Ada Calhoun AMA

Thank you so much! Yes! Many people upon hearing the title say, "RIGHT?!" And I have to say that ACTUALLY I do not think the street is dead, that the book is framed around many times when people said the street was over and nothing good would ever happen there again (1811, 1904, 1969, etc). My usual line to these people is that many of the 200 people I interviewed for the street said the street was only really great at one period of time (1977! 1945! 1988!) and that it was almost always when they were 19.

My favorite memory of growing up on St. Marks Place is probably the summer I turned 14, when my parents were away and my best friend, Asia, and I lived in the apartment alone. I worked at St. Marks Comics and took classes at Columbia and Asia worked at the mayor's office and took art classes. And we used to go on these incredibly long walks through the city together. In retrospect it was sort of insane that we lived alone there in 1991 (highest murder rate in NYC history!), but it was pretty magical.

Yes! The Tompkins Square Library librarian Jeff Katz has had me do several events at the NYPL, and most recently he asked me to give a walking tour on May 31 of cultural locations in the East Village. We wound up doing 3 hourlong tours that day with about 30 people on each one. I had a lot of fun, so I'd love to do more. It was free but I asked people to donate $ to the TSL if they could. [Everyone should do that all the time, of course: https://www.nypl.org/give - choose Tompkins Square in the drop-down.]

https://preview.redd.it/rvqgweiwrj5f1.jpeg?width=1104&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=af5b3a6c67a11d31bc131002d8135a360d17b8ba

W.H. Auden, my favorite, lived at #77 St. Marks. I love Low Life by Lucy Sante, which I first heard about on Vin Sclera's Idiot's Delight late-night radio show when I was in high school. I have a collection of random East Village books from the past, like Season of the Witch by James Leo Herlihy (1971) and this one about the General Slocum disaster (1904).

https://preview.redd.it/9pzgt1z6uj5f1.jpeg?width=4284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=782bb97723a1fba20392dbe8237a847da29a7731

Yes, someone tagged me in one of those posts about how terrible it was that people were drinking Aperol Spritzes and having fun hanging out together in a weekend car-free zone between 1st and A on a beautiful spring day when St. Marks used to be REAL and EDGY (ten years ago, lol).

I told the complainer that if he wanted to see fights and puking and screaming on St. Marks Place to just come back to the exact same spot at 2am. One of my neighbors who's been living on St. Marks since the 1970s replied, simply, "Word."

Basically I get suspicious when anyone starts talking about how the Village used to be COOL and now is LAME because YOUNG PEOPLE.

On Saturday someone yelled out the window at me and one of my library tour groups, "GO BACK TO CONNECTICUT!"

I have about 49 years of direct East Village experience and some of the people on the tours had been in the neighborhood even longer. We took bets that the yelling guy defending the honor of 10th Street who apparently mistook us for bridge-and-tunnel tourists moved here 7 years ago.

Book Club Bar, the revitalized SE corner of Tompkins Square Park (shoutout to the Friends of Tompkins Square Park volunteer planting crews on Saturday mornings), the renovated Holiday (they even have coffee now!), that gift shop Babs on Ave A for wedding etc presents, Village Works (I like shopping for books at midnight), my godkids love that soup dumpling place Nan Xiang...

Happy to see so many places from my childhood still around, too: B&H Dairy, Veselka, John's on 12th, Veneiro's, Blue and Gold, International, Strand, East Village Books, La Palapa, Panna II (and the spices grocery store downstairs), Tokyo Joe (hi, Ignacio!), Casa Adela (cash only), San Loco, LITTLE POLAND (indeed as good as music of Chopin)...

https://preview.redd.it/0pzzmw0y1k5f1.jpeg?width=397&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b19218ec923cb11b3b421388c60f0876f4e3321b

Answered above, but I'll add that I'd love to if the stars align again! PS thanks to the Redditor who posted photos on here of the tour including this one.

https://preview.redd.it/yet9hql43k5f1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=387a8becdac3bdc4995faf10358c75e3fc25276b

https://www.reddit.com/r/eastvillage/comments/1l5r32r/comment/mwj1zw4/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button