By Tom Lamia Something odd is happening in the West Village and other long-neglected areas of our city. New life is coming into throwback street paving and its importance to economic development. After decades of neglect for the old technologies, urban street paving is becoming a hot topic among politicians and urban planners. Historic New
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Somebody Just Shot My Neighbor!
By George Capsis I got a call from one of my readers who has now become a friend, to say a murder had just taken place on Bedford Street and I had met the man who had been murdered. I had been sitting out last summer at a small table near the kitchen of a
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Gourmet Garage Dies as Rent Hits One Million
By George Capsis A couple of people called me to say Gourmet Garage was closing—wow! Sure, I, who grew up in the Depression, found the prices larcenous, but the breads were good and if you didn’t want to travel up to Trader Joe’s—that was about it… And bang—when you read this they will be closed.
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Doctors and Diagnosis—Short an Operating Room
By Siggy Raible What follows is one reader’s very accurate portrait of a typical emergency situation. What seems to be left out in talking about the logistics of getting a patient from 13th Street to Lenox Hill is the pain and anxiety of the patient. I know because I had an identical experience. I had
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Jerusalem: No Winners
TAGS: POLITICS, NEWS, OPINION By J. Taylor Basker I have lived and worked in the Middle East since 2007, teaching at an American university in Amman, Jordan. I’ve made frequent trips across the River Jordan to visit Jerusalem, relatives in Israel and friends in Palestine. The first time I entered Israel I was shocked to
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Movie Review: THE LOST VILLAGE
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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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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The Price of Immortality
“OK, give me a business plan,” Steve Witkoff ordered, as he finished agreeing with Sarah Jessica Parker that St. Veronica should offer something for everybody, not only seniors, but young people and even kids. When I sat down to write the “Business Plan” I was stuck. How do you write a business plan to create
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Cynthia Nixon Comes to 69 Charles Street!
By George Capsis Arthur Schwartz, who besides being a prolific political contributor to WestView, is currently the lawyer for Cynthia Nixon’s campaign to become the next Governor of New York. As such, he kept e-mailing me he was going to get Cynthia to come to 69 Charles Street for an interview. And bang! The day
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City Awards WestView $5000
Erik Botcher, the Chief of Staff for City Council Speaker, Corey Johnson, called George Capsis, the publisher of WestView News, to say the City had awarded the paper an unprecedented grant of $5000 to support its enormously popular Free Concerts for Seniors program. “You ought to let people know the City supports you,” offered a
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News Staff Truncated
By George Capsis Oh, wow. The Daily News sacked half of their reporters in just ten minutes— bang, just like that. Sure, the villain is digital media. While I’m watching the CBS six o’clock news, Dusty is watching the alternate media on her iphone. The Times is almost bereft of ads. They do full page
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Battle on Barrow Street—A Victory for Organized Villagers
By Jane Heil Usyk Well! It has been quite a week; several meetings, two demonstrations, petition signing, and who knows what next week. Here is how it played out: on Monday, July 9th, I went to the senior center, Greenwich House, at 27 Barrow Street to see “The Big Knife,” one of the many excellent
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If You Can’t Fix It, Lie – NYCHA gives a course in lying and even has a textbook
By George Capsis I clicked on the TV to find Mayor de Blasio, in front of a gaggle of terribly young City Council members, competently running down the council’s achievements as the session apparently came to an end. With only the slightest change in tone he slid into what was happening to the New York
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Maison Kayser Closes
They are picking them off higher on the vine by George Capsis Oh, wow. I got a call from Peruvian born, Nelly Godfrey, who lost her restaurant on the corner of Christopher and Bedford in a years’ long struggle with our very own king of evil landlords, Steve Croman. By the way, Croman has just
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If You Can’t Fix It, Lie
NYCHA gives a course in lying and even has a textbook By George Capsis I clicked on the TV to find Mayor de Blasio, in front of a gaggle of terribly young City Council members, competently running down the council’s achievements as the session apparently came to an end. With only the slightest change in
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14th Street Fight Moves Forward
By Arthur Z. Schwartz Elevators coming to 14th Street and 6th Avenue On June 18, the 14th Street Coalition and Disabled in Action announced a big win in their joint lawsuit versus the MTA, NYC Transit, and the NYC Department of Transportation: Within the next four years, four elevators will be installed on the corners
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Larcenous Landlords Use the Law to Oust Tenants
By George Capsis Oh wow. On March 22nd the Times did a massive article (like 4 pages) on the emerging breed of amoral landlords that use rent regulations and an indifferent overworked bureaucracy to oust rent regulated tenants. Most tenants get hooked by failing to pay their rent but a new breed of heartless, larcenous
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New Models for Senior Share Living in the Village
By The Compassionate Caregiver What if we all could have the opportunity to live the last years of our lives in peace, comfort and tranquility, and to die surrounded by loved ones in a safe and familiar place? Soon there will be more seniors on the planet than there ever have ever been in history.
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Sounds of the Great Religions
By George Capsis The dramatic, almost theatrical interior space of St. Veronica invites imaginative uses and we came up with The Sounds of the Great Religions, a survey of great musical moments from the world’s great religions. Having been exposed to the Greek Orthodox church (my father was Greek, my mother a Lutheran German), I
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Two Takes on Cynthia
Vanity, Thy Name is Nixon By Alec Pruchnicki “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Cynthia Nixon has as much experience in government as President Trump did when he entered the White House. She has less experience in setting educational policy than Betsy DeVos did when she became Secretary of Education. Success, even
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A Quick and Current History of Your Christopher Park
By Scotty Elyanow Christopher Park, the triangular park located at the intersection of West 4th, Grove, and Christopher Streets with Seventh Avenue to the West and Waverly Place to the East was created back on April 5th, 1837 due to demand for an open space from the local residents after overcrowding and a major fire
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Ready to Write Checks to Save Pier 40
By George Capsis Oh wow, a Crain’s New York article from April 24th quotes Hudson River Park Trust engineer, Steven Perker on just how they are going to encase the 3,600 corroded steel piles now shakily holding up the 15 acres of Pier 40 (the largest pier in the Hudson) to allow it to provide
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5Pointz Decision, Part 2: The Tuesday Morning Massacre
By Catherine Revland On March 14th, the lecture room at the National Arts Club on Gramercy Park South was packed with artists, attorneys, curators, art dealers, critics, and historians to hear a discussion about the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA).The speakers were Federal District Court Judge Frederic Block (who spoke to the broader subject of
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Lawsuit Filed to Stop L Train Shutdown
By Arthur Z. Schwartz Ever since discussion of the L Train Shutdown, scheduled for April 2019, began, people affected have felt run over by the Government, be it the MTA, which is in charge of the subway part, or the NYC Department of Transportation, which is in charge of the street configurations above-ground. We in
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How Cynthia Can Become Governor
By George Capsis “There is a beautiful young lady out here who wants to see you— do you want to talk to a beautiful young lady?” called my wife Andromache (Maggie) from the hallway on her way to put out the garbage. I shouted back that I was always interested in talking to a beautiful
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From TAKI 123 to High Art: The 5Pointz Decision (Part 1)
By Catherine Revland Last month, when the art world learned that Federal District Court Judge Frederic Block had awarded maximum damages totaling $6.7 million to 21 aerosol artists whose work had been destroyed by a developer, the response was laudatory: “This will change perceptions of an art form for generations to come;” “A milestone for
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Ramsey Clark at 90: America’s Most Liberal Attorney General and Veteran West Villager (Part 1)
“The greatest crime since World War II has been U.S. foreign policy.”—Ramsey Clark By Bruce Poli Ask me why I live in the West Village, and I might say, “Because people like Ramsey Clark live here.” Considered one of America’s most liberal Attorney Generals, Ramsey Clark, who served in the Department of Justice during the
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Dr. Davis, We Need Frankness Not PR
By George Capsis I had an “Oh, wow!” moment when I read in the February 5th Villager article that Mount Sinai is “…‘leaning toward’ building an extra four floors atop its [newly proposed] mini-hospital…” This building would wrap around the shabby gray New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai at 14th Street and
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Preparing for Parish Closures and Mergers in New York City
What is remarkable about the following article, written by Jamie L. Manson in the National Catholic Reporter (NCR), “Preparing for Parish Closures and Mergers in New York City,” is the publication date—January 29, 2014—because the article could have been written this morning. Manson’s article is about the closing of Catholic churches in New York and
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Music I Grew Up With… and Starting A-Fresh:
A Primer for the February Concert at St. Veronica By Michael Feldman When I was a young lad, just getting my feet wet in the enormous repertoire of classical music, I recall my first expedition to the Sam Goody record shop. (Was it on 49th Street?) To this day, I remember the recordings I picked
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God at the Drafting Board
By George Capsis If God sat down at the drafting board to design a perfect solution for seniors now living alone in a five-story walk-up, with an ancient dog that has to go four times a day, what would He come up with? He would have a nice, fresh-faced youngster offer a strong arm to
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Welcome to 2018
By Arthur Z. Schwartz 2017 was a horrific year. Trump took office on January 20th, and within 11 days, I had a heart attack! (This is true, but I am joking about the correlation.) He took office on that date and made sure the world would never be the same again. I don’t like writing
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We Need Our Own Andrew Carnegie
By George Capsis On December 23rd, WestView gave another concert, our second at St. Veronica. Despite the rain, you came and again in great numbers and filled all the seats in the main sanctuary. Some had to again climb into the balcony—a full house! There is no doubt now that superb classical music played by
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What Do You Want Corey to Do?
By George Capsis What does it mean for the readers of WestView that 35-year-old Corey Johnson will, on January 4th, become the Speaker of the New York City Council, letting slide through his guiding fingers a City budget of $86 billion? He will be the second-most powerful man in City government. What do we really need
