Breen vs. The Glassing of New York

From her downtown office, Peg Breen, President of the New York Landmarks Conservancy, looks out over historic buildings that the Conservancy had a hand in preserving--Ellis Island, the 1886 fireboat station at Pier A, the U.S. Customs House/National Museum of the American Indian.

They remind her of what can be accomplished--and what is at stake in this age of rampant over-development.

A proposal is right now sitting on the desk of the New York State Assembly. If it passes, the city will become a radically different place. Breen wants to stop it.



The Conservancy is celebrating its 45th year of advocating for and funding the preservation and restoration of what Breen calls "the best of New York," from the Olmsted House and the Picasso Curtain, to neighborhood brownstones and houses of worship.

"Buildings tell stories," says Breen. "And all the different layers in New York tell our history. They tell migration patterns. They give you a sense of continuity of place. Here is a solid place, they say. People have lived here before and people will continue. It's home."

New York has always been in flux, yet it has maintained its character and cultural originality, its openness to new people and ideas. "But change has picked up more rapidly in recent years," says Breen, and that change is turning the city into something that looks more like Shanghai or Dubai.

It's about to get worse--and most of us don't even know it.


2016 protest againt MIH and ZQA, Getty

Breen is most concerned about the de Blasio administration zoning changes that are lifting restrictions on how high and wide developers can build.

First came ZQA. Packaged with the controversial MIH (Mandatory Inclusionary Housing), ZQA (Zoning for Quality and Affordability) was approved by the City Council in 2016, a move met with fierce protest from neighborhood activists and many other advocates for a human-scale city. Simply put, ZQA was a citywide upzoning to increase the sizes of new buildings in the name of affordable housing.

In their statement to the City Council, the Historic Districts Council called it "a concession to developers to sweeten Mandatory Inclusionary Housing." Furthermore, "ZQA loosens the entire city’s existing zoning to allow greater density for market-rate development, under the guise of creating affordable units, which, as we all know, is optional. The provisions for seniors have an expire after thirty years, after which will be converted to more market rate housing."

But the looming towers loosened by ZQA hit a ceiling--the FAR Cap.

The citywide residential FAR (floor area ratio) was capped at 12 back in 1961. FAR limits the size and density of buildings, and 12 is not the biggest--for comparison, the Empire State Building has a FAR of 25. Lower FAR can discourage new construction, and higher FAR often increases land values. For obvious reasons, the real estate industry wants higher FAR.

In New York, the FAR Cap is about to be removed.

"Once this cap is gone," says Breen, "it allows the city to come in and upzone. Communities will have very little impact. And nobody knows this is happening," because there has been no public hearing. 

"This is the opposite of democracy."


from HDC

The Regional Plan Association (RPA) supports the repeal of the FAR Cap. In a recent report (PDF), they claim it will increase racial diversity and fight inequality. Council Member Rory Lancman agreed in a Daily News op-ed. In the age of neoliberalism, where the so-called free market rules all, people have a hard time even imagining affordable housing not tied to big, luxury development. And the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY) is a big supporter of the repeal.

"They call it an answer to affordable housing," Breen says, but she is skeptical. Without the residential FAR Cap, she explains, the upzoning "will allow developers to go into neighborhoods they can't go into now," like low-rise areas of Brooklyn and Queens. "This is a radical change," pushed through without public input.

If it is approved, says Breen, "A lot of residential neighborhoods will change drastically. A lot of places that are already liveable, dense, and affordable will change--and not for the good. And we'll still have to solve affordable housing." Real-estate speculation will be a problem, she says, just like it is today with the rezonings in East New York and Inwood. "Once you get a couple of super-luxury buildings, with not really affordable apartments in them, it sets off a chain reaction that forces people out." Lifting the FAR Cap, she believes, will lead to mass displacement of the current population.

Breen is not against change and new growth, as she often has to attest. "We don't have a brick fetish," she says. But density for the sake of density is "not an unalloyed good." For too long, City Hall's approach has been to zone, not plan--and what do you get with zoning and no planning? "You get Long Island City," says Breen. Density and tall buildings, but "Where's the grocery store? Where's the park? You're just stacking people up."


LIC, photo: Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao/New York Magazine

The State Senate just passed the bill (S.7506A) eliminating the FAR Cap. In two weeks, the Assembly will consider similar bills (A.9500B, A.9509B) to put it through. "Every assembly person from New York," says Breen, "needs a barrage of emails and calls to say stop this and let's have a public hearing."

If you think New Yorkers should have a say in their communities, take action to demand a public hearing on this decision:
1. Find your Assembly Member's phone number and email -- click here.

2. Call and/or email them. You can cut and paste this message from the Conservancy, or one you write yourself:
"Don’t Lift the Cap! Eliminating the current 12 FAR cap in residential neighborhoods must not be included in the final budget resolution. It won’t solve the problem of affordable housing and will damage livable, diverse, and already dense neighborhoods.”

OR: The Municipal Art Society (MAS) has a ready-made email you can just fill out with your info and send -- click here.


For more information:
Landmarks Conservancy Alert on Lifting the FAR Cap
MAS: Testimony Against Lifting the FAR Cap
MAS: Accidental Skyline Report
HDC: On ZQA and MIH 
Norman Oder on Lifting the FAR Cap 

The Battler

Sal Albanese wants to shake up the system. “Some people say I was Bernie Sanders before Bernie Sanders,” he says, sitting in the famous White Horse Tavern on Hudson Street in Greenwich Village.

It’s a hot, muggy summer day and Albanese is sipping a cold bottle of beer. Dressed in pressed khaki pants and a crisp, blue button-down shirt, he hasn’t broken a sweat. A Democrat and former City Council member from Brooklyn, this is his third time running for Mayor of New York City and he’s hoping three’s a charm. The odds—and the mainstream media—are stacked against him.



“I got ripped today by the Post,” he says, referring to an article by Steve Cuozzo claiming that Albanese needs to get a firmer grip on why so many storefronts in the city are sitting empty, an epidemic that has become known as “high-rent blight.” The problem, as Albanese sees it, is caused by big landlords who collect buildings; hike commercial rents, effectively evicting small businesses; and then leave the storefronts vacant while they write the loss off their taxes and wait for major chains or banks. “It’s not about mom and pop landlords,” he says. “It’s about portfolios.” He calls New York City an oligarchy run by a “new Tammany Hall” of lobbyists for big real estate, a class of powerful elites who back Bill de Blasio while they fill the city with glistening towers for the ultra rich and push out everyday New Yorkers.  

“Hyper-gentrification is driving out working people,” he says. “Do we want to become just a landing strip for billionaires? Do we want to become Dubai?”

As mayor, one of his first orders of business would be to pass the Small Business Jobs Survival Act (SBJSA), a “commonsense piece of legislation” that would help protect small businesses from crippling rent hikes on lease renewals. The bill is sponsored by a solid majority of the City Council, and advocates have been trying to get it passed for 30 years. So what’s the problem? Albanese believes “the power of big real estate over our political system has kept it bottled up.” He dismisses the opposition’s argument that the bill is unconstitutional. Back in 2009, the City Council’s legal staff officially proclaimed the constitutionality of the SBJSA and the city’s own legal department has never said otherwise. Albanese would like to see the Council bring the bill to the floor for a vote and finally “let the courts decide” on the question of constitutionality. But this doesn’t look likely when so many council members, Albanese argues, take their funding from the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY), the powerful lobbying group behind the Jobs for New York pro-development PAC.

To those who might peg him as an anti-growth NIMBY, Albanese insists he’s not against development. “I’m anti-unfettered development,” he says. He wants balance. And he’s got a plan for how to get there. In addition to the SBJSA, he also likes the idea of a vacancy tax to stop high-rent blight, and a pied-a-terre tax that would redirect wealth to affordable housing. He’d reject all of de Blasio’s rezoning proposals, which he believes favor the mega-developers. As mayor, he’d appoint an entirely new City Planning Commission and “go back to the drawing board” with a new plan for bringing affordable housing to less dense parts of town by allocating city-owned land to small and non-profit developers—with significant input from local communities. “The city has to grow,” he says, “but it has to be done with good planning. Right now we’ve got rezoning without planning.”

But the deep root of New York’s unaffordability problem, to Albanese, is the tight grip that big business and big real estate have on City Hall, thanks to their significant donations. He proudly claims to take zero percent of his funding from big real estate and lobbyists, and he wants to reform campaign finance, ushering in the Democracy Vouchers plan recently launched in Seattle, a program that would give every registered voter four twenty-five-dollar vouchers to donate to the qualifying candidates of their choice. “New York City,” he says, “should be a real democracy again.” He also wants to reduce tuition at CUNY, his alma mater.

If all this sounds like a new New Deal for New York City, that’s no coincidence. Albanese’s favorite mayor was Fiorello LaGuardia. He also calls himself “a big Jane Jacobs aficionado,” praising the urban activist’s argument for a human-scale city.

Outside on Hudson Street, just a few doors down from the White Horse, Albanese stands before Jacobs’ former home. The ground-floor storefront is now occupied by a realtor’s office. Laughing ruefully at the irony, Albanese says, “Jacobs would be rolling over in her grave.” He looks down the block, to a pair of vacant shops for rent. They look like they’ve been sitting empty for a while, and their vacancy puts a damper on the energy of the street. This is where Jacobs wrote about the “sidewalk ballet,” the importance of vibrant street life. It’s a dance familiar to Albanese from his childhood in working-class Park Slope, Brooklyn, where he was the Italian immigrant son of a disabled father and a mother who served as breadwinner, working in the garment industry. Back then, he recalls, the streets were full of mom-and-pop shops. You knew the butcher and the baker. It was a community. Today, the city streets feel anonymous and impersonal.

“Real estate is doing what it always did—only now it’s on steroids,” he says. “A small business guy is just cannon fodder.”



On Bleecker Street, he walks past more shuttered storefronts. There are 19 vacancies in the five blocks between Bank and Christopher Streets, some lined up in rows. Back in 2001, there were about 44 small businesses on these blocks. They sold books, antiques, affordable gifts. Then Marc Jacobs moved in with multiple shops, followed by Ralph Lauren, Intermix, and dozens more luxury chains. Within a single decade, all of the small businesses were gone, largely pushed out by astronomical rent hikes. In one case, the rent shot from $4,000 to $40,000 per month. Albanese is stunned by the number—and by the fact that many of these shops sit empty for years. Marc Jacobs and Ralph Lauren have walked away.

“This is counterintuitive,” Albanese says, shaking his head. “Not only does it destroy neighborhoods, but these landlords are devouring themselves. It’s out of control and something’s got to be done about it.”

The mayoral hopeful knows he’s got an uphill battle ahead of him. He needs to raise $250,000 to even have a chance at beating the incumbent Bill de Blasio. He doesn’t have the financial backing of the city’s power elite, and he’s not sure if he can “entice enough people to contribute small amounts to take their city back.” Or to even get him on the same debate stage as de Blasio, where these critical issues can be raised. But the people of New York can surprise you. They voted de Blasio into City Hall by a landslide when he promised a fiercely progressive agenda and an end to the vast inequality he called a “Tale of Two Cities.” Many New Yorkers believe he has not delivered. Maybe they’ll look to Sal Albanese to complete that promise. He’s an idealist, after all, a man who sees New York as a global leader in democracy--at a time when democracy is on the ropes.

“New York,” he says, “is a city that elevates people. And what we do here has a ripple effect across the world.” 

Albanese wants to reform not just City Hall, but the idea of what the city is supposed to be, to get back on track with the progressive agenda that New York spearheaded through much of the twentieth-century—and lost in the 1980s—an agenda that places the power to shape neighborhoods in the hands of its people. He insists that he’s not just a critic, nor a man tilting at windmills. He’s got a plan. And if he’s elected mayor, he intends to use it.

“I’ve been a battler all my life,” he says. “You have to be. Why get in the arena if you’re not going to fight?”


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Zombie Urbanism

Jonny Aspen, Associate Professor at the Institute of Urbanism and Landscape in Oslo, Norway, coined the term "Zombie Urbanism" in 2013 to describe the way many urban environments are being designed today. I like the term, so I got in touch with Aspen and asked him about it--and how it applies to the redesigning of New York City, including the High Line, Hudson Yards, Times Square, and the new Astor Place.


Astor Place


Q: Can you give a definition of what you call "zombie urbanism"?

A: I’ve coined the concept in order to encircle what seems to be an increasingly more prevalent, and increasingly more worrying, phenomenon in contemporary urban development, namely the cliché-like way that many developers and designers talk about and deal with urban environments in general and public areas and places more specifically.

On the one hand I use it as a reference to what seems to have developed into an increasingly more homogeneous discourse, globally speaking, on what is believed to be important features of the so-called “creative city.” It’s a discourse that highlights the importance of cultural institutions, state-of-the-art architecture, and well-designed public places.

The concepts in use remind me of what the famous German sociologist Ulrich Beck has labeled “zombie concepts,” with reference to the social sciences. They are concepts that still are very much in use, but actually no longer fit the reality they intend to describe. As such the concepts are like the living dead, they are alive in our heads and our language, but not any longer useful for making precise propositions about the reality of the city.

On the other hand I use the concept of “zombie-urbanism” as a reference to how I experience many of the urban environments that come out from such a discourse, as built environments. What we can see is a kind of staged urbanism in which there is no room for irregularity and the unexpected, a well-designed, neat, and tedious urbanism based on a simplified understanding of the urban combined with more ideal aspirations about creating “living” and “people friendly” cities. You can see it in quite many urban redevelopment projects all over the world. Other examples can be found in strategies for remaking public places and plazas, such as for instance the recent developments of Times Square in New York.


Times Square


Q: What do you think is allowing zombie urbanism to spread across western cities today?

A: In general, the phenomenon is related to the current regime of neoliberal urban development and planning. This is a regime in which both developers and urban politicians quite shamelessly use urban features such as public squares and plazas as means for selling, marketing and branding. As such quite many aspects of “urbanism” have become subject to strategies of commercialization and capital manipulation. This development is of course also related to the seemingly never-ending spread of gentrification, or to what Neil Smith calls “generalized gentrification.”

The same goes, of course, for tourism, as an increasingly more important global industry.

Another important aspect, if not a cause in itself, is that quite many planners, architects, and designers seem to profit from such a development. They seem to have found themselves a new niche in designing urban tableaus of various kinds.


High Line, via urban75


Q: Where did you see these developments during your time in New York City?

A: I saw such developments most clearly in newly built areas, and especially in ones that contain public spaces and facilities. One such development is the Hunter’s Point South Park in Queens. I am particularly thinking about the promenade along the East River. Everything here looks clean, tidy, and civilized. The promenade is also equipped with well-designed chairs and benches. So everything seems in order, everything seems to make for a lively urban area. But even though the scenery is outstanding, especially the view towards Manhattan, the whole area feels dull and boring.

This is what I mean by zombie urbanism. Everything looks nice and urban, but in terms of social life, it’s rather sterile and dead.

A similar example can be found a bit further down the river, on the Manhattan side--the East River Waterfront Esplanade, especially the new Pier 15 that opened in 2011. The whole development is imbued with a well-meant rhetoric of making the waterfront accessible for all people, improving qualities of life, sustainability, and community programming. But again, the end result seems rather lackluster and limited. My impression is that most of the esplanade primarily is made to attract conventional recreational interest of tourists and middle-class groups that now seem to have taken over most of Manhattan.

Much of what’s here said also goes for the High Line and the Times Square redevelopment, though those stories probably are a bit more complex.

Besides such examples, the most obvious features of what I call zombie urbanism can be seen in many plans and prospects for future buildings and developments, especially when it comes to visualizing all the splendid qualities that the project allegedly will bring to the area when completed. Visualizations of public space qualities seem to have become increasingly important in this respect. In this way planners and developers deliberately use public space qualities as a way of both legitimizing and branding a future project. By highlighting all the fantastic urban qualities a development will bring to the neighborhood or to the city as such, any objections and criticisms that people might have towards the project are also curbed. Because who could really be against the planning of a new public space or a playground?

This has become a global trend. Just take a look at the plans for the new development at South Street Seaport or Hudson Yards in Manhattan.


The "Seaport of Tomorrow"


Q: What are the hallmarks of zombie urbanism? How do we recognize it when we see it?

A: This is harder to answer, because it’s not so that zombie urbanism is something that can be clearly pointed out as something that exists like a thing in the world. Zombie urbanism is a theoretical concept that, in the way I seek to use it, represents an effort to capture and put into words some important changes in the way our urban environments are produced as well as experienced.

For me, the latter issue of how we experience the urban world is especially important. This is what I’m trying to find ways of describing. Issues of feelings, affects, and atmospheres then become important, though they are not easily captured or put into words. I don’t want to become too philosophical about this, but the issues here at stake also relate to what each and one of us believe to be more or less genuine and authentic.

Why does the new Starbucks on the corner seem to be less authentic than the old coffee shop that it has replaced? It’s easy to pinpoint a range of issues and features that makes it so, but what it is that really makes the big difference might be harder to identify. Much the same goes for the topic of zombie urbanism. In general, my argument is that our urban life world increasingly seems to be staged in accordance with global clichés about urban environments and urban living. This is what worries me, and this is what needs to be further explored.


Astor Place


Q: Recently, in the East Village, Astor Place has been redesigned. This was years in the making. They removed part of the street, widened the central square, planted trees, put in concrete slab seating, and tables with umbrellas. It is now used by corporations like IBM and Citibank to hold “advertainment" events.

I'm pretty sure this is a prime example of zombie urbanism. But some would argue that it's a good thing--those slab benches and tables are full of people. How do we claim this is not an authentic and lively urban scene?

A: I agree that the remaking of Astor Place seems to be a good example of zombie urbanism. I would have to make some reservations due to the fact that I haven't seen the end result myself. But from what I can see from pictures and descriptions on the net, the makeover of the area resembles much of what I would call zombie urbanism. So what makes it zombie-like?

The most telling point is that the overall design solutions seem to be very generic. The whole place seems to play up design schemes for public places that are quite similar in many parts of the world. It is the same ingredients that are replicated all over: widened sidewalks, new seating, more plantings, upgraded lighting and so on, plus an attraction or two, may be an artwork or something, that apparently is to make the area stand out as something unique and special. My experience is that such places more often than not make for a fairly limited spectrum of public uses and activities.

City life is about encountering the unexpected and the unfamiliar. I'm not quite sure Astor Place will be the right place to visit in that respect.

Such forms of public design, even though many might see them as improvements, are damaging in that they block more creative ways of going about making public places. Instead of taking on the challenge of really involving people and working seriously with how to make places that are both socially mixed and inclusive, one settles with established urban design solutions, often prescribed by international consultancies.

When it comes to New York it might be that it's such a dynamic city, one can live or cope with a few zombie-like design solutions, such as at Astor Place, just because the places often will be put quite extensively to use. As such, the places themselves will continuously be in a state of flux and change, despite the way they are designed.

It's comforting to know that people will overrule the prescriptions of planners and designers. That's what urban living is very much about.


Astor Place

Drop Dead Perfect

From Park Slope to Key West: Everett Quinton’s Incredible Journey
guest post by Tim Cusack

Everett Quinton, former lead actor and artistic director of the Ridiculous Theatrical Company, is famous for his cross-dressing performances, and he’s currently starring in one of the juiciest of his career with Drop Dead Perfect at the Theatre of St. Clements in Hell’s Kitchen. As Idris Seabright, a 1950s Key West housewife with artistic aspirations, Quinton’s assured hand at the wheel drives this vehicle like a classic Ford Thunderbird hurtling down the Eisenhower interstate system.

So it comes as something of a surprise to learn that he never had a “drag mother” to teach him the skills of gender illusionism. “That’s why my makeup is so lousy. I don’t paint up pretty,” he wisecracks. We’re having lunch at Krolewskie Jadlo, which is Polish for “The King’s Feast” and the kind of place that fits so perfectly into its Manhattan Avenue block in Greenpoint. But then he grows serious: “I was such a fucking mess when I was kid that even if I knew such a thing as a drag mother existed, I would not have been able to access it.”


visit Flickr for more photos of the show

Quinton is not only a powerhouse of New York theatre, he’s also a native New Yorker, born and raised in Park Slope, Brooklyn (Garfield and Seventh Avenue to be exact). And the story of how that “fucking mess” became one of the legends of the American theatre is worthy of a biopic. He’s been on quite the streak in 2015, after nearly 40 years as an actor, including appearing with my company Theatre Askew in its production of Horseplay at La MaMa ETC. One of his myriad characters in that show was the King of Poland, so interviewing him underneath one of the royal portraits that adorn the restaurant walls feels appropriately meta.

After settling in and ordering some borscht and meat-stuffed potato dumplings, we start by talking about his Brooklyn childhood and some of the changes he’s witnessed over the decades. First up is the line that services Greenpoint. “When I was a kid, we used to sneak on the subway. That was our pastime, but the G train was always a mystery train to us because we never knew where it went.” We both marvel over its unforeseeable transformation into the “hip train” serving many of the trendiest Brooklyn and Queens neighborhoods.


Everett Quinton and Tim Cusack

I ask him about some other changes from the old days, and he mentions the recent addition to the Brooklyn Museum and how much he dislikes it. Then he shares a childhood story: “I used to play hooky in the Brooklyn Museum.” I ask him if there was a particular exhibit that he gravitated to. “It used to be on the fourth floor, and they would have these furnished rooms. I grew up in a shit house. There were too many of us. And I would go there and look at these rooms and imagine I lived in them. They were furnished with period stuff. That was my favorite thing. The museum was free in those days, otherwise I would never have been able to get in.”

When I bring up the gentrification of Park Slope, he points out that, even when he was a kid, that area had a significant bougie element: “I grew up on the poor side of Seventh Avenue. Working-class Brooklyn poor. But on the other side of Seventh Avenue you had middle class, and on Prospect Park West, all the ritzy people lived up there. Montgomery Place, about a block from where we were, had all these gorgeous row mansions. So in that sense it hasn’t changed. But what I have noticed about Park Slope is that there are more trees. There were no trees on my block when I was a kid except for the two across the street from my house.”

After leaving Brooklyn, Quinton served a stint in the military and then, like many LGBT people at the time, ended up in Greenwich Village, where he would eventually meet his partner Charles Ludlam and become a member of Ludlam’s theatre company. Queer people of my generation are accustomed to thinking of ourselves as being part of a community, but Quinton reminds me that this idea simply didn’t exist when he was a young man.

Ironically, among the few spaces that did offer a sense of that were the sexual cruising areas in the old piers along the Westside Highway. Quinton himself rarely visited them because, as he points out, they were very dangerous due to their state of disrepair. However, they also provided a moment of epiphany for him: “The Tenth Street Pier (aka Dick Dock) was so decrepit that there were big holes in the ground. But it was there that for the first time I ever had a sense of gay community. One day I saw these men bringing in giant planks of plywood to cover up the holes to keep each other safe. It still moves me to this day.”

He also was a bit of loner in those days but adds “Although late, late nights, after the bars closed, I would hang out with this bunch of people on the steps of St. Veronica’s, before they put the fence up. We’d sit there and often watch the sun come up. And then I met Charles Ludlam, and he would always talk about the theatre folk and Holly Woodlawn and Candy Darling and Jackie Curtis. So one day, we were walking down Christopher Street, me and Charles, and he says ‘There’s Jackie Curtis. Let me introduce you to her.’ And it turns out he was one of the guys I used to hang out with.”

We finish our meal, and Quinton insists I take home the huge potato dumpling he wasn’t able to eat, because that’s the kind of person he is. His journey from hard-scrabble Brooklynite to solitary Christopher Street kid to revered theatre eminence has been a remarkable one. But it’s those qualities of generosity and kindness that’s created a community of people around him who love him. One of the things I’m personally most grateful to New York City for is having him in my life. Long may (s)he reign.


Tim Cusack is the artistic director of Theatre Askew. You can find him at the Clyde Fitch Report.

Buy tickets for "Drop Dead Perfect" here. The show is playing now through October 11 at Theater at St. Clements, 423 West 46th Street.

Stink

Romy Ashby writes the blog Walkers in the City, which you should know about if you don't already. She has just published a novel called Stink. The book tells the story of a young person who flees to a mysterious New York-like city for a series of occult adventures. I asked Romy some questions--about dreams, books, farts, and gentrification.



JM: Your book starts with a dream. Do you remember your dreams? Do you write them down?

RA: Usually I don't dream and/or don't remember. I never write them down. I had a wonderful series of dreams once over several years about a beautiful cast-iron train. I'd see it in the distance and marvel, and whenever I would have a new dream about the train, I'd think, oh, it's this dream! Then I finally had a dream of a funeral procession with old men in uniforms carrying a large framed portrait through the streets. I asked what the procession was, and one of the old men said: “This was the conductor of the train you always dreamed about.” And after that, nothing.

JM: You don't remember your dreams and yet the whole of Stink feels dreamlike, vaguely unreal. Did you set out to create a dream city of sorts?

RA: No, I didn't set out to make it so. Writing it felt more like decorating an old department store window. And I should add that life to me always feels vaguely unreal. Sometimes not so vaguely.

JM: What does it feel like to decorate an old department store window?

RA: You have the empty window, framed from the street, and you can do anything you want with it. I put in all the things I found interesting from the nabe and whatever else I knew and liked. And then the window looked like a funny junk shop, I suppose.

JM: Like Ad Astra in the book. What was your inspiration for the occult shop?

RA: There were two actual occult shops that inspired it in part. One was the Magickal Childe on West 19th Street, and the other was the original Enchantments on East 9th Street. Both sold books and other odds and ends, and I would go in now and then and buy something. The vibe of the places would linger for the rest of the day. And Enchantments had a big kitty who wore a pentagram. He was the inspiration for my occult shop kitty, Aleister.

JM: How much of New York is in the unnamed city of Stink?

RA: Oh, lots. The diner was modeled after diners in general, but particularly on the doughnut shop that sat on 8th Avenue and 23rd Street. That's where the "real" Violet Rae character would stand by the register and complain. The "amusement park" was definitely inspired by Coney Island in all its ruined splendor, the wharf was largely based on the stinky fish market and seaport and the old winding streets of Lower Manhattan at the bottom of the island in the 1980s. Also, the waitress and counterman in my story are modeled after Charlie and Regina, who had their portraits recently in EV Grieve's blog.

JM: It certainly feels like a vanished urban atmosphere. The people, too, feel like the sorts of characters you don't run into much anymore. Or do you?

RA: No, you don't run into many like them, at least not as often as you used to. There were many more distinctive characters to be seen on the streets of New York twenty years ago than there are today. Most of the old ones have died out. I sort of cast the playwright and actor Harry Koutoukas, of Ridiculous Theatrical Company fame, as Harry the owner of the Occult shop in Stink. Harry Koutoukas died a few years ago, but I can remember so well how the mere sight of him walking along Christopher Street with his colorful scarves blowing behind him had a way of making the whole city feel more magical and interesting. Also, I should add that in Chinatown and Little Italy, and elsewhere, too, there still really were funny little shops that sold things like rubber gaskets.

JM: Did you buy a lot of rubber gaskets?

RA: Yes.

JM: To what end?

RA: For my stovetop espresso maker. When a gasket wears out the coffee tastes yuck.

JM: Of course. Tell me the story about farting in the bookshop.

RA: Years ago I worked at Three Lives bookshop, which is on West 10th Street. It's still exactly the same as it was 25 years ago, which is miraculous. Anyway, people used to come in and go to the back of the shop, the far rear corner where the literature ends and the travel books begin, and fart. I remember the two bosses complaining about how often this happened. And, they said, it was always men. It was never women doing the farting.

JM: I ask this, of course, because it happens in Stink. A lot of stinky things happen in Stink.

RA: Yes. It is a stinky story.



JM: So, because this interview is for Vanishing New York, how do you see Stink speaking to that--to the vanished city?

RA: What comes to mind first is the fact that I wrote Stink 20 years ago, and most of what I took as inspiration for it is gone now. The two big Sixth Avenue flea markets, every single bookshop in Chelsea, every junk shop, the doughnut shop on 8th Avenue, most of the diners I frequented, the fish market, the Magickal Childe, CBGBs, Jackie 60, Don Hill's, much of Coney Island that was there when I wrote Stink—including the old luncheonette in the subway station and the beautiful ruined Thunderbolt rollercoaster that had become a bird sanctuary—has all vanished.

JM: I'm going to ask you the question that people like to ask me, and that always irks me. Maybe you can answer it better than I can. New York is always changing. So how is this any different?

RA: I agree that New York is always changing, and a lot of the change is sad but natural, such as shops closing when someone retires or dies. And there are have been terrible instances of forced change in decades past. Just look at Robert Moses. But the change that has been happening in the last decade or so, as I've noticed it, has been different in that everything seems to be being razed for one replacement, which is “luxury residential.” And some of it defies logic, such as the demolishing of the huge St. Vincent’s Hospital, for yet more "luxury" residences, leaving a huge part of the city without a hospital. Twenty years ago if I had been asked whether or not such a thing could happen I would have said no.

I remember first hearing about gentrification in the 1980s, and it was definitely happening then, but not in earnest the way it is now. And to me, that word, gentrify, always meant what it means, which is literally "Make way for the gentry." It doesn't mean “improve for all,” the way some people seem to want to imply.

JM: Aren't you just being nostalgic? Don't you know that no one goes to doughnut shops anymore? (I’m being facetious.)

RA: Well, apparently people actually love doughnut shops because there are Dunkin Donuts stores all over town. But at the old doughnut shop on 8th Avenue you could also get all kinds of other things--it was a real diner as most doughnut shops actually were, and the best part of those places in my opinion (along with the friendly, funny regulars) was that I could afford it.

I also don't think it's nostalgic to miss the laundromat I liked to use or the corner grocery that I shopped in, because what I like about them is that I could wash my clothes and buy milk conveniently. Those things are getting harder to do. The new luxury buildings have laundry rooms for the people who live there, but at the rate things are going I'll be doing my laundry in the bathtub the way I used to do it in the 80s when I lived surrounded by ruins down in the Alphabets. I didn't like doing my laundry that way then, and I don't think I'll like doing it that way again. So, you tell me, is that nostalgia?

I will confess, though. Sometimes I get a pleasant nostalgic feeling when I listen to a nice record by Jack Teagarden. The words to “A Hundred Years from Today” can be a good reminder for how to prioritize one's ideas.

JM: What's on your record player right now?

RA: Well, just before you called I was listening to Trummy Young and Louis Armstrong.

JM: And what's on your current book pile?

RA: Currently I've been laughing my way through Mary Norris's wonderful book called Between You and Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen (she's been copy editor at the New Yorker forever, and she's the sister of the marvelous musician Baby Dee). Simultaneously, I'm reading February House by Sherill Tippins, the stories in White Girls by Hilton Als, and The Island at the Center of the World by Russell Shorto. That's what's piled by the bed. Also Ask Dr. Mueller: The Writings of Cookie Mueller. And in my subway-riding bag is A Superintendent’s Eyes by Steve Dalachinksy and a wonderful book of poems by Yuko Otomo called Study. I never tire of Yuko’s poems, no matter how many times I read them.


You can find Stink at St. Marks Bookshop, or buy it through Romy’s website. The book launch is tomorrow night,  Friday, June 26, 6:30 p.m. At 292 Gallery, 292 E. 3rd.

More Romy on JVNY:
At La Taza de Oro
A story about Debbie Harry on the High Line
On Joey Arias
On Kasoundra Kasoundra

A Conversation on Gentrification

I chatted via email with DW Gibson, author of the recently published book The Edge Becomes the Center: An Oral History of Gentrification in the Twenty-First Century. Filled with the real voices of New Yorkers, from both sides of the gentrification fence, it’s a must-read for anyone interested in what’s happening to our city in this era of rapid displacement, runaway development, and socioeconomic injustice. Just before our virtual chat, Gibson had come from moderating a conversation on art and gentrification out on Governor’s Island. That got us started on our own conversation.



JM: I was out in Bushwick this weekend for the Open Studios event. It gets bigger every year, and the demographic is shifting--more Greenwich housewife types and financiers in alligator shirts. Near the center of this event, on Grattan Street, a local family had set up a barbecue. Right nearby were all these kids doing performance art. I wondered: What is the relationship between these two groups? Do they communicate and in what way? Which brings me to the question: Is there such a thing as a "good" gentrifier vs. a "bad" gentrifier?

DWG: I think the word “gentrifier” is so loaded that it’s hard to get back to its provenance and make it a useful term. But I certainly don’t want to get bogged down in semantics.

I think what separates a “good” gentrifier from a “bad” gentrifier is his/her willingness to *listen* to the people who have lived or worked in the neighborhood for a long time. A gentrifier who wants to have a positive impact on the neighborhood first needs to learn what that neighborhood is all about — both historically and for the current residents. And then look for ways to get involved. It’s not necessarily about arriving in a neighborhood to bring your ideas there. It should be more about finding out how your ideas and energy can fit into the ideas and energy that are already in place.

That applies perhaps more specifically to artists but also all gentrifiers in general. And backing up a bit, the best starting point for a gentrifier is to look up at the world they inhabit, notice buildings, say hi to the people you see. It’s the best way to start and it’s so simple and achievable for everyone.


JM: Looking up is so important. Reminds me of an anecdote in your book, where one woman says that the new people in her neighborhood are all plugged into headphones, not paying attention, not looking at anyone. What message do you think that sends? And what impact does it have on the people of a community?

DWG: That’s one of the most important points made by an interviewee in the book. It was Shatia Strother, a long-time resident of Bed Stuy. She has the personal campaign of running up to people who have their headphones in, and she jumps in front of them and yells, “Look up!” Which only Shatia can get away with — without getting killed — because of how she comports herself and that big smile.

The “connectivity” that our wireless devices allow comes at a cost to our relationship with the physical world. The physical world — the streets we walk down, the places where we live and work — matter less because we’re always talking to someone half a world away. This is not about fearing technology, it’s about giving thought to how much we value connecting with the people who share the room or the bar or the office or the subway car with us. Historically, a defining characteristic of New York, particularly in terms of other American cities, has been that, for better and for worse, we are in each other’s faces. We encounter all kinds of people in our daily lives, in all of the small and big interactions we have. And this characteristic of New York is diminished by modern technology that de-emphasizes the physical world.

I feel like we’re less and less open to connect with the physical world, and that is not good for the overall health of any given neighborhood or community.


JM: Shatia is my hero, just for that maneuver. I wish I could get away with it, but I’d probably get punched.

It’s interesting to me, the cultural element of this looking down at phones and being “connected.” I visited East Harlem a few years ago—and maybe it’s changed already—but I went up there to check out the development that was going on, and I noticed that no one was on their phone. I was on 116th Street and it felt like the old New York sidewalk, by which I mean pre-2000s. People were paying attention. We all regarded each other.

Is this a class thing? A race/culture thing? I realize, of course, those intersect and are difficult to impossible to disentangle, especially when we’re talking about gentrification. This comes up quite a bit in your book.

DWG: That’s interesting to hear about East Harlem. I was spending a lot of time up there last year and I don’t think it’s so much the case anymore that there aren’t many phones. I think your observations 15+ years ago are more about the passage of time and cell phones becoming increasingly affordable.

It is a relentless march on the part of humanity toward more wireless connectivity! And I think this is a dangerous thing for cities. It’s hard to have this conversation, though, because it quickly sounds like a conversation about not wanting to embrace the power and potential of the modern age, which is not what it’s about at all. It’s about taking a look at the inverse of the digital “connectivity.” It’s about taking seriously the consequences of this “connectivity” and how it diminishes our ability and/or will to connect with our neighbors, both residential and commercial.


JM: These observations in East Harlem were more like 5 years ago, but that's how fast this stuff is changing.

Your book ends up being very much about racism. Was that something you expected going into it? In general, what did you expect to find when you began the book, and where did you get surprised--or not surprised?

DWG: I moved to New York in 1995 and have learned a lot about the city in my time here, so I certainly expected that race would come up as an issue. I think when I started this book I really wanted to stick to the fact that, at its heart, gentrification is a class issue. But that fact alone ignores this country’s, and this city’s, history with a host of discriminatory practices in housing and business. So in the US, and in New York, we cannot extract the race issue from the class issue. They are, in effect, one in the same.

The fact that stood out to me is that the real problem is the institutional racism — much more so than interpersonal racism. Very few people I talked to expressed racism or bigotry. The problem to solve is the historical, institutionalized systems that have disenfranchised New Yorkers over generations. (Redlining, etc.) Those practices still matter because they still affect individuals and families today — and in some cases those practices are still out there! Which is completely true and terrifying.




JM: One piece that doesn't come up so much in your book is the impact of gentrification on small businesses.

DWG: In terms of small business, two interviewees were important for me--Tarek Ismail and Barbara Schaum.

Barbara has been a leather worker on the Lower East Side/East Village for nearly 40 years, and I think she speaks to a lot of change from the point of view of a small business owner entrenched in her community.

I was really excited to include Tarek because here is a thoughtful young man thinking of opening a business in Harlem, but he is worried about doing so in a way that is not positive for the community. He is of Palestinian descent and, because of that family history, he’s very sensitive to the idea of adding to a neighborhood with a very rich and very certain — African American — history. I think if more business owners had Tarek’s sensitivity and conscientiousness the city would be much better off.

On the whole, I do think the commercial discussion gets lost sometimes in the residential discussion. (That’s one of the things you are doing so well — if I may compliment the interviewer.) And while the residential side of the discussion is of primary importance — we all need a place to lay our heads at night — we can’t forget the changes in New York on the commercial side.

The one caveat to the commercial conversation is that we can’t let it become about nostalgia. Land use is always evolving, I think, so it’s okay if one place closes and another comes in, in broad terms. The problem isn’t new shops. It’s the nature of those shops and the question: Who are they serving?

The sad reality is that so many small businesses are being replaced by big box stores. These types of places: 1. Lead to a further homogenization of what the city has to offer and 2. Are far less likely to be involved in the neighborhood, far less likely to be a part of the social fabric of the neighborhood.

Also, the commercial rents have gotten so out of control in so many neighborhoods, the only companies that can move in to these spaces are big corporations who can take a loss at that particular location but still make it work financially because they view those high-rent locations as advertisements, more so than actual retail outlets. So they basically become three-dimensional advertisements instead of actual stores.


JM: (I need to get in a plug here for #SaveNYC, where we're trying to protect small business and the local streetscape of the city.) I could ask so much more, but in all the interviews you've done, is there a question you wish you'd been asked but haven't yet?

DWG: There are two nuggets of info in the book that I’m surprised haven’t generated more questions:

1. The fact that the Bowery Mission made a market rate offer to the Salvation Army for their building on the Bowery, so they could expand their services to the homeless population. (Never reported before this book.) Of course, the Salvation Army did not take that offer and sold, instead, to the Ace Hotel chain.

2. The EB5 visa program that Alan Fishman talks about. This is a visa program that allows foreign nationals to buy a green card by making a $500,000 investment in a distressed neighborhood. The fact that we are allowing the world’s wealthy to buy residency in the U.S., and this is not part of our immigration discussion, is nuts!


JM: I’m glad I asked that question. And I do have one more. In the book, Celia says there are "ways to have less crime and more economic justice without displacement." In all the discussions you had, did you discover the secret formula for that ideal situation?

DWG: I agree with Celia that these are achievable things, but they require heavy lifting.

With regards to less crime without displacement, we would need to radically rethink how we approach policing altogether. Law enforcement would need to be ingrained in the community and understand it is in place to *serve* the community.

More economic justice without displacement can be achieved on a policy level using several tools. Two things that would immediately help: raising wages across the board, and making developers hire local. But even beyond that we can rethink giving tax breaks to developers. Why do we need to incentivize building in New York in 2015? And we can create taxes targeted at those with the most resources (expansion of the mansion tax, taxing those who do not occupy the multiple homes they buy, etc.).

No secret formula to solve all. But certainly clear steps we can take now to get moving in the right direction.



Find your copy of DW's book at your local independent bookshop.

Unchain Challenge

While I'm in the fight to stop the spread of big, national, global chain stores in the city, I am no purist. As I've said here before, for me, it's about moderation. But even if you want to avoid the chains completely, it isn't easy. As they proliferate, they destroy the alternatives, taking away our ability to choose.

Writer and urbanist Matt Falber has taken on the challenge to shop only local in New York City. He's blogging about it on his site. So far, quitting the chains cold turkey hasn't been easy. I asked Matt a few questions about his endeavor.


Matt at his local pharmacy

Q: What made you take this on?

A: I was volunteering at a town hall a few weeks ago. People were contributing ideas about how to improve quality of life and I was writing them on a whiteboard. One man said to me, "We need to learn from what's happened to the West Village and Chelsea and keep it from happening to other neighborhoods."

I knew what he meant immediately. I regularly mourn the sad state of 8th Ave between 23rd and 14th Street. It seems more empty than full. Several businesses that I admired all over the city have closed their doors because of high rents. And there's always the lingering fear that if the businesses can't afford to live in the city, how will I continue to afford to live in the city.

Then I read the piece that The New Yorker wrote this past weekend about the "blighted" West Village. It was a brilliant way to frame it, as Robert Moses tried to have the entire neighborhood demolished by calling it blighted. In a way though, it's true. We're losing the very thing that makes NYC special. For a while I've been saying to people, maybe it will fix itself. If all the restaurants can't afford to be there, maybe the rents will go down. The problem is, while small businesses can't afford it, chains can. And there's very little that's unique about the businesses that replace local institutions once they close.

Then, two days after reading The New Yorker, I was wandering through the East Village. That's when it hit me. Despite all of the businesses that have closed down there, that's the city that I love. It's unique and creative and you can actually see it disappearing as chains and luxury buildings encroach. At that moment I felt I had to do something. I also realized that I've been a fervent supporter of chains. I'm admittedly impressed by the way some chains operate. For example, Chipotle responsibly sources their food, but if I'm eating at a Chipotle, I'm missing out on what makes NY different from any other place.


Q: How's it been to go from chains to unchains?

A: Well, I've just started, but it's actually been harder than I thought it would be. I've already found myself frustrated because I'm hungry and everywhere I look it seems like there's only chain options. I walked from 28th and Broadway to 40th and 8th the other day and the vast majority of businesses were chains. I'm talking like one or two places a block that weren't.


Q: What do you miss about the chains?

A: The convenience. I don't have any good coffee shops near me in Washington Heights. The comfort of knowing what you're getting. The fact that Starbucks has offered me a free drink on my birthday. I really spent a lot of time deciding whether it would be acceptable to redeem it. I don't think this is just about financial exchange though. If I'm in a Starbucks, I'm not really getting anything special.

I'm not saying every moment of our lives has to be unique and original, but I think the whole point of doing this is to take a stand and say that the character that small businesses bring to our city is one of the things that makes us unique. New York wouldn't be known for its matzoh ball soup, egg creams, or bagels if it weren't for small businesses.


Q: What do you like better about the mom and pops?

A: So far, I've had really great conversations about things, though not always. Some small businesses aren't very friendly, but others have tons of heart. The coffee shop I wrote about on my first day, Cafe Bruins, is a pop up. The owner just decided he wanted to do something in an interesting space. It's as much about the quality of the experience and the product as it is about making a dollar. My barista, a really knowledgeable guy named Sasha, told me all about the process that was involved in making each of the coffees they served. The staff were also really interested in getting to know me.

It was so different than queuing up in a Starbucks and paying for a flatwhite with my smartphone.

Sasha relayed to me that he's not sure how Starbucks could even make an actual flatwhite as they don't have the equipment for it.


Q: How long do you think you can keep this up?

A: I'm not sure. So far it requires a fair amount of planning. I'm going to try to make it a permanent way of life, as long as I'm not visiting somebody in a suburb. Lots of my friends in smaller towns have told me they wouldn't be able to attempt something like this where they live.

Despite the initial effort, the hope is that as I get used to new places it will become easier. I think we're very conditioned to look for brand names. I've found myself realizing businesses I never noticed before because their name was printed in a fairly standard font on an awning the same color as a row of businesses next to theirs. I think that several small businesses could learn a lot about presentation and making themselves stand out. Then again, there's plenty that are good at it that I did notice but might not have patronized out of convenience.

I really hope that by writing about the places I go, I'll inspire others to walk a little farther for something unique. Unless we want chains to continue to dominate the island, we've got to make a conscious effort to support businesses operated by creative locals.


Stop the chaining of New York City. Join #SaveNYC! 

Out There!

Who says New York is dead? (Dying, I say, not dead.) Historic preservationist Kyle Supley (he helped get new homes for the Moondance and Cheyenne diners) is running a Kickstarter to preserve and showcase all that is still cool about New York City, and he needs your help to make it happen.

I asked Kyle a few questions about Kyle Supley's Out There!



Q: What inspired you to launch this project?

A: I'm making "Kyle Supley's Out There!" to showcase what's great about New York City, along with the New Yorkers making it happen.

Having lived in New York for 13 years, I've met incredible people, visited amazing places, and experienced one-of-a-kind things in this city that are too cool to keep to myself.

I have been a collector of antiques since I was young and have always been intrigued with preserving stories as well as things. Recently I realized that the people I know in New York are just as important, if not more so, to showcase and preserve for future generations, and felt that a quick and fun-to-watch show would be a great way to accomplish that.


Q: Many people complain (myself included) that there's not much left of the "real" New York -- the eccentric, odd, and outsider. Is this what you're seeking in "Out There" and how do you go about finding it?

A: I would agree that NYC is quickly losing its creative, quirky, and interesting people at a faster rate then ever due to soaring rent prices and the general suburbanization that seems to be unstoppable as of late.

Having moved to the city in 1999, I feel fortunate to have been able to experience a great deal of what was remaining of the gritty and alternative spirit, and I hope that with this project, I can capture those who are still holding on and continuing to keep New York, New York.

There are still many amazing small designers, event producers, cabaret performers, restaurateurs, and artists creating, living, and giving their all here. I want to help audiences learn about these people and places.


Q: How do you respond to those who might say that, by 1999, the gritty and alternative spirit of New York was already gone?

A: This show will not be focusing on what has been lost, but rather on people and places from the past who are still thriving today. We'll also introduce viewers to new and emerging talent who are keeping the spirit of New York alive through performance, fashion, small businesses, and more.

While it is true that we have lost a tremendous amount of creative capital and places that could only have been found here, this is still the greatest city on earth with lots to uncover.


Q: Who can we look forward to meeting on future episodes?

A: If I reach my goal, I have a number of confirmed guests for the show that exemplify this true New York spirit. Performer and comic Bridget Everett, blind-contour drawing artist Ian Sklarsky, phonograph DJ and vintage barber Michael Haar, and the incredible drag icon Flawless Sabrina, who has lived in her home on the Upper East Side for 47 years, just to name a few.

Performers that I would like to have on the show include mainstays such as actress and performance artist Penny Arcade, cabaret performer Joey Arias, psychedelic artist Joshua Light Show, and young singer and actress Bridget Barkan. They represent the true spirit of the city and offer a nod to the past but with a focus on new works for the future.


Kyle Supley is an actor, singer, and photographer (Instagram: ksuper), as well as an avid mid-century design historian and New York City preservationist.

Please visit Kickstarter to learn more and to help fund Kyle's show. He's only got 15 days to reach his goal or no show.

No Your City

Nicolas Heller is the creator of "No Your City," an episodic documentary film project that captures the special characters that keep New York City's street life, well, alive.

In this post-Bloombergian age of sterilized sidewalks and fussily manicured parks, the street character is a vitally important citizen--and a vanishing breed. We used to see them everywhere. Today, less and less. But a few remain. From Larry the Birdman to colorful Ms. Colombia, they're getting their close-up in Heller's lens.



I asked Nic a few questions:

Q: First off, why the NO in "No Your City"?

A: Ah, the first question everyone asks… There is no deep meaning behind it, I just wanted to keep the NYC acronym so I could use the subway token as a logo.

Q: You grew up in New York. What characters do you remember from way back?

A: I grew up on 16th and 5th in Manhattan. Union Square was my backyard, so most of the people I remember were from there. Te’Devan the 6’ 7” Freestyling Jew (who at the time was a spiritual healer), Wendell the homeless Fashion designer, the asshole with the cat on his head, the little man who sold hot dogs, Roman the pervert. The list goes on.

Q: What made you want to capture the characters of New York on film?

A: At first it was an excuse for me to get to know these people I have seen around the neighborhood for years but too afraid to approach. In the second season, it turned into a form of preservation. You know as well as I do that NYC is losing a lot of its charm. And with it, the city is losing a lot of its characters. I wanted to tell the stories of New Yorkers who might not be around much longer. So that kids can see these videos 40 years from now and be exposed to what NYC was.

Q: What do you think of that word, "character"? Is that the right word?

A: I consider the word “character” a positive way to describe someone. I remember my parents describing friends, clients, etc., to me when I was a kid. They would describe them as “a real character.” It was because they had something very unique about them. A vibrant personality. All my subjects are these things and more, therefore they deserve the honor of being called a “character.” I don’t just throw that term around. It takes a special person.



Q: What do you think is valuable about these people, and others like them, to the urban fabric of the city?

A: Street culture is what makes a city unique. You can go anywhere in the United States and there will be similar restaurants, stores, parks, etc. But there is only one of every character. There is no one else like Wendell, Larry the Birdman, Mrs. Colombia, Clayton Patterson, etc. You have to come to NYC to experience them.

Q: How do you approach your subjects? Is everyone open to being filmed -- or have you had some misses?

A: It usually starts with a photograph. Then I will talk to them and tell them about my series. Most of these characters love the attention so they are eager to be filmed. I’ve had a few misses, mostly because there was no way of getting in touch with them. But for the most part everyone is appreciative of the message and wants to be involved.

Q: Looking just at your films, one might think New York is still a weird, vibrant place. Do you think it is?

A: Totally. I am only 26, so I can’t quite remember what NYC was like over 10 years ago, but luckily I have Clayton Patterson’s archive available to me. In a sense, I am doing what he was doing 30 years ago. Documenting a moment in time that will inevitably change in the coming years. I still think the city has tons of personality. More so than anywhere else I have been to. I think my films do a good job of providing evidence of that.

Q: Will there be more films? What characters are you still hoping to get on film?

A: I will always be filming. The city plays a huge role in everything I do. I just finished a series on Brooklyn Drag Queens called Queens of Kings which will be coming out shortly after No Your City season 2 ends, and I am in the process of making an animated short film which will be a part of No Your City. Making these docs costs next to nothing, so as long as I am physically able, I will continue to tell people’s stories.


- Watch "No Your City" online
- Like it on Facebook

Joey Arias: Christmas with the Crawfords

The following is a guest post by Romy Ashby, who runs the excellent blog "Walkers in the City."

The Henry Street Settlement - Abrons Art Center has the best Christmas show in town right now with Joey Arias: Christmas with the Crawfords, dazzling audiences with a fabulous cast in the gorgeous old theater on Grand Street. When Joey, who has spent a lot of time on that stage, was asked not long ago to do something at Abrons this December, he suggested doing the show, which was recently summed up this way by The New York Times: “Joey Arias joins up with San Francisco's Artfull Circle Theatre to make NYC's Yuletide ever so gay in this all-singing, all-dancing, holiday extravaganza. Based on the infamous Christmas Eve radio broadcast from the Crawford family's Brentwood mansion, Christmas With the Crawfords features Joan, the children, and a stellar line up of Hollywood icons in a hilarious parody of -- and homage to -- the ‘Golden Age’ of Hollywood.”



Following is my short chat with the wonderful Joey Arias—a most down-to-earth and friendly star—done over the telephone:

In the Christmas show you play Joan Crawford. Were you a Joan Crawford fan yourself?

No not at all! I love her work, but I never read the books or followed her. So when I got the part I watched Mildred Pierce four times to study her movements, her face, her hands. I think Joan Crawford was groomed beautifully by Hollywood; the happy Hollywood story of going from nothing to something. And she went with it. She never stopped working until she died. Her daughter would say, ‘Stop! You’re a star and these movies you’re taking now are schlock!” But Joan would say, “It’s a role and I’m doing it. I don’t want people to forget me.”

The last time I did this role was in 2002 and I joined the Cirque du Soleil right after that. And it’s exciting to play this character. For the new generation, who doesn’t have a clue about old movies or most of these characters, it’s a light into the darkness to turn them on to what that world was like, to show that these were real people in addition to all the glamour and falsehood, the screen smoke and mirrors that were put on people’s faces who were groomed for the public. When Joan Crawford’s daughter wrote that book, Mommy Dearest, all the smoke and mirrors were shattered.

When you first came to live here in 1976, New York was a different city. What about it did you find most appealing?

I found the corruption, the drug dealers, the hookers, the city falling apart and the glamour—hand in hand—so thrilling! You were really able to fulfill your dream then, and whatever you wanted was really kind of at hand—if you worked hard enough.

And what did you want?

I wanted to meet Andy Warhol and change my life! I remember closing my eyes and saying, “City, whatever you want me to do, please guide me.” And of course I worked at it too. I wound up getting a job at Fiorucci, which had just opened, and I was right in the middle of all the hubbub. And my dream came true! Andy Warhol came in and he wanted to meet me! And from then on, everything just fell into place.

How easy was it to do shows without much money when you first came?

Oh, it was the old saying with Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney: “Let’s go to the garage and put a show on!”

And were there plenty of free "garages" available?

Oh, yeah! Downtown, the Lower East Side, there was the Mudd Club and of course we had Club 57 on St. Mark's Place, which Ann Magnuson started with Susan Hannaford. It started as the Monster Movie Club once a week and everyone had such a good time we just continued with theme parties and shows, and it was our neighborhood hangout. That was where Keith Haring, and Kenny Scharf and Jean-Michel Basquiat got their starts, and Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman and Lypsinka, everybody started there.

Having kept the same apartment on 10th Street and University since 1976, is your house a time capsule of an older New York?

Oh it is! It’s very old New York! When Klaus Nomi passed away I got a lot of his furniture, and there are little things here and there, pieces of art by Keith Haring and Jean-Michel and Andy Warhol and Kenny Scharf, oh, my God, it really is a History House!

To ask the opposite question of what you found most appealing, what do you feel most sorry about in New York as it is now?

I’m sorry that there is greed and corporations, that that Giuliani flipped it over to make it clean and accessible to that generation of people who are afraid to walk in the mud. The corruption is still around, but corruption wears ties now.

Despite the sad changes, do you have a favorite thing to do in New York?

I love to walk the streets and just bump into people. I love to meet people in the street—people that I know and strangers—and have conversations standing on the street corner. I love that. I’ll go out to the store to pick something up and then find myself just going for a walk. And the next thing I know, I’ll be having a conversation with an old friend or a new friend on the sidewalk. And now that I’ve become known, strangers stop me and say, “I love you! You’re so exciting! I came to see you, and that’s why I’m in New York!” And I’ll think, Oh, they’re just like me, the way I was with Andy Warhol! Now I find myself in that position; as the keeper of the flame.

Years ago, when you were publishing little interviews with interesting characters in Paper Magazine, I laughed at one of your questions to Debbie Harry (and her answer) which I will ask you now: What’s the first thing you do when you get up in the morning?

Make coffee.

What did Debbie say?

She said “Pee.”




Christmas with the Crawfords runs through December 27th, and stars Joey Arias as Joan Crawford, Chris March as Christina and a stellar cast of co-stars featuring Sherry Vine and Chris Mirto.

Kasoundra Kasoundra

The following is a guest post by Romy Ashby

For a long time, New York City was a treasure box of rarities and uncommon beauty, where no two blocks were alike. The ambiance of each neighborhood was made of all kinds of things and the many colorful people—the oddballs, iconoclasts, the funny intellectuals—who populated the streets. So many of those colorful people have disappeared with the relentless scaling up of the city, and usually nobody notices what happens to them. I feel sad when I come across the contents of someone’s life out on the street for the trash. A pervasive nightmare scenario in New York is the one of being poor, no longer young, and alone, and then losing one’s apartment. This happened to the artist Kasoundra Kasoundra in a terrible way. I would like to see her situation reversed, because it can be, but not without help.


Kasoundra, 2006, photo by Romy Ashby

Kasoundra lived for many years in a rent-controlled Upper East Side apartment. It was full of art and interesting objects, many of which she made. Many other things she found, or had been given, and each object had a story. She made a lot of her own clothes, read a lot of books and did volunteer gardening in Central Park. She had kitties who she loved. On her next birthday she’ll be eighty. She has a crystal clear, youthful mind and a wonderful, original intelligence. Her story is particularly frightening because, having been swept into a vortex of legal and bureaucratic incompetence and indifference, she not only lost her apartment, her pets and her belongings, but she lost her very freedom as well. She’s been stuck in a nursing home where she doesn’t need to be, far outside the city, against her will, separated from her friends, for almost three years.

How could this happen? After an illness and a lengthy hospital stay, Kasoundra recovered. As she explained to me today on the phone, the hospital offered to assign her a legal guardian. She understood "legal guardian" to mean an advocate who would help her get her finances and affairs in order after her illness, so she agreed to have a legal guardian assigned. “I thought it meant someone who would actually care about me,” she said. “I never imagined that a guardian was someone who could put me away against my will. But he did. He was a disaster.” Kasoundra’s right to live a full life was taken from her. She’s not allowed to leave the nursing home, she doesn’t have any of her own clothes or know where they are, and the courts did nothing to protect her from an appointed legal guardian who caused her immeasurable harm. Eventually that guardian was replaced by another one who is even worse.


In the Chelsea Hotel, late 1960s, photo by Liza Stelle

Kasoundra came to New York in 1960. She took jobs illustrating for the New York Sun, baling newspapers to drop at newsstands off the back of a truck, and she even worked as a mechanic. She lived above Puglia’s restaurant in Little Italy for a while, and for a long time she lived on 12th Street before moving uptown. She met all kinds of people, seeking out the most eccentric and interesting characters to pounce on and keep as friends. She worked with Harry Smith, who she adored and refers to as The Cosmos for his exceptional ability to understand everything and anything. She worked with Olympia Press publisher Maurice Girodias as an illustrator. She befriended Alice and Ray Brock of Alice’s Restaurant (she was later in the movie), and through Alice she met Liza Stelle, the daughter of jazzman Eddie Condon. For years she was a regular fixture at Eddie’s apartment on Washington Square, which was always full of musicians and Village characters. There she met Hank O’Neal, an ex-CIA agent who had traded his old life for a new one of making jazz recordings, writing books, and taking pictures. One day, Kasoundra found an old wooden telephone booth on a sidewalk. She dragged it to Hank’s recording studio on Christopher Street, and said, “You cannot get rid of this.” Hank kept it, and he photographed people sitting in it for a long time to come.

On the phone, Kasoundra described visiting Salvador Dali’s studio to look at his work. “He sat there twirling his mustache,” she said, “and I knew it was waxed!” She told him which of his paintings she liked most and wished she could own. “It was a loaf of bread split in half,” she said. You could see every pore in that loaf. You could almost take a bite out of it, it was so real!”

She told me how she’d found Hermione Gingold in the Manhattan telephone directory and called her up. “I love your movies!” she said. “I think you’re just thrilling!” And Hermione Gingold said, in her deliciously funny voice, “Well, you must come up and have tea, dear.” After their first meeting, Kasoundra visited as often as she could and always brought her flowers. She made herself laugh doing her own very accurate imitation of Hermione Gingold, who, she said, “had the most wonderful, lyrical way of being nasal.”

Well-known people were much more accessible years ago, and Kasoundra knew many. But status has never mattered to her. She’s an absolute egalitarian. If a person could converse on interesting subjects, they’d have her. She’s always had great appreciation for distinctive people, and they in turn appreciate her. There’s no one more distinctive than Kasoundra.

The Australian theorist Germaine Greer dedicated her book, The Female Eunuch, to five friends including Kasoundra when it was published in 1970. “For Kasoundra,” the dedication says, “who makes magic out of skins and skeins and pens, who is never still, never unaware, riding her strange destiny in the wilderness of New York, loyal and bitter, as strong as a rope of steel and as soft as a sigh.” Germaine Greer’s description of Kasoundra still fits, 45 years later, but against the present context of her life it is heartbreaking to read.


January 1, 1974, photo by Hank O'Neal

In the forced confines of the nursing home she tries to keep her sense of humor as best she can. She teaches art to other residents for something to do. But it’s very hard for her to not feel sad all the time. She’s an animal lover not allowed to have a pet. Her apartment on the Upper East Side was emptied out not long ago after years of legal limbo, and she has not been told where her belongings have gone. She’s very worried about her art. Her life’s work was in that apartment, and she considers her works of art to be her children. She wonders about personal treasures, such as her gypsy fortune telling machine and her “Napoleon Desk,” along with the rest of her furniture, her various collections, her clothes, and her many books.

When I asked her today what she wants most right now she said, “First of all I’d like my freedom. I’m sick of being stuck in this place, paid for with my government money, and I would like my property returned.” She would also like a place to live, in the city, where she can see her many friends.

There is no logical reason why Kasoundra should be trapped so far from the city. What she needs now is a good lawyer willing to help right this wrong. Recommendations are welcome.

Some years back, Penny Arcade and Steve Zehentner of the Lower East Side Biography Project featured an episode devoted to Kasoundra and her art, filmed in her apartment uptown. You can see an excerpt of that here.

Romy Ashby writes the blog Walkers in the City. To learn more about Kasoundra, and if you can help, please contact Romy through her web site, RomyAshby.com.