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NYC Drag queens, punks, and rebels weave a collective story of the culturally influential gem of a nightclub, the 1980s Pyramid Cocktail lounge. Theirs is a story of pushing limits, creativity, love, grief and survival, in a place where everyone belongs, in a city that is all but abandoned.

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Marc H. Miller and Barry Blinderman reflect on the Village of the '70s and '80s, when Reaganomics inspired Keith Haring to stick it to the man.

The late 1970s through mid-1980s in New York marked a major turning point in both the city's political history and the art world. Fueled by the policies of the Reagan White House, money began to flood the nearly bankrupt city, heightening the stratification between the haves and have-nots, while the specter of gentrification began to sink its teeth into the downtown firmament.

In this brief window, the last vestiges of bohemian life staked their claim in the outposts of the East Village and the Lower East Side, where a new anti-authoritarian art scene emerged. With the launch of galleries like FUN, Gracie Mansion, ABC No Rio, and Civilian Warfare, the downtown scene was primed for new talents like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, and David Wojnarowicz that would take the world by storm.

In an exclusive conversation with Document Journal, journalist and archivist Marc H. Miller and art historian and Semaphore gallerist Barry Blinderman discuss this pivotal era of New York City history, spotlighting how artists and galleries used work as a call to action, rather than a commodity for status and profit. Yet the scene's explosion would ultimately cause its downfall, as efforts to label and package that which defied the system would crash and burn. Today, while countless East Village storefronts sit empty because small businesses cannot afford the rent, we look back at a time when the neighborhood was a playground for anyone who dared to follow their dreams.

Marc H. Miller -In the 1960s, the East Village began to house the counterculture. Beatniks and jazz musicians lived there. There's a seamless line between beats and hippies, while punk was a later manifestation of it. There were a bunch of overlaps, and you had Allen Ginsberg and Richard Hell living in the same building. What they have in common is the low rents.

Barry Blinderman -Artists seek cheap rent. When I came to New York in 1980, SoHo was already becoming gentrified, with high fashion boutiques popping up next to galleries. In 1983 I lived at Rivington and Suffolk, in the Lower East Side. My loft was across the street from ABC No Rio. I would pass through the park on my way to SoHo and ten heroin dealers were chanting, "Black Death! Toilet!"

Marc -I was involved with ABC No Rio, which came out of The Real Estate Show. Colab [Collaborative Projects] had squatted a vacant city-owned building and mounted an exhibition on real estate. The city evicted them but there was so much publicity that the city offered the group an abandoned space, which became ABC No Rio. For the first few years it had a strong political agenda, which was heightened with the election of Ronald Reagan.

Barry -Reagan was the progenitor of '80s political art. Keith Haring, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger-everyone was reacting against what they saw as a war-mongering autocracy.

Marc -I'd date the East Village art scene as beginning in 1982. Andy Warhol and the pop artists had done a good job of publicizing New York, and a lot of people descended on the city and went into the arts. There was a reaction against business-it was the hippie generation.

Barry -In the early '70s we were proud of never wanting to pursue a career [laughs], "I want to study philosophy and I'm never going to work for the Man."

Marc -That was the spirit of the times. It became a D.I.Y. thing because the established galleries weren't opening up that much to younger artists so they created their own venues.

Barry -Here you had talented, visionary people in their 20s who were showing artists in storefront galleries. The D.I.Y. quality of FUN, Cash, and Nature Morte fit the sensibility of the time, where you had non-virtuoso musicians like the Talking Heads and Richard Hell who learned their craft on the go. Same thing with artists and galleries: Patti Astor at FUN was showing graffiti artists like FUTURA 2000, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Fab 5 Freddy, and Lee Quinones, who went from spray-painting walls and trains right to the galleries. This was thoroughly alien to the concept of 57th Street and Soho galleries, where everything was codified.

Marc -You could do anything. I was hanging out at CBGB and noticed there were a lot of visual artists hanging out there. I had the opportunity to do the first Punk Art show. There was a sense you could start an art movement. It was a little pretentious and I'm not sure it panned out but with the alternative press you could get that publicity out.

Barry -With the East Village Eye, the scene had its very own newspaper. Then Carlo McCormick, the curator and writer of the day, became the chief art critic for [the Eye]. Walter Robinson was writing for them too.

Marc -Walter was a member of Colab and his day job was working for Art in America. They gave him the opportunity to work with Carlo to do a story called "Slouching Towards Avenue D" and it provided an identity for the East Village art scene.

Barry -In 1980, I opened Semaphore Gallery in SoHo. By '83, artists we were showing, like Martin Wong and Mark Kostabi, wanted to show in the East Village but they also wanted to remain showing with us. I decided to open another gallery on the corner of 10th Street and Avenue B in fall 1984. Our first show was Keith Haring and Tseng Kwong Chi.

Marc -There was a belief that there was an 'East Village art movement' although I think that quickly proved untenable-there were too many styles. It was an attempt to define a movement based on a location and it encouraged a lot of people to become part of this new wave. The basic truth was that all the galleries, artists, and activity were a force of gentrification. There were two East Villages, with Avenue B dividing them.

Barry -The East Village was an exciting adventure but eventually it seemed merely a commercial and real estate designation. Many of the East Village galleries moved back to SoHo. A lot of the most talented artists, like Luis Frangella and Rick Prol, never survived that move and got lost in the shuffle.

Marc -Way too many galleries opened there and the term 'East Village artist' became synonymous with low quality. It was an illusion that there was an East Village style.

Barry -It was an arbitrary designation that had a lot to do with money, either a profusion of money or a lack of it on the artists' part. Now the city is so commercial you could never have the East Village scene happen.

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The explosive rise-and inevitable downfall-of the East Village art scene

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Marc H. Miller and Barry Blinderman reflect on the Village of the '70s and '80s, when Reaganomics inspired Keith Haring to stick it to the man. The late 1970s through mid-1980s in New York marked a major turning point in both the city's political history and the art world.

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The History of The Pyramid Club part 1: The Infamous Dressing Room

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"I humbly invite you to take a stroll through my life in the squatter community of the Lower East Side (LES) in the 1990s," writes Ash Thayer, whose book, Kill City, focuses on New York City squatters, harking back to another age, when city's were not being made overly safe, libraries were valued and open - those arcane places where you could sit indoors for free without paying money and read - when the welfare state was not run on grandiose corporate business lines, when being young, hedonistic and utterly lacking in ambition were joyous and the city-centre living was open to all. It's a halcyon vision of full-figured youth and fun, albeit one obscured by voracious rats and the occasional nutter, and for freezing cold months at a time shrouded in clouds of visible breath.

"Take note, that I can only be a guide to my New York. The photographs reflect the people who made up my particular tribe and the sanctuary I found with them. The LES was a very different neighborhood during the 90s than it is now. And it was a different universe then compared to what it was like back in the 70s or 80s, ask Frank Morales (who has generously contributed the introduction to this book) and other locals can attest.

Ash:

In the 1970s, a massive downturn famously brought New York City close to bankruptcy. Landlords failed to pay property taxes and abandoned their buildings, even some still occupied by tenants. Some owners took further measures and burned buildings for insurance payouts. Empty lots quickly turned into homeless encampments and drug use and crime rates soared.
The waiting list for low-income housing at the time was at least ten years and the shelters overflowed New York winters put the homeless sleeping on the street-an estimated 30,000 at the time-at risk of death from hypothermia while at the same time, hundreds of buildings throughout the city sat vacant.

Between 1980 and 1986 New York City took part in a federal homesteading program started by Jimmy Carter to help residents rehabilitate landlord-abandoned buildings and acquire the titles to the buildings. When the program was ended in the Reagan era, on a federal and local level, the need for housing was still growing. Housing activists decided to persevere, especially as New York's City Hall seemed apathetic to the housing crisis at hand. Over two dozen barely habitable abandoned buildings on the Lower East Side were occupied by people who hoped to acquire title once they brought them up to code. For some buildings it was a race against the clock, but by the mid 90s, these squatters often stopped evictions in court using the law of adverse possession.
So how does a middle class Memphis girl like me end up in this fringe community?
In grade school I was a target for abuse by a trio of evil-Disney-dimpled-redneck-princesses. I was a sensitive, pale, freckled, ginger, and easy to pick on. These girls had the right label of expensive clothes; I did not. They got attention from boys; I did not. I was a smart kid, and a competitive gymnast until I was 14, but depression and self-loathing from their ceaseless tormenting sabotaged me. I became a target for other bullies, including boys, and I was too ashamed to tell my parents anything. I was sure that would only make things worse.
In eighth grade a new girl arrived and I finally had a best friend. Together, we dared to hang out with older kids who saw our reject status as a badge of honor. They could get booze, dealt drugs, and would help sneak us into clubs. I was a good student during the day and a rager at night. I ended up leaving my parents' house before I graduated, and opted to move in with a bunch of punk rock girls. I shared a room and a single bed and learned about DIY (do-it-your-fucking-self) culture, anarchism, atheism, straight edge, and hard core. I was listening to Bad Brains, Minor Threat, Bikini Kill, John Zorn, Crass, Fugazi, The Cro-Mags, Patti Smith, The Specials, Hole, The Clash, Black Flag, Sex Pistols, The Slits, Dead Kennedys, Joan Jett, Motorhead, Die Kreuzen, The Damned, and The Misfits. Also, our local Memphis bands: Man With Gun Lives Here, Taint Skins, Cop Out, FMD, and Pistol Whipped.

The punk girls didn't give two shits about looking sexy, wearing respectable clothes, or fawning over guys. We died our hair crazy colors, and cut or shaved it in disheveled and nonsensical ways. If there was any sense of competition, it was about who could say fuck you the loudest with their appearance. Fuck me? Well, fuck you first! God, it felt so good to stop trying to fit in. The punk community taught me that I could take the pain and rage I felt and do something productive with it, involving social activism, music, and artistic expression.

In 1992, I moved to New York City to attend The School of Visual Arts. I found a railroad apartment on the Upper East Side with a rotating group of other teens, but we couldn't afford rent after just six months. I had a partial scholarship and was living on student loans so I moved to Brooklyn briefly, but after being booted from there I truly had no place to go. On the verge of dropping out of school because I couldn't afford tuition and rent, I shared my situation with a young local punk guy, Brett, who I'd met in Tompkins Square Park and at punk shows. He offered me a place to stay in his building, which he referred to as a squat. I had never heard the term before, but once I found out what it meant, I was in!

This was See Skwat. The building was dark inside, electricity was minimal, and it had no running water. Officially, it was unfit for habitation. It was owned by the city, and had been left unused and decaying for over 15 years. Some makeshift apartments were missing floors, walls, and ceilings. Residents had already replaced the stairs between several floors. People could find almost all the materials necessary to rebuild their apartments in the garbage: studs, drywall, flooring, and insulation. What they couldn't find they paid for themselves with money they earned at the same kinds of part time jobs that I found during this time: I waitressed, was a bicycle messenger, a hired hand at an all female moving company, and even did some general construction work. Living at See Skwat, I got to know squatters at the other buildings throughout the Lower East Side. We worked on our buildings during the day and partied at night. There were group construction projects, community room potlucks, and notorious concerts in the basement. We participated in community activities and board meetings, as well as demonstrations and protests for fair housing regulations for all New York City residents. When we couldn't afford to buy food we would dumpster dive and emerge with barely expired produce, bags of stale bagels, anything we could get our hands on. You just had to not give a shit when regular people gave you strange looks. If you were young, white, not covered in piss-stained clothes or drooling on yourself, and observed digging in the garbage, it really seemed to disturb passers-by.

After bouncing in and out of another apartment, I moved into Fifth Street Squat and started taking more pictures of the people around me. I found the environment fascinating and the people beautiful and intriguing. I had no interest in the typical art student subjects and I sure didn't want to shoot fashion, advertising, or anything I thought would support corporate America.
In my last year of school I moved into Serenity House. This apartment had some running water and electricity. There were more families in this building including four little girls, all about three to four years old.

During my time around the squats there were several devastating evictions: Glasshouse, the five buildings the made up Thirteenth Street Squat, Fifth Street Squat, and Dos Blockos. We all, as a community, and with support with some of our neighbors, fought like hell to keep them. I had a front row seats from which to observe the ways the media selectively covered our stories and events, leaving out crucial information and falsifying our history.

In 2000, the majority of the eleven remaining squats, (including See Skwat) started a process with City Hall, converting them into limited equity co-ops. Although the court's decision and how it was carried out was complicated and nuanced, it was widely seen as a victory for the squatters. However, the era of squatting on the Lower East Side as we had known it was forever changed.

To say that my time squatting in New York was formative is an understatement. Although it was, at times, a wild scene and full of imperfect people, including myself, it taught me so many valuable skills: construction, community organizing, and above all independence. My ability to trust my instincts and stay true to my beliefs, regardless of what others might think, was strengthened. Together, my fellow squatters and I crafted a life out of New York City's throwaways.

You can catch up with Ash Thayer on her website. - and buy her great book, Kill City, here.

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New York City Squatters In The 1990s - Flashbak

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"I humbly invite you to take a stroll through my life in the squatter community of the Lower East Side (LES) in the 1990s," writes Ash Thayer, whose book, Kill City, focuses on New York City squatters, harking back to another age, when city's were not being made overly safe,

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVxm9Efhm9w

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https://youtu.be/UFC77kr164c

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https://youtu.be/KBOcNf3557g

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The Lhasa Club Tapes - John Fleck in “The Cold Song”

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https://youtu.be/FYgVXPenwLk

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"MY SKIN IS A MAP" from TIM MILLER - MY QUEER BODY

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https://youtu.be/iZAv5C1PzEk

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GRITtv: Karen Finley: Art is Still Threatening

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https://youtu.be/et8l743J3go

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'All the Beauty and the Bloodshed' chronicles Nan Goldin's career of art and activism

'All the Beauty and the Bloodshed' chronicles Nan Goldin's career of art and activism

It's easy to focus on what's bad - 'All That Breathes' celebrates the good

It's easy to focus on what's bad - 'All That Breathes' celebrates the good

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Fresh Air for Feb. 9, 2023: Artist/activist Nan Goldin & filmmaker Laura Poitras

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'All the Beauty and the Bloodshed' chronicles Nan Goldin's career of art and activism 'All the Beauty and the Bloodshed' chronicles Nan Goldin's career of art and activism It's easy to focus on what's bad - 'All That Breathes' celebrates the good It's easy to focus on what's bad - 'All That Breathes' celebrates the good

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPtfWEuE0gY

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Super 16mm Masterclass :: History of 16mm Cameras - Indie Film Hustle

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https://youtu.be/xgC4RmkBehg

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https://youtu.be/MYlgj1hwcYw

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7 Rules of Cinematic Framing and Composition

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https://denniscooperblog.com/15-downtown-new-york-performance-artists-of-the-80s-and-early-90s-2/

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15 Downtown New York Performance Artists of the 80s and early 90s *

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'In performance art, usually one or more people perform in front of an audience. Performance artists often challenge the audience to think in new and unconventional ways about theater and performing, break conventions of traditional performing arts, and break down conventional ideas about "what art is," a preoccupation of modernist experimental theater and of postmodernism.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgKzEw3OFrA

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WHAT IS INSTALLATION ART ? Transforming Spaces into Immersive Experiences

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1990s New York City Streets, 90s Fashion

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A Brief History of New York Graffiti Art

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No Free Walls | Street Art & Gentrification Collide in Bushwick

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No Free Walls | Street Art & Gentrification Collide in Bushwick

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Jeremiah Moss | Vanishing New York: How a Great City Lost its Soul | Dey Street Books | July 2017 | 28 minutes (6,876 words) As someone who was evicted from her East Village apartment in 2005 - and who now finds herself worried about losing her place in gentrifying Kingston, New York - I was excited to see that Vanishing New York blogger "Jeremiah Moss" (the pseudonym for psychoanalyst Griffin Hansbury) had a book coming out. Since 2007, Moss's blog has catalogued the shuttering of one New York City institution after another, and staged demonstrations (which he himself didn't attend, for fear of outing himself) to try and save them. Where his blog has tended to focus mainly on the East Village and lower Manhattan, his book, Vanishing New York: How a Great City Lost its Soul, is more comprehensive, looking at the city as a whole, one borough and neighborhood at a time. It traces what he's labeled today's "hyper-gentrification" to the Koch era, and explores the problem in historical, economic, sociological, psychological, and personal terms.

Although Moss has been making his living for years as a shrink, he came to the city more than twenty years ago with the hope of becoming a writer. Having garnered glowing endorsements from veteran New York chroniclers like Luc Sante - not to mention the rare earnest blurb from Gary Shteyngart - it seems he's now truly arrived.

Below, the first chapter, "The East Village." - Sari Botton, Longreads Essays Editor
Continue reading "Mourning the Low-Rent, Weirdo-Filled East Village of Old"

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Mourning the Low-Rent, Weirdo-Filled East Village of Old - Longreads

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A chapter excerpted from Vanishing New York: How a Great City Lost its Soul, by Vanishing New York blogger “Jeremiah Moss” (the pseudonym for activist and psychoanalyst Griffin Hansbury). Moss traces the current wave of what he calls hyper-gentrification back to the Koch era.

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1990s east village new york - Google Search

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lower manhattan st mark's brooklyn art saint marks place 1980s restaurant late 90s greenwich village lower east side

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How ACT UP Flipped the Script on AIDS and Gay Rights

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What is HIV / AIDS and how does it affect your body? | Stanford Center for Health Education

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[music]

Kai Wright: It's Notes from America. I'm Kai Wright and welcome to the show. It's the first night of Hanukkah and the Solstice is coming this week, which means the Persian celebration of Yalda. Love to all of you who celebrate both of those holidays. It's a time of reflection and my guest tonight has been reflecting on his life quite publicly in recent years. Billy Porter has won an Emmy a Grammy, and a Tony. He's just an Oscar shy of that rare group of artists with all four awards, but that recognition has come only after decades of work as an actor and a singer, and a life that has had its struggles.

He reflects on that journey and the particularity of it as a Black queer HIV-positive man in his memoir unprotected. It is now out in paperback, and I recently got to talk with him about the book, about how art saved him, and about his engagement in this perilous political moment in our history. Billy Porter, thank you so much for this time. It is just a pleasure and an honor to spend some time with you.

Billy Porter: Thank you.

Kai Wright: I want to start where you start your memoir because you open it with the closing lines of Tony Kushner's epic show Angels in America, and those lions strike me to my core every single time. This we won't die secret deaths anymore. The world spins forward. Of course, I immediately think of your role on Pose as a character Pray Tell, and to me, you portray an angel in America looking out for queer kids of color, but for you, why begin the book with that idea, this idea of Kushner's angel sending us off to the great work of life?

Billy Porter: Well what's interesting to me is that I didn't know that I was missing something in the business and in my work. We talk about representation today. We have language for it. We didn't really have language. It was 1994. I'm Black, I'm queer, I'm in this business. I'm used for my talent in these spaces but I'm not allowed to really be a human being. I'm used as a clown, essentially, and there doesn't seem to be much movement for me in these spaces. This is pre-Hamilton, this is pre-Cynthia Erivo in the Color Purple. When you sang like a Black person and didn't sound like Mandy Patinkin, Patti Lupone, or Bernadette Peters, you were a Black entertainer without a soul.

You were there to be used to stop shows and to entertain, but when it came down to telling real stories about real human beings, there was no space for us in that. There was no space for Black people in general, and not to even say about a Black queer man. Angels in America I took myself to see part one, Millennium Approaches, and it was the first time that I saw a representation of my Black, queer, educated, grounded, three-dimensional human self on anything. I had never seen it before at all, and it wasn't until I was seeing it that I realized I had never seen it, and Jeffrey Wright was extraordinary in the role.

Kai Wright: Breathtaking.

Billy Porter: I knew in that moment that if I was ever going to make it in this business and by make it I mean convince the world that I'm an actor, it would be through the role of Belize. I knew that I was going to have to stand at an intersection that didn't exist. I was going to have to represent a community that didn't exist yet, so that when the time came I would be ready, and that's exactly what happened. I saw that show, I looked at the market and I was like, "Oh, they're casting straight boys in these roles." It's okay for now, but not always. Because as the Black gay man y'all need to give me that role.

Kai Wright: It's so funny that you put, or interesting to me that you put it that way around literally hadn't seen yourself. When I came out, I'd say to people when they asked, "Oh, did you always know?" I was like, "Sure, but I literally had no point of reference. I had not seen myself." People couldn't understand what I meant when I said that, at least at the time. I literally had never seen myself.

Billy Porter: Yes, and I've talked about this too. I was around the corner- Well, actually the back of the theaters butted against each other, and I was in Greece, the revival of Greece with Rosie O'Donnell and Megan Mullally and all of that, and I was playing a teen angel and they had me in 14 inches of orange rubber hair, and I'd stay running around like a little Richard cartoon on crack and it was just not- I was miserable, and I didn't understand because it was like, oh, the dream is- I'm like in a Broadway show and I'm a principal and I'm creating a role and I'm miserable.

Seeing Angels in America gave me clarity, and it was the first time too where like you saw a Black queer man educated the heart of the show, the center of sanity with all these white people swirling around him during the AIDS crisis, and Tony was dealing with the issues that many communities weren't talking about. He was speaking for his Jewish community and the white community, and the Black community and women. It was just so much at the same time, and it changed everything for me, and then what happened is Pray Tell became my own personal three seasoned Angels in America journey.

[music]

Kai Wright: Pray Tell was his character in the TV series Pose, which is about a chosen family of queer youth in New York's Ball scene at the height of the AIDS epidemic. He won an Emmy for the role in 2019 and was nominated for two more in the following years. The character Pray Tell spends part of the series concealing the fact that he's HIV positive from that chosen family, and in 2021, Billy Porter disclosed that he too had been living with HIV for years and had sought to keep it quiet.

Pray Tell was HIV positive and went through a journey of revealing that to his community. You had lived with HIV for 14 years and kept it to yourself and have now told the world about that, and I actually wonder about because you've become such a symbol of laying down the burden and claiming our joy and I wonder what it's like. Now to be on the other side of that, now it's been some time since you made that public decoration through this role. What's it like to be on the other side of that?

Billy Porter: It's such a wonderful question because as an artist, as a human, as a Black man, as whatever, when you live in a space of lack for your entire life when abundance shows up, it's still work to understand how to receive that, and I'm in the middle space of that. I'm in the space of trying to let go of waiting for the other shoe to drop all the time, and choosing joy, choosing it, it's a choice. I have to wake up every morning and recommit to choosing joy. Sometimes I'm really successful, sometimes I'm not successful at all. Some days I'm not successful at all, during the election I was not successful for several days in a row leading up to it and after it. I was just not successful at Joy.

It's really difficult right now, particularly, we're all living inside of a collective trauma and chaos that we're trying to move through and we have to feel simultaneously, and I'm learning how to do both of those things at the same time. It's like, you have to feel it, you have to be in it, and being inside of what's happening is what then allows for us to move through it, and I don't know that everybody understands that part of the journey. I am just learning how to understand that part of the journey. Embracing the truth is what gets us to peace, what gets us to joy. It is effort, it takes effort. It's work, it is work. It's what I'm finding for myself at least. I'll just talk about myself.

[music]

Kai Wright: I am talking with Actor Billy Potter about his memoir Unprotected, which is now out in paperback. Coming up we'll talk about how he's done a lot of that work of healing and finding joy through his art, and we'll get the backstory on that tuxedo dress that broke the internet during the Oscars in 2019, so stay with us.

[music]

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Kai Wright: It's Notes from America and Kai Wright and I'm talking this week to Billy Potter about his memoir Unprotected, which is now out in paperback. It's a revealing portrait in which he talks about really hard stuff from his childhood as a queer Black boy. He finished writing it during the early COVID shutdown, and he says that gave him space to really dig into himself.

Billy Porter: COVID helped me find the form in which to tell the story.

Kai Wright: What do you mean?

Billy Porter: I didn't want it to simply just be a cradle-to-grave narrative. I love books, I love writers, and so my standards for myself was very high. It was debilitating me for a bit, and then when I was able to just sit during COVID and quiet my mind and just be present, I was able to just settle into what I was feeling and what I was feeling was a parallel disruption of my nervous system that I felt during the AIDS crisis. Then I was able to align those two things and write from toggling between how the past living in that space in the 80s and 90s how that really affected me and my generation, then toggle back and forth to how this one was making all of us feel as well, and trying to marry those worlds together to find a space for healing.

Kai Wright: You write about your mother in very powerful terms in this book. She's been a part of your public conversation. Can you tell us a little bit about her and really starting with her birth and the way that shaped her life, because that's become such an important part of your own story too?

Billy Porter: Yes. My grandmother was ready to have her, there was no doctor around. They gave her this medication they used to give to babies that weren't developing well to hold them back for a little bit so that they could grow inside the womb a little bit better and they gave that to my grandmother to hold the baby for a while. Then the doctor came and forced my mother out, which pinched some nerve and created this disability with her that to this day at 76 years old has never been named. It presents like cerebral palsy, but it's not cerebral palsy, but she's in a nursing home and she has no mobility and it's degenerative and it's been her entire life just degenerative starting from the time she was born.

I watched her fight a system that-- she was born in the 40s, so any disability was aligned with retardation and nothing was wrong with her mind. Nothing has ever been wrong with her mind, but she was treated as if something was wrong with her mind back then. She was just put out of the consciousness of civilization, and she was determined to have a different life than she did and she got up every morning, got up every day, and lived whatever life showed up for whatever life was in front of her and that is something to me to see every day of my life that she is my hero.

If anybody ever asks me, it's like she's my hero because even today the fight we had with the nursing home was that they weren't getting her out of bed early enough in the morning. She was like, get me out of the bed, get me washed, get me dressed. If I have to be here, I'm not going to stay in bed all day. That was the fight that we were having so she's a lifer. Whatever the life is she has shown up for it and she's taught me and my sister to do the same.

Kai Wright: You write though also about, it's been complicated about the ways that she tried to protect you as a child but that didn't quite come out right. Not always. The ways that you needed to be protected.

Billy Porter: Yes, she was sheltered and the shelter was religion, and religion was Christianity and Christianity was our colonizer's religion. One of the things that came with the colonization was the stripping of our ancestry, which is the condemnation of the two spirit, aka the queer. Every Indigenous culture, including the African Indigenous cultures, have the two-spirit, which in modern days, in our time, would be considered the queer people. We have a direct connection to spirit because we are aligned with the male and the female inside of us. We're connected to all of it. That's why we have a direct connection to spirit, and we're the ones that were charged to protect the villages and historically protect the tribes. My mother didn't really-- our people don't really remember that. That's on purpose. I'm here to remind everybody that I'm not nothing new and we're actually a gift.

[music]

Kai Wright: Gifts are not always well received. To some, that gift is a threat. To others, that gift is something to prey upon. Billy Porter shares in his memoir the ways in which he was sexually abused as a child, including by his stepfather. I asked him whether writing the book was a way to begin reckoning with that trauma.

Billy Porter: I've been reckoning with it for years, as a matter of fact, I went into trauma therapy during COVID and we really teased apart in a different way this sexual trauma. As she began to understand me and my work, she really began to understand that I've been using my art to try to heal my trauma for my whole life, but not even understand-- she said you were doing it unmonitored. You were just doing it instinctively because you understood somehow that dealing with it from a creative angle would be healing for you and I have in everything I've done for a really long time. It's not the first time. This book is not the first time.

It's just another that I've inspected and taken it out and tried to ask why and what the point of it was and how to heal from it and set myself free. Is that possible? I'm still in the evolution of that, when I think one of the things about early severe trauma is it doesn't ever really go away, but you learn how to manage it better.

Kai Wright: It seems like in that way your art has indeed been part of what changed the trajectory of your life. Is that how you see it? Do you think art would have found you one way or the other, or that it's part of what you needed in order to have your life?

Billy Porter: I think it's what I needed in order for me to have my life. I don't know that I would have survived any of this without it, and I know that for certain. I had something to wake to and for every day that made me happy, that made me focused, that made me feel I was being of service and contributing to the world in some way. [music]

Kai Wright: In 2019, on the red carpet at the Oscars, Billy Porter had one of those viral moments in our culture, one in which he indeed contributed to the world with his gift of queerness, and also truly established his place as a fashion icon. If you somehow haven't seen the tuxedo dress to go look it up and there is a story behind it.

Billy Porter: I'm a big believer in speaking life into yourself. Words have power. When I was in college, I was teasing. We would have Oscar parties, and I would tease that, I'm going to wear a gown to the Oscars. I'm sick of the same penguin suit. This doesn't make any sense. Women get to have all the fun. I was saying that in the late 80s. When the surprise of being summoned to the Oscars to host the red carpet for ABC, I was surprised. Immediately I was reminded of what I had said all those years prior. I was like, "I think I'm going to have to do that." I was at a Christian Siriano fashion show, and I thought, "Oh my goodness, what if it looks like a tux close."

If the shot is really close and it looks like a tux, and then when you pull back, it's a full-on anti-bellen ball gown with replete with [unintelligible 00:25:36] and everything. I said that would be a full gag. I talked to Christian at the party. We only had 11 days, 12 days, or something. He agreed and he snatched that up in like, nine days. He made that in nine days. I knew that it would make a splash. I didn't realize that it would change. There was a light that I had I say B-O-A-O Before Oscar After Oscar, it is completely different after Oscars. My life is different.

Kai Wright: In what way, what do you mean? Say more about that?

Billy Porter: It just that It cracked open a space that I knew in my heart existed but I didn't know that it was so big and I didn't know that it was so-- it cracked open the world to me.

Kai Wright: So ironic through the claiming of that two square and that queerness that you had to wrestle with through claiming it, it cracked open the whole world.

Billy Porter: Right. I say it all the time. It's like everybody told me my queerness would be my liability, and it was for two decades plus. I'm so grateful that I lived long enough to see the transition where my queerness is my superpower.

[music]

Kai Wright: The other thing I would ask you about that moment is while there, you spoke with the late Congressman John Lewis. I want to ask you the same question you asked him because it comes up a lot on our show from folks, which is for those of us who are feeling fatigue politically. Who are, as you put it earlier in this conversation, struggle some mornings to say, "Okay, I'm ready." What encourages the forward momentum and engagement, how do we find it?

Billy Porter: First of all, we have to figure out how to take care of ourselves. The self-care component is everything, because when you take care of yourself, then you can recharge. We have to refill our wells. The second thing is like he said, we can never give up. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. That's what Fred Douglas said over 250 years ago. The conversation that we're having and the messaging has to change. I know at 53, our messaging is a change is going to come. Sam Cook.

In that there is an implication that we arrive somewhere, and the work is finished. We arrive. Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. Marriage equality. We got a Black president, Roe v. Wade. We arrive somewhere and the work is finished. A change is going to come. The change came and the change went, because we didn't understand that the work continues. Yes, we fight for something specific, and then once we get that specific thing, we continue to fight to make sure it doesn't get reversed. If we know that going in, then we take care of ourselves in a different way and we will not ever be fatigued again.

Kai Wright: You've got an album coming out next year, and as I understand it, the album will speak to this political and social moment that you're talking about now and that's-- am I right about that?

Billy Porter: While it has everything, it's a pop album. I wrote a lot with the late, great Andrea Martin Eminek from London. I wrote a lot with Justin Tranter. He's an executive producer on it. For me, it is like I'm so proud of the work. It speaks to my time in this business. It speaks to what I feel about the world. It speaks to the journey of love and what that truly means and healing. There's a lot of flexing on it [chuckles] because I've come out on the other side of something that, on paper, I wasn't supposed to. It wasn't supposed to look like this for me.

Kai Wright: Right.

Billy Porter: History is written by the winners and I win. There's a joy in it. There's a flex in it that makes me chuckle because I've never really been that guy. It leans into that. Musically it is everything I've ever wanted to do and say and put out in the mainstream music market. I'm thrilled, and excited. There's a new single out right now I just put out right before the election called Stranger Things. Go Get it I second at Global Citizen. You can see the performance on YouTube. It's called Stranger Things. I'm so proud of the work. There's some stuff that's highly political on there, but it's not the whole album. It's everything. It's all of my dimensions.

Kai Wright: It's so interesting too that because you write in the memoir about pop being weaponized against you and now ypu-- I guess you already really were a pop star, but with this album, you become explicitly pop star.

Billy Porter: Yes. I'm trying. We'll see.

Kai Wright: Is there anything in that, just that this relationship with the genre, that at one point it was--

Billy Porter: Well, yes. Like I said, one of the lyrics is history's written by the winners, then I win. You all put me out in the 90s. She's bad.

Kai Wright: Thank goodness for it. Before I let you go, you mentioned earlier you're 53 years old and the world has exploded for you midway through your life. I just wonder how that does or doesn't shape your priorities as an artist.

Billy Porter: Well, first I have to say I'm grateful that it happened now and not earlier because I know who I am and I know what I'm here for. I'm ready for this and there's a service component to this intersection that I stand inside of these intersections that I stand inside of. It's my goal to make sure that I show up properly and I stand in the service that I'm here for. How great it is when your work is your service. My work is my service. It really fills me up. It really really does.

Kai Wright: Well, Billy Porter, thank you so much for this time and for your work.

Billy Porter: Thank you.

Kai Wright: It impacts on me personally. Thank you.

Billy Porter: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Kai Wright: Notes from America is a production of WNYC studios. You can follow us wherever you get your podcast and join us on Instagram @notes with Kai. Listen, if you didn't catch the show last week, we did this awesome thing where we invited listeners to call in and live curate a Notes from America Holiday playlist. If you're looking for music to get you through the next few weeks, do check it out. You can go to our website and click on any other recent episodes to find a link to the playlist or you can just search for it on Spotify.

One more piece of exciting news, next month for the Martin Luther King Day holiday, we are going to record our show live from the stage of the famous Apollo Theater here in Harlem. This is part of an annual event produced by WNYC and the Apollo to honor MLK Day. For the first hour of it, I'll be hosting conversations inspired by the song Young Gifted and Black. The event is Sunday, January 15th. Tickets are free. You just have to RSVP to get them. They'll be available starting in the new year on January 2nd. You can get all the details @wnyc.org/mlk2023.

Jared Paul does the music and mixing for our show, editing, producing, and reporting courtesy of Karen Frillmann, Vanessa Handy, Regina de Heer, Rahima Nasa, Kousha Navidar and Lindsay Foster Thomas. I am Kai Wright. Thanks for spending time with us tonight and happy holidays.
Copyright © 2023 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio's programming is the audio record. terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

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Billy Porter on Bringing Blackness, Queerness and Fullness to Art | Notes from America with Kai Wright | WNYC Studios

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music] Kai Wright: It's Notes from America. I'm Kai Wright and welcome to the show. It's the first night of Hanukkah and the Solstice is coming this week, which means the Persian celebration of Yalda. Love to all of you who celebrate both of those holidays.

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HIV survivors reflect on 40 years of AIDS epidemic l ABC News

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The Face Of AIDS: The Story Behind Therese Frare's Photo | 100 Photos | TIME

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Therese Frare's scene of the deathbed of AIDS patient David Kirby gave the illness a human face. Its use in a United Colors of Benetton ad blurred the lines between commerce and public provocation in 1990.

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Wojnarowicz Set New York’s 1980s Art Scene on Fire | The Short List (Full Film)

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Laurie Anderson  Home Of The Brave 1986) FULL

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1990s New York Nightlife, Club Interiors

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(high quality) New York hardcore -1986 on the Regis Philbin Morning show ABC - nyhc

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New York City nightlife in the early 1990s was a hot and visceral experience. Drenched in throbbing neon while whirling away inside the relentless, pulsating music, a simple passing glance and an open mind could lead to the journey of a lifetime. True freedom was something tangible-even addictive. Freedom from one's self. Freedom from society's expectations. Freedom from the politics and anxieties that dwell beyond the club walls. In New York after dark, life was indulged to the heart's content, and there was plenty to go around.

Bold experiments in music, fashion, art, and sexuality set the tone for decades to come and established a new paradigm of American culture, one that extends well beyond the realms of nightlife and entertainment. Sexuality was celebrated in all of its colorful forms and without judgement. In these clubs, every breed of New Yorker-from candy-eyed ravers to Wall Street suits-intermingled with respect and longing for an unforgettable night.

A night in clubland wasn't lived vicariously through social media or filtered through an Instagram feed; these nights were experienced raw and unspoiled. Influencers wore their statements in bright and colorful expressions on the dance floor. What went viral were sentiments of peace, love, unity, and respect. Many of the clubs in Manhattan enforced a strict no photography rule, and because of this, the greatest nights were experienced one time and one time only. In 90s clubland, you just had to be there.

In the decade before this scene hit, New York City was a void waiting to be filled by a new generation. The AIDS crisis and its horrendous toll on the city had shuttered most of the adult playgrounds of the day. Mega clubs like Studio 54 had met their demise under Mayor Ed Koch's crackdown on illicit club activities, while the punk rock ethos of downtown bands like the Ramones and Blondie had slowly sunk into plastic commoditization. In 1987, the death of Andy Warhol marked the end of an artistic era.

That same year, 22-year-old Steve Eichner left his hometown of Long Beach, New York, with the dream of making it big as a music and celebrity photographer. As with most starry-eyed kids who ditch their hometowns for the Big Apple, Eichner was passionate and ready to work. He set up his photography studio at 27th Street and 10th Avenue and soon after landed a gig as a nightlife photographer for an independent magazine. An addictive routine ensued: late nights with camera in hand among the swirl of downtown clubs like Quick, Reins, and Glamorama, followed by early morning hours at the photo lab. Then repeat.
A night in clubland wasn't lived vicariously through social media or filtered through an Instagram feed; these nights were experienced raw and unspoiled.
Eichner earned a reputation as a reliable and talented photographer and caught the attention of Gene DiNino, owner of the Roxy nightclub, and was granted access into the venue's exclusive VIP spaces. Located at 515 West 18th Street, the Roxy was loud and proud, featuring an erotic roller disco and a house drag queen that could be seen soaring above the dance floor on her suspended throne. For Steve Eichner, this was pure visual ecstasy, but the party didn't end there. Through word of mouth, he soon discovered the thrilling world of illegal raves on the streets of Manhattan known as "outlaw parties," and the outrageous Club Kids who threw them.

An "outlaw party" was, in essence, the glitter-bombed forefather to the flash mob-imagine a quiet, late-night dining room in a midtown McDonald's suddenly erupting into a stampede of drag queens, three-eyed trolls, and dancing yellow chickens. From when the first cup of spiked Kool-Aid was poured to the moment the police arrived to dispel the crowd of hundreds that had gathered to party, it was pure adrenaline-fueled ecstasy.

In 1991, Steve Eichner was hired by Peter Gatien, an uncompromising entrepreneur from Quebec whose financial ventures in New York nightlife defined him as the undisputed "King of Clubland." As house photographer to Gatien's club empire, Eichner was granted exclusive access to some of the most iconic venues of the era: the Limelight, Tunnel, Palladium, and Club USA. In this new era of clubbing, every detail of the evening-from the neon ambience to the go-go dancing Club Kids-was coordinated to make each paying guest feel as if they were at the center of the universe. The parties would operate like amusement parks for adults and for twenty dollars at the door you were granted an experience like no other on earth.

In the shell of a nineteenth-century deconsecrated Episcopal church at the corner of Sixth Avenue and West 20th Street, the Limelight was the crown jewel of Gatien's pulsing empire. Under stained glass windows and religious iconography, subcultures thrived and crossbred with one another-everything from Goth and experimental electronica in the upstairs Gregorian room to Club Kid Michael Alig's notorious Disco 2000 parties hosted in the Library downstairs. There was a room filled entirely with foam and on the Limelight's main stage, the era's most buzzed about alternative bands broke new ground during the weekly "Rock 'n' Roll Church" event. Going to church had never been so much fun.

Further west in the Chelsea neighborhood was Tunnel, situated in an old railway station on 12th Avenue between 27th and 28th Streets. On any given night, the entrance line could stretch a full city block to 11th Avenue. The venue's long and dark railway design offered plenty of space to stretch out and indulge in any form of sinful activity, while each themed room offered its own unique experience: the Lava Lounge, Victorian libraries, a ball-pit room, and even an S&M dungeon designed as an adult playground for pleasure and excess.
The parties operated like amusement parks for adults and for twenty dollars at the door you were granted an experience like no other on earth.
Off Union Square was Palladium, a mega club located in what is today a New York University dormitory on 14th Street between Irving Place and Third Avenue. The building was built in the 1920s as a movie palace and by the sixties was hosting bands like the Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead. When Steve Eichner and his camera arrived, the bill featured music icons like Prince and Run DMC, as well as new acts like Naughty By Nature, LL Cool J, and A Tribe Called Quest-solidifying this venue's reputation as New York's premiere hip-hop scene.

Of all the spaces that Gatien held dominion over, perhaps the most fantastic representation of '90s clubland was Club USA. Located in the heart of Times Square in what was once Broadway's Central Theatre, its interior was designed to blend seamlessly with the barrage of consumerism right outside its doors. Gigantic neon billboards above the dancefloor stood as effigies to the old Times Square, along with porno booths and XXX adverts in every nook of the club. None of this was as shocking as the three-story slide from the upper bar to the ground level that saw club goers zipping down headfirst with their skirts upended. It was here that Eichner managed to document an incredible array of the era's cultural figures-Joan Rivers, Steven Tyler, Kate Moss, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tupac Shakur, and even Donald Trump. Everyone who was anyone in the '90s went out of their way to be caught on camera at Club USA.

With little warning, Club USA closed its doors to the public in 1994, after only two years in business. Following a bankruptcy filing by the building's owner, all of the site's tenants were unceremoniously evicted. As fast as Club USA had burst onto the scene with its over-the-top antics and ambitious vision, it too had become a casualty to the very thing it's concept encapsulated-the passing of one New York City era to the next.

For Peter Gatien, the closing of Club USA marked the beginning of the end for Clubland; by the end of the decade, Gatien would be deported to his home country of Canada under charges of tax evasion. Many of the promoters, artists, and Club Kids who helped define the scene had succumbed to the lifestyle's heavy use of drugs and alcohol; and in 1996, the murder of Club Kid and purported drug dealer Andre Melendez by Michael Alig and his roommate Robert "Freeze" Riggs meant that the party was truly over.

For Steve Eichner, it meant new beginnings. In the years following his clubland escapades, Eichner was hired as a staff photographer for Women's Wear Daily (WWD) and became a fixture of the New York fashion industry, documenting over forty fashion weeks and attending an incredible twenty-one Met Galas during his tenure. His pictures have since been featured in Vogue, the New York Times, Newsweek, Time, Rolling Stone, People, Vanity Fair, Cosmopolitan, W Magazine, Details, and GQ.
Each frame is like a snapshot from a fever dream that tingles the senses-the visceral heat of the bodies, the smell of the spilled liquor, the deafening bass.
As for his archive of thousands of images made as Gatien's house photographer, the original slides were placed into a climate-controlled storage in Long Island where they would remain untouched for the next several decades. In 2019, Steve Eichner, along with myself, revisited this enormous trove of photographs and began the process of formally cataloging and archiving the original source material. More than a collection of party photos from the '90s, what was rediscovered in those crates stand as a testament to the significant impact of New York City nightlife on today's popular culture.

Each frame is like a snapshot from a fever dream that tingles the senses-the visceral heat of the bodies, the smell of the spilled liquor, the deafening bass. For the people frozen in time within these images-the starry-eyed kids from Long Island, the flamboyant drag queens and Club Kids, the entrepreneurs and the suit-and-ties, the eyes of youth, and the aged wisdom-the party never ended. It's been raging for decades within binders collecting dust in a Long Beach storage facility. For all those who missed the party or who keep those memories stored away in the backs of their minds, these photographs capture a generation that shared an electric vision of the future and chose to make it their reality.

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From In the Limelight: The Visual Ecstasy of NYC Nightlife in the 90s by Gabriel Sanchez. Used with the permission of Prestel Publishing. Copyright © 2020 by Gabriel Sanchez and Steve Eichner.

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The Center of the Universe? Capturing New York City 90s Nightlife

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New York City nightlife in the early 1990s was a hot and visceral experience. Drenched in throbbing neon while whirling away inside the relentless, pulsating music, a simple passing glance and an open mind could lead to the journey of a lifetime. True freedom was something tangible-even addictive. Freedom from one's self.

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6sqft's series The Urban Lens invites photographers to share work exploring a theme or a place within New York City. In this installment, Ash Thayer shares intimate punk portraits of Lower East Side squatters from the 1990s. The photos are part of her collection "KILL CITY," which was recently compiled into a book and published under the same name.
These days it's difficult to think of the Lower East Side as much more than a destination for bar hopping, rapidly rising rents, and general raucousness, but not that long ago the neighborhood was a place pulsating with community, character, and openness to all walks: including squatters. One such squatter who found solace in this once distinct downtown enclave was photographer Ash Thayer who came to the city in the early '90s to enroll at the School of Visual Arts, but after a series of misfortunes (e.g. a shady landlord who stole her security deposit) found herself homeless.

Thayer, however, had always had an affinity with the counterculture community and it didn't take long for the kids of NYC's punk scene to lend her a hand. In 1992, she joined the See Skwat, one of several squats she'd ultimately spend eight years living in and documenting. Ahead, Thayer shares some of her emotional photography from her time at See Skwat, and she speaks to 6sqft about her experience living in what she describes as an "important piece of the unknown history of New York."

Mattie on Serenity Roof, 1997

I had been photographing my friends within the punk rock/anarchist/DIY community starting in my senior year of high school. I was very much in the moment, making images of who and what I was passionate about. When I began art school at SVA, I noticed most of the students pursuing fashion and other types of commercial work, which I had a really hard time getting interested in, so I just stuck with my friends and counterculture community, which was endlessly more fascinating and beautiful to me than the commercial world of art whose purpose was in creating desire while inciting personal insecurities in order to generate consumption of products and goods to achieve personal fulfillment. In short, I did not want to use photography as a tool to manipulate audiences. That much I was sure of at the time.
Child's Room, Serenity House, 1997 (top left); Sqwert, Serenity House, 1997 (top right); Bed and broom, 5th St. Squat, 1995 (bottom)
The winters were close to unbearable if you did not have a small room with insulated walls or enough electricity to heat it. The cold was miserable and it separated the real squatters from the "summer campers" who just came stayed in NY for the months with nice weather. Living without water was rough because we had to haul it up in containers after getting it from fire hydrants.

Entering and exiting the building could be stressful if you knew your building was being watched by the city. There were examples of police and city inspectors attempting to come inside the building when residents were coming or going, which could lead to an immediate eviction if they got in. They could make a claim that there was a building code violation and that it put the residents in imminent danger. If the city was pushing for an eviction, you were pretty much screwed if anyone got in. Hence the secrecy, high level of commitment and trust amongst residents, and a limited number of door keys.

When the 13th Street evictions took place, there was a huge standoff between squatters and local residents and Mayor Guiliani,'s massive police presence. It was one of the most publicized evictions of five buildings and was a heartbreaking loss for our community.

Caroline looking out of her window, Serenity House, 1996 (top); Joey looking at a map, See Sqwat, 1997 (bottom)

The Lower East Side has always been a melting pot of different lower income ethnicities and communities, that is until the late 80s and 90s. In the late 70s and 80s, from what I have been told, there was initial tension between some of the residents who had been there for decades and squatters, due to fears around gentrification. When young middle-class white people start moving into a neighborhood, it's a guarantee that rents will rise. However, the squatters were all lower income and earned the trust of neighbors by cleaning up empty lots and chasing out many of the drug dealers, criminals, and junkies that made the neighborhood unsafe. I am speaking in very general terms here. Drug use was often a problem within the squatting community, even though most buildings had rules against hard drugs.

There was constant conflict between squatters and police, particularly as a result of Mayor Guiliani's war on squatters and homeless people in general. Instead of constructively dealing with the issue of homelessness and lack of affordable housing, his solution was to evict squatters and arrest people sleeping on the streets. He made evicting squatters from their long-time homes part of his campaign for election. Since real estate investors had been chomping at the bit to gentrify the LES and break up its long-standing communities for their own profit, this motivated them to help elect Guliani.
Famous, Pregnant and building windows, 7th St. Squat, 1994
The police became his personal militia, paid for by New York taxpayers. He spent millions of tax dollars on evicting poor families.

I did not squat for eight years straight. I bounced in and out of apartments whenever I could afford it. Because of school, and time constraints, it was difficult to commit to a building and take on an entire apartment or studio and build it from the beams up. So, I would stay with other squatters in their apartments (or what was to become an apartment) and help them, as well as contributing labor on the building and shared spaces, like stairwells, electric, masonry, roof work, etc.

It was a full-time job occupying and creating homes in these buildings and it left little time for other jobs. We lived in the construction sites. Once an apartment and the building had the basics (which would often take years), then there was time for personal pursuits. The clock was always ticking to bring the building up to city codes as quickly as possible to avoid eviction.
Why did you decide to put all of these images in a book?
The project organically came to a close when I decide to move to Los Angeles in 1998. It was such a culture shock that I didn't stay there long. I lived in my hometown, Memphis for a year or two, working on a project before getting accepted to graduate school at both Yale and Columbia. These opportunities were too good to pass up, or so I thought at the time, so I returned to NYC to attend Columbia. I lived in Crown Heights, then Bushwick.

Carrie taking a break in window, 5th St. Squat, 1995
View from Serenity Roof overlooking 9th St. and Avenue C, 1998
It was an opportunity that came about as a result of Colin Moyniham, a writer at The New York Times, publishing an article and group of images from this series. Another previous squatter, Stacy Wakefield, contacted me and helped me create a book proposal, which resulted in powerHouse offering to publish it. I had rather lost hope that anyone would be interested in exhibiting or publishing this project. I knew that it was an important piece of the unknown history of New York, much like the incredible stories documented in Luc Sant's book, . I received a lot of discouragement from professors and no gallery had been interested in exhibiting it, with very few exceptions. It has taken time for people's perspectives to change regarding the ongoing housing crisis within our capitalistic structure and it took the market crash of 2008 to force Americans to see it as a real concern affecting our citizens. Owning a home is out of the question for most Americans today.

Yes, all of the time. I have maintained close relationships with many people. When the book was released we had a huge reunion party. I still stay with friends at See Skwat when I travel to NYC.

Well, it's fairly shocking and tragic. It's so sad to see small, family-owned businesses replaced with chain stores and banks. So much of the local character and uniqueness has been destroyed by lack of preservation, community planning and the city's ruthless profit mongering. The Lower East Side feels like one big college dorm frat party, with a shrinking population of locals. New people moving in are literally renting what we would consider a large closet for several thousand dollars a month. It's gross.

Oh, yes!
Are you a photographer who'd like to see your work featured on The Urban Lens? Get in touch with us at [email protected] . MORE FROM THE URBAN LENS:
I have two projects I am working on that are very exciting to me! The first is called "Shotgun Baptism." It is a photography and film based project addressing the shared experiences of women, minorities, and folks in the queer, trans, and non-binary gendered communities within the current patriarchal political structure in America.

The second is titled "Viking Women: The Crying Bones." Seeking to challenge and problematize traditional androcentric readings of Viking women and their way of life, this project provides modern day visual tableaus that collude with historian Anna Bech Lund's thesis, "Women and Weapons in the Viking Age." It includes photographs and a large installation piece.

***

All photographs courtesy of Ash Thayer

Neighborhoods : Lower East Side

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The Urban Lens: Ash Thayer's poignant photographs of '90s Lower East Side squatters | 6sqft

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6sqft's series The Urban Lens invites photographers to share work exploring a theme or a place within New York City. In this installment, Ash Thayer shares intimate punk portraits of Lower East Side squatters from the 1990s. The photos are part of her collection "KILL CITY," which was recently compiled into a book and published under the same name.

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Support WOW Cafe Theater - 40 Year Celebration!

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Contact Improvisation - A couple of basic exercises

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Core Connection / Sharing Balance in Contact Improv

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Contact Improvisation - Moments of practice, with Irene Sposetti & Johan Nilsson

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Heroin Addiction, Recovery and No Shame | Crystal Oertle | TEDxColumbus

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What Heroin Addiction Is Really Like, As Told By A Former User

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Measure Your Existence (endurance performance art piece by Tehching Hsieh)

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Measure Your Existence (endurance performance art piece by Tehching Hsieh)

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Larry Kramer, playwright of The Normal Heart and gay rights activist. 

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Larry Kramer, playwright of The Normal Heart and gay rights activist. 

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https://youtu.be/XVq0FcARYTM

Larry Kramer is known for being an outspoken activist. The Normal Heart is a much more anger-charged piece compared to Angels in America that came out around the same time. Because of this, it was not as successful. It is a piece that is very much auto-biographical, and is a great depiction of Kramer’s own experience living through the early years of the epidemic and how the disease manifested so suddenly in his community in New York City. There is a movie version starring Mark Ruffalo, Matt Bomer, Jim Parsons, and Julia Roberts that is worth the watch. Second best to seeing the play live of course.

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Larry Kramer Interview: Playwright on 'The Normal Heart' Movie | The New York Times

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Title: In 2019, protesters took to the streets around the world to demand change