If you missed Kathleen Hanna and Ad-Rock’s performance at the book party for St. Marks Is Dead, don’t worry, they may be sharing a stage again soon. Neal Medlyn, husband of the book’s author Ada Calhoun and the guy who brought the Beastie Boys-Bikini Kill power couple together for a round of punk covers at Cooper Union’s Great Hall, is performing as his ridicu-rap alterego, Champagne Jerry, and he’s bringing some of his famous friends with him.
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Kathleen Hanna and Ad-Rock Played Together, Stayed Together at the St. Marks Is Dead Party
L to R: Medlyn, Hanna, Horovitz. (Photo: Daniel Maurer)
“I know a lot of you complain about new groups coming in and replacing you,” Ada Calhoun told the crowd of East Villagers and ex-Villagers gathered in Cooper Union’s Great Hall last night. “If you’re not a Lenape Indian, I just don’t have a lot of compassion.”
Behind her was a photo of the area in all of its bucolic splendor, 400 years ago – way before the Pinkberrys and the Red Mangos inspired the tongue-in-cheek title of her new hyperlocal history, St. Marks Is Dead: The Many Lives of America’s Hippest Street.
The 13 People You Meet On St. Marks Place, Per St. Marks Is Dead
Everyone has a St. Marks story — my first was smoking free hash after getting ripped off on bunk X. “And since the middle of the twentieth century, kids from all over the country, and the world, who wanted to be writers or artists or do drugs have come to St. Marks Place to find one another and themselves.” So says St. Marks Is Dead: The Many Lives of America’s Coolest Street, the dizzyingly fascinating mostly-oral history by Ada Calhoun, which launches Monday, Nov. 2, at Cooper Union with free beer from Brooklyn Brewery and a punk cover band—the St. Marks Zeroes—featuring Ad-Rock.