Daily News from New York, New York • 81

DAILY NEWS, MONDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 173" Yoirlltvnllller irums ami ftfoe silk sftoddinigj NEW JERSEY Continued from pg 5) 34 fcjK queens A Trkt mmjmm Jllir lob 1 I' if I QTSW; 1 NEWS photos by Paul DeMaria. Map by staff artist Bob Juffras It's a neighborhood of contrast. Italian restaurant, a deli, Mexican place and a pizzeria compete -for First diners Two elderly gents take the bleak winter sun in St. Catherine's Park Top, map of district. both building heights and rents since the passing of the Third Ave.

El. It is a neighborhood which even lacks a name, somewhere between Turtle-Bay and Lenox Hill and most often referred to as Lower Vorkville. As Mrs. Marion Lucas, who lives in a white tower guarded by braided doormen on East 66th, observed: "I think of it not as an area it's a building." But It is contrast that dominates here, the fact that Mrs. Parker's cubicle is a block from the mammoth Manhattan House whose tenants pav tip to and are serviced by a staff of'132.

It is the fact that the price of a broiled lobster at the opulent, gas lamp-lit Maxwell's Plum on East 64th buys 32 hamburgers. 12 orders of french fries and five milkshakes at the new McDonalds, whose abbreviated golden arches shine onto Second Ave. six blocks uptown. It is a fact that there are more residents over age 65 than under 21 and that there are more resident doctors than there are trees on the street. Census figures say there are 9,291 persons living here, of whom 2.8 are black, that almost half lived somewhere else five years before and that nearly 30' walk to work.

Nearly 5'i of the families live below the poverty level and 20f i earn over $50,000. It is like a silk stocking with several runs. In or around it are Julia Richman High School, two dozen restaurants, the New York Blood Center, fancy First Ave. bars which sport colorful names like Tittle Tattle and Paul's Bunyan, a puppeteer, a commercial bakery, the Soviet UN mission, one public park, the FBI and a sperm bank. Dog droppings It's an area where dog droppings dot the street and many residents say they most regularly read The New" York Times and New York Magazine, an area where different groups of people live with different concerns where crime and traffic worry the wealthy and housing, rents, recreation and crime concern the rest.

The signs in the window of Jeans Beauty Salon tell the story: "No Dogs Allowed" and "Support Your Local Police." "I'm interested in eating and quiet sleep now, that's all, explained 73-year-old Steve Marcis, a member of the diminishing colony of Slovaks in the area. "I lived for 16 years in the building opposite the school. Then they tore it down and the relocation agent found me one on 65th St. It cost me plenty under the table but I now pay for four rooms. The company wanted to move me to a new building up in the 80s for two rooms, $154.

But my social security is only $149.70. "I've lived here 17 years and there've been changes," Larry Grivas, the 56-year-old super at 324 East 66th recalled. What kind, he was asked. "N.G." he replied flatly. "The quality's not there any more," he explained, referring to the new high rises.

"With buildings like that there's supposed to be wealth, and with wealth there's robbery and crime. Next door we had two robberies In 10 days in broad daylight. They don't break your door down any more they're locksmiths, they're pros." "And Julia Richman," Grivas says, shaking his head. "Ever since they moved in the roughness, they push you on the ground. There's a lady walking on crutches with a pin over there (he points to his hip).

They pushed her, hit her and robbed her in broad daylight." "But it's rent controlled, where can they go," says Grivas whose hollow cheeks hint at ill health. "Nobody wants to move out they just die." The Czechs and Slovaks and Hungarians who constituted a Little Bohemia are diminished daily by death and demolition. Observed Monsignor Stephen Hudacek at St. John's Church: "Our membership is now about one-third of what it was 10 or 15 years ago. They're being forced out of the neighborhood by high-rise apartments.

Members of this parish have been scattered all over God's creation mostly to Queens." The old men in worn suits and narrow ties and woman wrapped in scarves still mingle in St. Catherine's Park on 67th Street, leaning up against a fence which abuts the high school playground, which the winter sun warms in late morning. "We keep the ladies room closed," said Elisha Moses, the park attendant. "Ill open it tip for the old ladies or nurses but otherwise they find beer and gin bottles in there and grafitti all over the walls and people shooting up with dope." It is a different type of swinger that concerns Mrs. Carole Kostulas who chatted as she watched her two young sons at play.

Mrs. Kostulas, a George Wallace supporter whose family went on welfare for a month when her husband was out of work, complained, "The only big problem we have is we're getting a lot more outsiders in on weekends. They come and they don't leave they're out on the street at 4 a.m. They don't wealize they're in a neighborhood where people live. When I first came here I wouldn't think twice about gaiag eut at 2 a.m.

for milk. Now, you'd never writer for IBM, says he feels secure in his neat, gray six-story row house on East 66th which, like Manhattan House, across the street, is owned by New York Life Insurance Co. He discerns, however, "an overriding concern about blacks a backlash. The trend is very much away from the liberal and I think it will be quite obvious in the mayoral election whoever it is will be a long way off from what Lindsay is said to have stood for." Local residents have a penchant for ticket-splitting and a tendency to tout their "independent" registration. In 1969, Lindsay polled 2,888 to 667 for Republican John Marchi and 499 for Democrat Mario Procaccino.

The area also went for Hubert Humphrey and GOP Sen. Jacob Javits in 1968, and Got. Rockefeller and Democratic senate nominee Richard Ottinger in 1970. Last year, one election district whose residents are predominantly tenants of Manhattan House, voted heavily enough for President Nixon to carry the whole area for him, even though the other five districts supported Sen. George McGovern.

Most of the residents haven't even thought about this year's City Hall sweepstakes, except to either rail against Lindsay or say they are disenchanted with him but would vote for him again under certain circumstances. "I used to think he was evil but now I think he's just ineffectual," observes architect Gleckman. As for reaction to city services, Frank Angelino, 33-year-old newly named chairman of community planning board 8, notes that many tenants have "surrogates" for such services supers, Incinerators and such. Indeed, a draft city study disclosed that in 1970, the city spent $28 per capita in the board's district to provide services, the lowest of the city's 62 neighborhoods. "This is the cleanest block in the city guess why," Leo Clark, the night bartender at Breff ney Olde Steak House, the last remaining neighborhood pub, grins across the bar.

Because Lindsay's weekly television show was taped at WNEW across the street "Right," he replied. Meanwhile, Mrs. Celine Marcus, who runs the Lenox Hill Neighborhood a settlement house on 70th St. whose usefulness after 79 years may end as the area changes, muses about the changing area: "It's hard to tell what will happen," she observes. "But I still feel very strongly that if Yorkville be- comes 100 golden ghetto that will be said for everybody.

There is a certain quality of life that comes from a mixture of different people." "The people are most concerned -about housing and the cost of rent," Inspector McGowan said. "And whether Manhattan is going to exist as a residential area is going to depend on that." catch me out. They're sitting there on your stoop your stoop! People you don't even know. And today, you don't even dare look at someone crosseyed." It is estimated that more children in the area attend private and parochial schools than public school. P.S.

183 on 66th Street is half empty and is 62.7 white. Julia Richman. an all-girls school until six years ago, is now 11 white. Most of its students travel from East Harlem and only 5 live nearby. In addition to five security officers assigned to the high school, one 'city cop is stationed inside and another guards the park.

A police radio car also patrols the immediate area to "convoy" the students from the subway or bus and back. "There's really very little crime compared to most city high schools," insists Mrs. Sylvia Ball at, the principal who has taught at Julia Richman since 1956. "The people in the neighborhood are not accustomed to adolescents. The people around here see five Julia Richman students outside and they're very upset by it, they feel threatened.

If they're an adolescent and they're black or Puerto Rican and they're doing something bad, people just assume it's a Julia Richman student." The visiting criminals The profile if not the fact is accurate, however. Deputy Inspector Daniel McGowan, a rugged-looking 48-year-old with thick black hair who commands the 19th Precinct from 67th St. west of Third since leaving the public morals squad a year ago, explains that the area has "little resident criminal population" and that the average wrongdoer is nonwhite, aged 17 to 20, comes from a ghetto and frequently uses drugs. Crime statistics for the two sectors which include these 10 square blocks show a sharp rise in robberies for the month December, 1971, compared to December, 1972, a steady increase in burglaries to 59 for the month, a rise in assaults from one to eight, but no rapes or murders and a drop in grand larceny and drug arrests. Because there is less of a "sense of community," McGowan explained, a "blockwatchers" program was begun two months ago to speed up reporting of crimes and people have become "more crime-safety conscious." Book editor Bea Losito put a police lock on her door.

Mrs. Lucas of 66th who heads the sisterhood at Park East Synagogue which is a door away from the police station, opened evening meetings to men because the women wouldn't walk a few blocks Stores locked their doors and taped up signs telling patrons to "please ring bell." Yet Milton Weiss, a 53-year-old advertising copy.