Volume 75, Number 37
February 1 - 7, 2006
Editorial/ Op-Ed
Burden is doing the right thing; so should B.S.A.
Two hotly contested development projects were the subject of hearings before the Board of Standards and Appeals last week and the situations merit a closer look at how they are being handled — and, in one case, mishandled.
 Letters to the editor
Scoopy's Notebook
Editorial Cartoon
By Ira Blutreich
Talking point
Donor sought by a Democratic Party on life support
By Daniel Meltzer
Medical hot lines across the country remained silent today after physicians in the nation’s capital sent out an emergency call for a willing donor to step forward to contribute his or her brain as well as an entire backbone to the Democratic Party, which has been diagnosed with extreme multiple osteoneurological failure, or E-MONF syndrome (pronounced “eemonf”).
The shameful silence on Cuba by America’s librarians
By Andrei Codrescu
I was born in a place where people were forbidden to read most of what we consider the fundamental books of Western civilization. Being found in possession of a book such as George Orwell’s “1984” could land one in prison for years. My good luck was to meet Dr. Martin in my adolescence. Dr. Martin was a retired professor who had collected and kept in his modest three-room apartment the best of interwar Romanian literature.
Police Blotter
News In Brief
City agrees to make underground fuel tanks comply
Bus-ted on Avenue B
Everybody must get stones
Downtown Kobe
Get your autographed Villager here!
In Pictures
Shopping-cart race delivers on a good time
Mushing shopping carts full of giant legs or other bizarre cargo and wearing costumes, 800 people in 125 teams participated in the annual Idiotarod race last Sunday afternoon
Obituary
Bill Rice, 74, cult film actor, artist and writer
By Sara G. Levin
Bill Rice, who died on Jan. 23 at 74 from lung cancer, was perhaps best known as a legendary underground actor who appeared in “Coffee and Cigarettes” with Taylor Mead. But he was first and foremost a painter, then a photographer, sculptor, filmmaker and historian, who was a fixture in the avant-garde art world for over 30 years.
World
Trying to get by in Mumbai
East Village photographer Q. Sakamaki was in India at the end of last October, documenting poverty conditions in the largely Muslim northern suburbs of Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay), considered the world’s largest slum, and Delhi.
Sports
Girls league scores with focus on team play and fun
By Judith Stiles
Eleven-year-old Madeline Fried of Greenwich Village has always adored the legendary book “Madeline” by Ludwig Bemelmans, in which Paris is the setting for the adventures of “twelve little girls in two straight lines.”
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"Serving West and East Village, Chelsea, SoHo, NoHo, Little Italy, Chinatown and the Lower East Side"
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Villager photo by Q. Sakamaki
A rock band performing at the Tompkins Square band shell in June 1991, a few months before the park was closed and the band shell demolished.
Bring back the band shell! Activists to stage campaign
By Lincoln Anderson
Eric Drooker remembers when he was 7 years old and growing up in the East Village and noticed a new structure taking shape in Tompkins Square Park.
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Inside
Home Depot is looking for a home in Hudson Sq.
By Alex Schmidt
To push a big-box store into the Hudson Square neighborhood of Downtown Manhattan quietly and successfully, follow one simple rule: keep it under the radar.
Returning from walking the streets, step by step
By Ronda Kaysen
Anne Hanavan arrived at her Lower East Side shop in a leopard-print shirt, tight jeans and a bad mood. “Look,” she said, tugging open the steel gate, “If all you want is a story about a prostitute, I’m not interested. Go talk to someone else, there are plenty of former prostitutes around here.”
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Museum will have Abbie’s trash, Rubin’s road kill
By Lincoln Anderson
The Yippies, or Youth International Party, were always known for their sense of the absurd. In 1968, a year after their founding, they ran a pig named Pigasus for president and the next year Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin famously turned the Chicago 7 conspiracy trial on its head with their courtroom antics.
 Freegans find free feasts
Text and photos by John Ranard
Janet, a high school Spanish teacher, napped after Madeline’s gourmet meal, her body satiated with the comfort of a full stomach.
B.S.A. chips away at Arman Building hardship claims
By Chad Smith
The city’s Board of Standards and Appeals expressed skepticism on Jan. 23 about the economic hardship claim submitted for a building planned at 482 Greenwich St. on property owned by the late sculptor Arman.
 ‘Mercury building’ still unsafe for tenants’ return
By Jefferson Siegel
Nearly three weeks after mercury was found dripping into an apartment at 55 W. Eighth St., the building remains empty and officials are still unsure of the toxic substance’s origin.
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 Critical Mass bicyclist aids police hurt in collision
By Jefferson Siegel
For months cyclists participating in the Critical Mass rides have expressed concern about potential injuries resulting from police vehicles chasing bicyclists. Their concerns became reality last Friday when two motor-scooter police suffered injuries after colliding while policing the ride. By the end of the night, 14 cyclists were under arrest and many wondered if because of the police injuries a new level of confrontation loomed over future rides.
Quinn and union leaders support N.Y.U. grad students
By Kara Bloomgarden-Smoke
Undaunted by New York University’s continued rebuffing of their union, striking N.Y.U. graduate assistants rallied outside the university’s Bobst Library last Thursday, with a strong show of support from City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and union officials.
Neighbors of club are feeling the Love, too much
By Albert Amateau
“All you need is love,” sang the Beatles 40 years ago, but neighbors of Love, a club in the basement level of 179 MacDougal St. near the corner of W. Eighth St. in the Village, want less Love and more sleep.
Board committee approves final Union Sq. N. design
By Albert Amateau
The final plan for the renovation of the north end of Union Square Park, with an expanded playground and a restored pavilion to accommodate a private concession for a seasonal restaurant, was made public on Monday at a Community Board 5 Parks Committee meeting.
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Arts
 Fitting in ‘Candida,’ between shifts
By Jerry Tallmer
Miss Prossy sits all day, prim and stiff-backed, at her writing machine, typing out the sermons and miscellaneous correspondence of the Reverend James Mavor Morell, and then goes off to one of her day jobs, either taking care of reservations at Nobu restaurant in Tribeca or, uptown, strolling around, feather duster in hand, at Jekyll & Hyde, Sixth Avenue and 57th Street.
 New directions for historic art club
By Nicole Davis
Eight hundred miles south of New York, in the town of Augusta, Georgia, there is a traveling exhibition of art from the Salmagundi Club—the same Salmagundi Club that sits at 47 Fifth Avenue in a landmark brownstone on Greenwich Village’s gold coast. Started in 1871 by a group of artists who hung out every Saturday night to sketch and eat Salmagundi stew—the strange word means potpurri, which the founders chose to describe its amalgam of painters, sculptors, and designers—the club is probably better appreciated around the country than it is in New York City, though that is on the verge of changing.
‘Love n’ Courage’
By Jerry Tallmer
April in Paris, February on First Avenue.
Monday, February 13, to be exact, when Crystal Field’s Theater for the New City, First Avenue and 10th Street, holds its 3rd annual “Love n’ Courage” champagne-supper bash, this one celebrating the life and lyrics of the great E.Y. “Yip” Harburg, whose “April in Paris” was the other side of his bitter, poignant Depression-era “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime” coin.
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Online ‘therapist’ hangs up shingle on East Seventh
By Nicole Davis
Last week, Adrianne Wortzel, an artist and professor of new media at New York City College of Technology, unveiled her latest installation, Eliza Redux (www.elizaredux.org), an off-the-shelf robot that responds to questions posed by people online.
 Paying homage to Sam Shepard, one play at a time
By Jerry Tallmer
In a previous century, the appellation Jukes and Kallikaks was shorthand for interbred rural peoples of minimal sexual discipline and less mentality. The Jukes-and-Kallikaks genetic line would seem to have been passed along to a more recent family, first spotted in 1979 and now once again under scrutiny on a New York stage.
Koch on Film
By Ed Koch
The New World (-) This visually stunning film depicts a lush virgin America and later on, beautiful formal gardens in Great Britain belonging to the King. For me neither was enough, and I found the movie boring.
April’s Shower (-) In the last few months, several movies on sexual orientation — homosexual, gay and lesbian, and transsexual — have been released, e.g., “Brokeback Mountain,” about two homosexual cowboys, and “Breakfast on Pluto,” involving a transvestite. Whereas the first two films are sensational, “April’s Shower,” about a lesbian relationship, is poorly done.
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