Flaming Pablum

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Click over to Jeremiah Moss' Vanishing New York for the full story.

"Downtown is Dead"

The wife took me out for my birthday on Tuesday night, and we found ourselves having some late night drinks at one of our favorite remaining local watering holes. As we bellied up to the bar, we started chatting with a mountainous security guy from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn sitting to our left. At some point in the proceedings, a lanky, bespectacled gent with lobe-stretching earrings and arms covered by sleeves of ornate tattoos walked by. Our new security friend looked up then looked back over to me, chuckling "Anything goes in `dis neighborhood, am I right?" I smiled and returned to my beer.

As much as I'd have loved to agree with the guy, I just couldn't. The notion of "`dis neighborhood" being any different from the rest of Manhattan in this day and age is hopelessly antiquated. Sure, there was certainly a time when "downtown" meant something specific here. The Village, the East Village, Soho, Chinatown, TriBeCa, Chelsea, etc. – all these neighborhoods had their own signature flavors and archetypes. But in 2009, Manhattan has arguably become fairly homogenous from tip to tip. The Soho of my youth – a once-wild bohemian frontier that had art literally scribbled all over it -- is now basically an outdoor shopping mall of insanely pricey boutiques. In the East Village, most of the bars the original punks drank in are now all frozen yogurt emporiums. All around downtown, some of the old, fabled dance floors and bandstands where the music used to play – places like The Mudd Club and Danceteria -- are now more exclusive than ever; they're now the private living rooms of expensive condos. You're just as likely to find mohawks in midtown as you are on St. Marks Place. There are now just as many banks, Starbucks, L'Occitaines and Duane Reades south of 14th street as there are north of 59th. There are still drunks on the Bowery, only now they're loudly stumbling out of posh hotel lobbies after too many Cosmos. "Downtown," or at least as it was formerly known, is dead. Oh, and as a nice little coda to my anecdote at the top, the gent with the heavily inked arms turned out to be the executive chef of the establishment we were drinking in.

Anyway, all of this brings me to "Downtown Calling," a new documentary that's currently making the festival rounds. I first found out about it via Tim B's excellent Stupefaction blog. There have been similarly inclined films before (notably the flawed "Kill Your Idols" and the surprisingly great VH1 two-part doc, "NY77"), and my hopes always swell when I hear about them. The time period this new film seeks to encompass stretches from 1977 to 1985, a rather sizable chunk (although I wish they'd extend it into the late 80's, an equally fertile spell, to my mind). Given the sprawling amount of cultural activity in New York City at the time (from punk to disco to hip hop to no wave to hardcore and beyond, etc. – to say nothing of similar booms in art, theater and fashion), I'm very curious to see how they'll put it all off , although truthfully I'm a bit skeptical , especially given the sheer amount of footage in the trailer culled from the video of "This Is Radio Clash."

As much as I'm slavishly guilty of same, I'm also wary of the overarching strain of rose-tinted nostalgia. For all its myriad drawbacks, at least "Kill Your Idols" strove to assert that there was an equally vibrant contemporary music scene (however tenuous its link to the No Wave era). I'm hoping this film manages to strike the right balance. Check out their official website by clicking right here.

Don't Eat That

Spotted this via EV Grieve, and it predictably made my blood boil. I'm not that familiar with the work of food critic Sam Sifton, but his frothy-mouthed handjob review of Daniel Boulud's lamentably-named eatery, DBGB has just enough lame and lazy allusions to vintage punk rock to make me want to pry out his eyeballs with a butter knife. Maybe the food is indeed sublime at this place, but I'd sooner eat out of a toilet bowl.

42

I turn 42 years old today. Ummm … yay? As such, herewith my responses to this fairly uninspired stupid birthday survey.

When is your birthday? Today

Where will you be? Umm.. where I am now. At work & home in NYC.

Do you like birthdays? I'm not wild about the number of this particular one, but sure.

Do you have a birthday party? The wife threw me a big one when I turned 40. Beyond that I'd rather keep it relatively low-key

Who goes? Ummm. I do?

What do you do? The wife is taking me out for some surprise evening.

Do you think anyone actually takes 21 shots on their 21st birthday? Not sure, but I rang in my 21st year at a tiny punk rock club in Columbus, Ohio called Stache's. fIREHOSE were playing. I had to drink several "Prairie Fires" (shots of tequila & tobacco sauce) and Mike Watt drew the Blue Oyster Cult logo on my arm with a black sharpie. Good Times.

How many birthday spankings will you get on your birthday? None, if I have anything to say about it.

Would you describe your home as a "zoo"? What an odd question. But with two little kids in the house, it can be zoo-esque, yes.

What the best gift you've ever gotten? Well, I don't want to play favorites. Suffice to say, I've been given some very lovely, fun stuff over the years. I'm very lucky.

What do you want most for your next birthday? A staff position with amazing benefits.

What do you want from friends? I'm not the sort to make those sorts of demands of people.

What do you want from siblings? See previous answer.

How many birthdays in the future do you think you'll have? Hopefully quite a few.

How many languages can you sing the birthday song in? Two (English & French)

What's the earliest birthday you remember? I want to say I remember my the birthday wherein I turned a year old, but that's probably just a projection after seeing the photographs as a child.

What day of the week was your FIRST birthday? I was born on a Friday the 13th (which, of course, explains a few things).

How much did you weigh? Haven't the slightest clue.

Who was there with you? Well, I'm reasonably sure my mother was there.

When you blow out your next candles … what will you wish for? Ask me a year from now.

Roasted!

Evidently, the NYPD has an as-yet-unconfirmed-but-still-quite-amusing new nickname for Williamsburg hipsters.

Stuff You Might Have Missed

Here are a few choice items that crossed my transom today:

The Daily Beast weighs in on why Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize is only going to be a headache for him.

Tired of having to hop-scotch around dog poop? I know I sure am, and someone on Mott Street is also. Watch your backs, inconsiderate dog people!

Speaking of inconsiderate, evidently one of those physicists at the CERN lab in Switzerland (y'know, the place where they built that supercollider that's bound to create a black hole and destroy the earth – see picture at top of post) has ties to al-Qaeda. Grrrrreat!

At this link, meanwhile, you can find helpful advice on how to talk to an unemployed person.

And if you're unemployed, why not buy a Slayer album?

Here, Ephemeral New York exhumes New Wave Hookers!

Did you know that Angelina Jolie used to be a crusty Sick Of It All fan in Tompkins Square Park? I didn't.

Speaking of Tompkins Square Park, I actually walked by the East Village's own Slum Goddess this week in Union Square (she's pretty hard to miss). I didn't accost her, though.

Good news: Glen E. Friedman reports than an authoritative Black Flag bio is on its way! Awesome!

Sad news: Punk Turns 30 remembers the late, great Jim Carroll.

Unkle Sleazy of Throbbing Gristle/Coil talks about some of his favorite music.

Paul, Art, Dave & Trent

Just another note to send you back over to The New York Nobody Sings to check out my latest entries on Simon & Garfunkel (pictured at left circa 1968, during a jaunty stroll through Washington Square Park) and the ferociously rockin' and decidedly Manhattan-centric video for "I'm Afraid of Americans" by David Bowie & Trent Reznor. In fact, I like that clip so much, I'm going to put it here too. And as I mentioned on a recent Facebook update, given the reception President Obama's been getting from certain vocal circles in this nation of late, I'm pretty much afraid of Americans too. Crank it.

Happy Birthday, John Lennon

Jane's Constriction

Last call for alcohol over at the Jane Hotel. Gawker's now reporting that the ballroom's been closed in compliance with licensing laws after numerous violations. Maybe that means that Jane Street pooches no longer have to drain their bladders on the former Titanic-survivor-refuge/hardcore punk hotbed (hence vintage flyer at left). That's good news for the Jane Street residents, of course (an elite coterie of folks already blessed by being affluent enough to live in such an enviable neck of the woods), but will this action set off a chain-reaction? Should other clubs watch their backs?

A Birthday

Today is my dad's birthday. As far as I know, my dad doesn't regularly follow my weblog -- let alone know that it exists -- but I'm not entirely sure. Regardless, he's having a crappy time of it these days, so I thought I'd devote a quick post in tribute to the poor guy on his special day. My dad and I went through an unfortunate patch a number of years ago which resulted in us not speaking to each other for a great while. I'm happy to say we've moved beyond that. In any case, herewith a tune by one of his old favorite bands. I know that he likes this, being that I shamelessly ripped his copy of Creedence Gold off of him sometime back in the 1980s. Anyway, happy birthday, Dad. Onward & upward.