East of Bowery tonight at Sidewalk

[East Houston and Eldridge, 1987 © Ted Barron]

In 2008, writer Drew Hubner and photographer Ted Barron joined together to create East of Bowery, a collection of short stories capturing unvarnished moments from the neighborhood circa the 1980s.

In December, Sensitive Skin published a book version of the collaboration.

Tonight at Sidewalk, Barron and Hubner will present a multimedia version of East of Bowery featuring live music from Kurt (Pussy Galore, Boss Hog, Lapis Lazuli) Wolf. The show starts at 6:30. (No cover charge, but buy a drink or some food or something.) And if you can't make it tonight, they'll be doing it again on April 18 at the Cake Shop on Ludlow.

Here's an excerpt from Hubner's Next Stop Times Square post:

My last morning was like any other. I awakened with my mouth open, in the snow, with no shelter to speak of. Some of us called the empty lots behind the old matzo shop, at the corner of Norfolk and Rivington, the toxic waste dump. One never knew what or who might end up there, shiny needles, wine and other more intimate fluids were exchanged freely, we kept each other warm with song, spit and stories, of better, longer days and places where the sun filtered soft and lovely through fluttering leaves and left Indian paint patterns on our innocent faces.

Maybe there were fifty or so of us in the lot that night, none of our mothers when they walked us to kindergarten that first day and left us in the parking lot imagined their lovely child would ever end up in a place like this, even for one night. Everyone knows vacant lots are haunted by the men who once came home here where the walk was and hugged their pealing children tightly to their chests. It was almost an entire block, big enough for a baseball field. Some of us had fashioned temporary bivouac structures out of discards: cardboard boxes, found pieces of wood and orphaned plastic tarp.

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Read an interview with Baron and Hubner at No Such Thing As Was.

Find East of Bowery here.

(Semi) Daily Pixel is Baron's photo site.

Find more information about the book at Sensitive Skin.

[International Bar & Grill, 119 St. Marks Place, 1986 © Ted Barron]