THE WEEKLY NEWSPAPER OF LOWER MANHATTAN

THE WEEKLY NEWSPAPER OF LOWER MANHATTAN — Volume 18 • Issue 39 | February 10 - 16, 2006

Editorial
Don’t use school children as pawns
It’s hard to imagine how anyone could eclipse Gov. George Pataki’s policy of contempt for New York City school children, but Mayor Mike Bloomberg may have done the near impossible two weeks ago when he removed the money to build two essential Downtown school projects – a new K-8 on Beekman St. and a school annex for overcrowded P.S. 234 in Tribeca.

Letters to the editor

Under Cover

Talking point
It shouldn’t take a revelation to celebrate greatness
By Wickham Boyle
Epiphanny Prince, yes with two N’s, is one hell of a name. A girl saddled with such a portentous handle could have just curled up to hide. But Epiphanny Prince has hit the world upside the head and we all took notice.

The Penny Post
Putting Chaos in order
By Andrei Codrescu
One of my students wrote a poem about Eros and Psyche, about how sneaky Eros comes in in the middle of the night piping thrilly nothings into a girl’s ears causing her goosebumps, but then always-alert Psyche catches Eros at his tricks and chases him away. Nothing unusual so far. A good girl must guard herself against temptation and keep the world going through proper behavior and belief in civilization. The Greeks thought up Psyche and Eros and made them into gods.

Police Blotter

In Briefs
Holocaust memorial director to run W.T.C. museum

Park memorial for Black Hand officer to get a hand

Lower East Side community center and YMCA set to open

Raising school money in style

Field permits

Heavy metal encore

In Pictures

Dogs and people celebrate 4704
Lunar New Year festivities went out with a burst of colors and dancing.

Youth/ Sports
Drawing talisman comfort from the stuffed to the living
By Wickham Boyle
The other day I saw a lovely little girl being pushed in her stroller; the child was clutching a giant red panda, her arms were entwined around its stuffed head. In the next minute.

Youth Activities

Downtown Express photo by Talisman Brolin Ring out with a bang Lion dancers closed out Chinatown’s Lunar New Year celebrations Sunday with the annual parade. <more> Building owners will be fined for unremoved graffiti By Chad Smith With a resurgence of graffiti overrunning walls, windows and almost every nook and cranny in New York City, someone’s going to pay.		News Mayor cuts funds for new schools By Ronda Kaysen The mayor’s budget proposal slashed funding for two Downtown elementary schools slated for construction this year, despite longstanding promises from the city to build the schools. Officials discover the Pearl in the playground By Josh Rogers The city and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation have decided to preserve one of the only play areas on Downtown’s East Side by canceling their plans to close the Pearl St. playground to build an apartment tower.

INSIDE

North Tribeca building changes advance a step By Ronda Kaysen The City Planning Commission certified a North Tribeca developer’s application to redevelop a swath of the waterfront — setting the stage for a fierce battle with local residents about the historic district’s future. Fence is a thorny issue in new dog run By Chad Smith Battery Park City residents say that they “almost” love their new dog run on North End Ave. They’d be completely won over, they say, after an issue concerning a fence inside the run — a fence that may pose a serious risk to their dogs — is resolved. B.P.C. parks are muses for amateur artists By Jefferson Siegel Last weekend, a gunmetal-colored layer of clouds hung low above the Hudson, absorbing any trace of color from the winter landscape. Bare tree branches swayed in the winds of an approaching cold front as small gray hedges shivered in nearby planters.		Federal judge ‘shocked’ by E.P.A. statements By Ronda Kaysen The activists who have been fighting the Environmental Protection Agency ever since Christine Todd Whitman told Downtown residents and workers after 9/11 that the air in their neighborhood was safe to breathe and they should come home and breathe it — despite a lack of evidence — finally had their day in court. But the victory, the first in a long line of setbacks, was bittersweet. Chinatown’s police parking complaints captured on video By Adam Graham-Silverman Chinatown residents unveiled a video Tuesday they hope will help them make the case that police and government officials are abusing parking privileges in Chinatown, clogging the narrow streets and crowding out deliveries and business.

Downtown Arts & Entertainment

On the waterfront, before it was green By Nicole Davis It’s easy, if you don’t live or work near the water, to forget that Manhattan is surrounded by it. It’s easier still, while jogging or lounging or kayaking along the parks that now dot the west side from Battery Park to W. 55th, to forget that those green acres were once home to a working waterfront, filled with sailboats and oyster ships and later tugs and scows and football-stadium-sized pier sheds housing meat and produce and manufactured goods. Bargain bookstore sells $100,000 book By Rachel Fershleiser Most New Yorkers know the Strand Bookstore as a place to browse for bargains, roll their eyes at rude employees, and pick up a paperback for a dollar on a cart outside. But on January 28th, one anonymous industrial figure plopped down a more significant sum for a book— $100,000 to be exact. Lower East Side’s Renaissance man By Ernest Barteldes A keen observer of the comings and goings of his neighborhood, 41-year-old Lower East Side artist and musician Michael Rimbaud has spent the past few years painting portraits of every local resident that catches his eye — “the butcher, the baker and even the undertaker,” says Rimbaud.		Master of multiple personalities in a cast of one By Scott Harrah This illuminating one-woman show about the experiences of New York’s immigrant community recently opened on Broadway after a successful run two years ago at the Culture Project. Anyone who saw Sarah Jones’s performance Downtown will certainly agree that it is just as powerful on Broadway, and thankfully director Tony Taccone avoids trying to add any glitz or complicated sets and allows the simplicity of Jones’s narrative to shine. Going back to Greeneland By Jerry Tallmer It must be at least 20 years since a great film called “The Fallen Idol” disappeared off the face of the earth, or in any event off the movie screens of New York City, but the instant 8-year-old Philippe, the French ambassador’s son (just plain Philip or Phil, to Baines the butler), started running across sunlit Belgrave Square toward that tea shop on the other side, my heart leapt into my mouth and stayed there for the next 85 or 90 minutes.

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