Back East Village of the 1970s junkie prostitutes worked out of decrepit vans in the Bowery's parking lots and Johnny Thunder pawned his guitar at the hock shops above St. Mark's Place. The director of TAXI DRIVER filmed pre-teen Jodie Foster as a prostitute at that SRO hotel on 13th Street. Sighting William Burroughs shuffle down the sidewalk skin in a gray suit on his way to Eldridge Street was a common sight.
The Ninth Precinct had unofficially declared the alphabetted streets east of 1st Avenue a ‘no-go’ zone, but my West Virginia girlfriend had fallen in love with Toshi Matsuo's photo of the New York Dollas in front of Gem Spa and the actress wanted nothing else other than to live in the East Village and she wasn’t the only one.
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The rundown Lower Manhattan neighborhood was a DMZ for punks, musicians, artists, runaways, B-grade models, painters, dancers, actors, and sculptors recolonizing the burnt-out blocks between 1st and D Avenues.
The Gem Spa was a safe attractions to the Lower East Side.The spot had been opened since the 1920s and the owner's uncle, Hymie, supposedly created the chocolate egg. I loved their egg creams.
We were free.
The trashed blocks belonged to the People and the Gem Spa was an unofficial community center, where I regularly bought chocolate egg creams and the NY Times. The corner store had a great collections of magazines and the check-out workers never complained about browsing the magazines other than spending too much time with a HUSTLER. Sadly the institution's most recent owner, Mr. Patel, closed the Gem Spa in 2020 during the Covid Crisis.
Nothing has replaced it. Nothing Will. Unless it's another Gem Spa.
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