A dinosaur got a Christmas outfit last week in front of the Museum of natural History. Photo by Robyn Roth-Moise.
November 12, 2018 Weather: Sunny, with a high of 52 degrees.
Notices:
A free screening of a Vice documentary on wrongfully convicted people and more local events are on our calendar.
DREAMChasers is “a free tutoring and mentoring program to help students from low income and underrepresented backgrounds test into NYC’s specialized high schools,” says program director Jason Clark. “Students who are selected for our program will receive over 300 hours of professional test preparation for the SHSAT. Eligible students must be in 7th grade and available to attend classes Friday afternoons (after school) and Saturday mornings from December 2018 until October 2019. Classes will be held at Thurgood Marshall Academy, which is located at 214 West 135th Street, in Harlem, New York. Prospective students must complete a practice SHSAT exam on Saturday, November 17 and submit an online application by Sunday, November 18.” More here.
News:
A 20-year-old daredevil named Justin Casquejo was arrested last week after sneaking up one of the Waterline Square buildings on West 61st Street and dangling from a crane, police said. “He’s done this a few times over the years, starting in 2014 when he was 16. He squeezed past a fence at One World Trade Center, which was then under construction, and climbed to the 100th floor.” Casquejo says he’s raising money to travel the world and make art. He’s due back in court Dec. 11. As seen in the Instagram image below from another climb, Casquejo does not seem particularly afraid of heights.
Aren’t Upper West Side kids amazing? “Arguably the best banjo player in the world is — wait for it — a Jewish kid from the Upper West Side of Manhattan. His name is Béla Anton Leoš Fleck, and reached by phone at his home in Nashville, he agreed that what may at first seem an unlikely pairing of man and instrument was probably bashert.”
William Randolph Hearst’s Central Park West penthouse is on the market for a cool $18 million. “The elevator opens directly to the penthouse’s stone foyer, which leads to a gallery with vaulted ceilings and finally into the 16′ x 31′ corner living room. Here, an 11-foot-tall plaster ceiling looks down on a wall of built-ins, oak burnsall paneling, and a wood-burning fireplace surrounded by a gorgeous floor-to-ceiling hand-carved mantle.”
A writer for National Review stood in line with Jerry Nadler to vote on Tuesday. “On Tuesday, I stood in line with the congressman I was about to vote against. Alas, he would win, and win big: with 81 percent. He is set to become chairman of the House Judiciary Committee (Jerrold Nadler). But consider this: Standing in line to vote, with the person you’re going to vote against? That is a relatively rare thing in the world. Sweet democracy.”
A marriage made at Whole Foods. “The couple met in 2015 through a mutual friend, at the Whole Foods grocery store on the Upper West Side. ‘We actually went to the same church,’ Ms. Rushing said, and they had all stopped off at the store after services.” But was it in the produce or baked goods section?
The city is investigating an incident on a school bus. “A family says their developmentally disabled daughter was shaken and pushed by a bus aide on her way to her private school on the Upper West Side.”
The New York Times’ Ask Real Estate question always seems to be about the UWS. “We recently purchased a co-op in an Upper West Side brownstone with a large living room window overlooking our building’s garden. Now the owners of the abutting apartment in the neighboring brownstone are building a glass balcony off their master bedroom that will obstruct our view and dim our light.”
Love Bela Fleck & the Flecktones(all great musicians, especially Victor Wooten, aka Future Man) — where jazz intersects with bluegrass. Just saw them this summer in Port Chester at the Capitol. Brought the house down!
Please check out Rihanna Giddens on Banjo at Symphony Space this week/weekend.
The kid that climbs and hangs off of tall structures will appear again eventually, winning a Darwin award. I wonder if there were no social media outlets, would he still do these “stunts”?
Re: Finding Love at Whole Foods
“The couple met in 2015 through a mutual friend, at the Whole Foods grocery store on the Upper West Side.”
Sounds like “A marriage made at Whole Foods.”may be giving Whole Foods too much credit.
My suggestion for those seeking love would be to cultivate good friends and not to hang out at Whole Foods waiting for it to happen.
Meh. As if there were really so much as a dime’s worth of difference between National Review Republicans, and Democrats like Nadler. Two wings of the same bird-of-prey.
To quote Shakespeare, A plague o’both your houses!
(To say nothing of the follies of “democracy”…H.L. Mencken’s well-known apt quip on the matter will suffice for now.)
“On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
The moron observation was the last line of a column that appeared July 26, 1920, in the Baltimore Evening Sun, a newspaper Mencken helped found.
just helpin’