Via the EV Grieve inbox...An Evening with John Strausbaugh
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.
Read the rest of the interview here.
2 comments:
Whoa, hang on, John, NYC radical politics is over, now? What about all the Right to the City groups? What about Retail Action Project? What about CAAAV or FIERCE or Make the Road New York? What about Occupy? Some of the most dynamic organizing and agitating in the country is happening here right now, in spite of and/or because of massive inequality. I get so tired of the NYC nostalgia pity party sometimes -- there's still incredible people kicking ass in art and activism all over this town, even though those fields don't exactly pay well. Give 'em some credit for surviving and thriving in the gilded city, eh?
He's gonna have to add Frat Boys and Woo Girls when he writes the addendum.
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