Volume 75, Number 44
March 22 - 28, 2006

Editorial/ Op-Ed
Landmarks must set a hearing date for the old P.S. 64
On Oct. 18 of last year, the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission announced it had calendared the old P.S. 64 school building at E. Ninth St. and Avenue B for a designation hearing. The news came as a stunning victory for the neighborhood in its fight to save the building and restore it to use as a community cultural and/or educational center.

Talking point
Bush didn’t lie, but if NATO balks we must pull out
By Ed Koch
On March 12, The New York Times published the first of two articles on “Saddam’s Secret Strategy.” The Times reported that “the Iraqi dictator was so secretive and kept information so compartmentalized that his top military leaders were stunned when he told them [in December 2002] three months before the war that he had no weapons of mass destruction and they were demoralized because they had counted on hidden stocks of poison gas or germ weapons for the nation’s defense.”

Letters to the editor

Scoopy's Notebook

Editorial Cartoon
By Ira Blutreich

Police blotter

Scene

News In Brief

All hands on deck

A green proposal

They’re ’Bama bound

Harasser will be hung up 6 months

Community Board 2 and 3 meetings

Finally, finials are restored

Obituary

Shelton Powell, 43, market manager
Shelton Powell, who worked at the Morton Williams Associated supermarket on Bleecker St. at LaGuardia Pl. and at the Grand Union Market that previously stood at the location, died on Tues. March 14 in Newark, N.J., at the age of 43.

Youth/Sports

Golden moment at Chelsea Piers
Earlier this month, a group of Olympians helped the organization Right To Play kick off the opening of its first United States office in its new space at Chelsea Piers.

New Pier 40 fields put Downtown tourney on the map
By Jill Stern
Thanks to the new fields at Pier 40, Downtown United Soccer Club was able to host its first annual preseason soccer tournament the weekend of March 11-12. After months of preparation and planning by DUSC volunteers, all involved declared the event was a success.

"Serving West and East Village, Chelsea, SoHo, NoHo, Little Italy, Chinatown and the Lower East Side"

Villager photo by Jefferson Siegel Fallen ’40s hero isn’t forgotten Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, front row, sixth from left, joined the sons, grandsons and family of Patrolman Thomas J. Gargan on Tuesday for the unveiling of a street co-naming sign in his honor at Bank and Washington Sts. Gargan was killed in 1947 while responding to a burglary on Bank St. <more>. N.Y.U. may be looking to add to Third Ave. dormitory row By Lincoln Anderson With the recent news that the Catholic Center at New York University will be demolished and replaced by a smaller chapel built on only a portion of the property, the immediate speculation in the community was that New York University undoubtedly must be planning to buy the remaining property to develop a new building.		Inside Furstenberg’s Market designs; plans studios, event complex By Albert Amateau Fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg intends to convert two adjoining buildings in the Meatpacking District into a complex that includes theaters, event spaces, studios, offices and an enclosed roof space. Curtain ready to rise for Act II of the Cherry Lane Theatre By Jerry Tallmer One candle that Edna St. Vincent Millay lit in 1924 — the Cherry Lane Theatre she founded in what had once been a brewery on Commerce St., a couple of minutes’ walk from her tiny house on Bedford St. — has been giving a lovely light for 82 years now, despite some flickering over the decades and a lake in the first four rows whenever it rained.

St. Brigid parishioners appeal demolition ruling
By Albert Amateau
Despite the scaffolding erected over the sidewalk along the side of St. Brigid’s Church last week, former parishioners and East Village neighbors who are trying to preserve the 1849 church building believe that the walls won’t come tumbling down — at least not yet.

Long lines, Hawaiian shirts; it’s Trader Joe’s mania
By Ellen Keohane
There wasn’t a velvet rope, but there was a security guard outside Trader Joe’s on Monday afternoon.
Three days after its grand opening on St. Patrick’s Day, the specialty grocery store at 142 E. 14th St. attracted more shoppers than it could handle. So 30 people had to wait outside before a Trader Joe’s employee allowed them to enter. “Are you serious — this line’s for a grocery store?” one woman hissed before joining the queue.

New Judson minister says job was made in heaven
By Albert Amateau
“I’ve always wanted to be at Judson. I longed for it in a very greedy way,” the Reverend Donna Schaper told The Villager in an interview last week at Judson Memorial Church on Washington Square South.

Officer slain in ’47 honored with street co-naming
By Jefferson Siegel
Bank St. was filled with police commanders, officers and family members of a fallen Greenwich Village policeman on Tuesday to honor the officer’s memory with a new street co-naming sign.

Green Block needs more cultivation, committee says
By Lincoln Anderson
An initiative to improve energy efficiency and air quality in the East Village near the E. 14th St. Con Edison plant needs some more community input and fine-tuning before more than $2 million is allocated for the project, a Community Board 3 committee decided last week.

St. George Schools thrive as parish marks centennial
By Andrew Stasiw
With St. George Ukrainian Catholic Church on E. Seventh St. recently celebrating its parish’s centennial, the church and its schools continue to prosper within the ethnically diverse East Village. Situated across the street from the historic McSorley’s Old Ale House, St. George Ukrainian Catholic Church and Schools (the schools are adjacent to the church on E. Sixth St.) have a dynamic story — a story of a people escaping political turmoil in Eastern Europe and of survival and growth in a new land.

Living in the dead zone: 20 years after Chernobyl
By Chad Smith
The Ukrainian Museum is commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown with an exhibit drawing fresh attention to the history of the disaster, and surveying how Ukrainians residing in the afflicted areas today are managing to survive.

Museum’s push for historic district meets opposition
By Lincoln Anderson
A proposal by the Lower East Side Tenement Museum to create a new city-designated historic district on the streets around its home has sparked a backlash from local property owners who charge they were not informed of the plan even as the museum has been pushing ahead with it.

Arts

Simone de Beauvoir’s second love
By Jerry Tallmer
He was 39. She was 40.
They were meeting, this time, in New York City. He was American all the way. She was French all the way.
Nelson Algren. Simone de Beauvoir.
Thanks to him, in bed and otherwise, she had discovered a degree of womanhood, of love, that swept everything else aside. Almost.

‘Grey Gardens’ documentary gets makeover on stage
By Scott Harrah
Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner Doug Wright (“I Am My Own Wife”) has done the unthinkable. He’s taken an obscure documentary about Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis’s eccentric aunt and cousin and adapted it into an epic historical stage musical that far surpasses the 1975 film of the same name.

A violinist in fiddler’s clothes
By Michael Clive
Note to violin aficionados: when you’ve been stroking the strings with your bow all night, strumming a violin is not as easy as you might imagine. After quickly but gently lowering the instrument with your neck hand, you have to strum with the thumb of your bow hand, which must remain free and relaxed while your other fingers are tensed, keeping the bow clear of the strings.

Dear Jane: How should I sell my book?
By Sara G. Levin
To jumpstart her career as an author, English Literature Professor Patrice Hannon found the perfect job in an unlikely place. Twice a week, she rings up customers at the cozy Bleecker St. antiques shop, Clary & Co. while promoting her new book, “Dear Jane Austen: A Heroine’s Guide to Life and Love.” Nestled among delicate Belle Epoque chandeliers and Americana cutlery, the paperback has sold 100 copies from the store since December.

Koch on Film
By Ed Koch
“Ask the Dust” (-) After reading Manohla Dargis’ review in The New York Times, I expected to enjoy this movie. Unfortunately, I did not.
“Evil” (+) The title of this film doesn’t to a good job of conveying the subject. In my lexicon, the word “evil” is misused to describe the horrible relationship between a stepfather and his teenage stepson and what befalls that teenager at a private Swedish boarding school in the 1950’s where he ultimately ends up.

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