WestView

The Greening of the West Village: THE GREEN PIER

PIER 40 THIS SPRING? The Hudson River Park Advisory Board is holding a meeting at Village Community School on March 22 to follow up on the community’s interest to establish the first indoor/outdoor year-round Green Market in New York.

What We Would Really Like On Pier 40

In our December issue we offered 13 hard questions posed by the only two members of the Hudson River Park Trust board of directors who actually live in our community, Pam Fredericks and Paul Ullman. Pam and Paul wanted to know what we West Villagers were willing to tolerate in the way of Pier 40 uses and traffic making it possible for the board to sign a lease with a developer who would provide the $150 million needed to replace the corroding steel piles and seal the leaking roof.

Christmas Glows Again On Greenwich Avenue

Park Board Invites Pier 40 Solution

With little hope of getting developer money, Pier 40 board invites community 
to come up with uses to eventually pay for needed repairs. Driving to work, David Blumenfeld, while still in his early twenties and scion of one of the dozen or so mega real estate families, became aware of a decaying factory in east Harlem. “Boy, wouldn’t that make a terrific shopping center? I gotta tell dad.” And now, in his forties-twenty years later-he just might cut the ribbon. For developers, building in New York, the ultimate Monopoly game, has become a protracted sumo-like struggle with opaque city regulation, turf politics, exotic financing and community kvetching.

Fighting for School Seats

With stilt-walkers, chocolate-chip cookies, and affable host Brad Hoylman, the second rally for a school at 75 Morton Street was entertaining enough that parents might consider making it an annual occasion - if they weren’t so desperate for the DOE and New York State to work out a solution to the overcrowding problems that continue to plague the Village.

Fashionistas Clog Retail on Bleecker Street

At various times in history, the name “Bleecker Street” has conjured images of small immigrant-owned business, beatnik watering holes, folk music hangouts, and ethnic clothing stores. More recently the street, especially its far west end, has glossed up its image and become a magnet to lovers of designer fashion and cupcakes.
An unscientific survey of businesses [...]

The School Safety Act and Civil Rights for our Public School Students

Learning to be American
My parents came from the old country of pogroms. When word came to my mother’s ghetto that Cossacks were coming, her mother hid her child in the oven. Fortunately it was not lit. Once these new Americans started a family in Boston, I was put into the local William Lloyd Garrison public [...]

The Closer the Election, 
the Better Political Hearing

All our local politicians turn out to save our local post office. This morning I heard on WNYC that “less than one-fourth of all the registered New York voters will vote on September 15th.” Back in 1963, in a similar, not-quite-off-year election, when Ed Koch was running against Tammany boss Carmine De Sapio for Democratic District leader, Koch won by only 42 votes. (De Sapio was later convicted of kickback fraud and served time.) So it was not too surprising that all (and I do mean all) of our Village politicians turned out on August 20 for a rally to save our little post office on Hudson Street between Charles and West 10th Streets.

The Vanishing Village: Ghosts of Shuttered Restaurants 
Haunt Hudson Street

Where have all the restaurants gone? A stroll down Hudson Street from Abingdon Square to Christopher Street used to make West Village residents feel lucky and tourists wish they lived there. Now, instead of the bustle and hum of the mostly one-of-a-kind small restaurants that once lined the street, pedestrians are confronted with a string [...]

Bloomberg: Teaching Kids to Fear the Police

Since the 1950s I’ve been reporting education nationally and in this city, including writing books such as Our Children Are Dying, Does Anyone Give a Damn: Nat Hentoff on Education and Living the Bill of Rights. During those years, at The Village Voice I covered every chancellor of the school system. When Michael Bloomberg - [...]

Gay Activist Faults Quinn on Slush Fund

Quinn said to shun gay causes to get non-gay vote. “This is Donny Moss. I’m a resident of the West Village. And I made a short exposé on Christine Quinn. The Village Voice and Gay City News ran stories about it. One of your readers in my neighborhood thought you might be interested too.” I was, and I clicked on the link Donny provided and viewed the “Quinn exposé.” You should, too. Just go to http://tiny.cc/Yqyyb. What I found intriguing was that Donny had put together his little 60 Minutes-style of investigative reporting with his own on-camera commentary and snippets of Quinn press conferences in which three times in three different ways she stiff-armed questions about the City Council slush fund.

West Village Real Estate Succumbs to Downturn

They say it’s a buyers’market. It’s good for renters, too - unless you’re in retail. “You have to accept that you are going to have to come down as much as 20 percent,” a top local broker told this Village landlord, when discussing a rental property recently. “My own income is down 30 percent,” she continued. “And apartments I use to be able to rent in days now take weeks, and the landlords are paying the brokerage fees and even giving one month’s rent free.”

Behind the Scenes: A Wild Walk on the West Side, Three Stories High

New Yorkers are a very adaptable breed. This was made crystal clear the (surprisingly crystal-clear) day that the High Line opened. Although at the last minute the official opening was pushed up a day to Monday, June 8th, by midafternoon the revitalized bridge was already at capacity. Within hours of its opening, the first jogger, first fashion shoot, and first nearly nude sunbather were spotted among the sea grasses and irises planted along the elevated park. It continued to be a draw despite June’s steady rains.

School Seats Crisis Explodes in West Village

West Village parents were left in a state of panic last month, after the Department of Education announced that they would cut the Pre-Kindergarten programs at both P.S. 41 on West 11th Street and P.S. 3 on Hudson Street, in order to make room for the 91 locally-zoned Kindergarten students that were waitlisted for spots there. In conjunction with the Community Education Council for District 2, the DOE, and the office of City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and other city and state officials, a special task force was formed in early May to find a solution to placing these students. By the end of last month, the force had secured the Greenwich House at 27 Barrow Street to serve as a temporary space for the 80-plus displaced Pre-K students.

Village Politics: Phase One Completed. Park Critics Silenced!

At long last, on May 19^th, 2009, Phase One of the Washington Square Park (WSP) renovation (northwest quadrant) was completed and finally open to the public; and they’ve come in droves! The renovated part of the park looks spectacular and a recent visit found it filled with people, both young and old, hanging out on the new grass and benches or strolling along the pathways, which were lined with flowers and plants. As usual, musicians were seen playing in the plaza surrounding the fountain and kids were actually cavorting in the fountain water. Amazingly enough, not a dead rat or drug dealer to be seen!

H1N1 Flu Outbreak

As more cases of swine flu are reported, concern has led to panic for many New Yorkers. The H1N1 virus, also called the swine flu, is a new hybrid of pig, bird and human influenza. It is currently causing symptoms and spreading much like the general human influenza virus that we try to immunize against every year. Its characteristics, effects on people and possible treatments are still being defined and may very well change over the next several weeks. At press time, the flu had caused one confirmed fatality in the U.S. To put it into perspective, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported that the type of human influenza that we deal with every year leads to approximately 226,000 hospitalizations and 36,000 deaths in the United States. Confirmed swine flu cases in the U.S. number at 91.

Stimulus Yes! Parking Fee Increases? You Gotta Be Kidding!

Many of us didn’t like it when the Hudson River Park got set up as a self-sustaining park. The income from leases and concessions was supposed to cover its day-to-day or “operating” expenses (like salaries, landscaping and maintenance), and no operating money was to come out of the City or state treasuries. This was to be totally different from all other City and state parks, which live (and die) based on the amount the City Council or state legislature allocates for parks. (In fact, revenue from City parks, including the revenue from Yankee Stadium and Shea Stadium/Citi Field, just goes back into the general City treasury and is not dedicated to park use. Only the money to build the park - its capital expenditures - was to come from the City and State.)

Not Every Restaurant Can Boast Zero Stars

The Times recently ran a 4-column photo of the seemingly shuttered restaurant on the corner of West 4th and West 10^th Streets with a review, of sorts, by Frank Bruni hinting at the need for reservations 4 weeks in advance or a call to the Bowery used restaurant supply houses for a quick deal before the place gets a visit from the sheriff. But what a funny “review” - it was written in the form of a bitingly sarcastic e-mail from a “Fannie Von Furstinshow” to Graydon Carter, the rich and elegant editor of Vanity Fair and owner of the very in-and-absurdly-difficult -to make-a-reservation-at, Waverly Inn ($1000-a-bottle wines.)

Ceremonies Honor Two Slain Auxiliary Police Officers

On Saturday, March 14th, exactly two years after they were gunned down in the line of duty, Auxiliary Police Officers Nicholas T. Pekearo and Yevgeniy (Eugene) Marshalik were honored. The day began with a somber plaque dedication at their Sixth Precinct station house, followed by the co-naming in their honor of the corner of Bleecker and Sullivan Streets where they died. In attendance at both ceremonies were the slain officers’ families, their fellow officers, local politicians, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and members of the public.

Do We Need Newspapers?

As the publisher of WestView, one of my favorite Saturday morning radio programs is “On the Media” and yesterday a career journalist unburdened his growing pessimism as to the future of newspapers with the question, “When the newspapers are gone who is going to cover things like the City Council?”
That is the real role of [...]