Monday Bulletin: Post-Covid Psychotherapy, Open Air Opera, Park Harassment Allegations

Photo of outdoor comedy at the Westside Comedy Club by Gretchen Berger.

May 24, 2021 Weather: Partly cloudy, with a high of 67 degrees.

Notices:
Our calendar has local and virtual events.

A Food Bank giveaway will take place on Wednesday at Lincoln Center. More here. And a mobile vaccine site will be at Lincoln Center on Wednesday from 8 a.m. until 4 p.m., and on Thursday and Friday from 12-8.

News:
Public schools will open fully in person in September, with no remote option, the city announced. “The news comes as more than 60% of the city’s nearly 1 million public school students continue to learn from home full-time, with hundreds of thousands of children not stepping into a classroom for more than a year,” Chalkbeat reports.

COVID-19 forced psychotherapy online with mixed results, according to Ginia Bellafante in The New York Times. While some communication cues could be lost when treatment is virtual, a broader range of people might have access to psychotherapy online. “In New York, the high cost of treatment is inextricably linked to the real-estate market. Traditionally, many of the best-trained and most-sought-after practitioners have been concentrated in the city’s therapy alleys — parts of the Upper West Side, Upper East Side and Greenwich Village near the psychoanalytic institutes and often where the therapists themselves have lived. In New York, whether you are buying a bouquet of peonies, a pound of ham, or 50 minutes of psychic relief, you are always paying someone’s rent, and commercial rents in these places are high. But if therapists catered to some (or even all) of their patients online, reducing their overhead, they might be able to broaden the community they served, offering treatment to the less privileged, for fees on a sliding scale.”

“On Sunday, May 16th, the furloughed artists of the Met Opera came together for an outdoor performance on the Upper West Side called Open Air Opera: Street Dances,” broadwayworld reported. The event took place on West 75th Street and Broadway. “Dancers of the Met teamed up with the Met Orchestra and Met Chorus Artists to give the city what it has been craving this past year: live performances….’The healing power art has in all our lives is remarkable and it is to be shared, not saved,'” said Co-Producer Ceasar Abreu. “‘This live outdoor performance comes after a year of merely all online presentations and solo practicing in small New York City apartments, making for a grand impact for the audience but on the dancers as well.” Open Air Opera is part of New York City’s new Open Culture program. To learn more about the Dancers of the Met and sign up for future scheduling, click here.

Allegations of sexual harrassment were filed in court last year by two female gardeners employed by the Riverside Park Conservancy, against co-workers,” Patch reported. “‘The colleagues propositioned [one] for sex, spread sexual rumors about her, locked her in a bathroom and forced her to say ‘I love you’ in order to be released, and sang songs with sexually suggestive lyrics to her,’ reads a lawsuit filed on June 10, 2020, against the Riverside Park Conservancy and Lynda Tower — the Vice President of Operations at the nonprofit. The suit from…a Black woman, goes on to allege disability discrimination, race discrimination, gender-based discrimination and retaliation on the part of the Riverside Park Conservancy.” That suit was settled by the Conservancy, which denies any wrongdoing, telling Patch “the few alleged incidents that Plaintiff reported to RPC under its sexual harassment policy were addressed promptly and proportionately.”

The historic Kleeberg Residence, built in 1898, on Riverside Drive between W. 72nd and W. 73rd Streets is back on the market after two years, priced between the $15.8 million it sold for at auction in 2016, and the $40 million it once demanded. $25 million will get you this partially reconstructed, “37-foot-wide mansion, with a soaring 25-foot high oval living room, oriented to overlook Riverside Park and the Hudson River,” mansionglobal wrote. Designed by an acclaimed Italian architect, it calls for “26 rooms across an approximately 19,000 square feet of interior space, with nine bedrooms, 11 bathrooms, four half bathrooms, two studies and a staff office….Luxury amenities approved include an 83-foot marble pool, a partial basketball court, a movie theater, a rooftop terrace and multiple outdoor terraces…” If that feels a bit too much for your family, “it can also be built into a condo by a developer or designer,” says the broker.