I put up another entry, a few days ago, about the Plasmatics. Once again, to be writing anything about the Plasmatics in 2021 seems a bit odd, given that the band was basically over and done with well prior to the dawn of the `90s, and because poor Wendy O. Williams took her own life in 1998. They’re occasionally name-checked here and there, as I mentioned in that last post, but rarely with any genuine respect. In the grand scheme of things, their era is over.
Regardless, just like my affinity for Venom, I still harbor fond associations with the Plasmatics. And, also like Venom, while their music may not be have been as timeless of that of some of their peers, I am still invested in the Plasmatics. As such, when the following minutia crossed my screen, I sat up with attention.
In doing research about the sleeve of the band’s late 1981 effort Metal Priestess, which features the giant pentagram recently up for auction on eBay, I was reading the following WikiPedia entry, and was struck by a tiny detail. Here’s the passage in question.
Dan Hartman, who produced acts such as 38 Special and James Brown, among others, had been working on a session in LA when he picked up a copy of Beyond the Valley of 1984 and couldn't stop playing it. It was "ground breaking," he said. "I knew I wanted to meet these people and do something with them." Dan came down to the Tribeca loft where he met Wendy O. Williams and Rod Swenson and a month later he and Rod Swenson were working on the production of the Metal Priestess EP.
To be fair to Mr. Hartman, to have worked with as wide an array of artists as 38 Special, James Brown and the goddamn Plasmatics is pretty impressive. But that’s not what caught my eye. No, the factoid that I latched onto was the allusion of Dan Hartman heading “down to the Tribeca loft” to meet Wendy and her partner Rod Swenson, who was the band’s manager and mastermind.
In all my years as a Plasmatics fan, I had never heard that they were based down in Tribeca. I mean, it never occurred to me. During the band’s gestation and its heyday, the neighborhood in question was still a comparatively desolate no man’s land. I started exploring Tribeca in the early 90’s, and now actually work at the southern end of it. Before the pandemic, I was walking around Tribeca on a daily basis and now actually know the lay of the land fairly well, down there. This all begged the obvious question — where was their loft?
I started doing some creative Googling, and the first thing that came up was this blog post featuring an interview with Rod Swenson that first ran in 2008, the ten-year anniversary of Wendy’s death. In it, Swenson goes into detail about Wendy’s motivations and lifestyle, citing her virulent penchant for anti-conformity and her healthy, toxin-free lifestyle. It’s actually quite illuminating. But the part I was looking for was only fleetingly mentioned, that being that they grew their own raw food in the loft in “what is now known as Tribeca” and that it also served as “Plasmatics World Headquarters.”
Finding a dead end beyond that, I took my query to a Plasmatics fan group on Facebook, which immediately came back with an answer: A fifth-floor loft space on Thomas Street.
Thomas Street is a narrow little passage that extends off Broadway and runs from east to west down in Tribeca. A few steps from its eastern end, 33 Thomas Street … aka the mighty Titanpointe … looms like a forbidding, windowless monolith, towering over lower Manhattan. From there, Thomas slopes gradually to the west, into a tight lane that ends at 60 Hudson Street, the massive former Western Union building, serving as a slightly less ominous bookend with Titanpointe. Between these two spots, Thomas Street plays host, on the southeast corner of West Broadway, to The Odeon, an iconic eatery once formerly frequented by scenester socialites and famously cited in Jay McInerney’s paean to irresponsible `80s hedonism, “Bright Lights, Big City.” On a personal level, beyond going to the Odeon several times, my own associations with Thomas Street are fairly random. I once attended a New Year’s Eve party in the mid-`90s at its eastern end. Just steps to the west of its intersection of Church Street, my friends Rob and Joanne — then newlyweds — briefly flirted with the idea of renting a third-story loft with a big picture window overlooking Thomas, but demurred at the last minute and moved to midtown. I also once logged several laborious hours serving jury duty at 71 Thomas Street, the civil court house just across the street from The Odeon. Beyond all that, though, I’ve always enjoyed walking through Thomas’ canyon-like architecture. It’s just a cool, atmospheric little street.
Ah, yes, …. but WHERE on Thomas Street was Wendy & Rod’s fifth-floor loft?
On that same thread on the Facebook page, Ramones producer Ed Stasium weighed in with more detail:
Rod owned the building, he offered me a floor for the purchase price of $30k in 1979. I certainly couldn’t afford it then. I can’t imagine what it would be worth now.
From here, I hit Google like the ball peen hammer Wendy used to use on unsuspecting television sets. But try as I might, searches like “Plasmatics” and “Thomas Street” or “Plasmatics” and “Tribeca” continued to give me nothing I hadn’t already seen or considered, and no extra details.
Then I had a stroke of luck.
Remembering that Swenson, in the wake of Wendy’s passing, had left the music business and pivoted into a career of scientific academia, I started plugging in his name and suddenly up popped a heady text from some sort of conference in 1989. The text in question was titled "Engineering Initial Conditions In A Self-producing Environment,” penned by one Rod Swenson. If you read it looking for salacious details about the Plasmatics, you won’t find any. What you will find, however, is Mr. Swenson’s old address on Thomas Street, that being… 84 Thomas Street.
To be clear, lest you think I’m overstepping my bounds with my fanboy sleuthing, I’d like to assure you — dear readers — that you won’t find Swenson there today. Prior to Wendy's death, the couple had relocated to Storrs, Connecticut, to be closer to the university Swenson was teaching at.
But armed with my breakthrough information, I took a stroll back down to Thomas Street to check it out.
I’m not sure what I was expecting or even looking for, but today, 84 Thomas Street is an enviable plot of real estate on the western end of the street. The PH apartment — what would have been Wendy & Rod’s place — is listed on the buzzer as something called Stone Studios, although I could find no other information. I wonder if the occupants of same are aware that the space used to be Plasmatics World Headquarters. To see what apartments inside this are like, click here.
I’m sure the surrounding environs look entirely different from when this address served as same. And I can only wonder what Wendy would have thought about how the neighborhood has transformed (although I can imagine she’d have some choice words for it).
Anyway, case closed. For a closer look at what Rod Swenson’s up to these days, click here. For a snippet of conversation about The Plasmatics by Jesse Malin and Fred Armissen, click here.
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