The Paper of Record for Greenwich Village, East Village, Lower East Side, Soho, Union Square, Chinatown and Noho, Since 1933
June 23, 2016 • $1.00 Volume 86 • Number 25
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2nd Ave. tenants sue city, Con Ed, landlord for ’15 gas explosion BY YANNIC R ACK
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round three dozen tenants have fi led a nearly $19 million lawsuit against the city and others in the wake of the fi ery gas explosion that killed two men and leveled three buildings in the East Village last March. A roster of current and
former tenants, including lead plaintiff and “Sopranos” actress Drea de Matteo, fi led a civil suit in Manhattan Supreme Court last Tuesday that blames the city and Con Edison for not cracking down on the illegal gas hook-up at 121 Second Ave. that led to the blast and subsequent fi re on LAWSUIT continued on p. 30
Punk photog makes ‘History’ on Kickstarter with new CBGB book BY BOB KR ASNER
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ew York, East Village, 1976. A local street photographer leaves his St. Mark’s apartment, walks into a bar full of punks and the rest, as he says, is “History Is Made At Night,” the eagerly anticipated monograph of images shot in and outside
of CBGB by Godlis. (He has a first name, but prefers not to use it.) The limited edition art book is about to hit the shelves, thanks to a very successful Kickstarter campaign and Godlis’s determination to produce a book with integrity. Godlis spent three years — 1976 to ’79 — on the GODLIS continued on p. 4
PHOTO BY TEQUILA MINSKY
P.S. 3 fifth-grade students sang about peace and tolerance outside the Stonewall Inn on Monday. See Gay Pride special section, Pages 17 to 23.
U’ground Railroad’s spirit keeps chugging Downtown BY ALBERT AMATEAU
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wo events last week hearkened back to the days when New York was a station on the Underground Railroad and a center of the abolitionist movement that led up to the Civil War. One of those events was a reunion in Greenwich Village of the descendants of Sydney
Howard Gay, the editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard weekly newspaper, and of Louis Napoleon, a free man of color who conducted hundreds of fugitives from slavery through New York City to freedom in Canada and elsewhere. The June 14 reunion at the home of Otis Kidwell Burger, great-great-granddaughter of Gay, was organized by Don Papson, co-author of “Secret
Lives of the Underground Railroad in New York City: Sidney Howard Gay, Louis Napoleon and the Record of Fugitives.” Attending the reunion was Angela Terrell, great-great-granddaughter of Louis Napoleon on her mother’s side. Napoleon, born in 1800 and who signed his name with an X, nevertheless was instrumental RAILROAD continued on p. 6
Editorial: R.G.B. must back a rent rollback ..... p. 14 La Plaza Cultural rocks 40th anniversary .......p. 36 Handy Trump in Soho slam .....p. 8
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