strausbaugh presents a history of the new york city neighborhood greenwich village. the author reports on 400 years of the neighborhoods development from its inception as part of new amsterdam in the 1600s to its role in the social, political, and cultural movements of the 1960s, and its centrality in the gay-rights movement. it's about 15 minutes. >> thanks, sharon. thank you all for being here, and you know, braving the rain. obvious some people did but new yorkers would rate this like it's raining raise a budget everybody runs away. [laughter] we're supposed to be so tough. i want to thank the washington square institute for having us, and a big thanks to the historic preservation society, not just for organizing this, but for working every day to keep them from knocking down everything there is in greenwich village and the east village. [applause] >> every time i hear they're

going to not get another nice old building i think, why don't you knock down that no one but a good one that you just built and try that again before you knock down one of the old ones? so my book is a cultural history of greenwich village that is going to do a flyby through it. there's much more detail in the book obviously, and i want to start by saying in its heyday greenwich village was called the most famous neighborhood in the world. for centuries it attracted and was a haven for artists, political radical, life adventures, gays and lesbians, and misfits and outcasts from around the country and the world. coming together in this tiny, tiny little speck of dust american landscape, they bounced off each other like subatomic particles in an accelerated and created tremendous amounts of culture for america and for the world. it's worth noting i think at the outset that the artists and the preteens and intellectuals and

the radicals were always minority and often a trained you minority in the village and the other much larger and arguing more stable communities in the village. guys like me writing books like this don't always mention. so i tried to make sure that i got them in the book and want to say a few words about them before we move on to the artist. through much of the 1980s the village was the center of black men had which is on i think a lot of people don't know. especially around the menendez it goes called little africa, or if you're an irish cop you called it tune down. stephen crane wrote about. but more importantly the black community itself in the village created the first black newspapers, professional black newspapers in america. and have the first successful professional black theater in america, which is said to be. called african growth. it was in 1820.

pretty briefly because white hooligans at first were amused by the idea of an all black cast doing shakespeare, and they did a lot of shakespeare. they started with richard iii. but then he started acting out, the white guys in the audience and it didn't last very long. nevertheless, than one of the stars moved on to london and had quite a successful career as a shakespearean there. he did all fellow but he also do a lot of other characters, shylock and the rest and others in white face. [laughter] >> there was the irish west of those, the waterfront village at the western end of the village that inspired the movie on the waterfront, although it was shot over in jersey. it was inspired by the village and chelsea and hell's kitchen, waterfront. the irish village also gave us one of the most colorful is not necessary one of the best mayors in 20th century in new york city, jimmy walker.

and a world champion boxer who i think could only have come from greenwich village, gene, in the 1930s but he was a boxer who read shakespeare, who was good friends with george bernard shaw, who talked about the size of future lesson and this was a time when boxers tended to be bugs in the months. the press for the longest time couldn't tell if he was a hoax or not because he could speak whole sentences. [laughter] and it was the italian south village, another huge community from back when little italy wasn't just two blocks in the middle of chinatown. or what a friend of mine down there called little chitaly. it was a very large community. it gave us another one of our most colorful and at the most loved mayors of the 20th century, the relevant laguardia. he didn't go out there but he was born there, growth in italy and came back. and what is most colorful mobsters, vincent chen, the daffy dawn.

and then there was the lobster village, by not the nicest way to say that. but anyway the lost village, the upper-class village around and north of washington square park. and all those communities coexisted at the same time, and the artist and bohemians what sort of come and go but i do think it's the artist, bohemians, radicals, gays and lesbians that made the neighborhood famous. undesignated unique. there are a lot of nice neighborhoods around but there really was only one greenwich village. what i said art about its function as a magnet for artists and a haven for misfits and outcasts, went together for a very long time. i think it's easy to kind of forget now in most of america, until relatively recently, until the 1960s or '70s, if you were of an artistic event or he

wanted to be god forbid a poet or you're gay or lesbian, or you had radical political ideas you were probably a lonely misfit, and outcasts, almost anywhere you live. but there was one place everybody heard of, this place called greenwich village, this magical place week ago. a lot of people fled to greenwich village from everywhere around the country. and also from europe. and found that they were not only among other people like them, and were not only allowed to be whoever they were as outrageous or idiosyncratic as that was that they were encouraged to act out. that's a long tradition in the village, acting out. and the outcasts, its function as a haven for outcasts as all the way back to before greenwich village was before greenwich those but it goes back to the 1600s. the dust west indies companies put a few title vii all the way down at the bottom of manhattan, 1620. by the 1640s is still only five people down there and all the

rest of manhattan is boggs and bars and meadows and hills and streams. it's the wilderness. by the 1640s, there are a couple of dutch farms out this way but not much else but except for the natives and one of the native settlements was were danford street is now in the village. in the 1640s the dutch gave many other after conflict with a call have the freedom, and little plots of land that they strung like a necklace across the island from the village over into what is now the east village. they grew crops for themselves and give some of the crops to the settlement. this was not the dutch being good to their slaves, as it was sometimes portrayed. by the 1640s, even though there were only 500 people in new amsterdam that's a kicked off the indians by among other things by leading what could only be called terrorist raids on indian settlements in

manhattan and in new jersey, but they feared an all-out war was coming. it would come and figures. so they put their slaves after as a buffer zone and an art of warning system for when the indians can. is flexing you can tell who the pioneers are because they are the ones with the arrows in their backs. [laughter] and that tradition of it being a place for outcasts continues, newgate prison which was in effect the first sing sing was that crested and greenwich streets in the 1790s. through the 1700s yellow fever, cholera, other plagues run through that tiny little community down at the bottom of manhattan. washington square park in fact starts out as a burial ground for yellow fever and cholera victims because it was for an out of town. the village was one of the places that it was out in the country so you would flee out of

the village to get away from the plate. by the 18th of especially, especially video played in 1822, and is that you that people started building permanently in the village. one of the reasons the west village is a famously or infamously the streets curl around on each other and wander all over the place is because people were building along the cow path and the farm path and the streams, and then it just stated by the 1850s when the grid, the avenues and street grid of manhattan flows up and around, it's too late to change all that so the village always maintains this slightly anarchic mess of streets over at that and. that becomes part of its charm obviously, people find it charming to this it charming to the state and part about it is marketed as the old greenwich village in the 20th century. more misfits and outcasts, i've got more. i've got a million misfits and outcasts in 1804, arenberg was

living in richmond hill which was a mistake, a nice house upon a hill which is no longer there. the hill got flattened. in the south village down on king street and van damme. went across the hudson and went over and had his duel with alexander hamilton and shot alexander hamilton, came back to richmond hill, then fled richmond of the next day fling a murder rap. because he had, in fact, killed alexander. hamilton. in 1809, thomas paine comes to the village basically to die. thomas paine had been a hero of the revolution obviously as we all know, but as happens with a lot of revolutionaries, when the revolution was over he didn't settle down and become a bureaucrat in the new government the way he was supposed to. he continued to be what people find even in his day, as a pain. [laughter] and died and outcasts and pretty miserably, not long after the

tragedy thing ashley. in the 1840s the misfits of all misfits, he was one of the most pathetic people in the world. but he was living on and the street wichita west third street when the raven came up to the raven was his first, he finally had a successful poem. everybody loves the raven. the humorous parodies of the raven which is a sure sign of success, abraham lincoln was especially fond of one called the polecat. it didn't help much. you still a miserable character, poe, and died that -- not that long after miserably in 1849. so that a few years of being successful. and then in 1850s walt whitman probably the most vilified and misunderstood poet of his century i would think comes into the village to hangout in the first celebrated bohemian scene

in america in the late 1850s. at a basement rat cellar on broadway, little up from bleecker. there's a new lounge place there now called -- takes its name from a line of whitman but it's next door because the building didn't exist when whitman was hangout there. but that's all right. at least they know some history. the crowd publish a newspaper not for long for about a year called the saudi press, a weekly newspaper, that was just about the only place in the world that championed whitman's poetry at the time. not least because whitman wrote his own views in the press and thought himself a genius. and he was. so he was right. but also, saudi press also published jim smiley and his jumping frog which did a whole

lot to promote mark twain's career. and twain lived in several plays in and around the village to the late 1800s. whitman was also attracted not just by fellow writers and writers who are sure seemed like a stuffed them all the of the huge attraction for them, but because already by the 1850s the village has developed his reputation as a place where gay men can be, and they had to live closeted lives but at least they could breathe a little easier in greenwich village. they were very few places in the 1850s where you could do that. walt used to go there. after the civil war, it slowly begins to grow as an arty and bettina neighborhood. partly because institutions like nyu starts and immediately starts making its neighbors angry. [laughter] right away when they built the first village. so that's a long history there.

the national academy of design was there and one of the founders of that was samuel fb in moore's that we know from the morse code. but he was, in fact, a portrait painted by well-known as a portrait painter. he was down in d.c. on a commission to paint a quarter when he heard that his wife in connecticut was ill. by the time he got there she had died. he thought there's got to be a fast way to communicate information and news. so he among other people work on the invention of the telegraph. he did not invent the telegraph that he was one of the guys working on it and he did invent morse code. so that's another odd sort of village legacy. there were also lots of cheap rooming houses where young artists and intellectuals and bohemians could afford to live. from the beginning, making culture and making money generally do not go together in america. madonna makes a ton of money. everybody else makes none. and so artists and writers and

intellectuals, et cetera, need cheap places to live and work. the village for long time was provided the. there were a lot of cheap places to eat. in the early, and the late 1800s they would be french bistro's. anything french was considered bohemian because of the connection. in the early 20th century they would be italian places like spaghetti houses. ..

it was, as "the new york times" wrote, a little later, known to all the artists, actors, literatures, and goodfellows, generally. it was also judges and lawyers from jefferson market, the courthouse at jefferson market would hang out there. this is where a lot of people gathered. they talked and shared information. it is thought, this might be true, because of that, the saying i heard it through the grapevine comes. i think that is real. there are a lot of apocryphal stories from the village. that is worth noting. all bars in new york were men only until prohibition, until the speak easies. many had a separate rat side,

ladies entrance. there could aback room where ladies could drink. you didn't drink at the bar with men. that ends at prohibition, because speak spays easies can't organize. coed drinking starts in prohibition. that is a tangent. i'm full of those too. okay. so now we're up to the years leading up to the first world war, just a couple of years like 1912, 1913, leading up to the war. the village blooms as a bohemian center and art neighborhood. this is when the greenwich village becomes the greenwich village, the left bank of america. it had what was called a bit prematurery as it turns out its golden era at that point, its golden age. it is amazing, i could stand here half hour of names of people who were there. i will do a couple of greatest

hits. upton sinclair. >> host: sinclair lewis, march sell dushone, willa cat they are. buck minister fuller, margaret anderson and james heap. edgar verez. there were tons and response more actually. this crowd was instrumental bringing modern art to america. when they helped organize the giant and hugely famous now, armory show that was on lexington avenue. it was, it was an amazing thing. they brought the, pretty much the entire modern art scene from europe, which is where it resided, to new york and stuffed it all into the armory on lexington avenue. picasso, van gogh, matisse, and dozens and dozens of more

artists, almost none had ever been seen in america. now everybody is seeing them. another big important thing from the armory show that was everybody. until then, art in america you had money and taste. you were only ones allowed to look at art and going into museums and open to everybody. it cost next to nothing to get in. they didn't all like it or get it but they all went. it plants a seed of avant-garde in new york, honest to guard had been kind of a back water that will bloom late another century. so it was really important. they did the same thing with modern theater. they basically invented a modern american theater. it wasn't just in greenwich village. people were doing it in chicago and other places. it was in the village and eugene o'neill, and juna barnes and others were writing for the playhouse. and they pushed the envelope on modern literature.

they brought 20th century literature to america. it was two people brought it. it was margaret anderson and jane heap. they had a little review called, the little review. and several years, four years before ulysses, james joyce ulysses was published in paris. everybody thinks that was first publication of "ulysses." the book doesn't come out until 1922. three issues were seized by the post office and destroyed for obscenity while they were doing it. they got taken to jail. everybody showed up for the trial and at the trial there was three judges. it was a triumvirate of judges. i'm not sure why. one of the judges, when the defense lawyer, stood up and started to read outlawed from one of the offense seven passages to prove it was not offensive, the judge said stop, you can't do that. there is a junk lady present. the lawyers, but that is the publisher.

and the judge said, i'm sure she didn't know what she was doing. and that's a true story. at the same time they're pushing the after vanguard in the arts and literature they're pushing the avant-garde in politics in the village. there were a lot of radicals and social progressives in the village. anna goldman, anarchists came from, wasn't called the east village, from the lower east side to meet with big bill hayworth and elizabeth hurley flynn, from the iww the most radical labor organization at the time. it was an early epicenter of the women's movement, women's sufferage. women's lib. margaret sanger was there before she started planned parenthood. john reed organized the giant paterson strike pageant of 1913. millworkers in paterson in

new jersey went on strike. haywood and flynn instantly wanted to organize it as a an iww strike. reed and some other folks in the village thought the best way to get the word out is to bring the strikers to new york city where all the media are. so they rented out the old madison square garden which was still on madison square at that time and held the pageant. john reed led 1100 workers from the mill up the streets and into the building. they put giant, red, lit-up letters said, iww, at the top of the building. the idea was they were kind of announcing they had arrived and unfortunately they did announce they had arrived and the mainstream and the establishment and "the new york times" and a lot of other people were just shocked that these anarchists had taken over madison square garden t would come back to haunt them in a couple years in the red scare.

oh, and, and, i'm a baby boomer. my generation likes to think we invented sex. we did not. our sexual revolution really should have been called the sexual renaissance. our grandparents were having the sexual revolution in the greenwich village in the 19 teens and 20's. nothing we thought were sew wild and crazy in the 1960s and '70s was anything they were not doing 60 years before us. that is a tradition that continues in the village i think. or i like to think it does. the first world war really kills that golden age. people leave the village. the red scare, slams down on the radicals and the socialists and anarchists. goldman and burkman are arrested and deported.

haywood is arrested. i think flynn was arrested as well. hundreds of people were deported as foreign radicals. and in, then comes prohibition. in the 1920s is known more as a party stone than an artie zone. speak easies were just everywhere. henry and june miller ran one in a basement for a little while. texas gunen, hostess with the hostess during prohibition, saying give the little girls a big hand and worked in all the fancy nightclubs, speak spays easies, the ones jimmy walker would be in uptown lived in the village. she was giant personality. she moved to in new york city where the giant personalities lived which was greenwich village. chumleys, famous speak spays easy was started before prohibition as restaurant, tavern, became a very big speak

spays easy during the prohibition. he was anarchist and iww supporter. this legend is a little questionable. i'm not sure about this one but, it is said that the term 86'd from a plays, thrown out of a place or run out of a place, comes from the back door at chumleys which was 86 bedford street. when the companies found the iww guys, you would run out to 86 bedford street. it is possible. i can't prove that. i've never seen anybody who could but it's a good line. i think the guy who probably epitomized village in that era, partying village era is maxwell boden help. ei. he came to the village as a boy it of great promise. became known for genius in insulting people and starting arguments with people. his friend the writer ben heck,

said he quote, was more disliked, derided, beaten up, kicked down more flights of stairs than any poet i ever heard of or read, end quote. he was great at it. something about max, he liked to get into fights. he was a terrible drunk. he was an infamous lothario. instead of writing poetry he wrote pulp novels. they're not bad but it is pulp fiction. he deteriorates through the 1930s, 1940s. become as sham blink drunken host of a man haunting village streets haunting bars. would sell his poetry for a quarter at park. in bars, guys would buy him drinks to hear him say something poet-like. this is a great line. he called greenwich village, the coney island of the soul, which is a very nice line. he was shot to death in a squalid lovers quarrel in 1953.

that story arc from promising poet to the hideous drunk, you know, not only one that applies to the village but applies to the village a lot. the village was always a place, as i say you were encouraged to live large. you were encouraged, not just to be, live an excessive life but excessively excessive life. you drank excessively. you did everything well over the top. one of only places in america, you were not only, you could not only get away with it but you were encouraged to live that way. he was hardly the only one who drank himself to death in the village. delmore schwartz and dylan thomas two other great poets, delmore finally drank himself to death midtown. he did most of his drinking of himself to death in the village. with the depression, 1930s, the village become best known for writers and intellectuals and artists who are marxists and socialists. 1930s is called, the red

decade. if you were an artist or intellectual in the 1930s, a fellow traveler or member of the communist party. just how people were at that time. came back to haunt a lot of people in the early 1950s. so the partisan review, which became a great literary magazine and was delmoe schwartz as platform was the organ of the economist party, cpusa. their offices were on west 13th street. for a long time in publishing, newspaper and magazine publishing in new york, if you rejected an article because opinions were left-wing, you said that was too 13th street. pete seger and woody guthrie, come to the village in the late 1930s and bring with them folk music. there's a long history of the interaction of folk music and the communist party. the communist party originally hated folk music but, then went

to embrace later in the 30s. they plant ad seed that would blossom later in the village as well. max gordon starts the village vanguard, still going. oldest nightclub, oldest continuous nightclub in new york city. i was just there with my sister from out of town a couple weeks ago. in 1934, when he starts out max, it is famous jazz will be now. when he started out he couldn't afford music. so he would have village characters like maxwell and joe gould, famous joe gould do a drunken floor show and people would throw money at them. then in the late 1930s, as hitler is devouring europe an entire generation, the cream of european arts and intellectualism and scholarship fleece to america. comes, almost all of them come through new york city. many of them stay in new york city and many of them the ones who stayed in new york city worked their way down to the

village. one of the reasons was the new school was in the village. the new school had very aggressive policy hiring these folks. in new york city, not just at the new school but in city and village, let's say by 1940, salvadore dali, pete mondiran, hannah arent. claude straus and a whole bump of other people. a lot were in fact on the faculty of the new school. if you were on the g.i. bill at the end. war and you could go to the new school for free for certain amount of time, you could go through for, like hannah arent or claude straus or wh being your teacher and really forefree. part think from their influence, not just from their influence, partly through their influence from world war ii, through the 50s and 60s and lower east side, what became known as the

east village close through a remarkable explosion of artistic and creative activity. if that was the golden era in the 1913 this is the greenwich village renaissance and it's huge. the avant-garde in america is located in greenwich village and lower east side for well over 10 years. it makes new york city the art capital of the world which it had never been. it's the culmination what began i think you could say at the armory show in 1913, finally comes to fruition. in, in painting you had the abstract expression it. jackson pollack. rofko, and all them. that is really the first truly american avant-garde in art. at the same time, picking up where the provincetown playhouse left off, you have off and off-broadway theater which totally renovated everyone's ideas about theater and gave us sam sheppard and john greer and

all the great writers from that period. at the same time alan ginsburg is coming down to the village to meet were william bureaus. and kerouac comes down and they're living at village. beebop was not started in the village, but drifts down, finds very he receptive audience. people liked jazz in the for a very long time. there was contingent, most of the artists loved bebop because they loved the free expression of it. other people were known as moldy figures because they only likes old time. david ram, the great jazz musician i become friends with and around there and hanging out not own by with the bebopers and kerouac, we hung out together. exaggerated how much fighting was gone on. it was new yorknd village

and probably some arguing were going on. as part of all that bee bop, charlie parker comes to the village and lives on lower east side in the east village, greenwich's village's favorite place on earth. at the same time, after vanguard film-makers like darren come to the village. village voice and grove press which was by far the most avant-garde literary publisher at the time begin in the village. norman mail letter, james baldwin, dylan thomas, william gaddis, honest to god i could read the list for another 20 minutes they're all in the village at the same time in in the late 40's through the 50's. once again because they're all in the really small space. nobody else is paying much attention to them. uptown was not looking at abstract expressionist art. uptown was not reading new york school poets. they were their own audience for quite a while until pollack

becomes a superstar and everything explodes after that. it was what kenneth koch, one. poets in the village called, an atmosphere that was busy with collaboration. if you were an artist, your poet friend would write copy for your catalog. you would draw the drawing for his poetry book. the both of you would work together to create a play and maybe everybody be in your play. if you were making a film everybody had to be in your film and build sets and do acting, build costumes. because they were doing some of this collaborating they created tons and tons and tons of work. absolutely goes against what was the mainstream attitude towards artists and bee -- bohemian -- bohemians in the 50's. they're lazy people and lie around in their cafes. ferguson, every time you heard on tv, work? they were in the cafes in the day time. people didn't see they were

working all night and making a lot of stuff happen. they created a tremendous amount of culture for all of us at that time. by the late 1950s that folk music scene, woody guthrie and pete seger started back in the late 30's becomes a huge scene in all the coffee houses and attracts bob dylan. bob dylan comes and the village is his launchpad to universal superstardom. a few years later in the 1960s it is rock years, jimi hendrix was discovered playing in the cafe. he was jimmy james at that point. a guy discovered him. took him to london. turned him into jimi hendrix and made a big star out of him. andy warhol first saw the velvet underground in the village. the thugs doesn't get credit for being the thugs. they are in a great band. they were in residence at players theater on mcdougal for 800 performances or something.

in the 1970s, when the beatles break up, where did john and yoko flee? greenwich village. in 1969 the stonewall uprising or stonewall riots which has been called the bunker hill of gay liberation happens in the village. it could only happen in the village. up until then, gay liberation had been, the people involved in it had modeled themselves on the civil rights movement and nonviolent movement and they were very polite and dressed nicely when they picketed in front of the department of defense or wherever they were picketing and, as several of them said to me, we're not trying to act out. they wanted to be accepted in. by 1969 younger gay men, a lot of them, street transvestites and younger lesbians as well, were just so sick of getting pushed around by the cops, by the mob, who owned, owned or backed every gay bar in the village at that point, just went

nuts and finally couldn't take it anymore and rioted basically for three nights. not three consecutive nights. they rioted the next night. there was a night of calm. the village voice came out and objected to the way the village voice wrote about the riots and rioted again. it had a galvanizing effect on the gay community around the country. that is why the '70s becomes the decade of gay and lesbian liberation. the village in the '70s becomes highly identified as the gay village. my friend george tab of the punk rock band, furious boring, grew up in the village in off's and '70s. his parents took him to the diners at midnight or 1:00 in the morning. he would see people dressed as indians and cowboys. it was the village and everybody was dressing up and acting out. so when the village people came out, the vocal group, he loved their music. he totally missed, too young and

totally missed there was a gay subtext to it at all. he thought they were, you know, village people. and then tragically, of course in the 190's, because it was such an epicenter of gay culture, it was called ground zero for the aides epidemic and aids decimated the village, not just the gay village. everybody was decimated by it. i think by the mid 1980s, the village had its last hurrah as a culture, in a place that generates culture for all the rest of us. as a magnet for artists. as a haven for misfits. there are several reasons for that. but, i think probably the root cause as it is in almost any story you can tell about manhattan history is the cost of real estate. as we all know, who live here, the price of real estate has

soared over the last quarter of a century. it became impossible for anybody, you know, a young art it wouldn't think of moving into greenwich village now unless mom and dad are millionaires. it is in fact more a magnet for millionaires than misfits now. now that had happened before. as early as the 1920s newspapers were saying greenwich village is over as arts center. the price of the real estate has gone up too high but it didn't then. by 1960 if you were a young art it coming into new york to start your career you didn't move into greenwich village, you couldn't afford it. you moved to the lower east side or east village. it didn't soar astro mom i cannily as it has. i think, we've seen a great diaspora of creative workers, bohemians, et cetera, et cetera, from downtown manhattan which used to be such a center for them. now they're in brooklyn.

now they're in jersey. they're getting pushed far and farther out. i talked to a guy who lives in bed sty and rent is going up. getting ready to move out of bed sty because your rent is too high? that started happening at latest bohemian neighborhood like six weeks ago. at this point they will push them all into the sea. i don't know what is left. i guess, especially since we have the tv camera here so these aren't all new york city people that i'm talking to, why do we care? why do we care greenwich village isn't a bohemian center anymore or the lower east side for that matter? i think we do care because culture is an ocean in which we all swim. films, books, tv, music, our are our modern folklore and modern mythology and if we price artists and free thinkers and radicals and free libbers out of

our lives i think we impoverish all our lives. on that note. that is the end of me. thank you very much. [applause] >> just a reminder. danielle will come around with microphone and pick who is the first question. >> hi. when did lower east side, become the east village and why was the name changed? >> as, the first written version of, that i can see is about 1956. there was an ad in the village voice, it was by a businessman's association. a full-page ad says, come to the blooming east village. certainly bit '60s people are beginning to call it that. it was to contrast it from greenwich village. the east village was rock and

roll, hippie, the new thing. greenwich village was the old, bohemian jazz place to be. so, it begins around then. >> sort of a marketing ploy? >> certainly was. one of the things it was. it was a way for people to say, greenwich village is over. we're in the east village now. yeah. sorry. >> i'm wondering why, with all the jean jacobs and mumford and brendan gill, even standing up for the jefferson market. >> yep. >> building, fighting for it to become a library, why they didn't perhaps try to stand up for some of these great cultural houses like the special one on 10th street between 5th and 6th? what retain some of that, that cultural, you know, oasis where

everyone didn't have to leave because of high real estate, right? >> yeah. do y'all know about the building? it was on west 10th street right by 6th. it was i think the first planned artist housing in america. i'm pretty sure. i'm not positive of that. west, just east of 6th. you know where the building called the priscilla is? that is apartment building. is that nyu building or or new school? new school? >> [inaudible] >> it is that banded box sort after build building. that is where it used to be. so that is the new school. you know, they were so busy fighting off the highways, that were planned to go through, in both directions that were going to obliterate the village, that they missed some stuff. i don't think they could have possibly covered everything. one of the things they missed was, weren't focusing on enough in the 50's was private

developers moving in, knocking stuff down and building new stuff. i think that, once they finally started fighting the rear guard action against that when they at least the heart of the village landmarked so you can't do that anymore. that has the other effect of, price of real estate goes up there because, you know, so. so there is an upside and downside to everything i guess. >> how did you go about doing your research? because you certainly researched. >> boy, did i research. i read, you know, hundreds of books, articles. i didn't read all of all the books. i read all the books listed in that biblyinggraphy. and lots of articles. i interviewed a bunch folks this is not new and i researched it. i used to run the new york press which was a downtown newspaper and i got to read a lost folks. sadly some of the people i interviewed in the book are not around anymore. it was a ton of work but it is

great work. i've done worse. >> thank you. with so many, with downtown culture going so mainstream, and with so many talented people, creative people doing everything from home on their computers, i have two questions, one, is there a necessity for a bohemian village? and secondly, posers have existed throughout history. is there an increase now in just people who are posing, who are not maynard krebs? >> yeah. i don't think there is more now. there was always a lot. going back into, before the civil war, back to that walt whitman era, there were arguments about who was a real bohemian and who was a fauxian and it has gone along. one things that happens there is a cycle that happens over and

over again and artists and intellectuals colonize some neighborhood they can afford. instantly it becomes hip and the fauxemians show up. they attract real estate and media and businessmen and they price out the original artists out. in new york or manhattan you used to have another neighborhood you could move to. that is another problem. there is nowhere else to move anymore where you can find a cheap rent. first part of the question was, oh, there has been a lot of discussion whether or not now in the internet age, digital age when we're all twittering and tweeting and doing all that stuff all the time, yeah, yeah, all right. also being creative. all right. do you need a geographic bohemia? i, i am an old-fashioned guy but i think that, extraordinary amount of stuff that came out of that tiny place called greenwich village in the late 40's and

1950s when they were all living together, sleeping together, drinking together, fighting together and collaborating on all their work together argues against the idea that you can do that, you know, if you're here and the other person is in basal and the other person is in saw palo. i think you have to be rubble bows to affect each other's work. i could be wrong. some people think i'm an old fuddy-duddy but that is me hey. >> before the '60s there was no place equivalent to the village. >> there were some. >> i'm curious where the village is over where are we seeing in other parts of the country where you're being able to live is not an issue because you can afford to live cheap and create? where do we see that? >> it is very tough. here, why people moved out to jersey city. jersey city is much cheaper to be than manhattan, right?

>> [inaudible] >> that is a very good question. i don't, i don't know the answer to that. i think it's a really good question. san francisco still has fairly vibrant scene but it is not cheap. san francisco has become quite expensive. there are people in chicago. that is not as cheap as it used to be. all cities are going through this process. they're all remaking themselves as, affluent, tourist-friendly, family-friendly, generic, 21st century cities. nodes in the global, you know, the brave new world. i think it is making it very difficult to find places to be and do work. >> i will ask the question anyway. so where is, name a greenwich village today? >> see that's a very good, i don't know the answer to that i mean the closest we have, bush

wick and bed sty. kids out in flatbush. jersey city. it was hoboken. it got too expensive. it was williamsburg. it got too expensive. and we are seeing now that bush wick is getting too expensive and bed sty is getting too expensive. they will be out in cone any eye lan and brighton beach soon and then pushed to the sea. [laughing] is that it? we're done? oh, wait. >> thank you. i think your book clearly shows culture flourishes in a place of nonconformity, rather than than conformity. that the village is a beacon, an example to the rest of the country and i hope that your book will teach the rest of the country the value of nonconformity as a way to get

some culture going, you know? not really a question but. >> paul foster, who was a playwrite at the cafe chino and la mama. i think said pretty interesting and wise thing. the zeitgeist is only one place at one time. the zeitgeist was in classical athens obviously and then london obviously and paris in the 20's and in greenwich village for unusually long time for a zeitgeist to reside. once the zeitgeist leaves i never seen it move back to the old neighborhood. who knows where it is right now. i don't know. i've been asking some people. sort of berlin. brazil is having stuff going on. china is having stuff going on. which may be argument it is becoming more global and we shouldn't worry about this but i don't know. >> one more question? >> i often wonder if great

artists and writers could have flourished in another place than greenwich village, like john sloane. >> uh-huh. >> because they have done what they did someplace else? >> there were couple other little places. chicago renaissance. they had their own little scene going. in fact a lot of those people came and fed the village scene because they kept hearing how they should be in greenwich village and they moved from chicago. san francisco had a scene going at various times. in the 50's and '60s the north beach in san francisco had a lot going on. venice beach in l.a. there were, when you think about it, they were just these tiny specs of the vast american landscape. and that's why, creative people, misfits, outcasts fed to those places because it was kind of hard to be an artist anywhere else. >> well, i'd like to thank our speaker john strausbaugh.

[applause] >> booktv is on facebook. like us to interact with booktv guests an viewers. watch videos and get up-to-date information on events. facebook.com/booktv. >> i'm the beneficiary of a right total hip. i had daily nocturnal and nocturnal pain. if i didn't know better i would think i had metastatic prostate cancer, cancer to the bone and i saw the best surgeon and i got a wonderful procedure, right total hip. that was by the way just seven weeks ago. and a week ago i played nine holes of golf. that is how good it is. so i would challenge anyone in integrative medicine to say, could you have done that? if somebody has pneumonia you

need penicillin. if anyone has hiv or hepatitis-c, you need the right medications. summary fractures of bone, you need a sling and a good orthopedic surgeon. so western medicine does amazing things and we shouldn't forget that. somebody need a liver transplant. i had a patient who required 100 units of blood and survived a liver transplant, two years later ran bottoms ton marathon. so complimentary and integrative medicine has a major role in preventative medicine. how do we prevent obesity? how do we prevent depression? can we cure somebody's wheezing? but there is in my mind a certain limit to it. as of that chance -- [laughter] i preface this by saying deepak and i will disagree. it has a role. i have actually experienced, i

had arthroscopic knee surgery and out of the blue suddenly my knee was swollen and, i had actually canceled the golf i was going to play that weekend which was very depressing. beautiful, summer spring day in boston. then i meet a friend and she says, sanjay, you had mentioned you got relief from your back pain. i had a herniated disk by a acupuncturist and i saw the lady. my knee was hurting and it was swollen. i got acupuncture. she got out of the car in the parking lot of the country club and kicked her foot into the air. see how good it is. the next day on friday evening around 4:00 i had a little hiatus and i called the acupuncturist early in the morning. i went to see her and she did the acupuncture, and i got up and you can compare one knee to the other. suddenly the swelling is gone, the pain is gone. i couldn't believe it.

i don't understand how it happened. i called home. my wife was not there. i called her on her cell phone. she was going to come home two hours later. was doing some shopping. i went to the country club. i played nine holes of golf. so i have benefited from acupuncture and things of that sort. [laughter] i pass it on to deepak. >> i've benefited from what i had practiced. i don't take any medications. i never had surgery. never been hospitalized. but i agree with what much of san jif what he said, but i want to answer your question. she asked a very specific question about rue numerous race and how medicine is practicing. sanjiv comes from harvard medical school and which is gold standard and there are many other places like that and here are some statistics. here are some statistics. you can look them up. i didn't make these up.

thrown 36 to 40% of patients suffer from disease which is result of medical treatment. 80% of pharmaceuticals are optional or marginal benefit. which means if you didn't use them it wouldn't make a bit of a difference to the natural history of disease except save you some side-effects and some money. next time you watch television look at commercial for any pharmaceutical, whether for migraine. it starts with a could give you sexual impotence. ends with it could cause death. [laughter] in between is the is the torture. also most common heart surgery, coronary bypass. for not stable angina. it doesn't prolong life in more than 2% of people but the most common procedure. the second most common procedure

for heart is angioplasty. doesn't prolong life or stablize for more than 3% of the people. these are alarming statistics, and yet the surgery is being done everywhere, okay? back surgery, 98% is useless. hysterectomy? 95% is useless. so we're talking about huge amounts of money that are spent on procedures, okay. my father, our father, would make a diagnosis, unusual long call diagnosis with -- neurological diagnosis with precision. if you have a headache, go to the emergency room and don't walk out with a cat scan or mri you're lucky. nobody has the time to do it. we have a crisis, what we call health reform is not health reform. it is insurance reform. it has nothing to do with health. most of the expenditure is end of life care.

okay? nobody is allowed to die in the house. i just made my will. i said i'm not going to die in the hospital. i'm not going to have any of these resuscitative procedures. i've been in community hospitals where the same standards don't apply and i see doctors correcting something called hyper cholemia, a minor, not minor, aberration in electrolytes if you didn't correct would cause cardiac arrest and patient would die. they keep correcting even though what is there has no life there. a lot of what we call, prolonging of survival is prolonging of suffering. for the patient, for the relatives. only people who make money are the medical providers. so this has been a huge problem. i've discussed it with politicians. i even brought it up to our president, okay? but we have a system -- [applause] we have a system, we have a

system and this is again nothing to do with gold standard where sanjiv practices. [laughing] we have a system where for every congressman, there are 28 lobby its in washington. okay? their only business, they are either medical industrial complex lobby its, or they're military industrial. so, you know, where do we think our country makes money? selling arms to pakistan? supply arms to afghanistan. they supply arms to india. they go to dubai, you know, they trade. we have huge problems when the incentive for treatment becomes money, and it becomes the corrupting influence. if you go to a baker, what is he going to sell you? bread. what do you think, how do you think chemotherapists make money? for every chemotherapy treatment that they give. am i saying you shouldn't have

chemotherapy? i'm not saying that. but i'm saying question. i asked everyone here to be a difficult patient. question your doctors. get the statistics. go to google. get the information. and you will know more than the average medical provider. [applause] >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. next, booktv sits down with eric draper, the longest serving white house photographer, to discuss his photographs of former president george w. bush. it's just over half an hour. >> host: it was put together by eric draper. there is a forward by president george w. bush. mr. draper, in this book you asked the question, could a black kid from south-central los angeles be the photographe