VOLUME 30, NUMBER 08
RIP: Linda Belfer, 72 Gateway’s champion BY COLIN MIXSON Long-time Gateway tenant advocate and the “architect” of the residential complex’s rent-stabilization program, Linda Belfer, passed away on April 15. She was 72. Belfer is remembered as a fiercely intelligent and passionate defender of Gateway tenants since the earliest days of the sprawling collection of Battery Park City apartment buildings, who matched wills with Gateway’s well-heeled developers Photo by Maura Lynch and out-talked some Belfer, who of Downtown’s most Linda founded the Gateway influential politicians. Plaza Te n a n t s “She could wear Association in 1982, you down,” said long- and was the driving time friend and fel- force securing rentlow Gateway resident stabilization protections Karlene Wiese. “She for her fellow tenants, would just argue, and passed away at age 72. argue, and argue, and she was always way ahead of everybody. She was very smart and very quick.” Belfer, who was fluent in French, Spanish, and Hebrew in addition to English — and who graduated Saint John’s University School of Law at the age of 36 — founded the Gateway Plaza Tenants Association in 1982. The Gateway tenant advocate went on to envision and model the apartment complex’s long-running, state-authorized rent-stabilization program after New York City’s, and wrangle support from interest groups throughout the neighborhood to see it enacted time and time again. “She was one of the architects of that program that protected tenants up until this day,” said Gateway Plaza Tenant’s Association President Glenn Plaskin. “She was extremely competent and outspoken — brassy. She could hold her own with the ownership, the politicians, the leadership of Lower Manhattan. A very competent woman.” In addition to her service to Gateway tenants, Belfer served the larger community as a volunteer on Community Board 1 and as a local Democratic
APRIL 20 – MAY 03, 2017
BULLFIGHT!
‘Charging Bull’ sculptor has a cow over ‘Fearless Girl’ ‘advertisement’ BY COLIN MIXSON The sculptor who created the capitalist icon says that its newly minted neighbor, feminist icon, and social media sensation is utterly derivative of his iconic brass bovine, and is demanding her bigmoney financier take its wildly successful marketing gimmick elsewhere — and even pay him damages for violating his legal rights. “I don’t like it,” said Arturo Di Modica, who spent $360,000 of his own money to fabricate and install “Charging Bull” opposite the New York Stock Exchange without a permit in 1989. “They’re supposed
to find another place to do their advertisement.” Attorneys for Di Modica fired off letters to State Street Global Advisors and marketing firm McCann Worldgroup, which designed the marketing stunt, on Tuesday, which accused the companies of “commercializ[ing] and exploit[ing]” ‘Charging Bull’ and violating copyright laws, before going into the Sicilian artist’s demands that she be relocated and he get paid. “Fearless Girl,” according to Di Modica’s lawyers, wouldn’t be “fearless” if she weren’t fac-
ing down his bull, and the effect that State Street’s statue creates is entirely dependent on Di Modica’s opus. “The statue of the young girl becomes the ‘Fearless Girl’ only because of the ‘Charging Bull,’” the letter reads. “The work is incomplete with Mr. Di Modica’s ‘Charging Bull,’ and as such it constitutes a derivative work of the ‘Charging Bull.’” Attorney Norman Siegel cited State Street promotional materials referencing the new statue’s juxtaBULLFIGHT Continued on page 10
Photo by Tony Falcone
F ried eggs Lukas and Mark Mellott, age 5 and 3 respectively, had a ball (and lots of eggs) at the Easter egg hunt hosted by the New York Fire Museum on April 9. For more, see page 5.
BELFER Continued on page 3 1 M E T R O T E C H • N YC 112 0 1 • C O P Y R I G H T © 2 0 17 N YC C O M M U N I T Y M E D I A , L L C