Chelsea Now

YOUR WEEKLY COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER SERVING CHELSEA, HUDSON YARDS & HELL’S KITCHEN

CHANGE IS IN THE AIR AND SO IS PM2.5 Terminal, Tunnel Congestion Contribute to Shameful Stat Shared by Chelsea, Hell’s Kitchen (see page 2)

Photo by Christian Miles

© CHELSEA NOW 2017 | NYC COMMUNITY MEDIA, LLC, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

VOLUME 09, ISSUE 30 | SEPTEMBER 21 - 27, 2017

Residents Rally for Better Air Quality as Port

BY DUSICA SUE MALESEVIC Like boxers lacing up their gloves before a bout, community groups are readying themselves with studies, statistics, and strategies as the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey eyes its bus terminal expansion.

It is unclear whether the Port Authority will replace or renovate its aging facility on Eighth Ave. (btw. W. 40th & 42nd Sts.). During this period of uncertainty, advocacy organizations like CHEKPEDS (Clinton Hell’s Kitchen Coalition for Pedestrian Safety) and the newly formed Hell’s Kitchen South Coalition have designated air quality a major concern for whatever plan moves forward.

City data on air pollutants show why: Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen have the third-highest annual average of a fi ne atmospheric particulate matter called PM2.5, deemed the “most harmful urban air pollutant,” according to the New York City Community Health Profi les Atlas from 2015, the latest year available, and the city’s air survey. Midtown is fi rst citywide for the particulate, followed by

Via DOHMH

Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen have the third-highest level of a fine particulate matter known as PM2.5, which has been called the “most harmful urban air pollutant,” according to a city report.

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Stuyvesant Town and Turtle Bay. The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) established the New York City Community Air Survey in 2007, and the most recently released report in April focused on air quality in neighborhoods from 2008 to 2015.

The survey measures a myriad of air pollutants that includes PM2.5, nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide, according to the report.

Christine Berthet, a member of CHEKPEDS, used city data to discuss air quality in a presentation to a Community Board 4 (CB4) commit-

tee last week.

“Our whole city is already in the bad shape,” Berthet, who is also a CB4 member, told the Waterfront, Parks & Environment Committee at their Thurs., Sept. 14 meeting. But the air quality in Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen “not only is it worse, it is way worse,” she noted.

Compared with other city neighborhood annual concentration averages, the area is 69 percent worse when it comes nitrogen dioxide, 40 percent for fi ne particulate matter, and 92 percent worse for sulfur dioxide, Berthet said.

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Authority Bus Terminal Revamp Plans Proceed

Photo by Christian Miles

“We are not making progress here,” she said. “We are not on the right track and that’s very concerning.”

The area had a higher traffic density than both Manhattan and the city as whole in 2005, according to the survey. “The New York City clean air survey data has shown the connection between the bad air quality and the traffic,” Berthet said. “There is no real question that what’s coming out of the Port Authority and the Lincoln Tunnel have a major impact… on our environment and the air quality.”

Berthet pointed out that while the existing population was 103,245 seven years ago, there were 226,000 daily bus commuters and 142,484 daily car commuters passing through the area, according to 2015 figures. An influx of new workers once Hudson Yards is up and running could add another 125,000 by 2025.

“That’s not a small population,” she said. “People think about we are in the no-man’s land here but there are 47 schools and pre-Ks within half a mile of the Port Authority.”

Traffic congestion from the Lincoln Tunnel also contributes to air quality in the neighborhood, according to CHEKPEDS and CB4 member Christine Berthet.

AIR QUALITY continued on p. 25

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3

Photos courtesy of HK Dems

Mark Robinson, Congressmember Jerrold Nadler, and Marti Allen-Cummings.

Tom Shanahan, Assemblymember Dick Gottfried, Marisa Redanty, Olamide Faison, and Jeffrey LeFrancois holding young Elijah LaFargue.

Democrats in Hell’s Kitchen? Believe

BY NATHAN RILEY Donald Trump’s election provoked waves of revulsion all over New York City. In Hell’s Kitchen, a full-time drag performer, realizing his rights would be under attack, sought advice from a politically connected friend — City Councilmember Corey Johnson, who suggested he join a political club.

Following up on that suggestion,

Marti Allen-Cummings surfed the Internet, but couldn’t find a club in his neighborhood. Nevertheless, he persisted. Neighbors and friends of his wanted a political club that would represent the current day diversity of Hell’s Kitchen.

There was, in fact, already a political club in the neighborhood, but it’s one not suffused with the rainbow hues that would embrace Allen-Cummings

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and those he spoke to about the issue.

The venerable McManus Midtown Democratic Club was founded in 1892 when political battles between Irish Democrats and Protestant Republicans animated city politics. Jimmy McManus, a Democratic district leader for more than half a century, is now basically retired but the club remains in the family. Mickey Spillane, Jr., a nephew, is a district leader in what is formally known as AD 75 part B, but Dick Gottfried, the local state assemblymember, said of Spillane, “I haven’t talked to him in two years.”

Johnson and Mayor Bill de Blasio are busy this year running for reelection, but other electeds have no such obligations.

Allen-Cummings emailed Gottfried on his public mailbox and a senior aide spotted the message. Gottfried, clearly pleased with the outcome that ensued, enthused over the phone, “It came together very quickly.”

Wendi Paster, that senior Gottfried aide, called Allen-Cummings back. On Facebook, Allen-Cummings asked his followers if they wanted to start a club, and Mark Robinson, a friend, offered his living room for the first meeting.

Paster was there for that December meeting — and, crucially, leaders of the Manhattan Plaza Tenants Association showed up. These two high-rise apartment buildings on W. 42nd St., home to many artists, formed a critical springboard for the new political club, the Hell’s Kitchen Democrats.

For Allen-Cummings, it was all a big learning experience. District leaders, nominating petitions, collecting signatures were unknowns, but he and other neighborhood residents who met in December proved to be willing pupils.

Events also gave the new group momentum.

Cynthia Doty, an Upper West Side district leader from the Three Parks Independent Democrats, remembers meeting members of the new club at phone banks for Jon Ossoff, who ran for Congress earlier this year in a Georgia Republican district with an open seat.

The Hell’s Kitchen Dems marched as a group in the New York City Women’s March the day after Trump’s inauguration. They answered Trump’s white supremacist message with posters placed in stores in blocks above 34th St. proclaiming, “All Genders, Religions, Ethnicities, Sexual Orientations, Human Beings Are Safe Here.” By doing the work, they earned the trust of elected officials.

But it was evident the group had one big handicap — they were unknown, while the Spillanes, including Mickey’s sister and fellow district leader Denise, had the familiar name. But Gottfried, his fellow assemblymember Linda Rosenthal, State Senator Brad Hoylman, and Congressmember Jerrold Nadler all endorsed the new group. None of those officials are up for election this year, but according to Paster, they wanted the new club’s members to be able to say, “We’re here, we’re serious, and we’re not going away.” They gave the club credibility and access to the skills of other insiders.

One of Hoylman’s top staffers, Eli Szenes-Strauss, helped Paster in getting the club’s nominating petitions for city candidates and district leaders into shape, spending hours training Hell’s Kitchen residents on the intricacies of BELIEVE continued on p. 24 NYC Community Media

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Ground Zero Museum Workshop Offers Intimate Glimpses of 9/11

BY LEVAR ALONZO A museum founded, and often funded, by a photographer who spent seven months at Ground Zero is facing a challenge far greater than the struggle to keep its doors open. “It’s surprising to realize that it has been 16 years since the 9/11 catastrophe, and more and more people I meet forget what really happened surrounding America’s worst terrorist attack in US history,� said Ground Zero Museum Workshop curator Gary Marlon Suson, shortly before the Sept. 7 unveiling of a new sculpture and companion documentary timed for the 12th anniversary of the interactive museum dedicated to education and reflection.

Suson, an FDNY Honorary Battalion Chief, was the official photographer at Ground Zero for the Uniformed Firefi ghters Association — one of only two photographers (and the only one with full access) allowed at the site past the fi rst few weeks, when then-mayor Rudy Giuliani closed it to press out of respect for the families of those whose bodies were still being pulled from the site.

Suson’s capture of the North Tower in mid-collapse was shot on the rooftop of the museum he later founded (located on W. 14th St. in the Meatpacking District). Unlike the considerable distance from which that shot was taken, Suson’s work at Ground Zero consisted largely of close-ups, to emphasize the intimate nature of recovery efforts. “I focused more on people, and the emotions of Ground Zero,� Suson noted of the many “private moments, like the honor guards.�

In addition to over 100 of Suson’s photos, the 1,000-square-foot second floor space that houses the museum also displays dozens of images and artifacts of love, death, and sacrifice — including window glass, a ticket stub of the last PATH train to arrive at World Trade Center, and white lobby marble from the towers.

The museum pales in comparison to the much larger, more wellknown, and better-funded National September 11 Memorial & Museum.

Suson said that on slow months, he has had to put up his own money GROUND ZERO continued on p. 22

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A visitor listens to Susonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s narration while viewing his photograph of Father Mychal Judgeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bunker jacket, found among the collapsed remains of the South Tower.

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Anti-Trump Resisters Flood Grand Central on Eve of UN Speech PHOTO ESSAY BY DONNA ACETO With President Donald Trump, back in New York for only the third time since taking office in January, set to deliver an address to the United Nations General Assembly the following day, hundreds of demonstrators affiliated with Rise and Resist protested inside Grand Central Terminal during rush hour on September 18.

The protest’s theme was opposition to white supremacy, an issue that Trump elevated to a raging national debate with his “many sides” reaction in assigning responsibility for last month’s racist and neo-Nazi marches in Charlottesville, Virginia, that led to the death of Heather Heyer, a counterprotester killed when an Ohio man with a history of pro-Nazi sympathies rammed his car into a crowd gathered to denounce the hate messages.

On its Facebook page, Rise and Resist, in highlighting white supremacist policies of the Trump administration, also pointed to Trump’s Muslim ban, his suspension of President Barack Obama’s DACA program that protected undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children from deportation, Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ war on

NYC Community Media

drugs and his mass incarceration policies, and tax reform proposals aimed at relief for the wealthiest Americans.

After demonstrating at Grand Central, the protesters marched to Times Square.

In his bombastic address at the UN on Tuesday, Trump threatened to “totally destroy North Korea” if the US or its allies are threatened and called Obama’s Iran nuclear agreement “an embarrassment” to America.” — Additional reporting by Paul Schindler

September 21, 2017

7

Terrible Presidents, Tattooed on the Backs of Two Generations

Courtesy the Burbank family

Max Burbank’s grandfather, Irving Fagan, in his office at The Philadelphia Record.

BY MAX BURBANK Several years ago my bride, a woman of excellent judgment, exercised her marital veto and forbade me to get a tattoo of Richard Nixon.

While I recognized and accepted her authority in the matter (all marriages have bargains), I fear she thought I was being impulsive. I was not. I’m not a Nixon fan, and I wouldn’t permanently mark myself to be ironic any more than I’d vape. “Ink” is forever and should be of the utmost personal significance. Anything less becomes a permanent label advertising crassness in 12-point Gothic Bold.

Who, though, is the most omnipresent figure of the time I was born into? Whose rise and fall gouged his signature into American history, vile tendrils scrabbling forward into the future long after death, growing thinner, grayer, harder to discern, but never, ever vanishing? Who, in short, is the most tattoo-worthy?

Muhammad Ali? Elvis? Hah. Richard. Milhous. Nixon.

I have no personal memory whatever of Lyndon B. Johnson, but remember walking across the schoolyard with the other boys, arms over

shoulders, a Red Rover-style phalanx, chanting, “Humphrey is the one!

Nixon is a bum!” I remember what seemed at the time like a landslide loss. Richard Nixon is the fi rst president of my mental landscape.

I was 10. My parents hosted antiwar slide shows, real hippies crashed in our barn all summer, and George McGovern was my hero. The Senator from South Dakota, soft-spoken, rangy, a World War II Air Force veteran awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, now a soldier for peace.

Forever confused and tangled in my memory with Jimmy Stewart, he was the sun that dwarfed, yet cast, Nixon’s twisted shadow. Though they campaigned for McGovern, my folks told me he didn’t stand a damn chance.

I never believed them. He was the good guy. Black hats lose, and Nixon was a very black hat. Then I found out what a landslide really was. My parents slapped a “Don’t blame me, I’m from Massachusetts” sticker on the bumper of our Jeep, a perfect bookend for the brass Buddha my dad bolted to the hood the previous year.

MAX continued on p. 20

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Edie Windsor Celebrated in Poignant Temple Emanu-El Memorial

Edie Windsor at the LGBTQ Pride March in Manhattan in 2013 just days after her Supreme Court victory over the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

BY ANDY HUMM Outside the Upper East Side’s Temple Emanu-El on Fifth Ave., Edie Windsor’s comrades from the grassroots marriage equality movement lined up more than an hour and a half early to make sure they would get a seat inside for her Sept. 15 memorial service. These were the people from Marriage Equality New York whom Edie sought out in order to marry Thea Spyer in 2007. After the couple worked with these activists on the front lines of that cause, they helped connect Edie to the legal help she needed after Thea’s 2009 death to get her marriage recognized by the federal government.

The world will remember Edie, who died at age 88 on Sept. 12, as the successful plaintiff in United States v. Windsor in 2013, a challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act that secured full federal recognition of all same-sex marriages legal in the states. But hundreds gathered last week to celebrate her as more than just a brave and determined plaintiff in a landmark Supreme Court case, but as a singular human being full of life and love. Like Gilbert Baker, the Rainbow Flag’s creator who died earlier this year, and Father Mychal Judge, the Fire Department chaplain who perished in the 9-11 catastrophe, she was a gay person who touched the lives of millions — and those who encountered her felt a deeply personal connection.

(The service can be viewed at https://venue.streamspot.com/video/07b68277b0.)

Inside, we were joined by civic leaders from Mayor Bill de Blasio and Public Advocate Letitia James to Congressmember Jerry Nadler and out LGBTQ elected officials. We heard from Edie’s lawyer and friend Roberta Kaplan, her relatives and longtime friends, and — to the surprise of many — Hillary Clinton, in a service led by Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum of Congregation Beit Simchat Torah. But most everyone in the pews had a significant Edie story of their own, as well.

Michael Sabatino, now a Yonkers city councilmem-

10

September 21, 2017

Photos by Donna Aceto

Edie Windsor’s signature hat and scarf on the altar at Temple Emanu-El during her September 15 memorial service.

Judith Kasen-Windsor, Edie’s surviving spouse, was the first of the speakers at the service.

Roberta Kaplan, the civil rights litigator who took on Edie’s case after some LGBTQ legal advocacy groups turned her down.

ber, standing with his husband, Robert Voorheis, outside ahead of the service, said, “She came to a Marriage Equality meeting and said, ‘My partner has MS. I need to get married in Canada.’”

At that point in 2007, Sabatino and Voorheis were already in court fighting right-wing attempts to deny them recognition of their Canadian marriage in New York.

“We put her in touch with Brendan Fay” who had also married in Canada and, with Jesús Lebron, ran the Civil Marriage Trail to get American same-sex couples married there, Sabatino added.

Fay persuaded Judge Harvey Brownstone, an out gay Toronto jurist, to travel to a hotel near the airport there to marry the ailing and wheelchair-dependent Thea to Edie.

Edie never forgot Fay’s help, showing up for all his St. Pat’s for All fundraisers in support of his inclusive St. Patrick’s Day parade in Queens.

“At the Irish Arts Center, she would get up on the stage with Malachy McCourt to sing our anthem, ‘Wild Mountain Thyme,’” Fay said.

When his group, Lavender & Green, became the first Irish LGBTQ contingent allowed to march in the Fifth Ave. St. Patrick’s Parade in 2016 after a 25-year battle waged by the Irish Lesbian & Gay Organization and Irish Queers, Edie didn’t just show up. At 86, she marched the entire route and joined the afterparty in the East Village that evening.

“She showed us how to love in tough times,” Fay said.

Paul Schindler, editor of Manhattan Express and NYC Community Media

Gay City News, said, “I remember first seeing Edie and Thea — not knowing who they were — as nice old ladies at a meeting of marriage activists at the Center where the average age was probably 29. I was touched to see them, but didn’t realize these were the women who were going to change everything.”

Activist Jay W. Walker said, “She was tireless and attended almost every action with Gays Against Guns and Rise and Resist. Turn a corner and there was Edie.

She never stopped her activism and did it with such joy.”

Historian Blanche Wiesen Cook and playwright Clare Coss, a power couple of the progressive LGBTQ movement together for 48 years, were close to Edie since the 1970s.

“She was a force of love and joy,” Cook said, to which Coss added, “She made people feel they could do the impossible. She cared so much about equality and justice.”

Cathy and Sheila Marino-Thomas, leaders in Marriage Equality New York, worked alongside Edie for years.

“When she walked out of the Supreme Court, she walked over to our kids to let them know it went well,” Cathy recalled of Edie’s big day before the nine justices in March 2013.

James Esseks, co-counsel on the Windsor case for the American Civil Liberties Union, said, “I remember Edie saying that if she had to lose Thea, she would make something of it. And she did — not only a change in the law but she became a symbolic face so every American could better understand same-sex relationships. She turned a personal tragedy into a triumph for all LGBT people.”

Columbia University law professor Suzanne Goldberg, who at Lambda was co-counsel for the defendants in the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas case that ended anti-sodomy laws in the US and was among those who submitted an amicus brief in the Windsor case, said before the service, “In addition to being beautiful, committed, and funny, she was fiercely brilliant.” Goldberg recalled, “She said she’d read every word of my brief and proceeded to stun me. Many lawyers don’t even do that.”

Judith Kasen-Windsor, married to Edie just shy of one year, bravely led the speakers at the service.

“She was an international symbol of LGBTQ rights,” she said, “but she was simply my love.”

Rabbi Kleinbaum said, “Edie changed the world with a specific action, but like Rosa Parks she was part of a movement. She knew it took all of us to change the world.”

Lewis Freeman, Edie’s first cousin once removed, spoke during the service about how that famous picture of Edie outside the Supreme Court with her arms spread wide resulted from her spotting her family members and breaking away from the press conference to greet them.

“She was always Edie in public and in private,” said Freeman. “It didn’t matter how many people were around… For Edie, family wasn’t limited by blood relatives. You were all her family.”

His mother, Sunnie Baron Freeman, recalled always being very close to her cousin, but because she was 14 months younger, Edie, even to their final phone conversation last week, called Sunnie “Baby.”

MAX

MEMORIAL continued on p. 24 NYC Community Media

September 21, 2017

11

Close to Tears, HRPT Head Said Costly Litigation Sunk Pier55

BY DUSICA SUE MALESEVIC A day after the news broke that Barry Diller’s Pier55 project was scuttled, Madelyn Wils, head of the Hudson River Park Trust (HRPT), lamented the defeat.

“This is devastating to a lot of us, honestly, we just lost the largest gift to a park in the United States and a promise to have programmed it as a not-for-profit, ongoing,” the president and CEO of the Trust said. “So it’s a devastating loss.”

Wils was at a Community Board 4 Waterfront, Parks & Environment Committee meeting on Thurs., Sept.

14 for other Trust business — new vendor Black Tap is slated at Pier 84 and a discussion where the picnic area at the Chelsea Waterside Park would be moved — when co-chair Lowell Kern asked Wils what happened. The New York Times reported on Wed., Sept. 13 that the “entertainment pier” project was dead, and that costs had “ballooned to more than $250 million today from $35 million six years ago.”

One of the reasons for the escalating cost was due to lawsuits. “We were unfortunately defeated — not in the courts,” she said. “We won in the courts.

People seem to think somehow we lost in

Courtesy The Villager

Madelyn Wils, head of the Hudson River Park Trust, was candid at Sept. 14’s meeting of the CB4 Waterfront, Parks & Environment Committee.

the court, but we didn’t. … But we didn’t win because of the way that you could continue to sue and sue and sue.”

She continued, “Construction now is eight to 10 percent a year so if you figure two and a half years, you’re looking at about 30 percent higher costs and aggravation. … I think Mr. Diller and his family felt eventually that, you know, they were here to provide something really special. … I think that just this week, it just between Mr. Diller’s family, he just felt it was too much, and decided to bow out.”

Wils said Diller, a billionaire who is the chairman of IAC/InterActiveCorp, had “lost a lot of money already. The Trust has lost money. He’s lost more, but he has more to lose than we do.”

It is unclear what will happen to that part of the West Side waterfront, which Lowell called an “empty blight.” She said there may one day be a Pier 54.

Diller would continue to support the park in some way, she said. “I don’t think he knows what that means. I mean, it’s emotional for him,” she said.

“I think they just couldn’t understand how this could keep going on and so if I say too much more I’m going to cry so I’m not going to say much more.”

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Dental Coverage: $2500 toward comprehensive services.

Up to 12 visits per year to in-network Acupuncturists, $5 copayment per visit.

Transportation Assistance: Up to 48 one-way rides every year.

We can help you to save Medicare Part B premium if you are qualified for Medicare Savings Program (MSP).

Other social services programs are available.

Call Elizabeth Tejada at

1-917-246-2888. *You must continue to pay your Medicare Part B premium, if not otherwise paid for under Medicaid or by another third party. Plans are insured through UnitedHealthcare Insurance Company or one of its affiliated companies, a Medicare Advantage organization with a Medicare contract and a contract with the State Medicaid Program. Enrollment in the plan depends on the plan’s contract renewal with Medicare. This plan is available to anyone who has both Medical Assistance from the State and Medicare. This information is not a complete description of benefits. Contact the plan for more information. Limitations, co-payments, and restrictions may apply. Benefits, premiums and/or co-payments/ co-insurance may change on January 1 of each year. Premiums, co-pays, co-insurance, and deductibles may vary based on the level of Extra Help you receive. Please contact the plan for further details H3387_160706_161216 Accepted CST15186F NYC Community Media

September 21, 2017

13

POLICE BLOTTER HARASSMENT: In the ‘Market’ for conflict

the night, “never to return,” police noted, “and without providing promised services.”

This is one of those altercations where you read about the lack of civility and think, surely alcohol was involved — but the sobering fact is, push came to shove before the victim had a chance to imbibe his brewski. Police reported that just before 10 p.m. on Wed., Sept. 13, a 27-year-old male was at the Hudson Food Market (312 11th Ave., btw. W. 29th & 30th Sts.) for the express purpose of purchasing a beer. Another male, 46, was making use of the store’s ready supply of kilowatts by powering up his phone, which was plugged into a wall socket. When the juice mooch got a call, he removed the phone from his personal charger (still attached to the wall) and took his conversation outside. The budding beer drinker then turned his attention to that unescorted charger, and “switched plugs,” according to a 19-year-old witness.

Back from his chat in the great outdoors, the perp accused the 27-year-old of taking his phone charger, a charge leveled along with a shove and a punch during the ensuing argument (a story told by the witness as well as the store’s security cameras).

The victim did not sustain injury, and refused medical attention offered by responding officers.

FRAUDULENT ACCOSTING: Costly bottle service scam She wanted to rub shoulders with the beautiful people — but along the way, ended up falling in with the wrong crowd. A 28-year-old woman is out a considerable wad of cash, having fallen for one of clubland’s classic cons. The victim told police that the early morning hours of her weekend tour of area nightlife, she met a man at “an unknown bar near Little West 12th Street” and fell under the spell of a promise that, for $180, he could hook her up with entrance to Chelsea’s famed 1 Oak nightclub, with her own special table. With that promise to upgrade her chosen party venue (“Oak,” after all, is so much more exclusive than a W. 12th St. bar whose name you can’t recall), he took her to 457 W. 17th St. (a mere stone’s throw away from the club), where she handed over the finder’s fee. Her glam set go-between turned out to be a faux-fab Fagin, however, when he disappeared into

PETIT LARCENY: Stranger swipes Samsung Misery loves company, but nobody wants to hear a sad song sung by a host who invites people to his pad without subjecting them to a severe screening process.

Nevertheless, we’re here to report what happened — so if you’re in the market for a true tale of crime coming from a poorly curated guest list, then dig this, dear reader: On the evening of Mon., Sept. 11, a 49-year-old man invited friends and (here’s the operative word) acquaintances to hang out in his apartment, on the 500 block of 10th Ave. At some point in the socialization process, he noticed two things: First, his Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge phone (valued at $800) was missing from the living room table; and second, its sudden absence coincided with the hasty exit of a man the tootrusting host was not intimately acquainted with (henceforth known as the “unknown perp”).

PETIT LARCENY: You snooze, you lose This week’s blotter has a second tale of loss stemming from taking your eyes off the ball — or, more specifically, giving those eyes a rest that lasted a few hours too long. A cabbie reported to police that at around 1 a.m. on Fri., Sept. 15, he was parked in front of 331 W. 18th St. With his window partially opened, the thoroughly pooped 65-year-old settled in for a snooze. Three hours later, he awoke to discover all of the windows rolled down and his phone (an iPhone valued at $250) missing from the cab’s center console. Sadly, the victim did not have any tracking devices, such as the Find My iPhone app (which, as loyal Blotter readers know, has helped police to track and sometimes recover stolen phones). In a further blow to swift justice, there were no cameras in the area, which could have recorded the theft. The victim told police he might have the IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) at home, on the phone’s document of sale; so he’d got that going for him, we hope.

—Scott Stiffler

PUBLISHER Jennifer Goodstein

THE WEST SIDE’S COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER PUBLISHED BY

NYC COMMUNITY MEDIA, LLC One Metrotech North, 10th Floor, Brooklyn, NY 11201 Phone: (212) 229-1890 | Fax: (212) 229-2790 www.chelseanow.com scott@chelseanow.com © 2017 NYC Community Media, LLC

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September 21, 2017

EDITOR Scott Stiffler ART DIRECTOR John Napoli GRAPHIC DESIGNER Cristina Alcine

CONTRIBUTORS Levar Alonzo Lincoln Anderson Stephanie Buhmann Rebecca Fiore Dusica Sue Malesevic Winnie McCroy Puma Perl Paul Schindler Eileen Stukane

THE 10th PRECINCT Located at 230 W. 20th St. (btw.

Seventh & Eighth Aves.). Commander: Capt. Paul Lanot. Main number: 212-7418211. Community Affairs: 212-741-8226.

Crime Prevention: 212-741-8226. Domestic Violence: 212-741-8216. Youth Officer: 212-741-8211. Auxiliary Coordinator: 212924-3377. Detective Squad: 212-741-8245.

The Community Council meets on the last Wed. of the month, 7 p.m., at the 10th Precinct or other locations to be announced.

MIDTOWN SOUTH PRECINCT Located at 357 W. 35th St. (btw. Eighth & Ninth Aves.). Inspector Russel J. Green, Commanding Officer. Call 212-239-9811.

Community Affairs: 212-239-9846. Crime Prevention: 212-239-9846. Domestic Violence: 212-239-9863. Youth Officer: 212-239-9817. Auxiliary Coordinator: 212-239-9836. Detective Squad: 212-2399856. The Community Council meets on the third Thurs. of the month, 7 p.m., at the New Yorker Hotel (481 Eighth Ave., btw. W. 34th & 35th Sts.). Visit midtownsouthcc.org.

THE 13th PRECINCT Located at 230 E. 21st St. (btw. Second & Third Aves.). Deputy Inspector: Brendan Timoney. Call 212-477-7411. Community Affairs: 212-477-7427. Crime Prevention: 212-477-7427. Domestic Violence: 212477-3863. Youth Officer: 212-477-7411.

Auxiliary Coordinator: 212-477-4380.

Detective Squad: 212-477-7444. The Community Council meets on the third Tues. of the month, 6:30 p.m., at the 13th Precinct.

CASH FOR GUNS $100 cash will be given (no questions asked) for each handgun, assault weapon or sawed-off shotgun, up to a maximum payment of $300. Guns are accepted at any Police Precinct, PSA or Transit District.

ADVERTISING Amanda Tarley PH: 718-260-8340 Email: atarley@cnglocal.com ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES Gayle Greenberg Jim Steele Julio Tumbaco

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Chelsea Now is published weekly by NYC Community Media LLC, One Metrotech North, 10th Floor, Brooklyn, NY 11201. (212) 229-1890. Annual subscription by mail in Manhattan and Brooklyn $75. The entire contents of newspaper, including advertising, are copyrighted and no part may be reproduced without the express permission of the publisher - © 2017 NYC Community Media LLC, Postmaster: Send address changes to Chelsea Now, One Metrotech North, 10th Floor, Brooklyn, NY 11201.

PUBLISHER’S LIABILITY FOR ERROR: The Publisher shall not be liable for slight changes or typographical errors that do not lessen the value of an advertisement. The publisher’s liability for other errors or omissions in connection with an advertisement is strictly limited to publication of the advertisement in any subsequent issue.

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Side Street Saturday: Blocks Worth Walking on Sept. 23

BY SCOTT STIFFLER

THE 100 WEST 16TH STREET BLOCK ASSOCIATION’S ANNUAL BLOCK PARTY If it’s a warm afternoon spent admiring the architecture, playing badminton and listening to jazz music, you’re either in on the lawn of a 1920s country estate or at the 100 West 16th Street Block Association’s annual block party (only one of them has a dog parade, so there’s your first clue). The sixth annual installment of this charming side street gathering will also offer stoop/sidewalk sales, free ice cream, activities for the kids, and —in cooperation with the Lower East Side Ecology Center — the chance to drop off your electronics (computers, monitors, keyboards, video games, cell phones, etc.) for recycling.

Sat., Sept. 23, 11 a.m.–4 p.m. On W. 16th St., btw. Sixth & Seventh Aves. For more info, email Paul Groncki at pgroncki@gmail.com. For recycling info, visit lesecologycenter.org.

Courtesy 100 W. 16th St. Block Association

The 100 West 16th St. Block Association’s shindig has 1920s lawn party elements, plus the modern marvel of electronics recycling.

including Girls for Gender Equality, the Women & Justice Project, and the NYC Coalition for Women in Construction.

Sat., Sept. 23, 12–6 p.m. on W. 20th St., btw. 10th & 11th Aves. For more info, visit womensbuildingnyc.org.

THE WOMEN’S BUILDING SECOND ANNUAL COMMUNITY BLOCK PARTY The sidewalk shed that snakes along the former site of Bayview Correctional Facility tells you that some sort of transformation is taking place — and when the scaffolding is removed from that onetime women’s prison, the storied structure (which started out as a YMCA for merchant sailors) will have become The Women’s Building. As NYC’s hub to the global girls’ and women’s rights movement, the Building (expected to open in about five years) will assist organizations, individuals, and the surrounding community in all aspects of the quest to ensure “that all girls and women can live free from violence and discrimination.”

That mission comes one step closer to fruition when hundreds are expected to gather at this family-friendly celebration where you can learn more about this one-of-a-kind gathering place for plans, actions, and empowerment. The W. 20th St. side of the Building will play host to community art projects, kids’ activities, live performances (from groups including the Lady Dragon Step Team, vibe Theater Experience, and Camille A. Brown & Dancers), and organizations NYC Community Media

THE 25TH ANNUAL LONDON TERRACE STREET FAIR Photo by Nina Robinson

Learn about the bright future of former Bayview Correctional Facility, at the The Women’s Building Community Block Party.

Photo by Scott Stiffler

It’s a great time to be “Silver” — The London Terrace Street Fair, at 25, is an ageless wonder.

Last year’s version of this venerable early fall community gathering resonated more than ever before, having occurred one week after the W. 23rd St. bombing of Sept. 17. Clear skies for the rain-orshine brought out neighbors eager to connect — and, of course, bag treasures directly from the closets, shelves, and walls of London Terrace residents. Those residents will be on hand again this year, along with a number of outside vendors offering high-quality art, crafts, vintage collectibles, antiques, and specialty foods. As always, local electeds will be in attendance, eager to schmooze while they peruse the merchandise. Presented by the London Terrace Tenant’s Association, a portion of the proceeds will benefit the event co-sponsor: Holy Apostles Holy Soup Kitchen.

Sat., Sept. 23, 10 a.m.–5 p.m. on W. 24th St. (btw. Ninth & 10th Aves.). For info, email LTTAstreetfair@gmail.com and visit londonterrace.wixsite.com/ltta.

For info on the mission of Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen (296 Ninth Ave., at W. 28th St.), visit holyapostlessoupkitchen. org.

September 21, 2017

15

Photo by Kathy Willens/Associated Press

Tuesday night fever: Mayor de Blasio shows off his signature dance move, â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Smackdown,â&#x20AC;? at the Park Slope Armory after he won the Democratic nomination in 2013.

Dance Dance Evolution?

Cabaret Law Could Waltz Into History

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September 21, 2017

BY LAUREN GILL Mayor Bill de Blasio supports the repeal of an archaic law that bans dancing in establishments that do not have a special, hard-to-get license as long as those clubs and bars enact certain basic security measures, a rep announced at a Thurs., Sept. 14 City Hall hearing on the statute. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The de Blasio administration strongly supports repealing the current cabaret law,â&#x20AC;? said Lindsay Greene, a senior advisor for the Office of Housing and Economic Development. â&#x20AC;&#x153;There are better ways than the current law to create a strong and healthy nightlife economy.â&#x20AC;?

In June, Greene refused to say whether Hizzoner backed a bill

by Councilmember Rafael Espinal (Dâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;Bushwick) that proposes abolishing the 1926 cabaret law, citing a pending lawsuit on its constitutionality. The pol introduced the measure that month, arguing the statute was put in place to target black jazz clubs and has been used as a way for police to discriminate against minority groups ever since.

But now de Blasio will sign legislation to scrap the old law, on the condition it is replaced with one that requires nightlife businesses maintain surveillance cameras and ensure security personnel is properly licensed and registered.

Attendees erupted in a vigorous bout of â&#x20AC;&#x153;jazz handsâ&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x201D; raising their hands and wiggling them rapidly â&#x20AC;&#x201D; in approval following the announce-

ment, because clapping is not allowed in Council chambers.

The Department of Consumer Affairs currently enforces the cabaret law, but the NYPD will be in charge of ensuring haunts are up to code under the new legislation. Espinal worried this change will give cops free reign to target clubs and bars since they can use camera checks as a way to gain entry, but Greene claimed police will only investigate businesses when there is reason for concern.

Dance advocates spoke following Greeneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s testimony, including one woman with plenty of experience getting down who suggested the â&#x20AC;&#x153;dance policeâ&#x20AC;? might lighten up if they tried cutting a rug themselves. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Maybe theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll feel a little better if they start swinging and swaying themselves,â&#x20AC;? said Mercedes Ellington, the granddaughter of jazz legend Duke Ellington and the first black dancer in the revered June Taylor Dancers troupe.

The mayor, despite his gangly 6-foot-5 frame, is somewhat of a dance pioneer himself, most famously creating â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Smackdownâ&#x20AC;? in 2013, choreography in which de Blasio licks his hand and bangs it on the ground.

But before the mayor can make busting the move legal for all, Espinal needs to amend the bill and then the Council has to vote on it, which is expected to happen in December.

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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.

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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.

September 21, 2017

17

We Can Still Fly A refusal to grow up clashes with the march of time

BY DAVID KENNERLEY More often than not, theatrical meditations on mortality tend to be dismal affairs. But red-hot playwright Sarah Ruhl, who has earned plaudits for plays such as “Stage Kiss” and “Dead Man’s Cell Phone,” has solved the problem in her latest effort by expertly grafting on elements of the beloved children’s story “Peter Pan,” injecting a fantastic dose of whimsy while embracing the tale’s dark undercurrents.

“For Peter Pan on her 70th birthday,” now at Playwrights Horizons, is set in Davenport, Iowa, in the 1990s and in timeless Neverland. The first part features a protracted, tense scene in a hospital room, where an elderly father lies on his deathbed, attached to a web of monitors and drips, surrounded by his five doting offspring.

The siblings have put their lives on hold to stand vigil by their dying father (Ron Crawford). Ann, portrayed by the legendary, luminous Kathleen Chalfant, may be the oldest chronologically — she’s pushing 70 — but not emotionally.

Her fondest memory is playing the role of Peter Pan as a teenager, and she still identifies with the boy, sharing not only his love of flying but also his refusal to grow up.

John (Daniel Jenkins) is a college professor, while Jim (David Chandler) and Michael (Keith Reddin) are doctors who have followed in footsteps of their father, a local pediatrician back in the day. The youngest, Wendy (Lisa Emery), the apple of her father’s eye, appears particularly distraught over the dire circumstances. “Peter Pan” aficionados will notice that these names match those of key characters in the book.

The achingly poignant drama finds poetry in the peculiar dynamic of a family reunion, studded with reminiscences of key childhood moments anyone can relate to. Occasionally, each of the old man’s children reverts to their role when growing up, stirring old rivalries and recriminations.

Under the resourceful direction of Les Waters, the characters are richly drawn and expertly portrayed. Ann is based on Ruhl’s mother, who actually

18

September 21, 2017

Photo by Joan Marcus

Kathleen Chalfant and Ron Crawford in Sarah Ruhl’s “For Peter Pan on her 70th birthday,” directed by Les Waters, at Playwrights Horizons through Oct. 1.

played Peter Pan in her youth, and some of the dialogue is lifted from interviews with her extended family. The lead role is tailor-made for Chalfant, whose mischievous grin and sprightly demeanor conjures Peter Pan even before she dons the famous green tights, tunic, and feathered cap.

Arguing is a family sport. The siblings spar about politics, religion, afterlife, and euthanasia. By liberally upping the dose of their dad’s morphine, is it murder or simply palliative care? “It’s about staying ahead of the pain,” says Jim defensively. Ann recalls an earlier trauma putting down the ailing family dog. The pooch, played by Macy, who starred in the recent touring production of “Annie,” makes several heart-

warming, ghostly appearances and hits all of her marks. After their father finally takes his last breath, the siblings breathe a sigh of relief.

The second part finds the family at a large dining table at the family homestead, holding an Irish wake — drinking Jameson’s whiskey, cracking jokes, and trying find solace in their shared experience.

“I pride myself somehow on not growing up,” Ann says, equating that with being “programmed” and “ossified.”

Michael’s mantra used to be “immortality through immaturity.”

In the final part — a metatheatrical fantasia set in their childhood bedroom and a warped version of Neverland — the siblings play roles in an otherworldly

production of “Peter Pan.” Tinker Bell is there and so is Captain James Hook, embodied with dastardly panache by Chandler. They discover the Lost Boys and the Jolly Roger.

And yes, there is an abundant amount of jubilant flying involved. To this tenderly affecting drama’s credit, the cables miraculously disappear in our imaginations, and we are convinced the fairy dust is real.

Runtime: 90 minutes, no intermission. Through Oct. 1 at Playwrights Horizons (416 W. 42nd St., btw. Ninth & 10th Aves.). Tues.–Sat. at 7:30pm; Sun. at 7pm; Sat.–Sun. at 2pm. For tickets ($59-$99), visit ticketcentral. com or 212-279-4900. Artist info at visit playwrightshorizons.org.

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19

MAX continued from p. 8

(Did I mention Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m from a family of freaks?) In 21 months, Nixon would resign in disgrace â&#x20AC;&#x201D; but itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not like I knew that. I cried a lot.

The summer of 1973, I was 11. My grandfather was working on dying in an upstairs bedroom. I think heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d have checked out a good deal sooner, but having spent his whole adult life as a reporter for the Philadelphia Record and the International Labor Press Association, he sure as hell wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t going to miss the Watergate hearings. The Grim Reaper could cool his boney heels in the hallway.

After sundown heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d get weird, scanning blankets held between his hands like Sunday papers, often entertaining the delusion he was a passenger on a riverboat full of gamblers, prostitutes, and thieves â&#x20AC;&#x201D; but as long as the hearings were on, he was lucid as hell. He hardly spoke anymore, his skin was stretched across his bones like the doped paper on a model airplane, but his glittery eyeballs tracked every movement on the screen like a couple of sentient marbles. He hung in for a while after the final gavel, but never came downstairs again. I hope the Angel of Death came to him

Courtesy the Burbank family

Irving Fagan, directly to the left of President Harry Truman, posing with a bunch of old white guys in suits for God knows what all, probably some lefty labor thing.

as Representative Barbara Jordan (D-TX), that rich butterscotch voice letting the old reporter know his story was told, walking with him down the gangplank of that seedy riverboat onto a peaceful shore.

So the Founding Fathers built well, right? The system worked, the black hat got his comeuppance, albeit with

a pardon. The memory of a shadow is a potent thing, though. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re Nixonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s kids, and this is his world. The emotion that typifies us most is anxiety.

Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve spent our lives climbing up and away from the time the President of the United Sates was such a bad guy he had to resign. We can never totally relax. You know in a slasher fl ick, how the monster is laying there dead at the end? Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s getting up again before the credits. And thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s always a sequel.

Nixonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Southern strategy sucked the demagogues and white supremacists from the Democrats with red meat and dog whistles. Appeasing new red voters made it ever harder to run as a moderate Republican.

Nixonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s culture wars and targeting of â&#x20AC;&#x153;elitesâ&#x20AC;? was successful enough to never go out of fashion. Republican intellectuals turned a blind eye at best, cynically exploiting racial tension and religious tribalism, eventually birthing the Tea Party. Nixonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

signature scorn for Washington â&#x20AC;&#x153;eggheadsâ&#x20AC;? blossomed into the denigration of education and science, until the Republican Party became a perfect tainted Petri dish, ideal for spawning a monstrosity like Trump.

My kids saw marriage equality become the law of the land. They watched an African-American person become president. It felt like weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d left Nixon in the past, but he was right there with us the whole time, just beneath the surface. You canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t bury a real monster deep enough. And in a sequel, the monster is stronger. Shoot this one in the head with proof of high crimes and misdemeanors, heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll look at the smoking gun, yell â&#x20AC;&#x153;FAKE NEWS,â&#x20AC;? and keep on coming.

Bright side? I think itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s only a matter of time before Trump self-destructs.

Should he avoid impeachment, heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s still seventy-one years of bloated, old crazy-guy with a less-than-healthy lifestyle. Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not designed for the long haul.

But there are kids out there for whom Trump will be the fi rst president they remember. When he blows up, it wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be a shadow they live under, it will be a pureed spray of rotting carcass theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll be cleaning up their entire lives. Theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll never stop worrying Trump wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t a mere sequel, forever doomed to think he was the second installment of an endless franchise.

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s just as well my bride wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t let me get that tattoo. You know who has an ink Nixon on their back?

Roger Stone. Stone cut his nasty, pointed teeth working in the Nixon administration. He founded a political fi rm with Paul Manafort. He ran public relations for Bush during the Florida recount. He was an advisor on Trumpâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s campaign. Roger Stone is the fetid, vile tendril directly connecting Nixon to Trump. Anything that weaselly bag of crap has on its skin? I want nowhere near mine.

MANTA SPA FOCUSING ON MAN TO MAN MASSAGE

! "

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September 21, 2017

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Just Do Art: The Awkward Adolescence Edition

BY SCOTT STIFFLER

AUTHOR READING: “LORDS OF THE SCHOOLYARD” Set in 1970s southern suburbia, long before kids would be driven to suicide by cutting remarks hurled into cyberspace, the merciless tormentors in Ed Hamilton’s debut novel get their results the old-fashioned way — through face-to-face intimidation, made all the easier by adults who look the other way. “We were doing part of their job for them,” says the narrator of his coaches and teachers, “by showing that difference and weakness were prohibited.” An indictment of suburban boredom and banality as well as the rush we get from grabbing power and being given attention, “Lords of the Schoolyard” is told in fl ashbacks by Tommy Donaldson in adult form — whose candid observations about cruelty, alienation, opportunism, and betrayal never quite confi rm that the “classroom cop” has evolved to the point of rehabilitation and regret; only steely self-awareness. Released last week to coincide with October’s National Bullying Prevention Month, “Lords of the Schoolyard” follows Hamilton’s 2015 collection of short story sketches (“The Chintz Age: Tales of Love and Loss for a New New York”) and 2007’s true tales of living in an iconic NYC landmark (“Legends of the Chelsea Hotel: Living with Artists and Outlaws of New York’s Rebel Mecca”). Whether through nonfiction or pure fl ights of fancy, Kentucky native Hamilton’s knack for hurling gritty little details at the reader will leave lasting marks long after the fi nal page has been turned. Get the vocal version of that sensation when the Chelsea resident reads from “Lords” at a Lower East Side venue, next Friday.

Sept. 29, 7pm at Bluestockings Bookstore, Café, & Activist Center (172 Allen St., btw. Stanton & Rivington Sts.). Free (donations accepted; $5 suggested). Visit edhamilton.nyc, bluestockings.com, and stompoutbullying.org.

Courtesy Sagging Meniscus Press

Photo by Skye Morse-Hodgson

Chelsea’s Ed Hamilton reads from his debut novel, “Lords of the Schoolyard,” at a Lower East Side bookstore.

Sam Soghor, pictured, blends his own bio with that of co-writer Ben Gassman to flesh out the guy who runs “Sam’s Tea Shack.”

Ben Gassman and Sam Soghor. Directed by Meghan Finn; featuring Sam Soghor with Design by Normandy Sherwood; special guest performances by Adam Leon (9/21), Eliza Bent (9/27 & 9/28), and Rebecca Patek (9/30).

“DEMONSTRATION OF A DRUNK DRIVING ACCIDENT”

“SAM’S TEA SHACK” For the hard-partying, soft-spoken, rap-loving, storytelling shape shifter who presides over “Sam’s Tea Shack,” all roads, even the ancient ones, lead back to Queens. While serving up the titular beverage, your host recalls colorful tales of his youth (schoolmate of Lin-Manuel Miranda; guest of honor at a coke-flowing, adult-oriented, Studio 54-set bar mitzvah) while bringing all of the curiosity, albeit none of academic qualifications, of a genealogist, anthropologist, and psychoanalyst to his “Ashkenazi Jewish boy’s fantasy he is amongst his ancestors: central Asian nomads.”

Throw in sizable side orders of pop culture punditry, food criticism, and fatherly anxiety, and you’re right back where we started — in that culturally diverse borough accessible along the F train. Whether connected to the past (his grandmother on her death bed “looked quite Chinese”), summing up the present (“If the city had a king there would be more order; but the city doesn’t have a king, and I don’t want more NYC Community Media

Photo by Olivia Ellis

Jacob Grover’s first full-length production is no wreck, but you’ll still be rubbernecking “Demonstration of a Drunk Driving Accident.”

order”), or planning the future (he’ll book Tuvan throat singers for his son’s coming of age ceremony), Sam never met an observation he didn’t want to premise with “I’m just saying.” Beware of that phrase, because something big is about to drop. And if not, well, you can’t fault a show that keeps trying to ply you with rugelach.

Through Oct. 1; Thurs., Sept. 21/28 and Wed., Sep. 29 at 9:30pm; Tues., Sept. 26, Fri., Sept. 20 & Sun., Oct. 1 at 7pm. At The Tank (312 W. 36th St., btw. Eighth & Ninth Aves.). For tickets ($12, 1 drink minimum), visit thetanknyc.org. Written by

Students stage a cautionary play about drunk driving while facing some sobering facts about themselves, in recent NYU Tisch graduate Jacob Grover’s fi rst full-length production. Mr. Grover was seldom if ever asleep behind the wheel while taking the classes that earned him a BFA in dramatic writing, because “Demonstration of a Drunk Driving Accident” is, well, the hack phrase of choice that comes to mind is “remarkably assured.” Rest assured, the playwright doesn’t go down the easy road. The group of high school seniors who struggle to put on the play are a complex bunch, with the requisite amount of skeletons, rivalries, and anxieties that tend to come to a boil when a group of young people are put in a confi ned space and forced to bond. Compared to the library in “The Breakfast Club,” the gutted car body that serves as the set piece for their at-risk production seems positively claustrophobic — all the better for coaxing things to the surface.

Thurs./Fri., Sept. 21/22 at 8pm; Sat/Sun., Sept.

23/24 at 7pm. At the Alchemy Theater Laboratory (104 W. 14th St., btw. Sixth & Seventh Aves.). For tickets ($10), visit brownpapertickets.com. Artist info at jacobpgrover.com.

September 21, 2017

21

Photo by Gary Marlon Suson

January, 2002: Gary Marlon Suson, 100 feet below Ground Zero at the remains of Commuter’s Cafe in the PATH subway station.

GROUND ZERO continued from p. 6

Photos by Gary Marlon Suson

Now on permanent display, Marie-Hélène’s recently unveiled “Metamorphosis” (2017; 10.5 x 3.4 in.; steel, hydrographic transfer of image, paint, glass).

“North Tower Collapse from Meatpacking District, 10:02 A.M., 9/11/01.”

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September 21, 2017

to keep his own museum going. He has also started to work with the Memorial & Museum by allowing them to use his photographs.

“I’m just happy that my images are going to be in a place that more people can see them,” Suson said.

“As challenging as it is to keep the [Ground Zero Workshop] museum’s doors open, it’s minuscule compared to the challenges faced by the victims’ families on a daily basis.”

What sets the museum apart is its interactive nature. Visitors can pick up the artifacts, and hear Suson’s detailed and emotional fi rst-hand accounts of being in the pit (he not only shot photos, but was also part of the recovery effort, working with rescuers in the search for survivors).

One thought-provoking photograph shows a bunker jacket discovered in January 2002 among the remains of the South Tower lobby, which belonged to FDNY Chaplain Father Mychal Judge. A Franciscan friar and Catholic priest, Judge rushed Downtown from St. Francis of Assisi Church (135 W. 31st St.) following the fi rst tower’s collapse, and was fatally injured during the second tower’s collapse.

Suson has worked hard to offer a frank and respectful presentation of the grim subject matter. By focusing on recovery efforts rather than images of the tower collapsing, the museum is very kid-friendly — and its simple design and aesthetic, Suson recalled, stems his 2004 visit to the Netherlands, when he toured the home of Anne Frank, the Jewish teen who wrote a diary of her life before being sent to a Nazi death camp.

“The Anne Frank [Museum Amsterdam] amazed me at how small

her room was, yet almost 10 million people go a year to see her room,” he said. “There is nothing in the room but it was the importance of being there.”

The experience being in Anne Frank’s room inspired him to “come back home to build something similar in theory” where education and respectful remembrance went handin-hand. That mission was further realized on Sept. 7, when the museum unveiled a new sculpture entitled “Metamorphosis,” created by Belgium-born, New York City based artist Marie-Hélèn.

“The artist used her own original photo of the World Trade Center that was then heat pressed onto trade center metal,” Suson said. “We gave the artist glass from the towers that she chipped and placed throughout the project.”

In the center of the fl ag that is fashioned to the top of the artwork is a gemstone that was made from World Trade Center glass. The glass was shaped into gems to be placed in rings for 9/11 families. One side depicts the towers engulfed in fl ames, with broken glass representing the past. On the other side is an untouched tower. This new tower represents hope.

“My goal,” Suson said of his own hopes, “is to keep the memory of 9/11 alive through images and artwork — so that our world doesn’t forget.”

At 420 W. 14th St. (2nd Floor, btw.

Ninth & 10th Aves.). Museum Hours: Wed.–Sun., 11am–3pm. Admission: $25 ($19 for ages 4-12 and seniors 65+, free for 9/11 family members; $15 for military. Discounted rates for groups of 20+ (maximum guests per tour, 30). For more info, visit groundzeromuseumworkshop.org or call 212-920-4264.

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September 21, 2017

23

BELIEVE continued from p. 4

collecting valid petition signatures.

The club held meetings at community spaces in the district that runs up the West Side from 34th St. to about 70th St. By May, its members were fully engaged in the endorsement process, supporting de Blasio, Johnson, Letitia James for public advocate, and Gale Brewer for borough president.

All of them, of course, are incumbents overwhelmingly favored to win again this year. What was significant, however, was that this represented the first time the neighborhood ever had an open public endorsement meeting.

The McManus club, following an older tradition of boss rule, plays follow the leader. It doesn’t hold public endorsement meetings.

In settling on district leader candidates, the club chose Thomas D. Shanahan, a gay civil rights attorney, and Marisa E. Redanty, a past president of the Manhattan Plaza Tenants Association and a well-known local activist.

Shanahan and Redanty were up against the Spillane siblings, heirs to the McManus hold on the neighborhood.

The Hell’s Kitchen Dems may be new to political organizing, but they are not social media novices. A Facebook ad featured local elected officials touting Shanahan and Redanty as “a new generation of Democrats in Hell’s Kitchen.”

A video, also posted to Facebook, featured a very regal Marti AllenCummings wearing a full-length deep red evening gown urging voters to “Remember to vote locally” for district leader.

The campaign also included “Dear Neighbor” letters from well-known local residents like former Borough President Ruth Messinger and a video from former State Senator Tom Duane.

The Spillanes’ campaign, in contrast, was decidedly old school — posters mounted in store windows throughout the district.

On primary night last week, the new club held a party at the Ritz, a wellknown gay bar on W. 46th St. Though turnout citywide was down given de

MEMORIAL continued from p. 11

Edie’s longtime friends Marjorie Sherwin and Rose Walton did a moving reading of Maya Angelou’s poem, “Still I Rise” that contains the lines, “Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise?” Indeed, one of her doctors, Rosanne Leipzig, said Edie had been scheduled next month to speak to her fellow gerontologists about “love and sex” after 80.

Karen Sauvigne said, “My friend Edie Windsor was brilliant to her dying day, lighthearted and beautiful.” She spoke of Edie’s pioneering work at IBM in the 1950s “achieving the highest technical rank — rare for a woman” at that time — and how proud Edie was to have “the first personal computer delivered to a New York address.”

Sauvigne added, “Edie’s love was vast and boundless. She made everyone feel special.”

Clinton was greeted with a standing ovation and gave a well-received speech that included the line, “Edie helped change hearts and minds, including mine,” a reference to her only embracing same-sex marriage in 2013, after leaving the State Department and prior to her second presidential run. Activist Jackie Rudin wrote on Facebook, “I loved that Hillary’s presence did not overwhelm. She came with just the right amount of reverence and respect.”

Clinton said, “How she experienced loss, grief, and injustice made her only

24

September 21, 2017

Photo by Donna Aceto

Hillary Rodham Clinton acknowledged that Edie’s activism changed her heart.

more generous, more open-hearted, and more fearless in her fight. She refused to give up on the promise of America.

There wasn’t a cynical, defeatist bone in her body. That’s especially important for us to remember now.”

Michael Adams, executive director of SAGE, or Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders, which honored Edie’s achievements years before her famous case, said, “In so many ways, Edie was our mother. She made every one of us, her children, feel as if we were the apple of her eye.” He also said, “With Judith, she reminded us that we can have love and romance at any age.”

Roberta Kaplan, who took on the DOMA case independently after the LGBTQ legal groups initially turned Edie down, delivered what was a moving elegy, saying, “The fact that Edie

Blasio’s inevitability, more than 1,000 voted in Manhattan Plaza. The mood at the Ritz became ebullient as the evening wore on.

In the end, Shanahan pulled 1,763 votes to Mickey Spillane’s 1,403 for the male district leader slot, while Redanty outpolled Denise Spillane 1,844 to

1,339 for the female post. It was a clean victory for both Hell’s Kitchen Dems candidates, but Shanahan and Redanty both understand that a rematch could well emerge down the road. The new club is careful to speak respectfully of its rival.

In the aftermath, Allen-Cumming offered a “shout out” to the army of volunteers whose “hard work” gave the neighborhood a “voice.”

Gottfried believes the new club will grow. The district includes Hudson Yards, where new high rises will add thousands of new residents. The Hell’s Kitchen Democratic Club will be there to greet them.

“We had activists without a political club,” Gottfried remarked, “but they certainly came out of the woodwork” after Trump’s upset win last November.

The new club successfully mobilized voters because it embraced diversity, something Hell’s Kitchen residents love about their neighborhood. In this instance, Donald Trump gave a boost to progressive politics.

was the perfect plaintiff was obvious to me from the moment we met.” Kaplan recalled sharing her concerns about the health of Edie’s heart throughout the litigation, pushing the district court judge to rule quickly.

“Edie was never shy about describing the two maxims that she and Thea lived by: ‘Don’t postpone joy’ and ‘Keep it hot,’” Kaplan said. “While I had no issue with ‘don’t postpone joy’ — in fact, it’s a lesson I have tried very hard to keep in mind ever since — ‘keeping it hot’ was a different story.”

Kaplan won Edie’s pledge that she would not talk publicly about sex while the case was pending, even though “she made it clear she did not agree with my strategy.” They won the case “at 10:03 a.m. on June 26, 2013. I can assure you that Edie was publicly talking about sex before noon.”

Kaplan continued, “As a lawyer, there are moments with a client when you hold your breath. Perhaps none is scarier than when your client speaks at a press conference for the first time while a case is pending, which Edie did the day we filed our complaint. But from the moment she opened her mouth, that 4’11”, 95-pound Jewish lady with perfectly manicured nails and perfectly coiffed hair explained with such clarity and humanity why her rights, and all of our rights, should not be denied.”

“Edie saw in her lifetime the seemingly impossible dream of marriage that she and Thea shared when they got

engaged back in 1967 become reality for gay and lesbian couples across the nation and now even the world,” Kaplan said. “In fact, she had a huge role in making that happen. And Edie rightfully exercised that right with the utmost joy when she married the second great love of her life, her beloved spouse Judith, last year.”

We filed out to a heartbreaking rendition of “Over the Rainbow” from Cantor Steven Zeidenberg. The LGBTQ anthem can be a cliché, but here it allowed us a release at the loss of the woman who indeed brought us… well, over the rainbow.

Outside the service, Navy Master Chief Petty Officer Dwayne D. BeebeFranqui, with his husband Jonathan, talked about how three years ago he got Edie to speak to more than 400 LGBTQ military service members and spouses in Washington and how Edie said to him, “You continue to love and support that man because you need him and he needs you.”

She was a bit of an evangelist for marriage. Edie became friends with the men, inviting them to her Hamptons place, where Beebe-Franqui helped her identify medals Thea’s father won in the Dutch Army before fleeing the Nazis.

Jim Obergefell, whose 2015 Supreme Court case, building on the Windsor victory, won same-sex marriage rights for all Americans, said after the service, “It perfectly captured Edie: irreverent, political, warm, and loving.”

Courtesy of HK Dems

This poster appeared in windows on the West Side in recent months.

NYC Community Media

Courtesy CHECKPEDS via DOHMH

Air quality in Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen is a major concern for the Hell’s Kitchen South Coalition and CHEKPEDS. AIR QUALITY continued from p. 3

She added, “This is a major, major crisis for our neighborhood.”

Air quality also seems to disproportionately affect low-income residents — they are about nine times more affected by low air quality, she said.

CHEKPEDS was founded around 10 years ago, and the pedestrian safety group has always kept air quality in its sights. “As part of this work, we’ve been very, very active on the air quality. Because, indeed, when you are walking, you cannot walk safely without being able to breathe,” Berthet said.

The group tackled bus idling as well as fi nding more parking spots for buses, she said. Berthet said one of the main reasons a driver leaves the engine running is because there is nowhere to park, and they are looking to avoid getting a ticket. In New York City, a vehicle can idle for three minutes but only one minute in a school zone with fi nes ranging from $115 to $2,000, according to a flyer NYC Community Media

Photo by Christian Miles

The Port Authority is looking to increase capacity of its terminal by 40 percent by 2040, prompting health concerns from locals already alarmed by the neighborhood’s air quality statistics.

Berthet handed out at the meeting.

“One of the major problems we have with the Port Authority bus terminal is the amount of idling that not only the buses but also the cars backed up from the Lincoln Tunnel spew in our neighborhood,” she said.

Earlier this year, the Port Authority announced it would conduct a study on renovating its current location, known as the “build-in-place” option.

The authority’s board is tentatively scheduled to get a presentation on that option at its Sept. 28 meeting,

Steve Coleman, spokesperson for the Port Authority, said in an email.

Coleman said the specifi c agenda for the meeting would be issued on Sept. 22.

The Port Authority issued a request for proposal (RFP) in June for the environmental work for the new terminal, Coleman said, but only one proposal was submitted though it was posted and publicized for six weeks.

“Since Port Authority practice is typically to get two or more proposals to maximize competition, the environmental RFP will be combined with one for preliminary architectural/engineering services and will be reissued in the fall,” he said.

Estimated cost of the project could hit $10 billion.

The Hell’s Kitchen South Coalition was formed around issues related to the Port Authority’s bus terminal plans, Rev. Tiffany Triplett Henkel told the committee. “In May, we had another meeting of the full coalition where we identified air quality as a AIR QUALITY continued on p. 27 September 21, 2017

25

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September 21, 2017

NYC Community Media

Photo by Christian Miles

Environmental advocates say bus idling — running the engine while parked — contributes to air pollution.

Courtesy CHECKPEDS via DOHMH

Air quality in Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen is “not only is it worse, it is way worse,” said Christine Berthet at a recent CB4 committee meeting.

AIR QUALITY continued from p. 25

major concern.”

The coalition has called upon the Port Authority “to reduce the number of buses that will travel to Midtown in the future and to start immediately to reduce the current congestion caused by idling, gridlock, and the spillover of the Port Authority bus operation in our streets,” Henkel said.

JD Noland, a committee member and Hell’s Kitchen resident, said that the Port Authority wants to build a terminal to accommodate a 40 percent increase in capacity by 2040.

“It’s an enormous increase in capacity. They want to build a bigger terminal in Hell’s Kitchen,” he said.

Berthet said that the Port Authority wants a staging area for the buses.

“The problem with that is that the staging area is just a massive queue, which is going to be idling for five or six hours a day for 500 buses,” she said. “If we’re going to take more buses in New York City — maybe, right, we’re still fighting that battle…

We don’t want that staging. Period.

That’s it.”

In addition to fighting against a staging area for buses, Berthet enumerated other “targeted strategies for various bus activities,” shown on one of the last slides of her presentation, which included advocating for an enclosed terminal and parking, and underground ramps.

She said, “We’re going to have to have a big fight on our hands and that’s where we are going to use all that information.”

NYC Community Media

September 21, 2017

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NYC Community Media