Groovy meets chic at The Blind Pig FABnyc’s Annual Benefit!

Enjoy cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, and stunning views of the City from The Penthouse at The Standard, East Village. Try your luck in a raffle and silent auction, and shake a tail feather to speakeasy-themed live music.

Purchase Tickets at www.fabnyc.org/blindpig.php

FABnyc is proud to be an active leader helping to cultivate the dynamic, creative community of the Lower East Side. We provide year-round support to our 28 member organizations, connect local partners to one another, and ignite lasting relationships that help make our community and City better.

The Blind Pig will not only be a celebration of this, but will also help us kick-off (in style) another year of innovation and community building.

Thursday, May 30
El Museo del Barrio and El Barrio community sites
11:00am – 7:00pm

Naturally Occurring Cultural Districts (NOCD) New York invites you, members of the LES community, to join in on a citywide forum to “develop a vision for NYC that is grounded in the cultural vitality and social networks that make our communities strong.”

The all day event will include a lunch hosted by one of El Barrio’s network of community sites, including Art for Change, Hip Hop Theater Festival, Manhattan Neighborhood Network Firehouse and others, roundtable discussions on community health and sustainability, innovative uses of urban space, community resilience and renewal, and equitable development and there WILL be a closing party.

Learn more about the event and REGISTER here.

cutlog NY at Clemente Soto Velez Cultural and Educational Center

cutlog, a Parisian exhibition of “emerging, under-represented and off the grid artists,” has crossed the Atlantic straight into the Lower East Side’s Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center to bring you: cutlog NY. Focusing on “cutting-edge and established galleries that promote the work of contemporary artists,” cutlog NY hopes to foster a “creative labratory” with art from Beijing, Dakar, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Istanbul, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Lyon, Miami, Milan, Montpellier, Moscow, Paris, Philadelphia, New York, Santiago, Taipei, Tel Aviv, Saint Petersburg and Vancouver…whew. Obviously, the most exciting part is that it’s all happening at our member’s house (i.e. the CSV Center)! Expect a total takeover of the former public school, from classrooms to the parking lot. Take a look at cutlog NY’s site, and start getting excited for world-class exhibition in the middle of our neighborhood. Open for five days only, starting today at 5pm. And tickets range from only $4-$15. steal.

A Performative Exhibition by Michelangelo Alasa’ - May 10 – June 21, Fridays at 8PM

Artist Reception & Talkback: Friday, May 17, 2013, 9:30 PM

For years, artist Michelangelo Alasa’ has brought artists from across genres to incubate and present innovative artworks in historic Duo Theater.

Now, Alasa’ shares his personal journey through Confessions, a snapshot of his queer coming-of-age experience during the 1960s. Cathartic in nature, this performative exhibition reminds us of our deepest secrets, darkest longings, and biggest triumphs.

Attendees will be invited to write their own “confessions” on a gallery wall.

FREE; Reservation required at Smarttix.com

Read more about Confessions...

Catch Smith’s drawings out and about at the addresses listed below, and be sure to catch FAB’s own Tamara Greenfeld during the IDEAS CITY World Cafe: Identifying the Neighbors Workshop this Friday morning @ 10:00am. On Saturday, stop by FAB’s tent for creative, sustainable art-making and activities, and take a guided tour of Smith’s public art drawings the IDEAS CITY StreetFest from 11:00am -6:00pm.

Sites of Capital Revisited:

Extra Place, cement sidewalk blocks: alley off East 1st Street (between Bowery and 2nd Ave)
First Street Green, 33 East 1st Street (at East Houston and 2nd Ave)
Ideal Glass, gallery facade: 22 East 2nd Street (between Bowery and 2nd Ave)
La MaMa Backwall Arcade, 17 East 3rd Street (between Bowery and 2nd Ave)
La MaMa Basement space: 66-68 East 4th Street (between Bowery and 2nd Ave)
L’Apicio, restaurant windows: 13 East First Street(between Bowery and 2nd Ave)

• June 2013 – 74 seat Black Box Theater, 45 seat Black Box Theater and 20′ x 40′ Rehearsal Studio (same dimensions as 74 seat theater) and office space available to rent at competitive rates
• September 2013 – Teatro Circulo’s Gala Performance
• Fall 2013 – Opening of the Fall Season!

Below are a few snapshots of what we’ve all been patiently waiting for. Still not entirely finished, but so, so close, and plenty to get excited over. Sign up for Teatro Circulo’s mailing list to hear all the updates as they come in!

Progress in Teatro Circulo's Theaters

Summer’s Different
April 25 – May 12, 2013

Photo by Marlis Momber (Source: The Local)

If you ever find yourself living in New York City (or any of its outliers) you will come across one word perhaps just as often as you’ll hear the words “bagel” and “hipster.” The word is “gentrification.”

The notion of the changing landscape of a city is one that most people think they understand—people come and go and, sometimes, so do buildings. However, this change is not so simple. While it is true that no city stays stagnant, people are not disposable. Sometimes the “city” wants to change faster and more drastically than it can.

Areas in New York City such as Brooklyn, Harlem, and the Lower East Side have all experienced the “chic-ing” up that is associated with gentrification. This is most evident in the East Village when you think a little closely about the modern apartment buildings that are scattered throughout the neighborhood, nestled in between what would have been tenements during the turn of the century. The fact is, with “chic-ing” up comes higher rent prices (another thing you’ll hear as often as talk about pizza), which means that only certain people can live in the certain neighborhoods, and people who live in rent-stabilized apartments are suddenly placed in very economically unstable environments.

This is where Cooper Square Committee comes in. Located at 61 East 4^th Street, CSC is a housing and preservation committee that provides social housing services to residents of the Lower East Side for free. As one of FAB’s members, we work closely on many projects, including projects involving sustainability and the preservation of the cultural institutions on our block that they worked to protect over a decade ago.

I sat down with Executive Director Steve Herrick to talk about Cooper Square Committee, the work that they do, and the legacy of community organizing so important to the Lower East Side in which they follow.

When was CSC founded and why? 

The Cooper Square Committee started back in 1959 in response to a plan by Robert Moses who was the big urban planner in NYC at the time. Moses came up with a plan to demolish the area from 9^th Street down to Delancy Street, east of the Bowery to 2^nd Avenue, about 12 city blocks.  It would have displaced several thousand residents and destroyed several hundred buildings.

Our organization formed in response to that Moses Plan. Over the next couple years, the members held over 100 planning meetings and created an alternative plan to the city’s that was adopted as the official plan of the neighborhood in 1970. The plan minimized demolition of buildings, required that city developers build on vacant lots and move anybody who was going to be displaced into the new buildings.

By the mid 1970s, the city started taking certain sites with Eminent Domain, including some of the tenement buildings here on 3^rd & 4^th Streets. We realized that when the city would take ownership of these buildings, they’d do a really lousy job with maintenance, so repairs weren’t being dealt with. One of the buildings on 71 East 4^th Street even had a fire. We were also dealing with drugs in the neighborhood, so our organization’s focus was on getting the city to make repairs, keep the buildings up to code, and to contend with some of the decline that the neighborhood was experiencing.

G.O.L.E.S.

During this time, New York City was suffering from the flight of the middle class. There was abandonment going on further east on Avenues A & B. There was also arson. One of the organizations that formed as a response to these issues in the late 1970s was Good Old Lower East Side (G.O.L.E.S.). They came out of Cooper Square Committee.

In mid 1980s, we got the city under Mayor David Dinkins to agree to a plan that we developed to transfer ownership of city-owned buildings to residents as low-income co-ops. We wanted to emphasize preserving the existing housing stock and felt that there shouldn’t be any real demolition unless it was absolutely necessary. We formed the Cooper Square Mutual Housing Association a year after Mayor Dinkins signed the agreement in 1990.

I joined Cooper Square Committee as director in 1998.

In the year 2000, I reached out to the cultural groups on this block. I knew that they had talked to consultants about doing planning for a vacant plot. The consultants had one chapter that dealt with the cultural buildings and recommended that those buildings be preserved for cultural use. At the time Mayor Giuliani had been selling off a lot of city-owned buildings to asset sales (to the highest bidder), so I was concerned that these buildings could be at risk. So in the summer of 2000 I asked all the cultural groups to come together and started the planning process. It was great. I worked with several cultural leaders including Ryan Gilliam from Downtown Art. In the fall, we met with the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) and with the help of former city councilwoman Margarita Lopez, helped create what is now the East 4th Street Cultural District [which was the foundational beginning for our very own Fourth Arts Block].

What are some of CSC’s concerns today and for the future? 

Our focus over the past decade has been working more with tenant associations, making tenant coalitions from multiple buildings with the same landlord who are experiencing the same things: destructive renovations, buy-out offers, harassment, problems like that. That’s been a big part of our work.

We’ve also developed some housing on 2^nd Street and 2^nd Avenue, apartments for people with psychiatric disabilities. We’re currently developing housing for homeless gay and lesbian youth on 13^th Street in partnership with the Ali Forney Center. We expect to start renovation at the end of this year on that project.

In collaboration with FAB, we’ve gotten involved with the Lower East Side greening initiative, and we have been working with Mutual Housing Association buildings and low-income co-ops to help them to apply to get funding for weatherization of their buildings. We want to be part of an effort to reduce carbon emissions and have a greener, healthier city. Getting low income co-ops to commit the resources to put in more energy-efficient boilers, windows, insulated pipes and all that, helps the buildings become more efficient, reducing their operating costs which is important given that these house low-income tenants.

In terms of the future, I think there’s going to continue being development pressures and displacement pressures. Fortunately, the rezoning of Lower East Side that happened in 2008 set height limits for over 114 blocks east of the Bowery. Unfortunately, the east side of the Bowery is not protected right now, and as a result we continue to see these really out of scale buildings going up. But I don’t think we’re going to be seeing really out of scale developing happening in much of the LES.

(Source: MASNYC)

However, one of the great things that happened as of last year is the Landmarks Preservation Commission created the historic district, largely through the efforts lead by the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, that covers over 300 buildings between 3^rd st and St. Marks Place. I think they’re hoping to do another historic district somewhere in the LES. So tools like that I think really help to preserve the unique historic character of the community, but preserving the affordability is still a really big struggle. The biggest tool we have to battle that is the rent-stabilization law, which has to always come up for renewal about every 4 to 6 years. It’s coming up again in 2016 and I’m sure the landlord lobby is going to try to weaken it again. They’ve already weakened it a lot so that when an apartment becomes vacant, owners often just do some renovations as a formula where they can raise the rent 1/40^th of the cost per month [. . .] We’ve seen that just happen all over the place.

To some extent that may be the future of where pockets of the neighborhood are going, and I don’t know how you fight something like that because that’s just the kind of economy that we have. But we’re trying to build a broader movement of tenants and coalition groups around the city to try to get stronger protections and get the buildings departments to be more proactive when they’re dealing with some of the abuses that happen.

What is special about the LES that is worth preserving?

I think the Lower East Side a unique place because it is racially and ethnically diverse. I think it’s a community. A lot of other communities that are somewhat diverse, don’t feel like they really come together very much.

In the Lower East Side, I’ve seen many examples of people coming together and showing their support for people’s building struggles or struggles around different sites. I just think this is the kind of community where people rally together to support other people’s struggles. So many different movements have come out of this neighborhood, the Labor Movement, feminist activists and so many writers and artists. You can go down the line. So many oppositional struggles have an important origin here or important figures who have stepped forward from this community who have had an integral part in those struggles.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As a New York University student, the word “gentrification” is something that I am very aware of. NYU’s role as one of New York City’s largest property owners is visually evident as the University has very rapidly expanded to encompass large parts of both the West and East Villages. It is of no surprise that when community organizers, preservationists, and Lower East Side residents speak of my University, it is usually with disdain and accompanied with angry looks. As an NYU student who doesn’t support my University’s seemingly insatiable appetite for expansion, I think its extremely important to understand the work that Cooper Square Committee does to protect the people who have lived here and the buildings that have been here far longer than NYU. As a member of the Lower East Side community, I am also affected by the gentrification of my neighborhood and am at risk of not being able to afford to be a part of a community that I believe to be one of the most colorful, diverse, and passionate that I have ever seen.

Cooper Square Committee follows in the community organizing footsteps of such organizations as the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union of the early 1900s. It stands as a testament of the power of a united community, and as a symbol of the future of the Lower East Side. As long as there are people who care enough to organize, the Lower East Side is here to stay.

 - Written by Erica Cheung

Nine years ago, Metropolitan began a series of plays called “East Side Stories” in which they asked actors to meet with local residents in the Lower East Side and return with their stories in tow. Like old photographs come to life, these actors capture what artistic director Alex Roe calls “theatrical snapshots” of the diverse people that make up this unique neighborhood. “Visionaries” is one of three monologue productions, a part of this year’s “East Side Stories,” described by Roe as one of his favorite series’ of the year.

Michael Durkin and Mark August in last year’s East Side Stories

The performance begins with Shirley Campbell, a former Black Panther and American Tennis Association player who has lived on the block for over 30 years and frequents our FABnyc offices often. Stephen Conrad Moore is the actor who steps out of the black curtain dressed in an outfit Campbell would wear: a yellow hat, grey pants, and a simple jacket. Of course, his hands are covered in sparkling rings, just as hers usually are.

In fact, the sparkle of Moore’s rings catch the glint off another pair of hands in the audience. In the darkness sits a woman, decked out in velvet and sequins, staring wide-eyed at the man who is playing her on stage.

In an interview I had with Roe last week, he describes seeing people react to their own stories and calls it one of the most inspiring things about this kind of work. While I sat watching Moore perform with such spectacular mimicry (his voice was Campbell’s, his movements were Campbell’s) I couldn’t help but stare at the real Campbell, watching her as amazement shone from her dewy eyes.

“I get my dreams mixed up with my reality,” Moore says as he sits down on a chair in what looks to be the living room of an apartment. The actor expresses the fact that Campbell has dementia in the most delicate and beautiful way, combining a rant-like stream of consciousness with the most amazing one-liners: “My dog died, it’s something that I haven’t quite dealt with yet. He was a handsome dude.”

Some of the most spectacular parts of the monologue come from Campbell’s experience as a member of the Black Panther Party in Paris, going out to dinner with the actor Marlon Brando, and her involvement with the Nation of Islam. Moore eloquently describes Campbell’s feelings towards Malcolm X and her love of tennis: “Tennis is the philosophy of winning. If you can’t take it, you ain’t got it.”

Actress Emily Grosland and Michael Schupbach of The Puppet Kitchen

Next up is the actress Emily Grosland as Michael Schupbach, co-founder of The Puppet Kitchen in the Lower East Side. The stage quickly changes from the interior of Campbell’s living room, to the colorful site of Schupbach’s workplace. Grosland sits at a desk, playing with some fabric, wings on her multicolored sneakers (or “Shwings” as Schupbach calls them) and a bright red apron stained with paints used to make puppets.

“This is The Puppet Kitchen,” Grosland exclaims, lifting her arms high up, hands spread out wide—it’s the kind of gesture you’d expect from someone who went to Clown College, as Schupbach did. Grosland comes off as a little overly animated, but it’s endearing. This probably has something to do with Schupbach’s philosophy: “There’s no penalty for being too loud, as long as it’s done in a charming way.” Excited whoops emanate from the side of the theatre, indicating that the puppeteer is in the theater.

Sheila Head closes off the performance with her depiction of musician, singer, and swing dancer Dawn Hampton. The setting is a Swing Dance Event Panel Discussion, and Hampton is dressed to the T in a sequined ensemble and a black turban hat. Hampton’s story seems out of a black and white movie, growing up in the carnival, learning how to play brass instruments as a child, saying things like “but that was show business” and “you were paid by the mafia.”

Hampton was the only interviewee of the three who was not present that evening, but Head’s performance depicts her as elegant, theatrical, and from another era. Head’s eyes gleam when she speaks of swing, and you truly understand her disdain for Jazz music as she describes the Miles Davis performance she attended many years ago, which she simply describes as: “He will never do that to me again.”

“East Side Stories: Visionaries” is an inspiring performance that every Lower East Sider should see. The people who live here, who make up the history and present of this neighborhood, are absolutely incredible. That is why now, when I walk down the street on my way to class or work, I pay attention to the people around me, knowing that every one of them holds a priceless story that deserves to be told.

“East Side Stories” will be on at the Metropolitan Playhouse until May 5. 

- Written by Erica Cheung

When Sandy hit New York, the lights went off leaving over 18,000 New Yorkers in the darkness for five days. This disruption of power extended beyond the economic or productive sphere; it permeated every aspect of urban life and created a fundamental rupture with the perception of urban space.

-Grid Off/Lights On 

Those of us who live and work in the Lower East Side remember the darkness and lack of electricity that came with Hurricane Sandy. Once 5pm rolled around, most people were already in their houses, trying to cuddle together for warmth or warming up some food on their gas stoves (if they had gas stoves).

Grid Off/Lights On is a collaborative project (and blog) by the Cooper Union Institute for Sustainable Design that brings together architects, designers, activists, students and members of the LES community as a think tank to engage with the topic of climate change, energy, and urban space. Grid Off/Lights On is an environmental technology workshop aiming to “address questions of urban illumination by developing experimental lighting structures that generate their energy autonomously detached from the urban grid of power supply.” An experimental non-electrical off-grid lighting prototype will be installed in the East 4th Street Cultural District  as a product of the project.

Grid Off; Lights On is an officially exhibited project for the Ideas City Festival of the New Museum and is part of SUSTAIN, a collaborative research project of CUISD and FABnyc.