Flaming Pablum

Goodbye to Stromboli's on University Place

I first heard about the impending changes to University Place between 12th and 13th streets via Japonica, my favorite local sushi place on the southwest corner of that strip. I'd popped in to pick up an order to go and was chatting with the manager, who grimly informed me that the landlord was looking to oust them to sell the building. That was only a couple months back.

In the ensuing time, EV Grieve reported the news that the building -- which also houses Bowlmor, the tobacco newsagents, Stromboli's Pizza, a parking garage and a couple of other businesses -- was being razed to accomodate the development of -- WAIT FOR IT -- luxury condos. The tobacco newsagents have already reserved space across the street (in the spot the doomed eyeglass place operated). No idea if Japonica have plans to move (they could move back to their original spot a block to the south, which remains empty after the ramen noodle place moved to Waverly, although the space is much smaller than Japonica's current incarnation). 

Today, however, I was stopped dead in my tracks by the sight of the below. Stromboli's Pizza has been a fixture on this strip of University Place since before I was born (by a year, technically). After 47 years and without so much a whispered "seeya," they are apparently shuttered. Those are my kids up top enjoying Stromboli's last summer.

While never particularly gourmet, Stromboli's made and sold pefectly solid, dependable pizza, and the place exuded a great sense of place and neighborhood. My favorite memory of the joint -- beyond many a late night visit after an ill-advised consumption of beers in my pre-parenting days -- dates back to only last summer, when during a light summer rain, I peered into Stromboli's to see original NYC punk rocker Tom motherfucking Verlaine casually enjoying a late night slice of his own. If it's good enough for the man who penned "Marquee Moon," it's assuredly good enough for me.

But now,.... it's gone. That's my little boy Oliver in front of what currently remains.

John Lydon .... in a Checker Cab

This is a still from the trailer of a film John Lydon did with Harvey Keitel and an Italian director in 1983. Initially dubbed "Corrupt," the film has also been released as "The Order of Death" (after a track on Lydon's own This is What You Want, This is What You Get) and "Copkiller." I've never actually seen the whole thing, but by most accounts, it's not a good film. If you like, you can watch it here.

In any case, the scene of Johnny in the cab can be seen in the trailer. Can anyone name the address? I thought it might be in front of the NYU dorm on University Place between East 8th and Waverly (which Rick Rubin used as Def Jam's initial headquarters), but I think that's actually not correct.

Below, meanwhile, is PiL's "The Order of Death."

Going Backwards

Here's a stupid one for the weekend. The music is some vintage Pop Will Eat Itself. That's relatively incidental to the fact that it features a guy who painstakingly walked backwards through portions of Manhattan. Enjoy.

Back to The Sin Club

Back in 2012, I penned a quick post based around a photograph I’d stumbled across of some gig flyers in the East Village in the early 80’s, specifically ones advertising gigs by Sonic Youth and SWANS. The SWANS gig (see detail above) was going down at a long-since vanished venue on Avenue C called The Sin Club. Information on same was pretty sparse, although some readers weighed in with recollections.

Today, fantastic music site The Quietus featured a great article about the history of New York City loft spaces as reimagined as places for art and music, and one of the key figures they interviewed was Michael Gira of SWANS. In discussing how his band’s performance at The Kitchen prompted the police to show up (“because we were so loud”), Gira goes into some greater detail about the Sin Club. Here’s what he had to say.

But there were other spaces, a little further off the radar. "There was something called the Sin Club that was on Avenue C and Second Street or something, which was at the time just total apocalypse. Gunfire all over the place, burnt out cars everywhere. I remember that the PA there got heisted by the local police." Inside the Sin Club "was just a graffitied dry wall space. There were no amenities really. Some sort of laughable PA." Similar sorts of spaces would regularly "pop up and happen for a year or six months."

Read the full article here.

Today, the space the Sin Club occupied looks like this…

 

Regurgitating "Eat and Run"

By this point in the proceedings, if you trawl around on this blog or EV Grieve or Vanishing New York or Bowery Boogie or Scouting New York, you’re invariably used to one of us breathlessly citing notable films shot in New York City and painstakingly pointing out specific locations in and around town, be it the late Harold Ramis’ “Ghostbusters,” Walter Hill’s “The Warriors” or my particular obsession, Martin Scorsese’s “After Hours.” Everyone has their favorite NYC movie.

It’s been noted that New York City is an incredibly expensive city to film a movie in. One suspects that wasn’t always the case, however, when one considers 1986’s flatly ridiculous “Eat and Run,” a slavishly undercooked sci-fi film about a rotund alien who comes to Manhattan with the intention of, ahem, eating Italian people. The film stars the late Ron Silver. It is not a good movie.

I’d pretty much forgotten about it until someone invoked it in my office earlier this week, prompting me to revisit the trailer. I’m only putting that up here as it boasts some nice NYC shots. Check it out.

Maiden Manhattan Redux: Gramercy Killers

Okay, here's a quickie.

Yesterday, in a post pinpointing the exact street location of a shot of Iron Maiden in 1981, I found a pic of a bootleg disc which boasted a cover photograph presumably shot on the same day (the boys are wearing the same gear in the shot). Upon seeing that photograph, heavy metal chef Andy R. said...

the pic on the cd cover looks like University Place and 10th st.

...by which he means 28 East 10th, the building Alec Baldwin lives in.

As much as I relish the idea of Iron Maiden strolling down University Place, that didn't seem right to me. Plus, ... I had a hunch.

I keep meaning to finish my proper post about it, by the Gramercy Park Hotel over at the bottom end of Lexington Avenue at East 21st Street hasn't always been a plush destination. Long before celebrated hotelier Ian Schrager refurbished the place, the Gramercy Park Hotel was a study in witheringly elegant decrepitude. In the 1980's, moreover, it was arguably the rock n' roll hotel for stars either rising or dimming. If you were a new band swinging into New York City to play Irving Plaza or the Palladium or any number of now long-since-closed downtown venues, there was a more-than-likely chance they'd have put you up at the Gramercy. From the Psychedelic Furs and the Stranglers through Motorhead and The Clash .... droves of amazing bands stayed at the Gramercy Park Hotel in the 1980s,

As such, I figured....being that Maiden were booked to play at Palladium just across the park and down Irving Place at the Palladium at the time, it would have made perfect sense for them to have stayed at the Gramercy Park Hotel as well.

So, upon walking back from dropping Oliver off at school this morning, I took a stroll by the Gramercy to see if my hunch was correct. Sure enough it was.

On the cover of the bootleg, Iron Maiden are pictured hanging out on the northwest corner of East 21st Street and Lex. The stately building behind them is One Lexington Avenue. Here is that very corner today...which, incidentally, is just the other end of the same block this original photo was taken.

Maiden Manhattan: Solved

Well, that certainly didn’t take long.

Very shortly after I posted this entry, the guesses came rolling in.

First up, a reader named Ian opined thusly:

I think its park ave south between 21&22 looking north /northwest

After that, a reader named Paul wrote:

I concur with Ian: it's Park Avenue South. According to the internets, this must be July 1981 when they played 4 nights at the Palladium.

Finally, the master himself, Bob Egan of Popspots weighed in…

Ian was 99% right, except that it's not mid-block, because they are holding onto the street sign, it would be at the north-east corner of Park Avenue South and 21st Street. The telephoto lens squeezes the distance.

And as Ian also pointed out, Iron Maiden (with the gruffly punkish Paul Di’anno still on vocals, a position later to be held by the Valkyrie-piped Bruce Dickinson) played New York City’s Palladium (on East 14th Street… now a dormitory with a Trader Joe’s in its ground floor) for a four-night stint in July of 1981. Search hard enough and you can prize bootleg recordings of the mini-residency like this one (pictured up top). Evidently, during their few days in the big city, the band did an in-story signing (check out the video here – probably shot in a Crazy Eddie’s or Sam Goody’s, but it’s so grainy it’s hard to know). In searching around for other pics from that day, I did find one of bassist Steve Harris and another of bleach-blonde guitarist Dave Murray (sporting the same Harley-Davidson shirt).

Check out Bob Egan’s inimitable detective work below.

And, why not...?

Maiden Manhattan

My metalhead chef comrade Andrew R. posted the above photo on Facebook today, and it made my morning. Herewith, of course, a shot of vintage, Paul Di'anno-era Iron Maiden, posing manfully with feathered hair and disarmingly high-waisted denim on the streets of New York City. Now, based on the architecture surrounding them, can anyone pinpoint the exact location? Get to work.

Here they are from that same era.... 

Downtown with Coati Mundi

As I mentioned back on this post in 2010, I was a never a huge fan of Kid Creole of the Coconuts, but select tracks like "My Male Curiosity" on the soundtrack to "Against All Odds," and "Annie, I'm Not Your Daddy," totally captured my attention, despite being devoid of pugnacious power chords or angry white dudes with mohawks.

In any case, the moment that really tipped the balance in my fandom for the band was their cameo in in "Downtown `81," Glenn O'Brien's strange little docu-drama which received wide release in 2001. Featuring live performances shot at the fabled Rock Lounge on West Broadway just south of Canal Street, "Downtown `81" proved Kid Creole & the Coconuts to be a wildly versatile band. Despite including tracks by skronk-meisters like DNA and Teenage Jesus & the Jerks, the soundtrack's best moments remain the tracks by Kid Creole and company.

But a big part of what made those performances special were the contributions from Coati Mundi, who acted, I suppose, as August "Kid Creole" Darnell's hype man. Like a crazed Puerto Rican Flavor Flav, Coati Mundi leant a funky, bug-eyed mania to the tracks, acting the loon next to Kid Creole's smooth shtick.

Anyway, I stumbled upon a few videos by the man (the track above was actually featured in "Downtown 81," actually). Above, see Coati Mundi improving a lip-synch to "Que Pasa/Me No Pop I" around a very busy Washington Square Park in 1981. It's bizarre to see our man bouncing around the very playground that my kids would regularly play in a couple of decades later. Washington Square Park hasn't seen this degree of joie de vivre in some time.

Below, meanwhile, is a clip of Coati's from a couple of years later. "Como Esta Usted" was filmed in the East Village in 1983, and directed by fabled Roxy deejay, Clash buddy, filmmaker and erstwhile B.A.D. member, Don Letts. Here's what Coati's own YouTube channel says about the clip:

Directed by Don Letts Choreographed by former Kid Creole vocalist Lori Eastside.

In This Video: - Lori's dance troupe called Rockercise - Members Coati's family including his parents Flora and Cruz - Couple of ex-wives of members from the The Clash - Suzi Sidewinder as the Black Doll - Marina Hernandez (Sister) - Chet Baker's son - Sharon D'Lugoff - Leila

The video was filmed in 1983 in NYC's East Village. A dance sequence was shot on the fire escape of the old Filmore East which was owned by the famed legendary promoter and manager Bill Graham.

Coati Mundi was a founding member of Kid Creole and The Coconuts.

Word on The Street