West Side Spirit September 1, 2011

Un-CapedBat Crusader

Irene: Breadlessin the Park

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Compiled by Megan Finnegan and Josh Rogers

SCHOOLS WON’T LET THE BED BUGS BITE

The Department of Education is getting seri-ous about bed bugs this year, according to a letter sent by Chancellor Dennis Walcott’s office to City Council Member Gale Brewer. After reading an article this summer by Geoffrey Decker on the website Gotham Schools, entitled “Bed Bug Invasion Continued Unabated in 2010-2011 School Year,” the council member was jolted into action and sent a letter to the DOE, asking them to “immediately initiate a bed bug treatment contract to deal with the issue before the start of the school year” and to “send us a list of all schools that have been treated for bed bugs in the past year.”

The article noted that there were 3,590 confirmed cases of bed bugs found in schools in the 2009-2010 school year, a rate three times that of the pre-vious year, but acknowledged that the increase could be attributed to height-ened awareness of and vigilance about reporting bed bugs.

A DOE spokesperson noted that one reported finding of bed bugs does not an infestation make—kids could bring them in from home—and it’s true that schools are unlikely breeding grounds

for the blood-sucking pests, since they typically burrow into mattresses and clothing during daylight hours and emerge at night to feast on human blood.

Still, the report was enough to make Brewer’s skin crawl, and she recently

received a response to her letter from Dara Adams in Walcott’s office, stating that the DOE is “currently in the process of reg-istering contracts with three vendors to cover our bed bug treatment efforts.” Adams also noted that schools provide Bed Bug Fact Sheets to students and parents for a little bedtime reading in an

effort to stop the spread before they ever set a foot (or six) inside a school building.

The letter also said that the DOE only employed full infes-tation treatment at one school, P.S. 70 in Queens, during the last school year. Here’s hoping they can get it down to zero this year.

SIGN SWITCHEROO IN RIVERSIDE PARK

A reader recently called in to report massive confusion over the relatively new signs in Riverside Park that now instruct cyclists to yield to pedestrians. The con-fusion comes from the fact that, until recently, signs in the park

told bike riders to dismount—but no one seemed to be heeding them and the problem of sharing the relatively narrow paths persisted. The Parks Department recognized the need to adjust the signage after cyclists com-plained that it was unrealistic to ask them to dismount and walk their bikes, and that those responsible riders who obeyed the signs at all could be trusted to ride at safe speeds instead. After con-sulting with Community Board 7 and hemming and hawing about the word-ing, the department finally changed the signs—but still, not everyone is happy. We’ll see who raises enough of a ruckus to get them changed a third time.

WESTY TIME

Know some unsung Upper West Side heroes who are making a difference in the community? Nominate them for a WESTY, as in West Side Spirit Thanks You, our annual awards. We are cur-rently accepting nominations in sev-eral categories, including community builders, bravest and finest (police and fire), clergy, culture, educators, entrepreneurs, restaurateurs, real estate and health care. Tell us why your nominee deserves a WESTY in an email to [email protected].

Tapped InNotes from the neighborhood

MUPPET IN SPACE

Sesame Street Muppet Elmo and NASA Space Shuttle Atlantis Commander Christopher Ferguson recently teamed up to at the Eventi Hotel’s outdoor plaza to promote every-thing outer space. The plaza was transformed into a “mini space outpost,” filled with spacecraft displays, demonstrations, interactive exhibits, screenings and fun children’s activities.

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Irene’s UWS ‘Mayhem’ Limited to Bread & BranchesBy Megan Finnegan

Last week, Hurricane Irene had city residents shaking in their collec-tive boots. While there did not seem to be much serious damage on the Upper West Side, the neighborhood still came together to help those most affected by the storm.

When Mayor Michael Bloomberg took the unprecedented step of order-ing a mandatory evacuation of residents in Zone A—encompassing low-lying areas like the Rockaways in Queens and Battery Park City and the eastern Financial District in Lower Manhattan—many were bussed to the Upper West Side, where three evacuation centers were prepared to take in those who were forced to flee their homes. John Jay College, the Brandeis High School build-ing and the Joan of Arc school complex all stood ready to accept evacuees, but City Council Member Gale Brewer said it was John Jay that took in the highest number, around 300 people.

Brewer, who visited each of the three centers twice over the course of the weekend, said she was especially impressed with the generosity of the local residents who volunteered to help out at

the shelters.“I was there myself, personally, so I

really saw what was going on,” Brewer said. “West Siders jumped in, as they always do, and pitched in.” Residents helped unload tractor trailers full of sup-plies, a task that took five hours, or just made themselves available to help people get what they needed.

Brewer said the group staying at the shelters was comprised of residents from Queens, stranded passengers from LaGuardia who weren’t able to fly out

before the airport shut down and nurs-ing home residents from Zone A areas, as well as local homeless people who were simply happy to have a safe place to spend the night.

While Upper West Siders seemed pre-pared for the worst—there was a scram-ble to find grocery stores still stocked with bread on Friday, with people tweet-

ing pictures of empty shelves and lines snaking around the block at Whole Foods—they were ultimately spared from mayhem. Even those desper-ate for provisions on Friday had a few options left on Saturday, including Zabar’s, which didn’t close.

“We had no major inju-ries, no power outages,” said Brewer. “I saw some big branches,” but no felled trees in residential areas. Central Park’s roads remained closed to traffic on Monday so work-ers could remove 25 downed trees, branches and other debris, but pedestrians were able to enter the park.

“We were just good Samaritans, good volunteers,” Brewer said.

As Upper West Side resi-dent Paul Katcher wrote on Twitter, “Better safe than sorry, certainly, when [a] once-a-generation storm [is] possible. I applaud NYC’s preparedness.” Central Park workers tended to damaged trees after

Hurricane Irene.

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“West Siders jumped in, as they always do, and pitched

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By Megan FinneganAs the final days of summer sink into

fall, New Yorkers may want to add one more thing to their to-do list of last hur-rahs—bat watching. An organization called the New York City Bat Group, formed in 2004, promotes awareness and education about the bat species native to the city. One of their missions is to simply get New Yorkers to look up.

“Any night that it’s warm in the sum-mer and the insects are flying, the bats are out there eating them,” said Danielle Gustafson, one of the group’s original members. She said that many people mistake them for low flying birds, but bats can be found in most parks throughout the city. Gustafson works with the Museum of Natural History to lead tours through Central Park, teach-ing people how to spot red and little brown bats, two of the most common types.

Gustafson isn’t a biologist; she worked for the New York Stock Exchange for 14 years and now runs digital and social media for a bank holding company. But her enthusiastic fascination for the winged creatures is perhaps the best pos-sible qualification to educate the general public about an animal that many associ-ate with Halloween, vampires and a cer-tain caped crusader of pop culture. She first got interested in bats when, due to her interest in bird watching, a friend

invited her on a trip to the Amazon with a group of wildlife and bat conservation-ists. The more she learned, the more she became endeared to the often misunder-stood animals.

How does she dispel an ingrained sense of chiroptophobia?

“You start out with the fact that they’re mammals,” Gustafson said. “They’re clos-er to primates than rats are.”

She also marvels at their intelligence and instincts, recalling a time when she

and her husband were helping a friend complete research on bats in French Guinea for her doctorate. (The couple got engaged on a bat research trip in South America and requested donations to bat conservation organizations in lieu of wedding gifts.) They were netting moth-ers carrying their babies on their backs when they noticed one juvenile missing its mom. Their scientist friend told them

they should take care of the baby and deposit it back to the same spot in the jungle where they had found it, since the mother had probably dropped it off to feed and would return to pick it up later.

“They park their kids and then come back,” Gustafson said, admitting that before she had witnessed it, she was skep-tical the bat would remember the exact spot. “They have great special memory.” When they tried netting in the same spot

two nights in a row, all of the bats knew to steer clear of the area the second night.

On her bat excursions, Gustafson points out the bats’ ability to zero in on their prey—insects—without swiping people or branches. She uses a bat detec-tor to tune in to their calls in order to find and identify them.

“The closer to actual prey [they get], it sounds like they’re giving someone a raspberry because the clicks are so rapid and they’re zeroing in on the prey, and

that’s hilarious,” Gustafson said. “You realize how close over your head they’re flying, how uninterested they are in you.”

But Gustafson insists that people should be interested in the bats, because an alarming number of local bats have been dying of something called White Nose Syndrome. Because there is no official count of the bat population in the city, it’s difficult to say how the dis-ease is affecting them, but scientists are seeing it throughout the Northeast and are concerned that it could lead to local extinction.

“These are hibernating bats; they’re having these massive die-offs,” said Gustafson. “Bats have one baby per year, so these die-offs are really alarming.” The Bat Group hopes to secure funding to fig-ure out what’s causing the spread of the deadly fungus.

Gustafson remembers the reason she became interested in bats in the first place and hopes it will draw others to care about the animals.

“There is something about living and working in New York City that makes you hungry for the antidote to the build-ings and the concrete. It kind of makes you very aware of the natural creatures,” she said.

An Un-Caped Crusader for Bats

Danielle Gustafson of the New York City Bat Group before leading a tour.

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W e s t S i d e S p i r i t . c o m S e p t e m b e r 1 , 2 0 1 1 • W E S T S I D E S P I R I T • 5

Last week, as Irene forced evacuations and closures up and down the East Coast, building

service workers stayed put to protect tenants and the buildings and property where they work.

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By Molly O’Meara Sheehan

In 2008, Jennifer Brozost, then an ad-missions officer at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School, approached her co-worker Vimmi Shroff with an idea: why not start a business to help New York City parents navigate the notoriously nerve-wracking process of applying to private schools?

The two women have seen New York’s private school admissions from every an-gle. Brozost taught second grade before working in admissions for seven years; Shroff taught kindergarten before her eight-year admissions career.

Just a year after starting their consul-tancy, PEAS (Private Education Advi-sory Services), Brozost came to Shroff with another big request: would she co-write a book with her based on their experiences? They ended up collaborat-ing on The NYC Private School Admis-sions Handbook, which was published in June and walks parents through the steps they must take to apply to the city’s private nursery schools and kin-dergartens.

You write that you wished you had a book like this when you were applying to schools for your own children. Af-ter working in admissions, why would you need a guide? Jennifer Brozost: To keep ourselves organized. In the back of the book, we have checklists and places for notes. People can go to their interview, come back and write down everything there. It gets so crazy when you apply. Also, we included anecdotes to keep it light. We know it’s a serious process, but the more relaxed our clients are, the better they are going to do in their interviews.

You don’t recommend prepping chil-dren for the kindergarten admissions test, but aren’t you in effect prepping their parents? JB: It’s not really prepping parents. It’s just educating them on the process. It is giving them someone real to talk to after each in-terview. We’re just kind of doing a lot of their homework for them, and they can trust us. What is the first tip you give to par-ents applying to nursery school or kin-dergarten?

Vimmi Shroff: Talk to someone who is ob-jective [in order] to learn about a school. In this process there is a lot of park bench gossip. We saw tons of “frenemies” creat-ed this year, parents who were applying to schools who could be nasty to each other.

What is the top mistake that parents make?VS: Herd mentality. This is New York City, and people get so caught up and competi-tive and think the admissions process is their personal game, but it is actually a child’s life they are dealing with. Show re-spect to your child for who he or she is.

You write that all New York City pri-vate schools offer fabulous educa-tions. Can you explain why? VS: Because they invest in great teachers. They value education. That is the reason they are a school in New York City. It’s not easy to run a school here. They are always learning. The private schools also have a lot of resources compared to public schools. JB: You’re also getting smaller classrooms and more individualized attention. The problem with public schools, even though there are great ones, is that they are getting overcrowded again. Also, they really have to bring up the bottom of each class to per-form well on tests. So in the third grade, because of the third grade testing, they re-ally teach to the test for a lot of the year.

For more information, visit nypeas.com.

Head to The Met for the opening weekend of the poignant and timely 9/11 Peace Story Quilt exhibit, designed by Faith Ringgold and created in collaboration with young New Yorkers aged 8-19. Comprised of three panels with 12 squares each, this work of ar t conveys the impor tance of peace across cultures and religions. For more information, visit metmuseum.org and for even more family events, visit newyorkfamily.com.

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By Megan Finnegan

Anyone who’s ever crossed into hour four of a community board meeting can attest to two things: it is a gritty, tedious, absolutely nec-essary place where the first scraps

of democracy are woven into something resembling a fabric and it’s not for the faint of heart—or those who didn’t have the foresight to pack snacks and aspirin.

The fourth hour of a community board meeting, like the occasional fifth and the elusive but always pos-sible sixth hour, is when many people have given up and left. As the debate over whether or not to allow a half-day street closing for a particular event on a particular day drags on into the night, those members remaining eyeball one another and recognize a certain forti-tude, a certain passion and perhaps just the slightest tinge of insanity, because that’s what it takes to serve on a com-munity board in Manhattan.

That and passing the scrutiny of an independent review board, acing an interview with the borough president’s staff, dozens (and sometimes hundreds) of hours to devote to incredibly difficult but unpaid work, a strong enough sense of community to think it’s all worth the effort and a limitless supply of patience—though the last is more of a preference than a requirement.

It hasn’t always been this way. Community boards have changed a lot since Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer took office in 2006, after vowing in his campaign to reform the boards. Before Stringer got his hands on them, the 12 boards of Manhattan were rife with politicized appointments and agen-das, and were seriously unrepresentative of the communities they served.

Now, in 2011, the boards have indeed changed course, moving toward Stringer’s ideal of fully diverse and representative bodies that look not to petty neighbor-hood squabbles but address the higher concerns of urban planning for the future, envisioning and helping to execute a bet-ter tomorrow for their particular swath of the island. They’re moving in that direc-tion, surely, but some still have a ways to go on the journey.

Mel Wymore, chair of Community Board 7 on the Upper West Side, has been pushing hard to bring his board in line with the forward-thinking ideal that Stringer presents.

“Many of our boards are fairly reactive and we go in cycles, and sometimes we just get used to what we do. We just pass or fail resolutions,” said Wymore.

“A regular community board meeting

will spend a lot of time sometimes on a fairly routine application process,” he said. “I think if we could streamline some of our review processes, so that delibera-tions happen at the committee level, that would make room at the full board level to discuss higher-level issues.”

Having the ability to think about the future more than the present is a gift that not everyone shares. Stringer and some others would like to see a greater age mix on the community boards, but it’s a thorny problem.

“I want very much to continue to put

younger people on the boards because I think we need to prepare for the next generation of Manhattan leadership,” Stringer said.

Jackie Ludorf, chair of Upper East Side Community Board 8, explained why she thinks younger people stay away. “Maybe because so many of us are older,” she said. “I know how I was when I was younger, it was like, ‘Oh look at all these old people, do I want to belong to an organization of them?’”

The biggest hurdle to keeping young-er people on the boards is simply the time commitment required, Ludorf said. People get married, get bogged down in their careers, start families, move away. They aren’t necessarily lifers.

“It’s good to have continuity, though, because some of us who have been on for a long time remember things that have happened in the past,” she said.

Some argue that it’s impossible to make a real dent until you’ve served on a board for decades.

“If you’re on for five years, you don’t really contribute much,” said Upper West Side City Council Member Gale Brewer, 59, who makes it a point to rec-ommend younger people for Community Board 7 when possible. “That’s another challenge, to try to find people who are young or middle-aged to stick it out for 20 years.”

Her fellow council member on the East Side, Dan Garodnick, 39, completely dis-agrees. “I would not agree that you need to be there for 20 years to make a contribu-tion, and I think you should have people representing a wide range of ages on the board. Young people are underrepresent-ed,” he said. “Common sense and commu-nity sophistication is something that many people have at a very young age.” But it can be tough to find younger people who want to get involved in the important but difficult work of the boards.

Some of the issues that have seen drawn-out debate by Community Board 7 in the past year or so include whether

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Borough President Scott Stringer wants community boards to look at more long-term planning issues.

Community Board 7 encompasses the area from West 59th to West 110th streets from the Hudson River to Central Park. Boards have 50 unpaid members who vote on issues in an advisory capac-ity. All members are appointed by the borough president to two-year terms, but half are recommended by the local

city council members. On Board 7, City Council Members Gale Brewer, Melissa Mark-Viverito and Inez Dickens recom-mend, respectively, 17, 6 and 2 of the members.

Scott Stringer, Manhattan borough president, requires all community board applicants to clear a panel comprised

of leaders from good government and community groups, including The New York League of Conservation Voters, The Partnership for NYC, The League of Women Voters, The Municipal Art Society, NYPIRG, The Brennan Center for Justice, Citizens Union, the Women’s City Club of New York, The Hispanic Federation, West Harlem Environmental Action, The Regional Planning Association, The

NAACP and The Urban League.Council members recommend indi-

viduals who have passed muster with the panel. In an interview, Stringer said he has never rejected one of these recommendations.

The board’s committees meet once a month and can pass resolutions that are then brought to the full monthly board meetings as recommendations.

What is Community Board 7?

“I want very much to continue to put younger people on the boards.”

—Scott Stringer


featurecyclists in Riverside Park were obey-ing signs to walk their bikes; whether a particular application for a new wine bar might bring the likes of Lindsay Lohan and her hard-partying ilk up to the quiet residential neighborhood; and getting one resident’s nuisance of a local bar shut down for good.

While these issues are of the utmost importance to some in the community, the borough president would like to see boards move away from listing grievanc-es or focusing on micro issues that only affect a few people.

“I believe the future of community boards is less about solving local com-plaints and more about urban planning for a community,” Stringer said. One of his initiatives has been to place an urban planning graduate student as an advisor to each community board, and the city is now taking the program to other boroughs. In a way, Stringer is bringing the boards back to some of their original functions.

Back in 1951, Borough President Robert F. Wagner created the first com-

munity board prototypes, called com-munity planning commissions. When he became mayor, Wagner made them com-munity planning boards, whose roles were to advise the borough presidents on the development and welfare of their districts.

By 1975, when the city went through a major charter revision, the boards had morphed into what Stringer calls the “complaint vehicles” that he has been try-ing to move away from. With the advent of the professional politician in the 1970s came a boom in the availability of constit-uent services. Now, Stringer says, with the relative success of the 311 system and the offices of city council members and state legislators being open to solv-ing local issues, community boards can move away from cataloguing potholes and toward more serious, long-sighted planning efforts. In theory.

Community boards are the first stop

for businesses seeking to receive or renew a liquor license, and the State Liquor Authority often follows whatev-er the community board decides. They are also the first official body to review landmark procedures, whether designat-ing new ones or changing existing ones, and while the Landmarks Preservation Commission takes many opinions into account and sometimes goes against rec-ommendations, it too will often defer to community board decisions on smaller issues like changing windows on a land-marked building.

The community board holds serious discussions about issues like education and overcrowding on the Upper West Side, public opposition to an incoming charter school or decisions about zon-ing and landmarking that will affect the neighborhood for decades to come.

Wymore thinks the boards could be utilized for even higher purposes, however.

“I think the community boards are an underutilized resource for city gover-nance,” he said. “The community board could be where the mayor comes for developing policy, new programs, educa-tion, housing. I think there are real oppor-tunities for community boards to act as coordinating agencies on issues where there are many agencies involved,” like affordable housing, which involves half a dozen different agencies. Wymore envi-sions the community board as a facilita-tor of different interests.

Community Board 7 has dealt with complicated issues like the development of the Extell Riverside South community and Jewish Home Lifecare’s search for a new facility in the neighborhood. Wymore is hopeful the board can continue on a path of forward motion, dealing with the big-picture stuff. This fall, the board will vote on a set of guiding principles and will launch a social media campaign to get more people involved.

“I think it’s very rewarding to be able to take a very complex issue like SROs or small businesses and the complex econo-mies that we are dealing with—or even bike lanes and the way that bike lanes impact local business and environmental sustainability and the quality of the street life. To take those complex issues, articu-late them, figure out what’s working with the community and all the stakeholders, what’s important, and come out with a plan of action that works with every-one, that’s just been really rewarding and exciting,” Wymore said.

“While community boards don’t have a lot of official power, we have a tremen-dous amount of power in terms of being able to bring people together.”

CB 7 Chairperson Mel Wymore.

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WestSideSpirit.com September 1, 2011 • WEST SIDE SPIRIT • 11

Halfway into my second trip to Kalustyan’s, the amazing Curry Hill spice superstore, my wife

looked at me and totally nailed it:“Once you figure out how to make this

root beer, you’re going to immediately lose interest in it, aren’t you?”

She’s probably 100 percent correct, although I hope I continue making root beer for years to come. I have a Norman Rockwell-esque fantasy about spending weekends with my children (of which I have none yet) bottling our homemade creation. If not that, I would at least like to stick with this obsession long enough to come up with a recipe that actually tastes like root beer.

With my second batch effort, I man-aged to achieve a darker color but the root-beeriness still wasn’t quite right. And the yeast I used still imparted an impos-sible-to-ignore bread dough quality that I made it my No. 1 priority to fix in the next batch. I ordered up some ale yeast, stat.

What I really needed, though, was an immersion in the world of small batch root beers. While none of the brews I tried were bottle-fermented (they were all made using carbonated water), the fla-vors of these sodas would presumably be more complex than the mass-marketed root beers available in the supermarket.

The first root beer I tried was Boylan’s. This was the widest available brand I tried and it was pretty good. It had a choco-latey brown color and medium head with good, small bubbles. The smell was what I soon realized was the standard, modern root beer scent: wintergreen. The palate was very simple, but enjoyable. Vanilla bean up front, with major amounts of wintergreen through the middle and only the tiniest hint of sarsaparilla on the fin-ish. Pleasant, if not outstanding.

Sprecher’s color was almost that of Guinness stout, and the head had a great foam of frothy, small bubbles that lingered. This was the first root beer I smelled that actually had a discernable scent of sarsaparilla. The flavor profile was also a bit more interesting; molasses flavors gave way to a pleasant bite of sar-saparilla in the middle, and finished with a nice wallop of licorice sweetness and a touch of birch bark tannin. A solid root beer.

The beer maker Saranac also makes root beer, so I tried one of their concoc-tions. The color was a standard dark amber and the head was decent, though not as classic as Sprecher’s. There was more wintergreen and licorice on the nose, and the palate gave up brown sugar and caramel sweetness right up front. The wintergreen in the middle was bal-anced by a touch of sarsaparilla and lico-rice, and the whole thing finished with hints of bourbon vanilla.

The real star of the show, however, was the Ithaca Soda Company’s root beer.

It was the only bottle that didn’t have a twist-off cap, which I realized later was foreshadowing of the authenticity I was about to experience. Reddish brown in color with a nice, medium head, the nose on this root beer made me take a seat. Menthol, eucalyptus, wet tree bark…Was

this root beer or a wine I was smelling? On the palate I was greeted with flavors of anise and green herb up front. In the middle, I finally tasted sassafras. This was the only root beer with any major amount of that specific flavor component. There was wintergreen, but it served as a back-ground player. The whole thing finished with menthol, cherry and brown sugar notes. The best root beer I’ve had so far.

My quest continues and as I compile my notes, I reconfigure my recipe for the perfect home-brewed root beer. Onward!

By Josh Perilo

With my kids home from camp for an endless summer, I’ve spent lunchtimes over a hot griddle assembling grilled cheese sandwiches to share between us. I have become expert in my technique—just enough Vermont cheddar, with a squirt of mustard or daub of chutney. I stack six sandwiches, cut them neatly in half, pop them into a warm oven and yell “Luuuuunch.”

Can’t someone make a grilled cheese sandwich for me? I set off for Piccolo Café, a warm, small space with high wooden chairs and wood plank tables. This tiny café is many things to many people—from morning espres-so and breakfast bar, with green olive omelets ($8) and truffle egg sandwiches ($9), to panini and pasta shop. My Italian style toast ham and cheese panini ($6) was simple but elegant, on excellent Gian Piero bread with ample thin slices of ham and a slice of mozzarella. The cheese melting over the crust made it shine like a glazed donut, and I liked that my side

salad was not an afterthought but perky mesclun with a sweet bal-samic dressing. Piccolo reminded me of restaurants in Milan, where Milanese office workers ordered items like gnocchi with

tomato and basil sauce ($8) after a hard day and where tired Moms, like myself, could find respite and civility.

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By Mark PeikertFilm writer Sam Wasson has made a

name for himself with books that shed new light on familiar subjects. After chronicling the films of director Blake Edwards in A Splurch in the Kisser, Wasson narrowed his sights to a single Edwards film: Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The result was last summer’s buzziest book, the New York Times bestselling Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and the Dawn of the Modern Woman.

Joining the newly released paperback edition of Fifth Avenue this month is Wasson’s latest book, another examina-tion of mostly New York City-based films and a valiant demand to consider Paul Mazursky in the same breath as other rule-bending, iconoclastic ’70s directors like Scorsese and Coppola. With a series of interviews with Mazursky, his actors and colleagues, Wasson makes a convinc-ing case for Mazursky’s right to a wider critical reappraisal. We caught up with Wasson over the phone and discussed the most romantic romantic movie of all time, the reasons why Mazursky has slipped from the public consciousness

and the Holy Grail of show biz stories.

Have you been consciously choosing topics that are hiding in plain sight?You want to hit the sweet spot of the cul-tural consciousness. If it is too far remote, no one will give a shit. And if it’s already conscious, then it’s already been done. So you’re trying to walk this fine line between what’s available and what’s yet to be done.

What prompted you to write Fifth Avenue?I had written A Splurch in the Kisser. And Edwards did this slapstick stuff, and Tiffany’s was an anomaly. When it came time to write that chapter in the book, I thought it would be an easy ride through. But there was almost nothing written about the movie. Some bits in Audrey Hepburn books, but nothing substantial. And the idea to write a book about this, the most romantic romantic movie of all time—the playing field was wide open. I basically wrote the book that I was look-ing for while writing the Blake Edwards book. Mazursky was an act of love; Tiffany’s was about continuing the con-versation in my head.

You make a pretty solid case for Mazursky as the least acclaimed auteur of ’70s Hollywood.There are a lot of reasons for that. But really, he didn’t fit with the image of the rest of the guys, with the Scorsese and the Coppola. Mazursky made nothing like Bonnie and Clyde. [His movies] were soft, they were tender. And put that up against a Mean Streets or a Rosemary’s Baby and you’re talking about a guy who was not a part of what everyone else was doing. And of course, he was older than those guys.

What were you most surprised by while researching Tiffany’s?How racy the part was for the time. When it was released, it was so hot that Paula Strasberg told Marilyn Monroe to not take the movie. And Audrey Hepburn was wor-ried that as a new mother, it would ruin her image. After the film was released, people were offended by the image of a call girl. So much about Tiffany’s was somewhat morally dubious.

Also that they shot two endings, and that the ending we have is the second ending,

written by Blake Edwards.

And with Mazursky?How comparatively easy it was to have a movie made in the late ’70s and ’80s. They would greenlight a script based on an idea, based on your own track record. The amount of integ-rity, the amount of fraternity that went on in the business, the sense that we’re all in this together. It was show busi-ness, absolutely, and people

were in it to make money, but they also loved each other. That I found unbeliev-ably moving.

Your next book is going to be about another ’70s filmmaker who rewrote the rules, Bob Fosse. How did you go from Mazursky to Fosse?All That Jazz is the definitive show busi-ness movie, and to me, a guy who makes his living telling show biz stories, it has always been the Holy Grail. But the image of Fosse in All That Jazz is not the full man. I think it’s true of all of us that if we were to write our story, it would not be the story, it would be a version of the sto-ry. And All That Jazz had few of the joys of being Bob Fosse.

Of Golightly and Mazursky

Sam Wasson.

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President/CeO Tom Allon [email protected]/COO Joanne [email protected] PuBLisHer Alex [email protected] OF interaCtive Marketing and digitaL strategy Jay [email protected]

editOriaLexeCutive editOr Allen [email protected] seCtiOns editOr Josh [email protected] rePOrter Megan [email protected] editOr/editOriaL assistant Andrew [email protected] COntriButOrs Nancy J. Brandwein, Alan S. Chartock, Bette Dewing, Jeanne Martinet, Malachy McCourt, Lorraine Duffy Merkl, Josh Perilo,Thomas Pryor

[email protected] Gerry [email protected] OF new Business deveLOPMentDan NewmanassOCiate PuBLisHersSeth L. Miller, Ceil Ainsworthadvertising Manager Marty StronginsPeCiaL PrOjeCts direCtOr Jim KatocinseniOr aCCOunt exeCutives Verne Vergara, Rob Gault, Mike SuscavagedireCtOr OF events & Marketing Joanna Virello [email protected] COOrdinatOr Stephanie MussoMarketing assistant Jessica ChristopherexeCutive assistant OF saLes Jennie [email protected]

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City StorieS: StoopS to NutS

By Thomas R. PryorMy first coffin was metal. it mea-

sured six feet long, three feet wide and three feet deep. it rested on a wooden base that lifted it up a foot. it sat in near darkness at the rear of the par-lor. everyone paid their respects. Upon close examination, you saw it bleed sweat and you heard it release a soft, steady, communal hum. it held some-thing we cherished and missed all the time; it chilled soda bottles in Joe’s Candy store.

the cooler was battered and red, with a raised Coca-Cola bottle cap appearing on all four sides. A similar model had followed ike across europe throughout World War ii. i loved the coffin. i kissed it when no one was looking.

Joe’s Candy store was my home base in Yorkville in 1962. till i knew better, i thought a couple of kids lived there. Joe was a 50-year-old, moody italian bachelor. every day, Joe arrived at the store in gray work pants, a gray t-shirt and a puss on his face. Joe was a man of few words. Here’s a day’s worth:

“What do you want?”“put the comic book back.”“in the right place.”“Get out.”Joe made silas Marner look philan-

thropic. there were no fans in the store

and minimal electricity. Con edison had Joe on their “watch list.” to save money, he used refrigerator light bulbs in the store, giving the space a glow of gloom.

Coming from the bright sunshine into the wartime blackout, you became disoriented. With enough kids in there, you could get a good game of blind man’s bluff going—without the blindfold. despite his record-breaking cheapness, Joe was no fool. if you had a candy store, you must have ice cold soda. Kids boycotted candy stores that ignored this rule. the water tem-perature in Joe’s cooler always flirted with the freezing mark.

sometimes i needed to sub-marine my hand through a thin crust of ice forming on the surface. 200 bottles of soda were buried deep beneath the sea, in a light so dim the eels bumped into each other. More than 20 differ-ent brands slept on the ocean’s floor. Unfortunately, i usually craved a bot-tle of Mission Cream.

Mission soda was a local favorite with 10 different flavors, and Mission’s bottles had zero variation in style, texture or height. All Missions being equal led to a courage speech i’d give myself before each attempt. “You can do it. i’ve seen you do it. do it.”

shorter than the top of the coffin, i’d hop up and swing my arm over its front wall. My armpit was now respon-sible for keeping me airborne. i’d sink my other arm into the icy water with a numbing splash. My hand and fore-arm would tighten up before i achieved bottle depth. When i reached the wreck, my numb digits embraced the famil-iar Mission shape and pulled one up.

Orange. “Ooooh,” i moaned.Back down the bottle would go.

i’d do my best to remember where i replanted it; the bottles were snug as sardines. i had limited time before my arm below the elbow lost all sensation. rotating my arm in a corkscrew motion increased blood circulation, allowing

for a brief search extension, but the water was too cold. pride swallowed, i raised the last bottle i touched before my hand passed out. it was a root beer. “Grrrrr.”

i moved the second-place soda gently from my puffy blue hand to my landlubber hand. i tucked my arm under

my noncombatant armpit, rocking back and forth till warmth returned. With phony bravado, i grinned at my friends.

A wicked pleasure swept through the crowd when someone chose a soda you knew wasn’t their first choice. everyone knew each other’s favorite soda, right behind knowing their favorite sports team or movie star. When i was in the hot seat, i sat there drinking the soda, faking enjoyment, saying “hmmm” or “aaahhh,” followed by a satisfying swipe of my mouth. i knew, and they knew i was lying. it didn’t matter, i went down swinging. Addressing the mob, i’d say, “i do like it. i really do like it. i just didn’t tell anybody.”

thomas pryor’s work has been published in the New York times, he has recently completed his first book and he curates a show at the Cornelia street Cafe. read his blog at YorkvillestoopstoNuts.blogspot.com.

Be Firm With Sidewalk BlockersTo the Editor:

regarding sidewalk oblivion (“the Good, the Bad and the Oblivious,” Aug. 25); yes, it’s aggravating when oblivious pedestrians forget they’re sharing the city with 8 million other people. And, like the author, i resent having to ask for-giveness (“excuse me”) or permission

(“please”) to do something i’m perfectly entitled to do: walk down the sidewalk. so i’ve developed a tactic that works pretty well. in a firm voice, i simply declare my intention: “Coming through!” the offenders usually look a bit startled, but they move aside. And, i hope, they remember it for the next time.

Marcia SpireS

Letters have been edited for clarity, style and brevity.

L E T T E R S

August 25, 2011 Since 1985

Alternative Healthy Manhattan: New health college opening Page 10

Complaints at

West End Avenue

Kayaking at Age 97

P.4

P.2

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The Sour Candyman & the Coffin

“To save money he used refrigerator light bulbs...

giving the space a glow of gloom.”


By Bette DewingThe flash of lights etc. are ready for

Hurricane Irene, expected to strike New York the day after tomorrow (the end of last week, the time of this writing). And yes, I am anxious, but grateful it’s hap-pening before the 10th anni-versary of 9/11, which is also Grandparents Day. Not unre-lated is the appearance of The Waltons’ Mary McDonough and Richard Thomas at the Barnes and Noble at 82nd Street and Broadway on Sept. 8 at 7 p.m. They’ll discuss McDonough’s memoir Lessons from the Mountain. Unfortunately for me, Sylvia and her son Ira, who told me about the event, the East 79th Street Neighborhood Association meets the same night at 6 p.m. at the City University building, locat-ed at 80th Street and East End Avenue.

Incidentally, one does meet people who become friends at civic endeavors like these where, for instance, I met Ellie

and Ruth. Far more needs to be said and done to enable this benefit in a city where many live too much on their own—even in times of disaster. Especially since we are segregated by age, unlike life on Walton’s Mountain, where the three-generation

family lives together healthfully and helpfully because they work out their inevitable conflicts in a civil, nonviolent manner. Their extended family and the community are a part of their lives. (The Waltons blesses the Hallmark Channel weekdays from 4 p.m. to 6.)

Ah, but too little remembered on 9/11 are the grandparents and great-grandparents who suffered the profound loss of younger kin on this nation’s most terrible day. And the loss is sometimes compounded when a surviving parent remarries and contact with grandchildren is reduced or denied. But these cruel and often unjust losses get scant attention from the media, which so shapes our cus-

toms and views. Incidentally, it was thanks only to

Logos Bookstore’s calendar that I knew Sept. 11 was also Grandparents Day. But, like elders in general, this holiday is not a “hot topic,” even when record numbers of grandparents are primary caregivers to grandchildren—not to mention the presi-dent’s own maternal grandparents, who raised him. And the first lady’s mother is in charge of the first daughters’ care.

We need to hear more about that and the need for communication and conflict resolution skill lessons to help us all get along—including the need to share and talk.

And, of course, we need to protest and prevent the common tragic disas-ters that are too often ignored when the victim is old. Think of the crime of all-too-commonplace traffic tragedies. And I, who have so long banged the drum against such carnage, only learned from the East 79th Street Neighborhood Association’s June meeting that an

81-year-old neighborhood man was killed at 79th and York as he crossed with the light and a private carting truck illegally backed into him. Was the driver charged? Shouldn’t civic groups pursue the fact that, according to the police officer, carting trucks operating at night often break the laws of the road?

Of course we must. But for now, here’s an easy but important action to take to save our neighborhood pharmacies. Urge the governor to sign into law Assembly Bill A-5502-B and Senate Bill 83510-B, which ensure that prescriptions filled by local pharmacies will cost no more than those filled by mail-order pharmacies. Call Citizen Services at 518-474-1041, where you will only be asked to give your ZIP code.

Ah, and let’s hope that those who fill the faith group pews because of the 10th anniversary of 9/11 will come back the next week, and the next.

[email protected]

By Lorraine Duffy MerklIn the currently popular novel Rules

of Civility, Amor Towles writes that the problem with being born in New York is, “You’ve got no New York to run away to.”

We natives, however, learned long ago that you can run away if you just expand your horizons beyond New York City proper. Thus, my husband Neil and I have always headed out to Montauk. Although we both agree that “The End,” as the East End hamlet is known, is our home away from home, we have often been at odds about our accommodations.

Neil would like to buy a place in the area where we’ve summered since 1985. We can’t walk through town without him escorting me by the elbow over to look at the offerings in the window of the premier local realtor, John Keeshan (his father was Captain Kangaroo, by the way).

I, however, do not wish to own. I pre-fer to continue to stay at the same hotel

(most of the time in the exact same room) we’ve reserved at for the past quarter-century.

FYI: I’m still winning. So as the 2011 season comes to a close, yet another summer has come and gone and, much to Neil’s chagrin, we still do not own a second home “in the country” as a for-mer, rather pretentious colleague was fond of saying, even though her house was at the beach in Bridgehampton.

Neil isn’t the only one, by the way, who questions my choice. “Is your home in town, by the lake or on the ocean?” I’m often asked when people hear me speak of Montauk like a resident of the communi-ty. My lack of a deed usually elicits shock with a side order of “Aw”—as in shucks. The most prevalent response is the curt, accusatory “Oh,” followed by the respon-dent’s eyes casting down to the ground; the assumption being that we lost it all

in the crash of 2008 or to Bernie Madoff. Few believe me when I say it’s just not on my life list of must-haves. (Just so we’re clear, my no vacation home man-date applies to renting those belonging to other people—no matter how lovely—as well.)

So why would anyone not want a sec-ond home?

I like to keep my vacay a vacay. This would not be the case if I had to clean, clean up after, grocery shop and do laundry for people at whom most of the time I would be screaming because they were dragging sand into the house. Me broom in hand

does not sound like much of a by-the-sea holiday snapshot. Nor does saying things like, “No, I didn’t get to go fishing/biking/to the beach because I had to wait for the plumber/electrician/cable guy…” or any number of tradesmen who are summoned to any home for unforeseeable repairs.

Aside from the sand part, that scenar-io doesn’t sound much different from my day-to-day life in Manhattan. I honestly don’t want to end up needing a vacation after my vacation.

So I continue to vote to keep things just the way they are. Where we stay, the room I usually request faces the rolling ocean waves. The beach is steps away. The inevitable sand in the carpet is vacu-umed up by the provided housekeeping service. The maintenance staff fixes what breaks. The pool is enclosed in this green-house-type thing, so even if it rains, we can still go swimming.

Hence, I return from Montauk rested and relaxed with a positive attitude, even toward my aforementioned daily chores. That is how I maintain my civility.

Lorraine Duffy Merkl’s debut novel Fat Chick, from The Vineyard Press, is available at amazon.com and barne-sandnoble.com.

John Boy Never Forgot GrandmaGrandparents Day is Sept. 11. Does anyone care?

A Summer Home is No Vacation A clean break from the grind means no cleaning

Dewing Things BeTTer

ciTiqueTTe

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West Side Spirit September 1, 2011

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