Voted New York State's Best Community Newspaper

		NEWS Lopez calls Post toxic, as her funds are withheld By Lincoln Anderson Margarita Lopez, who last week came under fire for taking contributions from Scientology members while giving funds to the group’s Downtown detox center, is now also at risk of losing public matching funds because of unresolved problems with her 2001 funds. Yet, the East Side councilmember, in a lengthy interview with The Villager on Monday, said she has done no wrong and expressed confidence in her campaign for borough president. Slain writer played key role for park and for Pagan By Lincoln Anderson Steven Vincent of E. 11th St., who was murdered on Aug. 2 in Basra, will go down in history as the first American journalist killed in Iraq. But before his tragic end he also carved a place for himself in East Village history as a core member of the group that brought City Councilmember Antonio Pagan to power and helped bring about the cleanup of Tompkins Square Park.
Photo courtesy Friends of the High Line Hillary Clinton walks on the High Line north of 14th St. with Robert Hammond, left, and Joshua David, co-founders of Friends of the High Line. Hillary hikes on the High Line and hooks up $18 million for it By Albert Amateau Billed as a photo-op with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton walking the High Line in the Meatpacking District, an Aug. 4 event celebrated the congressional passage of the federal transportation bill with a significant $18 million allocation for conversion of the derelict railroad viaduct into a 1.45-mile-long elevated park.

Inside Con Edison explosion scorches apartment building By Jefferson Siegel On Wednesday afternoon, Aug. 3, an underground Con Edison transformer at Third St. and Avenue B exploded, sending two people to the hospital and leaving several families homeless. Significant damage was done to 199 E. Third St., a six-story apartment building. After a good run, Keith Haring’s Pop Shop goes pop By Ellen Keohane This spring, when the Keith Haring Foundation announced it would be closing its Soho Pop Shop on Aug. 28, some Haring fans took the news pretty hard. “It is sad… it’s almost like a good friend is dying,” posted Philip Bodifée on the Foundation’s Web site. “I cried when I got the e-mail saying that it was closing,” wrote another. Seminary looking up, too, with tower General Theological Seminary is considering a mixed-use residential project to be built by the Brodsky Organization to replace the four-story Sherrill Hall on the Ninth Ave. front of the campus. On Ave. B, trying to turn community space into condos By Ellen Keohane On hot summer days, it’s hard to imagine that any pool in the city would go unused. But there’s one, lined with mold, that’s been empty for more than 20 years in Christodora House, an upscale condo building in the East Village.		Artist who was once the center is now on the fringe By Lincoln Anderson It’s around 2 a.m. on Saturday night, as he slips up quietly and props his painting against the wall outside Ray’s Candy Store on Avenue A. The man is a slight figure, wearing a trucker cap, smoking. It was a long row to hoe, but gardeners reach deal By Sara Levin Following a year’s worth of negotiations, construction will begin on the Chrystie Place II apartment complex on the north side of Houston St. on the Bowery after an agreement was reached last Friday with volunteers from the neighboring Liz Christy Garden over protecting their turf. Gardeners opposed developers’ plans to excavate 3 feet into the garden. Although construction will still intrude somewhat, it is about two-thirds less than originally proposed, and will preserve the garden’s towering dawn redwood tree and smaller blue Atlas cedar tree, which are prized by gardeners. A walled seminary opens up with new learning center By Albert Amateau General Theological Seminary has begun construction of the Archbishop Desmond Tutu Education Center inside three of the seminary’s 19th-century buildings in a $23 million project that will include removing most of the forbidding wall along the 10th Ave, side of the campus.

Arts and Entertainment

Marian Seldes to headline her latest stage return Actress speaks on living the best part of life By Jerry Tallmer On Thursday evening, August 18, five days before her 77th birthday, Marian Seldes will make her character’s entrance down an aisle of a theater on East 59th Street, saying to the actor who portrays her driver, morphine supplier, and aide, “Gently, gently. You’re a sadist, Edward.” Come blow your horn Trumpet festival features a worldwide goulash of performances By Rick Marx For the month of August, master trumpeters of many different genres will be flocking to New York both to perform and enjoy the Third Festival of New Trumpet Music, of “FONT,” as it is known in brief. The entire festival runs through Aug. 27; locally, Tonic, the club at 107 Norfolk Street, will be among the venues, with four days of music, from Aug. 12 to 15, featuring a worldwide goulash of performances, from the Ray Vega Latin Jazz Quartet to the Zlatne Uste Balkan Brass Band, with lots of musical destinations in between.		Koch On Film By Ed Koch The Devil’s Rejects (+) This movie is extraordinary. It is a burlesque of all the movies that have come before like Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Reservoir Dogs. The movie has victims killed by the dozens and tortured before being murdered. The aggressors include men who are as dirty and ugly as it is possible to be. The women are physically beautiful, but just as, or even more, cruel than the men and surely the most foul-mouthed creatures that you have ever seen and heard on a movie screen. The 3 Rooms of Melancholia (+) This is a very interesting film that the New York Times critic called a masterpiece. I would not go that far. It is directed by a Finn, Pirjo Honkasalo, and the film was a collaboration among people from three countries — Finland, Sweden and Denmark — and it is a documentary on Russia. The man behind Hitler speaks Joseph Goebbels’ thoughts revealed in diary entries and historical footage By Jerry Tallmer If Cleopatra’s nose had been a half-inch longer, my father used to say, the whole history of the world would be different. Or again, as a bitter old joke goes, if only somebody had liked Adolf Hitler’s youthful paintings…