Drink, Fight, Fuck And Make Great Mosaic Art

Another East Village squatter artist collective disappears:

The members of the Cave, a squatter artists collective on St. Mark’s Pl. near Avenue A, recently were compelled to vacate the building after a developer with an option to buy the dilapidated tenement bought them out. Before the developer, Ben Shaoul of Magnum Management, paid them to leave, however, his workers first came in with some heavy-handed tactics, brandishing sledgehammers and crowbars.

Jim “Mosaic Man” Power, whose work decorates the bases and poles of East Village streetlights, said he enjoyed the artistic environment of the Cave, but that there was also a lot of partying and fighting that distracted from making art. He said he’s O.K. with taking a $2,500 buyout and didn’t fight leaving.

. . .

Eddy Menuau, another artist who lived in the building, also got cash to leave, and has relocated to Brooklyn and is currently concentrating on being a carpenter. Asked how much art got done in the building as opposed to drinking and fighting, he said it was about 40 percent art to 60 percent the rest.

(G.G. Allin would have turned 50 years old this August.)

Because Being A Numismatist Just Sounds Dirty

A dirty, filthy numismatist spreads valuable coins around town:

. . . Scott A. Travers is going around Manhattan this week making a few routine purchases and deliberately spending three rare one-cent coins. Mr. Travers is serious about coins: he collects them, writes about them and is a former vice president of the American Numismatic Association. He hopes that the sharp-eyed people who find one of the three coins will be caught up in what Mr. Travers describes as the magic of coin collecting.

“I’m planting a seed and I hope that a new generation of people will come to appreciate the history that coins represent,” said Mr. Travers, who is sprinkling around the pennies to coincide with National Coin Week, which starts Sunday. The pennies are almost a century old and are among the most coveted by collectors.

One was produced in 1909, the centennial of Lincoln’s birth, the first time a United States coin showed a historical figure rather than a depiction of Liberty. The coins had the initials of the engraver, Victor D. Brenner, prominently displayed — too prominently for public taste — so they were hastily removed and the coin was reissued without them. The San Francisco mint, whose coins had a small S mint mark below the date, produced fewer than 500,000 pennies with the offending initials. They became instant collectors’ items and most quickly disappeared from circulation.

Mr. Travers said his 1909 coin was worth more than $1,000. At Brigandi Coin on 44th Street in Manhattan, one of the rare 1909 coins was being offered for $1,200 this week.

The two other coins Mr. Travers is spending, though not as famous, are also worth a pretty penny because only a relatively small number were made. One is a 1914 penny from the Denver mint (a small D is under the date), valued at $350. The other is a 1908 penny from San Francisco with an Indian girl in a headdress, valued at $200.

Let’s Get Terry Gilliam To Direct

The hunt for Molly* the cat, who has been trapped in a Greenwich Village wall for like two weeks, has reached a Vivi-esque levels. Today, the Daily News reports on the latest:

For 13 days, Molly the cat has been trapped behind the wall of a Greenwich Village food shop, and would-be rescuers yesterday enlisted the help of kittens, humane traps, and even a feline therapist to lure the animal out.

As those efforts failed, the surreal spectacle surrounding 634 Hudson St. only grew as animal welfare workers, elite NYPD cops, and curious onlookers all pleaded for the 11-month-old black cat to emerge.

“We love you. Come out, Molly, we’re not going to hurt you,” cat therapist Carole Wilbourn cooed into a hole in the wall from which Molly’s meows have been heard. “It’s okay, we have the Molly fan club out here.”

Wilbourn used recordings of whale and sea gull sounds to try to coax Molly out — until she was asked to stop by an Animal Care & Control worker who feared the noise was only “stressing” the cat further.

“I can hear she’s distressed and she’s trying to get out,” said Wilbourn, who said she has treated 10,000 cats in her 30-year career. “I just want to help her.”

Molly catches mice at Myers of Keswick, a British food store, and apparently squeezed into a small hole in the 19th century building’s wall on March 31, said her owner, Peter Myers.

. . .

Rescue work has been slowed by the four-story walkup’s designation as a historic landmark, but city officials yesterday gave permission to remove more bricks to find the elusive cat. Mewing kittens and traps baited with food also were deployed as enticements.

Meanwhile, the Times focuses on the media frenzy surrounding the story:

Outside the 157-year-old, four-story building, reporters, photographers and television and radio crews recorded the scene and hung on every word from rescuers, who emerged now and then from steel trap doors in the sidewalk to report no progress. With little news, some reporters solicited the views of dog walkers and others who paused to watch the activity, which was making news across the country and even abroad.

Mr. Myers told of receiving calls from across America and letters from dozens of schoolchildren, all voicing hope for Molly. Reports on Molly appeared on Web sites of The Chicago Tribune and The Times of London, which noted that the deli sold clotted cream and meat pies and hit the home audience angle: “A cat who protects the delicacies much sought after by British expatriates is trapped behind a wall.” Some reporters, waxing eloquent, spoke of “the peripatetic pussycat” and “the timorous tabby.”

(By the way, what has Terry Gilliam been up to lately?)

*Incidentally, I’m hearing from reliable sources that the cat is actually named Millie . . .

Woody Allen Shirking His Civic Duty

Manhattan County Court Clerk Norman Goodman has the most celebrity sightings of anyone I know:

As county clerk, clerk of the State Supreme Court and commissioner of jurors for Manhattan, Mr. Goodman is responsible for every jury trial in every Manhattan state court, whether civil or criminal. He supervises about 180 employees who do everything from filing cases to collecting the $210 fee for the index number needed to start a civil action.

But his true talent is for sniffing out malingering jurors and prodding and cajoling Manhattan’s many prima donnas, from Hollywood stars to titans of Wall Street, to do their civic duty.

He has been honing those skills for 37 years, since May 3, 1969, when he was appointed to his job by the appellate division. He is now 82, which makes him four years younger than Robert M. Morgenthau, the Manhattan district attorney, the other well-known gray eminence in the Manhattan court system. Mr. Goodman is fairly tall, with a full head of white hair, a courtly manner and a wardrobe of conservative suits. He is cautious to a fault, the consummate clerk.

Manhattan jury pools are rich in celebrities, and Mr. Goodman can summon a deputy, Vincent Homenick, to provide a comprehensive list of those who have been called: Kevin Bacon, Roberta Flack, Henry Kissinger, Walt Frazier, Harvey Keitel, and so on, scores of them.

Naomi Campbell, the supermodel, responded to a jury summons by saying that she was willing to serve, but had a past assault conviction and, in any event, was a British citizen. (Records show she pleaded guilty to assault in Canada, but her record was expunged. She is due in Manhattan court on June 27 as a defendant, accused of throwing a cellphone at her maid.)

Celebrities are usually dismissed without being chosen, because lawyers fear they will have too much influence over other jurors. Still, Mr. Goodman asks them to return for juror appreciation day to talk to schoolchildren about the beauty of the jury system, and sometimes throw in a performance. Once he lined up Wynton Marsalis and Joel Grey on the same day. “I could have sold tickets to that,” he said, beaming.

Mr. Goodman, a strong believer in equal treatment, insisted that [Woody] Allen show up, bad memories and all. Mr. Allen arrived wearing what Mr. Goodman describes as “army fatigues and a Fidel Castro cap,” surrounded by his lawyer, his agent and a bodyguard. Mr. Goodman escorted him to the jury room, where Mr. Allen insisted on standing, rather than sitting like everybody else. The rest of the jurors gawked at him.

“We eventually offered him the opportunity to get out of there,” Mr. Goodman said. “Frankly, we were glad to get rid of him.”

Then again, it seems everyone wants to get out of serving on a jury:

Hemorrhoids are a perennial excuse, and one evidence-minded man mailed back a used box of Anusol as proof.

A Murray Hill woman wrote that regretfully, her husband could not serve because he had jumped off the Queen Elizabeth 2 and drowned. The Health Department later confirmed his death.

Another woman sent in a photograph of her battered face, with a note saying, “Thank you for understanding my chaotic situation.”

One man wrote a five-page treatise in medieval-looking script, explaining that his spiritual beliefs prevented him from sitting in judgment on the guilt or innocence of a fellow human being. He ultimately agreed to be part of the jury pool in a civil trial, where he would only have to determine liability; he was not chosen.

How The Other Half Lives

The strange alternate universe the Manhattan Cat inhabits — permanently holed up in cramped apartments, never interacting with the natural world — reaches a new level:

Animal-rescue workers and cops in the West Village are fighting to save an unlucky little black cat that’s been trapped in a wall for 12 days.
The indefatigable animal, Molly, was heard meowing as late as yesterday morning.

But when the NYPD’s Emergency Service Unit showed up hours later — complete with sensor-detecting equipment and snake-head cameras to find the kitty, there was no sign of any of her nine lives.

“I can’t tell you how many of these we’ve done, and this is a hard one,” said one cop.

No one’s seen the 11-month-old tabby, who lives at the British grocery store Myers of Keswick, since March 31.

Owner Peter Myers said he thought someone stole the pretty kitty, whose wandering ways have made her popular in the tony ‘hood.

But a few days later, he heard a familiar meowing coming from the store’s northern walls.