Protesters Attack John Varvatos With 'More Humorous' Signage
Demonstrators who picketed the new John Varvatos boutique on the Bowery last week plan a second wave of protests tonight, as the fashion designer celebrates the store's grand opening with a splashy charity concert.
The shop is located on the site of the former legendary rock club CBGB, which shuttered in 2006 after a lengthly rent dispute with its landlord.
"We'll have more humorous (and pointed) neon pink signs..." e-mailed activist Rebecca Moore, who last week carried a placard reading "ONE 'SMALL' LOSS OF A MUSIC SPACE, ONE LARGE STEP FOR PANTS."
"This is not about one music space, or just about cb's," Ms. Moore wrote, "or whether you thought [former CBGB proprietor Hilly Kristal] was a good businessman or not, or whether you gigged there - - but it is about the type of intense gentrification being used to sell the Lower East Side; it is about the co-opting of culture to sell overpriced luxury goods. This is about small music and cultural and community spaces getting pushed out of the city, so that the wealthy can position themselves as saving it (or just the buildings) ... but in fact, only using it as a marketing tool for their unaffordable wares."
In an interview with The Observer this week, Mr. Varvatos insisted that he is not to blame for the neighborhood's gentrification.
"We don't set the rent here," he said. "We didn't kick CBGBs out of here. We didn't force them to go. It was empty for a year. This could've been a bank, a deli, a Starbucks--it could've been a lot of things. At least we invested in saving what was here.
"I can't save the music venues in this city," he added, "but I can save a part of history."
In addition to preserving the hallowed venue's old sticker and graffiti-clad walls--and possibly preventing a bank from moving in--Mr. Varvatos said he is also hoping to support the local rock scene in other ways.
"We’re basically taking our profits and putting it into an artist development fund, so we can do shows at least once a month in this store," he said. "We have a stage, it expands, it turns. And we will put shows on in this store.
"I’m not going to be a club promoter here. I’m not going to run a club every night. But to be able to do it a couple times a month, and having cool young people that you think don’t have the funding behind ‘em or they don’t have a record company behind em, that you can put out in front of people, and you can do that also where people don’t have to pay to come listen to it. There’s something pretty cool about that. There’s not a lot of places in the city like that."
35 West 23rd Street
FLATIRON/CHELSEA CONDO LOFT. Live/Work Condo. No detail has been spared. ... More details |
|
But of course Mr. Varvatos, you set the rents down here. How can you not understand that?
You are saving the walls... and sure, I can appreciate that - but lets be clear - you are not opening a full time music space or a not-for-profit arts organization, when you could. You opened a clothing store that will do one concert a month and promote bands you like (and probably have a stake in.) This is not what community means. You aren't really giving back.
You sell goods that no one (except the wealthy moving in and pushing everyone and everything out) can afford. And you are using the icons of counter-culture to sell those luxury goods. And you do this next door to a homeless shelter and a block's distance away from two others. People who have nowhere else to go. I question BRC's (the landlord's) motives - how can they claim to be keeping their homeless clients welfare truly at the forefront when they are filling their storefronts with luxury retailers? How can BRC be claiming to do a service for the poor people they "represent", when they are helping raise the ante for how high rents can go in one of the last poor enclaves? At least CB's was a place anyone could hang out in. It was accessible to all. I am not saying it was perfect - but it still alive, kicking, and real for the tons of people who went there.
This is what it takes to sell things to a new generation - you have to use the icons they hold dear... like Elvis look-alikes were used to sell overpriced vacuum cleaners in the 50's. But some of us see thru this age-old song and dance, and see the wolf in sheeps clothing (or should I say the wall street boutique in punk clothing, because that is basically what it is). You either are of the corporate mentality or you are not - - and to me, I don't care if it wears a suit or if it has a spikey hairdo - - We can't all be fooled so easily. If it is elite and corporate, and if it is helping destroy the ecosystem of NYC and further contributing to the upheaval of the poor, I don't care if you've dressed it up to look like Johnny Rotten... it is a sham. But I do hope you support artists like Bobby Steele via your store, somehow. Maybe they will sell a few more t-shirts for the $250 you charge. If maybe one or two non-wealthy artists benefit from your Bowery location, I will be glad for them. But if I am supposed to sit back and cheer on the selling out of so many other people - of an entire community - for some walls behind glass and so that $400 pants can official start being sold on the Lower East Side, Sorry, i can't.
RM
Designer stores like this one are a gross display of wealth. I say cover the door of these new places in dog shit. They'll get the message that they are unwelcome. The class divide is getting uglier and the poor are going to start to ORGANIZE. We may not have $, but rich people won't go through shit—even to shop. NYC is so over because of rich assholes like this who just sell their wares off the backs of iconic spaces and the folks who gave their time and blood to make NYC great. The future of NY is disgusting.