The Villager

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

December 15, 2016 • $1.00 Volume 86 • Number 50

‘He’s still harassing us,’ Croman tenants claim as landlord faces prison

By Dennis Lynch

N

otorious Manhattan landlord Steven Croman is in both civil and criminal court for allegedly defrauding his lenders and strong-arming rent-stabilized tenants out of his buildings.

But even though he’s facing 25 years in prison, Croman hasn’t eased off his tenants at all,

some of them say.

“He’s still not giving heat and hot water, still not backing off from the rotten things he would do, like jacking up rent and not returning leases to people,” said Cynthia Chaffee, a longtime Croman residential tenant. “He’s still doing it and nothing’s changed. He’s still Croman continued on p. 4

Police hit Hells Angels H.Q. for sidewalk, cycle violations after shooting

BY LINCOLN ANDERSON

F

ollowing a shooting outside the Hells Angels’ East Village clubhouse early Sunday morning that left a man wounded, police on Tuesday afternoon removed items from the sidewalk in front of the place.

Shortly before 1 p.m., po-

lice vans closed off E. Third St. between Second and First Aves. Led by Captain Vincent Greany, the Ninth Precinct’s commanding officer, about 30 to 40 cops participated in the operation. They removed two potted plants on either side of the clubhouse’s door, as well as a bench, plus used angels continued on p. 7

Photo by milo hess

Ride on, SantaCon! Overshadowed by the Trumpocalypse, SantaCon somehow didn’t seem like such a big deal this year. The soon-to-be inebriated St. Nicks star ted out in the Flatiron District on Saturday. But the boozed-up bar crawl wasn’t as unruly this year, at least according to police, who handed out about 100 summonses but made no arrests. In one local incident, however, One and One bar, at E. First St. and First Ave., was repor tedly hit by a crew of bad Santas who busted into the place’s underground lounge and guzzled down copious bottles of liquor.

Close Encounters of N.Y.U. Kind: Massive Mercer design revealed

By Dennis Lynch

N

ew York University unveiled renderings last week of its multipurpose 181 Mercer building that show a sleek, modern glass-encased facility with tons of open space (inside), athletic facilities, classrooms and dorm rooms.

The $1.28 million building will be N.Y.U.’s largest educational facility and is set to open by late 2021 as part of the university’s

massive “N.Y.U. 2031” 25-year redevelopment plan.

N.Y.U. revealed the designs at the Dec. 8 meeting of its University Senate.

The project was formerly known by the more quirky name of the “Zipper Building,” due to its zigzag appearance when viewed from overhead.

However, most people — at least those not hovering in helicopters — will be looking up at it — way, way up. The educa-

tional edifice will rise 300 feet at its tallest point.

The 735,000-square-foot building has three main parts.

The block-long lower section — stretching from W. Houston St. to Bleecker St. along Mercer St. — houses classrooms, theaters, studios, common space and other facilities. A six-lane swimming pool and a four-basketball-court gym are located N.Y.U. continued on p. 6

In the zone: The St. John’s / Pier 40 deal ��������� p. 15 Bridge running back before it was cool ����������� p. 16 Will the hive survive? ������������ p. 12

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we’ll go home. We just want to stop it completely.” He added that the Oceti Sakowin — the mighty seven-tribe Sioux nation — is now reaching out internationally for help. “I heard Donald Trump say, ‘I can break treaties,’” Rowland noted. “We’re trying to get support from Russia, China and Cuba. We can make treaties. They can pressure the United States to honor their treaties. We are still a nation,” he proudly declared of the Sioux and their 1851 treaty with the U.S. government. “We’re going to reclaim our land and re-establish the original form of government our people had — the tribal council.”

Sioux far, so good: It was a major victory for the Standing Rock protesters in North Dakota earlier this month when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced it would not grant the final permit for the Dakota Access Pipeline. Instead, the Army Corps said alternate routes for the project — which the Sioux and “water protectors” warn could befoul the Missouri River — should be explored. Jean-Louis Bourgeois, son of the late famous sculptor Louise Bourgeois, who is Our Man in Standing Rock, put us on the phone with Chief Garry Rowland. The Lakota leader told us that, despite the latest news, the fight is far from over. The 5,000 protesters still out there will not abandon camp, he assured. “They told everyone to go home, but we’re not leaving,” the chief said. “When the pipeline is stopped, that’s when

In his speech at V.I.D.’s holiday par t y, Congressmember Jerrold Nadler said New Yorkers, in order to tr y to roll back the Republican tide, need to reach out and work with Democrats in election districts in nearby states where Donald Trump narrowly edged Hillar y Clinton.

NEW V.I.D. PREZ: Eric Coler has been elected the new president of the Village Independent Democrats club. He beat Jennifer Hoppe, who then also ran for vice president and was elected a club V.P., along with Barbara Reuther and Laurie Hardjowirogo. At 25, Coler is the youngest-ever leader of the city’s oldest progressive Democratic club, which launched the careers of Ed Koch and former Councilmember Carol Greitzer, among others. “The Village Independent Democrats has a storied history,” Coler said. “For nearly 60 years, this club has fought for human rights and dignity, for the integrity of our city’s political process, and for the quality of life in our community and our city. It’s a privilege to carry its agenda forward in these challenging times.” Coler’s agenda for the upcoming year will focus on working with like-minded organizations to fight Donald Trump’s threats to the social safety net, the environment and basic civil liberties, including voting rights and marriage equality. “V.I.D. will have to work harder than ever to defeat the president-elect’s radical and destructive agenda,” he said. “We have our work cut out for us, but we’re on the right side of this fight.”

On the local level, he said, “I can tell you that we are planning on doing a large rollout of a few large goals in the neighborhood.” Born and raised in the Village, Coler is deputy C.O.O. of Mercer Partners, a tenants-rights advocate and co-founder of the New York State Education Initiative, a foundation that develops after-school programs to enrich students’ lives. In its inaugural program this year, the Initiative helped teach more than 250 South Bronx middle schoolers the basics of financial literacy. Coler currently serves on Community Board 2, on which he is assistant secretary. V.I.D. member Sharon Woolums, for one, is totally bullish on Coler. “He’s young and energetic,” she said, “what the club needs an infusion of!”

POSSIBLE KIOSKS comeback: Last month, as the New York Post reported, Stanley Shor, the assistant commissioner of the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, told city councilmembers that the agency did not anticipate that porn-crazed

Adding some crosstown flavor to the V.I.D. confab in Hudson Square was District Leader Carlina Rivera, who represents the East Village.

creeps would be glued to the Web browsers on the new WiFi sidewalk kiosks. The kiosks “included pornography

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December 15, 2016

Photos by Tequila Minsky

New V.I.D. President Eric Coler speaking at the club’s holiday par t y, which, as usual, was hosted by Frieda Bradlow at her Charlton St. townhouse.

filters,” Shor assured. But in September, the city had to disable the Web browsers after New Yorkers filed complaints of being grossed out by men masturbating at the ad-plastered monoliths. Yet, the Post reported, “The city may eventually hook up the Web browsers again — but only with an improved porn filter and possible time limits, according to a rep for LinkNYC, the private firm that oversees the project.” Hmm...“improved porn filters?”

Yeah, right, like that will really work! (And what about the Russian hackers?) However, Councilmember Corey Johnson, for one, said he does not want to see the Internet sidewalk surfing safari come back to the kiosks.

Basically, he said, many people were also using them as “personal entertainment centers,” watching everything from music videos to cartoons, for long stretches of time.

“I’m O.K. with the WiFi,” Johnson told us. “But I’m not O.K. with the browser on the screen — because it’s not about just pornography. People turn over a crate for a chair and sit there and use it like an Internet cafe. I don’t support bringing the browser capability back. I do support using it for resources and information, like MTA subway maps – not endless browsing.”

Evil among us: As The Villager reported three weeks ago, state Senator Brad Hoylman and his family were targeted by haters after he called attention to two swastikas that were found carved into the paint on a service-elevator door in his Fifth Ave. apartment building.

Some Arizona crackpot then mailed him anti-Semitic fliers and alt-right nutcases barraged him with sickening messages, even threatening his little daughter. Well, we checked in with the state senator last week, and unfortunately there had been yet another incident. “It was a graphic and disturbing e-mail directed at my family and me sent to my district office,” he told us. “I prefer not to go into details so as not to provide whoever sent it to me the publicity they probably crave. It’s been reported to N.Y.P.D. and State Police. The fact is that my experience is just one of nearly 900 cases of hate incidents that have been reported across the country since the election, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center,” Hoylman said. “We must unite as a community to reject hate. Rest assured that I, for one, won’t be intimidated.” Right on! ... Asked this week, if he had experienced any new incidents, Hoylman reported, “No, thank goodness!”

Catches Academy’s eye: “The Witness,” Soho director James Solomon’s riveting film on the infamous 1964 Kitty Genovese murder, and the sensationalist, misleading reports about it by The New York Times and others, was shortlisted this week for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Film. The picture follows Scoopy’s continued on p. 3 TheVillager.com

SCOOPY’S NOTEBOOK Scoopy’s continued from p. 2

Kitty’s youngest brother, Bill Genovese, a disabled Vietnam vet, as he tries to get beyond the journalistic spin and hype to uncover the real story of what truly happened on that terrifying night. One hundred forty-five documentaries qualified for Oscar consideration, and the Academy’s documentary branch shortened this down to 15. Five of these will be nominated, and announced Tues., Jan. 24, along with the other Oscar nominations. “The Witness� will be broadcast on PBS’s Independent Lens on Mon., Jan. 23.

Green for clean: Councilmember Corey Johnson’s talking point in The Villager earlier this month, “A clean sweep: A new vision for neater streets,� didn’t specify the amount of the funding that he allocated to ACE (Association of Community Employment Programs for the Homeless) for supplemental street cleaning on high-trafficked corridors in his Council District 3. It’s actually a whopping $100,000. “They’ve been out there since October and the reviews have been great,� a Johnson staffer told us.

Super-corrections: A P.R. rep for 260 South St. contacted us after our article on the Two Bridges-area project in last week’s issue to school us on the fact that “supertall� does not just mean a

ginormous building. “The proposed towers in our project are not ‘supertalls,’� he insisted. “The official arbiter on these matters, the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, defines ‘supertalls’ as buildings more than 984 feet. Our proposed towers are 798 and 728 feet.�

Oh, so puny! Dude — they’re yuuge!

That’s what community activists who want the area’s zoning changed say. For the record, there are also “megatallâ€? towers, which are even bigger. We don’t even want to think about those... . But these definitions all change over time. Was a time when “skyscraperâ€? meant just 10 to 20 stories. The rep also noted that the Two Bridges area was zoned as a LargeScale Residential Development area 30 years ago. “That underlying zoning has not changed,â€? he stated. “This is an area long intended for development.â€? Uhh, yeah‌but exploiting new construction techniques and stronger steel, developers are now building taller and slimmer than ever. That has changed! And, yeah, it’s exactly part of the reason why activists want the area rezoned. ‌ In addition, our article on the St. John’s / Pier 40 deal last week incorrectly stated that the Hudson River Park Trust and local youth leagues are eyeing shifting the pier’s commercial space to its western edge. In fact, the plan is to move it to the pier’s northern and southern sides.

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December 15, 2016

Villager file photo by Jefferson Siegel

Landlord Steven Croman — holding a folder to cover his handcuffs — being walked into Manhattan Supreme Cour t this past May to be arraigned on a slew of charges filed against him by Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. A detective is at left and Croman’s attorney is at right.

‘He’s still harassing us’: Tenants say Croman continued from p. 1

using the courts to harass his tenants.”

Chaffee has lived in a rent-stabilized apartment on E. 18th St. — in one of the 140 buildings Croman owns citywide — for almost 20 years, and runs the Stop Croman Coalition. The coalition is one of two groups that tenants formed to share information and resources about tenants’ rights and how they can fight Croman’s tactics.

Chaffee’s neighbors at another Cromanowned building on E. 18th St. have gone without cooking gas since late April, which was only a couple weeks before New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman indicted Croman on 20 felony criminal charges and sued him in civil court. A resident claimed the building loses heat between 11 p.m. and 6:30 a.m., as well. Croman’s company sent those tenants a letter in late November that claimed Con Edison required “invasive and onerous” work to restore the gas and was seeking a waiver “of these additional unduly burdensome requirements.” The letter added that Croman’s company asked Con Ed to turn on the gas as soon as possible.

A spokesperson for Croman’s real estate company, 9300 Realty, said a cooking-gas leak at the building was repaired and was waiting for Con Ed to inspect the system and return service. The spokesperson added that the company was “working as quickly as

Organized by local housing groups, tenants regularly rally outside the offices of landlord Steve Croman on Broadway near Houston St. in Noho.

possible to accommodate [Con Ed’s] additional requests,” there and at another one of Croman’s buildings on W. 12th St. that has gone without cooking gas for much of the year, and that electric cooking plates were given to all residents at both buildings.

A resident at a Croman building on E. 58th St. said garbage collection is spotty, so rats have become a problem there. She has

also lost utilities as recently as November.

“Is the harassment still going on? Absolutely,” Viv Ramos said. “There was no heat on Thanksgiving and no running water the week of Thanksgiving. It’s the same crap day after day after day.”

A spokesperson for 9300 Realty disputed Ramos’s claims of lackluster garbage service croman continued on p. 5 TheVillager.com

Caffe Vivaldi-Croman court fight still simmering croman continued from p. 4

and loss of hot water at the building.

This week, tenants at the Cromanowned 159 Stanton St. filed a housing court action to get much-needed repairs made at the building, which have stalled in recent months. Shoddy repairs and deteriorating conditions there mean rainwater comes into the building through a roof door, causing ceiling plaster to fall into the hallways, they say.

There have been at least three burglaries in the building in recent months, and tenants said at least one was because a poorly secured window — which management was notified of — allowed a burglar to easily break in. Tenants will demonstrate in front of their building alongside tenants from Croman’s other buildings and Councilmember Margaret Chin’s chief of staff, Paul Leonard, on Thurs., Dec. 15, at 11 a.m.

Some of Croman’s commercial tenants have experienced issues as well.

The embattled landlord is involved lawsuits with some of those tenants, including the family that owns the Caffe Vivaldi restaurant and live-music venue on Jones St. in Greenwich Village. Croman initially sued Ishrat Ansari for “failing” to pay rent on basement space the Croman would not allow the cafe to use. The landlord lost, but still refused Ansari access to the space and still charged him rent for it, forcing Ansari to build a storage space on the ground floor.

Ansari, in turn, took Croman to New York State Supreme Court in 2014. The cafe operator expected a ruling this fall, but Croman’s indictment has put this case against him on hold. Croman is still charging Caffe Vivaldi for the inaccessible basement space, but the family has withheld rent since Ansari suffered a stroke earlier this year. That’s left them wondering what will come next, a spokesman for the cafe said.

“We’re not sure if there’s going to be a further hearing or not,” the spokesperson said. “We’re kind of in limbo for now, which has been the case for a handful of years.”

On Dec. 12, state Senator Brad Hoylman sent Croman a letter demanding that he “immediately cease all claims to basement rents and end [his] campaign of harassment through continued abuse of the court system in an attempt to evict Caffe Vivaldi.”

In May, Attorney General Schneiderman indicted Croman on 20 felony criminal charges for allegedly submitting false mortgage documents to banks: Croman claimed many rent-stabilized units were market rate and also inflated the amount of rent he charged for commercial spaces to show greater rental income. He secured more than $45 million in loans based on those false documents.

Schneiderman indicted Croman on a slew of charges, including seven counts of grand larceny and falsifying business records, plus one count to scheme to deTheVillager.com

fraud, one count of criminal tax fraud and four counts of “offering a false instrument for filing,” according to a press release. The A.G. also slapped the landlord’s mortgage broker, Barry Swartz, on 15 charges.

Schneiderman separately sued Croman in civil court for allegedly “directing an illegal operation that wields harassment, coercion and fraud to force rent-regulated tenants out of their apartments” to convert them into high-profit market-rate units.

Croman was known to file unjustified lawsuits against his tenants to encourage them to give up their fights and vacate their apartments. Schneiderman accuses Croman’s employees of often writing up

false documents claiming that his company never received rent from tenants, who he would then sue for the rent.

Croman also allegedly hired Anthony Falconite, a former New York Police Department officer, to intimidate tenants into packing their bags. According to the attorney general, Falconite would pose as a repairman or construction manager, gain access to apartments and then threaten tenants or take photos of their mail and belongings. He also reportedly followed some tenants to and from work. Schneiderman ordered Croman to “cease and desist” from having Falconite harass and intimidate tenants.

Schneiderman also accused Croman of performing hundreds of construction

projects without permits, filing false documents with the Department of Buildings to avoid oversight, and violating lead laws, among other unsafe practices.

Hearings for both Croman’s civil and criminal cases will be held on Feb. 7.

Some of his tenants and housing activists rallied outside New York County Criminal Court at the end of last month at a protest organized by the Stop Croman Coalition, Good Old Lower East Side (GOLES) and the Cooper Square Committee.

The message on the flier was direct and determined: “The Stop Croman Coalition and Croman tenants want to send a strong message to Steve Croman that we are here to stay and want him convicted.”

December 15, 2016

5

Close Encounters of N.Y.U. Kind on Mercer St. N.Y.U. continued from p. 1

on the basement level. Above this base, students will live in dorms in a tower, and faculty will have housing in an even taller tower on the building’s Houston St. end.

The building was designed to be green and N.Y.U. will seek the most modern LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification available, LEED v4. The 181 Mercer building replaces the now mostly demolished Coles Sports Center building, which was a low-rise gym only.

The design for the new building was vehemently opposed by some locals because of its size and design, which many said was out of context with the neighborhood. The site is surrounded on three sides by historic districts or individual landmark buildings. Community Board 2 recommended to deny the entire N.Y.U. expansion plan.

N.Y.U. says the building offers a new “gateway” to the south. But Soho is the neighborhood to the south, and Sean Sweeney, director of the Soho Alliance community organization, called the building “atrocious.”

“A well-designed glass building could fit into a historic district,” he said. “This is not a well-designed building. The massing is atrocious and does nothing for the neighborhood except to create high-rise towers to give students a better view of the city. It doesn’t add — it only detracts from the historic districts and the landmarks around it.”

Sweeney added that he worried that more student housing would only make the area surrounding it more crowded and spur more applications for bar liquor licenses — which the neighborhood has fought off in many cases over the years — to cater to students there.

A phalanx of local neighborhood associations and preservation groups sued over the larger “N.Y.U. 2031” redevelopment plan, but the state’s highest court O.K.’d the plan last year. Assemblymember Deborah Glick, a party to the lawsuit, said the design reveal bowled her over.

“They confirmed our worst fears of a massively obstructive and out-of-context building,” she said of the design. “It is so inappropriate, it is shocking.”

Many, including Community Board 2 Chairperson Terri Cude, also lament the loss of community green space outside the former Coles building.

“The 181 Mercer building will sit on land that was formerly the community’s,” Cude said, “the previously city-owned land in front of Coles gym that had a children’s playground, reflecting pool and the now-relocated dog run — plus much of the footprint of Coles gym that was itself built on former open space. It is frustrating that we so often have to fight to keep green open spaces that are an essential part of healthy living,” Cude said.

The project includes N.Y.U.’s purchase from the city of the open-space “strip” along Mercer St. that was a leftover from

6

December 15, 2016

A design rendering of 181 Mercer St., viewed from the nor theast looking toward the south. The project will spor t a 300-foot-tall tower on its W. Houston St. end, seen in the background, just to the right of One World Trade Center with its antenna.

A view of the plan for 181 Mercer St. from the nor thwest looking south.

The project will also open up the former Greene St., at right, to pedestrians. The street was closed to create a “superblock” 65 years ago.

a failed Robert Moses highway plan and which formerly contained the playground and Mercer-Houston Dog Run. The final building is slimmer and 20 percent smaller than what was originally allowed by the city. But that’s little con-

solation to the project’s numerous critics. The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation blasted the newly unveiled 181 Mercer design.

“The design is atrocious, and the complex will completely overwhelm the

area,” said Andrew Berman, the society’s director. “N.Y.U. claims the new design promotes ‘transparency’ and ‘connectivity’ between the university and surrounding community. That’s lipstick on a pig. A 300-foot-tall glass building is not transparent and is not going to feel contextual with the surrounding community.”

Berman agreed with the analogy that the almost sci-fi-style building’s appearance in the historic Village would be like a “Close Encounters” experience.

“I think it’s going to be a completely alien presence,” he said.

He added that the building’s size was only cut down due to opposition.

Despite the torrent of community criticism, though, Andrew Hamilton, N.Y.U.’s new president, said the university greatly needs the gargantuan facility.

“It is difficult to think of another school with a more acute need for academic space than N.Y.U.,” Hamilton wrote to the school community.

The building “will add nearly 60 new classrooms,” he said. “It will at long last give young performing-arts students in the Tisch and Steinhardt schools practice, rehearsal and performance spaces that are in line with the caliber of their programs. It will give our campus a modern gym to serve our student/athletes and the fitness needs of the rest of us. It will provide much-needed housing for both students and faculty.”

John Beckman, the university’s spokesperson, in a statement to The Villager, said, “One has to allow for subjective reactions to any building design,” but that there were a number of reasons for 181 Mercer’s design. Its transparency contrasts completely with the uninspiring design of the Coles gym and will lighten the streetscape, he noted. Because this transparency will let in sun, it will reduce energy usage, he said.

“We heard repeatedly from the community how important it is for our buildings to engage and activate the streets around them,” he added.

In terms of whether the building is contextual with the surrounding neighborhood, he stressed there is no unifying architectural vernacular to draw from.

“In its contemporary way, the design for 181 Mercer is about neither mimicry nor opposition to its context, but harmony,” he said.

The new building will also include an airy public atrium and a community room. Community Board 2 residents will be able to buy 12-use passes to use N.Y.U.’s new 404 Fitness facility, at 404 Lafayette St., as well as the athletic facilities at 181 Mercer just as they could for use of the Coles facilities, a university spokesperson said.

The university expects to complete demolition of the Coles building by this coming February. The next phase of demolition will be the removal of the old building’s girders and will require a crane at the site.

TheVillager.com

Police hit Hells Angels for sidewalk violations angels continued from p. 1

a circular saw to slice off a small ramp that led to the building’s easternmost door. All of this material was carted off in a Department of Sanitation flatbed truck.

“We just cleaned up the front a little bit,” Greany said. “We issued an Environmental Control Board summons.”

Asked if police had a warrant for the action, the captain said no, and noted that they didn’t go inside the building. They did knock on the door, he said, but no one answered.

So, police left the E.C.B. summons in a manila envelope taped to the front door.

After the police left, however, a group of three people exited the sixstory building and quickly walked off single file going westbound. They included two men — relatively small and unburly looking — wearing backpacks and hooded winter coats (without the Hells Angels name, known as the gang’s “colors,” on the back) and a woman. A bit later, another woman, with dark hair, exited the building, wearing large black sunglasses, jeans and a black jacket and puffing on a cigarette, and walked off toward the east.

At one point during the police action, someone inside the tenement had briefly pulled back a shade in a second-floor window and looked outside. A witness who saw this said he wasn’t sure if it had been a man or a woman.

Summonses were also issued for three of the Hells Angels’ motorcycles that were parked outside on the street under covers. It’s illegal to cover a license plate, Greany noted.

According to radical attorney Ron Kuby, who has represented the Hells Angels in past cases, police the day before had removed the orange cones that the biker gang uses to claim several parking spots on both sides of the street around its clubhouse. There were no cones visible on Tuesday.

“How many police does it take to capture cones?” he asked sarcastically.

The fight Sunday was sparked when a group of five friends in a white Mercedes-Benz reportedly moved one of the cones so that they could get around a livery cab parked outside the Hells Angels’ H.Q. Hells Angels poured out of the clubhouse and a melee subsequently ensued. One of the men in the car reportedly grabbed a chain out of its trunk and started swinging it around.

One of the non-Hells Angels, David Martinez, 25, got the best of one of the bikers, knocking him to the ground, and then was going to give him another kick. But the downed TheVillager.com

Photos by Lincoln Anderson

Captain Vincent Greany, third from right, facing camera, led Tuesday’s enforcement action outside the Hells Angels E. Third St. clubhouse.

These t wo motorc ycles were O.K., as far as police were concerned. But three others that were under tarps were slapped with summonses for having their license plates covered.

man — possibly a “prospective” gang member, according to the Daily News — whipped out a gun and shot Martinez once in the chest. The wounded man was recovering at Bellevue Hospital.

Police are said to be testing Martinez’s boot for DNA to try to identify the gunman.

Meanwhile, Kuby scoffed at Tuesday’s police action.

“They took away two beautiful conifers — little Christmas trees — because, what, they don’t have a permit

for a potted plant?” he asked. “Look, the N.Y.P.D. is obviously upset about the shooting. They expect cooperation from an organization that does not ask things from or give things to the police.

“I mean, the last time a Hells Angel asked for something from the police was when a Hells Angel gave something to police — which is never,” Kuby stated.

“To paraphrase Bob Dylan, ‘The Hells Angels don’t need you. And man they expect the same.’ That’s

Police left an E.C.B. summons for the sidewalk violations taped to the middle of the front door after no one answered when they knocked. But several people exited the building shor tly after the police left. An official-looking sign to the left of the door warns that the parking in front and directly across the street is only for “authorized Hells Angels”

from ‘Just Like Tom Thumb Blues.’”

Kuby said he had not yet talked to anyone from the Hells Angels about the shooting. He said all he knows about what allegedly happened is what he has read in the daily tabloids.

“I wasn’t there,” he said. “I haven’t spoken to any witnesses. I don’t know what guy did what. Nobody’s contacted me regarding representation.”

The attorney has previously repped the Hells Angels in civil cases against the city, such as when police executed warrants to search the clubhouse but exceeded the scope of what they were allowed to do, or made “false arrests,” he said.

He has also represented members of the biker gang when they faced criminal charges, including in 2007 when one of the bikers was accused of punching out a drunk woman in front of the place. The biker’s defense was that he had merely forcefully opened the door, which slammed into the woman, knocking her out cold.

Kuby said the police response to the shooting is not an evolving case, but actually “a devolving case.” Cops removing the potted plants was uncalled for, he shrugged.

“Neighbors didn’t complain about the trees,” he said.

December 15, 2016

7

‘Triangulating’ the past, present and future

By Lincoln Anderson

T

he dedication of the NYC AIDS Memorial at St. Vincent’s Triangle on Dec.1, World AIDS Day, was cause for celebration and somber reflection — as well as determination in the face of a new administration in Washington that may try to roll back the L.G.B.T. gains of the last eight years and beyond. As well as civil-rights concerns, advocates fear that healthcare funding impacting L.G.B.T. people and the services they rely on could be cut.

The memorial, the brainchild of two young planners, Christopher Tepper and Paul Kelterborn, cost roughly $6.5 million. About $4 million of that came from city and state government funding.

A white steel trellis occupying the small triangular park’s eastern corner, the memorial rises 18 feet tall. It also features a small granite fountain, benches and paving engraved with phrases from Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” The elegant structure will be subtly illuminated at night.

The NYC AIDS Memorial, along with the entire park, will be transferred to the city’s Parks Department early in 2017. Rudin Management built the park as part of its redevelopment of the former St. Vincent’s Hospital main campus into the Greenwich Lane — a high-end residential complex.

The Greenwich Lane’s condo association has separate agreements with the Parks Department and the NYC AIDS Memorial group to fund the future maintenance of both the park and the memorial in perpetuity.

This is actually the second AIDS memorial in the Village. The first was quietly dedicated in 2008 in Hudson River Park overlooking the old pile field of the former Pier 49, between W. 11th and 12th Sts. That one is a 42-foot-long curved bench of black granite. Carved into its surface is a simple lyric from a traditional Finnish folk song: “I can sail without wind, I can row without oars, but I cannot part from my friend without tears.” However, the majority of the park’s users who pass by the low-key monument may well be unaware that it is, in fact, an AIDS memorial.

On the other hand, the new NYC AIDS Memorial, at Greenwich Ave. and W. 12th St., is more centrally located in the heart of the Village.

More to the point, it sits right on part of the property formerly occupied

by St. Vincent’s Hospital, which led the way in treating the victims of the deadly plague in its early years.

8

December 15, 2016

Photos by Tequila Minsky

People checking out the NYC AIDS Memorial after its dedication ceremony earlier this month.

The 1980s mantra of ACT-UP is suddenly newly relevant today after our recent presidential election.

P.R. legend Ethan Geto, who is a board member of the NYC AIDS Memorial, was recognized at the ceremony. He also gave remarks.

Former Cit y Council Speaker Christine Quinn was seated among the V.I.P.’s at the ceremony. Quinn brokered the arrangement under which the NYC AIDS Memorial would occupy only a section of the park, rather than the whole site.

Many in the open-space-star ved communit y felt strongly that they wanted the site — or at least a significant par t of it — to be a typical public park, not a memorial per se.

TheVillager.com

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phone conversations. The use of a hands-free device does not lower distraction levels. The percentage of vehicle crashes and nearcrashes attributed to dialing is nearly identical to the number associated with talking or listening.

Daydreaming

Many people will admit to daydreaming behind the wheel or looking at a person or object outside of the car for too long. Per-

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Eating

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Try to eat meals before getting in the car. For those who must snack while en route, take a moment to pull over at

a rest area and spend 10 minutes snacking there before resuming the trip.

Reading

Glancing at an advertisement, updating a Facebook status or reading a book are all activities that should be avoided when driving. Even pouring over a traffic map or consulting the digital display of a GPS system can be distracting.

December 15, 2016

9

Tompkins Sq. tannenbaum, lighting turn 25

By R ainer Turim

T

his past Sunday was the 25th anniversary of the Tompkins Square Park Christmas tree lighting. The celebrations started at 4 p.m. with instrumental music provided by pianist Ellen Mandel, guitarist Michael Lyndon, and trumpet player John Hagan. Local neighborhood shops, such as Abraco Cafe, Angelica Kitchen, Butter Lane, C & B Cafe, Cupcake Market, Jimmy’s 43, Paradiso and Veselka provided tasty treats and warm drinks.

David Leslie, a director at the East Village Community Coalition, was busy preparing for the tree lighting. Leslie was happy to see that so many people in the community have donated to the event. This year the event was decorated with wreaths donated by Tom Birchard, Jimmy Carbone, East Village Parks Conservancy, East Village Community Coalition, East Village Independent Merchants Association, Saifee Hardware & Garden, and The Source Unltd Print & Copy Shop.

Before the tree was lit, The Theatre for the New City’s chorus sung festive songs, dressed in costumes provided by The Public Theater. Following the chorus, the tree’s original planter, Albert Fabozzi said a few brief words. Twenty-five years ago Fabozzi planted the tree in Tompkins Square Park in honor of his boyfriend who died of AIDS. The event concluded with a raffle provided by local neighborhood stores, including an.mé/ahn-may/ kids boutique, Alphabets, Davey’s Ice Cream, Dinosaur Hill, East Village Postal, Exit 9 and Village Kids Footwear.

Fabozzi moved to the East Village 30 years ago. When he planted the tree five years later, it was 8-feet tall. It’s grown a lot since then.

He was the former chairperson of Community Board 3.

“I got involved in the community because I didn’t want to live in fear,” he said.

Fabozzi is grateful for the community that he lives in today.

“It’s rare that communities like this exist,” he told the crowd.

After having been told that he made the event happen, Fabozzi cheerfully responded, “Honey, this is my family.”

Fabozzi thinks that other communities should look at the tree lighting as an example of good human kindness.

He told people afterward, “I think this is what people need. People need to be more good to each other. There’s enough nonsense in this world.”

Though Fabozzi served on the community board in the past, when asked whether he plans to get involved in the future in other community activism, he was noncommittal.

“Right now, I just want to paint,” he said.

Crystal Field, executive artistic direc-

10

December 15, 2016

Photos by Rainer Turim

Cr ystal Field, right, and Ye Olde New York Carolers from Theatre for the New Cit y per formed at the Tompkins Square Park tree lighting on Sunday afternoon.

Alber t Fabozzi, a former chairperson of Board 3, planted the tree a quar ter centur y ago in honor of a boy friend who died of AIDS.

A light snow fall star ted, as if on cue for the tree-lighting event.

tor of The Theater for the New City, led the chorus in caroling. She recalled the day the tree was planted, and also the

problems and issues of the East Village 25 years ago. “The community came together to solve them,” she said.

Looking at Sunday’s vibrant celebration, Fields was pleased. She was excited to see that more organizations and people have gotten involved in the event.

“This year, it has blossomed,” she said.

“The audience has grown and this is the largest audience we ever had. And we know it will keep on growing and flourishing. And this is a wonderful park and it’s ours and we want always to have it and to cherish it.”

TheVillager.com

Police Blotter Dead on W. 3rd According to a report, on Sat., Dec. 10, at 1:30 a.m., police responded to a 911 call for a man inside a vehicle in front of 72 W. Third St. Responding officers found a 50-year-old man unconscious and unresponsive behind the wheel of a parked vehicle. E.M.S. responded and pronounced the individual DOA. Police did not give more information. The Medical Examiner will determine the cause of death. The investigation is ongoing.

Pasting perp A guy got in a sticky situation after a police officer saw him allegedly pasting up billboards in front of 340 Bleecker St. early on the morning of Mon., Dec. 12. It was 3 a.m. and the man was using commercial-grade glue to post billboards on a property that stated, “Do Not Post Bills,” according to a report. He allegedly told the cop, “I was trying to finish before anyone saw me.”

William Acevedo, 58, was arrested for misdemeanor making graffiti.

Feisty fare A taxi driver got into an argument

with a fare that did not end well at Greene and W. Houston Sts., police said.

On Wed., Dec. 7, at 12:40 a.m., the passenger howled at the hack, yelling that he was going the wrong way. The rider then cuffed the cabbie in the face.

Sherin Kermanshah, 36, was arrested for misdemeanor assault.

‘Knife’ fight No knife was involved, but a fight at CK 14, the Crooked Knife, at 232 W. 14th St., last Friday morning left a man with a small cut on his lips and nose.

Police said that on Dec. 9 at 3 a.m., a man and a woman got into an argument with another man while he was ordering drinks at the bar. The first man then punched the victim in the face.

The woman and man, Maureen Lupo, 39, and Jelani Sefu, 28, were arrested for misdemeanor assault.

Riis return Police reported on Thurs., Dec. 8, that Odell Pamias, 74, a resident of 465 E. 10th St. in the Jacob Riis Houses who had been missing since Nov. 21, had been located and was safe. It wasn’t immediately clear why she went missing.

Subway assault

Dawson cuz sentenced

Police said that Sat., Nov. 19, around 3:25 a.m., a young man approached a woman from behind in the Canal St. J subway station, then pinned her against the turnstile and forcibly kissed her. He then threw the victim down and kicked her in the stomach and back. The victim did not seek medical attention at the time of the incident.

The suspect is described as around 5 feet 10 inches tall and 175 pounds, with short brown hair and wearing jeans.

Anyone with information is asked to call the Police Department’s Crime Stoppers Hotline, at 800-577-TIPS, or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). Tips can also be submitted by logging onto the Crime Stoppers Web site, www.nypdcrimestoppers.com, or by texting them to 274637 (CRIMES) and then entering TIP577. All tips are confidential.

As expected based on an agreed-to sentence promised to him by a judge after his guilty plea this past June, Juan Scott, 28, received 14 years behind bars last month.

Scott, actress Rosario Dawson’s cousin, pled guilty to three East Village sexual assaults last year.

At his sentencing, one of his victims — a woman he dated over that summer — told how he held her captive for five hours in her apartment, and that she thought he would kill her.

“I remember thinking this is it, this is how I die, with one of his hands around my neck and the other one clamped onto me from the inside,” the victim, now 28, said, according to the Daily News.

(Scott’s twisted M.O. was to violently violate his victims with his hand.)

She suffered a sprained hip, broken rib and post-concussion disorder.

“I’m very sorry. I feel like I just need help,” Scott told the victim at his sentencing, the News said. “I want help. I want treatment. I want to get well.”

When he gets out, he will be under mandatory supervision for a decade.

During the attacks, Scott, a Long Islander, lived at 544 E. 13th St., a former squat were Isabel Celeste — Rosario Dawson’s mother — and other Dawson relatives lived.

Cold feet on 4th According to police, on Wed., Dec. 7, at 3:45 p.m., a man entered the Chase bank at 204 W. Fourth St. and passed a note to a female teller demanding money.

But he fled on foot when the teller did not immediately comply.

The suspect is 5 feet 10 inches tall and 170 pounds, and was wearing a black ski cap, red jacket, dark-colored pants and gray sneakers.

Emily Siegel and Lincoln Anderson

Keeping New Yorkers in their homes prevents homelessness. Yet too many renters face eviction in housing court with no resources or tools to fight back. And they usually lose. That’s because 70% of tenants don’t have a lawyer, but 90% of landlords do.

Join AARP New York in calling on Mayor Bill de Blasio to support the Right to Counsel bill (Intro. 214-A), which would guarantee legal counsel for low-income tenants facing eviction in New York City Housing Court.

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Protect New Yorkers from Illegal Evictions TheVillager.com

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December 15, 2016

11

Keep hive alive! Gardeners stuck on saving bees

By Tequila Minsk y

A

bout a month ago, a clammy chill announced that the warm weather was finally gone as brittle brown oak and bright yellow honey locust leaves clung to the rain-slicked sidewalks.

The LaGuardia Community Garden — that swath of bushes, flowers and trees near the Morton Williams supermarket — was still lush with the fall blooms of asters, Japanese anemones, lavender, sage and nasturtiums —while the garden’s seasonal transition continued. Part of this transition was the rewarding honey harvest from the garden’s own beehive.

Sara Jones is not only a talented gardener but an expert beekeeper, as well.

She earned a beekeeping certificate from Cornell Cooperative Extension more than two decades ago. Along with garden members Barbara Cahn and Ellen Resnick, Jones donned protective headgear to begin the multistep process of honey harvesting.

Puffs of smoke from the smudge pot kept the bees “nonvolatile” as the harvest crew opened the top box of the four-level hive and brushed the working bees off frames holding the honey-filled combs.

Only the top two levels of the hive boxes (called “stupors”) — 17 frames in all — were harvested.

In this four-box hive, the bottom brood box is where the queen bee reigns, and the box directly above is left alone since it holds honey to sustain the bees through the winter.

This hive started with squatters — a swarm that settled into a small cabinet in the garden. The queen survived the winter of 2013-14, following the hive’s discovery. That spring, with the help of the New York City Beekeepers Association, bees and honeycombs were moved into purchased hive boxes with frames.

The garden’s hive of white boxes sits discreetly at its southeastern corner.

A year later, fall 2015 saw the first honey harvest.

“When I opened the hive in spring of 2016, I found the winter cluster didn’t survive,” Jones said of that first lost colony.

“The hive is reduced drastically in number during the cold winter months,” she explained. “The only job of these ladies is to keep the queen warm and fed during the cold winter.

“When the spring arrives and the light returns, if the queen had survived she would start laying again,” Jones continued. “She needs to build up her army of workers to be ready for the spring blossoms.”

When the queen didn’t survive the winter of 2015-16, like many other urban beekeepers, Jones mail-ordered a queen and workers from Mann Lake Bee Supply in Pennsylvania.

“A local community beekeeper volunteered to drive to Pennsylvania to pick up bees for community gardeners,” she recounted.

12

December 15, 2016

Photos by Tequila Minsky

Sara Jones removes a frame from the bee hive in LaGuardia Corner Garden.

After slicing off the top of the honeycombs, gardeners put the honey-filled frames into a hand-cranked ex tractor that will spin out the sweet substance.

Instead, the LaGuardia bee-meister and sidekick Barbara Cahn picked up their order of Carniolan bees — told that this type winters better — at a community garden in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.

“Imagine, we brought back two 3-pound packages of bees — each with 10,000 bees, in a shopping bag in the subway, while thinking, ‘If people only knew what was in our bag!’” Cahn recalled.

Cahn — with no previous honey harvest experience except for having taken a brief course and reading a book — immersed herself in the process.

“The experience of opening the hive and having all those bees around you is very scary,” she admitted, adding that she learned by doing. “Sara is always calm and assured when working with the bees, so I try to follow her example.”

The afternoon’s one casualty: A bee that navigated into Resnick’s glove stung her wrist twice.

Next the situation started to get sticky.

A hand-cranked extractor that could pass as a gargantuan lettuce spinner, loaned from Jones, waited in the middle of the parish hall kitchen of Church of the As-

cension on W. 11th St. Additional garden members joined the crew for the next step.

Starting by uncapping the honeycombs — gently removing the top layer of wax that seals honey in its cell — the frames were then set into the extractor.

The well-worn crank’s handle kept falling off. But once the crew MacGyvered it, cranking action built the centrifugal speed needed and the honey flowed, passing through a sieve that filtered out the loose wax. Half the 5-gallon bucket filled with the liquid gold.

“We weren’t able to raise bees in the city until very recently,” Jones noted. “And we’re registered with the Department of Health, which issues no-cost licenses.”

There are about 200 licensed hives in Manhattan.

Two harvests are the usual routine.

One in late spring would have yielded a light-flavored rose-and-lavender honey from the garden’s 100 rose bushes and lavender plants. The autumn product yields a darker honey.

“We only harvested once this year,” Jones said. That’s why both the springmade lighter honey and autumn darker honey were visible in the honeycombs and mixed together during the harvest process.

Two-dozen 8-ounce and two-dozen 12-ounce honey-filled containers were sold to garden members.

“It’s wonderful to have honey that tastes like the flowers that grow in our garden,” Cahn enthused. “We all noticed the taste of lavender and rose, and some more subtle flavors.

“We are going to try to keep our bees alive this winter by surrounding the hive with hay bales,” she stressed. Using Thanksgiving displays appropriated from nearby Amity Hall and Church of the Ascension, the hives were tucked in for the winter with hay bales.

Jones saved about two cups of the filtered-out beeswax to make candles or cosmetics.

“Urban beekeeping is a lot of work and a labor of love,” she said, adding that, with a small operation, you don’t do it for money. More important, she emphasized, “Bees’ pollination is so important to the environment,” pointing to the flora in the LaGuardia Community Garden, which for neighbors is a little piece of Greenwich Village paradise.

LaGuardia Community Garden is just south of Bleecker St. Its individual plots are allocated to community members, each plot expressing one’s horticultural proclivities. This street-side oasis is open to the public from spring through fall. But like the lives of the magical bees, the garden’s existence is tenuous.

As Joni Mitchell sang, “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” In this case, it’s N.Y.U. that is threatening paradise with construction plans for a new building on the supermarket site that could jeopardize the beloved garden.

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Westbeth has write stuff to deal with this mess

By Amy Russo

T

he doctor is in and the copay is free. All it takes is a trip to one of the “Subway Therapy” walls.

Ever since a couple of weeks after the presidential election, the Union Square subway station has been awash in fluorescent post-it notes with sentiments of hope, fear, sadness and strength. It all started with artist Matthew Chavez’s first message on the wall in the 14th St. tunnel between Sixth and Seventh Aves.: “Express Yourself.”

With the post-it writing thriving even after the election dust has settled, Westbeth Gallery, at 55 Bethune St., on Dec. 10 opened “Write Now,” an interactive installation that may best be described as smaller-scale “Subway Therapy.” The gallery’s white walls ask two questions of participants: what they’d like to leave behind in 2016 and what they wish to see in the year ahead. Tables of pens and paper allow visitors to leave their responses.

Karin Batten, the director of Westbeth Gallery, explained, “The mission is that people can voice, can really say how they feel about what’s going on in the country because a lot of people are very angry and scared.”

“Write Now” opened in place of a holiday show for Westbeth’s artist residents, a decision that admittedly was not popular with everyone. However, Batten said “We wanted bring Westbeth together.”

The gallery space is typically used strictly for painters and sculptors. But through this exhibit, Batten and others seek to share the space among an artistically diverse group of poets, writers and musicians.

Roger Braimon, a member of the Westbeth Artists Residents Council, echoed Batten’s message.

“It was a way to harness all the energy of the tenants in the building, not

Photos by Amy Russo

Karin Batten, Westbeth Galler y’s director, nex t to the exhibit’s more upbeat wall plastered with people’s hopes for the new year.

just the visual artists but the performing artists, the dancers, the musicians, the actors,” he said of “Write Now.” “Since it’s a visual arts space, it was somewhat exclusionary to the other disciplines.”

Like “Subway Therapy,” “Write Now” gives participants an outlet through which to express anything on their mind. However, a read of the first messages showed continuing concern in the aftermath of the election.

Braimon said the political climate has hit home with Westbeth residents, causing them to worry about government funding of their Section 8 affordable units.

“We’re at the cross of affordability and feasibility,” he observed. “It’s becoming more and more expensive to get a unit at Westbeth, so the idea of affordable housing to artists is dwindling.”

Chavez, known by his artist name, Levee, began “Subway Therapy”

for this very reason — to try to help people deal with the weight of their problems, whatever they may be. He was at the Westbeth opening on Dec. 10, seated at a table with a “Subway Therapy” sign on it.

“I want to give people an opportunity to have stress relief, a place to express themselves and to create dialogue amongst a community of people that believes many different things,”

he said.

Chavez’s project originally began nine months ago as “New York Secret Keeper,” an exercise in which participants were encouraged to jot down thoughts in a small book for quick anxiety relief. But rather than writing, people wanted to talk, and “Subway Therapy” was born in its first incarnation.

Chavez set up a small table and chairs and invited passing straphangers to chat, a service he’s been providing each week for the past six months.

After election night, Chavez realized he couldn’t speak with many people in the space of a few hours, so he brought post-its and pens to encourage art therapy. Since then, the notes can be seen around the city — and now, too, at Westbeth, where anyone may leave a message until Dec. 31.

“There’s so many things that happened that I never intended but that have been really wonderful because it helps people to grow and learn and talk to each other,” Chavez said. “I see more of that happening in the future.”

“Write Now” continues through Dec. 31. After the closing, the notes with wishes for the new year will be “archived for future use.” The notes about what people want to leave behind from this past year will be shredded and recycled.

The Christmas Season at St. Luke’s

ALL ARE WELCOME! US IN JOIN WORSHIP & CELEBRATION

BLUE EUCHARIST SERVICE | TUES. DEC 20TH 6:15 pm This service of healing and comfort is a safe place for all those who are sad or hurting during the holidays.

CHRISTMAS EVE | SATURDAY, DEC 24TH 5:00 pm — Christmas Pageant & Eucharist 9:30 pm — Prelude of Christmas Music 10:00 pm — Festive Choral Eucharist

CHRISTMAS DAY | SUNDAY, DEC 25TH 8:00 am — Said Eucharist 10:30 am — Choral Eucharist*

*Child care available for children under age 6; all children are welcome with us in worship.

The Church of Saint Luke in the Fields | 487 Hudson Street Out with the old...and the Trump...in with the new: These stick y notes, on the other hand, won’t be sticking around — they’ll be shredded.

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West Village (Corner of Grove and Hudson) New York, NY 10014

www.stlukeinthefields.org | 212.924.0562

December 15, 2016

13

Letters to the Editor Bad landlords to Indian Pt.

Photos by Tequila Minsky

Andrew Berman, director of G.V.S.H.P, left, and Councilmember Corey Johnson, celebrating at Film Forum Tuesday night, worked together to make the landmarking of the final third of the South Village Historic District happen.

South Village mission accomplished, at last!

Tuesday morning, the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the final one-third of the South Village Historic District that was originally proposed by the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation a decade ago. Included in this new historic district are the likes of St. Anthony’s Church and the late Tony Dapolito’s former Vesuvio bakery on Prince St., along with many tenements that were purpose built to house the droves of immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe in the late 19th century. The famed album cover photo for “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan,” featuring Dylan and Suze Rotolo, was shot on a snow-covered Sullivan St. in this district. Later Tuesday night, G.V.S.H.P., local residents and activists celebrated at Film Forum.

Longtime local activist Frieda Bradlow, left, talking with a young preser vationist at the G.V.S.H.P. celebration, lives in the nearby Charlton-King-Van Dam Historic District.

To The Editor: Oops…watch out… . The Villager is in danger of becoming the Village Voice (early on when the Voice’s investigative reporting excelled), what, with articles revealing Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner’s seamy side as a landlord of several East Village buildings; tenants without cooking gas for many months, thanks to another prize landlord in the East Village, and news about Indian Point and an editorial about Rivington House.

Keep up the good work!

Gloria Sukenick

Do the right thing To The Editor: Re “Toledano set to toss in the towel on 13 E. Village tenements” (news article, Dec. 8): Thanks to reporter Dennis Lynch for this article and thank you to The Villager for your continued efforts to report on the ongoing crisis of what is happening in our neighborhood. People want to stay in their homes.

My family’s legal struggles with Toledano (or new Landlord X), now in their 14th month, will most likely continue for another six to eighth months. There is no denying that it is a very stressful situation, but it is the right thing to do. And your reporting on this is also the right thing to do. We are grateful.

Craig Smith

Stiffler be praised! Amen!

To The Editor: Re “Froth and go forth: ‘GATHER!’ at Reverend Billy’s new show” (arts article, Nov. 24): The Villager generally and Scott Stiffler particularly have been the steady interlocutors on behalf of our activist-theater project for the last while, for which perhaps it’s true that we haven’t found a good way to show our gratitude.

Savitri D, our director, feels that Scott is the best writer treating our work in the current period, in this time since we settled into our residency at the Public Theater and our studio residence at the Lower Eastside Girls Club on E. Eighth St. We have had good houses early in our run, and we are grateful to you two for being there for us. We took

a risk going to Standing Rock from Nov. 20 to 28, the Thanks(taking) week. We believe Scott’s piece during that period made it possible to fill the house upon our return. We think that instead of mindless praise, Scott’s writing intrigues people.

Anyway, thank you. Earthalujah!

Bill Talen a.k.a. Reverend Billy

We shall not be MOVE’d To The Editor: Re “In a new groove with MOVE” (letter, by Chris Mustello, Nov. 24, 2016): I don’t doubt that Mr. Mustello enjoys his new MOVE food cart, and as a disabled veteran vendor he surely deserves one. The problem is not the carts, it’s the corruption motivating elected officials to sponsor a bill that would increase the number of food carts from the current 8,000 to 16,000.

These officials are pretending that they are helping immigrant vendors. In reality, they are trying to pass Intro No. 1303, in order to help one corporation backed by a Wall St. billionaire, a credit card company, a gasfracking company and a U.S. intelligence operative.

Readers should note that at the Oct. 26 public hearing on Intro No. 1303, every community board, every business improvement district, every New York City government agency and representatives of all the legal vendors in the city, were unanimous in opposing this bill’s passage.

Robert Lederman Lederman is president, ARTIST (Artists’ Response to Illegal State Tactics) E-mail letters, not longer than 250 words in length, to news@thevillager.com or fax to 212-229-2790 or mail to The Villager, Letters to the Editor, 1 Metrotech North, 10th floor, Brooklyn, NY, NY 11201. Please include phone number for confirmation purposes. The Villager reserves the right to edit letters for space, grammar, clarity and libel. Anonymous letters will not be published.

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Sound off!

ira blutreich

Tobi Bergman, who was chairperson of Communit y Board 2 for the past t wo years, also played a key role in making the landmarking a reality. It was used as leverage in the approval process of the St. John’s Par tners development project in nearby Hudson Square.

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December 15, 2016

Who’s laughing NOW! TheVillager.com

Pier 40 / St. John’s deal is a win so many ways

talking point

By Andrew Berman

F

rom a neighborhood preservation perspective, the final outcome on the Pier 40 / St. John’s Terminal deal is about as good as one could hope for.

We got unprecedented zoning and landmark protections for the surrounding neighborhoods, as well as changes to the planned St. John’s Terminal development at Houston and West Sts. that will significantly reduce this project’s impact upon nearby areas.

First, we were able to get landmark designation of the third and final phase of our proposed South Village Historic District, just a few blocks from the site.

Now this 10-block historic, low-rise residential area — including beloved monuments like St. Anthony of Padua Church — will have the strongest protections possible against inappropriate demolition and out-of-scale new development.

The city resisted landmarking this area for more than 10 years. We did get it to landmark the first two phases of our proposed historic district, between Houston and W. Fourth Sts., and LaGuardia Place and Seventh Ave. South, in 2010 and 2013. With the current zoning for this now-landmarked area allowing 300-foot-tall towers, and developers like Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner buying up properties in the area, designation did not come a moment too soon.

Second, we also got strict limits on any further air-rights transfers from the Hudson River Park into Community Board 2 (between W. 14th to Canal Sts.).

Estimates of the amount of the park’s air rights that the state Legislature in 2013 allowed to be transferred into this and other park-adjacent neighborhoods is about 1.6 million square feet. Thus, this limitation we won on future transfers is a huge victory, which will pay dividends for generations to come by protecting our neighborhood from the threat of massive overdevelopment that we could have seen on our westernmost blocks.

Finally, we eliminated the proposed “big box” stores and oversized “destination retail” from the planned St. John’s development, which would have drawn shoppers by car from across the metropolitan area, greatly exacerbating local traffic problems. Instead, we got limits on the total amount and size of stores allowed in the project.

There can be no understating of the impact of these measures, which were the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation’s three central demands throughout this process. Thousands of TheVillager.com

Photo by William F. Alatriste / NYC Council

Councilmember Corey Johnson speaking at the dedication of the NYC AIDS Memorial in Greenwich Village on Dec. 1.

Villagers stood up for these goals, the community board made them among its top priorities, and most importantly, City Councilmember Corey Johnson fought for and secured their inclusion in the final deal.

It’s rare that G.V.S.H.P. has much positive to say about deals involving large new developments, and this one will be among the largest. But this case was different than many other prior battles.

Most important, a huge development could have and almost undoubtedly would have been built on the St. John’s Terminal site, no matter what. By contrast, when G.V.S.H.P. opposed granting any approvals for New York University’s expansion plan or for a huge addition atop Chelsea Market, no new construction was allowed on those sites due to the then-existing zoning restrictions. So, what was in play in the current St. John’s case was not whether or not something could get built — but rather what its impact would be, and the benefits and mitigations for the surrounding community that would or wouldn’t be included along with it.

If this development application had not been approved, there would be no public benefits and no zoning or landmark protections attached. Additionally, under current zoning, a development on the St. John’s site would have been an entirely commercial structure — featuring offices, hotels, event space and retail. The traffic this would have generated would have been exponentially larger than the residential uses that will dominate the approved project.

In addition, there would have been no height limits or design controls applied to a project under the existing zoning. The

Our councilmember fought off future air-rights transfers.

“as of right” scheme for development on this site was a monolithic 600-foot-tall tower north of Houston St. The approved development, on the other hand, while still way too tall at 450 feet, will at least be broken up into several slender setback towers.

As part of the deal, the approved development will also provide both indoor and outdoor public space. Thirty percent of the units will be below-marketrate primary residences for middle- and lower-income New Yorkers, particularly seniors, and thus won’t be the perennially empty pied-à-terres for globetrotting billionaires we see in so many other new developments. And the developer will pay $100 million toward repairing the public playing fields on Pier 40 and other Superstorm Sandy-damaged infrastructure on that pier.

This last benefit comes from what is perhaps the most controversial element of the deal — namely, the Hudson River

Park’s selling 200,000 square feet of air rights from Pier 40 to the St. John’s site.

We continue to believe that allowing airrights sales from the park is a bad policy that could lead to grossly inappropriate overdevelopment of waterfront blocks, and that alternatives for raising funds for the park that G.V.S.H.P. and a coalition of community groups offered years ago should be utilized instead.

But had we not acted now, to attach a proscription against further air-rights sales into our community to this onetime-only sale of a fraction of the park’s total available air rights, the outcome no doubt would have been much worse.

Right now, we have a city councilmember who was willing and able fight to ensure that no more air-rights transfers were allowed than necessary to pay for the urgently needed repairs for Pier 40, and to protect our community from the possibility of the other 85 percent of the park’s unused air rights being transferred into our neighborhood at some point in the future.

One does not have to look far back in our past to see a time when we did not have a city councilmember who was willing to fight for such neighborhood protections — and the reality is we may not always have one in our future.

Factors such as term limits and larger political ambitions, which can enable councilmembers to ignore the wishes of the local communities that elected them, mean we would have likely faced the day when we couldn’t prevent the city and the City Council from transferring many more of those air rights into our neighborhood. The limitations we won on future air-rights transfers are about as strong a bulwark as we could achieve against that possibility in the future, thus potentially saving us from a future fight to protect our neighborhood we would have been much less likely to have won. And the restrictions we secured against future airrights transfers were approved over the objections of the powerful Hudson River Park Trust, as well as the wishes of the City Planning Commission.

They say politics is the art of the possible. When we see hostility at so many levels of government to preservation efforts and an ever-more emboldened real estate lobby, the Pier 40 / St. John’s deal we fought for was probably the biggest win possible for our community. We are extremely grateful to the countless individuals who worked with us in this effort, particularly Community Board 2. And we’re most especially grateful to Councilmember Corey Johnson, who championed these issues throughout the process, and ultimately made them a reality.

Berman is executive director, Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation December 15, 2016

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Bridge running way back before it was cool

sports

By Steve Slavin

I

’ve been a runner since high school. In fact, Bernie Sanders and I ran cross-country for Brooklyn’s James Madison High School. Almost every Saturday morning in the fall, more than a dozen of us would meet at the Kings Highway subway station to make the two-hour trek to Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx.

Bernie and I had not seen each other for more than 30 years when he spotted me at a fundraising party being held for his first Senate campaign. His first words were, “Still running?”

Bernie had been one of the best high school distance runners in the city, but when his mother fell very seriously ill during his junior year, he gave up running. There’s no telling just how good he might have become.

As for me, I’m still running. My times are not nearly as good as they had been in college, but my proudest personal best is having done two round trips over the Brooklyn Bridge in just over 29 minutes. Of course that was long before the bridge was

Photo courtesy Steve Slavin

Long before Bernie Sanders ran for president, he ran high school cross-countr y with Steve Slavin.

discovered by hordes of tourists.

Back in the 1960s, New York — as well as other cities — had not yet become such runners’ paradises. And the pedestrian paths of the bridges

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were virtually empty. Runners were considered oddities. Occasionally someone might call out an insult, as if we were the deviants.

Once, when I was on the Williamsburg Bridge, some teenage jerk yelled out something really stupid. I called back, “Your good looks are rivaled only by your high intelligence.” Imagine his stunned look.

I had a neighbor, Clarence Richie, who ran 26 miles twice a week, just for the fun of it. He turned me on to his bridge run, which he did on his “easy” days.

We lived on the Lower East Side, just off Delancey St., so we began our run on the Williamsburg Bridge. From there we headed along Myrtle Ave. to DUMBO and then over the Brooklyn Bridge. Once again in Manhattan, we threaded our way through Chinatown and back to the Lower East Side.

If the Brooklyn Bridge had just a handful of pedestrians, the Williamsburg Bridge was almost totally deserted. I rarely encountered more than one or two people when I would do my usual round trip. But my fondest memory was when a guy asked me for a cigarette.

Later, I thought of an answer, which actually made no sense: Don’t you know that running is bad for smoking?

There were even fewer people on the Manhattan Bridge. I ran across just a few times and don’t remember seeing a soul. It was kind of creepy, but that still didn’t compare with the stretch at the Brooklyn entrance to the Williamsburg Bridge, where you had to run about 15 feet below the subway tracks.

Sometimes people ask me if I ever ran a marathon. The answer is “yes and no.” Back in 1962, I did run in Boston. I was 22, and should have been in the best shape in my life. But I was working full time, going to grad school at night, and also attending occasional Army Reserve meetings.

That did not leave a lot of time of training. In fact, the best I did was one or two 5-mile runs a week. To this day, I am embarrassed to admit that.

My race strategy was on a par with my training regimen. I would go out fast and hold the lead as long as I could. Because there were just 181 runners, this would be possible. I did go out fast — much too fast. I led for a few hundred yards, but then I got a terrible stitch in my side. I was clutching my ribs as runner after runner jogged by. Soon I recovered, but now my goal was just to finish. I remember reaching the 5-mile mark in Framingham, the 10-mile mark in Natick. But by then, for the first time in a race, I had stopped running.

I would walk for awhile, and then start jogging again. I passed the half-

way mark near Wellesley College, but I knew that I would never make it all the way. My feet were blistered and I was dead last, far behind the guy in 180th place. A few minutes later, a kindly driver offered to take me to Boston.

Just an hour after the first runners crossed the finish line, the Boston papers had the results of the race. Here are the words in the second paragraph of a first-page story: “The fleeting glory of leading the pack went to Steve Slavin of Brooklyn. He was instantly pursued by Kurt Steiner. After a quarter mile Slavin clutched his side and dropped back, evidently because of the fast pace he had set.”

When I showed the clip to Clarence and his good friend Teddy, the two of them burst out laughing.

“What’s so funny?” I asked. “You’re laughing at me because I went out so fast?”

They just shook their heads, and couldn’t stop laughing. Finally, they were able to explain why the article was so funny. It turned out that Kurt Steiner was well known for sprinting into the lead at the start of marathons.

Then Clarence added, “You must have gone out of there like a bat out of hell to beat that guy!”

Maybe 30 years later, I heard that Kurt Steiner was the director of a road race I’d be running in. I walked over to him and asked, “Mr. Steiner?”

“Yah?” He was in his late 60s or early 70s, and had what appeared to be a German accent.

I handed him the clipping. A few seconds later he growled, “You vere zuh guy!!!”

On a beautiful late spring evening this year, I had just left an opening on Suffolk St. that was exhibiting my friend’s paintings. l decided to walk over to the Williamsburg Bridge. As I approached the walkway entrance, the light changed, and maybe 50 or 60 cyclists, and eight or 10 runners — all of them very businesslike —made their way onto the bridge.

In the 1960s, there had been just one pedestrian walk on the left, but now there were two cycling paths and two running and walking paths on the right. It cheered me to see these changes, and that so many people were running and cycling over the bridge. As I walked to the subway, I made myself a promise that I would come back here and run over the bridge. But maybe when it was not so crowded.

Slavin, who has published 16 books on math and economics, recently published his first collection of short stories, “To the City, With Love” (Martin Sisters Publishing) TheVillager.com

Gizmos and games as gifts for geeks Suitable tech for stuffing those stockings

BY CHARLES BATTERSBY Geeks can be a fickle lot, especially when trying to buy gifts for them. New, paradigm-shifting tech sometimes arrives with little fanfare. Early adopters of new gadgets are often filled with buyer’s remorse when their new toy turns out to be a dud. We tried out a few of the gizmos and games that are available this season, and came up with these prime candidates for stuffing nerdy stockings.

AIR HOG CONNECT MISSION DRONE

airhogs.com/connectmissiondrone Remote controlled drones are becoming more affordable each year.

However, everyone secretly wishes that their toy was really a combat drone flying over a city being invaded by aliens. The Mission Drone combines a real drone with an “augmented reality” video game that lets playImage via Square Enix ers fly their drone around a virtual The “20 Year Celebration” edition of “Rise of the Tomb Raider” includes the base game as well as all DLC. city full of adventures.

The drone is controlled with a phone or tablet, and the the PlayStation 4. mobile device simultaneThere has been a stream of downously runs a game that uses loadable content (DLC) over the last its camera to track the drone year, and a new set of DLC just as it flies over a special mat tombraider.com/en-us on the floor. The For the gamer who doesn’t arrived for all platforms to celescreen on the want augmented reality, brate the 20th anniversary of “Tomb phone then 2016 saw the release of some Rader.” With a year’s worth of DLC, displays a city of the best games yet for the plus the excellent base game, this is a full of alien PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. great choice to join any new console invaders, tiny “Uncharted 4” was the swan under the tree. marines, and song for PlayStation’s bigcivilians in gest franchise, while “Gears need of resof War 4” revamped a clas- doob3d.com cue. Players can sic Xbox franchise for a new Your cosplayer friend who likes Image via Air Hog walk around the room, generation. This year is also the dressing up as a superhero at Comic With this Air Hog drone, seeing their city from 20th anniversary of the vener- Con already has thousands of photos users control the physiany angle as the drone cal drone while playing able “Tomb Raider” franchise, on their Instagram account, and their flies through it. and “Rise of the Tomb Raider” refrigerator is covered in printouts. an augmented reality trolled much like its real is an excellent way for new players But what they really want is a tiny The Mission Drone game. counterpart. This is a to jump in, or for lapsed fans to get 3D figure of themselves in costume. can also be used as a regular drone, without the mat and handy feature, because the Air Hog re-acquainted with Lara Croft. It was The company DOOB will do a full game. The game can likewise be played is also a battery hog, and needs to be released on Xbox in time for the 2015 body scan right in their store, then without needing the drone; a virtual recharged after about 10-15 minutes holidays, and for PC a few months print out a color resin statue up to craft appears in the game, and is con- of play. later, but only just made its debut on gifts continued on p. 18

RISE OF THE TOMB RAIDER: 20 YEAR CELEBRATION

DOOB 3D PRINTING

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December 15, 2016

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Image via DOOB

A woman poses with a miniature version of herself, courtesy DOOB 3D printing.

ments with a tiny figure inside.

gifts continued from p. 17

14 inches tall. The printing is done at a factory in Brooklyn, and takes a couple of weeks — but the scanning is done right in the store, and we found no wait time at all when visiting their Soho location, one of two in New York City.

DOOB can create figures in a variety of sizes, the smallest of which is 4 inches and costs $95. They can print up to 14 inches tall, and can do multiple people together in a single sculpture. The larger the sculpture, the higher the price, and there is an additional fee for bulky outfits and props, like a cosplayer’s gigantic Buster Sword or plasma rifle. DOOB is also a great gift for pet lovers or newlyweds, and they have special Christmas items, such as tree orna-

AERA aeraforhome.com From evergreen trees to spices, the holidays have their own special smells. The Aera can fill a home with that distinct scent, without needing to bring in a tree or cook a feast. It’s a smart device that discreetly puffs out a variety of fragrances, and can be programmed with an app to activate on a schedule. The Aera recently launched with a selection of six fragrances “inspired by dreams” — but there are two new ones created specifically for the holidays.

Our experimentation with the Aera showed that it can easily fill a New York City apartment with its fragrance, and even the lowest setting will keep most rooms smelling fresh.

Theater for the New City • 155 1st Avenue at E. 10th St. Reservations & Info (212) 254-1109 For more info, please visit www.theaterforthenewcity.net

Bread and Puppet Theater’s Week 2: Faust - 3

December 14 - 18 @ 3PM (Sat. & Sun.) @ 8PM ( Wed. - Sat.) $18.00 General Admission $13.00 Student/Senior/Child 2 and Under FREE! 18

December 15, 2016

Paranoia of a Dream Written and Directed by Bina Sharif

“a haunting expression of dreams and

nightmares of immigrant women ”

‘LA CANTATA DEI PASTORI’ (The Shepherd’s Cantata)

“Celebrate Christmas Italian Style

with I Giullari di Piazza’s ”

December 1 - Dcember 18 December 16, 17, 21, and 22 8:00 PM Thurs.- Sat. 8:00 P.M. December 18 Sun. at 3:00 P.M. 5:00 PM $15.00 $15.00

Image via Aera

Keep your dwelling smelling fresh with the app-activated Aera.

The cartridges last for up to 60 days, and our heavy usage during testing only diminished the trial cartridges slightly. The Aera comes with one fragrance cartridge, and others must be purchased separately at $47 each.

MUSE BRAIN-SENSING HEADBAND choosemuse.com Muse is a gadget and app that helps with meditation. The headband reads brainwaves to measure how calm or focused users are during a meditation session, and sends this information via Bluetooth to the mobile device.

The app then provides verbal guidance on how to meditate, as well as feedback during and after each session.

Users close their eyes during the experience, so it uses audio feedback in the form of nature sounds. When the user’s mind is restless, the simulated weather become more intense; branches rustle, wind howls, and waves crash. When the user is in a very calm state, they’ll hear birds chirping in the background.

The Muse app uses a system of points, badges and objectives, encouraging users to practice multiple times a week. It is similar to the way the addictive Fitbit works for exercise enthusiasts. Users earn points for being in a calm state while meditating, and can “level up” like playing a game. At first this seems counter-

Image via Muse

A man demonstrates how to meditate using the Muse headband and associated app.

intuitive to the notion of calm and peaceful meditation, but the badges and scores are only revealed at the end of the session, so users (or rather, players) won’t be distracted by their score while meditating.

The Muse headband is our favorite gadget from this roundup, but also the priciest, at $249. Yet, that’s a small price to pay for oneness with the universe.

TheVillager.com

Just Do Art

Special Seasonal Song Edition 10am–1pm. Tickets are $10. To order, call 646-437-4202 or visit mjhnyc. org/latkepalooza. “Kids and Yiddish” is Sun., Dec. 25, 11am. Tickets are $20, $10 for children; $40 for families of 4, and $40 for premium seats.

Runtime is 1 hour; appropriate for ages 4 and up. To order, call 212-2132120 x206 or visit web.ovationtix. com/trs/pr/964686. The Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust is located at 36 Battery Pl. (at West St. & First Pl.).

Visit mjhnyc.org.

Courtesy National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene

Chinese food and a movie? Not this year.

“Kids & Yiddish” is performed Dec. 25 at the Museum of Jewish Heritage.

BY SCOTT STIFFLER

“LATKEPALOOZA!” & “KIDS AND YIDDISH” AT THE MUSEUM OF JEWISH HERITAGE Hands down the tastiest, truest indication that the holidays have arrived, latkes are to Jewish food as…well, there’s really nothing in the world that compares to a fried, shredded potato and onion pancake — at least not when it’s plucked from the skillet at just the right time, then served with your choice of sour cream or applesauce.

You can attend “Latkepalooza!” with full confidence that the artists in the kitchen know their way around this culinary treasure, which serves as the event’s centerpiece, and comes with side orders of music and hand-on activities.

Just as pleasing on the tongue, as anyone who’s ever described themselves as “verklempt” can testify, is the language of central and eastern European Jews.

Give the young ones a crash course in culture they’ll never forget, at the National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene’s funny, fast-paced, multilingual “Kids and Yiddish” revue, which sprinkles liberal amounts of Yiddish words and phrases into sketch comedy and parody songs. Rock, rap, and klezmer are among the musical styles used to mix Jewish folk traditions with current pop culture touchstones.

“Latkepalooza!” is Sun., Dec. 18, TheVillager.com

THE WEST VILLAGE CHORALE’S GREENWICH VILLAGE CAROLING WALK Hundreds have been known to take part in this annual song-filled trek through a neighborhood whose Dickensian London-like charm isn’t lost on those making their way through the Washington Square Arch with songbook in glove-covered hand — but don’t expect to see any rowdy flash mob/pub crawl/mannequin challenge shenanigans; quite the opposite, in fact! A tradition since 1974, members of the West Village Chorale will spend the afternoon leading small groups of carolers from Judson Memorial Church through the West Village and back again (where hot cocoa, cookies, and conviviality await). The last group leaves Judson around 2pm, so the outside portion of the event can finish well before crowds gather for “Not Straight Against Hate” — a march to defend and protect LGBTQ rights and freedoms that begins in Washington Square Park at 5pm, then makes its way to Trump Tower.

Caroling Walk festivities begin Sat., Dec. 17, at 12pm in the Meeting Room of Judson Memorial Church (55 Washington Square South at Thompson St.). Songbooks are provided, and this event is free (donations accepted). For more info, visit westvillagechorale.org. For “Not Straight Against Hate” info, @nsahofficial on Instagram and Twitter.

A SWINGING BIRDLAND CHRISTMAS Take top-notch ivory tickler and indemand arranger Billy Stritch, along

Photo by Bill Westmoreland, graphic by Todd Johnson

Don’t lose your balance, Santa: Jim Caruso, Billy Stritch and Klea Blackhurst (l to r) raise the roof at “A Swinging Birdland Christmas.”

Photo by Suzanne Blakely

Here you go a-caroling: Dec. 17, with the help of the West Village Chorale.

with sly wit and “Cast Party” open mic emcee Jim Caruso; then add brassy, roof-raising, ludicrously likable Klea Blackhurst — and you’ve got the ingredients of a Christmas chemistry set that smokes, sparks, and

blazes across the stage of Gotham’s swanky go-to room for up-close-andpersonal cabaret, jazz, and Broadway talent. Dripping with sophistication and refreshingly free of cynicism, the trio headlining “A Swinging Birdland Christmas” is not, however, operating without a healthy dose of irony. After all, they’ll be offering up beloved chestnuts like “Sleigh Ride” and “Holiday Season” at the tail end of a tumultuous presidential election year, with the uncouth victor a far cry from the civilized folks whose seasonal TV specials inspired this long-running showcase. Set to mark its seventh consecutive year of delivering us from the holiday doldrums, “A Swinging Birdland Christmas” can truly lay claim to having become what it set out to emulate: a popular standard that December just can’t do without.

At 6pm, Fri.–Sun., Dec. 23, 24, 25 at Birdland Jazz Club (315 W. 44th St., btw. Eighth & Ninth Aves.). For reservations ($30 cover, $10 food/ drink minimum), visit birdlandjazz. com or call 212-581-3080. A CD based on the show, of the same title, is available via the Birdland website or iTunes. Artist info at jim-caruso. com, billystritch.com, and kleablackhurst.com.

December 15, 2016

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ACCOUNTING PROCEEDING FILE NO. 2016-340/A CITATION THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK

TO: Unknown Distributees Attorney General of the State of New York Isabel Peters, a/k/a Isabella Peters Dolores Matthews David “Doe�

Robert “Doe�

To Isabel Peters, a/k/a Isabella Peters, Dolores Matthews, David “Doe� and Robert “Doe�, being the alleged siblings of Bessie Mullings, a/k/a Bessie C. Mullings, whose whereabouts are unknown, if living, and if they died subsequent to the decedent herein, to their executors, administrators, legatees, devisees, assignees and successors in interest whose names and places of residence are unknown; and to the heirs at law, next of kin and distributees of Bessie Mullings, a/k/a Bessie C. Mullings, the decedent herein, if living and if any of them be dead, to their heirs at law, next of kin, distributees, legatees, executors, administrators, assignees and successors in interest whose names and places of residence are unknown and cannot, after diligent inquiry, be ascertained by the petitioner herein; being the persons interested as creditors, legatees, devisees, beneficiaries, distributees, or otherwise in the estate of Bessie Mullings, a/k/a Bessie C. Mullings, deceased, who at the time of her death was resident of 66 Saint Nicholas Place, New York, New York 10032.

A petition having been duly filed by the Public Administrator of the County of New York, who maintains an office at 31 Chambers Street, Room 311, New York, New York 10007.

YOU ARE HEREBY CITED TO SHOW CAUSE before the New York County Surrogate’s Court at 31 Chambers Street, New York, New York, on January 31, 2017 at 9:30 A.M. in Room 503, why the following relief stated in the account of proceedings, a copy of the summary statement thereof being attached hereto, of the Public Administrator of the County of New York as administrator of the goods, chattels and credits of said deceased, should not be granted: (i) that her account be judicially settled; (ii) that the Surrogate approve the reasonable amount of compensation as reported in Schedules C and C-1 of the account of proceedings to the attorney for the petitioner for legal services rendered to the petitioner herein; (iii) that a hearing be held to determine the identity of the distributees at which time proof pursuant to SCPA Section 2225 may be presented, or in the alternative, that the balance of the funds due to the decedent’s distributees be deposited with the Commissioner of Finance of the City of New York for the benefit of the decedent’s unknown distributees; (iv) that the persons above mentioned and all necessary and proper persons be cited to show causes why such relief should not be granted; (v) that an order be granted pursuant to SCPA Section 307 where required or directed; and (vi) for such other and further relief as the Court may deem just and proper.

Dated, Attested and Sealed. December 8th, 2016, (Seal) Hon. Nora S. Anderson, Surrogate. Diana Sanabria, Chief Clerk.

Schram Graber & Opell P.C. Counsel to the Public Administrator, New York County 11 Park Place, Suite 615 New York, NY 10007 (212) 896-3310 Note: This citation is served upon you as required by law. You are not required to appear. If you fail to appear it will be assumed that you do not object to the relief requested. You have the right to have an attorney-at-law appear for you and you or your attorney may request a copy of the full account from the petitioner or petitioner’s attorney.

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On the outside, we’re a historic bedrock of the New York landscape.

But on the inside, we’re taking a brand-new approach to health care.

Two years ago, we opened an around-theclock, 911 receiving emergency center in the former National Maritime Union Building and brought innovative health care to Greenwich Village. Since then, we have been offering state-of-the-art care with you and your family’s best interest in mind.

Now our outpatient imaging center is open for business, utilizing the most advanced techniques and equipment available.

And there’s much more to come. We will be introducing additional medical services in the facility and continuing to raise the standard of healthcare in your neighborhood.

Visit us on Seventh Avenue between 12th and 13th Streets.

Emergency center (646) 665-6911 Imaging (646) 665-6700 Administration (646) 665-6000 Lenoxhealth.com

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