Transsexual punk rocker Jayne (formerly Wayne) County has, over the span of more than 30 years, worked as a singer, actress, stripper, journalist and prostitute. A pioneer of glam and glitter rock, Wayne straddles the worlds of gay and punk subcultures. She was called “sissy boy” growing up in the backwoods town of Dallas, Ga., and after arriving penniless in NYC, rioted at Stonewall, grooved at Woodstock, roomed with Candy Darling and Jackie Curtis (who tutored her in the art of extravagant and absurdist cross-dressing). Wayne also DJed at Max’s Kansas City and performed there in a glitter rock band in 1972. A rock ’n’ roll eccentric, her raunchy shows relied on her theater of the absurd training, featuring portable toilets and prosthetic devices. David Bowie, Sid Vicious, Johnny Rotten, Debbie Harry and Sting were all friends and enemies. In 1977, County left New York to return to London and formed the popular Wayne County & the Electric Chairs but returned to the U.S. in 1979—when Wayne became Jayne. After resuming her musical career in NYC, she recently returned to Georgia. Man enough to be a woman, Jayne never cut off her natural attributes—though she takes hormones.

The countertenor landed on planet Earth ever-so-briefly from a far-off galaxy, though he grew up in the German Alps, with birth-name Klaus Sperber. When his spaceship landed in NYC during the mid-1970s, we marveled at his elfin looks, his white Kabuki-painted face, his thunderbolt hair. But it was his superhuman voice—ranging from operatic soprano to Prussian general, baroque theatrical performances worthy of La Scala—that truly amazed. Nomi was one of a kind, but what kind, we’re not sure. Wearing black lipstick and nail polish before it was fashionable, he liked to say, “I think a man without makeup is like a cake without icing.” His death in 1983 from AIDS sealed his fate as a cult figure and the 2004 documentary, The Nomi Song, cemented his reputation as a New York eccentric. Despite his bizarre appearance, he was down-to-earth, naive but naughty, an oddball optimist. Man or Martian, new wave or opera? Nomi held out his hand, ET-like, and waved good-bye.

Originally from California, the artist and musician has been a fixture in the East Village for years and is best known for her group, The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black. The frank sexual nature of Pfhaler’s performances—TVHKB women are naked, brightly painted, have their teeth blacked out and wear two-foot high fright wigs—is cracked enough to freak out most everyone who comes across their path.

The wild pre-punk performer, poet, playwright and Andy Warhol Superstar never tried to be a woman. “Jackie Curtis is not a drag queen. Jackie is an artist,” Warhol said. This gender-bending cross-dressing performer with off-stage antics way wilder than those on-stage was built like a linebacker at 6-foot-2-inches. Occasionally posing as a macho James Dean, her trademark look was frizzed-out red hair, wigs sprayed with Raid, sequins around the eyes, a noticeable stubble, shredded gowns and stockings. Trash, glam and glitter—Curtis invented it. Born John Holder Jr., he was raised on the LES by his bar-owning grandma Slugger Annie. Out of the Warhol Factory “trannie” trio—which included Candy Darling and Holly Woodlawn—Curtis was the brains and appeared in Women in Revolt and later in Flesh with Darling and Joe Dallesandro. But she spent more time in the theater, acting and writing plays like Femme Fatale and Vain Victory. Curtis swapped ciggies for blow jobs with firemen, “rearranged” (trashed) friends’ apartments, shot amphetamine and heroin (detailed in Superstar in a Housedress). After dying in 1985 from a heroin overdose at age 38, a friend found Curtis’ note: “You are not truly a Warhol Superstar unless you are dead.”

Hattie Hathaway (aka Brian Butterick) is a founder of Wigstock, began the Pyramid Club during the 1980s and co-founded the fun and outrageous Jackie 60 party frequented by hos, drag queens, fashionistas and artists of all stripes at Mother. She began by performing in the post-punk band, 3 Teens Kill 4, in 1980, then performed and produced acts at La MaMa and P.S. 122. A former roadie, Hathaway helped establish Dee-Lite, RuPaul, Dean Johnson and The Red Hot Chili Peppers. At 6-foot-4-inches, she knew she couldn’t pass as a woman, so she had to be funny. But creativity is tougher in the New York of today: “I’ve been fortunate I’ve had a really low rent for the past 26 years. I live in Hudson Square: it used to be No-Beca, not Tribeca.” Butterick currently runs the lively 2,200-square-foot Rapture Café and Bookshop on Avenue A, featuring performance art and readings.

Who would have thought a blind musician, roaming the streets of NYC garbed in a Viking get-up—replete with horned hat—would turn out to be a musical genius, the king of contrapuntal composition? He was a poet who knew it, a music philosopher well above six-feet-tall, inhabiting W. 54th and 6th Avenue day and night. Moondog (aka Louis T. Hardin) claimed he was from Sasnak (Kansas in reverse), a mostly self-taught composer who crafted chord structures by ear and became one of the legends of the streets of New York, where he lived from the late 1940s until 1974. It was rumored musicians seeing Moondog playing in front of Carnegie Hall got him in to sit in on rehearsals. He left New York for Germany in 1974, where he recorded numerous albums until his death in 1999. He last visited NYC in 1989, when he conducted the Brooklyn Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra at the invitation of Philip Glass. He called himself “Moondog,” after a dog he had owned. “We used to howl at the moon,” he said. 

Is Alig a true freak or just a demented murderer? Plenty of people have their own opinions about the party promoter and ringleader of the ’90s Club Kids scene. The fact is he had the personality and magnetism to draw thousands to the city, all wanting to partake of his wild lifestyle. Alig made Peter Gatien’s Limelight the epicenter of wild energy with his themed parties filled with hedonistic displays of drugs and nudity that rivaled tales of ’70s-era Studio 54. But it’s because of his ability to wrangle drugged-out kiddies to mob trains and fast-food joints for spontaneous parties that he can be credited with a more subversive streak. Yes, it ended up with him murdering “Angel” Melendez, his drug dealer (Alig still resides in Attica Correctional Facility because of it), but there’s no denying that Michael’s energy crafted an entirely new lifestyle for many.

A penny arcade is a coin-operated device for entertainment, but Penny Arcade the woman is also a bitch, dyke, fag hag and whore—at least according to one of her signature pieces. She’s a broad who doesn’t give a shit about offending, a funny talented actress, a sexy street fighter combating sexual repression, censorship, small minds, the vacuity of the “Amerikan” lifestyle and New York’s current state of gentrification. Arcade (née Susana Carmen Ventura, she named herself Penny Arcade coming down from an acid trip) ran off to the LES in the late 1960s when she was 16. At 17, she landed a role in director Jackie Curtis’ play, Femme Fatal, at John Vaccaro’s Playhouse of the Ridiculous. She later collaborated with Quentin Crisp, Jack Smith and Charles Ludlam in various productions. Her 2002 New York Values was an “autopsy” on the death of bohemian NYC during the Giuliani years. Diagnosed with the hepatitis C virus in 2003, she’s become an unofficial spokeswoman for sufferers of a disease that often strikes people living on the margins. She’s co-founded the Lower East Side Biography Project, a video production and oral history workshop preserving the stories of Lower Manhattan artists and activists. As for her being a “freak” of New York, she says, “I just assumed if I got better and did more work, eventually the mainstream would recognize me. Instead, I’ve become a legend, a mythic iconic figure that still hasn’t been absorbed by the mainstream.”

New York is the land of fairies—but also elves. And lots of trolls, too. Patron Saint of the Uncool, ordained by the Universal Church, Reverend Jen Miller is curator of a Troll Museum displaying 400 wooly-haired imps in her sixth-floor walk-up on Orchard Street. Suggested admission: $3,000—but most give 50 cents. She’s an adorable sex symbol of the insane. Elfess, poetess, preacheress, painter, prophet, performer, 17-year-old Jennmoved from Maryland to the land of New York in 1990, “where I could talk to puppets.” In 1995 she began the Anti-slam open mic (now Wednesday nights at Mo Pitkin’s). On her weekly public access TV show, “The Adventures of Electra Elf & Fluffer,” she and her Chihuahua play superheroes taking down senators, sleazy frat boys, satanic cults, landlords, zombie-tourists and other miserable malcontents.

The performance artist/musician/actor is one of the greatest current proponents of a grassroots call-to-arms to create a counterculture in the city. He does it through pansexual displays of glitter and glam, strumming a ukulele and singing smart, political lyrics. Last year, Taylor Mac’s Red Tide Blooming, which critiques the homogenization of Coney Island (specifically the Mermaid Parade) and New York and the U.S. as a whole, was produced at P.S. 122. He’s mesmerizing to watch and is one of the best performers (and freaks) the city has to offer.

Sometimes hailed as the father of performance art, Jack Smith was a filmmaker, photographer and iconoclast who created a world—what he called “Baroque art”—that inspired many and continues to feed counter-cultural artists. Warhol stole from him, and Fellini was inspired by his best-known and only finished film, Flaming Creatures. He was a non-conformist, intense and difficult (he and Jonas Mekas of Anthology Film Archives had a nasty feud) and, although he influenced numerous musicians, artists and filmmakers, he died from AIDS in 1989 in poverty and relatively unknown by the mainstream.

With Mary Jordan’s recent documentary, Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis, and a planned book, Jack Smith: The Visual Biography, it may finally be time for Smith’s legacy to be better understood—or at least appreciated.