Monumental Village cleaning effort
The “Little Flower” gets a big pedicure — and overall maintenance
job — with an application of protective hot wax.
BY LINCOLN ANDERSON
AND TEQUILA MINSKY
Statuesque fi gures recently were
looking their buffed best with a
fresh-faced glow in the Village. No,
it wasn’t Model Week — but you might
call it Monuments Week.
Staff and summer apprentices from
the Parks Department’s Citywide Monuments
Conservation Project held a special
Village preservation week from July
15 to July 19.
The bulk of their activities involved the
annual care of the Washington Square
Arch. Running two lifts — one 80 feet
tall — they reexamined and “sounded”
the arch’s stonework (tapping it with a
mallet to test for stability), cleaned it gently
with pressure washing, and repointed
any areas of observable mortar loss.
The park’s Garibaldi and Holley monuments,
plus the nearby Fiorello LaGuardia
statue on LaGuardia Place, also were
spiffed up, with pressure washing along
their bases and ledges.
The fi nishing touch for the statues and
monuments was a “hot waxing,” to protect
the metal from the elements.
The supervisors of the Parks monuments
conservation crew have strong
backgrounds in preservation, and other
staff have relevant backgrounds in the
arts.
Power cleaning the Washington Square Arch on July 16.
In vino ’n’ music veritas
DORF continued from p. 18
headlining September’s Village Trip
festival concert in Washington Square
Park.
“If you want to talk about someone
who lives and breathes integrity, that
is Steve Earle,” he said. “His music, his
work, he’s speaking his truth. He’s not
shying away from it. Musically, I love
his music.”
As for Pier 57, Dorf said it’s going to
be tremendous.
“I hate to say ‘the best live-music
venue in New York,’ but f— it, I’ll say
it,” he said of the Chelsea waterfront
space. “I looked at no less than 100 locations,
this was the best.
“I think we’ve fi gured out a model
between big and small venue. At the
same time, you can look in the eye of
the performers and vice a versa. That
Having a blast cleaning the Garibaldi monument’s nooks and crannies.
defi nes intimacy.”
That said, he noted he will be paying,
literally, “100 times” the rent he was
when he opened the Knitting Factory
on Leonard St. in 1987.
That rent spike is, in part, what has
been driving music out of the city, in
addition to changes in how music is distributed.
“New York real estate is not fully
infl ation,” he noted, “it’s another level.
All I know is that we found a model,
and according to our Excel spreadsheet,
we can afford to rent — just barely.
PHOTOS BY TEQUILA MINSKY
But most live-music venues can’t. The
survivors have an opportunity to make
money. You just have to fi gure out the
right model.”
Music venues started shifting to
Brooklyn, he noted, “but Brooklyn real
estate overtook too quickly. You have a
lot of music now in Nashville and Hudson
Valley.”
Jakob Dylan and The Wallfl owers
will be playing City Winery, on Varick
St., on Mon., July 29, and Tues., July
30, and Joan Osborne will be closing it
down on Wed., July 31.
Schneps Media TVG August 1, 2019 19