Downtown Express photo by Elisabeth Robert

Roger Sayers, 14, skated Lower Manhattan’s Brooklyn Banks for the first time this week. Sayers may not get many chances to come back, because the famed park for skateboard and BMX bike tricks is expected to close soon for at least a few years. “Don’t do it,” he said.

Don’t let the Banks collapse, skaters say
By Julie Shapiro
The Brooklyn Banks is a place with no rules except gravity.

Wholesale change for Bazzini: Sarabeth’s to replace it
By Julie Shapiro
In the latest example of “new Tribeca” beating out “old Tribeca,” the Bazzini grocery, cafe and nut shop on Greenwich St. will soon become a Sarabeth’s restaurant.

City raises doubts about moving W.T.C. arts building
By Julie Shapiro
Three months after rebuilding officials floated moving the World Trade Center performing arts center to the site of the former Deutsche Bank building, the move looks unlikely to happen.

Deutsche demo could resume Nov. 2

Neighbors say shining school building is not a bright idea
By Julie Shapiro
When Tribeca residents call the New York Law School a brightly shining beacon of secondary education, they are not exaggerating — nor are they being complimentary.

News

School lottery may be dropped for temporary zoning

Kindergarten lottery may return Downtown this year
By Julie Shapiro
Downtown children could once again face a lottery for kindergarten seats.

Special applications for I.S. 276

Community project will rise near the Hudson, Thompson pledges
By Josh Rogers
Bill Thompson promised Downtown neighbors last week that if elected to be mayor, he would build the community alternative sanitation garage in Hudson Square.

Candidates think train has left the station on traffic pricing
Last year, Mayor Mike Bloomberg tried unsuccessfully to get Albany to pass a congestion pricing plan that would have charged daytime drivers $8 to enter Lower or Midtown Manhattan.

Bloomberg on…

Gov asks mayor & Thompson for B.P.C. help
By Julie Shapiro
Desperate to fill the $3 billion hole in the state’s budget this year, Gov. David Paterson is making another grab for the Battery Park City Authority’s money.

A spooky Halloween all around Downtown
It’s that time of year again—when Downtown kids and their parents parade through Lower Manhattan in costume, spooking us all while hunting for goodies.

‘Front Door Book’ offers window onto a community
By Lincoln Anderson and Rita Wu
A new book by Clayton Patterson offers a view not only into a more gritty Lower East Side of not long ago, but also into the well-known documentarian and artist himself.

Kazan: Vilified namer of names, socially conscious auteur
BY TRAV S.D.
Body of work contrasts ‘controversy that plagued its creator’

Celebration of culture merits more than cult following 
BY SCOTT STIFFLER 
Asian ‘Third Wave’ Americans define identity by being themselves