ASSEMBLY MEMBER ROSENTHAL’S CALL FOR HELP INSPIRED WEST COAST SCHOOL

When Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal sent out an e-mail to her constituents on the Upper West Side that explained how they could aid victims of Hurricane Sandy, she did not expect a response from San Diego.

Rosenthal’s e-mail list, it turned out, was a bit dated. One recipient was a former Upper West Side resident who left the city three years ago for the Southern California city. There she enrolled her children at San Diego Jewish Academy, a day school with a history of community outreach that includes benefit drives for post-earthquake Haiti and post-Katrina New Orleans. When she heard that the school’s administrators where brainstorming aid projects for New York City a few weeks ago, she forwarded Rosenthal’s message to Head of School Chaim Heller.

“We were looking for a local person who was actually doing something on the ground,” Heller told West Side Spirit on Friday at Rosenthal’s West 72nd Street office. “We wanted to be able to tell our students, practically, what their contributions would mean—something tangible.”

Heller and his colleagues decided to host an event that would raise money instead of goods, and told Rosenthal they would donate half the proceeds to a local organization recommended by her. Then they set about organizing and advertising their project: “The Mother of All Garage Sales,” a daylong used-item sale run by the school’s 600 kindergarten-through-12th-grade students and their parents.

Students spent the week leading up to the Nov. 11 sale collecting items from their families and posting fliers across the city. On the day of the sale, they took on roles assigned by grade, such as managing particular sections of goods and grilling hot dogs, which they sold to raise additional money.

According to Heller, the school charged $5 for food and a $5-per-car entrance fee. The items for sale, he added, were far from dusty throwaways pulled out of attics: “There was furniture, there were television sets, sports equipment, bicycles. There was a car. It was a big deal. We fanned all over the city for a week picking things up from people’s homes.”

The sale began at 8 a.m. and closed at 3 p.m. Heller said that people lined up before it opened, and well over 1,000 attended. The school raised $23,000 by the end of the day, well over double what Heller had anticipated.

Half of this amount went to the Jewish Federations of America, an international Jewish organization that has spearheaded its own extensive aid projects for victims of the storm. The other half, by Rosenthal’s recommendation, went to Met Council, one of the city’s largest human services agencies.

“I’ve worked closely with Met Council in my almost-seven years in office,” Rosenthal told West Side Spirit. “I know what wonderful work they’ve done when I’ve needed help for my constituents. The kind of help they give is not just food or places to live, but actual human beings who care and have empathy and compassion for the people who are stuck in a dark, powerless apartment.”

Ilene Marcus, Met Council’s chief of staff, joined Rosenthal in her office to accept an oversized check from Heller. She agreed that her organization’s mission in hurricane relief is to provide personal care to victims as well as goods and cash assistance. “It’s all about one-on-one interaction, making people feel comfortable,” she said.

According to her, San Diego Jewish Academy’s donation will help fund Met Council’s multifaceted “whole needs” approach to aiding hurricane victims, which includes building repairs, temporary housing, bulk food shipments, direct cash assistance and social worker deployments.

Did Rosenthal think it was funny that a large donation came from a mistakenly sent e-mail? “It was not a mistake,” she laughed. “It was serendipity!”

Nate Radley's The Big Eyes.

Nate Radley, a punctilious guitarist, is at Barbes in Brooklyn July 18 with four-fifths of the quintet from The Big Eyes (Fresh Sound New Talent 395). It comprises nine of his original songs, measured in tone and tempo, with amorphous melodies that his capable band (Loren Stillman, alto sax; Pete Rende, Fender Rhodes piano, who won’t be at the performance; Matt Pavolka, bass; Ted Poor, drums) flesh out in various combinations. Though too ruminative by half for my taste, Radley and company make the most of dynamics and interplay to build tension and arrive at release. Barbes is tiny; it will get hot.

Tenor saxophonist J.D. Allen brings The Third Incarnation, a septet plus four guest sitters-in, to S.O.B.’s July 19, and that group will obviously sound bigger, if not necessarily better, than The Matador and the Bull (Savant), his new trio album. Commanding in the honorable though prescribed post-Coltrane style, Allen is offset by bassist Gregg August and drummer Rudy Royston as he has beenon three other records since 2008. Their balance is impeccable, though they expand on Allen’s launching motifs and stream-of-consciousness improvs by each operating in their own fields, connected mostly by mood. On the sixth track of 12, “Paseillo,” the trio suddenly syncs in an upbeat, swinging abstraction over “Sweet Georgia Brown” chords—up till then, they’ve been somber if not sorrowful, and that major mode does not reappear. The format has its limitations and on CD grows repetitious, though live it’s probably compelling.

J.D. Allen Trio: The Matador and the Bull.

Rez Abbasi, a guitarist/composer appearing in quartet at Cornelia Street Café on July 20, was born in Karachi, Pakistan, but grew up in California. On ENJA Records’ Suno Suno (“listen listen” in Urdu) he convenes an ensemble called Invocation with alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa, who’s of South Asian ancestry but grew up in Colorado; pianist Vijay Iyer, who’s of South Asian ancestry but grew up in Buffalo (and whose own trio is at the MOMA sculpture garden on July 29); bassist Johannes Weidenmueller (from Germany, steeped in Spanish and New Orleans idioms); and drummer Dan Weiss (born in the USA, listened to rock, played metal, attended Berklee, studies tabla with Samir Chatterjee). They make music reflecting Abbasi’s interest in Qawwali religious repertoire of the Indian subcontinent.

Rather than appropriating that tradition’s melodic content or imitating its repetitive phraseology, Abbasi constructs multilayered compositions with lots of detailed moving parts, inspired, so he writes in liner notes, by “feeling.” Though the instrumental work is excellent, the program requires repeated listening to absorb and won’t satisfy anyone looking for a Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan tribute or a recognizable hybrid. The cross-culturalization results in something essentially without precedent, though its creators obviously know a lot about a lot of music. This is new. So let’s call it jazz.

Unfortunately, all of the elements that make the night so charming for children are a recipe for disaster for grownups. Replace candy with alcohol and you get belligerent, entitled sexy cats and Supermen. Grownup bad behavior tends less toward TPing trees and prank-calling teachers and more toward starting fights and puking on your shoes.

On the other side are the Halloween purists, those who would rather sit in the dark with a bowl of peeled grapes—or are they eyeballs?—and a stack of ’80s B movies. We’d rather repeat “Bloody Mary” into the bathroom mirror than spend an evening with the first group, but the trick-or-treater’s pull to wander the cool autumn streets can be too hard to resist. Luckily, while most of the city’s bars are overrun with Halloween novices, there are a few places that manage to weed out the swarm and let you play pretend at your own speed.

Walk down Avenue B between Second and Third streets and you’ll see a number of bars. The one you won’t see, however, is the only one worth going into—Idle Hands, at 25 Avenue B downstairs. Even with the address, you may not catch it on the first pass or you may accidentally wander into Billy Hurricane’s, the New Orleans-themed neon pit at street level. On either side of that blazing storefront guaranteed to have lured sexy cops and robbers like moths to a zapper, however, are unmarked steel doors and unassuming stairwells that will lead you down to a haven of rock ‘n’ roll and civility.

Run by a triumvirate of ex-music industry types, the bar houses an amazing collection of original tour posters from the last two decades as well as the city’s largest bourbon selection and a diverse craft beer roster that rotates regularly. Settle in to the Edison-bulb-lit basement den, get a bourbon recommendation or three and wait for your favorite headbanging classic to come on the soundtrack. Perfect for those dressed as: Ronnie James Dio, Joan Jett.

PKNY (49 Essex St., betw. Hester & Grand Sts.) is an ode to two seemingly conflicting eras gone by: the tiki kitsch heyday of the ’50s and the New York of the ’70s. The entrance is unmarked save for the perpetually closed, graffitied shutters marked with the words “Tiki Bar.” Passersby might suspect the place is an abandoned relic of the Lower East Side’s uglier days, caught in a drug sting gone bad and left untouched because no one could be bothered to clean up the mess.

The drinks are no kitsch afterthought, though—the bar’s owners have worked at the who’s who of New York’s cocktail revival, including Milk & Honey and Little Branch, and are the proprietors of Dutch Kills in Queens. Pick a category of beverage from suffering bastards, daiquiris, swizzles and more, tell the server what you’re in the mood for and let the bartenders ply their housemade syrups, fresh fruit juices and connoisseur’s liquor collection into a deliciously deadly concoction. Perfect for those dressed as: The Warriors extras, Bunny Yeager.

Should you be unlucky enough to find yourself in the West Village on Halloween night, don’t despair that you’re doomed to a night of dodging parade leftovers. 124 Rabbit Club (124 MacDougal St. at Minetta Lane), though in the heart of the Bleecker/ MacDougal Street axis of NYU evil, lurks safely below street level. Getting to the door requires navigation of a precariously steep steel stairwell, a challenge to the perfectly reasonable and downright impossible to a sexy nurse in six-inch heels.

Inside, ancient brick and discreetly baroque fixtures give the place a decaying Southern feel, more Tara post-fire than Mardi Gras. It’s spookier than a bowl of eyeballs and twice as grown up. Perfect for those dressed as: Elizabeth Taylor in Suddenly, Last Summer, Truman Capote.

Idle Hands on Avenue B in the East Village is a basement haven for bourbon, beer and rock.
Photo courtesy of www.streetandstage.com