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Inspired by yet another impending post about the excellent Soul Jazz series New York Noise (more about that shortly), herewith a live set from the mighty KONK, as captured in 1986 in the (since vanished) Tompkins Square Park bandshell. You may remember this post from a little while back discussing same.
Enjoy.
I wasn’t going to post anything on this here, originally, as it didn’t seem signifcant enough, given my thoughts about the place, but then EV Grieve picked up the posts I put up about it on social media and posted about it, so I might as well, too. Here we go.
Second Hand Rose on East 12th between Broadway and University Place appears to be closed. I say appears because EV Grive noticed a detail I first overlooked, that being an addendum note on the door that seems to read “closed for renovations.” That said, if I had a dollar for every business I’ve seen that’s vanished without a trace despite a note that said they were just closed for renovations, I could take myself out to a nice lunch.
This wasn’t the first home for Second Hand Rose. Originally, they were over on Sixth Avenue, just south of 14th Street, in a comparatively larger space. I can’t remember when that iteration of the enterprise closed, but it was probably around 2002 or 2003 that they decamped to East 12th Street. I used to live on that very strip of East 12th, and I was gone before they moved there.
Here’s the thing though: Neither incarnation was anything to write home about.
I don’t mean to be harsh, but -– for a start -– the place was always a mess. You couldn’t find anything you were looking for, and if you did happen to find what you were looking for, it wasn’t though any miracle of organization or assistance from the staff. If you managed to put your hand to an item you were in seach of, it was invariably an accident –- and notice I didn’t qualify that as “happy accident”? You might be happy you found it, but once you saw how much they were asking for it, that happiness would dry up pretty quickly.
More to the point, beyond the disarray of the stock, the afore-cited staff were indifferent on a good day, and downright thorny on an average day. By asking for anything, you were –- at the very least -– inconveniencing them or somehow putting their noses out of joint for daring to upset the deathly stillness of the place. And if you dared extrapolate about some nuance of the record you were searching for, they usually weren’t even slightly interested. If they were music lovers themselves, they certainly hid it well.
Adding insult to injury, they were remarkably particular and fussy about what germs you might be bringing into their shop. Despite their own dust-slathered disheveledness, they posted a snooty admonishment on their front door, scolding anyone who might be afflicted with a cold from considering entry, as if their place was some sort of neonatal intensive care unit.
So yeah, they were sloppy, surly, pricey and under-informed about their own stock. As such, while I’m usually sad anytime a record/disc shop closes, I can’t say I’m especially broken up about this apparent shuttering, nor am I particularly surprised.
That all said, maybe they are just renovating, and will re-emerge, Phoenix-style, from the ashes of their former ignominy with a robust new outlook.
I’m not holding my breath.
In case you think it’s just me that harbors these uncharitable feelings towards the place, here are some select responses from my posts about it on social media…
Wow. Yeah I pretty much disliked that shop, but man was it there for a long time!
They always had great stuff in the window but it was waaaaaay overpriced.
Overpriced and the staff made you feel like you were inconveniencing them even when you made a purchase.
I always wondered how they managed to stay in business. Least favorite record store in the city.
How they stayed in business? When I moved out of my 12th street place, I sold them much of my stash. They offerred my help in finding a new place; both mother and daughter were real estate agents... The store was a kinda-side interest...
Yeah that lady was angry, even by record store standards.
While walking up through SoHo earlier this week, I passed by a shop on the eastern end of Prince Street that I’ve spoken about before called Quality Mending. Despite its patina of ersatz-folksy charm, it’s essentially a pricey emporium of “vintage” duds. You might remember my anecdote from a little while back of spotting an old Generation X t-shirt in its window with an astronomical price tag. This week was another such occasion, but with something of a bitterly ironic sting.
As I glanced into the window, I noticed they were displaying an entire ensemble, ready-made for someone intent on replicating a fully curated “punk” look in one fell swoop. While that’s certainly nothing new (check out Barney’s latest attempts at same), I was immediately struck by the t-shirt hidden beneath the spike-laden, black leather jacket.
While I could only see a little bit of it, I immediately recognized it as Eric Drooker’s illustration from the cover of the second False Prophets album from 1990, Invisible People. I spoke about same on this post, but the cover looks like this….
Just as with that Generation X shirt, as much as I basically resent Quality Mending and everything it represents, I am a genuine fan of False Prophets and that album in particular. As such, I felt I needed to find out what their story was with that shirt.
It should be reinforced, at this point, that False Prophets were not just another noisy punk band. I mean, yeah, they were noisy and they were punks and part of that whole proto-NYHC scene alongside Kraut, The Mob, Even Worse and the Stimulators, but by and large, they were way more experimental. But what really set False Prophets apart from the rest of that horde was their social conscience. This album in particular is steeped in the band’s leftist, anarcho world view. Reinforcing that message is the sleeve art of Eric Drooker’s, who also provided illustrations for the video of the title track, which documents the plight of the homeless in New York City.
With all that in my head, I stepped into the shop and asked how much they wanted for the tattered garment in question. I learned that If I wanted to own this shirt, one that extols the merits of a band devoted to calling out the inhuman inequities of a capitalist society, it could be mine for upwards of $150.00.
I can only imagine this would make the False Prophets nauseous.
And just `cos it's awesome, here's a bit more of Eric Drooker's artwork:
Having cut my teeth on bands like Dead Kennedys, DOA, Black Flag and the Circle Jerks, when the hardcore floodgates fully opened for me in the early-to-mid 80’s, there was a veritable nation of new music to choose from. The ranks of this underground movement were filled with countless angry, young bands with lots to say, usually punctuating themsevles with provocative, tastelessly declarative and/or willfully objectionable names. From the Butthole Surfers, Suicidal Tendencies and Jodie Foster’s Army to the F.U.’s, the Fartz and Bullemia Banquet (just awful), there was no shortage of ensembles ready and eager to offend for the purposes of getting their music across. But of all those records from that era, the one that continues to stick out in my mind that really gave the envelope of taste a seriously hefty shove, it was the self-titled debut from a Michigan combo called -– wait for it -– the Crucifucks.
Given the singularly outrageous nature of their moniker -- a giddy combination of blasphemy and profanity -- I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the band managed to sell copies of their LP based on the burly strength of that name alone. I believe I first heard them courtesy of a mixtape messily assembled by my friend Spike (not his real name, immortalized here), and it left an impression.
The thing about the Crucifucks, however, was despite the irreverent giggles generated by that name, their album cover (a deceptively placcid nature scene, above) and their song titles (choice favorites include “Go Bankrupt and Die,” “Cops for Fertilizer” and “Hinckley Had a Vision”), it never seemed exactly defined if they were kidding or not. I mean, one could peruse the oeuvre of the Meatmen, scan their song titles, and safely assume that the guys in the band were just tasteless dicks. But, in the case of the Crucifucks, there was something about the delivery of vocalist Doc Dart that suggested he wasn’t just venting his considerable spleen for cheap laughs.
This was never so abundantly clear than in the video below, which I, until recently, never knew existed.
Here was see the disarmingly youthful Crucifucks having a bash through “No One Can Make Me Play Along With This,” a laugh-free screed that finds Doc Dart furiously taking the pilars of the establishment to task for their avarice and hyporcrisy. “Rockaway Beach” it is not.
While the bass player and guitarist are pretty much all business, Dart and drummer Steve Shelley (yes, later of Sonic Youth) put in quite a spirited performance. Dart’s disarmingly shrill, literally large-mouthed contributions betray any notion that he’s doing this soley for the purposes of entertainment (regardless of the chryons on the bottom of the screen carpet-F-bombing).
It’s a nice, pugnacious slice of 1982. Are people still making music this visceral today? If so, I’m not hearing it.
Back in 1993, I spent a few nights in the then-newly-erected dormitory for Cooper Union, perched on the corner of Stuyvesant Street at Third Avenue, looming over St. Marks like something out of “The Lord of the Rings.” I’d been commissioned by an old colleague who was now editing the school’s alumni magazine to write about life in the freshly-minted dormitory, the school’s first in their long history. You can read a more detailed account of the experience on this ancient post.
As I recounted in that post, though, there was a point wherein I was walking up and down St. Marks Place -– which still looked like St. Marks Place, at the time, if you smell what I’m cooking –- and interviewing various shop-owners and folks on the street about their impressions of the dorm. I remember chatting with a by-the-numbers punk rocker on the stoop of Sounds about it, and even though he was zealously boozy-before-noon, his assertion that this was “probably only the start” was lucidly prescient.
Indeed, looking back, it does seem like it was only the beginning. I mean, obviously, change is the only constant in the urban environment, and St. Marks Place has seen no shortage of upheaval (see Ada Calhoun’s stately tome for that whole story), but the development -- and subsequent turnover -- that has beset St. Marks Place, the East Village, and the entirety of Manhattan writ large in the 23 years since I chatted with that Mohican Nostradamus has almost transformed the area beyond recognition.
Last Friday, my friend EV Grieve reported the depressing-albeit-unsurprising news that the northeast corner of St. Marks Place is to be razed to accommodate a new, seven-story office building. This means, basically everything on the Third Avenue side from the edge of the Cooper Union dorm to the corner is gone, stretching as far down St. Marks Place as Papaya King.
Personally speaking, while I’m legitimately embittered by this development, the St. Marks that I first fell in love with back in the 80’s has already vanished. Trash & Vaudeville left a couple of years back. Sounds is gone. Mondo Kim’s, Venus Records, Norman’s Sound + Vision, FreeBeing and Rockit Scientist are both long gone. St. Marks Bookstores -– all its incarnations -– are gone. Dojo is gone. Coney Island High is long gone.
Sure, the Grassroots Tavern and St. Marks Comics are holding on, as is Search & Destroy, but that place still feels kinda recent … and not just a little expensive, considering the stuff they’re hawking.
Nowadays, I find its less hassle to avoid St. Marks between Third and Second entirely. There’s precious little there for me, these days.
This, of course, was not always the case. While loss of that McDonald’s, the Vape Shop and, to a lesser extent, the Papaya King aren’t going to get me weepy, I still dearly miss the old pizzeria that occupied the space currently held by Korilla, below captured by Weber Street photography.
I will also dearly miss the Continental, but that’s not to say I’ve set foot in the place since about 2006, when they removed the stage and stopped hosting live music. But when the Continental did feature live music, I routinely had my hearing abused by bands like The Unband, the Candy Snatchers, the Pleasure Fuckers, The Upper Crust, the Lee Harvey Keitel Band and the unforgettable, pyromaniacally irresponsible splendor that was Nashville Pussy. In that respect, the Continental was as valuable a venue as Brownie’s (gone), Tramp’s (gone), the Marquee (gone), Wetlands Preserve (gone), CBGB (gone) and Coney Island High around its corner (also gone).
Here's myself and Rob D. (the more dignified one) holding court in the Continental's basement circa 1995 or so.
So, am I sad that St. Marks is to be rendered further unrecognizable? Yes, but to my mind … to paraphrase the intendedly ironic title of Calhoun’s book … St. Marks is already dead.
Here’s a weird one.
Okay, so many of you probably remember some recent and not-so-recent posts I’ve devoted to photographer Drew Carolan’s book, “Matinee,” about the the New York hardore scene in the early-to-mid 80’s. I discussed it most recently here, but my first invocation of came from a video Drew had put together. You can see that video here (and below, if you don’t feel like clicking).
In any case, one of the characters Drew captured in his photographs was this, at the time, this comparatively little kid from Staten Island who was introduced into the NYHC community by his older sibling. For this purposes of this narrative, I’m going to respectuflly re-purpose Drew’s images here. That little kid is, today, one Anderson Slade.
Sometime after that, you might remember a long, laborious series of posts in 2016 wherein I became obsessed with pinpointing the exact location of a photograph of NYC’s own endearingly slovenly scumrock/post-hardcore band, The Lunachicks. In the process of that quest, I was put in touch with the photographer responsible that image, an affably patient guy named Joe Dillworth. After explaining my ridiculous obsession with his enigmatic photograph, he gamely sent me the contact sheet of the entire shoot. Among the shots in that shoot was a shot of Lunachicks bassist Syd “Squid” Silver. To Squid’s right, however, there appeared a figure on a bicycle that looked strikingly familiar. Sure enough, that is Anderson Slade.
It’s actually not that surprising that Slade, the same little kid from Drew’s pics should be seen fraternizing with the Lunachicks. Lunachick guitarist Gina Volpe was, herself, one of Drew’s subjects.That’s her on the far right of the punk trio (i.e. not the gentleman sitting down).
Anyway, the coincidences didn’t stop there. Earlier this week, a gentleman named Ruben posted a screen grab from “Vampire’s Kiss,” the arguably abortive 1988 Nicholas Cage vampire movie on the Facebook group Manhattan Before 1990. The screengrab featured a fleeting shot of Cage’s protagonist exiting a shop that used to operate on West 19th street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues called Magickal Childe. Being a big fan of Magickal Childe, I posted my own photograph of the place, which you may remember from my previous posts about the place, notably this one and this one. Here’s that photo now.
In short order, another member of the group reached out to me to say that he was putting together a documentary film about Magickal Childe, and would I mind if he used my photo. To buffer his request, he mentioned that we had a mutual friend in common, that being photographer Drew Carolan. This filmmaker wanting to use my Magickal Childe photo was none other than -- WAIT FOR IT -- Anderson Slade.
I said ‘sure,’ of course – I’m more than happy to help. I then shot him the link to my Lunachicks post featuring the shot of him and Squid from the Lunachicks.
…and verily MINDS WERE BLOWN!!!!
Anyway, keep your eyes open for news about an impending documentary about Magickal Childe. Go out and buy Drew Carolan’s book “Matinee.” Be sure to listen for Joe Dillworth’s new band, Cavern of Anti-Matter. And please keep reading Flaming Pablum.
Just a quick word.
I basically expressed as much on this post, but I’m feeling it bears repeating.
In as much as I welcome the dialogue that might be inspired from content I post here, the moment it crosses the line from dissenting opinion and into invective, that’s when I’m disengaging. I’m all for spirited debate, but I’m not interested in belaboring an exchange that’s descended into pointless antagonism and tastelessness.
As I said on that earlier post, if the comments you’re leaving aren’t genuinely intended for a meaningful discourse, you shouldn’t expect me to accommodate you by posting them.
If you’re assuming that this is inspired by the events of yesterday afternoon, you’re correct. I work about two blocks from where that all went down. Then, of course, there was this event this morning, about two blocks from where I live.
If you have something to share about either -– not that they’re related -– that’s fine, but let’s keep it level-headed and respectful. Let’s not waste each other’s time with wind-ups.
Thank you.
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