GAWKERS, GEEZERS AND OUTSIDERS

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"The 80s: 326 Years of Hip," a group show of four octogenarian artists at the Clayton Gallery & Outlaw Museum on Manhattan's Lower East Side, has been extended "due to popular demand," gallery owner and co-curator Clayton Patterson says. To celebrate, the gallery will host a literary evening on Friday. Readings from the writings of Beat memoirist Herbert Huncke will feature actress/author Tatum O'Neal, performance artist Edgar Oliver, writer Jack Walls, video artist Anne Hanavan, screenwriter Jeremiah Newton, Warhol Superstar Taylor Mead, poet Ira Cohen, photographer Dash Snow, and plenty of others from the alternative underground. Be there, starting at 7 p.m. (161 Essex St.) (At right, "The Herbert Huncke Reader.")

The show's opening "was a smash," Patterson says. A jam-packed crowd of more than 100 underground and outsider luminaries showed up, including artist Andre Serrano, poet Gerard Malanga, photographer Ryan McGinley, writer Victor Bockris, writer Larry "Ratso" Sloman, publishers and writers Foxy Kidd and Romy Ashby, and performance artists Edgar Oliver, Penny Arcade and Karen Finley.

Oh yeah, mustn't forget: The octogenarian artists whose works are being exhibited in the show are Mary Beach, Boris Lurie, Taylor Mead and Huncke, who died at 81 in 1996. Have a look at this.