THE WEEKLY NEWSPAPER OF LOWER MANHATTAN | Volume 19 Issue 28 | Nov. 24 - 30, 2006

Editorial

Traffic safety can’t end on Warren St.
We’ll start by giving the state Department of Transportation some credit. It’s not uncommon for government agencies to obfuscate and deny when inconvenient facts turn up in an environmental impact statement (see the West Side stadium E.I.S.). But D.O.T. did not try and pull a fast one when the environmental study on its plan to “improve” West St. predicted that the corner of West and Warren Sts. would become 60 percent more dangerous.

Editorial Picture

Lucky 7
Seven World Trade Center, the only building destroyed on 9/11 to be rebuilt, had a little work done last Friday.

Letters to the editor

Police Blotter

Under Cover

Downtown notebook
Yes I live in Tribeca but I ride a rickety bike
By Wickham Boyle
When I moved to Tribeca in 1977, I was young and so was the neighborhood. So young in fact that it had not yet solidified into the name that would be so connected to “upscale” that an SUV would be named after it. It was the Washington Market district, just Downtown as in, “oh I live Downtown.” Or it was near Chinatown, a place everyone knew. But now when I say I live in Tribeca, I cringe.

The Penny Post
The writer’s burden
By Andrei Codrescu
I wrote some of the heaviest books a dude ever lifted. The only books heavier than mine are picture books, from which it follows that pictures are heavier than words, which explains why people say that a picture is worth a thousand words, by which they must mean that a picture is a thousand times heavier than a word.

Privatization by another name?
Real estate attorney Stuart Saft argues in his report on Southbridge Towers possibly leaving the Mitchell-Lama housing program that “reconstitution” is a better word to use than “privatization” to describe the action Southbridge residents are debating.

Downtowners’ trophy season ends with trophies
The Downtown Soccer League officially ended its season with trophies, team pictures and plenty of games.

Overflowing with classroom space, private school seeks students
By Skye H. McFarlane
Living in Battery Park City, Terry Lautin always saw herself as a public school parent. Her daughter, Olivia, spent her elementary years happily at one of the city’s top-ranked neighborhood schools and Lautin hopes that Olivia will someday qualify for one of the city’s specialty public high schools. But as Olivia prepared to graduate from P.S.89 in the spring of 2005, Lautin felt her daughter’s options shrinking.

W.T.C. remains search splits community board
By Skye H. McFarlane
For the inhabitants of Lower Manhattan, the search for human remains at the World Trade Center site touches on the raw nerves of what is still an open gash in the heart of the community.

WNYC is moving to new headquarters on Varick St.
By Roslyn Kramer
A mini, if not microscopic, cultural center is emerging in the unpromising precincts of Varick St. The venerable Film Forum, the rare surviving revival house in Manhattan, is ensconced on W. Houston St. near Varick St. Not far are two small theaters, the Cherry Lane and the Vandam, venerable in their own right.

ARTS
Finding a stage for Parks’ 365 Plays
By Jennifer O’Reilly
What does one do after being the first African-American woman in history to win Pulitzer Prize in playwriting? Or after being the recipient of the extremely prestigious MacArthur foundation “genius” grant? Where is there left to go when you’re at the absolute top of your game, receiving accolades from virtually every respected artist and critic in your field? If you’re Suzan-Lori Parks, you respond by recommitting yourself to your craft with an intensity few people could imagine.

The ex-presidents’ club
By JERRY TALLMER
He was a playwright and a poet long before he was a president — Joe Papp brought Havel’s “The Memorandum” to the Public Theater as long ago as 1968, just before the Soviet tanks murdered Prague Spring — but the words “play” or “playwright” or “theater” never came up during the hour Vaclav Havel and Bill Clinton kicked things around before a packed crowd in Columbia University’s Lerner Hall last Wednesday, and the word “art” came up only once, when Clinton remarked that one of the enjoyments of being an ex-president was the freedom to take a couple of hours “to go to an art gallery” if he felt like it.

A dour German classic gets a rock-n-roll facelift
By Jennifer Demeritt
With the painfully loud ringing of a barracks bell, the audience is yanked into the consciousness of Woyzeck, the title character of Georg Büchner’s classic play, which runs through December 3 at St. Ann’s Warehouse.

NEWS
Have report, will argue at Southbridge
By Josh Rogers
Along with traffic, turkey and football, this year’s Thanksgiving talk for many Southbridge Towers residents is likely to include the words “flip tax” as they sort through a new report promising up to $1 million if they sell their apartments to the highest bidder.

Downtown journal from nearly two centuries ago
By Lori Haught
Christopher Prince knew Downtown. He’d lived there much of his adult life. He helped the fight for freedom during the Revolution, and by his 70s he had seen the city grow into a thriving metropolis, although Greenwich Village was still considered the countryside.

Chinatown students shape up in school
By Tina Shah
“O.K. Tommy you’re mine,” says Good Jean Lau, the gym teacher at Chinatown’s P.S. 1. His fifth-grade classmates bellow in laughter as Lau motions Tommy Chan to sit down across from her.

Greens say a rising tide may sink Downtown’s boat
By Sara Stefanini
The 20-foot structure didn’t turn out to be quite as impressive as the Environmental Action crew had hoped, but with two members holding it up, it still demonstrated how high the water level in Lower Manhattan could get if global warming continues at its current rate.

Downtown students say thanks to the Port
By Jefferson Siegel
After the Sept. 11 attacks, the world vowed not to forget rescue workers who ran into harm’s way, many never to escape. Five years later, just two days before Thanksgiving, students at a Downtown and gave thanks to Port Authority police officers for their heroic efforts.

Hope springs eternal in Aronofsky’s ‘Fountain’
By Steven Snyder
The evidence was there, but now it’s been repeated and verified for a third consecutive time: Darren Aronofsky is the next great filmmaker, the towering visionary of his generation.

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