As lazily invoked in this old post, I used to have an embarrassingly robust collection of arguably offensive t-shirts, most of which devoted to extolling the merits of any number of objectionably monikered ensembles like the Circle Jerks, Butthole Surfers, Pussy Galore, Cop Shoot Cop, Nashville Pussy, MDC (aka Millions of Dead Cops) and a few others. As a disagreeable teen, I was evidently far less concerned with ruffling the feathers of the easily riled or possibly just plain oblivious as to why certain juvenile slogans, images and/or invocations might be perceived as problematic or insensitive.
In more recent years, said collection has largely been whittled down not so much by a newfound influx of maturity so much as by the rigors of age (i.e. the garments in question quite often no longer fit my fifty-something frame or just look ridiculously unflattering when I do squeeze into them). Then, of course, there have been a few that I’ve just come to terms with as being indefensibly provocative. One such example of this was a pair of t-shirts my friend Howard made and sent me in exchange for a large-sized print of a photograph of mine. The shirts in question featured a familiar portrait of an unblinking Charles Manson, surrounded by choice quotes from the man as if they were pithy bon mots one might parrot at a cocktail party. While I was profoundly tickled by Howard’s signature blend of macabre humor, I rightly deduced that I could never wear either iteration (one white, one black). I handed one off to a videographer-turned-dubious-importer/exporter friend of mine and the other lived in the bottom of a drawer for a while before it found its way into a bag destined for my local Goodwill outlet. I wonder if they’ve managed to sell it.
But there’s one t-shirt I’ve since parted with that I thought of the other day, and I can’t for the life of me think of why I no longer possess it, not least in that I remember it being oversized (which means it would have fit well today). I wrongly identified its legend in that earlier post, but it was a shirt designed by Don of Terror Worldwide – who did a series of shirts “back in the day,” so to speak, and possibly one or two for my beloved Cop Shoot Cop – for the original Ludlow Street iteration of Max Fish. The design looked like a bit of art appropriated from communist Chinese propaganda, but manipulated to fit the irreverent sensibility of the Lower East side bar it was advertising. Featuring a smiling, kerchiefed proletariat woman – albeit with a third eye in the middle of her forehead – brandishing a can emblazoned with the name of the bar over the commanding legend “SURF SATAN!”
I don’t remember the circumstances of buying the shirt – probably a decision I emphatically realized while markedly inebriated on my way out of the bar, one evening – but for a spell in the mid-`90s, I remember wearing the Hell out of it, usually prompting a wide variety of reactions in others, from consternation to outrage and all points in between. It was never immediately clear that it was a shirt espousing a bar, but that probably wouldn’t have mattered anyway.
Personally speaking, after fourteen years of Catholic education, there are few things I find more amusing than needless invocations of Satan. The fact that otherwise seemingly enlightened individuals can be so effortlessly disturbed by the mention of the name or accompanying blasphemous iconography continues to fascinate me. Longtime readers might remember a similar post wherein I unspooled a yarn about breaking up with a girl I’d been briefly dating because she was shocked into speechlessness by the cover of a record she’d found on my shelves, that being To Mega Therion by Celtic Frost. We broke up on the spot. Sorry, but I’ll take Satan over the fear of divine retribution every time.
Anyway, either it was lost in a move between apartments, poached by friend or surreptitiously thrown down the garbage shoot by the woman who’d become my wife, the “SURF SATAN!” shirt hasn’t seen the inside of any drawer or closet of mine in decades. The pics of it above are not mine, but rather lifted from the internet, where the shirt in question is now something of a collector’s item. Go figure.
As for Max Fish, as I discussed back on this post, I gradually aged out of it, so to speak, and then it closed and moved to Orchard Street in 2010, but I never went to that iteration, and it closed shortly afterwards, anyway.
If you never went to the original one, here’s a brief taste of its interior…
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