Remembering Taylor Mead at Art Around the Park

Taylor Mead, the artist and Warhol superstar, died on May 8 after suffering a stroke in Colorado. He was 88. And his spirit lives on at Art Around the Park this weekend ...

For the Love of Taylor Mead (1924-2013)

Via the EV Grieve inbox...

For the Love of Taylor Mead (1924-2013)
Bowery Poetry, 308 Bowery
Monday, May 13, 6-9 p.m.

Come celebrate the oft-storied life and "brilliant downtown zen" poetry of this quintessential New York figure. Facebook event page is here.

Mead died Wednesday night after suffering a stroke. He was 88.

Photo of Taylor from 2012 by Hughbert Burckhardt.

Remembering Taylor Mead

[Photo from 1979, © Deborah Feingold/Corbis]

The New York Times files its feature obituary on Taylor Mead, who died Wednesday night after suffering a massive stroke.

Mr. Mead was the quintessential Downtown figure. He read his poems in a Bowery bar, walked as many as 80 blocks a day and fed stray cats in a cemetery, usually after midnight. His last years were consumed by a classic Gotham battle against a landlord, which ended in his agreeing to leave his tenement apartment in return for money. At his death, he had been intending to return to New York after visiting a niece in Colorado.

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The film critic J. Hoberman called Mr. Mead “the first underground movie star.” The film historian P. Adams Sitney called one of Mr. Mead’s earliest films, “The Flower Thief” (1960), “the purest expression of the Beat sensibility in cinema.”

Read the whole feature here.

Here's a video from 1996 featuring Mead and Quentin Crisp at the Cooper Square Diner on Second Avenue...



BoweryBoogie compiled several other videos featuring Taylor. Find those here.

RIP Taylor Mead

[Being crowned King of the Mardi Gras at a Lower Eastside Girls Club benefit last year. Photo by Greg Masters]

Lower East Side icon Taylor Mead has died after suffering a massive stroke last night in Colorado. He was 88.

In a brief farewell ahead of a full-length obituary, the Times refers to him as "the Warhol 'superstar,' Beat poet, stray-cat feeder and sweet face and voice of an era."


[Andy Warhol and Mead in 1975]

Here's a passage from a profile on Mead published last summer in The Paris Review:

When Taylor drifted to New York, after a stint in the poetry clubs of San Francisco in the late fifties, he found himself in the midst of a vibrant scene. “McDougal Street is where everything was,” he remembered. He fondly recalled night after night spent at the Gaslight, a basement café that no longer exists. Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso would read there often. Bill Cosby was a regular. “The police wanted to close the place because of Allen's and my language. The owner would sit there with a shotgun. This was the early days of New York. He sat down there with a shotgun! New York was so wild.”

Mead was a familiar figure in the neighborhood, whether performing at the Bowery Poetry Club or eating at his favorite restaurant, Lucien on First Avenue. He lived in the same apartment on Ludlow Street the past 34 years. Mead continued to live in his rent-stabilized apartment while the rest of the building that Ben Shaoul purchased last summer was converted to market-rate homes. (You can read more about that here.)

Mead eventually accepted a buyout in April and moved to be with his niece in Colorado, as BoweryBoogie noted.

Back to The Paris Review piece, which discussed how Mead found his home at Max's Kansas City in 1965.

After Max’s closed, things weren’t the same. Taylor spent some time at the Mudd Club, where he filmed a public-access television show and continued to read poetry and perform in theatrical productions at La MaMa Theatre; later, he spent time at Max Fish, before, as he claims, he was insulted by the bartender and forced to take his business elsewhere. The Mudd Club closed in 1983; La MaMa is a shell of its former self; Max Fish will, it’s being said, close in the next year due to escalating rents. People and places are gone for good, and during our conversation the East Village begins to sound more and more like a ghost town. Taylor is the last resident, the final holdout.

[Updated] Taylor Mead is (temporarily) leaving New York

Taylor Mead, the poet and former Warhol star currently living in hellish conditions during his Ludlow Street building's gut renovation, was scheduled to appear Sunday at the Anthology Film Archives.

He was to appear with director Michel Auder to discuss the 1970 cult classic "Cleopatra," which Mead appeared in alongside Nico and Gerard Malanga. However, that appearance has been moved up to tonight.

Per the Anthology website:

Since going to press with our Spring schedule, we've learned that Taylor Mead will be temporarily leaving NYC (for an undetermined period of time) just before our originally scheduled program on Sun, April 14. As a result, we have added a screening on Tues, April 9, with Taylor in person! Since this may be the last chance to see Taylor here in NY for some time, this evening is not to be missed! Come say goodbye to Taylor as he embarks on an adventure out west!

As you may have read, Ben Shaoul bought the building Mead lives in last summer. Mead, 88, continues to live in his rent-stabilized apartment while the rest of the building is converted to market-rate homes. (Mead has lived here for 34 years and pays $380 a month in rent.)

According to a report in the Post, "Workers hammer outside his door from 7 a.m. till the evening. Plaster falls from his walls and roaches crawl up his legs. The kitchen sink doesn’t work."

Word began to spread via Mead's friends and family last week that a buyout/relocation deal was in the works.

As for tonight, the film starts at 7.

Updated 10 p.m.
We asked Clayton Patterson, who has been working to help Mead, for an update. He said that Mead will be spending a few weeks with his niece in Denver... and that there are possibles trips to New Orleans and Upstate New York to follow... "then hopefully back to the LES." Patterson noted that Mead has not ben receiving any help from any local officials. He received one visit from reps from the offices of Councilwoman Margaret Chin and the Cooper Square Committee, as BoweryBoogie noted. "If Taylor had to rely on these political groups and our politicians he would probably be dead by now," Patterson said last night via email. He was unaware if Mead had reached a buyout agreement with the landlord.

[Image via]

'This is elderly abuse' — Warhol star Taylor Mead lives in squalor during building's gut renovation

Taylor Mead's home life in his fifth-floor walk-up continues to be a living hell, the Post notes today.

As you may have read in The Villager or at BoweryBoogie, Ben Shaoul bought the building Mead lives in and two others on Ludlow Street for $16.5 million last summer. Mead, 88, continues to live in his rent-stabilized apartment while the rest of the building is converted to market-rate homes. (Mead has lived here for 34 years and pays $380 a month in rent.)

Per the article:

Workers hammer outside his door from 7 a.m. till the evening. Plaster falls from his walls and roaches crawl up his legs. The kitchen sink doesn’t work.

Mead’s friends suspect Shaoul wants the poet to evict himself.

“It’s going to kill him,” said Clayton Patterson, a neighborhood activist and longtime friend. “This is elderly abuse. It’s pretty Third World when you think about it.”

You can read more about the legendary Mead, an actor, writer and poet, here. (Read this feature on Mead from The Paris Review last summer here.)

Of course, history doesn't mean much to developers.

“[Shaoul] is out for profit. He doesn’t give a shit about who I am,” he said. “It’s going to be hell.”

Taylor Mead still loves the neighborhood

The Paris Review checks in with a wistful feature on Taylor Mead, the 87-year-old writer-actor-performer-Warhol-star ... who moved to New York in the late 1950s...

A few things from the article ... Lucien on First Avenue is his favorite restaurant — "it’s one of the few places he leaves the apartment for." Also, the landlord is apparently trying to boot Taylor from his rent-stabilized Ludlow Street apartment. The heat was off all winter.

With a nod to its headline, "Taylor Mead's Lost East Village," writer Craig Hubert notes that "People and places are gone for good, and during our conversation the East Village begins to sound more and more like a ghost town. Taylor is the last resident, the final holdout."

Perhaps ... but...

Taylor wanted to make clear that, although the neighborhood has changed drastically, he still enjoys being here. “I love my neighborhood. And I love the new yuppies, they’re very nice. They help me get out of cabs.”

Read the full piece here.