Mere hours after opponents of N.Y.U.’s expansion plan rallied on the steps of City Hall, they get a big boost from Michael Kimmelmann, the architecture critic of the Times. “Common sense and the billions of dollars that the project would cost suggest the university would be hard pressed to build half of what it’s outlining during the next decade or two,” Mr. Kimmelmann writes, calling for a scaled-back version of the project that would build only two of the proposed buildings and include additional green space. Meanwhile, The Daily News ran an editorial earlier this week strongly in favor of N.Y.U., as well as an op-ed last week by former Mayor Ed Koch that supported the plan.
GREENWICH VILLAGE
N.Y.U. President John Sexton: ‘We Need More Space’
By NATALIE RINN
Natalie Rinn John Sexton addresses a student.John Sexton, the president of N.Y.U., addressed questions about the school’s considerable expansion plan at a Town Hall meeting earlier tonight. At the open forum for students, Dr. Sexton addressed a recent outpouring of community opposition, as demonstrated by a unanimous vote by Community Board 2 on Thursday disapproving of the proposed expansion near Washington Square Park.
“The community board vote did not surprise me,” he said, standing before a room filled with undergraduate and graduate students at the university’s Kimball Hall. “It would have been surprising if there had been a single dissent.”
He added, “You learn that there are a small minority of people that you can’t reach. They’ve gotta be what they are and they’re not going to be persuaded right or wrong.”
A recent Ph.D. graduate in comparative literature, Patrick Gallagher, pressed the president on being insensitive. “It sounds like what you’re saying is the community is always wrong. Has there ever been a time when you’ve come around to their point of view?”
“First of all, respectfully, I don’t think I said the community is always wrong,” Mr. Sexton responded. “The dialogue with the community has been fulsome for three years and 40 [community] meetings, and we’ve made changes in the plan based on things that were said.”
Read more…
Slideshow: Coen Brothers Take Second Street Back to 1961
By RACHEL CITRON
Photos: Rachel Citron
As previously noted, East Second Street got a 1960s Greenwich Village makeover today, via metal garbage cans, wooden milk crates, and throwback rides, some of them courtesy of the Oldsmobile Club of America. A couple of the movie’s extras, done up in vintage garb, told The Local that Joel and Ethan Coen – both of whom were on hand, as our new photos (clearly!) show – were filming the very first scene of their “screwball comedy,” “Inside Llewyn Davis.” So exciting.
During the takes we saw, two cars rolled down the snow-dusted street and then a young man clutching a cat and guitar case crossed the road and walked into a building at 77 East Second Street. When we left the block between First and Second Avenues, giant bags of leaves were at the ready and outdoor lights were being turned on. Maybe nighttime in autumn was next?
Have your own photos of the shoot? Add them to The Local’s Flickr pool. And if you live in the neighborhood and want to cover tomorrow’s action, e-mail us.
News Cameras on Second Street, Coen Brothers’ Cameras a Block Over
By EVAN BLEIER
Photos: Daniel Maurer
While news cameras focused their attention on a block on East Second Street where a three-alarm fire tore through a six-story apartment building last night, cameras were out for a different reason one block east: the Coen Brothers have parked over twenty vintage cars on Second Street between First and Second Avenues, where they’re shooting their new film “Inside Llewyn Davis.”
“Hollywood” Nick Pagani, a car wrangler for motion pictures, told The Local that he had secured the vintage vehicles for traffic scenes set in 1961. “We’re only going to drive five of them today,” he said. Read more…
Suze Rotolo and Edie Sedgwick, Slum Goddesses
By THE LOCAL
In its early issues, The East Village Other began featuring a “Slum Goddess,” a title that was taken from a Fugs song:
When I see her coming down the street,
I’m as happy as I can be,
My beautiful Slum Goddess from Avenue D.
Among the first to be featured was Suze Rotolo, the artist who had been Bob Dylan’s girlfriend. In her memoir, “Freewheelin’ Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties,” Ms. Rotolo, who died a year ago, of cancer at age 67, tells of the time Walter Bredel photographed her for the feature.
A few weeks later a reporter from the East Village Other, a new local biweekly claiming to be hipper than the Village Voice, asked me to be part of a feature the paper was starting up called “Slum Goddess,” inspired by a song by the Fugs, “Slum Goddess of the Lower East Side.” The feature would be the counterculture’s answer to the Miss America aesthetic of overly made-up and girdled women with beehive hairdos. I thought it was a fine idea and said yes. I was to be the Slum Goddess for December 1965. Read more…
Bleecker Bob’s Bound for East Village?
By STEPHEN REX BROWN
Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesThe news that both Bleecker Bob’s Records and the Holiday Cocktail Lounge would close amounted to a brutal double-whammy for many locals living around the Village. But there’s a silver lining: Jennifer Kitzer, a longtime partner of Bleecker Bob’s, told The Local that if worst comes to worst, the store will move to the East Village or Lower East Side.
For now, though, she and the staff are focused on remaining in their current location. “We’re not closing permanently — we’re not running out of there anytime soon,” said Ms. Kitzer, who later added, “I’m not looking to shut the name down, shut the store down. There’s going to be a fight in us.” Read more…
