Agosto Machado, 19?? – 2026

Downtown artist, actor and archivist Agosto Machado died on March 21. He was thought to be in his 80s, but as he said, “a lady never tells.” The Chinese-Spanish-Filipino-American orphan landed in the East Village in the late 1950s, and became a fixture of the artsy-fartsy downtown scene, befriending such pioneer as Candy Darling, Marsha P. Johnson (which whom Machado claimed to be with at Stonewall), Ethyl Eichelberger, Holly Woodlawn, Jack Smith, “and a number of friends who were at the Play-House of the Ridiculous.” He performed in Vain Victory (“People were so welcoming. I couldn’t understand why, because I don’t sing, dance, or act. The other queens were too busy to rehearse, and I was reliable.”), and in various thrown-together Off-Off Broadway shows. His apartment was an archive of that era, and he displayed his art at various venues (including MoMA). Machado also worked as a home-health aid during the worst of the AIDS crisis. He told interviewer Nadja Spiegelman that he particularly missed “The Silver Dollar. The Silver Dollar restaurant was on the corner of Washington and Christopher . . . The juxtaposition of the street queens, the homeless people, the people who wanted drugs—it was a clearinghouse. Working at the restaurant were these Greek immigrants, most of them from small villages in Greece. Now they lived in New York, and they were probably thinking, ‘This is America? It’s not like in the movies!’”