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The Paper of Record for East and West Villages, Lower East Side, Soho, Noho, Little Italy and Chinatown

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The Paper of Record for East and West Villages, Lower East Side, Soho, Noho, Little Italy and Chinatown

February 4, 2016 • FREE Volume 5 • Number 25

CBGB rocks on... well, sort of... in airport cafe

BY TINA BENITEZ-EVES

I

n its early days, CBGB actually had a kitchen where burgers and chili were cooked up. But it eventually became a dressing room, and many never imagined grabbing food inside the place ever again.

However, inside Terminal

C at Newark Liberty International Airport, travelers can now get a pseudo-taste of the now-defunct night club — or a turkey club sandwich, French onion soup or caprese salad — at CBGB L.A.B., or lounge and bar, a new restaurant that opened last December.

CBGB L.A.B. continued on p. 6

Conservative mag attacks Catholic Worker as lefty extremists; Who wrote it?

PHOTO BY TEQUILA MINSKY

BY MARY REINHOLZ

D

avid Horowitz’s conservative Web site, FrontPageMag.com,

Catholic Worker movement circles last fall when it posted an article attacking the followers of co-founder Dorothy Day as hard-left 1960s-style radicals who are allegedly

using the movement’s soup kitchen operation as a front to promote extremist politics and a “vile variant of liberation theology.”

The piece, posted Oct. 2 and carrying the byline of Spyridon Mitsotakis, a 27-year-old freelance writer, accuses Day’s “errant ac-

On the eve of the Iowa caucuses, at Saturday’s national “March for Bernie,” a Sanders supporter in Union Square posed proudly with her papier-mâché main man.

Purple: Paragon or pariah?

BY LINCOLN ANDERSON In the center of Adam Pur-

ARTICLE continued on p. 10

Eden — amid its concentric tables and trees — on Eldridge

represents darkness. …

F

ollowing The Villager’s recent exposés about Adam Purple’s stunning history of sexually abusing his own daugh-

HOWL! Happening — and how!....page 19 | May 14, 2014

ters and stepdaughters, the newspaper asked community activists for their reaction to the revelations. Not surprisingly, the responses ran the gamut from anger and denial to support and praise for the paper’s bringing the disturbing story to light.

Adam Purple, real name David Lloyd Wilkie, died in September at age 84 while biking over the Williamsburg Bridge. Following The Villager’s breaking the news of the legendary gardener’s death, his two daughters

came forward to share their experiences of growing up in a sexually abusive household and of Wilkie’s serving up to two years in prison in Australia for child molestation.

Subsequently, his two former stepdaughters also told The Villager their stories — with the older one, Dorothy, revealing that Wilkie sexually abused her nightly for when she was 12, for which he was arrested and went to jail. Meanwhile, his youngest PURPLE continued on p. 12

WWW.EASTVILLAGERNEWS.COM

www.EastVillagerNews.com

1

Adam Purple’s daughter Jenean told us hung on their wall in Australia — and which an apparently offended Australian judge cited at Purple’s custody hearing for his kids, slamming it as a “vulgar placard”? Valerio Orselli, executive director of Cooper Square Mutual Housing Association, shed some light. The poster, he said, “is a cartoon from The Realist magazine from the 1960s. It was obviously satire, although clearly not suitable for a very young girl. I think I may have it and it may have been reprinted in the ‘Best of the Realist’ book.” Indeed, the art was created by Frank CiePaul Krassner’s The Realist magazine’s Issue No. 48 in March 1964.

It reportedly became a pretty popular poster in its day. But with its image of a naked God raping a naked, top hat-wearing Uncle Sam — we

FONG UNFAZED: We were enjoying dim sum on Mott St. this week when we heard from reliable sources that things recently got heated at a Chinatown association meeting, and that some guy actually pulled a knife on Dewey Fong, a former deputy chief with the New York Police Department.

Fong was unfazed, though, we’re told, shrugging it off and saying he has had guns pulled on him in the past when he was a cop. It wasn’t clear if this was a family association meeting or some other civic association. Needless to say, the news is pretty scandalous. And of all the people to pull a knife on!

A police spokesperson could not immediately provide information on the alleged incident.

PURPLE POSTER: So what exactly was that graphic “...one nation, under God…” poster that

him, is that the city never did what he urged it to do — create pedicab stations. Instead we’re left with today’s chaotic situation, where pedicab drivers just swarm people randomly anywhere near Central Park South and aggressively thrust promotional signs in their faces.

CLOAK-AND-DAGGER POSTS: Well, the anonymous reader comments on any article involving the special election in the 65th Assembly District appear to have abated. It seemed that the online comments were the work of one or maybe two people, just judging by their tone and wording.

Usually, they were championing Jenifer Rajkumar, while often slamming her opponents, including Yuh-Line Niou — a.k.a. “that Niou girl” — and sometimes Rajkumar’s co-district leader, Paul Newell. Things really got weird when two of young children. In fact, we looked it up online, of the anonymous posters started having a “conversation” with another. “Agreed,” one of them Orselli, read this week’s community reaction ar- told the other on some point we can’t remember. ticle in The Villager on Adam Purple’s history of But we can see where the comments are coming child sex abuse. Orselli slams the gardens legend, from and what the actual user names are — as opsaying pedophiles should be outed. posed to the phony ones this person was using.

Both posts came from the same e-mail address PEDICAB PANIC: Also in this week’s Adam and I.P.N. somewhere in Scarsdale. If we need to Purple response article is pedicab pioneer George call in Edward Snowden to further investigate, Bliss, who defends the Garden of Eden’s creator we will! Anyone who dared speak up on the comas as an environmental visionary, albeit a deeply ment threads, calling for the commenter(s) to put a name with the posts, was viciously bashed and Bliss said he’s saddened to see how the industry told that they know nothing — nothing! — about now looks to be on the ropes with the mayor’s how local politics works, that it’s a bloodsport. new idea of putting the carriage horses in Central Clayton Patterson, for example, was told to shut Park squeezing out the pedal-pushing cabbies. “I up and emigrate to Austria already, while Patrick worked for eight years to bring pedicabs to New Shields, who is an actor-turned-window washer, York,” he said. The main problem, according to was nastily chided to butt out and keep “cleaning the pigeon crap off the window sills.” Wow! Classy! Someone — maybe the same person — also slammed Jeanne Wilcke, the president of Downtown Independent Democrats, and Sean Sweeney, another D.I.D. leader, for not forcing the club to pick a candidate, calling them spineless, “all talk,” etc., etc. Rajkumar told us she doesn’t know who was behind all the anonMAIL TO: One Metrotech Ctr North, 10th floor • Brooklyn, NY 11201 ymous posts, which seemed to us like an atYES! I want to receive The Villager every week of the year. tempt to spin the race.

Then again, it’s not even CHECK ONE: New Subscription Renewal exactly a race yet — no one knows if Governor (New Subscription $29•Renewal $24, for 52 weeks, by check or credit card, will be added to your current subscription) Andrew Cuomo will call a special election of Name: April 19, as he has previAddress: ously said he would do.

But at least the anonyCity: State: Zip Code: mous comments seem Email: Phone: to be under control… .

Card Type: [ ] Visa [ ] Mastercard [ ] Amex [ ] Discover Famous last words? As Card Holder’s Signature: for why the anonymous Credit Card Number: posts have dried up, it might well have been Exp. Date: Security Code: because we were poking around about it. “Word travels fast in political circles,” Sweeny told us.

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POLICE BLOTTER Named best weekly newspaper in New York State in 2001, 2004 and 2005

by New York Press Association Editorials, First Place, 2014 Overall Design Excellence, First Place, 2013 Best Column, First Place, 2012 Photographic Excellence, First Place, 2011 Spot News Coverage, First Place, 2010 Coverage of Environment, First Place, 2009

PUBLISHER JENNIFER GOODSTEIN

EDITOR IN CHIEF LINCOLN ANDERSON

ARTS EDITOR

SCOTT STIFFLER

CONTRIBUTORS ALBERT AMATEAU IRA BLUTREICH SARAH FERGUSON TEQUILA MINSKY CLAYTON PATTERSON JEFFERSON SIEGEL ZACH WILLIAMS SHARON WOOLUMS

ART DIRECTOR MICHAEL SHIREY

GRAPHIC DESIGNERS RHIANNON HSU CHRIS ORTIZ

EXECUTIVE VP OF ADVERTISING

No butts about it Tobacco Prince, the smoke shop at 200 W. 14th St., may not be around much longer. According to a police report,

thing was burning and once inside of her residence, he slapped and choked the victim. He then removed her clothing and forced her to perform oral sex.

The suspect took the victim’s cell phone and removed $250 from her wal-

found multiple packs of cigarettes without tax stamps, with forged tax stamps and with Virginia stamps being sold on the premises. Police said they also found a switchblade, pepper spray and marijuana at the location. According to police, Tobacco Prince has a history of illegal behavior and the police plan to shut down the business.

Employees Bassam Alnahhar, 26, and Sam N. Hassan, 24, were arrested for felony criminal possession of a forged instrument.

treated and released at an area hospital.

The suspect is described as a white male in his twenties, 6 feet tall, with black hair and brown eyes.

Anyone with information is asked to call the Police Department’s Crime Stoppers Hotline, at 800-577-TIPS. Tips can also be submitted by logging onto the Crime Stoppers Web site, www. nypdcrimestoppers.com, or by texting them to 274637 (CRIMES) and then en-

Bottle bash

Out of control

A man assaulted a woman at Warehouse Wine and Spirits at 735 Broadway on Fri., Jan. 29, police said. The victim was shopping in the store around 5:30 p.m. when she got into an argument with a man. The man hit her in the face with a bottle, causing substantial pain, bruising and swelling to her cheek and mouth, police said.

Police arrested Assane Ciss, 61, for felony assault.

A car chase between police and a man driving a gray Volkswagen Passat got wild on Sat. Jan. 30. According to a report, police observed a man making an unreasonable amount of noise with his horn on W. 14th St. and Seventh Ave. at 9 p.m. Cops activated their patrol car’s lights and sirens but the man did not comply by pulling over his vehicle and proceeded to drive to Fifth Ave. When the driver stopped, a police

AMANDA TARLEY

but the man accelerated, dragging him

ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES JACK AGLIATA ALLISON GREAKER JENNIFER HOLLAND JIM STEELE JULIO TUMBACO

lights and also drove on the sidewalk, endangering pedestrians’ lives, police the man refused to get out of the vehicle when police attempted arrest.

Elias M. Blancovitch, 35, was busted for felony assault.

MARVIN ROCK

McD senior pounder Member of the National Newspaper Association

The Villager (USPS 578930) ISSN 0042-6202 is published every week by NYC Community Media LLC, One Metrotech North, 10th floor Brooklyn, NY 11201 (212) 229-1890.

Periodicals Postage paid at New York, N.Y. Annual subscription by mail in Manhattan and Brooklyn $29 ($35 elsewhere). Single copy price at office and newsstands is $1. The entire contents of newspaper, including advertising, are copyrighted and no part may be reproduced without the express permission of the publisher - © 2016 NYC Community Media LLC. PUBLISHER’S LIABILITY FOR ERROR

The Publisher shall not be liable for slight changes or typographical errors that do not lessen the value of an advertisement.

The publisher’s liability for others errors or omissions in connection with an advertisement is strictly limited to publication of the advertisement in any subsequent issue.

Published by NYC Community Media, LLC One Metrotech North 10th floor Brooklyn, NY 11201 Phone: (718) 260-2500 • Fax: (212) 229-2790 On-line: www.thevillager.com E-mail: news@thevillager.com © 2016 NYC Community Media, LLC

4

Robbery pattern robberies — in all of which he either displayed or simulated a weapon — in the Sixth and Ninth Precincts, since December.

Sun., Dec. 13, at 3:45 a.m., two men, ages 30 and 29, were approached by the suspect, who demanded their property an apartment building lobby in the vicinity of Waverly Place and Christopher St. The suspect removed $400 from one Next, at around 3:15 a.m. Wed., Dec. 30, in front of 181 Thompson St., police believe the same suspect — this time with a sidekick — approached a man,

pavement, injuring himself. The driver

CIRCULATION SALES MNGR.

Member of the New York Press Association

A surveillance camera image of the suspect in what police believe is a string of Village robberies.

February 4, 2016

A police sketch of the suspect in the Jan. 3 Village sexual assault.

W. 12th sexual assault Police are looking for a man who sexually assaulted a woman in her Village home in early January, and are asking for the public’s help in tracking down the suspect.

According to police, on Sun., Jan. 3, around 3:25 p.m., in a residence in the vicinity of W. 12th St. and Greenwich Ave., a man knocked on a 23-yearold woman’s door, pretending to be a neighbor. He also was seen following the victim for several blocks before she got home. The man asked if some-

Police are asking for the public’s help in tracking down a man who beat up a senior on Sat., Nov. 28, in the McDonald’s at 114 Delancey St. On that day around 1:15 a.m., police said, the individual was inside the fast-food spot when he got into an argument with the victim, 64. The suspect then proceeded to punch the older and stomp him. EMS responded and took the injured man to an area hospital where he received treatment for facial injuries and bleeding of the brain.

The victim was in stable condition.

Police described the attacker as a male black with braids. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Police Department’s Crime Stoppers Hotline.

phone, watch and $300.

In the third incident, at around 8:35 p.m. on Thurs., Jan. 14, the suspect followed a man, 27, into an elevator in an East Village apartment building, simThen, around 5:35 p.m. on Tues., Jan. 19, according to police, the perpetrator followed a male victim, 28, into an apartment building at 381 E. 10th St., displayed a knife, and demanded his messenger bag. The victim refused and Finally, on Thurs., Jan. 21, at around 4:40 p.m., the same suspect followed a woman, 24, into an elevator in a West Village apartment building, and simuing with her headphones and $50.

The robber is described as about age 40, rather short, 5 feet 4 inches tall, 160 pounds, and with a dark complexion.

He was last seen wearing a black shirt under a black jacket, with blue jeans, black sneakers and a black winter hat.

Anyone with information is asked to contact the Police Department’s Crime Stoppers Hotline.

Emily Siegel and Lincoln Anderson EastVillagerNews.com

Sacking fattening foods for Super Bowl and beyond RHYMES WITH CRAZY

BY LENORE SKENAZY

I

t is a cruel joke that the Super Bowl comes just a little more than a month after we have resolved to forsake all wings, chips, dip, pizza, soda, beer, cheese sticks, CheezIts, Cheetos and anything else that is bright orange and vaguely food-like.

Ha. That’s why every year at about this time, the press turns its hungry eyes to Charles Platkin, a.k.a. The Diet Detective, a.k.a. Hunter College distinguished lecturer, to give us some of his trademark “equivalencies.”

For instance: To work off the calories of a 1-foot Italian sub sandwich would require you to walk the entire length of the Brooklyn Bridge — 14 times. That’s a Dr. Platkin equivalency. So are these: Four swigs of Bud Light equals eight minutes of playing pro football.

One handful of pita chips with artichoke dip equals running 141 football Working off one measly Cheeto —

EastVillagerNews.com

one! — equals chanting and waving around a foam hand for two minutes.

And God forbid you scarf down four Domino’s stuffed cheesy bacon jalapeno bread sticks — that requires 193 touchdown dances.

So how did Platkin, a lawyer, publisher, technologist, real estate guy and bestselling author, become obsessed with translating calories into everyday (and sports-watching related) activities? It all started when he was young — and tubby.

“I remember my doctor saying, ‘You’re not going to have a good social life, because you’re fat,’ ” said Platkin.

“And I was like, ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ But the truth was, I was ostracized as a child.”

He was still overweight in early adulthood when he decided to write a book on how to truly change your life.

This was after he’d gotten the law desingle.

“I was confused. I was thinking about changing behavior,” he recalled. “I was overweight and had terrible relationships.”

So, for three years, he researched how real behavior change happens. his manuscript when he realized, “I hadn’t changed one behavior of my own!” So he decided to actually fol-

low his own advice and, at last, he started losing weight. He also realized that the fact he ended up “with had an underlying cause: him.

“I’d always thought it was random,” he said.

Changing required that word we hear so often lately: mindfulness. He had to pay attention to what he ate, and when. (And who he dated, and why.)

He also had to stop feeling too embarrassed to ask for things like a plain grilled chicken breast when he went out to eat. In other words, he had to stop being ashamed to admit he knew he was fat and wanted to lose weight.

He folded his stories into the book and it became the bestseller “Breaking the Pattern.”

The great thing about mindfulness, Platkin said, is that you don’t have to be mindful forever.

“If you had to Google Map every he offered as an example. (And you would need some other kind of help.)

But after a short while, of course, you know the drill. your food patterns are. And once you notice that every night, right before bed, you eat a bowl of Ben & Jerry’s, well then, all you have to do is start

native. For Platkin, he started making swaps just like the ones you can make on Super Bowl Sunday: Toasted pita points instead of chips. Pizza without the mozzarella — add your own parmesan. Slow-churned Breyers instead of Ben & Jerry’s.

The idea is to concentrate not on what you can’t have, but on what you can. And since we gobble down many foods without realizing just how fattening they are, he popularized the “equivalencies.” FYI: One bowl of chili equals more than an hour of cheerleading.

These days Platkin is married and has a daughter. One day a couple years ago he was walking her to school and saw her holding her tummy in. He asked why. Well, of course she was practicing looking skinny.

“I just want you to know that you don’t ever have to worry about dieting or any of these things,” he told his daughter.

Life is not about forsaking. It’s about embracing who you are and what you love.

So long as it’s not Domino’s stuffed cheesy bacon jalapeno bread sticks. thor and founder of the book and blog “Free-Range Kids”

February 4, 2016

5

Hardly a Rocket to Russia; CB’s rocks airport cafe CBGB L.A.B. continued from p. 1

The open beer garden setup is adorned with a white-and-red CBGB awning, resembling the one that hung at 315 Bowery for more than 30 years, along with posters inside of Joey Ramone, Debbie Harry and Sid Vicious.

CBGB L.A.B., though, isn’t a “rebirth” of the famed East Village punk venue, but a theme restaurant in a very unlikely spot.

It’s part of a $120 million renovation of the airport terminal by food-service company OTG Management, including more than 55 new dining venues, with some concepts created by more than 20 chefs. But CBGB L.A.B. doesn’t have any CB’s-inspired sandwiches or other dishes. Deviled eggs are called simply deviled eggs.

Patrons can even order via iPad. But you need a plane ticket to get in.

“They have a bar like any other bar at the airport and a sandwich menu.

It could be like any other place,” said Lenny Kaye, the guitarist for The Patti Smith Group, told The Villager. “It’s a design opportunity that appears to be lost. It would be nice if they had bands play there or if they had a bathroom CBGB facilities.”

On his way through Newark, Kaye recently stopped in to the restaurant for a breakfast sandwich, and found the place, with its standard fare, didn’t evoke much of the original venue’s true spirit.

“I couldn’t resist,” Kaye said. “It was so airport generic, in a way. It didn’t seem to be anything but a lot of photos on the wall that didn’t make it look like the club might have looked. It seemed weirdly irrelevant to CBGB’s legacy.”

Smith and Kaye were the last act to perform at the venue when it closed on Oct. 15, 2006. He recalled that, in the early days of CBGB, there was a makeshift kitchen where hamburgers and chili would be served up, in what would later become a dressing room.

Karen Kristal, wife of CBGB founder Hilly Kristal, even made Kaye burgers in the 1970s.

“There’s kind of an odd full circle that you can go to a Newark restaurant and have a hamburger at CBGB,” Kaye said, adding that the hood of the stove could still be seen in the room throughout the life of the gritty Bowery venue.

Since CBGB’s doors closed for good nearly 10 years ago, it has been kept “alive” through merchandise, a CBGB music festival in New York, and its soiled stage — still intact at 315 Bowery at the John Varvatos boutique.

“A lot of kids had no parents in those days,” said Andy Shernoff, a founding member of The Dictators, at a recent punk panel at Howl! Happen-

6

February 4, 2016

PHOTOS BY GODLIS

Stiv Bators of the Dead Boys in 1977 inside the kitchen at CBGB, which later was converted into a dressing room. Legend has it that no one would eat the chili when Bators was in the kitchen, fearing he had added his bodily fluids to it.

“Why would you want to put ‘CBGB’ on your restaurant and not think of creative names?” she wondered.

Bayley also recommended re-creating the classic, CBGB bathrooms in the new establishment.

“The restaurant can have really horrible bathrooms, and that would be their thing,” she laughed. She also recommended selling CBGB T-shirts and playing punk music for customers.

Whether a theme airport bar or a re-creation of the actual venue, nothing can taint CBGB’s history or legacy, said Kaye, because it could never be the same.

“I don’t think it tarnishes the legacy of the club,” he said, “because the club’s legacy has gone around the world several thousand times, birthed thousands of bands, provided a sense creating a scene around that self and watching it grow. However, it asserts itself into the public consciousness, it will never be how CBGB’s was then.

But if somebody has a little memory

Lenny Kaye getting into his 1968 Chevy outside of CBGB in 1977.

ing Gallery, at 6 E. First St. “Hilly had an open house.”

Now, the House that Hilly Built is an airport restaurant, with the possibility of more CBGB-themed venues on the way. Tim Hayes, founder and executive director of the CBGB Festival, and several other investors bought the brand name in 2011 and now are planning an expanded, global branding campaign.

Before the CBGB sale, Hilly Kristal’s daughter, Lisa Kristal Burgman, and his ex-wife, Karen Kristal, were embroiled in a legal battle over his estate.

For years, Hilly Kristal, who died Aug. 28, 2007, had fought with the landlord of the CBGB space, Bowery Residents’ Committee, over unpaid rent, which eventually totaled $90,000. The venA majority of Hilly Kristal’s CBGB estate, totaling $3 million, was left to Burgman, who later sold off CBGB for good. Karen Kristal died in June 2014.

By 2014, the CBGB expansion was in full swing. Hayes brought in marand launched a campaign to spread the “attitude” of the famed venue around the world.

“CBGB was the home for countless in a statement released by Epic Rights.

“No one cared what you looked like, and everyone took care of each other.

In a way, CBGB became a tightly knit international family of musicians, artists and fans. The same strong spirit of CBGB continues today. We are excited to be working with Epic Rights as we expand the CBGB attitude around the world.”

Epic Rights hasn’t release any future licensing and branding plans for CBGB since 2014.

Photographer Roberta Bayley, who door, and captured the scene from its earliest days, said she’s not bothered by the Newark airport restaurant.

“If it’s their intention to make it a chain, that would seem bizarre,” she said. “But I’m not offended by it as long as the food is good. If they have really terrible food that would just be awful.”

Bayley said she’s not nostalgic for CBGB anymore, but the fact that the restaurant does not have more creative names for the food on its menu is a missed opportunity.

103, why not?”

John Holmstrom, co-founder of PUNK magazine, said that any future incarnations of the classic club, like the new Newark restaurant, really don’t matter in the grand scheme of the CBGB legacy.

“I made peace with CB’s, and we tried to save it,” said Holmstrom, who was involved in the Randall Milling the late Alan Rickman as Hilly Kristal.

“When you think about the roster of talent that hung out at CBGB…there’s no place like it in the world,” he said during the recent Howl! punk panel.

PUNK co-founder Legs McNeil echoed Holmstrom’s sentiments.

“I don’t think it matters anymore,” he said. “It’s ludicrous. No one ever wanted it when it was real and authentic. It’s like when we wait for someone to die.”

For anyone who lived the real CB’s, anything that opens now will never be the same, said Kaye. But as the “brand” of CBGB continues to grow, an airport restaurant clearly won’t be the last physical incarnation of the venue.

“CB’s is a well-documented success story,” Kaye said. “The real blessing of CB’s is that it made its mark on the culture of rock ’n’ roll. It was a moment in time and space.”

Kaye said he’ll stop into the CBGB restaurant on the way through Newark again.

“I might try the burger,” he said.

“I want see if it’s like the one Karen Kristal made for me back in 1974.”

EastVillagerNews.com

EastVillagerNews.com

February 4, 2016

7

County Committee vote set for Super Bowl Sunday

BY LINCOLN ANDERSON

O

n Saturday, Governor Andrew Cuomo issued a proclamation setting Tues., April 19, as the date for a special election for the 59th, 62nd and 65th Assembly Districts, as well as the Ninth Senate District.

The date — which coincides with the presidential primary election in New York State — was chosen in order to both “maximize voter turnout and minimize the cost to taxpayers,” according to the governor.

The Lower East Side’s 65th A.D. seat has been vacant since late last year when former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver was convicted on multiple federal graft charges and immediately According to State Committeeman John Quinn, Democratic County Committee members from the 65th A.D. will meet this coming Sun., Feb. 7 — Super Bowl Sunday — for their vote to pick the party’s sole nominee for the “special.”

Quinn’s Lower East Side Democratic Club will play a pivotal role in the County Committee vote. Other clubs covering parts of the district include Soho’s Downtown Independent Democrats, Chinatown’s United Democratic Organization and Grand St.’s Harry S. Truman Club.

The roster of Assembly hopefuls includes District Leaders Alice Cancel, Paul Newell and Jenifer Rajkumar, as well as Yuh-Line Niou — chief of staff to Queens Assemblymember Ron Kim — Chinatown activist Don Lee and Community Board 3 Chairperson Gigi Li. out for County Committee members’ support in D.I.D.’s turf, while Niou has the backing of U.D.O. Cancel’s home club is L.E.S.D.C. Councilmember Rosie Mendez has endorsed Cancel, who is married to Quinn.

At an event in Chinatown on Jan. 25 — before the special election was called — Lee announced he is running for Assembly. However — without a base in any of the local political clubs — he said he was looking beyond the special election, to the general election in September, when the public will have a chance to pick the Democratic nominee.

Speaking last week before the governor had called the special election, Virginia Kee, president emeritus of U.D.O., said it was hard to predict how the County Committee vote would play out. No candidate can expect to a win the required absolute majority — more than 50 percent of the vote — on Cancel might conceivably be the top she hoped Niou would come in sec-

8

February 4, 2016

As of Wednesday, at least six candidates were running for Assembly in the 65th District, including, from left, Alice Cancel, Paul Newell and Jenifer Rajkumar.

ond. After that, there would be further jockeying for position and more rounds of voting, during which Kee hoped Niou, her candidate, would prevail. But that, obviously, is clearly Kee’s partisan take.

“We don’t know what will happen,” she admitted.

Sean Sweeney, a leading member of D.I.D., said after each successive round of voting, the hope would be that the low vote-getters would drop out of the running.

Because of the short notice, it was a scramble to set a time and place for the County Committee vote, Sweeney said.

“It’s crazy because the Super Bowl is that day,” he said. “But Saturday is the Sabbath, and Monday is Chinese New Year, so that leaves Sunday afternoon. But sports fans on the committee might get antsy to watch the game and that could affect decision making. Crazy timing.”

The location and time of Sunday’s County Committee have been set for the Educational Alliance, at 197 E. Broadway, at 2 p.m. According to Quinn, the meeting must be open to the public and the press. The auditorium can hold 300 people, so it can easily accommodate the 200 County Committee members, plus the public and press.

According to their State Board of showing how much cash the candidates had on hand, Niou had $133,180, Rajkumar had $84,363 and Newell had $68,720.

Quinn said Cancel only opened her campaign bank account two weeks ago and has no funds on hand right now.

People are essentially raising the money for the general election in September, he said.

“You’re the Democratic nominee in this district — what is it, 8-to-1 Democrat? — [money] doesn’t matter,” he said of the April special election, which will pit one Democrat versus one Republican.

In response to Kee’s hope that Niou might leapfrog Cancel in later rounds

of voting by County Committee members, Quinn said, “Look, my club would not support Yuh-Line, and [she is] not getting anything from D.I.D. It ain’t gonna happen.”

The general election in September will likely be a wild free-for-all, he said.

“The scramble is gonna start the day after the County Committee vote,” he predicted.

Councilmember Margaret Chin is supporting Li. Quinn says he has “a good feeling” about Cancel being picked as the nominee on Sunday, especially because of the “weighted vote.” Namely, County Committee members’ votes will count more in areas where there was a heavy turnout for Governor Cuomo in the 2014 general election for governor. D.I.D. backed Zephyr Teachout in the primary versus Cuomo and then Green candidate Howie Hawkins in the general election.

“You’re walking in with 40 percent of the vote,” Quinn said of his club’s County Committee members. “You need 10 percent. It’s a weighted vote — it’s based on the number of votes that came out for the governor [in his last general election]. The West Side made the stupid mistake of going for Teachout. She gave Cuomo a run for his money. But not voting for him in the general? People stayed at home.”

Mendez released a statement in support of Cancel, saying, “There are many candidates who have declared their intention to run for the 65th Assembly District. Several of these would do a good job at representing this very diverse district. However, for me, there’s one candidate who stands head and shoulders above the rest and that candidate is Alice Cancel. Alice Cancel has been a district leader for 25 years who has, without remuneration, represented her community, who has fought against inequities and resolved thousands of complaints for her neighbors. Based on her commitment to her community and her ability to get things done, I am proud to support Alice Cancel.”

On Wednesday, Niou received the endorsement of former City Comptroller John Liu. “As a daughter of immigrants, Yuh-Line understands the challenges and issues that both immigrants and working families face,” Liu said.

“Her commitment to public service, her passion as a community advocate, her national experience, along with her extensive knowledge of the workings of state government, make Yuh-Line the voice Lower Manhattan needs in Albany.”

In turn, Niou said, “As a solid progressive leader, Comptroller Liu has been a true champion for immigrants and working families, and I want to continue his tradition of empowering those in need throughout our community by championing crucial issues like paid family leave and the Fight for $15.” Niou noted that the 65th Assembly District is a “70 percent minority-majority district” and that she represent it, if elected.

Also on Wednesday, John Bal withdrew from the race.

“It is unfortunate that other candidates are not troubled by the lack of democratic process,” Bal said. “My roots are in the community — not political clubs. It’s a disappointment that Governor Cuomo called for a special election, which strongly favors political clubs and excludes community participation.”

Bal said he was still currently in Thailand, studying the Thai language.

“If I thought it would be a fair nominating process, I would return home and campaign,” he said.

Quinn said Newell has strategically beaten out Rajkumar in terms of securing County Committee members who have weighted votes — in areas where there was a good turnout for Cuomo in ’14.

The game doesn’t start till 6:30 p.m., so people shouldn’t fret about their Super Bowl parties, Quinn added.

“Football’s just a game,” he said.

“This is a blood sport, boy. This is serious. This is our community. This is the real thing.”

EastVillagerNews.com

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February 4, 2016

9

Mag attacks Catholic Worker as lefty extremists; ARTICLE continued from p. 1

its left-wing stances on issues going back to the Spanish Civil war, and noted that the Maryhouse events draw a diverse crowd. Attendees include students from Catholic Universities like Fordham to retirees gripping canes and walkers when they

olytes” of welcoming speakers and activists who espouse anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, pro-Assad and proP.L.O. propaganda during Friday night lectures at Maryhouse, the red brick Catholic Worker residence on E. Third St. where Day died in 1980. Day is now being considered for sainthood in the Roman Catholic Church.

Martha Hennessy, a granddaughter of Dorothy Day who writes for the Catholic Worker newspaper, also which is headlined, “Pope Francis and the Uncertain Legacy of Dorothy Day, a disturbing glimpse into the Trouble at the ‘Catholic Worker.’ ” It claims that Hennessy, who shares Day’s philosophy of nonviolence and works of mercy for the downtrodden, allegedly “availed herself of the protection of it to Afghanistan.

Hennessy did not respond to a phone call to her Vermont farm requesting comment.

Joanne Kennedy, managing editor of the C.W. paper and another target of Mitsotakis’s jibes, acknowledged that Hennessy has photos of herself with armed people in the war-ravaged country.

“That’s what happens in Afghanistan. But that doesn’t mean she availed herself” of a weapon, Kennedy said in a telephone conversation.

“Under no circumstances would Martha hold a gun.”

Kennedy said that the FrontPage article “created a buzz for a moment and people said, ‘Oh, my God, did you see it? Who wrote it?’ But we didn’t respond. We don’t want to feed that kind of energy. What good would come of it?” snarky article was written by Robert Reiss, 63, a longtime attendee of

PHOTO BY MARY REINHOLZ

Robert Reiss at a Friday night meeting at The Catholic Worker’s Maryhouse on E. Third St.

events at Maryhouse who, she said, is known for objecting to talks on Israel and Palestine. She maintains Reiss is Mitsotakis’s “main source.”

Kennedy characterized the FrontPage charges as false or “taken out of context.” For example, she disputed Mitsotakis’s claim that her newspaper’s circulation was declining “vastly” because of its political bent.

Instead, she said, the circulation began “growing steadily” after 2006, the year when the paper cut its list of subscribers who did not respond to a query asking them to reply if they still wanted to receive it at an increased annual price of 25 cents “because our printing costs had become quite high.”

As a result of the cuts, Kennedy said, the paper reduced its subscribers from a full list of 65,000 to about 20,000 “and we cut our printing costs by a third.”

Since then, she said, the paper’s circulation has increased to 26,000.

E. 12th St. man found dead

J

oaquin Velez, a longtime resident of 527 E. 12th St., was found dead of a heart attack in his fourth-

Velez, who may have been in his late 50s, worked for UPS, at Spring and Washington Sts., and may have also more recently worked in a restaurant.

An East Village plumber told The Villager he had been called to the building 10 days earlier due to an odor that a neighbor living about the apartment smelled. The smell wasn’t coming out the front door, though.

People thought it might have been a dead mouse or rat.

But the odor grew worse, and someone thought it was gas, and he

10

February 4, 2016

was called again. This time, police entered the apartment, and found Velez dead in bed.

“The medical examiner said he had been dead more than four weeks,” said the plumber, who requested anonymity.

Julie Bolcer, spokesperson for the said the cause of death was hypertensive cardiovascular disease.

Velez lived alone.

“He was a quiet man,” the plumber said. “If you put something in your newspaper, then maybe people will know what happened to him.”

Lincoln Anderson

Kennedy, who lives at Maryhouse, dismissed Mistotakis’s charge that residents are vacating its rentfree rooms because of their alleged disgust over the lefty politics of those in charge.

“Who would give up free rent in New York, even for political reasons?” she said.

She said that Mitsotakis — a 2013 graduate in history from New York University who does not appear to live in the city — did not contact her for an interview and she didn’t meet him at Maryhouse. “But he could have been here,” she conceded.

David McReynolds, the famed East speaks frequently at Maryhouse, announced late last November that there could be a FrontPage writer in its midst before the start of a Friday night panel marking the 50th ancards in Union Square to protest the Vietnam War. “Is there a reporter for David Horowitz here?” he inquired sardonically.

The 86-year-old McReynolds, a retired national secretary of the War Resisters League, whose last name is misspelled in Mitsotakis’s piece, was clearly angry.

“I was furious,” he recalled last week. “The content was unfair and typical of the Horowitz people. They are very far right — and not legitimate as conservatives, like The National Review is. They don’t have those credentials.”

McReynolds acknowledged that his anger was stoked by reports that Reiss, who considers himself a Catholic Worker, was the author of the piece. He said that the Catholic Worker movement has frequently been attacked over the years for

Maryhouse volunteers described Reiss, a magician and writer, as a man who projects an “erudite William Buckley” persona and likes to “stir things up” in discussions.

Reiss told this reporter that he had penned a history of The Catholic Worker for The Villager and also lectured at St. Joseph’s Catholic Worker residence on E. First St. in 1995. He presented a written note about the FrontPage article following the Maryhouse panel on draft card burning. Reiss later denied that he wrote the article, noting he doesn’t own a computer, but claimed it was largely accurate.

After another Maryhouse event, Reiss acknowledged that he had given information on the Catholic Worker movement to Mitsotakis — mainly, he said, on “anti-Semitism” expressed at Maryhouse Friday night gatherings.

Reiss subsequently contacted the editor in chief of this newspaper and insisted that his contributions to Mitsotakis’s article amounted to only “one percent,” and that there had been “no stir” at Maryhouse as a result of the article.

Meanwhile, other Catholic Workers, past and present, still mistakenly believe that Reiss is the sole author of the FrontPage piece.

Bill Antalics, a former resident at the St. Joseph’s Catholic Worker building who now lives on E. Eighth St. and is quoted in the article, said Reiss discussed it with him several months ago.

“Robert came to me and was very, very angry about anti-Israel” comments he had heard at Maryhouse, he said. “I told him to be careful and fact check because he would become an outcast. He would lose friends” in the Catholic Worker movement.

Antalics said he hadn’t read the piece and didn’t recognize the name of Spyridon Mitsotakis. ed with Mitsotakis in a pre-dawn exchange of e-mails. He declined to answer questions about Reiss’s contributions to his FrontPage article.

“I stand by my reporting,” Mitsotakis wrote, adding that he had visited Maryhouse “many times” — and quiring of Hells Angels on E. Third St. on how to get to the building.

“It is noteworthy that there are ARTICLE continued on p. 11 EastVillagerNews.com

Maryhouse regular denies he wrote the article ARTICLE continued from p. 10

many back issues of the Catholic Worker newspaper available for free at Maryhouse and the sentiments I described often come through in the paper,� he noted.

Mitsotakis, who did not respond to a request for a photograph of himself, said his interest in the Catholic Worker movement began because of his “fascination� with Bayard Rustin, an African-American leader in the civil rights struggle who advocated for nonviolence, socialism and gay rights. He also noted that Rustin was a “personal hero� of his.

Eventually, he said, his interest in Rustin grew lap in membership between the W.R.L. and C.W. so I decided to [see] if the same stuff I found upsetting about W.R.L. was happening in C.W.�

Early in his article, Mitsotakis states that the material represents the “winnowing� of a year’s worth of interviews with people at “New York City chapters� in the Catholic Worker movement. He claims without substantiation that donors to the Catholic Worker newspaper are “sending less money� because of articles that “slander American foreign policy.�

The piece quotes senior Maryhouse resident Roger O’Neil, an associate editor at the Catholic Worker, stating, “In my day, we took seriously the world on these anti-American junkets.�

O’Neil told The Villager that the wording of the quotes “was not something I would say,� but not-

ed he made a similar comment in discussion with Robert Reiss. He characterized Reiss as a “complicated guy, but we need people like him in some ways.� O’Neil said Mitsotakis did not contact him and “nobody has seen him around� Maryhouse.

Informed of O’Neil’s statements, Mitsotakis wrote back to this reporter, saying in part, “I have to decline to comment any further. I don’t want this to turn into a witch hunt.�

Reiss continues to attend meetings at Maryhouse, according to Joanne Kennedy. What does she say to him these days? “It’s in our Christian spirit to say to him, ‘We’re going to forgive and try to love you,’� she said.

Reiss subsequently mailed to The Villager a packet containing a copy of his May 5, 1983, article — a “laudatory article,� he noted — that ran in the paper, “The Living Legacy of Dorothy Day, The Catholic Worker.� He also included, among other materials, a 1972 letter from Judith Malina, the late director of The Living Theatre, to a federal judge on behalf of Reiss during his trial for refusing to register for the draft. “Robert Reiss’ refusal to register for war is a meaningful part of a long and culturally important struggle in which we, you and I, and all of us are engaged,� Malina wrote Judge Charles Brient, Jr. Also included in Reiss’s packet was a 1995 letter from Frank Donovan, Day’s “right-hand man and major domo of the [Catholic Worker] operation in N.Y.C.,� Reiss noted, thanking him for having given the group a lecture on Reiss’s grandmother, the Village artist Sarah McPherson, at one of their Fri-

day night meetings.

In one of several letters faxed to The Villager, Reiss said, “It is slander (and libel if published) for certain individuals to assert, as they apparently have to reporter Mary Reinholz, that I am the author [of the Mitsotakis article in question].� all calls go directly to an answering service — he only had one phone conversation with the paper, in addition to his interactions with the reporter at Maryhouse. Reiss wanted to set up a face-to-face meeting with the paper’s editor in chief, who left him a message, asking if he could speak on the phone at a mutually convenient time. Reiss did not return the call.

Reiss added that Mitsotakis worked on the article for a year. “The Catholic Worker representatives, rather than engaging openly with the issues raised by Mr. Spyridon Mitsotakis, have embarked upon a McCarthy-like ‘witch hunt’ to identify as many sources within the C.W. community,� Reiss wrote. “Myself, I am a source for 1 percent of the author’s investigative piece, and one unattributed quotation.�

Reiss added that he feels a part of the Maryhouse group and is annually invited to their private Thanksgiving and Christmas get-togethers. “There was no stir� over the article, he repeatedly stressed.

With reporting

by Lincoln Anderson

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EastVillagerNews.com

February 4, 2016

11

Purple as paragon or pariah? Community reacts PURPLE continued from p. 1

whole thing of Purple. That’s it — he’s history.”

Gardeners are now busy focusing on “Gardens Rising” — a $2 million state-funded initiative to install rainwater-capture systems and other projects to mitigate storm runoff in the more than 40 community gardens in the East Village and Lower East Side.

The shocking Purple articles are only a distraction to this effort, he said.

“No one wants to talk about Purple anymore,” the man said.

biological daughter, Lenore, provided details on what her older sister, Jenean, meant when she had said, “We were trained to perform.” Namely, Wilkie regularly made the young girls put on naked shows, simulating adult sexual acts, in front of adults at parties.

These revelations and more were reported in two Villager articles, “The dark side of Purple” and “All Purple’s daughters.”

After his release from prison in Australia, Wilkie was reportedly deported, apparently to California, soon afterward making his way to Forsyth St. on New York City’s Lower East Side. There, he re-emerged as Adam Purple, a psychedelic hippie gardener bedecked in purple tie-dye with a about environmentalism and sustainability that were ahead of his time. He city lots, but it was ultimately razed in 1986 for an affordable housing project. Thirteen years later, the city forced him out of his building, which had been abandoned by the landlord at least 25 years earlier.

In his last couple of years, Purple lived in a small room at Time’s Up, the environmental and cycling group, in Williamsburg. He had long ago renounced the internal combustion engine and famously biked everywhere.

He felt energized being around the young cycling activists. He would help out and sort parts at their free bicycle-repair workshops.

‘A lot of disrespect’ When asked by The Villager for his thoughts about the two articles on Purple, Bill di Paola, the executive director of Time’s Up, said, “I have no comment — just a lot of disrespect for you. When are they going to stop?” he said of the articles. “It seems pretty negative, the whole thing. Time’s Up runs 100 percent positive events all the time,” he added.

As for, Chris Flash, editor of The Shadow, the East Village anarchist newspaper, he said Purple’s legacy, at least during his time on the Lower East Side, was all positive.

“The allegations about David Wilkie do not change my view of Adam Purple at all,” Flash said. “The Adam Purple I knew has nothing to do with the David Wilkie who is being accused of committing horrible and inexcusable acts 50 years ago. The Adam Purple I knew was a visionary, who, for the past 44-or-so years, was a valued and highly regarded member of our community, contributing

12

February 4, 2016

‘Can’t forgive him’

VILLAGER FILE PHOTO

Adam Purple speaking with The Shadow’s Chris Flash at the opening of the Museum of Reclaimed Space (MoRUS) in December 2012. During his remarks at the opening, Purple blasted former Councilmembers Miriam Friedlander and Margarita Lopez as “psycho-boobies” for supporting the destruction of his famous Garden of Eden so that affordable housing could be built on the site. It was probably his last public speaking appearance.

his wonderful garden, his insights and his intelligence. No one has come forward during that time — or, as The Villager would seem to prefer, after his death — to allege that Adam Purple acted improperly with anyone here, sexually or otherwise.”

being a sexual predator.

“I never saw the guy with a hardon,” he said. “He was a nonsexual being when I knew him, so it was a very deep shock. I only saw him maybe hug a middle-aged woman or kiss a woman’s hand. It was a total shock and letdown,” he said of the revelations.

“But now they’re saying Thomas Jefferson was a serial rapist,” he added. “All these people that are doing extremely good things may have something on the other side.”

At the same time, he said, “I don’t see how they can change what he did in New York City here.”

Plus, Purple deserves a chance for forgiveness, in his view.

“Malcolm X was doing very bad things as a young guy but later became a family man and a religious leader,” he said. “It’s like Jean Valjean in ‘Les Miserables’: Just because he stole some bread because his kids were starving, that inspector guy was going to bring him in and ruin his life.”

But, to hear him tell it, many gardeners apparently aren’t seeing it that way.

“We can’t have pictures of Purple prominent anymore,” he said. “People are tearing them down and throwing them away. They’re sanitizing the

‘All those reporters who did that with the Catholic Church — you are doing exactly the same thing.’

Margarita Lopez

‘Nonsexual’ as senior However, two local gardeners said the bombshell reports, in fact, have turned Purple’s reputation among neighborhood green thumbs into, well, mud. Both requested anonymity, saying they were recently “attacked” at a meeting for being friends with the gardens godfather.

One of them, who was friends with Purple during his last 20 years, said he never observed any evidence of his

His friend, however, disagreed that Purple’s legacy on the Lower East Side should remain unchanged in light of his criminal past as a child molester.

“I’m sorry, as a woman I can’t forgive what he did,” she said. “What he “I also like the fact that you put in that the mother abused her daughter,” she said of The Villager’s reporting that Diane, the youngest daughter of Romola, Wilkie’s wife in Australia, said Romola actually sexually abused her. girls,” the female gardener said.

Along with Diane, both of Wilkie’s own daughters say that Romola was complicit in the sexual abuse, though Dorothy, Romola’s oldest daughter, strongly denies this.

(In an interesting random Purple fact, the male gardener noted that Wilkie was baptized a Mormon.)

Another Adam Purple stalwart is George Bliss, who, in the 1980s, to raise awareness about the embattled garden, laid down 40 miles of purple footprints around the city leading back to the Eldridge St. green oasis.

Like others interviewed for this article, Bliss said he had not previously known of Purple’s conviction for child molestation. However, both he and the above unnamed male gardener said they knew Purple had been in Australia.

In light of the new information, Bliss said, “I think we all think that some of his activities in New York were to make up for what he’d done.

“I knew him in ’85 / ’86. I didn’t see any evidence of that. His son [Adam David] was there, he was around age 10. I think he was reformed,” he said of Purple.

“All I knew was that he lived in Australia,” Bliss recalled. “I thought it was because of the threat of nuclear war. A lot of people were living there in that context. Mind you, when I was hanging around with Adam, we weren’t PURPLE continued on p. 15 EastVillagerNews.com

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13

PHOTO BY STACIE JOY

In what has been an annual tradition for nine years running, burlesque dancers — the likes of Lickety Split, the Maine Attraction and Lilin Lace — helped celebrate Ray’s 83rd birthday at his hole-in-the-wall candy store on Avenue A on Sunday night. Ray, Asghar Ghahraman, was loving it!

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR What about his kids?

Purple rage

Purple haze

To The Editor: Re “Shame for Purple exposé!” (letter, by Laura Zelasnic, Jan. 14): Really, Laura Zelasnic? David Lloyd Wilkie got away with the most heinous of crimes. Obviously, you weren’t raped or molested as a child. But really? You should be ashamed of yourself.

To The Editor: Re “All Purple’s daughters” (news article, Jan. 21): He is lucky not to have touched my daughter.

I would have broken his legs.

To The Editor: Re “All Purple’s daughters” (news article, Jan. 21): Was this article really necessary?

Sylvia Rackow

Aron Kay a.k.a. The Yippie Pie Man

Bernadette O’Reilly

IRA BLUTREICH be published.

SOUND OFF! Write a letter to the editor

Bernie — the first muppet candidate.

14

February 4, 2016

news@thevillager.com EastVillagerNews.com

The different shades of Purple: Community reacts PURPLE continued from p. 12

ta,” she said, using the Spanish word for “male chauvinist.”

jabbering about Australia — we were focused on saving the garden.”

‘Garden mattered most’ More to the point, Bliss said, as far as he is concerned, Purple’s visionary ideas trump his history as a sexual predator.

“Look, I also think very highly of Buckminster Fuller — the Dymaxion car, the geodesic dome,” he said. “If I had found out a month ago that he was a child molester or he murdered somebody, would it matter? Not at all.

The main thing is the geodesic dome.

The same thing could be said of Einstein and his theories of matter and relativity.”

Similarly, Bliss said, “To me, what mattered most was the garden. And the next phase would have been housing underground — as he knew, it’s 50 degrees 10 feet down all year. It’s naturally insulated. You don’t have to burn fossil fuels to heat it.”

Bliss was referring to a plan Purple drew up to create a ring of underground abodes around the Garden of Eden.

He said the uncompromising green legend showed him a rendering of his idea: homes mostly buried in the earth with sloping green roofs — akin to the Hobbit houses of J.R.R. Tolkien’s mythical Middle-earth.

‘Survival matters most’ “I just don’t see a lot of bright lights out there to prepare us for what’s coming,” Bliss said of the world’s dire environmental challenges. “To me, what matters are these ideas.

Our survival on this planet is what matters. It’s not like I took the button for the garden off my sweater [after reading The Villager articles]. Look, the population is going to double in the next two generations. It’s doubled since 1972; since I graduated high school, since he started the garden, the population has doubled.

“He described a way of living that creates a utopia,” Bliss continued about Purple. “There is nobody like that who is that radical in their thinking. He said, ‘Do it together, without government, no land ownership, live together, with nature — boom.’ It’s as simple as can be — get off the grid. The idea of living in that much harmony with the earth: I agree that that is how we have to proceed. We have only so many great ideas that can save us — and this was one of them.”

EastVillagerNews.com

VILLAGER FILE PHOTO

George Bliss at MoRUS the night of the Adam Purple memorial this past September. The memorial included speakers at La Plaza Cultural, plus videos and other materials about Purple at the museum.

‘A creative genius’ With his Garden of Eden, Purple “was like an artist, a creative genius,” Bliss said. “And, of course, it was theater. At some point, he decided to turn himself into this artist — and at a certain point, he thought the garden was too beautiful to destroy.

“I can only hope that some of Adam’s ideas live on, can be incorporated into housing projects, lifestyle projects,” Bliss said. “He could have done more, but we were not ready.

There were not people ready to live without polluting, to try to rediscover the human niche in nature.”

It’s completely autonomous, but also ence.”

Seasteading is the idea of living on waters.

‘He described a way of living that creates a utopia.’

Monument crumbling?

Nevertheless, he admitted, regarding the news of Purple’s criminal past, “I’m very upset to hear about it.

I’m glad we’ve had a month or two to think about it. I’m not going to be pushing for a plaque for him now after that controversy. Or could we get a statue of him in Central Park — but I don’t think that could happen. So I’m not going to put my time on that.”

Purple was also well known in Central Park, foraying there daily from the Lower East Side on his bike to scoop up fresh horse manure to fertilize the soil in the Garden of Eden.

As for Bliss himself, he said, “Now I’m really interested in seasteading.

George Bliss

‘He was psychotic’ Former Councilmember Margarita Lopez, however, who fought to clear the Garden of Eden for housing, said she never saw Purple as a hero — but rather as a psycho.

“I was like, ‘Wow!’ ” she said of her response to reading The Villager’s recent coverage of him. “But, in honesty, I was not surprised, because when I interacted with him, I believed he was completely psychotic in those years.”

However, she was quick to add, “But not that psychosis and pedophilia necessarily go together. I believe he was mentally ill. Also, his behavior was always so strange when it came to women. … He was a machis-

she was working for Action for Progress, a local housing group. Purple by then had completed only about half of the Garden of Eden, she said. Lopez would go on to become president of the Lower East Side Joint Planning Council, an umbrella organization of 43 local organizations that was focused on developing affordable housing in the neighborhood.

According to Lopez, before Purple had even arrived on the scene, local housing groups had already put together a plan for the Eldridge St. site for affordable housing.

“We cut a deal with Koch,” she recalled. “People gradually started moving out of the buildings and were relocated. It was going to be called Esperanza. When Adam went and built the garden in there, he was told that he could not do that. And from that moment on, we were confronting each other because he kept building his garden.”

Was alien to her conversation with Purple.

“He told me he was Adam and he came from a planet, Urana... something, and that this was the Garden of Eden and his wife was Eve,” she said. “He believed that he on that this garden coincides with some lines and the planets — that this garden is the center of the planet and the direct connection to the planet Uranu… . He has a mathematical equation for that he put together — it was the exact mileage from point ‘A’ to point ‘B.’ It was a very convoluted story.

“It was impossible to communicate or make sense because he had this idea where this particular piece of land was connected with that planet. I said, ‘This man is crazy.’ ” Lopez met Eve. Then, a few years later, she met a second Eve. “I said, ‘Wait a minute, this is not Eve, this is somebody else,’ ” Lopez recalled telling him. “ ‘You telling me there is a second Eve now?’ And he got very upset and he walked away. … And I met his son also.”

At one point, as reported by The Villager back in the ’80s, Purple declared he would block the bulldozers with his body if the city tried to raze his garden, to which a furious Lopez responded she would tear the garden down with her own bare hands.

PURPLE continued on p. 16

February 4, 2016

15

The different shades of Purple: Community reacts the Garden of Eden.

“Pedophiles need to be exposed, whether they be priests, educators or seemingly harmless eccentrics,” he said. “Sad to say, Adam escaped any punishment because the revelations in your story came long after the fact and, as often is the case, after he was dead. So many lives damaged or destroyed.”

PURPLE continued from p. 15

‘Site was designated’ “Absolutely, I remember that,” Lopez said. “I remember saying that this has to stop, that this garden cannot stay here. He was impairing hundreds of units of housing. It was very important to bring back people who were entitled to live there. When he did this, he knew very well this site was designated — the plan to build housing there preceded me.”

Yet, Lopez said, she also worked hard to build and protect other gardens in the community.

“I believed that it was very important to have gardens and open spaces in the Lower East Side.

The greening of the Lower East Side was critical to reduce the impact of Con Edison,” she said, referring to the utility company’s E. 14th St. power plant. “People need to live in a place where green exists. I believe we were doing something that was into the future. But his garden came in violation of the agreement with the community.”

Lopez noted she fought off a plan by the Lower Eastside Girls Club to build their clubhouse on La Plaza Cultural garden, at E. Ninth St. and Avenue C — “I said, ‘No, that is a space for people to perform and do their art,’ ” she recalled — and another plan by Lower East Side People’s Mutual Housing to develop the 9th St. Community Garden, located kitty-corner from La Plaza.

‘Did a lot of damage’ “He did a lot of damage to our community,”

Rejected compromises On the subject of the garden, he said, “Actually, mise. We tried to work out a compromise with him;

PHOTO BY HARVEY WANG

Adam Purple perched high above his Garden of Eden.

Lopez said The Villager was right to bring it out into the open.

“When I learned that he molested his daughters, I said, ‘Oh, my God,’ ” she said. “That’s a sociopath — people that would harm people without blinking their eyes. It’s important to say that these behaviors have nothing to do with mental illness. It’s the inability to get outside of yourself: You are the center of the planet,” she said of the abusers’ twisted mindset.

‘You’re doing a great thing’

He was no hero. He was a human being. He had ideas that were affected by being psychotic. A lot of people in this community knew that he was mentally ill. A lot of people chose to ignore it.

“The fact that he may have suffered from mental illness doesn’t make him a bad person,” Lopez added. “But that whole issue of that garden was tainted and surrounded by his psychosis.”

Some commenters, though, have disapprovingly likened The Villager to the National Enquirer for divulging Purple’s perverted past and describing how he sexually abused the four young girls in his blended family.

“I disagree,” Lopez said. “Actually, The Villager has been a great asset in this community and it’s reporting is objective. And this issue of sexual abuse of children needs to be put on the front page of every newspaper and in the media, to say, ‘We are not in the Middle Ages.’ ” To cover up information like this would be “really horrible,” she said.

“You’re doing a great thing by publishing this article,” Lopez told the newspaper. “What you’re doing is fair and right. You know all those reporters who did that with the Catholic Church — you are doing exactly the same thing.

“As long as we pretend that doesn’t happen or isn’t there, or people are lying, that problem will continue. This is very important because the victims need to heal — and the only way they can heal is when this is acknowledged.

“God bless those girls, and God bless you for doing this article,” Lopez said. “Don’t back off.

The issues of bicycling, gardening — that had nothing to do with his actions. It’s time to decide, when somebody abuses another person sexually, it needs to be denounced.”

‘That’s a sociopath’

No sympathy

he did was to continue building that garden in that site that was set aside for housing. And, particularly, he harmed the relationship between the people who wanted to build housing and the gardeners.”

Lopez said housing activists were simultaneEd Koch’s plan for artists’ housing (which they felt was too exclusive, as opposed to general affordable housing) on E. Eighth and Eldridge Sts. This spread their energies thin, preventing them from fully focusing earlier on ousting Purple from the garden.

“Somehow, he was able to get in contact with some famous people, some people in power,” she recalled of how support grew for the Garden of Eden from the likes of poet Allen Ginsberg and architect James Polshek, among others. “Sud-

Regarding the story of Purple’s history of sexual abuse of his own stepdaughters and daughters,

16

February 4, 2016

Valerio Orselli was an ally of Lopez’s on the Low-

the garden, preserve the core area and still build the housing. Adam refused to give up any control and the housing was built, with no garden.

“There is a simple reality about gardens versus housing,” Orselli added. “Due to the cost of new construction, the only sites that are viable in New York City — and particularly Manhattan — for low-income housing are on city-owned land. Housing has dens — not even the Garden of Eden. Where housing advocates and gardeners can work together in the spirit of compromise, both housing and gardens frequently can be accommodated; witness the Liz Chrystie Garden on Houston St. Where compromise is not possible and the proposed housing is more than a token amount, the housing must prevail.”

What would Hegel say?

East Village journalist Bill Weinberg offered that the story of Adam Purple’s disturbing past offers a lesson to be learned about putting people on pedestals.

“No, The Villager was not wrong to bring it to light,” he said. “If the daughters chose to go public, their wishes should be respected. Let this be an inoculation against ‘heroes.’ Every human being has the capacity for evil. Maybe it even says something about Hegel’s paradoxical unity of opposites that the same man who created something so beautiful on Eldridge St. apparently had such a dark side.”

Freedom from slaver y Finally, many have wondered if Purple ever saw the video by his daughter Jenean that — without mentioning him by name — recounted her growing up as a self-described “sex slave” and how she struggled for decades afterward to recover from what she called her childhood “brainwashing.” Two days after Jenean posted on YouTube the video of her performance, done at an improv theater in the Northwest, Purple suddenly died.

However, Jenean last week told The Villager that the performance was all about her own healing, and that Purple was irrelevant. There is no evidence that Purple ever saw the video.

“I told him nothing of the ‘Coming Out’ piece,” she said. “It was a spontaneous creation. I would not have thought to clue him in. The piece wasn’t about him or the abuse. It was a way to celebrate of his business.”

EastVillagerNews.com

Embracing us all: Howl! Happening Gallery celebrates creation, community, legacy

BY PUMA PERL

Y

ears back, a good gallery opening provided enough food and drink to carry you over for days. You saw friends, checked out the art, and strolled over to the next place (if you were desperate, you might even carry a doggie bag). These days, you’re lucky to and many of the galleries, regardless of quality, demonstrate a disconnect with their surroundings.

Not the case with Howl!

Happening: An Arturo Vega Project — the love child of the late Arturo Vega (1947-2013) and Howl Arts, Inc. board members Jane Friedman, BG Hacker and Bob Perl (no relation to this reporter).

“Arturo Vega was our good friend,” said Jane Friedman, who serves as executor of his estate. “He was an amazing artist and supporter of arts and artists in every way possible. Part of his legacy is to counter the cynicism of the art world and champion artistic endeavors. The gallery is PHOTO BY JOHN E. ESPINOSA

East Village Museum that showcases the unique imagination and talent in our community. We have two major archives and also house the Tom Murrin Alien Comic archive.”

In addition, the Howl! Happening gallery (6 E. First St., btw. Bowery & Second Ave.) offers poetry readsions and concrete support — in the form of workshops geared toward obtaining health care and affordable housing, both of which are provided by the Actors Fund.

“Arturo Vega, American Treasure,”

Victor Bockris and Marcia Resnick signed copies at the Nov. 2015 release party for “Punks, Poets & Provocateurs: New York City Bad Boys, 1977–1982.”

Mar. 29, 2015. Subsequent events,

HOWL! continued on p. 18

EastVillagerNews.com

which change monthly, included installations by Downtown icons Lydia Lunch and Clayton Patterson.

“Secrets of the Great Pyramid,” the Sept. event, paid tribute to the great ’80s nightspot and included signature performances from that era.

“Insults,” which will display a series of Vega’s paintings imprinted with text fragments, will open on Mar. 5.

One of the unique aspects of Howl!

Happening is the merging of the old school with younger community members, musicians and artists who

roots, while contributing their own such a natural sense of inclusion.

The PUNK Magazine 40th Anniversary Exhibition, which opened on Jan. 14 and closed on Jan. 30, illustrated the sense of belonging one feels at these events.

Cartoonist and PUNK founding editor John Holmstrom and collaborators displayed both early art and new work by contributors. Copies

an illustration of Lou Reed on the cover, were available for sale. In a corner of the room, artist Ken Weiner drew his “ugly portraits” (he was one of many magazine contributors in attendance). Also in the crowd were Martin Rev, Tish and Snooky, Lenny Kaye and Anthony HadenGuest, to name a few, and, naturally, Holmstrom, greeting dozens of friends and signing books and zines.

Making my way through the

February 4, 2016

17

Howl! Happening fosters love for art and humanity HOWL! continued from p. 17

packed room, I encountered Emily Armstrong and Pat Ivers, who are known for their GoNightclubbing Archive of 1975-80. Their Nov. 2015 show, “Alone At Last,” featured an interactive peep show and closed with one of Friedman and Hacker’s famous holiday parties. “Howl!

Happening is our artistic playhouse,” said Ivers. “It reminds me of sharing ideas with my friends at CBGB — now, we actually see the outcomes.

Our crowd never stopped creating.”

Photographer David Godlis, another PUNK contributor, agreed. “It’s like sitting at the end of the bar again; everyone is here.” Alison Aguiar, whose older sister brought her to shows in the late ’70s, was standing nearby. As a young adult, she worked for CBGB and Manic Panic. “In the post-CB years,” she said, “Jane and BG have been the glue that connects us, brings us together, and provides places we can go. They embrace us all.”

“Gallery Director Ted Riederer is the facilitator and Jane Friedman is the visionary” is how artist/activist Clayton Patterson put it. “What I admire most about the vision is the people they show — everyone is very connected to the underground and the avant-garde. Some of them were the ones who made things happen, but they were too far ahead of the curve.” In keeping with that vision, Howl! is committed to emerging artists and their supporters.

Riederer, at 46, is a generation or two younger than many of the folks with whom he works. He is an artist and a member of The Antagonists, a group committed to mentoring others and to carrying on the work of Arturo Vega. “All of my hard work and dedication is a tribute to Arturo’s spirit,” Riederer told me. “He generously supported neighborhood artists and musicians of all ages and abilities. I’m really lucky to be part of that legacy.”

Antagonist co-founder Ethan Medicated” at the gallery last June, agreed. “Howl! Happening is the real deal,” he said. “Their track record not only demonstrates the historical importance of documenting the arts that put the Downtown scene into the forefront, but they keep an eye on the present and future of that same community.”

Photographer Marcia Resnick, who also attended the PUNK Anniversary event, has been documenting the Downtown arts and music scene since the 1970s. In Nov. 2015, she

18

February 4, 2016

PHOTO BY SHELL SHEDDY

PHOTO BY DAVID GODLIS

Cartoonist and PUNK co-creator John Holmstrom, at the 40th Anniversary Exhibition’s opening event.

Clayton Patterson will host the Acker Awards on Mar. 18, at Howl! Happening.

PHOTO BY DAVID GODLIS

PHOTO BY MARCIA RESNICK

Sex Pistols cover and original art, displayed at the PUNK 40th Anniversary Exhibition.

Marcia Resnick’s 1981 photo of David Byrne will be part of her gallery show, which opens Feb. 4 at Howl! Happening.

throughout her wildly successful release party for her book, “Punks, Poets & Provocateurs: New York City Bad Boys, 1977–1982.”

Writer Victor Bockris, who contributed most of the text, was by her side.

Like the PUNK exhibit, it brought people from far and wide, including photographer John E. Espinosa, one of many who have reluctantly left surviving as an artist.

“Marcia is my best friend and heroine,” he wrote. “Even after having to move back to Texas after 22 years, there was no way I would miss her party. When something is true and real it manifests a jolt of electromagnetic energy. Marcia’s photographs burst out from a sincere love of the

scene and its players, and from herself, as a partner in crime.”

An upcoming show, opening Feb. 4 and running through Mar. 2, will display her work and is sure to turn into another great party. “I love that Howl! Happening provides a magnetic attraction for those who frequented places like CBGB’s, Max’s and the Mudd Club in the ’70s and ’80s, and also for younger people who admire punk culture,” said Resnick. “Like those Downtown venues of the past, people now have a place where they can share their artistic creations, ideas, and mutual admiration. It was a perfect place for my book launch, and I’m hoping that my photo show attracts an equally enthusiastic audience!”

No matter whom I speak with about Howl!, certain keywords come up: Community. Spirit. Creation.

Legacy. Support. Energy. There is a joyousness and celebration of the artistic endeavor that is palpable, created by the love of both art and humanity. Who needs stale crackers, anyway?

Upcoming events include Marcia Resnick’s “Punks, Poets & Provocateurs: New York City Bad Boys, 1977–1982” (Feb. 4, 6 p.m.), an Actors Fund Affordable Housing Workshop (Feb. 16, 2 p.m.), Arturo Vega’s “Insults” (Mar. 5, 6 p.m.), and The Acker Awards (Mar. 18, 6 p.m.), in which Clayton Patterson and friends pay tribute to members of the avant-garde arts community.

EastVillagerNews.com

Dr. Burbank’s audacious Iowa autopsy Sifting through the caucus fracas

Here’s how it works, I think, kind of, anyway: Iowans gather in all of the state’s 1,681 Precincts (times 2, 1 for Republicans, 1 for Democrats = 3,362; or 3,363, since one party has an additional Precinct, usually decided by “one potato/two potato”). They gather with the purpose of electing delegates to the corresponding county conventions, one for each of the 99 state counties.

Q: Wait…what?

A: Hang on, I’m not done. Republican and Democratic Caucuses follow different rules and procedures. While ings of neighbors” (as opposed to the “voting” that goes on in primaries), participants must be registered to the party of the Caucus they attend, but can change registration at the actual Caucus as long as they are in possession of a “ring-a-levio” card or can prove their nickname is “Slapsy.”

The Republican Caucus — which should not be confused with the Republican Straw Poll, held in August of the preceding year, an event mostly

notable for being of even less importance than the Caucus, and now they aren’t going to do anymore ’cause word got out it was mostly just a liquor-fueled, corn on the cob eating contest — features lengthy speeches by “Precinct Captains” followed by paper balloting done right out in the open where anyone can see you, Iowa Democrats think the Republican process is way too simple and suspiciously like “voting.”

On arrival, Democrat Caucusers are sorted into designated candidate sections, (sometimes called “Voter Pens” or “Idiot Boxes”). There, they are counted. If one candidate fails to get at least 15% of voters, his “Pen” is opened, releasing its Caucusers. Precinct captains are allowed to speechify, cajole, threaten and prod released Caucusers into the remaining “Pens,” with the warning that if they continue to vote for their original candidate they will get a punch in the mouth.

CAUCUS continued on p. 20

THE NEW SOUND OF

BROOKLYN

BY MAX BURBANK

O

h my goodness! The Iowa Caucuses! It’s so exciting! After all the polls and

to the races — and the results! Good lord, can you believe it? Why, this means…

Okay, before we talk about who won what and all that portends, let’s just take a breath, shall we? Stop for a moment and consider something we all know deep down. The entire nation is involved in a conspiracy to mutually pretend that a Caucus is pretty very nearly the same thing as a Primary, and here’s the thing: it isn’t. There’s a reason why the circular race in “Alice in Wonderland” that goes on for a while and then just stops with no one discernibly in the lead is called “The EastVillagerNews.com

Caucus Race.” It’s because “Caucus” is just another way of saying “Meaningless Political Exercise.”

There is no way to even start thinking about the “meaning” of Iowa’s brief quadrennial foray into quasi-relevance until you understand what a “Caucus” is and how it differs from a “Primary.” To help you, I’ve prepared:

YOUR IOWA CAUCUS FAQ Q: So, Max, just what is the Iowa Caucus?

A: That’s “Mr. Burbank.” The short answer is, “No one knows,” which is not exactly true. In any given Caucus year, anywhere between six and a half-dozen people truly know what a Caucus is, with at least 20 more scattered throughout the state who “pretty much know but couldn’t really explain it.”

The Community News Group is proud to introduce BROOKLYN PAPER RADIO. Join Brooklyn Paper Editor-in-Chief Vince DiMiceli and the New York Daily News’ Gersh Kuntzman every Monday at 4 pm for an hour of talk on topics Brooklynites hold dear.

Each show will feature in-studio guests and call-out segments, and can be listened to live or played anytime at your convenience.

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LISTEN EVERY MONDAY AT 4PM ON BrooklynPaper.com/radio February 4, 2016

19

CAUCUS continued from p. 19

The number of delegates for each Precinct will be assigned based on Democratic turnout in that Precinct from the last two elections. That’s a sentence I cut and pasted directly from the Washington Post. If anyone knows what it means, tell me, and we’ll both be happy.

Q: So, do the Iowa Caucuses matter?

A: Let me be clear. No. Q: What? Wait, now…but, Max— A: “Dr. Burbank,” please. Look, the Iowa Caucuses are deliberately structured to select a very specific set of voters. You have to be willing to give up a whole evening you could spend with loved ones watching TV like a normal person, drive who knows how far through what kind of hellish Iowan winter weather to some godforsaken school gymnasium/ cafeteria that smells like boiled cabbage and capitulation, listen to teeth grindingly boring sound bites translated by neighbors who understand them even

TED CRUZ/FACEBOOK

Ted Cruz surreptitiously reaches out to Iowa’s gay voters, through a secret coded message sprawled across his campaign bus.

that you are (in ascending order of likelihood) without hobbies, evangelical, white, some sort of fanatic or an outright kook are very, very good.

This is not meant as a slight against Iowans, of whom the vast majority are lovely, well-adjusted people who almost certainly don’t Caucus. For the most part, Americans don’t even register to vote. Of those who do register, most of them still don’t vote. good? Of course not — but Caucusing is a much bigger drag. So the results of the Iowa Caucuses tell us pretty much nothing. That being said, let’s move on to feverishly discussing the results of the Iowa Caucuses as if they were really, really exciting…and important.

Q: What?! But you just said— A: Oh, what the hell else are we going to do? lyzing and chewing over every word 20-some odd megalomaniacs (and yes, anyone who thinks they should or even could be president is clearly a megalomaniac) have said without any real idea of what actual people might actually want. Now we have a data sample that, while tiny, bizarrely selective and deniably exists. Are you kidding? We’re going to go to town with this! The only reason we are not actually wetting ourselves is we’re saving that for New Hampshire!

So! The mind blowing, astounding, game-changing results!

THE REPUBLICANS Trump was leading in the polls right to the end, ish! Iowa Republicans faced a tough choice, a nightmarish game of “would you rather,” as in: “Would you rather gargle with toxic waste or shove a road kill possum down your pants?” — except Iowans seemed oddly enthusiastic about both possibilities.

In the end, Cruz (27.6%) crushed Trump (24.3%) decisively, winning by a whopping 3.3% — or

20

February 4, 2016

TED CRUZ/FACEBOOK

Ted Cruz surreptitiously reaches out to Iowa’s gay voters, through a secret coded message sprawled across his campaign bus.

roughly, I don’t know, like, 60 Iowans? What this means for Trump’s future is uncertain, but this much we do know: Iowans prefer a complete a-hole with some actual government experience. By, you know, about 3.3%.

The big news here was always going to be who came in third, ’cause isn’t the bronze medal always right behind Trump, giving his campaign a huge boost in credibility, always assuming you didn’t stop paying attention right after you heard Cruz won.

Ben Carson, who came in fourth with 9.3%, may have been hurt by Cruz supporters spreading rumors that he was dropping out of the race after it was revealed he had plane tickets to Florida, not

New Hampshire. Carson’s Communications Director leapt in, releasing a statement that Carson was not dropping out, just getting out of Iowa ahead of a “snow storm” and going home to get “a fresh set of clothes.” I guess Detroit is between Iowa and Florida. He probably has a favorite bathing suit.

Jeb! Jeb. Jeb? In sixth place at 2.8%, he called Trump “unstable” and referred to Cruz and Rubio as “backbenchers who have never done anything of consequence in their lives.” Besides, you know, beating the crap out of Jeb! in the Iowa Caucuses.

John Kasich, at 1.9%, wanted to remind the voters of New Hampshire that he was the only Republican CAUCUS continued on p. 21 EastVillagerNews.com

Next stop, New Hampshire…for some

BERNIESANDERS.COM

“The billionaire class needs to get the hell off America’s lawn, and keep the hell off America’s lawn. And close those windows, billionaire class!

What, are we heating the outdoors now?”

CAUCUS continued from p. 20

candidate who was an actual human being and not “some kind of reptile, or demon thrall or whatever the hell those other guys are.” Okay, that’s not really something he said, but it is true.

Carly Fiorina, also at 1.9%, said she was the most successful CEO in history, and that she had a suitcase full of baby parts she’d bought directly from Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards, and that she was already Queen of America, so Iowa could suck it.

Chris Christie, at 1.8%, wanted everyone to keep in mind that while technically he tied with Huckabee for last place, he wasn’t last place. Huckabee was last place ’cause he dropped out like a little baby quitter. Then he gave Huckabee a wedgie.

DONALDJTRUMP.COM

“My male member is this large, it’s one of the largest in fact. You could fit 25 Jeb Bush members into my member, with room left over for Cruz and Rubio. Because my member is yuge. YUGE.”

THE DEMOCRATS Hillary Clinton (49.9%) won, which makes her the winner, and Bernie Sanders (49.6%) didn’t lose by very much at all, which makes him also the winner.

Clinton took Sanders to the cleaners by .3%, some unknowable sliver of which she got from six (or possibly more, who knows) Precincts where there were exact ties, so they tossed a coin…unless Sanders won more of them than Clinton — because in Iowa not all precincts even report on coin toss decisions. While this column is peppered with whoppers, that isn’t one of them. But let’s be clear: this tie was not a tie.

It was a clear victory largely decided by coin tosses enough to be the real winner, and Martin O’Malley (0.6%) decided a refund on his airline ticket to New Hampshire was the better part of valor.

THE LOSERS As of this writing, Martin O’Malley (0.6%) and Mike Huckabee have thrown in the towel — both forgone conclusions, really. O’Malley, because since Lincoln Chafee dropped out, he’s had no one to sit with at lunch — and Huckabee, because no one in America can say “President Huckabee” without giggling, on account of the visual of a grown man throwing a bee. Huck-a-bee? Seriously? If he’d really ever wanted to be president, he’d have changed his said the race was “wide open” — but they may have EastVillagerNews.com

MARCORUBIO/FACEBOOK

“Okay Jimmy Fallon, yes, my parents were immigrants. That doesn’t mean I don’t hate immigrants. A lot of people hate their parents.”

meant it was wide enough to exit through without before we went to press. Google “Santorum Urban Now, on to New Hampshire, “The Granite State” — a place every bit as cold, weird and marginalized as Iowa, but a place where there’s a Primary, so it’s

easier to vote, and more people who care less will show up. And since caring less is what the vast majority of us do, the results will be more representative.

Is that enough to convince ourselves that anything before Super Tuesday makes any difference?

If you’re still reading, the answer is a resounding, American “YES!” February 4, 2016

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