Navigating the East Village

My first instinct upon beginning a personal map of the East Village was to draw on the cultural makeup of the neighborhood as well as my memory, being that I attended middle and high school right on what I now consider its northern end. The map I've posted here indicates what I feel are the general borders of the neighborhood (pink is the EV territory). Interestingly, this one is also the scheme used most often by Real Estate businessmen and the NYC Tourist industry. Despite the myth-making of the business world, these borders do hold up as far as my standards about cultural maps (insofar as borders realistically can). Walking one block beyond them in any direction reveals a clear distinction in culture and general atmosphere, brought on by big businesses on the west, residences to the north, and a relatively different population of residents and commuters to the south (and arguably elsewhere).

Of course, the confluence of the business vision of the neighborhood and the cultural one is not new. In fact, the modern existence of the East Village, and its very conception as an individual neighborhood is contingent on such a shared history. Before the 1950s, the area was considered part of the Lower East Side (Interestingly, many of my friends who live in it, particularly the non-white ones or whites who defined themselves by hip-hop, still call it that), and was populated mostly by poor immigrants and racial/ethnic minorities. The architecture was defined by tenements, and there were few businesses. The ones that did exist catered mostly to locals. In the 1950s, Allen Ginsberg moved there, and by the middle of the decade, the neighborhood had become home to various beatniks and self-described bohemian artists of several sorts. In the 1960s, hippies began moving in. By the late 1960s, the immigrant and minority population was no longer a visible majority. It was at this time that various Realtors began describing the neighborhood as "the East Village" to market it as the Greenwich Village, which had been hip in the 50s but had by then become mostly middle-class and decidedly uncool. Calling it the Village also erased its association with the immigrant ghettos. This helped bring more hip wannabes into the neighborhood, but also offended the traditional bohemian sensibility by destroying its obscurity). Many sites now considered landmarks, like the famous CBGB & OMFUG materialized soon after, making the bohemian conception of the space branch out and splinter into different varieties. Today, the neighborhood consists mainly of the relics of this bohemian past and its fetishized vision of the older space.

During my walk, there were several things that stuck out to me, and that made me question my own relationship to the neighborhood. The first thing I noticed was that all of the landmarks and sites which I initially categorized as the "old neighborhood" were actually only so old as to belong to the initial wave of bohemia. Indeed, perhaps the popular vision of the neighborhood had crept into my own. In order to rectify this, I began to envision the ideologies and dreams that had built my own conception of the place, and then to deconstruct them. I began to notice, much to my dismay, that I could not find any signs of the pre-bohemian community, except in the projects that existed on the extreme eastern side, where many Latinos still live, and in fetishized spaces.

There is McSorley's Old Ale House on East 7th Street, a place that has been operating since the 19th century. Back then, it actually was a gathering space for immigrants, many of them Irish. Now, it is being marketed as an "authentic" community space, and its connotations of working-class grit, along with Irish stereotypes, are being flaunted to no end. Of course, it has changed ownership since its earliest days, and in some sense it is being forced to do this to stay open; it is catering to rather than being evicted by the new waves of bohemia, and now, yuppies, that live there. Once inside, I saw a rather diverse group of people, mostly minding their own business. The interior remains mostly unchanged, to help maintain the preferred atmosphere. There are many people inside who would not look out of place in the stereotypical Williamsburg, but there are some who seem to be local, working class residents as well.

There is also the site of the former CBGB, survived only by its new apparel store since the original shut down in the October of 06 after it was seized by the Bowery Residents Committee in the name of starting a home for orphaned children. It may move to Las Vegas, though it has not done so yet. Now, though, plans have changed, and fashion designer John Varvatos plans to open a store at that address sometime very soon, promising to respect the legacy of the site, whatever that may entail. Still, the new CBGB store is something more corporate than before itself, selling all sorts of trinkets and apparel that depend on the old CBGB's image as a site for once avant-garde, underground punk music made by mostly-starving artists. Everything is priced rather high, but the most popular item remains the only apparel marketed by the original CBGB, the black tee shirt with the site's logo printed on it. Once again, nostalgia and fetishism reign.

More generally, St. Mark's Place is changing quickly. There are more Japanese-owned stores than ever before, and a large population of tourists, many of whom are Japanese themselves. Interestingly, the new stores don't seem to be drawing on any of the mythologies previously associated with the street. They do seem to draw local crowds interested in what they have to offer, and they are definitely connected to the influx of Japanese tourists. This is an example of a change that is seemingly unrelated to the past, but perhaps there is more here...