Check back next year: Once again, peace reigns at Community Board 2. Or, let’s put it this way: There are no contested races for board officers in C.B. 2’s upcoming election this month, according to Jo Hamilton, board chairperson. So Hamilton will just serve a second year, thank you, which is allowed under the board’s unofficial, two-year term limit for chairperson. It’s next year’s election that will be the intriguing one. Hamilton said, in the past, three names have been mentioned as possible chairperson candidates: David Gruber, Bo Riccobono and Tobi Bergman. “Other people talk about Brad Hoylman coming back,” she added. “But none of these people have said a word in the last year — and someone else might come up.” Hoylman, of course, stepped down last year, after his two-year stint helming the board, which covers the area between W. 14th and Canal Sts. west of Bowery/Fourth Ave. If he plans a run for Chris Quinn’s Council District 3 seat, another couple of years leading C.B. 2 would raise Hoylman’s political profile at the perfect moment. On the East Side, we hear that C.B. 3 Chairperson Dominic Pisciotta is also running unopposed for re-election.
Tested method: N.Y.U. President John Sexton urged Poly Prep High School graduates to “Go Glocal!” in his recent commencement address to them in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn. Boasting a 25-acre campus, Poly is popular with Lower Manhattan families seeking a private school option. A native New Yorker, Sexton reminisced about the most influential teacher in his own life, “Charlie,” who inspired him to earn a Ph.D. from Fordham and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. Amusingly, Charlie also advised the young Sexton to “get the SAT scores of any girl you date because looks fade away, but the necessity for good conversation never does.” More seriously, Sexton suggested that, in the 21st century, Poly grads take an “ecumenical” approach, both in their own neighborhoods — among the country’s most diverse — and in the world at large. In that vein, he urged the entire audience to “Go Glocal!” — a riff on “Think globally, act locally.” (For the record, Sexton didn’t coin the idea, at least not according to Stefano Gianazzi, an Italian who writes the Go Glocal blog, who claims “glocalization” originated in Japan.)
Make that 10 months! Our usually reliable Police Blotter really whiffed last week on the sentencing of Joel Pakela, a.k.a. L.E.S. Jewels, Avenue A’s most infamous “gutter pirate.” Jewels pled guilty April 6, following his April 1 assault of a man at the latter’s Mercer St. apartment after they met at The Urge, a Second Ave. gay bar. But instead of being sentenced on June 1 to 10 days, as our Police Blotter wrongly reported, Jewels got slapped with 10 months — which makes more sense, since he broke the man’s orbital bone, no easy feat. Since copping his plea, then failing to post his $30,000 bond, Jewels has been cooling his heels in prison. His projected release date is Oct. 20, 2010, meaning he’ll likely serve, not 10 months, but slightly more than eight months. As Stephen Morello, a Department of Corrections spokesperson, explained it, state law provides a discount for “good time,” meaning if the person doesn’t commit any “infractions,” he gets out of jail early. Like the other roughly 1,600 inmates in his building — all of whom are serving terms of less than one year — Jewels at least has his own cell. Rapper Lil Wayne is a neighbor, sort of, though he’s in an area of the jail for high-profile individuals and others who need protection. Anyway, if Jewels can get a copy of The Villager in jail, he probably had a laugh at our Police Blotter goof.
Sweet show: She thinks their cupcakes are better than Magnolia’s — yet she prefers to paint them, not eat them. Artist Donna Gould’s small, acrylic, abstract paintings of Sweetheart bakery’s cupcakes will be on display at the shop, on Eighth Ave. between 13th and 14th Sts., from June 17 through July 15. The cakes spoke to her, so to speak. “I was very impressed by their shapes,” she explained, “because sometimes they’re so unpredictable.” There won’t be any opening for the exhibit, because the place is just too small, noted Gould, a Jane St. resident. Of course, if while eating your red velvet delight, you should become mesmerized by one of her cupcake abstracts, you can always buy it.
A reel mystery: We were wondering what was up with the renovation of the old Charles Theater, at 12th St. and Avenue B. As The Villager reported last October, the plan was to return the place to use as a functioning Pentecostal church, plus show movies there once again. The film angle was the idea of activist Frank Morales, who grew up in the neighborhood and used to enjoy watching Saturday morning flicks there as a kid. But judging by the look of the building, the work isn’t done, and Morales confirmed things seem to be at a standstill. “Soon after the [Villager] article, the Buildings Department mafia hit us with a work stop order,” he said. “Obviously, someone in the vicinity saw us working there, read the piece and dropped a dime on us.” Morales said he’ll reach out to Reverend Carlos Torres, the church’s senior pastor, and try to find out what’s going on. The worst-case scenario, he said, would be if the church has decided to sell out and go for the “big bucks.”
