The Buzz

EDITORIAL
Keep traffic-plan momentum rolling
Congestion pricing is not the only way to reduce traffic, but it is the only realistic way to expand bus and train service and protect fares from going too high.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

POLICE BLOTTER

TALKING POINT
Traffic tolling plan will keep transit rolling
By Paul Steely White
What if you had to pay $3 for a subway trip and $114 for a monthly unlimited-ride MetroCard? Straphangers may soon pay that much if Albany doesn’t pass a congestion pricing plan this week.

NOTEBOOK
NOTEBOOK
Fiction and truth
By Andrei Codrescu
John Irving, the American novelist, offers an apology for Gunther Grass, the German novelist, in the New York Times Book Review.

MIKHAELA REID

OPEN HOUSE

SPORTS
P3 baseball coach mixes fun with the fundamentals
by Lucas Mann
Another summer of baseball action is underway at Pier 40, and in this, his second summer, Francisco Perez is in complete control of baseball operations at P3, after years working his way up the ranks. It is impossible to call Perez a novice, though.

PEOPLE
Amoroso appointed president of St. Vincent’s
Henry J. Amoroso was chosen as president and chief executive officer of St. Vincent’s Catholic Medical Centers last month to succeed Guy Sansone, who has been president of the St. Vincent’s system for the past 18 months while the institution has been reorganizing under Chapter 11 of the Federal Bankruptcy Act.

Stringer gives citations to C.B. 5 members

OBITUARIES
Anthony Formato, 80, St. Vincent’s rheumatology chief
By Albert Amateau
Dr. Anthony Formato, retired chief of rheumatology at St. Vincent’s Hospital and longtime Village resident, died May 13 at the hospital where he served for so many years. He was 80.
Volume 1, Number 45 | The Weekly Newspaper of Chelsea | July 27 - Aug. 2, 2007

Chelsea Now photo by Jefferson Siegel

Amma, who many followers consider a “hugging saint,” offers one of the 20,000 hugs she doled out during a three-day stop at New York’s Manhattan Center recently as part of her North American tour. For the full story and more photos, CLICK HERE.

Sex workers swept out of Gansevoort as the new clientele moves in
By Lucas Mann
The Meatpacking District is awash with new business. The windows in Diane von Furstenberg’s new shop and fashion studio at 14th and Washington Sts. morph through an array of colors at night, while young bargoers pour out of new watering holes like the Brass Monkey on Little W. 12th St.

Resolute Brits undaunted in street-sign campaign
By Lucas Mann
On July 10, the Transportation and Traffic Committee of Community Board 2 did the unthinkable. They managed to say no to a group wielding the ultimate weapon of argument: a British accent.

NEWS
Guss’ rivals in a pickle while mediating dispute
By Audrey Tempelsman
On July 16, Andrew Leibowitz, principal of the United Pickle empire, and Patricia Fairhurst, owner of Orchard St.’s Guss’ Pickles, met to mediate their longstanding conflict over the city’s most coveted cucumbers. Both claim legal ownership of the 87-year-old Guss’ Pickles brand.

John Raskin: The accidental organizer and other tales of the city
To local legislators, city planners and advocates for low-income communities, it may be hard to remember a time when they didn’t know John Raskin.

Foodies revel in Flatiron chef festival
By Jefferson Siegel
In a 1995 Time Magazine article, author and social critic Barbara Ehrenreich wrote, “For the millions of us who live glued to computer keyboards at work and TV monitors at home, food may be more than entertainment. It may be the only sensual experience left.”

Amma offers a rousing round of hugs in Chelsea
By Anjali Mansukhani
After waiting in line for hours in her search for comfort, Vanessa Strieff, a 26-year-old brunette actress from San Francisco who now lives in New York City, kneeled in front of “the hugging saint” at 10 a.m. a couple Wednesdays ago.

Arts & Entertainment
Return to Xanadu, where the wind machines blow
By Scott Harrah
Why would anyone want to make a Broadway musical adaptation of one of the silliest, most unwatchable movies of all time? For laughs, of course. Granted, there is much to love about this spoof of the mind-numbing 1980 stinker starring Olivia Newton-John as a muse for a sidewalk artist in Venice Beach, California, but its lampooning energy is not always consistent, and the story drags at times.

KOCH ON FILM

A frame shop enters realm of fine art
By Nitasha Tiku
After hours at Gallery 225, owner Peter Wallach and curator Victor Friedman stood gazing at a series of color photographs of the Coney Island boardwalk taken earlier this year. In one, a squat brick building with the words “Shoot the Freak” stenciled across its side was juxtaposed with the façade of Cha Cha’s Bar & Café (“Entertainment for the Hole Family”).

Pictures worth 1,000 words, and a handful of actors
By Stephanie Murg
In a 1961 manifesto, Claes Oldenburg famously advocated for art “that does something other than sit on its ass in a museum.” The pop artist gets his wish in “Exhibit This! The Museum Comedies,” a fast-moving series of 17 comedic scenes that brings to life over 40 works from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

An invitation to a private collection
BY JEFFREY CYPHERS WRIGHT
Imagine you live in a beautiful home with high ceilings, fireplaces and black parquet floors. Your end tables shelter stacks of books and the maroon walls are covered with your collection of contemporary art. Such is the transporting feeling one gets on walking into Yvon Lambert’s summer show, “Mario Testino: At Home.”

The primoridal in motion
By Sara G. Levin
“... We do not stand on the beach and inquire of the ocean what was its movement of the past and what will be its movement of the future. We realize that the movement peculiar to its nature is eternal to its nature...” —Isadora Duncan, 1903.

Listings

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Open House
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