It's happening...

I take it back -- I went by earlier, and thought this was a ploy to get NYPD out in force... But they are really doing it! This looks like the best live chat, free of right-wing "troll" spammers: https://occupywallst.org/chat/. The photo is from CNN -- tourists, unable to get their picture with the "bull"... It's great that this protest gets major coverage in U.S. media. That is, in itself, a victory!
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets of Manhattan's financial district on Saturday in a largely peaceful protest aimed at drawing attention to the role powerful financial interests played in wreaking havoc on America's economy.
Modeled on the "Arab Spring" uprisings that swept through Egypt, Tunisia, Syria and other countries this year, Occupy Wall Street is a "leaderless resistance movement" orchestrated through Twitter, Facebook and other social media tools. The Twitter hashtags #OccupyWallStreet and #TakeWallStreet lit up Saturday with coordination messages and solidarity tweets. (See CNNMoney's coverage in photos and tweets.)
68421PrintActivist magazine Adbusters spearheaded the event, putting the call out two months ago for participants in a Sept. 17 demonstration in lower Manhattan. Protestors arranged to meet and discuss their goals at the iconic Wall Street Bull statue at noon, as well as at a "people's assembly" at One Chase Manhattan Plaza at 3 p.m.
"The NYPD is aware of various protests and we have planned accordingly," Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne told CNN late Friday.
Early Saturday morning, police barricaded off Wall Street, erecting barriers around the bull statue that protestors had planned to make their rallying point. Protestors instead took to the surrounding streets, blocking traffic. By 2 p.m., nearly two dozen uniformed police officers surrounded the bull, while others worked to disperse the crowd.
"None associated with the demonstrations sought permits," Browne said Saturday. "A group that formed at the bull at Bowling Green spilled into the streets on each side of the bull, posed safety issues and impeded vehicular traffic. The streets were re-opened to vehicular traffic and barriers were subsequently erected at the bull to prevent a re-occurrence.
A marching band played as participants held impromptu yoga and tai chi classes in Bowling Green Park. Demonstrators moved their protest to another nearby park as their numbers swelled to around 500.
"Something needs to change," said one protester, who declined to give his name and covered half his face with a bandanna. "We need an economy for the people and by the people, not for the rich and by the rich."
Another protester, Rheannone Ball, chimed in: "It's our duty as Americans to fight for our country and to keep it true to serving its people. When it doesn't do that, it's immoral not to stand up and say something."
A call for 'justice:' Kalle Lasn, the editor-in-chief of Adbusters -- an activist magazine with a worldwide circulation of 100,000 readers -- said the editors there are angry that leaders in the financial sector "had not been brought to justice." Their inspiration came when pro-democracy uprisings broke out in Egypt on January 25 and quickly spread to other countries.
"We thought, why isn't there a backlash here?" Lasn told CNNMoney in an interview before the event. "We need to shake up the corporate-driven capitalist system we're in. To do that, we needed something radical."
Last month, cyberactivism group Anonymous released a video in support of the protest.
"It gave us a nice bit of street cred, some mystique. We lefties need a lot of mystique," Lasn said with a laugh.
That mystique is what drew Josh Dworning, a 20-year-old college student, to shell out $300 for a 24-hour train ride from Florida to New York.
"I heard about the protest through StumbleUpon, and I just really agreed that there's widespread discontent with the banks and corporations," Dworning said. "I'm no crazy radical, just a student who believes in something."
Dworning, who brought a tent for camping near Wall Street on Saturday night, said he's "planning on staying as peaceful as possible" -- though he'll be on alert, because "there's always the chance that someone can get a little too angry and throw a brick or something."
That's what scares Dworning's mom, Jeanne Molle, who said she's "a nervous mother watching her son get involved in a large-scale event in [a huge] city."
Lasn is hoping safety won't be an issue. A "Gandhi-like peaceful protest" is the only way the event will work, he says, though he acknowledges that central control is impossible over a group that organizers hope will swell to 20,000. And "there is a question of legality" around setting up tents and barricades, he admitted.
In a September test run of the occupation, nine people were arrested for disorderly conduct, and later released without being charged.
"It takes a lot to rise up and reform the global economic system," Lasn says. "And maybe this time we fail. But if we do, we're just setting the tone for the next revolution."
First Published: September 17, 2011: 4:18 PM ET
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Andrea Liu sent out this email -- Report on Second Day of Occupy Wall Street
i went down to the Occupy Wall Street Square Sunday night (9/18). it's coalesced since the first day into a relatively cohesive body with mechanisms to debate and decide action. they are calling it a "General Assembly." when i was there at 8:30PM they were trying to decide if they were gonna try to Occupy Wall Street this morning (Mon). people were taking turns giving speeches For or Against moving the protest to Wall Street. they were taking "stack." (i.e. at an activist meeting people get in line to give arguments for or against something).
there seemed to be 2 facilitators who were directing the discussion, they looked pretty young (college kids). then all of a sudden the police came and said that the (protest) signs all over the square had to be removed by 9:30PM, if the protesters didn't remove them the police would do it. then the debate switched to whether they should remove them or let the police do it. then they decided they would let the police do it, and film it. then some person who claimed to be a protester randomly started to remove the posters, and the protesters said he was an undercover cop, and they told him to stop. then they put back all the protest signs the removed, and sat on them.
here is the website for the process happening in the square--called New York City General Assembly:
www.nycga.net
Wall Street Bison (art project to replace the Wall Strete Bull with a Bison):
www.wallstreetbison.com
"Anonymous" (wikileaks hackers) is posting videos of Occupy Wall Street on its website:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6jdkpQjueo
"Celebrities" who have spoken in Occupy Wall Street square:
1. David Graeber, Yale anthropologist/anarchist who was fired for being too political, now teaches at Goldmsiths. parents fought in Spanish Civil War--he spoke around 7PM on Saturday:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Graeber
2. Roseanne Barr/(Stand-up comedian/TV star)
3. Immortal Technique (rapper)
4. Lupe Fiasco (rapper)
Here are some summaries of what speeches i can remember from the General Assembly:
(speech 1): Isn't it fitting we started the Wall Street March in front of the Musuem of the American Indian? The reason they originally called this Wall Street is because they built a wall to keep out Indians. Now we are the Indians. What is to stop us from calling ourselves Indians?
(people in audience say "white privilege")
(speech 2): Most of get people in this square are not from NY. We have to do outreach to bring more people from NY here, because it is New Yorkers who live here permanently who are going to cause change.
(conversation i had with filmmaker): There is nobody here over 25, and it is all white people. Everybody is from out of town. There are no kids from Williamsburg or Brooklyn here.
(that's all i can remember--unfortunately i didn't have video camera).
ABC story:
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2011/09/wall-st-protesters-say-theyre-settled-in/
Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/wall-street-protest-continues-for-third-day/2011/09/19/gIQAKqbffK_gallery.html
twitter search : #Occupy Wall Street
thanx,
andrea

"House Magic" #3 zine available as download

Before blasting off for vacation, I finished #3 and posted it online. You can download the 40-odd page zine from zinelibrary.info -- just search house+magic. Or you can go to the House Magic website at: https://sites.google.com/site/housemagicbfc/ (Number 1 & 2 are at both sites.)
“House Magic” #3 includes Bulletins from around the world; a stay at the Rote Insel in Berlin; a tour of the Regenbogen Fabrik/Rainbow Factory, Berlin; Ashley Dawson recollects her stay on Mainzerstrasse; “Right to the City” conference theses from Hamburg; a 1974 cover of Street by Ufe Surland; a new Provo pamphlet by Experimental Jetset; a talk with the artists of La Générale in Paris; photos and stories from the 1970s' squats on the Rue des Caves; visits by students to Metelkova Mesto in Ljubljana; stories from the USA, Bronx, San Francisco, and Hannah Dobbz' film “Squatumentary”; stories of “art squats” in Paris, London, Zurich, and Madrid; picture pages...
(That picture is the cover of HM#3 -- it was made into a giant banner and hung from the tower at New Yorck Bethanien CSOA in Berlin a couple of years ago.)

Consultations on New UK Anti-Squatting Law

From Mujinga we hear -- In the UK, the government has now announced the consultation on the criminalisation of squatting - the documents make quite interesting reading-
press release
http://www.justice.gov.uk/news/features/feature130711a.htm
Consultation webpage
http://www.justice.gov.uk/consultations/dealing-with-squatters.htm
Consultation document (pdf)
http://www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/consultations/options-dealing-with-squatting.pdf

Neoliberalism's Boll Weevils

When I was visiting at W139 in Amsterdam in May, I heard good buzz about Schijnheilig (Shine-high-lig). I headed over there late one night, after a poetry music festival, and saw that it was a big place, in a former school. They got kicked out this month. But no matter – they are going on to another place, as they have done for a number of years... This was the spirit of the squatters I met at Le Bourdon-L'Arsenal in Paris, painted on the facade of their okupa: “si vous nous expulsez ici... nous squatterons ailleurs/ nous n'arreterons jamais!”
Filmmaker Tino Buchholz has posted an interview with two Schijnheilig occupiers on YouTube – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGtrRKtBGgk. Tino produced a film “Creativity and the Capitalist City: The Struggle for Affordable Space in Amsterdam” (premiering next weekend) which examines the situation in which artists find themselves in that city today. The mainspring of the film is the conflict between the decades-old squatting movement in the city and its neoliberal commercial enemy, the “anti-squatting” businesses that fill empty building spaces with resident “guardians” on short-term contracts.
Tino writes, “With this film I want to cover the creative city/ creative class debate at its high peak - tracing its urban roots - and aim to portray the wider picture of the struggle for affordable space in advanced Western capitalist cities. This film is more than a local documentary on Amsterdam. The hype around the creative city began already a decade ago, it is global in scope and about to reach its peak. What happens when the hype is over? Housing as a job or the Right to the City? In this sense, the film explores the latest urban re-/development pattern in advanced Western capitalist cities and links it to existential struggles for affordable housing and working space in Amsterdam, such as temporary accommodation, squatting, anti-squatting and some institutional synthesis: 'breeding places' Amsterdam. Especially Anti-Squatting, the market answer to squatting, poses a threat to the Right to the City, how to address the question of vacancy in the future. Hence, one of the crucial questions is: Housing as a job (living as a Guardian) or the Right to the City?” Tino is working out of Technische Universität Dortmund.
IN OTHER NEWS, “A Brief History of Squatting in Brighton,” Mujinga's new zine is available from northern-indymedia.org/zines/2075 -- as: “using space 5” -- he is blogging at -- https://network23.org/snob/. He informs us of a new grab! -- “Building in Central Brighton Occupied in Solidarity with June 30 Strikes – An abandoned shop front in Churchill Square, Brighton’s biggest shopping centre, has been occupied in solidarity with striking public sector workers. The building had been empty since August 2010 and the occupiers are already making repairs in order to rescue the building from dilapidation. The space will be used to form links between the striking public sector workers and other members of the public who are affected by the government’s public sector cuts, such as students, benefits claimants and private sector workers. Starting June 30th, the day of the strikes, the space will be open in the daytime and used as a place for people opposed to the cuts in general to meet one another, drink tea, and find out about anti-cuts actions. At 6pm everyday there will be an Anti-Cuts Forum, a public meeting open to all to participate. From 8pm until the space closes at night there will be film screenings and acoustic music. Drugs such as Alcohol, Nicotine and Ketamine are strictly forbidden in the space, along with all forms of oppressive behaviour such as Racism, Sexism and Homophobia. The space is non-party political and is open to anyone opposed to the government’s public sector cuts is welcome to the space at 29 Western Rd, Brighton, on the corner of Churchill square. All enquiries to 07563696458.” Cheers!
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it's done -- Schijnheilig got the boot a couple days ago – here's the video --
http://nos.nl/video/253638-politie-amsterdam-ontruimt-kraakpanden.html
rockin' squattin' action!, complete with noise-rock soundtrack...

Slammin' at Joe's Garage

Joe's Garage is a storefront social center in Amsterdam, and the site of the recent “mini-SQEK” meeting of squat researchers in early June. The center is amongst a web of streets named after the Dutch founders of South Africa (Afrikaaners). For years this nabe was the home of immigrants living in social housing, and now the relentless pressure of the city's housing market has led to a cycle of speculation, evictions, and redevelopment as luxury condos. Amsterdam's squatting group east has conducted a campaign of occupation and tenant organizing against this gentrification. The center is named for Joe McCarthy – not the U.S. rightwing senator from Wisconsin, really, but another, Joe Cyrus McCarthy, an Iranian who backed the Shah and fled to Amsterdam after Khomeini came to power. This Joe bought a house, Momo our host told us, with black money and intimidated the rental tenants into moving out. Amsterdam real estate, we were told, is a perfect setup for black money and the creeps who handle it. It's a laundry circle – a house is worth 150K full of tenants, and a million empty. But Joe was found out by the authorities, Momo said. He fled the country to avoid prosecution, and the squatters grabbed his house. This was the first Joe's Garage, which they held for seven years. (Relatives of the owner took them to court, but could not prove they owned the building.) Because of the irony of his name, the squatters used Charlie Chaplin as a symbol. (Chaplin was expelled from the U.S. as a communist during McCarthy's blacklist crusade.) In 2008 the water cannons of the police appeared at the door of Joe's Garage at 6:30 in the morning. It was time to move... across the street!
Nazima, a U.S. anthropology student, has been studying the squatters of Amsterdam for several years, immersing herself in their anti-gentrification campaigns. She shared her work, which is basically concerned with the internal dynamics of the squatter movement itself. She traces the dyamics and trajectory of activists' “careers in the movement as a scripted path to self-realization and autonomy.” She spent a while discussing conflict – the kind of thing artist Seth Tobocman limns so well in his graphic novel about NYC squats, “War in the Neighborhood” (1999). Through her work one can see how a squatted house can fail internally before it is evicted.
Cesar presented his work on the Italian social center movement in Milan in the mid-1970s, the high tide of the radical left. In only two years, between 1975 and '77, 35 illegal social centers opened in Milan – (among them were today's survivors Leon Cavallo and Cox 18). The city became a point of diffusion of the movement to other cities in Italy and abroad, especially Spain. Tino Buchholz, who just finished a film about Amsterdam called “Creativity and the Capitalist City,” reported on the big Hamburg meeting of Right to the City, which was nearly simultaneous with our conclave.
Miguel told us more about Spain, especially the encampment in the Puerta del Sol (which is packing up even as I write this – the first phase is over, but this movement is by no means finished). On the 15th of of May, Miguel went to the plaza with 500 people in the autonomist and libertarian bloc. There they found themselves in a crowd of 15,000, and their objections melted away. The group which had called the demonstration decided to occupy the plaza, and Miguel's bloc joined them under conditions they had not previously agreed to – i.e., no violence, reformist claims on the democratic system, talking to the mass media, etc. “But we liked that this demonstration was forbidden, management was absolutely horizontal, and no flags – even the anarchist flags were forbidden. Finally, taking the public space – we wanted always to mobilize people in the street.... Finally it was a very autonomous movement, even for people who never listened to the word 'autonomy' – it was absolutely new.” There were many problems, with homeless people, sexist attitudes by men, excessive drinking (a condition of this touristical square at any time), and a lack of political memory. “But the truth is that something changed. Now even squat social centers which didn't work together in the past are working together in this occupation.” (That is, the huge permitted social center in a government building called Tabacalera, and some illegal centers are working together. Recently, excellent analytic texts in English on this movement have appeared on the Transversal website and Interactivist.net.)
Hans Pruijt took on what he called an emerging argument among intellectuals that squatting is a precursor of neoliberalism. He outlined the reasons -- among them, that squatters and social centers are plugging holes left by the retreating state with their giveaway shops, language classes, free food, etc. This led to a lively discussion, particularly about the ways in which the squatting movement across Europe has become a sort of training ground for future managers and politicians.
While the “mini-SQEK” was fascinating as ever, I had also other fish to fry in Amsterdam. (The herring are running, and I ate some raw with chopped onions and pickles at a stand parked on a canal bridge.) I had an assignment in Amsterdam., to make a talk at the W139 art space. They were hosting a show by British artist Jonathan Monk – (Glasgow trained) – which was a kind of spectacular gloss on a 1989 show of “East Village” artists called “Horn of Plenty,” a show at the Stedelijk Museum which had influenced Monk as a student. He had W139 drop the ceiling on the spectacular interior space to exactly his own height while wearing high heels. The drop concealed about 10 meters of light-filled gallery, creating a bizarrely institutional environment to look at installation photographs of the 1990 exhibition. I had been recommended to the lanky director of W139, Tim Voss, to talk about the East Village district, aka the Lower East Side, “back in the day” – 1980s and '90s... but, typically, perversely, I talked about the Lower East Side in the 1960s. (If you're interested, a script of that talk will soon be posted on the “House Magic” website with the related Rote Flora show materials.) I'm afraid it was something of a mismatch. Monk is a very interesting artist, but political he is not. He seemed a little bewildered as I blathered on about Ben Morea, Valerie Solanas, Tuli Kupferberg, Bullet Space, Fly, ABC No Rio and the Rivington School – the standard roster of crusty heroes and heroines of the rebel LES. They are all really remote from the artists of the 1989 “Horn” show (at the time my gang called them the “neo-geos”). We did all agree that when there's no opportunities, artists really have to do it for themselves. (Jonathan did it in Glasgow, with his schoolmates.)
W139 is a prime example. It was squatted in 1979. I met Ad de Jong at Monk's opening party, a graphic designer and one of the original bunch who “cracked” the building. He told how a fellow wandered in then, a “financial guy,” who said his gang could secure the building for a long time if they did something for the community. So they made it a real art space. Now the W139 group owns the building, which has been beautifully renovated as one of the biggest cultural spaces in the center. It has a huge downstairs – which the artists' collective Jochen Schmith has asphalted(!), a bizarre floor treatment which made the opening party edgy with the tinkle of beer bottles just aching to be smashed... A friend of the crew later drove his custom made open road motorcycle around the place, making a hell of a lot of noise and a nice tire mark on the wall – it seemed superbly elegant and appropriate to the installation.
W139 is in the center, very close to the central station. They are surrounded now by “coffee shops” which sell marijuana and other intoxicants, and a stone's throw from the red light district where goggle-eyed young men oogle the ladies in their glass-fronted cages on the street.
What with the mini-SQEK and the talk for W139, I didn't have much of a chance to check out other squat scenes. Amsterdam abounds in them, past and present, despite the recent anti-squatting law. I made it to Schijnheilig (Shine-High-lig), a squatted cultural center in an old school which was hosting a music and concrete poetry night. (“It was in Dutch,” Renée Ridgway told me, to console me since I missed the performance.) Vincent Boschma, my host at W139, told me this place is due to be evicted in a wave of police actions against squatters next week. (Vincent was also busy with his installation in a deserted shopping center – but the artists did not squat, instead they have been allowed to use it) Although they will soon lose the place, the Schijnheilig was squatted by a group which reckons with being kicked out, just like the Really Free School in London. They will go on to another place after this. Renée and I went up to her place with Alan Smart. (She has a studio in the Kinkestraat, a famous old squat gone legal.) There we looked at Alan's collection of Provo and Kabouter documents, lovingly gathered from various antiquarian book shops. The vitality, creativity, and pure Dutch cheek of these movements is still palpable from these well-made (albeit cheaply produced) old pamphlets and books.
On my last day I biked around to look at Binnenpret and OCCI, two relatively recent squatted spaces out along the Overtoom, a busy street that runs near one side of the Vondel Park. Binnenpret is a complex of low buildings. One, an important venue for new music and punk bands in the city, has been renovated in some bizarre traditional manner. It is all tarted up with bright colors on bare wood, and looks like a postcard Swiss chalet. In the courtyard of Binnenpret, a complex of projects in small buildings, it's hippie-land. A bare-breasted Dutch couple darted out of the collective sauna to check the weather in the courtyard: “Oh, it's raining!,” and went back in. The lovely cafe, a glass-fronted jewel-box with a charming garden outside it was closed. Another joint, Ot301, is a giant dark 1955 office or school building fronting on a courtyard. Downstairs a finely tricked-out space is important for new music. The guy working there couldn't tell me about anything else going on in the building... but somewhere in there is the graphic design group Experimental Jetset. They are working on the legalization and contract for Ot301, visiting other places that began as squats to get ideas. Their last pit stop was ABC No Rio in New York. It's a small world after all....

Joe's Garage, een autonoom sociaal centrum in een kraakpand in oost amsterdam
www.joesgarage.nl/

Hamburg Right to the City conference in early June, 2011, an invitation to invites to collective confusions, encounters and diversions.
http://kongress.rechtaufstadt.net/

Creativity and the capitalist city, the struggle for affordable space in Amsterdam, a film by Tino Buchholz.
http://www.creativecapitalistcity.org/indexDe.html
(see also a trailer on YouTube)

i don't yet do this Twitter thing, but if you do, the hashtag for the 15th of May movement is #spanishrevolution

the contemporary art space W139
http://www.w139.nl/nl/

I will soon post the W139 texts to the House Magic website part which has related content, "Rote Flora solidarity show Spring 2011"
https://sites.google.com/site/housemagicbfc/rote-flora-solidarity-show-spring-2011

Schijnheilig, a nomadic collective in Amsterdam doing a queer venture of creative activism and critical yadda yadda
www.schijnheilig.org/

OCCII | Onafhankelijk Cultureel Centrum In It
www.occii.org/

Binnenpret
binnenpr.home.xs4all.nl/

OT301 home/news, studios/parties, cinema, de peper, gallery, agenda, archive ...
ot301.nl

Fun 'Endless Summer' Action...

After my talk Monday night at Bluestockings Books, I am out of here (NYC). Some people from Real Democracy Now are in town from Spain. They are blogging in English about the occupations in Puerta del Sol, Madrid, and other parts of the country. I am hoping the people are still there when I return to town... Meanwhile, in Copenhagen, folks are taking off their clothes. Ask Katzeff tells us that around 1,000 people squatted an abandoned building near the free city of Christiania called Søminen. The idea is to turn the place into a self-managed social center. The photostream shows a really fun and wild-assed rave-up. The question is, can a party become an institution?

English blog on Spanish movement
http://ptqkblogzine.blogspot.com/2011/05/takethesquare-globalcamp.html

Photos in Java on the Copenhagen occupation
http://politiken.dk/fotografier/soundslides/ECE1293719/syv-dage-efter-stormen-paa-soeminen/

Back in the USSA

I've been snuffling around the old neighborhood these days – the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Yes, of course, it's a zone of young corporate stiffs now. Some streets are solid with bars pouring cheap beer at perpetual happy hours. I made a weekend pub crawl, just to smell the crowds. They were all in rut. Outside the famous art bar Max Fish was a rope and two really big guys in black suits controlling entrance. They took my state ID and put it into a scanner device which recorded it. Then I could go inside. These are cops hired to protect the business from the cops. Max Fish was recently closed for serving and under-21. The building Max Fish is in was until recently owned by the Elliots, old school LES landlords. Then it went to a son of them, who is a global wheeler-dealer type. This schlub tried to get the place, lock stock and liquor license – in a kind of “primitive appropriation” of the cultural capital of artists that is revealing of the true state of creatives in the super-heated global cities today. When he was thwarted, the schlub sold it to the owner of American Apparel – a clothing company which people mistakenly believe is somehow a fair labor practice operation. (The company has “greenwashed” itself on that issue from the get-go, basing their advertising on a softcore update of the labor unions' own historical “Union Maid” [i.e., “made”] campaigns of the '30s. This new owner is really rich, not just a little rich, and he looks to have an in with the cops. Because the old-school bully tactics of the Elliot son have been replaced by continuous official harrassment of Max Fish. (Although the Fish is not alone in this; other places that serve a non-bourgeois clientele are also under pressure.) The kind of giant klieg lights you see being used on the main drug dealing streets of ghettos in Baltimore are set up to shine in the windows of Max Fish for no apparent reason. (They ought to flash “get out!”) And somehow it is nearly impossible to register a complaint about this via the city's 311 municipal help line. No city agency seems to be responsible for the lights which bear NYPD logos. For the artists who made this neighborhood cool, “The future's so bright I've got to wear shades.”
Around the corner on Houston Street in the new skyscraper built with German capital, the No Longer Empty group has installed an actually decent art show in a large vacant storefront. I told them they were the enemy, because in Europe their kind of group forestalls occupations by temporarily filling a prominent vacant property with cultural content. (Kind of like Max Fish, although there the illusion was that it was a business with some hope of continuous tenancy. “Don't worry, boss. We can fix that.”) The chipper young gals sitting the place were a little baffled by that. But that's the way in NYC, artists and their presence manipulated like quicksilver, flowing rapidly around the city's vacant spots like some kind of flouride treatment for the epidemic of caries infecting the commercial real estate market. The technique was pioneered by the daughter of Durst, a major developer of Times Square. She started Chashama to fill the vacated storefronts along 42nd Street before they were demolished. Chashama programs continue today. They just closed a street art exhibition in the vacant NY Public Library building across the street from the Museum of Modern Art. Chashama is intelligent, and fearless in their embrace of edgy (read “non-commodity”) art. They even hosted an early anarchist convergence. NL Empty is a lot more timid. And they certainly don't understand themselves as being essentially a volunteer-run version of the kind of companies that will fill your vacant building in Amsterdam and London with short-term tenants who sign away their rights to stay – the “squatter-proofing” companies. At the Berlin SQEK meeting, Hans Pruijt told us that representatives of these companies were working with him to lobby against the recent Dutch anti-squatter laws. Of course, like the CIA funding the Taliban... keeping a good thing going.
With its heavy security cordon, Max Fish was pretty sedate inside. Nowadays most East Village bars play such loud music that social intercourse is reduced to gulping drinks and smelling each others' behinds. So I could relax, among the other controlled, amidst the gloriously painted walls and lavish art displays. I chatted with bartender and painter Harry Druzd – all the employees there are artists – and then walked on, to the Bowery Poetry Club. Nearby another empty newly renovated storefront has been spraypainted “Private Property.” (Duh.) Inside, a sort-of art show seems to be in progress, evidenced by a Samo-style graffito on the wall to the effect that “I am my own person...” The two graffiti read together make a kind of odious continuity between individuality and ownership. I was philosophically disgusted. I walked into the Yippie Museum. “This place smells like cat piss,” I told the barista. He wanted me to leave. So I told my story, and the only other people in the place, a young man and his friend, told me, “That's a case of predicate logic.” Even so, it's dangerous. As the great Reverend Billy told us at “service” that Sunday, our freedoms are being commodified, and sold to us as products. Billy entertains to liberate. For the neo-culture industry, it is as the French journal Offensive puts it, “Divertir pour dominer.”

Max Fish, Lower East Side "original" art bar
http://www.maxfish.com/

Yippie Museum Cafe and Gift shop and the Lenny Bruce Academy of Sick Comedy
http://www.yippiemuseum.org/

Bowery Poetry Club, with "digital poet in residence" (??)
www.bowerypoetry.com/

Chashama -- group of theaters, gallery spaces, and studios
www.chashama.org/

Reverend Billy & The Church of Earthalujah!
www.revbilly.com/