GREENWICH VILLAGE POT DEVOTEES BUMPED BY FAMILY FESTIVAL

NEW YORK -- It was pot-smoking hippies vs. baby-toting yuppies in Greenwich
Village on Saturday, and the hippies lost. Nudged along by an imposing
cadre of police officers, marchers at a pro-marijuana rally yielded
Washington Square Park to mimes, face-painters and riding ponies at the
first city-sponsored Family Day in the park.

In a striking symbol of changed times, a corporate sponsor of the event was
Rolling Stone magazine, which provided a stunt-bicycle demonstration. For
the last 27 years, May Day had been J-Day -- Joint Day -- in the park,
where thousands of pot smokers rallied in support of their favorite
controlled substance.

But Saturday they massed nostalgically across the street, jeering at two
video surveillance cameras mounted on poles that police credit with helping
run drug dealers out of the park.

Others shambled glumly downtown to Battery Park, where their Million
Marijuana March had been relegated by city officials. "Giuliani's a Dope.
Pot Is an Herb," their posters read.

"It's '1984' in 1998," lamented Dana Beal, 51, the organizer of the
pro-marijuana march, which he said this year had the added purpose of
"mourning the passing of the Village as we once knew it." Vince
Strautmanis, 38, a stockbroker and father of six who was pushing a stroller
past a marionette show, remembered coming to the park for the annual
marijuana rally when he was a student. "It was one big cloud," he said,
sounding almost wistful. "It was like Woodstock." Not anymore. A formidable
police presence highlighted the clashing cultures of several hundred
demonstrators versus a Family Day crowd estimated by officials at 8,000.
Before the march to Battery Park, the marijuana fans gathered quietly to
watch the jugglers and mimes. But whenever a knot of young people gathered,
police officers put barricades around them, much to the youths' amusement.

A police sergeant took one look at Sebastian Sabino, 17, wearing a mushroom
around his neck, and told him: "Battery Park!" When Sabino asked the
officer where that was, she replied, "First Precinct." Sabino took it in
stride. "It's all about peace, man," he said.

The park's signature -- a marble arch flanked by statues of George
Washington -- is surrounded by chain link and scaffolding while it is being
restored. But the culture of the park itself has been under construction
since Mayor Rudolph Giuliani took office in 1994 and instituted vigorous
patrols and drug stings, and posted signs saying no drugs, no drinking, no
biking, no skating. For good measure, another sign says, "Quiet Zone." It
worked, and Friday he crowed about the very idea of a Family Day in the
park. While acknowledging that some drug-dealing remains and that the
Police Department "has a lot more work to do" there, Giuliani said, "Decent
people can now use Washington Square Park and not get assaulted." Beal, who
said his march was dedicated to "all the people who are feeling the sting
of the crackdown in Greenwich Village," works out of a building that once
housed a hippie boutique on the ground floor. He and his supporters staged
a marijuana rally in the park every year beginning in 1973 -- each time
with a permit, except last year, when they held what a city spokesman
called "an illegal assembly."

Robert O'Sullivan, a chairman of a neighborhood group called Parents for
Playgrounds, which sponsored Family Day with the city's Parks Department,
decided that was not going to happen again. "I told them straight out, 'We
don't want you coming into the park,' " said O'Sullivan. "They talk about
free speech, but what they want is a pot-smoking party. We don't want
people drinking alcohol in the park, either."

So Saturday the park became a place for face-painting, a putting green and
a soccer clinic. Paul De Rienzo, 41, a leader of the marijuana march who is
editor in chief of High Times magazine, denounced Parents for Playgrounds
for "using their own children as props for their political agenda." His
nemesis, O'Sullivan, is a former financial adviser who now stays home with
his two children. He calls himself a liberal, says he smoked marijuana 10
or 15 times when he was in college, and doesn't even object to loosening
the marijuana laws. "I told Dana, 'We'll even lobby with you, guy, but we
don't want you coming into the park,' " O'Sullivan said. The marijuana
event drew Grateful Dead fans from throughout the East Coast, with a large
contingent of high-school students from Westchester County and New Jersey.
On sale was melatonin (a legal substance, priced at 25 cents for 2,500
micrograms), which Beal called "an LSD-like drug" that produces "trippy
dreams" when taken at bedtime. "It improves the pot high, but also cuts the
craving," said Beal, who added, "I don't use as much marijuana as I once
did." On corners surrounding Washington Square Park, Beal deployed
"marshals" to steer the arriving marijuana enthusiasts to nearby blocks so
they could link arms in a "Hands Around the Village" exercise.

Despite the event's ambitious name, the marijuana group predicted a crowd
in the mere thousands, billing Saturday's rally as "a full-dress rehearsal"
for May Day 1999, when they hope to finish the job. "Go ye forth and bring
us back a million people," Beal told supporters.

He said he planned to apply to use the Great Lawn at Central Park.