Friday, June 3, 2011

The start of Howl!



Until tomorrow.

[Photos by Bobby Williams]

9 comments:

Rocky Raccoon said...

Rocky was curious about that great banner hanging from the building on 9th and 1st Ave advertising the HOWL Festival. He thought for a second — wow how great is that — some defiant local EV miscreant scaled the side of this building and claimed it in honor of Ginsberg and the HOWL festival. In the spirit of the real EV - groovy.

Then he said wait we don't live in that EV anymore we live in Bloomie's corporate version of the EV - Rocky smells a rat.
So he did a little burrowing like raccoons are known to do and I found out that the owner of that building is the one and only Terrence Lowenberg of Icon Realty (http://ny.curbed.com/tags/terrence-lowenberg)
Yes, the Icon Realty that just demolished those great old buildings on East 4th street that Grieve gave an update on earlier, turned that nice old building on 10th between A and B into the Hotel Toshi (also featured on the Grieve) and has gobbled up buildings all over the EV. So this raccoon kept digging and guess what he found - Icon Realty is now a proud sponsor of the HOWL Festival, along with a couple of other shitty RE people including Tower Brokerage. So on the one hand you give money to celebrate the history of the EV, while on the other hand you tear it down.

What a disgrace by the folks behind the HOWL Festival to take money from these characters. The folks behind HOWL should be ashamed of themselves. Rocky will be boycotting HOWL this year for sure and hope other disgusted raccoons do too.

EV Grieve said...

UGH.

Shawn said...

WTF!

Do you endorse ING because you run in the NYC marathon? No.

Do you support George W. Bush because you lived in the USA during his two-term tenure? No.

Even Disney funded "Fahrenheit 9/11" for crying out loud! You think Michael Moore cared? He got the movie made!

Almost all EV landlords are sponsors of HOWL. And so are WNYC, Veselka, and Beth Israel. It's a tax write off.

To ask anyone to "boycott" or "censor" an event named for and in the spirit of Allen Ginsberg, free speech, and free expression, is the most ironic, hilarious, sad, and PATHETIC thing I've ever heard!

Marty Wombacher said...

Wow, nice digging by Rocky Racoon! I had no idea. It's kind of like the PMRC sponsoring a 2 Live Crew concert.

Anonymous said...

tower brokerage has been in this neighborhood for decades. i've been renting their apartments for just as long. bob pearl is a good guy.

Crazy Eddie said...

First the Lower East Side Girls Club. Now Howl. I am confused! What to do, what to do? Marty, thanks for that Tipper Gore flashback. Man Pig Bear!

Anonymous said...

Way to go Rocky! Some of the sponsors that they have are fine like Veselka, Beth Israel, etc., but to take money from Icon, Tower and Jacobson is PATHETIC!

They really need to be more careful about the sponsors that they take money from. The real estate brokers and developers have the most immediate impacts on the neighborhoods destruction.

By the way Allen Ginsberg was an activist. In his poem "Howl" he "excoriates what he saw as the destructive forces of capitalism and conformity".

NearBowery said...

Howl is dead. Long live Howl!

esquared™ said...

or it's like ticketmaster sponsoring a pearl jam concert...

surprised that vv or nypress is not a sponsor this year, but ny observer is