I grew up in the East Village in Manhattan in I was born in 1985 and I came of age really

in the early 90s in an era of crack and the city was dead broke.

I grew up with a mom who was a single, very outside the system human so we never had

any money and my whole block was low income housing.

I was born opposite a 700 person men's shelter.

On the corner was a group home for boys which was like a stepping stone to their future

life across the street.

On the next block was the Hell's Angels headquarters.

So you have this confluence of wildness and poverty and crime and the police called

our block the asshole of the universe because it was just the meeting point, the conjunction

of every shitty crazy and same thing that could happen.

But the East Village, you know, we were two blocks from CBGB's which is the birthplace

of punk music.

The Jammish Abasquez studio was on the next block and Nan Golden, who's my godmother, was

around the block.

So they all came there to make weird avant-garde movies and make no way of music and make punk

and make strange paintings and do cocaine and sell whatever weird shit they wanted to sell

and reinvent their identities and I was just trying to figure out how to have a play day.

They chose to be there and I was born there.

When I was a little kid, it was just me and my mom.

We were a team and I could find her.

I could reach for her.

...