Volume 76, Number 3
June 7 - 13, 2006
Editorial/ Op-Ed
Restaurants should not be collateral damage in bar wars
E.U. presented a perfect target: a new “gastropub” opening up in the bar-oversaturated East Village at a pivotal moment in the club/quality of life wars when the State Liquor Authority was finally listening to the community. An anti-E.U. petition stated “subdued restaurants and cafes are one thing, but loud raucous late-night bars (possibly with live music and or video screens) are quite another.”
Notebook
In his poetry or garden, Kunitz cultivated renewal
By Esther Harriott
In November 1995, the poet Stanley Kunitz, who died on May 13 at the age of 100, read from his work at the Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y. A short, slight man, Kunitz stood behind the lectern and, in his distinctive incantatory style, read a selection of poems that, he said, represented significant periods in his life.
Those lazy days of American summer that I don’t have
By Andrei Codrescu
People are starting to close their letters to me with “Have a deep lazy summer,” and I find myself writing back, “You, too, but don’t fall out of the hammock.” I mean, can you believe that? I don’t even remember my last deep lazy summer.
 Letters to the editor
Scoopy's Notebook
Editorial Cartoon
By Ira Blutreich
Police blotter
Scene
News In Brief
Stop! Stop? Aw, c’mon, please stop…
Block heaves sigh of relief as vent project nears end
Water world at Pier 40
Take me to the river
Obituary
Gino Raffetto, 83, of Raffetto’s on W. Houston St.
By Albert Amateau
Gino Raffetto, who ran Raffetto’s, the 100-year-old family food shop in the Village until he retired in 1992 when his sons took over, died May 23 in his home above the store in the same building where he was born 83 years ago.
Donn Davis, 71, hairstylist to women of a certain age
Donn Davis, a popular hairstylist on W. Eighth St., died of a heart attack in his Grove St. apartment on May 19. He was 71.
Youth/Sports
For a break, former tennis player tries triathlons
By Judith Stiles
When Quentin Ball heard that a giant dead sewer rat floated by a triathlete during a swim in the Hudson River last year, she cringed, but only hesitated for a moment before deciding to participate in the Nautica triathlon in New York City, to be held on July 16.
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"Serving West and East Village, Chelsea, SoHo, NoHo, Little Italy, Chinatown and the Lower East Side"
 Villager photo by Jefferson Siegel
Andrew Alpern, an architectural consultant for developer Gregg Singer, showing a photo of the old P.S. 64, left, and a mockup of how it would look “scalped” — after having all its exterior detailing ripped off — right.
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INSIDE
Quinn talks trash; backs Gansevoort transfer site
By Albert Amateau
Christine Quinn, speaker of the City Council and councilmember representing the Village and Chelsea, this week threw her support behind a proposed marine transfer station on the Gansevoort Peninsula for recyclable waste.
Trump fires up new plan for Hudson Square hotel
By Ronda Kaysen
Donald Trump’s newest addition to the Manhattan skyline may come in the form of a 45-story luxury high-rise on the sleepy eastern edge of Hudson Square.
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Dorm developer’s side tears down old P.S. 64 at hearing
By Lincoln Anderson
An architectural historian and an urban planner speaking for developer Gregg Singer blasted the old P.S. 64 at a Landmarks Preservation Commission hearing Tuesday morning, saying the building was “like the poor relative from the other side of the tracks.”
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Tasini wants 15,000 signatures, 0 troops in Iraq
By Lincoln Anderson and Jefferson Siegel
Senate candidate Jonathan Tasini kicked off his petitioning effort to gather signatures to get on the ballot at Union Square on Tuesday morning, where he was joined by antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan. Tasini has to collect 15,000 signatures in the next five weeks to qualify for the ballot in the Sept. 12 Democratic primary.
Trying to predict, and to direct, Chelsea’s future
By Albert Amateau
A panel of urban experts last week explored ideas about the future of Chelsea at a forum attended by nearly 100 neighbors at the Hudson Guild’s recently renovated John Lovejoy Elliott Center.
 Doctoroff puts full-court press on Basketball City
By Lincoln Anderson
Like Shaquille O’Neal in the paint, it’s so far been impossible to dislodge Basketball City from Pier 63 in the Hudson River Park. But on May 30, turning up the pressure, Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff wrote to Bruce Radler, Basketball City’s president, urging him to accept the Hudson River Park Trust’s offer under which the basketball facility would be able to stay on the W. 23rd St. pier through Sept. 1 of this year, but would have to vacate after that date.
For rent: Apartments with garden (and redwood) view
Before the construction of Avalon Bay’s new building on the north side of E. Houston St. at the Bowery, gardeners at the Liz Christy Garden were anxious that the work would harm their beloved sanctuary.
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 David of Mulberry is getting a rise in Little Italy
By Lincoln Anderson
An 8-foot-tall, anatomically correct replica of Michelangelo’s statue of David has been causing some raised eyebrows and getting a rise out of neighbors and tourists at the Mulberry St. Mall in Little Italy.
Gastropub is hungry for a beer and wine license
By Lincoln Anderson
Back in the 1980s, Bob Giraldi directed the music video for Pat Benatar’s “Love Is a Battlefield.” Today, though, the battlefield for Giraldi isn’t love but E. Fourth St., where community opposition is threatening to put his upscale new gastropub, E.U., out of business before it barely has had a chance to open.
 NEST is hardly empty, parents and students protest
By Anindita Dasgupta
On May 24, Wall St. stood divided. From 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m., more than 500 parents and children crowded the street facing the Cipriani Club. Parents waved signs and chanted, “Save our NEST!” while making sure their children didn’t run into the street. Children beat pots, blew whistles and shouted at cars passing by to honk in protest.
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Arts & Entertainment
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 Off-Broadway’s It director
By Rachel Fershleiser
If you’re the sort of person who pays attention to theatre directors, here’s a name you must know: Trip Cullman. Only a few years out of Yale’s directing program, the 31-year- old has assisted Mike Nichols and Joe Mantello, worked with top New York theatre companies, and directed five shows this season alone.
A con at first sight
By Jerry Tallmer
She, Adelaide Pinchin, a lonely, self-effacing virgin of a certain age who slaves away in the back room of a shop just off London’s Edgeware Road, making hats for fine ladies, is convinced she’s “too fat to be seen” (she isn’t) and has never stopped dreaming that some day the right man will come along.
In her one-woman show, Mary Pat Gleason uses humor to heal
By Scott Harrah
“Stopping Traffic,” written and performed by Mary Pat Gleason, is anything but the typical one-woman show. It’s a funny but often poignant first-person account of her battle with bipolar disorder while working as an actress and writer in New York and Hollywood.
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 Altman’s antidote to slick Hollywood fare
By Leonard Quart
For me the highlight of the pedestrian 2005 Oscar ceremony was the granting of an honorary Oscar to the director, Robert Altman – a still-working octogenarian who has had a luminous and prolific career. Still, despite his having received five Academy Award nominations for best director, he like Hitchcock, Lumet, and Scorsese (a testimony to Hollywood’s aesthetic obtuseness), has never won an Oscar.
 Koch On Film
By Ed Koch
Mission Impossible III (-) Feh is the right word to describe this so-called action movie. Tom Cruise should retire, become a stay-at-home dad taking care of his new baby and allow Katie Holmes to continue with her acting career. She’s alright, not yet terrific, but not bad either.
The Da Vinci Code (-) I did not read Dan Brown’s novel on which this film is based nor do I intend to read it. Many people who denounced the book and sought to put down the movie, directed by Ron Howard, smelled blood after the film’s poor reviews at Cannes.
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New York's
Exciting downtown scene
Scene and Heard
By Jen Carlson
I last left you with an interview of Aaron Dessner of The National, whose show I caught at Webster Hall on May 21st. Someone once told me if you put your ear to a pint glass you’ll hear The National, but do yourself one better and see them live. They have a way of tugging at my heartstrings while simultaneously inspiring me to drink whiskey on a barstool reading a Bukowski novel.
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Letters to the editor
