If it’s not aready readily apparent, I spend a lot of time walking around the city looking at relatively banal, workaday bullshit. I much prefer walking everywhere, as it affords me the opportunity to study the topography around me, and if you bother paying attention to that stuff, you’ll see all sort of cool things.
This morning, I was struck by something I’d have never expected. As mentioned back on a couple of posts, I used to be a fan of the New York band The Smithereens, a sort of arguably dour power-pop quartet from the mid-80’s who scored a couple of hits like “Blood & Roses,” “Behind the Wall of Sleep,” “A Girl Like You,” usually all flecked with a signature blend of melancholy, courtesy of primary singer/songwriter Pat DiNizio. DiNizio sadly left us in 2017, but what I spotted today might have cheered his otherwise usually glum demeanor.
Scrawled within the interior of a laughably anachronistic phone booth on Lafayette Street, just south of Kenmare street, I spotted the slightly altered lyrics to DiNizio’s poignant duet with Suzanne Vega, “In a Lonely Place” from 1986’s Especially for You.
ADDENDUM: My friend Erik schooled me on the origin of this line, and it predates the Smithereens' tune, alas. I stand corrected:
It's a Humphrey Bogart line from the noir "In A Lonely Place." I assume that's what inspired the song.
Here it is and the song in question and the original line from Bogart beneath.
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