THE WEEKLY NEWSPAPER OF LOWER MANHATTAN | Volume 19 Issue 30 | December 8 - 14, 2006

Editorial
Bike path terror
One would think bike paths are safer than city streets for bicycles. And one would hope a bike path that’s clearly separated from the street by a planted median with a low wall, such as the Hudson River bike path, would be even safer. But, tragically, just within the last five months, there have been two bicyclists killed on the Hudson River bike path.

Downtown Notebook
Love cars, kill cyclists on ‘greenway’ path
By Charles Komanoff
Another week, another dead cyclist. Last Friday evening, 27-year-old Eugenio Cidron left a party at Chelsea Piers, steered his silver BMW onto the no-cars-allowed Hudson River Greenway and drove south for a mile — a mile! — until he smashed head-on into 22-year-old Eric Ng just north of Houston St., killing him instantly.

Letters to the editor

Police Blotter

Under Cover

The Penny Post
King Cottonland
By Andrei Codrescu
How sad is everything? Driving north through Mississippi and northern Louisiana under a huge empty sky, I get the feeling that this world is abandoned. A wooden church spire sticks out of a vast expanse of flatland.

Picture Story

Downtown Express photos by Tequila Minsky
Birds of a feather reflect together
It got a little cooler Sunday but the sun was out, and there were signs Downtown that perhaps there was still time before winter.

Obituary

Marcia Lemmon, 48, scourge of bar owners dies
By Lincoln Anderson
Marcia Lemmon, the bane of Downtown bar owners and a fighter for quality of life on the Lower East Side, died on Saturday. She was 48.


Downtown Express photo by Elisabeth Robert

Students enter P.S. 89, which has the third most crowded fourth grade in the city, according to an analysis of the city’s numbers by Downtown Express.

City: P.S. 89 building has room, classes are crowded
By Skye H. McFarlane
The letter came at the end of the school year, telling the parents at P.S. 89 about an impossible choice. To accommodate a flood of incoming kindergarteners, the administration had decided to sacrifice a fourth-grade classroom.

Tribeca Schools & I.S. 89

Immigration foes stage memorial without actress’s family
By Lori Haught
During the day the sky was gray, just like the issue. By nightfall, the sky was black, and passersby and participants in the memorial for Adrienne Shelly only saw black and white where immigration was concerned.

State, neighbors near compromise on W. Thames Park
By Skye H. McFarlane
It was standing room only Monday night in Battery Park City, as Route 9A Project officials faced off with nearly 100 angry dog owners, gardeners and children holding hand-made “Save Our Park!” posters.

Aria over recess, middle schoolers try opera
By Priya Idiculla
The Hudson River Opera Company is full of carpenters, composers, writers, electricians, and performers, and all of them are in the seventh grade at I.S. 89.

ARTS
Visions of sugar plums, dancing again
By Sara G. Levin
“Move like angels, and don’t rush the first part,” said John Magnus, artistic director at the Joffrey Ballet School, as anxious young girls in black leotards and white tights waited for their cue.

The proclivities of a bumpy journey home
By Jerry Tallmer
Larry Keith told the waiter he’d like to start with a bowl of pea soup. Then he looked across at the press (this press) and said: “There’s a line in the play that goes ... that goes ... oh God, and it’s my line too...”

NEWS
Haven shatters, as 2nd cyclist is killed by driver
By Lincoln Anderson
In a city where speeding cars and trucks rule the road and bicyclists ride at their own risk, the Hudson River Park bike path would seem to offer one of the safest places to cycle.

Some come for Christ, some for childcare
By Ernest Scheyder
On a brisk Sunday morning deep in Chinatown, John Hum is teaching his third-grade Catholic catechism class about Adam and Eve.
“What did they do that was so bad?” Hum asked.

Dutch treat, trick or takeover threat?
By Lori Haught
Are the Dutch none to happy with the way our fair city is being governed? A small group of enterprising Dutchmen have started a Web site demanding New York return to its Dutch roots and change its name back to New Amsterdam, a.k.a. the Big Orange.

|Tourist first in the city to get new kidney procedure
By Lori Haught
New York Downtown Hospital is believed to be the first in the city to perform a new surgical procedure to repair a kidney.

Intrepid swings Downtown

On the waterfront
By Ellison Walcott
The otherworldly nature of the South Street Seaport has long attracted art and art types who sought out New York urban life in its rawest form.

A giant among directors
By Leonard Quart
As a college student in the ’50s, I often sat in the dark, watching with uncritical awe Ingmar Bergman films like “Sawdust and Tinsel,” “The Seventh Seal,” and “Wild Strawberries.”

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ANNUAL HOLIDAY TOY DRIVE Bring a new, unwrapped toy to the 4th annual Wall Street Rising Toy Drive. The United States Marine Corps will distribute the toys to needy children in the community. Continues thru Dec. 15; Mon. - Fri. from 9am - 6pm. WALL STREET RISING DOWNTOWN INFORMATION CENTER, 55 Exchange Place, bet Broad & William Sts., Suite 401. 212-425-INFO. www.downtowninfocenter.org. All toy donors will receive a free 3-day pass to Equinox Fitness located at 54 Murray St.

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