Here’s another unfair little post that takes an arguably needless potshot at the younger generation for daring to have different perspectives, different life-experiences, different priorities and for not knowing their historical minutia. In the past, I fired similar shots across the bows of YouTuber influencer-types like Brett Conti, Cash Jordan and Sarah Funk, although all three of those characters have thousands upon thousands of subscribers, while I only have a dwindling hallelujah choir of like-minded curmudgeons and a few loyally tenacious trolls, so, honestly, what the fuck do I know?
Invoke the words “East Village” to certain folks – especially ones of a certain age – and you’re bound to conjure a wide spectrum of associations.
Some will cite the Tompkins Square Park riots of 1988 or the cannibalistic exploits of Daniel Rakowitz, who dismembered his girlfriend, cut off her head and purportedly made soup from her brain which he, in turn, fed to the homeless in their encampments around that park.
Others might think of the Gas Station, a former filling station turned a junkies’ shooting gallery turned metallic sculpture park and performance space where GG Allin delivered his final anarchic and poop-slathered performance before overdosing later that evening.
Some might remember vanished bars and clubs like CBGB, Great Gildersleeves, The SideWalk Café, Save The Robots, Lucky Cheng’s, The Lismar Lounge, A7, The Life Café, The World, Alcatraz, Club 57, Coney Island High, Beowulf, Downtown Beirut, Manitoba’s, Lakeside Lounge and the Pyramid Club.
Others will immediately spout off a long list of luminaries like David Peel, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Ann Magnuson, Klaus Nomi, Deborah Harry, Richard Hell, Joey Ramone, Johnny Thunders, Iggy Pop, Lydia Lunch, John Lurie, James Chance, Arto Lyndsay, Thurston Moore and Jeff Buckley, or maybe lesser-known local characters like photographer/documentarian Clayton Patterson, Tompkins Square Park denizen L.E.S. Jewels, Mosaic Man Jim Power, graffiti muralist Chico or the late photographer Bob Arihood.
Some might whip out a mixtape of bands like Missing Foundation, Cop Shoot Cop, SWANS, Pussy Galore, the Black Snakes, Rat at Rat R, White Zombie, Prong, Surgery and Helmet or hardcore bands like Reagan Youth, Agnostic Front, Kraut, the Cro-Mags, Murphy’s Law, False Prophets, the Stimulators, The Undead, Leeway, Sick of It All … and the Beastie Boys.
Some might reminisce about Eddie’s Toy Tower on Avenue B, seeing Dee-Lite at Wigstock in the since-razed Tompkins Square Bandshell and attending poetry slams at the Nuyorican Poets Café on East Third Street.
Depending on who you ask, the East Village will be remembered as the home to hippies, yippies, punks, hardcore kids, freaks, hipsters, drag queens, gangbangers, activists, squatters and the unhoused. It will forever be remembered as a bohemian haven for artistic freedom or a lawless badlands or a richly varied enclave of immigrants or the home to the largest Ukrainian population outside of their homeland-under-siege.
You’re also bound to encounter folks who’ll correct you with the assertion that it’s just the Lower East Side and that the very term “East Village” was coined by colonizing gentrifiers and avaricious real-estate developers.
But here in the 2020’s – for better or worse – for a whole new generation, the names, faces, sights, sounds, stories and scenes all mentioned above mean precious little if anything at all. As I wrote at the top of this post, it’s admittedly unfair of me to task young vlogger Elana Taber and her comrade Margot with knowing about each and every aspect of the East Village’s multifaceted back-history (and lord knows I left out a shit-ton of stuff myself), but one can’t help feeling that reducing the neighborhood to simply a convenient aggregation of “quirky and funky” thrift stores and coffee shops is a strenuously myopic disservice.
But y’know, I’m a cranky old poop so, again, … what the Hell do I know?
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