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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#231 The Stonewall Riots Revisited
#230 Before Harlem: New York's Forgotten Black Communities
#229 Live in Brooklyn! The Bowery Boys: Ten Years of Podcasting
#228 The Pirate of Pearl Street: The New York Adventures of Captain Kidd
#227 The Hindenburg Over New York
#226 The Beauty Bosses of Fifth Avenue
#225 P. T. Barnum and the Greatest Show on Earth
#224 The Arrival of the Irish: An Immigrant Story
The Algonquin Round Table
#222 Who Killed Helen Jewett? A Mystery By Gaslight
#221 New York: Capital City of the United States
#220 George Washington's New York Inauguration
#219 Newsies on Strike!
#218 Lincoln Center and West Side Story
#217: Truman Capote's Black And White Ball
#216: Edwin Booth and the Players Club
01 The Wheel: Ferris' Big Idea ('The First' Podcast Special Preview)
#215 Ghosts of the Gilded Age
#214 Bronx Trilogy (Part Three) The Bronx Was Burning
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