In the Know: Punk bands thrashed while the audience crowd-surfed at Tompkins Square Park on Saturday to help raise funds for Dr. Know, the Bad Brains guitarist. The Dr., real name Gary Miller, is miraculously recovering from a severe heart attack and organ failure that he suffered last November. He had only been given a 5 percent chance of survival, but has been miraculously improving. The Tompkins lineup included the Cro-Mags, Token Entry, Antitode and Breakdown. T-shirts and other merch was sold to help the cause.
Incredible but true: It turns out that the Incredible Hulk that was recently in Tompkins Square Park, whose photos we featured last week, was actually not tormented nuclear physicist Bruce Banner but East Village performance fun-loving artist David Leslie. “I did the Hulk for my son Brooks’s friend’s birthday surprise,” Leslie told us. Now that’s a cool dad!
Fouratt for Assembly: Following Arthur Schwartz’s recently dropping out of the September primary versus Assemblymember Deborah Glick for health reasons, Jim Fouratt has stepped forward to run in his place. Schwartz collected enough petitions to get himself on the ballot, and Fouratt, through what is known as the “committee on vacancies” process, was allowed to use those, in turn, so that he can run in the primary. Schwartz, in a video statement, has endorsed Fouratt, saying that “voters deserve a choice” in September. Fouratt is a lifelong gay activist who back in the 1970s and ’80s ran local dance clubs as the manager at Hurrah and the talent booker at Danceteria. He’s a longtime member of the Village Independent Democrats political club, which is also Glick’s home club. Fouratt is hoping he can scoop up some of Schwartz’s endorsements, but says he feels like he’s getting the runaround from Allen Roskoff’s Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club. “He hates Glick, but hates me more, I guess,” Fouratt said of Roskoff. “Anyway, I will have my Web site up early next week and am fundraising.” For her part, Glick said that Schwartz’s petitions looked “very sloppy” to her and that, although he gathered enough names, she thinks they would not have stood up to a legal challenge. There were signatures missing and so forth, she claimed. “If I had wanted to, I could have gotten them thrown out by the Board of Elections,” she said. “I just don’t believe in challenging petitions.” Glick was confident that she will romp over Fouratt. “There will be a primary,” she said. “I will win — and I will win big.” Meanwhile, Schwartz scoffed at Glick’s saying his hefty stack of 2,500 petition signatures was sloppy. “I support the importance of Glick’s record being discussed and having a contested election,” he said.
Message from D’Ag: Like other Villager readers in her neck of the woods, columnist Otis Kidwell Burger, who lives on Bethune St. near the Greenwich St. D’Agostino, has been very concerned about the fate of the supermarket, which has been sporting aisles of empty shelves week after week. Through her accountant, Judith Frias, Burger recently received word from Nancy D’Agostino. “My sincerest apologies for the horrendous stock conditions,” the supermarket executive wrote. “As is evident, we are facing serious challenges. It is heartbreaking that we are disappointing our wonderful customers and stressing our hard-working associates. I know it has been weeks of poor conditions, but we are working to rectify our issues and I hope to get back to you within a couple of weeks with news of fuller shelves.” She signed off, “With deep apology, Nancy D’Agostino.” On Tuesday, Westbeth disabled advocate Margie Rubin called to say that when she passed the supermarket on her way home the night before, she saw that they were busy restocking the shelves. “A truck had brought in a whole bunch of new items,” she said, “and they’re expecting another truckload later in the week. Nothing more permanent than that — but there is food at D’Ag’s.”
Political ping pong: Speaking of Glick, arts scion Jean-Louis Bourgeois was bummed out that his request to her to snag him a ticket to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia didn’t pan out. We’re sure it had nothing to do with Bourgeois being a huge supporter of Senator Elizabeth Warren for president, and all about the fact that, well, it’s just not easy to get a seat unless you are a delegate. A couple of weeks ago, we attended Bourgeois’s birthday bash up at his new country house in Cold Spring, N.Y., where he gave an impassioned speech about why he was certain that Hillary Clinton would pick Warren as her running mate. Well, obviously that prediction didn’t pan out. But we did enjoy playing a few fast-paced doubles rounds on Bourgeois’s new ping pong table with a local sculptor and his real estate broker wife who sold Bourgeois the place.
Not going quietly: John Bal is back from Thailand but he’s out of the running for the September primary for the 65th Assembly District. In addition to announcing that he has dropped out of the race, he fired a parting shot at the Truman Democratic Club, the Lower East Side Democratic Club and the United Democratic Organization, accusing them of being “private clubs masquerading as Democratic clubs,” and has filed a complaint against them with the Board of Elections. Bal charges they are “closed” membership clubs with “closed” endorsements. He is calling on the B.O.E. to throw out the petition signatures that L.E.S.D.C. and Truman have collected for Alice Cancel and the ones U.D.O. has gathered for Yuh-Line Niou. The only club, in Bal’s view, that is doing things by the book is Downtown Independent Democrats.
Fundraising and facts: Last week, we reported that Paul Newell had put out a press release hailing himself as the “clear front-runner” in the 65th A.D. race based on campaign fundraising, having raised $92,000 in the current cycle. But former District Leader John Scott blasted that as “spin,” noting, for example, that, according to a recent report from the state Board of Elections, Jenifer Rajkumar has raised $137,400, Gigi Li $105,670 and Don Lee a whopping $156,000 in the same period. Surprisingly, Yuh-Line Niou is trailing the pack, with $52,400. Suffice to say, the crowded field of candidates are all scrambling for funds — except, that is, for incumbent Alice Cancel, who has raised only a few hundred dollars, but is clearly “banking” on her deep grassroots community support built up over decades of district activism to help her win re-election. For his part, Newell says he is the only candidate who, over the years, has been laser-focused on winning election to the state Legislature. That was clearly a dig at Rajkumar who made a bid for City Council in the past. Newell ran against former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver in 2008.
Correction: In our article last week on the unveiling of the Jean-Michel Basquiat plaque outside his former Great Jones St. loft, a photo caption incorrectly identified artist Kevin Duggan as Michael Holman. The article also incorrectly referred to the Two Boots Foundation as the Two Boots Pizza Foundation.
