The Best Defense Is A Good Offense

After West Village neighbors proposed to close the popular Christopher Street pier an hour earlier, the kids who frequent the site countered by calling for an even later curfew:

Community members proposed a stricter curfew for Pier 45 — better known as Christopher Street pier — in the West Village at last night’s Community Board 2 meeting, despite objections from LGBT youths who frequent the pier.

Members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth group FIERCE — which stands for Fabulous Independent Educated Radicals for Community Empowerment — about 60 of whom were in attendance at the meeting, countered board members by proposing a later 4 a.m. curfew in place of the current 1 a.m.

. . .

[Parks and Waterfront Committee chairman Arthur] Schwartz said he sympathized with the youths’ desire for a “place to call their own,” though their curfew proposal is unrealistic.

“We need a solution that isn’t 4 a.m.,” Schwartz said. “The mayor won’t allow it. The government won’t allow it.”

Some members of the board said a midnight closing is simply a matter of city regulation. “You can’t stay in a park all night long,” Schwartz said. “There are rules.”

. . .

Malcolm Brown, a Brooklyn resident and supporter of FIERCE, said the community board was discriminatory for focusing only on the noise created by LGBT youth from the pier and not on noise from those who frequent bars and clubs on Christopher Street.

“If there has to be a curfew for the pier,” Brown said, “there should be a curfew for the heterosexuals at the restaurants and the NYU kids at the bars, too.”