Volume Number 1 Issue Number 3 | October 13 - 19, 2006
The Buzz
Allerton sold: The Buzz has learned that the Allerton Hotel on the southwest corner of Eighth Ave. at 22nd St. has been sold to a developer for about $17 million. Hotel employees have told neighbors the five-story building at 302 W. 22nd St. with about 150 single-room occupancy units will close in January when the new owner will begin converting it into residential condos. The exterior of the brick building will remain essentially the same, according to the neighborhood buzz. The Allerton, owned by Carol Turner, who managed the building until recently, has long been notorious as a source of neighborhood violence and the site of at least one unsolved homicide in the past five years. Hotel employees have told tenants that two adjacent tenements at 306 and 308 W. 22nd St., also owned by Turner, have been sold to different new owners. Colin Casey, an aide to State Senator Tom Duane, reminded The Buzz that the city Department of Homeless Services has had a contract with the Allerton to provide temporary accommodations for families. But the department began moving families out of the hotel when it discovered contract violations, and all those tenants will be relocated by the end of October, Casey said.
Cold Goth: Guy Berryman, the bassist of Coldplay — the ubermellow British pop rockers — was spotted by The Buzz at Albion, the Goth night held at Downtime, 251 W. 30th St., last Friday. He told us that the band is on tour in the U.S. and he just felt like dropping by. Berryman was not attired in Goth garb, and stuck out a bit in his tweed jacket among the crowd, which sported women wearing black corsets and men in black pants festooned with buckles and chains.
Mini-mayor’s scared: As we were walking down Spring St. in Soho — that former art gallery district — on Sunday afternoon, Sean Sweeney, director of the Soho Alliance, called out to us from a bench by Vesuvio Playground where he and a lady friend were eating some takeout from Snack up the block. Sweeney, who just that day had been dubbed one of the city’s “mini-mayors” by the New York Times City Section, said now he’s getting kind of scared. Whenever someone gets killed in a drive-by shooting or by a car that jumps a curb, the newspapers always report that the victim was known as “the mayor of the block,” Sweeney noted. Sweeney, who is also president of Downtown Independent Democrats political club, also noted that he’s been invited to the upcoming birthday party of Jonathan Tasini — the antiwar candidate who got trounced in the Senate primary by Hillary Clinton — and that Tasini says he’s not going to fade from the political scene. “He wants to build a progressive movement,” Sweeney said.
Vendors look out: Speaking of Spring St., we weren’t so much walking down it, as walking in the street. Spring St. between Lafayette St. and W. Broadway is so packed with vendors of jewelry, acid-washed and distressed jeans and headbands on weekends that the only way to make any progress is to walk in the road, naturally, risking being hit by moving traffic. But according to sources, the city may be planning a crackdown on the illegal vendors along Spring and Prince Sts. — and all over Manhattan, as a matter of fact, including Chelsea. The vendor crackdown will reportedly start Uptown, possibly in Harlem, and gradually work its way southward.
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O.K., Buzzster, give us a call at our newsroom at 646-452-2464 or 646-452-2467, or e-mail us at news@chelseanow.com.
