We’ve moved: The Villager and its sister publications, Downtown Express, Gay City News and NYC Plus, have moved to 145 Sixth Ave., at the corner of Dominick St. and Sixth Ave., on the ground floor. We only moved a few blocks, so our zip code remains 10013. We’re in the former Here Café space, right across from Chelsea Vocational High School. Immediately to our east is a public plaza, Soho Square, which occupies the triangle formed in the 1920s when Sixth Ave. was extended south from Carmine St. In Soho Square is another prominent landmark, the statue of General Jose Artigas (1764-1850), an independence leader and national hero of Uruguay. His is one of six statues in a pantheon of Latin American leaders dotting Sixth Ave. from Canal St. to Central Park S. that were commissioned as part of the avenue’s being renamed Avenue of the Americas by Fiorello LaGuardia in 1945. Despite the efforts of the former mayor and good Villager, however, we’ll be sticking with Sixth Ave. in our address, as we feel it’s more recognizable.
Historic gathering: Doris Diether, chairperson of the Community Board 2 Landmarks Committee, was among the honorees of the “Salute to New Yorkers Active in Preservation From the 1950s” at the April 5 celebration of The New York Preservation Archive Project at Battery Gardens Restaurant in Battery Park. The event was billed as a “Toast to the Golden Jubilee of the Bard Act,” the 50th anniversary of the New York State legislation that authorized the 1965 creation of New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Law. Other honorees included Giorgio Cavaglieri, architect of the Jefferson Market Library restoration, and Margot Gayle and former City Councilmember Carol Greitzer, who were active in saving the Jefferson Market Courthouse for use as a library. Jan Pokorny, designer of the Battery Maritime Building restoration, and Whitney North Seymour, Jr., active in the campaign to restore Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Upstate country home, were also among the honorees.
Pot predicament: Dana Beal, organizer of the annual Million Marijuana March for pot legalization, tells us he’s freaking out about what to do on Sat., May 5. Battery Park, where the city has been giving the march a permit to end in recent years, is “all dug up” and there’s no way the march can end there, he said. There might not even be a march this year, he fears. However, Beal, an ex-Yippie, and others do plan to hold a memorial for Stu Albert in Washington Square Park from 11 a.m. to noon on May 5. Albert, who died in January, was the Yippies’ liaison to the Weathermen — the radical group that blew up a Village townhouse, among other things — Beal noted. “We’re going to have giant, Mao-sized posters of Stu Albert,” Beal said. “But we won’t be picketing N.Y.U. this year.” On another note, Beal reports that the Yippie Museum at 9 Bleecker St. did receive its certificate as an educational institution from the Board of Regents, which is needed to run a museum.
Park lawsuit: According to Sharon Woolums of the Emergency Coalition to Save Washington Sqare, or ECO, Justice Emily Jane Goodman, the State Supreme Court judge on their lawsuit, has scheduled oral argument for May 11 at 3:30 p.m. The lawsuit seeks to annul the Art Commission’s ruling to allow the moving of the Washington Square Park fountain as part of the park’s renovation, on the grounds that the Parks Department did not make the plans sufficiently available for public review prior to the public hearing.
S.L.A. workshop: Susan Stetzer, district manager of Community Board 3, said that the free workshop attorney Barry Mallin recently gave board members was only attended by the board members, plus a few representatives of block associations whose blocks are embroiled in ongoing battles with a few specific problem bars and nightclubs, and that these nightspots are ones that the board is actively involved in trying to shut down or keep from opening.
