Sting and Styler step in: The “King of Pain” wants to help ease the anguish of the victims of the horrific East Village explosion and fire. Sting and his wife, Trudie Styler, are pitching in to contribute in the wake of the devastating March 26 disaster on Second Ave. The 16-time Grammy Award winner and Styler, who heads Maven Pictures, have already donated $36,000 to a relief benefit for residents affected by the calamity, which brought down three buildings, killed Nicholas Figueroa and Moises Locon, and left 144 families displaced. The gala benefit performance will be held at Theater 80 St. Mark’s, at 80 St. Mark’s Place, on Sun., April 12, at 8 p.m. Writer Alan Kaufman, author of “Drunken 9Angel” and “Jew Boy,” who is spearheading the event, said Stone Gossard, the rhythm guitarist for Pearl Jam, has also given a generous donation, as has the Boris Lurie Foundation. Other celebs of “megastar proportions” have also contributed cash, but their names can’t be made public, Kaufman said. He said rocker
Patti Smith is the evening’s confirmed headliner, and will play at least a 20-minute set. While Sting and Gossard won’t be performing at Theater 80, many excellent artists will be, the writer said. The lineup includes Molly King, who has opened for Bob Dylan, singer Dev Hynes of Blood Orange, Chris Riffle, lead singer Penn Badgely of the band Mothxr and “Gossip Girl” TV fame, and local favorites David Peel and the Lower East Side (“Have a Marijuana” / “Die Yuppie Scum”), and guitar virtuoso On Ka’a Davis. The evening’s emcee will be none other than Randy Jones, the original Cowboy of the Village People. “This is starting out as a tight concert and is going to end up as a festival,” Kaufman predicted. “Really, the headliner is the East Village,” he said. “What happened in the East Village is like a mini-9/11 for the whole neighborhood.” Tickets were going for from $20 to $150. All proceeds will go to GOLES (Good Old Lower East Side), the local tenant-advocacy group that has been working closely with the fire victims. Kaufman said he got the idea for the benefit when he walked past the blast site and spoke to someone who related how a friend was lying in the hospital recovering from the disaster. This hit home for Kaufman, who in the ’90s was homeless and hanging out on a bench in Tompkins Square Park, at rock bottom, drowning his sorrows in the bottle, he said, which makes him able to relate to the fire’s victims who have lost everything. Initially, he hoped to raise maybe $5,000 from the event, but now it looks like they’ll pull in more than ten times that. Tickets for the 200-seat theater have been scooped up insanely fast. “By the time people read this, there probably won’t be any left,” he said. In addition to Kaufman, Jim Storm, a longtime East Village resident and visual artist, is working on the event, as are model Jennifer Pugh and Roderick Romero of the band Sky Cries Mary. Lending important support has been L.E.S. documentarian Clayton Patterson. The theater space and other costs have been donated by Lorcan Otway, whose venue has become a hub of community culture and activism in the East Village. A community rally is planned for 5 p.m. in the theater, and will run for the three hours before the event. For more information contact 212-388-0388. For tickets (if any are left…good luck) go to https://www.vendini.com/ticket-software.html?t=tix&e=0490ce09893307b21710db2a9546939a. For information on how to donate to GOLES, contact Damaris Reyes, executive director, 212-358-1231. As for why the money is being given to GOLES and not the victims directly, Kaufman said, “These people are shell-shocked. GOLES is serving as the conduit and is taking 5 percent, which is much less than these type of groups usually take. GOLES is boots on the ground. They’re very trusted people. They’ve been in the neighborhood. And they’re a nonprofit, so they’re set up for this.” Every single penny from the event will go to GOLES, he said. Rock on!
Ready, steady…announce! Democratic District Leader Jenifer Rajkumar, is getting ready to throw what she tells us is “a major Ready for Hillary event” on Saturday evening in Battery Park. “It’s expected to be the last one before she announces, and over 250 people from all five boroughs are coming,” Rajkumar told us. (We hear Hillary Clinton’s announcement e-mail will self-destruct after 10 minutes. Just kidding!) She is co-chairperson of the Ready for Hillary National Finance Council. Rajkumar also continues to be ready for the small screen, on the PBS show “To The Contrary.” She’ll make another appearance on the all-woman “Crossfire”-style forum this weekend, this time with Donna Brazile, vice chairperson of the Democratic National Committee.
Dig it! Digital archive! The manager of the Jefferson Market Library, Frank Collerius, told us some great news this week. He said that the Village branch, thanks to a $2,500 Innovation Grant it recently received from the New York Public Library, will be able to digitize nearly the first 50 years of The Villager’s archive, without any charge to us. Only 20 city library branches were able to snag one of these coveted grants, which are intended just for these kind of projects. The historic library, a former courthouse, at Sixth Ave. and W. 10th St., has the newspaper on microfilm and in print from The Villager’s beginning in 1933 during the Great Depression up through around 1980. The grant should cover digitizing all of that. After Superstorm Sandy sadly washed away about 90 percent of our archives — which had been preserved in big black bound volumes in our former Canal St. office’s basement — we had spoken with Collerius about our hope of doing this. And now that the cash has been earmarked, it’s a go. “We received a grant for this purpose and can start production soon!” he told us. “I really look forward to this exciting project!” As for digitizing the rest of The Villager’s archive up to the present date, Collerius added that, once they get the ball rolling on this first batch, he’s sure he’ll be able to secure the needed funding to finish the whole job. The archive will have fully functioning search capabilities, by key words, or by Page One for a particular issue, and so forth. And Collerius said, as the project progresses, he’ll be back in touch with us about how the digital archive can be further customized with any desired “bells and whistles.” In truth, those preserved early bound volumes from the 1930s, ’40s and even ’50s were so brittle, you couldn’t even handle them without the yellowed pages immediately crumbling to tiny bits in your fingers. So this will be a fantastic way to preserve the paper, while also allowing all the back issues to be widely read, enjoyed and, if desired, used for research. And we didn’t have to sell our soul to Google, either. The grant needs to be allocated by June 30, after which the work will start, so this will all happen pretty soon. Wow! This is just one more reason why we LOVE our local public libraries!
Austria or bust? Some readers, no doubt, after seeing Clayton Patterson’s name in this week’s lead Scoopy item, wondered to themselves, or perhaps even proclaimed aloud, “Is Clayton going to Austria or isn’t he!?” Almost exactly a year ago, a New York Times article, “Last Bohemian Turns Out the Lights: Clayton Patterson, Rebel and Photographer, Plans to Leave the Lower East Side for Europe,” announced that the L.E.S. documentarian was planning to emigrate to Austria. Regardless of whether or not they think Patterson really is the “last bohemian,” people keep asking us when or if he’s still going. So, how’s it looking? we asked him last week. “It turns out that it costs a lot to go over there,” he told us. “And another thing, I’m worried about is the European politics are starting to turn rightwing. And so many people asked me not to leave the Lower East Side, it makes it hard to leave. It’s a real hardship to take my whole archive over there. If I were 20, it would be no big deal.” All of that said, Patterson still would like to relocate. He’d settle in Bad Ischl, a spa town in the Alps where he has friends from his frequent trips to Europe for the Wildstyle and Tattoo Messe sideshow-style events that he helps run. His wife, Elsa Rensaa, has some health issues, and Patterson feels a “safe European home,” as the Clash put it, would be best for her. “If I had someone to sponsor me, I’d do it,” he said. “It’s safer. It’s better for Elsa. The food is better, it just seems more natural. If we stay in America, we’ll stay on the Lower East Side.”
