Villager photo by J.B. Nicholas
Actress Lindsay Lohan was shopping in Soho with her mother on Monday. They stopped in at the trendy Intermix store on Prince St.
Hovitz vs. Hughes? A new candidate could be stepping up to run for Community Board 1 chairperson when Julie Menin steps down in June. Menin has already endorsed Vice Chairperson Catherine McVay Hughes as her successor, and no definite challenger has emerged yet for the Lower Manhattan board, but several members said that Paul Hovitz could make a strong candidate. Hovitz may have a sizeable contingent of support in Southbridge Towers, where he lives, and on the Youth and Education Committee, where he was chairperson for many years. Asked about his plans last week, Hovitz grinned. “It’s possible,” he said of a run. Hovitz did not voice any direct criticism of Hughes, but he hinted that he would be better at presiding over the full board’s often-contentious meetings. Some are also saying it’s high time C.B. 1 adopt term limits for chairperson. Menin and, before her, Anne Compoccia, held the chairperson seat for seemingly as long as they liked, and for many more years than the two that are the norm at neighboring Boards 2 and 3.
Rant restraint: One reader on our Web site, www.thevillager.com, found our item last week on Village resident Barry Drogin’s outrage at not being able to photograph the High Line in the virgin snow so ridiculous, it wasn’t even worthy of a respectable response. Wrote “Todd McD”: “RE: ‘High Line snow job’ Some photog is pissed because the parks department cleared out the waking path? I’m not even going to rant about that, too easy, get over it.”
Ray reportage saturation: We thought we might have had the sad scoop on Ray Alvarez’s retail woes in our column last week — but, really, who did we think we were kidding? Ray has more bloggers covering him than most B-List celebrities. One of them, EV Grieve, did a roundup of the Ray reports, including our own: Slum Goddess (a.k.a. Eden Brower of the East River String Band) says that Ray has slashed the price of his Belgian waffles from $4 all the way down to $2, and the bloggin’ blueswoman is urging folks to patronize his candy store at Seventh St. and Avenue A and help save an East Village institution. Meanwhile, Bob Arihood of Neither More Nor Less — the undisputed “godfather” of Ray reporters, who has been chronicling the egg cream maestro’s doings for longer than we can remember — says Ray is set to launch his latest new product: cappuccino. Just when the chips are down, Ray is daring to take on Starbucks and the big boys. Get ready to rumble!
Felice Na’vi-dad? Like Ed Koch, our distinguished movie reviewer, we saw James Cameron’s new 3D film, “Avatar,” recently, but we enjoyed it more than Hizzoner. Yes, Koch is right, the movie does make one feel a bit guilty, but we were O.K. with it. One thing, though, Ed, if we may: The Na’vi — i.e. the “blue people” — do not call the earthlings the “fly people,” but the “sky people.” Well, anyway, whatever, “fly,” “shmy,” we get the picture that he didn’t like the flick. We also noticed that music critic Kurt Loder, in his own review on Rotten Tomatoes, knocked director Cameron as being a “self-acknowledged aging hippie, and his boomer worldview is strictly by-the-numbers.” A Tomatoes poster, in turn, blasted Loder, noting his opinion was in line with his own well-known grumpy “libertarian” attitude. Politics and hippies aside, after a while we just felt like we were watching a really cool action cartoon with blue humanoid/cats with erotic ponytails — and it wasn’t bad at all.
