Adam Purple was an opinionated, sometimes cantankerous, freethinker who lived as a squatter on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, avoided commerce and considered real-estate development to be a scourge.
So, many of his friends were perplexed when a new bar and restaurant adopted Purple’s name shortly after he died of a heart attack in September while crossing the Williamsburg Bridge.
The bar, Mr Purple, is on the 15th floor of the Hotel Indigo on Ludlow Street, a few blocks from where its eponym built an elaborate earth sculpture called The Garden of Eden that New York City demolished in 1986. An image of Purple wearing a knit hat and sunglasses is also painted on the lobby ceiling, part of a mural by artist Lee Quinones that includes references to the neighborhood’s days as a creative frontier.
By nearly any measure, Purple — a dedicated ascetic who lived in an abandoned tenement, got water from a hydrant, read by candlelight and kept warm with a wood-burning stove — is an odd symbol for a 24-story hotel with “spa-like bathrooms” and a terrace swimming pool.
“The gentrification, the consumerism, it’s the opposite of everything he stood for,” said photographer Harvey Wang, who began documenting Purple, whose birth name was David Wilkie, in 1977. “It’s just appalling.”
George Bliss, who years ago painted trails of purple footprints across the city to mourn the loss of The Garden of Eden, said it was “an insult” that the hotel had named not only a bar, but a hamburger after Purple, who was a vegan.
The Gerber Group, which owns the bar and restaurant, said in a statement that the restaurant was working with nearby businesses and with a homeless shelter, the Bowery Mission, and that the hotel had hired local people.
“In honoring Wilkie’s dedication to the neighborhood, the restaurant is committed to supporting the Lower East Side community,” the statement added.
Over the last decade, expensive rents and development have nearly extinguished the rebellious spirit that once animated the Lower East Side and the East Village, just to the north. Many long-time residents and businesses have been priced out. Recent arrivals have sought to capitalize on the area’s history by taking the names of former fixtures.
Some see that as an effort to acknowledge or honor the past. However, others say that such newer arrivals are falsely claiming kinship with ways of life that they are helping to eradicate, turning certain spots into a sort of Potemkin village.
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