When America met Leo Fitzpatrick in the 1995 cult classic Kids, he was playing the adolescent prince of downtown, swinging his shoulders across the Lower East Side in oversized clothes and yelling taunting curses through the streets. Today, at 36, the actor who was discovered when photographer and director Larry Clark saw him skateboarding in Washington Square Park — he was the loudest, angriest kid Clark had ever seen — still identifies as a sort of misfit. As a co-owner of the teeny Lower East Side gallery Home Alone 2 with the artist Nate Lowman, he is trying to create a DIY antidote to what he sees as the snooty attitude dominating the New York art scene.

Two decades after a low-budget film turned Washington Square skaters into international celebrities, the kids from "Kids" struggle with lost lives, distant friendships, and the fine art of growing up.

Manhattan Diary about Chloe Sevigny, 19, who is a downtown trendsetter of the moment. She was in a Sonic Youth video, recently in Details, in a series of photographs by Larry Clark, who has just cast her in his new movie "Kids". Her first break came at 17, when she was picked for a Sassy shoot, and was asked to be a summer intern there. Around that time, she posed for a fashion spread in Paper. A stylist, Gabriel Feliciano, said, "People want to project their desire on one girl. She's smart enough to hold back, and that allows us all to project whatever we want to. I could go on and on about Chloe, but actually I know very little about her."