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Editorial
A decade of service to Lower Manhattan
Carl Weisbrod was sitting in his Downtown Alliance office nearly four years ago without a landline or computer server. Rescue workers were still hoping to find survivors at the World Trade Center site while acrid smoke and chemicals hung heavy in the air. The west side of Downtown was closed off to the public. Like virtually everyone else in Lower Manhattan and many around the world, Weisbrod was shaken, but unlike most others, he had a clear vision of what Downtown needed to recover economically.
Letters to the editor
Under Cover
Downtown Express photo by Milo Hess
Relaxing pier
A chair resting last Saturday on Tribeca’s Pier 25 in the Hudson River Park.
Talking point
Changes for the worse at the Freedom Tower
By David Stanke
Every major landmark architectural project should carry a shadow name, the name that captures its essence more directly than the marketing name created by its advocates. The Freedom Tower for the W.T.C. is such a landmark. The name Freedom was a stretch from the day Pataki put the label on Daniel Libeskind’s unworkable design. Now, after numerous dramatic revisions, the name and 1,776-foot height are the only original aspects of the tower still in place. The shadow name for this building calls out from behind its armored base — welcome to the Feardom Tower. And in honor of the person most influential in instigating the current redesign, the Bloomberg Feardom Tower bestows proper credit.
The Penny Post
Love is blind
By Andrei Codrescu
The F.D.A. warns that Viagra may cause blindness, thereby confirming what everyone knows. The mystery of what attracts one person to another will be forever obscure. Not only is love blind, people like to be blind while they are in love. That’s why they close their eyes when they think of their love and often during lovemaking.
Briefs
C.B. 1Meetings
Stars of HBO and Tribeca
Special bell rung for London
Viewing terrorism’s aftermath
In Pictures
Photo by Carter Booth
Crashing the crash scene
The Houston St. area apparently isn’t even safe for the memorials to cyclists killed there. A cab crashed Saturday into a memorial bike placed on the sidewalk to honor Andrew Ross Morgan, 25, who was killed by a truck at the same spot last month while biking to work. The cab collided with another taxi at Houston and Elizabeth Sts. and then the cabs hit a parked car, knocked over a motorcycle and plowed through a no parking sign with the locked memorial bike placed by a group called Visual Resistance. One taxi passenger reportedly suffered minor injuries and two bar customers outside Tom & Jerry’s on Elizabeth St. were nearly hit. One factor that may have contributed to both accidents is that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is working on a subway ventilation project on Houston St. between the Bowery and Elizabeth St., which has taken a traffic lane away on either side of the major cross-town artery and caused decreased visibility in the intersection for turning traffic. Cyclist Brandie Bailey, 21, was killed on Houston St. in May.
INSIDE
Young volunteers on The Street
By Aili McConnon
Josh Tarasoff, worked 80-hour weeks at Goldman Sachs in the Financial District and escaped periodically to volunteer at Greenwich House and the Memorial Sloane- Kettering Cancer Center. He soon discovered two things: there were many terrific small to mid-size non-profits he never realized existed, and many of his 20-something peers on Wall St. would also volunteer if it were easier to find an organization they cared about.
Justice O’Connor, gays and a Tribeca law school
By ARTHUR S. LEONARD
In 1981, when President Ronald Reagan nominated Sandra Day O’Connor, an Arizona state appellate judge, to the Supreme Court, few would have predicted that the first woman to serve on the nation’s highest court, one known for a conservative record both as a jurist and a state lawmaker, would form the centrist linchpin and cast affirmative votes in the two most important gay rights cases to be decided by the court during her tenure —Romer v. Evans, in 1996, and Lawrence v. Texas, in 2003.
Pols and tenants burning over diesel decision
By Claire F. Hamilton
With London’s recent terrorist attacks still fresh in their minds, Lower Manhattan community leaders met in Tribeca Sunday morning to demand the Department of Buildings rescind a conditional variance at 60 Hudson St. The variance would ease restrictions on the amount of diesel fuel on single floors inside a telecommunications hub housing more than 80,000 gallons of it. Fuel-powered, emergency generators are located on six of the building’s twenty-four floors, though most of the fuel is underground.
3 Tribeca residents join Community Board 1
By Ronda Kaysen
Community Board 1 ushered in three new members recently, all of whom hail from Tribeca.
Borough president C. Virginia Fields appointed the new members, Peter Braus, Jennifer Fritz and Giselle Hantz, in the weeks before the board elected Julie Menin as its new chairperson in June. The three appointments filled the remaining vacancies on the 50-member board.
A guide to the ‘offbeat’ blocks of Lower Manhattan
By Ellen Keohane
Most New Yorkers walk the streets of Manhattan with a brisk stride, expertly dodging other pedestrians and cars with one thing on their minds: their destination.
Group recommends herbs for 9/11 health problems
By Lauren Dzura
Post-traumatic stress disorder and the infamous W.T.C. cough are among the many health problems believed to be associated with 9/11. Since February 2003, Serving Those Who Serve, a non-profit organization, has offered free herbal supplements for workers and volunteers who were involved in the rescue and clean up of the Sept. 11 attacks, as opposed to traditional Western medication. The program is now expanding to offer the over the counter pills to residents for $30 a month.
Newspaper publisher becomes the story before debate
By Ronda Kaysen
Much thought isn’t usually given to moderators. By definition, they are thought to be moderate, but Yori Yanover, who was tapped to facilitate Tuesday night’s City Council District 2 debate, has some strong opinions about the feminist, gay rights and psychoanalytic movements and isn’t afraid to blog them.
ARTS
Bohemia in downtown
By JERRY TALLMER
Edward Albee sits on a park bench in Greenwich Village and says: “I’d read about the Village, how Bohemian it was, and after getting thrown out of college, couldn’t wait to get here.”
New literary journal to launch
By AILEEN TORRES
Rick Rofihe has earned the distinction of being a successful writer. This Soho resident has had nine stories published by “The New Yorker,” which bought his first story, “Boys Who Do the Bop,” after Rofihe had spent about a decade—1978 to 1988—writing and trying to sell the piece. Despite never having taken a single writing class in his life and having grown up in a small town without a bookstore or library at the time—he devoured Walt Disney comic books and magazines as a kid—Rofihe has taught hundreds of courses on the craft of fiction at Columbia University, where he was a professor in the MFA program, the 92nd St. Y and the Gotham Writers’ Workshop.
Saloonkeeper turned social phenom
By JERRY TALLMER
Kristi Jacobson has a surefire method of telling if somebody knows who her grandfather was.
“If they say Toots like a tugboat toot-tooting, they don’t know. If they say Toots like Tootsie, they know.”
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