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
The Mysteries of Absinthe: Dancing With The Green Fairy
#400 Jacob Riis: 'The Other Half' of the Gilded Age
#399 The Changing Lower East Side: A View From Seward Park
#398 Marilyn Monroe in New York
Rewind: Birth of the Five Boroughs
#397 Ghost Stories of the Hudson River
Rewind: An Evening at Sardi's
#396 Samuel Tilden and the Presidential Election of 1876
#395 Jefferson Market and the Women's House of Detention
#394 New York Calling: A History of the Telephone
#393 Ric Burns and James Sanders on "New York: A Documentary Film"
Rewind: The Story of the Yellow Taxi Cab
Invisible Magicians: Domestic Servants in Gilded Age New York
#392 The Bowery Boys Podcast 15th Anniversary Special
#391 A Walk through Little Caribbean
#390 The Story of Flatbush: Brooklyn Old and New
Now Playing: Cautionary Tales
#389 The Ruins of Roosevelt Island
#388 The Hudson River School: An American Art Revolution
#387 Hyde Park: The Roosevelts on the Hudson
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