We’ve created a handy chart with all the soup kitchen and food pantry resources available in lower Manhattan. You can download it here or on our resource page. Feel free to print and share. More street resource printouts to come!
Author Archives: admin
Op-Ed: The Space Responds to NYTimes “Crusties” article
Support The Space!
If you haven’t already seen it on our facebook page, we just launched a fundraising campaign on Indiegogo to start bringing The Space to the next level. With the spring and summer quickly approaching, we want to make sure that we have funds available to provide people with the best services possible. Our staff has doubled since last year, and we are aligning ourselves for great things.
Here are just a few updates:
- we are now partnered with Hunter’s Center for Health Media and Policy
- Registered nurse Jen Busse has joined the team to bring street-nursing out to Tompkins Square Park this summer and provide people with basic medical services
- Our Pet Zine is completed and beautiful, making it our first publication for The Space library
- we are pressing forward with our 501c3 application.
And of course, thank you for your continuing support and encouragement.
Ukrainian Women struggle with drug use and HIV in “BALKA”
I attended a screening of BALKA:Three Stories at the Open Society Institute last week and was surprised to learn how much New York has in common with the former Soviet Republic. When it comes to social stigma and marginalization, the lives profiled in this documentary resemble many of those we encounter in the lower east side every week.
But the film was less about sweeping societal trends and more about the individuals that find themselves infected with HIV after injection drug use. They react to the news in unique ways and the film meets them at different points in their journeys as they take control of their future with the help of limited local services and in the face of conservative male companions and a repressive society.
Follow their facebook page for news and future screenings.
Valentines Day Inebration
On Valentines Day I joined Ian on a trip out to Greenpoint to check out a show at the Matchless Bar. The event titled ‘Valentines Day Inebration’ was a nice break from the regular Valentines Day atmosphere. In lieu of my thesis, I’ve been working on making it out to different shows to study our particular demographic and their culture. While a work in progress, the thesis is a holistic study of the transient community, their culture, and their historical presence in NYC. I’m particularly interested in studying the transient community in regard to the music typically associated with their culture.
Yet, with the plethora of sub-genres of punk and metal its hard to pigeon-hole a defining sub-genre as inherently “transient.” As someone pretty naïve to the scene, I had thought of Crust Punk as a cornerstone of the whole Crustie population, and therefore the transient population. The show we attended was pretty metal, and didn’t have much of the political aspects intrinsic to Crust punk. Bands in attendance included The Mortals, an all girls thrash metal band, Florida natives the Fatals, NYC locals Wizandry, and The Trowels from Philly. The bands presented a pretty heavy metal sound in the small show room that was well attended.
It definitely proved to be quite an interesting event. Ian was actually able to get me an interview with a member from the 90’s punk band L.E.S. Stitches that definitely helped provide context to the whole scene. As I continue to work on the thesis I’m sure to give more updates. Check out some of the bands websites below and stay posted!
-Joel
The Trowels
Mortals
Fatal
InSite at the Harm Reduction Coalition
Yesterday The Space team was out en force at the Harm Reduction Coalition. HRC hosted guest speaker Dr. Thomas Kerr, who spoke about Vancouver’s work in harm reduction and how the safe injection facility InSite has impacted different facets of the harm reduction community as a whole. It was exciting to see a turn out of almost fifty people in the conference room, mostly comprised of area organizations interested in hearing more about what our neighbors to the north are accomplishing. Our outreach team joined in on the discussion, asking poignant questions about the plausibility of safer injection facilities and what the legal ramifications are. You can watch the talk above.
-Andréa
The Space at Tompkins featured on WBAI Radio
Thanks to Barbara Glickstein, the co-founder and co-director of the Center for Health Media and Policy, I was given the opportunity to do a radio interview at WBAI for Thursday night’s Healthstyles program. The focus of the interview was on the work of The Space and the community that we are serving. It was a great experience to use radio as an outlet to spread our message of harm reduction and debunk some rumors about the transient homeless population that we commonly hear from the non-homeless East Village community.
Listen to the interview here.
-Andrea