Our Town Downtown Digital Edition Marh 22, 2012

FROM OWS TO CONGRESS

Hip-Hop artist turned activist vies for Valazquez’s seat (P4)

CITY APPROVES RUDIN PLAN FOR ST. VINCENT

Agrees to build school and lower number of condos (P4)

21 JUMP STREET Armond White on the junky remake of an ’80s TV series (P8)

THE FUTURE OF TV?

New service allows you to watch network television any time, anywhere and on any device (P12)

FROM HOMELESS TO HOPELESS How NYC is letting down record rates of its displaced population (P6)

PHOTO BY PATRICIA VOULGARIS

MARCH 22, 2012 | WWW.OTDOWNTOWN.COM

� N E I G H BO R H O O D C HAT TE R LOWER EAST SIDE SILVER PROPOSES GUN BUY-BACKS AT RUTGERS HOUSE In response to increased gun violence in the Lower East Side over recent months, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver wrote a letter to Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly recently, asking for their support in a plan to reduce gun violence.

Silver’s plan is to rally the DA’s office and NYPD to sponsor a gun buy-back program on the Lower East Side. “Gun buy-backs have proven to be a very effective way to remove guns from our streets,” he said.

Silver has also suggested a location for the program, offering the community room at Rutgers Houses on Pike Street, which he said would be a perfect location.

He noted that the tenants have already agreed to host the venue, should the DA’s office and the NYPD agree to the program.

CITYWIDE CITY OFFICIALS RENAME MADISON SQUARE PARK IN HONOR OF FALLEN 9/11 RESPONDER Earlier this month, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and New York City Parks Manhattan Borough Com-

missioner William Castro gathered at Madison Square Park, which spans from 23rd to 26th Street, to celebrate the life and courage of NYPD officer Moira Smith by renaming the park in her honor.

Smith, who is survived by her husband and daughter, is credited with saving hundreds of lives on Sept. 11, 2001. “People who survived the World Trade Center attacks will tell you they remember Moira, a beacon of calm in the chaos, leading the injured to care,” said Kelly.

SQUADRON OUTRAGED OVER REDISTRICTING In the wake of a state Senate vote in favor of controversial redistricting lines and a constitutional amendment that would form a 10-member commission (with eight of the members chosen by the Legislature) responsible for redistricting, State Sen. Daniel Squadron spoke March 15 about his opposition to the vote, which he called a “doubly broken promise.”

“The only way to change this poisonous process once and for all is to get the Legislature out of the business of drawing its own districts. One more year based on this process, much less a decade of its gerrymandered and political results, is unacceptable,” he said.

As a next step, Squadron has proposed

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that the governor veto the proposed amendment; however, his opinion is in direct odds with other city politicians, including Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who in a statement after the vote, said, “This agreement will permanently reform the redistricting process in New York to once and for all end self-interested and partisan gerrymandering.”

CHIN SEEKS TRANSPARENCY FOR METHADONE CLINICS Last week, City Council Member Margaret Chin introduced a law that would mandate community board notification of proposed methadone clinics. Currently, the New York State Office of Alcohol and Substance Abuse Services (OASAS) is only required to notify the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) of plans to establish a methadone clinic, satisfying its obligation to inform the community.

Chin’s plan, however, would obligate DOHMH to notify the local community board and the City Council when they are first contacted by OASAS. This measure of transparency, Chin believes, will aid in informing the general public of the potential presence of methadone clinics. “Given the strong feelings that many communities have regarding

clinics that dispense methadone within their neighborhoods, there is little incentive for applicants to inform the public that they are intending to open a clinic,” said Chin. “Local governments know their community best and they should have an opportunity to comment on whether the proposed siting is appropriate or needed.”

A PROPOSED END TO FINGERS FOR FOOD THROUGHOUT NYC With the support of Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Council Speaker Christine Quinn, State Sen. Daniel Squadron has introduced a bill that would effectively ban the fingerprinting of individuals eligible for food stamps, believed to be directly responsible for nearly 6,000 food stamp denials between 2009-2010, according to an analysis by the Empire Justice Center.

Advocates claim that fingerprinting deters families from applying because of embarrassment and places an unnecessary financial burden on the state.

“Finger imaging is so ineffective, such a waste of money and such an impediment to food stamp access that even Governor Rick Perry eliminated it in Texas, and now only Arizona and New York City still cling to this discredited process,” said Joel Berg, executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger.

OPEN THINKING | ON A NEW SCHOOL OF THOUGHT NO. 5 IN A SERIES

CAN PHYSICAL EDUCATION BE A CATALYST IN THE CLASSROOM?

By Jennifer Inniss Athletics and Physical Education Director, Avenues

When many of us were in school, physical education was simply “gym.” Leading educators today see it as so much more — because there is much to be gained when a dialog is established between teachers in physical education and those in academics.

Students who lack confidence in the classroom can often gain that confidence by becoming leaders in a physical education program.

Find out more about Jennifer Inniss’ thoughts on the role of physical education at www.avenues.org/inniss. You’ll find articles, videos, interviews and details on parent information events hosted by the leadership team of Avenues: The World School.

Avenues is opening this fall in Chelsea. It will be the first of 20 campuses in major cities, educating children ages three to 18 with a global perspective.

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� N EWS Prominent Occupy Wall Street Activist and Hip-Hop Artist Challenging Velazquez Encourages occupiers to become involved in electoral politics | By Chris Bragg A well-known Occupy Wall Street activist, hip-hop artist and former district leader has decided to take the plunge back into New York’s electoral politics — by jumping into the suddenly crowded race to take on Lower Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens Rep. Nydia Velazquez.

George Martinez, who is also adjunct professor of political science at Pace University and a cultural ambassador for the U.S. Department of State, announced that he was running at a March 8 candidate endorsement meeting of the New Kings Democrats, the reform-oriented north Brooklyn political club.

From the beginning, it was fairly clear that Martinez’s candidacy was something different; he began his pitch to the club with a “mic check.” And he spoke at near-yelling volume throughout the speech in a cavernous church in Greenpoint, though the district he is vying for includes parts of the Lower East Side, the East Village and Chinatown.

“I’m here to ‘mic check’ and have a conversation about a movement,” said

Martinez, in his late 30s, dressed in a suit and tie. “I’m here to bum rush the vote.”

Martinez has, in fact, has started a Facebook page and Twitter account called “Bum Rush the Vote,” which encourage Occupiers to get involved in electoral politics. He said he hopes to get enough volunteers to build his own “machine” to take on the Democratic establishment.

Martinez said he did not plan to raise any money for his campaign but would rely entirely on grassroots organizing.

“It takes $1.2 million to fund the average congressional race, but it took only a bus ticket to get to a park,” Martinez said, referring to Zuccotti Park, OWS’ home. He noted that he had produced a viral YouTube video during the days of the OWS encampment.

At one point, he threatened to “drop a rhyme” on his political adversaries, which include Goldman Sachs. A former district leader elected in 2002, Martinez touts himself as the first practicing hip-hop artist elected to office in the United States.

Martinez, who ran for New York City Council in 2001 in Red Hook, said he was not planning on criticizing any of his op-

George Martinez, an adjunct professor at Pace University and OWS activist, announced he was running to unseat Rep. Nydia Velazquez on March 8. PHOTO courtesy of george Martinez facebook

ponents in the race and that he respected Velazquez’s work—though literature passed out by a Martinez supporter told a different story, slamming Velazquez for some of her votes in Congress.

Meanwhile, Velazquez, who spoke after Martinez, also touted her Occupy Wall Street credentials.

“Before Occupy Wall Street, we had New Kings Democrats, and I was there,” Velazquez said.

The main threat to Velazquez remains

Council Member Erik Martin Dilan, who officially announced his intention to run against the longtime incumbent yesterday.

A fourth candidate, Dan O’Connor, is also in the race.

On first blush, it seems like it can’t be good for Velazquez to have two other candidates pitching a reform-oriented message in the race.

To read more, visit City & State’s blog The Notebook at www.cityandstateny.com.

St. Vincent’s Deal Adds School, Saves Building | By Alan Krawitz Following nearly five years of negotiation, an agreement reached Wednesday by the City Council, Rudin Management and the mayor’s office allows for significant changes to the developer’s plans at the former St. Vincent’s Hospital site.

The City Council’s Land Use Committee voted 10 to one in favor of a proposal whose major provisions include shrinking Rudin’s residential development from 450 condo units to 350; the purchase of a state-owned building at 75 Morton St. to be used for a new middle school; and the permanent transfer of Triangle Park to the city, which will include an AIDS memorial and undergo a public review process.

Moreover, the Council reported that $1 million would be directed to arts programs at P.S. 41, P.S. 3 and the proposed school at the Foundling Hospital site, along with $1 million for a legal services fund to help retain affordable housing in the Village. The Council also said that the Reiss Building on 12th Street would be preserved.

Brad Hoylman, chairperson of Communi-

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ty Board 2, praised Council Speaker Christine Quinn, whose district includes the Village, for her efforts on behalf of the community.

“The St. Vincent’s redevelopment package addresses significant needs in our area. This includes support for public schools, a legal fund for rent-stabilized tenants, open space that will become permanent public parkland with an AIDS memorial and sensible changes to the new development, including preserving the Reiss building in addition to the five buildings that were already saved as part of the project, which is in the Greenwich Village Historic District,” Hoylman said in an emailed statement.

However, he reiterated his frustration regarding the fight for a hospital in the Village.

“Unfortunately, the plan doesn’t include a much-needed full-service hospital,” he added. “That battle must continue.”

Plans for a new health care center to be operated by North Shore LIJ out of the modern building on West 12th Street, referred to by some residents as a “free-standing emergency room,” were unaffected by Wednesday’s announced deal.

Some politicians, including Assembly Member Deborah Glick, had mixed support

OU R TOWN DOWNTOWN | MARCH 22, 2012

man, executive director of The Greenwich for the revised Rudin West Village DevelopVillage Society for Historic Preservation, ment Plan. concurred with Glick regarding the upzoning “The battle to get a school at 75 Morton issue.

Street was a four-year effort and we’re happy “The GVSHP objects to upzoning the St. about that,” Glick said. She added that she Vincent’s site to give a luxury condo developwas not pleased about the upzoning priviment special zoning considerations originally leges afforded Rudin. intended for a hospital,” he wrote.

“That zoning should have been reserved He continued, “While for the ‘public benefit,’ as many of the changes may St. Vincent’s was,” Glick “That zoning should improve the [developexplained. “A private have been reserved for ment] plan, they don’t developer shouldn’t have the ‘public benefit,’ as necessarily address this been able to take that zonSt. Vincent’s was,” Glick fundamental problem.” ing and use it for a private, The special zoning commercial use.” explained. “A private Yetta Kurland, a memdeveloper shouldn’t have privileges Berman referred to date back to 1979, when ber of the Coalition for a been able to take that the St. Vincent’s site was New Village Hospital, told zoning and use it for a rezoned to allow a large WNYC radio that elected private, commercial use.” bulk of development for officials had “seriously hospital buildings and a failed their community” by much smaller one for residential buildings. standing behind the Council-brokered deal.

Berman added that Rudin is now asking Kurland said there is a glut of hospital for the site to be upzoned to be allowed much beds on the Upper West Side and Upper East greater bulk than the allowable residential.

Side but “zero hospital beds from the 50s all The revised plan must still be reviewed the way down [on the West Side] to the botby the City Planning Commission and will be tom of Manhattan.” voted on by the full Council March 28.

In an emailed statement, Andrew Ber-

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Out on the Streets Homeless New Yorkers face new challenges in light of cutbacks | By Megan Bungeroth with additional reporting by Marissa Maier

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t’s no shock that a still-struggling economy, an ever-more-expensive city and a continually burgeoning population have combined to produce record-high rates of homelessness in New York. What may shock some, however, is how difficult it is for the city to help its homeless population. In a time of fiscal cutbacks, the subsidies, grants and programs in place to help these most vulnerable people have all but dried up, leaving advocates on all sides scrambling to find solutions to keep New Yorkers off the streets and out of shelters.

According to data from the most recent available census of homeless people in the municipal shelter system, conducted Dec. 31, 2011, there were 39,787 individuals in the system, including 8,530 families with children. An Oct. 31 count found 16,934 homeless children in the shelter system, an all-time high number.

And these numbers don’t take into account homeless people living on the street or outside the shelter system. The Homeless Outreach Population Estimate survey, conducted across the city earlier this year, aims to approximate those numbers, but results are still being processed. Last year, it counted 2,648 individuals.

City officials, legislators and advocates for the homeless have differing views on what has caused these high numbers as well as the best ways to address them.

“Setting aside the economy, which certainly has contributed, one of the biggest factors is the policies of the Bloomberg administration, particularly cutting off homeless families from receiving federal subsidies,” said Giselle Routhier, policy analyst for the Coalition for the Homeless. “Right now, for the first time ever, there is no housing assistance whatsoever to help homeless families get out of the shelter system.”

She’s referring to the administration’s decision in 2004 to stop giving homeless families priority for federal housing subsidies like Section 8. That decision, based on the idea that continuing to do so gave people incentives to use the shelter system as a sure path to landing cheap housing, has been loudly criticized in recent years as the homeless population grows.

Seth Diamond, commissioner of the Department for the Homeless (DHS), said in an interview that bringing back that prioritization program wouldn’t be the panacea that some groups claim.

“The reality is that there are very long waiting lists for the available programs,” Diamond said. “The Section 8 program has a waiting list of 140,000 or more. For public housing, the chairman of NYCHA [the New York City Housing Authority] just testified, the waiting list is 160,000. There is a seven-

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Some advocates and politicians say the City has turned its back on its homeless population, which had close to 40,000 people in the shelter system in Dec. 2011. PHOTO BY Patricia voulgaris

year waiting list for public housing.”

Diamond also spoke about how DHS has prepared for the effective end of the Advantage program, which provided rent subsidies for formerly homeless families for up to two years. When the state cut funding for the program last year, the city determined that it could not sustain the program without the roughly $68 million in state and federal aid it had lost.

The city was still paying subsidized rents for about 16,000 formerly homeless families and individuals up until last month, however, while a lawsuit brought by the Legal Aid Society was ongoing. A judge recently ruled that the city could stop paying its portion of these rents, and the fate of the families who had been benefiting is unclear.

“We have been preparing for this for a while,” Diamond said. “We’ve done a lot of outreach to people who are Advantage recipients to help prepare, to talk to them about their individual situations.

Most people have been in the program for at least a year. People have had time to establish themselves, look for options, see what’s coming.”

Diamond said that close to 85 percent of those who took part in the Advantage program have not come back to the shelter system and that it has been successful.

But others dispute that characterization and say the city and state need to not only provide more assistance programs but expand on the Advantage model to offer more long-term solutions.

“We can’t just scoop people up and stick them in temporary housing, kick them out, move them somewhere else. It just doesn’t work. It’s not really a compassionate or practical approach,” said Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal, whose district, which includes parts of Hell’s Kitchen and the Upper West Side, contains several of the city’s shelters as

OU R TOWN DOWNTOWN | MARCH 22, 2012

well as housing for formerly homeless individuals. Rosenthal said that one current priority in the Assembly is to restore funding to several programs that have been axed this year, all designed to provide emergency assistance or intervention for families facing homelessness.

Local not-for-profits have also noticed an uptake in need for their services, like the New York City Rescue Mission on Lafayette Street, which provides hot meals, a daily food pantry and 71 beds for transient stays. Tom Hall, development director for NYCRM, noted an uptake in meals served in the past year. According to Hall, in 2011, the NYCRM doled out roughly 495 per day while in 2008 they only served 416 daily meals. NYCRM will soon break ground on an $11 million project to renovate three floors of its building to add 100 more beds.

“Usually, in mild weather like the winter we just experienced, our dorm might not be full but in this year, far more people, irrespective of the weather, have come here,” noted Hall. “We have never seen so many and there are quite a few people we have to refer to other places of shelter.”

While Hall and NYCRM public relations manager Joe Little note that their organization handles short-term housing and hunger solutions, they did add that one factor in an increasing need for these services is a reduction in homeless service funding a few years ago. Both pointed to the 2009 closing of Peter’s Place in Chelsea, which was the city’s only drop-in center exclusively for homeless people at the time.

City Council Member Jessica Lappin, who recently chaired a hearing of the Committee for the Aging on the alarming number of elderly New Yorkers facing homelessness—up 18 percent between 2010 and 2011 for people over 65—said the best thing the city can do to curb homelessness is to help people before

they’re out of their homes.

This is especially true, she said, of older people who may have extra difficulty surviving in a shelter due to health issues. “The most important thing for that population is to try to get them the services they need as quickly as possible, to try to help them remain in their home as long as possible if that’s the right thing for them,” Lappin said.

She pointed to a Department for the Aging program that pairs seniors facing eviction with legal counsel as one way the city can step in.

“Maybe your landlord tried to evict you because you’re a hoarder,” she said, naming one example of the cases seniors might face. “Sometimes what happens with older people is they stop paying their bills because they get confused about what bills they’ve paid.” All of these problems are fixable with the right help, Lappin said, but it requires outreach on the part of the city.

Many advocates echo the call to focus on keeping people in their homes and providing more affordable housing options. Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer said in an email that the high numbers of homelessness are “directly linked to scarcity of affordable housing.”

He cited a study his office conducted in 2007 that found 2,228 vacant properties in Manhattan he says could be used to build more affordable housing, as well as his suggestion that the city convert foreclosed properties into affordable housing.

Stringer also contested the administration’s rescinding of priority status for homeless families for public housing.

“Each year, approximately 5,313 NYCHA units are vacated; many of these units have more than one bedroom and can accommodate families,” Stringer said.

“By reinstating priority for the homeless on the NYCHA waiting list, even if it was only done on a temporary basis, the city could take immediate steps toward placing a substantial percentage of its homeless population into permanent housing,” he said.

While the city works to address the immediate needs of the city’s homeless population—New York has a right-to-shelter law that requires the city to provide a bed for every homeless person—it also has to work on preventing and reducing their numbers.

It’s a problem that won’t be going away any time soon, and some say we won’t see any effective changes until the next mayoral administration takes over.

“Homelessness is a national problem,” said Rosenthal. “But New York City, which has grappled with this problem for so many years, really ought to have some new ideas about how to deal with it.”

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Class Clowns and Cop Clowns ‘Jump Street’ reboot is junk | By Armond White “You shot him in the dick! I’ve never seen that!” Channing Tatum exclaims as Jenks, a rookie cop partnered with the doughy, uncool Schmidt (Jonah Hill) in 21 Jump Street. The duo have not outgrown their adolescent rivalry or immature sense of amusement that began in high school. Seven years later (after a police academy training session ridiculously scored to The Clash’s version of Junior Murvin’s reggae classic “Police and Thieves”), they’re sent back to high school as undercover cops. Less audience representatives than pandering role models, they want moviegoers to laugh at class clowns and cop clowns.

This nonsense comes from rebooting the 1980s TV series 21 Jump Street, minus the cop-drama gravitas. Ironically, it exhibits the lowbrow humor currently found on both network and cable TV shows—forms geared to the juvenile taste of 12-year-old boys, the gullible demographic desperately sought after by advertisers. Adults now embrace their inner brat as a sign of cool, longing for the irresponsibility of childishness. They accept TV mediocrity and smuttiness in movies like Knocked Up, The Hangover and Bridesmaids. The downward spiral continues with 21 Jump Street.

Refashioning TV junk as if it were enriched our cultural heritage, Hollywood diminishes it. As that misappropriated reggae song demonstrates, any possibility that pop culture can address socially, morally, politically important experience is denied.

21 Jump Street’s idiocy is personified in Tatum’s tall-drink-of-retardation, Hill’s rotund schmuck (a role he should have outgrown after David Gordon Green’s The Sitter) and later in a cameo by Johnny Depp, star of the original TV series, who is only fooling himself if he thinks this meta-comic turn is equivalent to Marlon Brando spoofing Don Vito Corleone in The Freshman.

Consider: Brando seized the opportunity to comment upon The Godfather’s cultural phenomenon that proved less conscientious than he had hoped when signing on to its gangster-movie allegory for corporate greed.

(Could even Brando’s genius have intuited that The Godfather would inspire a new cultural standard of thievery and ruthlessness that even politicians such as The Sopranos fans Bill and Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama would eventually endorse?)

Tatum, Hill and Depp are less conscientious stars; they simply overlook the consequences when trash ignores the crisis of police brutality—a problem producer Stephen J. Cannell had addressed in his exploitative TV mogul way by giving cop drama a hip-hop spin.

Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill in 21 Jump Street.

Now the spin is out of control. 21 Jump Street is aggressively stupid farce. Its directing team, Phil Lord and Chris Miller, can’t cohere the tone of a single scene, jumping from teen sap to gross-out humor almost schizophrenically. The relentless hodge-podge resembles a LMFAO music video—without the delirium that gives LMFAO their party-animal style.

Frequent video game intertitles steal from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World; dance scenes, stunt scenes and explosions are mistimed, while the overly violent shootouts imitate Pineapple Express.

This mess of dishonest intentions and cultural decline epitomizes the lack of sincerity and imagination now passing for

entertainment. 21 Jump Street has gotten better reviews than Jack and Jill, probably because it has nothing to do with real experience; because it substitutes narrative development with explosions and uses dick jokes for the repressed tensions of male bonding, as in Tatum’s homoerotic puzzlement when Schmidt befriends a narc played

by Dave Franco. Perhaps the lowest point is Jenks and Schmidt’s singsong trivialization of the Miranda rights advisory; it’s insulting to current urban sensitivities and reveals Hollywood’s ongoing juvenile comedy phase to be mindlessly offensive. 21 Jump Street is so obtuse it’s as if the social satire of Hot Fuzz never happened.

ope” (1954) is an early work borrowing its sculptural vocabulary from David Smith.

Nearby, we see “Shortstop” (1958), a breakthrough assemblage of rusty fenders. Chamberlain developed the fit by repeatedly running over them until they resembled a baseball mitt. This convergence of instinctive choice of material and random act would inform his work for the following decades. The hydraulic baler soon became Chamberlain’s tool of choice, although a sledgehammer was employed for finesse work.

In the work of the early 1960s he was able to bring an organic and voluminous lightness to the steel, contradicting its actual weight. The works pulse with elusive convolutions, as do the titles. “Miss Lucy Pink” (1962) sports an eye and floppy ear.

In minimalism’s moment, Chamberlain collapsed grid, line and plane all at

once. After a seven-year filmmaking break from sculpture in the ’60s, he returned with unique versions of figuration and brittle vegetal forms. During the five years before his recent untimely death, however, he began working again with automotive metal, carefully chosen “vintage” colors from the ’40s and ’50s. These bring back scale and volume to some of his most monumental work, completing the multifaceted self-portrait of this profound artist.

Tribute to Dynamism The ageless sculptures of John Chamberlain | By Jim Long John Chamberlain’s sculptures of crushed automobile metal are as immediately iconic as Hokusai’s wave. Careful to explain that the material he used was not found but chosen, Chamberlain conceived sculpture as groups of semichaotic modules that could be coaxed to fit, and the result seemed the most natural thing for sculpture to be: uncontrived, casual masterworks.

Like de Kooning, whose work he admired, Chamberlain’s subject matter was most often girls, jazz and cars. He found a way to sculpt color, and the “dynamic obsolescence” of Detroit’s industry insured

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he would have an unending supply of extremely sophisticated material. (At GM, Harley Earl and a staff of 75 developed color intentionally to create deluxe objects; economically and socially seductive.) It was no accident the sculptor admired the painting of de Kooning: the Dutch painter was choosing his “American” palette from the advertising of the day.

Chamberlain’s Guggenheim retrospective begins with the amazing “Doomsday Flotilla” (1982), a seven-part, floor-hugging hellish armada of skeletal lengths of black chassis parts fitted out with cream colored sails and chrome engines. It’s a blast of Dantesque radical imagination.

On the back wall hangs the relief “Essex” (1960).

Works on the ramp spiral upward in roughly chronological order, mixing wall reliefs with free-standing objects. “Calli-

OU R TOWN DOWNTOWN | MARCH 22, 2012

John Chamberlain: Choices Through May 13, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 5th Ave., 212-423-3500, www.guggenheim.org/new-york.

This article first appeared in the March 7 issue of CityArts. For more from New York’s Review of Culture, visit www.cityartsnyc.com.

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THE 7-DAY PLAN

BEST PICK

FREE The Hunger Pains, an Evening with the Harvard Lampoon [4/1]

92Y Tribeca, 200 Hudson St.(betw. Desbrosses & Vestry Sts.), 92y.org; 7 p.m., $12.

The Harvard Lampoon comes to 92YTribeca to celebrate the release of the Lampoon’s new book, The Hunger Pains, a bestselling parody of The Hunger Games. Join the writing staff for a night of readings and Q&A, concluded by a massive, Hunger Games-inspired fight to the death.

THURSDAY

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Checks and Balances: Presidents and American Finance Museum of American Finance, 48 Wall St. (at William St.), moaf.org; 1 p.m., $15.

This 45-minute walking tour of the Financial District is as much a guide to our presidential history as it is the story of our economic backbone. You’ll be given a first-hand look at the financial challenges faced by commanders-in-chief throughout our nation’s history, both as politicians and as people.

FREE Latinas in NYC: Women’s History Month Baruch Performing Arts Center Engelman Recital Hall, 55 Lexington Ave. (at 25th St.), RSVP to conference@manhattanbp.org; 8:15 a.m.

Join Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and the Coalition of Latin American Consuls in New York as they continue celebrating Women’s History Month by leading a discussion about women’s empowerment and gender equality.

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FREE Spotlight on Independent Film

World Financial Center Winter Garden, 220 Vesey St. (at West St.), artsworldfinancialcenter.com; 7:30 p.m.

Spotlight on Independent Film will function as a “Best of” highlight of small-budget films born in New York. Features include Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey (2011) and Metropolitan (1990) and special guest appearances.

WEDNESDAY

OU R TOWN DOWNTOWN | MARCH 22, 2012

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Rachel Platten with Jeff LeBlanc and Say Chance City Winery, 155 Varick St. (at Vandam St.), citywinery.com; 8 p.m., $15.

Sample your wine with a fresh pairing of youthful artists this Saturday night. Undercard artist Jeff LeBlanc has perfected a sound that’s caused some to call him “The New John Mayer.”

There’s also Say Chance, a heartfelt Maryland pop group that reminds us of what songwriting used to be about. The headliner, Rachel Platten, is a city-wise pianist and singer whose voice translates indiscernibly from the studio to the stage.

From East and West: Dueling Perspectives on Filming the Camps Museum of Jewish Heritage, 36 Battery Pl. (at 1st Pl.), mjhnyc.org; 2:30 p.m., $10.

U.S., British, Polish and Soviet teams all filmed the liberation of concentration camps in 1944 and 1945, yet each country delivers a different portrait of the camps today. Using clips from rare films, curators Christian Delage and Stuart Liebman, will compare the ways in which the Eastern and Western Allies recorded and preserved these startling images of death and the Nazi camps.

MONDAY

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The Neverending Story Skirball Center for the Arts, 145 6th Ave. (betw. Dominick & Spring Sts.), skirballcenter.nyu.edu; 7 p.m., $30.

The Neverending Story, based on the classic German novel and popularized by the iconic film, tells the story of a shy boy named Bastian who is tormented by school bullies and finds solace in a mysterious book.

FREE Sixties Pop Icons, Unseen The Half King, 505 W. 23rd St. (at 10th Ave.), thehalfking.com; 12 p.m.

Bruce MacCullum has worked on numerous motion pictures, from The Departed to Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead. But some of his most special work has never seen by the public. MacCullum invites the public to share in the experiences of his “forgotten summer,” featuring icons like Jim Morrison, in this photo exhibit.

SUNDAY

TUESDAY

Submissions can be sent to otdowntown@manhattanmedia.com.

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FRIDAY

SATURDAY

Visit nypress.com for the latest updates on local events.

Urban Odyssey Ellen Stewart Theatre, 66 E. 4th St. (betw. 2nd Ave. & Bowery), loco7.org; 2:30 p.m., $25.

Federico Restrepo brings the culmination of a 10-year investigation into the hearts and minds of immigrants with his latest demonstration, which the New York Times says is an “elegant multimedia show…consistently touching and evocative.” It is described as “a voyage of human experience, from leaving one’s homeland to finding a new country, making a new home and setting down roots.”

If It Only Even Runs a Minute 9 Joe’s Pub, 425 Lafayette St. (betw. E. 4th St. & Astor Pl..), joespub.com; 7 & 9:30 p.m., $15.

The latest installment in the award-winning series of concerts celebrating the scores, stories and scenes of Broadway musicals that never caught on. am New York says the series is “artistically compelling...displays the blood, guts, sweat and tears that go into making Broadway shows.”

FREE Weeknights with Giada

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Barnes & Noble, 33 E. 17th St. (at Union Square), barnesandnoble.com; 7 p.m.

Meet Giada de Laurentiis, author of Weeknights with Giada: Quick and Simple Recipes to Revamp Dinner. This book is written for the modern chef—dinner in 30 minutes or less, retaining one’s sanity and treating your body right are the focal points of Weeknights with Giada. The Food Network star will greet fans and sign1,000 copies of her book.

❮ FREE

Comedy School Dropout Beauty Bar, 231 E. 14th St. (betw. 2nd & 3rd Aves.), thebeautybar.com; 8 p.m.

There is no price for a smile at the Beauty Bar, which hosts the hilarious Comedy School Dropout lineup every Wednesday. If the ambiance of the Beauty Bar isn’t enough to get you through the door (think early ’90s beauty salon meets alcohol), the acts sure will. The set list will feature Suni Car (The PIT), Jon Bander (The Magnet) and Gaby Dunn (New York Times).

FREE Hidden Treasure Lunch Party & Presentation Housing Works Bookstore Café, 126 Crosby St., (betw.

Prince & Houston Sts.), housingworks.org; 7 p.m.

The National Library of Medicine’s Michael Sappol, Mark Dery, Zoe Beloff and Sport Murphy will talk about dentists’ hand silhouettes, the film Plastic Reconstruction of the Face (1918), and malaria pinup calendars (1945), just a few selections from the new book, Hidden Treasure, which showcases astonishing and rare books and objects from the National Library of Medicine. Complimentary wine will be served.

� EAT

When in Roma Pizza Roma, on Bleecker Street, manages to stand out from the crowd | By Regan Hofmann To open another pizzeria on Bleecker Street, home to institutions like John’s, serious newcomers like Keste and enough NYU student-targeting Famous Original Rays to start an army, seems like utter lunacy. Open in Battery Park City, on the Lower East Side, in Sheridan Square, you want to tell these delusional owners.

Pretty much anywhere else, save perhaps the three square blocks of Little Italy itself, would be more amenable to your charms.

But Pizza Roma (259 Bleecker St., betw.

Cornelia & Jones Sts., pizzaromanewyork. com) wouldn’t be swayed. In a whitewashed storefront that looks more like it ought to be selling slightly twee lingerie than pizza, they have staked their claim.

And while it may baffle some window shoppers, they have perfected a crust, the owners say, that uses less yeast but is allowed to rise over 96 hours, making it a “healthier alternative” to traditional pizza.

About that I have my doubts—there’s still plenty of olive oil involved, and really,

who besides lingerie models chooses pizza for its healthfulness?—but it is a genuine alternative to the others on the block. There is that room, which eschews the traditional pizzeria design tropes of dark wood, arched brick doorways as if to trompe l’oeil you into thinking you’re eating under the aqueducts and a roaring furnace of an oven in a prominent corner that manages to heat the place to inferno-like levels just to prove they’re not secretly microwaving your pie.

Pizza Roma, in making the bold choice to not hit you over the head with its Italianness, actually feels Italian.

Rickety wooden chairs and small tables fill the dining room, whose one red brick wall is covered with slightly goofy art, and spiky-branched floral arrangements and miniature topiaries dot the perimeter.

French doors open onto a cinderblock terrace in the back, so common to West Village properties and also, fortuitously, reminiscent of a side street cafe in Rome.

It’s not fancy, it’s not designed to within an inch of its life, it’s just clean, airy and charmingly ramshackle—very Italian.

Then there’s the pizza. Healthy or not, the crust is a thrill for those looking for a break from the tyranny of the Neapolitan charred thin crust that has gripped this city. That 96-hour method produces a base layer that’s much breadier, with a light, airy interior; more focaccia-like

The pizza al taglio of Pizza Roma. Photo Courtesy of pizza roma

than any pizza crust you’ve seen in a long time. Toppings also skew different, and the simpler the better; slices of potato and rosemary spikes were a rich, earthy compliment to the yeasty chew of the crust, while a pizza of the day of whole green olives and deliciously wrinkled roasted cherry tomatoes added the occasional pop of intense flavor, still allowing the crust to shine through. Less successful are those that fall back into standard pizza territories; anything with a marinara base, which tasted tomato paste-y and onedimensional, is better left alone.

It’s also provided in square slices, cut to order off long planks that are displayed proudly in a glass case that runs the length of the entranceway. This is what’s known as

pizza al taglio, pizza by the cut, in the Roman style. It’s not a new innovation—Pie by the Pound, in the East Village, has been pushing an Americanized, more-is-more version of the technique for years—but the execution, and that crust, makes it stand out. It also, apparently, makes it conducive to franchising opportunities; a Pizza Roma counter has just opened up in Whole Foods’ Bowery location.

Though I still worry for the sanity of Pizza Roma’s owners, who decided their first New York City location (the first Pizza Roma is in Barcelona, though the owners are Italians) should be in the city’s pizza ground zero, they may well have bucked the odds and done the impossible: built an original pizzeria on Bleecker Street.

when both flavors combine in your mouth is almost an overload of the acidity sensors; instead of magnifying, they cancel each other out. Once the tartness falls away, you will taste other, more subtle flavors in both the wine and the cheese that you would have missed if you had eaten or drunk them independent of each other.

The second principle is the idea of opposite tastes working together. I know, I know. You’re saying “like tastes and opposite tastes—doesn’t that cover everything?” Not really. I’m not talking about dissimilar tastes, like tannic and spicy. I’m talking polar opposites, like salty and sweet. Ring any bells?

In the wine world, the most classic example of this is pairing a salty cheese with a sweet wine. Port and blue cheese is a common one, but a lighter, salty French cheese and a Sauternes is just as classic. The idea is that the two flavors come together to form a third flavor in your mouth that would not otherwise exist. It is this simple alchemy that explains why salted caramel is the go-to highend flavor of the moment.

The third principle has less to do with taste and more with texture: the idea that opposite textures work together. Does wine have

texture? You bet it does! A silky merlot, a light pinot grigio and a dense cabernet sauvignon each have a distinct textures—as does sparkling wine. Pairing sparkling wine with a fatty or creamy-textured food is one of my favorite food and wine experiences, hands down.

In the example from the party, the creaminess from the oyster and the fat content of the fried breading coat your tongue, then the sparkling wine swoops in and cleans it all away for a perfectly balanced taste experience.

So the next time you’re planning a gettogether with friends, remember the three basics of wine and food pairing. You’ll make it a memorable evening and your guests probably won’t even realize why!

Follow Josh on Twitter: @joshperilo.

Penniless epicure

The Secret of Being a Sommelier The building blocks of pairing good food and wine

| By Josh Perilo

I

t was my friend Brian’s housewarming get-together, and I knew I could always count on a meticulously planned event from him. This time, he had hired caterers to pass around finger foods and corresponding glasses of wine with each food choice. The first two were tremendous: a sparkling wine with a fried oyster and aioli appetizer and a sauvignon blanc with a goat cheese and onion tartlet.

Then came the third pairing. It was a spicy chili-rubbed chicken skewer with a Napa Valley cabernet sauvignon. I looked around the room and watched as the guests ate and drank; one by one, every single guest registered the exact same look.

My wife, always the most polite person in the room, said it best when she whispered to me, “I don’t think he meant to do this.”

But why not? What difference does it really make if you have spicy food with a heavy red

wine? Drink and eat what you like, right?

Absolutely. That is my motto 100 percent of the time. But I guarantee that if you eat a truly spicy food and drink a highly tannic red wine right afterwards, you will not like what you taste. These are the basics of wine and food pairing. Sommeliers and chefs are not an elitist class of jerks (most of us aren’t, anyway) who are trying to puzzle their diners with strange combinations; the pairings are there because they just work, in the most fundamental way possible.

The secret to these basics are pretty…well, basic. I’m going to share the building blocks with you so you can understand them as well.

The first principle is the idea of like tastes working together. This is best exemplified by the goat cheese and onion tartlet and sauvignon blanc pairing. Both fresh goat’s-milk cheese and sauvignon blanc have a high level of acidity, so they both have a somewhat tart taste. On their own, people tend to either love or hate these two menu items.

It would seem that if you put the two together, you would have an unappetizing, mouth-puckering experience. Your taste buds don’t work that way, however. What happens

MARCH 22, 2012 | NYPR E SS.com

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� B USI N ESS Lights On…in Lower Manhattan

Downtown Alliance’s Kelly Rush lets us know what’s opening and closing In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, one of my favorite days of the year, an Irish blessing for you: May the wind always be at your back, may the sun shine warm upon your face, may your teenagers stay busy, may the road rise up to meet you and may you always find parking when you reach your destination. As usual, if you see any new retailers or spot changes to a longtime friend, please email me at tre@ downtownny.com and I’ll check them out.

Openings 7eventytwo

72 Warren St. (betw. W. Broadway & Greenwich St.),7eventytwo.org

Teenagers are known for a few things, and boredom is one of them. The Church Street School for Music and Art is taking that untapped energy and channeling it into creative endeavors that promise to enrich and enliven teens’ free hours. 7eventytwo is a drug- and alcohol-free zone that offers a variety of activities that promote learning and creative expression in a fun, safe environment. Events include battles of the bands, film screenings, figure drawing and open-studio Saturdays.

Workshops provide instruction on everything from digital cameras and music video production to fiber sculpture.

Woodrow’s

43 Murray St. (betw. W. Broadway & Church Sts.), woodrowsnyc.com

Glenn Garmont has got a good thing going. He and his wife Erin, who own Woodrow’s, are exactly where they want to be: in the middle of a neighborhood poised for growth with a bar whose popularity is already exceeding their hopes. “We haven’t been open even two weeks and things are better than expected,” Garmont said. Woodrow’s fills a void in the area for a casual, homey watering hole that offers great food without being too expensive. The owners have completed extensive renovations on the space to include a downstairs whiskey bar with comfortable couches and decorative touches that make you feel like you’ve come home—except nicer and with the option of your own personal bartender. Come for an after-work drink or make it your home for St. Patrick’s Day; on offer is an Irish breakfast with black and white

pudding, Irish bacon, eggs and toast, or enjoy an entrée like corned beef and cabbage, shepherd’s pie, Guinness beef stew or a corned beef sandwich.

Europan Diner Café

125 Fulton St. (betw. Nassau & Williams Sts.), europandiner.com

Europan has several locations throughout the city, but now we only have to travel to Fulton to get a taste of variety on a budget. The selection here is huge, but don’t be daunted by all your choices. To ease navigation, the choices at Europan Diner Café are split into several (OK, more than several) categories: egg platters, omelet options, breads and bagels, appetizers, salads, sandwiches, vegetarian wraps, regular wraps, paninis, sauté dishes, risotto dishes, “quesadilla corner” and cakes, pies and pastries. If those choices aren’t enough, a few other options are available, such as shakes, smoothies and gourmet coffees.

Quik Park

95 Wall St. (betw. Water & Front Sts.), www.quikparkgarages.com

Finding a parking space in Lower Manhat-

tan—really, in any part of the city—can be a quest even Odysseus would find challenging. This lot is open 24 hours a day and conveniently located at Wall and Water, within easy walking distance of the South Street Seaport, Staten Island Ferry, Battery Park and the shopping and commercial centers around Wall Street.

Anne Frank Center USA

44 Park Pl. (at Church St.), annefrank.com

The museum honoring one of the most recognizable and influential Holocaust victims, Anne Frank, officially opened its doors and held an opening celebration March 15.

The center promotes a message of tolerance and respect and uses Anne Frank’s diary and life to share her legacy with the world.

Closings Icon Parking, 95 Wall St. Digi Prints Inc. 176 Broadway The Bread Factory Café, 125 Fulton St. Sunny’s Deli, 11 Park Pl.

� DI G ITI ZE

Turn On, Tune In, Drop the Lawsuit

S

o, this website called Aereo just got sued by every major broadcast network.

Why? Because Aereo lets you watch broadcast TV channels whenever you want. And unlike Hulu or Netflix, where it can be days/weeks/months before new episodes come out, Aereo is actually TV. Right there, whenever you like, on your browser, iPhone or iPad. Yes. Let’s be real: Nobody but Nielsen families watches TV on a television set anymore. I bet so few people watch TV TV that only a few of you understood my killer Nielsen family joke! To be honest, who has time to sit around and watch the tube? Most of it’s not must-see; if it is—trust me—some bar in Williamsburg has a theme night for it. Not to mention how totally unhip it is to actually watch TV these days. We all know kids these days are watching the Internet just like the rest of us. If you are watching TV, it’s likely you’re using a DVR to do it, which is sort of what Aereo is about.

All the way back in 2009, Vishesh Kumar and Sam Schechner reported in the Wall Street Journal, “The Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to a new type of digital video recorder from Cablevision Sys-

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tems Corp., [which set] the stage for wider use of the technology.” That, of course, was the good ol’ Cablevision DVR Plus; much lauded for not requiring a small object in a room but derided for being unfathomably slow in the beginning. When Cablevision launched their bright idea, a slew of networks sued them too. Cablevision hired a lawyer and won their case—no spoilers, but Aereo just hired the same one.

The original defense rested on the fact that DVR Plus members were basically doing the same thing TiVo lets you do: recording content that anybody with an antenna and a TV has free access to. Every recording was saved to an individual’s own private virtual DVR storage. It’s very much like when Universal and Disney sued Sony because the Betamax was considered an evil piracy device. Aereo is is likely to use the Cablevision defense because their whole system works by allotting members their own private pair of micro-antennae located on the company’s Brooklyn rooftop—in effect, you’re paying Aereo to hold on to your antenna for you.

Like millions and millions of my contemporaries, to me, the Internet equals an Absolutely Everything Machine. If it’s not on the Internet, I don’t know about it. Even if it is on the Internet, if it’s not in the cheap-

OU R TOWN DOWNTOWN | MARCH 22, 2012

to-free price range, I actually do not want it.

Aereo’s $12/month price is not bad at all. If you add in the price of monthly Netflix and Hulu Plus accounts, the price tag for your TV diet is still way less than my grandfather pays for cable. After an extended Beta, Aereo launched for New York residents on March 14th. New users get a 90-day free trial. Their website looks nice and the video quality is just fine when you’re watching it live—that’s right: live streaming video.

All this actually-on-the-air-right-now content reminded me of what a huge letdown it was back in the day when there was “nothing on!” But with Aereo, I flipped ahead in the guide a bit, set it to record 30 Rock, did things, came back at 9 p.m. and was actually giddy! To think, my very own, brand-new episode of 30 Rock saved snug in my 40 hours of DVR storage space on the Aereo cloud and— What?! Under the Recordings tab, I found a friendly, devil-red line of text that read: “Not recorded: System error.”

I felt feelings then that I hadn’t felt since I once forgot to put a new VHS tape in for the Star Trek: The Next Generation series finale. There’s bound to be issues at first. And an episode of Seinfeld and an airing of the Addams Family movie recorded just fine later on.

Broadcasters need to stop and take stock of their industry. Here is another example, of many, of a business model showing us that carib guerra the future of television is not allergic to revenue. But still, these clunky old brands are so afraid of reality that they’ve become incapable of taking all this money I’ve got sitting around.

Services like Aereo could be a noncandy lifesaver for these guys. All of the ingredients are there: TV, Internet, willing consumers and money. And think of how much more in touch networks would be with all the data available from a web audience. Instead of spending cash picking on the new kids, legacy media outfits might consider a few smart investments.

Don’t be afraid of working together to make life easier for consumers.

How do you get your sitcoms? Think the plaintiffs are right? Let us know at nypress.com!

Follow @44carib on Twitter, just because!

WHAT ARE YOUR KIDS DOING THIS SUMMER? Renee Flax, director of camper placement of the ACA NY & NJ, will be on hand to answer parents’ questions and help guide them in their search for the right camp!

SATURDAY, MAR 31, 2012 Upper East Side St. Jean Baptiste School 173 E. 75th St. 12PM - 3PM

SUNDAY, APR 1, 2012

Upper West Side Congregation Rodeph Sholom 7 W. 83rd St. 12PM - 3PM New York Family magazine and the American Camp Association, NY & NJ are teaming up for their winter fairs! Meet dozens of different camp directors from local DAY CAMPS and SLEEPAWAY CAMPS from across the region.

Great for children ages 3 to 17! pre-register at:

Newyorkfamilycamps.com For more info on summer camps:

TheRightCamp.com

M AR CH 2 2 , 2 0 1 2 | nyp r e s s. c o m

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� FAM I LY C O R N E R

The Green Guru How organic living expert and NYC mom Alexandra Zissu keeps her loft clean, cozy and eco-friendly | Paula Balzer

E Olli Chanoff, Aili and Alexandra Zissu. PHOTO BY ANDREW SCHWARTZ

Alexandra’s Great Green Advice: Books, Blogs, Stores And More!

• The Complete Organic Pregnancy: What You Need to Know—From the Nail Polish You Wear to the Bed You Sleep In to the Water You Drink • The Conscious Kitchen: The New Way to Buy and Cook Food—To Protect The Earth, Improve Your Health, and Eat Deliciously • Planet Home: Conscious Choices for Cleaning and Greening the World You Care About Most • The Butcher’s Guide to Well-Raised Meat: How to Buy, Cut, and Cook Great Beef, Lamb, Pork, Poultry, and More • Zissu blogs at alexandrazissu.com and is Editorial Director for practicallygreen.com.

And her favorite local resources include: • The city’s wonderful green markets (87 locations!) can be found at grownyc.org.

• The Green Depot (greendepot.com) in the East Village is the nation’s leading supplier of environmentally friendly building products, services and home solutions.

• The Children’s Environmental Health Center (childenvironment.org) at Mount Sinai supports programs in research, education and patient care to protect kids against environmental health threats.

• Kaight (kaightshop.com) on the Lower East Side sells organic housewares and clothing for adults.

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OU R TOWN DOWNTOWN | MARCH 22, 2012

co expert and author Alexandra Zissu’s West Village loft that she shares with her 6-yearold daughter Aili and her partner Olli Chanoff lets off a cozy air amidst its über-green ambitions.

The walls are painted in soothing, muted shades, a mix of vintage and modern furniture is perfectly arranged for engaging adult conversation and piles of welcoming books are always within reach. But rather than pointing out the collection of retro prints and eclectic furnishings that she’s gathered from her childhood home, Zissu is most excited about the perfect amaryllis that’s in full bloom on her dinner table.

“Can you believe I planted that?” she said. “It was just a bulb with a tiny bit of green sticking out of the top.”

The flower is a vibrant poppy red and is, unquestionably, a cheerful touch on a cold winter day inside this green guru’s abode.

Without a doubt, Zissu has forever been a nature-minded Manhattanite. “I had always eaten

super organically because I was raised eating whole foods,” she said. “I joined a CSA [Community Supported Agriculture] in the late 1990s and turned very organic, learning a little bit more about the way food was raised.”

But it wasn’t until she started considering pregnancy that Zissu really jumped on the eco-friendly bandwagon. “I was talking to a friend who was also thinking about getting pregnant,” she recalled.

“I started researching everything from paint to nail polish to cleaning products, which can affect growing children.”

As Zissu dove deep into the world of eco-conscious parenting, she reacted like most moms-to-be.

“I started freaking out. It’s a house of horrors. What am I sitting on?

What kind of foam is in here? Is it off-gassing? What am I breathing? You get in the shower... there’s bleach residue getting up in your feet. The nail polish you’ve loved for years has hormone destructors! It’s going to do something unbelievably horrible!” she remembered with humor.

After methodically going through each aspect of her home and work life in an effort to make things greener, Zissu started to become fluent in the organic and natural lifestyle. Her next step, naturally, was writing The Complete Organic Pregnancy with Deirdre Dolan, the friend with whom she had shared that initial conversation.

And that was the beginning of her career. Six years and three more books later, Zissu fully embodies the environmentally responsible way of living and writes about it regularly on her blog at alexandrazissu.com.

One of her biggest must-dos? Shared

meals at the family table and purchasing food locally. “We spend Saturday afternoon at the farmer’s market at Abingdon Square.

We can get apples, bread, fish, meat, eggs—everything. Then we usually head home for a farmer’s market lunch.”

Back at the apartment, Zissu describes her living space as a “wholesome urban home setting.” While the loft is a good example of conscious design choices, like the sleek yet rustic dinner table, Zissu feels strongly that “it’s more about what’s green.”

The layout of the family’s living space is a testament to her commitment to clean and responsible living. The first floor features a central lounging area, including an antique table paired with new hardwood chairs. The office furniture is hand-me-downs—solid wood and classic in design—while Aili sleeps on her mother’s childhood bed frame, topped with a new organic mattress, of course. Toys are neatly stacked in non-plastic bins and rugs are made from natural fibers without backing.

But Zissu is especially proud of her kitchen, most notably her

our kids crawling around on the floor [at home]. You wouldn’t let your kids crawl around the street. Right there you minimize your exposure to pesticides, auto exhaust and even dog poop.” To make shoe removal easier for her own guests, Zissu has placed a charming bench with storage right next to her entryway.

When helping clients, she starts by finding the easy fixes. “It might not be easy to throw out your mattress, [so] change what’s already there…Look underneath your kitchen sink. What are you willing to give up? Take everything out and switch it with green products. Just doing this can result in a drastic reduction in inner air pollution.”

With an apartment that’s as pure as can be, Zissu now looks forward to cultivating a green thumb. “I would like to grow things. To experience that full circle…watching something grow from seed to corn.” Alexandra glances back at her amaryllis. “There’s something magical about growing things with a kid.”

NEW YORK FAMILY NEWSLETTER

For tips on local parenting resources, shopping and weekend events, sign up for a weekly e-newsletter at newyorkfamily.com.

glass container collection. An entire cabinet filled with jars of all shapes and sizes provides an attractive and safe alternative for storing food. “Look… no plastic!” Zissu exclaimed. Aili goes to school with a stainless steel Japanese lunch box while her mom chooses to cook in enamel pans—never nonstick.

“A good alternative is a cast iron pan. They cost about $25 and last forever.”

While committing to a green lifestyle may sound overwhelming, especially to a busy parent, there are some simple steps you can immediately take to improve conditions in your home.

“Take off your shoes!” insisted Zissu. “It’s the public health equivalent of washing your hands. We all walk around in NYC and we know what we’re stepping on, and then we see

For more tips on green living, read “Home, Green Home” at newyorkfamily.com.

PHOTO BY ANDREW SCHWARTZ

HIGHEST PRICES PAID ANTIQUES WANTED Paintings, Jewelry, Silver, Porcelain, Lighting, Furniture, Oriental Rugs, Tapestries etc.

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editorial

Executive editor Allen Houston ahouston@manhattanmedia.com Editor-IN-CHIEF Marissa Maier mmaier@manhattanmedia.com Special Sections Editor Josh Rogers jrogers@manhattanmedia.com Featured Contributors Whitney Casser, Penny Gray, Tom Hall, Regan Hofmann, Mary Morris, Robby Ritacco, Lillian Rizzo, Paulette Safdieh CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS George Denison, Veronica Hoglund, Wyatt Kostygan, Andrew Schwartz INTERNS Andrew Rice, Patricia Voulgaris

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18

Robert Warner

Master Printer at the South Street Seaport MUSEUM’s Bowne & Co Stationers

| By Anam Baig

R

obert Warner has been the master printer for 17 years at Bowne & Co Stationers, a modestly sized stationery store and printing press that is part of the South Street Seaport Museum. This piece of New York City history stands on cobble stoned sidewalks, giving New Yorkers and tourists alike a little taste of the 19th century, with its handcranked printing presses. Back when printers were tradesmen, not machines hooked up to computers, press printing was a skill and a trade essential to Downtown, which has always been a printing, publishing and finance district.

What does Bowne & Co offer the Downtown community?

This community that’s down here is unlike any other community. There’s a school and then there’s all these businesses and then there’s all these old buildings, which some people have inhabited and restored—there is a whole sense of renewal and community in this part of the city. This is where New York begins.

We have to learn from our history, preserve it and actually embrace a neighborhood so many people have passed through, like [Herman] Melville and [Walt] Whitman and Joseph Mitchell.

What do people expect when they walk in or pass it by?

When people enter the shop, oftentimes they say, “Oh, it reminds me of the way my grandparents’ house smells.”

And I’ll ask, “Well, were they printers?” and they say, “No, it’s the wood.” I’m so used to the smell of the wood after 17 years that I barely notice it.

[When I first started here] I just loved walking in and smelling the ink and the oils. There were two women in the back printing and there was a sense of industry and tradition. I want to continue to convey that. I like people to have an experience when they visit here that they wouldn’t have in any other store.

Why does printing matter?

This neighborhood was the printing and publishing district for many, many years. And as much as we’d like to think that we’re a paperless society, we still rely on paper now. Ink on paper is all the more beautiful when it’s letterpressed

OU R TOWN DOWNTOWN | MARCH 22, 2012

because it leaves a kiss on the paper and an impression on the page.

I am a firm believer that humans need the human touch, which is what Bowne & Co. Stationers does. You can buy a handmade $3 card here—why spend $4.50 at a Duane Reade on a glossy American Greetings card?

photos by Patricia Voulgaris

President/CEO Tom Allon tallon@manhattanmedia.com group PUBLISHER Alex Schweitzer aschweitzer@manhattanmedia.com CFO/COO Joanne Harras jharras@manhattanmedia.com Director of Interactive Marketing and Digital Strategy Jay Gissen jgissen@manhattanmedia.com

Do you have any letterpress workshops coming up to get some people coming in? You have to pass on the printing tradition eventually, right?

Occasionally I do workshops. The next one will be letterpress collage, and I’d like to do it weekly. Workshops sound so serious, like you have to work. I just want people to experience paper and composition. It’s not really playtime either, it’s an assemblage, but people don’t really know the word assemblage.

I could consider the next generation, take on an intern, pass on my knowledge. I’ll do what I can, but being here, unlocking the door and having normal business hours, people know and depend on me to come here. I’m not expecting millions of people—I don’t know if I want a global network. I think Downtown is enough.

What’s the appeal of an antiquated letterpress, especially in this technological age where everything is on a screen?

[The letterpress] is hand-operated and hand set, so every letter is an individual body of type. You can print 500 copies from one letterpress and 200 of them might be very similar, but the beauty of it is that they’re never going to be exactly the same. It’s the difference between something that is hand-embroidered and something that is machinemade. What’s beautiful about printing on letterpress is the ability of the viewer to

actually see a hand process.

I think more and more, the way the public views a computer screen or a tablet, people long to actually feel paper and run their finger across it. I know that the Kindle is very important because people are reading it and it’s accessible, but I’ve noticed that when people pick up paper or books, they run their finger across it and you see them taking it in. People will always hunger for something that has a texture to it.

Bowne & Co. Stationers, 211 Water St. (betw.

Fulton & Beekman Sts.), 212-748-8651.

on topic

What Comes After Affirmative Action?

New ways to add diversity as the policy nears its rightful end

A

ffirmative action’s defenders and attackers finally agree on something: The policy probably won’t be around too much longer.

The recent decision by the Supreme Court to revisit the issue clearly puts it in peril. Even if the court ends up retaining the legality of affirmative action for now, using race as a factor in school admissions was never seen as a permanent solution; there are fairer ways to add diversity.

Current affirmative action plans typically benefit the most advantaged in a group, including those who are also members of a minority most of us would like to be in—the 1 percent.

Large racial disparities, of course, persist everywhere. In New York City, even though over 75 percent of the students at the top-ranked public high schools are minorities, there are still

deeply troubling numbers. Less than four percent of the students are black or Hispanic at Stuyvesant High School, where the black population is a hair over 1 percent. At my alma mater, Bronx Science, 10 percent of the students are black or Hispanic. Compare this to the 72 percent of the city’s public school students who are Hispanic or black, roughly the same percentage of Asians at the two specialized schools.

The city Department of Education has made only half-hearted attempts to diversify Stuyvesant and Bronx Science and the numbers have moved in the wrong direction. The Specialized School Institute does recruit “disadvantaged” middle school students of all races to help them pass the admission test, but the city has also expanded the number of specialized schools.

Adding five schools was undoubtedly done with the best of intentions and has had mostly positive effects—but it also allows officials to downplay the problem at specialized schools, since the new schools have broader diversity. Higher scores are

needed to enroll at the top two schools, but the DOE tries to maintain the fiction it has not set up a two-tier system by not publicizing the scores. This was made clear in the emails the agency sent this paper last year when our reporter Megan Bungeroth [then Finnegan] looked into the problem.

One fair way to add more diversity at Stuyvesant and Bronx Science would be to give the best students at every middle school an added chance to attend, similar to a state college admission plan in Texas.

Coincidentally, the Supreme Court is now reviewing a different part of the Texas system. The undisputed part of the law grants college admission to the top 10 percent of high school graduates in Texas, thus opening doors to the best students in schools with large numbers of minorities.

Affirmative action supporters acknowledge that the non-racial component of the plan is working, but they argue it is not as effective as using race. The same argument is also made when income is used. But if diversity were the only goal, strict quotas would work even better than

affirmative action.

Fairness can’t be ignored, which is why you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who favors legalizing racial quotas. josh rogers Although affirmative action is going to end sooner or later, academia, for the most part, is not ready to give up. The energy used on these battles would be better spent on figuring out what causes racial disparity so it can be ended.

Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University, wrote on the Huffington Post, “It would be an enormous step backward to force our admissions offices to retreat to a homogeneity that stifles creative, broad-based education.”

He won’t have to. There are other paths to diversity.

Josh Rogers, contributing editor at Manhattan Media, is a lifelong New Yorker.

Follow him @JoshRogersNYC.

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