Greenberg is quick to credit his staff for keeping Tompkins clean. Actually, the number of his workers has shrunk over the years, forcing him to do more with less. In 1990, he had 15 permanent workers in Tompkins Square Park, and also managed part of Parks District 3, which is contiguous with the East Village and Lower East Side’s Community Board 3. Today, he only has four permanent workers for Tompkins, who also have to maintain 34 other sites in a portion of the district, such as the planted islands on East Houston St., for example.
Although there are drugs in the park, it used to be far worse. Plus, Greenberg noted, “What park doesn’t have drugs?”
“I used to come to this park early in the morning, and there were drug dealers and hookers. Now it’s normal people,” he said, though adding with a laugh, “They could be hookers and drug dealers.”
Last year, neighbor activist/photographer John Penley donated his extensive photo collection to the NYU Tamiment Library.... And now, the library has posted an online exhibit of his work from Tamiment's John Penley Photographs Collection ... such as the one above from 1994... a police assault vehicle evicting squatters on East 13th Street....
"A little after 6 we were walking on Avenue A in front of Benny's when we heard a loud POP. Someone in front of us ducked a little bit. There was some nervous laughter. Someone eating outside of Benny's said, "Was that a gun" to his friends. It turned out someone popped a tire on their bike."
"I was on Stanton and Attorney last night when I heard two gunshots coming from about a block east. I couldn't see what was going on out the window, but I saw people looking that way, and then the undercover cops and a patrol car headed that way. Anyway, I was curious to find out if you heard anything about it."
Day of RAY! Saturday February 6th from noon - 6pm
Benefit show at Sidewalk Cafe! Come see every musician, comedian, poet and performer this neighborhood has to offer.
$5 donation entrance fee at the door, no drink minimums.
15% of sales made from the show going toward the cause.
“We’re going to ask Michael Rosen to adopt us — me, Jim Power and Biker Billy,” L.E.S. Slacktivist leader John Penley explained. Penley said he hasn’t actually read Rosen’s new book, “What Else but Home: Seven Boys and an American Journey Between the Projects and the Penthouse,” in which Rosen recounts the story of how he and his wife opened their home to a group of local youths. “I heard reports. People said it’s not bad,” Penley said of the book. “We’d like to move into the penthouse, too — if he wants three new sons... . We’re not all that young!” Penley added that the camp-out concept is being well received: “A lot of people expressed gratitude that somebody’s doing something that’s a little radical this summer,” he said.
Penley made a name for himself documenting the turmoil of life on the Lower East Side and protesting big business, including NYU expansion, through the last decades of the 20th century.
“This one is my favorite,” Penley laughed, holding a Daily News front cover photograph he took after he discovered locals were growing marijuana plants in Tompkins Square Park.
“It was obvious. I mean, I know what pot plants look like,” Penley said. After Penley called the Daily News, a reporter from the paper went to the scene and brought a leaf of the plant to a professor at NYU who confirmed it was, in fact, marijuana.
Penley started taking photographs as a journalist in Nicaragua in 1983 when he covered the Contra War and continued to document life in the Village until about six years ago.
“I quit. I got completely burnt out. You know, it’s a very hard way to make a living. I was arrested multiple times,” he said. “I got tired of looking at stuff like fires and car wrecks.”
The activist will move away from the Village to live in Pennsylvania next month where he plans to deejay at his friend’s bar and ice fish in his spare time.
“To be honest with you, I’m really sick of the [Village]. The people who would generate creative things there have been forced to leave the neighborhood,” he said.
Hordes of NYU students only add to Penley’s annoyances with the comparatively bland flavor of the area has taken on in recent years.
“I think it was irresponsible to dump that many students on the Lower East Side without educating them about how to behave in our neighborhood,” he said.
