diana Switaj, CB1’s planning director. “But that’s very unpredictable, because who knows what’s going to happen during the bidding? People are confused why this is so difficult, because we’re not asking to add anything — we’re taking away elements.”

And of course, the foes of the park plan don’t care either way if the funding is lost. So for now, they’re left to wait and hope that the beautification effort fails — but even the wait can be seen as a victory of sorts for the pro-plaza position.

“I’m hoping that they’re forced back into design, because then they’ll be forced to come back to the community board [for input],” said Friedman. “And it’s okay that it just lingers there as an open space in the meantime. That’s a win for us.”

DowntownExpress.com

Weigh in on Wagner Park

BY YANNIC RACK The grass can always be greener.

The Battery Park City Authority is kicking off a “top-to-bottom review” of Wagner Park — the green strip along Battery Place at the southern tip of the neighborhood — with a survey to gather feedback from residents, workers and visitors on how to improve it.

“Wagner Park has been there for over 20 years now, and we have questions about how people use it, what they like about it, what they think may need changing. So we want to get that feedback,” said Gwen Dawson, the authority’s vice president of real property.

Questions range from personal experience of the park itself to how many times respondents have visited sights in the surrounding area, and Dawson said the assessment of the park would pay special attention to storm resiliency and environmental sustainability.

“As we started this study, our focus was in large part on matters of

BPCA

The Battery Park City Authority is asking for your input on how to improve Wagner Park.

resiliency, because the ‘Big U’ plan that has been conceptually devised by the city would impact this area,” she said. “We want to make sure that we take a close look at how that kind of

plan might impact the area, so that we have a way to feed into that.”

A planning consultant will evaluate the results of the survey, and Dawson said possible measures might include such

BPCA Continued from Page 1

of the seven-member board of the authority to be local residents — although chances are slim that the bill will make it through the Republicancontrolled Senate.

Cuccia, along with some fellow residents, has started a petition to the same effect (at democracy4bpc.org), which she says has racked up more than 1,800 signatures so far.

“It’s taxation without representation,” she says of the neighborhood’s curent management. “It’s important not to just have local representation, but a cross section of the Battery Park City population.

I’d like socio-economic diversity on the board. We are a diverse community.”

Calls to oust the BPCA leadership — or abolish the authority altogether — have gathered momentum over the past year in the wake of a series of unpopular decisions and tin-eared public-relations missteps during the tenure of Mehiel, whose term actually expired at the end of last year. Members of the board continue to serve until a replacement is appointed by the governor.

“Time and time again the Authority’s actions have shown that greater communication with the residents of Battery Park City must be a priority,” the officials wrote to Mehiel this week.

Their letter also noted that public comments are a regular feature at other state agencies, such as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Port Authority — and even the Empire State Development Corporation, where Mehiel served as vice-chair before taking up his post at the BPCA. Members of Community Board 1 promptly folDowntownExpress.com

Photo by Milo Hess

Battery Park City Authority board chairman Dennis Mehiel is under pressure from locals and elected officials to be more responsive to residents’ concerns. The latest effort is a call by pols to allow public comments at the authority’s board meetings.

lowed the pols’ lead and passed a resolution to the same effect at the monthly meeting of the board’s Battery Park City committee on Tuesday.

improvements as installing additional public bathrooms or building new walkways.

“It’s not a redesign, it’s an assessment [at this point],” she said, adding that the BPCA expects to draw up some concepts and proposals within the next two months.

“If, in fact, there are design components that will be necessary, that would be done separately with a contractor.”

The survey is available online at dandickson.typeform.com/to/JrbYEi, but residents can also request a paper copy by calling 212-417-2000 or from their local building doormen, who may also have them available, according to the authority.

Surveys should be completed by April 30, 2016, and paper surveys should be delivered to Battery Park City Authority, 200 Liberty Street, 24th Floor, New York, NY 10281, Attn: Wagner Park Survey.

Residents will also get to voice their thoughts on Wagner Park — as well as any other local issues — at the BPCA’s upcoming quarterly community meeting on Apr. 13 at 6 p.m. at 6 River Terrace.

“We should support the call for opening the monthly meetings — because all voting board members are there, so if the community has something to say, they will hear it directly instead of funneled and molded,” said Tammy Meltzer, a local resident and CB1 member.

“Other agencies do this as standard,” agreed committee chair Anthony Notaro, “so I support enforcing this call. We should direct this both to the governor and to chair Mehiel.”

But not everyone thinks the effort is worthwhile. Tom Goodkind, a longtime resident and community board member who is in favor of having the city take over the neighborhood, said he sees the letter going the same way as previous efforts to hold the board accountable.

“I haven’t seen the BPCA responding well to anything, they feel insular,” he said. “So I’m not quite sure why our elected officials are pushing for this, because it will just be ignored.”

A BPCA spokesperson declined to comment on the letter but said that the authority would welcome public comments at its next quarterly community forum on Apr. 13, which will take place from 6 to 7 p.m. at 6 River Terrace near the Irish Hunger Memorial.

The next board meeting of the authority is currently scheduled to take place earlier the same day, from 3 to 5 p.m. at the BPCA’s offices at 200 Liberty St. Cuccia said she was keeping her expectations low — both for the prospect of opening up future board meetings, and for the upcoming town hall.

“Last time,” she said, “they just ignored everything that anybody said.”

April 7 – April 20, 2016

15

E D ITO R IAL

We should set our elders free Publisher

Jennifer Goodstein Editor

Bill Egbert REPORTERs

Colin Mixon Yannic Rack Arts Editor

Scott Stiffler Executive VP of Advertising

Amanda Tarley

Account Executives

Jack Agliata Allison Greaker Jim Steele Julio Tumbaco Art Director

Michael Shirey Graphic Designers

Rhiannon Hsu Chris Ortiz Photographers

Milo Hess Jefferson Siegel Publisher EMERITUS

John W. Sutter

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NYC Community Media, LLC ONE METROTECH CENTER New york, NY 11201 Phone: (212) 229-1890 Fax: (212) 229-2790 www.downtownexpress.com news@downtownexpress.com

BY LENORE SKENAZY Why do grandparents and their grandchildren get along so well?

They share a common enemy.

Okay. Old joke. But the truth is, they do share another common enemy that is not a relative: Risk. When it comes to kids and seniors alike, society’s goal seems to be creating a zero-risk existence. This is as pointless and insulting for the older generation as it is for the younger.

“Surplus safety” is what Bill Thomas calls the elder-cosseting that goes beyond being helpful and actually dampens the joy of human existence. Thomas is a Harvard-trained doctor who has always been shocked by the way we treat elders (a term he much prefers to “seniors”). So he’s the guy behind the Eden Alternative, which, among deeper changes, also brings plants and animals into nursing homes so there’s something for folks to care for that grows and changes. He is also the author of “What are Old People For? How Elders Will Save the World.” And he founded the Green House Project — a kind of confusing name, since it has nothing to do with greenhouses.

First piloted in Tupelo, Mississippi, but now coming to Manhattan, the project replaces nursing homes with comfy, shared houses. The residents all live on one floor, with a big, country kitchen in the center. The day revolves around making dinner, with everyone pitching in any way they can, and then eating the meal together, staff and residents. Everyone has a purpose, every day has meaning. It’s so simple, it makes me ill to think of elders wheeled into institutional cafeterias with no

one asking anything of them, because they’re not people anymore. They’re more like packages.

Which brings us back to surplus safety — the kind that treats old people like antiques to be preserved in climatecontrolled comfort where nothing ever changes. Maybe that does lengthen their days on earth. But old people remain humans ­— and humans crave novelty.

Even if it involves a little risk.

“Risk is just the probability that things will turn out differently than expected,” Thomas explained over breakfast near Grand Central the other day, when he was down from his home in Ithaca. “Now we use it mainly to mean downside risk — your car might burst into flames.” But the upside of risk is that even when something bad happens (maybe not quite as bad as your car bursting into flames), you are now faced with something new that you have to adjust to. For instance: You got lost? Now you have to find your way home. To do this, you may have to steel yourself to ask a stranger for directions.

Once you do, you realize, “Hey — that wasn’t so hard!”

For kids as well as elders, says Thomas, “You need to be exposed to risk to grow. You have to be put in a situation where things can turn out differently than you expect. When we make a fetish of the downside of risk, we also get rid of the upside of risk.”

Helicopter parents try to remove all risk from their kids’ lives, because

Posted To Seaporters hoping for Peck Slip slip-up (Apr. 1)

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Anything will be better than the pavement and CitiBikes.

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Big bucks! LMDC awards $50M for Downtown projects (Mar. 24)

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16

April 7 – April 20, 2016

“What if?” looms so large: “What if my child gets abducted on the two-block walk to school?” Less recognized is the way we do the same thing to our elders, denying them the joy still left in life, because … what if? “Don’t go to Europe, dad. What if you get sick and you’re away from your doctor?”

It isn’t that we deliberately want to stunt our elders. It is that we don’t realize how vital novelty is to the soul at any age. “From a neurological point of view, the nervous system craves novelty,” says Thomas. “It needs novelty.

Without novelty, the nervous system can’t make new connections.”

So how can we give novelty back to our elders, if only to make sure that when we grow old no one is saving us from new experiences? The answer is simple: We have to start believing in our elders, the same way helicopter parents have to start believing in their kids. We have to trust our loved ones to roll with some punches.

These days Thomas travels around the country hosting a multi-media extravaganza called “The Age of Disruption Tour.” On stage singing (a skill he only mastered a few years ago) and playing guitar (ditto), and sometimes striding on stilts (major ditto), Thomas asks audiences to see growing into elderhood as just another stage of life, not that different from when they grew into adulthood from adolescence. It can be a time of growth, but it’s not without risk.

Or at least, it shouldn’t be.

Lenore Skenazy is a keynote speaker author and founder of the book and blog Free-Range Kids.

Be nice if some commemoration of Firefighters Robert Beddia, E-24 and Joseph Graffagino, L-5, killed at the fire, the 344th and 345th firefighters to die at Ground Zero, might be included in that $50 million. Contact the families; maybe name that playground for them.

And if they’re spending $700,00 for the

Jobs, Tribute in Light, which is very nice, maybe that same amount to return the Sphere to the WTC site – as hundreds of downtown residents have signed petitions for.

Michael Burke

Fulton fix-up: Downtown’s east-west transverse transforming from tacky to tony (Mar. 24)

Real Estate, Services, & more Check it all out in our

classified section!

Yeah the chain-and-mall-ification of Fulton Street is great pssshhhh.

Fulton Street was, is, and always will be a dump. The only cool/good thing on this sorry stretch was Strand Bookstore.

Enjoy your ChipotlE.Coli burrito.

AwFulton Street DowntownExpress.com

RIP: Peter Stanford Founder of the South Street Seaport Museum passes away at 89

BY YANNIC RACK Peter Stanford, the founding president of the South Street Seaport Museum and a tireless advocate for preserving New York City’s maritime history and historic waterfront, died on Mar. 24 in Crotonon-Hudson, N.Y. at the age of 89. The cause was a stroke, said his wife, Norma.

Beginning in the 1960s, Stanford played a pivotal role in saving the city’s old sailing ship waterfront by creating the Seaport museum, and leading the fight to preserve the old brick buildings around the Fulton Fish Market, including iconic Schermerhorn Row, in a historic district at a time of extensive new office construction in Lower Manhattan.

“In entirely plain terms, there’d be nothing left to preserve here in the Seaport were it not for Peter’s work,” said Capt. Jonathan Boulware, the museum’s current executive director. “[The New York Times architectural critic] Ada Louise Huxtable paved the way in a sense, but it was Peter — and others, including his wife Norma — who made what has happened here over the past 50 years possible,” he said.

From the time they founded the Friends of South Street together in 1966, the Stanfords embarked on a quest to transform the city’s original port into a world-class destination, and eventually achieved landmark status for the historic spot south of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Stanford led campaigns to save the historic vessels berthed at South St., including the lightship Ambrose, which is still at the Seaport, the fourmasted barque Peking, which will sail away to a new home in Germany later this spring, and the Wavertree, a sailing ship that is currently undergoing a $13 million city-funded restoration and will return to its berth this summer.

In his role at the museum and as the president of the National Maritime Historical Society, Stanford also helped organize the fleet of ships that sailed New York Harbor to celebrate the country’s bicentennial in 1976 and the Statue of Liberty’s centennial in 1986.

In 2011, after the museum almost closed amid financial strain and supporters started calling for the ouster of the institution’s then-leadership, Stanford, 84 and walking with a cane, attended a rally organized by a group he co-founded, Save Our Seaport. “[Volunteers] kept this place going through the difficult days, the thin days, when there really was no money and when the Landmarks Commission didn’t approve of the concept even,” he told Downtown Express at the time, recalling the museum’s birth 44 years earlier. “It was a wonderful battle. Our motto was, other museums are for people — this museum is people.”

Peter Marsh Stanford was born in Brooklyn on Jan. 16, 1927. His father, Alfred Stanford, was the Director of the American Newspaper Publishers Association’s Bureau of Advertising and later semi-retired to run the Milford Citizen newspaper in Milford, Connecticut.

DowntownExpress.com

National Maritime Historical Society

Peter Stanford, who died of a stroke on Mar. 24 at the age of 89, founded the South Street Seaport Museum with his wife Norma in 1967.

His mother, born Dorothy Janet Taylor, was an accomplished amateur pianist.

Stanford’s love of boats came early, said his wife of 50 years, Norma.

“There’s a photograph of him when he’s really just a tot, and he’s in his wooden rowboat, and he’s just rowing away,” she said. “He was born to the sea, he really was.”

Stanford grew up in Brooklyn, but would go sailing near the family’s vacation home in Connecticut and on Long Island Sound, where his parents later moved.

While still in school, he started contributing to the Naval Academy’s magazine, Proceedings, at the tender age of 15. Two years later, he enlisted in the Navy to work as a radioman during World War II. In 1949, he graduated from Harvard with a bachelor’s degree in history, and then went on to King’s College at the University of Cambridge, where he got a master’s degree in English literature.

He didn’t choose a steamboat for his journey to Europe, however.

“He found somebody who was sailing to England and sailed across,” said Norma. “When it was time to come back, he’d done so much sailing in England and in the Fastnet Races, he sailed to Spain, to France — whenever there was a holiday, all the people would go home, and he would go to sea. He just loved it.”

Stanford had first married Eva Franceschi, with whom he had three children, but the couple divorced and he later married Norma, Eva’s younger sister.

He was working in market research and advertising at the time, and turned a visit to the distributors of Beefeater Gin into a cross-country honeymoon. But Norma still had to share him with the sea.

“When we got to San Francisco, we went down to see the ships,” Norma recalled. “It was in the late evening, and the docks were open, so you could walk out on the ships. There was a young sailor there, in his dress blues and his little white cap. We said hello to him, and the three of us went and toured the ships.”

The next day, on the flight back to New York, she said the two of them started talking about a maritime museum on the waterfront of their own city.

“The idea of bringing it to New York seemed kind of natural,” Norma said.

After meeting with museum directors from San Francisco and the UK, they started compiling a mailing list to spread the word, obtained nonprofit status and opened a bank account for donations.

Both quit their jobs in 1967 (Norma was working for the Arts Councils of America at the time) and founded the museum that same year in a warehouse on Fulton St. Memberships only cost a dollar in the beginning, and the museum racked up more than 20,000 supporters in its first few years.

“Peter really threw himself into his work,” said Norma. “His work came first. And I knew nothing about sailing — my sport was riding. I’d rather be on a horse than go sailing. But when I went sailing with him, I got enthralled.”

And it was a good thing that his enthusiasm was so contagious, she said.

“We worked 12 hours a day,” she remembered of the early days. “We would leave South Street, sleep, get back in the car and go back. We saw the children on the weekends. It was not easy, and Peter worked Saturdays and Sundays as well. It was just hammer and tongs for years.”

With support from philanthropists including Jakob Isbrandtsen, a wealthy shipowner who became the museum’s chairman, the Stanfords worked to preserve the early-19th-century waterfront blocks in the area and secured the first ships, schooners and tugboats for the museum.

The museum’s founder was forced out in 1976, however, when its board brought in a wave of business-minded managers to run the institution.

“The takeover artists came and said, ‘Look, this is a big deal now. We can’t have these kids running it. We need to get some real managers in here,’” said Norma.

With her husband, she later wrote a book about the museum’s founding and the lead-up to their departure: stanford Continued on page 18

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stanford Continued from page 17

“A Dream of Tall Ships — How New Yorkers came together to save the city’s sailing-ship waterfront.”

During following administrations, the museum eventually ran into chronic financial difficulty as it struggled to rebound after the attacks of Sept.

11, 2001, the financial crisis, and Hurricane Sandy, whose damage to the Seaport and museum is still being repaired today.

But Stanford lived to see his baby achieve a rebirth of sorts.

Two weeks ago, the museum received a grant of $4.8 million from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation to build a community center, and this month also saw the opening of its first new exhibition since 2012.

Despite his grief over the turns that the museum took without him at the helm, Stanford became involved with the enterprise once again in recent years. He has praised Boulware’s recent leadership, and the admiration is mutual.

“I think Peter and I are sort of cut from the same cloth, and his excitement and enthusiasm for the Seaport

Museum and its work was undiminished through his entire life,” said Boulware, who met Stanford in 2011 when he joined the museum as waterfront director. “When I met him he was probably 85 years old and still every bit as excited about what we were up to as he’d ever been.”

The last time Stanford visited the museum was in last May, when he and Norma came from their home in Yorktown, N.Y., to see off the Wavertree, as the 130-year-old ship sailed away to be restored on Staten Island.

“It was a happy occasion, and at the same time it was a little sad,” recalled his wife. The pair had first brought the ship to the Seaport under their watch, and Norma said she had spiffed up its hull herself many times. “We looked at the ship moving out, and I said to him, ‘Peter, how many times have we seen this ship painted?’ And he said, ‘Too many to remember.’”

Stanford is survived by both his wife and ex-wife, as well as three children from his first marriage, Thomas, Anthony, and Carol; two from his second marriage, Robert, and Joseph; and five grandchildren, Nicholas, Luca, Kyan, Avani, and Sarah, who

Photo by Terese Loeb Kreuzer

Just days before the death of its founder, Peter Stanford, on Mar.24, the South Street Seaport opened its first exhibit since it was swamped by Superstorm Sandy, “Street of Ships: The Port and Its People,” and received a $4.8-million cash infusion from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation.

was born in February.

A memorial service, organized by his wife, the South Street Seaport Museum and the National Maritime Historical Society, will be held on April 16 at 2:30

p.m. at Trinity Wall Street, followed by a reception at the Museum.

The family requests that, in lieu of flowers, donations should be sent to the historical society and the museum.

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ALTERNATE SIDE PARKING RULES ARE IN EFFECT ALL WEEK It must be spring — the Tribeca Film Festival is back! The festival kicks off Wednesday, and while the real action doesn’t heat up until later in the week, stars, cinephiles, and paparazzi alike will be flocking to the festival and slowing down traffic in Lower Manhattan. Drivers should steer clear of Greenwich St. between Chambers and Hubert Sts. and Harrison St. between West and Hudson Sts. For Wednesday’s opening night festivities, Lower Manhattan hot spots to watch out for include theaters on North End Ave. between Vesey and Murray Sts., Chambers St. between West and Greenwich Sts., Vesey St. between Liberty and West Sts., and Laight St. between Hudson and Varick Sts. Spring also means it’s time for baseball! The Downtown Little League Opening Day Parade will close Warren St. between West St. and North End Ave. 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday.

Coming home late Thursday night will be tough going for Lower Manhattanites.

In the Lincoln Tunnel, the New Yorkbound south tube will close 11 p.m.

Thursday to 5 a.m. Friday. This closure

mandala Continued from page 6

water, erasing any physical trace of the mandala’s existence.

But far from being a waste of as many as 245 monk-hours of work, according to Loden, the destruction of the mandala will unleash and spread the raw energy of its blessings, which will flow with the Hudson out into the bay, and then on into the ocean. There it will mingle and benefit the creatures of the sea, before evaporation bears it up into the heavens, to rain down across the face of the earth in a shower of divine benediction, according to the monk.

“There’s a global healing concept in releasing the sand into the water,” Loden said.

Following the monks’ departure,

fulton stall Continued from page 12

of farm-fresh produce, the market remains one of Lower Manhattan’s best-kept secrets — but it’s the growers’ hope that it won’t stay that way for DowntownExpress.com

will send inbound traffic south to the Holland Tunnel, where one New Yorkbound and one New Jersey-bound lane will closed during the same time.

The Stone St. Pedestrian Mall will close Stone St. between Broad St. and Hanover Sq., and Mill Ln. between S. William and Stone Sts. 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. each day this week.

From the mailbag: Dear Transit Sam, Can I use my disabled parking placard to park in a “No Standing” zone in Manhattan? I say yes, but I’m getting mixed messages when I ask around.

Who’s right?

Bob, Manhattan Dear Bob, You might be getting mixed messages because there are multiple jurisdictions that issue disabled parking permits. On NYC streets only the New York City Special Parking Identification permit is recognized. With this permit, you can only park in a conditional “No Standing” zone if it pertains to spaces authorized for doctors, press, diplomats and government agencies. But you may not park in an Unconditional No Standing or in a No Stopping zone.

Transit Sam

Brookfield Place will play host to an Indian troupe of Bharatanatyam dancers Apr. 11–15, who will use the sacred dance style to explore both ancient mythology and contemporary themes, according to choreographer Malini Srinivasan.

The Winter Garden isn’t a typical host for the classical Indian style of dance, and Srinivasan hopes the venue will provide an opportunity for new audiences to discover it.

“I think for Brookfield, it’s not a traditional place for this art form, and because of that it will reach many different audiences than usual,” she said.

For more information and a full schedule, visit the Arts Brookfield website: www.artsbrookfield.com/event/ transcendentarts/.

long, according to Ryan.

“People are only beginning to understand there’s a market there,” she said.

“I’ll be honest, it’s slow, and we really need the public support. We need people to know there’s a market down there.”

BROOKLYN The Community News Group is proud to introduce BROOKLYN PAPER RADIO. Join Brooklyn Paper Editor-in-Chief Vince DiMiceli and the New York Daily News’ Gersh Kuntzman every Monday at 4:30 for an hour of talk on topics Brooklynites hold dear.

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BATTERY PARK CITY OPEN COMMUNITY MEETING

COME SHARE YOUR IDEAS AND VISION FOR WAGNER PARK!

WEDNESDAY April 13, 2016 6:00 - 7:00 pm 6 River Terrace

(near Irish Hunger Memorial)

Questions may be submitted in advance to info.bpc@bpca.ny.gov

www.bpca.ny.gov www.facebook.com/bpca.ny twitter.com/bpca_ny

Future meetings will take place on: July 20, 2016 November 16, 2016 April 7 – April 20, 2016

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Do The Math: Tribeca Film Fest x 15 = 2016

Vexed by ‘Vaxxed,’ TFF preps for scheduled slate, minus one

BY SC O T T S T if f l E r Set to take over a multitude of Downtown screens and scenes from April 13–24, the Tribeca Film Festival (TFF), now in its 15th year, is already making headlines with an embarrassingly adolescent misstep: its declaration that one previously announced selection won’t be seeing the flicker of a single TFF projector. “Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe,” a documentary taking the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to task for suppressing information linking the MMR vaccine to autism, was pulled from the schedule after a brief but messy public outcry from those who said the film’s very presence would give credence to ill-advised parenting and medical quackery.

“My intent in screening this film,” said festival co-founder Robert De Niro, “was to provide an opportunity for conversation around an issue that is deeply personal to me and my family. But

after reviewing it over the past few days with the Tribeca Film Festival team and others from the scientific community, we do not believe it contributes to or furthers the discussion I had hoped for. The Festival doesn’t seek to avoid or shy away from controversy. However, we have concerns with certain things in this film that we feel prevent us from presenting it in the Festival program. We have decided to remove it from our schedule.”

That was it for “Vaxxed,” as well as any further discussion on the matter. “We commented over the weekend,” said a TFF press representative, when asked to expand on why such a carefully curated festival — whose post-screening Q&As don’t shy away from robust discussion — would make the unprecedented move of launching a preemptive strike against one of its own.

No amount of steak pressed against that black eye will soon restore the festival’s well-earned reputation for championing provocative work —

Photo courtesy Maurizio Cattelan Archive

Maurizio Cattelan kicks a burning baby carriage in Milan, in “Maurizio Cattelan: Be Right Back.”

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and the fact that “Vaxxed” is currently screening at the Angelika Film Center further magnifies the perception that De Niro and his programmers were both asleep at the wheel and too quick to pull the kill switch.

That said, we’re still proceeding ahead with our annual genre-structured preview of TFF flicks (all of them still booked as of press time!). So consider taking a chance on the following 21 films — a number that, unlike 15, references an age of maturity at which the stage is set for a lifetime’s worth of integrity and good judgment. Zing!

GOING HOME, GETTING REAL & LETTING GO A powerful strain of melancholy seems to have gripped the programmers of this year’s TFF, who’ve curated a festival with a robust quotient of films that task their main characters with returning to old haunts and — by choice, force, or circumstance — growing up.

UK writer/director Rachel Tunnard parlays her British Academy Film Awards-nominated short into a full-length comedy about almost-30 Anna’s fits-and-starts attempt to acquire “Adult Life Skills.” After the death of her twin brother, she moves back to her rural hometown — and into a dead-end job, and an even more depressing living situation (the shed in her mother’s back yard). A chance meeting and growing friendship with a troubled young boy in desperate need of personal growth has her contemplating serious changes in her own state of fantasy world complacency. From Denmark, “Parentis” has empty nest couple Kjeld and Vibeke reacting to the absence of their son by moving back into the apartment they shared while students. That nostalgic flight of fancy takes a surreal turn, when they greet the dawn of a new day to discover they’ve become 30 years younger.

A underappreciated master of slow burns and fEST prEViEw Continued on Page 22

DowntownExpress.com

Image courtesy Niki Smit

Control your experience by controlling your breath, in the underwater word of “DEEP VR.”

New Worlds for an Audience of One VR at TFF delivers 360 degrees of exploration

BY CHARLES BAT TERSBY When the Tribeca Film Festival (TFF) began in 2002, video games and interactive entertainment were still struggling to be taken seriously.

In recent years, TFF programs like Tribeca Games and Games for Change have done their part to recognize the cultural impact and artistic legitimacy of these forms. This year, the festival takes another step further by augmenting its roster of films with events that take audiences out of the screening room and into new, immersive worlds.

Storyscapes (a collection of interactive installations) returns to TFF this year, with several new virtual reality (VR) options. The Apr. 14–17 programming includes “DEEP VR,” a deep sea simulator that allows players to control the experience through their breathing, a documentary (“The Ark”) that puts the audience face to face with a nearly extinct species of rhinoceros, and “Notes on Blindness: Into Darkness.” Guided by the original audio-diary recordings of John Hull after losing his sight in 1983, a “binaural sound” headset helps users empathize with the way a blind person perceives the world.

Another Storyscapes project represents the first VR game based on a DowntownExpress.com

graphic novel (Marc-Antoine Mathieu’s “S.E.N.S.”). Marie Blondiaux, a producer at Red Corner (the makers of “SENS”), describes what players will find when they put on their VR headseats: “An anonymous wanderer roams in a stripped down yet mysterious universe,” she explains. “You have to find a way within a maze without walls, with only arrows to guide you.”

Those arrows manifest themselves in manners both obvious and hidden, often creating optical illusions. Players will control their character within this work, by looking where they want to go, with a motion-sensing helmet.

The Virtual Arcade is a new event for the festival. It also uses VR experiences, and is open from Apr. 18–20. Among the virtual adventures is "Dragonflight,” an aerial combat simulator from Blackthorn Media, which allows players to fly on the back of a dragon.

Although “Dragonflight” has plenty of action, Michael Conelly, Creative Director of Blackthorn Media, says, “There’s a collective hunch that [VR] is a medium that's here to stay, and that it matters from a storytelling standpoint."

Conelly assures that players who try “Dragonflight” at the arcade “are going to have a hell of an experience meeting our dragon in person. He drops

Photo courtesy Tribeca Film Festival

This year’s Tribeca Film Festival ups the ante of its interactive dare, with new VR tech and storytelling experiences.

down out of the sky and lands with a THUMP, and looks right at you from just a couple of feet away.”

One of the films making its world premiere at TFF is the horror film

“Holidays.” A selection in the Midnight series, the anthology puts a grim and occasionally bloody spin on various NEW WORLDS Continued on Page 24

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I Dream of Genre: Tribeca Films Have Style fEST prEViEw Continued from Page 20

exasperated expressions, everyman actor Jason Bateman has his sophomore directorial effort with “The Family Fang,” in which a brother (Bateman) and his sister (Nicole Kidman) come back to their childhood home and embark on a search for their missing parents. Argentinian director Daniel Burman’s “The Tenth Man” is a gently comedic, affectionately observed, homecoming tale taking place over the seven days of Purim. Called back to the Jewish neighborhood of Buenos Aires, Ariel seeks to reconcile how his childhood dynamic with a caring yet often absent parent was shaped by his father’s acquiescence to the requirements of their religion.

WARFARE, PAST AND PRESENT In “The Fixer,” an exiled Afghan journalist lands a job at a small North Carolina town’s newspaper.

Applying those war correspondent skills to the humdrum police blotter beat, his pursuit of one particular item leads down a familiar, yet foreign, rabbit hole of conflict, danger, and intrigue. Pursuing a stable relationship and resolving to make a new life for himself as a real estate agent, “The Loner” — a former child soldier in 1980s Iran — struggles to shake his opium addiction and gambling habit. This visually intense and artfully violent debut feature from Daniel Grove (who also wrote the screenplay) bathes the mean streets of Los Angeles in neon, pitting the title character (Reza Sixo Safai, seen in the 2014 Iranian vampire tale “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night”) against both sides in a feud between the Iranian and Russian mobs. Executive produced by Wim Wenders and Errol Morris, the documentary “National Bird” assesses the

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collateral damage — physical, psychological, moral — experienced by three military veterans of America’s predator drone program.

ART ON FILM Furniture designer, taxidermist, subversive satirist, defiant outsider, and art world darling: Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan has been all of this and more over the decades, managing to elude categorization.

Charting the journey from scrappy upstart to his rightful place in the contemporary art canon, Maura Axelrod’s documentary “Maurizio Cattelan: Be Right Back” takes a playful approach to its search for the real story behind Cattelan’s public

Photo by Alison Rosa

In “The Family Fang,” Jason Bateman and Nicole Kidman, as Baxter and Annie Fang, launch a search for their missing parents.

persona and diverse body of work.

A Sun., Apr. 24, 6:30pm screening at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is a homecoming, of sorts, as the Guggenheim’s 2011 Cattelan retrospective cemented his place in the contemporary art canon. TFF seems to have a sweet tooth this year for art docs with a weakness for colons. Case in point: Matt Pizzano’s “Becoming: Bradley Theodore” (Apr. 15, 9pm) is an eight-minute short about how the titular artist turned his life around over the course of two years, through self-education,

Photo by Alejandra Lopez

In “The Tenth Man,” Alan Sabbagh, as Ariel, drives around his old Buenos Aires neighborhood between bouts of navigating a complex relationship.

self-promotion, and sheer dedication. In “Burden,” directors Timothy Marrinan and Richard Dewey survey the 45-year career of Chris Burden, whose self-analysis and philosophical musings are interspersed with footage and commentary that recall projects infused with danger and personal sacrifice — literally. Besides having been crucified to a VW bug, Burden’s been shot at, and confined to a 2x2x3 locker for several days.

The viral darling of stealth street art could be toppled by an upstart rival, in this debut feature from directors Ian Roderick Gray and Dylan Harvey. Blurring the lines between fact and fiction, “The Banksy Job” is a frenetic art world heist caper tale told by AK47 — a former porn star and acid rave promoter who assumes the villainous role of art world spoiler by setting out, in broad daylight, to swipe a piece of Bansky’s work located in Central London.

A more grounded (but no less affecting) portrait of an artist unfolds in “Everybody Knows...Elizabeth Murray.” Using vérité footage, exclusive interviews with art world luminaries, and excerpts from the painter’s private journals (as voiced by Meryl Streep), production designer Kristi Zea’s directorial debut is an intimate documentary following Murray’s formative years as an early feminist and mother of two, through a lung cancer diagnosis at the apex of her career.

The fi lm’s world premiere takes place on Sat., Apr. 23, 4:30 & 7:30 p.m, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, with another TFF screening on Sun., Apr. 24, 7:15 p.m. at Regal Cinemas Battery Park. fEST prEViEw Continued on Page 25

DowntownExpress.com

‘Califórnia’ Dreaming Boosts Brazilian Bildungsroman Marina Person brings 1984’s sights and sounds to the screen

Photo by Alison Rosa

Every frame of “Califórnia” bursts with lovingly assembled ’80s accouterments. Pictured: Clara Gallo as Estela and Caio Horowicz as JM.

BY SEAN EGAN “You kind of plan everything,” says Marina Person, a Brazilian writer/director, on independent filmmaking. “But a lot of unpredicted things happen as well, and you have two ways of dealing with it. One: to get desperate and cry in the sidewalk, saying ‘I’m not gonna make it because we’re not gonna have the scene I really needed.’ Or you can [go] like, ‘Ah! What can I do?’ and invent something else. That happened a lot in ‘Califórnia,’ because we shot with so little money.”

That wonderful, personal coming-of-age film, which Person co-wrote and directed on a shoestring budget, will receive its US premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival against the odds of budgetary constraints.

“If something goes really wrong, just relax, and try to look to the sides. The solution may be right in front of you,” she advises.

DowntownExpress.com

From filming largely indoors to keep costs down, dealing with inclement weather, and shooting guerrilla-style on the street without permits, Person employed her own wisdom against numerous obstacles. However, most difficult (and important) of all for Person, a former MTV Brasil VJ, was the process of acquiring music rights. Set in early-80s São Paulo and centering on Estela, a music-obsessed teen, “Califórnia” firmly establishes its tone through the use of choice cuts from alternative and new wave artists — including Echo & the Bunnymen, Cocteau Twins, and New Order.

Most tricky in Person’s long quest to curate the perfect soundtrack was securing the rights to The Cure’s “Killing an Arab.” The song, inspired

by Camus’ “The Stranger,” has been mired in controversy since its release, due to racist mis-

interpretations of the song’s lyrics. Because in “Califórnia” it accompanies a particularly moving sequence and helps to define a major character, Person reached out to The Cure’s people before filming to receive tentative permission to use the song. However, by the time she was in post-production months later, and had the cash to secure the rights, she was greeted with an altogether different reaction.

“The answer was like, ‘What?! You cannot use it!

What?! Who told you you could? You know [Cure frontman] Robert Smith wants to forget he wrote a song called “Killing an Arab.” ’ They were really upset,” she reveals, postulating that the Charlie Hebdo attacks may have rendered parties more wary of giving the go-ahead. Nonetheless, she did not give up.

Califórnia Continued on Page 27

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Tribeca Film Fest Ventures Into Virtual Reality NEW WORLDS Continued from Page 21

occasions for celebration during the calendar year.

“Holidays: Christmas VR,” was conceived and executed

by Scott Stewart, who also did the honors for the Christmasthemed segment of the film.

“In VR,” notes Stewart about the difference between this new medium and traditional cinema, “the viewer is dropped into a 360degree world wherein they have the freedom to look in any direction at any time.

So as a storyteller, you need to view your composition as the ‘world surrounding your viewer.’ It’s more like staging an event around a single audience member.”

Luis Blackaller, the Creative Director at Wevr, the VR production studio behind “Christmas VR,” points out that the narrative experience they provide is “closer to a vivid memory or a lucid dream. When telling a story in VR, it is important to figure out ways to make things come across around the viewer, regardless of what they are looking at. They might be browsing a bookshelf in a studio while the unexpected murder happens just behind their backs, and, yes, they might miss that moment. But they will get what happened because they were there.”

Some of the VR projects in the Virtual Arcade will involve murder and horror.

Image courtesy Baobab Studios

“Invasion” lets you inhabit the body of a bunny, then join the fight against an attack from outer space.

“Killer Deal,” the story of a machete salesman, is a humorous take on classic slasher films. Fans of horror/comedy will recognize its director, Anthony C. Ferrante, from the “Sharknado” films, along with leading man Ian Ziering.

Irad Eyal, writer and producer of “Killer Deal,” says the lighthearted feel of this project will provide the viewer with an experience unique to this new form. “A lot of the VR that you see now is pretty serious,” he notes. “And there's a place for that. I think VR is really good for documentary film making...but it's also very heavy. We wanted to give you an alternative to

Image courtesy Marc-Antoine Mathieu

The character of the graphic novel meets its avatar in VR, in “SENS.”

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that, with something that's campy, ridiculous, over the top, funny, and fun.”

Eyal also discusses how audiences respond to the narrative in an interactive VR story, noting how the viewer is “naturally going to follow the action, the same way you would if you were in a room with a monster or a serial killer. You're going to keep your eye on him."

Eric Darnell is known for directing animated films like “Madagascar,” but he also wrote and directed the VR project “Invasion,” which makes its debut at the Virtual Arcade. “Invasion” is the story of two cute bunny rabbits who repel an alien attack, with players inhabiting the body of one of those bunnies.

VR, says Darnell, “is not just an advancement of cinema.

It’s its own medium, with its own language that's just barely being developed right now. It's going to take time to realize all of the potential that VR has to offer.”

The Tribeca Film Festival is also hosting its Games and Media Summit for the third year. This Apr. 18 event will

Image courtesy Michael Conelly

Azhdaya approaches the tomb of Vermithrax in “Dragonflight,” an aerial combat simulator that puts you on the back of a dragon.

feature hands-on play with new VR games, as well as panel discussions with game makers whose topics include how to create games for VR, new “biometric” technology for interacting with games, and using VR for empathy and journalism.

As VR makes strides in being accepted as a form of legitimate storytelling, it is also becoming a more accessible experience to people who might have been turned off by early VR projects. Conelly, of “Dragonflight,” boasts of

the refined control scheme to his game, which is intended to help people who are prone to motion sickness. “We don't want Robert De Niro getting on our dragon and getting queasy,” he jokes.

All events mentioned in this article take place at the Festival Hub (Spring Street Studios, 50 Varick St., btw. Beach & Laight Sts.). Tickets to Storyscapse and Virtual Arcade events are $40 each, with discounted packages available. For more info, visit tribecafilm.com or call 646-502-5296.

DowntownExpress.com

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Tribeca Film Fest Navigates Its Mid-Teen Years fEST prEViEw Continued from Page 22

LGBTQ Weaving together footage from recently discovered home movies and unflinching excerpts from contemporary interviews, the act of contrition referenced in “Memories of a Penitent Heart” applies as much to the stigmatizing behavior of Cecilia Aldarondo’s family as it does to her uncle Miguel’s bid to reconcile his Puerto Rican/Catholic upbringing with his sexuality, in the days leading up to his death from AIDS in 1980s NYC. The subsequent shunning of his lover, Robert, comes to a head when Aldarondo tracks him down 25 years later, and begins to ask questions about keeping secrets, second chances, and what we cling to in times of crisis. The long shadow of Madge hovers over the men who went from obscurity to worldwode scritiny and back again, as the dancers who accompanied Madonna on her 1990 Blond Ambition World Tour. “Strike a Pose” reunites seven of the artists 25 years later, to reveal “the emotional truth behind the glamorous façade” — not just of life on the road, but of the further scrutiny they faced as stars of the tour documentary “Truth or Dare.”

The documentary “Check It” follows a group of Washington D.C. gay and trans teens of color who respond to bullying, rape, and abuse by forming their own gang and sending a message that acts of physical aggression against one of their own will be met with equal, or greater, force. Three members of the group are focused on in particular, as they pursue careers in fashion as an alternative to the cycle of gang violence. Journeys of personal growth also figure into “King Cobra,” a selection in TFF’s Midnight series that documents the rise, so to speak, of gay porn actor Brent Corrigan (aka Sean Paul Lockhart, who later became a gay-centric and “mainstream” actor/director of some note).

“Cobra” coils around Corrigan’s formative years, and the bitter break with the producer who made him famous. Garrett Clayton and Christian Slater star, respectively, as the feuding pair, alongside an ensemble whose marquee names include James Franco, Alicia Silverstone, and Molly Ringwald.

DO YOU LIKE GOOD MUSIC? Two childhood pals — one who grows up to be a comedian, the other, a folk-rocker — take to the road and split the bill on whatever hardscrabble DowntownExpress.com

Photo by Lisa Guarnieri

L to R: Kevin Stea, Gabriel Trupin and Oliver Crumes III, circa 1990. “Strike a Pose” is a look at life during and after touring with Madonna.

Courtesy Vice Films

“SHOT! The Psycho-Spiritual Mantra of Rock” surveys the career of Mick Rock, the man who captured iconic images of music royalty.

gigs they can book, in “Folk Hero & Funny Guy.” The documentary “Bad Rap” profiles the outsider quest of four Asian-American rappers struggling for artistic recognition. Hip-hop also exerts a pull on the young Palestinian protagonists of “Junction 48,” whose charged lyrics chafe against their conservative community and outside forces.

In Arabic/Hebrew with English subtitles.

“SHOT! The Psycho-Spiritual Mantra of Rock” is a documentary that surveys the prolific career of music photographer Mick Rock,

who gives a first-hand account of capturing iconic shots of David Bowie, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Queen, and other famous names. In “Geezer,” Green Day member and Broadway composer Billie Joe Armstrong stars as the former lead singer of a punk band who, at 40, finds himself married, living in the suburbs, parenting two children, and pining for more of the glories he amassed from a misspent youth.

For tickets and schedule info, visit tribecafilm.com or call 646-502-5296.

April 7 – April 20, 2016

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Person, on Snagging Songs and Shooting Guerrilla-Style Califórnia Continued from Page 23

“I said, ‘No, you know, you have to! I’m going to London and, like, go on strike. I’m going to do a hunger strike in front of Robert Smith’s house; he must let me use it!’ I was kind of desperate,” she recalls.

Following this rejection came a weeks-long process, during which Person scribed several extensive emails detailing her reasoning behind wanting to use the song, which found their way to Smith — who tried to convince Person to use a different Cure track in its place instead. After much debate and handwringing, she was eventually granted permission, which brought Person some muchneeded relief.

“I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat. I was totally obsessed with it.”

She was similarly obsessed with (and troubled by) getting the rights to David Bowie’s simultaneously melancholic and triumphant “Five Years.”

This time around, Person was able to snag the rights to the composition, but was rejected in her efforts to secure the studio recording.

After another desperate, weekslong process appealing to the powers that be and receiving radio silence, Person got creative and made due with the resources she had. She recruited Clara Gallo, the actress who plays Estela, to record a simple acoustic guitar-based cover, which was used for most of the film’s early festival screenings in lieu of the original recording. Then, out of the blue, the label changed their tune.

“Somehow, in November, somebody said, ‘Oh, do you want to use “Five Years? ” We have this version that is in “Ziggy Stardust.” ’ I said, ‘Version?! Yes! What?! This is the original! This is the one I want!’ ” she explains, confirming that it would be present in the Tribeca cut.

“I don’t know what happened, really I don’t. It was like a miracle.”

Visually, the film bursts with a love of music and ’80s culture — from stacks of records in a local shop, to posters of Estela’s musical idols lining her wall. Ever budget-conscious, Person helped keep costs down by providing resources from her own personal collection whenever possible.

DowntownExpress.com

Photo by Aline Arruda

Writer/director Marina Person hustled hard to bring her film to the big screen.

“Most of the records that appear, that stand out in the music store, are mine. I kept them from my youth,” she says. “Some of the Bowie photos that are cut from magazines are mine.

I still have, you know, an archive with all the Bowie things I collected.”

Every detail of the scenic design feels similarly lived in, in order to recreate 1984 — a “very special year in Brazilian history,” according to Person, due to the downfall of the military dictatorship, the rise of a new rock scene, and the emergence of AIDS. “The movie’s not about AIDS, the movie’s not about politics, the movie’s not about any of that,” she quickly notes. “But those things were important to me, and I wanted them to be present. The movie is essentially about a girl becoming a woman.”

This use of a very specific socioeconomic period as a backdrop for a simple story — along with its sliceof-life vibe and Person’s gentle, matter-of-fact directing style — recalls Richard Linklater’s work. Person also cites Francois Truffaut, and John Hughes’ “The Breakfast Club,” as inspirations in her filmmaking.

“I guess I’m influenced by everybody — all the filmmakers I love,” she comments of these touchstones.

“Nothing seems to be happening, but this is life, right? You know, there’s nothing special here, there’s no turning point; but life is made of these moments, right? I like that kind of film.”

Ultimately, the strength of “Califórnia” is not derived from any amount of art direction, song choice, or inspiration; it’s from the elegant universality at its core.

“Essentially, we talk about things that everybody has gone through, or will go through if they are younger.

You know, the teenage rites of passage,” Person says. “All the time you are asking yourself ‘Where am I? Where am I supposed to be? Is it here? What kind of person do I want to be? ’ And so, these things, I hope people can connect to that.”

“Califórnia” screens Sat., Apr. 16 at 6 p.m., Mon., Apr. 18 at 9:15 p.m., and Fri., Apr. 22 at 7:15 p.m. at Regal Cinemas Battery Park (102 North End Ave., at Vesey St.). Screens Thurs., Apr. 21 at 3:45 p.m. at Bow Tie Cinemas Chelsea (260 W. 23rd St., btw. Eighth & Ninth Aves.). Visit tribecafilm.com or call 646-502-5296 for tickets ($20 plus $3.50 phone or web processing fee; $10 for the Apr. 21 matinee, plus processing).

April 7 – April 20, 2016

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April 7 – April 20, 2016

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