By Helaina Hovitz

Photo by Stephanie Mei-Ling

Last Thursday, April 4, an Internet Week New York preview party was held at Design Within Reach’s newly renovated Soho Studio at 110 Greene Street.

Eventually, 400 guests mingled easily as they sipped on ginger-flavored cocktails and Saporo beer, but those who arrived painfully on time at 7 p.m. were faced with an awkward, half hour free-for-all in the enormous space, not sure where to go or what to do, likely appearing, to those looking in, to be shopping for furniture.

“I didn’t know what to expect or what to do when I got here. It feels really insider-y,” said Lisa Niedermeyer, whose nonprofit, Fractured Atlas, hopes to host a panel called Revenge of the Art Geek. “I think they kind of assume you were here last year.”

Though it was never explained to the crowd trickling in, the main aim of the party was to get people to vote for the festival’s panel entrants, 228 in all (voting will remain open through April 10th at InternetWeekNY.com). Promising contenders include “Will The Internet Save the Publishing Industry?” “I’m Tired of Being So White” and “Combating Device Schizophrenia: Get Your Message Heard Across Screens.”

Photo by Stephanie Mei-Ling

A DJ spinning trippy futuristic songs eventually abandoned his post and joined the crowd shortly before 8:30 p.m., when a preview panel called Sex, Drugs, Drones, and Codes was set to begin. The panel was kicked off by Daniel Pinchback, editorial director of website Reality Sandwich and author of Breaking Open the Head. Pinchback briefly talked about the resurgence of the Internet in psychedelics, highlighting the ways in which the Internet is “fostering a psychedelic renaissance.”

Next up was Matt Stinchcomb, former employee of Soho’s Rockstar Games and currently Etsy’s VP of Brand & Social Responsibility, who preferred to keep his Internet Week panel a secret but did his best to garner interest, saying, “I’m not gonna tell you what it’s about, but you guys are really gonna like it.”

Brian Anderson, an editor for Motherboard, proceeded to give a speech on drones that honed in on the lack of attention given to the topic. “More people are losing sleep and commenting on articles about chocolate milk than non-consensual surveillance,” he said.

“It’s compelling to see him so passionate about it, but at the end you’re like, what exactly is a drone?” said one baffled audience member to her date.

A drone is, by simplest definition, an unmanned aircraft or other floating device used for surveillance and bomb/missile launching, but can also be something like “that stupid little vacuum robot,” Anderson explained.

Ears perked up during columnist Kelly Bourdet’s panel run-down, which will be, essentially, on pornography. “Everyone — well, many people –  watch porn, and yet it’s not part of our every day conversation. The panel will discuss how the Internet proliferates porn and how it affects us,” she said, adding that the first picture to ever be uploaded to the Internet was a Playboy centerfold. “Iceland wants to make porn illegal. What do we want to do about this medium, as children, teens, and adults?” she posed rhetorically to the audience.

Her panel will also discuss how technology affects our modern day relationships.

Co-presented by Made in New York, the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment and Crain Communications, Internet Week is a weeklong event headquartered at the Metropolitan Pavilion (125 West 18th Street). There will also be Meetups, exhibits, screenings, parties, and more taking place at venues across the city. Vice Media will curate an expanded panel and classroom series exploring hot-button topics like sex, drugs, drones, pirating, and social media reporting from conflict zones. Flagship events like the 17th Annual Webby Awards, The Webutante Ball, and Time Inc.’s 10 NYC Startups to Watch will be joined by a roster of new partners participating in the festival for the first time.

Big name speakers will include WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg, Executive Vice President of NBC Universal Lauren Zalaznick, and, for some reason, Joan Rivers.

The event is expected to draw 45,000 people to 400 panels and will, hopefully, impress one of the panelists’ more critical members.

“I think it’s silly to have a week where we talk about the Internet,” said Anderson after closing out the panel preview. “It’s what we do every day.”

By Adam Janos

Many people love living downtown; it’s got some the city’s most iconic buildings, it’s at the heart of public transit, and night life and restaurants are popping up in a decade that has seen real estate values soar. Things sure are booming – just don’t expect your neighbor to necessarily stick around with you for the long haul.

According to a study conducted by Social Explorer and the Queens College Department of Applied Research of the Census Bureau, between the years 2007 and 2011, downtown Manhattan had the highest rates of transience in the city.  In ZIP code 10005, for example, 39.4 percent of those surveyed had been residents here for less than a year. In ZIP code 10006 (Battery Park), that number rose to 43.1 percent.  From the financial district to Gramercy Park to Tribeca and SoHo, rookie residents are making up 20-40 percent of the total population. As a point of comparison, in 10162 (Upper East Side), only 5.8 percent of their inhabitants had been around for less than year.

Downtown is putting the “New” in “New York.”

With such a small percentage of people who have been around for the time necessary to bring the neighborhood true consistency, business owners have to come up with different ways to draw steady clientele.  At Delmonico’s on Beaver Street, general manager Corrado Goglia says that, although the neighborhood has gotten more residential in the last five or six years, he still “sees lots of new faces. After 2007, a lot of people moved about. But between those who stay, the workers, and the tourists we continue to find business.” Like many in the area, Goglia is optimistic that those transience numbers will be turning around soon and that – regardless of what the Census Bureau’s data indicates – it’s become much more of a neighborhood in the fourteen years since he’s been general manager.

Others are not so sure. “It’s terrible,” says John Moran, owner of both the Mercantile Grill and Killarney Rose on Pearl Street. “You don’t see the same people from one year to the next… and that’s not good for places like this.  It’s only in the last two years that we’ve gotten a lot of residents down here.”

Which raises an interesting point: is the neighborhood transient, or is it simply growing? According to the Census Bureau, between 2000 and 2010 the population of downtown Manhattan has increased by 40,000. So even though people are moving in at staggering numbers every year doesn’t necessarily mean that they replacing others who have departed; it could also be a reflection of the general population growth of the neighborhood and the conversion of banking centers like 37 Wall Street into residential buildings flush with new tenants.

Mathematically speaking, though, even taking population growth into account doesn’t fully explain the high rates of new tenancy; as surely as some New Yorkers pursue apartments downtown, others are deserting it.

“I think this proves how important it is to develop and protect affordable housing in lower Manhattan, and in our city as a whole,” said Council Member Margaret Chin, who presides over three of the five most transient zip codes. “Rising rents is one of the primary causes of flight from neighborhoods, from Chinatown to the Financial District.”

“Over the past ten years, the residential population in the Financial District and Tribeca has more than doubled,” continued Chin. “Unfortunately, the development of essentials services, like supermarkets, public open spaces, and community faculties, has not kept up with this population growth.”

“We know people want to move into Lower Manhattan,” said State Senator Daniel Squadron. “Now it’s critical that our government provides the services that allow more people across the economic spectrum to make their lives here for the long term.”

By Nora Bosworth

Greenwich Village and Soho are brimming with individuals who lead wildly different lifestyles, and who oppose New York University’s gargantuan development project for reasons as distinct as their own personalities. Yet whether these people are managers of local liquor stores, self-pronounced “old hippie” gardeners, or brazen Soho residents who want to see more Armani suits and fewer “I love New York” t-shirts, they all feel an imminent threat to their quality of life in light of NYU’s expansion plan.

The construction, should it come to pass—which looks increasingly likely since its approval in the City Council in July 2012—will mark one of the greatest landscape shifts that the Village or Soho has seen in decades.

Neighborhood organizations, politicians, incensed neighbors, and 39 faculty departments of NYU have united to resist the development. In September 2012, the eleven groups filed a lawsuit against New York City, accusing the City Council and the City Planning Commission, among other governmental agencies, of violating a number of City and State laws. The petitioners are being represented by Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.

The groups’ case falls under Article 78 of the New York Civil Practice Law and Rules, which states that anyone may appeal a public agency’s written decision if he or she believes the agency has acted illegally. One of the petitioners’ primary claims centers on the assertion that the City agencies illegally alienated dedicated parkland without the approval of the State legislature.

Last Tuesday, February 26, petitioners against the city’s approval of the expansion plan had their first court hearing, marking a pivotal moment in a development battle that has been boiling over since the university unveiled its proposal in 2010. The petitioners include Assemblywoman Deborah Glick, NYU Faculty Against the Sexton Plan, Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, Historic Districts Council, LaGuardia Corner Gardens, and the Soho Alliance.

At the heart of the parkland alienation debate is whether or not four areas which the City gave NYU permission to build on – Mercer Playground, LaGuardia Park, LaGuardia Corner Gardens, and the Mercer-Houston Dog Run – constitute “parkland.”

If the Judge determines these spaces to be parkland, as the petitioners assert, then under New York’s Public Trust Doctrine, the City violated State law by handing over the lands to NYU without first obtaining the State’s approval.

In its defense, the City maintains that because the strips of land were never mapped as parks -  meaning they were under the Department of Transportation’s jurisdiction as opposed to the Park Department’s – they did not count as parkland.

But a scathing affidavit from former Parks Commissioner Henry Stern throws the City’s defense into serious question, calling their argument “shocking.”

Stern writes that as Parks Commissioner he “repeatedly requested the transfer of these sites to Parks and to officially list them as such on the City Map.”

He also asserts that, “There is one reason, and one reason only, why these parcels were not formally mapped: NYU obstructed the process through the efforts of its lobbyists and emissaries.”

Moreover, Stern entirely rejects the City’s assumption that a park must be “mapped” as parkland in order to be protected as such. He cites Central Park as a prime example of obvious parkland that was not mapped for many years.

“There is no need to specifically map such sites as parkland in order to demonstrate the intent to dedicate them as such,” he writes.

Instead, he argues, a park’s designation “flows from the publicly-accepted, continuous use over a period of time.” Under this logic, the four spaces in question would clearly fit the requirements of parkland, as the neighborhood has used them as such for many years. He also cites the Parks Department’s signage at the sites, its regular maintenance of the property, and its identification of the land on its website as parkland, as additional proof of its being parkland.

“These are parks, plain and simple,” he says.

But NYU administration disagrees. “Just saying a site is parkland does not make it so,” said Philip Lentz, the Director of Public Affairs at NYU in an email.

The two opposing sides of the lawsuit perceived the outcome of Tuesday’s hearing quite differently. The plaintiffs requested both that a separate hearing be held focusing solely on the parkland alienation issue, and that the defendants procure documents, (“discovery,” in legalese), that could prove Stern’s assertions. Or rather, disprove the City’s.

“[We] need expedited discovery to belie the Respondents’ false claims that the City never intended or even attempted to treat these four sites as parks,” the petitioners explained in their complaint.

In court, on February 26, the Judge decided that the City must ‘”show cause” why the petitioners’ request for a hearing and expedited discovery on their “parkland alienation” claim should be dismissed, according to a press release issued by Gibson Dunn’s public relations team.

While NYU issued a subsequent statement saying, “Nothing changes as a result of Tuesday’s hearing,” the petitioners hailed it as their “first legal victory.”

Bo Riccobono, who is at once a member of NYU Faculty Against the Sexton Plan, Vice President of the Soho Alliance, and the Vice Chair of Community Board 2, explained the “victory” in its legal context.

“Most of the time discovery is not allowed, under article 78,” he said in a phone interview.

Daniel Chirlin, J.D., one of the attorneys representing the petitioners, confirmed Riccobono’s assertion in an email, explaining that such legal actions are “special expedited proceedings under New York law.” Chirlin also celebrated the Judge’s order, adding, “Our firm has had excellent success in obtaining discovery in these sorts of lawsuits. We are confident that the Court will grant discovery in this matter when it reviews all the arguments,” at the next hearing.

The Village Backyard

 One effect of the plan, if executed, is certain: the LaGuardia Corner Gardens, the longest running community garden in the City, will be no more. The building that would go up on Bleecker Street would cast the garden into shadow, killing off most, if not all, of its plants.

“While the remaining sunlight could support shade-tolerant species, the proposed Bleecker Building adjacent to the garden would cast between four and five-and-a-half hours of new shadow on the garden during morning hours throughout the growing season, jeopardizing the viability of shade-intolerant species,” states the Environmental Impact Statement that the Department of City Planning composed.

It goes on to explain, however, that such a loss would not damage the neighborhood’s character as the garden is not, “a defining feature … with respect to uniqueness or overall characterization of the area.”

Sara Jones, Chairwoman of LaGuardia Corner Gardens, begs to differ. A florist by trade, she has spent nearly twenty years tending to her community garden and is now steeling herself for the death of most of her plants, including her one hundred rose bushes–she counted them recently– her vegetables and herbs, and the apple tree that is older than the garden itself. It has dozens of members and is open to the public seven days a week.

In his affidavit, Stern speaks fondly of the gardens, adding that as Parks Commissioner he told Community Board 2 that he “would embrace a formal transfer of LaGuardia Corner Gardens to Parks.” He says it never happened because NYU, who he calls the “800-pound-gorilla in the room,” pushed against it.

“We’ve made it a park for older people who are afraid to go into Washington Square Park,” Sara tells me, pants smudged from a morning of tending to her plot.

“Where else can you go on a school trip to a garden farm? Not in this neighborhood,” Sara says. In warmer weather she does school tours.

“It’s like the Village backyard,” another member, Susan Taylorson, chimes in.

But whether the “Village backyard” is also a park is still up in the air. The decision may very well determine the future for both Greenwich Village and Soho.

The next hearing will be held on March 15th, at the Manhattan State Supreme Court

New Park Snacks

Come spring, Hudson River Park will be offering new food and drink options throughout the park. According to the recently released Request for Proposals, which will be open until March 15, the West Side park is looking for bids for seven new food carts and trucks to be located in various locations including Battery Park City, Hell’s Kitchen and Hudson Square. These new additions will more than double the six mobile food vendors currently operating in the vicinity. According to DNAinfo.com, the Hudson River Park Trust is interested in certain vendors that offer food and drink at affordable rates. Specifically, they want vendors that charge $2 or less for at least two items. The Hudson River Park Trust is hoping that not only will the low prices improve visitor satisfaction; the monetary increase from monthly fees will help with the projected $80 million deficit. Hudson River Park is looking to have these mobile vendors up and running by May 1.

Manhattan Rental Market Report

Real estate brokerage firm MNS has released its January 2013 Manhattan Rental Market Report. MNS specializes in the sale, rental and marketing aspect of residential properties in both Manhattan and Brooklyn, and the report focuses on market summary, inventory analysis and trend prices.

As far as downtown neighborhoods are concerned, Soho, Tribeca, the Lower East Side and Harlem yielded the most interesting finds. In terms of average prices, Soho was ranked most expensive for non-doorman studios, and one- and two-bedrooms in doorman buildings. While the non-doorman studios were most expensive, rent for doorman studios in Soho had the second largest decrease in all of Manhattan. Tribeca was ranked most expensive for non-doorman one- and two-bedrooms (even with a 1.9 percent decrease in two bedrooms) and for doorman studios. While Tribeca’s doorman studios had the highest mean studio rental prices in all of Manhattan, the rent price for non-doorman studios had the largest decrease in Manhattan by far at 32.9 percent due to a 43 percent fall in inventory. Soho and Tribeca were the only two neighborhoods in Manhattan to experience a crisscross of studio price trends between doorman and non-doorman, and both switches happened between this past December and January.

Doorman studios on the Lower East Side had the highest price increase in all of Manhattan at 26.1 percent. The yearly basis average increase shows that rents were raised by $225 or 8 percent. In the past month alone, rents were raised $207 due to a fall in inventory.

If you want to live in Manhattan, this report shows that Harlem is the place to be. It was ranked least expensive in all of Manhattan and experienced a drop in rent of at least $49 across all studios, one bedrooms and two bedrooms. One-bedrooms in both doorman and non-doorman buildings experienced the highest drop of $78. “Rents are lower in this area compared to other desirable places in Manhattan, so any renters interested in going uptown should not wait around,” MNS said in its statement.

 OkCupid veterans flock to Housing Works Bookstore Cafe to swap horror stories

Studies everywhere are examining the same panic-inducing question—will online dating, with its guaranteed ability to let you endlessly shop around and tailor your perfect mate, ruin relationships forever?

Last week’s OkCupid Show (Stories of Love, Sex and the Internet) at the Housing Works Bookstore Cafe in Soho wasn’t able to answer that exact question, but it certainly offered up some interesting case studies and shed a little light on what it’s like to date in the OkCupid age.

Event co-host and comedian Adam Jacobson relayed to a packed house his own experience—an all-too-familiar scenario. At some point in your dating life you fall into a lull, he explained, one where you make a habit of going on two to three dates with friends-of-friends you meet at parties, only to watch things awkwardly peter out. You bump into them here or there, quickly accumulating a list of places you have to avoid for your own social and emotional well-being.

Eventually Jacobson, like millions of other Americans, joined the dating site OkCupid. Around this time he was approached by friends, each of whom had a barrage of stories to share about their own experiences. Dating sites, Jacobson learned, apparently make some people act a little cuckoo.

“Everyone had a crazy OkCupid story,” he said. “I decided we had to put together this show.” (Some of these stories, while entertaining, are not newspaper appropriate.)

Jacobson explained a phenomenon of online dating he saw emerge during the course of his site usage; it allows people to become less invested in their relationships. One woman he dated simply disappeared for four months, while another broke up with him via tersely worded text message.

Comedian Charla Lauriston said she’s been using online dating sites for the past five years.

“I assumed I was the kind of person who had to,” she said, explaining she had long been an identical twin to one of the “popular girls” in school, while her own memories involve time spent alone in the corner reading the sci-fi fantasy novel Ender’s Game. (On OkCupid, you have the option of searching for keywords, allowing you to find profiles of those who share your exact literary interests, for instance.)

Lauriston started out with the site eHarmony, but was humiliated when after a long dry stretch, a site representative called to inquire about the lack of activity on her account.

She then moved on to OkCupid, which offers its services for free and permits its users to slip through the cracks as they wish.

“If you’ve been on OkCupid, these are not weird at all,” Lauriston said, of her own dating escapades, which included a man who urinated in her Prius and another who “shamed her” for eating fried chicken in front of white people at a restaurant.

Surely these tales resonate with many; the evening brought to light several points about the online dating experience. First, a paradox: while in some ways online dating seems to force people to hold out longer with an incompatible match than they otherwise might, it also encourages less investment with the ability to peruse seemingly infinite other opportunities.

One storyteller speculated OkCupid actively tries to steer people away from their “best matches” because it would hurt the site’s membership. Ryan O’Connell, the editor of Thought Catalog, said OkCupid gives its users instant self-esteem boosts and makes people “immediately open.”

No matter what happens, one thing remains true: Using OkCupid guarantees there will be adventure.

Had it not been for OkCupid, Jacobson conceded he would not have had some of the most exciting times of his life, nor met his current long-term girlfriend.

Some discussed yet another phenomenon which arises with OkCupid use—small niches of people who have dated the same users will band together, hash things out, and often forge unforgettable friendships.

“You keep hoping it will work out,” explained comedy writer Michelle Markowitz, “but ultimately you do it for these weird experiences.”

By Sophia Rosenbaum

Chocolatier Jacques Torres’ business is booming at his Brooklyn shop—but melting on Hudson Street.

Torres attributes the success of his Dumbo outlet to the area’s rezoning, which sparked a residential boom. He’s hoping the same will happen in Hudson Square, an area in west Soho, where a rezoning plan that would change the area from largely a manufacturing district to a mixed-use district is the subject of dispute.

“If you want a neighborhood, you have to bring character to the neighborhood,” Torres said. “A small bar. Someone who can make bread. People selling books, a small grocery store. All of those things make a neighborhood.”

Torres and other Hudson Square business owners got a glimmer of hope for their rezoning plea Oct. 18, when Community Board 2 nixed the proposal but set the stage for a compromise. The board wants building heights set out in the zoning plan lowered, more open space put aside and part of the adjacent South Village to be landmarked.

“It’s a cat-and-mouse game,” board chair David Gruber said about the preservation of the South Village. “We have to save it from getting knocked down, because if it lags too much behind, we’ll lose a lot of buildings.”

Trinity Real Estate, which owns 40 percent of the property in Hudson Square, has been working for a decade on promoting the rezoning project, which would affect a 34-block swath bounded by the West Side Highway, Morton and Barrow streets, Sixth Avenue and Hudson Street, and Canal Street.

About 4 percent of the area is currently designated as residential, which translates to a few hundred people, according to Lloyd Kaplan, whose law firm represents Trinity. Kaplan said the proposed rezoning could bring 6,000 new residents.

“It’s a significant gain, but hardly an overwhelming one,” Kaplan said. “It seems like the right kind of balance that would produce around-the-clock 24/7 activity that supports retail developments that are so important to the future of any area.”

Andrew Berman, the executive director for the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, said he was “pleased with the language” in the board’s recommendation.

“It seems as though the community board recognizes that this is absolutely essential,” Berman said. “Rezoning will only accelerate the destruction of the South Village.”

The zoning proposal calls for building-height limits of 320 feet on avenues and 185 feet on narrower side streets. The board wants to limit building height on avenues to 250 feet for buildings with affordable housing and 210 feet for those without. On side streets, the board wants a maximum of 185 feet with affordable housing and 165 feet without.

Berman believes the board’s height limits are still too high, saying the numbers encourage out of character high-rise buildings.

“Hudson Square is more densely built up than Soho and the Village, but it’s not Midtown,” Berman said. “They come too close to allowing the mistakes that have already happened, like the Trump Soho building.”

But local merchants see rezoning as much-needed progress.

“It’s just the evolution of the city, and it happens all the time,” said Peter Howlett, director of design at the upscale furniture showroom George Smith, which has a branch on Hudson Street.

Nicholas Balint, manager of the Hudson Square Pharmacy, believes it’s inevitable that bigger chain stores will inhabit the area without zoning changes.

“You’re going to get a Jamba Juice and a J. Crew next to 200-year-old buildings,” Balint said.

Balint and Torres, who both referred to Hudson Square as a “ghost town” at nights and on weekends, are hopeful the rezoning will bring new life to their businesses.

“How can this neighborhood live like this?” Torres asked. “We need people to come to this neighborhood to make it alive.”

Photo by edenpictures. Via Flickr Commons.

By Paul Bisceglio

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*Update*: An NYPD spokesperson announced on Wednesday that Greg Smith was charged with failure to yield to a pedestrian and failure to exercise due care.

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South Village resident Jessica Dworkin, 58, was killed on Monday morning when the rear of a tractor trailer hit her and dragged her two blocks under its back wheels. According to witnesses, she attempted to cross Sixth Avenue on a foot scooter at the same time the 18-wheeler was making a right turn onto the avenue from West Houston Street. The truck swept her into its wheels.

Witnesses attempted to alert the unaware driver, Greg Smith, who finally stopped at Carmine Street.

“There were a dozen people running up the street screaming and telling him to stop,” witness Christian Cruz told the Daily News. “He didn’t notice. I saw all the blood and couldn’t look anymore.”

Another witness told the Daily News that once Smith realized what was going on, he rushed out of the truck. “He put his hands on his head like, ‘What did I do?’ He started screaming and crying.”

According to police, Smith is not expected to be charged. Dworkin was pronounced dead at the scene.

Soho Alliance director Sean Sweeney said that “everyone knew” Dworkin around Soho and Greenwich Village. Craig Walker, a longtime resident and friend of hers, told DNAinfo that she moved into her Thompson Street apartment back in the 1970′s.

Dworkin was an eccentric and sociable artistic type who spent a lot of time traveling the street on her scooter, according to Sweeney. Her taste for thrift store clothing made her easily stand out.

“She had a shabby finery to her clothing,” Sweeney told New York Press. “She was a bit of a hoarder — very fashion conscioius, in her own unique way.”

She was even known to change her outfits as many as four times a day, according to Michael Robinson, a Soho store manager who saw her almost daily for 23 years. She was a “fixture in the neighborhood,” he told DNAinfo.

One Soho resident who wished to remain anonymous mentioned rumors that Dworkin had recently been fighting eviction because of hoarding, but that neighbors came to her support and helped her to stay.

“She was well liked,” affirmed Sweeney. “She was a real neighborhood character who gave flavor to the neighborhood.”

Photo Courtesy of Wiki Commons

Hundreds of deadly drivers go free every year in New York City because NYPD protocol limits investigations into crashes which do not appear life-threatening. While no violent incident ever has its upswing, it seems reality star Stephanie Pratt’s boyfriend Julien Chabbott ran over the foot of just the right person to be forced to pay for his crime.

NYPD Officer Felix Recio is planning to sue Chabbott for $10 million for running over his foot with his Ferrari earlier this August, the NY Post reports. That’s about 38.5 times what Chabbott’s snazzy wheels are reportedly worth.

The incident went down outside the Mercer Hotel in Soho, when Recio was attempting to stick Chabbott with a parking ticket. Chabbott refused the ticket, jumped into the vehicle and allegedly drove over the officer’s foot, according to the Post.

Recio told the paper while injuries he sustained were relatively minor, he believes Chabbott “deliberately drove towards [him] with an intent to hurt [him].” Recio’s lawyer is going for first-degree assault with a deadly weapon charges, reports the Post. The officer, who said he was “just trying to do [his] job” at the time of the assault, has been unable to go back to work.

Chabbott’s attorney, on the other hand, was shocked by the rumor of a $10 million lawsuit. He told the paper: “the officer in question appears to have suffered no injury whatsoever.”

—Alissa Fleck

Photo by Wilson Rivera, courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons.

When most New Yorkers think of Canal Street, they probably don’t think of quality retail. There the goods tend to come rolled out on street vendor mats with the brands misspelled, not behind glass windows in fine shopping plazas.

Melinda Miller of Winick Realty Group, however, wants to usher in a new era for the downtown commercial street famous for its open storefronts, questionable electronic imports and tourist-grabbing counterfeits.

“For Canal Street, it’s a question of when, not if, the neighborhood will see its moment as the next great retail destination in the city,” she said in a recent company statement

Miller is marketing 272-274 Canal Street, a four-story, 1,800 square-feet-per-floor brick building at the northwest corner of Cortlandt Alley next to the new Tribeca Blu Hotel. As it stands, the building is unremarkable, but its owners, the Gindi family, have some big plans for its next retailer: a new glass façade and significant new signage.

“The beauty of Canal Street is that it sits at the apex of several Manhattan neighborhoods — namely Soho, Tribeca, Chinatown, Little Italy, Hudson Square and the Lower East Side,” Miller said in the statement, which added, “The potential for exposure rivals that of virtually any major street in Manhattan.”

Canal Street’s small individual storefronts distinguish it from most of the city’s other highly trafficked shopping districts, where large landlords own large retail spaces. Property owners, business people and the street’s vendors have been tracking the area’s shift towards the city’s more conventional commercialism for years, however.

“Canal is on its last legs,” a watch-peddler told New York Press back in 2010. “They want to make this a franchise block.”

Albert Laboz, a principal with United American Land, a major landlord on the street, agrees. On fashion retailer Necessary Clothing’s recent leasing of 261-263 Canal Street, Laboz told the Real Deal: “It is further evidence that Canal Street is really becoming an extension of Broadway in Soho.”

He said that he could not recall a larger deal in the area over the past decade.

“I think it is slowly starting to change. But I think the city cracking down on the illegal sales [of knockoff products] is going to be the biggest driver,” Ariel Schuster, executive vice president at retail brokerage RKF, told the Real Deal in a separate story on retailer landlords cashing in on Canal Street.

Not everyone shares Miller’s vision of the street as “Manhattan’s next great retail frontier,” however. Michael Glanzberg, a principal with Soho-based brokerage Sinvin Real Estate, for instance, told the Real Deal that he and others believe that higher-paying customers will avoid mixing with Canal’s discounted and knock-off merchants.

“From the standpoint of someone who represents upper-end and high-end retail, Canal Street really holds no place for those folks,” he said. “It is the merchandise. There is a demographic and a shopper on Canal Street that is drastically different from what you find even a block north in Soho.”

Canal Street’s fate is not sealed, in other words, but everyone knows in which direction it currently is headed.

Chris Brown, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

A brawl in June between rapper Chris Brown’s and R&B singer Drake’s crews at Soho’s Greenhouse left nearly two dozen club goers injured. Now, Entertainment Enterprises, which owns the trademark for Greenhouse, is suing the two stars on the grounds that the fight damaged the club’s reputation.

The company filed a $16 million claim against the pair on Wednesday. The lawsuit contends that before the fight, the company had reached a $4 million “agreement-in-principle” to license the Greenhouse brand to nightclubs around the country, according to DNAinfo. “The cachet and prestige associated with the Greenhouse marks” was lost, however, the lawsuit argues, once they “became associated with the kind of violent, life-threatening riot engaged in by [Brown and Drake].”

Drake, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Brown’s representatives have not commented on the suit, and Drake’s representatives have said he was leaving the club when the fight broke out and did not injure anyone. The lawsuit maintains that no matter how directly involved the two were, though, they still instigated — or at least made no effort to stop — the fight, according to CBS.

N.Y.P.D. temporarily closed the club after the incident, but allowed it to reopen once it paid a fine and hired more security. The State Liquor Authority has fined Greenhouse before for other fights and bad behavior, according to DNAinfo.

No criminal charges have been filed in the fight. The actual owners of the club are not involved in the lawsuit, and have not commented on it.