Drink, Fight, Fuck And Make Great Mosaic Art

Another East Village squatter artist collective disappears:

The members of the Cave, a squatter artists collective on St. Mark’s Pl. near Avenue A, recently were compelled to vacate the building after a developer with an option to buy the dilapidated tenement bought them out. Before the developer, Ben Shaoul of Magnum Management, paid them to leave, however, his workers first came in with some heavy-handed tactics, brandishing sledgehammers and crowbars.

Jim “Mosaic Man” Power, whose work decorates the bases and poles of East Village streetlights, said he enjoyed the artistic environment of the Cave, but that there was also a lot of partying and fighting that distracted from making art. He said he’s O.K. with taking a $2,500 buyout and didn’t fight leaving.

. . .

Eddy Menuau, another artist who lived in the building, also got cash to leave, and has relocated to Brooklyn and is currently concentrating on being a carpenter. Asked how much art got done in the building as opposed to drinking and fighting, he said it was about 40 percent art to 60 percent the rest.

(G.G. Allin would have turned 50 years old this August.)