Villager photos by Jefferson Siegel

Derided as a “rent-a-crowd” recruited to support extending term limits, a group sat together and held signs on one side of the Council Chambers last Thursday and refused to answer reporters’ questions, above. Yetta Kurland, a candidate for Speaker Christine Quinn’s Council seat, spoke against extending term limits without a referendum, right.

Take it to the limit 1 more time? Term turmoil at council hearings
By Lincoln Anderson and Albert Amateau
The hastily called two days of frenetic hearings on extending term limits last week were deemed great “political theater” by some observers. Among those who testified were a Mr. X, a man from a group called simply Rent Too Damn High! and a Latino pastor who concluded his remarks backing extending term limits by saying he prayed the City Council would “follow the Lord’s will at this time.”

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Second Cooper Square staffer nabbed for embezzling
By Gerard Flynn
A second staff member at an East Village affordable housing group has been arrested and is under investigation on suspicion of stealing at least $50,000 from the nonprofit organization, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office said last week.

7 injured as fire guts top floor of Nolita building
By Jefferson Siegel
A fire roared through the top floor of a six-story apartment building on Elizabeth St. Monday night, injuring three residents and four firefighters.


The wreckers cometh, Playhouse pro-preservers fear
By Lincoln Anderson
The Greenwich Village Society for Preservation, the Historic Districts Council and dozens of Village residents came together on Monday outside the Provincetown Playhouse and Apartments on MacDougal St. to protest New York University’s impending demolition of most of the historic structure to construct a new Law School building.

News
Senior poets, well versed in life’s rhyme and reason
By Albert Amateau
Poems, alive and thriving, flew around the fourth-floor room at Greenwich House on Tuesday afternoon as they do the second and fourth Tuesdays of every month when “Poetry for You and Me,” the Greenwich House Senior Center poetry workshop, meets.

Nader blasts the bailout and ‘2-party dictatorship’
By Mary Reinholz
A few of his young supporters wore T-shirts displaying merged images of Senators Barack Obama and John McCain emblazoned with one defiant word: “Nope.”

A walking tour kicks off Seward Park renewal talks
By Gerard Flynn
In 1967, under a federal “slum-clearance” program, tenements housing 7,000 residents on a large swath of several blocks south of the Williamsburg Bridge approach were razed.

An illustration from Miss Lasko-Gross’s upcoming autobiographical graphic novel, “A Mess of Everything.”
From ‘Pow!!!’ to ‘Maus,’ Wonder Woman to W.W. III, the graphic novel’s evolution is still being written
By Casey Samulski
Will Eisner slapped the phrase “A Graphic Novel” on the hardcover and trade paperback editions of his “A Contract With God and Other Tenement Stories.”

Four shot on L.E.S.; Not gang-related, police say
By Lincoln Anderson
Gunfire on two nights last week on the Lower East Side left several residents wounded and neighbors shaken.

Battalion Chief Savastano remembered at ‘Fort Pitt’
By Lorcan Otway
Fire Department officials and hundreds of firefighters gathered at the Pitt St. firehouse earlier this month to unveil a plaque for Battalion Chief James J. Savastano.

Fifty Words to lose your lover
By Christina Alex
Set in a married couple’s bedroom, the opening of Michael Weller’s “Fifty Words” make you feel like a peeping tom.

Koch on Film
By Ed Koch
“Choose Connor” (-) Everything in this political drama is apparent from the very beginning. It contains no surprises and very little suspense.
“RocknRolla” (+) This film, written and directed by Guy Ritchie, contains more violence than a Sam Peckinpah movie. More violence, frankly, than anyone can appreciate, including me. Nevertheless, the London setting is interesting and the English gang members are fascinating.