YIPPIES PROTEST NEAR BLOOMBERG'S TOWN HOUSE

The Yippies hit the Upper East Side last night, banging bongos and
shouting anti-Republican chants. They had come to protest outside
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's town house, and they dubbed their
demonstration the opening salvo of the Republican National Convention.

If so, it was a shot barely heard round the corner.

They obediently stayed within the police barricades at the corner of
Fifth Avenue and 79th Street, a perch well away from Mayor Bloomberg's
home farther east on 79th Street. The 60 people who had gathered were
not quite enough to fill up the cordoned-off pen.

Their invective, calling the mayor "Bummerberg" and chanting the
"Liar, liar, pants on fire" rhyme, was not quite incendiary. And they
offered Krispy Kreme doughnuts to police officers monitoring the
demonstration. The officers politely declined.

Many of the Yippies who gathered at the corner are now in their 50's,
and remember the birth of the Youth International Party under Abbie
Hoffman in the 1960's and the group's violent confrontation with the
Chicago police during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

The Yippies, whose protests combine street theater and radical
liberalism, reiterated the refrain of other protest groups: that Mr.
Bloomberg should allow demonstrations in Central Park during the
weeklong convention. What is expected to be the biggest gathering of
protesters has been limited to the West Side Highway, and Mr.
Bloomberg has shown no sign of changing his mind to allow
demonstrations in the park.

"Bloomberg is putting people in danger by saying we can't have Central
Park," said Aron Kay, a protester whose modus operandi is flinging
pies at politicians and celebrities. "The people of New York don't
need it. The mom-and-pop stores don't need it. We don't need it, and
the police don't need it."

As the sun set over Central Park, the demonstrators clapped,
encouraged one another's iambic chants and offered passers-by antiwar
buttons, fliers advertising other rallies and pro-marijuana magazines.

Mr. Kay said: "I feel that the park belongs to people. We have the
right to assemble in our park."

Dana Beal, another demonstrator, agreed, saying, "There's going to be
total chaos if they don't let us have Central Park."

An hour and a half after they arrived, the Yippies broke up and
filtered into the night. Whether the mayor had even been home to
notice them, however, was unclear.

"I don't know whether he was there or not," said his spokesman, Edward
Skyler. "That's not the sort of thing that would bother him."