It Happens This—and Next—Week
•Cycle Messenger World Championships
•International Olympic Committee votes on 2012 Games
•NBA draft at MSG
•‘War of the Worlds’
•Fireworks!
•Last day of public school
•Restaurant Week redux
BloggersTake on Goonie
Corey Feldman, back in town, gets cyberstalked.
Days after moving to New York to star in the Off Broadway black-comedy, martial-arts version of Fatal Attraction (with dance numbers), actor Corey Feldman had his own female-stalker experience. Unsurprisingly, since this was the Lower East Side, his building was infested with bloggers, and one neighbor, Lindsay Robertson, blogged to thousands of New Yorkers about running into the former Goonie there (another blog, Jossip.com, then published the address). “It’s kind of dangerous, you know?” says Feldman, not only for him but for his new wife, Susie (whom he married on-camera on the reality show The Surreal Life), and their baby, Zen. Feldman, who was back in the news with the Michael Jackson trial (he was called to testify about their previous, possibly inappropriate relationship), had been “hounded every day for the last two years by every media circuit you can think of,” he says, wearily. “Every time I try to do an interview or try to do anything, it’s just … ” He laughs. “I guess everyone needs a punching bag.”
—Shana Liebman
Refreshing andWish-Fulfilling
“Healing water” popular on Upper East Side.
Why quench your thirst with Poland Spring when you can drink Atacama Healing Water? Not only will it hydrate, it will, according to Japanese healer Jei Atacama, who sells $64 bottles of the stuff, “heal and solve all problems in life.” And so water-based faith healing has come to the fashionistas. Atacama, who says he was born with the “Power of Wishing” (which apparently means that anything he wishes for happens), takes pure spring water, adds the resonance of said Power of Wishing, and voila! He prescribes AHW in half-ounce doses, anywhere from every ten minutes to twice a day, depending on the severity of the illness. And people are buying: Fashion photographer Steven Klein, who shot Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s “family photos” in W, calls Atacama “a master.” And fur designer Gilles Mendel attests the water “has been a healthy alternative to helping me lower my stress and keeping me focused, especially at collection time.”
—Gloria Fallon
Sixth-Day WarAt the ‘Journal’
Should “star reporters” ask for overtime?
Wall Street Journal publisher Karen Elliott House was probably trying to be reassuring when she told the Times last week that just because her paper was starting a Saturday edition, “people won’t be working six days a week.” Still, she couldn’t help adding, “But any of the real stars of the Journal work a six-day week now,” a comment that could explain why she’s so unpopular there. “People are furious,” says one reporter. “It’s demoralizing.” It’s all par for the course at the restive newsroom, which picketed contract negotiations last year and is acting more like a union shop than a professional-class aerie as benefits get cut and fewer people do more work. “There are a lot of really committed journalists at Dow Jones who do work six-day weeks,” says reporter and union rep Theo Francis. “But she shouldn’t take that for granted.” Reporters are eligible for overtime for weekends, but “there’s an immense amount of institutional resistance to paying for it,” partly because, as he admits, there’s no room in the strapped paper’s budget. Nonetheless, “we’re encouraging people to show their star status by putting in for weekend work.”
Lefty Cred CrisisAt IFC Center
Indie film vs. union label.
What’s a good left-leaning indie-film consumer to do? Last Tuesday, moviegoers at the Village’s new IFC Center were greeted by union activists picketing the fact that, unlike the Sunshine or the Angelika or pretty much any other cinema in the city, the IFC isn’t using union projectionists. “I’m in kind of a predicament,” admitted a book editor in the ticket line. “I’d go to Film Forum, but I heard the Herzog movie wasn’t that good.” “This is bullshit,” said a bearded hipster. “They should get fucking professionals.” Then he bought a ticket, adding, protests “will not prevent me from going to the only theater that’s showing Miranda July’s new film.” A filmmaker with a ticket to July’s Me and You and Everyone We Know agreed, saying the IFC should be forgiven because in the low-budget indie world, an art house might need cheaper, nonunion help. Except that IFC is owned by Cablevision. “That doesn’t make sense,” she said
—S.L.
East HamptonBeach-Pass Panic
$400,000 rental, but no surf for you!
Summer 2005 has just begun, but a run on beach permits has already got renters in a rage. In 2001, East Hampton Village limited the number of nonresident beach-parking stickers to 2,500 (at $225 each), and they tend to sell out by late June. But on May 26, the East Hampton Star ran a story detailing the woes of renters who didn’t get them in the past, sparking a buying frenzy. Permits sold out by June 3, three weeks earlier than last year—and sand-disenfranchised renters are “extremely upset,” says Annie Christman of Village Realty Group. “They want to know why.” Broker Gary DePersia of Allan Schneider Associates likens spending $400,000 for the summer and not getting a sticker to “staying in Aspen and being forced to ski in Snowmass.” Next year, Joseph Horstmann of Main Street Properties says, “I’m going to tell people maybe they should get a sticker even before they get the house.”
—Peter Beller
EDITED BY CARL SWANSON