[South side of St. Mark's Place between 3rd Ave and 2nd Ave circa 1975]
Tomorrow afternoon (March 6), author-journalist Ada Calhoun will discuss her forthcoming book about the street she was born and raised on (uh, St. Mark's Place) at the New York Public Library.
Per the announcement:
Those who appreciate the street for its essential role in the beatnik, hippie, punk, hardcore, and hip-hop scenes of the past sixty years insist that St. Marks Place — now home to some of the priciest rental apartments in the city — is dead. But Calhoun notes that people have been saying that about this particular piece of land at least since the seventeenth century. She will argue that the street is only as dead as it ever was.
The talk is from 1:15 - 2:30 p.m. Find the building info here.
Her book for W.W. Norton & Company is titled "St. Marks Is Dead."
We spoke with Calhoun about the in-progress book last March. Seems like a good time to revisit part of that interview.
Any common themes emerging so far?
"The thing that I kept running into [were] people saying that there was this golden moment on the street when St Mark's was really itself and reached its full promise on this date and for these five years there was no better place in the entire world. It was the heart of culture — the center for music, art and poetry," she said. "People would describe passionately how it was so vibrant and they were so alive, then it died this horrible death."
For instance, Jack Kerouac biographer Joyce Johnson said that St. Mark's was all over in 1974 when someone flipped a cigarette into her son's stroller.
Another person Calhoun interviewed said that the scene died in 1974. Someone else said that all started in 1974. She also heard that the block reached its peak in 1978. Not to mention 1980. And so on.
"I'm really curious what's going on now. Basically my theory right now, based on doing this book, is that everyone was wrong. Everyone who thought it was dead was wrong," she said. "So people who think it's dead now are probably wrong too. My theory is that people coming out of karaoke bars or yogurt shops ... this is going to be some new wave of culture that we don't know about and won't even know about until it's over."
Previously on EV Grieve:
St. Mark's Place is dead! Long live St. Mark's Place!
13 comments:
"My theory is that people coming out of karaoke bars or yogurt shops ... this is going to be some new wave of culture that we don't know about and won't even know about until it's over."
god help us all...
-ahoy polloi, former St. Marks-er
Looking forward to reading all the stories !
I'd only disagree with Ms. Calhoun on one small point. The only active culture connected to St. Marks' yogurt shops is Lactobacillus delbrueckii bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus bacteria.
The only culture left on St. Mark's Place is the bacteria in the yogurt.
- East Villager
Ken, you beat me to the punch!
- East Villager
I think the "new wave of culture" idea is far-fetched at best. My perspective on St Marx is only about twelve years deep but right now I don't see much culture played out on that block other than that of commerce. St Marx today is more like a mall than anything else.
Ada interviewed me for the book. Lovely lady..Looking forward to the book.
And YES. IT USED to be MUCH cooler around these parts, BUT, at the risk of not seeing in black and white, but in grey, here goes:
1) Believe it or not, my dad, who saw Sinatra at the Paramount, was not EXACTLY THRILLED, when I told him in 1969, that I had just seen tThe Who for $5. at the Fillmore East
2) All my son Jake, 11, knows is what he sees and feels NOW. I take him to B&H, Russ & Dtrs., Yonah Schimmel, and of course, Katz's
Otherwise, he hears how "COOL USED TO BE", and how it's "NOT COOL NOW" from a bunch of old timers...Hmmm, sounds suspiciously familiar!
It's true that every generation has complained that St. Marks Place and the Village isn't as great as it was before. The difference is that in the past the culture of each group was part of a a larger cultural movement, from the Jazz musicians to Punk Rockers and New Wave, from the abstract expressionists to Pop artists like Andy Warhol, to street and graffiti artists that showed their work in Patti Astors Fun Gallery and toured the world like Basquiat, Fab 5 Freddy, Ero, Lee Quinones and Keith Haring.
There were great writers and poets like Amiri Baraka, social activists like Abbie Hoffman, photographers like Robert Mapplethorpe, Stevie Wonder even had a place nearby.
Today the culture is corporate, digital, and art as a movement is dead. The proof of that is to ask someone to name an artist. Chances are the person they name is dead. Name an art movement, same answer, it's over.
Unless selfies and tattoos and text messages are some kind of new art form, as crappy the Village has been at times, culturally it's never been this way before.
When I lived in Scottsdale, I, as a displaced New Yorker, had made up a joke - "What's the difference between Scottsdale and yogurt? Yogurt has live culture". It is nice to see the posts that "embrace" that sentiment...
I'm fond of telling people how when I was new to the city in the fall of 1980, I was walking on Prince and West Broadway and overheard someone complaining about the "new people" and how SoHo just wasn't as cool as it used to be.
Same as it ever was…
My Golden Age is vastly superior to your Golden Age.
Anonymous 6:05 - Ha ha ha!
I don't remember which one it was, but in one of Abbie Hoffman's books, he lamented the demise of St. Mark's Place. This was back in the 1960s! (Maybe 70s, at the time of publication.)
I'm sure there were people who said it was all over the day the street pavers came.
that person is in denial
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