Photo by Scott Matthews.

September 19, 2016 Weather: Rain, with a high of 75 degrees.

Notices:
The annual 104th Street yard sale and many more local events are on our calendar.

There are meetings this week on plans to rezone public schools and the Museum of Natural History’s proposed expansion.

Seniors can sign up for free fitness classes from the CityParks Foundation this fall. There are free tennis lessons in Central Park, for instance. See the list here.

News:
An 86-year-old man was violently mugged in Central Park early Friday morning. “A police spokesman said that at about 12:35 a.m., the man was walking near the park with his wife, when they crossed paths with a group of four men near the park entrance on East 76th Street. One of the people in the group asked the man for a dollar, and when he refused, someone threw him down and stole his wallet which contained $20 and credit cards.” The Post reports that the assailants were “black and in their early 20s.”

Prosecutors agreed to drop assault and harassment charges against Christina Carlin-Kraft, 34, who has posed for Playboy, for an altercation at The Smith in March. She just has to stay out of trouble for 6 months. “She and her pal got into a scuffle with manager Sergey Anokhin over the tab, according to law-enforcement sources and court papers…She allegedly hit Anokhin in the neck at around 10 p.m., causing “redness and substantial pain,” the criminal complaint says. Anokhin also told cops she kicked him in the groin, sources said.”

Scaffolding that stays up for years continues to hurt business on the UWS and elsewhere. “A French wine bar on the Upper West Side has been open for three years, but scaffolding has obscured the business for two years and impacted clientele hugely, according to an employee. She said even now, locals are only just noticing the bar and asking if they’ve recently opened because it’s so dark under the shed.”

A longstanding touch football game at Booker T. Washington Middle School on the border of Morningside Heights and the Upper West Side is “a uniquely sharp lens through which to view the American experience. A typical game features 12 to 16 players, representing a mosaic of weekend warriors. Whites, blacks, Asians, Latinos — we’ve got ’em all, not to mention Orthodox Jews, fundamentalist Christians, lapsed Muslims and a few atheists. The best athlete in the game is a Senegalese film editor, the strongest arm belongs to a civil rights lawyer, and the toughest pass rusher is either the manager of a midtown deli or an elevator repairman from upstate New York.”

Veep won the Emmy for best comedy series and showrunner David Mandel gave a shoutout to “chubby Jews from the Upper West Side, embrace who you are.”