Chelsea now and forever! “Chelsea stays up,” a defiant Nino Seimaj said of the photo that continues to grace the window of Osso Buco on University Pl. On Sept. 18, Seimaj received a letter from former President Bill Clinton’s legal counsel that claimed that the snapshot of a then-27-year-old Chelsea Clinton posing with Seimaj implies that the private citizen endorses the restaurant, and demanded that the photo be removed. The pic has been in its current location for more than five years — and is now joined by the letter itself. Although the letter noted that in the event the photo was not removed, “we reserve the right to exercise any and all options available to us,” there has been no contact between the two parties since the highly publicized paper was received.
Hopin’ for Hillary: Talking with Assemblymember Deborah Glick after the Hudson River Park Trust’s board meeting on Sept. 29, we asked her if she would be heading up to see Barack Obama in Washington Square. “When my mother was born, she didn’t have the right to vote,” Glick responded. “Hillary Clinton is smart enough, tough enough and experienced enough” to be president and has “foreign policy credibility,” she said. “I’ve spent my life voting for men of varying quality, and now I have a chance to vote for a woman for president,” Glick said. We took that as a No.
Bona fide Bono report: No one has moved into Julian Schnabel’s Palazzo Chupi on W. 11th St. yet, but we’re now absolutely certain that Bono has taken the penthouse duplex. So, it’s all right, it’s all right, maybe he doesn’t move in such mysterious ways after all. … And for the last word (we promise) on the meaning of that mysterious word “chupi,” see this week’s letters to the editor.
Thanks, Times: We’re glad The New York Times saw fit to run a correction last Wednesday giving us credit for breaking the story about the new Academy of St. Joseph on Washington Pl. only having two students. The New York Post tried to pull a fast one, claiming it had the exclusive, even though The Villager reported it three weeks earlier. The Times compounded the error by then citing the Post’s alleged exclusive in its own article, but then apparently realizing the error of its ways, ran a correction. At least someone’s got some integrity in this town!
Getting smaller, actually: The headline in our article last week on Ed Koch being tapped to be co-chairperson of Friends of the New St. Vincent’s probably shouldn’t have used the word “expansion.” Although the hospital plans to build a large tower at its O’Toole Building site, the hospital’s overall size will decrease. Marilyn Dorato, secretary of the Greenwich Village Block Associations, noticed it, and sent out an e-mail blast: “The signs do not seem to be encouraging that St. Vincent’s is intending to respect the original F.A.R. The Villager is calling their plans an expansion, which doesn’t sound good. …” Also, in addition to the public meeting this Wednesday night Oct. 10 at 6:30 p.m. at which the hospital and Rudin Organization officials will present their preliminary design plans, there will be three more presentations, on Thurs., Oct. 11, at 5 p.m. and Mon., Oct. 15 and Tues., Oct. 16, both at 6:30 p.m. All the meetings will be held at St. Vincent’s Hospital, 170 W. 12th St., 10th floor, Cronin Auditorium.
Pieces of the mosaic: In a dot-com deal that could be the East Village equivalent of Google buying YouTube, Jim Power, the “Mosaic Man,” has sold his treasured Web site. “I just got rid of eastvillage.com,” he said, breaking the news to us last week. “I made a deal for less than I was asking. It wasn’t that much; it was $10,000. I’ve spent that much on chalk.” He said the purchaser was a Lower East Side real estate company at Grand and Essex Sts. “The guy that got it is a good guy, Bob Weiss, he’s very concerned,” Power told us. Power said the cash will help him to finally get a room, though likely in the boroughs, definitely not in the East Village: He said it’s too painful to look around and see all his mosaic lampposts in such disrepair — at least 50 out of 80 of which need serious mending, which would take a crew and a couple of years, he said. “I can’t stay out here two more years, I’d lose my sanity,” he said. Power has been living in Peter Cooper Park, but plans to leave town soon in search of greener artistic pastures. “You know, they’re funding people in Philadelphia,” he noted. His other dilemma is that he badly needs a hip-replacement operation, but hasn’t found anyone reliable to take in his dog, Jesse Jane, while he spends a week in the hospital recuperating. “My dog will go in a casket with me before I put her in a kennel,” he declared. Also complicating the surgery situation is that he told a doctor he smokes pot, so the doc said the operation is off. “I was trying to be honest,” Power admitted, though adding he thinks he could lay off weed for a few weeks for surgery and recovery, temporarily at least. And after smashing one of his lampposts recently at Astor Pl. in a public outburst of rage and grief, he said he won’t destroy any more — but pleaded, “I can’t wait for the city to get its act together.”
Don’t spin me! Jane Crotty, who does public relations for the New School, didn’t particularly like being called a flack in a headline on our recent article on New School’s plans for a new building at 14th St. and Fifth Ave. “Next time, you can use something like ‘adorable,’ ‘well-preserved’ — ‘flack,’ c’mon!” she told us. We apologize, but “flack” is a lot shorter than “public-relations spokesperson,” which almost fills up the whole headline by itself.
BANning Bowery overdevelopment: A Bowery zoning forum, sponsored by the new Bowery Alliance of Neighbors (BAN), Cooper Square Committee, 10 Stanton St. Tenants Association and 5th St. Block Association, will be held at 10 Stanton St. between Chrystie St. and the Bowery, on Thurs., Oct. 11, at 6:30 p.m.
