Pier55 as historic misstep
To The Editor:
The North River Historic Ship Society and the larger historic vessel community is disheartened by the proposed Pier55, which will result in the loss of a pier long promised for the docking of historic vessels.
The current Pier 54 is one of only three piers — the others being Piers 25 and 97 — that were designated for the use of historic vessels in Hudson River Park. Our community has been looking forward to the rebuilding of Pier 54 for this purpose since the availability of affordable, publicly accessible, appropriately equipped berths for such ships in New York City is limited.
Including such vessels in the park is key to meeting the legislative mandate to draw on maritime heritage, as described by the Hudson River Park Trust in its recently released request for proposals (R.F.P.) for “Historic Vessel Long Term Docking and Programming” at Pier 25.
New York City has a long and rich maritime history. Its vast surrounding waterfront areas were utilized for the transportation of people and goods for many years, including those areas along the river on Manhattan’s West Side that now comprise Hudson River Park.
The Trust has been charged with the planning, development, operation and maintenance of Hudson River Park. Part of the Trust’s legislative mandate, per the Hudson River Park Act of 1998, is to draw upon that maritime history and seek ways to preserve, enhance public awareness of, and afford the public educational opportunities to learn about that maritime history.
These opportunities will be reduced with the loss of berthing at Pier 54.
Mary Habstritt
Habstritt is president, North River Historic Ship Society
Transparency is the key
To The Editor:
Re “Tobi Bergman is elected C.B. 2 chairperson; Gruber is praised by pols” (news article, Nov. 27) and “Pier 40 issue looms large in C.B. 2 chairperson race” (news article, Nov. 13):
As reported in the Nov. 13 Villager article on the three Community Board 2 members who ran for chairperson, during the board’s Q&A of the candidates, when asked “What would you, as board chairperson, decide on your own and what would you consult your fellow board members on?” Tobi Bergman replied: “I think the chairperson should consult on all decisions, all issues.”
Outgoing C.B. 2 Chairperson David Gruber put in a lot of work as chairperson and I acknowledge that work and those efforts. However, to point to the Washington Square Park Conservancy as one of his “accomplishments,” as he reported in The Villager’s Nov. 27 article, brings up a host of issues. This is an “accomplishment” that was done through Gruber’s private meetings with the conservancy’s four founding members, and he kept the information largely to himself for more than a year.
Gruber was well aware of sentiment in the community against a conservancy for Washington Square Park, having been involved to a great degree at meetings surrounding the redesign. And he should have been aware that the agreement with the Parks Department had been that any such proposed body would be open to full community input and oversight from the ground up. Other C.B. 2 Executive Committee members, including Keen Berger, had no idea for a year this was in the works until it was announced as basically a fait accompli.
Tobi Bergman also met with the conservancy founders and coached them before they appeared in public. Is this acting in the interest of the community when all the decks are stacked and the moves plotted out?
Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) documents later obtained by the Washington Square Park Blog show that never revealed were plans for a license agreement, theatrical productions and programming for park “patrons,” discussions around N.Y.U. money for the park with university higher-ups, the moving and potential banning of the hot dog vendors and more. When questioned by The Villager about all of this, the conservancy bobbed and weaved, and backed away from the plans — for the moment.
When this information came to light, instead of rolling back the conservancy and starting over with a full investigation and review, the C.B. 2 Parks Committee allowed a farce of a meeting to occur in early March 2014. At that meeting, Bergman, who was on the Parks Committee, was clearly on the side of the conservancy, not the community, and even tried to shut everything down at one point.
Now, as board chairperson, Tobi Bergman has a chance to set things right to ensure that the entire community board — including its committees — is conducting business in an inclusive, transparent manner and to correct mistakes that were made in the past.
Cathryn Swan
Swan is editor, Washington Square Park Blog
‘Swift boat fiasco’
To The Editor:
Re “Swift as N.Y.C. ambassador is not welcome on the L.E.S.” (talking point, by Clayton Patterson, Nov. 27):
Clayton’s video is a hilarious and much-needed antidote to the plastic Swift boat fiasco currently pulling the wool over many eyes. The heart and soul of New York City — eclipsed by decades of malignant landlordism, rampant gentrification and an invasion of pod people — is still inside some of us.
Artists, entertainers, working people, the crazy, the homeless and even public servants attuned to the pulse of the city were once essential components of what made New York City livable. That’s mostly gone now.
New York City is now comatose thanks to plastic people like Taylor Swift and the corporate takeover of everything. Authentic counterculture is now so far underground you’d need an archaeologist with a mining crew to find it. The giant simulation in place has been designed to erase all of us.
Clayton’s video is a cry in the wilderness. Let’s all take notice. Extremism in defense of liberty should be our goal. A new extremism that screams the truth. An extremism that rejects compromising with a global elite and a ruling class whose primary objective is to kill each of us.
Resist. Rebel. Question authority. You’ve got to say, I’M MAD AS HELL AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE!
Nick Zedd
Face of the new N.Y.C.?
To The Editor:
Re “Swift as N.Y.C. ambassador is not welcome on the L.E.S.” (talking point, by Clayton Patterson, Nov. 27):
Thank God, Clayton is still in there pitching! Great column, and the video is well done.
Unfortunately, Taylor Swift is the face of what New York City has become, or is becoming. She is so thin, and so white, and so rich, she almost doesn’t exist — anyone can read anything they want into her. She’s as safe as a glass of milk.
For what it’s worth, I feel that the period we’re living in is vaguely analogous to the late ’50s, and I don’t see anything remotely like the Beats on the horizon.
Almost all of the music I hear in the city now is retro, a copy of something that happened years ago. Clothing styles and haircuts are all from the past. It’s as if the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s never happened.
Perhaps this is a reaction to 9/11 — denizens of the empire retreating into safer, duller waters. It would be nice if Clayton’s film signaled the start of something new!
Ron Kolm
New York is not vanilla
To The Editor:
Re “Swift as N.Y.C. ambassador is not welcome on the L.E.S.” (talking point, by Clayton Patterson, Nov. 27):
New York, to me, has always been a place that embraced complexity, diversity and co-existence. There are many incredible and amazing cities around the world, and I have been lucky enough to perform in quite a few of them. But one thing that has always stood out about New York City is its inherent “take me as I am” attitude.
Tourism plays an important role for many great cities and these cities, in turn, make an effort to accommodate these tourists. In New York, tourists who wanted the “New York experience” always got one — but they were obliged to deal with New Yorkers. They came here and accommodated us, in our natural environment, and not the other way around!
New York maintained a wild, untamed, natural, expressive and artistic experience. It was not “more of the same” old consumerist mainstream culture that America has become famous for since WW II. Instead it was an antidote for that white-bread American feeling that has been alive and well on these shores for centuries. New York was edgy, challenging, engaging, maybe even a bit dangerous, but it had its own culture — its own extreme version of everything and everyone else.
More than just the “tired, huddled masses,” New York City attracted both the rejects and the most ambitious and talented from everywhere else. If you didn’t fit in anywhere else, then you definitely would fit in in New York City! And even though we never made it easy for anybody, we did always seem to take pride in our tough love uniqueness and individual warm-heartedness.
Now, we seem to be creating a New York City that lacks many of these qualities and is less and less maintaining its own special and difficult character. We are like someone in a relationship who tries so hard to become only what the other person likes, that we end up losing our own personality and the relationship to boot!
There are double-decker tour busses everywhere; we are constantly being looked at like zoo animals (instead of the predatory animals we used to be). And more and more it seems like I’m late to an appointment due to tourists standing in the middle of a crowded intersection/sidewalk/turnstile.
I am not sure what the point of a cultural ambassador is — and if we really need one, he or she damn well better represent the heart and guts of the city. If all we need is a song, and if the default is no longer Sinatra’s “New York, New York,” then maybe I would nominate Alicia Keys — at least there’s some inherent diversity and a pretty good tune.
Even though I am a musician, I have to admit that I have no idea who Taylor Swift is, and certainly no idea what her music sounds like. She seems to be very young, white, female, rich and blonde — perhaps the perfect ambassador for some city somewhere, I guess.
Avram Fefer
Time to repay the favor
To The Editor:
Re “Good P.R. for police” (Scoopy’s Notebook, Dec. 27):
In regard to the lead Scoopy item, it was activist attorney and soon-to-be federal prison inmate Stanley Cohen who advised Michael Julian not to take a disability pension when Julian retired from the New York Police Department.
Julian and Stanley had developed an adversarial relationship over the years in the neighborhood. But, believe it or not, Julian reached out to Cohen and asked his advice about taking disability. Not taking it cost Julian a lot of money over the years, and Stanley and I sometimes talked about how Julian must have been pissed at Stanley for giving him the advice.
Looks like in the long run Stanley’s advice worked out to be good for Julian since if he had taken the disability pension, he would not have been allowed to return to the N.Y.P.D.
If Julian sees this, I suggest he send some contributions to Stanley Cohen’s commissary fund in federal prison over the next 18 months starting on Jan. 6.
John Penley
Breach is widening
To The Editor:
Re “Cooper, alum association reach détente” (news article, Nov. 27):
The lawsuit filed in New York State Supreme Court has not “led to a tremendous amount of misinformation.” Quite the opposite. The Committee to Save Cooper Union’s petition filed with the court makes a cogent and compelling argument that Cooper Union’s president and board of trustees are in clear violation of the trust agreement they’re required to uphold. I suggest everyone read it.
Despite Cooper spokesperson Harmon’s characterization that, “honest disagreements have ensued over the best use of scarce resources,” this is actually a fight against a fundamental breach of the trust and charter by the president and the majority of trustees. The current situation is not a kind of détente. The separation of the Cooper Union Alumni Association from the school is an ominous sign of the widening breach between President Jamshed Bharucha, on the one side, and alumni, faculty and students, as well as city and state legislators, on the other.
It’s time for President Bharucha and the trustees to follow the practical recommendations of the Working Group to live within their means and reverse their disastrous decision to start charging tuition after 155 years of “free.” If not, the course they are on will lead to a precipitous drop in alumni financial support, falling student “yield” rates, dismal rankings and potentially, the loss of the unique PILOT tax exemption that is critical to the school’s financial survival.
Scott Lerman
RCN hooked us up
To The Editor:
Re “Chico loses Loisaida wall to New Jersey upstart” (news article, Nov. 27):
For the record: Although RCN changed their mind about letting the Girls Club use their Avenue C wall, they did come through with a very generous grant, which allowed the Girls Club to pay all the artists and interns who painted the mural on E. First St. We parted on good terms with RCN. The “Women Who Change The World” mural is still up in the garden and in relatively good shape.
Lyn Pentecost
Pentecost is executive director, Lower Eastside Girls Club
Alumni prez clarifies
To The Editor:
Re “Cooper, alum association reach détente” (news article, Nov. 27):
I am the current president of the Cooper Union Alumni Association and I have some small corrections to this informative article.
The Nov. 21 meeting for agreements was for discussion with representatives of three parties: the Cooper administration and Alumni Affairs Office, the board of trustees and the Cooper Union Alumni Association. Neither the trustees nor CUAA can enter into agreements without their respective bodies approving them.
CUAA, as a result of a decision by the Cooper administration, can resume meeting on campus after a brief period in which permission was denied. CUAA has never had direct access to the Cooper Union alumni database, as far as I know. CUAA recently developed its own database and started communicating directly with alumni. Previously, all CUAA communications to alumni were made through the Cooper Union-owned and -administered cualumni.com Web site and thus were mediated communications.
The Cooper administration did not support CUAA activities last year except for its generous support of the Founder’s Day Award Ceremony. If the Alumni Affairs Office has been strengthened recently, CUAA is unaware of this. Our understanding is that there are fewer Alumni Affairs Office employees than in the past. Perhaps the administration is referencing the growth of the Development Office.
The Annual Fund, previously administered by CUAA and staffed by the Alumni Office, has been administered and staffed by the Development Office since last year. Traditionally, alumni have given to the Annual Fund on an annual basis and CUAA was engaged in that campaign.
CUAA representatives are engaged in discussions to find ways that CUAA’s traditional mission of serving Cooper and its alumni can best be effectuated within the current state of affairs at the Cooper Union. The CUAA Council will determine the direction CUAA will take going forward.
John Leeper
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