The rebirth of the East Village in the late 1970s and the flowering of a new and original New York subculture -- what Edmund White called "the Downtown Scene" -- arose from the shadow of urban devastation and was anchored by a community that reclaimed its own deteriorating neighborhood.
In the last episode (Creating the East Village 1955-1975) this northern corner of New York's Lower East Side became the desired home for new cultural venues -- nightclubs, cafes, theaters, and bars -- after the city tore down the Third Avenue Elevated in 1955.
By the mid-1970s, however, the high had worn off. The East Village was in crisis, one of the Manhattan neighborhoods hit hardest by the city’s fiscal difficulties and cutbacks. It had become a landscape of dark, unsafe streets and buildings demolished in flame.
But the next generation of creative interlopers (following the initial stampede of Greenwich Village beatniks and hippies) built upon the legacies of East Village counter-culture to create poems, music, paintings, and stage performances heavily influenced by the apocalyptic situations around them.
This was something truly distinct, a creative scene that was thoroughly and uniquely an East Village creation -- punk and hardcore, murals and graffiti, fashion and drag. In this episode Greg hits the streets of the East Village in a special live-on-the-streets event, with musician and tour guide Krikor Daglian (of True Tales of NYC), exploring the secrets of the recent past -- from the origins of skateboarding to the seeds of the American alternative rock scene.
FEATURING: CBGB, Supreme, the Pyramid, Club 57, Niagara, 7B, Brownies, and many others
AND special guests Bill Di Paola from the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space and Ramon 'Ray' Alvarez from Ray's Candy Store
ALSO: Check out our Walking The East Village playlist, curated by Krikor and Greg -- on Spotify
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#437 Haarlem, Breukelen, Utrecht: Exploring New York's Dutch Roots
#436 Amsterdam/New Amsterdam: Finding Peter Stuyvesant
#435 Amsterdam/New Amsterdam: The Radical Walloons
#434 Amsterdam/New Amsterdam: Empire of the Seas
#433 New Amsterdam Man: An Interview with Russell Shorto
The Bowery Boys Adventures in the Netherlands TRAILER
#432 The Lenape Nation: Past, Present and Future
Rewind: History of the New York City Subway
#431 Park Avenue: History with a Penthouse View
#430 The Story of Flushing: Queens History, Old and New
#429 The Moores: A Black Family in 1860s New York
The Age of Innocence: Inside Edith Wharton's Classic Novel
#428 The New York Game: Baseball in the Early Years
#427 The Chrysler Building and the Great Skyscraper Race
#426 Behind the Domino Sign: Brooklyn's Bittersweet Empire
#425 It Happened at Madison Square Park
Rewind: Truman Capote and the Black and White Ball
#424 Kosciuszko! The Man. The Bridge. The Legend.
#423 Leonard Bernstein's New York, New York
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