Missing initial
Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver recently leaned over to UnderCover with a twinkle in his eye.
“Did you hear I was a deprived child?” Silver asked.
It took us a minute to realize what the most powerful man in Albany (sorry Gov) was talking about — but then we understood: Last week, UnderCover’s sister column Scoopy’s Notebook in The Villager, reported that Silver never uses a middle initial.
“My parents didn’t give me a middle name,” Silver explained to UnderCover.
We suggested that perhaps Silver could take on his own middle name if he felt so deprived, but he just chuckled and waved away the idea.
Nod to Chin
New Councilmember Margaret Chin (once she reaches the three-month mark, should we stop calling her “new”?) has gained at least one big supporter since taking office: Bob Townley, Manhattan Youth’s executive director.
During last year’s campaign, Townley was a vocal advocate for former Councilmember Alan Gerson, whom Chin unseated. But at a recent meeting on the cuts to I.S. 89’s after-school program, Townley said he was impressed by Chin’s proactive response and her staffer Jake Itzkowitz’s description of potential solutions.
“Very organized office,” Townley said. “We got a change in leadership here.”
Townley laughed, then added, “And I voted for the other guy!”
Taste goes east
Watch out, Tribeca — the Taste of Front St. is coming.
Inspired by the massive success of Taste of Tribeca, an annual event that brings in over $100,000 a year for P.S. 234 and P.S. 150, parents at the Spruce Street School are organizing a Taste of Front St. for this May or June. The idea came from Paul Hovitz, a longtime Seaport resident, and Spruce parents and Front St. restaurants immediately jumped on board.
Fernando Dallorso, owner of Stella on Front St., said he has 14 restaurants signed up so far, all hoping to improve their faltering business by participating.
“The situation of Front St. is desperate,” Dallorso said, adding that the fundraiser needed to happen before the fall because he wasn’t sure how many restaurants would still be open in six months.
Stringer goes street
Tribeca’s Greenwich St. is so chi-chi that nearly half of the buildings don’t have visible addresses, according to a new report (minus our “chi-chi” spin) by Manhattan Beep Scott Stringer. He says the lack of addresses not only violates city code and is annoying, it also poses a safety risk by delaying emergency responders.
His office looked at 13 busy streets in Manhattan and found about 40 percent of the locations did not have addresses. The worst offender was Eighth Ave. between 42nd and 59th Sts. with 58 percent of the locations being too cool for school or numbers. Greenwich between Murray and Spring Sts. trailed the way Downtown at 49 percent followed by Canal between Bowery and Hudson St. at 38. Lower Broadway between Cedar and Franklin Sts. scored the best in the borough, but still 20 percent of the spots were lacking building numbers.
Rockin’ Robin
U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney loosened up and got in the Twitter spirit (or at least a campaign staffer did) this week reveling in Carole King’s performance at a Maloney event and tweeting to the singer: “You make me feel like a natural Congresswoman!” Although if endorsees could be choosers — with enormous respect to King — we’d still take the Queen of Soul’s version of “…Natural Woman.” But even if she were so inclined, Aretha Franklin, with her famous fear of flying, was probably not going to take a midnight train from Motown for Maloney. (We won’t speculate about Gladys Knight.)
