A rendering of the “University House” dorm-conversion plan for the old P.S. 64, showing the historic block-through building’s 10th St. side opened up with new windows and entryways.

BY SARAH FERGUSON  |  Gregg Singer’s plan to convert the East Village’s old P.S. 64 into an upscale 500-bed dorm received favorable reviews from members of the Landmarks Preservation Commission on Tuesday. Although L.P.C. postponed a vote on the project pending further modifications, the commissioners generally praised the proposed reworking of the turn-of the-century elementary school as “inventive and appropriate.”

“I think it’s a great application,” said commissioner Joan Gerner, an architect and preservationist who helped oversee construction of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum. “A stroke of genius,” Gerner added, referring to the plan to replace the bulky wheelchair ramp on the Ninth St. courtyard with two smaller handicap-access ramps.

There were some quibbles over the proposed addition of glass panels and steel railings, and the obtrusive HVAC units and bulkheads, which might mar the historic mansard roof. But none of the commisioners even mentioned Singer’s role in scalping the terracotta details of the facade in 2006, which he had jackhammered in a last-ditch effort to undo the building’s landmark desgination.

Nor did L.P.C. take him to task for his abject neglect of the property over the last seven years — even though by law owners of landmarked buildings are required to keep them “in good repair.”

“I have always said that the best way to preserve a building is to reuse it in an appropriate way, so I think this is heading in that direction,” stated L.P.C. Chairperson Robert Tierney.

Such deference stood in contrast to the testimony of community members, including Councilmember Rosie Mendez, who urged L.P.C. to reject the dorm plan, calling it “inappropriate.”

Although L.P.C. has no authority to regulate how a landmarked property is used, Mendez argued that the communal legacy of the old P.S. 64 — first as a school for 60 years and then as the community center CHARAS — should be recognized.

“The history, architecture, cultural and community significance of this building is inexorably intertwined with the role it has played in the lives of successive generations on the Lower East Side,” Mendez wrote in a prepared statement read by a staffer.

Mendez also condemned Singer’s scheme to chop out sections of the 10th St. elevated courtyard so as to provide light and air to the first floor — primarily so he can add more dorm bedrooms there. The school’s original architect, C.B.J. Snyder, had designed the courtyards to be open and accessible to the public — a fact noted by L.P.C. in its 2006 designation report. Singer’s dorm, Mendez noted, would “privatize” the courtyards.

“Many things have changed since 1904, but the need for shared open space that is a source of community pride has not,” Mendez noted.

Singer’s scheme got even worse reviews from the community members who testified. Carolyn Ratcliffe, who chairs the 9BC Tompkins Square Block Association, accused Singer of “disregarding the health and welfare” of local residents when workers cleared out the building’s fourth and fifth floors “by throwing the debris out of the windows without any protection from the dust that covered our buildings and apartments, as it fell into an uncovered dumpster at the first-floor level.”

More recently Ratcliffe said she sent L.P.C. pictures of large sections of copper flashing that had come loose under the dormer windows that Singer had jackhammered.

“These violations were only repaired when the Department of Buildings executed emergency repairs when 50 mile-per-hour winds were hitting the block,” Ratcliffe said.

The Buildings Department Web site shows a history of “hazardous” violations, including “loose brickwork” and “loose copper flashing.”

Singer could not be reached for comment on Ratcliffe’s specific allegations. When asked about his overall neglect of the property in an interview at The Villager offices two weeks ago, Singer said he could not repair the building without an approved renovation plan.

“My hands are tied,” he said.

After Singer amends his plans to answer the commissioners’ recommendations, L.P.C. will schedule another public hearing and vote on whether to approve the dorm renovation.

It is then up to the Department of Buildings to approve the project. But thus far, D.O.B. has not weighed in on whether Singer’s proposed “University House” even qualifies as a legal dorm.

In order to meet the “community-facility use” standard, D.O.B. requires proof of either ownership or a long-term lease with a school. The Cooper Union has announced plans to rent out two of the building’s five floors for 15 years, but the leasing arrangement remains unclear. Singer says Cooper is leasing 196 beds, while Cooper Union officials maintain that they have only “the right of first refusal” for these beds — meaning they might not take all of them if their students don’t want them. It is also unclear whether the students would be leasing from Singer or Cooper directly. Singer and Cooper Union have both declined to share copies of the lease, citing a confidentiality agreement that Cooper inserted.

On April 30, Mendez sent a letter of complaint to D.O.B., demanding that the department review Singer’s dorm application with “precise scrutiny” and refrain from approving it until Singer can show “enforceable” leases for all 500 rooms.

“As you know the Dorm Rule was explicitly adopted to guard against ambiguous and speculative actions of this type,” she wrote.

Meanwhile, Mendez says she is setting up a meeting with Cooper Union President Jamshed Bharucha so that he can hear the “full history” of the property from community members, including former CHARAS Director Chino Garcia and members of Community Board 3.

On May 15, there will be a march from the old P.S. 64 to Cooper Union to protest the school’s role in legitimizing Singer’s dorm scheme, as well as its decision to begin charging undergraduate tuition after 100 years. Members of the East Village Community Coaltion, Cooper Union alums, members of Community Board 3 and Assemblymember Brian Kavanagh will be attending.

A photo from Clayton Patterson’s “Front Door Book.” From the 1980s through the mid-1990s, Patterson photographed many members of the Lower East Side’s Latino community in front of the door to his Essex St. home. Photo by Clayton Patterson

BY CLAYTON PATTERSON  |  I have documented this community for many years and have witnessed the changes. I was one of the well-known, anti-gentrification radicals, considered by the gentrifies to be a part of the so-called rabble, branded one of the troublemakers, arrested several times, banned from the Seventh Precinct Community Council for asking questions about crime. At one trial, a Corporation Counsel (New York City Law Department) attorney stated to the jury that I was a highly skilled provocateur. Many of the so-called good folks in the community were against what we were doing, until later, when it was too late.

Years later, I even had a high-ranking cop pull me aside and tell me that what we were trying to protect and the essence of the messages we were screaming turned out to be true. In came the money and out went our community. In came the anywhere-American-corporate-cookie-cutter businesses like Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts, McDonald’s, Blockbusters, 7-Eleven, Kmart and so on. Out went the individually owned and run restaurants, music venues, neighborhood movie theaters, drama theaters, shoe repair shops, record stores, bakeries, coffee shops, local fashion designers, fabric stores, book stores and so on.

We lost our hangouts, gathering spots, places to meet and mingle. The creative types lost the venues and fellow artists to criticize their work and to debate, practice and develop their creative crafts in front of a likeminded audience or peer group.

The Lower East Side was one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse neighborhoods in America. Because so much of our history was closely tied to new immigrants, our roots were diverse. When the larger population moved on, there were always a few businesses from that particular group that remained in the community. The neighborhood’s ethnic influences were Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, Japanese, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Cuban, German, Irish, African-American, Caribbean, Bangladeshi, Indian, Jewish, Israeli, Yemenite, Chinese, Palestinian, Italian and Korean, among others.

If politics were your interest, the L.E.S. was a fermenting hotbed of choices, and each choice had splinter factions to practically satisfy any need: Communists, anarchists, Libertarians, Democrats, Republicans, African nationalists, Puerto Rican separatists, white supremacists, Zionists and so on.

My family had been pioneers. In the late 1940s my father and a Native American friend, traveling in a covered wagon, moved a herd of horses from Saskatchewan to Alberta. One of the blessings I received as a child was spending time with elderly Native Americans. These folks were the last survivors of what I would now call the pregentrification generation: The last of the indigenous people who lived the traditional life, whose roots can be traced back hundreds of years.

As a young person coming from an extremely conservative, culturally limited, unsophisticated city and province that were less than 75 years old, all these differences, the endless choices, are what fascinated, fed and educated me, and what I fell in love with.

In terms of the old L.E.S. that I came to love and be a part of, no question, gentrification has forever changed what was. But, basically, I have adapted to this New World Order, and have even found a way to participate and fit in. There are new businesses I can relate to and support. These new business tend to be a little more modern and upscale versions, related to a youth culture I am familiar with.

Those of us who have been around are acutely aware of how many people and businesses have been priced out, bought out, burned out, evicted, forced to move, or been the victim of changes in the laws and regulations that have eroded tenants’ rights.

We tend to live in a right-now society. We concentrate on the issues and problems of today. However, photographs and videos are a way of remembering the past. When neighborhood people, myself included, go though some of the earlier L.E.S. photographs, videos and ephemera, we are always a little overwhelmed by how much has changed and how many people are gone. Because I have spent more than three decades living here, being involved in documenting, in one way or another, a wide cross-section of this community, I have gained some knowledge and insight into the changes.

For example, I have been blessed to have been able to photograph hundreds of individuals from this area’s Hispanic community: business owners, politicians, landlords, postal workers, musicians, artists, poets, civil servants, murderers, criminals, drug dealers, drug addicts, gangsters, stay-at-home kids, street kids, good guys, bad guys and in-between guys and women.

I empathize, sympathize and fully comprehend how much of their community, culture, businesses, opportunities and people they have lost to gentrification. As a rule, the majority of Hispanics stay within their own, and do not cross over, or engage in, what is foreign to their culture.

Soon two more bodegas on Stanton St. will be gone. The Pitt St. Boys’ Club is gone. Bloomberg, to save money, keeps wanting to cut back on school programs, such as art and sports, which offer a way out of the cycle of poverty. I came from the bad end of the working-class: Art saved my life. The mayor thinks cutting library hours helps save money.

There are few after-school programs. CHARAS, which helped a number of people, is gone. The L.E.S. projects still do not have the security cameras that were promised and for which money was allocated.

Even the Pathmark is gone, the place where families could save a little money and spend a little more on a few extras. What are the positive alternatives to keep a kid from being sucked into the negative street culture? Bloomberg wants to get rid of guns on the streets, but what alternatives is he offering? More jail time? More stop-and-frisk? More profiling?

There are very few L.E.S. Hispanic heroes for the youth to look up to. Raphael Ward, the 16-year-old youth who was murdered on Columbia St., was an example of a young person who had a dream, and was doing his best to do the right thing. Why not name the corner of Rivington and Columbia Sts. after him? Do something to memorialize his time on this earth. We need heroes. He needs to be remembered.

I know people were caught off guard by the amount of community support, mostly Latino, there was for Enrique Cruz, Orlando Rodriguez and Javier Rodriguez to get a full liquor license for a Latin bistro on Rivington St. I realize the Community Board 3 members were shocked at how much controversy and negative feeling this denial generated.

I am amazed at the lack of appreciation and understanding there was from the community board on how important these guys are to our part of the neighborhood. These guys are local heroes, stand-up guys, who against all odds have succeeded and even prospered in this new gentrified L.E.S.

Some of the comments, like “Who cares if they grew up here?”and “These people want to be the voice of our community?” are just offensive.

Maybe because I have photographed such a wide cross-section of the Hispanic community, all I have to say is, look at these guys. No gangster, get-over guys here. Like these guys should be stopped and frisked. Please.

Lower East Side residents carried their rations of food and water away from the National Guard drop-off site outside Smith Houses on Thursday night. Photo by Sam Spokony

BY SAM SPOKONY  |  In a shaky yet mainly successful start to the National Guard presence in Downtown Manhattan following the impact of Hurricane Sandy, on Thursday night hundreds of desperate residents welcomed a massive delivery of food and water outside a Lower East Side public housing complex.

The Guardsmen were originally scheduled to arrive to deliver the rations at 1 p.m. that day outside Smith Houses on Catherine St., near Cherry St. — but the people lined up waiting for hours for the drop-off became increasingly agitated until the trucks finally arrived around 6:15 p.m.

Despite many harsh words over the lateness of that arrival, the residents certainly appreciated the vital supplies, as their neighborhood continues to sit in darkness.

“We would’ve gone crazy if they didn’t come,” said Tony Chan, 40, who came with his family several blocks from their home on Mott St. to pick up a box full of food and water bottles.

Chan explained that, even though other problems still loom large, the rations provided an important lifeline to people like himself, who simply hadn’t been ready for such a difficult aftermath to the storm. Before the delivery, he had no food or water.

“The only thing we could’ve eaten was a rat,” Chan joked, as he walked home.

Governor Andrew Cuomo had originally mobilized the National Guard on Oct. 28, the day before the hurricane struck. And on Thursday morning, at the behest of local politicians, Cuomo announced the Guard would be delivering one million meals — supplied by the Federal Emergency Management Agency  — to Downtown Manhattan and affected areas in Brooklyn and Queens.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and State Senator Daniel Squadron, both of whom were part of a group that urged the governor to implement the deliveries, were outside Smith Houses on Thursday night with their aides to help oversee the arrival and hand out the rations. Although the crowd of hungry residents never became mob-like, the scene was somewhat frantic, as dozens of Guardsmen rushed to stack hundreds of cases of water bottles and sealed boxes of emergency meals.

Silver noted that, in terms of a potentially life-saving delivery, it was better late than never.

“It’s unfortunate that it isn’t taking place quite when they expected it to, but the need is being met,” Silver said. “This is just what happens when people are making decisions and trying to find answers in real time.”

The speaker added that, shortly after the National Guard arrived, he called the governor to say that the timeliness of deliveries would have to improve over the next few days.

According to an onsite member of the Salvation Army, which is helping to coordinate the shipments of the FEMA rations, the Guard will continue the deliveries at about 15 sites throughout the aforementioned areas until Sunday.

“I said to [Cuomo] that we’ve got to beef up the distribution process, because there were people here waiting for hours,” Silver said. “He told me that the sites were actually chosen by the city, and not his office. But it’s not about blaming anyone, because we’re all in this together. At this point we just need to make sure that people get what they need, because these are trying times for everybody.”

They were especially trying times for the many Chinatown residents who were left disappointed, and perhaps still hungry, by the National Guard’s late arrival on Thursday.

A drop-off similar to the one at Smith Houses was scheduled to take place outside Confucius Plaza, on Bowery between Canal and Division Sts., at 1 p.m. that day. But the arrival was reportedly rescheduled to 3 p.m., and then, after hours of miscommunication and speculation, the Guard did not arrive in time to actually hand out rations.

The delivery was in fact made to Confucius Plaza after the Guard finished its work at Smith Houses, but since it was already dark at that point — past 7:30 p.m. — the food and water was reportedly put into storage at the Chinatown building, so it could be handed out the following day.

It wasn’t only residents of the 44-story Confucius Plaza complex who were left wanting by the Guard’s failure to reach the building in time — as with the Smith site, residents from around the neighborhood showed up, many carrying a visible sense of desperation.

“We have nothing,” said a 24-year-old woman named Shatima, who has lived her entire life in the Baruch Houses projects, on Delancey and Columbia Sts., and declined to give her last name. “It’s gotten so bad that people are actually just taking shits in bags and throwing them out in the incinerator.”

Shatima, who arrived at Confucius Plaza around 3 p.m. on Thursday with several neighborhood friends, echoed the Mott St. tenant’s earlier explanation by stressing that they were all without food and water at that point because not enough people were ready for the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.

“I just didn’t expect it to be this bad,” she said. “We all remembered Hurricane Irene last year, that nothing really happened, and we just weren’t prepared for all of this. It sounds sad, but now we’ve just been asking people for food on the street, and we’ve been wearing the same clothes since Monday.”

Shatima and her friends were forced to find other options for food and water that night, but they were able to charge their cell phones outside Confucius Plaza at Speaker Silver’s “mobile district office” van, which was there from 3 to 6 p.m.

Silver and his top aides had rented a large van, staffed with volunteers, that they stocked with water and an array of electrical outlets available for charging phones and other devices. The mobile office began its much-needed journey on Wednesday afternoon, and was at the corner of Madison and Gouverneur Sts. on Thursday before heading to Confucius Plaza.

“We’re just trying to do all we can,” Silver said.

As people waited for the National Guard to arrive between 3 p.m. and around 5:30 p.m., Silver was joined outside Confucius Plaza by a host of other local politicians and community leaders who have been active in recovery efforts ever since Hurricane Sandy struck on Monday night. Along with Squadron, they included Councilmembers Margaret Chin, Jessica Lappin and Robert Jackson; Community Board 3 Chairperson Gigi Li; and staff members of Asian Americans for Equality, the Chinatown Business Improvement District and the Chinatown Partnership.

While waiting there before he and Silver headed over to Smith Houses, Squadron asserted that the real test of the storm’s impact is beginning now.

“It’s really important to remember that the crisis didn’t end when the wind died down, or even when the waters receded,” Squadron said, adding that he and his colleagues “pushed the city very hard” to implement in the FEMA ration deliveries via the National Guard.

“It was clear that we needed to be more proactive in dealing with the challenges posed by a long-term blackout in high rises with low-income or senior residents, or people with other needs,” he explained.

As for future National Guard deliveries to the Downtown area — whether through Sunday or, if Con Edison fails to restore power by then, perhaps longer — it’s clear that better communication will be key to reaching residents more swiftly.

The Salvation Army member who was at Confucius Plaza on Thursday — and who was supposed to be the main point of contact between the National Guard and the people at the drop-off site — was at a loss each time the politicians asked him for an update on the status of the delivery. He explained to this newspaper that he could only communicate with Guardsmen at headquarters, rather than those in the actual delivery trucks, thus there was no way for him to reach the Guardsmen driving to the site in order to give them directions or get an accurate estimate for their arrival.

Fifth Precinct police officers who were controlling the crowd outside Confucius Plaza were equally confused. Throughout the evening, they repeated that they were receiving conflicting or false information about the whereabouts of the delivery trucks.

As she stood waiting in vain for the trucks to arrive, assuming that the drivers didn’t know the best route to take, Chin vented her frustration.

“People have been waiting a long time for this, and [the National Guard] should have somebody driving with them who knows the city,” she said. “At a time like this, how could they send drivers who don’t know our streets?

But later, after the delivery at Smith Houses was completed and at least some of the earlier tension was lifted, Silver put the events of the day into the perspective.

“Look, sure, it’s been a little chaotic, but this whole situation is chaotic,” he said. “And once you go through a process like this on the first day, you can hopefully understand what went wrong, and have it go a little more smoothly the next day.”

As for his own plans, Silver pointed out that he and his staff would be taking their van through the Downtown area again the following day, to speak with residents while providing some valuable resources as the post-hurricane crisis continues.

“I’ll be around,” he said.

The nearly 50 elderly tenants of 80 Rutgers Slip who didn’t leave the building — which is in Zone A, the area that was under mandatory evacuation orders before the storm hit — faced a dire situation when their lobby was flooded and power was lost on Monday night.

Following the storm, the Two Bridges Neighborhood Council spearheaded a collaborative effort that provided a vital lifeline to the ailing seniors.

“We’ve been extremely pleased with the turnout so far,” said Victor Papa, president of Two Bridges, speaking on Wednesday afternoon.

Earlier that day, three meals for each of the 80 Rutgers tenants were delivered by the nonprofit organization Citymeals on Wheels, in an arrangement arranged and overseen by Two Bridges.

And Papa explained that on Thursday, the seniors would be receiving 200 more meals from the city’s Department for the Aging.

He also said that, in an equally heroic effort, a local volunteer dropped off 60 gallons of water at 80 Rutgers Slip on Tuesday. The water was shared between that building and the adjacent 82 Rutgers  Slip, which, like many other buildings in the area, was also without power and running water in the days following Sandy.

The Two Bridges staff also bought dozens of flashlights on Wednesday for the elderly tenants, but Papa added that more were needed for that building and others in the area.

He continued to encourage area residents to donate flashlights and other supplies to 80 Rutgers, since aid to the building was only immediate and didn’t constitute even a consistent short-term plan. The meal deliveries, Papa stressed, would not be continuous and were secured only for the days on which the food was delivered.

Although Internet reception was spotty and keeping cell phones charged was a constant struggle, social media and other Internet resources helped the swift responses to the seniors’ desperate needs, as well as to other struggling buildings within Lower East Side communities.

A new community-based volunteer Web site, lowereastside.recovers.org, went online on Tuesday morning. The product of volunteer collaborations between Occupy Wall Street and 350.org (an environmental organization), the “recovers” site allowed local residents to communicate and organize in support of ailing neighbors, as well as allowing community organizations like Two Bridges to post requests for donations for specific buildings.

Recovers.org is a for-profit operation that licenses its software to cities and major organizations that are preparing for disasters, and was founded last year by survivors of a tornado in Massachusetts.

“I think the site will make things a lot easier during the big transition that’s going to take place between the immediate disaster response and planning for long term needs,” said Caitria O’Neill, co-founder and C.E.O. of recovers.org.

Those who wish to donate specifically to Lower East Side buildings in need can visit lowereastside.recovers.org and contact community representatives by phone or e-mail.

As of 5 p.m. on Wednesday, the Web site also had requests for donations to 46 Hester St. in Chinatown, 242 E. Second St. in the East Village, and numerous other buildings in need.

Nearly 250,000 people were still without electrical power in Manhattan as of Friday. On Wednesday at noon, Con Edison released a statement saying that people in Manhattan and Brooklyn who are served by underground equipment should have power back by Saturday.

Papa acknowledged that Con Ed’s ability to restore power would be the most important part of recovering from the impact of Hurricane Sandy, but he stressed that, for the moment, it was up to Lower East Side residents to keep themselves going.

“In the end, we can’t rely on the circumstances of crisis, and the predictions of the authorities,” Papa said. “We have to rely on ourselves. We’re the ones that have to live through this.”

At the punk rock concerts on July 5 marking the Tompkins Square Park riot’s 24th anniversary, one longtime East Villager could be overheard saying, “Occupy Wall Street, they held Zuccotti Park for two months. We occupied Tompkins Square Park for three years!” Clayton Patterson was among the local photographers who documented the homeless park scene, including these shots, from 1989. Clockwise, from top left, the Tent City Crew; a shelter constructed with the help of a children’s jungle gym; a Palm Sunday service at the soon-to-be demolished band shell, inside which homeless people slept; a Tent City resident out cold on a cot during the day. The Tent City crew were the main organizers of the park’s homeless encampment. “They were in the northwest corner of the park,” Patterson said. “They kept things functioning and they were the main people that you dealt with when issues would come up with the homeless and the park.”

BY CLAYTON PATTERSON  |  Jochen Auer’s Vienna Wildstyle and Tattoo Messe in the Gasometer continues to bring high-level, world-class talent to his public. A messe is a fair, and the Gasometer is four huge, 19th-century, brick gas tanks that have been converted for various uses, from office and residential to entertainment. One of the contributions I brought to this latest incarnation of the show was finding Maria Jose Cristerna, Mexico’s “Vampire Woman,” and setting up the talks leading to her being given a chance to display her unique talents, below right. Above left, Steve Bonge, center, met with New Zealand-born tattoo artist Brent McCown, right. Brent will be attending Steve’s upcoming New York City international tattoo convention. Brent tattoos using the traditional Pacific style. Above right, Domino Blue, collaborates with her husband, Tom Blue, to create an auditory and visual, impressionistic stage piece, including percussionists playing oil drums and gymnasts performing skillful routines. Below, left, one of my highlights in documenting the show was meeting Weasel, the legendary Frankfurt soccer hooligan. Meeting a genuine hooligan, for me, was a real kick. Next weekend, Salzburg.

Photos By Clayton Patterson

Shuang Wen School parents and students rallied at Tweed Courthouse on Sept. 30, calling for the reinstatement of banished Principal Ling Ling Chou. Photo by Aline Reynolds

By ALINE REYNOLDS  |  One of the city’s top-rated schools, located on the Lower East Side, continues to be under intense scrutiny by the city Department of Education for financial improprieties.

Shuang Wen School (P.S. 184M), which boasts high rankings on state achievement tests and high rates of student acceptances in specialized high schools, is being investigated for a slew of possible violations, ranging from improper fundraising to breaches of admissions policies to falsified student records.

The city-led investigations began in 2009, when a small group of parents made complaints about the principal, the school’s Parent Association and the after-school program. While some of the parents suspect financial corruption on the part of school administrators, others allege they and their children were mistreated by the principal and her staff.

“This is about financial malfeasance,” said Edward Primus, whose high school-aged daughter, Nzingha Primus-Carroll, previously attended Shuang Wen, at 327 Cherry St. “There seems to be a co-mingling of funds between the school and the after-school program.”

Specifically, Primus is accusing the school’s Parent Association of illegally transferring $81,000 to SWAN, an organization that runs an after-school program for the students. The city is also looking into SWAN’s improper charges to parents, plus questionable wire transfers by school administrators to two companies based in China.

Neither school officials nor SWAN were available for comment.

Another parent who requested anonymity said the principal used intimidation tactics to operate the school in a manner she saw fit.

“The way they run the school was communist,” said the parent. “The principal liked her way, and the teachers were scared of her. They had no free speech to do their own way of teaching.”

As a result of the monetary allegations, Shung Wen’s General School Fund and Parent Association bank accounts were frozen last May; and Principal Ling Ling Chou was ousted from her position and transferred to a “rubber room” in July.

According to the Department of Education, whose Office of Special Investigations is probing the charges, the funds would continue to remain unusuable for the time being, pending the outcome of the financial audits.

Meanwhile, other school parents are concened that the investigation is negatively impact the school. Extracurricular events, such as the eighth graders’ annual field trip to China — for which the parents had raised $100,000 — was cancelled last spring. Vivian Chan’s 14-year-old son, Joshua, was one of the 2010-’11 eighth graders that missed out on the trip.

“My son was born here, and he has never been to China,” said Chan, with disappointment.

Shuang Wen is bilingual, with courses in both English and Mandarin.

“It was discouraging,” Chan said. “This is the day we were waiting for. He and his friends hoped one day they can go to China and practice all the words they learned.”

The freezing of funds is also compromising the children’s daily enrichment activities and scholarship opportunities, according to the parents.

“Everything — down from buying water for the children — we were not allowed to do,” said Trinh Eng, a Parent Association member. “For the D.O.E. to kind of unilaterally deny the use of this money, without any input of parents and without considering the impact on the children, is just outrageous.”

“This is 100 percent parent funding which the D.O.E. has confiscated and given us no reason or timeline for when it can be released,” said parent Diana Chen. “They have absolutely no right to do this. We absolutely want a level of respect that’s consistent with the amount of investment that the school and parents have put into this school.”

More generally, Chen and other parents are brimming with anger over what they deem to be endless investigations that are “harming” their school. In June, a group of them filed a class action lawsuit against D.O.E., charging the department with “overzealous and punitive actions” and unlawful searches of files and interrogation of children. The court papers also request that Chou be immediately reassigned as principal and that D.O.E. disclose information to the school about the investigations.

The parents received bad news last month, when U.S. District Court denied their request to have the court intervene in D.O.E.’s investigations of the school.

“I think the court is waiting for D.O.E. and the suit’s defendants to finish and indict Chou, and then they will just dismiss this case,” said Primus.

Chris Siragusa, who has two children at the school, said he’s “outraged” at the amount of time D.O.E. has taken to look into the allegations.

“If there was any wrongdoing, take the appropriate action, but do it quickly: Do not let this continue to drag on for years on end,” Siragusa said at a rally he and other Shuang Wen parents organized at Tweed Courthouse, D.O.E. headquarters, on Chambers St. on Sept. 30. “It’s wasteful and it’s hurting our children in many, many different ways,” he stressed.

“If there’s been wrongdoing, I’d like to know about it as a parent,” said Laura Gunn, the mother of a first-grader at the school. “There’s been no transparency in the investigative process, which I find totally un-American.”

Gunn is particularly angry with the way in which Chou was replaced over the summer.

“She was removed in such a sudden, dramatic fashion, and it wasn’t explained well,” she said. “It’s hard for the children to understand why someone who cared about them so greatly — and who their own parents respected so greatly — would suddenly be removed in that matter.”

Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott has declined to meet with the school or parents. In a letter Walcott sent to the Shuang Wen community earlier this year, he said, “I understand your concerns, but a meeting regarding this matter is not appropriate while the investigations are ongoing. We will conclude the investigations as quickly as we can.”

Parents are also objecting to the way in which students were pulled from their classrooms for questioning by D.O.E. personnel following a Lunar New Year performance last spring. Eng said her son, upon witnessing the interrogations, feared being targeted, too.

“We never signed up our children to be a part of some experiement we weren’t told of,” Eng protested. “To stretch something like this into certain powers that should only be used rarely, and use that in reference to a cultural performance, is just unbelievable.”

Meanwhile, Chou, who has been reassigned to administrative duties, is in working conditions that her attorney described as a “Siberia for disgraced principals…where she does nothing except twiddle her thumbs.”

“It’s disgusting,” her attorney said. “It’s deteriorating, in an awful sense.”

Chou also plans to pursue legal action supporting the parents’ lawsuit and, purporting not to have committed any financial wrongdoing, that she be reinstated as principal of Shuang Wen School.

Photo by Jefferson Siegel

Bob Arihood in Union Square covering a Critical Mass bicycle ride in July 2005.

By Jefferson Siegel

Late Saturday afternoon, intermittent rain fell on Tompkins Square Park. Lampposts blinked into life, their glow diffused by a dense mist that coated drenched paths.

Few would have noticed the scene was reminiscent of Edward Steichen’s iconic 1904 photograph of the Flatiron Building. There was one photographer who certainly would have recognized the opportunity and likely would have created another classic image. But he wasn’t there.

As rain returned and drifted through the leaves and onto benches and chess tables, sad news about that photographer was rapidly spreading. Bob Arihood, who lived in the East Village for almost 40 years, who documented the vanishing soul of the area first in this newspaper, then in his blog, Neither More Nor Less, and always in unparalleled photography, had been found dead in his home the night before. He was 65.

All that week, Bob’s closest friend, Michael Falsetta, worried that Bob wasn’t answering calls. As it became obvious something was wrong, Mike rushed to the E. Fourth St. apartment. He and Bob’s longtime neighbor, Jimmy Dunn, banged on the door. They called 911. After 45 minutes they called the Ninth Precinct. Eventually, they made their way inside, where they found Bob lying in bed, one leg dangling over the side, one arm reaching up. He appeared to have been dead for several days.

Bob was a presence in the park and especially across Avenue A in front of Ray’s Candy Store, his Leica M9 always at hand. Anyone who spoke with Bob would feel they had found a kindred spirit. His depth and breadth of knowledge of history, science and the human condition informed countless conversations.

If you turned a corner and saw Bob, you knew the next five minutes, or five hours, would likely be the most interesting part of your day.

Bob was born in Indiana in 1946.

Photo by Jefferson Siegel

Bob Arihood in a familiar pose, shooting Guillermo, of whom he also recently posted a video on his blog.

“Bob was a very independent person,” his younger brother, Leslie, said by phone on Tuesday from his home in Lafayette, Indiana. “He was ready to talk to anybody. At our mother’s funeral, it was constant conversations with people.

“He was so good at everything, he gave me an inferiority complex.”

As a high school freshman, Bob started playing football as a pass receiver.

“He pulled a tractor around to build up his leg strength,” Leslie recalled.

Bob would go on to study engineering at Purdue University, graduating in 1968.

“When he went to Purdue, he thought they weren’t doing things right. Because of his independence, he couldn’t sign up for anything,” Leslie said.

“There was a period when he was fascinated by guns. Then he would build things. He started off in the area of science and never really left it.”

Bob would move to Chicago for a short time but found that big city too confining.

“New York City has so many different things going on, so many different kinds of people, Bob could just dive into things,” Leslie explained.

Bob arrived in the East Village in the early 1970s and in 1976 moved into the E. Fourth St. apartment that would be his home for the next 35 years.

Early on Bob performed consulting engineering work while dabbling in photography. By the early 1990s he bought his first Leica M6, a high-end rangefinder camera with a built-in light meter. The die had been cast.

Bob began wandering the slowly evolving streets of the East Village, often at night. Burned-out building shells and empty lots were giving way to renovations and community gardens. Gentrification was about to rear its head.

In 1988, on his way home from a date, Bob found himself in the center of the Tompkins Square Park riot. The park, which had become a homeless encampment, was ordered cleared after a 1 a.m. curfew was imposed. Bob was not participating but nevertheless was beaten mercilessly by police.

“I squealed like a stuck pig,” Bob later recalled of the severity of his beating. Subsequently, more than 100 complaints of police brutality would be lodged.

The events of that night may have shifted his focus toward the less fortunate. Bob started concentrating on the people and businesses that gave the East Village its soul. He documented injustices.

Around 1999 Bob dipped a toe into the swirling waters of photojournalism as a photographer for The Villager. Over seven years as contributor to this newspaper, Bob’s photos won several awards, including for his protest coverage of the 2004 Republican National Convention.

In 2006, Bob struck out into the rapidly growing blogosphere with what would become an award-winning blog, Neither More Nor Less. As writer, photographer and editor, Bob was able to set his own agendas and deadlines. His reporting became must reading for locals, as well as a worldwide audience fascinated by the cauldron of stories served daily.

Early coverage followed the plight of Jim Power, the “Mosaic Man.” Power, an artist, had created a virtual mosaic trail of artwork on the streets. Bob followed Power’s work and his subsequent housing troubles. Bob was instrumental in helping Power, a Vietnam veteran, find a home in community-assisted housing.

“Bob befriended me years ago. He helped me out tremendously and he never stopped,” Power recalled, adding he plans to create a mosaic in Bob’s memory on the lamppost on Seventh St. and Avenue A.

Another frequent subject of the blog was L.E.S. Jewels, known for dropping his pants while blocking traffic and reaching inside the window of a local bar and taking pitchers of alcohol from the crowds of drinkers.

Some of Bob’s most popular posts involved Jewels’ wedding to local artist Amy Sanchez in 2007.

At a memorial gathering Tuesday night, Jewels looked somber.

“Bob had the biggest heart of anybody in the neighborhood,” Jewels said, adding that he had now been sober for 70 days. “He always had a dollar if I needed a drink or a coffee. Bob recorded parts of my life that I couldn’t remember.”

Neither More Nor Less won the Village Voice “Best Personal Blog” award last year.

If you wanted to find Bob, you headed to Ray’s on Avenue A where he could be found almost any time of day or night. As if he was a good-natured gravitational field, people found themselves drawn to Bob for his wit, wisdom, compassion and, most of all, his conversation.

Bob never refused to give a handout when asked for change, often pulling a dollar from his jeans pocket. If you were having a private conversation with him and someone walked by, they could join in without hesitation.

Bob rarely displayed anger, but when he did, it was ignited by those who denied or were ignorant of facts and science.

He often derided the 9/11 conspiracy theorists who would claim the impossibility of steel melting or buildings collapsing. Bob would recite the exact temperature steel melts at (2,500 degrees Fahrenheit) and launch into an informed discourse about structural integrity, load-bearing weights and modern building methods.

One night when asked about global-warming theories, Bob barked, “Al Gore is a clown!” but then calmly listed and disproved, point by point, many of the theories Gore put forth in his book and film, “An Inconvenient Truth.”

Several months ago, organizers of the Occupy Wall Street movement began a series of Saturday-night planning meetings by the Hare Krishna tree in Tompkins Square Park. At their first meeting, Bob started taking photos, whereupon several people told him he had to stop. Bob gave them a brief lecture on First Amendment protections and the freedom afforded those in public spaces. He declined to educate them on the wisdom of holding sensitive meetings in the middle of a public park.

At another meeting last month, Bob stood watching the same crowd with Rob Hollander, founder of Save the Lower East Side.

“Bob was the most interesting conversationalist in the Lower East Side, knowledgeable on so many fronts, whether the history of the Napoleonic occupation of Egypt or the technological novelties of the Cooper Square construction,” Hollander said.

“He maintained an interest in several sciences well beyond engineering. An extraordinarily compassionate man toward ordinary folk, he reviled the corporate moneymakers and protected the people around him that he documented. He was so much more than just a great photographer.”

Bob’s most recent cause, and success, was to save one of the area’s longest-running and favorite haunts, Ray’s. Bob remembered the 1970s when Ray’s was a demilitarized zone of sorts. Cops and miscreants would meet for a drink or a smoke in this neutral space before returning to the mean streets.

A small storefront best known for egg creams, Belgian fries and the latest Polish newspapers, Ray was now deeply in debt and on the brink of closing.

Once Bob began highlighting Ray’s plight on the blog, mainstream media soon followed and a David vs. Goliath storyline was born.

Fundraisers were held, volunteers came to clean the old floors and a delivery service was started to increase sales.

“I’m very upset about Bob,” Ray said after hearing the news on Saturday night. “I have tears coming down every minute. It’s a big loss. Without Bob, something’s missing.” Ray has placed Power’s mosaic plaque bearing Bob’s name in his front window.

Most recently, Bob’s concerns turned to his own future.

“A lot of the time it was struggling and how to make a living, and these young people with their cut-rate photography,” his brother Leslie said.

Bob’s back problem worsened, so much that last year he spent several weeks in the hospital.

But the streets still beckoned. On Sat., Sept. 24, Bob made his way Downtown to the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Zuccotti Park. He walked with hundreds of marchers all the way up to Union Square, where police began netting the demonstrators. Mass arrests followed. When the nearly 100 arrestees were carted off and the crowd dispersed, Bob went by subway back down to the encampment, staying until almost midnight, continuing to document the scene.

The next day he walked into Ray’s. Eyeing a front-page news photo of a young woman being arrested by a swarm of police, Bob pointed to the picture and said, “I got that on video!” His final blog post was a one-minute interview with a woman who was pepper-sprayed.

Bob’s close friend Mike is, like most, inconsolable.

“After childhood I never had a best friend,” Mike said. “There was a point in time we’d spend hours together and for years I saw him every day.

“I may stop coming to the East Village,” Mike continued. “The only reason I came by is to hang out with him like the old days. Now there are no more old days.”

“Bob always had your back,” said Krissy Hursh, his friend and neighbor for 20 years. Hursh cried several times while speaking at Tuesday’s memorial. “If you needed someone to talk to, if you needed a friend, you’d stop by Ray’s and talk to Bob.”

Another old friend, “Avenue A” Jay Pappas was one of many addressing the crowd of Bob’s friends Tuesday night.

“The smaller you were, the more he cared about you,” he said. “He was a rock with feet.”

Teenager Aiyana Knauer met Bob recently and cherished their conversations.

“Bob cared about the stories of people that other people would have forgotten,” she said.

“He was the Weegee of Avenue A,” declared John Penley, a longtime East Village photographer and activist.

“ ‘Bigger than life’ is a cliché,” said Chris Flash, publisher of The Shadow newspaper, “but I can say that about Bob and he would roll his eyes if he heard that.”

“I see Bob over the years complaining about this or that,” Bob’s brother, Leslie, said on Tuesday. “Maybe it’s because he could see what was wrong. He wanted to engage people.”

Bob Arihood was a true Renaissance man in every sense. His passing is an incalculable loss to the East Village and to all the lives he touched.

The 19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time.”

Bob’s body was flown to Indianapolis on Wednesday and driven 65 miles to Lafayette. Sunday night there will be a visitation and on Monday Bob Arihood will be buried next to his parents.

There are plans to preserve his photographic archive in one location after his estate is settled.

Friends plan to gather on Saturday afternoon at 2 p.m. in Tompkins Square Park and at the 6 & B Garden for a final sendoff.

The Lower Eastside Girls Club is in the running for a $50,000 award if it wins the DVF Foundation’s “People’s Voice” online vote, which started Monday. Actress Rosario Dawson nominated the club for the competition. Four other organizations are also on the ballot — though these are national groups, unlike the girls club, based in New York’s own East Village. Voters can also enter their names to win a free trip to New York City and a DVF (Diane von Furstenberg) shopping spree — only one person will win. (If a New York City resident wins, hopefully she or he will get some other perk since no travel is required.)

To vote for the girls club, go to http://www.thevillager.com/villager_406/voteforlyn.html, and click on the “Vote for Lyn” button above the YouTube video of Lyn Pentecost, the girls club’s director.

The DVF Awards were created in 2010 by von Furstenberg and the Diller-von Furstenberg Family Foundation to recognize and support women who are using their resources, commitment and visibility to transform the lives of other women. Honorees receive $50,000 in support of the nonprofit, 501c-3 organization with whom they are affiliated to further their work. The last day of voting is Feb. 15.

If the girls club wins, the money will go toward construction of their new Avenue D clubhouse and for their continued employment of local teenagers, Pentecost said.

“It’s really a vote for localization and a sustainable community,” she said. “It’s about keeping it all in the neighborhood.”

Rosie Mendez

More than three years after City Councilmember Rosie Mendez originally introduced the Asthma-Free Housing Act, significant parts of the legislation were incorporated in a proposed amendment to the New York City Safe Housing Act, which was passed by the City Council earlier this month on Wed., Jan. 5.

The new law designates asthma triggers — including mold conditions and vermin infestation — and makes the remediation requirements more stringent.

“With this legislation, we acknowledge that mold and rodent infestation — housing violations that make a major contribution to the asthma epidemic in New York City — are just as serious as other major code infractions,” Mendez said. “I am very pleased that we have expanded the Safe Housing Act to include these asthma triggers, so we can better understand their health impact on families that live in substandard housing.”

The legislation expands the 2007 act that identifies some of the city’s most distressed residential buildings and establishes direct measures to bring the buildings up to code.

Mendez represents the Second Council District, which includes the East Village.