I am all about supporting Busking. NYCSubwayGirl has a For Buskers section where I share useful information about busking in NY. City Lore and BuskNY have been incredible supporters of the right to Busk. I hope you can make it to this event celebrating 30 years legal precedent for the First Amendment right to Busk. The April 2nd event is the beginning of many celebrations to come throughout the year.

Busking at 30: Sounds and Stories from the Underground
April 2 @ 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM

7pm start time. Doors at 6:30pm.
Suggested donation of $5 at the door.
City Lore citylore@citylore.org
56 E. First Street New York, NY 10003 212.529.1955

With the recent rise in street performer arrests and harassment, Busking at 30 aims to highlight the importance of this underground culture and what it brings to the diverse and vibrant culture of New York City.

The program will feature a history of busking in New York City through vignettes and songs from historical performers of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, as well as a headline performance by one of the subway’s biggest stars, Morgan O’Kane , banjo virtuoso and activist. Other performers include Busker Ball producer Theo Eastwind ; classical guitarist Lloyd Carew-Reid, whose advocacy group Subway Troubadours Against Repression led the MTA to formally address performers’ rights in its post-1989 rules; and Roger Manning , the guitarist whose historic 1985 legal challenge opened the subway to artistic performance.

30 years after the first case to explicitly recognize New Yorkers’ First Amendment right to artistic expression in the subway, BuskNY and City Lore are pleased to announce Busking at 30: Sounds and Stories from the Underground, an evening that celebrates and advocates for the enduring art form that has long given voice to the city’s wealth of musical traditions and genres.

Busking at 30 is the first in a series of events leading up to a summer busking festival in celebration of the August anniversary of the People v Manning case, which was the first step in the legalization of subway performance that culminated in 1987.

NYCSubwayGirl loves to share about cool discoveries in NYC. City Lore has amazing advocacy and outreach within NYC communities. They support the arts in ways that are more important than ever before. City Lore documents, presents, and advocates for grassroots cultures to ensure their living legacy in stories, histories, places, and traditions. It's thanks to City Lore that I have information to provide street performers who want to know their rights.

I wasn't singing in the subway's back in the '70's and '80's (honestly never occured to me until the late '90's) but I do remember the graffiti on and in the trains , they are captured in an amazing exhibition that opens tonight at the City Lore gallery. Hope you join me.

City Lore is pleased to announce the exhibition: Moving Murals: Henry Chalfant & Martha Cooper’s All-City Graffiti Archive, opening Thursday, April 3rd with a reception from 6-9pm, and running through July 10, 2014.

Shot during the “Golden Age of Graffiti” in the ‘70s and early ‘80s, Chalfant and Cooper’s images of graffitied subway cars are among the major documents of American popular culture in the late twentieth century. Moving Murals presents their images in a way that they have never been seen in New York: a wall to wall mosaic of over 850 muraled trains, creating an ultimate All City graffiti trainyard environment complimented by wallpapered photographs of the writers in their element. And for the first time, the exhibit provides an interactive audience experience through the addition of Chalfant’s recently published iBook viewed on a large screen, complete with the train image archive, artist interviews, and videos.

These classic train murals, which have been the inspiration and guide for thousands of youthful artists around the world, did not survive on the trains for long before the city cleaned the cars, or the artists’ rivals painted over them. Chalfant and Cooper’s patience and determination in hunting down and capturing these ephemeral masterpieces with their cameras has left the world with a representative cross section of some of the best work by the most talented young artists who painted New York City’s subway cars in the seventies and eighties. These images pay homage to the young artists from the City’s underserved outer boroughs whose work—though often dismissed as vandalism—challenged contemporary fine arts standards, and lit the fuse for the street art and hip hop explosion heard around the world.

Where: The City Lore Gallery, 56 E 1st St. New York, NY 10003

How to get there: Take the F train to 2nd Ave or 6 train to Bleecker St.

For more information: 212-529-1955 x13 or aronner@citylore.org