The local paper for the Upper er East Side A SUPER TAKES FLIGHT, 15 MINUTES, P.21
WEEK OF MAY
14-20 2015
Our Take
LAST TUMBLE FOR GYMNASTS AT ASPHALT GREEN NEWS Parents put up a fight as the administration of the sports complex cuts the program BY GABRIELLE ALFIERO
When one of the coaches with Asphalt Green’s youth gymnastics program called a parents meeting in the final week of April to discuss changes for the upcoming season, nothing about the meeting seemed alarming. “I didn’t even come because I didn’t need to hear exciting, happy news,” said Beth Barron, whose 12-year-old son Robbie is on the boys team. But the following morning, an email from one of the team’s coaches made
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the cause of the meeting plain: Asphalt Green was eliminating the gymnastics program, making the current spring session the last for both the boys’ and girls’ teams. “We waited a day (to tell our children),” said Ilene Moore, whose son Myles has been with the program for eight years. Her daughter Ruby also takes gymnastics lessons at the facility. “I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I think he’s still crying. He normally goes to bed at 9:30. He was up until midnight crying. Just sobbing. We couldn’t stop it.” When the news settled in that the entire gymnastics program at Asphalt Green’s George and Annette Murphy
An Asphalt Green boys gymnastics team at the New York state championships earlier this year.
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ARTISTS DECRY FRICK’S EXPANSION PLAN In a letter to de Blasio, they say a proposal to expand the museum would compromise its intimatcy BY RICHARD KHAVKINE
The skirmish over the Frick Collection’s expansion proposal entered a new front last week when dozens of artists, architects, journalists, gallerists and others signed a letter to Mayor Bill de Blasio and the chairman of the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission urging them to deny the
plan. The letter, which was signed by Frank Stella, Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, Jeff Koons and Chuck Close, among others, says that the museum’s proposal would effectively destroy one of the collection’s most precious elements — its intimacy. “The Frick is revered for its wise curatorial and architectural decisions, and we hope that your guidance will ensure that it does not break with this tradition,” the letter, dated May
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6, says. The letter is the latest salvo in a yearlong tussle between Frick officials, who say the expansion is needed to meet the museum’s need for more space, and those opposed, notably the umbrella group United to Save the Frick, which counts among its roster architects, artists, authors, preservationists, art and museum critics, and members of the museum. The Frick, on the corner of 70th Street and Fifth Avenue, last year un-
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veiled an expansion proposal whose centerpiece addition would rise to the height of a six-story building. It would be built on the 70th Street side on the site of what’s now a decorative garden. The museum says the extension would add 42,000 square feet and comprise an expanded reception hall, conservation laboratories, auditorium, classrooms as well as a rooftop garden terrace accessible to museum visitors. All told, it would add about 24 percent more square footage, which museum officials call “a measured — yet crucial — gain.”
There’s something maddening about Bill de Blasio’s wanderlust. Our mayor, in office barely 16 months, has spent more time in national political speeches outside the city than he has on the Upper East Side. In recent weeks, he’s traveled to D.C., to Iowa, and to Silicon Valley. According to a tally in The New York Times, de Blasio has spent a third of the months of April and May on the road. His body language is that of the glad-hander at the cocktail party, the guy always looking over your shoulder, an eye out for the next, more interesting person, to talk to. The thing is, there’s more than enough for him to do at home, if only he’d engage. Tensions with the police are at a boiling part. City schools are creaking from too many kids. Small business owners are begging the mayor for help as their rents soar. Yet de Blasio often seems bored with the business at hand. Mayor Michael Bloomberg understood that running a city this big meant paying close attention to the guts of government. He dove into budgets and spent hundreds of hours understanding the government jobs that make the city work. de Blasio apparently has more important things on his agenda. The problem is, the mayor has a day job. For the city’s sake, now might be a good time to get back to work. Jewish women and girls light up the world by lighting the Shabbat candles every Friday evening 18 minutes before sunset. Friday May 15– 7:48 pm. For more information visit www.chabaduppereastside.com.
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