Fall Brooke

Providencia Lamultt, 81, sells her ices through her window at Tiebout Avenue by lowering a bucket with the ices inside to her customers.

You can buy ices from carts, trucks or stores all over the city. And in one section of the Bronx, you can get one by standing under a particular window and yelling, “Gramma!”

For nearly a quarter-century, Providence Lamultt, 81, has been running an ices business out of her Tiebout Ave. apartment, lowering them out her second-story window in a bucket.

“The kids yell ‘Gramma, Gramma – cherry, cherry’ through my window,” Lamultt said.

“I lower my bucket to get the money. I put the ice in and lower it to the ground.”

The ices are a bargain at 50 cents and have won rave reviews from the locals.

“They are the best ices I’ve ever had. All natural ingredients. Nothing better on a hot summer day,” said neighbor Jesus Estevez, 24.

Estevez called through the window for a cherry. A smiling Lamultt appeared and slowly lowered the bucket by rope.

He put two quarters in. The bucket went up – and came back down with the ice.

“Mmmm, there’s nothing like it,” he said after tasting his frozen treat.

“I know people who drive from New Jersey to call up to her window. She’s an institution.”

Other neighbors agree.

“You can’t buy these at a store. Gramma’s ices are so unique. The coconut has real chunks of coconut,” said Kris Hernandez, 31.

“The bodegas cost twice as much and aren’t half as good.”

Lamultt, a retired dressmaker,began her culinary career by experimenting with fruits and ice in her homeland of Puerto Rico when she was 10.

“I used to get whipped for stealing sugar from my mom for my ices,” she said.

She moved into her apartment off E. 181st St. in Fordham more than 30 years ago. She got the idea to sell her ices when a young boy came to her window and asked to buy one.

“I gave it to him for free, but then I began getting more requests,” she said.

Now she sells up to 30 a day in the summer.

“My ices are the best because I have lots and lots of experience,” she said.

A city lawmaker thinks it’s time for the perp walk to take a hike.

The humiliating media circus that followed the arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn convinced Councilman David Greenfield that the long-time staple of city crime coverage should come to an end.

“Even Mother Teresa dragged out by detectives would look guilty,” said Greenfield, who drafted legislation to outlaw the traditional walk of shame for high-profile suspects.

PERP WALKS THROUGH THE YEARS

“In our system of justice everyone should be presumed innocent until proven guilty,” said Greenfield (D-Brooklyn).

The lawmaker compared the practice to medieval times when suspects were placed in stocks and pillory in a public square – and pelted with rotten tomatoes.

French officials blasted the long-standing practice that generated pictures and video of the cuffed and unshaven former IMF chief straddled by burly detectives.

After initially defending the treatment, Mayor Bloomberg denounced it this week as “outrageous” and a “circus.” Yet Hizzoner claimed that he had “no say” in how the NYPD transports suspects.

Despite the mayor’s new stance, Greenfield’s legislation is likely a pipe dream.

The perp walk dates back to the 19th century, although its birth was tied more to expediency than embarrassment.

“We have been walking prisoners out of the front doors of stationhouses for 150 years in the Police Department,” Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said this week.

“This is how we transport people to court,” he continued. “I don’t think the genie’s ever gonna be put back inside the bottle. That’s the way it is.”

Some of the walks were more involved: in 1903, the NYPD marched suspected Mafia members through the streets of Little Italy.

When Rudy Giuliani was U.S. attorney in the 1980s, he made a point of walking accused Wall Street crooks through the media gauntlet.

The list of perp walk participants is a mix of the Social Register and social deviants: David (Son of Sam) Berkowitz, mob boss John Gotti, singer Boy George, Oscar nominee Johnny Depp, former New York Jets star Mark Gastineau and rapper Tupac Shakur are just a few.

Genovese family head Vincent (The Chin) Gigante was perp-walked in his bathrobe. Actor Russell Crowe sported sunglasses for his stroll.

You ink-stained wretches

Kelly has blamed reporters for the fury over the way the accused French sex fiend was marched past a swarm of media after his May arrest.

“If they make a decision to stake out a location when someone is walked out of the front of a precinct …it’s not a decision that the Police Department makes,” the commissioner said.

The NYPD has issued at least three internal orders banning the staged photo ops for high-profile suspects since 1962, police historian Mike Bosak said.

But in 2003, a U.S. appeals court found that nonstaged perp walks were constitutional.

Greenfield disagrees, contending the massive media attention has led to biased jurors.

“I honestly believe it’s unconstitutional,” he said. “If we banned it here we could send a message to the country.”

The measure won’t be formally introduced for another few weeks, as the Council is in summer recess until the end of the month.

A British opera company said on Thursday that it will present a new opera by the “Billy Elliot” writer Lee Hall, following a dispute in which Mr. Hall said that homophobia had led to the opera’s cancellation.

The company, Opera North, which is based in Leeds, said in a statement on its Web site that the opera, “Beached,” “is continuing as planned” following “intense negotiations behind the scenes with all parties.”

Earlier in the week, Opera North said that it was canceling “Beached,” which features music by Harvey Brough and a libretto by Mr. Hall, because it had lost the participation of the nearby Bay Primary School, from which about 300 to 400 students were to perform in the opera.

But Mr. Hall, the screenwriter of “Billy Elliot” and the Tony Award-winning book writer and lyricist for its stage musical adaptation, said that the cancellation of the project was the result of “discrimination” because he would not remove a gay character from the work. Opera North disputed Mr. Hall’s account, and a school representative said there were many problematic instances of potentially strong language, including “references to drug-taking, sexual conduct and the use of homophobic name-calling.”

BBC News reported that one lyric of concern to the school has been changed. A character who was to sing “Of course I’m queer / That’s why I left here” will instead sing “Of course I’m gay/That’s why I went away.”

In a statement, the Bay Primary School and local officials said, “We are delighted to announce that the revisions which the school requested have now been made and the author has addressed the points raised by the school.”

The statement added: “The final libretto is now an age appropriate text which was all the school had requested. The play retained the inclusion of a gay character, Professor Sewerby, who remains central to the play’s dramatic message. Neither the council, school or Opera North have ever expressed any concern over the inclusion of a gay character, only some of the language and tone around the character’s identity. The writer has now addressed this.”

QAWALISH, Libya — Rebels opposed to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi seized control of this village in the mountains on Wednesday, extending their hold in western Libya and inching toward a supply route to the capital that they hope to sever.
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Battle for Libya

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Times Topic: Libya — Protests and Revolt (2011)

After a half-day gun battle, Colonel Qaddafi’s soldiers yielded the town in the early afternoon, firing rockets and mortars to cover their withdrawal. The ordnance exploded on the hillsides around the town with reverberating booms and plumes of dust and smoke that briefly kept the rebels away.

But the rebels flowed in behind the fleeing troops, capturing more than a dozen of them and collecting the departed soldiers’ abandoned ammunition and equipment. Soon they were refueling their cars and pickup trucks at the gas station they now held.

Qawalish changed hands while rebels elsewhere reported making progress outside of Misurata, east of the capital, Tripoli. They said they were advancing toward the city of Zlitan. Those reports could not be independently confirmed.

In the mountains, the rebels said they hoped their day signaled new momentum for a fight in western Libya that had been deadlocked for more than a week. “We are doing well,” said Sofian Alhaj, a fighter who said he was a former employee of an investment company run by Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, one of the Libyan leader’s sons. “Now we will keep going, until we are in Tripoli.”

That ambition, if realized, would most likely occur in increments. Geographically, the seizure of Qawalish marked a minor shift in the front lines. But it moved the rebels within about 35 miles of Gharyan, a small city astride a strategic highway running south from Tripoli.

The highway heads south to Sabha, the central Libyan city that the rebels regard as a principal source of war matériel and other supplies for Colonel Qaddafi’s government, which is blockaded by NATO from the sea and pressured overland by rebels from the east.

As the war drags on into summer, capturing Gharyan has become one of the rebels’ main goals in western Libya. The rebels say that as many as 900 of Colonel Qaddafi’s soldiers are garrisoned there, backed by rockets and artillery, and that others are occupying villages and blocking positions along the roads from the west, making the approaches perilous.

Both sides suffered in the battle on Wednesday. At least 13 pro-Qaddafi soldiers and 7 rebels were killed. Many more were wounded, and the rebels claimed to have captured at least 15 soldiers.

After seizing Qawalish, the rebels did not press farther. Many of their fighters pulled back to the west in the midafternoon as Colonel Qaddafi’s soldiers shelled the village. After several ground-to-ground rockets exploded with roars that shook the town, scores of the rebels ran to their cars and trucks and sped away, leaving behind what appeared to be a holding force.

As the main body of rebels backed up, firing weapons in the air triumphantly, their behavior in the fight reflected the mix of enthusiasm, inexperience and poor state of equipment that has defined the anti-Qaddafi forces throughout Libya for much of the war.

When the rebels pushed into Qawalish with trucks crammed with fighters, some trucks contained only one rifle for every three or even four men. And when they moved forward on the village, the fighters stayed largely on the road or near its shoulders, neglecting to sweep and secure their flanks.

At one point, the advance carried the rebels past a Qaddafi mortar position just behind a short, steep ridge off the road. Shortly after the rebels arrived at a cluster of abandoned buildings that had been a Qaddafi defensive position and resupply point, the mortar crew opened fire, shelling the rebels effortlessly as they milled about.

The rounds landed perhaps 75 yards away, explosion after explosion, until most of the rebels drove away — again neglecting to climb the ridge and clear the pro-Qaddafi fighters behind it.

The area near the buildings also revealed the continuing hazards even in places that change hands: antipersonnel and antivehicle land mines that Colonel Qaddafi’s forces had buried along one of their flanks — threats that the rebels said they were just beginning to clear.

Hisashi Takamatsu reaches into a hole in the rubble-strewn ground outside his idled fish-packing plant and turns a valve. Nothing happens, but he does not seem surprised.

Still no water.

Nor is there yet any electricity in the “Fish Town” district of this port city. Nor does Mr. Takamatsu have any clear news from the government about how much compensation he might get for everything he lost when a tsunami wrecked all his machinery on March 11.

“I know nothing about my future,” he says bleakly. Continue reading →