West Village Locals Are Throwing Pop-Up Events To "Remind People Why We Love NYC So Much"

Last month, the State Liquor Authority (SLA) updated their website to clarify new COVID-19 guidelines that specify that restaurants and bars are prohibited from offering live music, ticketed events, and other forms of outdoor entertainment. This was met with immediate backlash from venues and performers who had started organizing live events like socially-distanced concerts, karaoke nights, and more.

In the midst of a pandemic that had decimated the NYC nightlife industry, it made people like West Village resident Peter Frank, 50, wonder if anything could be done to help boost morale and bring spontaneity back to local neighborhoods. What does culture look like in the streets of NYC at a time when ticketed events are illegal, and anything that could attract a large crowd is a health risk?

That's why Frank and his partner Michael Bailey joined forces with two other longtime West Village couples—Virginia Davies and Willard Taylor; Chuck Thomas and Michael Kretchmar—to come up with West Village Love, a semi-regular pop-up event.

"We all wanted to see a little more life in the streets, and at same time also give opportunities to local artists, performers, actors and dancers who are out of work and have limited opportunity to work and earn money," Frank, who has lived in the West Village since 1998, told Gothamist. "The idea was, can we do a pop-up event where we have impromptu street performances on the sidewalk that would help create a little energy and excitement, give people something to feel good about, and help a lot of small businesses in the neighborhood who are struggling? Can we entertain patrons and help restaurants stay open?"

These pop-up events, which are neither ticketed nor announced beforehand in order to keep crowds from forming, have happened twice in the last two weeks, most recently this past Wednesday evening. They've included a wide range of local performers: acoustic groups with singers, lyrical dancers who previously were in Sleep No More, mixed media artists painting art on site, haiku writers giving out poems, off-Broadway performers, cellists, jazz trios, and the Street Beat brass band.

Organizers emphasize that the performers are following all social distancing protocols per the CDC, and all participants must be masked. If a singer is not masked, it means that they are performing with someone that they live with. None of the performers touch each other except the dancers.

"We wanted to show the world that despite what they heard, New York is very much still alive and has a diversity of talent, and if you're a New Yorker who left you should come back," added Frank. "We wanted to remind people why we love NYC so much."

Davies, who has lived in the West Village for more than 30 years, and her husband first came up with the idea to put on these events. "We are long time residents of the West Village and Willard has served on the board of a number of our community arts organizations—The Kitchen, Aperture, The Wooster Group—so we were keenly aware of the impact of coronavirus on the arts community," she told Gothamist.

The three couples were then introduced to 37-year-old Hells Kitchen resident Holly-Anne Devlin, who has been working on and off Broadway since she was 19 on productions including Jersey Boys and 700 Sundays. She's a theater producer and director who owns three production companies, and employed 111 people prior to COVID-19.

"My industry was completely decimated," she told Gothamist, noting she's been out of work since March 11th. "Earlier this summer I started the Hells Kitchen Happiness Crew. We did popups, calling them 'magical musical pops up,' where we'd show up in front of restaurants and sing and play music and have a brass band, all to try to rejuvenate the neighborhood and bring some joy back."

With the help of City Council Speaker Corey Johnson's chief of staff Erik Bottcher, the West Village folks were introduced to Devlin, and they asked if she could help them throw similar events in their neighborhood as a kind of creative director.

The key to getting it all off the ground was that the three couples were willing to self-fund the entire venture initially, paying each of the performers "well over scale what they'd be paid for a union event." The group has started a GoFundMe now so that they can raise more money to pay performers and continue with these events through the rest of the year, with the hope of putting on 10 events altogether.

Now that this event is off the ground, Devlin says she'd love to work with other locals and throw similar pop-ups in other parts of the city. "I would love to do this everywhere in all five boroughs," she said. "I'd like to start raising funds, finding philanthropists in Brooklyn, Astoria, Staten Island, the Bronx near the Botanical Gardens. I'd love to continue this process, because it's amazing when communities come together. And I'm happy to be a part of it."

And like Frank, she thinks the conversation about NYC being dead has been overblown: "I think that my hope for the city is that 2020 is going to bring a clarity of vision that it implies, and I hope that's something we can look forward to. We hear that NYC is dead every other minute, and I don't believe that to be true at all."