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5-11 2016
MAYORAL PROBE FOCUSES ON LAX CAMPAIGN LAWS
MELDING SEX AND SHAKESPEARE
NEWS
Hell’s Kitchen writer uses the bard to discuss her own sexual fetish
State disclosure rules are already among the nation’s loosest BY MICHAEL VIRTANEN
A probe swirling around New York City’s mayor has cast a harsh light on some of the nation’s most lax campaign finance laws, with contribution limits so easy to get around that even government watchdogs acknowledge a ring of truth to the familiar excuse: Hey, everybody’s doing it. Mayor Bill de Blasio has been bedeviled by a criminal probe of an effort he helped organize in 2014 to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for Democratic state Senate candidates. He insists that he and his team have done nothing wrong and suggested they have been unfairly singled out for a common practice in New York’s famously opaque campaign funding system. While New York law restricts individual donations to any candidate at just over $10,000 -- already among the highest such limits in the nation -- party committees can receive individual donations of more than $100,000, and the committee can then transfer an unrestricted amount to the candidate. The legal restriction at issue in the de Blasio case is that such an arrangement can’t be specifically worked out in advance. Money can’t be given to a party committee with a direction that it’s passed on to a particular candidate. Even reform advocates acknowledge this restriction has been routinely flouted. “Everybody knows how it’s played so
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PROFILE
BY CHRISTIAN SCIBETTA
For author Jillian Keenan, there was no better place than Hell’s Kitchen to write her sexual comingof-age memoir “Sex With Shakespeare.” Keenan, 29, a foreign correspondent and freelance journalist who contributes to The New York Times, The New Yorker, Slate and other local publications has lived in Hell’s Kitchen with her husband David, a doctor in the neighborhood, for two years. Her first book, “Sex With Shakespeare,” is part coming-ofage, part literary analysis in which Keenan uses the plays of Shakespeare to interpret and understand her personal proclivities. The memoir comes out April 23rd, on the 400year anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. “I wrote a lot of the book at Rex’s Cafe on 10th and 57th,” Keenan says while sitting on her overstuffed sofa insider her cozy one-bedroom apartment. A frequent customer at Rex’s, she recommends the lox and avocado sandwich. “It’s a special, so they don’t always have it available. But when they do, you should try it.” The afternoon sunlight pours from her apartment window into the living room where Keenan is seated. She has long brown hair that comes to her chest and a blue T-shirt with a picture of William Shakespeare that she put on for the interview. Across from the sofa is a bookcase covering the entire wall with books. She shows off some of her favorites,
Photo by Christian Scibetta sex positive and a sexually exciting place to live,” she says. Keenan’s love affair with Shakespeare began at age 15 when she saw a rendition of The Tempest at the Utah Shakespeare Festival. She felt immediate kinship with Caliban, the fish-man servant of The Tempest whose outcast echoed her own feelings of alienation. Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis shortly after, Keenan left her familyat 17 to study in Spain. A born vagabond, Keenan then trav-
including a copy of Shakespeare’s works she bought as gift for David and a collection of travel books covering India, Thailand, Cuba and more. In Keenan’s new memoir, she comes out as a spanking fetishist. “Spanking is not a part of my sex life; spanking is my sex life,” she states in her new book. Coming out as a fetishist hasn’t been easy for Keenan, but living in the neighborhood has given her support during the process. “It’s super
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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
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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
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eled from Spain to California where she earned her Shakespeare chops studying English at Stanford University. “The summer after my sophomore year at Stanford the name I chose for my grant proposal was ‘Shakespeare and Sadomasochism,’” says Keenan. “So I was really unsubtle right from the beginning,” she says, laughing. But Keenan ultimately moved to New York City to work as a journal-
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