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

December 31, 2015 • $1.00 Volume 85 • Number 31

Arcane process to pick Shelly Silver successor favors district leaders BY JOSH ROGERS

o who is going to be picking the successor to Shelly Silver, the former assemblymember who was convicted last month on corruption charges? If you are following the story, you already know it won’t be voters. Members of the Democratic County

Committee from Silver’s 65th Assembly District in Lower Manhattan will effectively crown the next legislator early next year when they select the nominee for the April 19 special election. But at least the public can easily see who the committee members are, right? SILVER continued on p. 14

E.P.A. to fast-track Hudson River cleanup review in ’16 BY YANNIC RACK

he U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is speeding up its probe into whether General Electric’s cleanup of the Hudson River was a success, giving in to pressure from environmental groups who say the company needs to do more to clear the waterway from chemicals. The $2 billion six-year

dredging project concluded earlier this year and GE claims it successfully removed the dangerous PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, it dumped into the river before 1977. Instead of waiting until 2017, the E.P.A. announced this week that it will now start early next year with its inspection of whether the dangerous pollutant — CLEANUP continued on p. 11

PHOTO BY LINCOLN ANDERSON

An Adam Purple collage, including an “Omtober” ’93 letter to his daughter Jenean, mentioning an upcoming photo shoot with Harvey Wang for Life magazine; with photos of Purple, from left, with his son Adam David in the Garden of Eden; possibly at his high school graduation; and with Anne a.k.a. Eve No. 2. “what do you think of this brandnew letterhead?” he asks his daughter. “hipp, huh!”

The dark side of Purple BY LINCOLN ANDERSON

his is a true story…. I was born in Missouri in 1955. For the first 12 years of my life, I was held captive, and systematically brainwashed. I was indoctrinated and trained to be a sex slave. …” So began a woman’s monologue, entitled “Coming Out,” performed on Sept. 4 on the stage of an improv theater somewhere in the Northwest. Stagehands held up two large cardboard rectangles, each with a drawing on it

— one downstage, showing a young girl, the other upstage, a woman. As the narrator, hidden from view, spoke during the five-minute piece, several people first circled the drawing of the girl while holding up small signs with quotes, such as “Daddy loves you,” “Let the nice man kiss it,” “You like that don’t you!” “Let them watch, honey,” and “If it hurts use vaseline.” The woman went on to talk about how, as a young child, she was given pornography and sex toys, and taught to masturbate and achieve orgasm.

“It was part of daily life,” she said. “Everyone in the household participated. … We were posed and photographed. We were entertainment at parties and orgies. … It was my childhood reality. … “We moved from place to place, frequently and suddenly. This kept us isolated. … I did not know how to play or interact with others outside the home. ... Instead, I was told that my purpose, my reason for existing, was to provide sexual pleasure for whoever wanted it.” PURPLE continued on p. 8

Test proves it: Dogs really love us!.............page 12 A tough look back at the old L.E.S.............page 13 Motley jazzes up the Whitney......page 19

www.TheVillager.com

in the papers these past few months more than Madonna, and he looked at me and smiled. He said, ‘That’s because I’m better looking than she is.’ ”

FEELING THE BERN: MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki keeps telling us that Hillary Clinton is going to mop the floor with Bernie Sanders once the primaries hit the bigger states like South Carolina because she has stronger support among black voters. But Village

District Leader Arthur Schwartz, counsel for the Bernie Sanders New York campaign, doesn’t think so. “He is up 20 percent in the black vote since August and now has 34 percent. Hillary has declined, according to a CNN poll. When he wins Iowa and New Hampshire, the earth will shake. And he has more money and more foot soldiers than Hillary — 25,000 people volunteered to petition for him in New York State.”

CALLING TRUMAN CLUB: There are four Democratic political clubs that cover parts of the 65th Assembly District, but so far we’ve only heard news from three of them amid the machinations and maneuvering for the upcoming special election, expected to be held April 19. The Downtown Independent Democrats, along with their County Committee delegates, are wrestling over whether to back Paul Newell or Jenifer Rajkumar, the club’s two district leaders. The United Democratic Organization, based in Chinatown, has brought Yuh-Line Niou into the race. As for the Lower East Side Democratic Club, State Committeeman John Quinn has said he is going to let “the community” decide, and there will be no “backroom deals in smoke-filled rooms” (O.K., so no one smokes anymore, but whatever), to pick the candidate. That leaves the Truman Club from Grand St., which is the home club of former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, speaking of whom, that’s how we got into this situation in the first place. “We’re not doing anything right now,” District Leader David Weinberger told us on Tuesday. “We don’t have any favorites yet.” His co-district leader, Karen Blatt, is not a candidate, he said. What about Silver, is he involved with the club? we asked. “Yeah, he’s around,” Weinberger said. People are asking which way the club will go, but Weinberger said, “Right now, we’re holding out.” SHELLY STILL LOOKIN’ GOOD: Speaking of Silver, we hear from Villager contributor Lesley Sussman, who has been seeing him at the Bialystoker Synagogue recently, that he appears to be doing pretty well, under the circumstances. “He has a tremendous sense of humor and is very likeable,” Sussman said. “I told him that his picture has been

PHOTO BY BOB KRASNER

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December 31, 2015

E.V. still among tops for chain stores Named best weekly newspaper in New York State in 2001, 2004 and 2005 by New York Press Association Editorials, First Place, 2014 News Story, First Place, 2014 Overall Design Excellence, First Place, 2013 Best Column, First Place, 2012 Photographic Excellence, First Place, 2011 Spot News Coverage, First Place, 2010 Coverage of Environment, First Place, 2009

PUBLISHER JENNIFER GOODSTEIN

EDITOR IN CHIEF LINCOLN ANDERSON

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CONTRIBUTORS ALBERT AMATEAU IRA BLUTREICH SARAH FERGUSON TEQUILA MINSKY CLAYTON PATTERSON JEFFERSON SIEGEL ZACH WILLIAMS SHARON WOOLUMS

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The Villager (USPS 578930) ISSN 0042-6202 is published every week by NYC Community Media LLC, One Metrotech North, 10th floor Brooklyn, NY 11201 (212) 229-1890. Periodicals Postage paid at New York, N.Y. Annual subscription by mail in Manhattan and Brooklyn $29 ($35 elsewhere). Single copy price at office and newsstands is $1. The entire contents of newspaper, including advertising, are copyrighted and no part may be reproduced without the express permission of the publisher - © 2011 NYC Community Media LLC.

BY YANNIC RACK

he growth of chain stores in Manhattan slowed down this year, but the East Village remains one of the neighborhoods with the highest amount of chain retail outlets citywide, according to a new report. Placing third citywide on the Center for an Urban Future’s annual State of the Chains report, the 10003 zip code — which stretches between First and Fifth Aves. from 20th St. to north of Houston St. — boasted 163 chain stores in 2015, down by one from the previous year. That area includes part of the East Village, Union Square, Gramercy and part of the Washington Square district. Over all, growth in chain store locations across the city slowed down over the last year, with a 1 percent increase in the number of national retail locations compared to a 2.5 percent gain over the previous year — giving a sliver of hope to small businesses in areas that have seen many priced out in recent years. “It was very interesting to see that [the number of chain stores] is going down,” said Carol Crump, the managing director of the East Village Community Coalition, which has been working to save independent businesses in the neighborhood. “The East Village is a very attractive place but at the same time it’s one of the most vulnerable places, because we actually do have quite a bit of a community feeling and a very high number of small businesses,” she said. The coalition publishes a Get Local Guide every year — this year’s is the ninth edition — to promote local businesses, and it is working to establish an East Village Independent Merchants Association with grant money from the city’s Department of Small Business Services. Crump said the slowing trend of chain dominance reinforced what she has been noticing in the neighborhood. “I think people are really starting to love and appreciate the small businesses more, at least our local community,” she said. “But we do have a lot of influx,

FILE PHOTO

Starbucks is the leader in the number of chain stores in Manhattan, with 220 locations.

and it’s really important because the tourists that come don’t come to see a chain store.” Other nearby zip codes saw a jump in chain store locations, with the 10009 area — which covers the East Village east of First Ave. — seeing five new openings this year to reach a total of 30 (a 20 percent increase from the previous year), and the Lower East Side and

Chinatown, located in zip code 10002, registering one new location for a total of 48 (an increase of 2 percent). Greenwich Village and Soho, in zip code 10012, remained stable from the past year, with 114 chain locations. Starbucks leads the pack in Manhattan over all, with a whopping 220 locations across the borough, followed by Duane Reade / Walgreens and Subway.

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December 31, 2015

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City tries new tack to tackle homeless problem BY YANNIC RACK

hey’re as much part of the city’s fabric by now as the sidewalks and parks they call home: New York’s homeless, whose presence on the streets this past summer has dogged Mayor Bill de Blasio and drawn criticism of his handling of what many perceive as a growing crisis. But now the city has started a new tactic, with the simple goal of talking to every homeless person on the street, every day. “On my watch, we will never go back to those bad old days,” the mayor assured at the announcement of the program, which will see every Manhattan block from Canal St. to 145th St. canvassed daily by an expanded group of outreach workers. Called Home-Stat, the new program will also involve tracking the street homeless population in real time and expanding the police unit dedicated to the homeless from 70 to 110 officers, as well as a review of the city’s existing policies. One of the initiative’s goals is to lower the average response time to one hour by March 2016, when the program will be at full capacity. The homelessness issue became a political crisis for the mayor this year, with a citywide poll in November finding that 62 percent of New Yorkers disapproved of his handling of the matter. Different approaches to deal with the problem didn’t always have the desired result. In July, a police SkyWatch surveillance tower seemingly aimed at the homeless population went up in Tompkins Square Park. The tower’s appearance came on the heels of reports by the New York Post about a spike in homeless people in the park, followed by visits to the park by both the mayor and Police Commissioner Bill Bratton to check out conditions. But the tower was taken down after just a week amid vocal protests from many in the neighborhood. More recently, reports of homeless sightings increased in Washington Square Park when a group apparently relocated there from Union Square, pushed out by the annual holiday market. As the pressure mounted over the summer on City Hall to respond to the problem, de Blasio’s top aide on homelessness resigned and later, the same week as the Home-Stat announcement, the head of the Department of Homeless Services also stepped down. “After we tried a number of changes and reforms, we didn’t feel we were getting as much seamlessness and as much streamlining as we needed,” the mayor said. “We thought it was TheVillager.com

PHOTO BY TEQUILA MINSKY

A homeless outreach worker interacted with a homeless man — part of a group that had been encamped in the park — last month in Washington Square Park. She was part of a group of city outreach workers and police who got the homeless people to move out of an area on the grass where they had been staying and onto the park’s benches.

time to step back and look at the structures that are 20 years old.” On a recent rainy weekday morning, Washington Square was fairly empty, save for a few groups of tourists and the occasional dog walker. One of the latter, Diana, a local resident who didn’t want to give her last name, said the homeless had likely moved on to the subway stations and buses by now, fleeing the weather — even though the winter has seen record-breaking high temperatures so far. “I saw a couple lying on the lawns during the day [until recently],” she said, “but there weren’t any more in the park than usual.” She thought the mayor’s new approach sounded promising, but would only make a difference if the city also found better long-term solutions — by addressing the mental health and housing issues that force people onto the streets in the first place. “Just sweeping them off the streets is not the solution,” she said.

Jacob a. Riis revealing new york’s other half

“heart-rending retrospective” – The New York Times

Inequality remains a fact of life in America. A century later, this New York master’s photos still explode with outrage.

mcny.org 1220 FiFth ave at 103rd st

December 31, 2015

C.B. 3 mulls P.C. Rich, trolley site, R&D uses BY LESLEY SUSSMAN

he city’s plan to redevelop the P.C. Richard & Son site at 124 E. 14th St. has drawn the watchful eye of Community Board 3, which says it will strongly oppose any redevelopment of that property that does not support the everyday needs of the surrounding community. The store, which has operated on the city-owned site for 19 years, recently announced it will close its doors in February when its lease expires. New York City’s Economic Development Corporation has already called for proposals to redevelop the property and wants to replace the electronics shop mainly with tech startup offices. In a statement, E.D.C. President Maria Torres-Springer said, “The current site of the P.C. Richard store will serve as a new tech hub in Union Square, capitalizing on the academic and transit advantages offered by the neighborhood and its proximity to the Flatiron District. This is just one example of how we are finding creative uses for the assets we have in a city where space is harder and harder to come by.” However, at its Dec. 22 full board meeting at P.S. 20, at 166 Essex St., C.B. 3 made it perfectly clear that while it “strongly supports modern job creation within its district,” its first priority is to develop a strong local economy that is “diverse, affordable, supportive of independent small businesses and reflective of the residential community.” In a resolution passed by the board, C.B. 3 said it will specifically oppose any new chain store being located at the site, as well as a college dormitory and any eating or drinking establishments — due to a proliferation of such businesses in the neighborhood — and will only support retail businesses that are affordable to the local community. The board’s resolution also stipulated that if the city decides to build any housing there, it must be “100 percent permanently affordable.” Board members also expressed disappointment that they were not given the opportunity to collaborate with E.D.C. before its call for bids from developers was announced. At the C.B. 3 meeting, Linda Jones, the chairperson of the board’s Landmarks Committee said that the city’s announcement last month of its plans for the site caught board members totally off guard. “We were surprised to hear about it and to learn that the deadline for bids was Dec. 29,” she said. “But we were able to get that extended to Feb. 1.” In another matter, C.B. 3 also expressed its concern about the future

December 31, 2015

PHOTO BY CLAYTON PATTERSON

The Lowline Lab, which opened in October in an old Essex St. Market building at 140 Essex St., is a free laboratory and technical exhibit designed to test and showcase how the Lowline would grow and sustain plants underground. The Lowline Lab includes a series of controlled experiments in an environment mimicking the actual Lowline site. It’s open Saturdays and Sundays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., through March 2016.

development of the old Williamsburg Bridge Trolley Terminal space located underneath Delancey St. The abandoned terminal is part of the Essex Crossing redevelopment project planned for that area. The trolley terminal, which is leased from the city by the Metropolitan Transit Authority, has been dormant since 1948 and is located at the foot of the bridge, where the proposed Lowline park would be constructed. In a proposal passed by the board, C.B. 3 said it worried that the site “may be used for a purpose that would encourage luxury development and displacement of low-income residents.” The board requested that E.D.C. allow community input regarding any future utilization of the old trolley site. After the meeting, Jones told this newspaper that she was “surprised” that E.D.C. had announced bids for that site without any community consultation, and that the board wants to sit down with the city agency to discuss the matter. In other board action, C.B. 3 said that an application by the new Russ & Daughters Cafe at 127 Orchard St. to expand its operation was unkosher. The legendary 100-year-old appetizer shop, which recently opened this new full-service restaurant

counterpart serving Jewish comfort food, is applying for a full on-premise liquor license that would allow the cafe to display liquor bottles behind its bar and play unamplified live music once a month. C.B. 3 voted to deny the application unless certain stipulations were met, including that the cafe continue to operate as a full-service kosher-style dairy restaurant and that it only play recorded ambient background music and that there be no DJs. The board also said it wants to make certain that the restaurant “will not have happy hours, will not host pub crawls or party buses, and that the cafe have a closed facade with no open doors and windows,” so as not to disturb neighbors. Also at the Dec. 22 board meeting, Councilmember Rosie Mendez reported on some of her latest activities. Mendez said she and Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer have proposed legislation that would create a bicycle safety taskforce. She said that over the next two years, 10 town hall meetings will be held in every borough each year to discuss the impact of cycling on individual neighborhoods. Mendez also reported to the board and the more than 50 local residents who attended the meeting that she and Councilmember Daniel Dromm had opposed a recently passed a bill that will require the city to provide

$20 million for private and religious schools’ security guards. In total, the city will provide $19.8 million for at least one private security guard in each nonpublic school, including yeshivas and other religious schools with 300 or more students. Despite public opposition to the hotly debated bill, introduced by Brooklyn Councilmember David Greenfield, the legislation was approved overwhelmingly by a vote of 43 to 4. Mendez said she wanted to see these millions of dollars invested, instead, in the city’s “resource-starved public schools.” Also at the board meeting, Tommy Lin, a spokesman for Public Advocate Leticia James, said that James has called on TD Bank to terminate financial backing of gun manufacturer Smith & Wesson. Lin said that the guns used in the recent mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, in which 14 people were killed and 21 were wounded, were manufactured by the gun-making company. He reported that James had sent a letter to Mike Pederson, TD Bank president and C.E.O.; Bharat Masrani, TD Bank board chairperson; and Bob Dorrance, TD Securities chairperson, C.E.O. and president, asking them “to immediately review and terminate, to the extent possible, their agreement with Smith & Wesson.” TheVillager.com

How sweet it is!

This 1956 Fifth Ave. coach bus parked on Broadway and 44th St. was part of the M.T.A.’s vintage bus fleet that was out on the streets in the first half of December. This particular one is the first air-conditioned transit bus in the country. It was used on Fifth Ave., on the M4 and M5 routes, and retired in the mid-1970s. Save for Ralph Kramden himself behind the wheel, all the original details and ads have been preserved.

PHOTOS BY MILO HESS

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December 31, 2015

The dark side of Purple: Gardens icon dies PURPLE continued from p. 1

The cardboard picture of the woman was now brought downstage and the picture of the little girl removed offstage, as the woman spoke about her adulthood and reclaiming her life after a childhood of sexual abuse. “For 30 years I fought it, decades of recovery work,” she said. “One by one, I rejected every lie I’d been forced to live… Free of the brainwashing, I began to feel and notice a new playfulness and a desire to connect with people on a personal level.” The people now circled the figure with signs saying, “Party girl,” “12-stepper,” “Waitress,” “Mother,” “Wife,” “Teacher,” “Caseworker,” “Staff member.” She spoke of moving cross-country, finding a home in an “intentional community” where, at last, a man she found that she could relate to held her hand and told her, “I see you. I see you.” “Those words set that little girl free. .. And here she is. She is me. That girl is me,” declared a white-haired woman wearing a microphone headset as she emerged from behind the cardboard rectangle. A tall bearded stagehand looking like a biker dropped the cardboard rectangle and held up a sign saying, “May all human beings be free from suffering,” and the beaming narrator pointed at it. As the audience broke into applause, the woman, clapping along, too, happily shouted above the noise, “It’s possible to heal!” before walking offstage. The name of the woman’s father, which was not spoken during the piece? David Lloyd Wilkie, better known as Adam Purple, a.k.a. the godfather of the urban community gardening movement.

Dies two days later She posted the video of the performance for public view on YouTube on Sept. 12. Two days later, Purple was biking across the Williamsburg Bridge when he suddenly collapsed and died of an apparent heart attack. He was 84. The Villager broke the news of Purple’s death in an article on Sept. 15. The report noted that Purple’s friends in New York City were having a hard time locating his family members to deal with the burial and other affairs. “We’re here! We do exist!” the woman announced when she called The Villager after having read the article a day after its publication. But she soon revealed details of her

December 31, 2015

A photo from Dec. 1966 of David Lloyd Wilkie at age 36 in Australia, perhaps on a boat or ferry. “For Jenean and Lenore — with my love, Lloyd,” he wrote on the back.

years in jail in Australia for attacking one of his stepdaughters, after which he was deported from that country. While Purple is an icon of environmental sustainability in New York and even around the globe, this dark chapter of his earlier life is known by few other than his immediate family. However, the woman said she wants the story to be told now in the hope that it will help others like her who are battling to overcome the crippling effects of complex posttraumatic stress disorder. “He really destroyed the lives of the children that were living with him,” she said. “He was pretty psychotic, it went beyond abuse. We, literally all of us, have struggled all

‘I read “The Kinsey Report” when I was age 10.’ Jenean painful experience of being abused by Purple, abuse she said that was shared by her younger sister and two stepsisters.

Two years in jail In fact, when he was in his mid-30s during the 1960s, Purple served two

Adam Purple may have later claimed to be a member of the Intergalactic Psychic Police of Uranus, but in the early 1950s David Lloyd Wilkie worked for the U.S. Army news service.

our lives, those of us who knew him and were affected by him. In his early years, he was really whacked out. He did LSD — a lot.” Told that The Villager was working on the article, longtime local activists reacted with a mix of disdain, concern and, in some cases, encouragement. PURPLE continued on p. 9 TheVillager.com

right after daughter posts video on sex abuse shall do my best to be-do just what you want,” he wrote her in a birthday note he sent from 321 E. 12th St. in 1968 when she was 13. After being deported from Australia, David Lloyd Wilkie briefly bounced around Haight-Ashbury, his daughter said, before landing on the Lower East Side in 1968. There he eventually took on his Adam Purple moniker and soon, dressed in purple tie-dye clothes, was living with a new wife, fittingly, called Eve, and working on creating his magnificent Garden of Eden, which at its height spanned five abandoned city lots. One newspaper clip from 1976 that his daughter sent referred to him cryptically as the “Riddle Man.”

PURPLE continued from p. 8

“You’re going to kick him after he’s dead?” one local journalist responded disapprovingly during the memorial at La Plaza Cultural for Purple. “Just write something small and keep it vague,” cautioned another local journo. “You better really check that out carefully before you print anything,” urged a former squatter who said she used to know Purple when they were both “on the scene.” However, one longtime activist said, “It’s the truth, the people should know.” Another said, “It’s the truth… . People are building him up [to be a hero].” A cycling activist, told generally of the sordid story of what Purple did in the past, paused for a moment, then offered, “I can see that.”

Children of Eden Adam Purple, a new father again at age 52, in April 1982 with his only son, also named Adam, almost age 2, amid a riot of tulips in the Garden of Eden on Forsyth St.

‘Trained to perform’ “We were trained to perform. We were toys, not people to be loved,” the woman told The Villager. “In my piece I used ‘sex slave’ because the term ‘incest’ is so watered-down. It happened daily, until he went to prison. At any time it could happen, at the dining room table, friends coming over, anytime, anywhere. A friend would come over, and who knew where that would lead. He called it ‘diddle’ whenever he would touch us. …” Asked what specifically Purple did to them or had them do, she said, “Oh, everything — that’s what we were about — our purpose. He trained us, with pornography magazines, films, comics. I read ‘The Kinsey Report’ when I was age 10.” Recalling another incident that scarred her, she said Purple once, using a lathe, made a bunch of dildos from wooden dowel rods in different sizes and shapes, then varnished them and hung them up to dry on a clothesline in the basement, then brought the prepubescent girls down to see them as they hung there. “We all got to pick one,” she said. “And then he showed us… . To this day, I cannot smell vaseline — it’s blocked.” She said she and even more so her older stepsister, who was about a half year older than her, “received the most attention” from Purple. Purple was also part of the “swingers” subculture and an “orgy cult,” she said, where pretty much anything went, sexually speaking. She shared her story with The Villager in a number of phone interviews — and a collection of letters, family photos and documents perTheVillager.com

Anne, Eve No. 2, in the Garden of Eden with their son.

taining to Purple that she mailed to the newspaper — on condition that only her first name, Jenean, be used and that where she lives not be divulged. She even included in her package a rare copy of Purple’s “Zentences,” a handmade mini-flipbook of Zen koans that he personally inscribed for her. He originally made 600 of the books in Australia. One is in the New York Public Library’s Rare Books Division.

‘You can keep it’ She basically sent everything she had that related to her father. “I just want to get rid of it. You can keep it,” she said. “I don’t want any of it back.” Purple’s friends in New York called her, after The Villager provided her contact number, to see if she

wanted to help pay for the burial, but she declined. Jenean, who worked in the mental health field, said not long ago she finally figured out for herself that what she had was complex posttraumatic stress disorder — a recent addition to the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.” “I put the pieces of the puzzle together for myself,” she said. Jenean sent The Villager about 10 letters to her from her father, including a colored-in hippie block letters birthday card signed “daddy” in 1969, other letters in the 1970s and early ’80s signed “david,” and, finally, one in 1985 on which his signature, at that point, had evolved into “adam david.” Purple was a former journalist and the letters’ writing is eloquent. “If you wish to have any contact-relationship with me, i want to know exactly what you want — & i

“dearest jenean,” he wrote her on Jan. 3, 1979, when she was 24, “how utterly words fail me. none would express the quiet joy your letter brought me on a cold winter day. soon you will be half my age. your new sister was just two months old on new year’s day — having been born on november first at about sunrise (fortunate was i to be able to be present to witness a real miracle), she seemed naturally a nova dawn. her mother, diane, and I have been together for about seven years — not a record, perhaps, but a good average.” (This letter refers to Nova Dawn, his third daughter, who he had with Eve. A year and a half later, on July 13, 1980, his only son, Adam David, was born by a different woman, Anne, who was also called Eve. Adam currently lives in Beijing, China, where he teaches English. Formerly, he was a Hasidic rabbi living in Brooklyn — his mother had Jewish ancestry. He did not want to be quoted in this article and asked that his last name not be used. Eve No. 1 reportedly now lives Upstate.) In the letter, Purple goes on to say how he was currently writing an article for Garden magazine about his Garden of Eden. “Remember how we used to glean horse manure from the pasture of the kurmond property?” he reminisced. “well, the circular Garden now represents seven tons of horseshit spread about five inches deep, etc. hopefully, there is no bullshit about this Garden!”

Growing the garden On May 8, 1980, he typed in red ink with occasional black letters PURPLE continued on p. 22 December 31, 2015

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E.P.A. to fast-track Hudson River cleanup review CLEANUP continued from p. 1

which has been linked to cancer as well as reproductive, neurological and hormonal disorders — has been successfully removed from the river. “I’m glad the E.P.A. has shown the common sense to fast track its review of GE’s dredging in the Hudson River before it lets the company off the hook for bringing the river to the brink of extinction,” state Senator Brad Hoylman, who is a member of the Senate Environmental Conservation Committee, said on Dec. 23. Hoylman has long advocated for the cleanup and, along with two dozen other elected officials, sent letters to GE C.E.O. Jeffrey Immelt, as well as Governor Andrew Cuomo in July, urging the company to go beyond its court-mandated dredging requirement. The 200-mile stretch of the Hudson River from Glens Falls, which is about 40 miles north of Albany, down to the Battery is a federal Superfund site because of the PCBs — which means GE is required to clean it up long term. “This conforms to the schedule

we understood E.P.A. planned to follow,” GE spokesperson Mark Behan said of the new timeline, which would see the agency finish its assessment before April 2017. GE had announced in October that its crews removed more than 300,000 pounds of PCBs from the

ahead with dismantling the plant it used to process the dredged sediment. The change of gears at the E.P.A. comes after a slate of environmental groups, including Scenic Hudson, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, met with agency officials earlier this month to express their concern about the state of the operation. In a Dec. 18 letter to the environmental groups, Mathy Stanislaus, who oversees the E.P.A.’s Superfund cleanup programs, laid out the new schedule for the review and said that the study will also include more public participation, as well as an assessment of current conditions in the Hudson. The agency also notified the groups that if the review determines the cleanup has not made the river “protective of human health and the environment,” as required under

‘GE treated the Hudson as its dumping ground.’ Brad Hoylman

river, completing the six-year operation. “We are confident that the Hudson dredging project has achieved E.P.A.’s goals of protecting human health and the environment,” Behan said. Although the E.P.A. study will now be expedited, GE can still go

Superfund law, it would consider additional remedial actions. The environmentalists praised the E.P.A.’s agreement as a major step forward, but also warned that contamination remains at unsafe levels. “Everyone recognizes that the current PCB remediation is not adequate to protect the Hudson River and people who, despite the health advisories, continue to eat Hudson River fish,” Peter Gross, executive director of Clearwater, said. The chemical has contaminated wildlife to the point that it is not recommended for women under the age of 50 and children under the age of 15 to eat fish from the river. “For the better part of a century, General Electric treated the Hudson River as its own personal dumping ground, spilling millions of pounds of toxic PCBs into the river throughout most of the last century,” Hoylman said. “The E.P.A. has heeded the call of advocacy groups and elected officials like me,” he said, “but we’ll need to keep up the pressure to make sure GE fully compensates the people of New York for one of the greatest environmental disasters of our time.”

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December 31, 2015

They’re not faking! Our dogs really do love us RHYMES WITH CRAZY BY LENORE SKENAZY

o people save dogs or is it the other way around? That’s the question posed by the Broadway comedy “Sylvia,” starring Matthew Broderick as a disengaged middle-aged New Yorker who falls in love with a very human dog — so human that she is played by the talking, sniffing, adorable Annaleigh Ashford. But the who-saveswho question was also posed after a performance of the show last week, to an audience of dog fans. On stage were Broderick, co-star Robert Sella and two dog experts: Rachel McPherson, founder and executive director of the New Yorkbased Good Dog Foundation, which has 1,000 trained therapy dogs volunteering in the tri-state area, and Dr. Laurie Santos, founder of Yale’s Canine Cognition Laboratory. Yes, they are studying doggie thinking at Yale. “How many of you stuck around

tonight because you have a canine at home?” Santos asked the audience. “How many of you find yourself wondering what’s going on inside his or her head? Do they love me? Do they care about me?” The audience laughed a little self-consciously. Good news, the professor reported: Our dogs do love us. In fact, when they look into our eyes, they are bathed in as much love as we are. “Scientists have learned that part of the bonding that allows us to bond with a dog is the same thing that helps us bond with our babies,” Santos said. Babies are filled with what is colloquially called the “love hormone” or “cuddle hormone.” It floods their brain, and as we look at them, it floods our brains too. When researchers examined dogs’ urine after this same kind of gazing-into-their-owners’ eyes, they found the love hormone in it, too. Studies of wolf urine did not show the same thing. Somehow, dogs evolved to transmit and receive the same love signals as human babies, and beguile us the same way. This bond is so intense that the Good Dog Foundation harnesses it to help people who are lonely, scared or hurting.

“We work with lots of patients in hospitals, rehab units, nursing homes,” said McPherson, who has run the program for 18 years. One time, early on, she and her dog were helping a man who’d been paralyzed on his right side by a stroke. “He could not get his body to move,” she recalled. But when her dog jumped into his lap, the man would desperately try to throw the ball. This was back before the rehab unit was completely thrilled with the idea of having a dog around. But as the patient began to get his movement back, said McPherson, “The doctor was amazed at the results.” He became a big supporter of the Good Dog Foundation. Schools are signing up, too, to help students with everything from autism to dyslexia, as well as other learning and emotional issues. “We work with the kids one-onone because they become so stressed out in the classroom that they can’t read,” said McPherson. “But then they read to the dogs and it’s amazing. They feel very comfortable. And what’s phenomenal is that when the dog and the child are in a space, reading, the child becomes ‘cool’ to the other kids. They say, ‘Can we go

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Where’s Eleanor plaque? To The Editor: I walked by 20 E. 11th St. earlier today, and I did not see the plaque informing us that Eleanor Roosevelt had lived there. Eleanor Roosevelt moved to Manhattan in 1933, the year her husband was inaugurated, and lived at 20 E. 11th St, a row house, as a plaque on the building informs us. In 1942 she moved to 29 Washington Square West, an apartment house, where another

EVAN FORSCH

plaque informs us she lived until 1949. Eleanor lived in New York City with her girlfriend, while President Franklin D. Roosevelt lived in Washington with his girlfriend. This is an important part of history. Was the 11th St. plaque removed temporarily because of repairs? I don’t know. I certainly hope it comes back soon. Everybody should be able to know where the former first lady lived after the inauguration of her husband. George Jochnowitz

read to the dog?’ So what was a negative becomes a positive, and the kid’s reading really does improve.” A recent study at Mt. Sinai Beth Israel here in New York scientifically proved another benefit to human-dog interaction: Chemo compliance. The study involved 42 patients undergoing six weeks of chemotherapy and radiation for head and neck cancers. The protocol is grueling. Many of the patients get very sick and can’t eat. Some have trouble talking. But over the course of their treatment, with a loving dog at their side, their feelings of emotional and social well-being actually increased. Wrote one patient, “I would’ve stopped the treatment, but I wanted to come see the dog.” In the play, Matthew Broderick’s character is similarly saved by his love (graduating to obsession) with the dog he found: Sylvia. But eventually his awakened soul goes on to reconnect with his wife, a human played by Julie White. Dogs need humans, humans need dogs, and humans need humans, too. Call it a tail as old as time. Skenazy is a keynote speaker and author and founder of the book and blog “Free-Range Kids”

What of protesters’ rhetoric? To The Editor: Re “Unity rally thumps Trump over anti-Muslim rhetoric” (news article, Dec. 24, 2015): The protesters chanted, “Racist, fascist, KKK — Donald Trump go away!” KKK — really? I don’t recall Trump lynching anybody or even burning a cross. A bit over-thetop? Monica Lee

Love Steve on the L.E.S. To The Editor: Re “Tribes’ Steve Cannon is at it again” (news article, Dec. 17): I need to get over to Steve’s to sign an oversized photo print of him that I had in a show at his place. Somehow, it went from me, to his wall, to him, but that was a perfect solution for the piece. Love Steve and his whole, long and generous contribution to the culture of the Lower East Side. Thankfully, he was able to stay on the L.E.S. Great article, Bob Holman, and let’s hope people are listening. Steve needs to be listened to. Clayton Patterson

LETTERS continued on p. 14

December 31, 2015

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Seeing the LES plainly for what it really was NOTEBOOK BY ELLIOT JAGER

y the time I came on the scene in 1954, the Jewish Lower East Side was basically finished. I don’t mean to irk former Grand St. neighbors or more recently arrived denizens, but those who yearn nostalgically for the “good old LES” most likely had little firsthand experience of the real thing. Irving Howe’s epic history of the East European migration to the United States, and of the LES as a landing point, is decidedly not a work of nostalgia. His evocative “World of Our Fathers” wraps up a good few years before my bar mitzvah when I was 13 by describing the dismal scene off Delancey St.: abandoned buildings, shuttered synagogues, Hebrew-lettered signs covered over by Spanish-language posters with garbage and glass littering the streets. The neighborhood’s boundaries ran from 14th St. at the north to the river on the east, First Ave. on the west, and the Brooklyn Bridge at the south. In its heyday, around 1910, there were half a million Jews in this area. That’s about the size of the entire population of today’s Tucson, Arizona. Growing up, my LES was overwhelmingly populated by Puerto Ricans. The remnant Jewish community of roughly 20,000 — many elderly and poor — was preyed upon by neighborhood louts. Raised Orthodox, I worshipped in the Sassover Rebbe’s stiebel, or storefront synagogue, on Eighth St. between Avenues D and C. It was within easy walking distance of our apartment in the Jacob Riis Houses project, though a bit risky for a boy wearing a yarmulke. Today, most of the neighborhood’s synagogues are gone — some firebombed, like the Sassover Rebbe’s; others turned into condos, churches, even a museum. I imagine this description resonates as uncomfortably parochial with folks residing in today’s gentrified, multicultural, cosmopolitan — and ever-more white LES. Anyway, by the 1960s most of my coreligionists had moved out of the LES — as far away as acculturation and economic circumstances would take them. Others, though, found safe haven nearby in the lower-middle class cooperative apartments built by the International Ladies Garment Workers Union along the Grand St. and East Broadway enclave. My mother and I were not so lucky. When I was eight or so, my Holocaust-survivor father essentially abandoned us. Traumatized by his TheVillager.com

Elliot Jager as young boy with his parents on the Lower East Side in the 1950s.

wartime experiences and feeling dislocated in America, he decided to run off to Israel. It was a Hail Mary pass — you should forgive the expression. He and my mother had talked about emigrating and this was his way of trying to force her hand. But with no money, my father’s doubtful work prospects, a wan child in tow, and an elderly, infirm mother to care for, she thought it prudent to stay put. Eventually, my parents divorced, which made me quite an anomaly in our traditional community. He disappeared, became even more fervently Orthodox, changed his name, and started a new life somewhere in Israel. There was no child support. What’s more, for 30 years he and I didn’t see or speak to each other. My mom had no way to support us, so had to endure the shame of applying for public assistance — we called it “welfare.” She could pay only a fraction of my tuition at Yeshiva Chasan Sofer, a religious day school on Broome St., so I was granted a scholarship reserved for the indigent. We were desperate to escape from the high-rise Jacob Riis projects where crime was rampant, the elevators reeked of urine, and we were just about the only Jews left. City policy, though, forbade New York City

Elliot Jager today, a journalist in Israel.

Housing Authority tenants to transfer from one project to another. By dint of perseverance, my indefatigable mother was nonetheless able to convince housing managers to transfer us to the low-rise Vladeck Houses on comparatively safe Gouverneur St. It was from there that one night I looked out of my bedroom window and witnessed the Shneer Synagogue, an imposing pink Moorish

structure at 290 Madison St., go up in flames. The historic structure had originally been built as a Baptist church in 1856. The travails of the LES were emblematic of the city in general. In any single year of the 1970s, more New Yorkers were murdered on the streets of their city than Israelis killed by suicide bombers during the five years of the second intifada in the early 2000s. Even attacks on police were not uncommon. In January 1972, for instance, Officers Rocco Laurie and Gregory Foster were gunned down by militants on 11th St. and Avenue B. By 1973, we’d clawed our way into Cooperative Village on Grand St. with the help of a credit union loan. In the coming years, the city experienced a slow and uneven renaissance that saw New Yorkers’ quality of life — my own included — considerably improved. On a visit to Israel during the early 1990s, I met my father for the first time since he’d walked out. Since I moved to Israel in 1997, bit by bit we’ve built a relationship. As a Hassidic Jew, he believes that it is spiritually imperative I have a son of my own. It’s become his obsession. Yet nature did not take its course, nor did IVF treatments produce a miracle for me and my wife. I now see that the process I have undergone in coming to terms with what it means to be a childless man, in trying to make sense of my relationship with my father, and in searching for meaning within Jewish civilization is, somehow, inextricably tied to my experience of growing up fatherless on the LES. Now, well past middle age and from 6,000 miles away, I find myself captivated by David Simon’s television tour de force “The Wire,” set in contemporary Baltimore. In many ways, it’s led me to rethink how I ought to look back at my own New York City upbringing: True, I was fatherless and poor in a tough neighborhood; but I was blessed with an innately capable mother who taught me values, virtue and empathy. My community, though moribund and imperfect, was nonetheless committed to mutual aid. Ritual and tradition offered a framework for life. So while I can’t identify with hipsters hankering after tenement museums, potato knishes and kosher-style delicatessen, this curmudgeon is not shedding any tears that my LES has been supplanted by something — apparently — kinder, gentler and, I pray, more humane. Jager is a Jerusalem-based journalist and author of “The Pater: My Father, My Judaism, My Childlessness” December 31, 2015

Squadron pushes for reforming special elections SILVER continued from p. 1

Well, no. The city’s Board of Elections quickly sent The Villager its most complete list when this reporter asked this week, and presumably would do the same for anyone else, too, but the list is not readily available online. Even more disturbing than that, however, is that the names of some members filling vacancies on the committee may stay hidden from the public before the anointment. Cathleen McCadden, executive director of the Manhattan Democratic County Committee, said it is up to the local Democratic district leaders to fill vacancies, and many prefer not to release the names. “It’s the only power that they have,” she told me. Indeed one Downtown Democratic district leader, who was inclined to send me the most up-to-date list, told me there was resistance from fellow district leaders. But the County Committee’s leaders, if they were inclined, could also get the names to the public if they wanted. They don’t. There are 39 listed vacancies for the district’s 196 seats on the County Committee. Most members are not well known, but there are others who

have been active in the community or in local politics, such as Virginia Kee in Chinatown, John Fratta in the Seaport, Diem Boyd on the Lower East Side and Tom Goodkind in Battery Park City. Perhaps the most noteworthy person on the committee is Judy Rapfogel, who was Silver’s chief of staff for the two decades he was Assembly speaker. There have been many calls over the years to let voters play the central role in filling legislative vacancies, but McCadden said there’s nothing wrong with the current system, particularly in this case, since the new incumbent will likely face a Democratic primary next September, only five months after taking office. “They’ll only be in office for a hot second,” she said, explaining that, in Albany, “it takes a long time to amass any kind of power.” She did acknowledge, however, that the winner will be able to reach his or her new constituents with taxpayer-funded mailings. Susan Lerner, executive director with Common Cause New York, which has long backed more-democratic ways to fill vacancies, said “even a short [term] incumbent is able to arrange things within their district for an advantage.”

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reference to the federal convictions of two of Albany’s “Three Men in a Room” — Silver and former state Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos. The new bills would certainly be less costly than holding a primary and special election, and one nonpartisan special election might attract a higher turnout rate than holding two elections. But Rosenthal did not hold out much hope for passage in 2016. It may just be a matter of time as more beneficiaries see the problem. Two of the four candidates to replace Silver, Paul Newell and Jenifer Rajkumar, have an advantage in the race since they are district leaders and have helped form the committee to decide their fate. They will also likely fill some of the remaining vacancies, but both said in interviews this week that they supported a more democratic way to fill vacancies. (As The Villager has reported in recent weeks, Yuh-Line Niou and Don B. Lee, are the other two who so far have expressed strong interest in running.) Both Rajkumar and Newell said the winner would likely have an advantage when she or he runs for re-election in September, but neither thought that was definite. “On the other hand, that’s four days [a week] in Albany and less time speaking with Lower Manhattanites,” Newell said.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Continued from p. 12

Vote on the S.B.J.S.A.!

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

The current system “denies voters a real choice,” she added. Lower Manhattan is overwhelmingly Democratic, so the Republican nominee stands little chance to win. One of the reasons there has been no reform, Lerner said, is that so many state legislators first get into office through a special election and are reluctant to change a system in which they benefitted. Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal from the Upper West Side is the exception. She won the political insider game in 2006, but saw the problem with the system. “When I did run for the vacancy, a lot of people were disgruntled by the process,” Rosenthal, a former County Committee member, said this week. Soon after taking office, she sponsored legislation that would require a primary and special election to fill a vacancy but it went nowhere. This session she and state Senator Daniel Squadron of Downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn are sponsoring similar bills that would set up nonpartisan special elections to fill Assembly and state Senate vacancies. Candidates would collect signatures to get on the ballot. “It’s a big concern that the process to fill vacancies is so complicated and obscure, especially after the year Albany’s had,” Squadron said in a statement, making a clear

To The Editor: Re “What would Francis do? Voting on the S.B.J.S.A.” (talking point, by Sharon Woolums, Dec. 3): The debate is really over. Do we save small businesses in New York City or not? Do we stabilize every Main St., shopping strip and business hub in all five boroughs before they are wiped out completely? Do we act and pass the Small Business Jobs Survival Act, the only true legislation to address the unfair lease renewal process in New York City? In the past, former Mayor Bloomberg, Speaker Quinn, the Real Estate Board of New York and the Department of Small Business Services successfully collaborated to stop a vote on the S.B.J.S.A. and keep the pro-landlord status quo. Today, Mayor de Blasio, Speaker

Mark-Viverito, REBNY, S.B.S. and Chairperson Cornegy are again collaborating to stop a vote on the S.B.J.S.A. and keep the status quo. Enough is enough of worthless small business programs and worthless political rhetoric, and politicians pronouncing, “Our small businesses are the backbone of our economy,” yet doing nothing. Stop the fraud and vote to give rights to business owners to survive. Steve Barrison Barrison is co-chairperson, Coalition To Save NYC Small Businesses 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. TheVillager.com

Best in Screen, 2015

Our omnivorous critic harvests a subjective crop BY SEAN EGAN

is most resonant when examining dynamics of race and gender, and the personal toll this high-pressure environment takes on a person.

t’s that time again — when every publication, TV show, website and blog that covers the arts trots out their monolithic lists of the year’s most excellent offerings. But doing this, even if just attempting to articulate your own personal opinion, is a pretty tricky business. It’s not easy trying to compare the relative merits of, say, a movie shot for 100K on an iPhone, and the latest $200 million installment of “Star Wars.” I mean, that’s like comparing apples and the world’s most successful film franchise of all time. Seeing as even the notion of basing lists around the confines of the calendar year is arbitrary, it might be nice to take the focus off of ordering and numbering, and instead take films on their own accord — by assigning them other, equally arbitrary categories in which they can shine. All of these movies are, I believe, pretty great, and are worth the effort to seek out and watch. Because if there’s one thing that film in 2015 has taught us, it’s that the more cinematically omnivorous you are, and the less concerned you are with consuming only “the best,” the greater chance you’ll have to find something you love — especially in unexpected places.

MOST KICKASS MOVIE OF THE YEAR: “Mad Max: Fury Road”

Is there any way to describe George Miller’s belated fourth installment of his signature post-apocalyptic action franchise other than “kickass?” Well, you could also TheVillager.com

AMERICAN AUTEURS: “Bridge of Spies”

WARNER BROS.

There was no more explosive movie (literally) in 2015 than George Miller’s “Mad Max: Fury Road.”

say the nearly non-stop, two-hour car chase is “action-packed,” “gorgeously shot,” “delightfully analog,” “surprisingly intelligent,” or “tons of fun.” Or, perhaps you could simply call it “the best movie of the year” — but even that seems a little bit reductive.

MOST WHITE KNUCKLE INTENSITY: “It Follows”

With his astoundingly assured debut feature, David Robert Mitchell has created a near-perfect horror movie — and one of the year’s very best films, regardless of genre. Taking place in an out-of-time suburb, the shape-shifting titular “It” begins its titular following after the individual it’s plaguing passes it along to another via sex. Fluid camerawork, realistically-sketched

characters, and a brilliant premise set this chilling meditation about growing up and mortality apart — as does its ability to prod at big existential questions more effectively than most prestige pictures, while also remembering to steadily mount dread and thoroughly creep its audience out.

“Sicario”

Smart and harrowing, Denis Villeneuve’s mid-budget adult thriller is the kind that doesn’t get made much anymore. It doesn’t skimp on the tension or action, even while exploring headier ideas. Led by dynamic performances from Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin and Benicio Del Toro, and guided along by Roger Deakins’ expressive cinematography, it’s ostensibly about taking down a Mexican drug cartel — but

To paraphrase the movie’s coscribes, the Coen Brothers: “Tom Hanks. Cold War picture. Whaddya need, a road map?” And with Steven Spielberg in the director’s chair, the project does seem like a no-brainer the creative team could complete on autopilot. Fortunately, working from a true-story script that’s at turns tense and unexpectedly hilarious (and enhanced by a virtuoso performance from Mark Rylance as a mild-mannered Russian spy), Spielberg turns in his most handsomely realized, exciting and vital film in recent memory.

“The Hateful Eight”

In, appropriately enough, his eighth feature, Quentin Tarantino has produced what is certainly his nastiest, most difficult, most visually beautiful film to date. It’s a strange amalgamation of past work (the confined location of “Reservoir Dogs,” the western landscapes of “Django Unchained,” the talky revenge tale of, um, everything else), which uses its expanded running time, gorgeous 70mm cinematography, and a fantastic Samuel L. Jackson-led ensemble to tell a relatively simple, highly theatrical mystery. The twist here is that Tarantino plays everything far more straight than usual. Sure, there’s some gallows humor, but when his signature viscera starts BEST OF 2015 continued on p.16 December 31, 2015

Reboots, indies, auteurs top 2015 films writer/director Alex Ross Perry strikes a delicate balance between his signature acerbic humor and intense psychodrama, bringing out the best in both.

BEST OF 2015 continued from p. 15

flying, it’s more brutal than ever before. There’s a method behind this film’s cruelty and lack of moral center, though — it dares you to take a long, hard look at the human soul, which is unable to hide all its ugliness when magnified by the unflinching eye of Cinerama.

“Duke of Burgundy”

BEST OBLIGATORY HOLLYWOOD REBOOT: “Creed”

This might be the “Rocky” spinoff no one really asked for — but writer/director Ryan Coogler (of 2013’s acclaimed “Fruitvale Station”) justifies its existence by producing the series’ best movie since the 1976 original. Sylvester Stallone revisits his signature role with humor and pathos. Further aided by an intense, layered performance from Michael B. Jordan, Coogler digs deep into the characters’ psyches, and creates the most viscerally exciting fights of the franchise — knowing when to employ both lingering long takes and blistering montage to thrilling effect.

WARNER BROS.

Michael B. Jordan and Sylvester Stallone helped to make “Creed” a knockout for the “Rocky” franchise.

MAGNOLIA PICTURES

The iPhone-shot “Tangerine” looks like a vibrant Instagram profile come to life.

December 31, 2015

“Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens”

I mean, what can I say? Nitpicking aside, it’s “Star Wars” — and they pretty much did it exactly right.

NEW CHRISTMAS CLASSICS: “Krampus”

“Entertainment”

I’ve described this film before as “bleak” and an “overwhelming sensory experience,” and I mean that as nothing but the highest praise. Rick Alverson’s depressing, tragi-comic character study of an aging, down-on-his-luck comedian (Gregg Turkington) knocked the wind out of me in the best possible way. Certain sequences and images from “Entertainment” have burrowed their way deep into my mind, and have been marinating in a way that few movies are capable of doing. You may not

BEST BLOCKBUSTERS: “Ant-Man”

While “Avengers: Age of Ultron” struggled under the weight of its narrative obligations and largerthan-life characters, Marvel fared far better with its other summer release, the comparatively low-key “Ant-Man.” Featuring a looser, comedic vibe, inventive action sequences and a more down-to-earth story, the film is a distinctive and refreshingly offbeat installment of Marvel’s increasingly large cinematic universe.

UNCOMPROMISING INDIES (MALE-LED EDITION): “Buzzard”

There’s three things you gotta know about this movie: It’s punk rock as hell, its protagonist is a low-level con artist with a functioning Freddy Krueger claw/ Nintendo Power Glove hybrid, and it’s got a nearly five-minute long scene of him eating a plate of spaghetti. If any of these factoids pique your interest, you’re definitely the target audience for Joe Potrykas’ greasy, desperate, pitchblack comedy.

Equal parts Lynch, Brakhage, romantic-drama and ’70s softcore, “Duke of Burgundy” creates an intimately realized and emotionally affecting romance by examining what two women in love will do for each other to make their relationship work. That it does this by aiming directly for taboo subjects — namely extreme sexual kinks — and presenting them with a measured, art-house eye makes for an indelible, daring, one-of-a-kind film.

WARNER BROS.

The spies of “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” — Guy Ritchie’s fizzy, ’60s throwback.

“get it,” but there’s a good chance the movie will get you, and refuse to let go.

UNCOMPROMISING INDIES (FEMALEFRONTED EDITION)” “Queen of Earth”

Shot on endearingly grainy 16mm film, and providing a fantastic showcase for Elisabeth Moss, “Queen of Earth” is a tale of precarious sanity and long-term friendship, which plays out as a ’70s psychological thriller by way of indie dramedy. Possessing an impressively strong grip on his characters,

Hailing from writer/director Mike Dougherty, “Krampus” does for Christmas what his last feature, “Trick ’r Treat,” did for Halloween — providing genre cinema junkies with an instant holiday horror classic. It’s got a wicked sense of humor (bolstered by comedic ringers like David Koechner and Adam Scott), gorgeous grotesqueries (rendered lovingly, and, for the most part, practically), and enough yuletide heart to make the gore go down easy.

“Tangerine”

While not exactly a Christmas movie per se, all the action of this BEST OF 2015 continued on p.17 TheVillager.com

Arbitrary categories, essential films BEST OF 2015 continued from p. 16

“Crimson Peak”

iPhone-shot indie takes place on Christmas Eve — qualifying it for inclusion in this totally arbitrary category. But that label is as good as any for this thoroughly singular, confrontational comedy about two trans sex-workers navigating the streets of Hollywood. The unique cinematography, which looks like a widescreen, ultra-saturated Instagram page brought to life, serves to complement the film’s palpable attitude and wit.

BEST DEFENSE OF FOUND FOOTAGE HORROR: “Unfriended”

This nasty little flick twists the much-maligned “found footage” script by having the action play out entirely on a laptop screen. It’s an idea elegant in its simplicity and legitimately unsettling in practice, which accurately (and uncannily) reflects how people use technology and social media — managing to probe at our Internet obsession, and how it can affect our interpersonal relationships and moral fiber.

Even for a visual visionary, the world of “Crimson Peak” stands as one of Guillermo del Toro’s most stunningly realized milieus. Combining the gorgeous production design with eerie effects and twisted, heightened melodrama makes for a campy, creepy, soapy delight.

“Jupiter Ascending”

WARNER BROS.

The Wachowskis’ maligned space opera “Jupiter Ascending” features eye-popping visuals and production design.

BEST WORST MOVIE: “The Cobbler”

“The Visit”

Laugh if you want, but with his low-budget found footage chiller, perennial punching bag M. Night Shyamalan has made an honest-to-god (very creepy) creative comeback. Framing his tale of an ill-fated familial visit as the product of a precocious teenage documentary-filmmaker allows him to employ more formal mastery than the genre’s limitations usually permit, and lets him indulge in a fair amount of goofy humor and emotionally involving character work.

Though their nutso space-opera was roundly dismissed upon release, writer/directors Andy and Lana Wachowski’s humanism, style and sense of humor — as well as their knack for mashing up classic tropes with their own inventive ideas and thematic preoccupations — always keep things interesting and unpredictable. Yes, it’s a bit of a lumbering mess, but it’s a beautiful one, and, more importantly, an original and ambitious one — an increasingly rare thing to be valued.

LIONSGATE

Emily Blunt, in a shot emblematic of the arid, threatening landscape of “Sicario.”

BEST BLOCKBUSTERS (UNFAIRLY OVERLOOKED EDITION): “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.”

Featuring a splashy ’60s setting and an eye-popping primary color palette, “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” is big-budget blockbuster fun of the highest order, which has kinetic action, incredible style (and some playful homoerotic tension) to spare.

Yeah, it’s cliché to call out Adam Sandler for making bad movies at this point — but hear me out. “The Cobbler” is a special brand of awful — a misguided, quasi-magic-realism flick that defies succinct description, and reaches new, operatic heights of bats**t insanity with its every questionable plot twist. For those who love to riff with friends, consider this a bow-topped gift streaming on Netflix. And for those who insist on things like “technical competence” and “quality” in their films, I’d recommend “The Cobbler” co-writer/director Tom McCarthy’s other 2015 release, “Spotlight” — an engrossing retelling of the Boston Globe’s investigation of the Catholic Church sexual abuse scandal.

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Almost Mata January 26th Allen Wilder By order of the New York City 2.0 Hari Borough President Lovers, Letters by Matt Morillo and Killers TNC Written and Performed by: Appreciation January 7 thru 31 Eva Dorrepaal Day January 7- January 24 Thursdays Fridays and IFC FILMS

“The Duke of Burgundy” is a tale of kink and romance like no other. TheVillager.com

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(Tierra Del Fuego) “A Play About Forgiveness” Written By: Mario Diament Directed By: Moshe Yassur December 16 - January 3

December 31, 2015

For your reconsideration: Orson Welles

‘Midnight’ culminates a lifelong infatuation with Shakespeare BY TRAV S.D.

et used to hearing a lot more about Orson Welles over the coming months. The hoary old narrative on America’s greatest director is being rewritten; the old canard that says Welles’ best days were behind him after “Citizen Kane” (1941) is being laid to rest. Sometime next year the director’s unfinished late work “The Other Side of the Wind,” which was shot during the 1970s, is scheduled for release in the wake of a much-publicized crowdfunding campaign. And a reconstructed version of his 1969 “The Merchant of Venice” premiered at the Venice International Film Festival earlier this year. And then there is the widespread reappraisal of his recently restored 1965 masterpiece “Chimes at Midnight,” which will be screening at Film Forum, Jan. 1–12. Welles had many films in the works during his last decade, but “Chimes at Midnight” is the last one he completed, not counting the 1973 experimental documentary essay “F for Fake.” He thought of it as his most artistically successful film, and it was, in many ways, the culmination of his lifelong infatuation with Shakespeare. According to legend, Welles’ first exposure to the Bard came at age two, when his mother read him unabridged versions of the plays. As a teenager, he edited a three-volume series of books called “Everybody’s Shakespeare.” In 1934, he played Tybalt in Katharine Cornell’s production of “Romeo and Juliet” on Broadway. In 1936, he played Hamlet on the radio. Then he directed two Shakespeare productions of his own which put him on the map: a 1936 interpretation of “Julius Caesar” reset in the context of Fascist Europe, and a 1937 Voodoo-inspired “Macbeth.” His earlier Shakespeare films included a 1948 “Macbeth” (quite different from the stage production), and his 1952 “Othello.” Welles’ first appearance on television was in 1953, as the title character in an “Omnibus” production of “King Lear” — a role he was to play again onstage three years later. “Chimes at Midnight” was over a quarter of a century in the making. In 1939 Welles had put together an ambitious production called “Five Kings”, which folded together nine Shakespeare plays to tell the entire “War of the Roses” cycle, with himself in the plum role of Sir John Falstaff and Burgess Meredith as Price Hal (the young Henry V). This production collapsed

December 31, 2015

COURTESY FILM FORUM, PHOTOFEST

L to R: Keith Baxter and Orson Welles in Welles’ “Chimes at Midnight.”

under its own weight, and Welles went west to begin making films for RKO. He revisited it in 1960, as a much-condensed stage version, much more sharply focused on the FalstaffPrince Hal relationship. The stage production was aborted, but it turned into a film, which Welles shot in 1964 and 1965. In addition to Welles as Falstaff, the film features John Gielgud as Henry IV, Ralph Richardson reading narration derived from Holinshead’s “Chronicles,” Margaret Rutherford as Mistress Quickly, Jeanne Moreau as Doll Tearsheet, and Keith Baxter as Prince Hal. “Chimes at Midnight” was released in time for the 1966 Cannes Film Festival and won a couple of awards that year, but here in America it was, for the most part, critically dismissed, thinly distributed and ignored by the public. Its reputation has improved over the years, at least with scholars and critics, despite the scarcity of prints — and the seeming non-existence of any good ones. Like all of his post-Hollywood films, “Chimes” was made on a shoestring, often making use of desperate techniques to hide the seams, usually “sleight-of-hand” editing, and the

liberal use of overdubs in post-production to cover weak takes and performances. Muddy sound, in particular, has bedeviled this film in days past. In versions I watched years ago prior to the current restoration, the dialogue was almost impossible to understand. The present version not only addresses the audio flaws, but the print is visually pristine as well, providing audiences perhaps with what might be called the first real opportunity to properly evaluate the film. And it is indeed glorious, even eye-opening. Welles was gravely disappointed when audiences of his day didn’t see what he saw — that it was his best work both as an actor and as a director. And the fullness of time has also shown that it’s possibly the best Shakespeare adaptation ever put on film. Among other things, I can’t think of any other Shakespeare film that feels so imbued with an Elizabethan atmosphere. Welles once said that “Chimes” wasn’t just about the growing estrangement between Falstaff and Hal, but also about the death of “Merrie England,” i.e. the old Medieval England of Maypoles and Chaucer and

Robin Hood. What would follow would be all statecraft and modernity, and eventually World Empire. As Falstaff, the over-stuffed Welles drew on his own personal legend, of his reputation for drinking and gourmandizing and womanizing and boasting and irresponsibility, for a performance at once hilarious and full of sorrow and regret. And if the terrific performances weren’t enough, there is the justly celebrated “Battle of Shrewsbury” sequence — genuine spectacle of a size and scale one rightly wouldn’t expect in a film that is, until that point, rather intimate. But this too is a Wellesian magic trick. Less than 200 extras were made to stand for thousands, and the illusion is convincing. Of Welles’ “Chimes at Midnight,” it may truly be said that never has something so small ever seemed so large. Jan. 1–12. Mon.–Sat. at 12:30, 2:50, 5:10, 7:30 & 9:50 p.m. Sun. at 1:10, 3:30, 5:50 & 8:15 p.m. Runtime: 115 min. At Film Forum (209 W. Houston St., btw. Sixth Ave. & Varick St.). Call 212-7278110 or visit filmforum.org. Tickets onsite are $13 general admission, $7.50 for Film Forum members. TheVillager.com

Buhmann on Art: Motley at the Whitney ‘Jazz Age Modernist’ charts a daring visual language BY STEPHANIE BUHMANN

ne of the great visual chroniclers of 20th century American life, Archibald John Motley Jr. (1891–1981) first came to prominence in the 1920s. His memorable depictions of African American, everyday urban life skillfully document the era of the Harlem Renaissance — when African American art, music, and literature flourished and impacted culture nationwide. Though born in New Orleans, Motley was based in Chicago for most of his life. There, he became one of the first black artists to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, which provided him with an academic training focused on figurative painting in the European tradition. This education equipped him with impeccable technique — but Motley’s mature work was far from conservative. In fact, he succeeded in creating a daring visual language that fused vivid narratives with elaborate spatial distortions. Rendered in his distinctive palette, Motley’s compositions range in complexity. His most impressive paintings feature eclectic groups of people from diverse racial backgrounds and social classes. Through Jan. 17 at the Whitney Museum of American Art (99 Gansevoort St., at Washington St.). Mon., Wed., Thurs. & Sun., 10:30 a.m.–6 p.m.; Fri.– Sat., 10:30 a.m.–10 p.m. Tickets: $22 general; $18, seniors & students; free for those under 18. Pay what you wish Fri., 7–10 p.m. Call 212-570-3600 or visit whitney.org.

“Hot Rhythm” / 1961. Oil on canvas, 40 × 48.375 in. (101.6 × 122.9 cm).

“Tongues (Holy Rollers)” / 1929. Oil on canvas, 29.25 x 36.125 in. (74.3 x 91.8 cm). TheVillager.com

“Self-Portrait (Myself at Work)” / 1933. Oil on canvas, 57.125 x 45.25 in. (145.1 x 114.9 cm). December 31, 2015

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December 31, 2015

Before the Garden of Eden, legend’s daughters telling stories. His IQ was almost off the charts. Let’s let it go at that. “I’ve almost recovered at 57, started recovery at age 50,” Lenore continued. “It’s been a lifetime of invisibility, confusion and suffering the symptoms of mental illness. It was in the genes on both sides of the family. “We are survivors and there are more like us — not caring to continue the long line of generational sexual abuse perpetrated on us.” Lenore added that an adoption record she enclosed “is to prove, contrary to what Adam Purple / David Lloyd wrote in his literature he passed out in Central Park, that [Jenean] and I were not abducted, he just lost custody.”

PURPLE continued from p. 9

interspersed seemingly randomly throughout the letter, “dearest jenean, a light rain is falling this morning, so i’ll try to get this note off to you before my dental appointment… . tuesday & wednesday i planted about 240 bulbs (dahlia, lily, begonia & gladioli) liberated from automated bulb factories in holland (bill me later!). all orange in the six sections of the third circle of The Garden. … so far, I have planted tomatoes, cucumbers, peas, beans, cauliflower, onions, lettuce, peppers, broccoli, carrots and beets. about 12 of some 20 trees (apple, pear, nectarine & black walnut) from a ‘bill me later’ nursery have begun to leaf out.” At the end of an Oct. 2, 1983, letter, he quipped (seemingly) about marrying her: “idle irony dept.: if you were free to do so, etc., what legal restraint would there be against us marrying inasmuch as you are not legally my daughter. it might make a polemic plot for funny fiction of unintentional irony. who knows, the legal restraints against incest might not apply...funny, huh?” He opened another letter to jenean, dated “the ides of march 1984,” with, “time out while i get stoned….” going on later, to muse, “you may wake up some morning and realize you were born a zen-taoist-anarchist in a neo-fascist culture which perverts the former into itself. … the crocuses have been up blooming since the warmth of february & the roses are carelessly shooting out branch buds. … the tulips are greening too. …” He signed off, “must quit this to saw wood & rinse the sprouts & then get out to enjoy the sunshine.”

Pining for country life Finally, in a letter from Nov. 29, 1985, only about a month before the city finally bulldozed his beloved Garden of Eden to clear the way for a public housing project, Purple wrote to Jenean of how he was awaiting a federal appeals court’s decision on the garden’s fate. He added that their children — Jenean by now had a son of her own, Steven — should “do some or a lot of country living,” noting he had grown up in the country himself. “if I’m going to saw wood for winter heat, i’d just as well be in the country woods?” he wrote, apparently yearning a bit for the country life himself as the wrecking ball loomed over his urban oasis. A few weeks after Jenean’s first phone call to The Villager, her younger sister, Lenore, mailed her own package of Purple letters and

December 31, 2015

Trouble Down Under A photograph of Purple in a magazine profile, showing him scooping up horse manure in Central Park to fertilize the soil in his Garden of Eden.

documents to the newspaper. Yet, unlike her older sister, she did not want to talk on the phone, according to Jenean. “She was more seriously affected,” Jenean said. “She’s even more adamant about putting it behind her. Lenore ran away. She was on the streets young. She’s been beaten, battered, raped, jailed.”

Lenore wrote. “I lived with Adam and Eve Purple for the 1st part of the summer. He didn’t feed me enough so I took a walk to Greenwich Village and got in the wrong crowd. But I want to say that the first thing he did when I got there was to give me an enema. Really!! “So I spent the first part of the summer of my 16th year working in David’s garden and sleeping in Adam and Eve’s bed, not sleeping while they screwed and hoping they didn’t ask me to join in. Even Eve after she got pregnant wasn’t happy with David because he wouldn’t let her eat enough and especially non-macrobiotic items like eggs, cheese and milk, while she needed them. She left him, when I first went back in my 19th year and spent the whole summer working in the garden for/with David, but he finally insisted my tobacco go or I go, so I went.”

‘We are survivors and there are more like us.’ Lenore

Living with Purple Lenore put down her thoughts about her father in a five-page handwritten letter to The Villager. (These two daughters and the sole grandson all usually refer to Purple as David.) She described her father as “non-caring, thinking life is a bunch of games, wanting to do everything his way.” The sisters returned to America after three years in Australia. “When I was 16 I wanted to know my, ‘loosely,’ Dad, I say now physical Father, and he sent Eve Purple to find me and I was planning a runaway from a group home I was in,”

‘An insane genius’ Summing up her dad, Lenore wrote, “He’s hard, he plays, and he wants his way. He was an insane genius of our times. Unfortunately, one with a dark past, which he hid because it did not purpose his desires. He’d always loved gardening. When we were young, he taught us reading, gardening and love for

Jenean and Lenore lived with Purple and his second wife, Romola, after they moved to Australia, where Purple worked as a journalism teacher. Their birth mother had earlier been institutionalized back in America. They frequently moved, which Jenean said was due to Purple being a “pervert.” The National Archives of Australia confirmed that David Lloyd Wilkie and his family immigrated to Australia in 1964. Due to “legislative issues” — because he died less than 30 years ago — the New South Wales Police Force Information Access Unit could not provide details confirming Purple’s arrest, jail sentence and deportation. However, according to an Australian court document that each sister provided her own copy of to The Villager, in July 1966, when Jenean was 12 and Lenore 10, Romola turned Purple into the police for having allegedly sexually assaulted the oldest of the two stepsisters when she was 11, when they were living in Rooty Hill, a Sydney suburb, on Sept. 12, 1965. The court record — “Wilkie v Wilkie,” from June 26, 1967 — by which time Purple was serving his prison sentence at Long Bay Penitentiary, in Sydney, details the judgment in a custody battle between the stepmother and Purple over Jenean and Lenore, which the stepmother won.

‘He will say anything’ At one point in his written ruling, Supreme Court Justice Colin Elly Begg, frustratedly said of PurPURPLE continued on p. 23 TheVillager.com

say their lives were an abusive hell on earth PURPLE continued from p. 22

ple, “I would not accept the word of the respondent at all on any matter unless it was completely and fully corroborated by unimpeached external evidence. I doubt very much if he really understands the sanctity of an oath.” At another point, he stated, “The impression Wilkie gave me is that he is a man who will say anything to suit his own convenience.” To illustrate how Purple wouldn’t tell the truth, Begg referred to “a certain vulgar placard” in Purple’s home that two witnesses, a doctor and his wife who had visited him, testified about in court. “One of them said [Purple] spoke of how he had got this placard and had told them in the letter he had sent to America for the placard he had referred to a description of himself as the Rev. D.L. Wilkie,” Begg wrote. “He also told them he had been visited by authorities from the Postal Department.” However, Purple denied in court that he had ordered the placard, instead saying his wife got it. “I remember it — and right where it was,” Jenean told The Villager. “It was Uncle Sam with a top hat and striped vest and God with a long white beard, wearing a robe. Uncle Sam is kneeling and God was behind him, ‘One Nation Under God.’ ” The doctor’s wife further told the court that at a meeting at Purple’s house she was shown “a magazine depicting nude portions of anatomy of white and dark people… .” Again, Purple denied he owned the book.

Wife charged ‘cruelty’ In considering the wife’s charge of “cruelty” against Purple, the judge cited a fight that Romola said broke out between them while driving with their kids in the car after Purple “emphasised [sic] certain aspects of the way in which a woman should act to make a man satisfied.” Begg also noted that Purple reportedly “committed adultery” with a young student from Sydney Technical College, sleeping with her at his home after kicking his wife out of the bedroom. “It is apparent...the respondent has led a life in which sex has played a very large part,” Begg observed. Meanwhile, Purple accused Romola of having sex with other men at the couple’s home, but the judge, again, said he would believe the PURPLE continued on p. 25 TheVillager.com

PHOTOS BY CHRIS ORTIZ AND LINCOLN ANDERSON

Adam Purple was very proud of his mini-flipbook “Zentences.” The pages are split in half on the top and bottom, allowing innumerable combinations forming Zen koans, or paradoxes to be meditated upon, offering intuitive insight, and simply amusement. He originally made 600 of them when he was in Australia. This rare existing copy was inscribed to his daughter Jenean. But she sent it to The Villager and said to keep it, since associations with her father are filled with dark memories for her. She sent the book as it was originally sent to her, wrapped in a swatch of light burlap underneath a piece of cellophane and fastened with masking tape. Purple’s grandson, Steve Mason, created a sort of automated “Zentences” online, which can be found at http://phenomenon.org/ intense/zentences, and which is also available on the Web site http://www.zentences.com . December 31, 2015

December 31, 2015

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Notes from the underground; What a long, strange trip it was People.” “Of course, I adored it,” she said of his sprawling Garden of Eden. In an April 9, 1980, letter to her, however, he expressed suspicion of the TV show, writing, “regarding the ‘real people’ situation, it appears at least possible that the film interviewing was done, not for actual public broadcast, but for cia/ fbi police film files.” And Purple still seemed to long for her inappropriately, or at least claimed he did. “He was still carrying on with it,” Jenean said. “He said, ‘Maybe someday you, me and Lenore can have a threesome.’ ”

PURPLE continued from p. 23

wife over anything Purple said. Another court document, from California Superior Court in June 1968, pronounced that Jenean and Lenore were free from Purple’s parental control since he “has been convicted of a felony, to wit, child molestation.” Many of the letters that Jenean and Lenore provided detail the stepmother’s frequent pleas from Australia for their well-to-do maternal grandparents to send cash. Their grandfather was a vice president at The Reliable Life Insurance Company in St. Louis.

Generational abuse

Acid and abuse The sheaves of letters from Romola to the grandparents — many handwritten or typed on blue “aerogramme” paper — occasionally note her concern that Purple had been using LSD. In a letter from Oct. 28, 1966, she wrote that her eldest daughter “complained to me that he still molested her when I left the house to go to work…[and] Jenean had come to me complaining that ‘Daddy wouldn’t let her alone at night.’ ” Purple had previously promised her he would stop abusing the eldest stepdaughter.

Shunned shrinks Also, Romola wrote that Purple could have avoided jail if he had only accepted psychological help, but he refused. On May 15, 1967, she wrote, “Lloyd was sentenced Friday. He refused to co-operate with the Psychiatrist. Had he done so, he would have been out on bond & under treatment. Since he refused to see any psychiatrist after the first one, he was sentenced to 2 (two) years ‘Hard Labor.’… He will never be able to get a decent job unless he goes for treatment.” Earlier, on April 14, 1967, his wife had written, “He was found guilty on two counts of assault (indecent) & sentencing has been postponed... pending his examination by [underline] many [reg] competent Psychiatrists. The Judge said that this was the most demented man ever to appear in his court.” For his part, some of Purple’s letters focused on his efforts to send funds to his family, such as when he wrote to Romola on Sept. 26, 1966, saying, “My pay for this week will presumably be for four days because I did not get out of Parramatta Gaol until about noon today and so missed today at work. I trust that you will be able to meet the mortgage payments so as to help us avoid a mortgage sale for the time being.” (Perhaps Purple was referring to being in a prison work-release program that allowed him to work outside jail during the day.)

Claimed innocence On March 19, 1967, he wrote to the children’s maternal grandparents, proclaiming his innocence, and asserting that his second wife was not a fit guardian for his daughters: “I write now to reaffirm to you that I have been TheVillager.com

Adam Purple and Anne a.k.a. Eve. A relationship with a prior Eve, real name Diane, had fizzled over a fight about money. Larry Friedman was a student at Stuyvesant High School when he moved into Purple’s building at 184 Forsyth St., paying around $50 a month for oil to heat his stove. “There was Eve I and Eve II,” he told The Villager at Purple’s memorial this past September. “Eve I started dancing topless. She wanted to make money for their daughter, Nova Dawn, and move away. She did it. I heard her say, ‘I made $1,000 last night!’ My girlfriends didn’t have to babysit anymore because she moved away. That was the only time I heard them fight.”

and am very much interested in the long-term welfare of Jenean and Lenore, to whom I have a very close blood tie and to affirm to you that [my wife’s] charges against me (including those she induced her own daughter to be a party to) are false in fact and without basis in reality.”

Briefly reconnecting Like Lenore, Jenean did have some contact with Purple early on once he came back to America, but eventually she found it increasingly difficult to maintain the relationship. She recalled that, at first, “We were warned to stay away from him, and to have nothing to do with him. “We didn’t know where he was, his time in New York when he began to gather a group of people that looked up to him,” she said. She was referring to the “Purple People,” cult members who once followed him, all dressing in purple, keeping vegetarian and shunning leather garments, including leather shoes. “He mailed me some pot when I was 23. I was terrified of him, to be quite honest. … Marijuana was always an issue for him,” she said. He encouraged her to read and discuss with him “Stranger in a Strange Land,” Robert A. Heinlein’s sexually charged sci-fi novel. She did finally visit her father on Forsyth St. in 1980 when she was around age 25 and he was being filmed for the early TV reality show “Real

She believes Purple was sexually abused by his own mother after his father died in an electrical accident and the mother sought a new partner among family members, so it was a case of “generational sexual abuse.” Similarly, Lenore said an aunt she was close to told her Purple’s mother also was sexually abused. “He didn’t think he did anything wrong,” Jenean said. “He’s doing us a favor, don’t you know? How to give pleasure to a man — that’s what it was about. “I don’t blame him,” she said, forgivingly. “I’m glad he at least had people who respected him,” she said of Purple’s New York friends, including the young activists from the cycling group Time’s Up. He lived in a room in their Williamsburg, Brooklyn, headquarters over the past few years. Speaking of biking, Jenean does it herself — one phone conversation with The Villager was while she was on her bike running an errand — and she wears purple and violet, too, just like her father. “I live closer to the land than most people who follow him,” she said a bit defiantly, admitting, “He might have influenced me.”

‘I’m done healing’ Reflecting on her terrorized childhood and her long, hard-won healing process, she said, “I should write a book about it. I’m not going to. That YouTube video, that was it. I’m done. I’m done healing from it all.” Of her wanting to get the message out about complex PTSD, she said, “My father would probably appreciate that this would have have an educational component,” and laughed.

Grandson pans Mr. Purple This week, Jenean’s son, Steve Mason, went public with his criticism of the new Mr. Purple restaurant in the Hotel Indigo, at 180 Orchard St. Mason, who lives in San Francisco and works in tech and computer graphics, said he only found out this past Monday about the swanky nightspot — incredulously named after his ultra-low-impact-lifestyle grandfather. The restauPURPLE continued on p. 26 December 31, 2015

Grandson: Purple was difficult, but Mr. Purple is crazy! respect his tenacity.” Mason said he wrote Scott Gerber, head of the Gerber Group, which is behind the Mr. Purple restaurant, to express his disapproval. “I don’t know if he understands how deeply inappropriate it is for him to use his name,” he said. “Adam Purple was a vegan and they are serving hamburgers, plus highpriced cocktails.” In addition, he said he has high hopes for legislation, introduced in May and currently in committee in the New York State Senate, Bill S5650, that “provides that a property right exists in a deceased individual’s persona for seventy years after the death of the individual.” In other words, it would be a violation to use a person’s likeness without permission of his or her estate / family members. Without getting into specifics, Mason, in his letter to Gerber, also alluded to Purple’s history of sexual abuse. “I mentioned that there are aspects of his history that are extremely unsavory and would not reflect well on the bar,” he said. “It would be as if Disney named a ride after Roman Polanski — basically, that they are sitting on a P.R. time bomb.”

PURPLE continued from p. 25

rant appropriated Purple’s name just two months after his death, and even includes a mural of him. Mason promptly fired off a blistering letter about the inappropriateness of the eatery’s name to local blog Bowery Boogie. Later the same day, he e-mailed The Villager, saying that he knew the newspaper had been talking to his mother about the dark side of Purple’s legacy. “It’s something that I’ve known about for a long time,” he said of the sexual abuse. He said he was never that close to his grandpa, finding him “cantankerous and very narcissistic,” in addition to being leery of him due to his mother’s experience. “Basically, he wasn’t a good family member,” he said, adding, “but I was happy he had a group of people in Brooklyn that were some semblance of family.” Yet, Mason did visit him a few times in New York City. “I tracked him down about 15 years ago through an anarchist bookstore,” he said, probably referring to Blackout Books. “He was extremely intelligent, very scholarly — and you wouldn’t expect it from his appearance.”

Two narratives

Working the system Mason met his father in the Mexican restaurant Trez Aztecas, at Allen and Rivington Sts. “Adam Purple comes in and says he eats there for free every day because he gave them $1,000 when they couldn’t pay rent,” he recalled. “He was collecting Social Security and had almost no expenses. He basically had 50 grand in cash on him or stashed away at all times.” In one of Mason’s favorite Purple anecdotes, his grandfather then surprised him by pulling a cell phone out of his pocket and answered a call. “He said, ‘I know all the drug dealers from around the neighborhood. They give me their burners.’ ” Speaking of phones, Mason said, “He was very paranoid about the government. Whenever I called him, he felt that the FBI was listening in because he was a dangerous person to them, because he was aggressively against the form of society. He was calling for a world strike, a world s--- -in on the White House lawn, the abolition of money. “His whole thing was f---ing the system and getting stuff for free. Whenever he sent us mail, he would

December 31, 2015

David Lloyd Wilkie, the future Adam Purple a.k.a Rev Les Ego, in an early photo, possibly from high school, sent by his daughter Jenean.

put glue over the stamp so we could wash it off and reuse it.” Regarding his letters, Mason said Purple sometimes used the symbol for Uranus instead of the letter “H.” The symbol sort of looks like an “H,” plus Purple, well, apparently just liked the word play of “your anus,” he noted.

Family issues Mason said his uncle, Adam David, Purple’s son, is in his mid-30s, around his own age. “He grew up on Forsyth St.,” Mason said. “He was there when the garden was demolished. He was a Hasidic rabbi for a little while. He went to Israel for a couple of years and learned Hebrew and Aramaic. He came back, dropped out of Hasidism and went to L.A. “I’m the most together of all of

his children,” Mason said. “I’m definitely the most-straight person — I have a career and a job and an apartment. I avoided the Adam Purple shockwave.” Echoing his mother, he said her younger sister, Lenore, has had it especially tough. “She ran away at 13 and lived with the Rainbow Family for 30 years — as hardcore hippie as you can imagine,” he said. “She worked at a KFC for three years, it was like the first job in her life. She lives in a trailer.”

Restaurant revulsion For all of Purple’s negatives as a family member, Mason said, in terms of his grandfather’s environmentalism and radical values, “I really admire what he believed in and

If publicizing Purple’s troubled past helps get the restaurant renamed, Mason said, so be it, he supports it. Lower East Side documentarian Clayton Patterson said of publicizing the story, “The question is — who has the rights, the kids or the memory [of Purple the legendary activist]?” “It’s like a priest who abused kids, or like Bill Cosby — if you get 30 women complaining, you can’t dismiss them all,” he reflected. Told that Purple’s older daughter has only finally healed now at age 60, he said that clearly shows the seriousness of what she went through. Hopefully, the two narratives can somehow coexist and inform: on the one hand, the story of a family that finally healed from domestic sexual abuse, and, on the other, a man who built a new life for himself — and a glorious garden — on the Lower East Side and left a lasting legacy of environmental consciousness. Yes, Adam Purple was a man who was at once the “ultimate hippie” — yet perhaps a symbol, too, of 1960s excess and experimentation gone horribly wrong — a classic New York character — and, for many, a hero — though, clearly, a deeply flawed one. TheVillager.com

PHOTOS BY BOB KRASNER

Allan Ishac a.k.a. Simon Spokes is on the move and geared up for his new “That Bike Show” Web cast, which will go live in March.

Bike lover is taking the talk show on the road BY BOB KRASNER

llan Ishac is not a guy who sits still. Having written several books (“New York’s 50 Best Places to Find Peace and Quiet” and “The Guide to Odd New York,” to name a couple), he created a children’s video series (“Hard Hat Harry”), invented an app (“Tranquilicity”) and won awards for advertising copywriting, he is moving forward by going back to his first love. “I’ve been obsessed with bikes since I was five,” the longtime Village resident admits. He first found an outlet to explore the world of cycling with a column in Momentum magazine called “Cyclepreneurs.” In the column, he explores businesses that have ditched their trucks and vans in favor of pedal power, like the Chicago window washer who now works out of the back of a cargo bike. Ishac decided that he wanted his own business on a bike and he wasn’t about to start “delivering laundry or bagels.” “I was astonished that there was no entertainment media vehicle” focusing on human-powered vehicles, he noted. So he got his own cargo bike, ditched its bucket and enlisted inventor/designer Jimmy DiResta to create a talk-show desk for it. A theme song was commissioned from 17-yearold prodigy Annika Bennett. Wardrobe designers got to work and an alter ego, Simon Spokes, was created. The end result is “That Bike Show,” a Web TheVillager.com

Simon Spokes was recently able to snag none other than Santa Claus in one of the Web cast’s first interviews.

cast that will begin running regular five-minute episodes in March, though samples are now on the Web site. Spokes plans to park his bike/desk in various locations around New York, a city that has added 250 miles of bike lanes since 2006. Having already interviewed Santa Claus, Spokes has a wish list

of about 120 celebrity cyclists that he’d like to sit down with. Other things he’s wishing for are a female sidekick and some sponsorship (interested parties can contact Ishac via the Web site thatbikeshow.com). In the meantime, he said, “I’m committing all my energy and money to the show. For me, this is a dream come true.” December 31, 2015

December 31, 2015

TheVillager.com