(Photo: Courtesy of Overthrow)
Everyone hates on Donald Trump, and now he’s literally a punching bag— Overthrow, the boxing gym that took over the Yippie building in the East Village, is rolling out a voter registration truck that’s equipped with a Trump-faced punching ball, so you can clock Don King’s favorite candidate right in the kisser. Not that we’d ever condone violence (or exercise), but it’s better than having to pay to Beat Up Trump in Union Square.
Flyer via Artenol
Alexander Melamid speaks in sweeping terms, which is exactly how you might expect a 70-year-old Russian émigré to see the world. “If the system sucks, everyone sucks within the system,” he boomed. “You cannot be right within the wrong system.” This can be intimidating at first. After all, Melamid is the co-founder, along with Vitaly Komar, of Sots Art, what is sometimes referred to as “Soviet Pop Art.” This is someone whose work many of us have read about in art history books, and so his declarations hold considerable weight for us comparatively smaller people.
But if it were up to Melamid, he’d have those books destroyed.
Overthrow NYC, the gym that took over the Yippie Museum building at 9 Bleecker, is finally up and punching: Joey “The Soho Kid” Goodwin tells us it just hosted its first “Boxing & Booze” class — and there’ll be plenty more boxing and booze to come, as a series of underground matches is in the works.
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Dana Beal (left) and Joey Goodwin after last month’s “midgets and models” fundraiser.
From the looks of yet another “Looking for a Girlfriend” parody flyer, the boxing gym that took over the Yippie building on Bleecker Street is seeking “real fighters.” Maybe for another underground party?
Last month, a day after we spoke to owner Joey Goodwin, Overthrow set up a ring in the middle of a Broome Street loft and pitted “midgets and models” against each other in order to raise funds for Dana Beal’s ongoing efforts to bring an ibogaine clinic to Afghanistan.
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(Photos: Daniel Maurer)
When a messy foreclosure cleared out the Yippie building and a boxing gym took over 9 Bleecker Street, it was easy to see the development as the ultimate symbol of downtown Manhattan’s trajectory: counterculture replaced by counterpunching!
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9 Bleecker. (Photo: Daniel Maurer)
A location of Crunch just opened at 2 Cooper Square, and now this: a boxing gym is set to replace the Yippie! Museum at 9 Bleecker Street, a building that long housed outspoken lefties like pot activist Dana Beal.
A lawyer involved in ongoing litigation over the building confirmed that it’s a done deal.
“The court appointed receiver performed his duty and signed a long-term lease with a tenant that will be running a boxing gym out of the premises,” said attorney Steven L. Einig, who represents the building’s lender Centech LLC, which last year sued the building’s owners, Yippie Holdings and the National AIDS Brigade. “I understand that the tenant is a local resident and now the rent is going to paid, the building, which was quite run down, will be cleaned up and no longer vacant.”
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(Photo: Daniel Maurer)
(Photo: Fred W. McDarrah/Getty Images)
He was arrested numerous times for obscenity and reviled as the devil incarnate by religious figures and feminists. But when pornographer Al Goldstein died at 77 yesterday in Brooklyn, there was a flurry of tributes to his chutzpah and humor, some from people who knew him in 1968 when Screw, his explicit sex tabloid, debuted. (He also presided nude over a cable tv talk show, “Midnight Blue.”)
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Aron Kay (Photo: Mary Reinholz)
About 50 close friends of Aron Kay gathered in the imperiled Yippie! Museum in Noho yesterday night to celebrate what could be the Yippie Pie Man’s last birthday there.
A Corcoran “For Rent” sign now hangs outside 9 Bleecker. As previously reported, lawyers for David F. Segal, the building’s court appointed receiver, have filed a contempt motion against the building’s owners — who are already fighting foreclosure — over non-payment of rent, seeking $250 a day in fines, eviction of tenants, possible jail time and the auctioning off of possessions belonging to imprisoned yippie Leader Dana Beale on the second floor.
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(Photo: Daniel Maurer)
Wenig represents David F. Segal, the receiver, who claims that “not one cent” of the $20,000-per-month rent he demanded via a notice in September has been paid since May, when the court authorized him to manage the building. As a result, Wenig asked a judge last Monday to fine the building’s owners $250 per day for each alleged civil violation, evict its occupants and permit the auctioning of any possessions that aren’t removed by October 15. The judge will set a court date on October 18.
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