Through more than four decades, Tompkins Square park has stood as a microcosm of society and culture in a changing neighborhood. Located centrally in Manhattan’s East Village, the park serves as a central hub for the diverse communities of skaters, squatters, punks, hippies and artists that have shaped the identity of the area over the years. As a long-standing safe haven of counterculture in the city, the park’s grounds have been a stage for political action and resistance to gentrification, a sanctuary for generations of legendary skateboarders, and the stomping grounds of countless influential artists and cultural icons in New York.
From the early days of skateboarding and hardcore to the cultures and traditions kept alive in the park to this day, Tompkins has been a key place within New York. In celebration of this historic space, Living Proof is proud to present Tompkins Square Park: Forty Years, 120 pages of full-color photography spanning four decades of life within the boundaries of the park. The book features work from five New York City photographers, each with their own unique perspectives and stories from the evolving ecosystem of Tompkins Square Park.
During the 70’s and 80’s, the East Village carried a reputation as a dangerous neighborhood. A noticeable change from the hippies and beat writers of the ‘60s, the new decade saw an influx of squatters and punks to an area falling into disrepair. Regardless of the city’s financial difficulties and buildings left neglected by property owners, the music and art scenes in the East Village thrived. Historic venues like the CBGB Club on Bowery became the birthplaces of punk and hardcore music in New York, providing a stage for some of the first performances from bands including Television, Agnostic Front, The Cro-Mags, and Youth of Today.
As the area built a reputation for its growing outsider art scene, artists in search of cheap rent flocked to the area, including Clayton Patterson – a Canadian photographer and videographer who has documented decades of life, culture, and the process of gentrification in the neighborhood since moving to the Lower East Side in 1979.
In 1983, Patterson and his lifelong partner Elsa Rensaa purchased a two-story building on Essex Street, which they have used as a storefront, art gallery, tattoo studio, and the backdrop to countless photos of the neighborhood’s residents over the course of more than four decades. Patterson would display these photos in his window on a weekly rotation, and encouraged graffiti writers to add their tags to his doorway, which became known as the area’s “wall of fame”. Patterson was an early adopter of handheld video recording, and often shot videos and photos at the hardcore gigs and drag shows that took place in neighborhood venues.
On his way to an event at the Pyramid Club just across from Tompkins in August of 1988, Patterson noticed commotion arising from a protest of the newly-implemented 1am curfew, introduced in an effort to push out the community of squatters that occupied a section of the park. The overwhelming police response soon broke out into chaos, resulting in what would become known as the 1988 Tompkins Square police riot. Armed with his VHS recorder, Patterson recorded more than three hours of footage, including numerous instances of police brutality. Patterson was jailed for refusing to turn over his tapes, and played an instrumental role in exposing the NYPDs unreasonable and violent response to the demonstration. The event received national media attention, and several police officers were criminally indicted as a result of the footage. Patterson later appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show declaring his camera to be “a revolutionary tool.”
To this day, Clayton Patterson lives and works in the Lower East Side, documenting the neighborhood and its inhabitants through photos and video.
Skateboarding at Tompkins
As street skateboarding rose in popularity and gained momentum on the East Coast, skaters began to lay claim to their own section of Tompkins Square. By the late ‘80s, the park was the meeting ground and hangout spot for skaters including Harold Hunter, Steven Cales, and Ryan Hickey. In 1989, SHUT Skateboards and the now-defunct LES shop Skate NYC hosted a contest at Tompkins, setting up a number of ramps inside the concrete court on Avenue A and 10th Street, the park’s de facto skate spot now referred to as the ‘TF’.
In 1999, ABC Skate Shop opened on 13th and A, just blocks away from Tompkins. Still without an official skatepark in the downtown area, the smooth concrete inside the park became a refuge for skaters in the East Village, and the go-to meet up spot in an age before cell phones and social media. After 9/11, a heightened security presence downtown made street skating increasingly difficult, and skaters associated with ABC began bringing flat bars and other objects to Tompkins Square Park during the store’s opening hours, returning them to the shop for storage overnight.
Cheryl Dunn is a photographer and documentary filmmaker from New Jersey known for documenting urban life, skateboarding, and graffiti. After completing a bachelor’s in art history at Rutgers, Dunn moved to Milan for a number of years, pursuing a career in fashion photography. In the 80’s she returned to New York City, spending a large part of the decade shooting photos of professional boxing matches.
In the ‘90s, Dunn fell into the growing scene of skateboarders and graffiti writers convening in the Lower East Side. She translated her photography practice to street photography, documenting life unfolding as it happens in the city, offering a more candid look into the places and people that defined an era of art and culture downtown.
In later years, Dunn began working as a filmmaker, releasing short films accompanying her photobooks Bicycle Gangs of New York (2005) and Some Kinda Vocation (2007). More recently, Dunn has produced feature-length documentaries Everybody Street (2013) turning the lens on some of New York City’s most iconic photographers, as well as Moments Like This Never Last (2020), a retrospective on the life and art of the late Dash Snow, containing archival footage and interviews shot throughout their years of friendship.
During the 2000’s, downtown venues such as the newly-opened Alife Rivington Club, Clayton Patterson’s Outlaw Art Gallery, Aaron Rose’s Alleged Gallery on Ludlow, and dive bars like Max Fish connected people from all walks of life, coming together during a time that is now remembered as a historic era of nightlife, endless free time, and creativity that has gone on to influence alternative culture on a global scale.
After leaving his hometown of Los Angeles and relocating to Manhattan in late 2000, Alain Levitt found his first job as a photographer working with his sister, shooting street fashion for her Sunday Style section in the New York Post. Through her connections to staff at Alife and his affiliation with California graffiti crews AWR and MSK, Levitt quickly fell in with graffiti writers and skaters like Kunle Martins and Dash Snow from IRAK crew.
Already a dominant force in the downtown graffiti scene of the ‘90s, IRAK’s influence expanded into the larger art scene of the new millennium. Artists including Jason Dill, Tino Razo, Ryan McGinley joined the crew as the growing worlds of skateboarding, fashion, photography, music and graffiti collided throughout the Lower East Side. Habitually carrying his Canon AE-1 and a Yashica T4, Levitt constantly shot photos, using his camera as a social crutch in a scene he felt somewhat of an outsider to.
Eventually feeling discouraged by a lack of professional success, Levitt stepped away from shooting photography, instead entering the restaurant business with his wife in 2007. Together they opened Bacaro, an Italian restaurant on Division Street in Chinatown which they operate together to this day.
Faced with an unexpected amount of free time during the COVID-19 pandemic, Levitt unearthed boxes containing thousands of photos, rediscovering an archive of photos from a time when the party felt like it would never end. He began posting his never-before-seen photos onto Instagram, diving back into the nostalgia for summer days that started by meeting up with friends at Tompkins, roaming around downtown with New York City icons like Jason Dill, Mark Gonzales, Dash Snow, Leo Fitzpatrick and Will Strobeck.
Levitt’s photos received an overwhelmingly positive response, leading to the release of NYC 2000 – 2005 , published by Fucking Awesome in 2024. He has since returned to photography, shooting campaigns for Converse x IRAK as well as Nike, and published his second monograph Everybody’s Guilty, No One’s to Blame with Super Labo earlier this year.
In 2019, redevelopment plans threatened to replace the iconic asphalt court at Tompkins with synthetic turf. The notice came as a surprise to the skaters that occupied the space on a daily basis, who had not been consulted by city officials prior to the plan’s approval.
When Manhattan-born skateboarder Adam Zhu found out about the proposed changes to the park, the 22 year-old immediately mobilized to spread awareness and save one of the last remaining hubs of skateboarding culture in a gentrified East Village. Together with friends, he created the hashtag #SaveTompkins and spread a petition online, receiving more than 30,000 signatures and support from artists, celebrities, and skate brands across the country.
Growing up in the East Village, Zhu spent countless hours learning to skate at Tompkins, a place that fostered many of his formative friendships, and later led to a job at Supreme.
For skaters like Zhu, Tompkins Square Park holds a much deeper meaning than just another place to warm up or practice tricks. In a culture built upon reverence for its storied history – knowing who did what and where – the park’s deep roots in the foundations of New York skateboarding have elevated Tompkins to a destination spot for skateboarders worldwide.
After months of uncertainty and numerous meetings with the Parks Department, Zhu’s initiative to save the park was a success. In September of 2019, city officials announced that the plans had been changed – the TF would stay as it was.
Now 28 years old, Zhu has been shooting film for more than a decade, capturing his formative years skating, writing graffiti, and hanging out with friends in the Lower East Side. In 2022, he released his debut monograph Nice Daze with Paradigm Publishing, a documentation of his friends and experiences through the past decade.
Nolan Zangas
Nolan Zangas is a 26 year-old photographer from Stamford, Connecticut, currently based in New York City. Zangas started skateboarding at a young age, eventually making frequent train trips to visit family in Brooklyn and skate with his cousins. In his early teenage years, he started filming skateboarding and taking film photos of his friends while hanging out and skating street, and became the de facto filmer within his group of friends.
Zangas moved to New York City in high school after his mom relocated for work, continuing to skate and film until he suffered a serious back injury. During his recovery process, Zangas dove deeper into photography, taking walks and shooting architecture around New York City. Over time, his interest shifted back to shooting portraits of friends – the skateboarders, graffiti writers, and artists he found himself surrounded by in the downtown world.
In addition to his portfolio of shoots for high-profile brands and celebrities, Zangas has released MIRACLES + CROSSES (2023), a short film documenting New York’s youth cultures of skateboarding and graffiti, as well as his debut monograph So Far So Good (2024), a collection shot over a five year period, chronicling his generation’s coming of age in a rapidly changing New York City.
This article was written by Eden DaSilva for the release of “Tompkins Square Park: Forty Years”, now available on the Living Proof Patreon.
