Our Town Downtown September 15, 2011 by OurTown Downtown

Eccentric Athletics

From playing polo on a bike to trapezing on a pier, five New Yorkers redefine recreational activity (P10)

Gotham Battles

New book looks at Robert Mosesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; lasting impact on NYC and beyond (P16)

SEPTEMBER 15, 2011 | WWW.OTDOWNTOWN.COM

Where is Your Brain Freeze Coming From? (P18)

The 9/11 Notebook

A chronicle from the day before the anniversary to the opening day of the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum (P6)

BIDDING FAREWELL TO SUMMER

SIMON GARNIER | SIMONGARNIER.ORG

� N E I G H BO R H O O D C HAT TE R Funding Measures Rep. Jerrold Nadler recently introduced a bill, the National September 11 Memorial and Museum Act of 2011, which would secure ongoing federal funding of up to $20 million for the memorial and museum at ground zero. Nadler noted in a release that the funding would go toward the operations of the memorial and museum, and added that Sen. Daniel Inouye has introduced nearly identical legislation in the Senate.

FINANCIAL DISTRICT THE VERY FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL After a two-year incubation period at the Tweed Courthouse on Chambers Street, the students of the Spruce Street School finally moved to their permanent location in the Gehry Tower last week. A red carpet—though more for the rain than for fanfare—was laid out at the school entrance as Mayor Mike Bloomberg, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott, architect Frank Gehry, City Council Member Margaret Chin and State Sen. Daniel Squadron greeted parents and students. Earlier in the morning, Bloomberg and Silver noted that the opening of P.S. 397 was another symbol of Lower Manhattan’s recovery in the wake of 9/11. Hundreds of tots and guardians lined up for the first day of school, including Elda Rotor, vice president of the PTA, whose 7-and-a-half-year-old son Luca is entering 2nd grade. Rotor lived in Tribeca around Sept. 11, 2001, and her family eventually moved to the Financial District in 2006 when Luca was a baby. “This is a neighborhood of young families who are very committed, resourceful and friendly,” Rotor said of her new community. She opted out of nearby P.S. 234 for the “opportunity to start something from the ground up.” Another parent, Chris Todd, moved with his family from Tribeca for economic reasons, but settled on the Financial District primarily for the Spruce Street School, he said. The Gehry-designed building that houses the school is also, at 870 feet, the tallest residential structure in New York City.

2011-2012 PARENT RESOURCE GUIDE RELEASED Looking for ballet classes for your child or the nearest health center? State Sen. Daniel Squadron’s recently released third annual Parent Resource Guide has this information and more. The booklet features a comprehensive list of government agencies, educational resources (i.e., libraries and tutoring programs), community service groups (i.e., mock trials and Model UN), youth and community centers, health services (from hospitals to vision care), arts and cultural institutions and classes, sports and recreation, preschool and day care programs and summer camp information. The guide is available for download at the senator’s website or in hard copy by calling the senator’s office at 212-2985565.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver welcomes children to the newly opened Spruce Street School.

LOWER MANHATTAN SILVER REFLECTS ON A DECADE OF GROWTH In an evocative speech Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver delivered last week to the Downtown-Lower Manhattan Association, the Spruce Street School opening was the launching point to discuss a decade of development and growth around ground zero. “School openings may not make the front pages or be covered by the foreign press, but they are our most eloquent way to claim victory for a Lower Manhattan community many predicted would never come back,” Silver noted. “On the streets where people once ran for their lives, they will find young parents among the 55,000 residents of Lower Manhattan—double the number that were here before 9/11—pushing their strollers. On busy avenues of commerce that were expected to wither away, they will find more than 300,000 welleducated and highly trained weekday workers…In the soaring shadows of One World Trade and Four World Trade, residents and visitors alike will find dozens

Photo courtesy of Sheldon Silver’s office.

of new hotels with a bevy of restaurants and retail shops suited to every taste and every budget,” he added. Silver recalled his own memories of Sept. 11, 2001. “Seeing Flight 175 hit the South Tower, feeling the ground shake when the towers collapsed, the smell of smoke.” However, he focused most of his notes on the redevelopment in Lower Manhattan: the current 8 percent vacancy rate in World Trade Center 7, Goldman Sachs breaking ground on its new world headquarters on West Street in 2005, companies and not-for-profits like Condé Nast, Tthe Daily News, American Lawyer Media, the William J. Clinton Foundation and the New York Academy of Sciences moving their operations to the area. “My favorite observation, however, comes from the [Downtown] Alliance’s own report on the state of Lower Manhattan, and I quote: ‘Upon completion of the World Trade Center redevelopment program and the 8.8 million square feet of world-class office space, Lower Manhattan will regain its ranking as the

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nation’s third-largest central business district.’” The area slipped to fourth place after 9/11. LOWER MANHATTAN $17 MILLION IN COMMUNITY AND CULTURAL FUNDING Last week, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation awarded $17 million to Downtown nonprofits. Thirty-eight Community and Cultural Enhancement grants were given out. One beneficiary was the Manhattan Youth, which was awarded $500,000 to maintain six affordable afterschool programs. Of the funding, State Sen. Daniel Squadron said, “Our Downtown community and cultural organizations are critical to Lower Manhattan’s continued rebuilding…Their contributions are as integral as the headline projects that are reviving and transforming our community.” LOWER MANHATTAN National 9/11 Memorial and Museum: Pols Introduce Federal

LOWER EAST SIDE E-WASTE DAY For those looking for a sustainable way to rid their homes of electronics, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and the LES Ecology Center are sponsoring an e-waste day on Delancey Street between Chrystie and Forsyth streets on Sunday, Sept. 18 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Items accepted for disposal will be computers, monitors, keyboards, electronic mice, scanners, printers, fax machines, cables, televisions, VCRs, DVDs, audio and visual equipment, cable and satellite receivers, digital converter boxes and video game consoles. Lower East Side Delancey Street Safety Working Group Formed Earlier this week, a group of elected officials, city agencies and community leaders convened at State Sen. Daniel Squadron’s office to form the Delancey Street Safety Working Group. After a spate of accidents and growing public concern, the Department of Transportation installed countdown clocks at intersections along this thoroughfare, which has been dubbed the deadliest street in New York City, as the first step to increasing safety. The group agreed to reconvene in one month and regularly thereafter to work out short-term and long-term improvements.

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SE PTE M B E R 15, 2011 | otdowntown.com

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� N EWS

9/11 MeMorial opens to Much anticipation andREw ScHwaRTz

A Weekend of Remembrance, Stories and Healing | By marissa maier At 8:46 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 10, over 5,000 people lined the western waterfront of Downtown Manhattan, starting at Battery Park. For a brief moment, the group held hands in a long moment of silence to remember 9/11 as part of the Hand in Hand event organized by Community Board 1. Some held hands with strangers, like Karen H. a longtime East Village resident, who stood next to a 5-yearold girl. “I’m here because I still can’t wrap my brain around it,” said Karen, who asked to be named only by her first name. Others came in groups, like Rosemary Paparo, whose co-worker lost a sister on 9/11. Paparo arrived with roughly 30 colleagues. While many in the crowd didn’t directly lose a family member in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, almost all of them had a story about that day and what Downtown Manhattan was like in the days and weeks that followed. Paparo, who lived in Greenwich Village at the time, recalled that the exterior walls of St. Vincent’s Hospital were lined with missing person flyers. Diane Lapson, a Tribeca resident, said after the first plane hit, people were rushing to the site to help. “It was almost religious. They weren’t thinking of survival of the fittest,” she noted. “We have traveled 10 years to get here,” said another participant, before making her way to the Wall of Remembrance set up in Battery Park. The commemoration events continued through the day of the anniversary, starting at dawn at a 9/11 sunrise ceremony in Battery Park, where musicians played and elected officials recited selected readings. At 8:46 a.m., the service for family members of those who died on 9/11 began at

the memorial site with a moment of silence and the reading of the names. President Barack Obama, former President George W. Bush and former Mayor Rudy Giuliani all read passages during the roughly three-hour ceremony that was broadcast on all of the major television networks. A few blocks away, past the rigorous security perimeters set up around ground zero, workers and volunteers at St. Paul’s Chapel handed out white ribbons for people to tie around the gates of the church. A man played “Amazing Grace” on the flute, while 9/11 conspiracy theorists chanted across the street. A few hundred feet away, on Broadway, the International Action Center organized a day-long rally for the end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the afternoon, St. Paul’s held a ceremony for first responders. Tom Geraghty, who not only lost his sister-in-law on 9/11 but later joined the construction team that worked on the site, spoke there. He recounted that at the time he felt angry and sought revenge. “But then I thought of St. Paul’s church and the love inside it,” he said. Geraghty ended his speech with a simple message: “Spend more time with love. Tell people how you feel about them. Give more of yourself to others. Talk more. Share more. Love more.” That evening, The Tribute in Light cast beams of light high into the sky, making the Downtown residents who were out on the streets—both near and far from ground zero—look up in awe.

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Clockwise from top: The Tribute in Lights an art installation using 88 searchlights, illuminated on Sunday, Sept. 11, near ground zero; A man plays the flute outside of St. Paul’s Chapel on Sunday, Sept. 11; Thousands of participants held hands as part of the “Hand in Hand: Remembering 9/11” event on Saturday, Sept. 10; While the reading of the names took place a few blocks away at the memorial site, others gathered on Chambers St.; Children create a mural on Pier 25, one of the many volunteer projects that were part of “Hand in Hand.” PHOTOS BY wYaTT kOSTYgan

“On September 12, we open our doors to the world,” said Joe Daniels, executive director of the National Sept. 11 Memorial & Museum, in a press conference last week. The site, which hadn’t been trod on by the general public since Sept. 11, 2001, officially opened this Monday to thousands from over 30 countries, who had secured reservations in advance. While the memorial and museum are free, visitors are required to make make a reservation online at the organization’s website. At the end of last week, roughly 400,000 passes had already been secured and by Tuesday, Sept. 13, the first available time slots were on Oct. 14. The memorial site is landscaped with 225 swamp white oak trees, and the roughly 3,000 names of those who died on 9/11 and in the 1993 bombing are inscribed on bronze parapets on the perimeter of the twin memorial pools. Visitors can find the location of a loved one’s name on the memorial’s website. The memorial has also arranged Community Evenings, the first Sunday of every month beginning Oct. 2 and running through Jan. 8, from 4 to 7 p.m. Downtown residents are asked to reserve visitor passes in person at the 9/11 Memorial Preview Site at 20 Vesey St. starting Sept. 19. As Daniels looks forward to the future of the site, he noted that sustaining funding will be a challenge. The memorial and museum will have an annual operating budget of roughly $50 to $60 million, and Daniels said he will look to secure federal funding.

SE PTE M B E R 15, 2011 | otdowntown.com

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� N EWS Now Only Health Worries With passage of 9/11

Instead of eaterIes, Zagat CompIles aCCounts of 9/11

health law, Mt. Sinai docs and patients are no longer concerned about money | By Megan Finnegan

he World Trade Center Health Clinic at Mount Sinai Medical Center has been treating the first responders of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks for almost a decade. But it wasn’t until earlier this year that the doctors who run the program could look to the future and know that they would be able to continue caring for the people who are still suffering from the horrible events of that day. Since 2002, the center has operated by the grace of grants and piecemeal funding to address the ailments that have proven all too common among those who were near ground zero in the immediate moments and subsequent months after the towers fell. So far, the clinic has seen 20,000 individuals in their screening, monitoring and treatment programs. After a drawn-out battle in congress, the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act passed both houses last December and was signed into law in January, opening a Victim’s Compensation Fund and allocating federal money to centers around the country treating rescuers—firefighters, police officers, emergency medical technicians—and recovery workers from the ground zero site. Dr. Michael Crane, director of the program at Mt. Sinai, talks of the effects of the Zadroga Act with obvious enthusiasm. Not only does it ensure funding for the next five to six years, but it allows the doctors who run the programs to spend less time on reapplying for grant funding year after year and focus on planning ahead and assessing the data they have collected. “We get to look sort of longer term, at the bigger picture,” said Crane. “There’s actually research dollars in there. So questions that are coming up now about things like cancer and other types of illness can be answered.” Currently, the funding only covers treatment of illnesses that are generally agreed to have been caused by the conditions after 9/11; cancer is not included. “Over the years, the concept of World Trade Center-related illness was estab-

Dr. Michael Crane, director of Mt. Sinai’s Zadroga Health Clinic Center. The center recently received federal funding for treatment of first responders to 9/11. PHOTO BY andREw ScHwaRTz

lished. When doctors looked at the populations, saw the patients and wrote up their experiences, doctors here, doctors in the fire department, doctors downtown were all seeing the same thing,” said Crane. The most common conditions have been chronic respiratory ailments, like nasal irritation, sinus problems and asthma, and gastroenterological issues such as acid reflux, as well as a high incidence of mental health conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety disorders and depression. “If you don’t have that illness or those types of illnesses, up to now we’ve had to say, ‘listen, this is not covered, you have to go see a private doctor,’” said Crane. “Now under Zadroga, there’s a mechanism by which a guy like me in the clinic sees somebody and thinks, boy that’s a strange-looking thing, and then maybe I see two more of those two weeks apart, I can say, ‘These are really strange illnesses, we shouldn’t be seeing this.’ I can petition the World Trade Center administrator and say to Dr. [John] Howard, head of the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, ‘I think these conditions may be related to World Trade Center exposure.’” John Williams, a retired NYPD detective who now lives in Westchester County, makes the trip to the Mount Sinai center to treat his chronic respiratory problems that sprang up only recently, years after he arrived on the scene in the days following 9/11. “We were assigned to the landfill in Staten Island, sifting through the debris that was brought to the site, looking for human remains, personal property, identification, whatever we could find,” said Williams. Until last year, he was in the monitoring program at Mount Sinai, just going in for checkups and testing. But last year around Thanksgiving, he got sick with something resembling the flu, and respiratory problems only became compounded from there. “I couldn’t breathe for, like, a month and a half,” he said. Williams has nothing but

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praise for the doctors at the center, and said it’s a help to have access to a place dedicated to treating the 9/11-specific ailments that medical professionals and scientists are still struggling to understand. “I’ve been getting treatments and tests ever since.” New York representatives Peter King, Carolyn Maloney and Jerrold Nadler sponsored the Zadroga Act, named after Detective James Zadroga, an NYPD officer who developed severe respiratory problems after 9/11 and died in 2006. Though the bill’s authors represented bipartisan cooperation, it was hotly debated by the rest of congress, criticized by the right as bloated government spending and by the left as not going far enough. Ultimately, because the cause of cancer in any form is difficult to prove, the sponsors decided to leave it out. “This bill was passed by Congress only days before the Christmas holiday—a feat that very nearly did not happen,” Maloney said. “If we had put a presumption in the bill that required cancers to be covered, it would not have passed.” A study in the British medical journal The Lancet released last week found that firefighters who worked at ground zero are 19 percent more likely than their peers who were not at the site to develop different types of cancers. While the doctors behind the study are cautious not to leap to conclusions, Crane and others are hopeful that the results will allow Howard to consider adding certain cancers to the coverable illnesses under Zadroga. “We carefully crafted the legislation to allow opportunities for cancers and other not-yet-covered ailments to be added once they had passed the burden of scientific evidence,” said Nadler. “Anyone familiar with the ailments of responders and survivors of 9/11 knows that cancer has become a huge and mounting problem.” “Here are people—all of a sudden they

Tim Zagat is best known for his eponymous restaurant surveys, which he co-writes with his wife Nina. Zagat is taking a departure from the culinary world with the recent publication of his book 9/11: Stories of Courage, Heroism and Generosity. The work is a compilation of first-person accounts of Sept. 11, 2001, and its effects, from many noteworthy contributors including Downtown Alliance President Elizabeth Berger and restaurateur Daniel Boulud. In the opening piece, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani and then-Gov. George Pataki recount their experiences of that day and those following. Pataki described the deliberate choice to make Giuliani the public point person in the days after 9/11: “Rudy was tremendous at the public aspect and I didn’t want competing voices or messages. So he became, appropriately, the public face of the response, while behind the scenes, both teams [city and state] worked incredibly hard to make sure that everything that needed to be done was done.” 9/11: Stories of Courage, Heroism and Generosity is available at Barnes & Noble. PHOTO cOuRTESY Of TiM zagaT

are in the middle of this toxic mess,” said Crane. “There’s fibers and there’s asbestos and there’s metals and there’s dioxins and there’s all kinds of aromatic hydrocarbons and all this God-knows-what awful brew that is known to cause cancer. That stuff is carcinogenic.” Crane stresses that there is a lot still to be discovered about how 9/11 affected rescuers and responders, and that it’s better to be scientifically certain when covering new conditions. The good news is that there is now funding to determine what types of conditions should be included. Williams recalled speaking to one of the doctors on a recent visit to the Mount Sinai clinic. “He was talking about it, [saying,] ‘You just don’t really know what the next 10 years are going to bring.’ For me that was kind of sobering,” said Williams. “I’ve got these things going on now, but where is my health going from here? Nobody knows.”

SE PTE M B E R 15, 2011 | otdowntown.com

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downTown social A photographic diary of Fashion’s Night Out, Sept. 8.

o celebrate New York’s annual Fashion’s Night Out, Devon—one of my most fabulous friends—and I took on Manhattan the only way we know how—that, of course, being with the utmost style and grace. Our first stop was Opening Ceremony’s carnival-inspired celebration at the Ace Hotel, a suveronica hogland per trendy hot spot as well as the venue where I first met Devon during last year’s festivities. After several cocktails, we ventured downtown, stopping at a few bars along the way, and effortlessly walked into the Mondrian SoHo, where Neon Indian gave an intimate and spectacular performance to a very fashion forward crowd. Wrapping up our night at the Mondrian’s super chic lounge, Mister H, Devon and I danced our little hearts out, a noteworthy task given the size of our heels. Needless to say, the night was at the very least a success and I anxiously await what is in store for next year’s happenings. (Pictures 1-7): Fashion’s Night Out at Opening Ceremony at the Ace Hotel on West 29th Street. (8): Neon Indian performing at the Mondrian SoHo on Crosby Street. (9): Mister H, the bar and lounge at the Mondrian SoHo.

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SE PTE M B E R 15, 2011 | otdowntown.com

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The Extraordinary Sports—a nd Sportspeople— of Downtown Manhattan |

BY Kevin SheehAn

ew York is in the middle of its annual weather sweet spot. The dog days of August are behind us, the leaves haven’t started to fall yet and most urban dwellers are feeling the pull toward outdoor activities, mostly because in the back of our collective unconscious memories are the frozen days of January and February, when “going out” is relegated to the few hundred yards between your front door and the nearest subway entrance. With that in mind, it’s up to us to make the most of the next few weeks. Some downtowners are out there right now, jogging, cycling, playing in softball leagues—but that may be a little too pedestrian for hardcore holdouts who need a bit more to get them off the couch or away from their laptops. Fortunately, Downtown is rife with exciting, offbeat social sports that many of us never heard of. Once you know of them, you will have to try them—at least once. So for those of you waiting for an invitation, this is it! Take this chance to check out some of Downtown’s most offbeat sports and the people who are currently rocking them.

Mini golf tourneys caiTlyn BiERMan

Fumi Matsueda, right, the No. 2 dirt track racer in the country with his mentor Hugh Machie.

Dirt track racing

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kEvin ShEEhan

This year marks Sixth Street Specials’ 25th anniversary, though most New Yorkers have never heard of it or its friendly, informal racing team. The shop was recently featured in the Lee Klancher book Motorcycle Dream Garages and was the focus of a recent episode of Discovery HD’s Café Racer TV show. Despite the press coverage, people aren’t flocking to join the Sixth Street racers. Flat tracking is dirty and dangerous, and the fellows who are drawn to this sport wouldn’t want it any other way. They race vintage motorcycles—mostly British iron—at three local race tracks. The circuits themselves are mostly simple circles or ovals of dirt or chewed-up blacktop. On the weekends, racers lean vintage bikes into turns while they skid their left feet along the track at

80 mph. Most of the week is spent “wrenching,” working on the old bikes, fixing crash damage or tuning up the motor for the next race. Sixth Street Racing is currently gearing up for the Oakland Valley Speedway on Long Island, site of the upcoming AMA Vintage Dirt National Sept. 18. One team member with grease up to his elbows is Fumi Matsueda, a 32-year-old Japanese ex-pat currently ranked No. 2 on the national circuit. He’s been winding out a vintage Triumph in the 500cc brakeless division all season. “This is my third year racing and the first time I followed this national circuit. I think it’s a once in a lifetime thing—it’s so much time and money. Last year I beat Nickboy [Nick Weimer] and won the vintage class at Oakland, but he was younger then. He’s 16 now and getting faster—my whole American racing career has been trying to beat him,” Fumi said.

There is a new mini golf course at the end of Pier 25 run by Manhattan Youth, who, along with the New York City Social Sports Club, is bringing a new twist to hitting the little links. New York City residents now have access to mini golf tournaments in Downtown Manhattan. There are 21 teams in the inaugural league, four members to a team. The league’s best dressed team is “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” who, undeterred by a recent patch of bad weather, paired off for one of the rainiest rounds of mini golf ever. The team’s captain, 28-year-old Vanessa Brown, works in Union Square as a packaging production artist. She was inspired to start the team after watching a news report on another offbeat sport covered by the television channel NY1. “They were covering water polo a long time ago, and when I “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” the best looked up the or- dressed team in New York City ganization behind Social Sports Club’s inaugural mini golf league at Pier 25. it I found that they were planning a mini golf league. I said, ‘That is ridiculous! I need to do this! And I need three friends to come with me,’” Brown recalled, to laughter from her teammates. “It’s a perfect activity because it’s competitive enough that you want to win, but not so much that you get pissed when you lose—we’re not very good. Hitting the bar after is also a big part. It’s important to get off the computer and meet people in 3-D.”

Thomas Callahan, a polo whiz with two wheels and a mallet at his Brooklyn based bike shop.

kEvin ShEEhan

Rowing

At first, I was going to do a story on kayaking. Don’t get me wrong, kayaking is cool, and the program at Pier 40 has been successfully getting people out on the water for a while now, but it’s limited. Kayakers have to stay in what they call the “embayment,” the square of water between two piers that is also where the river’s debris tends to collect. But at the same Downtown Boathouse, just one door down, another group is offering a chance to get out on the water and row, row, row yourself to the Statue of Liberty, to Jersey or around the island of Manhattan! The boats offered by Village Community Boathouse, free of charge, are 25-foot White-

TRaPeze

At the very top of Pier 40—even higher, really—Marcie Beigel, a 32-year-old doctor, soars through the air and calls her favorite pastime “flying.” Her instructors told us that half the people attending the Trapeze School are one-timers, just wanting to cross it off their bucket list, but there is a hardy crew of regulars and Beigel is one of the best. “I’ve been flying since 2004 at TSNY [Trapeze School of New York] and it’s the most fun workout there is. I have a lot more strength now—trapeze strengthens muscles you didn’t even know you had!” she said. “My parents are both clowns, so this makes perfect sense for me. My sister’s a balloon twister, and I guess this is my circus trait. My parents aren’t circus clowns, they do hospital clowning, parties, parades…They’re so psyched that I do this, they come to the shows and brag to their friends that I fly on the trapeze. “I used to fly once a week, spend two hours on the outdoor rig with great people and feel like I got an amazing workout. Now it’s more like once a month. ”

“This is one of the greatest harbors in the world,” said Rob Buchanan, a rower who volunteers at the Village Commuity Boathouse near Pier 40.

hall gigs based on the traditional New York Harbor boats. The gigs are built by students during the winter and made available to the public from April to November, Tuesday and Thursday evenings and Sundays at noon. I caught one of the organization’s volunteers, Rob Buchanan, a 53-year-old professor at the New School, rowing up in a small dingy and asked him why he spends his free time rowing in the harbor: “I grew up around boats—when I came from the San Francisco Bay area, I was amazed at how few boats were in the harbor here. So I started volunteering with a guy who was starting a project called ‘Floating the Apple,’ which did almost the same thing we’re now doing with the Community

Boathouse,” he explained. “This is one of the great harbors of the world—so protected, with so many exit points, temperate climate, sandy beaches and enough room for everybody. More people should have access.” Last year they booked more than 3,000 “community rowers,” though Buchanan pointed out that there were only 1,200 waivers signed, so more than half of them were return rowers. Two nifty things about rowing these beautiful wooden boats are that there only needs to be one volunteer from the boathouse onboard, a coxswain, so the whole boat can be filled with you and your friends, and that if and when you get tired, you can just raise the mast and sail back home. kEvin ShEEhan

Marcie Beigel, a doctor, reconnects with her theatrical roots —her parents are both clowns— at the Trapeze School of New York at Pier 40.

Bicycle Polo

A few blocks from the Williamsburg Bridge, diehard fans gather on Thursdays and Sundays around a sunken court in Roosevelt Park, on the corner of Chrystie and Broome streets in the Lower East Side, to witness the urban appropriation of the traditional sport of kings. If you have above average bicycling skills, phenomenal handeye coordination and aren’t afraid of a full contact sport with little to no padding, feel free to make yourself a mallet and join in the fun—there are no snobs in this bunch. Thomas Callahan, a 31-year-old Brooklynite, has been coming across the bridge to play hard court bike polo for the last six months. He recently took a break from building bicycle frames at his shop, Horse Cycles, to explain the finer points of the game and why he’s so passionate about this sport: “It’s a three-on-three format played with a street hockey ball and homemade mallets— usually ski poles with 3-inch diameter plastic tubing attached at one end—and the matches range from absurd to very competitive. “The way a match works is there will be five to seven games, 10 minutes apiece, and you sit and watch. When a game ends, everyone throws their sticks in the center and we pull six for the next match. “The last time I played, last Sunday, about 25 people showed and I knew all of them—even the visiting player from France. Everybody is getting ready for the World Championships in Seattle, Washington, next week, so there’s a bit of a fever pitch right now. “The guys are mostly 19 to 40 years old, some bike messengers, a guy from the Blue Man group, computer programmers—too diverse to label them. Just a really solid, good bunch of dudes. I used to go to the gym, but since I’m getting older and I need to cope with more stress from my job and my life, I needed functional activities that are more fun and easier to keep going with, like bike polo. And the social aspect—whether it’s drinks afterwards, traveling for tournaments—it’s become a big part of my life.”

SE PTE M B E R 15, 2011 | otdowntown.com



THE 7-DAY PLAN THURSDAY

15 16 17 18 19 20 21

Opening day starts with the 10th annual Cannoli Eating Competition, featuring professional eaters from around the world vying to break the world record by downing over 26 full-size cannolis in six minutes. For full schedule, visit www.sangennaro.org.

FREE Tribute and Remembrance:

Asian Americans After 9/11 Museum of Chinese in America, 215 Centre St.; 7-8:30 p.m. A 69-minute documentary that examines the ways 9/11 impacted the Asian-American community. The film will be followed by a Q&A with Cao O, executive director of the Asian American Federation.

FREE 7 Year Anniversary

Group Show Krause Gallery, 149 Orchard St. (betw. Stanton & Rivington Sts.); 6-10 p.m. Artists’ reception at the Krause Gallery to celebrate new works by Jordan Eagles, David Peterson, Emil Alzamora, Richard Butler, Jeffrey Robb and Liz Darlington, among others.

Christine Hiebert’s Up Margarete Roeder Gallery, 545 Broadway (betw. Spring & Prince Sts.); 6-8 p.m. After beginning the work at an artist’s residency in New Mexico last year, Hiebert unveils her new series of large-scale drawings that investigate physical experiences of the natural world.

FREE Open Auditions for Worst Cooks in America

FREE STARVING

The Public Theater, 425 Lafayette St. (betw. E. 4th St. & Astor Pl.); 7 p.m. As part of the New Work Now! free play reading series, The Public Theater will host a staged reading of STARVING by S.M. Shephard-Massat, directed by Delroy Lindo. The work tells the story of Bettie and Meeker, who, after WWII, move from rural Florida to urban Atlanta to join a small but up-and-coming black community.

The Bank Street Theater, 155 Bank St. (betw. Washington & West Sts.); 8 p.m. The LAByrinth Theater Company kicks off its year-long festival of free staged readings highlighting 13 new works in progress. The series starts with Stephen Belber’s The Power of Duff, directed by Cat Miller, a play about a local newscaster in Rochester, N.Y., who casually prays for his recently deceased father on air and creates a hailstorm of public fury.

❮ FREE

Movies on the Square: On the Town Lawn at the Northwest corner of Washington Square Park; 30 minutes after sundown. On the Town (1949), starring Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Ann Miller, will screen outdoors in the newly renovated Washington Square Park as part of the IFC Center and the City of New York Department of Parks and Recreation’s “Movies on the Square.”

Babeland, 43 Mercer St. (betw. Grand & Broome Sts.); 8 p.m., suggested donation to Planned Parenthood of NYC. Hosted by Giulia Rozzi with Rachel Feinstein and Tom Shillue, Stripped Stories is teaming up with Planned Parenthood of NYC and Babeland. Running for five years, each show features comedians and musicians who reveal hysterical stories about their sex lives.

NewVillager Santos Party House, 96 Lafayette St. (at Walker St.); doors at 7 p.m., $12 in advance, $14 at the door. This self-proclaimed artist collective is made up of two San Francisco natives who specialize in songwriting, video, performance and collage. Their shows might be a multimedia frenzy, but their sound is decidedly mystical.

WEDNESDAY

FREE Shaken and Stirred

Burlesque The Delancey, 168 Delancey St. (at Clinton St.); 9 p.m. While Runaround Sue and Scooter Pie of Sugar Shack Burlesque host this nocturnal review, DJ Jess spins the music that turns this event into an allout dance party.

 OU R TOWN DOWNTOWN | SE PTE M B E R 15, 2011

Arias with a Twist Abrons Arts Center, 466 Grand St. (at Pitt St.); 8 p.m., ongoing through Oct. 16, $65 premium seating, $35 general admission. This updated version of the original madcap fantasy features the soaring song styles of Joey Arias surrounded by an eye-popping theatrical extravaganza conjured by a team of puppeteers under the direction of Basil Twist.

❯

Time Exposures: Picturing a History of Isleta Pueblo in the 19th Century National Museum of the American Indian, 1 Bowling Green (at State St.); daily, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., ongoing through Jan. 8. This exhibition, organized by the Pueblo of Isleta, tells the story of life on the Isleta Indian Reservation in the 19th century and its lasting effects on life today. Among 80 photographs in the exhibition are the works of many prominent western photographers .

FREE 12th Annual Barn Series

FREE Stripped Stories

Submissions can be sent to otdowntown@manhattanmedia.com.

❮ FREE

Michelson Studios, 163 Bank St. (betw. Washington St. & West Side Highway); noon. The Food Network is holding an open casting call for their popular show Worst Cooks in America. Potential contestants are asked to bring in one of their revolting concoctions along with their nominator. If your food really is the cream of the (bad) crop, you might get a chance to show it off to chef Bobby Flay and Annie Burell.

MONDAY

Visit otdowntown.com for the latest updates on local events.

New York Surf Film Festival Cinema Village, 24 E. 12th St. (at University Pl.); various times, ongoing through Sept. 17, $12. The New York Surf Film Festival returns with three days of screenings and lectures. This edition includes 30 premieres of surf-related films and Q&As with filmmakers and professional athletes. For full lineup, visit nysurffilm.com.

❮ FREE

SUNDAY

TUESDAY

San Gennaro

Little Italy, various locations; Sept. 15 through Sept. 25.

FRIDAY

SATURDAY

FREE 85th annual Feast of

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Rachel Uffner Gallery, 47 Orchard St. (betw. Grand & Hester Sts.); ongoing through Oct. 23. Artist Sara Greenberger Rafferty returns for her second solo show at the gallery with another collection of large scale works on acetate and plexiglass. Rafferty has perfected a unique “waterlogging” technique where she uses liquid inkjet images and digitally manipulates them to give a mottled look.

Wine, Women and Song: An evening of wine and cabaret Astor Center, 399 Lafayette St. (betw. E. 4th St. & Astor Pl.); 6:30-8:30 p.m., $95. Singer Marianne Challis, a winner of MAC and Bistro awards, will be joined by wine guru Andy Fisher, president of The Astor Center and Astor Wines & Spirits, for an evening of tunes from the great American songbook and a tasting of six wines.

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SE PTE M B E R 15, 2011 | otdowntown.com

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� SE E

Scene from ‘Lush Valley’, a theater experience that gives new meaning to breaking down the fourth wall.

Pursuing the American Dream With a Cast of You | By MARK PEIKERT

icket buyers take note: HERE just got a lot more interactive. The downtown theater company (formerly HERE Arts Center) is plunging head first into the immersive theater experience this month with Lush Valley, opening Sept. 11. An audience-reliant new project that treats each spectator as part an examination of the American dream, Lush Valley’s audience members are under consideration for citizenship in the titular town, complete with paperwork, oaths, civics tests and fingerprinting. “No one is forced to do anything they don’t want to do!” director Kristin Marting assured. “And we’re happy to respond to concerns anyone brings in. We’ve

done all this training with the cast in terms of client interaction and their responsibilities.” In a brave new world of participatory theater, Lush Valley is helping break new ground when it comes to engaging with the audience. Instead of the days when reluctant audiences members were dragged up on stage, slightly embarrassed, shows like Lush Valley are questioning what exactly theater means—and what it can do. The eight immigration officers sometimes deliver monologues to two or three audience members; the entire audience convenes for occasions like Town Hall meetings and voting or call in to a radio show to voice their concerns and complaints about America. And this may be the only show in town

 OU R TOWN DOWNTOWN | SE PTE M B E R 15, 2011

where texting during performances is actually encouraged. “Lush Valley is a metaphor for America. It’s the America that still has high hopes for the ideals on which America was founded,” Marting said. “And [it’s] looking back to the breadth of those ideals, not the narrowness. The American dream used to have a different meaning, but now people think of a house with a white picket fence. There’s been a codification, and the show is trying to reconnect with our core values and engage people in thinking about those ideals.” Divided into eight chapters, Lush Valley focuses on the concepts that comprise the classic American dream: equality, freedom, happiness, opportunity, community, ambition, hope and honor. Inspired by both literature (including John Dos Passos’ USA trilogy) and months of intensive workshops and online dialogue via the company’s blog and Facebook, the piece has combined theory with visceral experience.

PHOTO By caRl SkuTScH.

If Lush Valley sounds ambitious, that may be because Marting and her collaborators—including writers Robert Lyons and Qui Nguyen—have been working on the piece intermittently for three years. But it wasn’t until last year that the idea of treating the show as a theatrical Ellis Island came to mind. “It’s really solidified how the whole show took shape,” Marting said. “[It’s] emotionally engaging and not heady and didactic. We really pushed to create something that’s funny and entertaining.” Along those lines, Lush Valley will feature multiple dance numbers (derived from allAmerican pastimes like bowling and baseball) and jester characters inspired by the emotions Marting and her team have identified with the piece. “Lush Valley is about thinking how we all relate to each other and what our responsibilities are or should be towards each other,” Marting said. “But it’s also wrapped in Civil War fantasies and songs

and dances and filled with people as complex as where we are as a country. We have a Tea Party and Democrats as well!” Despite the presence of Tea Partiers, Marting said Lush Valley “is a friendlier, more inclusive place than America.” And thanks to the audience, every performance is different. “The audience changes it every night,” Marting said. “They get to choose the national anthem of Lush Valley and they write their own oath of allegiance that every citizen has to take to become a citizen.” Premiering on the cusp of major changes in both America and theatrical conventions, Lush Valley promises to be unlike anything else currently on the boards—and unlike America, in Lush Valley, one actually feels as if a single person can make all the difference in the world. If only American politics had such instant gratification. Lush Valley runs Sept. 9–24 at HERE, 145 6th Ave. (betw. Broome & Spring Sts.).

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� SE E The Death and Life of New York City Roberta Brandes Gratz’ new book The Battle for Gotham examines how Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs impacted the look of Downtown Manhattan

| By MARK PEIKERT

o rivalry will ever serve as a better representation of New York City itself than that of the ruthlessly ambitious Robert Moses and the community-minded Jane Jacobs. Moses, the mercurial, all-powerful “master builder” responsible for everything from the Cross Bronx Expressway to Jones Beach, found his nearabsolute power overthrown by urban activist Jacobs, whose book The Death and Life of Great American Cities and successful protest of Moses’ planned elevated thruway in Soho almost single-handedly destroyed the vision of cities as characterless, efficiency-driven monoliths that Moses had successfully propagated. In The Battle for Gotham: New York in the Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs (out now in paperback), urban advocate— and longtime friend of Jacobs—Roberta Brandes Grazt examined the impact of Moses and Jacobs on the city in which she grew up and still resides, while also looking at the current state of New York City’s urban battles through the lens of both visions. You come down pretty strongly in favor of Jane Jacobs over Robert Moses in Battle for Gotham. Roberta Brandes Grazt: They are totally incompatible, and the only people who find “On the one hand this, and on the other hand that,” are the people who don’t have the guts to find that they are incompatible. You have to fish or cut bait. People always cite Moses’ parks [as positive outcomes of his work], but my point is a) there are beautiful parks all over this country that were not built by Robert Moses and b) look at all the beautiful waterfront parks we’re building today without Moses. Moses was about power, not about design. Unlimited power. There’s no room in unlimited power for what Jacobs is about. If Moses was about the Big Idea, what was Jacobs about? Jacobs is about process, not just about short blocks and mixed use. Those are the easy concepts of Jacobs. I have no patience for people who try to do a little bit of each.

And the only way to do a little bit of each is to misinterpret Jacobs. She’s not about small-scale, period. She has nothing wrong with big-scale, if it’s done right and on the right thing. A skyscraper in the right place was fine! Is there nothing redeeming about Moses for you? Zip, zero, zilch. My main point is there was nothing Moses accomplished that couldn’t have been accomplished without the destruction and displacement of people, businesses and places with dictatorial power. Plenty of cities across this country wiped out neighborhoods with highways and city renewal, and they did it without Moses but with Moses’ example. Moses helped write the early laws; he was first in line for all the big funding; New York got the lion’s share of the funding and then he was hired by cities across the country to design highways and systems—some of which got built and some that didn’t. He set the pattern for the country. The reality of how destructive it was is borne out in how many places are undoing that pattern today, and the vibrancy that is coming back because of that. The fact that we defeated Westway and have an overthe-top, highly developed, interestingly developed whole West Side. You can go to San Francisco, you can go to Milwaukee—I cite all these places in the book to show that the undoing of Moses’ pattern is what is helping cities today. The very undoing of it underscores the invalidity of it in its original form. What Moses projects here in NYC would you like to see undone? I think it would be a very interesting challenge to figure out how to reweave the isolated projects, like the towers in the park public housing projects, into the urban fabric so that people are connected and not isolated. The biggest sin of that era— and Moses was not the only one extolling it—was the separation of uses. I think there needs to be a way to bring back the corner store and mixed uses in the public spaces. And perhaps building some low-rise senior citizen housing on those sites so some tower residents can comfortably move in so they don’t have to leave the neighborhood. Undoing the BQE that so split South Brooklyn. These are big challenges! As far as power is concerned, we fool ourselves into thinking there’s no Robert Moses today. The big developers are the power, the partnership of big developers with city government. You can’t stand in the way of [Bruce] Ratner; our planning structure is an expediter for big development. It’s another form of overwhelming top-down power.

 OU R TOWN DOWNTOWN | SE PTE M B E R 15, 2011

Above: Robert Moses with the Battery Bridge model. Right: Jane Jacobs. CREaTivE CoMMonS PhoToS

What do you think about the proposed Upper East Side waste transfer station? Nobody wants those things in their own backyard. The fact is, they have been over-concentrated in neighborhoods, and until they are fairly distributed so that neighborhoods are responsible for their own garbage, where’s the equity? I also think that if people are so concerned about waste transfer in their neighborhood, then what they should really be concerned about is a massive recycling program to sensitize people to the fact that if they aren’t more recycling-minded, they’re going to have more garbage trucks in their neighborhood. There are ways to diminish the garbage. And how do you feel about bike lanes? They’re the best thing to happen to this city since sliced bread! And if you want to talk about undoing Moses! I’m always amused when I see Janette Sadik-Khan referred to as a Moses because she’s done bike lanes on a big scale. Well, excuse me,

that’s Jane Jacobs on a big scale! Moses had no interest in any form of transportation other than cars, but streets were supposed to be for people. Transportation is a multimodal kind of thing, and we have so let the population assume cars have the most important right that it’s very hard to accept. I find it particularly outrageous of areas in Brooklyn where former or present officials want their official car privileges and they live within walking distance of perfectly good subway service. They don’t have to ride bikes, they can ride the subway—they shouldn’t be so dependent on their car. I have no patience for people who think the car should be dominant.

AVENUE

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Antiques, Art & Design at the Armory

Italian Baroque Venetian mirror with carved giltwood frame, circa 1750, from R. M. Barokh Antiques

Designer Committee Co-chairs :

Ellie Cullman and Jamie Drake

September 22 - 25, 2011 The Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Avenue, New York City For lecture series, book signing & general information, please visit avenueshows.com or call 646.442.1627

SE PTE M B E R 15, 2011 | otdowntown.com

ď&#x153;ąď&#x153;ˇ

� EAT

Original Flavor accept no substitutes for the final frozen treats of the summer

| By Regan Hofmann

y now, you’ve made the rounds and have tried all of the newest treats designed to start melting the minute you hit the summer pavement, a fleeting pleasure at its best. You’ve tried the bizarre ice cream flavors just to be able to tell the tale on a deep, dark February night. You’ve followed the Twitter feeds to track the trucks and carts, and you’ve eaten all the artisan popsicles and organic Slurpees this city has to offer. You’ve worn summer out. But lurking beneath the glossy veneer of this trendiest of food trends is a deepset New York City summer ritual that existed long before anyone got the idea to slap a pop culture reference and some sea salt onto it and call it cool. New York Augusts have always been an endurance test, and people have been coming up with ways to soothe the burn for years. Most of these shiny new set-ups were built on the back of this tradition, playing with established tastes and techniques to develop their signature offerings. Take these last few minutes of summer to dig into the backstory, so you’ll really have something to talk about come February. At the Hester Street Fair is the Shaved Ice Shop, young adorables constructing Taiwanese-style desserts. While the uninitiated might see these extravagant slops of fruit, ice cream and candy mounded on a towering base of finely shaved ice as an exercise in hipster excess, these are a curated, cutesified rendition of a very traditional treat. At Excellent Pork Chop House (3 Doyers St. betw. Bowery & Pell Sts.), a no-nonsense restaurant that does, in fact, serve excellent pork chops to Taiwanese ex-pats, build your own real deal from the Taiwanese Ice section of the menu. Pick three items from a list that includes tapioca pearls, jellies, sweet beans and corn (yes, kernel corn—trust them) or, if the thought of building a logical dessert from these schizophrenic components gives you a preemptive brainfreeze, go with the “random” option and get ready to excavate the sugared rubble. Doug Quint took a Mr. Softee truck and turned soft serve into a kitsch paradise with the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck, with specials like the Salty Pimp and toppings that include artisanal sauces, cookies and unexpected spice combinations. An

instant hit, the crowds can be hard to fight, even with their recent storefront opening (125 E. 7th St. betw. 1st Ave. & Ave. A). When your sugar rush just can’t wait, turn the corner to Ray’s Candy Store (113 Ave. A betw E. 7th & 8th Sts.), where soft serve (as well as milkshakes, egg creams and malteds) has been on offer for over 40 years. If you’re so inclined, get a cone and a bag of chips from the glassed-in cases behind the counter and create your own stonerinspired masterpiece. And while the West Village’s Imperial Woodpecker may have closed the gates on their sno-balls served in Chinese take-out containers at the end of August, the raspado sellers along Delancey Street, with their blocks of ice and traditional Mexican blades promise to keep coming out as long as the weather stays on

 OU R TOWN DOWNTOWN | SE PTE M B E R 15, 2011

their side. Their flavors aren’t as numerous as Woodpecker’s were, but they are similarly obtuse. What’s the difference between the fuchsia syrup and the pink? What, exactly, did Tiger Blood taste like? You could ask, of course, but the surprise is half the fun. No matter what color you get, be sure to add a healthy pour of condensed milk over the top, the sticky richness counterpointing the syrup’s sticky sweetness, leaving you utterly sticky. Find a hose or a water fountain to rinse the outdoors off for the last time before the icicles set in, and start working on those wintertime stories.

Clockwise from top left: The Big Gay Ice Cream Truck’s Cococone, vanilla soft serve dipped in curried coconut flakes; the brand-new Big Gay Ice Cream Shop; Ray’s Candy Store offers more than just ice cream; treats won’t melt the minute you hit the streets for much longer. PHOTOS BY caiTlYn BiERMan

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Subscribe for the best discussion of the arts in New York City

JAN. 12-JAN. 25, 2011 Volume 3, Issue 1

CityArtsNYC.com Our e-newsletter delivered to your inbox once a week IN THIS ISSUE: The Met’s La traviata has JAY NORDLINGER seeing Decker. Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera

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JOEL LOBENTHAL refutes Black Swan backstage behavior. Marina Poplavskaya starring in the Metropolitan Opera’s production of La Traviata.

LANCE ESPLUND praises Noguchi renovation & show.

www.cityarts.info | 212.268.8600 SE PTE M B E R 15, 2011 | otdowntown.com



The Last of the Lazy Summer Sundays | photos by veronica hogland

Well-clad youths soak up the final rays of the season—and take a last-minute bath in the central fountain—in Washington square park last weekend.

Jackie O’Kennedy, writer, Bloomberg (left), and Emily Popovks, designer.

Léone-Alix Mazaud, exchange student from Paris at Vassar College studying sculpture, mathematics, urbanism.

Rostta Lane, SVA freshman, photo major (left), and Cody Curran, nanny.

 OU R TOWN DOWNTOWN | SE PTE M B E R 15, 2011

Hannah Harms, Williams College grad, clinical research assistant (left), and Marijke DeVos, Trinity College grad, artist.

Justin Calder, sophomore at NYU studying art.

SuJin Kim, York University, Toronto.

Visit the Holy Mountain at Graymoor

Among the rolling hills flanking the Hudson River in Garrison, New York is the Mount of Atonement, commonly called Graymoor, home to the Franciscan Friars and Sisters of the Atonement. If quiet reflection is your goal, there are beautiful chapels, shrines and gardens. The nearby Appalachian Trail calls to hikers, and picnickers are welcome. The That Nothing The Graymoor Spiritual Center hosts retreats New Be Lost Thrift Shop (Wednesday – Sunday, Among the rolling hills flanking theLife Hudson River in Garrison, York is the exhibits, Mount of events, Atonement, andcommonly more. called Graymoor, home to 10am - 5pm) is a treasure trove of vintage items; the Franciscan Friars and Sisters of the Atonement. If quiet reflection is , 50 Route 9, Garrison, New York 10524 the Graymoor Book & Gift Center (Tuesday – your13 goal, there are beautiful chapels, shrines and gardens. www.AtonementFriars.org Sunday, 9am - 4pm) is the area’s largest The nearby Appalachian Trail calls to hikers, and picnickers are 845-424-3671 ecumenical book store. welcome. The That Nothing Be Lost Thrift Shop (Wednesday – Sunday, 10am - 5pm) is a treasure trove of vintage items; the Graymoor Book & Gift Center (Tuesday – Sunday, 9am - 4pm) is the area’s largest ecumenical book store. The Graymoor Spiritual Life Center hosts retreats exhibits, events, and more. 1350 Route 9, Garrison, New York 10524 www.AtonementFriars.org 845-424-3671

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Peeping in the Valley When it comes to foliage, the Hudson Valley leaves no trip option behind The Northeast on the whole is filled with a huge variety of broad-leaved trees whose foliage paints the region with a spectacular color range. But it is New York State in particular that boasts most of these trees— almost as many acres as the rest of the Northeast combined. The state’s tourism site, ILoveNY.com, provides leaf peepers with a gaggle of charts, figures and reports on up-to-date fall foliage color. A weekly report comes in the form of a detailed map charting fall color progress and listing the best vantage points for peepers in the state. With that said, finding the trees is not the hard part—it’s knowing where to go and how to get there. The Hudson Valley encompasses a wide area and is closer to New York City than the average urbanite might realize (the trip from Grand Central Station to Wassaic in the mid-Hudson takes a little over two hours). Westchester and Rockland counties mark the southern tip of the region, which passes through Dutchess and Ulster counties and stretches up through Albany.

For those with cars, it’s easy and convenient to make the two-hour drive up to Dutchess County, located in the middle of the region, and explore the surrounding farms, mountains, parks and nature trails. The county’s tourism site, DutchessCountyTourism.com, provides several itineraries for both day trips and overnighters. The site is a great tool for anyone planning a trip to the area, with lists of the best fall foliage spots, hiking trails, dining options and wineries. As for group tours, which can be found on the same website, the options are so extensive and far-ranging that the perfect fit is easily achievable. Whether you’re a foodie looking for an exceptional culinary experience, an adventurer looking to explore the outdoors or a history buff looking to learn about the region’s rich past, there’s something for every interest. Dutchess County Tourism has also partnered with MTA Metro-North Railroad to provide affordable group getaway day tours that allow tourists to not only survey the beautiful scenery but discover a bit of the local fare.

DANNY T

By ANNie LUBiN The summer might be peak season for tourism in New York City, but venture a little further upstate and it’s all about the fall. The explosion of fall foliage that comes in early September and departs around November brings thousands of tourists and leaf peepers, those who travel to view and photograph the fall foliage, to the state’s Hudson River Valley, making it the busiest time of year for the area. Advertised as the “perfect antidote to urban stress,” tours of the Hudson Valley offer an extensive array of options for the city dweller who doesn’t want to venture too far afield. “We usually get around 1,500 people in the fall who participate in our day tours,” said Nancy Lutz, communications manager for Dutchess County Tourism. “By the time it’s October, we’re getting two to three buses a day on Saturdays and Sundays.” For these tourists, fall foliage is not just the backdrop. More often than not, the robust greens, oranges, reds and yellows that cover the area are the main attraction.

New York has almost as many acres of trees as the rest of the Northeast combined.

And then there’s the Hudson River Valley Ramble, which takes place over three weekends, from Sept. 7 through Sept. 25, and celebrates the area’s vibrant history, communities, cultural attractions and natural resources. “It’s the perfect opportunity for people who want to get out and enjoy the great outdoors but don’t know where to go,” said Lutz. With over 200 events it’s easy to get overwhelmed, so check out Hudsonrivervalleyramble.com for the complete list of events, which include guided walks, hikes, camping and kayaking trips and festivals. Go for the leaves but stay for any one of the dozens of reasons so many people flock upstate this time of year. With so much to see, you’ll be praying Monday never comes.

Don’t just go offline. Go off the beaten path. Reconnect with nature, with friends and family, with yourself.

Valley, for a rejuvenating, nature-inspired getaway and get more smiles per gallon.

Cycle along the Hudson River, or climb Mount Beacon. Follow the wine trail, or try fishing for striped bass. Give yourself a few more days for picnics in formal gardens, biking across the Walkway over the Hudson, or excursions on the river.

Simple and Sophisticated. You Deserve Dutchess.

® NYSDED

Do wonders for your soul. Come to Dutchess County, less than two hours away in the Heart of the Hudson

DutchessTourism.com

 OU R TOWN DOWNTOWN | SE PTE M B E R 15, 2011

800-445-3131

Come and experience Columbia County. Beautifully nestled between the Catskill and Berkshire mountains with country roads, working farms and a small city that’s getting big attention-Hudson, NY! Its mile-long Warren Street boasts dozens of antique and home shops with an eclectic mix of art galleries, restaurants and performance spaces. Take a hike to the waterfall at Taconic State Park. Explore history at the Shaker Village and Museum. Tour the home and farm of our 8th President, Martin Van Buren. Only two hours from NYC by car or Amtrak.

Hudson Opera House

You’re Cordially Invited… ... “Anytime” Visit ColumbiaCountyLodging.com for the area’s preferred accommodations or call 800-558-8218 for information and availability assistance.

Metro-North & Dutchess County Farm Fresh Link: Great One-Day Getaways Weekend getaways visit charming villages, farms and wineries as a shuttle meets your train. Farm Fresh Food, Wine, Cheese and Fine Tea Weekend: From Wassaic for Millerton, Cascade Winery, and McEnroe Organic Farm, with cheese from Amazing Real Live Food Company, 9/7-18 and 24-25. Fall Harvest Wine, Cheese & Apple Picking Weekend: From Poughkeepsie, sample artisanal cheeses made at the creamery at Sprout Creek Farm. Explore charming Millbrook; known for its horse farms, also browse its gift and antique shops. Saturdays, meander in Millbrook Farmers’ Market. Your third stop is Clinton Vineyards, then off to Terhune Orchards for a hayride and to pick your own apples,10/1-2, 10/8-10/9 & 10/15. Packages include discounted, round-trip rail fare, shuttle; available at station ofﬁces; ticket machines. 800-445-3131 or http://dutchesstourism.com/agri-metronorth.asp. The programs provided by this agency are partially funded by monies received from the County of Dutchess.

Columbia County is the heart of the Hudson Valley and a welcome place to be any time of the year.

Fall – leaf peeping, hiking, apple picking and great antiquing. Winter – museums, holiday festivals and outdoor sports Spring - historic sites, wine tasting and local farm tours Summer - state parks, boating, swimming, bicycling and the arts Two hours from NYC by car or take Amtrak to Hudson, NY. Visit ColumbiaCountyLodging.com for accommodations or call 800-558-8218 for information and availability assistance.

A great place to come and experience “anytime”… And right now would be terrific!

 RAYMOOR :  HE  UDSON  ALLEY ’ S  PIRITUAL  REASURE

raymoor, often called the Holy Mountain, is home to the Franciscan Friars and Sisters of the Atonement. nestled in Putnam county, 50 miles north of new york city, Graymoor’s picturesque grounds, shrines, and chapels are open to the public year-round. e summit of Graymoor’s Mount Atonement provides a sweeping hudson Valley view and a life-size replica of michelangelo’s Pieta. of special interest is the World Trade Center Memorial Cross. erected by ironworkers assisting at Ground Zero, the cross is made from steel girders and ash from the north and south towers. Located in the St. Jude Meditation Garden, with its statues, benches, water fountain and pond, this is a setting of serenity and remembrance. every June, thousands pilgrimage to Graymoor’s St. Anthony Shrine. summer beckons others who come to picnic or hike the appalachian trail which crosses through miles of Graymoor’s expansive grounds. autumn greets with breathtaking colors. roughout the year, the Graymoor Spiritual Life Center welcomes hundreds to spirituality retreats and workshops, recovery programs, and special events. many come for Bible study, centering prayer, and daily mass and reconciliation. While you are here, you will also ﬁnd the perfect gift at the Graymoor Book & Gift Center, the Bethlehem Gift Shop, or the at Nothing Be Lost rift Shop.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

www.AtonementFriars.org 845.424.3671 Graymoor Spiritual Life Center 845.424.2111 That Nothing Be Lost Thrift Shop 845.424.3635 Graymoor Book & Gift Center 845.424.3671, ext. 3155

SUNDAY MASS: 11 AM, PILGRIM HALL

Franciscan Friars oF the atonement Graymoor 1350 route 9, Garrison, ny 10524 atonementFriars.orG SE PTE M B E R 15, 2011 | otdowntown.com

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� TALK I N G U P D OWNTOWN Manhattan Media

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exeCUTive eDiTOR Allen Houston ahouston@manhattanmedia.com MaNagiNg eDiTOR Marissa Maier mmaier@manhattanmedia.com CONTRiBUTiNg eDiTOR aND sPeCiaL seCTiONs eDiTOR Josh Rogers jrogers@manhattanmedia.com aRTs aND CULTURe eDiTOR Mark Peikert mpeikert@manhattanmedia.com FeaTUReD CONTRiBUTORs Melissa Berman, Wickham Boyle, C.W. Duffy, Annie Lubin, Tom Miller, Josh Perilo, Paulette Safdieh, Kevin Sheehan CONTRiBUTiNg PHOTOgRaPHeRs Veronica Hogland, Caitlyn Bierman, George Denison

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PRODUCTiON & CReaTive DiReCTOR Ed Johnson ejohnson@manhattanmedia.com eDiTORiaL DesigNeR Sahar Vahidi svahidi@manhattanmedia.com aDveRTisiNg DesigN Quran Corley OUR TOWN DOWNTOWN is published weekly Copyright © 2011 Manhattan Media, LLC 79 Madison Avenue, 16th Floor New York, N.Y. 10016 Editorial (212) 284-9734 Fax (212) 268-2935 Advertising (212) 284-9715 General (212) 268-8600 E-mail: otdowntown@manhattanmedia.com Website: OTDowntown.com OUR TOWN DOWNTOWN is a division of Manhattan Media, LLC, publisher of West Side Spirit, Chelsea Clinton News, The Westsider, City Hall, The Capitol, The Blackboard Awards, New York Family, and Avenue magazine. To subscribe for 1 year, please send $75 to OUR TOWN DOWNTOWN, 79 Madison Avenue, 16th Floor, New York, N.Y. 10016 Recognized for excellence by the New York Press Association

David Weisberger employee of ryder farm at the union square farmers market

| By Regan Hofmann

WYATT KOSTYGAN

PResiDeNT/CeO Tom Allon tallon@manhattanmedia.com gROUP PUBLisHeR Alex Schweitzer aschweitzer@manhattanmedia.com CFO/COO Joanne Harras jharras@manhattanmedia.com DiReCTOR OF iNTeRaCTive MaRkeTiNg aND DigiTaL sTRaTegy Jay Gissen jgissen@manhattanmedia.com

he Ryder Farm stand at the Union Square Farmers Market is immediately recognizable by its colorful banner, hand-hewn wooden shelving and wicker baskets neatly organizing the products on offer, as well as the beautiful “Flowers From My Garden” arrangements, named so customers can honestly tell admirers who ask about them that they are “from my garden.” Though smaller than the many folding table/container truck operations you see at New York’s flagship farmers market, which was founded in 1976 and boasts, on an average day, around 75 different vendors, Ryder Farm stands out as the heart of Union Square. The over 200-year-old farm in Brewster, N.Y., is a true family operation, run now by the founder’s great-great-great-grandchildren, Betsy and John Ryder. Unlike many of the smaller stands, which specialize in a few select crops, Ryder Farm runs the gamut of what’s seasonally available, from fresh-cut herbs to tomatoes, a variety of gem-like chili peppers (helpfully labeled “Betsey’s Favorites,” melons, zucchini and leafy greens—everything that tastes of pure summer that home chefs will be longing for come January. We spoke with David Weisberger, one of the farmworkers who mans the stand every Saturday, to learn more about the Union Square experience and find out what veggies to make one last dash for before they disappear for the season. Tell me about your involvement with the Union Square Farmers Market. The farmers have been coming since 1978—we were the first organic vendors here at Union Square. We don’t go to any other markets in the city. We run a big CSA in the middle of the week, so that splits our efforts. We’re in lower southern Putnam County, just north of Westchester, and we serve about 80 families in the area every Wednesday. The only other big marketing opportunity for the farm is this market on Saturdays. Do you feel like there’s a difference between your customers through the CSA and the ones here at the market? You get a better sense of people’s characters working here [at the market], it’s a different relationship. A little bit friendlier—just a bit more open. Do you have a lot of regulars who come down? Definitely. Every weekend we have our

 OU R TOWN DOWNTOWN | SE PTE M B E R 15, 2011

cast of characters, different people who always come down. On Wednesdays [at the CSA pickup] there’ll be a few people we know, but we’re so busy working— field work, transplanting—that the interactions are at a minimum. It’s always fun when we get chefs— we’re always impressed and we’re dreaming that they’ll bring us some sort of delicious snack, but they never do! David Bouley [chef and owner of several Tribeca restaurants including Bouley and the recently opened Brushstroke] came by and was really—he was a very hardcore guy. What did he get? He came two months ago—I remember it well, because he was so intense. He got scapes and tons of peppermint. This time he came, he got a bunch of herbs and then peppermint again. I guess he’s really into peppermint! There’s another chef who comes often from WD-50. The last time he came, he got a bunch of lovage from us, which is a weird perennial crop that we probably wouldn’t have done anything with otherwise. People don’t really know what to do with it. There’s another guy who comes—he’s not a chef, he’s just a regular guy, but he’ll come in waves. He’ll come once really early, and then an hour later, and then again another hour after that. Does he get the same thing every time? No, he’ll mix it up. He likes a lot of different things. He’s always here, though. Every weekend. Probably our best customers are this couple—they’re probably the only people who use these baskets that you see [among the decorations at the stand are two red reed baskets hanging above the cash register]—they always come and

buy $60-$70 worth of produce for the week. They’re really Ryder Farm fans! What’s your growing season? The CSA started end of May/early June. When the first frost kills off a bunch of the fruit crops—the tomatoes and peppers and eggplant—then it’s really going to start to slow down. We’ll be here another four, five weeks max. The CSA ends in two weeks, so we’re definitely in the downward slope of the season. What do you have out here that you’re not going to have in another week or two? We’re not going to have cucumbers for sure, and the tomatoes are starting to slowly diminish. It’s been so wet, I don’t see the tomatoes happening for much longer. Purslane has been really popular this year, and we won’t have any more of it because it’s not hot and dry enough now. It’s something a little weird that just really caught on with people. We’re sad to see it go because it’s basically a weed, so we don’t have to weed the crops, which is nice! Beyond that—the tomatillos might have another three, four weeks max. I doubt they’ll make it much longer. So by the end of your stay here at Union Square it’s going to be all squash all the time? Yep, a lot of winter squash! The watermelon we have out now shouldn’t have been harvested so early— we had to bring them in because of the weather, so instead of vine-ripened we’ve had to ripen them by putting hay around them inside. The nice thing is that we had plenty of them to give to our CSA— they’re like the golden fleece for CSA members. Usually the market gets most of them.

on Topic

The Summer Before the Fall After a shaky blockbuster season, Tom Hall ventures to the Toronto Film Festival to kick off the fall moviegoing season

he summer of 2011 is behind us, and as far as Hollywood is concerned, autumn arrives as a mixed bag of competing concerns. As The New York Times recently reported, ticket revenues for the summer season were up slightly over 2010 ($4.38 billion, an increase of less than 1 percent) and admissions hit a 14-year low (roughly 543 million, the lowest since 1997’s 540 million.) As the studios cling to the money generated by more expensive 3-D tickets, fewer and fewer Americans are willing or able to spend the money to visit (or, more likely, revisit) the characters and stories that are being served up alongside those heaping buckets of popcorn. In the process, the summer movie has become something of a take-it-or-leave-it proposition; with so

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many other delivery channels for movies and video entertainment, a stagnant economy provides more than enough justification for a laissez-faire approach to moviegoing. While Hollywood licks its wounds and counts its money, the days grow shorter and the studios turn their attention to the pressing need for prestigious projects at which to throw awards. What other business changes its focus so completely, with such Gregorian precision? The box office grosses still matter, but suddenly, as if by magic, the movies that matter are all being rolled out slowly, city by city, screen by screen, building awards buzz and word of mouth. The economics of the small movie take center stage. As a cost proposition, it makes sense; Hollywood makes about 40 percent of its annual revenue in the summer quarter, when school is out and families need something to do. By September, the explosive premiere and 4,000-screen blockbuster launch is replaced by the film festival red carpet. Film festivals have quickly learned

their place in the landscape, knowing that a combination of critical recognition and word of mouth can make or break a movie’s chances to find an audience and acclaim. No festival has been more important to that process than The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF)—opening each year on the Thursday after Labor Day, the festival’s track record as a launching pad for prestige pictures might as easily be ascribed to its staggering scope as to its curatorial prominence. The festival is a juggernaut, featuring over 330 films from around the globe, most looking to find a way into the consciousness of North American audiences. Perhaps in spite of its scale, it has earned its reputation as a bellwether for the Academy Awards; Crash (TIFF 2005), No Country For Old Men (TIFF 2007), Slumdog Millionaire (TIFF 2008), The Hurt Locker (TIFF 2009) and The King’s Speech (TIFF 2010) all had a premiere of one sort or another at Toronto, and each went on to win Best Picture. This year’s Toronto buzz features some familiar names. George Clooney stars in

both the political drama The Ides of March (which he also directed) and The Descendants, a terrific tragicomedy from Alexander Payne (making tom hall his first feature film since Sideways in 2004) that carries plenty of awards season hope. Glenn Close has been drawing notice for her turn as a woman passing for a man in Albert Nobbs, while Tilda Swinton’s role as the mother of a bad seed in We Need to Talk About Kevin may bring the film some deserved attention. But no film, regardless of its quality, can walk out of Toronto as a guaranteed success; there are months of festivals and audience building for these movies ahead. That’s the promise of autumn. Tom Hall is the artistic director of the Sarasota Film Festival and is a contributor to Hammer to Nail. He also writes The Back Row Manifesto blog for indieWIRE.

� T WE ET S PEAK | photographed by CaItLyN bIermaN Send photos of murals, posters, etc., you have seen in your neighborhood to otdowntown@ manhattanmedia.com or upload to our website www.otdowntown.com.

@mikebloomberg “the @Sept11memorial is a place where we can touch the face of history & the names of all those we lost.” (Sept. 11) @FdnYnews “1000s gathered at the Fireman’s memorial to remember the 343 #FdNy who died at the #WtC.” (Sept. 11) @trinitywallSt “20,000 ribbons of remembrance tied @StpaulsChapelNy so far this week! So many prayers and memorials.” (Sept. 10) @evgrieve “exclusive: after 30 years, Life Cafe— birthplace of #rent—closes in the east Village.” (Sept. 11) @tribecacitizen “eight apartment sales were reported in the past week, in buildings on hudson, Jay, West, Washington, gwich & bway.” (Sept. 10) @lowereastnyc “Fun Fact Question: orchard Street was named because of the apple trees once located here, as well as what other kind of fruit trees?” (Sept. 12) @newmuseum “First Saturdays for Families is back from summer break! 10 a.m.-12 p.m. today, Free!” (Sept. 10) @roofproject “rt @InhabitatNyC White @roofproject successfully painted 35,000 square feet of LeS rooftops an energysaving white!” (Sept. 13)

SE PTE M B E R 15, 2011 | otdowntown.com

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A NEW SCHOOL OF THOUGHT: OPENING FALL 2012 IN NEW YORK.

AVENUES NYC CAMPUS ON THE HIGH LINE

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