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Stop And Go On The Mali: If thestory, the on and off construction of tl second. During the Christmas si merchants asked that all work be st have started full swing in the sprinj contractor, sued the City instead for end of Mav, work was in full swing e Cii neve eached a written agreeme wi kcon uedand f was thought tha se. ion v .Id see a nearly finished city%u2019s Boat d of Estimate, nevertheles $40,000 to '%u25a0instruct wooden walkway sidewalks vhere work is being donein i qt nijml trvinU OUt whbe ike when the product will be fini three years away. Phase One of the wc k through 1981 while Phase 1 w finished u il 1983. (%u2022 'echiogrosso PhrThe Ups and Downs Of A Reporters LifeBY LIBBY HAYMANThe high point of my nearly a year as a Phoenix reporter was achieved when I found myself high up on top of the gantry crane at Northeast Marine Terminal in Sunset Park, soaking up atmosphere for the July Waterfront issue. The ascent had been the photographer's idea, and my six year old, who accompanied me to work all summer, eagerly went along, walking out on the boom and calling back to me. \you won't be scared.%u201d The Waterfront was one of the innumerable subjects which I'd never thought about before I wrote a story on them. As a result, my world's a lot bigger now, but Pm still afraid of heights.DID I SEE YOUR ARTICLE?Though much was new. coming to The Phoenix was also an extension of all the neighborhood and civic things I'd been doing all along, and my only frustration at first was having people say, %u201cI hear that you're working,\writing, \Phoenix.\regular every-week Phoenix reader either, before I came here, but I've learned my lesson. For a paper to do its job, evei^ody has to read it, react to it, write to it, week in and week out.As a reporter, I can%u2019t respond very well when someone urges us to cover something we%u2019ve just given a full page to; on the other hand, I still feel just awful when I%u2019ve missed something. The people who clue me in on things that are happening are not just contacts, they%u2019re friends. They also tend to be the same people who let me know when I%u2019ve made a mistake and when I%u2019ve done a good job. Without them, I%u2019d have drowned long ago in the marsh of unreturned phone calls, off-the-record comments, and deadlines,deadlines, deadlines, which still make every week into a new crisis, with a new resolution.UPS AND DOWNSI am fortunate right now to have two adjacent and contrasting beats, Downtown and Brooklyn Heights, so that I can cover neighborhood events as well as the ups and downs of Brooklyn%u2019s commercial life. With so much happening downtown, it isn%u2019t hard to be upbeat most of the time, but when the umpteenth delay has taken place on the Fulton Mall, it%u2019s nice to look at the more straightforward striving of neighbors in the Heights, keeping their blocks clean and their churches strong. Of course the Heights has produced its share of real estate news this year too%u2014Block 207, Concord Village Co-ops, 57 Montague, come to mind.The Fulton Mall, then. I was one of the hordes of Brooklynites to whom a trip to Downtown Brooklyn meant the Hoyt St. subway and A & S. When I made such a trip, I didn%u2019t even know that I was on Fulton Street. If this is true of lots of Brooklyn residents, as I believe it is, then that%u2019s part of Downtown%u2019s problem. The Fulton Mall is one step toward the solution, and even all the %u201cbad press over the past year, with the contractor suing the city and the merchants despairing over the moats in front of their stores, has assured that we%u2019ve all heard about the Mall now, and we will certainly go see it when it%u2019s built, though its completion is unconscionably far off. (A poster over my desk gives the Phase Two construction dates as %u201c 1981-1983,%u201d and in my lowest moments, I picture myself still sitting here in 1983, writing, %u201cConstruction was halted on the Fulton Mall today because....%u201d ).Will the Mali%u2019s sightseers become its shoppers? It depends on the stores, whichare very gradually improving in variety. I have to admit that one of the real disappointments I felt this year came when I had to cover the failure of Alexanders%u2019 to land the Martin%u2019s site. I still hope that even next year, when Albee Square opens, and the Mall starts to look nice, Downtown will really begin to be part of our brownstone neighborhoods, as The Phoenix has been treating it all along.CLOUDY CRYSTAL BALLDisappointment over Alexanders%u2019 was a comparatively strong reaction for me, as I have rarely taken personal stands on the issues I cover. I almost never make predictions, since I possess one of the cloudiest crystal balls over. I%u2019ll make a stab and say that Baruch College probably won%u2019t come to Brooklyn, just because I think I should try to foresee something; but that%u2019s my limit.Perhaps it%u2019s the result of years of training in non-partisanship in the League of Women Voters, but only two stories have really stirred me up this year. The closing of several major programs at The Brooklyn Museum, and the debate over adding extra grades to P.S. 8 in Brooklyn Heights, have both caused people a lot of anguish and I can%u2019t pretend not to care. The Museum chose to cut programs which had constituencies who loved them but could not reach into their pockets very far to support them. The loss of children%u2019s workshops and evening adult classes at the Art School is a severe loss to the Borough%u2019s artistic life, and it has hurt the aspirations of many students and teachers. No matter how much rationality I had to reflect in writing about the Museum%u2019s money crunch when the cuts were made, I wanted to cry %u201cDon%u2019t do it%u201d the whole time.P. S. 8 is even tougher, because I seeContinued on page 20An Atlantic Ave. %u2018State-Of-The-Nation%u2019BY LINUS GELBER AND HIS AMAZING SIDEKICK, HERB THE TYPEWRITERFacing me at the desk here is a threesheet, placemat-size architectural rendering of the Fulton Mall with an antinuke concert poster clipped to it. Old photos waiting for the morgue are stacked silently in old Lowenbrau beer boxes over the file cabinet, with the names, faces and salaries of the Koch administration pasted to the nearby wall (Comptroller Jay Goldin%u2019s eyes and mouth have been burned out with cigarettes). Downstairs there%u2019s a bottle of champagne on the layout table in the art department. The last of a case from our open-house last night, and outside Atlantic Avenue%u2019s morning traffic is quietly wading to work through the season%u2019s first legit snow. For all I know, it%u2019s the last of the 70%u2019s; the radio says it will be slush by noon, but I%u2019ll wait and see.I rarely wake up early enough to catch mornings, but I like them when I do. A yellow-slickered crossing-guard emerges from Bond Street through the flurries and is waiting for the bus, pacing back and forth for the cold. A clot of students crosses the street toward DeKalb. The B-63 comes and goes, taking the crossing-guard, and a sudden rush of New York Times%u2019 and umbrellas signals the rise of the office crowd. I caught the real early-birds on the tngid ti am \King%u2019s Highway, and the slightly-later circuit over scrambled eggs and toasty steam-heat at the K and M Deli up the block. The PHOENIX offices are still and chilly and I%u2019m the first one in. way ahead oi sc he de. (Editor ote: That's for sure!) Itlight enough v that the cars filing to and from th< B O 1 . re shut mg off their lights. A motor cle b izze%u00bb jy, and it make r si ,! md gruff.IT s DIFFERENT IN THE MORNING Mornings, mornings. I love watchingdifferent mornings in different places; they give me an idea of the turf, genuine feelings. Boerum Hill isn%u2019t niggling about things in the morning; Brooklyn Heights isn%u2019t being rich in the morning; Park Slope isn%u2019t priding itself in the morning; Columbia Street isn%u2019t being defensive; Red Hook isn%u2019t being trodden on; Clinton Hill isn%u2019t being overlooked in the morning; Fort Greene isn%u2019t up and coming in the morning; Carroll Gardens isn%u2019t being neglected in the morning; Gowanus isn%u2019t being redeveloped in the morning; and Fulton Street isn%u2019t being mailed in the morning. Mornings are just people waking up in different rooms and houses and yawning the same yawns and saying the same hellos and staring the same bleary stares over the same breakfasts, alarm clocks and morning trousers. Community activists get in the morning just like apathetics, and fanatical loonies wake up just like less fanatical politicians. The lowering of defenses is a nice thing: it should happen more often.Joel Wolfe, who opened Lisanne restaurant just before the Antic this year, is trundling a shopping cart off toward the Heights, and the composition of the crowds outside is changing. More fur coats ana Czar Ivan the Terrible hats, more earmuffs, buses and schoolchildren, more handbags and a new spray of snow. Now a fire engine and an ambulance, and a man coming back from the cleaners with his fresh-pressed suit, clad in plastic, ruffling in the wind. In an hour or two, Stan Murray will come and open up The Food Basket.MORE COMPLAINTS THAN PRAISEThis borough is an odd place, and this paper is an odd place. We hear-or at least I hear-more complaints than praise Put I%u2019d guess that%u2019s because the people that complain do it louder. The whole area is chock-full of feisty, cranky groups and feisty, cranky politics: some of it makes alot of sense, some makes none. The news though is a wacky grab-bag. Take Thornton Willet from Kane Street at a hearing over the summer on the Red Hook sewer plant: this hearing is much the same as the two years worth of discussion that preceded it, and all adversaries have become off-the-record friends, and Thornton jovially approaches Joe McGough, First Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection. They exchange warm greetings and clap one another heartily on the shoulders. The meeting starts and so does the shouting, with Thornton railing at the frontlines. The meeting ends and he goes flaming up the aisles to McGough: confrontation? No; warm goodbyes. See you next time, Thornton. Bye, Joe. What are you going to hit us with next time? Uhuh, that would be telling.Or Connie Newsome%u2019s friends and neighbors in the Neighborhood Action Coalition, who kick around the idea of privately raising, through private donations, more than a million dollars to finance middle-income housing, hoping to stave off what they see as a low-income project nearby. Of course, they had no money to make a mailing and had to take up a stiff*collection* at the meetings: Connie ended up pleased as punch. Seems they raised more than $500.%u2022 YES I DID, NO YOU DIDN%u2019TOr thg fights between the Times Plaza welfare hotel and the community, where the Community%u2019Advisory Board request s repairs and owner Abraham Ailon says he does them. No, you didn%u2019t, says the Board. Yes, I did, says Ailon. No, you didn%u2019t. Here, I%u2019ll show it to vou. savs Ailon. Thorp it%u2019s done. No, it%u2019s not, says the Board. Yes, it is, says Ailon. We got a Congressman to say that it%u2019s not, says the Board. Yes, but he came back and said it was better, saysContinued on Paj'e 201979%u2019s No. 1 Story: If there were a sto certainly the BQE unquestionably woi February and almost on a weekly basis place, or a task force was formed, or < explained how the traffic would flow or oi make a federal case out of it. But in the traffic was rerouted to almost everyo surprise turned out to be that anonymo helped keep traffic problems to a minin while work continued on schedule. Ma have been pleasantly surprised to driv portions of the Brooklyn-Queens Express drive less because of the high cost of g roads will be better. (Occhiogrosso Photoiconstruction of the F e Christmas shopp at all work be stoppi n the spring of instead for $4 r as in full swing even written agreement i was thought thatnearly finished p 'J late, nevertheless, i wooden walkways being done. 1 1i abe finishei '%u2019hase One of the $18 while Phase Two is %u2022echiogrosso Photo)Page 12, The PHOENIX, December 27,1979Looking At 1979 AsP H O E N IX F o lk T a k e A P e r s o n a ! l o o k a t i n e p e o i