HISTORY "CAPTURED"

Last night MB witnessed an enthusiastic screening of the new documentary film, "Captured" in an event space on the Bowery. The film chronicles the life work of LES artist and consummate man-of-many-hats, Clayton Patterson, who tirelessly etched scenes of pre-gentrified Lower-East-Side life into a vast compendium of photos, films, and art for over 30 years. Like a modern day Herodotus, Patterson labored, often risking life and limb, so that us future generations and revelers of the L.E.S. could witness the blood that was spilled on this ground before our time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxUZSIf5yjQ


Clayton is victorious as a Lower East Side hero and the film does a good job of picking through his vast collection of divisive if not outright disturbing video footage, but the PBR guzzling audience seemed to walk away unaffected by the woes of lower-east-siders of the last generation. At one point rioters raid the lobby of a upscale apartment building on Tompkins square -a mere neanderthal to today's Avalon or Ludlow monstrosities - in a gesture of angst toward upscale gentrification, but how does one expect the current inhabitants to react to this? As you might expect, the tragedy felt by the LES dwellers of the 70's & 80's was lost on more than a few.

The precious footage that Clayton has rescued from anonymity however, is CAPTURED's greatest gift. The LES as ghetto; a lawless, shameless, bubbling miasma of crime, art, newness, fear, and infamy. MB has often wondered what New York might have looked like during the 1863 Draft Riots and the tapes of the Tompkins Square Riot might be just about as clear a window as we can get into what happens when peace in our city takes a holiday.

'ROLE MODEL' TEE

ACTOR, Sean William-Scott was caught wearing the ol' Barking Irons classic "Greensward" tee in his new movie, "Role Models" last week. The film has been advertising all over NYC with a giant pictures of Mr. Stifler wearing this vintage Barking Irons diddy. Aside from Scott, Role Models also stars Paul Rudd -a gallant knight of comedy these days and a Barking Irons fan to boot. The film has been scoring solid reviews as a good ol' knee-slapper, just the thing for our depression era blues.

For the curious among you who are wondering aimlessly about the history and meaning of the "greensward" shirt, rest easy and you may now unfurl your brow:

In 1860, the city commission of New York issued a design contest for a landscaping plan to fill the center portion of Manhattan island. Over 1000 entries were submitted from all over the globe, but it was a submission by Fredick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux entitled, "The Greensward Plan" that ultimately won the day.

The ambitious Greensward Plan proposed roughly 8 years of massive terraforming and redirection of waterways in order to reconfigure the feral, rock-strewn land into a sprawling opus of open public space in the center of the country's most crowded city.

It is remarkable to remember that while it may seem like a preserved natural space, Central Park and the Greensward Plan represent the totalizing efffect of man-made space. Every square foot of Central Park was mapped out and reformed by steam shovels and good old-fashioned Irish labor, more than anything else it represents man's ideal vision of nature.

Thank you Sean-William Scott for your wearing on chest a most memorable homage to manscaping.

The Greenward shirt is available on the Back Door section of the Barking Irons webstore, get yours NOW!!!

THE BOWERY NOUVEAU

First off, kudos to the Bowery Hotel and its creators Sean MacPherson & Eric Goode for creating a truly exquisite vision of the Bowery 'gone Continental. We have always believed the Bowery to be a distinct calling card of New York City appropriate for out-of-towners or visitors from abroad. Much like New York, it is an entity onto itself having a colored history that is commonly set apart from the development of the rest of the city. It has always been boldy unashamed of what it is, for better or for worse.

During the 19th century the Bowery was the shadowy low-brow theatre district; birthplace of the American minstrel shows (the first form of American popular music); tap-dancing, the New York dialect, and later epicenter to the vaudeville theatre era. The Bowery was a constant thoroughfare of the carnivalesque; it may have appeared dark & dismal but it was a place that was alive with deeply American inventions and cultural fermentation.


The creators of the Bowery Hotel have taken this "aesthetic idea" of the Bowery as dark & cozy, mysterious, cave-like, ragged and well-worn, and married it to a vision of almost European grandeur. Granted, the interior of the hotel is probably far more elegant than anything that ever lived on the Bowery, but we can appreciate a tasteful appropriation of style when we see it. All the tapestries are tattered like ancient Medieval art, the furniture shows bruises and homely dings & tears in non-obstrusive places, in one hallway there is a glass showcase of Barnum-esque oddities, and surrounding the lobby is a smoky, painted panorama of a river-scape opposing the dusty streets of the old Bowery. Everywhere this dude is speckled:





Bowery B'hoyo

He is their logo & leprechaun and he is friend to Barking Irons. We know the Bowery is in transition and that's all well and good, but first, a tip of our hat to the Bowery Hotel for honoring a legacy in pursuit of new riches.

In contrast to this tasteful homage to the history that is the Bowery Hotel there is the newly constructed New Museum on Bowery, which, along with the new Whole Foods ushers in a new era of Bowery development that breaks unabashedly with the shadowy past of our humble thoroughfare and its lowly fore-bearers.



The "New Museum" on Bowery

Now, I am not one of those who is staunchly opposed to the rising tide of development or one to lament the passing of old, decrepit buildings -this destruction/creation process is part of the life blood of New York, if it did not exist it would truly be something to lament- but these fancy pants architects need to call a spade a spade. This is an excerpt from a recent interview:

Question: How does your design address the context of the Bowery—the thoroughfare itself, the beginning of Prince Street at the site, the surrounding of smallish buildings of different styles and conditions?

Answer: We wanted to be as consistent as possible with the scale of the existing surroundings. However, our building has to accommodate a much bigger program than its neighbors do. By shifting the different levels of the structure in relation to one another, we are also diminishing the bulk and establishing a more effective, dynamic relationship with the buildings in the area. On the other hand, because this area is in transition, we believe the New Museum building should have a strong identity of its own in order to survive, especially on a street as tough as the Bowery.

If this isn't blowing theoretical smoke up our asses, I don't know what is. Your building is by no stretch of the imagination at harmony or in context with its surroundings, it sticks out like a sore thumb and that's exactly what you wanted it to do. And what does "diminishing the bulk" even supposed to mean?? Does it mean diminishing the crappiness?? If so, well done. But we're not so bitter, we know that its par for the course and thats how come your pants got so fancy, so welcome to the Bowery... I guess.