Flaming Pablum

The Photograph (Slight Return to Magickal Childe)

Just a quick follow-up to this post. Being that this photo keeps getting strangely invoked every couple of years, I figured I’d dig out the negative to make some better prints of it. My friend Howard (invoked here, a million years ago) actually expressed interest in getting a blown-up print of it, so that’s what I did. Honestly, it’s a wee bit darker than I’d prefer, but it’s still pretty nice. I made a few, so if you’re interested, as well, do let me know.

Once again, here in 2022, the space that once was Magickal Childe at 35 West 19th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues is now slated to open up in May as Vinyl Steakhouse. Find out more about that venture right here.

Meanwhile, here's a glimpse of Magickal Childe in it's hellfire-flecked heyday...

ADDENDUM: In searching around, I also happened upon this video ... an homage to Magickal Childe by an ensemble called Cruz Machine. My photo again appears here about three minutes in, wherein they try to conjure its return...(and still I get no credit). Anyway, enjoy...

Back to The Village

I’ve spoken about the late Nelson Sullivan here many times before, but in a nutshell, he was this sort of visionary character who took tremendous pains to document his life and his experiences on video, which, circa the `80s when he was doing so, involved some comparatively unwieldly equipment.

This particular strip below was actually shot be Nelson on Super8 film, which is not quite as clunky an affair as video. In any case, there isn’t a date on this, but here Nelson captures some revealing footage of Greenwich Village and what is now frequently referred to as “the West Village” (usually incorrectly) from the 1970's. It’s striking how some aspects of it don’t look that different, even this many decades later. Here’s the official description.

Super 8 films shot by Nelson Sullivan on and around Christopher Street in the 1970s. These five reels feature shots of everyday life, focusing on pedestrians, traffic, and the buildings in the area, beginning with a long shot of the vacant Stonewall Inn. Other scenes feature Paws and Claws pet shop, the intersection of Christopher and Gay Street, Tor Restaurant, Rastro Importers (383 Bleecker Street), Frankel Pharmacy, Village Cigars, Riker's, the Christopher Street-Sheridan Square 1 Train station, St. Veronica's Church, and the inside of the former post office at 152 Christopher Street. The final reel begins on the uptown platform of the 1 station, where Nelson boards the train and rides for several stops before the film runs out.

Check it out....

The Update

There’s nothing more self-indulgent and presumptuous than a blogger that continually apologizes for lapses in posting regular content, but here I go again.

As I’ve been routinely lamenting in myriad posts over the past couple of months, I’ve had a lot on the burner, so to speak, and my preferred schedule of regularly updating this stupid blog has taken a bit of a hit as a result. Adding insult to injury, I’ve also blithely dropped a couple of vague hints about certain aspects of my silly life that prompted a few people to be genuinely concerned. I assure you, that concern is sincerely appreciated but ultimately unnecessary, as it turns out.

I should preface this laborious saga by saying I’ve probably never been a model patient. For more years than is advisable, I took a “don’t fix what ain’t broke” approach to my health. I entirely neglected to visit my personal doctor, not even for regular check-ups. I felt fine, so why bother, right? A couple of years back, however, I was experiencing an issue so minor that I don’t even recall what it was, but figured it warranted a proper doctor’s explanation, so I tried to make an appointment with my primary care physician, … only to find out that he’d passed away about two or three years earlier. Oops.

From there, I started going to see this new doctor recommended to me by my wife’s obstetrician. Dr. K is about my age and has a nice, relaxed manner. For whatever reason, I find it immensely rewarding to make him laugh, as that seems to diffuse any anxiety I might be experiencing when needing to consult his services. I figure, if he’s laughing, nothing can be so dire, right?

In any case, after signing up with Dr. K, I resumed my regular routine of basically ignoring whatever health problems I might have been experiencing until absolutely necessary. I carried on with that until my advancing age and its accompanying rigors started meddling with my unsustainable idyll.

Prior to the pandemic, as recounted in these action-packed posts, the only real concerns Dr. K had were getting me to cut back on the beer and ensuring that I get around to getting a long-put-off colonoscopy. I was finally ready to undertake that latter task until COVID-19 came and turned our collective lives into a b-grade disaster movie with no ending.

Last year, I finally did take care of that particular issue, only to be breezily informed by my disarmingly dispassionate gastroenterologist that I needed to have another one only a year later. That’ll happen this coming June. But, that’s not what this post is about (you're welcome).

As ominously invoked in this comparable post of a few weeks back, over the course of the last several months, I’ve been struck by a couple of mysterious, recurring symptoms that revealed themselves in manners both inexplicable and worrying. Now, as a gent in his mid-50’s, while it is perfectly reasonable to expect an incremental degree of physical atrophy in multiple departments, I had these two strange conditions sprout up perfectly out of the blue, and both gave me a considerable amount of alarm.

The first problem was … the vision thing (with strenuous apologies to the Sisters of Mercy). It was a phenomenon I’d experienced sporadically throughout my life, but more recently, it had suddenly started happening quite often. Essentially, the experience unfolds as follows. My field of vision becomes suddenly obstructed by what seems like just another small “floater,” only this floater pulses and grows. Gradually, the floater impedes my ability to see clearly as it expands. It distorts my ability to focus, read or even pinpoint depth as it gradually — over the course of about 30 minutes — takes over the entire vista of my sight. And then, … it just stops.

That sound pretty scary, right? Well, lemme tell you, … it is.

As such, after a succession of these instances — usually one a day over a set of three or four days — I got my wife’s trusted eye doctor on the phone and made an appointment with all haste. A day or so later, I was in his office doing my best to describe what I just tried to explain above. The whole thing sounded so idiotic coming out of my mouth that I was relatively certain he was going to shrug and tell me to get over it. “Yes, I know exactly what that is,” came his surprising response, “but the problem isn’t an ocular one … it’s a neurological one.”

Oh…. great!

In swift order, he explained that these strange phenomena I was experiencing were called “visual auras,” which basically means electric waves that course across the visual cortex of my nonsense-addled brain. Evidently, they are most closely tethered to migraine headaches. Mysteriously, I wasn’t having any headaches — migraines or otherwise — just the auras, which were worrying enough. He basically told me that if they persist, I should go take it up with a neurologist. Oh joy.

I went back to Dr. K, my primary care physician, and gave him the whole schpiel. He said that, in light of the fact that I’d experienced them periodically throughout my life, it probably wasn’t anything to worry about, but to keep him informed if they persisted. He also told me to cut back on the beer, but then — he suggests that for every grievance I bring his way. That weary suggestion is usually met with an emphatic “why don’t you go fuck yourself?” We have a great rapport.

I didn’t get away that easily, though. After checking my vitals, he deduced that it was apparently high time to put me on blood pressure meds. A tiny white pill every morning. Imagine my glee.

A couple of months after that, however, I had to check into my local urgent care facility to have them poke around in my ear, as it was feeling prohibitively clogged up with viscous, waxy goo. Again, you’re welcome. They ended up giving me some frankly ineffective drops for it, but not before unsolicitedly checking my blood pressure, and coming up with a number they deemed “too high.” I relayed this fun bit of intel back to Dr. K, who wasted no time in adding another little pill to my morning blood pressure regimen. A little blue one, this time.

Concurrent to the addition of the little blue pill to my life came a completely new and foreign sensation. They started off in periodic bursts that swiftly increased in frequency. I started feeling the blood rushing in my feet pretty much all the time. Not tingling or numbness, mind you, which is a different thing entirely, but the naggingly regular feeling of blood coursing through the veins in my feet. It didn’t hurt, but it was new, noticeable, different and woke me up at night. I asked myself, “what is this and why is this happening?”

Using my shoddy powers of deduction, I leapt to the seemingly obvious (to me) conclusion that this new issue had be the result of that new little blue pill, right? I mean, these sensations started in tandem with my daily ingestion of the drug. It must have been a side-effect, I figured.

As it happened, this was all going on during a super busy and not-just-a-little stressful period at my office, wherein my attrition-battered department was responsible for jump-starting a series of important initiatives that had been dormant since the start of the pandemic. I honestly cannot recall a chapter wherein we were all so completely besieged and flying on fumes to get these projects done. The result of this was that I didn’t get around to getting back in touch with good ol’ Dr. K for about three or four weeks. So, basically, along with stressing my scalp silver over work demands, I was worrying myself sleepless about my mystery ailment for essentially a whole month before acting on it.

I shot an email to Dr. K saying that I’d assumed I was having odd side-effects from the little blue pill and described the blood-rushing-in-feet stuff and asked if it was cool that I went off it. He was reticent to concede that this new condition could possibly be the result of the pill, and preferred that I stick with it, as my blood pressure numbers were now at an all-time healthy low. Eventually, he said I could try it for week, but to also knock off the beer. “Up yours,” I responded, and started skipping the blue pill.

The week went by, but the blood-rushing persisted. Then, the visual auras came back in force — three in a row over the span of three days. I relayed this to Dr. K, who demanded I go back on the blue pill and to knock off all beer intake entirely, believing that the symptoms I was experiencing might be the amalgam of stress and alcohol fighting with the blood-pressure meds. Dutifully, I complied.

I went cold turkey on the beer, started investigating yoga and acupuncture options (hey, why not, right?) and did my best to settle my nerves (never an easy task, that). The visual auras stopped, but the blood-rushing-in-feet continued. At this stage, Dr. K said it was time to consult both a neurologist and a vascular specialist. I was not super enthused about the prospects, but figured actionable solutions would be better than trying to wish these things away.

Evidently, springtime in New York City is neurological grievance season, so finding an available appointment with one of the docs Dr. K had referred me to was like scoring box seats to friggin’ opening day at Yankee Stadium. The soonest I could schedule one was for some time in July, by which point the very problem I’m consulting them about may have gone away (here’s hoping).

I was, however, able to score an appointment with the vascular guy, a young gent who — after I was put through the paces of a veinous ultrasound probe — cheerily told me I had “the veins of a teenager.” While that certainly sounded promising, that didn’t explain the problem. He assured me that there was nothing …er….vascularly wrong with me. No clogging or blockages to be detected. He mentioned that maybe I should consult a podiatrist and/or I should invest in some deeply unfashionable compression socks. He had all faith that those would clear up the problem. I have yet to take the bait on that one, haunted by images of my late step-father’s peer group, walking around the beach out on Long Island in knee-high compression socks.

So, with that particular issue at least a little more illuminated, if not fully explained, the only items left to address on Dr. K’s to-do list remain the neurologist appointment about the visual auras, and, of course, my follow-up colonoscopy. The jury is still out on whether the visual auras are the result of undue stress, beer battling with the blood pressure meds, a combination of factors or something else entirely, but he said I could go back to having a couple of beers a week, which I, of course, have taken up with robust enthusiasm.

In any case, for the moment, at least, I’m not dying. I’m just aging.

The Morning After 4/20

This might piss certain people off, but so be it.

As mentioned in this post, I was never a weed guy. It just didn’t suit my sensibility. And I just never cared for the dumb culture around it. I find it continually depressing that people continue to get so fired up (pardon the pun) about a stupid plant. But, then, I’m an avowed beer-drinker, so there’s me being a filthy hypocrite, once again.

In any case, were the uptick in depressing “hemp shops” around the downtown Manhattan environs not quite enough, yesterday, April 20^th, was “420,” the unofficial marijuana holiday. If you’re curious about the dopey (again, pardon the pun) etymology of this holiday, may I steer you to this article. Personally, I just don’t give a fuck and find it all very moronic and dispiriting. 

This morning, on my way to work, I took my usual turn into Washington Square Park – itself frequently already in a state of deplorable dishevelment – to witness first-hand the fallout of “420.” It looked like London after the fucking Blitz.

Clean up after yourselves, you fucking stoner shitheads.  

Status Report

Gilbert Gottfried was a Genius

Forgiving Young Americans

Like so much of what would become my favorite music, my introduction to David Bowie came via my older sister, Victoria, specifically her copy of Changesonebowie. A seismic compilation (although I don’t think either of us realized that, at the time), Changesonebowie arrived onto the stack of LP’s next to the family stereo circa summer 1978, and swiftly became an all-killer/no-filler favorite of the household (and a much-needed respite from the otherwise tireless airings of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack and my well-loved copy of Dressed to Kill by KISS). A jaw-dropping array of seamless pop, balls-out rock, sinuous funk, spacey weirdness and glammy panache, Changesonebowie really had just about everything one could ever want, and like certain crucial records before it, notably Mothership Connection by Parliament, Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd and A Night at the Opera by Queen, it was a record we both completely adored in equal measure.

That said, we may have been more divided on the track listing itself. While my sister warmed to the poppier aspects of the record, like “Fame” and “Golden Years,” I tended to lean toward the more riff-driven barnburners like “Diamond Dogs” and “Suffragette City.” I could never quite reconcile the specific sequencing of side two, wherein the cocky guitar stomp of “Rebel Rebel” slid right into the faux-Philly soul shenanigans of “Young Americans,” largely signaling the end of the big rock portion of the record. I didn’t know it, at the time, but it was that very accomplished versatility to shape-shift that ultimately made the man the renowned artist he was, but everyone knows that, now.

If anything, that bemoaned sequencing of that compilation was no accident, itself being a canny encapsulation of what had occurred in that era of Bowie’s trajectory. While touring the grimly dystopian Diamond Dogs (far and away my favorite album by the great man), Bowie grew fatigued with its spiky guitars and proto-goth melodrama and started ditching its trappings for a different sound and style entirely, swapping corroded glam rock for so-called blue-eyed soul. This somewhat bewildering transition is best captured on the live projects David Live and Cracked Actor.

By the release of next studio LP, Young Americans, the transformation was complete. Smitten as I’d been by my first taste of Bowie’s oeuvre, when I started investing in his back catalog in the ensuing years, I deliberately eschewed Young Americans, unable to shake the stigma of that first association. The title track alone started to get on my nerves, a brazen crowd-pleaser for drunken sorority girls who couldn't seem to remember — let alone parse — the actually-quite-complicated lyrics when shouting along to it at keg parties, I considered “Young Americans” a pandering cop-out. Fuck that populist shit, I thought. Give me the weird stuff.

I, of course, was a stupid, young American myself, at the time.

In time, my ironclad adherence to solely “that which rocked” relaxed a bit. As ideally comes with gradual maturity, my tastes broadened to embrace bits of music outside of the parameters of whatever flimsy tribal affiliations I might have previously assigned to myself. Decades later, as a perplexed 54 year old trying to navigate the shifting tectonic plates of popular culture, I no longer care about how my listening habits might be perceived. In terms of my Bowie fandom, I became deeply enamored of all aspects of his discography, from the hard angles of his Berlin period to the folksy whimsy of his first recordings to the brazen accessibility of the Let’s Dance era and all points between and beyond.

But I never bought Young Americans. Or not until today, at least.

My friend John made a coyly telling declaration on Facebook, a couple of days ago, that being…

my cranky old hipster level is "I thought your movie looked cool until the trailer had a 70s Bowie tune in it and then you seemed real basic”

I smiled and hit “like” immediately, assuming he was talking about the clunkily witless placement of “Starman” in the preview to the new Pixar movie about Buzz Lightyear. Turns out he wasn’t. He was actually referring to the use of “Time” from Aladdin Sane in the trailer for “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” (a film he’d later concede was crazy well done). But the point remained the same. While not quite a deep cut, the employment of even a lesser-celebrated single like “Time” in a film’s trailer just seems like a lazy stab at broadcasting some aspired connotation of cool invariably well beyond the scope of your movie. Points off.

But then last night, while chugging through several episodes of Season 1 of Netflix’s “Mindhunter” (yes, I realize I’ve been leaning a bit too uncomfortably into serial-killer content, of late) I was struck by a nuanced, period-specific placement of a libidinously undulating funk track that I immediately recognized as David Bowie, but had still never heard before. Turns out, that song is called “Right,” and it’s the fourth track off of —WAIT FOR IT — Young Americans.

It’s, of course, brilliant.

Today, I strolled up to Academy Records on West 18th, ponied up eight bucks and finally succumbed to the charms of Young Americans.

Crank it.

The Photograph

Okay, here’s another kinda convoluted one.

At some point in the spring or summer of about 1997, I snapped a picture of the storefront at 35 West 19th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, which was a shop called Magickal Childe. I’ve spoken about it before, here, quite a few times, but Magickal Childe was essentially an occult emporium, selling esoteric books and black magic knickknacks for spells, rituals, ceremonies, conjurings and the like. It was the perfect gift shop for all the Aleister Crowley acolytes in your family. A lot of folks spoke about Magickal Childe in hushed, ominous tones, but I never felt any sense of dread or unease in the place. The one item I remember actively buying there was an inverted pentagram pendant because,….well… METAL!

Personally speaking, Magickal Childe, to me, always embodied that now-rarefied essence of New York City. It was this wildly niche sorta concern that catered to a very specific demographic, but was still a thriving venture, very much an “only in New York” sorta place. It was there for several years, as I remember, until it closed in 1999, in the wake of the death of its proprietor, a guy named Herman. The vacated space at 35 West 19th Street became a tapas restaurant, as reported here, named Sala in 2004 and lasted until the pandemic forced its closure in 2020. Today, the space is in transition, but there are signs in the window that say “VINYL STEAKHOUSE,” suggesting a strange amalgam of record store and steak joint. Not quite sure how that works, but I being that I like both records and red meat, I wish them all success.

In any case, back in 1997, I was genuinely fascinated with Magickal Childe, so I snapped that picture. Those with a sharp eye for detail might notice that I even appear in the photograph, reflected in a mirror in the center of the shop’s window (just underneath and slightly to the left of the gold pentagram). I had no agenda in capturing the image beyond thinking it just looked cool.

Some years went by, and I ended up posting the photograph, along with several others, on an entry on this stupid blog under the title “Things That Are Not There.” As it turns out, photographs of Magickal Childe must be few and far between, as people started to reach out to me about it. I fielded a request from one reader to sell a print of it to him. I think I just ended up sending him a copy of it free of charge. I didn’t think much of it.

Years after that, some readers might remember my laborious search for the location of a certain photograph of the Lunachicks. When I finally got in touch with the photographer, a guy named Joe Dilworth, he graciously emailed me the contact sheet with the mystery photo in it. Along with the answer to my quest, that contact sheet also boasted a shot of the Lunachicks chatting with this guy who looked strangely familiar. I swiftly deduced that the guy in question was the same kid depicted in some age-old hardcore matinee photos by Drew Carolan. I realize this is all very confusing, but bear with me. As if on cue, that kid — named Anderson Slade — bizarrely got in touch with me out of the blue on Facebook. By this point, he was no longer a little punk rock kid from Staten Island, but now an aspiring actor and filmmaker who was putting together a documentary about Magickal Childe and wanted to use my photograph. I said “sure,” and then let him know about the photo of him and the Lunachicks, which blew his mind. You can read a more detailed about that whole chapter here.

Slade’s documentary, entitled “Horrible Herman’s Warlock Shop,” was in development for quite a while, and even had some trailers posted on YouTube, but those have since been taken down and there’s no news of any release dates. Anderson Slade is also no longer on Facebook. The plot thickened.

Cut to 2022. With the wife in London for the London Book Fair, I am suddenly free to watch stuff on television that I wouldn’t normally be able to. As such, I start watching “Sons of Sam: Descent into Darkness,” a four-part documentary series on Netflix that explores one investigative reporter’s feverish quest to break the story that David “Son of Sam" Berkowitz did not act alone. Even as a sniveling ten year old during the summer of 1977, I still vividly remember the atmosphere of paranoia that gripped New York City, so have always been fascinated with the story. Here’s the trailer…

In any case, halfway through the first episode, they start discussing the uptick in fascination with the occult in the `70s, stemming from disillusionment with the hippy ideal of the late `60s. In doing so, they start showing images of Wiccan ceremonies, illustrations from the Rosicrucian secret histories of the world, Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan, Aleister Crowley and …. fleetingly … MY PHOTOGRAPH OF MAGICKAL CHILDE.

I instantly sat up from my bowl of General Tso’s chicken and hit pause. What the fuck, Netflix? I don’t remember being asked about use in any Son of Sam doc. Laughably, I suddenly felt sort of violated, but then…. given the already-established paucity of images of the exterior of Magickal Childe, outside of screenshots from the Nicholas Cage film “Vampire’s Kiss” in which the shop makes a cameo, mine seems to be the first thing that comes up in a Google image search. Being no stranger to liberally appropriating images for this blog, I shouldn’t be surprised. But still, having a rinkydink blog post a pic without due credit is one thing — use in a major feature film on Netflix is another.

I started combing through my emails, with friends' voices in my head shouting “you can SUE them!” I wasn’t really interested in any financial gain from this, I was just kind of curious how they found it and a little hurt that they didn’t see fit to ask me if they could use it.

Then I figured it out.

Chalk it up to the fog of the pandemic or the steady erosion of my short-term memory, but in July of 2020, a company called “Radical Media” apparently reached out to me to say they were putting together “a documentary series for Netflix that features a storyline about the occult presence in NYC back in the 1970s and 80s, and we wanted to feature a photograph of the occult book shop Magickal Childe. It turns our there are very few photographs easily accessible, but a photo that you took of the storefront is one that comes up and is of good quality."

Evidently, I said “sure, no problem,” and even signed a release. I did not charge them anything for the use. They asked how I’d like to be credited, and apparently I wrote “Alex S./Flaming Pablum” in the email.

I watched the first episode to the end credits. Under the “photos courtesy of…” section, neither my name nor my blog’s dumb name came up. I watched the second, third and final episodes. A credit was never mentioned. I guess my signed release absolved them of that necessity, but that still kind of bummed me out.

That petty affront notwithstanding, I still recommend “Sons of Sam.” If you’re a bona fide New Yorker and a true crime buff, it’s a fascinating series, however grim (what? you were expecting frivolity??)

I was running errands earlier this week, and found myself not far from 35 West 19th Street, so took a short detour to revisit it.

Here’s how it looks today.

It's Still Here

Don’t be lulled into a false sense of security just because mask mandates have been relaxed.

This morning, my son Oliver — far and away the most careful and COVID-conscious member of our family — woke up feeling off, so he took a test and came up positive. Just to be sure, he took a second test, which also came up positive. Despite being fully vaccinated and boosted and still diligent about staying masked indoors, etc., he has contracted COVID. Oh joy. 

Mercifully, my wife and daughter are away in London (and hopefully staying safe and responsible), so it’s just Oliver and I here at home. Thus far, I’m still testing negative.

This isn’t over.

Back to Rebel Rebel

I wrote pretty much everything I might have had to say about Rebel Rebel, the record & CD shop at 319 Bleecker Street, when news broke that it was closing in 2016, so click here to read all that, should you care. Suffice to say, this tiny, fastidious boutique was a cherished and regular stop for myself and my coterie of similarly-inclined music nerds dating back to its late `80s origins. Were I to post a list of albums and singles I procured here — on both vinyl and compact disc — this entry would be as long as a David Foster Wallace manuscript.

But, because people are shit and everything sucks, Rebel Rebel was squeezed out like a zit by unrelentingly ascending rents. The space it once occupied was absorbed by a neighboring concern called Scotch & Soda, a venture wherein one can blithely purchase astonishingly overpriced Bermuda shorts. Like I said, people are shit and everything sucks.

But through the magic of video, you can now travel back in time to just the year before, French Dave (not actually French … see earlier post for details) was forced to shut up shop at 319 Bleecker, and catch a glimpse of the old, overstocked interior of Rebel Rebel.

I regret to say that I have absolutely no idea what happened to our Dave after he closed Rebel Rebel. I want to believe he found a new avenue of income and is doing well somewhere. Who knows?