Dear Mr. Capsis, I am a new subscriber to WestView News and I look forward to receiving my monthly issue each month. However, I must disagree with your page one article, “We Need Robert Moses.” If Mr. Moses had had his way, lower Manhattan would be paved over and vehicles would be streaming through Washington
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Emergency Vehicle Pollution
George, I believe you have a doctor in the house that occasionally writes for you. May I suggest a look at the Northwell Emergency Hospital? With emergency vehicles spewing pollution 24×7 on West 12th Street between 7th and Greenwich Avenues, the hospital has created a terribly polluted zone…made more dangerous since this block feeds people
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Keep the Bike Lanes
The issues on 14th Street are complex, but misinformation, or at least a heavily one-sided drumbeat from a pro-car, pro-parking crowd continues. One assumption is that motorists, who would have otherwise used 14th Street to cross town, have no other alternative than to use the adjacent side streets such as 12th or 13th. That assumption
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Praise from Terrence McNally
To the editor, I received a very positive email from Terrence McNally about my article ‘A Banner Year for Terrence McNally’ in the July, 2019 edition of WestView News and felt I should share it with WestView’s readers. As ever my hat goes off to Terrence—a great writer and friend. Having known Terrence for many, many years, I
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Melville’s 200th Birthday
Dear Editor, There is an article about Herman Melville in the July-August 2019 issue of Smithsonian Magazine. Among other things, William T. Vollmann reminds readers that August 1st, 2019 will be the 200th birthday of the complicated, brilliant, bedeviled author of, among other classics, Moby Dick. I suggest reading it online. Melville the writer is so associated
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14A Bus
Dear Mr. Capsis, We in the West Village are trying to keep the Abingdon Square 14A loop. The MTA wants to cut service, which for many is a lifeline. Also, sometimes the M11 stops at 23rd Street instead of completing the run to Abingdon Square. Both of these buses are infrequent at best. I am
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NYT Editorial Shock
Dear editors: I was shocked to see the New York Times editorial “Hudson River Park Needs Help” June 7, with a comparison of the Hudson River Park Trust proposals for office development on Pier 40 with the Westway superhighway plan of more than 20 years ago. Saying office development is ‘not that bad’ compared with
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Not on My Wall
At 10pm on March 5th, Webster Stone, who lives at Charles Street and West 4th Street, kept hearing a loud buzz. “I couldn’t place it, I couldn’t figure out what it was, and it irritated me.” Getting up from his couch, Stone checked to see if it was the washing machine or the dishwasher, and
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Pier 40
Dear WestView, I really appreciated the articles in your June edition by Bruce Trigg and Bunny Gabel regarding the Pier 40 development plans. I understand the call from the author to write to local representatives. However, I am an Australian living in the West Village and do not have the right to vote, so my
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Praise for WestView
Dear Mr. George Capsis, Thank you for daring to go where the controlled main media will not dare to tread. Your newspaper is fabulous. I don’t know where to start with the praise. I came upon your newspaper when I went down to the 6th Street Community Center. I am an upper west sider. Your
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George Capsis, Local Hero
Hi George, Hope you are doing well and still giving ‘em hell. Loved the Trigg, MD article about Pier 40. St. Vincent’s screw job all over again. And the usual brilliant planning to have the meeting just after Memorial Day. Surprised they didn’t do it on the Friday before, but of course that would have
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Open Letter to Corey Johnson to Save the 14A Bus Line Route
Dear Corey, Sort of ironic that my earlier Open Letter to you from WestView News was to plead for more bus shelters for riders waiting for the 14A—and now we’ve learned there’s a plan to do away with our vital little spur altogether—to replace it, apparently, with one that runs way out on the fringe of
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Charles Street Association Annual Planting
Dear neighbors and members of the Charles Street Association, Thank you for coming out this past Saturday. You made our annual planting a great success. This year all our tree-beds were planted and all are looking fantastic. However, in order to keep them alive, they will need lots of water throughout the hot summer months.
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White Horse
To Charlie McKenna, Re: Your letter to the Editor dated April 2019 We agree with you completely. Usually, it is Steve Croman raising the rent so high that the clubs and pubs and restaurants could no longer remain in business. In this case it was the owners of the White Horse Tavern who chose to
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Food Scrap Collection
Dear Editor: The food scrap collection article in the April issue of WestView had an immediate impact on local recycling efforts. Literally upon the day of publication, both online and in print, Saturday Union Square and Abingdon Square Greenmarket workers reported people coming to their sites to mention and/or leave a copy of WestView’s April
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Pier 40 Public Forum
I’m speaking for Friends of the Earth, an environmental group with a 45 year history of work to stop over-development in the Hudson River from Battery Park City North to West 59th Street, New York water and land now controlled by Hudson River Park Trust authority (HRPT). The authority controls 60 acres of NY land
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Litigation Over 14th Street Changes and SBS Bus Changes Coming Soon
As WestView goes to press, two lawsuits are about to be filed by my office addressed to the efforts of DOT Commissioner Polly Trottenberg to needlessly reshape our community. At first, she used the proposed L Train shutdown as an excuse. Now she wants to champion “fast bus service on the M14D and the M14A.”
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Save the Bus Stop!
Hi George: I’ve just sent off the following letter to elected officials and others regarding the M14A service: What is the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s purpose with regard to Bus Transportation? Is it to get the riding public from one convenient location to another or is it to move the buses from one location to another
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Bookbook Closing
Bookbook at 266 Bleecker Street will be closing its doors this May. We have been doing this for 35 years and it’s time for a road trip. In 1984, we opened our first bookstore, Biography Bookshop at 400 Bleecker Street on the corner of Bleecker and 11th Streets in what was, then, a historic West
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Dylan Thomas
In the front-page article about the sale of the building where the White Horse Tavern is, reference is made to Dylan Thomas and his having “his last drinks there and later died at St. Vincent’s.” He may well have had his last drink in New York there, but not his last drink. The truth of
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Croman/WhiteHorse
While it is easy to “Rage, Rage Against Croman,” (April 2019) and all the other horrible landlords and haughty millionaires who are buying up our beloved neighborhood and changing its very character, we have to acknowledge that these people are not Viking raiders who swoop down on unsuspecting property owners and take over their buildings
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Judson Church History
Dear George, Roger Paradiso’s article about Judson Church (April 2019 issue) tells a lot, but has huge holes in it. He doesn’t mention the protean gifts of Rev. Al Carmines, who Rev. Howard Moody (also not mentioned) hired to start a theater in the church. Rev. Carmines brought in large numbers of people who got
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Bike Lanes
Dear WestView: It is disheartening to read opinions from bike advocates (Dear Bike Lane Complainers/14th Street, WestView News April 2019) who preach from their moral high ground. Car ownership is “indulgent/gas-guzzling,” etc. “The Village was never meant for private car ownership…” Really? So let me understand this. People who pay taxes, permits, registrations, fees, etc.,
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Lenox Hill Hospital Revitalization Plan
The following letter comes from a doctor and very carefully avoids the fact that the Lenox Hill Hospital expansion is on the east side in the 80’s. As a West Village newspaper we have been campaigning for more medical facilities in the West Village, like a Cath Lab. —Editors To the Editor: I write this
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The Forum on Lenox Health Greenwich Village Facility
On April 29, the CB2 (Community Board for Manhattan District 2) and Susanna Aaron, Chair of the Social Services Committee, organized a special forum: Five years after the opening of Manhattan’s first stand-alone emergency room, how is our community engaging with Northwell’s Lenox Health Greenwich Village facility? There was a full house in the classroom
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Israel-Palestine
Dear editors: Hate has no place here. An article on Israel-Palestine in the April issue is a political diatribe one expects from the alt-right or alt-left media, not WestView News. I get the writer’s blog almost daily, and know that is her prejudice, and I might feel sorry for whatever happened to turn her to
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An Open Letter to Corey Johnson
Corey, greetings Great news to know you’re going to be ‘getting us moving’ so to speak! And as long as you’re looking at future plans, may I put in a word on behalf of the ‘senior riders’: Do you think we could get the bus shelters back? For instance, there used to be one here
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Spring Gardening
This morning I met with my old pal Susan Sipos, of Distinctive Gardens, to inspect our co-op’s backyard garden. She comes to visit us about this time every year. We walk through several levels of the backyard and inspect the damages that have been caused by the ravages of winter. We are lucky to have
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The Community Starts on Your Block
Think about it—a city block in New York can have a larger population than a small town in Kansas, and problems can start right at your door. Yesterday, as I walked up Charles Street to West 4th Street, I discovered to my disgust that somebody had painted his name in comic book script across a
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Fruit Vendor
Dear George, I am referencing WestView’s November 8, 2018 article ”Does Rudin Want Your Fruit Vendor to Move?” and am not sure if you have noticed that with the start of Spring the Fruit Cart Vendor in front of the Aids Memorial Park has returned. This is the view from my north facing windows. As a vendor
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14th Street
The 14th Street Coalition (I recently saw it referred to as the “14th Street Coalition for Parking”) would have us all believe that the new bike lanes on 12th and 13th Street are ruining the neighborhood, and that they are standing up in opposition on behalf of “the community.” My apartment faces 12th Street and
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Dear Bike Lane Complainers
The next time you step into your automobile, you might stop to think about the amount of space your car wastes in this already-congested city and consider the damage you and your indulgent, gas-guzzling car are doing to the environment. You might also then consider if, given those factors, you are in any position to complain about
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Drug Dealing in Washington Square Park
George, I appreciate your coverage of the drug dealings in WSP. Perhaps it was overlooked that dealing and usage does occur in the SW corner by the chess tables, which is adjacent to the childrens’ playground (“the mounds”) which is also directly across from the rest rooms. There is little if any activity on the
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Landmarking Bureaucracy
Dear George, Are homeowners of Greenwich Village now being targeted by the Department of Housing and Preservation Development (HPD)? As of September 2018, a certificate of non-harassment is now required by the Department of Building (DOB) before being able to file for renovation permits and approve plans. If your home/building falls under this designation you
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Man’s Best Friend
Dear George Capsis, My neighborhood a few nights ago reminded me of being in a pre-election period, a time when candidates fill the streets with signs displaying their photos, their name, their party affiliation, and the date of the elections. But these signs were different from election paraphernalia. They were carefully, lovingly made. Tall, they were
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Enough with the Bike Lanes!
There has been a continual reduction in street parking on lower Fifth Avenue. Within the last two years over 40 parking spaces have been lost to bike lanes, or simply converted to no parking zones (example—the west side of Fifth Avenue between 8th and 9th Streets). Street parking can exist with bike lanes, yet the
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No More Gas Stations
I really feel for my fellow Villagers with their SUVs and Merc’s having only one gas station left—the one on 8th Avenue. I remember when Houston Street was lined with stations, from Lafayette Street to Avenue C. In the early ‘70s I waited on Houston Street with a hundred other vehicles during the oil embargo just
