By Michael D. Minichiello This month’s West Village Original is artist Jenny Tango, born Florence Exler in Brooklyn in 1926. A visual artist working collaboratively and individually in painting, communications media, artist’s books and comic strips, Tango received both a BA and MA from Brooklyn College. A former educator with a list of both solo
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After Every Storm
By Stanley Wlodyka. There’s a black line spray painted 10 feet off the ground in the basement of Westbeth Artists Residency. The entire basement—every hall, every room—is marked. It’s a stark reminder that some of the artists who live there lost everything on October 29, 2012, when Hurricane Sandy hit New York. Hugging West Street,
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Upcoming Series: Arabic Speculative Fiction in English Translation
By Anna Boots Three percent: that’s the oft-cited figure of how many books are published in the United States each year in translation from languages other than English. It might be surprising to some people that Arabic is actually the fourth most translated language into English, following French, German and Spanish. This has not always
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IN AND OUT
Correction: in the September In & Out, we reported that Ghandi Café (283 Bleecker Street east of 7th Avenue South) appeared to have closed. Not so! We apologize for the misinformation. The big news this month was that the Small Business Jobs Survival Act (SBJSA) had a hearing at City Hall on October 22. The
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Ready to Eat
By Caroline Benveniste The retail activity on Hudson Street waxes and wanes with the seasons. Sometimes many of the restaurants and shops on one block close en masse (like Bespoke Kitchen, Tavo and La Maison Supreme), and other times improbably fancy stores open on a formerly bleak block (Günter Seeger, Sherri B and Martial
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Ambitiously Pursuing a More Vibrant 7th Avenue South Neighborhood
By Brooke Schooley Carved diagonally through residential streets in 1917, 7th Avenue South quickly became a service station-lined gateway to the Holland Tunnel, running from West 11th to Clarkson Street. You can see the vestiges of that era in the avenue’s low-rise buildings with their art deco trimmed cornices. Today, 7th Avenue South’s wonky intersections and
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A New Middle School for the West Village
By Ananth Sampathkumar, Partner NDNY Architecture + Design Middle School 297 NYC moved into its new location at 75 Morton Street this fall. The school officially opened in 2017 and had been sharing space with The Clinton School near Union Square for a year, while the building was under construction. In the mid 2000’s, parent
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West Village Images by Joel Gordon
Volunteers Thanksgiving Turkey Dinner for the Homeless Over 1,000 people from many walks of life, including seniors, the homeless and families on a budget, attended the Salvation Army’s annual free Thanksgiving dinner, with over 100 volunteers of all ages in the kitchen and on the servicing line. Photo credit © Joel Gordon 2018—All rights reserved. Other
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St. John’s Gets Another Do-Over: The Saga of 550 Washington Street
By Brian J. Pape, AIA, LEED-AP If you don’t have your scorecard handy, you’re going to miss some plays with this development along West Street across from Pier 40 and the Hudson River Park Trust (HRPT) headquarters. More than four years ago the developers of St John’s Terminal were considering an office/commercial scheme that would
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First Class
By Keith Michael I feed my first of the month stamped envelopes of bills into the big blue mouth of the mail box on the corner and, of course, jiggle its jaw (as my mother taught me) to be sure that my envelopes haven’t gotten stuck in its craw. Yes, I still pay bills with
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Andy Warhol: Endangered Species (At the Ukrainian Museum)
By Robert Heide At 222 East 6th Street (just off the Bowery) the ultra-modernistic Ukrainian Museum—which features multiplex galleries and a charming gift shop selling authentic embroidered shirts, dresses, books and oddities from Central Europe—is now presenting a splendid exhibition entitled Andy Warhol: Endangered Species. The ten striking silkscreen prints commissioned by Ronald Feldman (Feldman
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A Visit with Actress and Former Villager Marianne Rendon
By Jane Heil Usyk The last two years, since she left the Village, have been very, very busy for Marianne Rendon. How many young people graduate from college and immediately get a major acting part in a series? And then fill in the gaps in the shooting schedule with featured parts in movies? Marianne did
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Seven Books for Seven Ages
By Yalini Anne Sampathkumar (nine) Kids like to read and be read to. Some like fiction while others prefer non-fiction. Here are a few book suggestions, one for each age from four to ten. Puff the Magic Dragon by Lenny Lipton and Peter Yarrow (four-year-olds) Puff the Magic Dragon is a sing-along book about a
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Remembrances from The Lost Village: A Series of Stories About Greenwich Village
By Roger Paradiso After a screening of my film The Lost Village at the Cinema Village in April of 2017, I walked to the front of the screen to begin a question and answer period with the audience. Just as I got stationed, a kind and gentle man jumped out of his seat, presumably to
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Prostitution 101
“Working” college students now includes prostitution to pay cost of attending NYU By Roger Paradiso I was an innocent man on September 1, 2015. That’s when I attended the demonstration of Faculty and Students against NYU, the corporate university. I was innocent until a masked woman, who turned out to be an NYU student, stood
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Northwell Opens Suite of Doctor Offices
In a move to return the range of care once offered by St. Vincent’s, West Villagers are now being offered the skills of highly qualified physicians, each expert in the major disciplines of ambulatory medicine, in offices just across the avenue from the Northwell urgent care center. The entrance to this two floor suite of
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Graffiti Art and HipHop Architecture
By Brian J. Pape, AIA There is a keenly watched legal battle being waged over creative expression, as noted in WestView News March and April 2018 articles by Catherine Revland, The 5Pointz Decision. The Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 (VARA) has been litigated in a jury trial for the first time, ending February 2018 with
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Sometimes You Need Neighbors
How the Charles Street Block Association got started By George Capsis Sometime around the spring of 1971 I became aware of a program that the City was offering, which was that if you paid for a tree the City would plant it right in front of your building for free. Wow, that was, at that
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L-Train Shutdown “Mitigation” Back In Court
By Arthur Z. Schwartz The Mitigation Plan spawned by the upcoming April 2019 shutdown of the L Train, is back in court. As Westview went to press, the 14th Street Coalition, joined by a dozen block associations and condominium corporations, with new support from residents of East 14th Street and the Delancey Street area, filed
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Court to Beth Israel: “Maybe I Won’t Allow You To Close”
By Arthur Z. Schwartz Sometimes the wheels of Justice grind slowly. Back in November 2017, Westview Publisher George Capsis and I, plus the political group known as Progressive Action of Lower Manhattan, filed a lawsuit to reverse the partial closure of Beth Israel Hospital (which involved the loss of its heart surgery unit, its maternity
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Humberto Gonzalez-Bernal Comes Home!
By Arthur Z. Schwartz In the August issue of WestView I wrote about heroic efforts to save the life of 87-year-old Humberto Gonzalez-Bernal, a 59-year resident of Horatio Street. Humberto came to Horatio Street from Cuba in 1959, just before the revolution (which he supported; he still idolizes Fidel). He made his living as a
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Dine in Lefkada Tonight
Mediterranean Cuisine—Made with Love: From the Greek Island of Lefkada to Manhattan’s Westside Market, by Maria Zoitas By Caroline Benveniste With the dwindling number of supermarkets in the Village, it’s lucky that Villagers have access to a Westside Market on West 14th Street and 7th Avenue. But to call it a supermarket is unfair: when
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Halloween Jack-O-Lanterns
West Village Images by Joel Gordon It is believed that the custom of making jack-o-lanterns at Halloween began in Ireland, and was named after the phenomenon of a strange light flickering over peat bogs. It has also been suggested that the jack-o-lanterns originally represented Christian souls in purgatory, as Halloween is the eve of All Saints’ Day. “The Legend
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Greenwich House Pottery Expansion Plans Fire Up the Neighbors
By Ananth Sampathkumar, Partner NDNY Architecture + Design NIMBY or ‘Not In My Backyard’ is a term you hear quite often in conjunction with developments in the West Village. With residential properties in close proximity to commercial, retail and institutional establishments, the chances that a new development infringes on the light and air qualities of
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Then&Now: The Greenwich Village Theater
By Brian J. Pape, AIA Greenwich Village and the area of Sheridan Square was a popular tourist destination during the 1910s and 1920s, helped by the development of the West Side subway line in 1918. The Greenwich Village Theatre was originally built for the Greenwich Village Players, who, like the Washington Square Players, were amateur
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Why You Didn’t See Penny Mintz on the Ballot
By Penny Mintz If you are one of the 1,900 people, during those brutally hot days at the end of June and the beginning of July, who signed a petition to get me—Penny Mintz—on the ballot as candidate for Member of the Democratic Party State Committee, you may have noticed that my name did not
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Politics and Civics at the Jefferson Market University
By Nancy Aravecz In anticipation of this November’s midterm elections, the Jefferson Market Library is offering three courses on political themes that will be free and open to the public. These classes are geared toward helping members of the Greenwich Village community and beyond brush up on American civics, politics, law, and history. First up is
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Reefer Madness
By Lorraine Gibney On Sunday, August 12, 2018, the West Village Wellness Social met in the Westbeth Community Room on Bank Street. I accidently walked into the health social looking for Ilsa Gilbert for a scheduled interview; however, Ms. Gilbert and I remained in our seats, and enjoyed the music, lecture, and food. Eve Zanni
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Tech Tips & Tricks
By Peter Rooney Topic of the month: Safety There are many scams online, but perhaps the most insidious is the “Scareware” scam: “Your computer has been infected, but we can help.” How it works: A window pops up about a legitimate-sounding antivirus software program like “Security Tool,” and alerts you that your machine has been infected
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IN AND OUT
Retail may be struggling, but some brands have decided that the way forward is to improve customer experience, and one approach is to add food and drinks to the mix. Another trendlet we continue to observe is the proliferation of Asian restaurant openings in the Village. The item that received the most press this month
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From the Blue Zone to the Big Apple: Ikaria Comes to New York
By Lisa Bernhard On November 3rd and 4th, Ikarian chef Eleni Karimalis and her winemaker husband George will talk about their philosophy of healthy living and lead hands-on cooking classes of their favorite plant-based dishes at Miette Culinary Studio in Little Italy. Eleni and George, who were featured on Diane Kochilas’ My Greek Table (“Flavors
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9-11 Tiles Gains Gallery
Unique Mobile Gallery: The commemorative tiles created shortly after 9-11 and displayed at the juncture of Greenwich and 7th Avenue gained a mobile gallery with over 2000 tiles. The gallery is seeking volunteer guides and memorabilia. Please call or e-mail Dusty Berke—info@tilesforamerica.org, 917-601-7137.
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USPS Stamp
September was all Westbeth all the time! The United States Postal Service unveiled the latest commemorative stamp in their Music Icons series on September 7th. The stamp features a photograph of John Lennon taken by rock n’ roll photographer and Westbeth resident Bob Gruen. Other residents fondly recalled days gone by when it wasn’t out of
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West Village History: My Father and The Irish Hooligans
By Lorraine Gibney Children need supervision to become law abiding citizens. Since my father was parentless, he learned to run the streets of the West Village with unsavory characters. He was a citizen of his time and place, under a different type of supervision. Francis, nicknamed “Shorty”, was an elf-like little character. As the youngest of
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The Poetry Jukebox
By Carol Yost I kept wondering what the heck that odd yellow pipe, seemingly coming up out of the sidewalk, on Ruth E Wittenberg Plaza (the triangular traffic island at 6th Avenue and Greenwich Avenue, across from the garden by the Jefferson Market Library), was all about, but I just kept walking by. What I
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Free Wi-Fi Kiosks in the Village
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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Maggie B’s Quick Clicks
THE FAMILY NEIGHBORHOOD, where everyone has either pets or kids—and sometimes both! All photos by Maggie Berkvist.
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Hudson River Park Gets a Much-Needed Facelift
CONSTRUCTION AT PIER 45/CHRISTOPHER STREET
