Big Hair and Bad Luck: The Hard Times of the Troll Museum

I'll bet there's a doll that looks like trump. Too long red tie and all.

Rev Jen is an icon, and another unfortunate casualty of a now bygone era in our rapidly disappearing city. We are all poorer for people like Jen getting flung aside in favor of greed, homogenization, and "growth". This is the price for "safer, cleaner streets", though it shouldn't be, for $20 bowls of Ramen on your corner, for every square inch of Manhattan, and half of Brooklyn becoming a unique retail shopping experience. Mom and Dad bring the kids for vacation, the kids come back for school, or maybe they just think it'll be "cool" to live in NYC for a few years before decamping to the suburbs. Tech is now replacing Wall Street for bringing hordes of new people here who bring nothing to the table, reap all the benefits, and ultimately have no investment in being here. How about this for an idea: Tenure for people like Rev. Jen who have given their lives to this city and enriched it in ways hard to measure or monetize. Let the city recognize neighborhoods like the LES as cultural zones, protected from "improvement", and with a residential and commercial rent cap. Let the greedy landlords and developers build something from nothing in some vacant part of the city. Let the kids who are displacing people like her instead move to those neighborhoods; after all what do they do but work and consume, what difference does it make to them where they live if they really want to be here. Let them earn their place as Rev Jen and so many others now gone did. R.I.P Rev Jen Jr

Sad but wonderful story. All the best to Reverend Jen. I hope her collection includes one of those centaur trolls -- I always wanted one!

Ahh, old New York was better. How many New Yorkers does it take to change a light bulb? Three, one to change the bulb and two to complain that the old light was better.

Rev. Jen, thank you for sharing the trolls' stories with NYT readers. And thanks to Lucia Buricelli of NYT for fab photos. Reading this story has brightened an extremely windy, snowy, difficult winter's day up North. I'll be looking for trolls and other surprises once the snow abates...

I spent a week dog sitting for my son while he and his wife traveled in India the first week of the new year. I wish I had know anout this!

She needs help. I don't say this to be mean but she's been through a lot of self inflicted bad times and she hasn't learned a thing.

That last photo has a lot going on! Where was it taken? The Playtroll Mansion?

I have a lot of respect for Reverend Jen. When we met in the east side a couple of years ago I specifically told her that she needed to become purer when selecting Trolls as she has mutant trolls and real Russ trolls all together and that's not good luck.

Excellent article. Should we start a crowdfunding page for Reverend Jen and her lovely trolls?

Lovely story... My mom's small troll family, now most if not all AARP eligible, stands guard on my bookshelf to this day.

i have a friend who spent a lot of time styling the hair of a troll when he was a teenager. then he went to art school. then he went to, i don't know what to call it, hairdresser's school. Now he's 65 and had a career cutting hair and managing upscale salons, and it all started with that troll

Reverend Jen's books kept me sane when I had to move to a very square exurb of Montgomery County. She's a hero and I hope to meet her some day.

Rev Jen is a NYC treasure and I love this article. However, to say she got behind on the rent doesn’t tell the whole story. The slumlord who owned her building in LES continually turned off the heat, water, etc to get rid of her. Yes, NYC has changed and has become too expensive, but not sure why she should have paid rent to someone who harassed her for years.

This is the story of New York's artists in microcosm. I lived there for thirty years. During that time, I met some of the most brilliant artists you can imagine, and watched them desperately struggle against rents, and watched their professions vanish. When I first came to New York City, I knew all sorts of people who made a living just playing as sidemen on recordings! Most of the things that made New York City unique have been eroded or just destroyed altogether, replaced by Starbucks and 7/11s.

Thank you for bringing my childhood within walking distance. Smiles...

I feel the same way. This makes me sooooo miss NYC.

Few stories have made me so happy.

What incredible photos. Thank you Lucia Buricelli. I cut my troll's hair when I was 8. It never grew back...

Rev, I love you and hope to make your show! I still remember your Anti-Slams, your Doo-Doo the Teletubby costume, and the Mouse with the Human Ear on its Back costume. Freaks unite! Keep NYC interesting!

Reverend Jen, Patron Saint of the Uncool! In addition to collecting trolls and being a lovely fixture on the LES, she also organized conga-lines to dance in and out of bars to protest the archaic cabaret laws. She's one of those rare humans who make NYC better just by being here.

"Big Hair and Bad Luck: The Hard Times of the Troll Museum" I thought this was going to be another depressing article about the White House, thank you so for this article.

You can still visit the Troll Capital of the World... https://theculturetrip.com/north-america/usa/wisconsin/articles/this-wisconsin-town-is-the-troll-capital-of-the-world/

Met Reverend Jen at the Tenement Museum years ago. Highly entertaining and intelligent person. Very sorry to read about all the sorrows she's had. Wishing her a most wonderful life. She's right about NYC. The first time I really explored it was in 1980, before Disney came in and ruined Times Square. Dangerous, interesting, always on the go. That was NY then. The Bowery was still the Bowery although changes started to come more quickly. Makes me sad. She was a very interesting part of the Lower East Side. I wish her the very best.

Rev Jen! My lovely! I haven't seen you in ages. We met at that crazy audition years and years and ions ago. She is an amazing and beautiful person and artist.

I love Reverend Jen's intrepid nature. I love that a troll museum exists and I love the the NYT has published an article about it. Ah hope and optimism, so nice to see you again!

I like many forms of art and many artists, and wish Reverend Jen well, as I do all artists. But I've always wondered how most of them survive. According to a report in ArtNetNews in June of this year, a poll showed: "The median income for respondents was just $20,000 to $30,000, with 60 percent making less than $30,000. Although the median household income in the US is $58,000, according to the 2016 census, only 19 percent of artists make over $50,000 a year." and: "Only 12 percent of survey participants count gallery sales among their top three sources of income. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, 29 percent also rely in part on family support or inheritance.) Nearly half of artists surveyed attribute less than 10 percent of their income to their art practice, as opposed to just 17 percent who make 75 to 100 percent of their money off their art." I know having another job or steady freelance work helps many, but it must be brutal. Good luck to all artists, especially in NYC.

I hope Reverend Jen and her museum can make Brooklyn her home. This is the way with over gentrification everywhere: NYC, San Francisco, London, Los Angeles. Quirky artists, quirky businesses, and people of modest means are the first to go, and then their old neighborhoods become wealthy and bland. Los Angeles used to be cheap. No more. I lived there, now I am in "unfashionable" Pomona, California, where my quirky art and lifestyle reside. I have found some nice bohemians out here as well. Off the beaten track is often the best anyways.

This is my NYC. The place where I lived between 1985-1998. A place of fantastic freaks and lovable weirdos. A place where artists could still eek out a living and finds a place to live (usually shared with another person or two or three). The real NYC that seems to have withered since 2001 and more so in even more recent years. Is there still room in NYC for the Reverend Jens of the world? I sure hope so.