In 1959, in the basement of a tenement on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Richard and Dorothea Tyler founded an avant-garde artists’ collective and funeral society called the Uranian Phalanstery and First New York Gnostic Lyceum Temple. The Tylers were influential underground figures in postwar New York City culture. They connected people and created webs of creativity and spirituality that blended music, visual arts, publishing, tattooing, Eastern religion, Gnosticism, Judaism, and communalism. And more. And all at once.

To learn more about the Tylers and other fascinating figures of Lower East Side culture, try "Offbeats," by Clayton Patterson and me:
https://www.amazon.com/Offbeats-Lower-East-Side-Portraits/dp/188727698X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=21N2WB9O809HS&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Nsz3wlbumXlmb3uYkNDVckgcJRWRTEW-k6SuiTIu_i1I7Yp2dF8H_-KuVLBJLfVAOMGA7nmLrs1CLwyUMkqLiLIJD7XgZYebmMdU-RF1FK-B0iZQYYHemTUnBYkFtXg4dwRqePMd-FTcsnVZGHbkVsP_U3r8y7WbtB39tY9fMr_sUC9yxULpFcfrFPIqVRi582EHHaNQePft0mxdT3a9zfvhzVYLMjvfCteQ4QiSrMA.McI_tCM5JaePJEVbAO1OPwqywsvmJ8gw4xQXrzxZlO8&dib_tag=se&keywords=Offbeats+Patterson&qid=1715717775&s=books&sprefix=offbeats+patterson%2Cstripbooks%2C101&sr=1-1

Throughout World War II, Wall Street banks and giant American corporations traded with the Nazis and Japanese and played both sides in the war. They included Chase National Bank, Standard Oil, DuPont, and General Motors, among others. The impulse to prosecute them as traitors for their financial dealings with the Nazis and Japanese was countered by a simple, inescapable reality: the U.S. needed their backing as well.

Sixty-three years ago, on April 12 1961, Yuri Gagarin fell out of the sky. He was the first human to go to outer space. He almost didn't make it back alive. In their "space race" against the well-heeled Americans, the Soviets rushed their scientists, cut corners, and were very careless with their cosmonauts' lives. Gagarin was a lucky survivor. NOTE: I do not own this image.

Zombie apocalypse. AI annihilating us. Killer asteroids. Godzilla's comeback. War, plague, famine, crime. Why are we so obsessed with apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic scenarios? Maybe we're unconsciously but very publicly acknowledging the fact that the apocalypse isn't coming, it already happened. The world ended in the 20th century. A century of atrocities, a century of savages. A hundred years of holocaust. This is the world after the end of the world.

In the years leading up to World War 2, New York's pro-Hitler German American Bund had their own summer camp on Long Island, Camp Siegfried. NOTE: I do not own this image.

During World War 2, “zoot suit” was synonymous with “juvenile delinquent.” What the black leather jacket and the hoodie have been to later generations, the zoot suit was to the World War 2 years.

The coming of World War 2 politicized an illustrator who’d previously been known only for wacky advertisements and surrealist children’s books. His name was Theodor Geisel, but he's universally known as Dr. Seuss. NOTE: I do not own this image.

The New York House of Detention for Women -- aka the House of D -- had a number of star visitors, including Angela Davis. NOTE: I do not own this image.