Historical Reenactors Return To East Village For Summer Tourism Season

For in ye olde timey times, the locals once hoisted placards railing against “yuppie scum”:

Among the seasonal developments that signal the approach of summer in New York City are the ascent of lifeguards into wooden chairs on Rockaway Beach, the appearance of seersucker suits in Madison Avenue store windows and the formation of long waiting lines for tickets to Shakespeare in the Park.

But in the East Village, where people commonly sunbathe on tar-paper roofs, black leather is in season year-round and the street theater is always free, the calendar change is observed in other ways, with soap box speak-outs, self-organized street demonstrations and parades — usually against gentrification and its perceived agents.

And so it was that Friday night signified the opening of the East Village summer social season as 100 people gathered on East First Street to protest what they said was the sterilization and overdevelopment of the Bowery and the nearby streets, once one of the seedier districts in the city.

“This is the biggest crowd I’ve seen in a while,” said Jerry Wade, a veteran of many East Village demonstrations. “We used to have things like this all the time.”

John Penley, a local photographer, organized the event and advertised it as a “protest march against real estate developers, landlords, yuppie wine bars and Republicans.”

The starting point was the Bowery Wine Company, a sleek bar partly owned by Bruce Willis, which has been a meeting place for a Republican club. It stands just a few hundred feet from where CBGB, the renowned punk rock club, operated for 33 years before closing in 2006 after a dispute with its landlord.

The wine bar opened in March inside the recently built Avalon Bowery development, which takes up almost an entire block, including the former site of an abandoned schoolhouse that was used for years as a studio by monks who practiced martial arts. Later, squatters stayed there, referring to it as the Kung Fu Castle.

With Term Limits Comes . . .

. . . a bad case of senioritis:

They grumble behind closed doors, sick of stewing inside, dreaming of freedom. They want to stop working, throw parties, cause trouble. And waiting for the days to end is killing them.

They are the 35 term-limited members of the City Council, and they’re as restive as high school seniors.

For now, they shuffle in and out of City Hall budget meetings, trying to play nice as they divvy up the city’s money. But when July 1 rolls around and the new budget takes effect, they can stop kissing up to the people who control the purse strings — and start raising money and raising hell to promote their own careers.

“It’ll get worse,” said one of the 35, who himself is trying to figure out his future. “With each day, with each event, with each budget, there’s less and less leverage that the leadership of the Council can use to hold it together.”

To hear some of them tell it, the Council is already falling apart. Ambitious pols who know what they want to run for in November 2009 need to get noticed now — which may be why some of them have been using dry budget hearings to attack the Bloomberg administration.

“I’ve never seen grandstanding like I’ve seen in the last few weeks,” said Councilman Peter Vallone Jr., who is mulling a run for Queens Borough President. “The Council will resemble a herd of cats after July.”

No New Tammany Hall

The new political machine, begat by term limits, relies on nepotism:

For New Yorkers who voted to impose term limits on the City Council, the promise was to sweep clean a moldering institution and fill it with “citizen legislators” who would bring energy and fresh ideas from the private sector, where they would return after their eight-year allotments.

But as the first class of councilors elected under the term limits law in 2001 prepares to leave office next year, the very opposite is becoming reality: With lawmakers seeking new elective offices and career politicians looking to join, or rejoin, the body, the Council may well become a political revolving door.

Already, 20 of the 35 Council members who are being forced from office have filed with the city’s Campaign Finance Board to run for another position. And at least a dozen of those planning to compete for open Council seats have budding or established political careers, including state officials, relatives of Council members and even a few former councilors who collectively have decades of service under their belts.

. . .

Paul Vallone, whose father, Peter F. Vallone, represented a district in Astoria, Queens, for 27 years until his brother Peter F. Vallone Jr. took it over in 2002, is running to represent the Bayside area. Paul Washington, a former chief of staff for Councilman Charles Barron, is running for the councilor’s East New York, Brooklyn, slot, while Evan Thies, a former spokesman for Councilman David Yassky, is competing to represent Mr. Yassky’s Brooklyn district, which stretches from Park Slope to Williamsburg.

And then there is Thomas V. Ognibene, who represented Middle Village, Queens, for 10 years before leaving office in 2001 because of term limits. He recently lost a bid to replace Dennis P. Gallagher, his former chief of staff, who resigned from the Council this year after admitting to a sexual assault.

“The person who runs for the office is a relative, a chief of staff, a protégé of the person that was in there in the first place,” Mr. Ognibene said. “Insurgency is virtually impossible. You cannot generate the money or the support,” he said, adding, “So you don’t get the people in there that had been contemplated, the people with the fresh start, the new view.”

Sure, Change The Charter . . .

. . . just as long as it doesn’t apply to any current office holder, which is what most responsible elected bodies do:

In a sudden turnabout, Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday there’s still time to mount a ballot initiative this year to revise the City Charter – the likeliest route for altering term limits so the mayor could run for re-election in 2009.

Bloomberg has yet to name a Charter Revision Commission to conduct a top-to-bottom review of the government and recommend changes to put before the voters in a referendum.

Those changes could include extending term limits from eight to 12 years, either for all city officials or just for the legislative branch.

“I just haven’t focused on it yet,” the mayor said of the delayed appointments. “I’ll get back to you in the next few weeks.”

When he first announced plans for the commission in his State of the City Speech in January, the mayor said its work would take 18 months.

But yesterday, he changed the timetable.

“If you wanted to put something on this [year’s] ballot, there’s still plenty of time to do it,” the mayor said.

OK, this is getting silly . . .

If It Looks Like A Duck . . .

How to stave off lame duckness? Float the idea of abolishing term limits and/or a run for governor. But — people! — please don’t pay attention:

As his political team considers strategies that would allow him to remain in public life, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg acknowledged with rare candor on Wednesday that he was unsure about what to do next, and whether it would be as satisfying as being mayor.

Associates of Mr. Bloomberg say that while he has not decided to run for governor or seek a way to serve a third term, he has not closed the door on either possibility.

The New York Times reported Tuesday on its Web site that the mayor’s political team had been polling city voters to gauge support for undoing the city’s term limits law, which will force Mr. Bloomberg from office next year.

The poll also tested voters’ views on a Bloomberg candidacy for governor.

“I plan to, I think, stay on in public service in some ways or other — I don’t know how,” the mayor said on Wednesday after a news conference at City Hall. “You know, I don’t see anything for me. …” He stopped himself, looking off in the distance. “My guess is that, like I’ve said before, I will wind up running the foundation along with Patti Harris and trying to make the world better,” he said, referring to his closest deputy, Patricia E. Harris.

“I have no idea whether it’s going to be enough for me or not,” he added. “You can make a big difference in this world and I don’t know what specifically I’m going to do any more than you know what specifically you’re going to do in a year and a half.”