Time for Part 3.
If you need to catch up here is Part 2.
Original Post
Replies sorted oldest to newest
quote:
> The New York Times
> July 4, 2006
>
> For $1, a Collective Mixing Art and Radical Politics Turns Itself Into
> Its Own Landlord
>
> By COLIN MOYNIHAN
>
> For decades the stretch of Rivington Street running east from Essex
> Street was a largely forgotten and gritty pocket of the Lower East
> Side, home to bodegas, nail salons and blue-collar residents. Over the
> last 10 years, though, the area has evolved into one of Manhattan's
> trendy neighborhoods, with new restaurants, bars and boutiques.
> Roaming heroin dealers have given way to throngs of young, noisy
> visitors.
>
> Standing on the north side of Rivington, between Suffolk and Clinton
> Streets, is one of the few buildings that have barely changed in two
> decades: a crumbling, four-story structure that at one time was
> inhabited by squatters and now houses ABC No Rio, a community and
> cultural center that seeks to explore the interaction of art and
> radical politics. The building has a prominent place in the lore of
> the Lower East Side, and at times has had a rocky relationship with
> City Hall.
>
> Some of the artists who helped found the group first came together
> with the unsanctioned takeover of an abandoned building on Delancey
> Street. A little later, when members of the group moved a block north
> to a vacant building on Rivington Street, they battled attempts by the
> city to evict them.
>
> Those days of disagreement have finally come to an end.
>
> Last week, the city sold the building, 156 Rivington Street, to ABC No
> Rio for $1, said Neill Coleman, a spokesman for the Department of
> Housing Preservation and Development. The transaction came after years
> of negotiations, and one of the conditions was that the nonprofit
> collective that runs the building had to raise hundreds of thousands
> of dollars to begin renovations. Mr. Coleman said the city sometimes
> sells buildings for a dollar to community or cultural organizations
> because such groups provide a benefit to the public.
>
> "ABC No Rio exists as a resource for people with a diverse set of
> politics and a very broad sense of what is art," Eric Goldhagen, a
> collective member, said. "They can exchange ideas in a nondogmatic
> atmosphere out of which dynamic and interesting projects tend to
> grow."
>
> The group raised its money primarily in small donations, some from
> local backers and some from artists and musicians in other cities and
> countries who had never visited the center but admired its history of
> surviving amid political and economic struggles; many of them faced
> similar difficulties in running performance spaces in expensive urban
> areas.
quote:
NEW YORK -- Police are investigating the death of an unidentified man found clad in leather early Wednesday on a Manhattan street.
A dog-walker found the body along Hudson Street in the West Village, police said.
The man, believed to be in his early 40s, was wearing a leather mask, leather clothing and two collars, according to police.
Police said he was slumped over, with one of the collars hooked on the spike of a 4-foot fence.
The medical examiner will determine the cause of death.
© 2006 by The Associated Press
quote:Originally posted by Miss Understood:
Ugly Buildings
I was thinking recntly about all of the silver and glass boxy buildings going up around Downtown. I wondered what they might look like in 20 years. Were they designed to last? Is that some fancy sort of composite metal that resists staining? Is that glass unbreakable? Well, my question has been partially answered. I walked past the one on Bowery and Bond today and noticed visible dents in the wall on the outer ground floor. I looked up a bit and saw scratches and discoloration. I knocked on the wall and realized that it's just a thin hollow aluminum-like material. I think they'll all turn into dumps sooner than we think.
High end buildings used to be made of marble and other pretty yet strong types of stone. Toaday's architecture is not only boring, it's flimsy!
quote:New York is notoriously the largest and least loved of any of our great cities. Why should it be loved as a city? It is never the same city for a dozen years altogether. A man born forty years ago finds nothing, absolutely nothing, of the New York he knew. If he chances to stumble upon a few old houses not yet leveled, he is fortunate. But the landmarks, the objects, which marked the city to him, as a city, are gone.
-- Harper's Monthly, 1856
quote:Nightclubs are always opening (and closing) in New York, but this mini-surge of fresh venues is built on music and art, not the bling of bottle service, signaling the beginning of a hopeful new era in New York nightlife, one where the artists, musicians, and DJs"”tired of the bottle service boom bullying clubs into a world of materialism and monotony"”take back the night.
quote:Those overpriced rents make for overpriced potatoes, too.
quote:No matter how long you have been here, you are a New Yorker the first time you say, That used to be Munsey's, or That used to be the Tic Toc Lounge.... You are a New Yorker when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now.