attn. all PHAGS: NYC HEALTH DEPARTMENT FEEDS THE EPIDEMIC IT PROMISED TO END
WHAT HAPPENED?
Three months ago the de Blasio administration blew a hole in its efforts to prevent HIV and sexually transmitted infections. Without warning the City shuttered the Chelsea STD Clinic for 2 to 3 years of renovations. The Chelsea Clinic, the City’s busiest, was the site of 20,000 sexual health visits a year.
c
KAHN, from p.93
co-star in ‘Two by Two’ and also her acting coach, helping her with her roles in ‘Paper Moon’ and ‘Young Frankenstein,’ among others. Her relationship with her last boyfriend, John Hansbury — whom she married — was her longest lasting, and I’m really not sure what she’d have done without him during her final illness.” Kahn died of ovarian cancer in 1999 at age 57.
was such a high profile project created for her, but the demands of the Cy Coleman score, among other considerations, proved too much for her, and soon her understudy, Judy Kaye, took over, triumphed in it, and became a star. I saw Kahn in it and remember being disappointed by how wan she seemed in the flamboyant part. Her talent, although exquisite, may have been more on the miniaturist side, its finely wrought details more suited to the intimacy of film. She could
Chelsea is the epicenter of the City’s HIV and STD epidemics. The Chelsea Clinic has been a place of care for high-risk, vulnerable New Yorkers from across the City, often young, poor, immigrant, gay, bi, transgender, gender non-conforming and of color. The City’s initial replacement plan: Put up a sign directing people to a clinic 70 blocks away.
WHAT’S GOING ON NOW?
THE CITY BLEW IT!
Local elected officials promised to find funding for a cost-effective, pre-fabricated unit on the Clinic site that would replace lost services for a large number of New Yorkers. Too embarrassed to admit its blunders, the City’s Department of Health put public relations ahead of public health and chose to apply its band-aids instead.
ACT UP DOES NOT ACCEPT THE STATUS QUO! ACT UP DEMANDS THAT THE CITY:
Speed up the renovation process so it’s completed ahead of schedule. n Provide all possible support to neighborhood clinics and community organizations for expanded testing and prevention services. n Appoint a community board right away to oversee the restoration process. n Collect data that tell us how many people have been lost to testing and adjust the plan to engage them. n Put a pre-fabricated unit on the Clinic site to replace lost services for many New Yorkers. n
THIS AD IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY PHAG (the Prevention of HIV Action Group):
ACT UP MEETS EVERY MONDAY NIGHT AT THE LGBT CENTER, 7pm @ 208 WEST 13 STREET
100
20TH CENTURY FOX
Under community pressure the City has applied one bandaid after another to its self-inflicted wound. Nothing has yet stopped the bleeding: n The amount of local testing has plummeted. People seeking testing have disappeared. n The City has redeployed a mobile testing van to the area. It sometimes goes missing. When it shows up, it tests few. n A lone staff person at the site is often poorly informed and handouts can be out of date. n Three local clinics might one day add testing capacity. Right now, referrals to these over-worked facilities are rare.
Madeline Kahn in Mel Brooks’ 1974 hit “Young Frankenstein.”
The list of Madison’s 120 interviewees is impressive: “Cybill Shepherd turned out to be one of Madeline’s fiercest advocates — something Madeline would find astonishing, because she really didn’t feel they’d made a connection during the filming of [the legendary musical debacle] ‘At Long Last Love.’ When we spoke about that movie, [co-star] Eileen Brennan suddenly exclaimed, ‘God, I love music! Music means more than anything in the world to me! Even more than dogs! Even more than cats!’ I say this with respect and affection: late in life Eileen was kind of a crazy cat lady, and she seemed to know that and to exult in it. “Mel Brooks concluded one of our interviews by saying, ‘Kid, I want you to do me a favor. Don’t make this a long, boring book!’ I promised him to write that on a piece of paper and to tack it over my desk.” Kahn is on many theatergoers’ minds these days because of the revival of “On the Twentieth Century” starring Kristin Chenoweth (so big a fan of Kahn’s that her dog is named Madeline), which was perhaps Kahn’s professional nadir. It
be highly variable onstage and was also disappointing in the revival of “Born Yesterday,” but, years later, at a Rodgers & Hart tribute at Symphony Space, she completely stole the show with a side-splitting rendition of “Zip.” Of her voice, Madison said, “She was a lyric soprano with solid musicianship and a bright, flexible instrument. There are dozens of soubrette roles she could have and should have sung. Beyond that, opinions vary among her friends as to how powerful her voice was and what her potential was. Maurice Peress, her conductor for ‘Candide’ and ‘La Bohème’, believes she could have had a career like Callas; others seem to think she’d have been ill-advised to stray far beyond operetta and Mozart. But her friend Robert Klein [with whom she had a brief dalliance] probably summed it up best: Madeline’s singing ‘was not living room bullshit.’” What was Madison’s ultimate takeaway, after devoting seven years to writing this life?: “Many people seem smaller, the more one studies them. Madeline Kahn
c
KAHN, continued on p.101
June 25 - July 08, 2015 | GayCityNews.nyc