In the Candy Cab, Sweets That Delight, and Heal

“No eating or drinking inside this car,” reads a sign in Mansoor Khalid's cab, “Except candies.”

There are plenty of them. Mr. Khalid keeps the back dashboard of his yellow cab stocked with a layer of candy thick enough to induce envy in the most successful trick-or-treater.

“Turn around; see what else is back there,” Mr. Khalid recently told Legend Wilson, 7, who was riding in the cab with his mother, May Wilson. “There's a lot of options.”

Ms. Wilson said that her son had plenty of candy at home. “Come on, he can have some; he's in the candy cab!” Mr. Khalid insisted. “I'll call you when he has to go to the dentist,” Ms. Wilson said as her son collected a small pile of treats.

Free candy isn't the only perk of riding with Mr. Khalid, a 37-year-old electrical engineer from Pakistan who has been driving a yellow cab since 1996. He also recently bought a $400 subwoofer that, in his words, makes “your heart go boom,” and invites customers to plug their devices into the speakers. To complete the nightclub-in-a-cab experience, the car is also outfitted with an advanced lighting system that, when activated, flashes fluorescent reds, blues and purples.

“Everybody is depressed, stressed, New York City is not an easy life, so when New Yorkers see all the candies, chocolates,” they cheer up, Mr. Khalid said. “Some people start screaming, they're so happy.”

His altruism isn't bad for business, either. Mr. Khalid's cab has become an Internet celebrity, earning thousands of followers on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. That loyal online following supplies a steady stream of customers for Mr. Khalid, who fields frequent requests for pickups from fans who send their locations to him via Twitter or Facebook.

Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times Mansoor Khalid, driver of the candy cab, a taxi that doubles as a party on wheels featuring sweets, lights and music.

Mr. Khalid also uses Twitter and Instagram to advertise his services, posting pictures of grinning couples with handfuls of candy.

This grassroots outreach is one way that yellow cabs can rise above the fray in an increasingly competitive market. Last month, the Uber app became the first service to allow New Yorkers to hail yellow cabs with their smartphones, though a pilot program for the apps remains mired in court.

With the candy cab, Mr. Khalid has essentially created his own personal Uber, with nothing more than his smartphone and social media savvy.

But don't expect the 13,000 other yellow taxis to follow suit any time soon. The $300 a month Mr. Khalid spends on candy would probably be a dealbreaker for most cabbies.

“If you think about it, you have to wonder why he does it,” said Juan Miranda, who drives Mr. Khalid's cab during the day. “The way it is now, every time I brake, it falls forward.”

Mr. Khalid's customers certainly appreciate the effort. One rider, Casandra Johnson, was quiet during the first few moments of her ride with Mr. Khalid a few weeks ago, but perked up once she saw the stash in the back seat. “I was in a bad mood because I've been lugging boxes all day,” she said, “You just totally changed my Monday.”

Another passenger wrote on Twitter, “Sweetest ride in fifteen years. Left my bag of knitting there, but gained so much at heart when I googled you. God bless.”

She was referring to the somber back story of Mr. Khalid's generosity. His son, Saad, was born in 2010 with a congenital heart defect, and when Mr. Khalid visited him at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx after his night shift, he would bring coffee for the doctors and nurses there, who called him “coffee man.”

“My average was 20 bucks every night, for coffee and sweets,” he said.

Saad died last April, only 18 months old. When Mr. Khalid returned to work, he decided to turn his cab into a rolling celebration.

A year later, Mr. Khalid said that he still has not moved on. He still smells his son's old clothing, and has kept the boy's room untouched. But he learned from his time in the hospital that giving to others could at least hide, if not heal, his own feelings of loss.

“I like to buy something for people; I feel good,” Mr. Khalid said. “When you give something from your hand, you feel very good when someone gives a smile.”

A version of this article appeared in print on 05/16/2013, on page A21 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Free Sweets In His Cab, To Delight And to Heal.

Owner Takes a Chunk Out of an Unofficial Community Garden

Colin Moynihan for The New York Times Workers on Wednesday erected a fence around a privately owned lot inside a community garden on the Lower East Side as police officers, in the background, ensured order.

For years, the Children's Magical Garden de Carmen Rubio on the Lower East Side has been known for the peach and nectarine trees that grow there and the roosters that roam the lot. Although the garden is not recognized by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, it has existed since 1982 with little official objection.

But on Wednesday morning, a group of workers accompanied by private security guards and a photographer erected a metal fence around roughly 2,500 square feet in the middle of the garden. They said that they were acting at the direction of a company that owns the center lot of the three that make up the garden, which stands at the corner of Norfolk and Stanton Streets and is named for a community organizer. The garden's other two lots belong to the city.

Stan Weichers, 42, said that he was walking by the garden just before 9 a.m. when the workers and the guards arrived and used a power saw to cut through a lock securing the garden's gate.

Soon, a crowd gathered, shouting that the workers had no right to enter the garden. But police officers who showed up said the workers had a permit to erect a fence inside. The workers carried in metal posts and rolls of fencing into the garden, as guards in suits stood by. A photographer who had arrived with them captured images of some of those objecting.

One gardener, Kate Temple-West, said the gardeners had been working with the local city councilwoman, Margaret S. Chin, to arrange a land swap with the owner of the third lot, in an effort to make the garden permanent.

“This is a community garden that is specifically for children,” she said. “It's a very special place.”

A man who would not identify himself by name but said he worked for Norfolk Street Development, the company that controls the privately owned lot, told the gardeners that the fence was being erected to satisfy a request from an insurance company.

“We're putting up something that ensures safety,” he said.

As the police stood guard, the workers began fencing off a rectangular area, roughly 100 feet by 25 feet. Dozens of gardeners and their supporters gathered, crowding into the city-owned sections of the garden. The group included 11th and 12th graders from the Lower East Side Preparatory School, which is opposite the garden.

Their teacher, Teresa Devore, described the garden as “a green place, a place for fresh air,” and said the students had participated in a program that involved planting tomatoes, peppers and eggplant there.

In New York, Are Neighbors Anonymous?

Dear Diary:

As I was leaving my East Village apartment one afternoon, two cops stopped me outside.

“Can you let us in the building?” one officer asked me.

As I got the lock open for them, I asked what they were doing, if they didn't mind me asking.

“We're following up on a domestic violence report we received,” the same cop responded.

They told me the apartment number. I see them sometimes. A nod and a smile here and there, just to be polite. I don't know their names.

The cops walked in, thanking me. I forgot about the apartment until a couple of days later. As I was walking up the stairs, I heard a man shouting from behind their door. I couldn't tell if the woman's response was normal - it could have been a laugh or a cry, or both. But, having never really met the tenants, I moved on, to my own studio, my own problems.

A month ago, when I got locked out of my apartment for the second time, my dad back home in Chicago asked if I could exchange keys with a neighbor. I laughed.

“In New York, no one knows their neighbors,” I told him.

Read all recent entries and our updated submissions guidelines. Reach us via e-mail diary@nytimes.com or follow @NYTMetro on Twitter using the hashtag #MetDiary.

With Security, Trade Center Faces New Isolation

New York Police Department A rendering of a vehicle barricade known as a sally port on West Broadway, approaching the World Trade Center. The image is conceptual. The actual installation may look different.

The wreckage had not been cleared from ground zero when planners and neighbors began imagining how the devastation of Sept. 11 could be redeemed, in some way, by a new World Trade Center, one that would be fully joined to the rest of Lower Manhattan rather than standing apart in chilling isolation.

Chang W. Lee/The New York Times Barbed wires and fences have been erected on Vesey St. between Church St. and West Broadway near One World Trade Center.

It was a chance, they believed, to correct a painful planning error of the 1960s, when a lively, jumbled gridiron of riverfront streets, anchored by a clamorous appliance district called Radio Row, was bulldozed into oblivion to create a barren, windswept plaza whose only evident purpose was to serve as a pedestal for the twin towers.

With the blank slate offered by a catastrophic attack, planners, soon joined by the mayor himself, saw a chance to re-establish a great crossroads: Fulton and Greenwich Streets, tying the second World Trade Center into New York - north, south, east and west.

Now, however, they see that vision slipping away, as security concerns trump urban planning.

The Police Department has proposed encircling the site with a fortified palisade of guard booths, vehicle barricades and sidewalk barriers. And neighbors and planners worry that the trade center will once again feel cut off from its surroundings, a place where security credentials prevail, traffic is unwelcome and every step is scrutinized, as at the New York Stock Exchange or 1 Police Plaza security zones.

The police plan calls for nine guard booths, each about 6 by 12 feet in area and 11 feet tall. Eight street intersections would be restricted by a double barricade system known as a sally port, from 30 to 160 feet long. The trade center site would also be bounded by bollards, the barrier posts that have cropped up around many important structures since 2001.

This appears to depart from the expansive vision for Lower Manhattan offered by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in December 2002. “We can examine innovative ways to manage streets and traffic downtown, reinforcing the feeling that this is one place,” he said at the time. “Getting around easily means community, and that's what we're trying to create.”

Brendan J. Sexton, former president of the Municipal Art Society and former director of the city's Office of Operations, said this month that the Police Department's security plan “appears to bend every effort to undo this connectivity, the fluidity and connectedness the neighborhood hoped it was getting back.”

And Alexander Garvin, who was the vice president of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation for planning, design and development from 2002 to 2003, said the planned security measures made “a complete mockery of the public participation process of 2002-2003, the design competition, and the mayor's speech of December 2002.”

But the Police Department argued that the measures allow for plenty of public access. “The campus security plan will not isolate the World Trade Center from the Lower Manhattan community,” said Richard C. Daddario, the deputy police commissioner for counterterrorism. In fact, he said, it would make the site a more desirable for pedestrians and bicyclists, who will be able to pass freely. That, in turn, might knit it more seamlessly into the fabric of downtown.

The security measures are described in a draft environmental impact statement that is open for public comment until Wednesday.

New York Police Department As Church Street might appear with its westernmost lane set off as a restricted roadway for World Trade Center traffic.

A key goal of the early planning of the trade center redevelopment was to recreate parts of two important thoroughfares, the east-west Fulton Street and the north-south Greenwich Street, that had been eliminated by the trade center superblock.

“Greenwich Street is not only symbolically important,” Amanda M. Burden, the chairwoman of the city's Planning Commission, said in April 2002, when the first reclaimed segment was established. “It's about beginning to interconnect the totally disconnected elements of Lower Manhattan.” And Mr. Bloomberg said eight months later that “re-establishing Fulton Street through the World Trade Center site would make it a thoroughfare that stretches from river to river.”

David W. Dunlap/The New York Times A guard booth at a sally port on Nassau Street, near the New York Exchange.

Those streets have been recreated and will once again crisscross as they did 50 years ago. But under the police plan, they would be closed to through traffic at the trade center.

Vesey and Liberty Streets would also be closed to through traffic at the north and south ends of the site, as would one lane of Church Street, the eastern boundary. Only vehicles with business at the trade center would be permitted. They would undergo credential checks and inspection. Vehicles and drivers enrolled in a trusted-access program could go through faster screening.

Installation of the security measures would occur as construction progresses on the site, which may extend until 2019. The Police Department expects to share the estimated $40 million cost with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site.

Mr. Sexton recalled that what had come through most clearly in the planning process was the community's desire to restore Fulton and Greenwich Streets. “We can, with one change in municipal behavior, defeat all that design and engineering and urban planning, and vacate all that civic good will and good work,” he said in a May 1 letter to Mr. Daddario.

The New York Times

A year ago, leaders of Community Board 1 in Lower Manhattan told police officials of their worries. “We are very concerned that the implementation of this plan will adversely affect our growing residential and business community,” Michael Levine, the director of planning and land use for the board, said at the time. “We see ourselves surrounded by a ‘fortresslike' environment with the creation of a security perimeter around the W.T.C. site.”

This week, Mr. Levine said, “We knew our statements were falling on deaf ears.”

Julie Menin, the former chairwoman of the community board, who is now running for Manhattan borough president, said the community “cannot be in complete lockdown.”

Restrictions in zones that the police have established around the Stock Exchange and Police Headquarters have strangled some small businesses, she said.

David W. Dunlap/The New York Times The streetscape shown in the Police Department rendering above, as it appears now.

Mr. Daddario disagreed with such assessments.

“Pedestrians and bicyclists will be able to enter the site and travel along its streets and sidewalks just as they can everywhere else in the city,” he said in an e-mail. “Vehicles and tour buses having business at the site will have access after screening to guard against the threat of a car bomb. The booths at entry and exit points are approximately the size of existing newsstands you see about the city.”

In fact, the booths may be designed to complement the newsstands, and bus shelters installed by Cemusa under a franchise from the city, thereby making them less conspicuous.

“The argument that these measures will disconnect the site from the rest of Lower Manhattan ignores the fact that people largely experience the city on foot and on bikes,” Mr. Daddario said. “The measure of connectiveness should not be the volume of vehicle traffic passing through the site.”

There is a school of thought that pedestrian-only zones can seem lifeless, but some planners believe that the traffic restrictions will have a positive effect on the public's experience.

“It makes the entire World Trade Center more of a pedestrian precinct than it had been in the past,” said Jeff Zupan, a senior fellow of the Regional Plan Association.

Mr. Zupan did not say that guard booths, sally ports and bollard lines were ideal. But he added: “If you accept the fact that vehicles have to be checked, that's unavoidable. I'm not quite sure how to overcome that. It might be the byproduct of the fact that the World Trade Center was a place where 3,000 people died.”

Chang W. Lee/The New York Times A sally port on Nassau Street, near Wall Street, protecting the New York Stock Exchange.

A version of this article appeared in print on 05/17/2013, on page A1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: With Security, Trade Center Faces New Isolation.

Seeking to Engage Citizens, Athens Turns to New York for Advice

Spencer T Tucker/N.Y.C. Mayor's Office via flickr Giorgos Kaminis, right, the mayor of Athens, met with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg at City Hall on Wednesday.

Could Michael R. Bloomberg save Athens?

That thought was in the air as Athens's mayor, Giorgos Kaminis, spent an hour at City Hall on Wednesday with Mayor Bloomberg's head of volunteer services, Diahann Billings-Burford.

Traditionally, volunteerism in Greece has been carried out by rich women on behalf of the disadvantaged. During the “crisis,” the Greek shorthand for the social and political turmoil caused by the nation's continuing government-debt woes, the mayor has begun searching for a new model that would engage a wider swath of citizens, particularly the young. The idea is to give young, creative people a sense of purpose and civic engagement in a country where the youth unemployment rate has soared above 60 percent and homelessness and hunger are on the rise.

Mr. Kaminis is looking to Mr. Bloomberg, known for his philanthropic prowess, and to Ms. Billings-Burford, who has recruited thousands of New Yorkers to do everything from leading fitness classes in poor neighborhoods to preparing tax returns for guidance.

“We do not have at all a similar tradition of volunteerism in Greece,” Amalia Zepou, the newly appointed adviser on civil society networking for Athens, told Ms. Billings-Burford, whose title is chief service officer, on Wednesday, as they sat around a table at City Hall, with this reporter allowed to sit in.

“Not that people do not do things for nothing,” Ms. Zepou said. But, she continued, “With the crisis, so many new groups have popped up. Sometimes it's people with no legal profile.” Some are neighborhood groups that communicate through Facebook and social media. Often, she said, they are just three or four friends trying to do something positive.

To which Ms. Billings-Burford responded, “They are the ones you want,” because, “they don't come with the problems but with the solutions.”

Mr. Kaminis, who ran as an independent supported by the then-ruling socialist party on his election in 2010, only hinted at the kinds of problems he wanted to tackle through volunteerism. “We want to address a problem mainly in the center of the city, of graffiti,” he said.

“Tagging,” Ms. Zepou clarified.

What they did not mention was that the graffiti that has spread like a virus across Athens in recent years is not just vandalism or personal expression, it is often a political cri de coeur â€" decrying the government, comparing joblessness to terrorism, and the like.

Ms. Billings-Burford said that in New York, graffiti removal was not a volunteer operation. “You can call 311, and the graffiti removal crew will come,” she told them. “They're not volunteer; they're paid.” Conflict between volunteer and paid jobs is always a risk, she said.

But she suggested New York's “Love Your Block” program, which operates on the “broken windows” theory that a neglected block invites vandalism, but one that looks like people care does not.

Before adjourning for a private meeting with Mr. Bloomberg, Mr. Kaminis wondered if Ms. Billings-Burford would like to go to Athens to help them out.

She would, she said, but only after her current boss's term ended, and not a day sooner. “He knows the days,” she said.

Unemployment Rate Falls to Lowest Level in Over Four Years

New York City's unemployment rate fell in April to 8.4 percent, its lowest level in more than four years, as widespread hiring easily offset continued weakness on Wall Street, the State Labor Department reported on Thursday.

The city's unemployment rate was down half a percentage point from 8.9 percent in March and a full point from April 2012. The last time the city's rate was as low was in March 2009.

Private-sector employment in the city rose in the month by about 35,100, or more than three times as many jobs as have been added, on average, in April over the past decade, the Labor Department said. The city has added 275,200 jobs since the low point of the recession in November 2009, a gain of 7.5 percent.

The biggest gains have come in professional and business services and in the health and education fields. The biggest losses in the past year were in finance and government jobs.

The surge in hiring reversed a recent decline in the city's job market in comparison to the rest of the nation. Over the past year, the number of private sector jobs in the city has grown by 2.5 percent, while the national job count has risen by 2 percent.

Statewide, the unemployment rate is 7.8 percent, down from 8.2 percent in March. The national unemployment rate in April was 7.5 percent.

Michael\'s Still the Top Name for New York Babies, and There Are Reasons

Jumana El Heloueh/Reuters Yawn. Michael wins again. What else is new.

Updated, 6:15 p.m. | After half a century, New York still loves Michael very, very much.

For the 48th consecutive year, Michael topped the list of male baby names in New York State in 2012, the Social Security Administration announced on Thursday, followed by Jacob, Jayden, Ethan and Mason.

Sophia brought home girls' honors for the third straight year, followed by Isabella, Emma, Olivia and Ava. (Full results are here.)

There was a bit of movement in the boys' rankings, with Mason jumping from No. 8 to No. 5 and Ethan from No. 6 to No. 4. In the girls' rankings, Emma and Olivia swapped places.

But about this Michael thing. Were it not for 1964, when John briefly ascended in the wake of the Kennedy assassination, Michael would have been the New York chart-topper every year since 1956, when it upended Robert.

You might think that with that kind of stranglehold on the local name rankings, Michael would dominate the top spot nationwide. During the last half of the 20th century, you would have been right. But in 1999, Jacob wrestled the title from Michael and has held it ever since. Michael has now fallen to eighth in the national baby-name rankings.

That statistic, though, does not get at how deeply disparate the results are. In a large handful of states, Michael barely cracked the top 40. In Nebraska it was No. 37, right behind Bentley. The name was 36th in Iowa, 35th in Vermont and 31st in North Dakota, well behind the very New Yorkish pairing of Henry (No. 23) and Hudson (No. 24). In Utah, where Samuel and Jackson placed 6th and 7th, Michael was 28th.

Aside from New York, only New Jersey and Delaware have maintained their enthusiasm for Michael.

The reasons behind these divergent regional trends are numerous and pretty interesting. For one thing, they reflect what the self-proclaimed baby-name expert Laura Wattenberg called an “inverted political map.”

“The more progressively an area votes, the more conservatively it names its babies,” said Ms. Wattenberg, the author of a book and blog called “The Baby Name Wizard.”

Ms. Wattenberg has no formal training in the field of baby-name studies, but she does have a graduate degree in research psychology. More to the point, she has done a state-by-state analysis of baby-name representation and found that over the last generation, “There's been such a fracturing of baby-naming styles that there's been a huge amount of geographic difference.”

The inverse correlation between politics and baby-naming behavior, Ms. Wattenberg said, reflects the fact that women in progressive states tend to be older when they have their children, and therefore less likely to name their children after a drink or a tattoo or a pop star. Indeed, a federal map showing age of mothers at first birth puts New York and New Jersey in the oldest-moms category, with Southern states, including Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, having the youngest moms.

Further, Ms. Wattenberg said, Michael is a name whose appeal cuts across racial and ethnic lines, and so would tend to do better in a diverse state like New York, compared with Jacob, which she said “is disproportionately white.”

But Michael, look over your shoulder: for the second year in a row, Michael's margin of victory over Jacob in New York was fewer than 50 babies (in 2012, the count was 1,384 to 1,335). Michael's margins, once in the thousands, back when the birthrate was a lot higher, have been steadily shrinking for decades.

The Michael era may be nearing an end.

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 17, 2013

An earlier version of this post misstated the number of consecutive years that Michael has been the most popular baby name in New York State. It is 48, not 49.

New Jersey Lawmakers Use Manhattan City Hall to Push Tobacco Plan

It had all the trappings of a city news conference, including a starring role for the City Council speaker. But the topic at hand in City Hall's Red Room on Thursday was New Jersey.

A team of lawmakers from across the Hudson joined Christine C. Quinn, the Council speaker, to announce a plan to raise New Jersey's age to legally buy cigarettes, to 21 from 19, modeled on a similar proposal introduced by Ms. Quinn in New York City last month.

The sight of the New Jersey politicos caused some confusion in a room that is usually reserved for city business.

Richard J. Codey, a state senator and former governor, said he agreed the spectacle was odd. But he explained that he saw the issue as national and that he was eager to appear in New York after Ms. Quinn made the invitation.

“When we have more people on board it makes us stronger, not weaker,” he said.

Ms. Quinn, a Democratic candidate for mayor, promised to hold the next event in Trenton.

Mr. Codey, also a Democrat, interjected. “Hopefully you'll come as the mayor.”

“New Jersey's lips to God's ears,” Ms. Quinn said.

Later, when a reporter asked if Mr. Codey was prepared to endorse the speaker for mayor, Ms. Quinn jokingly said, “Moving on.”

Mr. Codey walked to the podium and said Ms. Quinn had not asked him. “I like a lady to ask,” he said.

Mr. Codey endorsed Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg for a third term in 2009.

A Skittish Bird at the Airport

Dear Diary:

While at Newark Airport recently, sitting at the gate awaiting departure for Chicago, my brother, sister-in-law and I were sitting near a woman with a pet carrier, from which loud, sort of weird squeaking noises arose every now and then. We couldn't figure out what was in there! A cat? A rodent of some sort?

Boarding began, and as we were seated, the woman came down the aisle with the pet carrier. I had to ask what was in the carrier.

“A bird,” she replied, adding, “He doesn't like to fly.”

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Child Is Coming for City Couple Who Lost Two in Nanny Case

Facebook Marina and Kevin Krim posted to Facebook on Thursday that Ms. Krim is expecting a son in the fall. The Facebook page contains an image from a mural that the Krims say is appropriate to the occasion.

Just over six and a half months after two of their children were found fatally stabbed in their Upper West Side apartment, Kevin and Marina Krim announced to the world this week that Ms. Krim is pregnant.

“We are very happy to let you know that Marina is expecting a baby in the fall,” the couple wrote on Facebook on Thursday. “Nessie can't wait to welcome her new baby brother. We are filled with many emotions as we look to the future, but the most important one is hope.”

Nessie Krim, who is 4, is the Krims' only surviving child. On Oct. 25, the police have said, Ms. Krim returned home to West 75th Street with Nessie from a swimming lesson to find her 6-year-old daughter, Lucia, and her 2-year-old son, Leo, dying from knife wounds, and the children's nanny, Yoselyn Ortega, stabbing herself in the throat.

Ms. Ortega was charged with the children's murders. Last month, she was found mentally fit to stand trial.

The Krims - she is 37, and he is 38 - announced Ms. Krim's pregnancy on the Facebook page of the charity they have started in their slain children's memory, the Lulu & Leo Fund, which provides arts and science classes to underprivileged children.

The Facebook posting had received more than 5,000 “likes” and nearly 1,000 comments by Friday morning.

“This is the happiest magical news we all could hope for,” one woman wrote, adding: “This little boy is a symbol of so many things. Your hearts were broken, but you never let your spirit dwindle.”

A version of this article appeared in print on 05/18/2013, on page A14 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Child Is Coming For City Couple Who Lost Two In Nanny Case.

Big Ticket | $29.78 Million for Town-House-Size Living

Ángel Franco/The New York Times The 1905 building at 320 West 12th Street used to be a nursing home.

An expansive penthouse at 320 West 12th Street, a former nursing home converted to luxury condominiums, sold for $29,783,812.50 and was the most expensive residential sale of the week, according to city records.

The seven-bedroom, eight-bath apartment was created by combining No. 9, a four-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bath duplex originally listed for $19.5 million, with No. 7, a $10.5 million 3,200-square-foot unit below it, for a total of 8,500 square feet over three floors. It also has 1,200 square feet of outdoor space.

The buyer, represented by Giampiero Rispo of Domus Realty and Brett Miles of Town Residential, used a limited-liability company, Abingdon Property NYC.

“I think, what the buyer saw in it was this rare opportunity to aggregate serious square footage,” said Tim Crowley, the managing director of Flank Development, which handled the conversion of the building, now known as the Abingdon.

The buyer was looking to relocate “a big family” downtown and had an open budget, Mr. Rispo said, but finding a suitably large apartment with outdoor space was not easy. “We checked everywhere,” he said, “and in any price range it was impossible.” He added that the search also involved a visit to the rock star Jon Bon Jovi's SoHo condo, listed for $42 million.

The Abingdon, formerly known as 607 Hudson, was bought for $33.3 million in January 2011. Although there are plenty of large town houses on prime blocks on the Upper East Side, Mr. Crowley noted, homes with 8,500 square feet in the West Village are “unheard-of.” Theoretically, he said, you might be able to cobble two West Village town houses together to get similar square footage, but finding a prewar boutique condo in the West Village with that amount of space “is probably as close as you will see to a once-in-a-lifetime real estate opportunity in this city.”

Town-house-size living was what Flank Development had planned when it converted the seven-story building into just 10 units, all larger than 3,200 square feet. The 1905 structure was once a home for working women; it was later a 200-bed nursing home. In its current iteration, it houses a gym and a sauna, and offers the services of doormen and porters.

The nearly $29.8 million sale price makes it the second-costliest deal in the West Village in recent years, according to Cityrealty.com. The 2010 sale of a 6,300-square-foot penthouse at 400 West 12th Street, the Superior Ink building, for $31.5 million, or roughly $5,000 a square foot, remains the most expensive.

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

Sad Christmas Memory Turns To Joy in Brooklyn Music Studio

David Gonzalez/The New York Times Mitchell Kezin, maker of a documentary about offbeat Christmas songs, at a studio in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, last month as the Calypso star Mighty Sparrow recorded “The Little Boy That Santa Claus Forgot.”

Mitchell Kezin was the little boy that Santa Claus forgot - and he never forgot that.

It was the Christmas season in 1968 when that realization first hit. His parents' marriage was crumbling. Dad was out carousing at office parties. Mom was home, trying to keep it all together.

To spark the spirit, she would play holiday records by Bing Crosby, Andy Williams and Harry Belafonte. But the B-side of one album was a weepy tune that made him feel as if the singer - Nat King Cole - were speaking directly to him. The song, “The Little Boy That Santa Claus Forgot,” told of a fatherless child who played with old, broken toys.

“The middle part is a spoken-word thing from Nat,” Mr. Kezin, a filmmaker who grew up in Vancouver, British Columbia, said recently. “I was just this little kid and really didn't know it was just a record. I felt like Santa had some omniscient point of view on my life. It was terrifying. I asked my mother to play the song over and over again, hoping each time the story would change a little.”

The story did not change. But he did.

Mr. Kezin, 49, grew up to become an avid collector of Christmas music who has bestowed on his friends custom-made recordings for the last 25 years. But he took that devotion one step further, producing a documentary called “Jingle Bell Rocks!” that tells the stories behind 12 offbeat holiday classics. Set for release late this year, the documentary includes songs like Miles Davis and Bob Dorough's “Blue Xmas (To Whom it May Concern),” and Clarence Carter's “Back Door Santa.”

Mr. Kezin started his Christmas music tradition while in art school, when he found himself one winter break with no money for gifts, but with access to a recording studio. Starting with a kitschy Hawaiian song, he added some of the usual suspects and cranked out 50 tapes for friends. He got more into it, ultimately getting in touch with a loose-knit fraternity of like-minded collectors. An article about those collectors in a newsletter made him realize they would be good subjects for a documentary.

One of those collectors was Bill Adler, the former record company executive who gave Run-DMC the idea for “Christmas in Hollis.” Mr. Adler took him to meet Joseph Simmons, who was the Run in Run-DMC. While in town last December, Mr. Kezin asked Mr. Adler where would be a good place for some different holiday music. Next thing you know, they were at Charlie's Calypso City, an outpost of West Indian culture in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, where Rawlston Charles, the sharp-dressed proprietor, and some friends were hanging out.

Mr. Kezin mentioned the old Nat King Cole tune. One of Charlie's friends started singing the song.

“Mitchell's head just about exploded!” Mr. Adler said. “He couldn't believe they knew the song. He had the idea to record a version of that song for the film. Then Charlie said, ‘I know Sparrow.'”

That would be the Calypso King of the World, Slinger Francisco, a k a Birdie, a k a the Mighty Sparrow.

Around the same time, Sparrow was driving with a friend in Brooklyn, where he was talking about an old Nat King Cole holiday song about a little boy. He started singing it in the car. Not long afterward, Sparrow got a call from Charlie.

“He knew I liked that song, and he was calling to see if I wanted to sing it for this movie,” Sparrow recalled with a smile. “This was written in the stars!”

On a rainy day last month, inside a windowless recording studio above Calypso City, Sparrow cut his part. Dapper in a brown suit and red turtleneck, he joked with friends while Mr. Kezin and his camera crew prepared to film him. Mr. Kezin had draped Christmas lights in the studio, and placed a Santa doll in the control room.

“Birdie, you ready?” asked the sound engineer.

“One, two, tree,” Sparrow replied, pulling his stool closer to the microphone.

He started to sing, his voice deep, rich and resonant, even at 77 years of age. Mr. Kezin, wedged into a corner of the studio, looked pensive. During the spoken part, Sparrow improvised.

“He's the little boy that Santa Claus completely forgot,” Sparrow recited.

In the control room, Mr. Adler slapped his hand over his heart and dramatically staggered back against the wall. Mr. Kezin smiled.

“I'm so sorry for that laddie,” Sparrow resumed singing. “He hasn't got a daddy. The little boy that Santa Claus forgot.”

Despite the lyrics, the sound was joyous - a calypso swirl of steel drums, horns and jangling triangles. It would become the upbeat finale of Mr. Kezin's documentary, and his own holiday story.

“It was a redemptive moment for me,” he said a few days after the session with Sparrow. “I took a song I was haunted by and turned it around. I made my own happier version. And it came out of the blue.”

A version of this article appeared in print on 05/18/2013, on page A15 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Sad Christmas Memory Turns To Joy in Brooklyn Music Studio .

Ask an Ice Cream Man

Next week, Metropolitan's Q. and A. series will feature Pete Van Leeuwen, 36, one of the owners of Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream.

Chang W. Lee/The New York Times Pete Van Leeuwen

With his brother Ben and their partner, Laura O'Neill, he started the business in 2008 with two classic yellow trucks selling high quality ice cream. Today they have six trucks and three stores in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

Mr. Van Leeuwen, a college veteran of Good Humor trucks, scooped ice cream the first year. These days, he spends his time troubleshooting - wrangling permits; giving directions when the police ask his trucks to move; lining up staff for the summer.

Wondering whether the boroughs have their own favorite flavors? How cutthroat the food truck business really is? Whether you might be Van Leeuwen material? Share your questions in the comments section below. We will pass the best on to Mr. Van Leeuwen, with some of our own, and publish the answers next week. And let us know if you have ideas for future interview subjects - we'll keep them in mind.

Week in Pictures for May 17

See the slide show

Here is a slide show of photographs from the past week in New York City and the region. Subjects include vintage trains in Grand Central Terminal, security at the World Trade Center and an oversize sandwich at Katz's Delicatessen.

This weekend on “The New York Times Close Up,” an inside look at the most compelling articles in the Sunday newspaper, Sam Roberts will speak with The Times's Brian Stelter, Kate Taylor, Lisa Foderaro and Sarah Maslin Nir. Also, Charles J. Hynes, the Brooklyn district attorney, and Thane Rosenbaum, an author.

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

A Curious Cost/Benefit Analysis of a Park Fund-Raiser

8:39 p.m. | Updated In 2004, I spoke with Adrian Benepe, who was then the parks commissioner, about the desire of hundreds of thousands of Americans to protest the Iraq War and the Bush administration by marching through the streets of our city for a rally at Central Park's Great Lawn.

Mr. Benepe and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg were adamantly, passionately opposed to letting protesters set foot in the park. We have, Mr. Benepe said, resodded and relandscaped. Our grass is lush and green and precious.

“Central Park is a respite from the city, a place for people to lay out and picnic,” he told me. “They have a right to protest, but they don't have a right to destroy the Great Lawn.”

Allowing tens and tens of thousands of foodies to descend on Prospect Park's sylvan Nethermead for the insistently, cacophonously commercial Great GoogaMooga festival is another matter altogether. A march to the Great Lawn was about free speech and dissent; GoogaMooga is about good old commerce.

The Great GoogaMooga, a fund-raising event sponsored by the Prospect Park Alliance, is promoted as an “amusement park of food, drink and music.” This weekend it has fenced off the luscious green and rolling heart of the park. Combined, tickets and food on average run well over $100 a person (even counting the admissions that were free), allowing festivalgoers to sate themselves on artisanal this and curated that.

Few of these customers, I'd guess, come from the crowded neighborhoods south and east of the park, where family income leaves most in that netherworld between working class and poor.

We live in an age of budget-starved and partly privatized parks. The consequences are not attractive. In Flushing Meadows in Queens, the quest for enough money to run a threadbare park means risking having a U.S.S. Enterprise-size soccer stadium dropped in your midst. In Prospect Park, it apparently means a festival that last year nearly wrecked that greensward for the summer.

The festival last year left great muddy patches where grass had been. Paul Nelson, the park's spokesman, played down that damage. “It was a couple weeks,” he said. “It's all stuff that is repairable. Trees weren't knocked down. Buildings weren't destroyed.”

We can agree that GoogaMooga was not as destructive as Hurricane Sandy.

But Mr. Nelson's accounting is not remotely candid. I walk my dog - or he walks me - through this Olmsted beauty four or five days each week. Last year, reseeding the rolling meadows of the Nethermead required roping off large swathes for the summer, which shut it down for soccer and Frisbee games.

Ask about other damage, and Mr. Nelson acknowledges “a little used pathway” was left broken and cratered, and edged by a 75-yard stretch of mud and dirt. This “little used pathway” is in fact the principal walking road from the park's lake up to the Nethermead.

“They are taking away the heart of an historic city park,” said Geoffrey Croft of New York City Park Advocates, who monitors and fights for the health of city parks like a cardiac surgeon in an E.R. “Olmsted did not design that park to have a pay-to-play beer garden.”

This festival offers many bafflements. You might ask: Why not hold it near the park's band shell, which is closer to the street and a broad stretch of asphalt. You might also ask why the park gets so little for giving up so much.

A year ago, Mr. Croft asked how much the Prospect Park Alliance hoped to reap from this multimillion-dollar festival. The alliance declined to answer, and so he filed a freedom of information request. A week or two back, he got his answer.

For allowing a private company, Superfly, and some tony restaurants to lay metal fences across the heart of the park, to seed it with dozens of porta-potties and a chariot fleet of golf carts, the alliance reaps a grand total of:

$75,000.

That sum would leave the alliance straining to hire a single park worker with health benefits. The festival promoters will pay out far more than that - $325,000 - for police officers to stand guard during the festival.

Mr. Nelson said that Emily Lloyd, the chief of the Prospect Park Alliance, promised that Superfly would be more environmentally sensitive in its loading and unloading this year. He invited me to walk the fields with Ms. Lloyd once the porta-potties are carted off.

Well, sure. Perhaps we'll run into Jennifer Schwartz, a 35-year-old bartender who walks that green glen nearly every day. She recoiled at the damage last year, and her heart sank when she saw the eighteen-wheeler beer trucks rumbling in again this year.

“This is our refuge,” she said. “It's like bringing a boom box into a library - it doesn't belong there.”

Emeli Sandé Wins at Ivor Novello Awards

Kevin Winter/Getty Images Emeli Sandé appeared on “American Idol” on Thursday.

The Scottish singer and songwriter Emeli Sandé won two prizes at this year's Ivor Novello awards in London, taking home the trophies for “best song musically and lyrically” and for “most performed work.”

The two prizes awarded to Ms. Sandé's single “Next to Me” on Thursday seemed to cement her position as the rising star to watch among British female singers. Last month her album “Our Version of Events” topped a record set by the Beatles for the most consecutive weeks for a debut work at the top of the British album chart.

Ms. Sandé did not attend the awards ceremony, as she was in the United States to perform on “American Idol” and to prepare for an event at the White House.

Her album, released in 2012, was the start of a string of successes for her. Last summer, she performed during the opening and closing ceremonies at the Olympics in London. She was also included on the soundtrack for Baz Luhrmann's film adaptation of “The Great Gatsby,” which was shown at the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday, and won two Brit Music awards earlier this year.

The Ivor Novello awards, in their 58th year, celebrate songwriting and composing, and are presented by the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors.

Calvin Harris, the Scottish D.J., took home the songwriter of the year trophy. He made British chart history last month by becoming the first artist to have eight Top 10 hits from one studio album. Noel Gallagher, the former Oasis frontman, won in the outstanding song collection.

The Leeds-based indie rock quartet Alt-J won best album for their set “An Awesome Wave”; the Maccabees won best contemporary song for “Pelican”; Justin Hayward, the Moody Blues singer, was given an award for outstanding achievement; and the American singer-songwriter Randy Newman was given a special international award. A full list of winners can be found on the Ivors Web site.

The Sweet Spot: Take a Walk on the Dark Side

In this week's episode, A. O. Scott and David Carr talk about villains in the movies. Scary, huh?

New Selection Process for Kennedy Center Honors

After fielding criticism for an ad hoc and secretive selection process, the Kennedy Center Honors for lifetime achievement in the performing arts announced a revision of its selection process on Thursday, The Washington Post reported.

The artists committee that does the nominating will be expanded and for the first time, the public will be able to make recommendations. A new committee that includes two previous winners, the cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the actress Chita Rivera, will then narrow down the list for the Kennedy Center board of trustees, which will make the final decision on the five winners.

The slate of nominees “will provide balance and diversity across the various performing arts disciplines” the Kennedy Center said in its announcement. Last year, some Hispanic groups criticized the awards process, complaining that only two of the 186 winners were Hispanic. The changes are the result of a seven-month internal review.

Popcast: Punk as Fashion, Music and Theory

Ray Stevenson/Rex USA Johnny Rotten (John Lydon) of the Sex Pistols in a 1976 photo, part of an exhibition on punk fashion at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's current show, “Punk: Chaos to Couture,” tells a fractured story of mid-'70s origins - Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren's “Seditionaries” shop in London, Richard Hell taking scissors to his hair and T-shirts in New York - and influences, leading to designers like Martin Margiela, Junya Watanabe and Gareth Pugh. But it doesn't tell much about the concurrent development of punk's music, nor about its basic impulses and ideals, whether utopian, social-realist, or primal.

Ben Ratliff, the host, is joined by the Times culture reporter Melena Ryzik and the music critic Jon Caramanica, as well as Simon Critchley - philosopher, New School professor, moderator of The Times's online philosophy blog The Stone, and former punk (born in Hertfordshire, England, 1960). Topics discussed: How long did punk really last? Was it sexy? Was it inclusive or narrow? How much were the bondage trousers at Seditionaries? And what did hippies ever do to punks to be so hated?

Listen above, download the MP3 or subscribe in iTunes.

RELATED

Melena Ryzik and Jon Caramanica on “Punk: Chaos to Couture.”

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

How ‘Scandal\' Hit Its Season Highs

Another broadcast television season has reached its end, and while the overall ratings may paint a dire picture for the networks, there are still some success stories, like ABC's “Scandal.”

In the last six months, the show has gone from solid performer to the No. 1 network drama in the 18-to-49 demographic at times, trading off with “NCIS” on CBS and ABC's own “Grey's Anatomy.” Last week, “Scandal” ranked sixth over all among broadcast programming in that category, ahead of even “American Idol” on Fox, according to Nielsen.

It all began on Nov. 29, when “Scandal” introduced a presidential assassination plot in an episode that drew 6.6 million total viewers. From there, the upward trend is very clear. Starting with the following episode on Dec. 6, the show never again fell below seven million and gained momentum as it went on to reach new series highs in total viewership five times over the season. The highest point came on Thursday for the Season 2 finale, when 9.1 million total viewers tuned in. That translates into a 38 percent increase in total audience, with 2.5 million viewers added in six months.

The New TV Season, One Stereotype at a Time

Colleen Hayes/ABC Liza Lapira, left, Lauren Ash and Rebel Wilson in “Super Fun Night,” coming next season to ABC.

The America we live in and the America we (and the rest of the world) see on television: they're different places that may be more similar than we would like to admit. The broadcast upfronts, held in New York this week, offered a first look at 35 new prime-time shows due in the 2013-14 season. Based on the trailers released by ABC, CBS, CW, Fox and NBC, here are a few characteristics of made-for-TV America.

To be the star of the show, it helps to be white. In 27 of the 35 shows, or 77 percent, it appears that the lead character or characters were white. Six shows have a mix of white and minority leads. That leaves 2 of 35 shows, or 6 percent, fronted by minority actors.

If you're Hispanic or black, you can be the star as long as the show involves violent crime. Ramon Rodriguez is the lead in Fox's “Gang Related,” playing a gang member who infiltrates the San Francisco police. Blair Underwood is the lead in NBC's “Ironside” remake, as a police officer who is in a wheelchair because he was shot on the job.

Talented minority actors are in demand to play white characters' bosses, sidekicks and underlings. Andre Braugher? Andy Samberg's captain in Fox's “Brooklyn Nine-Nine.” (It's a twofer: Terry Crews plays the sergeant.) Liza Lapira? Rebel Wilson's wingwoman in “Super Fun Night” on ABC. Michael Ealy? Karl Urban's android partner in Fox's “Almost Human.” Harry Lennix? Megan Boone's boss in NBC's “Blacklist.” Wendell Pierce? Michael J. Fox's producer in “The Michael J. Fox Show.” Nonso Anozie? Jonathan Rhys Meyers's Renfield in NBC's “Dracula.” J. B. Smoove? Will Arnett's cameraman in “The Millers” on CBS. Nicole Beharie and John Cho? Deputies to Ichabod Crane (Tom Mison) in Fox's “Sleepy Hollow.”

If you're a woman and you're the undisputed star of your show, you're probably on ABC. You're definitely not on Fox or NBC. Nine shows (26 percent) appear to fit this definition: Maggie Lawson in “Back in the Game,” Tricia Helfer in “Killer Women,” Hannah Ware in “Betrayal,” Sophie Lowe in “Once Upon a Time in Wonderland,” Ms. Wilson in “Super Fun Night” and Malin Akerman in “Trophy Wife,” all on ABC; Toni Collette in “Hostages” and Anna Faris and Allison Janney in “Mom” on CBS; and Adelaide Kane in “Reign” on CW.

If you're an Asian woman, you'll be promiscuous, angry or violent. Promiscuous: Brenda Song's character in a schoolgirl outfit, unbuttoned to show off a lacy red bra, in Fox's “Dads”; an Asian mother and daughter on a double date, the mother introduced as “a sure thing,” in CBS's “We Are Men.” Angry: An Army cadet going through a bitter divorce in Fox's “Enlisted”; a waitress yelling at a manager in Fox's “Rake.” Violent: Ming-Na Wen's Melinda May beating a bad guy into submission in ABC's “Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.,” demonstrating once again why Asian-American actresses routinely take martial arts training. (Corollary: There's a good chance you'll find yourself in great big black nerd glasses, as Ms. Song and Ms. Lapira do.)

Fat is still funny. James Caan surveying a Little League team in “Back in the Game”: “Don't forget fat. That kid lying there is fat.” The troops in “Enlisted” struggling to push a hefty colleague over a barrier on an obstacle course.

Drama League Prizes Awarded to ‘Kinky Boots\' and ‘Vanya and Sonia\'

“Kinky Boots” was named best musical and “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” was awarded best play at the Drama League's annual awards ceremony on Friday.

The league also named “Pippin” best revival of a musical and “Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” best revival of a play. Nathan Lane won the distinguished performance award for “The Nance.” Special awards were given to Bernadette Peters for excellence in musical theater, Jerry Mitchell for excellence in directing, and to Madison Square Garden Entertainment and the Rockettes for “unique contribution to the theater.”

The awards are voted on by theatergoers nationwide who belong to the league and attend shows on and off Broadway. The prize for “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,” Christopher Durang's rueful comedy, continues a winning streak in the derby leading up to the Tony Awards. So far the Outer Critics Circle and the New York Drama Critics' Circle have both singled out the play as the season's finest.

A Mad Man in Austenland

Vincent Kartheiser, currently whipping “Mad Men” fans into mixture of love and hate as the hairline-challenged super-creep Pete Campbell, will be soon be impersonating one of the most beloved characters in literary history: Mr. Darcy.

Mr. Kartheiser will assume the role in a rendition of “Pride and Prejudice,” adapted by Simon Reade and directed by Joe Dowling, which begins previews at Minneapolis's Guthrie Theater on July 6 and runs through Aug. 31.

Sliding on his posterior down the office stairs and being banished from his marital home may seem like a far cry from the waistcoat-ripping sexual charisma of Colin Firth in the 1995 BBC adaptation of “Pride and Prejudice.” But then Mr. Kartheiser, a Minneapolis native, made his debut on the Guthrie stage at age 7 in another distinctly un-Pete-like literary role: Tiny Tim in “A Christmas Carol.”

The Week in Culture Pictures, May 17

Hiroyuki Ito for The New York Times New York City Ballet performing Jerome Robbins's “N.Y. Export: Opus Jazz” during the American Music Festival on Friday at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center.

More photographs.

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

Cannes Film Festival: The Harvey Weinstein Show

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CANNES, France - If there are lines separating art and commerce in the film world, they are obliterated annually at the Cannes Film Festival. The world's most respected auteurs premiere their films in the Grand Palais, just above the Marché, the international film market, in the basement, where distributors sell the rights to those same films as well as to B-movie action sequels like “Outpost III: Rise of the Spetsnaz” - whatever that is and wherever it's rising from.

And, in one of the festival's oddest new traditions, Harvey Weinstein is now the host of a grand dog-and-pony show for all his new films - a dog-and-pony show of trailers, lubricated by a midday Champagne open bar, that has become one of the buzziest events of the festival.

“We have a member of the jury with us tonight, and she has to go for a jury meeting to hopefully decide which movie of mine wins the Palme d'Or,” Mr. Weinstein, buttoned into a tuxedo, joked in front of a temporary screen set up in a Majestic Hotel conference room.

Last year, Mr. Weinstein stole some of the buzz from the festival's competition when he previewed footage from three unfinished films - “Django Unchained,” “The Master” and “Silver Linings Playbook” - which all made it to the Oscars. “Last year was as good as any year we had at Miramax,” he boasted. Then, with a display of star power, he brought up Nicole Kidman, and the showman began selling the Weinstein Company's expansive 2013 slate of nine coming films.

The audience sat patiently through trailers for the Sundance hit “Fruitvale Station” and teasers for those two Cannes competition films, Nicolas Winding Refn's “Only God Forgives” (in which Ryan Gosling wordlessly endures a vicious rant from his on-screen mother, played by Kristin Scott Thomas) and James Gray's “The Immigrant” (in which Joaquin Phoenix shouts down Marion Cotillard).

The offerings ranged from Wong Kar-Wai's new kung fu film, “The Grandmaster,” which has already opened in Asia to mixed reviews, to “One Chance,” which appears to be a sentimental biopic of British reality television's opera-singing star Paul Potts. Shane Salerno's documentary “Salinger,” about the reclusive writer J. D. Salinger, was sold as a thriller-mystery with famous talking heads: Tom Wolfe, Edward Norton, Gore Vidal.

Lee Daniels's next film, “The Butler” - starring Forest Whitaker as a character based on Eugene Allen, who served eight American presidents in the convulsive years from 1952 to 1986 - was sold with notes of “Forrest Gump” and a dollop of “The Help.” Plum attention was also paid to Oprah's supporting role, and the female moviegoers Mr. Weinstein said he hoped she would draw.

Nicole Kidman plays Princess Grace in “Grace of Monaco,” though a volcanic Tim Roth, as her husband, Prince Rainier, seemed to steal the trailer. And Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts face off in the John Wells adaptation of “August: Osage County.”

Of course, Mr. Weinstein does love a good controversy, and the most intriguing footage may have been “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom,” based on Nelson Mandela's 1994 memoir. In the footage, Idris Elba delivers impassioned speeches, sure, but he's also seen making bombs, blowing up buildings and ripping off his shirt to reveal a buff, action-star chest.

“This is not Mommy's Mandela,” said Mr. Weinstein, who dismissed HBO's “Invictus,” starring Morgan Freeman. “You're going to see stuff that's pretty controversial, and it was all in the book - his relationship with his first wife, before Winnie.”

Mr. Weinstein said the recent Boston Marathon bombings did not make him consider cutting scenes of Mandela making bombs and exploding government buildings. “They made the bombs,” he said. “They didn't blow up anybody, but they blew up buildings, and somebody could have inadvertently been hurt. We tell it the way he told it.”

But, wait, there's more: “Crouching Tiger 2″ is the second of five planned films based on the Wang Dulu book cycle, and the company announced that it was picking up “Philomena,” a Stephen Frears film about a mother (played by Judi Dench) who reconnects with the adult son (Steve Coogan) she put up for adoption decades before.

“We reached, and we had the wherewithal,” Mr. Weinstein said in an interview, after a fan baffled him by asking to take an iPhone photo with him.

“And it's not about the Oscars,” he continued. “It's about, can we sustain a series of good movies over the course of a year? We've never done that. We've always said, here's three Oscar movies in the fourth quarter. We're going to do nine movies every year and see if there's an audience in March - and there may not be. I know there's an audience in August because of people getting sick of the superhero movies. By Aug. 1, you just want to see something where people speak.”