First Leonard Cohen, now this.
David Mancuso, one of the most influential figures in New York City nightlife, has died less than a month after his 72nd birthday. The Loft, an underground club that Mancuso operated out of his home in Noho, then Soho, and finally in Alphabet City, was celebrated for its invite-only after-hours parties, fueled by a cutting-edge sound system and a spirit of racial, sexual, and social inclusiveness. The vibe influenced later clubs like the Garage and even Studio 54.
(Photo: Maura Murnanae)
Just six months after becoming the first sex shop to unionize, Babeland has been accused of unlawfully firing an employee and engaging in practices that violate the National Labor Relations Act.
The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) filed an Unfair Labor Practice charge against the sex shop’s owners yesterday, November 14.
(Photo: Ronit Schlam)
We were looking at Young’s pieces “Chains,” which are exactly that: carved wooden chains, created in what Young called a “kind of monotonous, boring, really unsatisfying use of my time. It was only satisfying at certain moments,” like when he stepped back to see the enormity of his progress.
(flyer via Audre Lorde Project / Facebook)
Life seems pretty bleak post-November 9, and even moreso when you consider that 2016 has been declared the “deadliest year on record” for transgender individuals in America, with 24 trans people– predominantly women of color– murdered so far.
This week, GLAAD’s Transgender Awareness Week continues, culminating on Sunday with the Transgender Day of Awareness. Founded in 1998 by a trans advocate in honor of trans woman Rita Hester’s memory, TDOR has been commemorated every year by vigils and other community-based events. Here are several goings-on this week, fun and solemn alike, that are either directly affiliated with Trans Awareness Week or serve to spotlight and lift up trans and queer individuals or groups.
(Photo: Daniel Maurer)
The School’s Special Commission of Investigation found no one to blame for the October 2015 choking death of a 7-year-old girl at P.S. 250 in Williamsburg, news that upset her family. [DNA Info]
On Wednesday, police arrested a woman, 34, for allegedly punching a 9-year-old girl (who was not her child) at the Essex/Delancey Street subway station. [Gothamist]
Four days after the 162-year-old bar was closed by the Department of Health, McSorley’s Old Ale House was back in business as of yesterday afternoon. [EV Grieve] Keep Reading »
A booth dedicated to the old Pearl River Mart (Photo: Nicole Disser)
“Preservationist” has become something of a slur, used to denigrate the old-timers and neo-hippies who’d rather save ratty old tenant buildings and dusty mom-and-pop stores than make way for clean big-box stores with cheap stuff for everyone, and skyscraping mixed-use luxury complexes with their affordable housing pittance. It’s sorta like: C’mon, New York City is, by its nature, dynamic and changing. But the ever-faster pace of development and the lightyear rate of change have made for an urban landscape where transformation takes place exponentially and squeezes out the very people who have made this city vibrant and interesting in the first place.
Over the weekend, a slew of more than 40 local and visiting artists, as well as organizations like the Chinatown Art Brigade (a grassroots effort tackling the divisive issue of gallery-led gentrification in their neighborhood) demonstrated that preservation doesn’t have to be backward-looking.
Henry Chalfant’s subway photographs now on view (Image courtesy of Eric Firestone Gallery)
Since Thursday, the white walls at Eric Firestone Gallery have been wholly devoted to just a small portion of Henry Chalfant’s archive of “subway photographs.” Henry Chalfant: 1980 focuses on a year in which graffiti was still regarded as subversive and dangerous. At the same time, street art was at its most vibrant and anarchic. The work offers not only a trip back to the “golden age of graffiti,” but a thorough “visual anthropology,” as Chalfant describes it– a studied view of street culture back when it actually came from the streets.
(Photo: @sashaandlucca on Instagram)
We remember him well in the Chelsea Hotel, but Leonard Cohen’s New York City existence spanned beyond just the hotel where a makeshift memorial sprung up on Thursday after his death at the age of 82. Cohen came to New York City in 1966, just a year before the Summer of Love, and his breakthrough years there brought him into the orbit of Warhol and the Velvet Underground, the Beats, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and Jimi Hendrix. He wrote songs for Nico and penned “Chelsea Hotel No. 2” after a night with Janis Joplin.
(Photo: Scott Lynch)
Anti-Trump protesters once again poured into the city streets over the weekend. On Saturday, thousands of people shut down Fifth Avenue for more than two miles as they marched from Union Square to Trump Tower, in Midtown East, screaming messages of disgust and defiance at the president-elect. On Sunday afternoon, activists gathered their forces outside of Trump International Hotel & Tower, near Columbus Circle, to protest looming policy measures that would have major consequences for undocumented immigrants and their families.
Three people were shot just before 2 a.m. yesterday when a pair of armed men began arguing outside of Don Pedro, a Williamsburg bar. None of the injuries are life-threatening and police arrested one of the shooters, a 36-year-old man who took a bullet to the knee. [NBC NY]
In Union Square, a 48-year-old man was arrested on a recent Saturday after allegedly threatening someone with brass knuckles and a hammer. [Town & Village]
Spicewala Bar Indian Cuisine will soon replace East Village Burritos & Bar on First Avenue. [EV Grieve] Keep Reading »
(photo: Maria Baranova)
Edgar Oliver is a memorable man. I feel as though I could listen to him recite a portion of the phone book and throughout it I would find humor, joy, and sorrow. That’s not to say he has a terribly wide range of vocal inflection, but rather quite the opposite. Somehow he treats every word nearly the same way, with the same great deal of care and dramatics, and yet an entire world opens itself up among the syllables.
In Attorney Street, Oliver’s third solo storytelling show, he explores a new chapter of his life in a new apartment on the Lower East Side after being made to leave the small East Village SRO he’d remained for decades. With this major change, he also tracks other shifts in his life and surroundings: a vacant lot he cherished is now no more, a young boy that awakened desire in him as a child now has a child of his own, and so on.
(Photo: Cassidy Dawn Graves)
With the announcement of Donald Trump’s jaw-dropping victory on Wednesday morning, a massive question mark now hangs over the country. Will Trump’s reign be equally as volatile as the GOP candidate’s campaign? Hard to say, since the guy clearly gave very few shits about consistency. What’s more, it’s often next to impossible to understand what, if anything, Trump believes in (even his own ghostwriter has described Trump as a “living black hole”). But our first “orange president” has made one promise resoundingly clear: Immigrants are going to get hit hard.
