YouBoob: Google’s snapping up YouTube definitely was not magic as far as Jessica Delfino is concerned. One day after Google purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion, Delfino’s racy YouTube music video — humorously riffing on how a certain part of her anatomy is “magic” — disappeared from Google searches, yanked allegedly for “inappropriate content.” Delfino claims the video had received 20,000 hits worldwide in just a few days. “I find this to be a very scary development for the future of YouTube. I always thought Google were the good guys,” Delfino said in a statement. “I even tell audiences to ‘Google me’ at the end of my live performances.” Delfino has put the video back up online and she mischievously tells people to “Google it or me to find it.” Although the video may not be to all Villager readers’ taste, we have to admit, we find it kind of amusing. And, c’mon folks — this is the Village! Meanwhile, Delfino tells us her onetime beau, former mayor candidate Chris X. Brodeur, is “doing pretty well,” after recently getting out of the slammer for phone harassment of Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler, reporter Ben Smith or Brodeur’s former landlord Paul Stallings — we forget which one, or ones, exactly. “I went on tour with the Trachtenburgs a few weeks ago and he flew out to Phoenix the day he got out of jail to meet up with us,” Delfino reports. “So he and I did some shows (Jello Biafra opened for us at a festival in Tucson) and then we hung out in L.A. and had reunited for a few weeks.”
Too late: Villager readers who are fans of Ed Koch’s writing will have to content themselves with his “Koch on Film” reviews for the time being. Alas, Koch has inked an exclusive deal with another weekly. We recently asked Hizzoner if we could pick up one of his columns, but it was a no-go. “You are too late,” Koch told us in an e-mail. The other paper, he said, “has an exclusive on my political commentaries in New York City. Remember, I urged you to publish them.” Ouch!
Band shell rock: While at the end of one legendary music venue, CBGB, Sunday night, we bumped into Chris Flash among the crowd of punk fans watching outside, and asked him what’s up with the campaign to restore another East Village stage — the Tompkins Square Park band shell. The band shell was razed in 1991 following the finale of a series of park riots, and 15 years later, Flash and others are still outraged it hasn’t been restored. Flash — who publishes The Shadow newspaper — said they’ll highlight the bring-back-the-band-shell campaign at a series of concerts in the park this month on Oct. 18, 19 and 28, and that things will really start “heating up” this spring. “It’s high time we had the band shell back,” he declared, adding they also plan to file a lawsuit, of which the band shell will be a central part, “to correct the wrongs that have been done to our community.”
No vacancy for Hilton: Also at the CBGB farewell, Mike C. from Coney Island, 22, who goes by “Slayer Mike” and plays guitar in a Pentara cover band, said he had seen Paris Hilton earlier that day with her dog in Tompkins Square Park being photographed by paparazzi. Hanging out in CB’s Gallery, he was praying she wouldn’t show up and spoil the scene.
Parkpourri: In her report on Hudson River Park affairs, Connie Fishman, the Hudson River Park Trust’s president, reveals that the trapeze school — yes, the very one of (gasp!) “Sex and the City” fame — will be required to vacate its current space in the park at Desbrosses St. in Tribeca around the end of November; the trapeze will then relocate to Pier 40 next to the pier’s rooftop soccer field, as approved by Community Board 2 more than a year ago. Also, Fishman notes in her notes that, on Oct. 24, C.B. 2 will host a presentation regarding the Christopher St. Pier area and the youth who frequent it, at the Village Community School, at 272 W. 10th St.; the meeting will be attended by representatives of Council Speaker Christine Quinn’s office, the Mayor’s Community Assistance Unit, The Door, the Sixth Police Precinct, the Trust and Park Enforcement Patrol members.
Correction: An article in last week’s issue about the East Village/Lower East Side rezoning plan incorrectly referred to it as a downzoning. In fact, it is a slight upzoning, but with strict height caps — as we hope this week’s Page 1 article makes clear.
