East Villager

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

March 17, 2016 • FREE Volume 5 • Number 28

Curtain comes down on 2nd Ave. standby the Stage Restaurant

BY TINA BENITEZ-EVES

L

ima bean soup and challah bread “was the jam,” said Jonathan Jones, a former East Villager, remembering the Stage Restaurant, which officially closed for good earlier this month.

A longtime tenant of 128 Second Ave. — Stage’s home

for more than three decades — Jones was a regular customer of the Polish eatery for more than a decade, and even had a signature dish made specially for him by Stage proprietor Roman Diakun.

Over the years, locals and visitors alike indulged in Stage’s pierogies — potato, STAGE continued on p. 4

Purple, pedicabs, a push for recycling: A look back at New York’s ‘Eco ’80s’

BY BILL WEINBERG

R

eceived in the mail this week, from the wilds of New Hampshire — a historical and cultural offering from a member of the East Village diaspora, dispersed from its urban homeland by the forces of gentrification. To wit, Carl Hultberg, my E. Fourth St.

neighbor and buddy of many years, now a cabin-hermit in the Great North Woods.

The five-volume set of monographs is collectively entitled “Garden of Eden: The Eco Eighties in New York City,” and mostly consists of Carl’s photography from the era, with a big emphasis on ECO ’80S continued on p. 24

PHOTO BY SARAH FERGUSON

Stanley Cohen during an interview earlier this month at a Downtown law firm where he is currently serving as a consultant.

Stanley Cohen unbound Radical lawyer sprung, headed abroad

BY SARAH FERGUSON

G

oing to prison can be a radicalizing experience. So what happens when you take a radical attorney and lock him up in a federal prison camp in northeast Pennsylvania for 11 months on criminal tax offenses?

Not much, according to former East Village attorney Stanley Cohen.

“Prison didn’t touch me.

It didn’t change me. It didn’t soften me, it didn’t harden

me,” says Cohen, who started a blog called “Caged But Undaunted” during his stay at Camp Canaan in Waymart, PA. The LES’s most infamous defense lawyer also served three months at a Bronx halfway house and is now doing five more weeks of home confinement at his Upstate New York cabin in the foothills of the Catskills. Cohen, who is in his early 60s, was convicted last April on charges of “obstructing and impeding” the Internal Revenue Service.

In essence, the I.R.S. got him

for failing to file timely returns from 2005 to 2010, for failing to report some $35,000 in cash transactions, and for running a largely cash business in which he kept slack or no records.

In court, prosecutors alluded to millions of dollars in cash Cohen received from clients, many of them pot growers and smugglers from the Mohawk Nation’s Akwesasne Reservation on the Quebec border.

Cohen insists the notion COHEN continued on p. 8

Indian Point 11 plead ‘guilty and proud’........page 12 Rev. Jen, courage and Mr. L.E.S....page 19 Mosaic Man is in an edgy pole position..........page 14 | May 14, 2014

www.EastVillagerNews.com

1

ber Kathleen Keene told us the event was on track to raise close to the target of $50,000 — corporate matching funds and proceeds from an online auction were still coming in as of this week. The funds will pay for in-school enrichment programs by Paul Taylor Dance, the National Dance Institute and Third St. Music School, plus chess for all students from kindergarten to fifth grade. Some of the top items at the night’s auction were tickets to the sold-out “Hamilton” and “School of Rock” Broadway musicals. People also bid in a silent auction on items like jewelry and Cuban cigars. Keene added that P.S. 110 is also still pushing for a donation from Givenchy, which monopolized the area around the school for its Fashion Week show last year.

PHOTOS BY SCOOPY

From left, Paul Newell, Chad Marlow and Goldie Weixel at the P.S. 110 fundraiser.

Lauren and Evan Forsch were having mucho fun at “A Night in Old Havana.” If Evan’s Villager cartoon looks a bit squiggly next week, well, blame Lauren for scooping up those two $20 bottles of booze for just $10 apiece at the evening’s end.

SMOKIN’ CUBAN FUNDRAISER: The “A Night in Old Havana” fundraiser at P.S. 110, the Florence Nightingale School, at 285 Delancey St., last Saturday night was the place to be. Leading P.T.A. mem-

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2

March 17, 2016

IN THE CROWD: Among the throng at the P.S. 110 fundraiser were some local political parents — plus one of The Villager’s on-the-scene cartoonists. Chad Marlow, the ever-opinionated member of Community Board 3, and his wife, Goldie Weixel, were there, as well as our every-other-week cartoonist Evan Forsch and his wife, Lauren. Not a school parent, District Leader Paul Newell was also there — “working the room,” as they say — having come with his childhood friend Robin Sandler, who is also a P.S. 110 dad. The Forsches, if you haven’t already heard, currently have a pop-up shop, L.E.S. Popped, in a storefront formerly home to an Italian restaurant in the Seward Park Co-op’s commercial strip on Grand St. It features handmade arts from the Lower East Side. Check it out! They’re actually hoping to make it an ongoing affair. (We won’t even get into the controversy about the neighboring Kossar’s bialies store, its Saturday hours and the whole rabbi-certification issue. Oy!) For his part, Newell told us he had been at Coalition for a District Alternative’s endorsement votes earlier that evening and gave us the report. Basically, CoDA members decided not to endorse in the upcoming 65th Assembly District special election, feeling they wanted to hold their fire for the “real election,” the primary, in which more than one Democrat will be running — including Newell, among others — and which will be in September. Newell said of the four candidates on the special election ballot, only Yuh-Line Niou showed up to ask for the club’s endorsement. Newell personally spoke for no endorsement. Newell also reported that CoDA endorsed District Leader Carlina Rivera — for the September 2017 primary election — to succeed City Councilmember Rosie Mendez, who will be term-limited out of office at the end of that year. It’s most certainly a long way off, but as Newell said, “That’s how CoDA does it.”

‘RAJ’ EVENT ALL THE RAGE: Another expected candidate in the September primary for the 65th A.D., District Leader Jenifer Rajkumar recently held

PHOTO BY TEQUILA MINSKY

Longtime gay activist Allen Roskoff praised Jenifer Rajkumar at her recent Chinatown fundraiser.

a fundraiser at Chinatown’s Jing Fong restaurant. She was praised by supporters, including Allen Roskoff of the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club, which endorsed her back in January, saying she would be “a strong voice in Albany for reform and transparency.”

CANDIDATES FORUM: The Villager and our sister paper Downtown Express will be teaming up with the League of Women Voters of New York to host a candidates forum for the April 19 special election for the 65th Assembly District. The forum is currently set for Thurs., March 31, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., at the Downtown Alliance business improvement district’s LMHQ space, at 150 Broadway, 20th floor. The Alliance is also a co-sponsor of the forum. The event will be moderated by Lincoln Anderson, editor in chief of The Villager, and Laura Altschuler of the League of Women Voters. Invite letters went out to all four candidates earlier this week. So far, as of this Wednesday, Dennis Levy, running on the Green Party line, had confirmed that he will participate. Two other candidates, Yuh-Line Niou, running on the Working Families Party line, and Lester Chang, running as the Republican, Reform, Liberal and Clean Up the Mess candidate, have acknowledged receipt of the invites, and Altschuler is awaiting their confirmation that they will attend. She is still waiting for word back from Alice Cancel, the Democratic Party nominee.

Altschuler, who took the lead in setting up the forum, said it’s extremely important for the Lower Manhattan Assembly district to get to know the candidates and their views on the issues, since the district was represented for nearly 40 years by Sheldon Silver, until he was stripped of office late last year after his federal corruption convictions. So this is a historic moment and opportunity for change in the district.

WELCOME ABOARD! Well known to East Village activists and community gardeners, Harry Bubbins was named the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation’s new East Village and special projects director. Bubbins previously served as the founding director of Friends of Brook Park, a leading environmental and community advocacy organization based in the Mott Haven neighborhood of the South Bronx. He has had a direct hand in helping to preserve affordable housing, in jump-starting a number of green spaces in the South Bronx, and in helping to spearhead successful grassroots campaigns, from preserving more than 100 community gardens from the auction block to protecting public parkland on Randall’s Island. We remember seeing him speak at the memorial for slain squatter activist Brad Will at La Plaza Cultural some years ago.

EastVillagerNews.com

Taste of ©2016

Spring

Come out of your shell and celebrate the season and Easter. Order your all-natural ham or lamb, freshly prepared sides and desserts and even ready-to-serve meals from Mrs. Green’s Neighborhood Market.

It’s easy and convenient. Order in-store or online at MrsGreens.com/HolidayMeals.

Order by March 25th EastVillagerNews.com

March 17, 2016

3

Curtain comes down on Stage Restaurant 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

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4

March 17, 2016

STAGE continued from p. 1

cheese, beef, sauerkraut or mushroom, boiled or deep fried — made-to-order potato pancakes and red or white borscht and other soups, as well as sausage-and-tomato sandwiches, omelets, meatloaf, stuffed cabbage and beets, plus French toast or grilled cheese on challah bread, cheese and blueberry blintzes and an array of other specialty Eastern European and American dishes dreamed up by Diakun since his opening the Stage back in 1980.

On March 2, generations of Stage patrons learned that the restaurant, which has been closed for nearly a year following a lengthy legal battle with landlord Icon Realty Management, would never open again.

“It is with bittersweet emotions that we at Stage Restaurant are announcing that we are closing our doors permanently after 35 amazing years,” Diakun said. “The events of the year have been overwhelmingly devastating on us, and we have decided to close the Stage’s door.”

“It’s terrible,” said John Serdula, a longtime tenant who heads the building’s tenants association. “It was a focal point for the community of the East Village. Everybody went there. All the people from Cooper Union — artists ate there all the time. Every time I say I live next door to ‘Stomp,’ people will say, ‘Oh, you live near Stage?’ It has such a huge following.”

Diakun, who also lives upstairs from Stage at 128 Second Ave., addressed the ongoing legal dispute with Icon, which started days after the Second Ave. gas explosion on March 26, 2015, which leveled three buildings, 119, 121 and 123 Second Ave. Four days after the catastrophe, the restaurant was shut down, following a Con Edison investigation that revealed alleged gas siphoning in the building’s basement. This resulted in a gas shutoff — resulting in no heat or hot water for the building’s tenants for months — and the Department of Buildings issuing a stop-work order against Stage on any work in the basement. Icon issued Stage an eviction notice on April 13, and the restaurant sued the landlord to stop the process.

Diakun has been fairly quiet, rarely speaking to the press since Stage’s closing last spring.

In his Facebook post last week, he wrote, “Over the past year, we have resolved our dispute with the landlord. Stage Restaurant never engaged in any wrongdoing; however, after our prolonged closure and because of the cost to make the repairs and expenses of reopening, we are sad to say that the Stage cannot reopen.”

Nearly one year later, Diakun is tired, and the legal battles and the loss of money have taken a toll, according to Serdula, who ran into the Stage owner shortly

Roman Diakun in the front window of his Stage Restaurant on Second Ave. He recently announced he won’t be reopening.

after he had officially handed the restaurant’s keys over to Icon. Serdula said Diakun told him he had two more years on the lease but decided to close.

“I could tell that he’s depressed,” said Serdula, who also leads Icon Coalition, a group of tenants dealing with ongoing issues with the Iandlord. “It’s been one year since he’s been put under pressure by Icon and he couldn’t make any money during it.”

Serdula added that Icon did not allow Diakun to go into the basement to have his gas lines fixed, so that he could reopen his business, and was also trying to raise the restaurateur’s rent, plus is now allegedly harassing the longtime tenant, alleging that a downstairs neighbor is complaining of noise in his apartment.

“He’s furious,” Serdula said. “He should have fought more to keep the restaurant. I could understand it. You win this battle, then there’s another battle — and another and another. It’s too exhausting.”

Chris Coffey, an Icon representative, told The Villager that there were no rent increases for the Stage restaurant and that things ended amicably in court with Diakun.

“The lease was expired, but they were welcome to stay there,” said Coffey, adding that Icon hopes to get a suitable tenant that has the character of the East Village. “Icon wishes them the best…whatever they decide to do. They were welcome to come back, but made the decision not to reopen.”

Landlord issues aside, patrons will always remember what Stage was all about, whether borscht or an American cheese grilled on some challah with butter. For Serdula, it was all about Stage’s chicken soup.

“When you’re sick and don’t feel like

making anything and just want soup, you just had to go downstairs and say, ‘Can I have some soup?’ ” he said. “The pierogies were great, too. All the food was good. The challah bread was fantastic.”

Serdula and Jones remembered Diakun’s good nature and how he looked out for the building’s older tenants by bringing them food every day at no charge.

“He never announced it,” Serdula said. “He just did it, no charge. It’s a really nice thing to do.”

Now, Stage sits vacant in the ground floor of No. 128. The restaurant gate is up, though, and passersby can look in at the kitchen, the line of red stools and the formica-topped counter, with napkins, salt and pepper and other condiments still in place, as if Stage will open any day now. There are even a few specials still listed in the window.

“Thank you all for your support, your signatures, your donations, and especially your kind words,” Diakun added in his Facebook goodbye. “We could not have realized our passion and love for nourishing and providing a place of comfort and gathering to the community without you all. Your loyalty, support, kindness and love have been a true blessing, and something we will never forget.”

Jones, who moved to Virginia last fall following a lengthy court battle with Icon, still will always remember that one special dish at Stage.

“Roman used to make me an eggand-cheese on challah with potatoes and grits inside,” said Jones, who added that Diakun’s portions and prices were a steal. “This was a special he came up with for me. I have been dreaming about missing this egg-and-cheese special. I sure would have loved to have one this morning.”

EastVillagerNews.com

EastVillagerNews.com

March 17, 2016

5

Co-op may be fined big on garage: C.B. 3 member

BY LESLEY SUSSMAN

I

n a surprise turn of events, opponents of a new valet parking system recently put into effect at the Seward Park Co-op’s garage and parking lot learned at last week that the system’s new operators may lack the proper city permits and that the co-op could be fined up to $25,000 as a result.

The co-op’s 11-member board of directors in January approved the hiring of Icon Parking Systems, a citywide garage valet parking service, to operate the complex’s 388-car garage and parking lot. The management board of the Lower East Side co-op said the change would keep parking prices below market rate, shorten the waiting list by increasing the number of spaces, and generate much-needed annual revenue.

Since then, an uncivil war has been raging at the four-building, 20-story co-operative along east Grand St. between a segment of car-owning shareholders who are against the valet parking system, and the coop’s management board, which supports it. The garage is located at Clinton St. and E. Broadway.

The flap has not only involved shareholders who park in the garage and parking lot, but other shareholders at the 1,728-unit co-op, as well. These shareholders contend that the management board made the decision without any shareholder input.

In response, the co-op’s board has countered that the decision was made in good faith. The board says that not only will the new system result in increased income to help maintain the co-op without raising parking rates, but also open up parking space for the dozens of shareholders waiting for a space. There are currently 670 names on a parking waiting list.

The surprise announcement about possible permit violations was made by MyPhuong Chung, chairperson of the Community Board 3 Land Use, Zoning, Public & Private Housing Committee, at the committee’s meeting last Wednesday.

Chung told the co-op’s shareholders and her fellow committee members that based upon her “research” into the situation, she discovered that three required city permits to operate the new garage and parking lot may be missing.

“I researched the situation and the Department of City Planning told me that special permits were needed to make these changes,” she said. “According to the department of planning, these permits have not been filed with them, the Department of Buildings and the Department of Consumer Affairs.

“If this is true, the co-op could face fines of up to $25,000,” Chung noted. “I believe that they will have to pay for violations of permits for every day that they are operating.”

Among the violations that Icon may be committing, according to another Seward Park board member who lives in the co-op and requested anonymity, is that the garage has surpassed the number of cars — 418 — allowed under its current certificate of occupancy.

He also told this newspaper that, according to neighbors, the garage has been allowing single-day parking for motorists who do not live in the Seward Park Co-op. Both allegations have been strongly denied by Frank Durant, the co-op’s general manager.

“This is all pure nonsense,” Durant told The Villager the day after the C.B. 3 committee meeting.

“We would never put the co-op at risk, and we would never allow Icon Parking Systems to operate illegally. Single-day customers aren’t being given spaces until Icon is certain that it has the proper permits.

6

March 17, 2016

PHOTO BY LESLEY SUSSMAN

The Seward Park Co-op’s garage, at Clinton St. and E. Broadway.

“Icon is a reputable company that would not do anything that is illegal,” he continued. “Our attorneys reviewed everything, and if the city came in today to inspect the garage there would be nothing illegal that they would find.”

Durant went on to say that this issue was being manufactured by “people on the community board who live in this co-op that don’t want to give up their personal parking space.”

A reporter who visited the garage last week and asked if he could park his car there, although he wasn’t a resident, was given two different answers by parking attendants.

One told the reporter that parking was “for residents only,” while a second said, “if there was space,” he could park his car there.

Icon Parking Systems did not respond to calls for comment for this article, but did respond to the growing concerns by posting hand-written signs saying that the garage only allowed monthly parking.

Since the plan was first announced at the beginning of the year, outraged shareholders with garage and parking lot spaces have bitterly complained that they wanted to be able to park their own cars and not have to turn their keys over to valet parking attendants.

They also complained that the new system would squeeze more vehicles into the garage and parking lot so tightly, it would make it difficult for them to get in and out of their cars.

But some shareholders are slamming the new plan’s opponents as “selfish.”

One shareholder who asked not to be identified said that the valet parking system’s critics were “ignoring the fact that this service will increase revenues at the co-op by $200,000 to $300,000, without increasing parking rates, while also increasing the number of parking spaces available to the co-op.”

This point has also been made by the co-op’s board, whose members have responded that by hiring Icon to run the parking operation, the entire co-op will financially benefit from the additional revenues.

The atmosphere was electric at the C.B. 3 committee meeting as angry shareholders waited for man-

agement board representatives to make their case.

But they were disappointed as co-op board representatives — including president David Pass — immediately left the meeting without comment after Chung made her stunning announcement.

Durant later told a reporter that, after the announcement, the board president “felt threatened” by the large turnout of shareholders, which was why he bolted from the meeting immediately afterward.

Angry shareholders also stormed out of the meeting, voicing some criticism as they exited about the way things were being handled that evening.

“Thanks for letting us know,” one shareholder sarcastically told committee members before leaving.

Chung responded that the hearing would be rescheduled once the permit issue was resolved, and that shareholders would have their chance to speak.

After the meeting, Dominic Berg, former C.B. 3 chairperson, said he was also a bit surprised by Chung’s disclosure.

“If this is true,” Berg said, “it surprises me since management probably was told that they needed a zoning change. Management has an obligation to make sure that they’re following the law.”

Last month, the Seward Park board circulated a detailed, seven-page “State of the Co-op” memorandum, outlining the co-op’s financial challenges — especially soaring real estate taxes — and the resulting need for new revenue sources, if monthly maintenance costs were to remain at their current low levels.

The memo pointed out that in the past six years, real estate taxes have risen by 125 percent — from $5.2 million to $11.7 million annually — while maintenance costs have risen by 14 percent. The board also noted that the complex’s reserve fund has been depleted to help cover operating expenses.

After the memo was issued, many shareholders who attended a meeting on the matter last month at the Manny Cantor Center seemed satisfied that the board had acted in good faith and that the revenue generated by valet parking would benefit the entire co-op. Others, however, continued to argue that the board’s deliberations lacked transparency.

EastVillagerNews.com

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March 17, 2016

7

Freed radical attorney reflects on prison life, COHEN continued from p. 1

that he was rolling in the dough is ludicrous. He says his prosecution on tax charges was part of a broader effort of political retribution aimed at silencing a radical defender who has spent the last three decades representing the rights of other radicals, outcasts and the oppressed. It’s a not too preposterous theory, considering that he has represented everyone from Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law and Kathy Boudin of the Weather Underground to East Village squatters and Occupy Wall Street protestors, the leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah members of the Mohawk Nation and the Anonymous hacktivists known as the “PayPal 14.” (Cohen’s former law partner Lynne Stewart was convicted in 2010 of aiding a terrorist by helping her client communicate to followers from prison.) In 2002, he filed suit against Israel, accusing it of war crimes.

“They started investigating me in 1997, for material support of terrorism, because I was involved in a half-dozen battles with them over terrorism cases,” Cohen alleges, referring to inquiries launched over the years by the F.B.I. and Treasury and Justice departments.

“My case was not about taxes,” insists Cohen, who says he took the plea agreement only because the lengthy legal fight was “bankrupting” him, straining his family, and making it difficult to practice law.

“Am I banned from Israel and Egypt and Kuwait because of taxes?” he demands. “Shouldn’t that sort of say something? There isn’t a f---ing federal prosecutor in the United States who believes this is about f---in’ taxes,” maintains Cohen, who had to give up his Avenue D loft when he went to prison.

Prosecutors at the Northern District U.S. Attorney’s Office in Syracuse, where Cohen’s tax case was tried, insist their beef with him was not political.

Asked whether the case against Cohen was politically motivated, Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Southwick responded succinctly: “It was not.”

Cohen is still battling the I.R.S. in civil court over exactly how much in back taxes he still owes. But he was never fined for his tax offenses — a point he considers telling: “Go find another f---ing I.R.S. criminal prosecution in the United States without an order that you must repay a certain amount of money as part of your sentence. We looked. It doesn’t exist.”

Clearly undaunted, Cohen sat down with The Villager earlier this month for a wide-ranging interview in the offices of a Downtown law firm. Cohen says he was hired by the firm to consult on a big pro bono project, just two days after he entered the halfway house.

8

March 17, 2016

PHOTO BY SARAH FERGUSON

Stanley Cohen during an interview earlier this month at a Downtown law firm where he is currently serving as a consultant.

Although Cohen’s law license is currently suspended, he has not been disbarred. Rather, his law license is now “pending review” — meaning it is under the discretion of the New York Bar Association whether it will be reinstated once his full sentence has been served.

***

VILLAGER: So it’s not a given that you will lose your law license?

STANLEY COHEN: The haters are going around saying I’ve been disbarred, but it’s not true. In fact, there are those who believe that it’s highly significant that I wasn’t disbarred.

There are those who believe the grievance committee sees — “There’s something going on here.” (Cohen moves in conspiratorially and casts a wink.)

V: So you can still help prepare legal cases?

S.C.: If your license is suspended or pending, you can’t even practice until it is resolved. But I can still be a consultant. I can’t give legal advice — which I’m not — and I can’t go into court. But I can research, and I can write, and I can set up pro bono projects.

V: What was it like in the Big House?

S.C.: I did 10 months and three weeks in a prison “camp” that was very much like a f---ing Boy Scouts barracks. It was a camp, which is no bars, no cells, no barbed wire, no keys, no guns. One hundred twenty men in a bunkhouse with communal showers and communal bathrooms, making 12 cents an hour. And then we’re attached to one of the ugliest maximum-security prisons in the United States, filled with about 1,000 guys doing at least 20-year sentences, and 500 doing life without.

[Cohen’s blog includes the interviews he did with his fellow prisoners,

some living in the camp and others he encountered when he worked the red-eye shift at Canaan’s maximum penitentiary, packing lunches during a three-week lockdown.]

V: And how did prison deal with you as a radical attorney?

S.C.: I was designated a C.M.I., which is a Centrally Monitored Inmate. Within three days of my arrival, I had to sign a document which identified me as a C.M.I., that said quote unquote, “Because of inmate Cohen’s high public persona, his career of controversy, and the access to the media and the cases he’s handled, the Bureau of Prisons has decided he has to be a monitored inmate.” They wanted to keep me under their eye as much as possible; so when I got there, I was immediately assigned to the plumb librarian job of the law library. There were like 50 guys waiting to get the librarian job — [but] they gave it to me because it was 20 feet from the administrative offices, and people could walk by day in and day out and see me.

***

While in prison, Cohen says he received more than 100 interview requests — including one from CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, who wanted to follow up on Cohen’s foiled efforts to get leaders of Hamas and Al Qaeda to intercede to save the life of American hostage Peter Kassig, who was beheaded

by ISIS. The British Guardian did an 8,000-word series on Cohen’s role in the hostage negotiation, though the story did not receive much play here in the U.S. Cohen says he was also visited by London playwright Chris MacDonald, who is writing a play about Cohen, and who spent a weekend “taking notes up his arm” while being monitored by the

acting warden of the camp.

In addition, Cohen taught three terms of law classes to his fellow inmates, covering topics ranging from civil rights and American government, to the revolution that toppled apartheid in South Africa, the Israeli/Palestine conflict, and human rights law.

“I did serious stuff,” shrugs Cohen.

“My classes were volunteer, they were at night, you got no credit for attending. And yet they regularly drew attendance of 30 people — about a third of the camp,” he adds.

“One of the guys who attended all my classes told me, ‘I love your classes. I feel like we’re in college. We’re like adults, like men. We discuss.

We’re not dumbed down, we’re not f---ing idiots.’”

***

V: What was your hardest thing about being behind bars?

S.C.: Nothing about prison was hard for me — zero. There’s isolation and despair, there’s dirt and boredom, and there’s periodic violence — sometimes psychic, sometimes physical.

None of that was a big deal. The biggest problem, especially in camps, is you’re powerless to take care of family problems. You get your periodic phone calls and visits; you get a certain number of e-mails now in prisons. But it’s not like your wife or husband or son can just pick up the phone and say, “I’m having a problem,” and you intervene and then they don’t have to worry about it… . All you can say is, “It will be all right, you have to deal with it.”

Low-security prisons and camps are designed to hurt you by hurting your families. The prison doesn’t hurt you. The camps themselves are a f--ing joke. Sixty percent of every man and woman in federal prison in the United States has been convicted of a nonviolent offense and/or poses no risk of danger to the community. They do not have to be in prison. The whole purpose is to punish the person, and the greatest retribution is meted out to wives, husbands and children on the outside. That’s where they get you, that’s where they f--- you up. I have a strong partner of many years, but she had problems.

V: How was the food?

S.C.: Terrible. I’m a vegetarian. I had a friend of mine [in prison] who made me salads. There are exchange systems.

I lived on a lot of oatmeal, a lot of nuts.

I didn’t eat in the camp cafeteria at all the last five months. I would, however, go in two meals a day and get meals for friends who were big. I mean, breakfast was at 6 a.m. every day, lunch at 10:45 and dinner at 4. Who wants to eat lunch at 10:45?

COHEN continued on p.9 EastVillagerNews.com

plans to move abroad COHEN continued from p. 8

I went in heavy because I’d been traveling a lot and hadn’t been taking care of myself before I went to jail. So I lost 23 to 24 pounds — roughly two pounds a month, and got back to my normal weight.

***

The Villager reached out to Cohen again over this past weekend, following his release from the halfway house, to ask how he was enjoying his relative freedom, under home confinement in his Catskills retreat.

Cohen said he was battling a terrific chest cold but seemed otherwise nonchalant about it all. He said he was keeping busy cleaning up the lawn, writing his blog and catching up on Turner Classic Movies with his longtime partner, artist Joni White. According to the terms of his sentence, he is now allowed to travel domestically related to his work and things like health appointments, but must spend each night at home.

Ever the troublemaker, Cohen says he’s been blasting tweets about the state of Gaza, promoting B.D.S. campaigns against Beyoncé and J. Lo and Springsteen because of their plans to play Israel, and of course, harping on the current trainwreck of a presidential election. (He’s got more than 20,000 Twitter followers.) Since he got out, he says he’s received a half-dozen death threats via Twitter and online from “white national socialists” who are pissed about something he wrote about Trump and Sanders.

***

V: Aren’t you at all worried about putting yourself back in the government’s — or your haters’ — crosshairs?

S.C.: Let us be very clear about this.

Serious political lawyers put ourselves in the firing line all the time. It is what we do. Have there been times when I said f--- you to the beast and exposed myself and let myself be vulnerable?

Of course. Comes with the turf.

The government spent five years looking for hidden proceeds, because they are used to scammers and a-holes. They aren’t used to people like me. They’re not used to political fighters. They assumed that Stanley Cohen was getting rich because of the work he did — that Stanley Cohen was doing it for the money. It’s all nonsense.

So they spent five years looking for offshore bank accounts and hidden dollar amounts and stock portfolios, and found nothing, zero, because there was nothing.

What they didn’t get — what they really didn’t get — was I didn’t give a f---. Who gives a f---? Was I reckless in EastVillagerNews.com

certain regards? Absolutely. Did I not give a f--- about some of their rules and regulations? Abso-f---ing-lutely. Did I see them as being intrusive?

Absolutely. In my sentencing memo, it says, “Stanley Cohen has to be one of the best defense attorneys around…

There’s no doubt he is an indefatigable force on behalf of his clients. But he’s a lousy businessman.” Really?

V: So what’s next?

S.C.: I’m thinking about bank robberies… No, seriously, what am I going to do? Even once I get my license back — and I’m convinced I will — my days of running a major national criminal defense firm are done. I will continue doing international human rights work — maybe political cases, terrorism cases. I expect to become an expat and live abroad — essentially reversing the past 20 or 25 years of living in the United States and traveling abroad three or four times a year. I will now live abroad and travel to the United States three or four times a year. I’ll reverse it.

V: Any idea where you’ll go?

S.C.: My partner has agreed that there are a certain number of countries that she will go live with me in. She’s an artist, she’s got a gallery, a small studio in Florida which she wants to maintain. We’re looking in the Gulf States somewhere, we’re looking in Lebanon, where she and I have been.

We’re looking in South Africa… The countries I am thinking about are the countries that are very vibrant and in flux, in one way or another in a state of revolution. So they are involved in human rights struggles.

V: So you’ll pick up where you left off abroad?

S.C.: Look, I represent some very serious people. And I have been aligned with some very serious political movements for many years. And I have been a consultant to foreign governments.

So I could do this tomorrow — never pick up a law book, never cross-examine a witness, never step into a courtroom again — and continue. I’ve got teaching offers in a half-dozen countries that I could do. I could be a consultant in many places.

Two weeks ago, when the Muslim and Black Bar Association in South Africa tried to get Shimon Peres arrested there, I was a consultant in that case. I was part of the strategy that — well, it didn’t work at this point, the special prosecutor said the case was not likely to prevail — but I was part of that.

V: But will you keep a place here?

S.C.: Oh, I’m not giving up the cabin. We want to look for a place on the Lower East Side — just to stay connected. Something small, one bedroom.

V: Seriously? You can afford to rent on the LES after the case just bankrupted you?

S.C.: Yeah. We’re gonna look.

March 17, 2016

9

Kushner E. 4th tenants without gas five months

BY JOAQUIN COTLER

T

hurs., March 3, marked another hearing in ongoing litigation between young real estate mogul Jared Kushner and the tenants at 118 E. Fourth St. Residents of the East Village walkup building claim that the landlord has continued to deny them livable conditions, and have demanded the immediate restoration of essential services, including gas, heat and plumbing.

The renovations of the tenement’s apartments and the subsequent unsafe living conditions has been an issue for tenants since 2012. The most recent case involves residents’ claims that a gas outage throughout the building has deprived them of cooking gas since October 2015. But the problems have been going on longer than that, they say.

Back in 2013, Kushner spent upward of $200 million to buy more than 25 East Village properties.

Among them was 118 E. Fourth St., which he purchased from notorious developer Ben Shaoul as part of a $49 million deal that included six other buildings.

The buildings are currently op-

erated by Westminster Management, a subsidiary of Kushner Companies. For a year and a half, Westminster has failed to address numerous claims tenants have made about the conditions at No. 118, tenants charge.

“My bathroom ceiling has collapsed five times due to a leak in my neighbor’s sink that they just wouldn’t fix,” said Jennifer Hengen, a tenant in the building for more than 20 years. “They’ll just patch the pipe or hole, not tackle the root of the problem. Rusty water dripped from two holes in my ceiling for a year and a half before management called the plumber. Is this harassment or neglect?”

David DuPuis, an upstairs neighbor of hers, has lived in the building since 1983. He said that, in addition to the leak, which stemmed from his plumbing, a fire also started in Hengen’s ceiling due to faulty wiring, and the damage has only recently been addressed.

“They installed new wiring last week, and rebuilt some of the walls that were destroyed while they were searching for the cause,” DuPuis said. “It took over a year and a half, and a lawsuit, and six months of no gas, for them to actually fix things in the last two weeks.”

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that matters.

He claimed that the firefighters who came to address the blaze and the electricians who rewired the ceiling advised residents to move out because the place was in such bad shape.

DuPuis, an active member of the building’s tenants association, said that solidarity was the only way to force results in this case.

“We set up a private Google group back in 2012, so when Shaoul was tearing down the building we could post updates,” he said. “We would keep an eye on people’s apartments when they weren’t home. Management would always be coming and showing apartments and forget to lock the door on their way out.”

The Cooper Square Committee and MFY Legal Services are supporting the tenants’ fight against their high-profile landlord, who also publishes the New York Observer and is Donald Trump’s sonin-law.

Tenants said that after Kushner bought the E. Fourth St. building three years ago, Westminster kept it in pretty good shape for six months while showing the place to investors. After fixing — at least cosmetically — some of the serious issues depicted in the tenant association’s blog, “Occupy E. 4th St.,” management removed public garbage containers, which resulted in piles of trash in the courtyard, leading to a rat infestation lasting almost a year.

According to Brandon Kielbasa from the Cooper Square Committee, the total number of unaddressed violations in the building is currently 35, with eight outstanding class C, or immediately hazardous, violations. Attempts have been made to hold the landlord in contempt of court, but because he is not listed by name as the building’s owner, Kushner’s lawyers have insisted that his name be stricken from the case.

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Kielbasa believes it’s an attempt by the landlord to distance himself from the issues at No. 118.

“Removing him from the case protects him from the possibility of being held in contempt of court,” the activist said. “But the other reps listed on the Department of Housing Preservation and Development’s records for the building could still face that.”

Court was adjourned last Thursday with the contempt motion left to be argued later. In a last-minute protest, Kushner’s lawyers stated that they had confused this case with another one against him for not providing heat at 118 E. Fourth St. In the end, all parties ultimately agreed to reconvene March 22.

In a statement a spokesperson for Westminster Management said, “Regretfully, the gas at 118 E. Fourth St. was shut off by Con Ed due to safety concerns from residents last October. That turn-off caused loss of heat, hot water and cooking gas in the building on Oct. 12. We secured expedited approval from the Department of Buildings, made necessary gas line repairs, and restored heat and hot water on Oct. 21, once Con Ed was able to inspect the new gas line. Currently, nearly all of the building’s cooking gas has been restored, and we are actively working to safely ensure that the entire building has cooking gas. At the same time, we have recently taken a number of actions to address tenant concerns, including providing additional trash bins to accommodate garbage overflow; engaging an exterminating contractor to provide a complete building evaluation; and working with an electrician to ensure equipment is properly installed and maintained. Westminster Management takes complaints from residents seriously and we are committed to strengthening our management-tenant relationship.”

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March 17, 2016

EastVillagerNews.com

ADVERTORIAL

Successful ways to stretch retirement savings

Many budding retirees plan to travel, relax and enjoy the company of their spouses when they officially stop working. But such plans only are possible if men and women take steps to secure their financial futures in retirement.

According to a recent survey by the personal finance education site MoneyTips.com, roughly onethird of Baby Boomers have no retirement plan. The reason some may have no plan is they have misconceptions about how much money they will need in retirement. Successful retirees under-

net worth of less than $1 million, and many people live comfortably on less than $100,000 annually. When planning for retirement, don’t be dissuaded because you won’t be buying a vineyard or villa in Europe. Set reasonable goals for your retirement and make sure you meet those goals.

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stand the steps to take and how to live on a budget.

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Even men and women who invest in an employer-sponsored retirement program, such as a 401(k), should not make that the only retirement planning they do. Speak with a financial advisor who can help you develop a plan that ensures you don’t outlive your assets.

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programs if they are offered.

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• Start early on retirement saving. It’s never too early to begin saving for retirement. Although few twenty-somethings are thinking about retirement, the earlier you begin to invest the more time you have to grow your money. Enroll in a retirement plan now so you have a larger nest egg when you reach retirement age.

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11

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Indian Point 11 plead ‘guilty and proud’ in court

BY JK CANEPA

A

t midnight on Dec. 12 of last year, the final license for Indian Point Energy Center’s reactors expired. To mark the event, about 50 people walked up the road to the entrance of the nuclear power plant in Buchanan, N.Y., a small Westchester County municipality on the edge of Peekskill. Among the assemblage were several elderly Franciscan nuns, a frail Buddhist nun who had stood in silent protest when the plant was built more than 40 years ago, people of the (real) first world accompanying us with drums, a professor, a retired minister and others who traveled from Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York City, and those who lived close to the aging, leaking, deteriorating plant, residents of Westchester, Putnam, and Rockland Counties.

As we continued uphill, we stepped over chalk marks that said “Algonquin Pipeline.” Then I knew we were close — 105 feet from the safety equipment for the plant, in fact — and I pointed this out to the sisters. Moments later, we were in front of Indian Point and its giant domes.

We stretched yellow caution tape to block workers’ access as the drummers marked time. When told to disperse, 11 of us stood our ground, including three from the city: Bruce Rosen, Merle McEldowney and me.

One of the sweet nuns waved goodbye as we entered the paddy wagon.

We were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. (In fact, I think we were quite orderly and well-behaved, and wonder if the police know what disorderliness can look like!) In any case, we forked over our ID’s for inspection and then spent an hour in the precinct, handcuffs removed, in a carpeted back room with a Toys for Tots barrel, several chairs, restrooms — a pretty low-key bust, all in all.

Then those of us not from the area each paid $100 bail and we all went to our respective homes.

On Tues., March 8, we had our day at the courthouse, both outside in front of reporters and inside before the judge. Of course, the anti-nuclear voices were there (Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, Stony Point Convergence, Shut Down Indian Point Now). But there were also allies from all over: anti-fracking and anti-pipeline groups (Stop the Algonquin Pipeline, United for Action), clean water advocates (Riverkeeper, Hudson River Sloop Clearwater and New York City Friends of Clearwater, Catskill Mountainkeeper), groups part of the large greens (Sierra Club Lower Hudson) and small (Westchester People’s Action Coalition, Grass-

12

March 17, 2016

PHOTO BY © BERNADETTE EVANGELIST

Attorney Marty Stolar with anti-nuclear activists outside the Buchanan courthouse on March 8. After the press conference, Stolar pleaded guilty on behalf of the Indian Point 11, who also all pleaded guilty individually to the charge of disorderly conduct.

roots Environmental, New York City Safe Energy Campaign) and more.

A speaker from Fukushima sent a message of support and a reminder that the fifth anniversary of that tragedy was days away. We talked about the safety exemptions that Entergy received for the shoddy conditions in the plant, the spills and fires and numerous shutdowns. We brought out our “Bird Poop” banner to let the world know that one big bird streaming one enormous dropping onto the company’s wiring actually had caused Indian Point to close down just days after our arrest.

We exposed Entergy’s lie that they provide Westchester and New York City with 25 to 30 percent of our energy and explained that we don’t need one watt from this plant, since we’ve already replaced it with efficiency and solar, to the point that we’re covered even for peak load.

We asked what would happen to the 20 million people in the peak danger zone, where would they go in the event of an emergency? What fantasies about evacuation does the government have?

We railed against the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission and its revolving-door policy for industry hacks who come into government, approve projects, and then return to choice jobs in the corporate world.

And we talked about Spectra Energy’s 42-inch Algonquin Incremental Market (AIM) Pipeline clearcutting its way through private property grabbed by eminent domain and heading to within just 100 feet of the plant’s critical infrastructure. We made it clear that Spectra’s claim of a three-minute response to any failure of the pipeline

PHOTO BY ANDREW COURTNEY

In December, JK Canepa, far right, and other protesters blocked workers’ access to the Indian Point power plant. Eleven were arrested after defying police orders to disperse.

was clearly impossible, because the shutdown valves are miles apart and the company operates them from computers in Texas. And the company has an abysmal safety record.

We quoted industry experts about the 400-foot blast radius in every direction when a pipeline ruptures, opening up like a zipper moving at very high speed, carrying flammable gas at pressures of about 900 pounds per square inch. We pointed out the earthquake zones beneath our feet where we stood on the grounds of the courthouse.

We explained that uranium mining and the fossil fuels that a nuclear plant needs for its operations aren’t clean energy, that polluting the water and killing the fish isn’t sustainable energy, that radioactive leakage of tritium and who knows what else into the groundwater at 400 to 800 times the maximum safe level certainly isn’t a part of safe energy for the people and animals of the region.

Finally it was time to go inside — court was about to begin. Our law-

yer, Martin Stolar, who is also representing the Montrose 9, who blocked movement of machinery on the AIM pipeline, pled guilty on behalf of the entire group. (This other case may be a groundbreaking one, with the “necessity defense” in play.)

We stood proudly and repeated to the judge, one at a time, “Guilty.”

I sure didn’t feel guilty. I don’t think any of the others did either. But a notguilty plea might have resulted in an A.C.D., adjournment upon contemplation of dismissal, meaning it’s expunged if one gets no arrests for the next six months. It’s like getting a permit to march. Instead, our plea means that we can come back and fight some more. It’s like an unpermitted march — no agreement with the cops to stay within prescribed limits.

So, as we told the press, “Yes, we are guilty. And we might have to do it again.”

The judge let all of us off with “time served,” and we had to pay court fees — but no fine.

EastVillagerNews.com

A graphic look at birth of Planned Parenthood RHYMES WITH CRAZY

BY LENORE SKENAZY

O

ne hundred years ago in Brownsville, Brooklyn, our modern era began. In a squat building that no longer exists, a pretty and soft-spoken mom named Margaret opened an office where women could get something they’d never been allowed to obtain before.

Birth control.

The place wasn’t called Planned Parenthood in 1916.

“It didn’t really have a name,” said Sabrina Jones, author of an upcoming graphic novel, “Our Lady of Birth Control: A Cartoonist’s Encounter with Margaret Sanger.”

Back then, the idea of preventing unwanted pregnancies was so new and controversial, even Sanger herself didn’t expect to provide family planning to anyone other than… families.

At the time, Brownsville’s population was predominantly Eastern European and Italian, so Sanger made

her flyers in Italian, Yiddish and English.

“She assumed the clients would be mothers married with lots of children,” Jones explained. “Publicly, she never offered birth control to unmarried people — that was too far.”

Sanger didn’t even seem like a revolutionary. Delicate and poised, she had three children of her own and, for a time, lived a quiet suburban life up in Hastings. Her husband, a draftsman, worked for the architect Stanford White. He’d urged young Margaret Higgins to marry him while she was still in nursing school, because he was afraid that she’d fall in love with a doctor.

Sanger complied, but soon grew restless. As Jones put it, “She wanted a wider world.”

Wilder, too.

So in 1911 she moved to the Village and was soon mingling — and more — with the socialists and revolutionaries she met. Her new comrade Emma Goldman was probably the person who introduced her to birth control, and did so with an economic argument: Why is it that poor people, who can’t afford more children, always have more of them, while the upper classes don’t?

The wealthy had something the

poor did not, and that something was contraception. Back then, family planning was still dicey and pricey.

“Condoms were very expensive,” Jones noted. They were made out of sheep gut. “People washed them and reused them.”

Poor women rarely even knew about these. For them, the only birth control was abortion. Sanger worked as a nurse in the slums, where desperate women begged her to tell them the secret: How could they avoid having kids they couldn’t feed, or the abortions they despised?

Legally, she wasn’t allowed to tell them. Nobody was. Discussing birth control was against the law, as was dispensing it. When she finally decided to open her clinic, it was “an act of civil disobedience,” Jones said. Sanger went a step further and actually alerted the district attorney to her deed, because she wanted to go to court and get those laws thrown out.

The road to that goal was fraught with protest, prison, and a nearly lethal hunger strike on the part of Sanger’s sister. But in the end, the law cracked, and finally doctors were legally allowed to tell their clients about condoms.

Jones’s graphic novel tells that whole story, along with the reason

she felt compelled to write it. She woke up one morning, turned on the radio, “and I heard the story of a young woman testifying before Congress about the need for contraceptive coverage in student health plans,” she said.

That woman, Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke, was immediately lambasted by Rush Limbaugh, who called her a slut and a prostitute.

“She wants to be paid to have sex!”

Limbaugh told his listeners. “She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception!”

Jones recalled, “I was horrified that in 2012 a woman could still be shamed for advocating birth control.

When I came of age, birth control was a done deal that had achieved near universal acceptance. All the battles were about abortion.”

Realizing Sanger’s crusade was back in the crosshairs, Jones reached for her drawing board — literally.

Creating “social justice comics” is her standard M.O. Graphic novels have a way of making problems present in a way that simple paragraphs –– like these! — cannot. Margaret Sanger had her clinic, Sabrina Jones has her paintbrush, but they share the same mission: freedom to live and to love.

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EastVillagerNews.com

March 17, 2016

13

Mosaic Man, BID try to piece together pole project

BY LINCOLN ANDERSON

J

im Power, the East Village’s Mosaic Man, says he’s being pushed to the limit, asked to do what may be humanly impossible. He has around four months left to restore seven of his iconic mosaic-encrusted street light poles, so that they can be returned to Astor Place in time for the completion of the Astor Place / Cooper Square renovation project this summer. But he said he needs more funds to do the job properly — plus, it should actually include 10 of his poles, not seven.

Currently, the poles are sitting in a city Department of Transportation lot in Sunnyside, Queens. That’s another issue for Power, who has limited mobility. The Mosaic Man, who lives in supportive housing at The Lee, on E. Houston St., is hoping to find someplace nearby him where he can fix up the lampposts. He had hoped the Lower Eastside Girls Club on Avenue D might be a possibility.

The Village Alliance business improvement district has agreed to give Power up to $9,000 for the work, paying him on a pole-by-pole basis as he completes each one.

But Power contends he needs $40,000 to do the work properly, which would include 10 poles, including $3,000 for a couple of assistants to help him.

The poles, he explained, are not going back to the East Village as mere street furniture, but as “sculptures.”

“This is a really unusual trip — it’s never been done,” he said of the novel project.

He is considering doing a Kickstarter campaign to raise the additional cash, though is currently “on strike” through April 1, he said, over his frustration with the project.

The poles were removed from Astor Place and cut down to 10 feet tall. The mosaics stop at 8 feet high, leaving the poles’ top 2 feet barren. Power plans to cover up these unadorned areas with brickettes — bricks or slabs that are about one-twelfth the thickness of normal bricks — on top of which he will have added mosaics. Then, eight of these small, 3-inch-wide brickettes will be glued to the tops of each of the octagonal poles.

Topping it all off, literally, Power hopes that a local potter from E. Ninth St. will then create blue-andgreen “crowns” to perch atop each of the posts.

All the lampposts will need new grouting, which is a major job in itself, but Power has a special tool for that.

Though he is on strike, Power is raring to get to work.

“My time is precious and they’re wasting my time,” he said, adding, “Forget their plan — I’m doing my plan.”

14

March 17, 2016

PHOTO BY TEQUILA MINSKY

Jim Power, the Mosaic Man, left, was honored by Clayton Patterson at last year’s Acker Awards for defiant avant-garde artists, held at Theatre 80 on St. Mark’s Place.

A master craftsman, he refuses to skimp on materials or do a shoddy job.

“This is going to be out there for the next 1,000 years,” he said of the totemic “Mosaic Trail” posts. “We’re going to build this the way the Irishman started this — or we’re not going to build it at all,” he declared, referring to himself.

“A patch job, this ain’t. This is historical restoration. I’ll raise the money myself. I’ll go to the Chinese government, if I have to.”

He uses a superstrong glue to bond the sundry glass beads and pottery and plate shards to the poles, then an even-stronger, weather-resistant proprietary grout mix to fill in the spaces between them and lock everything into place. No way will he use cheaper bonding agents, he insisted, which is another reason he needs more than $9,000.

In and of itself, the work is physically demanding. Plus, he has been putting off hip-replacement surgery for years and is in a lot of pain, which does not make things any easier. Yet, he’s determined to get the job done.

“Sometimes, I have 200 pieces of glass in my fingers,” he noted. “Do you know what the pain is like?”

According to William Kelley, executive director of the Village Alliance, the city’s Public Design Commission approved the sites of the seven returning poles, which will be as close as possible to their previous spots.

The Department of Design and Con-

struction recommended the poles’ tops be welded shut with metal caps to waterproof them — but it did not O.K. any ceramic “crowns,” Kelley noted.

The larger Astor Place / Cooper Square renovation project will include widened sidewalks and new public plazas and permanently close Astor Place between Lafayette St. and Fourth Ave. to car traffic. The work stalled for about a year, Kelley said, because D.D.C. had to reassure the Metropolitan Transportation Authority about its construction plans around the Astor Place subway station entrances. Because this spot is an older part of the subway system, there isn’t much depth between the sidewalk and top of the subway tunnel, so it’s “fragile,” Kelley said, and the M.T.A. wanted to know the work would be done carefully.

The whole project is now expected to finish by August, he said, and they would like to be able to put in Power’s restored poles by then. The BID also hopes to have some fall programming in the new plaza spaces, including free smaller-scale performances and readings.

Kelley said he is all for the Mosaic Man doing Kickstarter to raise more funds.

“I think Kickstarter is a really cool idea,” he said. “You can give $5, $10, and I think that’s really amazing because people can feel a part of it.”

Kelley said it would be no problem for the Village Alliance to transport

Power’s poles to a local spot where he could work on them. But the Lower Eastside Girls Club’s executive director said their clubhouse is not an option.

“We don’t have that kind of space,” Lyn Pentecost said. “Every single room is in use. He needs some kind of warehouse or an empty storefront.ˮ Maybe the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space (MoRUS) could be an option.

“They have a basement,” she noted.

Told about Power’s plan to create the small brickettes for the poles’ tops — something Power said the Girls Club members might enjoying helping to make — Pentecost said he should contact Megan Kindsfather, the Girls Club’s director of arts programs.

Summing things up, the BID’s Kelley said, “We are signing a contract for one pole at a time to ensure the project moves forward. He is paid per pole and receives money upon completion and inspection. All work must be complete by July. The most critical issue at this time is that Jim needs to find space to work on the poles.

“The proposal to the city always had seven poles,” Kelley continued.

“Two of the bases were rusted and rotted and did not survive removal and transport; so at this point we have seven poles and five bases.”

Kelley noted Power’s numbers tend to fluctuate, in general.

“Jim alternates claiming between 40 and 80 poles once existed [along the entire Mosaic Trail] and I have no idea what is really true,” he said. “The trail started at Astor Place but went east to Tompkins Square Park and certainly poles have been replaced over the years.

“Jim also took it upon himself to strip one of the Astor poles completely before salvage for some reason.”

For his part, Power claims three of the poles were stripped of tiles — but not by him.

“I don’t care — I have a lot of tiles, I’ll put ’em back on,” he protested.

“Why only seven poles? It just looks like they’re cutting me down.

“Either they’re gonna deal — or no mosaics,” he warned. “Nine thousand dollars, you think I’m excited about that? Right now, I should call the whole thing off.”

One thing that is not in dispute, Power said, is the positive effect of mosaics on people.

“Five thousand years ago, the Greeks put mosaics into public housing,” he said. “Why? Because it tranquilizes the whole city. Boom!”

To help Power’s Astor Place mosaic-pole restoration project, contact him at nycjimpower@aol.com or contact City Lore at citylore@citylore.org.

Funds for the project can be contributed at PayPal. EastVillagerNews.com

Lookin’ for love on the Hillary trail

BY SARAH FERGUSON

M

aybe the flickering image of an Amex gold card projected onto the Jacob Javits Center’s glass walls should have warned me that even when Hillary tries to go populist, she does so with a certain corporate veneer.

Billed as an “organizing event” in the wake of her Super Tuesday wins, Clinton’s appearance at Manhattan’s West Side convention center last Wednesday was a victory lap for the home team — a chance to feel the love from labor groups who have endorsed her — such as the carpenters’ and teachers’ unions — as well as dueling allies like Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio (who was booed briefly for his reticence to endorse Clinton early on.)

For me, going to see Clinton was an effort at reconciliation. Having already been unfriended on Facebook by some women for expressing my profound disappointment with Clinton’s 2002 Iraq War vote, I nevertheless put on my best pantsuit and prepared to hear in person why she’s the best and most sensible choice to lead the Democrats in 2016.

But I could not get in.

At 5:45 p.m., just before Clinton took the stage, the Secret Service shut the doors, leaving a hundred or so of us stranded in the lobby behind the elaborate security check.

Even when I tried to ply my media credentials, I was rebuffed.

“We’re at capacity, ma’am,” one of the Secret Service guys in black polo shirts responded. “The event is closed,” he said — even though reports and photos of the event show that while the curtained-off stage area where Clinton spoke was full, the hall itself was half-empty and could have easily accommodated several hundred more people.

“This would have never happened at a Bernie rally. They just pushed me over the other side,” ranted a disgruntled man who had waited for more than an hour to get in, before stalking off.

“This isn’t us,” a Clinton campaign staffer told the remaining supporters milling in the unheated hall. “We are trying to do something on our end.

I’ll let you know if anything changes.”

For a moment, the voice of Hillary greeting the crowd amid strains of Katy Perry flashed on one of the TV monitors. But it was CNN and they quickly cut away. (Note to the Clinton campaign: Why not live cast the event on the monitors throughout the Javits Center?)

Contrast this to the reported 10,000 people who filled a stadium at MichEastVillagerNews.com

igan State University to hear Bernie Sanders speak last Wednesday, and you begin to grasp why Clinton is not running away with this thing — yet.

Sure, the New York event was just a campaign stop, and there are bound to be constraints when you consider the logistics of protecting a former first lady, New York senator and secretary of state who has aroused both enormous respect and venomous contempt in her many years on the public stage. Experience has its downsides.

But the control freakism of the Secret Service was also reminiscent of Clinton’s early refusals to do prime-time interviews and address issues back in 2015, when she first announced, not to mention the recent flap over appearing at a Fox News town hall.

And now there is e-mail-gate… I mean, why did she hide a server in her bathroom?

Even stalwart allies like The New York Times have begun to look pointedly at her role as secretary of state in pressing for the U.S. bombing intervention in Libya that led to the overthrow of longtime dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Instead of promoting democracy there, thus far this assertion of American “smart power”

PHOTO BY MILO HESS

Hillary Clinton speaking at the Javits Center last Wednesday, the day after her Super Tuesday victories.

country. We’re getting two for one, and she would be the first woman president. Give her a chance,” urged Young, speaking with a Jamaican lilt.

“I think it’s the best option we have,” added her friend Lourdes Moretta, a member of the healthcare workers’ union 1199 SEIU. “I don’t

think Sanders is going to win, and we have to press for a woman. I want a woman president, and I don’t want to see Donald Trump be president.”

Asked what she thought of SandCLINTON continued on p. 18

Actor and Village resident John Leguizamo was the event’s host.

has resulted in Libya devolving into a failed state and ISIS haven, swimming in arms looted from Gaddafi’s vast weapons arsenals.

As the Times wrote last Sunday: “Now Libya, with a population smaller than that of Tennessee, poses an outsize security threat to the region and beyond, calling into question whether the intervention prevented a humanitarian catastrophe or merely helped create one of a different kind.”

Unable to catch Hillary speak live, I contented myself with talking to her supporters about why they believe it is now Hillary’s time.

Carmen Cametta Young, a retired healthcare worker from Queens, said she was for Hillary, “mostly because of Bill.”

“I’m voting for her because I know Bill Clinton will help her run the March 17, 2016

15

Time to look at bigger picture on small businesses

EDITORIAL

L

ast Sunday, a crowd of around 100 neighborhood residents, joined by local politicians, rallied outside the Associated supermarket at 255 W. 14th St. after news broke that the market faces a triple rent hike that will price it out of the space.

Associated has been a staple at the spot for more than 35 years and, as a midlevel, affordable supermarket, serving both the Village and Chelsea, is deeply appreciated by a diverse mix of patrons. Seniors in particular, many on fixed incomes, rely on the grocery store in an ever-gentrifying part of Manhattan.

And that, of course, is the real issue. Gentrification is driving up rents, especially in Manhattan, particularly in areas like the Village and the rest of Downtown. Our neighborhoods are being radically transformed and our quality of life — our ability simply to live here — is suffering as the retail stores we depend on are being forced out again and again by the lease-renewal process.

The politicians at Sunday’s rally were sincere in calling for the property’s landlord to meet with them and try to reach terms under which

the supermarket could stay. But, of course, any action in that direction — any lowering of the rent to something even remotely affordable for Associated — would be totally voluntary on the landlord’s part.

In short, the steady attrition of beloved local merchants will be an ongoing story — unless there is a dramatic change, and that will most likely include some form of legislation. This loss, if the Associated’s lease is not renewed, would be very deeply felt because of the supermarket’s oversized importance in the community. But even if this store is saved — and we sincerely hope it is — the larger problem of skyrocketing commercial rents still isn’t being addressed.

Community Board 2 has started an online petition to save the store, a terrific idea and more power to that effort. But again, will we be able to do that each and every time a critical store is threatened with being kicked out of its space?

Mayor Bill de Blasio, to his credit, has made the “affordability crisis” one of the key issues of his administration. He pulled off a real coup last year when the Rent Guidelines Board voted to approve a rent freeze for one-year lease renewals for rent-stabilized apartments. That vote was a relief to millions of rent-burdened

New Yorkers. With de Blasio in the middle of his first term, we expect continued rent freezes — preferably rollbacks, as in a rent reduction. After all, as was clearly documented, landlords had unfairly profited from exaggerated operating-expense projections for years.

Yet, de Blasio, unfortunately, has not been as good on protecting small businesses, a cornerstone of the city’s affordability. A year ago, this page advocated for a vote in the City Council on the long-stalled Small Business Jobs Survival Act. This bill has sat idly in the Council for around 25 years.

Basically, it’s no secret that the city’s powerful real estate industry doesn’t want it ever to come up for a vote. The S.B.J.S.A. would create a system of nonbinding mediation and binding arbitration under which merchants would have a far better chance of negotiating fair lease renewals.

Previous Council speakers, including Christine Quinn, have blocked the S.B.J.S.A. from being voted on, despite strong support for it among councilmembers. Now, under a new speaker, support has been building again for the bill — more than two dozen councilmembers are currently sponsors.

A year ago, The Villager asked Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito where things stood on the S.B.J.S.A. and if

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Blaz in the zone To The Editor: On behalf of the dozens of tenants represented by the Haven Plaza Tenants Association, we support vital reforms that will grow and protect affordable housing.

Our fellow tenants are working people. They need and deserve affordable housing, and the zoning reforms proposed by the mayor will significantly boost the supply of affordable housing in our neighborhood.

Decades ago, tenants had the support of programs like Mitchell-Lama and Section 8 to help them

afford their homes. We need a new approach today that meets the needs of our time.

The crisis we’re in has meant all of us are spending more and more of our income on rent. Today, more than half of New Yorkers are rent-burdened, spending more than one-third of their take-home pay on rent. Every dollar spent on rent is one less dollar we have to feed our families, to educate our kids and to save for the future. It’s forcing families out of neighborhoods they’ve lived in their entire lives — and the only solution is to build a lot more affordable housing for the people who need it.

councilmembers finally would be allowed to vote on it. She said the Council would have a hearing, maybe more than one, about small business survival that would look at all options, including the S.B.J.S.A. To date, though, there has been no hearing.

This week, we again reached out to Mark-Viverito to ask what’s going on, but did not hear back by press time.

Only two politicians last Sunday spoke to the larger issue. Congressmember Jerrold Nadler said he felt commercial rent regulation is needed, while Assemblymember Richard Gottfried talked about making laws to address the crisis.

Maybe the S.B.J.S.A. isn’t the perfect answer. Maybe it needs some tweaking. Perhaps there are some better options, ones that go beyond the mere tax breaks de Blasio and others mistakenly think will appease the landlords.

In short, this is a conversation we desperately need to have, involving all sides. Without addressing this issue, de Blasio’s affordability vision is deeply flawed. Speaker Mark-Viverito, it’s time to show guts and have that hearing you promised — and come up with real long-term solutions. Otherwise, we can only look forward to more desperate rallies and, sadly, a lot more store closings.

What the de Blasio administration has proposed will change the reality in our neighborhoods for the better. The mayor’s Mandatory Inclusionary Housing program change will make it a hard-and-fast requirement for developers themselves to build permanently affordable housing in any area of the city that is rezoned. That building will go along with construction that is subsidized by the city — and so exponentially increase the amount of affordable housing we can provide to our city’s working families.

We are also strong supporters of the Zoning for Quality and Affordability. By overhauling these outdated rules, as the city proposes, we could not just increase the amount of senior and affordable housing built in our city, but ensure those apartments are the kind we’d all be proud to live in.

The city is taking unprecedented steps to preserve existing affordable apartments and protect tenants in their homes — but we can only turn the tide of this crisis if we change the way we build affordable housing and demand more from developers.

Together, these reforms will strengthen our neighborhoods, serve our tenants and ensure New York City remains a city for everyone. We urge you to support them.

Erma Campbell Campbell is past president, Haven Plaza Tenants Association

Clinton increasingly attacks and counterattacks with “facts.”

16

March 17, 2016

E-mail letters, not longer than 250 words in length, to news@thevillager.com or fax to 212-229-2790 or mail to The Villager, Letters to the Editor, 1 Metrotech North, 10th floor, Brooklyn, NY, NY 11201. Please include phone number for confirmation purposes. The Villager reserves the right to edit letters for space, grammar, clarity and libel. Anonymous letters will not be published.

EastVillagerNews.com

Who is this f----n’ guy? Trump from Soho to Uh-oh!

TALKING POINT

BY LINCOLN ANDERSON

I

met Donald Trump once. It was at the ribbon-cutting for his new Trump Soho condo-hotel at Spring and Varick Sts. in April 2010. Back then, I don’t think anybody had any inkling that he would one day be running for president.

The Soho Alliance and Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation had vigorously fought the construction of the 46-story behemoth — the Soho Alliance even sued in court — but The Donald prevailed.

What was most memorable to me about meeting Trump was his sort of goofy, breezy behavior when I was interviewing him. It was definitely a unique experience.

He cut the ribbon, along with his children, Ivanka, Eric and Don, Jr., the hotel’s development partners, Julius Schwarz of Bayrock and Alex Sapir, and Robert Lieber, the deputy mayor for Economic Development.

Trump’s kids were going to have a role in managing the place. Trump then asked if there were any questions from the media, and seeing none, with a “Let’s get to work!” he started to walk off. I stepped up to him, though, before he left the room.

First, he basically mocked my approach, saying, “Oooh!” and making a silly face. O.K., whatever, I didn’t see any other reporters deigning to interview him.

Trump looked eager to talk to a reporter, though.

When I told him that I worked for The Villager, he promptly said, in seriousness, “That’s a good paper.”

The Trump seal of approval, for what it’s worth.

We had reported on the fierce neighborhood opposition to the project, along with the discovery of ancient graves on the construction site that belonged to congregants of an early abolitionist church that once stood there. And there also had been a catastrophic construction accident that killed one worker when a collapse occurred near the top of the tower.

My first question was how would the restrictive declaration covering condo owners’ use of their units be enforced? Stays at the hotel are limited to no more than 29 days in a row within a 36-day period, and 120 days total per year. Opponents suspected the building was a “Trojan horse” for residential use, since the area had a manufacturing zoning that allowed hotels but not residential use, which had led the City Council to put the restrictive declaration in place.

No problem, Trump stated, confidently: The length of stays would be monitored by “computer,” and it was, of course, a great system.

What about the fact that the building was so tall it could be seen sticking up like a middle finger from all over Downtown?

“That’s a good thing,” Trump stated bluntly.

Chiming in, Ivanka said it meant people inside the building would have excellent views when looking out.

Ivanka seemed nice, but, umm, she totally missed the point — probably intentionally — by spinning that one the other way.

What of all the community opposition from Soho residents?

“They’re all our friends now,” Trump brashly assured. “Everybody likes our building.”

Suddenly, a pack of photographers — many of them, doubtless, paparazzi — moved in and, sensing a money shot of the whole Trump clan standing together, started barking at me to back up.

“Your notebook’s going to be in the photo!” one of EastVillagerNews.com

VILLAGER FILE PHOTO

Donald Trump and his daughter, Ivanka, at the ribbon-cutting of the Trump Soho condo-hotel in April 2010.

them yelled. “Get your notebook out of the frame!”

The camera-friendly Trump and Ivanka instinctively turned toward the photographers.

“Who is this f----n’ guy?” Trump joked, waving me off with mock annoyance as the camera flashes exploded in a blinding blaze of white.

The photographers satiated, I then asked the mogul about a report that only one-third of the building’s 391 units were in contract to be sold. That question, though, he didn’t want to answer.

“O.K., I’ll see you later,” he said, then walked out of the room.

One photog asked me, “What did he say to you?”

It wasn’t a big deal, I said. I assumed it was just Trump being Trump. But I realize now it was sort of par for the course with his M.O. of “insulting his way to the presidency.” I didn’t take it personally, and perhaps, in his own way, he was sort of trying to be funny.

But I have interviewed a lot of people, and, honestly, no one has ever acted quite like that. Most people don’t needle you the minute they meet you and then end an interview by saying, “Who is this f----n’ guy?” and wave you off with feigned annoyance. Again, I think he was just sort of breezily making a joke of it all. But is it presidential behavior?

I bumped into Trump again in the lobby and again asked him about the building’s gargantuan size.

“We had a zoning that allowed us to build this tall, and we took advantage of that,” he asserted. “I think it’s going to be a landmark in New York.”

He assured that the place would “do records, in terms of volume and food.”

He then walked out toward his waiting black car in front, but first kneeled down in the entryway to pose for a photo with some little kids who were checking into the hotel with their parents.

“See!” Trump called back to me over his shoulder while still on his knee. “This is business!”

My mom worked in the Garment District for decades, and I told her about my encounter with Trump.

“He sounds like a typical salesman,” she shrugged.

I work with a lot of salespeople. They basically put

food on my plate. Trump, though, is in a league of his own.

As for the Trump Soho hotel and its “great” computer system, Andrew Berman, executive director of G.V.S.H.P, this week told me, “As far as we know, for years after it was built, the Trump Soho never conducted or provided to the city the required audits to prove they were abiding by the law regarding terms of stay and residential use. However, just to make sure responsibility is placed where it belongs, neither the city, nor former Council Speaker Christine Quinn and former Borough President Scott Stringer, who helped craft the agreement, ever asked to see a single audit, and the city never penalized the Trump Soho for not doing so.

“As you know, however, the Trump Soho was a giant financial failure, and according to press reports, they were changing from a condo-hotel operation — which obviously lends itself to abuse of the restriction against residential uses — to a traditional pay-pernight transient hotel, which the zoning allows; so the possibility of zoning violations, as well as the applicability of the original agreement requiring audits, may no longer apply.”

Asked his thoughts on Trump aspiring to be president, Berman replied, in part, “The Trump Soho was clearly a scam from the beginning… . I don’t think that anyone involved with this project is qualified to serve as dogcatcher, much less any higher office.”

After the San Bernardino shooting in December, when Trump called for a ban on Muslim immigration, I asked some local Muslim merchants around where I live for their thoughts about him.

Hassan, from Bangladesh, the night man at a deli on my corner, said clearly Trump is a rich guy who has always been catered to and just takes whatever he wants.

“He wants a woman, he just picks them,” he said, plucking the air with his fingers.

“That is a big chair — for the whole world,” he said TRUMP continued on p. 18 March 17, 2016

17

Lookin’ for love on the Hillary campaign trail CLINTON continued from p. 15

ers, Moretta said he was “too much to the left” to win. “He has good ideas, but in this country, people are not ready for it,” said Moretta, who is from the Dominican Republic.

(As an example, she pointed to Sanders’s call for free college tuition: “You should pay something,” said Moretta, who put three daughters through college with hard work and scholarships.)

There were also lots of union members, who had been given comp time to attend, as evidenced from the many mass-produced signs, including one from the Laborers International Union of North America PAC that read: “LiUNA for Hillary, Pipelines = Good Jobs.”

(The abundance of people waving this slogan at Hillary made me wonder about the depth of her professed opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline.

Clinton had initially supported this controversial project when she was secretary of state, and still has close ties to pipeline builder TransCanada.

Paul Elliot, the national deputy director for Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, is now TransCanada’s top lobbyist.)

And let’s not forget Clinton’s flak-

king for natural gas fracking abroad while she was secretary of state.

Still, the appeal of having a woman actually ascending to the U.S. presidency is both tantalizing and real. Liz Bernstein, a 62-year-old acupuncturist from Brooklyn, was ecstatic after posing for a selfie with Clinton and shaking her hand. Bernstein, who had arrived at 2:45 p.m. to claim a front-row seat, said she loved how Hillary spoke of the need to bring America together, to “build bridges instead of walls,” and bring more “love and kindness” into the public dialogue — a new line for Hillary, one that Bernstein said made the crowd go “ballistic.”

In addition to core Democrats, Bernstein believes Clinton can draw moderate “rational” conservatives who are freaked out by the Trump Show and Ted Cruz’s extremism. And she’s more than fed up with what she called the “outright projection and sexism” coming from some in the Sanderista camp.

“Bernie’s speaking to an idealism that’s not rooted in what people’s lives look like,” said Bernstein, who hails from Washington State (aka Berner country). “He’s a lone wolf. He’s a professional criticizer. He doesn’t have the resources to tap into the peo-

PHOTOS BY MILO HESS

The New York Democratic establishment embraced Hillary Clinton last Wednesday, including from left, Council Speaker Melissa MarkViverito, Governor Andrew Cuomo, with his girlfriend Sandra Lee, and City Comptroller Scott Stringer. Mayor Bill de Blasio was also on hand to show his support.

ple who understand the intricacies of political process,” she added, citing Clinton’s ability to marshal the support of union leaders.

But if Clinton really wants to shatter America’s biggest glass ceiling, she’d better do more to provide ac-

cess. How do you lead a movement for change when you’re running as Democratic royalty — a former first lady turned senator turned secretary of state who comes to the platform with plenty of experience yet still acts like she has a bunch of stuff to hide?

Trump from Soho to Uh-oh!

TRUMP continued from p. 17

of the responsibility of being U.S. president. Clearly, he was implying that a guy like Trump should not be sitting in that seat.

Subbir, another Bengali who is the morning cashier at a smaller deli next to Hassan’s, said of Trump, “He may win the Republican [primary]...but the American people… .” He didn’t finish the sentence, but I think most people could fill in that pause: “...are not really crazy enough to elect this guy.”

“Every religion has good and bad,” he added.

Azad, a younger guy who works at the second deli at night, recently told me he actually follows Trump’s page on Facebook, just to keep up with whatever whacky thing he is saying now. On his smartphone, he showed me one of Trump’s videos in which he calls the Mexican border “Swiss cheese” and talks about all the executive orders he would pass, if elected.

“It’s too much bad talking,” he said of Trump. “If he be the president, you should be more...,” he searched for the word, “you can’t talk like that: ‘Kill that people.

Kill this people.’ It is American president. It is a big thing. He’s talking like homeless people. You should talk more carefully. If you be the president, you can’t talk like other people — you have to be more…”

“Responsible,” I said, helping him out.

“Yes,” he said. “No manners, no respect — nothing,” he said of Trump. “You can’t talk hard all the time. Sometimes, talk hard — sometimes, talk soft.”

18

March 17, 2016

Similarly, a barber from Uzbekistan down the street, said of Trump, “You have to be tough as president, but you also have to be nice. You represent the country.”

These guys are all recent immigrants. Their English-speaking ability isn’t perfect, but their comments are sane, sensible. This is what much of the world must think when they hear Trump bluster — a guy who is combative and reckless and simply not fit to be the leader of one of the planet’s most important countries.

I was sitting next to a French law professor recently on an Airporter bus to J.F.K., and asked him what he thought of Trump.

“Amusant,” he said, as in “entertaining, funny, amusing.” Sure, Trump is a reality TV star, you can’t help but watch him. It’s funny for now, but if he were to be elected president? He didn’t know what to say about that. The far right in France — and, in fact, all Europe — is about 25 percent now, he noted.

The day after Trump racked up still more primary wins on Super Tuesday, I got a call from a very concerned Frances Tallmer, the widow of the great writer Jerry Tallmer, who penned so many incisive talking points for us over the years on politics and all manner of issues.

“I’m scared, scared of Trump,” Frances told me.

“Jerry would be having a bloody fit right now, and would be writing his hands and his fingers off. He’s dangerous, he’s dangerous,” she said of Trump. “If he wins, we’d be having war and be in big trouble in this

country. He won’t stop. He’s a dictator. Honey, he’s a fascist, and he’s dangerous. Jerry and I are still connected — he’s telling me.”

I recently was catching up with Trigger, who runs the Continental cheap shots bar on Third Ave. There are some things he likes about Trump, he admitted, as he looked at me from beneath the brim of his Vietnamese rice paddy hat. But there are other things that really bother him, such as the candidate’s insensitive comments about people’s appearances, like when he dissed Carly Fiorina. I know, I told him, what kind of leader treats people like that? I mean — what? — would a Trump cabinet resemble something out of “The Stepford Wives”? On top of everything else, the guy just sounds so superficial.

Trigger also recalled he was once out at a fashion event and Trump was there with his current wife, Melania. Trump basically plopped himself down at the foot of the catwalk to better ogle the models, and just ignored his wife, according to Trigger, who said he found it disgusting.

Meanwhile, the Daily News front-page images of Trump as a clown and so forth remind me of MAD magazine. Yes, it is a mad political moment. …

Indeed, Trump, as everyone knows by now, is riding a wave of anti-establishment anger. I understand it — and I also feel it. After Hillary Clinton rolled up some big wins on Super Tuesday, I recently made my first-ever political contribution — to Bernie Sanders.

Hey, better keep an eye on those superdelegates!

EastVillagerNews.com

This column is about courage

Rev. Jen finds power in Pippi, prosthetics, pageants

BY REV. JEN MILLER

E

very column I write has a theme. Sometimes it’s tough to come up with one, given that I’m not a war correspondent, political correspondent, or even a sane person. I’m just a human being lying on a dirty mattress trying to figure out what to say about being human.

Yet, I feel no lack of pride. The best literature comes from observing the human condition, especially one’s own. Right now, my condition is broken. Seriously, it’s actually broken. Having slipped and fallen, I broke a rib under my right teat two weeks ago. If there are any physical therapists out there who do pro bono work and enjoy small boobs, I have a job for you!

And, speaking of body parts, my heart is broken as well because my boyfriend, Joe, still has a brain tumor. When you are estranged from your lover and call his name and feel only thin air, it’s worse than doing a one-person show with no audience. The little man who Dorothy proclaimed wasn’t a Wizard after all may have, in fact, been a wise Wizard when he uttered the sentence, “Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable.” A heart, a brain, and courage are the triple threat that lands you in the psych ward. But what would we do without them? Never fall in love, contemplate existence, or bravely light a friend’s fart on fire?

MGM should do a remake of “The Wizard of Oz” where everyone just wants an asshole — so they get Trump for president, and he tears down Oz and builds a casino that fails. Then everyone will be disappointed because they didn’t have the courage to have a brain or heart, EastVillagerNews.com

PHOTO BY JOHN FOSTER

Iggy Pop would have noticed: Rev. Jen strolls the Lower East Side in a goblin mask and actual ears from “Legend,” but fails to attract the attention of a population more concerned with trolling Tinder than engaging with their once-weird neighborhood.

PHOTO BY JOHN FOSTER

Rev. Jen and her ultra-realistic baby orangutan doll, Marc Junior, go for a stroll — and, in doing so, demonstrate that they are every bit as legitimate as other “conventional” families.

so all they got was an asshole, thus proving my point.

My brain is broken, and has been for years. If I were to list all my mental disorders in one column, this newspaper would be of encyclopedic size. My family recently tried to have me institutionalized in Maryland but there weren’t enough beds. Shocker! (Even Maryland’s state flag is psychotic.) If it were 1943, I would have already had a frontal lobotomy. Lucky for you readers, I am coherent enough to write stupid articles whilst having a bottle in front of me. (Thank you for that one, Mrs. Parker.)

All I’ve got that’s not broken now is courage, which shouldn’t be overlooked. We all have a heart and a brain.

Without both, we’d be dead — but courage is a thing you have to gain.

Many of us are broken, like the glass someone might have accidentally stolen from the bar across the street (sorry, Lucky Jack’s!) that a certain a-hole cat just knocked over.

At one time, glass, you served many mouths on the Lower East Side and fueled several idiotic conversations, but now you are just a pile of rubbish that cannot be taped up or glued together, only swept up.

Hence, this column is about courage (and, clearly, excessive exposition).

On my wall, there are pictures of Cher, Glinda, Dorothy, a howling female wolf, and Jayne Mansfield playing with her Chihuahua.

Alongside Jayne is a painting I did of the Egyptian Goddess Bast, and next to it, a tiny picture of Pippi Longstocking. Across from my bed, next to my record player, there is a Spice Girls album, given to me by an ex-boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend; her REV. JEN continued on p. 20 March 17, 2016

19

Of apes, trolls, elf ears and the Spice Girls REV. JEN continued from p. 19

p.m. Tickets are available in advance ($10) at slipperroom.com, and are $12 at the door.

way of showing solidarity. But the most important thing in my bedroom is a photo, taken in the ’70s, of my dad, leaning down to talk to me.

I am five years old, wearing heels (of course) and he is listening. At a very young age, he instilled in me the idea of girl power, the Spice Girls’ term for courage.

Now is a time to harness that power, especially since we have a misogynistic presidential candidate (the previously mentioned asshole).

How to harness Girl Power (no matter your sex or gender!):

BE LIKE PIPPI

As a child, I wanted to be like Pippi Longstocking, the “strongest girl alive.” She was a rebel who lived alone with her monkey, Mr. Nilsson.

I begged my parents for a monkey.

This was obviously not gonna happen in suburban Maryland. But some 40 years later, my mother remembered, and sent me an ultra-realistic baby orangutan for Christmas (a great ape, technically). His name is Marc Junior, named after my former roommate, who I frightened by convincing him I was actually obtaining a chain-smoking monkey to be named after him.

Marc Junior has been to several bars, where he has terrified others who he sneaks up on. My friend, John (who took the pics for this column) and I also obtained a stroller, which we used to cart him around Park Slope alongside more conventional families!

BE KIND TO MOMS

When I read an article about “Foxie,” a chimpanzee who was rescued from laboratory research and lost her babies to the lab, my heart broke (again!). But it turns out Foxie takes solace in Troll Dolls! I contacted Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

WEAR RIDICULOUS PROSTHETICS

PHOTO BY WALTER WLODARCZYK

He left his shirt at home — but Raven Solano, who came equipped with a “Pageant Dad,” nabbed the title of “Mr. Tribeca” at 2014’s Mr. Lower East Side Pageant (to his right, Rev. Jen and Faceboy). This year’s unholy fiasco takes place Mar. 21 at The Slipper Room.

and asked if I could send her a Troll.

They’d already heard of my Troll Museum (established in 2000) and welcomed yet another Troll (she has a lot). I then sent Foxie a letter: Dear Foxie: My name is Rev. Jen and this is Adrianna. She’s the first troll I ever got. She is precious to me, but not half as precious as you, even though I’ve never met you.

Her hair is matted because she’s been through some turmoil, just like you. She always has a smile on her face despite everything she’s endured and I hope she brings a smile to your face. Maybe someday I’ll get to meet you and the three of us can hang together.

Your Soul Sister, Reverend Jen P.S. I would invite you over to the Troll Museum but I think it would piss off the landlords and scare the cat and dog. xoxo A creative menu brought to you by Chef Franco Barrio with locally sourced produce serving New York style food in the heart of the West Village.

(212) 989-3155 | thebespokekitchen.com 615 ½ Hudson St, New York, New York 10014 20

March 17, 2016

PHOTO BY JOHN FOSTER

You’re never too young to learn: Rev. Jen, ever the good mother, fosters an appreciation for art by taking Marc Junior to a gallery.

And with that, I boxed up my very first Troll and sent her to live with Foxie. Hopefully they are cuddling right now.

ATTEND THE 17th ANNUAL MR. LOWER EAST SIDE PAGEANT

It is actually the best night of the year. Any dude can compete. One need not live on the L.E.S., since no one can afford it these days!

Categories for competition include talent, swimwear, and evening wear combined with Q&A. Any woman or gay man who attends gets to judge! Scores are tabulated on the Ballsack 3,000. To be held at The Slipper Room (167 Orchard St. at Stanton St.) on Mon., Mar. 21, at 9

As many people know, I have been steadily wearing elf ears for about 23 years, because they “look pretty” (see the above part about mental illness). Well, my mind was recently blown when Joshua White, founder of the famed “Joshua Light Show,” proclaimed that he had a mysterious present for me. We met for lunch and he handed me said present: prosthetics from the Ridley Scott-directed 1985 Tom Cruise vehicle “Legend.” For months, I’d gone without elf ears. At one point, Halloween Adventure even stopped stocking them because I was “the only person who buys them.” Now, I have such fierce elf ears that they were nominated for an Academy Award and I have a goblin mask! John and I decided to wear the prosthesis out for a walk, hoping others would be amazed and delighted. Sadly, the Lower East Side really has become the worst place on earth (next to Boston), as no one even noticed the fact that I was in a goddamned goblin mask, because they were all staring at their iPhones — probably looking for potential Tinder dates with other boring people. Tinder ’s tagline is “Like Real Life, Only Better.” I think I’ll stick to real life, but thanks for the option!

SPICE GIRLS

When one needs inspiration, one needs to look no further than the Spice Girls. Of course, as John and I were running rampant with Marc Junior, we got in an argument about who was our favorite. He likes Scary and I like Sporty (because her name insinuates that she likes sports, even though it’s Posh who got with Beckham!). This led us to take a complex survey, which involved asking random people on the street who their fave was. Currently, Scary and Sporty are tied. But, I enjoyed this answer: “Posh. She was the only one to whom I felt truly inclined to tell what I want. What I really really want. I feel like the rest were just bossing me around.”

No matter who your favorite Spice Girl is, harness your Girl Power — even if some days, you feel like the Cowardly Lion. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself (I totally stole that line).

EastVillagerNews.com

No ducking Donald

Hideous monster cobbled from years of divisive tactics hanced interrogation” — the Republican Party absolutely cannot imagine who the hell put Donald Trump on the gurney where they’d spent all that time doing such cool stuff.

David Brooks is shocked, shocked, that after years scribbling fawning apologia for the Bush administration’s lie-based regime change and its quest for the holy-yet-completely-made-up weapons of mass destruction, a liarliar-pants-on-fire like Donald Trump could demand such respect!

John McCain is shocked, shocked, that less than a decade after trying to rejuvenate his own flagging presidential campaign by choosing an incoherent attention trollop as his running mate, a lowlife huckster like Donald Trump could be a heartbeat away from the presidency!

Mitt Romney has his secret underwear in a twist and is shocked, shocked, I says, that after literally begging for the endorsement of (and money from) Donald Trump — a birther hobbyist unable to understand how such a darkly complected President could be born in Hawaii, when everybody

knows those people come from Africa, now, somehow inexplicably, that same Donald Trump, that actual same guy is the front-runner for the Republican nomination! Is this Bizarro World?!

And this violence! Out of nowhere, in a vacuum, with no provocation whatsoever, hordes of well organized, professional thugs and bad dudes, almost certainly at the behest of known brutalitarian strongman Communist Bernie Sanders, descend on a perfect love fest (not a rally, we don’t want to call it a rally, what is this Nuremberg?) of law abiding White Supremacists, God-fearing, ponytailed, toothless sucker-punchers and adorable Heiling Grannies! Donald Trump is robbed of his God-given, constitutional right to free speech! I know, because Trump spoke about it freely and at great length on every network for at least an hour longer than the rally itself would have run, and to a much larger audience.

But what could he do? After careful consultation with the police, and at their insistence, Trump “postponed” DONALD continued on p. 22

LIMITED ENGAGEMENT THROUGH MAY 8 A creative menu brought to you by Chef Franco Barrio with locally sourced produce serving New York style food in the heart of the West Village.

A New Play Written By Scott Elmegreen and Drew Fornarola Directed By Andy Sandberg

“SAVVY AND ENTHRALLING! A candid, sex-filled first-rate comic

DESIGN BY MICHAEL SHIREY

V

isualize this: by moonlight, corpses dug from fresh graves; the abnormal brains of psychopaths stolen from a medical school. In his shadowy laboratory, Dr. Frankenstein stitches dismembered parts into a single grotesque form.

The chain hoist clanks, slowly lifting the monstrous body up, up into the gathering storm! Lightning strikes, thunder roars! Transformers crackle, spit sparks, the monstrous body smokes! Inert. Lifeless. Still. But wait!

A hand twitches on the dangling arm, Dr. Frankenstein lifts his hands to the sky and shrieks…not “It’s Alive!,” but “Where the F$%& did THAT thing come from?!”

EastVillagerNews.com

Not “That’s not what I meant to do.” Not “Who replaced my beautiful creation with this hideous monster?”

Not “Oh, the horror of the predictable but unintended outcome of my experiments.” Not “Oops” or “Sorry.” Not “My bad.” Just “Where the F$%& did THAT thing come from?!” — as if there was absolutely zero connection between what he’d been doing and what happened.

That’s the Republican Party right now. After literally a generation cobbling together a hideous mash of Southern Strategy, Dog Whistle Race Baiting and Fox News — slopping in chunks of rancid, defective brain matter from Lee Atwater, Roger Ailes and Rush Limbaugh, strapping the results to a waterboard and juicing it with “en-

Starring Thomas E. Sullivan LIMITED ENGAGEMENT THROUGH MAY 8 Jake Epstein Jenna Gavigan

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Scott Elmegreen and Drew Fornarola Directed by

Andy Sandberg PHOTO: ZACK DeZON

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TELECHARGE.COM 212-239-6200 | Acorn Theatre at Theatre Row 410 West 42nd Street TELECHARGE.COM 212-239-6200 | Acorn Theatre at Theatre Row 410 West 42nd Street

StraightThePlay.com

#LivingALabel

March 17, 2016

21

Republicans ponder rich menu of sinking ship options DONALD continued from p. 21

the event, because he would never, ever want anybody to get hurt. Unless he was, you know, actively calling for them to get hurt like he does at every single rally, and certainly would have done at this one if the police hadn’t insisted he “postpone.”

Except, here’s the thing: they didn’t.

The Chicago Police Department says they had the whole situation pretty much under control, and that violence only broke out after Trump let everyone stew in the arena for a half hour before releasing a toady to tell them the Wizard wasn’t going to see them and they should come back tomorrow.

See, the police didn’t “advise” Trump about anything. He never met with or spoke to them. He lies with such a high degree of certainty that the press won’t ask him about it, for fear of venturing into analysis. If they do ask, his earpiece will probably malfunction anyway.

So with Super Duper Tuesday (seriously?) in the rearview mirror, what happens next? Rubio’s out, and now must decide if losing his home state to Trump was humiliating enough — or if he’d like to shoot the moon and lick The Donald’s jackboot. He could endorse Ted Cruz, an unspeakably loathsome human weasel whose survival depends on the enormity of Trump’s ego keeping direct sunlight from setting him ablaze.

So the Grand Old Party (or Grand Old Penis, after Trump’s rebranding) offers three sinking ships for horrified elite Republican rats to climb aboard.

Let’s call Ship Number One the Lusitania, where all the sailors line up behind Donald Trump. All they need to do is sign a loyalty oath stating “I pledge my soul to an orange leather sack of excrement, its pursed lips smacking at the prospect of bloody protesters wheeled from its presence on stretchers. We are indeed the party of White Supremacy, and we pretty much always have been since Goldwater — so let’s just admit it and win until we’re sick of winning.”

On Ship Number Two, the Titanic, panicked passengers desperately attempt to keep Trump from amassing enough delegates to win the nomination on the first ballot at convention, allowing Cruz, Kasich, Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney and other imaginary white knights to fight it out like rabid cats in a sack.

What’s left? The doomed ghost ship of last resort: The Flying Dutchman.

Here, the spectral crew moves the goalposts at the last minute. They can do that. Conventions are governed by

22

March 17, 2016

DONALDJTRUMP.COM

“I don’t know what the hell you people are talking about. Look how yuge my hand is. It’s in a fist, but it would be twice as big if I opened it. Plus, it’s cold, and I just washed my hands.”

party rules, not law. One of the rules is that those rules can be changed whenever and however. Hell, they could make it so the candidate with the biggest hands gets the nod.

The Republican Party has nothing but bad choices left. If human lastClementine-left-in-the-box-threeweeks-after-you-thought-they-wereall-gone Trump is the nominee, they’ll have to pray like hell for a terrorist attack. Barring a major fear-generating event to push your run-of-the-mill, mildly racist voters over the edge, there simply aren’t enough White Supremacist, neo-Nazi and fascist votes to win the general election.

The brokered convention and rule change options both lead inevitably to thwarted Trump voters turning their rage and violence inward.

That’s enough Republican on Republican fisticuffs to make the Chicago ’68 Democratic National Convention look like a damn Sunday School picnic.

The Republican chickens have all come home to roost, and in mid-July they are going to turn the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio into their own personal cock-fighting ring.

Why not? Hasn’t the Republican race been basically a cockfight all along?

See what I did there?

The only question left is, “Who’s to blame?”

Who made that monster on the table? The Republicans are certain it wasn’t them.

Thanks, Obama.

DONALDJTRUMP.COM

“Okay, get those hands up for the pledge! No, a little lower. Just a little lower, like you’re in Nuremberg. Great, great. That’s the picture!”

AP PHOTO/CHARLES REX ARBOGAST

A terrifying collection of “bad dudes and professional thugs” descended upon the University of Illinois-Chicago campus, forcing Donald Trump to “postpone” his rally.

EastVillagerNews.com

Just Do Art

BY SCOTT STIFFLER

BENEFIT FOR NO LONGER EMPTY

Founded in 2009 as a (literally) creative response to the still-familiar sight of businesses shuttered by rising rents and shifting consumer dynamics, one of the first projects from No Longer Empty (NLE) filled two vacant storefronts at the infamous W. 23rd St. Chelsea Hotel building with work from several of its artistic residents. The following year, NLE briefly occupied the former E. Fourth St. & Broadway Tower Records — in the guise of “Never Can Say Goodbye,” a fictional, thriving purveyor of vinyl whose record bins, walls, and stage were brimming with sound, light, and images from 20 artists tasked with delivering an experience that digital downloads and online sales can’t provide.

These early projects allowed for, even encouraged, bittersweet contemplation and charged conversation about the loss of neighborhood character — but NLE quickly evolved from hosting site-specific installations to curating site-responsive exhibitions. Today, their work (much of it commissioned) is created in collaboration with the surrounding community, with the goal of leaving a blueprint for the future once the exhibit closes up shop.

NLE’s forward-looking benefit, tellingly titled “The Journey Continues,” honors three women who are advancing their respective fields, while applying their talents to the betterment of the community: Ellen Baxter, of Broadway Housing Communities, improves the quality of life for the homeless by combining housing, education and the arts; Sol Aramendi (who’ll be spinning discs at the benefit) provides art-focused educational opportunities for immigrants; and Sarah Calderon, of ArtPlace America, advocates for the inclusion of art and culture in city planning. Calderon’s organization is a partnering funder of the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art & Storytelling — a mixture of affordable housing, universal pre-K, and an art museum. Bidding for the art auction (hosted by Paddle 8 and available for preview at bit. ly/188Um6Q) concludes at the end of the benefit.

Tues., Mar. 29, 7–10 p.m. at Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art & Storytelling (898 St. Nicholas Ave., at W. 155th St.; C train to 155th St. or 1 train to 157th St.).

To purchase individual tickets or tables ($200–$5,000), visit nolongerempty.org/ EastVillagerNews.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ARTIST PHOTO BY WHITNEY BROWNE

Brendan Jamison and Mark Revels’ “Sugar Metropolis,” part of No Longer Empty’s 2014 “If You Build It” exhibition. NLE’s annual benefit happens Mar. 29 at the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art & Storytelling.

A Mar. 21 benefit at The Bowery Electric will help defray medical costs associated with an accident that left members of musician Sonny Vincent’s family with severe burns.

DOCUMENTARY SCREENINGS AT THE AMERICAN JEWISH HISTORICAL SOCIETY

COURTESY AJHS AND THE FILMMAKERS

Michel Cojot, on a visit to NYC in the 1970s. His son will attend a screening of excerpts from the documentary “Cojot,” Mar. 23 at the American Jewish Historical Society.

home/benefit-2016 or send an email to benefit@nolongerempty.org. Follow NLE on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram; #nolongerempty and #NLEjourney.

BENEFIT FOR PUNK MUSICIAN SONNY VINCENT’S FAMILY

New York native Sonny Vincent was living in Europe on Jan. 2, when he learned that his son, daughter-in-law, and nine-year-old grandson were severely injured in a gas explosion and flash fire that engulfed their apartment. Vincent flew to North Carolina, with just the clothes on his back — and has been at their sides ever since, as they undergo treatment for third degree burns on 50–80% of their bodies.

A touring musician with deep roots in NYC (his band, TESTORS, performed at Max’s Kansas City and CBGB), Sonny has few resources, and has canceled three tours to be by his family’s side.

All proceeds from this night of music, poetry, and rare collectible merchandise will defray the costs of medical treatment and help them rebuild their lives. Performers include Walter Lure & The Waldos, New York Junk, WYLDLIFE, Puma Perl, The Nuclears, and DJ La La Linda.

Mon., Mar. 21, 7 p.m., at The Bowery Electric (327 Bowery, btw. Second & Third Sts.). Visit tktwb.tw/1SzqmGi for tickets ($12 online, $15 at the door). To make a donation, visit gofundme.com/xnvynbcc.

France, Jewish identity, and the Holocaust are themes that run through this night of documentary film programming dedicated to addressing the trauma, and celebrating the resilience, of those who’ve been targets of genocide and violence. Set in 2014 as France commemorates the 70th anniversary of D-Day, Curt Fissel and Ellen Friedland’s 28-minute “Yellow Stars of Tolerance” follows an effort to preserve stars painted on a Normandy synagogue’s exterior wall during World War II, that were a means of terrorizing the local Jewish community. Scheduled for national release in 2017, director Boaz Dvir will present a 20-minute preview of his PBS documentary “Cojot: A Second Chance Comes Only Once.”

The character study follows Holocaust survivor Michel Cojot through postwar life as a Parisian banker, a Nazi hunter on the trail of Klaus Barbie, and a pivotal player in the 1976 Entebbe hostage drama (his son Oliver, 12 at the time, was among those held by terrorists who hijacked a return flight to Paris from Tel Aviv). Oliver will join filmmakers from both projects, for a panel discussion followed by a reception.

Wed., Mar. 23, 7 p.m. at the American Jewish Historical Society (15 W. 16th St., btw. Fifth & Sixth Aves.). For tickets ($10 general, $7 for students, seniors & AJHS members), visit ajhs.org or call 212-294-6160.

March 17, 2016

23

Purple, pedicabs and a push for recycling: ECO ’80S continued from p. 1

the Village and Lower East Side. It is published under the imprint of Ragtime Society Press. (An aside: Carl is the grandson of Rudi Blesh, the famous jazz critic and promoter, and among his other projects was the Rudi Blesh Ragtime Society music appreciation club. His cavernous antebellum apartment that he inherited from Rudi was packed almost to capacity with vinyl — an international collection spanning ragtime, jazz, blues, rock and way beyond.)

The ’80s are remembered more for Reagan reaction and Koch conservatism than radical ecological politics.

But they were a time when, below the surface, the consciousness shift that began with the counterculture upheaval of the ’60s and continued through the environmental movement of the ’70s was ripening, getting serious about manifesting its vision in concrete alternatives.

Carl’s special project in those years was the Village Green Recycling Team, one of the first efforts at a recycling program in the city. He was also involved in the New York Greens, a nascent attempt at a Green Party in the city. This effort ultimately came to little, but it did bring together various activist and ecological projects from around the metro area, immersing Carl in an alternative culture that would prove an incubator for ideas later adopted by the mainstream.

The first volume is devoted to the New York Greens and related activist efforts; the next two to the late Adam Purple’s Garden of Eden and community gardens; the fourth to experiments in bicycle and human-powered vehicle (H.P.V.) design; the last to urban cycling and recycling. Shots of the celebratory All-Species Parade, with art-activists dressed up in homespun costumes to impersonate their favorite endangered animals, contrast those of scruffy volunteers pushing handcarts piled high with newspapers.

The Village Green Recycling Team and sibling Lower East Side Ecology Center, by their very existence, put pressure on the city to launch an official recycling program. Environmental groups were lobbying the City Council to pass a bill mandating such a program, after much resistance from the Sanitation Department. The enviros could point to these grassroots initiatives as evidence that recycling could work in the megalopolis; the bill was finally passed in 1989.

Among the images reproduced in “Garden of Eden” are Villager articles on these efforts from back in the day. (The L.E.S. Ecology Center continues to serve as a compost drop-off

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PHOTOS BY CARL HULTBERG

Adam Purple with some seedlings in his Garden of Eden in 1985.

The entrance to the Garden of Eden.

site today; hopefully, the bureaucracy will again follow the grassroots pioneers and instate a mandatory citywide composting program in the coming years.)

Although I couldn’t find a photo of it in his monographs, Carl’s apartment for years sported a sign in the window reading: “COOPER UNION, HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO

OUR NEIGHBORHOOD?” Another, actually illuminated from behind, read, “LIFESTYLES OF THE SICK AND SHAMELESS.” This was a reference to the Bowery Bar (today the B-Bar), which opened on the block, an early toehold of gentrification, in a reconverted gas station that had been long abandoned. The Cooper Union industrial-arts college owned the site, and Carl’s friend (and sometime housemate) George Bliss sought to establish an H.P.V. workshop there. Instead, Cooper Union turned the property over to developer Eric Goode, who transformed it into the B-Bar. In its heyday, when it drew the glitterati (it has since become déclassé), the signage right next door registered silent protest with those waiting on line to get in.

Bliss opened his workshop elsewhere, producing and marketing pedicabs and the big truck-trikes used by the V.G.R.T. This workshop, known as The Hub, bounced around to a few locations — most recently in the West Village, where he sold and rented alternative-model bicycles. It finally closed its doors in 2014 — according to George, forced out of business by the advent of Citi Bikes.

Also documented is the struggle of bicycle messengers to keep Fifth, Park and Madison Aves. open to bikes after the Koch administration issued an order banning them from those Midtown thoroughfares during working hours in 1988. This was the first time the messengers really got organized, in what Carl calls “a spontaneous American labor movement.” They repeatedly rode en masse in defiance of authorities, and ultimately prevailed in getting the ban overturned. These actions presaged the Critical Mass bike rides that took off in the ’90s, cyclists making the point with their bodies to demand their right to the road.

Again, this demand would later be taken up by the bureaucracy under Mayor Bloomberg, and dedicated bike lanes began appearing on many Manhattan streets — with stretches of Broadway now closed to cars entirely.

Then there’s Adam Purple. The two volumes devoted to him contain shots of his garden before, during and after its destruction in January 1986.

(Particularly poignant images show Adam’s cat, forlorn in the post-destruction rubble.) The destruction of Adam’s garden both set a dangerous precedent that gardens could be destroyed by city government fiat and galvanized a movement to defend them — ultimately resulting in the deals that saved hundreds of gardens around the city in the early years of ECO ’80S continued on p. 25 EastVillagerNews.com

A look back at New York City’s ‘Eco ’80s’

Steve Athineos leading an action by bicycle messengers in 1987 in what, according to Carl Hultberg, was a precursor to Critical Mass. Athineos, who ran a messenger company on E. Third St., organized the messengers so that they wouldn’t get banned from Fifth, Madison and Park Aves. He died this year.

Christina Datz hauling paper for the Apartment House Recycling Program of the Environmental Action Coalition.

ECO ’80S continued from p. 24

the Bloomberg administration.

Of course, it’s a bitter irony that gardens, bike lanes and pedestrian malls are today seen by many as EastVillagerNews.com

greasing the way for further gentrification (in the case of the pedestrian malls, actual privatization of public space). As the bureaucracy embraces alternative models, it has the effect of destroying those very grassroots ini-

Carl Hultberg, one of the core members of the Village Green recycling team and the author of a new collection of books on the “Eco ’80s.”

tiatives that broke ground for them and made them possible. The most blatant example is Citi Bike, a program that bears the name and logo of a financial behemoth — representing corporate recuperation of progres-

sive, even radical ideas.

Carl’s “Garden of Eden” commits to our collective memory those radical origins — and the lesson that all progress, ultimately, comes from below.

March 17, 2016

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NYC Rush are in a hurry to gel on fast-pitch scene

BY CORIE BEARDSLEY AND DAMIEN ACEVEDO

A

fter a long winter of indoor practices, the NYC Rush 12U team, headed by their two coaches, Corie Beardsley and Mary Beth Wallis, got outdoors last week to practice as a team. The 70-degree was not a bad way to ease outdoors in March for Manhattan’s only girls fast-pitch softball tournament travel team.

Our young squad — made up of 11- and 12-year-olds — participated in one tournament this winter.

On President’s Day, Mon., Feb 15, we ventured up to the Danbury Sports Dome in Connecticut. The forecast of snow resulted in the games being pushed up to an earlier start than planned and shortened games. We had a rough start, but by the fourth and final game started to see the team come together a bit.

It was most of the girls’ first tournament ever! They worked hard and learned a lot. At the tournament’s end, they each were able to speak to something they were proud of that they did and what they thought they could work on. We are so proud of the girls, and excited to get them on the field to start practicing as a team in anticipation of our first spring tournament on April 9!

Girls are scheduled into at least seven tournaments over April, May and June. These are mostly USSSA tournaments in New Jersey. The NYC Rush team is comprised of girls from Midtown East, Stuyvesant Town, the East Village, Lower East Side, the Bronx, Financial District and Battery Park City. Many of them play for their middle school and local Little League teams as well.

They are practicing twice a week as a team and enlisting private batting, positioning and pitching lessons on their off days. The team’s trainer, Renae Beauchman, is from California and played softball at Long Island University, a Division 1 school.

She trains our girls in hitting, defense and situational plays.

And don’t forget Damien Acevedo, the team photographer!

For more about NYC Rush, visit their new Web site at http://www. nycfastpitch.com/home.

EastVillagerNews.com

PHOTO BY DAMIEN ACEVEDO.

The NYC Rush, bottom row, from left, Kayla Acevedo, Grace Kirwin, Ava Wallis, Olivia Mazuel, Torrence Garvey and Julietta Orciuoli; top row, from left, Nathalie Perra, Katherine Minnis, Ella Carter, Amanda O’Shea and Raiya Dhalwala. Players not in photo: Paige Ali, Ella Franco and Leah Meyerson.

Some action from the New York City-versus-Dublin firefighters bouts at Webster Hall in 2014.

Erin go Brawl at W. Hall!

On Sat., March 26, at Webster Hall, 125 E. 11th St., a team of boxers from the Dublin Fire Department, the Garda Siochana Boxing Club, will square off against the New York Fire Department’s Bravest Boxing Team in a fundraiser. Dubbed the Easter Eve Uprising, the night of international amateur fistcuffs is in celebration of the 1916 Easter Uprising in Ireland. Tickets are $30 general admission, $50 ringside, at www.ticketweb.com (866-468-7619) or www.websterhall. com . Doors open at 6:30 p.m. First bout is at 7:30 p.m. sharp.

March 17, 2016

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NON-SURGICAL FOOT & ANKLE SERVICE

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Dr. Rock Positano, DPM, MSc, MPH, Director 519 East 72nd Street New York, NY 10021 212.606.1858

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