The East Village Gang
Let’s enter another side of life as seen in the East Village where a good New York story with a moral involves an exciting and masterfully-crafted plotline, one that captures the essence of a metropolitan avant-garde environment. The free-spirited residents embrace compulsive behaviors, it may cast movie stars or unknown actors.
The pioneer luminaries, the Midnight Cowboys and cowgirls, the fancy Delancey drag queens and Mohawk punks, the happy faces and cosplay desperate experiences, fill the air with laughter and sorrow. Include a soundtrack of hit songs, matching a tense chorus of honking horns stuck in traffic. A schmear of movies already exists from Taxi Driver to When Harry Met Sally, from Basquiat to Kids. The year 2025 has two newcomers: Darren Aronofsky’s Caught Stealing and Ben Jacobson’s Bunny adding to the checklist.
True to the nature of the East Village’s ongoing history of minting rebels, well-known, highly recognized figures add to the phenomenon. Jim Jarmusch, Steve Buscemi, Spike Lee, Richard Kern, Vincent Gallo, Nan Goldin, Kathy Acker, Larry Clark and Harmony Korine embody these ideals and aesthetics. Like a McKim, Mead, and White building, their collective body of work has been hailed as a virtuoso of New York City masterpieces.
It’s difficult finding artifacts from bygone eras, because things just disappear. I recently went on a pavement pounding expedition. A Desperately Seeking Susan search looking for Pieces of April, in hopes of rediscovering hard-to-find books, record albums and CDs.
My detective work involved sifting through bins and stacks inside various bookstores. It became uncomfortable after a while, trying to read book titles on shelves sideways is a bitch, along with having to ask, “Do you have... or have you ever seen?” Then suddenly, it became intriguing upon noticing, an instant sparkle in bookstore employee’s eyes widening with interest. I left appreciative and grateful after sharing curiosity and committed to preserving and understanding a neighborhood’s cultural significance.
I gasped when I saw one of Cookie Mueller’s original books behind a glass case selling for over $300 dollars at Printed Matter (23111th Ave). In Vile Days Gary Indiana writes about his friendship with Cookie when the East Village art scene started gaining global attention. The Village Voice art critic in the1980s, is a very good talker writing about “terminal self-revelation” also espousing “...a strong distaste for the eighties nostalgia that has been an institutional mania during the past several years...a lot of ill- informed notions of things past, may also have some pointed relevance to things present.” I purchased a copy of his book at Codex (1 Bleecker St.). They have a superb selection of rare art books.
My mission found more discoveries. The polite person working the Mercer St. Books and Records counter (206 Mercer St.) told me, “Every time we get something in from Clayton Patterson, it instantly disappears.” Visiting Chelsea’s distinguished artist-driven 192 Books (192 10th Ave.) a knowledgeable staffer wished me luck and turned me on to A. S. Hamrah’s Algorithm of the Night, film writings from 2019-2025.
Going online to Gallery 98 there’s an educated collection of art ephemera. This intense collector and researcher resource is gathered by curator Marc H. Miller. It’s a thorough journey that investigates the New York bohemian art world.
Capturing the movement, the look, the people, the magazine; editor and artist John Holstrom lends a talented hand to Ki Smith Gallery (170 Forsyth St.) with its current celebration of 50 Years of Punk now on view until January 11th, 2026.
Real-life personal conversations and photographs help connect downtown’s complex dots with a now and then New York photography exhibition. Photojournalist Clayton Patterson is a stronghold figurehead on the Lower East Side, along with historical author John Strausbaugh, they co-authored Off Beats: Lower East Side Portraits. Both recently spoke together with me at City Lore Gallery (56 East 1st St.). Martha Cooper and Clayton Patterson’s “Concrete Chronicles: Lower East Side Photos” exhibition, currently on view until February 1st, 2026, is a celebration of the uncompromising truth found on its streets.
Considering the importance of cinema to the East Village, Patterson is the subject of Captured, a 2008 documentary film, he’s also responsible for the 2005 book titled Captured: A Film/Video History of the Lower East Side with Paul Bartlett including a forward by Abel Ferrara. The hard-to-find Rosetta Stone is described as part formal history, part inspirational text, reminding people on the outside what it’s about. And there’s even more insight from The Press Gang Writings on cinema from New York Press, 1991-2011 by Godfrey Cheshire. Patterson art-directed and appeared in Ari Roussimoff’s 1991 film Shadows in the City. Recently restored by MOMA, this noir feature captures the scene and includes counterculture stars of the day: Taylor Mead, Annie Sprinkle, Joe Coleman, Kembra Pfahler, the Hell’s Angels and Nick Zedd.
A bit about Nick Zedd who died on February 27, 2022, at 63. His passing went relatively unnoticed by the mainstream media. In the 1980s, Zedd rose to notoriety as the founder of “The Cinema of Transgression” that cites roots with Ed Wood Jr., Jack Smith and John Waters as primary influences. He was a pivotal character in the label-driven attempts of the world of cinephiles with noses up their butts, pooh-poohing attempts to categorize advent-garde alternative, underground, No Wave, transgressive, post-punk movies. (We did lose the preeminent American avant-garde cinema historian P. Adams Sitney (1944–2025) this year.) Zedd’s movies were controversial and filthy.
Throughout his life, Zedd’s radical outlook shunned commercial success; he did have a New Museum showcase screening held in July 2013. However, he never really gained the critical recognition he deserved from the traditionalists. Testing the limits of taste, the dictionary describes transgressive as “Going beyond generally accepted boundaries; violating usual practice, subversive.”
Raised in suburban middle-class Maryland, Nick Zedd (His real name was James Harding) moved to New York in 1976 and went to Pratt Institute and the School of Visual Arts. His unwavering commitment to making low-budget Super-8 movies was intended to shock and transcend boundaries. His sardonic, wrecking ball dogma style, swam against the tide cautioning society quote “...elaborate propaganda sucking in audiences starved for a substitute reality to the mundane nightmare of capitalism.”
In October 2022, Amanita Funaro, Zedd’s stepdaughter, hosted a selected film screening of his work in Tompkins Square Park. His archives are housed at NYU’s Fales Library, The Downtown Collection. The Nick Zedd Papers preserved original material which includes handwritten scripts, notebooks, sketchbooks, photographs, and audio and film elements.
As the cultural beacons of the Lower East Side’s creative population began to disappear at the end of the 20th century, predictable transitional phases merged the decades. Around 2011, Zedd said farewell. The cost of living and a gentrification superstorm was the last straw. He left the “capitalist purgatory” of New York City which he filmed, talked and wrote about, relocating to Mexico City residing with Monica Casanova and their son until his death.
Zedd’s endeavors continued with refinement, producing and directing music video projects. “Skeletons” is a collaboration with music by Divine Dirt and Eduardo Berber’s striking black and white cinematography. The surrealist, sci-fi escapade was shot in Mexico City in 2019 with Ana Arenas and features his son Zerak Zedd.
In his own words “One has to be obsessed in order to create. That comes from within... the time has come for a rupture, a break, and an honest method of digging our way out of the manure of contemporary art... those who are proud of being imperceptible are lost.”
Technology and social norms are always subject to change. By focusing an emphasis on Clayton Patterson, Nick Zedd, and their East Village peers and cohorts, it’s a reminder that true innovators and outlaws in the eyes of America will always remain committed.