Flaming Pablum

The Big Kiss Off

Being that I've gone on record a thousand or more times here as a lifelong/long-suffering KISS fan, you'd think I'd be pretty broken up about the demise of East Houston watering hole Nice Guy Eddie's and its accompanying, Chico-rendered mural of the Destroyer cover. Here's the thing: I'm not, and lemme tell you why.

For a start, I was never a regular patron at Nice Guy Eddie's. I had nothing against it, mind you, but there never seemed to be anything about the place that owed anything to its surrounding neighborhood. It was a perfectly hospitable, endearingly populist bar ripe for burgers and beers after your office softball game. Honestly speaking, it's a bar that could probably have existed in virtually any town across the USA. Again, there's nothing wrong with that. But there's nothing interesting or distinctive about that either.

Secondly, while yes, I'm a big fan of (vintage) KISS -- especially the Destroyer album (you can read my windy appreciation of same by clicking here) -- I've never felt they belonged on that particular wall. Oh, sure, there are piles of photographs of me posing in front of it, making any number of drunkenly idiotic gestures and faces, but much like Nice Guy Eddie's itself, there's nothing inherently East Village about KISS. They weren't of the Lower East Side. They weren't from there. They never played there, unless you count the former Academy of Music (later the Palladium and now an NYU dormitory) on East 14th Street. KISS was never a part of downtown's once-thriving punk scene. If there's a neighborhood that KISS should be memorialized in, it's at least twenty-something blocks to the north.

If you wanted to paint someone with local significance on that wall, why couldn't it have been the Ramones? Or the Dictators? Or the New York Dolls? Or Blondie? Or Television? Or Kraut? Or Lydia Lunch? Or the Cro-Mags? Or Missing Foundation? The list goes on ....and on...and on.

But putting KISS on the wall of Nice Guy Eddie's was never about that. Painting KISS on that wall -- much like naming the bar after a character in Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction" or hanging framed posters of Walter Hill's "The Warriors" on the interior -- was just shorthand for "garrulous guys welcome here."

Five or six weeks from now (or whenever), when someone's painted over that wall, I'll probably be a bit bummed, but only out of disdain for the bank branch or artisinal cupcake emporium or whatever it will be that's next destined for that corner.

The photo atop this post comes courtesy of Goggla from the awesme Gog Log. 

Heresy

Seriously, this is just uncalled for.

For those who may not know what this is all about (and, really, you're invariably better off if you don't), here is Arturo Vega talking about the Ramones logo. These are the Ramones. And this is One Direction. 

UPDATE: Click here.

 

Back to The Cooler

Tim B. of Stupefaction put up a compelling little video snippet the other day of The Meatpacking District circa 1987. It's a sleepy little segment -- no wild debauchery or transvestite prostitution is depicted. It just shows the neighborhood when it was still largely devoted to the actual meatpacking trade. If you're only familiar with those streets as they are today, it's truly worth a viewing. The dichotomy is completely striking.

I spoke about my own experiences in the Meatpacking District here before, but suffice it to say, I greatly preferred the area in that previous incarnation, when it was still something of a desolate backwater.

I was discussing the neighborhood with some friends recently, and it inevitably led to the discussion about favorite spots that are now gone. Personally speaking, I was a big fan of bars like the Hog Pit and The Village Idiot. I remember having a surreal dinner at Florent once (with my mom, no less) and my friend Rob B. and I did once darken the doors of The Vault one strange weekday night.

I think the spot that brought me to the Meatpacking District the most -- in those halcyon days of the `90s, at least -- was The Cooler. Somewhat ironically named (the place was always a sweatbox), The Cooler was originally just that -- a deep, basement-level cooling facility for storing large quantities of meat -- that someone had the foresight to re-imagine as live music venue. As long as you weren't a claustrophobe afraid of extreme perspiration, it was a great place to see a band.

I remember attending a bunch of different shows at The Cooler. My friend Stefan was this huge indie rock guy, and would routinely coerce me into going to see bands I'd certainly never heard of at the time like Unwound, Blonde Redhead, Karp, June of 44, The PeeChees and this hushed, Nick Drake-y sorta character he was particularly wild about named Elliott Smith. It was a bit of a different scene from the stuff I was normally into, but I gradually found myself getting quite into it. 

Around 2001, the news came down that The Cooler was shutting its doors. Somewhat fittingly, New York proto-punk stalwarts Suicide were chosen to close proceedings. My friend Paul's ensemble, Botanica was booked as a support act, so I dutifully attended. I want to say that I remember the place being packed, although given the paucity of space, the place always seemed packed. Botanica -- then featuring Paul Wallfisch and guitarist Oren Kaplan (both also members of Firewater, at the time) -- played a typically dramatic set, punctuated by a cameo from Tod [A] of Firewater, who got up and sang a gritty cover of "It's a Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl" by Faust (see pic at the top of this post). After their set, Tod convinced me to split and check out this weird Ukrainian disco over on Canal Street, so I missed Suicide's set entirely. I climbed up that long flight of stairs and never returned to The Cooler.

New York Press ran a much less charitable review of that show (you can read it here). Funnily enough, I do remember trying to abscond with one of the gig posters they allude to (I love a good gig poster), and was summarily told off by some angry jackass who -- it turns out -- was the club's notorious owner Jedi. Too bad. I'd love to have that poster today. Who knew they were for sale?

But that was that. The Cooler's door slammed forever shut that night. Sometime in 2005, I believe, the space re-opened as a club called Rare which later morphed into a place called R&R, but I never went to either. From what I understand, these latter-day incarnations of the venue owed absolutely zilch to the endearingly grim and unrelentingly spartan aesthetic of the old Cooler. And honestly speaking, by that point, my adventures out in the rock clubs of NYC were largely behind me. Furthermore, by 2005, the Meatpacking District was the friggin' last place I'd ever want to be. I believe R&R closed its doors in 2007. For all I know, someone right now could be composing their own weepy blog post about how awesome it was.

Here in 2012, you'd never know the Cooler had ever been at 416 West 14th Street at all. That particular strip of way West 14th Street -- once a dark, forbidding byway and the perfect place to get mugged, raped, abducted or stabbed -- seems like busy shopping strip in the Hamptons, right there in the shadow of the Euro-tourist-choked Highline. You can barely find any pictorial evidence of its existence on the web either, or at least beyond this collection of ancient gig flyers. Like most of the rest of the Meatpacking District, it has been sanitized and wiped away.

Here's a clip I exhumed from YouTube of the afore-cited Blonde Redhead (named after a tune by fabled No Wave trio, DNA) performing at the Cooler in 1996. There's a reasonably large chance I was even at this show, for whatever that's worth.

And for posterity's sake, here's a little vintage Botanica...

Down in the Park

A former colleague of mine posted the below photograph on Facebook this afternoon, and it immediately reminded me of the song in the video beneath it, especially given the otherworldly pink hue of the fog -- itself strangely reminiscent (to me, anyway) of the album cover from which said song sprang.

Here are the facts about the photo.

Photograph by Jim Richardson, National Geographic

At times, the overall color of a scene can be so different from the way we normally see it that we hardly recognize the place. Seeing lush, green Central Park in a pink fog changes it completely in Jim Richardson’s stunning view, shot from a hotel window. —Annie Griffiths

Photo Tip: Bad weather makes great pictures. It can also make the familiar completely new. So head out in that snowstorm and find ways to shoot in the rain. Celebrate fog and sandstorm and lightning. New pictures await under these conditions.

Click here for more.

Roughly that same view, in less melodramatic conditions...

We'll Be Right Back After These Messages

Lifted from J.

After Midnight

It's been a busy, sweaty, stressy week, and I've wanted to put up more here, but time and circumstances and demands and complications have forbid it. But I spotted this photo on the excellent Tumblr site, Retro World and felt compelled to share it. Allegedly snapped circa 1945, this photograph displays a carefree, young couple indulging their love of recorded music sometime after midnight in our own Washington Square Park. Put simply, this picture just makes me happy.

It's Still Preferable to This

Photo courtesy of this site.

Robyn on the Streets

I could have sworn I'd posted this some time back, but found no record of it, so here it is. This is a quick spot on Flaming Pablum favorite Robyn Hitchcock walking the streets of downtown Manhattan that MTV cut circa 1990. As with most clips I post here, even if you're not a fan of the artist in question (and if you're not, you should be), you might enjoy the fleeting footage of an endearingly decrepit, flyer-plastered St. Marks Place and Washington Square.

Father's Day

I spotted this image on This Isn't Happiness about two weeks back, and it really kinda choked me up. Obviously, being a comics geek, I love this depiction of the Dark Knight as a doting dad, but more than that, this illustration -- by Andry Shango -- somehow completely sums up a certain element of fatherhood. There's something about the whimsical way little Batgirl is swinging her book bag that just nails it. The capes and cowls notwithstanding, this image perfectly captures my daily routine of dropping my children off at school.

The Batman analogy is also apt. Despite being the hulking caped crusader, in the company of his little ones, there is a vulnerability to him. Walking this city's streets with my wide-eyed little kids in tow, I can't help but ditch the adapted, swagger n' sneer I might normally affect. As Charlotte and Oliver chirp, giggle and banter happily on the way to the bus stop, I regularly find my eyes darting around, spying for obstacles, impediments or potential threats to their safety. That may sound ridiculous, of course, but there it is.

My youngest graduated from kindergarten this week, and it's left me incredulous. As much as my description of shuttling them around the city might sound stressful, each day that they become more autonomous and less reliant on their parents -- even in tiny increments -- it pounds another little nail into my heart. They are growing up so fast. To my fellow fathers, I tell you to appreciate these moments while they last, and have a happy Father's Day tomorrow.

Speaking of Father's Day, here's a little piece I wrote for The Job about the significance of reading to your children.

Treatise on East 10th Street