Volume 76, Number 49
May 2 - 8, 2007
Editorial/Op-Ed
Hats off to Spitzer for gay marriage bill
“Promise made. Promise kept” is the pithy comment State Senator Tom Duane offered in response to Governor Eliot Spitzer’s introduction on April 27 of Spitzer’s program bill to enact marriage equality for same-sex couples.
Talking Point
Kids and guns: An irresistible urge in violent times
By Daniel Meltzer
Another school shooting, the worst yet. More deaths, more grief, more talk, more questions. Guns are too easy to get. Mental health care isn’t. Little boys in America have always played with guns, real or virtual. We are all sons of the Wild West, the Revolution, the Civil War, deer and duck hunts and urban combat zones. Contrary to some opinions, it doesn’t mean we were all potential killers.
Letters to the editor
Police Blotter
Scene
Scoopy's Notebook
Ira Blutreich
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Villager photo by Jefferson Siegel
N.Y.U. president John Sexton in his office atop Bobst Library overlooking Washington Square.
Arts and Entertainment
 Family man
By Rebecca Cathcart
Kyle Baker’s Chinatown office is the embodiment of his busy mind. A 30-inch computer monitor erupts from a mountain of paper strewn across his desk. Bookshelves border the room, the frayed spines of old comics and reference materials peering at the clutter below.
In training to train words and Wisteria
By Jerry Tallmer
The one most salient bit of advice Jules Feiffer gave to Molly Smith Metzler in a one-hour mentoring session last fall — an “intense hour,” say they both — was that “if you’ve got a bad guy in your play, the least interesting approach is to bring him on as a bad guy.”
Sports
Batting around the debate on aluminum versus wood
By Judith Stiles
In the olden days of baseball, when kids played endless neighborhood games on sizzling summer days, the littlest tykes were called “no-hitters,” since their strikeouts and occasional bloopy hits did not affect the score.
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Listen to The Villager on Internet Radio:
This week on The Villager radio show, our guests are David Kramer, principal of the Hudson Companies, and John Fout, community policy aide for Concilmember Rosie Menedez. Kramer's Hudson Companies is building the new 26-story dormitory for New York University on E. 12th between Third and Fourth Aves. Fout, speaking on behalf of Mendez, calls Kramer and the U.S. Postal Service to task over the questionable air-rights transfer that is allowing the dorm to be built 30 percent larger than normal. Kramer defends the air-rights transfer and slams a community lawsuit against it as "frivolous." Kramer also blasts The Villager for dubbing it a "mega-dorm." Only on The Villager radio show!
NEWS
 Old market building to go from rags to riches?
By Lincoln Anderson
When the four one-story buildings of the Essex Street Market were constructed in 1938 by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, they were meant to house the Lower East Side’s droves of pushcart vendors so that they would stop crowding the streets.
University fails grade on landmark district plan
By Albert Amateau
New York University’s less-than-total support of the proposed South Village Historic District provoked some bitter words from Village preservation advocates at the Community Board 2 Landmarks Committee meeting last week.
Band in bubble will rock ’n’ write
After 25 years on Village beat, Mike Singer retires
By Albert Amateau
As Detective Mike Singer walked into the Sixth Precinct Community Council meeting in the basement of Our Lady of Pompei Church last Wednesday night, a wave of applause grew into a thunderous crescendo.
 Critical Mass transit for cyclists
By Jefferson Siegel
Last Friday’s Critical Mass riders made use of their wheels, ingenuity and MetroCards. After several dozen cyclists assembled in Union Square, many wearing copies of the Constitution with the words “My/Our Permit,” they quietly marched down the stairs of the Union Square subway station.
Film
 Tracing an artist’s journey, from street to screen
By Steven Snyder
Linda Hattendorf’s “The Cats of Mirikitani” won the audience award at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival, opened theatrically for an extended run at Cinema Village in March and, at 10 p.m. on Thursday, May 10, will hit New York’s public airwaves as part of the PBS series “Independent Lens.”
Koch on film
By Ed Koch
“Fracture” (-) I had hoped for more from this film.
“Lonely Hearts” (+) This film is based on the true actions of a couple who met through a lonely-hearts club. The period is the late 1930s and early ’40s, and everything looks authentic.
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