Holy crap, how is it Friday already? Sorry, it’s been another busy week for me, and I haven’t managed to get as much content up as I’d planned, but time got away from me. I’m sure you can all empathize.
En route to the office today, however, I veered off my normal course (I usually either go straight down West Broadway or down Lafayette), and strolled down Mercer Street. I’ve talked about my personal associations with Mercer Street a few times here (notably here, here and most recently here), but I doubt I’ll ever be able to walk down it and not think of my tenure at 55 Mercer Street Gallery, especially on swelteringly hot summer days like these. That all said, the Mercer Street of 2017 bares precious little resemblance to the Mercer Street of the late `80s and early `90s.
As mentioned in those other posts, the gallery I worked in was on the second floor of a then-musty, antiquated building, and in my capacity as a “gallery sitter” (i.e. the person who answers questions, opens and closes the place, mans the phone and basically makes sure no one fucks with the art), I was frequently alone for hours on end, given that not too many people were willing to climb the rickety stairs or take their chances on the elevator, which would practically groan when you entered it. It should also be pointed out that there was no air-conditioning. There was a sporadically functional industrial fan, but otherwise, it was often stuffy and sweaty.
As a result, I would often repair to the front and sit on the fire escape overlooking Mercer Street, trying to cool off. And when I’d had the foresight to bring my boom box (it could get really quiet at 55 Mercer Street, otherwise), there were a clutch of regular selections that would score those long, sweaty days. Deep in the throes of my Anglophilia, at the time, regular favorite selections included the Stone Roses’ debut album (still a towering achievement this many years later), Gala by proto-shoegazers Lush and, of course, the blistering Extremities, Dirty & Various Repressed Emotions by my beloved Killing Joke. But the album that reminds me the most of my days at 55 Mercer is the eponymous 1990 album by The House of Love, specifically the first couple of tracks, those being “Hannah” and “Shine On.” For whatever reason, the spacey, expansive vibe of that opening track immediately brings me back to that fire escape as if it had happened yesterday.
Today, 55 Mercer looks nothing like it once did, nor does the street it sits on. The street art is significantly diminished, the storefronts are now occupied by pricey clothiers and new construction is everywhere. The gallery closed up shop ages ago, decamping to another borough. The building was completely gutted and renovated in the 2000’s and turned into an exclusive, luxury condo. The fire escape I used to sit on was removed from the façade. The high-ceilinged rooms within that I used to sit around in are now someone’s master bedroom and kitchen, one assumes.
But walking by it all this morning, I dutifully dialed “Hannah” up on my iPod, and while the surrounding visuals no longer match up, it still puts me right back there.
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