The Manhattan Times

Shhhh!

by Mike Fitelson

Shhhh!

It’s always remarkable to hear the imaginatively different ways that Northern Manhattanites, both present and past, have distinguished themselves.

In April, Audrius Jegelevicius won top honors in the overall and super heavyweight levels at the 2009 NPC Steve Stone NY Metropolitan Bodybuilding, Figure, Fitness, and Bikini Championships (you’ve got to be well muscled just to lift the full title of that competition) and is now gearing up for the nationals in November.

The 242-pound Lithuanian native has been pumping iron for about 25 of his 37 years, and for the last three years at the free weight room at J’s Big Gym on W. 181st Street.

Gym owner Jay Hirshhorn noted about Jegelevicius, “He’s not the biggest guy I have but he’s the biggest ripped guy,” adding: “He moves some serious metal.”

Jegelevicius, whose name is mercifully shortened to AJ around the gym, also pushed Hirshhorn to add to his equipment inventory when, a year or so ago, he requested heavier dumbbells. The 140 pounders weren’t enough.

“He’s a sweetheart of a guy – you have to know that first,” Hirshhorn said.

Hirshhorn himself has also gained a large enough reputation in the world of bodybuilding that he has been tapped to judge a competition. The fact that the contestants are inmates at Arthur Kill Correctional Facility in Staten Island doesn’t faze him.

“I fully expect to be impressed,” he added.

Shhhh!

In perhaps the perfect counterpoint to the recognition that Jegelevicius is earning for how well he has perfected his body, former Northern Manhattanite Alex Schweder has two sculptures at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art that call attention to the imperfections of the human body and architecture.

The works include a urinal that he designed for use by Siamese twins and the specially commissioned work “A Sac Full of Rooms All Day Long,” which consists of two dwellings made out of vinyl – the larger one contained inside the smaller one – that are inflated at different rates to call attention to how both bodies and buildings undergo change, perhaps imperceptible at first, but apparent over time.

“There’s something compelling about imperfection – none of us are in the perfect body,” Schweder said by cell phone in Texas where he was shopping for fuses for snow machines to use in another art work.

Last year Schweder, a graduate of P.S./I.S. 187, permanently relocated to Berlin, which he said, “Feels remarkably like Washington Heights. It’s still figuring itself out, no one’s got any money and space is cheap, and, because of this, there are people from all over the world.”

After further reflection, he added that like growing up in Washington Heights in the 1970s, “the language I speak isn’t the dominant language.”

Shhhh!

This weekend the names of two of old-time Northern Manhattanites will take up permanent residence in the community when a section of Edgecombe Avenue will be co-named Paul Robeson Boulevard and part of W. 160th Street will be co-named Count Basie Place. The famous entertainers both lived at 555 Edgecombe Avenue.

The ceremony on Sugar Hill will be held Sat., Sep. 26 from 1 to 4 p.m. starting at the intersection of the two streets followed by free jazz, spoken word and refreshments at the Morris-Jumel Mansion.

Shhhh!

Fans of the hit Fox TV series “House” or Broadway musical “In the Heights” star Lin Manuel-Miranda will be glued to their screens on Mon., Sep. 21 at 8 p.m. when the season premiere airs. Miranda will play Dr. House’s roommate in a psychiatric institute during the two-hour episode. While the Inwood native has been tight-lipped about details of his performance, check out the spoiler blogs at www.latina.com if you can’t wait to find out what happens to the man who made a punch line out of the name Usnavi.

Shhhh!

In a bit of sad news, on Fri, Sep. 11, poet and punk rocker, Jim Carroll, a friend and artistic collaborator of Andy Warhol, the Doors, Lou Reed and Pearl Jam, passed away of a heart attack. He was 59.

Reading about it Monday morning in a New York Times obituary, Manhattan Times reporter Adam Garrett-Clark was struck by the news. Carroll’s 1978 autobiographical novel “The Basketball Diaries,” later made into a Hollywood film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, was the subject of one of Garrett-Clark’s first book reports as a middle schooler. Enticed by Carroll’s prose Garrett-Clark went on to read the sequel, “Forced Entries,” and a number of his poems, eventually adopting a writing style heavily influenced by the author.

Garrett-Clark was even more surprised a few hours later when he received an emailed tip from a reader that Carroll had lived just a block away from newspaper’s offices all this time.

Growing up in Inwood, Carroll developed his basketball chops on the courts of Inwood Hill Park and in the Dyckman Houses where he was said to have played against Lew Alcindor (who later changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar). After becoming famous, Carroll moved away from his childhood home only to return to his native neighborhood in recent years, living on Isham Street.