“New Yorkers don’t wait on line for anything, except for David Bowie,” said a woman waiting in line this afternoon for the MTA’s new David Bowie MetroCards.
Available at the booths and most kiosks at both Broadway-Lafayette and Bleecker Street stations, the 250,000 cards feature five images of Bowie from across his entire career, and are in general pretty groovy.
From “David Bowie is” at Brooklyn Museum. (Photo: Daniel Maurer)
The opening of the mammoth “David Bowie is” exhibit last week at the Brooklyn Museum left a lot of people nostalgic for the late Starman. Lucky for all the Ziggy Stardust acolytes out there, the Bowie love continues with a slew of new record releases in April and a batch of themed cocktails at Crown Heights bar and restaurant. So take your protein pills, put your helmet on and let the Bowie mania begin.
Suit used for the Ziggy Stardust tour. Courtesy of the David Bowie Archive (c) Victoria and Albert Museum.
David Bowie made no secret of his love for New York; he was known for frequenting the Strand and sneaking into movies at the Angelika, spending his final years enjoying all that the city has to offer. Several upcoming events around town will pay tribute to the late, great Starman, who died after a battle with cancer in January 2016. Whether it’s through a gallery exhibition of behind-the-scenes photos from Bowie’s prime, or a themed dance party in Brooklyn, there’s no shortage of ways to show your love and appreciation for Bowie this month. Hang on to yourself.
(Photo: Kavitha Surana)
Didn’t wake up at 1 a.m. to get a spot in line to see Vampire Weekend serenade Bernie Sanders at Washington Square Park this afternoon? There’s still plenty of Bernie love to go around the city ahead of the primary next Tuesday.
Vinyl, the Scorsese-Jagger production we’ve been looking forward to with bated coke-breath ever since it filmed in the East Village, finally hit HBO last night with an epic two-hour episode, and the critical reaction has been pretty much love it or hate it. Even if you’re with the East Village’s own Richard Hell in the latter camp, you’re probably going to watch at least another episode or two, just to bask/wallow in the ambience of the early-’70s New York City music scene. So here are some fun facts about the show that we’ve culled from around the net, and from our own archives.
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The author Phoebe Legere (Photo by Valentine Judge)
Singer, composer, performance artist and multi-instrumentalist Phoebe Legere has continually broken new musical ground since her New Wave band Monad formed in 1980. In 2006 Legere founded the New York Underground Museum, an interactive website that presents the work of both renowned and emerging artists. It was Legere’s eclectic talents that earned her an incredible opportunity.
(Photo by Kavitha Surana)
This morning we noticed graffiti artist Hektad had made some modifications to his 2nd Avenue F stop mural of a giant splattering heart, in honor of the man who fell to earth. A Bowie lightning bolt now pierces the heart, and messages of “Let’s Dance” and “David Bowie Rest Well” are scribbled on the edges. Appropriate, given the subway stop’s proximity to the setting of Lazarus.
Tony Zanetta and David Bowie, August 22, 1974 at Sigma Sound Studios in Philadelphia, during the Young American sessions. (Photo: Dagmar)
after that all-night session.
In the early 1970s, New York actor Tony Zanetta performed in underground theater in plays by Andy Warhol, Jackie Curtis and Wayne/Jayne County. His portrayal of Warhol in the play “Pork” would have him meet David Bowie in London. When Bowie visited New York in 1971, Zanetta guided him through the town’s nightlife. He soon became part of Bowie’s inner circle as tour manager of the Ziggy Stardust and Diamond Dogs tours and helped run Bowie’s MainMan management organization. Zanetta had not seen Bowie in over 40 years when he learned of his death this week. Below, Zanetta recalls the exciting time when Bowie arrived in New York an unknown who would soon become a superstar.
(Photo: Konstantin Sergeyev for NY Mag)
You may have seen David Bowie’s list of 100 favorite books floating around today. But where did he go to buy them? In 2003, he told New York magazine that our own Strand Bookstore was one of his three favorite places in New York, along with Washington Square Park and Julian Schnabel’s house. (He was also known to sneak into movies at Angelika.)
Today, Whitney Hu, marketing director at Strand, polled some of the store’s longtime employees and told us that Bowie, who usually shopped incognito and alone, “managed to evade most of them” except for owner Fred Bass, who at 87 still works the buying desk. Bass told her that Bowie “always came in for the trendier, contemporary information and also made his way, a lot of the times, to the art section,” she said. But Bowie hadn’t been seen at Strand since the early 2000s. “If he’s been in recently — in the last four or five years — he kind of slipped by everyone,” Hu said.
Mourners laid flowers and outside David Bowie’s apartment on Lafayette Street (Kavitha Surana)
By now you’re well aware that David Bowie has died, just days after his 69th birthday and the release of his 25th studio album. During the wee hours of January 10, it was announced that the beloved glam-rock icon who embraced androgyny and far-out, endlessly influential aesthetics “died peacefully today surrounded by his family after a courageous 18 month battle with cancer.”
After finding fame in his hometown of London and absconding to the U.S. in 1974, Bowie moved amongst New York’s downtown crowd, popping up at places like Andy Warhol’s Factory and Max’s Kansas City, before relocating to Los Angeles. We consulted a number of publications — one of them yet to be published — that offered an eye into Bowie’s life in early-’70s NYC.
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