Flaming Pablum

Vaya Con Dios, Big Enchilada!

There have been a whole bunch of changes on University Place and its accompanying tributaries of late. New businesses come, old business go and some storefronts stay empty (notably the 82 University Place, the former site of the Cedar Tavern, but that's a whole `nother rant). In any case, as I was walking home earlier this evening, I turned a corner and let out a disappointed little gasp upon spying that The Big Enchilada, the long-standing Mexican eatery at 28 East 12th Street, had evidently closed up shop. It's not that their grub was exactly top of the line, but they were quick, cheap and made a fine taco salad. There was no explanation nor any goodbye, just a forwarding mail address. Adios, muchacos.

Summertime Blues ... Explosion

Cheers to my friend Rob B. for passing this one on. Here, Pussy Galore/Boss Hog/Blues Explosion/Heavy Trash mainman, fellow Manhattanite, Astor Place K-mart shopper & Flaming Pablum favorite Jon Spencer shares his insider picks with the New York Times Magazine. Check it out.

I've Gotta Lush For Life

To be perfectly honest, I didn't even finish Richard Price's "Lush Life." It started out promisingly enough, but it somehow failed to sustain my interest. Perhaps I'll give it another crack. In any case, I just fielded a little promotional note from the good folks at Travel Goat hipping me to a video walking tour of the Lower East Side with Richard Price himself. It certainly makes me want to re-visit the book. Click here to find out more. Please enjoy.

Bits & Pieces

Two items caught my eye this morning that I felt really compelled to share. Firstly, EV Grieve posted a curious little tidbit about the current whereabouts and doings of John Lurie (the man whose music I posted here just days ago). The story is fairly bonkers.

Secondly, Patell & Waterman posted a prescient little nugget from 1977 that I spotted on Jeremiah Moss' page. Check out Vivien Goldman's cutting dress-down of Richard Hell & The Lower East Side. That woman's a prophet!

ADDENDUM: As Tim B. very rightly admonished me, the lovely "oh go on!" shot of Mr. Hell on the Bowery above was shot by the incomparble rock photog, Godlis. Seek him out.

Losing Beautifully

 I had some grand designs about composing something bigger this evening to post here, but I ended up getting sucked into a documentary on the Sundance channel. "Beautiful Losers" is a film by one Aaron Rose that chronicled a relatively small collective of underground artists in New York and California in the early-to-mid 1990s, including celebrated notables like Harmony Korine, Mike Mills and - wait for it -- Shepard Fairey, as well as a clutch of lesser-known but equally imaginative and prolific individuals. As with a couple of the other art films I've talked about here, specifically Eileen Yaghoobian's "Died Young Stayed Pretty" and, more recently, "Exit Through the Gift Shop," there is a requisite amount of eccentricity on display -- along with a chronically-recurring abuse of the adjective, "rad" -- but I found it to be a really compelling piece. I vaguely remember hearing about it upon its 2008 release, but I don't think it made a particularly huge splash.

In any case, if you didn't catch it and are as intrigued by (for want of a better term) unconventional and/or street art (everything from painting, grafitti and print-making through film and sculpture and beyond) and its accompanying culture (everything from skateboarding through music), I strongly recommend checking it out. You can find the film's official website here or simply tune in to the Sundance channel to watch it, as it's scheduled to air five more times before the end of the month.

Where Does the Time Go?

Much like the summer itself, this week has gone screaming by. Hard to believe it’s already Friday, let alone August. Today was only day three for me at the new job, and my head is already fully clogged with dog-eared volumes of newfangled technical minutia. In any case, given my frenzied new reality, I haven’t been as prolific here as I was threatening to be. That will change.

In the interim, here’s a lovely little clip I accidently discovered last night. The Lounge Lizards were a local, sorta ersatz-jazz ensemble in the early 80s led by John Lurie (of “Fishing with John” fame) and fleetingly featuring the mighty Arto Lindsay of DNA on guitar. In a nutshell, the Lounge Lizards were busy making melifluous jazz while the rest of downtown was making a skronky din. “Bob the Bob” is arguably their best known track (it features briefly in “Downtown 81”). Here it is scoring a strangely hypnotic loop of a car crossing the Brooklyn Bridge.

Have a splendid weekend.

More Pictures from The Lost Box

The title of the post says it all. To see the first batch, click thyselves here. As with those, these pics all date from 1996 through 2000. To enlarge images, simply click on'em. Enjoy.

The front of Billy's Antiques on Houston Street. Billy's took a hit not too long back when they were raided and Billy himself was arrested for selling subway signs. Regardless, it's always been a favorite spot of mine with loads of things to marvel at. Mercifully, it's still there ... but for how long?

The Scharf Shack on Prince Street between Mercer & Broadway. Scharf was originally a member of the East Village art mob of the 80's and a contemporary of folks like Basquiat and Keith Haring. The Shack hawked collectibles like t-shirt and other hip tchotchke. The structure is still there, I believe, but it's no longer a Scharf venture.

Some rude graffiti I spotted scrawled on a newspaper box on the corner of West 11th Street and 6th Avenue, just outside of what used to be Niko's Magazine shop.

Some incredibly detailed, eye-popping graffiti on the walls of a parking lot on Grand Street between Broadway & Wooster Streets. This area remains a target for taggers and street art. These particular pieces were long since painted over.

More from that same lot. This was a favorite image of mine of a couple brandishing a bottle of bubbly. I took several shots of it over the course of a year or so before it was finally totally defaced and later painted over.

Block Drugs is just a little independent pharmacy in the East Village that still somehow survives amid the constant proliferation of big drug store chains. Jeremiah Moss wrote a more detailed item about it not too long back. I've always admired its old school neon signage. Last time I checked, Block Drugs was still there.

Just a bland little shot of the front door of the late, great Chumley's (which, you may remember, basically collapsed in on itself in 2007). They said it's comin' back, but as JM noted, the inside has already been entirely gutted. 

I honestly can't be sure anymore, but I believe this was on the northeast corner of Crosby & Howard Streets. If that's correct, the business was originally a woodworking machinery concern and is now a posh boutique of some kind. I just liked the old, weathered look of it at the time.

I can't recall the exact address, but I believe this antiquated Coca-Cola sign is still faintly visible somewhere in TriBeCa.

Winston Churchill flashes the V's at you from the window of Myers of Keswick, a great little grocery store in the West Village devoted to rarified British comestibles. Supposedly, Keith Richards is a dependable patron when he's in town. Myers is still there. I bought a delightfully unhealthy sausage roll from it just a couple of weeks back, and it was luv'erly.

That's all for now. There may still be more to come.

I've Reached The Rock

Ahoy, folks.

First of all, let me address a lot of the comments that I've been fielding since my last two admittedly doomy-gloomy posts. For a start, I am not abandoning this blog, so breathe easy or resume frowning accordingly. Secondly, please remember that the source of the critiscism that gave me pause last week was a FRIEND of mine. He's not a random commenter or an anonymous hater or anything. It's the very fact that he's a friend of mine that leant his comments such weight. Had it come from some other source, I'd probably have ignored it. But, again, he's a friend of mine, so let's please keep the name-calling to a minimum. Thanks.

On the flip side of that, let me also say that I appreciate all your words of support. I can't predict how the afore-cited exchange is going to impact this weblog going forward, but it was encouraging to hear that not everyone finds Flaming Pablum to be boorishly limited in scope or myopic or conservative, etc. I've had a brief exchange with RK in the days since my last post, and I assure you that all's well. We'll invariably argue about it again soon, but there's no sincere ill-will.

The comparatively long silence between posts recently wasn't entirely due to the that incident, though. As I noted, I'm in the midst of a job change (actually, my first day at the new gig was today). As such, I had to tend to a number of things and then quickly traipsed off to Long Island for some sorely-needed time with my kids (that's them up at the top, of course, at our local wildlife refuge). After frantically wrangling through the red tape of searching for -- and miraculously landing--  a new job prior to the end of my contract at the last job (sparing me from the 100 day vocational exile I had to deal with last time), it was great to unplug and get away from the city for a quick breather.

But now I'm back in the working week. Without going too deeply into it, I'm now working within the hallowed halls of 30 Rockefeller, or "30 Rock," as it is universarlly known. While I've yet to spot Tina Fey or Alec Baldwin, I did surreally pass both Jimmy Fallon and Keith Olbermann on my way to buy a coke from the commisary. I thought that was pretty cool.

I'm also back in the city, so you can probably expect more to come in shorter order, notably further pictures prized from the lost box. Until then, here's a titularly-appropriate tune from Paul Simonon's short-lived side project, Havana 3.A.M. that I used to quite enjoy ... `cos, y'know, I live in the past.