By Gordon Hughes It’s about time. On August 18, 2021 I was back in Gotham for the first time in almost a year and a half. What better way to make reentry than attend the reopening of the venerable Joe Allen’s. The place was packed with actors, directors, dancers, singers, and, of course, producers. Laughs
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The Digital Age or the End of the World as We Knew It
By Roger Paradiso Some say the digital age had its beginning with the transistor, which belonged to the analog age. Remember transistor radios? I remember walking around the neighborhood listening to WABC disc jockeys who played the top forty hits. Whether it was the Beach Boys or the Four Seasons, it was a special time.
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Ramati, the Local Shoe Brand that is Changing Fashion’s Carbon Footprint One Step at a Time
By Karilyn Prisco As a fashion stylist I am constantly being introduced to new brands, trends and products. My love for fashion and my consumer responsibilities have always held a tense relationship. The devastating statistics speak for themselves. A 2021 report from the World Economic Forum identified fashion, and its supply chain, as the planet’s
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DOT Fails Enforcement of Open Restaurants
By Brian J. Pape, AIA,LEED-AP In a damning report issued by Council Speaker Cory Johnson’s office in August, the long-standing safety rules for street rights-of-way are routinely violated with no apparent enforcement. At a time when the mayor’s office and its Department of City Planning (DCP) are pushing to adopt new zoning laws that shift
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Brass Bands: Sounds and Smiles on a Summer Night
By Ede Rothaus Wafting through the hot, still, and damp air of an August summer night in Manhattan: the unmistakable melody of La Vie en Rose. I followed the music, towards the river, seeing glints of gold shining in the fading light. The glittering came from two of the instruments being played by a small
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Beth Israel Hospital Has Been Saved
By Siggy Raible It’s mid-August and we Manhattanites with no summer retreat are living in the city during the dog days of summer…you know, “those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer.” With time on my hands, I’ve decided to respond to the article by Arthur Schwartz, “Beth Israel Hospital Staying Open—What Should It Look Like,”
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Why I Have Great Expectations for Eric Adams
By Arthur Schwartz For the last seven years New York City has suffered through one of the most ineffectual Mayors in its history. That even includes Abraham Beame (remember him?) the Mayor who reigned over the collapse of New York City in the 1970s, and the takeover of New York City’s finances by a State
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The Children’s Free Opera
By Michael Feldman Recently, Terry Stoller, writing for the Westbeth, “Profiles in Art” series, interviewed me about my life’s work, which naturally centered on St Luke’s, China, the New York Collegium and the more recent St Veronica project and my admitted responsibilities in its demise. Somewhat forgotten were my early years in IS 70, an
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Salvador Peter Tomas Sang His Farewell Aria at 101
By J. Taylor Basker Operas often have tragic endings. Some of their greatest music has been written for characters who are dying. Death is seen as a dramatic opportunity, a moment of truth about our human condition. It is not feared or denied, but celebrated with powerful heartbreaking music. Gospel music also celebrates death—as a
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The Best Secret About Property Insurance Claims That You Need to Know
By Brian Evans, CEO Eastern Public, LLC, http://www.EasternPublic.com When the little newspaper that could suffered water damage, first from a suddenly leaky sink drain, and then from an abrupt roof failure, they did what millions of New Yorkers have done before them—they turned to their property insurance carrier for help. And just like the millions
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Why Exposing the Truth About 9/11 is Still So Important
By Craig McKee It’s hard to believe it has already been 20 years since the world was stunned by what we were told was a terrorist attack by Muslim extremists. We remember the images, the feelings, the disorientation we experienced on that clear Tuesday morning as we watched something unfold that we would never have
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The Tallest Buildings in the World
By Eric Uhlfelder Twenty years ago he was in Hong Kong working on the AIG tower. He was having dinner with colleagues when he had first heard the news. It wasn’t the first time Leslie Robertson’s towers were attacked. When he surveyed the damage the day after the 1993 bombing, he found the Towers had
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Refugees in Our Own City
By Jeff Hodges On the night of September 10, 2001, I was shooting the Marc Jacobs Spring Collection at Pier 54. Actually, I was shooting the celebrity arrivals, and when that was finished, I walked to the end of the pier to shoot some video of the Twin Towers. Although the client only needed a
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Generation Z’s View of a Post 9/11 America
By Anastasia Kaliabakos When I was sixteen years old, I traveled on my first international flight on a trip to Italy. I had been to airports a few times in my life, but could never shake the awe of how secure New York airports like Laguardia or JFK were. There were endless lines, bag checks,
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Summertime in August at the Jersey Shore
By Robert Heide with John Gilman During the 1940s War years I was a wee tot who spent every summer in nearby Olympic Park, New Jersey’s greatest amusement park, which opened in 1840 and sadly closed in 1965. My father enjoyed the beer garden there sitting at a table and listening to Joe Basile’s brass
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The Digital Revolution and the End of the World as We Knew It
By Roger Paradiso You know you’re in another world when you call the 800 number for a product you have and get the following recorded message: “Hello and thank you for calling. Your call is very important to us.” Really? How come you can’t answer the phone if it is that important? The recorded voice
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Restore Fairness
By Alec Pruchnicki One of the possible reasons American politics is so polarized is that supporters of both sides never hear the opinions, arguments, and “facts” from the other side. There used to be a partial solution to this called the fairness doctrine. It required that TV broadcasters address issues important to the public and
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A Happy Heart Story, Featuring Non-Profit, Harboring Hearts
By Dana Jean Costantino For the last several years I have had the great pleasure of being on the Junior Board of a New York based non-profit called Harboring Hearts. They pride themselves on providing the best care and help for heart patients and their families. As many of us celebrate coming out of the
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Surviving My Childhood
By Jeff Hodges My daughter often tells our friends she is glad she survived my childhood. We spent our workweeks in Manhattan and our weekends upstate, which meant that by kindergarten my daughter could hail a taxi and pick up a snake. She often juxtaposed her locales—I once overheard her instructing some hunters sitting around
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Dr. Nicola Mertsaris: A Greek Immigrant’s Journey to His American Dream
By Anastasia Kaliabakos Everyone is familiar with the phrase “American Dream,” but what does it really mean? Is it a white picket fence in a suburban town? A brick house with a formidable garden? A stable office job, providing for a wife and two children (one boy, one girl) and a golden retriever? The American
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Sleep
Abstracted from A Scientists View of Almost Everything By Mark M Green When you or any animal sleeps there’s no doubt of the increased danger from enemies or predators. Sleep means vulnerability. Sleep also means less time to get things done. So why sleep? What is sleep? For a wide range of animals, from human
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Super Hero XII: Which is Worse/Better: An Israeli Kibbutz or a New York City Co-operative?
By Robert Kroll Being a co-op superintendent is not all glory, glamour, and pride. Much of the time, when the super is not busy making his residents’ lives infinitely better by eliminating as many of the daily annoyances of modern living in an ante-bellum tenement as possible, he is cogitating. He, she, or they have
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The Untouchable Billionaire Slumlord: Part 2
By Deborah Privitello The tragic building collapse in Florida prompted us to speak out. My family remains homeless, forced to vacate for years from the conditions in our apartment—living in fear, during a pandemic, silenced by our billionaire landlord Francis Greenberger, CEO and founder of Time Equities, Inc. His powerful influence has enabled his ongoing cover-up
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Selma 1965: An Alliance of Greeks and African Americans for Civil Rights
By Anastasia Kaliabakos There is no doubt that the past few years have rocked the United States of America and its citizens. A global pandemic, economic uncertainty, and campaigns for justice have lately been inescapable topics at the dinner table for most Americans. Sometimes, the way that the world looks today may be discouraging to
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New York City Fast-Food Employers Beware: Just-Cause Needed for Firing
By Samuel Dobre, Esq. and Paige Carey Effective as of July 5, 2021, New York City fast food employers may only discharge employees for just-cause. This new law effectively chips away at the American tradition of at-will employment. What type of employers and employees are impacted? An employee engaging in customer service, cooking, food or
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Kaldis on Kaldis: Aristodimos Kaldis (1899-1979) Painter and Activist
By Guy Kaldis My father came to the USA from the crumbling Ottoman Empire in 1917 at the age of 17 to escape a domineering mother and a family that thrust him into managing the family shipping business in the eastern Mediterranean. He hated what he described as the material or physical world and preferred
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COVID Handed New York City a Golden Biotechnology Opportunity
By Kambiz Shekdar, Ph.D. We’ve all heard how COVID has emptied office towers, how CEOs are struggling to bring employees back to the office, and how reluctant employees are holding on to their new stay-at-home routines and/or greener pastures in states with more space, breathable air, and lower costs of living. Times change; and from
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The Return of Trump Before Trump
By Tom Lamia The personally acknowledged precursor to Donald Trump has announced his candidacy for Governor in Maine’s 2022 election. Maine’s Constitution limits its governors to two consecutive terms. Paul LePage was Maine’s Governor from 2011 to 2019, serving two consecutive terms. LePage’s announcement was not unexpected. LePage is a well-known and much reviled politician
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It’s Not NIMBY, It’s BANANA
By Alec Pruchnicki, MD There has been lots of opposition to various development projects in lower Manhattan over the years, and opponents are often described as taking a NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) position. As these controversies have accumulated, I think there is a better description: BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything or Anybody).
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Governors Island
By Melinda Holm A delightful eight minute ferry ride from Battery Park is Governors Island, a car free nirvana, an oasis in the heart of New York Harbor preserved by the US Army and then the coast guard until the 1990’s when President Clinton gave the island to New York for $1. There is something
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Boffo Laughs, a Bagel and a Schmear
By Kieran Loughney “I’m picking up something for Joel Grey,” said the young man next to me as I shopped at a store in the West Village. Excited by Grey’s name, I exclaimed, “How cool!” The clerk ringing up my purchase, asked, “Do you know him?” I told her, “I sure know his work. I
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A Hundred Years From Today
By Robert Heide There are many parallels today in 2021 to the years following the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918 and 1919, which is estimated to have killed forty million people worldwide. As of this month the number of deaths worldwide from COVID-19 is reported close to 4 million people. It took many years to
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The Digital Revolution and the End of the Film World as We Knew It
The film industry takes another hit. Are more theater chains and studios ready to fall into the large pockets of FB, Google, and Twitter? By Roger Paradiso The news that Amazon is acquiring MGM-UA is not surprising if you believe that the big fish eats the little fish to survive in this Darwinian and Amazonian
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Billionaire Slumlord
By Deborah Privitello Another Fourth of July is upon us, and I write this in remembrance of my late beloved husband Michael Privitello on what would have been our wedding anniversary. My children and I have been rendered homeless since April 2018 from our three-bedroom duplex on E. 50th Street. We have lived here since
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New Women’s Apparel Brand
In 2020 my friend Adriana Berguer and I co-founded Ines, our women’s fashion brand. We live in a historic apartment in the West Village where we design pieces for our customers, individuals that are looking to add versatile, high-end products that can live in their closets forever as their personal styles evolve. Our pieces are
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FashionWars
By Jeff Hodges In the early 1980s, when fashion was starting to loom large on the cultural landscape, I found myself on the riser with a horde of fiercely competitive photographers who deeply resented my presence. We were pioneering the use of video to record fashion shows—a medium that ended up transforming staid runway shows
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Feed Me
By Keith Michael It all started with a Sunday email from WestView’s own “Maggie B’s Quick Clicks” Berkvist, forwarding an earlier email from Left Bank’s maître d’ Danielle Marie: “Maggie, we’ve got a new friend at Left Bank. He’s been sitting in the [flower] pots all morning. Hoping you can forward this to Keith? The
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A Child’s Stay in Thailand: Some Glimpses
By Carol Yost When British Prime Minister Anthony Eden bombed the Suez Canal in late 1956, the United States, fearing an all-out Mideast war, ordered all American women and children in the Middle East to be evacuated to Beirut, Lebanon. I was living with my family in Damascus, Syria, and the very night we got
