The Tris McCall Report
November 30, 2004
I have seen the Rotunda of the Brennan Courthouse, and I've been impressed. This Friday, the people at Hudson County Cultural Affairs (and, as I found out last week, the County Executive himself) will transform the interior into a coffeehouse and performance space. Turns out that Thomas DeGise and his staff are big-time Dirty Linen-style singer-songwriter fans. They're pretty serious about turning the courthouse rotunda into a folk music destination. I'm going to be there to check it out, and I encourage you to take a look, too.
I don't want to hear about how far it is from the Downtown. The Courthouse is at 583 Newark Avenue, just past Dickinson High School in the direction of Journal Square. If you want to hop a PATH Train from Grove Street, it's no more than a three-block walk from the JSQ station; if you want to leg it up Newark Avenue from, say, L.I.T.M., it's no further than that trip from Houston Street to Chelsea that I'm sure you've taken a million times. Jersey City isn't an automobile suburb: one of the things I've learned over the past few months is that just about every place in town is easily and quickly accessible to pedestrians. If you're a Downtown stalwart, but you've always wanted to explore the other neighborhoods, a trip to the Brennan Courthouse is a good place to start.
I can't tell you much about the performers. Gene D. Plumber is a Hoboken singer-songwriter whose name definitely rings a bell; for all I know, I've seen him at Maxwell's or the Symposia Bookstore. Terence Martin is the headliner, and his website says he's from Larchmont, New York. Hey, Terence -- I have an article about your town that you might like to read. He didn't go to Mamaroneck High School, so I wouldn't expect any of that SWAS Wall weirdness in his music, but perhaps some of the Miltonian sensibility has rubbed off on him during his time in Eastern Westchester.
The price -- $10 -- is admittedly a little steep for rockers who are used to paying a five-note for a full bill at Uncle Joe's. But that's probably the going rate for this kind of music, and I understand that every subculture has its standards. Straightforward folk music and singer-songwriter music is a pretty popular genre, and one with devotees everywhere, so I don't think it's going to be too much of a problem. Still, I wonder if the County knows that weird/acid folk is all the rage right now among hipsters. Jeez, there was an article on Devendra Banhart in the latest Spin magazine; that's not going to last forever. One of my objectives for 2005 is to introduce the County Exec to this movement, and to see if I can get him excited about Joanna Newsom and P.G. Six and the kids right here in town at Perhapstransparent. I bet if Stephen Connolly and his pals were given the okay to put a show together, it would be pretty breathtaking. Looking beyond that, how cool would it be to see Sufjan Stevens play in the old County Courthouse? It's not a pipe dream. I've looked at the space, and let me tell you: if we play our cards right, it could happen.
November 29, 2004
Here's the press release for this Friday's show at the Courthouse:
Garden State’s most Folk music lovin’ County Executive, Tom DeGise, and the Board of Chosen Freeholders Present the Brennan Coffee House Music Series Jersey City N.J.
Where is the newest and most unusual venue to hear great local and national folk music acts? The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind —across the Hudson — from Jersey City!
It’s The Brennan Coffee House Music Series, a monthly performance series held in the Rotunda of the historic William Brennan Court House every first Friday of the month. This month’s headliner is Terence Martin, who has been described by New York folk guru Pete Fonatale, Host of WFUV’s “Mixed Bag,” as “one of those rare singer-songwriters who allows you right in — to feel what he is singing.”
Martin will headline a show this Friday, December 3, from 7:30-9:30 pm that includes Hoboken-based Gene D. Plumber as the opening act. The goal of the series is to feature both national and local talent in the hope of creating a new and offbeat venue for this kind of music.
“We’re trying create an event that will be intimate and fun, not stuffy or overly programmed,” explained County Executive Tom DeGise, who like Williams, loves the work of seminal modern folk artists like the great Joni Mitchell. Hudson County is underwriting the small initial cost of getting Hudson Folkapalooza up and running and to keep admission costs very modest, just $10 for this inaugural performance ($5 for seniors and students with ID).
The performers appear in the center of the Court House rotunda, surrounded by the audience seated at café-style tables a la The Bitter End. The audience in turn will be surrounded by the work of local visual artists. Refreshments, tee shirts, CD’s and other folk music-related items will be available for sale.
The William Brennan Court House, built in 1910, is listed on the National Historic Register and is home to the Superior Court of New Jersey and the Office of the County Executive. It is a magnificent building filled with murals and artwork created in the Beaux Arts style of the period. It’s marble rotunda extends upward four stories to a glass-enclosed top. Organizers have spent weeks developing an appropriate design for the performance space to create an eye-catching mix that is both stately and snug.
“We look forward to making the Court House rotunda point of destination for lovers of this music,” explained Hudson County Director of Cultural and Heritage Affairs William LaRosa. “We’re centrally located in Hudson County with plenty of parking in the Court House lot and we’re just a five minute walk from the Journal Square PATH station.”
For County Executive DeGise, the creation of the concert series is a particular pleasure for an elected official who so loves the music it showcases. For decades, he has haunted old record shops in Greenwich Village looking for rare folk recordings and enjoys listening to performers live at local venues. Folk music is kind of a soundtrack for office life in the County Executive’s suite at Brennan Court House. “Some problem gets the staff riled up; we coming running into Tom’s office and “Bridge Over Troubled Waters is on in the background, and you can’t help but calm down,” said DeGise staffer Jim Kennelly.
The "folk lovin'" business just sounds like hyperbole. I've seen DeGise's desk, and it looks like mine -- there are CDs all over the place. DeGise certainly knows enough to say the magic words to qualify him as a real fan: if your folk exemplar is Joni Mitchell, you're somebody who takes this music seriously.
November 28, 2004
It sounds like a porn shop, but Cynful Treasures is actually a brand new bakery on the corner of York and Grove. There's not much in the display case, and the fridge has little more than that awful GuS soda that they also stock at Subia, but the space is really nice, and the pastries look decent. Grove Street is lacking a good bakery, so I am rooting for Cynful to stick it out and make it work. Around the corner, Holidays is reopening under a faux-French name that's no less absurd. It looks like it's going to be the same place, more or less: the same assortment of pastries, waffles, breads, brunchy option. I'm looking forward to it. Hopefully the new ownership will keep more reliable hours than Holidays did.
The Brennan Courthouse is a beautiful building. Surrounded as it is by stores hawking bail bonds, and adjacent to the newer and more horrible courthouse tower that handles most of Jersey City's legal business, it's as easy to overlook as a gorgeous, federal-style structure can be. Me, I am trekking up Newark Avenue on a beautiful day, a copy of Shootout At The Sugar Factory in my hand, heading for a self-imposed appointment with the County Executive. Tom DeGise is in there, unless he isn't. He could be out to lunch. Literally, not metaphorically, I mean; metaphorically out to lunch is busting in on the the County Exec without an appointment.
Then again, he did ask me to swing by. His e-mails to me were so plaintive and so forthright that I had to believe he was in earnest when he wrote that he'd like to meet. At first, I didn't believe it was really DeGise who was writing to me -- I figured it was a crank trying to scare me out of my endorsement of Jerramiah Healy. But for a town of 240,000 people, Jersey City often feels small, and with few reliable sources of news and editorial writing, disparaging words written on a personal website can find their way straight to their target. Even when the target is the biggest fish in the pond.
The interior rotunda of the Courthouse is breathtaking. The marble center chamber stretches three stories high -- I can see wooden railings and gilt at the top, and a green dome. Around the pillars, Meredith Lippman has displayed the artwork for the Urban Complex exhibit. This is the first art show ever held in the rotunda, and it's part of a greater effort by the county government to make the chamber a public space. There's work here by Ed Fausty, Sandra Malak, Sandy DeSando. Enter a municipal structure in this town, and you're sure to see artwork from 111 First Street.
Into the main office I go. It's far better apportioned than anything in City Hall -- and it occurs to me again that the Courthouse feels much more serious and authoritarian than its plebeian cousin on Grove Street. The receptionist gives me the once-over, and decides I'm okay -- but it's no use, since Tom DeGise really is out to lunch. Ah, well, at least I can drop off the Shootout to Eileen Gaughan, the County Cultural Affairs Officer. Ms. Gaughan wrote to ask me for a copy: the County is also booking a concert series in the rotunda, and if nothing else, she'd like to know if I'll help to promote it.
Well, of course I will: that's what I'm here for. The Hudson County Cultural Affairs headquarters is, again, much nicer than any of the digs over at Jersey City Hall. If the municipal buildings always remind me of the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office, the Brennan County Courthouse is good enough for Percy Weasley. Eileen Gaughan greets me at the door, takes my envelope, and shakes my hand. She knows all about me; the County Executive is really anxious to talk to me. She wants to give me a press release, but she doesn't think it's been finished yet.
I'm led to a plush communications office, and the desk of James Kennelly. Hey, what do you know, he reads the Tris McCall Report, too. He tells me that he hopes that I will change my mind about the County Executive. Hoo boy, that gonzo rock-crit style of mine has really gotten me into hot water this time. Kennealy is enthusiastic, energetic. He takes down my e-mail address on a sheet of paper that already has Kathryn Klanderman's on it. I am in good company there, I suppose. There's going to be a public ceremonial signing of a piece of legislation that will dedicate 1% of all county capital projects to arts use. Among other things, this is going to pay for a stage, lights, and a piano for the concert series in the rotunda.
In the next chamber, the Gaughan family seems to have assembled en masse. Eileen Gaughan introduces me to her father William, who I've seen many times at City Council meetings; her mother is also there, seated in a nice, plush chair. Ms. Gaughan explains to him that I have a website where I write positive things about the local Democratic leadership. Well... not entirely accurate, but face to face with the Ward D councilman (with Ward A Councilman Peter Brennan pacing the halls outside), I will take it. I notice that Kennelly has a set of acrylic paints on his desk -- the type you might use to refinish a set of Matchbox cars. For his son, he assures me.
Ms. Gaughan returns with the news that the County Executive is back from lunch and wants to see me. Okay, then. I follow her out into the rotunda, and sure enough, there is Tom DeGise, ready with a big handshake. He ushers me into an office that is about the size of the back room at Uncle Joe's, and he closes the door. Wow, I'm getting a private audience here. I better think of something clever to say.
We talk a bit about the mayoral election, and my endorsement of Healy. It is clear that DeGise is bewildered and not a little upset by my hyperbolic suggestion on the site that members of the arts community don't trust him. He's always considered himself a friend of the arts, he tells me; he's served on the board of the Friends of the Loew's, and he's committed to transforming the Meagher Rotunda here in the courthouse into a viable performance and exhibition space. DeGise speaks earnestly, emphatically; he stays in good humor, but I can tell that the language in my endorsement honestly bothered him. I explain that I recieved lots of e-mail during the election season, and much of it came from people who demanded to know how I could support a candidate who was bound to be a puppet of DeGise, the county government, and the HCDO.
The County Executive firmly contests the premise. Healy is his own man, he tells me -- DeGise has enough problems to deal with on the County level without interfering in the work of the newly-elected mayor. If he'd wanted to control Jersey City, he would have stood for election. It strikes me that Tom DeGise is treating me much as he would a political equal: he's discussing the claims I've printed on this site as if they're weighty and reliable, and he's looking at me as if winning me over -- or at least cooling my percieved acrimony -- is a pressing matter on his agenda. I can't help but give DeGise credit for his forthrightness and willingness to talk. I doubt my New York City friends would have as easy a time getting an audience with Mayor Bloomberg.
DeGise shows me the copy of Shootout At The Sugar Factory, booklet inverted -- someone has been reading the liner-notes -- sitting in the center of his desk. It's in a pile of many, many other CDs, mostly recorded by singer-songwriters of reasonable renown. Holy smokes, the County Executive's docket looks a little like my own. He's an old folkster; he saw James Taylor and Harry Chapin and Joan Baez in Greenwich Village in the Seventies, and he's been going through these CDs, rating them, and selecting those he deems appropriate for the rotunda. This guy is taking the concert series seriously.
He is proud of the acts he's booked so far, and he speaks with great passion about his plans for the Rotunda. The 1% might not sound like much, he tells me, but it will work out to $80,000 to $120,000 for arts use -- and that's in addition to the normal Cultural Affairs operating budget. The County Executive wants to be sure there's a raised stage for the singers, and while he praising the acoustics in the room, he wonders aloud how to prevent people in the crowd from disrupting the performances. I suggest he take a page from Aaron Jackson -- but perhaps that isn't necessary to say. Anybody can see that DeGise is identifying and empathizing with the performers: imagining what it's like for them to be onstage, experiencing their anxiety and discomfort, nervous and protective as any show promoter in Brooklyn.
I guess you could say this is unusual for a politician. I wouldn't. Jesse Fuchs once wrote that politics is just rock and roll for older guys, and I have always felt that the reasons people enter politics are essentially indistinguishable for the reasons people want to become artists: they want to get up on that stump, inspire people, model behavior for others, spread ideology and memes, and, in the process, become a star. If I have always had excessive sympathy for politicians, this is probably the reason. Jim Kennelly has acrylics on his desk, Glenn Cunningham kept that detective novel he was writing in his desk drawer, and Tom DeGise loves music: listening to it, evaluating it, getting to know the performers and booking them into his Rotunda. My County Executive is getting a Critics Poll ballot from me this year. If he doesn't fill it out, I'd be pretty shocked.
November 21, 2004
L.I.T.M. celebrated a year in business on Saturday night, and many of the faces who I've come to recognize as arts regulars were there. The octagonal decanters of white wine sangria that I remembered from the "Meet The Mayor" event were back on the bar, and the kitchen was back in service. For a number of reasons, here's hoping that it stays in service. As has been the case every time L.I.T.M. has served food, everything was pretty delicious. I had a brie and ham panini (although I was eyeing the caprese panini), a bruschetta with olive tapenade with truffle oil, and a handful of caperberries. The prosciutto and melon hors d'ouvres were back, and was the manchego and quince combination and the olive platter. The prices were very affordable, and ingredients were all thoughtfully selected. Everything at L.I.T.M. is done on purpose, and everything bears the hallmark of the owner's formidable aesthetic intelligence. Keep that kitchen going, Ms. Jardiniano.
Here's photo essay #2 about 111 First Street. The first one ran three months ago, and since then, nothing has improved. Okay, here we go:
This is what remains of 110 First Street -- a handful of broken bricks, gravel, sand, and a few large cement blocks that apparently have no resale value. In the background, you can see the blue-tiered scaffolding that now rings 111.
Just before the Studio Tour, management nailed plywood over the doors of all the vacant studios, and spraypainted "No Trespassing" all over the halls. The artists originally wanted to post memorials to the departed tenants on each door; somehow management caught wind of this, and made it impossible. Not that it mattered, since the public was barely allowed inside the Arts Center -- and when people gained entry, what they saw was a building that had essentially been vandalized by its own managaement. As Bill Rodwell recently told me, the building is reverting to the state in which the artists found it back in 1988.
Speaking of vandalism, this is what happened to four cars just outside the Arts Center doors. This one belongs to a well-known tenant in the building. This car was parked on First Street -- right by the main entrance, and under the noses of the 24-hour police detail that is supposed to be guarding the block. Hmm.
Meanwhle, back on the fifth floor of the building, workmen are dismantling walls. The pile of electrical detritus on the left side of the hallway is representative of conditions throughout the building level -- there is undefinable junk all over the floor. Ed Fausty took this photograph, incidentally, and the one just before it. Even during crisis moments, Ed's eye for detail and composition is apparent.
Just last week, there were several studios beyond this red door. Now, there is nothing but a cavernous and uninhabitable space. Bear in mind that people on the floor are continuing to live and work in this demolition zone.
Throughout the floor, the plywood has been removed from the doorjams, revealing the rooms beyond. On the Bay Street side of the building, light floods in from the south, through the windows of abandoned spaces. It's silent and sepuchral, a ghost Open Studio Tour.
An abandoned studio on the fifth floor of 111 First Street.
I hear all the time about how the artists in 111 First Street are getting a "sweet deal". By this, people seem to mean that tenants are paying less for their spaces than they would if they rented at, say, Avalon Cove. This strikes our local libertarians as an injustice, an affront to the invisible hand. Here is a bathroom at the Arts Center. It is not at all atypical of other washrooms in the building. If the city allowed your landlord to keep your bathroom like this, I think you might decide that a little government regulation isn't always a bad thing. I mean, I like They Fought Back, too, but a sweet deal this is not.
The Bay Street side of the Arts Center was drenched during the fire, and nobody's studio was hit harder than Shandor Hassan's. Here, some of Shandor's stuff squats in the corridor, drying out. The note reads "please do not take". As I am sure you know, there is no heat in the building right now, and the corridors are still quite cold and damp. Judge Gallipoli ordered management to restore the heat within a week -- but since Goldman has already run up millions of dollars in fines for code violations and gone unpunished, it's hard to see what incentive he has to comply with the court order.
A uniformed officer watches the fifth floor demolition. It is often unclear whether these overseers answer to the municipal government. Many of the uniformed personnel at the Arts Center are members of a private security force hired by Lloyd Goldman.
The cornerstone of the arts community in Jersey City, even still.
November 17, 2004
If you turn right on Second Street at Warren, you can catch a distant but full view of the Statue of Liberty. Now that 110 is gone, and there are no more trucks blocking the street, there's isn't anything obstructing the sightlines. Framed between the Warren Street wall of the Arts Center and the Acadia Scenery factory on the west side of the block, the Statue seems to sit in the middle of the road. If you were able to follow Warren Street long enough -- over the water and up the shores of the island -- you'd be right at the heels of Lady Liberty.
110 First Street is nothing but a vacant lot now. All of the bricks have been carted away, the interior planks and beams loaded on a truck and carted God knows where. New tarmac has been laid on the verge where the lot meets Warren Street. The road isn't open to traffic yet -- there's still a barrier up on the First Street side. But if you wanted to get a sandlot baseball game going, you could hop the fence pretty easily.
With nothing left to knock down at 110, the construction companies have turned their attention to the Arts Center. When the scaffolding that rings the building was thrown up last month, Shandor Hassan guessed that building management would soon be knocking out walls -- and it turns out that his dire prediction was absolutely correct. Workmen have ripped the plywood off of the doors of vacant studios on the fifth floor, and are removing the barriers between studios. As artists in the building attempt to continue work, the top floor has become a demolition zone.
It's cold inside. There hasn't been any heat in the building since the fire on Sunday, November 7. Judge Gallipoli has given management seven more days to fix the heating system -- after that, presumably, there will be fines. But fines by the city never deterred Lloyd Goldman before. Luckily, it was temperate this week. As the temperature drops, the situation in the Arts Center will become increasingly dire. In the interior courtyard, workers have been digging up pipes. They're ostensibly fixing the sprinklers, but nobody in the building knows for sure.
Meanwhile, there are police and firemen in the hallways, along with contractors and people who look like they might be contractor's contractors. The constant police presence vigilantly guards the halls against wandering artists and visitors, yet was somehow unable to prevent vandalism to several cars belonging to tenants. These autos were parked directly outside the entrance to the Arts Center -- where armed guards employed by management regularly keep up heavy-handed twenty-four hour surveillance of the street. The official line is that the guards were on break while the car windows were smashed. Hm.
You might ask why New Gold has been allowed to make major "renovations" to a building that is now protected under the landmarking and PAD ordinances. Turns out that permission was given to the contractors just before those regulations went into effect. The municipal government signed off on the demolition, and the historical preservation office didn't object, either. This is pretty much what we've been expecting from the outset: we always knew they'd try to beat the clock. They did. Absurd as it seems, there are now no legal means by which we can stop management from demolishing 111 First Street from the inside out -- no matter that seventy tenants are still there.
November 15, 2004
A pretty desperate note from the front, sent by Kevin Mayer. I'll be headed down to the building tomorrow to do my own investigating.
Dear Friend of 111 First St. Arts Center:
As I speak, an elder in the artists community with a broken arm sits in her unheated apartment/studio, while the walls are coming down around her, and the hallways fill with plaster dust and exposed electrical wiring from the unsupervised and reckless demolition of her occupied building. This disabled senior citizen, Nancy Wells, is being victimized by a billionaire New York slumlord, Lloyd Goldman, co-owner of the World Trade Center. She and all the other tenants have been subjected to a vicious campaign of terrorism and harrassment from this slumlord, including arson, car windows smashed, and being deprived of heat for the last 8 days.
Meanwhile the entire City leadership of Jersey City, which should be protecting its citizens, is away partying at a conference for municipal officials in Atlantic City for the week. Goldman has bought off the police and they are working for him now. The tenants' lives are threatened by this man and no one is supervising the situation, which threatens to escalate further with potential loss of life.
An entire city has said it does not want this building torn down, and it is being torn down by thugs with contempt for the people and the law. The only hope for justice is for New York City to be made aware of this situation and for broader public opinion to make itself heard.
This is an important story. Spread the word as I know you can and will. We appeal to you. Kevin Mayer 201-659-2004
Frequently Asked Questions about 111 First Street
Q: Is anybody left in the building?
A: Indeed. Rumors that the building has already been evacuated are completely untrue. There are about seventy tenants still at 111 First. That's down considerably from the two hundred or so who populated the Arts Center a couple of years ago, but the seventy who've stuck it out are very much the core of the community. They feel they've earned the right to stay, and to have a say in the redevelopment of the building. They're not going anywhere until a judge demands that they move.
Q: Didn't all of the "serious" professional artists leave, though?
A: Among the seventy tenants currently at 111 First Street are many of Jersey City's best-known, best-loved, and most high-profile artists. Norm Francouer, Ed Fausty, Barbara Landes and Paul Sullivan, Bex Goyette: these are all folks whose work you can easily see around town, in bars, restaurants, small businesses, civic structures. If anything, the recent troubles at the building have winnowed out some tenants who don't have a deep commitment to the arts or to Jersey City. Those who have been willing to put up with the mistreatment by management are largely those who are determined to see the vision of an Arts District through.
Q: Is the building unsafe?
A: That depends on who you talk to. Building management claims that 111 First Street is a safety hazard, but I have never heard of anybody getting hurt over there. If last week's arson showed us anything, it's that the structure's internal systems are well-equipped to meet challenges. Ask Shandor Hassan if the sprinkler system at 111 is working okay.
Q: Why are artists at 111 First Street subsidized? Why shouldn't other Jersey City creatives -- or non-creatives, for that matter -- be subsidized?
A: The fallacious notion that the tenants at 111 First Street are recipients of municipal welfare of one sort or another is the most persistent misapprehension I encounter when discussing this subject with people in our community. Nobody at 111 First Street is subsidized by the government. They're involved in a rent dispute with their landlord, and they've been repeatedly threatened with displacement. To combat this, they've occasionally asked the city government for help. The Smith Administration pledged support to the community, and attempted to broker a resolution between the tenants and the landlord. When the management's infractions against its tenants became unbearably egregious, Mayor Smith tried to step in to stop them -- just like a city leader is supposed to do. Neither the Smith administration nor its predecessors have given money to the tenants at 111, or subsidized their businesses or living situations.
Q: What about the Powerhouse Arts District plan and WALDO? Don't those mean that artists are subsidized?
A: WALDO is a FAQ column of its own, and I'm not going to get into it here. There's a pretty elaborate history of WALDO on the ProArts website, and there's nothing I really want to add to that account -- by itself, the WALDO ordinance neither subsidized artists nor did it spark development in the Warehouse District. Whether the newly-adopted Powerhouse plan will do any better remains to be seen. The people who drafted the Powerhouse plan are supporters of the community at 111 First, and the passage of the redevelopment by the City Council is a nice step in the direction of a genuine arts district. But there is no guarantee that any material advantage will accrue to any of the Arts Center tenants because of this plan. It is absolutely possible that the Powerhouse Arts District could become a development success, but that the current tenants at the Arts Center will lose their case in tenants court, and be driven from the district en masse. In short, passage of the Powerhouse plan guarantees nothing.
Q: The tenants won their case in court on Monday! That means they get to stay, right?
A: Monday's case, heard by Judge Gallipoli, did not address the tenants' residency claims. The case concerned management's attempts to evacuate and close the building in preparation for demolition. Gallipoli did not humor the New Gold team, but he also didn't exactly rule against them -- while he refused to give them permission to evict the artists right then and there, he ordered a full trial on the subject, and set the trial date for March.
Q: So they're good until March?
A: No, no, the case that Gallipoli heard was separate from the tenancy dispute. Gallipoli demanded that Judge Theemling -- he's the local jurist adjudicating the rent cases -- expedite his decisionmaking. That means that the decisions will be made no later than the week before Christmas. If the two sides can't come to an agreement in arbitration before then, all of the tenants will go before Judge Theemling, who will decide whether or not they have a legal right to occupy the building. If Theemling rules against the tenants, they could well all be out by the end of 2004, and our freshly-minted arts district could suddenly be bereft of artists.
Q: Isn't it true that New Gold just wants the artists out of the building temporarily while management makes repairs?
A: On Monday, Judge Gallipoli fenced the New Gold team into a corner, and forced them to admit that the landlord's intention is to knock the building down. Don't be fooled: Lloyd Goldman has no interest in repointing or renovating. He wants to drive a wrecking ball through the walls. If he could make it happen legally, 111 First Street would be a brick heap tomorrow.
Q: What about the management plan to keep the outer ring of the building intact, and just construct a luxury tower in the center of the courtyard?
A: This was always nonsense, and I couldn't have been more pleased to see Judge Gallipoli expose it as such. Goldman's proposed tower was in violation of several zoning ordinances -- and not just the ones that were recently passed under the watch of Mayor Smith. The New Gold plan was bad-faith architecture, and an effort to hoodwink politicians and members of the public into thinking that management was interested in compromise and the artists were intractable. It was a nice try, but nobody should be fooled by this gambit anymore.
Q: The tenants live in the building, right? Doesn't that mean they're in violation of their lease?
A: Well, actually, not all of the tenants do. Some of them have apartments elsewhere in Jersey City, and only come to the Arts Center to work. But, yes, many of the artists at 111 First Street do live there. This is something we've all known for years -- I've known it, you've known it, three successive municipal governments have known it, and the landlord has certainly known it. Thousands of people who've passed through Jersey City during twelve straight Studio Tours have all known it. It's been common knowledge that folks live at the Arts Center: they've held events there, dug in there, invited strangers into their studios, celebrated with us, fought with us, inspired us. Now, I am not an attorney, and I don't pretend to know anything about tenant law. But it occurs to me that if a landlord knowingly allows people to live in his building, he's under some obligation to provide those people with basic services. It's not fair to wait fifteen years and then cry foul: if you've tacitly accepted your tenants as residents, then you've made yourself complicit in their lease infractions. New Gold will probably try to argue, disingenuously, that neither they nor anybody else ever realized that artists were living at 111 First Street. They'll be confronted by a mountain of evidence to the contrary.
Q: What's going on at the building right now?
A: As we suspected, management has used the fire as a pretext to turn off the heat in the building and freeze out the tenants. I'll let artist Kevin Mayer tell you about it in his own words:
As many of you know, the Art Center at 111 First St. is experiencing some of its most difficult moments ever right now. On Sunday evening an arson fire was set in one of the boarded-up, vacant studios on the top floor of the building. Workmen had been active in that space in the previous days, and suspicious noises were heard immediately before the fire. Arson investigators found rags and an open gas pipe that caused an explosion and ignited the fire.
The crime scene has now extended to the ground floor and other areas of the building where investigators have discovered evidence that the sprinkler system was sabotaged. It was evidently the intention of the arsonist(s) to make sure that the water pressure in the system was insufficient to control the fire. Fortunately, that did not happen and the sprinkler system controlled the fire until the fire department could come. Several artists on the floors below the fire suffered major water damage.
Pending repairs to the gas lines, the gas has been shut off and the building has been without heat for the last four days, with no end in sight. No doubt the landlord will delay restoring heat as long as possible. Many tenants are cold and having difficulty continuing with their lives. If you have space heaters that you would like to loan to the Art Center till the heat is restored it would make our lives a bit easier. Please contact me if you can help in this way. Thank you for all your support in the past. And yes, still we fight!
November 10, 2004
I'm going to attempt to correct some of the misapprehensions about 111 First Street tomorrow in a FAQ column. Today, though, I want to post an excellent three-point summation of the situation written by Bill Rybak, a local artist (not a 111 tenant). This is from Bill:
1. The development of The Powerhouse Arts District in the old blighted warehouse district is a win-win situation for Jersey City.
2. Lloyd Goldman, New York billionaire real estate speculator, has gone to preposterous lengths to sabotage P.A.D. redevelopment in order to build yet another luxury hi-rise on the site of the 111 First Street arts center. He has racked up millions of dollars in fines for his consistent failures to correct code violations, while his lawyers smugly assert that their intent to evacuate residents and demolish the building is motivated by a concern for their safety.
3. The apparent arson at 111 First Street is blatantly consistent with the pattern of thuggery that has become the hallmark of it's manager, New Gold Equities, under the direction of Michelle Berliner and ultimately her boss, Lloyd Goldman. They have brought havoc, destruction, and misery into the lives of dozens of hard working, tax and rent paying, Jersey men and women through their arrogance, greed, and dishonesty. They will undoubtedly try to use the damage caused by their fire as an excuse to cut off heat and/or water to the artists as winter approaches.
That's where this argument begins.
The phone rings just after 6:00. It's Alison Ashley, who covers fires. There's smoke coming from the top floor of 111 First Street, she says. Sure enough, down at the Oldest Standing Firehouse in Town, at the corner of Grand and Van Vorst, the alarms are blaring. From my window, I watch a fire truck roar out of the station toward the Arts Center. Hilary and I grab our jackets, and follow out on foot.
The tenants at 111 are due in court tomorrow -- they're to appear before Judge Gallipoli. I knew they were having a strategy meeting this evening, but I don't know whose studio is the gathering-place. I'm hoping that everybody is okay, and that there's been no substantial damage to the structure. Out on Warren Street, five blocks south of the building, I can see the sirens swirling, throwing red streaks up against the warehouses. Something that looks like a cop car backs in toward the courtyard. I neither see nor smell smoke.
Hurried, we cross Montgomery Street. Hilary points toward Exchange Place, where a second set of siren lights is flashing through a dense and billowing cloud. Holy crow, what's happening down there? I'm tempted to take a detour, but I decide to check out the Arts Center first. The street is wet, damp; fire trucks roll slowly down Bay. A policeman has set up a line of flares at the Warren-Morgan intersection. I can see the head of a crane on the Bay Street side of the building, stooping toward the brickface. For the first time, I can smell something burning.
We dash past the line of flares, and then under the scaffolding that now rings the Arts Center. Two trucks are parked on First Street, and firemen hoist an enormous hose toward the open courtyard. Further down the sidewalk, men with pickaxes and crowbars are prying open the door that leads to the east side freight elevator. I recognize some faces outside the building: Elaine Hansen from Yoga Shunya, Kevin Mayer, Tomomi Ono. Councilman Maldonado is here, too, talking to the firemen, listening to tenants, trying to figure out what's going on. Good for him.
I get some details. The fire apparently started in a deserted fifth floor studio that had been boarded up by management. Most of the tenant artists were at a meeting when the alarms began to ring. The building's sprinkler system kicked in, flooding much of the Bay Street side -- especially the studios directly beneath the fire. Damn, that means Shandor Hassan's two spaces are probably swamped by now. I imagine the water pouring in on his framed and meticulously arranged photographs, wrecking his walls, destroying his books, his cameras, his musical instruments.
We try to get inside, but building management won't allow us in. It's not just us, either -- tenants who've left the building aren't being allowed to reenter. An artist who I don't know is upset; she has a cat in her studio, and she needs to get the poor thing free from the smoke. The firemen assure us that the flames are out, and that the situation is under control. So why can't these people go back to their studios, and why can't we enter and help out the artists whose spaces are surely flooded? As always around here, it is hard to tell who is giving the orders.
Elaine's yoga students stand under the scaffolding, huddled around her, talking quietly. I feel pretty bad for them -- ostensibly, they came out tonight to work on relaxation and centering, and ended up caught in a forced evacuation. Nothing meditative about that. One of them mentions to me that there's another reported fire Downtown, at the Iron Monkey. The Iron Monkey? Well, that would explain the cloud of smoke and the siren lights by Exchange Place. My God, what's going on tonight? My instinct is to implore somebody to inform the mayor. But then it occurs to me: there is no mayor.
We decide to investigate. The stretch of Washington Street fronting the disturbingly-named Fatburger is closed, so we walk around the Powerhouse. It's a gorgeous night, unseasonably temperate and cloudless, and the lights in the Harborside Tower bathe the road in a soft, white glow. But even the air itself smells singed: down here, there's no doubt that there's something burning. At Montgomery Street, water from firehoses swirls and eddies around the ramparts placed by construction contractors. We leap a concrete divider and hustle over to the Iron Monkey.
No problems there. The fire is four doors north, right next to a lot that's under development. The three-story brick building hasn't been totaled or gutted by the flames, but even from across the street, it's not hard to tell that there's been serious damage done to the structure. The owner of the ground floor business paces on the sidewalk, arms crossed in front of her, staring at the firemen, silently imploring them for an answer. None is coming.
I catch my breath and do a little theoretical arithmetic. An unexplained fire breaks out at a building adjacent to a development site downtown. Almost simultaneously at the Arts Center -- just a few blocks north -- another fire breaks out. The Arts Center fire begins in a studio that has been locked and boarded up by management. It smokes the artists out of the building -- and onto the street -- on the night before their cases are to be heard by Judge Gallipoli. The fire happens on the fifth floor just as the artists are meeting elsewhere to discuss their legal strategy. Since most of the tenants are at the gathering, nobody is in the corridor to see what's going on. The sprinkler system floods the studios of several artists who are active in the effort to resist the plans of the landlord-developer. Tonight, instead of working out an articulate case to put before the judge, they'll all be trying to salvage their work. You don't have to be Oliver Stone to find this all extremely suspicious.
Back at 111 First Street, more artists have gathered around the main entrance. Lisa Portnoff emerges from her studio, asking questions, making phone calls, yet somehow still smiling. Jeff Baker has Junior Maldonado's ear, and is registering enthusiastic appreciation of the sprinkler system: this building is definitely not unsafe, he says, just look at how well its internal controls responded to a crisis. Hard to argue with that. Elaine Hansen and Tomomi Ono are also out on the street, all spirits improbably high. I am astounded once again by the resiliency of this community of people. Vandalize and burn their building, flood their studios, it doesn't matter: they just keep right on fighting. This is the Jersey City I want to be part of.
I'm pleased to see that mayoral aide David Donnelly has arrived, too. Bless that guy; he's surely got better things to do with his Sunday night than hang out on the street and talk to policemen, but whenever the Arts Center has been in trouble, he's been there. Plunkitt of Tammany Hall teaches that there are votes to be gathered in fires, but Donnelly's not running for anything. His boss got beat on Tuesday, and he's still here. We may be temporarily mayorless, but whatever is left of our municipal government continues to go to bat for us.
Yet it's not clear what Donnelly and Maldonado can do. The fire is out; it has run its course. The tenants' night of preparation before tomorrow's hearing before Judge Gallipoli has been disrupted, and many studios on the Bay Street side of the building -- including Shandor's -- have already been wrecked. Tomorrow, New Gold's attorneys will almost certainly use the blaze to argue that the Arts Center is unsafe, and needs to be permanently shut down. We will all find that ironic, I am sure. But we may also be powerless to contradict this account in court.
It has come to my attention that some of the city's elected officials check this space, but I'm under no illusion that anything I write here will be read by Gallipoli before he renders his decision. But if it seemed for a moment tonight like Jersey City was teetering on the brink of anarchy, that was no illusion: the smell of burning wood on the wind tonight was the surest sign that we are all at the mercy of forces beyond our control. We're not stupid: we know what went down here tonight, and why. But our arms may be too short to box with our adversaries. We desperately need our government and our civic leaders to step up and impose their will -- and, by extention, our will -- on a city that feels increasingly lawless. We've seen enough fires, enough cranes, and enough destruction Downtown. We've watched enough buildings fall. We need to get together, and start rebuilding.
November 6, 2004
Well, I spoke too soon. It looks like L. Harvey Smith is going to contest these election results after all. As always, the minute I give credit to Smith for graciousness and poise, he does something to make me regret it.
Three days ago, a dejected and somewhat petulant Smith was talking about resigning from the City Council. Now, Smith is invoking the Florida recount and, with Assemblyman Manzo, is acting like he wants a tussle. It was wild mood swings like this one -- his bipolar style of governance -- that led me to conclude that he didn't have the proper temperament to be mayor.
Suggesting that the Jersey City election bears any resemblance to Florida 2000 is ridiculous. In Florida, six million votes were cast, and Bush officially outpolled Gore by 500 or so. In Jersey City, 60,000 votes were cast, and Jerramiah Healy beat Smith by 3,000. That's the difference between the smallest, most fragile fraction of a percentage point, and a solid 5% victory. In the America I grew up in, politicians who lose by 5% don't ask for recounts -- they go home and figure out why they got their asses kicked.
L. Harvey Smith could have impressed me by acknowledging this and stepping out of the way. He could have left the crybaby act to Manzo, a politician who is much better at it. Instead, he and the Assemblyman have decided to play into the long legacy of Jersey City corruption to cast a shadow over these campaign results. They're going to use "stolen election" rhetoric to delegitimize and sully the Councilman's clear win. Mr. Manzo will almost certainly run for mayor again in the spring, and it's looking more and more likely that Smith, too, will repeat his candidacy. The longer these guys delay Jerramiah Healy's inevitable ascension to office, the less the Councilman will be able to accomplish during his short window of opportunity before the election cycle begins again.
If the tale of Jersey City government was not a sordid history of misdeeds, there wouldn't be a story here. Sure, Mr. Manzo's cheerleaders at the Jersey Journal would still have made their spiteful little scene ("Not Enough For Manzo Win"?!?!? -- what the hell kind of a headline is that?), but the rest of the area media wouldn't be paying attention. Under normal circumstances, there is no way that a four or five per cent margin with seven thousand votes to count is worthy of further examination: that's a win, and any political reporter worth his byline knows it. But if an election is held in Jersey City, that means there had to have been some corruption involved, right? Again, our reputation kills us: it prevents outsiders from taking us seriously, and right now, it's helping to keep our fairly-elected mayor from taking office.
This isn't about my support for Jerramiah Healy. If the roles were reversed here, and Healy had lost by 5% but was still insisting on counting every absentee and provisional ballot, I'd be just as hard on him as I've been on Smith and Manzo. I can't imagine the even-tempered Healy indulging in tactics like this, though, and that's part of the reason I supported him.
November 5, 2004
In a move that ought to surprise nobody who followed his campaign, Louis Manzo is contesting the election results. Because there are about 7,000 uncounted votes in absentee and provisional ballots, the County Clerk hasn't officially called the race for Jerramiah Healy. That means we're effectively mayorless until the Assemblyman drops his objections and concedes.
You might think that elections ought never to be called over until all the ballots have been read. But Mr. Healy can't get his administration started until the Clerk's office certifies his victory, and the odds against Mr. Manzo overturning the win are pretty astronomical. Here's why:
55,942 votes have been counted for Jersey City mayor this year. 28.54% percent of those were won by Jerramiah Healy. Healy outpolled Manzo by 2,676 votes, or, looked at another way, by nearly five percentage points of total votes cast. With 92% of the precincts reporting, it is virtually impossible to overcome a lead of 5%.
That 92% number is misleading, sure, because it doesn't count absentees. But let's take those seven thousand mystery votes, and try to imagine a realistic scenario where Manzo could grab a lead by counting them. There were eleven candidates running for mayor this year: ostensibly, the members of the rest of the field have had absentee votes cast for them, too. L. Harvey Smith, for instance won 21.77% of the vote, and 21.77% of 7,000 is 1523. Right away, the number of votes in question drops to around 5,500. Councilman Steve Lipski won 6.5% of the vote. 6.5% of seven thousand is 455. We're down to 5,000 votes. The Flood campaign picked up 14.18% of the vote. Fourteen per cent of seven thousand is a nice, round thousand. Do you see how absurd this is starting to get? We haven't even subtracted the projected votes for the Baskerville-Pine-Short-Gadsden-Mansour monster.
Based on expectations generated by the 92% of precincts that have already reported their votes, you can expect that -- liberally -- four thousand of the seven thousand uncounted ballots are marked either for Mr. Healy or for Mr. Manzo. For Assemblyman Manzo to overtake Healy and win the election, he would have to have outpoll the councilman by 3,339 to 661. Put another way, Manzo would have to win 83% of the uncounted votes to 17% for Councilman Healy. Put yet another way, Assemblyman Manzo would have to beat Jerramiah Healy by a six to one ratio in the absentee and provisional ballots to overcome his 2,676 vote lead. Considering Healy's lead in the general election total, the only way that's happening is if the ballots were cast by members of Mr. Manzo's campaign staff. (Even that is no sure thing.)
The Assemblyman is a smart guy, and he knows all of this. By dragging out this election to the bitter end -- a process wholly unjustified by his crummy vote total, incidentally, since politicians who ask for absentee ballots to be read are usually within a percentage point or less -- Louis Manzo is proving himself as ungracious in defeat as he was during the campaign. He can either continue to scrounge around for provisional votes and missing cartridges and hold up the process as long as he can for the sake of his bruised ego, or he can own up to the inevitable and allow Jerramiah Healy and Jersey City get on with municipal business. I don't see Harvey Smith demanding a recount, and Manzo's vote total was a hell of a lot closer to Smith's third-place finish than it was to Healy's pace-setting tally. Concede, Mr. Manzo, and stop standing in the way of our newly elected mayor.
Shame on the Jersey Journal for humoring this obstructionism.
November 4, 2004
An open letter to progressive webloggers.
Hi, everybody. By now, I am sure you're as exhausted as I am. I want to commend you on a big year -- a year when you drew a tremendous amount of mainstream media attention to writing on the Internet. You did so by engaging, on a daily basis, with the minutia of the Presidential election. You ran pithy one-liners and sophisticated gags about Bush, you ran flash movies, you ran photos, you ran well-researched essays, you replied to your comments with verve and energy; you posted it in the morning when you woke up, you posted on the sly from work, you posted at night before going to bed. You fought the good fight.
Trouble is, you didn't lay a glove on your target.
It's not your fault. I decided early in 2004 that there wasn't any point to posting about the Presidential election, because the people who needed to be convinced to vote for Senator Kerry were not going to respond positively to 'net cleverness from the New York metro area. If you didn't give up (and I know you didn't, because I read your site), I commend you for your persistence. I also commend you for doing what was, at base, a very public-spirited thing with your writing time. You could have been working on that coming-of-age novel. You could have been writing episode summaries of Gilmore Girls. You could have been cranking out crappy rock-crit for Pitchfork. Instead, you contributed to a national discussion, and you tried as hard as you could to shape that discussion. You did it because you felt you had to, and I understand. Here's to you.
But imagine for a second that instead of directing your attention toward a national contest that you had no realistic chance of influencing, you channeled some of that energy into writing about your own neighborhood. Imagine that instead of engaging with the imagined community of Presidential voters, you tried to connect with the actual community right outside your door. There were thousands upon thousands of smaller elections taking place in this season -- contests for State Senate, Assembly, city and town councils, sherriffs, municipal judges. Who was 'blogging about those?
The Democratic Party needs to be rebuilt from the ground up, not from the top down. We're never going to determine who wins a national election by running Java animations of the President. We're probably never going to determine who wins those elections no matter what we do. But we can have a say in those smaller contests, and we can effect change where it really matters: in our backyards. So next time around, when you are tempted to fire off that post against the Bush Administration, I'm asking you to think twice, and instead write about something right there on your block. You're never going to affect President Bush one way or another. But you might make all the difference on a matter of pressing local concern.
Sincerely,
Tris McCall
Over the past two months, I've used this space to argue that Jersey City has undergone a recent social transformation, and that we have outgrown our long heritage of arm-twisting, smash-mouth politics. I have argued that the old tactics of high-handedness, bullying, smearing opponents, and using threats to win votes are no longer going to be viable campaign options in a rapidly growing and upwardly mobile community that is coming to greater political and ethical consciousness. Last night, Jersey City voters proved me right, electing mild-mannered Jerramiah Healy by a comfortable margin over Assemblyman Louis Manzo and Council President L. Harvey Smith.
In so doing, the voters of Jersey City have rejected the lures of nostalgia and our colorful history, and the reflexive politics of arm-twisting. Instead, they chose the candidate who seemed to be the primary victim of campaign dirty tricks -- a candidate who to his credit, kept on the high road, and made his even temperament and proven ability to work with others a centerpiece of his campaign.
When Gerry McCann and Louis Manzo circulated those nude shots of Healy, they probably thought they had the election in the bag. If this had been 1984, they might have. But instead, the tactic backfired. Nothing could have done a better job of making Healy look like the unwitting victim of a corrupt and unscrupulous backroom cabal. It raised sympathy for the Councilman. And it almost certainly confirmed everybody's worst suspicions about Manzo -- that he was a throwback, an anachronism, aggressive and in-your-face, willing to indulge in any illegal chokehold necessary to win an election. He may have plastered signs on every piece of open yardage in the city, but in today's Jersey City, a street sign tsunami no longer washes away the electoral outcome.
And that's a good sign; maybe the best sign we have that Hudson County is finally reaching political maturity. Offered a clear choice between a sober (and yes, I use that word forcefully) and reasonable candidate and others who made recourse to emotional appeals and dirty tricks, Jersey City voters chose the sober and reasonable candidate. He didn't go around making irresponsible promises to vote down tax increases. He didn't try to pit one ethnic group against another, or grandstand as the chosen candidate of a particular community. He didn't roll around the Downtown in a sound-car at all hours, blasting the Rocky music over loudspeakers. He didn't treat our streets as a gigantic trash can in which he was free to litter as much campaign propaganda as he cared to. Instead he spoke, honestly and frankly, about the fiscal challenges we face, our limitations, our need to expand our ratable base without giving away tax abatements like Hallowe'en candy, and our need for responsibility, accountability, and above all, civility.
There's a scurrilous but amusing message board in Jersey City that's frequented by political operatives. Early in the day, Healy backers on that board weren't hopeful: they were alarmed that Mr. Manzo and Mr. Smith had more campaign workers at the polls. What they should now begin to realize is that Manzo and Smith lost this election, in part, because they had so many campaign workers at the polls. Recent arrivals in Jersey City -- and, with luck, there will be many more of them -- do not care to be harassed on the street by operatives. They do not want to be implored to put signs on their houses, or to come home to find their mailboxes stuffed with vaguely threatening circulars. They don't want to see naked pictures of 55 year-old men. They want to run their elections, and their civic polity, the way the rest of the nation does: in a fair and adult manner, long on issues and substance and short on dirty tricks.
As we move together into the Healy era, it's my hope that we can all take the lesson of civility from the Councilman's victory. I pledge to put aside some of my own acrimony in the name of compromise, and listen more carefully to people who don't agree with me. It's a lesson that all Democrats probably ought to learn after last night's thrashing on the national stage. Here in Jersey City, Mayor Healy begins with allies on the City Council, and a good working relationship with the party chief and the County Executive. This is going to be a tricky eight months -- but we've given ourselves a decent chance to untangle some of the toughest knots by electing a self-effacing public servant who has proven he can play well with others. I believe we've made the right choice. And it's my hope that we have finally buried Jersey City's political past: that entertaining but wholly counterproductive free-for-all where felons and hatchet-men dictate the flavor of our civic life, where the number of signs on your HQ window matters more than the number of policy proposals in your platform, and where the biggest bully is always the last man standing.
November 2, 2004
Yes, I would like to think I had something to do with it. I just hope that my judgement wasn't wrong. If it was, nobody is going to feel worse than me.
November 1, 2004
Outside, there is Louis Manzo literature all over the sidewalk. This guy is going to need a payment in lieu of taxes just to clean up all the littering done by his campaign. The yokels in the Manzo headquarters are looking glum today. In a few hours, they'll be back in the soundtruck, cruising around Paulus Hook and broadcasting a message from the Assemblyman. In case you didn't know, he wants you to vote for him.
Jerramiah Healy had his car out last night, too. His was less impressive than Mr. Manzo's -- it was a crappy sedan with an ancient-looking campaign worker speaking into a microphone from the passenger's seat. Do candidates for political office in other towns still engage in this practice? It seems like something lifted from a Fifties movie: quaint yet somehow barbaric, like bobbing for apples.
The L. Harvey Smith truck is parked on the corner of Grove and Montgomery, right in front of the HQ. Royal-blue posters are stuck to every surface of the automobile, just as the plate glass windows of the adjacent building are wallpapered with the Acting Mayor's name. All of this self-promotional energy -- this willingness to wallpaper the city -- couldn't possibly dissipate in two days time, could it?
In front of the Majestic Theatre, contractors are working to restore the facade. It's an unseasonably warm day, and the sun is shining off red and gold leaves. And it occurs to me: who wouldn't want to be mayor of this city?, this ridiculous town of attractive loose ends on the Hudson, growing out of control and jangling with nervous energy? Who wouldn't want to mount those steps to 280 Grove Street, march through the atrium with head held high, walk up the marble staircase and take the seat at the head of the table in Council Chambers?
By the end of tomorrow night, we'll all know who gets to take that walk. While the rest of the country sits and watches the map of the United States turn blue and red (mostly red, I am sure), the talk in the precinct houses and Jersey City neighborhood headquarters will not be about butterfly ballots, or Swift Boat commandos, or freedom on the march. It'll be about Louis Manzo, Jerramiah Healy, L. Harvey Smith, Steve Lipski, and Willie Flood. Call us provincial if you like, but we know what we've got here, and why it matters so much. And yes, we fight these battles out -- complete with sound trucks, smear campaigns, nude photos, restraining orders, paint splatterers, convicted felons and those well on their way -- to the bitter end. If this was your town, you'd understand.
Read what I had to say about October.
Read what I had to say about September.
Read what I had to say about August.
Read what I had to say about July.
Read what I had to say about June.
Read what I had to say about May.
Scumbaguette is a play, and it's what I had to say about April.
Read what I had to say about March.
Read what I had to say about February.
Read what I had to say about January.
Read what I had to say about last December.
Read what I had to say at the beginning of this crazy adventure.
