By John Bredin There are few places in America, or the world, with the active civic life of Greenwich Village. Where else would a 90-year-old zoning maven named Doris Diether, who puts the big shot developers in their place, be feted like a celebrity by an overflow, dignitary-studded crowd at Judson church—as she was last
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The Strand Bookstore Landmarking Debate
By Carol Yost There has been a proposal to landmark some buildings near where the 14th Street Tech Hub is going to be. The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP) would actually like to include far, far more buildings than the ones now under consideration. In any case, the threat of gentrification arising from the imminent
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L Train Not Shutting Down—But Will 14th Street?
By Arthur Z. Schwartz Back in 2016 the MTA did an Environmental Assessment of its now abandoned plan to shut the L Train down for 15 months, so that it could do electrical repairs in the Canarsie Tunnel. That 200-page report had a half page about mitigation. It said to add some more trains going
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Slogging Through Winter, Part Two
By Jane Heil Usyk I’ve already pushed through December and January. Now there are only three months left to go until beautiful (or mostly beautiful) May. Three months. What can you do with three months? Once I wrote a book in three months. I don’t feel like doing that again, though. Three dark, depressing months.
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The Women’s Rest Room and Abortion
By Dr. Donna Schaper Call me a drama queen or call me a woman. At least call me focused: I have one thing I want changed. It is the lines at the theaters in which women stand while men do not. Unisex bathrooms don’t only help people with “non-conforming” gender identities, they help women in
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Eating the Brand
By David Porat Lexus, Starbucks and Restoration Hardware (RH) are all trying to make friends by tickling your taste buds and satiating your tummy. All three have opened up impressive, or shall I say grand, temples to their brands in the Meatpacking and Chelsea Market Neighborhood. I have enjoyed in curious ways visiting all three and
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Kill the Zombie Park Already, Part VI: “I support affordable housing, but…”
By Alec Pruchnicki As the process to build the affordable and low-income housing called Haven Green on Elizabeth Street continues, Community Board 2 has held several public hearings. At the most recent one, I noticed something new. Virtually every speaker who supported keeping the Elizabeth Street Garden intact started with a phrase like “I support
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Depressed About Trump? Go on Jury Duty
By J. Taylor Basker I received the dreaded letter demanding that I show up for grand jury duty right after the New Year. I had misplaced my response to their questionnaire that probably would have disqualified me, so I received a jury duty notice. I could have gotten out of it, but since it was
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It’s My Turn
By James Lincoln Collier In the recent rather rambling chase for the presidency, there seemed to be a good deal of feeling abroad that it was Hillary’s turn. Bill had had his innings, and despite a small misstep—if that’s the appropriate term—came out of it pretty well. The Bushes believed that it was Jeb’s turn—it
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In Defense of Google
Dear Editors: I don’t agree with the sentiment that Google employees work online (WestView, January 2019) and on the phone and therefore don’t need a large office space—that is totally out of touch. Google is a premier global employer and offers jobs to thousands of people in New York that leave an impressive and lasting
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Seniors in Our City Can Have Scary Choices to Make
By Arthur Z. Schwartz In mid-December I got a worried phone call from George Capsis. An older woman (who I will call Fran for purposes of this article) had found her way to George’s apartment, holding a clipping from WestView about another older woman who George had referred to me with a landlord problem. She
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Notes From Away: War Story
By Tom Lamia I write on the day of the memorial service for George H.W. Bush. Today and during the preceding four days, many have spoken privately and publicly of the remarkable character of Bush 41. A connection between his character and the effect of his service in World War II has been noted as
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If Only God Had Money
By George Capsis Carol Yost, who scans the news with a mesh grid, sent me a Daily News article of November 26 that offered that tenants and developers “stand together” to push for changes in the rent law that will protect the safeguards in the original law of some 80 years ago. Hmm. Well, I do not
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Don’t Just Sit There, Resist—Part VIII: The Trump Effect
For each action in nature there is an equal and opposite reaction. —Newton’s third law. By Alec Pruchnicki After the Electoral College put President Trump in the White House, it appeared that he had invigorated the Republican Party. Mainline Republicans were cowed by his political followers into being spineless enablers of his policies at the
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Jerusalem: No Winners
TAGS: POLITICS, NEWS, OPINION By J. Taylor Basker I have lived and worked in the Middle East since 2007, teaching at an American university in Amman, Jordan. I’ve made frequent trips across the River Jordan to visit Jerusalem, relatives in Israel and friends in Palestine. The first time I entered Israel I was shocked to
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Marcus Welby is Dead
By Alec Pruchnicki, MD During the 1970s when Marcus Welby, M.D. was on TV, I seldom watched it. But, the image of Welby as the kindly, dedicated family doctor we were all familiar with, was well known. This image persists in our memories whether it’s a retired doctor or doctor’s daughter (see WestView September 2018
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“I Have What?” A Toxic Diagnosis
By A. I. Freeman At this year’s annual physical, the doctor entered the examination room with a grim expression. He said, “Tests confirm you have the onset of Trump Derangement Syndrome.” I was shaken. “My gosh, I have T.D.S.! How serious is it?” He replied, “Only Stage One. I’ll share a patient’s history: He was a retired Navy SEAL, a burly rugby prop with Stage Three T.D.S. After taping
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Don’t Just Sit There, Resist—Part VII: Elections Have Consequences
By Alec Pruchnicki The wheels of justice are slow to move, but when they do they grind exceedingly small. —popular axiom. The people of the country have done our part, for now, and produced a Democratic House of Representatives. Many of the congressional investigations of the Trump administration that have been undermined, if not completely
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Glyphosate in Greenwich Village?
By Robert Klein Jr. Glyphosate is used more than any other herbicide in the world, thanks to Monsanto (now Bayer), and it has been detected by laboratory testing in the urine of nine out of ten Americans. It has even been found in breast milk at concentrations much higher than the legally allowed limit for
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Who Else Did 9/11?
By Mark Channing Miller The US attorney’s office has just agreed to take another look at who did 9/11. The accepted view is that a handful of Muslim fanatics trained in U.S. flying schools commandeered four commercial passenger planes and aimed two of them at the World Trade Center, one at the Pentagon, with the
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Bring Back Bleecker
By Robert Ragaini From the Summer 2018 newsletter of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation “The transformation of and vacancies on Bleecker Street have been a particular concern to GVSHP. We have worked with local merchants on […] walking tours to bring patrons to the street and to see if disincentives for keeping storefronts
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The Story Emerges
By Tom Lamia Life everywhere has resembled a bad novel these past two years. Bad, but with all the ingredients needed for commercial appeal: good guys, bad guys and all shades of characters in between; intrigue worthy of Hitchcock; foreign malevolence on the scale of Peter Lorre; cryptic influences sure to be made known but
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Bureaucracy Rewards Doctor’s Dedication With a Penny
To The Editor: I was deeply impressed and moved by Dr. Gary Kohl’s story, “Duty to Warn: How Big Business Runs the Healthcare Industry,” in the October 2018 issue of Westview News. My father was an internist from Germany who lived in the USA for 54 years, had an office in New Jersey as a
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Duty to Warn, Part II: How Big Business Runs the Healthcare Industry
By Gary G. Kohls, MD In this two-part series, Dr. Kohls explores how the intersection of big business and the pharmaceutical, vaccine and medical device corporations have come to rule the healthcare industry. Part one of the series appeared in the October issue of Westview. The Big Pharma propaganda campaigns are much more potent today
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Hospital Board Members Reap Sure Rewards by Serving on the Boards of Pharmaceutical Companies They Buy From
By George Capsis Oh wow—I was surprised when I heard Northwell’s CEO Michael Dowling, with his thatched hut Irish brogue, boasting about Northwell’s purchase of a successful chain of storefront doctor’s offices, with one right on 8th Street just a couple blocks from the massive “overbite” building on 7th Avenue and 12th Street. I realized
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Does Rudin Want Your Fruit Vendor to Move?
As you walk around the streets of the West Village, you see more and more closed storefronts standing empty indefinitely. Not many businesses can say that they have been open in this neighborhood since 1991, but the Fruit Cart Vendor on the corner of 12th Street and 7th Avenue can. The third owner of the
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Why I Am Voting for Cynthia Nixon (Not Deborah Glick) For State Assembly
Glick Has Not Earned Your Vote. Nixon Represents Change. Think About It! By Jim Fouratt In the September issue of Westview, I wrote that Cynthia Nixon, if she did not win her primary against Andrew Cuomo, would be a perfect candidate to run on the Working Families ballot for NY State Assembly opposing 28 year
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Cynthia Nixon for Assembly? Time for A Change
By Arthur Z. Schwartz There was not a single Assembly District in the State of New York where Cynthia Nixon did better against Andrew Cuomo in the September 13th Democratic Primary than our 66th Assembly District. Yes, our bastion of progressivism gave her 57.5% of the vote against a man who spent over $20 million
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Squirrel Hill: It Could Have Been Greenwich Village
By Arthur Z. Schwartz I have struggled throughout my adult life with the question of the Jewish religion, and the “proper” parameters of a Jewish identity. With a name like Arthur Schwartz, I will never get far from those ancestors who escaped the Russian Czar and arrived in the Jewish diaspora of NYC. I was
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Indian Summer
By Tom Lamia As I write, in mid-October, I am feeling moderately pleased at having finished the bulk of my annual fall list of chores. The boat has been returned to its winter quarters in Newcastle, ten miles up the Damariscotta River. The son and grandson of its builder will look after it while the
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Village Community School Looks to Expand
SPACE & TIME—in this bustling urban environment we live in, everyone is looking for ways to better utilize what little we have of it. By Brian J. Pape, AIA, LEED-AP Village Community School (VCS) at 272 West 10th Street, between Greenwich Street and Washington Street, has applied for an expansion of its property’s buildings to
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The Village Community School’s Proposal: Is Bigger Always Better?
By Alan Chapell Seems like the West Village has become one of the busiest neighborhoods in NYC for development. One by one, our precious open spaces are being plugged in—all in the name of progress. But as the methodical drumbeat of development marches onward, it might be worth asking ourselves if all of this so
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Christine Blasey Ford and the Power of Memorable Architecture
By Ananth Sampathkumar, Partner, NDNY Architecture + Design Christine Blasey Ford testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 27th, 2018. Her testimony about the assault on her was both riveting and painful to watch. What made her statements so compelling to me was the clarity of architectural detail in her account. Her recollection included
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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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Duty to Warn: How Big Business Runs the Healthcare Industry
By Gary G. Kohls, MD PART ONE—In this two-part series, Dr. Kohls explores how the intersection of big business and the pharmaceutical, vaccine and medical device corporations have come to rule the healthcare industry. Part two of the series will appear in the November issue of WestView. “Corporations should not be involved in any aspect
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Notes from Away: Judicial Notice
By Tom Lamia Like you, perhaps, I spent time recently watching the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee. I have views on this sort of thing that are deeply associated with my past life as a lawyer. I went to Harvard Law School, graduating in the mid-1960s, a classmate and friend of Stephen
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Don’t Just Sit There, Resist-Part VI: What’s Next?
By Alec Pruchnicki Get it through your heads. They’re dusting off the hot seat for me! Lee J. Cobb as Johnny Friendly in On the Waterfront. The panic that President Trump is exhibiting as his minions flip on him (Flynn, Cohen, Manafort and others) reminds me of the fictional corrupt union official at the end
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Caruso’s Quips
By Charles Caruso Thought on 9/11 – Politics plus religion equals blood. There’s a little click in the air when early afternoon turns late. The first letter of the Times logo looks like Trump in profile. On a rainy day it’s OK to curse the TV weatherman. An apartment is not a home. A house
