Page Six Magazine puts Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell on the cover of its new issue.
And we begin:
Honey blond highlights? Check. Sample-size physique? Check. Closet full of designer duds to wrap around said physique? Check. But Candace Bushnell, the creative genius behind Sex and the City and the NBC TV hit Lipstick Jungle, doesn't just look like a character from one of her best-selling novels. (Take your pick: Sex and the City, Lipstick Jungle, Trading Up or Four Blondes.) By the way she lives (a feminist, she eventually married a much younger man) and who she writes about (most famously, of course, Carrie Bradshaw), Candace, 49, embodies a modern breed of New York woman that is as ambitious about love as her career. She is also as much a part of the fabric of New York City as the landmarks she helped popularize: Magnolia Bakery, Pastis and her beloved Greenwich Village.
Candace, who grew up in "upper middle class Glastonbury, Conn.," also recalls moving to New York:
After three semesters at Rice University in Houston, she dropped out to "run away to New York City." Her goal was to become a writer, but when she first moved to Manhattan in 1978 at age 19 she lived in a two-bedroom apartment on 11th and Broadway with three other girls. She had to scrape to pay her $150-a-month rent, often eating $1 hot dogs or a can of soup for meals. Dating was a way to score free meals and meet the city's glitterati.
Still, the article notes that: she is relieved to be out of the dating pool. "There's nothing harder than being single. And things are even harder for young women these days," says Candace.When I was growing up in the 1970s, you didn't have to shave your legs, let alone have a Brazilian wax."
How do I know this? Because I went to the site yesterday and started making stupid nightlife recommendations as part of the NYC & Company's "Just Ask The Locals" campaign. (According to the press release, "The site provides an expanded list of celebrity and local insider tips and top five recommendations, organized by Shopping, Dining, Arts & Entertainment and Nightlife. Visitors to the site also will be able to provide their own tips and ideas on how to navigate and experience the City.")
Why did I have such a mean-spirited high-school moment? Part of it was just wishful thinking. I wish that the Cedar Tavern didn't become a condo, for instance. Plus, I was actually curious if anyone was paying attention and patrolling the comments. More important, though, I'm tired of seeing these "Just Ask the Locals" ads everywhere. Seems as if I can't even walk to the bodega on my corner without seeing an ad with Mr. Mickey telling me about the lobby bar at the Bowery Hotel.
I don't mind real locals offering some advice to out-of-towners at the site, as we're invited to do. (Well, I mind a little bit...particularly when it's awful advice.) But! The site also features input from real celebrities! Say I'm from out of town looking for a place to go for a drink. Hmm, Sean "Diddy" Combs suggests a cocktail at the Mandarin Oriental. Perfect! Alan Cumming suggests the Box on the LES. Coltrane Curtis suggests the Beatrice Inn! Go the site and you'll see nuggests like this:
"If you are into clubs, I’d check out Butter, Marquee or 1 Oak." -- Sean "Diddy" Combs
All places that even tourists might know about, and likely couldn't get into unless they were really wealthy and dressed the right way. Here's the thing, the campaign (and site) only caters to an upper-class demographic. (For example, the site lists the most popular hotels, shops and restaurants based on user page views. The top three hotels? The Waldorf, the Bowery Hotel and the W.) This is the sanitized, condofied city our leaders apparently want us to be. All nice and glossy and...
This is the Life. This is New York City.™ This is home to Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda. This is a city known for its cutting-edge dining, shopping, entertainment, nightlife and culture. It’s where lines wrap around the block for a cupcake; where cosmos are sipped over conversation and where energy, excitement and style are found on every street. It’s classic and modern all at once with iconic landmarks that never lose their allure and new hotspots are constantly emerging. So whether you want to try the places made famous by Sex and the City or discover you own favorite locales—this is where it’s done. This is New York City.
We're still reeling from the feature in yesterday'sPost on the superduperfaboo Novogratz family...
After reading this, you may want to move to, say, Greenland. Or someplace where aren't TVs. And we pretty much have to excerpt the entire article:
Two gorgeous, self-taught downtown designers with seven young urban kids are set to become Manhattan's next reality-TV stars. Think "Jon & Kate Plus 8" meets "Sex and the City."
Artsy downtown couple Bob and Cortney Novogratz, who gut-renovate dilapidated city buildings and transform them into multimillion-dollar homes, are set to star in "9 by Design," a Bravo reality show premiering April 5 that chronicles their chaotic Manhattan life where real estate is the constant family drama.
Their shenanigans could make Bob and Cortney the latest New Yorkers you love to hate -- with some viewers likely to be outraged by the manic couple's constant uprooting of their kids, and others embracing them as the coolest and most photogenic TV parents since Mrs. Partridge and Billy Ray Cyrus.
Cameras follow the nomadic Novogratz clan -- they've moved more than 15 times within a five-mile radius -- as Bob and Cortney scramble to find a temporary apartment in one day after renting out their mansion at 5 Centre Market Place in SoHo.
They check out a $14,000-a-month East Village rental and briefly consider renting out an old bar where they would bathe their newborn in the urinal. They eventually settle on a two-bedroom apartment where all the kids have to share a 12 x 14 bedroom.
During the eight-episode season, Cortney gives birth, the couple builds their first boutique hotel on the Jersey Shore, and designs a private gym in Hoboken, NJ, a beach house in Amagansett and a townhouse in the East Village.
"We wanted to show off New York City like 'Sex and the City' did," said Bob, 46, who is filmed scooting around SoHo on his Vespa with his pregnant wife on the back of the bike.
"Building in the city is stressful," said Cortney, 38. "People can relate to moving whether they've moved once or as many times as we have. We've lost track of how many times we've moved over the past 17 years." Twice, the family has moved three times in one year.
The chronic flippers live in their homes while renovating, then sell them and move on to their next project.
The family currently lives in a five-bedroom, 8,000-square-foot townhouse at 400 West St., where they've built an indoor basketball court for the kids. But Bob and Cortney are already getting bored; they've listed the property for just under $20 million and are eyeing a move to the East Village.
"The kids may end up in therapy," Bob jokes on the show. Indeed, the couple actually named their fifth child "Five."
The Novogratz kids, Wolfgang, 12; twins Bellamy and Tallulah, 11; Breaker, 9; twins Five and Holleder, 4, and Major, 1, attend three different schools.
So New York Post Columnist of the Year Andrea Peyser caught the first screening of Sex and the City yesterday. What did she think?
In a roomful of women who looked as if they hadn't digested in months - and scant few breathing men - I saw the big-screen version of "Sex and the City," an excruciating paean to Manhattan, Manolos and menopause that should have been sponsored by Depends.
When did the story of four aging broads - and these women are about as far from being "The Girls" as Phyllis Diller is from puberty - turn into a horror show?
Time and the tyranny of the camera close-up have not been kind to Sarah Jessica Parker, who at 43 looks positively ghoulish as the still-single Carrie Bradshaw.
Her litany of lifestyle impossibilities continues to mount like her facial blemishes - a rent-controlled apartment, dozens of $525 pairs of stilettos, and a noncommittal, mega-rich boyfriend, Mr. Big. Sadly, the only thing large about Chris Noth these days is his protruding gut.
Ouch.
I spied a gaggle of gals who looked as if they'd eaten recently. I asked, Did you like it?
"Loved it!"
You can't be from New York, can you? "No, Connecticut," she said.
"Better than Indiana Jones!" trilled only the second man I saw. But this guy wore a pastel shirt. Figures.
I predict huge success in the multiplex. New Yorkers know better.
"Sex" sucks.
Hmm.
Well, it's really easy to make fun of a movie like this; it's even easier to make fun of the people who may enjoy this movie. Oh. And not to mention the looks of the actors in the movie. (Chris Noth fat? SJP ghoulish? C'mon.)
I wish Andrea would have written about the real problem with the movie -- how it ruined New York City. It's a subject worth repeating. Maybe she took a different route because the Postcovered this a few weeks back. But is saying that Chris Noth has a beer gut do much to bring attention to the rampant commercialization, sterilization and development that the movie helped spawn here?
The New York City health guidelines — via its updated Safer Sex and Covid-19 fact sheet — discourage group sex, but provide advice for interested parties, suggesting “to find a crowd, pick larger, more open, ventilated spaces”…
This is an open-minded safety precaution endorsed by the New York City health department to take during the pandemic ... and also a genius conceptual parameter for a visual-arts exhibition.
The East Village-based Ed. Varie is presenting Group Sex in their newest collaborative location on Monroe Street that showcases the works of artists Cavier Coleman, Colleen Herman, Esteban Ocampo-Giraldo, Giorgio Handman, Ivy Campbell, Leticia Infante, Moises Salazar, Nina Gilkshtern, Sarah Hombach, Scout Zabinski and Ted McGrath. (To learn more about each artist, please visit the gallery website here.)
The show explores group sex, sexuality and sensuality — both metaphorically and literally — in a raw, 2,000 square-foot space. This particular Ed. Varie collaboration marries gallery with the new Full Tank Moto Cafe — part cafe, motorcycle workshop and future bookshop all under the same beautiful roof.
The building used to be a glass factory, and (thematically, if you will) hosts chains hanging from the ceiling. Ed. Varie founder Karen Shaupeter had to enlighten me that the bondage decor was not part of the show but a happy accident nonetheless.
Through linoleum prints, gouache and acrylic paintings, soft sculpture and collage, the grit of the work in the space left an enduring impression as I walked through and witnessed exposed brick walls around the canvases and spilled dog food along the gallery floor.
There were spirit and realness both on and off-canvas, and if you’re exhausted by the Chelsea gallery hoity-toity, then please visit Group Sex for a revitalization. Authentic work is out here in the Lower East Side, ready to challenge and capsize the whitewashed and straight status-quo of what being an artist in New York looks like.
Thank you Ed. Varie for curating a show that, much like its title, isn’t afraid to show its roughness, its realness, its core. Among the standout work: Esteban Ocampo-Giralso’s Mañanas oil painting, depicting an illusionary, self-pleasuring scene that collides ecstasy with the mundanity of one's own bedroom confines. The forms in this piece are curvaceous and rich with highlighting and shadow play that is seductive and wildly transportive.
Another highlight was Ted McGrath’sMarat Moods/“…stop me if you heard this one…”/Haw haw haw. For me, the more disturbing looking the work is, the better. In this oil painting, we see multiple characters looking both humanly and mystically entrenched in a scene that looks so uncertain and on edge that it becomes nerve-wracking and uncomfortable to be around. There are skulls, banana peels and a sense of impending doom all captured in a sizeable canvas. Confusing and wretched, my favorite work in the show, hands down.
And there is Spring Fever by Moises Salazar, which captured me immediately both from Ed. Varie’s social media and in person. The work depicts a female form wearing heels on a fur backdrop embellished with constructed floral arrangements.
This to me is a kitsch daydream from the color right through to the glitter, yarn and sequins used to create the piece. The work is so polished and technically precise that it will leave you wondering how Salazar made it, let alone how the idea came into existence. Super cute, super ridiculous and super exciting to see how this artist grows. To no surprise, this piece has already sold.
If you are in need of a visual explosion, or even a new lease on your own creative practice, then I recommend visiting Ed. Varie’s amazing new space, and even striking up a conversation with its founder and staff. The experience was extremely welcoming and informative and I thank Karen for curating a potent and memorable show that represents a handful of talented and young practitioners.
Group Sex will be showing until April 18 at 49 Monroe St. (across the street from Coleman Skatepark under the Manhattan Bridge). Full Tank Moto Cafe is open daily from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., and the gallery will remain open until 6 p.m.
Clare Gemima is a visual artist from New Zealand. New-ish to the East Village, she spends her time as an artist assistant and gallery go-er, hungry to explore what's happening in her local art world. You can find her work here: claregemima.com
From New York, a profile of Taavo Somer, proprietor of Freemans, etc. The sub-head alone is enough to scare anyone off:
Coolhunted For those in search of the next groovy thing, Taavo Somer, proprietor of Freemans and the new Rusty Knot, is the prey of the moment. His downtown anti-style wants to have it all ways all the time—ironic and earnest, neurotic and carefree, cool and cheeseball
Actually, I did read the first three paragraphs, where there was a discussion on the old ice machine at Joe's:
To Somer, however, the ice machine was an object of mysterious beauty. He’d moved to New York to be an architect, and although he’d quit the profession almost immediately, he retained an architect’s compulsive tendency to deconstruct interiors, to take them apart in his head and figure out how they worked. “That ice machine was just kind of awesomely utilitarian,” he says. “The inner workings were right in front of you, not hidden away in some super-refined way.” Somer soon found himself filling drawing pads with studies of dive bars—detailed renderings of fictional haunts where he imagined his friends would hang out. The places he drew looked like Joe’s, with one crucial difference: Everything accidental was now orchestrated, the ice machine a piece of the design. “You don’t know it, but that’s what makes a place like that so comfortable,” says Somer. “That’s why you want to come back every night.”
Do you blame me for stopping after this?
Also, not to pick on New York, a magazine I generally like, there's the cover story on something called Sex and the City. The headline and sub-head here make the article seem sympathetic to the star.
Sarah Jessica Parker Would Like a Few Words With Carrie Bradshaw The Sex and the City star likes Victorian morality tales, frets about artistic purity, and laments the passing of Old New York. So how did she become the poster girl for the New Manhattan
Let me know how it goes.
Meanwhile! The New York Daily News also thinks New Yorkers care about the Sex and the City movie. What else would explain the paper running an EXCLUSIVE review of the movie 25 days before it opens? Great scoop, thanks! Oh, and Features Editor Colin Bertram gives it a breathless four out of five stars.
Meanwhile, does anyone die in the movie? Does anyone here care?
That's part of Mick LaSalle's glowing review of Sex and the City in the San Francisco Chronicle.
Hoo-boy, did he like this movie. A lot!
Yet even viewers coming in cold will appreciate "Sex and the City" as the best American movie about women so far this year, and probably the best that will be made this year. Indeed, at the rate Hollywood has been going, it may stand as the best women's movie until "Sex and the City II," if that ever comes along.
Meanwhile, Mick wraps it up:
There's something alive here. There's a feeling about this movie, that it's not some perfunctory cinematic appendix to a popular series, but the beginning of a whole new string of films. There's certainly no artistic reason "Sex and the City" can't be the women's equivalent of "Star Trek," with human emotion being the final frontier. Like outer space, that frontier is infinite.
Is it true that in space, no one can hear you scream?
"Smithereens" starts a weeklong revival today at the Metrograph, the newish theater complex down on Ludlow Street.
The 1982 dark comedy, which marked Susan Seidelman's directorial debut, is set in the East Village (and other downtown locales). Wren (Susan Berman), a suburban New Jersey escapee, is eager for downtown fame, plastering "missing" posters of herself on the subway and elsewhere. She sees a meal ticket in Eric (Richard Hell), the hot guy with a short attention span in a band. And there's the too-nice Paul (Brad Rijn), who pursues the uninterested Wren. Hustling ensues.
Seidelman started filming in late 1979, and continued on and off for the next 18 months. (Production shut down when Berman broke a leg during rehearsal.) "Smithereens," made for $40,000, was the first American indie invited to compete for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
She went on to make several female-focused comedies, including 1985's "Desperately Seeking Susan" with Rosanna Arquette and Madonna and 1989's "She-Devil" with Roseanne Barr and Meryl Streep, among others. (She also directed the pilot for "Sex and the City.")
I spoke with Seidelman about "Smithereens" and her follow-up, "Desperately Seeking Susan," also partly filmed in the East Village, during a phone call last week. Here's part of that conversation, edited for length and clarity.
On why she wanted to tell this story in "Smithereens":
I was living in the East Village and I was also at NYU. And at the time, NYU Film School, the graduate film school, was on Second Avenue — part of it was where the old Fillmore East used to be. So for three years, that area around Seventh Street and Second Avenue was my stomping grounds.
I started NYU in 1974, and I was there until 1977. So it was interesting to watch the transition from the older hippie generation and hippie-style shops and people as it started transitioning into the punk and new wave kind of subculture. I was a music person, so I frequented CBGB and Max’s Kansas City at that time. And so, that world was interesting to me, and telling a story set in that world about a young woman who’s not from that world, but wants to be part of it in some way, was both semi-personal and just of interest.
On production shutting down:
There were challenges throughout the shoot because I never had all the money. The budget ended up being about $40,000, but I probably only had about $20,000 at any given moment. I was borrowing and racking up bills. I wasn’t really thinking about how I was going to pay it. I figured I’d get to that when I needed to pay it.
Aside from those challenges, when Susan Berman fell off a fire escape and broke her leg during rehearsal, there was no getting around that. We had to quit filming. I kind of thought, oh, you know, fuck it — I’m not going to let this stop me. It made me actually more determined. I had the time to look at what was working and what wasn’t working, and I learned a lot of stuff. I started editing the footage. I could rewrite stuff and change the story a bit.
On casting Richard Hell:
That was when we redefined the character of Eric, who was originally not played by Richard Hell. It was played by somebody else who was not a rock-and-roller — he was more of a downtown painter/artsy type, not a musician — and was also played by a European actor.
By recasting and redefining that role with Richard Hell in mind, it shaped the tone of the movie and changed it, I think, in a good direction. I’m not going to give names, but the other actor — the other person is a working actor, as opposed to Richard Hell, who was acting in the movie, but was more of a presence and an iconic figure even at that time. So trying to make the character of Eric blend in with the real Richard Hell added a level of authenticity to the film.
On filming in the East Village:
In the scene when Wren is waiting out on the sidewalk and the landlady throws her clothing out the window and then splashes her with water, all the people and all the reactions in the background were from the people living on that block who had come out to watch.
At the time, New York was coming out the bankruptcy crisis. There weren’t a lot of police on the street, there wasn’t a lot of red tape and paperwork. These days to film on the street, you have to get a mayor’s permit — so many levels of bureaucracy. Back then, either it didn’t exist … but also I was naïve to what probably needed to be done.
We just showed up with cameras and we filmed. We had some people working on the crew who were friends and they told crowds lining in the street — just don’t look in the camera. Sometimes they did, sometimes they didn’t, but it was all very spontaneous.
That’s the advantage of doing a super low-budget movie — you can just go with the flow. For example, there’s a scene with a kid who’s doing a three-card Monte thing on the sidewalk. He was a kid we saw in Tompkins Square Park with his mother. We didn’t have to worry about SAG or unions or anything. I thought he was interesting and [we asked his mother] if they come to this address at this time and be in our movie.
On the lead characters:
My intention wasn’t to make likable characters. My intention was to make interesting characters and who had some element of ambiguity. There are things that I like about Wren; on the other hand, I think she’s obviously somebody who uses people and is incredibly narcissistic. I’m aware of that. But she’s also somebody who is determined to recreate herself and to live the kind of life that she wants to live, and redefine herself from her background, which you get a little hint at, this boring suburban New Jersey life she must have run away from.
On the independent film scene at the time:
The definition of an independent filmmaker has changed so radically. Nowadays, being an independent filmmaker could mean you’re making a $5 million movie that’s really financed by the Weinstein Company, or it could mean you're doing a cellphone movie like “Tangerine.”
But back then, there weren’t that many independent filmmakers. I know there were some people working out of Los Angeles who were doing stuff and a small pocket of people in New York City. So either you knew them or you were friends with them or you just knew what they were doing and had mutual friends. It was truly a small community. And within that community, there were also a definite relationship between people who were musicians, filmmakers or graffiti artists.
So everyone was borrowing people, trading information or sharing resources. Also, the world wasn’t as competitive as it is today. People were eager and willing to help somebody who was a filmmaker would act in somebody else’s film or tell them about a location or a musician. It was pretty simple, like — hey, let’s make a movie, without a lot of calculation.
On her follow-up film, "Desperately Seeking Susan:"
I didn’t have anything lined up after "Smithereens." I didn’t know what I wanted to do next. I just finished the movie when it was accepted into the Cannes Film Festival.
But I did know that there were very few female film directors. And the one or two I had heard about who had made an interesting independent film ... I knew that your follow-up movie, especially if it was going to be financed by a studio, you needed to be smart about the choice. You had to make a movie that you could still be creatively in charge of, or else you could get lost in the shuffle.
For about a year and a half, I was reading scripts. And they were, for the most part, terrible. I just figured these couldn’t be my next movie. I have nothing to say about this kind of material.
So then I got this script. It was a little different than the way it ended up being, but it was called "Desperately Seeking Susan." I liked that the character, Susan, felt like she could be kind of related to Wren in "Smithereens." I thought I could bring something unique to that kind of a role. So I didn't feel like I was out of my element there.
And also, part of the film was set in the East Village, a neighborhood that I loved and knew. The other good thing was I was so familiar with the characters and able to add my own spin using a lot of people from the independent film community in small parts, like Rockets Redglare, John Lurie and Arto Lindsay. Richard Hell has a cameo.
On working with Madonna:
At the time, Madonna was not famous when we started out. We were just filming on the streets like she was a regular semi-unknown actress. So there wasn’t a lot of hoopla around the film.
And then, you know, so much of life is about being there with the right thing and the right timing. It just so happened that the movie came out at the moment that her "Like A Virgin" album was released and they coincided and she became a phenomenon. But since that wasn’t during the actual filming, there wasn’t the kind of pressure that one would normally feel if you were working with a big star or a a super-famous person.
On the legacy of "Smithereens":
I think I was trying to document what it felt like to live in that neighborhood in that part of the city at that time. I never really thought about it in terms of whether the film would pass the test of time or be a time capsule or anything.
But the fact that it ended up being pretty authentic to the environment, to the neighborhood, is maybe what enabled it to pass the test of time.
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The Metrograph is showing "Smithereens," which features a score by The Feelies, on a new 35-millimeter print courtesy of Shout Factory LLC. Seidelman will be attending tonight's 7 screening. Details here.
In this ongoing feature, East Village-based photographer James Maher provides us with a quick snapshot of someone who lives and/or works in the East Village or Lower East Side.
Name: Holly DeRito and Tulip Occupation: Owner, Waggytail Rescue Location: Avenue B between 10th and 11th Date: Tuesday, Nov. 28
I’m originally from the sticks of Pennsylvania. I grew up with horses on a small farm next to Allentown. I came here for the music scene. One of my friends was a roadie for a band, and I started seeing shows. I just became addicted to New York. I’ve been here for 24 years. I was into hardcore punk, alternative. The first show that I drove up to myself was Bad Brains at the Wetlands.
I was bold but I probably should have been more scared than I was. I was always a little bit fearless. I’ve always been a little bit shy but then I’ve been bold. I like challenges — so one of my friends dared me to go into one of those S&M places and try out to be a dominatrix.
I was going to school and working two jobs. I just did it for shits and giggles, and they were like, ‘Oh, you’re blond, you’re hired.’ So I ended up doing that and that’s how I put myself through college with no debt. And then I did a dominatrix workout program that was on HBO and VH1 Real Sex — it was called Slaversize.
I got really sick with Lyme disease, so I didn’t start that again, but I adopted my dog Taco, and he was just magical. The day that I adopted him, two of my friends died in a murder-suicide, and I just remember he was so scared and I just clung to him. He was my soulmate dog.
Then I fostered a dog for another group, and the second that dog was adopted, Taco just looked so sad. So I road my bike up to the city pound to jailbreak him a friend. There I ran into a girl I had worked with as a dominatrix. She was running a pug rescue.
She pulled me into the back to where all of the dogs were on death row that the public didn’t see. She was like, ‘These are the ones that aren’t going to get out, who can you take? Can you help me?’ And I went home with seven dogs that night. I couldn’t leave any of them. So I went home and called my friends and said, ‘Hey can you watch a dog for a few days?’
I had no idea what I was doing — and that’s kind of how I started. It became like — I can save more. I was so passionate, and it was a challenge. I officially formed a rescue in 2004 and it’s just grown from there. The city has changed a lot in that there are almost no small dogs or family friendly dogs in the city shelters, which is great because people have started spaying and neutering. They have started taking better care of their pets. The city has become really pro-dog and dog friendly in comparison to what it used to be. Here for dogs to breed and have puppies, you almost have to make a conscious effort. They have to be in heat and find each other down the hallway and down the stairs. In Los Angeles, Dallas, and elsewhere in the south, they don’t spay/neuter and the dogs are just running in yards. They’re just completely overwhelmed with dogs.
We had a waiting list of people who wanted to adopt dogs. I went to Los Angeles to dogsit for one of my friends and saw the shelters there. I decided to form a program called One-by-One. We supply the carriers, we pay for the ticket for the dog as well as the leashes, the harnesses — everything. We drop off the dog at the airport, pick it up on the other side and a person just flies with the dog. Everybody said it couldn’t be done, and it seemed like it was impossible, but people love it. Everybody who’s done it has done it again. We’ve gotten about 500 dogs that way — one by one.
I have a little bit more faith in humanity. We get adoption donations. The dogs that are coming in tonight on American Airlines are from the highest kill shelter in Dallas, and then all the fosters are going to pick them up. I’m going to microchip them myself. I have my own little branch in Los Angeles with my system and my setup with the shelters and the veterinarians and we also partner up with a few groups. We take in dogs about every two weeks. I formed a buddy system where people who have fostered help the new [dog owners].
I really like anything hands-on. My mom was a nurse and my grandmother was a lab tech. I grew up going into the lab, visiting my grandmother and being fascinated by tumors when I was 6 years old. That stuff is kind of normal to me. I grew up next to a wildlife sanctuary, and because my mom is a nurse, we used to take in all types of orphaned animals and birds with broken wings. It’s an addiction, and it’s also a little bit of a gamble because I agree to a certain amount of dogs. If I don’t find fosters, then I’m out on the street with the dog. Hasn’t happened yet but I’m at the max amount allowed in my building – so yeah, I’d be sleeping at Remedy diner.
If people want to help we have a little fostering section on Waggytailrescue.org. For support we have trainers who we work with. A lot of the fosters end up adopting. A lot of people are considering adopting a dog and they’re not sure it’s the right time, so they’ll foster for a week or two and see if they’re ready for the commitment. If they’re not ready, they’ll maybe foster again until the right time or the right dog, so it’s a good system.
James Maher is a fine art and studio photographer based in the East Village. Find his website here.
I don't know why I do this. Anyway, this article seems to be floating around out there in the interwebs -- different sites, different dates, but all by the same author. It is titled "New York travel inspired by romantic films."
Travelling the City is like watching or experiencing what we see in the movies or any TV series. If it looks good in the movies, well, I have to say, my instinct one way or the other tells me I want to be there too! New York gives us the thrill of experiencing shopping, dining, be entertained and be romantic. If you are a fan of ‘Sex and the City’, the first thing that you will remember is watching Carrie Bradshaw (or Sarah Jessica Parker) and her addiction to shoes along with her fashionable dresses. What do you do? SHOP GALORE! One can never go wrong in shopping at Big Apple. Prepare your Manolos or Marc Jacobs to fill your shopping pleasure with sophistication and style at Barneys Madison Avenue. Not done with shopping? Madison Avenue is where you will find the top end department store filled with American and European designers like Saks Fifth Avenue. Of course who can forget the transformation of Anne Hathaway on the Devil Wears Prada. Make time for celebrity designer shops (Calvin, Giorgio) and fashion house boutiques (Prada, Chanel) in Madison Avenue. One of the feel good movies with unforgettable wedding proposal to date is Sweet Home Alabama. Why? While others go for a romantic setting at the beach or high end restaurants, Patrick Dempsey picked the perfect spot for a girl (Reese Witherspoon) to choose her own engagement ring at Tiffany’s. While there is a selection of jaw-dropping engagement rings for the bride to be, fine items for men are available and even for babies. Undoubtedly, Tiffany’s remains a girl’s best friend. After shopping fashionably, and hopefully spending wisely, it is time to perk up your social life. Sex and the City’s famous girlfriends - Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha shows us their ritual revolving with friends and loved ones is by dining out. Despite the countless fine dining restaurants in Soho the City also offers funky and inexpensive ethnic restaurants in East Village.
The Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space (MoRUS) will host author and cultural commentator John Strausbaugh as he reads from his latest book, "The Village: 400 Years of Beats and Bohemians, Radicals and Rogues" (Ecco 2013) on Thursday, June 13. The reading will begin at 7 p.m. with a Q&A session with Strausbaugh to follow. MoRUS is located at 155 Avenue C between 9th and 10th Streets. $5 - $10 suggested donation.
The Village is a collection of profiles and stories from events and personalities going as far back as 1640 that shaped and colored the cultural landscape of New York City below 14th Street.
Ada Calhoun writes in the May 31 issue of The New York Times Book Review: How rare and refreshing it is to find a chronicler who can remain dry-eyed and funny while describing the Village’s transformation from laboratory for change to “Sex and the City” tour stop.
Meanwhile, the folks at MoRUS conducted a Q-and-A with Strausbaugh, whose credits include serving as an editor of New York Press.
An excerpt:
MoRUS: Do you believe that the increasing gap between the rich and poor is effecting radical, progressive thinking in New York City? If so, in what ways?
JS: I suspect this is a very low point for radical, progressive thinking in NYC. Again, I’m speaking from what I know of the history. New York City was, for so many decades and in too many ways to enumerate here, a hotbed of forward thinking, not only in traditional political terms but in social and cultural movements as well. All the reprogramming and refashioning of the city over the last quarter-century or so to create the affluent, suburbanized, generic, tourist-friendly New New York has had, I think, a severe dampening effect on the city as a place that nurtures radical or progressive thinking on any front — political, social, or cultural. New York used to be a fantastically creative place on all those fronts. Now it’s being repurposed as a place of recreation, not creation.
In recent weeks, residents who live near the former P.S. 64 on Ninth Street and 10th Street between Avenue B and Avenue C have reported an opening in the plywood, offering access inside the long-empty property.
There have been reader reports lately of people inside the school, including on the roof. The FDNY responded to a fire here in December.
The other day, EVG contributor Stacie Joy, accompanied by a friend, walked through the wide-open gate to look around the former school and Charas/El Bohio Community Center. (The plywood has since been shored up, cutting off this entry.)
After seeing her photos, I asked Stacie for more about what she saw inside the school, which developer Gregg Singer bought in a city auction in 1998.
Why did you decide to enter the former P.S. 64?
It was kind of a whim. I’d heard reports of what was going on inside and I was, as a photojournalist and longtime East Village resident, curious…and the door was open.
I originally planned just to take some shots of the exterior but when I saw I could get inside the building I decided to document it for posterity. I have a history of getting into places and I felt it was important to see — and share — what was inside.
What did you first notice after entering the building?
The smell! It’s pretty unpleasant. A mix of urine and funk, with top notes of mold/mildew and, I think, animal death and decay. I also keyed into the sounds…there is a lot of dripping noise, echoes and scurrying and flapping from the animal inhabitants. Hundreds of pigeons live inside, plus the rats.
It’s almost pitch-black as you enter and there are shards of broken glass everywhere. There is evidence of other people bleeding from getting caught in the shattered glass or broken planks and exposed nails. I could also hear and feel the wind as it moved through the building. It was eerie and spooky and ghoulishly beautiful. It had a bit of a post-apocalyptic feel to it, at least until you made it up to the roof.
Based on your photos here featuring discarded cans of spray paint and fresh graffiti, it appears people have been inside recently. Did you see any evidence of anyone who may be living inside? Did you think anyone else may have been present while you were there — perhaps just hidden from view?
I did not see evidence of anyone living in there. I didn’t want to disturb anyone who may be living inside, and I wanted to be as respectful of the space as possible for an uninvited guest. There are, I think, six floors including the basement, plus the roof, but I only spied the wall art left behind, and evidence of parties: empty White Claw cans, condoms, teenage graffiti, love notes and messages, mostly centering around sex and drugs, plus some social justice themes.
What is your assessment of the building’s current condition?
It looks like at one point work might have begun — there were some supplies on the first floor ... but also evidence of a fire. The place is gutted down to the crumbling brick and studs, and there are hazardous holes in the floors and walls.
The space is soaring, empty and vast. I kept thinking about what it could be, and what a luxury it must be to have so much space to live or work in. The ceilings are so high! And there are so many windows, though most of them are busted out.
I was with a local artist who marveled at the graffiti and was covetous of the space, and what could be created there. We both felt changed and deeply affected by our time inside.
As previously reported, Gregg Singer has wanted to turn the building into a dorm called University Square. The DOB continues to maintain a Stop Work Order — dating to August 2015 — on the property.
In years past several local elected officials, community activists and residents have asked for the return of the building for community use.
In a Q-and-A published at Gothamist today, singer-songwriter (and Brooklyn resident) Mike Doughty was asked: If you could change one thing about New York what would it be?
His answer (bravo!):
The forward march of the gentrification cold-front. But I keep in mind that gentrification hasn't been around forever, and is a trend, not a universal unstoppable force. How many rich jerks that want to be in Sex and the City can there possibly be in America? OK, a lot, but there's not a limitless supply. If the upcoming Sex and the City movie tanks, it will be for the societal good.
A little off point: I miss his "Dirty Sanchez" column that he wrote back in the day at NYPress. (And how I miss the sister of Sanchez!)
From an interview from 2005 with Doughty in the Black & White weekly in Birmingham, Ala., by his former NYPress colleague J.R. Taylor:
Sadly, Doughty’s less likely to return to rock criticism. I’m proud to be on record as part of a mutual admiration society, since Doughty’s post-fame stint as the pseudonymous scribe “Dirty Sanchez” was easily some of the best rock writing in the genre’s sad history. “Rock critics are just failed writers” was a typically great line—although Doughty doesn’t look back at his glory days with much compassion.
“I wrote all that angry shit just about when I first got clean,” Doughty says. “What a dumb thing to do. I was really mad about rock critics being mean to people, so I set out to be really mean to them. It was pretty much the ultimate in pointless, hypocritical behavior.”
In this weekly feature, East Village-based photographer James Maher provides us with a quick snapshot of someone who lives and/or works in the East Village.
Name: Leslie McEachern Occupation: Owner, Angelica Kitchen Location: East 12th Street between 1st and 2nd Ave Time: 2 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 25
I was born and raised in Greenville, S.C. … nothing could be finer. I came to New York numerous times in the 1970s for visits, for fun. I was in college from 1967-71 and I was at a large school — the University of Tennessee — that had a lot of fringe people from Miami and New York City.
So I met all of these great, outrageous folks and got very much into an alternative lifestyle — meaning sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. I had a great time and was introduced to the alternative lifestyle, the vegetarian way of doing things. The back-to-the-earth movement was becoming strong at that point and it interested me a lot. I started working in a warehouse in Raleigh, N.C., for a company called Laurel Brook Foods and they were a wholesaler of natural foods. I also helped start a co-op there called Noah’s, which at that time had three families and now I’ve heard it has over 5,000 — still up and strong running.
I had started a small business representing certain natural foods, but I was going to different health-food stores around the country and trade shows and demonstrating their products. One day in 1981, I was at Greenberg’s. It was a very old school natural food store on First Avenue, between Seventh and St. Mark's Place. I was in there doing a miso demonstration and handing out samples and Frank Simons, the guy who had just bought Angelica Kitchen, walked in. I didn’t know him at the time but I had been a fan of Angelica. He and I caught each other’s eyes, to say it mildly. We got engaged and I moved from the mountains of North Carolina to New York to be with him. That was what got me here – falling in love and doing the right turn so many of us know about.
Angelica was at 42 St. Marks Place at that time. It was a small place and we had very few seats, so we had an open policy about seating. People came in and sat in any empty chair in the restaurant, whether it was a two top or a four top, so lots of connections were made that way. That was very fun. It was very community spirited. Organic wasn’t as much of an issue at that time but there were a lot of products available. That became my mission once I was in charge of the restaurant after Frank died. I really believed in the small, independent organic farmer as stewards of the land, so I was able to get on my soapbox through having Angelica Kitchen and really support the farmers.
There was this great couple called George and Tilly who were on Fifth Street between Second and Third and they would come in on Friday and Saturday from their farm in New Jersey. They would bring truckloads of fabulous produce and apple cider. You’d see everybody there from John McEnroe to the people who lived down the street. Everybody in town who ate clean knew about George and Tilly. I would be running back and forth with a hand truck with cases and cases of kale and collards and turnips and apples.
After Frank died, I moved over to Seventh Street between B and C. The great thing about the East Village is always the people, and I really felt deeper into the heart of the neighborhood. In those days it was so convivial and neighborly. It was very community driven. I loved it. There is a reason the East Village has the reputation that it does, historically, because it was a wild and crazy place, and yes it was sometimes scary. I had amazing things happen, including people stealing from me. It had kind of an outlaw feeling. In the moment it was frustrating, but you just kept going.
I built the 12th Street location in 1987, so it’s still the new place. It used to be the Café Royal when it was Jewish Broadway and all kind of characters were in here, including Bugsy Siegel and George and Gracie, and just on and on. I loved the fact that it was a gathering spot back in the day and now since 1987 it has been too.
Before the city made recycling law, I was already doing it, and not only recycling with recyclable goods, but also of compost, which of course made the weight on our garbage go down because we weren’t putting all of the refuse in the garbage bags. We were saving it in five gallon buckets to be used in a composting operation that Christina had set up on my block on 7th Street.
You know who didn’t like that? The garbage carters. You know who ran the garbage carters? It was an organized group called The Family. Things started happening to Christina. I think her truck got blown up. I’m pretty sure that’s the right story. I’m not sure if it was those people, but it was some kind of a competition issue.
Then one day right after I had opened on 12th Street, a group of shall we say gentlemen — four rather stocky men in suits — came to the front door to talk to me. So I called this guy, Carl Hultberg, who was handling the recycling for NYU, to come over and sit with us. These guys had come to intimidate me to stop my composting and recycling. They were at that time charging by the weight, and the weight wasn’t what it should have been according to them. So Carl, who was a strong activist and informed recycling man, started laying out information for them. They were claiming that they were recycling, these four men, and Carl said, "We would like to see your recycling operation. Can we go there?"
You could just see them think, "Who do these kids think they are?" But Carl was asking them very pointed questions to prove they weren’t recycling. It was a funny meeting. They walked out and they got nothing from us. We were cheering and high fiving. That was a great moment for not only Angelica Kitchen, but also a big moment in the changes that were coming. I don’t know if it influenced those four men or not, but now that recycling is a law and composting is encouraged, it’s kind of interesting to look at the progress we made.
Now things have changed drastically. From being, I guess they say farm-to-table, long before it had a terminology. Now a lot of people say that’s what they do, but there’s no way to verify. So I feel for the consumers because people who are really looking to support that movement are just kind of up to the whim of the people who are doing the branding of any particular location.
Some people are doing a very good job and some people are taking advantage of the trend — local, regional, artisan. That’s always just been how we do things here. But I don’t want it to be negative — I want it to be positive. We’re the real deal. We’re doing what other people say they’re doing. You can always count on Angelica to be completely plant-based and organic. We’re here seven days a week, lunch and dinner.
James Maher is a fine art and studio photographer based in the East Village. Find his website here.
To some, this year is symbolic of a potential global crisis that threatens civilization, but for a few New Yorkers that death knell rings much closer to home — on the Lower East Side. This year marks the threat of a different kind of death — the potential closure of a beloved bar known as Max Fish that has for more than 20 years been the life blood of New York’s downtown arts community.
Fortunately, when we finally caught up with owner Ulli Rimkus, we found her firmly rooted.
“We have no immediate plans to leave, and in fact, we’re good for now,” she explained joyfully last week.
If you recall, in December 2010, reports surfaced that the demand of rising rent costs might lead to the removal of yet another New York mainstay. However, by January 2011, Rimkus had received a one-year lease extension. Now she's here indefinitely.
While business has been up and down of late, Max Fish remains populated by regulars as well as newcomers hoping to mix it up at this storied art spot. For now at least, the hysteria of a forced move remains distant.
Hang the Art; the Beer Will Follow
Rimkus opened Max Fish on Ludlow Street in 1989, first as an art gallery, but her artistic past goes much deeper. More than a decade earlier she had arrived to the United States from Düsseldorf, then a part of West Germany.
In her twenties and eager to lay claim to New York’s thriving arts scene, Rimkus and her then boyfriend, artist Christof Kohlhofer, moved to the Lower East Side in 1977. They soon became members of the collective Collaborative Projects, Inc., or Colab, a loose confederation of artists that courted the likes of filmmakers Charlie Ahearn and Jim Jarmusch, painter Jane Dickson, sculptor Tom Otterness, and printmakers Kiki Smith and Jenny Holzer, and as many as 50 more.
By working together and establishing a nonprofit status the following year, Colab quickly evolved into a positive force in New York’s contemporary art scene. Besides being in control of its own exhibition spaces (which typically meant temporarily taking over abandoned spaces) Colab produced arts shows for Manhattan’s public access cable TV network, helped champion the nonprofit arts space ABC No Rio, opened a screening room for Super 8 films on St. Mark’s Place, and encouraged the intermingling and strengthening of the arts community at large.
Rimkus was at the center of that thriving push for unity and she even co-authored one of Colab’s first National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) grant applications, which later became a mission statement for the fledgling group.
No Gallery? No Problem
Within two years of its formation Colab began hosting radical group shows, first with The Manifesto Show in 1979, which broke new ground and caught critics’ eyes. The Real Estate Show followed in 1980, but none were as memorable as The Times Square Show. Held during the summer of 1980 in an abandoned four-story massage parlor on 41st Street and Seventh Avenue, critics hailed the exhibit as the arrival of New York’s “punk rock” artists. Nude models milled about and mock peep shows were staged. In one room, an orange punching bag hung from the ceiling.
According to its press release, the month-long exhibit took on “the complexities of the human condition, theatres of love and death, invention and phenomena…daring performance, comic relief, arcades of fiction and halls of art from the future — all beyond the horizon of your imagination.”
The Times Square Show had legs. Uptown gallery owners jockeyed for the opportunity to buy the work, and Jeffrey Deitch, Director of the Los Angeles Art Museum but then a young art critic, wrote that the art was “raw, raucous, [and] trashy, but exciting.”
The surging popularity of the artists, many who lived on the Lower East Side, paved the way for the first wave of gentrification in the East Village. Before long, galleries popped up on every other corner that would eventually create art stars out of Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf, David Wojnarowicz, and many others. Within five years, the East Village surpassed SoHo as New York’s art mecca with more than 78 galleries lining its streets by 1985.
In the late 1970s, however, the city’s contemporary art scene thrived for established artists, but not for newcomers. Colab was significant because it pushed the boundaries of what struggling artists could control, especially when they banded together.
Samuel M. Anderson, Ph.D., who has written extensively about the groundbreaking show, noted the power that was yielded by Colab and the significance of the artist alliance.
“Just as distinctions between the specific art works on display and the genres they represent begin to evaporate, distinctions between basic ontological concepts dissolve in the chaotic play of objects housed in a four-story massage parlor,” he wrote. “This was the particular, disorienting contamination of power wielded within the bounds of The Times Square Show: Not only materials, but genres, categories, sensibilities, even whole realities met, merged, and infected each other with the tumultuous interplay of their qualities, their meanings, and their histories.”
Street Artist to Art Star
Charlie Ahearn, director of the widely respected 1980s film "Wild Style," which told the story of New York’s earliest graffiti writers, remembers The Times Square Show well.
“Jane Dickson painted a portrait of Ulli on a black plastic bag and hung it in the second-floor stairwell,” Ahearn recalled. “Ulli was there often, hanging up work, helping out in the ‘gift shop’ on the ground floor, or up on the second floor ‘fashion room’ where Sophie VDT [another Colab artist] had hung work and Jean-Michel Basquiat painted a red abstraction directly on the wall. Basquiat also painted the words ‘Free Sex’ over the main entrance doorway, but someone else painted it out.” [The Times Square Show was Basquiat’s first entry into showing work professionally.]
“Ulli was an amazing supporter of artists,” Ahearn continued, “especially of Kristof Kohlhofer, who not only painted his stencil art on canvas, but was a forerunner to [today’s] street art scene, painting his stencils up and down Ludlow Street.”
Basquiat was also better known as a graffiti writer. His street tag, SAMO (an acronym meaning SAMe Old shit) was once found all over downtown Manhattan. He had become loosely affiliated with Colab through Diego Cortez, a filmmaker he’d meet at the Mudd Club, but he quickly left the graffiti world when his popularity exploded, just a few years after his associations with Colab.
But the collective was not without its problems. Just two months prior to The Times Square Show, the group was in danger of losing its NEA funding due to the work of one of its members, Tom Otterness, whose controversial project Shot Dog Film turned the stomachs of anyone who watched it. (Otterness, who fatally shot a dog in the video has since apologized, but continues to face opposition from some New Yorkers based on that 30-year-old work.)
Joann Jovinelly is a freelance writer and photographer who still calls the East Village home. When she's lucky, she sells her work and pays the rent. She knows about the Times Square Show because she lived and worked with Charlie Ahearn and Jane Dickson in the late 1980s and they told her all about it, among other things.
[Photo of Ulli Rimkus via New York Art Department]
