Jane's Walk on the Bowery

This weekend, May 2 and 3, come downtown for a Jane's Walk about Hyper-Gentrification and Appropriation on the Bowery. I organized and wrote the walk, while Kyle Supley from #SaveNYC will be your knowledgeable and charismatic guide.



Jane's Walk is a global "movement of free, citizen-led walking tours inspired by Jane Jacobs." In New York City, the walks are sponsored by the Municipal Arts Society.

Visit the site for more on the Bowery walk and many others. Here's a description:

For over a century, the Bowery’s character had been of the countercultural sort. Since the late 1800s it had been the sleazy territory of outsiders—punks, artists, bums, queers, and drop-outs, drag queens, prostitutes, tattoo artists, and con men. It was a haven for homosexuals when it was illegal and unsafe to be gay. Groundbreaking artists, including Mark Rothko, moved to the Bowery in the 1950s. More artists arrived through the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, including Jean-Michel Basquiat and Robert Mapplethorpe. The music scene at CBGB’s gave birth to punk rock. Then, in the 1990s, everything began to change.

Today, the Bowery, once synonymous with Skid Row, has become a luxury brand that appropriates its gritty past, sanitizes it, and then sells it for a sky-high price. On this walk, organized by Jeremiah Moss of Vanishing New York and #SaveNYC, and guided by preservationist Kyle Supley, participants will tour the main sites of the Bowery’s massive transformation and engage in a discussion about hyper-gentrification and appropriation. If time allows, participants will also loop back to Houston Street via Rivington and Essex for a look at how hyper-gentrification has transformed what is now known as “Hell Square.”