Whenever I meet my neighbors on the street or at the Abingdon Farmer’s Market on Saturdays, it doesn’t take more than a handful of syllables before they realize that I’m not from these parts. No matter how hard I try, my ‘the’ still sounds like a ‘ze’. I nod politely when they ask if I’m

Little has been written about the history of people of African descent in Lower Manhattan, even though their numbers were so large that our neighborhood and environs were once called “Little Africa.” Hardly anything has been documented about this area’s importance as a major hub on the Underground Railroad. Other cities have magnificent Freedom Trails,

As a physician, I sometimes have to give my patients and their families bad news. I try to do it as gently, but accurately, as possible, and always with an attempt to include any possible hopeful information that may exist. This article will follow that pattern with some very bad news, in my opinion, but

It was a hot late afternoon on the 14th June and excitement was in the air. Cop cars and TV news trucks were parked up and down Seventh Avenue South and people were flocking to side streets lined with metal barriers, waiting to catch a glimpse of the President and the First Lady, who were

The Hudson River Park Trust (the “Trust,” or “HRPT”), the State-City agency that built and runs the Park, urgently needs about $200 million for “capital maintenance” – repairing and rebuilding major elements of the Park. New York City and New York State are supposed to pay to build the park, and in addition to the

An emergency Community Board meeting was held on June 25th at Housing Works to address the environmental impact of the Rudin development of the St. Vincent’s Hospital campus on District 2. The meeting on Monday evening was attended by several hundred extremely animated and concerned parents and residents of District 2. The attendance was much

Call for 600 luxury apartments and hotel On May 1, WestView News hit the vestibules of the West Village with our big cover article suggesting NYU be offered Pier 40 in return for building a hospital. A day later I received an e-mail from attorney and Chairman of the Advisory Committee to the Hudson River

I observed bike share in both Paris and Washington DC and interviewed one user in each city. One, not a typical rider, used it in Paris because cabs were not easily available. The other in Washington used it regularly to commute home from the train station. Neither city appropriated pedestrian sidewalk space for bike storage

“Let go of your illusions and don’t confuse them with dreams,” novelist Devan Sipher recently told a New School writing class in the Village. His favorite quote inspired him to achieve his dream of publishing a novel and his funny fictional debut The Wedding Beat just hit the stores. Sipher tapped into his experience as

In May, the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP), working in partnership with the Two Boots Foundation, launched the first historic plaque program for Greenwich Village, the East Village and NoHo. The program will commemorate sites of special significance due to their architecture, events, historic figures who lived, worked or gatheredthere or notable institutions.

NYU asked for space on Pier 40 – let them have it if they return a hospital. During a tedious seven hour hospital stretch while my wife, Andromache, waited for and then received cataract surgery, I was electrified to read a Wall Street Journal article “Struggling Trust Seeks Funds for Hudson Shore”. It reported that

When I was growing up in Fargo, North Dakota, I recall asking my mother why the slogan “Buy Dakota Maid Flour” was written at the bottom of my report card. When she started talking about the Nonpartisan League, I stopped listening because I knew it had something to do with politics, a topic that bored