BEFORE dawn, Melissa Hickson slips out of her apartment on Jane Street in the far West Village and scoops up broken beer bottles, cigarette butts — and the occasional used condom — that lands on her property before her 7-year-old daughter gets up for school.
Most nights, Melissa is blasted out of bed by a pulsating sound system that booms next door. Taxi horns blare until all hours. Partygoers scream.
“This goes on until 4 a.m.,” Melissa told me, bleary-eyed from anxiety and lack of sleep. “We have beer bottles and wine bottles on the windowsill. Smashed glass.”
Her 14-year-old son, Taylor, suffers from asthma. And yet, every night, choking smoke fills the family’s living space.
“It’s a nice, quiet family street,” said Melissa. “And no one’s getting enough sleep!”
And so goes the Battle of Jane Street — a skirmish that pits the beautiful, the rich and the chronically drunk against ordinary fools. These people have spent millions on Greenwich Village real estate, never expecting that their investment would preclude them from getting a good night’s rest.
Ground zero of this war is the Jane Hotel, the former flophouse that is the city’s No. 1 hot spot of the moment. Since it opened in May, to a chain-smoking Mary-Kate Olsen and a plethora of A-list stars from Jennifer Aniston to Kate Winslet, Edward Norton and Mischa Barton, the neighbors have been reaching for the sleeping pills or dialing 311, to no avail.
“I can’t sleep!” protested Michael Zitomer, 5, one of they youngest victims of the Jane Street crisis.
But now, three Jane Street buildings have taken a tack used by any club worth its boldface reputation: They’ve hired public-relations powerhouse Ken Frydman of Source Communications and formed a coalition, Jane Street Neighbors United.
They want the city to shut down the hotel’s ballroom, which, they say, obtained its liquor license with the claim that the only music played would be “background music.”
How long can they be ignored?
I reached Karen Friedman, who does p.r. for the Jane, and she told me that “a lot of these issues have been rectified.”
“Six people keep traffic moving. They control crowds. The hotel has done acoustical work.” She said there’s more to be done. “It’s a process. It’s not going to happen overnight.”
But these attempts to tame Jane Street came as surprising news to Hickson, an Australian native who lives with husband Stephen and kids Jordan, 7, Taylor, 14, and Maddison, 17, at 111 Jane St., next door to the hotel. Their back yard is adjacent to the Jane’s back deck, where Melissa constantly sees people smoking. Management, she said, claims the deck is not used.
“Four nights a week, I go inside and ask them to turn down the music,” said Melissa. “They do it for about 10 minutes, then it goes back up.
“One time, a man said to me, ‘Come in and have a drink.’ I don’t want a drink! They’ve lost all control of the place.”
Jane Street resident Anthony Locane appealed to the Jane’s famous mascots — the Olsen midgets.
“Dear Mary-Kate and Ashley,” he wrote in an e-mail that landed in my box. “As the poster girls for the newest hip spot in NYC, the Jane Hotel, I thought I should write you both on behalf of all the small children here in the neighborhood who have not been sleeping since the club opened. They thank you for allowing them to stay up past their bedtime . . .”
No word came back to me from Mary-Kate and Ashley, who should move their favorite nightspot to a place where smoke and noise is appreciated.
China, perhaps?
Mackenzie plays Papa incest for a payday
When it comes to confessional literature, incest is the new black. I suppose cannibalism is next. Scratch that. It’s been done.
Mackenzie Phillips is just the latest to ratchet up the money-making horror by writing about her “consensual” affair with her papa, John, who is conveniently dead. But Mackenzie, I’m afraid, is not the first.
Kathryn Harrison attempted to demystify the father-daughter love match in her twisted and strangely empathetic memoir, “The Kiss.”
Like Mackenzie, Kathryn was herself a mother as she pulled this sordid story from the crypt, sentencing the kid to decades of therapy. How I wish these dames would find day jobs.
Better hitched than ditched
Why so surprised that New York has one of the lowest divorce rates in the nation? Do you have any idea what it costs to live here?
Divorce is expensive. Paying rent solo will crush you. Buying food for one will give you anorexia.
What’s more, Manhattan is home to a disproportionately large population of single people. If you go to all that trouble of finding a mate, better not admit you made a mistake. Either that, or move to Westchester before calling it quits.
It’s better to stay miserable in pairs. Cheaper, too.