Photos and reporting by Stacie Joy
The Tompkins Square Park holiday tree is officially lit for the season... the grand finale of the annual lighting ceremony late yesterday afternoon.
Albert Fabozzi (below) planted the much-loved Christmas tree in Tompkins Square Park in 1992 to honor and memorialize his partner, Glenn Barnett, and others who died of AIDS. The tree was 8 feet tall when he planted it. Today, the tree is well over 50 feet.
There's now a new sign noting the tree's significance for the community. (Someone stole the previous plaque.)
Despite the cold, windswept weather, a festive neighborhood crowd turned out for the event that included the Carolers of Olde New York from Theater for the New City and refreshments courtesy of Veselka and C&B Cafe.
EVG contributor Stacie Joy shared these photos of some of the attendees ...
10 comments:
Thank you for the reportage, Stacie!
It is refreshing to see a xmas tree that is alive
Albert is a legend! Thanks for all the great pics, Stacie.
Did veselka have coffee?
How pretty! Nice to see happy people together.
Ironically , this tree was planted by Fabozzi and Antonio Pagan after the pre-Christmas eviction of about 100 houseless people who had been living in tents in the park. Many of the leaders of "tent city" who were forced into city shelters died of AIDS so I add to this report that I think of them and the cruelty of it all every time I see this story repeated every year before Christmas.
Despite what John Penley says, the renovation of TSP that necessitated moving the homeless out and into shelters had nothing to do with Albert Fabozzi and Antonio Pagan, you can thank the administration of David Dinkins. I remember going to meetings in the TSP library in the summer of 1991 where the city planning commission and Parks Dept. had presentations showing how the park was going to be closed 50% at a time so as not to deprive the neighborhood of the entire space; the first part to close was from 10th street to about midway, once that was rehabbed then the southernmost half of the park got the same treatment. Amazing how even 30 years later it's always Pagan Pagan Pagan, instead of any acknowledgment that there were plenty of other forces of gentrification butting up against the neighborhood and indeed the entire city, which, despite what Penley and Chris Flash seem to think, was not run single-handedly by Antonio Pagan.
@7:26- "the cruelty of it all ?" Hey John, nobody forced that lot to put a needle into their arms. The suffering of their actions on their family members is far more cruel. The City didn't do them wrong. They did it to themselves.
Well this is a crazy thread. Did Fabozzi really ally himself so much with Pagan? What was his role in Tompkins Square Park before the park's closure? Dinkins most certainly razed and rehabbed the park due to the homeless occupation. There was no plan for a complete overhaul of the park prior to Tent City and subsequent sweeps. This was the casus belli, so to speak....
But I dropped in to say thank you to Stacie Joy for such excellent photos. Every year I manage to miss the tree lighting... but we did ck out the silent disco outside Lucky's! Twas groovy
Post a Comment