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
#262 Secrets of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine
#261 The Huddled Masses: Emma Lazarus and the Statue of Liberty
#260 Journey to Grey Gardens: A Tale of Two Edies
#259 Crossing to Brooklyn: How the Williamsburg Bridge Changed New York
#258 Tales from Tribeca History
#257 Frozen In Time: The Great Blizzard of 1888
#256 DUMBO: Life on Brooklyn's Waterfront
#255 The Rescue of Grand Central
#254 The Destruction of Penn Station
#253 Opening Day of the New York City Subway
#252 The Underground Railroad: Escape through New York
#251 McGurk's Suicide Hall: The Bowery's Most Notorious Dive
#250 The Empire State Building: Story of an Icon
#249 Madam C.J. Walker: Harlem's Hair Care Millionaire
#248 Sitting Down with Roz Chast of the New Yorker
#247 Rodgers and Hammerstein: The Golden Age of Broadway
#246 Tales from a Tenement: Three Families on the Lower East Side
#245 The Fall of the Fifth Avenue Mansions
#244 The Rise of the Fifth Avenue Mansions
#243 New York In Neon: Signs of the City
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