[C]iting indications police received early on from the M.E., the Ninth Precinct’s commanding officer said police don’t believe Pupshaw’s death was a murder, and are proceeding accordingly.
"There is no evidence to support" that Pupshaw was killed, said Deputy Inspector Dennis De Quatro. "At this point, it’s not being investigated as a homicide, but as an assault."
But some of the Tompkins Square Park "crusties" . . . say Pupshaw’s head was badly injured in the attack and that police aren’t investigating as thoroughly as if the victim had been a "yuppie."
De Quatro, however, said making things more difficult, witnesses aren’t cooperating.
"There seems to be a reluctance on the part of those in the park to talk to us," the deputy inspector said. "They can come into the precinct” and tell police what they know," he said.
May 8 was Bishop’s birthday. She and Pupshaw weren’t on good terms because Bishop’s ex-boyfriend, Greg, had broken up with her to go out with Pupshaw. Bishop had been pregnant by Greg, but miscarried. Bishop has a tattoo on her forearm in memory of her lost baby.
"She didn’t like me because I was carrying [Greg’s child]," Bishop said of Pupshaw.
Bishop, 29, already has two children, 15 years old and 11 years old.
Pupshaw’s presence in the park on Bishop’s birthday was not welcome. The two had words.
Bishop said she cursed out Pupshaw, then turned on her heel and started to walk off. Immediately afterward, she said, she heard glass breaking. Turning back around, she said she saw Pupshaw getting up off the ground and heard her say, "Look at my eye. Look at my eye."
"Absurd" was De Quatro’s response to that accusation. "It’s our duty to investigate the assault. If you are assaulted today and you die in an automobile crash in New Jersey tomorrow, we still investigate. One’s got nothing to do with the other."
Born on July 8, 1965, “Barnacle” was well known in the East Village as a gentleman and a gentle man, in spite of his hardscrabble looks. Bill wore a nose ring, and had a large, upturned scar on the left side of his mouth, giving him the look of a pirate, but that was the farthest from the reality of this man.
He went from the Navy, where he was a petty officer, a bosun commanding small craft, to the Navy Reserve, and then honorably discharged became a merchant mariner, spending a good part of most years sailing American-flag vessels.
When not at sea, Bill spent a good deal of time in Tompkins Square Park, where he was as at home with the “crusties” as he was with the Village intelligentsia. His stories, whether of life at sea or East Village adventures, were punctuated with his trademark Homeric line, “It was not for nothing that...,” and on the story would wind.
The suspect told the victim, “You don’t know who you are messing with. I’m from Detroit,” according to the assault charge filed by the Manhattan district attorney.
Lou Reed will be making a special appearance to read from, discuss, and sign his book, “Pass Thru Fire: the Collected Lyrics.” Containing a body of work that spans more than three decades, “Pass Thru Fire” (Da Capo Books, December 2008) is a compilation of the lyrics of an American original. Beginning with his formative days in the Velvet Underground and continuing through his remarkable solo career—albums like Transformer, Berlin, New York, Magic and Loss, and Ecstasy--Pass Thru Fire is crucial to an appreciation of Lou Reed, not only as a consummate underground musician, but as one of the truly significant poets of our time. Wed., Dec. 17 at 7 p.m. Free. Housing Works Book Café. 126 Crosby St. (betw. Prince & Houston Sts.)
A main victim of the city’s development boom has inarguably been the small businessperson, as mom-and-pop shops struggle to operate in a dense metropolis increasingly driven by real estate interests.
But with the recent economic meltdown — a reality check that exposed Wall St.’s avarice — some small businesses have received a precarious stay of execution as the market chills and rents freeze in place.
While not the best circumstances for a reprieve, the current economic situation does raise interesting questions about ensuring the survival of independent, locally owned retail businesses.
From restaurants and grocers to hardware stores and barbershops, the plight of Village- and Downtown-area mom-and-pop stores has been well publicized, as neighborhood institutions like the Jefferson Market face rising rents and competition from chain operations.
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In the end, much responsibility lies with us — the consumers — to support our local stores by patronizing them.
Without our support, the city’s diversity of offerings will give way to a streetscape of banks, chain drugstores and fast-food restaurants. And a Starbucks on every corner.
Police arrested three men shortly before 1 a.m. on Fri., Oct. 24, and charged them with stealing four bottles of oral-sex drops, three bottles of massage oil, a porn movie tape, a package of nipple cream and a sex toy, all from Cherry Box, an erotica shop at 162 W. Fourth St. The suspects, Corey Brown, 31; Malcolm Anderson, 26, and John Francis, 28, were charged with grand larceny after the woman who was tending the shop identified them, police said.
John Penley tells us he has had it, is “burned out” and is leaving and “going somewhere else,” to “parts unknown.” He wouldn’t be more specific. “I’m really busy, I’m moving my photo archives right now,” Penley said when we called on Tuesday afternoon. “I’m tired — no one had to walk in my shoes this summer.” It just won’t be the same without Penley leading the L.E.S. Slacktivists in chants of “Die Yuppie Scum” and feeding us items about…well, about everything and everyone under the sun in the East Village and Lower East Side. But apparently a summer spent tilting at Bruce Willis, the Economakises and the Christodora House has worn him out — but only temporarily, we hope.
“We’re thinking of getting a little demonstration together,” said Susan, who withheld her last name and who was spending last Thursday afternoon watching her daughter try out a new skateboard in the park. For Susan, the construction’s progress seems to be going at snail’s pace.
“I don’t see a lot of people working there each time I pass by,” she said. Susan heard rumors that the project will take six months — and “That’s too long,” she said.
In the Ninth Precinct, which covers the East Village, grand larceny surged to 22 for the week ending Aug. 24 this year compared to 12 the same week last year. Grand larceny increased to 81 in the 28-day period ending Aug. 24 this year compared to 65 in the same period last year.
Burglaries also spiked in the Fifth Precinct, which covers the Lower East Side, Little Italy and Chinatown from Broadway to Allen St. between Houston St. and the Brooklyn Bridge, during the week ending Aug. 24 when 10 were reported compared to four the same week last year. For the 28-day period ending Aug. 24 there were 22 burglaries compared to 13 the year before.
Wanting to get to the bottom of this mystery once and for all, this week we found ourselves gazing into an empty, gray, 50-foot-long pool in Christodora House’s basement. It was 8 feet deep at one end and sloped up from the center to a shallow depth at the other end. From the looks of it, it hadn’t been used for 50 years.
We also toured an adjacent gym with decrepit, old basketball backboards without rims and a high, cement-slab ceiling barely hanging onto rusted rebar and looking like it was about to come crashing down any second. The gym and pool spaces are zoned for community-facility use, meaning they could be offices for doctors or nonprofit groups. But, according to our tour guide, the building isn’t under any obligation or deadline to rent these spaces. In fact, Christodora tried to convert the gym to residential use a few years ago, but the city’s Board of Standards and Appeals rejected the condo tower’s hardship application.
