Another hat in the ring?
Corey Johnson was elected chairperson of Community Board 4 (Chelsea/Clinton) last Wednesday night. An up-and-coming young leader, it’s said he’s eyeing a run at the District 3 City Council seat in 2013. Johnson became “an instant gay hero” when he was profiled in Sports Illustrated and The New York Times in 2000 after he came out to his high school football team, on which he played middle linebacker, in Massachusetts. Other expected candidates include Brad Hoylman, who was just re-elected chairperson of Community Board 2; Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation; and activist Yetta Kurland.
Pedicabs to parking:
We hear that the 60 Thompson hotel has taken over the former HUB Station pedicab garage space on Thompson St. between Watts and Broome Sts. and will use it as a parking lot for guests’ cars.
PEOPs protest:
Cartoonist Fly is “howling” in outrage over her mistreatment during last weekend’s HOWL festival in Tompkins Square Park. She said she was “stunned” at what went down. Basically, as she tells it, “HOWL police” informed her she couldn’t sell her PEOPs zines in the park, even though she sells them there all the time. The HOWL crew told her the festival’s vendors weren’t being charged anything to sell their wares, but that there was a lot of paperwork to be filled out, yadda, yadda, yadda. She said, O.K., fine, she would just give out her cartoons for free, but they told her she couldn’t do that either. “I said, ‘O.K., well I’m going to do it anyway. So, do what you have to do.’ So they left all aggro and I sat there with my zines and I even sold a few things! I made $9!” Fly reported. “I knew Allen Ginsberg and I emceed and performed at several shows with him — I think he would’ve been on my side!” Fly assured of the festival’s legendary Beat poet namesake. “I think in the future the HOWL organizers should ask themselves: ‘What would Ginsberg do?’ ” After the bizarre confrontation, Fly said several people came up to her and told her they enjoyed seeing her PEOPs in this newspaper. She said she never had problems with HOWL in the past when it was run by Phil Hartman or Marguerite Van Cook.
“No Ribbon Man”:
His talking point column in our June 2 issue about the “hypocrisy” of the LaGuardia Corner Gardens could be the last thing he ever writes, Mayer Vishner tells us. That’s mainly because he’s down to his last typewriter ribbon, no one sells them anymore and he doesn’t know how to use a “f—n’ computer.” However, on the upside, the former managing editor of the alt LA Weekly magazine in the 1980s — “when it was bigger than the Village Voice” — is looking forward to a documentary film that might be made about him. The potential movie is being done by the same people who did “No Impact Man.” As Vishner puts it, it’s about “a secular, pacifist, Yippie pothead confronting the 21st century.” Vishner is also known for being a buddy of the late Abbie Hoffman, and was on his defense committee when the Yippie icon was busted for cocaine in the early 1970s.
“Mosaic Man” going mobile?
We recently caught Jim Power, the “Mosaic Man,” coming out of Ray’s Candy Store on Avenue A, where he had bought a couple of frankfurters for his pooch partner, Jesse Jane. Power said don’t be surprised if you see him riding around in an electric wheelchair sometime soon; he said Matt Rosen has talked to him about possibly hooking him up with one. Power said he’ll need it until he somehow can raise $3,000 to $5,000 for a hip-replacement operation. As for his “Mosaic Trail,” which he recently proclaimed was dead and finished, he now says he’s thinking of completely redoing all his Avenue A street lampposts. He’s also adding international accents to his individual lampposts, starting with Japanese, German and Swedish ones.
Correction:
A letter by Ginette Schenk in our May 19 issue about the late jazz violinist Billy Bang said he used to like to talk to her because she was vaguely related to “Diane Reinhardt.” In fact, this distant cousin was the famous Gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. (The error was made when we typed up Schenk’s handwritten letter to the editor.)
