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Honoring L.E.S. avant-garde with first annual Acker Awards

BY CLAYTON PATTERSON | As the tide of gentrification and the money it brings in its wake continues to wash away the creative culture that made the Lower East Side a world-renowned artistic center, I feel the need to somehow save, at least, an impression of what made the L.E.S. such a creative force. Creating [...]

May 30, 201311930No Comment2013-05-30+16%3A19%3A07adminRead More

Wild times in Austria

May 23, 2013 No Comment

BY CLAYTON PATTERSON | The recent Wildstyle and Tattoo Messe tour in Austria featured acts like the heavily tattooed Zombie Boy — who appeared in a Lady Gaga video, as well on as a German modeling show — and is hugely popular in Europe. There were also ballerinas and break dancers, and gymnasts and aerialists.

Soho House has my support, but won’t get Acker Awards

May 16, 2013 13 Comments

BY CLAYTON PATTERSON | I have finished my exploration of Soho House. It was interesting, and I’m glad that I took the opportunity to check them out. I see them fitting into this new Lower East Side. No different than the two new luxury hotels going up on Ludlow St. Of course, though — and [...]

Artist struggles to survive amid life on the street

May 9, 2013 No Comment

BY CLAYTON PATTERSON | One of the greatest blessings I have received in life is connected to my archive. How fortunate and blessed I have been to have been able to document such a wide cross-section of the people, places and events, the life and heart beat of the Lower East Side, before so much [...]

Things change: If not Soho House, what will we get?

April 4, 2013 24 Comments

BY CLAYTON PATTERSON | In 1998 when Captain Cooper of the Seventh Precinct was asked about the explosion of quality-of-life types of crime in my area of the Lower East Side, Houston to Delancey St., he stated we were now living in an Entertainment Zone. Who thought up the Entertainment Zone idea? Who was behind [...]

Our artists are our cultural treasures; They need help!

March 21, 2013 4 Comments

BY CLAYTON PATTERSON | On March 7 a representative each from Councilmember Margaret Chin’s office and the Cooper Square Committee visited Taylor Mead. They arrived around noon and stayed for about 15 minutes. Taylor lives on the top floor at 163 Ludlow St. I am not sure if they checked the door to the roof. [...]

Defending their homes on E. 13th St.; Homeless on A

March 14, 2013 4 Comments

It was an early summer morning in 1996, and hundreds of police were getting ready to flood onto E. 13th St. between Avenues A and B, above, to evict squatters from several tenements. “We were welded into a building on the north side of 13th St.,” Clayton Patterson recalled of this photo’s vantage point. “Bratton [...]

Pink Pony had a great ride, but couldn’t buck changes

February 21, 2013 1 Comment

BY CLAYTON PATTERSON | It’s one thing to be anti-gentrification and against the corporate development that is destroying the fabric of the community and plowing under the elements that make a neighborhood, and another thing to be engaged in helping to save what is left of the community. If we don’t support our local family- and [...]

Let’s get back to our roots: We need new leaders

February 14, 2013 14 Comments

BY CLAYTON PATTERSON | The Lower East Side used to be a place that sheltered, developed and nurtured great political leaders. These were politicians whose ideas changed the world and made a difference to the huddled masses, the new immigrants and the poor, even giving a hand up to the dissidents — those questioning [...]

‘Captured’ caught Koch’s eye

February 7, 2013 3 Comments

Ed Koch appeared in the movie “Captured,” a biopic on Lower East Side documentarian Clayton Patterson, and he attended its New York premiere in June 2008 at a Rooftop Films screening atop New Design High School on Grand St. on the Lower East Side. The rock band A.R.E. Weapons also played at the screening, which [...]