By George Capsis The always smiling and articulate City Council Speaker (who I thought was next in line to become the mayor) announced on Thursday, September 24th, that he would drop his run for mayor. This came as a surprise to me because whenever I offered his name in an article I would suggest with
By Stanley Wlodyka Jiménez Hello WestView readers! Local papers have long been charged with championing community first and foremost. As one of the last few, truly independent local newspapers in the country, WestView News is proud to back this effort to preserve the first AIDS memorial in NYC and the only one in a church
By Robert Heide 2020 is the 50th anniversary of the famed Cockettes, who made an acid drenched splash in San Francisco while living commune style shortly after the Summer of Love in the Haight-Ashbury, with their thrift shop vintage, fabulously collaged and assemblaged outfits barely covering their nudity with a profundity of accessories, including bakelite
By Fr. Graeme Napier Orsino in Twelfth Night commands his minstrels: If music be the food of love, play on; Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken, and so die. wishing that his lovesickness would perish. In this time of the pandemic, of course, the opposite has happened for music-lovers: the
By Brian J Pape, AIA A map that captures a moment, as all maps do, but in a simple and fun way, highlighting some historical structures, is part of the Brooklyn Historical Society Library’s new digital collection. Do you think you know Greenwich Village? Ask yourself if you can identify the locations on the map
By Joan Klyhn “Joan’s Shanghai” is a memoir of a childhood in Shanghai in the ‘30’s and ‘40s of the 20th century. I am writing it primarily for myself, extending it to my friends, and now to the many people who have shown themselves fascinated with this period in the past. Home I was
By Brian J Pape, AIA, LEED-AP 1896 witnessed a new building inaugurated at 156-168 Bleecker Street, a full block long and wrapping the corners at 187-191 Sullivan Street and 187-201 Thompson Street, that replaced a row of formerly fashionable houses called Depauw Row. The double-height recessed limestone on the entrance and lobby features a modillioned
By Stanley Wlodyka Jiménez Vija Vetra, choreographer, dancer, Westbeth Icon, proudly striding—with an impossibly straight back mind you—towards 98 years of age February next year, an Aquarian soul just like many of the best American presidents, wants you to know that there was an error in last month’s article about her. “It comes from the
By Kambiz Shekdar The Village Halloween Parade is a symbol of New York City. In 2018 the parade’s theme was “I am Robot.” In 2019 it was “Wild Things.” This year’s theme was to be: “BIG LOVE! BIG EMBRACE!” Alas, 2020 is not the year of the Big Embrace; the parade is canceled, but it
By Jeff Hodges When our daughter Rebecca was born in the 1980s, my wife Emily and I were living on Charles Street. The Village was still home to a generation of aging bohemians and vestigial Italians and Irish. There was no question but that our Becky was going to thrive, even if it meant growing
By Roger Paradiso On January 28th President Trump was briefed by Robert O’Brien, his fourth national security advisor, who said, “This will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency” (referring to the pandemic, from Bob Woodward’s book Rage). As autumn starts to come to the Village, we see more people walking
By Frank Quinn Assembly member Deborah Glick and State Senator Brad Hoylman have introduced legislation to ban the use of facial recognition technology by police departments regardless of its current use as a crime-fighting tool. Last year former NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill published an article titled “How Facial Recognition Makes You Safer.” He described the
By Alec Pruchnicki, MD “A billion here, a billion there, and before you know it, you’re talking real money.” —Attributed to Senator Everett Dirksen. Former Mayor Mike Bloomberg recently pledged $100 million for Democratic election efforts in the swing state of Florida. That is a lot of money for one state. Very rough estimates indicate
By Brian J. Pape, AIA, LEED-AP Our founding fathers established our post office and the decennial census as vital instruments for the benefit of our citizens and government. Throughout wars and economic turmoil the census has been taken, to help us know what this country has become and where our resources may need to be
By Anastasia Kaliabakos In the aftermath of Brexit, a debate has arisen over whether Britain should return artifacts that had been “unlawfully removed” from their countries of origin. One specific case that many people feel strongly about are the “Elgin Marbles,” which are remnants of the Parthenon from ancient Greece. In order to fully understand
By Erik Bottcher “In a Gentle Way, You Can Shake the World.” With these words, Mahatma Gandhi wanted us to understand that each of us has the ability to make a difference in the world, even through small actions. We live in a chaotic time, dominated by screens that flash terrible news before our
By Robert Heide Several months back this year I received a call from a writer named Vernon Gravely who lives in Murphysboro, Illinois. He told me he was finishing up a biographical book about an actor named Robert Morris who had been an apprentice in 1956 at the American Shakespeare Theater in Stratford, Connecticut. In
By Bruce Poli Few galleries have a backstory like this one. Art of Our Century, which opened at 137 West 14th Street in January, was named with a reverential wink at Peggy Guggenheim. It is located in the space that housed New York’s first Spanish-language bookstore—Librería Lectorum—and run by a true child of the Village.
It’s Monday night—the day after a tragic neighborhood incident. I call it stalking and grand larceny. My husband, Anthony Blanche, who will be 88 in October, born of Thompson Street (long before SoHo) ultimately living on Cornelia Street for fifty years, I for 34, was mugged in front of our door at noon. Yesterday we
By Kambiz Shekdar, Ph.D. Whether it is to spare one’s parents, friends or loved ones, the pandemic has changed our daily routines and customs. Some have put an end to family visits. Others subject themselves to two-week bouts of self-quarantine before visiting friends. Blurring the lines between germaphobes and the rest of us, some strip
By Stanley Wlodyka Jiménez Vija Vetra, a dancer living at Westbeth, is exceptionally proud of her country of birth, which isn’t India, in case you made that assumption after having watched her perform. It’s surprising that she should feel so Latvian at her core, considering that she spent only a fifth of her life in
By Karilyn Prisco When the paper was brainstorming ways to boost subscriptions during the COVID-19 pandemic, Sarah Jessica Parker, our neighbor and loyal supporter of WestView News, volunteered to gift a pair of shoes from her SJP by Sarah Jessica Parker collection to the New Subscriber giveaway initiative. We announced our winner, Erin Mintun, in
Support some of our favorite West Village shops and designers. POOLSIDE, “The Poolside Tote: Large lace handwoven raffia www.wearepoolside.com SJP BY SARAH JESSICA PARKER “Rampling” in Hamilton/Rish, Pointed-toe pump, signature grosgrain, sjpbysarahjessicaparker.com ROTHY’S, 407 Bleecker “The Mask 1.0” in Camo, washable 2-pack, www.rothys.com Lingua Franca, 382 Bleecker “Nevertheless she voted” 100% Cashmere,
By Alec Pruchnicki A new expression or meme has come into the English language. A “Karen” (sometimes described as a “karen” to turn it into an adjective from a proper noun) is an entitled, obnoxious, spoiled, often middle-aged white woman who believes she has the right to special treatment. She is the type of person
By Alec Pruchnicki One way to possibly live to a ripe old age in New York City, a city in which people get killed over parking spots, is to avoid unnecessary confrontations. They can sometimes quickly escalate beyond your control. Most dog walkers in The Village have their dogs on leashes, but not always. When
By Brian J Pape, AIA A phenomenon of the pandemic, or a response to vandalism? We are hard-pressed to decipher between them as we passed the boarded up business windows throughout the city. First, the COVID-19 virus spreads throughout the world; governments began to lock down their cities in efforts to contain the spread and
By Brian J Pape, AIA, LEED-AP I collected maps from the Brooklyn Historical Society, and made notes to relate them to Greenwich Village and waterfront changes. To do justice to the maps and to the readers, we present one map at a time, so that they can be reprinted at a larger size that is
By Jeff Hodges In the summer of 1978 I heard about a news outfit called Broadcast News Service that needed video crews to shoot from midnight to noon on weekends, working out of a car with a police radio scanner. I was a cameraman shooting punk rock, modern dance, and performance art in downtown Manhattan,
By Barry Benepe Part I: Suffering the Grid Manhattan is uniquely blessed or cursed, depending on your point of view. The rigid uniform rectangular street system was designed to maximize building development on the undulating landscape without thought for its natural topography, water courses, water bodies (including both the North and East Rivers, which Ann
By Alec Pruchnicki Wait! Don’t roll yours eyes and think of this as another rabid anti-Trump rant. Even as a legal layman, I think there are possible arguments for answering this question in the affirmative. There are plenty of people in The Village with more legal training than me and more internet skills, so my
By Toby Bellin Tuesday, September 11, 2001 before 9 AM on the crosstown bus on my way to work. Passing Fifth Avenue, I see a few people standing in the street looking up at the World Trade Center towers. I see black smoke rising from the top of one of the towers. That’s an awful
Abstracted from “A Scientists View of Almost Everything” by Mark M Green When the Scots revolted against the feudal demands of Edward I and mustered an army around the turn of the fourteenth century it lead to a massive English response causing the Scots to lose their richest and most populous city, Berwick. According to
By Malcolm J. Bowman Storm surges and sea level rise represent existential threats to the future well-being of New York City, coastal New Jersey and the south coast of Long Island. Superstorm Sandy was a rude awakening to the clear and present danger of how climate change and rising sea levels threaten the very existence
By Anastasia Kaliabakos The Hagia Sophia, a remarkable model for Orthodox churches and beautiful example of Byzantine architecture, has recently been in the news due to its sudden conversion from a historic museum to a mosque. Located in Istanbul, Turkey, this structure has stood the test of time, serving as a place of worship for
By Brian J. Pape, AIA, LEED Isidore of Miletus and Anthemius of Tralles were the two main Byzantine Greek architects that Emperor Justinian I commissioned to design the cathedral Hagia Sophia in Constantinople from 532 to 537. Hagia Sophia means Holy Wisdom. The church is also known as Ayasofya (Turkish), Sancta Sophia (Latin), and Church
By Barry Benepe I once asked my therapist, Alice Gerstman, how many people who had returned to life from death were grateful and how many disturbed at being wakened from a deep sleep. She replied, “About half and half”. None reported a glimpse of heaven or even purgatory. Several years ago, a close friend told
By Eric Uhlfelder For decades, when I ventured to the Catskills it was to ski. When the temperatures turned hot and humid, I would head to the East End of Long Island to pleasant hotels and B&Bs. My photography hung in local galleries, and for a long time I felt a part of the place.
