The Buzz
‘DON’T KILL WITH IT’
Last weekend, when an SUV driver jumped a curb on 35th St. and Seventh Ave., injuring 10 people and hospitalizing six, Chelsea Now thought of all the hard work for pedestrian safety provided by Christine Berthet and Board 4’s Transportation Committee, as well as City Council Speaker Christine Quinn’s recent transportation-safety bill. Berthet was blunt, especially given other accidents that weekend where pedestrians were killed. “Why isn’t this treated as involuntary manslaughter?” she said. “And why do the papers stop covering it?” Asked what she’d advise her neighbors at CB5 to do about the corner, Berthet sighed. “It’s kind of a systemic problem,” she said. “We should have bollards everywhere, we should have traffic organized much differently… And meanwhile the SUV driver [just] gets a citation. We need to change the culture, and to teach people. Just like you can have a gun but you can’t kill with it, here, there’s a car—don’t kill with it.” Quinn was similarly upset. “There’s sadly a number of bad corners in Chelsea,” she said. “We’re trying as much as we can to deal with congestion, but it’s incredibly tricky… At least the bill we passed this spring will give us empirical data and require that the DOT do something to address those corners. The goal is to know a bad corner before it becomes a deadly interval.”
WEST SIDE POLS TRASH TRANSFER STATION
Legislators were outraged at the agreement for a Marine Transfer Station for recyclable trash to be built on the Gansevoort Peninsula that Mayor Bloomberg reached on Wednesday with Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. Nevertheless, the Assembly voted 91-48 over the strong objections of West Side Assemblymembers Deborah Glick, Richard Gottfried and Linda Rosenthal to allow the M.T.S. to be built on the eight-acre peninsula that has been designated as Hudson River Park land. The transfer station, to be built where an existing but long-unused station is currently located, would take 1.36 acres from the peninsula, including a 25-foot-wide access road and ramp. As part of the city’s long range Solid Waste Management Plan (SWAMP), the M.T.S., which would move recyclables by barge to Sunset Park in Brooklyn, is intended to reduce Department of Sanitation trucks that go through minority communities and make each borough handle its own trash. Before it becomes final, the mayor, governor and leaders of the Assembly and State Senate must sign a Memorandum of Understanding about replacing and/or paying money for land that the M.T.S. alienates from the peninsula. However, the M.O.U. has not yet been written and none of the details have been set. The Friends of Hudson River Park two years ago won a settlement that forces Sanitation to get its current operation off Gansevoort Peninsula by 2013, but that agreement does not prohibit the transfer station. The Friends have made an alternate proposal for the transfer station to be on Pier 76 opposite the Javits Convention Center, but the city has said it would be too expensive. “What really outrages me is that the city never looked at our alternative,” said Ross Graham, co-chair of the Friends. “The Friends reserves its right to file a lawsuit about the M.T.S.,” she said, adding, “The fact is that nothing can be built on Gansevoort Peninsula until 2013, so the whole issue could be reopened.”
THE NIKONS LOVE NICO
When stories in Friday’s newspapers on the controversial Rent Guidelines Board’s vote at the Cooper Union hit the racks last week, it seemed their photographers had cameras trained on one man in the sea of rowdy, sign-waving tenants and landlords. Both the New York Times and Daily News featured front-and-center photos of Nico Boccio, the 72-year-old retired singer/actor and active member of the West Side Neighborhood Alliance, hollering along with the rest of the raucous crowd. Indeed, Chelsea Now even had a picture of the Manhattan Plaza resident last Friday, shown—albeit in a more subdued pose—manning phones for the WSNA’s push to encourage attendance at the vote. (He also appeared in a Times front-page picture back in 2005 at a rally against the proposed West Side Jets Stadium.) Boccio is no stranger to such demonstrations, as we quoted him in March at another rally he attended in support of restoring funds for Section 8 affordable housing funding. While he himself is secure in his apartment at Manhattan Plaza, the complex reserved for performing-arts professionals, until 2024, “I joined the West Side Neighborhood Alliance to fight for the other people that are in danger,” he told The Buzz. Boccio agreed his abilities to emote as a former opera singer probably drew the attention of photographers. “I have loud, resonant voice,” he acknowledged. “I’ve never had a problem of people hearing me on the stage.”
HAUTE TO TROT
Chalk it up to Chelsea Now’s utter lack of fashion expertise, but we were remiss in not identifying the subject of last week’s Scene photo featuring a woman sashaying into a Michelle Obama-hosted presidential fundraiser in Chelsea while donning a dazzling American flag-print dress. Turns out the couture attendee was none other than Catherine Malandrino, the celebrated New York-based designer with stores in the Meatpacking District, Soho, Los Angeles and Paris. The French-reared fashionista counts a coterie of celebrities as fans— including Madonna, Angelina Jolie and Beyonce—so can she now add possible future First Lady Obama to that roster? “Mrs. Obama did love the dress, and she was very honored that Catherine wore that dress that day,” Malandrino’s public relations manager, Janete Rodas, told The Buzz. She added that it’s the designer’s signature piece, unveiled after 9/11, and that it will be a “comeback dress” on the campaign trail. “It will mean a lot in this year’s election.”
