New York police crushed the emerging avant-garde scene in a coordinated crackdown.

Evidence

Three weeks after the first Flaming Creatures bust, The Village Voice ran a page-one story: CITY PUTS BOMB UNDER OFF-BEAT CULTURE SCENE. The police closed three theaters showing unlicensed movies—the Gramercy Arts, the Pocket, and the New Bowery. The Gate managed to stay open by locking out its weekly Film Club. Le Metro’s poetry readings were suspended. The requisite crackdown on MacDougal Street coffeehouses now included the off-off-Broadway venue Caffe Cino on Cornelia Street. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 513

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘requisite crackdown on MacDougal Street coffeehouses’ pairs with the book’s broader thesis that avant-garde scenes were legally policed — connects to any account of how repressive state action paradoxically energized underground culture.