Our Town Downtown January 2nd, 2014

cityArts

PROFILE

PAGE 14

P. 2

NYPRESS.COM

P. 2

•

COMMUNITY NEWS BELOW 14TH STREET • JANUARY 2, 2014 P.9

P. 2

P. 3

P. 3

What's Ahead for Downtown A look at what will matter to the neighborhood in 2014

P. 4

P. 5

P. 5

P. 8

P. 8

Rethinking the Schools

The Year Ahead

De Blasio’s tax hike for preKers is only the beginning

Opening Doors, and Memories, at the Freedom Tower The first major new building at the Trade Center opens early in 2014 One World Trade Center reopens early in 2014 -- reopening for many New Yorkers memories of the city’s darkest day.

The building, known throughout the world as the Freedom Tower and officially crowned last year as America’s tallest building, will for many downtown Manhattanites represent a fresh start after a dozen years of contentious -- and emotional -- debate about what should follow the terror attacks of Sept. 2001. In New

York, business marches on, even if the scars of the day remain.

Now, look for a new round of concerns surrounding the building, including security questions, continuing complaints about construction noise and disruption, and traffic congestion.

Nor will the opening of the building put an end to the construction site that is the former World Trade Center complex. Work on other buildings continue, as does the prolonged effort to build a museum to memorialize the attacks.

But the opening of 1WTC will be a moment of note, and the beginning of some sort of new start.

Just because there’s a new tenant in Gracie Mansion doesn’t mean public school issues won’t continue to dominate in 2014.

Bill de Blasio, for instance, has promised to tax the rich to fund universal prekindergarten. But while that high-profile plan is executed, other school issues will continue to weigh on City Hall.

This year, New York schools will have to either find a way to acclimate to new Common Core standards of testing and assessment, or hope that the disastrous first year under the new standards will lead to reform or at least a step back from implementing them. Education advocates have called for de Blasio – and Carmen Fariña, the newly appointed schools chancellor who was formerly a top official at the Department of Education – to de-emphasize testing and return to a focus on support for teachers and encouraging parental involvement.

The other major

flashpoint this year will be how the administration treats the growing influx of charter schools. De Blasio has already stated that he may require charter schools to start paying rent to the Department of Education, a major departure from the former policy of allowing these schools to co-locate with existing traditional schools, rent-free. That policy, if implemented, might force charters to look elsewhere for cheaper space than the DOE can offer, which would ameliorate one of the major criticisms of how the city treats charters now: that the co-location creates a “separate but unequal” learning environment, where building resources are given to the charter school students and their traditional school counterparts are forced to watch their peers get upgraded versions of everything.

This year will be the year that public school parents finally find out exactly what de Blasio has in store for their children. So far, he has been careful not to overpromise – or give too many specifics. Now, succinct campaign promises will give way to complex realities of bureaucracy – inescapable no matter who is in charge.

The De-Manhattanization of Politics De Blasio has vowed to turn his attention to the outer boroughs For the past dozen years, Manhattan has received a disproportionate amount of love from City Hall.

Michael Bloomberg not only lived in the borough, but his entire life and social circle were encompassed by it. And that

PAGE 2

OUR TOWN DOWNTOWN

was reflected in his biggest initiatives. From CitiBike to pedestrian islands to the rebirth of city parkland, Bloomberg’s signature ideas have tended to be heaviest felt in Manhattan, often to the chagrin of the outer boroughs.

All that is about it change.

Much has been made of Bill de Blasio’s Brooklyn base, both real and politically symbolic.

But de Blasio did make it clear in his campaign that he thought Manhattan had tended to get more than its share under Bloomberg -- whether it comes to bike

www.nypress.com

lanes or school rebuilding or grand new public-works projects. De Blasio has vowed to reverse that, and there’s no sign his new residency on the Upper East Side is going to temper those vows.

So could residents of Manhattan now find themselves getting less from City Hall, as it seeks to make up for lost time?

Look for some high-profile early projects from de Blasio in 2014 -- parks, schools, arts ventures -- as he seeks to make his case, leaving the city’s most populous borough sitting, at least for now, on the sidelines.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 2014

New Kid Downtown Johnson steps into Quinn’s slot

The Next Sandy Planning for the next storm while recovering from the last one For those living along the feebly protected shores of Lower Manhattan, 2013 passed with a collective breath-holding, dreading another superstorm that would rip through the painstaking reconstruction after Sandy had her way with the city in 2012. Last year, we were lucky. This year, we may not be.

While nature granted us a reprieve from brutal storms in 2013, reminders of Sandy remained everywhere, and spurred the city to think about protecting itself in new ways.

Hopefully, we can continue that trend this year – with an eye toward the next inevitable devastating hurricane that with any luck we won’t see for a number of years; but the odds are, we will see it.

The only uncertainty beyond when the next Sandy will hit is how prepared we will be for it. Talk of natural barriers and seawalls will need to become reality. The de Blasio administration needs to prioritize funds and attention to the city’s infrastructure and protection from natural disasters. Bloomberg’s ambitious swan song of a development plan for “Seaport City” might eventually mitigate coastal flooding problems, but those solutions are many years away from becoming concrete.

In the meantime, we need quick, effective stop gaps and strategies for dealing with rising waters.

The community also needs to continue its recovery. Whole swaths of downtown neighborhoods, like around the Seaport, were virtually wiped out and have rebuilt almost from scratch. It’s important that people living side by side with these businesses keep walking through their doors, spending money and helping the areas revive. Without a thriving business community there, there will be less incentive for the city to invest in protections for those areas, which could end up facing the same destruction from the next storm.

If we’re lucky again, that won’t be this year.

Immediately after winning election to the city council seat formerly held by Christine Quinn, incoming council member Corey Johnson was inundated with requests from local residents and groups and has spent the past several months in a frantic pace of meetings and introductions. When he jumps headfirst into the position this month, he will be as prepared as his constituents will allow, and will be offering them something in a city council representative they haven’t seen in 12 years – someone whose attention, at least for now, isn’t divided between the job at hand and higher ambitions.

While Quinn fought hard for the progressive policies that residents of the Village and lower West Side cared about – LGBT rights, HIV/AIDS funding and treatment, affordable housing – she was also criticized, perhaps unfairly, for her ambition. The task of council speaker is to weigh the needs of every district

in order to reach workable compromises, so there were also times when she necessarily had to consider other New Yorkers’ needs perhaps more than the other 50 members of the council ever did. Not burdened by that responsibility, Johnson is in a position to buckle down and fight for what his district cares about most. (On the flip side, of course, a less powerful position within the council means less leverage to get those objectives accomplished.)

Johnson will continue to work on many of the same issues that Quinn championed, and surely will take some pages out of her largely successful book; he’ll also need to start writing his own.

COAT

DRIVE Now – December Now - February 31 7th

Have you tried naturally healthy, fresh, organic walnuts?

Home grown, hand picked shelled or in shell.

Keeping New Yorkers warm for 25 years.

Donate at any New York City Police Precinct or other locations citywide.

For a full list of collection sites, dates, and times, visit newyorkcares.org.

Perry Creek

WA L N U T S

perrycreekwalnuts@hotmail.com

530.503.9705 perrycreekwalnuts.com THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 2014

OUR TOWN DOWNTOWN

Text iCARE to 85944 to donate $10 to keep a fellow New Yorker warm this winter.*

The Coat Drive is a program of New York Cares, New York City’s leading volunteer organization.

Photo: Craig Cutler © 2012 New York Cares, Inc.

For Coat Drive collection sites in New Jersey, visit jerseycares.org.

*A one-time donation of $10 will be billed to your mobile phone bill. Messaging & data rates may apply. Donations are collected for New York Cares by mobilecause.com. Reply STOP to 85944 to stop. Reply HELP to 85944 for help. For terms, see www.igfn.org/t.

www.nypress.com

PAGE 3

The Year Ahead .com STRAUS MEDIA  MANHATTAN PRESIDENT Jeanne Straus EDITOR IN CHIEF Kyle Pope EDITOR Megan Bungeroth • editor.otdt@strausnews.com CITYARTS EDITOR Armond White • editor.cityarts@strausnews.com STAFF REPORTERS Joanna Fantozzi, Daniel Fitzsimmons FEATURED CONTRIBUTORS Alan S. Chartock, Bette Dewing, Jeanne Martinet, Malachy McCourt, Angela Barbuti, Casey Ward BLOCK MAYORS Ann Morris, Upper West Side Jennifer Peterson, Upper East Side Gail Dubov, Upper West Side Edith Marks, Upper West Side

Up and Away Urban sprawl goes vertical, sparking new fights over air rights The development-friendly Bloomberg era may have officially ended, but the ramifications will continue to

ripple throughout Manhattan – and especially above it. Most of the land in the borough’s popular and dense neighborhoods, like the West Village and the Upper West Side, has already been gobbled up, and so now developers are craning their necks and salivating over the last unused parcels of extremely valuable real estate: air rights.

Many low-rise buildings and open spaces have unused air rights, meaning they are allowed to build to a certain height above their current height, calculated by square footage, density and lot size. Owners of these rights can sell them to other developers, though

PUBLISHER Gerry Gavin • advertising@strausnews.com ASSOCIATE PUBLISHERS Seth L. Miller, Ceil Ainsworth, Kate Walsh ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE Eliza Appleton CLASSIFIED ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE Stephanie Patsiner DISTRIBUTION MANAGER Joe Bendik OUR TOWN DOWNTOWN is published weekly Copyright © 2013 by Straus Media - Manhattan, LLC 212-868-0190 • 333 Seventh Ave, New York, NY.

they must be used on a building next to, across from or kitty corner to the original air rights-holder. It’s a swap, intended to give owners of these rights revenue while keeping the overall aerial landscape of the city even.

Last fall, the state approved a controversial law that allows Hudson River Park to sell its air rights, despite the outcries of locals who don’t want their river and park views obscured. The park says it needs the money it expects to earn in order to continue to operate, a claim that is echoed by other parks and landmarks looking to sell their rights against the objections of neighbors.

The result of this focus on air rights is a tendency toward gigantic towers rising from the midst of lower buildings throughout the city. It’s a new kind of vertical urban sprawl, but it affects people beyond the immediate nextdoor neighbors; looming shadows and an altered skyline become the business of everyone. This year, air rights sales will likely continue to heat up, but so will public awareness of the results of these sales, and hopefully, a meaningful public dialogue about the shape of the city will spring up along with the latest skyscrapers.

Straus Media - Manhattan publishes Our Town • The West Side Spirit • Our Town Downtown Chelsea Clinton News • The Westsider To subscribe for 1 year, please send $75 to OUR TOWN DOWNTOWN, c/o Straus News 20 West Ave., Chester, NY 10918 PREVIOUS OWNERS HAVE INCLUDED: Tom Allon, Isis Ventures, Ed Kayatt, Russ Smith, Bob Trentlion, Jerry Finkelstein

Do you have a news tip, story idea, nomination for “mayor of your block,” complaint or letter to the editor?

We want to hear from you!

Please go to nypress.com and select “Submit Stuff ” PAGE 4

OUR TOWN DOWNTOWN

MY DOWNTOWN

A Community Board Wish List

By Catherine McVay Hughes, Community Board 1 Chair As 2013 ends, we reflect on how hard work, persistence and working together has accomplished so much, especially with recovery after Superstorm Sandy and reaching the homestretch of the completion of the World Trade Center site. However, we must keep the momentum going. Community Board 1 has an ambitious to-do-list for 2014 and looks forward to working with everyone to: 1. Ensure that Community Board 1 is an active partner in the planning process for all future development proposals in the district 2. Locate a site for the new K-8 School in CB1 and work to secure additional school seats 3. Increase open and active recreational space by completing the Battery Green and bikeway, two ball fields and 30 acres of park and hills at Governor’s Island 4. Finalize plans to complete Hudson River Park’s Pier

www.nypress.com

26 5. Minimize construction impacts from more than 90 public and private large construction projects in CB1 in light of the closing of the Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center, which sunsets on 12/31/13 and has been the central agency coordinating all construction projects 6. Ensure that neighborhood character and quality are preserved. For example, by finding a more appropriate location for the Department of Probations office currently being relocated from the sale of 346 Broadway to 66 John Street 7. Guarantee that any proposed development for the South Street Seaport maintains its historic character, preserves the South Street Seaport Museum and vessels, and market is in context with the existing community 8. Harden infrastructure and plans to protect vulnerable populations to withstand extreme weather events 9. Open the National September 11th Memorial Museum and remove the fence surrounding it 10. Assure that that the WTC Campus Security Plan does not negatively affect the public realm We look forward to your participation in keeping downtown a premiere place to live, to work, to visit and to play.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 2014

In the Shadow of the Billionaires

MY DOWNTOWN

A Community of Homelessness

By Matt Krivich, Assistant Director, The Bowery Mission The Bowery Mission will celebrate its 135th anniversary on the Bowery in 2014, and we’re not standing still. In fact, we are in an exciting season of change and expansion. We recently received a grant to renovate two floors of our men’s residential program at 227 Bowery. The dormitories will be designed to create a deeper sense of community and belonging. Thankfully, we will be able to make these renovations without interrupting the compassionate care services we provide 24 hours a day – serving an average of 600-800 meals a day, and offering clothing, showers, medical

The LessThan-Super Bowl The host city isn’t feeling so grand about the big game in February Could New Yorkers be any more ambivalent about the Super Bowl?

For most American cities, hosting the nation’s biggest sporting event is as good as it gets, in terms of tourist business and overall bragging rights.

Here, we’re shrugging. A number of factors are feeding into the ambivalence. First is the simple fact that the game is being played in New Jersey,

THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 2014

care, and emergency shelter to more than 150 men every night.

We’re also in a neighborhood that is changing and expanding. It seems I get a call every other week from a new restaurant or business in the area, asking how they can help. Last week Whole Foods donated a tractor-trailer load of food – on top of their regular daily donations. We have growing partnerships with neighbors like The New Museum and the General restaurant. Messi Gerami, owner of Heart of Tea, came in for a tour this year and ended up employing two of our graduates.

It takes a village – it takes a city – to really address this issue of homelessness, and we want to create more opportunities to work together in 2014. I hope our neighbors will make a New Year’s resolution to stop by and introduce themselves so we can figure out ways to work together.

New luxury apartments along Central Park stir old debates Living near Central Park has never been for the weak of wallet.

But a gaggle of new, ultra-expensive apartment buildings opening on the south end of the park has rekindled long-simmering debates about the affordability of Manhattan and the role the park plays in the life of the city.

The buildings are astonishing in their price tags and their amentities, “a clutch of preening runway models, super-tall and skinny, the expensive playthings of Russian oligarchs and Chinese tycoons,” according to The New York Times.

These babies include One57, a 90-story tower across from Carnegie Hall where two

penthouses recently sold for a matching $90 million apiece. (This is the same building from which a construction crane dangled during Sandy, terrifying pedestrians and nearby apartment owners.) One block away is the Nordstrom Tower, at 1,424 feet, which is higher than the Freedom Tower without the antenna. Finally, will be the new towers at 111 West 57th Street, which pop up from the courtyard of Steinway Hall.

To hear the real estate brokers tell it, all of the buildings are distinctly special, each bringing a vital new flair to the city.

Many residents, though, have a different spin, especially the park lovers who are now learning that some of the towers will cast deep, dark shadows over the grass throughout a big chunk of the afternoon.

In 2014 New York, this is the shadow of progress.

which for most New Yorkers is enough said.

But then there also is the fact that, this year in particular, the city’s isn’t as football-obsessed as normal, given the meltdowns this year of its two hometown teams. Finally, there is the simple fact that New York City dwellers love to complain -- about traffic jams, street closures (did you hear they’re shutting down Times Square!?), slow-walking tourists.

Ultimately, the game will happen, it may or may not snow, and the city will look terrific on TV. That will be on Sunday, Feb. 2. On Monday, Feb. 3, the streets will be swept clear, the barriers will have magically disappeared, and New Yorkers will have moved on.

OUR TOWN DOWNTOWN

www.nypress.com

PAGE 5

OUT & ABOUT

SHOW OFF YOUR STYLISH PET AND MAKE THEM A CELEBRITY! Jan. 14 is National Dress Up Your Pet Day!

Friday, January 3 Cirque Éloize: Cirkopolis Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, 566 LaGuardia Place 8 p.m. $40 Bursts of color pierce a grey industrialized landscape and awaken one office worker who finds himself propelled on a journey of circus, dance, acrobatics and theater – finding real connections through his fantasies in an isolating factory-city. Positioned at the heart of the renewal of circus arts, like Cirque du Soleil before them, Cirque Éloize has been changing the face of circus and carving out a niche in the growing popularity of the field.

Events.nyu.edu

Saturday, January 4 Asian American Festival Children’s Museum of the Arts, 103 Charlton Street btwn Hudson and Greenwich streets 10-5 p.m. $10 To celebrate the diversity of New York City, CMANY present its sixth annual series of multicultural festivals that celebrate the artistic and cultural traditions of different communities.

Cmany.org

Union Square: Crossroads of New York Union Square Park 2 p.m.

Free With the help of your guide, you will explore the social and political history of the Union Square neighborhood through discussions of the people, history, architecture, and forces that have shaped this community. unionsquarenyc.org

Sunday, January 5 Dressing up in ttutus, t ttuxedos d and d funny f costumes is not just for humans, your furry friends can also show off their stylish side on Jan. 14. Share photos of your pets and we’ll make them a star by printing some of the submissions in the paper. Please include your name, neighborhood and pets’ names.

GO TO: nyspress.com PAGE 6

OUR TOWN DOWNTOWN

‘LA CANTATA DEI PASTORI’The Shepard’s Cantata Theater for the New City,155 First Avenue btwn 9th & 10th streets 5 p.m. $25; $15 children Based on the traditional southern Italian play written by Andrea Perrucci in the 17th century and still performed annually in the city of Naples. This musical version has been adapted and directed by Alessandra Belloni and enacted by masked commedia dell’arte characters, puppets, devils, and the Archangel Gabriel on stilts. Original music by John La Barbera. Narrated in English by La Befana, the

www.nypress.com

Good Witch of Christmas 212.254.1109; theaterforthenewcity.com

DRUMS OF ILLUMINATION Theater for the New City, 155 First Avenue 6 p.m. $25 Alessandra Belloni and I Giullari di Piazza once again join forces with the Silvercloud Native American Singers and Dancers for a performance of Drums of Illumination/Sacred Drumming, a World Peace Celebration.

212-254-1109; theaterforthenewcity.net

Monday, January 6 ENVIRONMENT, PUBLIC SAFETY & PUBLIC HEALTH CB2 CB 2 Conference Room, 3 Washington Square Village 6:30 p.m.

Free Discussion of topics and agenda Items for the coming year.

212-979-2272; Nyc.gov

The Performance Artist The Rubin Museum of Art, 17th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues 7 p.m. $45 Actor Isabella Rossellini + cognitive scientist Diana Reiss. To what extent do animals determine their own actions independently of hard-wired instinct?

Rossellini and Reiss compare notes about their observations how other animals exercise mind over matter by discussing animal

THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 2014

OUT & ABOUT communication, self-awareness, creative play, choice-making and altruistic behavior. rmanyc.org

Tuesday, January 7 Gangs of New York walking tour Broadway & Chambers Street, at the edge of City Hall Park.

1 p.m. $20 Come explore the legends and lore of Five Points and Herbert Asbury’s 1927 classic The Gangs of New York – the inspiration for the film – and learn about the real history of the area. Stops could include: Paradise Square, “Murderer’s Alley�, the African Burial Ground, the lost intersection of Five Points, and sites associated with Bill “the Butcher�

Poole, William M. Tweed, Master Juba, and the 1857 Police and 1863 Draft Riots. bigonion.com

Denby for a conversation on the complicated, tangled history of Hollywood and Hitler. As Europe hurtled toward war, a proxy battle waged in Hollywood over how to conduct business with the Nazis, how to cover Hitler and his victims in the newsreels, and whether to address or ignore Nazism in Hollywood feature films.

92y.org

NYU Silver Building, 32 Waverly Place, Room 408 6:30 p.m.

Free Discussion of topics and agenda Items for the coming year.

212-979-2272; Nyc.gov

Hollywood and Hitler 36 Battery Place 7 p.m. $15 Join Brandeis University professor Thomas Doherty and New Yorker film reviewer David

THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 2014

Is the West Side Fairway Cheaper?

A reader wrote asking why some groceries cost more at the Upper East Side location than the Upper West Side

A

can of Bumble Bee wild Alaskan salmon at the Fairway on East 86th Street is priced at $7.19 a can – but the same exact product is only $5.49 at the Upper West Side Fairway on Broadway and 74th Street.

J. Rubin, a local shopper, wrote to Fairway, and to us, to try to get to the bottom of this discrepancy.

We decided to see for ourselves. We sent a reporter to compare prices for a host of products (see chart) at the West Side and East Side locations. Prices were checked on Thursday, May 23, and do not include any sales or specials.

Here’s what we found: While a few prices were indeed higher on the East Side (Frosted Flakes and Twinning tea will set you

.com STRAUS MEDIA  MANHATTAN PRESIDENT Jeanne Straus ACTING EDITOR Megan Bungeroth • editor.wssp@strausnews.com CITYARTS EDITOR Armond White • editor.cityarts@strausnews.com STAFF REPORTER Joanna Fantozzi

TRAFFIC & TRANSPORTATION Committee CB2 NYU Silver Building, 32 Waverly Place, Room 206 6:30 p.m.

Free Discussion of topics and agenda Items for the coming year.

212-979-2272; Nyc.gov

FEATURED CONTRIBUTORS Alan S. Chartock, Bette Dewing,Jeanne Martinet, Malachy McCourt, Angela Barbuti, Casey Ward, Laura Shanahan PUBLISHER Gerry Gavin • advertising@strausnews.com

West Side East Side

Cheerios

$3.59

Frosted Flakes

CLASSIFIED ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE Stephanie Patsiner DISTRIBUTION MANAGER Joe Bendik

$6.49

$4.99

$4.99

Filet Mignon, per pound

$34.99

$34.99

Veal Cutlet, per pound

$16.99

$16.99

Fairway Organic Dark Roast Coee

$9.99

Twinning English Breakfast Tea

$5.29

$4.99

$4.59

$9.99

$9.99

Bertolli Extra Virgin Olive Oil

$12.99

$12.99

Fairway Cheese Ravioli

$6.99

$6.99

Naked Juice Green Machine

$6.89

Cost: $925

$6.89

Applegate Organic Beef Hot Dogs

$8.49

$8.49

Campbell’s Tomato Soup

$1.69

$1.69

Simply Heinz Ketchup

$4.29

$4.29

Nutella

$3.99

$4.49

TOTAL

$155.91

$158.01

eldman

To subscribe for 1 year, please send $75 to WEST SIDE SPIRIT, c/o Straus News 20 West Ave., Chester, NY 10918

$3.29

$5.29

Chips Ahoy, family size Fairway Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil

osenstein

PREVIOUS OWNERS HAVE INCLUDED: Tom Allon, Isis Ventures, Ed Kayatt, Russ Smith, Bob Trentlion, Jerry Finkelstein

$9.99

$2.99

Oreos Double Stued, family size

eller

Straus Media - Manhattan publishes Our Town • The West Side Spirit • Our Town Downtown Chelsea Clinton News • The Westsider

$7.19

$6.89

Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia

G R F

WEST SIDE SPIRIT is published weekly Copyright Š 2013 Straus Media - Manhattan, LLC 212-868-0190 • 333 Seventh Ave, New York, NY

$4.79

$5.49

Ghiradelli Premium Hot Chocolate

Do you have questions about what’s up in your neighborhood?

Email reporter@ strausnews.com with “What’s Up With That� in the subject line and we’ll investigate some of the most interesting ones.

STUYVESANT, BRONX SCIENCE, BROOKLYN TECH, AMERICAN STUDIES, MATHEMATICS AND ENGINEERING, QUEENS H.S. FOR THE SCIENCES, STATEN ISLAND TECH, AND BROOKLYN LATIN

ADVERTISING MANAGERS Marty Strongin, Matt Dinerstein

$3.59

$4.39

Bumble Bee Wild Alaskan Red Salmon

Preparation classes for the entrance examination for New York City’s SPECIALIZED HIGH SCHOOLS

ASSOCIATE PUBLISHERS Seth L. Miller, Ceil Ainsworth, Kate Walsh

Our summer course begins July 29, 2013 and meets every Monday and Thursday evening until August 29.

Fall courses begin either September 7th or 8th, 2013 Ten 3-hour classes A progress report is sent home to parents each week 6 complete practice exams provided Test taking techniques taught

*5) 7(67 35(3$5$7,21 &/$66(6

&DOO %DUEDUD *HOOHU ‡ %DUU\ )HOGPDQ

.HQ 5RVHQVWHLQ ‡ RU H PDLO XV IRU D EURFKXUH *5)7(6735(3#DRO FRP

WEST SIDE SPIRT

PAGE 4

Product

back a couple extra dimes) there were also a few items more expensive on the West Side, like Chips Ahoy and Ghiradelli hot chocolate.

Many prices, however, were the exact same.

But what about that glaringly high mark-up on the salmon?

Fairway did not respond to our email, but did respond to Rubin’s email, apologizing for what turns out to be a pricing error, which the store said they have since corrected. “The retail for the Bumble Bee Wild Salmon should be $6.49 at our 86th Street location, and $5.99 at Broadway, and these retails were corrected,� said a customer service representative in an email. “The difference in these retails is due to promotional pricing we received from our vendor at our Broadway location. We are sincerely sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused you, and we thank you for bringing this matter to our attention.�

It seems that Fairway is offering a fairly even grocery shopping experience for both the Upper East and West Sides.

www.nypress.com

THURSDAY, MAY 30, 2013

June 2, 2013

May 30, 2013

NY Times Hunter, The Saddest Smartest School Around Elite East side high school ranks last in happiness study

By Adam Janos

H

unter College High School, at 71st East 94th Street, is a school of superlatives. It’s regularly recognized as one of (if not the) most successful public schools in the city and nationwide, and is an ivy feeder, putting its graduates on the fast track to a life amongst the intellectual elite. Now, it’s been saddled with a less-stellar distinction: saddest spot in New York.

A new study by the New England Complex Systems Institute

Madison Square Park, East 23 Street between Madison and Fifth Avenues 11-6 p.m.

Free Throughout his 40-year career, Penone has employed natural materials and forms in an exploration of the contrasting and fundamental relationships between man and nature. He incorporates traces of fingerprints, nails, wires, carvings, and precariously placed boulders as remnant evidence of the sculptures’ manmade composition and the effect of human interaction with the natural world.

Penone addresses concepts of weight, balance, and scale, while merging the manmade and the organic. madisonsquarepark.org

Land use and Development Committee CB8

New York Post WHAT’S UP WITH THAT?

Thursday, January 9

Giuseppe Penone, Ideas of Stone

Wednesday, January 8

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST

.com STRAUS MEDIA ďšş MANHATTAN PRESIDENT Jeanne Straus

released August 20 took a measure of mood in the city using geo-tagged tweets. Twitter users are known for their informal, concise language, and tweets are frequently accented by the use of emoticons like “:)� or “:(“). After researchers established a correlation between the emoticons and the words that would accompany them, they divided all the chosen tweets by location and mapped the city’s mood.

Yaneer Bar-Yam, the study’s principal investigator, notes that high-density traffic spots like the midtown tunnel are associated with more negative emotions, while Central Park and Fort Tyron Park – the peaceful, green lungs of Manhattan – are associated with positive sentiment. “We looked at the locations with strong positive or negative sentiment, and the results are intuitive, which is strong confirmation that we’re doing the right thing,� he said.

And, according to the study, in all of New York City, the most negative place to be is Hunter College High School.

Several Hunter grads rushed to defend the institution. “I had a really great time there,â€? Mynette Louie, an independent film producer from the class of ’93 says. “I wasn’t happy about commuting over an hour to get to school‌ but I had a good time, because I was surrounded by all these smart people‌ it was pretty nerdy, but it was also just fun.â€?

Caroline Friedman, class of ’06, thinks the atmosphere was

EDITOR IN CHIEF ,ZMF 1PQF t FEJUPS PU!TUSBVTOFXT DPN EDITOR .FHBO #VOHFSPUI t FEJUPS PUEU!TUSBVTOFXT DPN CITYARTS EDITOR "SNPOE 8IJUF t FEJUPS DJUZBSUT!TUSBVTOFXT DPN STAFF REPORTERS +PBOOB 'BOUP[[J %BOJFM 'JU[TJNNPOT FEATURED CONTRIBUTORS "MBO 4 $IBSUPDL #FUUF %FXJOH +FBOOF .BSUJOFU .BMBDIZ .D$PVSU "OHFMB #BSCVUJ $BTFZ 8BSE -BVSB 4IBOBIBO PUBLISHER (FSSZ (BWJO t BEWFSUJTJOH!TUSBVTOFXT DPN ASSOCIATE PUBLISHERS 4FUI - .JMMFS $FJM "JOTXPSUI ,BUF 8BMTI ADVERTISING MANAGER .BUU %JOFSTUFJO CLASSIFIED ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE 4UFQIBOJF 1BUTJOFS DISTRIBUTION MANAGER +PF #FOEJL 063 508/ JT QVCMJTIFE XFFLMZ $PQZSJHIU ÂŞ CZ 4USBVT .FEJB .BOIBUUBO --$ t 4FWFOUI "WF /FX :PSL /: 4USBVT .FEJB .BOIBUUBO QVCMJTIFT 0VS 5PXO t 5IF 8FTU 4JEF 4QJSJU t 0VS 5PXO %PXOUPXO $IFMTFB $MJOUPO /FXT t 5IF 8FTUTJEFS To subscribe for 1 year, please send $75 to 063 508/ D P 4USBVT /FXT 8FTU "WF $IFTUFS /: 13&7*064 08/&34 )"7& */$-6%&% 5PN "MMPO *TJT 7FOUVSFT &E ,BZBUU 3VTT 4NJUI #PC 5SFOUMJPO +FSSZ 'JOLFMTUFJO

OUR TOWN

PAGE 4

www.nypress.com

intense, but never cutthroat competitive. “I’m in law school now, and when I was applying I’d hear stories that at some law schools, people will rip out the relevant pages from the library books so other people couldn’t read it.

It was nothing like that,� Friedman says. “At Hunter, there was a lot of cooperation: people were sharing notes, people were copying homework.�

Still, Friedman notes that there was limited sunlight in the classrooms (the students refer to the building itself as “the brick prison�), and advises current Hunter College High School students to, “go to the park during lunch. spend some time in the courtyard.�

Other alumni are less glowing in their reviews of the Hunter community; Sachi Ezura, class of ’04, remembers high school as one of the most difficult times in her life. “One thing I remember, is that everyone would go home and write in their Xanga or their Livejournal [online blogs]. And this one kid, all the popular kids used to pass around his blog‌ people reveled in each others’ sadness.â€?

Ezura herself spent considerable time in the nurse’s office when she would get upset, and she notes that in her class’s yearbook, there’s a drawing of her crying on a page entitled, “A Day in the Life of the Senior Class at Hunter�.

Michelle Kang, class of ’02, thinks a large part of the stress was related to the high pressure of the school combined with the inherent stress of living in New York. “I mean, you think all the typical things American kids get to do in high school: driving around, going to football games‌ I was in the middle of this dense, dirty place, trying to catch a train.â€? Kang has since moved to Seattle, and is getting her master’s degree in architecture.

Still, all Hunter alumni seem to agree that the experience, however painful or enjoyable, was indispensible.

And when asked, all maintain that their closest friends in adulthood are people they met while at Hunter. “I think if people can step away from [the academic pressure] and appreciate that this is the time in your life when you’re surrounded by the most intelligent, special people, that there’s a lot to be gained by that,� Benjamin Axelrod, class of ’02 says. “It’s a really good group.�

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2013

September 25, 2013

September 5, 2013

NY Times cityArts

CELEB

PAGE 18

NYPRESS.COM

t

COMMUNITY NEWS BELOW 14TH STREET t 0$50#&3

P.16

7KH &RQJUHJDWLRQ 9HUVXV WKH &RPPXQLW\

The Nutcracker Rouge Minetta Lane Theatre ,18 Minetta Lane, btwn Sixth Avenue and McDougal Street 8 p.m. $48-$68 Nutcracker Rouge is a sparkling reimagining of the Nutcracker tale told with erotic, sensual and opulent flair. From the director/choreographer Austin McCormick comes a Baroque-Burlesque performance of theatre, dance, and circus . Immerse yourself in a hedonistic display of gorgeous and decadent winter entertainment that includes opera performed by Shelly Watson, text inspired by E.T.A. Hoffman’s The Nutcracker and 19th century poetry. Final run on January 12. nutcrackerRouge.com

OUR TOWN DOWNTOWN

Village Halloween Parade Faces Obstacles in Comeback The Town & Village Synagogue

Churches and synagogues throughout Manhattan are ďŹ nding their ďŹ nancial plans thwarted by preservation eorts

By Megan Bungeroth

I

t’s hard to argue against preserving the city’s historic, soaring monuments to God. Churches and synagogues throughout Manhattan have been targeted by preservation enthusiasts since the city first created the Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1965. They have good reason: without landmark status protection, surely many of these places, which give religious congregations a home and neighborhoods an inimitable character and sense of history, would have been torn down

long ago.

The side not often heard above the rallying cries of well-meaning preservationists, however, is that of the actual church or synagogue members. The landmark process, meant to protect and preserve historical assets that theoretically belong to everyone, can sometimes end up displacing the very people who hold the actual deeds to these properties and destroying the community that resides within the building in order to preserve its facade.

On the Lower East Side, a well-known synagogue is hoping to avoid a landmark designation that some in the community are eager to obtain.

The Town & Village Synagogue on East 14th Street has occupied a building for decades that has been technically calendared (meaning that a vote was already taken to schedule a hearing) by the Landmarks Preservation Commission since 1966, though a hearing was never Continued on page 8

ALSO INSIDE WHAT’S HAPPENING IN HELL SQUARE? P.4

RESTAURANT HEALTH GRADES P.13

After its ďŹ rst cancellation in a three-decade history last year, the parade is struggling to ďŹ nd enough money to raise itself from the dead

By Omar Crespo

T

he Village Halloween Parade has had quite the rough year. Last year, hurricane Sandy left the costumes, floats, and music inoperable. This year, organizers have been forced to turn to Internet crowd funding in hopes of keeping the event going.

Sandy left the parade in dire need of donations and funding, which left its organizers in a state of limbo. Jeanne Fleming, the parade’s head coordinator for the past 33 years, is optimistic the event will come together for this year’s Halloween. “We hope so,� she said.

Because of the unintended shutdown of the parade last year, the event coordinators have had to try and recoup the losses suffered.

The parade committee turned to the popular crowd-sourcing website

Kickstarter, which helps artists fund their creative pursuits through public monetary pledges.

The Kickstarter campaign, which began on September 16, has been slowly making its way to the $50,000 green-light goal. If the full amount isn’t pledged by a October 21 deadline, the parade won’t get any of the funds.

Fleming said that compared to the hundreds of thousands of people who have attended and enthusiastically supported the parade over the decades, “the Kickstarter response has been lukewarm.� As of press time, the campaign had raised $41,975 from 732 backers, and five days left.

The $50,000 collected this year will go to investment insurance for the businesses and individuals who donated last year but did not get a parade.

Before this new digital venture, support for the parade came in the form of sponsorship from companies, businesses and TV licenses, as well as from grassroots-level funding such as children selling cookies or restaurants donating food.

Recently, the Greenwich VillageChelsea Chamber of Commerce, which represents small businesses in the downtown area, announced that the Rudin Family Foundations and the Association for a Better New York will give a $15,000 matching fund if the parade Continued on page 8

October 29, 2013

October 17, 2013

FIRST IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD ourtownny.com

westsidespirit.com

otdowntown.com

(212) 868-0190 www.nypress.com

PAGE 7

Hudson Rising

The Year Ahead

The massive new complex on the West side is coming into view This will be the year the Hudson Yards project takes shape.

The massive real estate-transit-apartment project on the far West side has been buzzing away behind scaffolds for more than a year.

Now, though, elements of the development are starting to become recognizable, and New Yorkers are starting to come to grips with how profoundly the development could change the balance of the city.

The numbers are astonishing: the land itself, from 30th to 34th street and Tenth Avenue to the West Side Highway, is the last remaining big piece of undeveloped property in Manhattan, a swath that had until fairly recently been a no-go zone. But thanks to the unqualified success of the High Line, and the creeping of Hell’s Kitchen west and south, the area is getting a new look, tilting the balance

15 1 The Second Avenue Saga The project won’t end in 2014, though there will be small victories Waiting for Godot plays on Broadway, and Second Avenue subway construction grinds away on the Upper East Side.

Some day, the project will end.

But for 2014, at least look for some quieter disruption in the neighborhood. The MTA announced late last year that it was done with the last of the big tunnel explosions uptown, a relief to residents who have had to acclimate

themselves to constant noise. Local businesses, meantime, have largely either adapted or moved on (as, apparently, have the rats, which once were a menace but now seemed to have found better accommodations elsewhere).

That’s the good news. The bad news is that the project is nowhere close to being done; the MTA’s official projection is that work on the East Side branch (there’s still three more phases in development!) wil be completed by 2016, which likely means some time beyond.

And the street closing and construction noise and truck traffic continue.

And Waiting for Godot? It ends its run on Broadway in March, no matter what.

4 7

of power in midtown Manhattan to the west.

The first tower in the complex, 10 Hudson Yards, will rise fast in 2014. That will be followed by 17 million square feet of commercial and residential space, retail, and a school. The extension of the 7 train arrives next year, as well.

What’s remarkable about the project, at least so far, is a fairly remarkable lack of agita, with the community, with the city, with environmentalists. Could this be a blueprint for a new way forward when it comes to big-idea projects in Manhattan? That may be ambitious, with the final project not expected until 2024.

But it’s a welcome start.

re-use

ways to your old newspaper

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

2

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

5

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

8

10

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

13

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

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

11

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

14

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

3

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

6

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.

9

Make newspaper airplanes and have a contest in the backyard.

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 8

OUR TOWN DOWNTOWN

www.nypress.com

THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 2014

cityArts

Edited by Armond White

New York’s Review of Culture . CityArtsNYC.com

Secret Lives of Walter-Marty Scorsese and Stiller overindulge themselves in two new films

By Armond White

T

he Wolf of Wall Street and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty are the same movie. Both films deal with the ambition of working-class protagonists: Scorsese’s three-hour epic about a kid from The Bronx who becomes a Wall Street titan (Leonardo DiCaprio) charts his aggression through drugs while Ben Stiller’s adaptation of the classic James Thurber story casts himself as a meek Life Magazine photography clerk searching for love and self-confidence through his imagination.

One film’s more interesting than the other, but neither is successful. Both represent filmmakers’ failure to clarify their own ambition or that of their subjects. Stiller’s spoofing (on various genres and cultural attitudes) gets needlessly inflated into a special effects extravaganza. His humor and vision are out-of proportion and misapplied (Thurber’s white-collar envy and resentment don’t easily translate to Occupy-era entitlement) so much so that he totally misses the sweet yearning and self-deprecation that he performed so well in Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums.

Walter Mitty suggests a failed Wes Anderson caprice. In an effort to make his ultimate movie, Stiller’s big-budget opportunity loses the rigor necessary to capture the contradictions of the hipster generation that romanticizes its irreverence and sentimentality (Dave Eggers is their Thurber).

The large scale compositions and hyperrealisitc special effects belong to a superhero comic not a working-man’s thwarted

Ben Stiller in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 2014

desires. (His romance with Kristen Wiig is sappy not sharp.) The milquetoast Mitty figure doesn’t speak to the era of American Idol wannabes; Stiller’s motivation is so schizoid he’s made a magnum opus mumble core film--a debacle as unwieldy, ennervating and unfunny as the most bourgeois, overpriced Hollywood studio epics of yore.

The Wolf of Wall Street is failed Scorsese--and that’s good to the extent it avoids more of his gangster-envy.

Unfortunately, he’s still working with DiCaprio which resembles the overspending, underthinking Stiller.

Scorsese’s DiCaprio-era movies all lack for inspiration which means his moviemaking urge has gotten hollow and out of hand.

The first scene in The Wolf of Wall Street is of a dwarf being tossed at a wall of velcro; the first sound is DiCaprio’s still-pubescent voice as Jordan Belfort Jonah Hill in The Wolf of Wall Street narrating his own life story. This odd-ball opening slight irony, this post-Oliver Stone look at Wall Street avarice immediately marks the film as a personal expression turns unexpectedly, outrageously comic. Belfort’s sins of of Scorsese’s anxieties: His is the self-sentimentalizing voice of success, affluence and decadence are exaggerated and druga dwarf in the Hollywood system--overwhelmed by his own enhanced--expressed in a set-piece where Scorsese (borrowing reputation and advantages. his 60s record collection) stages a dolly-in/dolly-out scan of Relaying the story of Scorsese’s own success and rowdy stock-traders to Jimmy Castor’s raucous 1966 “Hey, compulsiveness, The Wolf of Wall Street is a dreamlike account Leroy, your Mama Callin’ You!”). This is prelude to a couple of decadent self-indulgence during his New York, New Yorkdisproportionate scenes of Belfort’s yacht in a tempest and Hollywood years. The Wall Street setting and Belfort’s actual his domestic life with trophy wife (tk) that climaxes with a life story are pretext. As Pauline Kael once determined, Quaalude binge (“Cerebral Palsy stage,” Belfort says)--a bizarre, “Scorsese is just naturally an Expressionist” and Belfort’s slapstick homage to Michael Powell’s Small Back Room. high-living, boastful cautionary tale becomes the parable of Scorsese’s comic Expressionism differs from the bombast a reprobate (“I love drugs…and money. It makes you a better of his other impersonal DiCaprio films yet due to a script person”) who has shed the Catholic guilt of Mean Streets.

by Terence Winter, writer of that GoodFellas knock-off The The macho excess of Scorsese’s gangster films appears in The Sopranos, it’s still superficial bombast--sarcastic rather than Wolf of Wall Street’s big-budget version funny--despite DiCaprio finally becoming a Marty alter-ego: of Boiler Room, depicting the white the dwarf in velcro with an explosive temper. (Imagine the ethnic “get money” subculture where swagger Paul Walker could have brought to playing Belfort).

Belfort meets his sidekick Donnie Although the personal nature of this film distinguishes it, it’s Azoff (Jonah Hill in a Joe Pecsi role). still disappoints the social consciousness we once expected of Their rise in the industry involves Scorsese and lacks a valuable grasp of pre-Recession culture. gangster-style nerve, deception and David O. Russell’s American Hustle bests this with a closer read cynicism that is aided by drugs as on vulgar aspiration. reward and anesthesia. Belfort calls the Scorsese’s infatuation with profane behavior means The stock market “A real wolf pit, just the Wolf of Wall Street could easily be mistaken for another of his way I like it” and brags about his team’s mobster-training films. This is an ultra-cynical take on Walter wild European excursion “The flight Mitty.

It celebrates Scorsese’s own drug weakness--and Belfort’s there alone was a Bacchanal.” greed--as national tendencies.

No wonder the panorama of At certain points Scorsese’s long faces that ends the movie repeats Jia Zhangke’s Family-of-Man unvarying look at greed and self condemnation in A Touch of Sin. indulgence is stupefying (Walter Mitty on steroids). With none of Mean Follow Armond White on Twitter at 3xchair Street’s contrition or even GoodFella’s

OUR TOWN DOWNTOWN

www.nypress.com

PAGE 9

TV CITYARTS

Lisa Simpson Agonistes How the Hollywood left is driving The Simpsons to the DogsÂ

By Gregory SolmanÂ

I

n a recent episode of The Simpsons, Lisa grows a vestigial tail, ruffled fur, a cold nose and a cocked hat. She’s evolving into Poochie the Dog, a character inserted in a classic-era Itchy & Scratchy cartoon to lampoon desperate, audience-pandering program adjustments.

The now tired comedy—once the best written on television— has put Lisa on a leash and trained her to list left and bark unintelligibly, all in a feckless attempt to stay “relevantâ€? and “edgyâ€? in the face of Family Guy and other prime-time intruders. In classic Simpsonia, Lisa acted closest to creator Matt Groening’s sponsored character, functioning in the psyche of the show as the rational ego negotiating the unbridled id of Homer and squelching super-ego of Marge (who once memorably advised Lisa, “Take all your bad feelings and push them down, all the way down past your knees, until you’re almost walking on them.â€?) More obviously, Lisa was always the smart one, not the useful idiot she’s become in what ought to be the serieseuthanizing Season 25. In a show tellingly titled “The Kid is Alrightâ€?—after the mean-spirited movie commending a lesbian freezeout of males as untrustworthy sperm donors— lonely Lisa recoils at the discovery that a brainy new classmate who shares her love of the Bronte sisters and anagrams is—a gasp—Republican, and thus beneath befriending. What we’re supposed to make of Lisa’s occasional, albeit grudging indulgence of Milhouse Van Houten’s lifelong crush, or George H. W. Bush occasionally living in the neighborhood, is suddenly unfathomable.Â

To be sure, the joke’s often on Lisa, as she’s aghast to learn her parents were Reaganites in the “crazyâ€? ‘80s, and she struggles to tow the P.C. line: In a recent episode the new girl, one Isabel Gutierrez (voiced by Obama supporter Eva Longoria), stands impregnable to attack on all sides, being a “non-observant Argentinian Jewâ€? whose Republicanism can’t even be written off, Lisa despairs, as “a Catholic thing,â€? i.e. anti-abortion. And when pressed to defend FDR in front of classmates, Isabel advances an argument for Roosevelt’s unConstitutional drift as Lisa stammers 2nd grade school book platitudes unworthy of her usual sophistication. But in defending her politics in a class-rep debate against Isabel, writer Tim Long hits bottom, putting infantile words into Lisa’s mouth: Liberal is not a dirty word but “What ‘Liberal’ really means is that those who have more than enough should share a little with those who don’t,â€? Lisa says, “And those principles have consistently been in place during this country’s most prosperous timesâ€? (as in the Great Depression, Lis?). Long might just as well have had Lisa mouth “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.â€? At least that isn’t sugar-coated. (Tim Long is listed as a “consulting producerâ€? this season; one might say we’re in for a Long year.) Plain leftist agitprop has replaced the show’s once ingenious, equitable political equipoise. In an earlier episode called “Labor Pains,â€? Lisa organized the Springfield Atomettes cheerleading squad by orchestrating a strike and spouting pro-union bromides, inspiring them to exploit their sexuality in media properties shown in an end-credit montage. In “Four Regrettings and a Funeralâ€? reporter Kent Brockman refuses to join Fox News in New York because he has “scruples,â€? resolving to return to Springfield where he can decide what the news is, “like a god!â€? MSNBC, the joke of the real news world, is spared biting satire for the sake of guest star Rachel Maddow.  The coffee house radicals running the show now routinely serve up commentary on religion, rancid, bitter and acid.Â

Advertorial

FREE MEDICATION DOSE

Erectile Dysfunction

CHARENEE WADE Vocalist

Clinic Opens in New York STEVE MUELLER Men’s Health Consultant

NEW YORK Ä&#x2020; /RFDO SK\VLFLDQV DW D QHZ PHGLFDO FOLQLF LQ 1HZ <RUN DUH VR VXUH WKHLU PHGLFDWLRQ ZLOO KHOS PHQ ZLWK HUHFWLOH G\V IXQFWLRQ WKH\ DUH RIIHULQJ WKH ILUVW FDOOHUV D IUHH LQ RIILFH PHGLFDWLRQ GRVH (UHFWLOH G\VIXQFWLRQ DQG SUHPDWXUH HMDFX ODWLRQ KDYH ORQJ EHHQ D SUREOHP IRU PLOOLRQV RI PHQ LQ VSLWH RI WKH SRSXODULW\ RI 9LDJUD &LDOLV DQG /HYLWUD 0DQ\ PHQ DUHQÂśW KHOSHG E\ WKHVH SLOOV RU FDQQRW WDNH WKHP GXH WR DGYHUVH VLGH HIIHFWV 1HZ <RUN 0HQÂśV 0HGLFDO &OLQLF FXVWRP EOHQGV RYHU FRPELQDWLRQV RI PHGL FDWLRQV IRU HDFK SDWLHQW Âł7KDWÂśV ZK\ RXU VXFFHVV UDWH LV VR KLJK ´ VD\V 'U .HYLQ +RUQVE\ 0 ' DQG DXWKRU RI WKH ERRN Âł$ 'RFWRUÂśV *XLGH WR (UHFWLOH '\VIXQFWLRQ ´ Âł:H KHOS PHQ DV ROG DV QLQHW\ IRXU ZLWK GLDEHWHV SURVWDWH VXUJHU\ DQG KHDUW FRQ GLWLRQV 5HJDUGOHVV RI WKHLU DJH RU PHGLFDO KLVWRU\ RXU UHVXOWV HYHU\GD\ DUH DPD]LQJ ´ $OO PHGLFDWLRQV DUH )'$ DSSURYHG DQG QR VXUJHU\ LV LQYROYHG Âł:H DGMXVW WKH SUHVFULS WLRQ IRU D PDQÂśV SHUIRUPDQFH WR PLQXWHV

DQ KRXU PLQXWHV RU ORQJHU ´ DFFRUGLQJ WR 'U +RUQVE\ ´ DQG SDWLHQWV VHH UHVXOWV ULJKW LQ RXU RIILFH $IWHU FOLPD[ WKH SDWLHQW VWD\V HUHFW WKH HQWLUH SHULRG RI WLPH 7KLV DOORZV WKHP WR DFKLHYH D VHFRQG FOLPD[ DQG DGHTXDWHO\ VDWLVI\ WKHLU SDUWQHU 1R RWKHU PHGLFDWLRQ FDQ GR WKLV :H RIIHU D VLPSOH JXDUDQWHH ,I \RX GRQœW UHVSRQG WR WKH PHGLFDWLRQ RQ WKH ILUVW YLVLW WKH RIILFH YLVLW LV IUHH ´ :LWK WKDW JXDUDQWHH ORFDO SDWLHQWV KDYH QRWKLQJ WR ORVH 2SHQLQJV DUH ILOOLQJ TXLFNO\ IRU WKH IUHH LQ RIILFH PHGLFDWLRQ GRVH DIWHU WKDW WKH QRUPDO IHHV ZLOO EH FKDUJHG 3DWLHQWV VHH D OLFHQVHG 1HZ <RUN SK\VLFLDQ DQG DUH DVVXUHG RI XWPRVW SULYDF\ DQG SURIHVVLRQ DOLVP ZLWK SULYDWH ZDLWLQJ URRPV DQG DQ DOO PDOH VWDII )XUWKHU LQIRUPDWLRQ LV DYDLODEOH E\ FDOOLQJ (917) 267-5895.

1HZ <RUN 0HQÂśV 0HGLFDO &OLQLF %URDGZD\ WK )ORRU 1HZ <RUN 1< LQ 0LGWRZQ )ODWLURQ 'LVWULFW DW : WK 6W EHWZHHQ WK WK $YH DFURVV IURP 0DGLVRQ 6TXDUH 3DUN )RU SDWLHQWV PRUH WKDQ PLOHV DZD\ WKH GRFWRU ZLOO SD\ \RXU JDV www.NYMensClinic.com

live nightly. swing by tonight jalc.org / dizzys 7:30pm & 9:30pm sets 212-258-9595 Jazz at Lincoln Center Broadway at 60th Street, 5th Floor, NYC

Liberal Lisa and Conservative Longoria Since at least the 17th season, when an episode demonstrated a firm grasp of 19th century thinking in erecting and tearing apart the straw man of creationism, the show has been mired in illiberal imbalance on Christianity (and, for the most part, Christianity alone). A recent visual joke had Bart and Milhouse forming a tall man out of Reverend Lovejoyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s religious garb, Milhouseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bulbous nose forming the shape of an erect penis wandering inside the trousersâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;an unthinkably crude reference for a series that once had sensibility and taste. Producer James L. Brooks has either lost control of the show or the genius of the comedy, which used to zing around the political spectrum faster than the speed of resentment. In either case, Brooks should no more have Lisa paraphrasing Marx than Mary Richards angrily burning her bra.   New episodes make a half-hearted effort at balance, but the weightâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s straining one side. In an earlier day, no sooner had the show made fun of Ned Flandersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; religiosity than he could simply remind God of his supplicantâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s favor to get that last bowling pin to miraculously drop. A 1998 episode slid fluidly from cult deprogramming (with Montgomery Burns the Leader demanding worship as a New God) into unmistakable Communist critique, replete with American gulag. Flanders, on the deprogramming team, tries to win back Homer by offering him beer (in angry defeat, he resolves to tap too much foam); Marge tries to get the kids to abandon the cult with her own materialist lie, â&#x20AC;&#x153;hover bikesâ&#x20AC;? that are, alas, Huffies suspended from fishing lines. A modern show with the old sensibility would surely have fastened upon the cult of Obama, though itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s possible mere satire canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t top the spectacle of school children being brainwashed into singing a version of â&#x20AC;&#x153;Jesus Loves the Little Children:â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;Barack Hussein Obamaâ&#x20AC;ŚHmm, hmm, hmm!...He said red, yellow, black or whiteâ&#x20AC;Śall are equal in his sight!â&#x20AC;? (To paraphrase a triumphal Edward G. Robinson, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Whoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s your Messiah now?â&#x20AC;?) But to treat Lisa as a cipher is unforgivably grotesque, as transparent and cynical as Obamaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s reelection-agitprop, â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Life of Julia,â&#x20AC;? the animated story of how an American woman canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t go a single day in her life without one of Mother Governmentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wonderful, life-sustaining programs. In â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Kids Are Alright,â&#x20AC;? Lisa is completely dependent from cradle to grave on, as Lisa might say, â&#x20AC;&#x153;those who have more than enough.â&#x20AC;? The Simpsons always had liberal tendencies. CartoonistCreator Matt Groening put any doubts to rest when he denied the U.S. Air Forceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s request to use Bartâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s image as nose art, declaring that Bart was against war until he could start one himselfâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the Democrat position in a nutshell. And in the new life of Lisa, liberalism is but another species of Marxism. But Springfield was always a town everyone could recognize and imagine living in. Now itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s just another intolerant suburb of Hollywood.Â

Photo by Marylene Mey and Whit Lane

%RDUG &HUWLILHG 8URORJLVW HQGRUVHG

PAGE 10

OUR TOWN DOWNTOWN

www.nypress.com

THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 2014

CITYARTS BOOKS

CITYARTS FILM

Pynchon Soup for Dangling Dylan the Postmodern Soul Visionary author takes the modern world to the Bleeding Edge

By Ben Kessler

I

n his new novel Bleeding Edge, Thomas Pynchon uses the word “postmodern” for the first time in his fiction – a notable event in the career of this supposed American postmodern novelist par excellence. The word crops up in a few places, including a description of a Soho nightclub bathroom containing “the godfather of postmodern toilets…with three dozen stalls, its own bar, television lounge, sound system, and deejay.”

For Pynchon, ever the excremental visionary, it’s a peerless expression of satiric disgust. Postmodernism has no boundaries, no sense of the sacred. It fecklessly mingles excrement with entertainment.

Pynchon makes postmodernism’s insufficiencies the subject of Bleeding Edge, the surface plot of which focuses on unlicensed fraud investigator Maxine Tarnow’s efforts to untangle an apparent conspiracy surrounding dotcom-era tycoon Gabriel Ice and his shadowy company hashslingrz.com. The year is 2001, 9/11 waiting in the wings for the first 300 pages or so; the setting (mostly) Manhattan; and the plot (for this reader, anyway) absolutely impenetrable.

I have every confidence Bleeding Edge’s story would make sense, if one could slow the surprisingly sprightly (for a 76-year-old) arm that keeps cranking out noirish revelations and low-comic digressions. But the novel’s pace, which makes hash of conventional detective-novel plotting, helps Pynchon focus the reader’s attention where he wants it: on Maxine. We’re forced to admire and analyze how Bleeding Edge’s protagonist manages, with some difficulty, to keep her head despite the postmodern blur around her.

The blur extends beyond the book’s plot to the personalities that surround Maxine, almost all of whom are archetypal New York neurotics and selfstereotypers. From Jew to WASP to Italian-American, nearly all the supporting characters play to the hilt the roles selected for them in Manhattan’s ethnic drama, skewed

by Pynchon into comedy. And as capitalism, in the form of greedy property developers, lays waste to New York’s tangible history, these characters’ desperate self-parodies increasingly have nothing to refer to, no roots in the streets.

After 9/11, most of Pynchon’s people implode, getting lost in paranoid conspiracy theories or seeking solace in the “Deep Web,” an underground internet space rapidly coming to resemble the “surface Web” its nerd-snob denizens disdain. By contrast, the massacre causes Maxine to come into her own. Bleeding Edge’s last hundred pages attain a moral beauty unprecedented in Pynchon, as Maxine’s compassion deconstructs Gabriel’s conspiracy (the details of which are unimportant) strut by strut. To find comparable heroism in the oeuvre, you’d have to reach back more than 50 years to the post-Beat stories (e.g., “Entropy”) with which Pynchon began his writing career. But Bleeding Edge isn’t constrained by the young Pynchon’s Bomb-era post-adolescent despair.

Instead, a millennial strain of that same despair becomes what Maxine ministers to in the “whole sick crew” (pace V.) she meets in the ‘hood.

Pynchon explicitly connects Maxine’s morality to her “old yenta instincts,” her deep-seated ethnic penchant for benevolent, if unsolicited, intervention. This Jewish mother offers chicken soup for the postmodern soul.

Her culturally determined traits comprise her free will (or, as academics would say, her “agency”), and that’s the contradictory key to Pynchon’s conception of identity. Pynchon is most concerned with identifiers that reside “beyond the zero” (pace Gravity’s Rainbow), in human impulses and responses that long outlive the conditions that gave rise to them.

It takes decades, if not centuries, of oftentraumatic history to forge a Self.

The Coens examine Pop and Self

By Armond White

W

hen an apparition of Bob Dylan appears in Inside Llewyn Davis, it underscores the Coen Oscar Isaac as Llewyn Davis Brothers’ abiding ambivalence about Jewish tradition (which made A Serious Man their Jewishness. Dylan, the oracular popextraordinary) but as a series of beautifullystar-prophet -outsider from Minnesota tooled, second-hand motifs. (like the Coens) represents an advance Here, the Coens revisit the untrustworthy on mainstream culture and power that pop culture of Barton Fink and the Jewish troubles the Coen Brothers’ fascination with paranoia of A Serious Man. Combined, they American character. question the ethics of American pop culture Inside Llewyn Davis is the latest goand the neediness of Jewish artists. Been round for these clever lads’ interest in there, atoned for that. the agonies of personal identity amidst a Fans and critics who are familiar with heartless society not entirely their own. the Coens will overrate these details.

Llewyn (Oscar Isaacs), a dark, curly-haired Problem is, Inside Llewyn Davis (with the folksinger in 1961 New York City, is barely lament “Where is its scrotum?!!” and jokey over the suicide of his singing partner. He’s references to Disney’s The Incredible Journey) economically strapped, homeless, living off question Jewish alienation superficially. patronizing friends and virtually begging for HBO’s Flight of the Conchords was a more a solo recording career while also bootytrenchant display of outsiders’ music begging for understanding from a free-spirit biz alienation. But Oscar Isaac’s Llewyn, Greenwich Village girl (Cary Crybaby with his Hoffman-Pacino whine, seems Mulligan) he might have impregnated. disconnected from his own singing and Knocking at the door of WASPlacks the great feeling he showed in his role Americana--the 50s-60s folk-music as the remorseful pop star in the high school craze—Welsh-Italian Llewyn is a modern reunion film Ten Years.

Wandering Jew who, like Dylan, dare not Critics who cluelessly praise T-Bone speak his ethnicity (his name is a Welsh Burnett’s musical production ignore creation like Dylan’s chosen’s moniker).

Burnett’s drab musicianship. The musical The Coens cutely symbolize Llewyn’s banality of Inside Llewyn Davis is its greatest rootlessness in his constant chasing after a problem--impersonal, apolitical folk friends’ runaway Calico cat named Ulyssesmusic. Llewyn, a modern version of Saul -more cuteness evoking the Homeric Bellow’s Dangling Man--searching for his wandering of the Coens’ O Brother Where place in society and the universe, dangling Art Thou? While that 2001 film was a between expectation and reality--really is surprising rich excursion into country less talented than his deeply envied WASP music culture and America’s racial legacy, competitor GI Troy Nelson (Stark Sands) Inside Llewyn Davis offers no surprises. It’s who has the unfathomable gift of connecting more solemn than funny. to listeners.

This is a thornier problem than simply Inside Llewyn Davis doesn’t connect. The the Coens’ self-pleasing sarcasm, their Coens are facetious about Llewyn’s personal intellectual narcissism. They’re not clever crisis. That’s why the movie ends the same by half; it’s second nature to these new era way as Philip Kaufman’s The Wanderers with movie brats. But the self-pleasing selfDylan revolutionizing Jews’ and the world’s indulgence may offer less meaning in itself selfconsciousness. The slick, talented Coens than it does to them and their fans. That may please fans who are already familiar eye-wink title, Inside Llewyn Davis, refers with their habits but, sadly, for gifted, witty to his non-selling solo debut album (he film artists, the Coens’ Inside Llewyn Davis stashes a milk crate full of the vinyl discs says nothing new. at a friend’s apartment) as well as a teasing exploration of his soul. Problem is, Llewyn’s Follow Armond White on Twitter at “soul” is shown without the insight into 3xchair

Pynchon’s newest novel THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 2014

OUR TOWN DOWNTOWN

www.nypress.com

PAGE 11

RESTAURANT INSPECTION RATINGS

December 19 - 24, 2013

Iron Sushi

212 East 10 Street

Not Graded Yet (27) Raw, cooked or prepared food is adulterated, contaminated, crosscontaminated, or not discarded in accordance with HACCP plan. Food not protected from potential source of contamination during storage, preparation, transportation, display or service. Food contact surface not properly washed, rinsed and sanitized after each use and following any activity when contamination may have occurred.

The Central Bar

109 East 9 Street

Grade Pending (32) Hot food item not held at or above 140º F. Cold food item held above 41º F (smoked fish and reduced oxygen packaged foods above 38 ºF) except during necessary preparation. Live roaches 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.

Grade Pending (21) Evidence of mice or live mice present in facility’s food and/or nonfood areas. Filth flies or food/refuse/sewageassociated (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.

New Andy’s Deli

873 Broadway

A

A

Sigiri

91 1 Avenue

A

22 St Marks Place

A

Restaurant Grades The following listings were collected from the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s website on December 13, 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.

Long Island Bagel Cafe

Multi Tastes Diner

125 Fulton Street

23 St James Place

Gino’s Pizza

81 Catherine Street Grade Pending (2)

Waga

Blossom

187 9 Avenue

Grade Pending (28) Hot food item not held at or above 140º F. Evidence of mice or live mice present in facility’s food and/or nonfood areas. Sanitized equipment or utensil, including in-use food dispensing utensil, improperly used or stored.

Pyramid

101 Avenue A

A

Blk Mkt

110 Avenue A

A

Happy Wok

175 Avenue C

A

Istanbul Grill

310 West 14 Street

A

Spice Market

29-35 9 Avenue

A

Chelsea Papaya

171 West 23 Street

A

Tokyo Tapas Cafe

7 Cornelia Street

Not Graded Yet (6)

Le Pain Quotidien

52 9 Avenue

A

Hudson Diner

468 Hudson Street

Pie Face

169 West 23 Street

Not Graded Yet (16) Evidence of rats or live rats present in facility’s food and/or nonfood areas. Sanitized equipment or utensil, including in-use food dispensing utensil, improperly used or stored.

Juke Bar

196 2 Avenue

A

Blue 9 Burger

92 3 Avenue

Grade Pending (5)

Laut

15 East 17 Street

Grade Pending (12) Food from unapproved or unknown source or home canned. Reduced oxygen packaged (ROP) fish not frozen before processing; or ROP foods prepared on premises transported to another site.

Grade Pending (27) Cold food item held above 41º F (smoked fish and reduced oxygen packaged foods above 38 ºF) except during necessary preparation. Appropriately scaled metal stem-type thermometer or thermocouple not provided or used to evaluate temperatures of potentially hazardous foods during cooking, cooling, reheating and holding. Evidence of mice or live mice present in facility’s food and/or nonfood areas.

The Spring Lounge

48 Spring Street

A

Bequ Juice

350 East 9 Street

Not Graded Yet (8)

Pho Seng

174 2 Avenue

Grade Pending (28) Food from unapproved or unknown source or home canned.

Reduced oxygen packaged (ROP) fish not frozen before processing; or ROP foods prepared on premises transported to another site. Evidence of mice or live mice present in facility’s food and/or non-food areas. Live roaches present in facility’s food and/or nonfood areas. Tobacco use, eating, or drinking from open container in food preparation, food storage or dishwashing area observed.

Mee Noodle Shop

PAGE 12

223 1 Avenue

Not Graded Yet - No violations were recorded at the initial non-operational pre-permit inspection conducted on 12/23/2013, or violations cited were dismissed at an administrative hearing.

OUR TOWN DOWNTOWN

V-Bar And Cafe

225 Sullivan Street

A

Fiat Cafe

203 Mott Street

A

Cafetal Social Club

285 Mott Street

A

Dunkin’ Donuts

72 West 3 Street

A

Boqueria

171 Spring Street

A

Toloache

205 Thompson St

A

Morini

218 Lafayette Street A

Thelma On Clinton

29 Clinton Street

A

Ghost

132A Eldridge Street

A

Xing Wong Bbq

89 East Broadway

Not Graded Yet (2)

Douma Pizza

11 Stanton Street

Not Graded Yet (12) Evidence of rats or live rats present in facility’s food and/or non-food areas. Evidence of mice or live mice present in facility’s food and/or non-food areas.

www.nypress.com

THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 2014

NEIGHBORHOOD REAL ESTATE SALES

STREET SHRINK

Reported December 23 - 29, 2013 Neighborhood

Address

Apt.

Sale Price

BR BA Listing Brokerage

Battery Park Cit

30 W St.

#31B

$1,690,000

2

2

Rozencwaig Realty

0

1

Corcoran

Brooklyn Chelsea

E Village

Financial Distric

#1A

$550,000

212 W 18 St.

#10B

$9,418,812

201 W 21 St.

#8D

$400,000

305 W 16Th St.

#Res

$699,000

345 W 14 St.

#Phb

$6,236,781

21 E 1 St.

#Iu

$10

21 E 1 St.

#Iu

$10

21 E 1 St.

#Iu

$10

21 E 1 St.

#Iu

$10

425 E 13 St.

#4P

$944,000

1

1

Nestseekers

50 Ave. A

#2D

$845,000

2

2

Halstead Property

425 E 13 St.

#5F

$749,000

1

1

Town Residential

15 Broad St.

#1508

$725,000

0

1

B.H. Tal Real Estate

55 Wall St.

#508

$1,250,000

1

2

Corcoran

75 Wall St.

#31N

$980,000

1

1

Charles Rutenberg

20 W St.

#19G

$870,000 1

1

Corcoran

123 Washington St.

#35F

$1,364,455

Flatiron

16 W 16 St.

#2Rs

$819,000

105 5 Ave.

#7B

$2,550,000

2

2

Sotheby’s International

Fulton/Seaport

99 John St.

#1210

$784,052

1

1

Nestseekers

Gramercy Park Greenwich Villa

Lower E Side Noho Soho

Tribeca

Two Bridges W Chelsea W Village

295 3 Ave.

#4B

$230,000

45 Gramercy Park N

#14A

$4,100,000

26 E 10 St.

#8E

$525,000

0

1

Corcoran

177 Thompson St.

#1

$395,000

1

1

Douglas Elliman

77 Bleecker St.

#530

$950,000

1

1

Douglas Elliman

1

1

Halstead Property

30 E 9 St.

#3E

$802,500

570 Grand St.

#J1702

$440,000

575 Grand St.

#F1504

$620,000

2

1

Fenwick Keats Real Estat

25 Bond St.

#4E

$9,369,900

3

4

Corcoran

22 Renwick St.

#5B

$1,603,743

2

2

Brown Harris Stevens

22 Renwick St.

#2B

$1,760,000

2

2

Brown Harris Stevens

131 Thompson St.

#2F

$785,000

2

1

Douglas Elliman

14 Wooster St.

#2

$4,750,000

22 Renwick St.

#6A

$1,715,751

2

2

Brown Harris Stevens

37 Warren St.

#4C

$2,869,428

3

2

Corcoran

69 Murray St.

#Ph

$2,890,000

3

2

Brown Harris Stevens

2

2

Corcoran

37 Warren St.

#2B

$1,618,508

257 Clinton St.

#P2

$830,000

455 W 20 St.

#4B

$3,721,703

3

3

Corcoran

455 W 20 St.

#4E

$6,420,066

3

3

Corcoran

1 Morton Square

#3Dw

$3,050,000

396 Bleecker St.

#F

$465,000

0

1

Harris Veilson Real Estat

43 Clarkson St.

#2A

$4,120,000

43 Clarkson St.

#3A/4A

$6,180,000

421 Hudson St.

#617

$2,846,008

StreetEasy.com is New York’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 world’s most important real estate markets.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 2014

OUR TOWN DOWNTOWN

Q: Do New Year’s resolutions really work?

–Christina, engineer, NYC A: A new year. A tabula rasa. The blank slate which populates our mind’s eye each impending year offers a chance for a rebirth. We can eradicate nasty habits and accrue helpful ones. All it takes are some cognitive tactics. So, the answer to whether resolutions work is simple, but the explanation is more complex. Overall, yes, New Year’s resolutions work if you want them to work. But in order to graduate from goals you scribble in your Moleskine journal that never materialize to fully formed new habits, there are certain steps you must take.

Psychologists at Duke University define habits as a learned proclivity to repeat previous behaviors. Researchers who study habit formation have found that nearly half of habits experienced are repeated in the same physical contexts each day. However, these behaviors become automatic when there is an association between the context and response, as well as underlying goals.

This means that goals will become automatic responses once you deem them successful and follow through in the same physical location or context for a finite period of time.

When creating goals for us in the New Year, what’s important to keep in mind is specificity and ease of obtainment. Create a list of specific goals so that there is no room for gray. If you say you want to become a fit person in the New Year, this leaves ample room for assessment on what deems a person physically fit. You should, instead, create goals that have concrete definitions attached such as “I want to run 3 miles a day.” Cognitive psychologists also state that “framing effects” greatly impact the way we form decisions and formulate goals. Framing effects are when we use a benchmark or reference point as a way to appraise our current situation. So depending on your current situation, you perceive outcomes as either gains or losses.

Framing effects can actually help when creating goals for the New Year. If you’re evaluating the New Year as a blank slate,

www.nypress.com

then any goal achieved should be evaluated as a gain in this context. Framing effects can also change with time so that when we change the description of a situation, this will lead to adopting different points of reference. Thus, once we’ve achieved our goals up to a particular point—say, you’ve run your 3 miles a day for 3 months in the same physical location—you might hit a ceiling. You might think you have nothing left to achieve because your reference point was now 0.

However, now you have the opportunity to change your reference point to 3 miles and should evaluate future physical goals from that starting point. One simple cognitive description could lead to a whole new set of goals. Another method for delineating goals in the New Year is to hold yourself accountable. With technology these days there’s no excuse for not clearly defining your specific goals and recording your progress. Return to your recordings to see how far you’ve come and use this to influence your framing effect.

Another example is if you want to eat healthier in the new year, make one small change. In psychology, chaining is when small acts eventually accumulate into long-term benefits. For instance, we all know that refined flour is bad for us, yet we’re New Yorkers and we can’t bear to give up our bagel and coffee. Switch out the everything bagel for a whole wheat bagel.

Making changes that seem miniscule will ripple or chain into long-term changes so that eventually, refined flour is completely eradicated from your diet. What’s important to remember is the power your cognitions play in decision making. Repeat simple mantras to yourself and know that only you have the ability to chain positive behaviors and re-define your framing effect so that the New Year brings you health and happiness.

Kristine Keller received her Master’s in psychology from New York University.

PAGE 13

PROFILE

Sweet & Spicy, From Manhattan Via India A home chef is whipping up artisanal, Indian-infused chocolates from her East Village apartment

By Valentina Cordero Pragati Sawhnei flashes a deep smile as she gets ready to make chocolate in the kitchen of her East Village apartment.

She stands barefoot in front of a table piled with flower and fruit extracts. She puts the chocolate chips in a saucepan and sets them on the fire, occasionally stirring. Once the chips melt, she pours the chocolate on a marble counter and spreads

PAGE 14

it with a plastic spatula.

Her home smells like chocolate and her dress is no longer white.

Sawhnei tastes the chocolate obsessively with a little spoon, before adding some secret ingredients, which differ depending on the batch. She wakes up everyday thinking about a new flavor and how she could combine chocolate with exotic products. Chocolate, for her, has to be an elegant creation.

“I always wanted to be someone that does something creative,” she said.

Sawhnei, 38, splits her time between New York and her native Vasant Kunj, India, where last year she started her own online chocolate business: Chockriti. Choc stands for chocolate. Kriti means work of art in Sanskrit.

Sawhnei’s background is not in the culinary arts. She has a bachelor’s degree in Dentistry and a master’s in Public Health. She also did a semester at Columbia University Business School. But her passion for chocolate proved greater than her desire to become a dentist.

“I explored the world of chocolate,” she said. “Being in public health, I thought that I should have created something healthy.”

In 2011, after finishing her studies, she returned to India. She enrolled in a chocolatemaking class. She also experimented at home on her own, trying to transform chocolate into a work of edible art.

Sawhnei worked on developing rich flavors with natural ingredients. “A lot of commercial chocolate uses butter and syrup,” she noted.

So far, she’s created 30 flavors of chocolate, including orange blossom (pure orange extract blended with California almonds and dark chocolate) and Jasmine green tea (organic Jasmine and green tea leaves brewed in fresh cream).

“I like to experience different feelings,” Sawhnei said. “ I always ask myself: ‘What am I doing?’ It is a matter of taste.”

Her chocolate – 12 pieces cost $20 and 16 run $25 – is gluten and alcohol free with no compound chocolate, artificial ingredients or added milk. She uses 100 percent cocoa beans.

Every piece is handmade with ingredients imported, variously, from India, France, Great Britain, Japan and the Arab world.

Sawhnei, who sells about 20 boxes of chocolate

OUR TOWN DOWNTOWN

www.nypress.com

a month, isn’t making a living from her labor-intensive business yet. It usually takes her three to four days to prepare batches of 16 different flavors, whether she’s working out of her New York apartment or back home in India.

“As an Indian girl from traditional parents, I live at home with them. When I am in New York, I live with my brother and sister,” she said. “I want to continue this beautiful chocolate journey and I am waiting to get this venture profitable.”

Taran Dhanju, a medical technologist who has known Sawhnei since childhood, settled in Toronto in 1992. She reconnected with Sawhnei - and found out about Chockriti on Facebook last year.

“Sometimes, I taste her experiments, like the chocolate cupcake, which is not really a cake but a chocolate,” she said.

Chungwon Kim, a holistic health counselor, is another fan.

“When I think about Pragati’s chocolate, I get goose bumps,” she said. “She has a brilliant mind.”

Sawhnei is working toward selling her chocolates in stores and opening her own shop. She also hopes to have a social impact in India, where she’s hired three women to help her make chocolate. She believes that teaching them chocolatemaking skill could help change their lives.

“In the future, I would like to hire more Indian women, giving them the opportunity to learn how to run a business,” she said.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 2014

CLASSIFIEDS POLICY NOTICE: We make every effort to avoid mistakes in your classified ads. Check your ad the first week it runs. We will only accept responsibility for the first incorrect insertion.

Manhattan Media Classifieds assumes no financial responsibility for errors or omissions.

We reserve the right to edit, reject, or re-classify any ad. Contact your sales rep directly for copy changes. All classified ads are pre-paid.

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

ATT DOG OWNERS: Never run out of poop bags again. Free Shipping! www.walkingdoggies.com HELP WANTED

Drivers Wanted Looking to earn some extra money? If youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re reliable, have a valid drivers license/insurance and are available overnight Wednesdays we need your help delivering this newspapers. We pay $.85 per stop.

Call (212)868-0190 and ask for Helen today.

REACH

MANHATTAN + â&#x20AC;&#x153;THE BURBSâ&#x20AC;?

HOME IMPROVEMENTS

On site furniture repair, antiques, kitchen cabinets-new or repair, etc. Full reďŹ nishing in shop. Wood, leather, upholstery. Custom Furniture made from solid American wood.

FURNITURE MEDIC (212)470-3850

The â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Only Another Beerâ&#x20AC;?

Black and Tan

Manhattan

PA

NY NJ

TARGET JUST THE AUDIENCE YOU WANT

MASSAGE

Massage by Emerita (212)288-9132

are now part of

STRAUSNEWS

PAINT & WALLPAPER

SABBY PAINTING (917) 837-0811 Interior/Exterior Free Estimates Affordable Prices licensed & insured SERVICES OFFERED

SENSUAL BODYWORK young, handsome, smooth, athletic Asian. InCall/OutCall.

Phillip. 212-787-9116

Award winning weekly newspapers blanketing towns in the NY-NJ-PA border

strausnews.com

Call your account executive today (212)

Home Services PAINTING

SABBY PAINTING Interior/Exterior Free Estimates AďŹ&#x20AC;ordable Pricing

Happy Holidays Licensed & Insured

:H DUH D SURXG PHPEHU RI WKH $VVRFLDWHG 3UHVV DQG WKH 1DWLRQDO 1HZVSDSHU $VVRFLDWLRQ

868-0190

To advertise call (212)-868-0190 Classified2@strausnews.com

To Include Your Business Call Susan 212-868-0190

8 oz. pilsner lager 8 oz. stout lager 1 frosty mug 1 icy road 1 pick-up truck 1 10-hour day 1 tired worker A few rounds with the guys Mix ingredients.

Add 1 totalled vehicle.

Never underestimate â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;just a few.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Buzzed driving is drunk driving.

(917) 837-0811 THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 2014

OUR TOWN DOWNTOWN

www.nypress.com

PAGE 15

nyp.org/lowermanhattan

PAGE 16

OUR TOWN DOWNTOWN

www.nypress.com

THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 2014