In Episode 141 [11] of the CounterVortex podcast [12], Bill Weinberg defends the notion that he lives on New York's Lower East Side, repudiating those who would insist that his neighborhood is actually the East Village [13] or (worse) NoHo [14]. Weinberg traces the nomenclature controversies [15] going all the way back to the Lenape indigenous villages [16] of the area, Dutch and English colonial settlement [17], the riots [18] and uprisings [19] of the "Gangs of New York [20]" era, the neighborhood's Puerto Rican identity as Loisaida [21], the origin of the name "East Village" in the hippie explosion [22] of the 1960s, its cooptation by the real estate industry in the gentrification of the 1980s, and the resultant last gasp of anarchist resistance [23]. Weinberg counts himself among a surviving coterie of old-timers [24] who still consider [28] the entire area to be the Lower East Side. Listen on SoundCloud [11] or via Patreon [25].
Book discussed: The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld [29] by Herbert Asbury [30]
Production by Chris Rywalt [31]
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