This Week's Stories
GG's quick takes on recent NYC news


Week of 16 April 2001:

Clubs and 911
Some Manhattan nightclubs hire private ambulance companies to wait outside, and take to the hospital any patrons who have overdosed on drugs. City officials who long have been trying to close down the clubs, which include Roxy and Twilo, say the clubs do this in order to avoid calling 911 and thus escape the attention of the police. "I do this to protect my clients who go into cardiac arrest," answered the general manager of the Roxy, saying that 911 would be too slow. "People who go out dancing are in more medical need today than they were 10 years ago because of the way that they entertain themselves," said the lawyer for Twilo, meaning their consumption of drugs; Ecstasy and GHB (gamma hydroxybutyrate, known as a date rape drug) are especially common. But Twilo is being sued by two young patrons who said that, after they suffered drug overdoses last summer, employees of the club tried to hide them from Emergency Medical Service personnel. And the Manhattan district attorney is investigating the death of a medical student after he collapsed at Twilo last summer.

Rent Suit
A coalition of tenant groups is planning to file a lawsuit today against the New York State agency that changed the Rent Stabilization Code, charging that the new code undermines tenant protections, the Daily News reports.

Hale Hail
Hale House, the charity in Harlem that cares for children born to drug-addicted or HIV-infected mothers, has been the subject of a continuing series of revelations, in the News and the Times, of questionable practices, such as mismanaging its apartment buildings and spending too much on fundraising. One Harlem brownstone it owned was so full of housing code violations, the Times reports today, that the city ordered its tenants to move out. Hale House director Lorraine Hale, the Daily News reported yesterday, took a personal loan of $115, 800 from the charity to fix up her $405,000 home in Scarsdale. Her husband Jesse DeVore, the News also reported, is paid a salary of $110,000 to be Hale House's public relations director. Several long-time supporters have distanced themselves from the charity, which as a result has delayed its annual fundraiser until October. Yesterday, Congressman Charles Rangel and former Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton attacked the newspapers for their coverage. "I think it is very, very important that our community come together and think in terms of the thousands of children that have been taken care of by Hale House," Rangel said.

Millions to Ellis Island
On the first day it opened, the new Web site that offers information on some million immigrants who arrived at the Port of New York between 1892 and 1924, the American Family Immigration History Center www.ellisislandrecords.org, has been getting 27,000 hits PER SECOND, or an estimated eight million by the end of the day.

Campaign Finance Delayed
The City Council delayed by one week the vote to overturn Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's veto of the campaign finance law, which allows for a match of four dollars in public funds for every dollar raised by a candidate who agrees to certain restrictions. City Council Speaker Peter Vallone said the delay was due to the absence of 13 of the 51 council members, but Mayor Rudolph Giuliani implied they were missing because of his intense lobbying, and declared a victory.

Librarians
The Giuliani administration reached an agreement with the largest of the librarians' unions to grant an unusually large raise of 16 percent. Though the city's largest municipal union recently only got eight percent, city officials said the librarians' raise was needed because of the problems in recruiting and keeping librarians, which were detailed earlier this month in an article in Gotham Gazette. The union agreed to certain "productivity increases," such as the elimination of daily 20-minute breaks and night differential pay.

Ellis Island Online
Starting today, if all goes as promised, the Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island Foundation will launch The American Family Immigration History Center, a Web site that will contain the lists of names from ships (passenger manifests) carrying some 17 million immigrants to Ellis Island from 1892 to 1924.

Museums
Though it was hyped far less than the boom in Internet start-up companies, a boom in museums, happening at the same time, was in some ways no less impressive in its unprecedented scale and pace. Over the past few years, in the United States alone, about 50 museums were being built or expanded every year -- just about one a week. In New York alone, the 100 or so museums were being touted as the city's new billion-dollar entertainment industry. As Maxwell Anderson, director of the Whitney museum, liked to point out, more people were going to museums than attending sporting events. It would be difficult to find a major museum in the city that has not just finished, started or at least announced plans for an extensive renovation or expansion: The Museum of Modern Art is in the midst of a $650 million expansion. The Guggenheim is planning a new $700 million branch downtown. There are ambitious plans for expansion at the Museum of the City of New York and the Museum of Jewish Heritage, to give just a couple of examples.

It would be unfair to say that the museum boom has turned into an Internet-like bust. But, as Crain's New York Business reports, the downturn in the economy is apparently having its effect. Starting six months ago, there has been a sharp decrease in attendance at several of the major museums. For example, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which is the single most visited institution in New York City, has seen 200,000 fewer visitors from November through February, an 11 percent drop from the previous year. And the dip in the stock market is sure to lead to a drop in revenue. "Everybody's taken a hit," Eric Siegel, chairman of the Museums Council of New York City, tells Crain's. Though some museum officials say attendance always fluctuates, and none have publicly scaled back their expansion plans, several new local museums have been canceled (People Magazine Museum) or their openings postponed (Museum of Sex).

Campaign Finance Vote
Tomorrow, the full Council will vote to override Mayor Giuliani's veto of the current campaign finance law, which matches four dollars in public funds for every dollar that candidates raise in private funds.

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