Results tagged “cooperunion”

The Rent Guidelines Board's annual carnival of cacophony—wherein hundreds of rent-stabilized tenants shout themselves hoarse as the board votes to raise their rents again—goes down tonight at Cooper Union. Speaking to the Daily News, board chairman Marvin Markus describes the always raucous affair as "one of the rites of spring," and quips, "Maybe we'll give out Valium." Ha ha, making a mockery of "rent stabilization" is always good for a laugh.

Yes, even the extra terrestrials can't try to make something of themselves in the East Village without being told to GTFO. Cooper Union is closing in on completion of the new building for its School of Engineering, located on Third Avenue between 6th and 7th Streets and designed by Thom Mayne of Morphosis. But one tagger had other ideas for the future plans of the spot Curbed recently called CU's "new mindfuck of a building."

Early-decision applications to Cooper Union, which does not charge tuition, have skyrocketed this year, the Times reports, surprising no one. The school is experiencing a 70 percent surge in applications so far this year, compared to annual increases of 5 percent to 10 percent over the last decade. Emphasizing the obvious, the dean of admissions tells the Times, "I’m pretty confident that the economy played a big role. You probably had a lot of parents who said: ‘Look, I know you’re looking at Cooper Union. You ought to make it your first choice.' " Overall, the school expects to receive 3,300 applications for 265 spots in the Class of 2013, making the already competitive process even more cutthroat.

The fight over the Stalin banner that was hung and then subsequently removed from a Cooper Union building overlooking the East Village is continuing on and sure seems convoluted. A week after the banner was taken down, a tug-of-war over why it happened is going on between the university, the Buildings Department and the NY Civil Liberties Union with input coming from the nearby Ukrainian community as well as the artist whose installation it was a part of.

Cooper Union has taken down the giant Stalin banner that went up this week following pressure from the Dept. of Buildings, which had received complaints. The banner was part of Lene Berg's installation, “Stalin by Picasso, or Portrait of Woman with Mustache.” The school recognized that it may be particularly sensitive circumstances to have it up--with a large nearby Ukranin community keenly aware that it is the 75th anniversary of a famine imposed by Stalin that killed millions of Ukrainians. Jaroslaw Leshko, the president of the board of trustees at the Ukrainian Museum, did not want to kibosh the installation and suggested it be put up somewhere indoors. But Berg was more than unhappy with the move, saying, “In a sense, I think it’s self-censorship...They ruined my show, my work.”

Another clash of the art world and the religious reich is going down in the East Village. The AP reports that a "Roman Catholic watchdog group is protesting a student art exhibition that includes vulgar depictions of religious symbols including a crucifix and rosary." Just how does one depict a rosary as vulgar? There are ways:

The target of the protest is a series of paintings by Felipe Baeza. One of them depicts a man with his pants down and a crucifix in his rectum. A Latin caption says, "The day I became a Catholic." Another painting shows rosaries with male genitalia and a third, a man with a halo and erection.

Surely there is a difference between art, traditionally understood as conveying beauty, and junk. I have the sneaking suspicion that these paintings made the cut precisely because they were an assault on Catholic sensibilities. No, I can’t prove what the motive was, but I can be deadly certain that if even a reverential portrait of Muhammad had been offered, it would have been rejected. I hasten to add that if a reverential portrait of Jesus had been submitted, it too would have been rejected, but for entirely different reasons.”

Later today ABC will join together Barack Obama with the ladies of The View. While they tell us the main focus of their interview segment is on the "controversial remarks of Reverend Jeremiah Wright" (something that Elizabeth Hasselbeck has slammed him for in the past), one of the clips shows Barbara Walters telling Obama he is, "very sexy looking." At which point the presidential candidate needs to fan himself from the 78-year-old news legend's praise!

Presidential hopeful Barack Obama will be speaking in NYC today, as part of Cooper Union Dialogue Series. And Mayor Bloomberg's office "took the highly unusual step" of issuing a release letting the media know Bloomberg would be introducing Obama. Aw, that's what any billionaire mayor would do for his breakfast buddy!

A rendering for a building that will replace a Cooper Union engineering building has emerged (above). Designed by Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki, the 440,000-square-foot mixed-use building will replace the brown tribute to banality that currently hunkers across from the historic 1859 Cooper Union Foundation building. The 51 Astor Place building is to be demolished; the fate of the connected Starbucks (between Third and Fouth Avenues) is uncertain.

People have been wondering about former mayor Rudy Giuliani's campaign for a long time (his presidential campaign plan notebook went missing last January! he pays more attention to his friends' advice versus that of election consultants). Now, with the Florida primary on the horizon, it seems his New York-based supporters are starting to worry.

The best part of Mayor Bloomberg's maybe, maybe-not presidential aspirations is that we can debate about whether they are going to happen until the Democratic and Republican conventions next year! The NY Times now reports that the "excitement seems to have fizzled" about the idea of Candidate Bloomberg. It's a bit more detailed that Dan Rather's August proclamation that the Mayor would not run for president.

Mayor Bloomberg is back from London, just in time to deliver an address at Cooper Union while the world's media is milling about NYC for the U.N.'s General Assembly. Bloomberg will be appearing as part of a panel near Astor Place to discuss national policy matters. According to The New York Sun, an online site is attracting a growing number of supporters to draft Mayor Bloomberg as a third party candidate in the 2008 Presidential election. Bloomberg resigned from the Republican Party in June, ending a five-year affiliation that allowed him to win consecutive elections for mayoral office without slogging through a Democratic primary race.

From 1910 until 1963, when New York actually had a Pennsylvania Station instead of a dingy 1960s subterranean rat warren beneath a hockey rink and office towers, twenty-two stone eagles stood guard over the McKim, Mead, and White masterpiece. The eagles themselves, along with almost all the other stone artwork on the station were the work of artist Adolph A. Weinman, who among other things created Civic Fame atop the Municipal Building and the Walking Liberty half dollar coin.

You'd imagine that Kevin Burke, the chairman, president, and CEO of Con Ed, would want to attend at City Council meeting about the steam pipe explosion on July 18. But, no, Burke isn't showing up, which annoys many Council members. The Sun has a good look at the head of the city's essential and currently reviled utility.

One firefighters' group is taking their attacks on Rudy Giuliani's record to the videotape. The International Association of Fire Fighters, which worked with the Uniformed Firefighters Association (already a vocal critic of Giuliani) and Uniformed Fire Officers Association, produced a video called Rudy Giuliani: Urban Legend.

Don't miss the Observer story that asks City Hall beat reporters what they think of Bloomberg and the possibility of him running for President. The Times' Michael Powell observes, "There comes a point in every Mayor’s political life where they start to get bored with the city and start to kind of look around at what’s next." Yeah, he must be pretty bored to head to swing state Missouri for a speech next month. The Post says he'll be speaking at a forum that has also invited all presidential would-bes. Hmm.

Congratulations to everyone graduating this month! As NYU's commencement was today, with speaker jazz musician Wynton Marsalis, we decided to list the many NYC commencement speakers, with help from The Chronicle of Higher Education (if we've missed any or gotten it wrong, let us know in comments):

Last night, the Rent Guidelines Board voted 5-4 to propose rent hikes for rent-stabilized apartments on the order of 2-4.5% for one-year leases and 4-7.5% for two-years leases. Loft rent increases would be 2-4% for one-year leases, 4-7% for two-year leases.

Wow, some very wild data from the U.S. Census about the make-up of New York. Accordin to the NY Times, the number of Manhattan children under the age of 5 has increased by more than 32%, and half of that growth is attributed to wealthy white families. And get this:

The analysis shows that Manhattan’s 35,000 or so white non-Hispanic toddlers are being raised by parents whose median income was $284,208 a year in 2005, which means they are growing up in wealthier households than similar youngsters in any other large county in the country.

Continue reading "Manhattan Has the Richest White Toddlers In the Country"

Several restaurants in the 34th Street area will be offering special menus with wine pairings for $20.07 for lunch and $34.00 for dinner. Check the 34th Street Partnership website for a full list of participants.

Have you seen Caroline Woolard's giant tin can telephone, the blue seats she placed around town as part of the ConFlux festival...or found some of her released hair?

+ Following the release of the Atlantic Yards' Final Environmental Impact Statement, Empire State Development Corporation head Charles Gargano says Madison Square Garden owners Jim and Charles Dolan may end up killing the Gehry-designed project. More FEIS digesting from Curbed.

Heckling (followed by civility) was alive and well at last night's Community Board 3 meeting at Cooper Union. Wearing "Please IMPROVE the Plan!" stickers, East Village and Lower East Side residents interrupted Department of City Planning Commissioner representatives as they presented a plan for the area's first rezoning since 1961 ("Define affordable," shouted one audience member - $56,000 for a family of four, in case you're wondering, and, no, they didn't have numbers for individuals).

DISCUSSION: A performance artist, an art critic, an art scholar, a restaurateur, and a gallery owner all walk in to a bar...Oh wait, that's not the beginning of a joke. Those creative types will all be at The New Museum tonight though for their Hot Button! discussion series. Find out their motivation behind the craft. What will win, love or money?

This week, Sarah Michelle Gellar is back for more creepy girls hiding in her hair in the new sequel, out this weekend in the hopes that it will bolster rumors of a Stewart/Colbert ticket in '08.

-- We didn't report on Kapporot last week. That's a Jewish holiday-- "the ritual involves transferring a person’s sin to a live chicken."

President Bush ended many New Yorkers' gridlock nightmares by leaving the city yesterday, but he - and the rest of the U.S. delgation to the United Nations - missed Venezulan President Hugo Chavez's speech. And what a speech it was: Chavez called Bush "the devil," said it smelled of sulfur (since Bush had stood there), and showed said Americans should be reading Noam Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance instead of "watching Superman and Batman movies." Yeah, a big F-U to Bush and Hollywood! The NY Times reported laughs and gasps during his speech, because the General Assembly is normally a staid crowd. (The NY Times also reported how Chavez's regret was that he never met Chomsky before he died, pointing out that Chomsky is actually alive.) And, to think, people were worried about what Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would say (though Chavez didn't deny the Holocaust happened in his speech.)

Mothers and fathers, don't just dream about your children being doctors (well, doctors might be passe, given malpractice coverage), lawyers or hedge fund managers: Have them set their sights on being the president of a major university. amNew York has a feature on salaries of NYC college/university presidents. The presidents are mostly charged with fund-raising, hence needing a real "performer" that gets a sweet compensation package, but the money they make can be pretty sick (note: private institutions pay more, natch).

Walker Fee, Tape Artist Extraordinaire