Lowe and the 5 Oh: Rob Lowe, who turned 50 last month, recently appeared in some street art — apparently painted on the ground, not chalked, so as to hang around for a while — in Washington Square Park. It wasn’t done by just any old (no pun intended) tagger or graffiti artist, but is part of AARP’s yearlong celebration of the last of the Baby Boomers, i.e. “The Generation That Changed the World,” who are hitting the big 5 Oh this year. Formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons, AARP serves the needs of older Americans who are at least age 50, though they don’t have to be retired. Some other famous Boomers whose photos are shown at #Boomers50+ are Hillary Clinton, Yoko Ono, John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, John F. Kennedy, John Belushi and, umm, G.I. Joe. Sadly, too many talented Boomers were taken away from us too soon. As for AARP street poster boy Lowe, the quinquagenarian (yes, it is a word) sex symbol is definitely still working. His new film, fittingly titled “Sex Tape,” is scheduled to be released soon, while another flick, “The Pro,” about former professional tennis players who had a major falling out, is in pre-production.
Oh, Man(atus), they’re closed! After 23 years in business, Manatus, the popular Bleecker St. restaurant, suddenly closed on Sunday. Prohibitively high rent — what else is new? — was the cause. We hear they’re currently searching for a new location to reopen in the Village. We first heard about the closing from Susanna Aaron of Community Board 2, who we just recently learned grew up on Bleecker St. There aren’t really that many diner-style restaurants like Manatus around anymore, she noted. And, hey, they always did have one of the coolest ads in The Villager, with the two guys arm wrestling,.
Web-surfin’ safari: Well, we’ve finally solved the mystery of why The Villager has hundreds of Facebook friends in Namibia. This past Monday, we received an e-mail notice from a Zenao Angula alerting us about “The Villager newspaper weekly strategy meeting.” Yes, Jennifer Goodstein, our publisher, has instituted regular editors’ meetings here since taking over the paper — but in Africa? We don’t know exactly how we got on their e-mail list — maybe it was through our “The Villager Newspaper” Facebook page? — but it turns out there is, in fact, a Villager paper in Namibia. Their top story this week, in fact, is about a man who discovered his wife was cheating on him after seeing incriminating text messages on her phone, and then tied her to a tree overnight. She declined to press charges against him. Anyway, we e-mailed back Angula and straightened it all out. Who knows? Maybe we can become sister papers. For any Namibians who may be reading this paper — either mistakenly or who knows why — instead of the Namibian Villager, we note the passing of Andrew Intamba, 69, Namibia’s ambassador to Egypt, which we found out because it seems we are now also on the e-mail list of the Namibian Minister of Foreign Affairs! According to an obituary in the Nambian Villager, which the minister linked to, Intamba “dedicated his youth to the country’s liberation struggle as a combatant of the People’s Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN), the ruling SWAPO Party’s former military wing.” Since design is a hot topic for us this week after our huge win of a first-place NYPA contest award, it’s interesting to note that the Namibia Villager has a thatch-roofed hut taking the spot of the small “a” in the “Villager” in its masthead. Although we’re sure Goodstein will find that intriguing, we think she’ll probably want to stick with the New York City Villager’s new masthead for a while.
Not just nitty-griddy: An article in last week’s Villager, “Thinking ‘Beyond the Grid’ about disaster preparedness,” omitted the structure of the Beyond the Grid project and didn’t name all of its participants. In fact, Beyond the Grid is the effort of a consortium led by Two Bridges Neighborhood Council, composed of consultants with expertise in community development (Urbane Development, LLC); wireless technology (WiFi-NY), resilient design (Milestone Architecture, PLLC, with Alex Nadolishny’s consulting expertise in energy systems and emergency response) and green jobs training (Green for All). The article also mentioned FEMA as operating a medical operation in the Rockaways, whereas the operation was run by a well-known nonprofit relief organization, not FEMA.
