The Villager • Jan. 28, 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 28, 2016 • $1.00 Volume 86 • Number 4

City readies to request developers’ proposals for Elizabeth St. Garden

BY ALBERT AMATEAU

T

he city Department of Housing Preservation and Development presented its plan to build affordable senior housing on the site of the much-loved Elizabeth St. Garden at a Community Board 2 working group forum last week.

Most of the nearly 300

people who filled the auditorium of the Scholastic Building in Soho on Wed., Jan. 20, were with Friends of Elizabeth St. Garden and demanded saving the 20,265-square-foot oasis between Prince and Spring Sts. and building much-needed affordable housing for seGARDEN continued on p. 24

Neighbors demand input on Triangle Fire memorial, fearing its negative impact

BY YANNIC RACK

T

he group planning a memorial for the site of one of the most devastating industrial tragedies in the country’s history has secured the support of local elected officials and even the governor — but they made their pitch without consulting the community.

The Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition, a group of labor advocates and volunteers, wants to build a permanent memorial at the corner of Washington Place and Greene St., where 146 workers died in an infamous factory fire in 1911.

But some local residents TRIANGLE continued on p. 4

PHOTO BY TEQUILA MINSKY

Looking like Cam Newton pitching a football, a dad gave his son a push down the hill on Saturday at The Mounds ropes-course area in Washington Square Park.

Purple: Paragon or pariah?

BY LINCOLN ANDERSON In the center of Adam Purple’s magnificent Garden of Eden — amid its concentric circles of flowers, fruits, vegetables and trees — on Eldridge St. there was a double yin-yang symbol. In Chinese philosophy, yang represents light while yin represents darkness. …

F

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

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

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

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

Subsequently, his two former stepdaughters also told The Villager their stories — with the older one, Dorothy, revealing that Wilkie sexually abused her nightly for years and finally raped her when she was 12, for which he was arrested and went to jail. Meanwhile, his youngest PURPLE continued on p. 9

Whoa! Carriage horse plan lacks details....page 5 Slashings from sidewalk to the subway....page 12 Once upon a time at FIT...............page 19

www.TheVillager.com

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

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

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

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

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

It reportedly became a pretty popular poster in its day. But with its image of a naked God raping a naked, top hat-wearing Uncle Sam — we agree, it’s definitely not appropriate for the eyes of young children. In fact, we looked it up online, and we find it pretty hard to look at! For more on Orselli, read this week’s community reaction article in The Villager on Adam Purple’s history of child sex abuse. Orselli slams the gardens legend, saying pedophiles should be outed.

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

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

Usually, they were championing Jenifer Rajkumar, while often slamming her opponents, including Yuh-Line Niou — a.k.a. “that Niou girl” — and sometimes Rajkumar’s co-district leader, Paul Newell. Things really got weird when two of the anonymous posters started having a “conversation” with another. “Agreed,” one of them told the other on some point we can’t remember.

But we can see where the comments are coming from and what the actual user names are — as opposed to the phony ones this person was using.

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

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

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

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

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Neighbors fear Triangle Fire memorial impact Named best weekly newspaper in New York State in 2001, 2004 and 2005

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January 28, 2016

TRIANGLE continued from p. 1

are vehemently opposed to the proposed design for the monument, which consists of horizontal and vertical steel panels running along the side of the landmarked building, at 29 Washington Place.

“There are very serious concerns,” said Mary Johnson, who lives at 14 Washington Place directly across from the planned memorial site. “I’m really worried about this, because it’s such an important part of this neighborhood.”

Even though Governor Andrew Cuomo recently pledged $1.5 million to fund the memorial, Johnson and other residents of the two buildings at 14 and 15 Washington Place say that they oppose the design because it would impact their quality of life.

“That memorial is going to be facing all of our buildings.

We’re steps away from where it will be,” said Johnson, adding that residents fear the polished steel panels on the building will reflect light into their apartments and draw more people to an already crowded area.

“We’re ready to protest it because you have no idea how much activity there is on this street,” she said.

The design, chosen in an international competition almost three years ago, consists of three sets of polished steel panels running along the building’s facade.

One panel, installed at pedestrian-hip level, would tell the story of the fire in one line of words running around the entire outside of the building, and also would reflect the names of the victims — which would be etched into a second panel installed roughly 17 feet above the sidewalk.

The third panel, which would run vertically up the building’s corner to the eighth floor, is supposed to reflect a “sliver of sky” and attract curiosity from afar — making it a big point of contention for its immediate neighbors.

“We’re not objecting to any monument. In fact, most of us attend the commemoration for the fire every year,” said Howard Negrin, head of the Washington Place Block Association, which includes more than 200 apartments.

“But we have an objection to the very nature of the design — the discomfort it will impose on the neighborhood,” he said.

A group of residents showed up at Community Board 2’s full board meeting last week to protest the proposal, where they were met by Joel Sosinsky, the coalition’s secretary.

More so than the design itself, many of them seemed to be irked by the fact that they were blindsided by the plan.

“We’re really upset about the fact that we were not brought in early on,” said Negrin, adding that other residents at the C.B. 2 meeting echoed the sentiment.

“The whole Village is very active about anything that happens in the area,” added Johnson. “So not having any input whatsoever in this — I don’t understand really how they got so far.”

The project already has support from a range of local politicians, including City Councilmember Margaret Chin, Assemblymember Deborah Glick and Borough President Gale Brewer, who is also listed on the coalition’s advisory committee.

Sosinsky, who has been involved with the planning process for the memorial for years, defended the plan and said the coalition did in fact appear before C.B. 2 — in 2011, at which point the design had not been drawn up.

“We haven’t been back to the community board since, because we ran an international design competition. This is not a secret process,” Sosinsky said. “We would love to engage with the community.”

The former factory building now houses biology and chemistry laboratories for New York University, which supports the memorial design.

The coalition already takes part in the annual commemoration ceremony at the site of the fire, which was started more than 50 years ago, and also organized a large centennial celebration in 2011 that attracted thousands of people.

More than just remembering the victims who perished in the fire, the group also sees an important role for a new memorial in educating New Yorkers and visitors alike about the political

PHOTO BY YANNIC RACK

Residents of 14 Washington Place, above, are concerned about the impact of a planned new Triangle Shirtwaist Fire memorial, both in terms of its potential visual intrusiveness and the impact it would have on congestion on surrounding streets.

and social activism — and eventually far-reaching labor reforms — that followed the factory disaster. (The building does currently have some small plaques that commemorate the fire.)

A town hall meeting has been scheduled for Tues., Feb. 23, at 6 p.m. at Hebrew Union College, One W. Fourth St., Room CL3 (photo ID is required for entry) that will give the residents a chance to weigh in, and the coalition the opportunity to defend their proposal.

“Hopefully, this will give us a chance to bring everyone together,” said C.B. 2 Chairperson Tobi Bergman.

The coalition itself still has to raise around $1 million for maintenance before the memorial can even be built. Because the building is landmarked, the community board’s Landmarks Committee will also get a chance to review the design and give its recommendation before the plan is considered by the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission.

For his part, Sosinsky has no doubt that they will be able to bring the locals around to their idea.

“We will certainly take into account their concerns. I think they need to see and better understand what the memorial is,” he said, adding that the architects will likely present their design at the town hall.

“I think this is something that not only the neighborhood, but the whole city and the whole state is going to be proud of,” he said.

TheVillager.com

Whoa, Nellie! Many questions about carriage bill

BY YANNIC RACK

M

ayor Bill de Blasio’s plan to get horse carriages off of Manhattan’s streets and relocate their stables in Central Park hit a roadblock last week, when a host of critics on the City Council reined in any hopes of quickly resolving one of the most divisive issues plaguing his administration.

At a hearing of the Council’s Transportation Committee on Jan. 22, de Blasio administration representatives had a hard time answering questions about the proposal, such as how much it would cost to create a new stable in the park, where exactly it would be located, and why it was necessary in the first place.

“I think what you’re asking us to buy here is an empty bag with a hole in it,” Queens Councilmember Barry Grodenchik said at one point during the hearing.

In the audience at the packed City Council chambers were contingents of carriage horse drivers, animal rights activists and pedicab operators.

Most of them came to testify on the proposed new legislation, which would reduce the number of horses licensed to operate the city’s tourist carriages from around 180 to 95 over the next three years, finally restricting an industry that the mayor had once vowed to shut down altogether.

After a bill to outlaw horse-drawn carriages in the city failed to garner support last year, the mayor, together with City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and representatives of the carriage horse industry, announced two weeks ago that an “agreement in concept” had been reached to limit the trade.

But the details of the plan proved to be another matter altogether and raised outcries from carriage drivers, as well as park advocates and even pedicab owners — the latter who would be barred from much of Central Park under the proposal.

At the hearing, councilmembers tried to mediate among the many stakeholders, but tensions ran high.

The crowds, which had already been separated while queuing outside, spontaneously frequently broke into applause and heckling, so that officials in the chamber repeatedly had to warn the audience to keep quiet.

“We are here because we care. We care for the pedicabs, we care for animal rights, we care for the jobs of the men and women who work in the carriage industry,” Upper Manhattan’s Ydanis Rodriguez, the committee chairperson and a sponsor of the bill, said at the outset. “We want to come up with something that will work for everyone.”

TheVillager.com

PHOTO BY YANNICK RACK

Carriage horses would no longer be able to operate on the city’s streets if a bill proposed by Mayor de Blasio is approved by the City Council.

Despite such noble goals, the discussion quickly descended into a frustrating routine, as the councilmembers struggled to get a clear picture of the bill they are being asked to consider.

“The administration did a pisspoor job today of explaining their case and defending this legislation,” said Council Majority Leader Jimmy Van Bramer of Queens. “I have to say I came in with a very open mind. But I am more angry than ever because it is wrong to ask councilmembers to take a vote like this when no information is known, too many questions are unanswered, and all this is based on a premise that’s not backed.”

In addition to restricting the number of horses starting in December 2016, the measure would also limit each of the city’s 68 licensed carriages to one nine-hour shift per day and ban rides anywhere except for the park.

“Limiting the operation of horsedrawn carriages to Central Park will eliminate the potential for dangerous interactions between horses and vehicles” on busy Midtown streets, Mindy Tarlow, director of the Mayor’s Office of Operations, told the councilmembers.

But when pressed for details, Tarlow and her team of city officials sent to present the proposal largely stayed vague.

They could not say how much time horse carriages currently spend on city streets, or how many carriage drivers would lose their jobs under the plan. When asked how many horses had been killed in traffic in recent years, the answer was none –– although four have been injured.

The proposed location for the new stable is right on the park’s 85th St. transverse and is currently being used for park maintenance — but Tarlow couldn’t commit that the stable would ultimately be built there,

and didn’t say how much its renovation would cost.

Pressed by the councilmembers, she did promise that it would not take up any space currently open to the public.

“The goal is to have no impact on recreational use,” she said. “We will not take up any precious park space.”

Nevertheless, the plan didn’t go down so well with park advocates.

Tupper Thomas, executive director of the nonprofit New Yorkers for Parks and a former longtime senior city parks official, questioned the impact the stable would have on parkgoers and criticized the investment of public dollars in the project, which has been estimated will cost as much as $25 million.

“Parks are not just vacant cityowned property, they belong to the public,” Thomas said. “The city needs to give this proposal a much more careful analysis, and New Yorkers need to be able to ask questions.”

The sentiment was echoed by pedicab operators, who turned out in droves to protest the proposal. (In total, over 100 members of the public signed up to testify at the hearing.)

Even though pedicab drivers were not part of the discussions for the deal, the bill would ban them from operating in the park below 85th St. — which they say would put them out of business.

“It just came out of nowhere, out of left field,” Frankie Legarreta, who has been driving a pedicab in the park for six years, said before the hearing, as he waited outside. “We don’t even know why we’re a part of this bill. As far as common interest for the public goes, we are definitely a plus.”

However, asked about that part of the legislation, Tarlow told the councilmembers that it was “appropriate.”

She said the administration believes the deal is balanced and would not

reduce business for any of the stakeholders involved.

At one point during the hearing, a large group of animal rights advocates got up and left to rally for the bill outside on the City Hall steps.

Animal rights groups like the ASPCA, PETA and the Humane Society support the legislation, as does New Yorkers for Clean, Livable and Safe Streets, or NYCLASS, the group that lobbied for a ban of the carriage industry during de Blasio’s 2013 mayoral campaign.

The group came out in favor of the compromise only a day after expressing lukewarm approval and saying that it did “not go far enough” in protecting the animals.

“Our commitment to this cause has always been and will always be driven by our goal of protecting the well-being of carriage horses,” Allie Feldman, the organization’s executive director, said at the hearing.

As for the carriage drivers themselves, many testified against the bill, arguing that scaling back the number of horses — which would be reduced to 110 by this June and to 95 by the time the stable is built — as well as limiting their shifts to one per day, would spell their demise.

“We are not against the idea of the stables in Central Park, but we are against the timeline,” said Conor McHugh, a carriage owner and manager of Clinton Park Stables on W. 52nd St. “This bill, in its current form, is effectively a carriage ban,” said carriage driver Josh Sausville, who came to testify in the same gray overcoat and black top hat that he wears on his tours through the park. “It will bankrupt the industry, and we will be gone before we ever get the chance to move into the park,” he said. “This is just trying to put us out of business.”

Many of the councilmembers agreed.

“These are men and women’s livelihoods that we are asking to disrupt,” said Queens Councilmember Costa Constantinides. “Why are we asking them to take a huge leap of faith if we’re not able to guarantee anything yet?”

He added, “This could potentially be a death by a thousand paper cuts.”

Demos Demopoulos, secretary-treasurer of the Teamsters Union, which represents the carriage drivers, said that they were still trying to negotiate a favorable deal with the administration, to preserve as many jobs as possible.

The earliest date for a vote on the bill is at the next full meeting of the Council, on Feb. 3. With the amount of unanswered questions raised at last week’s hearing, however, a decision on the issue might take a bit longer.

January 28, 2016

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Can’t forgive him’

VILLAGER FILE PHOTO

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

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

being a sexual predator.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Margarita Lopez

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

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

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

“I’m sorry, as a woman I can’t forgive what he did,” she said. “What he did was horrific to any child.

“I also like the fact that you put in that the mother abused her daughter,” she said of The Villager’s reporting that Diane, the youngest daughter of Romola, Wilkie’s wife in Australia, said Romola actually sexually abused her.

“Her first rule was to protect the girls,” the female gardener said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“All I knew was that he lived in Australia,” Bliss recalled. “I thought it was because of the threat of nuclear war. A lot of people were living there in that context. Mind you, when I was hanging around with Adam, we weren’t PURPLE continued on p. 10 January 28, 2016

9

The different shades of Purple: Community reacts PURPLE continued from p. 9

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

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

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

The main thing is the geodesic dome.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

10

January 28, 2016

VILLAGER FILE PHOTO

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

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

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

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

It’s completely autonomous, but also completely free of government influence.”

Seasteading is the idea of living on a floating community in international waters.

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

Monument crumbling?

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

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

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

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

George Bliss

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

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

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

for “male chauvinist.”

Lopez first met Purple in 1978 when she was working for Action for Progress, a local housing group. Purple by then had completed only about half of the Garden of Eden, she said. Lopez would go on to become president of the Lower East Side Joint Planning Council, an umbrella organization of 43 local organizations that was focused on developing affordable housing in the neighborhood.

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

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

Was alien to her She vividly remembers her first conversation with Purple.

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

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

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

PURPLE continued on p. 25

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POLICE BLOTTER

Poisson punch-up Two men got into a knockdown brawl at Le Poisson Rouge on Sat., Jan. 23, police said. At 3:50 a.m., both men told officers they were at the live music venue at 158 Bleecker St. when they got into a fight with each other.

One man stated he was thrown to the ground, causing a laceration to his head. The other man stated he was pushed and then punched in the face, causing a laceration to his mouth.

Joseph Weller, Jr., 24, and Alexi Segal, 23, were both arrested for misdemeanor assault.

Goes gonzo at Gonzalez

PHOTO BY JEFFERSON SIEGEL

Francis Salud, 28, appearing at his arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court on Fri., Jan. 22. Salud is accused of a random slashing in the East Village on Sat., Jan 16, that left a man needing 150 stitches to close a gash on the side of his face.

Arrest in E.V. slashing

Police last week made an arrest in a vicious slashing on Sat., Jan. 16, on E. Sixth St. that left a man with a gash from his ear to his mouth that required 150 stitches to close.

Last Thursday police announced that, pursuant to an investigation, Francis Salud, 28, had been arrested at 11:30 a.m. that day near a family member’s home at 89 E. Fourth St. and Second Ave. He was charged with assault.

On Jan. 16, at 4:30 p.m., Salud reportedly attacked Anthony Christian-Smith, a 30-year-old social worker from Newark, N.J. who was out for dinner with friends, slashing him as he walked on E. Sixth St. The incident reportedly occurred in front of 608 E. Sixth St. Salud knocked the victim to the ground and cut him with an unknown object, police said. The victim suffered a large laceration to the right side of his face and a small laceration to his back.

The Daily News reported that Christian-Smith was in surgery for eight hours as doctors worked to save the nerves in his face.

Police called it a random attack.

Salud reportedly has a history of psychiatric illness and has previously been arrested on assault and weapon possession charges, according to police.

The Post reported that Salud was arrested in October for slashing a man in his left side in a courtyard at Bellevue over a fight over a cigarette.

The victim in that case needed 73 stitches. Salud was released from jail on $30,000 bail after that attack.

12

January 28, 2016

The News reported that helping nail Salud was his own notation in a date book.

“Next to a date book reminder about a quibble over a Kmart or CVS card, he detailed that he ‘did a buck fifty on somebody near Third Ave. [ON E. 6TH ST.]…’ about 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, the prosecutor said,” the News wrote.

“A buck fifty” refers to the 150 stitches that the victim required.

“He actually made an entry in his own planner, that he had committed this crime,” Assistant District Attorney Gregory Sangermano said in Manhattan Supreme Court.

“He is a danger to quite literally anyone he happens to pass on the street,” Sangermano said.

Followed girl home A 12-year-old girl had a scary encounter near Washington Square Park on Mon., Jan. 18. Police said the girl was walking home at around 12:30 p.m. when a man approached her and repeatedly asked, “Can you hide me?” and proceeded to follow her for several blocks as she walked to her apartment.

The man then entered her building and went into the elevator with her and said, “I just got out of jail, can you hide me in your apartment?”

The girl entered her apartment without the man and called police.

After a canvass of the area, the police found the man on Broadway and E. 10th St. and the girl positively identified him.

Carl Catapano, 39, was arrested for felony stalking.

An employee at Gonzalez Y Gonzalez bar, at 192 Mercer Street, was threatened by a patron he had tried to kick out of the place, according to police. The victim repeatedly told a bar patron to leave on Sat., Jan. 23,. at around 12 a.m. The employee then continued working and went outside to throw salt on the sidewalk.

However, the man knowingly stayed at the location even though he was told to vamoose numerous times, police said. The man then waved a box cutter at the victim and urged him to come fight him, placing the victim in fear of serious physical injury. Police found the man in possession of two box cutters and a pair of metal knuckles.

Police arrested Watzen Villafane, 32, for misdemeanor menacing.

Packing in Meatpacking A police officer observed a white Jeep run a red light and turn from Hudson St. onto Gansevoort St. on Fri., Jan. 15, at 2:45 a.m. The officer stopped the vehicle in front of 18 Ninth Ave. and found that one of the seven men inside of it was in possession of a loaded .40-caliber Sig Sauer pistol and plastic knuckles. Another occupant of the Jeep had an active warrant.

Henry Ogirri, 32, was arrested for felony criminal possession of a weapon.

Marijuana and open containers of alcohol were also found in the vehicle, for which the other passengers were issued criminal court summonses.

Loco for Four Loko The Grab and Go convenience store at 388 Sixth Ave., between Eighth St. and Waverly Place, became the “Punch and Go” on Wed., Jan. 13, according to a police report.

At 1:35 a.m., a man entered the convenience store and stole four bottles of Four Loko malt liquor, valued at $15.40, police said. An employee told responding officers that when he tried to take back the stolen merchandise, the filcher punched him in

the face, causing injury and pain. Police canvassed the area and found a man who fit the description given by the victim, who then identified the man at the station.

Police arrested Azariah Brundage, 24, for felony robbery.

Snack attack Kids get angry when they don’t get their afternoon snack. A 13-yearold boy stole Doritos, Cheeze-Its and Sour Patch Kids from a newsstand on the northeast corner of W. Third St. and Sixth Ave. on Tues., Jan. 12, at 7:39 p.m., police said.

After stealing the snacks, the boy then reportedly threw a magazine at the newsstand vendor, causing a laceration to his lip. Police searched the area and found the boy, and the victim was able to identify him. Cops recovered the Doritos and Cheeze-Its. However, the two packs of Sour Patch Kids have not been located.

The 13-year-old was arrested for felony robbery. The Villager is not releasing his name because he is a minor.

Was it therapeutic?

After returning from therapy on Wed., Jan. 13, at 7 a.m., a mother and daughter got into a dispute, which led to a physical altercation, police said. Inside a residence at 463 West St., the daughter went into the bathroom and reportedly asked her mother, “What did you say to me?”

Police said the mother then pointed a sharp object at the daughter and they began pushing and shoving each other.

The mother then put her hands around the daughter’s neck, causing obstruction of air and circulation. The older woman also grabbed her daughter’s left arm, causing a laceration to her arm and her left forehead, police said.

Miya Matthews was arrested for felony assault.

MacDougal meltdown A man became verbally abusive to his girlfriend on a Village street on Sat., Jan. 15, at 5:35 a.m., and then assaulted a witness who tried to intervene, according to police.

Police said the victim witnessed the abuse on the northeast corner of MacDougal and W. Third Sts. and began arguing with the boyfriend. The boyfriend then punched the victim in the face, causing pain and discomfort.

Another man saw the altercation and attempted to break it up. The boyfriend then attempted to flee by jumping on top of a cab, but kicked in the back window, causing it to break.

Police arrested Ernso Terogene, 26, for misdemeanor criminal mischief.

Emily Siegel and Lincoln Anderson TheVillager.com

U.S. details child porn, drug Another slashing arrest case against Chelsea dentist

BY DUNCAN OSBORNE

T

he federal government appears to have strong evidence implicating Chelsea dentist John Wolf in possessing child pornography and crystal meth, according to recently filed court documents.

Wolf was recorded in meetings by a confidential informant and an undercover agent from the F.B.I. at least 11 times. He also made a videotaped statement after he was arrested on Nov. 20, according to a Jan. 5 letter from the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York that detailed evidence that was turned over to the defense. The government also has text messages between Wolf and the confidential informant.

The government seized smart phones, computers, tablets and storage devices when Wolf’s Village home and Chelsea dental office were searched on Nov. 20, according to the indictment. The defense also received from prosecutors “subpoena returns from Gmail, Manhattan Mini Storage, and Time Warner Cable,” the Jan. 5 letter said.

Wolf, who is gay, is charged with

two counts of drug possession with intent to distribute, one count of possessing child pornography and one count of distributing child pornography. He could face up to 14 to 17-anda-half years in prison if convicted.

The descriptions in court records of just three child porn videos out of the at least 23 videos Wolf allegedly possessed are horrific. After his arrest, he denied ever having sex with children, and nothing in court records indicates he expressed an interest in having sex with children. In court records, he allegedly called the videos “some twisted s--t” and “jerk off material.”

At his arrest, the government leaked inflammatory allegations to the media charging that Wolf, who is H.I.V.-positive, had engaged in sex with animals and punctured holes in condoms that he then used during sex. Wolf, 59, is not facing any charges related to these stories that appear to have been used mostly to generate press coverage.

The Jan. 5 letter indicates that Wolf’s attorney, Marc Agnifilo, and the U.S. attorney have already engaged in plea discussions. Both sides declined to comment this week.

D

amon Knowles, 21, right, was removed by detectives from the Police Department’s Manhattan Transit Robbery headquarters, at 34 E. 12th St., around 1 a.m. on Wed., Jan. 27. Police said Knowles, of Brooklyn, randomly slashed Carmen Rivera, a 71-year-old Bronx grandmother of nine, on the face aboard a D train as it was nearing the Broadway-Lafayette St. station on Monday around 7:15 a.m. She needed 30 stitches to close the wound.

Knowles reportedly became a suspect after he was charged with criminal trespass and resisting arrest in a domestic incident on Tuesday, according to the Daily News. In the subway attack, he was hit with two assault charges: intent to cause disfigurement and intent to cause serious physical injury.

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January 28, 2016

13

With Speakers: Benjamin Dulchin Executive Director of the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development

Daniel Hernandez Deputy Commissioner for the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development

Andrew Leonard Children’s Defense Fund - New York

Maya Bhardwaj Economic Dignity Organizer Faith in New York

FREE EVENT

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Hydrant’s helper

Following the directives of Councilmember Corey Johnson, Perry St. resident Peter Hanifin took to his shovel and snapped on galoshes to create access to the fire hydrant on his block.

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

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January 28, 2016

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

Sacking fattening foods for Super Bowl and beyond RHYMES WITH CRAZY

BY LENORE SKENAZY

I

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

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

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

One handful of pita chips with artichoke dip equals running 141 football fields.

Working off one measly Cheeto —

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

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

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

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

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

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

This was after he’d gotten the law degree, but still was floundering — and single.

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

So, for three years, he researched how real behavior change happens.

He was finally ready to hand in his manuscript when he realized, “I hadn’t changed one behavior of my own!” So he decided to actually fol-

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

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

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

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

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

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

“If you had to Google Map every day to figure out what floor your office is on,” that would be painful, he offered as an example. (And you would need some other kind of help.)

But after a short while, of course, you know the drill.

It’s the same with figuring out what your food patterns are. And once you notice that every night, right before bed, you eat a bowl of Ben & Jerry’s, well then, all you have to do is start

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

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

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

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

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

So long as it’s not Domino’s stuffed cheesy bacon jalapeno bread sticks.

Skenazy is a keynote speaker and author and founder of the book and blog “Free-Range Kids”

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Registration is required for drop off and drop in activities.

RSVP is appreciated for family Plan & Play day attendance.

Register and RSVP at GreenIvy.com/Events TheVillager.com

Battery Park Montessori Summer Camp Sampler drop off available from 10-12 and 1-3 for children 2.5-6 years old.

Pixel Academy Minecraft Club drop in to the Pine Street School Design Technology Lab available from 10-3 for kids 6-14 years old.

January 28, 2016

15

PHOTO BY YANNIC RACK

A smiling carriage horse driver likes his job — but what about the horse? Some say the horses love their work, but does anyone really know for sure what goes on in the mind of an equine? If Mayor de Blasio’s plan succeeds, at least the beasts of burden will be doing all their pulling in the park.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

I hope we will really honor his memory by fighting to address income inequality.

In the name of Dr. King

Improve, expand Medicare

To The Editor: On the holiday remembering Dr. Martin Luther King, as I read about all the marches, prayer breakfasts and dinners, awards ceremonies and other events, this headline jumped out to me: “Richest 62 people have more money than poorest half of the planet.”

Today our world is torn apart by war, terrorism, racism and all kinds of violence, and it is hard to

EVAN FORSCH

read about it every day — especially about the war and economic refugees, as well as the homeless here in America. In all the quotes honoring and remembering Dr. King, I saw very few talking about the headline I shared above.

If Dr. King were still alive today, I have no doubt he would be putting worldwide economic inequality at the top of his list for protest and change.

Many of the other terrible events and violence today can be directly linked to poverty and greed.

John Penley

To The Editor: Re “We need universal healthcare in New York State” (talking point, by Kim Behrens RN, Jan. 21): Healthcare when we are healthy and working and no healthcare when we are sick and can’t work is not healthcare security. We need healthcare when we need it. Take healthcare off the table in our workplace and provide healthcare for everyone when it is needed, not just when we are healthy and working.

America cannot compete effectively in the market paying double-digit cost increases for healthcare. A health tax based on income, in place of a premium paid to insurance providers, gives stability to the insured and the healthcare medical providers.

Don’t wait to open that next insurance premium notice and hope that you can afford to maintain your coverage. Improve and expand Medicare for all. A 50-year success record is proof that it works for the elderly, the sickest and the disabled.

Imagine what it could do for us when we are all paying in based on our income for sustainable healthcare and not being afraid of what that next premium bill will cost.

Betty Madden LETTERS continued on p. 18

16

January 28, 2016

TheVillager.com

How I helped free Fernando, an innocent man NOTEBOOK

BY CLAUDE SOLNIK

W

hen Judge Jonathan Cataldo announced he would let TV cameras in the courtroom before announcing his ruling in Fernando Bermudez’s case, I felt encouraged. I had known Fernando was innocent for nearly two decades, ever since I wrote a front-page story for The Villager indicating evidence of his innocence. If the judge upheld the conviction for a Greenwich Village murder, there would be little to report. Media would only care if the judge overturned the conviction after Fernando spent 18 years in prison.

That day turned out to be one of the most memorable, and remarkable, in my life. Justice Cataldo did much more than overturn. He apologized to Fernando and declared him factually “innocent,” not simply not guilty. Fernando was freed soon after. Mike Gaynor, the retired detective who investigated the case, and the few of us who comprised the official-sounding Committee to Free Fernando Bermudez celebrated in a Chinese restaurant. The food was ordinary. It was the best meal I ever had.

Lesley Risinger and Barry Pollack, the lead pro bono attorneys who won, were heroes in my book along with MaryAnn DiBari, who fought hard, as well. The Villager played a role in freeing an innocent man. So, I believe, did I. While I didn’t forget Fernando (we’re friends), only lately have I become involved in his life and the issue of wrongful conviction again. I wrote a play, “Pedro Castillo Is Innocent,” based on Fernando, with enough fiction to get me to change the character’s name. The show “Making a Murderer” tells one wrongful conviction story. This play, running at Theater for the New City from Feb. 4 to 14, brings Fernando’s case back into my life and, I hope, shows it to others who live blocks from the site of the crime for which he was convicted and exonerated.

While we all talk about the need to move on, this play seeks to show us the human impact of injustice on an innocent man and his family. We can’t just forget what happened after a victory. We need to translate that into a recognition of the true tragedy and cost of these mistakes and a call for change.

I wrote the play because, while Fernando’s victory finished one thing, I see unfinished business in a broken justice system. The Villager when Tom and Elizabeth Butson ran the paper and other media helped free him, by helping attract talented lawyers and forcing the courts to look at the facts more carefully. In Fernando’s case, the media is one of the few things that did its job — and it does have one in the justice system.

Although The Villager put the story on its front page first, The New York Times had the courage to do the same, while he was in prison. “Court TV” reinvestigated, concluding he was innocent. TV stations and other publications weighed in. Why did Fernando remain in prison so long with no physical evidence and an alibi based on a photograph passed around by witnesses, while the main witness identified someone else as the killer?

A federal judge charged with reviewing the case gave it to a low-level magistrate who, I believe, was reluctant to overturn. Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau finally retired after decades of TheVillager.com

John Torres as Pedro Castillo (Fernando Bermudez) and Christine Copley as Gwen Castillo (Crystal Bermudez) in “Pedro Castillo Is Innocent.”

stonewalling and no “conviction integrity” process, clearly demonstrating a problem in the lack of term limits. The state judge handling Fernando’s case retired after doing everything possible to prevent witnesses from recanting. This wasn’t about making a mistake. It was about the cost of refusing to acknowledge and correct one.

Just as we pushed with press releases and advocacy to ‘Free Fernando,’ I am using words as weapons and tools once again.

Just like the way we pushed with press releases and advocacy to “Free Fernando,” I am using words as weapons and tools once again. “Pedro Castillo Is Innocent” seeks to show how this story exists in the perpetual present and isn’t just about facts, but family. It looks at Fernando during one portion of his life in prison. I left the details of Fernando’s story for Fernando to tell: I believe they belong to him. It fights against the temptation to forget, showing an innocent man in prison and those around him as they deal with an injustice so immense that it makes a person question the sanity of society.

We presented a staged reading at the Studio Theatre Long Island, which Fernando’s mother, brother and sister attended. “That’s Fernando,” his mother said. She was right. I used to sit in the prison parking lot after visits, writing down what he said. I believed he should be heard, and in this play, I believe, he is. I watched him suffer and grow, go from lifting weights to learning new words and lecturing at Harvard, Yale and elsewhere after his release. I was happy that the world wanted to hear the man that nobody would listen to for nearly two decades. He was using words to try to stop people from forgetting and get us to fix a broken system. I would do the same thing. I wanted others to feel as strongly as I did about what occurred and the need for institutional change. Judging by the reaction at a staged reading, that’s starting to occur with audiences.

Theater for the New City, run by Crystal Field, agreed to present the show, in part, I believe, because she likes the idea of a play that “says something.” At rehearsals, I listened as John Torres spoke lines I still remember Fernando saying. I watched Christine Copley, the actress playing a character based on his wife, go through the pain that I remember his wife, Crystal, felt. I watched the director, Danielle C.N. Zappa, and actors keep Fernando in front of me. When people talk about “Making a Murderer,” I think of Fernando and other innocent people awaiting resolution. I also think of Justice Cataldo, who understood it’s important for the world to see what went wrong.

I hope audiences will get a better sense of the injustice done in the name of society and ask that it not be done in their name. I am convinced one of the reasons great injustices occur is that we allow them to be invisible. We need someone to be innocent until “proven” guilty — not simply declared as such.

So many problems that led to Fernando’s time in prison remain. Prosecutors and police who did a terrible job were promoted, although they may have faced an emotional toll, realizing what occurred. Lineups were viewed simultaneously, where witnesses pick suspects most resembling the criminal. Carousel lineups where people step up one at a time are considered more reliable, but not required. Double-blind lineups — where the person running the identification doesn’t know who the suspect is — are a best practice. Neither is the norm. Then there’s a refusal to acknowledge error. We all make mistakes. Admitting one is a sign of a system’s strength.

I don’t believe this play can change anything, but I believe it’s part of an important push for change. If “Making a Murderer” turns into a TV show rather than a call for change, it will be a missed opportunity.

What’s happening is “our” problem. I lost sleep over Fernando’s situation for years as his situation became my problem. Ask my wife or children, who also dealt with this. When I listen to the actors, I sometimes smile, knowing Fernando is free.

But by writing this play, I refuse to forget the other Fernandos waiting to be freed — and future Fernandos. I hope others will see the show as the chorus for change grows, until we realize we are all responsible for these wrongful convictions and responsible for bringing about change.

“Pedro Castillo Is Innocent,” Theater for the New City, 155 First Ave., Feb. 4-14. Purchase tickets, $15, at www.theaterforthenewcity.net or by calling 212-2541109 or at the door.

Solnik is a former reporter for The Villager January 28, 2016

17

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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR LETTERS continued from p. 16

What about his kids?

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

Bernadette O’Reilly

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

Sylvia Rackow

Housing, not tech!

To The Editor: Wait! I don’t understand. A great piece of city-owned land, and the Economic Development Corporation wants to build a tech start-up?

The city is complaining how it has no land for affordable housing. This property, at 124 E. 14th St., is a prime site. Who are they kidding about tech start-up offices?

It’s your land, New York City. Build

100 percent affordable housing, whatever that really means in terms of availability income-wise. We want real New Yorkers in our community — and the affordability issue is questionable — but just build housing for real people!

On the lower level, build a community center for young kids from the schools and neighborhood to learn how to be part of this so-called tech start-up — don’t put a CVS there.

This is out of control. The city does not need to use its property, once again, to accommodate vague private interests.

Should the head of E.D.C. — who is not an elected official — be telling this community why on precious cityowned land we cannot build affordable housing?

That said, with the exit of PC Richard, where do I buy a stove? A fridge? I bought all my things through them. Is everyone in New York City buying stoves online?

Kriti Siderakis 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.

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January 28, 2016

TheVillager.com

Once upon a time, told with style

Fairy tales get the high fashion treatment at FIT

BY LINDSAY BU

I

n the storybook realm of evil stepmothers, handsome princes, little mermaids and humble maidens, any old talking mirror on the wall will tell you that appearances count — and things are not always as they appear.

Told with style and flair, the “Fairy Tale Fashion” exhibit, on view through April 16 at The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, uses the work of designers such as Rodarte, Christian Louboutin and Alexander McQueen to bring a refreshing complexity to the “happily ever after” arc of familiar narratives from the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson, Lewis Carrol and others.

“The first thing that I did when I got this topic approved was pick up a book of stories by Charles Perrault,” says associate curator Colleen Hill. “I had no idea of the history of fairy tales, but it turns out that this work, published in 1697, is considered to be the first major work of fairy tales.”

Approaching the stories with a fresh eye “really helped me to hone in on what I wanted to do, instead of trying to cover this over-arching concept of what a fairy tale is.” A defining moment came during Hill’s reading of “Sleeping Beauty,” which had a “funny reference to the fact that her clothing was outdated. So I thought it might be more fun to track these sort of details and concepts, and then use fashion to illustrate that.”

The gallery space is divided into four settings: Forest, Castle, Sea, and Parallel Worlds, each incorporating a number of location-relevant fairy tales, and various renditions of each familiar story. In the Parallel Worlds section, for instance, a striking blue Manish Arora dress inspired by the Queen of Hearts’ army of cards in Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” is placed next to a white frilled dress by Undercover.

The latter outfit pays homage to Czech director Jan Švankmajer ’s “Alice,” a 1988 take on the Lewis Carroll classic. “Alice” embodies the unsettling eeriness that defines Švankmajer ’s work, with his characteristic use of stop motion, taxidermy, and animal TheVillager.com

skeletons. Undercover ’s ensemble evokes this with the dingy pastel frock, similar to the one worn by the film’s titular character.

While some designers like Undercover make pieces to portray the essence of specific literary or film works, others deviate from the established descriptions and use their creative freedom to present an idea in a new light.

During a guided tour led by Hill, she chuckles as she points to a Giles Deacon gown from his Fall 2012 collection that is supposed to depict Cinderella’s worn and tattered rags — “rags that are, in fact, really beautiful and fashionable,” notes Hill.

The gown is stunning, ethereal with its layers of soft lavender tulle and gentle tears that expose white fabric underneath. These exposed areas of white, which are outlined in dark violet and grey, are the result of a blowtorch; yet, the gown is still somehow delicate and elegant despite (or perhaps because of) these burns.

“I wanted to give the sense that perhaps Cinderella has these beautiful garments, and when she is made to be this cinder-maid, they’re kind of charred and ruined over time,” says Hill.

Though Hill ultimately collected these different pieces and portrayed various stories through clothing, she also explained that, in many of the fairy tales, style is already very important for the characters.

In “The Wizard of Oz,” Hill explains, “There’s actually this underlying obsession with fashion that Dorothy has throughout the tale that’s kind of lost in the movie.”

She cites the example of when, before Dorothy embarks on her trip to Oz, she goes back into the house to change into a blue and white gingham dress, because she wants to look good for her journey. On display is a 1942 Adrian gingham dress, with a loose red and blue bowtie at the neckline. The pleated arm sleeves and distinct cerulean blue of the checked cloth are reminiscent of Dorothy’s original gingham outfit in the 1939 film — which is unsurprising, because Adrian was the film’s costume designer.

FIT continued on p. 20 January 28, 2016

19

Lots of little red riding hoods FIT continued from p. 19

According to Hill, even Snow White — who’s perhaps defined by her rosy cheeks and naïveté — also has a sense of vanity that shapes her behavior in early versions of the story. In the original Brothers Grimm tale, Snow White wants to have colorful corset laces and her hair to be perfectly combed.

In fact, the evil queen appeals to Snow White by making a poisonous apple that looks like her. In a small glass box on the platform is a dazzling Judith Lieber minaudière in the shape of an apple, and next to it is a life-size glass coffin with an Alice + Olivia rhinestone-encrusted, black organza gown lying down inside.

The breadth and diversity of pieces displayed in “Fairy Tale Fashion” are what make the installation so remarkable. The exhibit presents beautiful articles of clothing and accessories by some of the most renowned designers — but more importantly, it depicts the beauty of interpretation: that one story can have the power to inspire vastly different works of art. It is in this space that six different scarlet cloaks inspired by “Little Red Riding Hood” have gathered in front of an ominous green backdrop, and a long Yoshiki Hishinuma snakeskin gown shines just as much as the Alexander McQueen snakeskin mini-dress next to it.

Hill’s curatorial work provides the public with something both children and adults can enjoy — referencing stories that many are familiar with, while noting nuances in the various version of the same story.

“I think what’s fascinating is that the stories themselves don’t seem that complex when you read them, because they tend to be very short and they often have a sort of moral.

But when you really start to think about them a little more deeply, and taking these references to fashion and portraying them in light of fashion history, you can get a lot more of the subtleties and interesting concepts,” concludes Hill.

Free. Through April 16 at The Museum at FIT (Seventh Ave. at 27th St.). Hours: Tues.–Fri., 12–8 p.m.; Sat., 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Closed Sun. and Mon. Call 212-217-7999 or visit fitnyc. edu/museum.

20

January 28, 2016

© THE MUSEUM AT FIT

PHOTO BY LINDSAY BU

Ensemble illustrating “The Little Mermaid.” L to R: dresses by Thierry Mugler, Norman Norell and Rodarte.

A Giles Deacon gown from his Fall 2012 collection, illustrating the raggedy dress that Cinderella wears while doing chores (though the dress is not so shabby here).

© THE MUSEUM AT FIT

Clothing illustrating “Little Red Riding Hood.” L to R: 18th century cloak, 19th century nightgown, 1970s cloak by Giorgio di Sant’Angelo, cloak by Altuzarra, dress by Dolce and Gabbana, ensemble by Comme des Garçons. Chanel No. 5 video courtesy of Chanel.

TheVillager.com

The bon mot family slingers

‘Our Mother’s Brief Affair’ keeps truth at a distance

BY SCOTT STIFFLER

I

t’s easy to enjoy — but hard to believe — the central character in this flashback-heavy tale of a mother’s confession and the unsettling ripple effect it has on her surviving children. If only that assessment didn’t apply to the play as well.

During one of many “cry wolf” calls to her deathbed, Anna (Linda Lavin) — a stubbornly tart husk of the shag rug-loving, Burberry trench coat-wearing, Mary Higgins Clark-reading Long Island mother she was in her prime — lets loose with a doozy, telling grown-up gay son Seth (Greg Keller) about the affair she had when he was 15.

But are her tales of park bench flirtations and hotel room trysts (engaged in while a youthful Seth took weekly viola lessons at Juilliard) the product of a dying truth-teller, a victim of “mental mayhem natural to someone who’d had too many operations, and way too much anesthesia,” or a vain revisionist gunning for space in the competitive obituary page her son writes?

After just over two hours’ worth of anecdotes told, dots connected and observations made, Seth and his twin sister Abby (Kate Arrington) — still no closer to an answer they can live with — are reduced to wondering, “…who are you?”

Despite its finely calibrated, audience-pleasing quips and volleys (and there are many), Tony-winning writer Richard Greenberg’s layered, but ultimately wafer-thin play sends you on your way with the feeling of having been cheated out of an investment — not in time spent, but in characters ill-served by one too many plot twists that tantalize, then fail to deliver.

Full of juicy details that force a reassessment of the parent they only thought they knew, Anna’s brief affair is grist enough for her befuddled children. However, the even more disturbing revelation that caps Act I plays itself out as little more than a feat of parlor trick misdirection, as does a “Rosebud” moment from Anna’s childhood.

That origin story, though, is beautifully written and wrenchingly played — and if this single callous act seems incapable of causing Anna to proclaim, “I wasn’t worthy of the good things,” only to make those around her suffer for decades, then something

© JOAN MARCUS, 2016

Bench press: Despite their persistent questioning, Anna (Linda Lavin, center) knows how to hold her children at arm’s length.

must have done the job. How else to explain the deceased father’s only appearance? (“Everybody with their ‘oh mom’s so sick, mom’s so frail’ — she’ll live forever; one day I’ll drop down dead,” he says.)

Recalling what a lousy patient she was during those rounds of getting sick and getting well, Abe (John Procaccino, also cast as Anna’s lover) musters a level of rage so genuine and insightful that it makes the endless comedic observations of Seth and Abby seem as if they belong in a separate, far less important, universe.

Not helping matters: The brother and sister deliver their pithy quips directly to the audience.

It’s not long before this has the unfortunate effect of turning the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre into a downscale basement comedy club, where cascades of laughter, although well-earned, distract from the business of drilling deep enough to tap what really lurks below the surface.

Punchline imperative notwithstanding, Greenberg’s knack for heartfelt moments, achieved with stunning bursts of prose, keeps the whole “Affair” from drifting into sitcom territory — making the experience a disappointment only in the sense of potential not realized because of the roads not taken.

As the elusive title character, Linda Lavin (whose Feb. 1 “First Farewell Concert” at Birdland Jazz Club you really need to see) has no trouble distinguishing this performance from others in the “formidable parent” genre typical of her recent stage work. So perhaps it’s not such a bad thing to say you can’t quite figure your mother out. Best to show her some love while she’s still around.

For tickets ($60-$140), visit telecharge.com or call 212-239-6200. At the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre (261 W. 47th St., btw. Broadway & Eighth Ave.). For info on MTC, visit ManhattanTheatreClub.com.

Theater for the New City • 155 1st Avenue at E. 10th St. Reservations & Info (212) 254-1109

For tickets & info, please visit www.theaterforthenewcity.net or visit

Dare to be Black Written and

Performed by: Tommie J. Moore February 4 thru February 24

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January 7 thru 31 Thursdays Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 PM Sundays at 3:00 PM

January 28, 2016

21

Gay art goes bigger

Leslie-Lohman Museum to nearly double in size this spring

BY KELSY CHAUVIN

I

t may seem hard to believe, but it’s been nearly a half-century since Charles Leslie and Fritz Lohman hosted their first art exhibit. Little did they know that the gay art show mounted in their Prince St. loft in 1969 would lay the groundwork for a niche cultural institution that continues to get bigger and better.

This spring, the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art (leslielohman.org) will take another huge step with an expansion that will almost double its current size of 3,300 square feet. Its present location at 26 Wooster St. will take over the attached corner retail space at No. 28 in March. Pending construction timing, the additional showroom could open as soon as April.

“It seemed it was a natural move for us. It will allow us to expand in a gradual, controlled fashion, while at the same time make many facility-related improvements,” said Museum Director Hunter O’Hanian. “This will give us many important gains.”

Top among those improvements are two key programming changes. The first is that a larger space allows the museum to exhibit pieces from its massive collection of more than 24,000 works. That goal is a long time coming, especially considering that some of its queer-centric art has never been exhibited. Additionally, by having two galleries, the museum will no longer have to close while exhibits are installed and deinstalled.

The second programming advancement is perhaps even more significant, because it elevates Leslie-Lohman’s visibility and mission.

“We will continue building a destination museum with a dedicated LGBTQ focus on par with other small, excellent museums in New York, like the Studio Museum of Harlem, El Museo del Barrio, the Rubin, or the Jewish Museum,” said O’Hanian.

Before Leslie-Lohman evolved into an accredited, 501(c)3 non-profit museum in 2011, the gallery was limited in its ability to borrow relevant works from other institutions and individuals. The forthcoming expansion allows for new storage areas that better meet the typical storage requirements for works borrowed from prestigious establishments like the Smithsonian, the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Anyone familiar with the existing SoHo museum knows that the reception desk and tiny gift shop, though well designed for the space, are limited in size and function. With the wall between buildings 26 and 28 soon to be knocked down, the significantly larger square footage will allow for dedicated offices on the corner of Wooster and Grand Sts., where the work of the Leslie-Lohman Gay Art Foundation can be better conducted on premises.

An improved visitor greeting area will remain in its current location, and no longer double as staff work spaces. A bigger book and gift shop, small kitchen, additional restroom, and equipment-storage rooms will be added too, while the Wooster St. Window Gallery will extend nearly up to Grand St. Apart from adjunct spaces, much of the new showroom will house the Marion Pinto Gallery, named

22

January 28, 2016

MON IKER/ LESLIE LOHMAN MUSEUM OF GAY ART

The corner of Wooster St. and Grand St., where the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art will expand to form its current location at 26 Wooster.

DIMITRIS YEROS & THROCKMORTON FINE ART/ NEW YORK

Dimitris Yeros’ “With His Thoughts on Bulgaria,” 2015, inkjet print, 15 x 10 in., part of the “Medium of Desire: An International Anthology of Photography and Video” exhibition at Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art.

for the Soho artists’ district pioneer. Her work comprised the first one-woman show ever mounted at the Leslie-Lohman Gallery back in 1975, entitled “Man As A Sex Object.” Pinto famously painted the dual nude of Fritz Lohman and Charles Leslie that hung in Bologna’s Museo d’Arte Moderna years later, in the exhibition “Il Nudo.”

Pinto donated her life’s work to the Leslie-Lohman Museum. It’s in good company with works by queer artists as varied as Berenice Abbott, David Hockney, Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, George Platt Lynes,

Jean Cocteau, Del LaGrace Volcano, Robert Mapplethorpe, Deborah Bright, David Wojnarowicz, and many others.

A greater slate of community events, seminars, and educational programs also will be ushered in.

“The expansion will help us as we move forward in developing an educational program,” said Jonathan David Katz, the president of the museum’s board of directors. “We already have the most robust queer arts speaker and tour program in New York, but this expansion will allow us to expand those efforts even more.”

Currently, the museum is hosting its final exhibition before renovation begins. “Medium of Desire: An International Anthology of Photography and Video” was curated by art historian and board member Peter Weiermair and opened in Dec. Under the “desire” theme, the work of 14 artists on display represent a range of styles, “from documentation to elaborately staged photo shoots,” said O’Hanian. Works by famous photographers like Catherine Opie and Greg Gorman join those by less-established artists, including some international ones for whom this exhibit marks their US debut.

“In looking at these works, we see the expression of desire between those depicted in the images,” said Weiermair. “Then, in other works we see the desire between the artists and their subjects. In many instances, as we witness this desire, it evokes our own feelings, regardless of our individual perspective.”

There is no word yet on what exhibits or artists will open the expanded Leslie-Lohman Museum come spring. But we can be sure they will be both insightful and provocative, and continue the mission, “to exhibit and preserve art that speaks directly to the many aspects of the LGBTQ experience, and foster the artists who create it.” Charles and Fritz would have it no other way.

“Medium of Desire: An International Anthology of Photography and Video.” Through March 16 at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art (26 Wooster St., btw. Grand & Canal Sts.). Hours: Tues.–Wed., Fri.– Sun. 12–6 p.m., Thurs. 12–8 p.m. Visit leslielohman.org.

TheVillager.com

COURTESY RACHEL UFFNER GALLERY

Installation view, “David Armacost: Open Time.”

Two spaces, parallel narratives ‘Open Time’ showcases similar explorations of Armacost, Planck

BY STEPHANIE BUHMANN

O

ften working within arm’s reach of each other, David Armacost and Nikholis Planck pursue a similar exploration of painting. Honoring this unusual rapport, their individual efforts are showcased side-by-side in “Open Time” — an exhibition dedicated to notions of opportunity and potential in the creative process. In fact, both Armacost’s and Planck’s paintings reflect a sincere devotion to material experimentation. They also prove to have a keen interest in creating layered compositions that are able to convey personal experience.

By assigning two spaces to their parallel narratives, the gallery aims to evoke the trail of stimulating conversation that has sparked and underlined many of the artists’ works in the past. However, it also promises to become an independent installation in itself, blurring the divide between studio practice and public exhibition.

Through Feb. 20 at Rachel Uffner Gallery (170 Suffolk St., btw. E. Houston & Stanton Sts.). Hours: Wed.–Sun., 10 a.m.– 6 p.m. Call 212-274-0064 or visit racheluffnergallery.com.

TheVillager.com

COURTESY RACHEL UFFNER GALLERY

Installation view, “Nikholis Planck: Open Time.”

January 28, 2016

23

City is set to issue R.F.P. for Elizabeth Garden GARDEN continued from p. 1

niors someplace else.

Saving the garden is also the goal of Community Board 2. Tobi Bergman, C.B. 2 chairperson, reminded the crowd last week that in December the board passed a resolution to support an affordable housing project on the city-owned site of the water tunnel shaft at Clarkson and Hudson Sts., but only if the city drops the Elizabeth St. proposal.

Garden friends also have put forth another affordable housing possibility — the parking lot at 2 Howard St. currently used by the federal Department of Homeland Security.

Supporters of affordable housing on the Elizabeth St. site hope that open public space would be included in the project.

“It can be done on this site,” said City Councilmember Margaret Chin, who represents the neighborhood and supports the H.P.D. plan. Chin said the Elizabeth St. site had been padlocked for a long time after a public school there was demolished in 1971, despite the aging population’s desperate need for affordable housing. Since 1991, Allan Reiver has leased the site from the city. He cleaned it up and has used it as an outdoor storage space for his architectural monuments and statues. It was only a few years ago that the community discovered the property was public land, and since then it has functioned as a vital open space for the neighborhood.

While the H.P.D. team at the forum said the city is still studying alternative sites for affordable housing, the department nevertheless is preparing to issue a request for proposals, or R.F.P., for developers to build affordable housing for seniors on the garden site.

The city envisions a project with 60 affordable apartments (the minimum required for economic feasibility) for senior citizens in a seven-story building with ground-floor commercial space. The H.P.D. team said the city expects that the selected developer would include about 5,000 square feet of public open space. But opponents said that was not adequate to replace the more than 20,000-square-foot green oasis that neighbors now enjoy.

The R.F.P. is part of Mayor de Blasio’s program to finance 40,000 units of affordable housing. Once H.P.D. accepts a developer’s proposal, the plan becomes public and the project undergoes the city Uniform Land Use Review Procedure. The ULURP could take up to a year to complete and must be approved by the City Council.

Construction on the project, which must conform to the Special Little Italy District, which imposes height restric-

24

January 28, 2016

VILLAGER FILE PHOTO

A young girl amid festive pumpkins that gardeners had painted at the Elizabeth St. Garden’s annual Harvest Fest in October.

tions, would begin in 2018 with completion expected in the spring of 2020.

Senior residents of the C.B. 2 area (between the Bowery/Fourth Ave. and the Hudson River from 14th St. to Canal St.) would receive preference for 50 percent of the apartments.

But once those apartments become vacant, they would be available by lottery to any city resident.

However, a pending lawsuit in State Supreme Court is challenging the 50 percent preference for local residents. If the city loses the case, such housing would be open to all by lottery, regardless of where they live in the city.

The H.P.D. team, led by Deputy Commissioner David Quart, told the forum last week that the R.F.P. could not be made public until after a developer is selected. But in response to complaints that the process excludes the public, the team said the R.F.P. would include an addendum of observations and comments from the forum. The R.F.P. could also give the selected developer the voluntary option of contacting the local community board for suggestions about the project, the H.P.D. team said.

“We take your comments very seriously,” Quart told the forum, “but we always face trade-offs.” City housing projects include public open space wherever possible, he added.

Affordability in H.P.D. projects is defined as rent that equals about one-third of the area’s average median income. But Sante Cordella, a Little Italy resident, protested that

many elderly neighbors could not afford that rent.

Friends of Elizabeth St. Garden was organized in 2014 to preserve the heavily used community garden in a neighborhood with barely any park space.

“We have 1,500 letters of support for the Elizabeth St. Garden,” said Jeannine Kiely, a leader of the Friends group. “The neighborhood has an average of 3 square feet of park space per resident, counting the planted median on Houston St.,” Kiely said.

“Students, seniors, new residents and old neighbors — we’ve all come together to create this community space. It’s the soul of our neighborhood,” said Emily Hellstrom. She went on to say that neighbors want the Elizabeth St. Garden preserved for the community, and they want affordable housing for seniors on either the water tunnel shaft site or the Howard St. parking lot.

In addition to Little Italy neighbors, representatives of local politicians also spoke up for preserving the garden and for building affordable housing elsewhere. Aides to Assemblymember Deborah Glick, state Senators Daniel Squadron and Brad Hoylman and Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer urged H.P.D. to find another site for affordable housing.

Keen Berger, a C.B. 2 member instrumental in securing the New York State-owned 75 Morton St. for a public school, recalled that the state had issued an R.F.P. for the site but did not accept any, allowing it to become

a local middle school. Berger asked if there was any chance the city might decide not to accept any proposal for Elizabeth St., allowing it to remain a neighborhood park H.P.D. representatives said it was possible but they did not think it was likely.

“I want to see affordable housing built, but not on the Elizabeth St. Garden,” said Renee Breen, an 84-year-old widow, adding, “there is no other place like it.”

Howard Blakey, a neighborhood resident for 50 years, told the forum that he recently sustained a heart attack and the garden, a short walk from his home, is just what the doctor ordered.

“Don’t let them take a bulldozer to our little piece of paradise,” pleaded another friend of the garden.

“I feel we’re presented with a fait accompli,” said Amanda Rodriguez, adding that there is no guarantee that the R.F.P. would yield any senior housing. However, the H.P.D. team replied, “The site will not be sold for luxury housing. It will be for affordable housing.”

Speaking for Community Board 2, Bergman said, “We do not consider this a done deal.”

“This is the people’s property, don’t call it ‘city property.’ It’s the people’s property,” said Aziz Dahkan, executive director of the New York City Community Garden Coalition. “We’ve been fighting H.P.D. for years,” Dahkan said, “and we’ve been able to save seven of 18 community gardens that were threatened.”

He urged Elizabeth St. neighbors to carry on the fight to save the garden.

Although outnumbered at the Jan. 20 forum, supporters of the H.P.D. plan spoke up.

Linda Hoffman, executive director of the New York Foundation for Senior Citizens, which has developed 10 senior residential buildings, said that H.P.D. should include a full complement of social services in its senior housing projects.

Veronica Li, representing Asian Americans for Equality, said the city should make sure that 100 percent of the project is for senior residents.

Kent Barwick, former president of the Municipal Art Society and former member of the city Landmarks Preservation Commission, is chairperson of Friends of Elizabeth St. Garden. Nevertheless, he sees the potential for agreement.

“This is not a divided community,” Barwick, a resident of Mott St., said at the forum. “We’ve learned over the years to work together and support each other. There is no reason to be divided. Government’s role is to build consensus. I hope H.P.D. can work with this community.”

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

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

PURPLE continued from p. 10

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

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

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

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

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

Rejected compromises

PHOTO BY HARVEY WANG

Adam Purple perched high above his Garden of Eden.

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

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

‘Did a lot of damage’

‘You’re doing a great thing’

“He did a lot of damage to our community,” Lopez reflected of Purple. “The biggest damage he did was to continue building that garden in that site that was set aside for housing. And, particularly, he harmed the relationship between the people who wanted to build housing and the gardeners.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘That’s a sociopath’

No sympathy

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

Valerio Orselli was an ally of Lopez’s on the Lower East Side Joint Planning Council, fighting to raze

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On the subject of the garden, he said, “Actually, Adam played a significant role in the garden’s demise. We tried to work out a compromise with him; we proposed setting up a nonprofit to administer the garden, preserve the core area and still build the housing. Adam refused to give up any control and the housing was built, with no garden.

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

What would Hegel say?

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

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

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

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

“I told him nothing of the ‘Coming Out’ piece,” she said. “It was a spontaneous creation. I would not have thought to clue him in. The piece wasn’t about him or the abuse. It was a way to celebrate finding my way from slavery to authenticity. None of his business.”

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PHOTOS BY ROBBIELEEPHOTO.COM

From left, Gabriel Jacquez, D’Andre McLamb, Xavier Jennings, Drew Billingsley and Kevin Won at Senior Night at Seward Park High School.

Seward Park Bears are mauling the competition SPORTS

BY RICHARD KUSHNER

T

he Seward Park High School boys varsity basketball team is flourishing this season.

Their in-conference record is 9-1, the best in many years.

They are coached by Wallace Simpson, a North Carolina native who came to New York City 10 years ago. Simpson has had a lot to learn about Big Apple basketball but was able to pick it up fast. His assistants, Eddie Lau, Brian MacCullum and Pete Markovics, have been instrumental in bringing the team to its current pinnacle.

The young Seward Park players have a mix of backgrounds and hail from the local neighborhood and the boroughs. All races are included on the roster.

The senior class boasts D’Andre McLamb, the team’s star and high scorer. D’Andre has had several college scouts at the team’s games watching him, and we hope he receives a scholarship from one of them.

Drew Billingsley, who transferred in this year, along with point guard Xavier Jennings, have also gotten considerable attention. Rounding out the starting five is Gabriel Jacquez at center and Kevin Won, the team’s three-point specialist.

TheVillager.com

McLamb with his mom.

D’Andre McLamb at Senior Night, when all the team’s players gave their mothers roses.

The Fire Island Basketball Tournament has somewhat adopted the Seward Park boys because of my interest in the team. I’m the commissioner of the Fire Island Tournament, which occurs in Ocean Beach on three weekends at the end of each summer. I started consulting for Coach Simpson five years ago, and from then on have been an integral part in helping the young men in areas related and unrelated to basketball.

I have gotten the men from the Fire Island Tournament to watch the team and help out in turning these young boys into men and letting them see

some of the world outside of their immediate neighborhood. Our Fire Island players acting as mentors to the boys has enabled some of them to get jobs and get into college.

We sincerely hope that the Fire Island Basketball Tournament will continue to assist and mentor these young men in the future and give them some of the opportunities that we were blessed to have.

Continuing their winning ways, last Thursday, Seward Park beat Stuyvesant High School handily, 68-48.

Stuyvesant is always well coached and prepared, and has been Seward Park’s nemesis for several years. However, this season and last the tide has turned. The Bears from Grand St. also trounced the Peglegs 61-24 back on Dec. 3.

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