The Downtown Pop Underground

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Abbie Hoffman was an activist who co-founded the Youth International Party (better known as the Yippies) and helped organize Washington, D.C.’s first major antiwar demonstration, where Ed Sanders and others attempted to levitate the Pentagon. [more]

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After becoming well-known as a Beat-era poet, Allen Ginsberg became heavily involved in the downtown’s activist and arts scenes during the 1960s, when Hibiscus (George Harris III) met Ginsberg and the two became lovers. [more]

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Known as LeRoi Jones when he collaborated with Diane di Prima on the mimeo poetry zine The Floating Bear; this poet, playwright, and writer later relocated to Harlem and disassociated himself from the downtown scenes and became a leading figure in the Black Arts Movement. [more]

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Ed Sanders was a mimeo publisher, frontman of the Fugs, and potty-mouthed poet who opened the influential Peace Eye Bookstore on the Lower East Side, cofounded the Yippies, and was also involved in the underground film scene. [more]

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Poet and antiwar activist Grace Paley cofounded the Greenwich Village Peace Center, inspiring everyone from a young Bibbe Hansen to Ed Sanders. [more]

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West Village writer and activist Jane Jacobs engaged local independent media outlets like the Village Voice to help preserve sizeable swaths of the downtown landscape, allowing people to transform largely abandoned industrial areas into places to live and make art. [more]

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The actor, activist, and scenester Jim Fouratt was a regular at Caffe Cino, Max’s Kansas City, and other downtown hangouts; in addition to cofounding the Yippies, he witnessed the Stonewall Rebellion firsthand and later managed Studio 54 and Danceteria. [more]

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Judith Malina was the cofounder of the Living Theatre, along with her husband Julian Beck, and they played key roles in the development of Off-Broadway during the 1950s and Off-Off-Broadway in the 1960s. [more]

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Lendon Sadler grew up in Atlanta and visited New York City as a teenager before moving to San Francisco, where he met Hibiscus and joined the Cockettes; he then settled in downtown New York after the Cockettes' debut in the city. [more]

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Marsha P. Johnson was a street queen and early gay liberation activist who performed with Hibiscus’s Angels of Light; Miss Marsha’s impromptu banter with the audience always brought down the house, and she became a second mom to Hibiscus’s sisters. [more]

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Paul Krassner published the influential satirical magazine The Realist—which pioneered an envelope-pushing style that laid the groundwork for “New Journalism”—and he also cofounded the Yippies with Ed Sanders, Abbie Hoffman, Jim Fouratt, and others. [more]

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Before she lived at 87 Christopher Street, multimedia artist Yoko Ono organized downtown Manhattan’s first loft events, the Chambers Street Loft Series, in what is now called TriBeCa (the triangle below Canal Street). [more]