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Alec Baldwin Drops By to Cheer Up Displaced NYU Students

UntitledDaniel Maurer Baldwin leaves the building.

Displaced NYU students got an unexpected dinner guest today, as Alec Baldwin made a star appearance at the school’s student center.

The “30 Rock” star stopped into Kimmel Center, off of Washington Square Park, around 7 p.m. tonight. “I’m an alum and John Sexton asked me to come and talk to the students, thank them for their patience,” he told The Local as he left the building, politely breaking free from a dozen students that swarmed him at the elevator.

NYU relocated about 6,000 students earlier today after back-up power ran out at their dorms, according to an e-mail from Jules Martin, the school’s Vice President for Global Security and Crisis Management. Around midday, the generator at 3rd North residence ran out of fuel, creating a “temporary smoke condition,” but power was expected to be restored this evening, the e-mail said. Displaced students are currently showering at the school’s two sports complexes.

Mr. Baldwin, who lives near Kimmel on East 10th Street, has also been displaced by the storm: he told The Local that he and his wife had moved to a friend’s hotel because his elevator was out and taking their two dogs up and down several flights of stairs “wasn’t working.” He was also out of work for two days: “the show I do,” he said, referring modestly to “30 Rock,” suspended filming on Monday and Tuesday because team members couldn’t make it to Silvercup Studios in Queens.

As soon as Mr. Baldwin made his appearance alongside school president John Sexton in the cafeteria, students charging their phones, pecking at laptops, and dining at Kimmel sent out word via Twitter.

“Alec Baldwin just came to Kimmel and told us to stay safe #YesSir,” wrote @Glenneth_Coco.

“You know those weird moments when you’re temporarily living in Kimmel and you run into Alec Baldwin?” wrote @taylorsprow.

“Thats cool Alec Baldwin came to NYU to chill, but uhh.. can you take us home with you so we can shower n sleep in your probably fancy bed?” tweeted @CinemaBite.


Salvation Army ‘Girls’ Home’ Turns 82, But Some Aren’t Celebrating

P1070818Martine Mallary An actress plays Evangeline Cory Booth at the Markle’s 80th anniversary in 2010.

The Salvation Army’s Markle Evangeline Residence for Women, which celebrated its 82nd anniversary yesterday, is one of the last of the city’s “girls’ homes,” and an odd bird: incoming tenants pay $1,650 to $1,735 a month for a single room that comes with perks like weekly maid service, two meals a day, and access to a rooftop lounge with sweeping views of the Manhattan skyline. At the same time, they’re forbidden from having alcohol in their rooms, or bringing men back to them, and the building is run by staff members with titles like major and lieutenant colonel.

General Evangeline Cory Booth, daughter of the Salvation Army’s British-born founder, envisioned the residence as a safe haven for young single women of modest means. When the cornerstone of the 17-story art deco building at 123 West 13th Street was laid in 1930, one of its first residents beamed, “already it has the atmosphere of a real home. There are 325 girls overjoyed to be living here.”

But as the Markle observed its anniversary yesterday in a basement space that once held a swimming pool and is now used as a dining room, not everyone was so overjoyed. Last month, Marion Jeeves jumped from the window of her small apartment and died at the age of 57. Friends said she was a poet who had been depressed over long periods of unemployment and financial difficulties.

Others have left the building under less tragic but still bitter circumstances, complaining that the residence no longer caters to those of modest means. Read more…


As Students Move Into Palladium, ‘Limelight’ Recalls Its Days as Den of Depravity

gatien2Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures Peter Gatien today.

Many students moving into NYU’s Palladium dorm this week likely had no clue that their new East 14th Street address was, until 1998, home to a notorious nightclub of the same name. Now a documentary by Billy Corben, director of “Cocaine Cowboys” (a cult-hit chronicle of the Miami drug scene in the 1980s) revisits the era when the club was a fixture of New York City nightlife, and when its owner, Peter “King of Nightlife” Gatien, was at the heart of two dramatic court cases that represented a larger fight between the hedonism of the late eighties and the Giuliani-induced law and order of the mid-nineties.  Read more…