As Your President
I pledge I will not toodle-oo
or gum up all the bears in Congress
and chew them out quarterly

As your President
 I will love an artist every day
and make a home for many more
on the annotated margins of bills
and in natural dye pools

As your President
I will seduce the French
notre doldrum pals
thereby improving our scent in the world

As your President
I’ll arrange with strings and a ‘wall of sound’
every news conference and op
I won’t forget Grandmother AP
and will call on her daily in my news prayers


Next Stop
Scramming
give me that notebook
story lines all about the other side
where it’s black and bright
and dirty and loud
3/10 has come around again
what are we observing?
rebar (everybody needs it)
dry wallers and plumbers bag lunch under the trees
chill green leaves having not popped, not yet, why is that?
at least it’s not despicable September
daffy school children, stand up straight don’t slouch
the world will welcome you with a gazillion tentacles
The F train is no place to write
we’re coming up to the stops in all the heads
I want to squeeze you
while I speak to you
with all the soft sounds in my throat

— Leslie Breeding

W.J. Davidson, a West Village Resident for 20 years, edits the Poetry Corner.

The innocent wine obsessive sometimes needs a bit of help to make things go smoothly. Let’s call them Wine Basics – the little things that can enhance the wine experience.
Let’s start with glassware. Wine glasses should be fun and functional. They need not be terribly expensive but some are. Most important is that you have some proper wine glasses with no lip. A couple of different shapes will be helpful, with the standard shape for both cabernet or chardonnay, etc. while the big bowl types are better suited for more aromatic wines such as pinot noir. Excellent glasses are available from Czechoslovakia, such as those at Astor Wines for around $4 per glass or “stem,” as geeks call them. The German company Schott makes beautiful glasses in the $10 range and of course there’s Riedel, whose sommelier style glasses start at around $20. Just don’t let the kids drink milk out of them. You can express yourself with glassware. One of my favorite glasses is a one-hundred-year-old antique champagne glass that I lugged back from Amsterdam. And then there’s the $.99 glass from Fishs Eddy that I sometimes use for Cotes du Rhone. Would I drink Lynch-Bages 1989 out of it? No.
An absolute necessity is a good decanter. With more structured wines like Bordeaux or Barolo, you will want to aerate the wine for an hour or two before drinking. These are available in all shapes and sizes but simple ones can be bought at places like Crate & Barrel for around $20.
Another must: get some good wine books. Reading about wine will speed up your accumulation of wine knowledge and help you to remember those difficult chateau names. An indispensable resource is a mini encyclopedia style book, The New Wine Lover’s Companion, by Ron Herbst ($16.99). Why is Chateau Gloria so good? The unclassified Bordeaux Chateau is actually made up of parcels bought from several top crus, including the stellar Leoville Poyferre. Facts like these and others, like how to read wine labels, are readily available. There is also nothing like reading yourself to sleep with some good, light non-fiction. It’s almost as relaxing as a glass of wine.
Some other more specific but highly useful books include Robert Parker’s Bordeaux and Burgundy guides. Bordeaux is updated periodically (last in 2003) and includes extensive tasting notes. Burgundy is out of print but available from used book shops and on the internet. It has great maps and producer info to go along with Parker’s strong opinions. For a more classicist approach, Master of Wine Michael Broadbent’s Vintage Wine (2002) is a fascinating reference and fun to read.
One important thing to be aware of is a wine’s “drinking window.” Wines that have the ability to age, which is really only a small percentage of all wines but includes most of the best ones, will sometimes go through a “closed” period or “dumb phase.” After the wine is bottled, it may have a fruity, highly enjoyable youthful period that lasts for one or more years. But then the wine will start to “shut down,” going to “sleep” for a few years and sometimes more, only to emerge into maturity at a later date. Wines in a dumb phase are less enjoyable, with muted fruit, excess tannin and acid, and a generally grouchy attitude. Sometimes decanting can wake them up a little.
We’ve been focusing on red wines during these cold months but in the not too distant future look for columns on white wines as the weather warms up. For now here are a few recommended reds – note the “dumb phase” comments: ’08 Petite Amour – a Cotes du Rhone style red that has earthy cherry flavors and good balance for five bucks! A perfect match for those glasses from Fishs Eddy. No dumb phase. The ’06 Ravenswood Vintner’s Blend Merlot is a classy medium bodied red with dark red fruits and nice texture ($10). No dumb phase. The’06 Chateau Potensac offers a classic Bordeaux profile of currant fruit, restrained oak and a long finish ($20 -$25). Drinking well now but will probably go into a dumb phase in a few years. It will age for around 10 years. The ’05 Produttori Barbaresco is a serious wine at a super price. With a structure that should support aging for 20 years, the wine is a bit closed now. But at less than $30 you can buy two bottles – one to drink now with a huge slab of beef and a good decant, and then see how long you can keep your hands off the other one.

Chris Botta is a musician, writer and wine enthusiast.

Ever since I’ve lived at 350 Bleecker, I’ve known Janet Preen Tidwell to be the first resident there. For the first few months, she didn’t even know if there was anyone else in the building as she didn’t see another soul. That was 1962, and she inhabited a lovely, step-down alcove studio on the ground floor.
As someone who grew up not living anywhere for more than a year or two, I find such tenure fascinating – and there are a number of other residents at 350 who embody that as well. Here is someone who has seen – and lived through – changes that occurred over almost 5 decades, not just on a grand scale in the world … but right down the street and in the building, and is a trove of stories and details about the sidewalks we tread every day.
“Did you know,” says Janet, for example, “that Hudson Street Papers had moved from Hudson to Bleecker, right across the street, due to a major excavation, but always kept the name?” I do remember their cat name Pearl. I once saw from my window overlooking Bleecker that Pearl had gotten locked out of the store, and, alarmed, I brought her to my apartment overnight. “That’s nothing,” Janet remembers, “Pearl used to sneak out whenever she could, and walk into people’s ground floor apartments on Charles to visit.”
The neighborhood changed, more dramatically over the last few years than over the many years before. In the ‘70s and ‘80s, Janet recalls, the shops were all small, local shops – Eastern Arts, the Bird Shop, the Afghan store on the corner; and there were many more restaurants as well.
And the people? “Oh, it was more hippie-like in the ‘60s!” she notes. I chuckle, imagining Janet as a hippie. “Were you a hippie?” I ask her. “Oh no,” she says, “I couldn’t afford to be a hippie! I had to work!” Janet was a librarian in a large midtown law firm.
It certainly has gotten safer, Janet recalls, especially after the 6th Precinct moved next door in the ‘60s, from way west on Charles Street (now an apartment building named the “Gendarme”). And the house that stands adjacent to our courtyard was a working firehouse, even until the ‘80s. “We lived off the courtyard at the time, and the engines must have gone in and out 50 times a day! But we got used to it.”
In 1974 she married Hugh Tidwell, originally from Jackson, Mississippi, who also worked as a law librarian at the Federal Reserve Bank. Five years later they moved into a 1-bedroom upstairs on the 4th floor, where she’s been ever since. “Of course, the building has changed too,” Janet notes. “In the early days, it was a middle/working class building, no children – but always dogs. At one point, we had 28 dogs in the building!” The building now reflects the West Village demographics, with a completely diverse population.
“The most important thing about this building,” says Janet, “and this has stayed true over the years, is the community in the building. Especially after Hugh died, 4 years ago, I don’t know what I would do without my friends – Helen, Lori, Jack, Carolyn, who have been here forever; and my younger friends like Robert and Michelle, and Rod and Susan, to name just a few …”
In fact, the community at 350 Bleecker is like a Village in itself: The summer potlucks, with the April ones attended by the stalwarts wearing sweaters and gloves; the holiday party where the tree is trimmed mostly by the children, the decorations getting higher up the tree with the years as the kids grow taller; where neighbors walk each other’s dogs and check to make sure everyone is OK.
I see Janet regularly in the lobby, with her 16-year old poodle Jeremy in her lap. In the evening, she comes down around 8 or so, as Helen (“Saint Helen, I call her,” says Janet) takes Jeremy out for his last walk of the day, usually along with his pals Domino and Moose.

Armanda Squadrilli, an 18-year resident of the West Village, is a senior broker with Prudential Douglas Elliman, and writes frequently on a variety of subjects, including West Village vignettes and stories.

Last month, during my State of the City speech, I outlined a new plan to help strengthen our economy, create more jobs and get us moving on the path to full recovery.
Included in this plan are several new initiatives aimed at helping small businesses across the five boroughs. Specifically, 
we will:

• Improve the City’s inspection process New York City has thousands of rules and regulations for small businesses that protect public safety and the rights of consumers. But one of the biggest problems we hear from small business owners is that these rules are enforced in a way that’s unfair and inconsistent. That’s why we’re taking steps today to make the inspection process fairer for business owners. First, we’ll educate businesses about their responsibilities. Second, we’ll improve the way we train inspectors, putting a new level of focus on consistent enforcement. Finally, we’ll introduce new legislation sponsored by Council Member Karen Koslowitz creating a Business Owner’s Bill of Rights. This bill of rights will list the rules that inspectors have to follow and the steps that business owner can take if they feel they’ve been treated unfairly.

• Help small businesses get the loans that they need - Small business owners who’ve been turned down for loans will now get a second chance through our “Second Look” Program. Created in partnership with the New York Bankers Association, this new program will give business owners a second shot at securing the financing that they need. We’ll also convene a summit with the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce where participants from banking and small business can work to develop and propose ways to get credit flowing to small businesses.

• Provide training and support to minority- and women-owned businesses – This year we’ll partner with the City’s Small Business Commissioner, Robert Walsh, to launch a new executive management program for minority- and women-owned businesses. Firms participating in this program will receive the training and support they need to operate successfully and boost their business. This same program has already shown great results in Massachusetts, where three out of four participants increased their sales and were able to hire new employees.

• Create a $10 million Small Manufacturing Investment Fund – Many small manufacturers can’t get the kind of industrial workspace they need to operate and grow. Working with Council Member Diana Reyna, the Council has partnered with two non-profits that purchase and renovate empty factories in Brooklyn and then lease space to dozens of small manufacturers. So far this program has been able to create and preserve 125 jobs. This year we’ll take the program citywide by creating a $10 million Small Manufacturing Investment Fund (to be overseen by the City’s Economic Development Corporation). We believe this investment will allow about 40 small manufacturing firms to create as many as 200 construction and 230 permanent jobs.

• Develop a new market for public foods – Food manufacturing is a $5 billion industry that employs tens of thousands of New Yorkers. Working with Council Member Margaret Chin, we’re developing a proposal for a brand new public market for regional foods at the old Fulton Fish Market in Lower Manhattan. Modeled after Pike Place in Seattle, this market will serve as a major tourist destination and center of economic activity – a place where people from all across the world can shop for and eat regionally-produced food.

• Lower taxes for mom-and-pop shops – Last year we created a new tax credit to eliminate the double taxation on small unincorporated businesses and freelancers. This year we’ll extend that same kind of relief to another group that’s currently struggling – small mom and pop retailers. Together with Council Members Joel Rivera and Inez Dickens, we’ll work with Albany to create a new tax credit that will exempt mom and pop retailers from the City’s corporate tax. About 19,000 small retailers will be eligible, saving them up to $3,400 a year.
If we’re going to come out of this recession stronger than we were before, we need to continue doing everything that we can to help support and sustain the home-grown businesses that are so vital to our City’s recovery. With this new plan, we can help create new jobs, keep stores in business and set the stage for our long-term growth and recovery.
If you would like to watch or read my speech online and share any comments or questions you may have about these proposals, please visit my website at http://council.nyc.gov/html/soc/2009.shtml.

Red Riding Trilogy
In The Year of Our Lord 1974
(director: Julian Jarrold)
In The Year of Our Lord 1980
(director: James Marsh)
In The Year of Our Lord 1983
(director: Anand Tucker)

What I love about British filmmaking is its commitment to story and character. Naturally, they will churn out the occasional blockbuster but the legacy of classically trained acting has endured from those post-war Ealing Studios comedies (The Ladykillers) to the Kitchen Sink dramas with their angry young men (Look Back in Anger), and in more recent years, from Merchant Ivory adaptations to the more gritty films of Mike Leigh and Ken Loach. No matter, the legacy of English story-telling gives moviegoers something to sink their teeth into. Not to Hollywood-bash – that’s too easy – but it’s hardly a secret that budget and bottom line box office are what drives that machine. And the surest way to bring in the big numbers is to bring out the big name actors. It’s part of our legacy and we do it quite splendidly at times. After a summer or Christmas season one can, however, feel a bit malnourished. That’s why sitting through five hours of the Red Riding Trilogy, while difficult at times, was such a breath of fresh air.
The trilogy, which recently enjoyed a run at the IFC Center, looks so authentically like it was filmed in the 1970s or 80s – the time when the three stories take place – you might swear these were thirty-year-old British TV crime dramas. The verisimilitude is also helped along by the absence of name actors. Not to say there aren’t a great many faces any anglophile would recognize but just don’t expect Hugh Grant or Harry Potter to appear. The three films, which work out the intricate truths behind a series of serial killings in the Yorkshire section of England, are brutal and dare you to sit through them in one seating. And you needn’t; you can see them one at a time, (recommended) then go do something more uplifting, like catch Shutter Island or The Wolfman.
The three films adapted from a series of novels by David Peace take place over a span of about ten years. They are aptly directed by Julian Jarrold (1974), James Marsh (1980) and Anand Tucker (1983). The fact that their titles are named for the years in which they take place, preceded by the words “In The Year of Our Lord”, give the films a faintly stuffy old-fashioned feel. That would be correct. This was during a time when we took our leaders’ honesty or dishonesty for granted; or better said, that we accepted their flaws more passively: They may be corrupt bastards but they’re ours. Those who abuse power in the Red Riding films cover the spectrum, including the local civic-minded (read developers), the constabulary and, naturally, the clergy. A select few have a conscience, and inevitably, they are the ones who bring the story’s darkness into the light. But it should be said that the line between good and evil is intentionally fuzzy. Seemingly benign minor characters from the first film play a more central role in the later segments. Protagonists are killed off and quite suddenly their narrative dies with them. Usefully, however, flashbacks increase as the films go on in order to fill in any gaps in the plotline. These three films demand your attention. Not just because the northern patois can be very hard to understand but because there are so many interwoven characters and subplots. In the end, all the grisly truths come out and whether or not redemption is ultimately had is still left in question.
It just proves, when you are not beholden to the Hollywood system, you can create a movie with an ambiguous ending. The absence of formula is what makes this otherwise genre crime drama so compelling.
These films are available for viewing on 
Cable On Demand. Check your local cable guide.

Few organizations in the West Village can claim as long a history as Greenwich House. Founded in 1902 on Thanksgiving Day, Greenwich House has been “helping individuals lead more fulfilling lives” for more than 100 years. Throughout its history though, Greenwich House has always been at the forefront of social services, publishing the first tenants’ manual, opening the first after-school program, and establishing the first drug-free outpatient counseling center in New York.
The organization has continually strived to provide programs and services that, while sometimes diverse and seemingly unrelated, help to build a stronger community for those who take part. As Hannah Arendt, an influential German-Jewish political theorist says, for a community to exist there must be a metaphorical table between them. Greenwich House acts as the table that brings the New York community together.
We invite community members to the table at the Eighth Annual Taste of Greenwich House, a tasting event featuring more than 20 of the Village’s finest restaurants, where they can experience a night of delicious samples and learn more about Greenwich House while giving back to the diverse array of programs that serve thousands of New Yorkers each year. This year’s event will take place Monday, March 8. For tickets and information, go to www.greenwichhouse.org/Taste2010.
In its initial days, Greenwich House helped the large immigrant population in Greenwich Village to assimilate to their new surroundings by teaching them marketable skills, such as pottery and stone working. Today, the organization still operates primarily within the Village, but has adapted its programs to serve all New Yorkers. Programs are focused in four fields: the arts, early childhood education, services for senior citizens, and health and social services.
For artistic enrichment, Greenwich House runs a music school and a pottery school. The music school offers private lessons, programs and classes for children and adults, studio space, and a number of concert series throughout the year. In addition, the school holds regular student recitals open to the public. Greenwich House Pottery School is one of the best in New York, with 28 wheels, 2 large gas kilns and 4 electric kilns. Classes and workshops are held throughout the year, in addition to lectures and exhibitions. The bright storefront sells ceramics from around the country, and dynamic installations and exhibits showcase some of the best in contemporary and classic pottery.
Both the music and pottery schools offer programs for young children. In addition, Greenwich House also runs the Barrow Street Nursery School, a pre-kindergarten school serving nearly 130 children. In addition to the school, there is also the Child Safety Project, which provides counseling for children and families dealing with abuse, or who have been witnesses to violent crimes.
The health services offered include HIV/AIDS counseling and and clinical services, along with an extensive substance abuse treatment program. A full medical staff, including social workers, doctors and nurses, provide HIV testing, home visits for AIDS patients, and psychiatric care, among many other services.
The Judith C. White Senior Center provides a gathering place for neighborhood seniors to engage in activity and social experiences. The center serves fresh hot meals prepared on site daily, in addition to offering classes such as yoga, painting, Italian, and many more. The senior center acts as a social ground for a community to grow. Many of the seniors have had a long relationship with Greenwich House, attending its arts and education programs in their youth, and are now active at the senior center. Greenwich House also runs a senior health and consultation program, which provides counseling services to seniors. It is one of the few programs that still provide in-home visits to patients who are too ill for office visits.
At first, one might wonder how so many different programs exist under one roof. However, while many of the programs at Greenwich House operate independently, they come together at the table to support the New York community.
Many programs host events that reach out past their specific focus, and Greenwich House provides a great opportunity to connect those that might not otherwise be aware of each other. Pottery students attend concerts, or donate their skills to beautify the senior center; students at the nursery school put on concerts for the seniors. Each program helps add to the contributions of Greenwich House as a whole, and with events like the Eighth Annual Taste of Greenwich House, and others throughout the year, allows the table to continually expand and welcome new guests.

In what was the Public Space of the Chelsea Market, there is now an Emporium setting with newcomers to the market and an additional entrance on 15th St. New arrivals include:
Jacques Torres Chocolate – The Brooklyn-based chocolatier’s new retail location offers a broad assortment of chocolates, cookies, hot chocolate and more.
Lucy’s Whey – This cheese shop, originally established in East Hampton, focuses on American Artisanal Cheeses, along with condiments and crackers.
The Nut Box –The Chelsea branch of the Brooklyn-based shop sells many variations on nuts, dried fruit and spices at very good prices; it also includes a make-your-own Granola Bar.
One Lucky Duck – This extension of Pure Food and Wine (Irving Place) sells raw, vegan food that is not heated over 118° F and does not include refined sugar. You can buy juices and lunch to go, or find a comfortable spot to eat within the Market’s Emporium space.
Dickson’s Farmstand Meats opened in Chelsea Market this past fall and provides locally raised meat and poultry. Posman Books (their original store is in Grand Central) also opened in Chelsea Market, near the west entrance. Coming in March is a two-floor branch of Pennsylvania-based Anthropologie, to the large space that was Chelsea Wholesale Florist.
Choptank, a new West Village restaurant from alumni of Dell’Anima and L’Artusi, is inspired by food of the Chesapeake Bay and named after a river near Baltimore. Its menu style is traditional Maryland fish-shack in a more elegant setting. 306 Bleecker St.
Led Zeppole, a second stop to Artichoke Basille’s pizza, opened next door by the same folks. A very small space with made-to-order zeppoles, and other fried sweets, is open into the wee hours. 328 E 14th Street, between 1st and 2nd Ave.
Bistro De La Gare, a new restaurant with French and Mediterranean cuisine, opened on Hudson Street in February. The Chef-owners are Maryann Terillo who operated Jarnac and previously Café de la Gare and Elisa Sarno who worked for Mary Cleaver and Babbo. 626 Hudson St., near Jane St.

Many people over the last several weeks have asked me, “What does the recent news of St. Vincent’s possible bankruptcy mean for the plans for their new hospital tower and the Rudin condo developments?”
The simple answer is nobody knows for sure. The bigger question of course is will the hospital even continue to exist, and nobody knows the answer to that for sure yet either; until we know that, it is impossible to know what will happen with their buildings or on that site.
The range of possibilities of what could happen are broad, and many are disturbing. Almost a billion dollars in debt and laying off workers and shutting down programs as we go to press, it seems highly unlikely that St. Vincent’s will continue on in its current form. Will they find another provider to partner with and help keep them afloat? Will another hospital simply take them over? Will they fold, and the current site be sold off for some other purpose? Will their operations at this location be permanently scaled back or moved, will the same services be maintained in the same facilities currently there, or will they or someone else seek to move ahead with the new hospital/condo development plan, or some new version of it?
No one knows which if any of these will be the case at the moment. St. Vincent’s and Rudin had completed the landmarks approval process for their plans and had just begun the lengthy zoning change approval process when news of the impending bankruptcy hit. So they had not yet received all the approvals needed to move ahead with their plans, and that approval process appears to have been put on hold, at least for now.
However, the Rudin plans for the “East Campus,” to replace four of the hospital’s newer buildings with new residential development and to preserve and alter four of the older buildings for residential use, did get approvals from the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC). Those approvals could easily be used in the future by whoever the owner of the property may be, though zoning changes would still be needed for those plans to move ahead.
The permission to tear down the O’Toole Building to make way for a 290 foot tall hospital tower is another story, however. A lawsuit challenging that decision filed by several of the hospital’s neighbors notwithstanding, that permission was granted by the LPC through a “hardship” proceeding. The approvals for the East Campus were regular LPC approvals based upon their evaluation of the aesthetic appropriateness of the proposed changes. These regular approvals are routinely held on to for some time and transferred to new owners, and conceivably could be in this case. “Hardship” approvals, however, are totally specific to the applicant and the circumstances under which they are granted, and thus cannot be readily transferred to a new owner or even necessarily used under changed circumstances. The LPC also granted the hardship allowance to demolish O’Toole and construct the new building contingent upon St. Vincent’s demonstrating that it was financially able to move ahead with the entire plan and build the new $850 million hospital; that seems highly unlikely to be the case any time soon.
One can’t help but ask how we got to the current sad state of affairs. St. Vincent’s entered bankruptcy just three years ago. According to published reports, at the time they were strongly advised to find a more financially solvent health care institution to partner with to help them get back on their feet financially and several such institutions expressed an interest in doing just that.
Unfortunately, St. Vincent’s declined to go that route, and instead embarked upon a plan to build a large new vertical “state-of-the-art” hospital on the site of one of its buildings and sell off its other eight hospital buildings for speculative real estate development. Though St. Vincent’s was already massively in debt and losing more money every day, they pursued this plan which would inevitably only place an even greater burden upon their financial resources — the planned new hospital would actually cost more than twice as much as the income they hoped to get from the real estate deal.
Whether or not there continues to be a St. Vincent’s or a replacement hospital, how it functions and where it will be located, may well likely be determined by whether or not city, state, and federal government step in to help. From the beginning, groups like the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP) have said that St. Vincent’s financial problems, and any impact it may have on its ability to provide necessary medical services, should be addressed by government, not by speculative real estate deals. Whether or not this will happen remains to be seen.
One hoped-for outcome from the current situation would be greater transparency on the part of the St. Vincent’s administration, especially regarding finances. While everyone was aware that St. Vincent’s was financially challenged, many people and government officials, including many of St. Vincent’s most ardent supporters, were caught completely off guard by their announcement that they were facing a second bankruptcy in three years, this time much deeper than the first time. Many people were under the understandable misimpression that the hardship case which St. Vincent’s filed with the LPC to allow demolition of the O’Toole Building was a financial hardship, with the hospital claiming they could not afford to keep the building and opening up its books to prove it.
This is not so. St. Vincent’s actually filed what is known as a “physical hardship” case, which has nothing to do with finances, but rather a claim that a landmarked building can no longer be used to serve the institution’s mission.
(St. Vincent’s actually made an unprecedented claim that even though they could keep using the building for its current purposes, other of their buildings were outdated and the LPC needed to consider their campus as a whole. (This “campus exception” argument, which could have deep implications for a host of institutions such as NYU to also be able to demolish landmarked buildings, sparked deep concern among preservation groups across the city, many of whom, including GVSHP, filed an amicus brief questioning the basis for the LPC’s decision.)
We can now see that a financial hardship case would likely not have been successful in this case, because approval of the hospital’s plan would have vastly increased their debt, not relieved it. St. Vincent’s financial situation is so bad that they may not be able to keep their doors open, much less construct an enormous new facility. Predictions about what will happen to St. Vincent’s are speculative at best – and speculation has not served St. Vincent’s very well so far. One thing is clear, however – we all have a stake in whatever the outcome may be.

Like much else in this high-velocity culture of change, job hunting isn’t what it used to be (just a short while ago!)
As a career counselor, I ‘m seeing major shifts in the job market and in the way we need to look for work. Our career identities are in transition, as we often have to redefine ourselves in alignment with our (possibly new-found) aptitudes, but also with what’s possible. Just to focus on two of the crucial elements in looking for work and the changes we must be aware of:
Element 1: Resumes (“I’ve sent out hundreds of resumes and haven’t gotten one response. This isn’t like the last time I looked for a job!”)
Technology has made the listing and application process high volume and instantaneous: jobs get listed, the listings have tremendous reach and the responses are high-speed.and high-volume. Who reads the resume that you send? The person hiring? Not likely. The person interviewing? Also not likely. Chances are if you’re applying to a medium to large size co, the first to look at your resume is a human scanner, under instructions to screen in only those with certain “keywords” e..g. SAP accounting, or work history pattern ,e.g. 5 years at last job. The results of this preliminary scan are entered into some version of an Applicant Tracking System (ATS), where further scanning and specific pattern-identification will be realized.
So forget that well-crafted cover-letter, providing excellent reasons for the interviewer to see you, even though your resume is perhaps not quite on target, or you mention a personal connection. It will never be scanned. It will never be seen.
Every reason to consider you MUST BE IN THE RESUME!—it’s the only thing that has a chance of being seen—and has any chance IF it has those elements recruiters are looking for.
So forget ‘my resume’ and start thinking of the many resumes you’re going to have to craft to respond productively to job opportunities. You’re going to need to customize your resume as you target particular jobs. You’re going to have to research and know as much as possible about what’s being sought and how, if you want to me in the mix, that must be apparent in your ‘resume de jour’…Prepare yourself well and send out 5 resumes instead of 500, and you’ll be so much more productive!
Element 2: Interviewing
“I don’t know what to say when they ask about my plans for the next 3-5 years…or when they ask me to talk about my weaknesses?”
Because of the high volume of change in our economic life, interviewers are much more likely to look for flexibility, adaptability, change management skills and resilience than ever before. (One recruiter I know deliberately shifts her line of questioning mid-interview to test for these skills.)Just as on a resume 20 years at the same job has become a liability, so saying that you’re looking for job security or stability is not the positive answer it may have been just a few years ago. The fact that you changed jobs every few years is not as important as your reasons for making changes and what that reveals about your inclination and ability to take on new challenges and responsibilities.
On “weaknesses”: Despite the many interviewing guidebooks’ advice, it is NOT a good idea to say that your weakness is your being a “perfectionist”. Although it may have worked as an answer for some, and in the past, perfectionism has the connotation of obsessive, fixated, possibly rigid….and the interviewing company may be glad to have just rid themselves of someone who stayed until midnight to work on some minor detail!.
What interviewers love to hear about these days is how you’ve learned (and enjoyed learning) the skills you have, how you expect and do well with challenges, how you respond to the unexpected, how you handle conflicts, manage time and can reorganize your priorities on very short notice. That’s what they need and how you have to “frame” your presentation of yourself in an interview.
These are just two of the elements of our job search, but they are obviously crucial. In this challenging market, we need all the tools we can assemble. If we are more in alignment with market realities, we’ll be so much more effective and successful. And hey, this is the kind of challenge we’re supposed to be good at!

Appleheads are excited by every new gadget Mac offers and in turn become their best salesmen. I had a roommate who unnaturally used to go into these ten-minute demonstrations of anything Apple. It drove me insane, I thought the guy worked for Apple or something. “Look at this app, it turns your phone into an organic grass fed steak! This app is a helicopter pilot simulator, this app tells me the city’s best skate parks, this app you can use to level a picture frame.” Me: “Cool, stop trying to sell me dude … I get it — Apple does everything.” And then it did start to do everything.
“The iPad bridges the gap between an iPhone and a laptop,” numerous TekServe geeks told me with healthy exuberance. Will it spell the end of paper? No, but it will significantly reduce the need for the physical: document, bill, map, menu, music cover art, newspaper, and book — more so than any previous device. And why? Because you don’t have to do the zoom, pan and scan approach you have to do with the iPhone and iTouch (iPod touch).
As I write this article on my iTouch around the city and on the go, I’m seeing the growing necessity of having an iPad — I mean this thing is too small for extended writing and my laptop is too clumsy to carry around. I’d rather be iPad guy on the train than laptop guy. But it’s yet to be determined how big is too big to carry everywhere. At a skinny yet substantial 9.7 inches (measured diagonally) and half an inch wide, it seems the demographic certainly will include the over-sized purse queens and messenger bag men. But then again, you need to include the backpack kids and the no-bag-smart-phone-death grippers too. And with its keyboard attachments, wireless capabilities, cost, and sleek design, the iPad will also cover the coffee house junkies who are looking to take up a lot less space than with their bulky and antiquated laptops. And as for the recent Kindle/E-Reader boom, well it’s over — one of the iPad’s functions is an E-Reader, but not its sole function.
A few downfalls of the iPad: It doesn’t run flash-based applications, programs, software, or media files. It doesn’t have a camera and still cannot run multiple concurrent applications. So is it a cheaper laptop alternative? Yes, but not without a few snafus. It WILL certainly make the subway less hellish and turn everywhere into an office.

A LITTLE INFO
• 10 hour battery life
• 9.7 inches measured diagonally
• Wi-Fi with Bluetooth 2.1
• 3G network
• 16, 32, or 64 GB flash drive
• LED-Backlit IPS display
• Built-in speakers and microphone
• Currently compatible with 140,000 apps
• Can play video and music
• Stores photos

For complete tech specs for the product, go to http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/.

On February 11th, the Department of City Planning made a long-overdue presentation of its plans for a rezoning of a 6-block slice of the Far West Village between Washington and Greenwich, West 10th and West 12th Streets. The plan was for changes which the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation and several local community groups had been calling for for almost two years – eliminating an outdated C6-1 zoning district to impose stricter height and size limits on new development, and to ending the current bonus for commercial (such as hotel) or community facility (such as dorm or medical office) development.
Progress on this much-needed rezoning, first spurred on by plans for a nearly 100 foot tall hotel at the corner of Perry and Washington Street, has been slow. In April 2008 GVSHP and other community groups first asked the Department of City Planning, Community Board 2, and local elected officials to support such a change. After literally months of noncommittal stonewalling, rescheduled hearings, and non-responsiveness, community groups took matters into their own hands, and held a Town Hall meeting in April of the following year, 2009, to push for the rezoning. More than 150 people showed up, and in follow-up actions hundreds of letters were sent to city officials and hundreds more signed petitions.
Following this, in May of 2009 Community Board 2 held a public hearing on our requested rezoning and passed a resolution in support (which had been promised a year earlier). Several months later, in September of 2009, local elected officials wrote to the Department of City Planning stating that they supported the requested rezoning, and urged the Department of City Planning to move ahead. In November 2009, City Planning verbally agreed to do so, but waited several months to formulate a plan. Community groups pushed again, calling on City Planning to present their promised plan no later than February, and finally they did. City Planning says they will ‘certify’ the plan, or officially begin the approval process, in late April or early May. From there it takes about 6-7 months until final approval, with a vote of the City Council, at which point the new zoning takes effect.
Time is completely of the essence, and the delays which have taken place already mean it is more likely that we will see developments go up in the nick of time under the old, more permissive zoning. Under the law, just starting foundation work at the time of passage of the new zoning is generally enough for a new development to be “grandfathered,” or allowed to be completed under the terms of the old zoning.
Case in point: a planned new development at Charles and Washington Streets. Just two days before the City Planning presentation a developer brought a plan for a new building to the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) for approval. The building would be too large under the new zoning, but allowable under the current zoning. The LPC asked them to make some changes to the design, but did not require them to make the building any smaller. The developer could return to the LPC any time with a revised design, and once the LPC approves, they can get their permits from the Department of Buildings to begin work. A modest amount of work on the foundations at the time the new zoning takes effect (likely October or November) is all that would be required for the building to be grandfathered and completed under the old zoning.
At 145 Perry Street, the LPC last year approved plans for a combination hotel and residential development which, similarly, while allowable under the current zoning, would violate the new zoning because of the substantial hotel component. Work on that project could begin at any time, and similarly slip in under the deadline for the new zoning. There are also close to a dozen other potential development sites throughout this small six block area, and should a developer get LPC approvals for new construction on any of those sites, and foundation work begin before the new zoning passes, they could be built under the terms of the old, more permissive zoning as well.
Once the rezoning plan is ‘certified,’ there is little that can be done about speeding up the time frame for the approval process. There are multiple steps which must take place consecutively and which, by law, are each allotted a certain amount of time. That is why GVSHP and community groups pushed so hard to get to the point of certification, now expected in the next few weeks. Now we wait and watch to see who will beat the clock in the Far West Village.

Like most boys of my generation, I worshipped at the shrine of Mantle and Kiner. But I came from a bookish family and nestled in my pantheon of heroes was a roster of writers, among them Hemingway, Waugh, and Orwell. Not that, in early adolescence, I had read much of their work, but I knew about them—their affairs, their drinking habits, their political stances. In particular, I was entranced by the image of the lonely, impecunious and if possible, despised, writer composing his or her masterpieces in a Parisian café, with only a fin a l’eau for company. That I didn’t know what a fin a l’eau was didn’t matter: the image of Hemingway at the Closerie des Lilas or Sartre at the Deux Magots sipping and scribbling, seemed to me romantic as hell.
However, I never tried the experiment myself until recently, when my wife invited a fourteen-year-old niece to join us in a Parisian apartment we were temporarily occupying, in hopes that the child might acquire a veneer of culture. Regrettably, Cecily was immune to culture. She sat up until two in the morning watching old horror movies and slept on the living room daybed until noon. Perforce I had to find another place to write.
Now, I thought, would be my Hemingway moment. I repaired to the Café Sans Espoir with paper and pen, the Sans Espoir, determined to hang onto its Frenchness, lacking an internet connection. As I settled into a corner table, I considered ordering a fin a l’eau, but recognizing that a brandy at eight o’clock in the morning would bounce around in my stomach like a ping pong ball, I ordered a café crème, picked up my pen, and began.
A thick fog embraced the heath, dampening hopes and raising spectres. Jedson peered through the mist….
The table was wobbling. I braced it with a knee.
…clutching his blue-steel pistol tightly in his right hand, his left still painful from the bullet wound. His heart beat…
The table still wobbled. Carefully I shifted paper, pen, and café crème to an adjoining table.
…rapidly. He could see no more than two feet ahead of himself. Was the creature which had made that horrifying…
This table wobbled, too. I gestured to M’sieur. “Cette table wobbles.”
“Bien sur, m’sieur. Toutes les tables dans cafés wobble. C’est part of our Gallic charm.”
“Peut-etre vous pouvez fix the goddam thing.”
“Sans aucun doute M’sieur,.” He drew from his pocket a slim paperback and inserted it under the derelict leg. “Voila. That is why writers create books.”
“A oui? Peut-etre– But his back was already turned to me. I picked up my pen.
…noise that had come in the night still out there? What sort of creature was it? Jedson shivered inside…
At that moment a large man in an expensive overcoat landed at the adjoining table with the delicacy of a 747 coming in on runway three. He whipped out a cell phone and began talking loudly in bad French.
“Excusez-moi, M’sieur, mais je suis trying to write a book.”
“Bon,” he said loudly, “my table wobbles.”
With as much dignity as I could manage, I carried my pen, paper, and café crème to a distant table. Once again I grasped my pen.
…his coat. What if the rumors swirling around the old manse were true? Once again he shivered…
There came into the Café Sans Espoir a lady of a certain age leading a small dog, both walking stiffly erect, chins raised. On spotting me the dog began to bark.
The lady, her eyebrows raised, stared down at me from a considerable height. “Henri doesn’t like writers.”
“Nobody does. They’re always whining about being interrupted while they’re trying to work.”
“ Sans doute. Dogs can sense such things. I sometimes think that they’re more intelligent than people.”
“I’m sure of it,” I said sharply. “I once had a collie who spoke better French than you do. It was up for a good position at the U.N. but it bit Berlusconi at a meeting and lost the gig to a dachshund.” I gazed at her steadily. “It thought that Berlusconi was French.”
“Come, Henri.” She turned on her heel and stalked away, waving her tail behind her. I resumed.
Where was Michelson? He ought to have arrived long before this. Facing this task alone was not…
Then I noticed a small child accompanied by a severely chic maman standing in front of me. “What’s he doing, Maman?” the child said, pointing.
“Shush, Jacques, he is an American. He doesn’t know what he is doing.
Come.”
“No.” The child began to whistle shrilly through his teeth with the sound of a saw cutting steel.
“Madame,” I said, “I am working on a book of great importance. Peut-etre l’enfant could whistle himself elsewhere.”
The child ignored this. “I’ll bet your book isn’t as good as ‘Harry Potter.’”
“Au contraire, M’sieur. It is a masterpiece. It is about a small boy who asks too many questions and is eaten alive by an insane American who neglected to order a fin a l’eau.”
Maman grabbed the child’s hand. “Come, Jacques. L’Americain est dangereux,” and she led him away. I took a deep breath and resumed.
…had not been part of Jedson’s plan for the morning. What could have delayed Michelson? Surely the creature, whatever it was….
From directly in front of me there came a sudden loud groan, as if an elephant had died. I stared. Two feet in front of me a dirty rogue in a tattered suit was unlimbering an accordion. Slowly and deliberately I put away my pen and folded my paper. Clearly, the cafes of Hemingway’s day were better ordered than they presently are. But at least I could follow Hemingway’s practice in one respect. I beckoned to the waiter. “Une fin a l’eau, s’il vous plait,” I said firmly.

This month’s West Village Original is actor and director Everett Quinton, who has lived on Morton Street since 1975. That same year he met Charles Ludlam, founder of the Ridiculous Theatrical Company on Sheridan Square, and they became life partners and collaborators until Mr. Ludlam’s death in 1987. Today, Quinton still acts regularly as well as directs, including a recent production of “The Mystery of Irma Vep” at the Everyman Theatre in Baltimore.

Born in Brooklyn in 1951, actor Everett Quinton grew up in Park Slope, as he puts it, “On the poor side of Seventh Avenue.” According to him, Brooklyn was pretty provincial then, despite its proximity to Manhattan. “When you went to take the subway,” he recalls, “the signs read ‘To Coney Island’ or ‘The City’. Not ‘Manhattan’. I was even surprised that people actually lived in Manhattan. I thought it was all just businesses and towering office buildings. To then discover these interesting neighborhoods nestled inside all of that was quite amazing. I was fascinated by it.”
Discovering the West Village in particular gave Quinton a sense of freedom, especially with regards to his sexuality. “When I found the West Village,” he says, “I vowed to myself, ‘No more closet queen! I don’t know what’s going to happen here but there’s going to be no more girl friends and no more lying for me.’” He and Ludlam met on Christopher Street, right next to the Lucille Lortel Theatre, then known as the Theatre de Lys. “Charles’s name is on the Theatre Walk of Fame right outside the theater,” Quinton says. “Although someone once asked me why his name is so far from everyone else’s. It’s because I met him on that very spot. He introduced himself and within a year we moved in together on Morton Street.”
Quinton’s debut with the Ridiculous Theatrical Company was on February 10, 1976 in a show called Caprice. “For some reason, I always remember the date. Maybe because I played a ballerina who gets abducted!” he says, laughing. “It was a last-minute role for me. I was in the theater one day but off in a corner, finishing a term paper for a class at Hunter College. Charles approached me and said that he had written a role but there was no one to fill it. He asked me if I would do it. Since I had been watching rehearsals regularly and was familiar with the play, I agreed. That started my performing career.”
After that, Quinton began getting regular roles in Ludlam’s company. “A bigger role in Caprice came open, which I auditioned for but didn’t get,” he says. “Then at one point Charles did Der Ring Gott Farbinjet. I didn’t have to audition for that because there were so many roles. Instead, I lobbied for a particular one and got it. Then I showed that I could deliver the goods, so I never had to audition again. I got a company position.” From there he was involved in most of the company’s iconic productions, including the aforementioned Ring plus Galas, Camille, The Mystery of Irma Vep, and The Artificial Jungle, winning awards for his performances.
What was the Village like when he moved here? “It was right after Stonewall so there was a sense of neighborhood,” he says. Then he corrects himself. “There still is a sense of neighborhood. It’s just that I found it to be more self-contained in those days. You didn’t need to go anywhere because you could get everything in this neighborhood! There was the Capezio shop on MacDougal Street, where you could buy leotards and dance shoes for a show. Or those two beautiful art supply stores, one on West Fourth Street and one on Greenwich Street. There were two fish markets—as well as Zito’s Breads—on Bleecker Street. They all got eaten up by time.”
Quinton stops and laughs. “I have to be careful that I don’t start sounding like an old man,” he says, “complaining about how this has changed and that has changed! Besides, I think the Village will be just fine. And sometimes it just takes time to get used to certain things. Take those glass towers on Charles Street at the river, for example. I am now beginning to accept a certain beauty about them. And what can you do? They are there. Time marches on, and who’s the arbiter of beauty? Certainly not me.”

Do you know a long-time West Village resident who would make a good subject for this column? If so, contact Michael at michael.minichiello@gmail.com

Sitting the wrong way, bang – it hits – spasm in my lower back – the familiar dread – intense pain – walking bent over like a crab – in pain for a week – probably more. Next day, desperate, I am on the table at the deep muscle Hoshino massage, a therapist digging his thumbs into me. Ouch. One more day, walking crablike and in pain, I turn a corner and feel a twist as my knee turns independent of my sneaker which has grabbed the stone floor. I hobble like a crab the rest of the way while the pain in my knee gradually worsens. I am about to leave on a long trip to a far away place, where I have to be on my feet and my knee feels like hell. Orthopedic specialist checks out my knee and informs me that I need an MRI but that he can tell that I probably have a misplaced part of my meniscus and it might need surgery. He also lets his hair down. He tells me that he has to retire next year because they won’t give him enough time in the operating room to make enough money to make it worthwhile to pay his insurance premium for malpractice, $150,000 a year!!! My heart goes out to him – poor guy, but my heart also murmurs to me: “Hey, if this guy needs so many operations to cover this expense and who knows what else, is it possible he may have a low threshold for picking up the knife?” I head for the nearest computer and enter “unnecessary surgery” in Google and get 120,000 hits including a feature article in the April 16, 1989 Sunday New York Times full of undeniable statistics – and that’s without even mentioning the other 119,000 items on the web.
I crab-shuffle out clutching my back and favoring my knee, put elastic bands on both damaged parts and head for the airport the next day. It was painful but I did the job and survived and best of all received a great deal of sympathy for coming as a limping crab disguised as a scientist. My wife believes in all kinds of strange things, for example faith healers and the efficacy of acupuncture as a means to relieve the kinds of problems I was having. She insists. But I’m a scientist who needs the facts and I’m not going for acupuncture without checking it out. The first step involves money: Will the medical insurance I get from my job cover acupuncture? To my surprise the answer is yes. That’s reassuring – after all, medical insurance companies are going to be careful about the “health professionals” they use, no? So I take the next step and spend hours and hours reading everything I can get my hands on about acupuncture, including James Reston’s famous introduction of acupuncture to the western world in the New York Times July 26, 1971 column: he reported that he was relieved of pain after an emergency appendectomy while accompanying Nixon to China. But I’m a scientist – no fooling around for our profession. I’m into the original literature – Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, heavy stuff, Archives of Internal Medicine, Official Reports of the National Institutes of Health and much much more. The more I read, the more confused I become. Talk about controversy. In acupuncture we have total scientific confusion – yes there is something to it – no there is nothing to it. Maybe there is something but just a placebo effect.
So why do I read a report that nearly 50% of Americans enrolled in employer health insurance plans are covered for acupuncture treatments? With all the uncertainty I’ve found in the literature, doesn’t the insurance industry care? I take a break and go get a haircut from Mr. Costa on 14th Street (south side between 8th and 9th Avenues). When I tell him my quandary, he answers: “Professor – of course the insurance companies would cover acupuncture. It’s so much cheaper than going to a doctor especially with the things doctors recommend – drugs and surgery. They hope you won’t go to the doctor.” Right on Mr. Costa! As soon as he said it, I knew it was true.
Well maybe the insurance companies don’t have the best motives, but here is some science that could support acupuncture: A German scientist describes how microscopic spores from seaweed swim randomly around and slowly find their way to a surface they can glue themselves to and start to grow colonies. No one understands how the bugs know where the surface is. You can’t find a trace of evidence in the water they swim in to tell the way to any surface. Yet they unerringly head in the right direction, a bit drunkenly, but in the right direction. Maybe the German scientist’s bugs were sensitive enough to detect whatever information the surface was giving off, information that was invisible to us and our fanciest, most expensive machines.
Is it possible that science could be blind to effects that our bodies respond to? Maybe only our bodies are sensitive enough to detect the information given off by the acupuncture procedure – the methods available to science are too insensitive. We are the canaries in the coal mine.
Dr. Sun, doctor of Chinese medicine, located in Little Neck, Queens, has now stuck needles into me during two visits, sometimes heating and twisting them while I listen to meditative sounds and music. And I go home and eat more meat to increase my qi and take the herbal medicines he prescribed to balance my yin and yang. Knee and back are feeling better, but as old Dr. Art Snyder used to say during previous back spasm episodes: “Self-limiting Mark, self-limiting.” Confusion reigns and I continue with the acupuncture, as do a large number of Americans and Canadians.

In 1994 Jim Fitzgerald, an executive editor at St. Martin’s Press, decided it was a good time to publish a book on Greenwich Village. At first we wanted to do a historical and personal memory account of our lives in the Village, which we saw as probably the most famous neighborhood in the world – not excluding the Left Bank in Paris. We really believed that the Village was the only place to live, often reciting or singing the lyrics from the Broadway show Wonderful Town (based on the New Yorker short story My Sister Eileen by Ruth McKenna) – “Here we live, here we love – this is the place for self expression.” Fitzgerald convinced us that a memoir, history, and guide combination would sell best in the marketplace and the sales/marketing guys at St. Martin’s agreed. The title we came up with was simply Greenwich Village with two subtitles: Including the East Village and Soho and A Primo Guide to Shopping, Eating, and Making Merry in True Bohemia. Walking tours, restaurants, bars, shops and entertainment venues co-mingle with maps, photos, and a historical depiction of the Village as a home to artists, writers, musicians, actors, poets, Bohemians, and other folk who were attracted to the reasonable rents and coffee shop cafes. I myself often still like to sing a Paul Simon song entitled Bleecker Street with the lyric “thirty dollars pays your rent on Bleecker Street” — would it now be more like $3,000?
Many famous Village personalities include in the book are Bob Dylan, Bette Midler, Edward Albee, Tiny Tim, Jimi Hendrix, Lou Reed, Edna St. Vincent Millay (whose middle name was given to her after she was born at St. Vincent’s Hospital), and Joe Cino, who ran his legendary Caffe Cino Off-off Broadway theater on Cornelia Street where the early plays of Sam Shepard, Robert Patrick, Lanford Wilson, Doric Wilson, John Guare, H. M. Koutoukas, William Hoffman, David Starkwether, Tom Eyen, and Jeff Weiss were first produced. My own works The Bed and Moon had long runs at the Cino; and I was enthralled when Andy Warhol showed up and decided to film The Bed. Those were the days, indeed. The Cino has been designated the very first OOB theater with a historic bronze plaque now on the front of the Po Restaurant at 31 Cornelia Street, which was for ten years the home of the Caffe Cino.
Editor Jim Fitzgerald thought we needed a “hook” for the Spring pub date; and after checking the history books we came up with the date of May 5, 1995 — exactly one hundred years to the day of the original dedication ceremonies of the marble Sanford White-designed Washington Arch in Washington Square on May 5, 1895. The publicity department at St. Martin’s wanted a large-scale event and alerted Mayor Giuliani to the importance of that day. The May 5 ceremony at the Arch included the Mayor, other elected dignitaries, then Parks Commissioner Henry Stern, a classroom of school kids, a church chorale and the Governor’s Color Guard Band. We authors were invited as guests of honor. In conversation with the mayor we pointed out that one of the statues of George Washington had pockmark holes on his face and a dark stain on his trousers. We had a good time climbing to the top of the Arch with the Mayor — the same spot where in 1916 a group of artists and writers led by Marcel Duchamp and John Reed declared Greenwich Village “a free republic, a new Bohemia!” It should be noted that for years we complained about what we came to refer to as pink jail-yard lights that were predominant in Washington Square. Fortunately the restoration of the Arch and the rest of this great historic park, including a new softer old world style lighting system, couldn’t be better. Eleanor Roosevelt, who kept an apartment from 1941 to 1949 at 29 Washington Square West, would be proud. Following FDR’s death in 1945 she walked through the Park every day with his famous White House Scottie dog Fala. Later that afternoon we were interviewed on WNYC radio and were hosts at a book party at Nicholas Davies Gallery on Commerce Street, followed by a celebratory dinner at the Lion’s Head where the book was toasted by Uta Hagen, a regular, with martini in hand. What a day! The following week we were on PBS, interviewed by Laura Savini on location in the Square. Two weeks later Giuliani pledged one million dollars to kick off the privately funded restoration of the Arch.
As time marched on from 1995 to 2005 and now into 2010 we continuously noted that more and more of the tried and true establishments recommended in our book were disappearing. Apartment rentals in the new century soared as “yuppies” (young upwardly mobile) and “guppies” (gay upwardly mobile) and Wall Street workaholics descended on the Village. Now some have come to refer to the Village as Hollywood East as tourists try to ferret out where Julianne Moore, Liv Tyler, Brad Pitt, Gwyneth Paltrow, Sarah-Jessica Parker, Mathew Broderick, Hillary Swank, Glen Close and other celebrities live. In these difficult times it has become clear to us that a new updated edition guidebook on Greenwich Village would be almost impossible as establishments go out of business with a swiftness one could not have imagined in past decades. What used to be antique or boutique shops on Bleecker Street are now high-end window display fashion apparel stores run by either the Ralph Lauren or Marc Jacobs industries. Alas, a new Madison Avenue has swept into the Village.
We have seen of course that more and more of the old time establishments are either out of business or about to shut their doors permanently and this is particularly true in the Mom and Pop and singular individual categories. As in Gone With The Wind the carpetbaggers are in town – and in a big takeover way. To add to the dismay, many in the Village and elsewhere are holding their breath waiting to see what will happen with St. Vincent’s Hospital, which has a full historical account in the Greenwich Village book. In lieu of detailing the many changes since 1995, we have made a list of l5 places that are gone and 15 that are still here – 15 years after our guide book was published. Some of the most recent to disappear include Aphrodisia, Alphaville, Second Childhood, and The Pink Teacup. And new places open every day. In any case, the following – some of our old time favorites – are at this time still with us.

Still With Us:
The White Horse Tavern, the Stonewall Inn, Corner Bistro, Marie’s Crisis, the Café Wha? – Olive Tree Restaurant – Comedy Cellar complex, Village Vanguard, Julius’ Bar, Rocco’s Pastry and Coffee Shop, the Reggio Café, Waverly Restaurant, John’s Pizzeria, Cowgirl Bar & Restaurant, Three Lives Bookstore, Partners & Crime Mystery Booksellers, Bigelow’s Drugstore
Gone But Not Forgotten:
The Pink Teacup, Second Childhood, The Lion’s Den, The Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookstore, Bellardo, Ltd., Balducci’s, Le Figaro, The Borgia Café, Pennyfeathers, Anglers and Writers, Sazerac House, Grand Ticino, Mary’s Restaurant, O’ Mistress Mine vintage clothing, Zito & Sons bookstore.

Yesterday was a red letter day in both political corruption and criminal behavior. We observed the indictment of Councilman Larry Seabrook for a multitude of crimes over seven years, and the expulsion from the Senate of Hiram Monserrate. Both are noteworthy events.
The Seabrook prosecutor is the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara, who was appointed by President Obama on the recommendation of the senior Senator for New York, Chuck Schumer. Mr. Bharara was born in India and brought to this country as an infant. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Columbia Law School. He worked five years in the U.S. Attorney’s office, prosecuting criminal cases against crime families. In 2005 he became chief counsel to Senator Schumer.
The 13-count indictment against the three-term Councilman from the North Bronx covers a multiplicity of alleged sins: larceny, bribery, extortion, money laundering, etc. (http://www.scribd.com/doc/26616961/Seabrook-Larry-Indictment). Essentially, it accuses Seabrook of selling his office, collecting bribes, and defrauding the city on discretionary funds he received as a councilmember. The scheme was unfolded in charts presented by the U.S. Attorney and his staff.
The breadth of the Seabrook indictment is comparable to the barrage of charges against former Assemblyman Brian McLaughlin of Queens, once thought of as a mayoral contender. McLaughlin pleaded guilty on March 7, 2008 and was sentenced to ten years in prison. Along the way, he gave up a colleague, Queens Assemblyman Anthony Seminerio, who received a six-year sentence for securing state funds for nonprofits in exchange for cash. He disguised the cash as consulting fees in the style of former Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno, who was convicted on December 7, 2009 on two counts relating to the sale of a nondescript horse. Bruno is scheduled to be sentenced March 31; he has appealed his conviction to the Second Circuit. McLaughlin and Bernard Madoff, who was not in politics, are both serving time in a Federal prison in North Carolina.
Apart from his guilt or innocence, an issue in the Seabrook case is: who else knew what he was doing, and where was municipal oversight over the spending of discretionary funds? To some extent, the process involves Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who allocated the money among her members. The millions were granted as a reward for Seabrook’s political loyalty and reliability as a vote on the Council. Is it surprising that he should apply the same standard to the recipients of the money as were applied to him — No questions asked? Was there the slightest review by anyone in government over the seven years the scam was operating? (Four of those years were under former Speaker Gifford Miller.) Did Comptroller Thompson ever look at how the city money was being spent?
The more important question is: how many other Councilmembers do what Seabrook did? Councilman Miguel Martinez of Upper Manhattan was caught by Federal prosecutors last year, and pleaded guilty. He is now serving a five-year prison sentence. It is unlikely that these two are the only ones who misused the Council’s discretionary funds, although their activities may have been the most egregious. The system now in place makes it far too easy to steal public funds. Who is responsible for tightening procedures? Who does spot checks to see that programs exist? Where is the due diligence? Who is responsible, the mayor, the comptroller, the speaker, the commissioner of investigation? Rule 25-E: “Everybody’s job is nobody’s job.”
Monserrate is a different story. His offenses were not committed on the job, and did not involve defrauding the city. He allegedly slashed his girlfriend with a broken glass, and took 40 minutes in a car to find a remote hospital to which he could take her, after dragging her out of his apartment house. He waived his right to a jury trial, so the case was heard by Judge William Erlbaum, who acquitted him of felony assault but convicted him of misdemeanor assault because the dragging was caught on videotape. The victim told the emergency room doctor that Monserrate had slashed her. She later recanted her accusation, whether out of compassion, calculation or desire. Her story at the trial was that she had clumsily fallen on the broken glass, a frequent tale in cases of domestic violence. Judge Erlbaum said, pointedly: “There are two types of not-guilty findings. One is innocence, the other is not proven — these counts were not proven.”
Conviction of a felony results in automatic expulsion from the legislature. Many of his colleagues believed that he had committed a felony, and they were imposing the penalty that the judge decided not to because he felt the slashing was not proven beyond a reasonable doubt. It seems to us that people very rarely fall to the floor on their own and slash their faces on freshly-broken glass while arguing with their lovers.
Be that as it may, we believe that a large factor in Monserrate’s expulsion was his political disloyalty to both Republicans and Democrats. By following Pedro Espada and deserting his caucus for personal advantage in the June 8 coup, and then bouncing back a week later to rejoin the Democrats (thus leaving neither side with a majority) Monserrat managed to betray both parties in the Senate. Rule 25-W: “What goes around, comes around.”
The situation is comparable to that faced by Governor Spitzer, who was pursued by Federal authorities and found himself facing impeachment and removal from office, basically for consensual sex with an upscale prostitute — who is now a Post columnist on affairs of the heart. Spitzer was forced to resign in March 2008 because legislators of both parties could not stand him, because of his ill temper, inconsistency, and intemperate behavior, including threats and personal abuse. His intrigue against Senator Bruno, his evasions on the subject, and his attempt to blame staff showed lack of character. His tawdry role as Client No. 9 gave his colleagues the excuse they desired to trade him in for Lieutenant Governor Paterson. It is not a Rule, but it is apropos that answered prayers cause more tears than unanswered ones.
Whether they would have acted as they did if they knew what would transpire is an unanswerable question. It would certainly have made the Assembly’s deliberations more complex. But at the time, Paterson was a relatively unknown quantity, having spent twenty years in the Senate without generating much notice. His peaceable nature led to the belief that, with him, there would be more comity between the executive and legislative branches of government. That turned out to be a serious error.
One note on the recent rumor mill contretemps. We do not blame The New York Times, which has not (as of the day of the blizzard) published a word about the governor’s private life. It is curious that the Executive Chamber was silent for three days as the rumors swelled. On the other hand, so much in Albany is bizarre, and so much of the rest is bathetic, that no one should be particularly surprised any more by anything they do or fail to do.
One thing Albany is clearly not doing is dealing realistically with the budget crisis. When the state runs out of cash, can no longer borrow, and is unable to meet payroll, this issue will get the public attention it deserves. Of course, if the governor and legislature had acted when they were warned years ago, the situation would not be as acute as it is today.
Watching Albany is like watching a stock on the market slide downward, in fits and starts, but at increasing velocity. One wonders when it will hit bottom. Who knows what outside forces will be needed to come to the rescue? Will the cavalry arrive, and what price will we have to pay for their help? Together, we will watch.

For years we have thought and argued, demonstrated, met, calculated, and consulted consultants about what to do about Pier 40. At least 6 developers have spent upwards of a million dollars each developing plans and responding to RFPs, hoping to grab onto the last major piece of real estate located in Greenwich Village. It is important because Pier 40 has always been the lynchpin of the entire Hudson River Park.
We as a Community have been seduced by some plans and recoiled in horror from others. Periodically we return to our senses and understand that the only way to develop the Pier in a way which will both provide the revenue that Hudson River Park needs — and be community friendly — is to develop the Pier incrementally. Incrementalism doesn’t mean deals can’t be made where investors don’t invest capital into the Pier, it just means that capital is put into a limited part of the Pier. For example, a parking lot developer might be willing to put money into repairing the roof above parking spaces because it would produce income (if the lease was long enough) in the spaces now unused because of debris falling from the roof (and the Trust may be following up on such a possibility.)
Well, from the pages of WestView has arisen another seductive idea — bringing the Green Market to Pier 40. Let’s take a look at the vision.
• The Green Market would set up on the north side of the pier, using both the walkway on the water, the north shed (an open space the size of two football fields) and the north side of the walkway which surrounds the inner courtyard ball fields.
• The farmers and purveyors would set up in the different areas, creating a space which would be part green market and part open market, much like one finds in the Caribbean and Latin America. Merchants would sell flowers, fruit, vegetables or meats; fresh fish could be sold right on the water’s edge; artists and artisans could set up little booths to sell art, clothes, jewelry, crafts, spices, books, etc. Maybe there would be flea market booths as well. Prepared food vendors could also be given space, so that shoppers could eat and drink while they shopped.
• Set up and breakdown would be easy since each vendor would be required to have his or her own source of energy, if needed. The inner space has light and is heated.
• At first the green market would set up on Saturdays and Sundays. As word spread and crowds grew, new days could be added, or perhaps afternoons and evenings.
• All of this could be done with little investment on the part of the Trust. Perhaps the rolling doors on the north side of the shed would have to be fixed. Arrangements would have to be made for traffic control as trucks and vans entered for set up or breakdown.
• The rents charged for the vendors would be low at first (to attract vendors to a new location before it has established a customer base) and then rise based on the increase in foot traffic.
The disadvantages? I see none. The risk is solely borne by the purveyors who dare venture onto the Pier.
The upside? Bringing new people to the Pier for a new purpose, retail shopping. My bet is that the folks who now troop all the way to Union Square will come to Pier 40. And so will people from the West Village, Soho, Hudson Square and Tribeca. The size and selection will mean that more will be available at Pier 40 that at most city green markets, and once this new user population is brought to the Pier (either with the M8 bus or with shuttle buses if the MTA won’t cooperate) it will make the Pier more attractive to others offering community-friendly services and products. The Pier user population will expand beyond a sports and parking population. And it will be a crowd which mostly comes by foot. It could provide an outlet for struggling non-chain store West Village businesses, or a place for businesses we have lost to start again.
If it works, the Trust makes money and a whole new user group is drawn to Pier 40, opening the door to future development of other parts of the Pier. That’s exactly what happened with the youth sports users.
Like the idea? Think it stinks? Come to the public meeting March 22nd at 7pm. Let’s open up the discussion again.

Arthur Z. Schwartz is the Chair of the Hudson River Park Trust Advisory Council and of the Community Board 2 Waterfront Committee. He is also the male Democratic State Committee Member for the Village, Soho and Tribeca. The views he expresses are his own.

Thirty years ago, in a presentation I attended in Warsaw, Andre Targowski, a young University math professor who had been given the task of creating the first computer network for Poland, paused, and said something I have never forgotten…
“If you want to make an imaginative concept a reality — give it a name.”
When I thought about a year-round green market on Pier 40, the name came ..

I asked the accomplished designer Stephanie Phelan to do some quick concept studies and they were so good we are printing all of them for our readers to select and comment.

Please send us your vote and suggestions — or your own design — to win a free subscription to WestView. 
(Send to GeorgeC101@aol.com)

WestView contributor Stephanie Phelan is an award-winning designer of magazines, books and newspapers. Her logo designs include the famous Black Labrador for the Black Dog Tavern Company. Also known for her dog portraits, she has won The Westminster Kennel Club Award for Dog Art. To see more of her work, go to 
www.phelandesignworks.com, or e-mail her at phelandesign@mac.com.

George Capsis
Publisher
WestView

Your letter raises a number of interesting arguments for what has created high rents for small businesses in the West Village and elsewhere in New York. I must start by saying that I completely disagree with your theory that protections for residential tenants are responsible for the current situation, and I feel that your call to deregulate residential rent control would be harmful to New York City tenants.
However, I and my Council colleagues agree that the problem of high rents driving out mom-and-pop businesses must be addressed. The number of small business initiatives we have implemented and are exploring are too numerous to fit into this short response, so I do thank you for also publishing our letter outlining all the work we are doing at the Council.
Regarding the proposal to bring the Greenmarket program to Pier 40, I think it is a great idea that should be further explored. I have always been a huge supporter of the Greenmarket program and have worked tirelessly to increase access to fresh fruits and vegetables for New Yorkers. It was our work at the Council that allowed food stamp use at many Greenmarkets Citywide and that created Green Carts (food carts selling fresh produce) to serve neighborhoods lacking in grocery stores. Again we agree this time; greenmarkets are important for our neighborhood and to the city as a whole.
This is why my office reached out to the Hudson River Park Trust (HRPT) and Council on the Environment of New York City (CENYC), which runs the Greenmarkets program at the beginning of the year, after Westview’s survey results were published. My office asked for this topic to be added to the next Hudson River Park Advisory Council agenda, a public body that includes community board representation, local elected officials, HRPT staff and waterfront and neighborhood groups, which meets regularly to discuss the state and future of the park. The realistic barriers that will need to be discussed are funding, location, and safety.
A critical piece of information that your letter entirely glosses over is that a farmer’s market is not capable of solving the greater issues facing the pier. Pier 40 is in dire need of millions of dollars-worth of repairs to both its roof and piles. Because this great pier is one of the main sources of revenue for the Hudson River Park, it is imperative that HRPT devote its energy to creating a model of sustainable income generation for the pier, which may lead to another Request for Proposals being issued. A farmer’s market, while wonderful for the health of the neighborhood and sense of community, would be separate and apart from any plan to secure the long-term structural soundness of Pier 40 and financial viability and health of Hudson River Park.
In conclusion, I feel that we agree on our common goals. However, we disagree that it requires courage to take on the concerns and issues faced by small business, and to support and explore the possibility of a greenmarket at Pier 40. It takes hard work, asking tough questions, and sticking with it until we have the answers.

Sincerely,
Christine C. Quinn
NYC Council Speaker

On February 18th, Community Board No. 2 Manhattan unanimously passed a resolution in strong opposition to the draconian service reductions that MTA-NYC Transit has proposed, particularly in regard to the buses that serve our community and are often the only feasible mode of transportation for our most vulnerable populations, such as seniors, disabled and children, as well as being essential routes for the entire community.
Among the bus services threatened are the M8 (traveling east on 9th Street and west on 8th Street), which stands to lose both weekend and overnight bus service, the uptown M3, which would be moved from its central and easily accessible location at 9th Street and University Place several blocks further east, the M20 (the only bus in our area going downtown on 7th Avenue), whose hours of operation would be reduced, and the M6 (traveling uptown on 6th Avenue and downtown on Broadway), which would be discontinued completely.
These service cuts would be a hardship for our community, removing the links we need around town to conduct our daily lives and preserve our way of life as New Yorkers. If anything, we need more of these essential transit services, not less. In fact, just about a year ago, CB2 asked for an extension of the M8 to Pier 40 to provide safe, convenient and essential access to the many school children who use the pier’s athletic facilities and currently have to brave the dangers of copious, fast-moving traffic as they walk across West Street to reach the pier. This sensible and reasonable request, which also would benefit the many other people who look to access Greenwich Village’s west side waterfront out of harm’s way, was rejected by MTA-NYC Transit.
MTA will be holding a public hearing on these and other cuts in Manhattan on Thursday, March 4th at Fashion Institute of Technology, Haft Auditorium, 7th Ave. at 27th St. at 6 p.m. Registration closes at 9 p.m. Everyone is encouraged to attend and present their protests against these outrageous cuts.
Shirley Secunda, Chair
Traffic and Transportation Committee
Community Board No. 2, Manhattan

Former deliverymen at two different 8th Ave. and Hudson St. sushi restaurants are locked in battle with their one-time employers, spearheading regular picket lines in front of both establishments to protest what they claim are owners’ illegal and unfair practices and seek reinstatement to their jobs.
Tian Wen Ye, formerly of Kawa Sushi (24 8th Ave.), and Jian Kui Chen, formerly of Sushi on Hudson (now called Sushi West, and still located at 556 Hudson St.), both say they were paid wages below the government-mandated minimum and faced retaliation for complaining about their treatment and trying to organize fellow workers.
Both men say they worked more than 70 hours a week, Ye making $1.90 per hour and Chen making less than $3 per hour. The state-mandated minimum wage for tip-making positions is $4.60 per hour. Ye was fired in March 2007 after filing a complaint about the working conditions at Kawa with the Federal Department of Labor, and says he was then blacklisted by area restaurants. Chen was fired in June 2008 after demanding that his bosses comply with the law by paying employees minimum wage and overtime pay and fully reporting their wages and tips to tax authorities.
Ye and Chen, both from Fujian Province, China, have been supported by a coalition called Justice Will be Served (representing Local 318 Restaurant Workers Union, Chinese Staff & Workers’ Association, and a group called National Mobilization Against Sweatshops). They spoke, through a translator, to WestView at the Chinatown offices of the Chinese Staff and Workers’ Association.
Although the owners of both Kawa Sushi and Sushi West declined, through employees, to speak to WestView, the owners of Kawa Sushi, (a group headed by Yi Xiang Cao), have hung flyers in front of the restaurant telling their side of the story. Titled “Shame on you! Tian Wen Ye!” the flyer claims that Ye, as delivery manager, “always asked for more tips” from customers and was fired for fighting with another deliveryman. The flyer claims that Ye only hired his friends and relatives to work as delivery people, and disrupted other customers at their hangout, Starbucks on Greenwich Ave, with “their bad attitude.”
Ye and five co-workers managed to win their jobs back at Kawa Sushi in January 2008, along with compensation for underpayment. The next month, the men filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging minimum wage and overtime labor law violation and retaliation for organizing. Ye continued his organizing efforts and claims that in October 2009 his boss sent workers (including the brother-in-law of his boss) to threaten to beat him up. Ye was subsequently fired a second time.
According to the Kawa Sushi flyer, after Ye was rehired in early 2008 he continued his “rude” behavior, encouraged a staff member “to beat the kitchen chef,” and then “blackmailed” Kawa’s owners by demanding $20,000 in payment from the restaurant in exchange for not making waves.
Ye, Chen and many other restaurant, nail salon and other service industry workers have been emboldened by a $4.6 million October 2008 U.S. District Court judgment that awarded 36 former workers at two Manhattan branches of the Saigon Grill restaurant chain for back pay and damages. The judgment found blatant and systematic violations of minimum wage and overtime laws. Earlier, a National Labor Relations Board judge had ordered Saigon Grill to reinstate 28 deliverymen; the judge deemed them to have been fired in retaliation for the planned lawsuit.
Ken Kimerling, legal director of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), which filed the federal lawsuit on behalf of the former Saigon Grill deliverymen, says it is “not totally uncommon” for employers to retaliate by firing employees who fight for legal pay. Many owners, however, he says, “smarten up, because retaliation can lead to additional penalties and damages.” Kimerling adds that physical threats aimed at restaurant workers, such as the one that Ye alleges were made against him, are also not uncommon when employees agitate for more pay or try to unionize.
The strikes have attracted several supporters from the neighborhood, including W. 12th St. resident Harry Chotiner, who teaches film in NYU’s continuing education department, and Perry Street resident Merry Tucker, a retired public school teacher. Chotiner took one of the flyers that Ye was handing out and decided to learn more about the case. He called the Justice will be Served number on the flyer and read the handout from Kawa Sushi. “[Kawa] tried to turn themselves into a victim and that seemed ridiculous to me,” he says. “If [Ye] was threatening the restaurant, it doesn’t seem to me that he would go to a lawyer at that point and get the legal machinery involved.” Tucker sees the strike as part of a larger, nationwide movement that seeks fairer treatment of low-wage restaurant workers, who often face wage, gender or racial discrimination.
On a recent below-freezing day, Ye stood in front of Kawa Sushi with other picketers, carrying a sign that read, “Stop the retaliation, reinstate me now!” He said confidently, “Of course we will win. The boss is doing the wrong thing, and we have a lot of worker and neighborhood support. We will continue the strike until the problem is solved.”

Nancy Matsumoto blogs about the West Village and other topics at www.nancymatsumoto.com

Dear WestView:
Although I agree with many of the publisher’s points in the article (An Open Letter To Chris Quinn 2/10), slum landlord Neil Bender is not an example to use as a landlord facing the problems of owning rent regulated buildings today, i.e., Baby Buddha.
Since his mother’s death and his subsequent inheritance (currently being challenged) of her real estate empire (from her late brother, William Gottlieb), Mr. Bender has systematically tripled rents, resulting in the closing of many West Village restaurants and apartment buildings. Has your favorite restaurant recently gone out of business? Most likely it was a Bender/Gottlieb building and he tripled the rent at lease renewal time. Bender does not raise rents to balance the loss from rent regulated apartments, he raises them to get tenants out and sell the building at an inflated price. As for the landlord’s high fuel costs, many of his residential apartments are illegally rented as commercial spaces and the entire fuel cost is paid by the tenant. He practices slum land-lording and is quick to evict. Anyone who works in or is familiar with Landlord/Tenant Court knows his name. The list of tenants he is currently in litigation with is endless.
I assure you, Mr. Bender’s actions are purely motivated by greed and not necessity. He is destroying the fabric and good will that created the West Village. His late uncle, William Gottlieb, bought many buildings in the West Village and Meat Packing District before his death in the ‘90’s. Although notorious for minimal upkeep, he kept the rents reasonable and was more interested in the quality of his tenants rather than how much he could get out of them. Fearing that the West Village would to turn into the “Madison Avenue/Rodeo Drive” it has today, he swore never to sell to big developers. His sister Molly continued with his wishes until her death as his nephew (Bender) lay in wait for his time to come. Since his mother’s death, he has begun to sell off everything to anyone who has the cash without a thought for the future or history of The West Village. Bender is not a landlord to be looked to as an example of trying times, but possibly the subject of an investigative article on the fall of The West Village.
Greedy landlords like Bender and not just rent regulated apartments have to be factored in as part of the problem too.
Goodbye Baby Buddha, goodbye West Village.
Name Withheld

Dear WestView:

Having lived on “The Block” for more than 41 years, I found the articles about Charles Street in the February issue really wonderful. Each story complemented the other perfectly. Kudos to both authors!

John F. Early

More of our city’s hospitals are falling into financial distress and facing unprecedented downsizing and complete closure in some cases. Last year my own neighborhood hospital where I was born closed its doors. The impact on the community has been significant and continues to affect many residents that it used to serve, even now.
St. Vincent’s Hospital has been a fixture of West Village community since 1849 and has provided emergency care, trauma care, hospital facilities, outpatient care, medical education, mental health services and so much more. St. Vincent’s has taken care of countless patients and stood by us during some of the worst disasters including the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks. Its ongoing financial woes have many West Side residents concerned about their health care.
Many wonder how hospitals which were thought to be among the most stable institutions are in such financial dire straits. It may surprise you that most hospitals in New York are barely breaking even. Like all businesses, hospitals have operating and administrative costs which are constantly increasing while reimbursements decrease. Costs of keeping technology current, maintaining and upgrading facilities are also increasing.
Hospitals are reimbursed by insurance companies based on the diagnoses that patients are admitted with. The DRG or diagnosis related group system was developed by Medicare to specify reimbursement to hospitals. This is very different from how a doctor’s office gets paid, which is by “procedure codes” such as an office visit, injection or in-office surgery. The DRG reimbursement encompasses all of a patient’s hospital care including the hospital bed, nursing, lab tests, CT scans, MRIs and medications, all of which are getting more expensive as technology advances and the general cost of operating increases.
Decreasing reimbursements from insurance companies coupled with proposed cuts in future Medicare payments have hospitals concerned about their ability to provide good patient care and turn a profit. Hospitals provide emergency care to all patients. In many cases, patients either have little or no coverage, leaving the hospital with little to no reimbursement furthering their financial decline. With health care reform stalled, one wonders if the “the system” will ever change to effectively improve our care and health and promote the stability of hospitals and all other components of our health care, for that matter.
As a physician watching hospitals struggle to survive, making cuts and closing, I worry about the impact that it will have on the community and my patients. Reorganization is a common exercise in the corporate world and many companies survive it. Should your health care be treated as “business as usual” and the resulting loss in services and your ability to choose be considered a normal part of business?
The impact of the loss of life-saving emergency services for the area is immeasurable. In my neighborhood, many people with chronic conditions or with a higher risk of cardiac events have anxiously planned alternative transportation and contingency plans should they get sick and need to go to the ER. The thought of a longer trip to another hospital is frustrating and worrisome, especially in those life-threatening situations when seconds count, such as heart attacks or strokes. The extra 10-15 minutes of transport can — and likely will — make a difference.
For patients needing admission to the hospital, the ability to be close to family and home will be threatened. This not only affects the logistics of getting home, but will make it more difficult for visitors, thus affecting patients’ overall recovery and wellbeing. Complex trauma cases may need to be transported to hospitals farther away, creating a delay in getting the help that you may urgently need.
St. Vincent’s announced that it will reorganize and staff members will take pay cuts in an attempt to remain solvent. Details are still unclear at this time, however in all likelihood the hospital will be less than what it was before, at least temporarily. Hopefully essential services will remain and the hospital will be able to keep its doors open. As a former medical student who rotated through St. Vincent’s, seeing patients, friends and colleagues deal with such uncertainty is distressing. Their struggles are truly undeserved — especially for those who have provided the most valuable commodity of all — your health care.

A few days before Christmas my 17-year-old daughter fainted in Beads of Paradise where she was holiday shopping. Rushed to St. Vincent’s Emergency Room, she was tended to by Dr. Jerry Bader, the same ER pediatrician who had prevented her from being severely burned at age 10 by acid a homeowner on West 10th Street had thoughtlessly allowed to be spilled on the sidewalk to remove paint. This was the St. Vincent’s I wanted to write about, the heart of our Greenwich Village community, kept beating by devoted doctors and nurses who know our names and save us from life’s misfortunes. However, just as I learned that the Pediatric ER, which had always existed in its own ground-floor space, was now being absorbed into a larger newly-constructed Emergency Room, it appeared that there might be no Emergency Room at all. Overnight it seemed, St. Vincent’s–officially Saint Vincent Catholic Medical Centers– was scheduled to disappear in a takeover by Continuum Health Partners, a consortium of five hospitals in Manhattan and Brooklyn, which announced its plan to reduce emergency capabilities and turn the hospital into an ambulatory healthcare center for the community. Although the takeover did not occur, it brought attention to St. Vincent’s slow suffering, the arteries of its beating heart clogged by debt, misguided administrative decisions, lawsuits against its own consultants, cutbacks in state funded Medicaid, overall reductions in healthcare reimbursements, all in addition to a noble mission to care for the poor at a time of national economic recession.
A Level 1 trauma center, a 440-bed full-service hospital, a healthcare hub of lower Manhattan, St. Vincent’s is in a perilous state, not for one reason, but many. There were eight Catholic hospitals in New York City in 2007 but by the end of 2008 St. Vincent’s was the last one standing. Problems really began in 2000 when the Archdiocese of New York merged St. Vincent’s with hospitals in the Diocese of Brooklyn and St. Vincent’s Staten Island, creating St. Vincent Catholic Medical Centers, and putting it in the hands of the Diocese of Brooklyn and the Sisters of Charity. In 2009 in America magazine, Dr. Daniel P. Sulmasy, O.F.M., at the time holder of the Sisters of Charity Chair of Ethics at St. Vincent’s Hospital, wrote that “From the moment of its creation, Saint Vincent Catholic Medical Centers of New York was a disaster. The problems of a $1.6 billion-a-year multi-hospital, multi-nursing-home behemoth were legion. As it turned out, the Brooklyn hospitals were in horrible financial shape.” St. Vincent’s did not divest itself of the Brooklyn hospitals but instead the hospital board hired expensive turnaround consultants in 2004.
Consulting firm Speltz and Weis came from New Hampshire. In 2003 the company was nearing the completion of its work at Crouse Hospital in Syracuse, New York, where it had brought that hospital out of bankruptcy. To do the job, David Speltz and Tim Weis installed themselves as CEO and CFO of Crouse, where they had a successful turnaround according to Bob Allen, Crouse’s vice president of communication and government affairs: “They instilled a very aggressive level of accountability in this organization that really wasn’t here before under the old leadership.” Speltz and Weis came to St. Vincent’s immediately after, and reprised their roles, again installing themselves as CEO and CFO. However, sources who were at the hospital at the time say that the men quickly fired a number of competent loyal St. Vincent’s employees. A lawsuit filed on behalf of St. Vincent’s accuses David Speltz and Tim Weis of subcontracting as many as 20 replacement hires right away, and marking up fees for them for their own profit. More were hired as time went on. According to Bob Allen, subcontracting in this way did not occur at Crouse.
While Speltz and Weis was at St. Vincent’s as a management company, the hospital had also hired Huron Consulting Group, based in Chicago, as a financial advisor. According to the same lawsuit, without the knowledge of St. Vincent’s board, Speltz and Weis and Huron entered into negotiations for Huron to acquire Speltz and Weis, which it did for $17 million. In 2005 a law firm hired by St. Vincent’s stated that these negotiations resulted in breaches of fiduciary duty and conflicts of interest on the part of Speltz and Weis. The lawsuit, brought by Gray & Associates LLC as trustee on behalf of St. Vincent’s, includes Huron Consulting Group along with Speltz and Weis as defendants. It has been reported that St. Vincent’s paid Speltz and Weis $30.8 million and Huron $1.2 million in a combination of fees and expenses, and that Speltz and Weis allegedly miscalculated St. Vincent’s future net realizable accounts receivable by more than $60 million. Where were the watchdogs? Lawyers for Speltz and Weis and lawyers for Gray & Associates LLC did not return phone calls for clarification.
By 2005 St. Vincent’s finally filed for bankruptcy, being $395million in debt. The hospital had new administrators, and yet another consulting firm, Alvarez and Marsal. At the time St. Vincent Catholic Medical Centers consisted of seven hospitals located throughout Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, Staten Island, four nursing homes and a home health care agency. Upon emerging from bankruptcy in 2007, St Vincent’s sold off three of its hospitals, closed others, sold Manhattan real estate that had provided housing for residents and students, a convent for the sisters, and office space. St. Clare’s, which had become part of St. Vincent’s in 2003, was closed in 2007 by the state’s Berger Commission, which also closed Cabrini Medical Center in its mission to revamp the healthcare system in New York.
So what happened to St. Vincent’s after it pared itself down in 2007? “We entered the worst recession of the past 100 years,” says Michael Fagan, St. Vincent’s vice president, public affairs. “The environment is very different today than it was in 2007. We’ve had seven rounds of cuts to Medicaid, and as an independent hospital we don’t have the leverage with managed care providers so many of our managed care rates are below market.” That’s why a lot of hospitals are affiliating themselves with larger institutions. New York Hospital is now New York-Presbyterian. With a desire to retain its faith-based mission, whether St. Vincent’s would involve itself with an affiliation remains to be seen.
Today, in addition to the 160-year-old Greenwich Village hospital, St. Vincent Catholic Medical Centers consists of three nursing homes, a home health care agency, St. Vincent’s Hospital Westchester, which is a psychiatric facility, behavioral health programs throughout the metropolitan area, and the U.S. Family Health Plan, a managed care plan for military dependents and retirees. St. Vincent’s, which filed for its 2005 bankruptcy when it was $ 395 million in debt is now $ 700 million in debt. The hospital finds itsambitious plan with the Rudin Company for new hospital and residential development in jeopardy, has hired yet another restructuring organization, Grant Thornton, and is subject to the findings of a rescue task force whose members include Governor Paterson, the State Department of Health, GE Capital and TD Bank (St. Vincent’s lenders), the healthcare workers union, the New York State Nurses Association, St. Vincent’s management, and our local elected officials. Enough money is being infused into the hospital from the state and the hospital’s lenders to keep it going until the beginning of March. If a plan for salvation is not in place by March, when this article appears, St. Vincent’s may not be as it was, a hospital with a mission to care for “all who come to us in need, especially the poor.”
The increasing number of uninsured people is another reason the hospital is in such dire straits. St. Vincent’s does not turn away the homeless. Its Emergency Room had 64,000 visitors last year. Also, St. Vincent’s still continues to have the largest HIV/AIDS center in the state, which today is largely outpatient care. To save the hospital, union healthcare workers and the New York State Nurses Association have agreed to across-the-board 10 percent temporary wage reductions. Executives had already agreed to a 25 percent pay cut, and directors, managers, and physicians, 20 percent. Employees sacrificing to keep the hospital alive, are the cherished soul of St. Vincent’s, a nonprofit rarity in the for-profit hospital world of today.
This is where survivors of the Titanic, the attacks on World Trade Center, and the plane that Captain Sullenberger landed in the Hudson River, were cared for, and the hospital ought to sing its own praises (preferably for an audience of philanthropists). This is also where the Wall of Hope and Remembrance remained for years with “Missing” photos and notes of longing for many who perished in 9/11. Perhaps if Cardinal O’Connor were alive today he might lend his support and consider treating his brain cancer at St. Vincent’s rather than Memorial Sloan-Kettering. The website www.savestvincents.com has given direction and hope to the community served by St. Vincent’s. Maybe it’s not too late. According to a spokesman for the New York City Fire Department, St. Vincent’s received 18,618 ambulance transports in 2009. The hospital has three basic life support and two advance life support ambulances on call. St. Vincent’s, the life support provider that has been there for us, now needs all of us to offer the life support.

By George Capsis

The New York Times recently reported on the dilemma of getting private money to fund new city parks and cited the Hudson River Park as “half completed after 30 years of fractious planning and $400 million spent.”
The article quoted Hudson River Park Trust President Connie Fishman as saying that half of the operating budget — that is, the $5.5 million needed to pay her and the other staff salaries — comes from the 2,000 cars parked on Pier 40.
Fishman allowed that the fees from parking are “enough for now” but will not be enough as the park gets completed (supposedly this year) and certainly not enough to make the $280 million in repairs to Pier 40 that HRPT chairperson Diane Taylor, at the March 2008 board meeting, stated are needed to prevent “the ultimate loss of the pier itself.” But where will the money come from?
The original funding idea incorporated in the HRPT charter — or “act,” as it is termed — was to issue 30-year leases to developers to take one of the several neglected piers and build something nice for the community — something that would also net the developer sufficient cash flow to pay back the banks the many millions he would have to borrow to build the pier attraction and, of course, make a modest profit.
The Times writer offers as an example of this “potential for income” the Young Woo Associates’ proposal that actually won a lease (very rare) this last summer for Pier 57 at 15th Street.
What made the Young Woo proposal especially attractive is that it is fast to build and really cheap, like $191 million. They propose stacking used shipping containers to create a multi-level shopping mall for “local artisans” with a park on top. In their own words, it would provide “layers of containers to hold a mix of studio, retail and community spaces. Many of the spaces will be rented to local artisans as a way to bring in revenue and to give the pier street-credibility and community ties.” (Does anybody know what “street-credibility” is?)
But let’s go back to Pier 40. Since unlike Pier 57 the board of Pier 40 failed in over 10 years of trying to select a developer, and with the real estate market still testing bottom, there is literally no hope of finding a gaggle of new developers willing to drop hundreds of thousands of dollars for a new set of fancy proposals to meet, once again, the “are you kidding” attitude of West Villagers
When I asked Arthur Schwartz, the chairman of the HRPT Advisory Committee, if they were going to do another Request For Proposal, he jumped on the question and with dismissive finality made it clear the RFP days were over — that’s it for finding another Related Corporation ready to borrow $700 million for a Lincoln Center South.
So now what? Pier 40 is the last card to play to get the millions needed to seal the seams between the roof slabs that leach calcium deposits on the parked cars below when it rains, or encase the corroding steel piles in concrete before the pier goes plotz into the Hudson and, oh yes, pay the salaries of the HRPT staffers – the famous operating budget.
But Pier 40 has 15 acres of empty space on the street level alone and many of those acres are indoors. You don’t have to pile up used shipping containers to rent space to “local artisans” — the raw indoor space is there — right now.
So if the HRPT board bought the concept of creating a shopping mall for “local artisans” on Pier 57 then why not let Baby Buddha – forced out of business by high rent last month — buy raw space to create a new restaurant with a river view and outdoor tables on Pier 40?
In the long run — with quadrupling rents from the competition of national and international chains — the only small independent and family-owned businesses that will survive in the West Village are those that either own their own building or the four walls around them. (It is rumored that there is a deal pending to sell 7 shops in and along Bleecker to a European consortium for $27 million. With the Euro around $1.59, buying West Village real estate is a no-brainer.)
Baby Buddha was paying $15,000 a month — $180,000 a year. The cost of servicing a 30-year mortgage for $2 million to buy a Green Pier retail condo would be less than $12,000 a month.
By selling retail condos (just the raw space) to the many small independent shops and restaurants already or about to be forced out, we can save and recreate the old West Village around a year-round indoor and outdoor green market and immediately provide the $200 million to “fix” the pier — and the monthly maintenance fees would provide the gap in the operating budget for the whole five-mile-long park.
What is, like, nuts, about this financially practical plan is that it came from the “we hate big business West Villagers” who voted 2 years running that what they wanted on Pier 40 was a green market. And a green market, unlike the $191 million the Young Woo Associates will have to raise to create the used shipping container shopping mall on Pier 57, takes no investment . 
The farmers just drive their trucks and vans in and we are in business — like this Spring.
Barry Benepe, the father of the green market, would like to recreate the inviting openness of the Union Square market and, as the Green Pier prospers, the forbidding 4 block brick wall of the Pier could be open with sliding glass doors so farmers could put out displays of fresh fruits and vegetables to signal the excitement of the sunlit market court within. (The walls of the pier silence the West Side highway traffic roar and shield the spring-green field from the winds so you have a Shangri-La effect – a strangely quiet, sunny urban micro-environment).
It would perfectly recreate the European market square and, like the European market, filled with farm stands and outdoor cafes. It would be the place to go to shop, see people, meet neighbors, dine at one of the new restaurants or just sit by the river in the sun and think pleasant thoughts about your grand-kids. And on warmer nights the array of powerful field lights would extend the recreational and retail selling life of the Green Pier courtyard well into the night – a great place for free evening concerts
Instead of spending millions to repair the concrete slab roof, a new fourth tier roof could be constructed to bear lightweight soil and create a living roof that would absorb rain and grow live plants.
The glassed-in south side of the pier could provide a sunny kiddie hall to recreate what we find at Chelsea Market on a cold day – mommies and nannies letting their toddlers meet and play in the only such space available to them in the Village.
And since this is a pier, farmers and fishing boats could arrive by boat each morning from Long Island and the Jersey shore. The fresh fish and produce (our own Fisherman’s Pier) would attract world-class restaurants and the Green Pier could become the oft-proffered world-class destination (I mean, if in the dead of winter we can have hordes of tourists viewing brown scrubs on an elevated rail track, we should be able to attract some of them to the world’s largest Green Pier where they can sit inside a nice warm restaurant and watch the ice on the river).
As a pier it can offer ferry service to New Jersey as did the old Christopher Street ferry and draw rent-exiled Villagers now living in the phalanx of high-rise towers facing the Green Pier. It could also offer high speed ferries to Newark and LaGuardia Airport and the Jersey and Long Island beaches
Diana Taylor, Mayor Bloomberg’s special friend and Chairwoman of the Board of the Hudson River Trust, retained a $7,500 a month PR firm to escape the attacks of West Villagers who wanted to keep the torrent of vehicles away by defeating the plans of the big developers. “This is a park for all New York, ” she insisted, “and not just Villagers.”
Yes, well, maybe — but you mostly walk, or wheel a kiddie stroller to a park – and to that extent this is our park and this is our Pier 40 and right now West Villagers have voted to make it a green market.
There is something else which is very important about the Green Pier. The West Village is old — the town houses, the tenements and, yes, the residents. More than half a century of rent regulation has sealed West Villagers into their apartments (“if I had to pay market rent I would have to move”) so they get older, retire, or as is most often the case these days, discover that they can never get back into the job market again. They live on savings, Social Security and meals at the Greenwich House senior center. And we have kids out of college for a year or more that can’t find a job – any job.
The Green Pier would provide jobs — nice jobs: selling vegetables, fruits and flowers — as a paid grandma in the Kiddy hall – as a book seller — as a gallery manager – as a waiter in a river view café – as a ticket taker for the Jazz Café – as a personal trainer for an indoor/outdoor gym – as an usher for the Green Pier chamber concert hall and outdoor concerts…
The Hudson River Park Advisory Council has called a public meeting at the Village Community School auditorium, 272 West 10th Street between Greenwich and Washington Streets, on March 22 at 7:00 pm to learn if you like the idea of a Green Pier.
This is your idea and you could make the difference between it happening or not.
If ever it was important to speak up — now is the time.
E-mail me what you would like to see on the Green Pier: GeorgeC101@aol.com.
We will publish the best ideas and you’ll get a free subscription to WestView, the new voice of the West Village – your voice.

David Rothenberg created the Fortune Society in 1967 to life the hidden bars of prejudice for young offenders leaving prison. Photo: Amanda Morgan

For David Rothenberg, born in 1933 across the river in Hackensack, Greenwich Village was always the place he was destined to be.

“My family used to tell me that when I was four or five and they first brought me into the city I looked around and said, ‘Thank God there’s something else!’” he relates, laughing. “I always knew the Village was where I wanted to live. However, when I got out of the Army I first took an apartment uptown. I had a series of jobs and then began to work for a theatrical press agent. Producer Alexander Cohen hired me to handle the press for all of his shows. One of them was Richard Burton’s Hamlet. This was while he was having his very public affair with Elizabeth Taylor so it was an exciting time! After that, I needed a vacation so I took a freighter to Italy where I became enamored of their piazzas. When I returned I found an apartment on Sheridan Square, calling it ‘my piazza’. That was 1964 and I’ve been in the West Village ever since.”

How did a theatrical press agent start something like The Fortune Society? “In 1967 I produced a play called Fortune and Men’s Eyes at the Actors Playhouse,” Rothenberg recalls. “It was a gritty play about what happens to a kid who goes to prison, written by a man who had been there himself. I used my life savings—$12,000 at the time—to produce it because no one else would. It was a success, and we started a dialogue with the audience after the performances. Joining us on stage were people who had been in prison and I was moved by their struggles to re-enter society. I said, ‘We should start educating the public about the kinds of job and housing barriers you’re all facing.’ So my theatre office on 46 St. became the headquarters for the Society. By 1971 I had to make a career choice so I gave up theatre and for the next 18 years I was full-time director of the Society. After I ran for City Council in 1985 and lost, I went back to the theatre and re-opened my press office. I retired from that in 2001, but I’m still more heavily involved with the Fortune Society than I ever was.”

When asked what the Village was like when he first moved here, Rothenberg responds, “Wonderful! It was where I wanted to be, the part of the universe that attracted me. Off-Broadway theatre started here in the Village. Everything was free, non-judgmental, and creative. The Bagel and the Riviera were hangouts. There were always the jazz clubs and the Village Gate. You could go to Bigelow’s late at night and get a sandwich or an early breakfast at three or four in the morning.”

Yet Rothenberg doesn’t dwell on the past for too long, particularly since some things have improved. “I love what they’ve done down by the piers,” he says. “It’s nicer than it ever was. And opening the Center on 13 Street so that gay people have a place to go was exciting.” He does worry, though, about sky-high housing prices putting pressure on preservation efforts. “It’s always about the real estate people,” he says ruefully. “They’ve become the oil tycoons of Manhattan! Jane Jacobs always said, ‘Save the neighborhoods. That’s what makes a city strong.’ The Village is a wonderful neighborhood and it should be preserved.”

Does he have any last thoughts on being a resident of the West Village? “Just about how lucky I am to be here for all these years,” Rothenberg readily admits. “When I first got here all you heard was, ‘Everything was great twenty or thirty years ago!’ I’m very nostalgic myself about the days when I came here. I look back and I miss things. You soon realize, though, that what you’re really missing is your youth, when it was all new and fresh. But I’m not one of those people who think that everything great happened in the past. I still feel this neighborhood is exciting. That’s because people who march to a different drummer come to the Village. They always will.”

Do you know a long-time West Village resident who would make a good subject for this column? If so, contact Michael at michael.minichiello@gmail.com

Getting Our Ducks in a Row
It is a long row from planting a seed to harvest, requiring many inputs. First we needed money, but to raise that, we needed an experienced non-profit sponsor who cared about the degradation of our regional farmland and quality of urban life. The Council of the Environment of NYC was a perfect fit with Mayor Abraham Beam and Marion Heiskell as co-chairs bringing together the city’s resources to help Greenmarket get through the bureaucratic maze. The J. M. Kaplan Fund, the Fund for the City of New York and the Vincent Astor Fund stepped up to the plate with the needed funding. Then we needed sites. The first and most successful was suggested. by Suzanne Davis of the JM Kaplan Fund.

An Idea Bears Fruit
Early on the morning of July 17, 1976, Greenmarket made its first public appearance on a city owned vacant lot on Second Avenue and 59th Street. Normally the dirt covered chain-linked fenced lot was used by police officers to park their cars under a provision of their contract with the city. On this day, however, and subsequent Saturdays throughout the summer, they agreed to turn it over to the seven plant,vegetable and fruit growers to truck in their home-grown farm produce from Long Island, New Jersey and the Hudson Valley. Behind the fence farmers arranged their colorful and aromatic displays and stood proudly at their stands as the gates were swung open promptly at 8 AM to a curious public already gathering outside. Farmers and residents greeted each other with warmth and amazement. One young New Jersey grower stood astride a flatbed pile of sweet corn, smiling broadly, as she passed down the fresh ears to hands reaching eagerly upward. With Bloomingdale’s only a block away, a better location could not have been found.. The press and TV discovered a new and lively topic to wind up the news of the day in a lively and optimistic upturn. Greenmarket, featured on Channels 2,5 and 7 during that first summer, was up and running.

The farmers market caught the attention of Margot Wellington, executive director of the Municipal Art Society and a devoted Brooklyn resident. She sought and obtained the second market that year, placed in another city owned vacant lot at the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues. The publicity also sparked the interest of the City Planning Department which was trying to arrest the downward spin of Union Square. The staff of the Manhattan Planning Office, headed by Mithoo Baxter, pulled together the relevant city departments, especially Highways and Traffic, to make the parking area at the north end of the square available on Saturdays. Thus, 3 markets were in place by the end of the summer.

A Tree Branches Out
Over the next 30 years the markets grew. but not steadily. During the 80′ s as many closed as opened. This was mainly due to poor choices of sites or their temporary nature. The 59th Street site was sold to a developer for a high rise apartment building. Nevertheless, with the experience of hindsight and the help of numerous individuals, agencies and planning boards, attractive sites were obtained throughout the five boroughs. The mantra of “location, location,location” is especially true with a farmers market. A farmers market is unique in several ways. It is permanently outdoors. It is temporary; the farmers fold up their tents at the end of the day and leave the space as they found it. It is seasonal, reflecting the seasonality of the produce sold in it. Finally it is a focus for the community. As such it fares best when located in a community’s recognizable heart: alongside a popular park in Tribeca, at the foot of the Tramway at 59th Street, on the plaza in front of Borough Hall in Brooklyn or next to the historic Edgar Allen Poe House in Fordham. The move to historic Abingdon Square at the confluence of Hudson Street and Eighth Avenue in the West Village resulted in large improvements in community participation.
by Barry Benepe

The Heart of the Market
The essence of the farmers market is the interchange between farmer and city resident over the joy of beautiful food harvested from local soil. The farmer has something to show with pride and the consumer shares the joy of looking, smelling, holding and finally taking it home and lending his or her own creativity to preparing, sharing and enjoying a meal. The market interchange gives each participant an opportunity to share thoughts and information, to meet neighbors and enjoy casual company. One elderly shopper wrote in a letter that “the market relieved a long day of loneliness”.
It is basically an experience on foot, often close to one’s home or at least within walking distance. One is more lulled by a varied chorus of human voices than the grinding sameness of traffic. At a very basic level the open public market is an expression of democracy and the meeting of city and country. We all help to keep the surrounding region green if we buy the products grown their.

Greenmarket Today
Under the very able management by director Michael Hurwitz, Greenmarket has grown to 45 sites, some two days a week and all year long, serving all five boroughs. Many shoppers on restricted incomes pay with state issued Farmers Market Nutrition Program coupons or federal Electric Benefit Transfer cards. Nearly 800 varieties of seasonal fresh vegetables and 370 fruits are available throughout the year at all the markets combined, more than found anywhere in the city. Farms are visited on a regular basis to insure that farmers sell only what they grow or produce, the bedrock of the program. Recently one meat producer from Green County was suspended for not following this rule, leading to a lengthy article in the New York Times documenting the violation. A subsequent letter from a reader objected to the rule, saying that farmers should be able to sell the products of other farmers. When that happens, however, it leads to some farmers adopting a supermarket image, trying to please everyone, when the great value to a market is the diversity provided by individual farmers specializing in specific crops, such as the 15 varieties of hot peppers grown by New Jersey farmers Ted and Susan Blew. In small markets with only a few farmers Greenmarket rules do permit a farmer to devote up to 25% of his table to products from other local farms not otherwise available in that market, such as mushrooms, eggs or garlic..The range of products has increased enormously over the years, often in response to consumer demand. Over 130 restaurants now purchase from Greenmarket farmers throughout the city.

Nationally, there are now over 3000 farmers markets and they are growing, mostly in cities where they can efficiently serve dense populations with a minimum of motor vehicle use, thus promoting a more sustainable environment. Trips of farm produce to these markets tend to be less than 100 miles, far less than the two to three thousand many of the supermarket varieties travel. The produce sold is freshly harvested, often the day before market, in a mature form rich in nutrients and flavor. New Yorkers are fortunate in having a farmers market close to home.

Shortly after Christmas, Equinox Fitness Center shocked its neighbors by erecting multi-story billboards covering both sides of its building at Greenwich Ave. and 12 St. The giant billboards were erected without any of the required permits from the Department of Buildings and the Landmarks Preservation Commission (necessary because the site is within the Greenwich Village Historic District). They neglected to seek permits with good reason—landmarks regulations would have likely prohibited such signs from ever being approved, and zoning and building codes prohibit such signs in this residential district.

Scores of residents complained, and the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP) immediately took action—reaching out to the Landmarks Preservation Commission and Department of Buildings to make them aware of the illegal signs, citing the building and landmarks regulations which made them illegal, and calling upon both city agencies to take swift action against them.

Within a few days the agencies had issued violations and warning letters, but Equinox remained steadfast in their public defense of the billboards, and refused to take them down. This is an all-too-common occurrence, as fines for illegal billboards are often small compared to the real or perceived profit derived from them, and the fines are typically slow to accrue. GVSHP urged DOB and the LPC not to allow these signs to remain up in spite of their being found to be so blatantly illegal, and to put the maximum pressure possible upon Equinox to remove them. GVSHP also wrote to the presidents of Equinox and its parent company, Related Companies, letting them know that this continued violation of the law and of landmark and zoning protections for Greenwich Village was an increasing blemish upon their reputation. We followed this with an ongoing media assault, calling attention to this affront to neighborhood protections and the character of Greenwich Village by Equinox. Dozens of Village residents complained to Equinox by phone and in person, demanding they take the signs down.

The City followed this by taking unusually decisive action, issuing daily increasing fines and freezing any other permits for the site. Finally, on Friday, January 15th, two and a half weeks after they went up, with no public statement, apology, or admission of wrongdoing, Equinox took the signs down.

This relatively quick and happy resolution is unfortunately the exception to the rule. While GVSHP regularly reports illegal billboards to the city and urges they be removed, all too frequently city agencies refuse to admit that the signs are illegal. If they are do recognize the violation, the agencies are often extremely slow to inspect the sites, issue violations, collect fines, and force their removal.

This has been the case with everything from the eight-story-high Gansevoort Hotel billboards, which the Department of Buildings refused to admit violated zoning regulations in spite of GVSHP providing them with plain evidence to substantiate it, to countless less high profile billboards and advertising signs scattered throughout our neighborhoods which do not conform with zoning or landmark rules meant to protect their historic or residential character.

Was the city’s swifter and more helpful response in the case of the Equinox billboards a sign of a new approach, or simply a capitulation to an unusually high profile public outcry? Only time will tell.

In the meantime, however, if you see a billboard you believe to be illegal, call 311 and report it, and get a complaint number. Share the complaint number with GVSHP, and if possible send us a picture and the address of what you believe to be the illegal billboard. We can let you know if it is illegal, and if it is, we can follow up with the city agencies directly to make sure they are inspecting, issuing violations, and pursuing the maximum possible fines. While this can often be a frustrating process, we have been able to get dozens of billboards removed and served with violations and fines. While it typically takes substantially longer than the two and a half weeks in the Equinox case, it’s still a lot better than just accepting illegal signage that disrespects the character of our neighborhood.

For more information on how to help, see gvshp.org/blbd.

Chianti is a kind of stealth wine. It hides in plain sight, cloaked by its outdated reputation as a rustic, cheap bottle clad in straw. While its upscale cousins, Brunello di Mantalcino and the Super Tuscans, grab all the headlines, Chianti quietly goes about its business, satisfying wine lovers who want to put a quality bottle on the table. If you try to apprehend Chianti with only the old straw bottle as your description, you may come up empty-handed.

The fact is, Chianti is made from sangiovese, the same grape as the glamorous wines mentioned above. This evidence tips us off to Chianti’s potential for quality. Traditionally, Chianti had to be made from around 80 percent sangiovese with the rest of the blend coming from red grapes like canaiolo and colorino, and even some white grapes, such as trebbiano and malvasia. More recently, producers in Chianti have been working to push the quality level higher, and most modern Chianti has no white grapes and can even include small but significant amounts of cabernet sauvignon or merlot.

There are three important levels of Chianti: the most basic, labeled simply Chianti, can be made with grapes from the entire region; Chianti Classico, a higher quality wine, is made in a much smaller sub-zone, and must receive at least seven months aging in oak; Chianti Classico Riserva receives a minimum of eighteen months aging in oak casks and bottle before release.

Basic Chiantis are good quaffing wines and perfect for a mid-week meal. They go extremely well with pasta and especially red sauces, and usually cost around ten dollars. With Chianti Classico, your extra five or ten clams go a long way. These wines are much more complex and will complement your better efforts in the kitchen. They can also age for up to ten years. Chianti Classico Riservas are even more refined and can be drunk young, but will really shine after five years of bottle age and can continue to improve for much longer. There have been a number of excellent vintages in Tuscany over the last decade, including 2001 and 2004 through 2007. 2006 is a top vintage in Chianti, known for more structure, which translates to higher acidity and tannins, and therefore greater potential for aging.

Loggia Del Conte’s 2008 Chianti ($8) is a solid wine with cherry fruit, a touch of earth and good balance and structure. Coltibouno’s ‘07 Cetamura ($10) is slightly softer but has a little more of the Chianti earth and dark fruit flavours. These wines are for drinking now.

Felsina’s 2007 Chianti Classico ($20) has a rich, complex nose. Medium body, good finish and balance. Dark cherry fruit with a chocolate note. This 100 percent sangiovese wine is modern in style and has a lush quality that is a hallmark of 2007. Not particularly tannic and somewhat low acid for a Chianti.

One of my favorite Chianti producers is Viticcio. Their wines are consistently delicious—stylish, full of fruit and great with food, and they boast great Chianti typicity. The 2004 Riserva is highly concentrated with a long future ahead, full-bodied and elegant. The luscious 2005 Chianti Classico is medium-bodied and charming and in need of drinking now. The 2005 Chianti Classico is velvety and complex, with great blackberry fruit and medium to full body. These wines are a blend of 95 percent sangiovese with 5 percent merlot.

Castello di Monsanto is another favorite producer of mine, and of many other Chianti lovers, as well. Monsanto’s 2006 Riserva ($20) has a subtle but rich nose with chocolate, vanilla oak and red/black fruits— chocolate cherries, what the heck. Bold tannins, medium body and a very long finish. Great balance, quite dry. Elegant, complex and powerful. Gains weight in the glass and with food. Subtle spice notes—baking spices? Paprika? A tightly wound wine that needs time and will last for many years, but if you want to taste top notch wine making tonight, decant for an hour and enjoy with a hearty meal. An incredible value.

Some other Chianti producers of note include Casaloste, which made a fine 2004 Chianti Classico, and Rodano, whose 2004 Chianti Classico ($16) is complex and earthy with notes of leather and tobacco. Rodano’s Riserva, “Viacoste,” is also worth looking for, as they made excellent wine in 1999, 2001 and 2004 ($26).

Don’t get me wrong, Chianti is no social climber. It knows its place. But it also knows that its place is not always in a picnic basket, but quite often at an elegantly set table, with well-informed wine drinkers in attendance.

Veterinary Editor

In the last 12 to15 years, veterinarians have come to use and rely on several websites for medical searches, literature reviews, and interactive consults with their colleagues when confronted with challenging cases. These sites are often available by subscription, and only to for veterinarians. However, the internet has also become a great resource for our clients in understanding their pets’ medical problems. My goal in this article is to give you some useful ideas on how to critique an animal health oriented website. I will list a few sites that I think you will find helpful, reliable, and interesting.

Some of the factors that I look for in a useful website are:

Authority of Content: Where does the content come from? The best content is original, current, and produced by veterinarians whose names appear along with the content. Anyone with any credential, or no credentials, can start a website and post their opinion; in some cases it is hard to know just who is doing the talking. We have seen many clients attach to internet-origin information that has no basis in science or experience other than the experience and opinion of the person hosting the site.

Breadth of Content: There are many medical sites that address just one disease, or claim to be “medical information” sites, yet review only a handful of actual medical problems. I’ll give you a couple of good sites below (although information is much harder to come by on feline symptoms and diseases than on canine problems).

Presentation: The content needs to be laid out in an intuitive manner and in easily understood language. If you are looking for “Diseases,” “Symptoms,” or “Diseases by Breed,” then these headings should be readily apparent. Medical information should be organized logically, as a veterinarian might see it. If you have to give your email address (EMA) to get info, you will probably get a lot of promotional spam.

Interactivity: Several sites offer “Ask the Vet” sections; in fact, I write for one site and enjoy it immensely. Keep in mind that there is a limited amount of specific information that can be provided over the internet because 1) diseases vary considerably in different parts of the country and the vet may not be familiar with your area if he or she even knows where you live at all; 2) an interactive detailed history cannot be provided; 3) an actual examination of the patient (the most important step in forming a diagnosis) cannot be done; and 4) without the above, a specific diagnosis and treatment plan cannot be made. However, “Ask the Vet” features can often get you started in the right direction with your local vet. They also inform the site managers of visitors’ main concerns, helping them to develop pertinent new content.

Some Useful Medical Websites

doggedhealth.com (Disclosure: I respond to Ask the Vet Questions for this site. We are in the process of incorporating their “Diagnostic Dog” into our website. The site offers intuitive access to disease information by symptom for dogs. It was developed primarily by Dr. Dan Lauridia, who owns Murray Hill Animal Hospital, and Elizabeth Ross, the founder of the site.)
veterinarypartner.com/ Excellent Feline & Canine
helpmyhound.com/dog_diagnosis.php
helpmycat.com/cat_diagnosis.php
pets.webmd.com/dogs/symptoms/default.htm
petplace.com/cats/guide-to-cat-symptoms/page1.aspx (must give EMA)

Other Useful Sites

doggedhealth.com/diseases-a-symptoms.html?section=5&cat=38 Health by Breed-Canine
petmedsonline.org/common-cat-health-issues-by-breed.html Health by Breed-Feline
aphis.usda.gov/regulations/vs/iregs/animals/ Health Certificate Information for International Travel

If your cat or dog already has a specific diagnosis, you will be able to find a lot of information by simply searching the name of the disorder. Be sure to read several articles, and be critical by using the criteria outlined above.

Dr. Burns is the Founder of Downtown Veterinary Medical Hospitals PLLC (dvmhospitals.com). DVM Hospitals operates the West Village Veterinary Hospital that has recently relocated to 75 Eighth Ave. between 13 and 14 St. Dr. Burns is a Board-certified Specialist in Veterinary Internal Medicine.

I was beginning to wonder about old Doc Suture—his idea of a check-up was to look in one ear and if he didn’t see daylight, pronounce me fit—when he announced he was retiring. “You’ll like the new guy I’ve lined up. Smart as a whip. The advances they’ve made since I got out of medical school are amazing. Oh well, that’s water over the dam. I’m off for the fairways.”

Dr. Cyberwell turned out to be a feisty fellow in his thirties with an over-supply of energy and the confidence of a water buffalo. I stripped, and for ten minutes there was a silence broken by an occasional murmured remark like, “Interesting,” and “I’ve never seen one like that before.” Eventually he emerged from my armpit like an auto mechanic coming up for air. “Do you drink?” he asked.

“A little,” I said.

“That’s what they always say. More than one drink a day?”

“Ah—I might have a couple of martinis before dinner. My wife and I sit down and talk. It seems civilized.”

“If you think it’s civilized to swill down two martinis a day, you’ve got another think coming, my friend. You’re abusing alcohol.”

“Alcohol hasn’t complained yet.”

The witticism fell short of the mark. He frowned. “Diet cola from now on.”

“Not even one teeny tiny martini?” He shrugged. “If you want to spend your golden years bantering with shadows, go ahead.” On that cheery note he sent me away for tests.

Two weeks later I turned up at his office for the verdict. “What have you been living on? Pie and ice cream? Your cholesterol is through the roof and so is your blood sugar.”

“Suture always said that I was doing fine for my age.”

“The guidelines have changed. Suture may not have noticed.”

“Don’t they send out announcements when they change the guidelines?”

“Yes, but you have to read them,” he said. “I’m putting you on a low-fat, low-salt, low sugar diet.”

“What can I eat on that?”

“Bran. After a couple of weeks of bran you’ll rather starve. Did old Suture ever give you a stress test?”

My mouth dry, I shook my head.

“I figured as much,” Cyberwell said grimly. “That’s next.”

By this time Suture had taken on a luminous glow in my memory. But the wife, as she downed her six o’clock martini while I mourned over a diet cola, said, “You better face up to it, buddy,” so I took the stress test.

When I next reported to Cyberwell, he frowned. “You have the heart of a ninety-year-old camel,” he said. “The people at the lab thought I was playing a joke on them.”

“There was nothing wrong with my heart before.”

“They’ve changed the guidelines on that, too. How much exercise do you get?”

I knew it was useless, but I tried anyway. “I walk a lot.”

“From the looks of that gut I’d say you walk regularly from the sofa to the refrigerator and back. We’re going to start using the gym.”

“Is that the editorial or the royal ‘we’?”

“Don’t be impudent,” he replied. “I’m trying to save you from an early grave. I want you to run five miles before breakfast. At night you can take it easy—fifty push-ups, two hundred sit-ups.”

It took me two weeks of phone calls, but eventually I found him. Doc Boozaway may be a little behind the times—he has copies of Look and The Saturday Evening Post in his waiting room—but there’s no tomfoolery about push-ups and diet cola. “I never saw where a piece of apple pie hurt anyone,” he told me. “It’s as American as Mom. A person’s entitled to a little fun out of life. My Uncle Fred drank a quart of whiskey every day of his life. He lived to be 97 and would have made a hundred if he hadn’t slipped while he was rock climbing.”

“That sounds right to me,” I said. “I hope you don’t plan to retire soon.”

“I’ll retire when they carry me out of here feet first. Everybody forgets things now and then. The nurse usually catches them in time.” He winked. “Nice tushy, eh?”
It was. My wife wasn’t entirely thrilled by the new regime, but she said, “At least you’re more cheerful to live with these days.”

“You can’t have everything, can you?” I said, twisting a curl of lemon over the martinis. I raised my glass. “Happy days.”

The stark Bauhaus-like glass box Apple store on 14 St. and Ninth Ave. emits
an aura of uncompromising technical precision. As you enter you are met by
a smiling greeter who soliticiously asks your reason for entering what is,
most certainly, an orthodox Apple sanctuary. The vestibule of the Tekserve
shop is lined by a phalanx of dusty, obsolete machines smudged with the
finger marks of thousands of hours of happy keying. And ka ching you get a
ticket from an ancient cafeteria dispenser to meet with a techie who would
eat his iPod rather than sell you something he, personally, wouldn’t buy.
—Ed.

Tekserve has been the number one vendor of Apple products in New York City
since 1987. You’re right to think that since Apple started over 30 years ago
it has been a technological juggernaut, influencing how we listen to music,
make phone calls, write scripts, edit films and photos, design web sites,
and lay down music tracks. And Tekserve has been there since the beginning,
building more confidence in Apple than maybe Apple at times.
When Apple does have a dud, Tekserve is there to whip up some objectivity.
This cannot be said about the Apple Store’s staff, which consists mostly of
my out-of- work artist-type friends who know nothing more than the basic
features. TekServe’s staff has a bunch of artist types, too, but damn,
they’re not just the cute, pierced and tattooed holders of a 30 percent
employee discount—they’re experts. Being a vendor, they have no specific
agenda or products to push; they will simply give you all of the
information, and may even schedule a personalized training session.
Wherever you buy Apple products, Apple wins. So, buy from Tekserve, the
partner you won’t be embarrassed bringing home to Mom.

A little info
Tekserve not only sells Mac appliances, but also provides creative solutions
for Graphic, Audio, and Video professionals. In addition they do repairs,
rentals, trade-ins, seminars and small business solutions.
119 W. 23 St. NYC 10011
(212) 929-3645
Email: help@tekserve.com
tekserve.com

By Barbara Riddle

It was something to do with words, how they could trip you up and confuse you if you weren’t careful. It was a night course my father was taking at New York University, and he was very excited about it. The main implication for me, a ninth grader, was that I would be left alone on those nights. Did that mean I would have to cook my own dinner? At least it would be less expensive than the dancing lessons from Arthur Murray, and most likely would not involve the purchase of any special clothing.

I had not reckoned on the books, and the anxiety. The true cost of going back to school, in even so tentative a fashion. Couldn’t we just continue going to Gene Kelly musicals, laughing as Donald O’Connor duck-walked around a Hollywood backstage or Gene tap-danced up a wall in his penny loafers (just like my Dad’s) and yellow V-neck sweater? What was wrong with that?

Our record of Danny Kaye singing manic set pieces from Gilbert & Sullivan gathered dust while my frowning father tried to cram a week’s reading into one hour before class. Ever since being laid off as a thermostat salesman for the New England Territory, he had been fighting a growing depression. I didn’t think reading books with titles like “A Generation of Vipers” was helping his moods. We could have been riding on the top deck of the Fifth Ave. double-decker bus, or ice-skating at Rockefeller Center, followed by watery cocoa with huge gobs of whipped cream. This scalding concoction could be sipped for HOURS while we contemplated our throbbing ankles in the ugly tan rental skates with the numbers painted in green on the back. It felt so fantastic when you unlaced, the torture over, and wobbled around on flat feet in your old comfy shoes again.

Then, if we were feeling really wild, we’d follow up with a small bag of roasted chestnuts so hot you could burn your fingers trying to dig out the sweet, mealy morsels that you tongued and shifted in your mouth until it was safe to bite down.

But no, that winter semantics ruled with an iron fist, and I spoke less and less, so as not to provoke an excruciating discussion of what I had really meant, or thought I meant, by what I said, or thought I had said; and then pretty soon he was talking about something called Dianetics. The cover of the book was dramatic; it featured a bolt of lightning zapping someone’s brain. Sort of a Benjamin Franklin meets Moses motif. Perhaps his training as an electrical engineer saved him from the clutches of the Dianetics people when they started trying to hook him up to their little Amp-O-Meters, or whatever they called them. Or perhaps the semantics class actually had done him some good, given him some kind of immunity after all. Very soon, that book was also gathering dust.

Then, in the spring, with no particular warning, matchbooks from the Copacabana and The Stork Club began appearing on his Danish modern coffee table. (The place was so small, and my father so compulsively neat, that a few new matchbooks were immediately noticeable.) He began to travel on business again, and after I had gone back to live with my mother I heard less about semantics and more about the relative tightness of the new black chino sheath skirt I was so proudly wearing to school every day of the first month of high school. Although it was true that I could barely walk in it, everyone else was similarly hampered, and so no one of us was being particularly flamboyant. I was proud of that word (I practically shouted it, as in “I am NOT being . . .”) and of my line of argument. I was equally sure that Dad’s semantics professor at NYU would be impressed at my discourse on the relative meanings of the concepts “skin,” “tight” and “cheap.”

The White Ribbon is the latest film directed by Michael Haneke, one of Europe’s most highly regarded directors. The film has already won the Palme D’Or at Cannes, an honor that has even impressed the typically nonplussed Haneke. As of this week the movie has also won the Golden Globe for best foreign film. The White Ribbon tells the story of a series of violent and unexplainable incidents in a small German village on the eve of World War I. The film was shot by fellow Austrian Christian Berger who has collaborated with Haneke on several prior films including Benny’s Video, Cache, and The Piano Teacher. The new film, shot in a lush black and white, has a very distinctive look, which is why the cinematographer has been dispatched to help publicize the film.

Mr. Berger was in New York City to receive an award from The New York Film Critics Circle for his work on The White Ribbon. I had the pleasure to sit with the celebrated cinematographer at the Regency Hotel a few hours before the ceremony to discuss that film, his work with friend and director Michael Haneke, and anything else that came to mind.

AS: Can you describe the earlier years prior to your collaboration with Michael Haneke?

CB: I started as an assistant on the set, then went into news gathering; everything was in black and white then. I grew up with black and white in the end of the 60s and into the 70s in 16mm. Then towards the end of the 70s everything went to video. At that point I started working on a lot of TV plays and documentaries which I still do and love. I think it’s a very important counterpart for the [narrative feature]. Then I did my own feature films, three of them. Around 1990 I thought that enough was enough; I preferred to focus on the camera as my main thing. I created my own lighting system, having had bad experiences in the past with what you find in the field. With this lighting system, it gave the actors and directors freedom on the set; they would no longer be under technical dictate, which I hate.

AS: And that all changed when you started working with Haneke.

CB: I started this new lighting system during the making of The Piano Teacher. In the beginning of 2000 I started with self-built prototypes. To have a free set with no heat, no glare, or a reduced glare—some glare is inevitable. But it allowed the actors freedom.

AS: Do you consider yourself a storyteller, even in the role as a cinematographer?

CB: Not in connection with Haneke. He has a very remarkable and clear “handwriting” which I go along with. I have no problem with that. And I think he has the same feeling in regards to me because I think he saw the similarity as well. We were on the same level…

AS: What is that?

CB: With tastes, with framing?

AS: It’s a number of things, right? You have to have compatible personalities as well as the type of cinematic vision.

CB: I mean, he has his own idea, which is not mine, but I have respect for it. It’s his writing and he does so much preparation. He is very precise. You cannot improvise. He would hate it because he needs absolute control over every element. But I have a free hand over the lighting and the atmosphere as we discussed. He’ll say I need in that room one little oil lamp. And that’s it! And then the rest is up to me. And then, of course, there is the overall aesthetic of the film being in black and white. I planned it from the beginning.

AS: I went back and filled in all the gaps from Haneke’s films. I’ve seen pretty much everything now. In some cases I’ve been conscious of filmmaking style, Cache as an example, but I felt with The White Ribbon the presence of a cinematographer. Shot in black of white, of course, with a very rich palette. Shot significantly outdoors, more so than in past collaborations.

CB: Because it’s unusual. And it is a new kind of black and white quality. It’s been used recently for other films. Good Night and Good Luck, the Coen Brothers used the same technique for The Man Who Wasn’t There. I even got in touch with their cinematographer, Roger Deakins, to ask him about his experiences on the set and in the laboratory. So, it’s not a completely new technique but it’s another step on the digital side. That gives the impression of a new level of quality with black and white. No gain at all. Good contrasts. It’s closer to what you find with really good photographs. Prints.

AS: Unlike print photography, which is often spontaneous, this is all about preparation. Costumes, scenery, lighting….

CB: Enormous preparation. A lot of tests. Especially for the costumes. You have so many colors that can turn out the same shade of grey, for instance. You have to test it. Or a very fine design can be a problem because, as you know… some things you can repair afterwards, but preparation is crucial. You can repair things much more successfully than my older idols and colleagues like Sven Nyquist.

AS: Speaking of Sven Nyquist, there have been a lot of comparisons to his and Ingmar Bergman’s work. What is your reaction to that?

CB: Well, we covered the same subjects, it’s true. Even with the role of the priest.

AS: Not to mention the role of the doctor. The scene with his midwife. It reminded me of one particular scene from Scenes from a Marriage, when he was berating her to the point where you wondered how she could take such abuse.

CB: Well Bergman and Haneke both handled the same subject matter. We were not copying Bergman, at least not consciously (laughs).

The White Ribbon is currently playing at The Film Forum, 209 W. Houston St.

By Henry J. Stern

If one writes too frequently of shortcomings, one can get the reputation of a Cassandra, Eeyore, Chicken Little, or boy who cried “Wolf.” But what if the bearer of bad (or mediocre) tidings is accurate, like the soothsayer in Julius Caesar? Rule 29-T covers that: “The trouble is the charges are true.” Or true enough to require a thorough cleansing.

It is true that we have cried “wolf,” but in the case of the City and State of New York, there is a big, bad wolf at the door: insolvency. The state’s fiscal problems are greater than the city’s because the governor and the legislature have been particularly improvident and continue to spend more money than the state collects in taxes. Receipts have been substantially reduced by the Great Recession, which is what we should call the consequences of the last two years: the bursting of the mortgage bubble, the discovery of over a trillion dollars in toxic debt, the bankruptcy or collapse of major financial firms which did not receive bailouts, the huge decline in the stock market (now abated in most cases), the unemployment rate of ten per cent, and the mounting deficits in city and state budgets.

These events, taking place since the fall of 2007, have created a difficult climate for local governments, which, unlike the Federal Reserve, have no access to printing presses and no significant relationship with the People’s Republic of China. Cities and states are obligated to provide continuing services to the public: police, fire, education, health, sanitation and parks, among others. Some expenditures, such as assistance to the poor, increase in bad economic times because the city and state provide assistance to victims of the recession and their families. To make matters worse, it is difficult to raise additional money through tax increases when tax receipts are declining, and individuals and businesses are in financial distress. In these circumstances, financial competition with other states intensifies, and corporate power to extract concessions increases.

The legislature’s reluctance to make necessary reductions in spending intensified the state’s fiscal problems during 2009. This recalcitrance to reduce school and health assistance to localities comes mostly because such cuts would impact members of the unions that make substantial year-round political contributions to legislators, and regularly endorse incumbents at the biennial elections. Rule 30-N: “There is no such thing as a free lunch.”

The unions and the legislators, naturally interested in self-preservation and, where possible, personal and institutional aggrandizement, place their own overarching needs far ahead of any concern about sound fiscal policy. This is not a partisan issue. Republicans, who claim to be more fiscally responsible than Democrats, have not acted responsibly when they held office. The second Bush administration was supposed to bring reductions in the size of the federal government and ended up approving massive increases. New York State Republicans have acted in a similar manner. Not since the first year of the Pataki administration (1995) has budget reduction been a priority, and even Pataki abandoned that attitude as his twelve years as governor wore on.

Apart from fiscal concerns, the year was most notably marked by the farce which occupied the State Senate for over a month. Defecting Democrats gave Republicans control of the chamber in a sneak attack, but neither side for some time could put together the 32 votes needed to transact business. When the defectors returned to their original base, they were treated as conquering heroes, and given fiscal, titular and patronage rewards which they had previously been denied. Their successful operation, creating chaos and then receiving rewards for ending it, is evocative of the Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean. The difference is that the pirates had no prior loyalty to the shipowners; they were not betraying anyone, simply enriching themselves. Pedro Espada and his confederates were elected as Democrats; their actions were deceitful as well as possibly criminal. The defectors demanded and received millions of dollars in jobs and member items, just to return to the status quo.

Unfortunately, their fellow Democrats acted as enablers. So eager were the wimps and wusses to gain their own committee chairmanships and member items, they surrendered meekly to the demands of the pirates. A few hypocrites among them issued sanctimonious statements denouncing the turncoats and proclaiming their own distress. The truth is that any one of them could have stopped the coup by simply voting “No,” because each Democrat was the 32nd vote needed to take action. The pathetic events of midsummer will stain the reputations of all the participants, both active and passive.

The effect of these shenanigans was to increase public contempt for the legislature to what appears to be an all time high. The blatant disregard of the public interest demonstrated in Albany resulted in editorials (from all the city’s newspapers and many other papers around the state) excoriating self-serving and corrupt behavior on both sides of the aisle. Whether this disgust will have political consequences will be determined, one way or the other, in 2010 and in years to come. There may have been only four aggressors, the Amigos, but the other 28 Democrats in the Senate were complicit in paying the ransom.

The mills of justice took their toll on senior legislators, Senator Bruno and Assemblyman Seminerio among them. The two had, separately, set themselves up as consultants, and collected substantial fees (in Bruno’s case, $3.2 million over the years) from companies seeking contracts with the State of New York. Among the smaller fry, Senator Monserrate distinguished himself by allegedly raking a broken glass over his girlfriend’s throat and then dragging her into a car and driving her to a distant hospital. His story was that she fell on the glass, which is a common excuse in domestic violence cases, recanting complainants being so clumsy in times of stress.

To sum up Albany in 2009: A weak governor. An appointed lieutenant governor, state comptroller and junior United States senator, with others angling to take their jobs. A senate in anarchy. An efficient assembly with some ethically challenged members. A state attorney general waiting in the wings for the collapse of the regime, whose goal is to put it out of its misery by exerting a minimum of force necessary to do the job.

We are not soothsayers, but it seems highly unlikely that anything productive in governance or finance will emerge in New York State in 2010. And who is the man who bears responsibility for much of the chaos that has ensued in the last three years? It is Eliot Spitzer, candidate for the Democratic nomination for Attorney General, a position to which he was elected in 1998 and 2002. If he runs, he will certainly have name recognition the other candidates currently lack. But so did Mark Green.

We are fortunate that our lives do not depend on the vagaries of New York State politics. We should not be overly discouraged by the antics of politicians. We should do what we can, in a system biased in favor of incumbents and hostile to challengers, to make it possible for honest, decent and unselfish people to be elected to public office. The tides bring good government in and out, reflecting the changing will of the people. It is, however, up to us to exert whatever small influence we have on the side of truth, justice and fairness.

Our bodies work using principles of cooperativity. How else could the trillions of cells we are made of work together for a common purpose to keep us alive and keep us on our chosen path? Much of the organic matter of which we are made comes in the form of polymers: proteins, DNA, RNA, starch, for some examples. Polymers are an ideal form of matter demonstrating the principles of cooperation—many units strung together have to act together. Nature’s polymers are often helical, that is, coiled, like the old fashioned shock absorbers every car used to have. Shock absorbers work by cooperation—every turn of the helix contributes to softening the blow of the bump in the road. To accomplish this task the coil has to be entirely right- or entirely left-handed. Then all the turns can work together. Nature’s polymers are also entirely of a single handedness. The helical portion of all proteins is right-handed as is the double helix of DNA. That means if you look along the length of the coil, the turns will twist to the right.

In the 1950s DuPont realized it was going to lose the enormous amount of money the company made from nylon 6,6. The patent ran out and nylon was increasingly being manufactured in Asia. DuPont invented a new polymer that made a great fiber, but unfortunately for DuPont, the polymer fell apart at temperatures used for washing clothes. Even if the polymer was rejected for commerce, I loved it because it resembled natural polymers in being helical, while it was different from natural polymers in not being able to tell left from right. We discovered in our experiments that we could make the polymer overwhelmingly of the units that were confused about left and right (we called these units soldiers) but place among them, here and there, a very few units that preferred to be of one twist sense, left for example (we called these units sergeants). You can imagine what happened. If the sergeants liked a left-handed twist, the whole polymer went left-handed. Now that’s cooperation. I remember my sergeant loudly yelling when I was a soldier. We all jumped to obey.

We got a different result when we made the polymer of mixed sergeants, some favoring a twist to the left and others right. We randomly mixed the conflicted sergeants among each other and among the soldiers. If there were a few more of one kind of sergeant than the other, then the whole polymer obeyed the sergeants in the majority. As in an ideal democracy, the minority went along with the desire of the majority. That’s cooperation. But there was a big difference from the sergeants and soldiers experiment. The louder the arguing sergeants “yelled” for control of the helical sense, the less control the majority sergeant had. Intense conflict reduces cooperation, like what could happen in any marriage and is happening now in the United States Congress.

Darwin was perplexed by the cooperative activities he saw in nature and especially in social insects. Worker bees’ labor does not lead to their own reproduction. Worker ants have no offspring and instead feed their queen’s offspring. At first Darwin thought that cooperative behavior might be fatal to his theory of natural selection, which saw individual competition as a driving force for evolution, for “survival of the fittest.” But later Darwin conjectured that cooperation among individuals in a group could lead to enhanced survival of the group and this could be a factor working against competition among individuals in the group.

Darwin’s idea about cooperation in groups is seen in military activities, which would be impossible without cooperation. Many soldiers firing their weapons in concert demonstrate the concept of Gestalt; the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Soldiers working together are a far more powerful force than the individual soldiers fighting independently of each other. All military training enhances cooperative behavior among the soldiers: whc.net/rjones/USN/USN_team.html

Families, extended families, clans and tribes and even nations where the individuals share some portion of a genetic heritage offer one reason for cooperation—so that their shared DNA will survive even if individuals don’t survive or have offspring. But even in the absence of shared DNA, cooperation has value. Science has come up with mathematical models supporting the value of cooperation and its role in the evolution of complex organisms and complex societies in all forms of life reaching an apex in humans. Biology now sees “natural cooperation” besides “natural selection” as a pillar of evolution.

Cooperation leads to amplification of the force necessary for survival. This was so clear to the ancient Chinese that they did not have separate words for cooperation and amplification, rather using a single symbol representing the idea that a large number of small forces yield a large force. The Japanese use this symbol today. Life and its evolution demand cooperation.

By John Tebbel

WestView first received the news of the coming flood from our readers.

“The condo I’m involved with [on the corner of West St.] has just raised maintenance by 20 per cent. The reason: FEMA has just done a new 100-year flood risk and now decided it is in a flood plain or whatever. According to them, it could possibly be under 9 feet of water in the next 100 years (maybe a storm-surge hurricane). So there has to be building flood insurance (since all the mechanical systems would be wiped out). The board has bargained it down to under $50K a year. Right now, though, the rider hasn’t yet gone into effect and nobody there can get a mortgage.”

New York City exists because of the water. The ocean brought Europeans to this wonderful collection of waterways that would offer both shelter from the sea and access to the interior. Before the city, the ebb and flow of the tides created a temperate wonderland of marsh and stream and floodplain that brought forth plant and animal life to sustain a human population.

In our part of the city the water lives behind walls. As long as most of us have been alive the walls have been higher than the water. But as the recent disaster in Haiti reminds us, living memory is no protection or provender against catastrophe.

To this end the Federal Emergency Management Agency has recently redrawn the maps that tell us where a hundred year storm would flood coastal areas all around the country.

What we call the Hudson River is known to mariners as the North River, referring to where on the compass it is when your boat is sitting in the middle of the Upper Bay and you’re wondering where to go. And mariners also know it is as much a part of the sea as it is a way to drain the land.

We’ve recently witnessed the linkage between government and insurance. This is also seen in the area of coastal property. Village coop owners within a half block of West St. may not think they have much in common with those who have beachfront homes on Hilton Head, but to the Government and the insurance industry, oh and don’t forget the banks, one island near a part of the ocean is much like another.

Until the Federal Government got into the flood insurance business coastal landowners assumed all the risk of their risky location. The government flood insurance has allowed the taxpayers to subsidize coastal development. So far. There is a price we will not pay; we just don’t know yet what that is.

Usually, of course, the water stays down, the hurricane passes, the nor’easter relents. There are neighbors of ours in the more easily recognizable oceanfront communities such as Gerritsen or College Point who must pay strict attention to the coastal flood watches and for whom the rising water is a constant concern.

We have been able to ignore the flood danger so far, but no longer. FEMA has decided what areas they believe the hundred year storm will inundate and has issued maps to tell us all about it. The insurance companies will design flood insurance policies and the banks that hold the mortgages will demand that owners obtain it.

Of course the hundred year storm might not arrive for several hundred years. And a five-hundred year storm might show up next week. When it comes to natural disasters, records are meant to be broken.

Also of interest are the city’s own Office of Emergency Management’s maps of the three stages of hurricane evacuation that are contemplated in the event of hundred year storms and worse.

The first stage evacuation includes, roughly, the FEMA hundred year storm areas, and the second stage is much more extensive, requiring most everyone west of Sixth Ave. to refugee to higher ground.

The city wants us to stay with friends or relatives on higher ground, and, once you realize that only three shelters are expected to accommodate all of Manhattan south of Central Park, you’ll want to stay with friends and family too. Look at the map and start making a list.

The best, most detailed information is on the web.

Find the FEMA flood maps at msc.fema.gov

An excellent page of links is at fema.gov/plan/prevent/floodins/infocon.shtm

The city’s two cents, backed by police powers, are at nyc.gov/html/oem/html/hazards/storms_evaczones.shtml

The city’s Hurricane Evacuation Map is at nyc.gov/html/oem/downloads/pdf/hurricane_map_english.pdf

We close with the words of Ambrose Bierce from The Devil’s Dictionary:

Insurance, n. An ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the comfortable conviction that he is beating the man who keeps the table.

What had we shared? Three encounters. The first was in the mid-1960s when a festival of her movies was being shown at a theatre on 60 St. and Third Avenue. It was there that I saw Queen Christina for what was maybe the second time, but the first time in a movie theater and not merely on a small television screen with a grainy print. The potent eroticism of her sexually ambivalent performance totally drew me in. To my surprise, I unexpectedly found myself starting to get hard, in a relaxed and pleasureful way.

Only days after that, on a chilly autumn afternoon while walking in the same neighborhood, which was where I lived at the time (and she as well only blocks away), I was lost in thought with my eyes looking downward at the sidewalk. Wide gray flannel trousers strode into my view. Did I KNOW before I even looked up? I can’t remember now, but there she was. Queen Christina live in dark glasses, looking like a striking if very forbidding European woman of a certain age.

Recognition, surprise and shock must have shown on my face. Her expression was hard and I felt as if I was being told silently in no uncertain terms, I dare you to dare to speak to me! Awed, I obeyed the silent admonition, somewhat stunned to be having one of those encounters with her for which she was famous in New York. Garbo, the walker about town; Garbo, the unapproachable.

The second time was on a late summer afternoon about two years later. I was riding a bus up Third Ave. and there she was again, striding through the crowd, wearing dark brown sunglasses, this time with her hair pulled back, tied with a bit of ribbon. In the bustle of the day no one seemed to be noticing her. And how almost girlish she looked with that ribbon in her hair. I wanted to beat on the bus window or turn to my fellow passengers and shout, “Look! There she is!”

The third and last time was another couple of years later on a quiet, bright, and crystal- clear wintry Sunday morning in early 1968. I remember that time well because I’d only recently bought a Super-8 camera, with thoughts of recording some of the turmoil of what life seemed full of at the time. Assassinations, anti-war marches, “happenings” in Central Park.

If you know New York, then you know that special quiet on Sunday mornings before the city wakes up. Park Ave. was especially still. Maybe it was 8 or 9 AM. I can’t recall exactly, but I had decided to walk over to Central Park to shoot some film. I was walking to the corner of 64 St. when there she was again, this time a ways up the block from me, walking alone, swathed, almost sunken into a classically long, dark brown, wide- collared mink with a matching hat set at a stylish angle. Here I was with a camera, this time loaded with color film. How amazing that would be: to film Garbo, and in color, no less. I stopped in my tracks and stood still near the corner.

She spotted me and no doubt saw the camera as well. She paused in her walking. It was a moment. If I had begun filming her she could of course have covered her face as she had famously done so many times before unwanted cameras. But she wouldn’t have been able to avoid being filmed. And I would have a movie of Garbo.

This was all in a matter of seconds. The moment for a decision was very brief. And I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. There was something that prevented me from turning the camera on, from intruding in that way. So I kept walking across Park Ave. and she continued on her way down the block. Now I wonder what she thought at the time. Did she appreciate that I had respected her privacy? When I think of her now, I realize she was by herself each time I had seen her.

Years later I told a friend about it and that last encounter. He smiled and said, “It makes a much better story that you didn’t film her.” But still and even until today, a part of me wishes I had dared to do it. And as with so many other moments, I yearn for a do-over.

Even as I also wonder now who even remembers Garbo anymore. Given the blank stares I get when I mention certain names to people below a certain age, would it even matter to anyone? In the years to come I was to become well acquainted with at least three people who knew her well, two of them legendary stars in their own right. I never told any of them about those experiences. Those moments belong to only to us two, to Garbo and me.