Showing posts with label RIP. Show all posts
Showing posts with label RIP. Show all posts

Thursday, May 4, 2023

Thursday's parting shot

Photo by Jose Garcia 

In Tompkins Square Park, remembering food writer Josh Ozersky who died on this day in 2015. He was 47.
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Friday, April 14, 2023

RIP Vivian Trimble

 

Using this Friday-at-5-video post to remember Vivian Trimble, a keyboardist and vocalist from Luscious Jackson. She died on April 4 of cancer treatment complications. She was 59. 

The video for "Citysong" is from the band's debut release from 1994. 

In recent years Trimble lived in New Hampshire with her husband and two sons. However, she was active in this community during her time in NYC, which Performance Space New York on First Avenue and Ninth Street acknowledged in a tribute on Instagram.... 

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Tuesday, April 4, 2023

RIP Leonard Abrams

Photo from March 23 by Stacie Joy 

Leonard Abrams, the editor and publisher of the East Village Eye, the legendary magazine published from 1979 to 1987 that covered the neighborhood's arts, politics and social currents at the time, died suddenly on Sunday, according to several of his longtime friends. 

Abrams, who started the publication at age 24, had recently announced — much to his delight — that the Eye's archives, consisting of documents, manuscripts, artworks, videos, ephemera and a complete run of the original printed publication, had been purchased by the New York Public Library. (This article in The New Yorker has many more details about the archives.) 

On March 23, Abrams presided over a celebration of the acquisition at the Bowery Electric, an evening that included a performance by the Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black. 

His friends shared some thoughts on social media about his death... His post-Eye career included opening Hotel Amazon, which brought warehouse-style parties to a former LES school featuring, among many others, De La Soul, Public Enemy and the Beastie Boys. He also made the documentary "Quilombo Countr," narrated by Chuck D, about a community founded by escaped slaves in Brazil. 

However, in recent years, his main ambition was to find a home for the Eye archives.
As he wrote: 
NYPL's acquisition of the East Village Eye archive is the perfect outcome of our years-long search for the best home for these materials. I can't think of another institution with the breadth and depth of interest, the institutional strength and the dedication to the common good that compares to the New York Public Library — not to mention where it lives. New York deserves to keep this essential trove of materials. It covers a time when it wasn't always easy to love New York City, but we always knew how important it was to bring these voices to the public and to preserve them, even if it meant dragging them from one storage space to another for some 35 years.
In a 2012 interview with EVG, he discussed the legacy of the 72 issues of East Village Eye. 
I'm most proud of having gotten so many of them out. And hearing someone say something like "I moved to NY because I read the Eye in my home state." I was gratified to have published columns by David Wojnarowicz and Glenn O'Brien and Cookie Mueller and Richard Hell. And to have been told that the term "hip hop" was first printed in the Eye. And to have presented so many idiosyncratic voices in such a deadpan manner, as if what they said was as obvious as the weather. That was fun.
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Wednesday, March 29, 2023

RIP Joseph Bellaflores

An East Village man is remembered as a hard-working, devoted father after being killed riding an electric scooter to work early Saturday morning. 

According to the Daily News, Joseph Bellaflores, 43, was going west on Houston Street and was struck by a truck making a left onto Lafayette from the eastbound lane. (Police said he fell and slid under the passenger side of the Ford E350 van truck. The driver remained on the scene and was not charged. As Streetsblog pointed out, the police typically blame the victim in such deadly collisions.) 

He and his long-time girlfriend, Jacqueline Roman, have two sons, ages 12 and 7. 

"He was caring. He was protective. Just so much love. He was honest, he was true. Everything about him was real and genuine," she told the paper. "It's a big loss for anybody that knew him ... He was everything to us." 

Bellaflores was a staff member at 184 Thompson, a 140-unit residential building near Washington Square Park. 

Tenants there started a crowdfunding campaign to help his loved ones pay for expenses. 

Per the GiveSendGo page: "His positive attitude was infectious, and he will be terribly missed by all who ever had the pleasure of meeting him. The world lost a wonderful person in Joseph."
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Tuesday, March 7, 2023

RIP Tim Lomas

By Maggie Dubris 


Tim Lomas, artist, musician, teacher, photographer and longtime East Village resident, died suddenly at home on Feb. 17.

In many ways, Tim was the quintessential East Villager, living in his top-floor apartment on Avenue B since the early 1980s. He had a plot in the 6th and B Garden, played at the Pyramid Club and 8BC with his band Mercury Mile, and walked his beloved Ginger in Tompkins Square Park. 

Tim’s art and ceramic work graces scores of apartments in the neighborhood, and the dinners he hosted sparked lifelong friendships, creating a tribe that spans borders and generations. 

Tim once said, “The greatest artwork you’ll ever make is the one you make with your life.” His life was truly a masterpiece. In addition to his songs, painting and ceramic work, and many collaborative creative projects, Tim was a talented teacher, serving for years as an inspiration to children at the Third Street Music School and the Ideal School.

In 2005, he traveled to Thailand to help in the tsunami relief effort, and there the seeds of his foundation, The Global Children’s Art Programme, were first sown. He went on to spend nearly every summer bringing the joy of art and creativity to underserved and traumatized children in Thailand, Greece, Turkey, and Cambodia. He worked with artists worldwide to create a network of local programs in Africa, India, and throughout Asia. 

Tim’s death sparked an outpouring of both grief and gratitude. Grief for the sudden loss of this precious spirit, and gratitude for his having touched and changed so many lives.

If you get a chance, walk by the 6th and B Garden, and look for the small plot filled with sculptures and outlined in twinkling lights. It’s one of Tim’s many contributions to the East Village that he loved.
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Thursday, March 2, 2023

A memorial Saturday in Tompkins Square Park for Travis 'Grim' Durkin

Photo by Stacie Joy 

On Saturday afternoon, friends and family will gather in Tompkins Square Park for a memorial for Travis "Grim" Durkin. 

The longtime park regular died on Feb. 9 several weeks after being taken into police custody for shoplifting. He was 47. 

As EVG contributor Stacie joy wrote: "Travis especially loved the New York hardcore scene, concerts in the park and dancing, so it's a fitting spot to pay respects."
As Stacie reported on Feb. 14: 
Travis' family doesn't have a lot of answers and is left with questions after being notified that he was found unconscious in his cell after an arrest for shoplifting on Jan. 18. There was speculation that he suffered a cardiac event and was placed in a medically induced coma. 

Durkin's family is demanding answers from the NYPD. The Daily News has a follow-up on his death here. 

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Tuesday, February 14, 2023

RIP Travis 'Grim' Durkin

Photos and text by Stacie Joy 

Updated 2/19: The Daily News has a follow-up on Travis' death here.

In a follow-up email with Stacie Joy, his sister Chloe said that she is particularly upset that the police told media outlets how much Travis shoplifted to the penny but couldn't tell the hospital how long he was unconscious following the arrest. "That was just intolerable," she said.

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A familiar face in Tompkins Square Park, Travis "Grim" Durkin, died this past week while in the custody of the 6th Precinct in a hospice setting at Weill Cornell hospital. He was 47. 

Travis' family doesn't have a lot of answers and is left with questions after being notified that he was found unconscious in his cell after an arrest for shoplifting on Jan. 18. There was speculation that he suffered a cardiac event and was placed in a medically induced coma. 

After weeks of deteriorating condition, he was transferred to hospice care, and his life-saving support was removed. He died a few days later, on Feb. 9. 

An autopsy is pending, as is a local memorial event. The family plans on Saturday, March 4, at 2 p.m., in Tompkins Square Park. Travis especially loved the New York hardcore scene, concerts in the park and dancing, so it's a fitting spot to pay respects.
"Being a good friend was important to Travis, as well as capturing the imagination of the person he was engaging in conversation with," his sister Chloe told me. "He liked to entertain people and cheer them up. And he wanted to be loved." 

He is survived by his father and stepmother, Michael Durkin and Judy Durkin, two sisters, Chloe and Erin Durkin, and his daughter Rhiannon Jamison. His mother died giving birth to him. 

The family requests that instead of assistance, please donate to Washington Square Park Mutual Aid or your favorite police reform cause.
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Saturday, February 11, 2023

A tribute to Tom Verlaine on the Bowery

Someone left a thank-you note for Tom Verlaine outside the former CBGB space at 315 Bowery (now John Varvatos) ... quoting from "Marquee Moon." 

Not sure how long the note has been here. 

Verlaine, guitarist, frontman and co-founder of Television, one of the most influential acts of the CBGB scene in the late 1970s, died on Jan. 28 at age 73.
Life in the hive puckered up my night 
A kiss of death, the embrace of life 
Ooh, there I stand neath the Marquee Moon 
But I ain't waiting...
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Saturday, January 28, 2023

RIP Tom Verlaine

 

Tom Verlaine, guitarist, frontman and co-founder of Television, one of the most influential acts of the CBGB scene in the late 1970s, died today after a short illness. He was 73. 

Per The Wall Street Journal: "Despite its modest sales, Television laid a sonic foundation for decades of punk, alternative and post-punk bands." 

You can read more about his life and work at Variety ... Pitchfork ... The New York Times... BBC ... NPR ... Billboard.

Here's a sampling of the tributes to Verlaine, a longtime East Village resident, on Twitter...
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Thursday, January 12, 2023

RIP Alicia Torres

Alicia Torres, who founded the Esperanza Garden on Seventh Street and took part in the neighborhood's rent strikes in the 1970s, died on Jan. 4, five days away from her 99th birthday, according to her grandson, Marcel Torres. 

At the time of her death, she was living at 219 E. Seventh St. between Avenue B and Avenue C — her home since 1975. 

Here's more about her life via a tribute at Legacy.com: 
Alicia Torres and her eight children moved to New York City in 1959. In 1975, they moved to the heart of the Lower East Side (Loisaida), 219 E. Seventh St., a tenement building, after being displaced from one dilapidated apartment to another. 

Alicia had grown up on the island of Vieques; her family had been displaced from their land by the United States Navy in the 1930s and had suffered through the Great Depression, which made Puerto Rico the poorest country in the world at that time. 
When the building (219 E. Seventh) was sold in 1976 to a real estate speculator who tried to collect rent while providing no services, Alicia decided she was tired of being pushed around. With the guidance of a community housing organization, Adopt a Building, the Torres family organized a tenant association and led a rent strike. 

They collected the rents and started to make repairs and purchase heating oil. The landlord brought eviction proceedings in the Housing Court, but did not prevail as he failed to make the repairs that were ordered by the judge. Conditions were harsh, however, and most of the tenants gradually moved out, leaving the Torres family members occupying eight of the twenty-four apartments. 

In 1975, the building next door (223 E. Seventh St.) had a devastating fire. The City demolished the building in 1976 and the resulting rubble lot attracted neighborhood drug dealers. Some neighbors at this end of Seventh Street met with Alicia Torres and her family and together they started to clear the lot of the bricks and debris and planted sunflowers. It was backbreaking work, but soon the lot started to look more like a garden than a rubble lot. 

In 1979, the East Seventh St Block Association was granted a lease by the City's Operation Green Thumb and a fence was erected to protect the garden. Green Thumb delivered truckloads of fertile topsoil from upstate and soon after that, it wasn't long before the garden members, many of them 219 residents, were growing vegetables, flowers, and shrubs. Trees and rose bushes were planted and the garden became a magical space for East Seventh Street residents, especially children. 

On weekends, the garden would be full of people working, talking, cooking, and kids playing. It was an island of beauty and harmony amidst a gritty urban landscape. 
Photo of Alicia Torres in Esperanza sometime in the late 1980s courtesy of Marcel Torres. You can read more about what happened to the garden here.
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Sunday, January 1, 2023

A memorial on Avenue A for James Cunningham

There's a small memorial with candles and flowers outside a vacant storefront at 214 Avenue A between 13th Street and 14th Street ... near where police found the body of 51-year-old local resident James Cunningham early morning on Dec. 19.
According to the NYPD and published reports, Cunningham had just left the bar Spike's at 218 Avenue A around 1 a.m. when he bumped into Roland Codrington and his girlfriend on the street. 

Video footage at the scene, police officials said, shows the two men arguing for about 20 seconds before Codrington is seen slashing Cunningham with a knife. NYPD Chief of Detectives James Essig said the two men had no prior connection before Dec. 19. 

Police officials said that the same knife was used in a violent rampage in which Codrington also allegedly killed a doctor in Marcus Garvey Park and assaulted several other people before his arrest on Christmas Eve. 

The Daily News reported that Cunningham was a regular at Spike's, 218 Avenue A ... "who often came into the bar to order a seltzer or soda, never drank alcohol but instead used the bar as a community center." 

One EVG commenter had this to say about Cunningham: "He was my friend for 35 years and was the best type of person. James would have given the last of anything he had so another wouldn't have to go without."
On Dec. 22, Codrington allegedly choked a bartender and stabbed two Good Samaritans at Teddy's Bar and Grill on Second Avenue in East Harlem. Media reports stated that Codrington showed up at the bar with a pit bull and a baseball bat to settle a score. 

Police reportedly used surveillance video from Teddy's to link him to the knife attack on Avenue A. 

Early on Dec. 23, a 60-year-old pediatrician was found dead in Marcus Garvey Park. Police said that Codrington and the victim, Bruce Henry, got into a verbal spat that ended with the doctor being stabbed multiple times. The NYPD's investigation led detectives to Codrington and his girlfriend driving Henry's Mercedes-Benz in the Bronx on Christmas Eve. 

Essing said Codrington faces two counts each of murder and attempted murder and additional charges of second-degree assault and criminal mischief. Codrington had 12 prior arrests, Essing said. 

Codrington reportedly confessed to the crimes, telling police that he tossed the knife used in the crimes into the Hudson River.
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Friday, December 30, 2022

Remembering Dr. Kamala Joie Mottl

Longtime East Village resident Dr. Kamala Joie Mottl died on Nov. 7. She was 75. 

Her daughter, Legacy Russell, executive director and chief curator of The Kitchen, shared her mother's story with us... it starts with her graduation from the University of Hawaii in 1969 as a writer and editor at the Hawaii State Foundation for Culture and the Arts.
True to her free spirit and open heart, she left to backpack and stay at youth hostels on her own across Europe. After she returned to spend some months living near her sister Tahi in the Boston area, Dr. Mottl began graduate school at New York University, studying psychology and specializing in gerontology. Dr. Mottl's move at that time to a walk-up on Saint Mark's Place at apartment UWG ("Upper Westside Gallery") began her 50-plus year journey and joy in New York City. 

She remained in the same beloved apartment until her final days. Dr. Mottl over the decades became a regular radical fixture on Saint Mark's Place and within the East Village spanning every chapter of its change, an active advocate in organizing for tenant protections with her fellow neighbors across generations, through and beyond the site of 31 Saint Mark's Place.

Critical to her specialty and ongoing investment in her community work and support, Dr. Mottl worked with elders and their families at the Washington Heights Mental Health Center in Harlem and participated in early labor union strikes with the 1199SEIU union.

Dr. Mottl met Harlem-born Black American photographer and community organizer Ernest Russell (1944-2016) in the East Village, a meet-cute that began, as legend has it, when Dr. Mottl was wearing no shoes and strolling in the rainy East Village street. She caught his eye and they struck up an exchange. While the two were initially fond of one another, as Dr. Mottl told it, her heart had not fully made its decision until their first kiss.

Dr. Mottl finished her clinical career in gerontology at Roberto Clemente Community Health Center in the East Village. Thereafter she continued to actively volunteer and participate in elder programming and activities at Stein Senior Center and Sirovich Senior Center for Balanced Living, hosting reading groups, Kwanzaa ceremonies, and, after many years, resuming her viola playing and participating in a seniors-only band that performed in community gardens across the East Village.

She loved, and was loved by, her family, friends and neighbors. An organizer who held central the traditions of Black feminisms, an advocate for the sustainability of Black life across all ages and backgrounds, and a tireless Black creative contributor to the field of psychology and beyond it, Kamala also loved nature, animals (especially her pets Girlie, Piano, Kinky Liberty, and Freaky-Dawn Bubbles), and her neighborhoods that spanned time zones. 

Aloha, Kamala, our cosmic kuuipo. We hope you are having sweet dreams.
Photos courtesy of Legacy Russell
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Wednesday, October 26, 2022

RIP Peter Schjeldahl

Peter Schjeldahl, a longtime resident of St. Mark's Place and "a half-century-long prose stylist of New York City's art scene," died on Friday of lung cancer, his daughter Ada Calhoun announced. He was 80. 

You can read more about his life and wife in this feature obituary at the Times. 

Schjeldahl and his wife, actress Brooke Alderson, moved to St. Mark's Place in 1973. (They bought a place upstate in the 1980s.) In 2015, Ada published "St. Marks Is Dead." The dedication reads: "To my parents, who looked at the apocalyptic 1970s East Village and thought, 'What a great place to raise a kid.'"

Schjeldahl worked as an art critic at The Village Voice before joining The New Yorker as a staff writer in 1998. New Yorker Editor David Remnick wrote a remembrance, which you can read here: 
Peter was a man of well-developed opinions, on art and much else. He was someone who, after being lost for a time, knew some things about survival. We met more than twenty years ago. I was looking to hire a full-time art critic. I’d read him for years in the Village Voice. And a voice is what he always had: distinct, clear, funny. A poet’s voice — epigrammatic, nothing wasted. 
We got together at the office on a Saturday in late summer. Someone had shut off the building’s air-conditioning. Peter was pale, rivulets of sweat running down his face. I asked about an empty interval of time on his résumé. "Well, I was a falling-down drunk back then. Then I fixed that." He was harder on himself than he would be on any artist. 

 Don’t misunderstand: in the many years of his writing for The New Yorker, Peter was perfectly willing to give a bad show a bad review, and there were some artists he was just never going to love — Turner and Bacon among them — but he was openhearted, he knew how to praise critically, and, to the end, he was receptive to new things, new artists. ... He took his work seriously — despite the cascades of self-deprecation, there were times when I think he knew how good he was — but he was never self-serious. He once won a grant to write a memoir. He used the money to buy a tractor. 
In June, Ada celebrated the release of her latest memoir, "Also a Poet: Frank O'Hara, My Father, and Me," in the garden at St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery. A proud father was on-hand.
Schjeldahl read a poem. Ada shared an excerpt from the book about the time her father, on his wife's encouragement, decided to buy something for his daughter. He returned from the Strand with two books, one by W. H. Auden and the other a copy of "Lunch Poems" by Frank O'Hara. She was 9 at the time. 

Back to David Remnick's essay: 
When Peter got the news of his cancer — a cancer that he and his doctors kept at bay for longer than anyone imagined possible — Ada asked him if he wanted to revisit Rome or Paris. "Nah," he said. "Maybe a ballgame." And Ada arranged it, Peter wrote, "with family and friends: Mets versus Braves, at Citi Field. Glorious. Grandson Oliver caught a T-shirt from the mid-game T-shirt cannon. Odds of that: several thousand to one."
Photos from June by Stacie Joy
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Wednesday, October 12, 2022

[UPDATED] Remembering Manny the Peddler

Photo from 2020 by Brian Boulos 

UPDATED: Despite what the signs say, the service for Manny is on Oct. 29 at 2 p.m. at Most Holy Redeemer.

Manny the Peddler, a decades-long presence along Avenue A, recently passed away. 

Manny, aka Emmanuel Howard and a father of four, sold second-hand items here for more than 40 years. Although the city often came by and dumped all his sale items, Manny remained resilient and continued to run his sidewalk shop. 

We don't have any further information about his passing. He was believed to be in his early 80s. There is a small memorial (since removed) where he was often seen arranging his items for sale on various tables between Second Street and Third Street ... (thanks to Carl Bentsen for these photos) ...
There is a requiem mass for Manny on Saturday afternoon at 2 at the Parish of the Most Holy Redeemer on Third Street between Avenue A and Avenue B...
Here's more about Manny via a profile at The Local East Village from 2011:
He worked as a print shop delivery boy, metalworker, lathe operator, carpenter, and handyman, and around 1979 he began vending in front of the Con Edison substation on Sixth Street and Avenue A. It became a bonanza. 

"People used to come down from upstate and buy out the whole table for six, seven hundred dollars," he says, and then give him their business cards so he could call when he had good stock. Mr. Howard says he once made $4,500 in a week; he had never had that kind of money before. 

With a pocketful of connections, he could sell whatever people brought to him, and the temptation got too much. In 1997 he says he spent nine months of a six-year term on Riker's Island for possession of stolen goods. He suffered a heart attack while in jail and served the rest of the time on probation. 

"I messed up big time on that," he laments, and has since returned to selling donated items from neighborhood residents, many of whom he's done odd jobs for over the years. 

"Manny is organic to the neighborhood," says a café owner on Avenue A ... explaining that his spot is like a public space, connecting people from different backgrounds. "I see people gathered around the tables, all different layers of society. I think it is very healthy to have that."
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Tuesday, October 4, 2022

Remembering off-Broadway theater legend Jeff Weiss

Jeff Weiss, an actor, playwright and "doyen of downtown performance" who received multiple Obie Awards, died on Sept. 18 at an assisted living facility near his childhood home of Allentown, Pa. He was 82. 

Longtime residents recall performances at Good Medicine & Company, the storefront theater that Weiss and his partner Carlos Ricardo Martinez operated from their 10th Street apartment. 

Said one EVG reader in an email: "None of us who were privileged to see him perform in the tiny theater he created on East 10th Street will ever forget those nights. Nor will anyone who saw the various incarnations of 'And That's How The Rent Gets Paid,' which he performed at La MaMa, forget the brush with the genius that was Jeff."

"Jeff was one of the greatest figures in the history of American theater," Charles Richter, retired director of theater at Muhlenberg College and co-founder of Muhlenberg Summer Music Theatre, told the Lehigh Valley Press. "He never sold out. He always had enormous integrity. He was always asking profound life questions in shocking and hilariously funny ways." 

Here's more about Weiss via a feature obituary at Artforum: 
Forgoing formal acting training — he reportedly quit Stella Adler's class after a single session, finding it to be an "offensive lesson in group therapy" — Weiss's made his onstage debut at La MaMa Experimental Theater Club in 1964 in Robert Sealy's "Waiting Boy."

In the ensuing years, Weiss would regularly perform at the storied venue, garnering attention for his eccentric and unnerving performances in productions such as Louis Mofsie's "Three Mask Dances" (1966); Jean Reavey's "Window" (1966); H.M. Koutoukas's "When Clowns Play Hamlet" (1967); and Julie Bovasso's "Gloria and Esperanza" (1969), among others.

His last performance came at La MaMa in May 2017. 

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Wednesday, September 14, 2022

Remembering East Village artist M. Henry Jones

M. Henry Jones, a longtime East Village-based animator, filmmaker and 3D photographer, died this past June at age 65.

This Thursday evening at 7, his many friends and loved ones are coming together for a memorial at St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery on Second Avenue at 10th Street. 

Here's more about him and his work via the Burchfield Penney Art Center: 
In 1975 he moved to New York City, where he attended the School of Visual Arts. He soon became one of many prominent figures in the East Village alternative art space, working with several artists and musicians, and founding Snake Monkey Studios, a concept based out of his apartment on Avenue A. 

Jones' films throughout the 1970s and 1980s transcended the boundaries between moving and stagnant imagery, employing a meticulous and carefully crafted process to give viewers a unique visual experience. His early works are also representative of some of the earliest interactions between music, and films intended to complement its structure; one of Jones' most widely recognized films, "Soul City," is a stroboscopic color film created in collaboration with The Fleshtones. The two-year production of the two-minute film required each individual frame of the group's performance footage to be precisely cut, tinted and rephotographed. 

The film made its debut on the music and art scenes in 1979 and was unlike anything that had ever been done before. "Soul City," along with Jones' other animations for musicians pioneered the music video artistic concept years before MTV and the rise of music videos as we know them today.
David Hershkovits shared this about him in a July post at Legsville: 
Visiting him in his studio or running into him in the East Village neighborhood where we both still lived was an adventure in its own right. My head would spin getting lost in the weeds of his enthusiasms, but I'd always walk away elevated by the conversation, inspired by his hands-on approach and dedication, in his words, "to make the world a better place." 
And from curator Marc H. Miller of Gallery 98: 
Fans of Jones often refer to him as a “technical genius” but he is probably better described as a forward-looking visionary blessed with stubborn perseverance. Because his first works date nearly a decade before the widespread use of computers and digitization, Jones was restricted to labor-intensive analog techniques to create effects that would soon be facilitated by digital programs like Photoshop. 

Today we marvel not only at the visual effects he produced but also at the arduous, time-consuming processes he needed to use to achieve them. In hindsight, it becomes clear that the technology itself was the true subject of Jones’ work, as well as its most important component.
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Wednesday, July 20, 2022

A crowdfunding campaign for Andy Gil, killed by a hit-and-run driver on East Houston Street

The older brother of Andy Gil, the 21-year-old killed by a hit-and-run driver on East Houston Street last Thursday morning, has launched a crowdfunding campaign to help his family pay for expenses. 

Andy lived with his parents and two siblings. 

Here's more from Jesus Gil: 
Andy was just beginning his adult life. At the young age of only 21 years old, Andy had multiple talents that nourished and grew within him daily. 

While working full-time at Casa Cipriani as a lobby door ambassador, Andy also focused on creating, producing and managing bold and understated photo shoots and fashion pieces such as clothing and handbags. His ambition and drive to become a successful and hard-working son to provide for our mother and family touched the lives of everyone around him. 

Andy, being the sweetest and most kind-hearted person he was, threw himself into all of these different projects as a way to provide for our mother. He believed in nothing more that he would one day buy a house for our mother and was even planning a trip to Mexico so that she could see her mom, whom she hasn't seen in decades. He was ultimately the kindest and most gentle family-oriented young man. 
Police say Gil was crossing Houston at Forsyth from south to north when he was struck and dragged by a sedan that continued westbound. The driver remains at large.

You can find the GoFundMe link here.
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Sunday, July 17, 2022

A memorial for Andy Eduardo Gil

Updated: Thanks to the commenter: There is now a crowdfunding campaign for Gil's family.

There's a small memorial in the median at Forsyth and Houston for Andy Eduardo Gil, who police say a hit-and-run driver killed early Thursday morning. Gil was 21. (There are also some flowers and candles on the north curb at Houston.)

According to the Daily News, Gil worked at a hotel "while pursuing his aspirations of becoming a photographer and graphic designer." He was on his way to a photo shoot that morning. 

He lived with his parents and two siblings. 

The driver of the westbound vehicle remains at large.
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Friday, July 1, 2022

Hoop dreams: A memorial for Jesse Parrilla

Photos by Gebhard 

Tuesday was Jesse Day on the basketball courts in Tompkins Square Park... as friends and community members gathered to celebrate the life of Jesse Parrilla, the local hoops star who was said to be an innocent bystander in a gang feud this spring. 

Parrilla, who lived with his mother on 12th Street between Avenue A and First Avenue, and his longtime friend Nikki Huang were reportedly kidnapped and killed in May "in a series of retaliatory shootings" involving a stolen purse. (Previously.) 

Parrilla, 22, played basketball for a season upstate at Genesee Community College. In Tompkins Square Park, there were basketball games and remembrances of someone who is gone too soon...
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Thursday, June 30, 2022

RIP Lisa Martin

Lisa Martin, a longtime East Village resident who had relocated to Paris, died on June 18 at age 59. 

Last November, she was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. 

Here's more about her via a GoFundMe that friends set up on her behalf: 
A brilliant writer, filmmaker, fiercely loving friend, and devoted cat mama, Lisa has inspired, and vicariously thrilled, those of us lucky enough to have known her over the years. Whether you met her at a film festival, freelance job, squeezed into a corner at our little Tile Bar in the East Village, over a Bloody Mary at Harry's after a move to Paris ... Lisa has endeared all of us with her determination, wit and joie de vivre. 
Photo of Lisa on May 7, her 59th birthday, via Instagram
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