Several EVG Facebook friends shared this campaign with us... Yippie activist Dana Beal has launched a crowdfunding effort to take back the group's longtime home at 9 Bleecker St.
Here's some of the info via GoFundMe:
For over four decades, #9 Bleecker Street has been the headquarters of American and even international counterculture. It is the official home of the Yippies, (Youth International Party) a group of late 60's activist pranksters initiated by the legendary Abbie Hoffman working to create positive social change by mocking and subverting the establishment.
In 2006, the space was converted into The Yippie! Museum and Cafe. a space devoted to preserving the history of American activism and providing a location where young activists can mobilize – such as the Occupy Wall Street movement who used it to stage meetings and hold fundraisers.
In late 2013, the Yippie! Museum was snatched away by unscrupulous real estate developers who specialize in gentrification. They used deceptive and outright illegal tactics to take possession of the space and shut it down, robbing the national activist community and the world of a vital one-of-a-kind resource and historic location.
We are asking for ALL who read this message to join our crusade to Re-Occupy The Yippie! Museum by making a donation!
As of last night, there were two donations for $38 ... with a $50,000 goal. The money would go to pay "legal bills, maintain the museum's objets d' art, artifacts and documents — including irreplaceable Yippie! archives."
The three-story brick building at No. 9 has been the centerpiece in a long-running foreclosure battle. (Read this story in the Times from January for all the legal wrangling.)
As the Times reported in June 2013, Steven L. Einig, a lawyer for Centech, which holds the building's mortgage, "stated that Yippie Holdings, which bought Number 9 along with a nonprofit called the National AIDS Brigade, had failed for more than five years to make payments on the $1.4 million mortgage."
For their part, a lawyer for Yippie Holdings, said that the group was "compelled into foreclosure with payments being rejected" by Centech as part of a scheme or plan to take over the building.
The Yippies had to be out this past Jan. 17 for new tenants while the fight continued about No. 9's ownership.
The new tenant, Overthrow, named for one of the countercultural newspapers that the Yippies published here, is a boxing gym/training facility/party spot.
In an interview published Nov. 18 at Bedford + Bowery, Beal said, "We’re still fighting the case. We're trying to get a group of people together to pay off a foreclosure, and then we'll have the building – we’ll have the title. And then I'll be renting to [Overthrow]."
Beal also said that he was glad that the space was being rented to some "Yippie-flavored people" who appreciate No. 9's counterculture history.
Previously on EV Grieve:
The Yippie Museum Cafe is in financial trouble
The Yippie Museum Cafe will reopen next Wednesday
A bad sign at the Yippie Museum
Last day for the Yippies at No. 9 — for now
Fights of a different kind coming to 9 Bleecker St., longtime home of the Yippies
About Overthrow NYC, the boxing gym coming to the former home of the Yippies at 9 Bleecker St.
Throwing good money after bad.
ReplyDeleteHoping for the rapid failure of that idiotic Overthrow, they apparently have hired the short old bald 'looking for a girlfriend' loser to absolutely pollute the neighborhood with thousands of their dopey posters.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's just me, but when you get kicked out after 5 years of not paying your mortgage, it is not a conspiracy against you. Pay your bills and "the man" will generally leave you alone. This is a lot different than a group renting a space and being evicted without cause.
ReplyDeleteI highly recommend the promotional video put out by their failed Indiegogo campaign.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.indiegogo.com/projects/overthrow-new-york-boxing-club/x/1152447
It's a hilarious parody of un-ironic self-absoption. I don't think it was supposed to be a parody, but it's seriously funny.
"Compelled into foreclosure with payments being rejected" has a ring of truth.
ReplyDeleteI'm aware of the exact same tactic being used by landlords against rent regulated tenants in residential buildings where rent checks were sent in and not cashed so as to start eviction proceedings. Fortunately residential regulated tenants can easily defeat this before it goes to court with an attorney. Apparently not so easy in this case, if true.
Seems to me that Mr. Beal/Yippie Holdings could have created a 10+ year lease for the ground floor space that would have had to be honored even if the building had been foreclosed upon. This way, this space would still be open, despite foreclosure.
ReplyDeleteInstead, Dana and his friend who lived upstairs held the entire building to themselves until the last minute when it was too late to save the place, thereby depriving the counter-cultural community of yet another venue.
I've seen the same shit happen at a number of places over the years wherein one or a few hold on with a death grip, refusing to let go, even as they get deeper under water, only to jump ship just as it goes under, leaving the space unable to be saved by the community:
• Charas: A huge former public school building at East Ninth + Avenue B operated like a private clubhouse by a handful of guys paying $200 a month to the city -- they only invited community activists in when the city put the property on the auction block. It was too little late.
• Cuando: A multi-storied building located at 2½ Second Avenue, with a small church/auditorium on East First Street. These spaces were occupied by a few squatters who kept them to themselves, excluding everyone else. When the city handed it all over to real estate developers to create "luxury" housing, there was NO ONE to defend it.
• All Crafts Center: Two buildings, including a former ballroom that became the Electric Circus in the 1960s located on St. Mark's, between Third + Second Avenues (Clint Eastwood can be seen climbing the exterior stairs in his 1969 film "Coogan's Bluff"), that was controlled by Joyce Hartwell, a well-meaning social worker, who, rather than include community investors to pay arrears, allowed note holders to foreclose on a lousy $200k mortgage.
If Dana and friend gave a shit about 9 Bleecker, they could have used the ground floor space more inclusively and effectively, as well as the upper floors. I don't see how giving him money is going to "save" anything....
Wow, Chris, very informative. Thank you.
ReplyDelete