By Brian J. Pape, AIA Have you ever needed a map to show you where you were and where you needed to go in the Village? Have you wondered what we should do now that all the street payphones are gone? Have you wondered what the new sidewalk kiosks sprouting up all over the city
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Mickey Mouse Turns 90
By Robert Heide MICKEY FOR PRESIDENT: On November 18, 1928, the black and white Walt Disney “talking” cartoon Steamboat Willie opened at the Colony Theater in New York. Although there had been other cartoon stars that preceded Mickey, such as Felix “the Cat,” it was the Mouse who took the spotlight back then and forevermore.
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Hudson River Park Gets a Much-Needed Facelift
CONSTRUCTION AT PIER 45/CHRISTOPHER STREET
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Take Five: Max Dolgin Has Got It From Here
By Stanley Wlodyka Last month’s Westbeth Gallery show “A Diamond Jubilee” featured seven artists over 75 years of age who exhibited a wide variety of artwork: masks, puppets, paintings, photographs, and even politically charged embroidery. Judy Lawne, a photographer who came up with the idea for the show, wanted the opening to live up to
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Starmaker—The Interview Covers
By John Gilman It’s a time-honored tradition for writers to have a big kick off “launch” for their books—maybe a book-signing, a cocktail party, or an exhibit. In the case of Rizzoli’s Richard Bernstein: Starmaker—Andy Warhol’s Cover Artist, published last month, it was extravagantly all three. Kicking off New York’s Fashion Week, an opening night
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Jim Fouratt’s REEL DEAL: Movies That Matter
Awards season has arrived! A deluge of quality films will fall almost daily between September 1st and December 31st. In order to qualify for consideration of an Oscar, a film must run one week in New York City and Los Angeles. So you could buckle yourself into a theater seat for the next three months
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The Show that Keeps On Going
By Stanley Wlodyka The artists of A Diamond Jubilee are vastly different from one another, but they each can reveal the secrets to longevity and a fulfilling life. By the year 2050, experts predict that the segment of the population over the age of 60 will more than double, jumping from 900 million to 2.1
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“Are You Jewish?”
God Sends a Kosher Editor Oh wow, a $35,000, roughly 40 foot house-bus, in front of United Cigar and Christoper Street is blaring Yiddish music—this I gotta see. What I find is a very young rabbi waiting to step out and greet young men who look Jewish and return them to the kosher path. A
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West Village Sartorial Splendor
By Gordon T Hughes Jr. When you meet a guy, be it in the theatre district where I do most of my work, or in mid-town somewhere, and he is wearing a coat and tie, and tells you he lives in the West Village, it is most likely this writer. When I first moved to
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Theater Review: Days to Come
By Eric Uhlfelder So I said to myself, “The fate of the fool will also befall me. What then have I gained by being wise?” And I said to myself that this too is futile. For there is no lasting remembrance of the wise, just as with the fool, seeing that both will be forgotten
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Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood
By Robert Heide In the world of film, during the month of August, a new documentary called Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood opened in New York City at IFC on 6th Avenue, the Chelsea Cinemas, and 100 theatres across the land. It appears to be at this juncture certainly the most important, riveting,
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Andy’s and Everyone Else’s 90th Birthday
By John Gilman They were celebrating Andy Warhol’s 90th birthday August 9th with a big champagne gala at the Whitney Museum, and when we were personally invited by Claire K. Henry, assistant curator of the Andy Warhol Film Project, as her special guests, we were told to dress up in a gala Warhol manner. First
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A Tafel Surprise
By Jon D’Orazio I wish to share something I learned only last year, concerning Edgar Tafel, whom my architect father met at the ’67 AIA Convention. Together they arranged a summer job for me in Edgar’s office on 5th Avenue for that summer. It was just before I was to begin my Masters in Architecture
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Italytime to Present Three Eyes on Pinocchio in Spanish
By Jane Heil Usyk On November 7, 8, 9, and 10, the cultural organization Italytime will present a new version of Italy’s most famous character, Pinocchio, in Spanish. The show begins at 8 p.m. and is suitable for adults as well as children. Maureen Gonzalez, who translated the play, says, “One of Italytime’s goals since
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Tribute to Architect Edgar Tafel
By Brian J. Pape, AIA 39 years ago, this summer, upon the publication of Edgar Tafel’s memoir Apprentice to Genius: Years with Frank Lloyd Wright, my father-in-law Rabbi Bernard Mandelbaum arranged an introduction with the author. I visited Mr. Tafel’s Greenwich Village architecture office and got the book inscribed with “To Brian Pape—with best wishes
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Designing Waste—Strategies for a Zero Waste City
By Mary Chandrahasan, Partner, NDNY Architecture + Design Here are some interesting numbers to get you thinking about waste. Did you know that nearly 40 percent of all food in the United States is wasted? Food waste accounts for 20 percent of materials sent to landfills and is the main contributor to landfill methane emissions,
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Gotta Go!
By Keith Michael Another Sunday. Another walk in Hudson River Park. At the end of her leash, Millie has already walked me around her neighborhood block this morning, taking care of corgi-business, and now I’m walking myself (at the end of my own inner leash) along the river promenade, absorbing the view. The summer is
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Escape to Nowhere
By Ananth Sampathkumar, Partner, NDNY Architecture + Design “Man Struck and Killed by Falling Debris from New York Building Fire Escape,” read the headline from an online paper covering the incident in Soho earlier this year. The irony is all too obvious. The structure that was meant to save lives ended up taking one—because of
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West Village Original: Carmen Grange
By Michael D. Minichiello This month’s West Village Original is Dr. Carmen Grange, born in 1922 in Colón, Panama, to Jamaican parents working in the Canal Zone. Grange studied pre-med at Trinity College in Dublin and returned to the U.S. to do her residency, eventually opening a practice on West 13th Street. A resident of
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Tech Tips & Tricks
By Peter Rooney Welcome to a monthly column to help you turn your computer into a friend, brought to you by one of the oldest computer clubs in the world—right here in the West Village. We are the New York Amateur Computer Club, http://www.nyacc.org. Each month we’ll explore a technical topic, and attempt to answer
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Michael’s Recipe for When You Talked Too Long
By Jane Heil Usyk Here is a quick, delicious, lifesaving recipe for nights when you come home late and only have five minutes to make dinner; it’s also very cheap. The other night, for example, we were at our usual Monday night powwow with Simon, our wonderful opera teacher, who teaches opera appreciation and goes
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West Village Sows their Oats
By Naomi Sternstein We like our oats to talk to us, and humbleness is not required. This much holds true on the topic of oat milk. Our Oatly oats tell us all about their “oatsome deliciousness and what our products can do” and we drink it right up. Sometimes we like their too-cute dad-humor asides
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Tom Savage: Writer, Poet, and Playwright
By Lorraine Gibney On Saturday, August 11th, I had the privilege of interviewing writer, poet, and playwright Tom Savage at the LGBT Community Center on West 13th Street. For more than three hours Mr. Savage freely discussed his fascinating escapades as a prolific writer during the 1960s—when he hobnobbed with the most iconic figures and
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Don’t Just Sit There, Resist! Part V: Hey, Young People. Vote!
By Alec Pruchnicki There appears to be a lot of enthusiasm within the Democratic party for the upcoming midterm elections. The recent victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC, as I like to call her), the numerous victories in special elections around the country, several high profile primary fights in New York, and massive opposition to the
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Can You Be Both Pro-Affordability and Anti-Development at the Same Time?
By Donna Schaper It isn’t easy to be virtuous in Gotham today. Maybe it never was. You can be an organization as lofty as Habitat for Humanity and be accused of selling out, destroying gardens and siding with developers. So-called “Haven Green” has given the devil a lot of opportunities to repeat history. In a
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Notes from Away: No Time for Paradise
By Tom Lamia In Maine, summers can be short when you are least expecting them to be; yet they are glorious even so. The glory I speak of is the bliss that comes with knowing that a moment long-awaited has arrived. It would be tempting fate to go about crowing of how a particular summer
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Hoylman/Epstein Work to Save Hospital
By Penny Mintz Members of the Community Coalition to Save Beth Israel (CCSBI), including one of our founding members, State Assemblyman Harvey Epstein, met with State Senator Brad Hoylman in early August. This is the fourth in a series of meetings CCSBI has held with elected officials. Since April the coalition has met with City
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Jim Fouratt’s HAVE YOU HEARD!
SEPTEMBER 2018 VOTE AS IF YOUR FUTURE DEPENDS ON IT! If you are a registered Democrat in New York it is important to vote in the Democratic primary on September 13, 2018. I also know that most people in the City ignore the primaries. I know from personal experience. When I replaced Arthur Schwartz who
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Why I Am Voting for Cynthia Nixon and Jumaane Williams
By Arthur Z. Schwartz On Thursday, September 13th (make sure not to forget that our state leaders, ever anxious to depress voter turnout, moved this election to a Thursday) we face an incredibly important primary election in NY State. While Trump neophytes are winning Republican primaries, progressive Democrats are winning races all over in States
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Postcards to Voters (Now Arriving in NYC by the Thousands!)
By Sarah O’Neill Nine of New York’s Democratic State Senators have caucused with Republicans for years, tipping control to Republicans. Thankfully, we will have challengers for each one of them in the primary on Thursday, September 13th. And from now until September 7th there is an easy, fun way to help the good guys: #PostcardsToVoters
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DOT Lies to the Feds About 14th Street Plan
By Arthur Z. Schwartz I reported last month that the 14th Street Coalition, a group of 15 Block Associations, condo associations and co-ops, had won a major victory in their fight to keep the NYC Department of Transportation (DOT) from shutting down 14th Street to vehicle traffic, other than buses, as part of the efforts
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The Price of Immortality
“OK, give me a business plan,” Steve Witkoff ordered, as he finished agreeing with Sarah Jessica Parker that St. Veronica should offer something for everybody, not only seniors, but young people and even kids. When I sat down to write the “Business Plan” I was stuck. How do you write a business plan to create
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Cynthia Nixon Comes to 69 Charles Street!
By George Capsis Arthur Schwartz, who besides being a prolific political contributor to WestView, is currently the lawyer for Cynthia Nixon’s campaign to become the next Governor of New York. As such, he kept e-mailing me he was going to get Cynthia to come to 69 Charles Street for an interview. And bang! The day
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9/11 Lawyers’ WTC Evidence Can’t Be Ignored
By Dusty Berke On April 9th a PRNewswire press release went out to over 3,000 mainstream media announcing that a nonprofit organization of over 30 attorneys along with many 9/11 Family members were going to file a formal Petition the next day with the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York demanding a
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Jim Fouratt’s HAVE YOU HEARD?
AUGUST 2018 Let’s start with some GOOD NEWS: Cynthia Nixon will be the Working Families Party’s candidate for State Assembly, competing for the seat with Deborah Glick, who has held the office for 25 years. While everyone I know tells me they are voting for Nixon in the Democratic Primary in September, when Nixon is
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“The Glory of God is a Human Being Fully Alive.”
By Fr. Graeme Napier Thus, down the ages, sings St. Irenaeus, the second-century bishop from the little Aegean sea town of Smyrna who had heard the preaching of the soon-to-be-martyred Polycarp—a disciple of John the gospel-maker, to whom St. John’s in the Village is dedicated. Before I went to Oxford to study mathematics and philosophy
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Celebrating Mae West at the Jefferson Market Library
By Michele Gouveia “When I’m good, I’m very good, but when I’m bad, I’m better.” —Mae West With her double entendres, voluptuous figure, and distinct Brooklyn accent, Mae West became one of the most famous and imitated women of the 20th century. This year marks the 125th anniversary of her birth, and to celebrate the
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Vacation!
By Christina Winholt Do you want to take your vacation twice? How about a dozen times? Is it possible to relive your vacation as many times as you would like if you practice being in the moment while you are laying by the pool, hiking your favorite mountain, or seeing the sights? One of the
