The local paper for the Upper er East Side WEEK OF SEPTEMBER
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2014
OURTOWNNY.COM
OurTownEastSide @OurTownNYC
A SON’S TRIBUTE TO A MAGAZINE GREAT
In Brief
PROFILE
WOMAN KILLED BY TAXI; BYSTANDERS LIFTED CAB
Tom Hayes has chronicled his father’s time as the editor of Esquire magazine in a new documentary BY KYLE POPE
Tom Hayes had one of those Manhattan childhoods that all of us have fantasized about. He grew up in Babe Ruth’s former apartment, all 15 rooms of it, on the Upper West Side. He was once babysat by Gloria Steinem. And when his parents threw a dinner party, in their apartment on Riverside Drive, Norman Mailer and Tom Wolfe and Gay Talese and Nora Ephron were as likely as not to be part of the crowd. For a 10-year-old boy, it was a heady time, and Hayes soaked it in from his perch on the living-room sofa. Now, nearly a half century later, Hayes has produced a documentary about those years, and about the legacy of his father, Harold Hayes, who ran Esquire magazine during its heyday. “I wanted to make sure the old man was remembered,” said Hayes, whose day job is producing newsmagazine segments for German television. “I’ve kind of realized the dream of being a filmmaker by making a film about my father.” Hayes sits behind a desk in an East Side apartment that served as his father’s pied a terre after the fam-
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Shakespeare & Co. Booksellers’ downtown location has been squeezed out after a rent hike and will soon close. Photo by Gabrielle Alfiero
A BOOKSTORE NOT TO BE SAVING SMALL BUSINESS Shakespeare & Co. Booksellers takes its final bow on Broadway BY GABRIELLE ALFIERO
When Margot Liddell started in 1987 as the manager of the new Shakespeare & Co. Booksellers on
lower Broadway, near New York University, not even the books were safe in the now-upscale NoHo neighborhood. “It was wild,” Liddell said about the neighborhood in her low, raspy voice. Book thieves weren’t uncommon, she said, and ran from Shakespeare & Co. to the nearby Strand Bookstore or St. Mark’s Bookshop to the east with stolen merchandise,
hoping to sell the paperbacks for a small profit. “I used to chase people,” Liddell said. “I’d chase them myself, with my staff.” After serving the changing neighborhood and NYU community for 30 years, Shakespeare & Co. is closing. The longstanding shop, which Liddell remembers was once neighbored by vintage clothing shops Unique Boutique and Canal Jeans Co., lost its lease and saw a spike in rent, and closes for good on Sept. 6. “We’re sort of the last bastion of élan,” said Liddell, who noted that big-box retailers such as Kmart, Banana Republic and McDonald’s are now more common in the area. “And now we won’t be here, either.” Liddell retained hope for the fu-
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A woman struck by a taxi in Manhattan died despite the efforts of about a dozen bystanders who rushed in and turned the vehicle on its side to free her. Police said the woman, 58, was crossing Madison Avenue on the Upper East Side around 2 p.m. when the cab ran her over. Witnesses said the 30-year-old driver was making a left turn at 79th Street and appeared to be trying to beat a red light. Construction workers rushed from a nearby project and joined other good Samaritans in lifting the taxi van off of the woman. She was pronounced dead at Lenox Hill Hospital. Police said a 32-year-old woman riding in the cab was treated at the scene for pain. The driver was not injured, they said. Police didn’t name the victim, the passenger or the driver. Photographs showed the taxi on its side in front of a apartment building on 79th Street.
Jewish women and girls light Shabbat candles every Friday evening 18 minutes before sunse September 5 – 7: 03 pm. For more information visit www.chabaduppereastside.com.