MONTAUK POINT OCEAN BEACH
Frankly, I am just so bored with the stunningly beautiful beaches you can lie on extending from Montauk in the east to Westhampton Beach and beyond. Much more interesting to me, anyway, is the ocean beach southwest of the lighthouse at Montauk. It is consistently rated the worst beach in the Hamptons for sunbathing and swimming. Huge boulders impede your way trying to walk the beach. Where there are no boulders, good-sized rocks and pebbles make it impossible to lie down. At the back of the beach is an 80-foot-tall sand cliff, not only impossible to climb but also very dangerous because of its frequent avalanches. Meanwhile, just offshore there are dangerous giant rocks upon which bask harp seals for most of the year. They are cute, but they have sharp teeth and they bite. This beach is not for the timid.

SECOND & THIRD HOUSE
Montauk, way ahead of its time, agreed to name every new building in that town with its own number beginning with one. There were no houses in the town when they decided this. First House was located across from Hither Hills State Park, but it burned down. Second House, built around 1710, still stands and is a museum at the entrance to town on the north side of the Montauk Highway, and Third House still stands and is the ranch house for the Theodore Roosevelt County Park. The entrance is out toward the Point.
The tradition of naming each house has continued to this day. And as houses get built all the time all at different places in Montauk, it has become quite a confusing crazy quilt of numbers. But the Montauk Fire Department has a huge map of all the houses in the town all with their numbers so if someone calls in to say that 814 House is on fire, they know where to go.

THE WALKING DUNES
A series of enormous sand dunes sits to the north of the Montauk Highway accessible by a dead end road known as Napeague Harbor Road. These dunes tower 110 feet up at the top, and are being moved by the winds in a southerly direction toward the Montauk Highway and the ocean. You can see the tops of trees that got swallowed up sticking out of the southern face of these dunes. The Walking Dunes are particularly beautiful at night, when you and your significant other can go up there to sit at the top, look at the stars and encounter the meaning of life, or whatever.

MISS AMELIA’S COTTAGE
This is the absolutely adorable white shingle cottage on the north side of Main Street, Amagansett. It is a perfect example of a colonial saltbox built in the 18th century. Actually it is not an example of it—it is a colonial saltbox built in the 18th century. The house was for years and years occupied by Amelia, and her husband, after she died said he missed her very much. Thus the name, Missing Amelia, which soon got shortened to just Miss Amelia.

LONG WHARF
What is now Long Wharf in Sag Harbor was founded in 1771 at the end of Main Street in that town. It is the proud centerpiece of the community, people walk out onto the end of it and back all the time and you can too. More than 100 whaling ships tied up at Long Wharf in the early 1800s. Occasionally they went out whaling. What we now call Long Wharf was originally called Long Landing. Boats were pulled up to a spit of a beach there, they built a dock and it became Long Dock. When they lengthened it, it became Long Pier and eventually, in the early 1800s, it got its grandest name, Long Wharf, because they had to make it a wharf to get the 100 whaling ships to fit.

EAST HAMPTON TOWN POND
This is a grand body of water where swans glide, ducks paddle and little boys launch model sailboats. It is located at the west end of Main Street in that town. For years and years, it was sometimes a pond but at other times a swamp. In the 1930s, president Franklin D. Roosevelt created a WPA project during the Depression to build a large concrete pipe and culvert at the western end of the swamp so the water could flow freely in and out. The result was the end of the days when the pond was swampy. Feel free to take pictures of FDR’s concrete pipe and culvert.

THREE WINDMILLS
The Main Street of East Hampton is blessed with three old English wood-shingled windmills made in the early 1800s when the English were doing that here. They are the Gardiner Mill, the Home Sweet Home Mill —both along the southern side of the pond— and the Hook Mill at the eastern end of Main Street. The Hook Mill has just undergone a renovation that took two years to complete. For some reason, the giant blades of the mill are made of wood that is thinner than the wood on the other mills, so they are a bit harder to see. I don’t know why they did that. The Hook Mill before the renovation had blades of thicker wood.

SAGG BEACH
Many consider Sagaponack Main Beach to be the most beautiful in the Hamptons. To the west of the beach, Sagg Pond comes within 100 yards of the ocean, but doesn’t link up to let water in or out. Because it is important to let the water in and out for some reason, twice a year, at times randomly chosen by the Town Trustees, heavy equipment—steam shovels, payloaders and trucks—are brought down there to make the “cut” so the ocean and pond connect for a few days to let the water flow out. After that, the cut “heals.” You can watch the “cut” they make when it happens. Just go down to the beach and wait. After a while, the steam shovels, payloaders and trucks will come. It could be a long time, but the wait is worth it. And after that comes the healing.

SCUTTLEHOLE ROAD
One of the most famous roads in the Hamptons is Scuttlehole Road. It runs parallel to Montauk Highway north of Bridgehampton and meanders through farm fields and polo fields near to where Madonna lives. Scuttlehole Road was named after the giant spiders the size of dinner plates who nest at odd intervals in holes along shoulders of this five mile long road. This explains why there are no sidewalks. Drive the length of it, but don’t stop.

GIANT ROCK
A huge boulder, bigger than you can imagine, 15 feet high, stands on the southeast corner of Hampton Road and Flying Point Road. Many tourists take photographs of it. It’s as famous as Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts. You are welcome to go there and look at it, but last month it was stolen.

PROPER ATTIRE
Along the sides of each of the two roads that take you into the heart of Southampton Village are green street signs with white lettering that read PLEASE OBSERVE OUR PROPER DRESS CODES. There is no way to know what the proper dress codes are, because the sign is not big enough to accommodate the code ordinance, but you can guess at it. Or you can go down to Village Hall and have a clerk there read you your rights. Anyway, feel free to photograph these signs. But keep your pants on.

COUNTY ROAD 39
This is the bypass road of downtown Southampton, which has become over time the gateway to the Hamptons. The Dan’s Papers offices are now located on the south side of this road. When it was originally built it was called the Southampton Bypass because that is what it did, but when it got fully developed with all the buildings and everything along the route, “bypass” seemed an inadequate name for it. So it became what it was, which was County Road 39. Two years ago, people in Southampton, tired of the awkwardness and length of that name, voted to give the road another name. They named it after a well-liked local politician who recently passed, so now it is the Edwin M. “Buzz” Schwenk Memorial Highway.

CUSTOMS HOUSE
At the very center of the bridge that crosses the Shinnecock Canal sits the small concrete customs house where you and whoever else is in your car must stop to have your passport stamped by officials as you go from Shinnecock to Hampton Bays or Hampton Bays to Shinnecock. You don’t have to plan to make a stop to visit this place. You will anyway.

Lockdown
A 29-year-old woman was working out at a Wall Street gym when several items were stolen from her unsecured locker—she reportedly left the items in the locker even though her lock was broken. The robber made off with the woman’s purse, containing an iPhone, a driver’s license, several credit cards and some jewelry.

Making a Drive for the Border
A Canadian visitor to New York City is temporarily stranded here after his rental car was stolen from its Tribeca parking spot on Sunday, May 6, in the early evening. Inside the stolen vehicle was a cell phone, money, a purse, a GPS, some CDs and a Canadian passport.

Calling the Fashion Police
A 25-year-old woman reported her wallet was stolen from her purse in Lower Manhattan while she was en route to the PATH train. The woman’s credit card records revealed a $720 purchase at Abercrombie & Fitch  by the brand-savvy thief before she managed to cancel the card. Also missing were her driver’s license, a train ticket and some cash.

Caffeine Fiasco
A 55-year-old man was waiting in line at a major coffee shop chain for his morning caffeine fix when he noticed his laptop was missing from his bag. While in the shop, he reported, his bag never left his person. The laptop was never recovered from the incredibly sneaky thief.

Too Hungry to Notice
A 38-year-old woman was eating at a popular lunch chain mid-afternoon on a Tuesday in the Financial District when she noticed her purse had been stolen from where she set it behind her chair. The stealthy thief made off with her iPhone, wallet, passport, credit cards and house keys.

Phoning It In
A 17-year-old boy was arrested mid-day in Soho after grabbing an iPhone from the hands of a 49-year-old woman, who was texting. A witness apprehended the thief, who produced a pocket knife with the blade exposed. The perpetrator was arrested by officers who discovered a stolen Blackberry in his possession as well. Other evidence collected included multiple cell phone chargers, two iPods, an iPod Touch, two cell phones and a Bluetooth device.
In another itheft, on a Monday in Tribeca, a 63-year-old man’s company iPhone was grabbed by a young man who proceeded to run off the train they were both riding. The phone’s Find My iPhone application returned no results, and the victim decided not to pursue the matter. Additionally, a young man was enjoying himself at a nightclub in Soho on a Friday when he noticed his iPhone had been stolen out of his back pocket. He searched the club for the burglar to no avail, but his phone’s tracking system revealed a signal in the Bronx.

A 31-year-old man parked his car on the street in Soho on a Saturday and went to dinner, only to return at 2 a.m. to find a window smashed and a backpack missing. The backpack contained $1,670 in cash and  a charger, a calculator and a pair of sunglasses.

An Ambitious Thief
A woman was partying Thursday night at a Soho nightclub when she reached into her purse to discover various items missing, including cash, credit cards, an iPhone and makeup. American Express later called her to approve a $4,000 transaction on her account, which she denied.

Contracting Crime
One unfortunate contractor was a victim of burglary on Thursday, May 17 on East 59th Street, where a crook broke into his truck and stole a valuable piece of equipment. The victim had parked his car at the job site and got to work; when he returned at about 9 p.m., he found all the locks on his truck were busted and an electronic tester valued at $15,000 was missing. There were no eyewitnesses to the crime, and the case is still open.

False Tickets Fiasco

With the Stanley Cup playoffs in full swing, tickets to the live games are sure to be sold for big bucks. One unfortunate Long Island man was the victim of grand larceny when he purchased five tickets to an NHL game and discovered they were fakes when he and his pals went to Madison Square Garden to catch the game. The victim traveled to Third Avenue and East 66th Street on Wednesday, May 16 to meet with a man who called himself Glen Read. The man sold him the fake tickets to the game for $2,500.
So far, there have been no arrests in this case.

High-Priced Hijinks
Jewelry stores are high-value targets for crooks, and a dastardly duo took advantage of one unfortunate store on the Upper East Side Monday, May 21. At 3:30 p.m., a man and a woman entered a store located on Lexington Avenue. After looking around at the merchandise, the woman garnered the attention of the clerk by dropping some of the display jewelry. While the clerk was busy aiding the woman, the man shoved as many items as he could into his pockets. Only later did the clerk realize that the two had made off with seven items, ranging from necklaces to earrings. Overall, the theft cost the store $20,000. So far, there have been no arrests made in the case.

Slippery after Burglary
On Thursday, May 17, at 10 a.m., an employee was buffing the floors of a business on the Upper East Side to prepare for the coming day of business. While he was hard at work, a slinky crook snuck in the service entrance of the business, snatched a Compaq notebook computer and booked it from the premises. The notebook is valued at $300. Currently, the NYPD is viewing video surveillance that is believed to have footage of the crook, who was not seen by the employee.

Courtesy of Ben Lazar

As 25-year-old Deborah Feldman slides into a booth at an Upper East Side restaurant, wearing a trendy leather jacket and knitted blue sweater, it is difficult to imagine the path she took to get to this exact point in her life, a journey she details in her debut memoir, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots. In the memoir, Feldman describes how she was raised mainly by her grandparents in the Satmar community in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Feldman writes about sneaking off to a library as a girl to consume illicit books such as Roald Dahl’s Matilda. When she was 17, she was married to a man preselected by her family, with whom she had only spent 30 minutes before the ceremony. At 19, Feldman gave birth to a son. Hoping for a different life, she started secretly attending classes at Sarah Lawrence College, where she studied a variety of fields including literature and feminism, and started an anonymous blog detailing her experiences. Through her blog, Feldman was connected with a literary agent and then, while still attending Sarah Lawrence, she finished her memoir and left her community with her son. The book, however, has experienced a fair share of criticism and sparked several conversations about Feldman’s portrayal of her upbringing.

On Thursday, May 17, Feldman will present the work in the Lower East Side at the Tenement Museum, but we sat down with her beforehand to learn more about her work and the community she comes from.

You have said you were surprised by the reaction to—or success of—the book. What do you think people are responding to?

I am surprised the book did well, because with a book like this [the subject] is niche and you expect the book to do at best mid-list. And then something very weird happened. My publicist set me up [with an interview] with the New York Post and I met this woman, [the writer] Sara Stewart, who I loved and adored. We had this great lunch together and I gave a lot to the interview. … Then the article came out and it was nothing like what I thought this person would write … but the Post I guess edited it so that it sounded like these shallow sound bites … but then the Post piece got picked up by three newspapers. Then someone at The View saw it and called me and booked me for the show. But the Post is what got the [people from my community] angry.

Is that a publication that your community reads?

A younger Feldman. Courtesy of Simon and Schuster.

They read whatever is written about them. They are obsessed with how they are portrayed in the media. They want to control everything that is said about them.

They took issue with a lot of things in the [Post] interview that are the truth, but the Post misconstrued it—but it is not misconstrued to a point where you can completely deny it.

So they picked the article apart. From there, the more publicity I got, the more they wanted to knock me down, [but] had the Post not published that article, the dominoes would not have fallen into place.

But then I went on The View and I talked about marital purity, which is a big secret. Nobody talks about it in public ever. It is like we all agree that it is the one thing you cannot talk about because if the rest of the world knows we do this they will never look at us the same. … That’s why their excuse is “they can never understand because it’s so beautiful.” … It all boils down to [one] view and everything is built on that view that women are unpure because they menstruate.

[On The View] I was talking from my experiences and trying to be as simple and clear as possible because a lot of these things are really hard to explain. The funny thing is that I could have said way worse things about the laws of sex and marital purity … I didn’t bring up all the details. I just gave them the basics … and some people can argue that that is beautiful, but it wasn’t beautiful for me.

Feldman poses for her wedding. Courtesy of Simon and Schuster.

You have spoken about going through these marriage rituals and finding them shocking. You couldn’t believe that the women in your community were all doing this. Do women not speak about this?

No one ever talks about it in public. You never discuss it with anyone.

Even among only women?

Well … first of all, people are so bored and have so little to do besides work and take care of babies … so gossip is rolled into a million times its natural size. [Gossip] is the only thing that is safe. You never talk about you. You never confide, so you talk about someone else. It’s how people bond … the women will get together with their babies and have play dates … and gossip about their own families, about their friends, about their neighbors … when you have that kind of attitude obviously everything you do everyone will know.

There is this attitude—it’s almost like communism—of “don’t ever show people how you really feel because everyone will know.” There is no privacy and I think that is why women don’t communicate because they don’t trust each other.

What do they gossip about?

People gossip about everything: Is someone having trouble in his or her marriage? Is someone’s child ill? They will gossip about whatever they can find. They will gossip about someone wearing a brightly colored turban.

You have said that things are changing in the community that you come from, that the girls in your community no longer have to sneak away to the library to find out about a book like yours.

A few things happened that really changed the community drastically. One of those things was Williamsburg becoming cool and cool people moving in, which filled the neighborhood with bars. The rabbis were terrified of this because they knew that it was very tempting for a man to leave his family on a Friday night, walk a couple blocks and go to a bar.

The second thing that happened was the Internet. The Internet arrived and then there were cellphones and smartphones. What happened was there was no longer an effective way to build a wall around the community, because before if you wanted information, you had to go get it and you didn’t want to be seen getting it.

Courtesy of Simon and Schuster

You are working on a second book about people who leave religious groups both in America and abroad. What parallels do you find between your own story and theirs?

It’s funny that you say that, because when I wrote the proposal for my second book I didn’t think about it as anything more than a memoir, but when I wrote the memoir it was about other people’s stories, because I was meeting people and their stories where intersecting mine. When the publisher that I work with now, Penguin, read it, they said we see this as a much broader book than just a memoir. [They saw] this as a book about people who leave religion all over the world and what they have in common. Now this is a book about religious refugees.

Sign in for the tourney starts at 12:30 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 11. Get your tickets (a paltry $10) as soon as possible though as they will soon be long gone.

We got them on the phone to talk about the book, the shop, their ball technique and what’s in store for the future.

Did you ever think meatballs would be this popular?
Michael Chernow: At first I thought the concept was brilliant, but as we got closer to the opening, I was a little nervous about meatballs being the focus of the menu. But I think everyone loves meatballs. Rarely do I run into someone who doesn’t like them. That’s what I was banking on and, sure enough, it worked out.

How does running The Meatball Shop compare to other restaurants you have worked in?
MC: I have been working in restaurants since I was 13 years old—that makes it about 18 years. I have taken bits of what I learned in each restaurant and incorporated my own theories. I feel we have been able to create a really special place that I would like to work in and that I would want my friends to hang out in. I think the key is to create a special environment for the staff and make them my first priority. I have taken Danny Meyer’s lead in that.

Why did you pick the location for the businesses?
MC: For our first shop we knew we wanted to be in the Lower East Side. I worked in that area for 10 years; I knew the demographic would eat us up, literally and figuratively. The density of bars in the LES was the deciding factor for us. We wanted to attract younger bargoers to stop in before going out, and on their way home after drinking. The positioning of the first shop was strategically planned to categorize The Meatball Shop as a young, hip place to eat. It worked. We had the same motivation when looking for the Brooklyn store, so we secured a location on Bedford Avenue, right in the heart of Williamsburg.
Once we felt comfortable in our targeted demographic, we took a swing in a more family-oriented market, the West Village. We were a bit nervous, but the concept proved to be viable there as well.

Any reason two are downtown rather than uptown?
MC: The food scene downtown is thriving. As I mentioned before, we wanted to be considered as a restaurant that would not only be known for its food, but for its atmosphere.

The Meatball Shop as a unique system of ordering. Why did you format the menu in that way?
Daniel Holzman: There is a burger joint in Los Angeles called The Counter, and they have a check-box system where you choose your bun, patty, sauce and topping. Mike and I loved it, and we liked the idea of doing something that was kind of kitschy.
At first, The Meatball Shop was going to be counter service only, but it was too busy so we started full service. The immediate feedback was that people loved filling out the menu—eventually, we started using dry erase markers because we got sick of wasting the original paper menus. Now, I when I go to a restaurant, I want to write on their menu, too.

How long did the book take?
MC: The book took around a year from start to finish, from writing to taking photos. We wanted to make sure it was consistent with the restaurant, from the music to the food to the energy. I think we were able to portray that when you open up the book.

How did you pick the recipes for the book?
MC: For the original recipes, Dan and I spent a lot of time honing in on the flavors we love. We would look at the flavors and say, "Hey, let’s make that into a meatball." Usually, I come up with the name and Dan comes up with the recipe.
DH: We wanted to document the restaurant using all the recipes we liked. We had to pare down quite a bit and now, the book is almost completely made up of recipes we make at The Meatball Shop.

How far do you want to take the Meatball Shop concept?
MC: Dan and I are very excited with where we are right now, though we always have our ear to the ground and are constantly looking for ways to make the concept more efficient.
DH: We have been talking about it a lot. Mike and I said we would wait until we opened these two restaurants to get some hindsight. We weren’t sure what it would be like to open them, but people are responding well and I would like to open more.

Any new concepts in the works?
MC: I think meatballs have really taken over our lives, and stepping into a different concept isn’t something we are looking into right now. Also, the demographics of meatballs are so wide and vast, I don’t see us opening another concept outside the meatball shop.
DH: I would be really surprised if at some point in our lives we don’t do something else. But right now, meatballs are fun and I love it.

A Wedding of Hope
When Diamond Jones and Michael Thomas were married on Sept. 9, 2011, one might say that their wedding was a little unorthodox. They did get married in a 19th-century chapel, and hundreds of guests bedecked in their finest watched as Diamond, in her wedding gown, glided down the aisle.

The chapel, however, was located in the Bowery Mission, a two-building complex on the Bowery that houses the organization of the same name that supports homeless and poor New Yorkers. The guests were a collection of homeless men and women from the Mission and other shelters throughout the city, some of whom Michael and Diamond knew through their volunteer work, while others were complete strangers. The dress and the guests’ attire was “practically donated,” said Diamond, who paid a little over $100 for a $10,000 gown. Almost everything surrounding the big day, dubbed the “Wedding of Hope,” was donated, from the food at the reception to the flowers and makeup.

For Diamond, her volunteer and advocacy work for the homeless was inspired by her own experience as a young woman living on the streets of Manhattan. A few months after arriving in New York City from Virginia in her early twenties, Diamond found herself sleeping in hotel lobbies and doorways while working a minimum-wage day job. Her lifeline came in the form of a good-paying position with a nationwide bank.

And of the wedding day, Diamond said, “It was magical—a lot of work, but it was such a relief that our dream wedding came true.”

Blue Valentine
The first time Jennifer Stanton (née Lambert) saw her husband, Phil, his hands and head from the neck up were covered in blue paint. Phil, a co-founder of the Blue Man Group, was performing at a theater in Astor Place in the early ’90s just as the group was gaining enough popularity to make a living.

During the show, the time came for Phil and his two fellow performers to weave their way through the audience. Jennifer found him hovering over her.

“He looked me in the eyes and—this is so corny, but I thought, ‘His eyes are so amazing,’” she recalled. “I watched him for the rest of the show.”

A few months later, in 1993, Jennifer and Phil finally met face to face—and this time he was in drag. As part of a Broadway Cares event, the Blue Man Group was set to perform En Vogue’s “Free Your Mind.”

“He came gliding across the aisle in patent leather high heel boots, short shorts and a long opera cape and, I swear to God, I thought I was going to pass out. I thought he was stunning looking, confident and uninhibited. He came up to me and said, ‘Hi, I’m Phil. I’ll be your date for the evening,’” she said. “From that first day, there was never a question of ‘Are we together?’ It was just, ‘This is it.’”

The bridge in time from that first sighting to their first meeting almost reads like an old-fashioned courtship. After the Blue Man Group performance, Jennifer, at the time a cast member of a Guys and Dolls revival on Broadway, admitted to her fellow cast members that she “had a crush on a Blue Man.”

Months later, at an event at Gracie Mansion, a publicist connected to both shows egged Jennifer to write Phil a note. On a Gracie Mansion cocktail napkin, Jennifer wrote “some smart things about the show,” said Phil, and left her name and the address of the theater where she was working.

“I was intrigued. I wrote a letter and dropped it off at the theater,” Phil continued. “She called me on April 1, 1993, and we talked for three hours.”

The pair set themselves up on a “blind date”; Jennifer would meet him at his rehearsal space and help with the choreography for the Broadway Cares event. On that first date, they traversed Downtown Manhattan, from a sushi restaurant on East 9th Street—Hasaki, still there—to a bar in Nolita and then around Tribeca, where Phil lived at the time.

Over 15 years later, the Stanton duo has become a quartet with sons Cove and Scout and they continue to live Downtown. Through several other costume changes—and new projects like The Blue School, which Phil and Jennifer co-founded—they have stayed by each other’s side.

| By Lonnie Firestone

A great city is often marked by its confluence of architecture and nature. A century and a half ago in Manhattan, that combination created Central Park; today’s incarnation is The High Line, running from Gansevoort to West 34th Street near the West Side Highway. The ratio of beams to botany may be skewed toward to the urban end, but The High Line nonetheless offers city dwellers a bit of nature, earth and plant life, even high above ground.

And like Central Park, which has been a vast backdrop for the visual arts (perhaps most memorably with Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s The Gates in 2005), The High Line offers its own canvas of sorts: a 25-by-75-foot billboard positioned at 18th Street and 10th Avenue. High Line Billboard is the latest initiative from High Line Art, which commissions public art projects and installations from local and international artists for the park.

On display from Feb. 1–29 is “Developing Tray #2” by New York artist Anne Collier, a massive-scale photograph depicting a print of an open eye inside a developing tray. The image is at once a finished work of art and a depiction of art in progress.

The effect of an open eye (the artist’s own) staring at the viewer is particularly arresting given its immense proportions. “It is confrontational, sensual and voyeuristic at the same time,” said Cecilia Alemani, the Donald R. Mullen Jr. curator and director of High Line Art.

For the artist, displaying her work on a New York City billboard is a milestone in itself. “The street in New York is full of distractions—it’s chaotic,” Collier said. “I hope that [my work] might interrupt someone’s expectation of what might typically be seen on a billboard.”

If the High Line is the convergence of architecture and nature in Manhattan, the High Line Billboard is the convergence of street art and gallery space. For painters, photographers and mixed media artists, the opportunity to display their work on such a grand canvas amidst the steel of the rail lines and the city streets offers wider visibility than an exhibition at The Whitney—and perhaps comparable recognition.

High Line Art, jointly presented by Friends of the High Line and the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, was founded in 2009 with the goal of enabling artists “to think of creative ways to engage with the uniqueness of the architecture and design of the High Line.” High Line founders Joshua David and Robert Hammond had aspirations early on for the historic rail line to become an arena for artists, and the breadth of High Line Art today (which now also oversees a projection screen for silent films) has become a draw to the landmark site.

High Line Art has presented sound installations, sculptures, experimental films, paintings—even dance performances. The previous commission for the High Line Billboard was a gigantic representation of a $100,000 bill, created by John Baldessari, entitled, “The First $100,000 I Ever Made.”

Art in the public sphere lends itself to a different kind of reception and a different viewer relationship than art in galleries or museums; the environment of buildings, bridges, cars and crowds contributes to the viewer’s experience. “I’m interested to see how the image operates against the visual backdrop of the city,” said Collier.

By Alan Krawitz

Built in 1929, the historic Bialystoker Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing served residents of the Lower East Side for 80 years before it was put up for sale and ultimately shuttered late last year. The center’s nonprofit owners, Bialystoker Center and Bikur Cholim Inc., claim that mounting debt brought on by a combination of factors has forced them to sell the site in order to cover their financial obligations.

But now, local residents and preservationists are racing against time to get the 10-story structure, located at 228 Broadway, designated as a landmark to protect the site against development into residential housing.

“We got a tip that the sale of the Center may happen as early as this week,” said Joyce Mendelsohn, a founding member of the group Friends of the Bialystoker Home, a preservation group formed last year when the home’s closure was revealed. “We’re trying very hard to get the Center on the calendar of the Landmarks Preservation Commission [LPC],” Mendelsohn said by phone this week.

Getting a spot on the LPC calendar is the first step in the landmark designation process. If successful, it would freeze any work being done on the building for 40 days. This past Sunday, Mendelsohn hosted a panel discussion at the nearby Seward Park Cooperative on the past, present and future of the Bialystoker Home that was attended by more than 75 local residents, as well as preservationists and historians alike.

Support for preservation of the Bialystoker Home is substantial. So far, 14 LES organizations, including the Historic Districts Council, Bowery Alliance of Neighbors, Lower East Side Preservation Initiative and the Art Deco Society of New York, have joined the Friends of the Bialystoker Home.

Panel speakers discussed both the unique architectural elements of the building, such as its Art Deco style with an emphasis on verticality and use of setbacks and medallions representing the 12 tribes of Israel, as well as the structure’s important role in the settling and assimilation of Jews into the area from Bialystok, Poland.

Suzanne Wasserman, a filmmaker and director of the Gotham Center for NYC History/CUNY Graduate Center, described the LES as an unforgiving place in the 1930s, when the Bialystoker Home first opened. “One in three New Yorkers were unemployed and there were long bread lines no matter where you went,” Wasserman said.

Wasserman showed a photo of an unemployed LES man wearing a bread board that read, “I want work now!!”

“The majority of Bialystokers were poor immigrants,” said Elissa Sampson, a longtime LES resident and Ph.D. candidate in urban geography at the University of North Carolina.

She called the lettering at the entrance to the home, English letters written out as Yiddish script, an “amazing statement on immigration and assimilation.” The Yiddish became English and the immigrants became Americans, Sampson explained.

Daniel White, a spokesperson for the Bialystoker Center, said that landmark designation would only hurt the site’s chances for redevelopment sufficient to cover the center’s financial obligations. Those obligations include payment of pensions and benefits to members of 1199SEIU as well as back taxes owed on the property.

“The goal here is to redevelop the site so the center can pay off its debts,” White said.

However, as of this moment, local residents and the center seem to have different agendas.

“They want maximum profit and we want to save the building,” Mendelsohn said.

She added that as of Monday, supporters of the Bialystoker Home had delivered 57 postcards and 12 letters to the LPC favoring landmark designation for the site. And while Mendelsohn acknowledges that the building will be less valuable once it’s landmarked, she believes the Center can still recoup its money.

“There are still other developers out there that are interested in the property,” she said.

| By Linnea Covington

When you first walk into the Bye Bye CBGB exhibit at Soho’s Clic Gallery, the faces of disheveled punk rockers greet you. Pierced lips, funky hair and leather dominate the style, and though it appears they were shot in 1973, the images are from 2006, when the notorious venue finally shuttered its doors. Showing up at iconic CBGB OMFUG (Country, Bluegrass, Blues and Other Music For Uplifting Gormandizers) for its final 48 hours, Parisian visual artist Bruno Hadjadj shot the faces of those new and old punk rockers who had gathered to say adieu.

On Saturday, Oct. 14, 2006, Blondie’s Debbie Harry belted out “Heart of Glass.” The next night, Patti Smith played some tunes with Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers and ended her set with a rendition of “Gloria” that interlaced lines and melodies from various Ramones songs. I was there and, despite the cliché, it was a night to remember.

What most people don’t talk about is what happened outside the doors. While only a fraction managed to get tickets, on that warm October night hundreds of fans remained outside. People from all over the world had come to see the club for the last time, touch its graffiti-covered walls, smoke cigarettes and sneak sips of cheap whiskey from a flask under its dirty 315 Bowery awning in hopes of catching a glimpse of one of the famous faces from CBGB’s rich past.

Though many left disappointed, Hadjadj captured them there as they paid homage to an era that, despite the decades, hadn’t changed much since the early 1970s.

“The energy was so intense with all these people trying to get in, some in line for 24 hours,” said Hadjadj from his home in Paris. “My purpose was to shoot the people, not the stars.”

Though he made a book from the images, the exhibit at Clic Gallery displays only 14 pictures of a few people that struck a chord in him; like Flow, a girl in a short skirt, boots and cowboy hat that he showed as a gel print then blew up and decorated with blinking lights. Another portrait presents a rockabilly-styled man with a prominent belt buckle and piercings, which Hadjadj also shows two ways (including the blinking lights).

On one wall, he deviates from the portraits and instead displays sketches of winged cans of beer, gin bottles and a calendar, a seemingly poignant remark on the death of the club.

Hadjadj’s admiration for CBGB was almost happenstance. For years, he lived off and on in New York, and in the 1980s he resided near the venue on Bowery and Houston.

“During all those years, it was the place I was always passing by. I saw so many concerts there,” he said. “Even if you didn’t know who was performing, it was a place to go and spend some time.”

Hadjadj likened the club to such historical places as the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building, and said that many tourists would make seeing a show at CBGB part of their journey. Even if you didn’t subscribe to the punk rock fashion, the place remained a catalyst for culture long after this style of music gave way to hardcore, rock and the experimental bands that took over the stage in the early 1990s. Either way, a few things could always be counted on: a night of many bands, cheap, disgusting bathrooms and the feeling that you were mingling with history.

While Hadjadj’s exhibit at the gallery doesn’t capture the feeling of actually being in CBGB, it does seize on the emotions of the people who really knew about the club, would miss the venue and longed to keep a piece of it near. For this reason, he chose to add those LCD lights to some images to give them an iconic sparkle—to him, the real stars were the people that came out that night, not for fame or glory, but for love.

Bye Bye CBGB, through Feb. 28, Clic Gallery, 255 Centre St. (at Broome St.), 212-966-2766.