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WEEK OF SEPTEMBER
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10-16 2015
CLINIC’S CLOSURE CALLED SHORT-SIGHTED
Our Take THE POPE’S NEW YORK MOMENT
Activists say city efforts don’t meet demand, need for services BY DANIEL FITZSIMMONS
Activists in Chelsea have declared their own health emergency, an outcome, they say, of the inadequacy of city-sanctioned efforts to ease the fallout from the March closure of an STD clinic that served many in the neighborhood’s LGBT community. The AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power and the Treatment Action Group, two prominent AIDS and health advocacy groups, held an emergency town hall meeting on Sept. 2 to draw attention to what they say is a steep drop-off in testing and treatment for AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. According to the coalition, visits to STD clinics are down 18 percent citywide since a planned twoto three-year closure of the Chelsea clinic at Ninth Avenue and 28th Street. The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene said the clinic would be closed for renovations. In the meantime they’re directing patients 70 blocks north to the Riverside Health Clinic on West 100th Street. Other mitigation efforts include parking a mobile rapid testing van for syphilis and HIV outside the closed clinic and the introduction of three sexual behavior health sites at nearby health centers. But activists said the city failed to give any advance warning and their temporary mitigation efforts are unequal to the task. “We found out essentially that there had been no publicizing of the closing of the clinic,” said Jeremiah Johnson, a research and policy coordinator with
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The famed Hotel Chelsea on West 23rd Street between 7th and 8th avenues. Photo: Raanan Geberer
DOWN BY THE OLD HOTEL The Chelsea, a landmark home of the arts, now in flux BY RAANAN GEBERER
“I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel,” begins the famous song “Chelsea Hotel Number 2” by Leonard Cohen, about a sexual encounter with the late Janis Joplin. In its heyday, which lasted almost a century, the hotel was famous as a home for writers, musicians and artists, many of whose names are on plaques that grace the outside of the elaborate red-brick structure on 23rd Street
between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. Today, the hotel is in a state of flux. Signs in the lobby announce that the hotel is now closed and forbid people from taking photographs. A look from across the street into the windows reveals that construction work is under way. Even the sign hanging from one of the rooms that you saw a few years ago that bore the legend “Bring Back the Bards” (longtime managers of the hotel) is gone now. The colorful artwork that once adorned the lobby is also gone,
although the restaurant El Quixote, a mainstay of the hotel since 1930, remains. To understand the Chelsea Hotel (formally known as the Hotel Chelsea), you need to go back to the beginning. The landmarked structure was built in the mid-1880s as an early housing co-op, and was then the tallest building in the city. At that time, 23rd Street was the center of the city’s theater district. However, the co-op went bankrupt in 1905,
Never have the man, the message, and the moment been better aligned than in this month’s visit to New York by Pope Francis. At a time when New Yorkers, like many other Americans, are wrestling with homelessness, immigration and income inequality, along comes Francis, with pitch-perfect timing, to take them all on. The pope, who not only has never been to the Big Apple but whose aides have admitted he hasn’t had much interest, is determined not to waste the moment: his itinerary pretty much bypasses the Manhattan types who tend to swoon at big celebrity, and focuses instead on New Yorkers who have found themselves on the losing end of the city’s astonishing economic transformation. Among them: migrants from Central America and elsewhere, many of whom work in the shadows of the city for fear of deportation. Francis will give a blessing to a group of them on Sept. 25, at a Catholic school in East Harlem. (The previous day, the pontiff will be in Washington, D.C., to address a joint session of Congress. Though lawmakers had hoped for some face time with the pope, he is leaving the capital immediately after his speech to have lunch in a tent with some homeless people and immigrants.) You don’t have to be Catholic to be astonished, and moved, by this pope. The power and timing of his message could not be more welcome, in this city, at this moment in our history.
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SPRING ARTS PREVIEW < CITYARTS, P.12
FOR HIM, SETTLING SMALL CLAIMS IS A BIG DEAL presided over Arbitration Man has three decades. for informal hearings about it He’s now blogging BY RICHARD KHAVKINE
is the common Arbitration Man their jurist. least folks’ hero. Or at Man has For 30 years, Arbitration court office of the civil few sat in a satellite Centre St. every building at 111 New Yorkers’ weeks and absorbed dry cleaning, burned lost accountings of fender benders, lousy paint jobs, and the like. And security deposits then he’s decided. Arbitration Man, About a year ago, so to not afwho requested anonymity started docuhe fect future proceedings, two dozen of what menting about compelling cases considers his most blog. in an eponymous about it because “I decided to write the stories but in a I was interested about it not from wanted to write from view but rather lawyer’s point of said Arbitration view,” of a lay point lawyer since 1961. Man, a practicing what’s at issue He first writes about post, renders and then, in a separatehow he arrived his decision, detailing blog the to Visitors at his conclusion. their opinions. often weigh in with get a rap going. I to “I really want whether they unreally want to know and why I did it,” I did derstood what don’t know how to he said. “Most people ... I’d like my cases the judge thinks. and also my trereflect my personalitythe law.” for mendous respect 80, went into indiMan, Arbitration suc in 1985, settling vidual practice
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MANHATTAN'S APARTMENT BOOM, > PROPERTY, P.20
2015
In Brief MORE HELP FOR SMALL BUSINESS
The effort to help small seems to businesses in the city be gathering steam. Two city councilmembers, Robert Margaret Chin and Cornegy, have introduced create legislation that wouldSmall a new “Office of the within Business Advocate” of Small the city’s Department Business Services. Chin The new post, which have up told us she’d like to would and running this year, for serve as an ombudsman city small businesses within them clear government, helping to get through the bureaucracy things done. Perhaps even more also importantly, the ombudsman and number will tally the type small business of complaints by taken in owners, the actions policy response, and somefor ways to recommendations If done well, begin to fix things. report would the ombudsman’s give us the first quantitative with taste of what’s wrong the city, an small businesses in towards important first step fixing the problem. of for deTo really make a difference, is a mere formality will have to the work process looking to complete their advocate are the chances course, velopers precinct, but rising rents, -- thanks to a find a way to tackle business’ is being done legally of after-hours projects quickly. their own hours,” which remain many While Chin “They pick out boom in the number throughout who lives on most vexing problem. said Mildred Angelo,of the Ruppert construction permits gauge what Buildings one said it’s too early tocould have the 19th floor in The Department of the city. number three years, the Houses on 92nd Street between role the advocate She Over the past on the is handing out a record work perThird avenues. permits, there, more information of Second and an ongoing all-hours number of after-hours bad thing. of after-hours work the city’s Dept. problem can’t be a said there’s with the mits granted by nearby where according to new data jumped 30 percent, This step, combinedBorough construction project noise Buildings has data provided in workers constantly make efforts by Manhattan to mediate BY DANIEL FITZSIMMONS according to DOB of Informacement from trucks. President Gale Brewer offer response to a Freedom classifies transferring they want. They knows the the rent renewal process, request. The city They 6 “They do whatever signs Every New Yorker clang, tion Act go as they please. work between some early, tangible small any construction on the weekend, can come and sound: the metal-on-metal or the piercing of progress. For many have no respect.” p.m. and 7 a.m., can’t come of these that the hollow boom, issuance reverse. owners, in business moving The increased beeps of a truck has generto a correspond and you as after-hours. soon enough. variances has led at the alarm clock The surge in permits
SLEEPS, THANKS TO THE CITY THAT NEVER UCTION A BOOM IN LATE-NIGHT CONSTR NEWS
A glance it: it’s the middle can hardly believe yet construction of the night, and carries on full-tilt. your local police or You can call 311
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for dollars in fees ated millions of and left some resithe city agency, that the application dents convinced
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