There was an outpouring of emotion over the weekend as word made its way through the neighborhood that beloved Lower East Side photographer Bob Arihood had died. Arihood suffered a heart attack in his 4th Street apartment. He was 65.
The creator of the remarkable blog, Neither More Nor Less, Arihood documented a part of the Lower East Side many people choose to ignore. EV Grieve, who first reported the news of Arihood’s death, wrote:
The neighborhood was better off with his reporting, because no one else did what he did. Documenting 3 a.m. fistfights on Avenue A. Police searches in Tompkins Square Park. Comings and goings on Crusty Row. He captured the absurd, the ugly, the every day that makes the vanishing East Village unique.
He championed the underdogs, like the Mosaic Man and Ray of Ray’s Candy, whose beloved shop he certainly helped to save more than once by calling attention to it on his blog. He was the only one reporting on a rash of beatings of homeless people in Tompkins Square Park, including one incident that led to the death of a young girl named Lesia Pupshaw. His portraits of the East Village’s most marginal men and women are unparalleled in their empathy and humanity. He introduced many readers to people they would otherwise never know–like the unsinkable L.E.S. Jewels, the philosophic Biker Bill, the Avenue A Groper, and wild-eyed Marlene, also known as “Hot Dog.” These people lived with us largely because Bob brought them to our attention. Forgotten, invisible, pushed to the gutter, they existed in some way because Bob conjured them into our lives with his camera and reporting, with his sensitivity and indefatigable dedication.
There will be a memorial for Bob Arihood at Ray’s Candy Store, 113 Avenue A, tomorrow night at 8 p.m.
