MFer -- you're classification of the 3 types is really funny -- you made me laugh out loud.

Rwordplay -- you've hit the issues right on the head. And I thik we've got to keep public spaces truly public.

The cops should take care of the occasional drunks, crazies, dealers, if they annoy others. These "civic minded" "neighbors" are neither.

And how exactly does one create a private security force to patrol a public space? What authority can it possibly have?

The hasids do it all the time in Williamsburg.

The drug dealers dont harrass and I have lived in this immediate area for 15 years. On the other hand the crack addicts can sometimes be in your face when you are just trying to eat your lunch.

Over all, I do not think the park needed this "cleansing."

On the one hand you've got the people who want the park to be a nice place where you don't get harassed by dealers. On the other hand you've got the people who think it will be cleaned up SO MUCH that it will be homogenized and Disney-fied.

Now which one seems more realistic?

Do I get to select door number 2 out of the three doors you've suggested?

The whole notion of the public sphere is being tested here in Washington Square Park as well as in other private-public endeavors including The High Line, Madison Square Park and Times Square. My problem with the developers,designers and advocates of the new New York is their not very subtle effort to transform external "commons," notable for their elements of spontaneity, chaos and occasionally violence, into interior spaces, distinguished by limited and controlled access and total surveillance. To whom does Washington Square belong? The City, the people of New York, tourist, the inhabitants of surroundings streets, NYU? Washington Square was never intended to serve a small elite a la Gramercy Park. Those who think they can effect this transformation are delusional.

What that park really needs is a really good beer tent, where anyone over 18 can buy and consume beer to their hearts desire. The only rule being no taking the beer outside the park. Also a lot of loud music will help liven the place up. How about heating the water in the fountain? The amount of heat given off by the urine generously supplied by the waders will unfortunately not be enough to heat the fountain on those cool September evenings when freshman week is in full swing.

I bought some of my first bags of green there while sipping 40's skipping out on high-school in the late 80's. I'll never forget the guy - Marvelous - cuz "I look just like Marvelous Marvin Hagler" - and he did!! ahahahahah

Why not just white wash NYC and call it Singapore? Seems to be the new MO.

what do you think of this precedent- what if i think there's too much crime in my neighborhood, but can't afford to privately contract off-duty cops? carry this to a logical extreme and it's pretty scary.

letting kids go to summer camp with band aids in their packs leads to staff infections, because they just use the band aids to cover up wounds instead of going to the nurse to really deal with the problem. stupid rich kids.

There are 3 types of riff-raffs in WSP: the bums, mostly white; the dealers, mostly blacks; and the pigeon feeder, completely insane. To this list we can add 2 types of undesireables: the NYU undergrad douchebags, mostly scummy; and the small-dog run dog owners, who are feared most of all. For they have political power in their incessant bitching, sickening arf-arf of love, and devotion to their rat-dogs.

nothing i cant stand more than snooty pretentious yuppies with their mutt rat dogs who look down on you because you dont want to neuter your dog

WSP has kept going down hill since they stopped using it as a potter's field back in the early nineteenth century.

I'm glad to see the "hanging tree" is still there, albeit with out the appropriate branch. Perhaps with the help of FDNY's ladder 9 they can stretch another rope higher up and let it dangle in the faces of all the miscreants that walk under it.

Snoopy,

I'm surprised that the doctors give you access to the computers.

I don't believe in doctors, they cut me off from my main supply of drugs about four years ago, so I can't use the VA's computers anymore.

Fortunately I have a friend at City Hall and she just slipped me one of those new iphoneG3S's type electronic devices with free AT&T service paid by the city.

She told me to be very discreet in using it because it can be traced back to her office where she is working at City Hall room 342. I told her I would.

The had to do this after I sold them all those "keys to Washington Square".

can we keep little kids out of the fountain? I have nothing against them but if you ever see kids in bathing suits in the fountain then if you look around you'll see tons of perverted pedophiles staring at them creepily. It gives me the heebie jeebies.

Washington Square just got awkward.

Eleanor Roosevelt, who lived at 29 Washington Square West, would have been deeply ashamed of her neighbor's behavior. These are the same uptight patrician wanna-be's (Eleanor, being a true patrician, was eminently tolerant) who tried to have the dog run removed from WSP because of the noise.