I made a vow not to discuss "Sex and the City II." At least more than I already have. But Jeremiah's post today got me all riled up. Anyway, among other things, he points us to Foster Kamer's rundown on the best SATCII slams here at the Voice. (Thanks Esquared!)
Meanwhile, Scott Lamb at BuzzFeed has a hilarious post this morning titled Don’t See Sex And The City 2. Here, you'll find some more blurbs from SATCII reviews. Like this one from Roger Ebert:
“SATC2 takes everything that I hold dear as a woman and as a human—working hard, contributing to society, not being an entitled cunt like it’s my job—and rapes it to death with a stiletto that costs more than my car. It is 146 minutes long, which means that I entered the theater in the bloom of youth and emerged with a family of field mice living in my long, white mustache. This is an entirely inappropriate length for what is essentially a home video of gay men playing with giant Barbie dolls.
And!
If this is what modern womanhood means, then just fucking veil me and sew up all my holes. Good night.
In this ongoing feature, East Village-based photographer James Maher provides us with a quick snapshot of someone who lives and/or works in the East Village or Lower East Side.
Name: Holly DeRito and Tulip Occupation: Owner, Waggytail Rescue Location: Avenue B between 10th and 11th Date: Tuesday, Nov. 28
I’m originally from the sticks of Pennsylvania. I grew up with horses on a small farm next to Allentown. I came here for the music scene. One of my friends was a roadie for a band, and I started seeing shows. I just became addicted to New York. I’ve been here for 24 years. I was into hardcore punk, alternative. The first show that I drove up to myself was Bad Brains at the Wetlands.
I was bold but I probably should have been more scared than I was. I was always a little bit fearless. I’ve always been a little bit shy but then I’ve been bold. I like challenges — so one of my friends dared me to go into one of those S&M places and try out to be a dominatrix.
I was going to school and working two jobs. I just did it for shits and giggles, and they were like, ‘Oh, you’re blond, you’re hired.’ So I ended up doing that and that’s how I put myself through college with no debt. And then I did a dominatrix workout program that was on HBO and VH1 Real Sex — it was called Slaversize.
I got really sick with Lyme disease, so I didn’t start that again, but I adopted my dog Taco, and he was just magical. The day that I adopted him, two of my friends died in a murder-suicide, and I just remember he was so scared and I just clung to him. He was my soulmate dog.
Then I fostered a dog for another group, and the second that dog was adopted, Taco just looked so sad. So I road my bike up to the city pound to jailbreak him a friend. There I ran into a girl I had worked with as a dominatrix. She was running a pug rescue.
She pulled me into the back to where all of the dogs were on death row that the public didn’t see. She was like, ‘These are the ones that aren’t going to get out, who can you take? Can you help me?’ And I went home with seven dogs that night. I couldn’t leave any of them. So I went home and called my friends and said, ‘Hey can you watch a dog for a few days?’
I had no idea what I was doing — and that’s kind of how I started. It became like — I can save more. I was so passionate, and it was a challenge. I officially formed a rescue in 2004 and it’s just grown from there. The city has changed a lot in that there are almost no small dogs or family friendly dogs in the city shelters, which is great because people have started spaying and neutering. They have started taking better care of their pets. The city has become really pro-dog and dog friendly in comparison to what it used to be. Here for dogs to breed and have puppies, you almost have to make a conscious effort. They have to be in heat and find each other down the hallway and down the stairs. In Los Angeles, Dallas, and elsewhere in the south, they don’t spay/neuter and the dogs are just running in yards. They’re just completely overwhelmed with dogs.
We had a waiting list of people who wanted to adopt dogs. I went to Los Angeles to dogsit for one of my friends and saw the shelters there. I decided to form a program called One-by-One. We supply the carriers, we pay for the ticket for the dog as well as the leashes, the harnesses — everything. We drop off the dog at the airport, pick it up on the other side and a person just flies with the dog. Everybody said it couldn’t be done, and it seemed like it was impossible, but people love it. Everybody who’s done it has done it again. We’ve gotten about 500 dogs that way — one by one.
I have a little bit more faith in humanity. We get adoption donations. The dogs that are coming in tonight on American Airlines are from the highest kill shelter in Dallas, and then all the fosters are going to pick them up. I’m going to microchip them myself. I have my own little branch in Los Angeles with my system and my setup with the shelters and the veterinarians and we also partner up with a few groups. We take in dogs about every two weeks. I formed a buddy system where people who have fostered help the new [dog owners].
I really like anything hands-on. My mom was a nurse and my grandmother was a lab tech. I grew up going into the lab, visiting my grandmother and being fascinated by tumors when I was 6 years old. That stuff is kind of normal to me. I grew up next to a wildlife sanctuary, and because my mom is a nurse, we used to take in all types of orphaned animals and birds with broken wings. It’s an addiction, and it’s also a little bit of a gamble because I agree to a certain amount of dogs. If I don’t find fosters, then I’m out on the street with the dog. Hasn’t happened yet but I’m at the max amount allowed in my building – so yeah, I’d be sleeping at Remedy diner.
If people want to help we have a little fostering section on Waggytailrescue.org. For support we have trainers who we work with. A lot of the fosters end up adopting. A lot of people are considering adopting a dog and they’re not sure it’s the right time, so they’ll foster for a week or two and see if they’re ready for the commitment. If they’re not ready, they’ll maybe foster again until the right time or the right dog, so it’s a good system.
James Maher is a fine art and studio photographer based in the East Village. Find his website here.
"Smithereens" starts a weeklong revival today at the Metrograph, the newish theater complex down on Ludlow Street.
The 1982 dark comedy, which marked Susan Seidelman's directorial debut, is set in the East Village (and other downtown locales). Wren (Susan Berman), a suburban New Jersey escapee, is eager for downtown fame, plastering "missing" posters of herself on the subway and elsewhere. She sees a meal ticket in Eric (Richard Hell), the hot guy with a short attention span in a band. And there's the too-nice Paul (Brad Rijn), who pursues the uninterested Wren. Hustling ensues.
Seidelman started filming in late 1979, and continued on and off for the next 18 months. (Production shut down when Berman broke a leg during rehearsal.) "Smithereens," made for $40,000, was the first American indie invited to compete for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
She went on to make several female-focused comedies, including 1985's "Desperately Seeking Susan" with Rosanna Arquette and Madonna and 1989's "She-Devil" with Roseanne Barr and Meryl Streep, among others. (She also directed the pilot for "Sex and the City.")
I spoke with Seidelman about "Smithereens" and her follow-up, "Desperately Seeking Susan," also partly filmed in the East Village, during a phone call last week. Here's part of that conversation, edited for length and clarity.
On why she wanted to tell this story in "Smithereens":
I was living in the East Village and I was also at NYU. And at the time, NYU Film School, the graduate film school, was on Second Avenue — part of it was where the old Fillmore East used to be. So for three years, that area around Seventh Street and Second Avenue was my stomping grounds.
I started NYU in 1974, and I was there until 1977. So it was interesting to watch the transition from the older hippie generation and hippie-style shops and people as it started transitioning into the punk and new wave kind of subculture. I was a music person, so I frequented CBGB and Max’s Kansas City at that time. And so, that world was interesting to me, and telling a story set in that world about a young woman who’s not from that world, but wants to be part of it in some way, was both semi-personal and just of interest.
On production shutting down:
There were challenges throughout the shoot because I never had all the money. The budget ended up being about $40,000, but I probably only had about $20,000 at any given moment. I was borrowing and racking up bills. I wasn’t really thinking about how I was going to pay it. I figured I’d get to that when I needed to pay it.
Aside from those challenges, when Susan Berman fell off a fire escape and broke her leg during rehearsal, there was no getting around that. We had to quit filming. I kind of thought, oh, you know, fuck it — I’m not going to let this stop me. It made me actually more determined. I had the time to look at what was working and what wasn’t working, and I learned a lot of stuff. I started editing the footage. I could rewrite stuff and change the story a bit.
On casting Richard Hell:
That was when we redefined the character of Eric, who was originally not played by Richard Hell. It was played by somebody else who was not a rock-and-roller — he was more of a downtown painter/artsy type, not a musician — and was also played by a European actor.
By recasting and redefining that role with Richard Hell in mind, it shaped the tone of the movie and changed it, I think, in a good direction. I’m not going to give names, but the other actor — the other person is a working actor, as opposed to Richard Hell, who was acting in the movie, but was more of a presence and an iconic figure even at that time. So trying to make the character of Eric blend in with the real Richard Hell added a level of authenticity to the film.
On filming in the East Village:
In the scene when Wren is waiting out on the sidewalk and the landlady throws her clothing out the window and then splashes her with water, all the people and all the reactions in the background were from the people living on that block who had come out to watch.
At the time, New York was coming out the bankruptcy crisis. There weren’t a lot of police on the street, there wasn’t a lot of red tape and paperwork. These days to film on the street, you have to get a mayor’s permit — so many levels of bureaucracy. Back then, either it didn’t exist … but also I was naïve to what probably needed to be done.
We just showed up with cameras and we filmed. We had some people working on the crew who were friends and they told crowds lining in the street — just don’t look in the camera. Sometimes they did, sometimes they didn’t, but it was all very spontaneous.
That’s the advantage of doing a super low-budget movie — you can just go with the flow. For example, there’s a scene with a kid who’s doing a three-card Monte thing on the sidewalk. He was a kid we saw in Tompkins Square Park with his mother. We didn’t have to worry about SAG or unions or anything. I thought he was interesting and [we asked his mother] if they come to this address at this time and be in our movie.
On the lead characters:
My intention wasn’t to make likable characters. My intention was to make interesting characters and who had some element of ambiguity. There are things that I like about Wren; on the other hand, I think she’s obviously somebody who uses people and is incredibly narcissistic. I’m aware of that. But she’s also somebody who is determined to recreate herself and to live the kind of life that she wants to live, and redefine herself from her background, which you get a little hint at, this boring suburban New Jersey life she must have run away from.
On the independent film scene at the time:
The definition of an independent filmmaker has changed so radically. Nowadays, being an independent filmmaker could mean you’re making a $5 million movie that’s really financed by the Weinstein Company, or it could mean you're doing a cellphone movie like “Tangerine.”
But back then, there weren’t that many independent filmmakers. I know there were some people working out of Los Angeles who were doing stuff and a small pocket of people in New York City. So either you knew them or you were friends with them or you just knew what they were doing and had mutual friends. It was truly a small community. And within that community, there were also a definite relationship between people who were musicians, filmmakers or graffiti artists.
So everyone was borrowing people, trading information or sharing resources. Also, the world wasn’t as competitive as it is today. People were eager and willing to help somebody who was a filmmaker would act in somebody else’s film or tell them about a location or a musician. It was pretty simple, like — hey, let’s make a movie, without a lot of calculation.
On her follow-up film, "Desperately Seeking Susan:"
I didn’t have anything lined up after "Smithereens." I didn’t know what I wanted to do next. I just finished the movie when it was accepted into the Cannes Film Festival.
But I did know that there were very few female film directors. And the one or two I had heard about who had made an interesting independent film ... I knew that your follow-up movie, especially if it was going to be financed by a studio, you needed to be smart about the choice. You had to make a movie that you could still be creatively in charge of, or else you could get lost in the shuffle.
For about a year and a half, I was reading scripts. And they were, for the most part, terrible. I just figured these couldn’t be my next movie. I have nothing to say about this kind of material.
So then I got this script. It was a little different than the way it ended up being, but it was called "Desperately Seeking Susan." I liked that the character, Susan, felt like she could be kind of related to Wren in "Smithereens." I thought I could bring something unique to that kind of a role. So I didn't feel like I was out of my element there.
And also, part of the film was set in the East Village, a neighborhood that I loved and knew. The other good thing was I was so familiar with the characters and able to add my own spin using a lot of people from the independent film community in small parts, like Rockets Redglare, John Lurie and Arto Lindsay. Richard Hell has a cameo.
On working with Madonna:
At the time, Madonna was not famous when we started out. We were just filming on the streets like she was a regular semi-unknown actress. So there wasn’t a lot of hoopla around the film.
And then, you know, so much of life is about being there with the right thing and the right timing. It just so happened that the movie came out at the moment that her "Like A Virgin" album was released and they coincided and she became a phenomenon. But since that wasn’t during the actual filming, there wasn’t the kind of pressure that one would normally feel if you were working with a big star or a a super-famous person.
On the legacy of "Smithereens":
I think I was trying to document what it felt like to live in that neighborhood in that part of the city at that time. I never really thought about it in terms of whether the film would pass the test of time or be a time capsule or anything.
But the fact that it ended up being pretty authentic to the environment, to the neighborhood, is maybe what enabled it to pass the test of time.
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The Metrograph is showing "Smithereens," which features a score by The Feelies, on a new 35-millimeter print courtesy of Shout Factory LLC. Seidelman will be attending tonight's 7 screening. Details here.
Sex and the City 2 notched an estimated $32.1 million on approximately 6,100 screens at 3,445 locations, bringing its total to $46.3 million since its Thursday debut. That's a huge step backwards from the first Sex and the City, which bagged $57 million on its first weekend. Distributor Warner Bros.' exit polling indicated that a whopping 90 percent of Sex 2's audience was female, and 54 percent was under 35 years old. By comparison, the first Sex's opening weekend audience was 83 percent female.
Meanwhile, the SATC2 sign vandalism continued around the neighborhood....
BoweryBoogie has pointed out some SATCII vandalism on the LES...
Sarah Jessica Parker says it's a challenge making the Sex and the City sequel recession-friendly.
"How do we do that well? And how do we do that in a not lazy way? How do we address these economic times in a franchise that has a lot to do with luxury and labels?" Parker tells Billy Bush for Access Hollywood.
"There is a lot that we have to think about because times are very different. So these are nice challenges, these are good challenges," adds Parker -- who once said her character Carrie Bradshaw would end up "in a hospital" if she couldn't afford her trademark $600 Manolo Blahnik shoes.
And what can we expect in the sequel?
"I think we want this one to be a romp," she says. "The last one, we got to tell a really mature sophisticated story that had real heartbreak in it, and this time, I think we want a romp. We want our audience to have a massive romp."
Hmmm....Romp, eh? I think SJP meant to say...."I think we want something like 'Romper Stomper.' We want our audience to have a massive romp."
Yes!
[And I'm late to all this...Esquared had this important SATC news last night -- check out his 40% off photo....Daily Intel also had the goods...)
THAT Kwiat Diamonds will send security to 20 Pine St. tonight to guard the jewels Amanda Hearst and Andres Santo Domingo will wear at artist David Foote's opening, hosted by Porsche Design's fragrance, The Essence . . .
And!: THE "Sex and the City" tour buses will take a detour today so that diehard fans can take a gander at screen star Gilles Marini . Marini, who played Samantha's shirtless neighbor in "Sex and the City: The Movie," may even strip down again this afternoon while facing off in Ethan Zohn's Grassroots Soccer United match at Sara D. Roosevelt Park on the Lower East Side. The hottie will play with Brandon Routh and gold-medalist Heather O'Reilly to raise money for AIDS awareness.
The Razzies were held last night... honoring the worst movies of the past year (this wasn't the thing on ABC?)... and some old friends received accolades, per The Daily Mail ... "Sex and the City 2" received Worst Sequel and and all four of its stars — Jessica Cattrall, Sarah Kim Parker, Kristin Cynthia and Davis Nixon — collectively took the worst actress category. No word yet if this means that the SATC bus tours will be discounted.
From Gadling.com yesterday... some NYC specials based on "Sex and the City II" ... and this is just... depressing...
New York City's Pod Hotel, a budget-minded property on East 51st Street, has put together one of these anti-SATC packages.
Starting at $139 per night, the "Don't Get Carried Away" package includes one night in a bunk-bed room at the Pod, two cupcakes from Buttercup Bake Shop, a Brooklyn cocktail at East Side Social Club, and a knock-off designer handbag from Canal Street.
This package is a refreshing alternative to other SATC-themed packages, which typically have heftier price tags (can you say luxurious suites, Magnolia Bakery cupcakes, Cosmopolitan cocktails, and designer brands?)
And I just can't tell if this is supposed to be funny or not.
In recent weeks, residents who live near the former P.S. 64 on Ninth Street and 10th Street between Avenue B and Avenue C have reported an opening in the plywood, offering access inside the long-empty property.
There have been reader reports lately of people inside the school, including on the roof. The FDNY responded to a fire here in December.
The other day, EVG contributor Stacie Joy, accompanied by a friend, walked through the wide-open gate to look around the former school and Charas/El Bohio Community Center. (The plywood has since been shored up, cutting off this entry.)
After seeing her photos, I asked Stacie for more about what she saw inside the school, which developer Gregg Singer bought in a city auction in 1998.
Why did you decide to enter the former P.S. 64?
It was kind of a whim. I’d heard reports of what was going on inside and I was, as a photojournalist and longtime East Village resident, curious…and the door was open.
I originally planned just to take some shots of the exterior but when I saw I could get inside the building I decided to document it for posterity. I have a history of getting into places and I felt it was important to see — and share — what was inside.
What did you first notice after entering the building?
The smell! It’s pretty unpleasant. A mix of urine and funk, with top notes of mold/mildew and, I think, animal death and decay. I also keyed into the sounds…there is a lot of dripping noise, echoes and scurrying and flapping from the animal inhabitants. Hundreds of pigeons live inside, plus the rats.
It’s almost pitch-black as you enter and there are shards of broken glass everywhere. There is evidence of other people bleeding from getting caught in the shattered glass or broken planks and exposed nails. I could also hear and feel the wind as it moved through the building. It was eerie and spooky and ghoulishly beautiful. It had a bit of a post-apocalyptic feel to it, at least until you made it up to the roof.
Based on your photos here featuring discarded cans of spray paint and fresh graffiti, it appears people have been inside recently. Did you see any evidence of anyone who may be living inside? Did you think anyone else may have been present while you were there — perhaps just hidden from view?
I did not see evidence of anyone living in there. I didn’t want to disturb anyone who may be living inside, and I wanted to be as respectful of the space as possible for an uninvited guest. There are, I think, six floors including the basement, plus the roof, but I only spied the wall art left behind, and evidence of parties: empty White Claw cans, condoms, teenage graffiti, love notes and messages, mostly centering around sex and drugs, plus some social justice themes.
What is your assessment of the building’s current condition?
It looks like at one point work might have begun — there were some supplies on the first floor ... but also evidence of a fire. The place is gutted down to the crumbling brick and studs, and there are hazardous holes in the floors and walls.
The space is soaring, empty and vast. I kept thinking about what it could be, and what a luxury it must be to have so much space to live or work in. The ceilings are so high! And there are so many windows, though most of them are busted out.
I was with a local artist who marveled at the graffiti and was covetous of the space, and what could be created there. We both felt changed and deeply affected by our time inside.
As previously reported, Gregg Singer has wanted to turn the building into a dorm called University Square. The DOB continues to maintain a Stop Work Order — dating to August 2015 — on the property.
In years past several local elected officials, community activists and residents have asked for the return of the building for community use.
Jude (Asa Butterfield) is a teenage boy who is trying to reconnect with his father Les (Ethan Hawke) in 1987 Manhattan. When Jude's friend, Teddy (Avan Jogia), dies of a drug overdose, Jude finds himself befriending a group of friends who are against drugs, alcohol, profanity and sex and live for punk-style rock music. When he meets Eliza (Hailee Steinfeld), who is sixteen years old and is pregnant with Teddy's child, he and Les are forced to be her rock as she struggles through her pregnancy and early motherhood while Jude struggles with his feelings for her and his relationship with his father.
And here's the trailer ...
The Los Angeles Times has an interview with the filmmakers here. The the article, Spring Berman, who lived in the East Village during the Tompkins Square Riots of 1988, which serve as a backdrop to "Saints," discusses filming challenges and then vs. now:
The tops of buildings hadn't changed, and there are still street signs and a few landmarks that have not been turned into a Chipotle or a gourmet frozen yogurt shop. But they are becoming fewer and farther between. Even graffiti had become a scarce commodity — which led to some creative solutions.
"If we saw a graffiti-covered truck, we'd flag it down and give them 50 bucks to park in front of a Citi bike stand," Pulcini said.
The filmmakers did make use of one natural resource that always seems to be in abundance in the city. "I would often see our production designer picking up garbage," Pulcini said. "I'm not going to pay for garbage in New York," Springer Berman added.
"Saints" looks to capture both the beauty and messiness of the past, to walk up against a line of romanticization while being careful not to cross it. "I get irritated sometimes when people say how difficult it is in New York now and how much better it was then," Pulcini said. "Yes, it's hard because it's expensive and you're living with 13 roommates if you're in your 20s. But back then you were mugged and pulled into a stairway at gunpoint. There was a rat in every apartment. I don't know that it was easier."
In this weekly feature, East Village-based photographer James Maher provides us with a quick snapshot of someone who lives and/or works in the East Village.
Name: Leslie McEachern Occupation: Owner, Angelica Kitchen Location: East 12th Street between 1st and 2nd Ave Time: 2 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 25
I was born and raised in Greenville, S.C. … nothing could be finer. I came to New York numerous times in the 1970s for visits, for fun. I was in college from 1967-71 and I was at a large school — the University of Tennessee — that had a lot of fringe people from Miami and New York City.
So I met all of these great, outrageous folks and got very much into an alternative lifestyle — meaning sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. I had a great time and was introduced to the alternative lifestyle, the vegetarian way of doing things. The back-to-the-earth movement was becoming strong at that point and it interested me a lot. I started working in a warehouse in Raleigh, N.C., for a company called Laurel Brook Foods and they were a wholesaler of natural foods. I also helped start a co-op there called Noah’s, which at that time had three families and now I’ve heard it has over 5,000 — still up and strong running.
I had started a small business representing certain natural foods, but I was going to different health-food stores around the country and trade shows and demonstrating their products. One day in 1981, I was at Greenberg’s. It was a very old school natural food store on First Avenue, between Seventh and St. Mark's Place. I was in there doing a miso demonstration and handing out samples and Frank Simons, the guy who had just bought Angelica Kitchen, walked in. I didn’t know him at the time but I had been a fan of Angelica. He and I caught each other’s eyes, to say it mildly. We got engaged and I moved from the mountains of North Carolina to New York to be with him. That was what got me here – falling in love and doing the right turn so many of us know about.
Angelica was at 42 St. Marks Place at that time. It was a small place and we had very few seats, so we had an open policy about seating. People came in and sat in any empty chair in the restaurant, whether it was a two top or a four top, so lots of connections were made that way. That was very fun. It was very community spirited. Organic wasn’t as much of an issue at that time but there were a lot of products available. That became my mission once I was in charge of the restaurant after Frank died. I really believed in the small, independent organic farmer as stewards of the land, so I was able to get on my soapbox through having Angelica Kitchen and really support the farmers.
There was this great couple called George and Tilly who were on Fifth Street between Second and Third and they would come in on Friday and Saturday from their farm in New Jersey. They would bring truckloads of fabulous produce and apple cider. You’d see everybody there from John McEnroe to the people who lived down the street. Everybody in town who ate clean knew about George and Tilly. I would be running back and forth with a hand truck with cases and cases of kale and collards and turnips and apples.
After Frank died, I moved over to Seventh Street between B and C. The great thing about the East Village is always the people, and I really felt deeper into the heart of the neighborhood. In those days it was so convivial and neighborly. It was very community driven. I loved it. There is a reason the East Village has the reputation that it does, historically, because it was a wild and crazy place, and yes it was sometimes scary. I had amazing things happen, including people stealing from me. It had kind of an outlaw feeling. In the moment it was frustrating, but you just kept going.
I built the 12th Street location in 1987, so it’s still the new place. It used to be the Café Royal when it was Jewish Broadway and all kind of characters were in here, including Bugsy Siegel and George and Gracie, and just on and on. I loved the fact that it was a gathering spot back in the day and now since 1987 it has been too.
Before the city made recycling law, I was already doing it, and not only recycling with recyclable goods, but also of compost, which of course made the weight on our garbage go down because we weren’t putting all of the refuse in the garbage bags. We were saving it in five gallon buckets to be used in a composting operation that Christina had set up on my block on 7th Street.
You know who didn’t like that? The garbage carters. You know who ran the garbage carters? It was an organized group called The Family. Things started happening to Christina. I think her truck got blown up. I’m pretty sure that’s the right story. I’m not sure if it was those people, but it was some kind of a competition issue.
Then one day right after I had opened on 12th Street, a group of shall we say gentlemen — four rather stocky men in suits — came to the front door to talk to me. So I called this guy, Carl Hultberg, who was handling the recycling for NYU, to come over and sit with us. These guys had come to intimidate me to stop my composting and recycling. They were at that time charging by the weight, and the weight wasn’t what it should have been according to them. So Carl, who was a strong activist and informed recycling man, started laying out information for them. They were claiming that they were recycling, these four men, and Carl said, "We would like to see your recycling operation. Can we go there?"
You could just see them think, "Who do these kids think they are?" But Carl was asking them very pointed questions to prove they weren’t recycling. It was a funny meeting. They walked out and they got nothing from us. We were cheering and high fiving. That was a great moment for not only Angelica Kitchen, but also a big moment in the changes that were coming. I don’t know if it influenced those four men or not, but now that recycling is a law and composting is encouraged, it’s kind of interesting to look at the progress we made.
Now things have changed drastically. From being, I guess they say farm-to-table, long before it had a terminology. Now a lot of people say that’s what they do, but there’s no way to verify. So I feel for the consumers because people who are really looking to support that movement are just kind of up to the whim of the people who are doing the branding of any particular location.
Some people are doing a very good job and some people are taking advantage of the trend — local, regional, artisan. That’s always just been how we do things here. But I don’t want it to be negative — I want it to be positive. We’re the real deal. We’re doing what other people say they’re doing. You can always count on Angelica to be completely plant-based and organic. We’re here seven days a week, lunch and dinner.
James Maher is a fine art and studio photographer based in the East Village. Find his website here.
To some, this year is symbolic of a potential global crisis that threatens civilization, but for a few New Yorkers that death knell rings much closer to home — on the Lower East Side. This year marks the threat of a different kind of death — the potential closure of a beloved bar known as Max Fish that has for more than 20 years been the life blood of New York’s downtown arts community.
Fortunately, when we finally caught up with owner Ulli Rimkus, we found her firmly rooted.
“We have no immediate plans to leave, and in fact, we’re good for now,” she explained joyfully last week.
If you recall, in December 2010, reports surfaced that the demand of rising rent costs might lead to the removal of yet another New York mainstay. However, by January 2011, Rimkus had received a one-year lease extension. Now she's here indefinitely.
While business has been up and down of late, Max Fish remains populated by regulars as well as newcomers hoping to mix it up at this storied art spot. For now at least, the hysteria of a forced move remains distant.
Hang the Art; the Beer Will Follow
Rimkus opened Max Fish on Ludlow Street in 1989, first as an art gallery, but her artistic past goes much deeper. More than a decade earlier she had arrived to the United States from Düsseldorf, then a part of West Germany.
In her twenties and eager to lay claim to New York’s thriving arts scene, Rimkus and her then boyfriend, artist Christof Kohlhofer, moved to the Lower East Side in 1977. They soon became members of the collective Collaborative Projects, Inc., or Colab, a loose confederation of artists that courted the likes of filmmakers Charlie Ahearn and Jim Jarmusch, painter Jane Dickson, sculptor Tom Otterness, and printmakers Kiki Smith and Jenny Holzer, and as many as 50 more.
By working together and establishing a nonprofit status the following year, Colab quickly evolved into a positive force in New York’s contemporary art scene. Besides being in control of its own exhibition spaces (which typically meant temporarily taking over abandoned spaces) Colab produced arts shows for Manhattan’s public access cable TV network, helped champion the nonprofit arts space ABC No Rio, opened a screening room for Super 8 films on St. Mark’s Place, and encouraged the intermingling and strengthening of the arts community at large.
Rimkus was at the center of that thriving push for unity and she even co-authored one of Colab’s first National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) grant applications, which later became a mission statement for the fledgling group.
No Gallery? No Problem
Within two years of its formation Colab began hosting radical group shows, first with The Manifesto Show in 1979, which broke new ground and caught critics’ eyes. The Real Estate Show followed in 1980, but none were as memorable as The Times Square Show. Held during the summer of 1980 in an abandoned four-story massage parlor on 41st Street and Seventh Avenue, critics hailed the exhibit as the arrival of New York’s “punk rock” artists. Nude models milled about and mock peep shows were staged. In one room, an orange punching bag hung from the ceiling.
According to its press release, the month-long exhibit took on “the complexities of the human condition, theatres of love and death, invention and phenomena…daring performance, comic relief, arcades of fiction and halls of art from the future — all beyond the horizon of your imagination.”
The Times Square Show had legs. Uptown gallery owners jockeyed for the opportunity to buy the work, and Jeffrey Deitch, Director of the Los Angeles Art Museum but then a young art critic, wrote that the art was “raw, raucous, [and] trashy, but exciting.”
The surging popularity of the artists, many who lived on the Lower East Side, paved the way for the first wave of gentrification in the East Village. Before long, galleries popped up on every other corner that would eventually create art stars out of Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf, David Wojnarowicz, and many others. Within five years, the East Village surpassed SoHo as New York’s art mecca with more than 78 galleries lining its streets by 1985.
In the late 1970s, however, the city’s contemporary art scene thrived for established artists, but not for newcomers. Colab was significant because it pushed the boundaries of what struggling artists could control, especially when they banded together.
Samuel M. Anderson, Ph.D., who has written extensively about the groundbreaking show, noted the power that was yielded by Colab and the significance of the artist alliance.
“Just as distinctions between the specific art works on display and the genres they represent begin to evaporate, distinctions between basic ontological concepts dissolve in the chaotic play of objects housed in a four-story massage parlor,” he wrote. “This was the particular, disorienting contamination of power wielded within the bounds of The Times Square Show: Not only materials, but genres, categories, sensibilities, even whole realities met, merged, and infected each other with the tumultuous interplay of their qualities, their meanings, and their histories.”
Street Artist to Art Star
Charlie Ahearn, director of the widely respected 1980s film "Wild Style," which told the story of New York’s earliest graffiti writers, remembers The Times Square Show well.
“Jane Dickson painted a portrait of Ulli on a black plastic bag and hung it in the second-floor stairwell,” Ahearn recalled. “Ulli was there often, hanging up work, helping out in the ‘gift shop’ on the ground floor, or up on the second floor ‘fashion room’ where Sophie VDT [another Colab artist] had hung work and Jean-Michel Basquiat painted a red abstraction directly on the wall. Basquiat also painted the words ‘Free Sex’ over the main entrance doorway, but someone else painted it out.” [The Times Square Show was Basquiat’s first entry into showing work professionally.]
“Ulli was an amazing supporter of artists,” Ahearn continued, “especially of Kristof Kohlhofer, who not only painted his stencil art on canvas, but was a forerunner to [today’s] street art scene, painting his stencils up and down Ludlow Street.”
Basquiat was also better known as a graffiti writer. His street tag, SAMO (an acronym meaning SAMe Old shit) was once found all over downtown Manhattan. He had become loosely affiliated with Colab through Diego Cortez, a filmmaker he’d meet at the Mudd Club, but he quickly left the graffiti world when his popularity exploded, just a few years after his associations with Colab.
But the collective was not without its problems. Just two months prior to The Times Square Show, the group was in danger of losing its NEA funding due to the work of one of its members, Tom Otterness, whose controversial project Shot Dog Film turned the stomachs of anyone who watched it. (Otterness, who fatally shot a dog in the video has since apologized, but continues to face opposition from some New Yorkers based on that 30-year-old work.)
Joann Jovinelly is a freelance writer and photographer who still calls the East Village home. When she's lucky, she sells her work and pays the rent. She knows about the Times Square Show because she lived and worked with Charlie Ahearn and Jane Dickson in the late 1980s and they told her all about it, among other things.
[Photo of Ulli Rimkus via New York Art Department]
In this weekly feature, East Village-based photographer James Maher provides us with a quick snapshot of someone who lives and/or works in the East Village.
Name: Spike Polite Occupation: Musician, Lead Singer for SEWAGE, Actor, Model Date: Thursday, Jan. 7 at 7:30 p.m. Location: The Edge, 3rd Street between 1st and 2nd Avenue
I was born on a military base. I think it was Buffalo. My father was in the Cold War and in the end of Vietnam. We lived on military bases and then upstate, but I was forced to come here as an early teenager. My mom had me institutionalized, like for suicidal tendencies. I never thought you could be forced to be stuck in New York City, but it happened to me. I was 14 going on 15. Then they put through me the person in need of supervision, even though I wasn’t in need of supervision and then they sent me to Lincoln Hall. I had to go through all these foster homes and they kept me down here. Then when I got out of that they wouldn’t have me back.
I just met other people and it was always my goal to do something with music. I went to CBs. This was in 1988. When I was a kid skateboard fashion was coming around and people were listening to a lot of punk rock. As a child, my mother always took away my guitars and took away all the stuff. I grew up loving the Ramones, Sex Pistols, the Exploited, GBH — I liked them from both sides of the pond. I used to literally play over and over all the Sex Pistol songs on the album through my guitar and amp as a kid, and of course AC/DC and Black Sabbath too.
I started living in the squats. I just knew that this was rough and tough but it was easier than being in all of those foster homes and detention centers. At least here I had a fighting chance that I could have allies. The thing was, I didn’t have any direction or anything like that. I didn’t have a family to say, here is a trust fund, now you should go to college and blah blah blah. I didn’t have anything like that. I had a survival-level type of thing ... so I banded together with these other people and we lived in this abandoned building.
We’d find things on the street because New York was a different place then. Everything was on the street. They’d throw it away and you could take it yourself and sell it, right from the garbage where you found it. So we would go and take that stuff and we’d put it up in the squat and we’d make these little kingdoms and comfy crashpads and flophouses and then we’d go out during the day. Everybody would go out to make some kind of money and figure out whether they wanted to delve deeper into having nothing and do drugs and raise money for drugs, or if you wanted to go out and try to elevate yourself or to get up out of that stuff.
The 8th Street squat came after 3BC. 3BC was the headquarters of punk rockers, with spiked-up jackets and spiked-up hair, and colored hair and tight jeans and all that good business, whereas the other squats were mainly for the crusties. They were like the downtrodden with the pieces of rope for hair, and they would wear the baggy clothes and they looked like the color of concrete. They thought they were peaceful, so we were the anarchy punks, the punk rockers with the spikey hair, so we were different than them. 3BC was a flophouse of just like 50 to a 100, 200 punks crashing up there. A lot of them were visiting from out of town and most of the people in the squats, even the crusties, were from out of town too. Very few of them were from here or even from the state.
Punk rock ... I would define it from my point of view, basically it was working class, up to middle-class people. It was a rowdy, rebellious culture who had a reason to be rebellious because their way of life and everything was messed up. We were independent rebellious. We’re more like cats. Skinheads act like dogs; they want to be in packs. Punk rockers are independent people and they could take it or leave it. A lot of those people were Oliver Twist-type people. They’re paupers; they’re poor, but they’ll give you anything, the shirt off their back. They have nothing but you have their loyalty, almost like William Wallace of "Braveheart." The heart matters good, but it matters if the order is with you, but then in runk rock if you get too close to the order, you’re a sellout.
James will have more from Spike Polite in the next Out and About in the East Village...
James Maher is a fine art and studio photographer based in the East Village. Find his website here.
In this weekly feature, East Village-based photographer James Maher provides us with a quick snapshot of someone who lives and/or works in the East Village. James is traveling this week. East Village photographer Stacie Joy compiled today's post.
By Stacie Joy
Name:Seth Tobocman Occupation: Comic book artist Location: ABC No Rio, 156 Rivington Street Date: Oct. 7, 2:53 pm
I grew up in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. I was born in Texas but really only lived there until I was 2 and have very little memory of it. My family are basically Clevelanders. Several generations back they migrated there, Jews from Poland. My grandfather did not want to live in Brooklyn because he would be forced to be Orthodox. He said “I did not come to America to live in Poland.” So he went to Cleveland where he had no family and no one could tell him what to do.
I moved to NYC in 1976, year of the bicentennial. I was initially a student at NYU and stayed in the dorms. I had an apartment in Greenwich Village for a short period of time, got thrown out of there and moved to the East Village in 1979. I moved to my East 3rd Street (near Avenue A) apartment, which was $150 a month in rent. I dropped out of college, had no money. I knew I wanted to be an artist but I wasn’t sure what kind. I was interested in underground filmmakers like Kenneth Anger but not interested in mainstream comics. I was uncertain what I wanted to do and it was cheap to live here.
Someone got stabbed in front of the building the day I moved in. We had a slumlord who put a cheap lock on the front door. A lock that neighborhood 12 year olds could break. There were many drug addicts. They would wait next to the mailboxes and when elderly people would get their checks, they would rob them.
Once I was jumped — someone held a wire around my neck but a neighbor came to my aid. Said he was a cop and had a gun and badge in his pocket, which was a lie. He scared off the guy trying to rob me.
We were in court for several years as the landlord tried to raise the rent. We went on rent strikes, and had a great tenants' union. The outcome of the time spent in court was that we became rent stabilized, which was terrific. A lot of the tenants were older folks who had been part of the antiwar movement and they were happy to have meetings again. We would meet in the hallway of the building. We all wanted an affordable place to live.
Back then it was a place to buy drugs. There were visible lines of people waiting to buy heroin. Kids were getting shot. There were abandoned buildings and a sense of neglect. People came here for their vices. To buy drugs, prostitutes. The stereotypical Alphabet City.
There were also places like CHARAS, the Nuyorican Poets Café and the community gardens — where people were working to change the neighborhood. There were ethnic restaurants, different languages being spoken ... and no chain stores.
I am proud to be part of a group that has stood for community ideals since 1980 — the magazine World War 3 Illustrated. We were comic book artists who wanted to make a difference. It started in 1979 as a response to the Iran-hostage crisis. The magazine is an all-volunteer, self-published collective, a sweat-equity co-op that still runs today. We were the first to support the squatters movement, we covered events like the MOVE bombing in Philadelphia and the Mumia Abu-Jamal trial. Issues that we were involved in, and local issues. You can buy the magazine at MoRUS, Bluestockings, Revolution Books and St. Mark’s Bookshop.
Favorite moments in the neighborhood? The time the squatters retook the East 13th Street squats. It was on July 4, 1995, and squatters reentered the buildings and hung huge banners from the fire escapes. Lots of people were returning to the area from watching the fireworks — all viewing the events unfold. The police totally overacted and stormed the buildings, but all the squatters had escaped already and the police found only an empty buildings. Classic.
I love that the demolition of the Umbrella House [on Avenue C] was stopped. Oh, and the fact that ABC No Rio is still standing. It’s a real accomplishment. And, I also had great sex in the middle of the night once with a British ballet dancer by the East River!
[Photo on the Bowery and 1st Street by Derek Berg]
• "New York leaders faced an unanticipated crisis as the new coronavirus overwhelmed the nation’s largest city. Their response was marred by missed warning signs and policies that many health-care workers say put residents at greater risk and led to unnecessary deaths." (The Wall Street Journal, subscription may be required)
• The East Village is home to several boutique pilates studios that offer 1-1 sessions. With that in mind, there's a petition in circulation to allow these studios to reopen in Phase 2 instead of Phase 3. Find the petition here.
• There's also a petition to reopen NYC dog runs in Phase 2. Find the petition here.
• City's indie movie houses prepping to reopen later next month (Gothamist)
• And indie bookstores are trying with curbside service (B&B)
• LES/East Village takeaways from the NYU Furman Center's annual report, The State of New York City’s Housing and Neighborhoods (The Lo-Down)
• AG's office announces the second round of restitution funds for current and former tenants of landlord and convicted felon Steve Croman (Patch ... previously on EVG)
• Thanks to a bill via local City Councilmember Carlina Rivera, construction firms must now create a safe, alternative route for cyclists if they block a bike lane — or have their permit revoked (amNY ... Streetsblog)
• The city will create a permanent Greenwich Village monument to honor LGBTQ activists and Street Transgender Action Revolutionaries (STAR) founders Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera (Curbed)
• The casting director for "Russian Doll" explains how she put together the ensemble for the Netflix series set in the East Village (Backstage)
• Starting today at noon, the MTA says OMNY readers will go live at 16 stations along the 4, 5 and 6 lines, starting the long goodbye of the MetroCard (Gothamist ... previously on EVG)
• The 1954 version of "A Star Is Born" with Judy Garland plays Monday (June 3) at the City Cinemas Village East on Second Avenue and 12th Street (Official site)
• This series starts tonight ... cutting and pasting: "In conjunction with the Museum of Sex’s exhibition “Punk Lust: Raw Provocation, 1971-1985,” the Anthology hosts a related film program that expands on the exhibition by surveying how Punk culture used the language of sexuality – both visually and lyrically – to transgress and defy, whether in the service of political provocation, raw desire, or simply to break through the stifling gender norms and social expectations of its time." (Anthology Film Archives)
Neville Dance Theatre in the premiere of "53 Movements"
Saturday, June 1 at 3 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Dixon Place, 161A Chrystie St.
Tickets: $30; $18 for students
Reservations here.
Neville Dance Theatre will premiere director/choreographer Brenda Neville's 53 Movements, set to composer Terry Riley's musical masterpiece "In C," June 1. Often referred to as the founding composer of music minimalism, Terry Riley's pioneering 1963 work "In C," consists of 53 short, set musical phrases played by the musicians with improvisational choices.
No Wave force of nature Lydia Lunch is the iconic singer (Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, 8-Eyed Spy, Big Sexy Noise), poet, writer and actress. She also recently added cookbook author to her résumé. (Read more about that project here.)
Lunch, who lives these days in Barcelona, spoke with EVG correspondent Stacie Joy before her return to the East Village.
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Over the years you’ve had many labels. Singer, poet, actor, writer. Sex-positive rebel. Humanist. Confrontationalist. All still applicable?
Hey, thanks for leaving out some of the less flattering things I’ve been called! It all still pertains. Rebellious — yes. Sex-positive? Not so sure I’ve been labeled with that tag. In both the early Richard Kern films and much of the early spoken word and music, I was exploring the darker side of sexual obsession. Female predation. The Willing Victim Syndrome. Violent female urges. Revenge. Against the Father, God the Father, The Father of the Country. Or as I like to say, what is a father but a motherfucker?
But no matter what format I use to illustrate the issues I think need to be explored at the moment, whether it’s spoken or written word, music or even a photograph, I’ve always viewed myself more as a town crier, a hysterian ... a journalist in a sense — documenting a specific moment in history be it my own or the politics of the time in order to make sense of and empower one’s self out of life in the traumazone.
What stood out to you about New York City when you first arrived here from Rochester in the 1970s? What’s changed since then?
Rochester was pretty scuzzy, but New York was a magnificent wreck. It was grimy, dark, scarred and the crime rate was outrageous. Between the mafia, the dopers, the drug dealers, the arson and the muggings it was pretty fricking Grand Guignol. I had an advantage, though. I was fearless. Nobody ever even thought of preying on me. You can’t con a con. I felt right at home. I spent a lot of time perfecting petty street hustles. Pure instinctual survival mechanics put to good use.
I can’t speak about New York now. You tell me. I was here from ’76-81. In LA from ’81-82, London for two years, came back to New York and began curating a lot of spoken word shows, often at the Pyramid, stayed for a few ripe years during The Cinema of Transgression, post no-wave music scene of Sonic Youth and the Swans, etc., then left for good in 1990 for New Orleans, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, LA again to work with Hubert Selby and Jerry Stahl and left the States in 2004 when Bush stole the second election.
I’ve been living in Barcelona ever since. A country that was 40 years out of fascism as America went into what we now know is a police state. I can’t support myself as an artist in this country or even begin to find the proper venues to do all the different types of live performances I have the opportunities to do in Europe.
Do you have any advice for emerging artists?
Leave the country as soon as possible!
You were once quoted as saying, "I would be humiliated if I found out that anything I did actually became a commercial success." Does that still hold true today?
It's not a fear I need to entertain.
How can people support you and your work today? What’s next for Lydia Lunch?
I’ll be doing RETROVIRUS May 29 at Bowery Electric. A retrospective of sorts of my music from Teenage Jesus forward featuring Algis Kisyz (Swans) Bob Bert (Sonic Youth, Pussy Galore) and the indefatigable Weasel Walter. Really hot cock rock! My band Big Sexy Noise will release a double LP in September and the list goes on.
Updated with a statement from Jessica Goldman Srebnick, CEO/founder of Goldman Global Arts, landlord of the mural wall.
That's it for David Choe's mural on East Houston and the Bowery. The mural was painted over in the last 24 hours.
It's not immediately known who was responsible for the white out. The mural had been defaced multiple times since it was completed early on June 5. (The work was scheduled to be on view through October.)
Choe's work on the high-profile wall caused a stir, bringing back the story from 2014 in which he bragged about a sexual assault before later saying that he made the whole thing up. However, that wasn't an isolated incident. As Caroline Caldwell detailed at Hyperallergic, "The artist has an impressive history of making public statements that attempt to normalize or make a joke out of rape." An anti-rape protest and performance art piece titled "NO MEANS NO" is scheduled here today at 5 p.m. (Updated: Find a video clip here.)
Meanwhile, Choe issued an apology on his Instagram account yesterday ... complete with a blank image...
Jessica Goldman Srebnick, CEO/founder of Goldman Global Arts, landlord of the mural wall, posted a lengthy response about the Choe mural on her Instagram account...
