Before heading to Pa., John Penley leaves his photography collection to archenemy NYU; still annoyed by NYU students

You may have heard the rumblings since last fall that "Slacktivist" leader John Penley was moving away from the neighborhood for the wilds of Erie, Pa. It is true...and today's Washington Square News has a feature on Penley, who's giving his extensive photo collection to the NYU Tamiment Library. (Scoopy reported this last month -- Runnin' Scared had the news back in October.)

To the article!

Penley made a name for himself documenting the turmoil of life on the Lower East Side and protesting big business, including NYU expansion, through the last decades of the 20th century.

“This one is my favorite,” Penley laughed, holding a Daily News front cover photograph he took after he discovered locals were growing marijuana plants in Tompkins Square Park.

“It was obvious. I mean, I know what pot plants look like,” Penley said. After Penley called the Daily News, a reporter from the paper went to the scene and brought a leaf of the plant to a professor at NYU who confirmed it was, in fact, marijuana.

Penley started taking photographs as a journalist in Nicaragua in 1983 when he covered the Contra War and continued to document life in the Village until about six years ago.

“I quit. I got completely burnt out. You know, it’s a very hard way to make a living. I was arrested multiple times,” he said. “I got tired of looking at stuff like fires and car wrecks.”

The activist will move away from the Village to live in Pennsylvania next month where he plans to deejay at his friend’s bar and ice fish in his spare time.

“To be honest with you, I’m really sick of the [Village]. The people who would generate creative things there have been forced to leave the neighborhood,” he said.

Hordes of NYU students only add to Penley’s annoyances with the comparatively bland flavor of the area has taken on in recent years.

“I think it was irresponsible to dump that many students on the Lower East Side without educating them about how to behave in our neighborhood,” he said.

Meanwhile, who will step up to become, as the Post famously described Penley last July 31, "New York City's cuddliest anarchist"? No one, of course!

Previous John Penley coverage on EV Grieve here.

[Photo for WSN by Arielle Milkman]

The New York Post on John Penley: "quite possibly New York City's cuddliest anarchist"

The New York Post profiles John Penley today.

And we begin:

AS the unofficial leader of what is known as the East Village "slacktivist" movement, John Penley routinely protests: real estate developers, wine bars, wine bars owned by Bruce Willis, landlords, Republicans and the evergreen that is yuppie scum. "Frat boys throwin' up or takin' a p - - s on your building," he says. "Drunk, blockin' sidewalks, not lettin' baby carriages pass . . ." The 56-year-old Penley also enjoys shouting down obnoxious NYU students, inserting himself into neighbors' landlord disputes and making daily calls to newspapers and networks about area goings-on.
Penley is also, quite possibly, New York City's cuddliest anarchist: a burly 56-year-old Vietnam-era military man and ex-felon with two gold front teeth, lots of tattoos and a deep affinity for children, animals and the writings of Thomas Wolfe. He was married once, briefly, but doesn't like to talk about it.
One of his roommates was rock star Cat Power, who moved out and on long ago, but still pays her third of the share on Penley's $600-a-month apartment on Avenue B, where he has lived the bulk of his 25 years in the city. (His other roommate is a graphic artist.) Penley is something of a local on-call baby sitter, and is quick to dispense loose change or cigarettes to anyone who asks.

Read the whole article here.

Here's a quick video clip of Penley from the protest at 47 E. 3rd St. from July 11.



For further protest reading on EV Grieve, here's where to go.

John Penley taking a break from Slacktivating

From Scoopy's Notebook in this week's issue of The Villager:

John Penley tells us he has had it, is “burned out” and is leaving and “going somewhere else,” to “parts unknown.” He wouldn’t be more specific. “I’m really busy, I’m moving my photo archives right now,” Penley said when we called on Tuesday afternoon. “I’m tired — no one had to walk in my shoes this summer.” It just won’t be the same without Penley leading the L.E.S. Slacktivists in chants of “Die Yuppie Scum” and feeding us items about…well, about everything and everyone under the sun in the East Village and Lower East Side. But apparently a summer spent tilting at Bruce Willis, the Economakises and the Christodora House has worn him out — but only temporarily, we hope.

Penley in action during the "Let them eat cake" protest last July:



Previously on EV Grieve:
The John Penley collection

John Penley-led protest will call on NYU to help house the city's homeless

Longtime activist John Penley is staging a campout at NYU starting this afternoon at 4 to call on NYU to help house the homeless.

"There have been almost no street protests about housing in so long someone has to do it," he wrote on Facebook.

He will be stationed at Washington Square South, and hopes to sleep on the Judson Church steps at night. During the day, Penley said that plans to be in front of Bobst Library where he'll try to educate students about the issues of housing and homelessness.

Per the Facebook invite:

"I plan to ask NYU students to get involved in Housing for homeless and low-income people. I also plan to ask the University, which has built for-profit dorms all over the place, to build one building for poor and low-income people who are displaced by the gentrification NYU heavily contributed to."

A group of speakers, including Penny Arcade, Randy Credico, Joan Moossy and Frank Morales, are among those who are expected to join Penley this afternoon at NYU.

In 2009, Penley, a Navy veteran who is currently homeless, donated his extensive photo collection to the NYU Tamiment Library. (Find the photos here.) Penley said that he plans to take activists inside Bobst to show them the Tamiment Library.

Per an article in The Villager last week:

He hopes to maintain the campout for a month, but recently aggravated a back injury when his car was rear-ended while he was driving in North Carolina, so doesn’t know if he’ll be able to last that long. Rumor has it he may also go on a hunger strike.

"It's not going to look good if NYU arrests me," he told The Villager, "because they have my photo archives in there."

[Photo of Penley via Facebook]

At last evening's Ben Shaoul 'meeting' on Broadway

As reported earlier in the week, longtime East Village activist John Penley was planning a weekend-long campout at the offices of developer Ben Shaoul's Magnum Real Estate on Broadway. However, those plans changed, from a weekend-long campout to what Penley said would be "a meeting about the situation especially about others affected by Shaoul and his sledgehammer."

From these photos, via Facebook, you can see that several people joined Penley in front of the Magnum offices on Broadway just below Houston...



The NYPD was on the scene, though we're unaware of any actions that they may have taken again Penley and company...





At 9 p.m., Penley planned to stop by the former the former PS 64 and CHARAS/El Bohio community center on East Ninth Street to protest developer Gregg Singer's plan to turn the building into a dorm. We hope to have more on that later.

As for the "sledgehammer" nickname, that dates back seven years... you can read background at Curbed and The New York Times.

Previously on EV Grieve:
John Penley changes plans for weekend campout at Ben Shaoul's office; gentrification meeting instead

NYU showcases John Penley's photos online

Last year, neighbor activist/photographer John Penley donated his extensive photo collection to the NYU Tamiment Library.... And now, the library has posted an online exhibit of his work from Tamiment's John Penley Photographs Collection ... such as the one above from 1994... a police assault vehicle evicting squatters on East 13th Street....

You can access the whole collection here.

John Penley update

John Penley hasn't left town just yet...just saw him at City Hall.

THURSDAY OCT 30, 2008
3:00 to 4:00 PM
NYC CITY HALL
—————————————————–
COME TO THE STEPS OF CITY HALL DOWNTOWN NYC NEXT THURSDAY

YOU MUST HAVE AN I.D. TO GET ONTO THE CITY HALL'S STEPS TO DEMONSTRATE AGAINST THIS VILE ACT OF POLICE BRUTALITY.

SPEAKERS: DANA BEAL, RANDY CREDICO, JOHN PENLEY AND MORE TBA
—————————————————–
MICHAEL MINEO, AGE 24, OF BROOKLYN WAS ATTACKED BY THE COPS FOR ALLEGEDLY SMOKING A JOINT. HE AND HIS LAWYERS REPORTED THAT THE COPS RAPED HIS RECTUM WITH A POLICE RADIO ANTENNA IN BROAD-DAYLIGHT IN A SUBWAY STATION. THE COPS CLAIM THEY OBSERVED HIM SMOKING A JOINT AND THAT HE SWALLOWED THE JOINT AS HE WAS RESISTING ARREST.

ORGANIZED BY THE AD-HOC COALITION AGAINST POLICE BRUTALITY

John Penley's photo blog

Longtime East Village activist/photojournalist John Penley has launched a new photo blog, where you can find provocative shots from the neighborhood such as this...



Visit his site here.

For further reading on EV Grieve:
John Penley leaves his photography collection to archenemy NYU; still annoyed by NYU students

Why there wasn't a protest in Tompkins Square Park on Halloween

As we had reported, John Penley had organized a protest/fiesta Halloween night in Tompkins Square. The event was set to last from 7 p.m. to midnight or so... I didn't make it to the Park until 10 p.m. No one was there. I was told only a handful of people turned out. Penley wasn't there.

He offered an explanation via Facebook: "Some pretty heavy stuff came down on me the night before Halloween. I got maced and someone else close to me got a baseball bat to the face. I have gone into hiding for awhile. This is why I was not at TSP on Halloween."

Penley did say that filmmaker Vlad Teichberg was there at midnight for a “culture jam” projection. There should be a video soon.

While the protest didn't materialize, I thought there was a healthy discussion about concerts in Tompkins Square Park, a permanent bandshell ... and local politicians ... all leading up to Halloween. (Read the 74 comments here.)

Previous John Penley protest coverage on EV Grieve:

At the Donut Social

At the 47 E. 3rd St. Protest

At the Bowery Wine Co. protest

John Penley plans campout at Ben Shaoul's Magnum Real Estate offices this weekend

Longtime East Village activist John Penley is set to campout this weekend outside the offices of Ben Shaoul's Magnum Real Estate on Broadway in Soho. (Set to start at 5 p.m. Friday.)

Per the Facebook invite:

SHAOUL AND HIS REAL ESTATE COMPANY HAVE BEEN AN EVIL CORPORATE REAL ESTATE WRECKING AND GENTRIFICATION CREW IN THE EAST VILLAGE. THE WORST OF THE WORST !!!!

While Shaoul has been a widely criticized developer in the East Village for years, the recent revelations about actor-poet-writer Taylor Mead's living conditions were the impetus for this event.

Articles in The Villager and the Post and at BoweryBoogie have outlined the 88 year old's current living conditions while the Shaoul-owned building on Ludlow undergoes a gut renovation. (Mead, a former Andy Warhol star, had lived in the rent-stabilized apartment for 34 years and didn't want to leave.) According to the account in the Post, "Plaster falls from his walls and roaches crawl up his legs. The kitchen sink doesn’t work."

"It’s going to kill him,” said Clayton Patterson, a neighborhood activist and longtime friend. “This is elderly abuse. It’s pretty Third World when you think about it."

As Curbed put this particular episode, Shaoul is "up to his old tricks. Or, more specifically, his old trick — forcing stubborn, rent-stabilized tenants out of the apartments he owns by having their buildings demolished around them."

Penley had this to say to us via a message on Facebook:

"I am demanding at the protest that he give Taylor a renovated ground-floor apartment in Taylor's building rent free for the rest of his life and provide Taylor with home-care assistance. He just made so much cash speculating and flipping buildings on the LES that doing something humane like I suggest he do would be a very small gesture."

Shaoul has recently sold large parcels of his East Village buildings to developer Jared Kushner. Shaoul is currently converting the former Cabrini Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation on Avenue B and East Fifth Street into residences.

Penley recently held a campout to call on NYU to help house the homeless.

Bring it on (aka GOP Hard)

The Battle of the Bowery continues...On Page Six. Yesterday, we learned the New York Young Republican Club held a monthly social event at the Bowery Wine Company, which Bruce Willis has something to do with. In response to comments made by John Penley in April, one young GOPper told Page Six, "Needless to say, we're going to fill his neighborhood whether he likes it or not. We're coming with briefcases and BlackBerrys in hand to stake our claim."

And today?

The Bowery turf war between yuppie Republicans and local lefties will resume next Friday, when East Village gadfly John Penley will lead a demonstration in front of the Bowery Wine Co. with the Rev. Frank Morales of St. Mark's Church. Besides protesting "right-wing Republicans [a reference to Bruce Willis] opening yuppie wine bars in our neighborhood," as Penley put it, the rabble-rousers will blast the court decision allowing the owner of the tenement at 47 E. Third St. to evict his tenants so he can use the building as a one-family mansion. The New York Young Republican Club, which just held its monthly social at the Bowery Wine Co., is invited to counter-demonstrate - but, Penley told Page Six, "they have to show up in suits carrying briefcases so we can tell them apart."

Anyone know what time the demonstration will take place next Friday...?

Earlier on EV Grieve:

"We want to show our opposition to right-wing Republicans opening yuppie wine bars in our neighborhood"

John Penley changes plans for weekend campout at Ben Shaoul's office; gentrification meeting instead

We noted yesterday that longtime East Village activist John Penley was planning a weekend-long campout at the offices of developer Ben Shaoul's Magnum Real Estate on Broadway.

The protest was happening, in part, due to the the recent revelations about actor-poet-writer Taylor Mead's living conditions during a gut renovation of the building he lives in on Ludlow Street. (Mead, a former Andy Warhol star, had lived in the rent-stabilized apartment for 34 years and wasn't leaving.)

However, late last night, word began to spread via Mead's friends and family that a buyout/relocation deal was in the works ... there was also talk that, in light of this, the campout should be cancelled.

So now, per Penley:

This is what I am proposing ... that out of respect for Taylor's family and attorney, we will cancel our protest at Magnum Real Estate ... but since this is all over the place and people are gonna show up, we will have a meeting about the situation especially about others affected by Shaoul and his sledgehammer. I will be there at 5 pm and wait for anyone who wants to come and we will have the meeting at a location not in front but down the street ... I have no doubt whatsoever that calling for this protest had an effect on any buyout deal for Taylor Mead, but since others are in the same position he is I think it would be wrong not to do anything at all. I also think ... others have a right to meet about what Shaoul has done to them.

The Facebook event has been changed to "Meeting on gentrification at HQ of Magnum Mgt Office of Ben Shaoul — NYC's worst real-estate developer."

[Image part of the Facebook event for the meeting]

RIP Faith Laugier

Faith Laugier, a prominent presence in the East Village and NYC activist community, died unexpectedly this past week. She was 42. A cause of death was not revealed. 

Here's more on Laugier from the Daily News, which first reported on her passing.

“She was a sensational woman who had an enormous amount of potential and it’s a huge loss for the activist movement and a huge loss for the city,” said Aton Edwards, a friend. 

Laugier became a prominent activist when Occupy Wall Street formed in September 2011 and protesters set up an encampment in Zuccotti Park in the Financial District. 

Laugier slept in the park the first night of Occupy Wall Street protests, said John Penley, a friend. "There weren't that many people who stayed there the first night," Penley recalled. 

The number of protesters in the park grew, and Laugier emerged as one of the movement's leading organizers.

Laugier's friends and family created a website to commemorate her accomplishments. News about a memorial will also be posted on this site. Her family also initiated a GoFundMe campaign to help pay for funeral expenses. 

Photo courtesy of John Penley

More details on Halloween night protest/fiesta in Tompkins Square Park

Longtime East Village activist/photojournalist John Penley passed along more details about a Halloween evening protest in Tompkins Square Park:

On Halloween there will be a Protest/Fiesta in Tompkins Square Park to make some noise and ask the question, Whose Fukin Park? Unelected Real Estate/Yuppie/NYU Student lovin members of Community Board 3 have decided they want cops with sound meters and much fewer music and cultural events in the Park next year.

It will take place roughly 7 p.m. to midnight... and at that hour: "At Midnight we will go to the Apt. of the person behind this."

Previously on EV Grieve:
Movement afoot to limit the number of concerts in Tompkins Square Park

[Star Fucking Hipsters Photo by John Penley]

At John Penley's NYU protest

This afternoon, longtime activist John Penley started his campout to call on NYU to help house the homeless.

Bobby Williams stopped by to see what was happening...

Images from Summer 2015

June

At the NYC Drag March in Tompkins Square Park ...


[Photo by editrrix]

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East Village Radio returns ...


[Photo by James Maher]

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Closing time at the Odessa for the night ...


[Photo by Michael Sean Edwards]

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Santa hijinks ...


[Photo by Derek Berg]

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Not even Manhattanhenge on St. Mark's Place ...


[Photo by @Knickerbock4Lif]

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July

Ray returns after heart valve replacement surgery ...


[Photo by Peter Brownscombe]

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Christo and Dora's new offspring ...


[Photo by Fenton Lawless]

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An Avenue A purse snatching ...



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A patrol tower arrives in Tompkins Square Park ...


[Photo by ‏@urbanmyths]

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Noted ...


[Photo by William Klayer]

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August

A penthouse fire on Third Avenue ...



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At the annual Charlie Parker Jazz Festival in Tompkins Square Park ...


[Photo of Ron Miles by Stacie Joy]

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A new mural by Os Gêmeos on Second Avenue



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A grand reopening at B&H Dairy


[Photo by Derek Berg]

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Those Taylor Swift fans...


[Photo by Derek Berg]

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At Camp Out New York Post ...


[Photo by John Penley]

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A late afternoon thriller on East Houston and Avenue C ...


[Photo by Naomi Paulin]

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At the Tompkins Square Riot Anniversary concert ...


[Photo by John Penley]

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Another summer ...


[Photo by Bobby Williams]

A message from John Penley: "Hey man, I'm in Erie"

In this weeks's issue of The Villager (not yet online), Scoopy gets a call from Slacktivist leader John Penley from Pennsylvania. "Hey man, I'm in Erie ... I'm here. I'm staying, and I'll see what happens."

John Penley has a message for any future Ray's tenants

Meanwhile, longtime East Village activist/photojournalist John Penley has a new message atop his photo blog:

Reminder tonight: Rally for homeless outside the Christodora

Scoopy has more in this week's issue of The Villager:

“We’re going to ask Michael Rosen to adopt us — me, Jim Power and Biker Billy,” L.E.S. Slacktivist leader John Penley explained. Penley said he hasn’t actually read Rosen’s new book, “What Else but Home: Seven Boys and an American Journey Between the Projects and the Penthouse,” in which Rosen recounts the story of how he and his wife opened their home to a group of local youths. “I heard reports. People said it’s not bad,” Penley said of the book. “We’d like to move into the penthouse, too — if he wants three new sons... . We’re not all that young!” Penley added that the camp-out concept is being well received: “A lot of people expressed gratitude that somebody’s doing something that’s a little radical this summer,” he said.

For further reading:
"Mosaic Man" and the "Slacktivist" Promise New Tent City for the Homeless ... (Neither More Nor Less)

Long, hot summer at the Christodora (Curbed)

Occupy Tompkins Square Park this weekend

Demonstrators from Occupy Wall Street will be headed to the East Village on Saturday. John Penley is organizing this event set to start Saturday at noon and end Sunday at noon. Via Facebook:

Picnic starts at noon. General Assemblies at 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. Bring food, sleeping gear, drums, guitars, banners, signs and your friends. In memory of Monica aka Catherine Shay, Bob Arihood and Terry Taylor [the homeless Tompkins Square activist who died in 1994].

"I talked to about 100 people from the neighborhood at Zucotti Park [Sunday] and they were all thinking about the same thing and immediately said, 'Hell yes let's do it,'" Penley told me via Facebook.

Also, Penley said, the presence of the protestors will draw attention to the Park's legacy of activism.

“One of the reasons that we want to do this is to educate the new people living in the neighborhood about what went on in Tompkins Square Park in the '80s and the '90s, and the police response to it,” he told Patrick Hedlund at DNAinfo.

Planning meetings for Occupy Wall Street were held in Tompkins Square Park in August.

More details later this week...