Today's the birthday of Iggy Pop or — as I regularly refer to him — the Greatest Living American!
To honor the great man on his special day, I’m posting what could possibly be the most perfect video of all time. Some inspired soul decided to use a certain bit of 16mm, black and white silent film of Astor Place that I’ve posted here several times (shot, presumably, in the early-to-mid-60s?), and used “Down on the Street” from the Stooges’ seminal 1970 opus, Funhouse (which I’ve also rapturously waxed about here several times) to score it. It's an awesome pairing. Check it out....
Despite being from Michigan, Iggy has, of course, a long history with New York City. For years, he lived in the Christadora House over on Avenue B (hence the name of his otherwise uncharacteristically dour 1999 album, Avenue B) before defecting to Miami. I also remember hearing that he lived for a spell over on Mercer Street, adjacent to Washington Square Village.
I did see him out and about once ... I was walking west on St. Mark's Place (just across the park from the Christadora), and Iggy was seated just inside the door of Sin-E. I couldn't help myself from exclaiming "IGGY!" and he flashed me an endearingly goofy, bug-eyed grin and a thumbs-up. That pretty much made my year.
I’ve wheeled this one out before as well, but here’s Iggy giving a tour of his then-`hood in 1993. You’d barely recognize it.
I’m not a foodie. Don’t get me wrong, I adore food with every fibre of my being, but never in a bajillion years would I call myself a foodie. I’m largely incapable of cooking with any semblance of credibility. Pretty much the only thing I’m good for in the kitchen is cleaning up. I’m fine with that.
I also stand with the great Steve Goddamn Albini in his succinctly worded contempt for the cutesy term “foodie.” I have several friends who are legitimate epicureans, but I cannot converse with them at the same level of informed discourse. I don't get excited about new food trends, and I generally refrain from taking pictures of my meals and sharing them on social media,... unless there's something truly exceptional or horrific about them.
That all said, I know what I like. I can tell good cuisine from bad, and I am discerning in my appreciation. If I’m in the mood for a certain type of grub, I have a tried and trusted list of suitable eateries to suit that particular taste.
But am I a foodie? No.
With that in mind, maybe I’m not in a position to cross swords with the mighty Adam Platt of New York Magazine. For a start, I should preface this by saying I am a big fan of the magazine, and have been since I first started reading my parents’ copies of it on our coffee table as a child. I don’t always agree with what’s written in its pages -- and this is happening with increasing frequency -- but I still maintain that this information is coming from a reliable, readable and usually entertaining source.
This morning, I found a special edition of New York’s Where To East 2015 guide (“The best food in New York This Minute”) in my mail. Having two little kids, the wife and I don’t get out to eat nearly as much as we’d like, but I do like to keep abreast of what’s new out there, … and also like to congratulate myself when I see a place I’ve already discovered and/or dined at applauded in these sorts of guides.
In paging through, I came a across a listicle called “Trends We’re Tired Of.” This entry was among the ten cited….
Mawkish Ye-Olde-Restaurant Nostalgia: In this dog-eat-dog restaurant town, the end of a long run should be celebrated, not mourned. Besides, when was the last time you actually sat down for dinner at Benny’s Burritos?
I’m not sure where to begin with this. I guess my biggest quibble is that Platt’s writing from what I’d consider an incredibly selfish, myopic perspective.
Just to use the example he cites, the Benny’s Burritos on Avenue A operated for 26 years before it could no longer meet its rent and was forced to shut its doors in 2014. Maybe Adam Platt was done with it — and I’d imagine it’s hard to stay even fleetingly loyal to any single restaurant when reviewing new restaurants is essentially your gig — but it was still a fairly regular stop for lots of regular folks who counted it as a favorite neighborhood fixture (to say nothing of its employees who lost their jobs when the establishment was forced out of business). There’s absolutely nothing wrong with "mourning" that situation.
Yes, celebrate the place as well, but understand that it’s not just about you and your options for dining out. It’s about a community. It’s about a local business providing jobs.
While walking around SoHo this morning, my kids and I found ourselves on the corner of Crosby and Howard, so I couldn't help paying homage to Michael Lavine's old portrait of Sonic Youth from many, many moons ago...
Obviously, it's a COMPLETELY different scene today.
Back in `97 or so, I took the below shot of this same corner.
I'm also quite fond of this little set of corners, as it's the spot where Paul Hackett is dropped off in the beginning of "After Hours" (which I've talked about way too many times here)....
Incidentally, later in the morning, we wound ourselves over to the East Side, and ended up in the same Forsythe Street park where that photo of Pussy Galore was shot back in 1987. I thought that would make for a nice juxtaposition for the Sonic Youth shot (being that Pussy Galore were arguably the Stones to the Sonic Youth's Beatles), but the bench was unfortunately occupied at the time by a gaggle of frankly aromatic gentlemen in varying states of inebriation. Oh well...
As an admission that should shock absolutely no one who regularly reads this blog, I am not really a fan of house music.
I mean, I don’t really have anything against it, per se, I just don’t personally enjoy it. I have a few friends whose tastes and opinions I genuinely respect that absolutely love the stuff, and talk about arcane house records with the same rapturous fervor with which I foam at the mouth about out-of-print albums by Venom and Cop Shoot Cop, but y’know — whatever. To each their own.
I honestly don’t know enough about house music to credibly knock it. I just don’t really get it. It doesn’t speak to me. It just seems like purely functional music. You dance to it, I guess. There just doesn’t seem to be any on-ramp into it for emotional investment. Unless, of course, you’re whacked out of your gourd on drugs.
But, really, what do I know? I'm an old poop. I mean, I do love a lot of electronic music, like The Orb, Underworld, Orbital and, of course, those lovable Teutons in Kraftwerk, but in those instances, there’s still a bit of stubbornly conventional song structure at work. They may all be groundbreaking envelope-pushers, but they still adhere — however tenuously — to the pop format. Their songs have beginnings, middles and ends. They have definable melodies and, sometimes, vocals. You can even sing along.
Believe it or not, this post isn’t really about music. The only reason I bring all this crap up (having now incurred the ire of a nation of glowstick-wavey ravers) is because of a Swiss duo called In Flagranti.
I know precious *FUCK ALL* about them, but a colorfully named guy named Johnny Cola posted one of their videos (one of seemingly hundreds — these dudes are crazy prolific) on the NYC 1950 to Present group on Facebook, and it caught my attention.
Despite being from Switzerland, In Flagranti have a thing for old New York City. Maybe one of them spent some time here as foreign exchange student? Who knows. Most of their music seems to come sheathed in covers with naked women on them, but they also use old timey NYC shots like this...
In any event, here are the three videos I found that struck a chord with me. Check’em out.
This first one is for a long, hypnotic and — frankly — kinda boring track called “Thee Piece Suit.” The video, however, is essentially a nine plus minute film of an unhurried drive — complete with pauses at stop lights — up 10th Avenue at some point in the mid-70’s.
That one’s cool, but also kinda frustrating. I kept hoping the driver would hang a right, drive out of this somewhat boring patch of Hell’s Kitchen towards points east.ADDENDUM:Eagle-eyed reader and fellow blogger Bryan Kuntz of This Ain't the Summer of Love correctly identified this footage as having been lifted from Chantal Ackerman's "News from Home" from 1976. Well spotted, Bryan!
My curiosity piqued from that one, I searched out others. The next one I came across was for a cut called “Latter-Day Methods.” Once again, it’s another retrophillic dance-floor workout, but this time scoring an homage to longtime cable access smut pioneer, Ugly George (who I spoke about way back here).This clip finds George practicing his disreputable shtick; essentially petitioning women on the streets of mid-to-late-70’s Manhattan to come with into an enclosed space somewhere and take their tops off for the camera. Stranger than fiction, he actually managed to coerce a few to comply (and some went above and beyond, surprisingly enough). It ain’t pretty, but here it is….
Next up came a a clip for a track called “The Beast.” Once again, the music — to me — is relatively incidental. That said, the video cleverly appropriates footage from Walter Hill’s retro-dystopian gang war epic, “The Warriors” (which I’ve waxed rhapsodic about here and here). It’s fairly entertaining, if you’re a fan of the film.
Lastly, here’s “The End of the Road,” another meandering track that scores the Staten Island Ferry’s slow journey across the river, looking back at mid-70’s Manhattan.
Now, does any of this make me more receptive to house music?
A couple of weeks back, my friend/former sorta-colleague Phil Freeman asked me if I wanted to write up a little something about the new Jon Spencer Blues Explosion record for his formidable blog, Burning Ambulance. Given both my fandom for the band and the purportedly NYC-nostalgic bent of their new album, Freedom Tower No Wave Dance Party 2015 (which I spoke of back here), Phil figured I’d be a good fit.
Honored and flattered (I have tremendous respect for Burning Ambulance — Phil writes with passion and authority and dives deep), I said yes.
I already owned the album, as I’d been looking forward to it for some time, being the bona fide JSBX fan that I am. That’s them up top as captured by rock photographer Stephanie Chernikowski, by the way, lounging manfully against the storied wall of Old St. Patrick’s in SoHo.
The trouble, however, is that I’m being pulled in a million different directions these days. I’ve now been out of a job for quite some time. Mercifully, there’s been a bump in momentum, and I’m currently in talks with a small array of diverse outlets, but no offers are on the table as yet. I’ve come close before, though, and had it all fall away, so I’m trying to stay grounded and focussed and not get my hopes too high as I jump through the respective hoops.
On top of that, I’m also wrangling my two little kids . Last week, they had the whole week off, and this week, my wife’s away in London on business.
With that in mind, my review for Burning Ambulance was beginning to mentally hound me. I was able to fully digest and absorb the album (I’ve listened to pretty much nothing else for the past three weeks), but there’s a lot to be said about the band at this stage of the proceedings and the theme of this particular record. I really wanted to (a) honor my commitment to Phil and give him something worthy of Burning Ambulance and (b) do justice to the record.
Weirdly, I see Jon Spencer around town on a quasi-regular basis. My kids’ school is right near his home (he lives somewhere in Gramercy). I’ve never accosted him, although he did once wish me a “Merry Christmas,” ….. which was sorta mind-blowing.
Anyway, blah blah blah. Thankfully, Phil was very patient and I managed to get him my piece on Freedom Tower No Wave Dance Party 2015 earlier this week and PRESTO it’s now on Burning Ambulance. You can check it out here.
For the uninitiated, here’s the Jon Spencer Blue Explosion firing on all combustive cylinders….
I made the arguable error of renting “Slaves of New York” this evening. The 1989 cinematic adaptation of Tama Janowitz’s celebrated novel (which I never read), “Slaves” rubs shoulders with Susan Seidelman's equally dreadful “Smithereens,” “Mondo New York” and maybe “Godspell” in the vein of New York City-centric films that are positively rife with compelling location shots (in this case, fleeting tastes of SoHo, the East Village, the Lower East Side and the Meatpacking District), but are otherwise impossible to watch without gagging.
Plot-wise, it’s abject torture (and I'm only halfway through it). Poor Bernadette Peters does her best with what’s given to her, and Steve Buscemi has a small role, but beyond that, it's a total goddmann chore.
Still, for the location shots….it’s almost worth it. Not sure if I'm going to make it the whole way through.
Since I don't have a high-floored vantage point to replicate the photograph by Dana DeLoach I cited in that last post, here is, essentially, its inverse.
This was taken this afternoon from the southeast corner of East 12th Street and Broadway -- in front of what is now The Bean and what was, in Ms. DeLoach's 1971 photograph, a record store -- looking up.
I feel guilty every time I mine Manhattan before 1990 or NYC 1950 to Present on Facebook for content, but a user named Dana DeLoach posted the above image earlier this week on the latter, and it immediately grabbed me. I asked her if I could repurpose it here, and she graciously agreed.
This is, of course, the intersection of East 12th Street and Broadway, snapped from above by Ms. DeLoach in 1971.
There’s loads to love about this photo beyond its simply striking composition. Personally speaking, these four corners have special resonance. I moved just steps to the west of this photograph in 1996, and lived there until 2002 — arguably some of the happiest days of my life. This was “my corner.”
But even before I lived here, this patch had a special significance for me. Growing up on the Upper East Side, I’d come down to Union Square on the 6 train and come to this very intersection to hit the original site of Forbidden Planet, originally directly across from the Strand on the northwest corner of East 12th and Broadway (you can see shots of that corner through the ages by clicking right here.) Beyond that, I’d continue further down 12th Street until I got to Fifth Avenue, where my dad’s office was for a while (he worked at Forbes for a long spell — which, oddly, no longer holds court in that building anymore).
Funny thing about pictures like these -- we look at them from the filter of our own experience, often forgetting that these streets have existed for veritable LIFETIMES prior to that experience. I had absolutely ZERO idea that the southeast corner ever played host to a record store (and we all know howmuchIlovethose). When I first moved down there, it was an antique store. It later turned into a Quiznos sandwich shop and is now a coffee house called The Bean. The Strand, refreshingly, is still very much there — and looks pretty much the same in 2015 as it did in 1971, God bless it.
Last thought about this. The week I moved into my apartment on East 12th, I went out for beers with my friend Rob C. at one point in the evening, we passed across this very intersection again and discovered a small patch of wet cement right there in front of the Strand on the northeast corner. I forget what Rob carved, but I pulled out a pencil from my pocket and carved — I’m somewhat ashamed to admit — “KISS Rules” in the drying concrete.
Almost two decades later, you can still faintly make it out.
I’ve written about Drew Carolan’s photographs here a couple of time (most notably here). He’s an accomplished photographer, native New Yorker and Lower East Sider, but one of the projects that really defined his work was a series of pictures dubbed “Matinee."
Here’s how he officially describes it.
The Matinee photographs were made between 1983 and 1985 on the Bowery in New York City. The intent was to intercept kids on their to afternoon All Ages Hardcore punk shows at underground music mecca CBGB and photograph them in my makeshift outdoor studio.
As I understand it, Drew basically just set up his "makeshift outdoor studio” by putting up a large, white tarp on the south side of Bleecker Street, just steps to the west of Bowery (i.e. essentially across the street from CBGB), and from there he documented a wide cast of characters.
Even if you’re not a fan of the NYHC scene or punk rock in the slightest, Drew’s photographs are striking, poignant and affecting. Check them out on his official website here.
I’d become of fan of Drew’s after seeing his photos here and there, but it wasn’t until I saw the video at the bottom of this post that it all came together.
In any case, the Bowery of the mid-80’s seems several worlds away by this point. I don’t want to make this post into another laborious lament over the loss of CBGB (I’ve devoted more than enough bandwidth to that particular grievance, most recently here), but the neighborhood — nay, city as a whole — has so vastly transformed in the past fifteen to twenty years, that it can really make your head spin.
The strip of Bleecker Street between Lafayette and Bowery used to have such a great vibe to it. Obviously, I always associate it as the veritable river that plugged right into CBGB, but the street itself used to be much more interesting. Most of the facades are cleaner and have been scrubbed of the flyers and street art that formerly adorned them. Today, it’s just another street — and a busy one at that.
These days, I believe Drew Carolan lives in Southern California, but I wonder if he’d recognize the corner he used to hold court on with his tarp and his camera. I was out with my kids this afternoon (they have the week off), and we found ourselves on that very strip of concrete, so here’s my unrecognizable homage to Drew’s “Matinee” pictures.
Back in 2013, I wrote up a nice little post reminiscing about a somewhat unlikely spot for this blog, that being the K Cafe on the second floor of the Astor Place Kmart.
As expressed in that post, I have never been a fan of that Kmart, despite having begrudgingly spent money in it over the years. Its opening in — I believe — 1996 marked a grim tipping point for the rest of the neighborhood, comparable (in my mind, at least) to the shuttering of CBGB and the Cedar Tavern. Not that its entirely Kmart’s fault, but the Astor Place of today is now frequently referred to as the epicenter of “Midtown South,” a ridiculous misnomer that continues to furrow my brow. It’s barely recognizable as the wide open space that acted as the veritable gate of downtown that it was in decades past. Heavy sigh…..
Obviously, Kmart isn’t the only business in the storied, whole-block-occupying 770 Broadway. These days, it’s also the home of AOL, the Huffington Post, Billboard Magazine and, more recently, Facebook, among many others. I once had a job interview on one of its upper floors (not recently, mind you) in the mid-oughts at a trade magazine called Kitchen & Bath Business. The interview went nowhere (somewhat mercifully), but I was happy to be able to stroll around inside 770 for a tiny spell. It’s a massive, hulking fortress of a space.
In any case, regardless of 770’s tenants and the ongoing transformation of Astor Place from a pleasant, open plaza and into a hub of industry, the building remains an indelible landmark, and I can’t help but feel something of a stir when I’m inside it.
A couple of months back, I had the pleasure of meeting a friend for lunch at a company who recently opened office space in 770, and the view from their new cafeteria blew me away. I couldn’t resist snapping another pic — now from a higher vantage point — of that view down Lafayette Street.
Last evening, meanwhile, I found myself back in goddamn Kmart with my two kids, searching for a reading lamp to replace one that had recently ceased functioning on my desk. They hadn’t had what I’d needed in other spots around the neighborhood (I still miss Surprise, Surprise), so I threw in the towel and, sure enough, I found the exact item I needed on Kmart’s second floor.
As we were making for the exit, however, I took my kids on a detour back over to what had been that old K Cafe (once again, see that old post for details). Today, it remains something of a half-assed audio-video department (although they’ve completely given up selling compact discs at this point). I brought my kids over to those beautiful windows to look out over rush hour o’er Astor Place to mimic a shot from years earlier…..
Then..
Now...
I doubt I’ll ever be able to resist doing that.
Lastly, here’s another clip of U2’s oddball 1997 press function on Kmart’s ground floor. I actually attended this thing, and still think of it every time I’m attempting to check out of the place.
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