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
#304 The Miracle on Eldridge Street
#303 Building Stuyvesant Town: A Mid-Century Controversy
#302 Gangs of New York (Bowery Boys Movie Club)
#301 Haunted Houses of Old New York
#300 The Forgotten Father of New York City
#299 The Promenade and Preservation of Brooklyn Heights
#298 The Story of Brooklyn Heights
#297 Dr. Hosack's Enchanted Garden: Botany, Medicine, and Discovery in Old New York
Introducing Mob Queens
#296 Talking Trash: The NYC Department of Sanitation
#295 Saving the City: Women of the Progressive Era
#294 That Daredevil Steve Brodie, 'King of the Bowery'
Secret Places of Upper Manhattan
Sip-In At Julius': Gay New York In The 1960s
The Tombs: Five Points' Notorious House of Detention
#290 Bagels: A New York Story
Blood and Shakespeare: The Astor Place Riot of 1849
#288 The World of Tomorrow: The New York World's Fair of 1939
Greenwich Village in the 1960s
Uncovering Hudson Yards
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