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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 [...]

Why protest climate change?

February 11, 2013 1 Comment

V TALKING POINT By Fury Young I’m a bus organizer for 350.org’s Forward on Climate rally. I’ve been on board with the protest for months now. “Why is it important to protest climate change?” you might ask me. Because I feel it’s my civic duty as an earthling. Whether or not you believe [...]

8th St. problems were piling up

February 7, 2013 2 Comments

From The Villager, Feb. 8, 1973 A Page 1 article, “Crime and Garbage Top List of 8th St. Woes, Poll Says,” reported on a meeting to address downward-spiraling conditions in the Central Village. “The Main Street of Greenwich Village,” Eighth St., was swamped with trash, and crime ran rampant through the neighborhood. A survey filled [...]

Koch on Film

February 7, 2013 1 Comment

A major movie buff, Ed Koch immensely enjoyed writing his “Koch on Film” column for The Villager. Although he stopped writing for the paper in recent years, he continued to send his film reviews to his e-mail list. His columns sometimes featured political commentary and observations on the theaters themselves or the audiences. Below are [...]

‘Pie Man’ got Koch out of joint

February 7, 2013 No Comment

Aron Kay, the “Yippie Pie Man,” offered Ed Koch a marijuana joint at a book party at Elaine’s in 1979, to which an annoyed Koch responded, “Why do you always have to be so obnoxious, Aron?” Kay, recalling the incident, which was covered by High Times, told The Villager, “Koch shows up and Dana [Beal] [...]

‘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 [...]

Ira Blutreich

February 7, 2013 No Comment

Trying to save our community on a changing L.E.S.

January 31, 2013 13 Comments

BY CLAYTON PATTERSON | I have documented this community for many years and have witnessed the changes. I was one of the well-known, anti-gentrification radicals, considered by the gentrifies to be a part of the so-called rabble, branded one of the troublemakers, arrested several times, banned from the Seventh Precinct Community Council for asking questions [...]

Evan Forsch, Week of Jan. 31, 2013

January 31, 2013 No Comment

Creative pioneers under assault on the new L.E.S.

January 24, 2013 89 Comments

BY CLAYTON PATTERSON | The old Lower East Side produced a long list of creative individuals whose output and contributions were instrumental in altering the consciousness of America and the world, in so many fields: music, art, poetry, writing, theater, film, photography and video, political thought, religious philosophy and on and on. If I had [...]