UPDATE: Hells Angels Leave Third Street for Greener Pastures

      Two mornings ago, EV Grieve broke the news that the Hells Angels appeared to have vacated their clubhouse on Third after 50 years –– all identifying marks had been removed or painted over, leaving only the "77" across the now completely black entryway. The group's sudden departure from a block and neighborhood it had called home since the late 60's has been met with a genuine mixed array of emotions and reactions. As the EV Grieve's article was shared across various Lower East Side pages on Facebook yesterday, numbers of people mourned this move as another symbol of the erasure of the neighborhood's culture, or the further capitulation to real-estate developers, while numbers of others implored commenters to explain why we should lament the loss of an organization with such a violent criminal past. A similar dynamic often arises within conversations around the Lower East Side's long and extensive history of gang activity, drug use, prostitution, homelessness, poverty, or many other seemingly characteristic, yet not necessarily "positive", dimensions of the neighborhood. While I certainly do not believe that the ongoing legacy of any of these violent or destructive conditions of life on the LES should be viewed as inherently necessary to that which we might call the Lower East Side, I think it is about time we mount a more comprehensive evaluation of what it is we mean when we talk about "good" or "bad" neighborhoods or qualities within the city. 

      In this way, the legacy of the Hells Angels at 77 East Third Street is bound up within discourse around the LES as an historically "bad" neighborhood –– not only are the circumstances under which the MC could purchase their building for $1,900, with ten bucks down, demonstrative of the massive devaluing of real-estate and withdrawal of wealth from the community which took place over the course of the late 60's into the 70's; they too, as an organization whose members would as easily punch a cop on Bowery, or chase away crack dealers, as they would sell drugs or traffic women, became living breathing evidence of the neighborhood's moral bankruptcy. In so far as the existence of the Hells Angels in the Lower East Side confirmed the government and public's fears that the neighborhood had largely been turned over to heathens, junkies, and gangsters –– an equation was drawn between organizations like the Hells Angels and the constitution of the community around it. Out of this has emerged a complex and often precarious relationship between the community and the Hells Angels –– one which, while in no means a paragon of nurturing, public engagement, in various ways defies the dominant narrative of what happens when a neighborhood becomes "bad". For example, as the EV Grieve noted, the building had been repaired extensively and maintained in incredible condition for the decades of their occupancy –– efforts which countless residents across the city undertook to save public and residential space from the utter neglect of the city government and landlords. Many offer up accounts online of being escorted by members of the Hells Angels through certain blocks, or otherwise describe their role as an unauthorized form of community policing.

      Whether one thinks the Hells Angels are a force for positive cultural change or not, whether one likes them or not, what should in-part be acknowledged is the historical relationship between organizations like theirs and the political body of the Lower East Side. On a basic level, the departure of the MC has provided yet another moment to examine what it means for a neighborhood when seemingly unyielding chunks of it are removed.