Booming Chinatown
Korean drummers celebrated the Lunar New Year Sunday with the annual parade on Mott St. Neighborhood restaurants and bakeries said business was better for this year’s celebration. (go to article)
Downtown Express photo by Corky Lee
INSIDE DOWNTOWN EXPRESS
Board looks to limit speech
By Ronda Kaysen
When Community Board 1’s Bylaws Subcommittee unveiled a Code of Conduct at Tuesday night’s full board meeting, several board members cried foul, citing the First Amendment of the United States Constitution and effectively ending discussion on the topic until next month.
Downtown building coordinator named
By Josh Rogers
Charles Maikish has spent most of his career building, managing and rebuilding the World Trade Center and now he will coordinate the site’s redevelopment and all other large construction projects in Lower Manhattan.
Writing the last chapter at Ruby’s book store
By Zachary Roy
When Roberta Sadofsky opens the doors of Ruby’s Book Sale on March 7, her store will have been open in Tribeca for 35 years, to the day. More significantly, she will be opening the doors for the last time.
Precinct by precinct crime stats
By Albert Amateau
The sharp decline in crime citywide over the past 11 years is continuing at a slower pace, according to New York Police Department reports comparing 2004 with the previous year. But there were spikes in grand larceny and robberies in precincts that cover the Lower East Side, Soho and Greenwich Village.
P.S. 234 wrestles with overcrowding, noise issues
By Ronda Kaysen
Life at P.S. 234 is about to get very noisy, and it has nothing to do with rambunctious school children. With work at neighboring Site 5C already underway, what was once a sleepy, cobblestone corner of Tribeca will transform into a busy construction site when workers begin steel sheeting, a loud drilling process similar to pile driving.
C.B. 1 votes to add Frederick Douglass name to B.P.C. block
A section of Chambers St., from West St. to River Terrace,is likely to be co-named “Frederick Douglass Landing,” after a proposal was passed at the Community Board 1 on Tuesday
Stewart says jurors believed prosecutor paranoia
By Mary Reinholz
Two days after an anonymous jury convicted her in federal court of aiding terrorism by conveying messages from her imprisoned terrorist client Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman to an Islamic network in Egypt, Downtown activist lawyer Lynne Stewart took the cold evening air in Manhattan with her husband Ralph Poynter. The couple stopped at Revolution Books on W. 19 St. to listen to an author discuss an uprising in Nepal.
Architect tackles two different projects in Tribeca
By Ronda Kaysen
The future residents of 88 Laight St. will not be the only ones basking in the sun on their private balconies – their balconies’ glass railings will be busy absorbing the sun’s energy, too. Made with photovoltaic technology, the tinted glass railings, the first of their kind, will absorb light from the sun to produce energy for the building itself.
Arthur Miller, a man more complex than his characters
By JERRY TALLMER
“Elia Kazan: A Life” was the direct, no-nonsense title of Kazan’s 1988 autobiography. “Timebends: A Life” was the more poetic title of Arthur Miller’s no less fascinating 1987 autobiography. One doesn’t think of Arthur Miller, the man, as the more poetic of the two, but this past weekend, on the heels of the death at 89 of one of our arguably greatest playwrights, I reread “Death of a Salesman” for the umpteenth time, digging for the poetry within the so-called realism, and of course I (once again) found it.
City Hall Marriage Backlash
By AARON PARSLEY
From behind a podium in front of the cold, rain-soaked steps of City Hall, Rev. Joseph Mattera warned of a backlash from local conservative religious communities in reaction to a recent court decision to allow same-sex marriage in New York City.
Gays Wed At City Marriage Bureau on Valentine’s Day
By ANDY HUMM
Two weeks after Manhattan State Supreme Court Justice Doris Ling-Cohan ordered New York City Clerk Victor Robles to allow same-sex couples to obtain marriage licenses, Rev. Pat Bumgardner, pastor of the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC), marked Freedom to Marry Day on February 14 by taking over the wedding chapel at the clerk’s office and marrying two gay couples from her congregation.
Arts Downtown
Playing Shylock’s Jewish apologist
By JERRY TALLMER
The soups of the day, said the waiter, were chicken rice, potato leek and matzoh ball. Gareth Armstrong opted for the matzoh ball, I kid you not. “Sounds appropriate for a Welshman playing a Jew,” he said. No, not Shylock. At this point in his career, he is leaving that role to the distinguished actors who have done it through the centuries: Charles Macklin, Edmund Kean, Henry Irving, Rudolph Schildkraut, Laurence Olivier, George C. Scott, Boris Tumarin, Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, to name the most famous.
 Question Mark Guy’ visits lower Manhattan
By Angela Benfield
Sporting a literally questionable suit, Matthew Lesko gave a recent lecture at Borders to stressed-out mothers on “Free Stuff for Busy Moms.” You probably don’t know him by name, but you may have seen one of his late-night infomercials where he yells about “free money from the government” while waiving a handfull of hundred dollar bills. For the past twenty-five years, he’s been selling books in varying forms about it.
Airing dirty linen
By DEBORAH GARWOOD
Paul Vinet, a French artist based in Washington D.C., first exhibited “Learning From New York” at Jan van der Donk Rare Books in Chelsea in 2001. The color photographs depict the city from a pedestrian’s point of view, with a slight alteration—the artist paints over signs or other text images with creamy, white paint. Vinet, with a background in photography and graphics, has an interest in how visual culture intersects with the public sphere.
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