TOP HOLIDAY TOMES, p.
26
Volume 1, Number 21 FREE
A photo from the Next HOPE (Hackers on Planet Earth) conference in July at the Hotel Pennsylvania in Midtown,
at which the keynote speaker was to be Julian Assange. He canceled, though, because the U.S. government was
hunting him for his role in releasing a classified gun-cam video, showing Iraqi civilians and journalists being mis-
takenly killed by an American helicopter gunship in 2007.
Anarchists, Koch, everyone’s
wired over WikiLeaks debate
BY MARY REINHOLZ
After a London judge ordered him
released Tuesday from his London
jail cell on $314,000 bail, Julian
Assange, editor in chief of the whis-
tle-blowing WikiLeaks Web site, gave
a thumbs up to his supporters in a
packed courtroom and said through
his lawyer he would fight to clear his
“good name.”
Assange, a peripatetic, 39-year-
old Australian, was at first denied
bail Dec. 7 after his arrest on an
Interpol warrant stemming from allega-
tions of sexual assault by two women in
Sweden, who claim his crimes include
sex without a condom, a form of rape
in that country. Assange claims the sex
was consensual and has called the alle-
gations “dirty tricks.” Women Against
Rape, a group in the United Kingdom,
East and West Village, Lower East Side, Soho, Noho, Little Italy and Chinatown
has also questioned the charges. As of
Wednesday, however, Assange was still
in custody, as a lawyer for Sweden was
challenging his release, arguing he was
a flight risk.
Generally, Assange gets labeled
in America as either a cyber terror-
ist or an idealistic freedom fight-
er for WikiLeaks’ release of thou-
sands of secret documents to main-
stream media. The documents — clas-
sified diplomatic cables and war logs
— have left U.S. officials red-faced and
instigated calls for Assange’s indict-
ment for espionage — and even his
assassination.
But Assange, while vilified by right-
wing talking heads like Sarah Palin
and Bill O’Reilly, has a multitude of
ardent supporters, among them film-
maker Michael Moore, who offered
145 SIXTH AVENUE • NYC 10 013 • COPYRIGHT © 2010 COMMUNITY M E D I A , L L C
Vote postponed
on SPURA; Idea
is half market rate
BY LESLEY SUSSMAN
If the devil is, indeed, in
the details, then a Commu-
nity Board 3 committee that
for nearly two years has been
trying to draft comprehen-
sive guidelines for the future
development of the Seward
Park Urban Renewal Area
along Delancey St., seemed
this week to be in dire need
of an exorcist.
At a meeting on the eve-
ning of Mon., Dec.13, at
the Henry Street Settlement,
301 Henry St., members of
C.B. 3’s Land Use, Zoning,
Health study could
Photo by J.B. Nicholas
be done in as soon
as 3 to 4 months
BY LINCOLN ANDERSON
A community health
needs assessment that could
be used to make the case for
a new hospital or healthcare
facility to replace the for-
mer St. Vincent’s Hospital
$20,000 toward his bail, according to could be completed by early
news reports. The WikiLeaks leader spring.
has many other donors with “with deep Meanwhile, at a recent
pockets,” said sources in New York. meeting in Chelsea on the
Assange, chief spokesman for needs assessment, members
his amorphous international group of the Coalition for a New
WikiLeaks, is also the subject of con- Village Hospital continued
flict and suspicion among some who, to ask why the study was
upon first thought, might be assumed needed, saying there were
to be supporters, including East Village
anarchists who only know him by
accounts in the press.
Chris Flash, editor of The Shadow,
an underground East Village newspaper,
said in a phone interview that he and
his staff have not published anything so
far on Assange or the WikiLeaks scan-
dal. Flash said he wondered if the four-
year-old group now under such intense
Continued on page 15
December 16 - 22, 2010
Public & Private Housing
Committee spent nearly four
hours painstakingly review-
ing the details of the first
draft guidelines that were
presented to the committee
last month, and arguing over
many of these details.
Since last month’s pre-
sentation, some changes
to the guidelines had been
considered following sug-
gestions by committee and
community members. Panel
facilitator John Shapiro, an
Continued on page 17
sufficient studies already.
About 50 people gath-
ered at the Robert Fulton
Houses Senior Center on
Dec. 6 to hear members
of the Community Health
Assessment Steering Com-
mittee give an update on
where the study stands and
answer questions.
Hunter College School
of Public Health and North
Shore-Long Island Jewish
Health System are doing the
Continued on page 18
EDITORIAL,
LETTERS
PAGE 22
‘LOUIS IN THE SKY’
AT THE 92 Y TRI
PAGE 29
2 December 16 - 22, 2010

SCOOPY’S
NOTEBOOK
E.I.K. FEELIN’ GROOVY: Now that the 59th St. Bridge
has been renamed for Ed Koch, the questions are, first, is
the name change actually going to take hold, and, next, what
exactly will people call the stately East River span — i.e., the
“Ed Koch Bridge,” the “Koch Bridge” — maybe just “The
Koch” or simply “The Ed,” or even “The Eddie”? On the first
point, Hizzoner tells us he thinks there’s a chance the new
name could become common parlance. “We have no idea”
of whether it will sink in, he admitted. “The reason there’s a
reasonable chance is it doesn’t have a distinct name: It’s the
59th St. Bridge; it’s the Interboro Bridge.” (Actually, it’s the
Queensboro Bridge, or it was.) If traffic reports in the local
news media refer to it as the Ed Koch Bridge, that will help
the new name take root, he added. But Koch himself might
take a more active role. “I may even go out there and hand
out literature asking people to call it the Ed Koch Bridge,”
he noted. He said he would hand fliers to pedestrians near
the Midtown connector’s entrances on both the Manhattan
and Queens sides, but not to motorists. “I don’t think I’d
stop traffic — you could get killed,” he said. Actually, his
preferred appellation is “The E.I.K.,” standing for Edward
I. Koch. “If they want to call it the E.I.K., that’s got a good
ring,” he noted. “ ‘Let’s drive over the E.I.K.’ ” Staying open
to other variations, though, he added, “If they want to say,
‘Take the Eddie,’ that’s O.K. by me.” One report last week
noted that Koch actually had hoped to have Newark Airport
named for him, but Hizzoner downplayed that as never seri-
ous. “That was just joking. That’s reserved for presidents,”
he said of airport namings — though, he did point out that
J.F.K. rhymes with E.I.K. He said he’d had some talks about
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the airport idea with friends two years ago, but that it was
just lighthearted. Koch has already driven through the for-
mer Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel since its being redubbed the
Hugh Carey Tunnel, which was done simultaneously with
the bridge’s renaming for Koch. “I tell my driver, ‘Let’s take
the Hughey,’ ” Koch noted. “That’s what everyone called
him, Hughey.” However, he’s yet to relish the pleasure of
telling his driver, “Take the E.I.K.”
MOVIN’ ON UP: Lucy Cecere is sad that her boy
Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker may be leav-
ing the Village soon, for good. “It was all over the news,”
she told us last week. “They bought a 14-room apartment up
in the 70’s.” The thespian couple have twins and a son, and
we’re guessing, may need the extra space. (Also, let’s face it,
paparazzi have them totally staked out in the Village.) Cecere
said Broderick is responsible for the now-20-year-old, star-
studded mailboxes operation at Something Special, the store
Cecere’s husband, Leonard, runs on MacDougal St. just
off Houston St. Before, it was merely a postcard shop. “He
started it. We started it with him,” she recalled of Broderick.
“He just walked in. He had moved to California. He said he
couldn’t stay in Hollywood. He said, ‘I’ll be your customer.’”
A-listers avail themselves of the mailboxes for privacy so
people don’t bother them. Today, Something Special handles
mail for the likes of Famke Jansen, Jane Krakowsi and Patti
Smith. Cecere noted that Jansen just got a new bike from the
Netherlands, with a basket on front for her dog, Licorice.
But Broderick will forever be Cecere’s favorite. “Oh, I love
him,” she gushed. “We used to have lunch together in the
store every Saturday afternoon, until he met Sarah.”
JUDICIOUS WIN: Congratulations to Carol Feinman,
former Community Board 2 chairperson, on her election
last month as a judge. “I was elected as judge to the Civil
Court from the 1st Municipal Court District, which covers
Greenwich Village and Downtown Manhattan,” Feinman
wrote us. “I had been an administrative law judge for New
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December 16 - 22, 2010 3
York State for the past 25 years and am looking forward to
entering into a new area. I’ve been observing other judges
already and am very excited about this change.” If she could
handle C.B. 2, she’ll be able to handle anything in court.
CABARET CONNECTION: At the World AIDS Day
event in Washington Square Park a few weeks ago, West
Village activist Sharon Woolums reconnected with a distant
relative — Liza Minelli. Woolums passed a smiling Minelli a
letter explaining that Woolums’s mother’s great-grandfather
and Judy Garland’s great-grandfather were brothers, mak-
ing Woolums and Minelli distant cousins. The W. Eighth
Streeter told the singer she had a family tree diagramming it
all, and Minelli said she’d love to see it. We asked Woolums
to give us a little “Cabaret” over the phone, and she didn’t
need much prompting. We definitely heard a family resem-
blance.
IT WAS JUST MY EXAGGERATION...: What was John
Sexton thinking? In New York magazine’s article last month
on New York University’s expansion plans (“The School
That Ate New York”), the N.Y.U. president made a com-
ment that doubtless rankled many Village readers. As the
article’s author Gabriel Sherman wrote: “Near the end of
our interview, I ask Sexton what would happen if N.Y.U.
is thwarted in its campaign to build. Sexton told me that
N.Y.U. can build on land it owns nearby when a building
restriction expires in ten years. ‘We can grow anyway! I
mean, we grew for twenty years before. If that’s denied, we
have an as-of-right building that will be five feet away. Which
we’ll do! Maybe we’ll be forced to add seven stories to the
Catholic Center.’” Yes, of course, everyone knows N.Y.U.
now plans to build on the Morton Williams supermarket site
after the university recently ingloriously scrapped plans for a
400-foot tower in Silver Towers when the complex’s legendary
architect I.M. Pei protested. But adding seven stories atop the
Continued on page 31
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4 December 16 - 22, 2010
Mixed reviews at open house of renovated theater
BY ALBERT AMATEAU
The reviews ran the gamut last Saturday
when New York University officially
opened its new version of the renowned
Provincetown Playhouse on MacDougal St.,
where Eugene O’Neill presented his earliest
works more than 90 years ago.
For theater folk, the interior of the
vastly altered venue is a little, 88-seat gem,
with space overhead for banks of lights, a
green room actors’ lounge and two dressing
rooms tucked under the sharply raked seat-
ing area — a far cry from the former, awk-
ward, elevated stage with cramped dressing
rooms below and a ceiling barely high
enough to hang lights.
“I’m a theater person. I’m not interested
in museum theaters,” said Peggy Friedman,
a performer and executive director of the
Washington Square Music Festival. “You
used to be able to smell the mold,” said
Friedman about the old Provincetown
Playhouse.
But for members of the Greenwich
Village Society for Historic Preservation
who demonstrated outside 133 MacDougal
St. on Dec. 11, the theater space is a histor-
ic treasure despoiled by a renovation that
demolished parts of the 170-year-old walls
and failed to reuse or restore promised his-
toric elements of the theater.
“N.Y.U. stop lying. Eugene O’Neill is cry-
ing,” chanted demonstrators led by Andrew
Berman, G.V.S.H.P. executive director, who
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A waiter from La Lanterna restaurant next door on MacDougal St. brought hot
coffee and cookies to protesters outside the Provincetown Playhouse last Saturday.
declared the playhouse renovation was
another example in a long list of broken
promises by the university.
The original playhouse, named for the
theater in Provincetown, Mass., where
O’Neill’s works were first performed, was
in one of a row of four adjacent houses that
were altered over the years, until in 1940,
it morphed into a single, four-story, brick
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building with apartments on the upper floors
and the 130-seat theater on the ground floor
and basement at its southern end.
N.Y. U. acquired the building and play-
house in the early 1980’s. In 2008 the
university rejected an N.Y.U. School of
Law proposal to replace the building with
an eight-story academic annex. Instead, the
university decided on a five-story building,
plus a setback penthouse, for use by the
Law School. The decision included preserv-
ing the playhouse interior and its ground-
floor facade with its characteristic round
windows. The project, known as Wilf Hall,
is not as tall as allowed by existing zoning.
However, in August 2009 during the
reconstruction, a large part of the origi-
nal walls had to be replaced and the
original 1916 stage area had to be altered.
Preservation advocates denounced the
university’s failure to warn Community
Board 2 and members of the Borough
President’s Community Task Force on
N.Y.U. Development about the necessary
alterations.
But the new theater had won the
praise of Village elected officials, includ-
ing City Council Speaker Christine
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Assemblymember Deborah Glick, state
Senator Tom Duane and Borough President
Scott Stringer.
George Forbes, president of the Off-
Broadway League, said in a prepared state-
ment that the league was pleased by the
preservation of the playhouse “at a time
when small theaters are consistently in dan-
ger of permanently closing.”
At Saturday’s open house, music festival
director Friedman said, “Now we’ve got a
theater. We’ll see if N.Y. U. makes it avail-
able to the community.”
Joe Salvatore, who teaches educational
theater at the university’s Steinhardt School
of Education, said he was glad to be back
at the playhouse this September after two
years teaching acting and directing in swing
space.
“The class that I just finished teaching
here was the strongest that I can remember,
and I think it was directly related to this
new theater,” he said.
Salvatore is directing a program that will
include “Fog,” an early O’Neill one-act play
about seafarers, to be presented in the new
theater Feb. 25 to 27 and March 3 to 6.
Another open house visitor, Leslie Kipp,
a native Villager who still lives in the neigh-
borhood and was involved in the successful
community effort a few years back to block
a teen lounge proposed for the Jefferson
Market Library, said about the new theater,
“I’m not so sure I like it. I like the old
stuff.”
Out on the sidewalk in front of the
playhouse, Berman protested that there was
not much preservation in the project. The
decorative cast-metal ends of seating rows
that date back to 1940 were not replaced
along the aisle, but are set into the walls —
“entombed,” he said.
Berman also protested that there is noth-
ing to prevent N.Y.U. from discontinuing
theater use in the future, or enlarging the
entire building at a later date to the maxi-
mum square footage allowed by zoning. In
an open letter to elected officials, Berman
asked that they seek a written commitment
from the university to maintain theater use
and not to use its maximum buildable air
rights on the site.
Shelter Cat Dolls
with Lavender

Pension Shortfall
is Wall Street’s Doing
By Michael Mulgrew
New York’s professional hand-
wringers are leading the public fight
against union pensions and benefits,
calling them major causes of the city’s
fiscal distress. Tabloid editorialists
belabor worker pension “abuse” and
conservative think tanks beat the
drums for reducing worker benefits.
The facts about the pension
system tell a different story. First,
city pension benefits are generally
modest; second, the reason the city’s
contributions to pension funds have
risen has everything to do with the
global economic crisis that cost state
and city pension funds more than
$100 billion in lost value.
Let’s start with the myth
that city workers’ pensions are
unsustainably generous. The average
pension for a member of the city’s
Teachers Retirement Fund in 2009
— and this includes the pensions
of many principals and upper-level
administrators who started out as
teachers-- was $42,235 per year.
Retirees from the city’s other large
civilian union, District Council 37,
collect average pensions of only
$18,000 a year.
Like many employers, the city
makes contributions to the pension
funds of its employees, most of whom
make required contributions from
their salaries. (In addition, many
employees also make voluntary
contributions to 401K-style
VILLAGERPDF!-
A view from the rear of the reconstructed Provincetown Playhouse, looking down supplementary plans.) The amount
over the raked seating and the stage.
the city contributes varies by year, but
in the past has been as low as 4.3%
-INIMUMTO7EST6ILLAGE
of payroll for the teachers’ system.
Annual contributions have climbed to
30% to make up for investment losses,
but as the stock market recovers in
future years, that level will diminish.
In order to help the city meet its
obligations, the United Federation of
Teachers stepped forward last year
and negotiated a change in pensions
that the city said would save it $100
million a year.
The city’s pension funds could
recoup millions of dollars more if
December 16 - 22, 2010 5
they were permitted to sue the Wall
Street firms whose trading mistakes
and criminal actions caused the
massive losses. The Legislature
should modify the Martin Act — the
law that allows the state to pursue
wrongdoing on Wall Street–to let
pension funds bring such suits.
Taxpayers, particularly those in
higher brackets, should also be part of
the solution. During America’s great
expansion from 1950 to 1980, the
wealthiest 1% of Americans collected
about 10% of total income. As of now,
the nationwide percentage is 23.5% and
in New York City, the top 1% of earners
take in nearly half–an astounding
46% — of all income. Yet a large piece
— $4 billion annually — of the huge
deficit New York State is facing is due
to the planned expiration of income tax
surcharges on the highest earners.
The attack on city employee
pensions is just the opening salvo in a
campaign to “balance” the budget by
reducing the services important to the
great majority of the people who live
and work in this city, from schools to
sanitation and health care. Working
and middle class New Yorkers who
make this city their home can’t afford
to let this attack succeed.
Michael Mulgrew is President of
the United Federation of Teachers. This
article first appeared in Crain’s New
York Business.
6 December 16 - 22, 2010

Parents group hopes to SAVE Children’s Aid programs

BY ALBERT AMATEAU
Village education advocates and parents
are looking for ways to save a desperately
needed resource that is threatened by the
Children’s Aid Society’s announcement that
it is considering the sale of its Sullivan St.
buildings.
The society’s board of trustees meets today,
Thurs., Dec. 16, to decide whether to sell
its Philip Coltoff Center, at 219 Sullivan St.,
where it has served the Village since 1892,
and its Early Childhood Annex, at 175-177
Sullivan St.
The sale would mean that the society’s
after-school and early childhood programs
in the Village would close after June 2012,
according to Richard R. Buery Jr., president
and C.E.O. of the society.
The Children’s Aid Society’s single mis-
sion since its founding has been to serve
New York City children living in poverty,
Buery said.
“While Greenwich Village shows a contin-
ued demand for quality and affordable early
childhood and after-school programs,” Buery
said, “the neighborhood has changed radically
in the 119 years since the center opened, and
it is clear that the community no longer needs
us in the way that higher poverty New York
neighborhoods do.”
In response to the imminent closing, par-
ents and education advocates have organized
Save A Village Education (SAVE) to ensure
that the Children’s Aid Society keeps the cen-
ter open until June 2012, and that it sells the
center to an organization that will preserve
educational and community programs for
children.
‘It’s never a good idea to
take education away from
any child, rich or poor.’
Keen Berger
SAVE is urgently calling on Villagers to
sign a petition on the SAVE Web site, http://
www.saveavillageeducation.com, which is to
be presented to the society’s trustees on Dec.
16.
Ann Kjellberg, a parent at Greenwich
Village’s P.S. 41 and a SAVE member, said this
week that she was asking elected officials and
the city’s School Construction Authority for
help in achieving SAVE’s goals.
Buery said on Monday that he knows about
the petition and that he realizes the concern of
neighbors. The early notice, he said, was to
give parents a better chance to come up with
a solution. Although the properties are not
officially on the market yet, the society has
already received several offers for the Village
center, including some from schools. While
he hoped that the properties would remain an
educational resource, Buery said the society
could not at this time assure the neighborhood
about who might buy the properties.
Buery would not comment on estimates
that sale of the properties could realize more
than $20 million. Villagers have also heard
that Little Red Schoolhouse and another
local school are interested in the Sullivan St.
properties.
Andrew Berman, executive director of
the Greenwich Village Society for Historic
Preservation, noted that C.A.S.’s contiguous
buildings are located within the area that
G.V.S.H.P. originally proposed for the South
Village Historic District.
After 14 months, the Landmarks
Preservation Commission last June designat-
ed one-third of the proposed district as an
extension of the Greenwich Village Historic
District, but the Children’s Aid Society build-
ings were not included.
Berman said on Tuesday that L.P.C. in
June promised it would calendar a hearing
soon on the rest of the proposed district. In
a letter to L.P.C. Chairperson Robert Tierney,
Berman said, “The loss of the Children’s Aid
Society would be tragic. If its buildings were
to be sold prior to landmark designation,
it would likely lead to their demolition and
replacement with either a condo or dormitory
high-rise.”
Berman told the East Villager, “It would be
‘We are urging the
commission to move
ahead with consideration
of this area for landmark
designation.’
Andrew Berman
fairer for the Children’s Aid Society and for the
buyer of the property to know about the land-
mark status of the property. We are urging the
commission to keep its long-overdue promise
and move ahead with consideration of this
area for landmark designation right away.”
Keen Burger, chairperson of the Community
Board 2 Social Services and Education
Committee and Democratic district co-leader,
said she was disturbed by the prospect of los-
ing the society’s Sullivan St. center.
“It’s never a good idea to take education
away from any child, rich or poor,” she said.
“Not every Village child is from a wealthy
home. We desperately need more space for all
children to learn. I hope the society and the
community can structure a solution that will
keep education uses.”

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Last call for Mars Bar? Will it take a final dive?

CLAYTON’S
PAGE
Hank Penza, owner of the classic dive
Mars Bar, at First St. and Second Ave.,
center at right, hanging out with Mars Bar
regulars, is facing a decision amid news
that the place will soon have to close for
two years while a 12-story residential
building is constructed on the site. Penza
has the option of reopening in a new space
once the project is done, but would have
to pay a higher rent. Said documentarian
Clayton Patterson, “I love Hank. He’s had
other bars on the Bowery. He tells great
stories. Hank sits out there a lot. He kind
of supervises that corner. [Filmmaker]
Jonas Mekas used to go over there and
have a white wine. It’s more of a bohe-
mian bar, not a dive bar. A lot of artists
would go there.” Two other legendary
Lower East Side nightspots on Ludlow St.,
Max Fish bar and Pink Pony restaurant,
are also facing closure at the end of next
month due to escalating rent. Patterson
said indignantly, “What are they trying to
build there? What’s the purpose? There’s
three unfinished buildings on that block,
two empty hotels. Lucien let a lot of artists
eat in there for free,” he said of the Pink
Pony’s owner.
Photo by Clayton Patterson

He promises to work hard.

Promise to do your part.
Through all the homework, projects, and hours of practice, your child gives you his best. All this hard work
will pay off when it’s time for college. Do your part to help pay for his education by opening a New York’s 529
College Savings Program Direct Plan. With as little as $25, you, family and friends can open and contribute
to an account for your child. Contributions can qualify for a generous deduction from New York State taxable
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It’s so easy—just visit ny529directplan.com, and in about ten minutes, you’ve kept your promise.

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*Up to $10,000 is deductible from New York State taxable income for married
couples filing jointly; single residents can deduct up to $5,000 annually. May be
subject to recapture in certain circumstances—rollovers to another state’s plan or
non-qualified withdrawals.
**Earnings on non-qualified withdrawals may be subject to federal income tax and
a 10% federal penalty tax, as well as state and local income taxes. Tax and other
benefits are contingent on meeting other requirements and certain withdrawals are
subject to federal, state and local taxes.
The Comptroller of the State of New York and the New York State Higher Education Services Corporation
are the Program Administrators and are responsible for implementing and administering
the Direct Plan. Upromise Investments, Inc. and Upromise Investment Advisors, LLC serve as Program
Manager and Recordkeeping and Servicing Agent, respectively, and are responsible for day-to-day
operations, including effecting transactions. The Vanguard Group, Inc. serves as the Investment Manager.
Vanguard Marketing Corporation markets, distributes and underwrites the Direct Plan.
No guarantee: None of the State of New York, its agencies, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
(FDIC), The Vanguard Group, Inc., Upromise Investments, Inc., nor any of their applicable affiliates
insures accounts or guarantees the principal deposited therein or any investment returns on any
account or investment portfolio.
Upromise is a registered service mark of Upromise, Inc.
For more information about New York’s 529 College Savings Program Direct Plan,
obtain a Program Brochure and Tuition Savings Agreement at ny529directplan.com or by
calling 1-800-608-8617. This includes investment objectives, risks, charges,
expenses, and other information. You should read and consider them carefully
before investing.
© 2010 State of New York

Before you invest, consider whether your or the designated beneficiary’s home New York’s 529 College Savings Program currently includes two separate 529 plans. The Direct Plan
is sold directly by the Program. You may also participate in the Advisor Plan, which is sold exclusively
state offers any state tax or other benefits that are only available for investments through financial advisors and has different investment options and higher fees and expenses
in such state’s qualified tuition program. as well as financial advisor compensation.
 December 16 - 22, 2010 9

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10 December 16 - 22, 2010
Pols call blocking of 9/11 bill a ‘moral outrage’
BY ALINE REYNOLDS
Members of the New York congressional delegation
are desperately trying to secure the passage of the 9/11
Health and Compensation Act before the new year, when
the makeup of Congress will change and Republicans will
gain a majority in the House. Their desperation is due to
last week’s move by Republican senators who chose to
enact a filibuster until the Bush tax cuts were extended
across the board.
Named after New York Police Detective James R.
Zadroga, the bill is designed to provide continued annual
funding to healthcare centers for sick 9/11 workers, as
well as those who lived and worked in the contaminated
area for months after the attacks. The bill passed the
House floor last September.
Last Friday, reporters and 9/11 workers huddled
around a podium across from 7 World Trade Center to
hear Congressmembers Carolyn Maloney and Jerrold
Nadler, co-sponsors of the House version of the bill, speak
in support of its passage. Maloney and other Democrats
perceive the Republicans’ opposition to the bill as a
betrayal of those who sacrificed their lives and health on
9/11.
Bill Ferraro, 62, was among those at the press confer-
ence. Prior to 9/11, he had a clean bill of health. On the
day of the attacks, the union ironworker, who helped build
the Twin Towers in the 1960’s, rushed to the site of the
attacks to help. He has since been diagnosed with silicosis
and asbestosis, respiratory diseases caused by inhaling
silica dust and asbestos fibers.
“This is my new friend,” said Ferraro, pulling an
inhaler from his pocket.
Ferraro still works, but his limited lung capacity ham-
pers him considerably. He and tens of thousands of other
Photo by Aline Reynolds
Congressmembers Jerrold Nadler and Carolyn Maloney
at last Friday’s press conference on the Zadroga bill.
individuals were exposed to airborne toxins in the days
after the attacks.
“Healthcare should not be held hostage to partisan
politics,” Maloney said. Blocking Zadroga’s passage, she
added, is a “moral outrage.”
Nadler said last Thursday’s vote was a punch in the
face to all the workers that saved lives on 9/11.
“They said to the heroes, ‘We don’t care about you, we
don’t recognize you,’ ” he said.
Happy
Holidays!
130 BLEECKER STREET
212-358-9597
The politicians said that in order for Zadroga to have
a chance of ever reaching President Obama’s desk, the
Senate must take action immediately, before the new,
Republican-dominated Congress convenes on Jan. 5.
Senators could theoretically vote on Zadroga through
Jan. 4, the last day of the current Congress, with or with-
out it being attached to the tax bill, according to Ilan
Kayatsky, a Nadler spokesperson.
“The only way we can pass this bill is to pass it in this
Congress, and the only vehicle that we know is guaranteed
to have Republican support to pass it is the tax bill,” said
Maloney. The tax-cuts bill is legislation from the Bush
administration that President Obama hopes to renew.
Another option they’re exploring is attaching the bill to
Congress’s annual budget resolution.
“We’re tired [of fighting], but we’re not defeated, and
we haven’t given up,” said John Feal, founder and presi-
dent of the FealGood Foundation, a nonprofit organiza-
tion that has amassed more than $300,000 to support
some 800 9/11 first responders and their families.
Passing Zadroga in conjunction with the tax cuts,
Feal said, would be a bittersweet victory for the 9/11
survivors.
“The Republican Party is extorting the rest of the fed-
eral government — help millionaires over heroes.”
The bill originally prevailed in the House by a bipar-
tisan vote of 268 to 160. If signed into law, it would
reopen the Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund, which
would offer economic relief to sick 9/11 workers, students
and area residents. The law would also secure continued
annual funding for medical monitoring of 9/11 workers
and their treatment at New York health clinics. The law,
which would be funded at $7.4 million, would be fully
subsidized through revenue offsets.
 December 16 - 22, 2010 11

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On Tuesday, Charles O’Connell, a retired Army sergeant, was walking on Pearl St. in
Lower Manhattan headed to the post office, when a red-tailed hawk flew into a building
and dropped to the sidewalk in front of him. He picked up the bird and carried it to
Fire Department Engine Co. 6 on Beekman St. An animal rescue unit from the Battery
Park City CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) transported the bird to an
animal hospital. The hawk is expected to make a full recovery.
12 December 16 - 22, 2010
Jack Levine, 85, an artist who always kept it real
OBITUARY
One of the most important American
representational artists of the 20th century,
longtime Villager Jack Levine died on Nov. 8
after a short illness.
Throughout his long career, Levine
remained committed to figurative art, disre-
garding trends in the art world that did not
suit his purposes. This was particularly true
in the 1950’s, when abstraction was in ascen-
dance and social content was deemed out of
fashion by leading writers and critics.
Levine developed a unique modernist
approach, an expressive mode of painting
that he used to critique injustice and dishon-
esty in American society.
Born Jan. 3, 1915, the youngest of eight
children of Lithuanian immigrant parents,
Levine grew up in Boston’s South End. From
1929, when he was 14 years old, until 1933,
he studied painting with Denman Ross in
Harvard University’s art department. He was
then employed intermittently by the Works
Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project
from 1935 to 1940. Two of his W.P.A. paint-
ings, “Card Game” (1933) and “Brain Trust”
(1935), were included in an exhibition, “New
Horizons in American Art,” at the Museum of
Modern Art in New York in 1936.
The following year, he achieved national
recognition when his painting, “The Feast of
Pure Reason” (1937), a scathing critique of
Jack Levine in a 1988 photo.
political and police corruption, entered the
collection of the Museum of Modern Art.
Another of his paintings, “String Quartet”
(1934-’37), was included in the Whitney
Museum of American Art Annual for the first
time that year. Confirming his rapid rise in the
art world, he joined Edith Halpert’s presti-
gious Downtown Gallery in 1939, at age 24.
Levine’s burgeoning career was inter-
rupted by three and a half years in the Army
during World War II. Even so, he gained
widespread public notice while serving in
the South Atlantic in 1942 when “String
Quartet” was acquired by the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, after being included in its
exhibition “Artists for Victory.” The image
was later reproduced and displayed in New
York City subway cars.
After the war, Levine married artist Ruth
Gikow and moved to New York. Gikow died
in 1982.
Earlier in the 1940’s, he had begun work-
ing on paintings with Old Testament themes,
resulting in a series of “Hebrew Kings and
Sages” that revealed his more contemplative
nature.
At the same time, he continued creating
controversy with paintings like “Welcome
Home” (1946), a satirical take on a society
banquet honoring a returning general, which
was acquired by the Brooklyn Museum. Later
shown in a State Department exhibition of
American art that traveled to Moscow, this
painting created an international controversy
with its wry look at patriotism and the military
hierarchy. Levine, along with several other
artists, was subpoenaed to appear before the
House Un-American Activities Committee,
though he ultimately did not appear since he
was traveling in Spain with his family.
Throughout the 1950’s and 1960’s, Levine
continued to create some of his finest works,
including what is often regarded as his mas-
terpiece, “Gangster Funeral” (1952-’53),
which was acquired by the Whitney Museum.
In the early 1960’s, Levine also began creat-
St. Peter’s Chelsea
Episcopal Church
346 West 20th Street
(between 8th & 9th Avenues)
212.929.2390
www.stpeterschelsea.com
Christmas at St. Peter’s
Timothy Brumfield, Director of music /organist
David Ossenfort, renowned tenor
Laurel Masse, Manhattan Transfer's founding member
The Uptown Brass
DECEMBER 24 Christmas Eve
10:00 PM Christmas music
10:30 PM Blessing of the Christmas
Crèche and Festival Choral Eucharist
DECEMBER 25 Christmas Day
10:00 AM Sung Eucharist
DECEMBER 26
Sunday after Christmas
10:00 AM Sung Eucharist
ing prints.
In 1979, a comprehensive retrospective
of his work that was organized by the Jewish
Museum traveled around the country. Levine
continued to work steadily through the 1980’s
and 1990’s. In 1999, the Brooklyn Museum
held a retrospective exhibition of his etchings
and lithographs.
Levine received many awards and hon-
ors, including a John Simon Guggenheim
Memorial Fellowship in 1945 and a Fulbright
grant to study in Italy in 1950. He became a
Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences, Boston, in 1955, and was elected to
the American Academy of Arts and Letters,
New York, in 1973.
Levine once said of himself, “I am primar-
ily concerned with the condition of man. The
satirical direction I have chosen is an indica-
tion of my disappointment in man, which is
the opposite way of saying that I have high
expectations for the human race.”
Art historian Milton Brown wrote of
Levine, “He is a history painter for our
peculiar times, ultimately concerned with the
incongruous relationships, ludicrous events
and ironies of existence that somehow define
our political, social and cultural character.”
Levine is survived by his daughter, Susanna
Fisher; his son-in-law, Leonard Fisher; two
grandchildren, Rachel and Ari Fisher; a neph-
ew, Robert Fishman; and two nieces, Myra
Fishman and Elaine Weiner. A memorial
service will be announced at a later date.
 December 16 - 22, 2010 13

Stuyvesant
Eye Care
For unto us a Child is born….

Merry Christmas
from
Roman Dworecki, MD, PC
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In the Heart of the Village, with the Village in our Hearts! 212-677-3200

ST. ANTHONY CHURCH

Christmas
S S :
CHEDULE OF ERVICES
154 Sullivan Street
New York, NY 10012
(212) 777-2755
www.stanthonynyc.org

December 24
5:00PM - Vigil Mass for Christmas

Our Lady of Pompei December 25 - Christmas

25 CARMINE & BLEECKER Sts.,Greenwich Village, NY 12 MIDNIGHT - Mass of the Nativity preceded
212-989-6805 Christmas carols begin at 11:30pm
Staffed by The Missionaries of St. Charles/Scalabrinians
REV. JOHN C. MASSARI, C.S., PASTOR,
9:00AM - Mass of
BRO. MICHAEL LA MANTIA, C.S., REV. MSGR. ROMULO MONTERO
the Nativity
SCHEDULE OF HOLIDAY MASSES
Christmas Eve, 12/24: Family Mass at 5 p.m & Midnight
11:30 p.m. Christmas Concert 11:00AM - Mass of
Christmas Day, 12/25: 9 a.m., 11 a.m. (Italian) 12:15 p.m. (English) the Nativity
1:30 p.m. (Brazilian), 3:00 (Filipino)
New Years Day, 1/1/11: 9 a.m., 12:15 & 6 p.m. (English)
11 a.m. (Italian), 3:00 (Filipino)
CONFESSIONS
30 Minutes before the weekend Masses or upon request at the rectory.
14 December 16 - 22, 2010
Pit bull panic grips Tompkins Square Park dog run
BY TERESE LOEB KREUZER
The renovated Tompkins Square Park dog
run, which opened with fanfare and great
anticipation on the part of dog owners in July
2008, has turned into a nightmare for many.
According to Garrett Rosso, currently a board
member of Friends of First Run, a volunteer
group that provides community support to
the East Village dog run, five dogs and three
people have needed medical attention because
of pit bull attacks in the last two months. Rosso
said that the bills for these attacks amounted
to thousands of dollars and that the pit bull
owners just walked away, in most cases, not to
be seen again.
Jack Morer, a musician and Lower East Side
resident, confirmed Rosso’s account.
“All of the pit bull attacks were witnessed
by people I know,” he said. His own dog, an
English setter named Savannah, was attacked
in the park by a pit bull in June 2009. “I’ve
gotten into three shouting matches in the last
year with people whose dogs went after my
dog and who would not take responsibility or
take their dogs out of the run,” he said. Now,
when Morer brings Savannah to the dog run,
he said he makes sure that she stays beside him
at all times.
Other dog owners have reportedly taken to
carrying knives into the park in case they have
to defend their dogs. Last week, Rosso hung
what’s known as a pit bull break stick on the
dog run fence — with instructions — for two
days “so that people could see what it was.
Christmas at
St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery
An Episcopal Church in the Diocese of New York
131 East 10th St. at 2nd Avenue (212) 674-6377
www.stmarksbowery.org
Advent Lessons and Carols
Sunday, Dec. 19, 11 AM
Christmas Eve
Friday, December 24, 6 PM
This East Village pit bull looked pretty friendly. But fears of the breed are high in
Tompkins Square.
“Put behind the molars, it will break
the dog’s lock,” Rosso said, referring to pit
bulls’ dreaded clampdown bite.
A Parks Department spokesperson said
of the Tompkins Square dog run, “Parks
has met with the N.Y.P.D. and community
groups about the issue. Since we received
notice of these incidents, Parks Enforcement
Christmas Day
Saturday, December 25, 11 AM
Epiphany—The Feast
of the Three Kings
Sunday, January 9, 11 AM
3 PM pageant with gifts for children
Some dog owners have
reportedly started carrying
knives into the park.
leash areas. “Tompkins is an area where
you have a lot of pit bulls. Dogs will tussle
and owners get into arguments. With any
dog, you need to be in control. Many dogs
are very strong-willed. A lot of people
get dogs and don’t train them and neuter
them. Pit bulls are great dogs but you have
to train them.”
On Sat., Dec. 18, at 11 a.m., Drayton
Michaels, who specializes in training pit
bulls, will give a talk and demonstration
at the Tompkins Square dog run on how
to handle the dogs. He will discuss dog
park etiquette, how to referee dogs in
large groups, how to defuse potentially
dangerous situations and how to break up
Patrol officers, including undercover units, dogfights. He will also discuss pit bull traits
have been patrolling the area.” and “why your dog may be too much for the
“Tompkins Square is probably the most other dogs.”
popular dog park in the city,” said Robert “Dogs sometimes get into situations they
Marino, president of NYCdog, a privately can’t handle,” said Rosso, who is himself
funded organization working with the a dog trainer. “There’s little awareness
Parks Department to represent most of the among new dog owners about this. It’s a
city’s official dog runs and designated off- hot-button issue.”
The Church of St. Luke in the Fields
(An Episcopal Church in the Diocese of New York)
487 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014
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Anarchists, Koch et al. weigh in on WikiLeaks flap
Continued from page 1
scrutiny is a “legitimate effort to expose
government gossip and secrets or an effort by
the government to create a phony entity to be
perceived as a security threat so the govern-
ment can shut down Web sites.”
The government and the military, Flash
observed, created the Internet, “and it’s a
double-edged sword,” he noted. “If they want
to shut you off, they’re going to because they
run it.”
In a prepared statement for the East
Villager, Flash also noted: “On one hand, I
feel like applauding Assange and his crew for
shining a light on the darker side of govern-
ment intrigue. But on the other hand, I can’t
help but wonder if the WikiLeaks scandal
isn’t really a scam with which the govern-
ment can further restrict the free flow of
information and Internet access in the name
of ‘national security.’”
Paul Garrin, an East Village Internet pio-
neer and media artist, said he believes that
WikiLeaks provides vital sources for jour-
nalists and a “wakeup call for governments
to be more accountable.” But he considers
the State Department “gossip” released by the
group to be minor and even a “smokescreen”
to distract people from the government’s
failure to protect its own cyber sources that
have been leaked as well — and WikiLeaks,
he claimed, “had nothing to do with it.”
Garrin recalled a C-SPAN story he saw
about “Pentagon people watching porn.” He
claims they brought in a thumb drive USB
and plugged it into classified computer and
it spread a worm in the internal computer
networks that comprise the bulk of classified
information and bypassed the firewall.
“It was more than a Library of Congress
worth of data,” he continued, contending
that, “Bottom line, the U.S. doesn’t have
any secrets anymore. They’re now out in the
open — nuclear germs, any type of informa-
tion. Government is using [the WikiLeaks
flap] to cover this up,” he charged. He said
he believes that Assange is a “scapegoat” for
the government’s own incompetence.
“They’re pointing all these fingers when
their own incompetence has undermined
every national security secret we have,”
Garrin said. “It’s out on the open market.”
Meanwhile, Assange could be indicted by
a grand jury in the U.S. on espionage statutes
dating back to World War I. Other statutes
could be invoked, suggested U.S. Attorney
General Eric Holder, who has admitted the
Justice Department is conducing a criminal
investigation.
John Penley, perennial East Village com-
munity activist, anarchist and photographer,
questioned Assange’s judgment for getting
involved with the two women in Sweden
while he could get indicted for espionage in
West Virginia.
“Assange fell for the oldest trick in the
book by [involving himself] with women
who possibly work for an intelligence ser-
vice,” Penley said without offering substan-
tiation about Assange’s accusers, whose law-
yer has denied they were politically moti-
On Dec. 9, after an English court ordered Julian Assange’s detention, a “hacktivist”
with the group Anonymous was at work in Brooklyn. An estimated 5,000
“hacktivists” launched Operation Payback against corporations that cut money flow to
Assange’s WikiLeaks. Some call it the start of a “cyber war.”
vated.
That said, Penley went on to praise
Assange and WikiLeaks for “kicking off
something that I would compare to the big-
gest revolution since the Berlin Wall fell.
They’ve got massive support and it’s being
spread over Facebook. Assange is up for
Time magazine Man of the Year and he’ll
probably get a Nobel Peace Prize. Capitalism
will sell you the rope to hang yourself with,”
the L.E.S. “Slacktivist” added, claiming that
WikiLeaks is getting donations from rich
folks and various organizations.
“Quite a few groups are supporting him
and Bradley Manning,” Penley went on, refer-
ring to the 23-year-old Army private and
former intelligence analyst who had been sta-
tioned in Iraq. Manning is now imprisoned in
a U.S. Marine Corps brig in Virginia after his
May arrest in Kuwait for allegedly passing on
to WikiLeaks a classified 2007 video. Called
“Collateral Murder,” the video shows U.S.
military helicopter gunships killing Iraqis
who were said to be civilians, among them
two Reuters news service reporters. Manning
reportedly told an informant that he also pro-
Photo by J.B. Nicholas
vided WikiLeaks with secret videos of alleged
civilian killings in Afghanistan, as well as
260,000 classified State Department cables.
Manning, who was charged with
the unauthorized use and disclosure of U.S.
classified information, could spend 52 years
in a military prison if convicted.
Penley worries that the now world-
famous Assange may be “overshadowing”
Manning, even though Manning, who is
gay, is in a “lot more trouble and could be
charged with the death penalty.”
As for Assange getting indicted by a
federal grand jury, Penley stated defiantly:
“I say indict him. Then they’ll need to indict
the other news organizations for putting out
the documents, and everyone on Facebook.
My personal take is that they’re not in viola-
tion of the law.”
Attorney and author Michael Ratner,
president of the Center for Constitutional
Rights on Broadway in Noho, made similar
points after his human rights litigation group
issued a statement expressing alarm over
the “multiple examples of legal overreach
and irregularities in the arrest of WikiLeaks
December 16 - 22, 2010 15
founder Julian Assange, especially given con-
cerns that they are meant to clear the way
for Mr. Assange to be extradited to the U.S.
via Sweden.”
Ratner said prosecuting Assange for espio-
nage posed problems for the U.S. because the
government would have do “something never
done before: indict a journalist who hasn’t sto-
len material but had it passed on to him. He’s
no different from The New York Times. How
do you think that would go after Julian and
the other media that has printed these docu-
ments? The U.S. has a problem and they know
it. We have a First Amendment. We don’t have
an Official Secrets Act,” he added with some
irony. “People ought to know that we’re killing
people in wars.”
The U.S. would have trouble if it tried
to extradite Assange, added Ratner, not-
ing extradition “doesn’t happen overnight,
especially in the U.K. Extradition could take
more than two years.”
In the interim, New York Republican
Congressmembger Peter King, incoming
chairperson of the House Homeland Security
Committee, has made it known that he will
attempt to designate WikiLeaks as a terrorist
organization.
Former three-term New York City
Mayor Ed Koch, a once-liberal Democratic
congressmember who recently had the
Queensboro 59th St. Bridge named after
him, told this reporter he regards Assange
as an enemy combatant who should be
subject to a C.I.A. assassination.
“I believe that anyone who is in posses-
sion of stolen documents, doesn’t return
them when asked and publishes them,
should be executed,” he said.
Koch, 86, considers Assange as “no
different” than American-born Anwar al-
Awlaki, “the imam in Yemen” who alleg-
edly influenced the Fort Hood shooter
and was put on a C.I.A. hit list approved
by President Obama.
As for prosecuting newspapers like The
New York Times and The Guardian for
publishing documents first obtained by
WikiLeaks, Koch said, “That question is for
the courts to decide on whether the press
has First Amendment rights here. I don’t
believe you should be able to violate the law
with impunity. The State Department says
[the WikiLeaks documents] have endan-
gered lives.”
Koch said he thought Daniel Ellsberg
should have been prosecuted for leaking the
Pentagon Papers to The New York Times in
1971, even though Koch was “strenuous-
ly” against the Vietnam War at the time.
Outgoing New School president Bob
Kerrey, a former Nebraska senator and deco-
rated Navy SEAL for his service in Vietnam,
said he was “sympathetic to the anger
toward Assange, because the initial damage
was to the U.S. through his releases.” But
Kerrey, who served eight years on the Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence and was
a member of the 9/11 Commission, said
he didn’t think America “should overreact.
If we overreact,” he said, “we damage our
security and [suggest] we can’t tolerate
openness.
16 December 16 - 22, 2010

Photos by J.B. Nicholas

-69(33;/05.:(773,
Santacon comes to town
An annual bar crawl in Santa suits, Santacon took Manhattan by storm — or at least
by the beer mug handle — on Saturday. This year’s installment saw the horde of
St. Nick’s do some ho-ho-ho’ing in Central Park before coming Downtown to spread
their holiday cheer with Colin Huggins, “The Crazy Piano Guy,” in Washington Square

2XULGHDVIRUWKDW7HFKQR7ULEDO9LEH Park, above, and among the bars on MacDougal St., below.

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 December 16 - 22, 2010 17

Vote put off on SPURA 50 percent market-rate plan

Continued from page 1

urban planner and mediator, was hired by

C.B. 3 to guide the committee toward a
proposal that would be satisfactory to the
various factions on the committee, as well as
to various city agencies.
When all was said and done, the com-
mittee finally agreed on only one thing: to
put off any vote on the guidelines until next
month and, maybe, even later.
The development area, known as SPURA
for short, consists of 10 sites that have been
vacant for nearly 43 years after the whole-
sale razing of blocks of residential buildings
by the city for a never-completed urban
renewal plan.
The empty swath of open-air parking lots
on the south side of Delancey Street at the
foot of the Williamsburg Bridge is the larg-
est site of undeveloped city-owned land in
Manhattan south of 96th St.
At the marathon Monday night meeting,
which was attended by about 100 local resi-
dents — who by 10 p.m. had dwindled down
to just a handful — committee members
listened to a lineup of community members
who emotionally spoke out on how this city-
owned wasteland should be developed.
Speakers’ opinions ranged widely, from
Grand Street News editor Yori Yanover, who
said he opposed any housing on the site Photo by Jefferson Siegel
whatsoever, and, instead, wanted to see a rec- At a housing rally at the SPURA site last November, Councilmember Margaret Chin, at left, said, “Forty-two years... . I think it’s
reational area developed there, to representa- a moral question. Affordable housing has to be part of the equation. The opportunities are endless if we can come together and
tives of Good Old Lower East Side (GOLES), work together.”
an activist group advocating for mostly low-
income housing to be built there. keep delaying this and a new administration city agencies for their consideration. February,” Reyes said. “The holidays are
Adrienne Chevrestt, a member of St. comes in, we can lose everything.” In one positive sign of consensus, the coming up and this is a decision that after
Mary’s Parish, told committee members that McWater also urged an end to the bicker- panel informally agreed on what percent- 45 years needs to be carefully hashed out.
SPURA’s proposed development was “The ing between committee factions representing ages of types of housing should be built on Let’s discuss it next month and then come
last hope for people who are poor and who various area stakeholders. the proposed development site. The new back in February.”
want to live on the Lower East Side.” formula calls for 50 percent market-rate The touchy subject of how much low-
She was followed by Brett Leitmer, chair- housing, 10 percent middle-income hous- income housing should be developed on the
person of the Sustainable Housing And ing, 10 percent moderate-income housing, site came up at several points during the
Retail Expansion (SHARE) group, which ‘I think it’s insane to delay 20 percent low-income housing and 10 meeting. Reyes said she was deeply upset by
endorsed the current draft guidelines as a percent senior citizen housing. the remarks of some committee members
“Fair and evenhanded compromise that is this any further.’ Michael Tumminia and Linda Jones, that if the site was developed primarily for
radically moderate in its approach.” committee members who represent the poor people, it would increase crime in the
Afterward, committee members got David McWater interests of Seward Park Co-op mem- nearby Grand St. and Seward Park Co-ops.
down to the lengthy process of re-examining bers — a group that, along with residents “I don’t want to hear this,” she said.
their second draft guidelines section by sec- from the other Grand Street Co-ops and “I live across the street from these co-ops
tion. While there had been some expectation Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, has gen- and I don’t want to hear that they don’t
that the committee, after six previous meet- “To factionalize ourselves over this issue erally opposed low-income housing on the want more people like me living in this
ings, would vote this evening on a finalized is to defeat our chances of building homes site — said they found the new formula to neighborhood.”
draft that could be presented to the full com- for people,” he said. “It’s just not worth be O.K. Her sentiments were echoed by commit-
munity board and to the city before the end factionalizing ourselves.” “I think once we carefully explain the tee member Herman Hewitt, a real estate
of the year, a vote failed to materialize. Shapiro, meanwhile, said that he was plan to our members, they’ll also find it broker, who said, “I’m not sure what all
Instead, exhausted committee members, pleased with the progress being made, acceptable,” Tumminia said. this fear is about. People should stop this. It
under the advice of Shapiro, decided to but wanted more time before a vote was Jones, meanwhile, said, “While the sounds racist. Public housing will not affect
delay any formal vote on the guidelines until taken. mayor would like to keep the parking lots market-rate unit sales in the area.”
next month, a move that infuriated commit- “When we vote on this we need to be there forever, we don’t.” She added that, at Dominic Pisciotta, C.B. 3 chairperson,
tee chairperson Dave McWater. The chair- confident,” he said. “I don’t feel we have night, the poorly lit area around the sprawl- who earlier in the meeting said that he
person said such continued delays could put this confidence right now. One of the big- ing parking lots is dangerous for residents wanted to see a “balanced community”
the entire development project in jeopardy gest stumbling blocks is still the income of her development. on the site, said afterward that he was not
because the city might eventually lose inter- mix for the property. We have to have a full Also giving tentative approval to the disappointed by the month-long delay and
est in the project if there was no swift com- consensus before we vote on it.” formula was committee member Damaris wasn’t fearful that the entire deal with the
munity consensus. The facilitator said he also wanted more Reyes, executive director of GOLES. Reyes city would fall apart if delays continued.
“I think it’s insane to delay this any fur- time in order to engage in one-on-one emphasized, however, that while she was “I think there was progress,” he said. “I
ther,” McWater, who has been pushing for a meetings with various neighborhood stake- not initially opposed to the new housing- wasn’t expecting to vote tonight, so I guess
completed “statement of principles” by this holders on the committee to make certain mix formula, “There’s still a long ways to we’re not far from where we ought to be.
month, asserted. “Right now, we have a deal that there will be no “surprise ambushes” go before I can vote for it.” I’m hopeful that we can potentially have a
with the city where we have no losers. If we when the proposal is finally presented to “Let’s really iron this out and vote in vote in January.”
18 December 16 - 22, 2010

Healthy discussion continues about health survey;

Continued from page 1

assessment pro bono, under the guidance of healthcare pro-

fessionals, the area’s elected officials and community organi-
zations represented on the 45-member steering committee.
The Dec. 6 panel included steering committee mem-
bers Brad Hoylman of Community Board 2; Jesse Smith
Campoamor of Community Board 4; Dr. Neal Cohen, a
former commissioner of the New York City Department
of Health now on the Hunter College faculty; and Jeffrey
Kraut, senior vice president for strategy of North Shore-L.I.J.
Health System. State Senator Tom Duane, also a steering
committee member, sat in for the start of the meeting, and
expressed strong support, but left after about half an hour,
reportedly having to head back up to Albany.
Thus far, following the committee’s first meeting in
September, two reports were produced in October —
“Defining the Service Area” and “The Origin of St. Vincent’s
Patients” — and have been posted on Community Board 2’s
Web site.
According to the steering committee, the primary service
area for the former St. Vincent’s Hospital stretches from
W. 34th St. down to Soho and Hudson Square, east of
Photo by Lincoln Anderson
Fifth Ave. and the Bowery. Based on patient exit records,
about 45 percent of hospitalized residents in the 10011 and From left, L.I.J.’s Jeffrey Kraut, C.B. 2’s Brad Hoylman, C.B. 4’s Jesse Smith Campoamor and Dr. Neal Cohen of
10014 zip codes (Chelsea and Greenwich Village) were most Hunter College at the Dec. 6 meeting on the health needs assessment.
dependent on St. Vincent’s, while 55 percent sought inpa- munities, where it was ranked #1 based upon inpatient and L.I.J.’s Kraut said they will be looking at whether the key
tient care elsewhere. However, when it came to emergency emergency treat-and-release visit utilization.” issue is “availability of a hospital or the not close proximity
department use, the numbers were flipped, with 55 percent At the Dec. 6 meeting, Hunter College’s Cohen explained of emergency care” and also, “Where did all the doctors go?”
of residents in the primary service area seeking treatment at that the assessment will also include sit-downs with focus who were serving St. Vincent’s.
St. Vincent’s. groups and a survey with a “quantitative analysis.” He Yetta Kurland of the Coalition for a New Village Hospital
In general, the “Defining the Service Area” report notes, said the survey could be finished in the next three or four
“St. Vincent’s was the most preferred hospital for these com- months. Continued on page 19

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 December 16 - 22, 2010 19

Politics injected at meeting

Continued from page 18
asked the panel asked if the assessment will
conclude that a replacement hospital should
be put at the former St. Vincent’s site at 12th
St. and Seventh Ave., which is the position
backed by the coalition.
“I don’t think there’s a secret in the
resistance to this needs assessment,” she
stated. Referring to the report’s map of
the St. Vincent’s primary service area and
secondary service areas, she said, “As I
look at the map with the different colors
of green, we’re not specifically hearing that
the plan is to return health services to the
site of St. Vincent’s. … We’re not hearing
what the goal of the study is. Do we want
a full-service hospital in 10 years, or do
we want a hospital immediately at the St.
Vincent’s site?”
Hoylman responded, “We think you
need the data to make the case for a full-
service hospital.”
Added Campoamor of the former St.
Vincent’s campus, “We have no power over
that site.”
The St. Vincent’s property is the for-
mer hospital’s largest asset with which to
pay off its $1 billion debt, which forced
it to close for good at the end of April.
The property’s fate is being overseen by
Bankruptcy Court. St. Vincent’s recently
requested permission from Bankruptcy
Court to have CB Richard Ellis market the
property.
Last week, St. Vincent’s auctioned off
the hospital’s entire contents, from waiting-
room furniture and ambulances to the
backup generator.
According to one health insider, getting
a new hospital anywhere in Downtown
Manhattan would be a years-long process,
and is a daunting prospect in the current
fiscal economy.
“We all want a hospital,” Campoamor
responded to Kurland at the Fulton Houses
meeting. “Who’s going to fund it?”
Many see politics deeply embedded at
the heart of the post-St. Vincent’s health-
care debate. Kurland ran against Council
Speaker Christine Quinn in the last Council
election and came in a close second. The
expectation is — with Quinn serving her
final four years due to term limits — that
Kurland is readying for another run for the
Council. Hoylman is also a former Council Christmas Eve, December 24
candidate and is also expected to vie for the 5:00 pm Family Service with Christmas Créche
Third District seat. 10:30 pm Music for the Christmas Vigil
“Brad, you put in for the needs
11:00 pm Festival Holy Eucharist of the Nativity
assessment,” audience member Timothy
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Christmas Day, December 25
comments at the microphone. “You want
to run for mayor in four years — what’s up 11:00 am Traditional Carol Service
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Hoylman, who up to this point has never
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20 December 16 - 22, 2010

with committing first degree-rape at Webster

Madoff son suicide Hall, on E. 11th St. between Third and Fourth

POLICE BLOTTER Mark Madoff, 46, the son of Bernard

Stuy Town suspect caught
John Martinez, 39, who was arrested
last week in New Jersey for a New York
parole violation, was charged with a series
of muggings in Stuyvesant Town over the
past two months. On Thurs., Dec. 2, he
followed a woman victim into an elevator
at 525 E. 14th St. and robbed her while
threatening her with an ice pick, according
to charges filed with Manhattan District
Attorney Cy Vance Jr. About 10 minutes
later Martinez held up another woman at
17 Stuyvesant Oval, according to court
papers. He is also charged with victim-
izing a woman, 63, nearby in a building in
the Peter Cooper Village complex on Nov.
22. Earlier last month, the same suspect
robbed three victims in The Bronx’s Co-op
City complex, according to a New York
Post item.
Death at SoHo House
Police arrested Nicholas Brooks, 24,
of 60 Second Ave., on Fri., Dec. 10, and
charged him with attempted murder and
second-degree strangulation in connection
with the death of the successful 33-year-
old swimwear designer Sylvie Cachay. The
victim was found dead in her underwear
with bruises on her neck in an overflow-
ing bathtub in SoHo House, an exclusive
club hotel at 29 Ninth Ave. at W. 13th St.
in the Meatpacking District. Brooks is the
son of Joseph Brooks, 72, a Hollywood
songwriter and director facing charges that
he forced himself on 11 women he lured
to his house in 2009 by promising them
movie roles.
Brooks, who has lived for about a year
in the East Village apartment with three
roommates, was questioned for an entire
day at Greenwich Village’s Sixth Precinct
before he was charged with attempted
murder because Cachay’s cause of death
has not been determined. His picture on
his Facebook page shows him puffing on
a pipe commonly used in smoking mari-
juana. The victim lived on W. 10th St. near
Hudson St. She went to SoHo House with
Brooks after a small fire in her loft, accord-
ing to reports. Cachay had recently told
Brooks she was ending their relationship,
according to articles in the daily press. A
grand jury was scheduled to hear Brooks’s
case on Thursday.
Madoff — who is serving a 150-year prison
sentence for swindling billions of dollars
from countless victims — hanged himself
with a dog leash on Friday night Dec. 10.
Police found his body on Saturday morning
in his apartment at 158 Mercer St. between
West Houston and Prince Sts. The victim’s
2-year-old son was sleeping in a bedroom of
the apartment and was not hurt. The victim’s
dog, a Labradoodle named Grouper, whose
leash Madoff used to hang himself, was also
unharmed in the apartment.
No note was found on his body, clad in
khaki pants, a blue pullover shirt and white
sox. But he had sent e-mails to his wife,
Stephanie — who was at Disney World in
Orlando with her 4-year-old daughter and
her mother — telling her he loved her and
asking her to “send someone to take care of
Nick,” their son.
Mark and his brother Andrew were the first
to tell officials about their father’s scheme and
insisted they told officials about the situation
as soon as they learned about it. Nevertheless,
Mark and his family have remained under fed-
eral investigation for more than two years and
they are the target of several lawsuits. Police
were seeking a subpoena for Mark Madoff’s
computer and cell phone, according to a New
York Post article.
$2 swipe and hit
Two women were patronizing a sidewalk
food vendor in the Village around 2:50 a.m.
Thurs., Dec. 12, when one of them acciden-
tally dropped two dollar bills. A stranger
picked up the money and when one of the
women demanded its return, he punched her
in the face and fled. Police stopped the suspect,
Abdul Flynn, 46, of The Bronx, at the south-
east corner of W. Fourth St. and Seventh Ave.
South and charged him with robbery.
Clear teen in slay
A Manhattan jury on Tues. Dec. 14,
cleared Victor Fong of the November 2009
stabbing death of Nelson Pena, 18, during
a melee in front of 100 Hester St. where
the Chinatown YMCA shares the building
with I.S. 131 and Pace High School. Fong
had admitted stabbing another victim who
survived, Vincent Rivera, 17, in self-defense
but insisted he was not near Pena during
the melee. A video at the scene showed that
Fong was across the street from the school
when Pena was stabbed. Fong’s lawyer,
Robert Brown, also noted that the video
showed Rivera beating Fong with a pole just
before Pena was stabbed to death.
Webster Hall rape
Police arrested Salim Muhammad, 20, at
about 2:45 a.m. Sat., Dec. 11, and charged him
Aves. The suspect was charged with dragging
a 20-year-old woman into a private bathroom
at the club at 1:45 a.m., where he slapped and
raped her, according to reports.
She offers bribe
A woman who was arrested at 11:30 a.m.
Tues., Dec. 7, for stealing a wallet from a
victim at the corner of Grand St. and Bowery
and picking the pocket of another victim a
few minutes later at Hester and Elizabeth
Sts., was also charged with offering a $1,000
bribe to the officer who arrested her a few
minutes later, according to the Manhattan
D.A.’s Office. The suspect, Ha Vasko, told
the arresting officer, “I’ll give you all the
money in my wallet, which is over $1,000,
or I can write you a check if you let me go,”
according to the charges. Vasko was being
held in lieu of $75,000 bail pending a Jan.
11 court appearance.
Phony police
Two men with fake police shields around
their necks burst into a store at 67 Eldridge
St. at Hester St. at 3:45 p.m. Mon., Dec.
6, ran behind a counter and grabbed about
$1,000 from the cash box and fled, police
said. Police soon arrested David Oquendo,
one of the suspects, but his accomplice was
not apprehended,
Better to try a wall
Police arrested Melissa Justice, 39, around
5 a.m. Thurs., Dec. 9, on W. 10th St. near
Sixth Ave. and charged her with criminal
mischief after a witness reported that she
spray-painted, “Jesus is a pussy,” on the hood
of a car parked at the curb. The suspect was
in possession of the black aerosol spray can
when she was arrested, police said.
Cold-case arrest
Michael Mele, of Wallkill, N.Y. was
charged in Orange County last week with
the Dec. 3, 2008, murder of a woman
with whom he last had been seen leaving
Marquee, the club at 289 10th Ave. Mele,
who was on probation for a sex offense at
the time, is charged with murdering Laura
Garza at his Wallkill home. Although he
was a subject of police interest because he
and Garza were on a surveillance tape at
Marquee, the case went cold because there
was no trace of the victim until her skeleton
was found in Pennsylvania this April. Mele
was arrested shortly before being released
from prison for a parole violation. Garza,
25, originally from Texas, was a dancer who
had moved to Brooklyn shortly before her
Continued on page 21

Continued from page 20
disappearance. A Daily News item quotes
investigators as saying Mele dumped Garza’s
body and also disposed of a carpet from his
home and a mat from his car in order to
destroy evidence of the killing.
Bad second date
A resident of 250 W. 16th St. told police
on Sat., Dec. 11, that two weeks earlier he
invited a man he met on the Adam on Adam
Web site to his apartment for a night. The
resident said he ignored the guest’s e-mail
request for another date but found him in his
living room two weeks later as he was com-
ing out of the shower. The uninvited guest
fled with the victim’s watch and two rings
On Sat., Dec. 11, Medical Examiner’s Office personnel removed Mark Madoff’s body
from 158 Mercer St., the New Museum Building, where he lived in Soho.
December 16 - 22, 2010 21
with a total value of $2,500. The victim, 54,
did not know the suspect’s name.
Trapped in train gap
A 41-year-old actor was crushed and pinned
between a No. 4 train and a movable platform
extender at the Union Square subway station at
10 p.m. Fri., Dec. 10. Michael Dion had fallen
in the gap between the train and the extender
and was trapped at his waist and screaming for
about a half hour before transit workers were
able to release the hydraulic system and rescue
him. Firefighters removed the victim from the
station and an Emergency Medical Services
team rushed him to Bellevue Hospital. He
underwent surgery the following day and his
condition was described as serious.
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22 December 16 - 22, 2010
EDITORIAL
Save C.A.S. programs
The Children’s Aid Society’s recent announcement that
it is considering selling its Sullivan St. buildings came as
a tremendous shock to families for whom the society and
its programs are vitally important parts of their lives. The
society’s board of directors is expected to vote today on
whether to move forward with the plan to sell.
The Children’s Aid Society has, in fact, been an inte-
gral part of Greenwich Village for more than 100 years.
Although the neighborhood’s demographics and income
levels have changed over the years, the society and its
programs are no less treasured today than they were 50 or
100 years ago.
But the society says its work is more desperately needed
in other neighborhoods where children are at greater dis-
advantage. The Village has become affluent and the soci-
ety’s buildings are prime assets, they say, the sale of which
could fetch an estimated $20 million to $30 million to help
more needy kids elsewhere.
Yes, the Village has become more upscale. But not all
the 1,500 children C.A.S. serves annually at Sullivan St.
come from well-off homes: That the Philip Coltoff Center
gives out an annual $300,000 in financial aid attests to
that.
Above all, these buildings and programs are greatly
needed here. The C.A.S. early-childhood center and nurs-
ery school comprise the largest such facility in Downtown
Manhattan. The Sullivan St. offerings also include a
vaunted after-school arts program and a performing-arts
program, as well as camps and youth athletics.
Local parents absolutely rely on the center’s program-
ming — and are especially grateful for the affordable
prices, which, in many cases, are thousands of dollars less
than comparable programs. It’s no secret that there aren’t
enough pre-K seats in the Village’s public schools, so, in
that regard, the Coltoff Center is also providing a critical
service.
Basically, all that the center’s parents are asking is
that Children’s Aid Society give them a chance to work
out a way to keep these wonderful programs running.
Thankfully, the society’s board has agreed to allow the
programs to keep going until June 2012.
Because these properties aren’t residential, and because
the Landmarks Preservation Commission, unfortunately,
still hasn’t designated the entire proposed South Village
Historic District, the risk is that an extremely large, non-
contextual, high-rise tower could be developed on the
C.A.S. property, four lots in total, north of Bleecker St.
This would be a terrible legacy for the society to leave the
community that has nurtured it for more than a century,
just as C.A.S. has, in turn, enriched our community and
our families’ lives.
In short, there’s ample opportunity for profit — but if
expectations are lowered a bit, it could be a win-win for
both C.A.S. and the community. For example, it’s no secret
that Little Red Schoolhouse is interested in the society’s
Sullivan St. buildings. Another local school is also said to
be keen.
The Village’s diversity has been eroding for years, and
if C.A.S. and its programs are lost, it will only hasten the
homogenization. To parents, C.A.S. on Sullivan St. is “like
family.” It’s a unique place, and helps make the Village the
Village. The loss of its programs would be immeasurable.
C.A.S.’s mission is to help children and communities,
which it has done superbly here on Sullivan St. for so long.
If the society decides it must leave — then at least give
the families a chance to keep alive the programs that have
made such a difference in their lives.
Also, Landmarks should designate the rest of the South
Village Historic District now — as it said it would do last
year — so that mega-development doesn’t irreparably alter
and damage our historic, low-rise community.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
N.Y.U. can grow — in cyberspace
To The Editor:
Re “N.Y.U.’s towering blunder inspires us to fight on”
(talking point, by Miriam Kaplan, Nov. 25):
Well-written and hits the important reasons that we must
all continue to oppose the N.Y.U. 2031 plans. Doesn’t New
York University realize that by 2031 most of academic stud-
ies will be Internet based? Already many universities are pre-
paring for that educational method, offering online courses
toward degrees. For a so-called “progressive” university,
N.Y.U. is way behind the times.
Sylvia Rackow
How the Working Group works
To The Editor:
Re “In Chinatown, groups battle over a proposal for a
new BID” (news article, Dec. 2):
Rob Hollander is not a “member” of the Chinatown
Working Group. He is listed as a “Friend.”
The Chinatown Partnership is a voting member.
Wellington Chen has been the co-chairperson of the
Economic Development and Revitalization Working Team,
and thus has been engaged in the efforts of the Chinatown
Working Group from early on.
The levels of endorsement are:
• Voting Member: An organization that has endorsed
the Chinatown Working Group mission state-
ment. The organization’s appointed representative
(including alternates appointed by the organization)
will cast the organization’s vote at stated meetings.
• Friend: An individual not representing an organiza-
tion, or an organization/entity/firm that works with
the Chinatown Working Group or supplies ser-
vices, such as consulting, meeting space, etc.
• Supporter: An individual not representing an organiza-
tion, or an organization/entity/firm that may sign peti-
tions, postcards, etc. advocating the mission or subse-
quent principles.
K Webster
IRA BLUTREICH
Once again, Bloomberg denies that he’s eyeing the presidency.
Squash players: Game not over
To The Editor:
The Printing House Fitness & Squash Club, located on
Hudson and Leroy Sts. in the West Village, has been sold to
Equinox, a chain of gyms run by a large nationwide corpora-
tion. Printing House was a privately owned health club that
was an enclave, an oasis and a home away from home for
many New Yorkers. I know this because I was one of them.
It is important to know what is being lost. Printing
House was once one of the best boutique health clubs in
New York City. Members often lasted there for years, if
not decades, and friendships that began in the classes or
on the gym floor often extended into the neighborhood.
This was particularly true of the squash players at the
club, of which I was one.
The squash program at the Printing House was suc-
cessful for a few reasons: It had the most courts (five) of
any public club in the city and yet was extremely afford-
able relative to the other clubs. There was no waiting
list to get in, no dress code and no strict club rules. And
the experience was addictive — being in a totally relaxed
atmosphere, having a hard game of squash with a friend
and enjoying the health benefits of a super-aerobic sport
as an alternative to the other fitness options that are
available at many other clubs.
The physical benefits aside, squash’s social aspect
was also a huge drawing card. The sport is extremely
inclusive. There were regular round-robins where play-
ers of any level could sign up for two hours of vigorous
competition on the court and then all go out for a drink
afterward at a local watering hole. Playing in a Printing
House round-robin was a complete experience.
Unfortunately, despite this vibrant community of more
than 250 players, the Printing House recently announced the
end of its squash program. Equinox does not offer squash as
part of its business model, and hence, the courts were sched-
uled to close permanently on Dec. 15 of this year.
Some people may not be surprised by what has hap-
pened. They say squash is on the decline worldwide; that
squash clubs in London and Sydney and South Africa
that were once bastions of the sport are being left to die
slow painful deaths, or are simply being converted for
other uses. I am afraid that this may actually be the sad
truth. That trend, however, does not apply to the U.S.,
where squash is growing rapidly. So what is happening to
the Printing House is not indicative of squash in New York or
Continued on page 24

A streetcar named Pearl Harbor: Getting onboard
NOTEBOOK
BY JERRY TALLMER
On the last day of boyhood — not youth, but boyhood —
their big guy, Endicott (“Chub”) Peabody of Massachusetts,
unstoppable defensive lineman of the Harvard Crimson,
had almost single-handedly taken apart the Big Green 11
captained by our big guy, center Charles Milton (“Stubby”)
Pearson of Minnesota.
Now, on the other side of the river, the Boston side, an hour
or so after the end of the game on this aching Saturday after-
noon, I was steering my overcrowded black 1940 convertible
Ford Schpitfeuer straight into the mouth of a Mass Avenue
shortcut tunnel, only to discover that it wasn’t a shortcut at all
unless you were a streetcar of “the T,” Boston’s equivalent of the
M.T.A. One such monster, bell clanging furiously, was headed
at that very moment straight toward the nose of the Schpitfeuer
Ford, not to mention toward myself and the six or seven or eight
other guys — buddies, classmates, defeated invaders — who
were distributed elsewhere in or on the vehicle.
I was at the wheel because only a half-minute earlier, Al
Goldman, the corpulent, go-getting business manager of The
Dartmouth, who’d been serving as driver because he knew the
terrain, suddenly, right there in the middle of downtown Boston
traffic, had jammed on the brakes, looked around, jumped out,
said: “I left my car somewhere around here,” and disappeared
forever into the crowd. Leaving me, the editor in chief, to, so to
speak, take back the reins.
What did I do? I backed us out slowly, very, very slowly, with
the streetcar moving voraciously forward by way of encourage-
ment, inch by inch.
Why do I call that 1940 Ford a Schpitfeuer? Well, because
all that spring of 1941, we of The Dartmouth, the oldest college
daily newspaper in America, went out every so often in a couple
of cars to the Bema, a grassy place just off the campus, to play
dogfight in the skies over Britain, in honor of those who were
truly great. …“Achtung, Schpitfeuer!”… “I say, old boy, jolly
good show!” …as we hurtled and skidded our beer-drenched,
overloaded autos this way and that way over the greensward.
Babe and Craighead, DeSherb and Farb, Mitchbitch and Proc
Page, even humorless old Joseph P., my second in command.
Newspapermen! A fraternity more binding than any tradi-
tional Greek-letter animal house.
Those Bema dogfight things were merely the letting-off of
steam, of course — release of nervous tension — because 1941
was a very bad year indeed. During the course of it, Adolf Hitler
continued to consume and destroy country after country, while
we — in our faraway, isolated, protective little Hanover, New
Hampshire, cocoon — were increasingly involved in several
mini-wars of our own: the pacifist isolationists; subclass (a) radi-
cal or (b) reactionary, along with a sprinkling of America Firsters,
versus the ever more heated and alarmed stop-Hitler interven-
tionists. The latter meaning me, in that newspaper.
When the Germans, in April of that year, went from invading
Yugoslavia to invading Greece, Charles Guy Bolté, the golden
boy of the Class of 1941 — one year ahead of my Class of 1942
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Jerry Tallmer
— brought me a manifesto he had just written in the form of
an open letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. “Dear Mr.
President,” it began, “Now we have waited long enough… .” It
called on F.D.R. to quit stalling and at long last move against
Hitler by force.
I ran it on the next morning’s front page — and the whole
campus damn near blew up. What had been a 1,000 percent pac-
ifist college paper when yours truly (then also an ardent pacifist)
ascended to the editor’s desk was now all that and more of an
interventionist college newspaper — the first such in this entire
country, I have always believed. Listening to Edward R. Murrow
broadcast the summer before from the rooftops of burning
London had turned me 180 degrees around. That, and whatever
new barbarism the Nazis were executing every day. I don’t think
I ever used the word “Jew” except between the lines.
The Japanese? Well, they had raped an entire city — China’s
Nanking — back in 1937, but we would have to get around to
that someday in the distant future, when we had the time and
the means to do it.
In the fall of the year before, 1940, on the night of the famous
“Fifth Down” football game against Cornell, coach Earl Blaik
reminded us at a big emotional bonfire that Dartmouth men
always exemplified the idea of “Rugged, see!”
O.K., I’m only a college boy, a citified college boy who can
neither skate nor ski — nor, God save us, play football. But so long
as I have this newspaper, I’ll keep writing anti-Nazi, go-to-war edi-
torials while Babe — associate editor and best friend Alex “Babe”
Fanelli of Pelham Manor, New York — supplies the poetry.
In Boston, around midafternoon Sunday, the day after that
disastrous Harvard-Dartmouth football game, I pointed the
1940 black Ford (a hand-me-down from my mother) north
toward Hanover.
Several hours later, as I drew up and parked in front of
Robinson Hall, the ancient and honorable edifice that housed the
Member of the
New York Press
PUBLISHER & EDITOR
Association John W. Sutter
Member of the ASSOCIATE EDITOR
National
Lincoln Anderson
Newspaper
Association
ARTS EDITOR
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December 16 - 22, 2010 23
editorial and business offices of The Dartmouth, a kid came run-
ning out of — pouring out of — the building, I forget his name;
it may have been Jessup. He was what was called a “heeler” —
an underclassman bucking to become a full-time staffer of that
newspaper.
“Jerry!” he was yelling. “Jerry, have you heard? The Japs have
bombed Pearl Harbor!”
And like almost every other jerk in this country at that
moment, I said: “Where’s Pearl Harbor?”
Forty-eight hours and three or four extra editions of The
Dartmouth later, Babe and I were sleeplessly downing harsh
black coffee in the Hanover Inn. Babe looked at me, took a swal-
low, and said: “I guess we’d better go, don’t you?”
And so we went, leaving the oldest college newspaper in
America to the tender mercies of Joseph P. & Co.
Some six months later a postcard reached me at an anti-
submarine airbase up the Demerera from Georgetown, British
Guiana. It was from George Hanna, Class of 1941, a star on the
Dartmouth basketball team and someone I’d never met. It had
been mailed six months earlier. “So you went and did it,” it said.
“Good for you.”
George Hanna, a distinguished New Hampshire lawyer, died
only a couple of years ago. I never got to thank him for that
postcard.
Charles Bolté left college, went to Canada, joined the King’s
Royal Rifles, got a leg blown off at El Alamein, was a Rhodes
Scholar, married a beautiful girl named Mary Elwell, founded
and ran the American Veterans Committee, had a decent career
in publishing, was a physical and vocal duplicate of Orson Welles
as Charles Foster Kane, and is now also gone.
Endicott Peabody won a Silver Star for gallant service on a
U.S. Navy submarine in the Pacific theater of war. He served
one two-year term (1963-’65) as Democratic governor of
Massachusetts (and ally of John F. Kennedy), but was too racially
and economically liberal — he refused, among other things, to
send any human being to the electric chair — to ever again get
elected to anything. He left us in 2009.
And Stubby Pearson? Big, amiable, earnest, decent, rough-
complectioned Charles Milton Pearson of Minnesota? I knew
him fairly well, as it happens, because he, too, believe it or not,
in our freshman year had been a heeler, alongside me, though in
his case for the sports pages of The Dartmouth. But instead of
writing it, he ended up playing it — football and basketball, all-
star captains of both.
Stubby was also the Class of 1942 Phi Beta Kappa valedic-
torian, though by that time I was not on the scene. (The war, in
fact, was to save me from flunking out.)
I imagine that Charles Milton Pearson would have gone on to
become a Rhodes Scholar himself, a college president, a senator,
governor, a United States president, anything. But in late March
1944, Stubby Pearson plunged his Navy dive bomber down
toward a Japanese destroyer in the waters off Palau, and died in
the attempt, taking his gunner, T.W. Watterston, with him.
Does that do it, Mr. Blaik? Rugged, see! Give us the boy and
we’ll give you the man.
This bonfire is for all those boys, in the embers of
December 7, 2010.
PUBLISHER EMERITUS ART / PRODUCTION DIRECTOR CIRCULATION SALES MNGR.
Elizabeth Butson Troy Masters Marvin Rock
SR. V.P. OF SALES AND MARKETING ART DIRECTOR
CONTRIBUTORS
Francesco Regini
Mark Hassleberger
SR. MARKETING CONSULTANT Ira Blutreich
Jason Sherwood GRAPHIC DESIGNER
Doris Diether
Jamie Paakkonen
ADVERTISING SALES
Patricia Fieldsteel
Allison Greaker PHOTOGRAPHERS
Michael Slagle Bonnie Rosenstock
Julio Tumbaco Elisabeth Robert
Jefferson Siegel Jefferson Siegel
RETAIL AD MANAGER
Colin Gregory Clayton Patterson Jerry Tallmer
24 December 16 - 22, 2010

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR PEOPS PORTRAIT PROJECT BY FLY - WWW.PEOPS.ORG

Continued from page 22
in the U.S., generally. The closure of the last
remaining genuine squash club in Downtown
Manhattan is owing to factors external to the
sport.
Not surprisingly, the New York squash
community is devastated. Several avid squash
players I know moved to the Village to be
near their beloved club. These same mem-
bers are not taking Equinox’s decision lying
down. A committee was quickly formed in
the interests of keeping squash in Downtown
Manhattan. They are currently exploring
options for a new home.
Would it not be great if New Yorkers could
develop a player-owned squash club and buck
the trend by remaining independent and rein-
carnating what they had at the Printing House?
There will be many challenges, not least of
which is finding an available space in which to
build the new club. But if anyone can make this
happen, it is this group of people — from artists
and writers to attorneys and accountants — all
of whom are passionate about this sport and
will do all they can to preserve it.
We sincerely hope that a new squash club
will be developed, one with the vision of com-
munity as its foundation.
Brett A. Erasmus
E-mail letters, not longer than 250 words
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floor, NY, NY 10013. Please include phone
number for confirmation purposes. The East
Villager reserves the right to edit letters for
space, grammar, clarity and libel. The East
Villager does not publish anonymous letters.

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EASTVILLAGERARTS&ENTERTAINMENT
Revolution Books: Conscience and Commitment
Seeing Red, Yes — But Not Angry
BY STEPHEN WOLF
Before New York City became (briefly)
the capital of these newly United States
of America, patriots convicted of treason
to a mad and distant King George III
were brutally and publicly tortured — then
executed for beliefs and actions identical to
those of George Washington, Ben Franklin
Thomas Jefferson and many others who
resisted tyranny and created the foundation
of America.
This essential revolutionary spirit is as
fragile as democracy — and easily lost.
But for years now, it has been nurtured in
a Chelsea bookstore dedicated to nothing
less than revolution (for our nation and the
world).
The revolution desired is not a social
one. There are no books in the store on how
to plan armed revolt or make a Molotov
cocktail, nor is there even a sneer of anger
at any single person, country or political
persuasion. Instead, this bookstore is com-
mitted to a making of a more just world.
Revolution Books has been a crucial part
of our city since 1979 — for a while on W.
16th, then W. 19th — and now for a year
and a half just east of 7th Avenue at 146 W.
26th. It is, as its publicity card mission state-
ment expresses, “alive with a defiant spirit
that refuses to accept that the horrors of
today’s world have to be. People come into
Revolution Books from all over the world
to find the books and the deep engagement
with each other about the possibility of a
radically different way the world could be.
This is a bookstore at the center of building
a movement for revolution.”
The storefront is beautifully designed.
There’s a large picture window, well-lit and
inviting, and the space resembles an old
railroad apartment — long and narrow yet
stylishly, tastefully renovated. The wooden
floors are polished and smooth, with thick
wooden bookshelves stocked with treasures
(more about this later). There are a few
small, simple round tables with chairs,
where we can sit and read “or discuss,”
reads the store’s publicity, “the burning
issues of our time,” all the while listening
to gentle music in the background.
Deeper in the store is a small raised plat-
form with a podium and microphone for the
constant, remarkable variety of events that
regularly occur here. There are open-mic
poetry readings, documentary film show-
ings, lectures and panel discussions — all
of them relating to the bookstore’s humani-
tarian stand on sexism, racism, injustices of
all sorts, homophobia, imperialism and the
abuses of capitalism.
Here is just a quick salmagundi of all the
treasures — and consequential matters —
to be lifted from these shelves.
There’s Jesse Larner’s “Mount Rushmore:
Revolution Books: Taking the “Christ” out of “Christmas.”
An Icon Reconsidered” — which provides
another, deeper view of this national shrine
chiseled into the Black Hills, the mountains
most sacred to the Plains Indians who
were promised them in the 1868 Treaty of
Laramie provided they surrender everything
else. The white man soon broke this treaty,
too, and in time the mountain was carved
into the likeness of four presidents: the
great Sioux chief Crazy Horse once said
that the white man made us many promises
but kept only one: he promised to take all
our lands, and he did.
There is the illuminating “A People’s
History of the United States” by scholar
and civil rights activist Howard Zinn — a
bombardier in World War II who returned
home to New York after his discharge and
placed his medals in an envelope on which
he wrote, “Never Again.” Although, as
Photo courtesy of Revolution Books
Churchill declared, “History is written by
the victors,” Zinn tells the story of this
nation from the point of view of those not
in power.
Books on New York’s crucial events and
influential ideas (my favorite section after
poetry) has its own section as well. There
are books on the great waves of immigra-
tion a century ago, the Harlem Renaissance,
the rise of hip-hop, and Jane Jacob’s impor-
tant “The Death and Life of Great American
Cities” — which denounced the destruction
of neighborhoods replaced with the ugly,
crime-infested projects that removed our
citizens — mostly African-American —
from the life and flow of the streets.
Yet however significant and consequen-
tial the store’s primary purpose is, it also
has a sense of play and humor. There’s a
table of souvenirs, gifts and amusements:
December 16 - 22, 2010 25
finger-puppets of Einstein, Pavlov’s dog,
and one of Dorothy Parker (who loved the
Hotel Chelsea — where she “could lay her
hat and a few friends”). There’s a T-shirt
like those worn to play baseball, only
this team is the “Atheists.” There’s also a
wonderful shelf of donated first editions,
both cloth and paperbacks (some signed by
the authors themselves, and all for sale).
Carefully, I held the first edition Signet
paperback of J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher
in the Rye” — the same type of copy of the
banned book I hid in my room and which
I slipped inside the larger biology book so
I could keep reading in class, where I was
busted for laughing aloud when I read how
“Edgar Marshalla laid this terrific fart.”
Revolution Books is a “key repository
of radical and revolutionary thought,” said
Andy Zee — a tall, trim, white-haired man
with a youthful face and lively, penetrating
eyes behind eyeglasses and who, along with
Travis Morales, manage this not-for-profit
store and, like all the store’s helpers, take
no money for their efforts and dedica-
tion. There is nothing pretentious, preachy
or pressured about him or the bookstore
despite how lofty is the dream: “At the
core of Revolution Books,” he said with a
passionate calm, “is a center for building
revolution in this country and emancipation
the world over.”
But Revolution Books is not a store that
looks at the world through a single window.
Everybody and everything any literature-
loving reader wants is there. The Greeks,
Shakespeare, shelves of the best poets and
anthologies, English novels, the American
masters, African-American fiction, Native
American, Jewish-American and shelf after
shelf of Latino literature, much of it in
Spanish. There are plays, children’s classics,
religious studies, textbooks for classes held in
the neighborhood, and you can buy them at
Revolution Books every day from noon to 6.
“At Revolution Books,” the store prom-
ises, “you can meet the movement that is
changing our world.”
We need to nurture this spirit of fair
play, righteous anger and peaceful dis-
sent — and Revolution Books needs us.
All bookstores, especially the best of them,
struggle to survive at a time when the num-
ber of us who love reading and owning and
giving books is diminishing. “Eighty per-
cent of American families don’t buy books,”
Zee said with genuine concern, creases
appearing between his eyes, for he fears
that too many of us have “lost the experi-
ence of reading.” So this holiday season,
give books or a gift card from this marvel-
ous store — to spread the love of books, to
help the neighborhood’s small business and
to keep alive our country’s founding spirit
of revolution.
26 December 16 - 22, 2010
Area Booksellers on Novel Choices for Holiday Reading
Local Authors, NYC-Centric Tomes Worth Your Time
COMPILED BY SCOTT STIFFLER
Whether it’s a time-killing mind-expander on that long
plane, train or automobile ride en route to see loved ones
— or an excuse to remove yourself from unwanted conversa-
tion with distant relatives you only see once a year — there’s
nothing quite like a book (the printed page kind) to make the
holidays bright. Chelsea Now recently spoke with represen-
tatives from a few local bookstores to get their recommenda-
tions for worthy gifts and compelling works written by local
authors or set in our area.
PARTNERS & CRIME MYSTERY BOOKSELLERS
This independent bookstore is devoted entirely to
mysteries. They feature a complete selection of new titles
as well as classics and out-of-print books. Some of the
genre’s most popular authors visit the store for readings
and signings — so keep checking the calendar section of
their website for updates (www.crimepays.com).
Co-Owner Kizmin Reeves notes that if there’s a mys-
tery fan on your shopping list these days, “We often buy
a lot of singed books for the holidays. If it’s the newest
book by your favorite author, a lot of people really enjoy
those.”
Recently, the store hosted an event featuring three
authors whose signed works are now available. Reeves
recalls: “We had James R. Benn (“Rag and Bone”), who
writes about a young Boston cop who does military
investigations during WW II. Henry Chang (“Red Jade”)
writes about a cop in Chinatown. Stuart Neville’s ‘The
Ghosts of Belfast’ is a sequel to one of our favorite books
(“Collusion”).”
“The Ghosts of Belfast” examines the lingering and
dangerous effects of what Reeves calls “armed redemp-
tion…In each of the books, there’s someone who’s been
so strongly affected by things that happed during the
active times of the IRA, that they take up arts to settle
some old scores.”
If you want to shop local, in every sense of the word,
S.J. Rozan’s “On the Line” will be of interest. The
author, a Village resident, has a series based on a unique
investigative partnership. Reeves: “Her Lydia Chin
mysteries are some of the top customer favorites in the
store. The books are told in alternating points of view
per book, because the partnership is a young Chinese
woman from Chinatown and a middle-aged tough guy
from the Bronx.” Part of the author’s enduring appeal,
Reeves says, comes from the fact that, well, you always
learn new facts: “Not that’s it’s educational per se, but
a lot of knowledge gets brought in — whether it’s from
S.J.’s own architecture and construction background or
the history of an immigrant family. For more info, www.
sjrozan.com.
Also immensely popular among the store’s readers
is the Gaslight Mystery series, by Victoria Thompson.
“Her protagonists are a turn-of-the-century midwife and
a police detective,” explains Reeves. The mysteries are
mainly set in Village locations and offer a lot of local
history. Reeves points out that although Thompson isn’t
afraid to delve into dark subject matter, her work isn’t
exactly blood-splattered: “The violence is a bit offstage
— but she does tackle social issues that tend to have
shadows into the future.” Curious? For more info, www.
victoriathompson.homestead.com.
Partners & Crime Mystery Booksellers (44 Greenwich
Ave. btw. Sixth & Seventh Aves. at the foot of Charles St.).
Visit www.crimepays.com or call 212-243-0440.
Red Jade
A Detective Jack Yu Investigation
Henry Chang
Image courtesy of Soho Crime
Henry Chang’s “Red Jade” — When two bodies are dis-
covered in Chinatown, Detective Jack Yu is once again
confronted with organized, international Chinese crime.
192 BOOKS
Patrick Knifley, manager of 192 Books, points to two
titles, which open windows of a different kind into the
NYC art scene. That subject matter, he says, is especially
near and dear to the hearts of 192 Book’s regulars: “Steve
Martin’s new book, ‘An Object of Beauty,’ is a fascinating
view of the art market and the contemporary art world. It
resonates with our customers because we’re right in the
middle of the Gallery District, and a lot of our customers
are interested in that whole world.”
Also of likely interest to the store’s art-centric clien-
tele is “Michael Cunningham’s new book “By Nightfall.”
Knifley says it’s the author’s best effort since winning
the Pulitzer Prize for “The Hours.” But unlike Martin’s
character study of a fast-rising newbie, Knifley points
out that Cunningham’s novel “is about people who are
already established…It’s a little more about the world.”
As for works that are far from local but still compel-
ling, Knifley strongly recommends the work of another
Pulitzer Prize-winner — Stacy Schiff. She snagged that
honor for her book on Benjamin Franklin (“Franklin in
Paris”). Her non-fiction book on Cleopatra (“Cleopatra:
A Life”) is described by Knifley as “an historical biogra-
phy that reads like a novel.”
If you don’t mind one more dose of contentious debate
during the holiday season, Knifley says “The Slap” (by
Christos Tsiolkas) is sure to inspire strong opinions. “It’s
a contemporary Australian novel which looks at this very
small incident among this group of people in suburban
Melbourne. There’s a backyard barbeque. A child is mis-
behaving and someone, who’s not the parent, slaps the
child. That one little incident tears apart the fabric of the
whole community.”
192 Books (192 Tenth Ave, btw. 21st and 22nd Sts.).
Call 212-255-4022 or visit www.192books.com.
POSMAN BOOKS
Robert Fader, the buyer for Posman Book’s Chelsea
Market store, says that despite options such as Amazon.com
and the Kindle, this particular bookstore is doing well — in
no small part because they were invited. The building they’re
in “has over one million square feet of office space above
what we think of as Chelsea Market. The tenants above
expressed a need, a desire for a bookstore.”
Apart from its captive audience clientele, Posman offers
two specialty items that appeal to a nearby tourist destina-
tion and the dearth of foodstuff stores in the Market. Fader
says, “We have a relationship with the High Line, and carry
‘Designing the High Line.’ It’s a book that Friends of the
High Line publishes — fascinating in every sense. It has
lots of architectural drawings and rendering. It’s great for
anybody interested in the whole process of reclaiming the
High Line.”
Posman Books also has, says Fader, “one of the best cook-
book selections in the city.” Anyone who’s ever drooled over
the high-quality sugar-centric creations at Chelsea Market’s
Sarabeth’s Bakery will be drawn into a hypnotic trance by
“Sarabeth’s Bakery: From My Hands to Yours.” Fader praises
the “beautifully photographed” confections, noting that
it’s also well stocked with photos of baking techniques as
opposed to just showing the end product.
Posman Books at Chelsea Market is located at 75
Ninth Ave. Call 212-627-0304 or visit www.posman-
books.com.
BOOKS OF WONDER
Peter Glassman, owner & founder of Books of Wonder,
says they settled into their current 18th Street store after
four previous locations (in, among other places, the space
Continued on page 27

Top tomes for holiday reading
Continued from page 26
now occupied by legendary Village lesbian bar Henrietta
Hudson). These days, Books of Wonders selection of chil-
dren’s literature goes very well indeed with the building’s
subtenant Cupcake Café (where the promise of a sugar
rush has, we suspect, lured and then hooked more than
one reluctant reader).
“Our job is to promote a love of reading in young people,
so they will grow up with the tools to discover anything their
hearts desire,” says Glassman — who asserts adds, “Our
second goal is to develop the imagination.” As with any
good literary trilogy, there’s a third goal that brings a satisfy-
ing sense of closure to their mission statement. That goal,
Glassman notes, is the preservation of children’s literature
and the art that goes into children’s literature (the back of
the store houses antique books, posters, prints, graphics and
original artwork from the 19th and 20th centuries.
As for current offerings, Glassman enthusiastically rec-
ommends (for ages 3-7), “Children Make Terrible Pets” by
Peter Brown. He describes it as “A hilarious book about a
little girl bear who finds a little boy and decides he’d make
a great pet.” There’s also “The Odious Ogre,” by Jules
Feiffer, illustrated by Norton Juster. “They’re the team
who created ‘The Phantom Toolbooth’ 49 years ago,”
notes Glassman, “and this is their first collaboration since
then. It’s an original fairy tale about a mean, rotten ogre
who terrifies everyone and then runs into a maiden who’s
polite and friendly. It totally drives the ogre crazy that she
isn’t afraid of him.”
“My Mommy Hung the Moon: A Love Story” is that
increasingly rare bird — a children’s book written by a
celebrity who can actually write. With words by Jamie Lee
December 16 - 22, 2010 27
Curtis and illustrations by Laura Cornell, Glassman says
this story about a little boy talking about his mother and
all the amazing things she does stands on its own merits as
literature. “Jamie Lee Curtis is a very good writer,” praises
Glassman. “She’s someone who takes her writing seriously
and approaches it as a craft.”
For ages 8-12, “Archvillian” by Barry Lyga is especially
strong. “It’s about Kyle, a sixth grader who is the smart-
est, most popular kid in school,” says Glassman. Then,
one day, “He gets exposed to some space plasma and
finds he has all kinds of special powers, including super
genius. He’s determined to keep his powers a secret, but
the same night he got his powers, a strange boy appeared
in the plasma. He’s convinced the boy is a threat. Kyle is
determined to expose him and everything he does goes
wrong. So who is the archvillian? That’s up to the reader
to decide.”
Teenagers (12, 13 and up) will like “Dash & Lily’s
Book of Dares” by New Yorkers Rachel Cohn and David
Levithan (they’re the authors of “Nick and Nora’s Infinite
Playlist”). In this tale, says Glassman, “Dash and Lily Image courtesy of Balzer + Bray, an imprint of HarperCollins
are both teenagers who hang out in the same bookstore. “My Mommy Hung the Moon: A Love Story” stands tall
Lily hopes to meet the right guy by creating a notebook in a crowded field of celeb-penned children’s books.
where she leaves clues and hints. The two of them start
going back and forth in the notebook, not knowing who
the other is.” killed in a terrible car accident. At first, she doesn’t know
Richard Peck’s “Three Quarters Dead” seems like a how to cope with this. Then she gets a text message from
solid entry in the supernatural genre. The Newbery Medal the leader of the girls, and it turns out they’re back — and
winner’s latest work has a unique plot that speaks to the they need Kerry to make it possible for them to return to
eternal quest for fitting in — and involves a girl who the world of the living.”
speaks to the dead. Glassman explains, “It’s about a young
girl, a high school sophomore, who feels friendless and Books of Wonder is located at 18 West 18th St. (btw.
invisible — until the three most popular girls in school Fifth & Sixth Aves.). Call 212-989-3270 or visit www.
choose to bring her into their circle. The three girls get booksofwonder.com.
Thirteenth Street Repertory Company
50 West 13th Street, New York, NY 10011
(212) 675-6677 www.13thStreetRep.org
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens; adapted for the stage by Sandra Nordgren Directed by Michael Hagins
The classic Christmas tale of the old miser Scrooge, the ghosts who help him transform, and the little child who touches
his heart. Set in 1843 with period costumes. Filled with Christmas music and the carols we know and love!
“There are only two versions of A Christmas Carol that are a must-see: the
production at Madison Square Garden and Sandra Nordgren’s adaptation!”
NYTheatre.com
Previews Mon & Tues Dec 13th & 14th; Opens Thurs Dec 16th; Closes Sun Jan 2nd
No Performances Christmas Day & New Years Day
Thurs, Fri, Sat @ 7pm; Sun 3:30pm • Adults $20; Children $15
LINE by Israel Horovitz Directed by Edith O’Hara
New York’s longest running play – now in its 37th year at our theatre! Five people standing on line, each believes the
line has a different destination. It is the line of life. They will do anything to be first! Join the hundreds of thousands
who have laughed at this outrageous comedy.
“A perfectly drawn Line” Walter Kerr, NY Times • Editor’s Pick … New York Magazine
Fri & Sat 9:30pm • Adults $20; Seniors & Students $15
Children’s Theatre – All tickets $10
Wiseacre Farm – for ages 3 & older. By 13th St Rep. Directed by Duncan Moore
It’s Cliffie the Pigs 4 birthday and the whole farm is throwing him a party. But! Watch out! The fox loves to steal
th
birthday cakes. Kids come on stage and help save the cake! Sat & Sun Noon All Tickets $10
Rumple Who? – musical for ages 5 & older by Will Bartlett; Directed by Aron Bederson
A fun-filled adaptation of the famous fairytale Rumplestiltskin.
Sat & Sun 1:30pm • All Tickets $10
BIRTHDAY PARTIES FOR CHLDREN: Fun! Unique! Very Affordable!
OPENING FEBRUARY 2011!
TOUCH!
THE 1970 GRAMMY NOMINATED MUSICAL IS BACK!
“Best thing I’ve seen in years!” … Paul Simon
“Does NYC have another HAIR!”
Fri & Sat 7pm • Adults $20; Seniors & Students $15
TO PURCHASE ADVANCE TICKETS FOR ALL SHOWS: www.TheaterMania.com OR call 212 352-3101
28 December 16 - 22, 2010

Kids activities for idle hands

Shows and stuff to keep them busy, make them happy
COMPILED BY SCOTT STIFFLER
SEVEN IN ONE BLOW, OR THE BRAVE LITTLE KID
It’s not exactly a state secret: Kids, ever mindful that Santa
is watching, are on their best behavior throughout December
— or at least up to bedtime on the 24th. But a lesson on the
value of being true to yourself (and sticking to the facts) never
hurts. You’ll get that, and more, at Axis Theatre Company
‘s annual presentation of “Seven in One Blow, or The Brave
Little Kid.” Adapted from the classic fairy tale by The Brothers
Grimm, this interactive winter play for kids blends technology,
music and live performance to tell the tale set just before the
holidays on a snowy winter day. That’s when a kid who killed
seven flies with a single swat lets others believe he’s a tough
guy who’s felled seven people — which leads them to assume
he’s up to the challenge of more difficult tasks. In the end,
after a surprise twist, the kid discovers that a parent’s love and
care has no limits. Running time: 50 minutes. Appropriate for
ages 4 and up. Fridays at 7pm, Sat./Sun. at 2pm. Through
Dec. 19. At Axis Theatre (One Sheridan Square, just off
Seventh Ave.). For tickets ($12 for adults, $6 for kids), call
212-352-3101 or www.AxisCompany.org.
KLEZ FOR KIDS
Every year on Dec. 25, the Museum at Eldridge Street
presents “Klez for Kids” — a high-concept family concert
where kids and families come together to sing, dance, learn
Yiddish and re-enact a Shtetl wedding. Clarinetist Greg
Wall and his band Klezmerfest lead the audience on a musi-
cal tour of Eastern European Jewish culture. The program
ends with our sweetly sentimental and incredibly adorable
audience-enacted Shtetl wedding, where children take on the
roles of bride, groom and wedding guests. “Klez for Kids”
is part of the “Lost & Found” music series, which highlights
musical legacies that are at risk of disappearing. Sun., Dec.
26, 12:30 2:00pm, at the Eldridge Street Synagogue (12
Eldridge St. btw. Canal and Division Sts.). For tickets (12 for
adults, $8 for children, students, seniors), call 212-219-0888
or visit www.eldridgestreet.org.
THE NUTCRACKER
This hour-long version of the classic holiday event is
made especially for the attention span of kids ages 2 through
12. Keith Michael’s “The Nutcracker” is presented by New
York Theatre Ballet and promises to make its young audience
feel like they’re part of the show — from the moment Uncle
Drosselmeyer steps on stage and greets them to the grand
finale (complete with professional baton twirler Diana Reed,
who keeps everyone on the edge of their seats). This pro-
duction is the first ballet in NYTB’s “Once Upon A Ballet”
series — which continues in 2011 with “Cinderella” (Feb. 12
& 13), “Exquisite Little Ballets” featuring dances by Agnes
de Mille, Lotte Goslar and Antony Tudor (April 9 &10),
and “Sleeping Beauty” (May 14 & 15). A subscription to all
four performances is $112 per child, and $140 per adult. A
subscription to any three ballets is $87 per child, $108 per
adult. “The Nutcracker” will be performed through Dec.
19, at Florence Gould Hall (55 E. 59th St. btw. Madison &
Park Aves.). Sat., Dec. 18 and Sun., Dec. 19 at 11am, 1pm
and 3:30pm. Tickets are $35 for children and $40 for adults
COAL OVEN FOR YOUR PIZZA, NOT YOUR STOCKING!
HAVE A MERRY CHRISTMAS!
(includes a $1 per ticket facility fee) and can be purchased
at www.nytb.org, through Ticketmaster (800-982-2787) or
at the box office (55 East 59th St., 212-355-6160).
MANHATTAN CHILDREN’S THEATRE
Imagination reigns supreme in the productions of this
theater company’s ninth season — which is dedicated to clas-
sic stories and characters (with a twist!). Through Jan. 2, it’s
the world premiere of Chris Alonzo’s “Lula Belle in Search
of Santa.” Then, in 2011, the season continues with “Little
Red Riding Hood,” “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” and
“The Complete Works of the Brothers Grimm (Abridged).”
Performances are every Sat. and Sun., 12pm and 2pm. At
Manhattan Children’s Theatre (52 White St., btw. Broadway
& Church Sts. — 2 blocks south of Canal St.). For tickets
($20 general, $50 front row), call 212-352-3101 or visit
www.theatermania.com. For school, group and birthday
party rate info, call 212-226-4085. Visit www.mctny.org.
THE NEW YORK CITY POLICE MUSEUM
The “Junior Officers Discovery Zone” is an exhibit
designed for ages 3-10. It’s divided into four areas: the Police
Academy; the Park and Precinct; the Emergency Services
Unit; and a Multi-Purpose Area for programming. Each area
has interactive and imaginary play experiences for children
to understand the role of Police Officers in our community
— by, among other things, driving and taking care of a Police
car. For older children, there’s a crime scene observation
activity that will challenge them to remember relevant parts
of city street scenes; a physical challenge similar to those at
the Police Academy; and a model Emergency Services Unit
vehicle where children can climb in, use the steering wheel
and lights, hear radio calls with Police codes and see some
of the actual equipment carried by The Emergency Services
Unit. At 100 Old Slip. For info, call 212-480-3100 or visit
www.nycpm.org. Hours: Mon. though Sat., 10am to 5pm
and Sun., 12pm to 5 pm. Admission: $8 ($5 for students,
seniors and children. Free for children under 2.

CHILDREN’S MUSEUM OF THE ART

Explore painting, collage and sculpture through self-guid-
ed arts projects. Open art stations are ongoing throughout
2

the afternoon — giving children the opportunity to experi-

WE DELIVER
ment with materials such as paint, clay, fabric, paper and
COMPLETE DINNERS found objects. From Dec. 27-30, 10am-4pm, “Claymation
CALL:677-3820/475-9828
106 West Houston Street 677-3820 475-9828 Continued on page 29

155 1st Avenue at East 10th Street

Reservations/Info 212-254-1109 Online at www.theaterforthenewcity.net

BREAD & PUPPET DOLLFACE A CHRISTMAS

THEATER Book by B.J. SEBRING
Wednesday - Sunday Lyrics by DAVID FORMAN CAROL
December 15 - 19 Music by DAVID FORMAN
Adapted &
THE RETURN OF Directed by
ULYSSES TO HIS & ROB HYMAN
HOMELAND
ZEN MANSLEY
Directed by DAVID FORMAN
Wed-Sun @8pm Tickets $12
Thurs - Sun
& B.J. SEBRING December 16 - 24
THE
DECAPITALIZATION Thursday - Sunday Thu-Sat 8p,
CIRCUS Dec 23 - Jan 16 Sun 3p
Perfs Sat - Sun @3pm Thu-Sat at 8pm
All Seats $12 All Seats $10
Children under 12 $6
Sun 3pm $18/tdf Children under 12 $5

Just Do Art!
COMPILED BY SCOTT STIFFLER
OH SKY WHITE TIGER NIGHT
Former Polyphonic Spree member Louis Schwadron trans-
forms 92YTribeca into a psych-rock winter wonderland for the
first annual “Oh Sky White Tiger Night.” The dreamy, experi-
mental endeavor taps into Bushwick’s DIY circuit through video
artists, mumblecore films from Bushwick Film Festival director,
Kweighbaye Kotee, holiday-themed installation artworks, an
indie fashion show and performances from Behavior and Fancy
Colors. Sat., Dec. 18, at 92YTribeca (200 Hudson St.). Advance
tickets are available for $10 with a cover charge of $12 the night
of the show. For reservations, call 212-601-1000.
X-TANEOUS COMBUSTION
Help celebrate ten years of inflammatory (and inflam-
mable?) theatre from the folks who make an annual habit of
pounding out plays within a 48-hour period. The “X-taneous
Combustion” event (courtesy of Manhattan Theatre Source)
features a favorite choice from each of the last ten years worth
of “Spontaneous Combustion” events. FYI, for a little bit of
backstory intrigue: “Spontaneous Combustion” was one of
NYC’s first speed-play slams, devised as a way of getting the
talented volunteers who run the space onto the stage, rather
than simply cleaning it. Writers are sent off into the night with
just a first line and topical reference for inspiration, passing
the baton to the actors the next day (giving them 24-hours to
get the 4-8 minute pieces on their feet). At 7pm, Sun., Dec. 19
through Tues., Dec. 21 (special night of Burlesque to celebrate
after the Dec. 19 show). For tickets ($18), call 866-811-4111
or visit Tickets are available through www. theatermania.com.
At Manhattan Theatre Source (177 MacDougal St. btw. West
8th and Waverly, north of Washington Square Park, round the
corner from West 8th Street subway).
A SWINGING BIRDLAND CHRISTMAS
Our one complaint about the raucous Monday night
Birdland jazz club destination event that is “Jim Caruso’s
Cast Party” — a little too much cast, and not enough
Caruso. As emcee of the cabaret-themed open mic hap-
pening, Caruso shamelessly plugs the work of others while
mugging between acts — but this event at least features a
A rabbit negotiates the Berlin Wall’s death zone. “Rabbit à la Berlin”
Photo by Benny Kalb
Lead vocalist Louis Schwadron. See “Oh Sky White
Tiger Night.”
mere three others on the bill. And as “others” go, Caruso’s
trio of pals are no slouches (Hilary Kole, Billy Stritch and
Aaron Weinstein). In the tradition of beloved seasonal
specials, these four jazzy showstoppers will perform swing-
ing arrangements of “Christmas Waltz,” “I’ll Be Home For
Christmas,” Kay Thompson’s “The Holiday Season” and
“Sleigh Ride” (among other favorites). With Paul Gill on
bass and Tony Tedesco on drums. If you’ve not had your
stocking’s fill of Caruso, would it kill you to visit www.
jim-caruso.com? By the way, the CD “Jim Caruso: Live and
In Person” features Billy Stritch on piano and makes a nice
alternative to that plate of cookies you think Santa is so
fond of. As for “A Swinging Birdland Christmas,” it’s Dec.
20 through 25, 6pm at Birdland (315 W. 44th St.). Cover:
$30, with $10 food/drink minimum. Call 212-581-3080 or
visit www.BirdlandJazz.com.
Photo courtesy of Icarus Films
December 16 - 22, 2010 29
RABBIT À LA BERLIN AND LOSS
If there’s such a thing as a ‘humorous metaphor for the
East German Experience,” it’s to be found at Film Forum.
That’s where “Rabbit à la Berlin” is currently screening (one
of two films on a bill exploring the post-war German experi-
ence).
“Rabbit” is a 50-minute documentary short which recalls
a very different take on the unexpected consequences of The
Berlin Wall. Built in 1961, the “wall” was actually two walls
with a “death zone” in between. A handful of rabbits were
trapped in this geographical, and political, wilderness. For
the next three decades, they multiplied like, well, rabbits.
Told in the style of a nature documentary, the film shows
us life from a rabbit’s point of view — which becomes an
amusing but potent metaphor for the lives of postwar East
Germans.
The companion film — “Loss” — is a much more sober
examination of German angst. It uses Sigmund Freud’s
definition of mourning (which says loss of fatherland and
freedom is just as traumatic as the loss of a loved one) to
explore how 20th century German history (and the loss of
Germany’s Jewish population) has influenced its citizens’
speech and thought patterns.
Through Dec. 21, at Film Forum (209 W. Houston St.,
west of Sixth Ave.). For screening times, call the box office
at 212-727-8110 or visit www.filmforum.org.
HOLIDAY SEASON AT THE WORLD FINANCIAL
CENTER
You’ll never be bored this December — if it’s holiday
activities you’re in the market, and mood, for. The World
Financial Center has all the Yuletide bases covered with a
variety of events. Dec. 15, 17 & 22 from 12:30pm to 1:30pm
— and Dec. 18 & 19 from 12-2pm — The Big Apple Chorus
performs a cappella versions of holiday tunes. On Thurs.,
Dec. 16 at 12:30pm, the Niall O’Leary Irish Dance Troupe
performs “Celtic Christmas.” Holly and mistletoe get the this-
tle-and-shamrock interpretation, when O’Leary and his danc-
ers blend Irish and American influences to create a unique
take on holiday songs and tunes. Tues. Dec. 21 at 7pm, the
postclassical string quartet “Ethel” is joined by vocal legend
Ron Kunene and his South African choral group (“Themba”).
Celebrate Kwanzaa with a performance illustrating The Seven
Principles — presented by Forces of Nature Dance Theatre. It
takes place Wed., Dec. 29, at 12:30pm. All events are free and
can be found at the World Financial Center Winter Garden
(200 Vesey St.). For info, call 212-417-7000 or visit www.
worldfinancialcenter.com.
Kids activities
Continued from page 28
with Joe Vena” gives students the opportunity to create
their own short films, using stop-motion animation. Regular
museum hours: Wed-Sun, 12-5pm; Thurs, 12-6pm (Pay as
You Wish, from 4-6pm). Admission: $10. At the Children’s
Museum of the Arts (182 Lafayette St. btw. Broome &
Grand). Call 212- 274-0986 or visit www.cmany.org.
POETS HOUSE
The Poets House “Tiny Poets Time” program offers
children ages 1-3 and their parents a chance to enter the
world of rhyme — through readings, group activities and
interactive performances. Thursdays at 10am (at 10 River
Terrace, at Murray St.). Call 212-431-7920 or visit www.
poetshouse.org.
30 December 16 - 22, 2010

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 December 16 - 22, 2010 31

SCOOPY’S
NOTEBOOK
Continued from page 3

former Catholic Center, a.k.a. N.Y.U.’s new

Center for Academic and Spiritual Life? In
a May 2007 interview with The Villager, as
N.Y.U. was negotiating to buy the site from
the Catholic Archdiocese, Sexton stated of
the park-fronting property, “I’ve committed
that if N.Y.U. were to take it over, we would
not build to the maximum F.A.R. on that
site. My objective would be to build some-
thing that maintained the blue sky above the
arch as one came down Fifth Ave.” (F.A.R.,
or floor area ratio, governs how large a
building can be.) In an August 2007 article
in The Villager, Sexton reiterated that the
university would keep any building it devel-
oped at the Washington Square South and
Thompson St. site significantly lower than
what’s allowed under zoning. “The overrid-
ing factor,” Sexton said then, “is the blue
sky behind the arch.” To quote the article:
“While zoning would allow up to a 12-to-14-
story building to be constructed on the site,
Sexton said N.Y.U. would not ‘max out’ the
project, but instead would build only about
half as tall as permitted under zoning. He
didn’t want to put an exact figure on it...but
he said the N.Y.U. project would be ‘consid-
erably smaller’ than what a private developer
would build on the site.” Asked to reconcile
those statements with Sexton’s comment
in New York magazine, John Beckman,
N.Y.U.’s spokesperson, said, “At the end
of a 45-minute interview that covered a lot
of terrain, John Sexton was exaggerating to
make a point: that even when we construct
a building that leaves F.A.R. on the table —
and how many people in New York do that?
— the dominating voices are critical ones.
Even when we respond to community wishes
by producing a thoughtful strategy for how
to grow over the next two-plus decades, the
dominating response is ‘no growth.’ The
Morton Williams site isn’t five feet from
the tower we proposed. We’re not going
to add floors to the Center for Academic
and Spiritual Life; John specifically was the
person who insisted that it be built lower
and smaller than it could have been under
zoning. I would hope that everyone would
recognize the tone of exaggerating for effect.
Everyone should take it easy.” In fact, in a
June 2009 Villager article, Andrew Berman,
director of the Greenwich Village Society
for Historic Preservation, called on N.Y.U.
to make a binding commitment to never use
the unused F.A.R. from the Spiritual Center
in the future, so “that they won’t come back
in a few years to add stories” on top of the
Producer and DJ Mark Ronson, left, and Duran Duran’s Simon Le Bon, center, hosted East Village Radio on Friday evening.
was so busy bashing what she disparagingly
calls “gray-haired activists and hipster gar-
deners, sons and daughters of privilege” and
“aging Yuppies,” that she forgot a simple fact.
Referring to the four buildings N.Y.U. envisions
adding to the superblocks, Peyser writes: “The
university wants, over the next two decades,
to develop a moneymaking and tax-generating
series of buildings.” F.Y.I., Andrea: Nonprofit
universities, like N.Y.U., for the most part,
do not pay property taxes on their buildings.
The exception is if there is some commercial,
for-profit use in a university building, such as
a Morton Williams supermarket, for example,
which, in N.Y.U.’s case, would be a relatively
small part of the project and thus a proportion-
ally smaller tax. Got it?
HUNGRY LIKE THE NEW WAVE WOLF:
A crowd was gathered on the sidewalk
outside East Village Radio on First Ave.
last Friday night, pressed up against the
window. No, it wasn’t the latest indie
recording artist inside, but none other than
Duran Duran. Well, technically, it was
about one-fifth of Duran Duran, singer
Simon Le Bon, and he was accompanied
by Mark Ronson, who produced the band’s
new single, and who also produced Amy
Winehouse, among others. Curious pass-
ersby would ask, “Who’s in there?” The
response, “Duran Duran,” drew comments
like, “How random”; “Oh right, they’re
hungry like the wolf”; “He’s holding up
pretty well — he must be in his 50’s”; and
“Not bad — I mean it’s somebody.”
bumped into performance artist Ben Israel on
Sullivan St. a while back after Tuli Kupferberg’s
passing, and he recalled a humorous anecdote:
how when he and Tuli had showed up with
their sons on their first day at P.S. 3, they
were the only two dads wearing suit jackets,
“because we didn’t want to look like freaks!”
Ben Israel also noted he inspired the title
of Jonathan Larson’s famed musical “Rent.”
Larson was a waiter at the former Moondance
Diner, where Ben Israel would often eat, while
arguing with Larson about various topics. The
playwright was having difficulty with the title,
and Ben Israel mentioned some truism about
rent issues that he had said on a radio show —
and so, “Rent” got its name.
THE SHOW WILL GO ON: A “Tompkins
Square Everywhere / Save CHARAS
Projection” / Christmas Party on Sat., Dec. 18,
will start at 10 p.m. at the old P.S. 64, on E.
Ninth St. near Avenue B. Classic L.E.S. images
Photo by Scoopy
will be projected onto the abandoned school
building, once home of CHARAS/El Bohio
cultural and community center. The action
will then continue at Kate’s Joint, at Fourth
St. and Avenue B, where DJ Faith the Rogue
will spin for Makh’s birthday. Organizer John
Penley assures that this time the projection
will happen, unlike on Halloween, when they
were unable to pull it off due to circumstances
outside their control.
BACK ON THE AVE.: L.E.S. Jewels,
a.k.a. Joel Pakela, recently got out of Rikers,
after serving time for assault, and is back
on Avenue A. He’s actually improving his
image, in that, he’s at least beating up more
universally loathed victims this time around:
Jewels recently knocked out a fellow hellrais-
er named Choice — and everyone approved
since Choice is an even-bigger annoyance
than Jewels. Rumor has it a cop slipped the
victorious Jewels $10 for the feat.
Photo by Scoopy

building. Plus, it would also prevent any
future, ahem, “exaggerations” by Sexton.
FACTUALLY CHALLENGED POSTIE:
While we’re talking about N.Y.U., New York
Post columnist Andrea Peyser, in her Dec.
9 screed against the opponents of N.Y.U.’s
takeover bid for the South Village superblocks
“strips,” made a major goof. It seems Peyser
THE WORLD’S A STAGE: Soho’s Steven
Ben Israel makes a couple of appearances in
the new Wavy Gravy biopic playing at the IFC
Center at Sixth Ave. and W. Fourth St. (Not-
so-surprising factoid: Wavy Gravy — who got
his start in the MacDougal St. coffeehouses
as poet Hugh Romney — gets a free lifetime
supply of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream since he, at
one point, had a flavor named after him.) We
Espying this bright blue rooftop on the Chase bank building at W. Fourth St. and Sixth
Ave. we assumed it was a no-no in the Greenwich Village Historic District. Veteran
Community Board 2 member Doris Diether, who lives nearby, felt likewise, and
reported it to C.B. 2 District Manager Bob Gormley. But in fact, a blue-beacon roof
is perfectly O.K. in a landmarked district. Lisi de Bourbon, Landmarks Preservation
Commission spokesperson, explained, “We don’t have jurisdiction over the wattage,
hue or brightness of lights. We only have a say over where the light fixtures are placed
on a building. We’re about making sure the fixtures don’t crack or damage the facade.”
She said L.P.C. has not gotten any complaints about the roof.
32 December 16 - 22, 2010

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