Flaming Pablum

Suicide in SoHo: Redux

I posted about Suicide not too long back, but a gentleman on the Facebook No Wave page named Dan H. just posted the ad below and that sparked my curiosity.

Dating back to 1970 (how’s THAT for proto?), Suicide were already calling themselves Punk. Apparently, they played a gig at an art gallery named OK Harris on West Broadway.

The book “The Downtown Pop Underground” had this to say about it:

One of Suicide’s earliest shows was in 1970 at OK Harris, one of the first galleries to open in SoHo. It was owned by Ivan Karp, an art dealer who played an early role in promoting Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Robert Rauschenberg. “I told him Suicide should play at his gallery,” Vega said, “and to our surprise he said yes, and they printed up postcards and everything saying Punk Music by Suicide. It was a pretty intense show, but we got invited back, even though we freaked everyone out.” The OK Harris show flyer contained the first use of the word “punk” by a band, one of the many ways in which Suicide was truly cutting edge. “I remember seeing Alan Vega around the scene very early on,” said Chris Stein. “Suicide was so groundbreaking, it’s hard to convey how far ahead they were in relation to what was going on at the time.” Debbie Harry added, “As a performer, Alan was sometimes a baffling struggle of danger, drama, pathos, and comedy. He held nothing back from us, and the interaction with audience hecklers was fundamental.” Not only was their music radically different from the New York Dolls, so was their look. “We were street guys, we took what we could get, sometimes from the garbage,” Vega said. “I remember Marty [Rev] went through the trash and other thrift store or Salvation Army type stuff, mainly out of necessity. We didn’t have any money, so what became the punk look was born out of necessity. I cut holes in socks so that my fingers went through and I stretched the socks up to my elbows and had a cutoff pink jacket. That was really something, man! Basically, I just wore what I could afford. I’m not sure really what the fuck I was thinking.” From Chapter 27 of "The Downtown Pop Underground." 

OK Harris was there well into the new millennium, only closing in 2014. Today, the space that had been OK Harris is now a Japanese high-end bakery called Harbs. 

Around the same era, Suicide also played at a venue quite nearby called Blow Your Nose over on Greene Street, which I talked about here. They also evidently played OK Harris again, two years later.

Today, it's very hard to imagine this strip of West Broadway -- just south of Houston Street -- to have played host to anything so radical or even interesting, but these were obviously very different times. 

Here's another taste ... of Suicide. 

Are You Frustrated, Too?

“Have a Shitty Day”: Black Flag in Houston `85

The pic above was shared by my friend and former SPIN colleague, photographer Pat Blashill, (who I interviewed here back in 2015). This is not his photo but rather one snapped by one Ben DeSoto. I’m sharing it here, as it perfectly aligns with my fleeting experience of seeing latter-era Black Flag in 1986 (as discussed here and here). Here’s what Pat had to say about it…

Black Flag, International Club, Houston, 1985, by Ben DeSoto. A great picture of a young and fresh-faced crowd trying to figure out some late period Flag. This is my favorite kind of punk photo: the crowd is even more entertaining than the performer.

I love the looks of utter puzzlement in the faces of the crowd, who are clearly grappling with the realization that the band they were probably expecting is no longer the band they are bearing witness to. As I said back on one of those old posts…

Giving sway to their penchant for lengthy, free-jazz-inspired jams (as opposed to the taut, splenetic sprints on their early recordings), Black Flag was evolving into something else entirely, and not everyone was necessarily onboard. Their sound had become defiantly sludgy and turgid, defying the speedy mores of the hardcore community. When they felt like stepping on the gas, they could still whip a crowd up into a frenzy, but Black Flag were no one’s performing monkeys.

I also really love the kid directly in front of Henry whose t-shirt reads, simply: “HAVE A SHITTY DAY!”

Big City Shenanigans in 1956

Hot on the heels of those silent clips from the `70s, last week, I stumbled upon this home movie that was only posted a few days ago. Uploaded by one Sandra Otto, this is a charming little slice of one family’s (I’m making assumptions, of course) vacation to Manhattan in the bygone era of 1956.

After an obligatory shot of Manhattan taken from the bow of a ship, the action starts on the Upper West Side, with a jovial visit, by one couple, to fabled Fair Way supermarket on Broadway, after which they adjourn to the Hotel Kimberly in Midtown. Suddenly, it’s back to the Upper West Side, specifically Verdi Square (you can see the marquee of the Beacon Theatre in the background). Verdi Square, of course, would later morph into the not quite as salubrious north end of “Needle Park” in the early-to-mid `70s, thus coined for its concentration of heroin users and immortalized in the 1971 film, “Panic in Needle Park.” But, back in `56, it’s still all smiles and stylish hats. Then, it’s back to midtown for visits to 42nd and Fifth Avenue (you can just see one of the New York Public Library’s lions) before a trip to Bryant Park one block to the west, and then the inevitable pilgrimage to Times Square.

After a quick spot to since-vanished Hotel Wellington on Seventh Avenue at 55th Street, we’re off to the southernmost end of Central Park and then an aquatic adventure in the Boat Pond across from Bethesda Terrace.

From there, it’s a fleeting tip back to the Upper West Side, a stop at the United Nations and then a bird’s-eye view from atop a building around Sutton Place.

While there isn’t anything particularly revelatory or surprising about this charming video, it’s still an interesting contrast to view these familiar locations through the prism of 2023, a bizarre 67 years since this footage was first captured. The city preserved here looks uncharacteristically clean and safe, like a grainier version of a Hitchcock film. One assumes all the principal players in this silent drama have all passed away, but I might be mistaken.

Enjoy…

Downtown in The Silent Seventies

Here is another couple of these strange artefacts from YouTube, featuring archival street scenes of a since-vanished New York City.

The first one was captured at an indeterminate point in the 1970’s, and shot primarily in downtown Manhattan. While it’s simple to make out easily-indentified locations like Astor Place, Tompkins Square Park and St. Marks Place, the whole piece feels entirely removed from the incarnations of those places here in 2023. Even the faces of those passing by the camera look somewhat strange. Where are these individuals today? 

The whole effect is almost eerie. Here’s the blurb that goes with it:

n the 1970s, New York City underwent profound social and cultural transformations. It was a haven for artists, musicians, and creatives amid economic challenges. Neighborhoods like Greenwich Village and SoHo buzzed with artistic and cultural movements, while Studio 54 epitomized the exuberant nightlife. Yet, the city grappled with rising crime and urban decay, reflecting a complex social reality. Immigration contributed to a mosaic of ethnic communities, enriching the city with unique cultural and culinary experiences. The decade witnessed racial tensions and political changes, but the resilience and creativity of New Yorkers continued to shape the city's identity, leaving a lasting mark on its history.

The second clip is also silent, but shot on Super-8 film on, evidently, a Monday in the late summer of 1978. This filmmaker is a gent named Bud Tristano, who has a thing or two to say about it, specifically its depiction of Ray’s Pizza…

A word about "The Famous Rays" pizza place, on the corner of 6th Avenue and 11th Street. This was not the first place to use the name "Ray", and definitely not the last. So many pizzerias sprang up all over the city - using the name "Ray" in various forms - that it became a joke. But this one was different, and not associated with any other. It was the classic New York Pizza, in the Italian-American sense, when almost any pizza joint in the NY/NJ area was amazing. (Think "old world" meets "new world".) It retained this quality up through the 80s, and even into the early 90s. Yes you can find a good quality pizza now, but it takes some searching. And the better ones are more gourmet oriented. This was a f'n PIZZA, in the meat-and-potatoes sense.

Enjoy

Pizza Protocol

This shot was taken, over the weekend, from the inside of Ben’s Pizza on West 3rd & MacDougal Streets. I'm not suggesting that the pizza at this iteration of Ben's (there's another one in SoHo on the corner of Spring and Thompson Streets) is particularly exemplary, but they've been in operation since the early `80s and more or less hold their own in terms of consistency.

You’ll notice that nowhere on Ben's stately bill of fare do the dubious terms “cheese slice” or “cheese pizza” appear. They offer PLAIN slices and REGULAR pies. There’s no need to qualify these items with the descriptor “cheese” because, as we all know, without cheese, it ceases to be a pizza.

That is all.

22 Years Later

Bye Bye, Miyabi?

Of all the vanished spots around Manhattan I’ve devoted myriad posts to, Bleecker Bob’s is probably in the top three, right behind CBGB and the old Cedar Tavern on University Place. This is somewhat ironic in that, while the shop in question was indeed a widely beloved landmark for music geeks of all stripes, the shopping experience at Bleecker Bob’s was frequently somewhat fraught, largely thanks to the titular proprietor’s infamously bad temper. The late Bob Plotnik, who left us in 2018 after complications from an earlier stroke, accrued a storied reputation for screaming at customers and staff alike, establishing an atmosphere of hair-triggered derision that made even browsing in the store often unrestful … or amusing, depending on your sensibility.

Regardless, as first invoked in this ancient post, when I first discovered the place in the early `80s, it became a regular spot for me for decades, even if that meant weathering a storm of spittle-flecked invective from dear old Bob. The sheer volume of vinyl I procured at the West Third Street iteration of Bob’s shop (for a while, he operated a smaller place on nearby MacDougal Street, just off West 8th) was pretty staggering.

In any case, I’ve unspooled countless yarns about Bleecker Bob’s over the years, and a simple Googling ought to bring up more of them than you’d probably care to read. Most of these were penned to document the slow, painful demise of the shop and the rumors of what business was going to replace it on that strip of West Third Street. First reports asserted it would become a — wait for it — Starbucks, but those turned out to be false. Then it was supposedly to be a frozen yogurt place, who even hung a “coming soon” sign in its window. That venture, too, failed to materialize, and it started to seem like the space would become just another dormant storefront.

Eventually, about a year and change after Bleecker Bob’s cleared out, the space became occupied by a Japanese restaurant called Miyabi. In 2015, a friend and I decided to go dine there, resulting in a post I titled “Bento Boxing at Bleecker Bob’s.” As I recall, while the meal was perfectly fine, it was in no way especially distinctive, although my projections may have been tainted by my associations with the address’ former tenant.

Much as with the aforementioned CBGB, while there was fleeting chatter about a new iteration of Bleecker Bob’s opening up somewhere, it unsurprisingly never happened. As I’m prone to laboriously point out, the demand for brick-&-mortar record stores here in the new millennium isn’t exactly robust, least of all for a comparatively niche concern like Bleecker Bob’s. While they indeed hung a Madonna poster in the window during their latter eras, not many people went to Bleecker Bob’s looking for chart-based pop bullshit. You went there for obscure proto-punk vinyl, rarified out-of-print editions, hardcore 7”s, hard-to-find imports, bootlegs and a wide array of badges, patches, t-shirts and posters designed to frighten, provoke and/or witheringly insult the mainstream, … which was precisely how we liked it.

That said, and again, much like CBGB, in its latter years, the shop started to gradually degrade. The stock was no longer quite so well looked after, there wasn’t a lot of turnover and the staff seemed less and less enthused about the prospects of their employment. I remember stopping in on the final day with every intention of buying something to show my support, and finding really nothing I was interested in.

That’s all ancient history, now. Bleecker Bob’s, the shop, closed up in 2013 and Bleecker Bob, the man, passed away in 2018. That was that.

Today, meanwhile, I stopped in for a slice in neighboring Ben’s Pizza on the corner of West Third and MacDougal. It’s not that the slices at Ben’s are anything to write home about (they remain pretty perfunctory, as pizza goes), but they've been holding court on that corner since before I can remember. As I was departing, I glanced up and noticed that Miyabi’s gate was down and that all its signage — both on a hanging sign and above it’s window — had all been spray-painted over.

I found no mention of its closure online, but could Miyabi also have left the building?

Squeezing Furs

I've spoken about this before, but one would be exceptionally hard-pressed to make a convincing argument that Squeeze were ever a proper "Punk Rock" band (I believe I once described here as "more JG Melon's than CBGB's"), but I do vividly remember first hearing this song on WPLJ circa 1980 and being legitimately struck by how entirely *different* they sounded, squeezed -- pardon the pun -- incongruously between shaggy warhorses like Bad Company and ELO. They may have lacked the adrenalized sprint and weapons-grade barre chords of their punkier peers, but those taut, chugging guitars and futuristic synths made them sound positively revolutionary.

They're opening for the Psychedelic Furs tonight (sort of a strange double-bill) at Radio City, and my son and I are going. To whet my appetite, I found this on YouTube, and it's kind of an amazing clip. 

I've also written about my love for the Furs here before, notably here, so I won't bother re-hashing that, but here they are from roughly the same era....

“Halfway Between 'Casablanca' and The Titanic”: Back to The Gramercy Park Hotel

I was somewhat surprised, last week, to read on a website called 6 Sqare Feet (about NYC real estate, one presumes) that the Gramercy Park Hotel is reopening. Now, obviously, after Ian Schrager’s re-imagined iteration of the hotel closed in the height of the pandemic, any sign of recovery from those dark days should be welcomed. The part I found slightly dispiriting, however, was this line about the building’s new developer, Tyler Morse.

Morse intends to transform the hotel into one of the city’s most luxurious hotels.

Yeah, `cos that’s JUST what New York City needs, isn’t it? ::: sigh:::

Before Ian Schrager got his mitts on it back in 2003, the Gramercy Park Hotel had already acquired a colorful reputation. Lodging itself firmly in the psyche of rock fans everywhere following a storied, two-week residency by David Bowie, the Gramercy Park Hotel (cheekily re-dubbed “the Glamercy” in homage to Bowie) became the hotel of choice for all stripes of visiting bands. Bands like The Clash, U2, The Psychedelic Furs, Siouxsie & the Banshees and, I’m dead sure, many, many more all darkened the doors of the hotel. Alan Vega of Suicide (recently invoked here) actually lived full-time at the Gramercy Park Hotel for many moons. It wasn’t posh or fancy, but it was affordable and situated right at the mouth of Downtown Manhattan, walking distance from landmarks like Max’s Kansas City, Irving Plaza, The Palladium and other likely haunts.

I actually ducked into the old Gramercy Park Hotel a couple of times. A friend of mine from college booked a room there in the early `90s, which allowed me to actually go upstairs and check out the rooms, although I didn’t run into any musical luminaries, at the time. In the late `90s, whenever my then-future-in-laws came to town, they liked to enjoy a few bevvies at the bar, so I logged some hours there, as well. Again, despite my best efforts, I failed to spot any favorite musicians amidst the guests. Oh well.

But when Schrager got it in 2003, all that changed. He completely modernized the lobby, ripping out the wall-to-wall red carpeting and dismantling the signature wood-paneled walls, and giving it a modern, bespoke “re-boot,” with a pricey exclusivity to match. Apart from the address, all resemblance to its earlier incarnation was gone. I mean, sure, it was nice (I must confess to visiting both its bar and its roof deck, during this era), but you’d never have known the place once had leather-clad members of the Stranglers, the Buzzcocks and Iron Maiden running around its halls.

While it’s not a periodical I’m regularly prone to lionizing, Rolling Stone did publish a great rumination on the old version of the hotel, lovingly penned by the son of its original proprietor. Check that out here but remember -- Rolling Stone is now irritatingly paywalled, so prepare to be annoyed.

As for what comes next on that fabled corner, I can only hope that it’s undertaken with a reverence for the establishment’s history. We shall see.

Catch a fleeting glimpse of the old Gramercy Park Hotel (and other notable Downtown spots) here….