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Lower East Side Biography Project: Aron “The Pieman” Kay


January 28, 2013 | Eugene Reznik

To this day, Aron Kay is a regular on the New York City protest circuit, spotted intermittently at OWS and the annual Global Marijuana March. He’s best known though for throwing pies at very influential faces starting in the early 70s, earning himself the moniker, “Mad Yippie Pieman.” (Check it out, he’s even a [dot] org. Note the GIF of George W. Bush stepping on a rake.)

In this video, an excerpt from the Lower East Side Biography Project which aired on public access television last week, Kay talks about that monumental first joint shared with Abbie Hoffman, from whom he learned the greatest modern lesson of political action: maintaining a sense of humor.

Kay, who traces his inspiration back to the Three Stooges and the Marx Brothers, chronicles some of his most famous pieings, cuing us in to who got what flavor for what reason.

Former New York mayor Abraham Beame and head conspirator of Watergate, G. Gordon Liddy both got nailed with apple crumb. Other crypto-fascists like William Colby, head of the CIA under Nixon, got chocolate Bavarian. The process, Kay describes on his website:

Whipped cream showers everywhere, there is a strong smell of vanilla, another world leader falls prey to a cream tart.

Everybody knows someone who needs a pieing, Kays says in the video. “It’s a corrosive substance. It’s not like battery acid, but it corrodes the ego.”

The Lower East Side Biography Project continues this Wednesday at 11pm EST with a 28 minute biography on performance artist and playwright, Penny Arcade on New York public access television, or streaming live online at Manhattan Neighborhood Network Channel One.