Demo getting done: We caught up with Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe and Bill Castro, Manhattan borough Parks commissioner, last Friday at the ribbon cutting for the new Canal Park and they informed us that the long-awaited renovation of Father Demo Square on Sixth Avenue at Bleecker Street will be beginning shortly. The construction fence will be going up around the triangular plaza in two to three weeks. The renovation will last up to nine months, depending on weather conditions. If it’s a severely cold winter it will limit how fast the work gets done, Benepe said. The pricey project is budgeted at $1.3 million. It’s expensive, Castro said, because fountains — one of which will be installed in Demo Square — don’t come cheap.
Fountain fracas: On the subject of park renovations and fountains, Doris Diether of Community Board 2 filled us in on some of the goings-on at the daylong workshop last weekend on Washington Square Park sponsored by the Washington Square Park Council and led by the Project for Public Spaces. At one point, the participants broke up into 10 groups and headed for different parts of the square to conduct surveys and observations. Not surprisingly, Gil Horowitz and Luther Harris, like Diether, picked the group for the fountain. “They got into a violent shouting match,” Diether said of the two opponents. “This girl was talking about how sound bounces off the walls of the sunken area making the music sound better — and Gil kept interrupting her and Luther told Gil to shut up because we wanted to hear what the woman was saying. It got to be kind of wild, our little panel.”
Congratulations! East Village Democratic District Leader Anthony Feliciano and Gladys Cortez — above, before their wedding — walked down the aisle on Oct. 15 at Most Holy Redeemer Church on East Third Street before an audience of 200 friends and family. Cortez is a graduate student at New School University.
leader hopeful: The Democratic nominee for East Village female Democratic district leader is Katrina Monzon, who hopes to succeed Rosie Mendez, who is running in the general election to succeed Margarita Lopez in the City Council.
Corrections: An item in last week’s Scoopy’s stated that the Department of Transportation had done a horn-honking study on Avenue B resulting in the decision to put up new No Honking signs. However, it’s the Department of Environmental Protection, not D.O.T., that does the horn-honking studies, though D.O.T. does install the signs if warranted…. In an arts article on “Not the same old blood and gore,” which ran in last week’s issue, Johnny Kat was incorrectly named as the director of the “Trapped by the Mormons” remake. The director is Ian Allen.
Boo-rito: Want a free burrito and don’t mind a little humiliation? All you need to do is dress up as one — or a taco, burrito bowl or salad — on Halloween and go to any Chipotle Mexican Grill between 11 a.m. and 10 p.m. and they’ll give you a free barbacoa burrito, steak salad or carnitas tacos.
