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Darkhorses Win International Competition for TKTS Booth


Two darkhorses from Sidney, Australia won the prize in an international competition to create a new TKTS booth for Times Square. Sidney architects John Choi, 28, and Tai Ropiha, 36, designed a bright red grand staircase which will rise from the base of the statue of Father Duffy, for whom the TKTS traffic island is named, to a height of 16 feet. The TKTS logo will be emblazoned in bold black letters about 5 ft. high on the structure's north and south sides. Sales booths will be tucked in beneath the high end of the stairs, and after buying their tickets theatergoers will be able to sit on the steps looking out at the spectacle which is Times Square.

Choi and Ropiha, who visited NYC only once before returning last month to claim $5,000 in prize money, said they based their impressions of Times Square on films, magazines and television coverage of New Year's Eve celebrations. "We were reacting to the visual buzz," said Mr. Roipha, "and tried to create a strong singular image in contrast."

What was the jury looking for? "Something that had cleverness, visual economy and force," explained Jack Goldstein, executive director of the Theater Development Fund which operates TKTS and sponsored the competition. TDF was also looking for more booths as well as better working conditions for the sales staff within (They're even thinking about adding a public toilet). Construction, to begin later this year, is expected to cost around $2 million all to be raised by the Fund.

The competition, the largest ever in NYC history, drew 683 entries from 31 countries: ranging from a booth conceived as twin green crystals to a 3D rendering of Piet Mondrian's "Broadway Boogie Woogie." 40 top designs are currently on exhibition at the Van Alen Institute (30 West 22nd Street) while 200 more can be seen at the Urban Center (457 Madison between 50th and 51st). "There wasn't much room for an entirely radical solution," said Raymond Gastil, executive director of the the Van Alen Institute which organized the competition. "But the entries say a lot about the raw energy and talent that's out there."

Even the Coalition for Father Duffy which inundated the Mayor's office with over 7,000 postcards - "This is Duffy Square, it isn't TKTS Square," said the Coaltion head Maj. Gen. Joseph S. Healey. "You can't dump him from center stage and put him in the cheap balcony seats. It isn't fair." -was mollified by Choi and Ropiha's design.

But what about the existing TKTS booth - that wonderful, ramshackle, pipe-and-canvas construction which has come to represent Broadway theater to an entire generation since its inception 26 years ago? David W. Dunlap wrote in the New York Times (7/8/99): "The competition seems to doom one more facet of Broadway's architectural past, which has been chipped away piece by piece in recent years until very little remains of what was once a splendidly pungent esthetic amalgam, made of dozens of incongrous icons layered one on top of the other."

Dunlap went on to point out that the old TKTS booth was the product of that moment in the early 70's when Broadway was desperate for resuscitation and the city nearly broke. Under Mayor Lindsay, the Office of Midtown Planning and Development lent a city-owned trailer to TDF to be used as a booth for selling half-price tickets on the day of a performance.

Bound to a budget of only $ 5,000, architects John Schiff and Robert Mayers came up with the idea of renting pipes by the month from the R. C. Mugler scaffolding company in the Bronx. With these pipes, they extended the structure outwards - then streched translucent plastic through and around the pipes and painted "TKTS" in large Helvetica letters across. To keep the whole thing from blowing away, they lashed it to four rough concrete anchors at each corner.

The TKTS booth was an overnight and abiding success. More than 36.5 million tickets have been sold there since it went up. It won a design award in 1973 from the New York Society of Architects, a Bard Award in 1975 from the City Club for merit in civic architecture and has been called "a classic of early 70's design" and "the beginning of scaffold-like, high-tech, tensilt structures. Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani has referred to it as one of the "symbols of the renaissance" of New York City. Ron Silver who chaired the NYC 2000 millenium committee called it "Times Square's centerpiece."

But while preservation advocates believe a case could have been made for granting the booth landmark status, it would not have been eligible till turning 30 in 2003. And it probably would not have stood up that long. Even Mr. Schiff admits the booth was always meant to be temporary.

Kati Sounds Off:

There's a lot of talk in this town about "the community" and the arts are by no means exempt. Take the theater. In a recent issue of American Theater magazine, Ben Cameron, executive director of the Theater Communications Group, sang the praises of "community-specific [eg Latino, Asian-American, gay/lesbian] theatres" which, he claims, "speak to a unique need many have for communal celebration, for empowerment, for safe places to come together in an all-too-often hostile world."

Well, maybe. But it's also true that you gotta have a gimmick to get funded and one of the easiest gimmicks to have is community service/specificity. Meanwhile the proliferation of community-specific companies has led to a balkanization of the larger theater community - at least at its not-for-profit edges - as well as to a sort of unquestioning acceptance of the myth of cultural identity: an acceptance which is ultimately impoverishing both intellectually and imaginatively.

This is not to say there aren't scores of wonderful counter-examples - Pan Asian Rep, the Irish Rep, the Negro Ensemble Theater, the Puerto Rican Travelling Theater Company - to name a few. Nor that at one point the flowering of community-specific theaters did not serve a very necessary, corrective function.But as an overall trend, it's gone too far.

Kati Kormendi is a freelance writer and actress; the former Artistic Director of the Magellan Project, a multiarts theater; and the creator of The Serpent's Eye an online eco-art gallery. She has written for Mademoiselle, Cosmopolitan, and Talking Leaves magazine.

Lawmakers Propose Restrictions on Prison Solitary Confinement


Perkins

State Sen. Bill Perkins, a sponsor of the proposed HALT Solitary Confinement Act, discusses the bill at a community forum Friday in Manhattan. Photo by Bernadette Evangelist.


More than 5,000 inmates are held in solitary confinement in New York’s state prisons and city jails - a condition two legislators hope to change by reforming what they see as a torturous practice.

State Sen. Bill Perkins (D.-Harlem) and Assemblyman Jeffrion Aubry (D.-Queens) introduced a bill Friday that that would drastically scale back the use of solitary confinement, which isolates an inmate in a small cell for 22 or more hours per day.

Their proposal, the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term (HALT) Solitary Confinement Act, would cap solitary terms at 15 days. It also calls for the use of therapy and rehabilitation units as alternatives to isolating inmates in tiny cells, except in the most egregious cases.

Jessica Casanova, a family worker from East Harlem said she first became aware of special housing units (SHU), as solitary is called in the prison system, two years ago when she received a disconcerting letter from her nephew Juan Díaz.

In the letter, her nephew called SHU a "steel coffin," and wrote that, "I'm breathing, but I'm dead," Casanova said Friday.

Díaz, 32, was sentenced to 46 years to life after his conviction in 2004 on charges that accused him of robbing and beating to death a handicapped man. He was accused in November of using a homemade weapon to stab a prison guard in the head and abdomen. The guard recovered.

Confined at the maximum-security Upstate Correctional Facility, Díaz had been in solitary for two years when he wrote his aunt. Casanova rushed to visit him, only to find them divided by Plexiglass that prevented her from giving him a hug.

Casanova said Díaz has been in and out of the SHU during the past 12 years.

A recent count at Rikers Island, the city's largest jail, found that one in seven inmates in a population of more than 10,000 were being held in isolation.

Perkins traces the large number of inmates held in solitary confinement to the attitude of corrections officers towards inmates.

It's customary for guards to place inmates in solitary confinement for anything from the possession of tobacco to a messy bunk, according to a report by the New York Civil Liberties Union. When violence or gang activity are involved, the Department of Correction views solitary confinement as protection, either for the person being sentenced or the rest of the prison population.

"If two inmates get in a fight, they have to be separated, they have to be protected from each other," Martin Horn, the former New York City DOC Commissioner, told Gotham Gazette last year.

The city DOC said it was too soon to comment on the proposed bill and a spokesperson for the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision said they do not comment on pending legislation.

HALT’s proposed 15-day limit on solitary confinement would be in keeping reform advocated by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture.

"The bill is a fundamental transformation of the way the prison deals with misconduct," said Jennifer Parish, an attorney with the Urban Justice Center and founding member of the Jails Action Coalition. "It's a transformation from a punitive response to one that's more focused on assisting people with underlying needs that cause them to act out."

Such organizations as Human Rights Watch and the NYCLU are working to expose the psychological toll that the lack of human contact and outside stimulation has on inmates, many of whom will be released back into their communities.

The HALT Act would prohibit the use of solitary confinement for protection and would mandate that inmates be placed in traditional solitary cells for only the most egregious infractions, such as violent assault or attempted escape. 

The punishment would be eliminated altogether for inmates who fall into a number of "vulnerable populations," such as those under 21 and over 55 years old, as well as anyone suffering from a disability or mental illness and anyone who identifies as LGBT.

When asked whether the political climate in Albany is conducive to reforming policy on solitary confinement, Perkins responded with a question of his own.

"Have you been outside in the last few days?" he asked, referring to recent sub-freezing temperatures. "It's colder than that."

But Perkins predicts that "warm days are coming." They would come more quickly, he added, if the governor put the "moral and political weight of his office" behind the issue.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the proposed legislation.

 

Mayor Announces Settlement Agreement on Stop-And-Frisk


de Blasio-Bratton

Mayor Bill de Blasio came through on one of his top-priority campaign promises today with an announcement that he has reached a settlement agreement with civil rights lawyers who challenged the police department’s stop-and-frisk policy. 

The police tactic hasn’t been used since August, when a federal judge ruled that the policy was unconstitutional. Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg appealed the ruling. 

Reforming the policy that created the tactic will involve a more direct communication between city neighborhoods and the police department, de Blasio said. The mayor has in the past complained that the dialogue has been broken, instigating a rift between police officers and the residents.

A court-appointed monitor will oversee changes in police policy. The monitor will serve for three years and guarantee the NYPD is in complete compliance with the constitution. De Blasio also said he will install an independent NYPD Inspector General. 

“This is a defining moment in our history. It’s a defining moment for millions of our families, especially those with young men of color,” de Blasio said in a statement. “This will be one city, where everyone’s rights are respected, and where police and community stand together to confront violence.”

Critics of the stop-and-frisk policy charged that it targeted Hispanic and African-American men. Bloomberg countered that white people were stopped. De Blasio has stood firm in his belief that the policy was overused and abused.

“We believe in respecting every New Yorkers’ rights, regardless of what neighborhood they live in or the color of their skin,” de Blasio said.

Judge Shira A. Scheindlin first ruled the policy unconstitutional and wanted to make immediate changes to the policy because of racial profiling. The ruling resulted in the judge being removed from the case by a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals saying the judge “ran afoul.” 

In reaching a settlement agreement in the case Floyd v. the City of New York, the mayor and Police Commissioner William Bratton pledged to repair a flawed policy.

“We are taking significant corrective action to fix what is broken,” de Blasio said. 

Bratton, who helped initiate the stop-and-frisk policy under his first term as commissioner under former Mayor Rudolph Guiliani, attended the mayor’s news conference and said he is committed to keeping the law honest and fair. 

“We will not break the law to enforce the law,” he said in a statement. “That’s my solemn promise to every New Yorker, regardless of where they were born, where they live, or what they look like. Those values aren’t at odds with keeping New Yorkers safe—they are essential to long-term public safety.”



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