Flaming Pablum

You Have Been Judged ...

No sooner do I exclaim my concern about overly fetishizing the past than I stumble on one of the very artifacts from said past that I've scoured long and hard for. Much like my preoccupation with tracking down that long, lost and forgotten cover article from New York magazine about punk, I recently came across an item on eBay I've feverishly coveted since first spying it in the early `80s hanging on the wall of the original Forbidden Planet on the northwest corner of East 12th Street and Broadway.

As an unrepentant comics geek in the late 70's and early 80's, I became hugely enamored of the British series, "Judge Dredd" (way, way, way before Sly Stallone butchered it onscreen). The series was published here in the States via the Eagle comics imprint in 1983. Lushly illustrated in vividly violent detail by the great Brian Bolland (who'd later go onto vast acclaim doing Alan Moore's dark Batman saga, "The Killing Joke"), many of those early issues concerned Judge Dredd's dealings with the Four Dark Judges (they being Judge Death, Judge Fire, Judge Fear and Judge Mortis, don'tcha know), four unwelcome visitors from a neighboring dimension hell bent on exercising their own brand of infernal judgment. I shan't bore you with further plot points, but suffice to say -- they were entirely awesome.

Anyway, blah blah blah. At some point, they released this beautiful t-shirt with the Dark Judges on it, bearing the ominous (and slightly tasteless) legend, "YOU HAVE BEEN JUDGED, ... AND THE SENTENCE IS DEATH!" Needless to say, given my penchant for the pointedly juvenile and macacbre, I instantly craved it upon spying at Forbidden Planet. I'm not sure if it was a lack of funds or time or what, but I never got around to getting myself one.

And then it vanished. The only other place I saw it was -- oddly enough -- in the video for "Together in Electric Dreams" by erstwhile Human League vocalist Phil Oakey (misnamed in the clip below as Oakley). See Phil sporting it at 00:46. And the song sucks.

In the ensuing years, I've made several attempts to track it down, but have rarely found any proof of its existence beyond the above video. Periodic searches on eBay never turned up anything. My fellow comic geeks in local thrash heroes Anthrax even put out their own Judge Death shirt (one of the band's inarguably finer moments is their ode to the series, "I Am the Law"). I have that shirt, but it's just not the same (nor is it Brian Bolland's artwork, I don't think).

In any case, this week, I finally spotted it on eBay ... sold already, of course. More tellingly, it fetched a tidy sum of $125.00. Would I have spent that much ... for a t-shirt?

 

Ciao, Manhattan?

It's an old sob story, but people have probably been lamenting "the death" of NYC's character since they were still calling it New Amsterdam. It's also an old cop-out to quote the withering observation that change is the only constant in the urban environment. New York City changes. That's just what it does. But we don't have to like it, especially when there's seemingly precious fuck-all we can do about it.

It wasn't my original intention for this blog to be so largely about the cultural erosion of my home town. It just kinda worked out that way. I'm often left wondering if it's an unhealthy pursuit for me. To be so occupied with virtually constant ruminations about the past can't be a good thing. If I'm spending all my time looking backward, aren't I going to miss something coming right toward me?

I'm in good company, though. In the almost-seven years (damn!) that I've been writing here on Flaming Pablum, I've gotten to know a few like-minded bloggers who similarly document their own observations about the changing New York and what it means to them. Today, two of my favorites posted strangely synchronized entries about the indelible transformations of their respective favorite neighborhoods (I'm talking about EV Grieve's East Village and Jeremiah Moss' Meatpacking District). Both pieces struck me as very sad, and hinted at a new sense of futility that I'm not sure I've really noticed before.

I don't have a big answer or punch-line here, just a sad shrug.

Photo at the top courtesy of this blog.

Joey's on the Street Again

Spotted on East 4th. Tipped off by EV Grieve.

New York City 2012

There have been an awful lot of timelapse clips featuring NYC, and I'm guilty of posting quite a few of them here. Not sure what I'm looking for with these -- do I expect to catch a glimpse of myself or someone I know crossing a street or something?

Anyway, here's the latest, which I spotted on the Huffington Post site last week. There are the usual cliches, like the evocatively poignant new age techno soundtrack and the requisite bird's eye view of iconic streets, but there are little touches in this one that I like, like the segment featuring the silver Andy Warhol statue at the northwest corner of Union Square. And I think the mass yoga class in Bryant Park is well done.

Overalll, I'd suggest that the human element is better represented in this one, rather than depicting the city as just a teeming ant heap. Check it out.

Day of the Lords

Given that the Del Lords were formed by erstwhile Dictators guitarist Scott Kempner, you'd have thought I'd have had more time for them upon their mid-eighties heyday, but I never really warmed to their retro brand of tough guy roots rock. It just wasn't my scene (in much the same way, say, Gutterboy -- who featured former Kraut drummer Johnny Feedback -- left me cold and clammy).

In retrospect, they were perfectly respectable, but given the amount of more interesting music that was happening at the time, its no surprise I wasn't paying attention.

My friend Rob R. exhumed the clip below on YouTube this AM. If the tune doesn't do it for you, it's at least worth a viewing for its depiction of a few East Village locales (like the old "Crack Kills" mural) circa 1988. Also, Lou Reed makes a couple of dubious cameos. Enjoy.

Look at Those Knockers!

I was wasting time on Tumblr not too long back (and, really, what else does one do on Tumblr than waste time?) and came across the striking image above.

Snapped by one Jean-Eugène-Auguste Atget circa 1900, this albumen print from gelatin dry plate negative displays an ornate, serpent-festooned doorknocker that graces a door on 5 Rude Bonaparte in Paris, France.

Originally put up on the Elysskama Tumblr, I found the image really compelling and "reblogged" it to mine own Tumblr, Get Back to Work (aka Get Back Vassifer) and didn't think much more about it.

Sometime shortly afterwards, I was thumbing through some old photo albums, looking for a shot of something or another and came upon the photo below from 2004. That's me with my finger blithely inserted in the serpent's mouth, taken one-hundred-and-four years after Atget's.

Kinda weird, right?

Walk into The Light

Growing up on the Upper East Side in the `70s and `80s, the Financial District (or FiDi, as some people insist on calling it these days) wasn't a neighborhood I exactly spent a lot of time in. Even into my teens, when virtually the entirety of Manhattan became fair game as my friend Danny and I ran roughshod over it on our bikes, I rarely went down there. For a start, there wasn't much of a reason. It wasn't exactly the funnest part of the city.

That all said, I do dimly remember visiting "the light tunnel" at 127 John Street. My step-father worked in the neighborhood in the late `70's, so perhaps we were down there visiting him or something, but I remember being taken into the lobby of this seemingly random office building to check out this spacey neon tunnel. I don't recall if it was an art installation or just some forward-thinking architect's idea, but it was certainly a novelty of the time.

I sort of put in on the same level as the Burlington Mills exhibit on 6th Avenue (which I spoke about here). Burlington Mills was this cool attraction where you entered the lobby at one end of a building, got on a moving conveyer belt, and it slowly took you through these four or five rooms with all sorts of textile-manufacturing going on. I remember completely loving that.

The big difference between Burlington Mills and the 127 John Street's neon tunnel is that the latter has been well-documented (whereas I can barely find anyone who even faintly remembers the Burlington Mills thing). Again for the late `70s and early `80's, the tunnel seemed like the coolest, most futuristic thing since "Battlestar Galactica" or "Space: 1999" hit the boob tube. If you were a photographer and you needed a unique backdrop, it was a no-brainer.

As such, some thoughtful shutterbug captured one of my favorite local hardcore bands, KRAUT, in the tunnel, which they saw fit to slap on their 1995 compilation, Complete Studio Recordings 1981-1986. Similarly, the great Bob Gruen captured that awesome shot of Blondie in the tunnel at the top of this post (although, I'm at a loss why guitarist Chris Stein is dressed like a priest).

Moreover, you can catch a fleeting few moments what it was like to walk into the tunnel in Rick Liss' awesome short film from the early `80s, "N.Y.C. (No York City)," starting at about 1:05.

I have no idea if the neon tunnel is still at 127 John Street, but I gravely doubt it. Anyone know anything more about it?

ADDENDUM: I did a wee bit of research after posting this, and came across this infomative article from the New York Times (is there any other kind?). Evidently, the developer responsible for this any several other whimsical bits of fun was one Melvyn Kaufman, who sadly passed away this past March. In terms of the current status of the tunnel, the Times had this to say....

The neon tunnel at 127 John Street is long gone, a casualty of the building’s conversion to a residential rental in the 1990s. Currently owned by Rockrose Development, the building is now known as 200 Water Street.

There, rent runs to about $5,000 a month for a two-bedroom apartment. The capacious lobby is sheathed in hushed beige and cool marble.

Word on the Street

Who Took Out the Trash?

Some things just look better messy. This assertion makes me an enormous hypocrite, of course, given the amount of time I spend emphatically hollering at my little ones about keeping our apartment tidy, but that’s another post altogether. In the case of legendary punk clothiers Trash & Vaudeville, however, a little gritty, disheveled wear n’ tear has only served to enhance its urban authenticity. It has always been thus. You wouldn't want the place looking clean and presentable.

Regardless, as I strolled down St. Marks this past Sunday, I was stopped dead in my tracks by a (comparatively) spick n' span-looking Trash & Vaudeville. Gone were fraying layers of decades-old gig flyers, stickers and graffiti. Who thought that was a good idea?

Just take a look for yourselves....

Trash & Vaudeville circa 1997.

Trash & Vaudeville in June of 2012

For Queen & Country

Snapped at Tea & Sympathy on Greenwich Avenue on Sunday. Happy Jubilee.