ALIFE PRESENTS: Clayton Patterson

After about an hour of dodging over-dressed women holding shopping bags, cocktails, and Lucky Magazine Boutique Crawl maps on Bleecker Street, I met up with Justin to walk over to Rivington for Clayon Patterson’s "L.E.S. Captured" opening reception.

We huddled into ALIFE PRESENTS to check out select photographs from Patterson’s 30-year documentation of the Lower East Side, which included everything from children and families to lovers, drug dealers, disenfranchised artists, and the homeless. The photographs offer an honest, unedited look into the neighborhood and the people who inhabited the area during a socially and economically depressed period and as it experienced rapid gentrification. Though tinged with a bit of sadness and harsh reality, I also found the photographs to be somewhat inspiring.

Also on view was a digital showcase of Patterson’s Front Door portraits and “The Documentarian,” a short from the feature-length documentary “Captured.”

After we had finished looking at the photographs, we left the gallery only to be met by an enormously fat man with a pony tail entering the road on a glittery, cherry-red motorcycle-scooter hybrid with a giant sound system on the back blaring ridiculous music. The man rode around in circles and stopped traffic in every direction. He had quite a crowd watching from the street and no one knew whether to laugh or bow. I’m still not sure who this guy was, but after a few minutes, we decided to stop gawking and head to the ALINE courtyard for the private reception.

We pushed our way through the narrow sneaker-store to the back where we were met with the unmistakable scent of marijuana. There were buckets filled with miniature bottles of Colt 45, so we grabbed a few before positioning ourselves where we could take in the crowd. This crowd was light-years different from the SoHo crowd from earlier in the evening. Tattoos, statement sunglasses, flat-brim hats, piercings, and funky clothing were the norm here. Part of me felt a little out of place, but I also realized that the reason these people were so much more fun to be around was because no one cared what anyone else was doing. It didn’t matter that I was wearing gold flats instead of Dunks. We were all just there enjoying the DJ, the free booze, and the nighttime air.

Needless to say, the evening offered an interesting juxtaposition of lifestyles and neighborhoods (the main reason to live in New York).

I, for one, will not be attending another Lucky Magazine shopping event. I will, however, keep ALIFE’s gallery schedule on my fridge.