FRANK 22: NYC

IT AIN’T WHERE YOU FROM

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WHERE YOU AT

CONTENTS

Nemo’s Intro Luc Sante Adihala & House Lauren Hutton Bart Walker AZ Poppa Wu Ezec Bonz Malone Big Blood Gary Indiana Alfredo Martinez Ghetto Communicator James Nares Jonathan Shaw Julian Schanbel Kalaparusha Lee Quinones Rene Ricard Hugo Martinez Supanova Slom Mario Sorrenti Arto Lindsay Cody Franchetti Jim Jarmusch Stacey Rees Pakobeena Louis Sarno Sifu Shi Yan Ming Steven Lewis Vegas Girls Couples Luv Bug Starski Phil Schaap Zip Prince Harlem Lawrence Melodic Hip Hop Cop Killah Priest Uptown Juice Bar Mahen Bonetti & Solonka Shayne Oliver Zac Posen Kareem Campell Richard Hambleton Joe Coleman Allah B Bill Rice Kool Keith Ben Ruhe Rosie Perez Jonas Mekas

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Mike and Stephen Malbon Chris Nagy Sir Frank Frank Green Nemo Librizzi Jesse Nicely Carl Rauschenbach Craig Wetherby Abel Rugama, Stephen Yee Diem Nguyen Frenel Morris Grace Santa Maria Domingo Neris Christian Alexander Dan Tochterman Jim DiCarlo, Mark Lowyns, Dan Girma Lyntaro Wajima, Takayuki Shibaki Reietsu Sasaki Daisuke Shiromoto Victor Organic Kim Chey, Josh Bock, Liana Ponce (advertising@frank151.com) (content@frank151.com) (info@frank151.com)

Photos & Header Design Nemo Librizzi Cover Art Martin Wong, Houston Street (1986) Courtesy of The Estate of Martin Wong and PPOW Gallery, New York FRANK is published quarterly by Frank151 Media Group LLC “Frank”, “Frank 151”, and “Frank151.com” are trademarks of Frank151 Media Group, LLC. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is strictly prohibited.

Photos Rick Librizzi

Photo David “Shadi” Perez

I used to glimpse other cities in movies and lust after them as some do porn. By hook or by crook (I must admit, it was mostly by crook), I traveled the world. I have visited places that captivated me for some weeks or months - Marrakech, Bologna, Pointea-Pitre, Cascais, Nara; Paris even had me entranced for two whole years, but before too long I always yearned for home.

It didn’t help that wherever I traveled the locals were fascinated by the idea of New York, and urged me to speak of my homeland. Once I walked through a Cinecitta movie set of downtown New York while in Rome, and I swear I could have cried - here were those things I had seen and yet overlooked all my life: the beat-up alleys, tags spray painted on brick walls, fire -escapes, street signs, even the steam curling out from a manhole…

I learned in time to see my home through a traveler’s eyes - or better yet I became a traveler in my own city. I got drunk on whiskey at a disco cabaret show in Morocco, got broke and ate spaghetti at a soup-kitchen in Italy, trained at a Zen Monastery in Japan, smoked weed at a Rasta commune in Guadeloupe and I had to ask myself why I’d never done any of these things before, although all the above were readily available in my hometown.

When FRANK asked me to Guest Curate an issue about New York I am proud to say I did not overlook the obvious, and went right to the people and places that help to make this city all the things it is praised as abroad - cultured, diverse, and tough.

Dedicated toCurtis Cuffie

I was born in Belgium, in 1954.

My family immigrated to the United States when I was a child. Actually, because my parents weren’t sure they liked the place, we left and came back a few times before fate took over, so that I came to America at the ages of 4, 5, 8, and 9. We settled in New Jersey.

I first saw New York City on Halloween, 1959, and I was dazzled and shocked.

Everywhere were kids running through the streets in costume - we didn’t have Halloween in Europe, so I didn’t know what was going on - and the theaters of 42nd Street were covered in gigantic, garishly colored blow-ups of stills from the movies, which in those days were monster pictures and westerns.

My mother made me avert my eyes nevertheless, which naturally had the effect of making me want to run away and live in Times Square.

At fourteen I got a scholarship to high school in Manhattan. I commuted there every day, two hours each way, becoming increasingly interested in the city and decreasingly in my classes. I was finally given the boot halfway through junior year, but not before I had resolved to make New York my home as soon as I could. At eighteen I moved there to go to college, and the rest is history.

In high school I envied the kids from Manhattan - it was a carnival, while the other boroughs looked drab, not so different from New Jersey. A lot of those kids seemed much more worldly than I was; one of them was even an emancipated minor, with his own apartment on the Lower East Side (rent: $36 a month) and a job in a record store. I studied them closely and learned how to not show surprise at anything, how to walk into liquor stores and plunk my money down for a pint of fortified wine (I was 15 or so, but the drinking age was still 18 then) without betraying nervousness. I walked down every street, searching out the old, forgotten things as well as the new, flashy ones.

I got a part-time job stuffing envelopes for a big travel agency on Fifth Avenue and then dragging the mail bags to the Grand Central post office, and I was as proud as if I had been awarded the key to the city. But what really made me a New Yorker was learning the arcana.

I knew all kinds of alternative subway routes, knew how to shoplift from the big stores (much easier before video cameras came in), knew how to roll a joint in public without being seen. Most importantly, I kept a mental list of toilets in every neighborhood that I could use without being harassed. You couldn’t buy that sort of information.

We were both born in New York and raised in Brooklyn, the Borough of Kings.

We are the “Black Dynamic Duo of Heavy Mental Poetry”, our groups name is Higher.Soul.Power. We are known at the many poetry and cafe houses through out New York’s five boroughs. We make our daily living selling books, mixed CDs, incense and other novelties. We are known as AD.DI.AH.LA and House, and we have the advantage of meeting people from all over the world everyday; that is the great advantage of being a native New Yorker: New York doesn’t have to go to the world but the world always comes to New York.

To be a true New Yorker is like becoming a professor or a scholar or “Battle Hardened Combat Veteran” that is always ready for a Fresh New Lesson. Because New York is forever changing and complicated like a Rubic’s Cube or a battle field, you never know what to expect. New York is an education within itself; it is not for the weak or feeble. If you are just coming to New York: “you have to be use to constant change” because it’s like entering into kindergarten. For example, I saw a guy that was real nice from Pakistan open a news stand, with a big KoolAid smile on his face, within two months he was a complete cursing monster with an angry bitter face. If you are soft in New York, it will make you hard. New York is like a martial arts teacher that never runs out of techniques or moves, just when you got it figured out, it transforms on you. So to become a New Yorker

is like a spiritual experience. New Yorkers are like a private club with their own language and their own club card that says “Tough and Ready for Whatever.” We [AD.DI.AH. LA and House] consider ourselves: “Top Scholars of New York.”

We are the Drum & Bass-Afro Punk B.K. Kings, but it’s all about New York. New York is special to us. It is the Big City of Dreams, and of course everything in New York ain’t all of what it seems. The people control the rhythm of New York. When we think of New York, we think of music.

Music is the spirit of New York, and the music is diverse as the people — you can never stereotype in New York.

Look at us, we are two big black guys that love Japanese and Spanish food and that love Rock & Roll and Drum & Bass, and of course Underground Hip Hop. The night life in New York is like getting high off reality. The food, the fashion, the vibration, the people - they work together like different instruments in a band. You can find peace, or if you’re looking for it, a whole lot of trouble; or you can find the in between, which is living on the edge. Nothing shocks New York.

New York is always the place to be.

No native!

From South Carolina on my mother’s side and Mississippi on my father’s side.

I heard old family stories of my mother’s parents going to New York in the 20s, before the depression, after I already lived there for 20 years. Before then, as far as I knew, no one had ever gone in my family except for war. Regular New York rules: no Central Park after dark, cross street if a mad person approaches you, don’t catch their eyes, etc.

First, I’d never been in or seen a building taller than 10 stories - once in Miami in the 40s. Occasionally I’d see a hundred or more people congregated outside, at the state fair, etc. So breathing in New York’s walled canyons and seeing only slivers of sky, plus population pressure were all problems. I found the Village was the only somewhat comfortable place, and since I’d only come for a few months until my Tramp Steamer left for Africa, that’s where I stayed. I first had to learn New York manners: put on extra speed when passing on the sidewalk, don’t follow behind someone silently (I only owned sneakers) too close, and don’t smile or talk to just anyone who smiles and talks to you, especially when you’re a pretty young Rube. I also learned to never catch the eye of obvious freaks-in-trouble, or, rather, fellow citizens in crisis. With seven million people on a seven mile long island, you couldn’t bring anyone you saw sleeping outside on a snowy night home unless you were prepared to not sleep that night. Once you came to love the city and see millions of faces all those rules changed except the last. How long did it take? I was lucky. I fell in love with a born New Yorker six months in. I bagged my initial Africa trip and figured out how to

climb the New York beanstalk and meet giants.

We are all tribes, all nations, from Balinese to Afghanis. We used to be all classes living here. We are still all classes, but working here. The information one gets daily from just walking down New York streets and seeing thousands of different ethnicities and 21st century combinations is a whole new level of information to get and the info never ends. It’s like plugging your head into a light socket: if you live through it, you’re charged. We New Yorkers can absorb pretty much anything. I survived! If I couldn’t pick my rad sports/war journalist or field scientist friends, I’d rather be marooned on a desert island with 10 random New Yorkers than anyone else I know, because somehow, we would survive.

Russell’s joint (SSURPLUS) is my favorite store in NY. He’s a quintessential New Yorker, a young, kind kid, growing up during Cold War Russia, hearing of America as this horror show, yet having his own ideas and sticking to them. He finally escapes, comes and recreates the dreams he had about it. King Kong, 50s Rock, Studebakers, Chiquita Banana, Uncle Sam, Grand Canyon, our phenomena. All boring, overworked American clichés but seen made through the eyes of Russ and distilled through his USSR teen hood, one still feels our discarded magic in a brand new way. Even New York has been franchised-over. You won’t see anything you’ve seen before in Russell’s, it’s a real store.

I was born in Baltimore, Maryland; went to school in Cambridge, Massachusetts; started my career in San Francisco; and moved to New York in 1982. That is why I consider myself a true NewYorke r.

Photo Craig Wetherby

I was a New Yorker before I ever lived here. When I arrived I felt at home immediately.

What makes NY so special? The people I have met and the people I might meet tomorrow.

This picture was shot in Madison Square Park, a short walk from my office. It is a nice place to get some air or read a script. The Shake Shack is a great place for a burger; I had a memorable dinner with my son there recently.

New York?? Nah, I am from Harlem! Feel me?

I was born in the Bronx in 1964 but moved to Harlem at the age of six, the Mecca of all hoods: Saint Nick, “The Hill”...

the next generation to hell - I wrote a script entitled “Trapped” which was released by Roc-a-fella Films and Miramax as Paid In Full.

Worked at the local dry cleaner’s until I ran into one of the biggest connects in the city at the age of eighteen and became one of the youngest kingpins New York had ever seen...

Good movie, but “Trapped” would have saved the youth.

New York, the forbidden fruit...

You may have heard of my running mates, Richard Porter and Alpo. After the game we were playing turned ugly and backfired on us - getting shot nine times, twice in the head, waking up, seeing the light, realizing that the power we had was leading

Maybe you saw me in the documentary Game Over... powerful piece, but you must read the book, Game Over - the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God. Peace. One-Two-Six. The sun is God... Don’t believe me, ask a tree.

LOVE, AZ

I am a native New Yorker — from Fort Green, Brooklyn.

To really be a New Yorker, you really gotta be a native that’s the way I feel.

Some people come here for a while but they still don’t have that old New York spirit. See, the New York spirit is — you can’t even explain it. It’s something, a vibration that we feel inside. By me being born and raised in New York I can just look at a person and tell that they not from here.

New York, what makes it so special, it’s because niggas in New York keep it real. That’s why most of the people come here, for mostly the “realness”.

Ain’t no joke, you can’t come in here half-steppin’. Come here playin’ and it’s over. Most of the people, where they come from, their peoples play games, head games, and they never seen real people before.

But here in New York we all get along, and New York City is the only place you can come and it’s like you

traveled the whole world.

We shot in the American Indian Museum becase it brings me back more to my roots, the first Americans.

My family is full-blooded Shinnecock Indian. My great-grandfather’s name was Chief Walcott Cuffie, and Manhattan, which used to be called New Amsterdam, was owned by my great-grandfather.

So, how did they come? They came with the whiskey to get him drunk — he didn’t know what was going on — cause Indians don’t sell nothing.

Indians would trade. They were more peaceful people. I give you something you give me something.

So they really took advantage, and really snatched the land up. Never even got the trinkets and beaded necklaces history books speak of. So that’s about my roots, I’m a tribal-type person anyway, I always grew up like that.

I was born and raised in this city!

I am a second generation New Yorker.

My mother was born in a housing project on the Lower East Side. Her mother (my abuela) came straight from Puerto Rico. My mother was raised in Spanish Harlem and grew up in the East River Houses right off the F.D.R. on 96th Street. My father was born in Brooklyn. He was raised and bred in that borough! Garrison Beach and later on in East New York.

His family came from Poland, fleeing the Nazis since they were Jewish.

My grandmother, Helen Singer, lost 12 brothers and sisters due to those bastards! So basically my mother was working at a donut shop in Spanish Harlem and my father was a cop at the 23rd precinct. You do the math...

I was born at a hospital that don’t exist anymore. This hospital was called Flower Fifth Avenue. My mother used to work there at nights so I guess we got a deal. We then moved to the Bronx in Soundview until I was three and then moved to Jackson Heights, Queens - I am a Queens kid. I rep Queens to the fullest!

I wouldn’t know how long it takes someone to become a New Yorker, cause I am from the Big Apple! I can always tell when someone isn’t from here. No matter how long they been here, I can still tell that they aren’t from the NYC.

It is the city that never sleeps. If you go to any other wack city in the US-of-A, shit is closed by one or two.

That’s the time when we are going out meeting our friends. There are people who are like two hours away from NYC and have never been here. They talk about the city as if it was an enchanted magical fairytale kingdom! You can get whatever you want at anytime in this city.

Sometimes I forget how blessed I am that I grew up here, especially when I am touring and traveling in some wack-ass hick town I really start to appreciate this place!

I chose to be photographed at C.B.G.B.’s, it’s where it all goes down in underground music. Bands from all over the world want to play there cause of the history and notoriety. I chose C.B.G.B.’s cause that is where I got started in music. I saw my very first live show at C.B.G.B.’s, but more importantly I played my very first live show at C.B.G.B.’s. To me it is the birthplace of Punk and Hardcore music. It gave birth to the most influential scene - one that changed my whole way of life. The New York Hardcore scene!

I LOVE NEW YORK!!!!

Peace. 1.

LORD EZEC A.K.A. DANNY DIABLO D.M.S.

Most definitely a native New Yorker. Most gang affiliated, most true connected nigga here in New York. Period.

It should usually take you between 30 to 90 days to become a New Yorker.

The first 30 are the most important, because if you could get to 30 days and pay your rent, and especially the money you owe to the family that you’re staying with, at the end of 30 days, that is a big requisite to being a New Yorker. On top of that, you have to move as fast as other New Yorkers, talk as fast other New Yorkers, cut through the bullshit as fast as other New Yorkers. You have to stop saying “hello” and “good morning”. We don’t give a fuck about that, get to the point, that’s a New Yorker.

Anything can happen here.

The paradigm for Las Vegas is New York; Vegas is just a replica of what 42nd Street is, so New York is that city. It is the number one city in the world, because it’s an upper commerce, media, anything you want to get into.

I took my picture at a social club

in Little Italy because it’s part of a private society. Everything in society, in the world, everything is gangs and crews. The police, teamsters, firemen, Republican, Democrat, and Independent parties are gangs unto themselves. Everything is cliques, and from my extensive history of being in New York, living in 3 boroughs out of 5, I’ve met so many nationalities here, there are certain places where I might not have grown up in, but I call home, because we are like-minded people.

We have the same spirit of the street, and that’s a big thing that goes along with being a New Yorker. It is being able to speak without words, just through facial expressions, hand gestures, body language. By how a guy walks you can tell if he has been locked up. Its stuff like how he smokes. Its average stuff the normal person wouldn’t know. A New Yorker with an extensive history knows another New Yorker as such.

I was born in Harlem Hospital and brought up in foster care group homes.

All I know is the streets and jail.

Never got to know my parents. Never had a childhood.

And that’s why I hate the world.

The Bloods started in New York in 1993 on C-73. I was locked down on C-73 at that time. For the first time in my life I felt I had a family.

Being Blood as long as I have, I take the good with the bad.

People come to New York from other places for the opportunities. Opportunities that the people who built this country don’t have.

I stay in Harlem because it is a stronghold for the Bloods.

I know how to get my money up here, how to get up, and get out.

I moved to New York from Los Angeles in 1977. I had lived all over the place before I came here. I continued living all over the place after I came here.

I’ve never thought of myself as a New Yorker. I think of myself as a homeless person who happens to live indoors. I have an address here and some friends. New York itself hasn’t interested me in the slightest in twenty years. The only significant process I’ve gone through here is the aging process.

York. In other places you actually have to have some socially useful qualities as well.

Anybody who wants to move here from abroad, from a place with a national health system, has to be out of his mind. I can see where it might be preferable to living in Cleveland, where there really isn’t anything.

New York continues to generate a fantasy about glamor, wealth, and celebrity that a lot of people imagine has some relationship to real life. The fact that people find that fantasy a worthy goal for a human being tells you a lot about why the human race is in such lovely shape. You could say it’s special that sociopathic ruthlessness may get you a fraction of that fantasy if you use everybody around you like a Kleenex in New

My favorite place in NY is El Quixote, it hardly changes at all from one year to the next, it’s attached to a hotel that never changes either, I can get the same margarita there that I got there thirty years ago.

In a city where almost everything attractive gets demolished to make way for something hideous, places that stay the way they always were have a lot of appeal.

When I was born in New York, I think there were some Brontosaurus’s swimming in the East River. Uh ’67, ’67.

I think that someone knows they are a New Yorker if when they visit they become homesick for New York after they leave. I’ve known people to come here for a week, leave, and then become homesick for New York.

I certainly can’t think of any other place I would live.

I’ve been to other cities like Rome, Berlin, and London; the thing that struck me is how small they were and how low to the ground they were. In New York everything’s tall. When a New Yorker goes to other cities you realize, “hey this place is small.”

During September 11 people thought, “Uh-Oh, our downtown is gone,” but we’ve got like five or six downtowns.

My favorite destination in the city is the USS Intrepid because it’s an aircraft carrier! I think it’s amazing you can walk onto an aircraft carrier in Times Square. There’s all sorts of things you can see in New York where it’s normal here and everywhere else it would be something really super special. If that aircraft carrier was parked anywhere else it would be the main attraction, it would be their main thing. Here it’s just an aside.

Something you might think is so amazing is just normal here.

I’m a primitive New Yorker, from PrimeTime, born o’ Queens, New York City, and raised o’ Kings, New York City, (known as Brooklyn, New York, to the general population, of the planet). However, I’ve lived in Far Rockaway, Harlem and the Bronx, and I’ve enjoyed the difference o’ atmosphere (considering the age o’ culture).

Considering that New York is the home o’ Wall Street, amongst other references, according to the dollar, I would think that to become a genuine New Yorker one would have to appreciate the “Budget Boogie” of independent adulthood. New York City is a place where folks come to “grow up”, so to speak, whereas some children would run away to be a part o’ the circus, others run away from Smalltown Unknown to become a part of civilization (and still want to be unknown from that life o’ which they have ran from). I think that you would have to be a lover to realize that, yeah, in order to be a New Yorker, in the full comprehension o’ “citylife”, you would have to be a “lover” of life itself. Then the themes and theories o’ arts and different cultures would be accepted, in their proper alignment o’ comprehension, as pieces to a puzzle that keeps evolving, and one solves himself, in the mist of life, the purpose of the fast lane is to be complemented from the slow grind. New York is a “fuck”, and the city will never stop (sleep or not).

The architecture of New York City is reflection o’ art and architecture from all parts o’ the sphere; there is only one quarter land on this sphere, in spite of the fact that you refer to seven different continents as such. New York City is a gathering o’ all o’ these movements,

through food, music, dance, and money. In spite of the differences o’many the common reference is the possibility to share.

If for only one moment you might share a universal mood with those that were considered unknown, and as you step to the side o’ it, you might smile. The visit to New York is worth the education of a smile without ugliness. (Can you afford to love?)

As for the “flick” (the photograph), I was at Liz Christy Garden on Houston Street, somewhere in between SoHo and the Lower East Side of New York City. The garden is a hiding spot for lovers. In spite of the heavy traffic on the other side of the fence, on a nice spring or autumn night the garden is open to the general public; however, out of ignorance, few people go there. Yet because o’ such, for the few that do, in spite of the fact that the city wants to move the garden and use the property for some other nonsense (and in spite o’ the fact that I’m single these days), the memory of the hidden forbiddens in the middle of the famous unknowns are beyond the notorious because you would never, however, this is for those o’ us that have tried, or for those o’ us that have went there and cried , and tried again because somebody lied. If you love New York City you will never die.

I’m not a native New Yorker, but after living here for 31 years, I am a New Yorker. It’s done, and it’s as irreversible as turning an omelet back into an egg.

I figured that I could call myself a New Yorker, without reservation, after I’d lived here longer than I’d lived anywhere else. It’s also true to say that as soon as I arrived here I felt like I was home for the first time in my life.

New York seemed more of a world apart back then, and there was a sense of having joined the legions of the dispossessed, which was just fine by me. I think I learned to be myself in New York, in a way that would have been impossible anywhere else, because I was forced to stand up for what I believed in, and to have the courage to trade in what was crap about myself and my culture of origin.

I became leaner, and for a while, a little meaner, but it was just part of the process of opening myself up

to a greater generosity, which is the particular gift of New York City itself.

Wanting to visit New York is one thing.

Wanting to move here is another. To make the transition from outsider to insider you have to “want a piece of it,” and then want to give some back.

New York is a vast cornucopia of earthly, cultural, and spiritual delights and there’s enough for everybody. It may require a little sacrifice to receive one’s lot, but when you want to be a New Yorker, it’ll seem worth it.

My studio is the center of my life (aside from my children…and contrary to much opinion, New York is a great place to raise kids). It’s where I get to work and play at the same time.

I was born in New York, but I grew up in Brazil. I came back to New York at the end of the 70s and moved back to Brazil around the time Giuliani started turning New York into Amerikkka’s corporate fascist Disneyland state.

I’m glad I left. Nobody should spend their whole life in any one place, especially someplace as anthropocentric as New York.

New York once had its own character, unique, vibrant, and totally distinguishable from the rest of the country, and the planet, but with the insidious crawling toxic sprawl of post 9-11 globalization paranoia which has taken over the mass consciousness, it has slowly degenerated into a playground for the idle rich, boring aspirants to corporate mediocrity, and a prison for the so called New Yorker, pretty much indistinguishable from the rest of an increasingly bland and slavish American landscape. What used to be a hotbed for new ideas and the creative vanguard has become a place for outsiders, artists

and free thinkers to flee from like a house on fire.

Whatever it was, it aint no more. Unless you’re talking of the enormous opportunities for upwardly mobile materialists junkie vampires and wannabees from all over the planet to convert their greedy nightmares into reality at the expense of good people the world over, feeding the overfed yuppie manifesto with their grandiose schemes and egocentric ideals.

New York was once a great city, but as history shows us, every empire not built on strong enduring principals will eventually crumble and fall. Welcome to the New World Order, baby! Is he bitter? Well, just a tad, but as any resilient resourceful native New Yorker, he moves on and don’t look back...

I was born in the New Caledonian Hospital near Prospect Park in 1951. I grew up on East 5th Street between O & P near King’s Highway and Ocean Parkway.

I moved to Texas when I was 15 and came back in 1973.

In New York anything is possible.

My studio is the center of my world. When I’m not in my studio, I am in Montauk, or in the water.

“Mind is the rabbit at the dog track.�

-Kalaparusha

Supposedly we shouldn’t judge a record by its cover, but when I laid eyes on “Humility In Light Of The Creator” I knew it had to be great. Found out that this cat lived in the city and played sax in the subway, so I tracked him down. They say he is some kind of Sufi or Zen Master, but then why the analogy? A great jazz man is all those things. In the words of Charlie Parker, when asked what religion he followed: “I am a very devout musician.” I learned a lot from this man, as both a musician and a mentor.

Good thing he appeared so we could include him in this magazine, though he could not be reached for the interview bit. I can’t speak for him; I only recommend you seek him out for yourself.

I’ve spent 44 years in New York. I was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico and flew over in the then Pan American propeller planes when I was one year old. I settled in the Lower, Lower East Side, a stones throw from the now defunct Fulton Fish Market.

I would think one can become a New Yorker as fast as it takes to have your first breath of fresh, wholesome, New York stressed air — you can cut it with a knife, just as the humidity. The vortex of Atlantis starts its run here; you can truly have a “broken heart” here and see that life keeps crossing over the bridges, uprooting itself from the underground, and honking its horn at ya. Once you take a straight sheet of metal and brake form it to create a bend, it strengthens.

New York is not a part of the US mainland frame of thinkin’, cause it really is the host of the worlds

“coincidence of being”. Time lines of fashion statements, finance markets, politics, and the arts are all on stage or up-staged here. Its like the security metal detectors at the airports, everyone feels the guilt and elation as they pass through it while the world watches you.

If I could be anywhere in New York it would be in the Cyclone Coaster’s last car whipping on the peak drop-off, you can feel the breeze of the ocean in front of you and the screams of society in back while you snuggle your woman’s rack on that leap of faith.

I was born in Boston.

At 17 I was supporting myself as an artist’s model at the Museum School, etcetera. The art dealers on Newberry Street all knew me very well. One autumn afternoon Arnie Glimpsher’s mother Millie, who ran the original Pace Gallery, said to me, “there’s a Warhol painting at the Institute of Contemporary Art that you have to see”. She called the ICA, identified herself, and said, “I am sending a young man over there. Please let him in on my membership.”

I walked two blocks and in a small space just inside the door but not visible from the street was a brand new, largest size, lent by Johnson & Johnson, dayglo flower painting in the original four color flower format that popped and fizzed several Hans Hoffman push-pull feet away from the green background.

Suddenly a gentle black guard in uniform, with evident embarassment,

tapped me on the shoulder saying, “I’m sorry, sir, but the museum has been closed for half an hour”. I had been there for over three hours.

The formal messages I got from the picture are not as important as the fact that I decided to move to New York as soon as I’d put a couple hundred dollars together. And at just the right time a friend of a friend was abandoning a $45 a month floorthrough tenement on 6th street between B and C. Factored into my decision was a photo - a full spread in Life Magazine of Andy on a mullberry colored velvet Hollywood Modern sofa, reclining just like Truman Capote on the back cover of Other Voices, Other Rooms. It said without ambiguity, “this is a nice, older queer who will take care of me.”

I’m from Lincoln Center (the West Side). A survivor of the genocidal gentrification Robert Moses referred to publicly as “Urban Renewal”, privately “Puerto Rican Removal”. A more apt term would’ve included the working class Irish families that lived there also.

You are a New Yorker after your first arrest, bankruptcy, or Lotto Megabucks win.

It’s a collectively negotiated dream and a tale told by an idiot. A place where truly beautiful people come and barter their beauty for a fabricated illusion.

The struggle between what you were, which was perfectly fine, and what you may become, which would probably not be as good as what you were.

You’re in the belly of the beast with the poison and an ejector seat. Here you feel the frailty of the system we’re in and you know you have a nascent answer.

Miserable green And kill yourself blue Two elevators Make one elevator slow And the other one’s broken 20 watt bulbs in the ceiling So you barely see each other And you can nearly kill each other when you’re fighting Posters in the lobby Dead people that died in the building And wanted posters of people that came to the building And no cops The only time they show up is when you did something Here’s a ticket for pressing all the buttons on the elevator And one for littering -Tracy 168 on NYCHA

Yes, I am a native New Yorker. I’ve in New York all of my life.

For one to truly be a New Yorker one has to interact with various cultures and customs that this great city has to offer. Journey into various neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs and get in tune with its people, places, and things.

In my opinion, New York is the best city on the planet earth. It’s the only place that pulsates 24 hours a day, with vibrant energy and endless drama. It is the only place, where all races, colors, and creeds blend together, detach from each other, and vibrate to the song of life. I love being within this realm, the place where heaven and hell merge. If you can master New York, you can master the world.

As an emcee, I find creative ways to convey the values and principles of Ma’at, the Kemetic attribute of truth, righteousness, and balance, through the medium of edutainment. The Nile Valley ancestors of the Kemetic culture are dear to me because they were true to themselves, in tune with the land, and understood the cosmic correlations of “as above, so below”.

Today’s youth need to feel a greater connection to a legacy that pioneered mathematics and other sciences astronomy, medicine, spirituality and rituals to support it’s development, by overstanding this connection from the past to the present, it can provide

stability and direction for people who are unrooted to anything that will provide them with a means to make decisions and effect positive change in their own lives, the lives of others, and society as a whole.

Kemet, the original indigenious name for what is now known as Egypt in northwest Africa. Egypt is a name that was given to the ancient land of Kemet, “the land of the blacks” by foreigners such as the Greeks, and further enforced by the Persians and Arabs. This is why I feel the Studio of Ptah is an excellent place to be in New York City. Not only does it provide a way to express myself through my culture, it also provides a forum for learning and understanding what it means to claim Kemet in this day and time.

To live as a Kemite in New York is to reject the definitions given to Black people in America. Kemetic culture affirms greatness, while Black folk are expected to be weak and afraid. In this society, the only way a Black person, male in particular, progresses is through a realization of your strength and refusal to stand by and watch the further disrespect and oppression of your people. It is extremely difficult to thrive in an environment that tells you all the time, blatantly and subtlety that you don’t mean anything and are only allowed to exist if you choose to do so within very narrow confines.

I moved to New York in 1980 when I was 10 years old.

I think people are born New Yorkers even if they aren’t born here. Coming here is just the natural thing and I could not imagine living anywhere else.

The multi cultural environment in New York allows people to be individuals and unique.

Photo Mario Sorrenti

I sometimes bring my kids to the zoo, and feel the urge to jump into the polar bear habitat for a swim...

No I am not a native; I have been in New York since 1974.

It doesn’t take long to become a New Yorker. Other New Yorkers will treat you like one right away, it’s really a matter of how long it takes you to feel at home here yourself.

Masses of people are alluring, masses of people making things and apparently making decisions more so.

All the attention that one can possibly garner is available here. Combine

that with proximity to all this wealth and power, and NYC is pretty irresistible to both the vulgar and the sophisticated.

But it does seem like the real charms of the city are not usually the reason people move here.

I like to come here to the St. Marks Bookstore, it helps me remember and forget.

Steps How funny you are today New York like Ginger Rogers in Swingtime and St. Bridget’s steeple leaning a little to the left here I have just jumped out of a bed full of V-days (I got tired of D-days) and blue you there still accepts me foolish and free all I want is a room up there and you in it and even the traffic halt so thick is a way for people to rub up against each other and when their surgical appliances lock they stay together for the rest of the day (what a day) I go by to check a slide and I say that painting’s not so blue where’s Lana Turner she’s out eating and Garbo’s backstage at the Met everyone’s taking their coat off so they can show a rib-cage to the rib-watchers and the park’s full of dancers with their tights and shoes in little bags who are often mistaken for worker-outers at the West Side Y why not the Pittsburgh Pirates shout because they won and in a sense we’re all winning we’re alive the apartment was vacated by a gay couple who moved to the country for fun they moved a day too soon even the stabbings are helping the population explosion though in the wrong country and all those liars have left the UN the Seagram Building’s no longer rivalled in interest not that we need liquor (we just like it) and the little box is out on the sidewalk next to the delicatessen so the old man can sit on it and drink beer and get knocked off it by his wife later in the day while the sun is still shining oh god it’s wonderful to get out of bed and drink too much coffee and smoke too many cigarettes and love you so much -Frank O’Hara

I’m a New Yorker with the zeal of a convert - I moved here almost 20 years ago from California.

I became a New Yorker the first time I got off the plane and got in line for a taxi at JFK. I remember people smoking cigarettes intensely, inhaling like smoking was some kind of competition, talking a mile a minute to the people they knew and asking total strangers if they were going downtown, and did they maybe want to share a cab? I was overtaken by the amazing, crazy energy, and I fell madly in love with it. Head over heels.

I had finally found the place where I fit right in. I knew I wanted desperately to live in a place full of passion and commitment, and I love that New Yorkers can get passionate about anything. And I’ve always liked talking to strangers.

Becoming a New Yorker means being in love with this place. Mostly you can’t get over how fabulous it is, other times it pisses you off, once a week you think it’s definitely not for you, but something keeps you here and then you can’t imagine ever living

anywhere else. Being a New Yorker means always feeling excited about coming back home.

New York is special because it gives back. Somehow I always get what I need here, even if what the city has to offer me isn’t exactly what I think I might want. All the life on the street cheers me up, or makes me cry; I’ll run into a friend unexpectedly, or some randomly beautiful thing takes my breath away. It’s never, ever, ever boring.

I’m a midwife, and Long Island College Hospital is where I have the honor of attending births and welcoming lots of newborn New Yorkers to the world. For me, being there means witnessing the incredible strength and beauty of women in labor. With so much fear of birth in New York I’m worried that we are losing touch with that aspect of women’s power. I want to see more women reclaim it.

To be honest, I don’t think I’m a New Yorker. I live in New York the way a comet lives in our solar system.

Definitely I have an affinity for the place, been visiting it from Jersey since I was a kid. I think what I might really be is just another Jerseyite. Not a New Yorker, but a Newarker.

I have spent the last 20 years living in the Congo in the African Rainforest. I love it. Rainy season just won’t stop.

My Tahitian breadfruit tree, less than 2 years old, is nearly 15 feet tall. Bush Tracks tourists are passing through right now. Mostly wealthy Americans.

It’s their last year here. Next year they’re switching to an east-west tour of the Sahara. I enjoyed talking to one old man the other day, because he looked EXACTLY like Edgar Varese.

The only way I want to keep contact with NY from now on is through

a website I have planned, with recordings and the usual features, info about Akka (as the ancient Egyptians wrote it) in general and my village in particular. I’d post a daily blog of life in our village, all the petty and profound struggles of hunter-gatherers making a go of it in the 21st century.

Ultimately, I want a 2-hour (or more) weekly live broadcast over the Internet from our village, whatever happens to be going on - music, fight, argument, hanging out. Many Akka will want to speak to the world. I’d be available to translate into English, explain what’s going on, etc. Of course all this needs funding, of which I have as usual none.

I was born in Henan Province and grew up at the Shaolin Temple for many years. From my understanding, I believe everywhere is my home, I believe New York City is my home. I came to New York in 1992 and have been living here for 13 years.

Everyone knows New York City is the capital of the world. New York has many nationalities all together.

Everybody is different, everyone is special and everyone has a different kind of understanding.

For me, it only took a moment to feel that I was a New Yorker. That is my understanding and because of what I believe. For others it may take years.

New York is unique. We have the United Nations and the World Trade Center.

That means everything.

There are many challenges to overcome to live here and to completely express your life takes a lot of chi! New York gives people that opportunity. Everywhere, and especially here, you must believe in yourself, trust yourself, be honest with yourself 100% of the time, and master yourself.

Everywhere is my favorite place, if you understand. Of course, the Shaolin Temple Island must definitely be my favorite because I am teaching Authentic Shaolin Temple Chan Buddhism, or Shaolin Temple Martial Arts, which is the wheel of life. Shaolin training here at the Temple helps people understand that life is beautiful. It helps them to truly understand and enjoy their lives. I am trying to send a message to the world that everyday is a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! These holidays are known internationally and many people on these days truly enjoy their lives.

They spend the day with family and friends and take a little vacation.

Very simple, just put that happiness in your heart eight days a week and 366 days a year. Celebrate! Please eat good food, sleep good, live a happy life, and Buddha bless you.

An Interview with AZ Words AZ All Photos Courtesy NEMO NEMO: Are you a native New Yorker? OR How long have you been in New York?

AZ: I’ve been in New York ever since I was born. I was born here in the year 1964. So I’ve been here since 1964. Born in the Bronx, but raised in Harlem.

I’m a native New Yorker, born in Jackson Heights, Queens.

You are a New Yorker the second you decide to be one. Most know to some extent what they’re getting into. It’s like being on that high diving board...once you take the leap you know your in for a fall, and the water might be warm, cold, or just right, and you know you got to start swimming soon as you hit.

New York is an international city with virtually no native american population. Everyone has immigrant roots so eveyone already has a built in niche. It’s a tough talkin’ town with

a past that echoes cool, cool through its canyoned streets.

Prince Street in Nolita is my favorite street. It’s cafes and shops remind me of Paris, it’s hipsters and wide eyed tourists grounded in the majesty of old St. Patricks, while the ghosts and vestiges of Little Italy provide an old school charm.

With that and all its convolutions it feels like a neighborhood. I love my neighbors, when I lived uptown I didn’t know the couple in the apartment next to me by name.

Ten Years, I’ve been in New York. Someone either has the temperament to be a New Yorker, or not. Most of the people who can’t hack it are gone within a year of two, maybe less. So how long? Well, if you’ve made it past the first couple of years and witnessed the changing faces, you’re probably on your way.

After a couple of months you realize the relevance in Sinatra’s lyrics from New York, New York. “If I can make it there I’ll make it anywhere”. After a couple years, you realize those same lyrics are profound and Frank Sinatra was a genius.

For a lot of people I would guess, and at least for me, New York is addicting. Having never tried a drug of any kind, not even weed, most of my friends will find this answer, at the very least, ironic if not funny.

But here it goes, my patent drug metaphor I use whenever I’m asked this question. To me New York is like heroin… I mean, the good shit.

And it’s not a cheap habit. Only, the dealers we pay are called landlords, restauranteurs, shopkeepers, movie theaters, Verizon, and Con Ed. And they all have that “Goodfellas” “Fuck You Pay Me” attitude knowing that space is like product and if you don’t have their money, there’s ten friends behind you ready to take your place.

So why do we put up with it? I told you… it’s like heroin! And if you’re a real New Yorker, you know you can beat it whether you can or cannot because just to survive here is better than running a small town, because even when you’re down, you’re up, and you’re still in the middle of everything. There’s

times when New York is beating on you and you need to get away. But if you’re gone too long, the city pulls you back. And of course, finally if you could beat the habit, i.e. the city, the struggle is always still a part of you… and the struggle is what makes New York special.

My favorite place in NYC? Definitely the Great Lawn, 100%, no doubt about it. Just kidding. I’m going to be obvious, it was between 6’s and 8’s, the club that I built with my bare hands that ironically is the funnest, best-designed club ever (with $5 beers located on the corner of Stanton and Chrystie) or Bungalow 8.

It was a toss up, but fending off my own narcissism, I chose Bungalow 8.

Fuck you, you go there too… or you stand outside of it.

As a writer who recently signed his first deal, this place is like my office and the people here are like family.

Plus, it seems like there are at least a million people who would like to get into Bungalow for whatever reasons. Mostly involving networking, politicizing, or getting laid. Too bad, there’s only about eleven of us who get to do that whenever we want.

When your business is entertainment, there’s no better place to network.

Tania

Shvona

Sheena

Promise

Paz

Zakiya

Bridgette

Licole

Kacey

Julie

Celeny

Raina

Silq

Mika

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Piper

“ Jazz on WKCR 89.9 FM is a vestige of the glory of new feelings about culture that rose in the 1960s and early 1970s. It continues to give free access to the music to all who listen and retains a thouroughness and truthfulness that is mostly absent today anywhere else.�

“ If you’re not born in New York, you CAN’T become a NewYorker, all you can do is be easy and watch your ass.”

“The energy in New York is thick like ketchup!”

2005 Palm Pictures LLC

SOUNDTRACK BY DEFINITIVE JUX ARTIST EL-P

– FILM THREAT

“EXHILARATING! Bristles with a high-voltage style! ” – FILMMAKER MAGAZINE

"Soulful Pulp! Cult recognition awaits!"

- STEPHEN HOLDEN, THE NEW YORK TIMES

for pervasive language, drug use, some violence and sexuality/nudity.

COMING TO DVD OCTOBER 11TH www.palmpictures.com www.bombthesystem.com

photo Revolution

“I was born in money making Harlem.”

photo: Eric Schaetzke

Prince Harlem has been playing with a ball, sometimes with musical accompaniment, sometimes a capella, on the corner of 125th and Lenox for at least 10 years almost daily. Not so much juggling as just meditating upon it. I didn’t want to ask him... “Why?”

Man is pleasure.

Woman is love.

Pleasure enhances love, but love sanctifies pleasure.”

- Lawrence LeDouceur

“The energy in New York is thick like ketchup!”

Before Melodic made it as a Reggae artist I used to see him around the Twins’ weed spot up on Madison and 2-5th. He’d ask for a bag on the house. The response would be something gruff like: “Me don’t GIVE weed, me SELL weed, bretheren.” Whereupon Melodic would offer to sing for it. At first they’d laugh at him, but then the song kicked in, and Melodic would keep singing as he rolled his fat free joint.

“ Cops like donuts, it may not be always good for you, but it sometimes becomes brain food.�

-Derek Parker

“ It’s like a curse / Walk besides white women they start holding they purse / I just asked you for the time bitch / What you got anyway, some of the Indians turf?”

-Hard Times

“ New York lifestyle becomes a lovely fiasco.�

- Shayne

“ I love the fact that you can walk the length of the island.�

- Zac Posen

photo Eric Schaetzke

“I was born in money making Harlem.”

I wasn’t born in New York, but I moved to New York when I was 17. I’m turning 50 in November, so I’ve been here for 33 years.

I think I always was a New Yorker before I came to New York. From childhood I was always obsessed with New York. The first time I came to New York, my parents brought me here, and I guess it was the early 60s, and I went to Hubert’s Museum, which was an old sideshow on 42nd Street, and it pretty much captured my imagination. From then on I knew I wanted to live in New York.

There’s something unique about New York — it’s kind of like a real urban jungle where the architecture contradicts itself, where we can have a rococo next to modern, next to a gothic church, and each building seems to be like a plant trying to grow higher and more exotic and more dominant than the others. And the conflict of the animals, which are the people of the city, like jungle animals, they fight for every little bit.

Whether it’s homeless people fighting for change to Wall Street tycoons fighting over millions of dollars.

My photo was taken at Keens Chophouse, the quintessential New York steakhouse. To me it has the flavor of actually walking into Tammany Hall, what that must have been like. It used to be a place where you’d come to smoke pipes, and clay pipes decorate the entire ceiling of the restaurant and bar, and they also have pipes that are on exhibit there, like those smoked by Buffalo Bill Cody and Rube Goldberg. I just like some of the special rooms you can have parties in. One of the best rooms is the Teddy Roosevelt room which has taxidermy of animals that he shot.

I was born in New York City’s Harlem Hospital in 1948. I’ve been in New York all of my 56 years. Although I was physically born in New York in 1948, I was mentally born into the Knowledge of Self in 1964 when I met Allah, The Father of the Nation of Gods and Earths.

New York is very unique and for many reasons. People from all over the world dream about coming to New York City to work, play, or simply visit for a time.

Many came here seeking a new life from hard suffering places of their birth. My parents, like many other blacks in the 1940s fled the segregationist Jim Crow laws of the racist American South. In Harlem, New York they were less oppressed and industrially thrived, making social and economic progress. Here my father was able to raise a family of eight comfortably. I would say their adjustment to New York City from Florida and North Carolina was met with all the difficulties one might encounter moving from a small town to live in a large city like New York.

For me, being born, raised, and living in New York all of my life, my most important life-changing experience occurred when Allah, the Father, revealed Himself in Harlem, New York in 1964. He came to the Mecca of the world at a time when Malcolm X was speaking of black revolution and the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover was seeking to neutralize a “Black Messiah”. Allah, the Father was the Black Messiah, not only to the Lost Found so-called

American Negro but to all the human families of the planet earth as well.

New York was the one place on the planet where the world’s populaces were sure to come and learn of Allah, the Father’s just and true teachings, whether they accept them or not.

New York City is the one place on the planet where Allah, the Father manifested Himself and born His Righteous Nation of Gods and Earths.

Allah School in Mecca remains as a positive and powerful magnetic, not only to the world’s Hip Hop community, but to a vast amount of the true knowledge seeking youths of the planet.

I chose to be photographed at the Allah School in Mecca because it’s the one place in New York City where Allah, the Father established His Street Academy. He taught the youth the truth about the existence of the black man being the Sun of Man, the true and living God or the “Black Messiah”, whose arrival the government officials expected to appear at that predicted period in modern times. Plus, it’s the very same place that I serve as the Executive Director to expand and extend Allah, the Father’s universal programs of encouragement and enlightenment eternally.

I came to NYC on July 15, 1953.

Coming from a small Vermont town, it was always my dream to come to New York to study painting. So it didn’t take me long to feel at home, in the West Village, in the 50s. That is, now my social life was in the bars; the waters too, San Remo, and the Riviera. Back then, the New York pace was much slower, quieter.

The guitar and recorder were the instruments of choice for the lilywhite denizens of the MacDougal street cafes and Washington Square. So I headed to the bars. Life is about change, but I learned that in the city you have to be a functional schizophrenic, able to change on

a dime. To change on a dime is the New York pace, and so it was in the 60s, from the 60s, until now.

People move here because New York is the big challenge.

My favorite place in New York is Lucien’s, I love it and Lucien. It represents a kind of comfortable affirmation of the good things in life: good food, good drink, good conversation; an acceptance of life.

Gertrude Stein said about Paris, “It doesn’t take anything away.” Lucien’s is about the gentleness of life.

photo Jamil G S

I was born in New York, so of course I’m a Native New Yorker. I am New York, I am a big beam of New York.

The adjustments; some people come here just to hop on the train.

New York is an advanced place, New York is 24 hours. I’ve been to every city in the world, and every city shuts down. You have to be New York from the start.

New York is a city that has more vibrant colors. A lot of cities are plain and bland and they have no style.

New York always has the latest news.

Defiantly when it comes to fashion, we are right on time. Every other city is fashion delayed. We will be wearing a brand new baseball cap, other cities are always behind. The malls, the manufacturing, and the

distribution are always a year behind.

Vibe magazine and other magazines are distributed two months behind everywhere else; we get it first.

I like that New York has an abundance of adult video stores, I like to stop and pickWords/Photo up some tapes David for myTai sensuous Bornoff expression. New York is a city where you can always get entertainment, other cities you have to drive 13,000 miles just to get a movie or a DVD of your favorite adult entertainment, or anything like that. I think its good that we have local stores setup in the midst of New York City where you can buy tapes and DVDs.

I came to NY as a teenager in 1984. New York was at that time a place of intense activity; it was an outdated superstructure wobbling on the verge of total collapse.

Through the carnage, a parade of crooked cops and benevolent criminals marched along. And a lot of money was changing hands. The aesthetic of rapidly emerging street cultures was colliding into pop culture’s “big pretty people” party. Big ideas and dreams were bigger than life, in a sense anything was possible.

I was young then, but the streets were alive in a way that’s difficult to describe.

NY was like the sea herself: deep and uncharted, vibrant, corrupt, violent, and

alive. It seemed to me that superhuman forces, at once creative and destructive, were doing battle here for dominion over the cities heavily contested physical, intellectual, and territorial properties.

Right before my eyes, day and night, the spectacle of a civilization out of control… a cultural stampede… tribal war, the old world view overlapped the new. Various classes, cultures, ages and races, all interacted…defined themselves… and according to traditions: clashed…

elaborate dress, an almost ritual life.

There were all kinds of mentalities, personalities and identities. Some stood for integrity, some for traditions modest, reasons, others fought for supremacy, others still for concepts like love, hate, or fame.

But there were mythical characters too; dreamers, who felt they were creating the future, reincarnating the past, or just inventing something completely new. These mavericks were molding the world after their own image. “New York” icons were attempting to make an impact here through original expression.

Style, soul, intellect, and wisdom reveals the sheer scale of the power struggle - in finance, in personal expression, in the sexual realm. The genesis of human social evolution is unfolding at a rapid pace in NY. The greatest psychological transformation which occurs in naturalization is identity adjustment, a more accurate view of one’s relative importance in relation to the grand scheme of things. A mad dash for relevance in the new “new world”.

There is a quantification of every moment, every ounce, every square inch of it. In New York there is a kind of democracy of evaluations transpiring in every field. As long as you’re participating in this empire of selectivity you argue your particular case before a jury of your ‘peers’, in a capitalist system’s creative proving ground, it’s all experimental.

The show must go on, and this game of heart natural selection favored rugged individualists, vanguards, outlaws, and innovators, even fools and pranksters over “style-

imitators”, “posers”, “dick riders”, or “actors”. You could be from “Timbuck-Two” or “West-Bubble”, nobody ever checked for accents, not in NY. I suppose some “New Yorkers” are from NY, and some are not, those that graduate, or “make it here”, somehow got past every obstacle the city could put up, those that stayed on their course, they can have an impact. The ones that figure a way of tricking the game. But it’s not really about NY (geographically), in the end… it waits for no one.

The Chelsea Hotel is just where I ended up somehow. This building has retained, in certain ways, visible traces of a long vanished New York, yet it maintains in spirit a timeless persona, a watershed for many of the “New York” writers, poets, artists, and musicians for well over a hundred years, consequently the location is steeped in history. A lot of strange critters still rest here, the staff are all characters, presently I am painting in a studio here, so, I suppose for now, this is my place in New York.

“New York’s a Fuckn’ Great City!”

I am not a native New Yorker. I grew up in a small farming village in Lithuania.

I came, or, rather, I was brought here by the UN Refugee Organization in 1949 after a year in a Nazi forced labor camp and four years in a postwar displaced persons camp.

I was very, very lost when I came to New York. I had lost all trust in Western civilization. I was in shambles — I was in 1000 pieces.

It was New York that saved my sanity.

As I walked through its streets, as I got pulled into its life, into its energy, I began slowly to regain trust in life.

I had lost my home, my friends, my family, the places I loved. I needed

new memories, I desperately needed to connect, to let my roots into a new ground so that the winds of fate would not blow me away. New York became that ground. There was an energy here and a trust in life that I needed for my survival, for rebuilding myself. New York gave me that. It took a long time, maybe a decade, maybe two. That’s how long it takes to create new memories, new friends, loves, excitements, events that begin to sink into you and remake you and connect you to a new home, place.

I remember walking the streets of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. People used

to stop and ask me what they can do for me, why am I crying. But I was not crying. I was only very, very sad and hopeless. I guess I was crying in my heart without knowing it. But people saw it.

No, there is no other place like New York. The young energy, the abandoning oneself to the here and now, not being bogged down by the mistakes of humanity of the past, and the submerging in the present. It got me, it pulled me in. And I am still in it.

So here I declare my love for New York, to all its boroughs. I have lived and worked all over this city. It has sunk into every cell of my body, my heart, my brain, my soul. Yes, this is a declaration of my love to my New York. And I know that my New York is not like any other people’s New York.

I have my special memories, like you have your own. I have my memories, my loves, dust on my shoes, my special trees I love, my special little spots, bars, streets. Yes, yes, I love you, you are my wine, my song, and my woman.

Forgive me my Nameless Woman for saying this. I know you’ll understand

me because you have also declared your love to New York, to Brooklyn, to Coney Island, to its skyline, to its people, its streets, and the way the sun rises in it. You also needed it. Like many of us. So I know I am not the only one. Angels brought me here like they brought you. Like they brought all of us here. So here I declare my unconditional love to my adopted home, my adopted city that saved my sanity and gave me new life.

This photograph was taken at the Anthology Film Archives in a little room with a large round table which I have adopted as my anarchistic office.

I chose this room for the picture because I have spent so much time here with my friends from all over the world. We have spent so much time in this room talking, arguing, and also laughing and singing. It’s full of energy that is so typical of New York and my life. The young energy, or called it the ageless energy that makes New York always young, always new, always another, always here and now. And if you don’t feel it, or don’t need it, then keep moving on, jump the next train, you will find your place somewhere else. But I’ll stay here with my love.

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