I thought I’d take a moment to aggregate some updates regarding stuff I’ve written about here before. Here we go…
Some of you might remember this post from 2023, which documented the quiet closing of Miyabi, the frankly not-that-amazing Japanese restaurant that moved into Bleecker Bob’s former space at 118 West Third Street following the slow demise of that storied record shop in 2013. Well, after another period of dormancy – during which time the neighboring business to the west morphed from a dubious foot-rub/happy-ending joint into a frozen yogurt purveyor – it seems 118 is getting ready for a new tenant … one that involves, evidently, a “hibachi lab.” See the interior above.
Back in 2013, meanwhile, I wrote an entry about See/Hear, the furtive hive of zine culture, music-geek literature and underground comics that formerly held count in a basement-level space on East 7th Street. As you can see from the comments on that post, the mere invocation of the shop touched a nerve, for a lot of people. Well, for those folks, I’d like to highlight a new, comparatively exhaustive oral history that was just posted on Animal about the place that really goes into its back-history. Check that out here.
Lastly, some of you might remember a series of posts from 2017 wherein I became preoccupied with identifying a certain Manhattan corner upon which the fabled Misfits had once posed for a series of photos that had become relatively iconic (well, for Misfits fans, at least).
As detailed in those posts, I stalked the streets of Lower Manhattan trying to pinpoint the exact spot. At the same time, I reached out to the photographer, one Roxanne Lowit, to see if she could provide the answer, or at least some clues. Her assistant got back to me with some vague intel about where the location might be, and – in turn – I asked if I might reproduce some her photos for my posts. Unfortunately, the response was an emphatic NO, I could not. I got around that by linking to other sites who’d posted them, including photos of Lowit’s images on various bootleg singles and via some illustrations by my daughter, who was about 12 years old at the time. Here’s one of those illustrations now. This is Charlotte's interpretation of the print-out I'm holding in the shot above.
Initially, I was surprised that Lowit – who’d gone on to do many, many other higher profile projects and is now a celebrated fashion photographer -- should have given that much of a damn that some rinkydink little blog like mine wanted to host her pics, but hey, I do understand. That’s her goddamn work. Those images are no one else’s. Respect is due.
Cut to 2024, and someone has evidently convinced Lowit to revisit her evening in the company of Jerry Only, Glen Danzig, Bobby Steele and Joey Image by way of a new photo book called, “We Walk the Streets at Night.” Documenting the full shoot wherein Lowit led the Lodi, New Jersey quartet around the then desolate streets of the West Village (the corner in question, incidentally, was West 11th at Washington Street), the book is frustratingly spare on details (not even a preamble from the photographer). Moreover, the images themselves are presented in their original form as blown-up slides. It’s a nice effect, I suppose, but I would have liked to see some of the pictures in a larger format – and with a bit of anecdotal augmentation, although if you’re curious as to the doings of the Misfits during that era, I would recommend the excellent book,“This Music Leaves Stains” by James Green Jr.
If you’re curious about “We Walk the Streets at Night,” meanwhile, you can pick a copy up at Generation Records on Thompson Street. Tell’em Flaming Pablum sent ya.
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