blogchelsea

Bomb Scare Bummer

Coming home from the gym at 5:00 p.m. yesterday I stumbled across this scene in front of the Chelsea Hotel.  THe cops had about half of 23rd Street blocked off, and it looked like they had stopped 7th Avenue traffic as well.  The reason?  It seems someone found a "suspicious" package on the street. Though the cops weren't letting anyone through I saw a woman slip under the tape and walk unmolested, into the Chelsea Hotel.  Sensing my chance, I too made for the flophouse.  "Hey you! Get back here!" the cop called after me, "Don't you see that tape!?" I pointed to the woman ahead of me just then entering the hotel.  "Alright," the cop said, "But he's the last one!"  Fifteen minutes later they opened the street back up. I neve found out what was in the package. -- Ed Hamilton (Thanks to Larry Person for the second photo)

Office Space

Yao-Hui Huang, CEO of Gigapixel Creative, is looking for other small companies to share her firm's new space on 27th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues.  The cost structure won't be based on the number of people or the square feet, but how everyone splits up the space and the build out.  Companies can have their own office or share space.  The plan is to have the group share in rent, build out, phones, internet, conference rooms and receptionist.

The ideal is a mix of eclectic companies whose cultures are compatible.  "We are creating a cooperative and looking for companies that want to join a family," she said.  It's not restricted to tech and dot com companies.  She likes the idea of venture capitalists being introduced to non-profits and having a marketing firm next to an internet company.  "The space will be nice," she says, "but what we are really looking for is a company that is interested in this concept."

Find out more at info@gigapixelcreative.com.

Long Live Rock-and-Roll on 23rd Street

Remember Vlad, the scruffy looking fellow who used to play the guitar, grimacing as he did so, at the corner of 7^th Ave. and 23^rd.  Well, he’s back.  The reason he hadn’t been around for awhile was that some jerk complained about him and the cops had to give him a ticket and tell him to move along—even though they really didn’t want to.  The problem was that Vlad was using an amplifier—a necessity for a guitar to be heard above the cacophony of

23^rd St.  The prospect of further tickets—and maybe even the slammer—looming before him, Vlad moved his act up to

Columbus Ave. and 111^th St., and the Chelsea Neighborhood was deprived for a month or so of a vital part of it’s rock-and-roll spirit.

            Anyway, thanks to the people at Dan’s guitar, a solution has been found.  They lent Vlad a steel resonator guitar, which was designed to make a big noise in an era before amplified sound.  Vlad’s new instrument looks really cool, is chrome-like finish flashing in the sunlight, and if anything actually sounds louder than the guitar-and-amp combo he had before.  Best of all, since it’s not amplified, it’s perfectly legal.  “First amendment and all,” Vlad says.  The guitar looks like something an old Mississippi Bluesman would have played in back in the 20s, Blind Lemon Jefferson or somebody like that.  “All I need now are dark glasses and dog,” Vlad jokes, glad to back where he belongs. -- Ed Hamilton

The Lee Krasner Renaissance

© Pollock Krasner Foundation. Courtesy Robert Miller Gallery, New York

In the movie Pollock, it is Krasner who fascinates. Marcia Gay Harden, who won an Oscar for her performance, fills up the screen with her dark good looks and intelligent eyes.  It's easy to leave the film thinking the focus was on the wrong artist.  Even so, a small canvas by Krasner sells for somewhere between $800,000 to $2 million.  A comparable work by Pollock, if one is ever for sale, starts at $9 million.

October 27th of next year will be the 100th anniversary of Krasner's birth.  Gail Levin, author of the excellent Edward Hopper, is writing her biography.  This book might be the inverse of her work on Hopper, who was supported in lean times by his wife's disability checks.  Jo Hopper's diaries illuminated Hopper's inner life.  With Krasner, Levin can triangulate her through Pollock and the diaries of others.  In the mean time, the sassy Brooklyn girl's work can be seen at The Robert Miller Gallery until October 13th.   Paper shows gouache works on the handmade Howell paper that the couple both used.  Krasner liked to cut up her old works and use them for collages.  Artistically daring, it results in making her work even rarer.

Lee Krasner
HIEROGLYPH NO. 9, 1969
Gouache on paper
28 7/8 x 22 1/4 inches
73.3 x 56.5 cm

 

Brooklyn Book Festival

Hats off to Brooklyn for having an even more wonderful event than last year.  The emphasis was definitely on Brooklyn authors--Paul Auster, Jonathan Lethem, Jim Carroll, Pete Hamill and scores more were all in attendance.  It's interesting that Brooklyn Borough President and festival presenter Marty Markowitz chose to interview the Bronx-born Dominic Carter, senior political reporter of NY1 about his book No Mamma's Boy.  Without a doubt, this had to be one of the most moving conversations at the festival.  Carter talked about his early childhood in the Bronx where he was raised by his grandmother and aunt.  He never knew his father and his mother was only an intermittent presence in his life.  He was frank about his mother's mental illness and  the sexual abuse he received from her.  He wrote the book, in part, to heal himself and to reduce the stigma attached to mental illness. 

Carter also talked about some of his famous interviews.  He said that while he and Giuliani would go at it, even to the point where the former mayor would try to have him removed from the press corps, they were pals outside of work.  He asked Nelson Mandela how, after 27 years in jail, could he still smile and be so radiantly happy.  Mandela said, "To be angry would be giving into my captors and I would never do that."  He also said that Curtis Silwa says 'borderline racist' things on the air, but in real life he is not that way at all.  Carter also said Markowitz would make an interesting choice for mayor.   Hmmm...

General Theological Seminary to Appear Before Landmarks Commission

The General Theological Seminary's construction plans are up for discussion and probable vote by the Landmarks Preservation Commission on the morning of Tuesday the 18th. It will not be open for public comment.  However, the presence of an audience tends to make the Commissioners review items more carefully. The application is to demolish an existing building and construct two new buildings.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission is located on the 9th Floor of the Municipal Building at
1 Centre Street at the corner of Centre Street and Chambers Street, across from City Hall, in Manhattan. Be there by 10:15.

Join The Protest

The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, the SoHo Alliance, and neighborhood, business, and civic groups are sponsoring a demonstration against the planned Trump SoHo 'Condo-Hotel.'  The demonstration will take place outside the project's "launch party," to be held at the site, 246 Spring Street, btw. Varick and 6th Avenue next Wednesday, Sept. 19 at 10:15 a.m.
For more details visit www.gvshp.org/trump.htm.  (Photo: forklift)

Thought Police Introduce New Weapon in Ongoing Campaign to Colonize Our Psychic Space

     Are these storefront billboards an aberration, or part of a disturbing new trend?  The one celebrating evil and Satanism is on 7^th Avenue and  22^nd St., while that which glorifies sex and the subjugation of women has been slapped up on 23^rd near 6^th Avenue.  (I’m kidding, but just barely)  The former diabolical ad is on a site we’ve commented on before, where the owner – slapped down in previous attempts to nauseate the community – had cynically erected a public service announcement about breast cancer in the hope that no one would challenge him.  Since he got away with it, he thinks that now he can cash in by throwing up for-profit ads.  (Once the site of a popular coffee shop, this is on a building that he has allowed to sit empty for years.)  We always suspected this guy was in league with the devil, but I guess now this cinches it.

     This new trend is all of a piece with the recent obnoxious introduction of video squawk boxes into cabs.  Ads are becoming more and more intrusive every day.  I guess it’s not enough to have this crap way up on the sides of buildings (most of these billboards are illegal too); now it has to be at eye level so it can be less easily ignored.  Dial 311 and file a complaint. -- Ed Hamilton



















 

The Secrets of Improv at UCB

“The magical thing about improvisational comedy is that you can never just think up a scene.  It has to be built with other people,” said Joe Wengert. 

Wengert is an instructor and faculty supervisor at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in Chelsea.  The theatre, started in 1999 at the former home of the New Harmony strip club, specializes in long-form improvisation called the Harold.  Developed by Del Close of Second City, the Harold is an ensemble performance that resembles a good Seinfeld episode—a suggestion from the audience generates a succession of scenes with different story lines.  If it’s done correctly, everything ties in at the end.  The idea was taught to generations of Close’s students, comics like John Belushi, Bill Murray and John Candy.  A later generation—Matt Besser, Amy Poehler, Ian Roberts and Matt Walsh came to New York and started UCB.  Their improv and sketch writing classes are built around the Harold and the Game.

Many factors go into successful improvisation.  Unlike football, no one has a ‘position’ that they play.  Flexibility is key.  Wengert says, “I’ve told people: You can really do that sarcastic guy.  But what else can you do? It’s important to be versatile because any second you can play something you have never played before.”   

Keeping the scene real is important.  For Level I class exercises, Wengert tells students to intentionally not be funny--the scene ends when someone laughs.  “These end up being the most hilarious scenes,” he says.  “People are committed to the situation.  Improvisation is simultaneously acting, editing, writing and directing.  When you are doing all of that at once and you mess up and something comes out that’s not quite right, it’s going to be funny.”

It is important to act real in a scene.  “Don’t play a scene over the top,” Wengert said.  “No one will buy it.”  He describes a scene where a couple is having a fight.  “If you act real and say things that people really say in an argument in a relationship, it always gets a bigger laugh.”

Good improv has one unusual circumstance and you build off of that.  This is the idea of the Game.  He describes a scene where a couple is headed to the Prom and the father decides to invite himself along.  That’s the first unusual thing to build on.  “If that’s true, then what else is true?  You play off of that one thing instead of lots of things.  That’s funnier than cramming in a lot of wacky things.”

Wengert is an insightful instructor. During improv scenes, he listens closely.  After scenes, he gives constructive and incisive notes.  He leads the class in exercises like Environmental Charades, where, one by one, students act without speaking and (usually) all know where they are at the end of the scene. He reminds the class not to play dumb and not act too weird.  He tells them, “If it feels static or boring, remember to commit to it harder so we get to something new.”

He says timing is hard to teach but it can be improved by exposure to good comedy.  Some students make the mistake of injecting rapid-fire jokes into a scene.  It’s better, he says, to say a joke, let it breathe, do something not funny and say another joke.  People with great timing and charisma can even be a detriment to the ensemble.  Supporting the other people on stage is important, he said.  “If you are too much about yourself, you can ruin a show.”

Wengert finds one of the most inspiring things about improv is that a diverse group of people of all ages and from all over the country can learn to do something together.  “I think it’s the most fun thing in the world to do and it’s just as much fun for me to teach it.  Especially if the class is really into it.”—Sherry Mazzocchi

Upright Citizens Brigade
307 W. 26th Street (between 8th & 9th Ave)
212.366.9176

photo: Level III Improv Class

HIV Cases in Up Sharply in Men Under 30--Especially in Chelsea

According to preliminary data from the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, New York City has a rising rate of HIV infections in men who have sex with men (MSM).  The highest rate of increase occurs in men under the age of 30-from 374 in 2001 to nearly 500 in 2006.  In MSM ages 13 to 19, the diagnoses have doubled.  The under-30 age group represents 44% of all cases in NYC, while it was 31% in 2001.

With the exception of Staten Island, every borough had increased rates of HIV infections of MSM under 30 since 2001.  Manhattan had the largest increase, up 57% since 2001.  The highest concentrations were in East and Central Harlem (from 26 to 56—or 115%) and Chelsea and Clinton (from 25 to 39--or 56%).

In addition, another Health Department report shows a high increase in the number of syphilis cases among MSM in New York City during the first three months of 2007.  They note “Syphilis and HIV are a dangerous combination, because syphilis causes genital sores (making HIV easier to spread) and HIV lowers immunity (which can make syphilis harder to treat).”

Always protect yourself and others:

For information on where to find free condoms, go to: www.nyccondom.org.

New York City offers free and confidential tests for sexually transmitted diseases.

Gay Men's Health Crisis has an HIV/AIDS Hotline: 800.243.7692.

Chart from NYC Dept. of Health and Mental Hygiene