Volume One, Issue 31, April 20 - 26, 2007
The Buzz
WECLOME TO THE 21st CENTURY: Chelsea Cultural Partnership is abuzz, according to Caroline Press from the Rubin Museum, a core organization in the partnership. She told Chelsea Now that CCP has recently added three new members, most recently the Greenwich Village–Chelsea Chamber of Commerce, bringing the total membership to 18. The real buzz, though, is about the partnership’s new, dynamic Website, being created as we speak by Web producer Jody Bender and shepherded by Dance Theater Workshop’s Meghan Sprenger. Curious readers can already peek at the new and improved Website, at http: destinationchelsea.org, to see the rapidly growing new sections and built-in blogs, the better for Chelseans to snark. Or you could just wait till the launch party on May 8 and share the joy with the person charged with giving the keynote address, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.
ETERNALLY ELECTABLE: Last week, the Fulton Houses Tenant Association put up special flyers announcing that Borough President Scott Stringer would be stopping by their monthly meeting: “Come express your concerns!” But Stringer was called away at the last minute, sending in his place Hunter Johanssen, an aide who had been hired just two days earlier. Johanssen gave out his phone number and listened earnestly to tenants’ requests for less noise and more police protection. (He said this week that no one has called him yet.) He remained for the duration of the meeting, which included arguments over the new NYCHA policy mandating window guards in all apartments and nominations for the association’s board, in which all of the current officers, including board president Jimmy Pelsey, were re-appointed, with no candidate coming forward to run against them. “We love you, Jimmy!” a few people in attendance cried out, to which Pelsey said genially, “I do what I can.” Asked whether such uncontested elections were common, Housing Authority spokesman Howard Marder said that “resident council” elections, while mandated by federal law, are usually not contested, leaving the same people to take care of things in each complex. Just as in more prosperous buildings, Marder said, “no one really wants all that work.” At the end of the night, to reward those who showed up, there was a 50-50 raffle, where one lucky tenant went home with $25.
CIVIL UNION LET-DOWN: In a February article on New Jersey’s new civil union law taking effect, Chelsea Now noted the sheer lack of enthusiasm, at least on this side of the river, in contrast to the wave of New Yorkers who flooded Vermont in 2000. In March, we heard from the N.J. Star-Ledger and elsewhere that New Jerseyans were signing up for unions in fewer numbers than expected. It seems that now we know why: Many of those who did go to their city hall and came away with flowers and a Civil Union certificate are finding that companies are still not accepting their partners as spouses for health insurance purposes. Merissa Muench of Mount Olive, N.J., told the New York Times this week that the company that owns the medical sterilization office where she has been a technician for seven years told her it did not cover civil union partners. “It just irks me that a guy they just hired, his wife — bing! — has health insurance,” Muench said. “What else does the gay American community have to do to prove that we’re worth it just as much as you guys?”
Trust moves: With a new governor, rumors continue to swirl about shakeups on the Hudson River Park Trust’s board of directors and staff. Tom Fox, president of New York Water Taxi, told Josh Rogers of our sister paper Downtown Express that he’s not interested in being president of the Trust, but would serve on the board. Fox also said he and Douglas Durst, co-chairperson of Friends of Hudson River Park, are, in fact, lobbying for Durst to be the new chairperson of the Trust’s board. We hear former State Senator Franz Leichter, a current board member and author of the park’s founding 1998 legislation, is lobbying for the chairperson job as well.
Got something you think is Buzzworthy?
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.
