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NEW YORK -- This area was like the forgotten end of the world, but it was also a neighbourhood.
Now one of the trendiest and priciest areas of New York, the Lower East Side of Manhattan, was formerly better known for drug use and crime.
Canadian photographer Clayton Patterson is the only one who documented the radical transformation. Meet the Godfather of the Lower East Side.
Below Houston and east of the Bowery, everybody knows Patterson. Some even call him the Mayor of the Lower East Side. The Calgary native is hard to miss, with his trademark long goatee, black coat, embroidered skull hat and camera bag.
We met for coffee in his bunker, a former Hispanic dressmaker's shop on Essex St. He's lived here since 1983 with Elsa Rensaa, his partner for the past 37 years. His apartment is filled with boxes of his archives, including 2,000 video cassettes, 750,000 photos, a collection of heroin baggies and graffiti stickers.
The lost soul of the Lower East Side resides right here in this apartment.
"My archives represent the end of a period. I captured the last of that wild period," Patterson said. "The crime kind of protected the neighbourhood because it kept the rents low. You get rid of the cheap rents and you lose the artistic geniuses. There is no scene today. If you come here to be an artist, New York is dead. Go to China!"
This flamboyant, 61-year-old activist moved from Calgary to New York in 1979. He was 27 at the time. Raised in a religious family, he says he always felt like an outsider. It's no surprise then he found his niche in this part of the city.
"It was absolutely shady," he recalled. "Somebody got shot across the street the first night we moved in."
It was definitely not a place to hang out at night or during the day. You could easily become the prey of the next junkie in need of a fix. It was wild and chaotic. The neighbourhood was a melting pot of African-Americans, Hispanics, Puerto Ricans and Orthodox Jews. The streets were infested with Crips and Bloods gang members, squatters, anarchists, the homeless, hookers, bikers and punks.
Somehow, with his cool demeanour, Patterson was able to infiltrate all of these scenes. At the time, you had to be pretty intrepid to flaunt a camera below Houston St. E., especially if you were white.
Patterson would hang out with skinheads at the Pyramid Club. His camera would get smashed in the mosh pit during hardcore shows at CBGB.
He was backstage with drag queens and in the streets with drug dealers.
Before long, he became known as the Lower East Side's official photographer. Neighbourhood residents used to ring his doorbell to have their pictures taken in front of his graffiti-covered front door. Even at 4 a.m., he would come down and take their picture.
"They could buy it for $2 or exchange it for art. That way, there was a value," he said.
He kept a copy of each portrait. The result was The Front Door Book, published this year, likely making him the first street fashion photographer.
Patterson gained the most notoriety from pictures he took during the Tompkins Square Park riots in 1988. The park was nicknamed Tent City back then and had become a virtual refugee camp for anarchists and the homeless.
When police tried to expel them, the situation descended into total chaos. Patterson even went to jail because he refused to hand his tapes over to the NYPD. He ended up on Oprah.
"This is little brother watching Big Brother," he told the talk show host while holding his new weapon: His video camera.
At the time, he probably didn't know he was chronicling the last tumultuous moments of a neighbourhood that has since undergone full gentrification.
Today, those same streets are lined with trendy boutiques and hipster bars.
Former $38-a-month apartments now go for $3,000.
Despite the transformation, Patterson says he won't leave.
"We thought about it many times, but New York is my home even though it changed radically," he said.