This was a fairly quiet month, but after a long wait, it finally appears that some tenants are coming to the old St. Vincent’s site on 7th Avenue. A number of long-awaited openings have materialized this month, and a new pizza place has replaced a short-lived pizza place in the Meatpacking District. Open Top Openings
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Let the Sun Shine
By Keith Michael Overheard on the street: “Who decides when is the first day of spring? Do a bunch of people sit around a table and say, ‘This would be, like, a good day?’” It’s hard for me to imagine thinking that “spring” is merely a marketing ploy and not that there are grand rhythms
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Notes From Away: The Past Is History
By Tom Lamia “The past is never dead. It’s not even past,” is from William Faulkner and often used to show literary cool when saying there is nothing new under the sun. I am going to use it here to make a different point—that in older societies the past is revered and relevant. One such older society is
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Suzanne Poli Classic Photo
On a hot June Pride day in 2005, Suzanne Poli captured this infamous roller-skating pair, renowned for their dramatic and colorful flair, posing with their favorite companion. Miss Columbia (l.), the beloved drag queen from Queens died last October and was widely mourned and celebrated. Her swirling antics, as well as Rollerina’s, became part of the fabric of the annual half-century Pride March
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Then&Now: The Grand Pier 54 of Titanic History
By Brian J. Pape, AIA, LEED-AP THEN: This row of grand buildings embellished with pink granite facades testifies to the world’s busiest seaport’s prominence in the early 20th century. Both freight and passengers moved through these gates which totally blocked the waterfront from the city. White Star Line’s RMS Titanic sank in April of 1912
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Mia Says
Mia Says: I tolerate the idiosyncrasies of others in the hope they will tolerate mine. Photo by Dusty Berke.
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Teddy Crosses The Goal Line
Theodore (Teddy ) Capsis completed his four year football scholarship at Holy Cross with graduation and a hug from his sister Sophia. Photo courtesy of Doric Capsis.
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Parsons School of Design Runway Show Ornamented Fifth Avenue
By Karen Rempel | Fashion Editor As part of the New School’s graduation festivities at the end of May, the Parsons School of Design held the first-ever street runway show in Parsons history. The event on 5th Avenue and 13th Street featured more than 250 unique looks by Parsons fashion grads. It was a spell-binding
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Lenox Hill Hospital Plan Includes Park Avenue Condo
By Brian J Pape, AIA, LEED-AP Superstorm Sandy hit Manhattan hard in 2012, two days before Halloween. East River hospitals were crippled, transferring patients to other facilities. But transportation was hit too, so commuters mostly stayed home from their hospital jobs. My West Village home was at the edge of the flooding and without power,
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Style on the Street: Men in Suits
As the thermostat inches up, the coats come off and men display their sartorial elegance in suits both retro and up-to-the-minute. Text and photos by Karen Rempel.
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Maggie B’s Quick Clicks: ‘Tis the Season for Comings and Goings
—And all the signs that “Summer Is Icumen In”!
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Drink Your Tea
By Keith Michael Millie’s bounding “corgi kibble dance” inspired by a small handful of kibble tossed onto the floor is just the distraction needed for her while I sneak out the door. I’m on my way to the Hudson River Park Trust offices at Pier 40 for a meeting planning another summer of Sunday morning
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New Intergenerational Housing Ideas
By Brian J. Pape George Capsis asked me to please find the nonprofit company he saw in a TV presentation about “shared” apartments designed for unrelated individuals who are living collectively on either side of a shared kitchen and bath because this was like senior share apartments he wrote about in an earlier edition. A
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THEN AND NOW: The New School for Social Research Celebrates 100 Years!
By Brian J. Pape, AIA, LEED-AP For the first decade of its existence, beginning in 1919, the New School for Social Research and Alvin Saunders Johnson (1874-1971), a co-founder and leader of the institution from 1922 through 1945, operated out of six renovated brownstones on West 23rd Street. Johnson and others had been on the
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Lamenting the Loss of Our Lady
By Barry Benepe We have traveled to Paris every year for a month in the early autumn, staying on the west end of the Ile St. Louis adjacent to the Pont St. Louis leading to the Ile de la Cite and Notre Dame. We could look over at the eastern apse of Notre Dame with
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Five Cosmopolitan Artists at Westbeth Gallery in April
By Jane Heil Usyk “Worlds Seen and Unseen” is the name of this show featuring five well-traveled women who have been practicing their art for many years. It opens Friday, March 29th, from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., and will run from March 29th through April 20th, 2019. The hours of operation are 12:00 p.m. to 6:00
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Gary Sherball’s “Two Suspects” an Unexpected Joy
By Joel Gordon Judge Gary Sherball came to 69 Charles and sat and talked about the upcoming reading of his play with music at the Bitter End. He implored several times “come, come, and bring people.” I failed to put it in my calender and only recalled it when our photographer Joel Gordon called from
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The Vessel Arrives
West Village Images by Joel Gordon The $200 million centerpiece of Hudson Yards, The Vessel comes from British designer Thomas Heatherwick and is an inverted honeycomb-like structure of platforms and stairways. There are 75 pieces in total, each piece weighing about 93,000 pounds. It has 2,500 stairs and is 150 feet tall. Other examples can be
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Karen’s Quirky Style
The National Arts Club celebrated Jo Weldon’s new book, Fierce: The History of Leopard Print, in March, with a leopard-spotted event that had stylish New Yorkers turning out in truck-loads of faux pelts adorning every imaginable garment from boots to hats. Touted as a “neutral,” leopard prints might have been invented as nature’s camo, but
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Maggie B’s Quick Clicks
The Signs are All Around—At Last! All photos by Maggie Berkvist.
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Two by Two
By Keith Michael Honking and braying, a Canada Goose family flies across the promenade in front of us onto the lawn. Millie seems nonplussed as the geese immediately get industrious at their grass maintenance routine. Corgis are herding dogs, but maybe the geese are already orderly enough that Millie doesn’t feel the need to intervene,
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Constantinople Meets Rome
John Catsimatidis, owner of the Gristede’s supermarket chain, with his wife Margo, greet Cardinal Dolan in their Park Avenue apartment to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. Catsimatides has been invited to do a monthly column in WestView News based on his weekly radio series. When asked if he leaned right or left Catsimatidis responded—“in the middle, the truth.” WestView’s
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Drug Dealing—A Washington Square Park Industry
Oh wow, we did a short piece on large population of drug dealers in Washington Square Park last month and received some daring photos of their congregating every afternoon for what we guess is the pay off. Seems one guy is the boss and gives out the cash. It is disturbing to see how well
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Hey Jude, Lucio’s in the Village with Style
By Karen Rempel Bill Cunningham once said, “It’s not style unless it’s on the street.” The West Village is a glorious neighborhood for people-watching, as many of our neighbors and visitors are likely to be dressed in the unique style that makes New York such a fun place to live. On a recent sunny day,
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Ethnic Pride Portraits
Portraits of people around the world proud of their heritage, showing ethnic and religious pride wearing traditional folk regalia and costumes. Below: Greek, Korean, Native American, Hindu, Chinese and American African Muslim. Other examples can be found on my website www.joelgordon.com. Photo credit © Joel Gordon 2019—All rights reserved.
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Maggie B’s Quick Clicks
LAST CALL When the show opened last November, New York Times Art Critic Holland Cotter urged “MEET WARHOL, AGAIN, IN THIS BRILLIANT WHITNEY SHOW,” adding “the sweeping retrospective shows a personal side of the Pop master … and reasserts his power for a new generation.” And in the February 15th Times Weekend section, in a
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Right Wing Graffiti in The Village
The graffiti noted in Action Not “Art” in the September issue of WestView has sparked a backlash. There has been isolated “Deport Cuomo” and “InfoWar.com” graffiti around the West Village lately. The most recent addition is on the northwest corner of Hudson and Charles Streets. A neatly-lettered sidewalk chalk marking for the right wing InfoWars
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The Motivation for Political Paintings
By Phil Levine When I turned 40 years old (34 years ago) and living in Denver, I had this conversation with myself. “Philip, you think you’ve been given the gifts of music and art but you haven’t yet opened those gifts.” From that day on I committed myself to doing just that and began taking
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West Village Images by Joel Gordon: Art Illusions and Fantasies
Photographic series of digital computer art, illusions or fantasy featuring close up details taken from architecture and design elements of buildings. Other examples can be found on my website www.joelgordon.com. Photo credit © Joel Gordon 2019—All rights reserved.
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Then&Now: The Last One Left
By Brian J. Pape, AIA, LEED-AP Greenwich Village has been challenged on many fronts, but the car-centric culture has been one of the biggest. You may already be aware that when the early civic leaders decided Manhattan needed a simple, logical street layout for the city to grow north of Chambers Street, The Village
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Storefont Billboards
Storefront billboards are the spreading garish shrouds for dead retail shops that continually elude retail leases for months and even years. It is hoped that the City Council will enact legislation to end this new unique commercial blight; but landlords who despair of rentals are rapidly succumbing to the obvious attractive fees and Bleecker Street may
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Maggie B’s Quick Clicks
TO ALL MY FELLOW ‘CREATURES OF HABIT’: MAY YOU, AND ALL THE READERS OF WVN, HAVE A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR—maggie b All photos by Maggie Berkvist, with the exception of photo bottom right credit: Laurence Edelman.
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Celebrating Installation of New Jane Street Garden Fence
Officials joined the Jane Street Block Association (JSBA) and West Village Committee (WVC) to celebrate the installation of a new garden fence made possible by a grant from Speaker Johnson. From left: (in blue jacket) Bill Castro, Manhattan Borough Parks Commissioner; Brad Hoylman; Debra Glick; Gale Brewer; Corey Johnson; Susan Sipos of the WVC; behind
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