A Writer’s Diary Entries From Early August, 1988 | Thought Catalog

A Writer’s Diary Entries From Early August, 1988 | Thought Catalog

Saturday Afternoon in Alphabet City: King To Burn at Tompkins Square Park

(Video courtesy King To Burn)

Saturday Afternoon in the East Village: 13th Annual Dance Parade and Festival along Broadway, University Place, Eighth Street and St. Marks Place to Tompkins Square Park

(Video courtesy SCOOTERCASTER)

Sunday Morning in Alphabet City: "Keep NYC Trash Free" Poster at Avenue A and East 9th Street

Saturday Afternoon in Alphabet City: Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Sheer Terror, Killing Time and Combust at the Jimmy G Benefit Show at Tompkins Square Park

(Videos courtesy Chucky BrownsHoodTV)


(Video courtesy Christian Lesperance)

Saturday Afternoon in the East Village: Spook City in Tompkins Square Park

(Video courtesy npsgirl)

Saturday Afternoon in the East Village: Benefit Show for Dr. Know with Maximum Penalty, Breakdown, Token Entry, Cro-Mags and Antidote at Tompkins Square Park

(Video courtesy Dwayne Mendez)
(Video courtesy stonefilmsnyc)

(Video courtesy Chucky BrownsHoodTV)
(Videos courtesy jimcaverly)


(Video courtesy Dwayne Mendez)

Saturday Afternoon in the East Village: SOS and Friends II at Tompkins Square Park

(Videos courtesy Dwayne Mendez)

Sunday Afternoon in Alphabet City: The 24th Annual Tree Lighting at Tompkins Square Park

(Video courtesy jay r Mojica)

Sunday Afternoon in the East Village: The 22nd Annual Charlie Parker Jazz Festival presents Joe Lovano Quartet with Joe Lovano, Esperanza Spalding, Leo Genovese and Lewis Nash at Tompkins Square Park

(Video courtesy Vicenç Martí)

Saturday Afternoon in the East Village: Eighth Annual Dance Parade Dancefest in Tompkins Square Park

(Video courtesy Eddie Nicholas) (Video courtesy Zerina Phillip) (Video courtesy Manhattan Andaaz) (Video courtesy Gammablog) (Videos courtesy Brooke Cerda) (Videos courtesy DanielEyeV)

Late Friday Afternoon in the East Village: Play-diem's Leave a Lasting Mark Concert Series presents Spring Jam in the Park! with Sofus at Tomkins Square Park

(Video courtesy LeaveaLastingMark)

Early Saturday Afternoon in the East Village: The 23rd Annual Tompkins Square Halloween Dog Parade in Tompkins Square Park

(Video courtesy jay r Mojica)

Friday Night in the East Village and West Village: NYC Radical Faeries Gather at Tompkins Square Park for Gay Pride Weekend March to Stonewall Inn

Sunday Afternoon in the East Village: Iconicide - Puke Island 2013 presents "Witches Night Out" with Damn Broads, The Graveyard School, Cojoba, The Minor Cuts and Bum Rush Crew and No More Victims at Tompkins Square Park

Damn Broads

The Graveyard School

Cojoba

The Minor Cuts

Bum Rush Crew

Thursday Night in the East Village: Epix Movie Free-for-All presents "Raging Bull" introduced by Don King at Tompkins Square Park

We got to Tompkins Square Park around 8 p.m. on Thursday to see the first in what's called Epix Movie Free-For-All screenings -- this one, of Martin Scorsese's classic Raging Bull, starring Robert DeNiro as Jake LaMotta, and introduced by the still-around, best-known boxing promoter ever, Don King.

When we got there, the band Odetta & Gryphon were playing -- well, at the moment they were asking if anyone in the audience could re-string a guitar. Actually, they were quite good, and fetchingly winsome, and it had been a long time since we'd seen anyone successfully play the musical saw.

Epix is a giant company, or seems to be, that we had never heard from before. Epix is sponsoring a series of screenings of movies in city parks this summer, and we guess this was the first. They certainly were spending money here on all sorts of stuff. There as an additional screen in the grassy space, weird but mystical attractions for kids (a Wii-type video game booth, a baroque little carousel, video screens, free cotton candy), lots of attractions for adults, too, and probably never so much corporate presence in Tompkins Square Park of '60s counterculture corporate revulsion history.

They seem to be a premium TV channel sort of like HBO with movies and exciting live events. After Odetta & Gryphon left the stage (we'd missed an earlier band, Raging Bluegrass), an announcer/MC announced the many, many winners of what seemed like actually valuable prizes in a contest. The winners seemed happy. The MC at one point called the venue Thompson Square Park.

The great and legendary Don King lived up to his reputation by delivering a bombastic, rambling, hyperpatriotic talk (he carried a mess of flags, of which we could name only those of the good old U.S.A. and Israel) about Raging Bull, which he called a masterpiece "not just about boxing but about life" although he seemed to think its moral could be boiled down to something like "don't be so jealous about your woman."

He wore a star-spangled denim jacket, his hair looked whiter and more subdued, he pronounced "pummeled" with the accent on the final syllable, he quoted the Bard of Avon (we hope young'uns understood that that meant Shakespeare), and was just so adorable and charming that you immediately wanted to adopt him as your grandfather. One of our grandfathers used to smoke cigars in the park, too.

And, of yes, he praised the Epix people and their mission a whole lot. Did we mention their visionary leader, Mark Greenberg? From what we heard last night, he is a fine person and we hope he soon will be leading the polls among presidential candidates in the Iowa Republican caucuses. We're not kidding.

There was a really nice short beforehand, I Never Blamed the Beautiful Game, presented by the fine organization, Rooftop Films, which also should be running for president, or at least governor of Maine. The only drawback to tonight's event is that it seemed to have discombobulated Tompkins Square Park's venerable mentally ill residents, some of whom had the tendency to pop up here and there, sometimes in pairs, to rant a little. Well, they're certainly entitled, and Jake LaMotta would have approved.

Of the main event of the evening, Raging Bull, we can add nothing. It's amazing. We first saw it on December 31, 1980, New Year's Eve, at Century's Fresh Meadows Theater (you can read our book A Year in Rockaway: 1980, currently ranking #3,841,187 on Amazon bestsllers, to find out more).

We knew immediately back then that it was one of the greatest films ever made, and we're grateful to Epix for giving it to us as a gift, along with Don King and all the other stuff, here in the East Village on this beautiful night thirty years and six months later. If we ever get cable TV, we'll definitely sign up for Epix. And you should too, people. You'll never get them down, Ray. Ya hear us? Never get them down.

Youtube video courtesy of insidehoops

Friday Evening on the Lower East Side: Poets' Group Reading of Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" opening HOWL! Festival 2010 at Tompkins Square Park

From 5 p.m. till 7:20 p.m. we were in Tompkins Square Park today, thrilled to be attending the annual reading of the Allen Ginsberg poem, “Howl,” originally published in 1956, to commemorate the opening of the Howl! Festival.

It featured performances by the incomparable festival poet laureate, the legendary Anne Waldman (with music accompaniment by Ambrose Bye) and the equally legendary master of the spoken word, John Giorno, plus the fabulous Betsy Andrews, Jennifer Blowdryer, Ana Bozicevic, Guillermo Castro, Steve Dalachinsky, Thomas Fucaluro,

Greg Fuchs, Daniel Gallant, Alan Gilbert, Amy King, Mariposa, Douglas A. Martin, Angelo Nikolopoulos, Amy Ouzunian, Meghann Plunkett, Jon Sands, Susan Scutti, Jean Ann Verlee, Michael Warr, Chavisa Woods, Advocate of Wordz, RA 'R!' Araya. (These were the ones listed on the festival website, and they're).

Doing a yeoman's job as host and emcee was our old friend, the charming, funny master of all he surveys on the Bowery, Bob Holman,

who also ably acted as conductor for the group reading of the greatest American poem of the past eighty years.

And he even helped set up the chairs for the event.

This was one of the best poetry readings we've ever gone to, and we've gone to 2,342 of them since 1966.

But of course we love "Howl" and last fall we got to teach the whole poem for the first time; the book was on our syllabus in Cold War literature at City College (and we even brought some potato salad for our students to throw at us ("who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers...") although they spared us and just ate it.

Bob started by talking about the history of the HOWL! Festival a bit and said we're lucky to hear "Howl" today before we hear James Franco do it in the forthcoming movie (and then Bob said Franco and the film was really a good presentation we've got to see).

Anne Waldman, the poet laureate of the festival, began by reciting a poem by Allen's partner Peter Orlovsky, who died in late May.

Then she read some of her work, accompanied musically on the computer by her son Ambrose Bye, and it was great to hear such powerful work, like the brilliant "Why Am I Daring to Show My Face?" Attention must always be paid to Anne Waldman - not that anyone could or should want to do anything else.

Next up, the great John Giorno, best known for everything but there's Dial-A-Poem and Warhol's Sleep and AIDS activism and Buddhism and his not letting you in at 222 Bowery quickly enough and all this wonderful text-sound and text-text work.

John recited from memory an incredible longpoem, "Thanks for Nothing," written on his 70th birthday three years ago. It was a breathtaking tour de force.

Then Bob announced a kind of recreation of an open mic reading by poets selected by the local rockout poetry centers like his own Bowery Poetry Club, the Anne Waldman-founded (we were there, back in the day) St. Marks Poetry Project, Nuyorican Poets Cafe, and others - curated by Nathaniel Siegel.

The poets who appeared in brilliant one-poem takes were, in order, Advocate of Words, whose poem was an exuberant, right-on grito/shout-out to Justice Sonia Sotomayor;

Michael Warr, in from San Francisco, did one of his trademark excellent meditations on American culture and autobiography;

Jean Ann Verlee, evoking racing hummingbirds;

Susan Scutti, whose thoughtful poems we've related to (befitting her book's title, We Are Related) as the son of an Alzheimer's patient;

Jon Sands, who gave us a wry and knowing lament about yuppie cafe baristas;

Meghann Plunkett, who made us think exactly about what "keep your hands to yourself" means;

Amy Ouzoonian, who knows from yoga and diamonds;

Steve Dalachinsky, who in "just keep walking" found a terrific metaphor;

Angelo Nikolopoulos, whom we know from the White Swallow Poetry Series at the Cornelia Street Cafe;

Douglas A. Martin, who can write poetry as stunning as his fiction (we loved Outline of My Lover);

Mariposa, who honored the great Pedro Pietri and Loisida history;

Amy King, whose Slaves to Do These Things you need to read and who we miss seeing at Stain Bar;

Alan Gilbert, whose poem was as good as his brilliant critical essays on pomo lit;

Daniel Gallant, currently executive director of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, who read a really smart piece;

Thomas Fucaluro, who read his usual great poem, filled with heart, piss and vinegar;

Guillermo Castro, the Argentine-born author of the recent book Cry Me a Lorca;

Ana Bozicevic, who we also miss seeing at Stain Bar and whose poem had some delicious lines;

RA 'R!' Araya, whose work made us smile (and also wonder if he can get his name changed to less than one letter?);

and Betsy Andrews, author of New Jersey and other books, who ended the reading on a high note.

It was a long series of poets, but we didn't fidget a bit. As we said, this was probably one of the best readings we've ever gone to, but the best was yet to be: the 25-minute group reading of "Howl," which was truly thrilling.

The crowd, an eclectic diverse mixture of people of all ages, genders,

races, ethnicities, sexual orientations and degrees of hipness, seemed wonderstruck.

Lots of clearly were total Ginsberg fans; the woman with a headscarf at the end of our row held Allen's thick Complete Poems.

Anne Waldman began: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix; angel-headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection. . ."

And as Bob conducted, individuals taking over various sections, the group intoning much of "Howl" in unison,

the poem so clear you could hear it by the statue of Pomona and the dog run and even by the restrooms.

As the skies darkened - it was a cool but really pleasant early late summer evening - the poem did its magic on most everyone, rising and falling,

its most profound images and allusions satisfying (only at one moment did everyone seem to go out of tune, and it seemed perfectly appropriate), the constant repetition of "Moloch" and the rhythms making their way into everyone's brains until it came to its always surprisingly, satisfyingly almost-but-not-just-upbeat conclusion. Here is the YouTube video.

Like we said, Wow. Thanks to everyone who made this evening's poetry possible, especially Allen Ginsberg,

who we met a few times, mostly in this neighborhood or on the Brooklyn College campus, and you should try to get to the Saturday and Sunday events in this year's HOWL! Festival at Tompkins Square Park.