Flaming Pablum

Back to University Place: Fancy a Pint at Smith's?

The shot above was taken by one Richard Greene in about 1974. It was snapped on my own strip, University Place, just above East 13th Street. Were you to stand in this same spot today, you would essentially be standing in front of the newly-truncated Basics Plus hardware store. The southeast corner, until recently a juice bar, is currently occupied by a new deli.

In 1974, however, that corner was evidently held by Smith's Bar. Personally speaking, I don't remember a Smith's Bar on that particular corner, but I would have been very young, at the time. When I first moved into the neighborhood in the `90s, that space was occupied by a noodle restaurant. As described in this post from 2012, that venture suffered a fire and was then taken over by a Vietnamese restaurant. After that it became a sprawling, two-level hardware store, Basics Plus, with its own corner juice bar. That closed after several years, and the space was divided up again. A new, smaller and markedly less fabulous Basics Plus opened, and that afore-cited new deli took the corner space. 

In 2022, there aren't nearly as many bars along University Place as there used to be. Obviously, the Cedar Tavern is long gone. Jazz-bar Bradley's morphed into the douchey Reservoir which, despite rumors, never left. Our local, the Knickerbocker, is still going, but has kind of lost a bit of its luster, if I'm being honest. I would love to have Smith's Bar back, but I'm not holding my breath. That establishment clearly belongs to another era. 

On that post from 2012, a reader named Mykola shared thoughts about the bar...

On that corner in the late 1960s was Smith's bar, which used to be all over the city. A great place that served you beer or booze but also had a kitchen making corned beef sandwiches, knishes etc. I used to go there for lunch very often when I worked at Grove Press on 11th Street and University. Barney Rosset, the owner of Grove, who had recently passed away, always used to pop in for a pick-me-up drink. Ah, those were the days...

Sounds pretty great, right? Oh well. 

Funnily enough, my next-door neighbor actually gave me a Smith's Bar t-shirt (I have doubts about its legitimacy) several years ago. At that time, I only knew about the Smith's Bar on 8th Avenue in Hell's Kitchen. My friend Rob D. lived in that neighborhood, and we were always taken by its signature neon signage and its refreshingly unpretentious vibe. I have yet to find any other photos of this University Place iteration, but I'd be super curious to see more depictions of it. 

Run DMC's Fashion Update

Succumbing to Wet Leg

I am frequently heard to complain about how, evidently, all the good band names are taken – resulting in a veritable avalanche of indefensibly stupid band names like Dry Cleaning, Soccer Mommy, Mannequin Pussy, Car Seat Headrest, Laundry Day, Japanese Breakfast, etc. etc. My reaction to this has pretty much always been that if you can’t be bothered to think of a decent band name, you needn’t worry about me every giving a fuck about your music.

But, as has been well established elsewhere on this blog, I am a filthy hypocrite.

Back when the earth was young, I had a co-worker named Drew who shared a similar affinity for loud, obnoxious music. He was raving, at the time, about this band he liked called Pissed Jeans. As expressed above, I had zero interest, as I found their name to be idiotic and distasteful (and this coming from a guy who actively espouses bands like the Circle Jerks, the Butthole Surfers, the Revolting Cocks, etc.) In any case, Drew would not let up on his championing of Pissed Jeans, continually asserting that I was really missing out on a good thing. As if on cue, Pissed Jeans rolled into town and played at since-vanished music venue Cakeshop on Ludlow Street. Very begrudgingly, I went at Drew’s behest to check them out, churlishly expecting to be underwhelmed.

And, of course, they were fucking brilliant, as discussed here. Not only were they precisely a variant of slovenly, pugnacious rock that I happen to adore, once I saw perform and heard their music, their “stupid and distasteful” name made completely PERFECT sense. They SOUNDED exactly like the state of being wherein urinating in one’s own jeans is par for the course. Mind changed and summarily blown.

Cut to 2022 and suddenly there’s a hotly touted band making the rounds called Wet Leg. My immediate reaction is a disinterested “fuck you” in very much the same manner I wrote off Pissed Jeans. If “Wet Leg” is honestly the best thing they can come up with, why should I be arsed to listen to what is inevitably a puddle of anemic sonic piffle, right?

Once again, however, I stand corrected.

For relatively no good reason, I clicked “play” on the video below, captured at last week’s Glastonbury festival in merry olde England, and was quickly totally engaged. It was embedded in a roundup in Vulture. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but when they kick into that guitar riff at 01:12, I was completely onboard. The fact that there are two zealous guys in the audience dressed like lobsters had nothing to do with it, I assure you.

This is a more amped-up performance than captured on the studio version, but I’m still really digging it. It is my recent understanding that the band chose their admittedly dumb name to take the pressure off them -– which is pretty much the same reason why one of my favorite-ever bands, Echo & the Bunnymen, chose theirs. Once again, I am revealed to be prematurely closed-minded and a filthy hypocrite.

Sorry, Wet Leg … please forgive me.

Johnny in The City

Yeah, sorry, it’s another tenuously Sex Pistols-related post. Sort of. Deal with it.

I’ve posted a couple of entires about John Lydon’s tenure in New York City here before, but this video below caught my eye, as he gives some detail about his accommodations here prior to the release of the This is What You Want, This is What You Get album. In this interview from 1983, Lydon asserts that when in New York, he was living in a “huge loft with a stage” somewhere in a “commercial zone.” He then goes on to recount his experience of filming “The Order of Death” with Harvey Keitel (which I discussed back here).

While it’s inarguably true that John Lydon has since become something a laborious provocateur (wasn’t he always?) with a desperate penchant for contrarianism, I am still intrigued by the notion of where he might have been living. 

My first hunch is that the “huge loft” was somewhere in SoHo, which – back in 1983 – indeed was still something of a “commercial zone.” I’m sure the invoked Martin Atkins knows.

Anyway, weigh in, if you know…

Word on the Street

Suddenly, Summer

And just like that, … we’re into the summertime.

Just like last summer, the Flaming Pablum family is neck-deep in activity. My daughter graduated high school, a few weeks back, and my son Oliver finished up his sophomore year, shortly after that. As it happened, that was all going on in tandem with a string of high-pressure projects at work that I was recently moaning about. I managed to wrap those up, as well, although they’re to be followed in swift succession by another slew of challenging tasks. I shouldn’t complain about that, though. It’s all part of the gig.

In the last few days, we drove back up to Vermont to drop our boy back off at camp. He’s going to be a counselor’s assistant, this time around, so I’m no longer worried about him up there (as I was the first time around). He was very much looking forward to it. So long as his shipped trunk arrived (we never got confirmation of that), all should be well. We’ll go back and fetch him again in a little over three weeks.

Today, meanwhile, we’re again putting my daughter on a bus bound for her grandmother’s place out in Long Island. This will free up the apartment for me to have the second of too many colonoscopies. Regular, strong-stomached readers may remember the accounts of my colonoscopic debut last year, wherein my disarmingly blunt gastroenterologist breezily informed me that they’d “found a bunch of stuff up there” and needed to schedule another one “next year.” That’s happening tomorrow. We’ll see how that pans out … pardon the disquieting turn of phrase.

Beyond that, we’re sadly not going to log any time at the Lamb Cottage, this summer. You may remember some of my anecdotes about same, notably my dealings with some high-volume neighbors. While we do indeed love that place, we just couldn’t afford it this year. Instead, in July, after we’ve gotten Oliver back from camp, we’re jetting off to Greece for our first proper vacation in a very long time. Following that, we’ll then be hopping back over the pond to drop my daughter of at her chosen university in Scotland this August. I’m expecting that to be difficult for me, but we’ll see.

In between all of those procedures and maneuvers, both the wife and I will be working away. After two summers of lulling, pandemic-mandated limitation, this summer’s schedule does seem somewhat exhaustingly frenetic, but we’ll see how it goes.

I’m sure, along the way, I’ll be carving out time, here, to ruminate about this and that. Watch this space, as they say.

Cheers, and Happy Summer!

They Had The Flavor

Back ... Again ... to Flickr

I can’t remember when I first launched my Flickr page, but it certainly predated the era of Instagram.

I uploaded boxes and boxes of photographs, mostly from the `90s through the early 2000’s onto the site, nominally captioned them with threadbare detail and …that’s it. I never really did another upload. To peruse through them here in 2022, those pictures do seem to collectively capture a completely different city than the one that exists around us today. Or that’s how I feel about it, anyway.

Page through them and see ancient pics of since-razed landmarks, punk flyers, street art, snow storms, drinks in shitty bars, old friends, decrepit rock clubs, fleeting road trips, long-vanished record stores, former apartments and some very early shots of my kids when that chapter kicked in.

If you’re curious, check them out here.

Status Report

Hey all…. Sorry for the slowdown in regular service, here (believe it or not, in a perfect world, I would post something every day), but it’s been a Hell of a few weeks.

On the plus side, my daughter graduated from high school, earlier this week, which was a grand and significant milestone that was truly emotional and overwhelming. She heads to college (a university in Scotland -- more about that later) this fall, which will be an amazing opportunity and experience for her, but will be somewhat bittersweet and sobering for me. It seems like only yesterday I was picking her up from kindergarten.

On the work front, we’ve had multiple high-pressure projects in the works, each very demanding. Everyone in my department seems to be burnt out, at wit’s end and flying on fumes. Both the stakes and the tensions are high. I’ll have more time to devote to this blog once the dust settles.

In the interim, here’s a handy approximation of how I’m feeling about it all….

Says It All

Posted today in my news feed .... but the American Association of Retired Persons.