Seaport Gates “The Gates” artists, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, did not wrap up the Brooklyn Bridge at Harold Reed’s post-Christmas party last week, but the large-scale installation artists did steal away to Reed’s Seaport balcony and got a close look at the bridge.
Bureaucratic tip for the couple: If you are thinking of a new project to top Central Park’s Gates, this time you’ll have to go through city D.O.T., a.k.a. the Dept. of Transportation — tell ’em it’ll cut down on traffic, speed the traffic flow, and unlike the “Legend”ary Will Smith, you have no plans to blow it up.
Other attendees at the festive affair were architect Hugh Hardy, whose work includes Bryant Park and Greenwich Street South, John Haworth, director of the Lower Manhattan branch of the Smithsonian’s Indian museum, and City Councilmember Alan Gerson.
Uptown Downtown Sen. Barack Obama’s New York City friends and supporters plan to watch the Iowa Caucus returns Thursday night at Gold Street, the Financial District’s 24-hour restaurant — guess those kids are planning to stay up all night. The only other place in the city where the Obama campaign is gathering Jan. 3 is up in Harlem at Paris Blues — not the most optimistic name for an election return spot.
You go, girl You like me, you really do.
Some Democratic activists openly wonder whether Sen. Hillary Clinton is too hated in some quarters to win a presidential race, but last week her campaign put out new Gallup poll numbers showing that she is once again the world’s most admired woman. She has finished first or second 15 straight years and achieved the top slot six years in a row — with 18 percent of the respondents picking her this year, her highest number since 2000.
One of Clinton’s admirers is Catherine McVay Hughes, the 9/11envrionmental activist who told us a year ago she was supporting Clinton. The campaign has posted a video of Hughes at thehillaryiknow.com, with Hughes praising Clinton for asking the tough, unpopular questions about air quality.
“She’ll enter a room — the whole room will light up from her energy,” Hughes says on the video. “We wouldn’t be having the success today, if she wasn’t fighting day after day after day for the people living and working in Lower Manhattan.”
Start climbing It looks like Downtown is going to be short an elevator when the temporary PATH station entrance on Church St. closes in the next few months.
The current elevator on Church St. at the World Trade Center site serves both the PATH station and the A, C, E and 2, 3 subway lines. When the temporary PATH entrance moves to Greenwich and Vesey Sts., the elevator will follow — but there will be no underground connection from the PATH station to the subway, leaving subway riders stranded at street level.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority will not build a new elevator for the Chambers St. stops, spokesperson Aaron Donovan confirmed this week. That will leave the subway lines without elevator access for several years, until the new PATH station is complete.
Residents, needless to say, are not happy.
“To cut out access for people with disabilities is just brutal and shows you the heartless way New York functions sometimes,” said Barry Skolnick, Downtown’s elevator crusader and a Community Board 1 member.
Skolnick regularly sees residents laden with packages and strollers using the elevator — not to mention handicapped people.
“Also, people are very tired,” Skolnick added. “Not everybody is a young mountain goat.”
Spicy item Donna Mattos’s “46th Street Bliss” chili took the Golden Ladle Award in the People’s Choice category at the General Services Administration’s recent chili cookoff at 26 Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan. Her fellow feds judged hers to be the best of 15 chilis in a contest to benefit the Federal Employees’ Assistance Fund, which allows feds to donate to many different charities directly though their paychecks. Robert Granato’s and Kevin Bunker’s “Goomba’s Fra Diavlo” was first runner-up in both the People’s and “Critic’s” Choice award. Jeffrey Lau’s “Chorizo Firehouse Chili” won the critical Golden Ladle. Had any of the contestants challenged the “critic’s” culinary expertise, they would have been on rock solid ground for he was none other than Josh Rogers, associate editor of Downtown Express.
