One for Epstein: Maybe not that surprising, but Harvey Epstein got his first endorsement last week in his bid to succeed Brian Kavanagh in the Assembly, by winning the support of Epstein’s home political organization, Coalition for a District Alternative. Epstein beat out two other candidates for the club’s support, Michael Corbett and Marie Ternes. Epstein, a former chairperson of Community Board 3, works as a project director at the Urban Justice Center and is a tenant member on the city’s Rent Guidelines Board. Corbett is an aide to Queens City Councilmember Costa Constantinides. Ternes is a communications consultant who worked for Anthony Weiner when he was a congressmember. After having won a special election in November, Kavanagh will take over Daniel Squadron’s former Lower Manhattan / Brooklyn state Senate seat at the start of the new year. Meanwhile, the special election for the 74th Assembly District, which runs from the United Nations down through the East Village, will be in March, we hear. It’s likely some other candidates will emerge, but word has it that Epstein has good support in other local political clubs. It will be Democratic County Committee members who pick the party’s candidate for the special election, this time. Unlike the debacle that saw Manhattan County Leader Keith Wright and the Brooklyn party boss buck the County Committee’s choice of Paul Newell for Squadron’s replacement and instead put “the fix” in for Kavanagh, that won’t happen this time. In a quirk of the rules, those kind of backroom shenanigans can only occur if the district spans two boroughs. “They won’t be able to ignore the local County Committee’s decision,” Erik Coler, president of the Village Independent Democrats, assured us. “That’s only when there is a cross-borough district that the county chairperson can ignore the choice of the people. I am sure the county will try to influence local committee people for their choices, but according to their own bylaws, they cannot ignore the ruling of the County Committee.”
Glick sticks it to Eli: Assemblymember Deborah Glick, as anyone would know from perusing her NFL tweets, is a huge football fan and a hardcore Giants fan, but she is also a harsh critic of Eli Manning. So, she wasn’t upset at all when, last week, the two-time Super Bowl-winning quarterback rode the bench as Geno Smith played versus the Raiders. “Obviously, I’m not a huge fan of Eli. I think he’s past his prime,” Glick told us of the 36-year-old signal-caller. “I want to bring someone along — but not Geno Smith, who is a fumble machine. Next it’ll be Mark Sanchez,” she quipped. “I thought for the last two years, they should put someone in there who is ready… . Eli has not been sharp,” she said, adding that, in a rare feat, Manning actually ran for a first down on “first and inches” two or three weeks ago. “Nor is he gutsy the way that a Roethlisberger or Rodgers or any of them are,” she scoffed, saying that other pro Q.B.’s shrug off bigger hits than Manning does. As for Manning being over the hill, we asked her, what about Tom Brady, who is 40? “Brady views this as his life,” Glick said. “Eli doesn’t. Eli’s never been as accurate as Brady. Eli leads the league in interceptions at this point. Look, you can’t put Eli in the same league as someone like Brady.” Ouch! Oh, well…let’s go, Giants!
Rock on, Jimi and Jimy: After all the hype, we had to check out the Kiss the Sky: The RE-Experience show, featuring Jimy Bleu, at Café Wha? last week. It was in honor of what would have been Jimi Hendrix’s 75th birthday, and the MacDougal St. venue is where the guitar great was discovered. The show, which packed in a crowd of more than 200, didn’t disappoint! Bleu was great, ripping through all of Hendrix’s songs, from “Purple Haze” to “Manic Depression” and “Wind Cries Mary,” and even threw in a side of Cream, with a rocking and pounding “Sunshine of Your Love.” Among the V.I.P.’s in the crowd were the ultra-cool Juma Sultan, one of the percussionists in Hendrix’s band that played Woodstock and who also played on 12 of his albums, and photographer Lenny Eisenberg, who was just 17 when he shot Hendrix at the famed Upstate musical festival. “His music lives through you — and everyone who operates on a level of love,” Sultan told the crowd. “By nature, he was quiet, he was more spiritual,” he said of Hendrix. “He was always reaching for higher ground.” Also there was Storm Ritter, the Eighth St. boutique owner who is leading the Jimi Hendrix Way campaign to co-name Eighth St., where Hendrix built his still-extant Electric Lady Studios. The show was terrific and left us thinking: Man, music used to be soooo much better!
Here’s the beef: You can get into the holiday spirit and get a great meal at the Annual Police Roast Beef Dinner, at the Greenwich House / Our Lady of Pompeii Senior Center, on Wed., Dec. 13, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. There will be vegetarian and take-home meals available, plus Christmas caroling led by the “Arrow Keyboard Man” of disco-era fame, Novac Noury. It all happens in the church’s basement space at 25 Carmine St. The food is donated by local merchants and the Sixth Precinct Community Council and will be served up by the Sixth Precinct’s Finest. Entry at the door is $13 — a great deal when you consider just how delicious this food is going to be. All proceeds go to the Greenwich House / Our Lady of Pompeii Senior Center.
Not selling: As for Noury, he told us he continues to get queries — “every day, every day,” he said — for his vacant Little W. 12th St. lot in the Meatpacking District near The Standard’s Biergarten, but won’t sell and still wants to develop a building there. “It will be designed around a rainbow. People can have their weddings there,” he said. It would be around seven stories tall, “enough to have a restaurant, High Line elevation and pyramid on top for my caretaker’s quarters. It’s a vision, a legacy and a spiritual calling,” he said. As for why he “made a scene,” to put it mildly, at a Village bank branch a while back, he said he was upset because he had to make a mortgage payment on the lot, but the bank had not changed the mailing address on one of his accounts — he had been using the address of his Chelsea girlfriend’s apartment, but she died — so the bank account was closed to him.
