Rosenthal and Ginsberg.

Earlier this week, Allen Ginsberg’s secretary of 20 years, Bob Rosenthal, shared memories of his former employer – some of which will be included in a memoir he recently completed, “Straight Around Allen.” Speaking to The Local at Ginsberg’s former apartment on East 12th Street, where the two worked alongside each other for so long, he recalled the great poet’s daily routine, his tastes in literature and music, his mail and telephone communications, and his ways with money. Today, in our second installment, Mr. Rosenthal talks about Ginsberg’s social sphere during his two decades in the so-called poets building. Check back tomorrow for still more from this candid interview. 

Allen’s East Village
People would always call Allen and say, “Allen, come to my shangri-la in Hawaii,” and here or there. He would never go. A vacation for Allen was coming back and having nothing to do in the East Village. He would often go to the poetry readings at St. Mark’s. He loved the mushroom barley soup at the Kiev. And The New York Times – he just loved it. He hung around Tompkins Square, wrote a lot of one-line poems about skinheads there. And he was a natural. I think because he always felt free here. Read more…

Daniel Maurer Bob Rosenthal in the hallway of
437 East 12th Street, with Ginsberg
over his shoulder.

With just a few days left of National Poetry Month and a movie about the Beats in the works, it seems an appropriate time for Bob Rosenthal, former secretary to Allen Ginsberg, to share some memories of his former employer. After all, Mr. Rosenthal, an East Villager and a poet in his own right, recently completed a memoir titled “Straight Around Allen” (it’s being shopped to publishers) and he appears in “Passing Stranger,” a recently released audio tour of the neighborhood’s poetic landmarks.

It just so happens that the editor of The Local lives in Allen Ginsberg’s former apartment on East 12th Street – or rather, the portion of the apartment that contained the poet’s bedroom, bathtub, and the home office where Mr. Rosenthal worked alongside the literary legend for nearly two decades. Yesterday, Mr. Rosenthal, who these days teaches Beat literature to high schoolers, paid his first visit to his old workplace in some years, and spoke candidly about his time there.

Bob Moves to 437 East 12th, Allen Follows
My wife and I moved to New York from Chicago in 1973. We were living on St. Marks Place and met people in this building [437 East 12th Street]: Rebecca Wright, a poetess who was actually living with John Godfrey upstairs, was going back to somewhere in the Midwest where she’s from with her son and she was leaving me the apartment. It was like $125 per month and she said, “I’ll leave you these books” – all of them Allen Ginsberg books. She said, “I don’t need them anymore.” That’s when I started reading him. It was serendipitous. Read more…

Kathryn Doyle Toby Salkin painted these religious Jews, which
she calls “Boychicks,” based on a photo she took
in JFK two years ago

Every year in April, Allen Salkin, a onetime East Village resident and former staff writer for The New York Times, throws a spring frolic for an eclectic group of friends and colleagues. This year, it will double as his 70-year-old mother’s downtown art-world debut.

Mr. Salkin, who now lives on Forsyth Street, asked a friend who owns a gallery in his building if he could use it to give his mother a one-woman show. Yesterday, Toby Salkin filled the walls of the modest space with as many of her oil paintings as would fit. Among the bright blues and rusty oranges was the face of a conspicuously mustachioed cowboy: Randy Jones of the Village People. Read more…

Paul Simon has called Philip Larkin one of his favorite poets; tonight at Cooper Union’s Great Hall, the musician will join an illustrious group honoring the “archetypical English poet of the second half of the 20th century” (per Sunday’s review of the newly published “The Complete Poems”). Joining Mr. Simon will be readers from both sides of the Atlantic, including  Zadie Smith, Billy Collins, Adam Gopnik, Mary Karr, and Jonathan Galassi.

Larkin, who died in 1985, is often referred to as a poet’s poet, publishing a scant four volumes of poetry during his life. He was also a jazz aficionado, serving as music critic for The London Daily Telegraph. Tonight, The Queens College Jazz Band will perform some of Larkin’s favorite jazz compositions. More info here.

Photos: Lori Greenberg/Bergworks GBM (final photo courtesy Robert Sestok)

Yesterday’s rain washed out the dance performances and children’s events that were to kick off the inaugural season of programming at the former home of the BMW Guggenheim Museum. But that didn’t stop a few die-hard supporters of First Park from clustering around a newly installed sculpture by Robert Sestok.

The Detroit artist was in high spirits as he unveiled First Street Iron, a ten-foot-tall work of welded steel that he said was a “tribute to the city” he often visited. It will remain on display at the plaza between First and Houston Streets, near Second Avenue, until Oct. 22.

As The Local previously reported, Mr. Sestok first became aware of the restoration at 33 First Street well over two years ago because a close friend lived on the block. He was asked to create something for the park before the BMW Guggenheim opened in the once rat-infested lot. Read more…

Around the time he moved from SoHo to East 12th Street in 2004, Nikolas Kozloff – author of three non-fiction books about Latin America and numerous pieces about Occupy Wall Street for Al Jazeera and Huffington Post – was writing a novel loosely based on his brief tenure as an adjunct professor at CUNY. “Post-Academic Stress Disorder,” which Mr. Kozloff, 43, finally self-published last month, is the story of a young, socially vexed young man attempting to carve out a niche for himself in academia, latching onto subcultures in his new East Village neighborhood, and desperately seeking love and companionship – all while dodging a nefarious plot hatched by a fellow faculty member. The Local asked Mr. Kozloff, who now resides in Brooklyn, just how much of his novel’s wry observations about the anarchists, spiritualists, health nuts, pet lovers, and pie-throwers of the East Village were based on his six months there.

To what degree does your novel portray an exaggerated version of the East Village? The scene where the narrator, Andy, visits A&H Dairy (an exaggerated version of B&H) and is told that his grandfather had an affair with the neighborhood’s great anarchist, Emma Goldman, is pretty over the top.  Read more…

Laura Edwins

When Seolbin Park took over the tiny storefront next to her equally tiny East Fourth Street advertising and design firm in 2008, she invested $3,000 in converting the former barber shop into a modest art gallery. She planned to support the non-profit art space with the money she made at her day job next-door. But last August, she said, her landlord put a “Store for Rent” sign up in the window of SB D Gallery, and refused to take it down even as the gallery presented its annual 9/11 show in September. That month, Ms. Park was asked to surrender her keys.

Ms. Park kept her small office at 125 East Fourth Street, and was surprised when the next-door space (same address) sat vacant for five months. Tomorrow, it will reopen as a new incarnation of Ultra Nail Beauty Salon, formerly at 123 Essex Street. The owner, Isabel Arauz, told The Local she had worked in nail salons on the Lower East Side for the past 15 years. Read more…

The Wall Street Journal sits down with longtime East Villager Richard Hell, who will introduce a screening of Robert Bresson’s “The Devil, Probably” at BAMcinématek next Thursday. The film was released in 1977, when Hell’s band the Voidoids also put out their album “Blank Generation,” and the writer-rocker sees some parallels between the two: “The complete hopelessness? The contempt for the revolutionaries and the hippies? That was exactly how I felt. ‘Please Kill Me’? That’s what that whole movie is about. Looking for some kind of compensation in obsessive sex? All my work is filled with that—hopelessness, despair and burying yourself with sex.”

The Times grabs a bite at B&H Dairy with the composers who started Bang on a Can in the East Village 25 years ago. David Lang says the experimental music company, which is preparing for a trio of performances, is “not particularly nostalgic” but fellow composer Michael Gordon remembers the old neighborhood nevertheless: “This area was the hot arts center for the Pyramid Club and punk bands and CBGB. Philip Glass lives two blocks down, and we used to see Allen Ginsberg walking around the neighborhood.”

Daniel Maurer

Thought the Hole’s indoor garden was wild? Fuse Gallery may just give it a run for its money when its latest exhibit, “XOS / SOX” opens May 2. Skullphone, the Los Angeles-based street artist last seen purdying up construction containers on East Fourth Street, is piling 1,000 “custom produced” socks in the gallery behind Lit lounge, for everyone to take. Street-art inspired footwear sure is a thing lately. Is this going to hurt business at Sock Man and Sox in the City? Dunno, but we’re definitely snagging a pair to toss in the drawer with those pink tiger-print aNYthing socks…

“XOS / SOX,” opening reception May 2, 7 p.m.; through May 30, Fuse Gallery, 93 Second Avenue, (212) 777-7988 

The connection between Tulsa and the Lower East Side isn’t as distant as you think: in the early ’60s a group of artists and writers who first met in Tulsa – including Ted Berrigan, Joe Brainard and Ron Padgett – arrived in the East Village and grew to occupy a prominent place in the burgeoning writing scene.

Tonight at 8 p.m., the St Marks Poetry Project celebrates the Library of America’s publication of “The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard” with a reading and reception. Brainard wasn’t just a writer: his prodigious creative output included paintings, collages, assemblages, and designs of sets and costumes for theater. His witty use of comics in his work mirrored developments by Pop artists of the period.

Tonight’s readers will include Ron Padgett, Michael Lally, Larry Fagin, Ann Waldman, and Edmund White, as well as Thurston Moore, who, incidentally, will return to the Poetry Project on May 4 for a benefit performance with neighborhood fixture John Zorn.

Arne Svenson Barney Rosset in 1986.

The family of late publishing legend Barney Rosset, who died in February at the age of 89, has planned a public memorial for next month.

A representative of Grove/Atlantic – the parent company of Grove Press, which Mr. Rosset sold in 1986 – told The Local that the memorial, organized by the publisher’s wife Astrid Myers along with his four children and described as “a celebration of his life and work,” will take place at the Great Hall at Cooper Union, a short walk from the literary iconoclast’s loft near Cooper Square. Read more…

Woo hoo! We’re looking at highs of 79 degrees this weekend. Will the Tompkins Square Park drummers come out to play? Here’s hoping! The Local stopped by one of the longstanding group’s recent jam sessions: here’s our video to warm you up for the weekend.

After catching a rent break in November, the St. Mark’s Bookshop isn’t quite in the clear. “We’re hanging in there, barely,” co-owner Bob Contant tells Publisher’s Weekly in an item noticed by Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York. “It’s a difficult April. Traffic is down. Without an increase, we can’t rebuild our inventory. We’re 20 percent short of where we need to be.” According to Publisher’s Weekly, “a few landlords have come forward offering the store lower rent, but moving would be costly and the store’s business credit cards are already maxed out.” Hey, The Local did its part last night by springing for copies of Clayton Patterson’s neighborhood histories, “Captured” and “Resistance.”

With its former home at First Street and Second Avenue now a hole in the ground, a couple of Mars Bar’s neighbors are paying tribute to it in the next days.

Tonight from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. (to the dismay of some bloggers) upscale boutique Blue & Cream will launch an exhibition of photos that Debby Hymowitz took at the old dive in 2010 (you can see some of them online). And tomorrow, Jonas Mekas’s love letter to the watering hole, “My Mars Bar Movie,” opens at Anthology Film Archives. It’ll be its first screening since an underattended premiere at the Greenpoint Film Festival in October.

From the film’s first five minutes (excerpted exclusively above), it’s clear this isn’t a traditional documentary. The director said as much yesterday afternoon, nursing a beer and a double shot of vodka at Anyway Café. Read more…

If you’re looking for something to do this evening, here’s a last-minute option: two legends of the neighborhood, Lou Reed and Jonas Mekas, will appear with actor and martial artist Stephan Berwick during tonight’s short film program at Anthology Film Archives. They’ll be introducing Mr. Berwick’s 15-minute film “Final Weapon,” featuring Mr. Reed and his music, with a q&a session to follow. The program also features Bryan Felber’s “University of the Streets,” a martial arts short set in the East Village.

The Lo-Down reports that The Living Theatre is struggling financially, and that its founder Judith Malina was recently threatened with eviction from her apartment above the art space. The theater, founded in 1947, opened in its current location on Clinton Street five years ago. Since then, its 20-year commercial lease has been in a “constant state of re-negotiation,” according to the Lo-Down. Ms. Malina says that a professional business manager is needed to pull the theater back from the brink.

Fresh off his recent art show, Warhol superstar Taylor Mead will take questions at a screening of his work tonight at 7:30 p.m. Anthology Film Archives is presenting a new restoration of Robert Wade Chatterton’s 1961 film “Passion in a Seaside Slum,” shot during Mr. Mead’s brief foray into the Venice Beach Beat community, as well as two Vernon Zimmerman movies of the same era: “Lemon Hearts,” in which Mr. Mead plays almost a dozen characters, and “With Lust.”

Billy Leroy may have buried his tent on the Bowery last month, but the antiques dealer isn’t done snatching up oddities from around the world. He just got back from Glasgow, Scotland, where the seventh episode of the Travel Channel’s “Baggage Battles” was filmed. “It was a bidding bloodbath between me and my co-competitor Laurence Martin on a very historic item,” he wrote in an e-mail to The Local. “The Scottish people are really friendly and the single-malt whiskey is sublime.”

In this footage provided exclusively to The Local, Mr. Leroy, seated in front of a skull stash with his trademark cigar in hand, lets us in on the secret of getting a good deal. After the show premieres April 11 at 10 p.m., he’ll try his luck in Miami, during the filming of episode eight. “Boy, TV Land is a lot different then the Bowery,” he said. “I am starting to miss Bowery Misfits.”