Last night I walked down Mott Street and there were throngs of people everywhere and a movie being filmed. I asked a man standing on the sidewalk what was going on and he told me “a building is falling down”. Turns out the building next to the Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral has a giant crack up the side. I checked it out and I could definitely see it sort of leaning over, but I didn’t see the crack on account of the blinding movie production lights that were set up everywhere.
The throngs of people, obviously, were not there to watch a crack in a wall in real time but rather to see a glimpse of some celebrity. I asked a production assistant what they were filming, or more specifically whom they were filming, and the answer was Robert Pattinson, or Patterson, or whatever his name is. You know, the vampire dude.
In other neighborhood news, I have been trying all afternoon to connect on the phone with Karen Flores, who is listed as the “community construction liaison” for the Houston Street Reconstruction Project on the Lower Manhattan Info website. I want to ask Karen what the hell is going on, because they ostensibly “finished” the bulk of their construction in the Broadway-to-Bleecker portion of Houston St (repaved the roads, build nice paved/landscaped medians around a number of old trees, even put up cute little benches) and then they promptly tore down everything they’d built AND they cut down all the trees, which I watched them do with complete horror.
To add insult to injury, they then dug back up one or two lanes worth of street and paved over where the median used to be and are using that lane to reroute cars! What the hell? Paolo, as a member of the Nolita Neighborhood Association I expect you to advise on all this. I WANT ANSWERS. Typically I could care less about “civic” issues but I am just really fired up about the trees.
Thank you for writing this, neighbor. I’ve been meaning to do the same thing.
