Performer Penny
Arcade takes walk
down memory lane at
art festival show
Penny Arcade performing at La Plaza Cultural garden as part
of the LUNGS Festival on Sunday.
BY BOB KRASNER
This past weekend was
perfect weather for the 9th
annual LUNGS (Loisaida
United Neighborhood Gardens)
festival. Although it was an abbreviated
schedule this year due to
COVID concerns, there was still
music and performance going on
in gardens all over the east side.
La Plaza Cultural, at 9th St.
and Avenue C, presented actress/
writer/performance artist Penny
Arcade, who began by singing
acapella just before reminiscing
about her early 80’s home in the
East Village that was located just
down the street. Not only was
there no doorbell at the front of
the building, she noted, there was
no door. Arcade read from her
piece entitled “Front Row Seat
at the Apocalypse”, took a phone
call from Hip-Hop pioneer Fab
5 Freddy mid-performance and
unknowingly had a reunion of
sorts ( but not quite).
Penny Arcade performing at
La Plaza Cultural garden as
part of the LUNGS Festival
on Sunday.
In a piece that railed against
gentrifi cation, its effect on youth
and the fact that NYC has gone
from “the city that never sleeps to
the city that can’t wake up”, she
mentions that people come up
to her to tell her that they read
about her in Patti Smith’s book
“Just Kids.”
“No, you just read my name,
” she corrects. “You didn’t read
about me.”
In one of those lovely
Penny Arcade taking a call
from Fab 5 Freddy midperformance
at La Plaza
Cultural garden on Sunday.
coincidences that is almost too good
to be true, Patti Smith was eating
lunch with her longtime guitarist
Lenny Kaye directly across the
street, easily within earshot of the
well-amplifi ed sound system. No
one, including Arcade, seemed to
notice that fact and neither Smith
nor Kaye gave any indication of
having heard her.
And so, an ethereal moment of
connection between two veterans
of the 1970’s downtown scene
passed by, noticed only by a bystander
who happened to connect
the dots.
Lenny Kaye and Patti Smith, seemingly oblivious to Penny
Arcade, who was performing directly across the street.
Penny Arcade performing at La Plaza Cultural garden as part
of the LUNGS Festival on Sunday. Due to COVID concerns, no
one was allowed inside the gardens.
22 Oct. 8, 2020 Schneps Media