Evicted, Newark’s Mayor Finds Another Blighted Street

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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/20/nyregion/20newark.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion&oref=slogin">New York Times:

On Mayor Cory A. Booker’s final night at his bachelor-pad apartment in Brick Towers last Monday, there were important sartorial decisions to be made before the movers arrived. After living in one of the city’s most notoriously troubled buildings — where heat, hot water and elevator service were often in short supply — since 1998, Mr. Booker and two dozen other holdouts were being evicted to make way for the bulldozers.

It was a bittersweet moment for Mr. Booker, who earned himself a national reputation, cemented in an Oscar-nominated documentary, as a crusading would-be mayor who took on a negligent landlord and a vindictive City Hall by living alongside some of Newark’s most embattled tenants.

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Like some other doubters, Mr. Baraka — who lives six blocks from the mayor’s new home on Hawthorne — questioned whether Mr. Booker had truly been living in Brick Towers or just keeping his things there: “All I can say is, it’s a good story, but I don’t believe it.”

Asked about those who view his choice of residence these past eight years as a politically minded stunt, the mayor rolled his eyes. “Stunts are usually short-term,” he said. “They usually don’t last three winters without heat and hot water.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/20/nyregion/20newark.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion&oref=slogin