i get to walk by the b&t velvet-rope crowd daily, and can barely get by them all sprawled out, texting, celphone chatting, smoking, flicking cigarette butts everywhere and generally being gross. i usually just walk in the street. NOW with this "cafe" taking up half the sidewalk, plus the velvet rope line, what does that leave???
[T]here were also many hardships in running a café that could barely stay afloat. Kathy held an office job in midtown and all the work was straining her marriage. The couple split in 1984 and David wanted to sell the café. Kathy refused and resolved to run it by herself, just as New York City sank into the crack epidemic and the East Village swarmed with unpredictable junkies.
"It was hard for us working in a little neighborhood café, forced to do drug intervention, something we weren’t trained in or prepared for," she said. "We had people shooting up and OD-ing in our bathroom and things were getting pretty ugly."
"The flyer/cards are my first stab at trying to collect memories people might have of their day-to-day encounters with now empty businesses along 14th Street. I will then re-frame these memories and create a series of ephemeral text drawings placed in front of unoccupied commercial spaces. The texts combine these donated stories and daily observations, evoking past and present moments of daily life at the transitional sites. Laid out in ash and other impermanent materials, each work disintegrates and disappears quickly under the rush of ongoing urban life, echoing the temporal and transitory nature of the moments documented."
"It's an interesting, intricate social situation," Nathaniel Hunter Jr. observed early yesterday morning from the bench in Tompkins Square Park, where he has lived for the last six years. "The internal contradictions are constantly slamming into each other."
In the after-midnight darkness, nearly 300 homeless people were stretched out in the park -- sleeping, trying to sleep, talking and drinking. Their number has steadily grown from some 137 who were evicted when the police tore down their tent city two weeks ago after a series of clashes. A cooking fire smoldered near some bushes, a tepee and other shelters had been set up from sheets of plastic and cardboard refrigerator boxes.
More and more homeless people have been trickling into the park, attracted both by the latest burst of public attention and the number of soup kitchens operated nearby by religious groups, turning the park into a kind of a sanctuary and rallying point for the homeless.
Tompkins Square Park, 10 1/2 tree-shaded acres of worn pavement and scuffed grass, is the center of a singular part of Manhattan known variously as the Lower East Side, the East Village, Loisaida, Alphabet City, Community Board 3 or the Ninth Precinct, an uneasy community that is the meeting ground of the two most powerful forces in the city today: drugs and real estate.
The story told by Mr. Hunter -- a gentle, shrewd-spoken, gray-bearded black man known as Junior, who keeps a small rake and shovel by his bench to tend the nearby cherry and black-oak trees -- is that of many of the city's homeless: a single, massive blow pushed them over the margin. In his case, he said, it was the purchase of the nearby high-rise where he lived by speculators who turned it into co-ops, leading to a long, unsuccessful struggle against eviction.
"I was doing everything right, paying my rent on time, paying my cable TV on time," said Mr. Hunter, who was then a self-employed contractor. "But they wear you out after a year and a half or two. I was physically, financially, psychologically pooped out. I just wanted to be left alone, to find a spot in space to cool my head out. So I came here. I found a sanctuary, really, trees, open space, solitude.
"Of course at that time, it wasn't so pulsating with events. But now we have cook fires burning, political activists yelling, police around, all the things I had been running away from," he went on, suddenly bursting into a whoop of laughter at the irony. "Now I'm worried about my actual eviction from the park."
There were some some comments made about our team, Cheer New York, that did not I think do the team justice. They suggested Cheer New York lacked the skills to perform a pyramid, I've provided rebuttal in the form of photographic proof to the contrary. The team has a high level of skill and even greater dedication to our charity fundraising. Commercial events like Fashion's Night Out, help finance the good charity work we do on behalf of AIDS Walk, Avon Breast Cancer Walk, Walk MS NYC, Joey DiPaulo AIDS Foundation, and the Alzheimer's Association of New York.
I know event organizers were very pleased with the spirit and the energy the team injected into this fun event, and I also know many of the party goers were impressed and entertained. Many, many of them took the opportunity to tell me so personally as we joined them in the party. I think it's a shame some people are so cynical as to make nasty comments about a group of people who have given so much to the community.
Perhaps they just don't understand who Cheer New York is. I'd invite them to check out our website or see us on Facebook, and learn more about the team's tireless commitment to raising money and supporting charity, and being the most skilled athletes we can be.
His seven styles of pizzas will include some with seasonal toppings — brussels-sprout leaves in October, shaved porcini later in the fall and black truffle and taleggio cheese in the winter. There will be antipasti, like slabs of mortadella browned in the oven and vegetables roasted with pecorino. And there will be soft-serve ice cream.
It’s a playful variety of toppings and dishes that will be familiar to Motorino regulars. The simplicity of pizzeria fare has been a departure, though, for Mr. Palombino.
Trained in the most haute of French traditions, Mr. Palombino worked in Europe before moving to New York. He was chef de cuisine at BLT Fish when it was given three stars in The New York Times by Frank Bruni in 2005. (Motorino’s small wine list will be chosen by Fred Dexheimer, who worked with Mr. Palombino at BLT Fish.)
Kane lays out the math behind the models.
“If they’re 5-foot-10 or 5-foot-11, that’s one story. If they’re borderline OK, it’s harder.”
He calculates that a promoter who brings 10 or so girls measuring “5-foot-5 or 5-foot-6” to a Manhattan club or restaurant might command $500 for a night. A promoter who brings in the tall girls can get up to $2,500. In both cases, the models drink for free — the idea being that dudes wishing to party near them will book a table, which typically requires a $1,500 drink minimum per foursome.
