L.E.S. Nights

I wanted to share with everybody some recent photographs I came across taken by photographer Chris Bickford. Chris was in town in October participating in an eight-day photography workshop hosted by Magnum photographer David Alan Harvey. His project was simply titled "In The Night." When I first saw the photos (posted on Harvey's blog here) I knew exactly where three of them were taken: Welcome to the Johnson's, Whiskey Ward and THOR. Considering these three places are all near Essex and Rivington, I initially thought Chris hadn't "worked it" very hard. Still, though, he had a real nice shot of a couple having an intimate moment near the jukebox at WTTJ. "There's a blog post somewhere here," I thought. So I did some digging.

I easily found Chris's website and his travelogue, in which he writes rather eloquently about his workshop experience and the Lower East Side. I emailed him to find out more. Turns out, Chris actually lived at Norfolk and Rivington from 1997 to 1999 (he's now based in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina). Knowing that, and of course seeing the finished project and outtakes, gave me a whole different context. His writing struck a note with me and my own thinking about the Lower East Side. It definitely changed my initial thinking that he hadn't worked the story hard enough, or that he was simply photographing his friends having a good time. He's got a very strong eye for color and mood. The work speaks for itself.
Considering Chris lived in the Lower East Side ten years ago, I respect his opinion on how the neighborhood has changed. But it's more than a one-time Lower East Sider coming back to visit the neighborhood. He could have taken a holier-than-thou "What happened to my neighborhood" or "I was here before all of this" attitude. But he is fair and balanced, if not a bit nostalgic even. Reading him muse over modern day Lower East Side hip-dom is quite interesting. He describes the project as...

...a somewhat lyrical exploration of the New York night, focusing on the hip Lower East Side. From a visual standpoint, I was attracted to all the colors of artifical night light: neon, blue stage lights, red-gelled interiors, halogen street lights. From a thematic viewpoint, I was looking to capture what I saw to be the prevailing mood of the nightlife on the Lower East Side: a world of people searching for something, sometimes finding fleeting hints of it, but generally lost in the darkness of a place that is ultimately apathetic to whether or not their band makes it, or whether they find love, or how cool they look. The Lower East Side is one of the great bastions of the “Tragically Hip”, and to me there is some poignant irony about it all; so many people who yearn to be different, to rise above, to express themselves as artists, to escape the conformity of their upbringing…and all of them drowning in a sea of sameness: tattoos, pork pie hats, rock bands, wallets on chains, cigarettes outside the bar…I don’t think I really scratched the surface of that theme in my piece, but it was there with me the whole time. There were moments when I saw it all in a more positive light, when I thought of this great teeming world of art and music and young people out doing their thing, hooking up and breaking up and living out the dramas that are the stuff of rock and roll songs…but mostly it struck me as a sad, lonely kind of scene, with a retro-upon-retro style that no longer seemed to have much substance to it…kind of a Foucault’s paradise of endlessly circular self-references.

I think he nails it. I'm sure there's somebody reading this who endured harsh winters squatting in abandoned buildings in the 1980s who would scoff at all this, and what I'm about to say. But I moved to New York in 2000 and lived in a tenement building on Stanton that had closet-sized hallway bathrooms still in use. Drunks from Bowery would urinate and deficate on my building's front door. There was a homeless couple living on my roof. The superintendent's helper slept in the cellar. But then I'd walk a few blocks over and some elegant woman in high heels would be exiting a taxi, shouting into her cellphone trying to meet up with a friend who she can't see is standing right across the street. The clueless woman, the four men dressed identically, all standing in a line to get into the newest nightclub: it's all won out over the homelessness and the begging for change (or perhaps fueled it). And the madness hasn't stopped. In the emails I had with Chris, it was easy to tell he had some of the same thoughts I did. The funniest description he gave of the Lower East Side is one that I'll think of every time I walk past Piano's on Ludlow Street on a weekend: ironic, retro, trust-fund rocker purgatory.
I'm sorry this has turned into a rant about gentrification. But it all started when I saw some pictures taken at some places I like to play pool. I came across this work two days after playing at Lucky Jacks with Steve Tseng, who is pictured above at the red pool table.

Chris isn't sure what's in store for this project. "I’m thinking maybe I could take pieces of this idea south, to small towns and regional music scenes, where I might find a little more soul, a little more humanity. I think maybe I’d like to add a stronger element of 'Americana' to it. Maybe make it a piece about the 'American' night. Or hell, maybe I’ll just suck it up and head back to the LES for another dose of postmodern blues, New York style."