April 6, 1995

Finally there may be a plan for developing the Hoboken waterfront that will please city officials, Hoboken residents and the Port Authority. The proposal, which involves $75 million of Port Authority money, puts more emphasis on recreational and open space than earlier, more ambitious plans did. The plan includes restaurants, a 300-room hotel, 380 apartment units, parking for 2,100 cars, a soccer field and two basketball courts. If the City Council and the Port Authority go along, groundbreaking could take place in August, Mayor Anthony Russo said.

IN the old days, when fortunes here were made on cotton, corn and sugar cane, the town square would burst with people on a Saturday afternoon. "You couldn't hardly walk down the street," Horton Foote recalls. The stores don't open on Saturdays now -- no customers. There used to be five family-owned grocery stores. Gone. Three family-owned drugstores. Gone. On a recent weekend, both the main street and the town square were completely deserted.

A day after he lampooned the Japanese-American judge in the O. J. Simpson case with Japanese-accented remarks, Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato apologized yesterday, but still found himself the target of criticism from organizations devoted to fighting discrimination. "If I offended anyone, I'm sorry," Mr. D'Amato said in a statement. "I was making fun of the pomposity of the judge and the manner in which he's dragging the trial out."

The fashion world is no place for the uninitiated, though from time to time those in the know and out of it seem at least to be living in the same neighborhood. This week, of course, that neighborhood is Bryant Park in midtown Manhattan, where the 49 designer shows that constitute New York's semiannual fashion week are being held, like the circus, in tents. Inside, the frenetic backstage hair-styling, cosmetic-applying and zipping up gives way on stage to high-pressure performing and the excited scrutiny of critical mobs. The theatrics, practiced in Paris and Milan, Italy, as well as here, are mesmerizing: a model stares down a bank of photographers as she sashays down the runway and, at the last moment, with an infinitesimal moue or the twitch of a cheek muscle tries to eke out a psychic victory. It can be tense.

Two months ago, Patrick Erdman arrived at the University of Minnesota hospital here exhausted and anxious about his increasing difficulty in breathing. He has cystic fibrosis, whose victims often die from infections when their lungs become clogged by mucus. These days the 18-year-old high school student is playing basketball with friends, preparing to paint the family's home in Hudson, Wis., and feeling somewhat amazed at his rebound. "I have so much energy I can barely stay in my seat at school," Mr. Erdman said during a recent visit to the university's cystic fibrosis clinic.