Scoopy’s Notebook
V.I.D. VOTES: The elections for district leader
were the main attraction at the Village Independent
Democrats’ meeting last week. In the race for female
district leader, Jen Hoppe squeaked out a win against
Elissa Stein by one vote. District Leader Keen Berger
had previously announced she would not seek re-election.
We hear Berger asked Sharon Woolums to run,
too, but that Woolums declined, saying, “I’m a oneissue
person. I really just like to get into one issue.”
Interestingly, Berger also spoke at the meeting —
against the club’s endorsing her district co-leader Arthur
Schwartz for re-election.
As it turned out — at the end of the day, they didn’t.
It was a split vote for Schwartz, with 24 V.I.D.’ers voting
for him and 24 declining to endorse him, translating
into no endorsement. Speaking beforehand,
Schwartz had told us he was hoping for his fi rst endorsement
from V.I.D. “since 1997.” It was shortly
after then that he got mired in a feud with his thendistrict
co-leader Aubrey Lees and eventually left the
club, only fi nally recently rejoining it after more than
two decades.
In addition to Berger, no doubt it was mostly veteran
club members who put the kibosh on supporting
Schwartz, of whom some have said in the past,
“Arthur is all about Arthur.” But, more to the point,
Schwartz has been going after Assemblymember
Deborah Glick — who is a power in V.I.D. — for
years now, to the point where he even ran against
her a couple of years ago. Then, last year, Schwartz
campaigned for Cynthia Nixon on the Working Families
Party against Glick in the general election, even
though Nixon stressed she actually wanted Glick to
win re-election!
“Keen was saying like I have to earn their trust.
Give me a break! Like I have to prove something to
V.I.D.,” Schwartz told us. “I don’t think that I would
ever ask for their endorsement again. … It’s two less
meetings a month,” he said, of not being elected to
V.I.D.’s executive committee.
Schwartz said he’ll instead focus on his work with
New York Progressive Action Network, the Bernie
Sanders-inspired organization, of which he is statewide
political director.
However, David Siffert, the club’s new president,
sounded a conciliatory tone in a V.I.D. post-election
e-mail blast. “Though we did not endorse in the male
district leader race, I want to thank Arthur Schwartz
for attending the meeting and speaking to us in good
faith,” Siffert said. “Though he will not be V.I.D.’s endorsed
district leader, he is still a valued member of
the club and the community, and I look forward to
working with him this year to help make our city and
community a better place. I hope he will continue to
be an active participant in V.I.D. going forward.”
POTENTIAL FLATS FIX: Following the muchlamented
closing of Tex-Mex favorite Tortilla Flats
last October, Phil Mouquinho, who formerly ran P.J.
Charlton restaurant, at Charlton and Greenwich Sts.,
had the idea of inviting the Flats’ owners to reopen in
his space. For one, both locations are on the southeast
corner, he noted. “They have a Wall St. crowd,” he
added at the time of the Flats’ fi nale.
As for P.J. Charlton, Mouquinho shuttered the Hudson
Square eatery because of the construction project
that was going on around both sides of the building,
then leased it out as an offi ce space for the project. We
haven’t heard an update on Mouquinho’s offer.
ELECTRIFYING EXPERIENCE: While buying a
ticket for a movie at the Regal Union Square theater,
you can also switch your home electricity provider
from Con Ed to Green Mountain Energy. It’s pretty
quick and simple, plus you’ll get a $5 gift card for
FILE PHOTO BY LINCOLN ANDERSON
Phil Mouquinho and Cairo in front of his former
restaurant, P.J. Charlton, a few years ago.
The cover image of “John Wilcock: New York
Years, 1954-1971,” an online biography in
graphic novel style. Page four, about Wilcock’s
dream of starting a new paper, has a
dig at The Villager, whose contents back then
he describes as “mostly bridge club party reports.”
Regal.
As Kat, who signed us up recently near the theater’s
automated ticket machines, explained, most
Con Ed electricity is produced using fracked gas and
coal. Meanwhile, Green Mountain Energy’s electricity
comes from four or fi ve wind farms from around New
York State.
The company is the nation’s largest wind-power
provider. And they don’t use hydropower from Canada,
meaning they’re not complicit in ruining the ecosystem
up there with dams. Kat and Co. can also often
be found stationed inside the Best Buy store around
the corner.
ONION-WORTHY: After it was fl oated last month
by some fi nancial outlets that Ivanka Trump was
“under consideration to lead the World Bank,” Michael
Novogratz tweeted out his disbelief. “Is this
the Onion?” he scoffed in response to a Business Insider
article. “Novo,” who is the board chairperson of
Hudson River Park Friends, is a billionaire ex-hedge
fund manager now heavily into cryptocurrency. As,
it turned out, Ivanka will only “help pick” the new
World Bank leader. Phew!
NEWSSTAND NEWS: Readers have noted they’re
not seeing Jerry Delakas at his newsstand at Astor
Place and Lafayette St. anymore. That’s because his
nephew Angelos Delakas is now manning the kiosk
every day. Jerry had not been feeling too well — plus
kids had been stealing candy from him. As a result, he
was keeping the newsstand’s front gate rolled down
and selling lottery tickets from its side door. Angelos
now keeps the newsstand’s front gate open once again.
He said Jerry will be back in the warmer weather.
COJO, SJP, PEPPERONI: Council Speaker Corey
Johnson has been “eating crow” this past week for
having made notorious homophobe Ruben Diaz,
Sr., the chairperson of a City Council committee,
in return for Diaz’s support for Johnson becoming
speaker. On a lighter note, not too long ago Johnson
had a cute tweet about eating…pizza. “I just walked
into my neighborhood pizza place for a slice in my
pajamas,” he posted. “The owner says: ‘It’s my lucky
night!!’ I said: ‘Huh?’ He says: ‘All the local big wigs
tonight are here Corey! Sarah Jessica Parker just came
in 20 minutes ago for a slice!’ SJP + CoJo = ???” Well,
it defi nitely equals one pumped-up pizza guy, that’s
for sure!
Guest drops in: Famed feminist author Susan
Brownmiller recently had a high-fl ying guest visit
her Jane St. penthouse — namely, a red-tailed hawk.
The raptor hung out around 10 minutes, its talons
wrapped around the rooftop deck’s railing. “Donna
Schulman, my niece and a famous birder, thinks he/
she was a fl edgling from a Bobst/N.Y.U. nest,” Brownmiller
told us. You can fi nd Schulman’s avian insights
on Facebook.
R.I.P., JOHN WILCOCK: Soho news source Harry
Pincus tipped us off a while back that John Wilcock,
the fi rst news editor of the Village Voice, had died.
Wilcock passed away last year at age 91 in Ojai, California.
Jerry Tallmer, a founding editor of the Voice
and its fi rst fi lm and theater critic, wrote a piece
about British expat Wilcock that The Villager published
posthumously in February 2015, a few months
after Tallmer’s death at age 93.
“I used to bump into John at wide intervals through
the years, and he always bitterly felt he never got proper
credit as one of the founders of The Village Voice,”
Tallmer wrote. “He was right. He didn’t. He was a
pain in the ass, but an integral piece in this long-ago
jigsaw puzzle. … I wish him well.”
POT SHOTS: Dana Beal is off the hook. At the end
of last year, an agreement was reached under which
the “Grandfather of Pot” was ordered to perform 10
hours of community service. That’s all Beal gets after
being busted in Northern California two years ago for
trying to drive 22 pounds of marijuana back East.
Beal, 72, had already served two years in prison in
Nebraska back in 2010 and ’11 for two similar offenses,
though in those cases he was transporting more,
around 100 pounds of pot. He suffered a near-fatal
heart attack during that stint, so dreaded the prospect
of doing more hard time behind bars, fearing he
wouldn’t survive.
Anyway, Beal told us, since California legalized
weed in 2016, the most anyone is getting for traffi cking
pot nowadays is a wrist slap.
“People with 200 pounds are getting nothing,” he
chuckled. As for his plans for community service, he
said, “I’m fi nding a cure for crystal meth. … They
should give us back No. 9,” he added, apparently apropos
of that. Nine Bleecker St. is home to Overthrow
Boxing, but used to be the Yippies’ headquarters.
38 February 21, 2019 TVG Schneps Media