NYC NOW - Midday News: General Mark Miley Pardoned, Focus on Self Defense or Defending Others And We Take a Trip to Westbeth

Episode Date: January 20, 2025

As part of our Radio Rookies program, we visit the Westbeth Artists Housing in Manhattan’s West Village. For decades, the building near the Hudson River has served as an oasis for artists to live and work who might otherwise be priced out of the community.

Welcome to NYC now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNMIC. I'm Sean Carlson. This is our one and only episode today. Here are your news headlines from Michael Hill. Retired General Mark Millie says he's grateful to President Biden for a pardon. Biden today pardoned Millie, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and members of the House Committee that investigated the deadly January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol, using the extraordinary powers of his office in its final hour,

to guard against potential revenge by the incoming Trump administration. Donald Trump has warned of an enemy's list filled with those who crossed him politically or sought to hold him accountable for his attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss and his role in the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Millie has called Trump a fascist and detailed Trump's conduct around the insurrection. Daniel Penny's criminal trial may be over, but the debate about when is a okay to use force certainly is not. W&MIC Samantha Max reports. Last month, a jury chose not to convict Penny after prosecutors accused him of fatally choking

Jordan Neely on the subway. Since then, some commentators have warned that New Yorkers may hesitate to defend themselves or others because they don't want to end up in court. But some people fear the opposite. Historian Fritz-Umbach says New Yorkers' anxieties about crime could make them more likely to take matters into their own hands. The low road here is vigilantism. The high road here is a more thoughtful approach to how we handle mental illness, particularly in public spaces. Umbach says instead, New Yorkers should be more focused on helping people like Neely before they end up in a violent encounter. 21 and sunny right now. It's a cold day out there. We'll have some increasing clouds today.

a high up to's 26, but feeling at times like 10 degrees. Even colder tomorrow, cold all this week, with high temperatures at or below the freezing mark. Manhattan's West Village is home to a unique artist community. Our radio rookie reporter took us on a tour of her home. Stick around. That's after the break. This is NYC Aura. The West Village is one of Manhattan's most upscale neighborhoods, filled with luxury townhouses and fancy restaurants, designer boutiques. But for more than 50 years, one building, new.

near the Hudson River has offered a space for artists to live and work who would otherwise be priced out of this community. 17-year-old radio rookies reporter Vera Giroado moved into Westbeth artist housing with her family four years ago and gives us an inside look. Before we moved into Westbeth, my family lived across the river in New Jersey, but I went to school in the West Village. I would walk past Westbeth all the time. Back then, it was just another industrial building, until it became our home. My name is Pedro Girodo. I am a bassist and composed.

from Argentina. That's my dad. For nearly 25 years, he lived and worked around New York City, but he never imagined he'd be able to afford rent in the West Village, especially as a family of four. So getting in felt like winning the lottery. My total surprise, we got a letter 11 months later that we actually were getting very, very close to getting into the building. Our apartment is 1,300 square feet. My family pays around $2,000 a month, utilities included. The same apartment could easily go for five times as much in this neighborhood. We paid a similar amount in our old apartment in New Jersey, though back then we had a 45-minute commute to school.

Now it's just a 15-minute walk. And getting to gigs in the West Village is a whole lot simpler for my dad. I can actually walk to gigs before when I lived in Jersey City, but I had to drive the car, deal with all the traffic at the tunnels. So it made a very big difference in our lifestyle and life quality for the better. The building also offers a lot of resources, like rehearsal spaces that make large band rehearsals much easier for my dad to organize. The story of how Westbeth has benefited families like mine is a long one and an important one to tell. And I'm not the only one who feels that way.

Our building even offers tours for the outside world. Welcome to Westbeth. Westbeth is the largest artist live, work community in the United States, if not the world. That's George Kaminsky. He moved into Westbeth 42 years ago. He's leading a tour of my building for the group Open House New York. My building was constructed by Bell Labs in the late 1800s and transformed into affordable housing for artists and their families in 1970. It has 384 affordable apartments for artists and has maintained a lot of its old industrial feel.

Loft spaces, not many interior walls, high ceilings, and huge windows. It's an unconventional home for a family of four like mine, but we've made it work. A lot of the artists who live here produce work in their homes, but creativity is everywhere. I already mentioned the rehearsal spaces, but the building also has gallery and performance venues open to outside audiences. Here's my dad performing not too long ago. But living here hasn't always been so utopian. Christina Maley was among the first residents to move into Westbeth in 1970. She describes herself as a playwright, landscape architect, and printmaker.

Christina recalls much grittier days in the 80s and 90s. Because it was kind of dangerous, these guys who lived here formed a safety committee, and they would patrol the hallways. But they would basically knock on single women's doors and see if they were okay. While it was dangerous, it was also a hub of culture, earning the neighborhood the nickname Little Bohemia. And Christina says Westbeth's artist played a role in that. Christina remembers working with others in the building to create the West Beth playwrights feminist collective. Those are the things that are part of West Beth's life. not just living here and raising a family and trying to find work and, you know, make work or make

things, but also that we invite people to share in that experience. And tour guide and resident George says the artistic community helped to turn the neighborhood into the sought-after and expensive place it is today. It started to change in the late 1990s. Two things happen. The artists move into where it is less expensive. A lot of the old industrial buildings where they could do it. large studios, and they come in and populate it and then make it kind of hip.

And before you know it, trendy bars open, upscale restaurants and designer boutiques move in, and with these new developments, rent spike, pushing out most working artists. Fortunately, that hasn't been the case for West Beth residents. With subsidized rents still in place, artists can continue to live and create in the village. Terry Stoller, a writer who moved into the building in the mid-80s, put it this way. This is an oasis for artists and for people to be able to live in New York and continue their work. And the proof is that we have many artists who've lived here for 50 years who have continued to do their work. And I find that quite inspirational.

And it is Westbeth that has enabled them to do that. Over the years, a who's who of artists have lived at Westbeth, including Ralph Lee, a puppeteer, who founded the West Village Halloween parade, David D'altradici, a pioneer composer of the neo-romanticism movement, and Merce Cunningham, an influential modern and avant-garde choreographer. I asked a few residents if they would ever consider moving away, including Stoller. Have you ever considered leaving West Beth? No.

No? No, I would never consider leaving West Beth. This is my true home. It's a community. I'm now 75. I feel very comfortable growing older here. People look after their neighbors, and of course, it's affordable housing. Westbeth has played an enormous part in my family's life,

and it has been wonderful to join this vibrant community of artists. And I plan on being part of this building's history for a long time. For WNYC, I'm Radio Rookie's reporter, Vera Gidal-O. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WNYC. I'm Sean Carlson. We'll be back with three episodes tomorrow. We'll see you there.