Sanitation suit: We bumped into Hudson Square property-owners’ super-lobbyist Michael Kramer down by the City Planning Department on Reade St. on Monday, where he was about to head into another meeting on the Department of Sanitation megagarage planned at West and Spring Sts. He let on that the project’s opponents are planning a lawsuit, apparently to be announced quite soon. In fact, he said, we’ll find out “more at the press conference next week.”
Flier freak-out: In more contentious Department of Sanitation doings, the Bleecker Area Merchants’ and Residents’ Association recently got slapped with a fine of $4,275 after a by-the-book Sanitation special agent cited the organization for illegally posting 57 meeting fliers on street light poles and other city-owned “street furniture.” BAMRA pleaded their case, but an administrative law judge ruled against them. We hear they will appeal. Meanwhile, City Councilmember Alan Gerson says he will introduced legislation in the Council to allow community groups to post fliers for such meetings that are a benefit to the general public.
Obama bucks: A fundraiser for Barack Obama on Monday night in Chinatown at the Hester St. home of Matt and Amy Stein-Milford raked in $10,000 for the Democratic presidential candidate. Mark Alexander, a Seton Hall law and politics professor, called in on behalf of the Obama campaign. Responding to the Barack backers’ queries as to when their candidate will finally start “hitting back” against the attacks of John McCain and Sarah Palin and get nasty, Alexander said that’s not Obama’s style, that he has “a message of hope.” Elizabeth Moynihan, 79, widow of late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, made a special appearance. She told the assembled crowd that she had run three of the senator’s campaigns, and stressed the importance of getting out the vote. Certainly, the Milfords had to be happy with the many checks that were written. Matt, a divorce attorney, knows a bit from writing, as his mother, Nancy Milford, penned the wildly successful book “Zelda: A Biography,” about Zelda Fitzgerald. Amy is the deputy director of the Eldridge Street Synagogue, a.k.a. “The Museum Synagogue.”
Crack corrections: Our update on the ongoing sound-permit/donuts-attack flap in last week’s Scoopy’s column had a few inaccuracies, and we should probably be pelted with crullers as punishment for them. We assumed we had all the information on the good word of a reliable source, but as they say about assuming… . First off, the harassment, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest charges against Scott Sturgeon, Leftover Crack’s lead singer, have not been dropped, his attorney, Marty Stolar, informed us. Also, Sturgeon wasn’t offered “200 hours of community service,” which would amount to about five solid weeks of sweeping the streets, but just one day’s worth. Anyway, moving on, Stolar says Sturgeon’s tossing donuts toward police at a protest concert earlier this month falls under disorderly conduct, not harassment, and may be the only charge still standing once Stolar goes to work. Harassment, at least according to the police complaint, is being defined as Sturgeon’s singing “Kill the police” in Tompkins Square Park, because, the officer states, singing those words qualifies as an “obscenity.” It sounds like Stolar is going to have a field day challenging that charge. Plus, he intends to argue that the police have a vendetta against the Crack crooner and arrested him because of his anti-police lyrics. He said he’ll thoroughly cross-examine the officer on the stand. “Cross-examination is what I do,” Stolar said. … Also, we misstated last week the decibel level that police allowed Sturgeon and his Leftover Crack mates to have for their Sept. 5 anti-police concert by the precinct stationhouse: The agreed-to sound level was 70 decibels at 50 feet.
I-rock, I-raq (Eucrasia?): While we’re on the subject of rock bands, The Stalkers, who The Villager profiled last month, are getting some airplay — in Iraq. The BFBS (British Forces Broadcasting System) recently played their new hit “In Your Street Today” in that war-torn land. The songs’ lyrics are oddly appropriate: “Bring your lips, it’s the apocalypse / I’mma show you something that you just can’t miss / abandoned houses are where we have fun / wild, wild times in the sun..” Danny Goldshtein, the band’s bass player (O.K., O.K., so he also happens to be The Villager’s circulation manager), while happy to be making the Mesopotamian music scene, said; “I was against the war. I was at the protests.” The band still doesn’t have a label, and is now planning to go D.I.Y. As for the concert cruise mentioned in our article, we’re told it went well, mostly. But The Giraffes’ lead singer somehow wound up wearing The Stalkers’ good-luck American flag — see, they are patriotic — as a turban, and later set it on fire. Bad Giraffe.
