Rivington Was Ours: Lady Gaga, the Lower East Side, and the Prime of Our Lives
The cast of characters in Sullivan’s entertaining book are an eclectic bunch. Most are not famous. They include deejays, singers, “bar stool” poets, dancers, and guitarists. This is also the story of one too many beers and way too many drugs. All the action takes place on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where the city itself  “stopped making sense.” The star of the story is Stefani Germanotta. Sullivan was an up-and-coming deejay in 2006 when he met Germanotta, who is known today as Lady Gaga. Then she was a go-go dancer with big dreams: “Behind her dark bangs she had the delicacy and eye makeup of the tiniest eggs in a set of Russian dolls.” Sullivan describes hanging out with the soon-to-be-famous singer in her bare-bones apartment, their circle of friends, and their neighborhood haunts along Rivington, a bar- and restaurant-studded street that Gaga has referenced in several of her songs. An intimate portrait of a specific time—before stardom struck—and a particular place. Fans of Gaga and the downtown New York music scene will find this fascinating. --June Sawyers