Flaming Pablum

Revisiting Ravishing Rio

I was perusing through my feed, this AM, and was stopped in my tracks by an advertisement. Being the insufferable rock t-shirt dweeb that I am (and oh yes, … I have rules!), my Facebook page is often peppered with invocations of same, usually from illegitimate knock-off oufits like Redbubble and the like. In any event, up popped the image below.

This is, of course, a design based on the cover art from Duran Duran’s big breakthrough sophomore album, Rio, from 1982, presumably so-chosen, by the band, to evoke the sleek, glossy aspirations and aesthetic of that era’s high-flyin’, hard-partyin’ jet set. The image was designed by artist Patrick Nagel, who’d previously found renown via his suitably sexy illustrations for Playboy Magazine.

Before we go any further, let’s just clear some shit up: Duran Duran were brilliant. While I was otherwise besotted with all things punk and metal, at the time, there was, to my mind, absolutely no arguing with their brand of hook-laden pop. I remember first hearing “Hungry Like the Wolf” at a high school dance, and the rapturous reaction from the girls of my class upon the sound of that first thwomping slide down the guitar neck (not that different, in retrospect, from the opening drop into the sinewy groove of “Down on the Street” by the Stooges) was indelible. And, they rocked. We saw them last summer in Forrest Hills, and they brought the fuckin’ house down. They’re great. Still don’t like’em? Too bad for you.

In any case, what struck me about this particular t-shirt design – not that I’d necessarily want to wear it – was that I’d certainly never seen it before. Yes, of course, that’s the comely, smiling visage of Duran’s titular heroine, but unlike on the album sleeve, she’s depicted as saucily topless (on the sleeve, she seems to be draped in something like a flamenco dancer’s dress with an exaggerated ruffle over her left shoulder.) Much like that abandoned original Ramones design for Road to Ruin (that would eventually come to be sold, incongruously, as a t-shirt at Brandy Melville), I started wondering if this was maybe the original Nagel design before he adjusted it for the Duran sleeve.

I started doing a bit of pointless Googling, but nothing substational really came up. Evidently, Mr. Nagel was specifically commissioned for this job, so it’s doubtful that it was modelled or modified from a previous illustration of his. But who knows? In all probability, this more risqué design is just a modified replication of Nagel’s original illustration that jettisons all semblance of nuance in favor of a blunter blend of prurience. Who needs subtlety?

Anyhoo, whilst coming to that conclusion, I was struck by a surprisingly tragic coda on one artist’s bio of the man.

From Duran Duran Fandom Dot Com…

In 1984, at the age of 38, the artist participated in a 15-minute celebrity "Aerobathon" to raise funds for the American Heart Association. Afterwards, he was found dead in his car, and doctors determined by autopsy that he had suffered a fatal heart attack.

Pour one out for Patrick….

Day of The Dad Shoes

In the wake of my summer of avascular necrosis, allegedly brought on by obliviously breaking a small bone – I honestly forget the name of it – on the underside of my foot, somehow, I started experimenting with some ideally more accommodating footwear to help acclimate and/or ease the discomfort brought on by the persistent ache in my arch and the disconcerting numbness in my toes – two conditions, I was told, that were basically here to stay.

At the suggestion of several folks, I started investigating this new (or new to me, anyway) brand of running shoe called Hokas. Whenever I spotted a pair on the street or in the elevator or wherever – which is easy to do, given the company’s dogged insistence on slapping their name in big block-capital letters across all their products – I’d frequently ask the wearer what they thought of them. To the last, every person in Hokas I asked spoke of them with a fervor that bordered on the rapturous.

I finally relented and limped over to the Hoka outlet on Fifth Avenue (which, incidentally, has since moved to a roomier location three or four blocks to the north). I was immediately skeptical. Regardless of the alleged podiatric benefits the shoes seamlessly provide, they looked like garishly colored clown shoes. But the store was positively hoppin’ with enthusiastic patrons. A salesperson working the floor engaged me and I dutifully unspooled my needlessly detailed tale of podalic woe, prompting her to recommend a “Bondi 8” model. I started perusing those and asked to try on a pair.

After all the street-side testimonials I’d fielded, it was kind of inevitable that the miraculuosly velvety caress I’d been expecting didn’t really materialize. I felt significantly taller in them than my already lofty six feet. But, in that fleeting instance, the problem foot felt newly cushioned … they didn’t feel bad, so I picked out a comparatively simple black pair (as opposed to their normal, retina-burning options like circus-in-town-style turquoise-&-orange, hot chartreuse, vomit rainbow and/or radioacitve-urine yellow), brought them to the counter and officially became a Hokalyte.

After a day or so of wearing them, I was moved to start writing a deeply ridiculous post for this here blog, weepily recounting my former habits of adjusting my sartorial choices based almost exclusively on my musical tastes. To that end, in my distant younger days, I’d started wearing black, hi-top Chuck Taylor All-Stars given that the Ramones wore them. Similarly, after hearing Jaz Coleman of Killing Joke extol their merits in an interview in the mid-`80s, I’d dutifully started wearing clunky black Doc Martens. In typical fashion, I floridly detailed my gradual embrace of other styles of footwear based on equally idiotic criteria (my stubborn fondness for Nike’s contraband Black N’ Tan dunk-lows, as detailed here). My intended takeaway, I suppose, was that I’d crossed a rubicon, of sorts, and was now forced to wear what essentially amounts to the dread “dad shoes,” and how – woe unto me – there is nothing cool about Hokas. You don’t, after all, see any sneery, post-punk iconoclasts wearing them, now do you?

In a fleeting moment of clear-headedness, however, I came to my senses and abanoned that waste-of-time entry. In walking around Manhattan, I now see Hokas on pretty much everybody -- jogging yuppies, irritating tech bros, balding dog-walkers, pony-tailed woo girls, disgruntled high schoolers, non-binary NYU students, grumpy octogenarians, nuns, everybody. I even bought myself a second pair (albeit not quite as cushiony). I’ve made my peace with them.

Or so I thought.

This morning, a reel popped up in my social media feeds of Michael McDonald – the high-piped fleet admiral of all things Yacht Rock – discussing the challenges of his keyboard parts on the title track of the Doobie Brothers’ Minute by Minute. And what was he wearing in this video? THE VERY SAME PAIR OF BLACK BONDI 8 HOKAS THAT I FIRST BOUGHT. Not Colin Newman of Wire. Not Cronos from Venom. Not East Bay Ray of the Dead Kennedsys. Not Daniel Ash from Bauhaus and Love & Rockets, but fuckin’ Michael McDonald of the friggin’ Doobie Brothers.

ARRGH!

Back ... Again ... to Astor Place

Yesterday, writer Arthur Nersesian, whose first novel “The Fuck-Up” was a big favorite of mine, posted an old image of Astor Place on his Facebook page. That’s it up top. Odd, right? He didn’t slap a date on it but considering the Astor Place Cube (real name: “The Alamo”) was first erected on that spot in 1967, and given the make of the cars pictured in the lot in the background, I’m guessing this could have been taken at some point in the `70s or early `80s, but I can’t be sure.

It’s also striking in that so many of the elements depicted in this photograph are no longer recognizable. I mean, yes, that’s obviously the Alamo on the left side or your screen, and presumably the edifice on the right across the street is the lower façade of the Carl Fischer Music Building, but that parking lot is long gone, as are all the row houses in the distance on the eastern end of Cooper Square. There’s now a giant glass tower – which my kids and I used to refer to as “The Shampoo Bottle” – with a bank on its ground floor where the parking lot used to be. To stand on this very spot and look south today, they would be obscured from view, but the buildings featured in the background are largely all gone anyway, replaced by the space-station-like Albert Nerken School of Engineering and the Cooper Square Hotel, which I once described here as a “priapic pillar of avarice” and a “gigantic robot phallus.” You’re welcome.

In any case, on my way to work, this morning, I tried to replicate the shot Arthur posted. As I mentioned, a lot has changed.

Funnily enough, “The Alamo” was never meant to still be here. It was initially installed for a six-month spell in 1967, but when it was time to move it, the community rallied together to keep it there. Also, it was never designed to be interactive. Artist Tony Rosenthal didn’t assume people would take to spinning the thing. But, of course, spin it they do.

Here's another little fun artifact, an NYU Tisch school student film from 2003 called, simply, “Alamo.” Only 21 years ago, but it already seems like a totally different city. The “Shampoo Bottle” was only just under construction, and the giant “Death Star” monolith that is 101 Astor Place had not yet replaced the humble Cooper Union classroom buildings.

Enjoy the short trip back in time…

Back ... Again ... to Charly's Corner

I don’t mean to keep banging on about this, but rarely does a week go by that I’m not totally taken by surprise by the ongoing impact of the whole Charly Garcia Corner phenomenon.

Now, sure, your average American still has pretty much zero idea of who Charly Garcia is. When I wrote that article for The TriBeCa Citizen about the naming ceremony, there was a whole lotta backlash in the comment section from angry New Yorkers, wondering who the Hell this oddly mustachioed character was that he should be getting his own street corner. I implored people to remember that there’s a world beyond New York City, but I was largely met with a shouty chorus of “NEVER HEARD OF HIM!” That continues to make me a bit sad.

But ever since the story broke wide, however, the fateful predictions from my friends Inaki Rojas and Mariano Cabrera have completely come true. On my walks to and from the office in TriBeCa, I frequently stroll down Courtlandt Alley, and as I do, it has become not-at-all uncommon to spot folks (usually Latin Americans) faithfully replicating the sleeve of Clics Modernos. The light pole on that corner is also routinely covered in testimonials from sharpie-wielding fans who’ve made the pilgrimage to the corner of Courtlandt and Walker to pay homage, in very much the same way people flock to U2’s home studio of Windmill Lane in Dublin or the Beatles’ iconic byway of Abbey Road in London. See below…

But don’t take my word for it – check out the official Charly Garcia Corner Facebook and Instagram pages. I’m not makin’ this stuff up.

The image that really put the hook in me this week, however, was the one below. You may not know who Charly Garcia is or why he has a street corner named after him but the guy attached to the bicep below sure as shit does. The mind reels!!

And if you are curious, here's a taste of Clics Modernos...

Curtains for The 13th Street Repertory Theater?

It’s been in rough shape since its founder, Edith O’Hara, passed away in 2020, but the storied 13th Street Repertory Theater between Fifth and Sixth Avenues has really never looked worse. On my way to my video shoot over the weekend, I passed by the once-lively little venue and snapped the picture above. The entrances have all been fenced off, the windows boarded-up and the awning has been stripped. It’s not looking promising.

Despite being founded in 1972 and playing host to a wide range of renowned thespians over the decades, the theater was never landmarked. News reports have suggested that there is significant structural damage throughout the building. The more recent update I’ve seen, by way of Village Preservation last November, did not paint a pretty picture.

Personally speaking, the only performances I ever attended at the 13th Street Repertory Theater – although I attended five or six of them – were by the late, great Brother Theodore, who performed a remarkable two-decade residency at the theater prior to his death in 2001. Suffice to say, his was sort of a niche appeal. 

It was an intimate space, but always richly rewarding. Here’s hoping fate intervenes and it rises again.

Meanwhile, here’s a fleeting taste of Brother Theodore….

Lights ... Camera .... Abjection!

For the second time in as many months, I was interviewed, yesterday, for a documentary. Believe me — I’m as astonished as you are. But don’t whip out your remote and fire up Netflix just yet. The first one was for an Argentinian project about the quest to divine the precise location of an album cover photograph, which I — somewhat unwittingly — had a hand in (see this post for a summary, if you care). I have no idea when and where that will air or what its current status is, but I’ll let ya know if I find out.

This second one on Saturday afternoon, meanwhile, was for a student film being directed by the niece of a good friend of mine, and it’s all about the vanished record shops of New York City and, evidently, the maladjusted sociopaths like myself who regularly shopped in them.

Prompted by a series of strategic questions, I predictably invoked long-vanished ventures like Rocks in Your Head, Bleecker Bob’s, Rebel Rebel, Sounds, Second Coming, Freebeing, Subterranean, Route 66, Other Music, Venus, Lunch For Your Ears and several others, and windily extrapolated on the furtive community that frequented them. I periodically lapsed into the odd withering diatribe about how the jackbooted march of technology and the sickly allure of convenience have decimated this once thriving network and upended both its culture and ecosystem and probably trailed off in a semi-audible stream of potty-mouthed invective.

I babbled out a few anecdotes about the challenges of tracking down comparatively obscure LPs in the age before the internet, the singular joy of stumbling upon that crucial, rarefied import single and some of the key records that first inspired me to spend so much of my youth engaged in such activities. 

I have to say, when you're otherwise used to expressing yourself from behind the safety and editorial control of your keyboard, speaking off the cuff about this sort of silly stuff in a coherent manner can be trickier than you might imagine. I suspect I frequently come across, in the ensuing footage, as either a laboriously pompous jackass or a snivelingly precious, trivia-addled weirdo, but -- if you're at all familiar with this stupid blog -- you probably assumed as much, already. 

Again, I have no idea if this doc will ever play outside of a collegiate classroom, but should you give one whiff of a good goddamn, I’ll evangelize it if it becomes available for public consumption.

Watch this space.

Pie vs. Pie: Parsing the Great Manhattan Pizza Schism

This week, my lady-friends over at Desperately Seeking the `80s spent half of their weekly podcast recounting the litigious shenanigans of a quarelsome network of duplicitously opportunistic pizzeria owners, back in the `80s, who’d unwittingly birthed a city-wide ruse by basically all naming their respective establishments “Ray’s,” despite the fact that precious few – if any – of them were actually named that. Laugh it up, but if you’ve ever consumed pizza in New York City, you’ve probably eaten in one of them.

For decades, Manhattanites have feverishly debated which particular pizzeria is actually entitled to make the credible claim of being the first iteration. I’d always assumed it was the Ray’s that stood on the corner of West 11th Street and Sixth Avenue, but it turns out, that was not the case. Incidentally, that iteration of Ray’s is long gone. When it first closed, it became a pizzeria called, confusingly, Rao’s, but I’ve no clue if there was any connection to the renowned and exclusive Italian restaurant in Harlem of the same name. Regardless, it failed, and the space morphed into a Chinese retaurant called Shu Han Ju. I don’t remember thinking Shu Han Ju was anything to write home about, but I recall being struck that they served frog on their menu, at one point. If that whets your appetite, I’m sorry to disappoint you – Shu Han Ju just closed for good, and the space is now slated to be a – WAIT FOR IT – pizzeria.

In any case, do go check out Jessica Dorfman Jones’ scrupulous retelling of the saga of the many ructious Rays and their bellicose bellyaching.

I had a few takeaways from this episode, however, that I feel – as a native New Yorker – fully obligated to address here. You’ve doubtlessly heard me bitch and moan about a few these before, but these points bear repeating, as far as I’m concerned.

No. 1: As addressed here, under absolutely no circumstances should you ever qualify your choice of slice or pie as “cheese pizza.” Without cheese, the dish in question ceases to be pizza. It’s just a regular slice or a regular pie. It begins and ends there.

No. 2: As addressed here, you need to shun the onslaught of “$1 dollar pizza” joints. I fully realize that folks need to be able to eat on the cheap, but “$1 dollar pizza” is a strenuous affront to the rich, culinary history of New York City.

No. 3: Should you give your patronage to a Domino’s Pizza while within the confines of New York City, you should be run out of town on a rail and banned for life.

Those are my main pizza pet peeves. I know a lot of people get bent out of shape about the “correct” way to hold and consume their pizza, many asserting that the only way to properly do it is by folding the slice. In my opinion, that’s just a personal preference. You’ll doubtlessly recall the outrage many felt, back in the comparatively carefree days of 2011, when Donald Trump and Sarah Palin were taken to task for a pathetic photo op in which they popped into a pizzeria in Times Square and ate their slices with forks and knives. I mean, I think I was more riled by the fact that they went to a Famiglia, which I barely consider pizza. Whatever.

There are also strong opinions about where the best pizza can genuinely be found. I’m, of course, biased towards Manhattan, but I’ll be the first to suggest that New York City pizza ain’t what it used to be. Some will point to key spots in Brooklyn and Staten Island. Others get all red in the face about New Haven pizza. I can’t imagine anything noteworthy coming out of Connecticut, but I don’t claim to know anything about that, having never tried it. Maybe it’s amazing.

In terms of Chicago “deep-dish” style pizza (which Jessica also addresses in the podcast), I think this classic clip from Jon Stewart speaks for all people in the know on this issue….

Lastly, whenever I hear an invocation of Original Ray’s pizza, and the tangled rush to establish ownership of that moniker’s true provenance (sort of like the final scene of Stanley Kubrick’s “Spartacus,” only not quite as altruistic), I am reminded of my days as a nascent, ersatz music journalist at the dawn of the `90s. I was toiling thanklessly for a few independent music `zines, and found myself being privy to a wide swathe of local new music. Some of those bands became favorites of mine, while others … well, not so much. One from the latter aggregation of bands was a garage-y power-pop combo of no great musical renown, but, to my mind, one that had picked the absolute perfect name for a New York City band. To distinguish themselves from the hordes of competing bands and to possibly court notoriety and free publicity by way of a lawsuit, they called themselves …. WAIT FOR IT …. The Original Rays.

Here they were…. and they’re actually better than I remember them being.

Wareham Weighs In

It’s happened before. I’ve invoked someone’s name, and they’ve weighed in. I’ve had that happen with Lenny Kaye, Julia Cafritz of Pussy Galore, Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, Bob Bert of Sonic Youth/Pussy Galore, Handsome Dick Manitoba of the Dictators, punk photographer Roberta Bayley, John Lurie of the Lounge Lizards, Peter Missing from Missing Foundation, Jarboe of SWANS, the late photographer Ricky Powell, Johnny Ha Ha of Alien Sex Fiend and, most recently, Jim Fornidais of the Rats of Unusual Size (whom I somewhat blithely dismissed in an allusion to a triple-bill at the Pyramid, centuries ago --- sorry about that!). I mean, I suppose it’s not that big deal. Who hasn’t, at one point or another, googled their own name and perused the results? It should be so surprising, but it always kinda catches me off guard.

In any case, what I’m referring to is a comparatively ancient post from 2013, wherein I drilled down on the assertion, first invoked in the excellent memoir “Black Postcards” by Galaxie 500/Luna singer/songwriter Dean Wareham, that late Cramps guitarist Bryan Gregory (right) had allegedly worked at an Upper East Side King Karol outlet on Third Avenue between East 86th and East 85th Streets. Having grown up, as Wareham had, in that same neighborhood, and similarly gleaned that Cramps frontman Lux Interior had worked at nearby Musical Maze just down the avenue a little bit (as recently expounded on here), I was entirely fascinated by the concept of these two striking figures from New York City’s Punk underground toiling in the comparatively staid environs of Manahttan on the westerly edges of Yorkville.

Eleven years later, Dean Wareham has officially entered the discussion, leaving a note over the weekend saying….

okay I stand corrected; it was MUSICAL MAZE. Too bad I can't fix in the book. I too used to walk by the store on the way home from school and I bought the first Clash album there for sure.

Incidentally, that picture of Wareham up top was not captured in either King Karol or Musical Maze, but rather brazenly purloined from this page. Topically, however, the image fit the bill, so to speak.

Here in 2024, neither King Karol nor Musical Maze still exist. Neither do Bryan Gregory or Lux Interior of the Cramps, tragically. Today, actually, would have been Bryan Gregory's 71st birthday, had he not died of heart failure at age 49 in 2001. Dean Wareham, meanwhile, is still quite active and currently touring with Luna, so go check him out if you get the chance.

Here’s my favorite-ever Luna song, “23 Minutes Over Brussels” which features the inimitable guitar of the late Tom Verlaine. Crank it.

Throwing Punches: Overthrow Boxing Club Goes Punk!

Look, I don’t decry anyone’s initiative to get in shape, work out, slim down, beef up or pursue their favorite sporting activity, but the last several years have seen a wide swathe of downtown Manhattan practically overtaken by a wave of nouvelle fitness ventures to the extent that it’s become a veritable Fitness Corridor, running sweatily from Union Square to Houston Street between Broadway and the Bowery. From Barry’s Bootcamp, Soul Cycle, Rumble, David Barton’s and Crunch to Barre on Broadway, Equinox, Crossfit Union Square (which I bitched about here), Blink Fitness and SLT -- and probably a half-dozen other spots I’m forgetting -- gyms of this sort have handily overtaken banks, frozen yogurt shops and big-chain pharmacies as the inevitable businesses to swiftly set up shop when some age-old concern closes. Only cannabis dispensaries are more plentiful, but that’s a bug-eyed rant for another day.

Among these enterprises came the Overthrow Boxing Club, a style-heavy facility dubbing itself “the Home of Underground Boxing” that opened in 2014, occupying the former site of the Yippie Building at 9 Bleecker Street, on the storied strip between the Bowery and Lafayette. In this modest space where activist Abbie Hoffman once roused rabbled with the Youth International Party there is now a gymnasium with a fully equipped boxing ring wherein patrons can throw hasty haymakers and pound the living daylights out of each other.

Regular readers might remember an entry I posted back in 2015 in which I expressed my dismay and gradual disdain for the Joey Ramone mural that suddenly appeared just across the way that depicted the late, lanky Punk pioneer sporting a pair of boxing gloves. I winced at the appropriation of the neighborhood’s former character being used as a means to market a business that, to my mind, had absolutely nothing to do with Punk Rock. I mean, for better or worse – Richard Hell, Tom Verlaine, Johnny Thunders, Jayne County, Stiv Bator, Debbie Harry, Cheetah Chrome, David Byrne, Clem Burke, Lenny Kaye, Joey Ramone, James Chance, Lux Interior, Patti Smith --- these characters were very much not ripped pugilists with abs of steel. By and large, New York City’s Punk Rock diaspora – from the early pioneers to the No Wavers to the Power Popsters to the Hardcore Kids to the Noise Merchants and all points in between – were not generally known for their athletic abilities. Admittedly, an over-rhapsodized portion of it came with the palpable threat of physical violence, but it sure as shit wasn’t conventional boxing. I mean, yeah, I guess the Dictators were big fans of professional wrestling, but that’s a totally different thing. And sure, legendary Stimulators drummer and burly Cro-Mags founder Harley Flanagan accrued a reputation for being something of an easily triggered combatant and is now an avid practitioner of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, but I think he’s a bit of an exception to the rule.

Regardless, Overthrow continues to strive to legitimize some sort of connective tissue between itself and the neighborhood’s swiftly fading bohemian notoriety, and I find that kind of unseemly and disingenuous. This is precisely why I started furrowing my brow upon seeing these pasted everywhere downtown….

For those who don’t recognize it, this a modified version of a John Holmstrom illustration that appeared in the original run of Punk Magazine, which Holmstrom published alongside Legs McNeil in the late 1970's (I wrote about both of them not too long back). Holmstrom’s signature artwork graced the cover of many of that trailblazing periodical’s output. He’s also responsible for the cover art of the Ramones’ Road to Ruin after an initial design – which strangely ended up being sold on t-shirts by Brandy Melville – was abandoned for being too metal.

In any case, the second I started seeing these, I started to get a little irritable, assuming that Overthrow was – again – laboriously trying to assert some innate kinship with the ephemera of all things NYC Punk. I was further riled when I saw someone on Instagram wrongly credit the iconography to another source, blurring the context of the images’ true provenance. I wasn’t having that.

But wheat-pasted street art was one thing. Pricey street-wear was another. I suddenly started seeing people in the neighborhood sporting brand-new, dayglo t-shirts and knit caps with Holmstrom’s inimitable Punk font and illustrations on them. This was no longer just a furtive bit of pilfered imagery – this was fuckin’ commerce, which led me to confirm my sad suspicions with just a quick Google search.

Given the harsh realities of his chosen vocation as a cartoonist and underground `zine editor, I’m relatively certain money has never come easily to the great John Holmstrom, so – honestly -- who the fuck am I to preciously decry his getting into bed with the cred-hungry entrepreneurs at Overthrow? Sure enough, Holmstrom entered a deal with Overthrow and age-old athletic-wear company Everlast for a collaborative line of clothes and accessories that extol the merits of the gym, the brand and Punk Magazine. At a kickoff party, folks who’d I would have otherwise assumed to share my skepticism at such an enterprise – people like filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, Kembra Phaler of the Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, legendary photographers Bob Gruen and Godlis, former Ramones manager Monte Melnick, mainstay L.E.S. documentarian Clayton Patterson and a host of other notables – seemed perfectly okay with it. Again, who am I to bash something that generates awareness --- and hopefully revenue – of Holmstrom’s amazing work?

But I’m not gonna lie … it still kinda leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

What say you?

Back to Mary’s Candy Shop

Someone started a thread on the Lower East Side Facebook page that really intrigued me, so I’m sharing some of the cogent info here. I have no idea of the true provenance of some of these photographs, but some are, I believe, “tax photos” of New York City real estate. There’s a great archive of same to be found on this site if you’re curious.

In any case, here in 2024, the southeasterly corner of East 7th Street on Avenue A is occupied by Jesse Malin’s celebrated bar, Niagara, above, which has held court at 112 Avenue A since about 1997. That’s the interior of same right above, which I snapped in 2016.

Prior to 1997, the space was another colorful bar named King Tut’s Wah-Wah Hut, above. I drank within the confines of King Tut’s on several occasions in the very late `80s and early `90s.

Well before that iteration, meanwhile, the space in question was A7, the hallowed ground-zero of what would become known as New York Hardcore, otherwise truncated to NYHC. I’ve spoken about A7 a few times here, notably here, here, here, here, here and here, should you be interested.

But what was there prior to its halcyon days as A7? I’ve never really had a clue.

I am invariably projecting, but I want to say that the first time I ever laid eyes on that corner was as a child at some point in the late `70s from behind the backseat window of a moving car, and spying the cryptic legend “DEAD BOYS” hastily scrawled in spray paint on the wall that has played host to the mural of the late Joe Strummer since 2002. I certainly would love to believe that’s true, but it’s probably just a fanciful mental fabrication fueled by years of reverent mythologizing. I have no idea if anyone ever actually tagged the Dead Boys on that wall, but if you happen to remember that, as well, please do corroborate.

But beyond the Lower East Side’s days as the still-hotly-contested birthplace of Punk Rock, it should be remembered that this part of town has a rich, storied history all its own and played host to countless concerns, over the years, serving several different generations of New Yorkers. It’s conceivably very easy to sit in a neighborhood bar of the moment and forget how many separate ventures have occupied the space, over the vast span of years since the building was erected, ultimately reducing the perceived significance it once being a cultural hotspot of comparatively recent times to a meager footnote. This is not at all to suggest that A7 or King Tut’s Wah-Wah Hut or Niagara aren’t significant to a wide demographic, but rather that it’s prudent to remember one's place in the broader continuum.

To that end, a top contributor on the Lower East Side page named Jarrod Henry posted the picture below, appended with the caption:
Mary's Candy Store, later known at A7 (The birthplace of NYHC), now known as Niagara.

Prompted by same, readers chimed with some tax photos of the corner in question, notably from 1938…

…and another from some point in the 1940’s...

In any case, I can find no real record online of a Mary’s Candy Shop, although – really – why would there be? But I wonder what Mary would have thought about all the shenanigans that have gone down in her humble little store front in the ensuing decades.