When friends ask the entrepreneur Gary Mandell how long he has been producing the Thursday night Summer Concert series in the Courtyard of City Hall, he wittily and succinctly responds with prickly hirsuteness:
“Since 50,000 follicles ago.”
His latest agreement with City Hall, however, was a clock-stopper.
Normally, these mid-winter spectacles are heartstoppers.
At last evening’s barely attended meeting, the City Council unanimously endorsed Mr. Mandell’s captaincy of the six-week Summer Concert series faster than you can ask “What happened to the budding, ambitious, sometimes cranky members of the Cultural Affairs Commission who have tried almost every year to make life thorny for him and throw him out of office?”
Since the July-August schedule will mark Mr. Mandell’s 15th consecutive, the Cultural Affairs Commission Would-Be’s have ended up Haven’t-Beens.
Probably Never-Will-Be’s, either.
Mr. Mandell, the wind of the former huffers and puffers at his skinny back, looks like a cinch, at least until Town Plaza and Parcel B – due to break ground by the end of the year – are built.
Only people with blue faces are holding their breaths until there is a change.
Why, the Council members looked at each other and wondered?
“Gary does a good job and the concerts are well received,” Councilman Andy Weissman said this afternoon.
