Flaming Pablum

Notes from The Flown Coop

I hate to keep apologizing for the slowdown here, as I’m sure most of you probably wouldn’t even notice it if not for me tirelessly pointing it out. There are a couple of possible causes for this.

For whatever reason, I’ve been experiencing a tenacious torpor ever since we dropped our son off at school. It’s a tremendous cliché to suggest that I’ve been stricken by the aforementioned “Empty Nest Syndrome,” but whether it’s that or seasonal affective disorder or that I’ve unwitting ditched my muse or that I’ve simply started to lose my edge --- or all of the above, somehow I seem to have depleted my supply of the idiotic bullshit that passes for “content” here which normally flows out of me like needlessly verbose sewage.

I do have one kind of labor-intensive post in the works, but if I had a dollar for each idea I’ve hatched then summarily abandoned, in the last couple of weeks, I could probably buy us all a nice lunch. I had a post prompted by an exchange in the comments section of Tribeca Citizen about the dispiriting proliferation of cannabis dispensaries in lower Manhattan, but figured that’s more my own grievance than anyone else’s. I had another pointed one about grill-ordering etiquette in Manhattan delis, but – again – that’s all about my own pet peeves. I had a less cantankerous one that looked back at Sounds on St. Marks Place, but somehow can’t bring myself to finish it. I am not feeling especially inspired. Maybe I’m just burned out?

Compounding all this, my lovely wife left for London, last Friday, for the London Book Fair, making our empty nest that much emptier. Left to my own devices, this past rainy weekend, I did all that I could to escape the maddening quiet of our apartment. I was so bored on Sunday morning that – apropos of absolutely nothing – I decided to make a soggy pilgrimage to the Bowie mural in Jersey City. It’s impressive, yes, but in a super random (and not entirely that nice) neighborhood. Moreover, as far as I’m aware, the great man never lived here .. which begs the question … why Jersey City?

On Saturday, meanwhile, upon hearing of a brand-new record shop in Park Slope (Sterling Records on Fifth Avenue at Sterling Place), I schlepped out there to check it out. I wasn’t really looking for anything, but felt compelled to be supportive and buy something, so I bought a fridge magnet with the cover of XTC’s Drums & Wires on it, then proceeded to walk all the way home – all the way down Flatbush Avenue and over the Manhattan Bridge.

Last night, driven by a hankering for South Asian grub, I found myself in one of the few remaining Indian restaurants on East 6th Street, trying to maintain my composure in defiance of a roiling plate of Chicken Tikka that was weapons-grade spicy (a descriptor that normally does not apply to this particular dish). As my eyes and nostrils flowed like faucets, a guy behind me was steadily boring his date into a drooling stupor with Grunge-era conspiracy theories about Whitewater, the Rose Law Firm, and the late Vince Foster. Had I stepped through some sort of tear in the time/space continuum?

Anyway, I’m sure I’ll snap out of it in due course, but please be patient with me in the short term.

 

The Pastrami Remains the Same: Katz's Delicatessen Then & Now

1998:

2024:

St. Marks & Second, 1987

Someone on the Lower East Side: Back in the Days page posted an amazing shot by Dutch photographer Teun Voeten, over the weekend, that I wanted to share here.

This is the southwest corner of St. Marks Place at Second Avenue circa 1987. From about 1957 – although I’ve read that the business itself well predates that year – that corner was occupied by Gem Spa, a newspaper stand and candy store renowned as a neighborhood fixture. Its signature Egg Creams were touted as the best in the city (I cannot speak with any authority about that, but they were damn good), and it was famously immortalized in an iconic photograph of the New York Dolls by Toshi Matsuo (and later recreated by Roberta Bayley). I spoke about those elements back here.

The photo above was taken about fifteen years after that and features the same row of beat-up phone booths that Matsuo had the Dolls pose with. What struck me first about Voeten’s photo were the Rock Hotel flyers on the right, advertising a particular gig in December of 1987 featuring the Dead Boys, Kix, Circus of Power and a band called Hilfiger, which was a combo put together by guitarist Andy Hilfiger -- clothier Tommy Hilfiger’s little brother -- after the dissolution of the short-lived band King Flux, which featured Richie Stotts of the Plasmatics and Marky Ramone of – wait for it – The Ramones.

I was actually at that gig – which I wrote about here -- and still have that very flyer to this day. Here it was in my sorely under-utilized kitchen on East 12th Street back in the mid-`90s.

My memories of the show in 1987 are fleeting. I was home for Christmas break during my junior year of college. It was one of the Dead Boys’ annual reunion shows, albeit one of the final ones. I remember Kix – kind of a hackneyed hair-metal band who I wrote about here – being better than I’d expected. I sadly have no recollection about Hilfiger (sorry, Andy), but do vividly remember Circus of Power (who I wrote about here). Circus of Power always seemed like they should have been a bigger deal, but they were always kind of entirely out of step with the other New York City bands, at the time. Moreover, if I'm not mistaken, the guy in this photograph in the shades, backwards cap, black leather jacket and Ramones shirt looks like the incongruously named Gary Sunshine, guitarist for Circus of Power, although I can't be sure. 

The other thing that caught my eye was an invocation to one of my late friend Fran Powers’ bands, Whole Wide World, which you can see on the top right, just above the trio of Rock Hotel flyers.

Gem Spa closed in 2020. The space that Gem Spa formerly occupied is now a coffee shop called Poetica Coffee. The Dead Boys had already broken up, but the death of Stiv Bator in 1990 put a definitive stop to their annual reunion shows. Kix only broke up as recently as last year. Circus of Power technically broke up for a first time in 1995 but reformed in 2014 and are conceivably still at it. Whole Wide World was just one of Fran Powers’ many bands. They independently self-released an LP in 1987 (the same year as this photograph), and it contained a cover of The Nazz’s classic “Open My Eyes.” While he’d long since moved on to other projects beyond Whole Wide World, Fran Powers passed away in 2021.

Here's that full Dead Boys' set:

This was Circus of Power....

Spencer Speaks

Damian Abraham recently exhumed an older episode of his excellent podcast, Turned Out a Punk, wherein he posed questions to the great Jon Spencer of Shithaus, Pussy Galore (above, as captured in 1989 by Rick McGinnis), Boss Hog, Honeymoon Killers, Gibson Brothers, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, The HitMakers, etc. notoriety. Despite his reputation for cartoonishly amplified, potty-mouthed bluster, Jon comes across as very thoughtful, soft-spoken and self-deprecating. It’s an illuminating chat that delves into his original forays into making music, his move to New York City in the early `80s, his days being willfully negative and contrarian with Pussy Galore and much more.

If you’re inclined, do check it out. Jon Spencer’s currently touring, and comes to NYC next week. He’ll be at Town Hall. I’ll be there, will you?

You can hear the TOAP episode by clicking right here.

Revelation #9: Exhuming The Surburbs

Back in the mid-`80s, I had a significantly more voracious appetite for new music, and while that sounds like it might have been expensive and complicated, it was reasonably simple to track down the new stuff you liked without having to spend a king’s ransom, if you knew where to go.

I vividly remember, in the summer of 1986, hearing a single by a Minneapolis band, The Suburbs, called “#9.” That previous spring, I recalled my friend Walter at Denison University, repeatedly spinning that band’s 1984 EP, Dream Hog with some regularity, and quite digging it. This single, “#9,” sounded like quite a departure, given that it was on their comparatively slick, major-label debut (they’d signed to A&M Records, released one epoynmous LP, and were pretty much immediately dropped). I picked up a promo copy of The Suburbs for a couple of dollars at St. Marks Sounds, and slapped “#9” on many an outgoing mixtape, often nestled incongruously between Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer” and “Away” by The Bolshoi.

As it happened, given the lacklustre performance of The Suburbs’ big label debut, the album was never released on compact disc and the band broke up.

In later years, somewhat predictably, The Suburbs reformed, toured, released new shit and re-released a lot of old shit, but their star-crossed LP, The Suburbs, was never re-visited. While my enthusiasm for the band has since long waned, I’d been harboring a hankering, over recent months, to experience “#9” again, having not heard it in literal decades.

Thing is, it’s not on Spotify. It’s not on Bandcamp and my copy of the LP lives in a flight case in the basement of my mother’s worryingly flood-friendly basement out on Long Island. Even here in the age of immediate technological gratification, I couldn’t manage to hear “#9” again.

I seemed to remember there being a proper music video for “#9,” but I could never find that, either.

Until today.

Someone posted the original video as recently as a year ago, and I only came across it this afternoon. Find that below.

What I’d remembered of “#9” was strikingly different from what I heard when I hit play. Through the prism of 2024, not only is the single very much “of its era” (in, frankly, not necessarily a good way), but it’s just kinda … dumb. I mean, I love a lot of dumb rock, but usually there’s something slightly clever or notable about it. In this instance, “#9” is just banal in its dumbness, and sounds like a bit of LP filler on the soundtrack to a sub-John Hughes coming-of-age flick.

Musically, beyond being rife with period-specific flourish, I learned that the LP which spawned “#9” was produced by former Prince drummer and fellow Minnesotan, Bobby Z. I guess that was designed to add some purple pomp and circumstance to the band’s otherwise strictly “New Wave” sound. And while lead singer Beej Chaney might dress, punkily preen and pout like Stiv Bator of the Dead Boys, this is pretty middle-of-the-road stuff, and I now regret disseminating it on so many mixtapes.

No wonder they got dropped.

It's Band T-Shirt Day

According to some colleagues of mine, today is Band T-Shirt Day. The official (?) website attests that "Band Shirt Day is a global fundraising initiative, where artists come together for a single day to sell merchandise on their official sales channels and donate proceeds to charitable organizations of their choice.”

Regardless, at my office, the folks that program content for the company’s intranet portal were soliciting pics of team members sporting their favorites. Being that I have pretty much a full-blown addiction to accruing band t-shirts, I was game to participate. Here’s what I submitted...

“I have what any normal person would consider a stupid amount of band t-shirts, but I can’t seem to bring myself to part with any of them. This one is among my very favorites. It’s Dread Zeppelin. Ostensibly, Dread Zeppelin was a reggae band that played Led Zeppelin covers with an Elvis impersonator as a lead singer. If that sounds ridiculous, that’s because it was. Suffice to say, they were a tremendously entertaining live band. I got this shirt at a tour stop in 1990 at long-since-vanished Wetlands Preserve, not too far away from our office. To this day, this shirt continues to confuse and upset Zeppelin purists … which makes it priceless, to my mind.”

I partially went with Dread Zeppelin not just because I genuinely love the shirt, but because I can only bang the gong so much about my allegieance to certain specific bands like Killing Joke before I lapse into self-parody. Funnily enough, my company’s recently-hired new Chief Financial Officer submitted a pic of himself sporting a Killing Joke shirt, which pretty much knocked me right off the porch. I’ll be discussing that with him soon, although I have to meet him first.

I also love the irony of our CFO rocking a t-shirt emblazoned with the cover of the album that spawned the single “Money Is Not Our God.”

Anyway, Happy Band T-Shirt Day to all that celebrate. To see more of my stupid pile of t-shirts, click here. 

Don't Listen to Shelby

Here’s yet another nasty little post wherein I pettily take some doe-eyed whippersnapper to task for getting shit wrong, contributing to the propagation of misinformation and helping further ruin my hometown. 

I don’t know who “influencer” Shelby Church is. I’m sure she’s a well-meaning, upstanding human being who is hard-working and kind to her neighbors. Regardless, like Brett Conti and Elena Taber before her (both of whom I’ve eviscerated here before – and who both appear in the video below), she’s decided to cast herself as some sort of amabassador for New York City, despite demonstrably knowing fucking nothing about it. She made the video below after being here for a month.

That sort of shit sets my teeth on edge. Ironically, this post is coming hot on the heels of my own heroically under-informed guide to Dublin, but I at least had the decency to point out that I'm nothing but a clueless tourist in that fine city. 

Now, granted, it can well be said that I essentially live in the past and pine in vain for a New York City that no longer exists and is never coming back. While that indeed may be true, and that I should acclimate to the hyper-gentrified reality, that doesn’t mean that facts have become flexible. Wrong is fucking wrong, and I’m here to point it out when I see it.

Some surface-level comments right from the start:

1. Stop sitting on the fucking pavement. We fucking HATE that.

2. NO ONE has EVER lived in Times Square.

3. Brett Conti is NOT NOT NOT a “native New Yorker.” He’s from Massapequa, Long Island. Very big difference.

4. Don’t listen to Elana Taber about anything. Also, there is significantly more to a neighborhood beyond its "cute" shops, restaurants and bars.

5. Union Square is NOT in the East Village.

6. The East Village is PART of the Lower East Side.

7. Washington Square Park is NOT NOT NOT in the West Village, it’s fucking Greenwich Village. Get it right. The West Village is WEST of fucking Sixth Avenue, you dolts! 

I could keep going, but I’ll let you experience it for yourself. Enjoy thirteen minutes of idiotic blather from a gaggle of clueless whistleheads. There is no useful information here at all.

Back from Ireland

Hi again, all. Apologies for the tardy follow-up, but there’s been a lot going on, on the home front and elsewhere, and I’ve not had the opportunity — much less the energy — to update proceedings here.

First up, drop-off of the boy (as mentioned here) was successful. With a bare minimum of hiccups, my son Oliver was effectively ensconced at his college and, after only a week in, is already having a fabulous time. As predicted, it’s quite strange to be back here at home without him, and we miss him terribly, but he’s off to a rollicking start, and we couldn’t be happier and prouder. Mission accomplished.

My daughter is also safely back at her school in Scotland after a couple of weeks of traipsing around Western Europe with her flatmates. Neither of our children get Thanksgiving off, for obvious reasons, but we’re hoping to swing back over in November to see each of them. We’ll see if we can pull that off.

In any case, now that we’ve been back and forth to Dublin a few times, by this point, I thought I’d unsolicitedly give you a dilettante’s not-at-all-comprehensive guide to the city. You’re welcome!

BEST MEAL:
As I’ve been laboriously pointing out, it’s exceptionally hard to have a bad time in Dublin — I mean, you have to really work at it. There are so many great places to eat, drink and be merry, it’s ridiculous. That all said, if I ate and drank as I did last week for the duration of a month, I’d be fucking dead. It’s not just the drinks either. I mean, the food is hearty and heavy and not exactly the healthiest of options, in most cases, but goddamn if I didn’t enjoy myself, in that capacity. But since returning last week, I’ve been trying to sharply curtail the worst of my habits to do a bit of course correcting. We’ll see if that takes.

Anyway, on our second night of this past jaunt, while we’d intended to find a brand new place to dine, we ended up repairing to a spot we’d been before, a lovely restaurant on Dawson Street in central Dublin called The Ivy. The last time we ate here, I fielded a call from my office to tell me about a sizable bonus I was about to receive and my son got an acceptance email from a school he was interested in. As such, we consider the place charmed. Nothing so dramatic happened this time, but I had a steak that was verily to die for, so to speak. I highly recommend the place.

BEST PUB:
Much like trying to determine the best pizzeria in New York City, pinpointing the “best” pub in Dublin seems like a fool’s errand. That all said, while we did belly up to the bar at any number of pubs from the celebrated to the seedy, I’d have to say that while I do love the Stag’s Head in the Temple Bar area of town (that’s me imbibing in same up top), it’s a bit on the touristy side. My personal favorite was a comparatively humble joint we happened upon on Lower Baggot Street, just a few doors up from the birthplace of Francis Bacon, called Thomas Rody Maher’s or, simply, Maher’s. It’s just a cozy, unpretentious space with lots of atmosphere and elbow room. The pints of Guinness kept coming, the vibe was convivial and the music was excellent. I’d go back in a heartbeat.

BEST FISH & CHIPS:
A standard order in that part of the world, a plate of fish & chips in Dublin is not unlike, once again, a slice of pizza in New York City. Some iterations of it are sublime, whilst others simply check the box. I partook of this aquatic delicacy quite a few times, during this last visit, but if I had to pinpoint the “best” one, I’d say it was had at a comparatively expansive seafood joint on Pembroke Street Lower called Matt The Thresher. Everything about it was absolutely perfect. In all fairness, the fish & chips I had the night before (yes, I had it for dinner two nights in a row) at The Woolen Mills, a lovely riverside restaurant off the Ha’Penny Bridge, was also exemplary. But I’m still giving it to Matt the Thresher.

BEST PLACE TO ILL-ADVISEDLY SPEND:
I got a bit carried away at the Tower Records on Dawson Street.

BEST PLACE FOR SUNDRY ITEMS FOR A NEWLY MINTED COLLEGE KID: 
We stocked up at Dunnes in the otherwise somewhat grotty Stephen’s Green Shopping Center. We were able to outfit our lad with everything from basic accessories to rudimentary culinary items. Plus, they have a great, expansive grocery section in the basement.

BEST PLACE TO STAY:
The first time we came to Dublin in 2017 or so, it was my brilliant idea (not) to rent a room over a pub in the Docklands called O’Brien’s Ferryman. Inspired by the sepia-toned video of “Pride (In the Name of Love)” by U2 — I’m so embarrassing — I assumed the Docklands would be a manageable neighborhood in which stay. Suffice to say, the Docklands had long since morphed into a lively nightlife destination since the mid-`80s. Imagine renting a room above a bustling East Village bar on a Saturday night. When the Ferryman closed, each evening, the party would simply move outside and continue for another hour or so. It became a bit of a “if you can’t beat’em, join’em” kind of scenario, which —while fun — was ultimately unsustainable.

Our more recent trips to Ireland have found us lodging at the much more respectable Stauntons on the Green, a lovely little hotel just off St. Stephen’s Green that is but a stone’s throw from several key points around central Dublin, including Grafton Street, Temple Bar, Trinity College Dublin and loads of other places. It’s a great staging point for any Dublin expedition.

BEST DISCOVERY:
As an alternative to yet another heavy pint of Guinness (ironic, in that your average pint of Guinness actually packs LESS alcohol than a pint of lager), I went with a local Dublin brew, on occasion, called Hop House that wasn’t bad, despite some skepticism from the locals.

BEST PHONE SERVICE:
The 3 network is way, way better and more flexible than Vodaphone.

BEST WAY TO GET AROUND TOWN:
I will always opt for walking, but the tram (aka “The Luas” … pronounced like “Lewis”), is quick, clean, intuitive and efficient …. and quiet. I almost got slammed from behind by one on Dawson Street, because I’m a clueless American.

23 Years Later

"Great Bars of New York City"

While I do not know them personally, James & Karla Murray are renowned in the amorphous community of NYC-centric bloggers, vloggers, photographers, nostalgists and digital storytellers of which I am also a member. Over the 19 (jeezus!) years I’ve been “keeping” this silly blog, I’ve doubtlessly mentioned their name, evangelized their work and re-purposed their striking images countless times.

James & Karla's lovingly composed photographs of New York City corner shops, bistros, pizzerias, record stores, taverns and mom’n’pop concerns of all stripes have become a crucial part of the documentation of our ever-(d)evolving city, and their magisterial books like “Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York,” “New York Nights,” and “Broken Windows: Graffiti NYC” make any coffee table they are placed on that much goddamn cooler. I’ve frequently spied them out and about — Karla’s signature shock of punky, bleach-blonde hair is hard to miss. On the occasions in which I’ve accosted them (“hey, it’s James & Karla!”), they seem to be in a constant state of buoyant, infectious joy. They clearly live their entwined lives like one long, curious adventure, and are insatiable in their quest to see, go, do, experience, capture and create. I find them quite inspiring, in that way. 

Imagine my own joy, then, when I was contacted out of the proverbial blue by a publicist representing a new project for Prestel Publishing, that being the forthcoming book by James & Karla titled “Great Bars of New York City.” I relayed an enthusiastic “yes” to the publicist before I’d even finished reading the pitch.

Beyond my tireless affinity for waxing rhapsodic about the New York City of my growingly distant youth and/or my favorite willfully obnoxious, listener-hostile music, I am somewhat sheepishly notorious for my penchant for putting away many a pint of beer, and I quite relish doing so in any number of establishments — from the endearingly seedy to the stuffily stately — across the five boroughs (yes, dear readers, I have consumed beers on Staten Island). “Great Bars of New York City” speaks directly to that ….uhh…. unquenchable thirst with 239 pages of James & Karla’s brilliant photographs, augmented with text by food & culture scribe, Dan Q. Dao. The pictures are crisp, colorful and packed with nuanced detail, matched by Dao’s meticulous historical research and illustrative prose. It’s entirely splendid. If you harbor any of the same predilections as myself, you will not be able to put this book down, as I haven’t.

“Great Bars of New York City” is available on September 10th. Click here for more information. Also, don’t sleep on James & Karla’s Instagram page.