By Patrick Hedlund
DNAinfo News Editor
MANHATTAN — Hollywood starlet Chloë Sevigny wants to solidify her East Village street cred, and may even go so far as to join the local community board, according to a video interview the actress did for Bust Magazine.
The fashionable and oft-photographed 35-year-old, who lives in the East Village and is often seen hanging out in Tompkins Square Park, spoke extensively to the women's pop culture magazine about her roots in the Manhattan neighborhood.
“I would never go to the Lower East Side or Nolita, no,” she said in the interview. “I still feel like the East Village retains some of its kind of weirdo, East Village vibe.”
She also spoke of the East Village ethos — personified by people like punk goddess Patti Smith, who Sevigny name-checked in the video — and of how the neighborhood has changed over the past 20 years.
“Tompkins [Square Park] then was like a battle zone, there was nothing there,” she explained of the neighborhood’s nexus, where Sevigny modeled for a photo shoot when she was still a Connecticut high schooler.
“This is even pre-Giuliani, and I remember back then going to Avenue A and into Tompkins was just frightening.”
While some longtime residents have rued the neighborhood’s transformation, Sevigny said she hopes the area will continue to change for the better.
“I can’t believe the park is what it is now, today,” she said in the interview. “It’s such a safe and friendly environment. A lot of people complain about that, but I often see these ladies in their 40s and 50s with their kids, and I think, I hope one day I’ll still be hanging in the park with my kids.”
As for Sevigny’s civic aspirations, she said getting involved with the local community board — in this case Community Board 3, which covers the East Village, Lower East Side, and parts of Chinatown — could be the next step.
“I was actually thinking about joining a community board to help preserve some of the older buildings,” she said. “Try and save as many of them as possible and try to stop them from building as high.”
