James Kalm was a young artist who'd left the Great Northwest to attend the Art Students League on the GI bill. While working at Utrecht, an art supply store in the East Village, he happened to meet another westerner who'd abandon California to seek fame and fortune in the Big Apple. That artist was Mark Kostabi, and the place of their meeting was becoming the cultural crucible that would begin a new chapter of art history in New York. In many ways Kostabi became the personification of the East Village scene, vulgar, ambitious, maniacal and those were just his good points. Over the intervening thirty years the fortunes of the art market have had their ups and downs. The East Village scene crested then crashed tragically, but Kostabi still remains a productive artist. This video includes interviews with Mark Kostabi, Mike Cockrill, Thurston Royce and Carlo McCormick.