A Taylor Swift, 'Welcome to New York' mash-up courtesy of Clayton Patterson

Longtime LES documentarian Clayton Patterson has re-imagined/re-edited Taylor Swift's much-maligned "Welcome to New York" video … with archival footage from his archives circa the 1980s and early 1990s, including the Tompkins Square riots… there's also some footage of GG Allin writhing around on Avenue B for good measure.



Per Clayton's message via email:

Are there no NYC songwriters or musicians who could write a song and be a face representing the city? There is no talent in NYC? What is the message to struggling or successful artists? Where are our politicians on this corporate insult to NYC talent? Where are the agencies that represent NYC talent? What is the message to struggling or successful artists? What is the message to the average NY'er? Tell me DeBlasio is different from Bloomberg. It is one thing to make NYC into a corporate mall filled with cookie cutter corporate businesses, but now we have an individual with almost no relationship to NYC as the face and voice representing the city. It is like we have lost our mind?

Report: Clayton Patterson leaving the Lower East Side for the Austrian Alps

[Photo of Elsa and Clayton from 2011 courtesy of Curt Hoppe]

As you may have heard, longtime neighborhood documentarian Clayton Patterson and his companion Elsa Rensaa are moving away from the city.

In an article from the Times yesterday (online Friday) titled "Last Bohemian Turns Out the Lights," Patterson discusses his decision to leave after 35 years on the Lower East Side.

Early this winter, to the shock of those who knew him, he made an announcement: He was leaving New York. This was news in what remained of the creative underground that sits below 14th Street. After all, one of the last men who could credibly claim the title of Manhattan’s last bohemian had not only decided he was quitting the city, he also figured he could find a richer existence 4,000 miles away — in the Austrian Alps.

“There’s nothing left for me here,” said Mr. Patterson, who, at 65, is still a physical presence, with his biker’s beard, Santa Claus belly and mouth of gold teeth. “The energy is gone. My community is gone. I’m getting out. But the sad fact is: I didn’t really leave the Lower East Side. It left me.”

Read the whole article here.

Marlene, 1988

Clayton Patterson's photo page, in which he publishes work from his vast archives, is my favorite feature of the newly launched Villager spinoff, The East Villager.

This week, Patterson presents this photo of Marlene Bailey in Tompkins Square Park from 1988. You may know her better as "Hot Dog."



“I think it’s great to see her looking like that,” Patterson said in the feature. “I think it’s a good example of the difficulties and hard life of living on the street. She’s a neighborhood icon to some — a reprobate to others. I think she’s one of the last of the real survivors out there on the street — one of the street warriors.”

Here's a more recent photo of Marlene (with Poet John Lesko) from Bob Arihood's excellent new photo site, Nadie Se Canoce.

Reminder: "Home Grown LES" and "Captured" Monday night

Special screening of Clayton Patterson's "Captured" — 8 p.m. at Collective Hardware, 169 Bowery
Benefit for Collective Hardware’s “Home Grown L.E.S”

Here's the trailer:

"New York is now a museum, a relic"

"Now we end up with this nice, beautiful city, but like Rome or Athens, they were never a leading cultural center again. New York now is a museum, a relic. It's over. I'm not saying you can't be corporate, be picked up here like Britney Spears, but the whole avant-garde, Allen Ginsberg-world can't ever exist here again." -- Clayton Patterson talking to the Observer

Previous Clayton Patterson coverage on EV Grieve is here.

Tonight: Captured at Webster Hall

[Image by Clayton Patterson]

Clayton Patterson is the artist and documentarian who has been chronicling the changes in the Lower East Side since he first set up shop here in the early 1980s. Some of his 100,000 photos and 10,000 hours worth of footage went into Captured, which plays tonight at Webster Hall.

Here's a trailer for the film:



Also, Patterson, who grew up in Canada, was featured in yesterday's Toronto Globe and Mail.

Patterson never had much trouble gaining access to the sort of people who might normally be suspicious of a camera in their midst - drug dealers and users, gang members, others on the margins of society - in part because he shoots without judgment. But Captured shows that newcomers to the neighbourhood -- like developers putting up $3-million condos on the Bowery -- are suspicious of his camera.

Previously on EV Grieve:
“When I go out my door now, I don’t see anyone I know. I see the loss of a community.”

“When I go out my door now, I don’t see anyone I know. I see the loss of a community.”

[Image by Clayton Patterson]

The new issue of The Brooklyn Rail has a great feature on Clayton Patterson, the artist and documentarian who has been chronicling the changes in the Lower East Side since he first set up shop here in the early 1980s. Some of his 100,000 photos and 10,000 hours worth of footage went into Captured, which debuts Friday at The Rooftop Film Festival. "The film is as much a biopic of the neighborhood as it is a portrait of Patterson himself," according to the article by Jericho Parms

Here's an excerpt from the article:

When the Lower East Side took hold of Clayton Patterson, it never let go. He speaks of it as “a magic crucible that everything else would come out of.” In the last decade, he believes, he’s seen the end of that era as soaring real estate prices have begun to empty the village of its artists, bohemians, radicals and immigrants.
“When I go out my door now, I don’t see anyone I know. I see the loss of a community.” Patterson notes the changes—the cranky old tailor is gone, a trendy café bar bought out the Latino grocery on the corner. Still, there is a good chance that any person that walked the streets or attended an event in “the deep pool that is the Lower East Side” in the past two decades can be found somewhere in the Clayton Patterson archives. And, in that sense, they will live on forever.

Here's a trailer for the film:



Here's an article on Patterson from the Times.