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Jim Fouratt’s REEL DEAL: Movies That Matter
Awards season has arrived! A deluge of quality films will fall almost daily between September 1st and December 31st. In order to qualify for consideration of an Oscar, a film must run one week in New York City and Los Angeles. So you could buckle yourself into a theater seat for the next three months
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The Show that Keeps On Going
By Stanley Wlodyka The artists of A Diamond Jubilee are vastly different from one another, but they each can reveal the secrets to longevity and a fulfilling life. By the year 2050, experts predict that the segment of the population over the age of 60 will more than double, jumping from 900 million to 2.1
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“Are You Jewish?”
God Sends a Kosher Editor Oh wow, a $35,000, roughly 40 foot house-bus, in front of United Cigar and Christoper Street is blaring Yiddish music—this I gotta see. What I find is a very young rabbi waiting to step out and greet young men who look Jewish and return them to the kosher path. A
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West Village Sartorial Splendor
By Gordon T Hughes Jr. When you meet a guy, be it in the theatre district where I do most of my work, or in mid-town somewhere, and he is wearing a coat and tie, and tells you he lives in the West Village, it is most likely this writer. When I first moved to
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Theater Review: Days to Come
By Eric Uhlfelder So I said to myself, “The fate of the fool will also befall me. What then have I gained by being wise?” And I said to myself that this too is futile. For there is no lasting remembrance of the wise, just as with the fool, seeing that both will be forgotten
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Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood
By Robert Heide In the world of film, during the month of August, a new documentary called Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood opened in New York City at IFC on 6th Avenue, the Chelsea Cinemas, and 100 theatres across the land. It appears to be at this juncture certainly the most important, riveting,
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Andy’s and Everyone Else’s 90th Birthday
By John Gilman They were celebrating Andy Warhol’s 90th birthday August 9th with a big champagne gala at the Whitney Museum, and when we were personally invited by Claire K. Henry, assistant curator of the Andy Warhol Film Project, as her special guests, we were told to dress up in a gala Warhol manner. First
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A Tafel Surprise
By Jon D’Orazio I wish to share something I learned only last year, concerning Edgar Tafel, whom my architect father met at the ’67 AIA Convention. Together they arranged a summer job for me in Edgar’s office on 5th Avenue for that summer. It was just before I was to begin my Masters in Architecture
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Italytime to Present Three Eyes on Pinocchio in Spanish
By Jane Heil Usyk On November 7, 8, 9, and 10, the cultural organization Italytime will present a new version of Italy’s most famous character, Pinocchio, in Spanish. The show begins at 8 p.m. and is suitable for adults as well as children. Maureen Gonzalez, who translated the play, says, “One of Italytime’s goals since
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Tribute to Architect Edgar Tafel
By Brian J. Pape, AIA 39 years ago, this summer, upon the publication of Edgar Tafel’s memoir Apprentice to Genius: Years with Frank Lloyd Wright, my father-in-law Rabbi Bernard Mandelbaum arranged an introduction with the author. I visited Mr. Tafel’s Greenwich Village architecture office and got the book inscribed with “To Brian Pape—with best wishes
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Greenwich Village: What’s in the Name?
By Brian J. Pape, AIA Greenwich is a fairly common place name, a city in CT, a village in upper NY, NJ, RI, and of course, Greenwich England. Place-names typically have meanings that were significant to the settlers of a locality. When talking about place names, there is a specific term, toponymy, whereas “the etymology
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Designing Waste—Strategies for a Zero Waste City
By Mary Chandrahasan, Partner, NDNY Architecture + Design Here are some interesting numbers to get you thinking about waste. Did you know that nearly 40 percent of all food in the United States is wasted? Food waste accounts for 20 percent of materials sent to landfills and is the main contributor to landfill methane emissions,
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Gotta Go!
By Keith Michael Another Sunday. Another walk in Hudson River Park. At the end of her leash, Millie has already walked me around her neighborhood block this morning, taking care of corgi-business, and now I’m walking myself (at the end of my own inner leash) along the river promenade, absorbing the view. The summer is
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Escape to Nowhere
By Ananth Sampathkumar, Partner, NDNY Architecture + Design “Man Struck and Killed by Falling Debris from New York Building Fire Escape,” read the headline from an online paper covering the incident in Soho earlier this year. The irony is all too obvious. The structure that was meant to save lives ended up taking one—because of
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In and out
August was a surprisingly busy month—and since I was away for a couple of weeks I was particularly grateful to WestView readers for their observations. There were two major cocktail bar openings, a couple of restaurants, and the first shop to open in one of the properties that Brookfield purchased on Bleecker Street. Chelsea Market
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West Village Original: Carmen Grange
By Michael D. Minichiello This month’s West Village Original is Dr. Carmen Grange, born in 1922 in Colón, Panama, to Jamaican parents working in the Canal Zone. Grange studied pre-med at Trinity College in Dublin and returned to the U.S. to do her residency, eventually opening a practice on West 13th Street. A resident of
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Tech Tips & Tricks
By Peter Rooney Welcome to a monthly column to help you turn your computer into a friend, brought to you by one of the oldest computer clubs in the world—right here in the West Village. We are the New York Amateur Computer Club, http://www.nyacc.org. Each month we’ll explore a technical topic, and attempt to answer
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Michael’s Recipe for When You Talked Too Long
By Jane Heil Usyk Here is a quick, delicious, lifesaving recipe for nights when you come home late and only have five minutes to make dinner; it’s also very cheap. The other night, for example, we were at our usual Monday night powwow with Simon, our wonderful opera teacher, who teaches opera appreciation and goes
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Caruso’s Quips
By Charles Caruso The man in the seat gets the heat, the fame or the blame. ___ Dogs are not as stupid as cats think. ___ In these mass shootings, pity the gunman too. Think of the hell the poor devil went through before he cracked. ___ Geography is history. ___ New sex site: Orgasm.com
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West Village Sows their Oats
By Naomi Sternstein We like our oats to talk to us, and humbleness is not required. This much holds true on the topic of oat milk. Our Oatly oats tell us all about their “oatsome deliciousness and what our products can do” and we drink it right up. Sometimes we like their too-cute dad-humor asides
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Tom Savage: Writer, Poet, and Playwright
By Lorraine Gibney On Saturday, August 11th, I had the privilege of interviewing writer, poet, and playwright Tom Savage at the LGBT Community Center on West 13th Street. For more than three hours Mr. Savage freely discussed his fascinating escapades as a prolific writer during the 1960s—when he hobnobbed with the most iconic figures and
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Don’t Just Sit There, Resist! Part V: Hey, Young People. Vote!
By Alec Pruchnicki There appears to be a lot of enthusiasm within the Democratic party for the upcoming midterm elections. The recent victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC, as I like to call her), the numerous victories in special elections around the country, several high profile primary fights in New York, and massive opposition to the
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Can You Be Both Pro-Affordability and Anti-Development at the Same Time?
By Donna Schaper It isn’t easy to be virtuous in Gotham today. Maybe it never was. You can be an organization as lofty as Habitat for Humanity and be accused of selling out, destroying gardens and siding with developers. So-called “Haven Green” has given the devil a lot of opportunities to repeat history. In a
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Then & Now: Ninth Avenue Meatpacking District
By Brian J. Pape, AIA THEN: On May 4, 1927, Hudson Street, in this view looking south from West 14th Street, shows the Herring Lock and Safe Company Building on the right (c.1849; northern third, c.1854-60). It was a five-story “Flatiron-type” factory, built in “Vernacular/Neo-Grec” style for Col. Herring, which is still virtually intact. The
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Notes from Away: No Time for Paradise
By Tom Lamia In Maine, summers can be short when you are least expecting them to be; yet they are glorious even so. The glory I speak of is the bliss that comes with knowing that a moment long-awaited has arrived. It would be tempting fate to go about crowing of how a particular summer
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West Village Images by Joel Gordon
Street Gas Pipe Repair Crew I live on 12th Street and Seventh Avenue. Four blocks west, on Waverly Place and Seventh Avenue, street repair crews were replacing gas pipes. Excavating tractors would start at 8 pm, lifting and moving steel road covering plates. It was like living in a war zone, as jackhammers were digging
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Hoylman/Epstein Work to Save Hospital
By Penny Mintz Members of the Community Coalition to Save Beth Israel (CCSBI), including one of our founding members, State Assemblyman Harvey Epstein, met with State Senator Brad Hoylman in early August. This is the fourth in a series of meetings CCSBI has held with elected officials. Since April the coalition has met with City
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Jim Fouratt’s HAVE YOU HEARD!
SEPTEMBER 2018 VOTE AS IF YOUR FUTURE DEPENDS ON IT! If you are a registered Democrat in New York it is important to vote in the Democratic primary on September 13, 2018. I also know that most people in the City ignore the primaries. I know from personal experience. When I replaced Arthur Schwartz who
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Why I Am Voting for Cynthia Nixon and Jumaane Williams
By Arthur Z. Schwartz On Thursday, September 13th (make sure not to forget that our state leaders, ever anxious to depress voter turnout, moved this election to a Thursday) we face an incredibly important primary election in NY State. While Trump neophytes are winning Republican primaries, progressive Democrats are winning races all over in States
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Charles Street Makes History
On Wednesday, September 26, at 7 pm, the Charles Street Block Association is going to reveal and talk about the HISTORY KIOSK, a multi-sided street display case that will give tourists historic information, including names and biographies of historic and noted persons that have lived in the immediate area. The prototype is being offered by
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Postcards to Voters (Now Arriving in NYC by the Thousands!)
By Sarah O’Neill Nine of New York’s Democratic State Senators have caucused with Republicans for years, tipping control to Republicans. Thankfully, we will have challengers for each one of them in the primary on Thursday, September 13th. And from now until September 7th there is an easy, fun way to help the good guys: #PostcardsToVoters
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DOT Lies to the Feds About 14th Street Plan
By Arthur Z. Schwartz I reported last month that the 14th Street Coalition, a group of 15 Block Associations, condo associations and co-ops, had won a major victory in their fight to keep the NYC Department of Transportation (DOT) from shutting down 14th Street to vehicle traffic, other than buses, as part of the efforts
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Historic MeatPacking District Development
Amazingly, since we last reported on the Gansevoort Market Historic District (Nov. 2017 issue), we see the Meat Packing District quickly becoming one of Manhattan’s “Silicon Alley” districts populated by high tech companies; not just Google/Alphabet, Apple, Samsung, Tesla, and the Chinese giant, Alibaba, but many, many others. Tech companies are drawn to the “cool”
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Preview of IFC Coming Attraction
Opening on October 5th at the IFC Center on 6th Avenue (at West 3rd Street) will be another hot documentary film directed by Matt Tyrnauer (I wrote about his documentary, Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood, on page 22 of this issue) on the legendary discotheque Studio 54 where sex, drugs, and Donna Summer
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Great Theatre From Home
I have been involved in An American In Paris from the very start. This musical, its cast, production team, as well as the producers, have been one of the most thrilling experiences of my life. From the opening night in Paris at Theatre du Chatelet, to opening night here in New York at the Palace,
