Westviewnews june2015

The Voice of the West Village

WestView News

VOLUME 11, NUMBER 6

JUNE 2015

$1.00

Why You Never Get a Bill from the Hospital

By George Capsis

WHO PAYS FOR SANDY? Westbeth artist residents want the commercial tenants to share in

the cost to restore Westbeth, but management refuses to reveal the rents.

Photo by Maggie Berkvist.

Westbeth Board Sues to Conceal Numbers

By George Capsis “I always thought that the basic tenet of Journalism was to get both sides of the story” was the bristling challenge from sixtyone year-old Executive Director, Steven A. Neil of the forty-five year-old low rent artist enclave, Westbeth, in response to the May cover article by historian and Westbeth tenant, Catherine Revland, who repeated the tenants’ attorney’s accusation that Westbeth management had “extraordinarily” undervalued leases to commercial tenants—one as low as $4.20 a sq. ft. for ten years.

Accepting Neil’s criticism, I asked Neil to meet with Ms. Revland, but he dismissed this because he did not want to get into a heated exchange with her. We compromised—I would send him a list of Revland’s questions before meeting with him and then, to ensure accuracy, tape his answers.

On Friday the 14th after gorging myself on the expensive pastries and savories

of young French chef Dominique Ansel in the Chelsea Market kitchen of Sarah Beth with David Porat of Chelsea Market Basket, I walked down to 55 Bethune Street for our meeting. A bearded Neil ushered me into a large, first floor converted apartment now serving as an office. Joining us in the conference-tabled room was the Senior Vice President of LAK public relations, Richard Edmonds. (It is very rare we get a PR man at such interviews, and it always suggests they are very nervous.)

As I took out my tape recorder and a copy of Revland’s questions, Neil said quickly “I will send you my answers tomorrow…no tape recorder,” so I did not tape the interview.

The battle (and it does seem to be a battle) is that after the millions of dollars in damage by hurricane Sandy (the basement was flooded) the tenants who have been paying one-third to one-fourth of market Continued on page 4

“Knee replacement, or knee arthroplasty, is a surgical procedure to replace the weightbearing surfaces of the knee joint to relieve pain and disability.” –Wikipedia After 87 years, the cartilage separating my left leg bones had eroded, and the leg went off in unexpected directions (I could be mistaken for an old man). I considered knee replacement, but like any normal person I put it off and off.

“Use my doctor” was the repeated refrain from the ever-increasing number I encountered that had already had it done—by 2030 it is projected that 3.4 million in the US will have had this increasingly popular operation.

I took advantage of my position as WestView publisher and called the PR office of the Hospital for Special Surgery (I mean this is THE hospital for this kind of thing) and got the name of Doctor Geoffrey Westrich, the First Vice President of the Eastern Orthopedic Association. (He

DID THIS COST $66,731.00?: That is amount

billed, but Medicare only paid $15,949.81, illustrating the Alice in Wonderland character of US medical billing practices.

obtained a degree in engineering at Tufts before switching to pre-med, so he knows the knee both mechanically and surgically.

He is listed in New York Magazine’s Best Doctors and is a very good surgeon—probably the best.)

My operating room was the very last in the long corridor that wrapped around Continued on page 6

Stonewall Landmark

HONORING A MOVEMENT: The Landmarks Preservation Commission will decide on

Tuesday, June 2 whether to consider the Stonewall Inn for city landmark status—making it the first landmark honored for its significance to the LBGT community in New York. According to the Times, a yes vote by the committee will almost assuredly lead to “eventual designation as a landmark.” Photo Courtesy GVSHP.

End Graffiti and Fund History Trail see page 10

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2 WestView News June 2015

WestViews

WestView Published by WestView, Inc. by and for the residents of the West Village.

Publisher Executive Editor George Capsis Associate Editors Christy Ross, Katie Keith Design Consultant Stephanie Phelan Photo Editor Darielle Smolian Traffic Manager Liza Whiting Photographer Maggie Berkvist Comptroller Jolanta Meckauskaite Architecture Editor Brian Pape Film, Media and Music Editor Jim Fouratt Distribution Manager Timothy Jambeck Regular Contributors Cristiano Andrade John Barrera Barry Benepe Maggie Berkvist Janet Capron George Capsis Barbara Chacour Philip Desiere Ron Elve Stan Fine Jim Fouratt Mark M. Green Robert Heide Keith Michael Michael D. Minichiello Clive Morrick Brian Pape Joy Pape Bruce Poli David Porat Alec Pruchnicki Catherine Revland Arthur Schwartz We endeavor to publish all letters received, including those with which we disagree.

The opinions put forth by contributors to WestView do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher or editor.

WestView welcomes your correspondence, comments, and corrections: www.westviewnews.org

Contact Us (212) 924-5718 gcapsis@gmail.com

Correspondence, Commentary, Corrections Struggle Together Hi, All, Here is a picture I took after walking over the Brooklyn Bridge with other tenant activists. I saw these two women, one holding a sign, in a bus-stop shelter that featured a large poster showing Pope Francis with a message about the struggle we all are in together. I got their permission to take this picture.

After originally not intending to march, I was really tired afterwards but it was a very good experience. Among tenant demands were the calling for the extension and strengthening of rent regulation, which is due to expire June 15th; elimination of vacancy decontrol in rent-stabilized apartments, elimination of the 20% increase every time a tenant moves out, and elimination of the removal from rent stabilization when apartment rent reaches a certain threshold (once that removal takes place the landlord can raise the rent to any figure he wants); making the Major Capital Improvement increase (if the landlord replaces the windows or the boiler, for instance) only temporary for tenants rather than permanent; rent freezes or even rollbacks; the creation of far more units of truly affordable housing.

We’ve lost an awful lot of rent-stabilized apartments from city stock, and we’ll continue to lose them if we don’t strengthen the rent laws. The rents are too damn high! Not only do they make our city unlivable, but they encourage so much landlord and devel-

oper greed that many important community facilities or amenities such as hospitals, libraries, post offices, schools, community gardens and houses of worship that contribute so much to our communities are being sold and either demolished or converted, gobbled up so that new luxury condos can be created.

Many politicians and government agencies have aided and abetted this process.

We have to turn this whole situation around or we’ll lose the city we knew.

Eventually large parts of it would become deserted because you can’t have only rich people living here, and even they will need ordinary services that will disappear because no one will be here to supply them.

It’s hard to imagine.

I was one of those who spoke to some of the police officers lining our rally areas and our route: “Hey, you guys can’t afford to live here.” We got forthright replies: “Nope;” “Not on my salary;” “I live with my ma and pa;” “You’re right,” etc.

Included in the recipients here is our Comptroller Scott Stringer, who spoke at the rally today. Thank you, Comptroller Stringer. You’ve provided a report with data that supports the tenants’ campaign, and your speech was passionate. However, once again, we can’t forget that you’re also addressing a big event honoring the captains of Wall Street, organized by City and State. What are you going to say to them?

Will it be consistent with what you said to us? That, as they used to say, is the $64,000 Question. We don’t need their donations to a few charities and their endowments of

WE NEED TO STRENGTHEN RENT LAWS:

Pope Francis appears to look on in solidarity as tenants campaign for stronger protections. Photo by Carol F. Yost.

hospital wings with their names on them (ironic, since Wall Street greed has destroyed so many hospitals). Generally they create the problems we face; they treat their employees shabbily, and overcharge the rest of us. In short, they impoverish millions of people. There’s a reason for Occupy Wall Street. The tents are gone from Zuccotti Park, but the message is still there. Scott Stringer, will you speak to them about that? I don’t mean to be sarcastic.

Sincerely, Carol F. Yost

BRIEFLY NOTED Johnson Holds Inaugural West Side Summit On Saturday, May 9th, Councilmember Corey Johnson held the inaugural West Side summit at the newly renovated Civic Hall on Fifth Avenue, inviting community members from the entire West Side district to make suggestions about future legislative, policy, and budget decisions.

The packed meeting of over 100 people included many Community Board 2 members from the West Village.

Johnson started the day’s program by reporting on his own activities since taking office in January 2014. He was followed by several elected officials: Congressman Jerrold Nadler, Comptroller Scott Stringer, State Senator Brad Hoylman and Assembly member Linda Rosenthal.

The keynote speaker of the program was

Margaret Newman of the Metropolitan Art Society of New York who discussed city planning and neighborhood design.

Upcoming projects she discussed include preserving the many historical sites on the West Side, improving street design as part of the Vision Zero initiative and expanding park space and small business support.

After the speeches, the audience was invited to offer input at stations around the room focusing on various issues such as safety, parks, seniors, youth, health, housing, small business, and education.

Knowledgeable volunteers wrote down community member suggestions, and the top suggestions were presented to the entire assembled audience. Also, individuals were encouraged to write suggestions for the staff to read after the meeting. In general, there was a great deal of opportunity for community members to present solutions, instead of complaints.

The last activity was the announce-

ment of the winning proposals chosen by the Participatory Budgeting process. Over the last few months, committees of volunteer community residents reviewed many proposals for budget expenditures, and a vote by 2,400 individuals selected seven winners. These involved improvements in street design along with renovations of parks, schools, and libraries in the neighborhood.

Johnson said that twenty-one council members were using this method to decide how to spend some discretionary funds, and the suggestions from the community made him aware of many needs that he might never have discovered otherwise. At least two million dollars in expenditures will be made, possibly with more to come later in this year and next.

Even in a neighborhood as politically active as the West Side, there were two characteristics of this process that stood continued on page 3

June 2015 WestView News 3

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LIBERATED LANDLORD VICTIM SINGS:

Ruth Berk, liberated from a senior home to which she was confined because of her landlord, sings My Funny Valentine for NY Post Videographer Stephan Jeremiah. Since WestView championed her cause, she’s become the talk of the town with tons of traffic on the NY Post website and almost 20,000 views on Fox-Five’s website so far. In the FoxFive 5:00 news feature which aired on May 15, Arthur Schwartz—her guardian (angel)—and reporter Liz Dahlem discussed the horrific injustice committed

by Judge Tanya Kennedy’s court. Photo and caption by Jessica Berk.

out. First, the Summit was specifically designed to allow community participation in policy decisions—instead of simply being on the receiving end. Second, some suggestions recommended by residents have already been acted on with actual budget allocations and not just promises for the future — Alec Pruchnicki

Senior Action Day Returns

Senior Action Day is returning to the West Village. Organized by the Social Services committee of Community Board 2, it will be similar to an event held last year on the same theme. At that event, several hundred local elderly residents of The Village saw information presented by over thirty healthcare providers, local businesses with senior discounts, social service agencies and others.

This year’s event should have at least as good a showing. It will be at the LGBT Center at 208 West 13th Street on June 30th from 10:30 to 3:30. It is open to the public, and it is expected that over thirty exhibitors will be present—addressing a wide range of needs of the elderly residents of The Village and those who provide care for them. Local elected officials have also been invited. Blood pressure screening will be done by staff from the Lenox Hill Healthplex, which is next door to the center. Light refreshment will be provided.

—Alec Pruchnicki and Sasha Greene

GVSHP Awards On Wednesday, June 17th, from 6:30-8:30 PM, the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation will hold the 35th GVSHP Annual Meeting and 25th Vil-

lage Awards which this year are co-sponsored by The New School.

This event will take place at the Auditorium at The New School, 66 West 12th Street. The awards recognize people, places, and organizations which make a significant contribution to the quality of life in Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo. This year’s winners are: Barbara Shaum, Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks, David Rothenberg, The Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation, 201 East 12th Street Renovation, and the Regina Kellerman Award Winners: James and Karla Murray.

Admission is free and open to all, but reservations are necessary. To RSVP, please call (212) 475-9585 ext. 35 or email rsvp@ gvshp.org

Prejudice The Times reported the beating of a 21-year-old soldier of Ethiopian descent in a Tel Aviv suburb caught on video then broadcast on TV causing demonstrations directly parallel to those recently sparked here by the Ferguson incident.

The Times explains that there is a prejudice against Ethiopian Jews supposedly historically related to one of the lost tribes of Israel.

They are discriminated against in housing, education and employment and although they are only two percent of the population, they represent a third of youths in detention and have a higher rate of poverty, unemployment, suicide, divorce and domestic violence.

I met my first Ethiopian Jew at IS 70 when I was fourteen. A black Jew was certainly a surprise then and I can remember when Cecil revealed this fact with an anticipatory smile at our jaw dropping disbelief—a black Jew. Cecil dressed Jewish—that is he was much better dressed than any of us and although I can’t remember his being smarter he did have a habit of making long speeches in class, smilingly delighted by his verbal prowess. The message he wanted to convey was he was not black but a smart Jew. “Get out of Israel, you’re too nice” was the advice a father gave his son and related to me. He did not boast about his rank in military service, and he was distressed to hear a friend boast of the good deal a friend got by buying Arab land on the Left Bank—he got out and found he could be nicer in New York than New Yorkers (not too hard).

Andromache Geanacopoulos—later Capsis—was the head of the UN Guide service. She hired a guide who still had the tattoo mark from a Nazi concentration camp. This guide told the story of a German Jewish friend who reminisced about the good old days in Berlin and then forgot herself and said “ah if it wasn’t for the Polish Jews, we would still be there” (Her disbelieving tattooed friend was a Polish Jew).

—George Capsis

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Westbeth Continued from page 1 rent will get a rent hike, which they accept.

Yet, they feel that Neil and the unpaid board have been doing “sweetheart” commercial leases and some part of the hike should fall on the broader shoulders of the commercial tenants. To argue their point intelligently, the tenants’ association needs to see the details of the commercial leases.

Neil does not want to show the leases to the tenants’ association and has sued the Attorney General to prevent the release of information about the commercial leases to them.

Following are Catherine Revland’s questions and the answers provided by Steven Neil.

Catherine Revland’s question: Why is Westbeth Corporation suing the Attorney General

to prevent the release of financial information that AG has said the tenants have a right to receive? Will the tenants be paying for the cost of this litigation?

Steven Neil’s response: The better question to ask is why the tenants association hired an attorney, Barry Mallin, to demand the release of data from an inquiry that started in 2005 and was closed in 2007. A decade ago, information was given to the attorney general under a confidentiality agreement in an inquiry that the attorney general closed after determining Westbeth behaved perfectly properly. Ten years later, Westbeth is suing the attorney general to stop his reneging on the agreement that he and Westbeth made in 2005 to keep confidential the voluminous amount of information, involving personal information about residential tenants as well as corporate deliberations and decisions. And, con-

Tenants Seek Representation Westbeth is our home, and in many cases, the source of our livelihood. Many tenants have been here since day one when we opened in 1970 and the “average” tenant has probably lived here for over 25 years.

Our lives are invested in this institution.

We are grateful to all of those who serve, or have served, on our Board of Directors. Still, our board members rarely serve more than five years, with the exception of Westbeth residents on the board, and many serve less than three years. The biggest stakeholders in Westbeth are its’ artists and their families.

For over twenty-five years, the tenants’ recommendations to the Board were seated on the Board. The residents of Westbeth had people of their choosing, helping to set policy and voicing their concerns on how those policies would impact the artists and residents of Westbeth.

For the last ten years, that has not been the case. The Board now hand picks residents whom they feel will best represent the voice of the Board, not the tenants.

These residents serve with distinction on the Board, but their voices have been marginalized.

New York and The West Village are ever changing, and at times, many feel that the changes are not always for the good.

We understand that things will change in Westbeth as well, but we want to make sure it remains housing for artists at the lowest price possible.

We believe that the Board of Directors

also has the same goal. However, we feel that it is essential that the artists and residents of Westbeth, who will have to live with the policies set by the Board, have a voice in setting those policies. All of our elected officials, Congressman Nadler, Borough President Brewer, State Senator Hoylman, Assemblymember Glick and Councilmember Johnson, support the direct election of three tenants to the Board, elected by the residents of Westbeth. The residents of Westbeth voted by a margin of 95% to 5% in favor of the direct election of three tenants to the board.

The Charities Bureau of the Attorney General’s office has ruled that the residents have the right to see documents related to our governance. Rather than comply, our Board has chosen to sue the Attorney General. It only makes us suspicious of what is in those documents.

But all of this is nonsense. Funds needed for capital improvements are being wasted on attorneys’ fees. It is time for the Westbeth Board to seat three representatives, elected by the tenants, on the Westbeth Board so we can all work together to secure Westbeth’s future for the next generations of Westbeth artists. The Board does not have to this, but it is the right thing to do, so just do it so we can move on to find solutions to our challenges.

—­George Cominskie, President ­Westbeth Artists Residents Council

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trary to the assumption in this question, it cannot be financial information that the tenants seek because Westbeth makes full public disclosure of its finances, as required by law. Westbeth’s complete tax returns are available, from the IRS, from Westbeth, and from a website called GuideStar.

Westbeth complies in every way with every legal requirement concerning financial disclosure, and is proud of its record of always having done so. Since the financial information is freely available, it is obvious that there is another motivation for seeking this information, but Westbeth is not privy to that reason. As to whether the tenants are paying Mr. Mallin, that question is best directed to the tenants association.

CR: You state in your letter that Westbeth is a “successful housing and arts center owned and run by an independent corporation.” Is it no

longer a not-for-profit public charitable trust “in perpetuity”? If so, how and when was the charter changed?

As a not-for-profit corporation, it holds its property “in trust” for the people of the state of New York.

SN: It is not and never has been a “trust.” It

is a corporation organized under the New York Not-for-Profit Corporation Law and the Private Housing Finance Law. As a not-for-profit corporation, it holds its property “in trust” for the people of the state of New York. Its articles of incorporation are a matter of public record, and have never been amended to change its type of organization. A trust is a completely differContinued on page 8

Westbeth Executive Director Responds May 11, 2015 To the Editor: I was both surprised and disappointed at the recent article concerning Westbeth in WestView. Surprised because I have always thought a basic tenet of journalism was to get both sides of a story. Your reporter contacted no one at Westbeth in the course of her reporting. I was also surprised that your reporter did not reveal that she is a longterm tenant at Westbeth until deep in the story, which would have told your readers that the writer might not be completely impartial in her views. I was disappointed because had WestView inquired, we could have shown you how Westbeth is committed to providing affordable artists’ livework spaces and have done so for almost 50 years. We also would have explained to you that we are exploring every opportunity to achieve our mission now and in the future.

Your article, “Will Westbeth be the next St. Vincent’s?” draws a baseless analogy that will only needlessly worry our tenants and stakeholders. The fate of a failing hospital run by the Roman Catholic Church has no bearing on the fate of a successful housing and arts center owned and run by an independent corporation. The article itself is locked into events that occurred 30 years ago, without acknowledging that times have changed since 1985. Westbeth has paid off its 1970 mortgage and is operating in the black, and our commercial

leases subsidize our 350 residential tenants, not the other way around. And, we have spent more than $15 million since 2011 in updating and repairing our physical plant, including the current façade and roof replacements.

More important, artists want to live at Westbeth. Most of those on our waiting list have been waiting more than a decade, which is why we stopped taking new applications eight years ago. Rents for new tenants are set following federal guidelines that determine what rent is affordable to moderate-income families. Our residential tenants are all protected by Rent Stabilization or Section 8 laws. The average household in Westbeth pays $900 in rent, including electricity, approximately one-third to onequarter the rents in the neighborhood.

We’re proud of our 50-year record of providing affordable housing to artists and affordable space to arts organizations such as the Martha Graham Dance Company and the Labyrinth Theater, and we fully intend to keep doing so for the next 50 years and beyond.

Perhaps a member of your staff would care to inquire about Westbeth; if they do, I will be more than happy to give them my time and attention.

Yours, Steven A. Neil Executive Director

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The Law As I See It Your West Village Real

Westbeth Must Be the Center of Affordable Housing

By Arthur Z. Schwartz The story of Westbeth could fill up a volume. The Landmarks Preservation Commission’s designation of Westbeth as a landmark in 2011 is twenty-four single spaced pages long. It is hard to summarize, but its history and restrictions put the current controversy into context.

Roger Stevens, the first Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, conceived of the complex as the pilot project of subsidized, affordable housing for artists.

Westbeth was built in stages. The first of its buildings was built in 1860 as Hook’s Steam Powered Factory Building, and is one of the few waterfront industrial buildings of its era left. In 1903 Western Electric built an office and factory building, which was renamed as Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1925. Western abandoned the property in 1966.

Roger Stevens, the first Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, conceived of the complex as the pilot project of subsidized, affordable housing for artists. His vision was substantially supported by the J.M. Kaplan Fund charity. Between 1968 and 1970, the then-unknown architect Richard Meier designed and shaped 383 residential apartments, as well as a gallery, performance, and commercial spaces.

The JM Kaplan Fund and the National Endowment for the Arts each contributed $1.5 million to the construction. In June 1968, the property was transferred from Bell Labs to the Westbeth Housing Corp. In the arrangement that followed an $11.5% mortgage from Bankers Trust was established, at 3% a year, guaranteed by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), which was the first use of FHA’s moderate income housing program for artist’s housing. The Housing Corp also got a 70% tax status which was increased to 100% in 1982.

In 1972 the Certificate of Incorporation of Westbeth Housing Corp was amended to state that “[t]his company has been organized exclusively to develop on a non-profit basis a housing project for artists of low and moderate income where no adequate housing exists for such persons…

[T]he selection of artists to be provided with housing in the project will be made only with the recommendation of an appropriate outside groupof leading citizens established to pass on applications for such housing.”

As planned, The Kaplan Fund withdrew its involvement after Westbeth’s

completion, turning over control to a Board of Directors in 1973. Shortly thereafter a 17.5% rent increase led to a rent strike. The mortgage was assumed by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development in 1975. This was followed by an unsuccessful (and contentious) effort to co-op the complex. In 2009 the NYC Housing Development Corporation acquired the mortgage and the tax abatement was extended another forty years.

It is generally assumed that Westbeth has only the current Rent Stabilization Law to control its rent increases and the Residents Council has asserted that rents are being raised at an alarming rate—so much so that artists of low and moderate income cannot afford to live there.

But in my view, the June 30, 2009 Regulatory Agreement with HUD, which came along with the 2009 mortgage, seems to provide a vehicle for dealing with the problem. The key paragraph is Paragraph 6, concerning the application of the Rent Stabilization Law. That paragraph reads: “Sponsor shall not utilize any exemption or exclusion from any requirement of the Rent Stabilization Code to which the Sponsor might otherwise be or become entitled with respect to one or more units, including, but not limited to, any exemption or exclusion from the rent limits, renewed lease requirements, or other provisions of the Rent Stabilization Code due to (i) [rent level], (ii) [tenant income], (iii) the nature of the tenant, or (iv) any other factor. Notwithstanding anything contained herein or in the Code to the contrary, the additional allowance, if any, for leases on vacant apartments shall not exceed the lesser of the allowance permitted under the Code or five (5%) percent.”

I read this as an absolute prohibition on a rent increase of greater than 5%. I believe it also prohibits warehousing of apartments or their use as office/storage space.

The big issue is enforcement—only the City has the right to seek a remedy; and to date they haven’t taken any action The second big issue is information. As the articles in this issue discuss, the Residents Council is having a heck of a time determining exactly what is going on. But there is no question that Westbeth is supposed to remain a haven for affordable artist housing—and by affordable I don’t mean “affordable by West Village standards.”

Arthur Z. Schwartz is the Male Democratic District Leader for Greenwich Village and the President of Advocates for Justice, a public interest legal foundation which is providing legal advice to Westbeth tenants.

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Hospital continued from page 1 the building. They wheeled me past forty other operating rooms (this is truly an OPERATING hospital) and bang they put me to sleep. I awoke in a private room with nice nurse after nicer nurse for three days. Then at-home Visiting Nurses came to instruct me in physical therapy, but I was too tired and too weak to do it—I just wanted to rest.

And suddenly it was four months since the operation and I got a call to remind me that I had a check-up with Dr. Westrich on a rainy Monday. I subway-ed and cabbed my way to 532 70th Street, where the hospital hangs over the grey rushing waters of the East River.

I was greeted by the golden glow of smiling young John Powers, assistant to Dr. Westrich. John, a white-coated medical student planning to become a surgeon,

dropped his ubiquitous smile to say he had decided to go to Rome for six or seven years to become a priest.

John is so naturally nice I found myself thinking about writing an article about “niceness.” He had been on his way to correct physical ills with a scalpel and now would correct spiritual ills with niceness—equally sharp.

“How much do you think my knee operation cost? “ I asked nice John, and he looked inward and searched for a number like $10,000 -$20,000 dollars.

Then I asked the very nice practice manager, Denise Palacios (the favorite aunt of a growing Italian American family) and she too turned inward and guessed incorrectly—$30,000-$40,000.

Then I asked Dr. Westrich, and while he guessed higher, he did not know what the operation cost.

Continued on page 7

June 2015 WestView News 7

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Hospital continued from page 6 Hmm. If even the surgeon and the First Vice President of the Eastern Orthopedic Association does not know what an operation he performers at least twelve times a week costs the patient, we have a problem—and that problem is that medical costs are locked into what Medicare, Medicaid and the insurance companies have agreed to pay. The hospital accounting department writes a bill and that’s it—they don’t even bother to send the patient a copy. Now the Hospital for Special Surgery is an old hospital with smallish rooms and mine was no exception, but it cost me $4450 a night until they moved me to a semi-private room at $5450. The total for three days was $15,350.

“How much was your fee?” I asked Westrich. He quickly responded that it was tied to what Medicare would pay, though I recall he also threw out a number like $10,000 to $12,000. Still not bad if you do twelve operations a week My first knee doctor had to give up surgery because the insurance was in excess of $100,000 and he did not perform enough operations to pay for it.

So some weeks after the operation I got a bill that said I owed the hospital $1260.30—I paid it but I was curious to know the whole bill. You don’t get a bill if you don’t ask for it. So I called the doctor’s business manager and the accounting department, twice, and finally got it—$66,731.00.

The Sunday night before I saw Westrich, I was watching 60 Minutes when a commercial came on for the Hospital of Special Surgery. I wonder how many millions they spend on TV ads. And they are not alone—all the big and even the not- so-big hospitals trot out “ex-patients” relating how everybody gave me up for dead, but here am I alive thanks to [insert name here] hospital.

So what is the moral of this experience?

If even your surgeon does not know the final cost of an operation he performs, we have lost a realistic relationship between what it actually costs to deliver medical services and what we are paying in taxes and insurance to get it. We pay more for medical services than most advanced countries, and it is not always the best.

Here in the West Village after 161 years we lost our hospital—it ran out of money and could not pay salaries. So they locked the doors, nailed plywood over them, and sold the buildings for peanuts to a third generation developer to build luxury condos.

But wait.

On Sunday March 22nd I felt nauseous and vomited then vomited again and again and again. I called my primary physician, and he said call a 911 ambulance and go to Healthplex. I did and they sent my North Shore LIJ ambulance to Lennox Hill Hospital where they shoved a tube down my nose to my stomach to evacuate its contents (an

ISIS torture) and then they operated to remove an obstruction. One week in the hospital with the worst food I have ever encountered—I had to have the nurses go out and buy something I might eat.

OK can you guess the bill? $72,475.49 And hey, the daily room cost was $7025 not the $5450 that the fancy Hospital for Special Surgery charges. Lennox Hill was going broke, and they got bought out by North Shore LIJ, so I guess they upped the charges to get profitable again.

In just a little more than 3 months, I generated $140.470.49 in fees for two of the wealthiest hospitals in New York.

We pay $8,233 per year for our health care—two and a half times more than most of the nations of the world like France, Sweden and the UK.

Here in the West Village we can’t get one of the rich hospitals to offer a trauma-one emergency room to treat heart attacks and stroke...

Here in the West Village we can’t get one of the rich hospitals to offer a traumaone emergency room to treat heart attacks and stroke—if you have a heart attack you are expendable according to good “hospital” financial management.

Home Depot billionaire Kenneth Langone donated $200 million and NYU renamed its hospital after him.

The West Village has a few billionaires who—instead of giving $130 million to build a funny looking concrete island— could build a hospital.

We would name it after him.

Stop the Presses!

No sooner did I finish the above article than I got a call from Lydia Dalley, the patient advocate at the Hospital for Special Surgery, saying somebody from accounting would respond to my e-mailed questions. Bang, minutes later I got the call—when I expressed dismay at a $66,731.00 bill for a sixty minute operation and a three day hospital stay the staffer who asked “don’t use my name” responded that they only received $15,949.81.

Similarly, Lenox Hill Hospital, where they removed the obstruction in my intestines, revealed they received $27,607.63 out of the whole bill of $72,475.49.

Wow, it seems that they bill these crazy amounts, but Medicare pays only a fraction.

“We even know what Medicare is going to pay, but we send the same big invoice.”

It seems that different payers have a different tolerance for a bill—some insurance companies pay more and a Saudi Oil Prince pays the whole bill. She actually believes they do on occasion collect the whole crazy amount.

Medicare accounts for about eighteen percent of their customers. When a patient has no insurance, they work out a deal—

“we are very generous”—reducing the cost of the operation and offering time payments.

“Yes,” she agreed it is “crazy billing.” She said “I have been doing it for thirty-five years and maybe that’s why we are trying to get a better system.” I guess “better system” is a reference to Obama Care.

My daughter Athena complains that Obama Care is too expensive, and I have heard that complaint before—but if for thirty-five years the Hospital for Special Surgery has been sending the federal government invoices on which they know they will only collect one tenth the amount, we have a bit of craziness built into the bureaucracy.

Now, logic would unravel this, but what has logic to do with political solutions?

Oh, oh, and I had one item: BLANKET, WARMING UPPER BODY $34.00 Gee, they never sent me home with this blanket—oh wait I know—the $34 was for putting it on.

Hi George— Your article is good, it gives a feel for what billing means to us, docs and civilians alike.

Doctors really don’t know all the details of billing, it’s just too complicated. That’s why we have entire billing departments or billing companies that do this.

Of course, the insurance companies,

Medicare, and Medicaid have their people looking over the bills to see that the inflated charges don’t go through. It’s a real cat and mouse game for very big bucks.

I looked at the bill you sent in the previous email and to be honest, I couldn’t understand all the charges either, since they use technical billing language rather than straight medical language. By the way, some of these bills aren’t just a little bit higher then what is allowed, sometimes they are several times as high.

Also, what is billed and what they get are two different things. Often the companies and Medicare/Caid will actually pay a fraction of what the hospital is asking for. The actual amount received is more interesting then what is billed, which is often in Fantasy Land, but it’s hard to get this info.

If you remember, when the Healthplex was opening up I tried to find out what the fees would be and the billing people didn’t give me a straight answer. Either they didn’t know, because all of the fudge factors and negotiated rates hadn’t been calculated yet, or they just didn’t want to give proprietary info out to the press. If you remember some of my first articles in WestView about a single payer health system, this is one of the reasons. It greatly simplifies billing and institutions, or doctors, can’t do funny things with billing when it all goes into one computer with one set of rules.

—Alec Pruchnicki, MD

www.westviewnews.org

8 WestView News June 2015

Westbeth continued from page 4 ent kind of legal entity unrelated to Westbeth, its founding, or its corporate status.

CR: In your letter you disclose that the average rent of artist residents is $900 a month, and that they pay from ¼ to 1/3 the current market value rent for the neighborhood. Will you also disclose the average rent per square foot for commercial tenants and the percentage they pay of the current market value commercial rent in the neighborhood?

SN: Westbeth, although it is a not-forprofit company, does not as a matter of good business practice disclose such information.

CR: You state that there are 350 apartments for qualified artist residents. The figure has always been 384 apartments, minus the super’s apartment. What is the status of the missing 35 apartments that are supposed to be rented to qualified artist residents?

SN: There are no apartments that are “missing;” there are approximately 350 currently occupied. At the moment, there are nine apartments under active renovation, two that are being held by the estates of deceased tenants, two that are subject to long-term repairs, and seven that are being prepared for use in our new Artists in Residency program, where we hope to partner with various nonprofit arts organizations.

CR You say that Ramscale is paying market rent, but did you not also give the owners

of Ramscale a residential apartment? How do they qualify under the income and artistic requirements that everyone else must go through?

SN: The Ramscale tenants had three residential units on the 13th floor. Westbeth commenced litigation in 2008 to evict them, which was finally settled in 2014 after many years and much expense. Under the settlement, Ramscale now has strictly commercial leases for two of the units on the 13th floor, at commercially reasonable rents. They may not use the spaces for living, and are not entitled to renewal leases when those leases end. Westbeth is using the third space temporarily for the construction crews who are working on and above the 13th floor. Westbeth will rent the third space, for commercial use at market rates, when the construction ends.

As part of the settlement of six years of litigation, the parties agreed that the owners of Ramscale, who were surrendering three residential spaces, would receive one residential, Rent-Stabilized apartment elsewhere in the building, at the legal Rent-Stabilized rent.

CR All of the local elected officials (Nadler, Brewer, Hoylman, Glick, Johnson) support the idea of the tenants voting to directly elect three of their own to represent their concerns at the board level. Why doesn’t the board honor the wishes of the elected officials and the tenants?

SN: A common misconception is that

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members of a nonprofit board “represent” particular interests. This is incorrect, and in fact contrary to the laws of the state of New York. Members of any nonprofit board all represent the interests of the entire corporation, and are responsible solely to the corporation and to the state of New York for its wellbeing. They have the legal duties of loyalty, obedience, and care to the corporation. One of the board’s responsibilities is to elect its own members. It is their responsibility and no one else’s, and it would be a breach of their fiduciary duty to delegate that responsibility to the tenants’ association or to anyone else.

CR When was the last time the Board of Directors held a public meeting with the tenants?

SN: Members of the board meet regularly with the tenants association at its monthly meetings, and Westbeth staff meet almost daily with individual tenants.

CR After hiring a broker for your commercial spaces, how is it that one of those spaces was rented to the son of a former board chair?

SN: As noted in answering question number 3, above, Westbeth doesn’t discuss its business operations in public.

CR How much is the exterior work costing and will you be applying for an MCI to cover the cost of all of that work?

SN: The current project, which is de-

signed to preserve and protect Westbeth’s physical assets and address years of deferred maintenance, is currently expected to cost about $6.5 million. There remains millions of dollars more work to be done on the facade and roof, and the problem of windows has barely been addressed.

The Rent Stabilization Law and Code, which protects tenants in New York City from unwarranted rent increases, includes provisions designed to encourage building owners to take care of their buildings. This part of Rent Stabilization, called a Major Capital Improvement (MCI) application, applies only to improvements to the building that are long-term, buildingwide and depreciable under the Internal Revenue Code. The Rent Stabilization Law and Code provide that an owner must submit an MCI application with detailed supporting documents, including contracts, plans, invoices and cashed checks, to justify its application. The costs are first allocated between residential and nonresidential uses in a building. Tenants are notified of the owner’s filing, and all the material in support of the application is available to the public for review. Tenants can file responses to the application in which they can support, oppose or seek a modification of what the owner requests. The state housing division then issues an order, determining the allowable increases.

It is only after when the state issues its order that increases occur.

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10 WestView News June 2015

A Tolerance for Ugly

By George Capsis My TV offered that familiar Rio de Janeiro aerial shot of the Christ figure with outstretched arms over the spectacular, curving Guanabara Bay, and then cut abruptly to the shoreline where a wire fence held back floating plastic and household garbage. Rio, it seems, is one of the most polluted cities in the world, and the pollution is getting worse because of public and government indifference.

I realized that a city is as littered and graffiti-violated as we allow it—even this one.

I see litter, graffiti and strewn-ad flyers all over my block, Charles Street, and I wanted to know what I could do to address it. Trying to track down information about how the Post Office, Department of Sanitation and the Department of Transportation address graffiti led me on quite a chase.

I also wondered whether there might be a better way to handle the problem. Some years ago, during the Koch administration, a French company approached the MTA with an idea to sell ads on bus shelters as they were doing in Paris.

The fifty by twenty-six inch ads you see on the bus shelters are the result—and in a reasonably good location they can earn $900 to $1300 for just four weeks.

The ad salesman I spoke to offered that they are very easy to sell—in fact, advertisers often compete for locations and bid up the price.

If the Post Office were to sell ad space on the now graffiti-inscribed postal collection

boxes, they could reasonably charge $500 to $750 every four weeks.

If we multiply this by the thousands of boxes the US Post Office owns, we might solve their deficit problem.

But here in the West Village we could derive another benefit: for years I have thought we should have signs that offer a map and historic trail through the Village, indicating where famous writers lived. The postal box signs would give us a place to do it.

The Whitney Museum poster we have created provides a map to the door for tourists. This is just one example of how we might solve the graffiti problem, offer a beneficial service and—hey—maybe make some money for the post office as well.

Press Office Runaround

A quick warning for all upcoming journalism students—please realize that you can no longer ask questions of a real live city press officer. Oh, no—you have to send an e-mail with your questions. Sometimes you don’t know the questions to ask, and having just a little more information would better allow you to ask the right question, but forget about it. You must stumble ahead with the wrong questions in the hope of finding the right ones.

And stumble I did, as I persisted in contacting multiple city officials while trying to track down what to do about the graffiti in my neighborhood.

To their credit, the Post Office did not give me the runaround. In a very nice call, they explained that they do clean up graffiti if you call and ask. (Though I wonder how long it takes.) The Post Office official was a very nice guy who I would love to have a

beer with at the White Horse.

The Department of Sanitation was not so helpful. After several unproductive phone calls and emails to various department employees, Chief Keith Mellis provided the statement below about their Graffiti Free NY program.

And the Department of Transportation tried to hide their lack of a program behind non-answers.

I always feel a bit awkward calling a city department press office for my little newspaper when I know I am competing with calls from the Times and yet my questions are just as legitimate.

Think about it—the press office for a vast sprawling city bureaucratic department where even the head of it doesn’t really know what is going on. What happens when you ask somebody who is badly paid to answer a specific question? In this case my question was “Does the DOT have a department that goes out to clean or replace traffic signs when they get covered by graffiti or those little stick-on ads?”

OK, if the press officer is conscientious he or she will e-mail around and get nothing—or something so equivocating as to pass for nothing. But, what the hell, nobody is checking up on him or her—nobody is saying your response to WestView News is not up to the high standards of the DOT press office—so they send something so cryptic it could be interpreted to mean anything or nothing.

In this case, the only response I got was “On background, we encourage New Yorkers that see damaged traffic signs to report them to 311. DOT inspects, cleans, or replaces the signs when appropriate.”

The real answer is that DOT has no program to clean signs– none—and I found that out by going up the line and being

Graffiti or $1,000.00 a Month

BEFORE

AFTER

The US Post Office could earn $1000 a month per side if it leased space on its collection boxes for advertising. WestView proposes a sponsored tour of the West Village with references to historic buildings and events. Photos by Maggie Berkvist.

VISUAL POLLUTION: Bandit advertisers

encrust traffic control box while MTA has no program to clean them.

Photo by Maggie Berkvist

persistent until I finally got a big shot who said twice “don’t use my name.”

George B. Flood, the USPS Northeast Area Spokesperson, provided the following statement: Our familiar blue mail collection boxes and less prevalent green mail relay storage boxes are visible representations of the Postal Service on sidewalks in neighborhoods across America.

We appreciate customers who alert us to their dissatisfaction over graffiti, unauthorized postings, or damage to any one of the thousands of boxes we have on the streets of Manhattan. Manhattan residents can share their concerns with us by contacting the USPS New York District Consumer & Industry Contact office at 212-330-3667. Every effort will be made to make the necessary repairs or replacement.

Chief Keith Mellis from the Department of Sanitation’s Bureau of Public Affairs responded with the following statement: Defacing property with spray paint, broad-tipped markers, or etching acid is a serious offence. It is the responsibility of property owners to remove graffiti from their property, or arrange to have the graffiti removed.

The City’s Graffiti Free NY Program allows property owners and others to report graffiti and request that it be removed.

If there is a graffiti violation, the City will notify the property owner. If the owner does not remove the graffiti or inform the City that the graffiti is intended to remain on the building, the City will remove the graffiti for free. Graffiti removal generally takes place between March and December, and the clean-up scheduling can vary depending on the volume of requests. If you are a property owner who has been given notice by DSNY to remove graffiti, failure to comply or respond to the notice can result in a fine. http://www1.nyc.gov/site/dsny/streetsand-sidewalks/cleaning/graffiti.page

June 2015 WestView News 11

www.westviewnews.org

How the West Village Brought Civil Rights to the World

By Bruce Poli

raising children than heterosexual couples.

Human rights is one of the great issues of our time, and what has evolved from five nights of resistance at Sheridan Square nearly half a century ago is one of the great legacies of modern history. The Village has once again moved the world forward.

Did you know that Reader’s Digest was first conceived in a speakeasy at 1 Minetta Lane by DeWitt and Lila Wallace? That Jane Jacobs set a national model of American urban neighborhood life and used her time tested concept to defeat Robert Moses—who wanted to build a superhighway through South Manhattan, A Brief History of the Gay Pride Parade which would have destroyed many aspects of GreenExcerpted from the upcoming book Out of the Closet wich Village life as well as SOHO and the future and Onto the Streets: Gay Pride and the 21st Century Tribeca? Or that the street grid of New York—created

by Suzanne and Bruce Poli primarily for the purpose of commerce—was planned in 1811 at the Street Commissioner’s office on the secWhen in June 1969 the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich ond floor at the corner of Christopher and Bleecker Village NYC was raided by the police, the community Streets? was emboldened to fight back and make the streets So just how big have the contributions of the West their own. Every June since, they have marched for Village been to our world? their freedom in recognition of what we now admire AMERICA BEGINS IN GREENWICH VILLAGE: Many contributions - such Very big. as the 21st Century’s leading Civil Rights movement. as the fight for LGBT rights - started in the West Village and have major In fact, the often quoted statement “America Begins impacts on the rest of the world. OPPRESSION 1985 © Suzanne Poli.

Today, more than 45 years later, the Gay Pride pain Greenwich Village” makes the point clearly. rade is an international phenomenon of spectacular So it is no surprise that the 21st-Century Civil Rights It all started here in 1969, just a month before the Wood- color and drama, a feast for the eyes and all the senses, full of movement—the fight for Gay Rights—has reverberated from stock Festival, the symbol of Sixties culture. We have great life, diversity and celebration. This iconic annual event repreChristopher Street throughout the world. reason to celebrate the LGBT movement’s local story in the sents the timely evolution of the Gay and Lesbian, Bisexual Forty-six years after the Stonewall rebellion, in cities across context of a large Civil Rights universe. and Transgender community.

America, in the streets of Kampala and Moscow—where The annual Heritage of Pride march and week—long In the initial years of protest (1970-84) it was called the LGBT people are threatened to this day—the fight for LGBT events in June attract two million people to NYC every year Christopher Street Liberation Day March; then the solemn rights has become major news of our time. and lead the world Pride marches which take place in hun- and desperate era of AIDS (approx. 1984-2000+) dominated, The fight that started right here is still ongoing: throughout dreds of cities and countries. The marriage equality, LGBT with its devastating effect on the community; today, the draAsia and South America, where transgender individuals look military rights and transgender rights movements are among matic, celebratory parade of nations and organizations from to the U.S. for hope and courage; in Australia, where Mardi many aspects of the LGBT civil rights movement that have all over the world display their civil rights in living color and Gras is a great cause celebration every spring; in cities like Rega, created vast social change—and very quickly. sound.

Latvia and Vilnius, Lituania, where homosexuality is greatly The country is also rediscovering what constitutes a family, It has been an impressive journey—from Christopher Street suspect at best. and that same sex partners have a greater proven record for to the world stage. And we will never forget its story.

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Chris Tsiamis, Dina Andriotis, Nick Balint and Nikitas Andriotis (from left to right).

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Telephone: 212-255-2525 Fax: 212-255-2524 www.newyorkchemists.com • email nyc@newyorkchemists.com

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12 WestView News June 2015

O. Ottomanelli & Sons

By Caroline Benveniste

When shopping at O. Ottomanelli & Sons on Bleecker Street and speaking with Frank Ottomanelli, it is easy to imagine that you are back in the Bleecker Street of the 1940’s.

At that time pushcarts lined the street, and there were six butcher shops, two fish stores and two bakeries. The pushcarts had all disappeared by the 1970’s and by the time Zito Bakery closed in 2004 almost all the long-standing food shops on the street were gone. But luckily for Village residents Ottomanelli’s remains and provides the old-fashioned butcher shop experience that is so rare in New York City and elsewhere today.

Onofrio Ottomanelli was born in 1917 to Italian parents on a ship travelling from Italy in American waters.

When he was three, his parents moved back Italy, and he grew up in Bari where he learned his butchering skills. He returned to New York in 1937, and worked in his uncle’s butcher shop in Yorkville while living on Perry Street.

Onofrio opened the first Ottomanelli’s at 238 Bleecker in the 1940’s. That location was already a butcher shop, and Onofrio had his eye on it. When the owners decided to sell he bought it, probably already having in mind the motto he lived by: “live, work and trade in the Village.” The store later moved to the Blind Tiger site (also on Bleecker), and then twenty years ago, to its current location.

The Ottomanellis had eight children, six boys and two girls. Four of the sons worked with their father at the store until he passed away in 2000. Frank’s father taught him to use a knife when he was twelve or thirteen, and Frank remembers walking around the Village delivering meat at a young age. Frank’s grandfather came to the store every day and sat by the door. He expected to be brought a donut and coffee by 10:30, otherwise he would leave, and sometimes

will grind it on the spot.

Today Frank, Jerry and Joe are still working there, their brother Peter having passed away in 2012. Frank’s son Matthew is the only one of the brothers’ children to join the business. But with his strong family butchering background he has learned a rapidly vanishing set of skills which should preserve the tradition of Ottomanelli’s for future generations in the Village.

Italian Meatballs

STILL WITH US, AFTER ALL THESE YEARS: Matthew, Frank,

Jerry and Joe Ottomanelli in front of their family butcher store at 285 Bleecker Street. Photo by Maggie Berkvist.

even stay away for a couple of days.

Frank says his father was ahead of his time; he offered fresh game when no one else did. When he introduced Buffalo, about forty years ago, the Daily News did a full page spread. Today Ottomanelli’s has signs for Alligator, Kangaroo and Elk. Dry aged meat continues to be a big part of their business.

Ottomanelli’s only buys hanging meat, never boxed.

Onofrio would call his suppliers in the morning, starting between 4:30 and 5 AM, and if they could fulfill his order he would go on site to select the meat himself. Now Frank does the same, quite a rarity in the business today.

Not surprisingly, the store has many regular customers.

It is a great place to get advice on meat—both on which cuts to buy and how to cook it. For example, if you want to make burgers, they will suggest a blend for you, and they

Ingredients: 1 small onion, chopped 2 cloves garlic, halved 1 TBS Olive Oil 3/8 cup breadcrumbs 2 TBS milk 2 eggs 3 tsp parsley, chopped finely 1.5 ounce Parmesan, grated Salt, pepper to taste Flour for dredging I TBS Olive Oil for frying meatballs Fry garlic and onions in oil until onion is translucent.

Remove garlic. While onions are cooking, add milk to breadcrumbs. Beat eggs, add remaining ingredients (draining any excess milk from breadcrumbs) except the flour. Form mixture into balls, approximately one inch in diameter. Roll balls in flour. Add oil to non-stick skillet with cover. When the oil is hot, add the meatballs. Cook covered, over low heat, for 35-40 minutes, turning every 5 minutes or so to prevent burning. Serve as an appetizer or with spaghetti and tomato sauce.

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You know, for a thousand years people had let someone else run things and they were really worried that the only people who would get involved in their government, whether it be running for office or, more importantly, just working to see that the government worked, were people only of self-interest. And of course we have a lot of that.

We have a ton of apathy, people don’t care. And then it seems like all too many people who get involved are doing it because they’re saying there’s something in it for numero uno. But there are lots of people who are in it for the right reasons. And if you had to pick somebody who sort of –this room if filled with them, that’s one of the nice things about Arthur and his friends– but if you had to pick somebody who symbolizes that, it would be Arthur Schwartz.

June 2015 WestView News 15

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America is Hard to See

REDRESSING PAST IMBALANCES: Lee Krasner’s The Seasons, 1957, dominates the sec-

tion devoted to Abstract Expressionism. Photo by Maggie Berkvist.

The Whitney Museum’s Inaugural Exhibition presents 600 artworks from the Museum’s Collection

By Martica Sawin Faced with the responsibility for selecting an inaugural exhibition from a collection of 22,000 artworks, the Whitney curators have come up with a thoughtful solution.

Selecting the title America is Hard to See, a line from a Robert Frost poem, they have foregone the traditional chronological survey and opted for a sequence of thematic groupings in twenty three mini-exhibitions, each with its own visual coherence and compatible content.

These groupings elide smoothly one into another, leading viewers gradually through a century of artworks that reflect the many cross-currents of national experience. To avoid making claims for any body of artworks, the title of each subdivision has been taken from one of the works in that group. Thus Large Trademark, the title of Ed Rusha’s 1960’s painting of a movie studio logo, becomes the heading for the Pop

AN ELEGANT INSTALLATION: John Storrs’

geometric sculpture stands in front of a window overlooking the Hudson River. Photo

by Maggie Berkvist

art section, and a Fred Wilson 1991 title, Guarded View denotes the chapter on race, identity and gender.

Facing the elevator on the eighth floor, the recommended starting point, are Marsden Hartley’s two powerful abstract “portraits” of a German officer from his 1915 War Series, a fitting introductory statement about America’s awakening to modernism on the heels of the unadorned realism of the Ashcan School paintings hanging nearby.

That stylistic split continues with the elegant installation of John Storrs’ geometric sculpture in front of a window overlooking the Hudson River, juxtaposed with George Bellows’ Floating Ice, a view across the river toward the snow-covered Palisades.

Modernism makes further inroads with color-based abstraction under the heading Music Pink and Blue that includes the synchromist movement and a surprise nonobjective painting by poet e.e. cummings who, like so many of the artists represented here, lived in the adjacent Greenwich Village Neighborhood.

The large section devoted to Abstract Expressionism takes its name New York, N.Y. 1955 from a painting by Hedda Stern, the only woman in Life magazine’s 1950 photograph of fourteen male artists associated with the beginning of Abstract Expressionism and an entire wall is occupied by Lee Krasner’s nineteen foot long canvas, The Seasons. Clearly the exhibition is being used to redress past imbalances, even when the museum is not at fault, as in the case of Hans Haacke. A separate gallery houses his Shapolsky et al. Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, a real time Social System, as of May 1971, a diligently researched project which led to the cancellation of Haacke’s planned solo exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in 1971.

Such attempts to right gender neglect or to counter censorship reflect the museum’s

conscientious embrace of inclusiveness, as opposed to highlighting its most celebrated works. Here and there, however, popular favorites like Hopper’s Early Sunday Morning or George Bellows’ Dempsey and Firpo, make an appearance along with Alexander Calder’s much loved Circus.

Photographs, graphic art, and video make up a sizable portion of the exhibition, mostly in the sections addressing troubled times: the Depression, the Aids epidemic, lynching, anti-war protests, and race and gender discrimination. (There is scarcely a reference to pending environmental crises). The building’s spaciousness encourages visitors to move back and forth to make their own connections and comparisons. Two widely separated paintings, Robert Bechtle’s 61 Pontiac, 1968-69 and Peter Saul’s Saigon, 1967, a cartoon-style melange of rape and violence in Day-Glo color, when considered together convey the reality of the Vietnam era. Then for sheer pleasure one can look through a wall of windows to the seventh floor terrace, where the burnished steel surfaces of David Smith’s Cubi XXI gleam in the sunlight against a wide-angle view of Manhattan Among the works by Gertrude Whitney and her artist/friends in the ground floor gallery is John Sloan’s Backyards, Greenwich Village, 1910, a reminder of the museum’s origin in the heart of the artists’ territory. It was Sloan who said, “Artists in this frontier country are like cockroaches in kitchens, not encouraged, not wanted.” This was the situation Gertrude Whitney set out to correct, first by purchases, then by providing exhibi-

tion space. If we wonder in our global era whether the idea of maintaining a museum devoted solely to American art is something of an anachronism, it is useful to be reminded of the Whitney’s original mission to raise the status as well as the circumstances of American artists. Perhaps at this point the museum could say “mission accomplished” and redefine its agenda. Then there could be room both to reflect contemporary art’s global scale and to acknowledge the dialogue many Americans maintained with art from abroad, often through foreign sojourns, as well as the impact of the 1913 Armory Show and the influx of cultural refugees as Fascism rose in Germany.

The title of the inaugural exhibition, America is Hard to See, admits in advance that there is no comprehensive way to package American art. The present format of small thematic units has the advantage of flexibility, leaving room for hope that some of the accumulated backlog of artists and movements not currently represented will be brought out in contexts that will fill in what is now a limited view of a rich and diverse epoch for American art. Some of the topics announced for the coming year are the paintings of Archibald Motley, a “jazz age modernist” associated with the Harlem Renaissance, a career retrospective of Frank Stella, immersive environments by filmmaker/journalist Laura Poitras (Citizen Four), one hundred works by Stuart Davis, a pioneer in using images from popular culture, and three solo shows of emerging artists.

Teddy Capsis Ends with a Double

A MIGHTY SWING: Teddy Capsis helped his Chaminade High School team (19 wins

and 3 losses) win the 2015 CHSAA Championship over St. Dominic’s 10-0 on May 25, 2015. Capsis (6’3”and 260 lbs) is shown delivering a mighty swing that drove the ball over the right field fence of the New York Institute of Technology collegiate baseball field via one bounce, resulting in a ground rule double that knocked in two runs.

Capsis went on to score as well. Eight of Capsis’ Chaminade teammates will be playing college baseball next year. Teddy who was a three sport athlete at Chaminade High School (football, track and field, baseball) will consolidate his athletic career down to one sport in college. He reports to the College of Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts on 6/14/15 to begin his collegiate football career.

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16 WestView News June 2015

Think Pink

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52 West 10th Street SOLD $9,040,000 OUR RESIDENT PINK-DIPPED BIRD: Though not native to the east coast, the House Finch

(above) has adapted easily to east coast life. Photo by Keith Michael.

By Keith Michael Quick. Think of a pink bird.

An afternoon rain pings off the air conditioner. Millie has sprawled onto her back, her four short legs divining like the arrows on a weathervane, and her upside-down panting corgi-smile peeking out like a sea monster in the margin of a Dutch mariner’s map. Beyond my desk, Stanley Donan’s Funny Face is playing on TCM—it’s the opening musical number: the office doors have just been painted pink and Kay Thompson bursts out, “Think Pink!” Scene set.

How did you do with the pink bird question? Tricky. Probably the first pink bird that came to mind was a pink Flamingo (and then it was probably a dead heat between the listless group at the Bronx Zoo or the classic plastic stand-in gracing a suburban lawn— seeing the vast flocks of wild birds blushing an African lake is on my personal wish list.)

There is a Rose Cockatoo and a Roseate Spoonbill, but you won’t see them windowsill-hopping on Charles Street. A Ross’s Gull from far Siberia, in snazzy summer breeding attire, has a smudge of rouge on its breast, but seeing one in New York City would send birders into a head-spinning tizzy.

However, we do have our own year-round resident pink-dipped bird: the House Finch.

Not native to the east coast, they were sold illegally as cage birds in the 1940s, imported from the west as “Hollywood Finches.”

When traffickers feared arrest, the birds were released. The finches adapted easily to eastern life, and because they have a cheerful, burbling song, and are pink, they’re given more leniency than the metronomically chip-chipchipping rachetty-tuned European House Sparrow. In the morning, if you hear a chortling sound trickling down to the street from a high perch, look up, it’s probably a House Finch, pink-ing a railing or chimney stack.

Fred Astaire is inundating Audrey Hepburn’s “sinister” Greenwich Village bookstore for a high-fashion photoshoot (hilarious.)

The downpour on the air conditioner is deaf-

ening. Millie topples to her side, curving like a cashew nut.

Surely there are structural explanations for why feathers have rarely developed to reflect pink wavelengths, and speculative evolutionary reasons why donning pink has rarely dominated as a survival strategy (though the sartorial snap of a pink pocket square, necktie or socks, and the sensation of Jackie Kennedy’s pink suit and pillbox hat argue to the contrary.)

Fred, Audrey and Kay bluster in the elevator on their way to the top of the Eiffel Tower (heaven.) Millie continues her slow-motion belly roll, nose propped on her front paws, eyeing me with watery ambivalence.

I’ve told the story many times that my West Village Bird #1 was a House Finch caroling on the southwest corner of West 4th and 12th streets—inaugurating my “Listing” on September 9, 2006. I was new to birding at that time, and a pink “sparrow” sparked my fascination. Other partially pinkish birds seen within my usual village streets: Rose-breasted Grosbeak (WVB #74, Bleecker between Perry and West 11th streets, May 6, 2011— wearing a triangular rose bandana around its neck) and Ruby-throated Hummingbird (WVB #101, Garden of St. Luke’s, August 26, 2014—its name says it all.)

Audrey is running down the steps of the Louvre (in red, not pink, but still divine.) A thunder crash jolts Millie’s nap.

I haven’t pinpointed any House Finch nests in the neighborhood, but surely there are some. It can be a June project to discover where the toddler finches come from. A Pantone® color trend for 2015 is the pinky “Strawberry Ice.” The House Finch is ready for its closeup!

Fred and Audrey’s raft drifts into the idyllic landscape, swans decoratively following, white doves preening and circling. (How were swans trained to swim beside that raft?) The rain has stopped. Millie stretches to go out. The End.

For more information about nature walks, books and photographs, visit www.keithmichaelnyc.com.

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June 2015 WestView News 17

West Village Original: Isabel Case Borgatta

By Michael D. Minichiello

doesn’t let you make very many mistakes.

You can’t put anything back once it’s off.

This month’s West Village Original is sculp- It’s a tough discipline!” tor Isabel Case Borgatta, born in Madison, It’s this dedication that sustained BorWisconsin in 1921. In her lengthy career, she gatta at a time when women artists were has had numerous solo and group exhibitions, all but ignored by mainstream galleries seen her pieces in museum, corporate, and and museums. “Women artists were not private collections, and been the recipient of taken seriously when I was starting out,” numerous awards, among them Yaddo and she says. “They didn’t show women at Edward McDowell Fellowships. Borgatta all! People don’t know that now because moved into Westbeth in 1986 and still main- there’s been such a change, but the optains her studio there. portunities were just about zero. That’s one reason that I became active in the When she was twelve years old, Isabel Case women’s movement.” Does Borgatta feel Borgatta made a carving in Ivory Soap and she missed opportunities as a result of won a national prize such misogyny? of $100 in the popu“No, I feel like I lar contest sponsored was in the group

by Procter & Gamthat helped make ble. “One hundred a change,” she dollars was a big says. “This is deal in the depths what the organiof the Depression zation Women in and I think I became the Arts was all a sculptor because about: to promote of that,” she says, opportunities for laughing. “I started women so they carving anything I could show their could get my hands work. As a result, on. I went from soap so much progress to stone! But I think has been made.”

I always had a feel When Borgating for form and volta first moved to ume and I liked to New York in the make shapes.”

1940s she lived Borgatta went on Christopher on to attend both Street. Her marSmith College and FROM SOAP TO STONE: With a feeling for riage to another Yale, from which form and volume, sculptor Isabel Case artist led them to she graduated with Borgatta would carve on anything she could raise their three a degree in sculp- get her hands on. Photo by Michael D. children in WestMinichiello. ture. “It’s not the chester County most popular major but it was mine and and, after separating from her husband, I loved it,” she says. “And I had a blast! I she moved back to the city and subsemean, a girl at Yale? Come on! I was doing quently to Westbeth. “To me the Village what I really loved to do and nobody was was always very much like home,” she holding me back.” After Yale she came to says. “I liked the scale, the smaller buildNew York and started doing ‘direct’ carving. ings, and the informality. I liked the fact “That was something new,” she says. “Be- that you could make friends in the neighfore that people had built things up in clay borhood as well as in your own building. models and copied that. I worked directly I liked that there were a number of other from a raw piece of stone without prelimi- artists around. I had never completely nary drawings or models.” Since then, Bor- lost touch with the neighborhood even gatta has shown her work consistently. “I’ve though I had spent those years in Dobbs shown pretty much all over the world,” she Ferry. In fact, I showed at the Whitney says. “I’m not a superstar, but I’m up there.” way back when it was on 8th Street and According to Borgatta, the piece of stone now I’m looking forward to going to the itself is where she finds her inspiration. new one right around the corner!”

“Sometimes I have something in mind that As an artist and a resident of Westbeth, I want to carve,” she says. “More often, I Borgatta seems to have found the ideal find a stone that’s simpatico and I want to neighborhood to both live and work in. “I work with it. I love the tactile and sensual think it’s more tolerant of everybody and quality of stone. I can walk into a room everything, more relaxed, less demanding, with one hundred stones and pick out the and more accepting,” she says. “I just feel ones I like very quickly. Something about more at ease here. I love the lifestyle.” She the shape, size, color, and texture will speak pauses for second. “I still think the West to me. But I’m open to a lot of modifica- Village is the heart of Manhattan for what tions as I work. I like the fact that stone matters to me.”

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18 WestView News June 2015

The Lost Cinemas of the West Village The Fugazy Theater

By Clive I. Morrick The Fugazy Theater stood at what is now the corner of West Houston Street and Sixth Avenue from 1923 to 1929. The William F. Passannante Playground now occupies that site.

The Fugazy initially showed silent films and played vaudeville. Its capacity was 1,687.

Hubert J. Fugazy built the cinema between McDougal and Hancock Streets. Reilly and Hall were the architects. (They also designed the Sheridan Theater on West 12th Street— see, WestView News, April, 2015.) The 1927 Film Daily Yearbook listed the Fugazy Theater at “150 Houston Street.”

The New York Tribune reported on November 17, 1922, that Fugazy and his partner Antonio Rosetti had leased the three-story theater being erected on the north-west corner of MacDougal and Houston Streets to the MacDougal Amusement Company, one of whose directors was a Municipal Court Judge named Leopold Prince.

Fugazy and this company fell out over a disputed payment for assignment of the lease and Fugazy lost. By that time, February 1929, the theater was no more. (Prince was an accomplished violinist who founded the New York City Symphony in 1927, and

conducted it for twenty five years.)

In the late 1980s, Village author Terry Miller interviewed longtime resident Ermanno Stingo, who “remembers Hancock street as a block-long affair that teemed with people and traffic. ‘Remember, there were few through-streets connecting Bleecker and Houston before Sixth Avenue went through… and I also remember being taken by my mother to the cavernous Fugazy Theatre, which stood at the bottom of Hancock at Houston Street.

Once, just after we paid our dime admission, some man pulled a gun and held up the box office. Mother dragged me down the aisle and hid me behind the piano. I remember the pianist went right on playing, as if nothing had happened… ’” This might have been the occurrence reported in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle on January 14, 1924. The previous evening while the theater was full, bandits held up the assistant cashier and stole $2,000 in takings.

The Motion Picture News of July-Sep. 1927 reported that, “There is a rumor out to the effect that Jack Fugazy’s theater on West Houston Street may have to be torn down to make way for the subway in the section.”

That rumor was true. The cause of the Fugazy Theater’s early demise was the

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extension of Sixth Avenue south from Carmine Street for the new Independent subway and the approach to the new Holland Tunnel. (This also killed off the Carmine Theater—see, WestView News, May, 2015.)

Hancock Street was right in the path of the planned route for Sixth Avenue. The New York Times reported on September 19, 1926 that the extension would require THE FUGAZY THEATER: In this photograph, the only one in 10,000 people to find new the public domain that I have found, the vertical Fugazy sign homes. It would be the can be seen left center. MacDougal Street lies between the biggest street opening in two buildings in the photo. the City’s history.

The City had acquired the land it need- promoting fights. His father, Louis, born in ed on August 1, 1926, through condem- Genoa, Italy, made his fortune in New York nation. “Hancock Street, undoubtedly as a private banker. named for the signer of the Declaration Hubert, possibly named after Italy’s King of Independence, will be swallowed up Hubert, also owned a National Football in a single gulp,” added the writer. The League team called the Brooklyn HorseCity granted residents two thirty-day men-Lions, another short-lived venture extensions from eviction, foregoing rent, lasting only the year 1926. His nephew but gave the largely Italian community William, better known as Bill, became no help in finding new places to live and head of Fugazy Transportation and a manwork. City Comptroller Charles W. Berry about-town. Fugazy limousines still opersaid, “The exodus from Little Italy is pro- ate in New York City. ceeding satisfactorily.”

Yet another short-lived venture was HuThe Times writer concluded with this bert’s purchase of the New York Hippoobservation: “It looks as if the old quiet drome in 1934, with the intent of bringing days of street games and neighborhood opera to the masses. That one never got off gossip are over. The future of the district the ground. looms with warehouses and factories and And who was William F. Passannante? the ceaseless roar of rolling trucks.”

He was a lifelong Villager, and a New York So who was Hubert J. Fugazy? He was a State Assemblyman who represented the well-known boxing promoter who dabbled 64th Assembly District, which included in the arts. He lived in Chelsea. Born in his longtime neighborhood of Greenwich 1885, he had a short career in the ring un- Village as well as the Chelsea section of der the name Jack Lee, before he turned to Manhattan, for thirty-six years.

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June 2015 WestView News 19

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House Sales

By Matthew Pravda

Kiefer Sutherland sold his townhouse, 763 Greenwich Street, in September of 2012 for $17,500,000. The singlefamily house that was renovated by renowned architect Steven Gambrel, has traded hands again this past March for $17,750,000. The five-story, 21’ wide property has five bedrooms, an elevator, a garden, roof terrace, and every modern amenity found in a renovated home.

20 East 10th Street, Sarah Jessica

Parker’s 25’ wide, 6,800 square foot Greenwich Village townhouse, located between Fifth Avenue and University Place has a signed contract. The asking price at the time was $19,950,000.

After almost two years on the market, this transaction represents the seventh townhouse sale in the past 12 months between University Place and Sixth Avenue.

Matthew Pravda is a real estate broker at Leslie J. Garfield & Co. specializing in townhouse and small building sales. In 15 years he has had sales totaling over $300,000,000.

Meet Kumiko Nakayama

By Anne Laure Camilleri Kumiko Nakayama Geraerts’ creations daringly combine Provencal boutis and Japanese textile art. Totally enamored with vintage textiles, she uses both of these solid traditions as her sources of inspiration, without sticking to them too closely, to design finely embroidered accessories.

Boutis has its roots in stitching, embroidery and quilting techniques that have been practiced in the workshops of Marseille, France, since the 13th century. The beauty of a Boutis work comes from the originality of its design, the richness of its

motifs and the delicacy of its execution.

In June Kumiko will be in New York teaching classes on her technique at The City Quilter. Her classes have filled, but they are taking names for a wait list in case any of the registered students drop out. For more information, contact Cathy Izzo at The City Quilter.

The City Quilter 133 West 25th Street New York, NY 10001 212-807-0390 cathy@cityquilter.com www.cityquilter.com

PROVENCAL BOUTIS AND JAPANESE TEXTILE ART COMBINED FOR INSPIRATION: Kumiko

(left) working on her finely embroidered accessories (right). Photos courtesy of Kumiko Nakayama.

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20 WestView News June 2015

Dominique Ansel and Very Fresh from the Kitchen 31 EIGHTH ANENUE CORNOR 8TH AVE & JANE STREET

THE BIGGER THE BURGER THE BETTER THE BURGER THE BURGERS ARE BETTER AT TAVERN ON JANE

KEEN TO TRY THE NEW BAKERY-RESTAURANT: David Porat (left), George Capsis and

Sarabeth Levine gather around for a highly anticipated tasting. Photo by Nicole Seiler.

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Dominique Ansel is well known for creating the Cronut, which went viral. I heard him speak at the Fancy Food Show last year and he impressed me with his modest nature, his simpler words and his belief that even he cannot rest on his laurels— instead always needing to create and innovate. Based on this, I was very keen to try his new bakery-restaurant, taking the place of the Landbrot bread bakery on Seventh Avenue South, just below Charles and called Dominique Ansel Kitchen. His bakery on Spring Street in Soho is named Dominique Ansel Bakery.

On my first visit, my impression was that food tasted quite good and sitting outside looked pleasant, but no seats were available. Sitting indoors on a stepped platform was awkward and, in addition, there is very

little in the way of a display case because many of the products are finished to order, a technique called à la minute. Instead, a range of baked goods and savory lighter meals are pictured on signs hanging near Continued on page 21

THE SAVORY TASTING: (from left) The

Chorizo Corn Succotash Toast, the Sumac Chicken Salad Toast, and the Proscuitto and Boursin Croissant. Photo by Nicole Seiler.

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Pikkujamsa, sketching him and Nelida Mori in her Times reviewed restaurant, Taste of Lima, as it fights arbitrary eviction by one of the worst landlords in New York.

June 2015 WestView News 21

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Dominique Ansel Continued from page 20 the register. This innovation is the point and makes what he is doing in the “kitchen” different.

Speaking with my neighbor at Chelsea Market, Sarabeth Levine, the subject of Dominique Ansel came up. She too was very curious about the place and excited that Dominique, who she holds in very high regard, is keeping everybody on their toes and doing something new. She had a similar impression upon visiting, and I proposed that we get a bunch of items and taste them together. Her lead baker Marcello Gonazalez, George Capsis, and a few comrades from Chelsea Market Baskets joined us. The following is our impressions tasting the products, some made to order, about thirty minutes after they were made and picked up to go.

The pickup by one of my associates was efficient at about 11 AM. We divided the tasting into savory and sweet. Top scoring was Chorizo Corn Succotash Toast ($10.75) on toasted brioche. The vegetables had a vibrancy, the chorizo tasted right and the fact that it sat for a bit before being eaten—soaking the toast with the vegetable and sausage juices— added to the overall flavor. The Spring Vegetable en Papillote with Farro ($10.50) which is served warm with a soft egg, worked well as a healthier savory meal option. Also the Prosciutto & Boursin Croissant ($7.00) satisfied everybody.

People were less excited about the The Egg-clipse ($7.50), two confit (runny) egg yolks on mashed potatoes on top of squid ink brioche that included a mushroom béchamel. I found this had a pleasant taste with the squid ink flavor coming out a bit from the brioche, but—for as wild as it sounded—there was not too much combustion, and it may have suffered a bit from the transit time. The Sumac

Chicken Salad Toast ($10.75) disappointed people in that it was dark meat, which I like better, but others were less taken with. The tabbouleh top and sumac did not transport it to something more than chicken salad on toast.

Dominique’s sweets stole the show. His classic Cannele de Bordeaux ($3.00), and his Extra Fluff Mille Feuille ($7.75) both elicited an “Oh Yes” excitement from Sarabeth, who pronounced both—as well as his Dark Chocolate Flourless Cookie—as very near perfection. She initially was not as excited by the look for the Mille Feuille or Napoleon without the traditional icing as it was a bit lopsided. The pastry cream and puff pastry is “constructed to order” and has a “rustic” look, yet it gives you that important textural experience that could be lost if it were made several hours before or on a previous day. Pain au Chocolate 2.0 looked impressive with chads of standing well-tempered Valrhona chocolate, but did not meddle together properly, so did not improve on the original.

In the upcoming summer months, the outside seating at the Kitchen works for a casual daytime meal. Beyond that, as a yearround destination to enjoy the craft of this celebrated baker, it appears challenged. The concept of “not seeing it in the window,” and the à la minute preparation, along with not having an easy place to enjoy it if outside seating is not available is what makes this place different—but will also make it more difficult to manage and grow. The Kitchen is just about a month old and needs time to establish a rhythm. It will be interesting to see how this not overly practical innovation matures.

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Corruption? Leadership Needed!

By Arthur Z. Schwartz I grew up in the Bronx. We didn’t expect a whole lot of heroic leadership from people holding elected office there when I was young. More frequently than not (it seemed) a politician would get indicted and no one made a big deal.

Two Democratic County Chairmen (Stanley Friedman and Patrick Cunningham) and two Congressmen (Mario Biaggi and Robert Garcia) were indicted before I was firmly established as a Manhattanite.

I moved to Manhattan for college in 1970 and have lived here since (except for a one year visit to Brooklyn).

Here in Manhattan, things seemed so much better.

On the West Side we had a crusading Congresswoman named Bella Abzug, surrounded by a crew of young activists like Jerry Nadler and Dick Gottfried, anchored in the Village by Bill Passanante, a man who wasn’t afraid to buck the leadership and who introduced gay rights bills, and bills supporting reproductive freedom.

In the mid-90s our State Senator Manfred Ohrnstein got convicted, but it involved using Senate staff to do campaign work. He was followed by Catherine Abate, who was as squeaky clean as one gets, and Tom Duane, a man who might be partial to a hug, but not a dollar. Eric Schneiderman’s original district came almost down to 14th Street, and we all know where he is now. Our local leaders were stalwarts against corruption and abuse.

But times have changed. Almost monthly major political leaders are indicted. We actually have the former Senate Democratic Leader (Sampson) and the current Republican leader (Skelos) facing charges at the same time, alongside Sheldon Silver, the Democratic Assembly Speaker, who represents our neighbors to the south.

When Silver was indicted, our Assembly Member, Debra Glick, rushed to his defense after the first calls for him to resign. She invoked his right to be considered inno-

cent until proven guilty, instead of a call for a government leader’s credentials to be impeccable. She was joined by Gottfried to the north.

When our State Senator, Brad Hoylman, bravely called for Silver to step down, the movement snowballed. But one Assembly Member never got out of the way of the snowball— Debra stuck with Silver to the end, and refused to vote for the new Speaker, Carl Heastie, from, of all places, the Bronx.

As the details of Silver’s avarice were laid out and more indictments unfolded, we heard nothing from Glick. No calls for radical ethics reform, no calls for public financing of State Legislature campaigns, no calls for an enhanced reporting requirement from the State Board of Elections.

She has even less to say than Governor Cuomo, whose tepid statements about solutions to corruption belie his fear of cutting himself off from millions of dollars in questionable contributions.

Debra’s tepidness on this issue is only matched by her lack of ongoing activism against the continuous upscaling of Greenwich Village, West, Central and East.

Yes, she marches around against NYU, but developers know that the Village is open territory—unless they run afoul of Andrew Berman and the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. She gives lip support to folks who desperately need support (like in Westbeth) but doesn’t pound her shoe and refuse to take “no” for an answer.

I want crusading elected officials representing me in Albany: Don’t you? Debra Glick has been our Assembly Member for twenty-five years, next year will be her twenty-sixth.

She gets a full pension: it’s time for her to make room for a crusader and retire.

Arthur Schwartz is the Male Democratic District Leader for Greenwich Village. He has been endorsed for re-election by the Village Independent Democrats and the Village Reform Democrats.

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22 WestView News June 2015

Writers’ Workshop at Jefferson Market

By Rosalind Palermo Stevenson The concept of a writing workshop merges the solitary act of writing with the sense of community, and what setting could be more appropriate to the sense of community than the public library.

With the historic and beautiful Jefferson Market branch of the New York Public Library as our setting, I will give a six-week writing workshop where we will focus on both the craft of writing and the process of submitting work for publication.

In this workshop each writer will select a piece that they would like to hone, complete, and then send out to be published.

Every week several of the pieces will be selected for discussion.

In each session I will use lecture, exercise, and feedback on the pieces being discussed (both my feedback and that of the other participants), in order to assist the writer in refining and completing the work. All participants in the workshop will have their work discussed during the six-week period.

During the critiques, we will examine structure, point of view, character, scene, situation, dialogue, rhythm, image, and narrative voice in order to sharpen the editorial focus. We will also read from the works of published authors in order to illustrate and investigate the elements of authority, style, and craft.

This workshop is open to both prose writers and poets. As writers many of us work in both forms. And even if we don’t,

I believe that each form has much to teach the other about the uses of language. What is all writing, after all, if not first and foremost language?

Such elements as rhythm, pattern, lyricism, imagery, music, compression, silence—all natural components of poetry— have a great deal to say to and to teach prose. And conversely, components such as narrative, structure, dramatization, scene, character, voice, and resolution can be as relevant to poetry as to prose.

Attention to and sensitivity to the workings of language are essential to prose writers and poets alike, and in this workshop we shall enjoy the pleasures and instructive benefits of both.

Another important part of this workshop will be the process of submitting work for publication. This is so often a daunting aspect of the process—especially now when writers are in such great abundance and the competition to have one’s work realized in print is keenly felt.

I will share my knowledge of the markets and the resources (in print and online), the strategies for submission, the nuts and bolts of sending work out such as required guidelines, cover letters, the mechanics of online submissions, and all the rest. Each participant will come away with several places where they can send the work they have completed in the workshop.

I invite you to participate as we spend this six-week period together to further our writing goals!

Rosalind Palermo Stevenson is the author of the books Kafka At Rudolf Steiner’s (Rain Mountain Press, 2014) and Insect Dreams (Rain Mountain Press, 2007). Her short fiction and prose poems have appeared in numerous literary journals including, Web Conjunctions; Spinning Jenny and others.

Study of Temperament

By Ron Elve NYU Medical’s 1956 longitudinal research team—including Stella Chess, MD; Dr. Alexander Thomas (married to Chess); along with others—was key in a pioneering study of temperament in over two hundred infants from birth to age of forty.

Team charts were created to help the parents decide which behaviors might be a problem, noting which were related to genes and could be modified in an acceptable direction. Their book Your Child is a Person goes into much more detail. Interestingly, lower income parents in the study tended to be less proactive, somewhat passively hop-

ing the child would grow out of it.

Problem behaviors don’t always need to be modified. For example, a boy was a real kicker even in the womb. He ended up on the State soccer team!

As with many therapies, the beginning basics are a check of diet and lifestyle. For example is hyperactivity due to excess caffeine or chocolate? Next the child may be “interviewed”—focusing on the problem behavior and finding out what the child is feeling and believing. Analyzing these factors with the child can help to at least modify problem behavior.

Ron Elve (ronelve@aol.com) is tutoring and mentoring in the West Village.

June 2015 WestView News 23

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Science from Away: Stories

By Mark M. Green (sciencefromaway.com) Psychologist Rebecca Spencer, an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, conducted an interesting experiment on children between three and five. She demonstrated that those allowed to nap after learning about matching picture cards did much better in follow up games.

Her finding is consistent with research on the role of sleep conducted on mice where scientists have found that sleep enhances the immune system and helps to consolidate memories. In more direct evidence of the value of sleep, a colored dye was tracked in the brains of sleeping mice demonstrating that channels expand greatly increasing the flow of cerebral spinal fluid, clearing away waste products from the brain’s activities. Some of this waste is thought to be associated with the plaques leading to Alzheimer’s disease, as reported in the December 20, 2013 issue of Science. Take a nap.

A lot happened to me between the age of thirty and fifty.

Is it possible that the children I sired at the later age received genetic information from these experiences? A yes answer corresponds to Lamarck’s ideas back in 1801 about transfer of acquired information from one generation to the next.

There is a great deal of evidence that Lamarckian theory is connected to epigenetic changes in the otherwise invariant DNA sequences that control us, something once addressed in this column (http://blogs.poly.edu/markgreen/?s=Lamarck).

Now scientists see this at work in coral reefs, which respond to climate warming by adaptations on a short time scale, such as consistent with epigenetic changes, which are then passed on to later generations of the coral.

•

I’m old enough to remember when tomatoes tasted great and looked terrible by today’s standards. Now many of

new at

which would signal the presences of the photosynthesizing chloroplasts.

•

TASTELESS TOMATOES: While they do look great, a natu-

ral mutation is responsible for affecting the quality of taste in our tomatoes.

us think the tomatoes look great but most agree they are tasteless. Scientists at Cornell University have discovered that a natural mutation in the genetic complement of the tomato plant, designated SIGLK2 which adds a single base (a tiny change) is responsible for the transformation.

Fewer chloroplasts are produced with the consequence of reduced production of sugar in the plant and also sensory molecules such as lycopene and related molecules responsible for the aroma and flavor of the tomato. Lycopene production depends on photosynthesis carried on in the chloroplasts. Other the last seventy years, according to the Cornell researcher, James J. Giovannoni, breeders have focused on breeding plants that produce better-looking tomatoes. In other words the plants supplying us with tomatoes now favor the extra base in that gene, which is why they are uniformly red without green color in the skin,

Psychologists at the Universities of California, Southern California and Illinois in Chicago have looked into widely reported findings by earlier researchers showing that people who identify with politically conservative views are happier than those with liberal views. That work was based on what is called self-reported data. In other words asking people. In this new work what is called a more reliable probe is used, the way people smile. There are different kinds of smiles, one involving only the mouth and the other involving the mouth and the eyes, which psychologists can measure and using this probe they find the opposite: by the new measure, political liberals are in fact happier.

This is not a big surprise to me. When my wife allows, I turn on right-wing radio in the car. I like to hear opposing views. My favorites, Sean Hennity, Mark Levin and Rush Limbaugh are usually outraged and angry, not very happy.

•

Well now let’s get cheered up. I recommend to all us oldtimers an article in the October 31, 2014 issue of Science entitled: “Plasticity of the aging brain: New directions in cognitive neuroscience,” which informs its readers that the aging brain once thought to be declining in its capacity is rather increasing in plasticity. What does that mean?

Memory training programs and neurostimulation apparently can cause changes in the aging brain, which is allowed by the plasticity of the brain, to yield generally improved memory, reduction of stress, improving mood and sleep and increasing levels of intellectual activity among other benefits. Get off the couch and use that topside organ, ladies and gentlemen.

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24 WestView News June 2015

Then & Now

Grand and Thompson

By Stan Fine

THEN

1927. Calvin Coolidge, the 30th United States President, gave his State of the Union Address on December 6th.

Charles Lindbergh received the Medal of Valor from NYC mayor Jimmy Walker on June 13th. New York City is under construction as usual, looking east toward West Broadway and the Grand Street Station of the Sixth Avenue Elevated Train that stopped running in 1938, and replaced by the IND line. Photo: nycvintageimages

NOW

2015. Although construction has altered the very same view over the years, if we look deep enough with some imagination, we can practically see 88 years back into the past.

Photo: Stan Fine

Plans for Middle School Unveiled

By Stacy Horn

“Tonight is a celebration,” Council Member Corey Johnson announced to the packed room of parents and other advocates who have been fighting for a middle school in the West Village since 2007.

75 Morton Street, an unused State building, has been their goal almost since the beginning. Started in 2008, the battle for the building was finally won in 2014, when New York State transferred the building to the School Construction Authority.

Their next hurtle was turning 75 Morton Street into a stateof-the-art school. Initial plans had not reflected what parents envisioned, like a large and well-stocked library. On May 11th, everyone in the room at the LGBT Center was anxious to see the fruits of their most recent round of campaigns.

As each speaker rose, some of the people who helped were acknowledged, like Assemblymember Deborah Glick and Senator Brad Hoylman, as well as successive waves of parents who fought for a school their own children would age past any hope of attending, all eyes were focused on the stacks of drawings beside them. By the time Jeannine Kiely, a parent and a member of Community Board 2, Shino Tanikawa, the Chair of Community Education Council Two, and Heather Campbell, a member of the Community Board Two Task Force, began holding renderings of the school plans aloft, the assembled crowd was more than ready to revel in their hardwon victory.

The room erupted into successive rounds of applause as Melanie E. La Rocca, Chief of Staff of the School Construction Authority, explained what everyone was seeing—win-

Chinese Buy the Waldorf

By George Capsis A Chinese company just bought the Waldorf Astoria hotel for $1.95 billion. It is the highest price ever paid for a hotel at $1.4 million per room and appears to be the beginning of several similar acquisitions—the Chinese are buying New York.

We had a similar shock in 1989 when the Japanese bought Rockefeller Plaza and then too we thought the Japanese were going to become the dominant nation, but they stumbled and an American company bought it back.

The Chinese will not stumble and are quickly moving to become the dominant nation of the 21st century.

At breakfast this morning an intern with Oscar de la Renta told me that Chinese fabrics had become too expensive and the industry had turned to India. I also recently watched two half-hour documentaries—one on how the Chinese had encased a sky scraper in glass so it might have its own pollution free climate and another on the growth of Beijing, which has a high speed metro system that laces through a city with old sections reminiscent of the Village and new sections direct copies of Manhattan skyscrapers. On Saturday I ran into a guided group of Chinese tourists eyeing Grand Central Station—perhaps the next purchase.

Steppin’ Out

ALL EYES FOCUSED ON THE RENDERINGS: Melanie E. La

Rocca, Chief of Staff of the School Construction Authority, explaining plans held up by Community Board Two Task Force members Heather Campbell and Jeannine Kiely.

Photo courtesy of Stacy Horn.

dows would be enlarged to provide a “sun-drenched,” cafeteria, and to give students a glorious space to “do what middle schoolers do best,” prompting laughter and knowing groans.

Those large windows, she continued, would also shine light into the now impressive-sized library.

In addition to the enlarged library, plans for the seven-story building include one floor dedicated to District 75 students, three science labs, two art rooms, two music rooms, an auxiliary room which some parents see as a future dance space, and in the basement, a health center which will also include dental, vision and mental health services.

To help them email 75Morton@gmail.com.

HONORING ‘BOJANGLES’: On May 24th, students

from the American Tap Dance Foundation participated in Tap Attack on Hudson River Park’s Pier 45 in celebration of the 16th National Tap Dance Day, observed each year to commemorate the birthday of the legendary Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson. To quote Tony Waag, director of the Foundation, “I want everyone to remember who Gregory Hines was, Donald O’Connor, Honi Coles and the Copasetics…” adding that the annual event was “the perfect occasion to honor those history makers as well as motivate dancers to preserve the art form.” Photo by Maggie Berkvist.

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June 2015 WestView News 25

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Jim Fouratt’s

REEL DEAL: Movies that Matter June 2015 Shocker: In Manhattan tickets for new movies can cost $15 to $20 dollars for adults and $14 for seniors (there goes the fixed income movie goer). Early morning shows cost a little less—between nine in the morning and noon it will only cost you $8.50-$9.50 for any age. That’s great if you can get yourself to a theater for a ten AM movie—certainly not a time to take a date.

Recently, I went to see Far From the Madding Crowd at Cinema 2 across the street from Bloomingdale’s. The tickets cost $17 for an adult and $14 for a senior.

A medium popcorn and soda cost an additional $15. Sure the renovated theater was lovely, and if the theater stayed open all night, the seats would have been a hotel bed bargain—complete with beautiful and clean shared bath.

We were shocked but paid, but the movie was certainly not worth it. Carey Mulligan rides a horse well, but lacks the inner turmoil and lust that Julie Christie exuded in the 1967 version along with Peter Finch and Terence Stamp. Rent the original; it sizzles .

The high prices made me angry, demonstrating the short sighted vision of the owners. At these prices many people are not going to risk seeing a small film that is not blown up in marketing everywhere.

And sadly these smaller films are often what I am trying to get you to see.

Let’s Go to the Movies HEAVEN KNOWS WHAT Directors Ben Safdie and Joshua Safdie

HEAVEN KNOWS WHAT: Arielle Holmes,

above. Image courtesy of Radius/Weinstein.

Junkies have always been fascinating subjects for directors, actors and the viewing public. Remember The Man With A Golden Arm and The Panic in Needle Park? Heaven Knows What is the latest. It has troubled me ever since I saw it at The New York Film Festival last fall.

Arielle Holmes, who plays a version of herself called Harley in the film, captured the attention of many critics. The Safdie Brothers are also critical darlings. Their first film, Daddy Longlegs is a semi-autobiographical narrative film based on their own unhappy childhood. Heaven pretends to be a narrative that looks like a documentary, set in the same location on 72nd Street and

Broadway with Central Park a couple of blocks away. The brothers are smart when it comes to technical crafting—they hired cinematographer Sean Price Williams and a crew he had worked with before. The film is arresting to watch visually.

Ben Safdie spotted a young woman coming out of the subway and almost immediately was smitten with her. He discovered that she—Arielle Holmes—was a homeless junkie crashing in Central Park with other young junkies, supporting herself in the usual ways and also working part-time as a teenage dominatrix. The more she told him about her life, the more excited he became with the drama of it all.

He decided to make a movie based on her and her friends. She would write it. She would star in it. She was still using.

He paid the teenage junkie dominatrix, not to whip him, but to write for him— paying by the page. She turned her pages in daily and got paid. Somehow it was supposed to be fiction, although both in real life and in the movie she was madly in love with a junkie named Ilya, who was initially cast as her male lead. The final day of rehearsal Ilya freaked out, overdosed and was removed from the set by ambulance. A professional actor—Caleb Landry Jones— was brought in to play the part.

It’s a hard story to watch. My ethical problem is in a narrative film should directors actually cast active drug users? Yes, in a documentary, but the narrative form of storytelling is different. They are actors.

At the Lincoln Center premier, Ilya was in the audience. Desperate for attention he kept shouting out during the Q&A that he was being ignored. He died from an overdose in Central Park in April of this year. When filming finished, Arielle asked the brothers to help her get clean and they arranged for her to go to rehab in Florida. After rehab, she moved to Los Angeles.

Heaven Knows What presents me with the same ethical problems that most of Larry Clark’s films do. Is the director being exploitative of the young performers or has the director’s obsession triggered a seduction by the subjects themselves? The scared, desperate hopelessness of Heaven’s characters also references Easy Rider in the way drugged freedom is romanticized—

not made pretty but still romanticized. So there you have it—see it or not.

TANGERINE Director Sean Baker

This is the most exciting film I have seen emerge from the almost formulaic “indie” film scene. Baker became the talk of people who go to Sundance for movies, not parties (there actually are a lot of these folks).

Tangerine was in a new category of films that Sundance has created for low budget, creative story-telling using new technology.

It was shot on an Iphone with a 4.95 app.

When I heard that, I was tempted to run the other way because I like movies shot to show on big screens in dark rooms. But since NEXT has been the most exciting and important part of my Sundance viewing, I went into the theater and learned a new lesson. All the new technology gives a wider choice in how to make a film and, in particular for a low-to-no budget film, it makes it possible.

The story is one that has been told before—bad street girls in love with bad boys who do them wrong. Set in a part of downtown LA that has not yet been gentrified, Tangerine is about a community of runaway friends whose gender expression and identity both shock and seduce. These are the working class tranny hookers that reminded me of the “girls” who worked the meatmarket when the only things open at night were the fetish bars and the all night bagel shop. When these characters pull you in, you are roped into the relationships that underlined All About Eve. The camera choice is perfect because it captures the frantic energy of survival and aggressive passion of novella emotions. I came away with such a feeling of authenticity and was impressed by the power of friendship.

The cast looks so real that the acting makes you believe these are real people not actors—and that is a compliment. Baker is able to capture the desperate mood swings of people holding on to life and managing to have a good human time while somehow swept up in one drama or another.

Shooting in color helped create this “circus mort”environment and bring to life the people with dreams who frolic, fight and love in it.

5 FLIGHTS UP Director Richard Loncraine

An interracial couple who have been together forty years must let go of their perfect apartment—five stories up, with panoramic views of water, bridges and land, but no elevator. Watching their story, I wondered what life was like forty years ago when he, a black painter, and she, a school teacher, met, fell in love, and moved into this apartment.

Played with the richness of experience, Morgan Freeman and Diane Keaton evince a long-sustained love and commitment as life changes around them.

Now he is having knee and age-related body problems, and his physical problems make them finally decide to give up and sell their dream apartment. In comes real estate agent Cynthia Nixon, a friend, but a real cut-throat, take-no-prisoners agent out to win the biggest commission, and a born scene stealer.

All the actors—and there are many faces you will recognize from films and quality TV programing—are terrific at playing New Yorkers I know. This issue may hit home to some long term Village readers.

Like Ira Sachs’ Love is Strange, 5 Flights Up looks at what was and what is now. Truly a village tale. Available on VOD and iTunes.

MAD MAX FURY ROAD Director George Miller

What is there not to love? A one-armed female hero with no gender expression problems, a Max who has perfectly internalized the steel silence and vulnerability of Randolph Scott and Gary Cooper, more sand storms than Lawrence of Arabia, four pregnant Priscilla’s in desert distress, a posse of old dykes on bikes to the rescue, a soundscape that pays homage to a live performance of a Metallicalike art composition, almost language free— and under all the noise, visual stimulation and nerve-wracking battle scenes hides a critique of oil dependency and the privatization of water and a commentary about a woman’s right to control her body. Go. Online find coverage for the Human Rights Festival.

(CC) Jim Fouratt jimfourattsreeldealblogspot.com reeldealmovies@gmail.com

WestView Keeps Me Alive and it can do the same for you

After nearly eleven years West View has taken on a life of its own.

A loyal core of West Village contributors submit unique and intriguing articles that you can read in no other publication.

They are doctors, lawyers, scientists, historians, chefs, and just plain West Villagers with informed opinions like you.

We are always looking for new writers, and everybody has a story to tell and and everyone has an opinion.

So go to your computer and key in GCapsis@gmail.com and tell us what you would like to write about

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26 WestView News June 2015

ant military figure serving in the Middle East during WWI. The movie will be shown over two nights. Jefferson Market Library, 425 Sixth Avenue. Free.

JUNE EVENTS

by Stephanie Phelan of westvillageword.com

wv w

MUSIC n Friday June 5, 7 pm: Sunset on the Hudson Chuck Braman’s band will play

at Pier 45, Charles Street and Hudson River Park. Free.

n Friday June 12, 7 pm: Sunset on the Hudson Baby Soda Jazz Band will play

for

WestView News

at Pier 45, Charles Street and Hudson River Park. Free.

n Saturday June 13, 7:30 pm: Matt Mitchell Quartet and Devin Gray’s Relative Resonance Greenwich House

STREET FAIRS AND SPECIAL EVENTS n Sunday June 14, 1-6 pm: Positively 8th Street Festival, Day 1 Games,

activities and musical performances. 8th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.

For information on the attractions, go to villagealliance.org/events/positively8thst.

Wednesday June 17, 5:30 pm: GVSHP’s Village Awards People, busi-

nesses, and organizations that help to make our neighborhood special will be honored. Free, but reservations required.

To register, call (212) 475-9585 ext. 35 or email rsvp@gvshp.org. The Auditorium at The New School, 66 West 12th Street. n Thursday June 18, 6-7 pm: Martha Graham Plaque Installation The great

dancer will be honored in a ceremony outside of 66 Fifth Avenue. Free, but reservations required. To register, call (212) 475-9585 ext. 35 or email rsvp@gvshp.org. n Saturday June 20: BAMRA Festival

A street fair on Bleecker Street between Broadway and Sixth Avenue. n Sunday June 21, 10 am-10 pm: Make Music New York Musicians of

every variety perform in public spaces throughout the city.

n Sunday June 21, 12-5 pm: Positively 8th Street Festival, Day 2 Games,

activities and musical performances. 8th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.

For information on the attractions, go to villagealliance.org/events/positively8thst. n Saturday June 27: 6th Avenue Festival Sixth Avenue beteen Houston

Street and Waverly Place.

LGBT PRIDE n Tuesday June 23, 6:30 pm: Gay Liberation in Photos Photographs by activ-

ist and documentarian Ellen Shumsky at Jefferson Market Library, 425 Sixth Avenue. Free, but registration required; call (212) 475-9585 ext. 35 or e-mail rsvp@gvshp.org. n Tuesday June 23, 8:30 pm: Family Movie Night Enjoy a family-friendly

movie under the stars at Pier 63, Hudson River Park and 23rd Street. Free. n Friday June 26, 7 pm: The Rally This event marks the opening of official pride events. Pier 26, North Moore Street and Hudson River Park. For more events, go to http://www.nycpride.org/events. n Sunday June 28, All Day: Pridefest

ALWAYS A BIG CELEBRATION The annual Gay Pride Parade, Sunday June 28, will once again bring a festive atmosphere and an expected two million participants to the West Village.

Photo: The Wedding, © Suzanne Poli 2003.

The street fair vendors, performances and other activities on Hudson Street between Abington Square and West 14th Street. For more events, go to http:// www.nycpride.org/events.

n Saturday June 13, 2 pm: Inherent Vice Joaquin Phoenix plays a private

n Sunday June 28, 12 pm: The March

n Sunday June 14, 8 pm: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid Diners

Begins at 36th Street and Fifth Avenue, and ends at Christopher & Greenwich Streets.

FILM n Monday June 1, 6 pm: Earthquake

Ava Gardner and Charlton Heston star in this movie about a catastrophic earthquake in California. Jefferson Market Library, 425 Sixth Avenue. Free. n Thursday June 4, 2 pm: Austerlitz, Part 1 Orson Welles, Leslie Caron and

Claudia Cardinale star in this film about Napoleon’s coronation and politics. Hudson Park Library, 66 Leroy Street. Free. n Friday June 5, 8:30 pm: Caramel

Washington Square Park’s Films on the Green screens a movie about five women who meet and talk regularly in a Beirut beauty salon. French and Arabic with English subtitles. Garibaldi Plaza, Washington Square Park. Free. n Sunday June 7, 8 pm: Jurassic Park

Diners get to enjoy Sunday night movies at Left Bank restaurant, 117 Perry Street.

Reservations recommended; 212-727-1170. n Monday June 8, 6 pm: Invasion of the Body Snatchers Donald Sutherland

stars in this 1978 remake of the classic horror film at Jefferson Market Library, 425 Sixth Avenue. Free.

n Thursday June 11, 2 pm: Austerlitz, Part 2 Orson Welles, Leslie Caron and

Claudia Cardinale star in this film about The Battle of Austerlitz and Napoleon’s drive eastward. Hudson Park Library, 66 Leroy Street. Free. n Friday June 12, 8:30 pm: Pépé le Moko Pepé manages to evade police

in Algiers, but is undone by a Parisian playgirl. French and Arabic with English subtitles. Garibaldi Plaza, Washington Square Park. Free.

eye in a psychedelic world of surfers and stoners. Hudson Park Library, 66 Leroy Street. Free. get to enjoy Sunday night movies at Left Bank restaurant, 117 Perry Street. Reservations recommended; 212-727-1170. n Monday June 15, 6 pm: Stage Door

A 1937 movie about a bunch of aspiring actresses, starring Katherine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers. Jefferson Market Library, 425 Sixth Avenue. Free. n Thursday June 18, 2 pm: Waterloo

Music celebrates the 100th performance of the Sound it Out series with a post-concert party including free adult refreshments. Tickets $25. Greenwich House Music, 46 Barrow Street.

n Tuesday June 16, 8 pm: Washington Square Music Festival A free concert

with the music of Leopold Mozart, Frederico Busoni, Jean Francaix and Maurice Ravel on the main stage at Washington Square Park. n Wednesday June 17, 8 pm: Eivind Opsvik’s Overseas Tickets $15.

Greenwich House Music, 46 Barrow Street.

n Friday June 19, 8 pm: Charles Evans with Dave Liebman A chamber-

jazz concert at Greenwich House Music, 46 Barrow Street. Tickets $15. n Friday June 19, 7 pm: Sunset on the Hudson Chuck Braman’s band will

play at Pier 45, Charles Street and Hudson River Park. Free.

Rod Steiger and Christopher Plummer star in this film about Napoleon facing defeat at the hands of the British.

Spectacular battle scenes. Hudson Park Library, 66 Leroy Street. Free.

n Tuesday June 23, 8 pm: Washington Square Music Festival A free concert

n Sunday June 21, 8 pm: So I Married an Axe Murderer Diners get to

n Friday June 26, 7 pm: Sunset on the Hudson Max Gallico & Friends

enjoy Sunday night movies at Left Bank restaurant, 117 Perry Street. Reservations recommended; 212-727-1170. n Monday June 22, 6 pm: Morning Glory Katherine Hepburn is an aspiring

actress in this 1933 movie. Jefferson Market Library, 425 Sixth Avenue. Free. n Thursday June 25, 2 pm: Abe Lincoln in Illinois Raymond Massey stars in this

1940 filmography of Abe Lincoln. Hudson Park Library, 66 Leroy Street. Free. n Saturday June 27, 2 pm: American Sniper Bradley Cooper stars in this film

about a Navy Seal who has a hard time after returning from his tour of duty. Hudson Park Library, 66 Leroy Street. Free. n Sunday June 28, 8 pm: The Talented Mr. Ripley Diners get to enjoy Sun-

day night movies at Left Bank restaurant, 117 Perry Street. Reservations recommended; 212-727-1170. Park Library, 66 Leroy Street. Free. n Monday June 29 and Monday July 6, 6 pm: Lawrence of Arabia The

movie stars Peter O’Toole as a flamboy-

with harp, celeste, and spoken words percussion on the main stage at Washington Square Park. will play at Pier 45, Charles Street and Hudson River Park. Free. n Tuesday, June 30, 8 pm: Washington Square Music Festival A free con-

cert of winds, strings, and voice on the main stage at Washington Square Park.

KIDS/TEENS n Tuesday June 2 and Tuesday June 9, 3:30 pm: Budding Bookmakers

Introduction to a wide variety of books with an interactive book reading and an art activity exploring the techniques used by illustrators. Jefferson Market Library, 425 Sixth Avenue. For ages 5-12. n Sunday June 7 and Sunday June 14, 1 pm: A Children’s Garden of Music Free concerts for kids at Jeffer-

son Market Garden, Greenwich Avenue between Sixth Avenue and West 10th Street. For further information, go to jeffersonmarketgarden.org. n Thursday June 18, 3:30 pm: Superheroes and Story Songs An interac-

tive musical where children become “stars

June 2015 WestView News 27

www.westviewnews.org on stage”. For all ages up to 12. Hudson Park Library, 66 Leroy Street. Free. n Tuesday June 23, 3:30 pm: Wildlife Superheroes An up close look at several

creatures with an array of “super” qualities that makes each a “wildlife superhero” in its own right. For kids ages 5 and up. Jefferson Market Library, 425 Sixth Avenue. n Tuesdays 3:30-5:30 pm: Chess Master Workshop Kids ages 6 and up

Dance Festival Modern Dance perfor-

mances by the Paul Taylor Dance Company, Parsons Dance and Ballet Hispanico at Pier 61, Chelsea Piers. Free. n Thursday June 18, 8-9:30 pm: There Will Be Pie! Enjoy comedic perfor-

mances while eating a slice of pie. RSVP to thehighline.org. 14th Street Passage on the High Line. Free.

MUSEUMS, GALLERIES, EXHIBITS

n Tuesdays at 3:30 pm: Yoga St. Luke

in the Fields, 487 Hudson Street., First come, first served. Free.

will be discussed at Hudson Park Library, 66 Leroy Street.

n Thursdays June 4-September 10.

8:30 am: Yoga with Yoga Vida Wash-

Deborah Harkness’s book at Jefferson Market Library, 425 Sixth Avenue.

Garibaldi Plaza. Bring your own mat. ington Square Park, Garibaldi Plaza.

Bring your own mat.

n June 13-28: Avri Ohana A solo show

n Tuesdays, 3:30 pm: Phreaky Physics Become a junior engineer by ex-

n June 18-July 10: Totalsmit The

Garibaldi Plaza.

n Through June 6: Rosy Keyser — The Hell Bitch Maccarone, 630 Green-

LEARNING

n Through June 7: Portraits and Jersey Shore Beachscapes Anthony

Street.

perimenting with axles, pulleys, levers, gears and wheels. Jefferson Market Library, 425 Sixth Avenue. Registration required in person or by calling (212) 243-4334. Jefferson Market Library, 425 Sixth Avenue. Free. n Tuesdays at 3:30 pm: Afternoon Movietime Classic and current movies

for kids ages 3-12. Hudson Park Library, 66 Leroy Street. Free. n Wednesdays from June 3-August 21, 10 am: Kids Yoga with Soothing Sounds

Recommended for kids ages 2-7. Class meets in the seating nook opposite the big playground at Washington Square Park. n Wednesdays at 11:15 am: Toddler Time Interactive stories, action songs

works of Mark John Smith at Ivy Brown Gallery, 675 Hudson Street, 4th floor. wich Street.

Martino’s work at Westbeth Gallery, 55 Bethune Street.

n Through June 10: Point of Departure Jamel Robinson’s paintings at Ivy

Brown Gallery, 675 Hudson Street, 4th floor.

n Through June 12: Greenwich House Pottery Artist Exhibition Greenwich

House Pottery, 16 Jones Street.

and fingerplays for walking tots accompanied by parents or caregivers. Hudson Park Library, 66 Leroy Street. Free. songs and rhymes for children ages 2-5 at Jefferson Market Library, 425 Sixth Avenue. Free.

n Wednesdays at 4 pm: St. John’s Choristers Free Musical Education

Training in music fundamentals and vocal technique for children 8 and up.

Open to kids from all over the city, but is made up primarily of neighborhood children. As part of the program, they sing once a month at a Sunday Eucharist. St. John’s in The Village, 224 Waverly Place. n Thursdays at 3:45 pm: Owls and Otters Storytime Picture book stories

for children ages 5-6 at Jefferson Market Library, 425 Sixth Avenue. Free.

n Friday June 5, 1 pm: Computer Basics Hudson Park Library, 66 Leroy n Saturday June 6, and Saturdays Through June 27, 3 pm: Ephemeral New York, Ephemeral Image A 4-ses-

Maccarone, 630 Greenwich Street. A limited-run artist’s book will be available at the opening on May 9. n Through June 30: Extravaganzas of Obscurity The works of Ken Wade

at Westbeth Project Room, 55 Bethune Street. n Through July 11: Performing for the Camera Tseng Kwong Chi’s self-por-

PERFORMANCES

traits employ satire, farce and global politics. Grey Art Gallery, 100 Washington Square East.

n Monday June 15-Sunday June 21: Kulturefest NYC An international

HEALTH

festival of Jewish performing arts to take place in locations throughout the city, including Skirball Center for the Performing Arts.For schedule and tickets, go to http://kulturfestnyc.org.

n Tuesdays June Through October 16: Tai Chi Washington Square Park,

n Wednesday June 17 and Thursday June 18, 6:30 pm: Hudson River

at the High Line, under the Standard Hotel.

Garibaldi Plaza. Free. n Tuesdays June Through September, 10:30 am: Tai Chi An introductory class

n Monday June 8, 6:30 pm: Building History Detectives—Greenwich Village Learn how to discover a build-

ing’s history, dig out details of its architecture and fascinating tidbits about its social history. Washington Square Institute, 41 East 11th Street, between Broadway and University Place. Free, but reservations required, To register, call (212) 475-9585.

COMMUNITY MEETING

n Saturday June 13 and Saturdays through July 25, 3 pm: A Writers’ Workshop A six-session course where each

n First Saturday of Every Month, 2-3:30 pm: Jefferson Market Book Swap Bring books and/or art you’re

Park Library, 66 Leroy Street. Free.

n Through June 20: The English Garden Cecily Brown’s paintings at

VILLAGE HISTORY

n Wednesday June 24, 7 pm: The 6th Precinct Community Council Meeting

n Saturday June 20, 10:30 am-4:30 pm: The Battle of Waterloo Hudson POINT OF DEPARTURE Jamel Robinson’s paintings will be on display at Ivy Brown Gallery through June 10.

n Monday June 29, 4:30 pm: A Discovery of Witches A discussion of

sion course explores the city’s history through rare 16mm films. Attendance at all four sessions is not mandatory; register by phone at 212-243-4334. For a full list of films, go here... Jefferson Market Library, 425 Sixth Avenue. Free.

n Friday June 19, 1 pm: Computers —Connecting to the Cloud Hudson

n Wednesdays at 3:30 pm: Seussology— Oh the Places You’ll Go Kids explore the ideas illustrated

in Seuss’s book and create their own three-dimensional landscape using Magic Noodles. For kids 6 and up. Hudson Park Library, 66 Leroy Street. Free.

n Thursdays, June 4-September 10, 9:30 am: Dances for a Variable Population Washington Square Park,

participant will work on a story or several poems, bringing them from composition to a completion and readiness to be submitted for publication. Jefferson Market Library, 425 Sixth Avenue. In-person registration, starting June 6, is required, as class is limited to 15 participants.

n Wednesdays at 3:30 pm: Preschool Time Picture book stories,

n Saturday June 13, 10:30 am: The Plague of Doves Louise Erdrich’s book

n Wednesdays from June 3- September 16, 8:30 am: Yoga with Soothing Sounds Washington Square Park,

can learn chess at the beginner, intermediate or advance level. Jefferson Market Library, 425 Sixth Avenue. Free.

at Westbeth Gallery, 55 Bethune Street.

LITERATURE

Park Library, 66 Leroy Street. Free.

Our Lady of Pompeii Father Demo Hall.

Bleecker and Carmine Streets. Open to all.

ONGOING EVENTS OF NOTE

willing to trade with others to Jefferson Market Library, 425 Sixth Avenue.

Snacks will be provided, but bring your own coffee. n Saturdays, 11 am: Hudson Park Book Swap Exchange books one

Saturday each month at Hudson Park Library, 66 Leroy Street. n Tuesdays at 3:30 pm: Yoga St. Luke in the Fields, 487 Hudson Street., First come, first served. Free. n Every 4th Wednesday, June-August: ¡Arriba! Latin dance party with

Park Library. 66 Leroy Street.

Orlando Marin, tthe Last Mambo King, at the 14th Street Passage on the High Line. Free.

TALKS

n Thursdays at 5 pm: Hudson Park Library Chess and Games Chess,

n Friday June 26, 1 pm: Computers — MS Word 2010 for Beginners Hudson

n June 10, 6:30 pm: We’re Still Here Ya Bastards— How The People of New Orleans Rebuilt Their City There-

sa Lang Community and Student Center, Arnhold Hall, 55 West 13th Street, Room 1202. Free. n Wednesday June 17, 6:30 pm: Mushrooms for People and Planet— Ancient Allies for Modern Maladies

New research showing how mushrooms can help the health of people and planet.

Theresa Lang Community and Student Center, Arnhold Hall, 55 West 13th Street, Room 1202. Free.

Checkers, Battleship and other classic board and strategy games. Beginners welcome. Hudson Park Library, 66 Leroy Street. People can bring their own games or use what's available at the library. Chess lessons for new learners also available. Hudson Park Library, 66 Leroy Street. Free. n Tuesdays June Through September, 10:30 am: Tai Chi An introduc-

tory class at the High Line, under the Satandard Hotel.

n Tuesdays, April-October: Stargazing The High Line at West 14th Street.