The Lo-Down Culture Cast

Photographer Whitney Browne talks with Host Traven Rice about her debut Book, "Candy Store - A Behind-the-Counter Look at Ray’s Candy Store, One of NYC’s Most Beloved Sweets Slinging Stalwarts." The book is launching this weekend, just in time to celebrate Ray's 50th year of business in the East Village.

Most New Yorkers who live downtown have been into the iconic shop at one time or another, and often late at night, as it was ope...

Coss Marte in 2015. photo by Alex M. Smith for The Lo-Down NY.

After featuring Coss Marte in The Lo-Down's "My LES" column ten years ago, host Traven Rice connected with him again to catch up on all he has accomplished with his two innovative businesses, both of which have social justice missions at their core.

In 2009, Coss Marte was sent to jail as the leader of a multi-million dollar cocaine operation. He was also ...

Host Traven Rice talks with Immanual Oni and Debra Jeffreys-Glass about the Chrystie Street African Burial Ground's new memorial, HALO. The installation is located at the entrance to the M'Finda Kalunga Garden, on Rivington Street, between Forsythe and Chrystie streets.

The project was commissioned by FAB NYC (Fourth Arts Block). They write:

New York City’s Lower East Side has always been shaped by the history and presence of Blac...

Host Traven Rice spoke with Lower East Side artist Marja Samson. Samsom is an international artist and filmmaker, whose work confronts and exposes cultural issues with elegant wit. Poised within 1970’s international avant-garde, her early works are experiments in self representation.

Her embodiment and simultaneous commodification of the character "Miss Bhave" and "Miss Kerr" pose an elegant, tongue-in-cheek dissection of glamour....

A conversation with founder Mark DeGarmo, who has been based on the Lower East Side for over 30 years.

As an artist and scholar, his work investigates embodied imagination, improvisational composition, and nonverbal/non-discursive ways of knowing. Thus far in his professional choreographic career, DeGarmo has created over 100 dance and performance works and directed multiple tours in 13 countries.

The themes of his choreographic w...

Host Traven Rice talks with director Miriam Wasmund and performer Liz Dutton about "Your Faithful Reader," an experiential theater performance that merges the worlds of acting and dance with real letters.

Participants were mailed writing prompts—suggestions of letters they may want to write: to others (known and unknown), to themselves, to their most beloved objects, or even the intangible.

The response was pages of heartfelt word...

Lower East Side NYC arts and culture podcast host Traven Rice interviews Filmmaker Stuart Ginsberg about his new film "It’s A to Z: The Art of Arleen Schloss." Schloss was a downtown performance artist who invited other artists to collaborate and perform with her on a weekly basis. 

The film explores Schloss’s creative work and evolution and how it changed over time. A highly original cross-disciplinary artist, she was known for h...

Host Traven Rice spoke with Gary Guarinello, founder of Catalyst Records in Essex Market, for this episode of The Lo-Down Culture Cast. Gary is a drummer and a music lover who is also a former butcher. He was working at The Market Line Food Hall at Ends Meat when he pitched the idea for a record store, which he opened in 2022.

When the food hall shut down in the lower level of Essex Market, he moved Catalyst Records upstairs, a...

Host Traven Rice spoke with author Dan Slater about his new book, "The Incorruptibles - A True Story of Kingpins, Crime Busters, and the Birth of the American Underworld," which focuses on the true stories of the Lower East Side underworld and the secret efforts by wealthy uptowners to eradicate them during the late 1800's and early 1900's.

It's a "harrowing, true-life tale of an immigrant underworld, a secret vice squad, and the...

Host Traven Rice spoke with writer-director Claire Ayoub for this episode of The Lo-Down Culture Cast. Claire's first feature film, Empire Waiste, is out now. The boundary-pushing film tells the story of Lenore Miller (Mia Kaplan) an overweight, insecure teen whose talent for fashion is discovered by her confident, plus-sized classmate Kayla (Jemima Yevu), forcing her into the spotlight—and into the path of both bullies and new f...

"Culture Cast" Host Traven Rice speaks with Luis Fernandez, a partner in the popular "Forsyth Fire Escape" (of the amazing scallion pancake burrito creation) which started in 2021 during Covid. Founder Isabel Lee created the "burrito" with inspiration from her Chinese and Thai roots and Luis's Dominican background. During the pandemic, they served burritos out of their apartment by lowering them in a bucket off of their fire escape...

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 ...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...