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
#320 Hart Island: The Loneliest Place in New York
#319 The Tale of Charging Bull and Fearless Girl
#318 Moonstruck: That's Amore!
#317 Vaccinated: New York and the Polio Outbreak
#316 Jenny Lind at Castle Garden
#315 Abandoned Pantheon: The Hall of Fame for Great Americans
#314 Tillie Hart - The Holdout of London Terrace
#313 The Straw Hat Riots of 1922
#312 Has Jack the Ripper Come to Town? A Gilded Age Hysteria
#311 Uprising: The Shirtwaist Strike of 1909
#310 1918: The Harlem Hellfighters
#309 What Gets Saved? Landmarks & Historic Districts Explained
#308 Andrew Carnegie and New York's Public Libraries
#307 The Holland Tunnel: The Wonder of the Jazz Age
#306 Just Desserts: The Origins of New York Cheesecake, Cannoli and More
#305 Christmas in New York: The Lights of Dyker Heights
#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
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Irish Songs with Ken Murray
History Obscura
Historycal: Words that Shaped the World
The Rest Is History
Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra