village voice

best of new york 2006
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Best Bonnie-and-Clyde Duo In City Hall - Charles Barron and Viola Plummer

Who needs a bank heist when taxpayers will gladly pay you to jack City Hall? Councilman and diehard Black Panther Charles Barron and his black-radical chief of staff, Viola Plummer, win the award for political gangsta couple of the year. It's no secret that the two are very familiar with controversy, but shit got out of hand on May 30 when the council turned down their bid to rename part of Gates Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant after the late Sonny Carson, a black nationalist and community hero (a fact the media refuse to acknowledge). The rejection sparked Plummer's revolutionary fire, and she threatened to assassinate Councilman Leroy Comrie, one of the members of color who abstained from the vote. Plummer quickly said she was referring to Comrie's career, not his life, but it was too late. Security was immediately beefed up at the hall (just in case the 70-year-old grandma showed up to work packin' heat), and Councilman Comrie rolled with a security entourage deeper than 50 Cent's. In the meantime, Council Speaker Christine Quinn pledged to look into whether Plummer should be fired (weeks later, she was). How did Barron and his round-the-way girl respond to the heat? They kept it gangsta, of course: On June 16, the defiant duo led a congregation of more than 200 residents in a renegade renaming of Gates Avenue. Plummer's message to the crowd: "We are going to go block by block to remove these slave-owning, murdering, bloodsucking crackers from these streets." Brace yourselves, p.c. crowd: She also said that this campaign could slow down the wave of gentrification—because "crackers" might think twice about moving to a neighborhood where all the streets are named after black freedom fighters.

Other People & Places categories:

Best little house in the Village
75 12 Bedford Street

Best transatlantic reed boat dry-docked near the Hudson
Abora III

Best straight-headed ho
Al Sharpton

Best ghostbuster
Artie Matos

Best (in fact, only) Louis Sullivan building
Bayard Building

Best albatross
Bernie Kerik

Best way to enjoy the Brooklyn Promenade
Blue Pig

Best radio-interview-show host
Brian Lehrer

Best bridge anywhere
Brooklyn Bridge

Best old-school-decrepit subway station
Chambers Street J-M-Z stop

Best Bonnie-and-Clyde duo in City Hall
Charles Barron and Viola Plummer

Best New England town in the Bronx
City Island

Best criminally unknown superstar in our midst
Diamanda Galás

Best Manhattan neighborhood in Brooklyn
DUMBO

Best place to get murdered, raped, or robbed in the city
East New York, Brooklyn

Best old-fashioned labor stem-winder
Ed Ott

Best place to pretend you're in a movie about New York where an important scene plays out in a tiny coffee shop
Eisenberg's Sandwich Shop

Best equestrian statue
El Cid

Best city councilman to tighten his belt
Eric Gioia

Best remnant of old (old) Soho
Fanelli Café

Best place to compose a Dear John (or Jane or Jean) letter in palatial grandeur
Frick Collection

Best New York lawyer not in New York
Glenn Greenwald

Best place that will cease to exist when Columbia takes over West Harlem
Hint House Artist Collective

Best noble failure
It's Still Not a Done Deal

Best subway steel drummer
Jeffrey "Sighting" Antoine

Best Brooklyn assemblyman who never quits
Jim Brennan

Best adherent of mosaic law
Jim Power

Best old-school Italian joint in the East Village
John's of 12th Street

Best peace tribute
Marble Collegiate Church

Best illegal Valentine's Day card sent to a New Yorker
Matthew Diaz's missive from Guantánamo Bay

Best old-school Greenwich Village restaurant
Minetta Tavern

Best place to seek shelter from a rainstorm
Morgan Library and Museum

Best underappreciated waterfall that also happens to be a historic site
Morningside Park's mini-waterfall

Best. Law. Ever.
New York City's Noise Code

Best place to read about New York history in blissful quiet
New York Society Library

Best urban monk
Nicholas Vreeland

Best graveyard
Rossville Boatyard

Best highway pull-over
Shore Road pullover

Best statue of a famous political leader
statue of Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia

Best reason to stop bitching about how small and noxious your apartment is
The Lower East Side Tenement Museum

Best underappreciated skyscraper
the original McGraw-Hill Building

Best (and cutest) East Village radio DJ
Timmy G

Best old, short street
Weehawken Street