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Scoopy's notebook
The local "411" on people, politics, gossip, business openings.

Editorial
Lawrence v. Texas: Let freedom ring
This week, in the hallowed halls of the United States Supreme Court in Washington, the gay and lesbian rights movement won the single most important victory that it ever had to win.

Letters to the editor

Second thoughts
By RICHMOND JONES

Editorial cartoon
By IRA BLUTREICH

The Penny Post
A New Orleanian in London
By Andrei Codrescu
The tourist to London can be three things: a sociologist, a miser and a gawker, either separately or all at once. Riding on the Tube, for instance, he can watch a bewildering variety of humanity speaking dozens of languages, like a complex musical instrument made from the tongues of former empire. The bodies and wraps belonging to these tongues span a range of fashion from Rhodesia to Abu Dhabi with a touch of Britney Spears and Master P.

Notebook
Learning to appreciate play’s simple joy in Nyons
by Patricia Fieldsteel
Monday was my birthday, my first here in Provence. It was also Pentecost (a national holiday) and the day Lance Armstrong rode through town. This was Lance’s second trip to Nyons (if you can call whizzing by in less than a second a visit).

Remembering Hepburn in the role I loved her most
By JERRY TALLMER
Sixty-three years is a long time for a person to be in love. Sixty-three years is also a long time for a person to want to be somebody else.

Religion
St. John’s Lutheran reverend aims to open doors
By Albert Amateau
The sight of 46 teenagers decked out as the animals from Noah’s Ark on the steps of St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church struck a strange note one evening last week for passersby on Christopher St.

News in brief

Police blotter

Dumpling devourer

Bam! Emeril moves to Chelsea Market

Beautifying Union Sq.

New flavor on Avenue D

Images from Thompson St. fire

Dumpling devourer

Picture story

Pride in the city

Thousands strut and cheer at Gay Pride March

Supremely proud

Sports

Children's activities

Swindell hurls no-hitter; G.V. is 1-1 in tourney
The Greenwich Village Little League Major League Tournament team shut down the Downtown Little League on Friday evening, June 27, at J.J. Walker field, the Village team’s home field. Daquan Swindell tossed the first no-hitter by any Greenwich Village tournament team in 13 years of tournament play.

Nine-and-10-year-olds edge Harlem in extra innings
It was a pitchers’ duel for the first six innings between Brian McKenna for Greenwich Village and Terrell Price for Harlem on June 28 in the first Little League tournament game for both 9-and-10-year-old teams at J.J. Walker field on Hudson St. in the Village.


Villager photo by Lorenzo Ciniglio Fiercely proud A reveler evoked a cross between kabuki and wood nymph, with hand cymbals, at last Sunday’s a nnual Gay Pride March.

Greenwich House Senior Center saved
By Albert Amateau
The Greenwich House senior program, which failed to reopen as scheduled in April because of the city’s budget gap, was fully funded last Friday when the new city budget was passed by the City Council and approved by Mayor Bloomberg.

PATH plan is still on track
By Albert Amateau
The Port Authority has asked the city Department of Transportation to be the lead agency in the environmental impact statement for new entrances that the authority wants to build at two PATH commuter train stations in the Village.

Charas owner considers sale
By Lincoln Anderson
A group of protestors who were evicted from the former CHARAS/El Bohio building a year and a half ago recently were cleared of misdemeanor charges in connection with their arrests.

Most agree cabaret laws need changing, but how?
By Elizabeth O’Brien
Both the city and nightlife advocates agree that New York City’s 77-year-old cabaret laws are antiquated. But one week after the Department of Consumer Affairs held a public hearing on the topic it remains unclear whether the laws will be eased into retirement.

Rocky ending for raccoon caught in tree on Hudson
By Patricia Belizario
A raccoon was apprehended by police officers in the vicinity of Abingdon Sq. last week after it climbed into the highest branches of a tree and fell asleep.

No sidewalk smoking at Houston St. hookah cafe
Although on weekend nights on nearby Orchard and Ludlow Sts. the sidewalks outside bars are mobbed with smokers because of the new anti-smoking law, at Café Cairo on E. Houston St. people are smoking indoors — but not cigarettes, hookahs.

Trust is operating Pier 40 mooring
By Albert Amateau
The Hudson River Park Trust will operate the public mooring field south of Pier 40 this summer, the second season of sailing since the former mooring field south of Pier 25 was closed after Sept. 11, 2001.

Private school planned on Greenwich
By Elizabeth O’Brien
The Downtown School, a new private school to open next year, is looking to buy a theater space on Greenwich St. just north of Canal St., according to Robert Golden, the school’s founder and executive director.

New manager takes helm at Seaport mall
By Elizabeth O’Brien
Michael Piazzola has dropped anchor. After holding five jobs in 10 years, from Florida to California and points in between, the new vice president and general manager of the Seaport Marketplace thinks he might just make New York home.

Change at top at D.T.W. as new facility is readied
By Doris Diether
Major changes are about to take place at the Dance Theater Workshop, 2l9 W. l9th St. David R. White, executive director and producer of D.T.W. since l975 will step down on July l to be replaced by Marion K. Dienstag. And the newly constructed D.T.W. will open for its first season on October 2.

FOOD

A quick bite in Chinatown makes a lasting impression
By Lauren Fouda
Having missed a meal — unheard of in my universe — and in a hurry to get to an uptown class, I stumbled into the oasis of Taste Good, an unassuming Malaysian restaurant in Chinatown. Five minutes later and only five dollars lighter, I emerged into the chaos of Bayard St. protectively clutching an order of mee siam.

What goes on inside the minds of beautiful women?
By JERRY TALLMER
It was Laurel Pinson’s mother who from time to time during Laurel’s girlhood in Houston, Texas, would quote Rita Hayworth’s piercing remark: “They go to bed with Gilda, they wake up with me.”

Focus on writing links dramas at ‘Springfest 2003’
By Davida Singer
When Jeffrey Horne moved from Dallas to New York in l997, he began directing around town, but soon became restless to branch out on his own.
“I’d seen some good Off-Off Broadway theater, and was fortunate enough to be involved with Expanded Arts’ acclaimed ‘Dahmer,’ ” he recalls, “but I wanted to be around that kind of special production all the time.”

Slow Poke is worth the wait for both fans and band
By Sean Fitzell
It was a Thursday afternoon one summer in Brooklyn. Four friends got together to play some music and experiment with new recording equipment. The result was a spontaneous and emotional recording called “At Home” by the band Slow Poke. It soon became an underground hit at the club Tonic, where it was spun between live sets. And the band soon became a regular at the club’s midnight sets.

Botanical Garden professor digs in closer to home
By Ranjit Jose
Phytomediation (the process of removing lead from soil), botanical and floral design are just some of the passions of New York Botanical Garden instructor and Villager Marie Stella Byrnes. This N.Y.U. history major went on to follow her passion for gardens and gardening by studying landscape design and has taught classes on the subject at the New York Botanical Garden as well as the Cooper Union.

Dance writers fighting for space with sports, war
BY DORIS DIETHER
The Dance Critics Association returned to New York last weekend for their annual conference, this year held at Barnard College. And again this year the special honoree was a Villager, Morton St. resident Francis Mason. Mason, who grew up in Jacksonville and Philadelphia before he came to New York, has been a dance writer since l950 and hosts a radio program, “Today Ballet,” on WNYC.

Koch on film
By ED. KOCH
Friday Night (-)...The film opens with Laure (Valerie Lemercier) sitting in her car in gridlock traffic because of a transit strike. A man, Jean (Vincent Lindon), approaches her car and asks for a ride, which is not unusual given the strike. Remember, during the 1980 New York City transit strike, people offered rides to strangers...Tycoon (-) It provides a fictionalized history of the Russian oligarchs who became rich during the reigns of Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin when the Soviet Union was breaking up.