The .org group claims 500-600 members, the .com a thousand. Though accusations of fraud have been made by both sides, the current leaders have long since stopped rationalizing the clubs’ independent existence; it was just something that happened that no one got around to fixing.

“There was never any sense of the two organizations not coming together,” says Jason Weingartner, who headed the state-affiliated group from 2001 to 2003 and is now executive director of the New York Republican County Committee. “It’s a vestige of a past that no one even knows now.”

According to the groups’ leaders, rapprochement is at hand. New presidents elected in 2007 are in merger talks; they have members well-versed in the corporate versions of such maneuvers to sort out the logistics. Neither leader has a timeline, and specifics are scarce. But initiative, at least, is there—with Republican strength at a low ebb, combining forces would make them a more relevant force in helping to get candidates on ballots, raising their profiles, and lobbying for institutional support. It would also make things easier for potential supporters.

“Right now, I think most of them just get confused,” says Daniel Peterson, president of the club that isn’t affiliated with the state party, but which maintains legal ownership of the club’s name and logo. “We are a minority party in the city. The last thing we want to do is confuse people.”

The stumbling block this time, though, won’t be logistics. It probably won’t even be personalities, which kept a wedge between the groups for so long. Rather, it’s competition between visions of what the party should be.

Lynn Krogh, the 28-year-old-leader of the state-affiliated group, has an energy that overwhelms people who aren’t used to her. She’s got a full-time job as communications director for architect Daniel Libeskind, and she’s also running unopposed for the chairmanship of the state Young Republicans, a post once held by Weingartner, who is her fiancée. After emailing for about a week and a half, The Observer only scored a phone interview because she was sick and home from work.

Like Weingartner, Krogh is more party-booster than ideologue. As such, her club doesn’t endorse in primaries, raised no objections to Mayor Michael Bloomberg seeking the Republican line for his reelection campaign, and has no particular policy initiatives. The handful of members gathered at the club’s May Social at Joshua Tree on 46^th Street (“Rad Jams all night long,” read the e-mail announcement. “It's gonna be the Shiz Nits!”) were diverse, young, and professional, focused on drinking, not debating.

Kristine Nalbone—the club’s public relations chair, glowing in a hot pink dress with a small silver cross necklace—became more involved when she was laid off from her PR job, and now helps coordinate club activities like kickball with the Young Democrats and sending cookies to soldiers. She talked of Iraq (“Now it’s just a more friendly and inviting place”) taxes (“nobody’s taxes should be raised in a recession”) and her opposition to universal healthcare (“That’s the beauty of our country—we are not a socialist nation.”) According to Krogh, all those views—and their opposites—are totally welcome.

“I am not one who will ever stand up in front of an organization and tell them what to do,” she said over the phone, hoarse but rapid. “That’s what being Republican is about! We don’t tell people what to do!”

Therein lies the distinction.

“I thought that was kind of silly,” said Peterson, 37, about Krogh’s policy of not endorsing in primary races.

He says that staying true to firm conservative ideals is the only way to rally the party.

“We can be a big tent,” he said. “But we have to stand by our core principles. If we’re going to alienate people from our club, well fine. If you’re not for it, vote Democrat.”

 Peterson’s club took a vehement stance against Bloomberg’s run at the Republican line. His members tend to be on the older side, and often more socially conservative. Peterson himself, a lease administrator at Time Equities, went unregistered for 15 years and has a pronounced libertarian streak, joining the G.O.P. only to run for city council in 2005. The issues he checks off as priorities like a high school textbook’s definition of conservatism: lower taxes, smaller government. Kick-start the economy by cutting the cost of doing business. Hold politicians accountable for things like “lulu accounts,” the stipends city council members receive for heading up committees.

For Krogh, organization comes before issues.

“It is about the ideas,” she said, when pressed for the policies that will carry the party forward. “But at the same time, realistically speaking, you need the people and the organization to back it up.”

And that means just doing whatever it takes to get people involved. Both clubs count the Tax Day Tea Party, which brought out thousands for a vaguely directed exercise in mass frustration, as a success. Weingartner, whose other job is fund-raising consulting for Cathy Blaney Associates, cites the emergence of groups like the Hip Hop Republicans and Conservative Punks—which speak to the African-American and white rocker communities respectively—as the way to bring the same message to more people.

“They don’t look the same, they don’t act the same, they just want the same thing that everyone else wants,” says Weingartner, a Queens native. “They just want to live their own lives, essentially.” While recruiting new candidates to challenge Democrats in races up and down the ticket, Weingartner’s favorites for the upcoming gubernatorial election include some familiar names: Rudy Giuliani—“He has the ability to transform that which was considered untransformable”—and former Congressman Rick Lazio.

Saul Farber, one of the three young candidates that Krogh’s club backed heavily in the November election, is the poster child for her and Weingartner’s gospel of inclusivity. Right after graduating from New York University, the 23-year-old challenged a 38-year incumbent for state Assembly in a district in Chelsea and Murray Hill, managing a respectable 18 percent of the vote in an area where only nine percent of voters are registered Republican. And really, Farber is barely recognizable as a Republican: he’s pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, calls himself a “progressive,” and even dates a Democrat. Only on certain issues, like solving the MTA’s fiscal problems by privatizing the whole system, does he show his conservative stripes.

“It’s time to modernize,” Farber says. “It’s the only way to show the voters of New York that we are not a party of the old guard, a, and b, we’re not archaic in our beliefs.”

 Farber plans to start at New York Law in the fall, and meanwhile is working at a taxi company and plotting his next campaign—a state office, almost certainly in 2010. Now as a Republican district leader, his philosophy of outreach revolves around the least common denominator, or things that all conservatives can agree on. That, he said, should be the approach for merging the two clubs, so long divided. Kind of like merging two synagogues, the Jewish South Floridian analogizes, one Reform and one Conservative.

“It’s important that people see that you have your stuff together, because you need your house in order to really make moves,” Farber said.

Still, the reunification—which would require a fusion of finances and philosophy, as well as (presumably) a single leader—is still just a glimmer in the club presidents’ eyes. Krogh declined to speak in detail about the state of negotiations; if it happens, it happens.

Weingartner took a half-hearted stab at a prediction: “I’m cautiously optimistic,” he said. “Very cautiously optimistic.”

THE OCTAGON: Roosevelt Island sells itself on being part of New York City and yet separate, quarantined from the hurly-burly of Manhattan while still only a subway stop away. Now, it looks like the narrow strip of water has protected some rental real estate from being infected by the market malaise. 

The Octagon opened in 2006 to some fanfare, being a restoration of an 1830s insane asylum, long since closed. With an outdoor swimming pool and family-friendly amenities like a full-time day-care center, the 500-unit luxury building leased up in a jiffy and has been nearly full since.

“For whatever reason, a lot of things are working for us,” said Bruce Becker, president of architect-developer Becker and Becker. Could have to do with the building’s trendy LEED Silver rating. Or the lower-than-Manhattan-proper rents. Or the fact that only 12 percent of residents work in finance—instead of Wall Street types, the Octagon is packed with people in marketing, design and tech-related jobs.

Sure, there’s a little softness in the one-bedrooms, which go for between $1,900 and $2,600. They’re offering a couple months of free rent to entice new tenants, and just put up a banner on the north parapet that’s visible from the F.D.R. Drive. Rents in general have leveled off, after rising a typical 8 to 10 percent a year from the first two seasons.  Then there are the 240 new high-end apartments coming online this month at Riverwalk Crossing, the fifth project in Related’s Riverwalk complex, which already has two large condo buildings. Riverwalk is closer to the island’s one metro stop, and boasts most of the same amenities as its more historic rental cousin to the north.

Still, the Octagon team is not worried, maintaining that Riverwalk will just bring more interested parties through their own leasing office. And at this point, potential renters are plentiful, looking for deals but leery of buying in a tumultuous market; the Octagon’s pension fund owner had thought about converting the building to condos, but is not moving forward with that plan at this point.

“In this economy, with uncertainty about home values, the renters are doing better than the homeowners,” Mr. Becker said. “We’re fortunate.”

COLUMBUS VILLAGE: You’ve probably heard more about the five new residential towers rising at 97th and Columbus from the people angry about them than the people trying to help them succeed. Many residents of Park West Village, the rent-stabilized housing towers next door also owned by the Chetrit Group and Stellar Management, have been vocal in their opposition to the massive market-rate rental project.

And for a little while, at least, it’s likely to stay that way.

Through a spokesperson, management declined to comment for this story, other than to say that a press release with pricing and availability details would be available in two weeks. They’ve also been keeping mum to the larger agent community as well—even though there seems to be interest in the development’s promised 710 units.

“We just don’t know anything that’s gong on with that building. There’s just zero information,” said Sequoia Millen-El, CityRealty’s director of client relations, noting that she gets a few inquiries a week from people interested in the project. “It seems like it’s on hold.”

Though it may still be under construction several months after its scheduled completion date, the complex is by no means on hold. Project manager Peter Rosenberg told the Columbia Daily Spectator that the buildings should be ready for move-in by Memorial Day, with apartments renting at prices comparable to the rest of the Upper West Side—which, according to the Real Estate Group’s April market report, are about average for Manhattan.

Other than Extell’s glassy Ariel condos on Broadway at 99th and 100th, the 30-story 808 Columbus and its smaller neighbors are still a somewhat new thing for the upper Upper West Side. Designed by Costas Kondylis, a firm with dozens of huge projects in the city—including the Atelier on 42nd Street, the Plaza Hotel, and five Trump buildings—they’re a stark contrast to Park West Village’s red-brick slab towers, one of Robert Moses’ biggest urban renewal projects.

Besides the anchor tenant of Whole Foods, there’s still quite a bit of big-box retail space up for grabs, with T.J. Maxx, Bank of America and Associated Supermarket as rumored takers.

DWELL95: The lobby of Dwell on Wall, the ritziest new rental in the Financial District, are literally paved with money—enlarged coins are inlaid in the floor. The whole thing was designed on a Wall Street theme, actually, with svelte surfaces, gold plating, and a few bulls and bears scattered around for effect. It’s trademark YOO by Phillippe Starck, the French New Design icon who does everything from trains to toothbrushes, and who tends to make himself as much a part of the marketing as the product itself.

But despite the over-the-top luxury, this was an eminently practical effort. "I've been predicting the cooling off of the housing market for four or five years now," YOO chairman John Hitchcox told The Real Deal when the building started renting last spring. "It's gone on much longer than we expected. And when condominiums start to slow, rentals get a little bit more busy."

Good call. While condos have been going on the auction block left and right, Dwell on Wall’s 507 apartments were 76 percent leased in January and are 95 percent sold out, not including a batch of new units on the penthouse floor to be furnished by Starck himself. One-bedrooms are gone, but studios start at $3,475 and two-bedrooms at $6,280—well over the average for the area, which is already among the most expensive in Manhattan.

Developer the Moinian Group declined to release any information on current incentives, although The New York Times reported last summer that paid-up broker's fees and two months free rent were in the offing. Since then, the lower-priced units have been snapped up.

Chalk it up to expert branding? Even the building’s telephone hold music oozes style—“Eets the besta place,” murmurs a male French accent, over soft funk beats. “Hermes and Tiffany, all these shop…”

We found this poster and another blue one that reads "Renting an Apartment in NYC is Harder Than Grad School," in the same crazy hip block lettering, in an academic building at Columbia, where graduation looms. A spokesman for the developer had this to say: "The materials are part of an ongoing leasing campaign targeting a wide-range of potential residents, including young professionals graduating from colleges and universities."

Mr. Cipolla: Not true! There are 400 national parks, and most of those national park units are buildings. There are 22 national park sites in metro New York. And most of those are really buildings, historic monuments. It’s much more varied than people think.

Have you spent much of your life in New York City?

I have, almost my entire adult life, had an apartment here. There have been periods when I was here full time, and then long stretches when I wasn’t here full time. But through my entire adult life, I’ve been a part of New York, involved with New York, obsessed with New York, and I’ve started businesses here.

You’ve come in at a hard time for New York. Does MAS’s role change when the city and state are basically in economic survival mode?

Our role absolutely does change as the city changes. It gives an organization like MAS an opportunity to focus more on its thought-leadership position. There aren’t going to be as many immediate planning and preservation battles or crises to respond to—MAS is leaving what has been a very reactive period, of neighborhood concerns and historic preservation battles and zoning initiatives. A lot of that stuff has abated. Things are just happening a lot more slowly. It’s different.

One of the things you said you’d be doing in this job is advocating on the federal level for New York, and you had strong ties to the Bush administration. How’s it going with Obama?

I’m spending very little time in Washington. The administration’s moves in public infrastructure investment and thinking about developing a strong urban policy position are very encouraging and very exciting. With federal money becoming available, one would hope that those resources don’t channel just to old-think solutions. We don’t want billions of dollars of infrastructure money available to cities to go to interstate highways. There are other ways to invest those funds in sustainable transportation, in rebuilding urban fabric.

What’s encouraging is that this is a group of people that I think understands cities and believes in cities and believes cities are the future, and so intellectually, all of that potential is there. But then the bureaucratic realities of Washington are the risk, because what a lot of the forces will do is to take this new investment and push it down into backwards, retro, unsustainable investment activities. As an urbanist, that really worries me.

So—Moynihan Station. What are the realistic prospects of that getting funded?

The conversion of the Farley Post Office is the quintessential shovel-ready project. The plans are done. Senator Schumer’s office has been working very hard on it, in terms of directing resources. It’s a very complicated set of players that need to be aligned to make that happen, but we feel very encouraged.

Another thing that MAS has been vocal on lately is the redevelopment of Coney Island. You don’t think it can happen on private land, but don’t want the city to take it through eminent domain. How is that going to work?

It was publicly reported [in early April] that the city made an offer to the developer of about $105 million. The developer had about $93 million invested in the property that the city was trying to buy. So you’ve got the city offering the owner roughly a 10 percent profit, at a time when there are global real estate failings. It’s remarkable, really. Is it then the taxpayer’s obligation to increase the size of the profit? I’m a capitalist. You have to have a motivated seller, and an eager buyer, and we have an eager buyer who seems to have made a solid offer. Our hope is that that negotiation is successful and that the city does acquire the property.

So Joe Sitt is not going to hold out for the extra $50 million he wants?

I don’t know.

The M.T.A. has also been short of cash lately. What can be done?

I think we need to see a large and sustainable commitment at the federal and state levels for public transportation in this country. Period. And we need to change the funding paradigm and think in a different model in terms of what we’re investing in and what we’re building as a country. Until that happens, we’re going to have a deteriorating existing public transportation infrastructure, only small incremental improvements, and more burden on the back of public transportation consumers. It needs to be a global policy shift. I think we have a president who understands this, but I think we have a country that largely doesn’t understand this. I mean, just look at what we subsidize today. When you look at how little money goes to support public transportation vs. what goes to support roads, bridges and the automobile industry, it’s no wonder we’re facing fare hikes.

What’s your commute like?

I walk. Or take the subway. I live in Carnegie Hill.

What are some of your favorite newish architecture projects in the city?

On the new side, I really like the Standard Hotel. I like all the High Line–related stuff. Some of it may never become reality, but it’s easy to get charged up about that. It’s really cool. I like the New Museum. I like the cubes. I love DS+R, they just did Tully. I went on a hard hat tour, it’s absolutely magnificent. It’s so cool. So there’s been some great stuff happening—not enough. In this environment, you know, when are we going to get a great new building?

Would you say you have a pet issue?

I have a lot of pet issues. Public transportation is a pet issue. Social and business entrepreneurship is a pet issue. Another pet interest is responsible landlords. What we’re seeing now in New York is that as retail places are going out of business, which is very sad, some of the property owners now are boarding up, literally creating blight. It’s disrespectful to the people who live and work in those communities. It’s happening at a greater rate, and I think that’s really alarming. It’s very un-Jacobsean. The whole idea is for a building to be a good neighbor to the one next to it.

What’s your feeling about term limits?

I’m a fan of term limits. Political change excites me. I think there’s a very legitimate debate, but I’m a term-limits guy.

Does Mayor Bloomberg deserve another term?

He deserves another term if the city of New York elects him.

You haven’t been too vocal as a spokesperson yet. Are you the person who should be the one speaking for MAS?

I will be. I’m new; and we’re working on a lot of things internally right now. So I’m doing a little more listening now than I am talking.

Has it been a steep learning curve?

No. I’ve always followed all this stuff. But obviously I haven’t had the opportunity to work on it or act on it. The charitable environment is really under tremendous stress; and that’s very disconcerting and unnerving.

How much has MAS’s funding been off?

Probably about a 20 percent decline [from the same time last year].

What about MAS do you want to change or modernize?

I think that we have to embrace change, and really take advantage of new media and Internet communication to do our work. Planning and preservation advocacy, historically, has been a totally offline activity. There are wonderful aspects to that, it’s very familial. People understand how to interact with each other over many decades of work. New forms of communication represent new models for conducting this work that, actually, if you’re open to it, while it doesn’t have the same kind of emotional pieces, it doesn’t mean that there isn’t the same underlying integrity. And on the upside, there’s an opportunity to make things more populist, to get out of the elite-driven boxes that this work has been in over time.

Does MAS have a Twitter feed yet?

We do.

You do?

All that stuff is firing up.

ldepillis@observer.com

They didn’t have to deal with erstwhile Democratic mayoral contender Anthony Weiner. The congressman had committed to the mayoral forum, which was sponsored by gay and lesbian Democratic clubs, but he pulled out this week. (He also canceled an appearance for the same evening at the Village Independent Democrats.)

On the same day that David Paterson announced that he was introducing same-sex-marriage legislation in Albany, Avella took the opportunity to remind the few dozen assembled club members about the legislation he sponsored to advance marriage equality in the City Council, despite representing a relatively conservative district. When someone asked whether he had anything nice to say about Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Avella demurred. 

“Whether she was a different person than I thought she was…when she became Speaker—totally different attitude,” he said. “I would have thought she would have been more helpful in advancing marriage equality.”

When Thompson spoke, he seemed determined to counter the widespread impression of a lackluster initial campaign effort. He charged up to the front of the room and quickly invoked the election of Barack Obama as one of the reasons behind his decision to enter the race.

Both candidates gave similar answers on the question of the city’s economic recovery, saying they would resuscitate small industries; the councilman focused on light manufacturing, while the comptroller gave the example of the film business, which he said evaporated with the disappearance of a key tax credit.

“We continue to be the drug addict that runs back to Wall Street for a Wall Street fix,” Thompson said.

Avella positioned himself as the candidate running against the influence of the real estate industry. He said his campaign isn’t taking its money (it’s unclear how much it would help anyway; he has raised $230,000 this election, compared to Thompson’s $5 million).  And, asked what distinguishes him from his main rival, Avella highlighted his opposition to overdevelopment. “I have never seen Thompson ever speak out against that issue,” he said.

The candidates differed sharply over education: While Thompson said he supports mayoral control of schools—with some modifications—Avella sharply criticized the Bloomberg reforms, and said he’d wing it when coming up with a replacement. 

“I don’t have a plan,” he said. “You know what my plan is? To have a real discussion with all the stakeholders and come up with something that works. You can’t really come up with a solution to this issue in the heat of a campaign. “

Avella also said, as he has previously, that he’d fire current schools chancellor Joel Klein.

Stonewall Democrats Vice President Aubrey Lees, chatting between the two candidates’ appearances, was less than enthusiastic about the state of the Democratic mayoral field. While she said that both Thompson and Avella are good on the issues she cared about, she said that most people weren’t following the race closely enough for it to matter.

“They’ve been around for a long time,” she said. “I don’t think our community, and the community in general, finds them that exciting. They don’t see them as viable candidates. So I don’t think people find this an exciting race, unfortunately.”

Weiner would have been “pretty popular,” but given his last-minute cancellation, she just shook her head.

“I don’t think he’s running,” she said.

One audience member tried to suggest a more aggressive strategy for the comptroller in attacking the mayor for extending term limits.

“People got that this is a guy who pays people off,” the questioner said. “Isn’t that a place where you can really go after him?

“Without giving away campaign strategy…” Thompson trailed off, leaving hope, perhaps, for surprises down the road.

Corcoran Sunshine was trying something unorthodox. Miraval Living, the luxury spa-condo spawn of an Arizona-based resort company, is 40 percent full after being on the market for over two and a half years. So, the brokers brought in about a dozen boutique retailers with names like Haute Hippie and Flutter, to lure female condo hunters (a male-oriented event is in the works).

A flock of 30 smiling, well-groomed staffers—not including the labels’ reps—floated through offering drinks and taking coats. Upon entering, I was immediately paired with marketing director Jen Hall, who guided me through the bazaar.

“Instead of having a really flashy campaign, we’re bringing in something that’s very true and very reflective of what the building is,” said Ms. Hall, in a soothing spa-toned voice. We passed blown-up shots by Vanity Fair photographer Mark Seliger, depicting residents in scenes of peaceful repose, opposite a quotation from Proust: “The real voyage is not in seeking new landscapes but having new eyes.”

The three-day event had included a “friends and family” night, where current residents were invited to mingle and browse. The younger girls were particularly amused, according to another guide.

“They were so taken by the shiny headbands, and it was so wonderful,” said Sarah Winters, a bubbly rep with Dan Klores Communications. “It really is a community.”

We ran into Nancy Burger of Grace Group, which puts on the “pop-up” retail events. Ms. Hall was explaining how this dual-purpose experience gets prospective buyers more used to the idea of spending your money on an apartment. Ms. Berger interjected: “To spending your money period!”

THE 40-STORY MIRAVAL LIVING, built in 1985 as River Terrace, had always been slated for condos—economic conditions led owner Harry Macklowe to keep it as a rental. For two decades, it bumbled along as an average property with serviceable apartments at Upper East Side rents; owners association president Stewart Chassen estimates it had about one-third yearly turnover, with nearly all its 408 apartments occupied.

When C&K properties and Zamir Equities bought it for $365 million in 2005, all but nine of the tenants left—a lot fewer than the developers had expected. Those who stayed got a slight break on their purchase prices, and massive renovations on the rest of the building began.

One of those who stayed was Seymour Lieberman, a 92-year-old professor emeritus at Columbia who still maintains a lab at Roosevelt Hospital. He didn’t feel like moving when the building converted, but finds the construction noise “unbearable”—one family on his sparsely populated floor had moved out because of the noise that morning—and the amenities unimpressive.

“None of them appeal to me whatsoever. It’s gussying up the place,” he said over he phone from his one-bedroom apartment. “I enjoy my work, I’m living a good old age, except for this damn apartment.”

Ongoing construction, scheduled to finish up by the end of the summer, may be one reason sales have been sluggish. Then, of course, there’s the economy. But it’s still the only building of its kind in New York City, and the owners haven’t lowered prices significantly; they’re still around $1,455 per square foot, according to Streeteasy, which is only a hair above last year’s fourth-quarter average for the neighborhood.

Instead, management swapped out the brokering team—twice. In September 2007, they replaced the Marketing Directors with Prudential Douglas Elliman super-seller Dolly Lenz, and ousted her for Corcoran last November.

“Change is good. It spurs interest, it spurs demand,” explained project manager Jim Sheehan. On the difference between Corcoran and its predecessors: “I think that they’re reaching out to the entire brokerage community. And not just within their own firm.” (Ms. Lenz and the Marketing Directors could not be reached for comment.)

The new team hasn’t been massively more successful. Since taking over, 19 units have been sold, compared to about 75 each for Ms. Lenz and the Marketing Directors.

Elliman broker Max Dobens, who is on the team of Lenz rival Jackie Teplitzky, thinks the spa-condo concept is just off-base. “You don’t relax when you leave a screaming 2-year old on the 24th floor to go down to a spa on the fourth floor. The brain doesn’t work that way,” he said. “Part of becoming relaxed is leaving the energy of New York, and I don’t think that it’s a flick-of-a-light-switch event.”

HOW DO YOU MARKET OVER-THE-TOP luxury in modest times such as these? The new strategy, Corcoran says, isn’t about luxury at all: It’s about “healthful living,” an in-house vacation, every day of the week.

“The previous firms pretty much only marketed on the Miraval Spa. It was all about the spa, and it wasn’t that much about the real estate,” said senior managing director James Lansill. The building is attracting people moving back from the suburbs; brokers advertise the units as replacing the need for a second home. “This building happens to suit that highly revised way that people are pursuing things.”

Back at the weekend open house, Ms. Hall and I had descended from the show floor to tour the gleaming new facilities. There’s the largest private park in New York City. The fully equipped fitness center, with leather-seated machines. There’s the cafe, where you can get a smoothie on your way to work, catch a cab and pick up dinner on the way back.

“This is what makes me truly covet the building as well,” Ms. Hall smiled, taking us to a serene Olympic-size pool, and the expensively tiled women’s locker room, outfitted with Miraval bath products. Miraval advisers are available to tailor your health regimen. Art classes will be held for your kids.

So the point is that people never really have to leave?

“Yes,” she affirmed. “People are so busy now.”

"Prince Street belongs to me. I’m sorry—it’s turf.”

Sean Sweeney, president of the Soho Alliance, was talking in late March about bike lanes. He could’ve been talking about political races. Restaurants. Condo-hotels. The thing doesn’t matter so much as the location: the blocks just below Houston. “I don’t go above 14th Street,” he said in late March. “I get hives.”

From his Greene Street loft—bought for around $100,000 in the early 1980s—Mr. Sweeney, 63, directs a potent NIMBY machine that has engendered equal parts fear, loathing and love in the downtown diaspora. There, he hosts meetings of the Downtown Independent Democrats, where he’s been president since 1997 (with one four-year hiatus). He chairs Community Board 2’s Landmarks Committee. And the loft has unofficially headquartered the Soho Alliance since the group installed its phone and answering machine in a corner, sometime during the tail end of the Dinkins administration.

Mr. Sweeney is home about 90 percent of the time to answer it. He speaks quickly, with a force that overmatches his stature, even carrying himself ramrod-straight. Never married—“I don’t like institutions,” he explained—he still eats porridge and lives with his elderly mother, whom he cares for affectionately. It’s fitting: Territoriality is a family tradition.

Born in an Irish Republican ghetto of Glasgow, his parents gave him the good British name of John for his own protection, but wrote the name he would later take—Sean—on the back of a now yellowing birth certificate, which he produced from a leather briefcase. When Mr. Sweeney was 3, his family moved to Brooklyn, where he grew up waging campaigns against Catholic school authorities.

He landed in Soho in the 1970s, where by night he managed the Loft, an invite-only house party where drugs flowed like water. By day, he picketed the British Consulate, and worked with Irish Northern Aid to send money back home.

“The bosses were bad, and the landlords were bad,” he says of his upbringing, steeped in Labor politics. He doesn’t much care for developers, either, nor they for him. Mr. Sweeney wakes up every morning to the sight of the Trump Soho condo-hotel, which he claims to have pushed into near foreclosure. The completed tower is slated to open this fall, according to reports. (A representative for the developers declined to comment for this story.)

In his mid-40s, Mr. Sweeney put his money in the stock market, and hasn’t worked since. Now, he lives off that, plus a rental property in Montauk and the sale of his mother’s old home in Glasgow. His full-time activism is all-volunteer; he finances the Soho Alliance’s lawsuits—which average about $20,000 each—largely through donations raised from co-op boards. Until recently, the litigation was also underwritten by S&M club proprietor Don MacPherson, who last month was arrested for mortgage fraud in the Hamptons (Mr. Sweeney thinks he’s innocent).

“Hey, do you want to sleep?” he said, describing the club’s MO. “Have someone come to a Soho Alliance meeting, and contribute $1,000, and you sleep.”

Mr. Sweeney has never aspired to higher political office himself—he never bothered to become an American citizen. No matter: In private, politicians have started to call him Boss Sweeney, as a compliment.

NEARLY THREE DECADES OF BEING a professional pain in the ass have born significant fruit. “He has created a political structure in Soho that candidates, city agencies and elected officials ignore at their own peril,” according to the current Community Board 2 chairman, Brad Hoylman, who says Mr. Sweeney’s opposition had a lot do with his failed City Council race against Alan Gerson in 2001.

“He’s a force of nature,” agreed freshman State Senator Daniel Squadron, who got a toehold in Soho when the Downtown Independent Democrats endorsed him over incumbent Marty Connor. “I knew, if I’m going to run for this seat, I’m going to need to know Sean Sweeney.”

Soho residents usually hear about the latest outrage through his strongly worded flyers about hearings and races. The ones for the Downtown Democrats are called “D-Notes,” colored pamphlets that bear Mr. Sweeney’s name along with the politicians he’s endorsing. “When this goes out with my name on it,” he said, flicking the green pamphlet, “They go, ‘Oh, yeah, I don’t know who this guy is, but I know Sean, he’s a nice guy.’”

Over 30 years, however, enemies mount as quickly as friends.

Mr. Sweeney has railed against a Department of Transportation that dares put down bike lanes without asking him first. Having fought the imposition of the Lower Manhattan Expressway in the 1960s, he calls the progressive DOT commissioner, Jeanette Sadik-Khan, “Robert Moses in a skirt.”

“We defeated Moses, and we’re going to defeat Sadik-Khan. I’ll be around and she’ll be gone. Got it? Quote,” he said. “She’s not been nice to me. …”

“I think that old radicalism really resonates with many of his constituents in SoHo,” mused Paul White, head of Transportation Alternatives, which has butted heads with the Alliance over bike lanes as well. “People rally around fighting the imperialist City Hall without paying attention to the details of what are offered.”

After helping him to victory eight years ago, Mr. Sweeney is now feuding with Councilman Alan Gerson, saying he’ll back “anyone but Gerson” for that seat and heckles the councilman at city events. “Basically, he lied to me too many times, has no sense of gratitude, has ignored Soho,” Mr. Sweeney said.

And then, of course, there’s the four-year battle over Lola, the partly African-American–owned soul-food restaurant on Watts Street that the Soho Alliance litigated into bankruptcy earlier this year. That, combined with Mr. Sweeney’s decision to hold a community board committee meeting on Martin Luther King Day, has led to allegations of racism from many sides.

“Little bit of a bigot there,” said longtime downtown operative Ray Cline, a consultant at Progressive Strategies Group. “He doesn’t get along with black folks.”

Though Mr. Sweeney brushes off the charge, it clearly still rankles. He pulled from his briefcase a crinkled photo of himself with the staff at the Loft, mostly black: “I did more to integrate Soho than Lola ever did.”

LATELY, HE'S EVEN MADE ENEMIES within his own political club. In April of last year, Mr. Sweeney faced a challenge from relative newcomer Pat Moore, after years of uncontested elections. He calls it a coup engineered by the Community Board 1 chairwoman, Julie Menin, who wanted the Downtown Independent Democrats’ backing for a prospective City Council campaign. Allegations of vote-stacking flew on both sides. Ultimately, he called off the election on a technicality.

Former ally David Reck, a community board member and president of Friends of Hudson Square, says Mr. Sweeney turned against him over a vote on a bike lane two years ago (Mr. Sweeney claims the fight got physical, which Mr. Reck denies). Now, Mr. Reck is working to oust him as head of the Downtown Democrats, or even start a new club.

“Sean has become the petty little dictator of it all,” said Mr. Reck, meaning the Soho Alliance as well. “Something’s got to be done, because Sean has become a tremendous problem.”

“There is so much potential in the club, and it’s not used at all,” sighed Ian Dutton, who ran and lost against Mr. Sweeney last year after serving two years as vice president. “I just feel like he gets up in the morning and decides who he’s going to make miserable.”

Mr. Sweeney has his defenders, like club founder and bar owner Jim Stratton, who—like his successor—cherishes old Soho. “The problem that Sean has is shooting from the hip a little bit,” Mr. Stratton says. “He’s got a good Irish temper. But then he calms down.”

For his part, Mr. Sweeney says that having won an actual contested election has only raised his profile in the party apparatus. But he admits to having had a hard time sleeping after the aborted elections last year.

“I don’t like rejection,” he said. “I have a weakness for that. I want people to like me.”

For those who attack him, Mr. Sweeney has a favorite saying: “Let no good deed go unpunished.”

“That’s what a lot of humanity is like. What have you done for me recently, Sean?”

ldepillis@observer.com

It may have been the most innocent of alcohol-swilling madhouses the Lower East Side has seen for a while.

A line stretched down the block—even after the PBR open bar had ended!—with a “Happy Little Raffle” to benefit a local arts charity, landscape painting tutorials, and the "world’s first official" Bob Ross look-a-like contest at Gallery Bar on Orchard Street.

“Now that we’re a little distanced from when he was alive, we have only begun to understand the significance of his unflappable joy,” said afro-wigged organizer Misha Calvert, referring to the bearded, big-haired star of the long-running PBS program The Joy of Painting, who died in 1995. “At the time, the Afro was in style, he blended in a bit more. Now that we’ve gotten so cynical as a country, someone like that stands out.”

Ms. Calvert organized the bash with online gallerist Alex Zoppa. “Alex Ross—Alex Zoppa—I keep calling him Alex Ross, like he’s related—has been sitting on [the idea] for years.” Now, she said, “it seemed like the perfect time to lift New York’s spirits.”

The Daily Transom asked contestant Joseph Brunetti, sporting a towering wig, how he took on the persona. “I sniffed a lot of paint,“ he said.

How did he view the competition? “I saw one woman with a real 'fro who I felt a real kinship to,” answered Mr. Brunetti, who daylights as a senior designer for Croc shoes. “I kind of wanted to touch her … with my brush.”

Upstairs, partygoers stood mesmerized at a projection of the late Ross’ show, watching as colors coalesced into a sky with scudding white clouds. Downstairs, a Bob Ross-certified artist demonstrated his methods, painting an idyllic snowcapped mountain over and over again as volunteers attempted to replicate it.  

“My roommate was trying to cheer me up,” said medical student Robel Beyene, 26, watching carefully before his turn at the easel, who remembers watching Ross’ show with his grandfather. “It completely works.”

“My parents were old hippies,” said Peter Edry, a 27-year-old insurance salesman. “There was a pungent smell in the air, and we would watch Bob Ross together.”

The night culminated in a performance by the Titanium White Hot Dancers, a mixed-gender troupe, who disco danced in curly brown wigs and denim shirts. The dance was choreographed by a member of a country western gay and lesbian dance troupe called the Manhattan Prairie Dogs, which recently performed a version of Beyonce’s “Put a Ring on it,” wearing skirts with tie-on bellies.

One onlooker summed up Mr. Ross' appeal thusly: “It used to be way kitschier, what he’d do,” said lawyer Carrie Trowbridge, 31. “But now, kitsch is cool, and maybe even subversive. That’s why this hip crowd is here."