Flaming Pablum

Give Thanks, You Turkeys!

I realize it’s not entirely over yet, but I feel it’s safe to assert at this stage of the proceedings that 2013 wasn’t actually the greatest year. I’m not going to go into any big, soppy details, but there was more than a normal share of setbacks in the past eleven months to qualify 2013 as a SHITE year. My family and I will be very happy to see the back of it.

That all said, it being Thanksgiving, I feel that it’s prudent to remember how fortunate we actually are. With that, I’d like to wish one and all a very happy, healthy, hearty, humorous and hell-raising Thanksgiving. Let’s get through the holiday season and pass quickly and quietly into 2014 and hope for better days ahead.

And, yes, I realize the GIF below is actually of Dokken decimating a chicken and not a turkey, but it's too good not to use.

 

 

Bleecker Bob's Flips the Final Finger

I sort of buried the suggestion of same in this post, but here's the confirmation from the Bleecker Bob's Facebook page:

today we give a big FUCK YOU to the assholes at Forever Yogurt who closed down a 45 year old landmark record store to build a bullshit froyo shop and now pulled out of the lease!!!

the storefront at 118 west 3rd is now for rent.

Once again, that's the "for rent" sign above my kids' heads...

Down the Way from the K Cafe

I can't put a specific date on it, but I'm inclined to say that the Kmart on Astor Place opened up sometime in 1996, but I honestly don't remember voluntarily setting foot in the place until U2 held a bizarre press conference there in 1997 to kick off their ultimately flawed PopMart tour (to this day, I can't help but think back to them playing their somewhat anemic b-side, "Holy Joe" in the area where greeting cards are now sold, just north of the cash registers). Like Kmart's very placement on Astor Place itself, the event was fairly botched and ill-considered.

I didn't do any genuine shopping in that Kmart until I had kids (opting instead to buy my sundry housewares at places like Surprise Surprise on Third Avenue between 12th and 13th). But, once babies were on our scene, I was regularly dispatched to Kmart to procure diapers and accompanying gear in bulk.

Despite seeing the odd punk rock luminary in its expansive aisles (I've run into both Richard Hell and Jon Spencer within its walls), I've never warmed to the Astor Place Kmart, and I sincerely doubt I ever will. If they closed it up tomorrow, there's nothing about it I'd miss. Well, there is maybe one thing...

On the second floor of the southeast corner of the building (which, of course, used to house the department store Wanamakers, way back before my time), there's a chamber with big, beautiful picture windows that face east and south. When Kmart first opened there, that space was used as the "K Cafe." There used to be a clip on YouTube of a news report, suggesting that this little wing of the Kmart stayed true to the neighborhood's bohemian roots, and it would feature art shows and the like. Sadly, that video is no longer available, but you can see a little bit of the K Cafe in this NYU student film from 1996.

Evidently, the K Cafe didn't really take off, and it became their audio/video department for a while. The last time I was there, it looked like the place where cut-out CDs, holiday DVDs, and budget electronics went to die. Being up there is fairly depressing.

That said, the views from what was the K Cafe are still striking. If you're there with a device that takes pictures, it's hard not to succumb to the temptation of snapping a shot. I took that one up top of my kids looking south down Lafayette Street in 2011.

Last night, however, I was perusing around Flickr, and I stumble upon the shot below by one Ethan Wolff (click here to see more of his excellent photographs of NYC). I'm guessing he shot this particular photograph from that same second floor vista in the K Cafe fairly soon after the place opened. The parking lot on Astor Place is still pictured, the diner on the right hand side is just that -- still a diner and not yet a Starbuck's. Across the way, it's still Barnes & Noble (and not yet the Walgreen's, although it would morph into Astor Place Wines & Liquors between those two incarnations, if memory serves). Click on the photo to enlarge...

I've spoken at great length in the past about how I feel about Astor Place, basically how once upon a time in pretty much symbolized the gateway to everything I held dear. As we all know, Astor Place is shortly to get a radical facelift (this on top of having a couple of horrible structures already erected on it). As such, the Astor Place that I know and love will probably not be recognizable as such for much longer.

As a quick aside, the bus stop pictured above in Wolff's photo at the bottom of the image also made a fleeting cameo in Glenn O'Brien's "Downtown 81" (see below) in a scene wherein Jean Michel Basquiat is accosted by a foppish David McDermott. The acting is wooden and terrible, but it's an interesting snippet. When this scene was filmed, the diner on that corner hadn't even opened yet. Today, once again, it's yet another entirely needless Starbuck's.

Velvet Validation

This is pretty ridiculous, but I feel compelled to share it, despite the fact that it's ancient history, by this point.

I don't know why I didn't notice it at the time, but apparently, back in July of 2011, the official Lou Reed Twitter feed tweeted out a link to a story from here on Flaming Pablum (about Lou Reed, naturally).

He/they tweeted out this story, but kinda botched the link. Still, it's the thought that counts, I guess.

 

See You on 'Everybody Street'

As a fitting follow-up to my recent posts about Ricky Powell and Joel Meyerowitz, herewith athe trailer for a new documentary on street photography called "Everybody Street." Look amazing. Find out more by clicking right here.

Everybody Street Official Trailer from Alldayeveryday on Vimeo.

V is for Velvet

I was playing this track this evening, and my 7-year-old asked me the name of the band. Upon answering, he then accordingly asked... "Why? Do they eat velvet cake under the ground?"

Yes, Oliver. Yes, they do.

Reminisce with The Rickster

Regular readers might remember a photo quiz I put up back in May of 2012 wherein I tried to divine the exact location of a photograph of the Beastie Boys from their License to Ill days. Well, that photograph was taken by erstwhile Beasties associate/photographer/eternal hepcat/native New Yorker Ricky Powell, who later weighed in on the proceedings (check out the comments on that post). Later that year, I put up a little clip of Ricky speaking about the state of the West Village (and the gentrified detrioration thereof).

Here at the tail end of 2013, Ricky's still at it. This week, a website called Elite Daily ran a profile of the man, appended with the video below...

Back Again to That Stoop & Downtown with The Kids

Given our similar interests and sensibilities, it's pretty inevitable that my blogging comrade EV Grieve and I overlap on some topics. This morning, in the wake of my re-visitation of the fabled "Waiting on a Friend"/Physical Graffiti stoop on St. Mark's Place last week, Grieve exhumed the "Waiting on a Friend" shoot, complete with some photos from the day (comparable to a post I did last year on the same subject).

Somewhat coincidentally, I took my kids out last weekend for a heroic trek around downtown Manhattan (which I'm sure they'd equate with the Bataan Death March, if grim historical allusion was their forte). As I'm wont to do, I decided to replicate some notable photographs along the way (see my homage to Amons Poe's "The Foreigner" from that Friday as an example). Honestly speaking, given the amount of pictures I snapped, I doubtlessly alienated huge swathes of my Instagram followers, put off by my tireless stream of images. In any case, as we were walking down St. Marks, we, of course, had to stop and honor that stoop once again. Here it is, with my little boy Oliver pinch-hitting for absent Mick and my daughter Charlotte serving as Peter Tosh.

Here are some other shots we attempted...

 The exterior of "Club Berlin" in Martin Scorsese's "After Hours" from 1985 (Spring Street just steps to the west of Hudson Street)

In 2013...

The firehosue of Hook & Ladder 8 at 14 N.Moore Street, better known as the station from "Ghostbusters" and "Ghostbusters II," pictured here circa 1988...

..and in 2013...

The Beastie Boys on Staple Street circa 1998...

...and 2013

 

...and, slighty more ambitiously, the location of the video shoot for 1984's "All That I Wanted" by Belfegore (now pier 25 off the West Side Highway)...

 

...and in 2013

 

Ironically, this little stretch is quite built up now, and features lots and lots of joggers, unwittingly replicating the frenzied sprint of the video.

As a final bonus shot, here are the kids in front of what was Bleecker Bob's. Remember all that talk about it becoming a frozen yogurt emporium? Apparently, that's no longer the case. The forzen yogurt banner is currently in tatters, and the sign above my little Charlott's head reads: "For rent."

 

Street Photography: Not for the Shy

I'm a huge fan of so-called "Street Photography," but I suck at it. If you look at my pictures scattered around this blog and over on Flickr, you'll notice that in nine out of ten shots, there are absolutely zero people. That may look intentional, but most of the time it was because I was too much of a wimp to either seize a certain moment or at least ask someone if I could take their picture.

There are exceptions to that rule, of course --- like the punks in Washington Square Park up above (I couldn't let that Shawn Kerri-designed Germs tattoo get away) -- but most of the time, I just couldn't do it. That's probably one of the reasons I take so many pictures of my kids out and about the city -- they're my captive subjects.

Here in the age of the smartphone, it’s easier than ever to covertly take pictures of people on the street (or, more commonly, on the subway) without their cognizance, much less consent, but that just doesn’t appeal to me. It’s just so discourteous. Personally, I think I’d be pretty pissed off if I found out that someone had taken my picture and posted it somewhere without my knowledge or blessing. And with Instagram (a social media platform I could certainly be accused of ….abusing), you can disseminate said images globally in a veritable nanosecond.

In any case, the other day I put up an amazing shot of Lou Reed and John Cale walking down Fifth Avenue that was taken by photographer Joel Meyerowitz, a storied figure in the realm of street photography. You’ve doubtlessly seen more of his images here and there. Here’s another of my faves of his below.

In any case, I recently discovered this illuminating little film about his approach to street photography, filmed back in 1981, fitting on the very streets of Manhattan. Even if you’re not a budding shutterbug, it’s worth it just for the trip back through time.

Goodbye 5Pointz

I understand from Jeremiah Moss that 5Pointz over in Queens has been whitewashed in advance of its impending reconfiguration as a pricey condo. Knowing of its fate, I made a pilgrimage out to 5Pointz late last summer to document it before it was destroyed. Here's just a fleeting handful of images from that day. There were many, many more.

Not to get all hyperbolic, but in terms of NYC street art, the whitewashing of 5Pointz is comparable to the tearing down of the original Penn Station. Just sayin'.