Tonight is the annual Met Gala, aka the Costume Institute Gala aka the Met Ball, the fundraising gala for the benefit of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute. (This evening's honoree is Rei Kawakubo.)
On Saturday night, Vogue Magazine held its annual pre-Met gala at 6BC Botanical Garden and Grape and Grain on Sixth Street between Avenue B and Avenue C.
As we understand it, Vogue "made a very generous gift" to the garden and "promised to be respectful of the space."
Here's the recap via Vogue:
[There was] a “Midsummer Night’s Anime” dress code. All around, guests decked out in their finest mingled amid glowing flowers. For dinner, attendees meandered over to Grape and Grain, an adjacent wine bar, for custom bento boxes from David Bouley’s Brushstroke. Afterward, revelers returned to the garden for a dessert of Taiyaki fish cones topped with matcha green tea ice cream. Trays of Minamoto Kitchoan mochi and cookies were passed, along with glasses of Moët & Chandon Champagne and cups of Heavensake sake.
EVG regular Shawn Chittle shared the photos on this post...
36 comments:
Lord, deliver us from evil.
And what's beautiful is we were all invited to attend! Or not. How is the garden allowed to rent itself out for events? And what is the criteria to be picked? If I want to have an event there, and I have the money, am I going to get a yes?
I had a birthday celebration at the end of last year in their adjacent space Against the Grain...it was excellent and likewise for the staff.
Agree! What are the rules for community gardens renting out their space for private events, weddings, parties?!
Anonymous 9:38, Yes, anyone can reserve a community garden. Just ask the people who run the garden. The garden I am a member of reserves space for all sorts of things. This coming Saturday is a birthday party. In June, people are reserving it for a wedding celebration. We charge $25/hour, but if someone from Vogue wanted it, we'd probably charge a flat fee that would amount to more than $25/hour. Why not? There's a lot of stuff we need that we could get with the extra money.
9:38pm...if you researched the website for a particular community garden in the neighborhood you could also have gotten answers to your questions there...though it seems you were assuming the answers to your questions were "no" (but maybe I read your comment with snideness that was not intended).
Animosity seems to go with anonymous
What do they charge for a Mugging..You know for a little bit of that old time LES flavor?
The snide was definitely intended.
looks like a great time and the garden is even more beautiful all lit up!
Typical EV attitude, let's just look out for our own interests and screw everyone else.
Stop shitting on the East Village, Gardeners.
To the natives- you are prey, and are going to screw yourselves and the neighborhood by recruiting monied people and institutions. Don't you realize what the newbies are up to by renting out space for parties like this. This is not protecting the gardens and neighborhood.
Where is LUNGS?
We have these gardens and they need to be protected.
You give these people an inch, they will take a mile.
I hope the city takes this garden and builds housing for the homeless, with a private garden just for them. You don't deserve this garden.
This is what happens when rich people take over Alphabet City.
While this event was going on, at the La Mama Theater on East 4th Street, the legendary Jeff Weiss (on a program with some young cabaret performers--thank you Nicky P.) paid tribute to the memory of his partner of 57 years, Richard Carlos Martinez (he died in December after many years of dealing with Parkinson's disease). The hundred or so people who heard about his visit to NY saw a master theatrical magician perform monologues and songs for a little more than 1 1/2 hours. Fashionista parties will come and go, those of us privileged to have been with Jeff on Monday night will cherish the evening as long as we can convey our memories of it. Sad that no one from EV Grieve knew about the event. Ah, Jeff Weiss, Ah Life. To quote the opening song (Rogers and Hart), "Who knows where or when" we will ever see the likes of Jeff Weiss and Richard Carlos Martinez again."
Typical of the EV today, everyone only cares about themselves, not about the impact there actions have on the rest of the community.
Anon: 10:49, some confusion on your part, this EV party was on Saturday, the Met Gala was on Monday and Jeff Weiss was on Monday. Your point is well taken, however, that EV Grieve should have had something about Jeff Weiss posted. I didn't know about the event until this morning, when a friend who was there emailed me. When people on this site lament the death of the creative spirit that ruled in the East Village--two of those who contributed to its glory days were Jeff and Carlos. Carlos was also an environmental activist who helped organize small fences around trees. In one of the plays I saw, Teddy and the Social Worker there was a fabulous song "Dear Mr. Mayor" which lamented the exorbitant rents (and this was in the late 70s?). I wish I knew the words to that song. Any help out there? May Jeff return to NY for more performances.
What's with the animosity towards this party? The attendees have the "attitude" and energy of what the East Village was once like. Yeah it was sorta fancy, but I'll take this over the drunken senseless parties of the frat bros.
Just as the average East Village resident can't get into the Met Gala, I'd like to keep the Met Gala out of the East Village community spots. Jenny, if they had old EV attitude, it would be open and not exclusive.
Jenny, if you were really trying to be old-school you would have had Junkies of different persuasians nodding out in-front.
@ 1:23 PM, are you the Mayor of the East Village now? Sounds like your envy is trying to build a metaphorical wall to keep out deplorables.
You gotta love the self-delusion. The East Village should be open and inclusive -- except when it's closed to "those" people, obviously.
And anime.
@Jenny, typical response to point at the fratties. Yes they suck but it is the rich elite that suck the life out of the hood. The fratties live 4 or 5 to a converted tenement apartment and in most cases get treated like shit by their landlord. The crowd going to the Met gala live in the lux condos that have sprouted on land once housing schools, churches, theaters things that supported working people.
That vogue event dimished the quality of life for locals. It was a lamentable privatization of communal space. This garden is in the middle of a residential block. Keep in mind, these community gardens have been created by volunteers from our community over many, many years. Now these vogues descended on it with their money and make locals feel unwelcome. They blasted until midnight their type of music, not even asking whether local wanted to hear it or not. They posted metal barriers on the sidewalk and a security guy at the garden entrance to scare away anyone without fashionista looks.
One wonders what their permit said, who issued it, and on what grounds. A printed notice posted just the day before announced that the event would last until 7pm, yet it was handwritten over 8:30pm, and in fact lasted late into the night. We need full transparency on the process.
Music was blasted most loudly from 10pm to midnight. Cop cars were right outside, but those rich people can buy them easily off. Cops didn't intervene. Again, we need transparency on why not. When residents of the projects congregate without or past a permit, they get arrested, beaten up, or taken away on stretchers, here the rich make noise and drink alcohols on the street with cops willfully ignoring instead of enforcing code and protecting the neighborhood.
Of course, what is a little donation for those vogues (compared to what a commercial venue would have cost them), is a substantial amount for a garden. But it is paid at the price of unwanted disturbance for many residents, including those who had to work early the next day. Let's hope this was the very last event of such kind.
This will probably offend everyone here and the east village, because with the state of society today where class and economic inequity grows and celebrity worship is now an American pastime it should make you madder, these Vogue piggies and their lame groupies are the community and the constituency, the ones that only matter, the ones the cities are subsidizing luxury housing for with some affordable housing crumbs for the hundreds of thousands of desperate citizens to compete for.
All your gardens and our parks will be privatized and glommed by these enlightened, dubiously influential and creative types. The city for sale has been sold. 10;38 was right, give them an inch and they take a mile and they take and take and take, it's never enough.
These people may have good intentions and politics, but it's superficial. Just the fact they utilized/monopolized a community garden like this, with the obligatory big goon bouncer in front, just puts up a big middle finger to residents and passerby around them, especially to the poorer people living in the projects a block away.
What needs to be done with these isolated "events" is to follow the money. Especially if there is a non-profit involved, the majority of them are shady. If there's a recent comparison, look at the recent idiocy at city hall re-commemorating the Mets World Series victory from 1986! only four of the mets showed up and it was supposedly to give Dwight Gooden a key to the city because he missed the first parade because he got loaded on coke. It turns out the whole thing was arranged and lobbied by wormtongue agent of the city James Capalino, who our corrupt mayor allegedly cut ties from and the whole "event" was reportedly a production for some TV show.
If our officials can do this in plain sight, just imagine what bodes for your communal and public spaces in the near future.
Resist and persist.
Ohhhh dread forgot this little gathering and the wine and cheese the hi lite of the season no less
Outrageous. We need to better protect our gardens. Don't allow those monied vogues and commercial enterprises to take over what volunteers in decades have build with their own hands. Resist their attempts to wrangle even these little spaces from our community.
Community Gardens rent out their space to collect much needed funds for their operation. They receive minimal supplies and no funding from the City through GreenThumb. The bigger the Garden, the nicer the Garden, the more money needed. 6BC is bigger than average and beautiful. They put A LOT of effort in and it shows. Tools, electricity, capital projects, all cost money. Gardens wouldn't have to rent out their space if half the people on this site complaining about this party took the time to write a grant or donated money themselves.
This party looks like it was held at night. For safety and security, most Gardens aren't open in the evening unless there is a special event. By their license with the City, Gardens must keep a minimum of open hours to the public, which this Garden does. The people who put in the blood, sweat and tears to upkeep these spaces are free to operate the space in service to the public as they see fit. This occasionally includes renting out the space during non-public times so the Garden can be open, accessible and beautiful the rest of the season for the public.
Hate to say it, but we may be seeing more events like this if funding to the Greenthumb project is cut:
https://medium.com/@NYCMayorsOffice/keeping-community-gardens-strong-and-growing-be155dbc5349
"The federal Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program, which the Trump budget proposes to eliminate, provides nearly 50% of GreenThumb’s funding."
Your defensive self righteousness just mimics everything that is wrong in the city and neighborhood, and the mentality of landlords and developers, mainstream-sadistic monied people and institutions-who want what you have, all of which happen to be caring-democrats, donors, lovers of plants and animals. They have taken most of it around here and will continue to take it all, in just the very way you are going about your business. Your apathy for solving problems is original and ingenious.
Your arrogance and behavior is right on track, setting the stage furture-overthrows on the neighborhood. Ignorance is bliss.
How does this happen anyway? What were they all just sitting around and one of the pant-shitters came up with a brilliant idea- hey lets head over to Alphabet for the gala and topple on their turf for awhile; and plant some seed.
"Heck, if anyone wants to have a 4 hour party at my apt and pay my annual rent, please email me! I kinda think you'd do it too, right? If my neighbors want to, go on with your bad self! I can deal with one night of that for you to get your rent paid for a year."
That would be very nice for you (getting paid), but what about your neighbors who would have to put up with that? That's kind of the point.
I'm all for the gardens raising money, but this is at the expense of the neighbors and community. Unfortunately, this is where we're headed as money rules everyone and everything.
Sad that one can no longer make a snide little comment about the snot-nosed elites of society, without someone getting all smarmy and triggered.
I recognize that woman in the spiderweb dress, and since I never go anywhere, it had to have been in the neighborhood. I love the dress of the woman to her right!
Also, it's funny people say the partiers made them feel unwelcome, when not so long ago junkies made everyone feel unwelcome.
This reminds me of the BMW Guggenheim Lab, and the Don Capoccia, two squat-rehabs, in exchange for more EV land for luxury housing. The connections are apparent between Vogue, Alphabet City and the above. These same people are responsible for taking money from anyone, for their cause, as well as to push as much upscaling as possible, while they hide behind their support for the neighborhood-through the arts, gardens and charitable causes.
This goes all the way back to the Antonio Pagan days. It's funny, but they once tried to take La Plaza Cultural. Additionally, one needs to look at other members of this garden, to realize the coup.
What they are trying to say is that in order for "You People" to access the garden it costs "Money". I thought that the original gardens, people took plots and planted their own stuff, and paid for it themselves, and that they were for the community. How expensive is it to run a garden? They make it sound like they need hundreds of thousands of dollars. I am wondering how much money is coming in and where it actually goes? Is it to pay for events, so that they can market the East Village? Years ago everyone created these gardens and used them. They were bohemian and free spirited. Are they now trying to upscale the gardens and the neighborhood? This is a bunch of bullshit. I hope you see what they are doing.
Anonymous Venemonus Anonymous Venemous Anonymous Venemous Amen Snake That Swollowed Itself
Lol if you only knew how little a vogue employee makes
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