Our Town - July 19, 2018

The local paper for the Upper East Side

WEEK OF JULY THE ESSENTIAL GIACOMETTI ◄ P.12

19-25 2018

IN THE CITY, BIG PHARMA’S GOT COMPETITION COMMERCE Independently owned apothecaries cater to clientele

BY MICHAEL DESANTIS

Council Member Ben Kallos and Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer joined local activists for a rally in advance of a July 17 appeal hearing on the Department of Buildings’ approval of a condo development at 180 East 88th Street. Photo: Michael Garofalo

UES TOWER DISPUTE HEADS TO APPEAL LAND USE Hearings begin in zoning battle over East 88th St luxury condo building

BY MICHAEL GAROFALO

Opponents of a controversial Upper East Side condominium development rallied this week in advance of a key appeal hearing in their fight against the project. Critics claim that the development at 180 East 88th Street, if affirmed by the city, would create a roadmap for other builders to skirt the intent of the city’s zoning resolution.

Construction is in progress on

These developers should be held to task by the City of New York. Their plans do not follow the law.”

Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer the building in question, a planned 32-story, 523-foot-tall condominium tower near the southwest corner of Third Avenue and East 88th Street.

Local land use groups Friends of the

CONTINUED ON PAGE 15

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If you own an independent pharmacy in Manhattan, odds are you’ll be competing with a CVS, Walgreens or Rite Aid no more than a block or two away.

That competition has contributed to the downfall of independently-owned pharmacies such as the Battery Park Pharmacy and University Chemists in downtown Manhattan, both of which closed this spring. Surviving independent pharmacies in the city have leaned on a mix of innovation, individuality and customer service to maintain their presence and overcome challenges posed by corporate giants.

Multiple pharmacists have said they’re forced to overcome contracts between chain stores and insurance companies where consumers have to get service from a chain pharmacy unless they want to pay the full price of medication.

“Which is not right,” Abby Fazio, the owner of New London Pharmacy, said. “We are trying to fight in New York State. Bottom line, the patient should go where they want to go and where they feel more comfortable. Because chains are so big and they have so much power versus a small independent pharmacy, it’s very hard and competitive.”

Fazio isn’t afraid of the competition, however. She’s led New London Pharmacy, a Chelsea location on Eighth Avenue and 23rd Street, to hire ex-

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Abby Fazio, the owner of New London Pharmacy, on Eighth Avenue and 23rd Street, has hired specialists for each of the pharmacy’s several departments. Photo: Michael DeSantis perts to oversee each department the store offers: prescription, cosmetics, bath and body, surgical care, over-thecounter products, nutrition and website. Those specialists will then work together to ensure customers get what they need. Fazio used the relationship between her prescription and nutrition sections as an example.

“The nutritionist helps the pharmacist in the sense that, ‘Yes, this patient has diabetes but let’s talk to him also about what he’s eating and his exercise and what to watch out for and how to inject himself and how to test himself,’” Fazio said. “This way, whoever comes in and has a question knows they can speak to that expert. That’s something I feel we offer that nobody else does.”

C.O. Bigelow Chemists, a Greenwich Village apothecary in business since 1838, also boasts a large storefront to complement its pharmacy. Alec Ginsberg, son of owner Ian Ginsberg, said having a significant retail business is a necessity for independently-owned pharmacies.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 5 Jewish women and girls light up the world by lighting the Shabbat candles every Friday evening 18 minutes before sunset.

Friday, July 20 – 8:04 pm.

For more information visit www.chabaduppereastside.com

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JULY 19-25,2018

WALLACE STEVENS MAKES HIS MARK, AGAIN COMMEMORATION Honoring the great poet outside of his Chelsea home, where he wrote some of his legendary works

BY ALIZAH SALARIO

The poet Susan Howe discusses the legacy of Wallace Stevens. Photo: Alizah Salario

The world — or perhaps just a few squares of Chelsea sidewalk — arranged itself into a poem on July 11th in front of the former home of Wallace Stevens.

Considered to be one of the greatest American modernist poets of the twentieth century, Stevens was recognized with a cultural medallion honoring his legacy and New York inuence outside 441 West 21st Street, where he resided in the top oor apartment from 1910 to 1916.

A handful of distinguished poets, Stevens aficionados and the occasional Chelsea dog walker withstood the afternoon heat to pay tribute to Stevens, who composed some of his greatest poems in his stately Chelsea home, including “Sunday Morning� and “Peter Quince at the Clavier.�

Though Stevens never quit his day job and spent many years practicing

The cultural medallion dedicated to Wallace Stevens outside 441 West 21st St. Photo: Alizah Salario insurance law and living in Hartford, Conn., “New York remained his aesthetic point of reference,� said Glen MacLeod, vice president of the Wallace Stevens Society, which nominated the poet for the honor.

MacLeod, a Stevens scholar, noted that the poet’s work was transformed after seeing an early show at the Armory consisting of modernist paintings. The influence on his work was profound; the analogous processes between poetry and painting began to inform his work. “His work matured in this house,� said MacLeod.

The poet Deborah Garrison, now the poetry editor at Alfred A. Knopf and a

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senior editor at Pantheon Books, read moving a moving letter from Stevens to his wife, Elsie, written upon his discovery of what would become their Chelsea home. “It has everything in its favor, and I know you will like it,� Stevens wrote.

Lisa Goldfarb, president of the Wallace Stevens Society, spoke about the master stylist’s love for the landscape of New York. Stevens took pleasure in walking the length and breadth of the city, she said, and was known for walking from Chambers Street to Spuyten Duyvil in one day. “Somehow, the rhythm of my walking gets into the rhythm of my poems,� said Goldfarb, quoting Stevens.

The Stevens medallion is one of about 120 cultural medallions throughout the ďŹ ve boroughs. Started in 2000 by Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel, chair and founder of the Historic Landmarks Preservation Center, the cultural medallion program marks sites where individuals who made an impact on New York lived, worked and created. The program is patterned after London’s famed blue plaques program, both reminding passersby of living, breathing history and linking the past and present.

At the ceremony, Diamonstein-Spielvogel encouraged New Yorkers to nominate individuals whose imprint on the city deserves to be remembered.

Distinguished poets in attendance included Susan Howe, who spoke of how “extraordinarily moving� it was to remember Stevens. “I turn to Stevens these days almost as a form of prayer,� she said.

Howe closed with a reading from the ending of “Sunday Morning,â€? which is considered one of the greatest poems in the English language. “At evening, casual ocks of pigeons make/Ambiguous undulations as they sink/Downward to darkness, on extended wings.â€?

JULY 19-25,2018

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CRIME WATCH BY JERRY DANZIG CAR VS. SHOPPING CART

STATS FOR THE WEEK

Road rage incidents now apparently include interactions between cars and shopping carts.

At 1:57 p.m. on Thursday, July 5, a 42-year-old woman was driving her white 2018 Mercedes sedan westbound on East 76th Street when she came upon a man and a woman walking in the middle of the street pushing a shopping cart. According to the police account, the driver almost hit the pair by accident and the two got upset, with the female pedestrian spilling liquid inside the car, splashing the driver in the face, before the assailant also reached in and scratched the driver in the face with her hand, the woman told police. The man joined in, slamming the shopping cart into the driver’s car, causing dents in the driver’s-side door. Makailah Hayes, 34, and Steven Ujvary, 40, were arrested and charged with assault, police said.

Reported crimes from the 19th district for the week ending July 8 Week to Date

GRAM SCAMMED The dreaded “relative in trouble” phone scam now has a new wrinkle: payment using FedEx. At 11 a.m. on Thursday, July 5, a 92-year-old woman living on Park Avenue got a phone call from an unknown person saying that her granddaughter had been arrested in Illinois and the grandmother needed to send $10,000 in cash to an address in that state. Unfortunately, the grandmother complied before checking the story with her granddaughter and sent the full amount in cash via FedEx.

Photo by Tony Webster, via Flickr

Year to Date

2018 2017

% Change

2018

2017

% Change

Murder

0

0

n/a

1

0

n/a

Rape

0

0

n/a

7

6

16.7

Robbery

2

0

n/a

80

63

27.0

Felony Assault

1

3

-66.7

74

71

4.2

Burglary

3

3

0.0

110

106 3.8

Grand Larceny

28

26

7.7

748 713

4.9

Grand Larceny Auto

3

1

200.0

27

68.8

16

HOME UNSAFE

PIZZA PUNCH

It seems that one home safe turned out to be not at all safe. A 44-year-old female Upper East Side resident told police that sometime between Friday, June 1, and Monday, July 9, money went missing from her home safe. The victim told police that the only person other than her child and herself with access to her apartment was a nanny working five days a week at the location. There were no signs of forced entry to the woman’s apartment or the safe. The amount of cash stolen totaled $20,400.

Yummy melted cheese apparently did not appease an alleged attacker in a local pizza shop. At 8:43 p.m. on Tuesday, July 10, a 32-year-old man was standing in line to get pizza in the Two Boots shop at 1617 Second Avenue when another man came up to him, called him a “douche bag” and then punched him in the mouth.

The assailant fled on foot, and police were unable to locate him in the neighborhood.

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Useful Contacts

DrawingBYBoard MARC BILGREY

POLICE NYPD 19th Precinct

JULY 19-25,2018

153 E. 67th St.

212-452-0600

159 E. 85th St.

311

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311

CITY COUNCIL Councilmember Keith Powers

211 E. 43rd St. #1205

212-818-0580

Councilmember Ben Kallos

244 E. 93rd St.

212-860-1950

STATE LEGISLATORS State Sen. Jose M. Serrano

1916 Park Ave. #202

212-828-5829

State Senator Liz Krueger

1850 Second Ave.

212-490-9535

Assembly Member Dan Quart

360 E. 57th St.

212-605-0937

Assembly Member Rebecca Seawright

1485 York Ave.

212-288-4607

COMMUNITY BOARD 8

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LIBRARIES Yorkville

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Webster Library

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HOSPITALS Lenox Hill NY-Presbyterian / Weill Cornell

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BIG PHARMA CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 “That’s why in New York City you really don’t see that many independents anymore,” Ginsberg said. “It’s because you can’t really survive just on the dispensing.”

The pharmacy, on Sixth Avenue and Ninth Street, sells products in skincare, makeup, bath and body, hair, fragrance and men’s grooming.

Ginsberg feels the largest factor that separates C.O. Bigelow Chemists from a CVS or Rite Aid is that their pharmacies are in separate businesses.

“We’re going the other direction, away from convenience like those guys are focusing,” Ginsberg said.

“We’ll let them play the drive-thru game as long as they want to. We’re in customer care. We want to take our time with every patient, answer all their questions.”

Ginsberg said the pharmacy tries to individually educate its customers in

addition to serving them, pointing to the difficulties of understanding how the health care system in America works. Part of that education is honesty.

“Our mantra is ‘Genuine, honest, trustworthy,’ Ginsberg said. “So, to put it plainly, we don’t bullshit anyone. If you come in and ask a question, you’re going to get an honest answer, whether it’s one you like or you don’t like. We’re here to educate the people as much as we can.”

As far as service goes, Cordette Pharmacy in Midtown has a policy of treating its customers well. Jay Patel, the pharmacist of the West 39th Street business, said he tries to go out of his way to treat any customer like a member of his own family.

He said, if possible, he’ll leave the pharmacy desk to walk the aisles as many as 100 times a day to check in on customers and see if they have any questions for him. He expects his staff to do the same.

“Every time there’s a person walking up and down the aisle and if one of my

C.O. Bigelow Chemists on Sixth Avenue has been serving the Greenwich Village community since 1838. Photo: Michael DeSantis

New London Pharmacy, on Eighth Avenue and 23rd Street, differentiates itself from big-box retailers through its customer service, its owner says. Photo: Michael DeSantis

staff doesn’t see him and doesn’t address him, I get irritated,” Patel said.

“I will walk out there and address [the customer].”

The customer service and care that independently-owned pharmacies offer is likely the biggest advantage they hold over chain stores. Some pharmacists say that the lack of personal attention customers are given at a large chain have benefitted them.

“They actually do us a favor,” Patel said. “Their customers who don’t get the service [from big chain stores] come here where they do get attended to.”

Part of that is due to the amount of

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staff behind the pharmacy counter.

C.O. Bigelow Chemists has four fulltime pharmacists working at one time, while New London Pharmacy has at least six.

“I hear chain stores only have two people working to fill 400 prescriptions,” Fazio said. “You need at least six people minimum.”

Ginsberg said he has four working at the same time in order to accomplish more tasks than one or two people can handle.

“So when it’s just one of you, you have to focus on checking the prescriptions and getting them out all day long,”

Ginsberg said. “With us, we can have one or two guys doing that while the other ones are working on immunizations, running through med-lists with people, doing medication therapy management.”

Fazio, Ginsberg and Patel all value customer care above everything else while continuing to come up with methods to stay ahead of corporate pharmacies, be it multiple departments, free delivery, more efficient division of labor or familial values.

Those are what got them this far, and it may be what keeps them successful in a corporate-dominated city.

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POLITICKING FOR ‘PEOPLE’S LAWYER’ POST ENFRANCHISEMENT Three women court the clubhouse vote, showcase legal and people skills, usher the battle for attorney general into an East Side church

BY DOUGLAS FEIDEN

The seismic political power of the #MeToo movement. The drive to fix, trash or replace a busted male-dominated system. A sea change in the political climate. A dramatic shift toward the empowerment of women.

All those dynamics have transformed the Democratic primary race for state attorney general – and they were tough to miss at the forum for candidates on July 11 at the New York New Church in Murray Hill.

The scene was the old Swedenborgian church, at 114 East 35th St., where three of the contenders, all of them women, vied for support from roughly 125 members of 10 Democratic political clubhouses.

Two of the hopefuls were African-Americans. A third was about six months pregnant.

The only no-show was the only male aspirant in the contest.

And he was lambasted for skipping the event.

Largely aligned on the liberal-left-feminist spectrum, all

Leticia James, right, the city’s public advocate, is one of four candidates running for attorney general. She is pictured with Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul earlier this month. Photo: Courtesy of Leticia James three won rousing cheers from attendees, who hailed from the Eleanor Roosevelt Democratic Club, the chief sponsor, as well as the Lexington Democratic Club, Gramercy Stuyvesant Independent Democrats, Tilden Democrats, Ansonia Independent Democrats and Four Freedoms Democratic Club, among others.

Galvanizing the gathering: A backlash to the perceived depredations of President Donald Trump, coupled with a vow from all three candidates to hold him accountable through the broad enforcement powers vested in the state’s chief legal officer.

“He continues to lie, and a lie

should not have life,” said Letitia (Tish) James, the public advocate who is the first woman of color ever elected to citywide office.

The clear frontrunner in the race as the official designee of the state party convention, James dubbed Trump “Agent Orange,” and added, “He is an illegitimate president.”

Only slightly more modulated was Leecia Eve, a lobbyist for Verizon, the first black woman to serve as Port Authority commissioner and a former legal adviser to Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has nevertheless endorsed James.

“He is handing out pardons like manna, dangling potential

Leecia Eve, a former legal adviser to Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Gov. Andrew Cuomo, is also bidding to become the state’s top law enforcement official. Photo: Courtesy of Leecia Eve pardons to people Bob Mueller is prosecuting, and I’d aggressively pursue anyone he’s pardoned,” she said. “Every tool imaginable to prosecute Trump and the Trump Organization” would be deployed, Eve added.

If either James or Eve prevails in the primary, and then beats back a Republican opponent, it would be the first time an African-American woman was elected to statewide office in New York.

WOOING THE CLUBHOUSE Rounding out the trio was Zephyr Teachout, the Fordham University Law School pro-

Zephyr Teachout, a law school professor who ran against Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2014, takes to the stump in a Murray Hill church last week seeking the Democratic clubhouse vote as she campaigns for state attorney general. Photo: Courtesy of Zephyr Teachout fessor who mounted a fromthe-left primary challenge to Cuomo in 2014 and shook him up by garnering 34 percent of the ballot. Her baby is due in October.

“We are in a credibility, constitutional and democratic crisis the likes of which this country has never before seen,” she said.

Teachout pledged to use the “law as a sword, not just a shield,” and to make fighting Trump her number one priority, adding, “We need to do three things – litigate, agitate and elect.”

Her message won the day with at least one club: Minutes after the forum ended, the Four Freedoms Democratic Club, based on the Upper East Side, caucused at the front of the church, voted and delivered its endorsement.

“Zephyr Teachout will have our support in mail, in literature and with volunteers on the ground when it counts,” said Kim Moscaritolo, former president of the club and a Democratic co-district leader on the East Side.

The energy and engagement animating the race tracks to the implosion of ex-Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who was forced to quit on May 8 amid horrifying allegations

he’d beaten, choked, sexually abused and threatened to kill four women he had dated.

State legislators filled the vacancy by appointing Barbara Underwood, the state’s solicitor general, who became the first woman to serve as New York’s top counsel, a position often referred to as the “People’s Lawyer.”

But no woman has ever been elected as AG, going back to the creation of the job in 1777, and James, Eve and Teachout all jumped in when Underwood said she wouldn’t seek election in November.

The fourth candidate is U.S. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, the three-term Hudson Valley incumbent and the first openly gay House member in the state.

He’s running for AG even as he simultaneously runs for reelection to Congress, a move that faces potential legal challenges.

Maloney irked organizers by staying in Washington on the night of the forum: “He cited the responsibilities of his current job – the one he appears to no longer want,” said Mike Corbett, the Democratic codistrict leader from Kips Bay, Murray Hill and Tudor City who was the event’s moderator.

And he called on the only male hopeful to “end this quixotic pursuit to be our next attorney general.”

Corbett praised all three “incredible women” for their “progressive visions,” singling out Teachout for her “fiery passion about the issues” and Eve for her “impressive resume” and accomplishments at the state and federal level.

While the state would be in “good hands” with any of them, he said his own club, the Eleanor Roosevelt Democrats, along with at least three others, had already endorsed James, and said her “two decades of government experience, combined with an incomparable knowledge of the law,” set her apart.

“She will not back down from a fight,” Corbett added. invreporter@strausnews.com

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BY STEPHEN R. GROVES

A campaign manager who moonlights as an energy healer. A photographer who sings in a heavy metal band. A Muslim progressive activist who runs a cooking blog in her spare time.

These are some of the political outsiders who helped propel 28-year-old Alexandria OcasioCortez to a massive Democratic primary upset and into the national spotlight.

If it seems Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign crew is unconventional, that’s sort of the point.

She said she intentionally built her team from the ranks of burgeoning progressive and social causes, not from the traditional Democratic Party machine.

“The best way to build this campaign was to organize around the groups that were already working and organize around the issues that mattered to them,” said OcasioCortez, explaining that she drew from such groups as Democratic Socialists of America, Muslims for Progress and Black Lives Matter.

In the wake of Ocasio-Cortez’s stunning primary victory over 10-term incumbent Joe Crowley in the Bronx and Queens, her campaign drew high marks for its consistent message of social justice, door-to-door outreach, aggressive social media, a slickly produced video that went viral and even a bold campaign poster.

“We didn’t dare to hope we had a chance, but in our hearts, we believed we would win,” said Daniel Bonthius, a 32-year-old former actor who started out as the campaign’s first spokesman and eventually became Ocasio-Cortez’s scheduler and “body man.”

Like any millennial movement, the campaign had its roots on social media. Bonthius posted a Facebook message asking his friends to wake up to the political process, and they decided to meet up once a week. The friends soon joined Indivisible, a network of groups

DINING

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, right, a relatively unknown Congressional candidate a few weeks ago, was propelled to an upset primary victory with the help of a diverse campaign crew. She was endorsed by Zephyr Teachout, left, herself a candidate for attorney general, a few weeks ago. Photo: Courtesy of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez opposed to President Donald Trump’s policies.

After hearing about OcasioCortez’s primary bid on The Young Turks, a progressive commentary program on YouTube, one of the group’s members invited her to their weekly meeting. Over the next months, she worked house parties and political rallies to recruit people who were passionate about social activism and ready to engage in an election campaign.

For her campaign manager, she selected Virginia Ramos Rios, a 46-year-old who has a background in insurance marketing and energy healing. But after a diagnosis of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and the frustrations of navigating health insurance, Ramos Rios turned to politics.

Like Ocasio-Cortez, she was a campaign organizer for Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders. Her only previous experience running a campaign was for a far-left City Council candidate who lost last year but surprisingly garnered nearly 30 percent of the vote.

Naureen Akhter, a 30-yearold co-founder of a progressive Muslim group and part-time food blogger, said she joined as a neighborhood campaign captain after Ocasio-Cortez went out of her way to welcome her.

“There was room for anyone willing to do the work,” she said.

So the band of volunteers gathered in living rooms to pore over maps, stood on street corners to talk up voters, and coordinated phonea-thons and fundraisers from a campaign office that shared a building with a tattoo parlor

and a palm reading shop.

Throughout the district, they also plastered walls with a campaign poster that featured Ocasio-Cortez looking up over her shoulder with her name in striking, slanted graphics.

It was produced entirely by friends, including Jesse Korman, a New Jersey-based photographer and heavy metal singer who met Ocasio-Cortez when she was working at a Manhattan restaurant. She came to his studio after a full day of campaigning, and although she was tired, Korman told her to just express her passion and confidence through the photos.

“She naturally is that person,” Korman said. “She’s not putting on something.”

As the campaign came together and the election date drew near, the volunteers felt they were gaining on the 56-year-old incumbent Crowley, whose $3.4 million in spending was 10 times that of Ocasio-Cortez.

As they hit the streets one last time to find any registered Democrats who might give Ocasio-Cortez a vote, the smiles, honks, and encouragement bolstered their optimism. By the end of the night, OcasioCortez would be the new star of the party — heavily favored to win the general election in November and become one of the youngest women ever in Congress.

The next day, she tweeted a photo of the worn-out shoes she wore on the campaign trail.

“Respect the hustle,” she wrote. “We won bc we outworked the competition. Period.”

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Voices

Write to us: To share your thoughts and comments go to ourtownny.com and click on submit a letter to the editor.

LESSONS LEARNED

BY BETTE DEWING

If ever there was a blessing in disguise. It’s the 12 boys and their soccer coach trapped 3 miles down in a Thailand cave. That’s because it brought the whole world together for almost three weeks, overcame the perilous divisions doing us in, locally, nationally, internationally.

And also personally. And, yes, it rather relates to last week’s op-ed

piece in this paper, “Why I’m Not Ashamed to Move Back in With My Parents,” which counters a societal no-no, even during a time we might call the affordable housing crisis.

Now, don’t stop reading ...

First, boundless thanks to Madison Avenue Presbyterian associate pastor, the Rev. Beverly Bartlett, for alerting me to the meditation Rx which kept these boys, age 12 to 16, relatively calm and hopeful dur-

ing this grueling ordeal and supermiraculous rescue. And how grateful is the world that their soccer coach, who unwittingly got them into this trap, was a former Hindu monk and a specialist in mediation techniques.

And surely we must remember this, to, yes, save the world along with the heroic efforts of divers, especially Saman Gunan, a former Thai Navy Seal diver, who lost his life delivering oxygen tanks to the trapped boys and their coach.

And the lesson we might act upon is to make meditation a part of our daily lives and beyond, way beyond.

And also to find lost boys everywhere, and to cultivate that village that will teach them those important life’s lessons.

Governor Cuomo just dedicated megabucks for city and state sport activities as an alternative to joining youth gangs. Ah, but what’s also needed is exposure to meditation techniques and conflict resolution skills which also help the families they need to stay together.

But grandparents must be part of this mission and why isn’t Matilda Cuomo’s tireless children’s education work ever mentioned by her son? She was once awarded by this

paper for her tireless work in that so needed endeavor and recently awarded by the Savoy Foundation for her work on behalf of “underserved youth. The American History Women’s Hall of Fame recently inducted Matilda Cuomo.

And here’s to taking a lesson from Bartlett, the Madison Avenue Presbyterian associate pastor, who believes in meditation to calm and direct us. Let’s follow her example in doing a twice daily 10-minute meditation. Remind me! dewingbetter@aol.com

THE LAST STRAW

BY LORRAINE DUFFY MERKL

Decades ago, my husband Neil and I had one of our first dates at The Mad Hatter which once reigned the UES restaurant scene on Second Avenue at 78th. When we were served our drinks, the first thing Neil did was remove the straw. He noticed me looking horrified, as though he had just pulled a pin out of a grenade, and responded simply, “I’m no longer nine.”

It wasn’t a deal-breaker, but since I had always associated straws, especially the bendy kind, with fun, Neil would have to prove himself to be amusing company in other ways. (He did.)

It’s only taken 30-plus years, but I’m finally going to follow Neil’s lead and forgo straws altogether.

My decision was kicked off by what has now become a national anti-plastic straw movement (yes, movement) with advocacy groups out there like Give a Sip, Stop Sucking, and the Last Plastic Straw. But the reason to give straws up entirely was that I don’t like the alternative being offered by restaurants and cafes around NYC. The other day I had quite a delicious meal at The Penrose on Second and 83rd but drinking my Arnold Palmer through a paper straw altered its taste. I may as well have sipped my ice tea/lemonade combo through a rolledup page from this newspaper.

Straws have been around since 3000 B.C. when they were made of gold.

Eventually rye grass was used, and

Photo: Marco Verch, via flickr

then paper, which was to go-to until the early 1960s when plastic was found to be more durable. They were also a luxury — at least in my house.

“We don’t need those,” my mother would say as we did our grocery shopping; our money better spent on actual food. Every now and then though I’d be able to sneak a package into the cart and she’d let it slide. Blowing bubbles with my straw was enough to turn basic chocolate milk into an experience.

When I first heard about places in the UK like McDonald’s banning plastic straws, I thought, Why don’t they just get recycled? But it seems that unlike other forms of plastic, single-use straws made of that material cannot be.

Today’s straws are made of polypropylene, in and of itself a highly recyclable plastic resin, commonly used in yogurt containers, bottle caps, toothbrushes and plastic utensils. But recyclers are usually cautious about the types of polypropylene they accept, and straws will rarely be taken. From what I’ve read, it’s been suggested that because they’re small, straws fall through the equipment and can’t be captured.

According to Earth911.com, the bigger issue than how to recycle plastic straws is how to reduce their use. In the U.S., we use 500 million drinking straws each day, an average of 1.6 straws per person. Hence, the recent cause célèbre is Starbucks’ ban on plastic straws, claiming that by 2020 it will stock them no more. (They’re still in abundance at

the First and 85th location.) This could make the prime first world problem: How will one drink one’s Frappuccino?

But we’ll cross that overpriced beverage when we come to it.

For all the talk about the environmental impact of plastic straws, those in the plastics industry lay the blame for pollution and wildlife endangerment not necessarily on the drinking apparatus, but on littering in general.

To those, unlike me, for whom, “Hold the straw,” refuses to roll off the tongue with the ease of, “Hold the mayo,” Earth911 suggests you bring a reusable one with you when you dine out.

For less than twenty bucks on Amazon, you can get a set of half a dozen reusable straws made of everything from stainless steel to bamboo. The silicone versions present in a variety of colors, patterns, and the requisite glitter. Some sets come with their own mini cleaning brush.

These of course will fit right in at UES eateries such as Wahlburgers, Pizza Beach or the Mansion Diner, and especially when dining al fresco in Central Park. But if you’re going to the likes of Sant Ambroeus, Daniel, or Majorelle, Tiffany & Co. has a sterling silver straw for $250. (The gold is $350 and there’s one with a butterfly charm attached for $425.) Hey, sip big or stay home.

Lorraine Duffy Merkl is the author of the novels “Back to Work She Goes” and “Fat Chick,” for which a movie is in the works.

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BERNSTEIN’S ‘MASS’ ECHOES THROUGH THE DECADES HISTORY Messages of subversion and hope from his 1971 piece have a contemporary flavor

BY MARK NIMAR

In 1971, President Nixon received a warning from the FBI: Leonard Bernstein, the famous composer of “West Side Story,� had written a piece of music that posed a threat to the country. The piece, called MASS, a work of musical theater for the stage commissioned by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, was having its U.S. premiere at the inaugural gala of the Kennedy Center.

The Bureau believed MASS might have “anti-war messages� hidden in its Latin text, and “that Bernstein was mounting a plot ‘to embarrass the United States government,’� according to Bernstein’s official website.

Although both critics and general audiences have had mixed reviews of the MASS over the years, the piece may finally be having its moment.

This month, the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center is staging MASS in celebration of Bernstein’s centennial.

MASS is a piece of music unlike any other. Instead of being a traditional musical setting of the Latin liturgy, Bernstein’s MASS is an eccentric mish-

mash of rock ‘n’ roll, gospel and folk music that questions authority, both religious and political. A cross between a religious service and a Broadway show, MASS puts religious texts, secular words, a boys’ choir, dancers and rock musicians all on one stage. The result is a daring, subversive piece, which reflects the turbulence of the Vietnam was era through its bold experimentation with genre and musical convention.

For its staging at Lincoln Center, the Young People’s Chorus of New York City, SF Opera Lab curator Elkanah Pulitzer and conductor Louis LangrÊe are all coming together to produce this eclectic piece of art.

Stephen Schwartz, MASS’s original lyricist (and the famed composer of “Godspell� and “Wicked�), is coming to work on the show and give a pre-concert talk. Both performances are nearly sold out; many attribute its renewed popularity to the contemporary events, which, they say, have some parallels to the late 1960s. “Nowadays, it seems as though we are watching historical progress unravel and reverse before our eyes,� says Nicole Fragala, a mezzo-soprano currently in rehearsal for a production of MASS at the Ravinia Festival in Illinois. “It has left us with the ache of cynicism or hopelessness.�

Soprano Kristina Bachrach, a recent winner of the ZieringConlon art song competition, shares the same sentiment.

Bachrach believes that “the piece, as timely today as ever, stands as a beautiful testament to what can happen when disparate members of a large community unite to achieve a common goal.�

Bachrach also appreciates the wide-ranging nature of the piece, saying that “Bernstein was a hero and pioneer for his work blurring the line between what was considered ‘high brow’ and ‘low brow’ American art,� and that MASS is a testament to that legacy.

Faye-Ellen Silverman, a composer and professor of music history at Juilliard and at New York University, is also grateful for the inclusive quality of Bernstein’s music. Silverman said she values how Bernstein, whom she remembers as “a larger-than-life figure,� incorporated “Latin and jazz rhythms ... from popular music� into MASS, and took “musical risks� with his works that other composers were not willing to take.

His genre-breaking music and national television appearances made classical music accessible to millions of Americans, and this appreciation of activism and inclusion is evident in MASS perhaps more than in any other piece of his music.

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THE ESSENTIAL GIACOMETTI At the Guggenheim, the work of one of the 20th century’s greatest sculptors is on the ramps for the summer

BY VAL CASTRONOVO

Not since 1974, eight years after his death, has the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum hosted a comprehensive show dedicated to Swiss-born artist Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966), who painted, drew and sculpted obsessively in a tiny, unpretentious studio in Montparnasse, Paris, for 40 years. An exhibit of this magnitude was last staged in the city at the Mu-

Bronze “Walking Man” (1960; cast 1982), part of a trio of sculptures that Giacometti considered submitting for display on the plaza of the new downtown headquarters of Chase Manhattan Bank near Wall Street.

Fondation Giacometti, Paris. © 2018 Alberto Giacometti Estate/Licensed by VAGA and ARS, New York

IF YOU GO WHAT: “Giacometti” WHERE: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Ave, (between 88th and 89th Streets) WHEN: through Sept. 12 www.guggenheim.org seum of Modern Art, in celebration of the artist’s 100th birthday in 2001.

Now, Giacometti is being celebrated both in a film — “The Final Portrait,” starring Geoffrey Rush — and in the Guggenheim’s Frank Lloyd Wrightdesigned rotunda, where nearly 200 paintings, drawings, sculptures and archival items line the ramps in a steady chronological climb to the top of the museum without a roof. Wear walking shoes.

The majority of the works are on loan from the Fondation Giacometti in Paris, which just opened a re-creation of the artist’s studio near the famously cluttered original atelier in Montparnasse, which Giacometti once likened to the “inside of his skull,” the Fondation’s director, Catherine Grenier, recently told ARTNEWS. The setting here is stark, the art even more so. The cratered, elongated figures from Giacometti’s postwar period — reed-like walking/pointing men and ramrod-straight women — mix with dark, scratchy portraits of family and friends and smooth, trippy Surrealist sculptures from the early 1930s with none-too-subtle sexual references, humor and violent imagery (e.g., “Woman with Her Throat Cut,” 1932, an abstracted female figure splayed on the floor that looks more like a bug than a human; and “Disagreeable Object,” 1931, a spiky phallic objet).

From 1928 to 1934, Giacometti embraced the Surrealists and let his unconscious be his guide. As an emerging artist, he also drew inspiration from African, Oceanic, Cycladic and Cubist art — and Brancusi. One of the first major works we encounter on the spiral is “Spoon Woman,” both the early plaster (1927) and the later bronze (1926-1927; cast 1954).

The small abstracted head is dwarfed by an enormous concave form be-

Alberto Giacometti painting in his Paris studio, 1958. Photo: Ernst Scheidegger. © 2018 Stiftung Ernst Scheidegger– Archiv, Zürich low the bust — an inverted pregnant belly? — that playfully identifies the figure as female and fertile. The piece riffs ceremonial ladles, called “wakemia,” carved by the Dan peoples of West Africa.

Giacometti ultimately resisted the pull of the Surrealists and gravitated to “the real” in 1935, with a particular emphasis in the last two decades of his career on the head, mobile men and tall immobile women, the latter a pose he adapted from ancient Egyptian statuary.

He suffered a decade-long creative dry spell, however, until the end of World War II allowed him to return to Paris from Geneva, where he was forced to wait out the hostilities. He was blocked. Shortly before and during the war, “the uncertain and agitated artist whittled down medium-size figures to miniatures, and often into oblivion as the plaster crumbled into dust,” art historian Valerie Fletcher writes in the catalog. (See “Small Bust on a Double Base,” 1940-1941, and “Silvio Standing, Hands in Pockets,” 1943.)

In Paris, a reunion with existentialist-friend Jean-Paul Sartre and brother Diego — the latter his studio assistant and frequent model — together with his marriage in 1949 to Annette Arm, another frequent model, reinvigorated his practice. But the horrors of war were acutely felt and left an indelible effect on the art.

The postwar figures loom larger, more expressive and skeletal. Per the wall text, “Giacometti was unflinching in his portrayal of humanity at its most vulnerable.” The plaster “Head on a Rod” (1947) has sunken cheeks and appears to be howling.

He explored the themes of alienation, isolation and voyeurism in a series of multi-figure works, one in an urban setting, another in a forest, and yet another in a cage. In “City Square” (1948), for instance, the four walking men and

“Black Annette” (1962), an oil portrait of Giacometti’s wife, Annette, whom he married in 1949. Annette, and Giacometti’s brother, Diego, were frequent models. Photo: Val Castronovo

lone static woman are overwhelmed by the sculptural base, which may be a comment on man’s trifling place in the world, Fletcher notes.

The men seem to be walking in the direction of the woman, who may be an object of desire or a symbol of an ideal, such as Beauty or Justice. But, as Fletcher writes: “Curiously, none of the men’s trajectories lead precisely to her, perhaps a metaphor for the futility of aiming for an optimum goal that is never quite reached — which was, in fact, Giacometti’s philosophy.”

The exhibit, while organized chronologically (start at the bottom), immediately departs from the timeline in the High Gallery, off Ramp 1, with three large sculptural works that the artist created around 1960 for the plaza of the new downtown headquarters of Chase Manhattan Bank.

Architect Gordon Bunshaft tapped him for the project (other artists were also invited to submit proposals), but he declined to proffer a plan in the end because he had never visited the site. In brainstorming for the competition, however, he returned to those three motifs that had consumed him for decades, producing “Monumental Head,” “Walking Man” and “Tall Woman.”

And yes, in case you were wondering: an edition of the bronze sculpture “Man Pointing” (1947), which sold for $141.3 million at Christie’s in 2015, is here. Keep walking.

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RESTAURANT INSPECTION RATINGS JUL 3 - 9, 2018 The following listings were collected from the Department of Health and Mental Hygieneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s website 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.

The Loeb Boathouse Central Park

0 E 72st Central Pk Drive North

A

Cafe Boulud/Bar Pleiades

20 East 76 Street

A

E.A.T. Cafe

1064 Madison Avenue A

Wa Jeal

1588 2 Avenue

A

BurgerďŹ

240 East 82 Street

Grade Pending (20) Hot food item not held at or above 140Âş F. Filth ďŹ&#x201A;ies or food/refuse/ sewage-associated (FRSA) ďŹ&#x201A;ies present in facilityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s food and/or nonfood areas. Filth ďŹ&#x201A;ies include house ďŹ&#x201A;ies, little house ďŹ&#x201A;ies, blow ďŹ&#x201A;ies, bottle ďŹ&#x201A;ies and ďŹ&#x201A;esh ďŹ&#x201A;ies. Food/refuse/sewage-associated ďŹ&#x201A;ies include fruit ďŹ&#x201A;ies, drain ďŹ&#x201A;ies and Phorid ďŹ&#x201A;ies.

Arturoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Pizza

1610 York Ave

A

Subway

1613 2nd Ave

A

Maâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Noodle Fun

1744 1st Ave

A

Thai Peppercorn

1750 1st Ave

A

Superior Cafe

1490 Madison Ave

Grade Pending (55) Hot food item not held at or above 140Âş F. Cold food item held above 41Âş F (smoked ďŹ sh and reduced oxygen packaged foods above 38 ÂşF) except during necessary preparation. Food not cooled by an approved method whereby the internal product temperature is reduced from 140Âş F to 70Âş F or less within 2 hours, and from 70Âş F to 41Âş F or less within 4 additional hours. Food prepared from ingredients at ambient temperature not cooled to 41Âş F or below within 4 hours. Filth ďŹ&#x201A;ies or food/refuse/sewage-associated (FRSA) ďŹ&#x201A;ies present in facilityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s food and/or non-food areas. Filth ďŹ&#x201A;ies include house ďŹ&#x201A;ies, little house ďŹ&#x201A;ies, blow ďŹ&#x201A;ies, bottle ďŹ&#x201A;ies and ďŹ&#x201A;esh ďŹ&#x201A;ies. Food/refuse/sewage-associated ďŹ&#x201A;ies include fruit ďŹ&#x201A;ies, drain ďŹ&#x201A;ies and Phorid ďŹ&#x201A;ies. Insufficient or no refrigerated or hot holding equipment to keep potentially hazardous foods at required temperatures.

Joy Burger Bar

1567 Lexington Ave

Grade Pending (24) Evidence of rats or live rats present in facilityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s food and/or non-food areas. Food not protected from potential source of contamination during storage, preparation, transportation, display or service.

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JULY 19-25,2018

TOWER CONTINUED FROM PAGE1 PAGE 1 Upper East Side Historic Districts and Carnegie gie Hill Neighbors, with the he support of local elected officials, have appealed the Department of Buildings’ decision to approve of the project.

The Board of Standards rds and Appeals, the agency responsible for reviewing the he matter, was scheduled to hold its first hearing on the appeal July 17.

The dispute centerss on the building’s L-shaped zoning lot, which fronts on n Third Avenue and is set back ck from East 88th Street by y a tenfoot-wide gap. This 10-foot by 22-foot area fronting ing on East 88th Street, which ich according to the plans of developer DDG Partners’ will one day be used to access the building’s main entrance, is in fact a separate zoning lot.

This lot, which is too small to build upon, on, was initially part of the larger lot on which the building is being constructed. ucted. The developer later subdivided the original lot to create the tiny new one fronting on East 88th Street and transferred ownership of the carve-out to a different corporate entity also controlled by DDG. The carve-out’s sole purpose, opponents say, is to allow the developer to build higher and avoid zoning restrictions that would normally apply to buildings fronting on East 88th Street. According to the project’s opponents, the development would be unbuildable in its present form without the carve-out.

“If the Board of Standards and Appeals upholds these tactics, it has the potential to radically alter the character New York’s residential neighborhoods, absent any public input,” Rachel Levy, the executive director of Friends of the Upper East Side Historic Districts, said at a press conference at City Hall July 16.

Initially, the carve-out was

15

Our Town|Eastsider ourtownny.com wrote, “We closely reviewed this project and required the developer to make changes beA rendering fore we issued our final approvshows the al. We stand by our decision.”

10-foot by Ben Kallos, who represents 22-foot lot fronting on the neighborhood in the City East 88th Council, has joined a pending Street that lawsuit against the developer lies at the and the city alleging that the core of developer’s tactics represent “a the zoning deliberate attempt to circumdispute over vent and nullify” city zoning a 523-foot condominium provisions. Kallos and others said the East 88th Street projtower under construction ect speaks to a broader issue of on the block. developers finding and exploiting zoning loopholes to build ever-taller towers without regard for neighborhood context.

Several speakers at the July 16 press conference referenced the proposed 668-foot condo tower at 200 Amsterdam Avenue on the Upper West Side that is the subject of an ongoing zoning dispute over the project’s irregularly shaped lot.

“It’s kind of like playing a game of whack-a-mole, with an industry that has billions to devote to coming up with new ways to circumvent the rules,” Kallos said, citing tactics such as excessive floor-to-floor ceiling heights, so-called “gerrymandered” zoning lots, and the use of mechanical voids as tools that have been used by developers with increasjust four feet wide, prompting ing frequency in recent years the DOB stop work on the proj- to inflate building heights and ect in 2016 on the ground that property values.

Kallos and other members of the lot could not be “subdivided into a 4’ lot for the sole pur- the City Council have said that pose of avoiding a zoning lot the legislative body needs more requirement.” The subdivision resources to expand its land was subsequently widened to use staff to review projects beits current 10-foot depth, after fore they receive approval.

Manhattan Borough Presiwhich the DOB lifted the stop dent Gale Brewer said that work order.

Lo van der Valk, the president a ruling in favor of the DDG of Carnegie Hill Neighbors, Partners by the Board of Stansaid that the project’s approv- dards and Appeals’ would al reinforces the perception, signal to other developers widespread among neighbor- that the carve-out tactic is achood land use groups, that the ceptable, opening the door to Department of Buildings is too future tower projects fronting permissive in its interpreta- on numbered streets. “Once tions of the zoning resolution. you set a precedent, then that “We shouldn’t really be here,” precedent is always utilized in he said. “It costs tens of thou- other instances by developers,” sands of dollars to fight these she said.

“These developers should be developers, and this is really the job of the Department of held to task by the City of New York,” Brewer said. “Their Buildings.”

In an emailed statement, De- plans do not follow the law.” partment of Buildings spokesperson Andrew Rudansky

ACTIVITIES FOR THE FERTILE MIND

thoughtgallery.org NEW YORK CITY

New York Academy of Medicine’s Rare Book Room

MONDAY, JULY 23RD, 6:30PM 92nd Street Y | 1395 Lexington Ave. | 212-415-5500 | 92y.org Join Atlas Obscura on an after-hours exploration of what it meant to be human 1,000 years ago.

The woodcuts of Sebastian Brant’s Ship of Fools, the tradition of the Danse Macabre in anatomy, and the history of understanding of medicine and reproduction will be covered ($45).

Microbia: Eugenia Bone with Julie Wolf

WEDNESDAY, JULY 25TH, 6:30PM Mid-Manhattan Library | 455 Fifth Ave. | 212-340-0863 | nypl.org Microbes are among the oldest forms of life and they play a crucial role in existence, from atmosphere to soil to humanity itself. Catch Eugenia Bone, author of the memoir Microbia, in conversation and Q&A with Julie Wolf of the American Society for Microbiology Science (free).

Just Announced | The Fortune Academy and Castle Gardens

THURSDAY, AUGUST 2ND, 3:30PM Open House New York | 630 Riverside Dr. | ohny.org As part of the Spaces of Justice series, catch a tour of two buildings that help with reentry for formerly incarcerated individuals. A converted West Harlem convent and a new, LEED-gold, environmentally sustainable building next door, will be the focus (free).

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HELPING DISABLED ADULTS FIND WORK The JCC’s “Just One Job” program assists those in their 20s and 30s in developing skills for employment

BY MICHAEL ROCK

Finding a job is hard. If you have a disability, it’s even harder. Despite anti-discrimination laws, the vast majority of Americans with disabilities are unemployed, underemployed or struggle to hold down their jobs.

The inequity isn’t due to incompetence on the part of the disabled, but the result of stigma and a traditional understanding of work culture that conflicts with many of their deficits.

Fortunately, there are programs designed to help close the gap.

The Jack and Shirley Silver Center

JULY 19-25,2018

Business

for Special Needs at the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan offers the ”Just One Job” program for participants of its Adaptations support group.

The community center’s website describes Adaptations as “a community of adults in their 20s and 30s with developmental and/or learning disabilities and a high level of independence.”

“There was a shortage of job services and a great demand for opportunities for bright young adults to contribute to the workforce,” said Allison Kleinman, director of the Center for Special Needs. “Through training and a partnership for many years with JobPath [an organization devoted to people with developmental disabilities] and a grant from UJA-Federation of New York and ACCES-VR [New York State education and work program for dis-

Just One Job participant Emily Mann selling merchandise to a customer of the JCC’s Shabbat Shop. Photo: Michael Rock

Deborah Lechner working at her desk at Park East. Photo: Michael Rock

The program not only helps its par- got hired at similar jobs that were not abled adults], JCC Manhattan estabticipants find work, but keep positions interested in hiring me,” she told The lished the ... program.”

To join, participants must be Adap- as well by offering them job coaches Spirit. “I stayed two extra years in a job tations members for at least several who act as liaisons between them where I was not treated well knowing months. Next, they must “work with us and their supervisors. “Success in job how difficult it would be to attain anon assessing their skills and on devel- placement is measured in job satisfac- other job.”

She now understands that her sooping social skills necessary to be suc- tion and in job retention,” said Goodcessful in the workplace,” said Andrea man. “For most of our participants, cial deficits undermined her efforts to Goodman, the director of Just One Job. this is their first job and/or their first thrive in the workplace. In addition, her sensory issues have made Upon being accepted into many work environments unJust One Job, members reguappealing to her. larly attend group sessions disWith the help of the Just One cussing such varied topics as Job program, Lechner now writing cover letters and manworks full-time in the adminisaging deficits and and anxiety.

I am especially proud of all of our trative office of Park East SynaThey also occasionally atparticipants who place their trust in gogue. A higher-level colleague tend networking events at answers any questions about companies and organizations us to help them be their professional work she may have while on the throughout the city, assist ‘best selves.’ I am also very proud of job. When loud office machinpart-time in projects around the relationships we have formed with is in use, she wears headthe JCC, learn how to promote employers and with community partners ery phones to prevent the noise themselves and their profeswho help advance our program.” from overwhelming her. sional accomplishments and Andrea Goodman, director of Just One Job Despite the efforts of Just prepare for interviews.

One Job’s work, stigma still Particularly successful memmakes it harder for employers bers may also take part in the Community Work Experience pro- supported job placement. Keeping the to hire disabled candidates. It may also challenge those with disabiligram, a six-month internship at one of job is a great accomplishment.”

According to Kleinman, Just One Job ties to actively seek out the help they several companies and organizations with whom the Center for Special has successfully employed over 50 Ad- need. “I am especially proud of all of aptations participants. Deborah Lech- our participants who place their trust Needs has partnered.

Those who complete the internship ner, one of them, joined Adaptations in us to help them be their professioncan put it on their resume and utilize eight years ago at the recommenda- al ‘best selves’,” Goodman said. “I am also very proud of the relationships their new colleagues as references. tion of an ex-boyfriend.

Lechner first realized that she would we have formed with employers and Sometimes, the companies may even offer community interns full-time em- need extra help in finding work “when with community partners who help less qualified and dedicated friends advance our program.” ployment.

JULY 19-25,2018

17

Our Town|Eastsider ourtownny.com

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Our Town|Eastsider ourtownny.com

JULY 19-25,2018

SLEEPOVERS AND SCIENCE: FOR ADULTS ONLY EXPERIENCES Moon rocks, the blue whale and sea stars at slumber parties for grownups at the American Museum of Natural History

BY EMILIANO RODRIGUEZ MEGA

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, nocturnal creatures are allowed to roam the halls of New York’s American Museum of Natural History, free from shouting and swarming children. They are adult humans, known to sometimes quietly contemplate science with a cocktail.

“If you go to a natural history museum during the day, it’s definitely a space for people who are under 4 feet tall. And that’s clear in every way — from the soup they serve at the cafeteria to the height of the label,” said Victoria Cain, a museum historian at Northeastern University in Boston.

“It’s kind of fun to reclaim that space for adults.”

On a recent June evening, 175 grownups signed up for a slumber party at the New York museum, which has capitalized on the hype created by Ben Stiller’s “Night at the Museum” franchise. The museum’s first sleepovers were aimed at kids. Then in 2014, people 21 and up were invited to explore its darkened exhibit halls.

The experiment was so popular that other science centers followed suit.

Aquariums and museums in Atlanta, Milwaukee, Portland, Oregon, and elsewhere have hosted pajama parties for grown-ups. And they’ve become a hot ticket, according to Cain.

“When I saw that we could do it and that there was also alcohol, we were like, ‘Oh my gosh. Someone read our diary,’” said Janine Agarwal, 29, who attended the sleepover at the American Museum of Natural History to celebrate her husband’s birthday.

THE EXPERIENCE During the night, guests have dinner in a room full of moon rocks and a 15-ton meteorite, and can wander around the 45 permanent exhibition halls. They can also join guided tours, visit the planetarium, meet with curators and chat with museum scientists about their research — all while the city rests.

“I don’t think there’s any way you’d be able to experience this place in such a special way as doing this kind of overnight,” said Giancarlo Bruni, of Toronto, as he played with the control panel of a full-size submarine. “It’s phenomenal.”

While only adults are allowed, there is still childish fun to be had. Monica Seebohm and her friend Renee Brown came in hooded T. rex onesies.

“We’re always looking for some ad-

Water buffalo at the AMNH. Photo: Eden, Janine and Jim, via flickr venture, and we thought bringing a dinosaur costume was appropriate,” Seebohm said. “We like to dress for the occasion.”

Lights go out at 2 a.m. People can sleep in their own sleeping bags or the museum’s cots, aligned right below the belly of a 94-foot-long blue whale that hangs from the ceiling of the Hall of Ocean Life. Those who feel restless can get cookies and coffee at the Hall of Planet Earth.

Michael Nedell, 53, recalled being afraid of the whale as a child.

“When I was younger, that blue whale freaked me out. I’d been scared of [it] until I grew into a teenager,” he said. “Now I get to sleep under her.”

THE SCIENCE BEHIND IT Silence greets those who venture into remote exhibits. That stillness makes a difference for visitors hoping to learn something, said biologist John Karavias.

“During the day, you’re fighting crowds. You feel like you’re being rushed and all you’re doing is getting an ‘Ooh!’ and an ‘Ah!’ but you’re not learning,” said Karavias, who studies the effects of climate change on marine life. “When you go to these at night, all the background noise is quieted down and you’re able to digest the science behind everything that you’re looking at.”

He was recently invited to show off acrylic bowls filled with weird-looking sea stars and sea urchins. Bright red spikes covered the body of one big star. Another one had arms so thin that they looked like noodles.

Some visitors were awed; others recoiled when they touched the marine creatures.

Starfish like these depend on a

healthy ocean to survive, Karavias explained. But carbon dioxide from the burning of coal and natural gas is making the ocean more acidic. That means sea urchins, mussels, corals and other organisms have a hard time creating their shells or skeletons, which affects their development.

A few floors above, tour guide Arlene Katz taught visitors about animals that glow.

She approached a tank with an eel snuggled in the rocks. Its camouflaged body was hard to pick out from the sandy bottom. But an ultraviolet film made it glow greenish-blue. It’s not making its own light, like a firefly does. Instead, it absorbs light and releases it as a different color that’s invisible to predators but obvious to other eels.

“It’s a hidden language,” she explained. “Sometimes you gotta hide and sometimes you gotta show off.

They’re doing it simultaneously. It’s a brilliant solution.”

Katz said the sleepover is an opportunity for guests to be surprised by nature. “We want people to have so much fun that they almost forget they’re learning,” she said. “But this is not an amusement park. We are sneaking in a lot of information.”

At the AMNH. Photo: Eden, Janine and Jim, via flickr

IF YOU GO WHERE: American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West and 79th Street WHEN: Adult sleepovers are offered several times a year. The next one is Sept. 21 COST: $350 per person Photo: Chris Schieman, via flickr

JULY 19-25,2018

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YOUR 15 MINUTES

To read about other people who have had their “15 Minutes” go to ourtownny.com/15 minutes

A LEAGUE OF HER OWN Kathleen Butler, a former textbook editor, on acting, directing and Ezra Pound

is we went out to Indiana. They were filming in Evansville. We got hair and makeup because Penny [Marshall] wanted to make sure we looked like the people. I think we were there almost a week, with the meter running, so that was good. And she finally got to us. She was so busy, she never got to see us. And we were sitting in the outfield and meeting Tom Hanks. We had the best time and the best group of older women. And then we got to meet most of the younger women and they were just terrific. So we watched it being filmed. The last day that they were allowed in that stadium, Penny finally comes over, and we’re all lined up, shaking in our boots, thinking, “Oh please God, just pick me.”

BY ANGELA BARBUTI

When Kathleen Butler first came to New York, she studied at Circle in the Square, and her day job was editing textbooks at Random House. She got her first acting gig at 23 with Bob Moss who founded Playwrights Horizons.

The Peter Cooper Village resident has been acting ever since. Her most wellknown role is her portrayal of the Older Kit, the younger version played by Lori Petty, in “A League of Their Own,” which she called a “charming and delightful thing,” one she is so proud to be part of, because its message about the power of women is timeless.

About five years ago, Butler made her foray into directing. As one of the founders of Triumvirate Artists’, whose mission is to give work to those over 55, Butler’s upcoming project is “Pound,” by Sean O’Leary, about the life of the poet Ezra Pound, who will be played by Christopher Lloyd. It will debut on Oct. 4 at The Lion on Theatre Row.

How did you start in directing?

About five years ago I got a call from a theater artist studio in Phoenix, Arizona. They asked me if I would come out and direct “Marriage Play.” So I went out and it was amazing because as soon as I walked into the rehearsal hall after the casting, I never even thought of my readings or anything else that I had done in that play. So I started directing and I loved it. So I stayed on there and did “An Evening with Edward Albee,” and that was all different excerpts from his plays.

I had to call him and get special permission to do that. I thought, “This seems like a natural progression to me.” I had been on the other side of the table so long, I kept thinking, “Will I know what not to do with actors?” So that’s how I started. So for the past five years, I have been directing on and off, staged readings and “Delirium’s Daughters,” which started as a showcase on Theatre Row and moved into off Broadway.

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The poet Ezra Pound’s mugshot following his arrest in Italy on charges of treason in May 1945.

What are you working on now?

I’m working on a project now called “Seeing Stars” with Ellen Gould. She’s written a wonderful one-woman show with music. But she has juvenile macular degeneration; she’s had it all her life. A lot of people don’t know; they think it’s something you get when you’re old, but it isn’t. So she’s done this marvelous piece; she’s done interviews with all sorts of people and she plays all the characters and she’s written the music. We just did our first public performance for about 150 people at Visions on 14th Street. A lot of the audience was handicapped, either blind or partially blind. And it was extraordinary. So we’ve been working on that for about a year. I’ve been acting as a dramaturge. I’m getting more and more into directing, although I continue to act all the time.

Tell us about “A League of Their Own.” What was that experience like?

Oh, I loved it. It was just terrific. I had never done a huge movie like that.

And I thought, “Well, I’d better learn how to do that.” I went and got an acting on tape about movies, so I sat and watched that and thought, “Oh I can do that.” So the first thing that happened

Then you went to the Baseball Hall of Fame to film.

We were up there for almost 10 days. She’s very careful and gets a lot of shots. They just kept saying to us, “Just don’t touch the Babe.” [Laughs] Babe Ruth. If you notice, I was taller than Lori Petty, so at the very end, when I come in, they do a group picture, and it’s just a little thing; I’m standing there and all of the sudden I kind of shrink because Penny said, “You’re the only person I ever saw that got taller as they got older!” It was a wonderful experience. We just had a ball. My granddaughters just saw it two years and they said, “Was that you, Kate?” I think it’s wonderful because it speaks to so many things about women’s lives.

Tell us about casting Pound and Triumvirate Artists’ mission.

First of all, the good news is, Christopher Lloyd, and I think you’re the first one in the press that knows this, is going to play Ezra Pound. So we’re very excited. He did the reading at the vineyard in the fall and he was wonderful. He was just perfect for the part, so we’re very happy about that. Our company, Triumvirate Artists, goal and mission is to give work to theater professionals over 55. We look for plays that obviously have actors over 55, but also our stage manager and director are certainly over 55. We have all these submissions; we put feelers

The actor and director Kathleen Butler, who will direct a play about the seminal, but controversial, poet Ezra Pound. Photo: David Rodgers out to a lot of the graduate schools, the Dramatist Guild.... This play popped up, I think about, seven years ago.

What can you tell us about Pound?

Pound was one of the great poets of the 20th century, if not the greatest. He wrote beautiful, if sometimes impenetrable, poetry. What Pound wrote and what he said, has terrific effects on people’s lives, but a lot of people don’t realize the terrible stuff he did. He was a fascist and worked for Mussolini and lived in Italy and did these awful broadcasts for Mussolini, all about hatred and everything you could imagine. They are terrible tapes when you hear them. After Mussolini fell, Pound was arrested for treason in Italy and also accused of treason in this country. They kept him in a public cage in Italy for three months and because of who he was, people like Archibald MacLeish, who is a character in our play and T.S. Elliot and Heming-

way, all sorts of literary figures, got him out and back to the United States.

He was also accused of treason here.

They wanted to put him on trial and of course, he would have been hung.

To avoid that, they managed to put him in St. Elizabeths Hospital for the criminally insane in D.C. The head of the hospital doubted that he was too crazy to stand trial. Our play starts at the end of his 13th year at St. Elizabeths, where it looks like he is going to be released. www.triumvirateartists.com

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PUBLIC AUCTION NOTICE OF SALE OF COOPERATIV APARTMENT SECURITY PLEASE TAKE NOTICE: By Virtue of a Default under Loan Security Agreement, and other Security Documents, Karen Loiacano, Auctioneer, License #DCA1435601 or Jessica L Prince-Clateman, Auctioneer, License #1097640 or Vincent DeAngelis Auctioneer, License #1127571 will sell at public auction, with reserve, on August 1, 2018, in the Rotunda of the New York County Courthouse, 60 Centre Street, New York NY 10007, commencing at 12:45pm for the following account: Eric Goldberg and Lisa Goldberg, as borrower, 144 shares of capital stock of 310 East 70th Street Apartment Corp. and all right, title and interest in the Proprietary Lease to 310 East 70th St, Apt. 6E, New York, NY 10021 Sale held to enforce rights of Citibank, NA, who reserves the right to bid. Ten percent (10%) Bank/Certified check required at sale, balance due at closing within thirty (30) days.

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Pursuant to Section 201 of the Lien Law you must answer within 10 days from receipt of this notice in which redemption of the above captioned premises can occur. There is presently an outstanding debt owed to Citibank, NA (lender) as of the date of this notice in the amount of $292,521.80.

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above captioned premises is $1,050,000.00.

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If you have received a discharge from the Bankruptcy Court, you are not personally liable for the payment of the loan and this notice is for compliance and information purposes only. However, Citibank, NA, still has the right under the loan security agreement and other collateral documents to foreclosure on the shares of stock and rights under the proprietary lease allocated to the cooperative apartment.

Dated: June 29, 2018 Frenkel, Lambert, Weiss, Weisman & Gordon, LLP Attorneys for Citibank, NA 53 Gibson Street Bay Shore, NY 11706 631-969-3100 File #01-080833-F00 #95226

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