The Guardian UK has a profile on her, in which she discusses a variety of topics... including!
Her former neighborhood:
“The East Village, it’s lost,” Sevigny says with a snort. “Have you seen Astor Place? Starbucks, Citibank, Kmart, and that’s about it. Some of the streets are still holding out – you can still find a few of the old mom-and-pop stores. The avenues? Forget it. They’re gone for good.” She is only 41, but speaks like an old-timer, casting her eyes back to a sepia-toned era.
Why she moved to Brooklyn:
“I got out, in all honesty, because of rats. After Hurricane Sandy, my street was overrun and I couldn’t handle it. The 10th Street Association are going to hate me for saying that. But yes, the rats are all over the East Village, they’re in Tompkins Square. And I lived on the ground floor with the garden, and I could hear them scratching outside the window and I just couldn’t cope.”
Her hometown of Darien, Conn.:
The actor visits regularly, although she doesn’t much like it; again, the place is not what it was. “Change freaks me out,” she says. “The town used to be really charming. Now it’s the whole post McMansion thing, and everybody cuts down the trees because they don’t want to deal with the leaves. And they floodlight everything, and knock down the colonial homes, and put up these big, ugly, boxy-looking things that are very on trend.” She sighs once again, like an aged pioneer. “Everything used to be wilder and more romantic.”
Previously on EV Grieve:
Chloë Sevigny on the East Village today: 'It’s like a frat house everywhere' (57 comments)
Image via the Love & Friendship website
39 comments:
Drama queen, much? Save it for the screen if you can still get work.
When I can afford to move I'm out too. There's no reason paying this much to live surrounded by rats, bros, bars and chain stores.
Good evening, America. I'm Chloe Sevigny. It's recently come to my attention that I hate räoths. I was discussing this problem last night at the launch of Jean Nouvel's new Bluetooth-enabled casket line with my friends Bella Freud, Bella Abzug and Carrot Top.
She's just speaking truth. Can't vouch for the rats but all the rest? Spot on.
As long as we elect officials that suck-up to the real estate industry the EV will never be more than a campus for the rich, the bored and the bros. As for Sevigny... well she's telling the truth.
I love people like her who did nothing to try and save the hood, who have the money to move out, and then trash the hood while there are people still here trying to change the situation. Why can't people like her just leave quietly and not insult those of us who stay. Frankly i could give a rats ass about what she has to say, in fact, I would like to thank the rats for ridding us of her, maybe they will have the same impact on others of her ilk.
As far as I can tell the rats aren't preventing people from taking over the neighborhood. The loss of mom and pops is old news, bros and hoes too. The fundaental problem is that it's a class war and people who would like to remain here are being tortured out of their apartments and developers are ravaging us, celebrities around here find the neighborhood darling, and everyone including my dentist says there just aren't any mom and pop store anymore, is shallow.
Kmart has been here forever already. Thie chainstores have invaded every neighborhood in NYC not just here. We need to do something in terms of zoning for that, which people are working on.
Rats are the only things "keeping it real" in the EV today, bless the little buggers.
Oh please honey, stop.
City Chloe Attacked By Rats!
Every time I pass by her former block, I always see the biggest rodents. And the funny thing is, the tenements and townhouses on that block are the fanciest in East Village.
Also, the couple who bought her apartment moved out like a year after.
Someone should buy those rats a nice big slice of pizza to thank them for chasing Chloë Sevigny out of the neighborhood. Nice work, EV rats!
She's a 41 year old actress. I hope she's saved some money to prepare for the downhill slide.
@ 12:16 PM: Why are you insulted by her remarks? I'm not. She's right about the rats. I was jogging one night in TSP and unwittingly kicked a rat that had scurried in front of me. What exactly, are we supposed to do to "save the hood?"
I think that a lot of the butt-hurt here was posted by one or more real estate developers and/or agents and/or someone who is hoping to sell their condo and doesn't want the prices to drop before they do.
She didn't say anything that hasn't been said here thousands of times before. Look at the site's motto: "The East Village is Dead".
Yet another example of a privileged person who would have been far too terrified to come to the EV in the 70s-90s, but who somehow found it acceptable to move here after it had (she thought) been suitably cleaned up for her precious self, never thinking it was precisely the presence of wimps like her that drove - and continues to drive - the gentrification of the area, and the systematic eradication of all the things she waxes nostalgic about (most of which were probably already gone by the time she moved in here, thanks Felicity, thanks Sex in the City). Agree with Anon. 12:16, why just move and bitch rather than stay and bitch, using whatever "fame" she had left to call attention to a major problem in the area she supposedly loved so much? That's like watching your mom drown because it's too much trouble to throw her a life preserver, then whine about how much you miss her.
So you're disgusted by rats, honey? The *real* rats in this neighborhood are the ones buying up stable buildings and destroying the lives of the tenants in them in order to make themselves even richer. The gray ones on four legs? No problem, in my book, I think they're kinda cute. You - nah. Not so much.
This isn't the first time Chloe has bemoaned in an interview the demise of the EV: I guess it is a convenient way to shroud herself in the aura of being the last in a line of genuine residents of the EV who have the spirit of adventure and authenticity about them. Anything she says is designed as self-promotion. As someone has posted, Kmart has been around for many years now. I guess she doesn't like it because it has reasonable prices compared to stores she shops in. I guess it doesn't carry the designer clothes that she is sporting these days. The garbage she spews is meaningless just as she is.
Are her complaints that much different than ours?
LOL @ the image of Chloe sitting with her chai tea at her window overlooking her backyard patio and a rat popping up and hitting into her window. OMG WTF!!! RU kidding me?!!
Chloe is the bridge between the East Village art girl and the East Village broho. She's a gateway girl. Chloe is nu-goth.
As for her bemoaning the cultural death of the East Village, well, it's pretty evident isn't it? When Other Music closes there will be no more East Village record stores which carry music by living breathing gigging touring bands. Bowery Electric is the only small live music venue for these bands (sorry now or soon to be AEG Live owned Mercury Lounge which shuts out entire generations of youth with their 21+ admission policy.) Name me ONE EV bookstore besides The Strand which is about as far on the outer edge of the EV as you can get.
Where in the EV can I hang with people who aren't bros, hos, hedgefunders, bridge-and-tunnel morons, NYUmans, crusties, or degenerate junkie lowlives?
Chloe was in American Psycho but oddly doesn't have a pic of her from it on her Instagram. 'She have beef with Mary Harron?
She's right and this is apropos for evgrieve. The EV just ain't the same, Alan Ginsburg would freak if he saw it now.
"Yet another example of a privileged person who would have been far too terrified to come to the EV in the 70s-90s, but who somehow found it acceptable to move here after it had (she thought) been suitably cleaned up for her precious self"
She was living on the LES in the mid-90s. You know, well before "Felicity" and "Sex and the City." But just after a movie called "Kids," which apparently all these hard-core posters don't remember? Don't like her, that's fine, but she's not some hothouse flower transplanted to the EV in 2002.
Even more reason for her to try and fight for the neighborhood.
What? She moved to Brooklyn to get away from rats? As if any neighborhood in NYC is free of rats. Is she kidding? She thinks Brooklyn doesn't have any rats? Brooklin practically invented rats! And Darien CT has always been full of uptight people from the upper crust with overpriced homes. They (and Greenwich) practically invented the McMansion. Poor Chloë isn't happy anywhere, she's not happy in the EV because it's too crappy, and isn't happy in Darien, CT because it's too nice. Aw rats!
I like her and think that she finds interesting projects/directors to work with. She will be able to work as long as she wants to.
Yes, chain stores are everywhere, not just the East Village (or Midtown South!)
I chalk this up more to the drudgery of doing press for a new movie. She knows how to give good quotes. It wouldn't be as interesting if she said "I moved to Brooklyn because I found this beautiful townhouse."
If she really thought this neighborhood was shit, she would not have held her tag sale here as she recently did on Avenue C.
Some of you guys are being a little tough on her. Her downtown bonafides are pretty well established -- even if she comes from privilege, she lived in the EV long enough to complain about it however she likes. (In fact if I'm annoyed by anything about her, it's the way she downplays her privileged upbringing. I don't care if you were the poorest family in Darien -- the poorest family in Darien is still richer than 99.9% of the rest of the world.)
The comment about her age is rude. She's always taken unusual roles and she is an amazing actress, she will be fine.
These uninformed comments are hilarious. CS is not the enemy. She was here long before it sucked and as for her staying to "save it" - what is she supposed to do? I'm sure she would probably lend her support to an effort if asked - even from Brooklyn. It does sound like RE people losing their minds over her comments...especially since they sound so newbie.
Cloe Sevigny, Brest Easton Ellis, etc people need to stop talking shit about our neighborhood. Doesn't concern you anymore and your idle chatter doesn't do a lick of good for anyone. It's not even interesting. Leave us the fuck alone to deal with our own neighborhood problems. In other words morons, stop thinking out loud please.
From the hotsy-totsy well to do Darien, CT to the East Village...and she thinks she knows what the EV is like? So funny...another pretender who came to the EV to "experience" life in the nitty-gritty city. But what did she learn? She is afraid of rats. So she moves to Brooklyn? I guess the Brooklyn rats aren't good enough and take offense to her Darien accent. But they'll come around eventually and it will be off to somewhere else.
Since I've been living in the EV almost as long as this girl is on earth and hanging out here longer almost half a century, I would say that she never knew the EV at all...she was just living out the suburban kid moves to big city fantasy and wants to trade on it as if it were a rite of passage or badge of honor of some type.
The EV has lots of real residents, but she never met them because she was too busy looking up instead of around.
She moved into the neighborhood in the 90s and lived here when there were still other creative types so she knows what the neighborhood used to be. I don't begrudge her success. I wish I had done as well creatively and financially! And I know how bad the rats are when you live in the ground floor. My best friend is leaving her ground floor place on 9th Street because the rats are always at the door and windows facing the backyard. They have even gotten inside the apartment! This actress has the same complaints the rest of us have. Luckily for her she can afford to move.
I live on the block, and we do have a horrendous rat problem. She is not exaggerating! I know, because we also live on the ground floor.
I also will give her credit that when she lived on the block, she participated in the block's annual tag sale. She also deserves credit that she earned her own $ -- she is very different from the current crop of town house buyers, most of whom have vast inherited wealth and fall in love with the idea but not the reality of owning a 150+ year old house.
I agree with the above poster about her deserving credit for earning her own money. She has also done lots of indie work and didn't go for the easy cash. As for the people who criticize her for not doing something to save the neighborhood, give me a break. What are you doing besides complaining on a blog?
I posted that comment and I do a great deal of activist work in the community, so screw you. Not only did she not do anything she used the hood as a back drop in several fashion photo shoots. Her brother is in nightlife and caused numerous problems for residents in the West Village. She is a big proponent of nightlife which is as much of a problem as the rats. As a matter of fact one of the major factors in the increase in rats in the hood is the giant mounds of garbage bags filled with trash that sit on the sidewalk all night until the private carting trucks pick it up. Oh and they are loud as hell so . . .she left and my final thought to her is don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.
Chloe exemplifies those that escaped their suburban and/or privileged upbringing to come to the city to create and be part of a vibrant culture. Nowadays, people who are moving to the EV and Williamsburg that are coming from places such as Darien Connecticut, are bringing Darien, CT with them and making the EV and Williamsburg an extension of their entitled existence in the suburbs so that they can still feel privileged and superior esp. amongst the locals and natives.
Chloe's a cool chick and a NY OG. Learn da facts, before speaking, my sons.
Wow...the supporters of this girl are probably just as naïve about the real EV. She earned her own $? If you are from Darien you came with a silver spoon stuck in your....well....let's not get too mean. NY is a tough city...but she obviously couldn't make it here which is why she really left. NYC is filled with delusional people who think they are creative, artistic, talented, etc. Like minnows in an ocean, they eventually are food. Real talent rises. False talent is forgotten.
@8:50 PM there are still a decent amount of places to see live music or touring bands in the EV/LES. Webster hall, Bowery Ballroom, Arlene's Grocery, Otto's Shrunken Head, Parkside Lounge... hell even Rockwood.
As for record stores, Academy records carries new releases. Turntable Lab stocks a small but decent selection, same with Good records. Generation over on Thompson, while not in the EV is not much further away than Other music... A1 records, even if they don't stock new releases, has a pretty good selection...
If rat is a euphemism for bro, then yes, I agree, me too, I've moved out because I was chased by those "rats".
Post a Comment