Christine Quinn has spent her political life representing Chelsea and the West Village, first as chief of staff to then-Council Member Tom Duane, and then in 1999 as his successor on the Council, after Duane was elected to the State Senate. She still lives in the same Chelsea apartment that she has been renting since 1992, and now shares with her partner, Kim Catullo.

Since being elected Council Speaker in 2006, though, Quinn has spent more time in the neighboring Council district further downtown, dealing with a broader array of Council issues. In fact, city business required that the original location of this interview, Moonstruck Diner, a regular haunt of hers on Ninth Avenue and West 23rd Street, be shifted closer to City Hall. Instead, she sat down at Jerry’s Café, a gastro-diner on Chambers Street, to chat about food, family dynamics and her plans for St. Patrick’s Day.



Q: What is good here?

A: I’ve been here for breakfast, I’ve ordered in the Cobb salad, which was good. I think I’ve ordered in the Caesar salad. It’s fairly new. But people like it at City Hall.

Q: So this is one of the hot new lunch spots?

A: It used to be in Soho and then they couldn’t afford the rent, so then they moved here fairly recently.

Q: What are you leaning toward?

A: Oh, I’m going to get a salad. Probably the Caesar salad. Or maybe the Cobb salad.

[Waiter arrives; Quinn orders Caesar salad with shrimp and unsweetened ice tea]    

Q: Do you have time to shop and cook, or are you more of a takeout person?

A: I have personally never been a big cooker. My partner Kim likes to cook. I actually like to bake. I find baking pretty relaxing, but I don’t get to do it as much as I would like. I made a cake over the weekend—olive oil and polenta, from the Babbo web page, which is in the district. It’s very hard to time it right. The last time I made it, it was a little too dry. Kim likes the cake and she’s going to be working on a trial soon so I was just trying to do something nice.

Q: So what’s in your refrigerator right now? A bottle of ketchup?

A: No, actually, our refrigerator—Kim is really good about keeping it well packed. We’ve got a bunch of mandarin oranges. I brought them down to City Hall yesterday. I meant to do it again. They were really good. A bunch of grapefruit. If you opened our fridge, you would think we would have a real fear of the scurvy, which we don’t. What else do we have in there? A bunch of cheese, a lot of yogurt, some hummus.

Q: The city is at an important crossroads. What’s your take on where we are?

It was interesting—my sister’s coming to New York this morning … and she was recounting having plans with grandparents, my mom and my aunt, not going back to the city to see Broadway plays because they were nervous about the crime. And my mom and aunt had grown up in the city. That was the most important thing—to not let the city go back to a place where there was garbage and crime.

Q: I knew you had a sibling, but I didn’t know if it was a brother or a sister. Your sister’s older?

A: She is. She’s 10 years older than I am. She’s 52 years old. My father always said he had only two children. She lives in Guilford, Connecticut, she’s a geologist and she’s married to Dr. Robert, we call him. He’s a psychiatrist at Yale.

Q: Does he analyze the whole family?

A: I’m sure he does [laughs]. But he doesn’t share it. My sister’s incredibly smart. She’s a geologist, but also has an MBA. She’s kind of a combination geologist-businesswoman. She’s the tough one in the family.

Q: Is that a weird dynamic? You dad is very involved with your political operation—he’s got a basement office in City Hall.

A: He does, I just saw him. He was complaining about something or another.

Q: How does your sister feel about your father being so involved with your life?

A: He’s as involved with her life. We e-mailed this morning. She was going through scheduling of when he was going up there, did I not need him for this weekend—so he’s very involved in their life. They’re redoing their house. He’s been helping them with that.

Q: You guys share custody of him.

A: Absolutely.

Q: Tom Duane has said that he goes to your place down the Jersey Shore. Is he a good houseguest?

A: He is a very good houseguest. He’s a very good houseguest for a host of reasons, not the least of which is he loves the beach. He’s a fun houseguest because he really has a good time.

Q: You and Kim have busy schedules—how do you make time for each other? Date night?

A: We don’t have a set one; we just try to figure it out. Every week is different ... You just have to work at it. Like on Monday, I had the day off, she had to work because she’s getting ready for the trial, so she left work a little earlier, went home, watched a DVD of Grey’s Anatomy and then went out to dinner. That was fun.

Q: Do you have any guilty-pleasure TV shows?

A: Oh yes.

Q: What’s on the list? American Idol?

A: I like American Idol at the end. I don’t like it at the beginning. It’s mean. It almost makes me not watch it at the end. I haven’t made a decision whether I’m going to watch the end of this season or not.

Q: Because they make fun of people?

A: They’re mean. I love, love, love Charmed! It’s fabulous. It’s three sisters who are witches. One was Shannen Doherty, who had to get kicked off the show. Another one’s Rose McGowan. Anyway, it’s terrific, three strong women. Men as well. And then anything Lifetime.

Q: Switching gears again, the mayor gave you a few challenging moments for 2008 and some other things arose last year. Was there one issue for you that was the toughest to get through?

A: Obviously, leading into the economic downturn, which we could kind of see moving in both slow motion and at light speed when you’re in the middle of it in 2008, was frightening. You could see it was headed in a way that was going to be very, very impactful on our budget and of course, potentially, impactful on New Yorkers’ everyday lives.

Q: So that for you was the biggest thing. Having to embrace that and figure out how to …

A: How to get through it in a way that was true to what I and the vast majority of Council members believed, that you have to deal with this budget crisis in a way that’s economically fair and just, and you have to do it in a way that—some services are just too important to cut to the bone or beyond.

Q: When you’re on regular business throughout the city, though, do you get the celebrity treatment ever?

A: Sometimes you go places and people recognize you … Occasionally you get folks who come up to you and thank you for something, or young women who are excited, or young LGBT people who get excited. And that’s always exciting on my end. It’s kind of a kick when that happens … And, look, this is New York City, you could be sitting at a diner next to Madonna having breakfast with Julianne Moore, so people are like, “So there’s the speaker and the mayor, who cares?”

Q: Your dad in the past has said that you need to be more succinct when you talk, and you’ve begrudgingly agreed.

A: Sometimes my answers go on too long.

Q: Have you taken his advice? Do you get more sound bites?

A: (To press secretary) Have I gotten more sound bites? I’ve tried. I don’t know if I’ve succeeded, but I’ve tried.