WestView News, VOLUME 10, NUMBER 3 MARCH 2014

WestView News

The Voice of the West Village

VOLUME 10, NUMBER 3

MARCH 2014

$1.00

A City Vanishes Can de Blasio return it?

By George Capsis “Huge tax breaks up to half a billion dollars a year were being given to developers to build luxury buildings,” argue the authors of Vanishing City in a 55-minute documentary screened by Community Board 2. It was followed by a panel who supported the premise that the Bloomberg administration overly f avored developers in the guise of having them build affordable apartments under the so-called 80/20 rule (80 percent market rate and 20 percent affordable). “Affordable to whom?” was the general audience rejoinder in the 3-hour session in an overly heated Judson Church conf erence room on Tuesday, February 18th.

The film assembles experts, politicians, and victims of the recent explosion of luxury apartment building for what appears to be inexorable growth in wealth of the one percent and their progeny. As the film came to an end, I kept thinking that de

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YOU CAN JOG TO CENTRAL PARK FROM HARLEM: It began with adventuresome buyers picking up cheap Harlem brownstones then developers doing condos on cheap land as Harlem reverts to a predominately white community as it was in the 1920s. Photo by Jason Knobloch.

Billionaires Behaving Badly: Connecting the Dots to the Hudson River Park Board

By Catherine Revland For many a West Village resident, the most hair-raising revelation in Kevin Roose’s New York Magazine expose, “The OnePercent Jokes and Plutocrats in Drag: What I Saw When I Crashed a Wall Street Secret Society,” is the interlocking membership rolls of two powerful organizations—Kappa Beta Phi, the no-longerso-secret f raternity f or highly successf ul financiers, and the Board of Trustees of the Hudson River Park (HRP).

One holder of dual membership is billionaire Michael Novogratz, chair of the HRP Board. Roose describes an altercation with Novogratz at the annual dinner of Kappa Beta Phi he infiltrated two years ago. During one of the acts put on by new initiates, who are required to perform before

the members in drag, Roose blew his cover when he pulled out his phone to record a particularly crude and self -congratulatory parody. Novogratz, sitting next to him, shouted, “Who the hell are you?” Adhering to his publication’s code of ethics, Roose identified himself as a reporter, upon which Novogratz “grabbed my arm and wouldn’t let go… eyes bloodshot, neck veins bulging.” Other Kappa members then rushed over and tried to convince Roose that “what I’d seen wasn’t really a group of wealthy and powerful financiers…making light of the financial crisis and bragging about their business conquests at Main Street’s expense,” before ushering him out the door.

Novogratz is also a principal at Fortress Investment, a hedge fund that has control-

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A Kaleidoscope of the 1970s

MOVIE MUSICALS REVIVED WITH A VENGEANCE: Busby Berkeley wearing his fedora holding auditions for the 1971 Broadway revival of No No Nanette. In the row behind him Warhol superstars Jackie Curtis, who wanted to understudy movie and stage comedienne Patsy Kelly (one of the stars of the show), and blonde Candy Darling, who hoped to be cast as a Ziegfeld showgirl in the musical production.

Photo by Phil Cohen.

By Robert Heide By 1969, we were wondering what the decade of the l970s would bring. As it turned out, the Seventies was a time of changes and again as in the Sixties, all of it seemed

to be happening at a breakneck speed. In the early part of the decade, there was a continuum of the Sixties, particularly in terms of the ongoing and brutal Vietnam

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www.westviewnews.org A line of Brant Geese. Photo by Keith Michael.

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WestViews

WestView News Published by WestView, Inc. by and for the residents of the West Village Publisher Executive Editor George Capsis Managing Editor Jane Singer Photo Editor Darielle Smolian Designer Design2pro.com Cartoonist & Illustrator Lee Lorenz Contributors Irv Bauer Barry Benepe

Maggie Berkvist

Andrew Berman Janet Capron

George Capsis DuanDuan

James Lincoln Collier Amanda Davis Parisa Emaili Jim Fouratt

Mark M. Green Alvin Hall

Robert Heide

Sara Hendrickson Keith Michael

Michael D. Minichiello Brian Pape

David Porat

Alec Pruchnicki, MD Catherine Revland David Turner

Architecture Editor Brian Pape Film and Media Editor Jim Fouratt Theater Editor Irv Bauer Photographer Maggie Berkvist Traffic Manager Liza Whiting Distribution Managers Tim Jambeck Steve Schoepke We endeavor to publish all letters received, including those with which we disagree.

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Correspondence, Commentary, Corrections Dear Editor,

It’s no secret that NYU’s land grabbing schemes have upset many residents and NYU f aculty. But other issues involving scandals and lack of ethics by administrators and board members continue to plague NYU and besmirch its reputation. Both President John Sexton and NYU Trustee Barry Diller have exhibited unbridled greed and dishonesty in the face of exorbitant tuition rates and reprehensible corporate crimes.

In 2005, NYU pledged to protect human rights by kicking Coca-Cola off campus in light of revelations of Coke’s complicity in human rights abuses and ongoing cover-ups from Latin America to India and the U.S. NYU brought Coke back in 2009 because it embarrassed the old boys’ network and didn’t fit in with the interests of CocaCola board member Diller, who has amassed $160,000,000 of Coca-Cola stock. It’s time for NYU to dump Coke, dump Diller and reaffirm its commitment to human rights and social justice.

Ray Rogers KillerCoke.org

Dear Editor,

I have just read an article in the current issue of New York Magazine (“The 1% Joke and Plutocrats in Drag: What I Saw When I Crashed a Wall Street Secret Society”) that shocked me to the bone. Writer Kevin Reese describes how in January 2012 he infiltrated the annual dinner of Kappa Beta Phi, a secret society of “highly successful financiers.” During one of the many acts of the new initiates, who are required to perf orm in drag, Reese blew his cover when he pulled out his phone to record one of their self -congratulatory parodies. The man sitting next to him shouted, “Who the hell are you?” “I’m a reporter,” Reese admitted, upon which the tycoon “grabbed my arm and wouldn’t let go… eyes bloodshot, neck veins bulging.” Other Kappa members then rushed over and tried to convince him that “what I’d seen wasn’t really a group of wealthy and powerf ul financiers… making light of the financial crisis and bragging about their business conquests at Main Street’s expense.”

Here’s where my hair stood on end. The man who threatened to break the reporter’s phone was Michael Novogratz, chairman of the Board of the Hudson River Park. And

that’s not all. He is one of four members of this secret society who are also HRP power brokers. Diana L. Taylor, chair of the Trust, is an “Exalted High Council” of Kappa Beta Phi, and Mitchell J. Rudin and Michael Bloomberg (represented on the Board by an employee of Bloomberg Philanthropies) are also members. “The first and most obvious conclusion was that the upper ranks of finance are composed of people who are completely divorced f rom reality,” writes Kevin Reese. “Second, Kappa Beta Phi was a f ear-based organization of executives who had strong ideas …but would never have the courage to voice those opinions in a public setting.”

Guess who’s also a Kappa member? Chris Christie’s brother, Todd. I know precious little about the world of high finance, and I kind of stumbled on the story about the plutocrats who dominate the HRP Board that first broke in the February issue of this paper, but I’m willing to bet a few doughnuts that the story of masters of the universe salivating over potential waterf ront real estate profits now has legs on both sides of the Hudson River. How long bef ore a financial reporter starts investigating what’s happening in our neighborhood?

Catherine Revland

I cannot sleep in my apartment as the system clicks on and off every 5 minutes. You can hear this on Bleecker Street. Phone number to contact Jimmy Alberici community affairs 212 741-4826. He always has a line of bullshit. Russell at buildings maintenance 718-476-7587. He always acts like everything will soon be great and never does anything. Also Rudy at 718 923-2720. He told me if it was a private company he could shut them down but he could not do anything about the cops. The department has no backbone when it comes to dealing with the police. I am not intimidated by them at all.

Jim Green

Dear Catherine Revland,

I am only a month or so late in writing to compliment you about your article in the January issue, "Murder on Grove Street: The Waterfront Rebellion".

(Once upon a time, I was something like ten years behind on reading newspapers and things, so only a one month delay is an improvement, I think.)

Articles like yours are the meaty, really interesting kind. Only days ago I complained to George about a new subscriber or whoever who complained about my not having any apostrophes in my February article, "Presidents Day 2014". Nothing else, nothing about Dear Editor, the article itself. Criticism can be constructive If you have quoted her accurately, there or useless. As for your article, it is well written. is a slip between Reverend Stacey’s avowed Which is what I have come to expect from any desire to “leave the green space untouched” of your articles.

Back in 1969, I worked on the waterf ront and her threat to eradicate it altogether: “that’s certainly an option we can look into.” for six months or so. A better term for what (Horse-trade the glorious cherry trees? I was then is an apprentice longshoreman, although 'apprentice' was not used. I thought it Ah, for a Chekhov) Karen Sunde a dead end, so went on to other things.

Too, much later than that I remember seeing Budd Shulberg on our street one time, asDear Editor, suming that short, quite stout man was him.

I always felt sad for the young 14 year old My name is Jim Green. I moved into my apartment in 1977. I had never called 311 un- actor in the movie, who, 50-plus years later, til May 2013 when the Sixth precinct turned still thought of Marlon Brando as a sort of on their air conditioning unit. I tried to rea- hero. Suffice to write here I did not think son with them over the loudness but they Brando was a hero in any way, shape, or form. took no action. Af ter I got an impact viola- In this instance, Brando might have counseled tion on them, they stalled me off through the the fatherless young man to stay in school, but summer but then finally shut it down when I he did not do that. (I know, I know it wasn't got the second violation in late August. Then, Brando's place or "role", but still. Or maybe I the heating system went on in October. It was AM judgmental…)

Thank you, Catherine. brutal. Two violations later they have done Sincerely, John nothing about it.

The opinions put forth by contributors to WestView do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher or editor.

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BRIEFLY NOTED THE VILLAGE GATE REDUX On February 16th, a crowd of music groupies from ‘the good old days’ gathered at Le Poisson Rouge (formerly the Village Gate) on Bleecker Street, to hear a new composition by one of their favorites, David Amram, and to enjoy what felt very much like a family reunion.

offered that I was one of those voices. He also knew WestView News and liked it.

He explained that he had been renting the town house for 10 years, but now the church would only give him a one year lease and the rent went up each year.

I repeated that Reverend Stacey had said that the town houses were in need of urgent repair and that this was one of the reasons for building the apartment house. The doctor took a quick mental inventory and offered that, “Yes, well some small repairs but nothing major.” He then turned to the first very crisp-looking town house and said the renters in that building did their own renovation.

(I thought later if a renter is doing his own renovations, he must have a very long lease at a low rent; lower than any mortgage he would have to pay to buy it, not very good stewardship of church property.)

I continued to D’ag past the parking lot on which St. Luke Towers is to be built and thought what a nice garden it would make.

—George Capsis

Bedrock

DAVID AMRAM A LEGEND CONTINUES: A living link to the West Village golden age of jazz. Photo by Maggie Berkvist.

After describing how he came to write his new Greenwich Village Portraits, celebrating his f riends Arthur Miller, Odetta and Frank McCourt, Mr. Amram reminisced about some of the many musicians and writers who had been close to him through the years - Charlie Mingus, Dizzy Gillespie, Leonard Bernstein, Pete Seeger, Alan Ginsberg and fellow Beats. In true Amram tradition, he also introduced a lively variety of other musical artists whom he had invited to perform, ending the evening with a special tribute to one of his closest early Village friends, Jack Kerouac, one of whose poems was read by daughter Adira Avram, after which the evening ended with a rousing rendition of Pull My Daisy.

The good news for those who missed this first performance of Greenwich Village Portraits is that it will be included in a free concert of Avram chamber music at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in April. Details of this and other future programs, including the premier of a documentary, DAVID AMRAM: THE FIRST 80 YEARS, can be found at http://david-amram.blogspot.com/2013/12/highlightsof-2013-calendar-january-6.html —By Maggie Berkvist

OPEN BUT NOT ACCESSIBLE: Pier 45 and 47 may have stayed open this winter, but for several weeks the ice and snow have made them impassable except for the hardiest ‘skiers’. This is a view Feb. 21. We suspect the walkways were not built to be plowed: wood boards and pavers that could easily be ripped up by snowplows.

Photo by Brian Pape.

Manhattan, you were there. Family, friends, lovers, a husband, pets, apartments, and dreams have all fled like seasons, but you were there. You, more idea than land, nevertheless, were there like land. Your neighborhoods have stayed true to their shadows, the ghosts play on, ignoring buildings that mimic eternity but implode with shocking ease. So the Lower East Side and the East Village are still immigrant angry, their tenements thrown up as temporary shelters lurch in the dusk, cobbled and half-dead. The landmarked West Village stands invaded, like occupied Paris. Times Square cleans up but keeps its mad crossing roads. The Upper East Side, newly settled but as stifling as an Edith Wharton winter party, tries to resist the ghost of trees that sweep out street life. Central Park: homage, tableau vivant, a strange wood, strangely wild. The Upper West Side turns away from town, one big hostelry serving travelers who want to believe they’re home. Harlem the wellspring, a siren of lost treasure in the North, mourns its youth and warns us all like a low horn in a deep fog. Nothing changes, not the light, not the rivers, not the bedrock.

Manhattan is the island that never forgets, a self-conscious island f ull of wind. New York, Manhattan, my Kali, my cruel host, my love, this rebuke is for you.

—Janet Capron

Living Next to St. Luke’s Tower “Yes, it is 18 degrees but you gotta get out of the house.”

I found myself on Barrow Street headed for D’Agostino’s weekly sales, walking past the now newly publicized St. Luke’s row of 1820s town houses, when a door opened and a dog pulled his owner down the steps and I asked, “Pardon, do you live in this house?”

“Yes,” said Doctor Adriano Borgna, with a base cello Italian accent. I asked if he knew of the 15-story apartment house that would go up just 50 yards from where we were talking. He raised eyebrows and he smiled.

“Yes,” he said and then explained that his wife had gone to the Landmark Preservation Committee meeting and “40 people spoke against it and only a f ew f or it.” I

DYLAN THOMAS AT THE WHITE HORSE: The First Minister of Wales, Carwyn Jones and the granddaughter of Dylan Thomas, Hannah Ellis with WestView Publisher George Capsis, who recalled listening to the poet recite in the back room 61 years ago on the poet's 100th anniversary. Photo by Maggie Berkvist.

BIKES NEED A HOME: The miles of city bike paths have encouraged bike use, but three flights up is too far to haul. The DOT is offering bike racks to avoid street clustering.

Photos by Maggie Berkvist.

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150 Charles Street: Large but Friendly

By Barry Benepe

How can one build a relatively large building in the West Village while still maintaining its character? The new building designed by Rick Cook nearing completion at 150 Charles Street is the most recent new major residential development in the West Village.

Occupying the shell of the f ormer Whitehall warehouse between West 10th and Charles Streets, it manages to retreat from the street walls while rising in the center. It is appropriate for a building, a block f rom the waterf ront, to appear as a ship in a dock rather than a dominating urban tower. In fact, one of Cook’s favorite photos is by Berenice Abbot showing the last of the wooden sailing ships at the foot of Charles Lane.

The current C1-7 commercial zoning (R8 residential equivalent) would permit a 35-story tower. Instead, the architect showed his client a drawing of five figures.

Three of them are standing erect like sentinels in white tuxedos. They represent the three existing 16-story Richard Meier towers to the north. The f ourth and fifth are

crouched modestly below them, def erring to the formal presence of the tall standing trio to the north. The duo represent a more humble presence in earthy brown tones, more in character with the Village where 150 Charles “comf ortably cascades back from the street,” in the words of Mr. Cook.

The resulting experience to a passerby is a modest scale with the building rising only three stories before it sets back. The entire building contains 91 dwelling units on a lot of just under 47,500 square feet.

“We wanted an intimate connection to street lif e,” said Cook “by providing individual street level entrances to the ten three-story town houses.” The building then steps back in a careful composition of stacked volumes that preserve the neighborhood’s scale and romantic character. These surround 30,000 square f eet of landscaped space distributed throughout lush green roof tops, planted terraces, and courtyards. The east and west end of the one acre site are capped with existing buildings, East Village houses to the east and commercial buildings to the west.

The project is described by the architect as “incorporating ideas of biophilia, our in-

MAINTAINING WEST VILLAGE CHARACTER: A view of the new 150 Charles Street from Hudson River Park. Photo by Maggie Berkvist.

herent connection to the environment, access to nature throughout the building is related to themes of prospect (wide, open

views) and refuge (safe and protected interior spaces).” Despite the architect’s desire to play a modest retiring role alongside the Meier towers, the view from the Hudson River Park shows a building as high as those towers as a very dominating presence in the surrounding neighborhood.

Rick Cook’s own office on the top floor at 242 Sixth Avenue is surrounded by curving glass windows facing toward the Empire State Building and the Metropolitan Lif e Tower overlooking Madison Square.

A perennial seasonal flowering meadow surrounds the office, providing a green roof wildlife habitat. Cook sees his roof and the one at 150 Charles as parts of a growing future urban ecosystem supporting the migratory and feeding patterns of bird life.

The office is adorned with hundreds of caref ully sculpted project models, delicate works of jewel-like architectural art. Each project is approached with individual care and sensitivity to its surroundings. Rick Cook’s own narrative is rich in historic ref erences told with the experience of a thoughtful teacher. 150 Charles Street reflects this thoughtfulness.

Meet Shino Tanikawa, Education Leader and Activist

By Sara Hendrickson

Shino Tanikawa began her foray into New York City’s public school system “f rom the bottom up” when she volunteered f or a f undraiser at PS 3 in the West Village where her two daughters, now ages 19 and 11, attended school through 5th grade.

She quickly progressed to PTA Treasurer and Co-President, and on to the District 2 PTA Presidents’ Council as Treasurer.

Tanikawa was elected last June for a second two-year term on the Community Education Council for District 2 (CECD2), and again chosen by her fellow CECD2 members to serve as President. District 2 is the largest of the city’s 32 districts, with 25,000 students, spanning a vast area f rom the southern tip of Manhattan, to 59th Street on the west side, and 96th Street on the east side. CECs are advisory bodies to ensure parents and the public have input into education policies and decision-making for PK-8 schools, with the authority to approve school zoning lines. In addition to her seemingly round-the-clock work f or city schools, Tanikawa is District Manager of NYC Soil & Water Conservation District, an agency that manages conservation projects to protect natural resources and promote the health and welfare of the city.

WVN: Many think that CECs should have more authority beyond just zoning decisions, particularly the authority to approve school closures and charter school co-locations. What is your position?

BOOTS-ON-THE-GROUND EXPERT: Shino Tanikawa offers valuable insight into city schools. Photo courtesy of Shino Tanikawa.

Tanikawa: The more power we have, the more people might be interested in running for the CEC, which is a good thing. But we have to be careful of what we wish for. It’s a huge responsibility. You really have to spend a lot of time looking at everything to make any particular decision that affects students. I don’t want CECs to become luxury positions where only those who don’t have to work can serve. I think that’s wrong.

WVN: Mayor de Blasio’s education platform during the campaign included granting CECs an advisory vote on school co-locations and

closings, which de Blasio cleverly called a new Unif orm Parental Engagement Procedure, or UPEP, analogous to ULURP (Unif orm Land Use Review Procedure) that community boards have over land use decisions in the city. Will that be enough in your opinion?

Tanikawa: I do think that’s a better way to go - that we have the advisory vote and it will be taken seriously. It’s not going to be the final say, but if they vote against our resolution they better have a very good reason why they did that. I might be the minority opinion on this, because there are a lot of CEC members that want more absolute authority.

WVN: Do you have any concerns about de Blasio as our new Mayor?

Tanikawa: I am concerned about him delivering on his promise to listen to parents and include us. He might find that to do it right in a more democratic process will take too much time and it is just easier to make decisions the way Bloomberg did. He is also in support of Mayoral control and I’m not. I don’t want a system that depends on the temperament of one person.

WVN NOTE: Under the city’s Mayoral control system, the Mayor appoints 8 of the 13 members on the Panel f or Educational Policy (PEP), which governs the city’s school system. De Blasio has never offered to give up his 8 seats, but committed to appoint more parents and other community members, a promise he has followed through on, judging by his recently announced appointees.

WVN: Do you think CECs should be given at least one PEP seat to appoint one of their CEC

members?

Tanikawa: That is appealing to me, but I think first we have to strengthen the CECs bef ore we can get there. We are starting to come together as councils city-wide, so maybe it’s possible. Hopefully, with the new administration we won’t be fighting co-locations and school closures every month, and we will have more time to network with each other.

WVN NOTE: Soon after de Blasio was elected Mayor, over half of the CECs and citywide councils came together in what their joint press release announced as “an unprecedented show of unity,” collectively signing on to a comprehensive letter to de Blasio outlining key issues f or city schools and urging action in partnership with parents.

WVN: Why is a city-wide network of CECs so important?

Tanikawa: Because issues in my district might be relevant in other districts. That kind of commonality gives us strength, so that we’re not the only ones saying this is wrong.

Or, we’re not saying this is wrong when other districts are saying this is right. It will put each district in city-wide perspective, which I think is necessary.

WVN: As President of CECD2, what do you see as the priorities looking at the year ahead and more long-term?

Tanikawa: In the coming year, we are looking at middle school admissions. Lack of capacity for middle school is a serious con-

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March 2014 WestView News 5

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Closing Hospitals Saves Money: A Failed Theory

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Armanda Squadrilli “THE CLOSER”

By Alec Pruchnicki, MD

“...many a beautiful theory was slain by an ugly fact.”

Thomas Huxley One of the many reasons for the closing of St. Vincent's Hospital is that health policy experts in Washington, Albany, and even New York City, and the politicians who listen to them, believe that closing hospitals will save substantial amounts of money. This theory is wrong.

Both common sense and academic studies indicate this.

Those of us who can remember back to the 1970s in New York City, know that medical costs were blamed for part of the crisis of that period. The city had many more hospital beds than most of the country, in proportion to population, and medical care was a great deal more expensive here. Policy makers said that these two facts were related and so if hospital beds were decreased, so would overall medical costs. According to a study done f or the Committee of Interns and Residents by Alan Sager and Deborah Socolar of Boston University, there were 119 hospitals in the city in the 1970s and 55 in 2006. However, during this dramatic drop in hospitals, costs kept increasing, and New York City is still a cost outlier when compared to the rest of the country.

As f ar as the rest of the country in concerned, total hospital beds peaked in 1980 and fell by about 35% by about 2004. Yet, during this same time, U.S. medical spending took off and now is 50% higher than the next most expensive system, while quality of care ranks us somewhere around 20 or 30th in the world, depending on what measures are used. Massive cuts in hospital beds did not improve cost control or quality. The theory is wrong. Yet, in a recent interview f or NY 1, Stephen Berger, who heads the commission that advocates closing New York hospitals, insisted that more closings are needed to decrease costs and improve quality.

There are many reasons why this approach does not save money. Many hospitals that close are smaller, less expensive ones, sometimes much more efficient ones also, and the larger expensive hospitals expand to take up the slack. New York City has a very high number of teaching hospitals that educate a disproportionate number of medical students and residents, and teaching hospitals are usually much more expensive than non-teaching ones. Doctors continue to practice medicine the same way and will still want to hospitalize patients who they believe need it, and these will go to the overburdened remaining hospitals. Remaining hospitals have less competition and can raise prices significantly, which they have done.

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FEWER HOSPITAL BEDS IN THE U.S. DO NOT PROVIDE LOWER COSTS NOR BETTER QUALITY: Although medical care in Germany is much cheaper than the US, and health outcomes much better, it is still able to afford state-of-the-art hospitals, like the Frankfurt University Medical Center (above) and provides its citizens with 8.3 hospital beds per 1000 people while the US provides 3.1 beds.

There are many reasons why this approach does not improve quality. Out-patient facilities are supposed to provide more care while in-patient beds decrease. However, most hospitals have out-patient clinics that care for people who have fewer options (poor, uninsured, homeless, etc.) and closing the hospitals closes these clinics, leaving potentially sick patients with decreased access to care.

Some will be able to arrange new medical access and some won't have that option. A disproportionate number of closed hospitals are in poorer black and Hispanic neighborhoods and so a geographic segregation occurs in health care access.

When these facts are pointed out to hospital closing proponents, the response is usually that more hospitals need to be closed, even though it hasn't helped bef ore, and more out-patient facilities should be opened, even though they do not always reach people who need them.

There is one other measure to show that this theory is wrong. Other industrialized countries with developed health care systems also have a lot of hospitals. According to some international surveys, as many as 25 other countries have as many or many more hospital beds than the United States does, and their systems work just fine. They are all significantly less expensive than ours and significantly of higher quality than ours.

The f acts presented here are just a f ew, there are many more that disproves the theory. Its proponents, and the politicians who support them are desperately doubling downing on this approach in the futile hope that maybe they can somehow get it to work in the future. How many more St. Vincent's Hospitals have to close before they abandon this failed theory?

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Affordable Housing Debate Rages

By Brian Pape Affordable housing seems to be what everyone wants, but fewer and fewer are able to find it in NYC. The Village Independent Democrats screened the documentary The Vanishing City on February 16, which, along with a table full of handouts and a Q&A session with panelists, presented viewpoints on the ‘hot’ topic of affordable housing in NYC. One of the handouts offered these solutions for the vanishing affordability. Three main demands were to: a) Redefine affordable housing by using neighborhood median income in formulas and make subsidized housing permanently regulated; b) Regulate and tax speculators by ending tax abatements, tax upzoned property to fund public domain improvements, and raise taxes on vacant property; and c) Change government structures to give more power of local decisions to Community Boards.

Attorney Seth Miller on the panel suggested that the City license residential managers, so that bad managers could be barred for improper practices.

Moses Gates, also a panelist, remarked that taxes and land costs are the greatest development variables area to area, since construction costs are similar in the boroughs.

Author Tom Angotti of New York For Sale was in the film and on the panel, and summarized several ideas f rom his book, including the importance of preservation of existing (usually affordable) housing stock, and the presence of community planning to provide a comprehensive look at changes to a locale.

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A Brief History of Rent Controls To help understand where we are, we need to know how we got here.

The City’s website (nyc.gov/html/housing info) for the NYC Affordable Housing Resource Center gives highlights of Rent Stabilization Systems history. They quote the Emergency Rent Laws of 1920 as the first of many attempts to alleviate a pressing shortage of housing in the aftermath of WWI. These rent f reeze laws were repealed in 1929.

For similar reasons, federal rent controls were adopted in 1943, and when these expired in 1951, New York State adopted them. For a period f rom 1962 to 1983, rent control powers were transf erred to NYC. The City adopted Rent Stabilization (RSS) laws in 1969 and established the Rent Guideline Board (RGB). In 1983 the administration of controls again

transferred to the State.

The legal foundation for governmental control of private ownership goes back to European and Magna Carta history, and many principals were carried over to the colonies, and eventually the US Constitution. In the Fifth Amendment to the constitution, the “Takings” clause provides that private property shall not be taken f or public use without just compensation. The clause remains controversial due to the changing perceptions of how the terms are defined (private property, taken, public use, just). For rent controls, court challenges have upheld the legitimacy of these measures. What is not settled is whether a government can legally take private property and sell it back to another private entity f or development, which is happening in some areas as part of “gentrification.”

Where Are We Now? According to the City, there are one million rent stabilized housing units in NYC. RSS covers most units in buildings with 6 units or more, and regulates private apartment rents (about 2/3 of all rentals). Rent is not based on household income, and there are no income eligibility requirements. Rents are set by the state RSS. The Metropolitan Council on Housing (metcouncilhousing.org) states that the NYCHA has 175,000 units, Section 8 Project buildings have 90,000 units, and Section 8 in private units have an indeterminate number. For these programs, tenants pay 30% of the household income for rent.

The Mitchell-Lama program developed 140,000 units. These are typically private building owners that can opt out after 20 years, or rent stabilization contracts can be negotiated. These were meant as middleincome housing. Each building has its own waiting list.

New ‘Affordable Housing’ construction is financed by Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC) or other programs, such as 80/20, or inclusionary zoning. Eligibility varies f rom building to building, and usually has an income range for initial acceptance. Some units are offered by lotteries.

A recent report by the Independent Budget Office (Crain’s Feb. 18 by Greg David) shows that over the last 10 years, inclusionary zoning generated 3470 new units, and 421-a program generated 3392 new units of affordable housing. The Bloomberg administration’s goal of 165,000 affordable units built or pre-

continued on page 7

March 2014 WestView News 7

www.westviewnews.org served is targeted to be met by the end of this year. That would mean their goal is met with almost 158,000 preserved units.

(Mayor de Blasio’s goal is 200,000 units over the next 10 years.)

NYU’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy (f urmancenter.org/institute) states that NYC has 175 affordable housing programs, many obviously for very distinct sub-groups.

What‘s Next?

Just as active, interested citizens came to the VID film screening and discussed these issues, so too are many others par-

ticipating in community board meetings, landmark preservation and zoning meetings, and many other activities to express their wishes.

Housing laws help protect tenants.

Many organizations are actively helping people with housing problems.

There is strength in numbers, and rent regulation is a pluralistic endeavor. History has shown that when neighbors act together, much can be achieved.

Brian Pape, AIA, LEED-AP, LRES Green Architect & Historic Specialist Architectural Editor, West View News

City Vanishes continued from page 1

Blasio has repeatedly pledged to refurbish or build 200,000 units of affordable housing in the next 10 years and how did he plan to do it? Would he build public “public housing” – something like Stuyvesant town? Would he try “slum clearance” and via eminent domain claim depressed neighborhoods in Brooklyn and the Bronx. Would he take over buildings from slumlords and fix them up?

Would he provide rent subsidies f or those who can’t afford “luxury” apartments? Just how would he bridge the every widening gap between the super-rich and us Western Beef sale shoppers?

The film makers, Fiore De Rosa and Jen Senko, are both West Villagers and had the idea to make the film because they began to realize that the only people lef t in the West Village were those lucky enough to be in rent regulated apartments or who bought their apartment 20 years ago and new “creative” people like themselves, could not afford to move in.

The irony is that filmmaker Fiore excused his not returning my call because he was repairing leaks in buildings that he serviced and agreed we were losing rent regulated apartments as tenants moved or died and that slumlords would simply not making any repairs in the hope of forcing them out.

The film did not offer any solutions and I am going to see if I can get back to some of my de Blasio contacts to see if we can find the man or woman that de Blasio has designated to build the 200,000 units of affordable housing. However, this issue is going to press so I thought I would take you back in time – way back – to when New York had lots of affordable apartments.

Back, before the war, with the first warm days of spring, my German mother would say, “I think we should move,” and we would go f or a walk on the Upper West Side. If she saw an apartment building just a little bit nicer than the one we were living, in she would look up to the sign “Apartments to Let” to see if they had any 2 or 3-bedroom ones and if the sign said

yes, she would have me push the shining brass bell marked “Super” and f rom the basement he came with an enormous ring of keys. She would ask, “Do you have a 3-bedroom on the top floor?” (Top floor apartments were cheaper and sunnier.)

We would climb the four flights and the super would open the door to reveal a newly painted apartment with newly varnished floors and a paper runner down the long hall with bedroom af ter bedroom off it to the sunny dining room and parlor in the front.

“How much?” My mother would ask and if it were over $50 dollars, I knew we were in for some negotiations. “How many months concession?” was my mother’s next question. Now, I feel you young sixty-year-olds should know that “two months concession” meant how many months f ree of rent was the desperate landlord willing to give to get anybody – just anybody – to take the apartment.

So many men were out of work, so movers could recruit labor at fifty cents an hour, the minimum wage, so moving never cost more than $15 and workman would carry heavy barrels of china on their backs up four flights without a complaint.

My Greek father was a business broker who helped to buy and sell restaurants and bars owned by fellow Greeks. Indeed, he was the first such broker in New York and had his office in the Times building and he would drive me down to the office and park legally right in front of the door.

Very often, we ran out of money to pay the rent and the landlord would come to visit. In the last family apartment on Tieman Place, the landlord was a very nice, cultured German Jew with an academic Van Dyke beard who had fled Hitler with just enough money to buy an apartment building. My mother would sit talking German for a half hour and say later, “His German is so beautiful.”

When a year or two later the spring would come, my mother would say “I think we should move.”

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Going to Prison with Philip Johnson

By George Capsis

“Oh wow,” I thought, as I read the Times article on what to do with the rusting 1964 World’s Fair New York State Pavilion. I jumped because the so-called exhibits in that suspended steel oval with a 226 f oot swivel stick tower were designed by the firm of Robinson, Capsis, Stern – yes, this George Capsis.

I had done a deal for RCA to swap equipment at cost f or f ree space just under the “Space Needle” in the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair and met Al Stern and Jack Robinson who were doing the “World of the Future” exhibit in that same pavilion.

Al, who had worked with Billy Rose in the 1939 New York Fair, stood less than five feet tall and delivered measured, self-protective insults with a theatrical accent (he could not resist a good insult even when directed at the judge testifying in court). He married early, only to discover his wife cheating and switched to the other side, which brings us to Jack Robinson, who was more openly gay.

“We would like you to become our f ull partner,” offered Al Stern and as I sensed later, it was that they needed a straight partner that could meet and help sell to straight clients.

My big contribution was getting Clairol as a client. Hair dye producer Clairol (they started at 14th Street and 6th Avenue) had only one obsession and that was to secure 10 minutes of riveted attention while they sold “if I have only have one lif e to live let me live it as a blond.” I remember the Borden’s “Rotolactor” f rom the 1939 Fair, in which cows entered a stall on a slowly revolving turn table and were milked leaving the stall for the next cow.

We could mathematically deliver how many women the Clairol Carousel (my name) would deliver the booth and had a mirror in which they could see themselves

Education Activist continued from page 4

cern too. Next year is the huge bubble that created a lot of wait lists four year ago when we had 100 kids wait listed for kindergarten.

These students are going to be in 5th grade next year, and af ter that looking for middle school seats. When we have a capacity shortage, the admissions process becomes even more problematic.

WVN: What else is on the radar screen f or CECD2?

Tanikawa: We have to be monitoring overcrowding in Community Board 1 [Lower Manhattan]. When the kindergarten application process is over, if we end up with another 150 students who don’t have a seat, I want to be sure the DOE has some kind of plan of what to do with those kids who can’t

HISTORIC LANDMARK OR EXPENSIVE TEAR DOWN?: Queens preservationist debate whether the 1964 Philip Johnson New York State Pavilion is worth saving.

in different color shades; I invited Jackie Kennedy for a ride.

Back to the Times article.

Philip Johnson, who, according to Wikipedia, came out very early and was known as the “Gay Architect,” designed the New York State Pavilion. Now, Wikipedia has a startling revelation that Johnson right up to 1940 was openly pro-Nazi and openly anti-Semitic. Wow! Perhaps his willingness to entertain such an outrage is the key to his design “philosophy” – he didn’t so much design as allowed a momentary design outrage to find his pencil and bang, he made the AT&T building look like a Chippendale dresser. Fif teen years af ter I had viewed Johnson’s unmade New Canaan bed, we were scheduled to meet to

talk about what world visitors would learn about New York State when they walked under the red and white hanging plastic cover held aloft by an oval ring and a series of reinforced concert pillars.

Johnson giggled as he repeatedly said, “We have no money f or the exhibits. I spent it all on the tent – tee hee.”

That was the problem. While Johnson whipped off a sketch seemingly on the back of an envelope, the real architects and structural engineers made it a reality. It ate all of the budget his pal Governor Nelson Rockefeller had given him, “tee hee.”

I can’t remember anymore how much was lef t f or the exhibits, but it was practically nothing and we had another problem, the Johnson tent had no walls – the exhibits had

to be rain proof. Jack Robinson did them and they were like Calder “mobiles” – sheets of steel fitted together with “exhibits” etched or attached, not great.

Yet at that meeting, half a century ago, the Times article of today got its start.

One of the requirements of all f air pavilion budgets was, as it was in the 1939 Fair, that money had to be set aside to tear the building down af ter the f air and leave the place a park. However, profligate Johnson had simple ignored it and commented, “Oh, oh, we have no money to tear it down, tee hee, they are going to put us all in prison tee hee.”

Indeed, right now “it will cost $14 million just to demolish the site” and I wish they would, and I wish they would.

fit into those schools.

WVN: District 2 is such a huge district - do you think it should be reduced in size?

Tanikawa: I am not opposed to that, as it is a little unwieldy. That is a State legislation issue. But now that we have become a less diverse district as a whole, if you further chop it down, some smaller sections will be even less diverse than we are now. That is not desirable since I believe diversity in our student body is critically important.

WVN: There has been controversy and even a law suit around the CEC election process. [Under the current system, only three PTA officers per school vote on CEC candidates.] Should the election process be changed?

Tanikawa: I do think every parent should vote. Now you can be elected with only three votes. That’s not right, and that’s one of the reasons we’re not taken seriously - we’re not considered elected. Also, we still have parents who don’t know what the CEC is. There

might be a way to stagger the election so we don’t totally turn over. This year, CECD2 was lucky, because many of the members decided to run again, so there was about half of us who continued on. That kind of continuity is critical.

WVN: Was there a spark that ignited your activism?

Tanikawa: What really got me introduced to other activists was Lobby Day. The Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Council hosted lobby day where parent activists worked with the UFT [teachers union] or whoever else had resources to get buses to send parents up to Albany, usually around budget time, to meet with Assembly members and State Senators.

WVN: How do you open doors at huge bureaucracies like the DOE, up in Albany, and with local politicians? Any advice for other activists?

Tanikawa: It sounds simple, but I think being nice always works. Even if you’re an-

gry, if you want somebody to listen to you, you have to put your anger somewhere else.

I guess I learned this the hard way working with my teenage daughter. If you want someone to pay attention to you, whether it’s speaking or writing a letter, if you start yelling, people are not going to listen. So I try to live by that rule, to make sure that what you’re saying is being heard.

WVN: Can you see yourself on CECD2 f or some more years ahead?

I’m eligible to run until my daughter is in 10th grade, and she’s in 6th grade now, but I don’t think that f ar. I wasn’t going to run again this term, but I thought, we’re going to have a new Mayor, I have to be here. We ended up with an incredible team on the CECD2. We did last term as well. We can disagree and still be f riends. I love that it’s OK not to vote the same way - it’s actually better. There is a diversity of opinion, and we can still go have a drink together.

March 2014 WestView News 9

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Café au Go Go Revisited

By Parisa Emaili

Fifty years ago, Café au Go Go, an incubator of talent that ranged from rock, jazz and f olk to stand-up comedy with perf ormers such as Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Jefferson Airplane, B.B. King, Joni Mitchell, Cream, Muddy Waters, Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, George Carlin and Lily Tomlin, opened its doors to the Greenwich Village scene. Though the Café lasted just over five years, it made a lasting impression to those who f requented the venue and those who only know it through history. In honor of the would-be 50th anniversary, Greenwich House Music School has launched an eight-week tribute series commemorating the Café’s eclectic past.

“The Caf é au Go Go Revisited f estival pays homage to the ingenuity and imagination of our one-time neighbor,” says Rachel Black, Director of Green-

wich House Music School, whose vision to honor this period of Greenwich Village’s artistic history led to the production of the festival. “That spirit is at the heart of the work we do at Greenwich House and is reflected in the line-up for this inaugural festival.”

Ms. Black has invited Jennie Wasserman, previously of Carnegie Hall and Joe’s Pub and currently a member of the programming team at Jazz at Lincoln Center, to book the Café au Go Go Revisited f estival. Assembling an impressive line-up of artists covering the fields of jazz, blues, folk, chamber pop, Americana, classic soul and R&B, reflecting the diversity of programming that made Caf é au Go Go great, Ms. Wasserman did not disappoint.

Live perf ormances begin March 6 at Greenwich House Music School, 46 Barrow Street, and will continue every Thurs-

Post Attacks Charles Street Ship Owner

By George Capsis

“Take a look at this,” said Jorge, with a triumphant smile on his face as he dropped the Post on my desk. The headline read, “TYCOON TANKS AGAIN” next to a photo of a handsome 51 year-old lion headed Peter Georgiopoulos and supermodel Karan Young, his bride and mother of their two sons.

In the same photo appears their double brownstone mansion on Charles and West 4th Streets. The article included how the Greek American might lose one of his shipping companies because it had missed a $3 million debt payment this week.

Now, as it happens when the Georgiopoulos f amily moved in, not too many years ago, I struck up a conversation with Karan as she stood waiting f or the movers who explained that her husband had a Greek name (son of George) and was a ship owner. He did not grow up speaking Greek and had only learned it as an adult. When I explained that my father was Greek, she said, "You have to meet Peter," and later made him get out of the car they were driving, to ring my bell and shake my hand.

When we moved to Charles nearly 50 years ago, the two building were owned by an Irish-American f amily that operated a cluttered grocery store where Mary’s Fish Camp is today. Peter Georgiopoulos has been

very generous to the Charles Street Association and always gives a donation f or whatever event he attends.

According to the Post, he claimed in 2008 to have made $2 billion. A Google search revealed a yacht and an estate, so I don’t think we need worry too much f or the Georgiopoulos kids.

In 1927, when my f ather and mother were return to New York from Greece after my uncle had unsuccessfully run as mayor of Salonika, they met a Greek mother, Georgiopoulos, with her three daughters who, when they got to New York changed their name to “George.”

Our young Mr. Georgiopoulos grew up in the Bronx, attended Bronx Science bef ore going to college and then Wall Street. He learned how to trade ships and the changing price of cargo. Karan is a name in fashion and she dated Donald Trump just before she married Mr. Georgiopoulos - she became Greek Orthodox, which indicates that Peter is still a “real” Greek.

Two weeks ago, I tried to leave him a note to allow permission to put a bench across the street in front of Sevilla, dedicated to Andromache (Maggie) Capsis but he never got back to me.

Maggie’s name was, before I married her, Andromache Geanocopoulos.

I hope he reads this and says “yes.”

day through April 24, all starting at 8pm.

Tickets to all shows are available online or in person at Greenwich House Music School. Perf ormances are general admission, first come first seated, and open to all ages.

Café au Go Go Revisited Performance Schedule: March 6: Dom Flemons and Eli “Paperboy” Reed make their formal debut as a live duet, in this evening of acoustic blues, gospel and country favorites.

March 13: Falu, a Mumbai-born singer known for her fusion of rock, jazz, funk and traditional Indian music, explores the classical side of her musical heritage.

March 20: Pharaoh’s Daughter brings psychedelic and pop sensibilities to their blend of Hasidic, Middle Eastern, African, Eastern European and Mediterranean influences.

March 27: Michael Daves and Tony Trischka will play new and traditional bluegrass music (including excerpts f rom Trischka’s new album, “Great Big World.”).

April 3: Julia Haltigan, a New York native, will present modern songs in the West Village singer-songwriter tradition.

April 10: “Getz Au Go Go” Revisited: With the influential Stan Getz album “Getz Au Go Go” as inspiration, New York’s top Brazilian musicians will explore highlights of 60s bossa nova.

April 17: David Amram and The Amigos Band. “Renaissance Man of American Music” Amram returns to his Village roots, alongside his newest quartet of collaborators.

April 24: Deva Mahal. The daughter of folk-blues legend Taj Mahal performs blues and R&B grounded in the 60s Southern Soul tradition.

Philip Seymour Hoffman – Reflections

By Irv Bauer

With great sadness I heard of the passing, the death, of Philip Seymour Hoffman.

He was a Village neighborhood guy. I was a sympathetic acquaintance, passed him on Seventh or Greenwich Avenue. We’d nod a brief acknowledging smile and go our separate ways.

My wife Vimi, and I, would see him at Good Stuff, the coffee shop on 14th Street off Sixth Avenue, a good place for breakfast. He’d be sitting alone at the counter or at a small table.

The same hint of a smile, a nod, then back to his privacy.

I had seen all his films, most of them. I marveled at his choices and his chops. He was fiercely gifted. The actor of our age. I had gone to see him perform on Broadway in Long Days Journey Into Night, the great Eugene O’Neil play. He played the older son, Jamie, the one pursued by the demons of alcohol. As usual he have a uniquely singular, unusual, riveting performance. I lef t the theater dazzled by his artistry, hurried along to the Seventh Avenue subway at 42nd Street, returning to the safety of my comfort zone, Greenwich Village.

The local train came first and since it didn’t matter for the short distance to 14th Street, I got on. Just as the doors were closing there was a last rush to get in. I stuck my hand out to hold the door. It was Philip Seymour Hoffman. Boy he had gotten out of the theater fast, curtain calls, make up. He thanked me. A flickering smile of recognition and we talked the f ew stations downtown. Nothing earth shattering – his performance, a bit about the play. I tried not to gush. He was kind. We dropped it. We talked about play

HOFFMAN WAS FIERCELY GIFTED: Author Irv Bauer and recently deceased actor Philip Seymour Hoffman (above) - just neighborhood guys, as Bauer reflects upon their shared subway ride chat.

development, a long time interest of mine.

He spoke of his prof ound involvement with the Labyrinth Theater Company. We got off together at 14th Street, walked to 12th Street still small talking. “I’ll see ya’round.” We shook hands. I went towards 6th Avenue he turned towards Jane Street.

I thought that when I was an actor in the Village oh so many years ago, I would have liked to have been in a play with Philip Seymour Hoffman. Then we would have become family. Now we were just neighborhood guys nodding and smiling acceptance of our Village fraternity. He was a great actor. He was a good guy. I wish that we had talked more. I’ll miss seeing him around.

10 WestView News March 2014

Voices of Ascension presents “Mendelssohn Festival”

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How the Landmarks Preservation Commission Works

By Amanda Davis, Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation

Pureum Jo, soprano Carlton Moe, tenor Andrew Henderson, organ

Wednesday, March 26, 2014 at 8:00pm The Church of the Ascension Fifth Avenue at Tenth Street New York City Tickets are available at www.voicesofascension.org.

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As Mayor de Blasio continues the process of appointing new leadership at each city agency, the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) will likely see its longtime chair, Robert Tierney, replaced as well.

Chair Tierney was appointed at the beginning of the Bloomberg administration, which means he has served as the head of the LPC for well over a decade. Who the new LPC chair will be is only speculation at this point; as the smallest city agency, it is not uncommon that a new appointment here could take months. It is also possible that the mayor could re-appoint Chair Tierney, though this seems unlikely.

You may ask: what does the Landmarks Preservation Commission do? In a nutshell, it’s the city agency responsible f or identifying, designating, and then regulating the city’s landmarks and historic districts. Changes to designated landmarks or buildings within historic districts are subject to the approval of the LPC; once a building owner receives an LPC permit, the Department of Buildings (DOB) then has the go ahead to issue a permit as well.

Minor alterations are typically handled by LPC staff. Major alterations, new building proposals, and other applications must be reviewed by the agency’s eleven commissioners at Tuesday public hearings and public meetings. The public is welcome to attend both, although testimony is only taken at public hearings (public meetings are only held when the commissioners request f urther revisions to the application presented at the initial public hearing).

These commissioners consist of the fulltime chair and ten part-time commissioners appointed by the mayor. Appointments are subject to the approval of the City Council, though it has never in memory turned

one down. The Landmarks Law dictates that these commissioners must comprise at least three architects, one historian, one city planner or landscape architect, and one realtor; at least one resident of each borough is also required. With the exception of the chair, the commissioners serve three-year terms that can be renewed.

While all eleven commissioners have an equal role in deciding matters presented to the commission for a vote, the chair really has an outsized role in relation to the agency’s work, which is why that appointment garners so much more attention and prominence. The chair manages the agency, determines the staff which makes many of the most important decisions, and influences the commissioners’ decisions. He/ she also decides which proposals for landmark designation will be considered by the commission, how quickly they will be considered, and what the boundaries of a proposed historic district will be.

Thus, when a community advocates f or landmark designation, it is really the chair who decides if the LPC will pursue it and when, and what buildings will be included or excluded. (In some cases, a proposed district moves ahead before or after a wellconnected developer or influential institution has been able to demolish a building or construct a new, out-of -scale one.)

Once an area is selected, a proposed district comes bef ore the f ull commission f or a vote. The commission can simply vote it up or down with the option of shrinking the boundaries; it virtually never votes down a landmark proposal the chair has brought f orward (though f ew are brought f orward in comparison to the number of requests received). While boundaries are of ten reduced, this is almost always initiated by the chair rather than the other commissioners,

continued on page 11

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Air Rights from Hudson River Park Even More Vast Than Previously Disclosed Advocates Call for Measures to Limit Use, and Prevent Overdevelopment

By Andrew Berman, Executive Director, Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation At a Community Board 2 public hearing in February, Hudson River Park Trust President Madelyn Wils for the first time publicly acknowledged that the legislation passed by the State legislature in 2013 creates and allows the transf er of air rights from a vastly larger portion of the Hudson River Park than previously disclosed. Instead of only creating transferable air rights f rom the nine “commercial piers” within the park (where some limited development is currently allowed), as previously claimed, the legislation actually creates transferable air rights from all the park’s piers, numbering more than twenty. This increases by hundreds of thousands, and possibly millions, of square feet the amount of air rights the legislation allows to be transf erred from the park to inland areas. The legislation was introduced by Assemblymembers Deborah Glick and Richard Gottf ried, and approved by local State Senators Brad Hoylman and Daniel Squadron.

That the legislation might have enabled air rights transf ers f rom more than just the commercial piers in the park is a point the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation had been raising for some time. This was one of many outstanding questions about the impact of the legislation which remains unclear, including how f ar inland the air rights could be transferred and what process is required for transferring them.

Confirmation of this inf ormation drives home the point that limits need to be placed on the use of the air rights from the park, or we will one day find ourselves f acing enormous and inappropriate development inland

How the Landmarks Preservation Commission Works continued from page 10

who will typically approve his proposed changes.

The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP) has written to Mayor de Blasio asking that a structural engineer be appointed as an LPC commissioner. One of the greatest concerns in rowhouse-heavy neighborhoods such as Greenwich Village is the large amount of excavations that threaten f ragile small

f ueled by air rights transf ers. Thus f ar the Trust and some of the other proponents of the legislation have said these f ears are unfounded – the Trust and City will never use air rights from beyond the commercial piers, and air rights transf ers can only happen when approved through the ULURP process, which requires approval of the City Planning Commission and City Council, with input f rom the Community Board and the Borough President.

But this only tells part of the story. The ULURP process is f ar f rom a guarantee of a good outcome; it has given us the NYU expansion plan, the St. Vincent’s/Rudin rezoning, and the Chelsea Market expansion, to name a few. And verbal assurances about what current players will or won’t do not only have no impact upon f uture players, but are not even binding upon current players. It is certainly not without precedent f or government officials to promise one thing and later do another, especially when a potentially vast amount of real estate money is involved.

Instead, the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation and more than a dozen west side community groups are calling on city and state officials to take steps to ensure that Hudson River Park air rights are not used inappropriately in the future, and do not result in overdevelopment of our neighborhood. We are calling for: State and city legislators to prohibit air rights transf ers f rom the non-commercial piers, and extinguish any development rights from recreational areas of the park Exhaustion of measures to f und the park without upzoning our neighborhood bef ore any upzoning is considered. Such measures include pairing any air rights transfer with a downzoning (thus not increasing the allowable size of development), linking air rights

nineteenth century homes. Currently, the LPC def ers structural matters to DOB, but GVSHP wants to see the LPC take a stronger role. Many Village residents will remember the collapse of two 1830s rowhouses owned by renowned photographer Annie Leibovitz; with more and more excavation work taking place underneath or adjacent to these old houses, dangerous incidents like this could happen again.

Landmark and historic district designation is incredibly valuable to our neighborhoods, as it helps retain significant buildings, details, and streetscapes that might otherwise be lost to the wrecking ball. For this reason, GVSHP’s top priority in the years ahead is to continue seeking expanded landmark and historic district protections in our neighborhoods.

transfers to changes in allowable use without increasing the allowable size of development, and assessing a f ee on all new development in air rights transfer zone which would fund the park, thus making funding not dependent upon increasing the allowable size of development.

Establishing what the financial needs of the park are and making approval of any air rights sale contingent upon meeting this established standard of need.

The Trust and city and state officials appear to be very f ocused on coming up with a mechanism that will allow some of the air rights which the State legislation has created to be transferred from the park, thus funding the park by enabling increased development inland. They say they want this done through a consultative process with the community that will result in an outcome which can be broadly supported.

Hopef ully this will be the case, but this only addresses part of the issue created by the legislation creating air rights f rom the park.

It’s good if we create an acceptable mechanism that allows some of the air rights to be

used now. But unless we also prohibit unacceptable uses of the vast remaining pool of air rights in the future, we are setting ourselves up for disaster.

It would be naïve to assume that incredibly powerful real estate interests are not going to seek ways to access these remaining air rights to allow them to build much larger buildings along our waterfront. They only need to find one point in time in the f uture where they can convince the powers that be to let them do this, and once approved, such transfers are irreversible.

That is why it is so important that we insist now upon putting in place saf eguards and limits in relation to the use of air rights, to prevent this f rom taking place. If these are not put in place at the beginning of the process, it is unlikely they ever will be. And without them, I believe it is virtually guaranteed that we will see overuse and abuse of this provision at some point in the future, resulting in irreversible overdevelopment of our waterfront.

To find out more, see www.gvshp.org/airrights.

12 WestView News March 2014

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Testimony of David D. Turner before the Landmarks Preservation Commission regarding the construction of a residential tower at 100 Barrow Street

February 4, 2014 In their presentation, the applicant goes out of its way to remind us “there will be no demolition.”

But there are many ways to demolish something: sometimes by taking a brick f rom a place it should be lef t and sometimes by putting a brick in a place it should not go. The effect of 100 Barrow would be to demolish its architectural and historical context.

No structure has ever abutted 96 Barrow Street. And now, instead of the twenty-two cherry trees that are there, the most wellpreserved Federal house on the block would have a neighbor four times its height. The corner would become a joke of scale, a sort of brick Laurel & Hardy.

The massing of the proposed design is f renetic. Viewed f rom Greenwich Street, the filleted corner under the rounded corner is unprecedented in the Historic District, owing more to art deco than village brownstone or even old law tenement. The use of brick screen railing is not appropriate.

There should be some kind of nominal cornice. The amount of

SUN/SHADOW STUDY: Dashed outline indicates shadow cast from proposed 153 ft. tower onto Rectory garden and Hudson St. - shadow starts on the garden at approximately 2:30pm.

blank street wall is not neighborly.

And then, of course, there’s the height. Let’s come out and admit it — it’s the giraffe in the room.

On that subject, I happened to notice that, in the applicant’s sunlight and shadow study, the days all ended at 3pm. Did anyone else find that strange? I mean, we’re

SUN/SHADOW STUDY: Dashed outline indicates shadow cast from proposed 153 ft. tower onto Barrow St. garden and Hudson St - shadow starts on the garden at approximately 3:15pm.

Images courtesy of David Turner.

talking New York in June, here, not Helsinki in December. So I hired a firm to explore all daylight conditions using the applicant’s publicly available specifications and city tax data f or surrounding lots. This study was conducted by licensed architects at I-Grace Project Development Group. The

results were surprising.

Keep in mind that on a fact sheet available on St. Luke’s website, they claim the tower, “will not cast an additional shadow over the gardens.” But according to this study, on the first day of f all and spring, the tower’s shadow would begin to hit the Rectory Garden around

2:30 and gradually cover it up. By 4:30pm, light that used to reach all the way to the east side of Hudson Street, even all the way to Grove Street, would be completely gone.

From public areas, the ambiance would be substantially dimmed.

On June 21st, the tower’s shadow first hits the Barrow Street Garden around 3:15, engulfing about three-quarters of it (all but the southeast quadrant) by 5 o’clock, before the Archive shadow has even begun to advance east of the Barrow Street townhouses. (You begin to see why the applicant wanted the day to end at three.)

Taken together, this evidence shows material harm to the character and aesthetic of the area in question as viewed from public rights-of -way. I ask you to deny a Certificate of Appropriateness — and out of respect f or Clement Clark Moore’s original vision, to restrict development on the block to the height of the bell tower.

Thank you for this opportunity to speak.

David D. Turner

March 2014 WestView News 13

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Come See, Come Saw

By Keith Michael “February is merely as long as is needed to pass the time until March.”

- Dr. J. R. Stockton Millie, in her corgi-ness, pulls me out of my front door directly to the deepest pile of snow still loitering down the block. She’ll forage. I’ll reminisce.

I like winter. (Don’t throw gravelly ice chunks at me.) However then, I have heat and hot water and electricity, boots, long-johns, sweaters, a coat, scarf, hat and gloves; and I don’t have a car or driveway that needs to be shoveled out again and again. Millie has her tufted fur coat. Birds just have, well: f eathers. I repeat this over and over like a looped YouTube video (have you seen the five-second clip of the corgi puppies running into the kitchen?). I really really don’t understand how birds survive single digit temperatures while we’re shivering even inside all of our layers and are walking with little shuffling steps so as not to up-end on the ice. Okay, part of what I love about winter is the coming back inside from the blinding blue skies or crystalline nights to hot chocolate and hot toddies (try the ones at Left Bank with the orange and cloves) and to a friend’s lighted fireplace.

True, this winter it’s mostly been only the hardiest resident birds enlivening the

streets: the sparrows, starlings, Cardinals, Blue Jays, and commuter crows and hawks.

Recently, there has been a Mockingbird that occasionally soars over Washington Street. I don’t know if it’s been around or just arrived early thinking that spring was finally springing. The gulls seem to be endlessly circling high above. I wonder what they’re seeing f rom up there. Are they looking for Hansel and Gretel leaving behind breadcrumbs to find their way back home? I’ve really been looking but have spotted nary a Chickadee or Tuf ted Titmouse or Nuthatch or even a gray Junco along my usual routes. The winter-guestsonly White-throated Sparrows have been lying low as well (those are the sparrows, conveniently named, that have the white throats). One day there was a Sapsucker. In the sun’s glare I couldn’t tell if it was wearing mittens.

On the river, there have always been, even on the bleakest days, a few stalwart Mallards (with the green heads) and Gadwalls (with the black butts) and Black Ducks (black all over inclusive of their butts) - the males in their dandyish mating finery. Rather than hanging out in their regular spots on the grassy piers, which, nevertheless, haven’t been so grassy, I’ve seen our Brant geese flock more often than not coursing up and down the river in their characteristic beak-

to-tail formation (probably arguing among themselves where to put down). There have been some black-and-white Buffleheads bobbling among the pilings, though some days they’ve had to negotiate with the icepacks jamming up their fishing holes. A trio of Red-breasted Mergansers have been patrolling the open water. I get f rostbite just thinking about ducks and geese with their fleshy feet dangling in the sub-freezing salt water.

For diversion, I’ve taken daytrips out to Floyd Bennett Field and Breezy Point to indulge in the unprecedented winter influx f rom the f ar north of Snowy Owls (I’ve seen at least nine) – one of which reportedly was spotted in Chelsea sitting on the river-railing but I wasn’t so lucky to have been there.

The Witch-hazel has already been blooming for weeks on the Highline, their stringy vermillion or ochre petals unfurling into each other through the frost. Yes, I got a bittersweet twinge knowing that the end

ONE OF WINTER'S RESIDENTS: A hardy Cardinal.

Photo by Keith Michael.

of snow-f estooned branches and icy river panoramas was beginning. I do believe that some tree buds are starting to swell. The dripping icicles are prisming the morning sun.

Millie barks. She’s worked over this snow bank and is ready to move on.

For a schedule of monthly NYC Wild! nature walks visit www.keithmichaelnyc.com.

After “SMYRNA”, Part II

FROM BOTH SIDES

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14 WestView News March 2014

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Science from Away: Backwards Learning Mark M. Green (Sciencefromaway.com)

In 1967, after finishing a fancy education, I received an offer to be an assistant chemistry professor in Ann Arbor, the University of Michigan. I took it and opened a laboratory in May of that year with the intention of doing something original in organic chemistry research. It didn’t turn out to be very usef ul research considering that the focus was on the nature of a chemical world in which all the molecules were so separated as to never come into contact with each other. This means that there would be no such thing as temperature. In those days, in the 1960s, a scientist could do things like that and attain praise and financial support – not possible now, when it’s important to show that something practical can come out of what goes on in the lab.

In September of that year, I met a large class of students, many of whom were trying to go to medical school. I remember standing there in f ront of about 250 of them whose main purpose, I correctly f eared f or too many, was to get me and my course out of the way so they could get where they wanted to go. Well, that’s not a great source of motivation for learning and I imagined I had a better source.

How about showing these students the interesting stuff that organic chemistry is responsible for, like rubber and gasoline and even sexual hormones and then helping them discover the principles I was trying to teach by taking that “stuff ” apart – good idea. However, as for any young professor, there was publish or perish to pay attention to and at any rate, no text book in the world took that approach, which could be called “backwards learning.” It seemed a shame because that’s clearly the way kids learn. Kids learn f rom exposure to things that are too complicated to get the meaning of right away. Mom does not hesitate to say, “I love you,” until the baby learns to speak. Anyhow, survival in the academic world came first, so I dropped that backwards idea and did what everyone else was doing and let the students hate me and the course. They can’t get you fired f or doing the standard approach, so let it be. But, I was fired anyhow.

The Vietnam War was heating up while I was watching the kids in my classes avoid the terror of fighting in the war by being in my class. That was the way it worked then, before the draft lottery came in 1969.

There was a great deal of anger around the campus. I had not made a secret of my antagonism to the war just as I had not kept

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my idea of teaching backwards to myself , which I was told caused some serious antiwar people to approach me with an offer.

“Prof essor Green – we have some photographic slides showing how the principles you are teaching are being used by the US military in Vietnam as weapons that had been outlawed by the Geneva Convention and the weapons are being manuf actured by large chemical companies that are supporting the department of the university you work in.” Quakers were the source of these slides (National Action/Research on the Military-Industrial Complex (NARMIC) working out of Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. The students got all riled up and I f elt good about contributing to the protest against the war, a war so many of us felt was worse than unjustified, which now almost everyone agrees with. However, others who had the power to fire me convinced themselves that I had given up science f or politics and theref ore did not deserve to be a prof essor of chemistry at this wonderful institution. Sorry Green, no tenure for you. Be gone.

I did stay in the academic business, taking a circuitous path which included both being blackballed and being treated with great kindness and am now a tenured prof essor at the engineering school of New

NOW USING HIS BOOKS TO TEACH THE KIND OF CLASS HE'D IMAGINED IN 1967: Mark M. Green, about to be a professor almost fifty years ago. Photo courtesy of Mark Green.

continued on page 19

West Village Original: Ralph Lee

By Michael D. Minichiello

This month’s West Village Original is Ralph Lee, founder of the Village Halloween Parade.

Born in Middlebury, Vermont in 1935, he is a master mask-maker and currently artistic director of The Mettawee River Theatre Company, which has been dramatizing myths, folk tales, and legends from diverse cultures for over 35 years. One of the original residents of Westbeth, Lee moved there with his family in 1970.

He is currently on the faculty at NYU. As a child growing up in Vermont, Ralph Lee discovered two passions he would pursue for the rest of his life: puppetry and the theater. “All my teenage years I made puppets and masks,” he says. “I would take them around to birthday parties and schools and do shows. Theater is something I really connected with very early on as well. I was in my first play when I was seven. It was in our one-room schoolhouse and I played a cat.

After that, I was hooked!”

Af ter graduating f rom Amherst College in 1957, Lee studied dance and theater in Europe for two years on a Fulbright Scholarship. Returning stateside, he moved to New York to act and began creating masks,

PUPPETRY AND THEATER: These two passions led Ralph Lee (above) to start the Village's famous Halloween Parade in 1974.

Photo by Maggie Berkvist.

puppets, and larger-than-lif e figures for theater and dance companies. “It happened one year that I taught for a semester at Bennington College,” he recalls. “They wanted me to do a production so I decided to do an ‘almost-pageant’ that took place outdoors and moved around the campus. The students made a lot of masks and giant puppets

continued on page 17

March 2013 WestView News 15

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Oh Pussy My Love

By James Lincoln Collier

In New York, and no doubt Chicago and Kansas City, the general rule is that you should try to get along with the people next door without actually becoming more than casual acquaintances. What starts as little backand-forth requests for some confectionary sugar or a red onion leads to cocktails and then dinner. The next thing you know you are planning trips together, which can only end in disaster.

However, some sort of commerce with the people next door is unavoidable, as for example when you run out of Vermouth on Sunday when the liquor store is closed, or when the UPS guy is due the morning you have a dental appointment. Recently, the credit balance was in the Potables’ favor when Jerry Potable knocked at our door. “We’ve got to go see Aunt Sally in St. Louis. They told her not to eat stuffed dates, but she wouldn’t listen. Can you feed the cats?”

“I don’t know anything---“ “Don’t worry, it’s simple. I’ve lef t some cans of cat food on top of the ref rigerator. They can’t jump that high.”

“They can open cans?”

“No, of course not. But they push them off the counter and roll them around on the floor. It annoys the people downstairs.”

“I can see that,” I said, casting hastily around in my skull for a way out.

But Jerry was in full cry. “Cranberry gets the yellow bowl. She should have her dinner on the counter where Obama can’t get to it. He always gobbles down his own f ood right away and then goes after Cranberry’s.”

“Obama?”

“We like to give them interesting names. They like it. It would be bad for their egos to be called Jim or Bob or Bill.”

I couldn’t bring myself to use either name. “What kind of bowl does the other one get?”

“Obama gets the Mother Goose bowl. He likes to have something to read while he eats.”

“Read?”

“You know what I mean. Something interesting to look at.”

“I should think he’d have ‘Jack and Jill’ pretty well memorized by now.

Maybe he could recite it for us someday.”

Jerry ignored the witticism.

“They’ll want fresh water. Just dump out what’s left in the bowl.”

“Which bowl?”

“The one with water in it. That should be obvious.” He paused. “I’m

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not asking you to clean their litter box. But you might pour in some fresh Kitty Litter. There’s a bag under the sink.”

My heart was also under the sink.

I knew perfectly well that my choice was between cleaning the litter box or living in a cloud of mustard gas for as long as the Potables were away.

However, if I wanted Jerry to collect our UPS parcels or empty the mailbox the next time we went up to Lake Moil, I would have to comply.

So a day later, I cautiously entered the darkened apartment. Instantly Obama disappeared under the sof a while Cranberry emitted a fierce hiss and swatted at my ankle. I jumped back, banging my elbow on the door frame. My temper was not improved.

“If you want your supper, stupid, get the hell out of my way.”

She hissed again and took another swat at my ankle. I lost control and aimed a kick at her gut, but she was quicker than me and in a lot better shape. She hastily joined Obama under the sof a, where she sat hissing and challenging me with a cupped paw. However, this allowed me to gain access to the top of the ref rigerator. Quickly I distributed the largesse and escaped.

Over the next few days Cranberry, Obama and I established an armed truce. They stayed under the sof a when I was present, and I ref rained from kicking them when they swatted at my ankles. The Potables were due back in a couple of days. I figured I could hold out that long.

Then I received a phone call from Jerry. “Aunt Sally’s taken a turn f or

the worse,” he said. “They don’t expect her to last through Tuesday.

How are the little darlings?”

I gritted my teeth. “We’re managing,” I said.

“Aren’t they wonderful? Don’t you just love them?”

“Up to a point,” I said. “I suppose you’ll want to race home to see the little darlings the minute the funeral is over.”

“Well, there’ll be things to do.

Clean out her house and so f orth. I told them at work I might be gone f or a bit. Give our best to the darlings.”

I’ll be sure to,” I said with what I hoped was a note of coolness in my voice. But already the truce was breaking down. Emboldened by my pacific nature, both of the little darlings now began hissing and swatting the minute I walked in, and didn’t desist until the f ood was on the floor and they could begin gobbling it down in their unmannerly fashion. For a couple of days I took this, and then something snapped.

The next thing I knew Obama was flying through the air and Cranberry was streaking up the stairs.

Yet there was a smile on the face of the care-giver. Thereaf ter, as I filled their bowls and changed their water they stood well back in the doorway staring at me uneasily. I knew that they would squeal on me the minute Jerry Potable put his suitcase down, but I didn’t care. The next time the little darlings needed a care-giver I would have business in Boston. The little darlings could look after themselves.

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A Kaleidoscope of the 1970s continued from page 1

War; and there was the shooting of the students at Kent State; the blast f rom those shots still rings in our ears today. Then there was the guru-monster Charlie Manson who was the captain at the helm of the bloody Sharon Tate murders in Los Angeles. I had written a play for the Caffe Cino called Moon about a hippie couple in the Village which I directed; it opened there on Valentine’s Day, February 14, l967. Subsequently, the play was produced by the Manhattan Theater Club and in other theaters in New York and across the country. It was published by E. P. Dutton in an anthology called The Best of Off Off Broadway put forth and edited

by Village Voice critic and playwright Michael Smith.

Eric Krebs, in 1969, ran a new theater on George Street in New Brunswick, New Jersey called Brecht West.

He asked me to bring in a production of Moon which he f elt was “a classic.”

I gathered together a new cast that included a fine young actress named Ellen Gurin, with Richard Portnow, Marlene Fischer, and Fred Forrest. My partner John Gilman came along to repeat the role of Christopher and as the driver to take the group of actors back and forth from New York to New Jersey. Eventually, Portnow was cast in a lead role in Woody Allen’s Radio Days and Fred Forrest played opposite Bette Midler in The Rose and starred in many other films. It was fun to take off-off Broadway into the boondocks and following Moon, Eric Krebs with Phil Cohen and Jeanne Ford commissioned me to write a new play in 1970 for the theater which was At War With the Mongols my response to the ongoing Vietnam War. It is about a hippie couple loosely based on the characters from Moon who are on the run trying to escape Mongol hoards that are invading the U. S. mainland. They are hiding out together in a shack on the beach where they drop acid and contemplate their fate.

William M. Hoffman, a Cino playwright, came down to see it on the train and to my surprise and delight Billy, as we called him, decided to publish it on the spot in a collection of plays he was putting together called New American Plays, Volume 4 to be published by Hill & Wang. The cast consisting of Linda Eskenas as Meg and John Gilman as Mick gave f orth with hysterical wayout performances which inspired other New York off-off playwrights including Mr. Hoffman and Robert Patrick to bring their own plays to Brecht West.

The idea was that Eric Krebs wanted to create a kind of Cinoesque theater for

the college town of New Brunswick; and to add to the craziness of it all during the run of Mongols, there were race riots and floods. Nevertheless, town folk and students f rom Rutgers attended and seemed to be having a good time.

The publications of off-off plays created opportunities for these new works to be perf ormed in small theaters and in universities in America and abroad.

It was also a good feeling when royalties came in f rom Moon and Mongols which incidentally was the title f or a production of the two plays presented later at the Cherry Lane Theater by Elaine B. Shore, the television actress who brought along Otto Preminger to opening night.

As it unfolded, the ‘70s began to be thought of by many as a sexual revolution. The idea on Christopher Street was to let it all hang out. Cruising was the order of the day – a 70s movie starring Al Pacino titled Cruising, about the gay underworld, was filmed entirely in the West Village. Do-yourown-thing translated into sexually acting out in whatever way you chose, short of murder. There were backrooms where men groped around in the darkness not knowing what kind of excitement might come their way. At clubs like The Mineshaft, The Eagle and The Anvil, all hell broke loose rivaling the sexual excesses of ancient Greece and the Roman baths. Loud, ear-splitting bombastic music was led by Donna Summer and the Bee Gees who created the brilliant fast stepping score for the John Travolta movie Saturday Night Fever which helped establish the style of the ‘70s - high platform shoes and low waist bell bottom trousers. Fun Disco recordings were also issued by the likes of Ethel Merman, Liza Minelli, and the outrageous “Pink Flamingoes” star Divine.

At the very top of the Disco scene was Studio 54, wherein Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager had transformed a theater into one of the most f antastic nightclubs on the planet. Myself and partner John Gilman spent many a wild night there hanging out with Andy Warhol, Truman Capote, Mick Jagger, Bianca, Diana Vreeland, Brooke Shields, and other celebrity personages. It all happened under a huge suspended crescent man-in-the-moon which would descend from the rafters; and a mechanical arm holding a spoon dipped into an ostensible bowl of cocaine - and many at Studio 54 seemed to partake of that white powder all-up-the-nose or whatever and not to mention sexual trysts of one kind or another in the balconies.

Other late night to early morning Gotto-go-Disco spots included Xenon and Danceteria, the latter hosted by party promoter Jim Fouratt who looked fantastic, dressed to the hilt in an orange satin suit. Another sex-nitespot favored by the straight swinger was The Hell-

Fire Club. After leaving Studio 54 with Marianne Faithful who was introduced to us by filmmaker Kenneth Anger, we also spent many a late night at The Mudd Club.

I believe the most notorious of the later af ter-hours places was The Anvil, housed in a small triangular building on West 14th Street at the West Side Highway. Dancing atop the bar you would see a transgender character known as ‘The Amazing Yuba’ who set herself on fire night after night – yet mysteriously Yuba’s nude body never showed any burns on the skin itself. A male dancer named ‘Mr. Slit,’ danced in the dark wearing only a black leather jockstrap, boots, and a miner’s helmet with a spotflashlight attachment. Downstairs, from the two crowded horseshoe shaped bars, was a dark basement room smelling of poppers and sex was obviously the most important thing going on in those nights going into day. Celebrities showing up for these bacchanals at The Anvil included Truman Capote with Lee Radziwell and it was reported that filmmaker Werner Fassbender flew in from Germany and spent three nights there.

It seems that as the dawn broke outside, the revelers continued carrying on at a fast and intense pace. I remember thinking watching the ‘Amazin’ Yuba’ and ‘Mr. Slit’ that all of this cannot possibly last. This in the late Seventies must have been not unlike the time of the Weimar Republic. It could not last; and by 1980 a new medieval disease began to enter into the picture. This dead-man-disease was initially called GRID (gay related immune deficiency syndrome) and later AIDS. The 1980s eventually came to be known as the ‘AIDIES.’ The Nostalgic 1970s In the middle of all of this, a new trend began to take place. Alongside the druggie-Hippie-Yippie sexual revolution of the l970s, there was a sense that the America that many of us had known was fast disappearing into what some called ‘Lost America.’ It was as if in the midst of all the outward mind blowing gaiety, nobody was really having any fun.

This was f ollowed by a nostalgic trend – a sudden craze for another time – namely the l920s and the Depression era of the l930s. A big shif t showed a longing for things and places that were no more and that were purely American. The search f or material evidence of things past was to be made at flea markets and antique shows across the land. Whatever our parents discarded like overstuffed mohair furniture, cobalt blue-mirrored coffee tables, chromium cocktail shakers, decorative cookie jars, l930s Bakelite jewelry, Catalin radios, Art Deco statues, lamps, ashtrays, and vintage clothing were suddenly all the

continued on page 21

March 2014 WestView News 17

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New and Old Cold Evening Destinations

By David Porat

Ramen Thukpa rides the Ramen wave and f ocuses on an assortment of f ortif ied hot soups that are especially appealing in the cold of this winter. It has a very simple and pleasant interior with limited seating that plays to the Thukpa roots; Thukpa being a soup meal f rom Tibet similar to the Japanese Ramen, both having overlapping Chinese influences. The restaurant was recently opened by two entrepreneurial industry veterans who are making a go of it on their own. They do local delivery, but we enjoyed a dinner for three on a cold February night.

Aside from Ramen, appetizers, dumplings, soup, and salad are offered. We tasted an assortment that included Scallion Pancake, Crab Rangoon, Beijing Duck, Pork Soup Dumplings, and a Cucumber Salad. All proved to stimulate the taste buds, but the Pork Soup Dumplings, a generous portion of six each in their own little tart pans, were f reshly made and had a rich deep and slightly sweet flavor, especially captured in the broth that became your last slurp on each dumpling. The duck bun sandwiches were a pretty good quick proximally of the real

West Village Original: Ralph Lee continued from page 14

and I brought up stuff that I had made for other shows as well. I had never done anything like that before: the logistics, the costumes, and the large cast. It turned out to be a surprisingly successful event.”

Is this how the Village Halloween Parade came about? “Theatre for the New City had been bugging me to do something for Halloween and in 1974 I finally agreed,” Lee says. “Doing that event at Bennington had given me confidence so I felt able to embark on a larger project. I can’t remember who said the word ‘parade’ but it seemed like it was in all our minds. We envisioned it as a mile-long theatrical extravaganza winding through the Village.”

“I really liked those early days because people could enter and leave the parade at any point,” Lee continues. “By the fifth year, the crowds were so large we had to erect barricades. My wish all along had been that people would come and see this parade and then go back to their own communities and start their own. But that’s not what happened.”

Af ter running the parade f or 12 years, Lee decided to give up the reins. “I felt it was time for me to move away and I’ve honestly never regretted that,” he admits. “The final year that I did it was the first year it moved to Sixth Avenue. I’m definitely happy that it’s still go-

deal and the cream cheese and crab fried dumplings, also known as Crab Rangoon, where tastybites.

We tried a pork, fish, and duck ramen.

All were a hearty portion with the fish special that evening standing out as the most interesting. The special had a f ew kinds of fish, including fish balls or dumplings, along with a curried coconut, milk, creamy broth. The prices are all very reasonable and an ample dinner for three was about $75. At this point, they do not have a liquor license so more value is added with beer or wine f rom a block away on 7th Avenue.

Empire Diner is an old f avorite of many older New Yorkers. It has been closed f or a good decade and reopened unsuccessf ully in the last f ew years. I am happy to report that on another cold, snowy evening, I had a very satisf actory dinner while watching the snow fall again on 10th Avenue. The interior, which has been updated a little, is classic with a menu to match, helped to birth again by Amanda Freitag, a chef who has been around the few blocks a few times.

The menu is simple and well-priced with somewhat new takes on classics including a Greek salad with grilled octopus and skate wings done in the style

ing. I wouldn’t have wanted it to disappear but the feel of community was hard to sustain once the route changed.”

As a long-time resident of the West Village, Lee is grateful that he’s had the opportunity to be here, and that Westbeth has been such “a wonderful place to live.” However, he does have some regrets. “It’s not fun the way it used to be and much of that is financial,” he says. “Due to commercial interests, a lot of people were squeezed out. As f ar as the people living here now, well you have to practically be a millionaire to do so. That really changes things.” He laughs. “That’s pretty simplistic, but it’s the way it feels.”

Even more indicative of change is the f act that a Halloween parade could probably never get off the ground now. “It’s interesting,” Lee says. “It seems to me that it would be very difficult to start an event like this nowadays. It happened at a time in the Village when things were more open and there was more sense of community. So many residents along the route would open their doors and let us set up lights in their apartments and put our ‘creatures’ on their rooftops and fire escapes. It really shifted the feel of the environment to be able to do that.

But I can’t imagine that people today would open their doors that way.”

In other words, the Halloween parade was the product of a different West Village.

“It was a wonderful coming together of just the right elements,” Lee agrees. “It’s hard to imagine that happening again in the City at this point.”

APPEALING HOT FOOD IN THE COLD OF THIS WINTER: The special of the evening, a slightly spicy fish Ramen Thukpa - or soup. Photo by David Porat.

of buffalo chicken wings. Both worked well and were thoughtfully prepared. A roast chicken with a lemon, rosemary sauce served with whipped ricotta was a nurturing comfort food entrée on a cold night. Brussel sprouts were as tempting as potato chips, roasted crisp with some chili jam. Apple pie with whipped cream was a pie of which any diner could be

proud. The Empire Diner is only open f or dinner at this point but plans to be open longer hours soon.

Ramen Thukpa 70 Seventh Avenue South ( just north of Commerce Street) 212 929-2188 Empire Diner 210 Tenth Avenue at 22nd street 212 596 7523 www.empire-diner.com

70 Seventh Avenue South (Just Down From Bleecker Street)

212-929-2188 www.ramenthukpa.com

18 WestView News March 2014

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Jim Fouratt’s REEL DEAL: Movies that Matter March 2014 • Let’s Go To The Movies!

ROBOCOP 2014 dir José Padilha Only when I saw that Brazilian José Padilha would be the director did I become interested in learning more about RoboCop 2014. I had seen all of Padilha’s films. Bus 174 made its North American debut at SXSW Film Festival Austin, Texas. His reconstruction of the kidnapping of a passenger-filled bus in full daylight in downtown Rio had me sitting on the edge of my seat.

I knew the landscape of politics and action he could bring to the new RoboCop but wondered how much he could get away with in a Hollywood, big budget, action.

Padilha and the screenwriter Joshua Zetumer have brought RoboCop 2014 into 21st reality by making him of the generation of war-damaged US vets now cops and the world of the post 9/11 Patriot Act seeded militarized police state enabled by the technology to maintain peace and fight crime using weapons developed for war. In the simplified world of action films, the narrative is a bad and smart, driven robot developer (welcome back Michael Keaton) on the cusp of drone innovation who wants to bring drones into the local police station but is having a hard time selling the idea to a “liberal” US Senator (Zack Grenier) who objects to letting feeling-less machines do policing. The CEO has the

support of a Fox news-like channel with Samuel L. Jackson playing an ideologue masquerading as a journalist. Desperate to put a human element into his robot, he turns to a police officer blown up by crime boss, mashing human and mechanical in one drone being.

The casting is super. New, sensitive, tall hunk Joel Kinnaman, f resh off of the moody cable series The Killing, brings his Tony Perkins/James Dean sensitivity and his mangled body to the robot container and his struggle to keep his heart beat driving the rhythm of machine policing.

Padilha is able to landscape the story seeding drone ethics, police corruption, moral science and libertarian ethics of succeeding at any cost. He projects it on to an IMAX screen in 3D. Padilha succeeds because he never sentimentalized the video game mentality of contemporary pop culture. Special mention goes to Australian actress Abbie Cornish for taking the cliché of the frightened wife and making her a fully dimensioned character. Praise to Gary Oldman for showing the complicity of science in militarization public safety servants. Padilha triumphs in updating RoboCop, making it momentto-moment thrilling and asking some very serious questions about man and technology, business and ethics. See it!

Want to comment on an issue you’ve read in this month’s WestView?

Send us your feedback at gcapsis@gmail.com

KIDS FOR CASH: Sandy Fonzo, whose son committed suicide, confronts Judge Mark Ciavarella outside courthouse in this film directed by Robert May. Photo by Bill Tarutis/SenArt Films/Kids For Cash Movie.

MARS AT SUNRISE dir Jessica Habie The new Israeli Cinema has consistently conf ronted the grandf ather politics and looks directly into the eye of a dream gone wrong, not f rom a point of view of rejection, but with the intent of bringing a cold shower to the romantic notion of homecoming. It depicts the journey f rom idealizing the celebration of survival to a nitty-gritty reality of how a socialist dream of communal effort devolved into a militaristic nation built on collective f ear and economic aggression financed by world governments and successful entrepreneurship be it oranges or guns. The fear of extinction mines the psyche of old and young has spiralled into a defensive policy of containment and aggressive occupation of disputed land. A generation of young people both in Israel and Palestine ask themselves a new question about survival: How do we live here?

Jessica Habie’s Mars At Sunrise is an attempt to bring a different lens to the living conditions experienced on both sides.

She places her non-linear narrative on the border experience set on the Palestinian side. She lived and worked in Palestine while conceptualizing this story of a painter whose creative space both physically and psychically is literally invaded by the politics of the region. The Israeli government’s policy of containment plays out in restrictive boundaries to movement and creates fissures of resentment on both sides Mars At Sunrise attempts to avoid the almost by now narrative cliché of the true social conditions of the occupation.

Looking at the dead-end of confrontation politics, Habie attempts to not fall into the expected narrative and instead landscapes through human encounter, the topogra-

phy of place and creative desire. Mars At Sunrise demands a letting go of intellectual arguments and mines possibility in a visually stimulating exploration amplified by a soundtrack of infectious beats and collisions of music expression.

Recommended with a word of caution: let go and sink into the aesthetic landscape.

You can watch this film at Marsatsunrise. com/the-film/ Watch a Q&A reel deal filmed w/ director/ Actors http://youtube.be/3T59_FsvtRw TEENAGE dir Matt Wolf Science teaches that the body and brain are not f ully grown until a person is in their early 20s. Until the 19th most of the world much earlier. The 20th in how children were brought up. Economic conditions and gender difference greatly shaped the way children were educated when education became mandatory.

This is the backdrop of a delightful look at what has been named the teen years in Matt Wolf ’s delightful if provocative look at the World War II population f allout.

John Savage, a noted British public intellectual and culture critic, published a very dense scholarly book on the subject, Teenage: The Creation of Youth 1875 -1945 where he posits the capitalist creation of a self conscious market. Matt Wolf , the enf ant terrible of the art driven, non-linear film bio of people like David Wojiarowicz and Joe Brainard, collaborated with Savage in adapting his book to a screenplay.

Drawing on archival film clips and the voices-overs of actors including Jena Malone and Ben Wishaw to make a cinematic narrative of Savage’s book. Teenage

continued on page 19

March 2014 WestView News 19

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Jim Fouratt’s REEL DEAL: Movies that Matter continued from page 18

documents the making of and the marketing to teens. It does not ask all the relevant questions nor attempt to be definitive in its answers. It will be a pleasurable if challenging take not so much on bodies, although the hormone fallout is well represented as it is on the creation of young consumers both as an identity with a material consumption.

Teenage is a meaty yet pleasurable exploration of what is called also adolescence and a must for parents and adult teens.

KIDS FOR CASH dir Robin May A recent exposé of teen life is the tabloid headline scream documentary called Kids For Cash.

This story almost bumped all the Kardashians off the supermarket tabloids with their lurid headlines lining the checkout lines at grocery stores and mall superstores.

Two judges, so the story goes, conspired to build a juvenile detention facility in Western Pennsylvanian. Hearings begun af ter f rightened, indigent parents had signed away their right to legal representation for their child in trouble with the authorities.

Kids being disinclined f or pranks, fights, social media fantasy were no longer being sent to detention or assigned penalty work.

This judge was sending them, sometimes for six years, to prison like youth detention centers f or rehabilitation and ref orm. The presiding judge had a policy of zero toler-

Science from Away: Backwards Learning continued from page 14

York University. I stopped working on worlds without temperature and switched to asking questions about how a helix can distinguish left from right. I published a lot and got plenty of grants. When I reached an advanced age, I closed my laboratory and got around to that backwards teaching idea I had so many years ago in Ann Arbor. This time, I’m approaching it in a way that is not so dangerous to the establishment: I’m writing books in which students can learn

ance post Columbine and with a stern voice and a wave of his hands sent teenagers into a prison environment which in some incidents reminds one Abu Grade. The judge claimed to be doing it for their own good because their parents had failed in their role of responsible parents. What he did not tell the court visitors, the accused adolescents and their shamed parents was that he had a financial interest in the juvenile detention center. The kids at the prime of their teen years and body changes were sitting in cells and many times in solitary confinement.

Finally a crusading local reporter and a few angry parents fought back and finally brought the two judges down. Too late for those kids so damaged that they turned to drugs and wound up dead either as overdoses or suicide.

That you would think was the core of Kids For Cash. However, it gets deeper and also treads a questioning line that subtly asks how you raise teens and teach them right from wrong. It is not just a story of a wrong made right, which of course it is, but significantly it ask real questions: what does it mean to parent, when is it right to intervene and what is the best corrective treatment?

NOTE: Please go to either jimf ourattsreeldeal.blogspot.com or westviewnews. org/reeldeal f or my recommendations f or both MoMA’s New Directors/New Films and The Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Rendez-Vous with French Cinema as well as a thought provoking essay by WestView’s Theater Critic Irv Bauer on the difficult journey of adapting plays to film + Matthew McConaughey shares about making Dallas Buyers Club and his method of acting (video).

TEENAGE: Archival photo of Jitterbug dance contest at the Shrine Auditorium in Southern CA, 1939.

Courtesy of Everett Collection/CPL Archives.

the principles of the science based on what is important to us, things that arise f rom application of these scientific principles.

Here’s one of many: the identical chemical characteristic that allows the petroleum industry to make high octane fuel is at work in our bodies on the pathway to make the molecules that decide if we are male or female. Here are the books: Organic Chemistry Principles and Industrial Practice, 2003 co-written with Harold Wittcoff, a doyen of the chemical industry; and Organic Chemistry Principles in Context: A Story Telling Historical Approach, 2012. I’m using these books to teach the kind of class I imagined back in 1967, to motivate students, and it actually seems to be working.

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SCAVENGING THE FRIDGE AND PANTRY MAKES FOR QUITE THE ADVENTURE: Creating the Middle Eastern ochazuke (above), a twist on this traditionally Japanese dish, made from leftovers.

Photo by DuanDuan.

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I’ve been wandering the world recently, doing Yemen one day, hopping over to Japan the next, and sometimes experiencing both cultures in one dish. The kitchen is magical that way. Slow-simmering lamb stock dyed bright yellow by turmeric will fill the room with heady heat for an afternoon; the sudden sharp tang of yuzu oil tickles the memory of polished wooden counters; a whiff of whiskey seeps out of the whipped cream just to remind you how ridiculously rich and over the top the world can be. Yemeni maraq broth, yuzu soused fava, and classic tiramisu were all part of the travel plan, but the real journey begins after all that is done and eaten.

Cooking with a fully-stocked fridge is fun, but nothing’s quite like the adventure of figuring what to make with one lonely poblano, half a carton of mascarpone, a fistful of dayold rice, and a couple of forgotten cans dug up from the back of the pantry. Sometimes I feel like I’m playing the last letter game (shiritori for those who play it in Japanese), where the next word must begin with the last letter of the previous word. I cook my meals with the endings of previous one, linking them up like a daisy chain, which can go on for a week or so.

This week’s leftover cycle began with reusing the maraq lamb stock to make a Middle Eastern ochazuke, a traditional Japanese dish that usually means green tea over rice with

pickles. My version was halal lamb stock poured over a grilled rice ball, mixed with f ava beans, cilantro, and a generous squeeze of lime—tasty. The next day, the left over rice was stir-fried with onions, garlic, and canned crab (yuck, no wonder I never buy this stuff ).

The canned crab was pretty terrible, and I had to add a big pinch of garam masala and stir in a dollop of mascarpone to make it palatable. This now creamy mix got stuffed into a char-grilled poblano and topped with a good amount of whole-grain mustard. Grilled pepper is meltingly sweet, and this one packed a surprising amount of heat for a poblano, making it was absolutely contradictory and delicious. Dismal crab was rescued from the brink of foulness, and I quite enjoyed this new creation. Next time I may try the stuffing again with an oily fish, or perhaps with octopus, which would be amazing in terms of texture.

This is how new worlds are discovered.

The recycling of lef tover continues still.

I had some curry crab mascarpone mix lef t over, which went into a potato salad with sardines, capers, a small hill of dill, and mounds of tangy mustard. The next step will probably be smashed potato pancakes with carrot green pesto (all the actual carrots were eaten days ago). But who knows, maybe I’ll finally go grocery shopping again—the tea and coffee jars are running low.

If you have any comments, suggestions, questions, or other tasty tidbits, contact DuanDuan at SnackBar.Kitchen@gmail.com.

March 2014 WestView News 21

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Why 12 Years a Slave Isn’t Exactly History to Me

lent echoes. Even today, when I go back to the place where I was raised, I do not walk down the dirt roads where I went cautiously as a child and teenager.

Solomon’s evolving understanding that

he had to play dumb in smart, undetectable, ever-changing ways in order to live—not just survive—also struck me as a shockingly contemporary aspect of African American life, particularly in business.

The scene in which Epps, the plantation’s master, comes as a surprise in the middle of the night threatening to kill Solomon Northrup because a white indentured servant has told the master that Solomon paid him money to mail a letter to his f amily up north captures not an old dynamic, but one that still exists today having morphed into something more subtle. No one likes to acknowledge it, but in many organizations and businesses being a smart black person remains tricky. One constantly negotiates perceptions about one’s “attitude”—the word that too often is code for free-floating discomfort. The one-on-one talks with a supervisor in his closed office that my black friends or I have been called into become subtly worded threats about our survival—specifically our employment and our economic lives.

However, what haunts most is how the actor playing Solomon changed his face as

the hopelessness of his situation persisted.

It was the slight way his mouth hung open and turned down more and more throughout the movie. I’ve seen this look on the faces of friends and family members as they try and try to get jobs only to be rejected repeatedly, as their living standards diminish, as the negative assumptions about who they are have little ref erence to what they once knew themselves to be or hoped to be.

Like Solomon, they have to find someplace deep within themselves, where it cannot be touched, to hide and sustain a belief in hope.

Since seeing 12 Years a Slave, I see the echoes of this face and they invariably jar me a little. Aspects of the movie just don’t feel or look like history to me, no matter how much I try to place them in the past.

Alvin Hall is a prolific author, financial educator, and broadcaster including radio and TV both in the USA and the United Kingdom. He covers personal finance, business, and contemporary culture. He started his lif e in the panhandle of Florida on a farm and was educated on the east coast, at Yale and Bowdon and resides in New York. More about the author is available at www.AlvinHall.com.

town with photographer Phil Cohen in tow f or these off off Broadway drag perf ormers to audition for the great man. When he met Candy at the audition wearing a ‘30s dress and looking every bit like Carole Lombard, Berkeley said, “On looks alone you should get in.” He had no clue that Candy was a man. It was a memorable and fun day. No No Nanette was a smash hit in the 1970s running for 861 sold out performances before closing in 1973.

John Gilman and I both got into the antique business to make a buck and we set up a table at the 26th Street flea market in New York bringing back Deco – or Pop-culture Americana items from the countryside markets, antique shops and garage and yard sales all over New Jersey and Pennsylvania as well as from upstate and New England. Turning a profit was fun, as was hitting the road in our l954 two-tone green Packard Patrician touring sedan that we had bought f rom a mechanic named Louis Pesagno on Morton Street for $325. He told us it had been a Mafia chieftans car and we eventually rented

it to be utilized in the movie Godf ather II. The culmination of this buying, collecting, and selling happened when we were invited in l976 by Jeff and Cara Greenburg to take a booth at a one-week long Art Deco Exposition Show and Sale at Radio City Music Hall. It seemed that Deco had come of age in the greatest Deco movie palace in New York. Deco-style ‘30s movies were shown featuring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers or the movie She starring Randolph Scott and Helen Gahagan, who showed up for the revival just to see herself on the giant screen at Radio City.

In addition to doing many of my 1960s plays in the 1970s, my new play Suburban Tremens was produced in that decade by the New York Theater Strategy at Westbeth Theater. Also, at a certain point, John and I decided it was time to write a book about American mass-produced Pop-culture Art Deco; and this included everything from cosmetic rouge tins and powder boxes, Fiestaware, nude lady mood lamps, 1930s toasters, streamlined automobiles, diners, automats,

1939 World’s Fair memorabilia, and other everyday whatnots. For f un we included a chapter on Mickey Mouse, that imp rodent f rom the l930s who spawned an avalanche of ‘mouse merchandise.’ In later decades we ended up writing four books about Mickey Mouse and Walt Disney. We had been referring to ourselves as ‘The Dime-store Kids in Lost America’ so we decided to call the book Dime-Store Dream Parade – Popular Culture 1925-1955. We signed a contract with a very erudite and sophisticated editor at E. P. Dutton and the book was published in 1979 on the 50th anniversary of the Wall Street stock market crash. This was our first book on American Pop-culture and there were others to follow. Many collectors including Barbra Streisand and Bette Midler went af ter Art Deco with a vengeance as did Andy Warhol, who never stopped. Andy couldn’t get enough cookie jars or things Deco-Americana for that matter.

All in all the nostalgia 70s was a splendif erous retro-ride on a Deco-Merry-GoRound.

River to developers.

Then there’s Diana L. Taylor, chair of the Hudson River Park Trust since 2007. She was listed as one of eight “Exalted High Council” on the dinner program. She is also a member of the investment committee of Wolfensohn and Company, a global financial institution that manages more than $1.5 trillion in assets. James D. Wolfensohn, founder of her company and former president of the World Bank, is on the full membership list of Kappa Beta Phi, as are HRP Board members Mitchell Rudin, CEO of U.S. Commercial Operations of Brookfield

Office Properties, and Michael Bloomberg, who is represented on the HRP Board by an employee of Bloomberg Philanthropies.

More than the of ten misogynistic or homophobic parodies, even more than the jokes about tycoons stuffing their pockets with bailout money while the common f olk got taken for a ride, what is truly disturbing about this article is the conclusion Roose draws about his experience of being a fly on the wall witnessing plutocrats at play. He writes that “the upper ranks of finance are composed of people who are completely divorced from reality,” that they are a “fear-based organization

of executives who had strong ideas …but would never have the courage to voice those opinions in a public setting.”

Well, now they have been voiced. Although some may dismiss this latest revelation of the true nature of the 1% with a jaded “Thus it has always been,” f or the def enders of our precious waterf ront park one thing has irrevocably changed. When the time comes for investors and developers with self-serving connections to go for the gold—those lucrative air rights transfers— it won’t happen in the dark. We know now, who you are.

By Alvin Hall

It f elt and still f eels like recent history to me, not like something from the long-ago past. I’ve seen 12 Years a Slave three times (the second and third alone) to ascertain as many of the sources of these f eelings as I can.

The capriciousness and arbitrariness of white people’s behavior, demands, and words marked many of my experiences when I went outside of my community growing up in the Jim Crow south of the rural Florida panhandle. It had no logic that I could figure out in advance. Anytime I lef t my house, I was in a perpetual state of preparedness or avoidance, as Solomon Northrup gradually came to be on the plantations in the movie. Anytime I walked from our home to the nearby river to go fishing I was told to go casually into the woods if a truckload of white men approached us and began to slow down because you could never tell what they would do. As I watched the plantation’s foreman and master’s actions, I did not see them, but f elt them and their ghostly, malevo-

A Kaleidoscope of the 1970s continued from page 16

rage. It became like an archeological treasure hunt all the way.

Movie musicals, particularly Busby Berkeley’s splendid rhythmic kaleidoscopic visual geometric extravaganzas like Golddiggers of 1933 or Footlight Parade starring Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell were revived with a vengeance at art houses like Theater 80 St. Marks, the Thalia or the Regency. A major revival of the 1925 musical No No Nanette starring Ruby Keeler in a triumphant tap dancing return to show business and also featuring Patsy Kelly opened on Broadway at the very start of the 1970s - January 19, 1971 - with spectacular dance sequences directed

by Busby Berkeley. With our f riends f rom the Warhol Factory Candy Darling, Jackie Curtis, and Paul Ambrose we headed up-

Billionaires Behaving Badly continued from page 1

ling interest in St. John’s Terminal, a fourstory, three-block-long, 1.3 million-squarefoot behemoth on West Street opposite Pier 40, and a dazzling profit-making opportunity under the new law, written and promoted by HRP Board members, that allows for the transfer of air rights in the Hudson

NOT QUITE HISTORY YET: Author Alvin Hall (above) finds modern day similarities to this film based in the past. Photo by Damani Moyd.

22 WestView News March 2014

www.westviewnews.org MARCH EVENTS

WORKSHOPS

Monday, March 10, 6pm: What’s

Saturday, March 8, 10am: ESOL

Up, Doc? The accidental mix up of four identical plaid overnight bags leads to a series of increasingly wild and wacky situations. Starring Barbra Streisand and Ryan O’Neal.

Jefferson Market Library, 425 Sixth Avenue Free Tuesday, March 11, 7:30pm: The Whole Is Greater Than the Sum of the Parts: Comedy Teams on Film This night will feature choice moments in cinema history with classic comedy teams such as Burns and Allen, Laurel and Hardy, the Ritz Brothers, Abbott and Costello, the Marx Brothers, and a few surprises. They say it’s “all in the timing.”

Come see for yourself!

BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center, 199 Chambers St. Free Wednesday, March 12, 7pm: Secret Garden From a young age, the poet Diana Bellessi wanted to travel. At a time when few women traveled the roads alone, she hitchhiked her way across the continent, looking for the lands promised by the books of her childhood. In time, she found that going to a nearby place could be an equally intense adventure. Secret Garden accompanies the poet on the journey she makes at the end of each year from Buenos Aires to an island in the Paraná River. In Spanish with English subtitles. Reception to follow. Claudia Prado and Diego Panich will be present for a Q&A. NYU, King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center, 53 Washington Square South Free; photo ID required Monday, March 17 6pm: The Awful Truth Unfounded suspicions lead a married couple to begin divorce proceedings, whereupon they start undermining each other’s attempts to find new romance. Starring Irene Dunn and Cary Grant.

Jefferson Market Library, 425 Sixth Avenue Free Monday, March 24, 6:30pm: Everything We Want Are there any instructions on how to be a woman these days? Everything seems possible for the thirty-somethings tackling their lives today, as the globalized world offers a myriad of options – more than ever before.

Program Free English Classes New Student Information Session This information session is for 1 beginning-level and 1 advanced level English class. Testing will follow the information session.

For more information check online at: www.nypl.org/english Jefferson Market Library, 425 Sixth Avenue Free Sunday, March 16, 11am: Gotham Writers’ Workshop: Fiction Writing Free fiction writing workshop with David Ebenbach.

Housing Works Bookstore Café, 126 Crosby Street Free MOVIES Monday, March 3, 6pm: The

Owl and The Pussycat Can a bickering odd couple in Manhattan become friends and maybe more? Starring Barbra Streisand and George Segal.

Jefferson Market Library, 425 Sixth Avenue Free Thursday, March 6, 6:30pm: The Front A cashier poses as a writer for blacklisted talents to submit their work through, but the injustice around him pushes him to take a stand.

With Woody Allen, Zero Mostel, Herschel Bernardi.

New School, Johnson-Kaplan Hall, 66 West 12th Street Free; registration required 1-212686-5005 Thursday, March 6, 7pm: Al Nisa: Black Muslim Women in Atlanta’s Gay Mecca The story of how filmmaker Red Summer brought five women together who sought to establish a community where there was none for Black Muslim Lesbians in Atlanta. The women in the film, who have the ability to be visible and vocal, have decided to do so for all the ones who cannot. They came together in this film to declare their existence, share their stories, start a critical discussion and set a foundation of communal existence for themselves.

NYU, Kimmel Center for University Life, 60 Washington Sq. S., Rm. 808 Free

Over a period of three years, director Beatrice Moeller followed three of those young women in their individual search for the right way to live their lives. After the screening, the director, one of her film’s subjects, Marie Sarah Linke, and game designer/animator Lea Schoenfelder will discuss the film and the private and professional challenges young women face these days.

NYU, Deutsches Haus, 42 Washington Mews Free DANCE Monday, March 10, 17, 31,

8pm: Dance Works-in-Progress A free, high visibility low-tech forum for experimentation, emerging ideas and works-in-progress held in the fall and spring seasons.

Artists are selected by a rotating committee of peer artists, and join artists-in-residence and international guests each season in performing.

Judson Memorial Church, 55 Washington Square South Free Tuesday, March 25, 7pm: Experiments in Dance A program of non-curated shared showings of experimentation and work-in-progress, for artists at all stages of their development. The events are centered on an audience discussion moderated by an Artistin-Residence or an occasional guest, where we will experiment with different feedback methods to support and inform the artists’ process.

Eden’s Expressway, 537 Broadway Free READINGS Tuesday, March 4, 6:30pm:

Poetry Forum: Amy Lawless / Roberto Montes Amy Lawless is the author of two collections of poetry: My Dead and Noctis Licentia. She received a poetry fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts in 2011.

Roberto Montes is the author of I Don’t Know Do You and the chapbook, How to Be Sincere in Your Poetry Workshop. His work has appeared in The Best of the Net 2011 Anthology; Forklift, Ohio; Sixth Finch; ILK; and elsewhere.

New School, Johnson-Kaplan Hall, 66 W. 12th Street, Room A510 $5

Wednesday, March 5, 7pm: A Sumptuous 3-Course Feast of Readings Hosted by David Gutowski and Kimberley Wetherell. This month’s featured guests: Bridget C. Firtle, owner and master distiller of Owney’s NYC Rum will share her story and sample Bushwick’s premier small-batch rum; DINNER: Noah Fecks & Paul Wagtouicz will share the stories behind their best-selling cookbook, The Way We Ate, based on their wildly popular Tumblr of the same name; DESSERT: Luke Barr will read from and discuss his new book Provence, 1970: M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard, and the Reinvention of American Taste, which recounts the summer that iconic culinary figures James Beard, M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, Richard Olney, Simone Beck, and Judith Jones found themselves together in the South of France.

Housing Works Bookstore Café, 126 Crosby Street Free Thursday, March 6, 7pm: The Well’s Wife and The Tiger’s End: Seth Fishman and Téa Obreht Read Fan Fiction Seth Fishman, author of The Well’s End, and Téa Obreht, author of The Tiger’s Wife, read fan fiction for each other in the most serious tone possible.

Housing Works Bookstore Café, 126 Crosby Street Free Thursday, March 6, 7pm: Pulitzer Prize winner Sharon Olds reads from her book Stag’s Leap Also reading: Bianca Stone, author of Someone Else’s Wedding Vows.

NYU, Lillian Vernon House, 58 West 10th Street Free Friday, March 7, 2pm: Contributors read from The Best Canadian Poetry 2013 With: Leanne Averbach, Ross Belot, Anne Carson, Louise Carson, Michael Fraser, Ben Ladouceur, Dale Matthews, Robin Richardson, Ruth Roach Pierson, Moez Surani.

Hosted by Molly Peacock.

NYU, Lillian Vernon House, 58 West 10th Street Free Friday, March 7, 5pm: Creative Writing Program Alumni Reading With Iris Dunkle, Lizzie Harris, Ben Schrank, Holly Thompson, Brian Trimboli, and Monica

Wendel. Featuring alumni reading from recently published books.

NYU, Lillian Vernon House, 58 West 10th Street Free Friday, March 7, 6:30pm: Jaron Lanier reads from his book Who Owns the Future?

Scientist, musician and bestselling author Jaron Lanier – the father of virtual reality - argues that the rise of digital networks like Facebook, Twitter, Google, and others has led our economy into recession and decimated the middle class.

Now, as technology flattens more and more industries, we face even greater challenges to employment and personal wealth.

Cooper Union, 7 East 7th Street Free Sunday, March 9, 6:30pm: T.V. Paul reads from his book The Warrior State: Pakistan in the Contemporary World International relations and South Asia scholar T.V. Paul explores Pakistan’s geopolitical struggles and the crippling effects of foreign aid that have caused its unique inability to progress, as he puts the concept of a “geostrategic curse.”

Cooper Union, 41 Cooper Square Free Monday, March 10, 7pm: Stock Tips: A Party About a Zine About Soup With readings by zinesters Rachel Fershleiser and Ami Greko, Rachel Fershleiser, and contributors Dave Bry, Bex Schwartz, Kevin Nguyen, and Jaime Green. Plus a soup recipe exchange!

Housing Works Bookstore Café, 126 Crosby Street Free  Wednesday, March 12, 6pm: National Book Critics Circle Reading Readings by this year’s finalists in the categories of Fiction, General Nonfiction, Biography, Autobiography, Poetry, and Criticism.

New School, Johnson-Kaplan Hall, 66 West 12th Street Free Wednesday, March 12, 7pm: Mind Reading: Brain Awareness Week From empathy to epilepsy, from cognitive disorders to the mystery of memory, an evening of writing that draws on—and deviates from—what we know about the brain. With fiction, nonfiction, and poetry by Stefan Merrill

Having a West Village event? If your organization is planning an event or a public meeting, or anything else you’d like us to consider for WestView’s Events page, please submit to: westviewarticles@gmail.com by the 20th of the month prior to the event.

March 2014 WestView News 23

www.westviewnews.org MARCH EVENTS Block, Meehan Crist, Timothy Donnelly, Leslie Jamison, Miles Klee, Elissa Schappell, and Lynn Schmeidler.

Housing Works Bookstore Café, 126 Crosby Street Free Thursday, March 13, 6pm: National Book Critics Circle Awards Ceremony Every year, the National Book Critics Circle presents awards for the finest books published in English in the categories of Fiction, General Nonfiction, Biography, Autobiography, Poetry, and Criticism.

New School, Johnson-Kaplan Hall, 66 West 12th Street Free Thursday, March 13, 7pm: Novelist Joyce Carol Oates read from her work Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Book Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction.

Her books include the national bestsellers “We Were the Mulvaneys” and “Blonde” (a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize), and the “New York Times” bestsellers “The Falls” (winner of the 2005 Prix Femina Etranger) and “The Gravedigger’s Daughter”. Her most recent title is “Carthage” (Ecco, 2014). Introduced by Jonathan Safran Foer.

NYU, Lillian Vernon House, 58 West 10th Street Free Friday, March 14, 5pm: Poetry: Douglas Kearney / Ruth Ellen Kocher Douglas Kearney’s latest collection is “Black Automaton” (Fence Books, 2009). Ruth Ellen Kocher’s “Goodbye Lyric” is due from Sheep Meadow Press in 2014.

NYU, Lillian Vernon House, 58 West 10th Street Free Tuesday, March 18, 6:30pm: Poetry Forum: David Lehman David Lehman’s New and Selected Poems appeared in November 2013 from Scribner. His other books of poetry include Yeshiva Boys (2008), When a Woman Loves a Man (2005), The Evening Sun (2002), and The Daily Mirror (2000), from Scribner, Operation Memory (1990) and An Alternative to Speech (1986) from Princeton.

New School, Johnson-Kaplan Hall, 66 West 12th Street, Room A510 $5

TALKS Monday, March 3, 7pm: A

Conversation with Zucchero, Grammy-Nominated Italian Rock Singer Adelmo Fornaciari, more commonly known by his stage name Zucchero Fornaciari or simply Zucchero, is an Italian rock singer. His music is largely inspired by gospel, soul and rock music, and alternates between ballads and more rhythmic boogielike pieces. In his career, spanning four decades, Fornaciari has sold over 50 million records around the world and has achieved numerous awards, including two World Music Awards, six IFPI Europe Platinum Awards and a Grammy Award nomination.

NYU, Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò, 24 West 12th Street Free Tuesday, March 4, 7pm: Artist Talk: Matthew Thurber Multimedia artist and cartoonist Matthew Thurber will be the speaker.

New School, Johnson-Kaplan Hall, 66 West 12th Street, Room A404 Free Tuesday, March 4, 7pm: Architect Frank Barkow discusses his craft In 1993, Barkow and Regine Leibinger founded their practice in Berlin.

Their interdisciplinary, discursive attitude allows their work to expand and respond to advancing knowledge and technology. Their work is in the permanent collections of MoMA, the Heinz Architecture Center, Pittsburgh, and the Deutsches Architekturmuseum, Frankfurt.

Cooper Union, 41 Cooper Square Free Wednesday, March 5, 5pm: Regional, National, and Global Trends in the Indian Film World A lecture by Amit Khanna, a media leader on Indian television and cinema, has been the Chairman of the Board of Reliance Entertainment. He has had a long career as a film and television director and a journalist. He currently plays a major role in debates about media policy, regulation and markets in India and in global markets for Indian media content.

NYU, 20 Cooper Square, 5th floor Free; registration required 1-212992-9562 Wednesday, March 5, 6:30pm: Grassroots Politics from Brooklyn to the White House No, Bill de Blasio hasn’t announced his candidacy for president...yet. But the same type of grassroots politics that gave Mayor de Blasio his start and propelled him to the mayoralty

helped turn a little-known, freshman senator from Chicago’s South Side into the President of the United States. Learn how from Mitch Stewart, who, as Obama’s 2008 Iowa caucus director and 2012 battleground states director, helped oversee the campaign’s field operations in its most critical contests. Stewart will be joined by leading New York City strategists who are managing local efforts to achieve universal perkindergarten and public campaign financing.

New School, Arnhold Hall, 55 West 13th Street, Room 1-202 Free; reservations required 1-212229-5600 Thursday, March 6, 7:30pm: The AIDS Generation This panel moves off from Perry Halkitis’s recently published book, The AIDS Generation: Stories of Survival and Resilience, to discuss some of the strategies for survival and coping employed by the first generation of gay male long-term survivors of the disease. Through interviews conducted by Halkitis, the book narrates the stories of gay men who have survived since the early days of the epidemic; documents and delineates the strategies and behaviors enacted by men of this generation to survive it; and examines the extent to which these approaches to survival inform and are informed by the broad body of literature on resilience and health.

NYU, Kimball Hall, 246 Greene Street Free Tuesday, March 11, 7pm: If You Build It, with Designer Emily Pilloton Pilloton founded the design nonprofit Project H in 2008, believing deeply in the power of design and building to excite learning and citizenship. She believes that by giving youth, particularly girls and students of color, the skills to design and build their wildest ideas, we can support the next generation of creative, confident changemakers.

New School, Johnson Design Center, 66 Fifth Avenue, Kellen Auditorium Free Thursday, March 13, 6pm: Arab Feminist Anti-Imperialism: From San Francisco to Cairo Lecturer Nadine Naber is an associate professor in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies and Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago and a member of the Diaspora Studies Cluster. She came to the University of Illinois from the University of

Michigan, Ann Arbor where she co-founded Arab American Studies (an Ethnic Studies unit within the Program in American Culture). She is author of Arab America: Gender, Cultural Politics, and Activism (NYU Press, 2012).

New School, Johnson-Kaplan Hall, 66 West 12th Street, Room A510 Free Tuesday, March 18, 6pm: Feminism and Architecture: Intergenerational Conversations Susana Torre, editor and curator of the Women in American Architecture exhibition and catalog, organized in 1976 by the Architectural League of New York through its Archive of Women in Architecture, will deliver a keynote address on the impact that feminism has already had on architecture and urbanism in the past 30 years, and speculate on why this has not been broadly acknowledged.

Following will be a discussion examining necessary changes for our recalcitrant professional and academic architectural cultures. This exchange, across a broad spectrum of practitioners and educators, focuses on analysis as well as setting a new agenda for change.

New School, Arnhold Hall, 55 West 13th Street, Room I-202 Free; registration recommended 1-212-753-1722 Tuesday, March 25, 12:30pm: Theological Que(e)ries Come and hear the tale of Rabbi Yochanan and Reish Lakish, two men of the Jewish Talmud whose relationship might be classified as “queer.” Whatever your knowledge of issues of sexual orientation, gender roles, and gender identity in Judaism and traditional Jewish texts, you are welcome to attend this discussion.

This will be led by Rabbi Nikki DeBlosi, who holds a BA in Women’s Studies from Harvard University and an MA and PhD in Performance Studies from NYU. NYU, Kimmel Center for University Life, 60 Washington Square South, Room 602 Free MUSIC Tuesday, March 4, 7pm:

Percussion Master Class: Raquy Danziger Raquy Danziger gives a master class in the Turkish Darbuka.

NYU, Percussion Penthouse, 35 West 4th Street Free  Wednesday, March 5, 8pm: Distinguished String Faculty Recital

With: Cyrus Beroukhim, Violin; Wendy Law, Cello; Justin Hines, Percussion; Stephanie Baer, Director, Program in String Performance.

NYU, Black Box Theatre, 82 Washington Square East Free Thursday, March 6, 8pm: Double Reed Faculty Concert Featuring contemporary and traditional works.

NYU, Frederick Loewe Theatre, 35 West 4th Street Free Sunday, March 9, 5pm: The Improvised Traumdeutung: The Austrian Scene Curated by Christopher Zimmerman-Director of Music and Performance at the ACFNY, this one-day festival features a host of Austria’s foremost creative improvisers. The program also includes a continuation of the Austrian Cultural Forum New York series “In the Absence of ” focusing on the oeuvre of Anton Webern. The series creates a framework in which creative musicians conceptualize and perform a program focused on a particular canonic composer-except that none of the music is heard in the way intended by that composer.

(Le) Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker Street Free; reservations required 1-212505-3474 THEATER Tuesday, March 11, 5:30pm:

City Stories: Stoops to Nuts Author and storyteller Thomas Pryor, published in The New York Times and featured on public radio’s “This American Life,” presents a “super duper” lineup of storyteller chums including Barbara Aliprantis, Cris Beam, Francis Flaherty, Robin Hirsch, Tim O’Mara, Joshua Rebell, Angelo Verga and Adam Wade.

Cornelia Street Café, 29 Cornelia Street Free Friday, March 14, 7pm: New Voices Playwrights Festival: Standard Aptitude by Sam Byron Four years after he was caught and publically ostracized for taking the SATs for other students at his high school, Zach tries to rekindle his sense of hope when his childhood friend, Becca, returns from college wanting to make amends.

New School for Drama, 151 Bank Street Free; reservations recommended 1-212-279-4200

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S A L E S & D E S I G N G A L L E RY 212 776 1110 | 10M SW.C O M EXC LU S IVE MARKETI N G & SALE S AG E NT DO U G LAS ELLI MAN DEVE LO PM E NT MARKETI N G Renderings are for illustration purposes only. Prospective purchasers should not rely upon these depictions and are advised to review the complete terms of the offering plan for further detail as to type, quality and quantity of materials, appliances, equipment and fixtures to be included in the units, amenity areas and common areas of the condominium. The complete offering terms are in an offering plan available from the sponsor. File No. CD13-0040.

Sponsor: MS/WG 1107 Broadway Owner LLC, P.O. Box 1644, New York, NY 10150; Property location: 10 Madison Square West, New York, NY 10010. Equal Housing Opportunity.