THE WEEKLY NEWSPAPER OF LOWER MANHATTAN

Downtown Express photo by Jefferson Siegel

Downtown has the love

If there really is a broken heart for every light on Broadway, then that rule apparently only applies to Midtown. Philadelphia residents Mario Rodriguez and Rocio Nunez got their New Year’s Eve embrace started a few minutes early Monday night on lower Broadway as they waited for the Trinity Church bells to ring in 2008. More New Year’s Eve photos.

Port misses deadline and says ‘worst’ construction noise is almost over
By Julie Shapiro
In a move that surprised few but angered many, the Port Authority waited until Dec. 31 to announce that excavation of the eastern World Trade Center bathtub would not be complete by the end of the year. The work may last into mid-February and could cost the Port Authority $13.5 million.

NEWS
Downtown group look to chop
By Albert Amateau
Friends of Hudson River Park and other waterfront advocates went to court on Dec. 11 to close down the W. 30th St. Heliport saying the noisy copter pad is illegal and should have been kicked out of Hudson River Park years ago.

Guiding sailors through rough waters
By Julie Shapiro
When the Rev. David M. Rider took the helm of an organization serving maritime workers, the Seamen’s Church Institute, he didn’t know much about boats.

Pier 57 process is barely afloat three years later
By Lincoln Anderson
Although there has been intense focus on Pier 40 at W. Houston St. lately as the process to pick a possible developer for it is nearing completion, another Hudson River Park pier, Pier 57 at W. 16th St., is also drawing renewed attention.

Feds kick in millions for residents’ 9/11 ailments

State raises yellow flags on two Downtown bridges
Steel beams on the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges are decaying, but the bridges are still safe to travel, the State Department of Transportation announced last month.

DOWNTOWN ART & LIFESTYLE

The accidental assassin
By Steven Snyder
The degree to which Andrew Piddington’s “The Killing of John Lennon” will enthrall audiences is proportional to how close those viewers felt to the one-time pop icon; how devastated they were in the days after his cold-blooded assassination at The Dakota in December of 1980.

KOCH ON FILM

Rebel with a cause
By Leonard Quart
Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud‘s “Persepolis” has already won the Award for Best Animated film from the New York Film Critics Circle, and will probably win a number of others by the time the award season is over.

Who wears Jane Jacobs’s mantle in today’s New York?
By David Halle
Though not its avowed intention, the Municipal Arts Society’s terrific Jane Jacobs exhibition offers material for a long overdue re-evaluation of the famous urban scholar.

A wellspring of evil
By Steven Snyder
What may surprise audiences most about “There Will Be Blood” is how little blood there is — how the film’s violence is of the more emotional variety, unveiled not in any sort of Wild West shootout but in the cruelty of the business meeting, the church gathering, and the swift gutting of California’s lush landscape, as oil leapt past gold and silver to become the definitive commodity of the western states.

John Sayles sings the cotton pickin’ blues
By Rania Richardson
“The music keeps moving forward, and if you can’t make it work, you’ll become obsolete,” said director John Sayles.

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