A.D.Z. in the L.E.S. – Part one

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'New York, New York is a hellava town / the Bronx is up and the L.E.S. is down...'

Okay so I'm stealing from the Beastie Boys, stealing from Frankie the blue eye'd mafia motherfucker, but that is the only way I'm ever gonna kick off a trip to the Rotten Apple, or the L.E.S./East Village to be more precise. When I'm in town I never go above 14th Street as the L(ower) E(ast) S(ide) is where it is at. It used to be a place crawling with skaters/bohos/artists/cool fuckers, but then the money moved in and forced the prices up and the nice peeps moved out. But, since the 'recession' the place is getting back to what it used to be as rent has dropped as no-one has any money — or no-one wants to be seen to have any money. I think they still have it, but New Yorkers are a weird lot — you never really know what is really going on in there...

As always I fly into Newark Liberty Airport, which is a 20-min train ride ($15) away from Manhattan, much better than the black hole that is known as JFK, which is a $45 cab ride (+tip). Anyway enough of the travel tips... I cleared immigration after the usual 20-questions. My recent LA trip was instantly flagged and as always I told the guy I was over on holiday. Working as a writer has to be one of the most ambiguous job titles and if the powers to be thought I was over here interviewing peeps then I'd need a visa; which seems a little fucked to be able to talk to people and take a few snaps...

So I drop my shit off and go for a wonder and find the place has changed a bit. Kim's Video on St. Marks Place (where I stay) has gone. Kim's was the best ever video/dvd shop with the most serious collection of obscure and cult films. There are some seriously designed buildings that have sprung up outta no-where (see pic) which look so out of place in the East Village.

I hook up with my pal Charlotte, who totally looks after me over here and we go for a kebab. You can take the boy outta England but you can't... yada yada yada as they say this side of the pond.

King Adz is HUCK’s roaming street culture reporter and the author of The Urban Cookbook: Creative Recipes for the Graffiti Generation.

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A.D.Z. in the L.E.S. – Part one (text) by King Adz is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.