Connecting with locals in New York hasn’t been hard at all – we’ve used the same strategies we apply in every place we visit and we’ve found New Yorkers to be really responsive. They’ve been friendly, accessible and easygoing, so why was it trickier to find a Local Knowledge candidate for New York City?
The locals we’ve met during our two week stay in New York City’s East Village have been happy to meet for a drink to divulge their favourite spots and share local advice on how they think we should best experience their home. See travel writer David Farley’s tips here. However, as we were very much focused on the East Village this trip, we wanted insider knowledge and tips specifically for New York’s East Village.
Finding the right person for our Local Knowledge series – someone who can really help us get beneath the skin of the East Village, New York City specifically – has been a tad trickier and taken us a bit longer than it had in other destinations so far this year. But after a week of being in the city, whenever we asked a Lower East Side-r if there was a person they could suggest who had lived in the ’hood for a long time and knew it intimately, one name kept cropping up…
A linguist, author, researcher, historian, community activist, preservationist, and in recent years an actor, Rob Hollander has lived in the East Village since 1978. In his spare time, Rob leads walking tours around the Lower East Side. I email him and tell him we’d love to pick his brain about our current home away from home and he suggests Terence and I meet him near the Joe Strummer mural, pictured above, from where we stroll across to Tompkins Square Park for a chat.
Unlike many New Yorkers we meet, who all seem to come from somewhere else, Rob was born in Manhattan – that “narrow slip of an island between New Jersey and Long Island” which he says he thinks is “crassly overdeveloped”.
Rob’s folks were also born on the Lower East Side. “Their parents came from the Old World,” he says. “The family worked in jobs like the garment industry where they’d copy expensive uptown dresses and illegally reproduce them at a knock-off, meanwhile railing against the capitalists exploiters of the sweatshops. That was one side of the family. The other side owned a brothel, which was also common.”
“My parents somehow found respectability as a Freudian psychoanalyst and an economist. Of course the Freudian was the son of the whorehouse owner, and the economist the daughter of the Marxists in the illicit garment trade,” Rob reveals. That makes sense.
Thirty-two years is a long time to live in one place. We ask Rob what makes the East Village so special for him. “New York has lots of neighbourhoods, but they are mostly exclusive in some way, either exclusive ethnically or financially or linguistically,” he explains. “The East Village is mixed in every way.”
“If you take a look at Tompkins Square Park, you see it all: the Chinese practicing Tai Chi in the mornings, the middle class sunbathers in the afternoons, the homeless playing chess at the tables, the tattooed, dread-head crusties hanging out with their dogs, every ethnicity playing at the handball and basketball courts.”
“And the neighbourhood has kept its low-scale tenements with the old fire escapes,” Rob continues. “It just looks like New York to me, it feels like New York – the real New York, not the glass and steel New York that’s no different from any big city except bigger – it’s the New York where people actually live and hang and kickback and socialize and enjoy their own neighbourhood.”
We ask Rod if he’s ever lived anywhere else.
“When I was younger I travelled, but not the sightseeing-for-three-days kind of tour. I spent two months living in Florence, for example, in one super-cheap place where I struck up a close friendship with the clean-up guy who was actually a student from Spain — although I didn’t know a word of Spanish or he a word of English. We ended up travelling together to Venice and Padua, along the way meeting a couple of brothers who joined our junket. That’s the way to travel,” he says. We completely agree.
Local Knowledge – Rob from the East Village, New York City
Q. What do you most love about your work as a linguistic?
A. I honestly don’t know why everything about semantics fascinates me, but it does. Maybe I like it because to everyone else it’s dull as dirt.
Q. Why should people come to the East Village?
A. Great restaurants of every type that won’t dent your pocket. And the place feels like a neighbourhood – not crowded or rushed.
Q. 3 words to describe the East Village?
A. Young, lively, unpretentious.
Q. And its residents?
A. All types from funky to hipster to utterly ordinary.
Q. Your top tips for visitors?
A. Take in an avant-garde performance at P.S. 122 or Theater for the New City on 1st Ave between 9th and 10th Streets, or the little theater district on 4th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues (La Mama, DUO and about a dozen more), or the Newyorican Poets Cafe where the poetry slam was invented. Have a drink afterward at KGB bar, the bar Lucky Luciano once owned, or at the Museum of the American Gangster, a former notorious speak-easy back in the day.
Q. Quintessential East Village souvenir?
A. Get a tattoo from a local tattoo parlour on nearly every street.
Q. Must-do eating experience?
A. Compare egg creams at Ray’s and Gem Spa. Can’t get them outside New York.
Q. Essential thing to know before coming here?
A. Don’t try to park in front of the Hell’s Angels clubhouse on East 3rd Street. They don’t play around.
Q. Most important phrase to learn?
A. “NYU”. N-Y-U – that’s New York University, the expanding school that’s taking over the neighbourhood. You’ll see their purple flag everywhere. Not loved among the residents. Don’t smile when you say it.
Q. Any other advice?
A. That ornery, ranting, homeless old man with the dog and cane? That’s the best-known artist in the neighbourhood, who gave it its trademark mosaics on the lampposts.
You can book walking tours around the East Village, Alphabet City, Lower East Side, and Chinatown/Five Points with Rob by emailing him at hollander.rob@gmail.com or through the Lower East Side History Project website.
Great interview.
3 words to describe the East Village?
Young, lively, unpretentious.
Sounds like Rob embodies his neighbourhood. This is a great interview, and some great tips — especially the one about not parking outside Hell’s Angels clubhouse. A potential lifesaver?
Thanks!
Here’s what someone else who ‘knows people who knows people’ says about our friends who ride big bikes:
“They’ll ask you to move your car. Once.” “Don’t talk back, don’t say you’ll do it later. Just move your car.” ;-)
I love that you interviewed this guy! He offers a great perspective on the neighborhood. Though I can’t believe he categorizes the EV as not crowded! Guess it depends on where he hangs out come Fri-Sat night. ;)
Hi Laura, glad you enjoyed the interview. I guess his point was that it doesn’t feel like the ‘city’ with the hustle and bustle. Our ‘hood was very low-key, I have to say. The bar scene is big on the weekends, but locals we met tend not to go to the bars where the visitors from other parts of NYC come on the weekends. They stick to the unfashionable older ones (with the much cheaper drinks!) where they know the barperson and everyone else, or entertain at home.
But I do get your point, we’re just glad we saw it before all the kids come back from semester break!
Also, I really like the right hand portrait of him. A cheeky touch of Brooklyn boy, Woody Allen about him.
Thanks, that was my fave photo out of the session. He *is* cheeky.
This is my neighborhood and I agree, it shouldn’t be missed on a trip to NYC! The restaurants are cheap and tasty, and there’s a lot of local culture to soak up. Don’t miss Tompkins Square Park
We interviewed Rob at Tompkins Square Park actually! Though have to say the park is still a tad dodgy. We walked through it every day for two weeks and still saw a bit of dealing going on – though that’s going to happen in a lot of city parks in big cities around the world. While it doesn’t bother us, I probably wouldn’t recommend families picnic there. But then they have the wonderful East Village community gardens for picnics, don’t they? I fell completely in love with those. What an asset to the city!