Volume 16 • Issue 17 | September 23 - 29, 2003

Downtown Express photo by Ramin Talaie

Performers from the Chinese Folk Dance Company were among the many groups that entertained tens of thousands of visitors to historic Battery Park over the weekend for the third annual CultureFest. The event, organized by NYC & Company, last year was held in Bryant Park.

Principals say classes are overcrowded
By Elizabeth O’Brien
Many local children began public school this month in classrooms more crowded than ever, the result of a growing residential population in Lower Manhattan and a federal law that allows students to transfer out of failing schools.

Shadow studies released for Tribeca development
By Elizabeth O’Brien with Josh Rogers
The developer and the designer for the proposed Site 5C on Chambers St. presented the results of their shadow study to the public Monday night and heard the community’s concerns about the building’s likely impact on the neighborhood.

Bus plan could reopen W.T.C. wounds
By Josh Rogers
The proposed revisions to the World Trade Center rebuilding plan don’t provide enough parking space for tour buses and could reopen the emotional fight over the merits of preserving the footprints of the Twin Towers down to the site’s bedrock, according to a director of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp.

Mayor, governor back 9/11 funds for Midtown
By Josh Rogers
Mayor Mike Bloomberg said last week it is “perfectly appropriate” to use money intended to help New York recover from the attack on the World Trade Center to construct offices in Midtown. Gov. George Pataki pledged to help the mayor achieve his goals.

Keep the vodka off the pizza, Tribecans say
By Elizabeth O’Brien
Some Tribeca residents are worried about a planned pizzeria at 360 Broadway where patrons will be able to order a scotch with their slice.

Opposition to South Ferry subway project grows
By Dana Young
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s proposed $400-million-dollar renovation of the South Ferry subway station is getting a cold reception Downtown.

Lower East Siders fight to save school window
By Albert Amateau
Parents of children at P.S. 42, the Benjamin Altman School on the Lower East Side, are going to court again this week to try to stop the developer of a seven-story residential condo from blocking a window in a fifth-floor classroom in the school.

Trust closes new playground to add fence
By Elizabeth O’Brien
Parents say the new children’s water playground on the Jane St. Pier has safety hazards that force them to remain on high alert as their children play. But that could change when the Hudson River Park Trust finishes installing a new fence around the playground this week.

Youth groups pitch Downtown programs
By Jessica Mintz
Meryl Dominguez’s toes poked out from under her flowing pink and purple gown. They might not have been such a prominent detail had Dominguez, 10, not been tottering on a pair of stilts two feet above the ground outside the semi-annual Youth Fair hosted by Community Board 1 last Wednesday evening.

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History of Chinatowns documented at museum
By Alison Gregor
Wedged among Chinatown’s herbalists, fishmongers and the stores selling satin hats with fake pigtails is a lantern-shaped gallery that sheds a little light on the sometimes inscrutable Chinese-American experience.

A Musical Look at Immigrant Life
By Tanya A. Gingerich
The new musical “A Stoop on Orchard Street,” is educational family fare about the lives of Jewish immigrants in the Lower East Side in the early 1900’s. If you are looking for any significant insight into New York tenement life, this play will disappoint (for that, read Luc Sante’s fascinating book “Low Life”) but for a light evening of sentimental theater with a little history thrown in, head down to the Mazer Theater, in the neighborhood where it all began.

Koch on film
By Ed. Koch
Lost in Translation (-) This flick received universal Hosannas to the Highest with one exception — me. It is hype, pure hype. There is no comparison to the movie it allegedly resembles, Brief Encounter. That movie of over fifty years ago, starring Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson, still resonates with great meaning when its name surfaces. Camp (+)This is at best a pleasant film, enjoyable but definitely not a blockbuster. It is a combination of the old Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland films which had the two putting on a show at school. This has the kids putting a show on at camp and the kids are no longer corn fed and off the farm, as Garland and Rooney might have been.

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