Our Town Downtown November 17, 2011

NOVEMBER 17, 2011 | WWW.OTDOWNTOWN.COM

Shocking #OWS Developments (P18)

A Second Act for Miss Ellen Barkin The Big Easy actress champions new role (P10)

A Side of Blindness

I LLUSTRATION BY KE LLE N JOH NSTON | PHOTO BY LEAH E. KOZAK

Greenwich Village eatery serves up multi-course meals and entertainment in the dark (P16)

From gangsters to pickles, Downtown rocks the niche museum scene (P6)

Talking Up Downtown

Museum of the City of New York’s Susan Henshaw Jones dishes on taking over the reins of the Seaport Museum (P18)

N E I G H B O R HOOD CHAT TE R � Why Let the Billionaires

Have all the Fun?

Students Margaret Christman and Sara Healey make mobiles as part of the Jane Goodall Roots and Shoots program, which focuses on making positive changes in communities.

Photo courtesy of the Jane Goodall roots and shoots ProGram

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Call Jane Wilton at (212) 686–0010 x379, e-mail gray@nyct-cfi.org, or visit nycommunitytrust.org.

 OU R TOWN DOWNTOWN | nove m b e r 17, 2011

BATTERY PARK CITY SEVENTH ANNUAL JANE GOODALL ROOTS AND SHOOTS NORTHEAST YOUTH SUMMIT Saturday, Nov. 12, K-12 grade students gathered at Battery Park City School, the city’s first “green” school, for the seventh annual Jane Goodall Roots and Shoots Northeast Youth Summit. Students traveled from all around New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont and New Jersey, as did environmental and humanitarian leaders from across the region, to participate in the event. The group built reflective mobiles for skyscrapers to deter migrating birds from collisions, made dog and cat toys from reused materials for local animal shelters and created a peace-themed collage from recycled materials to be displayed at the school.

The Jane Goodall Roots and Shoots program was founded in 1991 by Dr. Jane Goodall and a group of Tanzanian students. The program focuses on making positive changes in communities, for animals and for the environment.

CHINATOWN PIONEERING BIG BELLY TRASH COMPACTORS Last Wednesday afternoon, on the corner of Canal and Mott streets, City Council Member Margaret Chin and members of Community Board 3 held a press conference to unveil Chinatown’s newest effort to go green. The Chinatown Partnership has teamed up with Big Belly Solar to install solar-powered Big Belly trash compactors in the neighborhood.

The compactors have a unique green energy sensor that monitors how full the cans are and sends a message to the unit’s command center when the trash

needs to be compacted. The sensors also monitor when the garbage must be collected, which cuts down on unnecessary collections that waste fuel and increase pollution.

Chin noted the financial gains the city stands to make from this installation. The compactors hold roughly five times more garbage than regular trash cans, so the city will pay less for trash collection. This program was implemented in Philadelphia, where collections were reduced from 17 to 5 in one week, with immediate savings of 70 percent, according to the Big Belly website.

LOWER MANHATTAN RIBBON-CUTTING CEREMONY AT MEDHATTAN Doctors Leslie Miller and Alicia Salzer, co-founders of Medhattan Immediate Medical Care on Liberty Street, hosted the ribbon-cutting at their new facility Monday, Nov. 14. The Medhattan center is a state-of-the-art medical facility that provides the luxury of a high-class hotel chain to ease the all-too-painful hospital experience.

Patients can expect snacks, plush robes and a host of unanticipated amenities, including wellness services such as acupuncture and massage. As many New Yorkers know, luxury has its price.

However, the goal of this facility is to provide luxury at a discount. According to the press release, “Medhattan promises luxury that patients can afford, with visits costing as little as $200.” As cold and flu season hits full swing, a hospital visit is often an unfortunate reality, but New Yorkers may be more willing to spend some time at the new Medhattan Immediate Medical Care Facility—in plush robes and slippers, of course.

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S E P T E M B E R 8, 2011 | otd ow n tow n . c o m

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Zuccotti Park early Tuesday morning after it was cleared. PHoTo bY Dan nguYen

Movement Remains Despite Cleanup | By marissa maier Nearly two days shy of its two-month anniversary, the encampment at Zuccotti Park dubbed Occupy Wall Street (OWS) was cleared out by members of the New York Police Department in the early morning hours of Tuesday, Nov. 15. At a press conference later in the day, Mayor Michael Bloomberg noted that health and safety concerns had spurred the sweep. By the afternoon, however, supporters of the movement had returned to the barricaded area, where dozens of NYPD officers stood in the cordoned-off park.

According to Alix Koloff, who was in the settlement’s kitchen at the time, the police arrived around 1 a.m. near the Broadway and Liberty Street entrance, turning on bright lights and telling protesters to gather their belongings and vacate. “Gradually, they were on all sides of the park with their shields,” she said.

Koloff and many others, she noted, stayed put until about 3:30 or 4 a.m., when she said police began dragging individuals out of the park. She added that she left the kitchen right before a group of people were pepper-sprayed.

Roughly a block away at about 2 a.m.

Anthony Robledo, who has been part of the occupation for a month, was barred from re-entering the park by police. He watched

as trucks moved toward the area. Several witnesses reported that the trucks were used to cart off the protesters’ tents and belongings.

While many others relocated to nearby Foley Square, Robledo stayed behind and waited until he was let into Zuccotti Park at around 7 a.m. According to statements from police officials, roughly 142 people were arrested inside the park, including Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez, and an additional 50 or 60 individuals were arrested on nearby streets. There have also been widespread reports of the media being barred from covering the events.

At a press conference later that morning, Bloomberg noted that the park should be accessible to the full public but that OWS’ use of tents and temporary structures had made this impossible. For weeks, local politicians had been fielding complaints from residents regarding quality-of-life issues such as urination and defecation and excessive noise.

“This morning, the city took targeted action to restore public safety and security to the Lower Manhattan neighborhood. I have been assured that the protesters will be allowed to return to Zuccotti Park—for 24 hours a day—where they can continue to exercise their First Amendment rights,” said Council Member Margaret Chin.

Options for Relieving School Overcrowding are Hotly Debated | By LiLLian rizzo

The Department of Education rolled out a new rezoning plan last week in the hope of settling the growing problem of overcrowded schools in Lower Manhattan and increasing waitlists for kindergartens.

But it looks like the DOE is the only one that is content with this new rezoning plan.

While the DOE looks to new zones as the answer, parents, elected officials and Community Board 1 see only one real resolution to this problem: Open more schools as the population increases.

“I have a lot of heartache because a lot of parents say they don’t want zoning to be a rebalancing tool,” said Michael Markowitz, council member of the Community Education Council for District 2, at the DOE’s Nov. 8 rezoning proposal meeting. At the meeting, the DOE’s Elizabeth Rose presented its latest proposal, outlining new zones for children in Tribeca, the West Village, Chinatown and the Financial District.

The rezoning will only go into effect if the CEC approves it within the next 45 days, though CEC and CB1 members think there is a possibility they may extend this time limit for the sake of pending amendments.

The latest proposal looks to relieve pres-

sure on P.S. 234 on Greenwich Street, a school that grapples with waitlists yearly. It also creates a smaller zone for the Peck Slip School, set to open in 2015, and changes the zone of the newly opened Spruce Street School, P.S. 397.

According to the latest plan, a new zone for the upcoming school at the Foundling Hospital location in Chelsea will be instituted when it is opened in 2014, along with one for the Peck Slip School. Another major challenge was a split of Tribeca’s zones—under the proposal, children who live east of West Broadway and north of Murray Street will be zoned for P.S. 1, in Chinatown. These children are currently zoned for P.S. 234 and P.S. 397.

“We asked the DOE to leave the P.S. 234 zone the way it was and they decided to take the northeast piece and send it to P.S. 1, which doesn’t have room—and parents don’t want to go there anyway,” said Paul Hovitz, co-chair of CB1’s Youth Committee.

“This plan brings zones in line with what the community needs and what schools can provide, and addresses the feedback we heard during our last proposal,” said DOE spokesman Frank Thomas.

There was widespread criticism, especially from the CEC and CB1, about the Peck Slip School, which just received an increase

 OU R TOWN DOWNTOWN | nove m b e r 17, 2011

“I do not believe the ban on tents and other sleeping material impedes on these rights,” she said. “With the park rules in place, residents and area workers can once again make use of this public space.”

In a joint statement, Rep. Jerrold Nadler and State Sen. Daniel Squadron noted: “We agree that Zuccotti Park must be open and accessible to everyone—OWS, the public, law enforcement and first responders—and that it is critical to protect the health and safety of protesters and the community. The city’s actions to shut down OWS last night raise a number of serious civil liberties questions that must be answered.

“Moving forward, how will the city respect the protesters’ rights to speech and assembly?

Why was press access limited and why were some reporters’ credentials confiscated? How will reported incidents of excessive force used by the police be addressed?”

Community Board 1 Chairperson Julie Menin added, “CB1 has been clear that we oppose the use of force in this situation and

of seats. Before children can enter the school itself at 1 Peck Slip, they are attending classes at its incubation site at the Tweed Courthouse.

Currently, Tweed offers room for two classrooms per grade, though when Peck Slip opens there will actually be four classrooms per grade. A shared request from the CEC and CB1 was made to increase the incubation classes to three per grade and tackle exactly what a few rooms on the bottom floor of Tweed are being used for.

“Even if it means putting staff in a trailer for a year, I want to see it happen,” said Shino Tanikawa, CEC president. “We gained another section in the school but the zone is smaller.”

Until Peck Slip is opened, students attending classes at Tweed will automatically be transferred into the specified zone for Peck Slip, if the plan is approved. But Rose argues that increasing the number of classes in Tweed doesn’t work—there’s not enough room and trailers cost too much money for a temporary expense.

The last time the DOE rezoned Lower Manhattan due to its increasing population was three years ago. While parents, community members and the CEC bickered with the DOE over the flaws of its plan, there was really only one solution they all agreed on: open more schools to relieve the pressure instead of shuffling kids around neighborhoods.

“Don’t split up communities like parts of northern Tribeca” said Julie Menin, president of CB1, at the CEC meeting. “Additional schools in the Community Board 1 district are

oppose a forcible clearing of the park. We believe that there is a solution that allows the protection of OWS’ First Amendment rights and also respects the quality of life for residents and small businesses.

“As we have consistently said,” she asserted, “these two are not mutually exclusive and we urge the city to meet with OWS and work toward a reasonable solution.”

“I think, under this administration, the NYPD likes to keep the media as far from anything they do as they can,” Leonard Levitt, author of the book NYPD Confidential, observed.

OWS was dealt another setback that day when New York City Justice Michael D. Stallman ruled that the property owner Brookfield Properties had the right to uphold its rule prohibiting the use of “tents, structures, generators and other installations” in the park. Some protesters, however, remain undeterred.

“These people,” said Robledo, pointing to the officers in Zuccotti Park on Tuesday afternoon, “are doing their job, and we have to do ours. We are going to reoccupy.”

LeGend proposed zone Lines zone 234 zone 1 zone 089 zone 276 zone 397

needed for additional growth in areas.”

“They basically rezone to respond to new schools,” said Hovitz following the meeting.

Currently, Hovitz and CB1 are coming up with amendments to the rezoning plan, although he is unsure if they will actually be used if requested by the CEC. The DOE has not responded on whether amendments to the proposal are possible.

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What if We never met?

Your guide to the best obscure museums of Downtown | BY Paulette SafDieh

It takes a lot to impress a New Yorker. Out-oftowners and tourists, newly transplanted coworkers from the West Coast (and, at times, even our Uptown counterparts) get excited about seeing the latest Broadway show or MoMA exhibit, but we shrug our shoulders like we’ve seen it all before. We have our own idea of what’s cool.

Photo courteSY of SkYScraPer muSeum

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ecause everyone loves food (although not everyone loves museums), the NY Food Museum opened in 1998 with mass appeal, giving New Yorkers a new way to celebrate tasty grub and learn a thing or two while they’re at it. Since originating the city’s annual International Pickle Day nine years ago, the NY Food Museum has continued to give us reason to believe that New York’s tastebuds enjoy food beyond the realm of red velvet cupcakes and Halal food from a cart.

The NY Food Museum is not a sight to be seen one afternoon and never revisited, mainly because of its traveling status. Sans a permanent home, the museum hosts discussion panels, film showings, traditional exhibits (including their first How New Yorkers Ate 100 Years Ago) and the upcoming Lower East Side Pickle Day this spring.

Beware of the crowds; pickle day draws tens of thousands of visitors every year.

NY Food Museum, 59 Orchard St. (betw. Grand & Hester Sts.), 212-266-9010, www.nyfoodmuseum.org; call for exhibition dates, times and prices.

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ItalIan amerIcan museum

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ppropriately nestled on the corner of Mulberry and Grand streets among the Italian bakeries and aroma of freshly cooked pasta, the Italian American Museum pays homage to the first Italian immigrants to come to New York City.

The museum’s director, Dr. Joseph Scelsa, an extremely knowledgeable—you guessed it—Italian-American sociologist, bought the building in 2008 from the Italian-American Stabile family, with the hope of archiving community artifacts from the last century and a half. The Stabile family emigrated to New York in the 1860s and first opened the space as a bank.

The museum’s interior is built around the actual glass booths where the tellers sat, and includes an array of artifacts from the 19th century through today. The collection ranges from ItalianAmerican currency printed in New Jersey during World War II

(when the U.S. occupied Italy) to the first vendor plates from the annual San Gennaro festival. Old passports and luggage tags are showcased beside community photographs, marriage certificates and even a restored wedding dress. The very back of the museum holds an organ that dates back to 1898, a 6-foot-tall bank vault and hand-cranked calculators used in the space years ago.

Welcoming about 100,000 yearly visitors, the museum preserves a culture unique to our city’s Little Italy—“the most famous Little Italy in the world,” according to Scelsa.

Italian American Museum, 155 Mulberry St. (at Grand St.), 212-9659000, www.italianamericanmuseum.org; weekends, 12–6 p.m., $5.

Photo courteSY of italian american muSeum

 OU R TOWN DOWNTOWN | nove m b e r 17, 2011

up pickle exhibits, some cater to house ghosts and some showcase comic books like the Metropolitan Museum of Art does Rembrandt works. So what if you intentionally missed the Alexander McQueen exhibit this year? There’s a different kind of viable culture thriving in our own quarters that you don’t need to wait two hours in a line to experience.

ny Food museum

skyscraper museum

cross the street from the Jewish History Museum and down the block from the Museum of the American Indian, this tribute to our city’s favorite form of architecture is yet another reason to hop off the train at Bowling Green. A small, one-floor space, The Skyscraper Museum showcases an array of historical documents (including newspaper clippings and World Trade Center floor plans) and an impressive wall exhibit of the world’s tallest buildings.

Black-and-white photographs of New York City construction sites line the ramp leading from the gift shop entrance to the one-floor dedication to our city’s—and the world’s — most famous high-rise buildings. Tall glass windows and overhead mirrors give the illusion of walking through an indoor skyscraper park, allowing visitors to navigate between the pillared cases that hold model buildings, including Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest at 2,717 feet, and the Kingkey Finance Tower in Shenzhen, China.

Interactive touchscreens and wall-mounted television screens teach about skyscraper form and history—did you know there are jumbo skyscrapers (surface area up to 2 million square feet) and super jumbos (up to 4 million square feet)? The museum’s collection also includes a replica New York Times front-page story from 1947 announcing the proposal for the World Trade Center site and the letters exchanged between famed architect Minoru Yamasaki and the paper’s architecture critic.

The Skyscraper Museum, 39 Battery Pl. (at Little W. St.), 212-968-1961, www.skyscraper.org; Wed.–Sun., 12-6 p.m., $5.

Downtown thrives on the charm of unconventional culture—which is why a haunted house museum finds its home on Bowery and not on Museum Mile. Unbeknownst to a lot of us, our exclusive hub south of 14th Street has its own fair share of museums—depending on what your definition of museum is. Some travel from location to location setting

MuseuM of the aMerican GanGster

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carface fans, rejoice! This museum, hidden behind a 10-foot black gate on St. Mark’s Place, is home to some great gangster paraphernalia. Established just over a year ago in a onetime speakeasy, the museum showcases the scandalous and violent years of the Prohibition era with artifacts ranging from 100-year-old stills (the vesssels used to make moonshine) to the infamous bank robber John Dillinger’s death masks.

A visit to the museum, which more closely resembles a small schoolroom than the MoMA, starts with a showing of a 15-minute video about American history in the early 20th century. Simply furnished with a bench and four wooden chairs, the museum teaches about the history of the building itself and the gangsters who operated out of it, Walter Scheib and Frank Hoffman.

After purchasing the building in 1964, the current owner discovered a copper safe filled with $100 gold notes (equivalent to millions of dollars today), cigarettes and beer bottles left by Scheib and Hoffman. Over the years, the owner’s decision to gather these and other relics and expand the collection into a full-fledged museum came to fruition last spring.

The safe, now covered in rust, sits at the museum’s entrance filled with replica bills and the bottles found inside years ago. Wanted posters, newspaper clippings and Pat Hamou paintings line the walls of the museum, which has a special Valentine’s Day Massacre section and hand-drawn diagrams of American history. Although visited by local school groups and gangster enthusiasts, the museum has some days when nobody walks through the door.

Make sure to visit the theater and bar on the ground level to cap off your visit and celebrate the legality of alcohol.

The Museum of the American Gangster, 80 St. Mark’s Pl. (betw. Ave. A & 1st Ave.), 212-228-5736, www.museumoftheamericangangster.org; 1-6 p.m., $15.

Merchant’s house MuseuM

C photo courtesy of merchant’s house museum

elebrating its 75th year in business, the Merchant’s House Museum welcomes between 50,000 and 100,000 curious every each year to explore the supposedly haunted, 139-year-old row house on East Fourth Street. The museum first opened in 1936, three years after the death of Gertrude Tredwell, the last person to live at 29 E. 4th St. The Tredwell family lived in the house for over 100 years, and a visit to the museum suggests they—or their ghosts—still do.

Once you walk up the wsix steps from the sidewalk and step through the white marble door, be prepared to hear strange sounds of nonexistent footsteps and catch yourself looking over your shoulder in fear. Through the display of 3,000 untouched possessions from the Tredwell family and their four Irish servants, including old clothes and a wooden piano, the museum evokes a creepy sense of abandonment. Throughout the two floors, stationed amongst the roped-off furniture, fully dressed mannequins of the Tredwells appear more authentic than any sculpture at Madame Tussaud’s.

If you can get past the spookiness, the Merchant’s House Museum also serves as an educational opportunity to learn about New York City architecture and lifestyle history. A double parlor room on the ground floor showcases mahogany chairs, hanging gasoliers and paintings, all dating back to the early 1900s. The intricate mouldings lining the ceilings and brick exterior helped earn the building landmark recognition as the only historic house museum south of 14th Street.

Merchant’s House Museum, 29 E. 4th St. (betw. Bowery & Lafayette St.), 212-777-1089, www. merchantshouse.org; Mon.–Thurs., noon–5 p.m., $10.

Clockwise: Lorcan Otway with a copy of The Chicago Daily News from the day after the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre; A collection of liquor bottles from the Prohibition era; Forensic death masks, which question whether or not John Dillinger was ever captured and killed; Otway opens one out of the two safes his father discovered. PHoTos by walTer scHille

MuseuM of coMic and cartoon art

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ome of us have a greater appreciation for the brilliance behind Charles Schulz comics than famous Renaissance paintings. The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art lets you know you’re not alone, presenting a collection of the best graphic arts, classic comics and cartoons from around the world. Located amid the tourist frenzy of Broadway in Soho, the museum has its own discreet, quiet space on the fourth floor of an office building.

Though small, the museum offers a collection of newspaper funnies, Japanese anime, comic strips and gag cartoons to bring back feelings of childhood nostalgia and leave you asking why you ever stopped reading Archie comics. It examines how issues of the First Amendment and censorship have tangled with graphics over time and how the images on display reflect the period in which they were created. Should a visit awaken your creative flair, offered classes include the Craft of Comics Writing and Writing for Animation. A gallery-style museum, rotating exhibits are set up every few weeks, so always call ahead to confirm whether the museum is open.

Leave time after your visit to head over to Animazing Gallery on Greene Street, a 26-year-old gallery featuring artwork from greats like Tim Burton and Maurice Sendak, to keep in the spirit of the day.

Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art, 594 Broadway Ste. 401 (betw.

Houston & Prince Sts.), 212-2543511, www.moccany.org; Tues.– photo courtesy of museum of comic and cartoon art Sun., 12-5, $6. nove m b e r 17, 2011 | otdowntown.com

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THE 7-DAY PLAN

BEST PICK

FRIDAY

SATURDAY

SUNDAY

MONDAY

Location TBA, www.nycbeerathon.com; check-in 11 a.m., $65.

Get ready for a new kind of marathon event in New York City. As a nod to the 26 miles of the Marathon, the NYC Beerathon is an all-day, all-night journey where thirsty and enthusiastic participants are afforded tastings of 26 hand-picked beers at 26 hand-picked bars from the East to the West Village. The starting line location and course map will be available on the NYC Beerathon website the morning of the race.

THURSDAY

17 18 19 20 21 22 23

NYC Beerathon [11/19]

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Angelique Kidjo Joe’s Pub, 425 Lafayette St. (betw. Astor Pl. & 4th St.), www.joespub.com; 9:30 p.m., $30.

Called “Africa’s Premier Diva” by Time magazine, Angelique Kidjo, along with director Jo Bonney, will revisit the legends and tales of Kidjo’s childhood with a poignant perspective on the history of her native country.

FREE Bought, Borrowed & Stolen

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

Submissions can be sent to otdowntown@manhattanmedia.com.

Good Morning America Johnny Johnson Dream Show The Living Theatre, 21 Clinton St. (betw. Houston & Stanton Sts.), www.livingtheatre.org; 8 p.m., $25.

If you could have a dinner party and invite anyone, dead or alive, who would you choose? John Strasberg has answered this question in his new play Good Morning America Johnny Johnson Dream Show. On his morning talk show, Johnny Johnson interviews a psychic medium. During the interview, Plato, Mark Twain, Hamlet, Mary, mother of God, Abraham, Bonnie and Clyde, Adolf Hitler and Margaret Sanger all make guest appearances.

FREE 7 Delightful Sins

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Dean & Deluca, 560 Broadway (betw.

Prince & Spring Sts.), www.allegramcevedy.com; 6 p.m.

Nothing goes together quite like cookbooks and knife collecting. Chef, journalist and restaurant founder Allegra McEvedy will be signing her new book, Bought, Borrowed & Stolen, a food-travel diary that covers 20 years of her globetrotting.

Leslie-Lohman Museum, 127-B Prince St. (betw.

Houston & Grand Sts.), www.leslielohman.org; 6-9 p.m.

Well, that’s not what we thought they meant by homo erectus! Charles Gatewood’s exhibit, 7 Delightful Sins, will be on display and the photographer himself will be there to celebrate the opening night. The exhibit highlights vintage and contemporary prints of nudes, fetish and counterculture subjects captured over 45 years.

FREE Haudenosaunee Friendship Day

Craic Comedy Night 116 NYC, 116 MacDougal St. (betw. Bleeker & W. 3rd Sts.), www.thecraicfest.com; 7 p.m., $15.

As winter gets closer and the days get shorter, don’t let the cold-weather blues weigh you down. Join headliner Aidan Bishop at this showcase of Irish comedy talent from across the Atlantic and NYC and enjoy good laughs and a pint of ale (or two).

National Museum of the American Indian, 1 Bowling Green, www.nmai.si.edu; 1–5 p.m.

Don’t let the name scare you away. Learn to pronounce it and much, much more! Visitors will dance with the Haudenosaunee Singers and Dancers, meet with Fred Kennedy about traditional snow snake competitions, learn about lacrosse and make traditional cornhusk dolls.

Boy Gets Girl Access Theater, 380 Broadway (betw. White & Walker Sts.), www.accesstheater.com; 7 p.m., $18.

Everyone has a story about that guy or girl who got just a bit too stalkerish. Rebecca Gilman puts these experiences to paper in her funny, suspenseful theatrical production, Boy Gets Girl. Theresa Bedell is an independent literary journalist living in New York City. When set up on a blind date with Tony, a handsome man new to town, her life is turned upside down.

Every Little Step Closing Night Joyce SoHo, 155 Mercer St. (betw. Houston & Prince Sts.), www.joyce.org; 2 p.m., $20.

Traditional Irish dance and African-American step dance?

Together? Dance Theatre of Ireland and Soul Steps will end its popular run of the original collaboration combining African-American stepping, Irish and modern dance, rhythm and storytelling. Their work has been described as a constant reflection of our human states of frailty and strength.

Ben-Hur Film Forum, 209 W. Houston St. (betw. 7th & 8th Aves.), www.filmforum.org; 7:30 p.m., $12.50.

Film Forum is offering a brief respite from the noise of your daily life. Take a step back, take your earbuds out and get off Twitter for a silent movie screening that is just good oldfashioned fun. As part of its weekly series Silent Roar, Film Forum will be screening the 1925 epic Ben-Hur, complete with original color tints, two-strip Technicolor sequences and legendary chariot sequence.

TUESDAY

WEDNESDAY

 OU R TOWN DOWNTOWN | NOVE M B E R 17, 2011

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Where Am I? Tribes Gallery, 285 3rd St. (betw. Aves. C & D), www.tribes.org; 10 a.m.–6 p.m., $5 suggested donation.

Want to experience art like a blind man? The concept of the show is to simulate the experience with art of Steve Cannon—founder of Tribes Gallery—as a blind gallery owner. The room will be dark and filled with fog. Video installations will be projected on the walls, and live music will accompany attendees as they’re guided through a labyrinth of various sculpture works.

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Canterbury Tales Remixed SoHo Playhouse, 15 Vandam St. (betw. 7th & 6th Aves.), www.sohoplayhouse.com; 7:30 p.m., $39–$55.

Remember reading the Canterbury Tales in school and wanting to beat yourself to death with the book?

Well, this ain’t your professor’s Canterbury Tales.

Linking today’s hip-hop lyrics with the greatest stories ever told, Canadian hip-hop artist Baba Brinkman forges a new theatrical masterpiece out of the rawest material etched onto vinyl or carved into clay tablets.

Anne Hathaway Talks Culture The Public Theater, 425 Lafayette St. (betw. Astor Pl. & 4th St.), www.publictheater.org; 8 p.m., $25.

Looking for a little highbrow entertainment to justify what you did over the weekend? Join Anne Hathaway, Sam Waterston and several esteemed academics to discuss the ethical implication of King Lear and answer the question: Does culture make us who we are?

AA Bondy Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey St. (betw. Bowery & Christie St.), www.boweryballroom.com; 8 p.m., $15.

Ease into your work week with something much more enjoyable than preparing for your Wednesday morning meeting. With music made up of scenes gathered in actual places (upstate New York, Mississippi, California) and scenes from another place, Bondy has been described as a finger on a dream globe. One foot in the dirt, one in the ether— an unseen voice at your ear. On the tide with the Surfer King. Show is 18+.

Dancing at Lughnasa The Irish Repertory Theatre, 132 W. 22nd St. (betw. 6th & 7th Aves.), www.irishrep.org; 8–10 p.m., $65.

Widely regarded as Brian Friel’s masterpiece, the Tony Award-winning show is the story of the five unmarried Mundy sisters who live in a modest cottage in Donegal. On the threshold of the autumn of 1936, the sisters, with unfailing courage and sweet forgiveness, dance in a wild, final celebration of their way of life before it changes forever.

November 23, 2011

S E P T E M B E R 8, 2011 | otd ow n tow n . c o m

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� SE E Another Happy Day Caps a Great Year ellen Barkin’s new movie is the icing on the cake of her 2011 | By mArk peikert “I don’t think I’ve ever said the words ‘I’m proud of myself,’” Ellen Barkin said over coffee recently at Soho’s MEET at The Apt. “But this movie is the greatest accomplishment of my career.”

Barkin was speaking of Another Happy Day, which she produced and stars in, but that statement could have been about any number of projects over the course of this past year. In April, she made her Broadway debut in The Normal Heart, winning a Tony Award in the process. This summer saw the release of the indie film Shit Year, with its sure-to-be-iconic poster of Barkin in runny makeup, eyes mostly closed, a cigarette dangling from the side of her famous mouth. But it’s Another Happy Day, writer-director Sam Levinson’s first film, that has the Greenwich Village resident so uncharacteristically happy with herself.

The Little Book That Could

A good book is discovered by a big publisher | By Aspen mAtis Emily Rubin, 55, is a youthful-looking former dancer whose debut novel, Stalina, was recently published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. We spoke with Rubin in her colorful East Village apartment about teaching fiction writing to cancer patients, buying her apartment from the city of New York (for only $250!), the origin of the name Stalina and storytelling in laundromats.

Tell us about Stalina’s journey to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; I know the book followed an exciting path to publication.

Yes! Stalina was a pick in the Amazon Debut Novel Award contest in 2010. It was published through that in January 2011

by AmazonEncore. It did quite well—sold

“Quite frankly, I’m having a very good five years,” she said seriously. “I never say nice things about myself and I get yelled at all the time for not owning my accomplishments, but I do have to say over the last five or so years… And it has really hit home in the last year.”

Another Happy Day finds Barkin leading a cast that includes Ellen Burstyn, Demi Moore and Kate Bosworth. Her role as Lynne—a divorced and remarried mother of four struggling to get through her eldest son’s wedding day amid family dysfunction—was, according to Barkin, “the most difficult, rewarding, complicated, cathartic role of my life. This was a killer.”

Among other reasons, Barkin found the role challenging because of her character’s less-than-stellar parenting skills.

“To sit up there on the screen and basically tell the world that I, Ellen Barkin, made some very big fucking mistakes as a mother…” she said, of how audiences might see her performance through the lens of her past. “I’m not a bad person, I’m not a bad mother. It could have traumatized my children.”

3,000 copies—and was picked up by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt [HMH]. Now the initial print run is bigger—I’m not exactly sure how big.

I believe in the book. It has an audience that’s pretty broad. HMH is giving an unknown author a chance to have some legs. I am thrilled; HMH has taken the edge off thinking I was crazy to think I’d ever get published. There’s a writer’s life for me to pursue.

Tell us, without giving too much away, about Stalina’s story.

An older Russian immigrant comes to the States after the fall of the Soviet Union, takes a job at a short-stay motel and convinces the owner to let her transform the rooms into fantasy settings— rooms that encourage their visitors to exit the everyday and enter a playful fantasy world. The motel becomes popular and the rooms become portals to Stalina’s childhood in Russia.

Stalina is such a loaded name. Why did you choose it for your protagonist?

One of the community classes I taught was in Brighton Beach. All of my students were older Russian immigrants. When I asked them to tell the stories of their names, I found many had come from poets or soldiers or scientists or even scientific discoveries. One woman was Sta-

 OU R TOWN DOWNTOWN | nove m b e r 17, 2011

Ellen Barkin in Another Happy Day. PHoTo courTesy of PHase 4

Some pressure was removed thanks to Barkin’s close relationship with Levinson, son of director Barry Levinson, who gave Barkin her big film break in 1982’s Diner. “As

lina. She explained that she was named for Stalin. Although it was a brutal name to carry and her classmates suggested she change it, she felt changing it would bury her country’s history. She would not change it.

As you wrote Stalina, were you also teaching?

I worked in television broadcasting for almost 20 years—something that has afforded me my writing life. I’ve also taught writing workshops in New York City public schools, community centers, community colleges. Now I’m teaching a workshop at Beth Israel Hospital for cancer patients. I had breast cancer in 2008. Now I’m all clear! I wanted to give people who were going through treatment the opportunity to write about things not

Left: Emily Rubin, author of Stalina. courTesy of emily rubin Right: Stalina. PHoTo courTesy of HougHTon mifflin HarcourT

a producer, I was lucky enough to be working with an extremely gifted and wildly focused, unbelievably well-informed, very strong writerdirector who worked really fast,” Barkin said, then grinned. “That writer-director was also a first-time writer-director, so anything that was asked of him he thought was normal. And it was fabulous!”

After being at Levinson’s side for the three years from writing to filming, Barkin said her need for his input as an actor had already been satisfied, leaving her free to focus on her producing chores. “So I’d have to finish the scene,” Barkin recalled, “and say, ‘OK, that’s an hour you’ve been lighting that. Too long. Kate Bosworth is maybe the prettiest girl in the movies. You don’t need that much time. Save it for me!’

So it actually really worked.”

Another Happy Day seems to be the perfect grace note for Barkin to end her anything-but-shit year. “I feel inspired, invigorated, energized,” Barkin said. “I feel brand new, with a life’s worth of experience behind me. And I feel that at 57 years old, I am ready to embrace whatever it is I have to offer as an actor and as a producer. And not to be afraid of it.”

cancer-related as a break. People have complex lives. They’re not just cancer.

Where do you like to write in the city?

I’m kind of a homebound writer. When I’m outside in the neighborhood, I observe. I like to be sequestered away when I’m writing. I love people watching and eavesdropping in Manhattan.

Your apartment is so lovely.

We totally renovated the apartment from rubble. This building was a homestead—collectively the tenants fixed up the building. Everyone renovated their own apartments. We purchased the building from the city for $10,000. We purchased our apartment for $250. Each apartment cost $250.

Tell me about the reading series you produce in laundromats.

“Dirty Laundry Loads of Prose” is a reading series that takes place in laundromats. Two writers and sometimes a musician will, over the course of an hour, read and perform their work. I produce it. The last one had several writers, and I asked them to write short pieces about a stain and present them. We called it “Remains of the Stain.” Chocolate, lipstick, blood.

Interesting work.

To read more about Rubin, visit www.emilyrubin.net.

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� DI G ITI ZE Gotham CNET Hands-On Holiday Guide Holiday gift guide for the tech-savvy

A CNET techie, one of many, helped shoppers in Nolita decipher the best gadgets for the holiday season at a pop-up shop at the Openhouse Gallery.

| By Kristina Diggins-reisinger

Photo courtesy of cnet

A

ny vintage style devotee, shopaholic or foodie would feel right at home in Nolita.

Boutiques, chic shops and eccentric bars and cafés line the streets. In the midst of this trendy neighborhood, I found CNET’s HandsOn Holiday Guide, a tech-centric pop-up shop for the gizmo whiz in your life.

Hosted through Sunday, Nov. 13, the four-dimensional guide found a temporary home at Openhouse Gallery. The place was packed with electronic gurus and customers drooling over walls lined with the latest toys accompanied by helpful explanatory note cards for technological amateurs like myself.

Cameras When I entered the shop, I was met with an array of featured cameras, including the Canon EOS Rebel T3i, the Nikon D3100 and the Sony Cyber-shot DSCHX9V. The Canon Rebel was on the pricier side, starting at $659.99. This finely tuned piece of machinery boasts excellent video capabilities as well as high image quality.

When shooting stills and video, however, the Rebel’s controls can be frustrating to operate, and it’s not terribly fast for spontaneous shooting. This wouldn’t be a good option for parents like myself looking to capture those first steps.

Conversely, the Nikon D3100 has a markedly smaller viewfinder but features excellent photo quality and well laid-out buttons and controls.

The one that nabbed CNET’s editor’s pick, however, was the Sony Cyber-shot.

While considerably more affordable at $269.99, it boasts shooting features including face detection and image stabilization.

According to the experts, one key piece of advice this holiday season if you are buying a camera is to ditch any obsession with megapixels. Most cameras on the market today have more than enough megapixels to get the job done. Instead, opt for a cheaper body but a higher quality lens. Buying an expensive camera and putting a cheap lens on it is like buying a Lamborghini and putting a four-cylinder engine in it; better to buy a Honda Civic and add a souped-up V-8. The lens is what focuses light so your pictures are crystal clear. entertainment

For the in-home entertainment field there were three clear frontrunners: Apple TV, Microsoft Xbox 360 Slim and Sony PlayStation 3 Slim. Apple TV lets you stream all of the movies and TV shows available on iTunes to your HDTV on a pay-per-view basis. It offers Netflix, streams content from any iOS device or computer running iTunes and costs about $349. The Apple TV, however, won’t work with older, pre-HD TVs. A mammoth product in terms of features, the Xbox Slim, at $299, includes a sleeker design, much quieter operation, a better cooling system, touch-sensitive power and disc tray, 250GB hard drive, built-in Wi-Fi and five USB ports. The new Xbox, however, doesn’t warrant a purchase if you already own a working older version.

The Sony PlayStation 3 Slim, also $299, won editor’s top pick and is sure to indulge your gaming needs with all the best features of the Xbox Slim plus a Blu-ray and DVD player.

Computers If you are looking to splurge for your loved one this season with a fancy new computer, the first question to ask yourself is, how often do they travel? If they seem to be out and about quite often, a laptop with a screen that has added weight might slow them down. Pick one with more compact dimensions, around 13 inches in length, but skip the Netbook, since your smart phone isn’t significantly

 OU R TOWN DOWNTOWN | nove m b e r 17, 2011

smaller and still offers all the same functions.

CNET editor-at-large Brian Cooley’s presentation encouraged consumers not to fear the death of the PC. Tablets and smart phones are an adjunct, but people are still using PCs as their home base.

CNET’s shop featured laptops including the Apple MacBook Pro 2011, Dell XPS 14z and HP Pavilion dm1z. At $1,700, the MacBook Pro offers incremental updates to its processor and, according to the CNET experts, has the best trackpad and gesture controls of any current laptop.

The Dell XPS 14z is attractive with its unprecedentedly thin body and packs all the punch of a 14-inch laptop in a 13-inch body, with plenty of configuration options.

Winning the editor’s pick was the HP Pavilion dm1z, a far more affordable laptop at roughly $400 than its competitors that features a better touch pad and updated processor. smart phones Okay, let’s talk smart phones. Android vs. iPhone: which is better? While the iPhone offers tons of music and a simple, intuitive interface, Android offers more control. When buying a smart phone as a gift, remember to think about the tech ecosystem the person is already submersed in. Chances are, if your sister owns an iPod, iPad and a MacBook, she is going to want to stick with the iPhone so she can easily transfer data between

devices.

At her talk, CNET’s Jessica Dolcourt discussed the hottest smart phones and highlighted the Droid Razor, which was released on 11/11/11 and is, for a limited time, being sold for $111.11. The Razor is a 4G phone with HD display, 8 megapixel camera and splash resistant screen, in case someone spills the eggnog.

The iPhone 4S will run you about $299, but aside from its faster processor and upgraded camera, there isn’t much there that the iPhone 4 didn’t already have. The editor’s pick was the Galaxy Nexus, featuring a huge 4.65inch HD display and a slightly curved face intended to hug your cheek when holding the phone to your ear, which offers impeccable speed. televisions LG advertised its latest TV with the phrase, “Seeing believes.” Their new LG Cinema 3D TV offers 2D and 3D conversion functions, smart TV and a magic motion remote. Like a mouse for a smart TV, the remote lets you drag, flick and select your preferences without the hassle of using multiple buttons and arrow keys.

Other featured televisions were the Samsung PN51D7000 and Sony Bravia KDL-46NX720. The Samsung, at $1,200, offers outstanding overall picture quality, with excellent black-level performance and extremely accurate color. Key features include built-in Wi-Fi, comprehensive picture controls and more apps and streaming services than competitors. At $1,099, the Sony Bravia produces deeper black levels than any LED-based TV tested and includes built-in Wi-Fi as well as an Internet suite that streams services and widgets.

Visit www.cnet.com for more information on these and other products. Happy shopping!

� DWE LL Cleaning House with Michael Moeller We pick the brain of the East Village-based designer on his show helping New Yorkers declutter their homes

| BY marissa maiEr Michael Moeller co-hosts The Style Network’s Clean House New York, which debuted in October. In an episode that aired this week, Moeller and his partner in design, Nina Ferrer, helped West Village resident Paul, whose apartment was so jam-packed with belongings that he slept on the floor. The pair cleaned out his place, helped him sell items at an auction and a yard sale and later redesigned the space to make it functional.

We asked Moeller about the key to successful design and how New Yorkers can go about clearing out their homes.

What is your design background?

I have been doing interior design for a little over 10 years. I worked on high-end

residential properties for a firm, but then I wanted a change and I went into hospitality design.

About three years ago, I decided to go out on my own and I have worked on decent-sized projects. I have been concentrating on residential properties— not super high-end, more of the starterouters, the thirtysomething artists and people who work in finance. I work with an amazing group of clients who could run their own reality show.

It seems like, with home design, you really need to have an intimate understanding of what your client needs, since it is their home.

Of course. When I meet a 29-year-old finance bachelor, I have to think that he wants a place to impress girls and for his friends to hang out in. While, with a couple in their thirties, they might want to take that extra bedroom and make it into a nursery at some point. The key to success is knowing what clients want.

How much does psychology play a role

in your work, especially when working with a client like Paul, who has a very strong attachment to his possessions?

For me, I don’t get as personal as my co-star, Nina Ferrer. I read people and I try to formulate what they want. Paul is single, lives in the West Village and wants to work from home; that was the program in my head. For him, he was so distracted by so many things that I wanted to minimize those distractions in his life.

My sister is a psychology major and we have endless conversations about how design relates to psychology. To create an environment for someone, you have to understand them and how they live.

What are the best ways for people to go about cleaning out their apartments?

The one thing people buy a lot of, I think, are clothes. I have a system. For me, if I have gone a full season and I have not worn something, I throw it away. I’m the same way about shoes. If you get a good season out of a pair of shoes you spent $100 on, then throw them away.

As far as collections go, I understand that

Michael Moeller helps New Yorkers clean and organize their urban—and pint-sized—abodes.

Photo courtesy of the style network

people want to collect, but people should start collections that make sense for them. If you love to have friends over, you might want to collect vintage cocktail glasses.

What about the show most excites you?

I am excited to see people get into it. A lot of people all over the country will have a chance to see how New Yorkers live.

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� EAT Blindfolds, Caresses and Accordions My dark dining adventure | By Leonora Desar

W

hat have I gotten myself into this time? I wonder silently.

I am wearing a blindfold—pardon me, a fancy eye mask called a “Mindfold”— that makes me look like Cyclops from the movie X-Men. My hands rest lightly on the slender shoulders of a dancer/embodier— more on that later—who is guiding me to the restroom before the evening’s festivities begin. She tells me I may remove the mindfold once I am inside the restroom, but I must put it back on immediately afterward so I don’t to see my surroundings.

No, I am not a Skull and Bones novitiate preparing for my big initiation. It’s Thursday evening and I am at Camaje Bistro and Lounge in Greenwich Village, where I will soon, according to Camaje’s website, be whisked off to “a romantic, intriguing innerspace.” I, who have problems not spilling wine and sauce on myself under the best of circumstances, am about to eat a mysterious, French-inspired four-course meal in the dark, the contents of which won’t be revealed to me until the very end of the evening.

“We could have just blindfolded ourselves and eaten at home,” whispers my husband Lucien when I am led safely back outside the restaurant. While we wait with a feisty Russian family and another couple, he shows me a cartoon that he has scribbled of me in my X-Men mask. I scowl at him, unamused. “Just give it a chance!” I hiss.

Dana Salisbury, the creator and director of Dark Dining Projects, emerges from Camaje, her short hair gleaming a bright burgundy underneath the street lights. She gives us the drill.

“These events are not about blindness, they’re about celebrating all of the other senses. You know, like, we’re three-dimensional but we live in a very two-dimensional world... So tonight is part dinner party and part event. Dark dining is all about slowing down. Enjoying yourself. Toasting each other.

Feeding each other...”

Feeding each other? How are we supposed to do that?

I am about to find out.   

“OK, so does everybody have an item in their hand?”

I am now sitting inside Camaje. My hands successfully grasp what feels like a piece of bread, filling me with a sense of accomplishment that is soon dashed by the cold water that I’ve just spilled on my lap. As I said, I was

never a very graceful eater.

“OK,” Salisbury resumes, her voice floating somewhere in the dark. “So what we’re going to do is on the count of three—don’t do it, I’m just demonstrating verbally—one, two, three crunch! And what that’s going to do is help create a sound snapshot. It should be able to give you a sense of the size of the room and where the other people are sitting in relationship to you. Are you ready?”

Crunch, crunch, crunch. Wow, I had never realized just how loud food could be.

It turns out that I never realized a lot of things. Like, for instance, how much I really enjoy white wine (if that is in fact what I’m drinking—I can’t be absolutely certain with the mindfold on). The more I drink of it the more I realize how much I also really like salad, which (I believe) has now arrived as the first course.

“But you’ve never been crazy about salad before,” Lucien reminds me. “You must be enjoying it because your other senses are heightened with the mindfold on.”

I am not so sure about that, actually. Without any visual cues to alert me to what I’m eating, it’s more like I am being tricked into getting past my own preconceived notions of what I think I like or dislike.

In any case, the next course has now arrived and I am pretty sure it’s salmon, which I always tend to like a lot. Unfortunately, though, it’s hard to eat without a knife and I, in my infinite clumsiness, would never dare to attempt it while still wearing my Cyclops mask.

So I do the unthinkable. I pick up a piece of it with my hand. I mean, no one’s looking, right?

Not necessarily.

You see, the thing is that even though the patrons can’t see one another, our hosts—who include Salisbury, Camaje’s owner and chef Abigail Hitchcock, the dancer/embodiers (trained dancers who have “a good feel for how to be embodied and how to help other people feel embodied,” according to Salisbury) and God knows who else—definitely can.

“I feel like we’re in a fish bowl,” Lucien whispers. “It’s like we’re on display and everyone can hear everything we’re talking about.”

“You’re being paranoid—we would know if someone was nearby,” I say.

“More water?” a voice suddenly asks us, just inches away.

“Now I feel paranoid,” I whisper to Lucien when I think we are alone again.

“So, now that the wolf is no longer at the door, we’re going to take about 10 minutes to just luxuriate in sound while the kitchen works on the main course,” Salisbury says. “I give you Kamala.”

 OU R TOWN DOWNTOWN | nove m b e r 17, 2011

Diners nosh in blindness at Camaje Bistro and Lounge in Greenwich Village.

Photo courtesy of Dark Dining Projects

I am wondering who the wolf is and why he’s no longer here when an operatic, ethereal voice pierces the room accompanied by (what sounds like) an accordion. It’s like being serenaded at a renaissance faire by a very vocal woodland nymph—if woodland nymphs played the accordion, which I am not sure they do.

“Ahhhhh,” sings the nymph.

Suddenly, feminine hands begin to caress—yes, caress—my bare arms. This must be what I get for wearing a sleeveless dress.

Then the music stops. The hands do too.

“Did someone just feel us up?” Lucien asks.

The real fun, however, begins after the third course.

“Because we are so few we have a luxury tonight, which is that we can get people up dancing if they’d like,” Salisbury says. “What we’ll do is we’ll come help you stand if you wish.”

“We’re not standing. We’re staying…right?”

Lucien pleads.

Wrong.

Salisbury’s somehow familiar, feminine hands lead Lucien and I to the dance floor.

Kamala, the woodland nymph, is playing her accordion again with a vengeance. This time the mood is what I would expect to find if I stumbled into a tavern in Transylvania.

Hands clap. The accordion picks up the pace.

“I’m dancing with some pretty woman!” a female voice cries out in a thick Russian accent.

“See, this isn’t so bad,” I tease Lucien. Soon enough we are guided back to our seats.

“You’re so quiet,” Lucien says after a few minutes have passed.

It’s true. I’m all talked out. It’s one thing to sit for two hours with someone and fill in the silences with eye contact, but it’s quite another to have to rely entirely on words.

Let’s just say I feel grateful that I’m not on a

first date. I mean, talk about the potential for uncomfortable silences.

Even feeding each other—which Lucien and I do awkwardly under Salisbury’s tutelage — is not enough to add romantic flavor to an otherwise flavorful meal.

“Ouch! You almost poked my eyes out with your fork,” Lucien complains. “Thank God for the protection of that mindfold thing.”

Chop, chop.

“So now we’ve come to the dénouement of the evening,” Salisbury says. She introduces Hitchcock, who at last reveals the menu.

“I can’t believe that wasn’t salmon!” I exclaim.

“I can’t believe I just ate lavender ice cream,” Lucien says.

Finally we are led out by someone who sounds a lot like the dancer/embodier from earlier in the evening. She warns us to remove our eye masks slowly and only when we arrive outside the restaurant.

“You mean we won’t get to see what the set-up looks like without the mindfold?” I ask.

“You’ll have to come back another day,” she says with a smile.

The question is, will we?

“The food was great,” I say to Lucien as we walk down the street.

“But it was $120. Each!” he reminds me.

“Even the mindfolds were $12 if we wanted to keep them.”

“I think it was worth it—for a one-time experience,” I rejoin. “I wasn’t exactly transported to ‘innerspace,’ but it did kind of feel like we were in Eastern Europe for a while.”Another thought suddenly occurs to me.

“Hey, you know what? When we get home, let’s see if we can buy a mindfold cheap on eBay.” Camaje Bistro and Lounge, 85 MacDougal St. (betw. Bleecker & Houston Sts.), 212-6738184; for a schedule of dark dining events, visit www.camaje.com/specialevents.html.

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CLASSI FI E DS Classified Advertising Department Information Telephone: 212-268-0384 | Fax: 212-268-0502 | Email: advertising@manhattanmedia.com Hours: Monday - Friday 9:00 am - 5:00 pm | Deadline: Monday 12 noon for same weeks’ issue

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Early Education coordinator WantEd Coordinate 3 early childhood education centers in the Northwest Bronx. Programs include child care (private pay and funded). Head Start and UPK for children 1-5 years old.

Supervise large staff, develop budgets, and work with Board and Parent Association.

Master’s degree in Early Childhood Education NYS teacher’s Certification (birth-2nd grade) 10 years administrative experience in ECE required. Supervisory Licenses, SDA, SAS and SBL recommended.

Resumes and 3 letters of reference to employment@mmcc.org.

PErsonal oFFicE assistant nEEdEd Office Assistant needed. Typical duties includes; • Pack Shipments Supplies; • Track Shipments; • Receive Shipments and Stock Inventory; • Data Entry; • Routing Mail; • QA Inspections. Experience & proficient in Quick book, Excel and Word Applications. e-Mail resumes to “davewalshdesk@att.net Interested Applicants must be 18+ yrs above.”

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O U R TOW N : D OW N TOWN | S E PTE M B E R 8 , 2 0 1 1

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POLICY NOTICE: We make every effort to avoid mistakes in your classified ads. Check your ad the first week it runs. We will only accept responsibility for the first incorrect insertion. Manhattan Media Classifieds assumes no financial responsibility for errors or omissions. We reserve the right to edit, reject, or re-classify any ad. Contact your sales rep directly for copy changes. All classified ads are pre-paid.

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noticE is hErEBy givEn that a license, Number 12576762 has been applied for by Adan Chikurin Inc d/b/a Chikurin to sell Liquor, Wine & Beer in a restaurant at retail for on-premises consumption under the Alcoholic Beverage Control Law at: 1105 Quentin Rd, Brooklyn, NY 11229

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noticE is hErEBy givEn that a license, Number 1257500 for Beer, Wine & Liquor has been applied for by the undersigned to sell Beer, Wine & Liquor at retail in a restaurant under the Alcoholic Beverage Control Law at: 1756 E Tremont Ave, Bronx, NY 10460 for on-premises consumption. Liquid Lounge LLC

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noticE is hErEBy givEn that a license, number Pending for Beer & Wine has been applied for by the undersigned to sell Beer & Wine at retail in a restaurant under the Alcoholic Beverage Control Law at 102-16 43rd Ave., Corona, NY 11368 for on premises consumption. El Madrono Corp d/b/a Restaurante Gaby.

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noticE is hErEBy givEn that a license, Number 1257908 has been applied for by NYC Chicken & Grill Inc d/b/a Chicky’s to sell Wine & Beer in a restaurant at retail for on-premises consumption under the Alcoholic Beverage Control Law at: 355 East 86th St., NY, NY, 10028 PuBlic noticE noticE is hErEBy givEn, Pursuant to laW, that the NYC Department of Consumer Affairs will hold a Public Hearing on Wednesday, November 23, 2011 at 2:00 p.m. at 66 John Street, 11th floor, on a petition from C.S.L.L. Rest. Corp. to continue to, maintain, and operate an enclosed sidewalk café at 1271 Third Avenue in the Borough of Manhattan for a term of two years.

Requests for copies of the proposed revocable consent agreement may be addressed to: Department of Consumer Affairs, ATTN: Foil Officer, 42 Broadway, New York, NY 10004.

Liquor at retail in a restaurant known as: Green Tree Chinese Restaurant Inc d/b/a 123 Nikko under the Alcoholic Beverage Control Law at: 1280 Amsterdam Avenue, NY, NY 10027 for on premise consumption. noticE is hErEBy givEn that a license, Number Pending for Beer, Wine & Liquor has been applied for by the undersigned to sell Beer, Wine & Liquor at retail in a restaurant under the Alcoholic Beverage Control Law at: Amsterdam 726 Inc, 726 Avenue, NY, NY 10025 for on -premise consumption.

noticE is hErEBy givEn that a license, Serial # Pending for Beer, Wine & Liquor has been applied for by the undersigned to sell Beer, Wine & INSERTION ORDER: LPK5430WSS PUBLICATION: WEST SIDE SPIRIT RUN DATE: THURS., NOVEMBER 3, 2011 SECTION: CLASSIFIED/PUBLIC NOTICE AD SIZE: 1 COL X 35 LINES ADVERTISER: NYC PARKS DEPT

RENOVATION, OPERATION&MAINTENANCE OF TWO (2) NEWSSTANDS, VERDI SQUARE, MANHATTAN All bids submitted in response to this RFB must be submitted no later than Friday, November 18, 2011 at 3 pm.

For more information, contact: Jeremy Holmes, Revenue Inspector, Division of Revenue and Concessions, 830 Fifth Avenue, the Arsenal-Central Park, Room 407, New York, NY 10065 or call (212) 360-3455 or to download the RFB, visit http://www.nyc.gov/parks/businessopportunities and click on the “Concessions Opportunities at Parks” link. Once you have logged in, click on the “download” link that appears adjacent to the RFB’s description. You can also email him at jeremy.holmes@parks.nyc.gov.

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

� TALK I N G U P D OWNTOWN Manhattan Media

editorial

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 Whitney Casser, Penny Grey, Tom Hall, mary morris, robby ritacco, Lillian rizzo, Paulette Safdieh CONTRiBUTiNg PHOTOgRaPHeRs George Denison, veronica Hoglund, Wyatt Kostygan, Andrew Schwartz iNTeRNs Kristina reisinger, mcCamey Lynn

adVertiSinG

advertising@manhattanmedia.com PUBLisHeR Gerry Gavin ggavin@manhattanmedia.com DiReCTOR OF NeW BUsiNess DeveLOPMeNT Dan newman assOCiaTe PUBLisHeRs Seth L. miller, Ceil Ainsworth aDveRTisiNg MaNageR marty Strongin sPeCiaL PROjeCTs DiReCTOR Jim Katocin seNiOR aCCOUNT exeCUTives verne vergara, rob Gault, mike Suscavage DiReCTOR OF eveNTs & MaRkeTiNg Joanna virello jvirello@manhattanmedia.com exeCUTive assisTaNT OF saLes Jennie valenti jvalenti@manhattanmedia.com

BuSineSS adMiniStration

CONTROLLeR Shawn Scott CReDiT MaNageR Kathy Pollyea BiLLiNg COORDiNaTOR Colleen Conklin CiRCULaTiON Joe bendik circ@manhattanmedia.com

PRODUCTiON

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

Susan Henshaw Jones Ronay Menschel diRectoR, MuseuM of the city of new yoRk

| By penny gray

S

usan Henshaw Jones, president and Ronay Menschel director of the Museum of the City of New York, speaks about the museum’s interim takeover of the South Street Seaport Museum at 12 Fulton St. How did you become president of the Museum of the City of New York?

I’m a native New Yorker, but I was living in Washington, D.C., heading up the National Building Museum when I got a call because my husband and I were moving back to New York after 10 years in D.C. The call was this job. I started in February 2003 and I have been here ever since.

And it’s been a good match?

Oh, I think so. What attracted me most—what makes me happiest—is the name of our museum. I believe there is so much others can learn from our city.

It’s a place of opportunity, diversity and perpetual transformation. The Museum of the City of New York is a testament to that.

The Museum of the City of New York has just taken over at the South Street Seaport Museum. Will this change your role at all?

Well, it’s important to clarify that this is an interim agreement for one year with a six-month possible extension and it started on September 29. We were asked to consider this by the City of New York; they were seeking a solution for the future of the Seaport Museum.

And so they came to you. What’s the solution?

We’re working quickly to show the community and New Yorkers that we can make quick, positive changes down at the Seaport. We have secured funding for the reopening of the boats; we’re winterizing the boats at the moment so they can be opened up by the summer.

We’ve also restarted the school programs; we’re booking programs as we speak and the first school program began November 1. We’ve hired archivists to work in the library, cataloging.

The library has been closed to the public for a long while, so it’s badly in need of organization. Hopefully, we’ll even be able to digitize documents and make them available on the website.

Beyond that, we’re exploring strate-

 OU R TOWN DOWNTOWN | nove m b e r 17, 2011

gies for our galleries on Schermerhorn Row. The Seaport has 30,000 square feet of public exhibit space within Schermerhorn Row, so we’re putting together an exhibition of New York’s maritime history, broadly speaking. As of January, we’ll be inviting artists into designated space to put the gallery into use for art installations, performance art, etc. It’s a good time to put the word out about that.

Sounds like you’ve got a lot on your plate. What’s the most difficult aspect of taking on the South Street Seaport Museum?

Undoubtedly, it’s the consideration of the 11 vessels in the Seaport fleet. Up here at the Museum of the City of New York, we haven’t really considered ships, but we embrace them. We are committed to joining these iconic ships with the Schermerhorn Row block, but working out the ins and outs of the vessels is certainly the greatest challenge.

And meanwhile, you continue to run the Museum of the City of New York as well. What’s the greatest challenge there?

Unlike our neighbors down Fifth Avenue, we’re a mid-sized museum entity. We’re a $16 million shop, so raising money in the post-2008 environment is the task at hand. We manage to have a surplus, though, because we’re very responsible.

The Museum of the City of New York is located at 103rd Street and Fifth Avenue, and the Seaport is definitely a Downtown museum. What’s it like working downtown and how does location affect museum culture?

Downtown is really a different place.

photo courtesy of the MuseuM of the city of new york

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

I spent over a decade working in Lower Manhattan with the [John] Lindsay administration in the ’70s and ’80s, when all of the 24-hour uses of Manhattan were being facilitated. Thanks to the Downtown-Lower Manhattan Association, there’s new life cropping up all over the place, and even the function of Downtown is changing, with new residential areas and new uses. It’s unbelievable. It just goes to show how long it takes for city planning to really take root.

And how can Downtowners become involved in the Seaport Museum?

We need the support of all New Yorkers. We need Downtowners to become members on all levels. It’s not just a source of support, but also of attendance. And if museums aren’t your thing, come on over to Bowne & Company Stationers—it’s a fully functioning 19th-century letterpress. You can get your holiday cards printed here, or cards for any occasion. There are a lot of ways to be involved with the South Street Seaport besides stepping inside of a traditional museum.

on topic

Get Famous Or Get Married

t

he 2013 Green Card Lottery, also known as the “Cinderella Visa,” just closed, and from the millions of hopefuls who applied from around the world, there will only be 55,000 lucky winners.

In my 10 years in the U.S., I have gone though a multitude of temporary work visas and I’m well acquainted with the bureaucracy that accompanies the right to live and work here. A green card would allow me to stay in the country indefinitely and work independently, without the need for sponsorship by an employer.

But, distrustful of fairy tales, I had never taken my chances with the lottery.

Hailing from Athens, Greece, I’m well educated, with a career in publishing behind me; I did not see myself as a Cinderella kind of immigrant. I left my country long before its financial troubles started, and for the past eight years I’ve been a happy resident of Greenwich Village. So, at 32, while pursuing a graduate degree from a respected New York-based university and still disdaining the lottery, I went to see a lawyer in Midtown instead.

The lawyer, a loud, animated, middleaged Armenian man, spent the first 10 minutes of the consultation shuffling through my file, as if to find something he may have missed. Regrettably, the material was all there, and it was insufficient.

“You need proof of extraordinary accomplishments to apply for a green card on your own,” he said. “See that?” he pointed to a framed photograph on the wall behind me. In it, a young woman in a suit was standing next to Barack Obama.

“One of my clients,” he explained. “A very successful case.”

I had underestimated the facility with which a green card was obtained. It was with the confidence of a “successful case” that I had gathered all the paperwork the lawyer had requested, a small pile of visas accumulated over the past decade that I saw as milestones on my path to success.

They proved that I had beat out other candidates who had applied for the same jobs and that my employers had decided I was worth the complications of sponsorship: lawyers, extra costs and precious time. I was the quality import, better than the local product, equivalent to a drum of French goat cheese, a German auto part, a bottle of Stella Artois. Or so I had thought.

Pinched in the lawyer’s thick fingers, my visas did not seem so impressive. And I, sitting in his office, facing Barack Obama, no longer felt like French goat cheese. I was not an import, I was an immigrant, someone who belonged to the “visitors” line at JFK airport.

Every time I returned to New York from visiting my family in Greece, I’d get

stuck in that slow-moving line and spend my time mulling over the inconveniences the lack of a green card had caused me over the years: to live here I had to be employed, but few companies would consider hiring me because I needed a visa to work. If one did, I was locked into the job for good. To quit meant I also had to quit the country, or find another corporation to sponsor me all over again. As I followed the dreaded zigzagging belts that marked the path to the INS booths, I’d often think, “You know, America, I don’t want to be here this badly.” But I did. I loved this country as much as my own. Unfortunately, my love was unrequited. Based on what the lawyer was telling me, I was not good enough for America to want to keep.

“It just seems premature,” he continued. “Maybe, after you publish a book or two…”

I nodded. Publish a book or two.

Simple enough.

“Or…” he hesitated. “Are you in a relationship that could lead to marriage? With an American, I mean.”

I shook my head.

“How old are you?”

“Thirty-two.”

“Well, what are you waiting for?”

That question did not feel as threatening as when posed by my parents, but I still had no suitable answer.

� STR E ET S C E N E

FLAVoR oF tHE WEEK

OLIVIA WILSON’S bumpy ride through the porno-sphere

F

resh off a sticky breakup and working an internship while embarking on my final year of college, my sex life is not the stuff of raucous frat house films.

In May, I moved home after a semester abroad, where I left a hopeful and loving boyfriend who wanted to “make it work.” Being a realist, I was fully aware that thousands of miles is an insurmountable hurdle at this point in my life. Being a complete coward, I could not and still cannot be the one to break that poor boy’s heart. So my current relationship status is lingering in limbo and my sex life has been basically nonexistent.

If you’ve passed the 2nd grade and can count, you’ve probably put it together that this makes almost six months since I have had any kind of encounter with the opposite sex. I’m not looking for sympathy, I just want to convey the desperation of my situation. I am not the kind of girl who will go home with the first guy who buys me a drink at the bar, so with my tight schedule and lingering boy troubles, I have had zero opportunity to find someone to, ahem, help me out.

Friends have offered several solutions

to this problem, the most frequent of which is to cruise the world wide web to find a little viewing material and some self-love. Watching porn is not really my style, but I figured I would give it a go just to see what all the fuss is about.

Diving into the porno-sphere was difficult enough just in the execution.

Am I the only person who didn’t know that there are about a zillion websites featuring everything from foot fetishes to needle play (yikes)? I had no idea what I was getting into. My Google search history is now fairly hilarious— and pathetic—with queries like “normal porn” and “regular sex scenes.” I didn’t know where to look for standard stuff, sex that doesn’t involve vegetables or riding crops.

Through several embarrassing and awkward conversations with friends, I did manage to find some sites that have things close to what I am familiar with.

I’m no prude, but the websites I have seen do the opposite of turning me on. I don’t know if it’s a girl thing or just a me thing, but the idea of a girl taking it from behind while she robotically moans or, worse, screams like a banshee, basically ensures that I will not be wanting anyone or anything south of my border. Call me a

“I’m sorry,” he said, with vague regret. “What else can I tell you? Get famous or get married.” He rolled back his chair and stood up. “Are you Sophia Efthimiatou paying cash?”

I would not have minded paying him the $200 had he told me something I did not already know. Fame and marriage were the only two options a woman had, anyway, regardless of the green card.

Otherwise you were not considered a very “successful case”—and fame, actually, wasn’t always a guarantee. The only problem was that although I had met the country I wanted to commit to, I had yet to meet the man.

That’s why I resolved to give the green card lottery a shot this year, to join the millions of potential immigrants hoping for a green glass slipper. My chances can’t be much worse than those of finding Prince Charming within the next year.

Even if I did, I would rather not have to exchange vows with someone simply because it would allow me to breeze through passport control at JFK. There is no point in rushing, after all. The only thing that awaits most of us on the other side is baggage.

romantic, but I wouldn’t mind a little plot.

Which led me to a revelation that could perhaps simultaneously help lift both the economy and the female libido out of the recession. There is an industry that is (according to my extensive research) completely untapped: Girl Porn.

Any lady who has seen the extended version of the sex scene in The Notebook or the library scene in Atonement knows exactly what I am talking about.

I have made peace with the fact that men’s porno fantasies are often a dark and scary place and I have no place in a male porn world. I wouldn’t mind a little visual stimulation, but are my only options hardcore doggy-style or twohour-length feature films? I am not ready to make a commitment to either, so I propose this: short, but plot-driven films that are graphic but not gross.

I don’t need sweeping romance, but I do need the sense that the two people involved may have met before, and aren’t immediately going at it like farm animals. Is that too much to ask? The first company to produce female-friendly erotica will be a wealthy one. Until then, I suppose I will continue my search for adult entertainment that doesn’t make me want to Purell my brain.

Photographer Scot Surbeck caught a quick puff at the North Cove Plaza outside the Winter Garden in Battery Park City last week. More of Surbeck's work can be found on his blog cityclickr.net.

nove m b e r 17, 2011 | otdowntown.com



“All students need a realm in which they can feel ‘expert.’

That takes time, attention and hard work. But in developing that interest, students gain a capacity to succeed that you don’t get simply by having broad coverage.”

GARDNER DUNNAN ACADEMIC DEAN AND HEAD OF UPPER SCHOOL, AVENUES Former Headmaster, The Dalton School

WHAT MAKES A GREAT HIGH SCHOOL? A commitment from Avenues: The World School. Avenues was

The advantage of mastery. In addition to an advanced program of

conceived to provide a rich K-12 education with a global perspective.

broad academic study, Avenues students will develop mastery of

To that end, grades 9 to 12 represent the culmination of our school’s

a subject for which they have a particular passion. That could be anything, from science to language to athletics to art.

many unique features.

“The pursuit of a passion will take hard work and

“It is in the Upper School that the World Course,

will also impart an important lesson about achieving

the Avenues mastery program and the utilization of

excellence,” says Dunnan.

the incredible resources of our neighborhood and greater New York City will come to full fruition,” says

Preparation for college and beyond. Upper School

Gardner Dunnan, academic dean and head of Upper

students will learn in a collaborative environment that

School at Avenues. “The Upper School will give

reflects the world in which they will soon live and work.

our students the opportunity to study at Avenues

They will graduate with advanced proficiency in a

campuses abroad and to host visiting scholars — in

second language, as well as with the credentials sought

person and via our connecting technologies.”

by the world’s leading colleges and universities.

WWW.AVENUES.ORG

TO LEARN MORE, OR TO SIGN UP FOR OUR PARENT INFORMATION EVENTS, VISIT AVENUES.ORG OR CALL 212.935.5000.

Avenues-ManhattanMedia_Gardner.indd 1

11/10/11 4:52 PM