Editorial
The life and death of Jane Jacobs
Jane Jacobs, one of the greatest legends of Greenwich Village and urban planning, died on Tuesday. Though she had moved to Toronto some years ago, Jacobs — who was 89 — will never be forgotten here.
The Penny Post
A moving experience
By Andrei Codrescu
Here we go again, me and the books. Some of them have been with me for almost four decades, decaying perceptibly and imperceptibly as they were dragged from hills to seashores, from wintery cities to tropical rooms.
Talking Point
Festival abandons Tribeca with ‘Flight 93’ premiere
By Wickham Boyle
I thought the Tribeca Film Festival was a great idea, five years ago, in the wake of 9/11, which left this Downtown community churning in commotion and temporizing with an uncertain future.
Editorial Picture
Two hot directors
Under Cover
Police Blotter
Letters to the Editor
In Briefs
Vesuvio Playground renovation
Youth/ Sports
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 Downtown Express photo by Jefferson Siegel
Workers installed Alexander Calder’s “Jerusalem Stabile” in City Hall Park on Saturday. Five of his pieces will be on display in the park through 2007 and one is in City Hall.
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News
With W.T.C. deal, Port delays retail construction
By Josh Rogers
Port Authority leaders acknowledged Wednesday that they were pushing back by half a year the target date when construction could begin on the Church St. side of the World Trade Center site.
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Calder metal works joined with City Hall Park’s green
By Janel Bladow
There’s a Seven-Legged Beast loose in City Hall Park. That’s not all, nearby stands a Three-Colored Dog.
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INSIDE
Nadler blasts rail link; says Downtowners are being ‘poisoned’
By Ronda Kaysen and Josh Rogers
The proposed Downtown rail link to J.F.K. Airport is “a really stupid project” as far as U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler is concerned, and the money would be better spent on other transportation projects.
Nadler on Clinton, Iran & impeachment
U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler disagrees with New York’s junior senator on several big issues, but he said Friday that he would back Sen. Hillary Clinton in 2008 if she decides to run for president.
Obituary
Jane Jacobs, urban planning pioneer, is dead at 89
By Albert Amateau
Jane Jacobs, a writer whose ideas transformed the principles of urban planning 45 years ago and a Village resident who led the fight to save an imperiled neighborhood until she moved with her family to Canada in 1968, died Tues. April 25.
Chinatown tasting goes on like water off a duck’s back
By Alex Schmidt
Despite the shower on Saturday, I decided to make my way Downtown for the fourth biannual Taste of Chinatown. I wasn’t alone. Huddled around the storefronts of 51 participating eateries, small mobs of visitors sampled $1 and $2 dishes while holding umbrellas or just acquiescing to the downpour.
Community gardeners now covered by city insurance
By Alex Schmidt
Community gardeners across New York City are celebrating. On March 23, Parks Department Commissioner Adrian Benepe announced that the city would extend municipal liability protection to community gardens. Previously, these gardens either depended on organizations to cover their private insurance policies or gardeners paid insurance expenses out of pocket.
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 Park, piazza or pool? Debate over Peck Slip’s future
By Ronda Kaysen
Peck Slip might be a neglected, rutted street now, but some local residents and business leaders have a different vision for the unruly road. They hope to transform it into a cobblestone piazza in the spirit of Rome or Paris.
Pataki signs deal to allow school construction
By Ronda Kaysen
Governor George Pataki signed legislation Monday providing capital funding for New York City schools, paving the way for the city to build two new elementary schools Downtown.
Report says luxury developers benefit from tax program
By Tequila Minsky
Members of 10 housing organizations gathered at 88 Leonard St. off Broadway a week ago to draw attention to the release of a report that addresses the question: Do developers in Tribeca need tax subsidies to build in a neighborhood so trendy it even has a car named after it?
Activist lawyers who work pro bono
By Jefferson Siegel
Pro bono publico is the Latin phrase meaning “for the public good.” It connotes the legal profession’s performance of free work as a public service. The work is a suggestion by bar associations, not a mandate.
Architects and students collaborate on mall project
By Bonnie Rosenstock
The Hester Street Collaborative, in conjunction with the United Neighborhoods to Revitalize Allen and Pike, is seeking nominations of people and places to be included in the co-naming of Allen St. as Avenue of the Immigrants
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 Special Section
All in the family: Tribeca Film Fest reaches out to community
By Steven Snyder
The Tribeca Film Festival is where many communities within the film industry, from producers to screenwriters to directors, come to meet. But for Peter Downing, the festival’s creative director, one of the key missions of the event since its inception has been pulling together the Tribeca residential community as well.
 “NY, NY” competition highlights the best of Big Apple films
By Steven Snyder
Director Georgia Lee doesn’t hesitate to credit the Tribeca Film Festival with changing her life.
The director of “Red Doors,” an official entry at last year’s festival, Lee said she was pursuing her MBA at Harvard Business School when she decided to take a leave of absence to pursue her real passion – film.
 Benefiting a controversial school through song
By Steven Snyder
The passion that seems to overflow from the vibrant, moving and somewhat addictive “Follow My Voice: With the Music of Hedwig” is quite similar to the passion that makes the Tribeca Film Festival such a remarkable experience. Broken down to their essentials, both are built around great works of art that inspire people to come together in celebration of all that make us different, yet the same.
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 A lackluster world restored
By Shana Liebman
“On the Bowery,” which screens as part of the “Restored/Rediscovered” series at the Tribeca Film Festival, premiered at the Venice Film festival—in 1957. After winning honors there and by the British Film Academy, it opened in New York City, where the New York Times called it a “dismal exposition to be charging people money to see” and “a temperance lecture.” Shortly after, it went on to be nominated for an Oscar.
Tribeca Drive-In. / Tribeca@Tropfest
Behind the Screens at the Tribeca Film Festival
Most people associate the Tribeca Film Festival with its famous founder Robert De Niro. Behind the scenes, though, hundreds of staff members and volunteers work tirelessly to put together the multi-faceted festival.<more>
 Tribeca Film Festival Listings
Inside Iraq:
By Steven Snyder
A growing cadre of renegade filmmakers are traveling overseas and returning with stories that reshape the way Americans see the Iraq war, far beyond the conflict’s traditional media coverage. Three of the latest Iraq documentaries will premiere side-by-side at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, each chronicling the stories of American soldiers, veterans and Iraqi insurgents with an intimacy that no other film or television documentary has yet captured.
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Downtown Arts & Entertainment
Ready or not, ‘United 93’ arrives in theaters
By Neal Schindler
The images of 9/11 are indelible. That’s especially true for New Yorkers who witnessed the events of the day firsthand. Now, nearly half a decade later, moviegoers nationwide will be privy to 9/11 images no one has seen before. “United 93,” British writer-director Paul Greengrass’s real-time recreation of the only hijacked flight not to reach its target.
Family History
By alex schmidt
This weekend, April 28 through 30 at Shooting Star Theater, critically acclaimed performer Nora Cole draws upon family history and famous female leaders like Winnie Mandela and Coretta Scott King to chronicle the African American experience in her second solo show, “Voices of the Spirits in my Soul.”
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 Music series takes root at Tribeca film fest
By Anne O’Neil
It’s hard to imagine a film without the sound of music. The two go together like Woody Allen and George Gershwin, Wes Anderson and Mark Mothersbaugh, Quentin Tarrantino and … just about every obscure pop, soul, and rock band under the sun.
 Post-Katrina, artists rebuild their lives — Downtown
By Tommy Hallissey
Nagged by the feeling he was stuck in a scene from a bad Godzilla movie, Christopher Saucedo drove his red Ford truck east on the westbound side of I-10 from New Orleans toward Houston, where he had waited out hurricanes before.
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