West 101st Street and Central Park West was co-named “Corine Pettey Way” last week. Read below to learn more.
September 23, 2019 Weather: Sunny, with a high of 90 degrees.
Notices:
Readings, concerts and other local events are on our calendar.
Corine Pettey was a teacher and activist who fought for tenant rights and environmental protections for 30 years, retiring in 2004. “Corine Pettey was a long-time political activist during the 1960s and ’70s and then again after she retired from the NYC Board of Education in 2004 after a 30-year career as a teacher and elementary school principal. In the 1960s, she joined the Riverside Democrats to work on national and local issues like enforcing housing statutes and helping tenants from being evicted during co-op conversions. She advocated for the co-op conversion law which today prevents renters from being evicted by landlords converting their rental buildings to co-ops.”
News:
Leaks plague the Douglass Houses building at 826 Columbus Avenue (101st Street), and even impact a childcare facility in the building. ““This leak has been here ever since I have been here for years. Housing doesn’t do anything about the leaks,” complained Zeny Malik, who lives at the Douglass Houses. “They fix certain things and will patch it up for a while.”
A Fordham student describes the unique challenge of shopping on the Upper West Side, visiting several grocery stores over a few hours on a weekday. She calls her column “Eat, Pray, Cry”. “I hustle to Morton Williams, looking to keep my shopping experience short and sweet. Once inside, I am greeted by a blast of cool wind and a hot bar perpetually down to its final scoop of crusty mashed potatoes. Within moments, my guard is up…Although its distance is daunting, the siren call of Trader Joe’s affordable products leaves me with no choice but to make the trek up to 72nd Street. As I approach the store, I can see the checkout line spilling out the front doors.”
Bob Dylan will have a Beacon Theater residency this year. “Bob Dylan has announced an intimate 10-show run at NYC’s Beacon Theatre on November 23, 24, 26, 27, 29, and 30 & December 2, 3, 5 and 6.”
the short piece on Corine Petty reminds us that the “old” West Side was a great place, and the “old” progressive activism accomplished a lot. The UWS was filled with activists like Corine.
Hi Bruce
That “old progressive activism” turned the UWS into a grimy and crime-ridden dump.
(It did, however, result in some greedy and selfish “progressives” earning a huge financial windfall from their subsidized apartments).
It was all those evil gentrifiers and developers who cleaned up the mess these old time progressives made and turn the UWS into a safe and desirable neighborhood.
Sherm
Sherm. the upper west side was transformed by longtime residents who stayed through the bad old days and supported small businesses and partnered with the local police making the kind of neighbor hood people now want very much to live in .The predatory developers and landlords showed up in the last ten years to take advantage of this
Not quite, but you can believe this fairy tale if it makes you happy.
And what exactly is a “predatory” landlord and developer? I never heard that term before.
Hi Sherm,
With all due respect, your narrative is not supported by any actual historical analysis of the revitalization of the UWS. That revitalization was, in fact, the result of the work of numerous city agencies and larger social and economic changes.
You can no more blame the problems of the old UWS on activists than you can cheer to successes of the new UWS at the free market.
-Abe
+1!!!
Many colleges today have food pantries for students. Sad that they’re needed, but good that they’re there.
there was a recent study of CUNY that showed that some super-high percentage of students are “food insecure” (don’t have enough to eat) at some point every month. Also many CUNY students are “housing insecure”: homeless and/or crashing on someone’s couch.
We need hundreds and thousands of activists like Corine Pettey to address these issues. thankfully, the younger generation is producing them.
While there may be some “food insecurity”, I think there is a fair amount of not prioritizing correctly.
Stop overusing this residency thing. He’s playing ten shows over two weeks. Why is that now a “residency?”
Reading the Fordham student’s essay, it did not seem to me that the student could not afford food or an issuecof food insecurity …?
In fact, there are a few references to ordering delivery including:
“With the optimism of a woman only three weeks into the semester, I stride confidently out of my dorm, certain that this trip will empower me to stop ordering copious amounts of soup from Uber Eats.”
Though it has its deficits, perhaps the student should have tried Western Beef which is just a few blocks from Fordham
I don’t think the check out line at Trader Joe’s ever spilled out the front doors on to Broadway since the check out is one flight down, and any long lines snake around the store. Besides, at busy periods, the store has had 32 registers open with a mean waiting time of ten to twelve minutes! T.J.’s does a good job taking care of its customers.
My senior parents live five blocks south of Fordham and visit Trader Joe’s a few times a week. It only takes about 15 minutes to walk there from 57th street, hardly a “daunting distance” even for them. I agree with the poster who said the checkout line does not spill out the front doors. The only time you will see a line outside is before the 8am opening, on big holidays, and when severe weather is forecasted. “Eat Pray Cry” seems to be more poetic fiction than fact.