Patti Astor

Patti Astor is New York City's original "walk on the wild side".

Biography

She started out in Cincinnati, Ohio where she had a "perfect 50's childhood" and was a charter member of the Cincinnati Civic Ballet. Her adventurous spirit however took her to NYC at the age of eighteen (in 1968) to Barnard College but she soon dropped out to take a leadership role in the anti-Vietnam war group SDS (Students for a Democratic Society). After two and a half years and the end of that war she traveled the United States and Europe with her dance act, "A Diamond As Big As The Ritz".

Returning to New York in 1975 pioneering Patti was at the center of the storm in New York's legendary East Village. from punk rock at CBGB's with local bands Talking Heads, Blondie, and Television, the New Wave at the Mudd Club and independent films with directors such as Jim Jarmusch and Eric Mitchell.

The undisputed queen of the downtown scene, she appeared in over a dozen beyond low-budget epics, such as "Rome '78", "The Long Island Four", "Snakewoman", and "Underground U.S.A". One of her best roles was as Virginia, the roving reporter, in the legendary hip-hop epic, "Wild Style". These films are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. ("Wild Style" was voted "one of the ten best rock and roll movies of all time".)

She went on to found the world famous FUN Gallery, the epicenter of the early '80s art explosion. This tenement storefront gallery, the first in the East Village, showcased such artists as Keith Haring, Jean Michel Basquiat, Kenny Scharf, Fab 5 Freddy, Zephyr and Dondi.

The FUN Gallery Crew of downtown artists and hipsters, beat-boys, rock, movie and rap stars kicking it with the neighborhood kids; everybody mingling with museum directors, art historians and uptown collectors in their mink coats and limos was unique.

Patti said, "I wanted everyone who walked through that door to feel,'Yes, I can make a difference here'."

After closing the FUN, Patti then moved to Hollywood where she acted in, wrote and produced "Get Tux'd" starring Ice-T in one of his first movie roles and the crowd pleaser "Assault of The Killer Bimbos" awarded by People magazine "Trash Pick of The Week".

Miss Astor currently resides in California where she is finishing her book "FUN! The True Story of Patti Astor" to be published in 2008.

External links

* [http://www.at149st.com/astor.html Interview with Patti Astor]
* [http://www.powerhousearena.com/nosleeptilbrooklyn/release.html No Sleep ‘til Brooklyn: A powerHouse Hip Hop Retrospective]