Reminders tonight: Memorial in Tompkins Square Park for Monica Shay

Monica Shay died on Thursday after being shot last weekend at the Pennsylvania country home she shared with her husband Paul. She was 58. Tonight at 8, her friends and loved ones will gather in Tompkins Square Park for a memorial vigil.

As The Villager noted, she and her husband Paul, who is expected to recover, were prominent neighborhood activists. "They helped the East Village squatters who took over city-owned buildings in the 1980s. They also supported the encampment that homeless people set up in Tompkins Square Park."

The memorial will be held at Seventh Street and Avenue A at the entrance to the Park.

[Photo of Monica Shay from 1990 by Clayton Patterson via The Villager]

Another view from 1991

We've had a few items lately about 1991. (Such as this one.) Billy Leroy passed along the above photo from 1991 ... The future Billy's Antiques was called Manhattan Castle and Props .. as Billy noted in the photo, it was a time when cope were making frequent arrests in the middle of East Houston just west of the Bowery... and the MTA apparently didn't care if you sold MTA signs...

[Photo by Clayton Patterson, courtesy of Billy Leroy]

Lower East Side artists now larger than life — on canvas

It's likely that you spotted a few workers carrying a large portrait of Clayton Patterson up the Bowery the other day...

Indeed, the portrait is the latest from Curt Hoppe, the legendary hyper-realist artist who is among those showing new work starting this Saturday at the Woodward Gallery on Eldridge Street.

Hoppe is currently working on a series of paintings of fellow Lower East Side artists. Here's Patterson posing with his portrait.

Curt also sent along his portrait of Arturo Vega ...

...and in progress.

Curt hopes to show this series together — likely 15 portraits in total ... we're looking forward to seeing these.

[Photos courtesy of Curt Hoppe]

Previously on EV Grieve:
Q-and-A with Curt Hoppe: Living on the Bowery, finding inspiration and shooting Mr. Softee

EV Grieve Etc: Mourning Edition

Ailing man prevents mother-in-law from being robbed on First Avenue (The New York Post)

The art in the tree at the Cooper Square Hotel (Jeremiah's Vanishing NY)

A panel Sunday on modern day New York street photography featuring Clayton Patterson, Matt Weber and Jake Dobkin (Nathan Kensinger Photography)

The misery of living in NYC (Runnin' Scared)

An update on SPURA project planning (BoweryBoogie)

Squirrel love in Tompkins Square Park (Nadie Se Conoce)

A comeback for Jeffrey's Meats in the Essex Street Market? (The Lo-Down)

Fifth Generation vs. the Blank Generation (Flaming Pablum)

An East Village ambassador for Japanese cuisine (The New York Times)

Inside Kenka on St. Mark's Place (Eater)

Photos from NYC's "best coffee shops" (Refinery29)

Watch Billy Leroy throw someone into a coffin and nail it shut

Billy Leroy tells us about an independent film project that he's working on called "Don Peyote." Michael Canzoniero directs. While it started out as a small film, the production received funding... and it's turning into some much larger... it stars Dan Fogler and Anne Hathaway.

Anyway, here's a scene that features Billy (and the fellow in the German helmet is Clayton Patterson; the young woman is Billy's daughter Celina Leroy).

Here's the set-up for this scene shot outside Billy's Antiques on East Houston:

"We jump on Dan. I beat him up and throw him into a coffin and nail it shut... It's all part of a nightmare scene he has after ingesting hallucinogenic drugs. Wish I could do this to some of the yuppies that wander into Billy's."

The movie is still in production. Here's a snippet of it.

[Photos by Isak Tiner]

EV Grieve Etc: Mourning Edition

When Clayton Patterson decided to paint a non-commissioned mural on Houston and the Bowery in 1980 (The Villager via BoweryBoogie)

A collection of hardcore '80s photos (Jeremiah's Vanishing NY)

A drink at Gargiulo's in Coney Island (Eater)

Op/Ed: Support CB3′s SPURA Planning Guidelines (The Lo-Down)

Baby Fat Larry!: Mobsters still have cool names (Gawker)

Drug dealers circulate business cards in the EV and LES ... and eventually get busted (The Post) Here's one of the cars, via the Post...

A look at Mechanic's Alley (The Gog Log)

In search of a Warhol street shot (Flaming Pablum)

PETA responds to the dog-killing-rat-story in Washington Square Park (NYC the Blog)

Oderus Urungus butt shot while passed out at Idle Hands — no need to thank me! (Neighborhoodr)

And off topic: Steampunk Palin (BoingBoing)

How's the food at Yaffa Cafe these days? (East Village Eats)

And here's a midnight shot of Yaffa courtesy of jdx ...

And let's hear it for the overnight snowfall! Woo! A shot looking west on 10th Street toward Avenue C early this morning via Bobby Wiliams...

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.

New look, name for 'The Villager'

Per the paper's editorial this week:

You might have noticed something different about the newspaper you are holding in your hands. For starters, it has a different name on the front page — and that name is in “eco green,” not blue.

Starting this week, East Villagers and Lower East Siders who have enjoyed reading The Villager over the years now have a paper they can call their own. It’s called the East Villager and Lower East Sider, and it will offer the best of what The Villager brings — but with an increased focus on Downtown’s vibrant East Side

.

In addition, each week, the paper will feature a page of Clayton Patterson's vast LES archives.

If you don't pick up a hard copy around the neighbor, then you can check out their new website.... and new digital flipbook.

Congrats to Lincoln Anderson and his crew... as always, I look forward to reading the paper each week...

"An Absurdist Valentine to a disappearing City"

Here's part of a news release for a screening that I received the other day... I look forward to seeing this some day...

DIRTY OLD TOWN: a new gonzo narrative by young trio Jenner Furst, Daniel B Levin and Julia Willoughby Nason. Abel Ferrara presents this indie-feature ...

DIRTY OLD TOWN swirls around Billy's Antiques and Props as owner Billy Leroy faces eviction from his ramshackle tent off Bowery. With 72 hours to pay the rent, his urban Big Top draws in a troop of freaks, renegades and misfits. These strange characters form a colorful tableaux full of carnival pageantry, white lies and victimless crime, in a downtown slice of life that playfully blurs the line between reality and fiction.

The filmmakers spun this strange tale from their previous documentary, CAPTURED, which chronicled the transformation of the Lower East Side through the renegade lens of documentarian, artist and activist Clayton Patterson.

DIRTY OLD TOWN also showcases longtime actor Nicholas De Cegli, AKA Nicky D, a famous fixture in the New York City nightlife scene. Close friend Abel Ferrara refers to Nicky as "John Wayne" within this twisted going out of business story. There are also first time acting debuts from Paul Sevigny the restauranter and Club Guru, Ashley Graham the young full-bodied supermodel and Janell Shirtcliff, aspiring actress, model and wife of MGMT drummer Will Berman.

The filmmakers have used vibrant characters and locations, both real and fictional, to form an eclectic collage, working with available materials and turning film into found art. Executive Producer Marc Levin calls this project "An Absurdist Valentine to a disappearing City".

In more ways than one, DIRTY OLD TOWN reverberates the loss of many bohemian institutions Downtown and an on going change in the culture of New York City.

Leroy's actual landlord, the real estate visionary Tony Goldman, screened the film and despite being depicted as a frill-less curmudgeon, found the tale to be interesting and the irony to be laughable. For years Goldman has been a conscientious force in revitalizing neighborhoods, most famously Soho and South Beach Miami.

For more info visit on the film, go here.

DIRTY OLD TOWN from Blowback Productions on Vimeo.

Newcomers to the Lower East Side have 'amnesia of some sort — a self-entitlement'

At the City Room this morning, Sarah Maslin Nir has a recap from last week's panel discussion titled "The Lower East Side Remembered and Revisited."

The panelists were:
Joyce Mendelsohn, author
Annie Polland, the Tenement Museum
Clayton Patterson, photojournalist and author
Eric Ferrara, the Lower East Side History Project

A few passages from the article:

The influx of luxury buildings and the moneyed residents who can afford them, panelists like Mr. Patterson seemed to say, erase the color and vibrancy of the area, even as they shoo away perceived blight like the suppliers of drug baggies. But if the roof is made of glass and steel and is designed by a celebrity architect, are the stories underneath less “real life”?

The problem, Mr. Ferrara said, is that newcomers to the Lower East Side have “amnesia of some sort — a self-entitlement. Somebody’s paying $3,500 to live in the same two or three rooms where somebody’s grandmother used to sit in the window crying, ‘How am I going to pay my rent?’ ” If they were aware of the history behind sky-high real estate, he said, the pricing out would be “a little easier to bear.”

Yet the very history being rubbed out by developers and yuppies is, paradoxically, what draws them to the area, Ms. Polland said, citing, for example, the Hotel on Rivington’s founding concept: “The area has arrived, but retains it’s colorful, urban diversity,” says literature on the hotel’s Web site. It “caters to the upper class,” she said. “It’s staking its image on the identity of a neighborhood that in order to have that diversity,” officials “would need to be thinking about affordable housing.”

Image via Museum of the City of New York

Reminders tonight: The Lower East Side Remembered and Revisited

The Lower East Side Remembered and Revisited
CUNY-Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Ave., Manhattan, Elebash Recital Hall

Join panelists:
Joyce Mendelsohn, author
Annie Polland, the Tenement Museum
Clayton Patterson, photojournalist and author
Eric Ferrara, the Lower East Side History Project

Joyce Mendelsohn’s "The Lower East Side Remembered and Revisited," first published in 2001 and is being re-released by Columbia University Press in a revised and expanded edition, including a new section on the Bowery. Panelists will discuss the neighborhood's venerable churches, synagogues and settlement houses as well as the breakneck changes that have taken place. Transformed from historic to hip – aged tenements sit next to luxury apartment towers, and boutiques, music clubs, trendy bars and upscale restaurants take over spaces once occupied by bargain shops, bodegas, and ethnic eateries.

*RSVP FOR TICKET AVAILABILITY

Date: December 2, 2009
Time: 6:30 PM-8:30 PM
Phone: 212-817-8471
E-mail: gotham@gc.cuny.edu

Check out the Web site for more details.

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:

Tonight in Tompkins Square Park: The Toy

Meh...I don't get it either. The Toy? As IMDB describes the plot: On one of his bratty son Eric's annual visits, the plutocrat U.S. Bates (Jackie Gleason) takes him to his department store and offers him anything in it as a gift. Eric chooses a black janitor (Richard Pryor) who has made him laugh with his antics. At first the man suffers many indignities as Eric's "toy", but gradually teaches the lonely boy what it is like to have and to be a friend.

Double ugh. (Oh, and the having Bates as a last name sets up a running gag...Master Bates...)



Now allow me to repeat what I said in a post from July 16:

This film series is all well and good. I'm all for free things that can bring the community together. Not to mention I enjoy cheesy Hollywood movies . . . Still, I'd appreciate an outdoor movie series showing more obscure mainstream and independent films and/or a showcase for local filmmakers. How about something on the history of the neighborhood, such as Clayton Patterson's Captured?

Anyway...on Sept. 19 in the Park: The Shining.

"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.”

Batman Begins tonight in Tompkins Square Park

An obvious choice given that The Dark Knight opens Friday. This film series is all well and good. I'm all for free things that can bring the community together. Not to mention I enjoy cheesy Hollywood movies. (Not that the films in this series are cheesy.) Still, I'd appreciate an outdoor movie series showing more obscure mainstream and independent films and/or a showcase for local filmmakers. How about something on the history of the neighborhood, such as Clayton Patterson's Captured?

Anyway, back to Batman Begins...and one more wish: Wouldn't mind seeing another Christian Bale movie instead...

“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.