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Music History Neighborhoods Podcasts Writers and Artists

Walking the East Village: Culture Among The Ruins 1976-1996

PODCAST The rebirth of the East Village in the late 1970s and the flowering of a new and original New York subculture — what Edmund White called “the Downtown Scene” — arose from the shadow of urban devastation and was anchored by a community that reclaimed its own deteriorating neighborhood. In the last episode (Creating… Read More

Before CBGB’s, parties at 315 Bowery were for the birds

Above: The first of hundreds of Bowery hotels — the old Gotham Inn in 1862. The inn, which dated from the 1790s, sat quite close to where 315 Bowery is today, just north of Houston Street. (Pic courtesy NYPL) The early history of buildings at 315 Bowery — the address that would later become the… Read More

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Friday Night Fever Podcasts

CBGB & OMFUG: Punk music history on the Bowery

Photo courtesy araceli.g, Flickr PODCAST Modern American rock music would have been a whole lot different without the rundown dive mecca CBGB’s, a beat-up former flophouse bar that made stars out of young musicians and helped shape the musical edge of downtown Manhattan. Owner Hilly Kristal may have initially envisioned a place for ‘Country Blue… Read More