The Lo-Down Culture Cast

The Lo-Down Culture Cast

Conversations with culture changers in downtown New York City. Hosted by Arts & Culture Editor Traven Rice.

Episodes

June 1, 2024 25 mins

Host Traven Rice spoke with Alexandra Aron, Founder and Artistic Director of Remote Theater Project, about the upcoming production that will take place in Sara D. Roosevelt Park on Saturday, June 8th at 2pm and 4pm.

The show, titled "Thank You For Listening," is a community engagement project that's been in the works for over a year.

It's based on conversations and workshops with three different communities that intersect in the ...

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This week's episode of The Lo-Down Culture Cast features pioneering Lower East Side gallery owner James Fuentes.

Host Traven Rice spoke with Fuentes about how growing up in the neighborhood influenced his creative aesthetics and the intention behind the gallery, which he opened in a live/work space on St. James Place in 2007. Those were the early days when the Lower East Side was just beginning to be recognized as an art gallery n...

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May 13, 2024 28 mins

For this edition of The Lo-Down Culture Cast, host Traven Rice speaks with photographer Alain Levitt. Alain is well known in the neighborhood as an artist and the co-owner of the beloved restaurant Bacaro. Alain recently celebrated the publication of his first official photo book, "Alain Levitt, NYC 2000-2005," edited by Tim Barber. It features a series of photos of the downtown "creative class" in New York during the early 2000...

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We spoke with Roxy Hunt, Co-Founder of The Lower East Side Film Festival (LESFF), for this week's episode of The Lo-Down Culture Cast. Roxy talked with host Traven Rice about the festival's beginning, founded in 2011 in an interactive storefront, and how they have continued to engage devoted movie fans by creating unique live experiences and surprising programming for the last 14 years.

The festival features the innovative work...

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April 7, 2024 14 mins

Host Traven Rice spoke with Hester Street Fair's manager and producer Janine Ciccone for this week’s episode of The Lo-Down Culture Cast. Hester Street Fair kicks off its 15th year next weekend down at the Seaport. Formerly located at Seward Park on Hester Street, off Essex Street, it moved to the Seaport four years ago after losing their lease. 

It's been an incredible incubator for small business over the years and The Lo-Dow...

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April 1, 2024 25 mins

Host Traven Rice spoke with Author-Illustrator Ellen Weinstein for this week's episode of The Lo-Down Culture Cast. Ellen's vibrant picture book, Five Stories (for children and adults alike) is being released this month. The story features five children, from five different cultures (Russian, Italian, Dominican, Puerto Rican and Chinese) through five different decades, who grow up in the same tenement building on the Lower East Si...

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March 25, 2024 25 mins

Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara, PhD, is the Abbot and co-founder of The Village Zendo, a contemporary Zen center based in downtown Manhattan. A Soto Zen priest and modern day American Zen Teacher, O'Hara integrates traditional meditation and koan practice with social engagement and peacemaking. 

A Founding Teacher of the Zen Peacemaker Order, she taught for many years at New York University’s Tisc...

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March 8, 2024 28 mins

This week on The Lo-Down Culture Cast we spoke the trio behind the new documentary, Veselka: The Rainbow on the Corner at the Center of the World. Filmmaker Michael Fiore, who wrote, directed and produced the film, joined host Traven Rice, along with Tom and Jason Birchard, the 2nd and 3rd generation owners of Veselka, the restaurant, to talk about the experience of making the film right as the Ukrainian war broke out.

The restaur...

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March 3, 2024 19 mins

This week on the Culture Cast we spoke with Steven Matrick, Co-Founder of The New Colossus Festival, which is happening at eight different venues on the Lower East Side from March 6 - 10. Over 130 bands from all over the world will be playing at Arlene's Grocery, Pianos, Rockwood Music Hall, Mercury Lounge, Heaven Can Wait, Berlin and Baker Falls.

The festival was started in 2019 in an effort to bring live indie music back to t...

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February 27, 2024 25 mins

An assemblage piece in Bonnie Lucas' exhibit, "Small Worlds," currently showing at Trotter&Sholer (168 Suffolk St.)

This week we spoke with artist Bonnie Lucas, who currently has a show at the gallery Trotter&Sholer on Suffolk Street. Bonnie has been creating intricate assemblages, collages, drawings and paintings that deconstruct the cliches of girlhood for the past five decades.  We first met Bonnie in the early days of ...

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February 18, 2024 22 mins

Kicking off our next series of interviews with culture changers in downtown New York is our conversation with gallery Founder and Director Hannah Traore. She's an up and comer in the NY art and fashion scene who's been widely recognized for taking "old guard" gallery owners to task, especially when it comes to artist representation. Host Traven Rice spoke with her about putting down roots in the neighborhood, becoming involved in ...

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December 11, 2023 33 mins

Host Traven Rice speaks with Niki Russ Federman for episode 11 of The Lo-Down Culture Cast. She's the 4th generation co-owner of the esteemed appetizing shop, Russ & Daughters.

Known for the best bagels, lox, herring, caviar babka and other traditional baked goods and smoked fish in New York City, the landmark shop has been in the same location at 179 East Houston Street since 1914.

Russ & Daughters was the first small bus...

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November 19, 2023 21 mins

Host Traven Rice speaks with tattoo artist and historian Michelle Myles. Michelle started tattooing on the Lower East Side in the early 1990's, before it was legal. She opened Daredevil Tattoo in 1997 with her business partner, Brad Fink. Michelle was one of the first female tattoo artists around.

Brad has always been a collector. They ended up with so many interesting historical tattoo artifacts on hand, they created The Daredevi...

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November 12, 2023 27 mins

This week we spoke to Orchard Street Runners Founder, Joe DiNoto. 

DiNoto created a weekly running group that has blossomed into an organization that is known globally for its creative, high intensity, late night (threshold pace) races that take place on the live streets of NYC.

A born and raised New Yorker, Joe DiNoto founded Orchard Street Runners after a successful yet unfulfilling career in architecture. Growing up, Joe spent h...

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October 15, 2023 29 mins

Host Traven Rice speaks with Whitney Browne, an experimental and commercial photographer whose work explores themes of movement and gesture as reflections of mental states.

Best known for her involvement in the dance community, she currently works in New York City and Los Angeles.

She has spent the last decade developing her own experimental movement photography methods, working to build a visual language between photography and p...

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October 9, 2023 24 mins

MM Serra joins host Traven Rice to talk about her career as an avant garde and experimental filmmaker. Serra has been based on the Lower East Side for over three decades. She is also an author, curator, and professor at Parsons at the New School. For 32 years, she was the Executive Director of the Film-Makers’ Cooperative, the world’s oldest and largest archive of independent film.

Serra has created over 34 films, and her first fiv...

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October 1, 2023 21 mins

Host Traven Rice speaks with the folks from Nonhuman Teachers, a new non-profit that takes a creative approach to ecological storytelling. 

Executive Director Christian Cummings, Events Coordinator Joey Valley and Board Director Sandeep Rangi spoke with host Traven Rice about the newly formed project that aims to help deepen the relationship between humans and the natural world.

The non-profit sprang out of their creative stud...

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September 26, 2023 25 mins

Host Traven Rice speaks with Yin Kong, Director and Co-founder of Think!Chinatown. Yin is a community-based designer and curator living and working in Manhattan's Chinatown. Think!Chinatown is the culmination of her work in urban design, museum, culinary & cultural instruction, and community engagement. 

Think!Chinatown is an intergenerational non-profit based in Manhattan’s Chinatown, working at the intersection of storytellin...

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September 16, 2023 36 mins

Host Traven Rice speaks with Alex Knowlton, Director of Joe's Pub at The Public.

Joe’s Pub is an eclectic downtown cabaret space that was named for Public Theater founder Joseph Papp. Since it opened in 1998, Joe’s Pub has been supporting an array of artists at different stages of their careers, offering an intimate space to perform and develop new work.

They present a wide variety of live music, comedy and performance nightly. ...

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September 9, 2023 22 mins

Host Traven Rice speaks with photographer Destiny Mata for the latest episode of The Lo-Down Culture Cast.

Mata is a rising star who grew up in the neighborhood. She is a Mexican American photographer and filmmaker who focuses on issues of subculture and community.

After studying photojournalism at LaGuardia Community College and San Antonio College, she spent 2 years as Director of Photography Programs at the Lower East Side Girl...

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