Movies and Galas• Venus premiere. Celeste Bartos Theater, MoMA, 4 W. 54th St., nr. Sixth Ave., 6:30 p.m. Expected attendees include Natasha Richardson, Corinne Bailey Rae, Dan Hedaya, Arianna Huffington, and Damian Loeb. Dan Hedaya isn’t in Venus. But he was in Swimfan. Once again, point Hedaya.
it just happened
Bloomberg’s Agenda Anything But Lame Duck
Proving that six years of prosperity can get a mayor thinking of posterity, Mayor Bloomberg announced ambitious environmental goals this morning in a speech at Flushing Meadow. Gone is the Bloomberg of December 2001, who chased quick economic fixes, like football stadiums and Olympics. Today Bloomberg wants to balance rising population against rising sea levels. He noted that city planners expect 900,000 more residents here by 2030. “With our administration not beholden to special interests, we now have the freedom to take on obstacles looming and to begin clearing them away,” he fairly gloated.
Bloomberg’s goals would pursue indisputably good things: get everybody within a ten-minute walk of a park, cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 30 percent, make 90 percent of the city’s waterways clean enough for recreation, improve all sewers, and invest in regional mass transit to keep travel times stable. As parsed, these goals have less stick than a can of Crisco in City Council chambers. They seem flexible enough to make good business sense, but what will happen in post-Bloomberg New York? Will potential Mayor Dick Parsons funnel them into a big bond package?
grub street
It’s a Beautiful Day in Gordon Ramsay’s Neighborhood
So let’s say a superstar British chef comes to New York, and let’s say he opens up a new restaurant right around the corner from your apartment. That’d be a good thing for you, right? Wrong, if you live behind Gordon Ramsay’s new restaurant at the London NYC. Residents of the building backing up against the hotel have been complaining about incessant noise and unpleasant odors from the restaurant’s exhaust fans. Today Grub Street investigated, and the results aren’t pretty. Some view, eh?
We Spot-Check Gordon Ramsay’s Stink [Grub Street]
neighborhood watch
Fake Beach Comes to Red HookChelsea: See NYC-themed gingerbread creations (CBGB, Empire State Building) at Chelsea Market. [NYC Stories]
Clinton Hill: No. 70 Lefferts Place was designated today by the Landmark Preservation Commission. Hooray! [Brownstoner]
Dumbo: Hey D.J.’s, there’s a holiday sale at Halcyon on Wednesday. For everyone else: free beer! [A Brooklyn Life]
Long Island City: Cops love it when artists put up unauthorized installations. No, really, they do. [SuckaPants via Razor Apple]
Park Slope: What’s with all the yellow signs that say “Sit Here”? More public art? [Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn]
Red Hook: No need to be jealous of Long Island City. You can have your own fake beach. [Curbed]
