Monday, December 26, 2011

East River bandshell

c. 1989, the old bandshell in the East River park. The scene of the great graffiti/hip hop finale in Charlie Ahern's film Wild Style. Built in 1941, torn down and remade in 2001.

Grady's Altar

Grady was killed in 1991 in an altercation on the street with an off-duty NYPD cop and light-heavyweight boxer. A beautiful artist, a lousy punch, a great loss.

Saturday, December 17, 2011

Bullet Space c. 1990

Posters on the building are from the book project Your House Is Mine (edited by Nadia Coen and Andrew Castrucci). They were also pasted on abandoned buildings in the neighborhood.

4th of July (a good day for arson)

They blamed bottle rockets, but someone set fire to the building across the street. A big old factory - five floors of pigeon, rat and junkie droppings and the piled debris of years of disuse went up with a rush and the flames were so high you could see it blaze from blocks away. It burned so hot that we couldn’t stand on our roof - the heat reddened our faces and the smoke scorched our lungs, and the bricks of our building got too hot to touch. We were engulfed by the heat, afraid we’d burn down too, standing under cascades of sparks and blasts of superheated air.
And then the burning building collapsed, setting the firemen running and the neighbors yelling as bricks tumbled and burning beams flew about. A whole wall fell sideways, crushing all the cars parked in the lot next door and also the unlucky chickens cooped there. They were probably cooked already by the heat. By morning Third Street felt apocalyptic - a smoking, ruined landscape populated by fat rats, skinny cats and the local mob of skeletal stray dogs. For a week they pulled out the twisted metal of flattened cars and lined them up to be carted away - compacted scrap. The smell lingered - burnt neighborhood.
Another year on the Fourth, gangbangers lit up a bag of fireworks they had stuffed under the seat of a stripped car outside our front door. A smothered hissing detonation, then smoldering stinking black smoke until the car burst into flames. It burned so hard the fire licked our front door and second floor fire escape and the choking greasy smoke poured through our crooked old windows. We didn’t want to let the firemen in (safety violations always a good way to evict) but there was too much fire and they were too busy to mess with us. Let us in or we’ll cut the door down. My skin and everything in my apartment was covered with greasy black soot.
As our neighborhood was to drugs, Chinatown was to fireworks -
an open-air bazaar of shells and mortars, M-80s, blazing fountains and
roman candles. They sold openly on street corners and out of car trunks. Which meant that every year our building would shake rattle and roll with weeks of massive detonations in the streets. Smoke hung low on hot nights as the Lower East Side sky flashed colors and smelled of gunpowder. Dangerous and beautiful sparks, like us. We’d watch the shrieking rockets shoot up at buildings and whistle down the street at cars. Kids would shoot them at each other. For fireproofing we’d close our windows in the stifling summer heat and pray nothing landed on our roof.

Monday, December 12, 2011

Bullet Space c. 2002

Gia and Griff, at Bullet Space c. 2002

Umbrella House c. 1988

Murals by Siobhan, Erin Sinefit, Killjoy, Sabrina Jones, Seth Tobocman

SQUAT~TER /n. (skwot-er) -S (plural)

  Painters carpenters hippies drunks anarchists communists unbelievers overreachers actors arsonists welders scribes dreamers screamers babies born here brothers and sisters neighborhood kids neighborhood hookers hooks the hooked dancers crackheads teachers slackers builders burners rats mice fleas flies lightning bugs bright sparks termites crusties cooks drummers diggers plumbers printers poachers roaches flies wasps bees gallerists careerists carousers housers plasterers the plastered mudslingers pornographers shooters snorters historians hystericals bikers bricklayers roofers rockers windowbreakers stepping razors gay blades dogs cats birds eels knuckleheads rabblerousers bottlethrowers wanderers wailers rastas b-boys loose cannons smokers tokers cabdrivers fishermen swanks swells highrollers lowballers bullies bastards bullshit artists gardeners scrubs boozers brawlers lovers fighters beautiful whores ghosts of mad hatters seamstresses weavers shoemakers bakers butter and egg men signalers signmakers cigar rollers paperboys gas lamp lighters grocers brawlers dogfighters dealers cops robbers yahoos yayhoos the quick and the dead poets punks and junkies.