AS the unofficial leader of what is known as the East Village “slacktivist” movement, John Penley routinely protests: real estate developers, wine bars, wine bars owned by Bruce Willis, landlords, Republicans and the evergreen that is yuppie scum. “Frat boys throwin’ up or takin’ a p – – s on
your building,” he says. “Drunk, blockin’ sidewalks, not lettin’ baby carriages pass . . .” The 56-year-old Penley also enjoys shouting down obnoxious NYU students, inserting himself into neighbors’ landlord disputes and making daily calls to newspapers and networks about area goings-on.
Penley is also, quite possibly, New York City’s cuddliest anarchist: a burly 56-year-old Vietnam-era military man and ex-felon with two gold front teeth, lots of tattoos and a deep affinity for children, animals and the writings of Thomas Wolfe. He was married once, briefly, but doesn’t like to talk about it.
One of his roommates was rock star Cat Power, who moved out and on long ago, but still pays her third of the share on Penley’s $600-a-month apartment on Avenue B, where he has lived the bulk of his 25 years in the city. (His other roommate is a graphic artist.) Penley is something of a local on-call baby sitter, and is quick to dispense loose change or cigarettes to anyone who asks.
“Cigarettes are $8 a pack – that is a lot of money to someone like John,” says his friend Clayton Patterson. “He has a lot of compassion.” (Penley thinks he gets his fight from his grandfather, a Methodist preacher who dragged the young John to three services each Sunday.)
Next week, Penley – with all the menace he can muster – says he will spearhead an “all-out war against the real estate developers.” Plans are vague. This will follow his latest extravaganza – an on-site 20th anniversary celebration of the 1988 riots in Tompkins Square Park, to be held this weekend. He has helped book punk acts such as Leftover Crack (a band he claims the cops are out to get) and has also set up an art party for the neighborhood’s children. “We’re gonna have balloons and cupcakes and art supplies, and we’re gonna hang the kids’ artwork on the metal fences around the park,” he says cheerfully.
Much to his chagrin, Penley’s gentle nature is well-known and irrepressible, no matter how many gold teeth he installs or tattoos he gets. (Even his felony conviction was mild: He spent one year in prison for jumping bail after being arrested at a nonviolent protest; he fled, he says, only because he was deeply unhinged after his sister died in a car crash at the same time.)
Recently, Penley organized a protest outside 47 E. Third St. against millionaire Alistair Economakis, the landlord who is famously trying to evict all renters: “John’s group is very nice,” says David Pultz, a resident of the building who’d never met Penley before. “They had pizza and street musicians. It was like a party.” Pultz was impressed that Penley’s event drew six cops. “At our rallies, we have housing advocacy groups speak, maybe a politician, and we get one policeman,” he says, clearly impressed. “We welcome his support. He’s got his press contacts. He’s trying to get Bruce Willis to issue a statement in support of us.”
For a time, Willis was another archnemesis. Penley was thinking of buying a pig in Chinatown and hauling it up to the Bowery Wine Co., which Willis co-owns, and burning the actor in effigy. “Then I decided I really didn’t want to kill a pig over Bruce Willis,” Penley says. Instead, he staged a regulation rally and had his friend David Peel perform. This immediately won over Bowery Wine Co.’s other owner, Chris Sileo.
“I look over and see David Peel,” recalls Sileo, “and I say, ‘Hey! I saw you perfoming “I Hate You Mark David Chapman” the night after John Lennon was killed, at Kenny’s Castaways!’ It was nice.” Now, Sileo – himself an aging mainstay of the East Village – says that they’re all quite friendly.
Which, in fact, illustrates the most poignant aspect of Penley’s quest: He is fighting a fight long since over and won – and there is no worse fate for a man whose raison d’etre is a good, righteous fight. One of Penley’s oldest friends, compatriot Merll Truesdale, agrees. “We used to call him Loki, after
the Norse god of mischief,” says Truesdale, who, on his visits from South Carolina, remains in awe of how clean the neighborhood is. “John’s got this firebrand radicalism, but he’s always done it with a smile on his face. That’s his philosophy: Keep a smile on your face when you’re giving it to the man.”