My comrade Drew sent me this video recently, and it's worth checking out. Not a native New Yorker by birth, but an avid appreciator of vintage NYHC and the fabled East Village/Lower East Side culture of yore, Drew was a little surprised by this video, having heard of how dangerous and gnarly downtown supposedly was in the late `80s. Drew prefaced this clip with:
This really shatters for me the notion that Ave A in the 80s was this insanely scary place…because it doesn’t look too different to me.
In some respects, that's fair enough. Topographically, the cityscape depicted (mostly East 7th and Avenue A) hasn't really changed all that much, although the businesses have. But, I maintain, it still seems a world away from what's there now.
The clip below was filmed by one Nelson Sullivan. If memory serves, Nelson was a real trailblazer -- essentially a video blogger before such things even existed. Himself and a few other individuals used to show videos like like (little slices of life in NYC) via cable access television (for more on that click here). I remember two other similar programs, like "Dog the Cat" and "The Church of Shooting Yourself."
In any case, Nelson was a mild-mannered gay gentleman who gamely carried what was probably a comparatively bulky video camera around with him everywhere, amassing an incredible amount of footage that now belongs in a veritable time capsule. Some of it is pretty banal (i.e. wandering around Tompkins Square Park with a friend, wondering where they should have lunch, etc.), but as period pieces go, they can still pretty fascinating. One might wonder where the individuals pictured here might be today.
If I'm not mistaken, Nelson Sullivan has since passed away, but I'm not certain. You can see more of his clips here.
Enjoy this little taste of the East Village circa 1987. Things to look out for: flyers advertising a gig by They Might Be Giants (then still an unknown local act) and, I think, Fleshtones guitarist Keith Streng sitting at a neighboring table in the background at 07:26.
Nelson did sadly pass away from a heart attack, July 4, 1989. Didn't know him, although have since realized from watching his videos that I was once in the same throng outside the club Mars when I was visiting NYC for the first time. His archive was recently taken into the downtown collection at the Fales library at NYU (http://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/research/fales/downtown.html), went to the small and funny celebration they held where Michael Musto, Lady Kier and others recounted stories of his times.
There's a short documentary about his life available on i-Tunes called "Nelson Sullivan's World of Wonder," made by his friends Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato.
Posted by: RJJNY | November 15, 2013 at 11:46 AM
Nice find! Thanks for sharing!
Posted by: EV Grieve | November 15, 2013 at 12:28 PM
There was a guy walking with Wendy Wild who kind of looked like a young Musto, but probably wasn't him. Yeah, a kid might be tempted to think it doesn't seem much different than today, but like you said, it sure was. The nice thing about it, though, was that by '87...and even moreso five years later...that Ave. A still had this rep as a dark and dangerous place, even though it had definitely become more 'civilized' in terms of crime. B could still be a little teeny bit scary and C and D, well, still a (relatively) lot of drug dealing and violence there. I was living between A and B and have to say that when going out I turned right, toward A, about 80% of the time. Crazy things still happened on A. I remember waking up one day and hearing that Curtis Sliwa had been beaten up early one morning. I think he was sitting in a stopped cab with the window open and someone grabbed him, not sure--it was a strange story. And yeah, I came around the corner on 7th St. from 1st Ave. in time to see a guy hosing blood off the sidewalk and the cops getting ready to leave the scene of a fatal stabbing. It wasn't all peaches and cream, but stuff like that was becoming more of the exception than the norm. The feeling in the air, though...so, so, so much different than today. And why did everyone wear those horrible roundish eyeglass frames and goofy clothes? ha ha ha Well, not everyone did, most of us had wraparound sunglasses and still hung on to our black jeans and leather, although I do remember one pair of glasses I had that were incredibly hideous...
Posted by: John M | November 15, 2013 at 05:05 PM
The guy with Wendy Wild is Michael "Kitty" Ullman.
Posted by: dany | November 17, 2013 at 10:41 AM
The East Village I remember - my girlfriend moved to a place on 7th between C and D just after this. I don't like to get all nostalgic about the '80s - I had to live through it an all - but compared to today, it's eye-poppingly vibrant and eccentric and stylish. I don't think I'd want to dress like that again, but it certainly wasn't drab, and drab is how too much of the world - yes New York, I'm talking about you, too - looks now.
Also, remember when sushi was "new"?
Posted by: rick mcginnis | November 18, 2013 at 12:15 PM