The Downtown Pop Underground

Bigelow Drugs on Sixth Avenue, between West Eighth and Ninth Streets, was another community hub that sold everything from magazines and medicine to fountain soda drinks.

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Located at 10 West 13th Street, this vintage movie poster and bookstore Cinemabilia employed Television manager Terry Ork, as well as Richard Hell and Kristian Hoffman of the Mumps.

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Gem Spa was a newsstand located on St. Mark’s Place that sold chocolate egg creams for a quarter and was a popular hangout frequented by everyone from Allen Ginsberg to Patti Smith.

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Before the Mercer Arts Center collapsed in 1973, it was where underground theater, glam rock, video art, and performance art briefly intersected in the early 1970s—planting the seeds of what would become known as “punk.”

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Another jewel in the downtown’s literary crown was the Paperbook Gallery, on Sixth Avenue around the corner from the Eighth Street Bookshop, which stayed open until midnight—a practice that encouraged people to socialize.

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• Jackie Curtis’s Lucky Wonderful

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Betsey Johnson began her career in fashion as a designer for Paraphernalia, a hip clothing store located on the corner of Sixty-Seventh Street and Madison, which featured go-go dancers in the window and blaring rock 'n' roll.

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Peace Eye Bookstore—where proprietor Ed Sanders used to crank out printed matter on his mimeo machine and rehearse with his irreverent underground rock band the Fugs—was located between Avenues B and C, on East Tenth Street.

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Village Oldies, which sold vintage 45 rpm records, was opened in 1967 by two men known as Broadway Al and Bleecker Bob (who later opened Bleecker Bob’s record store); Patti Smith met record store clerk Lenny Kaye at Village Oldies, which began a fruitful musical collaboration that lasted five decades.

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