Michelle Rick

You notice them everywhere in Manhattan, but perhaps particularly in a slightly out-of-the-way neighborhood such as the East Village — middle-aged or older New Yorkers who look as if they have remained in the city that doesn’t sleep way past the limits of insomnia or common sense.

They seem a little lost in this International House of Cupcakes, among i-Stoned youth, galvanized immigrants, packed bars, and cafés where the music is always played at a volume whose message might as well be posted on a notice board outside — Adults Permitted, But Youth Preferred.

Aging is a delicate, unrewarding business at best, and some people — as a result of genes, outlook, resolution, and money — manage it better than others. To judge by the relative lack of oldsters in the East Village (anyone over 40 is a rarity on the streets after 9 p.m., and most of those are either homeless, comatose, or possibly dead), it’s obvious that this is one of the more trying places in which to grow old. Those who hang on must also confront the irony of living in an era in which they are constantly scolded that it is within their power to remain “young,” while being made to feel ancient almost all the time.
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Paula CourtJody Oberfelder

Jody Oberfelder is an East Village dancer/choreographer who started out as the lead singer for the Bagdads, a punk band which played at CBGB’s. She then became a dancer and choreographer who has brought to both roles unusual athleticism, heart, humor, and in the words of Village Voice critic, Deborah Jowitt, “a zest for endearingly human dancing in an upside-down world.”

She has gone from creating works with titles such as “Wanted X Cheerleaders” and “Crash Helmet Brigade” to directing opera (“Dido and Aeneas”)  and now Igor Stravinsky’s “The Soldier’s Tale,” which she will present at the Michael Schimmel Center for the Performing Arts at Pace University (where “Inside the Actors Studio” is filmed) from June 9 to 11. Recently The Local spoke to her about her work and how living in the East Village has influenced it.

You have been part of the East Village arts scene for a long time. How has living here informed your work as a dancer and choreographer?

I’ve lived in the East Village from 1980 to the present, and I saw it change from a place where it was still full of old Ukrainian characters and really scary just to go east of Avenue A. When Life Café came into being on Avenue B, I remember kind of tip-toeing my way over there beside the park. I think I was just one of the many kinds of art-makers and filmmakers who was around at that time. Steve Buscemi and his wife Jo Andres were going to all the same events, and he’s pretty famous now! It was more of a cabaret-ish atmosphere, and you’d stay out pretty late, too. There was a great performance duo called Dancenoise, and also the “Full Moon” shows at P.S. 122. This was the more liquid East Village, more sweaty and physical. There were also people doing more esoteric work at the time.
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Michelle Rick

Cities are unforgiving places, and New York perhaps the least forgiving of all.

One of its less attractive traits has always been its self-mythologizing triumphalism and I ♥ NY campaigns, a localized form of the nationalism it derides in the rest of the country. “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere,” Frank Sinatra sang in what has become Manhattan’s unofficial national anthem and New Year’s rallying cry. It’s a sentiment to which countless scrambling citizens still subscribe. If they can just work hard enough, be ingenious and ruthless enough, they too will be “king of the hill / Top of the heap,” because this is the place. Or so we like to think.

Is it, though? Just over a century ago, C.P. Cavafy (1863-1933), an enduringly popular Greek poet who lived in Alexandria, Egypt, wrote a 16-line poem called “The City” which immortalizes a peculiarly urban dilemma whose outlines disenchanted New Yorkers will readily recognize. Those who have just moved here should read the poem, memorize it, print it out, and stick it on the fridge door.
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Michael Sean Edwards on East Village life in the 1970’s and 80’s.

“One of the things that most struck me about the East Village when I moved here in 1978, and what made me love it so much is that it really was a village; an enclave in NYC that felt like old Europe rubbing up against the new wave.”
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Grace Maalouf Tomorrow’s UEFA Champion’s League Final between Barcelona and Manchester United is certain to intensify the rivalries among the East Village’s European soccer fans. Above, Manchester United fans take in a match at Nevada Smith’s earlier this year. Below: Barcelona memorabilia at Nevada’s.

Kenan Christiansen

Saturday will be a big day in the East Village, which, as you may have noticed, has a lot of Europeans living in it, visiting it, and — East Village merchants say Thank You! — spending a lot of much-needed money in it.

Tomorrow afternoon, however, many of those Europeans will be passionately engaged in watching the UEFA Champion’s League Final between Barcelona and Manchester United, which starts at 2:45 p.m. and is being shown live on Fox. (Not Fox’s soccer channel, but its main channel — i.e., the one that shows “American Idol.”) However, expect many of them to be watching in bars and restaurants around the East Village and Lower East Side, including Nevada Smith’s, The Central Bar, etc. As will be plenty of other New Yorkers from around the world, including a healthy dose of native New Yorkers.

Now for the match itself. What have we got?
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Ladies of the East Village, it’s time to stash your stilettos away and save your flip flops for the beach. This season is all about chunky heels, whether they are giving some lift to a pair of gladiators or height to your favorite strappy sandals. On the street, the wedge is a walking shoe with the height of high heels and all the glitz too. It’s sure to be seen as summer rolls around.

NYU Journalism’s Rachel Ohm reports.

Tim Schreier

Today we begin a recurring series of interviews with local experts who will offer their takes on cultural issues, trivia questions and current events concerning the neighborhood.

On Tuesday, American songwriting legend Bob Dylan celebrated his 70th birthday.

In a career that’s spanned 40 years and has had more than its share of mystery, one of the most enduring questions concerns Dylan’s disposition toward the Village and the meaning of the song, “Positively 4th Street.”

Some say the song was meant as a rebuke of all the plastic folkies Dylan met while living in the Village, while others claim it was Dylan’s way reacting to being booed, after leaving his fan-base to go electric at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, and still others say Dylan was merely talking about the “many 4th streets of his life.”  In any case, the song provoked a widespread feeling of individual unease by directing it’s accusations toward a universal “you:”

“You got a lotta nerve
To say you are my friend
When I was down
You just stood there grinning”

The Local East Village contacted Jeff Conklin, co-content Director for East Village Radio to provide his take on the song and Dylan’s relationship to the East Village.

What’s your interpretation of the song “Positively 4th Street?”

Quite simply jealousy. The song reminds me of a bucket full of crabs, where one crab is inching to get out and all the other crabs are trying to pull him back down. That’s my example of what happened to Dylan, anyway.

“You got a lotta nerve
To say you got a helping hand to lend
You just want to be on
The side that’s winning.”

He had to be angry when he wrote it. It’s a great song.
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A would-be message from the East Village, in 140 characters or less and inspired by photography.

Brendan Bernhard

Pansies at Night (E. 9th St.)

Angry old men is what they look like, with eyes
like eyebrows and in-your-face mustaches. Purple
quiffs! Yellow noses! From drinking what?

A day after preservationists held a vigil for the demolished 35 Cooper Square, The Local takes a look back at the historic building with archival photographs provided by David Mulkins of the Bowery Alliance of Neighbors, one of the leaders of the campaign to maintain the building.

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Michelle Rick

Would-be messages from the East Village in 140 characters or less.

Divine Retribution

Clouds, rain, ice, wind or lung-stopping heat pursue
him, in any country, on almost any day. God’s
punishment for spending ten years in L.A.

Global Transport Provider

The taxi driver from Senegal has lived in Dijon, NY,
Barcelona, and Kansas. He speaks three languages. Just
another working stiff, y’all

Ost

‘The debris of laptops’ (Colin Firth) on silvery display.
Everyone mit coffee & Mac. We all changed so quickly.
Can we please change back?

East Village Grunge

Writers mythologized it, residents boasted of it, tourists
ate it up. Now landlords happily serve it to us, in a
grimy, $2,000 plastic cup

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Vivienne Gucwa, a community contributor to The Local East Village Flickr Group shares her images of the weekend’s New York Dance Parade, which wound its way through the East Village Saturday.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

If you’d like a chance to see your best shots appear on The Local, join The Local East Village Flickr Group.

Johnny Pérez on capturing the city after hours.

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