The Mulberry Street Gang Exibit

Sits in an Empty Lot on Houston Street in NYC

We love finding quirky pop-up exhibits in New York City,

and we were recently excited to discover one in an empty lot at 49 East Houston Street! The exhibit, created by Steve Stollman, is small but honors something big—people who have shown bravery in challenging some of the most pressing social and political issues of their times. The exhibit will be there until September 15, honoring the “Mulberry Street Gang” consisting of Jacob Riis, Teddy Roosevelt, Nikola Tesla, Mark Twain, and Joseph Keppler (founder of the barrier-breaking, satirical Puck magazine).

https://untappedcities.com/2017/07/19/the-mulberry-street-gang-exhibit-sits-in-an-empty-lot-on-houston-street-in-nyc

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Gallery Exhibit at 704 Columbia Street

Posted on Sat,Sep 25, 2021 by Trixie Starr

Source https://www.trixieslist.com/2021/09/25/gallery-exhibit-at-704-columbia-street/

Who remembers the bicycle shop around Houston and Mulberry Streets in downtown New York?

Steven Stollman, pictured above, used to own and run that bicycle shop by the Puck Building from 1974-2010. He has owned 704 Columbia Street (former home of WGXC radio) on 7th Street Park for the past ten years. Steven just sold the building, and for the next two weeks, until October 9th, he is opening up the ground floor for visitors to his art gallery.

The show is a combination of two shows, Going Nowhere Fast and The Mulberry Street Gang. Going Nowhere Fast, initially shown in 1991 at the Municipal Arts Society in Manhattan, focuses on the need for human and solar-powered transportation. Thirty years later, Steven notes that not much has changed in transportation options, “We have gone nowhere fast.”

The Mulberry Street Gang focuses on some of the men during the early 1890’s who lived and worked in and around the Puck Building – Theodore Roosevelt (US president), Nikola Tesla (scientist), Mark Twain (writer), Jacob Riis (photographer), and Joseph Keppler (founder of Puck Magazine). There are pictures and descriptions of each man in the windows. All men, contributed to social change, in their form.

Why is he selling the building? “If Marina had continued with her space, then this would have been a cafe or art gallery,” Stollman says of 704 Columbia. The performance artist Marina Abramovic owned the large “Tennis Courts” building next door and had plans for a large art space. Abramovic sold the building about a year ago and the idea for a performance arts space in the “Tennis Courts” building vanished.

Stollman will keep the space open until October 9th when the new owners arrive, and his posters and artwork will be on display. The downstairs will be open to the public from about noon to 5 pm. “I want to say goodbye to the building”, says Stollman.

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The Mulberry Street Gang Lives Again

In Hudson NY
On display at 704 Columbia Street in Hudson for the Summer along with the Going Nowhere Fast show.

The exhibit is on. Please come to see it.

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Mulberry Street

Going Nowhere Fast

In New York City in the 1890s

on the corner of Mulberry and Houston Streets, an extraordinary handful of people held forth from their various corners. The means they used to project their feelings and aspirations were all radically different from one another and also a departure from anything the world had ever seen before. They were each also preoccupied with the inequalities and injustices that characterized life for the average person in their time and they were each determined to change the course of their society’s history. What is amazing is, they each did. Each needed to re-define what could be, even should be. What they each realized was, that making such a breakthrough required them to invent a new medium, so fresh that it could convey their fierce determination to their fellow-creatures, where mere words could never work. What a crew they were.

This show, here until September 15th, is intended to bring attention to some of the remarkable individuals who once worked in this neighborhood and had outsized positive influences over our lives.

Weekly PUCK magazine, published in the adjacent PUCK building for 40 years from 1877 to 1917, not only forced politicians to pay more attention to the critical issues of their day but also inspired the rank irreverence that brought my generation MAD magazine and Stephen Colbert. The masthead of PUCK, which proclaimed Shakespeare’s acid judgment “What Fools These Mortals Be”, was mirrored in our age by MAD’s sardonic “What, Me Worry?”. Published 75 years later, founded, interestingly, a mere one block south of PUCK’s headquarters, it also gave aid and comfort to the REALIST, a journal of “social-political-religious criticism and satire” which many regards as the father of the modern “Underground Press” of the 60-s and ’70s. Using humor to foster a better appreciation of some of the toxic forces which have had so much influence over our lives is essential, in both sharpening our understanding of them and as a guide to finding the best ways to counteract them.

As Mark Twain said, “Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its only sure defense”.

Along with Joseph Keppler the founder and lead artist of PUCK, the other members of this Gang, were Jacob Riis, who illuminated our underside using explosive flash photography, Nikola Tesla, the greatest inventor of our time, his friend and frequent visitor, Mark Twain, and Police Commissioner and crusading corruption reformer Theodore Roosevelt. When he became an accidental President, TR took what he had learned from these important social critics and applied much of it to his political philosophy. In sum, we are only able to be as realistic as we are about our current condition, because of the raw honesty which these people brought to the table. Some might be distressed that 125 years later, we still have so far to go in representing our existence with the frankness that it deserves and requires.

There is no end to the irony that the PUCK building is now owned by a person, Jared Kushner, likely to have been one of the magazine’s primary targets in its heyday. Mis-use of power was the most dangerous failing that the magazine abhorred and the current abandonment of truthfulness would have provided them with an infinitude of material. When facts cease to be real, this goes far beyond differences of opinion. Sowing confusion and misunderstanding among the public can fatally undermine the social contract. We have too few institutions dedicated to preserving our values and principles and an unlimited number devoted to increasing consumption and broadcasting the importance of materiality. Many views with horror the disappearance of empathy, as it is replaced by one-dimensional naked self-interest. As more time is spent staring at a little screen than engaging in the honest conversation we look forward to an awakening that will restore our ability to connect fully with all of those around us.

The exhibit will now include the best of the political cartoons being produced today. The more serious our issues become, the more important it will be to find a perspective that takes in the whole picture and allows us to recognize the humor, absurdity, and universality of our condition. The hope is that this may serve to make it easier for us to take action on behalf of our most important needs, together and effectively.

We can hardly imagine the courage it took, over a century ago, on this spot, to take on the worst examples of inhumanity, the biggest bullies and brutes at loose, and beat a bunch of them to a pulp. Nikola Tesla put the great Thomas Edison in his place. PUCK magazine lowered the boom on General Grant and the monopolies. Jacob Riis dared the gangsters whose victims he exposed with his exploding magnesium light to shut him down. Twain became the scourge of the racists and imperialists. Teddy Roosevelt really got under the skin of the mighty Republican Party.

These ambitious and creative individuals forged brand new weapons, to be employed in forcing the broadest social betterment. From the cutting-edge hi-tech color comics of PUCK to the acid ridicule dispensed by Mark Twain’s monologues, TR’s National Park System and Tesla’s radio, AC and water power, and Riis’ shocking images, a drive to benefit everyone, to the maximum degree, is what obsessed this crew. They all had their flaws, but we are all their beneficiaries. Their drive, creativity, and generosity were as rare in their own time as they are today.

It is especially important that the journalism that is represented here, the search for the truth, the realities of our existence, be given its due. We will have a hard time surviving without the wisdom and perspective that it brings. Even though corporate-supported media may not give us the widest range of views, we are now in a time when even the most basic assumptions about our rights are under a fierce attack and the importance of establishing the facts that must be used to determine our condition is crucial. Let us celebrate the gifts that have been provided to us in the past and honor them by supporting the best examples of this degree of honesty and relevance, whether it is political cartooning or revealing documentaries, painfully-honest truth-telling (with a dose of humor), breakthroughs in clean-energy or unconventional office-seekers. We have never needed to acknowledge and celebrate, those willing to recognize and respond to our greatest challenges, more than we do today.

Going Nowhere Fast Publication

Going Nowhere Fast the show was put on at the Municipal Art Society in New York City in the Summer of 1991.

You can download the Publication Here.

This special publication has grown out f the Municipal Art Society and Ughtwheels exhibition “Going Nowhere Fast: The Transportation Show” which was on display at the Urban Center Galleries from July 10 through September 7, 1991.

SUMMER, 1991 $1

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Mulberry Street In New York City

in the 1890s

on the corner of Mulberry and Houston Streets, an extraordinary handful of people held forth from their various corners. The means they used to project their feelings and aspirations were all radically different from one another and also a departure from anything the world had ever seen before. They were each also preoccupied with the inequalities and injustices that characterized life for the average person in their time and they were each determined to change the course of their society’s history. What is amazing is, they each did. Each needed to re-define what could be, even should be. What they each realized was, that making such a breakthrough required them to invent a new medium, so fresh that it could convey their fierce determination to their fellow-creatures, where mere words could never work. What a crew they were.

This show, here until September 15th, is intended to bring attention to some of the remarkable individuals who once worked in this neighborhood and had outsized positive influences over our lives.

Weekly PUCK magazine, published in the adjacent PUCK building for 40 years from 1877 to 1917, not only forced politicians to pay more attention to the critical issues of their day but also inspired the rank irreverence that brought my generation MAD magazine and Stephen Colbert. The masthead of PUCK, which proclaimed Shakespeare’s acid judgment “What Fools These Mortals Be”, was mirrored in our age by MAD’s sardonic “What, Me Worry?”. Published 75 years later, founded, interestingly, a mere one block south of PUCK’s headquarters, it also gave aid and comfort to the REALIST, a journal of “social-political-religious criticism and satire” which many regards as the father of the modern “Underground Press” of the 60-s and ’70s. Using humor to foster a better appreciation of some of the toxic forces which have had so much influence over our lives is essential, in both sharpening our understanding of them and as a guide to finding the best ways to counteract them.

As Mark Twain said, “Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its only sure defense”.

Along with Joseph Keppler the founder and lead artist of PUCK, the other members of this Gang, were Jacob Riis, who illuminated our underside using explosive flash photography, Nikola Tesla, the greatest inventor of our time, his friend and frequent visitor, Mark Twain, and Police Commissioner and crusading corruption reformer Theodore Roosevelt. When he became an accidental President, TR took what he had learned from these important social critics and applied much of it to his political philosophy. In sum, we are only able to be as realistic as we are about our current condition, because of the raw honesty which these people brought to the table. Some might be distressed that 125 years later, we still have so far to go in representing our existence with the frankness that it deserves and requires.

There is no end to the irony that the PUCK building is now owned by a person, Jared Kushner, likely to have been one of the magazine’s primary targets in its heyday. Mis-use of power was the most dangerous failing that the magazine abhorred and the current abandonment of truthfulness would have provided them with an infinitude of material. When facts cease to be real, this goes far beyond differences of opinion. Sowing confusion and misunderstanding among the public can fatally undermine the social contract. We have too few institutions dedicated to preserving our values and principles and an unlimited number devoted to increasing consumption and broadcasting the importance of materiality. Many views with horror the disappearance of empathy, as it is replaced by one-dimensional naked self-interest. As more time is spent staring at a little screen than engaging in the honest conversation we look forward to an awakening that will restore our ability to connect fully with all of those around us.

The exhibit will now include the best of the political cartoons being produced today. The more serious our issues become, the more important it will be to find a perspective that takes in the whole picture and allows us to recognize the humor, absurdity, and universality of our condition. The hope is that this may serve to make it easier for us to take action on behalf of our most important needs, together and effectively.

We can hardly imagine the courage it took, over a century ago, on this spot, to take on the worst examples of inhumanity, the biggest bullies and brutes at loose, and beat a bunch of them to a pulp. Nikola Tesla put the great Thomas Edison in his place. PUCK magazine lowered the boom on General Grant and the monopolies. Jacob Riis dared the gangsters whose victims he exposed with his exploding magnesium light to shut him down. Twain became the scourge of the racists and imperialists. Teddy Roosevelt really got under the skin of the mighty Republican Party.

These ambitious and creative individuals forged brand new weapons, to be employed in forcing the broadest social betterment. From the cutting-edge hi-tech color comics of PUCK to the acid ridicule dispensed by Mark Twain’s monologues, TR’s National Park System and Tesla’s radio, AC and water power, and Riis’ shocking images, a drive to benefit everyone, to the maximum degree, is what obsessed this crew. They all had their flaws, but we are all their beneficiaries. Their drive, creativity, and generosity were as rare in their own time as they are today.

It is especially important that the journalism that is represented here, the search for the truth, the realities of our existence, be given its due. We will have a hard time surviving without the wisdom and perspective that it brings. Even though corporate-supported media may not give us the widest range of views, we are now in a time when even the most basic assumptions about our rights are under a fierce attack and the importance of establishing the facts that must be used to determine our condition is crucial. Let us celebrate the gifts that have been provided to us in the past and honor them by supporting the best examples of this degree of honesty and relevance, whether it is political cartooning or revealing documentaries, painfully-honest truth-telling (with a dose of humor), breakthroughs in clean-energy or unconventional office-seekers. We have never needed to acknowledge and celebrate, those willing to recognize and respond to our greatest challenges, more than we do today.

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The Gang

Joseph Keppler

Austrian immigrant artist and founder of PUCK magazine, 1877-1917. The descendant of Johannes Keppler, 17th Century planetary scientist and author of Harmonices Mundi. Drew the pictures, sold the ads, wrote the copy. Got Presidents elected and corrupt trusts busted. Invented the color comic book.

Jacob Riis

Danish immigrant writer and photographer, a pioneer in the use of documentary photography as a tool of social improvement. Wrote How the Other Half Lives, important muckraking exposure to society’s underbelly. Took TR with him as his bodyguard and got him worked up about unacceptable living conditions etc.

Theodor Roosevelt

The new Police Commissioner has given the job of taking on a department which was the headquarters of most of the criminal activity taking place in the city, primarily bribes to ignore illegal activity. He eventually found that he had to start a whole political party to upset the status quo.

Nikola Tesla

Serbian immigrant scientist and inventor of AC current and the induction motor, the power of Niagara Falls, the radio, neon and fluorescent lighting, the electric starter in your car, etc. He stated, as his goal, to make life easier for all of us, to remove the burdens, and not just of the few.

Mark Twain

Tesla’s friend Samuel Clemens, who loved all of the strange toys in his laboratory and liked to visit him to play with them. While Tesla was lighting the world, Twain was getting the world to lighten up.

What unites these folks, aside from their temporal and geographical proximity, is the courage it took to take on the cruelest elements of their society, with nothing but their extraordinary courage and determination to arm them. Each knew that they had to reinvent the language, add another dimension, shuffle the cosmic deck, and sit in the dealer’s chair to be able to make a difference. They fed off of one another’s willingness to take on the most deeply-entrenched forces of their time, and, incredibly, each managed to prevail, at least for a time.

It was a black and white world back then but Tesla used colored light and multi-hued lightning flashes and Keppler used off-color humor and color inks, to transform our world. They saw the future and realized that we were headed to a place where verisimilitude was going to be essential and we would not get there without a full measure of truth-telling in the process. PUCK magazine took on the most powerful people and forces in the society, dressed them in lady’s clothes, or portrayed them as animals, pulled them off their pedestals as rudely as humanly possible. Tesla took on Thomas Edison, the titan of titans, and humbled him by proving that he didn’t know what he was doing.

Twain was the first stand-up comedian. There were some before him, and lecturing and giving talks was a common event in the pre-electronic universe, but his version was unusually pertinent, moved issues and changed results and he used a sharpness of humor and genius for the unexpected that is still on display on Colbert and Jimmy Fallon’s beats. They named the official humor prize after him for good reason.

TR is hard to fit into this picture until you realize that he took the edginess of PUCK and the social sensitivity of Riis and revolutionized politics in his time with concerns for nature and the common man, busted trusts, and attacked monopolies. He was immersed in the angry righteousness of these two immigrant firebrands and it worked against his earlier macho experiences and transformed him into a different person.

The sum total effect of the creativity and compassion of these three pattern-smashing immigrants and two classic Americans, and the work that they did, has contributed mightily to whatever remnants of humanism that have survived the century-long onslaught, through wars, depressions, etc. on our empathies. That they shared the same space and time, must have had some contacts and surely had a great influence upon one another is remarkable, verging on amazing. The energy that they contributed to and drew from this location is clearly evident in our own, now ubiquitous, color-saturated technologies, and our reliance on sassy humor to give us essential relief from the many hazards of this existence, points up how powerful their contributions to our welfare have evolved.

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Quotes

Words of Wisdom from Mark Twain

Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its only sure defense.

Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.

Damn these human beings; if I had invented them I would go hide my head in a bag!

No civilization can be perfect until exact equality between man and woman is included.

Always acknowledge a fault frankly. This will throw those in authority off guard and give you an opportunity to commit more.

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.

The atrocious doctrine of allegiance to party plays directly into the hands of politicians of the baser sort – and doubtless, for that, it was borrowed – or stolen – from the monarchical system.

If a man doesn’t believe as we do, we say he is a crank. I mean it does nowadays because now we can’t burn him.

The first thing a missionary teaches a savage is indecency.

In God we trust. I don’t think it would sound any better if it were true.

There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.

When in doubt tell the truth.

The man was made at the end of the week’s work when God was tired.

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.

The lack of money is the root of all evil.

To be busy is man’s only happiness.

Do not put off till tomorrow what can be put off till day-after-tomorrow just as well.

The Autocrat of Russia possesses more power than any other man on the earth, but he cannot stop a sneeze.

What then is the true gospel of consistency? Change.

Thunder is good, thunder is impressive, but it is the lightning that does the work.

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Kushner and Newman

Jared Kushner and Alfred E. Newman

There are good reasons that there is a picture here of real estate magnate and key presidential advisor Jared Kushner. Mr. Kushner owns the PUCK building, (the home, on the corner, of PUCK magazine for the better part of its 1877-1917 lifetime) and he and his wife Ivanka made part of this building their home as well.

Alfred E. Newman was the figurative representation of MAD magazine, an intentionally absurdist and nihilistic version of its spiritual father and nearby neighbor. PUCK was pictured in the form of a nearly naked child, as a sculpture on the front of its building. In the place of PUCK’s Shakespearean, exasperated, ”What Fools These Mortals Be”, is a clueless question, perfect for its fatally complacent and self-absorbed time, “What, Me Worry?”.

Born within the womb of MAD, on Spring Street and Lafayette, in 1952, was another infinitely rude, hilarious, and confrontational publication, THE REALIST. Its mascot was a sad shmoe, and its nerve and relentless search for the truth helped mightily in the birthing of a host of art and truth-rich publications across the country in the 1960s and 70s known as the “Underground Press”.

All these publications preached a deep distrust of authority and its pretensions, worked to free us from superstitions and mythologies, used humor and artistry to help us understand the world as it is and as it might be and helped us navigate the currents running through it. We have long depended upon these mediums to clear our visions and give us the courage we will need to survive our current onslaughts and their value can not be overestimated.

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A Plan

Why I want to create a new Medium

In the final decade of the 19th Century, the Gilded Age had put in bold relief a detestable gap in people’s fortunes and thus provoked a monumental response. There was a remarkable handful of individuals, who, each in their own way, created a new medium, through which their rare insights and deep compassion could enable an entire population to embrace a more humane and fulfilling framework, on which to base a more genuine “society”. Nikola Tesla, Mark Twain, and Theodore Roosevelt, Joseph Kepler, and Jakob Riis, were all revolutionaries of a sort, and for some reason, they also did it within a stone’s throw of each other, and at around the same time. Might creativity and courage be infectious, but in a good way, like laughter?

Since mere words no longer sufficed to reach into our collective consciousness, they were driven to create an entirely new language, a new path into our brains. Each person found that those who were responsible for our common welfare, the classic politician and businessman, to have failed in a prime mission, to enable our free, honest, and open communication and ability to take action relative to our own welfare. At a time, which was not entirely dissimilar to our own, instead of our version of a new medium, “social media”, in one case, immigrant artist Kepler, at PUCK, invented both the comic book and the modern magazine, while aiming his barbs at corruption and greed. Across the street, police reporter and photographer, Jakob Riis, exposed street urchins and grimy lodging houses with such brutal realism, that documentary photography began opening up the invisible world’s quiet suffering, to the healing light of popular awareness, everywhere.

There is a tradition that goes back at least a century or so, but probably some Millennia, that revolutions in consciousness can be provoked, when we are able to experience new and deeper means of communication, especially as regards our common conditions and why they must be made better. When we find ourselves at odds, due to the sharp contrasts that exist between the fortunes of various populations, we are driven to find creative ways to plunge the general population into greater awareness. Troubadours and poets know about this. Our natural resistance to un-needed change, the unwillingness to poke the sleeping dog, often casts us into long periods during which few improvements in our condition take place. Waking a sleeping population takes great effort and creativity, due to our tendency to ignore what we’ve heard or read before and which has now faded into the background, due to its over-familiarity.

When Tesla invented the radio, one of his goals was to enhance the likelihood that insights and truth would have an easier time reaching the public. (His contributions were also critical to the development of TV as well). It is not his fault that electronic media has become the home of so much drivel and dangerous propaganda. He was interested in distributing the ability of the many to reach one another, which thereby diluted the power of those few who could exercise any influence in this realm. Rush Limbaugh was not on his mind, nor was porn (he was kind of sexless), but his close friendship with Mark Twain was partially on account of their philosophical agreement, as regards so many people’s low status and the unfairness and un-acceptability of this situation.

Twain was famously on the front lines of the struggle to provide everyone, especially disenfranchised peoples, with their full measure of life’s rewards. I would suggest that the medium he invented was stand-up comedy. No matter how influential Tesla was in his creation of wireless communication and electronic media, the use of that medium by our late-night TV hosts is currently the most powerful and important use of these media today. They are all today’s Twains, albeit bolstered by teams of clever keepers of his flame. Exposing the ridiculous nature of so-called conventional reality, especially as it relates to politics, is pure PUCK and Twain too. Nothing punctures official pomposity and stupidity like a well-turned punch line or great political cartoon.

The seriousness of Jacob Riis’ exposes of official misconduct made a big difference, after his book “How the other half lives” gained such popularity that political leaders were forced to enact innumerable reforms, in various aspects of many lives, at that time. Airless apartments got airshafts. Laws forbade child labor and other abuses. The illustrations that had festooned printed publications since their birth was gone, in favor of graphic images that could not be denied or looked away from. Although fans of George Grosz, Toles, or Herblock might disagree, it was difficult at that time for a drawn picture to have the impact of the unexpected arrival of a real image, of real people, under real conditions, all of which had remained from half to fully-hidden, forever. For all of their wide exposure through newspapers to the public, some of the strongest impacts of his work came from its effect on the Police Commissioner, sent to clean up the New York City department from the depths of corruption it then embodied, Theodore Roosevelt.

When he coined the term “Progressive” one of the things he meant was that he had listened to his good friend, Riis, and accepted into his world the disenfranchised, forgotten, and miserable, the poor, as worthy of his attentions. He was an aristocrat who, by becoming the symbol of anti-corruption and un-corruptibility, was fated to carry some pretty radical ideas for their time into the politics of a basically very establishment-favorable political system. He had to have read PUCK regularly too, where he was a favorite subject for their cover art, and be impressed by the strict ethical standards to which they were wont to hold top officials. He invented a new political party, partly so he could do some of the cleanings up at the Federal level that he had been inspired to do while in the City.

Nobody regards TR as perfect. He also wanted to jail some political cartoonists with whom he disagreed during WWI, in spite of his love affair with PUCK. Heroes are usually complicated individuals with some incidents that they would prefer being forgotten but that is getting harder all the time. The question now is: What can the new Medium be, that will help the most, to widen our appreciation for one another and the gifts we have been provided with and can simultaneously serve to make the distribution of those goods more in keeping with the traditions and ideals that we outline in our pronouncements?

I think that the answer is in how we interact with one another, in the decision-making process that affects our day-to-day lives the most directly. This means a constant flow of information and opinions that resembles a giant score-board of points and counter-points. Finding a way to measure when consensus has been reached on any given issue is paramount and must be determined using the same process. The Rules of the Game are not set in stone yet and the fewer of them the better. The Ten Commandments are to be admired as much for their value as rules to live by as for their conciseness and clarity, lack of ambiguity, or room for hedging.

If we can agree on one thing, maybe we can agree on almost everything. In fact, there is little, beyond maybe abortion and the death sentence, which is not available to open disagreement, without rancor, today. What is the Forum for the conversation, is a good question. There is already no substantial disagreement on a host of issues. Start with potable water. Without it, we are dead or at least pretty sick. We can not live without it for very long. A lot of it has already been badly polluted and many of the rules regarding the poisoning of it with toxic substances have recently been weakened or eliminated altogether. Flint and Newark are in trouble and they are not the only ones. Our primary answer is to fill the oceans with little plastic bottles. You can buy them for less than a quarter wholesale so they are a popular item to merchants who can sometimes get $2 a bottle. They only cost a few pennies to manufacture.

When Earth Day was in NYC some years ago the bottlers of water were the sponsors. The message was essentially ”Don’t worry. Even if all of our regular water sources are deadly, we have secured a few of the remaining clean ones and we’ll keep you supplied indefinitely”. In other words, environmentalism is a plot by the elites to poison your resources and then make certain they have their own, while they kill the oceans as a bonus. We have allowed Evil to prevail in some aspects of our lives and most everybody knows it and agrees that this is no way to run a world. If we could take on the subject of water, bring everybody into the discussion, quiet the influence of Nestle and Pepsi, etc. and have this discussion ourselves, expose the economics and perhaps come to an agreement of what must be done and how we are on our way to figuring everything else out. May the Forum (not the Roman or Penthouse one) begin. Let students get course credit for it and let those under 18 be the decision-makers, give the heaviest influence to the little kids who will be most affected by these decisions. Turn this world on its head.

Super-Nationalism keeps us from looking beyond our borders to Europeans or Asians, Africans, or Latinos, for the answers that they may have already found, to problems that we have not even identified yet, much less confronted. It is as though Americans are a different race and we can practice a form of Racism by simply claiming that anything which is not American is not entirely real and should thus be shunned or ignored. Even though we all came from somewhere else and could even have innumerable relatives there, it doesn’t exist. This is an aspect of denying what we did to the inhabitants of this land when we murdered them, so we could have it for ourselves.

If these abused populations ever acquired a powerful enough weapon and adopted our methods, perhaps we would be evicted from our lush estates and maybe, if we behaved, let into certain ”reservations” occasionally, so we could hunt there and pay dearly for our prey. Our contempt for “others” of every description is described as a form of pride, perhaps a bit excessive, but basically healthy, home-team ardor. This form of “branding” though is a big part of world history and a lot of blood has been shed to keep its franchises going. Empires come and go but they often leave scars that may never heal.

We have long contended that we are all and everything, and everybody else should simply be like us if they want to be cool. Our music and movies have had a pretty strong influence on various cultures around the world, at various times, but it is being widely agreed that colonialism, military or cultural, is way outdated. While there is still too much imitation and pandering, experimentation and originality are beginning to matter much more. Lately, though, we have been sent into the abyss by our unfortunate response to the Pandemic and recent widespread realizations regarding the economic and racial divides that dominate our culture and many others. American football features military-like formations and plays described in terms of combat-like encounters with hand-launched missiles and vicious tackles, whereas the soccer being played everywhere else is done in shorts, instead of plastic armor, and unique plays and shifting roles are favored over mechanical efficiency. We are moving from envied to pariah in a flash.

Is one style better than another? Does beating the other guy take precedence over appreciating their skill and class? I have heard that in Japanese baseball the perfect score is 1-1 so nobody feels bad about losing. Probably it is no longer true, as they have adopted so many of our standards and sensibilities but we lean so heavily on competition as an ideal and then end up enabling some monopoly to crush any semblance of it because we get a little better deal at the mall or on the internet than we do from the local person, sweating out their too-high rent. Is this the society we want?

Empty stores and bulging larders, filled with stuff we don’t need because we think somebody is measuring us by the size of that load? There is no question that friendly rivalry can motivate and add pleasure to any experience. This ignores the question of whether it is worth the pain that is inevitably suffered by those who don’t make the cut or are left feeling terrible. Biology may end up having a huge influence on your success in reaching your goals in life, but why tilt the table even more? This is little more than a case of the “winners”, mostly trust-fund babies, being determined to cement their advantages, often at the expense of everybody else. This is a mindless continuation of the system of rigid, stratified social roles, that an unexamined history has provided us.

We were told, that sharing leads to unwanted pregnancy and Communism. So we supported great armies, at incredible expense, to help maintain a status quo that pleased almost nobody, but meant we could all get by. We are in a not-quite-post-monarchical society, where celebrities stand-in for royalty, and the fact that 2/3 of the money belongs to people who did nothing to earn it, except being born well-off, is becoming more and more of an impediment to a just society.

We have too much of everything, except the willingness to admit that our addiction to status is keeping us from making the changes needed, to enable us to enjoy the fruits of our lives fully. That cannot happen if anybody wakes up hungry when there is too much food. It can not happen if anybody can not find a source of healthful water within their reach and which does not make them complicit in the fouling of their own nest.

So let the conversation begin. It doesn’t matter what it is called. Maybe it is better if it has no name. For that matter, it can do without “leaders” too and the Seashell or other symbol of a temporary spokesperson can stand in for Big Brother’s oversized microphone. There is too much common sense afoot for us not to be able to right this wreck and put it back into service. We were willing to allow our representatives to take care of our situation, but we have learned that they are too easily swayed, by the most influential voices, and the general welfare soon disappears under layers of time that have already been lost. We are all going to become sick and die someday since we are human but that should not mean that we must tolerate the degree of pain, which so many are forced to endure during their lives, because we have not yet confronted the centuries-old discrepancies, that persist to this day, in our access to this world’s gifts.

There are those who are afraid that this surrender to entitlement will leave many individuals unwilling to do anything that will benefit anybody else, since we have already been provided with whatever we most need, without having to give anything back in exchange. I say that we have not even begun to understand what we are really capable of doing, and becoming, and giving to others because we have never been given credit for being able to do that in our history. These gears may be a little rusty, but nobody can say that they are not still engaged, and ready to roll, on our own behalf. We have been given a shrunken version of who we are because we are much easier to manage that way. We really have no idea of what genius is being discarded continuously.

If we make certain that the weakest, the youngest and the oldest, the disabled, and those most at service of their hormones, are given the most support, we are on our way to accepting our own weaknesses and how much we could benefit from the care and concern of others. Pride and humility are not opposites and, in fact, one is impossible without the other. Our talents are considerable, in some ways unlimited, once we have cast off the shackle of having to compare ourselves with others.

We can make ourselves proud, by shedding the limitations that have been placed on our perceptions and get about the task of growing our awareness exponentially. We can make sure that all voices are heard and the health of our neighbors becomes as important as our own, and it doesn’t matter whether you like them or not. Nobody said it would be easy, but the alternative, maintaining the status quo forever, is unacceptable and unattainable. We are following a trail of crumbs that leads over a cliff and there is no excuse anymore for not finding the path on this terra firma that can lead us all to a fresh drink of water. After that, we can try to figure out how to get ourselves something nutritious to eat.

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The Upside-Downtown News

How do you keep a good idea from being co-opted, plasticized, monetized, and capsized?

It is possible to print 10 different editions of an 8 page, full-color, 35 lb.,11” x 17” tabloid newspaper, the inside (2-3 and 6-7) pages being common material, (editorial and other “cartoons” from around the world), the front, back and centerfold being perhaps local, sometimes just personal-generated material, for 10 cents a copy. Each edition could be from 1000 to 5000 copies, adding up to a minimum of 10-20,000 copies in all. A variety of small circulation, somewhat neighborhood-oriented, art-heavy editions, can be printed at the same time and each one distributed by its creator(s) to available and appropriate perches. This can all also be put online at the same time easily.

Along with the phenomenal benefits, there is a hazard here too: If initial efforts at doing this are successful, it will soon be difficult to distinguish legitimate expressions, using this medium to increase local awareness and beneficial activity, from bogus, commercialized and ego-driven replicas. How can that degeneration of the medium be slowed or stopped? Can it be? Is there a way to highlight efforts that are creative and community-conscious from those that are destructive and misdirected without editorial control?

This can be happening at many universities and throughout neighborhoods and regions and provide a new means to mobilize people of conscience to be more visible, vocal and effective in generating life-affirming activities, from protecting critters to improving healthful opportunities to survive, and engage with the real world.

Some arrangements with editorial art producers and the syndicates which often represent them are already in place. There is an abundance of excellent material from around the world, due to widespread concern about today’s politics. There is also increased sensitivity by artists to unapproved uses of material, especially online, and this effort will work to facilitate the most appropriate and fair rules for the use of artists’ work. There does need to be a mediating agency, ThePrintPress.org, to enable this process to move ahead, with access to legal advice etc. Hopefully, existing publishers can provide whatever guidance and management is needed to maintain a quality result.

All paper publishers will be required to respect what others regard as their proprietary material and receive permission before it is copied. Also, it will be highly preferable that an element of the paper be related to the physical proximity, the neighborhood, where it originates, to support its relevance. While spawning this “new” medium surely has its risks, the potential rewards here are just too vast to ignore.

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Press

The Gallery Press

In New York City in the 1890’s, on the corner of Mulberry and Houston Streets, an extraordinary handful of people held forth from their various corners.

At the same place this show, here until September 15th, is intended to bring attention to some of the remarkable individuals who once worked in this neighborhood and had outsized positive influences over our lives.

In Press:

Daily News New York, September 13, 2017:
VIDEO: Steve Stollman and the ‘Mulberry Street Gang’
Meet Steve Stollman.

A longtime resident of downtown Manhattan, he lost his home near Mulberry street. Now he’s erected a gallery of sorts honoring historic residents of the area as he is forced to leave behind the place he called home.

Video by Pavel Ezrohi.

Watch all at http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/manhattan/steve-stollman-mulberry-street-gang-article-1.3493223 or at Youtube

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NAcSCssqjM&w=560&h=315]

Atlas Obscura:
The Mulberry Bend
During the 19th century, you could pay for violence off a prix-fixe menu on this Manhattan street. Read all at http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-mulberry-bend

Untapped Cities, July, 19. 2017:
“The Mulberry Street Gang” Exhibit Sits in an Empty Lot on Houston Street in NYC
We love finding quirky pop-up exhibits in New York City, and we were recently excited to discover one in an empty lot at 49 East Houston Street! The exhibit, created by Steve Stollman, is small but honors something big—people who have shown bravery in challenging some of the most pressing social and political issues of their times. The exhibit will be there until September 15, honoring the “Mulberry Street Gang” consisting of Jacob Riis, Teddy Roosevelt, Nikola Tesla, Mark Twain, and Joseph Keppler (founder of the barrier-breaking, satirical Puck magazine)… Read all at http://untappedcities.com/2017/07/19/the-mulberry-street-gang-exhibit-sits-in-an-empty-lot-on-houston-street-in-nyc/

Bowery Boogie, May, 05. 2017:
This Fallow East Houston Lot Pays Tribute to Tesla, Teddy, and Twain
Steve Stollman spent the last month fine-tuning his open-air museum exhibit at 49 East Houston Street. The wall of fame composed of dated clippings, posters, and portraits is an attempt to foist an appreciation of neighborhood history onto unsuspecting pedestrians… Read all at http://www.boweryboogie.com/2017/05/fallow-east-houston-lot-pays-tribute-tesla-teddy-twain/

The New York Times, April, 30. 2017:
In NoLIta, a Tribute to Forgotten History
When Steve Stollman talks about the energy that once pulsed around the intersection of Houston and Mulberry Streets, he is not indulging some touchy-feely sensibility (even if he did make a living in the 1960s distributing hippie-friendly underground newspapers). He’s being literal… Read all at https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/30/nyregion/in-nolita-a-tribute-to-forgotten-history.html

Larry Evene, March, 26. 2017:
The Mulberry Street Gang
In New York City in the 1890’s, on the corner of Mulberry and Houston Streets, an extraordinary handful of people held forth from their various corners. The means they used to project their feelings and aspirations were all radically different from one another and also a departure from anything the world had ever seen before. They were each also preoccupied with the inequalities and injustices that characterized life for the average person in their time and they were each determined to change the course of their society’s history. What is amazing is, they each did. Each needed to re-define what could be, even should be. What they each realized was, that making such a breakthrough required them to invent a new medium, so fresh that it could convey their fierce determination to their fellow creatures, where mere words could never work. What a crew they were… Read all at https://larryrevene.com/2017/03/26/the-mulberry-street-gang/

Bowery Boogie, March, 31. 2017:
Fallow for a Decade, Activity Anew at 49 East Houston Lot
Holy shitballs!

There is actually activity to report at 49 East Houston Street, forever the vacant lot and dumping ground.

Yesterday evening, two crowbar-wielding workers were spotted dismantling the splintered plywood, revealing the void created here a decade ago. Word on the street is that the property is up for sale, though we haven’t spotted any listings just yet.

Regardless, construction ain’t gonna happen in the near future… Read all at http://www.boweryboogie.com/2017/03/fallow-decade-activity-anew-49-east-houston-lot/

Vanishing New York, April 16, 2008:
Steve Stollman’s Place
Yesterday Curbed reported that a former bike shop at 49 East Houston is to become a giant, 14-story, tumorous, cantilevered, residential building. Awful to contemplate, especially considering that the bike shop was not just a bike shop… Read all at http://vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com/2008/04/steve-stollmans-place.html
The New York Times, Nov. 30, 2004:
For Activists, a Place of Aid and Comfort
Twenty years ago, Steve Stollman decided he wanted to do something positive for himself and for the city. After fighting without luck the city’s plans to slather advertisements on bus shelters, he was looking for a cause that would embrace his belief in human-size alternatives to mass-marketed urban life… Read all at http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/30/nyregion/for-activists-a-place-of-aid-and-comfort.html?mcubz=0

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Press Release, September 24, 2021.

For September 27, 2021.

Provocative exhibit in Hudson for 10 days, opening Saturday, September 25
Two previous historical shows from New York City are being put on display at 704 Columbia Street in Hudson for a limited time.

The Going Nowhere Fast display, a survey of our transportation systems, first appeared at the Municipal Arts Society 30 years ago. It included a display of unusual vehicles while providing vital information, both about our current state of affairs as well as a look at needed changes, such as vehicle sharing, and solar and human-powered conveyances. It is surprising that the last 30 years have changed our situation so little and it is only now that the urgency of making needed changes is just becoming apparent to many.

The Mulberry Street Gang material recounts the accomplishments of an extraordinary group of world-changers, from Nikola Tesla and his friend Mark Twain to revolutionary journalists Jacob Riis and PUCK magazine editor Joseph Kepler. These remarkable people all were clustered around the corner of Mulberry and Houston streets in New York at the same time, in the mid-1890s and each was determined to do what they could to make a more egalitarian and humane society through the creation of new mediums of communication.

Primarily a display of large images, this show is intended to provoke us to engage with these issues more seriously and to help us realize that they are important to our future survival.

This show was put on at the Municipal Art Society in New York City in the Summer of 1991. You can download the paper Here.

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Press Release, October 02. 2021.

Open until October 11, 2021.

The China poster from PUCK is amazing since they didn’t even have a stock market in China until 1920 and this poster is from 1900. Current events in China parallel this strangely. “Equity Bubble” indeed. What is the Euro symbol doing there?

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Contacts

Steve Stollman

Tel.: +1 212 431-0600

Email: stevenstollman@gmail.com

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