By Bennett Kremen The Lost Village is an alarming documentary that uses engaging interviews and strong visuals to show us the slow death of that unique treasure called Greenwich Village. You’d have to be deaf and blind not to notice that dismayed Villagers everywhere are profoundly baffled by a cancerous disease known as hyper-gentrification. The film is not a nostalgic historic rendering of the Village
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Northwell Returns Doctors to St. Vincent Site
By Joy Pape I’ll never forget the day I started work for Lenox Hill Hospital when I attended my first day of orientation in a lovely venue in Long Island. It had recently been merged with the North Shore Long Island Jewish (NSLIJ) Health System, now known as Northwell Health. It was the time of
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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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Mia Says
As an old dog I cannot always hear your love, but I can feel it. Photo by Dusty Berke.
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The West Village’s Historic Lintels
Lintels, did you ever notice our West Village Lintels? You might ask, what are lintels? Well they should not be confused with lentils as in your soup. No, they are, according to Webster’s Dictionary, “the horizontal piece over a door or window”. Well, I never really did notice these lintels until our historic 1853 co-op
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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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Gentleman Jerrold: Our Fierce Warrior in the House
By Catherine Revland The NRA is Twitterpated over Congressman Jerrold Nadler. “To say it bluntly,” warns #AmmoLand, “the man would be a nightmare for Second Amendment supporters if the Democrats take control of the House.” Aside from being the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, with jurisdiction over the Department of Justice, the FBI,
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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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Hospital Transformations Hearing
By Penny Mintz It has been a busy few weeks for the future of Beth Israel and hospitals in general. On October 3rd, the City Council’s Health and Hospital Committee conducted a hearing about the ongoing hospital “transformations.” Matt Siegler, a senior vice-president from the Health and Hospitals Corporation testified about the changes in our
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West Village Original: Jenny Tango
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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Then & Now: Bleecker Playground Park
By Brian J. Pape, AIA, LEED-AP Pick any public park, and it has a story to reveal about what it once was, and how it came to be a parkland in a densely built metropolis. In this ‘bird’s-eye’ rooftop view, Hudson Street heads straight south from the Meat Market district, with Bank Street intersecting in
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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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Tech Tips & Tricks
By Hank Kee Topic of the Month: Do You Know Who Has Your Personal Data? Besides Facebook and Google, do you know who has your data? What are they doing with that data? Have you heard of Google Timeline? What is Google Timeline? I recently received an email from Google Timeline. Google has information on
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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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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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Angels belong
By Roberta Curley look what it took for you to uncover their path I won’t gallivant upward not while I’m down here doing stuff like tightening difficult-to-screw-in lightbulbs or whooshing along avenues of the self-interested my plan is to try Daddy, you’d be SO proud your prayers stream in daily I’m striving to budget and
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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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Caruso’s Quips
By Charles Caruso Thumbing through an old telephone book can be a melancholy experience. Always put important things in the same place. The majestic grace of a building crane moving slowly across the morning sky. A mot to trouble the mind’s eye. The new chumminess between North and South Korea foreshadows the end of U.S.
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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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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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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
