Google Excludes Xavier Mission’s “Grab and Go” from Community Grants
Through WestView, I wish to thank Xavier Mission at St. Francis Xavier Church on West 16th Street for nutritious “Grab and Go” brown bags distributed every Sunday between 12:40 and 1:30 p.m. The volunteers are tireless and respectful. However, I wish to ask the recipients to be mindful of cleanliness and not to throw banana peels, or even the bananas, on the ground. There are waste cans for that purpose.
Finally, Google Community Grants funding has unfortunately excluded Xavier Mission from its funding sites. Readers, please write to Google and tell this giant tech firm to support Xavier Mission, which is just a few blocks from its building on 8th Avenue.
—Cecilia K. Gullas
Streetwise: The Car / Restaurant / Citibike / Orange Cone Wars
We have a newly heightened conflict in NewYork City:
Parking spots versus restaurant spaces.
No question that restaurants hold high esteem and critical value in our city, and the West Village is among the greatest showcases of international restaurants in the world.
We have class, we have diverse quality cuisine and we have the wide neighborhood sidewalks to accommodate them in a pandemic. It’s great to see life come back to Greenwich Village and New York with the sidewalk restaurants everywhere…but I have a car…no don’t hate me… and this has become a real Civil War finding a parking spot.
Oh and yes those two other factors—a massive decade-long Citibike takeover of former parking spots and the new explosion of orange cones—implying, but not necessarily actually meaning, work to take place.
How do we deal with all this mess??
Overall it’s a symbol of New York City’s challenge with diversity of transportation versus economic and social survival. And as the pandemic rages into the cold weather and the specter of heated tents on the street becomes real, what then?
I’m not pretending to have an answer—it’s an open question which I would love our politicians and readers to address.
— Bruce Poli
Goodbye Conspiracies!
The September issue of WestView News devoted four full pages, more than any exposé ever printed in WestView, to the promotion of conspiracy theories to explain the destruction of the entire World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. It is eminently clear, however, what led to the collapse of the twin towers and the following fires which consumed Buildings 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and virtually all the buildings standing at the World Trade Center. What caused this fiery calamity was the impact of two hijacked passenger jets. The first jet came from the north and crashed into the top floors of the North Tower, Building One. The second plane, a passenger jet coming from the south laden with enormous amounts of explosive fuel blasted into the South Tower, Building Two, slicing into and exploding against Building One in a fiery double punch. There is no doubt of these facts.
The conspiracy theorists live in a fantasy world in which they ask our readers to embrace their beliefs that government agents secretly planted bombs throughout the World Trade Center precisely timed to explode simultaneously when the two hijacked airliners struck. They ask us to believe that these agents knew just when the hijacking and crashes would take place while they waited patiently by their detonators to kill themselves and the 3000 other human victims. When did WestView become a comic paper? What has happened to the intelligence of its editorial staff?
—Barry Benepe
Will Bleecker Stay Famous?
Dear Editor,
Coming back from Trader Joe’s via Bleecker Street, I noticed several angry announcements on some storefronts blaming the Governor and the Mayor for the permanent closing of their respective stores.
I agree with them. Bleecker Street is famous. But will it stay that way? What with the political situation, I believe that things are only likely to get worse mere days after the upcoming Election. After all, which candidate is more likely to keep big cities, including ours, safe? Will Bleecker Street be boarded up permanently?
Some readers have another or second homes to go to. And then there are the others, including people like myself. Do I sound somewhat concerned?
—John F. Early, Charles Street
Regarding the Graffiti at 163 W. 10th St (Magic Trick and You Go Girl in DayGlo Yellow), I went to the 6th Precinct in the 24 hours afterwards in the first week of May and tried to make a complaint. Not only wasn’t I told any arrest had been made, the officers on duty did not seem to even be aware of it. I was told there was nothing they can do and that the only person who could report it as a crime was the building owner. Seeing as how the building already had several sections of graffiti on it all I could do was photograph it and send the photos to you at West View News.
Six months later there is more graffiti by the week and none of it like the “Texas” and “Magik Trick” etc is being remediated. Buildings should be fined by the month, tagging in a historical district is debilitating to neighborhood morale. And in the past 2 months there are daily reports online of buildings being accessed and packages stolen in hallways throughout the Village. Video clips of masked men walking in on surveillance and none are being caught. What’s next?