Our Town January 2nd, 2014

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PROFILE SINCE 1970 PAGE 16

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Welcome to the Neighborhood!

Our Town gives the new mayor an East Side primer

By Daniel Fitzsimmons Hello Mr. Mayor, Happy New Year and welcome to the Upper East Side. We’re glad you decided to live in Gracie Mansion, but a bit sad that the city will probably no longer be giving tours through what is now your home (that would be weird; you come downstairs one morning and a couple from Toronto are ogling the grandfather clock).

There’s something you should know right off the bat: nobody on the Upper East Side voted for you, and they’re still pretty upset about the whole marine transfer thing. But it’s your problem now, too, at least for the next four years.

But really, you’re moving into a nice area. You’ll be doing most of your shopping on York Avenue. Between 86th and 85th Street are two nail salons, three cleaners and a yoga studio, if you have need of such Continued on page 5

ALSO INSIDE RESTAURANT EAST SIDE INSPECTIONS REAL ESTATE P.13 P.14

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

The Year Ahead

Up and Away Urban sprawl goes vertical, sparking new fights over air rights The development-friendly Bloomberg era may have officially ended, but the ramifications will continue to ripple throughout Manhattan – and especially above it. Most of the land in the borough’s popular and dense neighborhoods has already been

gobbled up, and so now developers are craning their necks and salivating over the last unused parcels of extremely valuable real estate: air rights.

Many low-rise buildings and open spaces have unused air rights, meaning they are allowed to build to a certain height above their current height, calculated by square footage, density and lot size. Owners of these rights can sell them to other developers, though they must be used on a building next to, across from or kitty corner to the original air rights-holder.

It’s a swap, intended to give owners of these rights revenue while keeping the overall aerial landscape of the city even.

Last fall, the state approved a controversial law that allows Hudson River Park to sell its air rights, despite the outcries of locals who don’t want their river and park views obscured.

The park says it needs the money it expects to earn in order to continue to operate, a claim that is echoed by other parks and landmarks looking to sell their rights against the objections of neighbors.

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

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

Some day, the project will end.

But for 2014, at least look for some quieter disruption in the neighborhood. The MTA announced late last year that it was done with the last of the big tunnel explosions uptown, a relief to residents who have had to acclimate themselves to constant noise. Local businesses, meantime, have largely either adapted or moved on (as, apparently, have the rats, which once were a menace but now seemed to have found better accommodations elsewhere).

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

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

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

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THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 2014

The Year Ahead

Rethinking the Schools De Blasio’s tax hike for preKers is only the beginning Just because there’s a new tenant in Gracie Mansion doesn’t mean public school issues won’t continue to dominate in 2014.

Bill de Blasio, for instance, has promised to tax the rich to fund universal prekindergarten. But while that high-profile plan is executed, other school issues will continue to weigh on City Hall. schools This year, New York school ols will have to either find a way to acclimate to new Common Core standardss of testing and assessment, or hope that the disastrous first year under the new standards will lead to reform or at least a step back from implementing them.

Education advocates have called for de Blasio – and Carmen Fariùa, the newly appointed schools chancellor who was formerlyy a top o

official at the Department of Education – to de-emphasize testing and return to a focus on support for teachers and encouraging parental involvement.

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

This year will be the year that public school parents finally find ic sch chool pa out ou exactly exacctl ex tly what wh de Blasio has in store r ffor or ttheir he children.

So far, he has h h ass been careful not to over overpromise – or give too many specifics. m Now, succinct campaign suc promises promise will give way to complex realities com of bureaucracy – bur inescapable no matter inesc who is in charge.

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

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

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

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

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

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The Year Ahead .com STRAUS MEDIA  MANHATTAN PRESIDENT Jeanne Straus EDITOR IN CHIEF Kyle Pope • editor.ot@strausnews.com EDITOR Megan Bungeroth • editor.otdt@strausnews.com CITYARTS EDITOR Armond White • editor.cityarts@strausnews.com STAFF REPORTERS Joanna Fantozzi, Daniel Fitzsimmons FEATURED CONTRIBUTORS Alan S. Chartock, Bette Dewing, Jeanne Martinet, Malachy McCourt, Angela Barbuti, Casey Ward, Laura Shanahan BLOCK MAYORS Ann Morris, Upper West Side Jennifer Peterson, Upper East Side Gail Dubov, Upper West Side Edith Marks, Upper West Side PUBLISHER Gerry Gavin • advertising@strausnews.com ASSOCIATE PUBLISHERS Seth L. Miller, Ceil Ainsworth, Kate Walsh ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE Eliza Appleton CLASSIFIED ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE Stephanie Patsiner DISTRIBUTION MANAGER Joe Bendik OUR TOWN is published weekly Copyright © 2013 by Straus Media - Manhattan, LLC 212-868-0190 • 333 Seventh Ave, New York, NY. Straus Media - Manhattan publishes Our Town • The West Side Spirit • Our Town Downtown Chelsea Clinton News • The Westsider To subscribe for 1 year, please send $75 to OUR TOWN, c/o Straus News 20 West Ave., Chester, NY 10918 PREVIOUS OWNERS HAVE INCLUDED: Tom Allon, Isis Ventures, Ed Kayatt, Russ Smith, Bob Trentlion, Jerry Finkelstein

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OUR TOWN

Garbage In, Garbage Out Tracking the most contentious issue on the East Side For Upper East Side residents within breathing distance of E. 91st Street, no issue will be more pressing in 2014 than the progress – or setbacks – of the waste transfer station slated to go up along the river. Despite avid community opposition to the plan to tear down the defunct Marine Transfer Station (MTS) at the site and construct a new one, the city has already begun the first phases, sending truckloads of debris from the demolition out daily.

Last year was the year for residents, along with sympathetic politicians and other local leaders, to mount a fierce battle against the city’s plan. Lobbying groups coalesced into one mega-opponent, Pledge 2 Protect, and enlisted the help of high-powered public relations teams to blast the plan in the media and to anyone who would listen. Several different lawsuits have been winding through state courts, trying to stop the plan on technicalities, since it’s been approved at every level of city government. State Assembly Member Micah Kellner still has an active suit against the city. If he were to prevail, the city council would be required to reconsider the entire Solid Waste Management Plan, of which the Transfer Station is a big part, based on what Kellner alleges are grossly incorrect estimates of the quantity of trash that the facility will process.

But regardless of

what victories may still be on the horizon for those opposed to the trash station, 2014 is likely to be the year the plan pushes forward. Demolition of the old site is already well underway, and if it clears the legal hurdles, the city could start construction on the new one this year as well. Incoming Mayor Bill de Blasio has been noncommittal about the project, erring on the side of approval, citing environmental justice issues. Opponents may need to brace themselves and change course from a path of strident opposition to one of cooperative mitigation, working with the city to get some concessions where possible if a complete victory isn’t.

It’s a bleak possibility for those who have petitioned, rallied, passed out flyers, bugged politicians and shouted from the sidewalks for years now against this plan, but it’s also a chance to coordinate their considerable energy into holding the city accountable for at least constructing the safest, most environmentally friendly waste transfer station Manhattan has ever seen.

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

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

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

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

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Hall where two penthouses recently sold for a matching $90 million apiece. (This is the same building from which a construction crane dangled during Sandy, terrifying pedestrians and nearby apartment owners.) One block away is the Nordstrom Tower, at 1,424 feet, which is higher than the Freedom Tower without the antenna.

Finally, will be the new towers at 111 West 57th Street, which pop up from the courtyard of Steinway Hall.

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

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

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

THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 2014

The Year Ahead

The Newcomer on the East Side Kallos arrives, with a technology focus Ben Kallos will be sworn in to the City Council this week, taking Jessica Lappin’s seat representing a broad swath of the Upper East Side, Midtown East and Roosevelt Island. His victory in the race was a surprise – he was running against current Assembly Member Micah Kellner, who was endorsed by all and largely thought to be an easy favorite to win.

Kellner’s campaign fell apart, however, when past allegations of sexual harassment of an Assembly staffer came to light, and Kallos scooped up votes that had been dropped in disdain. He presented himself as the fresh, new, uncorrupted choice for city council, and voters bit.

Now Kallos will need to show his chops in the council, which, according to campaign promises, he intends to do through promoting technology as a good government tool and finding out-of-

THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 2014

the-box solutions to long entrenched problems.

Some of those problems are citywide, but some, like the need for more middle school seats, hit right in his Upper East Side district.

Kallos has the potential to channel his youth and energy into productive partnerships with other council members, which is what is required to get things done in city government.

But he must also be aware of the needs of his constituents, many of whom are elderly and have problems that may not be solved strictly by new technology. Based on 2010 estimates, 17 percent of the population on the Upper East Side is 65 and older, versus only 12 percent citywide.

Jessica Lappin is the outgoing chairperson of the council’s Committee on Aging and worked closely with the aging population in her district; Kallos would be wise to do the same, while also paying equal attention to the young families worrying about public school education and middle class housing options.

OUR TOWN

In With the New at City Hall

By Ben Kallos, Council Memberelect, Upper East Side With new leadership in city government we have an amazing opportunity for the East Side and the City as a whole to bring about fundamental changes and tangible results.

The community rallied around our campaign for City Council with a shared vision of transparency, accountability, and open government, so the city works for our neighborhood, where I grew up and still have family.

We’ve already hit the ground running. As a member of the Progressive Caucus of the City Council, I’ve helped shape rules reforms that seek to make the Council more transparent, accountable and fair. More than 30 fellow members and memberselect have signed on to what some are

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calling “City Council 2.0.”

In our district, we will hold “Breakfast with Ben” where we can meet to discuss what is important to you, bring our office to you with mobile constituent service hours so we can provide better services, and continue to maintain our “open platform” to create a government office you can call your own.

Our work together is only just beginning. I will remain focused on reforming government so that it’s effective and accountable to you, and will prioritize fighting against the proposed garbage dump in our neighborhood, increasing the number of seats in schools and expanding services for seniors. You can learn more about these solutions or suggest your own at BenKallos.com or by calling 212-960-3440. Together, we’ll keep our neighborhood a great place to live.

PAGE 5

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST New York Post WHAT’S UP WITH THAT?

Is the West Side Fairway Cheaper?

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

A

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

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

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

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

.com STRAUS MEDIA  MANHATTAN PRESIDENT Jeanne Straus ACTING EDITOR Megan Bungeroth • editor.wssp@strausnews.com CITYARTS EDITOR Armond White • editor.cityarts@strausnews.com STAFF REPORTER Joanna Fantozzi FEATURED CONTRIBUTORS Alan S. Chartock, Bette Dewing,Jeanne Martinet, Malachy McCourt, Angela Barbuti, Casey Ward, Laura Shanahan PUBLISHER Gerry Gavin • advertising@strausnews.com

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THURSDAY, MAY 30, 2013

June 2, 2013

May 30, 2013

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

By Adam Janos

H

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

A new study by the New England Complex Systems Institute

.com STRAUS MEDIA ďšş MANHATTAN PRESIDENT Jeanne Straus

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2013

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

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

By Megan Bungeroth

I

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

long ago.

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

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

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

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

RESTAURANT HEALTH GRADES P.13

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

By Omar Crespo

T

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

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

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

The parade committee turned to the popular crowd-sourcing website

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

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

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

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

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

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

October 29, 2013

October 17, 2013

FIRST IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD ourtownny.com

American Folk Art Museum, 2 Lincoln Square 5:30-7:30 p.m.

Free The museum trustees and staff invite the public to explore the galleries free of charge, have a refreshment in the cafe, and enjoy live music in the stunning atrium. folkartmuseum.org

Whitney Museum of American Art, 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street $20; $16 students/seniors 11-6 p.m.

This exhibition of Edward Steichen photographs, including celebrity portraits and fashion photographs taken during his tenure as chief photographer for CondÊ Nast. The photographs were given to the museum by collectors Richard and Jackie Hollander and reflect the artist’s interest in nature whitney.org

September 25, 2013

September 5, 2013

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Free Music Fridays

Edward Steichen in the 1920s and 1930s: A Recent Acquisition

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

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

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

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

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Bumble Bee Wild Alaskan Red Salmon

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

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

Many prices, however, were the exact same.

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

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

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

OUT & ABOUT

westsidespirit.com

otdowntown.com

Saturday, January 4 DON GIOVANNI 96th Street Library, 112 E 96th Street, btwn Park and Lexington avenues 1-4 p.m.

Free New York Opera Forum performs the complete opera of Don Giovanni by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. A live musical recital performed in concert with piano accompaniment. The musical program is cosponsored with New York Opera Forum which was founded by Richard Nechamkin in 1983 to give classically trained singers the opportunity to learn and perform standard operatic repertoire in the original languages.

Nypl.org

Sunday, January 6th A Night with the Stars of The Bridges of Madison County 92y, Lexington Avenue at 91st Street

(212) 868-0190 PAGE 6

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7:30 p.m. $29 From a bestselling novel to an Oscarnominated film, The Bridges of Madison County is now on Broadway.

Join us for talk with the show’s stars—fourtime Tony Award nominee Kelli O’Hara, stage and screen’s Steven Pasquale, Tony Award-winning director Bartlett Sher and Adam Guettel, the Tony Award-winning composer/lyricist of The Light in the Piazza.

Special appearance by Tony Award-winning composer Jason Robert Brown.

92y.org

Monday, January 6 NYPD 19th Precinct Community Council 153 East 67th Street, btwn Lexington & Third avenues 7 p.m.

Free The 19th Precinct community council meets the first Monday.

212-452-0613; nyc.gov

Trial Class with Eastside Westside Music Together American Youth Dance Theater 428 E. 75th Street 10:30 a.m.

Free Since 1993, Eastside Westside Music Together has brought families closer together -- over 35,000 -- through fun, engaging, developmentally appropriate community music making. If you haven’t experienced one of their classes or haven’t been in our program for a while, they invite you to attend a free demonstration class and learn what makes us stand out in a sea of early childhood programs.

ESWSMusicTogether.com

Tuesday, January 7 Roger Goodell with Ben Feller: Welcome to the NFL 92y, Lexington Avenue at 91st Street 7:30 $20 The head of the National Football League, Commissioner Roger Goodell, speaks at the 92 Street Y for the first time. In the midst of the NFL playoffs and just weeks before the Super Bowl takes place in the New York area, Goodell will open up about the league’s changes, challenges and place in American

THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 2014

OUT & ABOUT culture. Former chief AP White House Correspondent Ben Feller moderates.

92y.org

Edie Windsor and Roberta Kaplan with Judy Gold 92y, Lexington Avenue at 91st Street 8:15 p.m. $29 Edie Windsor will enter the history books as a pioneer for gay rights. She was the woman at the center of the groundbreaking case that led to the Supreme Court decision to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act and clear the way for marriage equality. Hear Edie Windsor’s story as she’s joined by Roberta Kaplan, her attorney, and the Emmy Award-winning comedian and actress Judy Gold, to discuss the implications her case has on the fight for gay rights in America.

92y.org

Wednesday, January 8 Cleopatra’s Needle The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fifth Ave. at 82nd St. 10-5:30 a.m.

Free This exhibit marks the culmination of the Central Park Conservancy’s conservation program of the obelisk of Thutmose III, best known as “Cleopatra’s Needle.” In addition to exploring the background on how there came to be an obelisk in Central Park, Cleopatra’s Needle explores the meaning of obelisks in ancient Egyptian divine and funerary cults, and the process surrounding the obelisks’ creation. metmuseum.org

James Carville and Mary Matalin

Thursday, January 9th Greatest Hits Vol 1: The Ciders 92y, Lexington Avenue at 91st Street 7 p.m. $40 Cider tasting event. Taste hard ciders— and discover a few new surprises. Apple and pear deliciousness will be accompanied with amazing cheeses to match and a discussion on each.

92y.org

On Biography with Rachel Syme: Olivia Laing on Drinking and Writing 92y, Lexington Avenue at 91st Street 7 p.m. $23 What is it about writers and drinking?

The alcoholic writer is almost a cliché—but like most clichés, it’s grounded in reality.

In The Trip to Echo Spring, Olivia Laing examines the link between creativity and alcohol through the work and lives of six extraordinary men: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever and Raymond Carver.

92y.org

Old-Time Cinema: Mr. & Mrs. Smith 96th Street Library, 112 E 96th Street, btwn Park and Lexington avenues 2-4 p.m.

Free Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, 1941, 95 minutes, b&w. Starring Carole Lombard, Robert Montgomery, Gene Raymond, Jack Carson, Philip Merivale. A much-married couple discover that their marriage wasn’t legal.

Nypl.org

92y, Lexington Avenue at 91st Street 8 p.m. $29 The surprising and provocative political couple of James Carville and Mary Matalin started turning heads back in 1992. He worked for Bill Clinton; she worked for the first President Bush. Since then, the split between Republicans and Democrats has become sharper and more bitter.

But Carville and Matalin have stayed married, continued working for their own parties, raised two daughters, moved to Louisiana—and written a new book together. How do they do it? Find out in this dicsussion.

92y.org

STOP ‘N’ SWAP !

FREE

®

Saturday, January 11 MS 167 Robert F. Wagner 220 E. 76th St (b/t 2nd & 3rd Ave)

12pm-3pm Bring clean, reusable, portable items to share, or just come see what’s free for the taking.

You don’t need to bring something to take something!

(No furniture or other large items, please.)

GrowNYC.org/Swap Email: Recycle@Grownyc.org Call: 212.788.0227 GrowNYC’s Office of Recycling Outreach and Education is a NYC Department of Sanitation funded program

THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 2014

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PAGE 7

Welcome to the Neighborhood!

Continued from page 1

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

things. There’s a Gristedes on 87th Street but a doorman across from Gracie Mansion said the Fairway at 2nd Avenue and 86th Street is cleaner.

York Avenue between 87th and 86th Street has a Duane Reade and Bagel Bob’s - a good spot for a quick bite. There’s also a liquor and wine store at 87th Street and York Avenue that’ll probably come in handy going forward.

York Avenue between 87th and 88th Street has a florist as well as a spa and hair salon for when you need pampering.

The shopping north of 88th Street is pretty sparse, but there’s a shoe repair place at 89th that delivers for free.

Timmy’s Restaurant at 91st and York Avenue is the nearest proper restaurant and you can work off the pounds at Asphalt Green on 91st Street. They’re pretty peeved about the marine transfer station, though, so maybe you should just stick to running along the East River, at least for the first couple years.

The 6 train stops at 86th Street, but you’ll probably take a helicopter to work and land it

on your big front lawn - a tale of two yards?

On days you decide to schlep it into the office in the back of an SUV try not to snarl traffic too badly.

Most people understand the necessity for these accoutrements; you are a pretty important guy now. And trust us, you’re not regarded as some interloper from Brooklyn who stole the election with an Afro and likes the Red Sox. You won fair and square, and the people on the East Side are a reasonable bunch. Plus, it’ll be good to have the mayor in the manse now. The last guy preferred his lavish townhouse on 79th Street. He’s worth about $31 billion and can do things like run the country’s largest city for $1/year. We assume you’ll opt for the $225,000 pay check money well-earned we say.

Anyway, we hope you’ll enjoy it up here and we look forward to seeing you at Bagel Bob’s. Enjoy our neighborhood Mr. Mayor and please keep the dog on a leash at Carl Schurz Park.

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

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THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 2014

cityArts

Edited by Armond White

New York’s Review of Culture . CityArtsNYC.com

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

By Armond White

T

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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PAGE 9

CITYARTS BOOKS

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

By Ben Kessler

I

n his new novel Bleeding Edge, Thomas Pynchon uses the word “postmodernâ€? for the first time in his fiction – a notable event in the career of this supposed American postmodern novelist par excellence. The word crops up in a few places, including a description of a Soho nightclub bathroom containing “the godfather of postmodern toilets‌with three dozen stalls, its own bar, television lounge, sound system, and deejay.â€? For Pynchon, ever the excremental visionary, it’s a peerless expression of satiric disgust. Postmodernism has no boundaries, no sense of the sacred. It fecklessly mingles excrement with entertainment. Pynchon makes postmodernism’s insufficiencies the subject of Bleeding Edge, the surface plot of which focuses on unlicensed fraud investigator Maxine Tarnow’s efforts to untangle an apparent conspiracy surrounding dotcom-era tycoon Gabriel Ice and his shadowy company hashslingrz.com.

The year is 2001, 9/11 waiting in the wings for the first 300 pages or so; the setting (mostly) Manhattan; and the plot (for this reader, anyway) absolutely impenetrable. I have every confidence Bleeding Edge’s story would make sense, if one could slow the surprisingly sprightly (for a 76-year-old) arm that keeps cranking out noirish revelations and low-comic digressions. But the novel’s pace, which makes hash of conventional detective-novel plotting, helps Pynchon focus the reader’s attention where he wants it: on Maxine. We’re forced to admire and analyze how Bleeding Edge’s protagonist manages, with some difficulty, to keep her head despite the postmodern blur around her. The blur extends beyond the book’s plot to the personalities

Pynchon’s newest novel that surround Maxine, almost all of whom are archetypal New York neurotics and self-stereotypers. From Jew to WASP to Italian-American, nearly all the supporting characters play to the hilt the roles selected for them in Manhattan’s ethnic drama, skewed by Pynchon into comedy. And as capitalism, in the form of greedy property developers, lays waste to New York’s tangible history, these characters’ desperate self-parodies increasingly have nothing to refer to, no roots in the streets.  After 9/11, most of Pynchon’s people implode, getting lost in paranoid conspiracy theories or seeking solace in the “Deep Web,� an underground internet space rapidly coming to resemble the “surface Web� its nerd-snob denizens disdain.

By contrast, the massacre causes Maxine to come into her own. Bleeding Edge’s last hundred pages attain a moral beauty

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unprecedented in Pynchon, as Maxineâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s compassion deconstructs Gabrielâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s conspiracy (the details of which are unimportant) strut by strut. To find comparable heroism in the oeuvre, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d have to reach back more than 50 years to the post-Beat stories (e.g., â&#x20AC;&#x153;Entropyâ&#x20AC;?) with which Pynchon began his writing career.

But Bleeding Edge isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t constrained by the young Pynchonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Bomb-era post-adolescent despair. Instead, a millennial strain of that same despair becomes what Maxine ministers to in the â&#x20AC;&#x153;whole sick crewâ&#x20AC;? (pace V.) she meets in the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;hood. Pynchon explicitly connects Maxineâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s morality to her â&#x20AC;&#x153;old yenta instincts,â&#x20AC;? her deep-seated ethnic penchant for benevolent, if unsolicited, intervention. This Jewish mother offers chicken soup for the postmodern soul. Her culturally determined traits comprise her free will (or, as academics would say, her â&#x20AC;&#x153;agencyâ&#x20AC;?), and thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the contradictory key to Pynchonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s conception of identity. Pynchon is most concerned with identifiers that reside â&#x20AC;&#x153;beyond the zeroâ&#x20AC;? (pace Gravityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Rainbow), in human impulses and responses that long outlive the conditions that gave rise to them. It takes decades, if not centuries, of often-traumatic history to forge a Self. And thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s also the reason Pynchonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s incessant references to pop culture are not postmodern frippery but central to his method. Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fascinated by the way even the industrialized illusions of pop recapitulate perennial human fixations. In Bleeding Edge, for example, Pynchon informs us that Azrael, the name of Gargamelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cat in The Smurfs, is also the name of the angel of death â&#x20AC;&#x153;in nonbiblical Jewish traditionâ&#x20AC;ŚIn Islam also, for that matterâ&#x20AC;Śâ&#x20AC;? Recent pop culture has yet to produce a heroine as prepossessing as Maxine. Interestingly, though, she does recall Helen Armstead, the WASP protagonist of another remarkable American novel published this year, Jonathan Deeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s A Thousand Pardons. There are plenty of superficial similarities: Both are recently divorced New York mothers whose work (Helen is a PR exec specializing in corporate crisis) brings them within spitting distance of culpable yet unrepentant male arrogance. Spoiler Alert: Both Helen and Maxine are reunited with their ex-husbands at the denouement. Perhaps most importantly, both are repeatedly compared by their male authors to priests â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Pynchon calls Maxine a â&#x20AC;&#x153;defrockedâ&#x20AC;? fraud investigator (and she literally strips down during a tour de force pole-dancing scene). It appears Dee and Pynchon have invented redemptive figures for a post-9/11, post-economic-collapse culture. The punning nickname Maxineâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s best friend gives her â&#x20AC;&#x201C; â&#x20AC;&#x153;Maxipadâ&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x201C; makes the point, in classic Pynchonesque punning style.

In a world that wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be getting simpler or less potentially hazardous anytime soon, the best you can do is try to stop the bleeding.Â

Jazz at Lincoln Center Broadway at 60th Street, 5th Floor, NYC

Photo by Marylene Mey and Whit Lane

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TV CITYARTS

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

By Gregory Solman

I

n a recent episode of The Simpsons, Lisa grows a vestigial tail, ruffled fur, a cold nose and a cocked hat. She’s evolving into Poochie the Dog, a character inserted in a classic-era Itchy & Scratchy cartoon to lampoon desperate, audience-pandering program adjustments. The now tired comedy—once the best written on television—has put Lisa on a leash and trained her to list left and bark unintelligibly, all in a feckless attempt to stay “relevant” and “edgy” in the face of Family Guy and other prime-time intruders.

In classic Simpsonia, Lisa acted closest to creator Matt Groening’s sponsored character, functioning in the psyche of the show as the rational ego negotiating the unbridled id of Homer and squelching super-ego of Marge (who once memorably advised Lisa, “Take all your bad feelings and push them down, all the way down past your knees, until you’re almost walking on them.”)

More obviously, Lisa was always the smart one, not the useful idiot she’s become in what ought to be the serieseuthanizing Season 25. In a show tellingly titled “The Kid is Alright”—after the mean-spirited movie commending a lesbian freezeout of males as untrustworthy sperm donors— lonely Lisa recoils at the discovery that a brainy new classmate who shares her love of the Bronte sisters and anagrams is—a gasp—Republican, and thus beneath befriending. What we’re supposed to make of Lisa’s occasional, albeit grudging indulgence of Milhouse Van Houten’s lifelong crush, or George H. W. Bush occasionally living in the neighborhood, is suddenly unfathomable.

To be sure, the joke’s often on Lisa, as she’s aghast to learn her parents were Reaganites in the “crazy” ‘80s, and she struggles to tow the P.C. line: In a recent episode the new girl, one Isabel Gutierrez (voiced by Obama supporter Eva Longoria), stands impregnable to attack on all sides, being a “non-observant Argentinian Jew” whose Republicanism can’t even be written off, Lisa despairs, as “a Catholic thing,” i.e. anti-abortion. And when pressed to defend FDR in front of classmates, Isabel advances an argument for Roosevelt’s unConstitutional drift as Lisa stammers 2nd grade school book platitudes unworthy of her usual sophistication.

But in defending her politics in a class-rep debate against Isabel, writer Tim Long hits bottom, putting infantile words into Lisa’s mouth: Liberal is not a dirty word but “What ‘Liberal’ really means is that those who have more than enough should share a little with those who don’t,” Lisa says, “And those principles have consistently been in place during this country’s most prosperous times” (as in the Great Depression, Lis?). Long might just as well have had Lisa mouth “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” At least that isn’t sugar-coated. (Tim Long is listed as a “consulting producer” this season; one might say we’re in for a Long year.)

Plain leftist agitprop has replaced the show’s once ingenious, equitable political equipoise. In an earlier episode called

THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 2014

Liberal Lisa and Conservative Longoria “Labor Pains,” Lisa organized the Springfield Atomettes cheerleading squad by orchestrating a strike and spouting pro-union bromides, inspiring them to exploit their sexuality in media properties shown in an end-credit montage. In “Four Regrettings and a Funeral” reporter Kent Brockman refuses to join Fox News in New York because he has “scruples,” resolving to return to Springfield where he can decide what the news is, “like a god!” MSNBC, the joke of the real news world, is spared biting satire for the sake of guest star Rachel Maddow.

The coffee house radicals running the show now routinely serve up commentary on religion, rancid, bitter and acid. Since at least the 17th season, when an episode demonstrated a firm grasp of 19th century thinking in erecting and tearing apart the straw man of creationism, the show has been mired in illiberal imbalance on Christianity (and, for the most part, Christianity alone). A recent visual joke had Bart and Milhouse forming a tall man out of Reverend Lovejoy’s religious garb, Milhouse’s bulbous nose forming the shape of an erect penis wandering inside the trousers—an unthinkably crude reference for a series that once had sensibility and taste. Producer James L. Brooks has either lost control of the show or the genius of the comedy, which used to zing around the political spectrum faster than the speed of resentment. In either case, Brooks should no more have Lisa paraphrasing Marx than Mary Richards angrily burning her bra.

New episodes make a half-hearted effort at balance, but the weight’s straining one side. In an earlier day, no sooner had the show made fun of Ned Flanders’ religiosity than he could simply remind God of his supplicant’s favor to get that last bowling pin to miraculously drop. A 1998 episode slid fluidly from cult deprogramming (with Montgomery Burns the Leader demanding worship as a New God) into unmistakable

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Communist critique, replete with American gulag. Flanders, on the deprogramming team, tries to win back Homer by offering him beer (in angry defeat, he resolves to tap too much foam); Marge tries to get the kids to abandon the cult with her own materialist lie, “hover bikes” that are, alas, Huffies suspended from fishing lines. A modern show with the old sensibility would surely have fastened upon the cult of Obama, though it’s possible mere satire can’t top the spectacle of school children being brainwashed into singing a version of “Jesus Loves the Little Children:” “Barack Hussein Obama…Hmm, hmm, hmm!...He said red, yellow, black or white…all are equal in his sight!” (To paraphrase a triumphal Edward G. Robinson, “Who’s your Messiah now?”)

But to treat Lisa as a cipher is unforgivably grotesque, as transparent and cynical as Obama’s reelection-agitprop, “The Life of Julia,” the animated story of how an American woman can’t go a single day in her life without one of Mother Government’s wonderful, life-sustaining programs. In “The Kids Are Alright,” Lisa is completely dependent from cradle to grave on, as Lisa might say, “those who have more than enough.”

The Simpsons always had liberal tendencies. CartoonistCreator Matt Groening put any doubts to rest when he denied the U.S. Air Force’s request to use Bart’s image as nose art, declaring that Bart was against war until he could start one himself—the Democrat position in a nutshell. And in the new life of Lisa, liberalism is but another species of Marxism. But Springfield was always a town everyone could recognize and imagine living in. Now it’s just another intolerant suburb of Hollywood.

PAGE 11

CITYARTS FILM

Dangling Dylan The Coens examine Pop and Self

By Armond White

W

hen an apparition of Bob Dylan appears in Inside Llewyn Davis, it underscores the Coen Brothers’ abiding ambivalence about their Jewishness. Dylan, the oracular popstar-prophet -outsider from Minnesota (like the Coens) represents an advance on mainstream culture and power that troubles the Coen Brothers’ fascination with American character.

Inside Llewyn Davis is the latest go-round for these clever lads’ interest in the agonies of personal identity amidst a heartless society not entirely their own. Llewyn (Oscar Isaacs), a dark, curly-haired folksinger in 1961 New York City, is barely over the suicide of his singing partner. He’s economically strapped, homeless, living off patronizing friends and virtually begging for a solo recording career while also booty-begging for understanding from a free-spirit Greenwich Village girl (Cary Crybaby Mulligan) he might have impregnated.

Knocking at the door of WASP-Americana--the 50s-60s folk-music craze—Welsh-Italian Llewyn is a modern Wandering Jew who, like Dylan, dare not speak his ethnicity (his name is a Welsh creation like Dylan’s chosen’s moniker).

The Coens cutely symbolize Llewyn’s rootlessness in his constant chasing after a friends’ runaway Calico cat named Ulysses--more cuteness evoking the Homeric wandering of the Coens’ O Brother Where Art Thou? While that 2001 film was a surprising rich excursion into country music culture and America’s racial legacy, Inside Llewyn Davis offers no surprises.

It’s more solemn than funny.

This is a thornier problem than simply the Coens’ selfpleasing sarcasm, their intellectual narcissism. They’re not clever by half; it’s second nature to these new era movie brats.

But the self-pleasing self-indulgence may offer less meaning in itself than it does to them and their fans. That eye-wink title, Inside Llewyn Davis, refers to his non-selling solo debut album (he stashes a milk crate full of the vinyl discs at a friend’s apartment) as well as a teasing exploration of his soul. Problem is, Llewyn’s “soul” is shown without the insight into Jewish tradition (which made A Serious Man extraordinary) but as a series of beautifully-tooled, second-hand motifs.

Here, the Coens revisit the untrustworthy pop culture of Barton Fink and the Jewish paranoia of A Serious Man. Combined, they question the ethics of American pop culture and the neediness of Jewish artists. Been there, atoned for that.

Fans and critics who are familiar with the Coens will overrate these details. Problem is, Inside Llewyn Davis (with the lament “Where is its scrotum?!!” and jokey references to Disney’s The Incredible Journey) question Jewish alienation

Oscar Isaac and Justin Timberlake in Inside Llewyn Davis superficially. HBO’s Flight of the Conchords was a more trenchant display of outsiders’ music biz alienation. But Oscar Isaac’s Llewyn, with his Hoffman-Pacino whine, seems disconnected from his own singing and lacks the great feeling he showed in his role as the remorseful pop star in the high school reunion film Ten Years.

Critics who cluelessly praise T-Bone Burnett’s musical production ignore Burnett’s drab musicianship. The musical banality of Inside Llewyn Davis is its greatest problem-impersonal, apolitical folk music.

Llewyn, a modern version of Saul Bellow’s Dangling Man--searching for his place in society and the universe, dangling between expectation and reality--really is less talented than his deeply envied WASP competitor GI Troy Nelson (Stark Sands) who has the unfathomable gift of connecting to listeners.

Inside Llewyn Davis doesn’t connect. The Coens are facetious about Llewyn’s personal crisis. That’s why the movie ends the same way as Philip Kaufman’s The Wanderers with Dylan revolutionizing Jews’ and the world’s selfconsciousness. The slick, talented Coens may please fans who are already familiar with their habits but, sadly, for gifted, witty film artists, the Coens’ Inside Llewyn Davis says nothing new.

Follow Armond White on Twitter at 3xchair

Oscar Isaac in Inside Llewyn Davis PAGE 12

OUR TOWN

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THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 2014

RESTAURANT INSPECTION RATINGS

December 17 - 23, 2013

El Aguila

A

Restaurant Grades

1215 Lexington Avenue

Morini Ristorante

1167 Madison Avenue

A

Luna Rossa

347 East 85 Street

A

Asian Station

1444 3 Avenue

Not Graded Yet (20) Raw, cooked or prepared food is adulterated, contaminated, crosscontaminated, or not discarded in accordance with HACCP plan. Evidence of mice or live mice present in facility’s food and/or non-food areas. Sanitized equipment or utensil, including in-use food dispensing utensil, improperly used or stored. Wiping cloths soiled or not stored in sanitizing solution.

The Supply House

1647 2 Avenue

Not Graded Yet (33) Raw, cooked or prepared food is adulterated, contaminated, crosscontaminated, or not discarded in accordance with HACCP plan. Food not protected from potential source of contamination during storage, preparation, transportation, display or service. Food contact surface not properly washed, rinsed and sanitized after each use and following any activity when contamination may have occurred. Sanitized equipment or utensil, including in-use food dispensing utensil, improperly used or stored. Wiping cloths soiled or not stored in sanitizing solution.

Creative Juice

203 East 85 Street

A

Eli’s Essentials

1291 Lexington Avenue

A

Teavana

1142 Madison Avenue

A

Reif ’s Tavern

302 East 92 Street

Grade Pending (17) Raw, cooked or prepared food is adulterated, contaminated, crosscontaminated, or not discarded in accordance with HACCP plan. Filth flies or food/refuse/ sewage-associated (FRSA) flies present in facility’s food and/or non-food areas. Filth flies include house flies, little house flies, blow flies, bottle flies and flesh flies. Food/refuse/sewageassociated flies include fruit flies, drain flies and Phorid flies.

Yura & Company On Madison

1292 Madison Avenue

Grade Pending (23) Cold food item held above 41º F (smoked fish and reduced oxygen packaged foods above 38 ºF) except during necessary preparation. Appropriately scaled metal stem-type thermometer or thermocouple not provided or used to evaluate temperatures of potentially hazardous foods during cooking, cooling, reheating and holding.

Food not protected from potential source of contamination during storage, preparation, transportation, display or service.

The following listings were collected from the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s website on December 13, 2013 and include the most recent inspection and grade reports listed. We have included every restaurant listed during this time within the zip codes of our neighborhoods. Some reports list numbers with their explanations; these are the number of violation points a restaurant has received. To see more information on restaurant grades, visit www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/services/restaurant-inspection.shtml. #1 Aki Sushi

1425 York Avenue

A

Up Thai

1411 2 Avenue

Not Graded Yet - No violations were recorded at the initial non-operational pre-permit inspection conducted on 12/18/2013, or violations cited were dismissed at an administrative hearing.

Glorious Food

522 East 74 Street

Grade Pending (25) Evidence of mice or live mice present in facility’s food and/or non-food areas. Personal cleanliness inadequate. Outer garment soiled with possible contaminant.

Effective hair restraint not worn in an area where food is prepared. Food not protected from potential source of contamination during storage, preparation, transportation, display or service.

Columbus Citizens Foundation

8 East 69 Street

Grade Pending (23) Cold food item held above 41º F (smoked fish and reduced oxygen packaged foods above 38 ºF) except during necessary preparation. Evidence of mice or live mice present in facility’s food and/or nonfood areas. Food not protected from potential source of contamination during storage, preparation, transportation, display or service.

Le Charlot

19 East 69 Street

A

Delizia Ristorante

1374 1 Avenue

Grade Pending (35) Hot food item not held at or above 140º F. Cold food item held above 41º F (smoked fish and reduced oxygen packaged foods above 38 ºF) except during necessary preparation. Food not cooled by an approved method whereby the internal product temperature is reduced from 140º F to 70º F or less within 2 hours, and from 70º F to 41º F or less within 4 additional hours. Raw, cooked or prepared food is adulterated, contaminated, cross-contaminated, or not discarded in accordance with HACCP plan. Food contact surface improperly constructed or located.

Unacceptable material used.

Subway

1411 2 Avenue

A

The Pony Bar

1444 1 Avenue

Grade Pending (15) Evidence of mice or live mice present in facility’s food and/or non-food areas.

O Sha Thai Kitchen 1711 2 Avenue

A

Tanoshi Bento

1372 York Avenue

A

Ichiro Sushi

Grade Pending (26) Hot food item not held at or above 140º F. Cold food item held above 41º F (smoked fish and reduced oxygen packaged foods above 38 ºF) except during necessary preparation. Appropriately scaled metal stem-type thermometer or thermocouple not provided or used to evaluate temperatures of potentially hazardous foods during cooking, cooling, reheating and holding.

Sicaffe

964 Lexington Avenue

A

Eli Zabar

922 Madison Avenue

Not Graded Yet (19) Cold food item held above 41º F (smoked fish and reduced oxygen packaged foods above 38 ºF) except during necessary preparation. Food Protection Certificate not held by supervisor of food operations.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 2014

OUR TOWN

www.nypress.com

1694 2 Avenue

PAGE 13

MY STORY

NEIGHBORHOOD REAL ESTATE SALES Reported December 23 - 29, 2013

In Praise of Community Centers That Foster Community

Neighborhood Beekman Carnegie Hill

Lenox Hill

By Bette Dewing Hurrah! Our new mayor will reside in Gracie Mansion but will often return to his Brooklyn home because he depends on local places like the bakery, the luncheonette and the local “ Y.” Unlike his predecessor, he seems to know the importance of selfsustaining neighborhoods which meet everyday needs, and may saving and restoring these endangered places be a top priority of his administration! (To be continued ...)

Incidentally the “Y”’s are an invaluable community, and how we miss the gracious Lexington and 50th Street Y, with its affordable classes, exercise and meeting rooms. And one bulletin board notice drew this Presbyterian to a Unitarian Church in Brooklyn Heights where its congregation had formed surrogate extended-family groups connecting all ages “so nobody is left out.”

A role model for other faith groups, surely, which are pretty much segregated by age.

I don’t know if our new mayor has a faith group, but they can be strong communities, as well as spiritual centers. And as we’re still in the 12 Days of Christmas time, let me just stay with faith groups and a longtime concern that congregations should be at least as involved with their own members’ needs, as say, providing shelters for strangers without homes. (Related to preventing and overcoming that critical condition, clergy should call attention to Alcoholic Anonymous and Cocaine Anonymous groups often held on church premises. Their “open” meetings should be attended by the general citizenry, especially its policy makers and media reps.

Members there do actively help one another.

A real community exists. In this especially over-imbibing season, the number to call for A.A. and other 12 Step information is 212 647 1680.)

As for churches, too often, only a brief visit

and perhaps a plant is given to homebound members for Easter and Christmas. The same is true of civic groups where follow-up on ill members, even when they die, is often overlooked.

I don’t know whether St. Stephen’s of Hungary church is an exception but a member frantically asks for media coverage on how the Franciscan hierarchy told pastor Father Angelo he must leave the church

by January 1, instead of his scheuled May retirement date. The church community is not only praying, but actively protesting this “unreasonable demand.”

I do know that during Father Angelo’s tenure, this church on E. 82nd Street has numerous community-building events, including an annual Thanksgiving dinner for the congregation and the community. AlAnon meetings are held there, as are exercise classes for those over 60, many from outside the church, and sometimes more follow-up is needed when a member suddenly drops out or is known to be ill.

And isn’t that what communities should be about, meeting those needs which, especially for elder and disabled persons, are mostly impersonally filled by paid professionals and social service agencies? And bless Vivien Ehrlich, when as the Dorot agency president, she ruefully wrote The Times, how elders are sadly at the bottom of the list of volunteer recipients.

Not unrelated are two Christmas cards just received with glowing news about offspring accomplishments, but no mention about the loss of elder parents in 2013. Incidentally these parents couldn’t have been more caring, and you know I really won’t go quietly on this one!

Midtown Midtown E

Murray Hill

Sutton Place Turtle Bay

Upper E Side

Upper E Side

dewingbetter@aol.com

Yorkville

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

We want to hear from you!

Please go to nypress.com and select Submit Stuff.

PAGE 14

OUR TOWN

Address

Apt.

Sale Price

BR BA Listing Brokerage

424 E 52 St.

#10A

$50,000

455 E 51 St.

#6F

$1,500,000

2

2

Warburg

50 E 89 St.

#11Ab

$3,675,000

4

5

Douglas Elliman

8 E 96 St.

#1A

$520,000

141 E 88Th St.

#8A

$3,110,753

2

2

Stribling

530 Park Ave.

Multi

$43,944,761

222 E 71 St.

#2A

$912,900

2

1

Corcoran

301 E 64 St.

#6C

$615,000

1

1

Corcoran

12 E 64 St.

#5B

$1,300,000

1

1

Stribling

205 E 59 St.

#11C

$2,800,000

3

3

Coldwell Banker Bellma

781 5 Ave.

#1001

$4,700,000

2

2

Douglas Elliman

405 E 63 St.

#4K

$608,750

1

1

Next Stop Ny

315 E 65 St.

#2G

$1,219,000

2

2

Owner

315 E 65 St.

#8H

$1,175,000

2

2

Owner

465 Park Ave.

#7E

$930,000

475 Park Ave.

#12D

$1,130,000

245 E 54 St.

#18J

$405,000

0

1

Next Stop Ny

235 E 57 St.

#9E

$950,000

2

2

Keller Williams

235 E 57 St.

#10A

$340,000

0

1

Corcoran

225 E 57 St.

#8P

$415,000

0

1

Douglas Elliman

225 E 34 St.

#12C

$1,450,000

55 Park Ave.

#9E

$860,000

2

1

Cj Net Inc.

1

1

Corcoran

35 Park Ave.

#8J

$785,000

330 E 38 St.

#50Aq

$14,550,000

357 E 57 St.

#Res

$415,000

420 E 58 St.

#6A

$830,000

1

1

Corcoran

333 E 45 St.

#28D

$712,000

1

1

Halstead Property

333 E 43 St.

#407

$390,000

1

1

Sotheby’s International

333 E 46 St.

#7F

$524,398

0

1

Corcoran

251 E 51 St.

#17C

$1,110,000

2

2

Mns

321 E 48 St.

#3J

$550,000

1

1

Corcoran

1

1

Corcoran

235 E 49 St.

#8G

$390,000

799 Park Ave.

#9D

$2,250,000

515 E 72 St.

#28E

$3,563,875

4

4

Corcoran

1420 York Ave.

#5N

$345,000

0

1

Oxford Property Group

201 E 77 St.

#14F

$1,300,000

2

2

Halstead Property

201 E 77 St.

#14A

$600,000

1

1

Halstead Property

150 E 77 St.

#Phcd

$2,850,000

2

2

Brown Harris Stevens

171 E 84 St.

#7B

$1,750,000

2

2

Keller Williams

50 E 79 St.

#5E

$2,600,000

3

3

Stribling

240 E 76 St.

#11P

$450,000

0

1

Douglas Elliman

33 E End Ave.

#11C

$740,000

2

1

Corcoran

345 E 81 St.

#15C

$444,000

444 E 86 St.

#10D

$520,000

1

1

Rb Homes

1641 Third Ave.

#23J

$715,000

1

1

Douglas Elliman

500 E 83 St.

#15E

$1,080,000

2

2

Brown Harris Stevens

StreetEasy.com is New York’s most accurate and comprehensive real estate website, providing consumers detailed sales and rental information and the tools to manage that information to make educated decisions. The site has become the reference site for consumers, real estate professionals and the media and has been widely credited with bringing transparency to one of the world’s most important real estate markets.

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Request for Bids

SALE OF FOOD FROM MOBILE FOOD UNITS, CITYWIDE All bids submitted in response to this RFB must be submitted no later than Tuesday, January 21, 2014 at 11:00 a.m.

For more information, contact: Glenn Kaalund, Project Manager, Division of Revenue and Concessions, 830 Fifth Avenue, the ArsenalCentral Park, Room 407, New York, NY 10065 or call (212) 360-1397 or to download the RFB, visit http://www.nyc.gov/parks/ businessopportunities and click on the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Concessions Opportunitiesâ&#x20AC;? link. Once you have logged in, click on the â&#x20AC;&#x153;downloadâ&#x20AC;? link that appears adjacent to the RFBâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s description.

You can also email him at glenn.kaalund@parks.nyc.gov.

TELECOMMUNICATION DEVICE FOR THE DEAF (TDD) 212-504-4115

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Request for Bids

SALE OF FOOD FROM UP TO 5 MOBILE CONCESSIONS All bids submitted in response to this RFB must be submitted no later than Tuesday, January 21, 2014 at 11:00 a.m.

For more information, contact: Glenn Kaalund, Project Manager, Division of Revenue and Concessions, 830 Fifth Avenue, the ArsenalCentral Park, Room 407, New York, NY 10065 or call (212) 360-1397 or to download the RFB, visit http://www.nyc.gov/parks/ businessopportunities and click on the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Concessions Opportunitiesâ&#x20AC;? link. Once you have logged in, click on the â&#x20AC;&#x153;downloadâ&#x20AC;? link that appears adjacent to the RFBâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s description.

You can also email him at glenn.kaalund@parks.nyc.gov.

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PAGE 15

PROFILE

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

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

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

PAGE 16

OUR TOWN

it with a plastic spatula.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sawhnei, who sells about 20 boxes of chocolate

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 2014