This has been quite a goddamn week, eh? Beyond it being dreary January and the obvious, stratospherically heartbreaking news that David Bowie has forever left us, we also lost the great Alan Rickman (who I was fortunate enough to see onstage in Noel Coward's "Private Lives" on Broadway several years back, but who my little girl knows only as “Snape”) and storied NYC rock ’n’ roll manager/producer/cool cat Giorgio Gomelsky. We were also informed that the L train to Brooklyn is going bye-bye (I guess that means no more trips to Rough Trade) and that fucking “Friends” is coming back. I mean, haven’t we suffered enough? Must that impenetrably low depth-point of idiotic pop culture be re-foisted up on us? Basically, I think we can all agree that 2016 has sucked a major greasy one, thus far.
On a personal level, I’m still wrestling with that thing that I cannot talk about here. This all said, at least my new job has been a great, engaging, life-affirming and verily life-saving godsend, one for which I am eternally grateful to an otherwise seemingly maleficent deity for.
I constantly feel like apologizing here for sub-standard or erratic posts, although I’ve fielded a couple of genuinely lovely notes from readers in the past couple of days that have really lifted my spirits. Thanks for bearing with my melodrama.
In any case, as I was hoofing it downtown to work this morning in a funk worthy of Charlie Brown, I looked up and spotted a doorway that triggered something.
Those of you who’ve been hanging around here might remember an unwieldy photo quiz I posted back in 2011, wherein posted a slew of notable pics of rock types hanging out in specific locales around the city. Some of them, of course, were crazy obvious, while a couple of others really stumped the experts. One of the latter variety was this one below.
Here we see, of course, the inimitable Lydia Lunch. This is actually a still from a Vivienne Dick film she starred in from 1979 called “Beauty Becomes the Beast.” As you might imagine, it sure ain't a feel-good romcom.
Anyway, I posed the question to readers to identify that doorway wherein our Lydia is seen looking desperate and expectant. Given the subject matter and the casting, it wasn’t exactly a giant leap to suspect that it was somewhere on the Lower East Side, but no one seemed to nail it. I thought it might be on Bond Street just a few steps in off the Bowery, but never made a solid match-up.
In any case, years later, I’m walking down West Broadway to work this morning, and I spied this.
But, of course, that’s not it either. The numbers don’t match. But, it’s kinda similar, right? Anyway, the hunt continues. At the very least, it got my mind off my troubles for a moment.
“Beauty Becomes the Beast” used to be on YouTube, but doesn’t seem to be anymore. That said, here’s a suitably grim little snippet of Vivienne Dick’s, also featuring lovely Lydia in petulant form.
Keep your hopes up and try to stay positive.
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