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The Week in Pictures for March 8

Here is a slide show of photographs from the past week in New York City and the region. Subjects include the opening of Fairway in Brooklyn, a brightly painted school and a St. Patrick’s Day parade in the Rockaways.

This weekend on “The New York Times Close Up,” an inside look at the most compelling articles in Sunday’s Times, Sam Roberts will speak with The Times’s Frak Bruni, David Gonzalez, Ángel Franco, Jacob Bernstein and Eleanor Randolph.

A sampling from the City Room blog is featured daily in the main print news section of The Times. You may also browse highlights from the blog and reader comments, read current New York headlines, like New York Metro | The New York Times on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.



Cuomo Voices Mixed Optimism for Chances of Campaign Finance Proposals

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo spoke about campaign finance reform at a luncheon with civic leaders on Friday.Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo spoke about campaign finance reform at a luncheon with civic leaders on Friday.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Friday that he was “cautiously optimistic” that he could push through the Legislature this spring an overhaul of the state’s campaign finance laws, one of the top priorities in Albany for government reformers and progressive groups.

At the same time, he struck an uncertain note about the centerpiece of what advocates are proposing: putting in place a financing system for state elections, modeled after the one used in New York City, whih matches small donations with public money. In exchange, candidates must agree to strict spending limits.

Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, said the rise of independent groups’ spending enormous sums of money in campaigns has “made it more complicated” to devise such a system.

“The juxtaposition between an independent expenditure committee and public financing is truly difficult to explain,” Mr. Cuomo said. “The politicians feel a public financing system will handcuff them, and if an independent expenditure committee then parachutes into the race, they’ll be defenseless.”

The governor’s speech at a luncheon on Friday provided a preview for one of the top policy debates that is likely to come up in Albany after the state budget is completed this month. The luncheon was sponsored by the Committee for Economic Development, a business-backed policy group, and the Brennan Cent! er for Justice at New York University School of Law. Mr. Cuomo will also hold a conference call on Monday with supporters of overhauling the campaign finance system.

In his State of the State address in January, he pledged to push for a broad package of campaign finance changes, including the creation of a system of public financing for state elections, lower limits on political contributions and a requirement that contributions be disclosed in almost real time.

But some advocates of overhauling the state’s campaign fund-raising laws have been skeptical of how far the governor will be willing to push lawmakers, especially Republicans in the State Senate, who have opposed using public money to pay for political campaigns. Mr. Cuomo has also been extraordinarily successful raising money under the existing lax fnd-raising rules.

In a 23-minute speech on Friday at the Midtown Manhattan offices of the law firm Covington & Burling, Mr. Cuomo said the good news, for advocates of campaign finance changes, was that the presidential election had raised public awareness of the flood of money in politics. He said New York State could set an example for the rest of the country in moving to combat it.

The bad news, the governor said, is that the measures he is proposing are “not a prophylactic to the basic vulnerability of Citizens United,” the Supreme Court case in 2010 that led to a surge in outside spending.

“Yes, you could come up with a very restrictive system with very restrictive limits,” he said, “and then have an independent expenditure committee come in and totally violate the spirit of what we were trying to accomplish.”

Mr. Cuomo said, politically, this year was an ideal one to try to push for changes in Albany, given that lawmakers were not up for re-election. But he wa! rned that! it would be a challenging area in which to make progress, because “this is not about changing policy that will affect someone else; this is changing a policy that affects them in their livelihood.”

In his remarks, Mr. Cuomo was particularly critical of outside groups that spend lavishly to support political candidates, saying “these ties now are so close that it really begs credibility that they’re truly independent.”

Mr. Cuomo has drawn criticism over his ties to an outside group, the Committee to Save New York, that has spent millions of dollars supporting his legislative agenda. Asked after his speech about the Committee to Save New York, Mr. Cuomo did not respond directly, but observed, “The independence line, in some cases, has been blurred.”

Speaking to reporters, he added that his primary concern was with independent groups that spend enormous sums in political campaigns “and obliterate a candidac..”

“An independent expenditure committee comes in - ‘Americas for America’ - and spends $10 million, and nobody knows who it is or where it came from, and that, to me, distorts the system,” Mr. Cuomo said. “And when you’re trying to say to the politicians, you should have this public financing system, but there’s this alternative that could distort everything, it’s very difficult.”

Mr. Cuomo, who faces re-election next year, also discussed why he has continued to raise a large amount of money using the lax fund-raising rules that he wants to change. In January, he reported more than $22 million in his campaign account.

“The least favorite part of my job is the fund-raising part,” Mr. Cuomo said. “But until the rules are changed, I don’t have an alternative. I happen not to be independently wealthy, which would have solved a! lot of p! roblems on a lot of levels.” He added, “A rich multimillionaire says, ‘I want to be governor,’ and they’re going to spend a lot of their own money - that could be formidable.”

Mr. Cuomo said that from his point of view, lawmakers would be acting in their self-interest if they moved to overhaul the state’s campaign fund-raising system.

“Raising money is very hard,” he said. “It’s very unpleasant on a personal level. It takes a lot of time. And most politicians who have to deal with the system would be the first ones to say they want to change it.”



Bicyclist Riding Against Traffic Dies After Being Hit by 2 Cars

A bicyclist traveling the wrong way in a lane on New Utrecht Avenue in Borough Park, Brooklyn, was killed early Friday morning after two cars struck him near the intersection at 58th Street, the police said.

The cyclist, Victor Lopez, was southbound on the east side of New Utrecht Avenue, a two-way street, when he collided with a northbound 2008 Honda, according to the police. Mr. Lopez was then hit by another car, also a 2008 Honda, going west on 58th Street.

He was declared dead at the scene of the accident, which happened shortly before 5:20 a.m.

The authorities are investigating whether either car stopped, the police said, but no criminality is suspected at this time.

Mr. Lopez lived on 34th Street in Brooklyn. He was 49.



The Week in Culture Pictures, March 8

David Bowie during his “Aladdin Sane” period, in a photo from “David Bowie Is,” a show coming to the Victoria and Albert Museum.Masayoshi Sukita/The David Bowie Archive 2012 David Bowie during his “Aladdin Sane” period, in a photo from “David Bowie Is,” a show coming to the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Photographs More photographs.

A slide show of photographs of cultural highlights from this week.



Pace to Recognize the Legacy of Jule Styne

Jule Styne wrote the music for MGM Jule Styne wrote the music for “Bells Are Ringing,” which became a 1960 film with Dean Martin and Judy Holliday.

They will be playing a lot of composer Jule Styne’s best known songs at the Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts at Pace University on Saturday night â€" selections from Broadway shows like “Funny Girl” and and “Gypsy” and “Peter Pan.”

But they will not be playing the favorite song of Mr. Styne, who died in 1994, because such a song does not exist, according to his widow, Margaret Styne, 76.

“If people asked Jule what hisfavorite song was, he’d say, ‘I haven’t written it yet,’” Mrs. Styne said.

She will be in attendance at the theater in lower Manhattan for the musical retrospective entitled “American Showstoppers: An Evening With Jule Styne.” The Broadway composer and collaborator’s contributions to the American songbook included “I Don’t Want to Walk Without You,” “Let It Snow! Let it Snow! Let it Snow!,” and “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.”

He won the 1955 Academy Award for Best Song for “Three Coins in the Fountain” and once estimated that he had published some 1,500 songs for theater and Hollywood.

The Fred Barton Orchestra will lead the show with the Broadway singers Vivian Reed and Pamela Myers also taking part.



Wallets Disappear, Followed by Cash via A.T.M.’s

This woman is withdrawing $2,000 from a bank account that is not hers, the police say.N.Y.P.D. This woman is withdrawing $2,000 from a bank account that is not hers, the police say.

The not-at-all-disreputable-looking grand larcenist has struck again.

At 6:40 p.m. on Jan. 31, the police say, the woman in these surveillance photos withdrew money at an A.T.M. from the account of a woman who had recently noticed her wallet missing at the Key Food supermarket at 52 Avenue A in the East Village.

N.Y.P.D.

The same thief, the police said, had been seen on Nov. 19 withdrawing $2,000 at a Chase branch on Eighth Avenue and 15th Street in Manhattan from the account of a woman who had noticed her wallet missing in the Borough Hall subway station in Brooklyn.

The police did not say how much money had been withdrawn in the more recent incident or where it took place.

Anyone with information about the crimes is asked to contact Crime Stoppers.



92nd Street Y Announces New Concert Season

The 92nd Street Y will open its 2013-14 concert series in the Kaufmann Concert Hall on Oct. 19 with a program of late-19th- and 20th-century piano sonatas by Russian composers. Or with a program of Liszt compositions and arrangements. Or with a program of Bach, Beethoven, Chopin and Shostakovich. As part of the Masters of the Keyboard series, Valentina Lisitsa, a Ukrainian pianist who has recently gained a big following on YouTube, will make her New York recital debut playing one of three programs to be chosen by the general public and the audience through online voting. Three other programs in the Masters of the Keyboard series each feature single programs, to be played by Olga Kern, Yefim Bronfman and Peter Serkin.

The Y’s Distinguished Artists in Recital series offers appearances by the violinist Miriam Fried and the pianist Jonathan Biss; the violnist Gidon Kremer and the Kremerata Baltica; and the cellist Steven Isserlis and the pianist Jeremy Denk. The distinguished Hagen Quartet, which has been celebrating its 30th anniversary with performances of the Beethoven string quartets in Europe, will perform the entire cycle at the Y in six concerts in November, and the Brentano String Quartet will present three concerts, each featuring a premiere, beginning in February.

Expanding on its use of a satellite space, 92YTribeca, the Y will offer a new recital series, Listen Up, and will join the Metropolitan Museum and Symphony Space in presenting the New York Philharmonic’s contemporary-music series, Contact!



The Sweet Spot: Let’s Go to the Movies

A. O. Scott and David Carr talk about the ups and downs of experiencing films in a theater … enjoy the popcorn, mind your manners and please share the armrest.



Big Ticket | A Marble Marvel For $9.46 Million

The historic brick building at 60 Collister Street, a former stable, houses a 9,300-square-foot marble showplace, complete with a sauna and a “quarry room” that contains a heated saltwater swimming pool.Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times The historic brick building at 60 Collister Street, a former stable, houses a 9,300-square-foot marble showplace, complete with a sauna and a “quarry room” that contains a heated saltwater swimming pool.

The Marble House, the eccentric and extravagant TriBeCa triplex that embodies one man’s ode to all of the design possibilities inherent in marble, especially the Carrara variant, sold for $9,466,099.64 and was the most expensive sale of the week, according to city records.

The transaction also included a designated parkingspot, No. 7, inside the historic 15-unit brick building at 60 Collister Street/157 Hudson Street, a former stable that dates to 1866 and is now known as the American Express Carriage House.

The most recent listing price, drastically marked down from the original $24.5 million, was $14.995 million. The home had been on and off the market at ever-descending prices for a few years, returning in July at $17.5 million.

To describe the 9,300-square-foot showplace, No. 1C, as unusual would be a gross understatement. Not many Manhattan apartments can claim â€" or would admit â€" to offering a “quarry room” containing a 45-foot heated saltwater swimming pool clad in Carrara marble and, like the rest of the residence, equipped with radiant floor heating. The downstairs pool is, naturally, adjacent to a red-cedar Finlandia sauna, a 1,000-bottle wine cave, and a 12-seat screening theater.

The exterior.Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times The exterior.

On the top level, known as the “private” level, there are four named bedroom suites â€" the 1,000-square-foot Master, with its all-Carrara bath and imposing Palladian window, and the Striped, the Valencia and the Bardiglio â€" as well as an office/music room, a laundry room and a room identified in the floor plan as “the trunk room.”

The four-bedroom, five-and-one-half-bath apartment is entered through a 400-pound door leading to a 60-foot grand hall lighted by Murano glass chandeliers. The chef’s kitchen has 50 linear feet of counter space â€" marble, of course, like the two-ton sink. And the formal dining room accommodates 40. Wherever the floors aren’t marble, they are white oak arranged in a chevron pattern.

The buyer of this 80-foot-wide home,the designer and occasional producer Stuart Parr (“8 Mile” and “Get Rich or Die Tryin’”), personally selected the slabs of Italian marble displayed in the home: Striato Olimpico and Crema Valencia figure prominently. Mr. Parr also owns the Stuart Parr Gallery on Vestry Street and, according to his biography, is working on a film that pays homage to Frank Lloyd Wright.

VE Equities bought the building out of foreclosure in 2011 and has since sold all 15 units. Justin Ehrlich, a partner in VE Equities, confirmed the sale to Mr. Parr. A notable newcomer to the building, as reported by the real estate Web site The Real Deal and confirmed by city records, is a top agent from Douglas Elliman Real Estate, Raphael De Niro, who bought a $3.5 million corner loft there last summer.

Big Ticket includes closed listings from the previous week, ending Wednesday.



Graphic Books Best Sellers: Tony Stark’s Struggles

With “Iron Man 3,” starring Robert Downey Jr., out on May 3, the arrival of the “Iron Man Omnibus” to our hardcover graphic books best-seller list couldn’t be better timed. The book, at No. 3 on the list, offers 944 pages of intrigue following the hero and the man under the armor, Tony Stark. These stories include Stark’s fight against alcoholism as well as a time-travel clash with Doctor Doom, a throwdown with the Incredible Hulk and a cadre of supervillains (Madame Masque, Whiplash, the Titanium Man and more).

This edition reprints issues Nos. 115 through 157 of the “Iron Man” series. The “Demon in a Bottle” storyline ran in issues Nos. 120 through 128 in 1979. By the end of the story, Stark puts his binge drinking behind him, but his pat struggle has come up in more recent stories. Back in 2011, Shane Black, the director of “Iron Man 3,” said he opted not to explore the famous storyline. “It’s part of Tony’s character, but I think the ‘Demon in a Bottle’ aspect, if you go there, you really have to go there,” Mr. Black told Comic Book Resources. “The film then becomes about that, because the journey that involves recovering from alcoholism is an entire movie.”

As always, the complete best-seller lists can be found here, along with an explanation of how they were assembled.



Joy Behar Leaving ‘The View’

Joy Behar, an original member of the 16-year-old ABC talk show “The View,” says that she has decided to leave the show at the end of its current season.

“There are other things on my plate I want to do,” she told Deadline.com on Thursday, citing a play she has been writing and her stand-up comedy. She also said she would like to host another talk show of her own; she previously had stints on HLN and Current TV.

After Ms. Behar leaves, Barbara Walters, the co-creator of “The View,” will be the only original member still on the show. There may be more changes to come: TVNewser.com reported on Friday that Elisabeth Hasselback would not return for the next season, according to unidentified sources. A representative of the show said Ms. Hasselback “has a long-term contract,” but would not elaborate.



The Ratings Behind the Renewals

Amid what has been a dire winter for many broadcast programs, Fox renewed four shows this week: “The Following,” “New Girl,” “The Mindy Project” and “Raising Hope.”

The first was a no-brainer, as “The Following” has the somewhat dubious honor of being the only midseason entry to find ratings success on a broadcast network. The most recent episode drew 8.8 million total viewers, just below its season average of 9 million.

“New Girl” was another easy decision. Even though it no longer reaches the same ratings heights that it did during its first season, it frequently ranks in the Top 20 shows watched by 18- to 49-year-olds, the demographic prized by advertisers.

The last two renewals were more surprising. “The Mindy Project” has averaged only 3.2 million total viewers in its first season despite following “New Girl” on the schedule, and “Raising ope,” now in its third season, is down compared with previous years, to an average of 3.8 million viewers.

But in recent weeks, both programs have settled near their season averages in total viewers, suggesting an increasingly rare ratings trait: stability.



Astoria Park, 1:49 P.M.

Todd Heisler/The New York Times

A Magazine, a Plan, a Contest — Symmys!

Awards season isn’t over quite yet. On Sunday the winners of the first annual Symmys awards, for outstanding palindrome achievement, will be announced in Portland, Ore. The name of the awards is a palindrome, of course, and so is the date on which they’re being handed out: March 10, or 3/10/2013.

The finalists in four categories are impressive, even if they don’t approach the elegance and coherence of arguably the most famous palindrome: “A man, a plan, a canal, Panama.” These embrace the more nonsensical side of the art form, as in these finalists in the short palindrome category: “But as God lived to bore us silly, did a mad idyll issue robot devil-dogs a tub” And, “I made Rihanna hirsute, familiar, frail: I’m a fetus Rihanna hired, am I”

A higher grade of poetry is available in the word unit category, in which only the full words, not the letters, have to work forwards and backwards. An example: “You swallow pills for anious days and nights, and days, anxious for pills, swallow you.”

The awards are organized by the Palindromist Magazine, which bills itself as “the world’s leading palindrome periodical,” in case you’re looking to narrow your subscription choices.

The panel of judges includes the parodist Weird Al Yankovic (the lyrics of his song “Bob” are all palindromes, like “we panic in a pew”); the comedian Demetri Martin; John Flansburgh of the band They Might Be Giants; and Will Shortz, The New York Times’s crossword editor.



Popcast: ‘Harlem Shake’ and the New Meaning of No. 1

The D. J. Baauer, whose Julie Glassberg for The New York Times The D. J. Baauer, whose “Harlem Shake” fueled a Youtube craze, at Glasslands Gallery in Williamsburg.

For the third week running, Baauer’s trap novelty “Harlem Shake” takes the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, largely because of the magazine’s new tabulating system that takes into account Youtube views. (Baauer is also the cover story in the magazine’s current issue, which tells you somethng about how a publication can make itself a large part of its own story.)

This is an interesting moment in the ongoing story of how we consume and react to music, because those Youtube views typically include less than a sixth of the length of the track, and the students, office-workers, and professional sports teams dancing to the song in those thousands of videos aren’t really expressing anything about the song itself. Or are they Jon Caramanica talks with host Ben Ratliff about trap, listening, appropriation, memory, impotent rage, and disembodied dance crazes.

Listen above, download the MP3 here, or subscribe in iTunes.

RELATED

Jon Caramanica on Baauer’s “Harlem Shake” and Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop”

Ben Sisario on the changing of the rules in the Billboard Hot 100 chart

Baauer’s Reddit AMA

SPOTIFY PLAYLIST
Tracks by artists discussed this week. (Spotify users can also find it here.)



Nanny Charged With Murder Appears in Court

Yoselyn Ortega, a nanny who is accused of fatally stabbing two children in her care at their Upper West Side apartment last October, made a brief appearance in Manhattan Supreme Court on Friday. She is still undergoing a psychological evaluation to determine whether she is fit to stand trial.John Marshall Mantel for The New York Times Yoselyn Ortega, a nanny who is accused of fatally stabbing two children in her care at their Upper West Side apartment last October, made a brief appearance in Manhattan Supreme Court on Friday. She is still undergoing a psychological evaluation to determine whether she is fit to stand trial.

Watching ‘The We and the I’ in the Bronx

David Gonzalez/The New York Times

After three weeks in upstate New York, Alex Barrios was excited about coming back to the city. The sight of the Empire State Building, its shiny spire peeking over the jagged suburban landscape, set his heart racing.

He was home. Again. And on a bus. Again.

The two events are not unrelated. He was returning to the Bronx for the premiere of “The We and the I,” a film by Michel Gondry that features him and more than two dozen young people who portray - more or less - themselves. Set on a bus ride home on the last day of school, it is a heartfelt and honest peek into their lves and loves, dreams and fears, joys and tragedies. Filmed almost entirely inside a bus, it’s like “The Exterminating Angel” meets “Cooley High” on wheels, while bouncy ’80s rap music plays in the background.

It could just as easily be “Long Day’s Journey Into Hunts Point,” since that Bronx peninsula was the backdrop to many scenes. Yet unlike persistent portrayals of that area as some drug- and sex-saturated hellhole populated by thugs and ragamuffins, the movie treats young people from there like, well, actual young people. They laugh, bully, bicker, cry and boast. It ends on a note of mystery and hope, with a couple huddled in a dark park, as Manhattan’s fuzzy skyline twinkles in the distance.

“These are the things that happen with everyday teenagers,” said Mr. Barrios, who just turned 22. “People have this misconception the Bronx is this really bad place, but it has as much culture and respect as any other place. Some people hear things and take it a differe! nt way. This point of this film was to show the Bronx from our perspective because we actually live there.”

His path to the movie was as circuitous as the route covered by the imaginary BX66 bus of the film. While in high school he had gone to the Point, a community center on Manida Street, to use the music room, practicing bass with his metal rock band.

A few years ago, Mr. Gondry approached the organization to see if its young people would be interested in doing a workshop to help him develop a new film. Word went out. Mr. Barrios jumped in.

“Why not” he said. “I always had an interest in acting. I used to do little monologues with my friends. We made fake movie trailers for fun. Let me try to do this seriously and take it to another level.”

The stories the young people traded in the workshop became the basis for the script. And many of them were invited to join the cast. Mr. Barrios wound up being in the movie in more ways than one not only does his character have a crucial scene at the end, but his actual sketches were also used in a notebook toted by another teenager who played an artist.

Mr. Barrios â€" a gangly young man who is as quiet in real life as he was in the movie - takes his art seriously. Mr. Gondry took him seriously too, since he cast him in a second movie, bringing him over to France for the filming.

“I play an incarnation of Jesus,” Mr. Barrios said. “A flashy Jesus, like a Michael Jackson Jesus. He put me in a rocket ship that flew around a church. It was pretty crazy.”

And then he returned to the Bronx, where he lived with his father in a housing project. The “situation,” as he calls it, has not been easy. His mother died two years ago from a stroke. He wants to change things, so he looked for work - at drugstores, restaurants, delivery services, but came up empty.

That’s not crazy. Just common.

Some friends said he should ask the filmmaker for another role. While! Mr. Barr! ios is grateful for being in two movies, he is taking life step by step, doing what needs to be done. He has a plan. It takes time.

“I’m not going to hassle the guy,” he said. “I got my foot in the door. Now it’s about how you walk through.”

Instead, he enrolled last month in a Job Corps program in Calicoon, N.Y., about two hours from the Bronx. There, he is learning culinary arts. He hopes to return to the city, get a job and keep on drawing, playing music and looking for acting work.

“The way I see it, Job Corps or working on a film with Gondry, it’s just a job that needs to be done,” he said. “As long as I’m focused on the task at hand, I’ll do it. It’s no different from sweeping an entire hallway. I tend to work a lot. It’s all in the plan.”

So it’s back to Calicoon.

“It’s a strange place,” he said. “I’m used to seeing the city, the buildings and the cracks in the sidewalk. Now I see grass and trees. I can finally see stars in the sy.”

And, perhaps someday, one in the mirror.



2 Neighboring Examples of Gowanus’s Return Clash Over Noise

Elise Long, an owner of the Gowanus Arts Building, on the roof of the building, with the Fairfield Inn & Suites behind her. The hotel and the arts building are in a conflict over noise.Uli Seit for The New York Times Elise Long, an owner of the Gowanus Arts Building, on the roof of the building, with the Fairfield Inn & Suites behind her. The hotel and the arts building are in a conflict over noise.

The Gowanus Arts Building and the Fairfield Inn & Suites, neighbors in a fast-changing industrial corner of Brooklyn, are separated by only the hotel’s parking lot.

The arts center, a former soap factory now filled with rehearsal space for dancers and musicians and studios for artists, was one ofthe first signs of the Gowanus neighborhood’s comeback when it opened in 1985, a time when the zone between Park Slope and Carroll Gardens was a no man’s land ridden with drugs, prostitution and other crime. The Fairfield, a sleek 12-story Marriott hotel that opened in 2011, one of about a half-dozen hotels to open in the last few years, is one of the newest.

But lately in Gowanus, the two generations are not getting along so well.

Management at the Fairfield has been complaining about late-night drumming at the arts building. The inn’s guests, according to the hotel, have said they are unable to sleep through noise that rings out as late as 2 a.m.

“Many of our corporate guests are here on business and usually have an early start to their day,” the Fairfield’s general manager, Darren Piercey, wrote in an e-mail in January to Gabriella Denne! ry, founder of a percussion ensemble that rents space in the building. “Others are leisure travelers who travel from all over the world to experience all the excitement that is Brooklyn and N.Y.C. Unfortunately, they are unable to stay on track due to lack of sleep as a result of the constant drumming coming from the Gowanus Arts building.”

Guests at the Fairield Inn and Suites hotel in Brooklyn have complained about late-night drum noise from the nearby Gowanus Arts Building, the hotel management says.Andy Newman Guests at the Fairield Inn and Suites hotel in Brooklyn have complained about late-night drum noise from the nearby Gowanus Arts Building, the hotel management says.

People at th arts center say the late-night drumming has happened only a “handful” of times. They worry that an age-old urban pattern, where artists move into a desolate neighborhood and make it safer and more desirable, only to get pushed out by the next wave of arrivals, is playing out yet again. As the conflict has ground on, the arts center has called for a boycott of the hotel.

The Fairfield’s thinking “is very skewed, like, ‘Nothing existed until we showed up, and now we’re going to make this barren land safe for international tourists because we don’t want them to get a bad impression,” said Elise Long, a co-owner of the building whose dance company, Spoke the Hub, is one of the arts center’s original tenants.

No one associated with the hotel, which is part of Marriott International, would comment for this article.

Both buildings - the hotel fronts on busy Third Avenue, the arts center on a side street, Douglass Street â€" are in an area zoned for manufacturing. But regardless of zoning, the city’s noise code prohibits music from raising the noise level in nearby dwellings above 42 decibels, quieter than most normal conversations, a spokesman for the city’s Department of Environmental Protection said.

“The noise code applies to the entire city,” said the spokesman, Ted Timbers, “but our inspections are driven by concerns or complaints.” If someone lodges a noise complaint to 311, either his department or the police would follow up, he said.

Mr. Piercey wrote to Ms. Dennery that the inn had “begun lodging complaints with 311” and was “tracking the activity,” but a search of the city’s 311 database turned up no complaints about 295 Douglass Street, the arts center’s address, and the environmental department said it had not received any.

The band In One Wind set up for a practice session at the Gowanus Arts Building late last month.Uli Seit for The New York Times The band In One Wind set up for a practice session at the Gowanus Arts Building late last month.

Officials at Marshall Resorts and Hotels, which manages the hotel, did not return requests for comment. Nor did Mr. Piercey or officials of Troutbrook Development, which owns the hotel.

A Marriott document for franchiser! s [pd! f] says Fairfield Inn guests “are the most productivity-oriented of the select-service/extended stay brands” and are looking for the ability to “keep their routine intact.”

Ms. Long and one of her tenants, Scott Kettner, a drummer, say the 2 a.m. noise went on only a few times, when Mr. Kettner’s studio-mate Tim Keiper practiced late into the night. Mr. Kettner estimated that Mr. Keiper practiced until 2 a.m. four times in the past year.

“The trucks going down Third Avenue are a lot louder,” Ms. Long said. She suggested to Mr. Piercey that the Fairfield Inn pay to soundproof the Gowanus Arts Building. Mr. Piercey did not respond, she said.

The hotel and the arts center seem as if they could benefit from each other’s presence. For now, that is not happening. Lori Lahnemann, owner of the Philadelphia Dance Academy, which is scheduled to give a performance with Spoke the Hub in April, said that she had made reservations at the Fairfield for 25 dancers and 15 chaperons, but tht Ms. Long persuaded her to switch hotels.

“We definitely would have stayed there if it weren’t for the boycott,” Ms. Lahnemann said.



A Journey Into Films, Beginning at a Bronx Community Center

David Gonzalez/The New York Times

After three weeks in upstate New York, Alex Barrios was excited about coming back to the city. The sight of the Empire State Building, its shiny spire peeking over the jagged suburban landscape, set his heart racing.

He was home. Again. And on a bus. Again.

The two events are not unrelated. He was returning to the Bronx for the premiere of “The We and the I,” a film by Michel Gondry that features him and more than two dozen young people who portray - more or less - themselves. Set on a bus ride home on the last day of school, it is a heartfelt and honest peek into their lves and loves, dreams and fears, joys and tragedies. Filmed almost entirely inside a bus, it’s like “The Exterminating Angel” meets “Cooley High” on wheels, while bouncy ’80s rap music plays in the background.

It could just as easily be “Long Day’s Journey Into Hunts Point,” since that Bronx peninsula was the backdrop to many scenes. Yet unlike persistent portrayals of that area as some drug- and sex-saturated hellhole populated by thugs and ragamuffins, the movie treats young people from there like, well, actual young people. They laugh, bully, bicker, cry and boast. It ends on a note of mystery and hope, with a couple huddled in a dark park, as Manhattan’s fuzzy skyline twinkles in the distance.

“These are the things that happen with everyday teenagers,” said Mr. Barrios, who just turned 22. “People have this misconception the Bronx is this really bad place, but it has as much culture and respect as any other place. Some people hear things and take it a differe! nt way. This point of this film was to show the Bronx from our perspective because we actually live there.”

His path to the movie was as circuitous as the route covered by the imaginary BX66 bus of the film. While in high school he had gone to the Point, a community center on Manida Street, to use the music room, practicing bass with his metal rock band.

A few years ago, Mr. Gondry approached the organization to see if its young people would be interested in doing a workshop to help him develop a new film. Word went out. Mr. Barrios jumped in.

“Why not” he said. “I always had an interest in acting. I used to do little monologues with my friends. We made fake movie trailers for fun. Let me try to do this seriously and take it to another level.”

The stories the young people traded in the workshop became the basis for the script. And many of them were invited to join the cast. Mr. Barrios wound up being in the movie in more ways than one not only does his character have a crucial scene at the end, but his actual sketches were also used in a notebook toted by another teenager who played an artist.

Mr. Barrios â€" a gangly young man who is as quiet in real life as he was in the movie - takes his art seriously. Mr. Gondry took him seriously too, since he cast him in a second movie, bringing him over to France for the filming.

“I play an incarnation of Jesus,” Mr. Barrios said. “A flashy Jesus, like a Michael Jackson Jesus. He put me in a rocket ship that flew around a church. It was pretty crazy.”

And then he returned to the Bronx, where he lived with his father in a housing project. The “situation,” as he calls it, has not been easy. His mother died two years ago from a stroke. He wants to change things, so he looked for work - at drugstores, restaurants, delivery services, but came up empty.

That’s not crazy. Just common.

Some friends said he should ask the filmmaker for another role. While! Mr. Barr! ios is grateful for being in two movies, he is taking life step by step, doing what needs to be done. He has a plan. It takes time.

“I’m not going to hassle the guy,” he said. “I got my foot in the door. Now it’s about how you walk through.”

Instead, he enrolled last month in a Job Corps program in Calicoon, N.Y., about two hours from the Bronx. There, he is learning culinary arts. He hopes to return to the city, get a job and keep on drawing, playing music and looking for acting work.

“The way I see it, Job Corps or working on a film with Gondry, it’s just a job that needs to be done,” he said. “As long as I’m focused on the task at hand, I’ll do it. It’s no different from sweeping an entire hallway. I tend to work a lot. It’s all in the plan.”

So it’s back to Calicoon.

“It’s a strange place,” he said. “I’m used to seeing the city, the buildings and the cracks in the sidewalk. Now I see grass and trees. I can finally see stars in the sy.”

And, perhaps someday, one in the mirror.



Book Review Podcast: Matrimony in the Movies

Olimpia Zagnoli

This week in The New York Times Book Review, Jdith Newman reviews “I Do and I Don’t,” Jeanine Basinger’s new book about the history of marriage in the movies. Ms. Newman writes:

Romance movies may demand chemistry, but movies about marriage demand something more difficult to create â€" a sense that a couple are simpatico, that however much they may bicker and snipe, their deep understanding and feeling for each other will ultimately keep them together. Beloved movie couples like Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon, for example, generate more light than heat: in films like “That Forsyte Woman” and “Madame Curie,” they convince us that whatever their problems or station in life, they have each other’s backs. Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy worked so well as a married couple not just because they were known to be an off-screen pair, but because, as Basinger explains, they “generated a sense of incompatibility, ! competition, class difference and underlying tension.” Beyond attraction, there was respect: each saw the other as the most interesting person in the room.

On this week’s podcast, Ms. Basinger discusses marriage in the movies; Leslie Kaufman has notes from the field; Charles McGrath talks about the letters of P. G. Wodehouse; and Gregory Cowles has best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.



A Freaky Fund-Raiser for a Storm-Ravaged Freak Show

Patrick Wall, the house manager at Coney Island USA, cleaned a water-damaged player piano last fall after Hurricane Sandy swept through.Mario Tama/Getty Images Patrick Wall, the house manager at Coney Island USA, cleaned a water-damaged player piano last fall after Hurricane Sandy swept through.
The storm left the place quite a mess inside.Patrick Wall The storm left the place quite a mess inside.

Sideshows by the Seashore in Coney Island â€" hom to some of New York City’s finest sword swallowers and contortionists â€" was battered last fall by Hurricane Sandy, as water from the ocean and from Coney Island Creek inundated its gift shop, its theater and its on-site watering hole, the Freak Bar, causing nearly $400,000 in damage.

Dick Zigun, the founder of the Vaudeville group, was personally homeless for weeks after his loft in the neighborhood was flooded. He spent much of the winter bedding down on other people’s couches with not much more to his name than his cat.

Much of the interior was left flooded.Patrick Wall Much of the interior was left flooded.

Now, however, with the sideshow trying to reopen next month, Coney Island USA, its parent organization, is holding a fund-raising event this Saturday â€" tomorrow â€" at Webster Hall in Manhattan, at which Mr. Zigun and a cast of dancers will perform a theater piece called “The Burlesque Manifesto.”

The evening will also include appearances by Insectavora, a razor blade and fire eater, and Serpentina, a 6-foot-tall snake charmer with additional expertise in the bed of nails.

The event is scheduled to run from 7 to 11 p.m. Tickets, beginning at $60, can be purchased online at coneyisland.com.

The freaks hope to be open for business next month.Patrick Wall/span> The freaks hope to be open for business next month.


Sprawling Expo Coming to MoMA PS1

Agnes Denes, Courtesy Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects, New York “Wheatfield - A Confrontation: Battery Park Landfill“ (1982) by Agnes Denes.

Klaus Biesenbach, the chief curator-at-large at the Museum of Modern Art, and the director of MoMA PS1, the museum’s outpost in Long Island city, will devote the next sixth months to EXPO 1: New York, a sprawling exploration of the current state of the ecology and social and political change.

The festival’s centerpiece is “Dark Optimism,” a show by about 35 cotemporary artists based on the notion, attributed by the museum to the editor of Triple Canopy magazine, that we are on the brink of both the apocalypse and an unprecedented technological transformation that promise a brighter future. Adrián Villar Rojas, Meg Webster, Agnes Denes, Anna Betbeze and the Fluxus performance artist Joseph Beuys are among the artists whose works are included in the exhibition, which opens at MoMA PS1 on May 12 and runs through Sept. 2.

“EXPO 1: New York” focuses on some of the most pressing issues of the day,” Mr. Biesenbach said in a statement, “specifically recent ecological challenges set against a backdrop of economic and socio-political concerns that have made a dramatic impact on daily life.

Also among the festival’s offerings is an exhibition of Ansel Adams’s nature photography, drawn from MoMA’s collection; a group exhibition of New York-based young artists, cur! ated by Josh Kline, and EXPO Cinema, which the museum describes as “an evolving program” that will draw on film, video art, games, advertising, pop culture and material created by online visitors.

In addition to the art and video exhibitions at MoMA PS 1, the festival will include a component at the VW Dome 2 - a temporary cultural and educational center in the Rockways, at the southern end of the parking lot between Beach 94th and Beach 95th Streets. Lectures, art exhibitions, video screenings and performances will be presented at the dome in partnerships between the museum and arts organizations in the Rockaways and Queens County.

“Return the WrldCourtesy the artist, Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, and Kurimanzutto, Mexico “Return the World” (2012) by Adrian Villar Rojas was on view last year at Documenta 13 in Kassel, Germany.

The dome was built this month (the outer hull is expected to be completed today), and in April, MoMA PS1 will present a series of talks there, also streamed online, about architecture and the environment. The focus of the talks will be the 25 winning proposals selected from those submitted in response to the museum’s call for ideas about sustainable waterfront planning and construction, including alternative housing models, rebuilding the boardwalk, protecting the shoreline and community engagement. The proposals, which must ! be in for! m of a video under three minutes long, are due on March 15.

EXPO 1 will also include a series of daily lectures, starting May 12, by artists, writers, technologists, economists and ecologists, who will speculate about the future as they would like to see it. And the Argentinian architectural firm a77, which is known for building with recycled and salvaged materials, has been commissioned to build a colony for artists, architects and thinkers - who will inhabit it for the duration of the exhibition - in the courtyard of MoMA PS1.



Sprawling Expo Coming to MoMA PS1

Agnes Denes, Courtesy Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects, New York “Wheatfield - A Confrontation: Battery Park Landfill“ (1982) by Agnes Denes.

Klaus Biesenbach, the chief curator-at-large at the Museum of Modern Art, and the director of MoMA PS1, the museum’s outpost in Long Island city, will devote the next sixth months to EXPO 1: New York, a sprawling exploration of the current state of the ecology and social and political change.

The festival’s centerpiece is “Dark Optimism,” a show by about 35 cotemporary artists based on the notion, attributed by the museum to the editor of Triple Canopy magazine, that we are on the brink of both the apocalypse and an unprecedented technological transformation that promise a brighter future. Adrián Villar Rojas, Meg Webster, Agnes Denes, Anna Betbeze and the Fluxus performance artist Joseph Beuys are among the artists whose works are included in the exhibition, which opens at MoMA PS1 on May 12 and runs through Sept. 2.

“EXPO 1: New York” focuses on some of the most pressing issues of the day,” Mr. Biesenbach said in a statement, “specifically recent ecological challenges set against a backdrop of economic and socio-political concerns that have made a dramatic impact on daily life.

Also among the festival’s offerings is an exhibition of Ansel Adams’s nature photography, drawn from MoMA’s collection; a group exhibition of New York-based young artists, cur! ated by Josh Kline, and EXPO Cinema, which the museum describes as “an evolving program” that will draw on film, video art, games, advertising, pop culture and material created by online visitors.

In addition to the art and video exhibitions at MoMA PS 1, the festival will include a component at the VW Dome 2 - a temporary cultural and educational center in the Rockways, at the southern end of the parking lot between Beach 94th and Beach 95th Streets. Lectures, art exhibitions, video screenings and performances will be presented at the dome in partnerships between the museum and arts organizations in the Rockaways and Queens County.

“Return the WrldCourtesy the artist, Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, and Kurimanzutto, Mexico “Return the World” (2012) by Adrian Villar Rojas was on view last year at Documenta 13 in Kassel, Germany.

The dome was built this month (the outer hull is expected to be completed today), and in April, MoMA PS1 will present a series of talks there, also streamed online, about architecture and the environment. The focus of the talks will be the 25 winning proposals selected from those submitted in response to the museum’s call for ideas about sustainable waterfront planning and construction, including alternative housing models, rebuilding the boardwalk, protecting the shoreline and community engagement. The proposals, which must ! be in for! m of a video under three minutes long, are due on March 15.

EXPO 1 will also include a series of daily lectures, starting May 12, by artists, writers, technologists, economists and ecologists, who will speculate about the future as they would like to see it. And the Argentinian architectural firm a77, which is known for building with recycled and salvaged materials, has been commissioned to build a colony for artists, architects and thinkers - who will inhabit it for the duration of the exhibition - in the courtyard of MoMA PS1.



London Theater Journal: The Young and the Restless

LONDON â€" A cruel virus is gnawing at the entrails of James McAvoy, who is delivering a star turn that sears in the title role of Jamie Lloyd’s production of “Macbeth” at Trafalgar Studios. Among the symptoms: coughing, vomiting, gagging, falling down while hallucinating and smiling in the midst of dire situations, as if at some torturous private joke.

Then there’s the matter of all that blood, his and others’, that’s usually visible on much of his body. But that seems to be less a symptom than a cause. This virile, able-bodied solider has been felled by the habit of killing. Murdering people, even in the name of king and country, can make a man pathologically sick. Of course this one is also afflicted by what he calls, with wondering contempt, “vaulting ambition.”

Being ambitious is traditionally regarded witha warier eye in Britain than in the United States. And the tolls it takes on the young and restless is being charted in two of the most sensational performances on London stages this season. In addition to Mr. McAvoy’s Thane of Cawdor, there’s the brilliant Kate O’Flynn’s Racheal Keats, the perpetually thwarted working-class heroine of Simon Stephens’s “Port” at the National Theater.

These two could hardly be more different in many ways, starting with their sex and provenance. And while Macbeth is a much-studied embodiment of the dictum “Be careful what you wish for,” Racheal is a relatively unknown example of what happens when ardent prayers are never answered. But both roles allow their portrayers to make their marks in ways that define careers, as they ferociously vent the hunger of groping souls in harsh environments.

In Mr. Lloyd’s “Macbeth,” which is packing in refreshingly un-gray-headed audiences, t! hat country is, as it always has been, Scotland, but of tomorrow instead of the Middle Ages. A post-performance discussion with Mr. Lloyd was advertised with the title “Apocalypse Now: Is It the End of the World as We Know It”

The designer Soutra Gilmour has accordingly created an ecologically stripped, war-blighted landscape where the sun has ceased to shine and 21st-century technology has stopped functioning, aside from occasional salvaged gadgets like those computer tablets with which the three witches illuminate their faces. This is “Mad Max” territory, and it can feel a wee bit forced.

Also unnecessary. Because it’s not as a vision of a desolate future that this “Macbeth” compels but as a portrait of a military mind undone. From the moment the gore starts to fly in the opening scenes of this production, we see that violence has become a conditioned reflex for its characters, who have lived too long in a state of war. (Hugh Ross’s gently spoken Duncan feels like a relic from nother age; his imminent death is inevitable.)

Mr. McAvoy - who earned his stripes as a two-fisted movie actor in films like “X-Men: First Class” - could do Macbeth the action hero in his sleep. What he gives us in addition is the brain-jarring consequences of working as a killing machine.

This Macbeth is not, you suspect, an innately imaginative person, or at least he’s never defined himself that way. But suddenly he’s having visions, and they’re scaring the hell out of him. And once his wife (a raw, blazingly young Claire Foy) pushes him into murdering his King, the already blurred line between war and peace-time behavior dissolves entirely, along with the military discipline that has kept him intact.

That the words “post-traumatic stress disorder” are summoned in the program notes doesn’t sound like just a bid for topicality. Mr. McAvoy’s performance brings to mind accounts of soldiers harrowed by their ti! me in Ira! q. When this Macbeth finally bites the toxic dust, it feels like a suicide. What’s more, you suspect that the survivors left on stage will eventually follow suit.

The streets of Stockport in northern England, the setting for Mr. Stephens’s “Port,” are nowhere near as bloody. But at times they feel almost as bleak. Stockport is the home town of both Mr. Stephens (“Harper Regan,” “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time”) and this production’s celebrated director, Marianne Elliott (“War Horse”). So presumably they know whereof they spea in conjuring a place where every road seems to lead to a dead end.

This is terrain that British writers and filmmakers have mined since the 1950’s, from Alan Sillitoe to Mike Leigh. And with its familiar roster of addictions, petty crime and domestic abuses, you may feel at first that it’s not worth revisiting. But Mr. Stephens and Ms. O’Flynn have shaped a vital and surprisingly original character in Racheal, whose mother (shades of “Harper Regan”) leaves her husband and young children shortly after the play begins.
Like her mum (played by Liz White), Racheal, whom we first meet as a garrulous 10-year-old, wants more than anything to escape, and the urge can make her behave rather nastily.

But as given exhilarating (and willfully irritating) life, from pre-adolescence to young adulthood, by Ms. O’Flynn, this girl is a radiantly divided self, torn between the need for flight and the gravitational pull of Stockport. She can’t stop moving or talking, mostly in a fusilla! de of que! stions that have little chance of being answered.

Some critics have seen this play, which was first staged in Manchester in 2002, as a life-affirming work. I don’t know about that. “Port” left me feeling that Racheal might well be buried in Stockport. On the other hand, I could also imagine the words “I’ve gotta get outta here” carved on her tombstone, and their summoning an oddly hopeful energy from beyond the grave.



Old Subway Station Will Temporarily Replace New Station Damaged by Sandy

Workers pumping out water from subway tracks inside the South Ferry subway station, which was swamped by Hurricane Sandy. Transit officials said the old South Ferry station will be reopened while repairs are completed. Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times Workers pumping out water from subway tracks inside the South Ferry subway station, which was swamped by Hurricane Sandy. Transit officials said the old South Ferry station will be reopened while repairs are completed.

With South Ferry station still perhaps years away from returning to service due to Hurricane Sandy, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority will revive a decommissioned station at the same location as early as next month, officials said on Friday.

The old station had been put into retirement in 2009, eplaced by a gleaming new station that cost over $500 million to construct. But the new station suffered perhaps the worst damage of any corner of the transit system during Hurricane Sandy, leading officials to predict that it could take as long as three years to rebuild it completely, at an estimated cost of $600 million.

The prospect of reopening the old station at first seemed remote, but in recent weeks, officials hinted that returning some service to the stop â€" the last on the No. 1 train and a critical connection for Staten Island Ferry riders â€" was essential. In the station’s absence, riders have been forced to either walk to the No. 1 at Rector Street, take the R train from Whitehall Street, or use the No. 4 or 5 train at Bowling Green.

Thomas F. Prendergast, the interim executive director of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority,! said last month that the inconvenience was “just too hard” for riders to bear for years to come.

But restoring the old hub is no easy task. The station’s loop track has been used since the storm as a turnaround point for No. 1 trains, but the station itself was long known for its peculiar layout. For one, the sharp curve of the platform allowed only passengers in the first five cars to disembark.

“It’s not a perfect solution,” said Allen P. Cappelli, a board member from Staten Island. “But it’s much appreciated.”

Officials have said that they are not aware of any decommissioned station ever returning to use as a passenger hub in the agency’s history.



This Week’s Movies: March 8

In this week’s video, Times critics share their thoughts on on “Oz the Great and Powerful,” “Beyond the Hills” and “The We and the I.” Read all of this week’s reviews here.



This Week’s Movies: March 8

In this week’s video, Times critics share their thoughts on on “Oz the Great and Powerful,” “Beyond the Hills” and “The We and the I.” Read all of this week’s reviews here.



Friedkin Retrospective Coming to Brooklyn Academy of Music in May

William Friedkin on the set of his film BAMcinématek/Photofest William Friedkin on the set of his film “The Exorcist.”

The filmmaker who taught moviegoers to be terrified of the New York City subway system (and also made Georgetown seem like a pretty horrific place) will be getting a warm welcome from Brooklyn. William Friedkin, the Academy Award-winning director of “The French Connection” and “The Exorcist,” will be the subject of a six-film retrospective in May at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, it was announced on Friday.

The retrospective, presented by BAMcinématek and titled “Friedkin 70s,” will run from May 2 through 7. Its opening night film will be “Sorcerer,†Mr. Friedkin’s 1977 action thriller about a team of fugitives attempting to transport unstable explosives in South America. The screening of “Sorcerer” (which has recently been the focus of a lawsuit Mr. Friedkin filed against Universal and Paramount to determine his rights to show the film publicly) will be followed by a Q & A with the director, who will also be signing copies of his new memoir, “The Friedkin Connection.”

Other films in the retrospective include “The French Connection,” the gritty 1971 crime drama that won the Academy Award for best picture and earned Mr. Friedkin his Oscar for best director; as well as “The Exorcist,” his blockbuster 1973 adaption of William Peter Blatty’s best-selling novel about demonic possession.

This series will also present “The Boys in the Band,” Mr. Friedkin’s pioneering 1970 film about gay culture and adapted fr! om the Mart Crowley play; “The Brink’s Job,” the 1978 crime caper starring Peter Falk; and “Cruising,” a 1980 noir starring Al Pacino as an undercover police officer seeking a killer in the gay bars of Manhattan’s West Village.



Waiting for Radiation Treatment, an Inspiration

Dear Diary:

At the desk, my friend Fran registers for radiation therapy and we take our seats in one of three chilly waiting rooms at Sloan-Kettering’s oncology department. The early-morning sun shines through grimy, rain-spattered windowpanes. Suddenly a diminutive figure breezes in; her black-and-white striped floppy hat all but obscures her face. A raincoat of the same design flows from her shoulders, forming outstretched wings.

She sinks into the last empty chair and in a peppy voice says, “We’d all rather be someplace else, done with all this stuff, but that’s life, isn’t it”

I stare, mesmerized, as does everyone else in the room. The woman parks her red-wire, fold-up shopping cart â€" containing newspaper, Danielle Steel novel and lunchbox â€" beside her chair. When she checks in at the desk, the staffer chides her, “Mrs. G., your appointment with Dr. R. is for tomorrow at 2.”

“That’s O.K.,” she says. “I’m here now. I’d rather be a day early than b called ‘the late Mrs. G.’ You can call me Pigeon; that’s what my boyfriend calls me.”

A giggle goes around the room. She settles in her chair and forages for her lunch, saying: “I’m 86. I have diabetes, high blood pressure, a heart condition and now this. Nevertheless, my doctor told me I’d be fine â€" therefore I must not give up. It’s all about attitude, isn’t it”

Pigeon knows that cancer is the common denominator in the room. She greets some of the patients, rejoicing with the college student in remission, inquiring of the mother from France about the progress of her 11-year-old son. Watching Fran go in for radiation, she says to me, “You are a true friend to come with her every day.”

En route by taxi back to Fran’s apartment on 58th Street, Fran doesn’t feel like talking, giving me time to ponder Pigeon’s philosophy of life: that it all boils down to the will to survive, despite all obstacles. Our driver threads his way across Central Park, pausing! to make a turn near Strawberry Fields. I watch a groom feeding lunch to his chestnut mare. No sooner has he set the pail of oats on the sidewalk than a flock of pigeons swoops down, sharing the horse’s lunch.

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