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Scoopy’s, Week of June 13, 2013

SCOOPY

V.R.D.C. VOTES ARE IN: The president of the Village Reform Democratic Club, Maria Passannante Derr, gave us the results of the club’s recent endorsement votes. Mayor: no endorsement. Public advocate: Daniel Squadron. Borough president: Julie Menin (who romped over Jessica Lappin, 40-12). George Arzt, Menin’s P.R. guru, hailed it as a “smashing Menin victory.” City Council Districts 1, 2 and 3: Jenifer Rajkumar, Rosie Mendez and Corey Johnson, respectively. District leader: Keen Berger and V.R.D.C.’er Arthur Schwartz.

APPLE-DEE APP HOOKERS: A few years back, we heard that many of the transgender sex workers who used to troll the Meat Market — and the Village streets just south of it — had gone online to meet johns, since there was less risk of arrest. Now we hear where they’re going online, specifically — namely, at the Apple Store, at 14th St. and Ninth Ave. “They come in all dressed up and use the A/C and the free Wi-Fi, too. They check their status [on Facebook],” an employee told us. “They’re pretty recognizable because they’re the worst dressed — I mean, most scantily clad.”

LITTLE LEAGUE SEXUAL SECURITY? Meanwhile, in related raunch (sort of), we see that a Department of Buildings permit was recently posted on the door of the former West World, at the corner of Clarkson and West Sts., allowing its conversion from “adult bookstore” to “adult eating and drinking” establishment. In other words, it looks like plans for Platinum, a new Scores-like “gentlemen’s club” — i.e., topless joint — are indeed underway. This past October, Thomas Wolfe, the club’s operator, had assured The Villager that his bouncers and exterior lighting would only make the street safer for Little Leaguers and youth soccer players traipsing by on their way to and from Pier 40.

YOU DA MAN! Congratulations to Jefferson Siegel, who won Best Feature Photo at the New York Press Club’s 2013 journalism awards on Monday night. His winning shot was of six alleged sex traffickers all handcuffed together, sitting on a bench outside a courtroom, with all but one of them doing their best to hide their faces from the camera.

YO! WORD FROM THE STREET: Christopher St.’s Jessica Berk tells us she recently spotted Brooke Shields, with her dog and husband in tow, rushing away from a very tall paparazzo and toward the safety of her S.U.V. across the street. “I called out to her, ‘Does this happen to you all the time?’” Berk said. “And she made a hand gesture and said, ‘Unfortunately, yeah.’ ” Also, Berk reports, “Everyone, everywhere is talking about Hugh Jackman.” Basically, the Aussie actor is all the rage in the nabe and everyone loves him, she said.

DIE YUPPIE SCUM! The Shadow’s Chris Flash is psyched about the upcoming 25th anniversary of the Tompkins Square Park riots in the first week in August. He said the plan music-wise is to bring back the original bands from that era who used to radically rock the park’s erstwhile band shell. In addition, this year will see an effort to educate people about the meaning of the riots and the resistance. There will be movie nights and panels with local squatters, activists and the civil rights attorneys who defended them. Flash is hoping Norman Siegel will be a panelist. They’re still working on venues, and he said he’d love if one was the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space, a.k.a. MORUS.

JUST WHAT WE NEEDED? So, will it be a Duane Reade or a CVS? We hear the ground-floor commercial tenant at 482 Greenwich St., Ben Shaoul’s new residential building on the late artist Armand’s lot at the corner of Greenwich and Canal Sts. (right across the street from The Villager’s offices), could well be pharmaceutical in nature. “It won’t be a pizza place or a Subway,” we’re told by a source. “A bid was put in for a small pharmacy.”

TAPE ME AT WOUNDED KNEE: Continuing in the “medical Hudson Square” vein, Sol Rosenblatt, 83, a Hudson Square resident (actually, he lives right above The Villager’s offices), happily reports that the F.D.A. has finally cleared his new wound-healing invention, Iodofoam, which releases iodine in a controlled manner. It’s already been favorably written up in the Key West Citizen. The jingle goes, “I oughta used Iodofoam.” Just kidding. … Seriously, earlier in his career, Rosenblatt was part of the medical team for the Apollo missions, where he became concerned about bringing Earth’s germs to the moon. He also invented Merocel, an antimicrobial alternative to gauze, hoping it could help treat seriously injured soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq.

ULTIMATE CORN-DOG CONFLICT: We bumped into activist Rob Hollander in Tompkins Square Park early Sunday evening, who told us the No 7-Eleven coalition is gearing up for a major “picket-rally” against the new double-decker 7-Eleven slated for 23rd St. at Fifth Ave. opposite the iconic Flatiron Building. Hollander tells us this particular fast-food franchise will even have seats for customers, a troubling trend. The anti-chain coalition is finding common cause with the occupation and protest in Gezi in Istanbul, which they note, started over opposition to a shopping mall. And they’re winning on Avenue A, they say. In a press release the Slurpee-savaging alliance trumpets, “7-Eleven Corp. has delayed its 11th St. and A store opening from May 15 to Nov. 15. There’s still no franchisee, their grocery/beer license application expired last month and the contractor no longer says he’s constructing a 7-Eleven; it’s just a generic box, he says. We won’t know for sure that we’ve won until 7-Eleven takes the site off its Web site as an available store, but it looks good for us. No doubt the corporation wants to keep a neighborhood-friendly image and doesn’t want any bad press.”

SLOW ZONE ON FAST TRACK, HE HOPES: Community Board 3’s Chad Marlow tells us that the application for a car speed-controlling East Village Slow Zone has been filed with the city’s Department of Transportation. He was looking to see what other neighborhoods also filed for the initiative and noticed that the application for a Cooper Park Slow Zone in Brooklyn’s Community Board 1 seemed to lift language from his recent talking point on the subject in The Villager. Compare this line from the Brooklyn application, “These especially benefit children, seniors and physically disabled persons, for whom poorly behaved, speeding drivers present the greatest danger,” to Marlow’s original, “The improvements will be of particular benefit to children, senior citizens and certain physically challenged persons for whom speeding traffic presents the greatest danger.” Marlow told us, “Seems people are reading The Villager in Brooklyn — and are not above copying other people’s work, with minor covering efforts! They better not beat out my application!”