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....
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