The Paper of Record for Greenwich Village, East Village, Lower East Side, Soho, Union Square, Chinatown and Noho, Since 1933
April 28, 2016 • $1.00 Volume 86 • Number 17
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Call it Fort Pot Rx: 14th St. dispensary is slammed as ‘like a jail’ BY PAUL DeRIENZO
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s Pennsylvania became the 24th state to legalize medical marijuana last week and with ballot measures to legalize the weed in several others, including California this November, New York’s medical marijuana law is finally getting off the ground.
In states where pot is legal, like Colorado, there have already been $1 billion in sales and tens of millions of dollars in taxes collected, including for school construction, while in New York medical marijuana is carefully regulated to prevent even the slightest hint of recreational POT RX continued on p. 10
Car ve-out freak-out: Some Village families not in 75 Morton zone BY LINCOLN ANDERSON
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illage school advocates and parents are putting on a push to change a zoning quirk for the new 75 Morton St. middle school that would make Baruch College Campus High School — all the way over on the East Side — and not 75 Morton the zoned middle school for students living in
a “gerrymandered” slice of the Village. The controversial zoning carve-out begins at Eighth and Greenwich Aves. on its west side and stretches down to 12th St. on the south, Fourth Ave. on the east and up to 14th St. on the north. It follows the same zoning for elementary schools that
PHOTO BY SARAH FERGUSON
West Villager Alber t Wilking brought a velvet Prince shrine that he created to Tompkins Square Park last Sunday — coincidentally, right as a pop-up dance par t y on bic ycles for the Purple One was rolling in. See Page 3.
Prisoner Purple: ‘Talkative’ con made cut for tree camp BY LINCOLN ANDERSON
CARVE-OUT continued on p. 4
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n response to The Villager’s information request, the Australian Department of Justice has released files documenting Adam Purple’s imprisonment for sexually molesting his oldest stepdaughter. At the end of last year, The Villager broke the shocking story — first told to the newspaper by Purple’s two daughters — of how legendary Lower East Side gardener Purple, real name David Lloyd Wilk-
ie, spent up to two years in jail Down Under in the 1960s as a result of the conviction, and was then deported to America. A follow-up article included subsequent interviews with his two former stepdaughters, who further corroborated his history of child sex abuse. Purple, who was born in Missouri and had worked as a journalist in the States, moved with his blended family to Australia after getting a job teaching English at a technical college there. The family included his second
wife, Romola, her two daughters, Dorothy and Diane, and Wilkie’s own two daughters from a previous marriage, Jenean and Lenore. It was a far cry from “The Brady Bunch.” As Jenean previously told The Villager, Purple’s sexual abuse of the girls — which had already been occurring in the U.S. — only rose to more debauched levels in Australia. The family lived in isolated areas, away from prying eyes, and Purple threw wild parPURPLE continued on p. 12
Soho leader booted (again) from C.B. 2........p. 2 Crime: Getting punchy in East Village..........p. 9 A real crane in the glass.........page 14
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