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WEEK OF SEPTEMBER PICASSO IN 3D < CITYARTS, P.12
17-23 2015
JAZZING UP THE JEWISH NEW YEAR Rabbi Steven Blane, who founded an online synagogue, plays The Bitter End with his band for Rosh Hashana BY RUI MIAO
FASHION WEEK MOVES TO THE WEST SIDE, AND THE LOCALS YAWN
For many of his congregants, High Holy Days are the only time of a year when they get to see their rabbi, Steven Blane, in person. Most of the time, Blane presides on their computer screens. The founder and spiritual leader of Sim Shalom, a virtual synagogue, Blane conducts services out of a small room on Riverside Drive, within a four-room apartment that he shares with his wife, Carol, and two puppies, Sammy and Ari. The room is sparse: a sofa, a chair, an Asian-styled dark bamboo divider and a workstation atop a Persian rug. Blane, equipped with a keyboard, a studio microphone and a large monitor with a camera, streams live services every Friday night from there. Blane, bald, bespectacled, and sporting an earring in his left earlobe, sits in front of the bamboo divider. “I’m on,” he said into the camera at 7 p.m. on a recent Friday. “I’m on now.” A typical service lasts about an hour. “I start by singing jazz, to warm it up,” said Blane, a former Broadway singer who plays the piano, guitar and ukulele. About 15 minutes in, he puts on his kippah, and begins to sing and to celebrate the liturgy. “Now I’m a rabbi,” he says. He interacts with the congregants via a chat window, which shares the screen with the live video. He greets congregants by name as they join the service online. “It’s like a family,” said Sharon Schorr a Sim
New York Fashion Week’s move to a new location near Penn Station has energized the global fashion crowd, but it’s hardly worth mentioning at Brother Jimmy’s BBQ, a block away. “I’m not into fashion and I can’t afford the clothes,” said Kasia Davenport, 32, a waitress at Brother Jimmy’s, located across the street from Moynihan Station at the corner of Eighth Avenue and 31st Street. “What matters to me is my job.” The restaurant’s homelike ambiance, combined with succulent slow-smoked ribs, can make anyone forget not only about fashion week, but also about being in the heart of New York City in general. Fasion Week’s relocation this year to a still-gritty slice of Manhattan, between Moynnihan Station and the Hudson River, had lots of potential, throwing together models and designers with the Irish bars and porn shops nearby. But so far, at least, that hoped-for mash-up
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NEWS A hoped-for mash-up of models and Irish bars disappoints BY MARIA PANSKAYA
Our Take CELEBRATING A SUBWAY STOP It is a sign of the dysfunction of our public life that the opening of a new subway station is cause for celebration. Yet it is, and the new 7 train station at Hudson Yards is indeed a wonder. The station, the first new stop in the system in two decades, extends by a mile and a half the 7 train and is the westernmost outpost of the uptown system. The station features impressive public art, an elevator that (for now) works, and heating and cooling systems that will keep commuters cool in the summer and warm in the winter. In short, it has everything that the rest of the world has come to expect in a working subway system, but that New Yorkers, beaten down by decades of infrastructure neglect, see as something just short of a miracle. Should this be so in the richest city on earth? Even the weekend opening of the new station carried with it some of the petty squabbling that has made such projects a rarity. The mayor and the MTA bickered over funding issues. Former mayor Bloomberg - a champion for the station -- was a noshow. Cynics predicted that the temperature-controlled platform would be a winter haven for homeless people. And everyone pointed out that the $2.4 billion project, as glorious as it is, opened its doors a year and a half late. But for now, let’s celebrate the 7 station -- and the even-more impressive Fulton station in lower Manhattan -- as steps in the right direction. And recognize that our public spaces, and public transit, define who we are as a city.
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WEEK OF APRIL
SPRING ARTS PREVIEW < CITYARTS, P.12
FOR HIM, SETTLING SMALL CLAIMS IS A BIG DEAL presided over Arbitration Man has three decades. for informal hearings about it He’s now blogging BY RICHARD KHAVKINE
is the common Arbitration Man their jurist. least folks’ hero. Or at Man has For 30 years, Arbitration court office of the civil few sat in a satellite Centre St. every building at 111 New Yorkers’ weeks and absorbed dry cleaning, burned lost accountings of fender benders, lousy paint jobs, and the like. And security deposits then he’s decided. Arbitration Man, About a year ago, so to not afwho requested anonymity started docuhe fect future proceedings, two dozen of what menting about compelling cases considers his most blog. in an eponymous about it because “I decided to write the stories but in a I was interested about it not from wanted to write from view but rather lawyer’s point of said Arbitration view,” of a lay point lawyer since 1961. Man, a practicing what’s at issue He first writes about post, renders and then, in a separatehow he arrived his decision, detailing blog the to Visitors at his conclusion. their opinions. often weigh in with get a rap going. I to “I really want whether they unreally want to know and why I did it,” I did derstood what don’t know how to he said. “Most people ... I’d like my cases the judge thinks. and also my trereflect my personalitythe law.” for mendous respect 80, went into indiMan, Arbitration suc in 1985, settling vidual practice
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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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