“One balmy spring day in 1931, in the heart of the Depression,” the Washington Square Outdoor Art Exhibit Web site relates, Jackson Pollock, in dire financial straits and facing imminent eviction, schlepped some of his paintings down the stairs of his Greenwich Village apartment/ studio and set them up on the side- walk near Washington Square Park.

He was joined by his equally desperate friend and fellow Villager Willem de Kooning. The Uptown art establish- ment took notice of the Downtown outsiders, and shortly thereafter, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, founder of the Whitney Museum, and Alfred H. Barr, Jr., director of the Museum of Modern Art, organized the first art show that evolved into the twice- yearly Washington Square Outdoor Art

Exhibit, which takes place Memorial Day weekend and the weekend follow- ing, and Labor Day weekend and the subsequent.

This spring marks the art exhibit’s 79th year and 159th show. The new executive director, John Morehouse, who took the helm last January and has two shows under his belt, is hoping to

The city has sealed the deal on a development plan for the Hudson Yards that includes far more afford- able housing than ini- tially expected. In a near- unanimous vote, the City

Council last month O.K.’d the revamped scheme to rezone the sprawling West Side rail yard.

Developer on track with low-cost units at rail yards site

State and city elected officials joined environmen- tal activists on the steps of City Hall on Monday brav- ing subfreezing temperatures to demand that Governor Paterson scrap plans for hydrofracture drilling for natural gas in New York State’s Southern Tier.

Elected officials, who at previous hearings focused their opposition on gas drill- ing in the six Upstate coun- ties of the New York City watershed, which supplies 90 percent of the city’s drink- ing water, suggested at the Jan. 4 rally that the radical new drilling method should

Officials and activists demanded that the state withdraw its draft supple- mental generic environmen- tal impact statement for hydrofracture drilling in the Marcellus Shale formation — which lies 3,000 to 6,000 feet beneath the surface of 27 Southern Tier counties — and conduct an entirely new study.

The 800-page study issued in September propos- es rules intended to minimize the environmental impact of wells tapping the natural gas in the rock formation.

Pols and enviros
usher in new year,
not with bubbly,
but chilled H2O

Number 2, at 84 W. Third St. “The rumor has been swirling for a couple of months, but is getting more attention now,” B.B. wrote. “According to The Real Estalker, Cooper and partner Ben Maisani purchased the firehouse together back in September for $4.3 million.” The property reportedly has 8,420 square feet, plus its original brass poles and spiral stairs — no doubt, those poles will help Cooper get to his breaking news stories faster.

Precinct for the past four and a half years, has been promoted to inspector and transferred to the Midtown South Precinct, where he takes over as C.O. De Quatro’s last day at the Ninth was Monday, the same day Deputy Inspector Kenny Lehr started as the precinct’s new commander. Lehr formerly head- ed Transit Division 33, in Brooklyn South. Asked his thoughts on De Quatro’s tenure at the East Village precinct, Detective

ney who ran unsuccessfully for the City Council seat of Speaker Christine Quinn in November, was the victim of an apparently random assault by a young man during the early hours of New Year’s Day. Her assailant, one of a group of several youths, punched her in the back of the head several times as she was standing on the south side of 14th St. between Seventh and Eighth Aves. The 3:50 a.m. assault was painful but the injuries were not serious and Kurland refused medical attention. “I was waiting with a friend for someone to come out of a building when we saw about six guys coming up the street,” she told The Villager. “One of them ran up and pummeled me in the head. He seemed hopped up — strung out — and it looked like he didn’t even see me. It seemed like he would have attacked anyone who was standing in that spot at the time,” Kurland said. The suspect, who was no older than 20 and might have been younger, could have been swing- ing wildly as he was walking up the street, she added. “It made me ask myself what we are doing about youth violence and what we are doing to get drugs off the street to make sure that young people can celebrate New Year’s or any other occasion peacefully and responsibly,” she added. Kurland said she and her friend followed the sus- pect and his group to the subway station at Seventh Ave. and 14th St., where she told them she was calling police. One member of the group of white Hispanic youths tried to persuade her not to call police, but a Transit worker dialed 911 and the group dispersed.

ago on the new Downtown Democratic political club finally coming up with a new name for itself — Lower Manhattan Democrats — Sean Sweeney, president of Downtown Independent Democrats, fired off an e-mail to put the upstart club in its place. Celebrating her impending entrance into the City Council, Margaret Chin, Sweeney wrote, had had a big banquet at Jing Fong in Chinatown on Dec. 23, and D.I.D. was out in force, as opposed to the other guys. “D.I.D. had three tables with 10 people at each table,” Sweeney crowed. “Reading Scoopy’s column about

about the only thing they’ve accomplished. In fact, the only person from the new club who attended [Chin’s banquet] was Bill Love.”

for Jim Power, the East Village’s “Mosaic Man.” First of all — getting him off the hard streets and out of the cold — he now has a place, with three hot meals a day, up in Harlem at Kelly House, a facility run by Common Ground. He said the program is for the “chronic homeless,” and that for an individual to be accepted, outreach workers must spot the person fi ve times living on the street. After a few months up on 127th St., he said he might transition to Common Ground’s Times Square residence, and then to their new project at East Houston and Pitt Sts., at the former Boys’ Club site — assum- ing it ever gets built, hopefully. Jesse Jane, Powers’s canine companion, was dozing comfortably by his side when we called “Mosaic” Monday night. Power, who is in his 60s, noted that Jesse Jane is 9 — that’s 63 in dog years — and that she’s been leading a rough life with him for 8 1/2 years, so she really needs this break. However, Power’s hips are going, and he needs to fi x at least one soon, or he’ll really be in trouble: And there’s no way he’ll ever be able to repair his mythic “Mosaic Trail” of 80 tile-covered street lampposts unless he gets a hip replacement. So he and friends are planning a big fundraiser at Theatre 80, on St. Mark’s Place, Tues., Feb. 16, from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. The details are still being worked out, but Power said several historic fi lms about the East Village will be shown — including the 1989 movie “Mosaic Man,” not seen for 20 years — and that there will be musical performances. Power also will be handing out awards — in the form of his trademark mosaic-encrusted plaques — to several individuals who have, for a long time now, been contributing to the com- munity and making a difference. Among these will beRay

“Old-fashioned in every way”,
this Chelsea “trip back in time”
purveys “hearty” Americana
in a “Waterford-and-wood-
buring-fireplace” setting; add in
“accommodating” staffers who
“pour a great Guinness” and the
“whole is definitely equal to
more than the sum of its parts.”

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Rock legend Patti Smith leaving the Bowery Ballroom
on Delancey St. last week after one of her three per-
formances there. A new documentary about the singer
and Downtown resident, “Patti Smith: Dream of Life,”
aired on PBS on Dec. 30. She also has a new book
out, “Just Kids,” about her close friendship with the
late photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.

But Congressmember Jerrold Nadler told the crowd outside City Hall on Monday that the study was “not adequate and the proposed drilling rules would subject the water systems of the entire state to risk.” Nadler acknowledged the potential economic benefit of natural gas drilling to the state, but said, “It must not be done at the risk of the state’s water systems.”

Joe Levine, head of NYH2O, a leading state pure-water advocacy organization, said the environmental impact statement was “the best that money could buy — written by the gas drilling industry.” He recalled that the city Department of Environmental Protection conducted its own study of hydrofracture drilling and submitted a finding in November that the process posed a risk to the city water sup- ply and recommended banning drilling in the watershed.

Assemblymember Deborah Glick said the proposed drilling would impact the entire state and threaten “clean drink- ing water…the scarcest resource on the planet.”

Assemblymember Brian Kavanagh noted that hydrofracture drilling uses “millions and millions of gallons of water with added chemicals pumped into the rock to release the gas, but it’s not clear where that water goes once it is used.”

Kavanagh also said the state envi- ronmental impact statement does not adequately call for information about the chemicals, many of which are toxic in high concentrations, that are used in the process and their impact on the environ- ment.

Assemblymember Richard Gottfried submitted a statement saying that natural gas drilling in the New York watershed would be “colossal madness” and would endanger the water supply of more than half the state.

“There have already been pollution incidents in hydraulic-fracturing opera- tions,” Gottfried said. “At the very least, the draft environmental impact statement must be withdrawn and redone to fully take stock of the danger to life, health and the economy of the region and to fully evaluate alternatives.”

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, newly elected Councilmember Margaret Chin and Councilmember James Gennaro of Queens also called for the state to start

Quinn noted that the city has spent millions of dollars to acquire land in the watershed counties to insure the purity of the city water supply. Referring to the study’s estimate that hydrofracture drill- ing would provide more jobs in the state, Quinn said that the jobs would come “when we have to build an $8 million- to-$10 million filtration system when our water is no longer drinkable.”

Gennaro, a geologist by profession, said the hydrofracture drilling is “not your ordinary gas drilling. It’s gas drilling Rambo style.” He said New York State would find itself “in dire trouble if it puts its resources on the table [for sale].” Gennaro said the Bloomberg administra- tion deserves credit for opposing the pro- posal to drill in the watershed.

The draft environmental impact state- ment has gone through several hearings since the fall and the deadline for sub- mission of written comments was mid- night Dec. 31. The federal Environmental Protection Administration submitted its testimony on Dec. 30, saying the agency had “serious reservations about whether gas drilling in the New York City water- shed is consistent with the vision of long-term, high-quality, unfiltered water supply.” The E.P.A. statement called for “a very cautious approach in all water- shed areas.”

The federal agency recommended that the state Department of Environmental Conservation, the lead agency in the environmental impact statement, join with the state Department of Health, which governs safe drinking-water stan- dards, and with the state Public Service Commission, which regulates construc- tion of natural gas pipes, to come up with a final E.I.S. The Bloomberg administra-

tion in November also called on the state Department of Health to weigh in on the E.I.S.

state,” the federal agency should take the lead in creating nationwide regulations on hydrofracture gas drilling.

Congressmembers Eric Massa and Michael Arcuri, who represent districts in the state’s Southern Tier and Adirondack regions, also called for a statewide drill- ing ban, along with City Councilmembers James Brennan and William Colton, both of Brooklyn, and former Councilmember Tony Avella of Queens. Martha Robertson, Tompkins County legislator, said, “If it [hydrofracture drilling] is not safe for New York City, it’s not safe for Tompkins County.” She noted that much of the coun- ty’s water comes from individual wells.

Alex Matthiessen, president of Riverkeeper, said Paterson could go down in history as the governor who destroyed the New York City watershed if hydrof- racking were allowed. He also said that in the worst-case scenario, if drilling were permitted, the state should impose an excise tax to raise money for D.E.C. enforcement of drilling regulations.

Representatives of other environmen- tal groups at the rally included Annie Wilson, Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter Energy Committee; Deborah Goldberg, Earthjustice; Kate Sinding, National Resource Defense Council lawyer; Wes Gillingham, Catskill Mountainkeeper; and Joel Kupferman, New York Environmental Law & Justice Project attorney.

At Monday’s press conference at City Hall on the hydrofracking issue, City
Councilmember James Genarro gave remarks. Congressmember Jerrold Nadler,
standing to the left of Gennaro, spoke before him.

‘Clean drinking water is the scarcest resource on the planet.’