EDITORIAL
Let Pridefest move to Chelsea
It appears that part of this year’s Gay Pride celebration has just been stuffed back into the closet. On April 27, the Community Assistance Unit (CAU) of the mayor’s office unexpectedly denied an application by the group Heritage of Pride (HOP) to move its annual LGBT street fair, Pridefest, from the West Village to Chelsea to make room for a chunk of the estimated 400,000 people who will descend on New York City the weekend of June 23–24. CAU also refused to let HOP move the fair from Sunday to Saturday to free up volunteers to help keep the event safe and orderly.

Letters to the Editor

Talking Point
Pushing for marriage equality in Albany
By Paul Schindler
Here’s where the LGBT community and its allies stand in the spring of 2007 in the fight for marriage equality. Governor Eliot Spitzer has introduced his bill, Senate Republican Majority Leader Joe Bruno has said he will not move the issue in his chamber, but Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Lower East Side Democrat, has signaled that he expects the matter to be discussed in the majority party conference, made up of a whopping 108 of the 150 assemblymembers.

Notebook
An Edwardian death room
By Andrei Codrescu
People report ghosts at the Colonial Burma Hotel and Spa in Eureka Springs, Ark. The lumbering rooming house served as a Civil War hospital, a miracle spa for dying cancer patients from Kansas, a tuberculosis sanatorium, an abandoned building, a losing investment for the St. Louis mafia and, in its present incarnation, a romantic destination for Arkansans and Missourians desirous of rekindling romance through the use of pedicures and herbal wraps.

Police Blotter

Mikhaela Reid

The Buzz

Health and Fitness

Getting your body back for summer, Part 2
By Greg Rothman, M.S. P.T.
I mentioned in last week’s column that each spring, people tell me how their New Year’s resolutions fell through sometime in February and ask if it’s too late to get in shape for summer.

Volume 1, Number 34 | The Weekly Newspaper of Chelsea | May 11 - 17, 2007

Chelsea Now photo by Jefferson Siegel

Paula Martin, director of Bayview Correctional Facility’s Stay’N Out drug-treatment and therapeutic program, talked to Chelsea Now in her office last Friday.

At Bayview, Stay’N Out of trouble, going deep
By Chris Lombardi
Darlene Martinez, all of 5-feet, 5-inches tall, sat calmly as she faced her prison counselor, Paula Martin. “This is my sixth state bid [separate incarceration] in nine years.”

Hudson Rail Yards forum draws plenty of critics
By Al Amateau
Advocates for affordable housing and supporters of the High Line packed a public presentation on Tuesday concerning the city’s and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s guidelines for a mega mixed-use development over the West Side rail yards.

1,500 turn out for a hearing on future of Pier 40
By Lincoln Anderson
More than 1,500 parents, Little Leaguers and budding David Beckhams — plus a crew hauling a 14-foot-long Whitehall rowboat complete with a sail — mobbed P.S. 41 last Thursday evening for a public hearing on Pier 40’s future.


Amnesty push for illegal immigrants is unflagging
By Barry Paddock
Half the flags were America’s stars and stripes at the May 1 Union Square immigration rally, and half were from dozens of other countries, reflecting both the widespread origins of the thousands who attended and their common desire for full participation in American life.

Forth in a series on the Hotel Chelsea—past and present

Offering a home to bards for more than 50 years
By David Gibbons
Here in Chelsea, the closest thing we have to a village innkeeper is Stanley Bard. Having run the Hotel Chelsea for more than 50 years, the 72-year-old Bard, a longtime art enthusiast, unflappable manager and elder statesman among local businesspeople, projects an air at once laidback and authoritative, solicitous and dignified.

NEWS

Annual Pridefest likely to be nixed
By Chris Lombardi
Chelsea will likely not get its official slice of Gay Pride Weekend this year after all — despite the support of City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Congressman Jerrold Nadler, State Senator Tom Duane, State Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, city Comptroller William Thompson, the Chelsea Cultural Partnership, more than 150 local businesses, Community Board 4 and police from three local precincts.

Penn South woman killed on Ninth Ave. and 23rd St.
By Albert Amateau
Irene Yevelson, an elderly Penn South resident, died shortly after noon last Friday when a truck hit her as she was walking downtown across Ninth Ave. at the corner of 23rd St.

Second anniversary anything but a celebration

Chelsea 300 Block stoops to conquer

Cycle of paintings examines cyclist’s death on path
By Jefferson Siegel
Seth Mulvey, a former special education teacher at a San Francisco elementary school, moved to New York two years ago and enrolled in the illustration program at the School of Visual Arts.

Trumped! Condo-hotel gets green light to build
By Albert Amateau
The Department of Buildings on Tuesday approved the plans and the application for a building permit for Donald Trump’s proposed 42-story condo-hotel on Spring St. in a manufacturing district in Hudson Square, a project that has roused intense opposition from preservation advocates.

Summer Camps
Activities abound for Chelsea’s children
By Alyssa Galella
As the weather heats up, children all over the city are getting ready to turn in their textbooks and enjoy the months of freedom known as summer vacation.
Arts & Entertainment

A new look at Brooke Astor’s life, sans scandal
By Sarah Norris
“To receive, one must give,” wrote Brooke Astor, the acclaimed New York philanthropist and heiress, whose life is the subject of a new biography, “The Last Mrs. Astor” (W.W. Norton), by Frances Kiernan. Now 105, Astor made headlines last year for the lack of care bestowed upon her by her son, Tony Marshall, and though this book touches upon the scandal, its primary concern is tracking a life fully lived.

Koch on Film
By Ed Koch
“Away From Her” (+) This simple but moving picture depicts how Alzheimer’s affects a couple that has been married for 44 years.
“Waitress” (+) I went to see this movie after reading Joe Morgenstern’s review in The Wall Street Journal. He wrote, “The writer-director Adrienne Shelly, who died in New York City late last year at the age of 40, took such perishable ingredients as wit, daring, poignancy, whimsy and romance, added passionate feelings plus the constant possibility of joy, decorated her one-of-a-kind production with pastel colors and created something close to perfection.”

Doing the time warp again, this time with Buffy
By Michael Tedder
Like others, Clinton McClung watched the 1997 premiere episode of the television series “Buffy The Vampire Slayer.” It was cute, he thought, but not really worth his time.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree
By Will McKinley
The year is 1943. America is mired in the depths of World War II and a nervous nation turns to the radio to forget its troubles. And each month, live from the studios of WXYZ in New York City, the singing, swinging Apple Sisters do their bit to put a bounce in Uncle Sam’s step and a smile on his collective face.

Kindling the spirits
By Jeffrey Cyphers Wright
Art has been haunted from the get-go. Consider its origins: a bunch of guys, together in spooky caves, acting all serious and painting bison to appease the gods. Ever since, we’ve looked back to previous work to keep the spirits alive.

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Grief at LastThe third and final installment of photographer and filmmaker Erwin Olaf’s trilogy features narratives and portraits, mostly of women caught in private moments, at Hasted Hunt through June 2. “Rain” and “Hope” are the titles of this series’ first two episodes.

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