By Robert Heide and John Gilman *lyric from the song Bleecker Street from Simon/Garfunkel album Wednesday Morning, 3 AM – 1964 Recently, in virtual quarantine during these pandemic times, heeding the constant reminders to stay home and only when it was essential to go out, to wear our masks, we became nostalgic for better times,
By Brian J. Pape In and Out, by Caroline Benveniste (WestView News, July 2020), reported the flurry of re-openings of restaurants with outdoor seating that were able to take advantage of the city’s “open restaurant plan” for more than 8,600 businesses. Gene’s “Est. 1919” Restaurant at 73 West 11th Street has been closed for months,
Yesterday I interviewed my friend Ramsey Clark, 92, about his lifelong relationship with his great friend John Lewis. Ramsey Clark was Attorney General during The Great Society and wrote and supervised both the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1968. He said of his beloved friend Lewis, with whom he
By Brian J. Pape, AIA, LEED-AP Years of debate went into how our westside riverfront should be designed. Many of our readers will recall when the Hudson River Park (HRP) opened 20 years ago, or even 12 years ago, when the public esplanade had a string of sturdy masonry comfort stations plus an elegant little
By Jesse Robert Lovejoy Recently I heard from guy I knew as an undergrad at Yale in the 1960s. He’s been at work collecting several thousand signatures from alumni in order to get on the ballot for next year’s election of alumni trustees. He’s an impressive guy with an impressive career, and would like to
By Kambiz Shekdar, Ph.D. My first column in WestView News appeared a year ago. How has my column added to the general discussion? What has been the response from readers? Have people found it valuable? How much funding did my column help raise for the charitable cause I set out to support? I invite any
By Kieran Loughney Isolation. Lockdown. Seclusion. Words now part of my daily conversation bring me back to a time when these terms had a different context. I return in my mind to a place where another invisible enemy was confronted. A place where there were strict limits on personal freedom and no assurance of a
By Russell Saray “His mask is bigger than his Speedo.” “Look straight ahead, honey.” I gripped Steve’s hand with my wedding ring in full view. Onward we marched along the six-foot-wide wooden boardwalk, our masks up, holding a chilled bottle of Guiluhem 2018, our house rosé that we consumed in copious amounts like Kool-Aid at
By Bennett Kremen When a raven-haired, high-minded beauty like Anyaskaya d’Borovik, the renowned doyenne of a spirited Greenwich Village dance troop, succumbs in passion to a rugged, willful man like “Sonny Boy” Aiello, the question always asked is, “Why?” Anya, a sophisticated, fiercely dedicated artist, flourishing in radiance throughout my novel, The Performance, keeps pushing
By Alec Pruchnicki, MD I’ve written about how I disagreed with Trump on political grounds, but this piece is why I oppose him on serious medical grounds. After impeachment early this year, Democrats, including myself, were starting to plan for the election in November. When COVID came in, everything changed as life and death decisions
By Katie Keith “Mark it Covid” has become a phrase around our house. I’m not sure exactly what it’s a placeholder for. “Put a Fork in It”, maybe. “So It Goes,” is a possibility (Vonnegut). Or it could be just a thing to yell across the room after weeks on end of spending too much
By Bruce Poli Earlier this year I was driving on 14th St. in the right lane. In the left lane was a police formation of several cars. Suddenly a van was sticking out into my lane so I put on my left turn signal, waited for the right space between police cars, went around the
By Nancy Davidoff Kelton My father died in 1997 at age 88, yet he wakes me up some mornings and guides me through my days. On Father’s Day and every day, particularly now, I am grateful for his gifts which include: A sense of humor: It goes beyond tilting our heads upon seeing Aunt
By Lynn Pax “Get yourself grounded and you can navigate even the stormiest roads in peace.” Steve Goodier We live in a nature-deficient society. It is estimated that we spend 93 percent of our day indoors. We live far above the earth in high-rises, wear synthetic clothing and plastic-soled shoes, and we cover recreational areas with
By Dan Schlesinger The New York Amateur Computer Club holds free monthly meetings open to the public at NYU. Presentations cover computer technology and trends. Currently, during the coronavirus pandemic, NYACC meetings are online via Zoom. At the April NYACC meeting, ESL (English as a Second Language) instructor Dina Schlesinger interviewed Elizabeth, her online student
By Alec Pruchnicki The dramatic, and sometimes deadly, confrontations between civilians and the police reminded me that growing up in The Bronx we also had a set of rules of engagement when dealing with police. I came from a working-class area, Arthur Avenue. We had no particular love of the police, and they returned the
By Toby Bellin In 1985 I attended my first meeting as a supportive care volunteer at St. Vincent’s. The class of 24 was a very mixed group—a pre-med student, an actress, a writer, a lawyer, two nuns, a businesswoman, among others. The speaker at this first meeting was Marc, a classmate who had offered to
FDR-Style Program Urgently Needed to Address Looming Post-Covid Housing Crisis By Diane Sare, Candidate for U.S. Senate-NY 2022 The national news media is filled with stories about the extreme anxiety of renters and property owners wondering will happen when it is declared that the COVID-19 Pandemic has abated and there is no more forbearance on
By Hannah Reimann I spent two weeks in June on Vinalhaven Island, Maine. Reachable by ferryboat from Rockland, it has a year-round population of 1200. The only guideline for out-of-state visitors at that time was to quarantine for 14 days. I could walk on the shore or wilderness near our family cottage, alone. I complied
By Anastasia Kaliabakos Mankind’s relationship with horses dates back millennia to when a horse’s ability to carry a human was first discovered. This use of horses has had a tremendous impact on their relationships with man on an individual level, and on humanity’s progress as a whole. Horses have been used throughout history as assistants
By Robert Heide The bigger than big book entitled simply Warhol by Blake Gopnik just published by Ecco, a Harper Collins imprint, is 39 pages short of 1,000, took over ten years to write, and is an astute comprehensive biographic study that is overflowing with practical, insightful information which focuses hard on the life and
Mid-Lockdown New York’s Artists Take Back the Streets By Katie Cercone As Black Lives Matter protests sparked by the May 25th police murder of George Floyd flared across the nation, with blockbuster images of looted Targets and shattered storefronts in their wake, Soho’s luxury brand retailers rested assured their fortresses of status-symbol high price tag
By Carol F. Yost On May 12, 2020, an op-ed appeared in the Daily News with the title, “Why I Slept on the Subways: They Were a Safer Refuge for the Homeless the Public Holds in Contempt.” It was written by Denis Dugan, who identifies himself as a homeless man. One paragraph reads: “With too
By Bruce Poli In 1978, Gilbert Baker—who called himself the Gay Betsy Ross—hand dyed the first LGBT Rainbow Flag to fly in the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade. He was rumored to have been inspired by Judy Garland’s Over the Rainbow, and the iconic symbol of the ‘nation’ of gay rights has had a
There’s Flash Dance. Dirty Dancing. And then there’s CoviDance. By Mia Berman Maybe I’m not as agile as Ginger Rogers. I admit it. I never partnered with Fred Astaire or Baryshnikov. And maybe I didn’t have the moves of Shakira. But what I did have was an idea. When the Covid pandemic hit, I began
By Jennifer Brozost Throughout this pandemic—this time of fear, uncertainty and frustration—I have been scared. Scared of what the future holds, scared of getting sick, and scared to leave my house to get groceries to feed my family. At the start of the shutdown I went to the supermarket and had a complete panic attack
By Brian J Pape, AIA, LEED-AP Development in NYC takes a long time, and it may also have to weather Great Recessions. Such is the case for 90 Morton, aka 627 Greenwich Street, once an abandoned, eight-story printing warehouse. When architect and developer Peter Moore and KMG Partners paid $37.8 million for the site in
By Debra Camitta Imagine you changed careers and started a new business and then suddenly the World and New York City went on pause. Like many others, that is what happened to me. What didn’t go on pause was my great love for flowers and creating floral designs. My passion for flowers started when I
By Lynn Pacifico Until the birth of my sister when I was four, my family lived in a little two-bedroom house that was owned by a great aunt. My brother, a year younger than I, shared a bedroom with me, his crib across the room from mine. A special relationship formed between us there, a
By Kambiz Shekdar, Ph.D. Since the first Gay Liberation marchers took their first steps in the West Village on June 28th, 1970, “Pride” has gone from a protest march to a glitter-filled sparkle parade. We are grateful for so much to celebrate, and are confident that re-focusing the energy of the annual NYC Pride parade
By Jesse Robert Lovejoy The last time this happened was 50 years ago. The president and the generals appeared on TV nightly, reporting scores of victories and overwhelming body counts. The media bought the story. Vietnamese villages were incinerated, and towns were carpet-bombed. Thousands of young Americans bled and died in the rice paddies. The
Erik Larson’s new book intimately explores Churchill and Britain during the Blitz By Eric Uhlfelder BOOK REVIEW: THE SPLENDID & THE VILE Eric Larson’s remarkable account of Winston Churchill’s first year as Britain’s Prime Minister when Germany unleashed the Luftwaffe against England in 1940 is a read to be savored. The Splendid and Vile, Larson’s
By Barry Benepe In a previous issue of WestView News, I reviewed Council Speaker Corey Johnson’s Comprehensive Transportation Plan in which he placed emphasis on making streets more pedestrian-friendly. In a future article I will expand on this under a vision called Livable Streets. Meanwhile, I would like to comment on an interim proposal forwarded
By Eve Zanni Rom Ferri was born into a loving, musical family; the youngest of 5 children in New Jersey. His father was an opera singer who sang at La Scala in Milano and whose also appreciated Louis Armstrong’s singing. 2 of Rom’s uncles played guitar, mandolin and banjo in some of the major big
By Bruce Poli West Village author David Carter, renowned for his detailed, truth-telling history Stonewall: the Riots that Sparked the Gay Revolution (St. Martin’s Press, 2004) endured years of criticism and challenge to his decade-long researched book on the Stonewall Rebellion—its forelife, life and fallout. Raised in rural Jesup, GA, Carter—who moved to Greenwich Village
By Joe Bongiovanni Let’s begin our study of money with this question—because everywhere, inquiring minds want to know—what is money? What serves as money isn’t derived from either a natural or a man-made material of any kind, and its study is virtually absent from our entire education system. Like Political Economy and Civics. The most
By Sue Peters In response to the shutdown of the economy, Congress passed the CARES Act. To date, Congress has appropriated $670 billion in funds to aid small businesses with Small Business Administration (SBA) loans. Also in the CARES Act, Congress appropriated $454 billion in funds for larger businesses, states, and municipalities. These funds, however,
By Karen Rempel It’s time for marriage counselling, not divorce. Defunding the NYPD is not the answer, but education and dialogue is. The police have been getting a lot of negative press; and it is justified, no question. The tragic murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin and the resulting unprecedented worldwide
