THE WEEKLY NEWSPAPER OF LOWER MANHATTAN | Volume 19 Issue 37 | January 26 - February 1, 2007

Editorial
Congress must pass 9/11 victims’ health assistance programs
Like far too many other self-sacrificing men and women who searched for bodies at the World Trade Center site in 2001 and 2002, Police Officer Cesar Borja, 52, developed an illness that almost certainly was related to the toxic chemicals released into the air as a result of the collapse of the Twin Towers.

Letters to the editor

Under Cover

The Penny Post
The modern Achilles’ heel
By Andrei Codrescu
People’s vulnerabilities change throughout history. With Achilles it was his heel. For us, it’s the laptop. And not even the laptop, but the tiny memory chip inside.

Police Blotter

In Pictures

The next … greatest generation?

In Brief
13-year-old stabbed in Soho

Island’s park designer finalists picked

Free swim lessons

Dog and cat adoptions

Youth

M.A.T. relay team qualifies for Milrose Games
Last Sunday, at the second annual New York Road Runners Foundation’s Indoor Jamboree Track & Field Meet at the National Track & Field Hall of Fame in Washington Heights, the Manhattan Academy of Technology Dragons’ 4 x 200 meter relay team of Jubile Domenech, Patty Rosa, Ashley Thomas and anchor leg Tafari McKenzie came in second overall in the meet, qualifying them to run at the prestigious Milrose Games at Madison Square Garden Feb. 2. 

Dragons’ ace seals comeback win

Downtown Express photo by Jefferson Siegel

Sen. Hillary Clinton left the World Trade Center site Monday, before traveling to Washington for the State of the Union speech Tuesday.

Cop death and Clinton draw more attention to 9/11 health concerns
By Josh Rogers
In some ways it was like many Church St. press conferences near an area better known as ground zero – there were politicians, first responders and relatives of the victims of the 9/11 attack. But it was the second day after Hillary Clinton announced her presidential candidacy, so many more reporters attended.

C.B. 1 sides with 9/11 families on remains search
By Skye H. McFarlane
After three months of heated debates, Community Board 1 finally took a position on the city’s renewed search for human remains in and around the World Trade Center site.

Fiterman meeting

ARTS

Unlocking the vault: Drivin’ that train
By Todd Simmons
Saturday night was the first of two concerts at the World Financial Center’s Winter Garden featuring songs from the seminal Grateful Dead albums, “Workingman’s Dead” and “American Beauty.” Despite frigid winds blowing off the Hudson outside, an overflow crowd came out for a free show by an eclectic lineup of musicians who put their own spin on the songs of the late psychedelic jam band pioneers. Amazingly, over a decade after the passing of Jerry Garcia, the Dead can still draw a crowd.

Unlocking the vault: The songs that filled the air
By Nicole Davis
When emcee John Schaffer, host of WNYC’s Soundcheck, introduced the second half of the American Beauty Project on Sunday night, he was quick to let everyone in the audience know that the previous evening’s performance was the first time in years the Winter Garden had reached full capacity — in 30 minutes no less. But if Saturday was the show that packed the house, Schaffer promised the crowd that organizers had “saved the heavy artillery for tonight.”

Theater
Sit-com stars hold their own in ‘The Scene’
By Scott Harrah
Theresa Rebeck’s “The Scene” is loaded with clichés — and surprises. In fact, when the lights come up for intermission, one may feel this is simply a well-acted but fairly standard dramedy about how a younger woman wreaks havoc on a middle-aged married couple in show business. However, within the first 10 minutes of the second act, it’s evident that this is a dark, engrossing drama that borders on the tragic.

The A-List

Listen to Tribeca Radio:
Express associate editor Josh Rogers and reporter Skye McFarlane talk about Sen. Hillary Clinton and 9/11-related health issues and West St. traffic safety. They also discuss the Tribeca waterfront and presidential politics with Julie Nadel, a  member  of the Hudson River Park Trust board and chairperson of the CB 1 Waterfront Committee.

PREVIEW PODCAST BY TRIBECA RADIO

NEWS
Spitzer nixes dangerous change on West St.
By Skye H. McFarlane
The latest score on West St. is in: Community 1, State Department of Transportation –2... minus two left-hand turn lanes, that is.

A class where you can throw paper airplanes
 By Brooke Edwards
Stars hang from the ceiling of room 100 at Corlears Junior High in Chinatown. There is a giant flight simulator projected onto a three-foot half-dome in the corner. The room — decorated in futuristic black, silver and gray — is filled with 13 computer stations surrounded by model airplanes and space shuttles, remote-control robots and satellite photographs of the earth.

City balking on rec field for East River’s Pier 15
By Skye H. McFarlane
Ordinarily, it’s a good sign when a preview leaves the audience hungry for more. Unfortunately, the city’s preview of its latest plan for the East River waterfront left an audience of community members demanding more information and greater assurances that recreational space will not be sacrificed for commercial interests.

Downtown warrior monk fights for strong minds, bodies
By Judith Stiles
Shi Yan Ming’s parents had three children who died of starvation, and when he became ill, his parents sold their last worldly possession, a fountain pen, to buy medicine. The treatment did not work, and as his parents were preparing to bury him in China’s rural Henan province, they serendipitously met a poor acupuncurist on the side of a road who miraculously cured him with only a few needles.

Residents: Filming the apocalypse creates pandemonium
By Brooke Edwards
Emotions range from thrilled to furious and everything in between at the conversion of the Seaport Historic District into an apocalyptic war zone for the latest filming of “I am Legend” starring Will Smith.

The kings of carne asada
By Nicole Davis
It’s Restaurant Week in New York, an egalitarian dining tradition in which normally expensive restaurants offer prix fixe meals for cheap. Another way restauranteurs can cut down on costs: don’t open a restaurant at all.

Mike Daisey’s life before wartime
By Jennifer DeMeritt
Mike Daisey has a gigantic head. In his new one-man show at the Public Theater, his expressive face, glowing baby pink or flamingo red, mirrors his explosion of ideas on everything from the sensation of his wife in his arms to the “ecstatic dirtiness” of the New York City subway system.

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