Chelsea Now photo by Lawrence Lerner

Kevin Beauchamp at the Gay Men’s Health Crisis center on W. 24th St., where he volunteers.

Staying positive while living with H.I.V./AIDS for 15 years
By Lawrence Lerner
Chelsea resident Kevin Beauchamp is a glass-half-full kind of guy, the kind of person who can say, “Good things come out of every situation,” matter of factly, with conviction. It doesn’t seem to matter that, for 15 years, Beauchamp has also been living with H.I.V./AIDS.

Renovated Allerton will cater to tourists, association is told
By Albert Amateau
A Chelsea block association last week celebrated the sale of the Allerton Hotel, at the corner of Eighth Ave. and W. 22nd St., which over the past several decades has been a place of one-night stands as well as temporary accommodations for homeless families and a frequent source of violence.

Joy Chiavetta, 50, physical therapist, proud mom
By Albert Amateau
Joy Dorothy Chiavetta, born and raised in Chelsea and a resident most of her life of Penn South, died Dec. 2 at her brother’s home in Pleasantville, N.Y., after a two-year struggle with breast cancer. She was 50.

Pedestrians like being on the clock at W. 8th St.
By Lori Haught
While the city Department of Transportation isn’t ready to weigh in yet on its pilot program using countdown streetlight signals for pedestrians, Village residents have already started passing judgment.

NEWS
Drunk driver on Hudson path mows down cyclist
By Lincoln Anderson
In a city where speeding cars and trucks rule the road and bicyclists ride at their own risk, the Hudson River Park bike path would seem to offer one of the safest places to cycle.

Governor’s ‘gift’ has tenants up in arms
By Roslyn Kramer
The New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal is proposing rule changes that would hit rental tenants hard while easing rules that apply to landlords.

First woman hits all the right notes in gay chorus
By Lawrence Lerner
The day was Sept. 7, 2005. Joan Garry remembers the audition well. In a nondescript rehearsal room at Chelsea Studios on W. 26th St., she situated herself next to the pianist and faced the two male musical directors sitting behind a long table.

6th Precinct denies brutality charges by gay youth
By Albert Amateau
More than 100 protesters organized by the Audre Lorde Project, a Brooklyn-based advocacy group for lesbian, gay and transgender youth of color, gathered in front of the Sixth Police Precinct last week and charged that precinct police beat two black men on Christopher St. on Nov. 1.

Mears is named deputy director of Museum at FIT
Patricia E. Mears, former assistant curator of costumes and textiles at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, has been named deputy director of The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology. She joined the museum staff in 2005 as research curator.

Arts & Entertainment
Spilling the beans of the heady, literary ’50s and ’60s
By Jerry Tallmer
And so, Lord knows, does the photograph of Alice Denham that appears on the front cover of her book and on this page. Pneumatic bliss and a come-hither look. It was taken by Peter Basch in 1962, some few years after Alice, a sweet little thing from Jacksonville, Florida, had defied her strict, straitlaced, outraged mother and come to the big bad city to (a) become a writer, (b) get to know all the bad boys of the arts — writers and actors and that lot — who were getting famous all over the place, and (c) survive principally by modeling for ads and the like with or without much clothes on, mostly without.