Will Chloë Sevigny Determine The Future Of East Village Nightlife?

by BILLY GRAY · May 24, 2010

    Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer invited actress/designer/indie porn star/hipster demigod Chloë Sevigny to join a stuffy old community board. Over Twitter, naturally. Will Sevigny bite? Does she even tweet anymore? What would CB3 look like with her sourpuss behind its foldout table?

    Stringer (Twitter Handle: scottstringerbp) tweeted Sevigny (ChIoeSevigny--unverified, by the way) on Friday:

    "I would like to invite @ChIoeSevigny to officially apply to a Manhattan community board"

    This all came about thanks to a Bust video in which Sevigny raved about the East Village as her favorite 'hood in the city and said:

    "I was actually thinking about joining a community board to help preserve some of the older buildings, try and save as many as possible and try to stop them from building as high."

    Would Sevigny be good for the East Village and Lower East Side or bad? Does she know that the "East Village" didn't even exist until the '70s and was a name concocted by greedy real estate agents to differentiate it from the slummy Lower East Side (which it had been called) and more closely resemble the gentrified Greenwich Village?  The question is, is Chloë Sevigny a legitimate East Villager who will keep its spirit in mind as she wades through Community Board 3's intimidatingly long monthly agenda of liquor license, extended hour and sidewalk cafe applications?

    On the one hand, Sevigny grew up in Darien (aka Daryan), which is one of the wealthiest, most Stepford and least East Village communities in Connecticut and thereby the world. On the other, she claims to have lived in a "frugal" household and swept the tennis courts at the local country club rather than play on them. Bonus points for her mother being of Polish blood, which does jibe with the East Village's Slavic past.

    Regardless of her authenticity, what kind of attitude would Sevigny bring to CB3? She could side with club and bar owners and channel the huffing/rolling/sexing/diseased kids of Kids, the movie that made her a star or take a cue from the repressed Mormon homebodies of Big Love who waddle around in nightgowns all day and reject applications without so much as skimming then.

    Of course the great big conflict of interest for Sevigny involves her brother Paul's noted and widely reviled nightlife operations, even if Beatrice Inn fell and Kenmare falls outside of CB3's jurisdiction.

    But that might be a moot point since Stringer sent the invitation over a platform that Sevigny hasn't used since January, when she tweeted Vincent Gallo.