The local paper for Downtown wn
WEEK OF MARCH
MORE THAN THE SCREAM
3-9
CITYARTS, P.12 >
2016
Our Take
OUT OF GAS INVESTIGATION A surge of gas shutoffs, particularly for rent-stabilized tenants BY DANIEL FITZSIMMONS
53 Ludlow Street, where a dozen tenants, including Ruby Mak and her mom, have been without cooking gas since last September. Photo by Daniel Fitzsimmons
Ruby Mak has been spending more money on takeout than a doctorate student mid-dissertation, and her new rice cooker is working at least as hard. “A lot of it is just out of pocket, going out to eat a lot more,” said Mak. “When we cook at home it’s just a rice cooker. You can steam things with it, or make rice, basically.” Last September her building joined hundreds of others across the city with no natural gas, cut off by Con Edison after
THE STORY OF OUR STREETS
an inspection blitz by the city’s Dept. of Buildings that began last April, less than a month after a fatal gas explosion in the East Village that claimed two lives. According to statistics provided by the DOB, ConEd reported 343 shutoffs to the agency in 2015, a 400 percent increase over 2014’s 67 shutoffs. And the upward trend appears to be increasing even more: So far in 2016 there have been 157 shutoffs, according to the DOB. “Since the spring of last year we started noticing a lot of people coming in that had no gas, either cooking gas or heat and hot water,” said Donna Chiu, director of housing and community services for Asian Americans For Equality.
CONTINUED ON PAGE 5
ONE FOOT IN FRONT OF THE OTHER STREET LEVEL Walking sets this place apart. It’s why you don’t leave. BY BILL GUNLOCKE
Let me start this in Hemingway’s Paris. “I would walk along the quais when I had finished work or when I was trying to think something out. It was easier to think if I was walking and doing something or seeing people doing something that they understood.” A Moveable Feast I’ve had a pat answer when people ask why I moved here 20 years ago. I’d say I moved here for the Jewish bookstores and
the Irish bars. I thought that was a cool answer. And a true one. But I’d revise that answer now. I’d tell a deeper truth about why I’ve been here. I’ve been here for the walking. Outsiders might think we’re here for the shopping. While I’m no shopper, I might have thought that, too. We have so many stores. Other places don’t. When I visit my youngest daughter in ski-area Wyoming and we pull in her driveway late in the day after picking up her three young daughters from school and their varied activities, there’s almost always a package or two on the big-stone steps in front of the door. I thought, Oh, sure, if they want shoes or sweaters or Halloween costumes, they have to order them from someplace else.
It’s not New York, I thought. Then I started noticing just how many packages show up in the lobby of my apartment building here all afternoon. Mounds of them, from the same places my Wyoming daughter was getting her daily shipments from. So maybe shopping in the bountiful stores was not why people lived here. No more than books or pints of Guinness were really why I lived here. I think our daily walking routine is the one thing that we can’t get anywhere else. The tiny old woman in my building would shuffle through the lobby with baby steps early every still-dark morning. The all-night doorman would push and hold the big glass door open
CONTINUED ON PAGE 6
One of those images that make walking the streets here romantic. Downtowner
OurTownDowntown
O OTDOWNTOWN.COM @OTDowntown
Newscheck Crime Watch Voices Out & About
2 3 8 10
City Arts Things to Do Business 15 Minutes
12 13 16 21
WEEK OF APRIL
SPRING ARTS PREVIEW < CITYARTS, P.12
FOR HIM, SETTLING SMALL CLAIMS IS A BIG DEAL presided over Arbitration Man has three decades. for informal hearings about it He’s now blogging BY RICHARD KHAVKINE
is the common Arbitration Man their jurist. least folks’ hero. Or at Man has For 30 years, Arbitration court office of the civil few sat in a satellite Centre St. every building at 111 New Yorkers’ weeks and absorbed dry cleaning, burned lost accountings of fender benders, lousy paint jobs, and the like. And security deposits then he’s decided. Arbitration Man, About a year ago, so to not afwho requested anonymity started docuhe fect future proceedings, two dozen of what menting about compelling cases considers his most blog. in an eponymous about it because “I decided to write the stories but in a I was interested about it not from wanted to write from view but rather lawyer’s point of said Arbitration view,” of a lay point lawyer since 1961. Man, a practicing what’s at issue He first writes about post, renders and then, in a separatehow he arrived his decision, detailing blog the to Visitors at his conclusion. their opinions. often weigh in with get a rap going. I to “I really want whether they unreally want to know and why I did it,” I did derstood what don’t know how to he said. “Most people ... I’d like my cases the judge thinks. and also my trereflect my personalitythe law.” for mendous respect 80, went into indiMan, Arbitration suc in 1985, settling vidual practice
9-16
MANHATTAN'S APARTMENT BOOM, > PROPERTY, P.20
2015
In Brief MORE HELP FOR SMALL BUSINESS
The effort to help small seems to businesses in the city be gathering steam. Two city councilmembers, Robert Margaret Chin and Cornegy, have introduced create legislation that wouldSmall a new “Office of the within Business Advocate” of Small the city’s Department Business Services. Chin The new post, which have up told us she’d like to would and running this year, for serve as an ombudsman city small businesses within them clear government, helping to get through the bureaucracy things done. Perhaps even more also importantly, the ombudsman and number will tally the type small business of complaints by taken in owners, the actions policy response, and somefor ways to recommendations If done well, begin to fix things. report would the ombudsman’s give us the first quantitative with taste of what’s wrong the city, an small businesses in towards important first step fixing the problem. of for deTo really make a difference, is a mere formality will have to the work process looking to complete their advocate are the chances course, velopers precinct, but rising rents, -- thanks to a find a way to tackle business’ is being done legally of after-hours projects quickly. their own hours,” which remain many While Chin “They pick out boom in the number throughout who lives on most vexing problem. said Mildred Angelo,of the Ruppert construction permits gauge what Buildings one said it’s too early tocould have the 19th floor in The Department of the city. number three years, the Houses on 92nd Street between role the advocate She Over the past on the is handing out a record work perThird avenues. permits, there, more information of Second and an ongoing all-hours number of after-hours bad thing. of after-hours work the city’s Dept. problem can’t be a said there’s with the mits granted by nearby where according to new data jumped 30 percent, This step, combinedBorough construction project noise Buildings has data provided in workers constantly make efforts by Manhattan to mediate BY DANIEL FITZSIMMONS according to DOB of Informacement from trucks. President Gale Brewer offer response to a Freedom classifies transferring they want. They knows the the rent renewal process, request. The city They 6 “They do whatever signs Every New Yorker clang, tion Act go as they please. work between some early, tangible small any construction on the weekend, can come and sound: the metal-on-metal or the piercing of progress. For many have no respect.” p.m. and 7 a.m., can’t come of these that the hollow boom, issuance reverse. owners, in business moving The increased beeps of a truck has generto a correspond and you as after-hours. soon enough. variances has led at the alarm clock The surge in permits
SLEEPS, THANKS TO THE CITY THAT NEVER UCTION A BOOM IN LATE-NIGHT CONSTR NEWS
A glance it: it’s the middle can hardly believe yet construction of the night, and carries on full-tilt. your local police or You can call 311
n OurTownDowntow
COM
Newscheck Crime Watch Voices
for dollars in fees ated millions of and left some resithe city agency, that the application dents convinced
2 City Arts 3 Top 5 8 Real Estate 10 15 Minutes
12 13 14 18
CONTINUED ON PAGE
25
The worst and the best of New York were both on display Monday morning on 36th Street in midtown. Carol Dauplaise, the 77-year-old owner of a jewelry company, was crossing Madison Avenue at 36th Street during the morning rush when a livery-cab driver turned the corner and hit her. The driver of the car was arrested for failing to yield to a pedestrian, and cops say he had been cited for at least 10 other traffic violations since 2015. It was but the latest in a sad litany of traffic deaths and injuries that have lingered on, despite Mayor Bill de Blasio’s efforts to curb traffic crashes in the city. Dauplaise is the sixth person to have been hit by a car in the past three days alone. According to The New York Times, at least 20 pedestrians and three cyclists have been killed in traffic accidents so far this year, and more than 900 pedestrians have been injured. It’s demoralizing. If families of victims, a devoted mayor and heightened awareness can’t make a dent in the problem, what can? Amid the carnage, though, New Yorkers once again rallied. Immediately after Dauplaise was hit, bystanders ran to try to help. A group of them, working together, managed to flip the car on its side, in hopes of rescuing Dauplaise. Unfortunately, it didn’t work. She was pronounced dead at Bellevue a short while later. The efforts of our fellow citizens to save a stranger should hearten us, despite the continued recklessness of a dangerous few who continue to make our streets a place of tragedy.
We deliver! Get Our Town Downtowner sent directly to your mailbox for $49 per year. Go to OTDowntown.com or call 212-868-0190
2
MARCH 3-9,2016
Our Town|Downtowner otdowntown.com
WHATâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S MAKING NEWS IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD NYPD FAULTED ON SEARCHES In dozens of instances, city police officers lacked search
warrants or even probable cause when entering residentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; homes, a review of hundreds of such incidents by the Civilian Complaint Review Board, The
Photo: torbakhopper, via ďŹ&#x201A;ickr
Is Online Gaming Consuming Him?
New York Times reports. The review, released this week, concludes that the number of occurrences during which officersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; improperly
entered private dwellings feeds public mistrust of police, The Times reported. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a serious problem that could be avoided that has terribly serious effects on people who are invaded,â&#x20AC;? the newspaper quoted Richard D. Emery, the chairman of the review board and a civil rights lawyer. â&#x20AC;&#x153;You can imagine how you would feel if somebody burst into your house â&#x20AC;&#x201D; slammed in â&#x20AC;&#x201D; with guns drawn, at 6 oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;clock in the morning while youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re undressed and asleep.â&#x20AC;? The Times notes that the boardâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s report is critical of police department rules for neglecting to specify that warrants or probable cause is essential for officers to enter homes. The Fourth Amendment speciďŹ cally protects people and their homes from â&#x20AC;&#x153;unreasonable searches and seizures.â&#x20AC;? And while police can enter without a warrant, law enforcement must demonstrate that action was justiďŹ ed. City police have often failed to do so, according to a former Law Department executive quoted by the paper.â&#x20AC;&#x153;Quite often, they donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have any conďŹ rmation at all, and they still barge in,â&#x20AC;? Joel Berger, who represents clients in legal actions against police, was quoted by The Times. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re
big on claiming consent where, in reality, they pressured people into agreeing to let them in.â&#x20AC;?
FINAL CHAPTER FOR ST. MARKâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S BOOKSHOP
FORMER POWER PLANT, MERCANTILE BUILDING ON LANDMARKS LIST
St. Markâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Bookshop closed its doors Sunday after nearly 40 years in business, due to ďŹ nancial struggles, DNAinfo reported. The shopâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s co-owner, Bob Contant, told DNAinfo that the shop owed $68,000 in back rent to the New York Housing Authority as well as $34,400 in unpaid taxes. The store held a cash-only sale through Sunday with everything priced 50 percent off, the publication reported. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re selling everything off,â&#x20AC;? Contant told DNAinfo last week. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Once weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve reached the point where I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t pay my staff, that will be it.â&#x20AC;? The store sold a wide variety of books on topics from cultural theory to graphic design, and was an East Village staple, DNAinfo reported. Johanna Climenko told DNAinfo that the shopâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s closing is, â&#x20AC;&#x153;So very sad. You have been an essential part of the fabric of the East Village and NYC for so long. We are losing our beloved city piece by piece.â&#x20AC;?
Two downtown Manhattan buildings are slated for landmark designations after a Landmarks Preservation Commission vote last week, DNAinfo reported. One of the buildings is located at 33-34 Gold St., and was home to one of the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ďŹ rst power plants, Excelsior Power Company, the publication reported. It was built in 1888 and now serves as residences. The building was initially cut from the priority list due to alterations to the building, but it was decided that its historical merit meant it should move forward in the landmarking process, DNAinfo reported. The second building is a 19th century mercantile building, located at 315 Broadway in Tribeca, DNAinfo reported. These buildings were among a total of 30 sites prioritized for an official vote before the end of 2016, the publication reported.
Rollover to Country Enjoy the beneďŹ ts of our Variable Rate IRA and watch your nest egg grow.
18 Month Variable Rate IRA**
0.70
%
APY*
We can help every step of the way in moving your IRA assets. Simply call your friendly neighborhood banker for details.
BRANCH LOCATIONS FLAGSHIP BRANCH 655 Third Ave. New York, NY (212) 292-5254
MANHATTAN 902 Second Ave. New York, NY (212) 829-9998
SCARSDALE 80 Garth Rd. Scarsdale, NY (914) 722-1500
RIVERDALE 583 W. 235th St. Bronx, NY (718) 601-8300
WOODLAWN MAIN OFFICE 4349 Katonah Ave. 655 Third Ave. Bronx, NY New York, NY (718) 324-7100 (212) 818-9090
* Effective 2/3/16, the 18 month Variable IRA interest rate is 0.700%, Annual Percentage Yield is 0.70%. Rate is equal to the most recent discount auction rate of the six-monthTreasury Bill plus 0.25%. The minimum opening deposit to qualify for the APY is $250.00. Consult your tax advisor for information on tax advantages. ** Withdrawals from 18-month Variable Rate IRAs before the maturity date may be subject to a bank early withdrawal penalty of six monthsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; simple interest on the amount withdrawn at the
MARCH 3-9,2016
3
Our Town|Downtowner otdowntown.com
CRIME WATCH BY JERRY DANZIG
CITY MAN ACCUSED OF 17 BURGLARIES A New York City man is accused of burglarizing 17 homes on Long Island. Nassau County police say the suspect was initially arrested Feb. 20 and charged with three counts of burglary. He’s now been charged with another 14 counts after a search of his home. Police say they’ve recovered tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of jewelry, designer purses and sunglasses. Nassau County Police Chief Kevin Smith says there’s so much property that investigators are still going through it. Authorities say the break-ins began in November 2014 in Port Washington and surrounding areas. Mamuka Bokuchava was arraigned Saturday. Prosecutors say he is a waiter at an upscale Manhattan restaurant. His attorney, Tara Whelan, says he is his family’s sole provider. His wife and child attended his court appearance.
STATS FOR THE WEEK
New Jersey rail pass, various debit and credit cards, as well as apartment keys, were also taken. The total stolen came to $2,116.
Reported crimes from the 1st Precinct for Feb. 15 to Feb. 21 Week to Date
Year to Date
2016 2015
% Change
2016
2015
% Change
NOT WELL AT CHANEL
Murder
0
0
n/a
0
0
n/a
Rape
0
1
-100.0
2
1
100.0
Robbery
0
0
n/a
8
4
100.0
Felony Assault
4
1
300.0
8
5
60.0
Burglary
3
2
50.0
19
25
-24.0
Grand Larceny
20
14
42.9
162
110
47.3
Grand Larceny Auto
1
1
0.0
3
2
50.0
A fleet-footed thief bagged a box of designer handbags worth more than $10,000. At 8 a.m. on Feb. 15, a man removed a shipment box of merchandise sitting on the sidewalk by the loading dock of the Chanel store at 139 Spring St. The thief was last seen fleeing on foot southbound on Wooster Street. Police searched the area but could not locate the bandit or the missing merchandise. The items inside the stolen box were two blue Chanel Segin handbags each worth $3,400 apiece, plus a black Chanel backpack valued at $3,700, making a total haul of $10,500.
ENTERPRISING THIEF
TAKEN ON THOMPSON
Not all people who rent cars intend to return them as well. At 7 a.m. on Feb. 13, an unknown man used an Enterprise key card to access a 2016 Infiniti QX70 in the parking garage at 10 Liberty St. He never returned the vehicle. Enterprise told police that the credit card on file for his account was not working. The GPS in the vehicle had also been disengaged. The car was last scanned leaving the Holland Tunnel the next afternoon. The Infiniti, New York plates HEB1310, is valued at $55,000.
Unless you drive an armored car, you might consider not leaving valuables inside a vehicle. In the early morning of Feb. 16, a 26-year-old man parked his white 2015 Ford in front of 68 Thompson St. When he returned two hours later, the driver’s-side rear window had been broken and more than $2,000 in property, as well as personal items had been taken. Missing were a $500 MacBook Pro, a $400 Givenchy pouch , a $250 FTb Canon camera, a $200 Samsung Galaxy S4 tablet, $200 in cash and other items. A Jamaican passport, a phone charger,
You’ve Arrived at World-Class Care Right in the Neighborhood See a Weill Cornell Medicine physician at one of our comprehensive, multi-specialty locations in Lower Manhattan today
Jason Kuffer, via Flickr
station at Broadway and Fulton Street. The young man chased the girls, but they got away. The cell phone, a gold iPhone 6 Plus valued at $900, was offline when tracking was attempted.
MEAN TEENS
COFFEE SNATCH
Two teenaged girls made off with a man’s cell phone in the subway. At 3 p.m. on Feb. 12, a 28-year-old man seated in the middle of a southbound 4 train car, one of the young women swiped his phone from his hand and fled the train as it pulled into the Fulton Street station and the doors opened. The thief was accompanied by a 15-year-old girl. The two fled on the southbound platform and left the
At 12:55 p.m. on Feb. 15, a 70-yearold woman visiting from South Wales was waiting in line at the Starbucks at 38 Park Row when someone snatched her wallet from the bag that she was carrying. There were no witnesses to the wallet grab. The property stolen included $600 in cash, €250, a Visa card, a pink wallet purse, and hearing aid batteries. The total stolen came to $969.
Weill Cornell Medicine. Care that Connects to you. 40 Worth Street 156 William Street
visit us at weillcornell.org to learn more
For appointments, call 1-855-WCM-4YOU Today
4
MARCH 3-9,2016
Our Town|Downtowner otdowntown.com
Useful Contacts
Chelsea History
POLICE NYPD 7th Precinct
19 ½ Pitt St.
212-477-7311
NYPD 6th Precinct
233 W. 10th St.
212-741-4811
NYPD 10th Precinct
230 W. 20th St.
212-741-8211
NYPD 13th Precinct
230 E. 21st St.
NYPD 1st Precinct
16 Ericsson Place
212-477-7411 212-334-0611
FIRE FDNY Engine 15
25 Pitt St.
311
FDNY Engine 24/Ladder 5
227 6th Ave.
311
FDNY Engine 28 Ladder 11
222 E. 2nd St.
311
FDNY Engine 4/Ladder 15
42 South St.
311
ELECTED OFFICIALS Councilmember Margaret Chin
165 Park Row #11
Councilmember Rosie Mendez
237 1st Ave. #504
212-587-3159 212-677-1077
Councilmember Corey Johnson
224 W. 30th St.
212-564-7757
State Senator Daniel Squadron
250 Broadway #2011
212-298-5565
Community Board 1
1 Centre St., Room 2202
212-442-5050
Community Board 2
3 Washington Square Village
212-979-2272
Community Board 3
59 E. 4th St.
212-533-5300
Community Board 4
330 W. 42nd St.
212-736-4536
Hudson Park
66 Leroy St.
212-243-6876
Ottendorfer
135 2nd Ave.
212-674-0947
Elmer Holmes Bobst
70 Washington Square
212-998-2500
WHEN 23RD STREET WAS BROADWAY A theater row once thrived in Chelsea BY RAANAN GEBERER
COMMUNITY BOARDS
LIBRARIES
HOSPITALS New York-Presbyterian
170 William St.
Mount Sinai-Beth Israel
10 Union Square East
212-844-8400
212-312-5110
CON EDISON
4 Irving Place
212-460-4600
TIME WARNER
46 East 23rd
813-964-3839
US Post Office
201 Varick St.
212-645-0327
US Post Office
128 East Broadway
212-267-1543
US Post Office
93 4th Ave.
212-254-1390
POST OFFICES
HOW TO REACH US:
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR:
212-868-0190 nyoffice@strausnews.com otdowntown.com
Include your full name, address and day and evening telephone numbers for verification. Letters that cannot be verified will not be published. We reserve the right to edit or condense letters for libel, good taste, grammar and punctuation. Submit your letter at otdowntown.com and click submit at the bottom of the page or email it to nyoffice@strausnews.com.
TO SUBSCRIBE: Our Town Downtown is available for free below 23rd Street in select buildings, retail locations and news boxes. To get a copy of downtown neighborhood news mailed to you weekly, you may subscribe to Our Town - Downtowner for just $49 per year. Call 212-868-0190 or go online to StrausNews.com and click on the photo of the paper or mail a check to Straus Media, 20 West Ave., Chester, NY 10918
NEWS ITEMS: To report a news story, call 212-8680190. News releases of general interest must be emailed to our offices by 12noon the Thursday prior to publication to be considered for the following week. Send to news@strausnews.com.
BLOG COMMENTS: We invite comments on stories at otdowntown.com. We do not edit those comments. We urge people to keep the discussion civil and the tone reflective of the best we each have to offer.
PLACE A CLASSIFIED AD: Call 212-868-0190. Classified ads must be in our office by 12pm the Friday before publication, except on holidays. All classified ads are payable in advance.
PREVIOUS OWNERS: Tom Allon, Isis Ventures, Ed Kayatt, Russ Smith, Bob Trentlyon, Jerry Finkelstein
CALENDAR ITEMS:
ABOUT US
Information for inclusion in the Out and About section should be emailed to hoodhappenings@strausnews.com no later than two weeks before the event.
Our Town Downtown is published weekly by Straus Media-Manhattan, LLC. Please send inquiries to 20 West Ave., Chester, NY 10918.
In the latter half of the 19th century, when you went to the theater, you may have gone to one of the houses on “Theater Row” on West 23rd Street. West 23rd Street wasn’t only a theater district: a perusal of issues of The New York Times from those years shows that it also had restaurants, boarding houses, lecture halls, prestigious stores, fraternal organizations, the Art Students League and more. East of Fifth Avenue on 23rd, you had the original YMCA building and the original home of City College (on the site of today’s Baruch College campus). To the west, you had the Pavonia Ferry to New Jersey. Holding it all together was the 23rd Street horsecar. To be closer to the theaters, bonafide stars lived on 23rd Street. One of these was Lillie Langtry, who was as famous for her liaisons with European royals as for her theatrical roles. A Times report on a fire at her house at 361 W. 23rd St. revealed that it contained a tiger skin, a bearskin and portraits of the King of Denmark and the Prince and Princess of Wales. The West 23rd Street Theater District included: • Booth’s Theatre, built on the southeast corner of 23rd Street and 6th Avenue by Shakespearean actor Edwin Booth and opened in 1869. Booth was the brother of the notorious John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Abraham Lincoln. Booth’s theater featured a lobby with Italian marble floors, a chandelier whose gas jets were lit by an electric spark system, marble pillars, and statues of Shakespeare and well-
known actors of the day. Edwin Booth opened the theater with a production of “Romeo and Juliet.” For the next five years, he concentrated on the classics, but wasn’t able to make a go of it. In 1874, the theater was taken over by other impresarios. Despite theatrical and musical successes, including an appearance by Sarah Bernhardt, the building was sold in 1881 to a dry-goods store. • Proctor’s Theatre was located at the current site of the Selis Manor residence for the blind, on the north side of 23rd Street between Seventh and Eighth avenues. The location was the site of several theatrical enterprises before it was bought by Frederick Francis Proctor and opened as Proctor’s in 1888. Proctor’s featured then-novel electric lighting and hosted an exhibition of another newfangled invention, the phonograph, in 1890. Proctor’s first concentrated on serious plays, but then switched to vaudeville. Among the famous acts who played here were the Three Keatons (featuring Buster Keaton), Will Rogers and Lillian Russell. By 1907, however, the theater converted to motion pictures. It eventually became part of the RKO movie theater chain, but fire decimated the building in 1937. • Pike’s Opera House was opened in 1868 by entrepreneur Samuel Pike on the northwest corner of Eighth Avenue and 23rd Street. At first it presented grand opera. Some sources say its first performance was Il Trovatore, others say La Traviata (both by Verdi). But when robber barons Jay Gould and Jim Fisk took it over a year later and renamed it the Grand Opera House, they added operetta, debuting Offenbach’s La Pericohle, according to Daytonian in Man-
Booth’s Theatre between Sixth and Fifth avenues on 23rd Street, built by famed Shakespearean actor Edwin Booth. hattan. The website states that the Grand Opera House wasn’t able to turn a profit, and in 1876 added popular stage plays like “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” In 1938, RKO took it over and remodeled it into a motion picture theater. RKO closed the theater in 1960 for demolition in preparation for the construction of Penn South. Today, the site is occupied by the small building, owned by Penn South, which houses Dallas BBQ, Dunkin’ Donuts, Baskin-Robbins, Pita Pan Café and the Mount Sinai Doctors medical facility. Those weren’t the only theaters on the street. The 23rd Street entry for NYSonglines, a site tracing the history of Manhattan streets, address by address, mentions Koster and Bial’s Concert Hall, on the same corner of 23rd Street and 6th Avenue now occupied by Citibank. Koster and Bial operated from 1879 to 1924, and were described as a “popular vaudeville house featuring Victor Herbert’s
orchestra.” Leaving 23rd Street, at 312 8th Avenue nearby, you once had Miner’s 8th Avenue Theatre, part of a then-popular chain of variety theaters. The Cinematreasures website says that Miner’s burned in a fire in 1902 and was rebuilt as a theater that first showed both burlesque and films, but eventually showed movies only. It survived until about 1960. Now, you have a large new apartment building on the approximate site Today on 23rd Street, you can find the Chelsea Bow Tie Cinemas between 7th and 8th; the School of Visual Arts’ multipurpose SVA Theatre between 8th and 9th, and the Cell Theatre, which bills itself as “a 21st century salon,” on the opposite side of the street between 8th and 9th. And if you go to Lillie’s, a Victorian-styled bar-restaurant at 13 E. 17th St., you’ll find a prominent likeness of Lillie Langtry, whose life the place celebrates.
MARCH 3-9,2016
OUT OF GAS CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 Chiu called the increase “freakish,” and said AAFE is working with Mak’s building and almost a dozen others in Chinatown and the Lower East Side to restore services. And Chiu, like many housing advocates, has witnessed a pattern of exploitation by building owners who prolong service interruptions in an effort to pressure rentstabilized tenants into leaving their apartments. The dozen or so residents in Mak’s building, at 53 Ludlow Street, brought a Housing Part action in court - or HP in housing parlance, the part of the law used to force a landlord to make repairs or mitigate a loss of services. Under a settlement, landlord Sky Management will provide a $100/ month rent abatement retroactive to Sept. 21 of last year, when the outage occurred. The landlord must also provide hot plates for tenants. Joel Cullotta of Sky Management said the building’s gas infrastructure was simply outdated. “The piping for the cooking gas was just very old,” said Cullotta, who added that it made more sense for the building to convert to electric from natural cooking gas, which became part of the settlement in the Housing Part case. “It would need to be replaced, and it made more sense to convert to electric.” Cullotta also defended Sky’s handling of the shutoff, and said that they’re waiting on ConEd to install electric meters in the building’s basement. “We worked immediately to restore the gas and heat as soon as we could,” said Cullotta, noting that the Sept. 21 outage affected the heat and hot water gas system as well, which Sky was able
Our Town|Downtowner otdowntown.com to restore in three days. Cullotta would not comment on whether Sky was offering buyouts or making an effort to get existing rent stabilized tenants out of the building. He acknowledged installing 13 surveillance cameras in the building, but said “we’ve done that in most of our properties.” Despite the hardships, Chiu said the situation at 53 Ludlow Street is one of the brighter spots in their gas shutoff caseload. “At least at 53 Ludlow there’s been some progress,” she said concerning the HP settlement. That’s not always the case. Housing lawyers and tenant activists throughout Manhattan confirmed over and over again the same trend of building owners opportunistically prolonging gas shutoffs to pressure rent stabilized tenants into leaving their apartments. “I’ve got a couple tenants who haven’t had gas for months and months, and one of them in particular has a stack of receipts that’s pretty dramatic from having to go out and buy food in the neighborhood,” said Evan Hasbrook, a housing lawyer with the Legal Aid Society. “She can’t afford this.” In his experience, said Hasbrook, the fault lies with the building owner despite their protestations to the contrary. “In these cases the landlord has the legal responsibility to provide cooking gas and heating and the rest,” he said. “But you end up in housing court and the landlord says either that ConEd is dragging its feet … or that the tenant is not providing access to ConEd or the landlord. They try to pass the blame wherever they can and make an excuse, but legally it’s pretty clear this all falls on the landlord.” Chiu of AAFE agreed that the blame
In less than a week of reporting this story, this newspaper was approached by no fewer than four advocacy organizations, one elected official’s office, and a number of housing lawyers who were eager to talk about the issue of skyrocketing gas shutoffs and how the city’s less scrupulous landlords are exploiting the situation.
game is a favorite pastime between ConEd and building owners. In housing court, she said, a landlord’s lawyer often claims, “’Oh it’s Con Edison, we’ve tried everything,’ so that is a story we hear all the time.” Betsy Eichel, a tenant organizer with Housing Conservation Coordinators, said in addition to landlords prolonging the process, there’s a lack of qualified plumbers to perform and certify necessary repairs from all the shutoffs. “I definitely noticed an uptick in gas outages after the East Village explosion,” said Eichel. “However, the quickness to turn the gas off also leads to the long outages; there’s not enough licensed plumbers to keep up with the number of buildings without gas, so a backlog is inevitable.” Eichel said landlords are supposed to provide hot plates, but in her experience they either don’t or won’t without prodding from tenants. “We usually try to negotiate a rent abatement,”
she said. “Some tenants will keep their receipts and try to get some compensation in Small Claims Court, but that isn’t as efficient as a rent abatement.” She also agreed with colleagues at other organizations that prolonged shutoffs can be used as a “tool” to harass rent stabilized tenants. “I don’t think any of the landlords in buildings where I work shut off gas on purpose, but they didn’t rush to turn it back on,” said Eichel. “In addition, the one thing that all the buildings I work in without gas had in common was that the outage happened amid construction; their landlords were renovating vacant units which would be rented at market rate.” Sam Himmelstein, a housing lawyer with the tenant-only firm of Himmelstein, McConnell, Gribben, Donoghue & Joseph, said Eichel’s assessment is accurate. “Whether you call it deliberate harassment or benign neglect, the landlord says they’ll turn the gas on when the work is completed,” said Himmelstein, of the cases he sees. Himmelstein said his firm typically negotiates from the landlord a voluntary rent abatement of 10 to 25 percent the monthly rent, but in order for the landlord to do anything, in his experience, they must be taken to court. “The thing I have to emphasize is that unless you bring them to court they’re going to drag their feet,” he said. Brandon Kielbasa, director of organizing and policy at the Cooper Square Committee, is seeing the same thing Himmelstein is. “We’ve seen a huge uptick,” he said. “Many of the buildings are those that have recently had major gut renovation construction occur in them. Many of the buildings are owned by aggressive, bad acting landlords.” Kielbasa said cooking gas disrup-
5 tions are a “huge disturbance” for tenants that are left without the means to prepare meals at home, and emphasized that tenants who organize tend to get gas restored much sooner than those that don’t. “So, we usually urge all tenants facing cooking gas issues to quickly initiate a HP action in housing court to get gas restored,” said Kielbasa. “From our experience a housing court case is essential to open the lines of communication with a bad acting landlord and to also start putting pressure on the landlord to restore the gas in a timely way.” And few would argue with the DOB’s overabundance of caution concerning gas leaks, and the disasters that rarely, but tragically, accompany them. The East Village explosion that occurred on March 26 of last year claimed two lives, and followed a March 2014 gas explosion in East Harlem that claimed eight lives. But in less than a week of reporting this story, this newspaper was approached by no fewer than four advocacy organizations, one elected official’s office, and a number of housing lawyers who were eager to talk about the issue of skyrocketing gas shutoffs and how the city’s less scrupulous landlords are exploiting the situation. All told, in three days we were informed of over 20 buildings in Manhattan and Brooklyn comprising hundreds of units – many of which are rent stabilized and occupied by tenants on fixed incomes - that are enduring gas shutoff conditions. The DOB’s own statistics illustrate the drastic increase: 67 shutoffs in 2014, 343 in 2015, and 157 in January and February of this year. The agency is inspecting five times as many buildings for faulty or illegal gas hookups than before the East Village explosion last March.
6
MARCH 3-9,2016
Our Town|Downtowner otdowntown.com
ONE FOOT
what she needed.
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
“For (Jane Austen and the readers of Pride and Prejudice), as for Mr. Darcy, (Elizabeth Bennett’s) solitary walks express the independence that literally takes the heroine out of the social sphere of the houses and their inhabitants, into a larger, lonelier world where she is free to think: walking articulates both physical and mental freedom.” Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking
for her. He’d be alert for her return 15 minutes later. He’d jump up to get the door for her. Her hands were full, even if she’d have been strong enough maybe to manage getting through the big doors by herself. She had a cup of coffee in one hand and a Daily News in the other hand. If she were your mother, you’d tell her you’d get her a coffee maker and you’d have her paper delivered. But she’d likely not hear of it. She liked to get out. You could tell. She was still grateful for the opportunity to walk across the street and get
Here, your car can’t make a statement about who you are. Here, your clothes and the way you walk say who
you are. Almost no one here is exceptionally heavy. I’m surprised therefore, given the vanity and the health-consciousness of New Yorkers, who want to look and feel good when they’re walking down the street, how many cookies and chocolate things are for sale here. Just like I’m surprised when I go out for breakfast on Sunday morning, how many people still get bacon with their eggs. They eat like Larry the Cable Guy. You wouldn’t think. All the walking must allow them to pig out. If you walk for exercise, they say you should walk like you’re late for an appointment. If Michael Bloomberg got us all to
stop smoking in bars and restaurants-in all bars and all restaurants, in an instant--how come no one can stop cars from barreling through red lights here? They don’t squeeze through, or inch through, either, they barrel through. Sans souci. You’d think that would be one thing city government could do. Make cars stop at red lights. Walkers notice. It’s awful, isn’t it? Speaking of lights, here’s another thing walkers notice: Walking north and south is a pain. Walking at a normal pace, you hit a red light at every corner. You break into a trot sometimes, after a few blocks of the stopping and waiting, just to break the pattern, holding your pocket where your
BE THE SOMEONE
phone is. If you’re an exercise walker you know you have to cross the street and etch-a-sketch your way along to keep moving. An hour walk is the best thing. You don’t need a gym. You don’t need a gym bag. Or a padlock. Or a membership card. You just go. An hour later you return. A different person. “Walking . . . is how the body measures itself against the earth.” Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking
WHO HELPS A KID BE THE FIRST IN HER FAMILY TO GO TO COLLEGE.
newyorkcares.org
MARCH 3-9,2016
Our Town|Downtowner otdowntown.com
7
8
MARCH 3-9,2016
Our Town|Downtowner otdowntown.com
Voices
Write to us: To share your thoughts and comments go to otdowntown.com and click on submit a letter to the editor.
Letters
THE SECRETS OF 100-YEAR-OLDS
BOYCOTTING TRADER JOE’S To the Editor: I will never shop in Trader Joe’s again. I went to the store on 72nd St. & Broadway and encountered a policy that is rude to elderly customers. I discovered that they are fine with making people wait in line even longer, causing gaps in the line while people get off the line and expect people to hold their place while they peruse shelves, causing elderly people, who have enough problems just waiting on line, to wait even longer while they indulge their own needs at the expense of others. I just had the rudest response to my objection to it by the Captain of the store and one of her employees, who actually told me to go to the end of the line if I had a problem with waiting on the two boys in front of me who were constantly taunting me
SENIOR LIVING BY MARCIA EPSTEIN
with nasty comments and bullying me as I simply asked them to move along and stop holding up the line even more. As it was the movement of the lines was painfully slow. I am outraged that I was told this is in fact their policy... that people can just wait while others take their time online to further halt the movement. With the amount of elderly
people who live on the west side and in fact are all over the country, this is disrespectful and certainly does not live up to their supposed dedication to service. It feeds the selfish “me” attitude of too many people and is undignified. I encourage all seniors to boycott this store. Carole Weinstein W. 97th Street
AGAINST THE SUPERSCRAPERS To the Editor: Your story extolling the wonders and marvels of the new generation of ugly mistakes which are polluting our iconic skyline -- and the quality of our urban existence -- displays remarkable ignorance of the devolution which monster towers represent. Two of the 15 paragraphs comprising your front page story are devoted to cursory mention of the harms which these uber-phallic projections are introducing -- and they are relegated to the very rear of the story, which concludes which the typical mealymouth mush dished out by the mayoral stooge Carl Weisbrod in his rubber-stamp role as Chair of the City Planning Commission. Why not do the community a real service on this crucial issue and devote an entire
page to a d-e-b-a-t-e on the pros and cons raised by mankind’s latest attempts to erect the Tower of Babble ?
STRAUS MEDIA your neighborhood news source
Vice President/CFO Otilia Bertolotti Vice President/CRO Vincent A. Gardino advertising@strausnews.com
Howard Charles Yourow, S.J.D. Coalition For A HumanScale City
Associate Publishers Seth L. Miller, Ceil Ainsworth Regional Sales Manager Tania Cade
I’ve known three or four people who lived to 100 and beyond, including my partner’s father, who died at 102. What they all had in common was what I’d characterize as “emotional health.” They were good natured, resilient, positive, optimistic and forward looking. My partner’s father, an Irish immigrant, ate bacon and eggs for breakfast every morning of every day of his life (as I saw, and as I was told). He didn’t smoke, though, and he liked walking around his Long Island town long before walking was “in.” In fact, he was thought somewhat eccentric for doing so. When I met him, he was 100 and the most easy-going person I’d ever encountered. The second person I knew who lived to 100 was the mother of an old friend. Her husband had been killed in the Holocaust and she and my friend, who was a child at the time, went to England and started a new life. My friend’s mother was also an upbeat, optimistic person who had a smile and a welcome for everyone. These characteristics, along with a sense of humor and a gift for contentment, plus meaningful social connections, help one to live a long and relatively happy life. Of course, there’s no guarantee. Genetics and accidents play a role; bad luck can come to anyone. Illness lurks around
every corner. But from what I’ve seen myself and heard from others, these are personality traits that the oldest Americans seem to share. I’ve been getting notices on various websites that “Your Browser is Out of Date. Please Update Your Browser.” Well, I’ve got news. I’m out of date, and please don’t keep telling me to update my browser. It just makes me mad. I like my browser just fine. My old desktop does what I need it to
do, and that’s all I want. Okay, maybe it’s a bit slow, but I can use my e-mail, Google illnesses and stalk old acquaintances on Facebook. What more could I want? I’m appalled by the stories I hear from friends and acquaintances about the medical situation for elders. In my women’s group, two people asked for recommendations for internists who would take Medicare. They were told by many offices that no new Medicare patients were being seen. They are convinced that their age is the reason, the idea being that old people need more medical help and will overload the doctor’s schedule with low paying Medicare reimbursement.
President & Publisher, Jeanne Straus nyoffice@strausnews.com Account Executive Editor In Chief, Kyle Pope editor.ot@strausnews.com Fred Almonte Director of Partnership Development Deputy Editor, Richard Khavkine Barry Lewis editor.dt@strausnews.com
Staff Reporters Gabrielle Alfiero, Daniel Fitzsimmons Director of Digital Pete Pinto
How sad. How awful. I’m lucky to have found a wonderful doctor who does take my Medicare, but not too long ago I was searching for a specialist and it took quite a while to find someone who did take regular Medicare. Again, how very sad. Of course doctors need to make a living, but is it all about the buck? Where is the feeling for helping people, the moral sense that medicine is not all about what insurance a person has? I suppose I’m being naïve, but when I heard my friends’ stories, I admit I was shocked. They’d spent hours on the phone trying to find a new doctor (both of theirs had retired) and were still searching as of the time I offered the name of my compassionate Internist. I recently read an article in The New York Times about what married gay couples call each other. Do they like to call each other husband, wife, wusband, hersband or husfriends? I have another conundrum. I’ve been with my male partner for 16 years, and I still don’t know how to refer to him. Significant Other is too long. Good friend hardly describes him. Paramour implies an illicit relationship. I usually say “partner,” but somehow I get in that he’s male or mention his name. I have absolutely nothing against gay relationships, but I am not gay and prefer people to know that I’m in a male/ female relationship. Call me old-fashioned, but I am what I am. We’re all allowed to identify ourselves as anything we wish to these days, and I am an old, heterosexual female who chose not to marry again after having done so a few times, producing two children and four grandchildren. I do wish that English had a good word for my type of relationship, but it doesn’t seem to. All suggestions are welcome.
Block Mayors Ann Morris, Upper West Side Jennifer Peterson, Upper East Side Gail Dubov, Upper West Side Edith Marks, Upper West Side
MARCH 3-9,2016
9
Our Town|Downtowner otdowntown.com
Chapter 1
EVE AND OTHERS Welcome to our first serialized novel. This week, Manhattan writer Esther Cohen kicks off the first weekly installment in what will be a novel set in the neighborhood. Intrigued by what you read here? Join us next week for Chapter 2. Beautiful Eve, belle with high silver boots and an actual jumpsuit made out of parachute silk (she’d never tell me where she bought it, silver, too). Beautiful Eve moved in to live with me when my longtime roommate went to France. Because, she said, the words ‘I am going to France’ were reason enough. She had a cousin with an extra bed and in the late 70s, that was reason enough to Just Go. Beautiful Eve wanted to be an actress, authentic Uta Hagen disciple, to emote, and often, she read scenes with her friend Robert, over and over again. View from the Bridge. She was the seductive niece and Robert the infatuated uncle. One day Beautiful Eve decided she wanted to get married. God knows why. No one we knew was married then. We never even used the word. The day she decided was Pablo Casals last concert in Central Park, and Eve went. That night there was rain. Light then heavy, and the man next to her had an umbrella. Of course she did not. He opened it over her head, and then he moved in.
Turns out he was agoraphobic, and the Casals concert was an experiment in Going Out. An occasion, for them both, for him to move into our apartment that very night. Like beautiful Eve, Timothy, too, had a gorgeous voice, deep and Brandoish, and so they immediately became engaged. They went to 47th Street and bought a diamond ring. And then, there were plans for a wedding. There we were, free from various conventions, looking at pictures of well-tiered wedding cakes. And those couples in the pictures, they looked like they were in a black and white TV movie from 1955. Smiling with all their teeth. Beautiful Eve and big red
hair, like a wild swimming cap. As for her beau, her fiancé, her intended, her germophobic agoraphobic love, he wore plastic gloves for every occasion, even to turn on the sink, Timothy was a man who was hard to see, as if he always stood out of the frame. In the way that some people can be, he was eternally elusive. All his opinions were maybes. Nothing like Eve’s father, a lawyer who seemed to diagram his own sentences. Timothy didn’t sing, but he often hummed. If you asked what he was humming, he wouldn’t tell you. And then, if you asked what the reason was, he wouldn’t tell you that, either. Here’s what happened to Eve and Tim: they did not get married. Even though we spent a week choosing appetizers (canapés!), writing down the bottles of Dom Perignon they would buy, still they separated. Not the way we all did in those days, Loudly and With Reasons. They kind of faded. One day Timothy said he was going to visit his Aunt May in Brooklyn and Eve, when he walked out the door, said Good Riddance. That’s all she said. What’s funny is he never came back. Esther Cohen has written five books and her work has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Newsday and elsewhere. She posts a poem a day at www.esthercohen.com,
Tired of Hunting for Our Town Downtown? Subscribe today to Downtowner News of Your Neighborhood that you can’t get anywhere else
Dining Information, plus crime news, real estate prices - all about your part of town
Cultural Events in and around where you live (not Brooklyn, not Westchester)
Now get your personal copy delivered by US Mail for just
$
49/Year for 52 issues
To Subscribe : Illustration by John S. Winkleman
Call 212-868-0190 or go online to otdowntown.com and click on subscribe
10
MARCH 3-9,2016
Our Town|Downtowner otdowntown.com
Be Seen
in Manhattan’s Premier Arts Section where...
87%
of readers say they visited a museum in the past 3 months
72%
of readers say they attended a concert in the past 3 months or readers say they attended a Broadway performance in the past 3 months
68% RY 12-18 ,2015
n FEBRUA
12 Our Tow
E, EGON SCHIELSP REBEL ON DI LAY
12
of public k 1912 on a charge with Peacoc cerated in ed in Self-PortraitStanding, 1911Gouache, immorality. oat, on paper, r style soften onment, Waistc olor, and black crayon His edgy, angula Vienna ath of his impris ngs waterced on board Ernst Ploil, the afterm t is rife with painti mount s. but the exhibi of elongated, emafellow artist e ngs bling family and tribut and drawi figures resem with voted to d, decorative ts ciated, trippy -Portrait gold-bronze sister, it presen A (“Self r est ntial, Mick Jagge Above Head,” 1910) to his young in an existe ed er (“Self- yet another figure toned. Arm Twist n’s monst one silverNOVO this enstei many CASTRO iscent The space, BY VAL or Frank Head,” 1910). himself, an emptywork is eerily remin it Portrait, , golden portra of the artist great hair The lines that iconic its cur’s , and s portra with of Klimt I” (1907) review block, Neue egotist and a dandy Peacock Waist- “Adele Bloch-Bauer 2nd floor and After rave e around the g on the ng Portrait with a testawrapped given its Egon12Schiel residin are openi (“Self1911), rently show its Ou to t of a new Standing,” self-referGalerie has ve and extended r To coat, wnto his fondness for ough it the subjec e on April 2, timed film, show a reprie 20. The exhibit, with ’s ment Down tionism—th him at Neue Galeri the upcoming run until Aprilfocus on the artistat ence and exhibitow ce saved n O coincide with starring Helen ive CTO the practi an exclus is the first of its kind s. BER 23- “Woman in Gold,” is true that lds. Not surmodel Reyno 29, hiring iture, the 2014 and Ryan of the portra the cost of ortraits, many in Mirren museum. e’s emulation i, who a major U.S. cative, are prisingly, Schiel The self-p inspired ndra Comin quite provo the his early years Curator Alessa al thesis at Colum ” nude and a room alongside master in doctor silver Klimt. with ssionist’s ed in wrote her ns, and to- the moniker “the filled Austrian Expresome 125 groupand Lovers sectio gallery is tton nt s red bia on the hot-bu adjace patron and The has gathe ures Eros form the exhibit’s sitters and endea ring d maportraits, and sculpt portraits of ially paintings m, a getherBut with all the X-rate gallery, it includes an espec boy in striped drawings, floor of the museu an core. on display in this it of a young on the third German and Austri (“Standterial bland portra the painting of for ed trousers A paper with is a tame, rather steals showcase , most on shirt and rumpl d Shirt,” 1910). Edith that art. The works ngs, are organized Boy in Stripe Schiele’s wife which the painti music of it is a ing side room, from given over just 11 oil is , with the g in the show. is not just because small tes, of tically full thema nberg emana , with reproducAnd it nberg waftin ng in a room it, Schoe Arnold Schoe very explic s, to his time in prisonzed watercolors large oil painti . b of Viagoni his t-sized, albeit Harm background in a subur tions of the eted while serving r, modes on paper. Edith Born in 1890was a rebel painte e-class girl e compl e the works table, middlin 1915 after Schiel sentence. in respec ant enna, Schiel Dean of his age,” married art- the and 24-day Edith became pregn w “the James states about the al whom Schiele me model the mello After physic le painted s with ding his longti audio tour naked a striking y”, charm 1918, Schie in discar y,” with a ist, who boreto Dean (both died at live-in lover “Walland prim, finely trio, “The Famil ring a nt father shelte e could d collar years resemblance only three my of her ruffle striped dress, a garme ’s mother and pictur After the ated their 20s). child. (Alas, been res of Joseph rvative Acade y deline es up vision t an small until April and has months Vienna’s conse he precociousl that conjur colors. Set agains stay six not But where .) sevlooks its lender iele and of many Fine Arts– contractage 16–Sch Schiele’s wife like a turned to free coat ancy, Edith e enrolled at iconoclasts broke -white void, into her pregnh flu and died. Schiel ppe off ke and awkward, rather ufellow nstgru eral be manip doll-li later of the ed the Spanis d the Neuku waiting to three days same day as and forme marionette ). perished the a Seces(New Art Group hated the same malady—on 31, 1918. lated. of the Vienn her family l, October A protégé v Klimt (1862-1918), y, with Edith and her sister Adele prowife’s funera his show his was only 28, a prodig sion’s Gusta d, Schiele made n, painting, with a decade. He he have to lasted just , Weber the g, “Why did ” But the porwhom he idolize a career that heralded as one of y age of Freud nstein. testin dumb? ssion is Wittge mark in the looking so is now centur expre he her and last But othe Loos, vapid , of ex, psych with the Hoffmann e’s finest. pe and adgreatest artists onally compl s, with their trait ered one of Schiel likeness ng the envelo nism. His emoti consid d image for pushi rful female of moder nal use of sexually charge Another masteearly stages of his vancing the causewith a cause. unconventio rebel of masturba- painted in the of Gerti Schiele” brilliant line, Make that bedepictions , “Portrait room deand lewd color and n couples and career, is displayed in the tion, lesbia art world on fire (1909) the y incarhavior, set ed and briefl , 1915 Oil on got him arrest in Striped Dress) lands Schiele Nether The (Edith Hague, Standing Den Haag, The Artist’s Wife, Portrait of the ion Gemeentemuseum canvasCollect
Our Tow
EXHIB ITION S
to very strong Responding Neue Galerie has demand, the first-of-its-kind show extended its lastic Austrian artist of the iconoc
SET IN THE CITY: RECL A
STR EET ART
Photogr complet apher Justin Bett e room sets on man builds city stre ets
THEAT ER
Alongside comedy writer Wickens starte d a festiva Gavin Starr, this judgment l that is a year. zone” “no submit videos in show busine Minim of shows they’ve ss. People show al selection require the chance ments that brings written for to finally perform surprises with make for a formed in mance slot. or have each front the only selecti of an audience. Considit per- game show Last year, the audience perforBY NICOLE watched a that allotte ering dildo. DEL MAURO chance is quite on requirement is CHELSEA Comed d the winner They also time, this a golden y writer Shawn watched a knows that piece about “If the artist great. dramatic dance some people Wickens the Troma Films, think his work to try,” Wickenis willing to try, we are rican Americ prevalence of HIV in the Afwilling s said. Central have Blue Man Group and is bad. artistic stew an community. The festiva The Bad Theate Comedy all rejected r l, an haven for variou Fest, as it is known his submis Wickens is wrenching, of the outlandish and sions. , is a safe the heart the s types regarding thenot ashamed of this. First time is interesting meaningful and the His actors, playwrof creative misfits. random, becaus to perform matter is simple: when theory ducers call e you never know you’re going ance, nothin it comes the festiva ights and film proto see. what will always g l home. Experi writers take “It’s be someone is universal. There part, enced and totally accepting of is bad. remain tucked too, submitting works that thinks develo the ping artists a thing that O’Neil risks they want to is an opport away in drawers for But Wicken take,” Jonath l, a repeat unity to perform years. It submitter of rejection s also knows the stiflin it, build confi said. to the festivaan performance dence or simply for the heck of g l, face when presen writers and fear York City stage. Starr and work on a New Wicken’s work actors ting their his theater Starr is showin “The festiva is no except peers, he createdwork. So, to assist l is to g a 15 year-ol ion. give people dissolves perfor creativ in college a d piece he wrote a chance to mers’ pressu showcase that find e and be on stage, which be sation . Wickens, who is a solving their with less and re by first weekly improv performer is harder audience’s dis- city,” less small iexpect “It turned into Wickens theaters in to nizing an improv at Magnet Theater, is a festival whereations. orgathe topic skit very low,” Wicken Submissionssaid. of depression for the festival. With the bar is set s said. its within the New York City. are not limited to munity, the comedy compeople shows from Bad Theater Fest is presen in issue long-fashow will be a sort of tribute Washington, ced D.C. and Pittsbuting relevant now in the entertainment to an in the tragic world, rgh supers wake of comed tar Robin Williams’ improv style suicide. Its y is a tribute Bad Theate to the r Fest “I think improitself. v
A comedy writer has created to showcase performance a festival s with no expectations
IMING THE STREET
Bet tma partial n’s latest tirely ly out of coinwork develop out said tha of creativi cidence, but ed sem traits t he plan ty. Original en- in bled in the BY ADEL the ned in beginni Native LE BROD stylized the env iron to shoot ly he Stre Lower Eas ng of Oct BECK et por t tin Bett Brooklyn ment that nat sets. How photogr of hyp - but it between OrcSide on Riv ober the ever ect to man is brin ingt erwas caption tory of urally com , complic the stre ging hisapher Jusstillatio not his hard and Lud on atio e with “It’s bee #Setint first New Bet tma ets of n. new low intentioNew York inte heStree the terrns n inte For his York in-, to see profess n, 23, hasManhattan. projrfered “Studions. how the resting and t. with hisi- man said first set, in iona bee and eve and cou lly for n sho pub space awe would and standing he only inteBrookly n, expect. man saidn added to lic has resp some bia Rec nts Forbes a few yea rsotin g nat I was trying is rea lly exp Since ” nded to Bettonded these magazin ive solv . “Wh now “When briefly. to thin ensive Low sets among ords, ABC leave welcom receiving e,” k of an sitting it sell er East en I did the ,” BettFamily e, Columimage, we were ing feed such pos on my said Bettma alte Side, is scat his clients. shootin set and Hon Stre ing and frie His tere n. “I wasr- ing to people kep dow n bikes on thethere was in the to et work, Betback for his itive and well as d with high artistic resu da not I looked dow nd Gozde Eke t stop g the firs take the ping picture t was “Rather set bec street whoa guy friekeep it goin tman said Set in the r’s roof ing a set personal end -profile wor me wal iced that a n onto the s,” Bet and askcom than tryi aus g with nd. he street took buildin cided k esse tma k as eav the help plans Since peting with e he though Project of portrai “Go “From ntially crea g on the and be coothat for the ng to fight n said. each ts title ors, includhis ” of his in of recl set is enti bike sale t it coll zde [Eker] which bagel d “The there ted a set sideit, futu inte and abo I for Bet s.” made l to leave the re sets it I de- said aimed foun rely from hom a photog tman tradBagel Bet rest ing to thought it wall.” would my pho one in rate on thes I will continu the he m inta d obje comprised wou ld people tma n bui ld ed a tog L.A and eless peo raph and cts, ct run e to fornia. rap . wit hou e,” he said afte sets out be take thei other Bettman into som his com idea tran explain h ple livin a stor y . one Since pan side r own and let oth r I e sfor meded. “And plan on s we have t her, but “I did g in Cali ture pictures er a “Findin g thecomplicatio ions have then the,” stripe his set on all into - didn that peo cha ther bedroom Riv ing it gets doing at leasdone together the furn itur ns. ple had using furn bea ’t wan too cold ton, a e.” find llenge bec t one . We e has ect as i- has r and nigh complete aus pinpiec Bettma t anymor disposed an ong out, but I more before with tedd htag has tstand, together es that all e it’s diff iculbeen of or n’s mos e.” see this oing On an y wor ple Oct t seri arisen for a set, t rece Instagr projk cohesiv to tha aro ober “Ho nt set 6 Bet es.” nk ing pho und tow n among fans am onc wever, ass ” he said. ely was astma n have bee . Peoall the you on his e the embling posted postingtos of Bett Fac furn sup n has ebook capturman iture a por the the bee them on thei ’s creation part of n fairly eas has been sets ningproject and t he has recepage for and r profi fou nd stat buildin ived on to y. The ting les wit eye out work on his ed he was h muc up wallpapg them has hardest next set. beginbee ing roo for a random h mor er Kee e time-co and wallingn putthe stre m, or perhap bed roo p an nsumin . It m, livs bat g then is commutet during you your nex hroom on e. t morning
More Events. Add Your Own: Go to otdowntown.com Greene Street, 8th floor. 2-6 p.m. The symposium brings together educational specialists, journalists and academics to open a dialogue around the THE MAGNIFICENT pedagogical, legal and ethical repercussions of the use of new SEVEN technologies in educational Hudson Park Library, 66 Leroy environments. Register at events.nyu. Street edu/#event_id/95149/view/ 2 p.m. The townspeople of a Mexican event village, at the mercy of a band of outlaws, hire seven American “THE BALCONY” gunslingers to free them from the bandits’ raids. The Theater at the School of 212-243-6876 Drama, 151 Bank St. March 3-5. Thu-Sat. at 8 p.m.; Sat. matinee at 3 p.m. PIANO FEST Free, but reservations are recommended. Center for Jewish History, A performance of Jean Forchheimer Auditorium, 15 Genet’s drama, translated by West 16th St. 7:30 p.m. $15; CJH members, Bernard Frechtman, directed by Carl Cofield. seniors, students, $10 212-279-4200. http:// The Phoenix Chamber events.newschool.edu/calendar/ Ensemble performing music by day/2016/3/5 Bach, Brahms, Barber, Mozart, Zaretsky, Stravinsky, Schnittke and Lavignac. Featured musicians are Claire Belkovsky, Ellen Braslavsky, Niel Frankel, Vassa Shevel and Inessa Zaretsky. 212-294-8301. www.cjh.org/ event/2809
Thu 3
Sat 5
n OCTOB ER 16, 2014
ENCOURAGING BAD THEATER
Out & About
IF YOU GO
The festival spans over the weeken 17, 24 and Nov. ds on 154 W. 29th1 at Chelsea’s Treehouof the Oct. se Theater, within a 90-min Street. Four or five plays are $15 availab ute time slot each night. are shown BadTheaterFesle on EventBrite through Tickets Pioneers Bar t.com and knock $3 off the website a drink at festival will down the street from the where peoplealso host a Halloween partyvenue. The will compete at Pioneers, the bad costum for e competition. the worst costume in
actors feel red-headed like the step dren of the chilcomedy and theate worlds,” Wicke r ns said. “There improv actors,is, for a very ‘root for the under dog’ mentality, and that’s what we’re all about as well.” Right now, merely fun the Bad Theater Fest is for viewer s The three-y ear old event and actors. ing out its kinks; organi is still irona challenge zing skits is and between sets smooth transitions are never teed. But Wicken guarans said can be seen he hopes it by a pool of untappfuture audiences as ed talent.
otdowntown.com
YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD NEWS SOURCE
Fri 4
FRANZ ERHARD WALTHER BOOK LAUNCH ▼
Dia: Chelsea, 535 West 22nd St., 5th floor 4–6 p.m. Free. Celebrated artist Franz Erhard TECHNOLOGY, Walther will present his book PRIVACY, AND THE “First Work Set” about his FUTURE OF EDUCATION interactive piece of the same name. Signed books will be New York University, 239
available for purchase. www.diaart.org/chelsea
DISPLACEMENT: CINEMA STUDIES GRADUATE STUDENT CONFERENCE NYU, Michelson Theater, Ichelson Theater, Department of Cinema Studies, 721 Broadway, 6th floor. All Day. Free. Featuring keynote speaker Giuliana Bruno (Harvard University), closing remarks from Sandy Flitterman-Lewis (Rutgers University), and a screening of Chantal Akerman’s 2006 film “Là-bas.” events.nyu.edu/#event_ id/99241/view/event
Sun 6 LEADERSHIP IN TIMES OF TENSION Museum of Jewish Heritage, 36 Battery Place 3 p.m. $15; members and students, free “The Leo Frank Case and the Role of Professionals Today”: The 1915 lynching of a Jewish man in the U.S. inspires a conversation about the dangers of hate speech and xenophobia, both then and now, and the responsibility of professionals in fostering civil discussion. 646-437-4202. www. mjhnyc.org/calendar_mar16.html
MARCH 3-9,2016
NOËL COWARD’S “BRIEF ENCOUNTER” Provincetown Playhouse, 133 Macdougal Street 3 p.m. $15 General, $5 Students & Seniors Directed by Amy Cordileone Tickets: 212-998-4941, tickets.nyu.edu, 566 LaGuardia Place
Mon 7 INTERNATIONAL LITERATURE BOOK CLUB
11
Our Town|Downtowner otdowntown.com
order and how it leverages mobile, viral video and real-time reporting to connect. With Aaron Edwards, mobile editor at BuzzFeed News, Elizabeth Plank, senior editor at Mic and host of Flip the Script, and Cenk Uygur, co-founder of the Young Turks Network. Moderated by J. Max Robins, executive director, Center for Communication. RSVP via events.nyu. edu/#event_id/92042/view/ event
Tue 8 PEN PARENTIS PRESENTS LAUREN ACAMPORA, RUMAAN ALAM, AND HELEN PHILLIPS
McNally Jackson, 52 Prince St. 7 p.m. The International Book Club, led by Sarah McNally, will be The ANDAZ Wall Street, 75 discussing Solibo Magnificent by Wall St. Patrick Chamoiseau. 7-9:30 p.m.Free. 212-274-1160. www. Meet Great New Writers mcnallyjackson.com/ Lauren Acampora, Amazon’s event/2016-03 “best book” pick, Rumaan Alam whose debut novel is the buzz THE NEW NEWS ORDER of Spring, and Helen Phillips, New York Times Notable book ▼ awardee. 239 Greene St., 8th floor 212-501-2031. www. 6:30-8 p.m. penparentis.org A discussion of the new news
IS TRUMP’S MUSLIM BAN CONSTITUTIONAL? NYU, Smart Classroom 206, Vanderbilt Hall, 40 Washington Square South 4 p.m. Adam B. Cox, Robert A. Kindler Professor of Law at NYU, speaks about Trump’s plan to ban Muslim immigration to the United States, focusing on the constitutional issues implicated by Trump’s plan. events.nyu.edu/
Everything you like about Our Town Downtown is now available to be delivered to your mailbox every week in the Downtowner From the very local news of your neighborhood to information about upcoming events and activities, the new home delivered edition of the Downtowner will keep you in-the-know.
And best of all you won’t have to go outside to grab a copy from the street box every week.
Wed 9
It’s your neighborhood. It’s your news.
THINKING EVIL CUNY, The Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Ave. 11:45 a.m. Gina Philogène, a professor of psychology at CUNY and Sarah Lawrence College, talks about Machiavellian Principles in today’s geopolitical context. www.gc.cuny.edu/PublicProgramming/Calendar/
WRITING AND THINKING ABOUT THE CRITICAL ESSAY: TINA PACKER AND NIGEL GORE 66 West 12th St., Alvin Johnson/J.M. Kaplan Hall, room 510 6:30-8:00 p.m. Free. Tina Packer will talk about “Women of Will,” her book about women in Shakespeare, performing scenes from the plays with her fellow actor Nigel Gore. events.newschool.edu/
X
Yes! Start my mail subscription to the Downtowner right away! 1-Year Subscription @ $49
Name
________________________________________________
Address _________________________________ Apt. #
________
New York, NY Zip Code __________ Cell Phone _________________ Email Address___________________________________________ Payment by
Check # __________
Money Order
Credit Card
Name on Credit Card (Please Print) ___________________________ Card # _______________________ Exp. Date
____ //____ // ____
Signature of Cardholder ___________________________________
Return Completed Form to: Straus News, 20 West Avenue, Chester, NY, 10918 or go to otdowntown.com & click on Subscribe
12
MARCH 3-9,2016
Our Town|Downtowner otdowntown.com
SCREAMING BEAUTY AT NEUE GALERIE A new show highlights Edvard Munch’s classic tribute to angst and his later Expressionist works BY VAL CASTRONOVO
It’s been three years since the Museum of Modern Art played host to Edvard Munch’s pastel iteration of “The Scream”(1895), which memorably faced off with Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” on a far wall. Now Neue Galerie has staged an encore presentation of one of the world’s most famous works of art, this time tucked into a small room — a “chapel-like environment” in the words of the gallery’s communications director, Rebecca Lewis — where viewers can pay their respects. Hard to believe, but the Norwegian artist’s iconic work is just one of many spectacular draws at “Munch and Expressionism,” a gorgeous, intimate show that examines Munch’s influence on German and Austrian Expressionists — and their influence on him. Call it a dialogue that informed his development as a modern artist at the beginning of the 20th century and their development, with the focus on a coterie that included Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Gabrielle Münter and Emile Nolde from Germany, and Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka and Richard Gerstl from Austria. In the foreword to the exhibit’s catalog, Neue Galerie’s director, Renée Price, acknowledges Munch’s debt to Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec and Gauguin, but emphasizes his
special “affinity” with the German Expressionists, who supported his mantra, “I do not believe in the art which is not the compulsive result of humanity’s urge to open its heart.” As the museum’s president, Ronald Lauder, writes, Munch’s works are “like a punch to the stomach. His images relate to primal emotions shared by all human beings: loneliness, anxiety, jealousy. But they are rendered in such a way that we also feel the beauty of existence ... ” There is plenty of beauty here. Thirty-five paintings, several making their American debut, and 50 works on paper are arranged thematically along walls painted with bright custom-designed colors, some “extracted from the works themselves,” Lewis said on our private tour. But while Munch (1863-1944) is best known for paintings and prints created in the 1890s — e.g., the introspective, emotive “Angst,” “Melancholy” and “Scream” motifs — the organizers have cast a spotlight on later, lesser-known works, with highlights from the artist’s “vitalist” phase (c. 1901-1916) of particular interest. A 20th century European theme emphasizing the lifeforce, vitalism “points in the direction of something radiant, life-affirming and robust,” scholar Øystein Ustvedt writes in the catalog. “It can be seen in the turn of the century’s art, philosophy and science, as well as in the budding nudist culture and emergence of new lifestyle ideals dominated by
Edvard Munch (1863-1944), “The Scream,” 1895. Pastel on board in the original frame 79 x 59 cm (31 1/8 x 23 1/4 in.) Private Collection. © 2016 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Egon Schiele (1890-1918), “Self-Portrait with Raised Bare Shoulder,” 1912. Oil on wood. 42.2 x 33.9 cm (16 5/8 x 13 3/8 in.) Leopold Museum, Vienna. outdoor recreational activities, physical fitness and a healthy diet.” Call it “getting back to nature,” the show’s curator Jill Lloyd said, alluding to the Nietzschean notion of nature as a source of renewal. She pointed to Munch’s “Bathing Men” (1907), on exhibit for the first time in the U.S., and his “Sunbathing” (1914-15), two colorful paintings of nude bathers showcased on the same wall in the second gallery. “Munch
wants his work to be modern. He wants to show a Munch that no one has seen before,” she explained. “He’s interested in the theme of male vitality. Bathing is a celebration of naturalness.” More vitality and virility are on parade on the adjacent wall, where Munch’s full-length portrait “Christian Gierløff” (1909) debuts and stands testament to the new, modern approach. The assertive, plein air image of Munch’s worldly friend, an economist, contrasts with his
earlier, more subdued portraits. “The persons portrayed [in the early 1900s] are bursting with self-confidence and energy,” Ustvedt writes. “Family members and bohemians no longer dominate the genre as they did in the 1890s. Rather we see scientists, industrialists and representatives of a progressive, cultural elite.” The brightly colored portrait of Gierløff is bathed in strong, summer sunlight, with the
figure looking directly at the viewer. He is self-assured and angst-free — an extrovert! — with an agreeable demeanor. Turn around and see Munch’s parallel approach to landscape. His snow paintings, “White Night” (1900-01) and “Winter. Elgersburg” (1906), are paired with Emil Nolde’s “Sea B” (1930) and Gabriele Münter’s “The Blue Gable” (1911), respectively, to illustrate crosspollination. The light-toned snowscapes show the artist “moving further away from reality,” Lloyd said, referring to Munch’s broad brushstrokes and expressive style. There is “patterning, banding and a reduction of the landscape to its essentials,” she said, with the emphasis on “the idea of mood and emotion.” But back to the holy place: “The Scream,” in its original frame, is flanked by half a dozen resonant works—including Erich Heckel’s dramatic woodcut “Man on a Plain” (1917), a response to the trauma of World War I that echoes a “Scream” lithograph, and three haunting self-portraits by Egon Schiele. Schiele and Munch both “captured the spirit of anxiety,” Lewis said in conclusion, noting the stylistic similarities between a Munch self-portrait at the show’s entrance — “like an x-ray” — and Schiele’s bony, angular figures. Visitors can worship in the chapel and the rest of the rooms through June 13.
MARCH 3-9,2016
13
Our Town|Downtowner otdowntown.com
ACTIVITIES FOR THE FERTILE MIND
thoughtgallery.org NEW YORK CITY
e-Waste Tsunami—Exhibition Reception
FRIDAY, MARCH 4TH, 6:30PM The New School | 55 W. 13th St. | 212-229-5108 | newschool.edu Photos and models at this show explore the dilemmas of the end life of our gadgets, and raise the question: why aren’t we designing for this inevitability? (Free)
An Evening on Parade
MONDAY, MARCH 7TH, 7PM Museum of Jewish Heritage | 36 Battery Pl. | 646-437-4202 | mjhnyc.org George K. Wells as Juliet, Nicholas Martin-Smith as the Prince and Christopher Moore as Romeo in Hudson Warehouse’s “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged).” Credit: Susane Lee
ROMEO AND JULIET AND WRESTLING TO DO Theater company offers a humorous survey of Shakespeare’s plays BY GABRIELLE ALFIERO
“Can we do the vomit?” Susane Lee asked George K. Wells during a recent rehearsal of “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged).” In the production from Hudson Warehouse, an Upper West Side theater company that stages classical theater productions in Riverside Park, Shakespeare’s 37 plays comically unfold with three actors, 60 roles and 45 costume changes, without intermission. Wells plays Ophelia, and in one scene goofily mimes retching into the audience. “I call it a tour de force,” said Lee. “It’s not just acting. It’s so physical. They’re fighting; they’re wrestling; they’re running up and down the auditorium.” The company first staged the comedy outdoors in 2013 as part of its 10-year anniversary season, and then brought the production to Goddard Riverside Community Center when it became the organization’s resident theater company. Written
by Adam Long, Daniel Singer and Jess Winfield, the play debuted in 1987 and followed with a nine-year run in London. An often slapstick retelling of all Shakespeare’s theatrical works, the show is a change of pace for the classically-trained actors. Wells, who performed as Romeo in a previous production of the tragedy, now plays Juliet, along with all the other female roles in the production, sometimes donning dramatic wigs and period dresses. “It’s mayhem,” said Nicholas Martin-Smith, the founder and producing artistic director of the company and one of the three actors in the production. During rehearsal, Lee and costumer Emily Rose Parman worked through the actors’ costume changes. They discovered that Christopher Moore needed assistance changing out of a long white beard and into a brown cloak as he transitioned from Polonius to his son Laertes in a matter of seconds. “Pieces have to be suggestive, rather than elaborate,” said Parman, given the time constraints. Lee updated the script, taking liberties and adding fights where none existed, with the help of the company’s fight director. A golf club duel breaks
IF YOU GO “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)” March 3-20 Produced by Hudson Warehouse Goddard Riverside’s Bernie Wohl Center 647 Columbus Ave. at 91st Street Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m.; Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets $15, or $10 for students and seniors For more information, visit www.goddard.org/ communityarts or call 212799-9400 out in “Macbeth” and a wrestling match, complete with clotheslines and headlocks, goes down between the Capulets and the Montagues. Some of Shakespeare’s original language remains, but the production is accessible, Lee said, and allows the actors to improvise. “We love Shakespeare,” Lee said. “We make it understandable and accessible and say it in a vernacular that everyone can understand. It’s not highfalutin.”
In conjunction with a new exhibition on the life and lynching of Leo Frank, catch performances from the creative team behind Parade (the 1999 Tony-winning Broadway show), and a converation about the ways history can inspire art. ($20)
Just Announced: The Serengeti Rules: The Quest to Discover How Life Works and Why It Matters
TUESDAY, MARCH 15TH, 6:30PM The Cooper Union | 41 Cooper Sq. | 212-353-4100 | storefrontnews.org Rules underlie all of life, with a startling similarity across scales. Biologist Sean B. Carroll talks about the secret logic of nature, and how it might be applied to heal our planet, in a conversation with New York Times science columnist Carl Zimmer. (Free) h New York Te columnist Carl
For more information about lectures, readings and other intellectually stimulating events throughout NYC,
sign up for the weekly Thought Gallery newsletter at thoughtgallery.org.
M AR B LE C OLLE GI ATE C HURCH
Richard Elliott Principal Organist of The Mormon Tabernacle Choir in Salt Lake City.
THURSDAY, MARCH 10, 7:30PM $20 at the door and $15 for students and seniors
1 West 29th Street / New York, New York 10001 / 212 686 2770 / MarbleChurch.org
14
Our Town|Downtowner otdowntown.com
IWantToBeRecycled.org
MARCH 3-9,2016
MARCH 3-9,2016
Our Town|Downtowner otdowntown.com
15
WHAT’S THAT DOGGIE’S PEDIGREE? DNA tests sniff out pooches’ genetic makeup and ‘reveal parties’ celebrate findings BY MICKEY KRAMER
Sunday turned into Dog Day Afternoon, with a touch of “the Maury Povich Show,” outside the Oslo Coffee Roasters shop on East 75th Street where Mark and JeanMarie Fusco
hosted a “DNA reveal” party for their 18-month old-adopted dog, Theo. The doggie bash drew about a dozen pooches and their guardians. On offer were Mark’s own hand-baked dog biscuits (in four different sizes!), a “Guess Theo’s Ancestry” contest and gift bags. Theo — short for Theodore Oreo Pepperspot — was a gracious host as well, playing with, and licking, any
Theo, center, an American Staffordshire terrier and cocker spaniel mix, at his DNA reveal party on Sunday with other canine and human celebrants.
willing participant, canine or human. “He’s a popular boy and this was an opportunity to bring the local dog community together to celebrate four legs,” Mark said of his black and white, thick-furred pup. Andrew Diresta attended with Zoey, adopted last June from In Our Hands Rescue, a city-based nonprofit. Diresta was told Zoey was a black lab-mix and expected a dog that would weigh about 60 pounds, but little Zoey has topped out at barely half that. Partly for that reason, but “more out of curiosity,” Diresta has purchased Wisdom Panel, the same DNA test used by the Fusco family and will have the results within three weeks of sending in the cheek-swab sample. Diresta said that he, too, may have a “DNA reveal” party. “It’s a ‘thing’, now,” he laughed. Wisdom Panel advertises its DNA tests with the slogan, “Dogs can’t talk, but their DNA can.” The company says that its canine genetic tests, which cost under $100, can trace a dog’s breed ancestry back to three generations and reveal answers to a few questions, such as concern drug sensitivities and expected weight range, but not much more. While simple curiosity might be a main reason for DNA testing a dog, Meena Alagappan and Robert Fried-
lander had a more practical rationale to do the test on Margo, already about 10 years old when she was rescued two years ago from a hoarding situation in Tennessee. “She had been badly abused and we had no medical history, so we decided to do a DNA test to better understand what health issues she may be predisposed to, based on her breed,” Alagappan said. For the record, Margo, who weighs about 25 pounds, is a surprise mix of Bernese mountain dog, basset hound and cocker spaniel. Alagappan and Friedlander also tested then-12-year-old Jackson, which they assumed was a beaglemix, but turned out to be a full breed. “Even though he was much smaller than most beagles, it does make sense given his medical issues and distinctive howl,” Alagappan said. Returning to the party, Sue King and Melissa Ryan brought their two rescued terrier-mixes, Harry and Rosie. When asked if she would consider doing a DNA test, King said, “if someone else paid for it.” The tension mounted as the guests waited for Theo’s “grandmother” — Mark’s mother, Mary Anne Fusco — to show up before the reveal. Some guessed during the pre-reveal contest that Theo might be border
A DNA test revealed that Theo is an American Staffordshire terrier and cocker spaniel mix. His genetic identity was celebrated at a DNA reveal party on Sunday. collie, husky, Dalmatian or Australian cattle dog, so when the moment of truth arrived, and Mark scrolled through the email on his phone and announced “American Staffordshire terrier and cocker spaniel” there were audible gasps and surprise from the crowd. JeanMarie was astounded that Theo was part cocker spaniel. It’s “kind of a shocker,” she said, “but with so many people always asking us what kind of dog he is, we can now give an official answer.” For his part, Mark was pleased with the afternoon’s conclusion. “From his appearance, he’s a mystery,” he said, “and now that veil has been lifted.”
MUSEUM TAPS NEIGHBORHOOD GROUPS FOR PARK REDESIGN AMNH working groups to focus on transportation, park redesign BY GABRIELLE ALFIERO
The American Museum of Natural History is tapping into the neighborhood for a community working group that will weigh in on the redesign of a portion of Theodore Roosevelt Park, where the museum plans to use a quarter-acre of green space for a proposed expansion. Friends of Roosevelt Park, the nonprofit that manages the park with the city’s Parks Department and the museum, will co-chair the group with the museum. Block associations, elected officials, Community Board 7, and park advocacy group Defenders of Teddy Roosevelt Park, among others, make up the group. The project’s landscape architecture firm Reed Hilderbrand will also attend meetings, which begin on March 4. “It’s always been our intention to work with the community to achieve the objectives of what the museum would like to do and make sure that the needs of the community are met as this project moves forward,” said Dan Slippen, vice president of government relations at the museum. “I think that what we’re doing now is really solidifying, in a way, efforts that we always
intended.” The museum has already met with community groups and residents, and will continue to hold individual meetings about the project. The group will focus on the park’s current and future design and use, park construction and maintenance, and sustainability and historic preservation, among other topics. “This is where the rubber meets the road,” said Adrian Smith, a landscape architect and president of Defenders of Teddy Roosevelt Park. “We’re optimistic that we’re going to be able to affect even more change than we already have.” Defenders seeks to preserve the park as a neighborhood respite, and continues to raise concerns about changes to the museum’s underground service driveway, which necessitates the removal of trees, including a large English elm at 79th Street and Columbus Avenue. In total, the museum anticipates that nine trees will be lost in the construction project. “We don’t want to just be perceived as tree huggers,” said Smith. “What do those nine trees mean? What it means to us is that it changes that portion of the park forever. Those are big, significant trees that really create a beautiful outdoor living room, front door,
backyard.” The organization is also interested in how the construction project will affect the park. Slippen expects the working group to discuss the service driveway, but noted that the park use and tree loss hasn’t changed since the design concept was released in the fall, though the museum is “looking heavily” at how to preserve the English elm. Peter Wright, president of Friends of Roosevelt Park, said a similar group formed in the late 1990s when the Rose Center for Earth and Space was constructed, which he remembers as a successful initiative. The W. 81st Street section of the park was redesigned at that time. “We want this neighborhood group, the voice from the pew, the people there, to give ideas to the landscape design company as to what attracts people, what are the good things, what are the no-no’s,” Wright said. “That’s what this committee is all about.” Friends supports the museum’s expansion plan, and Wright isn’t too concerned with the tree loss. The park is densely filled with more than 200 trees already, he said, which creates competition between existing trees for sunlight and nutrients. Wright also hopes to discuss the ad-
dition of a learning garden for local students once the group convenes. The museum also launched a transportation working group, chaired by Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and Councilmember Helen Rosenthal, to address transportation and parking around the museum. In addition to community groups, the city’s Department of Transportation and the New York Police Department’s neighborhood precinct will also participate. The discussions will focus on current issues but could also have relevance to the transportation analysis for the construction project’s environmental impact statement
Congestion around the museum has been an ongoing concern, said Rosenthal. “That problem has not gone away, so now we have a working group with all the right people at the table whose goal it is to fix it,” she said. Wright expects some disagreement amongst those in the landscape group, but said the meetings provide opportunities to raise concerns. “There’s going to be a typical West Side food fight about some things, but that’s okay,” he said. “That’s why we’re getting together. It’s like at a wedding. Speak now or forever hold your peace.”
16
MARCH 3-9,2016
Our Town|Downtowner otdowntown.com
Business
In Brief DEVELOPER BEHIND EAST SIDE SUPERCRAPER FILES FOR BANKRUPTCY PROTECTION The developer behind a 950-foot tall condo tower in Sutton Place has filed for bankruptcy protection in order to stop a foreclosure auction. Crain’s reports that Joseph Beninati, who operates the real estate firm Bauhouse Group, along with another executive, put a limited liability company that they control and that owns the development site on East 58th Street into Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The move halted the Feb. 29 auction of the site by the property’s lender, Gamma Real Estate, which holds more than $180 million of debt tied to the parcel. Last week, Beninati failed to win a restraining order in State Supreme Court that would have prevented Gamma from foreclosing on the property. Beninati’s lawyers in that case, Stephen Meister and Kevin Fritz, were asking for a delay to give Beninati more time to try to arrange a sale of the site or refinance it and pay off Gamma, Crain’s said. After losing that case, Beninati said that he stood to lose millions of dollars he invested in the development and two years of his time.
WTC TRANSIT HUB OPENS The soaring transportation hub opening next week at the World Trade Center was designed to evoke a bird in flight, but it is hatching under a cloud. There will be no ribbon-cutting ceremony when the train station’s grand hall, called the Oculus, opens to the public. The main issue is sore feelings over the cost. The hub, which includes a commuter rail station, retail shops and connections to several subway lines, cost $3.9 billion. That’s roughly the same as the price of building the adjoining, 104-story One World Trade Center. But Spanish-born architect Santiago Calatrava says the train station will be an important public space like Grand Central Terminal. The station is replacing a commuter station connecting Manhattan to New Jersey that was destroyed almost 15 years ago in the 9/11 attacks.
GOLDMAN SACHS TRUMP BACKER PLACED ON LEAVE A financial adviser said to be the only Goldman Sachs employee to contribute to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has been placed on administrative leave, according to The New York Times. The employee, Luke Thorburn, made two donations, totaling $534.58, to Mr. Trump’s campaign in September, according to Federal Election Commission records cited by the Times. He also trademarked the phrase “Make Christianity Great Again,” according to public records. The Times confirmed that Mr. Thorburn is associated with a website that sells hats that resemble Mr. Trump’s red and blue “Make America Great Again” caps, replacing the word “America” with “Christianity.” Though Thorburn sought to distance himself from the website, the Times reports that the bank became concerned about apparent inconsistencies in Mr. Thorburn’s story, and placed him on leave.
LANDMARKS COMMISSION FINALLY CLEARING LONG BACKLOG NEWS List of preserved buildings could include Bergdorf store The commission that decides which city buildings are worth preserving took a step to protect 30 properties that have languished on a list of possible landmarks for years. The Landmarks Preservation Commission’s vote to recommend the 30 properties for landmark status was part of an effort to clear a backlog that had built
up over decades. “As the city’s expert body on historic preservation, the commission has spent months analyzing testimony and conducting further research on these items,” commission chairwoman Meenakshi Srinivasan said in a statement. “Our actions today represent an important step in addressing this backlog.” One property that will now be considered for landmark designation is the luxury Bergdorf Goodman store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Others include the Pepsi sign on the Queens wa-
terfront, several churches and a YMCA in Harlem. Most of the properties had been on the commission’s calendar for 20 years or more. They were among 95 sites that were up for consideration. he Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation said one of the properties now headed for landmark status, an 1816 house at 57 Sullivan St. in downtown Manhattan, had been on the calendar for almost 50 years. “This charming historic house was the first and only structure ever built on this site and has re-
markably survived subway construction, street widenings, the building of the Holland Tunnel, tremendous development pressure and any number of other urban transformations, which consumed so many of its neighbors,” society president Andrew Berman said. “This survivor will now hopefully live for another two centuries or more.” The commission has promised a vote on the recommendations by the end of 2016 after a round of hearings.
MARCH 3-9,2016
Our Town|Downtowner otdowntown.com
17
18
Our Town|Downtowner otdowntown.com
THE DENTAL HEALTH OF YOUR PET PETS BY MELISSA TREUMAN
A number of years ago, after a night of excruciating mouth pain, I found myself stretched out in a dentist’s chair, feeling a mix of both sedation (thankfully) and shock as the dentist studied my x-rays and began rattling
off a laundry list of procedures I’d ultimately require. Not one to beat around the bush, I immediately inquired about costs, and after he begrudgingly began providing prices, I started crunching the numbers. The tally came to almost $20,000. Even in my sedated state, I was close to tears. Dental health is something that
many of us don’t think about until we are on the cusp of a crisis. For our pets, it can be even easier to overlook because our dogs and cats rarely alert us to problems until they have reached a critical point. If our pets aren’t acting like something is wrong, we generally don’t assume that anything is. But the old adage that “if something isn’t broke, don’t fix it,” is a terrible phi-
losophy when it comes to the dental health of our four-legged loved ones. The longer problems go undetected and untreated, the more difficult and costly they ultimately become. Just like people, dogs and cats require regular maintenance of their teeth and gums. Brushing your pet’s teeth daily, or at least three to four times a week helps to reduce plaque, which is a source of bacteria and can cause gum disease. Approximately 80% of dogs and cats have dental disease by the age of three. This leads to periodontal disease if left untreated. The long term consequences of periodontal disease include bone erosion, tooth loss, abscess and pain. Bacteria in the tartar and plaque can also affect your pet’s general health, causing serious damage to the heart and other internal organs. Signs of dental disease include halitosis (bad breath), swelling of the face, excessive drooling, loss of appetite, visibly loose teeth and inflamed gums.
MARCH 3-9,2016
Bear in mind that while your pet may exhibit some of these symptoms, they also may not. Furthermore, by the time they do display these symptoms, they may require a significant amount of work. We can’t possibly pre-empt every condition that may await our two and four-legged loved ones but we CAN take precautions, and, preventative measures can go a long way. Bringing your pet in for an annual dental checkup can keep plaque and bacteria at bay, and help to stave off costly procedures and serious illnesses down the road. Trust me when I say, it’s better to be safe than sorry…. Melissa Treuman is Director of Brand Communications, Bideawee. During the month of March, The Animal Hospitals at Bideawee are offering $50 off any dental procedure. To make an appointment, call 866-262-8133.
MARCH 3-9,2016
WHY DAY CAMP? CAMP BY MARLA COLEMAN
Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tough to be a kid these days. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tough to be a parent. In a society where the nature of the family, the work place, and the community have changed dramatically, we can no longer assume that the natural process of growing up will provide children the experiences and the resources they need to become successful, contributing adults. In sharp contrast to the traditions of growing up in the 50s and 60s, today we live in the ďŹ rst moment when humans receive more of their information second-hand than ďŹ rst! We are in a climate where it is harder to know what we need to survive, so drawing on experiences that give children healthy alternatives and opportunities to instill capabilities, the hallmarks of thriving, is the greatest gift you can give a young child. Does it really matter if my child doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t go to day camp, especially since she will go to overnight camp in a few years? She is only four years old â&#x20AC;&#x201D; why does she need day camp? Camp provides one of the very few links with a world
SUMMER CAMPS MANHATTAN & BROOKLYN CAMPUSES!
ďŹ lmmaking ! Ages 13-18 ! Day or Residential ! 1-6 Week Camps NYC Residents Get
5% Off Tuition! Call Now: 800.718.2787
19
Our Town|Downtowner otdowntown.com
acting
los angeles
dance
new york city
O
O
larger than the consumer culture we inhabit â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and day camp is one important choice in a quiver of options. The camp experience helps children and youth develop an appreciation of their place and their responsibility in a much larger universe. A preschooler â&#x20AC;&#x201D; or even an older child who might be reluctant to go to overnight camp â&#x20AC;&#x201D; can join a community that is created especially for her to practice growing up. Why wait until age ten when the beneďŹ ts of feeling connected and being able to contribute and navigate at an earlier age can be reaped? Under the supervision of inspiring guides and passionate coaches, children can feel successful and make new friends while having the time of their lives; they can experience belonging and contribution; they can have a sense of consistency and predictability in times of turbulence and change. Day camp can begin as early as age three, and is geared to children who get to experience camp and still return home each evening! They have the best of both worlds â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the camp community which is built exclusively for kids and their own home which provides the security they need at a tender age.
One day camp parent said, â&#x20AC;&#x153;While my children and I are constantly bombarded by the news which is focused on what is wrong with the world, camp is a living example of what is right.â&#x20AC;? Day camp is a terriďŹ c ďŹ rst experience. Reminiscent of less complicated days, when people connected with nature, thrived on inter-generational relationships, and made new discoveries, everything is designed and scaled to ensure that children feel included, cared about, and capable. Beginning camp at an early age provides important advantages. Camp is the best demonstration of moral and spiritual order â&#x20AC;&#x201D; democracy is the core purpose. Children learn life skills and behaviors that become habits of the heart. While many then move on to overnight camp, others will be content to continue the day camp experience: after all, there is a camp for everyone â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and that might well be day camp! Marla Coleman is the parent liaison at Camp Echo in Burlingham, New York. The immediate past president of the American Camp Association, she is a co-owner of Coleman Family Camps, which includes Camp Echo and Coleman Country Day Camp. To learn more about camp and child development, please visit the American Camp Associationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s familydedicated Web site: www.CampParents.org, or call the toll-free number 1-800-428-CAMP (2267).
WE TRAIN BRAINS!
vermont
photography
music
SUMMER CAMPS 2016
SESSION SESSION SESSION SESSION
1: 2: 3: 4:
JUNE 12 - JUNE 25 JUNE 26 - JULY 16 JULY 17 - AUG 06 AUG 07 - AUG 13
DONâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;T LET YOUR BRAINS CRAMP..
COME TO OUR SUMMER BRAIN CAMPS!
800.718.2787
socapa.org
S Brain Camps (Grades 4, 5 & 6) S SHSAT Spring/Fall Classes
Your neighborhood news source
otdowntown.com
S SHSAT Summer Intensives S One on One Tutoring Packs: For everything from 4th Grade Enrichment to SATs & ACTs
$50 REBATE ON ALL SUMMER CLASSES AND PACKS WITH THIS AD. Use code: BRAINCRAMP
)YVHK^H` H[ [O [O :[Z c c PUMV'PIPKWYLW JVT c PIPKWYLW JVT
20
Our Town|Downtowner otdowntown.com
MARCH 3-9,2016
MARCH 3-9,2016
21
Our Town|Downtowner otdowntown.com
YOUR 15 MINUTES
To read about other people who have had their “15 Minutes” go to otdowntown.com/15 minutes
Monmartre in the Time Warner Center.
A BOUTIQUE SENSIBILITY Owner of iconic fashion outpost Montmartre recounts origins, looks forward BY ANGELA BARBUTI
Avi Toledo, the founder and owner of the fashion boutique Montmartre. Photo: Michael Creagh
When Avi Toledo decided to open his first boutique in 1980, he chose Columbus Avenue as its address. At the time, the area was not the destination it is today, but the budding entrepreneur saw its potential. “Columbus Avenue was filled with a lot of restaurants and cafes and reminded me of Paris,” he explained. “I saw that they needed boutiques and I was the first or second to open on Columbus.” The brand quickly expanded and at one point had up to five stores around Manhattan. Now, Toledo is focusing his efforts on operating just one store in another ideal location, the Time Warner Center. The retailer opened with the now iconic building in 2006, so is celebrating its 10th anniversary as one of The Shops in Columbus Circle this year.
How did you get started in the fashion industry? I was working in boutiques as a salesperson and had a lot of connections in the industry with manufacturers. At the time, retail was the only place to shop, not like now. I enjoyed the industry and was good at sales, and that inspired me to open my own store.
You worked as a driver while you opened your first boutique. I drove in Manhattan and to the airports. When you pick up people at the airport, sometimes you pick up people who are famous. I did it part-time at night because I just opened a boutique on Columbus Avenue. It was a small boutique and I was trying to develop it, so I did extra work as a car service. I picked up Miss Universe from Venezuela and Miss USA. At the time, they were staying at an apartment especially for the pageant contestants. And I took them
to that building that, later on in my life, I moved to, ironically.
How did you pick Columbus Avenue as the location for your first store? I thought it would be up-andcoming. Now it’s only boutiques and some restaurants. But there was a time in the 80s and 90s where there were only boutiques and not too many restaurants. People would shop at my store after they had dinner because I stayed open until after 11 in those days.
How have you seen the Upper West Side change? Well, it’s developed now. There are new buildings, Lincoln Center was transformed. A lot of fancy chains and boutiques came in because the rent went up. When I started, the rent wasn’t that high. It’s a whole new ballgame right now. That’s why I always aim to stay new and fresh and bring in exciting, new and hip designers, and also those who give back to the community and to charities.
What are the positives and negatives to owning a business in the Time Warner Center? The positive is that it’s a hightraffic area and tourists come in and love it and it’s unique to an average store in the street. It’s a unique mall; there are not a lot of stores. It’s more of a boutique mall. Plus, with all the great restaurants, Whole Foods and Jazz at Lincoln Center, they can make a whole day and night of it. We are also open seven days a week,
Monday to Saturday, 10 to 9 and Sunday, 11 to 7. I don’t see any negatives right now; it’s a perfect location and we’ve been here for over 12 years.
What is the atmosphere like in your store? Very customer-service friendly and we have fashions for women sizes 0 to 12, so we get mothers and daughters and it’s welcoming for everyone. It’s just a nice place to shop and nice people work here. The clothing is fun and playful. We keep changing the clothing every week. We sell a lot of dresses. We are also have amazing jewelry, hats, handbags, belts, scarves, whatever you would need to complete your whole look in one place. We also get many celebrities and their stylists who love shopping here for their events and special appearances. We offer in-house stylists who get to know our customers, and know what they like and contact them when new styles come in. We have a great lounge area, to give a place to sit and relax or for the men in our customers’ lives to sit back after a great day of shopping. We also have a great online store and keep up-to-date with social media www.montmartreny.com
Know somebody who deserves their 15 Minutes of fame? Go to otdowntown.com and click on submit a press release or announcement.
22
Our Town|Downtowner otdowntown.com
“I WISH SOMEONE WOULD HELP THAT HOMELESS MAN.”
BE THE SOMEONE. Sam New York Cares Volunteer
Every day, we think to ourselves that someone should really help make this city a better place. Visit newyorkcares.org to learn about the countless ways you can volunteer and make a difference in your community.
MARCH 3-9,2016
MARCH 3-9,2016
CLASSIFIEDS CARS & TRUCKS & RVâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S
23
Our Town|Downtowner otdowntown.com
MASSAGE
MERCHANDISE FOR SALE
Telephone: 212-868-0190 Fax: 212-868-0198 Email: classified2@strausnews.com
POLICY NOTICE: We make every eďŹ&#x20AC;ort to avoid mistakes in your classiďŹ ed ads. Check your ad the ďŹ rst week it runs. The publication will only accept responsibility for the ďŹ rst incorrect insertion. The publication assumes no ďŹ nancial responsibility for errors or omissions. We reserve the right to edit, reject, or re-classify any ad. Contact your sales rep directly for any copy changes. All classiďŹ ed ads are pre-paid.
SERVICES OFFERED
Directory of Business & Services To advertise in this directory Call #BSSZ (212)-868-0190 ext.4 CBSSZ MFXJT@strausnews.com
EMPLOYMENT TUTOR
Antique, Flea & Farmers Market SINCE 1979
East 67th Street Market
REAL ESTATE - SALE
HELP WANTED
VACATIONS
REDUCE REUSE RECYCLE INSTRUCTION
Indoor & Outdoor FREE Admission Questions? Bob 718.897.5992 Proceeds BeneďŹ t PS 183
Control Your Own Future h
NEED TO RUN A LEGAL NOTICE? Quick | Easy | Economical
Call Barry Lewis today:
212-868-0190
(between First & York Avenues) Open EVERY Saturday 6am-5pm Rain or Shine
it e Sm n r o b s E. O
Opportunity to BUY Established Real Estate Brokerage Firm with a rich history in serving Greater New York Area since 1887!
*OWFTUPST t 7FOUVSF $BQJUBMJTUT t 4VDDFTTGVM #SPLFST w
No l l Ca
212-986-7644 www.eosbornesmith.com to take the next step into your future!
NEW FLORIDA HOMES
Call us at 1.855.458.7447 or visit OnTopoftheWorld.com On Top of the World Communities Inc., Ocala, Florida a 55+ community. On Top of the World Communities reserves the right to change or withdraw any offer at any time. Prices, features and speciďŹ cations are subject tochange without notice. Certain conditions may apply. Void where prohibited by law. NY Registration #H13-0004, NJ Registration #09-04-0018 and #NJ12-04-2019.
:H DUH D SURXG PHPEHU RI WKH $VVRFLDWHG 3UHVV DQG WKH 1DWLRQDO 1HZVSDSHU $VVRFLDWLRQ
Chinese Objects Paintings, Jewelry Silver, Furniture, Etc. Entire Estates Purchased
800.530.0006 Neck
1BJO 3FMJFG t 'BDJBM 3FKVWFOBUJPO 8FJHIU -PTT t %FQSFTTJPO t *OTPNOJB 4USFTT t 4DJBUJDB t "SUISJUJT t "MMFSHZ
Free Consultation 212-355-2988
www.acupunctureon.com 30 E. 60th St, New York, NY (bet Park & Madison Ave)
Elbow
Hand Knee Ankle
Pain Relief
Singles, Families including LGBT Thinking of moving to New Jersey? Call Barbara Silber, RealtorÂŽ Direct: 973-280-6086 www.barbarasilber.com Office: 973-251-0100
4245 Town Center Way, Livingston NJ 07039
On Top of the World in Ocala is Floridaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Premier Active Adult Community â&#x20AC;˘ Over 250,000 sq. ft. of amenities â&#x20AC;˘ 54 holes of golf on three courses and much more
TOP PRICES PAID
ACUPUNCTURE
SUBURBAN
FROM THE $170s
ANTIQUES WANTED
24
MARCH 3-9,2016
Our Town|Downtowner otdowntown.com
Don’t go out into the cold. GET YOUR LOCAL NEWS DELIVERED It’s your neighborhood. It’s your news. And now your personal copy is delivered directly to your mailbox every week!
SELLIN G THE POPE P.4 >
VOL. 1, ISSUE 40
1-7
FRANCIS BITTERSW’ VISIT PARISH EET TO CLOSED CIOHNERS OF URCHES NE W S
Just $49
Eastsi der
WEEK OF OC TOBER 2015
FINDIN G STARS IN THE SU
< CITY BWAY ARTS,P. 12
As closed in Rome churches wa compli , a pontiff’s visit for appeals cated em otions it stirs up BY DAN
IEL FIT
ZSIMM
ONS AND
Abou RICHAR United t 20 block KHAVKI D s NE gave a Nations, wh north fro m his Assem toric addreere Pope Fr the Catho bly, sits Ou ss to the Ge ancis lic r the Ar church shu Lady of Pe neral ch ace tte The ch diocese of Ne red in Ju , a ly by w York. after Wo urch was est ablishe ing pri rld War I, d wi with a nciple. Alm th peace a soon ost found tion an small but de a centur y dioces d financial dicated con later, sol gre e decid of Peace ed to vency, the arcgamerge with hSt. Jo hn the the nearb Our Lady Street y Ch Evange . list on urch of The Ca Ea st 55t h 1919 by tholic paris immigraa growing po h, establis he borho nts to the pulation of d in od Ita city an the Ar , was one d the ne lian of chdio cited cese of dozens clo ighsed by de ing de cli nin g attNew York, which mogra priest phics enda nce, s, announ among oth and a shortash iftfrom Staced the me er factors, whge of rgi en ten Isl year. and to ng of paris it hes Alban Closin y late last sense g Our Lady to con of Pea ce made grega peal pe The conts extend host of Francis nding in Ro , who have little fas the Ar an passionwell beyond crowd was being me, even as ap- P.4 > hion, food fas for foo s in the and t of Food on Manhatt Pope cheered host, d ha hion, and he ir own “Here wi an styles conservativ by r tio Town th chef Mi s led her e their ch we have pe backyard. huge ’s n to op theby Art of Food chael White co- and for having and the urch and wa le who rea ’s , y’re dr nt to pa lly love Nicole comes on October happening , Our wo it’s kind of very snooty iving the uld wa comica at rti stores an int Miller sta BY ANGELA BAR will be 25 Upper Ea 13. The event So- eve m away, cipate CONTINU ern rte BUT d rybod lk into anothl because yo , I read tha and op I her car ” said on Ma art fro preparing st Side chefs wel- An ED ON u can en t eer as dis d the y would be er store dishes m one PAGE 16 who tly aft your compan is New on Avenue ed her first au ins of Sothe ctions. close se stores wo aloof and and pir sto Yo in When er you design y grew signifi up an by’s up ed by cold. uld The Tr rk City fashio 1986. The re we op An com res d ibe ened theed a tie. n his there d open up open up an t Wh ing ca res ’ 20 an were so d CO s ha store on at was ident’ tory. lf 15 of Ma NTINU many d close up. it like wh s intere fi dis rst the rec tim ED ON on store en sts Jewish PAGE 5 ession was empty es when Madis on Madison you opened you wh women or , ate be be on Av Av tw ligh and ve ing r 27 Cu enue enue? We we r. We withs poorly run een Frid ting the Shabba girls light up had a the wor TU ES re lin t ay too and , or the eve ar Ho d the ld by and yea ning 18 re for reput liday can DA Y, y Ti ta Friday, tim min ayears rs. dles O C TO and ye es. Shemin October 2 – utes before sun every BE R 13 ns 6:19 PM set. ars i Atzere ho ste AR
Nicole at her Miller fashio spring month n show last Clarks at Skylight Photo on Square. McMu ©Patrick llan
THE ENDUR ING STYLE OEF aTAsStTsEid er 1-7
SELLIN G THEAR T OF FO OD POPE
FRANCIS BITTERS ’ VISIT D PAROISNHIO’ TWN EEMT ITOS S CLOSEDTCH ERS OF O FU ROCDHNESY. C FO NE W S d by Ch ef Mi ch
BY DAN
IEL FIT
OUT
OM Ni co le
Westsider
t, Simcha t Torah, Sunday Oct . 4Oct pre exis ting flam . 5 - after 7:12 6:16 PM ww w.c habadu e. For more info PM from a pperea rmation stside.c visit om
GE TI CK ETT 20% OFS AT F
FINDIN G STARS IN TH SUBW E AY < CITY AR TS,P.12
Nicole at her Miller fashio spring month n show last Clarks at Skylight Photo on Square. McMu ©Patrick llan
THE ENDUR ING STYLE Easts 1-7 OF TASTEider
SELLIN G THE POPE
AR T OF FO
OD
BY DAN
IEL FIT
OUT
!
Mi lle
r
t, Simcha t Torah, Sunday Oct . 4Oct pre exis ting flam . 5 - after 7:12 6:16 PM ww w.c habadu e. For more info PM from a pperea rmation stside.c visit om
GE TI CK ETT 20% OFS AT
ONS AND F Abou RICHAR United t 20 block KHAVKI D s NE gave a Nations, wh north fro m his Assem toric addreere Pope Fr the Catho bly, sits Ou ss to the Ge ancis lic churc r Lady ne ral the Ar h shutte of Peace ch The ch diocese of Ne red in Ju , a ly by w York. after Wo urch was ing pri rld War I, established wi with a nciple. Alm th peace a soon ost found tion an small but de a centur y dioces d financial dicated con later, sol gre e decid of Peace ed to vency, the arcgawith the merge hSt. Jo hn nearb Our Lady Street the Evan gelist y Church of . on Ea The Ca st 55th 1919 by tholic paris immigraa growing po h, establis he borho nts to the pulation of d in od Ita city an the Ar , was one d the ne lian of chdio cited cese of dozens clo ighsed by de ing de cli nin g attNew York, wh mogra en ich da nce, priest phics s, announ among oth and a shortash iftfrom Staced the me er factors, whge of rgi en ten Isl year. and to ng of paris it hes Alban Closin y late last sense g Our Lady to con of Pea ce made grega peal pe The conts extend Francis nding in Ro , who have little fashion,host of the Ar an passionwell beyond crowd was being me, even as apt fas for foo s in Manhattfood and con of Food on Pope ch host, d ha hion, and he “Here their own eered by P.4 wi an styles servativ r tio Town th chef Mi s led her e their ch we have pe backyard. huge> ’s n to op theby Art of Food chael White co- and for having and the urch and wa le who rea ’s on Oc , happ y’re dr nt to pa lly love Nicole com ening , Our wo it’s kind of very snooty tober es iving the uld wa com at rti an int Miller sta BY ANGELA BAR will be 25 Upper Ea 13. The event So- eve lk into ical becaustores, I m away, cipate CONTINU ern an rted he BUTI ryb rea st pre welan se ” Sid on Ma d open said r career paring art ED ON And theody would other store you can d that your com dis dishes e chefs who PAGE 16 as au from one be alo tly aft is New on Avenue ed her first se pan ins of cti of and and clo pir Sothe sto Yo ons. in se up stores wo When er you design y grew signifi by’s up ed by The Tr rk City fashio 1986. The re we op And the and open uld open upcold. coming rest ibeca ened theed a tie. ’ What wa reside n history. s half of re were so up and clo and CO store on nt’s int se up. NTINU many Madis first sto s it like when 20 erests the tim ED ON on 15 es wh wa rec re Jewish PAGE 5 Madis on Madison you opened you whate ession or be s empty, betw en women on Av ligh and ve ing r enu Avenue 27 Cu e? We we r. We withs poorly run een Frid ting the Shabba girls light up had a the wor TU ES re the lin ar y t and Ho ay evening tood the , or ld an re rep lida by DA Y, d years. for ye 18 y ut aFriday, Ti ta ars an times. Octobe minutes befo candles every O C TO r re sunset. d years Shemin BE R 13 ns i Atzere 2 – 6:19 PM ho ste AR
Clinton Yes! Start my $49 subscription right away! Plus give it to a friend for just $10
ZSIMM
SELLIN G THE POPE
Name ______________________________________________
OD
FRANCIS BITTDEROS N’ V’ISTIT PARISHIOWN EET TOM I S S O U T ! S OF CLOSED CH ER T UROCFHF OESO D N Y. C O M NE W S d by Ch ef
Address _______________________________ Apt. # ________
THE ENDUR ING STYLE OF
AR T OF FO
Mi ch
BY DAN
IEL FIT
ZSIMM
WEEK OF OC TOBER
1-7
at
ae l W hi te
& De sig
As closed in Rome churches wa compli , a pontiff’s visit for appeals cated em otions it stirs up
ne r Ni co le
Mi lle
r
GE TI CK ETT 20% OFS AT F
t, Simcha t Torah, Sunday Oct . 4Oct pre exis ting flam . 5 - after 7:12 6:16 PM ww w.c habadu e. For more info PM from a pperea rmation stside.c visit om
ONS
THE ENDUR ING STYLE OF
AR T OF FO
Signature______________________________Date _______________
DON
d by Ch ef
’T M IS
TOFF
Mi ch
OO
OD
S OU T co le
TASTE
!
at
D N Y. C ae l W hi te OM & De sig ne r Ni
Mi lle
r
GE TI CK ETT 20% OFS AT F
FINDIN G STARS IN THE SU
< CITY BWAY ARTS,P. 12 Nicole at her Miller fashio spring month n show last Clarks at Skylight Photo on Square. McMu ©Patrick llan
EaTsAtSsTiE der
Abou AND RIC HAR United t 20 block KHAVKI D s NE gave a Nations, wh north fro m his Assem toric addreere Pope Fr the Catho bly, sits Ou ss to the Ge ancis lic r the Ar church shu Lady of Pe neral chdioces ace, a ttered The ch in e of Ne w York. July by after Wo urch was ing pri rld War I, established wi with a nciple. Alm th peace a soon ost found tion an small but de a centur y dioces d financial dicated con later, sol gre e decid of Peace ed to vency, the arcgamerge with hSt. Jo hn the the nearb Our Lady Street y Chur Evange . ch of lis t on The Ca East 55t h 1919 by tholic paris immigraa growing po h, establis he borho nts to the pulation of d in od Ita city an the Ar , was one d the ne lian of chdio cited cese of dozens clo ighsed by de ing de cli nin g attNew York, which mogra priest phics enda nce, s, announ among oth and a shortash iftfrom Staced the me er factors, whge of rgi en ten Isl year. and to ng of paris it hes Alban Closin y late last sense g Our Lady to of peal pe congregants Peace made The coextend Francis nding in Ro , who have little fashion,host of the Ar an passionwell beyond crowd was being me, even as apt fas for foo s in Manhattfood and con of Food on Pope ch host, d ha hion, and he “Here their own eered by wi an styles servativ r tio Town th chef Mi s led her e their ch we have pe backyard. huge ’s n to op theby Art of Food chael White co- and for having and the urch and wa le who rea ’s , lly y’re dr nt Nicole comes on October happening , Our wo it’s kind of very snooty iving the to participlove uld wa comica at stores an int Miller sta BY ANGELA BAR ate will be 25 Upper Ea 13. The event So- eve m away, CONTINU ern an rted he BUTI rybod lk into anothl because yo , I read tha ” said on Ma d art fro preparing st Side chefs wel- An ED ON y wo u can t er sto dison opened he r career as dis m PAGE 16 wh re and he tly aft your compan Avenue is New r first o clo d these sto uld be aloof s inspir auction one of So sto Yo res in an se up theby ed by When er you design y grew signifi s. The Tr rk City fashio 1986. The re ’s and op would open d cold. we op up An coming rest d the ibeca ened theed a tie. en up ’ What wa reside n history. s half of re were so up and clo and CO store on nt’s int s se NTINU ma Ma it up. like wh first sto ny tim dison erests the rec ED ON en re Jewish PAGE 5 ession was empty es when Madis on Madison you opened you wh wom or being , betw ateve en and on Av Av ligh r 27 Cu enue enue? We we r. We withs poorly run een Frid ting the Shabba girls light up ha the TU ES re lin t d a rep ar y Ti and yea there for tood the tim , or Frid ay evening 18 and Holiday can world by DA Y, ut amin years rs. ay, dles ta O C TO and ye es. Shemin October 2 – utes before sun every BE R 13 ns 6:19 PM set. ars i Atzere ho ste AR
Email Address_________________________________________
VOL. 1, ISSUE 40
WEEK OF OC TOBER
sedCh d by a chuefrch T O F F O in Rome esch O D N Y. t Mi wa itlfor ae apte compli , a pontiff’s vis W hi COM peals cated em & otions it stirs up De sig ne r Ni co le
Return Completed Form to: Straus News, 20 West Avenue, Chester, NY, 10918 or go to strausnews.com & click on Subscribe
r
ZSIMM
FRANCIS BITTERSW’ VISIT PARISH EET TO CDLOOSEDN CIO’ HTNERMS OI F URCHESS S NE W S
Cell Phone ________________________________
Mi lle
ONS AND Abou RICHAR United t 20 block KHAVKI D s NE gave a Nations, wh north fro m his Assem toric addreere Pope Fr the Catho bly, sits Ou ss to the Ge ancis lic r the Ar church shu Lady of Pe neral ch ace tte The ch diocese of Ne red in Ju , a ly ur w by York. after Wo ch was ing pri rld War I, established wi with a nciple. Alm th peace a soon ost found tion an small but de a centur y dioces d financial dicated con later, solven gre e decid of Peace cy, the gaed archwith theto merge St. Jo hn nearb Our Lady Street the Evan gelist y Church of . on Ea The Ca st 55t h 1919 by tholic paris immigraa growing po h, establis he borho nts to the pulation of d in od Ita city an the Ar , was one d the ne lian of chdio cited cese of dozens clo ighsed by de ing de cli nin g attNew York, mogra enda nc which priest ph ics e, s, announ among oth and a shortash iftfrom Staced the me er factors, whge of rgi en ten Isl year. and to ng of paris it hes Alban Closin y late last P.4 > sense g Our Lady to of peal pe congregants Peace made The coextend Francis nding in Ro , who have little fashion,host of the Ar an me wa ap passionwell beyond , even as s being crowd t fas for foo s in Manhattfood and con of Food on Pope ch host, d ha hion, and he “Here their own eered by wi an styles servativ r tio Town th chef Mi s led her e their ch we have pe backyard. huge ’s n to ople wh urc theby Art of Food chael White co- and for having h and the an o ’s , y’re dr d want to really love Nicole comes on October happening , Our wo it’s kind of very snooty iving the particip BY ANG Mi uld wa com at lle an int ate will be 25 Upper Ea 13. The event So- eve lk into ical becaustores, I m away, CONTINU ern an r started he ELA BARBUTI ryb rea st Side prepa wel- 2015 an se ” said on Ma d open r car art ED ON rin chefs And ody would other sto you can d that your com eer as dis from g dis PAGE 16 tly aft is New on Avenue ed her first pan auction one of So hes inspir who clo these stores be aloof an re and store York Cit in 198 se the ed When er you design y grew signifi s. wo d up by by’s up 6. The Tr y we op And the and open uld open upcold. coming ibeca fashion his The rest ened theed a tie. up ’ re were an tory. What wa reside s ha store on lf of so ma and close d CONTINU nt’s int first sto s it like when erests the rec Madison wa ny times up. ED ON re on Ma you wh Jew s PAGE 5 ess empty ope en ish wom ion Madis whate en and on Av dison Avenu ned your lighting ver. We or being po , between girls ligh 27 e? the en We orl Shabba ue ha withs t up the Cu lin ar y run we Frid TU ES d a rep and yeare there for tood the tim , or Frid ay evening 18 t and Holiday can world by DA Y, y ut Ti min aye rs. ay, dles ta utes befo es. ars an Octobe O C TO r re sunset. every d years Shemin BE R 13 ns i Atzere 2 – 6:19 PM ho ste As clo AR
Eastsider
New York, NY Zip Code _____________
!
at
ae l W hi te
& De sig ne As closed r in Rome churches wa compli , a pontiff’s visit for appeals cated em otions it stirs up
VOL. 1, ISSUE 40
WEEK OF OC TOBER
t, Simcha t Torah, Sunday Oct . 4Oct pre exis ting flam . 5 - after 7:12 6:16 PM ww w.c habadu e. For more info PM from a pperea rmation stside.c visit om
VOL. 1, ISSUE 40
FINDIN G STARS IN THE SU
< CITY BWAY ARTS,P. 12 Nicole at her Miller fashio spring month n show last Clarks at Skylight Photo on Square. McMu ©Patrick llan