Flaming Pablum

Back to Fanelli's

I honestly can't remember the last time I set foot in Fanelli's. Actually, that's not true. The last time I set foot in there, I was summarily asked never to return (and I've since obliged said request). I was with a gaggle of friends there in the mid-1990s that turned into a slightly unwieldy group. As our numbers swelled, we asked for an extra chair in the front to facilitate a late arrival. Not only was said request denied, but the waitress basically told us we were blocking the front door and instructed us to fuck right off. Fair enough, although it's not like we were lighting firecrackers off and dropping our pants or anything. So, we left and went to Milady's instead.

Regardless, Fanelli's remains a Soho institution. It's become as storied a landmark as fellow downtown public houses as The Ear Inn to the West and McSorley's to the East. It makes cameos in Manhattan-centric film's like Amos Poe's "The Foreigner" and Phil Joanou's "State of Grace." It was picked to visually represent old downtown on a 1989 cover of New York Magazine. Even now, the place still exudes all the cool cache of a relaxed corner bar, despite the fact that its surrounding neighborhood has long-since transformed from a bohemian backwater into a roiling hotbed of commerce.

I found the above picture randomly on Flickr and completely adore it (despite my hurt feelings from being unceremoniously asked to leave the bar all those years back). Looking more like a snapshot of an idealized Paris, the above photo (taken in 1982 by one Dizzy Atmosphere) depicts Soho when it was still sleepily rough-around-the-edges. I love how the opposite corner's walls are covered in flyers and bills. Today, of course, that corner looks very different, being that it plays host to the noxiously exclusive Mercer Hotel. There's nothing sleepy about this neighborhood today.

I doubt I'll be returning to Fanelli's any time soon, although that has less to do with any grudge and more to do with the fact that, as a married father of two, my time spent in bars has decreased rather sizably. In fact, I usually stay as far as way from Soho as possible, being that it's basically now just a giant shopping mall (which I've lamented several times before). If ever I'm pining for the Soho of old, though, perhaps I'll just return to this picture.

School's Out

So, here's the deal. Gothamist runs a little item in a slightly flip tone riffing off a harrowing story in the New York Post about a pregnant woman getting assaulted just off Union Square by some students from the notorious Washington Irving High School on Irving Place. The comment board then lights up with predictably inflammatory remarks accusing the author of the Gothamist piece, John Del Signore, of being a sophomoric race-baiter and many other unpleasant things. While, yes, it's irresponsible to make sweeping generalizations, anyone who has ever walked by or even remotely near said high school during hours of operation (or, worse yet, right after the dismissal bell rings) can tell you that it's inarguably a wretched hive of scum and villainy (to borrow a line from Obi Wan Kenobi). The fact that Del Signore cited several other violent incidents associated with the school did little to dissuade the detractors. I've seen these students in action myself, and it's usually pretty jarring. So, yeah, while Del Signore could maybe have excised some of his more obviously provocative prose, let's please stop pretending that this high school doesn't have a well-earned reputation.

Goodbye, Rammellzee

Apart from this somewhat lengthy piece back in 2006, I don't write about hip hop here too often. And ever since leaving my perch at MTV News Online in 2007, I have even less reason to write about it. As I pointed out in that older entry, while I do like a lot of hip hop, it's just not a genre that speaks to me in the same way as certain others, even less so these days. For example, I just don't hear what's so exceptional about clowns like this Drake character that people are literally rioting about these days. Seriously, let's raise the bar, shall we? That said, I'm sure there's still some cool stuff going on underground. A colleague of mine recently sent me some tracks by a Omaha rapper named Meatl1p who sounds endearingly unhinged and adventurous.

In any case, there's a rumor going round the campfire (which I picked up by the ever-savvy Tim B.) that eccentric hip hop pioneer, Rammellzee just passed away. I haven't seen any official word on it as yet, but it's sad if so. While I'm not exceptionally versed in his doings, Rammellzee's iconic single with K-Rob, "Beat Bop," has always been a favorite. Infectious, relentless, surreal and hilarious, "Beat Bop" almost singularly encapsulates the adventurous, fuck-the-rules nature of early hip hop. Beyond the intricate wordplay, the track itself is both funky and eerie, retaining that dubby space in the mix that evokes ominous echoes at an inner city playground in the dead of night. By today's standards, it may sound antiquated and almost quaint, but when I was in high school, tracks like this, "White Lines" and pretty much the entirety of Run-DMC's eponymous debut (which played in seemingly never-ending rotation in my high school student commons) could completely stop you in your tracks with that now-rarified "what the hell is this?" quality. Hit play below and see if you agree.

And if it's true, rest in peace, Rammellzee.

Then & Now: Lafayette & East 4th Street

Because Jill and EV Grieve requested it, herewith a Then & Now post springing off this afore-mentioned photo. I'm being a perfectionist, but unfortunately, my shot's taken a little too far to the north by a couple of yards. Ideally, I'd have captured the northeast corner, but whatevs. Enjoy.

Lafayette & East 4th Street, 1912:

Lafayette & East 4th Street, 2010:

Shot Through The Art

I'm a wee bit late to the table on this one, but I was let off my leash suddenly on Monday night, so decided to take advantage of my newfound freedom by going to the movies (something I don't get to do very often).

A friend of Peg's came into town from England, so I waived my ticket and let Peggy take her to go see Shakespeare in the Park whilst I instead went to finally go check out "Exit Through The Gift Shop," the new documentary by Banksy. I hadn't read a single review of this prior to viewing, so please believe that I'm being entirely objective here. I loved it. I know Banksy and Shepard Fairey (another pivotal figure in the film) have their share of detractors, but ignore that haters and go see this movie. Even if you're not that fascinated by the world of street art, you really should check it out. It's truly an amazing and hilarious rags-to-riches story about life, art, family, obsession, fame and success. Find out more by clicking right here. The trailer is below. Enjoy.

Who Sunk the Punk?

Hot on the heels of my post yesterday that ruminated on how rock has largely left the East Village, I ended up crossing paths with two old NYC punk stalwarts this morning while running errands in the East Village. Roused from my Saturday morning slumber by my early-rising youngsters, I stepped out into the AM to try to chase down a new lamp for our front hall. Said task found me darkening the doors of the godawful K-Mart on Astor Place. Unsurprisingly, said megamart didn't have the lamp I was after (I'm looking for an evidently elusive "touch lamp"), so I swiveled on the soles of my cliched black Chuck Taylors and headed for the exit. Who did I almost run smack into but Jon Spencer of Pussy Galore/Boss Hog/Blues Explosion/Heavy Trash fame. It was an odd place to encounter the famously foul-mouthed noisenik (though I've actually run into him before), but I suppose each of us has fallen prey to the sickly allure of K-Mart's convenience at one point or another. Last year, you may remember, I ran into original punk architect Richard Hell there doing some last minute Christmas shopping. Funny old world.

An hour or two later, I found myself lugging our "change jar" to a bank on 3rd Avenue and 10th Street when I passed a diminutive, portly gent with a thinning quiff and black sunglasses. As I made it to the corner and was looking back, trying to place the strangely familiar figure's face, a beardy, aging hepcat on the corner noticed me noticing him and grinned knowingly. "That's right," he said, gesturing with his chin at the figure I'd just passed,"You got it. That's James Chance." Suffice to say, he doesn't look much like the svelte, bug-eyed No Waver pictured above anymore.

In any case, while searching for the afore-cited article in yesterday's piece, I came across a slew of other articles lamenting the disappearance of the punky East Village of old. It's a weepy punk nostalgist's field day!!!

"East Village dirge: Where have all the punk rockers gone?" (May 2009)

"New York Streets where the punks used to pogo" (Mar 2009)

"The Downtown Scene, When It Was Still Dirty" (January 2006)

Lastly, here's a clip of Jon Spencer before he became a dutiful K-Mart shopper.

When Downtown Still Rocked

Earlier this week, I posted a little entry about a show my friend Drew and I attended at the Cake Shop on Ludlow Street by a band called Pissed Jeans. During the course of same, as I noted in that post, there were at least three photographers present. Given the intimacy of the venue (we're talking SMALL), Drew and I wondered if our pictures would make it into any of the ensuing coverage of the show. A few days later, the video I posted appeared (shot from the same angle where we were standing, alas – we didn't appear). Shortly after that, Brooklyn Vegan (arguably the preeminent site for these sorts of things) ran their typical photo summation of the show. As awesome as their photos were (check'em out by clicking right here), again images of Drew and I sweatily rocking out to the plangent strains of Pissed Jeans failed to materialize. Our hopes of being immortalized like those hirsute heshers on the back cover of Kiss' Alive crumbled.

The whole episode reminded me of a similar incident almost exactly two decades ago. In June of 1990, I was bouncing between a gig as a copy clerk at LIFE Magazine (where I'd dutifully run around the office taking printed hard copies of stories to editors to read – a task that seems laughably primitive by today's standards) and writing and copy-editing for a tiny, independent music `zine. I was also contributing to a handful of other periodicals, writing about music. As such, I'd managed to weasel my way onto the regular guest lists of virtually every significant record label. And as New York City was still a thriving hotbed of live music at the time, my nights were regularly spent out at a variety of clubs and venues soaking it all in. Honestly, it didn't suck.

Anyway, one night in early June, my friend and former colleague from my days interning at SPIN, Brent, and I decided to go check out this band from Seattle called The Fluid at Ron Wood's East Village rock club, Woody's. Though situated right in the heart of the E.V. (I want to say it was on East 5th, just off of 2nd Avenue, but I might be mistaken), the interior of Woody's owed nothing to the surrounding neighborhood. Inside the dark venue were potted plants, zebra-striped couches and framed portraits of rock luminaries scribbled by Ron Wood himself. It was essentially an 80's hangover. In any case, The Fluid was an up-&-coming grunge band on SubPop that boasted a slightly more conventional, accessible sound than their peers in Soundgarden, Tad et al. True to the style of the times and their genre, the Fluid assumed the stage in a frenzy of hair, flannel, frayed denim and Doc Martens and played an energetic set to a receptive audience. Brent and I had a good time, then took off to consume beers somewhere else in the East Village.

A day or two later, a fellow former SPIN employee, Karen Schoemer wrote a piece for The New York Times titled "In Rocking East Village, The Beat Never Stops." The morning that the issue hit the stands, Brent rang me up and told me to check it out. There at the top of the article was a photograph of The Fluid rocking out at Woody's. More importantly to us, Brent and I were pictured in the crowd, immortalized in the smudgy ink of the New York Times.

While I'm sure I kept a copy of that article somewhere safe, I'll be damned where it's gotten to in the ensuing twenty years. I'd actually forgotten about it until the Pissed Jeans show the other night. So, this week, I hit the web to try and find it. Sure enough, the Times website has the article online, but it comes without the photo. I glanced at the bottom of the piece and learned that the picture in question was snapped by none other than storied NYC Punk shutterbug Ebet Roberts (better known for iconic photos like these). After fruitlessly scouring the web for the photo, I decided to fire off a note to Ms. Roberts herself, asking if she'd be interested in selling me a print of the shot. I have yet to hear back from her, but my hopes are high.

In the interim, you can read Karen's piece by clicking right here, although the East Village is, of course, a decidedly different scene today than it was then. And for a little extra context, here's a bit of The Fluid. If I ever get the photo, I'll post it.

As The Earth Vomits

Original Killing Joke drummer/co-founder Big Paul Ferguson once famously quipped that the ambition of the band was to capture the "sound of the earth vomiting." Well, over a pulse-quickening groove iced with the "bitter, biting twang" (as Youth describes it here) of Geordie Walker's guitar, Killing Joke returns to that task with all cylinders firing on "Kali Yuga," a new track on their just-released e.p., In Excelsis. Sounding more determined than they have in years, this all-original-members line-up of the band has released a clutch of tracks to whet the appetites for a full (and long-delayed) album later this year. The title of this song refers to the Hindu term for a dark age of strife, discord and quarrel that presages the apocalypse. Given that we currently have a broken oil drill in the Gulf of Mexico that is busily soiling the ocean and threatening to act as a veritable ipecac for the earth, if there ever was an anthem for this age, I think this is it. Killing Joke? Your mission has been accomplished.

Yesteryear's Downtown

By this stage of the proceedings, if you've spent any meaningful amount of time reading this weblog, you're invariably used to me waxing histrionic about some picture I've plucked off of someone's Flickr page. I'll routinely dole out some incredibly banal minutia about how a certain record store or live venue or dive bar or comic book shop or pizza parlor used to stand on the very corner of whatever street is depicted back in the 60s, 70s, 80's or 90s, and then I'll lapse into an embittered tirade about the jackbooted march of gentrification and how Dee Dee Ramone or Stiv Bators or Lux Interior or Johnny Thunders or (insert name of favorite deceased punk rocker here _________) wouldn't recognize it today if they came back, etc. etc. etc. It's becoming a bit of a Flaming Pablum standby.

But the photo I'm cherry picking today well pre-dates the arguably over-rhapsodized NYC era of my distant youth. No, the photo below captures the Lafayette Street of 1912. I don't know if they were calling that particular strip "Noho" back then, but I rather strenuously doubt it. This particular shot (1912: Lafayette Street, view N to E. 4th Street; Woman carries bundle of home-work [Lewis Hine]) was plucked from a truly amazing set of pictures on Flickr dubbed New York 1910's. The striking thing about this photo and many others like it in the set is how still very recognizable the locales remain. At first glance, for example, the below shot looks like the prototypical, sepia-toned photograph you spy hanging on a museum wall. But upon closer scrutiny, you can deduce that those horses & carriages are parked right in front what is today's Screaming Mimi's. Up the street on the left is the site of the old (by our standards) location of Tower Video. Across the way is the large warehouse that today plays host to Astor Wines. In the distance, you can spot the Wannamaker's building (today, the home of K-Mart & AOL). Give the set a perusal for more strangely familiar trips through the time machine.

It's a fitting reminder that these streets that some of us are so precious about for any number of reasons (some of them silly, some of them valid) were here long before us. And, God willing, they'll be here long after we're gone.

Heartache on Bond Street

My bike isn't a fancy one, or at least not anymore. It's a battered Trek 820, covered with a slick patina of dust and city grime and covered in weathered, peeling stickers that extol the merits of long-defunct punk bands. Its seat is as unwelcoming to the buttocks as an unrelenting granite headstone and swaddled with an oily, ripped bandana. It's suffered innumerable spills in its day and no longer exudes a sheen of glossy newness, which is just as I like it (although I really should get a new seat). All the same, I don't lock it out on the street. In fact, when you see me riding it, you'll notice I don't bring a lock with me. Why not? Well, because I'd never assume a lock would keep it safe on the streets of New York City. I ride it out, I ride it around, then I ride it home. It stays with me. I stay with it. Case closed.

Clearly, however, not everyone is as anal/neurotic/jaded/paranoid as I am. Witness this tragic tale of woe (courtesy of eagle-eyed EV Grieve), wherein the suddenly-former owner of a presumably gleaming chrome Bianchi Pista writes an earnest plea to the enigmatic "punk/hippie girls" who purportedly bought his stolen bike (or stole it themselves) from its perch on Bond Street. I wonder what steps he'd taken to secure the bike in the first place. In any case, here's hoping someone does the right thing and restores this guy's faith in humanity. But ever since reading this story, I haven't been able to get this song out of my head.