CLAYTON show with JOEY GOODWIN
8 Ball Radio Show New York on December 13, 2016 [66 min]
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ABOUT JOEY GOODWIN: He is the founder of the Overthrow Underground Boxing Club and CEO & Creative Director for the Home of Underground Boxing. ►more
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PUMA PERL: At Overthrow, Counterculture and
Counterpunching Share the Card
The Villager, New York on July 3, 2018
Joey Goodwin says this team photo describes them to a T. | Photo by Danielle Levitt
Back in 2010, two friends and I initiated a poetry/performance series at the Yippie Museum Café. Every week, we chanted and burned sage in a losing battle against the smell of the feral cats that lived upstairs. Ibogaine enthusiasts trooped down to their basement meetings, cheerfully ignoring the boundaries being broken onstage. For 40 years, the building, eventually known as 9 Bleecker, was home to countercultural characters and free thinkers of all kinds. (The Youth International Party, known as the Yippies, founded in 1967, was an anti-authoritarian, youth-oriented offshoot of the anti-war movement.) On February 8, 2014, following years of court hearings, Yippie archivist Alice Torbush was the last to leave. “And yes,” she told me, “I turned out the lights.”
Eight years later, I’m back at 9 Bleecker, sitting in the upstairs office of Overthrow New York with its founder and CEO, Joey Goodwin, and our mutual friend, Clayton Patterson. The vibe is warm and friendly. A bear-like dog lies under the table and a second one wanders around. Staff members pop in and out — one’s a Golden Gloves winner, another is described as the “worst boxer in the world.” As Goodwin explained, “It’s a boxing gym, but it’s also a community, a throwback to the spirit of CBGB and the Mudd Club. How do we,” he asked, “take the past and all that shit people say doesn’t exist anymore and translate it? How do we create a fresh script for Generation Z, written by Generation Z? I know it sounds weird. It’s a boxing gym — but at the end of the day it’s a birthplace for culture, a training ground for a new youth revolution.”
Clayton added, “It’s the authenticity factor, a real connection from the past. This place is an old-style gym with old school boxing.”
“Yes and no,” Goodwin countered. “I’m more focused on learning from people like Clayton and Alice,” whom he described as “shepherds and mentors.” “World champions train here,” Goodwin noted, “but we’re different. We almost disrupt everything. If I hold on to the authenticity thing, I get stuck in it.”►more
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