Inside
Letter from the editor
Save our Olympic bid, Mr. Mayor
After being wined, dined and escorted by Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Dep. Mayor Dan Doctoroff for an intense four days of lobbying, Nawal el-Moutawakel, the chairperson of the International Olympic Committee’s site evaluation commission, surprise, surprise said she agreed with her chaperones that New York City will not get the Olympics unless the city commits to building an Olympic-size stadium on Manhattan’s West Side before the I.O.C. vote in July.
Hopes for Pier A to finally open
The plan to complete the restoration of Battery Park’s magnificent Pier A has had many positive developments over the last 16 years only to be followed by setbacks. Money woes, lawsuits, 9/11, bureaucratic delays, etc. kept the project stuck.
Letters to the editor
Under Cover
Police Blotter
Winter in the Winter Garden
A couple made their way down the imposing steps of the World Financial Center’s Winter Garden last weekend.
Downtown Express photo by Milo Hess
Downtown notebook
The mouse that drives me up a wall By Angela Benfield
I’ve decided to get a cat. It’s not that I really want one. Though I do like all animals, I’ve always fancied myself as more of a “dog person.” And, I actually have a terrier. But he hasn’t been helpful to me in my current predicament. You see, it’s not so much that I really want to have a cat. It’s that I want to get rid of a mouse.
The Penny Post
Honda and pedestrians
By Andrei Codrescu
The familiar voice of a famous actor, speaking for the Honda car company, claims that hitting a pedestrian with your Honda causes less damage. Most companies, the ad explains, use crash-test dummies inside the car, whereas Honda has been using them outside the car. This explanation is followed by a pedestrian dummy flying through the air after it’s hit by a Honda and surviving, supposedly, with less deadly effect than if it had been hit by a, let’s say, Pontiac.
Obituary
‘Yangee’ Sarlo, 85, mainstay in what became Soho
Frank Sarlo, known to all on Thompson St. as Yangee, died on Jan. 30 at St. Vincent’s Hospital. He was 85.The cause of death was cancer, according to Chickie Piazza, a friend.
Youth Activities
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Sixteen years after Wings Point Associates signed a lease to redevelop Pier A in Battery Park, the firm is ready to begin finishing the project. Seth Goldstein, the firm’s project coordinator, is “stoked” about beginning work. ( article )
Downtown Express photo by Jennifer Weisbord
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Inside Downtown Express
W.T.C. memorial for ’93 victims unveiled
By Divya Watal
Sept. 11, 2001, has etched itself into a permanent recess in the minds of all Americans, and particularly Lower Manhattan residents, but Feb. 26, 1993 – a date full of Stygian portent – has almost faded into oblivion, leaving but a fragment that harbors its dark memories.
Pier A Progress
By Ronda Kaysen
Pier A in Battery Park may finally get a long awaited multi-million dollar restoration now that the city and the pier’s leaseholders are close to hammering out an agreement, bringing nearly two decades of wrangling to a close.
Not quite a busman’s holiday for Chinatown drivers
By Loretta Chao
“Fa la shen! Fa la shen!” yells Mr. Zhou with urgency as he points to his white shuttle bus. Parked behind a row of sidewalk vendors in Chinatown’s Chatham Square, the bus fills up quickly; and just as the last of the grey cushioned seats are taken behind the tinted windows of his shuttle, Zhou will jump back into his seat, throw it in gear, and head to “Fa la shen,” or Chinese for Flushing.
Little Italy store gets littler
Journal editors on biz ethics
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Top-line concerts at 55 Wall St.
By Ronda Kaysen
Stevie Wonder, Sheryl Crow, Alicia Keys and four other big-name musicians will perform at Cipriani Wall Street over the next eight months as part of a concert series benefiting Wall Street Rising, a non-profit organization founded to revitalize Lower Manhattan after the events of Sept. 11, 2001.
City to take a look at bumps on bridge bike path
By Amanda Kludt
Community Board 3’s Transportation Committee and the Department of Transportation have agreed to consider alternatives to the metal bumps spanning expansion joints on the bike path on the Williamsburg Bridge, should the board pass a resolution recommending it.
Students donating instruments to Sri Lankan school
By Aman Singh
A Downtown music school has decided to raise funds for a Sri Lanka school that was devastated in the December 2004 tsunami and create a pen-pal society at the same time.
The man behind Joey Ramone’s hair
By Ronda Kaysen
Joey Ramone, the front man of the iconic East Village punk band the Ramones, took his hair very seriously. For 17 years, until his death in 2001, Ramone relied on a sprightly East Villager named Hugh Mack Dill to transform his unruly mane of curly black hair into, well, an unruly mane of curly black hair.
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Arts Downtown
‘Death rattle of the world – with laughs’
By JERRY TALLMER
When Alan Schneider directed the American premiere of Samuel Beckett’s “Endgame” at the Cherry Lane Theater in the 1957-58 season, he wore a baseball cap and did a lot of whispering to his actors. They were Lester Rawlins as the blind, chairbound Hamm, who cannot stand; Alvin Epstein as clumping Clov, who cannot sit; P.J. Kelly and lovable Nydia Westman as Nagg and Nell, the old ones, the parents, bottled up in garbage pails at the footlights.
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Legendary Vanguard on the eve of its anniversary
By JERRY TALLMER
Sunday afternoon. The joint is empty. Almost empty.
In the tiny kitchen of the Village Vanguard, which is also Lorraine Gordon’s office in the Village Vanguard, just as for all those years it was Max Gordon’s office, and was also what passed for the Green Room of the Village Vanguard where the talent hung out and shot the breeze between sets, the phone is ringing off the hook.
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