Public Hearing on Proposed Soho BID
According to a release from the SoHo Alliance, councilmember Margaret Chin has called a public hearing on Wednesday, Oct. 31, at 10 a.m. at City Hall on the proposed Soho Business Improvement District (BID). The hearing will be conducted by the City Council’s Finance Committee Chair Dominic Recchia, and both proponents and opponents of the BID are expected to present their positions, a process expected to last for several hours.

DA Announces Sentencing for 1998 Crimes on LES
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr., recently announced the sentencing of Lerio Guerrero, 33, to 15 years in state prison for a rape and burglary on the Lower East Side in 1998, according to a release from the DA’s office.

“Without the state’s DNA data bank, this defendant might never have been apprehended,” Vance said. “But because New Yorkers live in a state that recognizes the power of DNA to convict the guilty and exonerate the innocent, this crime victim is able to finally see justice be served nearly 14 years later. The fact that we were able to file an indictment in this case before the statute of limitations expired serves as a powerful reminder of the importance of the recently passed All Crimes DNA law and the continued expansion of the DNA data bank.”

According to the defendant’s guilty plea and documents filed in court, on Nov. 8, 1998, Guerrero followed the victim to her apartment building on the Lower East Side. She was 28 years old at the time. He pushed open the building door behind her, and threatened her with a piece of broken glass. While holding the glass to the victim’s throat, the defendant cut his own hand, bleeding on the victim’s coat. Guerrero then forced her to the rear of her apartment building, where he sexually assaulted her and stole her wallet. The defendant then forced his victim to follow him to an ATM to withdraw cash. When Guerrero tried to make the victim go to an ATM at a different location to withdraw more cash, she broke away and ran into a deli.

FiDi’s Transformation and Impact on Foreign Buyers
Real estate brokers and community leaders recently filled the rooftop of 75 Wall Street, a new luxury condominium atop the Andaz Wall Street hotel, for “Becoming FiDi,” a discussion of the Financial District’s residential transformation. The event brought together industry experts for a panel on foreign capital, which has been especially impactful in the Financial District.

“There is definitely an appetite for prime Manhattan real estate, particularly in Asia, and the Financial District has become one of the most sought-after areas in the entire city,” said panel participant Alistair Auty of JMA Property Services, a U.S.-based real estate corporation that works closely with foreign brokers and investors, in a release.
Hosted by The Hakimian Organization, developer of the 75 Wall Street Residences, the event began with a tour of the neighborhood led by historian Joyce Gold and continued in the building’s stunning rooftop lounge with a panel discussion moderated by Matthew Fenton, editor of The Broadsheet and seasoned FiDi reporter. The panel included Auty, Elizabeth Berger, president of the Downtown Alliance, and Amina O’Kane, director of Upper School admissions for Léman Manhattan Preparatory School.

City Council Members Will Recruit Volunteers to Escort Women to Abortion Clinics
Last Friday, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and other council members, along with representatives from Planned Parenthood, the New York Civil Liberties Union and other pro-choice organizations, gathered at City Hall to announce their upcoming “Clinic Protection Project.”

Under this program, council members will recruit and coordinate volunteers to accompany women to abortion clinics. Planned Parenthood and other reproductive health clinics already have volunteer escorts for their patients, but they say they need more. Thus Speaker Quinn and others are stepping in.

“Protesters have a right to speak their minds, but the exercise of the First Amendment should never intimidate anyone from accessing medical care,” Speaker Quinn said.
The need for a supplementary service has increased in the last few years, according to pro-choice officials, because there are more protesters outside clinics, many of whom reportedly harass women attempting to use the facilities.
“In the last three years … we’ve gone from two or three protesters on a given Saturday morning, to 50 or 60,” said Joan Malin, CEO and president of Planned Parenthood New York.
The President and CEO of Choices, Merle Hoffman, said in a phone interview that protesters outside her clinic wear vests printed with the words “Unborn Baby Protector” and also videotape the patients who enter, shaming them. Hoffman said one woman who came for an abortion arrived in a panic, because the picketers outside had said that the anesthesia would kill her.

Hoffman attributes the increase in protesters to the “rise of the radical right,” while Assemblywoman Deborah Glick said that having a pro-choice president in office has ignited the pro-life movement.

Although the details of the program are still being mapped out, Speaker Quinn said that her team will work on the recruitment and management side, and Planned Parenthood will actually train the escorts.

More than 400 supporters flocked to the West Side’s luxurious Hudson Terrace lounge Tuesday night for limitless drinks, sexy entertainment and decadent fun at Planned Parenthood of New York City’s 8th annual Summer, Sex & Spirits benefit.

Guests mingled and danced in the spacious yet intimate venue, adorned with sparkling chandelier fixtures, bathed in warm pink lighting and sprinkled with red leather couches. They spilled out onto the outdoor patio, taking advantage of the all-night open bar while waiters circled with trays of hors d’oeuvres and rich desserts. Signature mixed drinks—the Sex in Paloma and the Margaret Sanger “Collins”—were served, and a station of volunteers dished out dixie cup servings of creative ice cream flavors.

DJs Tanner and Louis XIX kept the mood alive with girl-power classics like Kim Carnes’ Bette Davis Eyes, and This Ambitious Orchestra performed crowd pleasers including Beyonce’s Run the World (Girls), while scantily-clad women adorned in sequined, circus-themed ensembles and feathered headdresses danced on stilts, twirling parasols.

The famous, red-headed Mistress B, known for her erotic balloon artistry, laughed and posed for pictures with guests in a black leather get-up and fishnets, twisting balloons into masterpieces such as Rolling Stones-style lips and tongues, male genetalia and pole-dancing women.

Guests admired beautiful designer fashion items displayed around the perimeter of the room, using personal identification numbers to participate in open bidding on prizes ranging from handbags to gift certificates to sex toys; a sparkly Jimmy Choo Wallet and cherry red shades from Chanel were among the prizes, to name a few. The hyped 24-carat-gold INEZ vibrator, made by Good Vibrations and valued at more than $13,000, rested in a plush, felt-lined display box on its own table.

Mel Gagarin, one of the event’s organizers, estimated that the benefit drew in more than $25,000, including proceeds from the open auction, a raffle and ticket sales. Tickets for the 21-and-over celebration, priced at $40 for general admission and $80 for a pass to the VIP reception, sold out to fill the venue to capacity.

One hundred percent of the funds raised Tuesday night will go to fund Planned Parenthood of New York City services.

“Summer, Sex & Spirits is organized by PPNYC’s all-volunteer Activist Council. All money raised at the event supports PPNYC’s healthcare services, education programs and advocacy work,” Gagarin said. “The event brings together pro-choice New Yorkers in a fun, summertime cocktail party environment and encourages folks to get more involved in our advocacy work.”

Planned Parenthood of New York City will host their eighth annual benefit Tuesday night

By Rebecca Harris

Young professionals and feminists from across the city are sure to come out to the West Side next Tuesday for an evening of cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, live music, circus acts and a few naughty surprises.

Planned Parenthood of New York City will host its eighth annual Summer, Sex and Spirits Benefit this Tuesday night at Hudson Terrace, a luxurious bar and lounge in Hell’s Kitchen overlooking the Hudson River. The main event will begin at 8 p.m., following a VIP reception at 7 p.m.

This year’s sexy benefit will be circus themed, with tricks by Lady Circus including aerial acts and stilt walking. DJ Tanner and DJ Louis XIX will take the stage, along with musical performers such as This Ambitious Orchestra. Erotic balloon artist Mistress B will also work the crowd throughout the night, mingling with guests and crafting naughty balloon masterpieces.

In addition to entertainment, the 21-and-over celebration will feature an open bar all night, light refreshments, a raffle and a silent auction fundraiser. Prizes include designer fashion items, restaurant and hotel certificates and “experiences”—ranging from a group cupcake-making class to a 24-carat gold-plated vibrator valued at more than $13,000.

The benefit is organized by PPNYC’s Action Fund Activist Council, a volunteer branch of Planned Parenthood. All proceeds raised at the benefit will go towards health care services, legislative advocacy and education programs across the five boroughs.

Last year’s event drew about 300 attendees and raised more than $23,000, according to Stephanie Demmons, community organizer for PPNYC. Tickets can be purchased online at PPNYC’s website. General admission tickets are $40 in advance and $50 at the door; VIP passes go for $80.

Photo by Andrew Schwartz

After four years as editor in chief of The Onion, comedian Joe Randazzo is leaving the paper, and America’s self-proclaimed “finest news source” is relocating its offices from New York to Chicago. City & State editor Morgan Pehme talks with Randazzo about his tenure at the helm of the popular satiric publication and asks him if there’s anything funny about Andrew Cuomo.

City & State: What’s so funny about politics?

Joe Randazzo: You have a high concentration of egotistical people who oftentimes put their worst qualities forward to get noticed and to be recognized, and this lack of compassion, humanism and altruism often leads to success in politics. These are the worst qualities of humankind that people who are being put forth to represent all of humankind are embodying, so that inherently is a tragically hilarious juxtaposition.

CS: How seriously does The Onion take itself?

JR: I think it’s understood that there’s this bedrock responsibility to speak truth to power, to call out bullsh-t when The Onion sees it or hears it, and to always try to fall on the right side of issues, to never be against the victim—and not to try to maintain objectivity but to keep any target open, so Democrats are just as open to ridicule as Republicans. But in order to get to the good jokes that make The Onion successful, all the writers have to do is make each other laugh. I think a responsibility to the broader social conversation is genetically encoded in The Onion as an institution and that rubs off on the writers, but on a daily basis Onion writers aren’t thinking about their responsibility or taking themselves very seriously. It just needs to be funny jokes.

CS: At The Onion, are you a journalist first or a comedian?

JR: I come from a little bit of a journalism background. I majored in journalism at Emerson and I worked for NPR, but I’m definitely a comedian first.

CS: Earlier this year, Rep. John Fleming of Louisiana mistakenly thought a story in The Onion about a planned “AbortionPlex” was genuine. On other occasions The New York Times and Fox News have reported on your articles as fact. How blurry is the line between real news and fake news in the current media environment?

JR: That one was really wonderful, because the whole point of the AbortionPlex story itself was to try to give as much credence to what we imagined every right-wing nut job’s worst nightmare of Planned Parenthood could be and to explore that and give it The Onion treatment, which is to present it in a very dry, authoritative way. That’s our formula; that’s the lens through which we observe the world—that’s where 90% of our comedy comes from—so when we do it really well, sometimes people who aren’t familiar with us take it seriously. I think it does to a degree speak to—especially during the Bush Administration and the rise of FOX News, not that Rupert Murdoch is an evil person, per se—this sort of reinventing news as entertainment that that has really taken hold in American culture.

I think in [Rep. Fleming’s] case, he’s a pandering guy who’s not that intelligent, who thought that something obscenely ridiculous like the AbortionPlex could ever possibly be real. But actually, one of the things that lent it some credence was that somebody went and created an actual Yelp site for the AbortionPlex—we didn’t solicit this, they just did this of their own accord, organically—and hundreds of people who were in on the joke started giving it thumbs up or thumbs down and writing reviews like “It was great! My husband and I are going to go there every year for our anniversary” and stuff like that, which sort of gave texture to this world we created that we never could have done on our own. I think that story, paired with that kind of real-world response to it, painted this picture that for some people made it much easier to believe that it was real, even though the story itself was ridiculous. I mean, it’s a $7 billion AbortionPlex or something like that, where they’re killing, like, 1500 babies a minute. There’s waterslides, and you can have a martini while you wait. It’s like there’s no way that would ever be real, even from Planned Parenthood. It’s delightful when people take that stuff seriously.

CS: Does constantly mocking hypocrisy and ineptitude in government make you hopelessly cynical about the state of our country?

JR: I think a lot of comedians are cynical. I’m generalizing, but comedians tend to be fairly sensitive people who have to kind of harden their souls to the fact that they’re going to get hurt, and that everybody’s going to get hurt, and that people are imperfect and that, you know, ultimately we’re all going to die. I think that’s actually the background of every comedian’s mind. So, I think there’s a side to that sensitivity that hopes for good, that wants to be optimistic, that wants to be idealistic, but that’s a vulnerable place to be, and rather than going out and trying to collect names for Children’s International, comedians write nasty jokes about Rush Limbaugh. Personally, I wouldn’t say that I’m cynical, but I’m not an activist.

I think that our country, if we continue on this path which is consumed with the endless obsession with consumption—that’s physically unsustainable, spiritually unsustainable, and culturally unsustainable. Politics is just a reflection of that, trying to keep order out of all these different types and groups of people, who are all basically just trying to get by in a material world—I think Madonna said that at some point. So I don’t actual think I’m cynical, but I’m not holding out a lot of hope for, like, big change. For one thing, we’ll probably have to wipe out, like, three quarters of the population maybe before anything good can happen, and that’s okay, I’m comfortable with that. I’m just enjoying my life while I can before the big purge comes.

CS: As a comedic journalist, when scandals like the ones that brought down Anthony Weiner and Eliot Spitzer hit the papers, do you just think to yourself, Thank you!?

JR: Something like Eliot Spitzer or Anthony Weiner is a little more in the purview, from The Onion point of view, of late-night talk shows, like one-liners and zingers. The Onion tends not to really comment on those types of little blips, and when we do it tends to be more of a comment on the media’s take on something. We try to write stories that can be evergreen, that you can read in 10 years and they would still make some sense. We try to look at it with more than a 24-hour news cycle mentality. When Anthony Weiners come up I think we actually say, “Sh-t!” because we have to either figure out a joke that nobody else has done, or we won’t be able to cover it at all.

CS: The Onion hasn’t really run a satiric article featuring Andrew Cuomo since his days as HUD Secretary. Is there just nothing funny about Cuomo to write about?

JR: I don’t think there is. He’s boring, right? That’s his whole thing?

CS: In 2009 The Onion was awarded a Peabody, and last year you actively campaigned for a Pulitzer. Does The Onion really deserve journalism’s highest award or was that just a shameless publicity stunt?

JR: I think that we would all actually really like to win a Pulitzer—and now that I’m leaving in two days, I think I can say that The Onion absolutely does deserve a Pulitzer. In terms of commentary I don’t think there’s anyone who has consistently done a better job with sort of more integrity that The Onion has. The Onion also does lots of stupid, horrible jokes that have no business being published, but I think there isn’t any other organization that has for 20 years observed the American condition as consistently as The Onion has. It’s been amazing to be able to work for them for six years. The Pulitzer campaign was definitely tongue-in-cheek. It was meant to be sort of a comment on awarding prizes for journalism, which is kind of a weird thing. In many ways, even though you are talking about things that are supposed to be good for the community, it can get wrapped up in just as much vanity as the Academy Awards can. So we thought it would be funny, instead of pretending we don’t care about prizes like many news outlets do, just shamelessly going for one and saying we will actually just buy one from you, if you allow us to do it.

To read the full article at City & State click here.