The Villager • Jan. 21, 2016

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The Paper of Record for Greenwich Village, East Village, Lower East Side, Soho, Union Square, Chinatown and Noho, Since 1933

January 21, 2016 • $1.00 Volume 86 • Number 3

An E.V. landlord’s past assault conviction has his tenants more worried BY YANNIC RACK

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hile dozens of East Village residents have accused their new landlord of shady practices ever since he bought their buildings last year, they may be surprised to find out that he also has a criminal past. Raphael Toledano, the

25-year-old who last September expanded his real estate portfolio in the neighborhood with the purchase of 16 buildings, is the subject of a state investigation into tenant harassment. In addition, The Villager has learned that he was convicted of aggravated assault and TOLEDANO continued on p. 12

Apple, carrot, zucchini? Chewing over admissions ideas for Morton school BY SARA HENDRICKSON

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ew innovative admissions policies have been instituted at a handful of the city’s public schools to combat increasing segregation and narrow the intractable achievement gap. On the evening of Mon., Jan. 11, 160 community mem-

bers gathered in the gym of the Clinton School for Artists and Writers, at 10 E. 15th St., to learn about these novel approaches and collaborate on shaping the admissions policy for the new Morton St. middle school, which will be opening in fall 2017. The meeting was sponSCHOOL continued on p. 24

Front row, from left, Lenore, 7, Diane, 8, Jenean, 9, and Dorothy, 10, with Romola and David Lloyd Wilkie — later known as Adam Purple — on their passport photo to emigrate to Australia in 1964.

All Purple’s daughters BY LINCOLN ANDERSON

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verything is true,” said Diane Beastrom. One of Adam Purple’s former stepdaughters, she called The Villager three weeks ago — the day after the newspaper’s publication of “The dark side of Purple,” an exposé of the urban gardening legend’s shocking history of sexual abuse and imprisonment — to tell her own story. Beastrom, in turn, provided a contact number for her

sister, Dorothy Brooks, in Australia, who in short order recounted to The Villager her years of nightly sexual abuse, culminating in rape, by Purple, real name David Lloyd Wilkie. “He was truly a horrible monster,” Dorothy said. “I am still recovering.” Diane also provided a phone number for Lenore Wilkie, David Wilkie’s youngest biological daughter, who, in phone interviews, similarly shared her vivid memories of growing up in the sexually deviant

household, which she credits with sending her life on a downward spiral into decades of homelessness and prostitution. Lenore also said that when she went to live with Wilkie on the Lower East Side when she was 16, he had her put in an IUD — her assumption being he clearly hoped to have sex with her — and that it left her permanently unable to bear children. In “The dark side of Purple,” Jenean, Wilkie’s oldest PURPLE continued on p. 8

Judith Kaye, 77, L.G.B.T champion.............page 4 Supporting single-payer healthcare..........page 15 Twin Peaks in the flesh.................page 21

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TRAGIC CRUSTY CODA: David McKee a.k.a. Natas, died in late August in Tompkins Square Park after his pit bull, Jax, earlier that month had gone on a bloody rampage in the East Village, attacking both a dog and a man. Jax’s victims included Sidney, famed punk-rock photographer Roberta Bayley’s pug, who was attacked outside her home on St. Mark’s Place. Sidney received emergency surgery but didn’t pull through. A few days later, Jax attacked Michael Puzzo, chomping him under his arm, after Puzzo tried to defend his girlfriend’s little dog, Bobito, from a Jax attack. One outreach worker had speculated that McKee might have been suffering alcohol-withdrawal effects and fallen and struck his head. Well, the New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner recently told us the cause of death for Natas (“Satan” spelled backwards), who was a “crusty traveler.” “The cause of death is acute intoxication by the combined effects of heroin, benzodiazepine and alcohol. The manner of death is accident,” Julie Bolcer, the medical examiner’s director of public affairs, reported. “Accident” means it was not “homicide, suicide or natural,” Bolcer explained. By coincidence, a cousin of Natas recently posted a comment on The Villager’s article about the troubled young homeless man’s death, in which she also apologizes for the swath of terror he and Jax blazed through the East Village last summer. He wasn’t some “fauxbo.” He just had a really tough life. For more, see this week’s Letters to The Editor. BAL SAYS NO! As we reported last week, YuhLine Niou has strongly called for a special election for the 65th Assembly District to be held on presidential primary day, April 19, as Governor Andrew Cuomo initially signaled he planned to do. Until now, though, Niou has been the only one taking a firm stand one way or the other on the issue. Word has it that other options would be to hold the “special” in June, or just wait till September and hold an open primary. This week, John Bal,

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January 21, 2016

another Assembly hopeful, weighed in, slamming the idea of a special election for the vacant seat formerly held by Sheldon Silver. “There should not be a special election to fill the 65th Assembly District seat,” he said. “The nominating process favors district leaders and political clubs — not our community. Grassroots candidates, such as myself and others, who are not a member of a political club are at a disadvantage.”

HEART-WRENCHING SITUATION: We stopped by the other day to say hi to Ray at his candy store on Avenue A and E. Seventh St., and were disturbed to hear about the difficulty he’s having affording his heart medicine. Back in June, Ray, now 83, underwent heart surgery and had a pig valve put in, along with a pacemaker. But he still needs a virtual pharmacy cabinet of pricey pills. They cost him about $400 a month. He told us he tried forgoing the meds for one month to try to save money, but he really started to feel the effects. He showed us his bag full of pill bottles, and it’s quite a stash — big bottles, little bottles, big pills, little pills — you would think he’s a drug dealer. Obviously, he needs this medicine badly, so that he can keep serving up delicious egg creams and sugar-dusted beignets to the grateful neighborhood. How come Ray can’t have the medicine he needs covered by insurance? Obamacare — where are you? NOW WE’RE COOKING! Like restaurants? Like being on the water? The Hudson River Park Trust is issuing a request for proposals, or R.F.P., for a shortterm lease (four years, two two-year extensions) for a seasonal cafe space near the foot of the Christopher St. Pier. According to the Trust: “This unique waterfront space offers an enclosed cooking kiosk, dedicated outdoor seating and the opportunity for two mobile concession units. The Greenwich Village section of the park is one of the most popular, with frequent free Trust-sponsored events attracting even more park users.” If interested, better hurry up and apply! Responses are due Feb. 8. For more information, go to https://www.hudsonriverpark.org/aboutus/bids-business-opportunities .

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January 21, 2016

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Judge Judith Kaye, 77, gay rights champion Named best weekly newspaper in New York State in 2001, 2004 and 2005 by New York Press Association Editorials, First Place, 2014 News Story, 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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The Villager (USPS 578930) ISSN 0042-6202 is published every week by NYC Community Media LLC, One Metrotech North, 10th floor Brooklyn, NY 11201 (212) 229-1890. Periodicals Postage paid at New York, N.Y. Annual subscription by mail in Manhattan and Brooklyn $29 ($35 elsewhere). Single copy price at office and newsstands is $1. The entire contents of newspaper, including advertising, are copyrighted and no part may be reproduced without the express permission of the publisher - © 2016 NYC Community Media LLC. PUBLISHER’S LIABILITY FOR ERROR

The Publisher shall not be liable for slight changes or typographical errors that do not lessen the value of an advertisement. The publisher’s liability for others errors or omissions in connection with an advertisement is strictly limited to publication of the advertisement in any subsequent issue. Published by NYC Community Media, LLC One Metrotech North 10th floor Brooklyn, NY 11201 Phone: (718) 260-2500 • Fax: (212) 229-2790 On-line: www.thevillager.com E-mail: news@thevillager.com © 2016 NYC Community Media, LLC

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January 21, 2016

BY ARTHUR S. LEONARD

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hen retired Chief Judge Judith Kaye of the New York Court of Appeals died on Jan. 7 at age 77, most accounts of her passing mentioned her dissenting opinion in Hernandez v. Robles, the 2006 case in which the state’s highest court voted against the claim that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry, as one of her most notable opinions. Her opinion, in the 4-2 case, however, was merely the capstone of a long career on the court during which she often spoke out eloquently in cases important for the rights of gay people as well as those affected by the AIDS epidemic. Governor Mario Cuomo appointed Kaye to the court early in his first term in 1983, and then elevated her to the position of chief judge in 1993, a post she held until she reached the state constitutional age limit of 70 in late 2008. As of her retirement, she was the longest-serving judge in the Court of Appeals’ history, as well as the longest-serving chief judge. Kaye was also the first woman to sit on the state’s highest bench and the first to serve as its chief judge. At the time of her appointment, Kaye had no judicial experience, having worked as a corporate and litigation lawyer in private practice for most of her career, so Cuomo naming her stirred some controversy. She soon, however, assumed a leading role on the court, especially as a defender of civil rights and minority rights. She joined the majority of the court in 1989 in a historic ruling, Braschi v. Stahl Associates Company, which for the first time in American law recognized cohabiting same-sex couples as members of each other’s family –– in this case, for purposes of the state’s Rent Control Law, thus protecting the right of a surviving same-sex partner to take over a lease if their apartment was rented in the name of a deceased partner. Following up on this important ruling, Kaye wrote the court’s 1993 opinion in Rent Stabilization Association of New York v. Higgins, which upheld the New York Division of Housing and Community Renewal’s regulations that extended the Braschi ruling to the far larger rent-stabilization system. D.H.C.R. had specifically noted the impact of the AIDS epidemic on the housing security of gay men as a justification for the regulation. Kaye rejected the plaintiff’s argument that extending protection to nontraditional families through an administrative regulation was an impermissible legislative act by the agency, and she also rejected the argument that extending this protection had unconstitutionally deprived the owners of property rights. In 1991, Kaye penned an important dissenting opinion in the case of Alison D. v. Virginia M., when the court ruled

adoptions allows the children to achieve a measure of permanency with both parent figures and voids the sort of disruptive visitation battle we faced in Matter of Alison D. v. Virginia M.” A year later, Judge Kaye provided the crucial vote in a 4-3 decision holding that a dentist’s office is a place of public accommodation, so a dentist would be in violation of the Human Rights Law for refusing treatment to patients the dentist knew or suspected to have H.I.V. infection. Finally, of course, there is Kaye’s dissent in Hernandez, PHOTO BY SKADDEN.COM in which she argued Judge Judith Kaye was the first woman to serve on the on behalf of herself New York State Court of Appeals, its first woman chief and Judge Carmen judge, and its longest-serving member and chief. Ciparick that samesex couples did have that a lesbian co-parent of a child was a right to marry. a “legal stranger” who could not seek “This State has a proud tradition of afcourt-ordered visitation rights after sep- fording equal rights to all New Yorkers,” arating from the child’s birth mother. she wrote. “Sadly, the Court today reThe court rested its ruling on the for- treats from that proud tradition.” After mal language of New York’s antiquated noting the long list of federal and state Domestic Relations Law, which even to- cases holding that “marriage is a fundaday adheres to a vision of families that mental constitutional right,” she wrote fails to reflect reality. Kaye criticized the that “fundamental rights, once recogcourt for exalting legal formality above nized, cannot be denied to particular a central purpose of family law –– pro- groups on the ground that these groups tecting the best interests of children. have historically been denied those On the same date as the Alison D. rul- rights. Indeed, in recasting plaintiffs’ ing, Kaye joined the majority in an im- invocation of their fundamental right portant ruling upholding a determina- to marry as a request for recognition of tion by the state’s Public Health Council a ‘new’ right to same-sex marriage, the not to list H.I.V. infection as a condition Court misapprehends the nature of the requiring mandatory testing and contact liberty interest at stake.” tracing. The Council was concerned that Kaye’s confidence was vindicated over such a listing would prevent infected the past several years as scores of courts, persons from cooperating with public many of them citing her dissenting health officials and impose a barrier to opinion, declared state bans on sameaddressing the H.I.V. epidemic. The New sex marriage elsewhere unconstitutionYork State Society of Surgeons had chal- al, culminating in the Supreme Court’s lenged this decision, but the court held Obergefell ruling on June 26, 2015. that the Council’s ruling had a rational After New York’s Legislature enacted basis that should not be second-guessed marriage equality in 2011, Kaye happily by the court. performed same-sex marriage ceremoIn a sharply divided 4-3 ruling in Mat- nies. Perhaps not so coincidentally, the ter of Jacob, a 1995 case, Kaye wrote for lead attorney in US v. Windsor, the case the majority, creatively interpreting the that struck down the federal ban on recstate’s antiquated adoption statute to ognizing same-sex marriages in 2013, was allow for second-parent adoptions –– a Roberta Kaplan, a former law clerk for critically important ruling in mitigating Kaye whose book about the case describes the unfortunate impact of the Alison D. the important role the judge played for her ruling. Since the Court of Appeals con- as a mentor. Kaye had several openly gay sidered same-sex co-parents to be “legal and lesbian clerks, some of whom have strangers,” the only way they could pro- themselves become judges. tect the relationship with their children On another issue, one of Kaye’s acwould be if they could adopt them, with complishments was opening up Family the permission of their partner. Court to reporters. Judges had feared “Indeed,” she wrote, “viewed from their decisions would be scrutinized by the children’s perspective, permitting the the media, but Kaye prevailed. TheVillager.com

Gansevoort developers get too pushy for locals BY LUCAS ROPEK

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ince the announcement that Neil Bender of William Gottlieb Real Estate and Aurora Capital Associates plan to redevelop nine buildings on a block of Gansevoort St. in the landmarked Meatpacking District, the community response has been overwhelmingly hostile. Many locals consider the block’s old brick buildings valuable artifacts of the neighborhood’s history, and believe that demolishing some of them and adding stories atop others — both are called for in the plan — would be a tragedy, not a triumph. The Gansevoort developers are now being accused of using a push poll, in what appears to be the latest attempt to sway the community toward accepting their plan. Push polling is a form of telemarketing disguised as a survey, in which a caller asks the listener a series of leading questions meant to influence his or her opinion on a particular subject. The Gansevoort pollsters reportedly asked community members questions like, “Would you prefer to see a series of decrepit, partly demolished buildings, or a historically sensitive restoration of what Gansevoort St. looked like until the 1930s?” Push polling is traditionally used during political campaigns to win votes and tar opposing candidates. Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, and a vociferous opponent of the developments, made public the claims of polling at the most recent

A rendering showing how developers would raise building heights — either by adding stories or building completely anew — at the west end of Gansevoort St. between Greenwich and Washington Sts.

G.V.S.H.P. committee meeting. He reported that nearly a dozen concerned residents had reached out to him about the poll over the past week. Many of the polled weren’t persuaded, but rather, deeply “annoyed,” Berman said. Katherine Schoonover, 62, a neighborhood resident who is also a G.V.S.H.P. trustee, received her call on Jan. 13, and was asked a series of questions related to the deal: Had she heard of the Gansevoort development plans? Would she rather see a beautiful restoration of pre-1930s architecture, or watch

her neighborhood buildings quietly cave in on themselves from age? When Schoonover rebuffed this line of questioning by asserting that they presented a false choice, the caller then dovetailed into a series of odd questions, including inquiries into her political affiliation, race, family size and also, apropos of nothing, “What do you think of Andrew Berman?” Schoonover assumes these were asked to gauge what factors might persuade her to support the project in the future. The mentioning of Berman is not surprising given what a vocal opponent he’s been ever since the deal’s announcement. The preservationist calls the poll a “sign of desperation” and believes it only highlights the serious lack of public confidence in the developers’ plans. For further evidence, Berman cites the many recent community meetings where residents have expressed disapproval of the scheme. “There was an enormous turnout against the proposal at the Landmarks Preservation Commission public hearing,” he said, referring to the agency’s Nov. 10 hearing on the matter. Indeed, if push polls are meant to persuade, this one seems to be doing it completely wrong. “They were trying to push me but they didn’t succeed in changing my mind at all,” said Schoonover, who insists that her view of the project is still “entirely negative.” She also called the poll “deceptive” and a “pretty low way to go about doing things.” As far as Villagers like Schoonover are concerned, the Gansevoort developers are clearly being far too pushy to win residents’ hearts and minds.

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January 21, 2016

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Many questions and answers at Johnson town hall BY LINDSAY BU

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t was a Wednesday community twofer at the L.G.B.T Center. Following a community resource fair, which touted complementary flu shots and smoke detectors, and provided a chance for city agencies and advocacy organizations to hand out information, City Councilmember Corey Johnson hosted and moderated a town hall meeting on Jan. 13 at the W. 13th St. center. Dozens of residents filled the meeting space to capacity, as they listened to introductory remarks from each of the 14 panelists representing city and federal agencies — including the Office of Emergency Management, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Department of Education. The format was that Johnson asked a few general questions of specific agencies, then read questions submitted by the public. Audience members wrote their concerns on index cards, which were handed up to the front of the room. However, at certain points things got a bit heated, as passionate audience members shouted out follow-up questions from their seats, or ripped out pages from notepads and walked up to Johnson to submit more questions. Johnson politely but firmly stated that people should hand their questions to the staff members that were collecting them. The first of Johnson’s own questions was posed to Julie Menin, commissioner of the city’s Department of Consumer Affairs. He asked her to elaborate on the new “big picture items” that New Yorkers were introduced to in 2015. “We are thrilled to be the agency that implements and enforces the paid sick-leave law, which extended paid sick leave to over a million New Yorkers,” Menin said. “Since we’ve been implementing this law, we have reached $1.3 million in restitution and fines for over 9,000 employees.” Regarding the NYC Transit ordinance, Menin explained that, “The law went into effect in January. Any company, business or nonprofit that has 20 or more employees must provide commuter benefits to their employees. So this is the use of pre-tax money, and it’s not costing the employer more.” Asked to talk about some of the disparities in healthcare seen across different neighborhoods, Mary Bassett, commissioner of the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, noted some unfortunate statistics. “This city is a city of neighborhoods, but it is also a city that is deeply segregated by income,” she said. “In Brownsville in Brooklyn, which is one of the poorest neighborhoods in our city, the life expectancy is 11 years shorter than in wealthy neighborhoods, like Murray Hill and the Financial District.” Johnson asked her, “What are some of the things that you are doing...to actually try and decrease these disparities?” “What we are doing,” Bassett explained, “is ensuring that we focus our most intensive programs — the ones that rely on people, because those are our most expensive programs — in the neighborhoods where the need is greatest. We have a program, for example, called Healthbox, which gives people an added amount of money that they can spend at farmers’ markets, and we’re working particularly in low-income neighborhoods…ensuring that we have been promoting access to health services in these communities.” In addition, some agencies have embraced user-friendly smartphone applications, which the offi-

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January 21, 2016

Byron Muñoz fielded questions about the Department of Buildings during the town hall.

PHOTOS BY TEQUILA MINSKY

Julie Menin, Consumer Affairs commissioner, handed out the agency’s report on gender pricing at the community resources fair.

cials promoted throughout the night. Reading from an audience member’s index card, Johnson asked Zachary Campbell, M.T.A. assistant director of government, to respond to a situation that many New Yorkers face, namely, when “you could wait forever and not have a bus show up, or a bus finally does show up and you see a sign at the front that says, ‘Next Bus Please.’ ” “All bus service is scheduled according to ridership of the route, and once we see an uptick in ridership, we will increase service accordingly,” Campbell said. “There are also other tools that customers can use that are really, really helpful. If you haven’t downloaded it, we really strongly suggest the Bus Time app — it has every bus in the city, in real time. You can also text the code at the stop if you do not have the smartphone.” Similarly, regarding a question on the inefficiency of calling 311 to report issues involving homeless people, Erin Eisenberg, program analyst of the Department of Homeless Services acknowledged the problem. “I completely understand,” she said. “I go through it myself. I’ve timed it — it’s probably about five minutes just to get through the call. The 311 app is really good. It takes 60 seconds to use the app. It’s GPS based. You scroll down and ‘Report a Homeless Person’ is one of the options on the home screen.” Other audience queries yielded less clear-cut solutions. For instance, Johnson asked Byron Muñoz, the intergovernmental and community liaison for the Department of Buildings, about how to get D.O.B. to further investigate a complaint, specifically if the complaint is closed because the inspector could not enter the building during his or her visit. “Because resources are limited, we go out twice, and we attempt two times to gain access, and if there is an illegal situation, we can bring that before a judge,” Muñoz said. “Otherwise, the complaint will be closed, and what you will do is then request for a

new inspection, and you can always follow up with my colleagues at the City Council.” “That is not very user-friendly,” Johnson said in a joking manner, to which Muñoz suggested that he could be contacted directly, then gave his office number and e-mail address to the audience. Another D.O.B.-related question asked why after-hours variances were being handed out “like candy.” “What do we do to ensure that people have real livability without being unable to sleep?” Johnson read aloud. “If you’re experiencing after-hours work that is not allowing you to get the rest that you need, you would contact me or anyone at our department, and we would look at modifying that after-hours variance to a reasonable hour,” Muñoz said. “After-hours variances are most often issued for one category, which is called ‘public safety.’ Public safety literally means traffic conditions,” he explained. “The developer or applicant is saying that, ‘Due to traffic conditions in the area, the density of it is making it unsafe for me to engage in the delivery or removal of debris during certain times of the day.’ ” After-hours work can take place any time after 6 p.m. and before 7 a.m. After a few more questions — on topics ranging from improving animal shelters to better managing overflowing street corner trash cans — Borough President Gale Brewer spoke. “I love constituent issues,” she said. “I’m one of these people who loves to sit in a district office and solve constituent problems. “Everyone in this audience,” Brewer noted, “has ideas that need to be addressed. You have public servants here on all sides of this podium who solve problems with us, and it’s really an honor to be here tonight.” Johnson thanked Brewer for crediting him as one of those problem solvers, then concluded the meeting by expressing gratitude for the spirit of collaboration between politicians, agency officials and constituents. “I say thank you,” he told the capacity crowd, “because, each and every day, I get to walk up the steps of City Hall, and I sort of pinch myself. I can’t believe that I get to engage in and do this kind of work. It’s an honor, a privilege…and I’m grateful that I get to do this kind of work with you.” TheVillager.com

A Starbucks tutorial RHYMES WITH CRAZY

MileaSubaru.com

BY LENORE SKENAZY

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lease pay attention. There will be a quiz. Starbucks recently took out a two-page, fold-out, super-slick ad in The New Yorker to educate us benighted, Folgers-swilling plebes on “The Art of Espresso and Milk.” Using a chart only slightly less complex than the periodic table of the elements (for instance, it did not list barium or neptunium), it showed a sort of timeline of coffee concoctions, starting with: Doppio: “Two shots of espresso. Straight.” Latte Macchiato: “Foamed whole milk marked with shots of espresso.” Flat White: “Sweet ristretto espresso shots finished with whole steamed milk.” Cappuccino: “A shot of espresso topped with a deep layer of foamed milk.” And, but of course: Caffé Latte — “A shot of espresso in steamed milk lightly topped with foam.” Got that? O.K., quick: Which drink dumps a shot of espresso into a cup of foamed barium? Ah, just yankin’ your chain. That’s at Dunkin’ Donuts. As for the Starbucks chart, I didn’t even give you all the concoctions on the list to prevent your head from exploding like an overheated doppio ristretto machine. (Didn’t Ristretto start out by making a boy out of wood? Or am I confused?) Anyway, after all this, the ad explained as if to a dim bulb: “Latte Macchiato: Foamed milk marked with espresso makes it intensely bold.” O.K. While “Flat White,” which is — as you’ll immediately recall — sweet ristretto espresso finished with blah blah blah is “rich & velvety.” Never mind that the pictures of these two ostensibly polar opposite drinks look about as unsimilar as those “Spot the difference!” puzzles you do while waiting for a Greyhound bus. Which perhaps explains why the ad is driving me to drink something stronger than a latte macchiato. (Or was it a caffee latte?) What I mean is: I’m drinking grain alcohol mixed with Yoo-hoo. You see, here’s a company that already asks us to fork over all our cash previously reserved for necessities like medicine and HBO just to drink some scorched caffeine in a pseudo-chatty place where everyone is actually on their phone, staring at their laptops and hogging TheVillager.com

Built on the Strength of Experience.

the seat across from them. And now, for us not to sound like idiots there — “I’d like a coffee regular, please” — we have to study gradations between coffee drinks more subtle than the ones between flatworms and tapeworms. (Do not go look these up! Or at least, do not click on “images.”) Starbucks has already amused itself by training us to say “tall,” when we mean “small” — tall being the littlest cup of coffee you can get without whittling yourself a mug on the spot. And some marketing exec earned her wings by convincing us that grande and venti are the two most sophisticated words in the world, even though these really mean, “I am a grand baboon,” and “Excuse me. My vent is open.” Other Starbucks words that you might not realize have direct English translations are: Caffé Espresso Frappuccino. Translation: Milkshake Vanilla Frappuccino. Translation: Vanilla Milkshake Caramel Flan Frappuccino. Translation: Gloppy Milkshake Caramel Ribbon Crunch Frappuccino. Translation: Crunchy Milkshake Double Chocolaty Chip Frappuccino. Translation: Shameless Milkshake Hazelnut Frappuccino. Translation: Milkshake for High-Income Squirrels Shaken Sweet Tea. Translation: Tea with sugar. Duh. And someone who isn’t you got paid (and healthcare, too!) to shake it. Caffé Americano, by the way, simply means coffee. Like the stuff you get at the donut cart, for $1, without having to learn a new language, or inquire as to how artisinally the cart guy plans to dissolve your sugar. And with the extra $4 you save, you can buy several hand-twisted, canesugar-dipped inzuppare ciambellas. You know, glazed donuts. Skenazy is a keynote speaker and the editor and founder of the book and blog “Free-Range Kids”

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More women come forward to tell of how Adam PURPLE continued from p. 1

daughter, asking that only her first name be used, and Lenore told The Villager their stories, and provided a cache of family letters and court papers, opening the window onto their father’s arrest for child molestation for attacking Dorothy when he was 37 and she was 12 and the family was living in Australia. Wilkie was convicted and went on to spend up to two years in jail, before being deported, apparently to California, where he spent a short while in Haight-Ashbury. Soon after, he re-emerged in New York City on the Lower East Side, where he reinvented himself as the mysterious yet charismatic hippie figure Adam Purple. Dressed in purple tie-dye and with a succession of two wives named Eve, he created his sprawling Garden of Eden on five lots, which — fertilized by horse manure he collected in Central Park — flourished until 1986, when the city bulldozed it to create affordable housing. In 1999, the city evicted him from the abandoned building on Forsyth St. he had been living in. Wilkie died this past September at age 84 while biking across the Williamsburg Bridge. The Villager article about the white-bearded “gardens godfather” was nothing less than a bombshell. As one stunned local activist reflected, “Your story is convincing. It’s the zeitgeist of the whole thing that harshes my buzz. I mean Adam Purple? It’s like he’s our Bill Cosby.” Now in their late 50s and early 60s, all four women say that only in late middle age have they finally gotten their lives and psyches together and, to the best of their abilities, recovered somewhat from the damage of their chaotic and abusive youths. Wilkie met his second wife, Romola, when their paths crossed by chance in Death Valley, according to Dorothy. Romola was on her way to a new job and was having car trouble and Wilkie, who happened to be driving by, helped her out. They soon married. But their blended family, including two daughters of Wilkie’s — Jenean and Lenore — and two of Romola’s — Dorothy and Diane — turned out to be a far cry from “The Brady Bunch.”

Diane’s story Diane, who now lives in California, said she remembers sailing three months aboard the Orsova to Sydney, Australia. “He hated America. I don’t know why,” she recalled of her stepfather. An Australian immigration entry document states Wilkie’s profession

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January 21, 2016

Romola with her daughters, Diane, left, and Dorothy, right, some years after Romola had divorced David Lloyd Wilkie (Adam Purple), who served up to two years in jail for attacking Dorothy.

as journalist and that he planned to work there as one. He had previously worked on a daily newspaper in York, Pennsylvania. However, in Australia, he wound up teaching English and lit-

ences was when a strange man suddenly showed up at the home. “I remember this one night. We woke up to someone in our house,” she said. “He had just gotten out of jail. He called over all the girls. He told me to get into bed with him. He was naked. I think he was a pedophile but I don’t know. “I said I had to go to the bathroom — we had outhouses then. I hid behind a water tank. He came out to look for me in the outhouse, but he didn’t see me. I feel I was very lucky that day.”

‘I wasn’t able to move. I was praying that it would be over.’ Dorothy

erature at the college level, according to the women. Before traveling to Australia, Diane said, they drove around the States and down to the Panama Canal and back up in a panel van, with pit stops at nudist camps along the way. In America, Wilkie had started brewing his own superpotent beer at home and this continued in Australia, she recalled. The sexual abuse had been going on in America but only increased Down Under. “The worst of it was in Australia, in Kurrajong Heights,” Diane said, referring to a town near Sydney. “He brewed his own beer — that was for his parties — and they said something about acid.” One of her most harrowing experi-

Mother’s abuse Another incident affected her even more deeply, however, because it involved something her own mother did to her during a party, she said. Three of the women say that Romola — who died last March — was complicit in the sexual abuse, though Dorothy strongly denies this. “They were always having parties. She took me in a room and said I had to suck between her legs,” Diane recalled of her mother. “He had told my mom if I didn’t do this he was going to rape me. I never trusted anyone again after that — I was afraid of everyone.” The little girls cursed like sailors, and Wilkie taught them to diss the

Dorothy today in a Facebook photo.

Australian national anthem. “We were raised like animals,” she said. “In school we would say, ‘God save the f---ing queen.’ That’s what he would have us say.”

‘He was nasty’ Jenean had told The Villager about wooden dildos that Wilkie carved for the little girls, and Diane confirmed this. “Yes, I remember all of that,” she said. “He was nasty. And he would read us stories and raunchy comic books. Everything that Jenean has told you is true.” After Romola had divorced Wilkie and he had gone to jail, she was short on cash and put Diane in a “boarding PURPLE continued on p. 9 TheVillager.com

Purple sexually abused them as young children PURPLE continued from p. 8

school,” after which she lived with foster parents. Wanting to flee what she felt was a toxic family situation, Diane wound up returning to America and living with relatives. “I just wanted away from her,” she said of her mother.

Dorothy’s story For her part, Dorothy recalls Wilkie being physically as well as sexually abusive. “I remember his army boots well,” she told The Villager. “We would climb a tree to get away from him. Oh yes, he would kick us with his army boots, steel-toed. That was discipline.” Similarly, her sister Diane said once she was supposed to water the beans outside but was watching cartoons on TV instead, and Wilkie picked her up and threw her down on her back. “I still have scoliosis because of it,” she said. “It hurt very bad after that for a long time. I’m getting chiropractic care for that right now.”

‘It was every night’ Regarding the sexual abuse, Dorothy, the oldest of the girls, said that, after reaching a certain age, she was regularly subjected to it by her stepfather. “For a few years there, it was every night,” she recalled. “Not assaulting me, I don’t know — but I suppose it was a kind of rape. He used his tongue. “He would do it every time he could, from the time I was six to the time I was 12. He was doing things to me — it wasn’t a two-way thing. “He would ‘inadvertently’ wake me up. I would be asleep, and he would want me to be asleep. I wasn’t able to move. I was praying that it would be over. To me, it felt like hours. He would just go on and on, all night. It felt like an eternity.” She, too, remembers the dildos. “Every time we were alone, he made us use those wooden things, all together,” she said. “It was sort of dehumanizing. He was a monster. He knew what he was doing. He was destroying four young minds. He was a horrible, horrible man.” As for why Wilkie did these things, Dorothy said, simply, “because he was insane.” Another time, she said, she was running away down the street for help and Wilkie chased after her in the car. “I thought he was going to run me over,” she said. “I think he thought I was going to tell.” TheVillager.com

PHOTO BY HARVEY WANG

Adam Purple in winter 1982, when he was 52, on his building’s fire escape overlooking his huge Garden of Eden. Purple lived at the bottom of the abandoned building. Four years later, the city bulldozed his garden to make way for public housing.

Sexual assaults Eventually, things escalated even further and one night Romola found Wilkie “molesting” Dorothy. Romola took her two daughters and left him, but eventually returned, after he promised he wouldn’t do it again. But he did, and she had him arrested. On Oct. 28, 1966, Romola wrote to Jenean and Lenore’s maternal grandparents, saying, in part: “Dorothy later complained to me that he still molested her when I left the house (Lloyd had Wednesdays off) and I asked him and each time he would pass over it lightly and the last time he said that she waited in bed for him to come to her, and that I had no business interfering in his affections towards her.” (His family referred to Wilkie as Lloyd when they were in Australia but David afterward.) The judge’s ruling in the subsequent custody hearing for the children refers to two instances of Wilkie assaulting Dorothy and then, immediately after each assault, committing

an “act of indecency upon the girl.” “I do know he raped me the last time, when I was 12 years old,” she told The Villager. Asked if she felt there was anything at all good about Wilkie, Dorothy answered, “No, he was 100 percent evil and insane.” However, she stands firmly behind her mom.

‘We were raised like animals.’ Diane

“I believe that my mother was forced to do things that she wouldn’t normally do,” she said. “She was a very devout woman. Perhaps he had given her drugs. She fought him tooth and nail.” Dorothy said she doesn’t remember the “vulgar placard” that the judge at the custody hearing said witnesses testified having seen in the Wilkies’ home. Jenean recalled

it as a poster of God sodomizing Uncle Sam, with the slogan “One nation under God.” Dorothy said it certainly fits. “I would say so… He just wanted to drop the bomb on America,” she said.

Decadent decor As for the house’s other decor, she recalled, “His library consisted of two whole bookshelves of Sexology magazines, right from the floor to the ceiling. It is all about sex and what to do,” she said of the explicit publication, which ceased publishing in the late 1960s. “And the Kama Sutra — we were made to read that. Of course we didn’t understand it, we were children.” Purple also did give them the Classics Illustrated comics series — comic book adaptations of literary classics — which she enjoyed, which was about the only good thing she could say about him. As for how Wilkie later came by his Adam Purple moniker and why his wives in New York City were named Eve, Dorothy thinks it’s because at one point back in the States Wilkie had been friends with a couple next door, Adam and Eva, who were into psychedelic drugs. She also believes PURPLE continued on p. 10 January 21, 2016

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Purple sex-abuse survivors have spent their He also showed her a purple robe that he had worn in court after police busted him with a massive crop of pot in his Lower East Side garden. Over the course of her two visits, she met both the first and second Eve, and liked them both, though felt Eve No. 2 was “more mature.” Each of the four young girls was affected differently by their abusive childhood environment, she said. Of them all, Lenore seems to have the best memories of her youth. “I was the youngest one, it affected me differently,” she said. “Diane was shy and awkward. Dorothy was sleek and sensual. Jenean was reserved, withdrawn. I was just a kid, a baby. I was the youngest, I was his favorite. He bounced me on his knee, carried me on his shoulders. He’d be playing on his guitar and smoking his pipe and winked at me. I was his little girl. We all sang folk songs. Everyone played instruments except me. It was so much fun. We were cultured.”

PURPLE continued from p. 9

that in Australia Wilkie was synthesizing LSD with his students at the school where he taught.

Lenore’s story As for Lenore, her older sister, Jenean, had described her as the “most damaged” of all the girls. Lenore had shared her memories of her father in a five-page handwritten letter to The Villager, parts of which were published three weeks ago in “The dark side of Purple.” Contacted by The Villager for this follow-up article, Lenore said she wasn’t sure at first if she wanted to give an interview, but ultimately decided to do it and get it all off her chest. Unique among her sisters and stepsisters, Lenore actually lived with her father during two separate stints on the Lower East Side after he had had become Adam Purple. In fact, Wilkie sent Eve to find Lenore at a home for wayward girls in South Dakota and bring her back to New York to live with him. Lenore had actually come to New York a year earlier to try to find him, without success. “I was more sexually deviant, in a bad way. It would be very personal to tell my story,” Lenore told The Villager at the outset. By “deviant,” she was referring to her own experiences after she lived with her father. However, her father’s apparent desires upon his youngest daughter were clearly deviant — as in the ultimate taboo, full-on incest — in her view.

Made her get IUD “My father got me an IUD and it made me sterile,” she said. “I’m sure he wanted to have sex with me. I was very naive and only 16 and only had had sex twice. He didn’t want me to get pregnant. He took me to a doctor with a fake ID that said I was 21.” Dorothy and Diane both told The Villager that Lenore had related to them how Wilkie made her get the intrauterine device and how it had left her sterile. In part of her letter to The Villager that was published in “The dark side of Purple,” Lenore wrote, “So I spent the first part of the summer of my 16th year working in David’s garden and sleeping in Adam and Eve’s bed, not sleeping while they screwed and hoping they didn’t ask me to join in.” Asked last week if Wilkie ever did have sex with her back then, she said, “No!” There wasn’t much discussion before Wilkie, two months after her arrival, took Lenore to get the birth-control device. “He asked me if I wanted it,” she recalled. “I said, ‘I guess so.’ I didn’t know it could damage you. He probably lost out on the whole deal because he paid the doctor and he got no sex with me.” Having never given birth, it was extremely painful for her to have her cervix dilated to insert the IUD — but her father came prepared. “He gave me some smoke that was kick-ass!” she said. “It soothed my pain. I don’t know where he got it, because his homegrown stuff was good but not that good.”

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January 21, 2016

Kids’ sex shows

Adam Purple a.k.a. David Lloyd Wilkie on his folding bike outside the Time’s Up headquarters in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. For his last couple of years, Wilkie lived in a small room at the environmental and cycling group’s space. He died in September of heart failure while biking on the Williamsburg Bridge, possibly returning from grocery shopping in the East Village.

‘We had to play with ourselves and each other and imitate adult sexual acts.’ Lenore

Good garden memories Lenore said she loved the Garden of Eden. Her main job was to clear the weeds around its brick pathways. “He couldn’t get rid of them because he didn’t want to use chemicals,” she said. “He s--t in a bowl with newspaper in it and buried it under blackberry bushes because that’s a plant you could do that to and could eat it,” she recalled of Purple’s famed “night soil.”

However, in “The dark side of Purple,” Jenean had said the girls “were trained to perform.” She didn’t elaborate much, though — but Lenore did. The “performances” happened at the parties that Wilkie and Romola frequently threw, up to several times a week, as the naked prepubescent girls acted out X-rated skits that Wilkie directed. “Jenean has blocked this out,” Lenore said. “There would be a bed in the living room and we would have to play with ourselves and each other and imitate adult sexual acts. ‘Can you do this?’ ‘Can you do that?’ Like two of us at a time. ‘You two… . ’ Diane and Jenean. Dorothy and me. Me and Jenean. Dorothy and Diane. All different combinations. Never boring,” she quipped. “We pretended to [have sex]. We weren’t stupid. We went along with it as long as we had to. Like lesbian sex — putting crotches together. You just play like an adult and pretend you’re in love. We were completely brainwashed.” The guests would watch the kids’ show, but not everyone would. “Oh, just some of ’em,” Lenore recalled. “Some of ’em would be drinking and talking — it was just like an attraction at a bar.” Similarly, though less evocatively, Diane said the girls “played with themselves” at the parties. But Dorothy said she doesn’t remember the sexual skits, noting, “A lot of what went on was blocked by my young mind.” The girls didn’t have to strip off their clothes because they were usually already naked anyway. Romola often went around topless in the Australian heat, Lenore said. “We lived naked most of our life,” she said. “One day I realized I was naked when a neighbor boy came by. I hid behind a little scrub bush.” Like Diane, she recalled the family hitting the nudist camps before going to Australia. “We’re used to be naked, it was part of our upbringing,” she said. “We ate lean,” she added. “We lived on sauerkraut and corned beef, no toys, nothing — barely clothes.” PURPLE continued on p. 11

TheVillager.com

lives suffering and recovering from the effects PURPLE continued from p. 10

‘Play with your toys’ Lenore remembers the dildos, too. However, these were not used in the erotic skits the children had to perform. “Those were for his own private measurements,” she said, “so he would know when we were big enough for him to enter us. That’s why Dorothy told me to stop doing it. I’ll never forget her telling me that.” They would only use the dildos in the basement, up to “several times a week, if we wanted to,” she said. Wilkie called them their toys. “He’d say, ‘Why don’t you go play with your toys?’ He would watch a lot.” In addition, Lenore and Jenean both recall their father making them watch him pee. Lenore noted this behavior is known as “grooming,” in which the predator conditions the victim. In fact, all of these behaviors — from pressuring a child to engage in sexual activities, indecent exposure of the genitals to a child, displaying pornography to a child, actual sexual contact with a child and viewing of the child’s genitalia — are textbook examples of sexual abuse.

Pre-Purple memories Lenore also remembers when Wilkie was on trial in Australia for attacking Dorothy, and how she cried because she was too young to attend. Both of his daughters recall how the family used to move, frequently and suddenly. Lenore said, even as a young girl, she figured this was because he had either gotten into trouble for some sexual or other incident or was running away from a girlfriend. Again, at least for Lenore, there were also some good memories mixed in with those of the chaotic sexual abuse. “He came home with an electric banana that he made in Australia, with lights that flashed in different times,” she said. “It was beautiful. It didn’t really look like a banana, it was like a tube.” She, too, remembers his high-octane beer, made in garbage cans, with sugar and yeast, and heated by light bulbs.

Curious about dad As for why she sought out her father after his release from prison, she said, “I was curious what he was like. Everybody had told Jenean and me, don’t try to find him, don’t talk to him.” It didn’t freak her out to see her former college professor father now as a longhaired hippie bedecked all in purple. “When I came to New York, I just accepted him,” she said. However, not long after she got the IUD, she left Wilkie because he wasn’t feeding her enough. The vegan diet Wilkie and Eve ate was too spartan for her. “In the morning, they would have a mung beansprout shake — with banana, whatever they had left over — and brewer’s yeast,” she recalled. “For lunch, they’d have like cantaloupe or salad or bread and some cheese. I split from him because I had to get something to eat.” TheVillager.com

PHOTO BY LINCOLN ANDERSON

A van parked on Avenue A last week sporting a message from September praising Adam Purple as the godfather of urban gardening and alerting people to his memorial at La Plaza Cultural in the East Village. None of his family members attended the memorial.

From Purple to trouble She wandered over to Washington Square, where she met a man who offered her a joint. It turned out, though, he was a pimp. “He was on the prowl,” she said. At first, she actually thought the idea didn’t sound too bad. “I thought, I liked sex and I liked money,” she said. But it soon became a nightmare and she found herself in the Bronx working as a prostitute that fall and winter. “The guy beat the s--t out of me a few times,” she recalled. “It was horrible, guns and chains. Yeah, I’ve seen it all, I haven’t done it all. He shaved my head. I got away, I went to a Krishna temple in Brooklyn.” She left the city, but returned a few years later, again at first living with her father on Forsyth St. After a painting job fell through, she found herself working as a prostitute again to make money. “When I came back at 19, I was walking the streets,” she said. “I wasn’t going to go to a massage parlor. “He was sort of a grouch the second time,” she recalled. “The first time he was just a pervert.” This time around, he complained about her cigarette smoking. “I rolled my own from a Drum pouch,” she said. “He used to smoke a pipe but quit. He was a macrobiotic vegetarian Zen Buddhist, so he didn’t like the tobacco in his pure peace.” Again, she left him, but once more ran into trouble. “I was on the streets,” she recalled. “These five

guys surrounded me with five guns. They drugged me with a mind-suggestive drug and made me do a triple-X-rated blackmarket film. They said, ‘You wanna make $25,000?’ I never got anything. Afterward, they dumped me in a bathroom in Grand Central.”

Homeless years For 24 years, starting at 16, Lenore was homeless. “I would sleep anywhere — side of the road, abandoned building, under a bridge, out in the woods,” she said. She sometimes would hang out with the Rainbow Family and also the STP (Sagittarius, Pisces, Taurus) Family, the latter sort of the forerunners to today’s train-hopping “crusty travelers.” “The STP was like the beginning of all that,” she said. Her lifestyle continued this way — homeless, prostitution off and on — until age 40, when she finally found a good program for the homeless in Montana, where she now lives in an apartment. “That’s when I got off the streets,” she said. Asked if she felt being raised in a hypersexualized environment — where the tots were “trained how to give pleasure to a man” — led her to become a sex worker, she said, “I do, definitely.”

‘Stepmother was guilty’ She also feels Romola was even more guilty than her husband, simply because Wilkie was so comPURPLE continued on p. 26 January 21, 2016

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Toledano ’12 assault conviction worries tenants TOLEDANO continued from p. 1

causing bodily injury less than four years ago, and once was charged with trying to swindle a bank out of hundreds of dollars, according to New Jersey court records and police reports. In a 2012 confrontation that landed two teenagers in the hospital, Toledano allegedly beat the two youths with what police reports alternatively describe as a “crowbar,” “a branch” and “a metal or wood object approximately two and a half feet long.” The violent assault earned Toledano, who was then a realtor, two years of probation. And in a separate case three years earlier, Toledano was charged with defrauding TD Bank of $500 in a scheme involving multiple withdrawals from three different banks. Only 19 years old at the time of that earlier incident, he was charged with one count of theft by deception and entered into a pretrial intervention program — which provides defendants, often firsttime offenders, with an alternative to traditional prosecution. The complaint was ultimately dismissed in 2012. A spokesman for Toledano and his company, Brookhill Properties, dismissed any discussion of his client’s criminal record as “character assassination.” “These alleged incidents from years ago have absolutely nothing to do with Brookhill Properties or the company’s conduct as a landlord,” he wrote in a statement. But to many of Toledano’s tenants, who have joined together to fight back against their new landlord’s practices, the convictions merely affirm the negative impression they already have. “It’s pretty crazy who we’re dealing with,” said Ben Lebovitz, a tenant at one Toledano-owned property, 97 Second Ave., who successfully fought off an effort to evict him last year. “How does it feel that that guy is my landlord? It’s scary,” he said. “Maybe I’m just paranoid, but I definitely creep around corners when I walk down my stairs and look who’s waiting outside my building,” Lebovitz said. “Although now he apparently prefers using lawsuits instead of crowbars,” he added. Both the state attorney general and the state’s Tenant Protection Unit, or T.P.U., are currently investigating Toledano and the management company he hired and later fired, Goldmark Properties, on charges of tenant harassment. The probes came after residents of one of his buildings, 444 E. 13th St., took Toledano to court over alleged attempts to drive them out of their rent-regulated homes through illegal construction and persistent threats and buyout offers. Representatives for the attorney general’s office as well as the state Department of Homes and Community Renewal, the agency that oversees the T.P.U., would not comment on the investigations because they are ongoing. Meanwhile, though, tenants claim that the harassment isn’t letting up. In a letter sent to Toledano on Jan. 5, tenants urged their landlord to stop serving them with notices to vacate and holdover lawsuits, threatening to shut off their heat and hot water, pressuring them to accept buyout offers and following them “in and around their buildings, after hours, on the street, and close to where they live.” The letter was signed by the Toledano Tenants

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January 21, 2016

Raphael Toledano was probably not smiling like this when he was arrested for aggravated assault a few years ago in his hometown in New Jersey.

Coalition, a group that meets once a month and includes representatives from many of the buildings owned by the investor. “Our work is essentially just trying to keep people from taking crappy buyout offers and knowing their rights,” said Lebovitz, who now informs other tenants of their rights through the coalition.

‘How does it feel that that guy is my landlord? It’s scary.’ Ben Lebovitz

Nina D’Alessandro, who started the group last July after complaints first started to amass, said it now includes 19 different buildings across the East Village and Chelsea. She has lived at 231 E. Fifth St., which Toledano owns, since 1978. “It’s very sad and disturbing news,” D’Alessandro said of the landlord’s prior conviction. “It really makes one very uneasy to be at the hands of somebody like this.” In police reports obtained by The Villager, Toledano is described as someone who was known to

the authorities in his hometown of Lakewood, N.J. According to the police report in the assault case, which occurred on April 9, 2012, the victims testified that Toledano and two other men showed up at the victims’ house in a black Lexus with New York license plates. Toledano then got out of the car and attacked two of the four boys, ages 16 and 17, on the front lawn, according to the report. “Toledano had the crow-bar and he [and a fellow attacker] chased [the victims] towards the house attacking them along the way, and yelling at them ‘Don’t talk to my sister! Don’t be messing with her!’ ” the police report said. One of the officers who responded to the incident and arrived after the attackers had already left, described in his report seeing “a large amount of blood on the front door as well as a trail of blood on the floor.” “I observed a male party sitting on the couch, with what appeared to be a large gash on the top of his head,” the officer wrote. “I asked the male who did this, he responded Ralphie Toledano [sic] hit him with what he thought was a crowbar.” The victims were treated at a nearby hospital. One of them had at least two separate head wounds that had to be stapled, according to the report, and the other one reportedly suffered a broken jaw, which hospital staff said would require surgery. Police later searched the car Toledano was driving at the time of his arrest later that same night, and found a blood-smeared Blackberry phone belonging to one of the victims, according to the report. The incident, together with his previous run-in with the law, paint a picture that is alarming to those that have to deal with Toledano today. Stephanie Rudolph, a lawyer at the Urban Justice Center who currently represents the tenants of nine apartments at 444 E. 13th St., said the conviction raises serious concerns for her clients. “There were a lot of really scary threats made at 444 E. 13th St. by agents allegedly hired by Mr. Toledano,” she said. “I think that it’s particularly worrying to now learn that Mr. Toledano himself has a violent criminal past.” In their lawsuit against Toledano, Rudolph’s clients claim that they were threatened with losing their heat and hot water, as well as having their belongings thrown out into the street and the police called on them. Court papers in the E. 13th St. case also show that the landlord claimed in his defense that the “relocation specialists” that allegedly harassed tenants at the buildings were not employed by Toledano and therefore outside of his control. “It’s definitely something that has been concerning to my clients,” David Frazer, a lawyer who represents three East Village tenants in active court cases against Toledano, said of the assault conviction. “Particularly when you couple that with his persistence, where people come home and there are multiple messages from him on their answering machines or cell phones,” he added. Regarding accusations of harassment, the Brookhill spokesperson insisted that Toledano and his employees treat every tenant with respect. “These baseless accusations are false and do not reflect or represent the feelings of the tenants we interact with on a daily basis,” he said. “Over the course of the next year, we will continue ensuring that all of our tenants’ needs are met.” TheVillager.com

POLICE BLOTTER

17 8th Avenue (between 12th and Jane) Surveillance-camera images released by police of the two alleged Jonty Jacobs robbers.

Police released this surveillance-camera image of the suspect in the Jan. 16 slashing on E. Sixth St.

E. Sixth St. slashing

On Sat., Jan. 16, at 4:30 p.m., a man was assaulted and slashed by a stranger as he walked on E. Sixth St., police said. The unknown man knocked the victim to the ground and cut him with an unknown object. The victim suffered a large laceration to the right side of his face and a small laceration to his back. The suspect is described as a male Asian, 20 to 30 years old, 5 feet 6 inches tall and weighing around 150 pounds, who was last seen wearing a black waist-length jacket, black skull cap, black pants and brown boots. Anyone with information is asked to call the Police Department’s Crime Stoppers Hotline, at 800-577-TIPS. Tips can also be submitted by logging onto the Crime Stoppers Web site, www.nypdcrimestoppers.com, or by texting them to 274637(CRIMES) and then entering TIP577.

The suspect is described as last seen wearing a dark winter jacket and a dark winter hat. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Police Department’s Crime Stoppers Hotline.

Jonty job On Thurs., Jan. 14, at 4:20 p.m., two individuals entered Jonty Jacobs — a store selling South African biltong (dried beef) and other meat products — at 114 Christopher St., approached the salesperson and simulated a gun, police said. The men demanded money, then removed $200 and a Dell laptop computer before fleeing westbound on

Christopher St. There were no reported injuries. The first suspect is described as 25, about 5 feet 7 inches tall, weighing 140 pounds, with brown eyes and short black close-cut hair. He was last seen wearing a black-and-gray hooded ski jacket, blue jeans and black sneakers. The second suspect is also described as 25, about 5 feet 10 inches tall, weighing 220 pounds, with brown eyes and black hair. He was last seen wearing a black hooded ski jacket, black jeans, a black ski cap and multicolored sneakers. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Police Department’s Crime Stoppers Hotline.

www.leftbankbooksny.com leftbankbooksny@yahoo.com instagram @leftbankbooksny

212.924.5638

Lincoln Anderson

E.V. elevator robbery On Thurs., Jan. 14, around 10:45 p.m., a man approached a 27-yearold woman inside of an elevator of a building in the vicinity of E. 12th St. and Third Ave., police said. The suspect simulated a firearm and demanded money from the victim. He fled on foot with $150. The victim was not injured. TheVillager.com

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January 21, 2016

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PHOTOS BY TEQUILA MINSKY

Clayton Patterson.

Flo Fox.

Taking it to — and from — the streets Clayton Patterson and Flo Fox were at the opening of the “NYC Streets Then and Now” photography exhibition at Salomon Arts Gallery, at 83 Leonard St., in Tribeca last Thursday evening. Lower East Side documentarian Patterson and Chelsea’s Fox are among the show’s featured photographers. The images were mostly black and white. The place was packed, with a line stretching halfway down Leonard St. to the gallery entrance. The “then” photographers included Patterson, who is a contributor to The Villager, Fox, Robert Herman, Sue Kwon, Martha Cooper and Janette Beckman. The “now” photographers featured Khalik Allah, Destiny Mata, Alberto Vargas, Aymann Ismail, Jessica Lehrman and Luis Santana, who co-curated the show with Cindy Caroli. The mostly youthful crowd sat on the polished floor as Patterson, Cooper, Herman and Beckman fielded questions and related their experiences of shooting on the street posed by photo editor Stella Kramer and the crowd. The show runs through Jan. 21.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Purple tried to jump in To The Editor: Re “The dark side of Purple” (news article, Dec. 31): I remember hanging out with Adam Purple and his entourage. I, too, greatly respected him for the whole environmental consciousness thing. I hate to say it, but I can see the whole pervert thing. A bunch of us were hanging out at his place, I guess

IRA BLUTREICH

on the Lower East Side. I was 15 and the young lady I was with was like 14. We were under some blankets and started having sex. He just came over and tried to jump right in. We weren’t into it and it made us feel really uncomfortable. Still, I appreciate all the good things he did and all the peace and love and whatnot. Still, it seems he never felt any remorse or felt like he had done any wrong. Cristofer Lentsch

MMA is empowering To The Editor: Re “We need to go to the mat vs. ultimate fighting” (talking point, by Deborah Glick, Jan. 7): Assemblymember Glick’s opinion is biased and naive at best. Mixed Martial Arts is nothing new. New York State allows all the elements of MMA and other combat sports to exist within it statutes — yet when all those are combined, you have a problem? Her opinion is biased, hypocritical and probably politically, i.e. financially, driven. This writer is obviously a person who has never faced the reality of physical adversity, either in being physically attacked or bullied. The practice of MMA is empowering. It makes people become stronger by putting them face to face with the physical adversity of an attack by another human being and teaches them to persevere and learn from the experience. The martial arts culture that generates this sport is often a lifesaving one, with thousands of members in New York alone. Individuals literally become better people, with better egos, from this culture. I myself was a horrible teenager, insecure and abusive, before I found this sport. This sport gave me confidence, which made me kinder, and also gave me lifelong relationships. This sport and this culture have saved multiple lives from spiritual mediocrity by combining mind, body and spirit, by dealing with the reality of fighting — a reality that has been a part of humanity from the beginning. LETTERS continued on p. 16

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January 21, 2016

TheVillager.com

We need universal healthcare in New York State TALKING POINT BY KIM BEHRENS RN

A

s an emergency room nurse, I am confronted daily with patients whose lives are devastated by inadequate health insurance. In one memorable example, last year I approached a middle-aged woman with advanced ovarian cancer as she sobbed inconsolably on her stretcher. “Where is your pain?” I asked. In response she cried, “I can’t stay here anymore. Because I’ve been so sick I haven’t been able to work, and

from seeking healthcare just because we don’t have the money to cover the co-pays or the deductibles. The solution? In 2015 the New York State Assembly passed with a huge majority the New York Health Act (A.5062), a bill that would provide healthcare for every resident via a single public fund, a.k.a. a single-payer healthcare system. This bill has received no attention from the press. The bill now faces an uphill battle in the state Senate (S.3525), but more and more doctors, nurses, social workers, small business owners and patients realize we need this. Given our current political climate, passage of a universal healthcare system is daunting as the Republicans vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act nearly every day. However, the A.C.A. stipulates that a state can move to a universal healthcare system as long as it meets certain criteria: It must cover at least as many people, it cannot cost more to the government, and it must offer the minimum benefit package stipulated in the A.C.A. While guaranteeing access to healthcare for all residents, New York Health provides for a single-payer payment mechanism, similar to those used successfully in all other industrialized countries. People who have needed medical care while visiting either Canada or Western Europe appreciate the timely, proficient and compassionate care they have received in those countries. The New York Health Act would establish a fund designed solely to facilitate the flow of money needed for healthcare. We all would pay into it according to our ability and there would be enough funds to cover the healthcare bill when it’s our time to use healthcare services. Projections show that 98 percent of New Yorkers would save money under this method of financing. Hospitals and physicians would continue to operate privately. There would be no “networks” limiting which providers you could see; patients would be free to select their own physicians and hospitals. Opponents of the plan often say frivolously, “We can’t afford it.” The truth is we cannot afford not to have it. Other countries with economies comparable to ours have universal coverage yet pay half as much per person as we pay for healthcare in the United States. Roughly 30 percent of our healthcare dollars are consumed by administrative costs. The recent revelation that one

pharmaceutical company (Turing) has arbitrarily increased the retail cost of its generic drug (Daraprim) 5,000 percent again demonstrates the abuses of the pharmaceutical and insurance industries that profit exorbitantly from the current healthcare system. This price gouging would be eliminated in a single-payer system because the government would be able to negotiate the cost for bulk purchasing. New York State has a long legacy of progressive change. After World War I, New York crafted and implemented

unique socially progressive legislation strengthening workers’ compensation and child and women’s labor laws. These laws served as a template for the New Deal to follow. Today, New York Health would immediately benefit New Yorkers and again foreshadow future progressive national legislation as New York would continue to lead the way. Behrens is an emergency room nurse in New York City and a board member, New York Metro Chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program

All other industrialized countries have a singlepayer mechanism.

now my health insurance ran out and I can’t pay for the extension, and I don’t want my son to drop out of college. “Please don’t do anything for me,” she added, “because I won’t be able to pay for it, I have to go back to Hungary,” a country I recognized as having a universal healthcare system. President Obama has delivered a healthcare plan — the Affordable Care Act, or A.C.A. — that has expanded the distribution of healthcare to many but has failed to limit rising costs. Thirty million Americans remain uninsured. The requirements that insurance companies can neither refuse coverage to those with pre-existing conditions nor set an upper limit upon reimbursement for any given condition represent progress. Nothing in the A.C.A., however, restricts the insurance industry from continuously raising premiums to maintain soaring profits. The average deductible on all plans, $1,077 in 2015, discourages many from seeking care. The relentless merger of insurance company conglomerates lessens the possibility that competition will limit future cost escalations. We need to build the political will to change the current system to one that doesn’t bankrupt us just because we are unlucky enough to get sick; a system that doesn’t discourage us TheVillager.com

PHOTO BY TEQUILA MINSKY

A Bowie Bleecker oddity

A photo of a young, shaggy-haired David Bowie — looking a lot different than his later incarnations as Ziggy Stardust and the Thin White Duke — in the window at Bleecker Street Records on W. Fourth St. January 21, 2016

15

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Continued from p. 14

Assemblymember Glick sounds like someone who wants to keep people docile and afraid. People are empowered by this sport on a personal basis day in and day out. Maybe Glick should learn MMA herself, so she can be personally empowered — and feel what it is like to become a physically, mentally and spiritually stronger person than she is today. Gabriel Toribio

Natas’s cousin speaks out To The Editor: Re “Crusty punk whose pit bull terrorized East Village is dead” (news article, Sept. 3): To Google my cousin’s name, David McKee, and see this article was very hurtful. I would like to apologize to the people and animals who were hurt by David and his dog, Jax. And I do believe that, as well as David is dead, so is his dog. I do not want to make excuses for David’s actions or those of the dog because I could not imagine how I would feel if it was myself or one of my children who was hurt. At the same time, finding this article and seeing a family member called “crusty” was a painful shot to my gut, and I’m thinking that maybe if roles were reversed, the person writing this would feel the same way if it was his family. I understand it is a generalized name for a certain group of people but I had to read the article a few times before I could calm myself and understand that. David was a sad person and was not homeless by choice. He was abandoned at months old by his mother and my aunt. His father’s mother, David’s grandmother, raised him. His father was killed in prison and his grandmother died when he was 17, leaving him homeless. Growing up, David did not have much. My aunt was old and sick and David was a handful. He also had many emotional problems dealing with abandonment. David made stupid decisions and did many stupid things. I’m sorry — but who hasn’t? Do we live in a perfect world? His actions maybe have inadvertently hurt others but he did not do so intentionally. I also just want to add, if it makes anyone feel better: When there was a memorial for my cousin, I let two “traveler” friends of his whom I did not know and their pit bull stay at my home overnight. My own dog ended up being attacked! The world needs kindness and understanding and not so much negativity. Again, I am sorry to anyone my cousin hurt either directly or indirectly.

which is officiated by New York’s Bravest, the Fire Department, who enact the attempt to rescue the fire victims. In the actual fire, the ladders did not reach the eighth floor. It is a respectful and solemn annual anniversary event, usually attended by the mayor and local politicians and many other dignitaries. For this landmarked university building located in a residential area, the respect shown to honor the victims of this tragedy for all these years has been ongoing and appropriate. In 2016, the anniversary occurs on Good Friday, so best to verify the date of the event if you are planning to attend. Mary Johnson

An open and fair election To The Editor: Re “Yuh-Line Niou is a new contender for Silver’s ex-seat” (news article, Dec. 17): Kudos to Lincoln Anderson and The Villager for taking an interest in the nominating process to fill the seat vacated by Sheldon Silver. Not only did we learn about Yuh-Line Niou, but the article sparked healthy democratic debate. I’m a grassroots candidate for the vacated Assembly seat. I don’t belong to any political club. With community support, I’m one of the only persons that challenged Mr. Silver in a Democratic primary. Although several candidates are competing for the vacant Assembly seat — which is a good thing — I’m the candidate most deserving of community support. However, the community is locked out of the nominating process to fill this empty seat and cannot make their voices heard until the September primary. Considering the Assembly seat was vacated as a result of political corruption, the Democratic County Committee should go to extra lengths to demonstrate an “open and fair” nominating process. However, the County Committee is preventing candidates from participating in the nominating process. The deck is stacked for the district leaders, who appoint persons to vacant County Committee seats. I’ve lived in this community for 45 years and consider myself part of the “new breed” of political activists — that’s assuming that you define new breed as putting the community before yourself,

being environmentally committed, a supporter of individual rights and strongly anti-corruption. It’s difficult for community grassroots candidates to command media attention because the nominating process favors political clubs — not the community. Despite the above criticisms, I like both Jenifer Rajkumar and Yuh-Line Niou as candidates. I hope if I’m elected, they will become part of my widespread coalition to better our community. John Bal

Serious sidewalk hazard To The Editor: Over the last few weeks, I have seen more and more of those metal cellar doors left wide open for extended periods of time. Usually, they have a red rubber cone in front of them as the only protection to prevent someone from falling into the cellar from the street. And sometimes even a rubber cone isn’t there. Prior to this, the only time I had seen one open was if someone was going up or down doing work. I could go a year without seeing even that. Now I see an open cellar door two, three, four, five times a day. And they are not always the same ones. Clearly, there has been some kind of change. I find this terrifyingly dangerous, a catastrophe waiting to happen. I fall a lot, so this is particularly unsettling to me. Also I can see how someone not paying attention for a second could fall into one of these openings, or bump up against the door itself, which is dangerous enough — or trip over something, or slip on the ice, or simply not see it, or be jostled in the street by accident. I don’t know why this has started to happen so often. But clearly something new and very dangerous is going on. What can be done to stop it? Robert Roth

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.

Lisa Hasenpat

Honoring Triangle Fire victims To The Editor: Re “What took so long?” (letter, by Joseph Hanania, Jan. 14): Perhaps he is unaware that memorial plaques are affixed to the building and that there is an announced major commemoration for the victims of this tragic fire annually on its March 25 anniversary,

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January 21, 2016

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So much more than killing monsters Narrative video games of note in 2016

BY CHARLES BATTERSBY

V

ideo games are still behind other media when it comes to being respected as a form of narrative art — but there are designers who excel at creating story-driven interactive experiences which allow players to explore richly detailed worlds, speak with compelling characters, and learn the histories of fictional cultures. Accompanying this year’s usual new crop of mindless shooters, monster-killers, and phone-tapping time wasters will be games whose stories will engross players in their worlds.

THE LAST GUARDIAN Release Date: TBA, 2016

Team Ico is a developer that has made cult hits like “Ico” and “Shadow of the Colossus” by employing non-verbal narrative storytelling. Their characters rarely speak — and when they do, it is in inhuman languages, or just saying each other’s names. “Ico” and “Colossus” told tales of ruined kingdoms, heroic sacrifice, and the selfish refusal to let a loved one pass on — all without directly saying anything. Players had to observe their surroundings, and extrapolate the history of these characters and their worlds. In Team Ico’s next game, “The Last Guardian,” players control a human boy who befriends Trico — a giant bird/dog/cat monster. The two of them will need each other’s help to escape a crumbling castle. Because Trico is a giant animal that doesn’t speak, players will have to figure out how to give him instructions, and read his body language to guess what he wants. The game has no definite reTheVillager.com

IMAGE SOURCE: SONY

The giant chimeric creature Trico is your companion in “The Last Guardian,” which features narrative storytelling not driven by dialogue.

lease date, but is coming sometime in 2016. In the meantime, the developer’s older games are available on PlayStation 2 and 3.

DEUS EX: MANKIND DIVIDED Release Date: August, 2016

The first game in this series arrived in 2000, before futuristic dystopias were all the rage, and it was ominously prophetic about the 21st century. Players took control of a cybernetically-augmented government agent who had to unravel a global spider web of conspiracies. What sets the “Deus Ex” franchise apart from the crowd is that

almost any obstacle can be circumvented through stealth, hacking, negotiation, or non-lethal weapons. Of course, if players want to shoot their way through life, they can do that too. The fourth game in the series, “Deus Ex: Mankind Divided,” will focus on how cybernectically-augmented people (“Augs”) are being discriminated against by the rest of humanity. Like the best of science fiction, the story is a metaphor for real world issues, with Augs standing in for any oppressed group. “Mankind Divided” is a direct sequel to the last game, “Human Revolution.” The series, thus far, still holds up, and is highly recommended for cyberpunk and conspiracy enthusiasts.

MASS EFFECT: ANDROMEDA Release Date: Fall, 2016

“Mass Effect” is a science fiction series that has three prior games. The original trilogy is a masterwork of galaxy-spanning storytelling, during which players guide a single character through hundreds of hours of adventures. What makes this trilogy particularly engrossing is that players shape the story by deciding what their character will do at certain points in the game, and these decisions carry over through each game in the series. Friends and GAMES continued on p.18 January 21, 2016

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Intriguing stories engross gamers in other worlds

IMAGE SOURCE: MICROSOFT

The time control on display here is a major component of “Quantum Break,” in which players battle futuristic baddies. GAMES continued from p. 17

lovers can die along the way, and galactic politics can shift based on what the player chooses to do. This year, fans are getting another installment in the series. The details are being kept secret, but it is known that this game introduces a new playable protagonist. The previous games created a vast galaxy full of alien civ-

ilizations, each with their own history and culture, so there is a great deal left to explore out there. “Mass Effect: Andromeda” is a new direction for the franchise, but the team at Bioware has rarely made missteps, so it’s a title to look out for. Science fiction fans who haven’t tried the older “Mass Effect” games should leap into the trilogy now, to be caught up in time for the fall release of “Andromeda.”

THE NEW SOUND OF

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

QUANTUM BREAK Release Date: April 2016, exclusively for Xbox One

Plenty of video games have heroes who can control time, but Remedy Entertainment popularized this effect with “Max Payne,” a third-person shooter game. Released in 2001, it was about an ex-cop who would enter a stylish slow-motion mode during gunfights. Aside from the “bullet time” effect, “Max Payne” also has an excellent story, with a hard-boiled narrative delivered by its surprisingly eloquent killing machine. Remedy’s next game, “Alan Wake,” was about a verbose novelist trapped in a horror story that he wrote. Of course it was riddled with loquacious narration, and clever plot twists. Remedy’s upcoming game, “Quantum Break,” is about a man who gains the ability to control time, and must use it fight the minions of a ruthless corporation from the future. Given Remedy’s history of combining gunplay with storytelling, this should be one of the most thoughtful action games of the coming year.

DREAMFALL CHAPTERS Release Date: TBA, 2016

In 1999, point-and-click adventure games were at their most popular, and many players still insist that the genre hit its high point with that year’s “The Longest Journey.” It was about a woman who could shift between two worlds. One was a fantasy realm, and the other was a futuristic city right out of science fiction. It got a sequel in 2006 called “Dreamfall,” but that game ended in a cliffhanger. This final installment in the series is called “Dreamfall Chapters,” a five-part “episodic” game. The first of these five chapters arrived in 2014, and the fourth in December 2015. With its blend of sci-fi and fantasy, the game appeals to a wide audience. The series has three playable characters, and gamers will certainly find themselves drawn to at least one. New players should have enough time to try both of the previous games before this magnificent 17-year journey reaches its end.

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

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JOSEPH LICHTER, D.D.S.

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LISTEN EVERY MONDAY AT 4PM ON BrooklynPaper.com/radio 18

January 21, 2016

IMAGE SOURCE: FUNCOM/RED THREAD GAMES

A screenshot from the sci-fi/fantasy game “Dreamfall Chapters,” the final installment of a long-running series that began in 1999. TheVillager.com

COURTESY THE ARTIST AND NICELLE BEAUCHENE

“Pure Potential No.1 through 4” / 2015. Colored pencil, ink, and graphite on antique ledger book pages. 54 1/2 x 202 inches (48 ledger book pages).

Stunningly intricate and deeply meditative

Despont’s drawings invoke her recent Bali roots BY STEPHANIE BUHMANN

H

er first solo museum exhibition, “Louise Despont: Energy Scaffolds and Information Architecture” features a site-specific architectural installation and several series of largescale drawings. These works, all of which were commissioned by The Drawing Center, promise to be deeply influenced by Despont’s recent relocation to Bali. Best known for her stunningly intricate drawings on antique ledger paper, Despont employs compasses, stencils, and rulers to create deeply meditative compositions. One of the architectural works on display, for example, will hold a monumental frieze drawing composed of no less than

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COURTESY THE ARTIST AND NICELLE BEAUCHENE

“Return to Formlessness” / 2015. Colored pencil and graphite on antique ledger book pages (71 x 112.5 inches, 20 ledger book pages).

seven panels. For Despont, each drawn line symbolizes the invisible energy that flows mysteriously through the human body. In addition to her own work, Despont has also invited conceptual artist Aaron Taylor Kuffner to present his gamelatron, an original instrument created by him that is a robotic variant of the gamelan, the traditional Balinese and Javanese orchestra that includes vibraphones, drums, chimes, bells, and gongs. Jan. 22–Mar. 20 at The Drawing Center (35 Wooster St., btw. Grand & Broome Sts.). Hours: Wed., Fri., Sat. & Sun., 12–6 p.m. & Thurs., 12–8 p.m. (free every Thurs., 6–8 p.m.). General admission, $5 ($3 for students/ seniors, free for children under 12). Call 212219-2166 or visit drawingcenter.org.

COURTESY THE DRAWING CENTER

Despont has invited conceptual artist Aaron Taylor Kuffner to present his gamelatron, a robotic variant of the traditional Balinese and Javanese gamelan.

January 21, 2016

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Listen to any Hollies

Anniversary of a hit prompts memories of swinging London BY JIM MELLOAN

T

his month marks the 50-year anniversary of the debut of The Hollies on the Billboard Top 40. “Look Through Any Window,” penned by the prolific young songwriter Graham Gouldman, later of 10cc, peaked at No. 32 on the January 22, 1966 chart. I was 10, and, as far as I recall, unaware of The Hollies. But when my family moved to London in November of 1966, the band’s glorious three-part harmonies and catchy melodies suffused the airwaves. Thanks to the BBC TV show “Top of the Pops” and DJ Alan Freeman’s BBC radio show “Pick of the Pops,” I became a committed chart-tracker. And in the spring of 1967 I walked down to Harrods, near our house, went up to the fourth-floor record department, selected The Hollies’ “Carrie Anne” out of the giant slots that held each of the current hit singles in order of chart rank, and paid my 10 shillings — my first-ever record purchase. (Later that year, on that floor, Harrods debuted the ultra-groovy Carnaby-Streetesque “Way In” store-within-a-store.) The core of the group, Allan Clarke and Graham Nash, were friends since age five in Manchester. Like the Beatles and many bands of the time, they got started as part of the skiffle craze of the late ’50s. They came up with their name in December of 1962 as both a tribute to Buddy Holly and a nod to the season. After an appearance at Liverpool’s famed Cavern Club in January of 1963, they got an audition for a record contract, which they won. Band member Vic Steele played guitar at the Cavern Club gig, but he didn’t want to be a professional musician — so Tony Hicks replaced Steele for the audition, then assumed his place in the group. By the time “Look Through Any Window” was released, the band had had quite a few hits, both covers and originals, on the UK charts.

HOLLIES.CO.UK

L to R: Allan Clarke, Bobby Elliott, Eric Haydock, Tony Hicks and Graham Nash.

Their follow-up to that one was a bit of a misfire: they recorded George Harrison’s “If I Needed Someone” and released it as a single, learning just days later that the Beatles were including the song on their “Rubber Soul” album. (But what a great version; I didn’t know about it until I started researching this article.) The single went to No. 20 on the UK chart, but wasn’t released here. The Hollies finally made their name in the US with “Bus Stop” — another Gouldman composition, which peaked at No. 5 both there and here. At the time we moved to London, “Stop Stop Stop” (a Clarke-NashHicks tune notable for its banjo part) was climbing the charts. I don’t really remember that one from the time, but I definitely recall “On a Carousel,” by

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20

January 21, 2016

the same three, from February of ’67. It was “Carrie Anne” that I found irresistible, however. That one came with springtime lunch hours in Regent’s Park, near where I was enrolled at the American School in London (ASL). Coming close after the Beatles’ “Penny Lane,” both sunny and infectious songs epitomized the glory that was Swinging London in 1967. My mom purchased “Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields Forever,” and I decided it was my duty as a budding music consumer to buy “Carrie Anne” on my own. “Carrie Anne” was the first commercial song ever to incorporate steel drums. I recall one clueless reviewer at the time praising The Hollies for their innovative use of a “toy piano.” In 1995 Nash revealed that the song was actually inspired by Marianne Faithfull, who Nash had a crush on, but who was having an affair with the married Clarke at the time. In the fall of ’67 The Hollies released “King Midas in Reverse,” a lush, ambitious song written solely by Nash. I have a memory of hearing that one, or thinking about it, in the lunchroom at ASL, amidst the junior high bustle and steaming cups of hot soup in yellow plastic cups served by Cockney lunch ladies. I don’t know if I reflected upon the fact that the lyrics mirrored my

own plummeting social status — but they did. This one only went to No. 18, a relative disappointment, and that was the beginning of the end of Nash’s time with The Hollies. After that one, he and Clarke wrote “Jennifer Eccles,” a catchy piece of fluff that returned The Hollies to the UK Top 10. By now, though, Nash had broader ambitions. He had written “Marrakesh Express,” but he’s said that The Hollies didn’t seem very interested in working on it. He had been spending more time in the US, and had met David Crosby and Stephen Stills, and so decamped to form Crosby, Stills & Nash and move on to the next part of his career. The Hollies had a big hit in 1969 with “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother,” a ballad that was a departure from their poppy harmonies, and their other notable successes in the ’70s were the rocker “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress” and “The Air That I Breathe.” It was their version of Springsteen’s “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy),” retitled as just “Sandy,” that got me working on performing that one around 10 years ago. Clarke retired in 2000, but Tony Hicks is still with the band, and they will commence touring the UK and Europe in March. Happy anniversary, boys. TheVillager.com

Just Do Art BY SCOTT STIFFLER

A KICKSTARTER KICKOFF FOR “LEAVES OF GRASS I TRIMMED WITH MY MOWER”

His body and soul bled dry by 1,000 humbling cuts coming from obligations to work and family, the caged bird that is the suburban dad seeks solace in the little things: grilling meat in the back yard, small talk with his fellow bread-winners, and by-thenumbers lovemaking sessions with his wife “in the bed I paid for from my job.” Laugh if you must, but there’s a certain wounded dignity to this quiet struggle — and it’s all been captured by self-anointed “Dad Poets” Ralph Dobis and Zeke Anderson, in their new collection of rhymes: “Leaves of Grass I Trimmed With My Mower. In order for these contemporary Walt Whitmans to grow a spine (the kind that binds book), they’ll need your help. That’s why Dobis and Anderson — the satirical personas of Upright Citizens Brigade regulars Mark Vigeant and Sam Reece — are seeking donations to fund a first edition printing of “Grass.” The authors will be reading selections from this alternately defeated and defiant tome, at the launch event for their Kickstarter campaign. The night of silly dadthemed jokes, poems and songs will feature special guests Dan Chamberlain, Anna Drezen, Doug Smith and Ike Knight Bardia Salimi. Free. Fri., Jan. 29, 8:30 p.m. at The Drama Book Shop (250 W. 40th St., btw. Seventh & Eighth Aves.). Visit facebook. com/events/956706321070758.

THE FIFTH ANNUAL MISS TWIN PEAKS PAGEANT

During separate visits to a dream world Red Room, FBI agent Dale Cooper is told, in backwards-speak, “That gum you like is going to come back in style” and “I’ll see you again in 25 years” — by, respectively, The Man from Another Place and the Homecoming Queen whose murder Cooper has been charged with solving. Visionary burlesque producer Francine “The Lucid Dream” knows these scenarios well, along with every other strange and wonderful twist associated with David Lynch and Mark Frost’s 19901991 surreal soap opera “Twin Peaks” TheVillager.com

PHOTO BY IAN STROUD

Song of my dad bod: Ralph (pictured) and Zeke launch a Kickstarter campaign for their Whitman-like book of poems, Jan. 29 at The Drama Book Shop.

PHOTO BY DAN DEMETRIAD

Kitty Lunn performs at the Jan. 26 bake sale and karaoke bash, to benefit Theater for the New City’s fundraising goal: $30,000 for a new handicapped lift.

PHOTO BY FILIP WOLAK

The bodies are rock hard real — but the owls are not what they seem, at Jan. 30’s Fifth Annual Miss Twin Peaks Pageant.

— returning, gum-style, for new episodes in 2017. But why wait? “The Pink Room: David Lynch Burlesque” has been keeping the “Peaks” flame burning since Feb. 2011, when its debut coincided with the anniversary of Laura Palmer’s death. This installment has characters from the show vying for your attention and love, along with the title of Miss Twin Peaks (a nod to the show’s coveted pageant honor). Expect supremely odd and undeniably alluring talent competition displays from the likes of Audrey Horne, Shelly Johnson, Norma Jennings, The Log Lady, Josie Packard and others — as portrayed by “Lynch Burlesque” regulars Amelia Bareparts, Boo Boo Darlin’, Bunny Buxom, Foxy Vermouth,

Minx Arcana, Montana, Satanica, Matt Knife and Schäffer the Darklord. Sat., Jan. 30. Doors open at 11 p.m., show at 11:30. At Joe’s Pub at The Public (425 Lafayette St., at Astor Place). For tickets ($20), visit joespub.publictheater. org or call 212-539-8500. Artist info at francineburlesque.com.

FUNDRAISER: THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY APPRECIATION DAY

Low-cost ticket prices year-round and a free roving street theater production every summer keep the provocative, political, experimental, and often wonderfully loopy work of Theater for the New City (TNC)

accessible to the masses — but the essential East Village complex’s lower level theater is currently off-limits to the TNC’s handicapped staff, patrons, and performers. Help correct this situation by heading into your kitchen, getting creative with butter and eggs and whatnot, then bringing your favorite goodies to TNC’s bake sale — whose proceeds, along with much-appreciated contributions of any amount, will kick off fundraising efforts to replace the theater’s broken handicapped lift (cost: $30,000). Between browsing the bounty of sugary goodness, there will be a special presentation by playwright JeanClaude van Italli, plus performances by the all-girl Japanese Taiko drumming/ dance troupe COBU. Kitty Lunn, whose Infinity Dance Theater features artists with and without disabilities, will perform “In Time Like Air.” A biographical piece created for her by Peter Pucci, this duet for dancer and wheelchair is set during a snowstorm (referencing the accident that caused Lunn’s injury). Before and after the pros, sing the praises of TNC by belting out your favorite song, Karaoke-style. Free (donations accepted via bake sale proceeds or cash contributions). Tues., Jan. 26 at 7 p.m. At Theater for the New City (155 First Ave., btw. E. Ninth & E. 10th Sts.). For info, visit theaterforthenewcity.org or call 212-254-1109. January 21, 2016

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January 21, 2016

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Chewing over admissions ideas for Morton school SCHOOL continued from p. 1

sored by the 75 Morton Community Alliance, Community Boards 2 and 4 and Community Education Council 2. Parents from 23 schools attended, along with several professional educators and representatives from the Department of Education and local politicians. The event followed a series of group envisioning sessions and fruitful collaborations between the community and D.O.E. over the last several years to create this large new school for 600 to 900 students and 60 to 100 District 75 students with special learning needs. Holly Noto, a 75 M.C.A. member and professional facilitator, kicked off the meeting. “You have a voice,” she told everyone. “This is your chance to put a new dish on the menu.” Continuing with the food analogy, which proved useful throughout the evening, Ned Elton of 75 M.C.A. walked the audience through six hypothetical school models created by various admissions methods. The “apple” school was purely zoned with no screening and one academic track. This would likely create a school that is easy to get into (since students living in the zone who apply are automatically admitted), with fairly low diversity (the Morton St. school is located in the affluent and homogeneous West Village), and a varied academic pace within one program for students at different academic achievement levels. The “carrot” school, in contrast, was unzoned, with screening based on academics, behavior and the student’s expressed interest in the school, and with one academic track. This would likely create a school that is difficult to get into, with minimal diversity, and an accelerated academic pace for high-achieving students coming from neighborhoods near and far. The “blueberry,” “eggplant,” “dandelion” and “zucchini” school models had other admissions methods and single- or dual-track academic programs, which created schools with characteristics falling somewhere in between the “apple” and “carrot” ends of the spectrum. Before breaking into discussion groups to deliberate on these models, educators from city schools shared their experiences, offered advice and made some impassioned pleas. John O’Reilly, principal of the Academy of Arts & Letters in Brooklyn, described how his K-through-8 school in Fort Greene was being impacted by a wave of neighborhood gentrification, with thousands of new residential units and hundreds of affluent white families vying for a small number of seats. After much advocacy from the school’s leaders and community, D.O.E. granted approval late last year for a “diversity set-aside” admissions method, whereby students eligible for free and reduced lunch — indicating their family lives at or below the poverty line — receive priority for 40 percent of the school’s seats. “We’re constrained by the laws of the land to talk about race, but I can talk about socioeconomics, which has been a vital piece of our school,” counseled O’Reilly. His colleague, Assistant Principal Meg Crouch, was emphatic. “All the research shows that an integrated, diverse school narrows the achievement gap,” she said. “So if you want students to prepare to be strong adults in a democracy, advocate for diversity based on so-

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To explore the possibility of establishing a new middle school zone for the Morton St. school, District 2 Superintendent Bonnie Laboy recently initiated the zoning process to start the clock ticking on the “prescriptive procedure,” which ultimately falls under the purview of C.E.C. 2. The process includes zoning proposals and possible revisions from D.O.E, interspersed with C.E.C. 2 meetings and public hearings, and culminating with a final vote. To stay on track for 75 Morton’s timeline, a vote of six of the 10 C.E.C. 2 members approving the new zone would have to take place by this April. Tanikawa explained that even if 75 Morton becomes a zoned school, PHOTO BY CHIHLAN LU given its large size, it is not likely to Break-out group participants marked their preferences for be 100 percent zoned since that could characteristics of the new 75 Morton St. school. risk seats going unfilled. After becoming well-versed in a cioeconomics and learning needs.” long menu of admissions methods, attendees sepaPrincipal Maggie Siena from the Peck St. School rated into a half-dozen break-out groups to come up addressed innovative ways to screen students for with new admissions recipes and deliberate on the admission. For example, she encouraged considersix food-based school models. ation of new screening filters, such as artwork or One break-out group discussed the potential new group projects. zone as a way to achieve diversity. “Students may be strong, but not hit the metrics,” “I like the idea of going down the West Side with she said. “So this may allow you to see qualities in a new zone to pick up different neighborhoods — kids and to have a diversity of learners.” just follow the E train,” suggested Lowell Kern, Siena also pointed out that parents of high-achievwhose two children attended P.S. 11 in Chelsea and ing students have become increasingly “nervous are now in high school and college. about their children applying to homogeneous Questions about what screening filters to weave schools,” so an admissions policy ensuring diversitogether and how to define diversity dominated ty may be important to attract those applicants. many conversations. In addition to admissions priority for low-income “The D.O.E is ready to allow more schools to destudents, other new methods include set-asides for fine diversity,” Tanikawa had advised the groups. English Language Learner students, students with For example, some asked, could children’s creativa range of low, medium, and high state test scores, ity and learning styles be screened since information students from specific elementary schools, and stuis processed by students in different ways? Could dents with incarcerated parents. family involvement be screened since parent engageThere are only four zoned schools out of the 23 ment is closely correlated with strong schools? Greg middle schools in District 2, but none are 100 perRegaignon, father of a fourth grader and a seventh cent zoned. The largest are Baruch and Wagner, grader, worried that “family involvement could be a which have 1,000-plus students and use a hybrid proxy for family income — like volunteer hours for admissions method. A portion of seats are filled parents who can afford not to work.” based solely on a student’s residency within the After good, spirited debates, each participant zone. In addition, a portion of seats are filled based ranked the top three school characteristics that maton screening criteria, which may include test scores, tered to them most and where on the spectrum they report cards, attendance, interviews, the student’s would like to see those characteristics for their ideal rank choice for the school, and other metrics. Both middle school. A final vote was cast on their way schools offer two academic programs — an “acaout the door for one of the six school models, leavdemic progress” track and a more accelerated “speing people to wonder which one the community cial progress” track — and students can apply for would coalesce around — “zucchini?” “eggplant?” one or both programs. “blueberry?” “A zoned middle school is not what you think of It did not take long to find out, as tallies and takeas a neighborhood school,” explained Shino Tanikaaways from the session were presented the followwa, the president of C.E.C. 2, in her refresher course ing night at the Jan. 12 C.E.C. 2 meeting. Although on middle school admissions. the community was somewhat agnostic on zoning Elton of 75 M.C.A. clarified that a “zone” for a city and showed about equal support for single- versus middle school is actually larger than people might dual-track academic programs, there was signifithink. cant preference for using two admissions methods. “It’s not a matter of the school being five blocks This approach could create a school with characteraway,” he said. “It could be two express subway istics deemed most important by the community: stops away since it’s really about the commute.” a strong academic pace, plus diversity — diversity A significant portion of School District 2 on the created by having students with different socioecoWest Side from W. 23rd to W. 59th Sts. and withnomic backgrounds, academic achievement and in easy commuting distance from the Morton St. learning styles. school is, in fact, unzoned. This evolved, in large Sharing this vision with D.O.E. will be the next part, from three schools in Hell’s Kitchen that were step along the path of opening the Morton St. school formerly K-through-8, but phased out their middle 18 months from now. school grades over the years. TheVillager.com

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Lenore today. For 24 years, until age 40, she was homeless. “I couldn’t cope,” she said of her life before. “I was really emotionally disturbed. When you’re on the streets, nobody cares. But where I live now has a really good homeless program.”

Purple survivors still healing PURPLE continued from p. 11

pletely bonkers. “David had an excuse for being out of it,” she said. “He was so, so, so, so insanely genius that he couldn’t get to reality. Life was a game. Romola was no innocent bystander. She should have been prosecuted. “Oh, he was crazy,” she said of her father. “I’m sure he had a diagnosis if he ever went to a shrink. He was a genius and a strange duck and he did the best he could.” Romola, in one of her letters to Jenean and Lenore’s grandparents when Wilkie was facing prison, had written that he could have avoided jail and been out on bond if he only submitted to psychological treatment. “He was too good for that,” Lenore said. “He could play games with anybody. Oh, they would have locked him up if they could have, but he wouldn’t let ’em.”

Purple’s positive legacy Of the four women, Lenore and Jenean — but especially Lenore — despite Wilkie’s sexual deviancy, still value his contributions as a guerilla gardener and sustainability pioneer. “He showed me his plan for greenhouses and [ecologically based] cities, his urban planning,” Lenore said. “He was way ahead of his time, in terms of an ecological, carbon-safe environment. That’s his gift to the world, not his urban gardening. What he did before, it still counts — and also what he did after. He reinvented himself. I don’t care what anyone else says, it counts.” Another of his best traits was his resourcefulness, she said, a product of his rural Missouri roots. “Reusing, recycling — he was from the old school. He grew up on a farm,” she said. His father was German — very strict — she said. But he died when Wilkie was young in an electrical fire in a printing shop he had in the back of their property. She thinks that printing shop inspired Wilkie’s trademark rolled-up leaflets ad-

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vocating the likes of “World Bike-in,” “General Rent Strike,” “World Orgy” and “World S--t-in” that he would hand out to people as he biked up to Central Park to scoop up horse manure for the garden.

Therapy and recovery Like Jenean and Lenore, Dorothy turned to therapy in midlife to help her, at last, deal with the traumatic feelings she had locked away deep inside. Her therapist taught her to forgive, “or it eats you up inside,” Dorothy said. Still, she can never fully forgive Wilkie for what he did to her. “I think he ruined things for me,” she said. “It’s very hard to recover.” Of the memorial service that was held for Wilkie at La Plaza Cultural, she said, “He doesn’t really deserve it. He was a monster. When they rang me to tell me he was dead, I thought, ‘Thank God’ — and then I said I shouldn’t say that because I forgive him. It was a reflex,” she said with a laugh. Lenore has been twice married and twice divorced. She just turned 58 and is finally trying to quit smoking. Dorothy, who worked as a taxi dispatcher, has a daughter. Diane, who has children of her own and has also had horses, has worked many jobs, her longest as a coal miner. “I was one of the first women to work at a coal mine in Wyoming,” she said. “I can operate heavy machinery. But I feel like I have a glass wall above me — I just could not break into the field.” A loner, she recently joined a motorcycle club that includes police officers. Riding and hanging out with them, she said, she finally feels “safe.” Jenean, who has a son and worked in the mental-health field, four years ago pulled up stakes and moved to an “intentional community” in the Northwest to find herself. She had said she decided to tell her story to The Villager to highlight the issue of complex post-traumatic stress disorder, which she self-diagnosed after other menPURPLE continued on p. 27 TheVillager.com

Punk magazine all-stars rock 40th anniversary

PHOTOS BY BOB KRASNER

Whoa! Punk magazine contributor Robert Romagnoli, left, and Punk’s founding editor John Holmstrom at the mag’s 40th anniversary party.

BY BOB KRASNER

P

unk. Nostalgia. If you were there, it never would have occurred to you that 40 years after the birth of Punk magazine, John Holmstrom and company would be at the Howl! Happening Gallery celebrating the anniversary of a 50-cent rag that wanted to be MAD magazine more than it wanted to be Rolling Stone. Punk published 15 unforgettable issues from 1976 to 1979, and there have been a few revivals since then. The somewhat ragged survivors of that legendary scene came out to celebrate with original contributors Robert Romagnoli, Godlis, Roberta Bayley, Ken Weiner and musicians Lenny Kaye, Martin Rev and Handsome Dick Manitoba, among others, amid displays of period art and memorabilia. While it may not have brought you back to a night at CBGB, artist Marlene Weisman noted that the party was “a whole lot better than that P.T.A. meeting that I was supposed to go to.”

Artist and Punk fan Marlene Weisman struck a pose in front of some of the magazine’s classic covers.

Purple sex-abuse survivors are still healing PURPLE continued from p. 26

‘Why he was alone’

tal-health professionals had failed to identify it in her. Diane is the only one who never sought professional help. “I never had counseling because I had too much to do,” she said. However, she added, “If Jenean didn’t speak out — I am so glad she did. It gives us a voice.” In fact, following the publication of “The Dark side of Purple,” Jenean visited Diane, not having seen her since their childhood days in Australia. Both agree, though, that the reunion could have gone better, but at least they tried.

“That’s it, I’m done,” Lenore said after telling her tale to The Villager. “So now people will have the full story — of why he was alone. Even the Eves couldn’t put up with him. Even Adam couldn’t put up with him,” she said of Purple’s only son, Adam David, with Eve No. 2. (Adam David now lives in China, where he teaches English literature to Chinese students. He did not want to be quoted in the previous article and requested that his last name not be printed.) In fact, there is at least one more daughter of Wilkie — Nova Dawn,

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who he had with Eve. No. 1. Lenore said she knows their real names, but would not divulge them, wanting to protect their privacy. Wilkie clearly avoided detection on the Lower East Side all these years for his past conviction. Why that happened is partly because, prior to 1996, New York did not have a sex offender registry. A New York Police Department spokesperson explained that the sex offender registry works “going forward — not backward.”

Breaking the cycle Studies have shown that sex offenders have a high rate of recidivism

— even more so if they have never gone to jail for the crime — while their children are also more likely to become abusers themselves. Above all, Jenean and Lenore both emphasized that they are thankful that the cycle of generational sexual abuse has not repeated in them or Diane or Dorothy or any of their children or any of Wilkie’s other children. According to them, Wilkie’s sister Anna revealed that Wilkie was sexually abused by his own mother, while Jenean and Lenore’s birth mother, Ann, said there was also sexual abuse on her side of the family. “We beat the odds,” Lenore said. “None of us became abusers. We can heal. We all broke the cycle.” January 21, 2016

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