You will remember the Pulp Fiction scene in which Vincent Vega is sceptical about the wisdom of ordering a $5 milkshake. “I don’t know if it’s worth five dollars, but it’s pretty fuckin’ good” was the grudging verdict. Just imagine what he’d have thought about a $16 burger. Probably about as much as the people of Manhattan’s Meatpacking district, who voted with their feet and caused one such overpriced restaurant to close down. Hah! That’s one in the eye for exploitative pretension.
Flanked on either side by Google and Apple, Galerie Au Bon Punk (ABP) has now moved in to the vacated property, and is hosting The $16 Burger Show by long-time neighbourhood residents and cultural pillars Clayton Patterson and Elsa Rensaa. The husband and wife team moved to New York in 1979, witnessing (and documenting) the rise of the Lower East Side through photography, film, writing, painting and tattoo art. Patterson and Rensaa’s show will be injecting some energy into what the former has dubbed the “dead meat district”; wrap your chops around this tasty burger at the 9th Avenue gallery until 15 May.
