downtownexpress.com

Volume 20 Issue 9 | July 13 - 19, 2007
Letters to the Editor

Sting’s behind the curves

To The Editor:
So, I just read the recent Downtown Express article by Albert Amateau entitled “Don’t turn on the red light, Chinatown tells Sting & Bowie” (news article, June 29 – July 5). I’m writing not so much about the main thrust of the article — that entertainment venues in a city known for them are suffering increasing intolerance at the hands of gentrifying communities — but more so on the lead sentence: “Ivan Kane and his celebrity partners David Bowie and Sting are about to bring burlesque back to the Big Apple with a New York branch of Forty Deuce, Kane’s club in Las Vegas and Los Angeles.” A lead and a notion that hits close to home.

Mr. Amateau might have done just a tiny bit more research on the topic (a simple Google search would have sufficed) because despite what the press release for Forty Deuce may want you to believe, New York is in fact a thriving hub of burlesque. New York has fostered and nurtured the new burlesque scene for more than a dozen years at this point, with a variety of regular burlesque shows at a wide range of venues on almost any night of the week. Shows like “Le Scandal” at the Cutting Room, “Starshine Burlesque” and “Sweet & Nasty Burlesque” at Rififi, “Pinchbottom Burlesque” at Collective Unconscious, “Coney Island’s Burlesque” at The Beach, the nightly burlesque shows at The Slipper Room, or newcomer Corio, and a dozen more. New York is, in fact, the home of The New York Burlesque Festival, an international multi-day burlesque pageant now in its fifth year.

With all due respect to Messrs. Kane, Bowie and Sumner, they’re not so much bringing burlesque back to the city, as just bringing more of it to a place already rich with performers and shows. And Mr. Amateau should have mentioned that.
Bill Morton
Wasabassco Burlesque producer, Brooklyn, N.Y.

A drop in the bucket

To The Editor:
Your photo of the children’s pool at Vesuvio Playground opening told only half the story.  Or maybe just one quarter of the story (Photo caption, July 6 – 12, “Vesuvio flows with water”).

What your photo didn’t show was that the rest of the renovation of this cherished and highly used neighborhood park and playground is still unfinished — a year and a half after the renovation began.  For most of that period, very little work was done.  Then, in the past two months, there has been a flurry of activity on new seating areas, play equipment, the sports court and the pool.

Why did this modest project have to take so long?  Hundreds of children were deprived of a neighborhood pool last summer. And neighborhood residents, including many senior citizens, have been without a place to sit, visit with friends, find an oasis from busy streets.

The New York City Parks Department should apologize to the South Village for mismanaging this project so badly.  Worse still is the irony that the park is named in memory of the bakery owned by Tony Dapolito, who was a community activist dedicated to this neighborhood and especially its children.

If Tony had been alive, this project would have been completed more than a year ago. What an insult to his memory.
Bill Abrams

Lesson learned

To The Editor:
 When my kid went to P.S. 234 and then I.S. 89, parents were always surrounded with educators’ talk about “group projects” and “working together.” There were no desks set in rows like I was used to, and I was always somewhat mystified at this setup, wondering why it was so important.

Now, I get it: At graduation from I.S. 89 in June, the eighth graders put on a spectacular two-hour program with student-made films, skits, live music, dance, poetry recitation, and singing, demonstrating that all the group work and consensus building had allowed students to express themselves as individuals while learning within a supportive, cohesive whole.  The understanding and respect the diverse student body showed for one another at this graduation was certainly not my experience from junior high school — this was something I had never quite seen before.  It was magical.

Bravo to principal Ellen Foote and the teachers at I.S. 89!  The kids got the most important part right.
 Julie Nadel

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