EDITORIAL
‘Mass eviction’ rule needs to be clarified
Hundreds of renters flooded E. Third St. between Second and First Aves. on Saturday to show solidarity with the tenants of 47 E. Third St. Landlords Alistair and Catherine Economakis are trying to use the owner-occupancy provision to empty the 15-unit, five-story tenement and make it a private mansion.

NOTEBOOK
118 online dates, for those keeping score at home
By Angela Benfield
After jettisoning the perfect Mr. Wrong, I was ready, at the ripe young age of 39, to throw in the towel on finding even a slightly unperfect Mr. Right. Then, a good friend, one with a shiny new beau, encouraged me to get modern and try online dating.

Portsmouth journal
By Andrei Codrescu
Barbara got us from Logan in Boston and drove us to Portsmouth, N.H., on historic Highway 1, studded with Dunkin’ Donuts on both sides of the road, a burger joint with life-sized plastic cows in front, muffler places, and so on, until we were in the Live Free or Die state, a motto that, Barbara explained, means no state sales or income taxes.

Letters to the Editor

The Buzz

Police Blotter

Health & fitness

Getting the most out of your workouts
By Greg Rothman, M.S. P.T.
In my last two columns, I wrote about common misperceptions that keep people from reaching their fitness goals. Unfortunately, there is so much information out there—in books, magazines and television info-mercials hawking exercise equipment—that many people have reached a point of information overload. They have been exposed to so much (usually faulty) that they just don’t know how to get the results that they seek from a fitness program.

Obituary

Harriet Pifer, 96, beloved mother and grandmother
By Albert Amateau
Harriet Pifer, known as Hattie, died at the age of 96 in a fire on April 11 in the Chelsea apartment where she had lived with two of her sons for the past 46 years.
Your Weekly Neighborhood Newspaper | Volume One, Issue 31, April 20- 26, 2007

Chelsea Now photo by Jefferson Siegel

Kathleen Conway, a 50-year-old administrative assistant and inmate at Chelsea’s Bayview Correctional Facility, helped start the prison’s Learning Center for Women in Prison in 2002. She is now part of the center’s freshman class and is on track for a liberal arts associates’ degree from Bard College.

Bayview Prison: The road to college and beyond
By Chris Lombardi
Kathleen Conway and Marlene Tejada enter the conference room resolutely, their smiles and handshakes confident and their hair just so, Conway sporting a stylish chin-tracing bob, Tejada’s pulled into a neat ponytail. Like any college students, they confide that they haven’t been getting much sleep, and talk about their schedules with a mix of resignation and pride.

For WNYC archivist, it’s a painstaking labor of love
By Richard Pyatt 
He is not trying to formulate the theory of relativity, but with his head crowned by a dense flaring growth of gray hair, archivist Andy Lanset easily brings to mind the popular image of Einstein. Lanset’s connection with space and time, however, is much more down to earth.

Renters and electeds unite against eviction ploys
By Sarah Ferguson
The relentless gentrification of the East Village and Lower East Side sparked a bit of popular revolt this past weekend.
On Saturday, nearly 400 people rallied outside 47 E. Third St., where awealthy couple is seeking to turn the entire rent-stabilized building into their own private mansion.

Ben & Jerry’s pedals scoops for HIV/AIDS cause
By Jefferson Siegel
On Tuesday, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream stores celebrated the company’s 29th anniversary by giving out free ice cream cones all day long.

City Council bill takes aim at worst landlords
By Albert Amateau
City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Councilmember Letitia James of Brooklyn introduced new housing legislation on April 17 that would crack down on landlords of the city’s worst-maintained building who refuse to repair hazardous conditions.

Braunstein trial set to begin
By Albert Amateau
The trial of Peter Braunstein, charged with arson, posing as a firefighter, and sexually abusing and imprisoning a woman in her Chelsea apartment on Halloween, 2005, is scheduled to begin April 22 with jury selection.
First in a series on the Hotel Chelsea—past and present

Remembering the Hotel Chelsea
By Mary Reinholz
There was a time during my stay at the Hotel Chelsea more than three decades ago when I wondered if Valerie Solanas’ vengeful spirit had become flesh in the art-filled lobby. 

NEWS

C.B. 4 nixes Selldorf at 200 Eleventh Avenue
By Lawrence Lerner
You’re a Wall St. tycoon with impeccable taste in modern art and a desire for all things luxury. So, is it too much to ask for a parking garage to adjoin your $2,000-per-square-foot Annabelle Selldorf–designed duplex loft overlooking the Hudson River?
Evidently, it is.

Hell’s Kitchen dreams a new Ninth Avenue
By Chris Lombardi
Project Find Coffee House, a senior center across Ninth Avenue from the Port Authority Bus Terminal, was empty Wednesday evening. The seniors who eat breakfast and lunch there had gone home, but two other seniors, residents of nearby Manhattan Plaza, arrived right at 6 p.m. and sat firmly by the window, reminiscing about the good old days.

City Council hears from Chelsea’s pedestrian advocates
By Lindsay Beyerstein
Transportation officials, community groups, environmental activists and concerned citizens testified at a City Council oversight hearing on pedestrian safety last Wednesday.

Remembering the local fight against fascism
By Judith Stiles
When longtime Penn South resident Moe Fishman called his parents in Astoria to tell them he was going off to war back in 1937, his father buried his head in a stack of laundry and wept, and it was the first time Mrs. Fishman had seen her husband cry.

New designations beef up Meat Market protections
By Lincoln Anderson
Last Wednesday, State Parks Commissioner Carol Ash approved the listing of the entire Meatpacking District on the State and National Registers of Historic Places.

On the Record

Bringing the booty back into buns
By Alyssa Galella
If you tell someone you’re going to the Big Booty Bread Co., on 23rd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, you’ll probably get a funny look. Owner José Rojas, 28, is used to it. But this two-year-old bakery with bright green and orange walls and leopard-print stools is a favorite among many Chelsea residents.
Arts & Entertainment
Portrait of an avenue, by Stefan Brecht
By Ed Hamilton
On a clear spring day, as light streamed into the white-washed back room of St. Mark’s Church through the large barred windows, a crowd of perhaps 200 well-wishers gathered to honor Stefan Brecht, son of the great German playwright Bertolt Brecht.

Desire and denouement on the waterfront
By Jeffrey Cyphers Wright
What is desire? What do we want? And what do we have to pay? These are the questions a lot of artists are asking these days. Whether it’s love or stability, prestige or pleasure, our desires are our masters and exact a toll. As the Swiss poet and critic Henri-Frederic Amiel noted, “to desire to know the art of living… make use of suffering.” Sounds like there’s a lesson here.

James Baldwin (of sorts) returns to New York
By Jerry Tallmer
The role of the writer is not to write but to disturb the peace.
So says the James Baldwin whose “Notes of a Native Son” and “The Fire Next Time” and “Go Tell It on the Mountain” and “Blues for Mister Charlie” and “Going to Meet the Man” woke up — disturbed — carried the news to that portion of white America that inhaled the high-explosive oxygen of his writing in the 1950s and ’60s and was willing to breathe, and listen.

Koch on Film
By Ed Koch
“The Hoax” (-) Most reviews that I read of this film were laudatory. I found it boring.
“Red Road” (+) Red Road is the name of a street in a depressed area of Glasgow, Scotland, and a hangout of the underclass young people involved in drinking, drugs and alternative lifestyles.
“The Accomplices” (+) This play is about the efforts of Peter Bergson (Daniel Sauli) to convince President Roosevelt (Jon DeVries) to rescue the Jews being slaughtered in Europe by the Nazis. 

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Courtesy of ClampArt, New York City
Evidence of Life Stephen Wilkes explored a long abandoned hospital complex in Ellis Island for five years. The result is a breathtaking selection of photographs on view at ClampArt through May 12. Above: Stephen Wilkes, “Administrative Quarters,” 1998, Ilfochrome

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