AIDS Park Gets Big Load

My West Village friend Chad noticed the long-awaited canopy is finally going up on the west end of the NYC AIDS Memorial at St. Vincent's Hospital Park, which we affectionately refer to as the AIDS Park.

Thad better watch out ... 

This is what the finished product should look like ...

NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio Calls Plastic Bag Bill a 'Bold, Necessary and Achievable Goal' -- UPDATED

I've seen this in work in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., and I must say I think the Plastic Bag Bill is one of the best ways we everyday people can help the environment. (My old cat Troy was terrified of them -- maybe he was a green kitty!)

The mayor said today:

“In OneNYC, my Administration committed to sending Zero Waste to landfills by 2030 – a bold, necessary and achievable goal in pursuit of a more sustainable New York City. Achieving Zero Waste includes significantly reducing the use of plastic bags, which have long clogged our water system, gotten stuck in our trees and littered our city. The Council’s legislation strikes the right balance, reducing reliance on single-use bags and incentivizing the use of reusable bags, while safeguarding consumers with some logical exemptions to protect vulnerable New Yorkers. The Department of Sanitation projects that this five cent fee could reduce plastic and paper bag waste by approximately 60 percent, based on the experiences of other cities. I congratulate the Council on the bill’s passage and look forward to signing it. Successfully implementing the legislation and dramatically reducing the use of plastic bags will also require close coordination between the City and our local businesses. That’s why I’m so pleased to partner with the Food Industry Alliance and New York Metropolitan Retail Association, representing New York City’s largest retailers and grocery stores, to distribute reusable bags to New Yorkers upon enactment of this legislation.”

UPDATE: The bill passed 28-20.

Music History

Find out what became of the original CBGB awnings HERE!

And go inside the rock 'n' roll-inspired John Varvatos store HERE.

Lunatic Slashes Two on C Train

Jesus, NYC is becoming so '80s again -- and not in a good way.

Matthew Ruff, a 22-year-old recent musical theater grad from the University of Florida, said he was on his way to a job waiting tables in Chelsea Tuesday afternoon when he saw a man in a denim hooded jacket pacing back and forth on the train before he pulled out a box cutter.

“He looked at the guy beside me, attacked him, then he came towards me,” Ruff told the Daily News. “He didn’t say anything. He was just coming toward me with the knife. He definitely had a crazy look in his eye, like it was all for fun. He just looked focused, like he knew exactly what he wanted to do, like if he wanted to kill us, he could have.”

Ruff says he tried to escape to the next subway car, but he tripped and fell in between cars. The attacker then got on top of him as he lay on the floor and cut a 4-inch gash on the right side of Ruff’s forehead before fleeing. Cops identified the assailant as Stanley Gray, 29, of Brownsville,  

Ruff, of Bushwick, needed 28 stitches to close the gash. “It’ll be a noticeable scar, but I’ll be all right.” 

The first victim, Oneal Mendez, 32, was treated at Brookdale Hospital. Cops arrested Gray four blocks from the attack the C train’s Ralph Avenue station in Bedford-Stuyvesant. The train attack came the same week the NYPD announced subway crime has risen 7.5% this year.

First Look at NYC AIDS Memorial at St. Vincent's Hospital Park

Here's your first look at the New York City AIDS Memorial at St. Vincent's Hospital Park (Seventh Avenue and Greenwich Avenue), the only thing left of the iconic hospital that was Ground Zero for the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s.  

It still sickens me that the hospital where so many men and women lost their lives has been converted to a luxury condo complex -- and it likely cost Christine Quinn the mayor's office -- but I am thrilled that the park is finally close to being ready for people to visit, and reflect on a time that thankfully seems almost unimaginable just 20 years later.

Doesn't quite look like the final design announced in 2012, which was described this way:

The streamlined design will feature an 18-foot steel canopy as the dramatic gateway to the new St. Vincent's Hospital Park in the West Village. As it's described in a press release, the memorial also will feature "a central granite fountain, granite benches, and a granite paving surface carved with educational and commemorative text. The text will be curated by a team of historians, artists, community members, and activists led by Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning playwright Tony Kushner."

Maybe there's more work to be done, but the construction barrier just came off and it's a sight for sore eyes.

Not only was history erased when St. Vincent's closed, the entire area was left without a hospital. Instead we have the Lenox Hill Healthplex, which is a cross between an urgent care and the Fisher-Price hospital I had as a kid.

UPDATE:

As we move into the next phase of the LGBT movement, I encourage people of all backgrounds to remember how we got here and the many sacrifices made along the way.