After the teenage riot at a West Village Dunkin' Donuts last month, police have taken an increased interest in the surprisingly wild West Village. They even brought in mounted patrols! But that isn't quite enough for many neighbors who have been complaining for years about the "unruly youths" who pour off of the Christopher Street pier when it closes at 1 a.m. To that end, Dave Poster, the head of the 20-year-old watch group the Christopher Street Patrol, recently wrote to the Villager calling on the city to close the pier at 10 p.m..
The pier has been a problem for the neighborhood for some time. It attracts a large crowd of young gays who, in the words of Poster, "claim the pier as their own—not the community’s—and use it as their stomping grounds before descending upon local streets at 1 a.m. At this time, a mob of rebellious, angry and often dangerous youths turn their disrespect and just plain meanness onto the community until the early morning hours."
In 2006, Christine Quinn introduced a plan for the pier in which an increased police presence was intermingled with youth outreach, but that seems to not have had a lasting effect. And it it still leaves the neighborhood wide open after the pier closes for those youth to run wild.
