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.
More recently, the space showed up for lease via RealNY... the floors are available for retail or office space...
This past Nov. 7, after 10 years at No. 9, Overthrow closed its boxing gym on the ground floor. As ownership wrote on Instagram: "Unfortunately, we took on immense debt during and post-Covid, which kept the doors open, but we can no longer afford our current lease, and the building has been listed for sale by the owner, making staying open unsustainable." 
