Friday, 29 Mar 2024

Statues of Women Are (Finally) Coming to New York City

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It’s Friday. Today is International Women’s Day!

Weather: Brrrr! Temperatures start in the mid-20s and may reach into the upper 30s by this afternoon.

Alternate-side parking: In effect until March 21 (Purim).

More than half of the 8.6 million people living in New York City are women, yet only five of the 150 statues in the city’s outdoor public spaces honor women.

This week, City Hall said it would add statues of four pioneering women in the boroughs the women once called home. (Earlier, the city announced plans to honor Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman to serve in Congress, with a statue at an entrance to Prospect Park in Brooklyn.)

These are the women being honored:

Billie Holiday (Queens, near Borough Hall)

A famed jazz singer, Ms. Holiday moved to New York when she was about 13. In 1939, she notably recorded “Strange Fruit,” which protested racism, particularly lynching.

Elizabeth Jennings Graham (Manhattan, near Grand Central Terminal)

She won a lawsuit in 1855 against a Manhattan trolley company that wouldn’t let her ride in a whites-only car. It was a first step in desegregating New York’s streetcars.

Dr. Helen Rodríguez Trías (the Bronx, in St. Mary’s Park)

In the 1980s, she developed programs for families affected by H.I.V. at the state’s AIDS Institute. She also became the first Latina director of the American Public Health Association.

Katherine Walker (Staten Island, on the ferry landing)

She spent nearly three decades as the keeper of the Robbins Reef Lighthouse, lighting the way for ships between Staten Island and Bayonne, N.J., in the early 1900s. Historians credit her with helping to save at least 50 lives.

[Read about 10 women who readers said should be honored with statues.]

Whom else should New York City honor?

My colleague Ginia Bellafante, who has written extensively about gender and the city, told me that “the city shouldn’t get too self-congratulatory about all of this,” referring to the new statues.

The city, she said, should focus not just on women who are famous pioneers, but its fameless everyday heroes.

“New York worships too hard at the altar of exceptionalism,” she said, adding that people should be reminded of the millions of women who keep the city running.

So, which women should we be celebrating?

“The struggling mom who has three jobs and travels an hour to get her kid to a great school every day; the nannies and cleaning women who make it possible for affluent women to go to work in hospitals, courtrooms, universities, law firms; the home health aides and preschool teachers and waitresses who keep everything humming.”

From The Times

Michael Cohen sued the Trump Organization. He said he was denied $1.9 million in legal fees after cooperating with prosecutors.

A lush garden or senior citizen housing? The imminent sale of the Elizabeth Street Garden to build affordable housing has placed two of the city’s scarcest resources at odds.

Two 12-year-olds drew swastikas on a playground. For young people, the Holocaust has become dangerously far from view, the Times columnist Ginia Bellafante writes.

Seatbelts required in the back seat? This and other surprises are in Governor Cuomo’s budget.

[Want more news from New York and around the region? Check out our full coverage.]

The mini crossword: Here is today’s puzzle.

What we’re reading

A nurses’ strike might be on the horizon. [PIX]

A brawl inside a Queens restaurant was caught on video. [New York Post]

Will the M.T.A. convert 14th Street into a bus-only road when the L train tunnel is under repair? The agency said it’s “complicated.” [Streetsblog]

Where to get your head shaved on Long Island for the annual charity fund-raiser known as St. Baldrick’s Day. [Newsday]

She doesn’t want her former husband back, even after he won a $273 million jackpot. [New York Post]

Coming up this weekend

Friday:

Teenagers can play retro video games at the Grand Central Library branch in Midtown. 3:30 p.m. [Free]

A variety show featuring Asian-American performers at the Upright Citizens Brigade theater in Hell’s Kitchen. 7:30 p.m. [$14]

Expect real-time swiping at Tinder Live! — a comedy show about the dating app at Littlefield in Gowanus. 8 p.m. [$15]

Fenty Formation, a dance party dedicated to Beyoncé and Rihanna. at Baby’s All Right in Williamsburg. 11:55 p.m. [$5]

Saturday:

A tribute to the ball icon Hector Xtravaganza at El Museo del Barrio in East Harlem. 1 p.m. [Free]

Hear the best of Biggie at a brunch celebrating the Brooklyn rapper at Schimanski in Williamsburg. 2 p.m. [$10 women / $20 men]

Do yoga to the sounds of jazz at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem. 3:30 p.m. [$15]

Sunday:

Move your hips at a hula class at 92Y on the Upper East Side. 11:30 a.m. [$18]

A screening of the movie “Pariah” at the Lewis Howard Latimer House Museum in Queens. 3 p.m. [Free]

— Iman Stevenson

Events are subject to change, so double-check before heading out. For more events, see the going-out guides from The Times’s culture pages.

And finally: What happened to the man accused of printing a 3-D gun on Broadway?

The Times’s Jan Ransom reports:

Last year, a puppet specialist with the Broadway musical “The Lion King” was arrested at the Minskoff Theater and charged with attempted criminal possession of a firearm after he was found to have been manufacturing a 3-D-printed gun, prosecutors said then.

In New York, it is illegal for an unlicensed person to 3-D print an assault weapon, pistol or revolver.

Now, six months later, the Manhattan district attorney’s office has dropped the charges against the man, Ilya Vett, 48, because the gun, once completed, would not have been operable — a requirement under the law to prove that a crime had been committed.

“There was no firing pin attached to the hammer of the prop, and no room for one to be inserted even if the prop were to be modified,” Matthew Sears, an assistant district attorney, said during a hearing Thursday at the Manhattan Criminal Courts Building.

He added that Mr. Vett had told investigators he was creating the prop for the firearms collection of his brother, who has a gun license.

Mr. Vett, a married father of two who had been part of the Broadway show for 17 years, said he lost his job after the charges. He said he had been unable to find steady employment since the charges were announced.

“I’m happy to try and move on now and get some work,” he said.

Mr. Vett’s lawyer, Mark Bederow, said the past six months have been “a nightmare” for his client.

Among the family members and friends who showed up to support Mr. Vett at the hearing was his mother, Aletta Vett, 77.

She wore a sticker that read, “Props don’t kill people.”

It’s Friday — set your clocks forward on Sunday for daylight saving time.

Metropolitan Diary: Family Business

Dear Diary:

I went to see “The Band’s Visit” at the Ethel Barrymore Theater with my cousin, Carolyn.

We were ordering a cocktail before the show started when we noticed a man standing in front of a large framed portrait of Ethel Barrymore. He was posing so as to mirror her profile, and another man was taking his picture.

As Carolyn and I went to our seats, I noticed the two men sitting in the row behind ours. Making my way down the row, I smiled and leaned toward them.

“I saw your profile pose back there in the lobby,” I said to the man who had had his picture taken. “There’s an uncanny resemblance.”

He looked up at me.

“Ethel Barrymore was my great-grandmother,” he whispered.

I took my seat.

“That guy in the lobby having his picture taken?” I said to my cousin. “Ethel Barrymore was his great-grandmother!”

She looked over her shoulder, and then leaned toward me.

“And these are the best seats he could get?” she said.

— Barbara Travers

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