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A reader named Mark recently wrote me with some kind words about Flaming Pablum. He also passed on the link to his own blog Lost Property. In his own words, it's a "collection of found photographs catalogued by year and organized to suggest an open narrative. To be read from the bottom up." The above photo is from 1951.
Check it out by clicking right here.
Over the last five years here on Flaming Pablum I've spilled a lot of figurative ink about the loss of my beloved neighborhood local, that being the late, lamented Cedar Tavern on University Place between 11th and 12th streets. The Cedar Tavern I knew, loved and frequented unceremoniously closed up shop some time in late 2006, and I've spent the ensuing years slavishly bemoaning its absence and flipping a vehement bird at the soulless (and still-empty) condo that now stands in its footprint.
But the Cedar Tavern that really carved its name on the map was its original incarnation just a few blocks to the South (where, if I'm not mistaken, a Chase bank outlet now sits). It was at that Cedar Tavern that storied luminaries from New York's art scene used to mix, mingle and -- legendarily in Jackson Pollock's case -- get into rousing bouts of bloody-knuckled fisticuffs. A veritable CBGB for the paintbrush crowd, the original Cedar Tavern was a slice of a long-since-vanished New York City the likes of which we shall probably not see again.
Well, my friend, former colleague from TIME and art-savvy minx from the ass-whuppin' C-Monster, Carolina Miranda recently co-wrote a cool little historical piece about that Cedar Tavern for WNYC, and it's well worth a listen. Click below to do just that, and find out more by clicking right here. And throw the goats for Carolina, because she continues to rock mightily.
I believe my first introduction to the work of the late Hunter S. Thompson came via a dog-eared paperback copy of his perennial classic, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” which was handed to me by my grade school chum Walter just prior to my departure on a three-week bicycle trek across the verdant expanse of Massachusetts. Walt put the book in my hand as if he was handing me a loaded weapon (which, in a way, he sorta was) with a look on his face that seemed to say, “you’re finally ready!” For some people, it was their first viewing of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” For others, it was the first few amplified barre chords off The Ramones. For Walter (and millions like him), it was “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.”
I’m actually not as “gonzo” about Thompson’s writing (sorry) as some others. I loved “Fear & Loathing…” and his book on the Hell’s Angels, but I can’t say I’ve read too much of his stuff beyond that. But I know people who can recite chapter & verse of Thompson’s thorny prose and have lovingly-detailed tattoos of Ralph Steadman’s iconic illustrations for “Fear & Loathing.” For all his myriad eccentricities, Thompson commands – even from the grave – an army of acolytes.
In any case, my good friend and former colleague “Hot Johnny” Flowers has been following my vocational trajectory of late and sent along something that he thought might put a bit of a spring in my step. Composed sometime prior to his elevation to a veritable deity of counterculture, check out this cover letter Hunter S. Thompson penned and sent for a newspaper gig in 1958. As my dad noted, it’s “not exactly the kind of pitch that would work today, however, is it?”
By posting the above photo, I suppose I'm only further vindicating accusations that this blog fetishizes the past, but c'est la guerre. As I inch perilously closer to my forty-third birthday, I find myself randomly searching for pictures of New York City during the year I was born -- hence the one above. I'm not suggesting I hung out at the Five Spot (it's awning pictured on the southern side of the street above), snappin' my fingers to Ornette Coleman with the other hepcats.
I should point out at the top of this post that as much as I would have liked to, I did not take the above photo. Rather, I brazenly appropriated it from Broke-Ass Stuart's Goddamn Website.
Sometime in the early 1990s, I remember going to the Subway Inn on East 60th Street just off Lexington Avenue (convenient staggering distance from the entrance to the 6 train) with my friends Rob, Tim and Ed and marveling at its endearingly gritty interior and old school New York dive bar sensibility, looking remarkably like a location from a Martin Scorsese opus (which it very well may have been at one point or another). Its regular clientele were career drinkers, not comparatively well-scrubbed and insufferable dilettantes like ourselves. The gents at the bar at the Subway had very possibly been there all day, whereas we were clearly just passing through. Feeling like tourists in our own city, we respected our place in that particular food chain, supped up our many beers and shuffled back out into the night, invariably headed south to louder, younger venues.
In 1998 or so, I stopped into the Subway Inn again, this time with the woman who'd later become my wife. We shared a booth in the back and stared moony-eyed at each other over a couple of drinks while an ancient juke box played doo-wop tunes from a bygone age late into the evening. It seemed once again like a scene out of a film. The Subway Inn was this strange little oasis of endearingly shoddy character in an otherwise bland neighborhood (near the southern border of the Upper East Side), perched diminutively in the shadow of Bloomingdale's palace of posh.
Prior to last night, the last time I'd set foot in the Subway was with my friend John Flowers in 2005. In was a rainy summer afternoon and we were putting away some pints in preparation to witness Devo play in Central Park later in the day. While much of the city had changed rather significantly by this point, the Subway Inn had somehow retained its same shady veneer and un-fussed integrity.
Last night, I was to attend my 25th high school reunion at a restaurant in midtown. Being that it didn't make sense to go all the way home after work, my wife and I made a plan to simply meet back at the Subway Inn around 7pm for a couple of "secret drinks" (as we used to call them) before going to my reunion. So after leaving my office in the arguable hotbed of Satanism in Rockefeller Center, I strolled over to East 60th street in the cooling October evening.
I could hear it a half-a-block away. From within the interior of the Subway Inn came a thunderous, pulsing beat. Stepping inside was an all-sensory assault. Three massive televisions were broadcasting three different sporting events as I narrowly squeezed between the crowd at the bar and the (newly-installed?) massive digital jukebox, playing Rihanna's cloyingly puerile "Rudeboy" at an amplification that would make even Motorhead arch a warty eyebrow. The place was packed, loud and, well, annoying. I quickly downed a Budweiser and decided I couldn't take it. I squeezed back out the door to wait for my wife outside. As I was standing under that iconic neon light, an older gentleman wearingly shuffled by me and into the Subway Inn. Two seconds later, he came back out. "It's insanely loud in there," he muttered as he passed me, "I don't know how you stand it."
"I can't," I said, "That's why I'm out here."
"Well, maybe we're just old," he replied as he walked into the night.
Stunning shot of a rainy downtown Manhattan (specifically the corner of Avenue A and East 7th Street) taken by one James Jowers in 1967. For more of Jowers' photographs, click here.
Stay dry out there.
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