Our Town January 23rd, 2014

cityArts

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NYPRESS.COM • THE LARGEST PAPER ON THE EAST SIDE • JANUARY 23, 2014

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Solving a Deadly Garodnick Sharpens Traffic Puzzle a number of recent Focus for Final Following pedestrian fatalities -- including four over the weekend -- experts, Council Term more residents, and After conceding the speaker’s race, the third-term Upper East Side council member turns his attention to development and neighborhood concerns

By Megan Bungeroth Dan Garodnick is nothing if not unflappable. Coming down from a roller coaster year of campaigning for three different elected positions as well as supporting colleagues running for citywide offices, Garodnick has just started his third term in the city council representing the Upper East Side’s 4th district, and he has already shaken off the ups and downs of his ride, setting his sights firmly forward.

Early in 2013, Garodnick began a campaign for city comptroller but stepped aside when then-Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer jumped into the race, which he eventually won against Eliot Spitzer. Then Garodick ran unopposed to retain his council seat, winning easily, and also put himself in the running for speaker of the city council, a position that’s essentially second in power to the mayor and is chosen by the 51 members of the council. Presenting himself as a businessfriendly Democrat who would work with the mayor but also act as an independent counterbalance for his agenda, Garodnick garnered the support of some 20 council members, but conceded the race to Melissa MarkViverito hours before the vote. He asked his supporters to join him in voting for his one-time rival in the name of council unity. Now he’s finally able to turn away from campaigning and back to his job and his district.

“We have a lot on the agenda, starting with a number of land use related issues, the East Midtown rezoning we’re going to pick that back up to finish,” said Garodnick Continued on page 9

elected leaders look for answers

By Joanna Fantozzi The corner of 97th and West End Avenue was crowded with neighbors, activists and local politicians last week for the vigil for two pedestrians killed in separate accidents. The victims included Cooper Stock, age 9, who was killed crossing West End Avenue with his father two weeks ago, as result of a cab driver making a blind left turn.

At the vigil, children gripped the hands of tearful adults who held candles in cups—the dim light illuminating angry protest signs demanding change.

“This is unacceptable, this isn’t right. This is matter of life and death and we do have to protect our little babies,” said City Comptroller Scott Stringer, speaking at the vigil. “If you can’t drive, get out of your car and stop hurting our children.

As a city, let’s get this done now.”

Mayor de Blasio last week rolled out his Vision Zero plan,

which aims to reduce traffic fatalities to zero in the next 10 years. He has devoted an entire agency to Vision Zero, which will report to the mayor with a plan to improve the 50 most dangerous intersections in New York, expand the number of 20 mph zones in the city and pursue a legislative plan to give the city more power to enforce traffic laws.

While the pedestriansafety push was prompted by the death of Cooper and a woman in Queens, it was given extra impetus by four more deaths over the weekend, including a 26-year-old woman killed while crossing the street a block from where the vigil was held.

“Pedestrians are not protected and we see that every day with a number of accidents. Not only are people hit and killed but they are mostly hit and injured, and these injuries can be really life-altering,” said Christine Berthet, founder of CheckPeds, the Chelsea/Hell’s Kitchen Pedestrian Safety Organization. “I think the goal of vision zero is good, but dramatic, and when you try to get to perfection you won’t but you will get as close as possible.”

In the first two weeks of 2014, there already have been seven pedestrian fatalities in the city, and 11 traffic deaths

ALSO INSIDE DEBATING THE HORSE CARRIAGE BAN P. 4 NEW UPPER EAST SIDE MIDDLE SCHOOL P.8

Continued on page 4

TAPPED IN Franchised Bacon, Pro and Con In our January 9, 2014 issue, we ran an essay titled “Franchised Nostalgia, with a Side of Bacon,� by Megan Bungeroth, arguing that the rise of chain restaurants in Manhattan isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Below are some of the responses to that story. “I came to NYC to escape the IHOPs of the world. Having lived in NYC for 30 years, the rise of the chain stores is forcing out small mom-and-pop stores. We don’t want imitation maple syrup.

What I do want is the small quirky diner, the Soup Nazi, not the ATM on every block and an Olive Garden. Why would someone come all the way to NYC to just be in the same place and have the same food as home. If you want that, then stay home in your small suburban cul-de-sac!!!� - online comment, TKW “‘We’ do not do these stupid things, you do. There’s no way I’d get anywhere near all this crap that we live here to escape from.

You are not being ‘ironic,’ you are an ordinary, boring hick and don’t deserve this city.� - online comment, Grade A Fancy mag “I liked your piece on the entry of big chains into Manhattan.

I too grew up in a small town (in the Midwest) and I’ve gotten tired of hearing people hate on everything they knew from home, simply because it was from home and not from New York. I haven’t made my way to IHOP (in fact I’ve never been to one) but if there’s any city that needs feel-good joints, it’s New York.

UN leader addresses East Side synagogue following trip to Auschwitz

Your article reminded me of another article I just read and really enjoyed called the Unexotic Underclass. It’s about why technology is so focused on the New Yorks and LAs and forgets about the needs of everyone who doesn’t live in a major city. I think 2014 is going to be a good year for ‘unexotic’ businesses and ideas. Bring on the pancakes!�

- letter, Evan Cohen “This has been part of a huge problem with New York we have seen in the last 25+ years as the rents have constantly risen and many natives left due to those high rents, replaced with ‘wannabes’ in many cases with no appreciation of what made New York tick for years. Seeing IHOP or Dairy Queen in Manhattan is not a surprise (Friday’s and Subway are not in that group because Friday’s actually started as a singles bar on the Upper East Side of Manhattan even if the original location on 63rd Street and 1st Avenue is no longer there and Subway was in Manhattan on the Upper East Side as early as 1977, LONG before that became the chain it is now). Seeing Applebees and other such places like it invade Manhattan really goes to show how many ‘real’ New Yorkers left in the past 25+ years because they could no longer afford to live there.� - online comment, Hoops and Horses “Born and raised in Queens, but I would take the high prices and prosperity of NY today over the decrepit NY that existed through the early 90s.� - online comment, scastro87

United Nations Secretary General Ban Kimoon, who recently returned from a trip to Auschwitz, joined Rabbi Arthur Schneier at Park East Synagogue’s annual U.N. Holocaust Commemoration Shabbat service on Jan. 18.

The Secretary General spoke to the E. 67th Street congregation about his recent trip. “I stood on the ramp where the transport trains unloaded their human cargo, where the awful moment of selection took place – where the quick flick of an SS commander’s index finger meant the difference between being killed immediately in the gas chambers and being kept alive only to be worked to death,� he said. “I was profoundly saddened by what I saw.�

The service was in advance of United Nations Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27. Holocaust survivors and their families were in attendance.

Ambassador Ron Prosor, Permanent Representative of Israel to the U.N, and members of the diplomatic corps representing over 50 countries also participated.

The commemoration began with Rabbi Arthur Schneier’s speech “Hear the Cry of the Oppressed.�

The Shabbat Service was also led by Chief Cantor Yitzhak Meir Helfgot accompanied by Maestro Russell Ger and the Park East Synagogue Choir.

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THURSDAY, JANUARY 23, 2014

CRIME WATCH Filched on Fifth

By Jerry Danzig

Four Gone Conclusion An unknown perpetrator made unauthorized charges to a woman’s debit and charge cards. On Saturday, January 11, a 40-year-old woman living on the Upper East Side reported to police that someone had made unauthorized charges to her Citibank debit card and her American Express card, totaling $4,000. She had lost the Citibank debit card some time before, but was still in possession of the American Express card. Police said an investigation is ongoing.

Criminal Couple A man and a woman snatched a teenaged girl’s iPhone. At 3:30 PM on Tuesday, January 14, a 16-year-old girl was walking on East 91st Street when a man and a woman grabbed her iPhone 5 and fled the scene. The iPhone 5 was valued at $250.

This Talk Wasn’t Cheap Someone stole cash from a neighborhood newsstand. At 12:30 PM on Monday, January 13, a 58-year-old man operating a newsstand on Lexington Avenue walked out of the stand to have a conversation with another person. When he returned, he discovered that cash had been removed from the register and the shoebox behind the counter, totaling $3,806. No video is available of the incident.

A woman’s wallet was stolen on a bus. At 4:10 PM on Friday, January 10, a 70-year-old woman was riding the southbound M1 bus. As the bus passed 80th Street on Fifth Avenue, the woman realized that someone had stolen her wallet. She later canceled her cards, but discovered that charges totaling $1,081 had been made at various ATM machines.

COMMUNITY ALERT! Safeguard your apartment and home.

Recent burglaries have occurred in the neighborhood.

Be alert for suspicious activity.

Perpetrators are gaining entry by: • Forcing locked doors, mainly the front, due to inadequate locks.

• Front doors left open and unsecured.

• Unlocked rear windows.

• Fire-escape windows.

Remember to: 1. Secure all windows and doors.

2. Install and lock secondary locks.

3. Do NOT leave your electronics (laptops, iPods, etc.) near your windows in plain view.

4. Install only FDNY-approved safety gates on fire-escape or ground-level windows.

PROTECT YOUR HOME: Your local precinct Crime Prevention Survey consists of a walk-through of your home and a list of security recommendations to help prevent your chances of being burglarized. Call your local precinct and ask the crime prevention officer for this FREE service.

If you have any information regarding any burglaries, please contact your local precinct detective squad.

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THURSDAY, JANUARY 23, 2014

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Solving a Deadly Traffic Puzzle Continued from page 1

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overall. Last year, there were 173 traffic deaths, according to the NYPD. Everyone with a stake in this issue -- planning experts, residents, parents and elected officials -- agree that action has to be taken. Here are some of the specific proposals that have begun to emerge:

Lowering the City Speed Limit from 30 MPH to 25 or 20 MPH

20 speed and red light cameras that will be in operation at any time. And the maximum fine for getting caught over the speed limit? Anywhere between $50 and $100.

Failure to yield and speeding are the two most common causes of pedestrian accidents, according to the activist organization, Right of Way. “Because New York can get overruled by Albany at any time we had to get their permission to use technology that has been improving cities all over the world for decades,” Martinez said. “They didn’t want to give us permission, we negotiated and ended up with a small program.”

Changing the Streetscapes

Starting with former Mayor Bloomberg, the typical This is a common solution, especially considering streetscape in New York, especially in Manhattan, has been the fact that if a pedestrian is hit by a car going evolving since the inclusion of bike lanes and pedestrian plazas.

30 mph, they have a 50% chance of surviving, Caroline Samponaro says that Transportation Alternatives but if they are hit by a car going 20 mph, they has noticed a big difference in pedestrian safety, since “streets aren’t operated like speedways anymore.” Really large avenues, have a 90% chance of surviving, said Caroline especially on the Upper West Side, can be narrowed with the Samponaro, director of Campaigns and inclusion of specific bike and bus lanes, wider sidewalk curbs Organizing with Transportation Alternatives. and islands that divide the avenues.

“I don’t think a 20 mph “Making streets safer for bicyclists has a wonderful side speed limit should be COUNCILMEMBER effect of making it safer for citywide, because certain HELEN ROSENTHAL, ON THE pedestrians because there’s a lane NEIGHBORHOOD’S thoroughfares like the of traffic that moves slower than PEDESTRIAN DEATHS FDR Drive allow for cars that acts as a buffer,” said Kaufman. higher speeds,” said Sarah Kaufman, a traffic research Imposing Harsher It’s unthinkable that a single associate at NYU. “But side Punishments for Reckless neighborhood should experience three streets should be reduced Drivers pedestrian fatalities in one week. The to 20 mph. There’s no UWS stands together in sympathy with reason you have to plow It’s common sense that if drivers the families affected. We’ve engaged the knew there would be a heavy through a side street when Mayor’s Office directly on this issue, and punishment, they would be less kids are nearby.” recommend that the West 96th Street

“

likely to speed or drive recklessly.

Reducing the speed limit is corridor, including 97th Street and West However, at the moment, drivers much more complicated than the End Avenue, be one of the Vision Zero can only get a maximum of a Mayor simply proposing a new $500-$700 fine or a 30-day prison study sites.

But we also need concrete set of laws. First of all, according sentence for hitting a pedestrian, public safety measures implemented to legal experts at Transportation Alternatives, the mayor would immediately -- which includes additional even if they kill or seriously injure someone. It is incredibly difficult have to get a special “home rule” and more visible signage for pedestrians to prove vehicular involuntary exemption because many traffic and drivers alike. I pledge to work manslaughter or negligent laws are under the jurisdiction of alongside my colleagues in government homicide. Instead, because the case the state, including speed limits and the community to ensure that is so hard to prove, said Martinez, and speed cameras. In addition, the the defense will get slapped with immediate steps are taken.” state has the ability to overrule any a fine or small prison sentence, of the decisions the city makes. leaving the injured party to seek Juan Martinez, a general compensation through a lawsuit. counselor at Transportation Martinez says that in many court cases, remorse and cases Alternatives, said that the City Council recently tried to reduce of “he’s just a kid, he didn’t mean to kill the pedestrian” are the speed limit citywide to 25 mph, but couldn’t because it was common. However, making a left turn without looking is still under jurisdiction of the state. making a choice, despite the lack of intent behind the results of that choice.

Installing More Speed and Red Light Cameras “We need to show a moral obligation to drive responsibly and to be careful, and we can do so through implementing Even though the NYPD has promised to devote more serious consequences for people who harm or kill someone manpower to enforcing speed limits and other traffic laws, else while driving,” said Martinez. “Lawsuits are a lousy crossing guards and traffic cops can’t be everywhere. In May, way to get justice. The driver doesn’t end up really feeling the City Council passed a resolution asking Albany for more the consequences. And as a result you don’t get a change in speed cameras -- as many as 200 in school zones and other behavior and the cycle continues.” high-risk areas. However, Albany has given New York a limit of

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THURSDAY, JANUARY 23, 2014

Debating the Central Park Horses Last week’s coverage of the proposed ending of horse carriage rides sparked an avalanche of commentary Since their livelihoods depend on their horses, why would the drivers “mistreat” their horses? The horse-carriages are one of the icons that ARE New York. Who would take a carriage ride in Chicago, Peoria or Cleveland? There is a big difference between pedicabs and carriage rides that has to do with the romance of New York. This has been an issue for so long and those who are against them perhaps have no romance in their souls and I feel sorry for these unhappy people.

Melissa Gibbs W. 81st Street No, I don’t think horse and carriages should be banned from the park and streets of our city because a small group of fanatics think they should. Yes, there have been incidents when a horse is harmed in traffic or just collapses for no apparent reason, but those incidents are few and far between. The horse and carriage is a longrevered icon in the city and should be maintained for visitors of all kinds. The virtual romance they inspire has been depicted in one film after another and should be continued for the future. And I’m a lover of all animals.

I would further like to say that the many regulations and guidelines now in place are strictly followed by the industry and should therefore be figured into the equation. I will write to the new mayor to voice my opinion and I hope all other New Yorkers who want to save the horses and their carriages should do so also.

John Elari W. 74th Street

ONLINE LETTERS “I’m thrilled that Mayor de Blasio is taking the reins in putting an end to carriage horse abuse. Finally, we can all live, work, and play freely, while at the same time, breathing a sigh of relief.” - Wendy

spooks or bolts. This mode of transportation simply isn’t safe in the 21st Century. I am proud to work in a city that has elected such an animal friendly and humane mayor.” Polly McBride

“It is just common sense that horse carriages do not belong in the middle of the most congested city in America. It seems like every few weeks there is another accident in the city between a horse, car and pedestrians.

I’m glad that NYC will finally put an end to this inhumane practice.” - Charlie di Giacomo

“Even PETA, as hard as they try, can’t come up with a record of any pedestrian being hurt by a horse and carriage since 1999. Unless you are suggesting that because an activity MIGHT hurt a pedestrian, it should be banned from NYC? If that’s the case, Mayor de Blasio needs to start with a ban on autos in NYC, they are a REAL threat.

Animal friendly? Humane? Hardly. He’s ready to make homeless and jobless 220 well cared for horses.” - Katrina

“These horses are private property. They have value and the drivers aren’t going to ‘adopt’ them to people who know nothing about horses and don’t believe draft horses should have jobs. De Blasio is kowtowing to a real estate develop who covets the stables and donated heavily to his campaign.” - Olivia Joan “The horse carriage industry is not only dangerous to the horses but pedestrians are endangered when a horse

“No one will ‘adopt’ the carriage horses. Horses are very expensive to feed, provide with medical care and dental care (yes! they need dental care also) and to have proper horseshoes. There already are many ‘retired’ race horses and wild horses that no one wants to adopt because of the cost. The carriages should just be used inside Central Park.” - Fran Garber

I think that the horse carriage should stay but be limited to Central Park. The horses shouldn’t be on the streets, but I’m fine with them making tourists happy by working in the Park.

Sincerely, Marcia Epstein W. 97th Street We are very upset that our mayor, Bill De Blasio, intends to ban the Horse Carriage Trade. We are 82 years of age and have lived at the same address since 1967. We do not believe that the horses are abused in any way. They are kept in clean stalls at stables and fed very adequately. I’ve never seen a skinny carriage horse. Their work is better than the alternative (dog food).

If we had known of De Blasio’s plan, we would not have voted for him. If he goes ahead with this, he will not get our vote again.

If there are going to be any demonstrations against his plan, please e-mail or call us. We are avid horse lovers. We’d be happy to participate.

How many people does he want to put out of work? It’s not just the carriage drivers, there is a whole chain of people.

Many years ago my grandfather Albert Wills was a dedicated milkman in Queens for the Renken Dairy. His longtime horse, Red, was very intelligent. He would move from one house to the next without being told , waiting for my granddad, who carried 12 bottles of milk in a metal carrier, to return. He cried when Red died in front of him.

We heartily feel that the horse carriage trade should not be banned because of a few activists say so.

Could it be that there is money behind this, and someone wants the stables out in order to build another Needle Tower?

Doris and George Campbell Amsterdam Avenue

THURSDAY, JANUARY 23, 2014

OUR TOWN

For the past few years, I have worked alongside my fellow animal lover friends in NYClass to help put an end to the horse carriage industry in New York.

When this industry first took hold in New York 150 years ago, it made sense since it provided, in part, a means of transportation for the city, before the advent of the automobile as we now know it. Today, it has not only morphed into a tourist attraction, at the expense of these wonderful animals, but also has infringed on the quality of life of all who live and/or

work in Manhattan.

No one is looking to deprive anyone else of a livelihood, especially in our current economy, as perhaps some carriage drivers would have it. In truth, instances of animal abuse have been uncovered, and traffic accidents -- even injury to tourists -- have occurred.

Our city has enough traffic congestion as it is, compounded by pollution created by gas emissions from cars. This practice has proven, time and time again, to be hazardous to man and beast alike.

NYClass has proposed a common

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sense alternative to the horse & carriage: a “green” eco friendly car which can accommodate 8 people.

All that the lady and gentlemen who currently steer the horses through traffic need to do would be to brush up on their driving, thereby transferring their skills to a safer and more modern means of tourist transport.

I am pleased and proud that Mayor de Blasio has the integrity and the courage to finally right what has been a wrong for way too long.

Wendy Glickstein E. 83rd Street

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M A R B L E C O L L E G I AT E C H U RC H

OUT & ABOUT Lego Movie Hands-On Learning Barnes & Noble, 86th & Lexington Ave, 150 East 86th Street 2 p.m., Free Join for a Hands-On Learning event as we count down to The Lego Movie. Activities, fun and surprises for all who attend. For children.

Barnesandnoble.com

Welcoming. Inclusive. Surprising.

Dr. Michael B. Brown, Senior Minister 1 West 29th St. NYC, NY 10001 (212) 686-2770 www.MarbleChurch.org

Friday, January 24

Sunday, January 26

Fridays at Noon: The Legacy of Jean Leon Destine

Ben Kallos City Council Inauguration

92nd Y, Lexington Avenue at 92nd St 12 p.m., $5 Considered the father of Haitian professional dance, Jean-Léon Destiné died earlier this year. Starting in the 1940s, he brought the traditional, folk and religious dances from his native Haiti to stages all over the world (including 92Y) and choreographed new works drawing on Haitian and other Caribbean dance styles. His dances also commented on the impact of colonialism and slavery on Haitian society. This performance will include revived dances, archival footage, live drumming and testimonials from people who worked with Destiné.

92y.org

Saturday, January 25

92nd Y, 1395 Lexington Avenue 11:30 a.m., Free New council member for District 5, the Upper East Side and Roosevelt Island, Ben Kallos, will be sworn in at a public ceremony.

The event is open to the public, but only those who RSVP are guaranteed seats.

Benkallos.com

Assertiveness Training: Say What You Mean Lexington Avenue at 92nd Street 10:30 a.m., $95 Do you avoid taking a stand even when you know you’re right? Make sure your needs get met and learn to say no without antagonizing others. For men and women. Bring lunch.

92y.org

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The Paper Bag Players Hiccup Help!

Kaye Playhouse, Hunter College 68th Street between Park and Lexington Avenue 11/1 p.m., $15+ Focuses on a child’s relationship with parents, grandparents, teachers, siblings and friends, and explores the joy, conflicts, adventures, and mis-adventures of these very special relationships. The show is an hour of funny stories, zany characters, lively music, eye-popping sets and props made out of paper bags and boxes - with lots of opportunities for the audience to be a part of the fun.

212-772-4448

Monday, January 27 Social Security Presentation 67th Street Library, 328 East 67th Street 2 p.m., Free A general overview of Social Security as a foundation for planning your future. When should you take benefits? How can married couples maximize them? In this session, you will learn how to get the most out of what you have put in. Presented by McGraw Hill Financial.

Nypl.org

THURSDAY, JANUARY 23, 2014

OUT & ABOUT Stay Well Exercise 67th Street Library, 328 East 67th Street 12 p.m., Free Stay Well volunteers certified by the NYC’s Department for the aging will lead participants in a well-balanced series of exercises for seniors of all ability levels. Please wear loose comfortable clothing. Exercise equipment will be provided. All participants are required to sign a personal medical waiver at the beginning of the class.

Nypl.org

Wednesday, January 29 Josephsohn Exhibit Hauser & Wirth, 32 East 69th Street 10-6 p.m., Free Devoted to the late sculptor Hans Josephsohn (1920 – 2012). For over six decades, the German-born Swiss artist devoted his practice to the enduring theme of the human figure, which he explored in standing, sitting, and reclining figures, as well as half-figures, heads, torsos, and reliefs. hauserwirth.com

Tuesday, January 28 Thursday, January 30 Fallen Angel Theatre Company Winter Benefit 2014 Mutual of America, 320 Park Avenue, 35th Floor 6-9 p.m., $200 Join the ladies of Fallen Angel, with friends Paddy Moloney, Mayor David Dinkins, Willie Colon, Peter Quinn, Dick Barnett, Colum McCann and “surprise” guests as they honor pioneering woman of theatre, Garry Hynes.

646-621-4948; fallenangeltheatrecompany. blogspot.com

Knoble Knitters and Crochet Club

Ian Rankin: Saints of the Shadow Bible

86th & Lexington Ave, 150 East 86th Street 7 p.m., Free The Knoble Knitters and Crochet Club will gather for their monthly meeting at tables in the Cafe. For adults.

Barnesandnoble.com

Barnes & Noble, 86th & Lexington Ave, 150 East 86th Street 7 p.m., Free Ian Rankin joins us to discuss and sign his latest thriller in the ‘Inspector John Rebus’ series.

Barnesandnoble.com

Wednesday, February 12, 8 pm ß Shubert Theatre, NYC TO PURCHASE TICKETS: Call 212.221.7300 ext. 133.

FOR MORE INFORMATION VISIT: www.actorsfund.org.

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How To Really Make It In VoiceOvers 92nd Y, Lexington Avenue at 92nd Street 7 p.m., $30 With such talents as James Earl Jones and Linda Hunt doing voiceovers, you might think breaking into this field is impossible. Not so. Learn an exciting method for beating the competition.

92y.org

THURSDAY, JANUARY 23, 2014

Having the right doctor is essential. When you call our Physician Referral Service, a registered nurse or a referral specialist will help you connect with the best doctor to meet your healthcare needs. They can also give you information about our doctors’ education, specialties, office hours, languages spoken and insurance participation.

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PAGE 7

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OUR TOWN

Parents meet principal of M.S. 177, opening this fall

By Daniel Fitzsimmons

WA L N U T S

PAGE 8

The East Side’s Newest School

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Parents crammed into the auditorium of a school on the Upper East Side to meet the principal of a new middle school that’s slated to open in the same building next year.

M.S. 177 will enroll about 80 sixth-grade students for the 2014-15 school year. Full implementation is slated for the 2016-17 school year, by which time the school will serve 255-300 students in grades 6 through 8.

The existing school, P.S. 158 Bayard Taylor, is a kindergarten through fifth-grade elementary school with about 775 students, located at York Avenue and 77th Street.

Parents at the packed meeting - many of whom had kids enrolled in Bayard Taylor were mostly concerned about the enrollment process for M.S. 177, though some were also concerned about how the two schools would co-exist in the same building.

Fifty-percent of students enrolled next year at M.S. 177 will be screened by the new principal and other administrators, and will most likely be accepted based on high test scores and other achievements. The other half will be drawn from a District 2 lottery of applicants who expressed interest in the school by attending an information session.

District 2 Superintendent Mariano Guzman said applicants can apply to M.S. 177 through the screened process, unscreened process (lottery), or both, and that applications to the new middle school won’t affect those made to other District 2 middle schools. However, he stressed that in the years ahead, applying to M.S. 177 could affect applications to other schools as the new middle school is integrated into the overall process.

Christina Riggio, the principal of the new school, was on hand to introduce herself and answer parents’ questions about M.S. 177.

She said M.S. 177 will be hiring six teachers to teach three classes. Class size will be in the high 20s.

With only 80 seats up for grabs, in a middle-school-hungry district, parents were at the meeting to learn about the enrollment process in the hopes that their graduating fifth-grader would land one of the spots.

Still, some Bayard Taylor parents, like Abhinav Chandra, are fearful that adding hundreds of more students to the school will strain the building’s resources and space.

“There are programs at [Bayard Taylor] right now that are not compensated programs,

Christina Riggio, the principal of M.S. 177 they’re there just because the space is there, so are they going to be cut? Gym? Is that going to be cut?” said Chandra.

Another parent asked Riggio how students who were selected for M.S. 177 under the lottery process would receive extra help if they fall behind, as both screened and unscreened students will share the same classrooms.

Riggio said the administration is prepared to enrich or collapse the curriculum for higherachieving students, while slowing it down for students who are struggling.

“The other thing we’re considering is having a coach so that we have a second body in the room to push in for those students who may need it,” said Riggio. “In the beginning of the year we’re going to take great strides in getting to know your students.”

A language course will not be offered for sixth-graders next year, Rizzio said, and interest in music, arts and language will most likely be addressed by way of lunch clubs and after school programs. Guzman cited another District 2 school with a high Asian population that has a Mandarin lunch club.

Riggio said several logistical points were still to be decided, such as what time M.S. 177 will start and end and whether students will be able to leave school premises during lunch. The new middle school will occupy the fifth floor of the school building, which will undergo construction this summer.

Riggio taught social studies at a public middle school in the Bronx for six years and was involved in Teach For America. She was also a lead teacher at the DOE, mentoring other teachers, and an achievement coach.

Riggio holds a masters in elementary education and teaching from Pace University and a masters in school building leadership from Columbia.

“I love middle school,” she said. “It’s a transitional time in kids’ lives. With change comes an opportunity to expand their interests and their love of learning.”

For more information, call the District 2 office at 212-356-3815. Contact Christina Riggio at middleschool177@gmail.com.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 23, 2014

Garodnick Sharpens Focus for Final Council Term Continued from page 1

in a recent interview. “We are going to try to advance the East River esplanade and we’re going to be dealing with infrastructure concerns like resiliency against coastal flooding and improved transportation options and traffic reduction.�

The East Midtown rezoning is an ambitious project championed by former Mayor Bloomberg that would allow more new and high-rise development in the area, intended to retain and attract major corporations. The city council voted late last year to reconfigure much of the original rezoning plan and will send the revisions back to community boards to review. Garodnick has continually pressed for more consideration of pedestrian and infrastructure issues in the rezoning. “Improving the functionality of transportation is important,� Garodnick said. “One of the reasons we should do the East Midtown rezoning is it’s paired with improvements to the Grand Central subway experience - finding ways to move trains out of Grand Central faster, creating more space on the platforms, improving pedestrian flow, improving commuter flow.�

Garodnick said that making improvements in the city’s transportation systems was a top priority of his constituents, along with ensuring good public schools, keeping housing affordable and maintaining the low levels of crime the Upper East Side currently experiences.

In his time campaigning first for comptroller and then for speaker, Garodnick also had a chance to talk with residents in all five boroughs. “I think being a candidate in broader than my own area has opened my eyes to a variety of issues which will be instructive for me, whether it is the fact that there are many New Yorkers who are struggling for economic opportunities, to people who are trying to have fairness in their own employment, to the broader

transportation issues or housing issues that exist,� he said. “I have seen a lot and it certainly has made me a better public servant.�

Not one to dwell on setbacks, Garodnick also insisted that the speaker’s race is over, along with any contention between him and Speaker Mark-Viverito. He said that he still believes the council can act as a unified, independent counterbalance to the mayor, a theme he continually emphasized during his campaign. He also wants to keep working for his East Side constituents – creating a path to tenant ownership of Stuyvesent Town and Peter Cooper Village is another priority for his final term. “Above all we want to continue to be the most responsive office to the people who have put us here,� Garodnick said. “When constituents call we want them to get a responsive and effective result.�

Scenes from works by Berlioz, Donizetti, and Mozart, plus Stravinsky’s One-Act Mavra James Levine, Conductor Directed by Edward Berkeley Featuring singers from the Metropolitan Opera Lindemann Young Artist Development Program and Juilliard Opera with the

JUILLIARD ORCHESTRA Costumes by Kim Krumm Sorenson Lighting by Paul Hudson

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THURSDAY, JANUARY 23, 2014

A Concert of Comic Operas

OUR TOWN

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PAGE 9

Transforming Manhattan, from the East Side

MY STORY

Dreaming Dreams on MLK Day

By Bette Dewing In 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through non-violence. What would Dr. King think of the world today when even once safe havens like schools, are invaded by killers, often a student out for revenge? Would he not be shocked by the entertainment industry’s obsession with fictional killings, maimings, betrayals, sexual lust, and again, revenge? And would he think there must to be a connection?

And King might wonder why no protests are raised by the old men and old women who grew up with G-rated entertainment and with only a limited amount of it. Indeed, a generally G-rated culture shaped the majority views, regardless of racial, ethnic or economic background.

But elders need a leader to encourage speaking out, and one who believes that today’s unchallenged inequality and bias can also be age-related, and today’s degregation is also by age group. Even in families.

As for families, King would rejoice to see a grandmother in the White House, but be angry that so few people know it, or that the young need all the responsible adults possible in their lives. It’s so obvious a need, and to prevent abuse and neglect, as in the recent horrific fatal abuse of four year-old Myls Dobson by his jailed father’s girlfriend. But only failed child protection agencies are blamed, not the breakdown of the family, especially the extended kind whose presence can prevent all manner of problems, including domestic violence and the peer bullying epidemic.

And the need for intergenerational connections is vital for elders and also the middle generation. Elders are often too much alone, and regarded as burdens when their systems break down. But again, the family system must not break down. It needs all-out support, not just the hired or social services kind, but from the community - neighbors, and faith, civic and other philanthropic group members.

Now, this is a lot about elder needs and rights because even when, for example, over 60’s are victims of traffic tragedies, there’s little media coverage or legislative outcry. But what a terrible dereliction of government duty that it takes the death of a child, like recently, 9 year-old Cooper Stock, to prompt a long-overdue crackdown on what I call crimes of traffic. But there’s still no official all-out indictment of just this one particularly deadly-to-pedestrians traffic crime, which killed young Cooper.

And although Rep Carolyn Maloney honored me in the 2006 Congressional Record “for perhaps being the leading Big Apple champion for enhancing pedestrian safety,” my voice demanding, above all, for drivers to yield when turning into a crosswalk, is not being heard.

Why? Age could be a factor, but even more that, according to another tribute, I was the first one to call, and repeatedly call, for zero tolerance for scofflaw bicycling. But now that many City Hall mama’s and papa’s seem so gung-ho for two-wheeling, they don’t want strict enforcement, or any other “restrictions.”

Ah, dear Dr. King, your beliefs, struggles and ultimate sacrifice to bring about seemingly impossible dreams for civil rights and racial justice - they give hope and strength to not give up on dreams that are countercultural and politically incorrect. dewingbetter@aol.com

PAGE 10

OUR TOWN

We’ve all seen the sooty pictures of 19th century Manhattan.

Much of that smog came from the elevated trains that dotted the city -- steam-powered monoliths that churned out smoke, cinders and soot.

That era ended in 1902, with the opening of the 74th Street Powerhouse, a critical step in helping the city transition from steam locomotives to cleaner electric trains.

The story of the powerhouse, still in operation at 74th and the East River as a power generator for ConEd, is told through 31 photographs as part of the New York Transit Museum’s newest exhibition, “Anatomy of a Powerhouse: Electrifying the El.” Construction on the powerhouse started in 1900 and by 1902, the power plant was operating as the largest alternating current (AC) power station the world had ever seen. By June 25, 1903, all of Manhattan’s elevated lines had been electrified.

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Over 6,000 tons of steel and iron were used to construct the skeletal frame for the building, and inside, massive machinery lined the floor from wall to wall in a space that extended 100 feet longer than a football field.

The photographs reveal the staggering scale of the powerhouse, offering a rare glimpse into early transit history in New York and the immense power required to move Manhattan’s entire elevated railway system.

The photos are on view through October at the museum, at the corner of Boerum Place and Schemerhorn Street in downtown Brooklyn.

1-718-694-1600.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 23, 2014

STREET SHRINK

I’ve been reading a lot about the eye region and empathy. What do studies say about it? – Sacha, Chelsea, Cover your mouth with your hand and you can still use your eyes to convey most emotions. You’ll flutter your eyes to flirt.

Blink rapidly to hold back tears. Or you’ll smize - the Tyra Banks-perfected practice of smiling with your eyes by stretching them like a lemur in the night. The eye’s architecture is one of the most complex elements humans possess. A structure so carefully and artfully designed that the brain devotes a third of its energy on making sure our eyes function efficiently.

Though our eyes serve as our prime secret weapon to lure singles at a bar, we also rely on them to register other emotions like fear and sadness. It’s these traits that build our empathetic muscle.

In fact, those with impairments in the eye region might help mental health care professionals address youth who present with psychopathic tendencies, like callous and unemotional traits. Callous-unemotional traits in children include a consistent disregard for others’ emotions as well as an extreme lack of empathy. One study found that a group of kids who presented with these callous-unemotional traits had specific problems when attending to the eyes of other’s faces. It didn’t matter whether the person was happy, sad, or angry - the child couldn’t accurately assess which emotion was conveyed. But, when this group of kids was asked to look at the mouth region of others, they were able to report the emotion and showed no differences to kids who lacked callous and unemotional traits. So, when someone is conveying that they feel scared by widening their eyes, a person with psychopathic traits might exhibit fear blindness and won’t be able to register a victim’s fear. In effect, they lack empathy due to eye impairment.

A study by Dr. Yoast Van Baardewijk further tested this empathetic theory by comparing kids with high callous-unemotional traits to those with autism; both groups show a characteristic neglect of the eye region. However, the reasons for this deficit are different. Autistic individuals avoid eye-gaze because they lack social awareness to maintain eye contact, whereas those with callous-unemotional traits might show inattentiveness to the eyes due to deficits in brain areas, like the amygdala, the part of the brain that controls fear and anxiety.

Other research by Dr. Mark R. Dadds looked into whether eye contact contributes to psychopathic-like traits. His research suggests that one’s caregiver might play a role in recognizing emotion in another’s eyes. The idea is that caregivers who properly attended to their infant by feeding them when hungry and providing warmth and comfort by constant eye-gazing, modeled a set of appropriate emotions. But, caregivers who were neglectful and failed to attend to the child’s needs might also have averted eye contact and failed to model appropriate emotions.

There are a slew of characteristics that we can remain cognizant of when treating youth who present with callous-like traits and one of those is children who have a deficit in recognizing another’s eye region. It’s this specific area where empathy is registered. On a more practical level, when taking to the streets of NYC, we can use our eyes as signals to people of our own emotions. We can also show that we understand where others are coming from by locking eyes and directing our gaze. Stretch your eyes and you just might build your empathetic muscle.

Kristine Keller received her Master’s in Psychology from New York University. Have a question for our Street Shrink? Email news@strausnews.com with “Street Shrink” in the subject line.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 23, 2014

OUR TOWN

ASK MARGARET

Dear Margaret, Recently I attended a birthday party for my 5-yearold son’s classmate. I found myself chatting with another parent about how our kids end up with an enormous number of birthday gifts from these parties, which each of their classmates usually attend bearing presents for the guest of honor. When I asked this fellow parent how they handled the influx of goodies (in addition to gifts from grandparents, aunts, uncles, and family friends), he shocked me by revealing that he and his wife spirit away the gifts from his son’s birthday party, hide them, rewrap them and give them to him for Christmas! While I understand the impulse, I feel a little uncomfortable about this plan. What do you think?

Signed, Perplexed Partygoing Parent Dear Parent, Kids these days are showered with more toys than they could ever play with - it’s a wonder they’re not stressed out trying to schedule quality time for each and every Pokeman. Combine the abundance of gifts with the scarcity of storage space in most Manhattan apartments, and you’ll have to start shoveling a path down the hallway every day so your kids don’t get buried by their own fun. Not to mention that some parents try mightily to impress upon their children the fleeting and superficial value of material possessions, which is tough when they’re clutching the hottest items from the Toys ‘R’ spring catalogue.

Your question, though, isn’t how to stem the flow of toys, but whether this dad’s creative solution is ethical or icky. Should unsuspecting parents be unwittingly funding the Christmas bounties of their children’s classmates?

The problem here isn’t really the re-gifting. It’s hard to fault a parent for throwing up their hands and saying “enough” to the steady stream of gifts for their little ones. Especially if this particular kid’s birthday falls in the months leading up to Christmas, which I’m guessing it does, it can be an exercise in parental failure to go out and find a whole new lineup of gifts when their child has just received everything on their wishlist weeks before. Despite what your 5-year-old has told you, there are a finite number of stuffed bunnies that will fit with him in his twin bed.

What’s irking you is that most parents

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forking over $59.99 for the latest Wii U game for the birthday kid du jour expect to be simply reciprocating what other parents will later do for their kid, not playing Santa. Technically and etiquettewise, a giftee is free to do whatever he or she wishes with a gift (provided the gifter has received a thank you!) But this arrangement, premeditated as it is, seems like a breach of the social contract that’s been set up among your circle of parents and offspring.

The solution, though, isn’t to scold this parent, nor is it to let that tidbit spill to the other parents at the next coffeehouse meet-up. If it truly bothers you, the whole culture of gift-giving among your kids’ friends needs to shift. Maybe that means sending an email to the class list asking that parents collectively agree on a price limit for classmates’ birthday party gifts, or a no-gift policy, or even a collection for a local charity in which the kids could get involved (like a neighborhood food bank).

But that’s assuming you want to deal with that inevitable headache and some potentially nuclear fallout from the kiddos.

If you want to maintain the status quo but don’t feel right about your gifts being recycled through family holidays, just pick out thoughtful, nice presents for your kids’ friends, and get them engraved with their birthdate.

Do you have a pressing neighborhood question for Margaret? Email news@ strausnews.com with the subject line “Ask Margaret.”

PAGE 11

cityArts

Edited by Armond White

New York’s Review of Culture . CityArtsNYC.com

Pop Origami Doug McGrath Reimagines Broadway’s Jukebox Musical

By Armond White

O

ne of the best aspects of Beautiful: The Carole King Musical (at the Stephen Sondheim Theater) is seeing book writer Doug McGrath’s origami treatment of American pop music history.

McGrath, who has directed the excellent films Infamous and Nicholas Nickleby) starts with bio-pic basics about singersongwriter Carole King’s life in the 1960s. (Prodigy Carole Klein from Queens, N.Y., began writing and selling songs at age 16.)

PAGE 12

There are at least five sides to Beautiful’s story: King’s rise among songwriting peers; the turning point when early rock-n-roll shifted from an interpretive performer’s medium to a musician-composer-singer’s art form; the social confluence of ethnic, racial, feminist consciousness; the expansion/ explosion of the entertainment styles; and the launch of King’s solo career with the success of her semi-autobiographical 1970 album Tapestry that brought female singer-songwriters to national prominence.

McGrath unfolds these sides through clever dramatic placement of emblematic songs that, under Marc Bruni’s brisk direction, transforms oldies nostalgia into something more. King’s songs (co-written with Gerry Goffin, alongside compositions by Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann) come across as more than a series of

OUR TOWN

greatest hits and also as reflections of the writers’ personal lives.

“Will You Love Me Tomorrow” is enriched when presented as Goffin’s masculine lyrical view of his seduction of King yet sung publically as a girl’s confession of romantic bliss and insecurity.

Through such complexity— and originality--McGrath captures that special thrill when a musical’s songs artfully express its characters’ feelings, but he also looks back with sociological hindsight at rock-n-roll’s crossgender innovation—the emotional richness that made those records produced for teenagers (“a girl singing girl’s songs” as Don Kirshner says) yet expresses the deepest feelings of men and women around the world.

When reprised, some of the songs turn into showbiz simplicity.

Bruni’s staging recalls the sparkle of other jukebox musicals, an enjoyable if superficial quality

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Jessie Mueller in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical even when a bit anachronistic: Josh Prince’s choreography turns East Coast R&B groups The Shirelles and The Drifters (both the epitome of mid-century Negro social advancement) into the stylized, quicksilver toughness of Motown’s later, differently energetic acts).

This never offends because it is all in the spirit of cultural transformation that Beautiful prances through.

This ungritty show doesn’t cover King’s personal rollercoaster travails as described in her autobiography A Natural Woman or Sheila Weller’s Girls Like Us. But the feeling for pop-music history and what it says about the emotional life of American youth who embarked upon the songwriting tradition of Tin Pan Alley and Broadway and made it their own is something better than a spinoff of Glee or a 21st century version of vaudeville.

McGrath understands the way King, Goffin, Weil and Mann (among other pop composers of their era) articulated intimate experience with sharp observation (“On Broadway,” “Walking in the Rain,” “Pleasant Valley Sunday”) in fresh idioms that became universal. There have been many shows about this pop revolution—

from Leader of the Pack: The Songs of Ellie Greenwich to Jersey Boys, An Evening with Janis Joplin and Motown: The Musical—and given the range of Beautiful’s score, it isn’t merely the Carole King story, even when it resorts to backstage cliches. Still, it makes entertaining an aspect of our cultural history usually better served by journalism (as in Janet Maslin’s classic essay on the Singer-Songwriter phenomenon in The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll) or that might otherwise be as dry and predictable as a PBS documentary.

The performers do right by the songs: the early Ensemble medley “It Might as Well Rain Until September” is rousingly harmonized and Jake Epstein, Anika Larsen and Jarrod Spector respectively turn Goffin, Weil and Mann into pop-group combos.

As King, Jessie Mueller gets the uncanny plaintive vocal quality of the Tapestry years and conveys the modest, girlish, non-star quality that King maintained even while writing songs that conquered the world.

Follow Armond White on Twitter at 3xchair

THURSDAY, JANUARY 23, 2014

CITYARTS AUCTIONS

Eye on Auctions Americana and more up for bid

By Caroline Birenbaum

T

he New York auction season resumes next week with Americana and Old Master works of art. Pieces from a number of stellar private collections, new discoveries, and works not previously on public exhibition will be on display during previews starting this weekend. Refer to the websites for schedules, illustrated catalogues-and sometimes videos, blogs, press releases and lectures about highlights.

Christie’s christies.com A single catalogue encompasses three Americana sales, each including works from the esteemed collection of Eric Martin Wunsch. Important Silver to be sold Jan 23 features a pair of sauceboats by Paul Revere, and a set of tablespoons he made for Daniel and Mary Turner Sargent of Massachusetts (her father owned the famed “House of the Seven Gables”). Among the American Furniture & Folk Art on Jan 24 are paintings and sculptures from the wide-ranging Kristina Barbara Johnson Collection. In addition to wonderful porcelains, the Jan 27 auction of Chinese Export Art contains a

Weill Music Institute

China Trade album and a large oil on canvas commemorating the visit of the first official envoy of the British Empire to the Celestial Kingdom.

On Jan 28, a single-owner sale of Graphic Masterpieces by Goya, with complete sets of the “Caprichos,” “Desastres de la Guerra,” “Tauromaquia,” and “Proverbios,” ushers in the Old Masters sessions. Old Master Paintings on the morning of Jan 29 showcases Artimesia Gentileschi’s “Self-Portrait as a Lute Player,” a number of lovely paintings from the Toledo Museum of Art being sold to benefit the Acquisitions Fund, and several paintings from the Wunsch Collection. That afternoon, a session of Renaissance Art presents more works from Toledo, paintings being sold by the Metropolitan Museum of Art to benefit European Paintings Acquisitions, and an exquisite illuminated “Book of Hours” known as the “Rothschild Prayerbook,” recently restituted to the heirs of Max Stern. More Old Master Paintings, followed by Old Master and Early British Drawings & Watercolors on Jan 30 round out the series, to be discussed in a lecture, “Old Masters in Focus,” on Jan 26 at 1 pm.

Sotheby’s sothebys.com Jennifer Tori

Free

Neig hbor hood Conc ert Marina Harris, Soprano Robert Mollicone, Piano

Marina Harris

Saturday, February 8 at 5 PM

Advent Lutheran Church

Singing a virtuoso Mozart aria or piercing audience’s hearts in a sacred work by Bach, there’s little soprano Marina Harris can’t do.

Robert Mollicone brings a conductor’s insight to the program with his nuanced piano accompaniment.

2504 Broadway (at 93rd Street) Manhattan adventnyc.org | 212-903-9670 1 2 3 | Bus: M104 This concert is part of the Marilyn Horne legacy at Carnegie Hall.

Thanks to The Honorable Gale Brewer for making this concert possible.

Carnegie Hall’s Neighborhood Concerts are sponsored by

Free concerts in all five boroughs! carnegiehall.org/NeighborhoodConcerts

THURSDAY, JANUARY 23, 2014

OUR TOWN

Of special note among the Important Americana offered on Jan 24 is a rare silver handseal for the First Continental (Rifle) Regiment. On the 25th, Visual Grace: Important American Folk Art from the Ralph O. Esmerian Collection, includes pottery, walking sticks, a weathervane, decorated furniture, and drawings by selftaught Alabama street artist Bill Traylor that have been exhibited in various museums, including the recent show at the American Folk Art Museum.

Fine Old Master Drawings on Jan 29--the Tiepolo’s may remind you of the recent Venetian Drawings show at the Morgan Library--are followed by Old Master Paintings & Sculpture on Jan 30.

The morning session includes spectacular paintings from the Dutch Golden Age, in particular a large close-up by Honthorst of a “Merry Group behind a Balustrade,” whose delectable young woman lute player has not been on view since 1883, “Child and Nurse in an Elegant Townhouse,” a subtle domestic scene with a complex composition by Jacob Ochtervelt, and what is likely a marriage portrait by Jan Molnaer of himself and his painter-wife Judith Leyster. A special early afternoon session, The Courts of Europe, exhibits princely taste from the Renaissance to the Rococo, notably Boucher’s oval painting, “The Sleep of Venus” that belonged to Mme. De Pompadour, mistress of Louis XV. Additional Old Master Paintings & Sculpture resume at 3 pm. Antique Carpets and Textiles from Distinguished Collections, including

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Grandma Moses’ “The Old Covered Bridge” Azerbaijan silk embroideries and a Safavid “Topkapi” prayer rug, and final sessions of Old Master & 19th Century Paintings & Drawings follow on Jan 31.

Bonhams bonhams.com There are nice selections of Fine American & European Furniture, Silver & Decorative Arts on Jan 23 and Maritime Paintings and Decorative Art on Jan 24, where a late 18th-early 19th century pine figurehead of a “Baroque Gentleman” upstages the ships’ portraits and other maritime paraphernalia.

Keno kenoauctions.com A manuscript draft of an historic document hidden in the archives of the Morris-Jumel Mansion in New York will be offered in a single-lot sale on Jan 26. Until now, only the 1775 printed version was known, and authorship of the plea for reconciliation, addressed to the people of Britain from the American Continental Congress, was attributed to Richard Henry Lee of Virginia.

Based on the handwriting, this newly discovered 12-page draft is said to be by Robert R. Livingston, with edits by Lee; as such it suggests that Livingston played a greater role in the American Revolution than previously believed. Proceeds from the sale will fund an endowment for the Morris-Jumel Mansion, Manhattan’s oldest house, which was built as a summer home in 1765, served as Washington’s headquarters during the Revolutionary War, and became a museum in 1904. It is one of the notable New York historic houses open to the public (morrisjumel.org)

Swann swanngalleries.com A delightful sale of 20th Century Illustration on Jan 23 presents unique works on paper ranging from sweet nursery alphabets to racy pin-ups, including many drawings by “New Yorker” and other magazine cover artists and cartoonists, iconic book jackets and illustrations, early advertisements

by Theodor Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss), inscribed drawings by Maurice Sendak, extending the Americana Week theme up to the present day.

PAGE 13

DANCE

OPPORTUNITY Motivated and talented low-income public high school students are eager to go to college but can’t afford SAT prep.

Jane Comfort’s dance troupe

Making Art A.S.A.P at APAP Local festival brings dance, theater and music to town at reasonable prices

By Valerie Gladstone

W

ho said ticket prices for dance, theater and music were too high for the average New Yorker?

In fact, usually they are but in January every year, the Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP) comes to town offering a multitude of artistic delights at very reasonable prices. Established 57 years ago and a New York City event since the ‘70s, the Washington DC-based organization offers a sampling of what’s new and engaging from the US and abroad for industry professionals to select from and decide what to bring back to their communities in the coming year.

While one must sign up for the conference to attend many events, just as many are open to the public. This year it took place throught January, with performances all over the city.

“The priority is to network,” says Scott Stoner, director of APAP, on the phone recently. “Presenters, artists and audience members get a chance to interact in ways that are not usually available to them. It’s very

PAGE 14

practical and it’s very inspiring.”

This year APAP is collaborating with other major festivals and series, including Under The Radar, globalFEST, Winter Jazzfest, Focus, Prototype and Coil, meaning any even wider range of theatrical experiences will be available. Those attending the forums get a chance to hear keynote speakers from the worlds of music, dance and theater, including Diane Paulus, artistic director of the American Repertory Theater, choreographer Kyle Abraham, dancer Wendy Whelan and actor and playwright Taylor Mac. New England-based choreographer Adele Myers has participated for three years. “I wanted to gain exposure,” she says. “It’s been great for the conversations with presenters, other audience members and dancers. It also gives us a chance to try out new dances. We’ve gotten work at new theaters every year. I don’t know how else that would have happened.”

Choreographer Jane Comfort echoed her words. “Something good always comes out of it,” she says. “Once I wanted to try an abstract work, which I rarely have done. The day after I showed it, I got a text from the American Dance Institute, asking if I wanted to take part in its incubation program. I had been trying to get a grant to do that. The participants need a lot of stamina but if you’re simply someone interested in any or all of these arts, it’s an incredible education.”

OUR TOWN

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IMPACT Every year, New York Cares brings its Kaplan SAT Prep program to public schools throughout the city. In 2012, volunteers worked in 40 schools and helped 1,000 students get into the colleges of their choice, including several admissions to Cornell and New York University.

Volunteer or Donate at newyorkcares.org.

New York Cares is New York City’s leading volunteer organization.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 23, 2014

Photo credit: Lauren Farmer

FILM CITYARTS

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

West Side East Side

Cheerios

$3.59

Frosted Flakes

CLASSIFIED ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE Stephanie Patsiner DISTRIBUTION MANAGER Joe Bendik

$6.49

$4.99

$4.99

Filet Mignon, per pound

$34.99

$34.99

Veal Cutlet, per pound

$16.99

$16.99

Fairway Organic Dark Roast Coee

$9.99

Twinning English Breakfast Tea

$5.29

$4.99

$4.59

$9.99

$9.99

Bertolli Extra Virgin Olive Oil

$12.99

$12.99

Fairway Cheese Ravioli

$6.99

$6.99

Naked Juice Green Machine

$6.89

Cost: $925

$6.89

Applegate Organic Beef Hot Dogs

$8.49

$8.49

Campbell’s Tomato Soup

$1.69

$1.69

Simply Heinz Ketchup

$4.29

$4.29

Nutella

$3.99

$4.49

TOTAL

$155.91

$158.01

eldman

To subscribe for 1 year, please send $75 to WEST SIDE SPIRIT, c/o Straus News 20 West Ave., Chester, NY 10918

$3.29

$5.29

Chips Ahoy, family size Fairway Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil

osenstein

PREVIOUS OWNERS HAVE INCLUDED: Tom Allon, Isis Ventures, Ed Kayatt, Russ Smith, Bob Trentlion, Jerry Finkelstein

$9.99

$2.99

Oreos Double Stued, family size

eller

Straus Media - Manhattan publishes Our Town • The West Side Spirit • Our Town Downtown Chelsea Clinton News • The Westsider

$7.19

$6.89

Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia

G R F

WEST SIDE SPIRIT is published weekly Copyright Š 2013 Straus Media - Manhattan, LLC 212-868-0190 • 333 Seventh Ave, New York, NY

$4.79

$5.49

Ghiradelli Premium Hot Chocolate

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.

STUYVESANT, BRONX SCIENCE, BROOKLYN TECH, AMERICAN STUDIES, MATHEMATICS AND ENGINEERING, QUEENS H.S. FOR THE SCIENCES, STATEN ISLAND TECH, AND BROOKLYN LATIN

ADVERTISING MANAGERS Marty Strongin, Matt Dinerstein

$3.59

$4.39

Bumble Bee Wild Alaskan Red Salmon

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

ASSOCIATE PUBLISHERS Seth L. Miller, Ceil Ainsworth, Kate Walsh

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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PAGE 4

Product

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.

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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

EDITOR IN CHIEF ,ZMF 1PQF t FEJUPS PU!TUSBVTOFXT DPN EDITOR .FHBO #VOHFSPUI t FEJUPS PUEU!TUSBVTOFXT DPN CITYARTS EDITOR "SNPOE 8IJUF t FEJUPS DJUZBSUT!TUSBVTOFXT DPN STAFF REPORTERS +PBOOB 'BOUP[[J %BOJFM 'JU[TJNNPOT FEATURED CONTRIBUTORS "MBO 4 $IBSUPDL #FUUF %FXJOH +FBOOF .BSUJOFU .BMBDIZ .D$PVSU "OHFMB #BSCVUJ $BTFZ 8BSE -BVSB 4IBOBIBO PUBLISHER (FSSZ (BWJO t BEWFSUJTJOH!TUSBVTOFXT DPN ASSOCIATE PUBLISHERS 4FUI - .JMMFS $FJM "JOTXPSUI ,BUF 8BMTI ADVERTISING MANAGER .BUU %JOFSTUFJO CLASSIFIED ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE 4UFQIBOJF 1BUTJOFS DISTRIBUTION MANAGER +PF #FOEJL 063 508/ JT QVCMJTIFE XFFLMZ $PQZSJHIU ÂŞ CZ 4USBVT .FEJB .BOIBUUBO --$ t 4FWFOUI "WF /FX :PSL /: 4USBVT .FEJB .BOIBUUBO QVCMJTIFT 0VS 5PXO t 5IF 8FTU 4JEF 4QJSJU t 0VS 5PXO %PXOUPXO $IFMTFB $MJOUPO /FXT t 5IF 8FTUTJEFS To subscribe for 1 year, please send $75 to 063 508/ D P 4USBVT /FXT 8FTU "WF $IFTUFS /: 13&7*064 08/&34 )"7& */$-6%&% 5PN "MMPO *TJT 7FOUVSFT &E ,BZBUU 3VTT 4NJUI #PC 5SFOUMJPO +FSSZ 'JOLFMTUFJO

OUR TOWN

PAGE 4

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Freeze-dried Disney

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.�

Thawing out the clichĂŠs and commercialism of Frozen

By Armond White

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2013

September 25, 2013

September 5, 2013

NY Times cityArts

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PAGE 18

NYPRESS.COM

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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

Disney’s Frozen

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

otdowntown.com

westsidespirit.com

(212) 868-0190 THURSDAY, JANUARY 23, 2014

OUR TOWN

D

isney Animation is no longer simply Disney Animation as proven by the megablockbuster Frozen (to date: over $300m gross). This neo-fable has social prognosis and prospective commercial potential prefabricated into its mytholgy.

Frozen’s tale about two temperamentally different sisters, the frolicking, touchy-feely Anna (Kristen Bell) and the repressed Elsa (Idina Menzel) whose neuroses manifest in literal frigidity (everything she touches turns to ice, snow, tundras) resembles a committeemade checklist of marketable points. In post-Pixar lingo, that’s a series of recognizable tropes audiences can take to be classical without needing to be convincing. Who needs credibility when you sell updated clichÊs like a refurbished cellphone?

Elsa’s sensual crisis updates Han Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen, Anna’s rowdiness recalls last year’s Brave, loss of the girls’ parents is primordial while the unfortunate sibling rivalry reflects a modern complex vulgarly derived from Mary Gaitskill’s Two Girls Fat and Thin. Trouble is, Disney Animation turns these elements into set-pieces to show off technology (impressive

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evocations of arctic locales, perspectival marvels like saw blades cutting through ice into chilly waters that is better than any 3D) which overwhelms the thinly-conceived story and characterizations.

The contrast of technical innovation and mundane “fantasy� narrative stops Frozen from sparkling. Almost immediately there is an incessant musicalization of the story modeled after The Lion King (a pseudo-native chant under the opening credits) and plot points that are really song cues and songs that are merely applaud-seekers: Menzel belts-out a solo that exposes Disney Animation’s craven attempt at stealing from Broadway’s Wicked (another sisterhood fable).

At least there is visual interest in Frozen (a rarity in this era when advanced computer graphics have returned visual fancy to the cookie-cutter) but when directors Cchris Buck and Jennifer Lee’s skills are combined with the usual Disney cuteness (fuzzy animals revive Anna) and canned-Broadway tunes, there’s little chance for a fable to truly frighten or inspire. The message of female empowerment could be powerfully clear (just as Brave made the same obvious points that Beasts of the Southern Wild sentimentalized) yet there’s an equally powerful cynical calculation by Disney Animation to undercut sexual tradition with the romance of sexlessness. Frozen returns cartoons to infantilism--smug infantilism with a Broadway tune where its heart ought to be.

Perfect for new generations of eunuchs.

Follow Armond White on Twitter at 3xchair

PAGE 15

RESTAURANT INSPECTION RATINGS

SIXTH BOROUGH

January 7 - 13, 2014

Leaning In

Restaurant Grades The following listings were collected from the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’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.

In my case, it means dumpster diving, head first

Healthier Choices

2105 1 Avenue

A

By Becca Tucker

Aba Asian Fusion Cuisine

1588 York Avenue

Grade Pending (25) Hot food item not held at or above 140º F. 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.

These days I can’t pass a garbage pile without sticking my head and most of my torso into the can. Usually I find something irresistible.

At the end of my shared driveway, for instance, is a recycling bin that’s a constant source of useful flotsam like empty ice cream cartons that can be turned into flats to start seeds, glass pickle jars that make ant-proof food storage containers, egg cartons to hold and give away our own chickens’ eggs, juice jugs that can be transformed into sap buckets and attached to one of the sugar maples in our yard.

Whenever I pass the recycle bin on foot, headed to the park for a jog, its siren song compels me to flip open the top and insert myself at the waist.

Until recently, I saw myself as basically profligate: after dinners with college friends, when they’d start dissecting the bill, I’d throw down more than my share and wander across the street to window shop.

These days, you’d be more likely to find me out back behind the kitchen, looking for scraps to feed my chickens.

After a small dinner party at my mom’s apartment in D.C., I pulled from her kitchen trash an avian feast: a baked potato, beet peelings, salad greens and cantaloupe rinds, plus a container of spoiled sour cream.

“Really? You’re going to take that all the way home?” Even my mom, the notorious family pack rat, was surprised. “Do not forget it in my fridge.”

I put a garbage can in the lunchroom at work specifically for food scraps for aforementioned chickens. At the end of the day, if no one’s in the lunch room, I sift through the main garbage for apple cores and bread crusts that didn’t make it into the food scraps bin. It doesn’t exactly enhance my professional image to be rooting around in my co-workers’ soggy half sandwiches, I admit. I haven’t quite figured out what “leaning in” means but I don’t think it’s supposed to be this literal.

Husband Joe has developed garbagevision in step with mine. He calls it “a different level of consciousness.” He’s been

Little Italy Pizza

217 East 86 Street

A

Tiny Thai

1558 3 Avenue

Not Graded Yet (28) Cold food item held above 41º F (smoked fish and reduced oxygen packaged foods above 38 ºF) except during necessary preparation. Raw, cooked or prepared food is adulterated, contaminated, cross-contaminated, or not discarded in accordance with HACCP plan. Evidence of mice or live mice present in facility’s food and/ or non-food areas. Food contact surface not properly washed, rinsed and sanitized after each use and following any activity when contamination may have occurred.

Carino Restaurant And Cafe

1710 2 Avenue

A

Wine Bar & Ristorante

1742B 2 Avenue

Grade Pending (16) Evidence of rats or live rats present in facility’s food and/or non-food areas.

Sanitized equipment or utensil, including inuse food dispensing utensil, improperly used or stored.

Vinus And Marc

1825 2 Avenue

A

El Barrio Restaurant

158 East 116 Street

A

Wimpys Restaurant 23 East 109 Street

A

Dong’s Great Wok Garden

1631 Lexington Avenue

A

Ruby’s

172 East 106 Street

Grade Pending (22) Hand washing facility not provided in or near food preparation area and toilet room. Hot and cold running water at adequate pressure to enable cleanliness of employees not provided at facility. Soap and an acceptable hand-drying device not provided.

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.

PAGE 16

OUR TOWN

www.nypress.com

re-using squares of tinfoil, saran wrap, the bags from cereal boxes, even the oil left over after making home fries, which he served in a saucer at breakfast recently.

“Seems a shame to waste it,” he said, as we dutifully swirl forkfuls in the viscous orange liquid.

A Buenos Aires newspaper reported that every month Jorge Bergoglio, better known now as Pope Francis, returned 30 rubber bands from the daily newspapers that were delivered to his house to the kiosk whence they came. The pioneering farmer, Mark, who became the subject of the memoir The Dirty Life, kept a ball of used dental floss, in case someday he had to sew up a hole in his pants. Angry environmental activist Derrick Jensen spent nine years dumpster diving foodstuffs like watermelons and expired ice cream that he fed to himself, his cats, dogs and chickens.

A constant awareness of what’s being tossed can be wearing. Side effects include depression, disgust, despair, empathy with the Unabomber. Part of me wishes I could go back to tuning out the pile of “obsolete” electronics (obsolescence is relative. I’ve seen flat-screen TVs in there) that I drive past on my way to work. How the single village of Florida, NY, can excrete an endless stream of televisions, printers, scanners, and fax machines is a question that plagues me.

Still our ranks continue to grow. The morning after her dinner party, my mom was slicing up the remainder of the cantaloupe for breakfast. “The chickens love cantaloupe rinds?” she said, opening the fridge to put sections of rind into the bag of scraps that I was going to take home. “You feed them this and you get eggs,” she said.

“I’m getting it.”

Becca Tucker is a former Manhattanite who now lives on a farm upstate and writes about the rural life.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 23, 2014

NEIGHBORHOOD REAL ESTATE SALES Reported January 13 - 19, 2014 Neighborhood

Address

Apt.

Sale Price

BR BA Listing Brokerage

Beekman

455 E 51 St.

#1B

$610,000

1

1

Charles H. Greenthal

455 E 51 St.

#1D

$575,000

1

1

Brown Harris Stevens

Carnegie Hill

1065 Park Ave.

#15C

$690,000

Lenox Hill

Midtown E

Murray Hill

1125 Park Ave.

#7A

$4,950,000

3

3

Kleier Residential

1185 Park Ave.

#9C

$4,895,000

3

3

Douglas Elliman

47 E 87 St.

#9B

$750,000

1

1

Corcoran

177 E 93 St.

#3C

$435,000

1

1

Halstead Property

50 E 89 St.

#7B

$1,250,000

152 E 94 St.

#10D

$445,000

153 E 87 St.

#5A

$1,142,000

2

2

Douglas Elliman

125 E 93 St.

#6C

$475,000

781 5 Ave.

#407

$855,000

330 E 72 St.

#7

$3,250,000

3

3

Town Residential

530 Park Ave.

#3E

$1,730,000

303 E 60 St.

#18E

$600,000

1

1

Douglas Elliman

530 Park Ave.

#15D

$4,875,000

200 E 66Th St.

#C0203

$2,621,993

401 E 60 St.

#33B

$2,200,000

530 Park Ave.

#5C

$4,378,475

166 E 63 St.

#16K

$975,000

COAT

DRIVE Now – December Now - February 31 7th

2

3

Douglas Elliman

1

1

Stribling

403 E 62 St.

#2C

$515,000

1

1

Weichert Mazzeo

210 E 63 St.

#4A

$295,000

0

1

Douglas Elliman

400 E 67 St.

#22D

$2,800,000

2

2

Corcoran

530 Park Ave.

#12A

$9,469,725

4

4

Classic Marketing- 530

200 E 66Th St.

#E1202

$3,614,787

3

3

Corcoran

300 E 71 St.

#5O

$985,000

440 E 62 St.

#12A

$599,000

2

1

Coldwell Banker

136 E 64 St.

#11C

$2,300,000

2

3

Brown Harris Stevens

530 Park Ave.

#15H

$2,100,000 1

1

Brown Harris Stevens

720 Park Ave.

#Masb

$2,350,000

20 E 68 St.

#3B

$1,300,000

860 5 Ave.

#2L

$1,275,000

1

1

Corcoran

245 E 54 St.

#30K

$600,000

1

1

Next Stop Ny

250 E 54 St.

#9B

$570,000

0

1

Charles Rutenberg

200 E 57 St.

#7A

$1,579,000

2

2

Corcoran

30 E 37 St.

#6J

$878,850

2

1

Kian Realty

415 E 37 St.

#5B

$700,000

1

1

Anchor Associates

225 E 36 St.

#19E

$315,000

0

1

Douglas Elliman

415 E 37 St.

#9A

$928,000

1

1

Corcoran

415 E 37 St.

#19K

$685,000

1

1

Luxury Habitat

Keeping New Yorkers warm for 25 years.

Donate at any New York City Police Precinct or other locations citywide.

For a full list of collection sites, dates, and times, visit newyorkcares.org.

160 E 38 St.

#25E

$1,370,000

2

2

Corcoran

310 Lexington Ave.

#4J

$595,000

1

1

Corcoran

320 E 42 St.

#2217

$254,000

0

1

City Connections Realty

415 E 37 St.

#34K

$765,000

1

1

Douglas Elliman

2 Tudor City Place

#2Hn

$655,000

1

1

John J. Grogan &

325 E 41 St.

#904

$486,000

1

1

Douglas Elliman

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.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 23, 2014

OUR TOWN

Text iCARE to 85944 to donate $10 to keep a fellow New Yorker warm this winter.*

The Coat Drive is a program of New York Cares, New York City’s leading volunteer organization.

New York Cares Day is run by New York Cares, the city’s leading volunteer organization, and the New York City Department of Education.

Photo: Craig Cutler © 2012 New York Cares, Inc.

For Coat Drive collection sites in New Jersey, visit jerseycares.org.

*A one-time donation of $10 will be billed to your mobile phone bill. Messaging & data rates may apply. Donations are collected for New York Cares by mobilecause.com. Reply STOP to 85944 to stop. Reply HELP to 85944 for help. For terms, see www.igfn.org/t.

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PAGE 17

CELEBRITY PROFILE

The First President in New York Historian Harlow Giles Unger pays homage to the presidency of George Washington in his newest book

By Angela Barbuti At the intersection of Wall and Broad Streets, George Washington was inaugurated as the first President of the United States almost 225 years ago. The building where the event took place, Federal Hall, housed Congress at that time in history. Although our first president had strong ties to New York City, his allegiance spread across the entire country. In fact, he was elected unanimously, and according to author Harlow Giles Unger, he was “the only man who could unite the nation.” Unger, a New York native, decided to write his 22nd book, Mr. President, on Washington, who he considers to be “the greatest president in American history.” On February 6th, he will be at the Mid-Manhattan library discussing how the first popularlyelected president in the world held the new nation together.

People may not realize that New York City was the original capital of our nation.

Yes, indeed. It was the original temporary capital until Congress could decide on a permanent site. And, of course, people in Philadelphia, where the Continental Congress met during the Revolutionary War, wanted their city to be the capital. Most agreed it was too far north, and the idea was to unify the nation. Eventually, Maryland and Virginia decided to give land to the federal government, what is now the District of Columbia. Philadelphia became the temporary capital for the 10 years leading up to the transfer in 1800 to the District of Columbia.

When Washington first became president, he lived here in the city.

He was living in New York City in a house that was loaned to him by the Postmaster General, Samuel Osgood. Then he moved to Philadelphia, when the capital moved there.

One of the points you make in your book is that when Washington got his title, there was no real power behind it.

Well there was no title, actually. There’s a

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funny story about how he got his title because no one knew what to call him. During the Revolutionary War, he was “General.” People called him “Your Excellency.” Finally, James Madison, who was a congressman then, pointed out that the Constitution prohibited titles. So they realized that they’d have to call him, “Mr.,” and that’s how he got his title, “Mr. President.” But after he became Mr. President, he realized that the Constitution had prescribed him to be a figurehead. It says that the executive power shall be vested in the President of the United States. But it fails to define “executive power.” People expected him to sit at his desk and nod off to sleep like a nice old man and let Congress have all the power. But his name was George Washington, he wasn’t going to sit by and do nothing. Little by little, he assumed powers that were not given to him by the Constitution.

Oh, he’d be absolutely appalled to see the nation’s infrastructure deteriorating while we spend our national treasure in places like Afghanistan.

What’s one example of Washington asserting power?

Sending troops to war against the Indians.

The Indians were considered foreign nations then. Without authorization by Congress, he raised a small army and sent them to war against the Indians in the Ohio territory to prevent their attacks on American settlers.

Since then, in all the wars in our history, Congress has only declared war five times.

Washington set the precedent. Presidents have taken us to war in violation of the Constitution. To his credit, President Obama publicly recognized this when he was tempted to send troops into Syria. He wasn’t going to do it without a Congressional declaration of war. That was the first time anyone has publicly recognized the Constitutional prerogative of Congress to declare war.

You also stress that Washington did not want permanent alliances with the foreign world.

Why do you think he was so adamant about this?

He wasn’t going to let foreigners dictate our policies. Once you enter into a treaty, pact, or any other arrangement with a foreign country, they have the right to dictate our actions. We had lived under foreign tyranny for more than a century prior to that and he wasn’t going to cede our sovereignty to any foreign power. We are now trapped in a war in Afghanistan and have been trapped in wars in Vietnam and Iraq. We’re not masters of our own fate. And this is what Washington warned against.

What do you think he’d say today about our foreign entanglements?

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The year he was elected, he took a 29-day tour around the country so people could get to know him.

He felt it was necessary. After all, they had no real dissemination of news or pictures. All you had were painted portraits in those days so people didn’t even know what the president looked like. In the interest of national unity, he wanted all the people to get to know him and know that he truly represented them.

During that journey, he refused to stay in people’s homes, and instead chose to stay in taverns and inns.

Exactly. He refused to stay in private homes and indirectly insulted Governor John Hancock when he reached Boston, by refusing to stay at his lavish mansion on Beacon Hill.

He felt that by staying in someone’s private home, he would insult those whose homes he didn’t stay at, and it would be a show of favoritism. He wanted to have allegiance to all of the people and not any single interest group.

Although Washington was a twoterm president, you explain that he did not want to be elected to a second term.

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He didn’t want to run for president in

the first place. Actually, he never ran for anything; he was elected unanimously.

John Adams realized at the Continental Congress that they would have to pick a Commander-in-Chief who would be acceptable to the North and the South.

And he picked Washington and it was a brilliant choice. Not only was Washington a brilliant military commander, but he had the support of both Southerners and Northerners. Washington wanted to quit after the first term, and Jefferson went to him, saying, the North and South will only hang together if they have you to hang on.

How do you research your books?

I’ve accumulated a huge library of original books, biographies, and collections of manuscripts. Of course, I use the Library of Congress extensively. And go to the sites that have collected the papers of each of these presidents that I’ve written about. The papers of Washington are at the University of Virginia. Gradually they are being put on the internet. The papers of John Adams and John Quincy Adams, which are at the Massachusetts Historical Society, much of that now is on the internet page by page on your screen. But you have to be able to read his handwriting, and that becomes difficult.

Where are your favorite historical places in Manhattan?

The New-York Historical Society is a great place to go in terms of American history.

Federal Hall, where Washington took his oath of office. There’s still a building there - it’s a newer building. Federal Hall at that time was a different building. It had just been refurbished with the House of Representatives to meet on the ground floor and the Senate on the second floor.

For more information on Harlow’s event, visit: www.nypl.org

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