May Create Double Terrorist Target

For years, Community Board 4 has been involved in the planning and design of a state-of-the-art commuter ferry terminal on Pier 79, at the end of West 39th Street. Following the attack on the World Trade Center, when ferries were the only way home for thousands of commuters stranded in Manhattan, a new terminal and increased ferry service have seemed that much more important. But another post-9/11 reality has recently raised some concerns about the location of this Hudson River terminal.

The glass pavilion of the six-slip, $30 million terminal will wrap around two ventilation shafts for the Lincoln Tunnel, an entrée to Manhattan that has the dubious honor of consistently topping the city's short list of potential terrorist targets. And at Board 4's December meeting, members questioned the wisdom of increasing the incentive for would-be terrorists by piling another public-transportation hub on top of what is already one of Manhattan's infrastructure lifelines.

"The fact that we're now providing [terrorists] with a double target … makes it a more valuable target," board member Frank Eadie said at the meeting. The effects of an attack would be greatly magnified, he explained: "You basically shut down the ferry service, which is what kept the city going after 9/11, and you take out a tunnel shaft."

The new West Midtown Ferry Terminal is part of a $300 million citywide ferry project that also includes the renovation of the Staten Island Ferry's Whitehall and St. George terminals, a new floating terminal at the World Financial Center, and a new Port Imperial Intermodal Ferry Terminal on the Hudson River in Weehawken, N.J. Although planning for this project was in place long before 9/11, the key role that ferries played in evacuating downtown on the day of the attacks-and the fact that daily ferry ridership has nearly doubled, from 32,000 to 55,000, with the loss of the World Trade Center PATH line-have given the project added impetus.

Construction on the new West Midtown Ferry Terminal is slated to begin in the middle of 2003. Once completed, half of its slips will be operated by the Imperatore family's ferry empire, NY Waterway. Since federal dollars are the primary source of funding, the terminal will be subject to strict competition regulations, which means that NY Waterway will be required to open the remaining slips to other operators. In addition, the company will be forced to close down its existing Port Imperial ferry terminal, on Pier 78 at 38th Street, in order to avoid competing with the new, federally funded facility, which will be twice as large.

Designed by William Nicholas Bodouva & Associates, the terminal will have a glass-enclosed main waiting room, curving vestibules on either side of the 145-foot Lincoln Tunnel ventilator shafts, and an elevated walkway for pedestrians over the ferry slips.

"Just about everything about this ferry terminal has met with our approval," John Doswell, co-chair of Board 4's waterfront and parks committee, told board members. However, concern about the terminal hugging the Lincoln Tunnel ventilator shafts prompted Mr. Doswell's committee to draft a letter asking the federal and state agencies involved in planning the project to consider the security issue.

The letter also suggested an alternate location for the new terminal: at West 34th Street, where a temporary terminal might be built in conjunction with an Olympic stadium on the West Side railyards. Since Board 4 thus far hasn't taken a formal position on the stadium, however, members were hesitant to send a letter favoring a stadium ferry, since it might give the appearance of favoring the stadium by association.

Other Board 4 members thought that the piggybacking of the shafts and the terminal was just par for the course on a crowded island. "The Holland Tunnel shaft is on a public pier," board member Joe Restuccia told the board. "This is a dense city, with lots of things right next to each other." Still others thought the worrying should be left to the powers that be, such as the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. "If anybody's acting paranoid after 9/11, they are," said board member Ed Kirkland, referring to the P.A., "and they're not concerned about [this terminal]."

The Port Authority, which operates the Lincoln Tunnel, says it has security in hand. "There has been additional security put in place since 9/11, and we believe that's adequate," Port Authority spokesman Steve Coleman told The Observer. "But we can't talk about the specifics."

After lengthy debate, Board 4 scrapped its letter and sent it back to committee for a rewrite. However, a rewrite has since been abandoned, since the period for public comment on the project has come to a close, and also because the board feels comfortable that the agencies in charge are aware of the potential problem. "Other people have written letters," Mr. Doswell told The Observer. "I know it's been brought to their attention."

Meanwhile, the city's Economic Development Corporation, which is spearheading the citywide ferry project, will be putting the additional post-9/11 federal funding available for terminal security to use. "We're installing security cameras and vehicle barriers and, in addition to that, we're working with a security adviser to advise us on what else we should be doing at that terminal, Whitehall and the new ferry landing on the East River," E.D.C. spokeswoman Janel Patterson told The Observer.

-Karina Lahni

Jan. 15: Board 8, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, 430 East 67th Street, 7 p.m., 758-4340.

Jan. 16: Board 9, Community Board Office, 565 West 125th Street, 6:30 p.m., 864-6200.

Jan. 21: Board 1, St. John's University, 101 Murray Street, 6 p.m., 442-5050; Board 11, La Guardia House, 307 East 116th Street, 6:30 p.m., 831-8929.

To Hold Lottery for Admission

When, in January 2001, Columbia University announced its plans to construct a new K-8 private school for the children of its faculty and staff, a firestorm was set off between the university and Morningside Heights residents. Now, nearly a year after the groundbreaking for the building on 110th Street and Broadway, the storm has yet to subside.

In the latest chapter of the saga between the community and Columbia University, Community Board 7 heard testimony on Nov. 6 from a Columbia representative about the fall 2003 opening of the school. During her presentation, Marcia Sells, of the university's administrative planning department, outlined plans for a lottery system which the school will implement to select approximately 150 students (half of the projected initial student body of 300) from non-university-affiliated families living in School Districts 3 and 5.

The School at Columbia University, as it is called, was initially designed to attract new faculty who might otherwise be reluctant to relocate their children to Manhattan, by promising them both top-notch elementary schooling and homes in the building's new housing units. Among some of the more outspoken opponents of the school has been City Council member Phil Reed, who says it represents an elitist move to suck life out of the local public-school system. Already upset by the displacement of various retail outlets on the ground floor, residents have demanded that Board 7 negotiate a less exclusive use of the new building.

Community unrest gave birth to the Board 7–supervised lottery system, which Columbia says it will carry out in two phases: an initial drawing on Dec. 3, and-to ensure that the community has ample time to hear about the program-a later one at a date still to be determined. The university is currently launching a widespread advertising campaign to get the word out: placing newspaper ads, disseminating flyers, alerting superintendents and principals in School Districts 3 and 5, informing local elected officials and holding community forums.

The lucky winners will have an "informal interview" with the school that, according to Ms. Sells, will include no I.Q. or other intelligence test, and will only be used to determine that "this is the right school for them"-meaning to make sure there isn't any "really serious developmental concern." Upon admission, financial aid will be available for the $22,000-a-year school. Columbia children attend at a discounted rate.

But promises of community access are little reassurance for 110th Street Block Association member Carolyn Birden, who told The Observer that she believed, judging from past experience, that "private schools are very careful to select students who will be successful, and that means that a lot of students with disabilities or behavior problems will be shut out. That's how private schools maintain their great stats," continued Ms. Birden. "They just dump anybody with any problems at all into the public system."

"[Columbia's] initial approach was not consistent with our agreement," Board 7 chairman Larry Horowitz said of the lottery system, when contacted by The Observer . "The mechanics of [the lottery] were not accomplishing what we expected them to accomplish. We got into discussions with [Columbia], and they have reiterated their commitment to abide by the agreement, and they are working with our committee to get our input, primarily on outreach efforts and the mechanics of the lottery.

"It's a work in progress, and it's complex," Mr. Horowitz continued, pointing to the wrinkle of having a new president at Columbia (Lee Bollinger) step in this year. "We've been having ongoing discussions [with the new administration], and they are available and forthcoming with us. Personally, I think we're going to get there."

-Benjamin Ryan

City Plans to Wall In Segment of Ninth Avenue

When residents and business owners in the meat-packing district learned that the Third Water Tunnel-the largest capital project in the Western Hemisphere-was to set up a construction site for one of its water shafts off Ninth Avenue at 13th Street, they expected some hassles: 450-ton digging devices called "moles," noise, congestion, mountains of bedrock, dynamite. What they didn't expect was an announcement by the city's Department of Environmental Protection that it was planning to wall off half of Ninth Avenue for an entire block with 12 feet of concrete for four years.

"We don't understand how the D.E.P. would let that happen and disturb an entire neighborhood," Community Board 2 member Carol Yankay told The Observer .

A decade ago, the city's plan was to locate the construction area for the 600-foot-deep shaft to the Third Water Tunnel in a parking lot at what is now 18 Ninth Avenue. But Edison Parking Corporation, the lot's owner, fought off the city's attempts to acquire the property in the mid-90's, and as the price tag rose to $20 million, the city threw in the towel. Edison instead sold the lot to Richard Born, developer of the Mercer and Chambers hotels. Mr. Born entered into a 99-year lease on the property with Long Island City developer Michael Achenbaum, of WSA Management Ltd., who has recently begun construction on a 13-story hotel on the site.

In need of a construction area, the city's D.E.P., which is building the tunnel, is now eyeing the eastern half of Ninth Avenue and part of the eastern sidewalk between 13th and Gansevoort streets. The area has been approved by the city's Department of Transportation and will be cordoned off with the concrete wall starting some time in 2004, when the excavation is slated to commence (when the underground shaft is completed, the street above will be cleared).

A back-up for the First and Second underground tunnels that currently supply the city's water, the 60-mile long Third Water Tunnel-once compared in scope by former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to an underground Great Wall of China-has been under construction since 1970 and will link all five boroughs to the Hillview Reservoir in Yonkers upon its completion, approximately 18 years from now. This past August, ground was broken at 30th Street and 10th Avenue for the nine-mile Manhattan leg, a U-shape that starts at West 60th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, goes down the West Side to the Holland Tunnel, and heads north up the East Side.

The shaft at Ninth Avenue and 13th Street is one of nine planned for Manhattan that will bring water from the Third Water Tunnel, buried 60 stories deep in bedrock, up to consumers. But its location has become a point of contention, with neighbors balking at the proposed four-year blockade of Ninth Avenue. The concerns, as outlined in a letter to the D.E.P. from Community Board 4 (the site is located in Board 2's district, but the joint 14th Street Area Committee of Board 2 and neighboring Board 4 has been handling some of the related issues), include traffic obstruction-particularly of the M11 bus line-and cutting off a key loading zone for meat-packers and other area businesses.

"It would be horrifying!" said Carla Krasner, co-proprietor of Dufour Pastry Kitchens on Ninth Avenue at 13th Street, speaking to The Observer . Dufour supplies handmade hors d'oeuvres to hotels and gourmet shops like Zabar's and Balducci's and loads up its trucks along Ninth Avenue, where the proposed concrete wall will go up. "I don't know how we're going to schlep the goods down the cobblestones" to an alternate loading zone, said Ms. Kransner.

For now, Board 2 is continuing to lobby the Mayor's office to keep the dig off Ninth Avenue, potentially, they say, by acquiring the hotel site through eminent domain or by negotiating a deal with Mr. Achenbaum-whose construction permit has been granted and who broke ground in September-to delay his development until the completion of the excavation. But according to D.E.P. spokesman Charles Sturcken, the city is not considering a purchase. "If we don't have to, we don't want to acquire property," he told The Observer. "We'd rather use the public space for a temporary time … we definitely have a right to be on Ninth Avenue, and that's where we're going."

Failing city intervention, the community hopes that Mr. Achenbaum himself will have a change of heart and hold off on his project, given the logistical complications of a luxury hotel co-existing with a major excavation. The hotel, to be named the Gansevoort and completed by the end of 2003, was designed by architect Stephen Jacobs, whose previous projects include the boutique hotels Library and Giraffe. "If the city does not pull this permit, there will be a [13]-story hotel there with its front door facing a concrete wall," Board 4 member Tom Lunke told The Observer . "So I don't think that's going to be attractive to a high-end hotel." Mr. Achenbaum's spokeswoman had no immediate comment.

-Karina Lahni

Nov. 13: Board 6, New York University Medical Center, 550 First Avenue, Classroom A, 7 p.m., 319-3750.

Nov. 14: Board 5, Fashion Institute of Technology, 27th Street and Eighth Avenue, Building A, eighth floor, 6 p.m., 465-0907.

Nov. 19: Board 11, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Stern Auditorium, 1468 Madison Avenue, second floor, 6:30 p.m., 831-8929; Board 1, Seaman's Church Institute, 241 Water Street, 6 p.m., 442-5050; Board 3, P.S. 20, 166 Essex Street, 6:30 p.m., 533-5300.

Andy Warhol, who used to dress the windows at Lord & Taylor before becoming the poster child of the Pop Art revolution, once made the observation that "when you think about it, department stores are kind of like museums."

With this casual remark, Warhol foreshadowed the emergence of today's culture of mass consumption, in which boy bands are created, packaged and marketed with the efficiency of an assembly line, and every museum has an obligatory museum-store tacked on to propel dedicated consumers toward the manifest destiny of our time: a van Gogh on every mug.

But at 150-154 West 17th Street, culture appears to be reclaiming some lost territory from the omnipresent forces of commerce. The building there, which is famous for having housed Barneys' women's store from 1986 until 1998, is about to evolve into a Himalayan art museum, lending a different kind of prophetic weight to Warhol's pronouncement.

And that pronouncement, quoted by Lisa Schubert, director of the future Rubin Museum of Art, was used to open the discussion of the forthcoming museum's plans at the Community Board 4 meeting on July 24. The museum-which aims to begin construction on the former Barneys site within the next several months and hopes to open in about a year and a half with 20,000 square feet of gallery space-came before the board to present its plans and discuss a zoning variance it might need to raise the ceiling in the rear of the building by 10 feet, in order to have adequate display room for some of its larger pieces.

The museum, which purchased the six-story converted apartment building at auction, plans to retain many of the existing architectural elements, most importantly its pièce de résistance : a spiral staircase inside the six-floor atrium. The stairs and atrium, conceived by a design team that included renowned European designer Andrée Putman, were installed during the site's metamorphosis from brownstone apartments to Barneys.

The current conversion from former department store (the space has remained vacant since Barneys' departure) to museum is being handled by Richard Blinder, a partner in Beyer, Blinder, Belle, the architectural firm famous for its 1998 restoration of the Grand Central Terminal. Mr. Blinder plans to create a large, uncluttered space at the entrance, using stone floors and wood elements to invoke a "sea of tranquillity" to help the visitors' transition from manic city streets to a "peaceful, Tibetan … soothing" atmosphere. Once duly decompressed, visitors can climb the spiral staircase-which, museum press material explains, will serve "as a metaphor for traversing the levels of meaning in Himalayan art"-to view the works on display around the atrium on the five floors above. The collection, which boasts more than 1,200 paintings, sculptures and ritual objects from countries such as Bhutan, Nepal and Tibet, was started 25 years ago by the museum's creators, Donald and Shelley Rubin, the founders of a large managed health-care company named Multiplan.

Board 4 was happy to welcome the Rubin Museum of Art into the neighborhood, requesting only that residents be given a discount on the admission price, an idea to which Ms. Schubert appeared amenable. "I'm delighted that these splendid pieces of world art will be available to West Side art lovers," board member Adam Honigman told The Observer . "I only hope that discounted admission will be made available to low-income [families], students and seniors who live in our area."

Meanwhile, as Barneys' former self on West 17th Street is discovering its spiritual side, its present-day incarnation on Madison Avenue is, well, over it. Barneys' creative director and The Observer 's resident fashion guru, Simon Doonan, says he dabbled with the Zen vibe a few years ago, but has since transcended it and has no plans for rebirth anytime soon. " AbFab was the nail in the coffin of the New Age trend. It sort of made the marriage of New Age and fashion really ridiculous," he told The Observer , referring to AbFab anti-heroine Eddy's brief foray into meditative chanting. Barneys is about "retail and glamour and style and making people look good," Mr. Doonan continued. "We wouldn't presume to focus on their spiritual lives. Our mantra at Barneys is … we chant, but we're chanting: 'Taste, luxury, humor!'"

-Karina Lahni

Aug. 6: Board 3, Jasa/Green Residence, 200 East Fifth Street, 6:30 p.m., 533-5300.

To Overcome 'Gatien Curse'

Call it the "Gatien curse," for there are few names more liable to put a community board on the warpath than that of Peter Gatien, the notorious former owner of the nightclubs Tunnel and Limelight, who was forced out of business by a multitude of legal troubles, including drug charges.

Most recently, the curse descended upon nightclub operators Callin Fortis and Ken Barilich when, on March 24, the New York Post 's Page Six reported that the two, in league with Mr. Gatien, were planning to open a New York branch of Crobar, the hot night spot that Messrs. Fortis and Barilich operate in Miami and Chicago. The prospect of a Gatien operation taking root once more in their backyard-on West 28th Street-prompted outraged Chelsea residents to raise alarms with their local community board, which was to vote on Crobar's liquor-license application at their May 1 meeting.

Aware that they were heading into the eye of a bureaucratic storm, Crobar brought out the big guns, launching a public-relations campaign of epic proportions.

Led by Crobar's community and government liaison, James Capalino, who has represented hotelier Ian Schrager and run two successful Mayoral races for Ed Koch, the campaign has included a slick brochure, consistent public denials of Mr. Gatien's involvement with Crobar, and the contention that the Page Six item was planted by a malicious competitor.

The principals of Crobar, along with their traffic and security experts, made all the usual promises to Chelsea's Board 4 at the May 1 meeting. With their arrival, they said, would come their own fleet of security cars, which would be employed to patrol the neighborhood. The crowds outside the club-which will make its New York debut in a former prop studio at 530 West 28th Street, between 10th and 11th avenues-would be carefully managed, and the patrons would not cause traffic problems. And, they promised, they would do everything in their power to keep drugs out. Furthermore, Mr. Capalino contended, his new club would become an asset to the neighborhood; Crobar is a well-run operation that "raises the bar" for competing nightclubs, he told The Observer .

In addition, a procession of character witnesses were paraded into the meeting to tout Messrs. Fortis and Barilich's professionalism, their devotion to community and their integrity. One of those witnesses was the former two-term mayor of Miami Beach, Neisen Kasdin, who credited the dynamic duo with lifting the quality of Miami Beach's nightlife and with operating virtually complaint-free.

Crobar's principals went on to emphasize their community involvement, noting their numerous charitable affiliations. They explained that while the club will occupy the bottom two floors of the building, the top two floors will house a performance space, an art gallery and-this was the kicker-teaching space for the Tibet Center.

So it was only fitting that the coup

de grâce in Crobar's community-

relations campaign was delivered by a man of the cloth. The venerable Nicholas Vreeland, director of the

Tibet Center on East 31st Street, approached the microphone wrapped in a burgundy robe, his hair closely shorn, to thank Crobar for making the space available at a reasonable cost. "I'm the spiritual side of Crobar," he introduced himself lightheartedly.

After that, the opposition was toast.

A handful of residents and the attorney representing a large commercial-property owner on the block raised objections to the size of the club, which will have the capacity to entertain approximately 1,300 revelers each night. Resident Laine Conklin asked the board to oppose Crobar's liquor license and, if not, to impose strict regulations on Crobar-preferably some kind of performance bond, where the club would be subject to serious sanctions should it cause trouble in the neighborhood. "There have been many promises tonight," Ms. Conklin told the board. "I would love to believe them." But ultimately, "what are the guidelines?" she asked.

The guidelines imposed by Board 4-which voted to recommend that the New York State Liquor Authority grant Crobar's liquor license-included that the club provide street-cleaning services and that it hire as many of its estimated 120 employees from the neighborhood as possible.

Despite a handful of dissenters, the majority of the board was swayed. "I was going to vote against this because I didn't think they had the experience, and [then there was] the whole Gatien thing," board member Kevin Kossi told the board before announcing his intention to greenlight Crobar.

For board member Jennifer Byron, it was the Tibetans who tipped the scale. "If the Buddhist center has agreed to take a space in the building, come on! " she urged the board. "This is an internationally recognized religious community that is living in exile. If these people think that they can co-exist with [Crobar], then there isn't anything else to be said."

-Karina Lahni

May 8: Board 6, New York University Medical Center, 550 First Avenue, Classroom A, 7 p.m., 319-3750.

May 9: Board 5, Parsons School of Design, 560 Seventh Avenue, 6 p.m., 465-0907.

If a law that tightens restrictions on adult-entertainment establishments, put on the books last fall by outgoing Mayor Rudy Giuliani, finally does take effect, strip clubs and other purveyors of naughty diversions may be going the way of the art galleries: to West Chelsea. At least that's where Scores, the topless bar preferred by such aficionados of the bosom as radio personality Howard Stern, is headed.

Despite the objections of local businesses who came before Community Board 4 on March 6, the board went ahead and voted unanimously to recommend that the New York State Liquor Authority approve Scores' liquor license for its new digs in the neighborhood. "It was a strategic vote," Board 4 district manager Anthony Borelli told The Observer .

While a 1998 Giuliani administration dictum banished all X-rated businesses to manufacturing zones, Scores, thanks to a loophole in the law, has remained at its East 60th Street location. But that loophole (allowing a business to operate in a commercial or residential neighborhood if no more than 40 percent of its floor space is dedicated to prurient pursuits) would be tightened Giuliani's law goes through.

Litigation from X-rated shops or action from the Bloomberg administration-which, thus far, has avoided taking a position on the matter-could prevent the law from going into effect. If it does, though, Board 4's district-thanks to the proud industrial heritage of Hell's Kitchen and Chelsea-has lots of manufacturing zone to offer to sexy businesses seeking refuge. Mr. Borelli told The Observer that he's already fielded calls from representatives of adult-entertainment establishments scoping out the neighborhood.

But even within manufacturing districts, the zoning imposes limitations, such as prohibiting more than one adult-entertainment establishment within a 500-foot radius. If the strip clubs must come, board members figure that Scores-whose dancers don't bare it all, and whose $700 bottles of wine attract a well-heeled clientele-isn't the worst of them. If Scores lays claim to the area first, it could keep out other, raunchier operations.

"Personally, I've been there," board member Lance Dashefsky confessed. "It's a very high-class establishment-I think it's the classiest," he continued, before checking himself: "Not that I surveyed all of them."

In addition to sleazier adult fare, board members hope that Scores-which operates under a company, aptly named Go West Entertainment, that has already signed a 20-year lease on a 30,000-square-foot defunct parking garage at 533-535 West 28th Street-might help fend off an anticipated liquor-license application for a large nightclub on the same block between 10th and 11th avenues. "One of the advantages of putting [Scores] in is that it's going to make it more difficult for the disco to come in," said board member Pat Rogers.

Despite the strategic advantages of supporting Scores, there were some objections. "No matter how wonderful your establishment is, how clean … when the patrons leave the establishment with a woody, they're going to want it taken care of," said board member Adam Honigman, by way of expressing his fears that the club may foster prostitution or otherwise compromise the security of the neighborhood.

Other complaints came from area property owners concerned that the presence of a strip club will lower the value of their real estate. Cornell DeWitt, proprietor of the eponymous art gallery on 27th Street, voiced his fears that Scores' arrival will halt the steady northwest march of galleries, boutiques and other businesses that have been reviving the far reaches of Chelsea. "It's a matter of association," Mr. DeWitt told the board. Those businesses "don't want to be in the same neighborhood as an establishment like Scores."

For its part, Scores isn't exactly thrilled about its new home, either. "We're not going there by choice," Scores consultant John Neilson told The Observer . "This is not a pretty street," he continued, pointing out the profusion of sanitation trucks on the block, dilapidated sidewalks and the neighboring scrap yard. "Do you think we want to be there?"

Scores plans to spend approximately $5 million to convert the building and will be ready to open in Chelsea as early as November. Mr. Neilson told The Observer that the East 60th Street location is slated to close when (and if) the law takes effect this fall-or else will shut its doors when its lease expires in September 2003.

For its Chelsea location, the club has agreed to a number of stipulations from Board 4, such as planting trees and installing street lights in front of its new building, providing security patrols and meeting regularly with community representatives to deal with any problems. "The tenants who are there," Mr. Neilson told The Observer , "have not made any attempt to clean up the street. We're the people spending the money and upgrading the neighborhood."

-Karina Lahni

March 20: Board 8, Lenox Hill Hospital, 100 East 77th Street, auditorium, 7 p.m., 758-4340.

March 21: Board 2, St. Vincent's Hospital, 170 West 12th Street, Cronin Auditorium, 10th floor, 6:30 p.m., 979-2272; Board 9: 565 West 125th Street, 6:30 p.m., 864-6200.

March 26: Board 3, P.S. 20, 166 Essex Street, auditorium, 6:30 p.m., 533-5300; Board 12, Milstein Hospital, 177 Fort Washington Avenue, 7 p.m., 585-8500.

–Michael Lewis, Liar's Poker

The Wall Street of the 1980's still holds mythic status in the American collective memory. Most of us knew of it only through what we'd heard and read, but that only served to make its symbolism more powerful; we latched onto the images and buzzwords of Wall Street–trading floors, hostile takeovers, Milken–and allowed them to embody the greed of the decade.

A few fictional accounts helped us along –Bonfire of the Vanities comes to mind, of course, and that Oliver Stone picture. But for many, the quintessential textbook is Michael Lewis' Liar's Poker . A runaway best-seller, Mr. Lewis' 1989 memoir captured, exhilarated–and disgusted–a generation. And it was all the more remarkable because it was true. Mr. Lewis had worked on the bond-trading desk at Salomon Brothers, and he'd played the game of risk for which the book is named.

Twelve years later, things are very different on Wall Street. The greed is still there; much of the wildness, however, is gone. Things have gone solemn, corporate.

But in a small office uptown, a few bored young refugees from the Street, pining after the financial culture described in Mr. Lewis' book, are trying to inject their old haunts with some 80's nostalgia. They want to reintroduce Liar's Poker to Wall Street, to get back to the days of bidding and bluffing, the days when confidence and knowledge–not computers–made the money. That they're doing this via the Internet may or may not be ironic.

"Wall Street has changed substantially [since the publication of the book]," said Nick Coleman, whose one-bedroom apartment in Murray Hill also serves as the office for his company NoPay2Play.com. He says it in such a way as to make clear that he does not like those changes. Although Mr. Coleman says that "they'll still cut your head off for a dollar," he unabashedly laments the disappearance of what he calls Wall Street's "old-boy network."

Mr. Coleman, 25, is in a position to know. His father worked his way up from gofer to senior managing director at Bear Stearns, which is where Mr. Coleman went to work after graduating from Providence College in 1997. He began as a summer intern, then became a salesman in the municipal-bond department, where his father had spent most of his career (Mr. Coleman claims that, if any old-boy network is left on Wall Street, it's in municipal bonds), and finally ended up in private client services. But he didn't like it. The Wall Street that Mr. Coleman entered was not his father's Wall Street, nor was it that of Mr. Lewis. It was an anonymous, equities-dominated affair, and it didn't hold his interest.

"Back then [when Liar's Poker was written], the bond markets made it much more exciting," said Mr. Coleman, who grew up on the Upper East Side and exudes an easy, patrician air. "It was dominated by personalities …. It was an old-boy network." It was a place where the grimmest assignment, as Mr. Lewis pointed out, was "Equities in Dallas," and where enthusiastic traders came to work each day "ready to bite the ass off a bear."

Justin Farley, Mr. Coleman's partner, enthusiastically agreed: "The margins were much larger. Meriwether and those guys would buy a bond from somebody in California for $80 and turn around and sell it to someone in New Jersey for $83 …. Now it's just about institutional traders."

So last September, Mr. Coleman left Bear Stearns with the hope–by then already a bit outdated–of starting an Internet company. What he had in mind was a "gaming Web site," and although the Nasdaq had by that point been on the decline for several months, he was able to gather enough seed money from family, friends and a few private investors to launch NoPay2Play (he says that he is about to close a second round of funding).

Mr. Coleman, a professed lover of card and numbers games of all sorts, began the Web site in a nostalgic frame of mind: just as he was disillusioned by the new Wall Street, so was he fed up with the complex, graphics-heavy video games preferred by the Internet generation of yuppies. So members of NoPay2Play are offered, most prominently, old standbys, albeit in electronic form: roulette, blackjack, craps, poker. There is also plenty of sports-related stuff to fill out the site's suggestive gambling ethos–"NoPay2Play are not affiliated with, nor do we advocate, gambling," Mr. Coleman said, in his best attempt at solemnity.

Several months ago, Mr. Coleman had the idea of making a more explicit play to his former colleagues on the Street. He and Mr. Farley, who worked as an analyst at Prudential Securities and a consultant at Deloitte & Touche before joining his college friend, took another look at one of their favorite books and decided that it was time to get people playing Liar's Poker again. They hired a couple of programmers from IBM and developed a 21st-century version of the dollar-bill-based game. It is downloaded, but takes place via Instant Messenger–which gives it an advantage over other online Liar's Poker offerings, because it manages to steer clear of the ban on gaming sites enforced at most large Wall Street firms.

The object of Liar's Poker is to call your opponents' bluff before they call yours. Each player has a dollar bill with eight serial numbers. The players take turns "bidding" based on their assessment of what the other players hold. For example, a bidder will call "three fives," meaning he–it's usually "he"–believes there are at least three fives among the combined serial numbers on all of the players' dollar bills.

The bid builds with each round. As the numbers mount and the bidding becomes more aggressive, the calls become less likely, and players up the ante until everyone decides to call one player's bluff. The winner gets everyone's money and, back in the old days, respect.

In the Wall Street of the 1980's, a good Liar's Poker player was a good bond trader, and a good bond trader or salesman was what everyone wanted to be: a Big Swinging Dick.

"The game is sort of emblematic of what goes on in the industry, because it's like chicken," said one bond salesman for a major investment bank. "A lot of the time the question is 'Do I show my hand or not?', and a lot of times that's the issue on the job. There's a semi-macho element to it."

There's also its symbolism as a rite of passage. "It's like smoking cigars," said one equities trader with a major investment bank, who is in his early 30's. "You smoke cigars three years out of college."

Playing Liar's Poker also helps put things into perspective, said the bond salesman. "It's a self-mocking way of downplaying the significance of the real money that's being traded."

To Mr. Coleman and Mr. Farley, offering a cyber version of Liar's Poker is a way of rekindling a fading culture–a mindset caught so effectively in Mr. Lewis' book and now largely absent. The "genius" of Liar's Poker , Mr. Farley said, is that it shows how "back then, if you were smarter, you had the upper hand. You didn't know who was holding what bonds or what positions …. It was like the Wild West in the bond market."

Mr. Farley compared this with today's market, in which all purchases and positions are closely tracked; all is transparent, and much of the art of the trade–of valuing immense numbers of bonds in a matter of seconds, of sizing up rival traders and making margins–is gone.

Mr. Coleman said that he started playing Liar's Poker as a child with his father and brothers. "[My father] would never let us win," he said of those days when he was a student at St. David's. Mr. Coleman has been playing ever since. He insisted, again with an earnest attempt at solemnity, that he never played–nor did he know anyone who played–at Bear Stearns (later he slipped and reminisced about playing against co-workers for lunch). Mr. Coleman, whom one can imagine enjoying Las Vegas, said that the most he's ever played for was "a few hundred dollars."

But what about the rest of Wall Street? Some share Messrs. Lewis, Farley and Coleman's fascination with the game. Others said it is no longer part of the Wall Street ethos.

"I used to carry at least six $1 bills that had six or more of [a] kind in my wallet … only as a joke," said Paul Cherney, who writes a daily market column for S.&P. Market Watch. "It was a passing thing."

"A lot has changed," said Kevin Logan, chief market economist at Dresdner Kleinwort Benson. "Attitudes have changed … things are different. All the big money is being made in stocks now."

Where once it was a ubiquitous presence, a distraction for bond traders in the heat of big trades, Liar's Poker is now more likely to reappear during a late-running Happy Hour. "You might see guys in bars [playing] it," Mr. Logan said.

So why this moment–this solemn, corporate, button-down moment in the culture of Wall Street–to launch a new Internet venture devoted to a vestige of the carefree (some would say careless) 80's? The NoPay2Play partners sounded breezily optimistic. "News of a new start-up" surviving in the current business environment, Mr. Coleman explained in press-release-speak, "adds tremendous value."

But Alex, a programmer and designer who was present in the office, was more practical: "It's bargain-basement time. You can get great discounted rates on services …. There are a lot of people out there dying for a paycheck."

The poor souls who've been recruited to survey elusive Manhattanites in the city's swankier high-rises are running into an obstacle to government efficiency as fearsome as the proverbial Ozark grandma sitting on a porch with a shotgun: the doorman. They're hired to keep outsiders out, and they are nothing if not energetic in fulfilling about their job requirements. Even the outsider flashes a copy of the U.S. Constitution, which authorizes his or her appearance every 10 years.

"You know those pesky doormen," said U.S. Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, whose district includes the Upper East Side. "They don't want to open the door for anyone. We've gone over their heads, to the building managers, sending letters to get the cooperation we need."

If Ms. Maloney seems insistent, it is with good reason. There's a lot at stake in the head count, including the future composition of Ms. Maloney's district. New York State figures to lose at least two congressional seats when new districts are drawn based on the new census. One of those seats very likely will come from New York City, which already is suffering from a lack of clout in Washington. Ms. Maloney's district already bears the scars of a previous redistricting: For years, the Upper East Side congressional district, the so-called Silk Stocking district, was a proud entity unto itself. After the 1990Census, however, the Upper East Side no longer had enough people to justify a single district. Now the Silk Stocking district stretches across the East River to Brooklyn and Queens.

Of course, government spending programs are based on neighborhood census counts, too, so an undercount could lead to a cut in funds for schools, social services and other government institutions.

Apparently, though, residents of the Upper East Side believe that census forms are for the little people–and besides, who among them sends their children to public school?

The doormen who look skeptically at census enumerators bearing ID cards, tote bags and a stack of books are, after all, doing what their employers–the building residents–wish and pay them to do.

"What we do is give [the census enumerators] the number of our office, of the people who take care of the building," said one Upper East Side doorman who asked to remain anonymous. "They send a letter to every tenant; if they respond, they respond. If not, I can't let anyone in. A lady [enumerator] came here once; I said, 'I'm sorry, I can't let you in. You've got to go through our manager, because I don't want to get fired.' If I let her in, then I get fired."

But one census enumerator pointed out that she and her colleagues are not just people off the street looking to gain entrance into posh buildings. "We're not selling anything," said Margaret Chiffriller, a census crew leader for part of the Upper East Side. "It's not a 'no, thank you' situation. We're not selling Girl Scout cookies or newspapers."

Nevertheless, building managers want nobody in the hallways, not even certified government head counters. "It's very simply a matter of security," said John Luciano, an Insignia Residential Group account executive for 301 East 78th Street. "All their careers these men have been told not to let people in. And there's no reason to alter that." While he said he understood that "sometimes you need to remind the people in these higher-end buildings that they need to be counted," Mr. Luciano didn't see the purpose of allowing the enumerators into the building. "All they need to do is bring the paperwork over to the superintendent. He'll place it under the doors of the people the forms specify. And then they'll get it back to the people at the census."

Can't Be Bothered

Or will they? Some civic-minded Upper East Siders wonder whether their neighbors are really interested in helping the government get an accurate head count. "I've met seemingly sophisticated New Yorkers who say that they can't be bothered" with the census, said M. Barry Schneider, chairman of Community Board 8, which covers the Upper East Side. Unlike the black-helicopter crowd, which has expressed its antipathy toward this year's census, the Upper East Side seems less motivated by paranoia than by a sense that it is entitled to pay no attention whatsoever to such a grubby activity.

It's uncertain how many Upper East Side residents have failed to fill out their census forms–those numbers won't be available until next year, when the process is complete. The counting process is expected to continue throughout the summer, at least.

Determined to maintain a nearly impenetrable atmosphere, co-op boards throughout the Upper East Side have given their doormen orders to turn away anyone who isn't expected. "The problems come from co-op boards concerned about privacy," said Julia Plokin, a local U.S. Census Bureau official. "They were afraid that enumerators would come in en masse, wandering through the halls. But we send only one or two people in."

Gregg Carlovich, the resident manager of a co-op at 3 East 69th Street, asserted that there are "a lot of scam artists out there and the doormen are trained to spot and stop them. Some guys pretend to be Con Ed, others delivery people. So you have to be careful." Mr. Carlovich prefers to receive the enumerators himself. "Only about 25 percent of my residents hadn't filled out the form originally, and most of them use their places as pieds-à - terre. When the census people come I let them know that 'this guy's in Florida, this guy D.C.'"

The lack of cooperation from doormen and co-op boards hasn't been entirely unexpected by the Census Bureau. "The denials have not been a surprise," said Lester Farthing, the regional director for the New York office of the bureau. "The Upper East Side presents one of the toughest situations as far as reaching people. You have people making a good salary, a lot of them are gone traveling, some apartments are owned by corporations, many by foreigners who have no clue what is going on."

To be sure, the process has startled some wealthy non-citizens on the Upper East Side. According to Ms. Plokin, the Census Bureau received numerous complaints about odd young people with pencils and pads from residents near the United Nations, where many consular officials and staff live. One diplomat insisted that she was being "stalked by a young man" who said he was from the Census Bureau.

But misunderstandings can't always be blamed for a lack of cooperation with enumerators. While in some cases it is building policy that doormen refer census workers to management, as at 480 Park Avenue and 301 East 78th Street, there are less savory reasons for refusing entry. "Of course race is always a problem," said Mr. Farthing, noting that many census enumerators are members of minority groups. The Census Bureau had tried to head off the problem by recruiting workers from within individual neighborhoods to survey those neighborhoods. Not surprisingly, however, Upper East Side residents weren't interested in working for the U.S. Census. "The Upper East Side produced the lowest result of our recruiting," Mr. Farthing said. "In most every other neighborhood we went eight times [over] our expected recruiting goal. In the Upper East Side we never hit it."

As a result, the enumerators working the Upper East Side don't look especially like most Upper East Side residents. In some cases, creative measures are being used to get into the building. "If an enumerator is denied access, for whatever reason, we try again," Mr. Farthing said. "We can try … three times to get the right combination. We try to match our enumerators to residents by demographic. We look at all the factors."

Even if the doorman can be hurdled, there is some mixing and matching within the building to entice residents to an interview. "If an old man has trouble getting an interview with an apartment we know contains two bachelors, we know to send a beautiful girl the next time," Mr. Farthing said. "Then there's no problem getting an interview. We have some beautiful people working here."

A Fine Mess

By providing for the privacy of their building's residents, doormen actually are breaking a federal law that forbids building employees from barring census workers, under threat of a $500 fine.

"There very well could be fines," said the Census Bureau's Ms. Plokin, "but frankly it's gone unenforced. Our goal is not to make waves, it's to count people. The fine gives us a realistic threat, though. If it were levied, I think people, no matter how well off, would care."

The fact of the matter, however, is that fines have not been used to help open the doors for enumerators. Doormen are still suspicious of the surveyors, dressed in something other than the Upper East Side uniform of entitlement.

And, of course, that's why they're there. Ben Chevat, Ms. Maloney's chief of staff, sympathized with the doormen's plight. "It's the doorman's job to keep people out," he said. "The census has had better luck in neighborhoods other than affluent neighborhoods. The doorman is just another challenge.

"America," he noted, "is a complicated place."