YOUR WEEKLY COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER SERVING CHELSEA, HUDSON YARDS & HELL’S KITCHEN
Photo by David Puchkoff
A GATHERING OF FALLS
Three of the five falls of Victoria Falls — the Devil’s Cataract in the foreground, and in the distance Main Falls and Horseshoe Falls — offer splendor in their gathering. See page 12 for Eileen Stukane’s photo essay on her recent trip to Zimbabwe.
Growing Anger Over City STD Efforts BY DUNCAN OSBORNE A town hall organized by ACT UP and the Treatment Action Group demonstrated the growing anger with the de Blasio administration and the city’s health department over what activists say is their failure to respond to rise in sexually transmitted diseases, and new HIV infections, among the city’s gay and bisexual men. “Bill de Blasio, take public health in New York City off the starvation diet that Michal Bloomberg put it on,” said Jim Eigo, an ACT UP member, at the September 1 meeting at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center. Roughly 170 people attended the town hall, which was a mix of fervent advocacy and data that was displayed via PowerPoint on a large screen
above the heads of the evening’s principal speakers. Activists charge that visits to the city’s eight currently-operating sexually transmitted disease clinics have declined by 18 percent since the health department shuttered the clinic in Chelsea in March for a twoyear renovation. The Chelsea clinic had more annual visits than any other clinic and accounted for 20 to 25 percent of visits to all nine clinics in recent years. With its high volume, and with many gay and bisexual men using the clinic, it was expected to play a central role in the Plan to End AIDS. That plan, which aims to reduce new HIV diagnoses in New York
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Rubin Museum Cuts: Fiscal Prudence or Mission Drift? BY DUSICA SUE MALESEVIC Linda John was excited when, around two months ago, she found a program she really liked at the Rubin Museum of Art (150 W. 17th St. btw. Sixth & Seventh Aves). She discovered “Auspicious Stitches,” which taught different types of stitching and embroidery, after going to the museum on a Monday, when free admission is offered to seniors. “It was a terrific group of woman who were doing interpretations of Himalayan themes,” John said in a phone interview. But that program, as well as others such as “Yak Packers” (an early
childhood art class), has recently been cancelled. “I think it was exactly the kind of thing that the museum intended originally to establish, and now it just can’t keep it up,” she said. John said a museum representative told the group that donors want to see programs that draw in a large number of people. “Auspicious Stitches” had anywhere from 10 to 30 people who regularly attended, she said. “So it doesn’t matter whether the program is good. It doesn’t matter that it fulfills the aspirations of the museum, at least the way it’s stated
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VOLUME VOLUME 07, ISSUE 07, 29 ISSUE | SEPTEMBER 22 | JULY 10 16 - 16, 22, 2015