Our Town Downtown November 07th 2013 by OurTown Downtown

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COMMUNITY NEWS BELOW 14TH STREET • NOVEMBER 7, 2013 P.11

The Landmarking Wars: What’s Next at City Hall? Developers, preservationists gear up for postelection battle By Joanna Fantozzi For key players in the fight between developers and preservationists, the countdown to a new city administration boils down to this: how will Bill de Blasio approach development in Manhattan? On the one hand, de Blasio has a record of siding with preservationists, dating back to his days fighting local development projects in Brooklyn. “This is a city,” he said during the campaign, “that understands that greatness is not measured by the height of our skyscrapers, but by the strength of our neighborhoods.” On the other hand, the Historic Districts Council and Friends of the Upper East Side note that during the campaign, de Blasio didn’t meet with them, despite their repeated invitations to do so. The Real Estate Board of New York, which represents developers, is hoping for a friendly ear in a de Blasio administration, given his statements during the campaign that he wants to speed up the process of development and cut through the red tape and costly approval processes. “His objectives for the city of New York are no different than ours,” said REBNY President Stephen Spinola. “I hope they will look at ramifications of landmarking and will take into consideration any impacts it might have. You can make a decision to landmark something but then you will not have an opportunity to create a new structure and invest significant hundreds of millions of dollars into city of New York’s economy.” In the weeks leading up to the election, both sides in the landmark wars amped up their arguments, in hopes of influencing the campaign. A REBNY report, for instance, pointed out that more than 28 percent of Manhattan is landmarked, including the Greenwich Village historic district and the West End Historic District on the Upper West Side. According to the real estate group, no affordable units have been created on landmarked properties in the last five years; REBNY cites what it says is census data showing that the more landmarked a neighborhood is, the wealthier the average resident will be, in essence making the neighborhoods less affordable and less diverse. “The numbers don’t lie, they can’t argue with fact,” said Spinola. That report drew an outraged response from the Historic

Elizabeth Williams’ drawing at the recent trial of the Somali pirate, who broke down crying during proceedings. The recently released film “Captain Phillips” starring Tom Hanks depicts the story of the 2009 hijacking of the Maersk Alabama.

Reporting By Drawing In her 30 years as a courtroom sketch artist, Elizabeth Williams has witnessed and recorded many famous cases By Daniel Fitzsimmons

Elizabeth Williams drawing at the trial of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former managing director of the International Monetary Fund who was accused of sexually assaulted a maid in a NYC hotel room.

Elizabeth Williams takes low-tech tools into a place where cameras and other recording devices aren’t allowed – federal courtrooms. With her brushes, pencils, pastels, paint and paper she re-creates scenes that would not Continued on page 8

ALSO INSIDE BERKLEY STUDENT WINS SPORTS HONOR P.2

STREET SHRINK P.10

DOWNTOWN EVENTS P.6 EATING GRADES P.15 Continued on page 4

NEIGHBORHOOD CHATTER

E. Village College Student Gets Soccer Honor The Norwegian native was named Rookie of the Week after scoring two goals for his Berkley College team By Omar Crespo Haakon Schjelderup, a sophomore at Berkley College and the star forward of their soccer team the Knights, has much reason to celebrate. The week of October 21, the Norway native was awarded the honor of Hudson Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Rookie of the Week. “I’ve never won an award before, if feels good,” Schjelderup said. Although previously on the HVIAC honor roll twice, the East Village transplant finally received recognition for his talents when he scored two consecutive winning goals against Saint Kings College and SUNY Old Westbury. In the same week, the Berkley Knights gallantly rode their way into the United States Collegiate Athletic Association Championships off a four win streak, ending

their season on a 13-3 record according to the USCAA. It is the team’s first championship bid in soccer and their best season to date. “I’m very excited,” said Schjelderup, “it is my first championship ever.” The star rookie believes the Berkley soccer program to be excellent and said that it generates outstanding sports comraderie. For Schjelderup , these accomplishments seem to have been a lifetime in the making. A sports aficionado since his youth in Kolvereid, he began to focus his sights on the goalpost at the age of 15 when he decided that soccer was the sport for him. “I like the feeling of accomplishment,” Schjelderup said, evoking the excitement of scoring a goal. As for the young player’s future, he sees himself hitting the books as efficiently as he hits the ball. “Finishing my management degree and hopefully getting my master’s in business management” are his academic goals, Schjelderup said. “And if possible, to continue playing soccer, to get a scholarship and to make it professional,” he added. “It has always been a dream of mine.”

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THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2013

CRIME WATCH

Illustration by John S. Winkleman

Unpacking Sacking

A woman’s bag was stolen as she was unpacking her car. At 12 noon on Thursday, October 3, a 56-year-old woman was on Church Street unpacking plants from her vehicle for a movie set, leaving her black handbag on the ﬂoor of the vehicle on the front passenger’s side. At 2 PM, after unpacking the vehicle, the woman noticed that her bag was missing. The items taken were a silver iPad valued at $600, Ray-Ban prescription sunglasses costing $425, a black Baggallini tote handbag costing $100, and Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses priced at $98, making a total of $1,223. The iPad lacked tracking software.

By Jerry Danzig

Fragrant Foul A man stole bottles of fragrance from a store on Broadway. A 24-year-old male employee at the store reported that at 8:23 PM on Monday, October 21, an unknown man entered the store and removed items from shelves without permission or authority. Video is available of the incident. The items stolen were eleven bottles of fragrance valued at $1,115. Axe Jack Someone lifted two guitars from a car parked on West Broadway. At 9 PM on Saturday, October 12, a 24-year-old man from Plainfield, NJ put two of his guitars into the trunk of his blue 1999 Ford Contour parked on West Broadway. When he returned at 10:30 the following morning, the guitars were gone. There were no signs of forced entry, and the man said he had locked the doors, and the car had an alarm. None of the car locks appeared to have been tampered with. The stolen guitars were a Fender Jaguar HH electric valued at $699 and a Martin DCX1E acousticelectric valued at $550. The total of the gone guitars amounted to $1,249.

2 Train Travails Someone took a woman’s wallet in the subway. At 4:30 PM on Sunday, October 20,

a 24-year-old woman rode the number 2 train from 59th Street to Franklin Street. She had her wallet in a shoulder strap purse. She felt a bump when she arrived at the Franklin Street station and after she exited the train, she discovered that her wallet was missing. Unauthorized charges were made to three of her credit cards before she canceled the cards. The items stolen from the bag were $300 in cash, a credit card, a debit card, a Metro Card, a health card, a Social Security card, the woman’s driver’s license, and a Chase Bank card. In total, she was taken for $478.

Metro Cad Someone stole a woman’s wallet as she was shopping in a department store on Broadway. At 4 PM on Wednesday, October 9, a 57-yearold woman was shopping in a Broadway department store when someone bumped into her. She later realized that her wallet was missing from her bag. Unauthorized charges were made on her credit cards at MTA locations. There was no video of the incident, and she canceled the cards. $113 had been charged against her American Express card, along with $113 on her Visa card and $226 on her Actors Federal Credit Union card. Other items missing from her bag were a New York State driver’s license, a real estate license, another credit card, and her Social Security card. The total stolen amounted to $452.

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In his own words: de Blasio on landmarking vs. development

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GREENWICH VILLAGE SOCIETY FOR HISTORIC PRESERVATION

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Landmarking Continued from page 1

Districts Council and Greenwich Village Society Preservation, which, along with other preservationist groups and public housing advocates, teamed up to hold a rally in protest of REBNY’s report, decrying the numbers as unsubstantiated. Simeon Bankoff, the director of the Historic Districts Council, cited as a counterexample the Amsterdam Houses on the Upper West Side, which residents have been fighting to landmark, so it doesn’t get bulldozed and replaced by condos. “This was a politically calculated move in trying to capitalize on what they see Mr. de Blasio’s interests to be,” Bankoff said. “The affordable housing crisis in New York is incredibly important, and that’s what REBNY is trying to appeal to.” Preservationists argue that REBNY actually is anti-landmarking, and doesn’t actually care about affordable housing. As evidence, they point to the $90 million penthouse apartment at 57th Street that sold for $90 million last year, the top of the $500 million luxury hotel and apartment REBNY-backed project. REBNY argues that the luxury hotel and penthouse will pour billions of dollars into the city’s economy. “Slowing down the rate of development actually helps more affordable units become available,” said Andrew Berman, director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. “REBNY completely ignored in this report, and their numbers show correlation not direct causation.” Spinola said that REBNY is not anti-landmarking, but that it is against extending pre-existing historic districts, like the proposed West End Historic District, which would make much of the Upper West Side a landmark. Diane Wildowsky straddles the two sides, as a preservationist activist, realtor at Sotheby’s and REBNY member. Her opinion on development echoes what de Blasio has said in many of his campaign ads and speeches: “You have to say what makes NYC so fantastic is it’s so diverse,” said Wildowsky. “We are a city filled with artists, musicians and people who don’t make a salary that’s 45 times the rent. A city can’t grow if all you’re going to do is cater toward the mega rich.”

June 2013, in a meeting with New York Landmarks Conservancy: “I came to this honestly through personal experience starting at the age of 14, seeing the house that my grandfather was born in southern Italy, which had been in our family for hundreds of years. I think that gave me very personal sense of the power of keeping things that matter and say something about our culture and history. Being a preservationist is very natural.” April 2010, from a New York Times interview: “I never got to see Pennsylvania Station, and I feel a palpable pain about that. I hope the city will strengthen, amplify and make more complete our approach to preservation.” February 2010, in meeting with Landmarks West!: “The links between preservation as it connects to other public priorities, including affordable housing, economic development and energy efficiency….are real. The challenge we have before us is to reinterpret the preservation cause in more universal terms.”

Let Us Tell You What to Do! Do you have a dispute with a neighbor? Need advice on how to navigate a sticky situation at your child’s school? Want to settle a dispute about proper urban etiquette? Our Town Downtown is here to help, and dish out advice on living in your corner of the city. Please send your queries for our new advice column to editor.otdt@strausnews.com with the subject line “Advice Column.” We will be debuting the column in an upcoming issue. www.nypress.com

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2013

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PAGE 5

OUT & ABOUT Celebration of Wine Downtown

Friday November 8 This Is Your Cigarette The Players Theatre 115 Macdougal Street Between West 3rd & Bleecker Streets 8:00 p.m. $5 A man believes he has created a cigarette that when smoked, the person will become the idealized version of who he wants them to be. He visits his three closest relationships to get them to smoke it. 212-475-1449

102 North End Avenue 3 p.m. â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 6 p.m./8 p.m. â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 11 p.m. $99 Taste over 200+ fine wines, expertly curated by Vintry Fine Wines *Free Riedel Wine Glass: Yours to keep after the event ($30 value) *Enjoy a delicious array of paired plates and cheese by Conrad New Yorkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s exclusive caterer -- Danny Meyerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Union Square Events http://www.nywinefestivals.com

Chen Dance Center Chen Dance Center, 70 Mulberry Street (corner of Mulberry & Bayard in Chinatown) 7;30 p.m. $12; $10 for students & seniors Chen Dance Center is pleased to host â&#x20AC;&#x153;Hip Hop & Hoops: An Indigenous Experience,â&#x20AC;? led by Lakota artist/musician Frank Waln. Performers will tell their stories through traditional Native American music and dance, augmented by electronic music and hip hop. www.chendancecenter.org 212.349.0126

Saturday November 9th NYC Autumn Wine Festival: A

Lorenzo Da Ponte: A 175th Anniversary Remembrance St. Patrickâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Old Cathedral - 263 Mulberry St 7:30 p.m. $20; $10 students/seniors Concer will celebrate Lorenzo Da Ponte as champion of Italian culture, librettist for Mozartâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most famous operas, and friend to Casanova. Opera music, historic anecdotes,

and dramatic reading from his memoirs will highlight Da Ponteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s colorful life. www.lorenzodaponte.eventbrite.com

Florian Hecker: â&#x20AC;&#x153;C.D. - A Script for Synthesisâ&#x20AC;? C.D. ÂŹA Script for Synthesis is a sound piece, an experimental drama, a model of abstraction recalling Artaudâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Theater of Cruelty as much as Beckettâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s minimalist narratives and neo-imagist poetry. It is the climactic third chapter in the triology of textsound pieces Hecker has collaborated with the writer and philosopher Reza Negarestani (Chimerization, dOCUMENTA (13) and Hinge, Lumiar CitĂŠ, Lisbon; both 2012). The suggestive encounter with a pink ice cube is a conceptual point of departure for a scene in which linguistic chimeras of smell/ sound descriptions are materialized through synthetic trophies, auditory objects, and theatrical props. Exeunt all human actors, C.D. ÂŹA Script for Synthesis is an experiment in putting synthetic emptiness back into synthetic thought. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Peter B. Lewis Theater 1071 5th Ave New York, NY 10128 November 9, 2013 at 7:30 PM $15-20

Sunday November 10 Argentine Tango Seminar Dardo Galletto Studios, 151 West 46th Street, 11th floor (between 6th & 7th Avenues) 4:30 p.m. â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 7:30 p.m. $75 advance; $85 at door The Dardo Galletto Studios welcomes back Gabriel Misse & Analia Centurion, two of todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s great tango dancers and teachers, for a series of classes and seminars. The couple, here from Buenos Aires, will also perform www.dardogallettostudios.com 212.575.0222

Washingtonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Broken Politics with Bob Woodward Yeshiva University-Stern College for Women 7:30 PM to 9:00 PM Hyper-partisanship and zero-sum politics have led to a government shutdown, risk of default, and an inability to address the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s problems. Bob Woodward, Associate Editor of The Washington Post and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner discusses the origins and impact of dysfunctional politics in Washington.

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THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2013

OUT & ABOUT

Monday November 11 Discovering Bodoni Rose Auditorium, 41 Cooper Square 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM 200th anniversary of the death of Giambattista Bodoni. While Parma celebrates its hero with exhibits all over the city, it seems fitting that we celebrate him here in New York with a tribute to his life. Valerie Lester will take us on a tour of the cities in which he lived and will introduce you to the important people in his life: his grandfather; the superintendent of the Propaganda Fide press; the duke and duchess of Parma; prime minister Guillaume Du Tillot; Nicolás De Azara (the Spanish ambassador to Rome); and Napoleon and his second wife, Empress Maria Louise, who became Parma’s beloved duchess Maria Luigia.

Tuesday November 12

Eldridge, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, and Lee Morgan. The program also samples the strange history of the trumpet as represented in Hollywood films such as Young Man With a Horn (starring Kirk Douglas), The Five Pennies (with Danny Kaye), and Better Blues (with Denzel Wash www.tribecapac.orgington

Small Engine Repair Lucille Lortel Theatre 121 Christopher St. (Christopher/Bedford) 7 p.m. $69+ Stars The Walking Dead’s Jon Bernthal as Frank—one of three past-their-prime high school pals who meet up after-hours at Frank’s off-the-beaten-path engine repair shop. But when college jock Chad shows up, the gang’s long-simmering resentments bubble up to the surface, with hilarious—and shocking— results. http://www.lortel.org/llt_theater/

Scenes Through the Cinema Lens: The Trumpet in Jazz

Wednesday November 13

Tribeca Performing Arts Center 199 Chambers St 7:30 p.m. Free This program features great jazz trumpet soloists such as Louis Armstrong, Roy

Big City Moms Biggest Baby Shower NYC Fall 2013 Metropolitan Pavilion, 125 West 18th Street 6:30 PM to 9:30 PM $65-425 The biggest baby shower in New York. Big

City Moms is the premiere social event group in NYC and NYC moms rely upon Big City Moms as their #1 resource. From seminars, family fun days, mommy and me classes, expectant events, Big City Moms is the place to be all over the city.

Public Art Fund Talks at The New School: Allora & Calzadilla John Tishman Auditorium 66 West 12th Street 6:30 PM to 8:00 PM $10 Collaborating since 1995, Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla incorporatesculpture, photography, performance, sound, and video in their art. Their hybrid works are often conceived as a set of experiments that test whether ideas such as authorship, nationality, borders, and democracy adequately describe today’s increasingly global and consumerist society. Throughout their collaborative practice, their work has also crossed the myriad boundaries between public and private space, exploring the ways in which basic materials and familiar forms can communicate complex and unexpected historical, cultural, and political metaphors and associations.

Book Preview Event: Everything That Remains by The Minimalists Housing Works Bookstore Café, 126 Crosby St. 7 p.m. Free Two months before the publication of their new book Everything That Remains, Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, better known to their 2 million readers as The Minimalists, will host an event in New York City to preview the book for the media and the public. At age 30, Joshua and Ryan left their sixfigure corporate careers, got rid of most of their material possessions, and began living more deliberately. Be the first to hear them discuss their new book and their journey into the simple life, followed by a short reading, a brief Q&A, and an optional book signing. You’ll also be able to pick up a special advance copy of the book available at only this event. Questions: tour@theminimalists.com

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NOT JUST FOR YOU, FOR THEM. Men and women aged 18 years or older who have advanced breast cancer due to a BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutation are invited to see if they may qualify for the Brocade Study. The purpose of this medical research study is to determine the safety and effectiveness of an investigational medication in combination with chemotherapy in patients with advanced hereditary breast cancer. Each individual will be evaluated to determine his or her eligibility. Those who qualify will receive investigational medication or an inactive placebo, study-related medical exams, and lab tests at no charge. Compensation for time and travel may also be available. To see if you may qualify, call 1.855.5ONCOLOGY (1.855.566.2656) or visit BrocadeStudy.com.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2013

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PAGE 7

Reporting by Drawing Continued from page 1

normally be seen by the wider public. In her 30-plus years of being a courtroom sketch artist she’s covered the high profile cases of John DeLorean, Martha Stewart, John Gotti, Dominique Strauss-Kahn and the Times Square Bomber, among many others. She recently teamed up with four other courtroom sketch artists to collaborate on a book of sketches spanning 50 years of high courtroom drama. The book is set to be released by CUNY Journalism Press in early-2014. We spoke to Williams about her interesting work and how she always gets her picture no matter the circumstances. How long have you been a courtroom sketch artist? Do you still find it interesting? I started working as a court artist in Los Angeles in 1980. My first really big case though was the 1984 trial of John Delorean [the U.S. engineer and automobile maker who successfully defended himself against federal drug-trafficking charges in 1982. His DeLorean DMC-12 sports car was featured in the 1985 film Back to the Future.] I find people interesting, so drawing in a courtroom is always interesting; also drawing in the subway and on the streets of NYC I find interesting. For several years, I have created paintings and drawings of NYC scenes for an art auction benefit for downtown’s Manhattan Youth. I love doing that too. I find it all interesting. How did you become a sketch artist? When did you know that’s where you wanted your career to go? I was working in Hollywood drawing illustrations for costume designers but that was not paying the bills and a teacher in one of my grad courses suggested I try court illustration. It’s not so much that I decided where my career would go, as the economy and the reality of the illustration business took me in this direction. Back in the 80s and 90s I was hired to do general illustration jobs and over the years, have illustrated books, magazines, advertising campaigns, pharmaceutical brochures, etc... But recently with the rise of

Photoshop, the decline in art something eventually I feel is budgets and the proliferation of close enough that I can expand stock illustration there is not a from there. If something else lot of general illustration work happens, like the Somali pirate, out there. So court artwork is I just whip out that other piece a major piece of my business of paper and start drawing. Then now. The news business must once that scene is over, I will still use us in federal courtrooms go back to the other beginning if editors feel it is important of the face or figure I felt was to show a specific scene or worthy enough to take to a defendant; it is not a creative finished state. decision to hire us, it is a Has the rise of the internet journalistic one. They would and the changing news cycle always rather have cameras but affected your work process? they can’t in federal court. The issue is the deadlines, How do you regard your especially the rolling deadlines role as a sketch artist in a with wire services, they never journalistic sense? stop and we are always racing The sentencing of Faisal Shahzad, the Times Square bomber. We are first journalists and against the clock. One is always our job is to draw the courtroom caught in a delicate balance of Is there any one detail you always look for scene as honestly as possible. determining the quality of the artwork versus when making a sketch? What’s the craziest thing you’ve seen the amount of time, when is good “good The most important issue is the likeness, in the courtroom in your time as a sketch enough.” All clients would like the art as soon the next is the scene; we are there in place of artist? as possible, yet they want it looking good and cameras, so that is our job. Two things come to mind, one was during spot-on right. So we are constantly challenged Approximately how long does it take to the Yusef Hawkins verdict when the jury with that issue. make a sketch? did not find the second defendant guilty of What can you tell me about the book Depends what it is, if you’re covering a long murder, the spectators and family went so trial and a witness is on the stand all morning, that’s about to be released? nuts. That was the only time I felt was really The book is a compilation of artwork by you can draw two nicely finished illustrations in danger of getting hurt, but Al Sharpton was five artists who have covered famous court during a morning session in court, i.e. three able to control the crowd and moved them cases from around the country over the last hours. outside to see their rage. 50 years. Cases include Jack Ruby [who killed During an arraignment, where there is very The other craziest thing is the recent limited time, and a pressing deadline, you take President John F. Kennedy’s assassin Lee terrorist, Abu Hamza - the handless terrorist. Harvey Oswald in the basement of a Dallas what they give you: 15 minutes or 20 minutes, I’ve never seen that before, a defendant police station], mob kingpin John Gotti, it depends. missing limbs, and from what I understand it the Watergate burglars, key Iran-Contra What sort of tools do you take into the was due to him trying to build a bomb. players, Charles Manson, David “Son of Sam” courtroom to make your sketches? What’s What different skills does a courtroom Berkowitz, members of the Black Panther your process like? sketch artist need to have over say a party, kidnapped heiress Patty Hearst, pop I use brush pens, colored pencils, oil landscape artist? icon Michael Jackson, Mohammed Salameh, pastel and oil paint sticks; it is a technique I You need nerves of steel, and cannot be the terrorist behind the 1993 attack on the developed over the years. thrown by anything. Our clients care about World Trade Center, and many more. I always wait to draw the main subject, the end product, and you need to deliver it, The book is being published by CUNY everything else falls from that. and on time, no matter what the conditions. Journalism Press, a new academic imprint. If a specific moment occurs I feel is The subject may be in court for just minutes, The book’s main format is an illustrated important, then I whip out a piece of paper your seat and view can be rotten, but you eBook, which is a relatively new type of and quickly draw what I see. A good example still have to get the scene. Landscape is a illustrated book. The book’s website is www. of that was the Somali pirate [recently completely different type of artwork, and is illustratedcourtroom.com and the Facebook at depicted in the film Captain Phillips with based on a whole different set of standards. Illustrated Courtroom. Tom Hanks]. He was sitting in court during Trees and bushes don’t move, the trees, bushes his arraignment and all of a sudden, when Where has your work been featured? and fields don’t get up and walk out. My work was recently featured in the Wall his parents were mentioned by the judge, he Street Journal, CNBC News, Bloomberg TV, broke down and wept. He had been smiling Art and Auction magazine, WABC news and previously and one of the papers called him via the Associated Press my work has been in “Jolly Roger” but then once he got into court the Los Angeles Times, The Christian Science he cried. I had to draw that, and did. That Monitor, The New York Times, USA today, drawing made the cover of the New York Post. ® To Bethesda, MD; Arlington/ London Times, The NY Daily News and The Do you ever just sketch the outlines of a Daily Beast. Rosslyn and Lorton, VA scene and move on to another one because When I work for the AP, sometimes my things are happening so fast? Do you work can be sent across the globe and end up take written notes on mood, emotion, to in all sorts of places from Canada, the United accompany your sketches? Kingdom, Europe, Argentina and Russia - it This is a very good question, because you just depends upon the story. Several big bring up the issue of things moving so fast. global stories I have covered were: the Russian What I do to combat that, is first, as soon Spies, Osama Bin Ladin’s son-in-law, Al Libi as I can see my subject (usually a defendant) (the terrorist captured in Libya), the case of I will draw over and over very quickly the Argentina’s bonds defaulting and Dominique person’s face, so I understand the shape Strauss-Kahn. and structure. Then I try, (and hope) to get

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STREET SHRINK

: I meet so many different people everyday. But what is it about first impressions that are so hard to let go of—why does the first interaction always stick out the most?

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anyone we meet without creating shortcuts. : Recently a friend of mine brought to Brain studies at New York University have my attention this same reoccurring confirmed that two specific areas of the phenomenon. She’d gone on a few brain, the amygdala known as the emotion/ dates with a guy she was interested in — he aggression hub of the brain, and the posterior was nice, hilarious, and good-looking. But cingulate cortex, linked to economic decisionthere was something she couldn’t shake making are activated when making fist about him. When they first met he was incredibly shy. Her first impression of him was impressions. The trouble is, once we have ingrained these crystallized in that moment — a cute guy but first impressions, they are difficult to eradicate, way too reserved. That first perception hasn’t especially when you view that person in the diminished, even though he’s proven himself same setting or context. When we make a in subsequent interactions to be brazen and conclusion in any situation, we gregarious. look for examples that confirm New York City is a vast cultural It would be or validate our decision rather hub with over 8 million people. In exhausting on our than search for contrary evidence. order to make sense of the dozens brains to make In psychology we call this the of people we meet everyday, sense of anyone confirmation bias, where we our brains have generated an efficient way to maximize our we meet without interpret information that cognitive resources. To solve creating shortcuts. confirms our initial beliefs about something. If someone violates problems, we use heuristics, our initial first impression, we which in psychology is defined tend to think they are exhibiting an exception as a mental shortcut when an exhaustive to the rule. So, my friend who has found out search in our brains for data is impractical, that her love interest isn’t so quiet after all, time consuming, or impossible. Examples thinks that anytime he is chatty or social is an of heuristics are stereotyping and intuition. exception, rather than a fixed trait. When we meet someone for the first time, we To change a first impression, psychologists only have the evidence presented to us in that recommend viewing that person in a short span of time. But we strategically piece completely different context. If your first this information together to create a helpful impression of a new colleague at work is that narrative. she’s stuck up, this impression may never If you meet someone for the first time and change if you continue to only see her in a they are reserved and taciturn, you’ll probably work setting. Invite her for a cup of coffee; find yourself making other associations that see how she interacts in a different setting, are tied to those qualities. You might think with different people, and your impression if the guy you’re dating is quiet, then he’s could change. The more you view a person probably not at risk for talking to other girls in different contexts, the more those qualities and cheating. Conversely, you might think of that you deem “exceptions,” override the other reserved people you know and extract confirmation bias, and become the “rules.” characteristics from those people and apply Kristine Keller received her Masters in them to the person you’ve just met. Again, psychology at New York University. you only have a small amount of information present when you first meet someone, and your brain works quickly to create an overall Do you have a question for our picture. Heuristics help us create a profile Street Shrink? Email news@ of a person with only a small amount of information available. strausnews.com with the subject Heuristics are incredibly helpful. It would line “Street Shrink.” be exhausting on our brains to make sense of

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cityArts

Edited by Armond White

New York’s Review of Culture . CityArtsNYC.com

Why Glass Menagerie Persists By Armond White

achary Quinto wants to be the Tom Wingfield for his era. In the new Broadway production of Tennessee Williams’ 1945 play The Glass Menagerie at the Booth Theater, Quinto presumes a modern Sad Young Man interpretation of the play as Williams’ autobiographical gay memoir, making Tom (Williams’ nickname) an archetype of the regret-filled gay youth who left his hometown behind yet can’t escape his family ties and emotional obligations--memories of his clubfooted sister Laura and effusive mother Amanda. Why has this sentimental play-America’s second most powerful sentimental play after Thornton Wilder’s Our Town--persisted despite Williams’ later, more daring works (A Streetcar Named Desire, Eccentricities of a Nightengale)? Because of its vivid, moving and regretful subtext which has been respected and internalized, universally. Everyone identifies with Tom’s attachment and his resentment (see the films of Andre Techine to find its international—and most provocative--influence). Tom’s family ambivalence carries a fount of self-deprecating affection that should never be vulgarized into camp. But Quinto, of the selfentitled Glee generation, makes this delicate, poignant, funny aspect of the play overexplicit. Quinto’s Tom, a puppydog with literary affectations who joins the Merchant Marines to get away from the mother he both loves and resents, flounces and

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2013

affects effeminate mannerisms--a bold, stupid choice. Director John Tiffany further bowdlerizes Williams’ fragile, ambivalent conceit. It has to be a fragile conceit or else it’s a monstrously crude and manipulative one. Tiffany’s production (with the exception of Cherry Jones’ performance as the mother Amanda Wingfield) is all manipulation, not sensitivity. It lacks that delicately balanced ambivalence (home vs. the world) that is key to the outcast’s sense of identity. Tiffany emphasizes the “dream play” aspect that Williams borrowed from both Wilder and Strindberg, disrespecting 1940s post-war plangency, the sense of longing that did not require a literal representation of dreaming--as in the disastrous, absurd introduction of Laura (played wimpishly by Celia Keenan-Bolger) crawling out from under sofa cushion. Tiffany misses the appropriate emotional beats of the material. Its essence is in Tom’s realization that “In memory everything seems to happen to music”--an insight that should spark any modern cultured person’s recall of Terence Davies’ great memory/ musical films The Long Day Closes and Distant Voices Still Lives. Instead, Tiffany Glee-fully exaggerates Tom’s secondary traits and even imputes them to his relationship with the Gentleman Caller character (played bi-curiously by Brian J. Smith) with whom there is much inappropriate physical flirtation. Gone is Williams’ wise, mid-century understanding of the fluidity of sexual attraction, the force of the Gentleman Caller’s masculine heterosexuality. Tom’s

sexual longing to be a “man among men” (Carson McCullers) is only pat of what can be powerfully felt in artists as diverse as Hemingway, McCullers, Davies, and others. In the Glee era, Williams’ nostalgic sense of home is mocked. The Gentleman Caller makes faces at Amanda’s fluttery hospitality. And his scenes with Laura, which should combine empathy about his own failings and chivalrous defense of hers, wind up flat and monotonous. (Morrissey telepathized the Gentleman Caller’s lines in two Smiths songs, “Shakespeare’s Sister”--referring to how Laura is addressed--and “These Things Times” taking on her and Tom’s affliction: “I’m the most inept that ever stepped.”) Their sexual affection is needed to make the Gentleman Caller scene the vital crux of the play. Although Tom prepares GC’s appearance as “the expected thing that we live for,” Tiffany’s disrespect for Williams’ probing of the heterosexual “norm” neglects that complex sense of desire that was Williams’ gift to human understanding. It was what Jacques Demy got from Williams for his 1962 debut film, Lola. And Demy’s Lola, in turn, ignites the sexual discovery of Techine’s teen characters in Wild Reeds. They could as well have attended a performance of The Glass Menagerie, but not one that told them their sexual identity was more significant than their complicated, humane compassion. When Amanda tells Tom “I don’t believe you go to the movies ever night. Nobody in their right mind goes to the movies every night,” Williams covered for waterfront

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Cherry Jones and Zachary Quinto in The Glass Menagerie cruising; he confessed the existential release that social outlaws sought in the fantasy of cinematic/theatrical romanticism. His insight stings. That’s what Quinto and Tiffany patronizingly deny to today’s Broadway audience. It’s not a desire to escape, but a need to dream, to access romantic/sexual/artistic fulfillment away from the family but without rejecting it. It’s impossible to reject Cherry Jones’ Amanda, she portrays a fully actualized, if sorrowful heroine-a woman who, due to the very social conventions she believes in, cannot pass on her courage and faith to her children. “I need to give you courage--for life” she tells Laura, an echo of her plaint “I am overwhelmed--by life.” Jones’s radiance embodies this strength and beauty. It is more than Tiffany’s p.c. smugness understands.

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This interpretation of The Glass Menagerie misunderstands the play’s beauty and its particulars (Laura plays with a single figurine rather than an assortment representing the world of fragile human kind). Despite the political justifications attached to contemporary gay identity, Tennessee Williams was not stupid or insensitive to his own needs. His subtlety--and Wilder’s, and Demy’s and Morrissey’s and Davies’--require new appreciation. The Glass Menagerie doesn’t need p.c. updating; it persists because the truth and feeling and poetry of Williams’ subtext have always taken care of itself. The Glass Menagerie plays at the Booth Theater, 222 Wests 45th St. Follow Armond White on Twitter at 3xchair

PAGE 11

CITYARTS MUSEUMS BRIAN ZEGER, Artistic Director

Juilliard ELLEN AND JAMES S. MARCUS INSTITUTE FOR

VOCAL ARTS

“Untitled 1977” by Monir Shauhroudy

Radamisto Before the Revolution Asia Society’s “Modern Iran” takes us back in history Julian Wachner, Conductor James Darrah, Director Juilliard415 with Juilliard Singers Emily MacDonald and Cameron Mock, Scenic and Lighting Design Sara Jean Tosetti, Costume Design

Wednesday, November 20 at 8 Friday, November 22 at 8 Sunday, November 24 at 2 – Sold Out! Peter Jay Sharp Theater at Juilliard

Tickets $30 CenterCharge (212) 721-6500 ? Online at www.juilliard.edu/radamisto Janet and Leonard Kramer Box Office at Juilliard 155 West 65th Street, Monday – Friday, 11AM – 6PM ? (212) 769-7406 1/2-price Patron/Senior/Student tickets available at the Juilliard Box Office only TDF accepted at the Juilliard Box Office only Juilliard Opera is supported by the vision and generous lead funding of the International Foundation for Arts and Culture and its Chairman, Dr. Haruhisa Handa The Space in Between, 2008, monotype by Emily MacDonald

PAGE 12

OUR TOWN DOWNTOWN

By Rania Richardson

ith Iran’s nuclear program and new president in the news, taking a step back to the country’s art prior to 1979 may enlighten the current headlines. “Iran Modern” at Asia Society includes pieces of breathtaking beauty as well as provocative religious and political commentary. The show covers the period between 1941 and 1979, paralleling the reign of the Shah of Iran, who supported both Westernization and the repression of dissent. In 1979 the Shah fled in the unrest of the Revolution, and Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile to lead, in what continues to be, Iran as an official Islamic Republic. For the exhibition, curators culled more than 100 pieces by 26 artists from collections outside Iran, because United States sanctions prohibit borrowing art from within the country itself. The show is organized by theme, evoking dialogues with the work based on placement, such as dazzling cut mirrors by Monir Shahroudi Farmanfarmaian opposite the dirt-encrusted canvases of Marcos Grigorian’s earthworks and Nahid Hahgigat’s shadowy, foreboding etchings facing Nicky Nodjoumi’s vivid depictions of injustice. In the decades leading up to the Revolution, Tehran was a cosmopolitan art center and worldwide travel, artistic exchanges, and state support created a fertile environment

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for artists to draw from global influences. The connection to international styles of the period is apparent in much of the show, including thick, three-dimensional strokes of paint on Manoucher Yektai’s abstractions and delicate figurines of wrestlers and acrobats caught in motion by Bahman Mohassess. While some welcomed outside influences, a school of artists calling themselves Saqqakhaneh (the term for a sacred drinking fountain) incorporate Shiite iconography and pre-Islamic folk art to create a unique, neo-traditional style. Parviz Tanavoli, a seminal figure in the movement, incorporates symbolic hands and feet as well as locks and keys to many of his pieces, melding the comic with the reverential. He sculpts bronze to create parodies of ancient tablets and to shape letters of the Persian alphabet into living creatures. Two other key figures of the movement, Faramarz Pilaram and Charles Hossein Zenderoudi, use playful, decorative calligraphy to cover canvasses with typography. A gallery is devoted to this work, as well as that of other calligraphers such as Mohammad Ehsai, who illustrates the poetry of Omar Khayyam through the shape of his words. A small archive room in the exhibit is devoted to posters and ephemera from art shows of day, as well as an historical timeline that traces political and cultural milestones of the era. Iran Modern shows through January 5, 2014 at Asia Society, 725 Park Ave. Follow Rania on Twitter: @RaniaRichardson

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2013

JAZZ CITYARTS

Slippery Keyboard King Terry Waldo swings the blues for locals at JALC By Elena Oumano

Waldo will teach a course next year on Jelly Roll Morton, another undervalued genius of the early 20th century, on Mondays, Feb. 24-Mar. 17, 6:30-8:30 pm. For more information go to jalc. org/swingu. To enroll in a Swing U. course, call 212258-9922

Weill Music Institute

Free

Neig hbor hood Conc ert Marco Stefani, Tenor Brent Funderburk, Piano

Marco Stefani

Saturday, November 23 at 5 PM Whether singing a classic song or captivating audiences in an operatic role, tenor Marco Stefani brings charisma and sweet tone to every note he sings. This recital features songs by Haydn, Handel, Schubert, Liszt, Tosti, and Rossini.

Advent Lutheran Church 2504 Broadway (at 93rd Street) Manhattan adventnyc.org | 212-903-9670 1 2 3 | Bus: M104 This concert is part of the Marilyn Horne legacy at Carnegie Hall. Thanks to New York City Council Member Gale Brewer for making this concert possible.

Carnegie Hall’s Neighborhood Concerts are sponsored by

Free concerts in all ﬁve boroughs!

Terry Waldo at the pianodisc THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2013

Laidback and engaging onstage and in class, Waldo evokes the vivid, freewheeling personalities and music of the musicians he loves and the true measure of their achievements without over-sanctifying them, illustrating information with CD tracks, vintage film footage, his own live playing, and leavening the discourse with his dry, occasionally self-deprecating wit. Following the improvised “Jazz at Lincoln Center Blues” that punctuated a discussion of the differences between ragtime and Blues (genres he terms, like others, “slippery”), Waldo accompanied himself singing “my own Blues, but it doesn’t have 12 bars,” making a salient point while cracking up the room with such lyrics as “Your pencil’s run out of lead/ It’s just lying there dead/Should have popped some corn or read a novel instead/You got them can’t get it up Blues.”

Kimono Photography

idway through the second session of keyboardist/ writer/producer/author Terry Waldo’s four-part course on early 20th century ragtime pianist James P. Johnson (Tuesdays, 6:30-8:30 at Jazz at Lincoln Center), he scans the room from his perch at the piano. “Is there anybody here who wants to play the Blues who doesn’t play the piano?” he asks. A man volunteers. “We’re going to play “The Jazz at Lincoln Center Blues” in the key of E flat,” Waldo announces as the volunteer, face partially shielded by a baseball cap, slips into a seat to Waldo’s right. “Make something up using only the black keys,” he instructs his duet partner. “If you play in the key of E flat using only the black notes at the top, you can make up a Blues because you’re using only those ‘blue notes.’ I want you to bring out all of your pain and

anger, about Obamacare or whatever is bothering you.” Waldo launches a driving Blues intro at the bottom of the scale, and the student comes in on key, marching up and down the right-hand black keys, working it. “Oh, you do play the piano,” Waldo observes. “We felt each other,” he tells the class. “That’s the way we roll here, we communicated.” The classroom is packed, and no wonder. Waldo, who was dubbed by The New York Times as a “ragtime pianist nonpareil” and also plays tuba and banjo, draws on an encyclopedic store of knowledge about ragtime, swing, stride, Blues, early jazz and their offshoots, in part because his Columbus, Ohio, childhood home was across the street from the world’s second largest collector of ragtime vinyl, piano rolls, and jazz films. At age 20, he moved to New Orleans and then San Francisco, so he could jam with the legends. Back in Ohio, he taught college and played in his bands. A written request to Eubie Blake asking for the sheet music to “Charleston Rag” led to a 16-year close working and personal relationship until Blake’s passing. Besides nearly 5 decades of concert and

club playing internationally and in NYC, where he now lives, Waldo’s produced and arranged over 40 albums and composed for television shows ranging from The Tonight Show to Ken Burns’ Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson. In 1978, he was music director, producer, and talent for the first two-way television operation, Columbus-based Warner Qube. “Andy Kaufman came on as a Vegas character singing ‘On the Street Where You Live,’” Waldo recalls. “The audience at home zapped him off but he came back to interrupt the other acts. He was wonderful.” Waldo is also credited with sparking off the ragtime revival of the 1970’s with This is Ragtime, the 26-part 1974 series he produced for NPR, which led to his definitive 1976 book of the same title (revised and republished by Jazz at Lincoln Center in 2010).

carnegiehall.org/NeighborhoodConcerts

OUR TOWN DOWNTOWN

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PAGE 13

15 1 4 7

re-use

ways to Behind the Palm d’Or your newspaper old

Use it as wrapping paper, or fold & glue pages into reusable gift bags.

Add shredded newspaper to your compost pile when you need a carbon addition or to keep ﬂies at bay.

Use newspaper strips, water, and a bit of glue for newspaper mâché.

Crumple newspaper to use as packaging material the next time you need to ship something fragile.

Tightly roll up sheets of newspaper and tie with string to use as ﬁre logs.

After your garden plants sprout, place newspaper sheets around them, then water & cover with grass clippings and leaves. This newspaper will keep weeds from growing.

Make origami creatures

Cut out letters & words to write anonymous letters to friends and family to let them know they are loved.

Roll a twice-folded newspaper sheet around a jar, remove the jar, & you have a biodegradable seed-starting pot that can be planted directly into the soil.

Make newspaper airplanes and have a contest in the backyard.

Use shredded newspaper as animal bedding in lieu of sawdust or hay.

Make your own cat litter by shredding newspaper, soaking it in dish detergent & baking soda, and letting it dry.

Wrap pieces of fruit in newspaper to speed up the ripening process.

12 15

Stuff newspapers in boots or handbags to help the items keep their shape. Dry out wet shoes by loosening laces & sticking balled newspaper pages inside.

a public service announcement brought to you by dirt magazine. PAGE 14

CITYARTS FILM

OUR TOWN DOWNTOWN

Blue is the Warmest Color exposes Spielberg in the whorehouse of art cinema By Armond White

lue is the Warmest Color is distinguished by being the Palm d’Or winner at the Cannes Film Festival when Steven Spielberg was President of the Jury. It was a shocking choice only because the film is so meaningless, not due to its supposed “shocking” lesbian sex scenes. Such “explicitness” couldn’t have fazed Spielberg who dared Hollywood’s pioneering lesbian content in 1985’s The Color Purple--a film that has yet to get its due from critics but has become a staple for Black academics and proved globally popular; note its frequent TV showings, even on the hipster station Sundance Channel. (The Cannes festival began with a tribute to Spielberg featuring a performance of The Color Purple’s theme song “Sister,” a song that transcended sexuality with a sympathetic expression of female solidarity). Given Spielberg’s humanist sophistication, the Jury’s choice of Blue is the Warmest Color is puzzling; it reverses the progress of The Color Purple with a meandering focus on sexual license. Director Abdellatif Kechiche’s story of a Parisian high school girl Adele (Adele Exarchopoulos) who succumbs to the butch charms of a blue-haired art student Emma (Lea Seydoux), then loses all sense of herself is neither pro-humanist nor pro-gay. Kechiche, adapting a graphic novel by Julie Maroh, emphasizes the physical aspects of romance--sexual attraction, sexual coupling-that makes the stability of gay romance questionable. In The Color Purple, Spielberg’s adaptation of Alice Walker’s novel featured a mature understanding of the need for love between women as well as between opposite genders. The Color Purple’s Hollywood discretion (and pop universality) may not have pleased 1985 status-keepers who preferred Out of Africa but Spielberg and screenwriter Menno Mayjes wonderfully recognized the humane essence of Celie (Whoopi Goldberg) discovering herself through an attraction to blues singer Shug Avery (Margaret Avery). Their relationship, based in Black blues folk culture, was less about sex than the larger issue of emotional fulfillment-personal wholeness and spiritual salvation. Kechiche, a politically-correct operator whose monotonous Secrets of the Grain exploited

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Lea and Adele in Blue is the Warmest Color Muslim immigrancy, uses gayness to support dubious ideas about romance and identity. His long, obvious concentration on female sexuality doesn’t celebrate womanhood but exploits it in that grayish-blue area of gynophilia (heterosexual men’s excitement at watching women copulate—and teenage Adele’s shaved pudenda). Really, what is there to learn from watching Adele and Emma bumping-and-grinding? Or repetitive close-ups of Exarchopoulos’s wet, open mouth (obvious vaginal symbolism)? She gives up her intellectual interest in literature to implausibly become a hausfrau to please her social-climbing woman. (Seydoux’s tomboy manner as a woman who puts her career before her personal life recalls Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s trollish look.) In Robert Towne’s 1982 Personal Best, female sex scenes were emotionally intimate yet without all the huffing, puffing and bumping uglies. Director John Huston once suggested certain private acts should never be shown which Kechiche confirms with the silly pointlessness of Adele and Emma’s extended exertions. As with the belly dancing in Secrets of the Grain, Kechiche doesn’t know when enough is enough. All this is as unprofound as Woody Allen’s self-justifying “The heart wants what it wants”--a way to avoid examining the depths of human interaction. Kechiche gets no credit for a gay sex breakthrough; anyone who has followed the cultural progress of gay filmmakers are already ahead of this film through the dazzling experiences of Andre Techine’s Wild Reeds, Gael Moreau’s Full Speed, Duscatel-Martineau’s My Life on Ice and Lionel Baier’s Garcon Stupide--for starters. Otherwise we’re back to the ignorance of thinking Brokeback Mountain was an innovation. Kechiche emulates the realism of Maurice Pialat and Mike Leigh then ruins it with dubious insights (“Tragedy is inevitable, that’s the essence of human life”) that are fashionable humbug. Spielberg should be embarrassed.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2013

RESTAURANT INSPECTION RATINGS

October 26 - November 2, 2013

Pinkberry

350 WEST 14 Grade Pending: (22) Cold food item held above 41º STREET F (smoked fish and reduced oxygen packaged foods above 38 ºF) except during necessary preparation. Evidence of mice or live mice present in facility’s food and/or non-food areas. Personal cleanliness inadequate. Outer garment soiled with possible contaminant. Effective hair restraint not worn in an area where food is prepared. Facility not vermin proof. Harborage or conditions conducive to attracting vermin to the premises and/or allowing vermin to exist.

sNice

45 8 AVENUE

Restaurant Grades The following listings were collected from the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s website on November 4, 2013 and include the most recent inspection and grade reports listed. We have included every restaurant listed during this time within the zip codes of our neighborhoods. Some reports list numbers with their explanations; these are the number of violation points a restaurant has received. To see more information on restaurant grades, visit www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/services/restaurant-inspection.shtml. 10010

10014

Moe’s

367 FIRST AVENUE

Bagel Express III

340 3 AVENUE

Comfort Inn

18 WEST 25 STREET

Zaro’s Bakery

920 A BROADWAY

Upright

547 HUDSON STREET

Dunkin Donuts

175 VARICK STREET

Joe

141 WAVERLY PLACE

El Charro Espanol

4 CHARLES STREET

Noodle Bar

26 CARMINE STREET

Mas La Grillade

28 7 AVENUE SOUTH

Empellon

230 WEST 4 STREET

DeSantos Restaurant

139 WEST 10 Grade Pending: (27) Cold food item held above 41º STREET F (smoked fish and reduced oxygen packaged foods above 38 ºF) except during necessary preparation. Evidence of mice or live mice present in facility’s food and/or non-food areas. Food not protected from potential source of contamination during storage, preparation, transportation, display or service. Facility not vermin proof. Harborage or conditions conducive to attracting vermin to the premises and/or allowing vermin to exist. Proper sanitization not provided for utensil ware washing operation. “Wash hands” sign not posted at hand wash facility.

Village Vanguard

178 7 AVENUE SOUTH

Grade Pending: (22) Cold food item held above 41º F (smoked fish and reduced oxygen packaged foods above 38 ºF) except during necessary preparation. Evidence of mice or live mice present in facility’s food and/or non-food areas. Filth flies or food/ refuse/sewage-associated (FRSA) flies present in facility’s food and/or non-food areas. Filth flies include house flies, little house flies, blow flies, bottle flies and flesh flies. Food/refuse/sewageassociated flies include fruit flies, drain flies and Phorid flies. Facility not vermin proof. Harborage or conditions conducive to attracting vermin to the premises and/or allowing vermin to exist.

NEW YORK STATE ASSEMBLY SPEAKER

STATE SENATOR

NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL MEMBER

SHELDON SILVER

DANIEL SQUADRON

MARGARET CHIN

and The City University of New York invite you to a

CUNY College Information Fair SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2013 11 AM–2 PM REFRESHMENTS WILL BE SERVED SEWARD PARK EDUCATIONAL CAMPUS 350 GRAND STREET (AT LUDLOW STREET) NEW YORK, NY 10002

Receive one-on-one counseling and information on: Academic and honors programs Adult and continuing education Financial aid and scholarships Citizenship and immigration services

www.cuny.edu/admissions

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2013

OUR TOWN DOWNTOWN

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PAGE 15

NEIGHBORHOOD REAL ESTATE SALES Reported October 18-25, 2013 Neighborhood

Address

Battery Park City

200 Rector Place 30 W St.

E Village

Financial Distri

Flatiron

Fulton/Seaport

BR BA Listing Brokerage

#7T

$526,700

Ccg Real Estate Brokerag

#10C

$1,266,700

Corcoran

#P4

$584,000

200 Rector Place

#11J

$589,000

1 1

Address 150 Nassau St.

Gramercy Park

Apt.

Sale Price

#6D

$715,000

85 Irving Place

$16,000,000

205 3 Ave.

#2P

$430,000

Douglas Elliman

235 E 22 St.

#1Ef

$660,000

William B. May

235 E 22 St.

#1Ef

$720,000

BR BA Listing Brokerage

Citi Habitats

#4M

$690,000

280 Rector Place

Multi

$1,075,000

32 Gramercy Park

#8C

$527,000

Charles H. Greenthal

34 Gramercy Park

#Mbf

$1,360,000

Warburg

#2U

$425,000

Level Group

2 South End Ave.

#3H

$385,000

21 South End Ave.

#Ph2y

$1,475,000

Regatta Ny Realty

235 E 22 St.

333 Rector Place

#804

$2,377,613

Corcoran

202 E 22Nd St.

#7B

$392,000

235 E 22 St.

#16A

$430,000

30 W St.

#26D

$750,000

Corcoran

380 Rector Place

#15D

$640,000

Ccg Real Estate Brokerag

#1B

$145,000

#4A

$620,000

Greenwich Villag 77 Bleecker St.

#104N

$1,995,000

211 Thompson St.

#6E

$660,000

Citi Habitats

Corcoran

211 Thompson St.

#5D

$400,000

Halstead Property

#11D

$505,000

Corcoran

121 W 19 St.

#3A

$2,375,000

Dgc Real Estate Investm

15 W 12 St.

161 W 15 St.

#5E

$1,395,000

Corcoran

49 W 12 St.

#10C

$1,470,000

Douglas Elliman

#A108

$2,000,000

Corcoran

305 W 18 St.

#5E

$375,000

303 Mercer St.

50 Bayard St.

#6U

$660,000

35 E 10 St.

#5B

$825,000

Douglas Elliman

#B608

$950,000

Core

628 E 14 St.

$339,686

250 Mercer St.

643 E 11 St.

Multi

$1,102,196

39 E 12 St.

#111

$2,255,000

Halstead Property

77 E 12 St.

#10E

$625,000

75 Ludlow St.

#2C

$1,181,170

Halstead Property

#D105

$699,000

Lower E Side

Corcoran

77 E 12 St.

#15G

$725,000

Coldwell Banker A.C. La

417 Grand St.

75 Wall St.

#26D

$821,542

Douglas Elliman

417 Grand St.

#E1302

$380,000

Loho Realty

Dgc Real Estate Inv

38 Delancey St.

#6C

$900,000

Douglas Elliman

Loho Realty

20 Pine St.

#1205

$1,035,500

15 William St.

#19D

$80,995

455 Fdr Drive

#B207

$395,000

40 Bond St.

#Th2

$10,000,000

80 John St.

#8G

$990,000

Sothebyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s International

Noho

15 Broad St.

#1002

$892,500

Leiter Realty Group

Nolita

225 Lafayette St.

#4B

$1,675,000

Soho

111 Mercer St.

$4,327,562

Douglas Elliman

71 Sullivan St.

#3C

$405,000

Charles Rutenberg

22 Wooster St.

$1,525,000

52 Laight St.

#Ph

$5,931,306

Fox Residential Group

38 Warren St.

#7B

$3,000,000

Sothebyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s International

130 Watts St.

#3S

$2,505,000

Corcoran

Douglas Elliman

142 Duane St.

#3A

$2,925,000

Sothebyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s International

#20B

$2,330,000

Corcoran

Douglas Elliman

15 Broad St.

#1810

$2,850,000

Nestseekers

55 Wall St.

#548

$791,710

Corcoran

5 E 22 St.

#7L

$950,000

16 W 16 St.

#8As

$820,000

Halstead Property

16 W 16 St.

#8Jn

$750,000

Brown Harris Stevens

42 E 20 St.

#8Dphd

$3,841,375

10 W 15 St.

#1517

$755,000

Tribeca

69 5 Ave.

#15F

$975,000

Argo Residential

200 Chambers St.

5 E 22 St.

#11T

$975,000

Newell And Assoc.

101 Warren St.

#3020

$5,600,000

52 Laight St.

#R5

$2,574,136

31 North Moore St

#Phe

$5,570,000

Corcoran

440 W 23 St.

$2,225,000

Douglas Elliman

525 W 22 St.

#5B

$1,825,000

Core

445 W 19 St.

#6A

$610,000

Corcoran

130 Barrow St.

#207

$899,000

Coldwell Banker Bellmar

122 Greenwich Av

$2,350,000

161 Perry St.

#1A

$2,000,000

Douglas Elliman

350 Bleecker St.

#1F

$499,000

Douglas Elliman

130 Jane St.

#1H

$1,700,000

Douglas Elliman

280 Park Ave. Sout

#18D

$1,079,500

280 Park Ave. South Realt

99 John St.

#208

$549,855

Nestseekers

150 Nassau St.

#7J

$460,000

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212-868-0190 nypress.com ZZZ DGYHUWLVHU QHZV FRP PAGE 16

Neighborhood

377 Rector Place

337 W 20 St.

Chinatown

Sale Price

350 Albany St.

Brooklyn Chelsea

Apt.

OUR TOWN DOWNTOWN

Spire Group

W Chelsea

W Village

256 W 4 St.

$4,175,000

StreetEasy.com is New Yorkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most accurate and comprehensive real estate website, providing consumers detailed sales and rental information and the tools to manage that information to make educated decisions. The site has become the reference site for consumers, real estate professionals and the media and has been widely credited with bringing transparency to one of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most important real estate markets.

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THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2013

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PAGE 17

CELEBRITY PROFILE

Writing the Book for Gay Grooms Event planner Jason Mitchell penned the ﬁrst ever planner for men marrying men By Angela Barbuti Jason Mitchell helps put the “gay” in engagement. At least that’s what he promises in his new book, Getting Groomed: The Ultimate Wedding Planner for Gay Grooms. The how-to guide definitely delivers by considering the differences and similarities to planning a gay wedding as opposed to a straight one. The beauty of it all, he explains, is the fact that traditions don’t yet exist, so grooms are free to create their own based on personal style and taste. An event planner at the Soho House in the Meatpacking District, Mitchell writes using his extensive experience, combined with a light-hearted sense of humor. The icing on the two-groom topped wedding cake is that the book was born right around the time same-sex marriage legalized in New York. Your husband came up with this book idea. As a professional event planner myself, I knew we weren’t going to work with one, so I said to my husband, “I just want to get one of those handy books they make with checklists and calendars, so I don’t miss anything.” In searching for them, I grew really frustrated because all of them were for brides. In expressing that to him, he looked at me and said, “Why don’t you write the book for gay grooms?” Tell us your engagement story. My husband did a very nice job surprising me; I really had no idea. I thought we had plans to have an early dinner before a show of his favorite cabaret artist, Barbara Cook. He wanted to leave the house so early to get there, but he likes to be early to everything, so I didn’t really think it was that weird. We got all dressed up to go and I came out into the living room and he said, “I just need you to sit down; I have to ask you something important.” He came back in the room with this big bouquet of flowers and said, “Will you marry me?” I started crying and said, “Yes.” And then he said, “We have to be at Tiffany’s. We have an

PAGE 18

appointment and they’re waiting for us to pick out our rings.” And what happened once you were at Tiffany’s? It was really funny going to the engagement floor of Tiffany’s as two men at the time. It’s a very touristy place on 5th Avenue, so there were people snapping pictures of us as “the engaged gays.” We were just living it up - drinking champagne and talking rings. I learned how nice it is to pick out your own ring, because it’s the question that’s really most important, not the object. You have seven years of experience as an international event planner. Was it always at Soho House? Yes, that’s really where I started. I’ve gotten so much great experience here, but have always done freelance work on the side. It’s definitely the kind of field where, the more you do, the more you learn. What are the challenges to planning a wedding in the city? Finding a venue that will suit your needs and being able to plan on whatever budget you might have. Depending on how many out-of-town guests you’re having, taking their needs into consideration and being able to find accommodations for them, ideally nearby the venue. Having to not think like a New Yorker when you plan this. We are very used to commuting and getting ourselves wherever we need to be. But a lot of out-oftown people find that to be a big challenge. In your book, you discuss the fact that some families will have a difficult time finding their place in a gay wedding. How do you take that element into account? If a family is not going to be involved, that probably won’t come as a surprise to the groom. It’s not like all of the sudden they’re going to announce marriage and that’s going to be the thing that’s going to change someone if they were accepting. There are assumed roles in most straight wedding planning - what the mother of the bride does, and what the father of the bride does. So at gay weddings, it becomes up to the grooms to say to their parents, “This is what we would like. This is what we expect.” Parents are not mind readers and can’t be expected to know. I think all families have to really decide what’s comfortable for them.

OUR TOWN DOWNTOWN

Let’s talk about fashion choices for two grooms. You and your husband each wore a different shade of grey. For gay grooms, I’ve seen so many different looks. I’ve seen them totally matching from head to toe, or just wearing whatever they look great in. I planned a wedding for a lesbian couple who did their ceremony in heels, and after, when it was time to start dancing, they changed into gold Converses and gold Toms. It was a cute statement. Your bridal party consisted of best boys and groomsgirls. Did you come up with those names? Yes. That felt very fitting for us. Within our circle of friends, we call a lot of our guy friends, “the boys.” I have more than one best friend, as does my husband, so we didn’t feel like there was one person to whom we could say, “You’re the best of the best.” We had seven guys and three girls. Since we didn’t have an even number of people, and a decent amount were really mutual friends, we said, “Why do we need separate sides? Why can’t they all just be our entourage?” You say that a wedding should tell the couple’s story. I love how you gave out kits for Bloody Marys, your and your husband’s favorite drink. To me, as an event planner, the more personal you can make a wedding, the better. And that’s what always has more of an effect on the guests. Being able to explain why you made some of your choices is exciting for them. For us, to give a Bloody Mary kit for the next day was not just because they are good the next day - they’re our favorite thing to have in the afternoon. What was the coolest favor you’ve gotten? A flash drive of music that was heard at the wedding. And it’s something you can really use. Some wedding favors, I feel, people just don’t put thought into them. Therefore they feel impersonal and you just take home this random item that you don’t really have a connection to. Now every time I hear the music from that flash drive, it makes me think

JASON’S TIPS TO PERSONALIZE A WEDDING -Opt to name tables with something significant rather than using numbers. Whether it’s special places or favorite icons, anything that tells guests more about the couple will give them something to talk about. -Highlight every special moment of the night with a song choice that is meaningful. Not just the first dance and last dance, but every event will stand out more when

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of their wedding. You give a tip for saving money by having an iPod instead of a DJ or band. Sometimes you don’t need something more elaborate than that. I was at a really fun wedding with a big dance floor, where everything was handled with an iPod. You just need someone to operate it. Joan Rivers gave a quote for your book’s cover. Is she a friend of yours? I’d like to consider myself friends with her. I’m a huge fan of hers and met her a few times after seeing her perform. She is the loveliest person and when we pitched the idea of putting her name in some way on the cover, she said, “Absolutely, I think the idea is great.” So for me, that was a major honor. Is it true that you are coauthoring a wedding planner sequel for lesbians? Yes. When we first talked about this book, we asked if we should make it for lesbians and gay men. We then decided that the point of it was to be as specific as possible, so better to keep them separate. And I think I need to [coauthor] with a lesbian to make sure I really understand. Follow Jason on Twitter: @MrJasonMitchell

accompanied by the right music. From the first song guests hear to what underscores the cake-cutting, every choice should be selected with detail. -If you are giving away party favors, choose something useful or significant and attach a note to guests explaining why you picked it. Whether it’s your favorite treat, hangover cure, or a flash drive of music you played at the wedding, let your guests know why you chose it.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2013

CLASSIFIEDS Classified Advertising Department Information Telephone: ] Fax: Email: classifi FE !TUSBVTOFXT DPN Hours: .POEBZ 'SJEBZ BN QN ] Deadline: .POEBZ OPPO GPS TBNF XFFLT JTTVF

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BY GIVING JUST A FEW HOURS OF MY DAY

I HELP CHILDREN PREPARE FOR

ABECAUSE LIFETIME OF LEARNING I DONâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;T JUST WEAR THE SHIRT, I LIVE IT. ÂŽ

GIVE. ADVOCATE. VOLUNTEER. LIVE UNITED

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I am delighted to invite you to the special events that mark CUNY Month during the month of November at CUNY’s 24 colleges and professional schools. – Interim Chancellor William P. Kelly

pen houses, admissions and ﬁnancial-aid workshops, sports tournaments, lectures, performances, and book talks, most of them free, panel discussions, world-class faculty, high-achieving students and honored guests.

NOV. 1-DEC. 20

NOV. 1-11

NOV. 1-DEC. 15

NOV. 6

NOV. 7

LATINO NEW YORKERS 1980-2001

DONATE TREATS FOR TROOPS AT HOME AND AWAY

ART AS WITNESS

SWALLOW IN THE SUN CONCERT BY LIZA GARZA

John Jay College of Criminal Justice All Day Free

Exhibit of works by Rosemarie Koczy Queensborough Community College Tues. & Fri. 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Wed. & Thurs. 10 a.m.-7 p.m., Sat. & Sun Noon-5 p.m. Free

WHEN BRAINS ARE IN SYNC Physics Colloquium Prof. Lucas C. Parra The City College of NY 4 p.m. Free

Accompanied by Dominic Garcia College of Staten Island 2:30-4:30 p.m. Free

NOV. 7-DEC. 11

NOV. 9

NOV. 10-DEC. 15

NOV. 11

NOV. 12-18

A CENTURY IN ART

CITIZENSHIP NOW APPLICATION ASSISTANCE EVENT

LIES MY FATHER TOLD ME

MARCH WITH CUNY’S VETERANS DAY PARADE FLOAT

INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION WEEK

Commemorating 100 Years of El Diario LaPrensa Longwood Art Gallery Hostos Community College Noon-6 p.m. Free

Exhibit of works by Theresa Ferber Bernstein Baruch College Sidney Mishkin Gallery Mon., Tues., Wed., and Fri Noon - 5 p.m. Thurs. Noon - 7 p.m.

NOV. 17

THE HUNGARIAN STATE FOLK ENSEMBLE Lehman College Center for the Performing Arts 8 p.m. $35-$10

Brooklyn College Student Center 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Free

National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene Baruch College 2 p.m. $50-$60

29th St. and 5th Avenue 11 a.m. Free

Study Abroad Programs CUNY campuses

NOV. 14

THE ROBERTS COURT: A REPORTER’S REFLECTIONS

MPH & MS GRADUATE STUDENT INFORMATION SESSION

TALES FROM THE TRASH: SANITATION WORKERS

Adam Liptak, New York Times Supreme Court correspondent The City College of NY 5 p.m. Free

CUNY School of Public Health 5:30 p.m.-7:30 p.m. Free

Sustainable Cities, and the Value of Knowledge Prof. Rebecca Bratspies, Dr. Robin Nagle CUNY School of Law 6 p.m. Free

NOV. 18

NOV. 20

UNWANTED: THE FACES AND VOICES OF HAITIANS AND DOMINICANS

ONLINE MS IN BUSINESS MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP INFORMATION SESSION

Explore CUNY Graduate Programs 2-7 p.m. at Grand Hyatt Hotel

A CONVERSATION WITH THE HON. SONIA SOTOMAYOR Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court President Lisa S. Coico Prof. Lyn Di Iorio The City College of NY 5:30 p.m. Free

Prof. Luis Barrios John Jay College of Criminal Justice 1:30 p.m. Free

NOV. 16

“STUART LITTLE” Kingsborough Community College Performing Arts Center 10:30 a.m. For Ages 4 and up. $12

School of Professional Studies CUNY Graduate Center 6 p.m.-8 p.m.

Quality Affordable Debt-free Degrees For a complete listing of Open Houses at all CUNY colleges and details on hundreds of other events during CUNY Month visit www.cuny.edu/cunymonth PAGE 20

OUR TOWN DOWNTOWN

www.nypress.com

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2013