BY LINCOLN ANDERSON It was a recent Saturday night

shortly after 10 p.m. in Greenwich Village and two police offi cers were sitting astride their horses, George and Billy, on Greenwich St. just south of Christopher St. They were part of a unit of fi ve mounted offi cers who have been assigned to help patrol the Christopher St. area on weekends in the wake of a recent rash of violent assaults. A pair of tourists were petting

either George or Billy on his forehead.Suddenly a dark-haired man in a

baseball cap ran up to one of the offi cers and could be overheard say-ing something about a group of “30” people hanging out up the block, that it was really bad, come quick. Based on his excitedness and urgency, the man didn’t appear to be a police offi cer, but perhaps a resident or merchant.

One offi cer immediately started his horse at a walk and hung a right onto

Christopher St. He proceeded down the sidewalk and brought the powerful and imposing animal to a halt next to a group of more like 15, not 30, black men seemingly peacefully congregating by a chain-link fence across the street from the PATH station entrance and Chi Chiz, a bar that caters to black gays. The offi cer talked to them and the men dispersed without incident.

BY LINCOLN ANDERSON Concern is brewing over

Pier 40 once more, after the Hudson River Park Trust passed a resolution to ask the state Legislature to extend the lease term for the huge W. Houston St. pier

from 30 years to 50 years. Opponents of The Rela-

ted Companies’ failed Cirque du Soleil/Tribeca Film Festival plan for the pier fear that with a lease

With longer leaseat Pier 40, wouldRelated re-emerge?

Crackdown on Christopher St.after string of violent incidents

Villager photo by Q. Sakamaki

In front of the Christopher St. PATH train station on a recent Saturday night. Many young gays and lesbians come to the Village from New Jersey via the PATH.

BY ALBERT AMATEAUAND PATRICK HEDLUND

The fi rst segment of the High Line park opened on Monday with a ribbon-cutting ceremony includ-ing Mayor Bloomberg and other offi cials, along with Joshua David and Robert Hammond, who 10 years ago began promoting the idea of converting a der-elict, elevated railroad into a park-in-the sky.

A class of 22 fi rst-grade students from P.S. 11 in Chelsea was among the gathered offi cials, Friends of the High Line and press cel-ebrating the June 8 opening of the park segment between Gansevoort St. in the Meat Market and W. 20th St. in Chelsea.

Construction crews were

also on hand ready to con-tinue working on the sec-ond segment of the elevated park, between W. 20th and W. 30th Sts., with 2010 as the target completion year.

The project’s third and fi nal segment loops west around the Metropolitan Transportation Authority rail yards at W. 30th St. and goes up to W. 34th St., where the old rails dip below the street across from the Javits Convention Center. But the third seg-ment’s future is uncertain.

“We will be working very hard to make it part of the park, but it belongs to the M.T.A. and it depends on what’s going to happen there,” Bloomberg said of

High Line opens;Greenway raises parks to a new level

Continued on page 18

145 SIXTH AVENUE • NYC 10013 • COPYRIGHT © 2009 COMMUNITY MEDIA, LLC

Continued on page 5

Continued on page 34

EDITORIAL, LETTERS

PAGE 22

CABARET CONFAB

PAGE 29

Volume 79, Number 1 $1.00 West and East Village, Chelsea, Soho, Noho, Little Italy, Chinatown and Lower East Side, Since 1933 June 10 - 16, 2009

She’s all baseball, p. 21

2 June 10 - 16, 2009

GLEASON SHOCKER AT D.I.D.: Pete Gleason won the endorsement of Downtown Independent Democrats last week, delivering a body blow to the re-election efforts of Councilmember Alan Gerson.

D.I.D. is considered by many to be the most important politi-cal club in the Council’s First District because it covers most of the area’s Lower Manhattan neighborhoods. As a practical matter, the endorsement means club volunteers will be helping Gleason collect signatures over the next few weeks to be on the ballot for the Sept. 15 Democratic primary, but perhaps more important, it means primary voters who have not tuned in to the race yet will see some of their most politically active friends and neighbors out campaigning for Gleason, an attorney and a former police offi cer and fi refi ghter.

“I’m stoked,” Gleason said immediately after beating Gerson in the vote, held at St. Anthony’s Church on Houston St. the night of Tues., June 2. “This is tremendously important. It sends a clear signal that new leadership is needed.”

D.I.D.’s endorsement helped Gerson narrowly win the Council seat in 2001, when he was one of seven Democrats vying for the open seat. He has won the club nod each time since, including in 2003, when he handily beat Gleason in the endorse-ment vote and in the primary.

In more recent years, however, Gerson has lost the support of some Downtown political leaders who previously helped him get elected, including Sean Sweeney, Julie Nadel, Adam Silvera and Jean Grillo.

Gerson also lost support in the club because many members believe he put up two of his political allies, Noel Jefferson and Avram Turkel, to run as Democratic district leaders against

Grillo and Silvera. Gerson, in a phone interview, acknowledged giving “friendly advice” to both about mounting challenges, but he said the decision to run was made by the candidates.

The offi cial vote tally was 62 for Gleason and 54 for Gerson, with their three opponents and “no endorsement” splitting the remaining 8 votes. The numbers were slightly different in the fi rst count, tallied by two different people, with Gleason getting 65 votes on both counts and Gerson getting 56 and 57.

Bob Townley, a Gerson supporter, said he thinks Gerson is having more trouble getting re-elected this time because people had been expecting to get a new councilmember due to term limits. Citing the dire economy, Gerson voted last year to extend limits for the Council, the mayor and other offi cials even though he had previously said at various times over the years that he would not support overturning voter referenda on the matter without a new referendum.

Townley, who runs Manhattan Youth, a Tribeca-based children’s organization, also thinks Gerson is more vulner-able because there are a lot of new residents who have moved Downtown in the last few years and don’t know Gerson well.

“There is a spirit of change,” Townley said as the club ballots were being counted. “Alan has to work hard — there’s a lot of new people in the community.”

Townley said Gerson should be re-elected because of his experience helping Downtown, both in the Council and leading Community Board 2 before that.

“I think Alan deserves four more years because of his original commitment of the last 20 years.”

Nadel said she continues to like Gerson personally, but he’s “totally disorganized,” echoing a common criticism of him. “People deserve better. I would try anybody else.”

She said she feels Gleason is the strongest opponent right now, but she said she ultimately could end up supporting a differ-ent Gerson opponent as she learns more about them.

Margaret Chin, a former executive with Asian Americans for Equality; PJ Kim, a former Community Board 1 member who has administered anti-poverty programs; and Arthur Gregory, a

restaurant/bar owner and former C.B. 1 member, are also run-ning for the seat. Chin and Kim lead the fundraising race so far, with $108,000 and $71,000, respectively, followed by Gerson ($26,000) and Gleason ($23,000). Gregory has not yet fi led fundraising fi gures.

Money is not expected to be an issue because the city’s gener-ous matching fund law makes it relatively easy to raise enough money to run a credible campaign.

The opponents point to their individual experience as being right to lead the Council, and criticize Gerson for not effectively using the bully pulpit to get more for a district that includes the World Trade Center site.

Townley and other Gerson supporters say he was a steady force after 9/11 and continues to fi ght hard throughout the district, which includes Battery Park City, the Financial District, the South St. Seaport, Tribeca, Chinatown, Little Italy, Soho and Noho, as well as the South Village, Washington Square and most of the Lower East Side.

Gerson, who insists he is stronger politically than he ever was, said the endorsement loss was “disappointing,” but he said there were several contributing factors that lessened its signifi cance. He said Gleason “stacked” the club, although Gerson acknowl-edged it was not a violation to get new members to join the club six months in advance before the vote as Gleason did.

“This club does not represent the district,” Gerson said of D.I.D., adding he had won most of the other political clubs’ endorsements.

Gerson said there were potential voting irregularities since his side was denied access to the D.I.D. membership list before the vote, a charge echoed by a few other Gerson supporters.

Sweeney, the club’s president, said under the bylaws, mem-bers can view the list with advanced notice, but the Gerson camp did not make such a request before the vote.

Gleason’s people had their own criticism for Gerson, namely that he distributed his own publicly funded Council newsletter at a political event where he sought an endorsement.

Gerson said he did not print any extra newsletters for the event and it was not passed out to all club members as campaign literature, but merely made available to some who were there. He said he takes “whatever newsletters I have to wherever I go. It was not widely distributed [at the meeting.]”

Gleason was surprised by the explanation. “He’s an attorney,” he said of Gerson. “For him to use public

money for political purposes is against the law — and that’s exactly what he did. Case closed.”

At least 130 people attended the meeting, making it the larg-est one in the club’s 37-year history, according to D.I.D. founder Jim Stratton.

Josh Rogers

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BY ALBERT AMATEAUThe Rudin Organization showed the

Landmarks Preservation Commission on Tuesday the newest version of the resi-dential side of the St. Vincent’s redevelop-ment project with a scaled-down Seventh Ave. apartment building.

The tower proposed for the east side of Seventh Ave. between 11th and 12th Sts. was reduced in height by 15 feet — equiv-alent to one story — to 218 feet from the previous, 233-foot-tall version.

It was the second height reduction for the largest proposed residential build-ing on the east side of the current St. Vincent’s hospital campus. The original height of 265 feet was reduced to 233 feet last year.

The changes presented on June 9 to the L.P.C. followed some of the suggestions that Landmarks Commission members made at a May 12 L.P.C. meeting. In addi-tion to the height reduction of the large residential building, Dan Kaplan, the F.X Fowle architect for the residential compo-nent of the hospital project, said the five townhouses proposed for 11th St. would line up straight in the newest design, rather than follow the zigzag alignment of the previous plan. The townhouses — set back 9 feet from the property line to provide front gardens — would also have “celebrated” entrances, including cano-pies, round glass windows and rusticated

limestone trim with recessed doors.The four buildings of the present hos-

pital complex that are to be preserved and adapted to residential use will retain more of their current detail than in the previous design, Kaplan said. The bronze doors of the Nurses Residence on 12th St. would remain. The penthouses on the Raskob building on 12th St. and on the Spellman building on 11th St. will be lower and wider than they are now.

Because St. Vincent’s is in the Greenwich Village Historic District, L.P.C. is responsible for reviewing wheth-er any changes, demolitions and new construction are appropriate. Last month, the commission approved the demolition of the O’Toole building on Seventh Ave.’s west side to make way for a new 299-foot-tall, 21st-century hospital on the site. The approval followed L.P.C. granting of a hardship application by St. Vincent’s.

Landmarks Chairperson Robert Tierney on Tuesday said the commission would study the new design for the proj-ect’s residential side and have at least one more hearing, possibly as early as Tues., June 16, before the commission votes on the project.

Both the project’s hospital and resi-dential sides will require zoning changes and must pass the city’s uniform land use review procedure, known as ULURP, a nine-month process that includes City

Planning Department review and commu-nity board hearings with a final decision by the City Council.

However, Protect the Village Historic District, a group of neighbors opposed

to the siting and size of the proposed hospital, has filed a lawsuit challenging L.P.C.’s granting the hardship application on which the hospital approval is based. The suit is still pending.

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June 10 - 16, 2009 5

change, the “Las Vegas on the Hudson” scheme could rear its glitzy, high-impact head again.

In the past fi ve and a half years, two efforts by the Trust to fi nd private developers to repair and revamp the 14-acre Pier 40 have sunk. As part of the second effort, which capsized last year, The Related Companies proposed its Cirque du Soleil-centered plan that would have drawn millions of people to the pier annually. But Related couldn’t make its plan’s fi nancials work within the 30-year lease requirement of the Trust’s request for proposals, or R.F.P., for the pier. Related insisted on a 49-year lease, and, as a result, was disqualifi ed by the Trust in March 2008. This second R.F.P. process was formally closed six months later, when the Trust rejected a lower-impact, community-friendly collaboration by the Pier 40 Partnership and Urban Dove/CampGroup, featuring two or three public high schools and possibly a new private high school. The Trust believed this last proposal’s fi nancials would not work.

Meanwhile, the pier, desperately in need of renovation, continues to deteriorate. And so, at last month’s Trust board of directors meeting, former state Senator Franz Leichter proposed the board ask the Legislature to amend the Hudson River Park Act to allow a longer lease on Pier 40 — of 50 years. Taking many commu-nity members and park advocates by surprise, Leichter’s idea was not listed on the meeting’s agenda and was introduced as “new business.”

“We’re really handcuffed with that 30-year lease,” Leichter told his fellow board members. “I think we really need to lift that restriction, and more important, move ahead on Pier 40.”

Leichter said 160 parking spaces on the pier have been taken out of use because of the roof’s crumbling condition, and that unless something is done, more parking spaces will soon be lost — or worse.

“The piles are in bad shape,” he said of the metal supports on which the pier sits. “We may even have a situation where we have to close the pier.”

Leichter said there is “a glimmer of hope” the park act could be amended this year to address Pier 40’s lease.

“I’ve been told by one of the more infl uential legislators that it would be helpful if we had an expression of support” for the lease extension, Leichter said, not naming the legislator.

Of those park piers that are slated for com-mercial uses — to generate revenue for the park — initially all had 30-year leases under the park act, as Leichter explained it. In order to qualify for historic preservation credits, the lease for Pier 57 — which has a unique, fl oating caisson support system — was extended several years ago to 49 years, he noted. An exception was also made for Chelsea Piers, which got a long-term lease before the Hudson River Park was even formally established.

Diana Taylor, the Trust’s chairperson, agreed a resolution requesting a longer lease on Pier 40 is needed — especially because the community has been a stumbling block.

“Pier 40 has been such a problem because there has been so much opposition by the com-

munity,” Taylor said. “We have to do something, and I think it’s a great idea,” she said.

Joe Rose was the only board member who spoke up about discussing the idea with local park advocates fi rst to get an “appropriate consensus.”

“If the [Hudson River Park] Advisory Council has a concern about [extending] the lease, let’s hear their reason why,” Rose urged.

However, Taylor said no consultation with the community or any consensus was needed before the Trust voted.

“There will be opposition — this is New York City,” she stated. However, she added, “I agree we should work with the other groups, and maybe get a letter from them, too.”

Taylor said she would authorize the Trust’s staff to draft a letter to legislators seeking the 50-year lease and also direct the staff to work with the Friends of Hudson River Park — the park’s chief advocacy group — “to bring them along.”

However, Rose said, he understood the park’s advisory council was supposed to give its assent to these sort of changes.

Leichter disagreed, saying, “I certainly don’t like the idea that action taken by this board requires the approval of the advisory council.”

In the end, the resolution passed unani-mously.

“Thank you, senator,” Taylor told Leichter after the vote.

Arthur Schwartz, chairperson of both the park’s advisory council and Community Board 2’s Waterfront Committee, later said, “The fact that the Trust board passed a resolution without fi rst talking to the advisory council and the community boards and the elected offi cials in the neighborhood is both arrogant and poor politics. If there was ever a sure way of making sure there was opposition, this was the way to do it. People in the neighborhood haven’t approved a 49-year lease on principle — it really depends on the use.”

Schwartz said he and other park advocates were previously in favor of a 49-year lease for Pier 40 when the Pier 40 Partnership/CampGroup plan included the School Construction Authority building schools and supporting community uses on the pier.

Schwartz said he spoke with Leicther at the Friends of Hudson River Park’s benefi t the night before the Trust’s board meeting and told him the community would support a longer lease for those types of uses, but not for big

commercial development.Schwartz noted he was told by a Trust

offi cial that the pier is now losing $600,000 a year because so many parking spaces have been taken off line because of the decaying roof.

“I think there’s almost a conscious resolu-tion on the part of the Trust to let the pier deteriorate to justify a longer lease,” he offered.

It’s unclear whether the lease extension would be passed in Albany. The pier is in Assemblymember Deborah Glick’s district, and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver told The Villager he would defer to her on it.

“I don’t know what Deborah’s view is on it yet. She hasn’t told me,” Silver told The Villager when queried about the lease proposal last week. “But it’s in her district — and the [assem-bly]member is closer to it.”

Silver said that “maybe there’s a compro-mise” that could be included in a new Pier 40 R.F.P. process, but didn’t mention specifi cs.

He said the legislative session should end on June 22 — though possibly June 23 — and that there’s no chance the amendment would be “sneaked in” before the session’s end, as some park advocates fear.

“We never sneak anything in,” Silver stressed. “Any bill goes before the substantive committee.”

Glick said her offi ce had been getting “a lot of calls” after the Trust’s board meeting. The callers expressed concern about a Pier 40 lease extension, and were saying, “Don’t do anything that opens the door to Related,” she said.

Glick emphasized that lengthening the lease was Leichter’s idea, not hers.

Glick, too, spoke to Leichter prior to the board meeting, and said he told her the Trust might possibly need to put some addi-tional restrictions on Pier 40’s use along with extending the lease.

Meanwhile, Glick said, she told Leichter that “a lease extension doesn’t address an emergency.”

“The real question is how do we get the roof fi xed to preserve revenue for the pier?” Glick told The Villager. “Over 40 percent of the park’s operating budget is generated by Pier 40. Forget the pier’s development for a minute — it is an immediate, emergency safety issue and affects the park’s revenue stream.”

Plus, Glick added, in the current economy, many development projects are on hold.

Glick last year expressed qualifi ed sup-port for a longer Pier 40 lease, such as for a school, but defi nitely not to enable megade-velopment of the pier.

Last week she said, “Longer lease terms are not necessarily my fi rst choice, in general.”

Asked if she thought an amendment to the park act could conceivably be slipped through by the end of session, Glick said, “I’ve been here long enough to know that anything could happen. ... Sometimes things happen quickly. ... This is the sort of thing that’s a little more complicated because of its long history and the general care that was taken with the legislation.”

Trust resolves to ask for longer lease for Pier 40

‘Pier 40 has been such a problem because there has been so much opposition by the community.’

Diana Taylor,

chairperson,

Hudson River Park Trust

Continued from page 1

6 June 10 - 16, 2009

Villager photos by Jefferson Siegel

St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral was fi lled to capacity on Sunday for a celebratory Mass by Archbishop Timothy Dolan. At right, Dolan, standing on the edge of a raised platform, spoke with Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and his wife, Veronica, after the Mass.

BY LINCOLN ANDERSONArchbishop Timothy Dolan led Mass

at St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral on Mott St. on Sunday, kicking off a celebration of the 200th anniversary of the historic house of worship.

The cathedral’s cornerstone was laid in 1809, and it took six years to complete the structure, which is why the bicenten-nial recognition will last, not one, but six years. The church served as the New York Catholic Diocese’s fi rst cathedral until the new St. Patrick’s at 50th St. and Fifth Ave. was completed in 1879. In the early 1800s, Old St. Patrick’s congregation was mainly Irish, but also French, German and some Spanish. Today the cathedral is in what’s now known as Nolita, and the Masses are held in Chinese, Spanish and English.

The cathedral was packed to capacity last Sunday as Dolan, New York’s newly appointed archbishop, entered to a swell of applause, waving to his left and right, and passing under the drawn swords of the Knights of Columbus.

In his remarks, Dolan said he had been honored to visit the crypt beneath the cathe-

dral that morning, where his early predeces-sor archbishops lay entombed.

Dolan summed up the cathedral’s history as “two hundred years of love, service, fam-ily, solidarity and community.” But he added, “We can never allow the church we love just to become a museum, or just to become a memory. We are alive.”

Dolan said he was so proud of the old cathedral that he would ask Pope Benedict to elevate it to a basilica, sparking applause from the congregation.

“I just think it deserves it,” he said, cit-ing “endurance” and “faith.” Mentioning the early cathedral community’s “tenaci-ty,” he recalled how the Ancient Order of Hibernians had defended the church in the face of anti-Catholic mobs who sought to burn it down.

Remarks were also given by the church’s other religious leaders in both Chinese and Spanish. The church’s current pastor is Monsignor Donald Sakano.

Afterward, Dolan exited out through the front door, again to heartfelt applause.

Sister Kathleen Marie Aucoin, a member of the Sisters of Charity — the religious

order that used to run an orphanage at what is now Old St. Patrick’s School — was vis-ibly moved, a tear streak under her eye.

“This is home,” Aucoin said. “This is our cradle.”

Among the prominent offi cials attending the Mass was Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.

“It was an awe-inspiring event,” Kelly said afterward. “The church is beautiful, I hadn’t been it for a few years and it just sort of hit me again what a beautiful church it is.”

A group of three women in their 70s and 80s who grew up together on Mott St. — Millie Scarpulla, Jean Licari and Fonsina Pumilia — came back for the event, in one case traveling two hours. They recalled going down into the crypt as kids and bap-tisms and marriages in the cathedral.

Asked later about the fate of another Downtown Catholic church, Our Lady of Vilna on Broome St. in Soho, Dolan told The Villager he was sure his predecessor, Cardinal Edward Egan, made the right deci-sions. More than two years ago, the arch-diocese closed Our Lady of Vilna, citing its damaged roof and a dwindling congregation. But the church’s former members and its

supporters in the city’s Lithuanian commu-nity contend it is repairable and that it still had a healthy-sized congregation. They fi led a lawsuit against the archdiocese last year to reopen the church.

“After eight weeks, I’m hardly versed in all the particulars,” Dolan replied when asked about Our Lady of Vilna. “At a curso-ry glance, I would say that the decisions that Cardinal Egan reached were very sane.”

Told that Our Lady of Vilna’s supporters want to meet with him, hoping he’ll be more sympathetic than Egan, Dolan responded, “I’m always happy to meet with everybody, but if it’s to change the decision Cardinal Egan made, it might not be that productive.”

The celebratory Mass was followed by a parade up Mott St. that included everything from Civil War re-enactors representing New York’s Fighting 69th regiment to fl oats sponsored by Little Italy restaurants with smooth-crooning singers. Old St. Patrick’s School’s fl oat, designed by Macy’s, featured students sitting at antique desks. On a fl oat bringing up the rear was a 10-foot-high scale model of the star of the hour — Old St. Pat’s.

Dolan celebrates ‘200 years of love’ at Old St. Pat’s

June 10 - 16, 2009 7

th2525Thank You!Thank You!

8 June 10 - 16, 2009

BY RITA WUA petition against the New York City

Housing Authority’s new ban of dogs weighing above 25 pounds and three breeds — pit bulls, Rottweilers and Doberman pinschers — is now online, and public housing residents who love their pooches are rallying around the cause.

“These types of regulations unfair-ly discriminate against responsible dog guardians who reside in NYCHA and serve only to brand public housing resi-dents and their pets as vicious and out of control,” the petition states.

The petition also asserts that tenants were not properly notified of the new pet policy. Journal, the NYCHA newslet-ter, did not disclose the new regulations until its April issue, a month before the policy was set to go into effect. A good number of housing developments had not received mail notification. Also, because the information was available only in English, non-English-speaking residents were unaware of the proposed change.

The petition suggests extending the deadline for the policy’s implementa-tion to May 1, 2010, revoking the bans on specific breeds, removing the weight caps, including pet owners in the cre-ation of a new pet policy and stopping any evictions as a result of the new policy.

NYCHA had given the impression that as long as applications were submit-ted by the May 1 deadline, dogs above the 25-pound limit or from the three banned breeds would be grandfathered in. However, a number of tenants with dogs in these categories reportedly have had their attempts to register their pets rejected. Some of these residents have already received notices from manage-ment asking to discuss their tenancy, according to the policy’s critics.

Angel Seda, a community organizer with GOLES (Good Old Lower East Side), a neighborhood housing and pres-ervation organization, created the peti-tion based on tenants’ input from weekly Sunday meetings.

“We’re really hopeful that if we can get the door open to at least start talk-ing about this policy again, to protect the homes of residents who have tried to register and have been denied, we’ll be able to come up with a real solution and, hopefully, a format to take other policies that might be discriminatory in NYCHA, and really think about how do we create real solutions to these prob-lems — because NYCHA is public hous-ing, housing for the public,” Seda stated. “It’s not only the management’s respon-sibility or the chairperson of NYCHA’s board responsibility to run public hous-ing. The residents have to have some of

that responsibility.”Many residents feel it’s not the size

of the dog or the breed that’s the prob-lem but the owner. They want to “come up with some realistic solutions that don’t demonize pet owners or criminal-ize dogs,” the petition notes. They feel NYCHA should provide handouts on how to be a good pet owner, offer dog-training classes, create dog runs and install surveillance cameras. Reprimands should come in the form of education on the issue.

“Some support in an area where you might not have that much information on how to change the situation or make it different always becomes a great way to heal what the person has done to the neighborhood,” said Seda.

Kanielle, who only gave her first name, a resident of Bracetti Plaza, a NYCHA development at Avenue C and E. Third St., has a pit bull named Denim who is almost 2 years old. Kanielle said the dogs being targeted by the Housing Authority are scapegoats.

“There are dogs out there that are vicious — I’m not saying that they’re not,” she said. “But they come in every breed and every size. They used to blame the Dobermans in the ’70s, Rottweilers in the ’80s, and now it’s pit bulls. It’s not even the dog’s fault how they come out. It’s the owner’s.”

She feels the focus shouldn’t be on

dogs, but on more important issues.“There are people that are there that

don’t pay rent, are back in rent,” Kanielle said. “They have court dates. They have drugs going in and out of their house. It’s known that there’s been drug trans-actions, been arrested for drugs, kids taken away by A.C.S. [Administration for Children’s Services]. It’s all over the place. There’s no cameras. Nobody cares about the real issues, like broken doors, broken elevators, broken hallway lights. It’s dangerous. But they’re complaining about pit bulls or dogs over 25 pounds.”

Amarilis, a resident of the LaGuardia Houses who also only gave her last name, depends on her German shepherd, Jubilee, for more than just companion-ship.

“I have a lot of illnesses and that causes depression,” she said. “And if it wasn’t for my dog, I wouldn’t be going out there. I wouldn’t be an activist right now. These are things she is making me do. I’m more active. I’m more social. That’s what dogs do. They bring a lot of joy into people’s lives. It’s really unfair if you think about it. That’s the bottom line.”

Seniors, in particular, also are often very attached to their canines.

“Old people, they don’t have any fam-ily, they don’t have any protection. They don’t have any companionship,” said a tenant from the First Houses who did not want to be identified.

There have been claims of dogfights and aggressive dog incidents, but so far there has been nothing to back that up, the tenant said.

“Whether it does happen, no one real-ly knows,” the tenant said. “They have to give us some information before they make a statement like that. We haven’t seen what the statistics on dogfights on NYCHA property are, the complaints that have been registered at the man-ager’s office. Dogfight incidents happen-ing on NYCHA property reported to the police — we haven’t heard of any. It’s all speculation. If NYCHA wants us to have trust in them, they have to give us that information.”

Howard Marder, a Housing Authority spokesperson, in an interview a few weeks ago, said, “The [new pet] policy is a request from residents, resident leaders and the N.Y.P.D.”

However, activist Seda has a problem with that statement.

“There’s just way too much involve-ment from police in creating the laws and the policies at NYCHA,” Seda said. “There should be no police involvement. There should be more resident involve-ment. The Police Department having a part of the decision-making doesn’t make sense. Bring in the A.S.P.C.A. Bring in anybody. Bring in Cesar Millan, the Dog Whisperer.”

For more information about the peti-tion go to www.petitiononline.com/NYCHAPPE/petition.html.

Public housing tenants vow a dogfi ght over pet rules

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Villager photo by Rita Wu

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BY JULIE SHAPIROThe city will not begin reconstructing

Chatham Square this summer, after the unpop-ular plan drew months of criticism from the community and elected offi cials.

The city insisted this week that the delay does not mean the $50 million project is shelved, but offi cials would not say when the work would start. Several people said that the project is unlikely to move forward anytime soon.

“I don’t think they’re going to do anything anymore,” said Justin Yu, chairperson of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association. Yu met with D.O.T. Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan and other high-level D.O.T. staff last week to discuss the Chatham Square plan. “Defi nitely she said they would reconsider it, review it,” Yu said of Sadik-Khan.

Yu is one of many Chinatown leaders who oppose the city’s proposal for the compli-cated seven-way intersection. The city wants to realign the streets that feed Chatham Square, connecting East Broadway to Worth St. and the Bowery to St. James Place. The plan would cut Park Row out of the intersection, essential-ly making permanent the post-9/11 decision to close the street to protect One Police Plaza.

Chinatown advocates spoke out against the city’s plan immediately when the city began pushing it late last year. The advocates were concerned that the city’s traffi c and pedestrian improvements would be outweighed by the negative impact of the three-year construction

on local businesses. When the city decided to move ahead with the reconfi guration any-way, residents and business owners banded together, holding rallies and gathering petition signatures.

“I guess D.O.T. got the message,” Yu said. This week, the city acknowledged the delay

in the project, but denied that anything beside the schedule had changed.

“The project is not suspended or shelved,” said Scott Gastel, a D.O.T. spokesperson. “We are working on some timing and coor-dination issues,” he added in an e-mailed statement.

Gastel would not say when construction contracts would go out to bid or when work would begin.

The city previously said it was essential for construction to begin this summer, so that the intersection would be able to handle an increased fl ow of cars during Brooklyn Bridge work starting next year. Gastel would not say how the Chatham Square delay would impact the bridge work.

Since the bulldozers won’t be arriv-ing in Chatham Square anytime soon, Councilmember Alan Gerson said the com-munity now has time to work with D.O.T. on a plan that makes everyone happy.

“It’s a wonderful victory for the com-munity,” said Gerson, who protested the Chatham Square plan last month with Comptroller Bill Thompson. “This gives us a chance to regroup.”

Jan Lee, a Chinatown activist and owner of an antiques store, also was glad the project is on hold, but said it’s important to remain vigilant. Lee heard from a citywide offi cial that D.O.T. is only delaying the project to avoid widespread protests during election season.

If Mayor Mike Bloomberg gets re-elected this fall, “this project starts the day after,” Lee said, based on what the city offi cial told him.

Lee hopes the delay will give the Civic Center Residents Coalition time to build support for their alternate plan, which would leave the intersection largely as is, reducing the project’s scope, cost and duration. The plan, endorsed by Community Board 3, would add a new one-lane road directly con-necting St. James Place to East Broadway but would leave Park Row in its central position, in the hope that it will one day reopen.

In a seven-page letter to C.B. 3 last month, Luis Sanchez, D.O.T.’s Lower Manhattan bor-ough commissioner, said the community alter-native plan would provide some relief to the traffi c that snarls the intersection, but wouldn’t work as well as the city’s plan. Sanchez also said the city’s plan improves pedestrian safety, while the community’s plan doesn’t.

C.B. 3’s Chatham Square Task Force, which relied on the expertise of traffi c con-sultant Brian Ketcham, also recommended that the city add a second eastbound lane to Worth St.

In his May 1 letter, Sanchez agreed that widening Worth St. would improve traffi c

fl ow, and he said the city’s original plan included that. The city also wanted to add a third southbound lane to Bowery.

But the problem is that widening the streets would cut into park space that has both state and city protections, Sanchez wrote. In late 2007, D.O.T. asked elected offi cials if they would support removing some park space for traffi c improvements, and they did not support it, Sanchez said.

Now, redesigning the intersection would require another fi ve to seven months of work, Sanchez wrote.

“It is simply too late to consider such a fundamental change to the design,” he wrote.

However, Gerson said Chatham Square’s current work delay gives the city more than enough time to get approval to remove a small amount of park space and redesign the intersection. Gerson supports demapping the park areas — which are basically concrete-topped plaza spaces — and he expects that it would take no more than a few months to do so, especially since the city is adding more park space elsewhere in the design.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who has a large say in whether the park space is demapped, has not seen any specifi c propos-als and has not taken a position, said Caryn Adams, Silver’s spokesperson. In general, D.O.T. should work with the community to reach a consensus for Chatham Square, Silver said in a statement.

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Bridgetta Sweeney, 91, motherof head of Soho Alliance, D.I.D.

BY ALBERT AMATEAUBridgetta Sweeney, the mother of Sean

Sweeney, executive director of the Soho Alliance and a member of Community Board 2, died June 1 of complications of Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 91.

She was born Dec. 19, 1917, in a section of Glasgow, Scotland, known as Little Ireland, the daughter of Irish immi-grants to Scotland. Known as Jetta, she came with her husband, Daniel, and their 3-year-old son, Sean, to the U.S. in 1950, settling in Brooklyn. In 1977, she and her husband returned to Glasgow. A staunch partisan of the Irish Republican cause, she

demonstrated in protests during the 1980s against British treatment of imprisoned I.R.A. hunger strikers.

Her husband died of cancer in 1993, and in 1995 she returned to New York to be near her son. She lived in a studio in Tribeca at fi rst, then went to a nursing home as her Alzheimer’s condition pro-gressed, later moving in with her son in Soho as the disease worsened.

Nevertheless, she had good days, and as a member of the Downtown Independent Democrats club, of which Sean is presi-dent, volunteered in the political cam-paigns of Kathryn Freed and C. Virginia Fields.

Her funeral Mass was Sat., June 6, at St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral, 263 Mulberry St.

Villager fi le photo

Bridgetta Sweeney and Sean Sweeney sharing a laugh in 2000.

BY ALBERT AMATEAUA Brooklyn jury of seven men and seven

women last week found Darryl Littlejohn guilty of fi rst-degree murder for killing Imette St. Guillen, 24, a John Jay College student, after abducting her from a Soho bar on Feb. 25, 2006.

The June 3 verdict came after less than seven hours of deliberation at the end of a trial in which a young woman testifi ed about being kidnapped and molested by Littlejohn in Queens several months before the St. Guillen murder. Littlejohn, 44, is currently serving 25 years to life after having been convicted of the Queens offense.

Lawyers for Littlejohn indicated they would appeal the St. Guillen murder con-viction on the grounds that the testimony of a previous victim should not have been allowed in the trial.

Littlejohn had been employed as a bounc-er at The Falls, at 218 Lafayette St., where St. Guillen was last seen alive. Her bound and gagged body was found in the wetlands off the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn. DNA evidence on the blanket the victim was wrapped in was crucial in the conviction.

Daniel Dorrian, 36, manager of The Falls at the time of the incident, also tes-tified and acknowledged that he failed to tell police that he had ordered Littlejohn to help St. Guillen out of the bar. Dorrian’s family also owns Dorrian’s Red Hand on E. 84th St., where Robert Chambers, convicted in the 1986 “Preppie Murder” case, met his victim. The Falls went out of business shortly after the St. Guillen murder.

Littlejohn is scheduled to be sentenced July 8.

Soho bouncer is found guiltyof murder in St. Guillen case

OBITUARY

June 10 - 16, 2009 13

BY ALBERT AMATEAU Robert J. Healy, whose knowledge of

political lore and gift for gab were legendary in Democratic Party circles in Manhattan and beyond, died on Sat., May 30, at Calvary Hospice in the Bronx at 67.

Born and raised on W. 15th St. to a longshoreman’s family, he lived for several years with his mother in the Robert Fulton Houses in Chelsea and for the last 10 years in St. Margaret’s House, a senior residence on Fulton St.

“He was a political maven and raconteur extraordinary,” said Alan Flacks, a political blogger and member of the Three Parks Democratic Club on the Upper West Side. “If you wanted to know who were the can-didates in the Democratic primary in the Fifth Civil Court District in Kings County in 1990-something, he could tell you,” Flacks said.

“Anywhere I went — to a Democratic Party dinner or event — I’d see him, even in Queens, he was there,” said Carlos Manzano, a former president of the McManus Midtown Democrats and candidate for City Council in 1999 and for Manhattan Borough president in 2005.

“I don’t remember a conversation with him that wasn’t delightful,” said

Assemblymember Richard Gottfried. “He was something of an iconoclast and he had very smart observations about politics and policy that made a lot of sense.”

Robert Healy was a member of several Democratic political clubs. Louise Dankberg, president of the Tilden Midtown Democrats on E. 19th St., recalled that Healy was a dili-gent member of the Tilden club’s executive committee. “He came to all our events and knew everything and everyone, especially in judicial politics,” she said.

He was also a dues-paying member of the Chelsea Reform Democratic Club, accord-ing to Doris Corrigan, State Democratic Committee member. “I think he fi rst belonged to the Horatio Seymour Club,” she said, referring to the Tammany club in Chelsea that dissolved in the 1960s.

Jim McManus, whose grandfather found-ed the club of the same name, said Healy kept up with the ins and outs of Democratic politics and generously shared his knowl-edge.

Sean Sweeney, president of Downtown Independent Democrats, said that in a recent conversation, Healy told him he had a few Caribbean governments as lobby clients. Other friends said he was a lobbyist for healthcare industry clients, and no one was sure if he had a law degree.

“Everybody knew Bob, but nobody really knew him,” was the comment common

among his friends.Healy had been in poor health since last

December when he was found in his room at the St. Margaret’s residence after having fallen and struck his head. He had been hos-pitalized since then and was later discovered

to have a brain tumor.A sister, Katherine Kearney of Garnerville,

N.Y., survives, in addition to fi ve nieces and nephews and 10 grandnieces and grand-nephews. Redden’s Funeral Home was in charge of arrangements.

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The St. Mark’s Church Greenmarket, which opened on May 26, this year boasts new farmers and expanded space onto Second Ave.

The Greenmarket operates every Tuesday from 8 a.m. until 7 p.m. through Dec. 29 at E. Tenth St. and Second Ave. and new farmers will join as the season progresses.

The Greenmarket will present free events, including chef demonstrations and raffles, throughout the season. WIC and Senior Farmers Market Nutrition checks are accepted from July to November at all Greenmarkets.

An article in the June 3 issue of The Villager erred in stating that the Greenwich Village Historic District was the city’s first historic district. Simeon Bankoff, executive director of the Historic Districts Council, e-mailed The Villager to say the first historic dis-trict was Brooklyn Heights, designated in 1965. The Greenwich Village district was the 11th district designated in New York City, although it is the largest. The Villager regrets the error.

Correction

OBITUARY

St. Mark’s Greenmarket grows

Find it in the archiveswww.THEVILLAGER.com

14 June 10 - 16, 2009

In recognition of the Better Newspaper Contest 2008 awards recently won by The Villager and its sister paper Downtown Express and the two papers’ ongoing coverage of the community, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver on June 5 issued an Assembly proclamation for each paper. Silver presented the offi cial framed documents to Publisher

John W. Sutter at Community Media’s offi ces last Friday. The Villager’s proclamation stated, in part: “Whereas, businesses that inform and contribute to the vibrancy of those communities merit the highest commendation… Proclaimed, That The Villager and its talented and dedi-cated staff be commended for producing such a high caliber

community newspaper in the heart of New York City, a city known internationally for its exceptional newspapers; and we congratulate The Villager on its recently announced New York Press Association Awards, noting with pride the signifi cance of its professionalism, commitment to com-munity, and many contributions to the spirit of excellence which so distinguishes the City and State of New York.”

Silver said he looks forward to The Villager each week, and that he’s usually the one who takes the bundle of papers and unties them and puts them in the rack in his Grand St. co-op apartment building’s lobby. “This is my hometown, and you are my hometown newspaper,” he said. “I just want to add my name to someone who says, You’re doing a wonderful job.”

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Villager photo by Patrick Hedlund

Back row, from left, Troy Masters, Lincoln Anderson, Josh Rogers, Jason Sherwood, Allison Greaker, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, Julie Shapiro, John W. Sutter, David Jaffe, Dani Zupanovich, Cynthia Soto, Mark Hassleberger. Front row, from left, Francesco Regini, Cheryl Williamson, Colin Gregory, Jamie Paakkonen. (Missing from photo, Patrick Hedlund and Albert Amateau.)

June 10 - 16, 2009 15

BY PATRICK HEDLUND

WEBSTER’S WOES

The recently landmarked Webster Hall in the East Village is reportedly more than a half million dollars in debt.

According to a tipster on the blog Down by the Hipster, the popular E. 11th St. club/concert space is in rent arrears to the tune of $400,000, as well as owing an additional $100,000 in back taxes to the city and state. The club’s owners also allegedly owe untold amounts to creditors, promoters and alcohol distributors.

“They are looking for some kind of bail-out from the state (for the taxes issues) and the landlord (apparently they would like their rent lowered by half until things ‘get better’),” the mole noted on the blog. Lonnie Ballinger has owned the venue since 1982.

The 1886 hall — which originally hosted labor rallies and political protests before giving way to headline acts — continues to feature regular concerts and weekly events.

The building recently underwent a $2 million renovation and redesign that includ-ed a new recording studio and performance area.

TRUMP ‘TRAITORS’

Don’t deal with The Donald unless you want the Soho Alliance on your back.

The civic organization, headed by neighborhood gadfly Sean Sweeney, recently criticized the local quasi-business improvement district for partnering with the developer for a shopping event.

After the Soho Partnership announced that the new Trump Soho condo-hotel would be co-sponsoring the “Soho Stroll” — a weekend event that gives custom-ers discounts at neighborhood shops and restaurants, with the proceeds going to combat homelessness — the Soho Partnership wound up on the receiving end of Sweeney’s ire for its dalliance with The Donald.

“It seems like everyone in Soho, and much of Downtown, utterly disdains Trump Soho, yet the Partnership partners up with Trump and his Russian Mafia partners?” read an e-mail missive from Sweeney. “The Soho Alliance have been flooded with money from Soho residents and businesses for the lawsuit to bat-tle this ill-conceived project, but [Soho Partnership founder] Henry Buhl enters into a partnership with it? Apparently, Trump is looking for community accep-tance and for a few dollars the Partnership is providing it. It is shameful.”

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16 June 10 - 16, 2009

16THANNUALMEETING

Property Owners, Retail & Commercial Business Owners,Residents, Friends & the Community are invited to celebratethe 16th Anniversary of the BID where this year’s highlightswill be reviewed & next year’s plans revealed.

Thursday, June 18, 2009, 6–7:30 pmThe King Juan Carlos 1 of Spain Center53Washington Square South(between Thompson & Sullivan Streets)

Guest Speaker:Janette Sadik-Khan, Commissioner, NYCDOTTopic: Sustainable Streets: Greening NYC from Top to Bottom

Program:• Presentation of the First Norman BuchbinderAward for Building Restoration in theGreenwich Village Historic District

• FY 2010 Budget Presented• Introduction of new Directors

RSVP Required:212.777.2173 ore-mail bid@villagealliance.org

“I want to build a District Attorney’s offi ce that’s defi ned not by how we handle the big, high profi le cases, but by how we handle the tens of thousands of cases each month that won’t ever get written about—cases that don’t involve infamous acts or famous people, but whose outcomes mat-ter every bit as much.

“I’ll never forget that as your next DA.”

— Cy Vance

A passion for justice.The experience to deliver it.

Villager photo by Tequila Minsky

All aboard the High LineFirst graders from P.S. 11 in Chelsea helped with the ribbon cutting for the opening of the High Line park’s fi rst section Monday.

June 10 - 16, 2009 17

Girl snatches purse

Police are looking for a teenage girl in connection with a May 13 purse snatching on the Lower East Side that resulted in the victim’s falling to the sidewalk and suffering a head injury. The woman victim, 47, was walking in front of 62 Hester St. between Ludlow and Orchard Sts. at 1:35 p.m. when the suspect, described as a Latino girl between 15 and 17 years old with brown hair, ran up behind her and grabbed her bag, knocking her to the ground, police said.

The incident was classifi ed a robbery because the victim was physically injured. Phone the N.Y.P.D.’s Crimestoppers line at 800-577-TIPS (8477) or submit information about the suspect online at www.crimestop-pers.com.

Another A.T.M. gone

An automated teller machine with an undetermined sum of money was discovered missing on Friday morning June 6 from in front of 602 E. 14th St. near Avenue B, police said. Police said they were investigat-ing the theft but were unable to say how

the A.T.M. was spirited away. On April 21, Valentine Garcia, of Queens was arrested in connection with the theft of several A.T.M.’s on the Lower East Side and elsewhere by knocking them down with a white van and driving off with them. Garcia was being held pending a July 28 court appearance.

Wash. Sq. attack

Police arrested James Riddles, 40, shortly before 9 p.m. Thurs., June 4, and charged him with attempting to rob a man, 27, who was talking on his cell phone at LaGuardia Place and Washington Square South. Riddles, a Bronx resident, punched the vic-tim in the face, pulled a knife and demanded the victim’s wallet, but fl ed without taking anything, police said. Riddles was being held in lieu of bail pending a June 10 court appearance.

Bashed bouncer

Police arrested Daniel Menendez, 22, at 2:50 a.m. Sat., June 6, and charged him with

assault and possession of a controlled sub-stance during a confrontation with a bouncer at Woody McHale’s bar, at 234 W. 14th St. Police found an unspecifi ed quantity of marijuana on the suspect while he was being charged with punching the bouncer in the face after the vic-tim refused to let him into the bar.

Called his bluff

A man walked into the Capital One Bank branch on Sixth Ave. at W. Fourth St. shortly after 9 a.m. Thurs., June 4, and passed a note to a teller asking for $800, and saying, “I don’t want to kill myself.” The robber, described as blond haired and middle aged, then put a razor to his wrist, but fl ed when the teller refused to respond to the threat.

Stolen property

Police responded to a report of a strong-arm robbery of a man at Avenue A and East Houston St., at 11:30 p.m. Sun., May 31, where the victim, 23, told offi cers that two teens beat him and stole his cell phone. Police later arrested Joshua Igartua, 18, and a younger teen whose name was not released because of his age. Igartua was charged with possession of stolen property after the cell phone was found on him. He was being held in lieu of bail pending a July 8 court appearance.

Hit peacemaker

Two men walked into a store on Henry St. near Catherine St. at 9:40 p.m. Fri., May 29, greeted the owner, then hit him over the head with a chair and fl ed, police said. The victim told police that he had broken up a fi ght the day before between the two suspects and a third man.

Mugged on Mott

Two suspects ambushed and robbed a man, 77, as he was walking up to his third-fl oor apartment on Mott St. near Grand St. around 7:45 p.m. Sun., May 31, police said. The suspects waylaid the victim on the stairs between the second and third fl oors. One suspect put a hand over the victim’s mouth while the other went through the man’s pockets and took $250 in cash.

Driver hits offi cer

A driver who was pulled over at Watts and Thompson Sts. for a traffi c violation at 7 p.m. Mon., June 1, sped off while the traf-fi c agent was writing a summons, according to police. The side-view mirror struck and injured the agent’s hand. The driver has not been apprehended.

Albert Amateau

POLICE BLOTTER

18 June 10 - 16, 2009

“He said we can’t stand here,” one of the men said afterward.

“It’s a public street, ya?” added another, but didn’t put up any protest to being moved along.

This sort of police activity — moving along crowds, breaking up knots of people — is likely to be seen more frequently along Christopher St. this summer.

After a recent spate of assaults and mug-gings that have shaken the Christopher St. area — and with the hot weather coming and the accompanying droves of nighttime revelers expected soon — police are beefi ng up their presence along what they call the “Christopher St. corridor” and neighboring blocks.

The police response is partly due to complaints from residents and businesses — notably the neighborhood’s gay bars, who say they are suffering because of what’s hap-pening in the streets.

The Sixth Precinct recently received 18 new offi cers, increasing its manpower. In addition to the mounted offi cers, two new light towers, one at Christopher and Hudson Sts. and the other at West Fourth St. at Sixth Ave., illuminate the street. A mobile com-mand center is now posted on Christopher St. between Washington and Greenwich Sts. to coordinate area anticrime efforts. Finally, a mobile surveillance watchtower may also be brought in to provide “eyes in the sky,” according to Deputy Inspector Raymond Caroli, the precinct’s commanding offi cer.

Concern over the recent crime, as well as street conditions in general, dominated the Sixth Precinct Community Council meeting two weeks ago, as Caroli laid out the new plan and listened and responded to resi-dents’ and merchants’ pleas for help.

Caroli reassured people at the meeting that police have a fi rm handle on things.

“I think one assault is too much,” the deputy inspector said, “but if you put it in perspective, I don’t think it’s out of control. In the last month, all of these assaults have hap-pened along Christopher St. or within a few blocks of Christopher St.” Caroli referred to two stabbings, one bias incident — in which a gay man was attacked by a group of men

as he was trying to get into a cab at Sheridan Square and fell and struck his head — as well as some slashings and fi ghts.

As of the meeting two weeks ago, there had been 43 assaults this year in the

Greenwich Village precinct; ten of those were against offi cers as they were making arrests and the suspects fought back.

Caroli pointed out that the precinct last year had fewer assaults — under 100 — than any year since 1990. So, the percentage increase in assaults this year compared to last year needs to be put in context, he said.

“Statistically, I knew this year was going to be a challenge,” the precinct commander said, “to do better than that 18-year low.”

In short, Caroli asserted, the precinct actually has had “a very low number of assaults” so far this year.

Plus, offi cers are giving out more tickets than last year, he said: In the month prior to the meeting, Sixth Precinct offi cers wrote 353 summonses for such offenses as public

urination, open alcohol containers, pan-handling and unreasonable noise — a 40 percent increase from the same month last year, he said.

Overall arrests are also up sharply com-pared to last year, according to Caroli.

The added manpower of 18 more offi cers “is going to have a huge effect on [reducing] these incidents” in the Christopher St. area, Caroli said.

“I’m not just targeting Christopher St. because it’s there,” he explained of the new crackdown on the famous gay boulevard. “That’s where the assaults are happening. My idea is to get the crowds moving and out of the area as expeditiously as possible. Those who are enjoying themselves is all well and good. But those who are hanging out to do the bad stuff” police will work to move out or arrest, he stressed.

Dave Poster, head of the Christopher St. Patrol, a volunteer anticrime group that walks the area with the Guardian Angels, said he felt the new police efforts would send a clear signal:

“Anything goes here doesn’t go any-more,” Poster said. “Anything goes isn’t business as usual.”

But he said more help is needed from the area’s politicians. Noting it’s an election year, Poster urged people at the meeting to write and e-mail their local politicians and “demand that something be done.”

Charles Rice, owner of The Monster on Grove St., said his customers and employees are at risk when they leave the gay bar in the early morning, because muggers and others are lurking in and around Christopher St. Park.

Crackdown on Christopher St. after violent incidents

Villager photos by Q. Sakamaki

Mounted police on duty on Friday and Saturday nights are providing “omnipresence” along the Christopher St. corridor, according to Deputy Inspector Raymond Caroli of the Sixth Precinct.

Robert Ziegler, manager of Ramrod and Boots and Saddles gay bars, says the crowds of gay and lesbian youth on Christopher St. are hurting local bars’ business.

‘My idea is to get the crowds moving and out of the area as expeditiously as possible.’

Raymond Caroli,

6th Precinct commander

Continued from page 1

June 10 - 16, 2009 19

“I’m concerned there are these guys out-side giving hand signals to each other, letting them know that there are guys leaving with money,” Rice said. “There are prostitutes and hustlers watching who’s coming out.”

The area is basically out of control, as Rice sees it, and gets even worse during the Gay Pride festivities.

“There are young things getting off the PATH train that don’t even know their sexual orientation,” Rice said. “Pride used to be fun — but it’s now like apocalypse.”

Rose Mezzatesta, an artist who lives on Christopher St., said, “Christopher St. is literally under siege by gangs. There are girl gangs and there are boy gangs — and they’re fi ghting a turf war to sell drugs.”

She suggested the Port Authority close the Christopher St. PATH entrance to stem the tide of youth fl ooding into the neighbor-hood.

“The Parks Department is going to be pressured at some point about closing the pier,” Mezzatesta added, referring to the Christopher St. Pier.

Since Hudson River Park’s Greenwich Village section opened in June 2003, the beautifully redone pier has only grown in popularity among gay youth, for whom it has been a traditional stomping ground and safe haven.

Robert Ziegler, manager of Ramrod, a gay bar at Christopher and Weehawken Sts., said he was happy about the strengthened police presence, when a Villager reporter spoke to him at his bar on the recent Saturday night. As opposed to pointing to specifi c incidents of crime, Ziegler expressed con-cern about the general tone of the street. “Thank God,” he said of the police initiative.

“The kids are very rowdy. They run in here and yell and scream. People don’t want to come down here. They close the park at 1 a.m. and the kids don’t have anywhere to go. The kids are underage. They can’t go in the bars. They go up and down the street in groups of 15.

They don’t get out of your way. I walk in the street, I just don’t want a problem.

“I think most of them are from New Jersey,” Ziegler said. “You can be gay, but respect the neighborhood.”

Meanwhile, Weehawken St. “is like a hooker street,” he said, where transgender prostitutes occasionally knock out his lights to better ply their trade.

In short, Ziegler said, Christopher St.’s gay bars are hurting in tough economic times, and a major reason is the street scene. As a result, a number of the bars — Ramrod, Boots and Saddles, the Hangar and Ty’s — have banded together to form a coalition to survive. They’re taking out joint advertisements in local news-papers and teaming up on a fl oat for the Gay Pride march, among other ideas.

“If we lose the bars, we don’t have Christopher St. anymore,” Ziegler said. “Two Potato, we lost. Sneakers, we lost.”

The former Dugout almost went under as a gay bar location, but it was recently revived as Ramrod, he noted.

Badlands, the gay video store formerly just east of Ramrod on the West Side Highway, closed six months ago. Ziegler said he was hoping to rent the space and put another gay bar there, but can’t fi nd out what’s going on with the property. The former Sneakers is going to be some sort of museum devoted to a local artist, he said he’d heard.

A sign on the former Badlands announced “Store for Lease” and gave a phone number for Weinberg Properties. A woman who answered the phone there Monday said she was the owner, Weinberg, but wouldn’t give her fi rst name.

Asked about her plans for the location, she said, “I don’t want to comment.”

While Christopher St.’s bars are trying to hang on, Ziegler said, many gay bargoers now prefer to hang out in Hell’s Kitchen, at newer places like The Ritz, therapy, Posh and HK Lounge.

Nearby, two friends, Daniel, 18, and Byron, 19, paused at the corner of Weehawken St. to do a romantic pas de deux for The Villager’s photographer. Asked about the complaints — voiced by others as well as Ziegler — that the young gays hog the side-walk and won’t move out of the way, Daniel responded, “I think they should move.”

But he wasn’t talking about the gay youth moving over on the sidewalk, but local residents moving — as in, out of the neighborhood.

“I think they should move, because this is our place where we get to be us,” he said.

A group of lesbian friends hanging out on the Christopher St. Pier, drinking what they said was “soda” out of styrofoam cups, agreed some of the youth ought to behave better. In fact, they had been discussing it among themselves.

“It’s exactly what we were saying earlier,” said Maddness, 24, wearing a tan baseball cap. “We have mature adults and young kids down here.” The immature kids are the problem, she said, adding, “We only come down here to have fun, not start violence.”

Her friend Pinky, 26, wearing a red base-ball cap and with heavily tattooed forearms, gestured to some garbage on the pier’s lawn next to the bench they were sitting on.

“You see this right here,” she said disap-provingly. “The people from this neighborhood

Villager photos by Q. Sakamaki

Tasha, left, and Pinky enjoyed hanging out and socializing on the Christopher St. Pier.

Vogueing on Hudson St. after the Hudson River Park’s curfew.

‘We only come down here to have fun, not start violence.’

Maddness

Continued on page 20

20 June 10 - 16, 2009

don’t do that.”However, Tasha, 21, who was wearing neon

green hoop earrings and sported a more femi-nine style, said she didn’t feel the neighborhood was too accepting.

“I feel like I’m under surveillance by police,” she said.

Maddness was psyched for Gay Pride, when, she said, “They be butt naked down here.” She said she had a 3-year-old daughter through a sperm donor, but wouldn’t bring her to the pier, because the environment isn’t good for kids.

Mira, 20, was on the pier with another group of women, a mix of lesbians, straights and bisexuals, from New Jersey.

“We’re from across the pond,” she quipped. “This is where you get to relax,” Mira said

of why she likes to come to the Christopher St. Pier. “I think this is like one of the coolest places on earth.”

Bob Morris, a writer who lives on Perry St. and was walking his dog past the pier around 12:30 a.m., dismissed the fuss about the gay youth as way overblown. He’s gay himself, he noted.

“Nobody’s going to bother you,” Morris said. “These are gentle kids with big mouths. No one’s going to hurt anybody.”

According to Poster of the Christopher St. Patrol, one activity has actually decreased — prostitution. Transgender hookers used to troll

the Meat Market, but that area’s transforma-tion into an entertainment district drove them south into the Village’s quiet streets, for a time. Christopher St. used to have young male prosti-tutes, but not anymore, Poster said. The current prostitution scene is basically transgender pros-titutes along Greenwich and Washington Sts. north of Christopher St., but the numbers really seem to be down, Poster said. And whatever prostitutes remain are mainly coming out late at night, he added.

On the recent Saturday night when The Villager was out reporting, just one obvious transgender prostitute was spotted around Charles and Greenwich Sts., and said not to take her photo. She was seen later on further north standing on a street corner a block south of the Meat Market. It wasn’t clear if another, friendlier transgender who passed by along Greenwich St. was a prostitute or not. She said she could use some head shots from the photog-rapher since she was a model.

On Wed., June 17, at 7:30 p.m., a forum on West Village crime will be held in the basement of Our Lady of Pompei Church, 25 Carmine St. The forum is being sponsored by the Sixth Precinct Community Council, Community Board 2, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, State Senator Tom Duane and Assemblymember Deborah Glick.

For more of Q. Sakamaki’s photos of the Christopher St. nighttime scene, go to www.thevillager.com.

St. Mark’s Church celebratesGay Pride MonthSunday, June 28 at 11 a.m.

This Gay Pride Service will feature:Musique led by Mary Seymour, Renoly Santiago, Earl Giaquinto, Miss Velvita Louise a.k.a. James Solomon Benn, Jahneen, Larry Marshall, Nanette Natal

The Vissi Dance Theater with excerpts from “Butch Queen in Pumps”Courtney Ffrench, Artistic Director

The Rev. Winnie Varghese, Priest in ChargeJeannine Otis, Music DirectorSt. Mark’s Church in the Bowery

Join Us in Celebrating Life!

St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery131 East 10th St. at 2nd Avenue 212-674-6377 / www.stmarkschurchbowery.org

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Assaults are up, but prostitution’s becoming scarcer

Villager photo by Q. Sakamaki

A transgender person walking along Greenwich St.

Continued from page 19

June 10 - 16, 2009 21

BY RITA WUGabrielle Brown started playing base-

ball at age 7. She tried her hand at fenc-ing, ballet and other activities. But “only baseball really worked” for her, she said. Now 15, Gabrielle plays for the Jazz in the Greenwich Village Little League’s Senior Division. She usually plays second base or right fi eld but loves playing catcher. She has always been the only girl on all the Little League teams she’s ever been on, but this year she’s the sole female in the entire division.

This isn’t a problem for her. So far, everyone — friends, family, coaches and

teammates alike — has been supportive. For Gabrielle, she’s just playing baseball.

“When I’m in the batting cages, hitting and improving my skills, there are times where I’ll just go into this zone where I like forget about who I am and forget about everything else,” she said. “It’s just a really nice feeling. Then I’ll come home and be like, ‘Oh no, I have three hours of home-work.’ But you forget about all that when you’re playing baseball.”

It wasn’t until recently, while writing a paper about debunking stereotypes, that she realized that she was debunking a ste-reotype by just playing baseball. Unlike so many other girls her age who had dropped out of Little League completely or switched to softball, Gabrielle’s love for the game had made her immune to pressures or doubts.

“Softball is a stereotype in itself,” Gabrielle said. “The ball is bigger, the base paths are closer together, pitchers throw underhand — made by men who didn’t want girls to succeed to a high level.”

One of her shining moments was the fi rst time she played catcher. The fi rst-string catcher had broken his ankle and was out for the season. The player her team got to replace him was a no-show. The coach approached Gabrielle and said, “You have good hands, you know the game, you’re gonna play catcher.” All in all, she did a good job. But, for Gabrielle, what was most inspiring was being thrown into a situation in which she was inexperienced and having to prove to herself that she could do it. And she did.

A huge Yankees fan, she was on cloud nine after meeting Joe Torre at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Gabrielle looks up to the former Yankee skipper and con-

siders him a role model. “He managed to lead a team with

such great stoicism,” she said. “He really managed to handle the players and get a trust aspect going and realize that players weren’t robots. And he really emphasized the human aspect of the game.”

Gabrielle in her own right is a role model.

Her coach Ray Scardapane said, “Gabrielle is a very hard worker, who is highly motivated, and she is very athletic. Her enthusiastic demeanor and work ethic are a huge plus for the team. She accepts the challenge of playing against the boys, and although in some instances presented with strength inequities — such as a pitcher throwing 85-plus miles per hour — she never backs down.”

Besides playing ball, Gabrielle spends a lot of her time, as she says, “eating facts on baseball.”

“Anything I could get and I got a lot,” she said of her baseball knowledge. “Did you know that there are 108 stitches in a baseball?”

Her other true passion is acting. She is currently studying drama at LaGuardia Arts High School on the Upper West Side.

“I was defi nitely a star in the womb,” she said.

In the meantime, Gabrielle has one more year with the G.V.L.L. Senior Division, after which most players move onto high school or college ball. She’s hoping she can do the same. She’s waiting for the chal-lenge — another opportunity to prove that she can.

Villager photo by Rita Wu

Gabrielle Brown demonstrates the fundamentals — a level swing and keeping her eye on the ball.

‘Softball is a stereotype in itself — made by men who didn’t want girls to succeed to a high level.’

SPORTS

Little Leaguer loves the game and loves a challenge

22 June 10 - 16, 2009

EDITORIALProcess at Pier 40

Over the years we’ve repeatedly called for the Hudson River Park Trust to work more closely with the commu-nity, no more so than on the intractable, yet critical, issue of Pier 40.

The enormous, 800-foot-by-800-foot, three-level, for-mer shipping pier on the Hudson at W. Houston St. has been the subject of two failed redevelopment attempts within the past half decade alone. Meanwhile, Pier 40 needs immediate repairs — millions of dollars worth of them — for its corroded metal support piles and deterio-rating roof.

One hundred and sixty parking spaces — nearly a tenth of the pier’s total — are now unusable because of the pier’s continued decay and its rotting roof. As a result, about one-tenth of the revenue the pier produces for the park has also been lost, which is a serious concern since Pier 40 produces 40 percent of the park’s revenue.

Last year, the second failed Pier 40 request-for-proposals process saw The Related Companies unable to make its plan’s fi nancials work within the R.F.P.’s require-ment for a 30-year lease. Dubbed “Las Vegas on the Hudson,” Related’s plan would have included a Cirque du Soleil and movie theaters and venues for the Tribeca Film Festival, drawing 2 million to 3 million visitors per year to the pier, changing the character of both the park and surrounding neighborhoods.

Diana Taylor, chairperson of the Trust’s board of direc-tors, and other Trust board of directors, including the current and former Parks commissioners, Adrian Benepe and Henry Stern, clearly favored the Related scheme, feeling it was the only fi nancially viable plan and that, well, a circus and glitzy entertainment uses were appro-priate for Hudson River Park at Pier 40. But because the plan didn’t work fi nancially within the 30-year lease term, it was eliminated from the running.

The Trust then gave the Pier 40 Partnership, a com-munity-based group, and the Urban Dove/Camp Group team several months to collaborate on a joint proposal that included the novel idea of schools on the pier, along with sports uses, while retaining the pier’s central court-yard sports fi eld space as sacrosanct.

This plan seemed to us like the perfect solution for the pier. But as the economy started to cloud, the Trust pulled the plug on the R.F.P. process, claiming this last plan wouldn’t work. As she announced the R.F.P. was closed, again, Taylor said the Trust would probably have to request a longer lease.

At the Trust’s May 28 board meeting, urged on by for-mer state Senator Franz Leichter, the Trust unanimously resolved to seek a change to the state Hudson River Park Act to allow a longer, 50-year lease.

While a 49- or 50-year lease at Pier 40 is O.K., it must only be for the right use — not, for example, to enable a mega-entertainment complex like Related’s plan. In short, the Trust must work with local elected offi cials, park advocates, Community Board 2 and other stakeholders to craft an R.F.P. with terms acceptable to the community. The two main requirements should be to retain the court-yard fi eld and provide space for public schools. An R.F.P. that stipulates keeping the fi eld should deter another Cirque du Soleil proposal.

If our local elected offi cials feel the community is onboard with a new Pier 40 R.F.P. — that the Trust has tailored the R.F.P. to satisfy the community — then surely they will support a lease extension. Again, the lease’s length isn’t the issue: The use is the issue.

Let’s not put the cart (the lease extension) before the horse (crafting an appropriate R.F.P. that results in an appropriate use).

Changing the park act fi rst, without the community’s support and approval, will just lead to more delays and greater costs, only putting Pier 40 at even greater risk.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR‘Club DKNoise’

To The Editor:Re “Def Jam party was deafening, Donna Karan nabes

complain” (news article, June 3):Thank you for covering the problems that Donna Karan’s

studio causes for our community.How can Donna Karan consider herself a friend to this

neighborhood while she continues to erode our quality of life? I was surprised to read that she was actually present at the Def Jam concert. She was probably there for a few hours at most, while I endured two days of sound checks and two nights of thunderous music.

Ms. Karan must know that there are children living in the buildings directly across from and next to her building.

Should we really tolerate this noise because the worst of it is over by 11:30? My apartment was shaking! I made numerous calls to 311 during the daytime sound checks and the nighttime performances.

As there are frequent events in that space, it has become standard procedure for large moving trucks to noisily unload equipment early in the morning (sometimes arriving as early as 6 a.m.) and noisily reload late at night after the events. The large garage door to the main space creates a nightclub with a wall open to the outside. Even when the garage door is closed, the music is so loud that it drowns out TV or music in my apartment.

This activity does not belong in a residential neighbor-hood! When did she get permission to run a nightclub on this block?

Katherine Rachlin

Praying for some quiet

To The Editor:Re “Def Jam party was deafening, Donna Karan nabes

complain” (news article, June 3):Immediately after your article and editorial hit the stands,

a makeshift sign (scotch tape and white printing paper) was posted on the side door of Karan’s complex at 711 Greenwich St. at Charles St. The sign reads, “This is a sacred place. PLEASE ENTER IN SILENCE.” With this mentality, one wonders how serious the Karan camp is taking the issue. I took a photo of it. As of the morning of June 6, the sign remains.

Charles Amann

Cat was a gracious guest

To The Editor:Re “Pretty Boy, the Mayor of E. 7th, is mourned; He was

one cool cat” (news article, June 3):My wife and I were graced by his presence one evening

while dining outside at 7A about six months ago. Hizzoner Pretty Boy was a very gracious table guest and happy for any scraps we gave him from our table. R.I.P. Pretty Boy.

Adam Lenovitz

A sensitive subject

To The Editor:Re “N.Y.U. reveals plan for spiritual center on Washington

Sq.” (news article, June 3):When we read your article on the New York University

religious center building, there was no mention of the architects involved. As one of us is a retired member of the art community, we are particularly sensitive to the absence of credit for artists of every kind. For example, in the TV coverage of the new Reagan sculpture there was no credit mention of the sculptor’s name, another faux pas. Please be more sensitive to artists.

Irwin and Marilyn Horowitz

Editor’s note: Yes, that information should have been included in the article. The architects of N.Y.U.’s new Center for Academic and Spiritual Life are Machado and Silvetti Associates, LLC

Fountain is not a pool

To The Editor:The renovated sections of Washington Square Park

look great. It is wonderful to see people enjoying the park, including the newly renovated fountain. The other day I noticed families with small children in bathing suits laying out towels in the sun for a city version of a day at the beach. Many children and adults were splashing in the fountain. I have a concern, though, about the children who play in the fountain.

Continued on page 32

Paterson pulls the rug out from under police and fi refi ghter pensions.

IRA BLUTREICH

June 10 - 16, 2009 23

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BY FRANK MORALESIt’s spring 2009 in New York City and an unannounced

U.S. government plane streaks across town. Recollecting the horrors of 9/11, the incident scares the heebie-jeebies out of the citizenry. Meanwhile, U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer, while attending an April 18 “Tour of the Battenkill” annual bicycle race in Cambridge, N.Y., responds to a question regarding efforts here to establish a new 9/11 investigation. Lending his qualifi ed support to such an inquiry, he says that he’s positively disposed toward a new investigation into the events of 9/11, though his support for such a probe would depend on the form it would take. “I think it’s not a bad idea,” he said. “You know, you’ve got to do it in a good way, but, yes, I’d be for it.”

New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, for her part, recently joined her colleague and also recommended a fresh look at the events of Sept. 11, 2001. Commenting on May 27 to a young reporter who had suffered the loss of a loved one during 9/11, she responded to the question of a new inves-tigation by suggesting that “another review, or a fuller hear-ing” is warranted, especially given the number of questions put forward by victims’ families that remain unanswered. “I think those questions should be answered,” Gillibrand stated. She went on to affi rm that, “It’s important that every family member have every question answered.”

Schumer and Gillibrand are not the fi rst to call for a new (real) investigation of into the crimes 9/11. The list is long and it’s growing. A small sampling of some of the more notable adherents to this call include former President Jimmy Carter, who when asked if he’d support family members who want a new investigation into 9/11, stated, “Yeah, I don’t have anything to do with it, but I certainly would. It would be nice.” Former Senator Mike Gravel, who brought the Pentagon Papers to the U.S. Congress long ago, supports the idea as well. As does his friend Daniel Ellsberg, the military analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers.

Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee wants to see a new investigation, as does former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura. Ventura and other members of Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth (including Curt Weldon and Cynthia McKinney) are “calling for a new, independent investigation of 9/11 that takes account of evidence that has been documented by inde-pendent researchers but thus far ignored by governments and the mainstream media.”

On the international front, former Italian President Francesco Cossiga, U.K. Member of Parliament Michael Meacher, Japanese Diet member Fujita Yukihisa and former German Defense Secretary Andreas von Buelow have all expressed support for a new inquiry into the Sept. 2001 attacks. So has British M.P. George Galloway, who put it this way: “The failure of the Bush administration to properly investigate, maybe for self-serving reasons, because it would have shown them to be monumentally incompetent, or something more sinister than that, is another argument that

is beginning to be established.“We don’t know everything,” Galloway said, and because

“there are lots of questions,” there is “defi nitely the need for more investigation.”

The noted author Gore Vidal, prior to the last elections, stated, “I think one advantage of having a Democratic House of Representatives after the coming election will be that we can have a new commission investigate 9/11 and the events leading up to our attacks on two innocent countries, Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s about time that we begun to clean up our own house before we fi nd that an international tribunal has summoned our leaders to The Hague in chains to put them on trial.”

Why, even Lee Hamilton, ostensible co-chairperson of the federal 9/11 Commission, the body tasked with getting to the truth of what happened — which many now feel was set up only to concoct and rationalize the offi cial story in the fi rst place — even he admitted that their own commission was “set up to fail.”

Finally, let’s not forget, as Ralph Nader has reminded us, that the Bush “government didn’t even want to have an inquiry” at all. And let’s not forget that the inquiry the 9/11 Commission did eventually carry out — with ground rules set up by its executive director, Philip Zelikow, a Condi Rice confi dant — insured, according to Nader, that “they weren’t going to name names, or hold anybody responsible.” “So right from the get,” said Nader, the government-sponsored

investigation of 9/11 “was fl awed” and, consequently, “there needs to be another one, and the best place to have it is New York City.”

Well, apparently there are many who live and work here in New York City who think the same thing. In fact, 45,000 of them and counting! An organization called NYC CAN, or the New York City Coalition for Accountability Now (nyc-can.org), composed of family members, fi rst-responders and survivors, has gathered some 45,000 signatures toward a ballot initiative for this coming November 2009. The initia-tive would allow the voters of New York City to sanction a new investigation of 9/11, an investigation with teeth, with subpoena power and with a scope of inquiry that promises to leave no stone unturned.

In a sense, although NYC CAN takes no position regarding the facts of the case, calling only for a new inquiry, it appears to represent the global “9/11 Truth Movement” come home. Having spread its critical spirit and zeal for an honest render-ing of this most heinous crime, its truth has comes marching home, home to New York City, to the scene of the crime, come home in the form of a movement for a new investigation. Given the energy and support behind its efforts, NYC CAN just may succeed in putting the matter of an authentic investi-gation of 9/11 on this November’s ballot, and in the process, open up the mother of all cans of worms.

Morales is a member of 9/11 Truth

9/11 Truth comes home; Pols back new investigationTALKING POINT

At a vigil for captive U.S. journalists Euna Lee, 36, and Laura Ling, 32, in Washington Square Park, Danielle Chang placed fl owers for her friend Ling. Monday a North Korean court sentenced the women to 12 years hard labor. The pair were captured March 17 on the China/North Korea border while reporting a story either on female traffi cking or North Korean refugees.

SCENE

Villager photo by Corky Lee

24 June 10 - 16, 2009

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40th Anniversary Miracle Mets 1969 - 2009

Villager photos by Tequila Minsky

Something for everyone in the new High Line parkHigh Line walkers are encouraged to take off their shoes at one section and dip their feet in shallow running water, left. Others might be content with a more traditional park pastime, like sitting on one of the new park’s benches, right.

June 10 - 16, 2009 25

BY JERRY TALLMERJessica Dickey was on a treadmill and watch-

ing television when word of the Amish murders broke on the screen; right in front of her nose and across the nation.

The TV was attached to the Brooklyn YMCA’s treadmill. “It went like choong! right in front of me,” she vividly remembers.

A gunman had invaded a one-room school in the tiny community of Nickel Mines in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and there shot to death fi ve children — all girls — ages 6 to 13 (having fi rst ordered all the boys out of the premises).

This was on October 2, 2006. “Treadmills and television, two of the irregularities in my life,” says the seriously beautiful golden-blonde Jessica Dickey with a good-humored shrug; but there had been nothing at all good-humored or funny about her reaction to the traumatic slaughter at Nickel Mines, or the way the TV commentators on every channel chewed the whole thing over and over and over, extracting the last drop of sensational juice — “dissecting everything, adding detail after detail”— for the next 24 hours.

“I usually fi nd it very easy to look away, but with this one I couldn’t look away. I guess you could say I was grabbed and held by it,” says actress-cum-playwright Dickey, who is perform-ing all seven of the interlocking roles of ”The Amish Project,” her own good tough poetic fi ctional take on what happened that day in 2006 in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania — the state where she herself had been born and bred — and what perhaps lay, sexually and otherwise, behind the those killings.

But the sexual questions are very obliquely put.

“That’s right,” she says — and then, with a laugh: “What am I talking about? In rehearsals, that’s all we talk about.”

Not laughing: “Something about the Nickel Mines crime deeply disturbed and saddened me. Before Nickel Mines I’d been writing a play personally, for myself. ‘The Amish Project’ was the fi rst piece of writing I really put out into the world.

“Wrote the fi rst draft from December 2007 to January 2008, submitted it to The Fringe [New York International Fringe Festival] in February 2008, and it was accepted in May. Went very fast, actually; I didn’t think anything in theater could go fast.”

ANNA, age 14, to the gunman: “Sir, please shoot me fi rst.”

VELDA, age 6, sister of Anna: “Please shoot me second.”

And he did, and he did.You create those imagined children amaz-

ingly, said an admiring journalist.

“Thank you,” said the young woman who, so to speak, brought them into the world, and portrays them — little Velda with just a hint of a lithp —and their killer and the killer’s wife and everyone else.

The Nickel Mines bloodbath of October 2, 2006, would not have been quite so disturbing if it had not been perpetrated against a peaceful self-sealed community like the Amish — about whom the rest of us know very little.

Playwright Dickey invents a character — an “Our Town”-type historian named Bill North — to tell us something about the Amish:

Okay, fi rst of all, you need to under-stand

most people think that Amish is just Amish,

that they’re all alike. But see, that’s not exactly true.Some Amish use a computer for busi-

ness (battery powered), some don’t…So while on this side of the cultural

fence the Amish appear “all alike” (via their common symbols, such as bonnets and buggies), the truth is there are infi nite varieties

in howeach district negotiates being Amish in a modern world.

“The Amish Project” was workshopped at the Cherry Lane Theater. The play touched writer Dickey’s literary agent, Morgan Jenness, who moved it along. Its director then and since is Sarah Cameron Sunde. About a week before

the opening of last year’s Fringe production, playwright and director went together to Nickel Mines to see what they could see.

As opposed to Moisés Kaufman’s “Laramie Project,” which had a team interviewing dozens of residents of the town where college student Matthew Shepard had been crucifi ed on a Wyoming fence by two drunken homophobes, Dickey and Sunde “didn’t try to talk to anyone. We just looked.”

There was a logical reason for such limita-tion. Or a logical barrier: “The dichotomy between something that happened” — i.e., real-ity — “and then the play” [i.e., something imag-ined]. “I didn’t want to bring them together.”

But just looking had its own messages. That one-room schoolhouse, for instance, was no longer there.

The Amish had torn it down one week after the killings, and would presently build a New

Hope schoolhouse elsewhere.“As if saying: ‘We don’t want to remember

this.’ There’s now just a little fi eld, hard to fi nd, where the old school was. And three maple trees left standing to mark the spot.”

Like the clump of trees at the Bloody Angle — the High Water Mark — at Gettysburg?

“Yes, like that.”Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, just above the

Mason-Dixon Line and next door to Gettysburg, is Jessica Dickey’s hometown. She was born there — to a social worker mother, a gym teacher father — on a September 19th, she says, stopping short of giving the year.

“I mean I already admitted I was on a tread-mill,” she ventures, handing over any further defense of the matter to a pair of astonishingly blue-on-blue eyes.

She earned her BFA from Boston University, alongside a year at LAMDA, London’s Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.

She lives in Brooklyn with her fi ancé, actor Jerry Richardson, and is at work on a new play, “Yellow,” inspired by Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1891) — brought up to date and to “an unlikely relationship between an American woman and a Bosnian man” who survived the concentration camp at Omarska.

I don’t know if there are any children in it. If there are, they will be worth a look and listen.

VILLAGERARTS&ENTERTAINMENTA ‘good, tough, poetic fi ctional take’ on traumatic slaughterPlaywright mines insight from the unknown

Photo by Chia Messina

Jessica Dickey, who wrote and stars in “The Amish Project”

THE AMISH PROJECTThrough June 28

Written and performed by Jessica Dickey

Directed by Sarah Cameron Sunde

At Rattlesnake Playwrights Theater

224 Waverly Place (between W. 10th & Perry Streets)

(212) 868-4444 or www.rattlestick.org

THEATER

“THE ART OF BEING STRAIGHT” (+)

This fi lm, which runs only 70 minutes, is about the lives of young men and women who travel to Los Angeles looking for work. Some pair off and others hang out together. The young man most admired for his hetero-sexual activities is Jon (Jesse Rosen, who also

wrote the script and directed the movie). It turns out, Jon is sexually confused. He is taken to bed by his boss, Paul (Johnny Ray Rodriguez), head of the advertising fi rm for which Jon works. Jon fi nds the experience enjoyable.

Those looking for heavy homosexual or heterosexual sex won’t fi nd it in this mod-est fi lm, and viewers will be disappointed if they are seeking vicarious sex as onlookers. However, those wanting to see a fi lm dealing with the subject of homosexuality — there being so few in mainstream theaters — will

KOCH ON FILM

Continued on page 28

26 June 10 - 16, 2009

BY STEPHANIE BUHMANN

Claire Oliver Gallery is currently featur-ing a site-specifi c installation by the Russian artist Georgii “Gosha” Ostretsov — who has been part of the Moscow art scene since the mid-1980s. Eclectic, and as visually overwhelming as it is enticing, “Coolville” is comprised of painted, mural-sized can-vas comic strips that sparkle through vivid color and form. Arranged along the walls, suspended from the ceiling, and contrasted with the occasional life-size fi gurative sculp-ture, the paintings have not only taken over the gallery’s exhibition space; they’ve trans-formed it into a science fi ction wonderland.

When asked how the concept for “Coolville” developed, Ostretsov explains that it began with his search “for the mean-ing of the word ‘beautiful’ on the Internet.” Using the Russian to English dictionary, “the word ‘Coolville’ came up and the beautiful Utopian village in the gallery” got its name. Despite a sense of playfulness, the mood here is serious and the tone satirical (an “enduring characteristic of Russian culture” according to the press release). Ostretsov’s world is one charged with political energy and rebellious spirit. In this project, the biggest challenge (besides creating an entire utopian city in the middle of a gallery space) was “to explain the story of the Russian art-

ist to a new American audience.” Although he has exhibited extensively

in Russian and Europe, “Coolville” marks Ostretsov’s U.S. debut — a fact which has a keen impact on this particular project. While as a conceptual artist Ostretsov expresses his ideas in various forms, “Coolville” aims to combine Eastern and Western ideas. Ostretsov draws inspiration from the early 19th century literary works of Gogol, the absurdist’s writings and the theatre of OBERIU (a short-lived avant-garde grouping of Russian post-Futurist poets in the 1920s and 1930s) — as well as from the seminal narrative installation works by the Russian-American conceptual artist Ilya Kabakov.

Most importantly, “Coolville” employs a

style derived from Pop Art and Western com-ics — which Ostretsov views as a “universal language between Eastern and Western cul-tures.” Indeed, they are easy to follow and comprehend, as their narratives unfold in a largely visual manner.

However, to Ostretsov (who was born in Moscow in 1967), there is another impor-tant aspect. “In the Soviet Union, comics were prohibited as capitalist propaganda,” he explains. The Bolsheviks had banned comics due to their “bourgeois” Western ori-gins. Despite occasional appearances in chil-dren’s magazines like “Murzilka” or “Veselie Kartinki,” they continued to exist largely in the underground — until the Perestroika era in the late 1980s. It was because of their controversial if not secretive status that Ostretsov, became “attracted to comics as an antagonistic way to express [himself].” They were not a part of the everyday, but instead contained a taste of revolt. Cartoons are not “pop but protest!” as Ostretsov puts it.

“Coolville” is a bizarre realm, where the artist takes on the role of a superhero. In his hands, art becomes a powerful tool against all kinds of evil, enabling him to wrest con-trol from a reviled regime and create a new world. It is a story of struggle, victory and progress. But the struggle to push ahead is not without its emotional challenges, and Ostretsov occasionally masks his superheros as to provide them with an extra layer of protection (or, as he admits, to establish a barrier fear; the artist manifests as a protec-tor or teacher to society at large).

When asked what kind of teachings his superheroes might like to convey, he explains that he would like to “show a way how people could live tomorrow.” Pondering that every day there emerges new examples of how this futuristic life might materialize, he wonders if the destruction of patriarchal superiority and its replacement with a matri-archal system could be the answer. Ostretsov argues that the most important requisite of a leader should be a general love for the people. As women give birth to boys and girls, and so have been equipped by nature to love members of both sexes equally, they might be the solution.

“Coolville” is part of Ostretsov’s ongo-ing New Government project, on which he has been working since the late 1990s as a commentary on the nature of power and despotism in post-Soviet Russia. Based in a Euro-Christian culture, Gosha’s heroes “rally against ternary and The New Government [and] through comics this story can be eas-ily told.” In the past he stated: “As the acting organ of power, the New Government must demonstrate its operative status; closely watch over the mass media, so that the reality of

historical events does not undergo distortion; react quickly to disasters; carry out a policy of scientifi c-technological progress; provide for the evacuation of the globe’s population in the event of planetary catastrophe; vigilantly ensure general adherence to the Constitution; act as a punitive power; give some attention to the development and support of cultural-educational activities; and engage as much as possible the intellectual potential of man.”

This summer, more can be seen of Ostretsov’s work as the artist will represent The Russian Federation in the 53rd Venice Biennale. For the biennial, which runs from June to November, Ostretsov has put together an autobiographical installation in which he “constructed the house where [he] lives and in the last of six rooms sits a self-portrait robotic sculpture who draws an eternal ‘0’ on the table. This symbolizes both infi nity and noth-ingness. By making art I cheat death — It will live on past me.”

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Russian artist: cartoons are protest, not pop Utopian wonderland charged with political energy

Image supplied by the artist

“Attack From Within” by Gosha Ostretsov

GOSHA OSTRETSOV: “COOLVILLE”Through June 27

Claire Oliver Gallery

513 West 26th Street

212-929-5949 or www.ClaireOliver.com

ART

The paintings have not only taken over the gallery’s exhibition space; they’ve transformed it into a science fi ction wonderland.

June 10 - 16, 2009 27

BY DAVID NOHThe New Dramatists’ lunch (May 19)

at the Marriott Marquis paid touching trib-ute to the late Horton Foote (1916-2009). Present at the event were his children, Hallie, Daisy and Walter, who, when their father died last March, were the fi rst to call New Dramatists to tell them they wanted the show to go on, regardless. Foote led a long, exemplary life, both in and out of the the-ater, and I will always treasure the memory of meeting this courtly Southern gent dur-ing the Off-Broadway run of “Dividing the Estate.” He sat at the back of the theater for every performance, admitting it was out of “sheer egomania.”

This event, as always, was packed with past and present Tony nominees. As much as I adored Karen Olivo in “West Side Story,” Haydn Gwynne deserves to win Featured Musical Actress for “Billy Elliot.” She cre-ated the role from the ground up and is in the Marian Seldes –– whom she was talking to –– tradition of great character actresses, bringing real heart and truth to this some-times overproduced show.

When I mentioned this, she said, “I’m going to go and cry now… I started the show in London in the very early stages, so I know where the bodies are buried. I hadn’t done a musical since ‘City of Angels’ in 1993. We got the most fabulous reviews and ran for eight months, but it never attracted the right audience. If we’d fi rst played at the National Theatre and then transferred into the West End it would have been better. Audiences needed to know that it was very much a sophisticated, thinking piece. That audience does exist in London, but you have to tell them that that’s what the show is, because you don’t want to attract the wrong audience who’ll think, ‘This is too heavy.’

“In London, we look to Broadway as the birthplace of musicals. ‘Billy Elliot’’s suc-cess is something we don’t take for granted, because for us to bring this show here is like an American company bringing Shakespeare to Stratford-on-Avon. Broadway is where this particular art form was born and thrives, and we hold that in reverence. For instance, when “The Producers” came over, people could not wait to see it… and loved it!”

Gwynne’s character, Mrs. Wilkinson, is an update of those terrifi c old ballet mis-tresses with the pounding canes that Maria Ouspenskaya and Judith Anderson once played in fi lm, but she said, “Maybe because I’m not a dancer and I haven’t gone through all that, I started more with my imagined view of that woman and how she fi ts into the story, and the way everybody is leading a sort of disappointed life.”

The three “Billy Elliot” boys were prop-erly be-suited and awestruck, their responses fi lled with “Amazing!,” which Marian Seldes had just informed me was the new “awe-some.” Latin-looking David Alvarez was especially cagey when I asked him what was his background was. “Ballet.” “No, I meant ethnically – Hispanic?” “I’m Canadian.”

O-kay. It kind of reminded me of when Brad Wong became B.D. Wong in “M. Butterfl y,” some producer’s idea of throwing off the scent in that prehistoric time when gender-fucking was theatrically groundbreaking and not a given.

Far more expressive was the delight-ful, non-nominated David Bologna, who plays Billy’s engaging cross-dressing friend, Michael. When we were gay little boys, who didn’t love to sneak into Mommy’s closet –– I remember being so proud when I cre-ated a bustle out of her bathrobe, and wish I’d seen someone like Michael onstage back then. Bologna said, “It’s a really fun role to play. I see Michael as a crazy, eccentric guy who isn’t into your typical sports, but he’s okay, expresses himself, and loves it. I never dressed up myself. I wasn’t a jock either, but when I was younger I did like to sing and dance.

“A lot of kids were at the ‘Billy’ auditions, but for my callback, there were only twelve of us. It was neat because they tried to make it feel as lightweight as possible and not like an audition –– to not put that stress on us –– which was really good, as we weren’t nervous or stressed out. Being in the show is an incredible feeling, especially at the end when I tell the audience to give me more applause. You have them in the palm of your hand and you can do anything. I think that was the part of the original choreography from London. I’m from Austin, Texas, but born in New Orleans. I think when I moved up here I just lost my drawl, but we got that Southern hospitality. I had never studied any formal ballet or tap, was actually an Irish dancer, and that really helped with my tap.”

John Glover from “Waiting for Godot” cleared up a pressing mystery for me, espe-cially in these Swine Flu-scared days. What was that mucus-y substance that kept drool-ing out of his nose and mouth whenever he was onstage? “Mucus! I just push it out every night. Some nights I get more than others. It’s all from the text. Estragon talks about how Pozzo slathers. Someone equated me with that horse in ‘Gone with the Wind’ Scarlett beats to death. Drool is drool.”

The divine Chita Rivera, the sexiest woman in the room, still lovin’ the gay cruises she gets booked on, was fascinated to hear about my spotting Carol Lawrence and Grover Dale taking the subway to the “West Side Story” opening night party, and gave me her honest but strictly off-the-record opinion about this current production.

Lynn Cohen, familiar to many as Magda, Cynthia Nixon’s nanny on “Sex and the City,” is the always fun, unoffi cial hostess of the press room, and told me, “I just fi nished ‘Chasing Manet’ with Jane Alexander and am going to do a fi lm next week with Chris O’Donnell –– he better be cute! As for me being in the next ‘Sex and the City’ movie, from your mouth to God’s ears… I loved doing the role. It’s the best because they’re

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Great Jones Repertory Company - AsclepiusWritten & Directed by Ellen Stewart

June 11-14, 2009 / Thursday-Sunday at 7:30

BLUE DAY Written & Directed by Alessandro Corazzi

June 11-14, 2009 / Thursday - Saturday at 8:00pm / Sunday at 2:30pm

La MaMa La Galleria ~ 6 East First Street NYCTAINTED LOVE from Visual AIDS

Curated by Steven Lam & Virginia Solomon Featuring: Luis Camnitzer, Jose Luis Cortes, fierce pussy,

General Idea, Gran Fury, Matt Lipps, Catherine Lord, Charles Lum, Ivan Monforte, Wu Ingrid TsangJune 11-28, 2009 / Thursday - Sunday 1-6 pm

Opening Reception June 5th, 6-9 pm

Poetry Electric ~ William Electric Black, Series DirectorWHAT I HAVE LEARNED by Jeremy Lardieri

June 16, 2009 at 8:00pm

The Poet and the LumberJackThe Two Masks of Playwright Mike Gorman

Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 8pm

Coffeehouse Chronicles - Chris Kapp, Series DirectorLIVINIA CO-OPSaturday, June 13 at 3pm

Talking about the Tonys, two weeks beforeThe boys of ‘Billy,’ ‘Godot’ mystery mucus, Egyptian gay director

DAVID SCHINEMANN

Haydn Gwynne with Tony Award winner David Alvarez in “Billy Elliot.”

Continued on page 28

28 June 10 - 16, 2009

appreciate this one, truncated and minimal-ist as it is. “The Art of Being Straight” is playing at the Quad Cinema on West 13th Street in Manhattan.

“AWAY WE GO” (-)Over dinner, after seeing this fi lm,

my companions P.A. and P.B. said they had contemplated leaving the theater dur-ing the fi rst 20 minutes. They eventually became interested in the unfolding story. I felt the same way at the beginning of the picture, but leaving was not an option since I had to report the facts to my read-ers. Although I occasionally appreciated a scene or a bit of dialogue, on the whole, I thought the entire movie was a pointless mess.

New York Times reviewer A.O. Scott gave the fi lm a far better, although nega-tive, review than it deserved. He wrote, “The smug self-regard of this movie, direct-ed by Sam Mendes from a script by Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida, takes a while to register, partly because Ms. Rudolph and Mr. Krasinski are appealing and unaffected performers and partly because the writing has some humor and charm.” Yet at the end of his review, Scott brilliantly wrote, “Does it sound as if I hate this movie? Don’t be silly. But don’t be fooled. This

movie does not like you.”The two leads, Burt (Jon Krasinski) and

Verona (Maya Rudolph), are excellent in their portrayals of a young man thrilled he is to become a father and a woman feel-ing irritable and uncomfortable during her pregnancy. The picture becomes a road fl ick when the unmarried couple decides to drive across the country to visit relatives and look for a place to live. Among the cast of char-acters they visit is Lilly (Allison Janney) for whom Verona once worked. Lilly, who lives in Phoenix, is a loud, uncaring woman with respect to her own children. This is a very different role for Janney from the character she portrayed on “The West Wing” television show. Another person Verona and Burt visit is LN (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a disliked profes-sor at a Madison, Wisconsin, university.

(An aside. In real life, Maggie Gyllenhaal lives with her daughter and husband, Peter Sarsgaard, in the Village, where I live. Further, before going to see this movie, I had lunch at Balthazar in Soho, and in walked her brother, Jake Gyllenhaal, with his lady friend, Reese Witherspoon. This review is beginning to read like a Page Six item in the New York Post.)

Couples similarly situated may enjoy the relationship between Burt and Verona. I kind of liked them but not enough to suffer all that accompanied them. “Away We Go” is not a terrible movie, but for me, seeing it was a waste of time.

Artists & Writers Residencies

www.vermontstudiocenter.org

Koch on FilmContinued from page 25

all like a repertory company and Cynthia is a great actress. I based Magda on my grandmother from the Ukraine. You pull up everything from the past.”

I ran into Martin Pakledinaz, Tony-nominated for costume design for “Blithe Spirit,” and he told me, “Dressing Angela Lansbury –– how intimidating was that at first? She’s such a style icon from ‘Mame,’ ‘Manchurian Candidate,’ and ‘Murder, She Wrote,’ in those simple suits which are really not that simple to execute. She couldn’t have been easier. She asked me, ‘What did you think of how Anthony Powell dressed me in ‘Death on the Nile’? And I said, ‘Wow, you want to go that high, huh?’ So we went for it and, regarding her Mrs. Lovett/ ‘Sweeney Todd” braid buns over the ears, that was her idea. I, too, mentioned the similarity to ‘Sweeney,’ but she said, ‘No one will remember that!’ She brought in a picture of her nanny who wore her hair that way, and that always stayed with her.”

Rupert Everett was very particular about his costumes and fit, and remarked that he had never had so many costume meetings on any project. He specified no smoking jacket, as that would look “too gay.” Pakledinaz dressed Jayne Atkinson’s ghostly Ruth in a similar tailored suit

to what she wore in life: “They usually bring her back in an evening gown, which doesn’t make much sense,” while Christine Ebersole discovered the after-life effect of her ethereal chiffon sleeves in tech rehearsal. “She just started playing with her sleeves over her hands and said, ‘Look at this!’ Those are the moments when a designer goes, ‘Thank you, God!’”

Julie Halston, with her devastating, desert-dry delivery, had everyone –– as they say on Long Island –– hysterical laughing, at her show at Birdland (May 19), with her accounts of growing up in Comack, where she mistook her father’s testicle during an Easter Egg hunt. (“I don’t remember dye-ing a pink one?”) Being Italian, she was once reduced to childhood tears when class teasing forced her to ask her mother if they were Mafia: “Would we live in a shithole like this if we were?” (Take that you broads from “The Real Housewives of New Jersey” –– and how much of a guilty pleasure is that hor-ror show?)

Halston had the gayest night in the history of the world when she went as Liza Minnelli’s guest to the “first Barbra Streisand Farewell Tour” at Madison Square. Imagine massed hordes of people davening at the sight of Liza, and then having to stand guard in the public ladies room for her (she was refused the usage of Streisand’s private loo), while some

woman screams, “It’s Liza! I can’t pee!” and, later, Richard Simmons, writhing in agony on the floor in a red sequined jumpsuit, shrieking “Barbra won’t see me! Why?!”

BAM Rose Cinemas is presenting a ret-rospective of Egyptian filmmaker Youssef Chahine (1926-2008). Series curator Elliott Stein, who will be speaking on June 3, told me, “He was a leading direc-tor in Arab cinema, making movies about Israelis who fuck Palestinians, Muslims who fall in love with English colonials they’re supposed to kill. In his autobio-graphical trilogy, ‘Alexandria… Why?’ he depicts himself as being bisexual, and there’s also his critique of Muslim funda-mentalism in several films. These are very ballsy things to do in movies financed by the Egyptian government –– just to go out in the world and survive assassination after doing all that.

“As a filmmaker, his films are often really rough but it’s the ballsy quality about them which compels. That’s the one adjective that really describes him to me. His films are not hard-core, but it’s obvi-ous what’s going on. There’s not much real nudity, but there are gay romances and affairs which are physical. How far could he go? But he went as far as he could. He played a depraved sex maniac in his breakthrough film, ‘Cairo Station,’ a candy vendor who goes around killing

girls out of sexual frustration, and he’s very good.

“Twenty years ago, I got an invitation from Georgetown University to talk about his films with him during a weekend ret-rospective. I spent a lot of time with him, had drinks, went to the Egyptian cultural attaché where he was staying. He gener-ally traveled with handsome young men. Walter Reade had a retrospective on him ten years ago, and already he was a little shaky but he was okay, and we had coffee and caught up. He died last year. The New York Times obits for film are usually ter-rible, but his was very good, the only one I’ve ever seen by A.O. Scott, their first string critic.

“He was a magnificent, formidable figure of Arab cinema for more than half a century, bursting with energy and force, and very political towards the end, very anti-Israel in terms of their foreign policy toward Palestinians. But he had a lot of Israeli friends, and his films were shown in Israel, as well as gay film festivals everywhere, extraordinary for someone from Arab cinema. He was an outspoken critic of Egyptian President Mubarak, as well as American foreign policy. When asked in an online interview whether he thought Egypt would become more free and liberal in the near future, his reply was, ‘No, neither in the near nor in the faraway future.’”

Talking about the Tonys, two weeks beforeContinued from page 27

June 10 - 16, 2009 29

AESCLEPIUS Who says there are no new tales to tell? To fi nd one, La MaMa E.T.C. went considerably far back in time to come up with “the fi rst play to tell the story of the ancient Greek god of medicine and healing.” Conceived, written and directed by the legend-ary Ellen Stewart, “AESCLEPIUS” tells how the son of sun god Apollo and mortal maiden Coronis transcends to his rightful place in the heavens because of his great work in medicine. As achieve-ments go, it’s not like he won American Idol — but give Aesclepius a break; he was working in a less enlightened era. May 28 through June 14 (7:30p.m., Thursday through Sunday) at La MaMa E.T.C. Annex; 66 East 4th Street). Tickets are $25 ($20 students/seniors). To reserve, call 212-475-7710 or online at www.lamama.org.

ARC RECORD SALEThe ARChive of Contemporary Music (a not-for-profi t archive, music library and research center) collects, preserves and provides information on the popular music of all cultures throughout the world. Their over three million sound record-ings makes them the largest popular music collection on Earth. Thursday, June 11, from 6:00p.m. to 9:00p.m., ARC members can attend a pre-sale party and enjoy early bird shopping. Not an ARC member yet? Just show up and join. The rest of we civilians, though, are hardly shut out from fi nding deals and steals. The regular sale happens June 13 through June 21, daily, from 11:00a.m. to 6:00p.m. Expect to fi nd tons of Broadway recordings (most for a buck), Jazz LPs, world music, punk, DVDs and an “Astroturf Yardsale” of 50s kitchen stuff and clothing. At 54 White Street (3 blocks South of Canal between Church & Broadway; call 212-226-6967 or visit http://www.arcmusic.org.

GREENWICH HOUSE MUSIC SCHOOLMerely announcing a benefit for your good cause isn’t always enough to get people out of the house and into the seats. Fortunately, Greenwich House Music School’s fundraising event has the benefit of four char-ismatic NYC cabaret legends who embody the spirit of excellence the school seeks to instill in its pupils. That their musical selections pay tribute to one of the American Songbook’s most cerebral, celebratory, melancholy lyricist/composers doesn’t hurt either. “Come Rain or Come Shine: Celebrating the Songs of Johnny Mercer” features performances from Klea Blackhurst, Jim Caruso, Christine Ebersole and Billy Stritch. If your only recent exposure to roof-raising vocals is American Idol, come see how the real pros nail a song and kill the audience. Proceeds benefit the school’s music education programs and will assist with vital facility upgrades. 7:30p.m., Monday, June 15, at the Cherry Lane Theatre, 38 Commerce Street. Tickets are $100 or $75; $250 gets you the show plus admission to a post-event champagne reception with the artists. To purchase, call (212) 991-0003, ext. 403. or online at Purchase online at www.greenwichhouse.org/rainorshine.

WASHINGTON SQUARE MUSIC FESTIVALNo spring chicken but not yet ready for social security, the Washington Square Music Festival remains healthy, strong and vital as it celebrates its 51st season. The final concert of that season sees Musical Director Lutz Rath playing The Devil in Stravinsky’s “A Soldier’s Tale”—an adaptation of a 1918 theatrical parable in which a soldier trades his fiddle to the devil for a book that predicts the future of the economy. Also on the bill: David Oei performs Brahms’ Piano Trio in C Major, opus 87; also, soprano Lucia Hyunju Song performs Schubert’s “Shepherd on the Rock.” June 19; 8:30p.m.; Free; seating is first-come, first-served. At St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church (371 Sixth Avenue). Call 212-252-3621 or visit www.washingtonsquaremusic-festival.org.

TEA CART STORIESThis performance art and site-specifi c installation project by mixed media artist Michele Brody explores the cer-emonies, traditions and values surrounding tea. Brody invites you to step into her tea cart (parked across from the Lower East Side Tenement Museum’s Visitor Center). Once host and guest begin to sip, the pleasant libation encourages confession and conversation. After you’ve shared family stories as well as memories and experiences dealing with tea (which are being recorded), Brody will transcribe excerpts from the session onto paper tea bags that have been steeped in tea leaves — creating a visual memory of the shared experience. The stories will be strung on a structure made of cop-per pipes installed on an early 20th century pushcart — located in the windows of 97 Orchard Street for all to see. Brody’s tea cart, at 108 Orchard Street, will be open from 4:00p.m. to 7:00p.m. on June 11 and 25 and July 9 and 23 (rain dates the following Thursday, if necessary; call 212-982-8420 or visit www.tenement.org for details).

Photo by Kit Kittle

Christine Ebersole

Photo by Ken Howard

Pianist David Oei performing with the Festival Chamber Ensemble

Photo by Michele Brody

Tea, sympthy, and oral histoy

Photo by Richard Greene

George Drance as Aesclepius and Denise Greber as Panacea

ALISTTHECOMPILED BY SCOTT STIFFLER Scott@thevillager.com

SHOPPING

BENEFIT

THEATER

ARTMUSIC

Setting up for the ARC record sale

30 June 10 - 16, 2009

NOTICE OF FORMATION

OF SUPREME REALTY

MANAGEMENT, LLC

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Vil 5/6 – 6/10/09

PARK LAW FIRM PLLC

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ARES GROUP PART-

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BLARGWARE LLC

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TION OF ESTCO LLC

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TION OF SULLIVAN

DEBT OPPORTUNITY

FUND GP, LLC

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TIES LLC

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Arts. of Org. fi led with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 04/16/09. Offi ce location: NY County. Principal offi ce of LLC: the LLC, Attn: President, 122 E. 42nd St., NY, NY 10168. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the LLC at the address of its principal offi ce. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

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GROUP LLC

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GOLDEN DOORWAYS

LLC

Articles of Org. fi led NY Sec. of State (SSNY) 4/21/09. Offi ce in NY Co. SSNY desig. agent of LLC upon whom process may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of pro-cess to 51 MacDougal St., Ste 103, NY, NY 10012, which is also the principal business location. Purpose: Any law-ful purpose.

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NOTICE OF FORMATION

OF STEWARTSOFT, LLC

Articles of Organization fi led with Secretary of State of New York (SSNY) on 03/10/09. Offi ce location: NY County. SSNY has been des-ignated as an agent upon whom process against the LLC may be served. The address to which SSNY shall mail a copy of any process against the LLC is to: Cor-poration Service Company, 80 State Street, Albany, NY 12207. Purpose: To engage in any lawful act or activity.

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NOTICE OF FORMATION

OF THE M. A. SULLIVAN

GROUP LLC

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TION OF D. E. SHAW

REAL ESTATE PORTFO-

LIOS 12, L.L.C.

Authority fi led with NY Dept. of State on 3/2/09. Offi ce loca-tion: NY County. LLC formed in DE on 10/23/07. NY Sec. of State designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served and shall mail process to: D. E. Shaw & Co., L.P., 120 W. 45th St., 39th Fl., NY, NY 10036, Attn: John Liftin, General Counsel, regd. agt. upon whom process may be served. DE addr. of LLC: 1209 Orange St., Wilmington, DE 19801. Arts. of Org. fi led with DE Sec. of State, 401 Fed-eral St., Dover, DE 19901. Pur-pose: any lawful activity.

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NOTICE OF QUALIFICA-

TION OF D. E. SHAW

REAL ESTATE PORTFO-

LIOS 19, L.L.C.

Authority fi led with NY Dept. of State on 3/2/09. Offi ce location: NY County. LLC formed in DE on 3/3/07. NY Sec. of State designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served and shall mail pro-cess to: D. E. Shaw & Co., L.P., 120 W. 45th St., 39th Fl., NY, NY 10036, Attn: John Liftin, General Counsel, regd. agt. upon whom process may be served. DE addr. of LLC: 1209 Orange St., Wilm-ington, DE 19801. Arts. of Org. fi led with DE Sec. of State, 401 Federal St., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: any law-ful activity.

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TION OF KURTZMAN

CARSON CONSUL-

TANTS, LLC.

Authority fi led with NY Dept. of State on 4/16/09. Offi ce location: NY County. Princ. bus. addr.: 2335 Alaska Ave., El Segundo, CA 90245. LLC formed in DE on 5/24/01. NY Sec. of State designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served and shall mail process to: CT Corporation System, 111 8th Ave., NY, NY 10011. DE addr. of LLC: 1209 Orange St., Wilmington, DE 19801. Arts. of Org. fi led with DE Sec. of State, 401 Federal St., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: all lawful purposes.

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GREAT CATERERS LLC

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PARK AVENUE PSY-

CHOLOGY PLLC

Articles of Org. fi led NY Sec. of State (SSNY) 3/31/2009. Offi ce in NY Co. SSNY design. Agent of LLC upon whom process may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to Dr Sedighe Flugelman 445 Park Ave 10TH FL New York, NY 10022. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

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MY NYC LLC

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NEW YORK HALLELU-

JAH COMPANY LLC

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NOTICE OF FORMATION

OF HARMONY FILMS,

LLC

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02/23/09. Offi ce location:

NY County. SSNY has been

designated as an agent upon

whom process against the

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NOTICE OF FORMATION

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10/24/07. Offi ce location: NY

County. SSNY designated as

agent of LLC upon whom

process against it may be

served. SSNY shall mail

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II GP L.P.

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PROPERTIES THIRTY SIX LLC

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AND SERVICES LLC

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NOTICE OF FORMATION OF BOTSARIS MORRIS REALTY LLC AMENDED TO BOTSARIS MORRIS

REALTY GROUP, LLC

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TION OF NB ALTERNA-

TIVES HOLDINGS LLC

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XIV RIVER CONSULT-

ING LLC

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TEN90 SOLUTIONS, LLC

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TRIPLE T 143 HOLDINGS

LLC

Articles of Org. fi led NY Sec. of State (SSNY) 4/24/2009. Offi ce in NY Co. SSNY design. Agent of LLC upon whom process may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to Mark Friedland-er Esq 15 Maiden Lane Suite 2000 New York, NY 10038. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

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GARY G. VENTER, FCAS,

CERA, ASA, MAAA, LLC

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TULLY’S BAKERY LLC

Company Articles of Org. fi led NY Sec. of State (SSNY) 4/17/2009. Offi ce in NY Co. SSNY design. Agent of LLC upon whom process may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to Helen Tully Lewis 201 West 11TH Street, APT #3G New York, NY 10014. Purpose: Any law-ful activity.

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NOTICE OF QUALIFICA-TION OF AQUA ROSA

ADVISORS, LLC

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NOTICE OF FORMATION OF LITTLE APPLES PHO-

TOGRAPHY, LLC

Articles of Organization fi led with Secretary of State of New York (SSNY) on 04/10/09. Offi ce location: NY County. SSNY has been designated as an agent upon whom process against the LLC may be served. The address to which SSNY shall mail a copy of any process against the LLC is to: Little Apples Photography, 160 Riverside Blvd., Apt 32A New York, NY 10069. Purpose: To engage in any lawful act or activity.

Vil 5/20-6/24/09

NOTICE OF FORMATION OF 143 PROPERTIES LLC

Art. of Org. fi led w/ Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 12/23/04. Offi ce location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC for service of process. SSNY shall mail pro-cess to: 875 Ave. of Americas #501, New York, NY 10001. Present name of LLC: 143 Development Partners, LLC. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Vil 5/20-6/24/09

NOTICE OF FORMATION OF GO PRETTY LLC

Art. of Org. fi led w/ Secy. Of State of NY (SSNY) on 1/7/09. Offi ce location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC for service of process. SSNY shall mail process to: 888C 8th Ave. #106, New York, NY 10019. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Vil 5/20-6/24/09

247 REALTY ASSOCI-ATES LLC

Arts of Org fi led with NY Sec of State (SSNY) on 02/26/08. Offi ce: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to: c/o Redi Management Corp., 4 Wash-ington Ave. South, Lawrence, NY 11559. Purpose: Any law-ful activity.

Vil 5/20-6/24/09

NOTICE OF QUALIFICA-TION OF REALM PART-

NERS FUND LP

Authority fi led with NY Dept. of State on 5/5/09. Offi ce loca-tion: NY County. Princ. bus. addr.: 390 Park Ave., 16th Fl., NY, NY 10022. LP formed in DE on 1/22/09. NY Sec. of State designated as agent of LP upon whom process against it may be served and shall mail process to: c/o CT Corporation System, 111 8th Ave., NY, NY 10011, regd. agt. upon whom process may be served. DE addr. of LP: 1209 Orange St., Wilmington, DE 19801. Name/addr. of genl. ptr. available from NY Sec. of State. Cert. of LP fi led with DE Sec. of State, 401 Federal St., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: any lawful activity.

Vil 5/20-6/24/09

P U B L I C N O T I C E S

June 10 - 16, 2009 31

NAME OF LLC: MY FAIR

ROSES, LLC

Arts. of Org. fi led with NY Dept. of State: 4/24/09. Offi ce loc.: NY Co. Sec. of State designated agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served and shall mail process to: c/o Business Filings Inc., 187 Wolf Rd., Ste. 101, Albany, NY 12205, regd. agt. upon whom process may be served. Purpose: any lawful activity.

Vil 5/20-6/24/09

NOTICE OF QUALIFI-

CATION OF FLEXIBLE

OPPORTUNITIES, LLC

Authority fi led with NY Dept. of State on 3/4/09. NYS fi cti-tious name: Flexible Opportu-nities Fund, LLC. Offi ce loca-tion: NY County. LLC formed in DE on 2/26/09. NY Sec. of State designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served and shall mail process to the prin-cipal business addr.: 522 5th Ave., NY, NY 10036. DE addr. of LLC: c/o The Corporation Trust Co., 1209 Orange St., Wilmington, DE 19801. Arts. of Org. fi led with DE Sec. of State, 401 Federal St., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: any law-ful activity.

Vil 5/20-6/24/09

NOTICE OF QUALIFICA-

TION OF REALM PART-

NERS SUB-FUND LLC

Authority fi led with NY Dept. of State on 5/5/09. Offi ce loca-tion: NY County. Princ. bus. addr.: 390 Park Ave., 16th Fl., NY, NY 10022. LLC formed in DE on 4/30/09. NY Sec. of State designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served and shall mail process to: 111 8th Ave., NY, NY 10011. Regd. agt. upon whom process may be served: CT Corpora-tion System, 111 8th Ave., NY, NY 10011. DE addr. of LLC: 1209 Orange St., Wilm-ington, DE 19801. Arts. of Org. fi led with DE Sec. of State, 401 Federal St., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: any law-ful activity.

Vil 5/20-6/24/09

NOTICE OF QUALIFICA-

TION OF ASTAR 325

ROUTE 17M - MONROE

LLC

Authority fi led with NY Dept. of State on 4/29/09. Offi ce location: NY County. Princ. bus. addr.: 1114 Ave. of the Americas, 39th Fl., NY, NY 10036. LLC formed in DE on 3/31/09. NY Sec. of State des-ignated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served and shall mail pro-cess to: c/o CT Corporation System, 111 8th Ave., NY, NY 10011, regd. agt, upon whom process may be served. DE addr. of LLC: c/o The Corpo-ration Trust Co., 1209 Orange St., Wilmington, DE 19801. Arts. of Org. fi led with DE Sec. of State, 401 Federal St., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: real estate investments and fi nance.

Vil 5/20-6/24/09

NOTICE OF QUALIFICA-TION OF O-CAP GP, LLC

App. For Auth. fi led with Secy. of State of N.Y. (SSNY) on 4/23/2009. Offi ce loca-tion: New York County. LLC formed in DE on 4/21/2009. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: 140 E. 63rd St., Apt. 17C, New York, NY 10065, Attn: Michael Olshan. DE address of LLC: 615 S. DuPont Hwy., Dover, DE 19901. Cert. of Form. fi led with DESS, P.O. Box 898, Dover, DE 19903. Purpose: to engage in any act or activity lawful under the NY LLC Law.

Vil 5/20-6/24/09

NOTICE OF FORMATION OF CAPOSALDO 37TH STREET, LIMITED PART-

NERSHIP

Certifi cate fi led with Secy. of State of N.Y. (SSNY) on 1/8/09. Offi ce location: New York County. SSNY desig-nated as agent of LP upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: Davis & Gilbert LLP, 1740 Broadway, New York, NY 10019. Name/address of each genl. ptr. available from SSNY. Term: until 1/8/2089. Purpose: any lawful activity.

Vil 5/20-6/24/09

NAME: STONE LANE PICTURES, LLC

Art. Of Org. Filed Sec. Of State of NY 02/05/09. Off. Loc.: New York Co. Corpora-tion Service Company desig-nated as agent upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY to mail copy of process to THE LLC, C/O CSC, 80 State Street, Albany, NY 12207. Purpose: Any law-ful act or activity.

Vil 5/27 – 7/1/09

MANGALA NAIK, PHYSI-CIAN, PLLC,

Articles of Org. fi led N.Y. Sec. of State (SSNY) 7th day of April, 2009. Offi ce in New York Co. at 630 1st Avenue, Suite 31D, New York, New York 10016. SSNY design. agt. Upon whom process may be served. SSNY shall mail a copy of process to 630 1st Avenue, Suite 31D, New York, New York 10016. Reg. Agt. Upon whom process may be served: Spiegel & Utrera, P.A., P.C. 1 Maiden Lane, NYC 10038 1 800 576-1100 Purpose: Medicine.

Vil 5/27 – 7/1/09

MIHARO GAMES LLC

Articles of Org. fi led NY Sec. of State (SSNY) 4/6/2009. Offi ce in NY Co. SSNY design. Agent of LLC upon whom process may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to Orcun Koro-glu 88 Edgecombe Ave Ap 2 New York, NY 10030. Pur-pose: Any lawful activity.

Vil 5/27-7/1/09

LAZ RESOURCES, LLC

Articles of Org. fi led NY Sec. of State (SSNY) 3/4/2009. Offi ce in NY Co. SSNY design. Agent of LLC upon whom process may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to THE LLC 205 W 57TH ST. 6AD New York, NY 10019. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Vil 5/27-7/1/09

BULLSEYE VENTURES LLC

Articles of Org. fi led NY Sec. of State (SSNY) 3/26/2009. Offi ce in NY Co. SSNY design. Agent of LLC upon whom process may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to Jonathan Bull 56 Perry ST. APT. 1R New York, NY 10014. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Vil 5/27-7/1/09

NANDITA KHANNA ASSOCIATES LLC

Articles of Org. fi led NY Sec. of State (SSNY) 4/24/2009. Offi ce in NY Co. SSNY design. Agent of LLC upon whom process may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to THE LLC 160 East 38TH Street, #28H New York, NY 10016. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Vil 5/27-7/1/09

NOTICE OF QUALIFICA-TION OF DCMF LIQUI-

DATING COMPANY LLC

Authority fi led with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 4/22/2009. Offi ce location: NY Co. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 4/8/2009. SSNY des-ignated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to THE LLC 461 Fifth Ave, 10TH Flr NY, NY 10017. DE address of LLC: Corpo-ration Trust Center 1209 Orange Street Wilmington, DE 19801. Arts. Of Org. fi led with DE Secy. of State John G. Townsend Building P.O. Box 898 Dover, DE 19903. Purpose: any lawful activity.

Vil 5/27-7/1/09

NOTICE OF QUALIFICA-TION OF NB ALTERNA-TIVES ADVISERS LLC

Authority fi led with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 04/28/09. Offi ce location: NY County. LLC formed in Dela-ware (DE) on 02/19/09. Prin-cipal offi ce of LLC: 605 3rd Ave., NY, NY 10158. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Corpora-tion Service Co. (CSC), 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. DE address of LLC: c/o CSC, 2711 Centerville Rd., Ste. 400, Wilmington, DE 19808. Arts. of Org. fi led with Secy. Jeffrey W. Bullock, Div. of Corps., P.O. Box 898, Dover, DE 19903. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Vil 5/27-7/1/09

NOTICE OF QUALIFI-CATION OF CARBON VISUAL EFFECTS LLC

Authority fi led with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 05/07/09. Offi ce location: NY County. LLC formed in Dela-ware (DE) on 04/30/09. Prin-cipal offi ce of LLC: 180 Varick St., 14th Fl., NY, NY 10014. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. DE address of LLC: 2711 Centerville Rd., Ste. 400, Wilmington, DE 19808. Arts. of Org. fi led with DE Secy. of State, Div. of Corps., John G. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Design and produce graphics for com-mercial broadcasting.

Vil 5/27-7/1/09

NOTICE OF QUALIFICA-TION OF SUITE ACCESS,

LLC

Authority fi led with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 05/13/09. Offi ce location: NY County. LLC formed in Dela-ware (DE) on 05/01/09. Princi-pal offi ce of LLC: c/o Suite 850 LLC, 230 Park Ave., Ste. 850, NY, NY 10169. SSNY desig-nated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Attn: Marc Adel-man at the principal offi ce of the LLC. DE address of LLC: 2711 Centerville Rd., Ste. 400, Wilmington, DE 19808. Arts. of Org. fi led with Secy. of the State of DE, Corp. Dept., Loockerman & Federal St., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Vil 5/27-7/1/09

NOTICE OF FORMATION OF SUPER LAW GROUP,

LLC

Art. of Org. fi led with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 3/23/09. Off. Loc.: NY Co. SSNY designated as agent upon whom process against the LLC may be served and shall mail process against the LLC to the principal business addr.: 156 William St, Ste 800, NY, NY 10038. Purpose: any lawful activity.

Vil 5/27-7/1/09

NOTICE OF QUALIFICA-TION OF ANTIPODEAN DOMESTIC PARTNERS,

LP

App. for Auth. fi led Sec’y of State (SSNY) 3/25/09. Offi ce location: NY County. LP org. in DE 3/23/09. SSNY desig-nated as agent of LP upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to 499 Park Ave., 10th Fl., NY, NY 10010. DE offi ce addr.: c/o CSC, 2711 Centerville Rd., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of LP on fi le: SSDE, Townsend Bldg., Dover, DE 19901. Name/addr. of each gen. ptr. avail. at SSNY. Purpose: any lawful activities.

Vil 5/27-7/1/09

NOTICE OF QUALIFICA-TION OF TOCQUEVILLE GOLD PRIVATE EQUITY

GP, LLC

App. for Auth. fi led Sec’y of State (SSNY) 4/8/09. Offi ce location: NY County. LLC org. in DE 7/23/07. SSNY desig-nated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to Attn: John Hathaway, 40 W. 57th St., 19th Fl., NY, NY 10019. DE offi ce addr.: c/o CSC, 2711 Centerville Rd., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. on fi le: SSDE, Townsend Bldg., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: any lawful activities.

Vil 5/27-7/1/09

NOTICE OF QUALIFICA-TION OF TOCQUEVILLE GOLD PRIVATE EQUITY

FUND, L.P.

App. for Auth. fi led Sec’y of State (SSNY) 4/8/09. Offi ce location: NY County. LP org. in DE 7/23/07. SSNY desig-nated as agent of LP upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to Attn: John Hathaway, 40 W. 57th St., 19th Fl., NY, NY 10019. DE offi ce addr.: c/o CSC, 2711 Centerville Rd., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of LP on fi le: SSDE, Townsend Bldg., Dover, DE 19901. Name/addr. of each gen. ptr. avail. at SSNY. Purpose: any lawful activities.

Vil 5/27-7/1/09

NOTICE OF QUALIFICA-

TION OF METROPOLI-

TAN REAL ESTATE PART-

NERS GLOBAL III, L.P.

App. for Auth. fi led Sec’y of State (SSNY) 3/2/09. Offi ce location: NY County. LP org. in DE 2/26/09. SSNY desig-nated as agent of LP upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to Attn: Felipe Dorregaray, 135 E. 57th St., 16th Fl., NY, NY 10022. DE offi ce addr.: c/o CSC, 2711 Centerville Rd., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of LP on fi le: SSDE, Townsend Bldg., Dover, DE 19901. Name/addr. of each gen. ptr. avail. at SSNY. Purpose: any lawful activities.

Vil 5/27-7/1/09

NOTICE OF FORMATION

OF GF INVESTORS, LLC

Arts. Of Org. fi led with Sec. Of State of N.Y. (SSNY) on 05/01/09. Offi ce location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail pro-cess to: Emanuel Gerard, 1 E. End Ave., NY, NY 10075. Pur-pose: any lawful activity.

Vil 5/27-7/1/09

NOTICE OF FORMATION

OF SHANY LANDMARKS

LLC

Arts. Of Org. fi led with Sec. Of State of N.Y. (SSNY) on 05/01/09. Offi ce location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail pro-cess to: The LLC, 12 E. 86th St., #727, NY, NY 10028. Pur-pose: any lawful activity.

Vil 5/27-7/1/09

NOTICE OF QUALIFICA-

TION OF GRAND CEN-

TRAL OPPORTUNITIES

FUND, LP

Authority fi led with Secy of State of NY (SSNY) on 06/12/08. LP formed in DE on 06/03/08. Offi ce location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LP upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail pro-cess to: The LP, 230 Park Ave., Ste. 539, NY, NY 10169. DE address of LP: 160 Green-tree Dr., Ste. 101, Dover, DE 19904. The name & address of each general partner is available from SSNY. Cert of LP fi led with DE Secy of State, 401 Federal St, Dover DE 19901. Purpose: any law-ful activity.

Vil 5/27-7/1/09

NOTICE OF FORMATION

OF LOCUST VALLEY, LLC

Arts. of Org. fi led with NY Dept. of State on 4/22/09. Offi ce location: NY County. Sec. of State designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served and shall mail pro-cess to the principal business addr.: c/o Jacobson Family Investments, Inc., Carnegie Hall Tower, 152 W. 57th St., 56th Fl., NY, NY 10019. Pur-pose: all lawful purposes.

Vil 5/27-7/1/09

NOTICE OF QUALIFICA-TION OF KONDAUR VENTURES VIII OFF-SHORE REO 1, L.L.C.

Authority fi led with NY Dept. of State on 5/12/09. Offi ce location: NY County. LLC formed in DE on 4/30/09. NY Sec. of State designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served and shall mail pro-cess to: c/o CT Corporation System, 111 8th Ave., NY, NY 10011, regd. agt. upon whom process may be served. DE addr. of LLC: c/o The Corpo-ration Trust Co., 1209 Orange St., Wilmington, DE 19801. Cert. of Form. fi led with DE Sec. of State, Townsend Bldg., Dover, DE 19901. Pur-pose: any lawful activity.

Vil 5/27-7/1/09

NOTICE OF FORMATION OF LEAD LLC

Arts. of Org. fi led with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 6/23/2006. Offi ce location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail pro-cess to: Scott Martel, 245 East 54th Street, Ste 29B, New York, NY 10022. Purpose: any lawful activity.

Vil 5/27-7/1/09

NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN

that a Liquor License, Serial #1226113, has been applied for by the undersigned to sell liquor under the Alco-holic Beverage Control Law at 435 Park Ave. South, New York City, NY 10016 for on-premises consumption. Toon Thai Inc.

Vil 6/3/09 & 6/10/09

NOR JEWELRY LLC,

Articles of Org. fi led N.Y. Sec. of State (SSNY) 5th day of February 2009. Offi ce in New York Co. at 72 Bowery, New York, New York 10013. SSNY desig. agt. Upon whom pro-cess may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to 72 Bowery, New York, New York 10013. Reg. Agt. upon whom process may be served: Spiegel & Utrera, P.A., P.C. 1 Maiden Lane, NYC 10038 1 800 576-1100 Pur-pose: Any lawful purpose.

Vil 6/3 – 7/8/09

NOTICE OF FORMATION OF SPYE DESIGN STU-

DIO, LLC

Articles of Organization fi led with Secretary of State of New York (SSNY) on 04/02/09. Offi ce location: NY County. SSNY has been designated as an agent upon whom process against the LLC may be served. The address to which SSNY shall mail a copy of any process against the LLC is to: The LLC, PO Box 1150, New York, NY 10037. Purpose: To engage in any lawful act or activity.

Vil 6/3-7/8/09

NOTICE OF FORMATION OF BOTTOM LINE CON-

CEPTS LLC, A DOMESTIC LLC.

Arts. of Org. fi led with the SSNY on 04/01/09. Offi ce location: NY County. SSNY has been designated as agent upon whom process against the LLC may be served. SSNY shall mail a copy of process to: c/o Feffer & Feffer, LLC, 440 E 57th St. #18 C-D, NY, NY 10022. Purpose: Any Lawful Purpose.

Vil 6/3-7/8/09

MARTIGNETTI PLANNED

GIVING ADVISORS, LLC

Articles of Org. fi led NY Sec. of State (SSNY) 3/30/2009. Offi ce in NY Co. SSNY design. Agent of LLC upon whom process may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to Anthony Martignetti 900 Park Terrace East 4TH Floor NY, NY 10034. Purpose: Any lawful activity. Registered Agent: Robert B. Moy 575 Lexington Avenue, 23RD FLR NY, NY 10022.

Vil 6/3-7/8/09

NOTICE OF FORMATION

OF TEMPEST CAPITAL

ADVISORS, LLC

Articles of Organization fi led with Secretary of State of New York (SSNY) on 04/20/09. Offi ce location: NY County. SSNY has been designated as an agent upon whom process against the LLC may be served. The address to which SSNY shall mail a copy of any process against the LLC is to: Tem-pest Capital Advisors, LLC, 520 West 19th Street #5B, New York, NY 10011. Pur-pose: To engage in any law-ful act or activity.

Vil 6/3-7/8/09

NOTICE OF QUALIFICA-

TION OF T&L SPORTS

AND ENTERTAINMENT,

LLC

Authority fi led with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 05/15/09. Offi ce location: NY County. LLC formed in Dela-ware (DE) on 04/24/09. Princ. offi ce of LLC: 275 Madison Ave., 35th Fl., NY, NY 10016. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to the LLC at the princ. offi ce of the LLC. DE addr. of LLC: 2711 Centerville Rd., Wilm-ington, DE 19908. Arts. of Org. fi led with Secy. of State of DE, John G. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any law-ful activity.

Vil 6/3-7/8/09

NOTICE OF QUALIFICA-

TION OF LEXINGTON

CAPITAL PARTNERS

VII, L.P.

Authority fi led with NY Dept. of State on 3/4/09. Offi ce loca-tion: NY County. LP formed in DE on 1/15/09. NY Sec. of State designated as agent of LP upon whom process against it may be served and shall mail process to the prin-cipal business addr. of the LP: 660 Madison Ave., 23rd Fl., NY, NY 10065. DE addr. of LP: The Corporation Trust Co., 1209 Orange St., Wilming-ton, DE 19801. Name/addr. of genl. ptr. available from NY Sec. of State. Cert. of LP fi led with DE Sec. of State, 401 Federal St., Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: any lawful activity.

Vil 6/3-7/8/09

NOTICE OF FORMATION OF 367 BROOKLYN, L.L.C.

Arts. of Org. fi led with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 11/20/08. Offi ce location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail pro-cess to: 570 Lexington Ave-nue, 40th Fl., NY, NY 10022. Purpose: any lawful act or activity.

Vil 6/3-7/8/09

NOTICE OF FORMATION OF 2131 MERRICK LLC

Arts. of Org. fi led with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 5/8/09. Offi ce location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail pro-cess to: The LLC, Attn: Jeff Sutton, 500 Fifth Ave., 54th Fl., NY, NY 10110. Purpose: any lawful activity.

Vil 6/3-7/8/09

JADETRIBE, LLC

Articles of Org. fi led NY Sec. of State (SSNY) 2/11/2009. Offi ce in NY Co. SSNY design. Agent of LLC upon whom process may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to THE LLC Kimberly Hartman 99 Bank Street APT 2C New York, NY 10014. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Vil 6/10-7/15/09

MEDITERRA COLLEC-TION LLC

Articles of Org. fi led NY Sec. of State (SSNY) 3/18/2009. Offi ce in NY Co. SSNY design. Agent of LLC upon whom process may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to Sema Tekinay 300 East 56 Street APT. 28B New York, NY 10022. Pur-pose: Any lawful activity.

Vil 6/10-7/15/09

THE TAX STRATEGISTS, LLC

Articles of Org. fi led NY Sec. of State (SSNY) 2/11/2003. Offi ce in NY Co. SSNY design. Agent of LLC upon whom process may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to The LLC 2 Wall St., Ste. 500 NY, NY 10005. Purpose: Any lawful activity. Registered Agent: Dan Korn-blatt 2 Wall St., Ste. 500 NY, NY 10005.

EISDORFER DENTAL PLLC

Articles of Org. fi led NY Sec. of State (SSNY) 5/5/09. Offi ce in NY Co. SSNY desig. agent of LLC upon whom process may be served. SSNY shall mail copy of process to 121 E. 60th St., Ste. 7C., NY, NY 10022. Purpose: To practice the profession of dentistry.

Vil 6/10-7/15/09

NOTICE OF FORMATION OF PANTOGA LLC

Articles of Organization fi led with Secretary of State of New York (SSNY) on 4/07/09. Offi ce location: NY County. SSNY has been designated as an agent upon whom pro-cess against the LLC may be served. The address to which SSNY shall mail a copy of any process against the LLC is to: The LLC, 4014 13th Ave., Ste. 202, Brook-lyn, NY 11228. Purpose: To engage in any lawful act or activity.

Vil 6/10-7/15/09

P U B L I C N O T I C E S

32 June 10 - 16, 2009

I remember that when the original plans for the renovation were being discussed, someone in the Parks Department mentioned at a Community Board 2 Parks Committee meeting that the Parks Department wanted to move the steps from inside the foun-tain to the outside; doing this would dis-courage people climbing into the fountain. Councilmember Alan Gerson, among others, objected and wanted the steps to be kept in the fountain so that people could use it as a stage for performances when the fountain was off, and could also enjoy the water and splash around when the fountain was turned on.

The Parks Department argued that the water was not clean, that it was recycled fountain water that was not treated or puri-fi ed. Fountains in the rest of the city have steps leading up to the fountain. People rarely enter into fountains in other parks. The Parks Department could not install water purifi cation equipment to ensure the safety of people playing in the water because that would change the fountain into a pool. Apparently, if it is defi ned as a pool it causes a whole set of other problems, including the requirements to regularly test the water and have a lifeguard present.

The popular view won the day and the steps remain going down into the fountain.

On a beautiful sunny day people climb over the low wall and enjoy the fountain from the inside while many children, dogs and some adults splash in the water. The presumption by everyone is that the water is clean and safe. The presumption is wrong.

The question now is what can be done. I am most concerned about the children. It seems to me, at a minimum, the Parks Department needs to place signs around or near the fountain warning parents that the water may be contaminated. Perhaps Councilmember Gerson or others who want-ed the steps to go into the fountain could come up with an idea to make the fountain safe as well as beautiful.

Bob O’Sullivan

Skeptical on scores

To The Editor:In your editorial “Keep mayoral control,

but with modifi cations” (May 27), you say, “[R]eading and math scores are up and the schools do seem better.”

Richard Mills, New York State commis-sioner of Education, said that all the state tests scores were up, not just New York City’s, which he attributed to better test prep across the state. Or perhaps the tests were easier.

New York City school test scores are administered and graded by the same entity and with no independent oversight, so it’s hard to verify the results; but school admin-istrators have been fi red for being caught changing tests results, in order that their schools are not punished, underfunded or closed down.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress, a more objective and independent measure of student achievement, shows that New York City results are fl at, demonstrat-ing no improvement. As Mark Twain says, “There’s lies, damn lies and statistics.”

A. S. Evans

Mike isn’t accountable

To The Editor:Your editorial “Keep mayoral control, but

with modifi cations” (May 27) argues, “If we can’t hold the mayor accountable when there are problems, we’ll have no one to blame but ourselves.”

How, exactly, are we supposed to hold the mayor accountable? Public school parents are too small a minority in city politics to affect the outcome of a citywide mayoral election. The mayor “runs” on education only in the broadest possible sense, manag-ing, in Bloomberg’s case, with his millions, to convince a lot of people who have noth-ing to do with the schools that he is doing a good job.

This is accountability?This year, hundreds of children were

on waiting lists for their own zoned kindergartens, after parents and elect-ed officials had warned for years that enrollments were swelling. Parents went to the schools chancellor, they went to our Community Education Councils, they went to the central school board (which Bloomberg unilaterally renamed the “Panel for Educational Policy”), they went to the City Council, and nothing was done. More than 40 percent of New York City public schoolchildren attend schools in overcrowded buildings. Where’s the accountability for that?

The Bloomberg administration has taken responsibility for not a single one of its fail-ures. For New York City public school par-ents, “accountability” is a word that sounds good in the newspaper, but in reality is an empty promise. Without true checks and balances, Bloomberg, like a king, is only as accountable as he feels like being.

Ann Kjellberg

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P U B L I C N O T I C E SNOTICE OF REGISTRA-

TION OF MICHELMAN & ROBINSON, LLP

Certifi cate fi led with Secre-tary of State of N.Y. (SSNY) on 03/26/09. Offi ce location: NY County. SSNY desig-nated as agent of LLP upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: The LLP, 15760 Ventura Boulevard, 5th Floor, Encino, CA 91436. Purpose: To engage any lawful act or activity.

Vil 6/10-7/15/09

LUDLOW6 LLC

a domestic Limited Liability Company (LLC) fi led with the Sec of State of NY on 4/14/09. NY Offi ce location: New York County. SSNY is designated as agent upon whom pro-cess against the LLC may be served. SSNY shall mail a copy of any process against the LLC served upon him/her to The LLC, 333 Hudson St., 6th Fl., NY, NY 10013 General purposes

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ACCELAPAYMENT LLC

a domestic Limited Liability Company (LLC) fi led with the Sec of State of NY on 4/2/09. NY Offi ce location: New York County. SSNY is designated as agent upon whom pro-cess against the LLC may be served. SSNY shall mail a copy of any process against the LLC served upon him/her to The LLC, 105 E. 34th St., Ste. 163, NY, NY 10016 General purposes

Vil 6/10-7/15/09

NOTICE OF QUALIFICA-TION OF AH 88 GREEN-

WICH LLC

Authority fi led with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 5/13/09. Offi ce location: NY County. LLC formed in Dela-ware (DE) on 7/1/05. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: c/o National Registered Agents, Inc., 875 Avenue of the Americas, Ste. 501, NY, NY 10001. Address of the principal offi ce: 45 Horatio St., NY, NY 10014. Address to be maintained in DE: 160 Greentree Dr., Ste. 101, Dover, DE 19904. Arts. of Org. fi led with DE Secy. Of State, 401 Federal St., Ste 4., Dover, DE 19901 . Purpose: any lawful activities.

Vil 6/10-7/15/09

NOTICE OF QUALIFICA-TION OF SEG LATIGO

ADVISORS GP, LLC

Authority fi led with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 05/19/09. Offi ce location: NY County. LLC formed in Dela-ware (DE) on 03/31/09. Princ. offi ce of LLC: 590 Madison Ave., 9th Fl., NY, NY 10022. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Corporation Service Co. (CSC), 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. DE addr. of LLC: c/o CSC, 2711 Centerville Rd., Ste. 400, Wilmington, DE 19808. Arts. of Org. fi led with DE Secy. of State Div. of Corps., John G. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St., Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.

Vil 6/10-7/15/09

NAME OF LLC: BIG SLIDE ENTERTAINMENT LLC

Arts. of Org. fi led with NY Dept. of State: 1/27/09. Offi ce loc.: NY County. Sec. of State designated agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served and shall mail process to: 10 E. 75th St., NY, NY 10021, Attn: Jer-emy H. Schneider, regd. agt. upon whom process may be served. Purpose: any lawful activity.

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NOTICE OF QUALIFICA-TION OF SALA ASSOCI-

ATES LLC

Authority fi led with NY Dept. of State on 5/14/09. Offi ce location: NY County. LLC formed in DE on 2/27/07. NY Sec. of State designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served and shall mail pro-cess to the principal business addr.: 44 Still Rd., Ridgefi eld, CT 06877, Attn: Louis Sala. DE addr. of LLC: c/o The Corporation Trust Co., 1209 Orange St., Wilmington, DE 19801. Arts. of Org. fi led with DE Sec. of State, 401 Fed-eral St., Dover, DE 19901. Pur-pose: any lawful activity.

Vil 6/10-7/15/09

NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN

that license number 1226533 has been applied for by the undersigned to sell liquor at retail in a restaurant under the Alcoholic Beverage Con-trol Law at 202 204 West 36th Street, New York, N.Y. 10018 for on-premises consump-tion. JPD RESTAURANT LLC d/b/a PIG’N WHISTLE

Vil 6/10/09 & 6/17/09

TO PLACE A LEGAL NOTICE

in The Villager, call Dave Jaffe

at 646-452-2477 or email

david@thevillager.com

PUBLIC NOTICE

Notice is hereby given, pursuant to law, that the NYC Department of Consumer Affairs will hold a Public Hearing on Wednesday, June 10, 2009, at 2:00 p.m. at 66 John Street, 11th fl oor, on the petition from 212 Lafayette Associates LLC, to establish, maintain, and operate an unenclosed sidewalk café at 212 Lafayette Street, in the Borough of Manhattan, for a term of two years. Request for copies of the pro-posed Revocable Consent Agreement may be obtained by submit-ting a request to: Dept. of Consumer Affairs, 42 Broadway, New York, NY 10004, Attention: Foil Offi cer.

Vil 6/3/09 & 6/10/09

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June 10 - 16, 2009 33

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34 June 10 - 16, 2009

the High Line’s northernmost section. The M.T.A. has des-ignated The Related Companies to develop a project above the rail yards, but Related has not yet decided whether to preserve the High Line segment or take it down.

Bloomberg, however, had some defi nite good news for the High Line. The city had just signed off on the sale of city-owned land to the Whitney Museum for the new Whitney Downtown to be built at the Gansevoort St. end of the elevated park, the mayor announced.

The High Line park, with grand stairways at Gansevoort, 14th, 16th, 18th and 20th Sts., will be open to the public seven days a week from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Bloomberg called the park “a great gift to the city” from Friends of the High Line, the largely volunteer organization founded by David and Hammond, which will run the park under the supervision of the city Department of Parks and Recreation.

The park’s landscape design, by James Corner Field Operations, Diller Scofidio Renfro, with plantings by Piet Oudolf, “exceeds expectations,” the mayor said.

Segments one and two are projected to cost $152 mil-lion and Friends of the High Line has raised $44 million, the mayor said. The city has committed $112.2 million to the project, and The Friends will be responsible for 70 percent of the cost of maintaining the High Line.

New York State recently provided $400,000, and dur-ing the past couple of years kicked in $23.8 million.

Barry Diller and Diane Von Furstenberg, who togeth-er donated $5 million to the High Line in 2006, more recently put up another $10 million, conditioned on a matching donation, which was met in short order by Philip Falcone, a billionaire hedge-fund manager, and his wife, Lisa Marie, the mayor said.

Hammond recalled that the High Line was built 75 years ago to raise New York Central Railroad tracks off the street where trains were a menace to pedestrians. David thanked Bloomberg for embracing an idea that had been mocked by his predecessor, Rudolph Giuliani.

Amanda Burden, the City Planning Commission chair-person, said that when she first came up to the High Line she knew that the city had to preserve an irreplaceable part of the city infrastructure. The rezoning of the right of way was a key piece of the project that is just being realized, Bloomberg said, noting that there are 33 new buildings recently completed or being constructed as a result of the rezoning. The ribbon-cutting ceremony took place under part of Andre Balazs’s recently completed Standard Hotel, which straddles the High Line at Little West 12th St. Balazs’s project, however, wasn’t affected by the rezoning, which was only in Chelsea, north of 14th St.

Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe was in his glory, opening another park two weeks after reopening the renovated part of Washington Square Park and a few days after opening the rebuilt Harlem Piers on the Hudson River.

Congressmember Jerrold Nadler recalled 1983 when he joined the late Peter Obletz in an effort to save the elevated rail line that was being dismantled piece by piece from Spring to Gansevoort Sts.

“We didn’t envision anything like this,” Nadler said. Back in the 19th century, the state Legislature said

that trains on 10th Ave. had to be preceded by a man on horseback waving a red flag or a lantern. In 1929, the state authorized the West Side Improvement, popularly known as the High Line.

Later on Monday, during an informal question-and-answer session, Burden ranked the park among the city’s greatest achievements during her tenure.

“This is without question — no contest — my favorite

project,” she told The Villager. “It’s been my number-one priority since the day I got appointed, so there’s tremen-dous satisfaction in seeing this happen today.”

The event evoked a more emotional response from Hammond, who said he’s recently been driven to tears while witnessing the fruits of his labor.

“I’ve been crying a lot,” he said. “My dad always said the best response to joy is tears, and that’s definitely been happening.”

For David, who has spent as much time atop the High Line as anyone throughout the years, actually seeing the public take to the park has been his greatest reward.

“It isn’t really complete until today, when the doors open and people come into it,” he said. “It’s just so exciting to see people walking up the stairs and looking around and begin-ning to use this park. It’s magical.”

The High Line represents another leap forward for the fast-growing Meatpacking District, which rose in recent years from gritty to glam seemingly overnight. Annie Washburn, executive director of the Meatpacking District Initiative, said the new public space will encourage a more diverse crowd to explore the newly upscale area.

“Hopefully, what the park will do is draw in the people that feel that they can’t come to the neighborhood,” she said. “And the neighborhood will then start to include more people as a response to that.”

Just-married couple James Lui and Cynthia Tsui had planned to take their wedding photos nearby in the West Village before getting the news that the park was already open.

“It was easy enough just to walk up and see if it was open,” said Lui, who used to live with his wife in Chelsea. “We came right up, and it was amazing — it was really beautiful.”

The two posed for shots along the length of the High Line as passersby congratulated them.

“Our photographer’s in heaven,” Lui added. “She really likes a lot of the angles, the perspectives — just the whole

look and appeal of everything.”On Tuesday, the High Line’s offi cial opening day, a hand-

ful of visitors took to the park in the morning despite inter-mittent downpours.

Danielle Roberts and Michael Rodenbush made their way down from the Upper East Side to take a tour, and said they’d trek down regularly because “it’s a destination.”

“I think it’s really nice that they saved something that was an important part of the city’s history, and I think it’s really well executed,” said Roberts, 45.

Ella Georgiades, a West Villager, came with her two daughters, 2-year-old Tasha and 2-month-old Bea. The High Line is “completely awesome and very kid-friendly,” she said.

“I didn’t quite get that it was going to be so landscaped; I thought it was just going to be like a walkway,” said Georgiades, 31. “I got the whole park-in-the-sky, oasis thing, but I didn’t think it would really work out. I think it’s worked out very, very nicely. It’s the kind of thing you’d see in Montreal, not in New York City.”

Bethany Wall, a Jersey City resident, made a quick stop over at the High Line in between work engagements in the area.

“I love different perspectives of New York and also the connection to history,” said the 48-year-old. “I will defi nitely come back here as a destination, myself and with others.”

Patrick Shepherd, 29, an actor who was auditioning in a building that overlooks the park, came down after he saw construction workers replaced by regular visitors that day. He worried that, as a public venue, the park might suffer from New Yorkers’ disrespect.

“Within in a week it’ll be all graffi ti and spit and gum and whatever else all over it, but for now it’s beautiful,” he said. Regardless, he predicted crowds will still fl ock from all over to experience the High Line.

“I defi nitely think that it’ll be a thing that tourists will come check out when they’re in the city, because it’s unique,” he said. “How many parks are in the sky?”

Elevated greenway raises parks to a whole new level

Villager photo by J.B. Nicholas

Parkgoers enjoyed a section of the recently opened High Line just north of 14th St. on Monday night. The park is open seven days a week until 10 p.m.

Continued from page 1

June 10 - 16, 2009 35

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At High Line ribbon cutting on Monday, fl anked by P.S. 11 students, from left, the students’ teacher, Farida Ahmad, Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe, Robert Hammond of Friends of the High Line, hedge-fund manager Philip Falcone, Josh David of Friends of the High Line (partially hidden from view), Mayor Bloomberg, Lisa Marie Falcone, Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Congressmember Jerrold Nadler, Diane von Furstenberg and Borough President Scott Stringer.

36 June 10 - 16, 2009