THE WEEKLY NEWSPAPER OF LOWER MANHATTAN

THE WEEKLY NEWSPAPER OF LOWER MANHATTAN | Volume 16 • Issue 37 | February 13 - 19, 2004

Inside

Editorial
Intelligence inquiry can’t let Bush off hook
President Bush has been forced into setting up an Intelligence commission under increasing pressure, after no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq. The president will appoint the commission’s members, who will investigate the “intel” on Iraq’s weapons — the basis for branding Iraq an imminent threat — and whether it was tailored to suit the administration’s agenda.

Last call for S.L.A.; bar saturation has gotten out of control
Out of frustration that the community’s protests to the State Liquor Authority that the East Village and Lower East Side are over-saturated with bars, lounges and nightclubs have been falling on deaf ears, Community Board 3’s State Liquor Authority Committee has passed a resolution marking a new approach to the problem.

Penny Post
Digital pics
By Andrei Codrescu
After the initial flash of passion, I gained some control over my urge to photograph everything I see. But after a few weeks of snapping everything that looked good, interesting, or weird, I’ve run out of memory on my computer, and I’m now having to review and identify about six thousand perfect images, and trying to decide which three thousand to trash. I can’t possibly dispense with the fifty brilliantly spontaneous shots at that party I can’t (or won’t) remember, and I couldn’t in good conscience chuck the carefully lit pics of my mother’s living room.

Talking Point
Farewell, Gasoline Alley; the changing face of Noho
By Keith Crandell
New people are coming into Noho and more are on the way. I must admit, I have yet to see one of the most famous of my new Noho neighbors, Britney Spears, the pop singer notable for her romances and her role with the Mouseketeers on the Disney Channel so many years ago, waiting for the #1 bus on Lafayette near Bond. And therein lies the challenge. I will get back to Ms. Spears in a moment.

Letters to the editor

Seconnd Thoughts

Downtown local

Pressure rehearsal

PATH crowds

Washington fest

Dancing with C.B. 1

Meeting schedule

Animal rage

Police Blotter

Obituary
Elizabeth Lydon, 47, Downtown environmental activist
Elizabeth Schutz Lydon, active in the field of sustainable agriculture and author of books and articles on environmentally sound food, died Mon. Feb 9 at her home on Morton St. at the age of 47.

Kids/Youth

Little School plans to include first grade this fall
By Elizabeth O’Brien
The Downtown Little School will become bigger this fall, with the addition of a new class for five and six year olds.

Cougars split
The girls I.S. 89 Cougars team, organized by Manhattan Youth, celebrated yet another win against a team called ICE last week winning 27-18, bringing their record to 6-0.. However the Cougars boys team took a beating in their match against the Clinton Hawks, where they lost 27-52 recently.

Picture Story

Youth Activities

Development boom near the river
By Lincoln Anderson
Touting it as the new “Condo Coast,” developers continue to chip away at the old industrial Hudson River waterfront area to replace it with a new “edifice complex” — a string of new designer buildings for an upscale market.

Gore says Bush ‘abused’ nation’s trust on Iraq
By Lincoln Anderson
Speaking Downtown a week ago, former Vice President Al Gore accused President Bush of exploiting Americans’ fears after 9/11 to wage war against Iraq.

An idea for Hoboken’s 9/11 victims
Two Downtown designers who have made their mark in Lower Manhattan are among the four finalists to design a memorial to the 57 Hoboken residents who died in the Sept. 11 attack.

B.M.C.C. inks deal to open across from Fiterman
By Josh Rogers
The Borough of Manhattan Community College’s Fiterman Hall is still severely damaged from 9/11, but across the street, the school has just signed a 10-year lease so their students can move from temporary trailers back to regular classrooms this summer.

Car thrown by Con Ed explosion
By Melanie Wallis
A car parked on Howard St. was blown onto its side after a Con Edison junction box blew its lid on Mon., Jan 19 at 11:30 in the morning. Humberto Leon, owner of Open Ceremonies Designer Dress shop, said the explosion was “huge,” and that debris flew into his shop. “The glass that shattered from the car windows was blown to the floor of our door and through the mail slot into the shop,” Leon said.

A unique medical practice opens in Soho
By Jaclyn Marinese
Dr. Glaser received a call for help. It was from a woman whose teenage daughter was requesting birth control pills. The mother feared that by giving her daughter the pills she was signaling that it was okay to have sex.

Kerry wins Downtown pols’ late endorsements
By Josh Rogers
The remaining Downtown elected officials who had not yet endorsed in the Democratic presidential primary came to City Hall Thursday to endorse Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, joining many state, city and labor leaders.

L.M.D.C. releases cultural organization short list
By Elizabeth O’Brien
On Feb. 10, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation released its short list of candidates to provide cultural programs at the rebuilt World Trade Center site.

The second winter of bridge discontent
By Josh Rogers
“Every single timeframe we have set has been met,” Gov. George Pataki said confidently about the detailed timeline for Lower Manhattan projects that he announced last April and updated in October.

Young Tribecan killed in Upstate accident
By Elizabeth O’Brien
Nick Silvestri, a fifth-grade student at P.S. 234 in Tribeca, died on Feb. 2 from injuries sustained in a sledding accident on Feb. 1 near his family’s weekend home in Delaware County, New York. He was 11 years old.

A timely staging of Shepard’s ‘States of Shock’
By Jerry Tallmer
The White Woman has her clam chowder. The Colonel has his banana split. Cyndy A. Marion had her haircut.
The White Woman, petulant, overbearing, and blinkered, slurps her long-delayed clam chowder while her husband, The White Man, no less obnoxious and blinkered, masturbates over the bowl of his own clam chowder that Glory Bee, the coffee-shop waitress, has dumped in his lap.

New play by Nicky Silver at the Vineyard
By Davida Singer
In his twenty-three years of writing plays like “Pterodactyls,” “Raised in Captivity,” “Eros Trilogy” and “The Altruists”, Nicky Silver has won or been nominated for many awards - from Drama Desk to the Oppenheimer.

Viewing Orwell through a 2004 lens
By Jerry Tallmer
Orwell! Thou shouldst be living in this hour / The world hath need of thee . . .
That’s true of any hour, any year, but in this year and hour there is as great a need as any. The Patriot Act. The Department of Homeland Security. If that isn’t Newspeak, what is?

Koch on Film
By Ed Koch