By Frank Quinn WARNING: The following may contain misinformation. Reader discretion is advised. Most of us in NYC interact with the police only when there’s an emergency, but a few go to public meetings, like the one I was at this past summer to review the situation at Washington Square Park. It was captivating to
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Sarah Jessica Parker on WestView
In early November, as we were getting ready to leave Lenox Hill Hospital after a week long stay where I receivied a heart stent, Dusty handed me an email from our WestView editor, Kim, which was a copy of an article in Travel and Leisure and in which Sarah Jessica Parker is asked “What makes
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Hell on Wheels
By Kieran Loughney The threat is stealthy, silent, spine-tingling, and all too real. Our strolls through the West Village had delighted us before the danger emerged. But things changed. Moving along sidewalks warily, we gently chided the culprits as they whizzed by. “Careful there, please,” we’d say. As the risk intensified, and our patience wore
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SERINO Pop Up Shop
NYC-based brand Serino opened a temporary creative studio and boutique on Bleecker Street on November 4th. Serino 330A Bleecker Street New York, NY Hours: Tues – Sat 11am to 7pm Sun – 12pm to 6pm More about Serino: The NYC-based brand was recently launched after two years in the making by a team of fashion and tech veterans.
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Northern Dispensary Gets a New Life
By Brian J Pape, AIA, LEED-AP In 1831, carpenter Henry Bayard and mason John Tucker built a two-story brick building on a triangular plot of land at Grove Street and Waverly Place to house Greenwich Village’s free medical clinic, the Northern Dispensary. The clinic’s purpose, “To furnish medicine and medical attendance gratuitously, to such of
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Notes From Away: Man in the Middle
By Tom Lamia Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer was my classmate at Harvard Law School. Steve was also my model for brilliance without pretense. No one in that Kennedy era circle of the ambitious and talented seemed more able, or better directed toward making a mark on the world. For a few weeks in the
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Leave the Attitude, Take the Cannoli
By Alec Pruchnicki, MD Twenty-eight years ago, when I moved down to Greenwich Village from Arthur Avenue in The Bronx, I wanted to find an Italian pastry shop like the ones in my old neighborhood. I found Rocco’s on Bleecker Street. For twenty-eight years I have been eating their cannoli and panettone. No more. The
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An Angry Reader Spawns a Solution
By George Capsis We don’t get too many angry letters to the editor but we sure got one from Laurence Edelman, who was outraged at the disparaging remarks we offered in our July edition about the restaurant sheds that, according to our restaurant owner and WestView critic, evidently helped to save his business. But the
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The Village Awakens!
By Hannah Reimann Like the re-emergence of post-pandemic Broadway, the Village’s theatrical and cultural world comes alive with exciting events in October and November 2021. The official soft launch of Welcome Back, West Village! will kick off this October featuring local restaurants, concerts, films and other performance events on the streets and in venues of
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PALM’s Focus: Housing and Health Insurance
By Penny Mintz Now that the primary elections are over, Progressive Action of Lower Manhattan (PALM), a chapter of the statewide New York Progressive Action Network (NYPAN), is once again focused on effecting grassroots change that matters to the residents of Lower Manhattan. On August 17th, PALM held a meeting in Jackson Square—the first live
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9/11 on 9/12/21 at Westbeth
By J. Taylor Basker To commemorate 9/11, there will be an event on 9/12 at Westbeth Artists Housing. A poem written by Griselda Steiner will open the event. After that there will be a digital presentation of photos from 9/11 by Westbeth photographers (David Plakke, David Seccombe, Judy Lawne, and others) who spent months documenting
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9/11 Twenty Years
By George Capsis Everybody has a 9/11 story; here is mine… I was working as a consultant for the United States Council for International Business, and there was a going to be a conference way up on one of the higher floors of Building One of the World Trade Center. I toyed with the idea
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Paris or Shanty Town?
By George Capsis Just a few feet from where I am keying this at 69 Charles Street, a very young Sinclair Lewis and his roommate (brother of poet Stephen Vincent Benét) would walk to the exit door on many Sunday mornings on their way to the outdoor cafe at the famed historic Brevoort Hotel at
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City Planners Become Enemies of Historic Preservation
By Brian J Pape, AIA, LEED-AP Never before have we witnessed such a callous attitude about historic preservation exhibited by city officials and department heads. Mayor de Blasio’s Department of City Planning (DCP) is on the warpath against historic districts—proposing rezoning that strips the historic districts of protections, and substituting open development measures that are
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Homeless Encampments
By Alan Cohen Greenwich Village is experiencing an explosion of homelessness and homeless encampments that surpasses anything longtime residents can recall. It is part of the chaos that has descended on this neighborhood, which includes stabbings, muggings, a shooting, and closed streets that house nightly parties which cause strewn garbage. Residents face difficulties when trying
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Open Restaurants: Assault on Quality of Life
By Brian J Pape, AIA, LEED-AP Once upon a time, city residents worked with their city government to protect the quality of life for all: noise ordinances were developed to limit the volume and hours of loud crowds, loud music, and loud work sites; restaurants were required to limit sound pollution with closed windows and
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Fifth Year Commemoration of the Pulse Nightclub Shooting
By James Tigger! Ferguson Five years ago, an unspeakable massacre occurred at Pulse nightclub. We live in a country that worships guns—the power, the money, the violence and the hatred that guns represent. So it certainly wasn’t the first massacre, nor would it be the last. And though it was the deadliest shooting in this
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A Great Victory—Beth Israel to Stay Open
By Penny Mintz In a closed Zoom meeting on Tuesday morning, June 15, 2021, representatives from Mount Sinai informed Community Board #3 that Beth Israel Hospital will remain open. I was not invited to attend. Nor were most of the community health activists involved in the struggle to keep Beth Israel open. But I learned
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A Tribute to Detective Stanley Dash
By Lisa Smith Dear Detective Dash, or may I call you Stanley? You’re gone now, having died from COVID on May 29th, so you won’t be reading this, but I want the world to know: you were one of the good guys that helped put me back together. You know my entire story, as you
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Charles Street Association News
Dear neighbors, Thank you for coming out and helping restore Charles Street to its natural beauty! Already, these flowers are putting a smile to all the faces when strolling down the street. To maintain our flowers throughout the summer, these tree-beds will need plenty of water. Please kindly remind your super or building manager to
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WHAT A DIFFERENCE A DAY MAKES
SATURDAY, JUNE 26 SUNDAY, JUNE 27 WHAT A DIFFERENCE A DAY MAKES: A large crowd of young people danced to live music at Washington Square Park (left) as NYPD officers kept watch over the crowd (center) during the last Saturday evening in June. Just a day later, the crowd would explode again, pitting NYPD
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International Stretto Piano Festival
From the West Village Across the Global Stage, a Virtual World Premier Narrow Keys…Broad Minds…No Boundaries By Heidi E. Russell Long time West Village resident Hannah Reimann joins forces with fellow pianists Carol Leone of Texas and Rhonda Boyle of Australia, bringing together a talented roster of pianists from around the globe to celebrate and
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Ray Johnson, Pop-Culture Collagist, Master of ‘The Happening’ and the Mysterious World of Zen Emptiness
By Robert Heide A new fantastic exhibition of Ray Johnson artworks, collages and memorabilia at David Zwirner Gallery, 525 West 19th Street will be on view until May 22. The exhibit curated by Jarrett Earnest is called ‘Ray Johnson: What A Dump.’ The presentation offers many never-before-exhibited collages and drawings from the 1950s through the
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Police and Public Wield the Same (Anti-Graffiti) Brush
By Brian J Pape, AIA It was a perfect day for street activities, cloudy but mild with temperatures in the 60’s. Just like dozens, perhaps hundreds, of others in precincts throughout the city’s five boroughs, we saw the opening round in the next chapter of the on-going fight against urban blight and graffiti. The Police
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An Interview With Mayoral Candidate Ray McGuire
By Frank Quinn and Bob Cooley Ray McGuire and his two brothers didn’t have much growing up. “I never knew my father. He never acknowledged me, a sorrow I share with far too many.” His mother worked as a social worker, his grandfather in a factory during the week and as a janitor on
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The Great Race: Vaccines vs Mutants
The Great Race: Vaccines vs Mutants By Alec Pruchnicki, MD It is hard to predict the future, but with COVID it is even more difficult. There is a race going on between the factors that will improve our situation and other factors that can make it a lot worse, and right now it’s a toss-up
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The End of Graffiti?
By George Capsis I hate graffiti and perhaps that is why WestView News has done several front page articles on the subject. With the pandemic and the closing of offices we now have an ever-ready young crowd that poured into Washington Square during the Black Lives Matter demonstrations and then marched down Broadway, spray cans
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A Mayoral Candidate With Significant New York City Experience
By Frank Quinn From 2014 to 2020 Kathryn Garcia was the 43rd Commissioner of the largest sanitation department in the world. Before that she was Chief Operating Officer of the NYC Department of Environmental Protection, and an interim Chair of the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA). She grew up in Brooklyn as an adopted
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WestView News Interviews District 3 City Council Candidates
By Frank Quinn and Bob Cooley The New York City Democratic Primary is June 22, 2021. Six candidates will compete for the District 3 city council office currently held by Corey Johnson who is term-limited. WestView News interviewed all six candidates and our short-form videos can be viewed below. We asked the candidates for succinct
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Corey Johnson Bounces Back
By George Capsis Oh wow, it was only just a short while ago I read with despair that Corey Johnson was dropping out of the race for mayor because of an extended bout of depression, and then, bang, on February 18th I read in the Times that he is thinking very seriously about running for
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The Architecture of Outdoor Dining: Restaurants Get Design Corps Help
By Brian J. Pape, AIA It seemed like the city began to change overnight, evoking comparisons to Paris or Rome, with so many sidewalk cafes opening up in response to the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. NYC was one of the first cities to severely limit gatherings to restrict virus spreading, harkening back to previous pandemics
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COVID Vaccines—Where is the Leadership?
By Arthur Schwartz On January 14, at 2:30 a.m., I got a needle full of the Moderna vaccine stuck into my arm. It wasn’t easy to get that done. As soon as I heard that Governor Cuomo had opened the vaccine to people over 65, I got on the internet trying to make an appointment.
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Lenox Health Greenwich Village to Ramp Up Local Vaccinations
By Bob Cooley “Tomorrow, I will lay out our vaccination plan to correct course and meet our goal of 100 million shots at the end of my first 100 days as president,” stated President-Elect Joe Biden in his January 14 address. Lenox Health Greenwich Village is racing to finish a new vaccination unit that will significantly aid in
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NYC COVID-19 Vaccine Finder
The City of New York has published a COVID-19 Vaccine Finder here. The Finder does not work with Internet Explorer, so you’ll need to use a different web browser. Wear Your Mask You will not be admitted to the site without one. Do I need to take precautions even after I’m vaccinated? Yes! Even after you
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City Winery Opens on Pier 57 Amidst Shutdown
By Brian J Pape, AIA The new flagship location for City Winery, designed by Brooklyn-based Christopher Warnick Architecture, has opened on Pier 57 near West 15th Street. Unfortunately, the pandemic shutdown of indoor dining means it is mostly off-limits to the public, except for the main entry with a wine shop and the winery itself.
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Working to Save West Village Restaurants
By Maggie Berkvist Back in early December, a number of us signed a petition to Senators Schumer and Maloney at saverestaurants.com/take-action/ However, it was pretty clear, even before the stimulus package was passed, that it was not going to begin to cover the financial needs of our area’s bars and restaurants. Which is why—since they
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2020—The Return of the Depression?
By George Capsis If you go online right now you can find half a dozen articles on the precipitous drop in the New York City real-estate market brought about by the pandemic. In reading them I encounter terms that are very familiar to me, which I discovered when apartment-hunting with my mother during the depths
