Flaming Pablum

Back to the Artist Lofts

Hey again, all. I know I said I was leaving, but I’m not departing until later this afternoon, and a regular reader named Crawford just shared this me, and I thought it was cool enough to evangelize here. Here’s hoping you agree.

The clip below is by a photographer named Josh Charow about a compelling project. Here’s his official description.

I spent the past two years creating my first photography book titled 'Loft Law. The Last of New York City's Original Artist Lofts' about artists living under the protection of the Loft Law. The law, enacted in 1982 (Article 7-C of the Multiple Dwelling Law), granted protection and rent stabilization to thousands of artists who were living illegally in commercial and manufacturing zoned lofts in neighborhoods like Soho, Tribeca, and the Bowery after the manufacturing industry predominantly left Manhattan.

Two years ago, I found a map of the remaining protected buildings, rang hundreds of doorbells, and photographed and interviewed over 75 artists who are still living in these incredible lofts to this day. The photographs explore some of the most unique beautiful, and hidden artist studios across New York City. The book includes writing and personal stories from the incredible group of artists featured in the book.

Buy the book: https://www.joshuacharow.com/shop/lof...

To inquire about purchasing a print, please contact: [email protected]

Here’s the video:

Damaged Hours: Back to Mohawk Night at Club Berlin

Mention the words “New York Hardcore,” and certain band names are inevitably going to be invoked –- notably classic ensembles like Agnostic Front, Cro-Mags, Murphy’s Law, Kraut, Antidote, Heart Attack, Cause For Alarm, Warzone, Madball, Sick of It All and several others. But, since its gradual gestation from about 1981 (around the time when Bad Brains expatriated to NYC from Washington D.C.), there have been countless bands born under the NYHC banner, from The Undead, Even Worse, False Prophets, The Stimulators, Virus, The Mad and the fledgling Beastie Boys through Gorilla Biscuits, Judge, Youth of Today, Biohazard, Leeway, and about nineteen-dozen other crews from all over the five boroughs. To try to encapsulate, quantify or even simply know all the pertinent outfits that are tethered to the scene in one form another is a fool’s errand – although my excellent comrade Drew Stone has done one helluva job in exhaustively doing just that.

When it comes to keeping score of all things NYHC, I may talk a good game, but I’m ultimately something of a dilettante. While I was furiously in thrall to certain key bands (I have always been a bug-eyed zealot for KRAUT), and went to as many shows as I could, back in the day, I would never call myself an authority so much as a loyal, reverent enthusiast. Not for nothing, but classic New York City hardcore also came burdened with a bit of an aura of menace. Whether warranted or not, the tightly knit scene didn’t always exude a warm welcome for the uninitiated. Being a Upper East Side kid with a pipe-cleaner physique, at the time, didn’t exactly put me in good fettle to withstand a frenetic Sunday matinee moshpit or a skinhead “wall-of-death” across the Ritz ballroom floor, but I did my best.

All this is to say that while I’ve always counted myself a fan and supporter of all things NYHC, I don’t pretend to even begin to know every solitary aspect of the scene and its myriad proponents, which is precisely why I couldn’t speak with any certainty about the speculation below until I go verification. Here goes….

Regular readers (if they actually exist) might recall several mentions here of a guy named Fran Powers. Tragically no longer with us, Fran was a member of quite a few New York City bands, over the years, but was an active participant of the NYHC scene as a member of a band called Ultra Violence, although his main outfit was a genre-straddling combo called Modern Clix. If that latter name rings more of a bell, that’s because, in the past few years, the revelation of the origin and geographic location of a bit of cryptic graffiti that ended up as the title to a pivotal album by Argentine rockstar Charly Garcia (he obliviously named his album after Fran’s band, after having his picture taken under a striking tableaux of graffiti tags on Cortlandt Alley in TriBeCa) came to light, and I, somewhat unwittingly, played a role in determining the exact location. Initially unbeknownst to Fran, that album went onto become comparable to the Abbey Road of Latin American rock. It’s a long, confusing story, but click here for a bit more detail, should you care.

But, anyway, before all that stuff bubbled to the surface, I’d met Fran at a party in SoHo, about ten years ago, and we became friends. Some short time after that, I was at home watching my all-time favorite film, Martin Scorsese’s “After Hours” from 1985, and was amazed to discover that my then-new-friend Fran had a major cameo appearance in the movie. I reached out to him to see if he’d be game to discuss the experience for a post here on this blog, and he did just that, which you can read here.

Cut to 2024….

Given my interests and predilections, Facebook frequently fills my feed with stuff it thinks I’ll be engaged by. Right they were, this morning, when they posted an entry on a public group named simply “Hard Core.” The entry was a photograph of a period-specific band from New York City, and snapped by the late photographer Bri Hurley, who published one of the earliest documentations of the New York Hardcore community in her book "Making a Scene." Here’s that photo now.

For those who do not recognize this band, this is a combo called Damage. While I’d heard their name and am familiar with some granular minutia about their membership (more about that in a second), I must confess that they were simply not “one of my bands,” so to speak. In my days as a self-styled hardcore kid, I latched onto several particular bands, but for whatever reason, these guys just weren’t one of them, and I missed the boat. To be fair, they were only around for about five years. They released one studio album, entitled Sins of Our Fathers and, later, a live recording captured at CBGB before they split.

The only things I really knew about Damage were that it was the band that bassist Mike Kirkland played in before forming Prong (another favorite of mine) with former SWANS drummer Ted Parsons and erstwhile CBGB soundman Tommy Victor. Another notable bit of trivia is that drummer Patrick Blank –- formerly of the original line-up of the Undead with former Misfits guitarist Bobby Steele and future Cop Shoot Cop bassist Jack Natz -- played in their ranks for a short period of time.

Regardless, I’d never seen a photograph of the Damage guys until this morning. Take another look at the picture. Future Prong bassist Kirkland is the gent sitting in the center, holding a beer. I believe Pat Blank is sitting in front with the shades on. As a curious aside, the blonde dude in the upper right-hand corner is wearing the same Discharge t-shirt design sported by Kirk Hammett on the back cover of Metallica’s Ride the Lightning that I recently spoke about on this post.

But the guy that really jumped out at me was the mohican fella on the bottom left. I felt like I immediately recognized him, and then it hit me, and it took me right back to the Club Berlin scene in “After Hours.”

Let’s go back there now, shall we?

Upon reviewing, I went back to the Hard Core page and postulated my theory that, since Fran Powers of Ultra Violence and Modern Clix, Bobby Steele of the Undead and the notorious John “Gringo” Spacely all made quick cameos, could the “hey mon!” punk who enters Club Berlin before Paul in “After Hours” be Damage frontman Ted Warner (at specifically 00:58 in the clip above)?

Much to my great surprise, Warner, who, in later life, went onto study at Pratt Institute and is now evidently a software engineer at Bloomberg (and no longer sports a mohawk) said “yes, that’s me!”

And THERE YOU HAVE IT!

Here’s a bit of Damage now. Crank it up and hoist one for Ted!!

Incidentally, while Club Berlin, which Kiki, in the film, says was on West Broadway at Grand Street, did indeed exist, the exterior used in "After Hours" is not that actual venue. I wrote about that actual spot back here. These days, it's all under scaffolding awaiting a new iteration of who knows what?

For a truly exhaustive rumination on all things "After Hours," click here. 

Dawn of the Dough Retarders: Back ...AGAIN... to Bowery & Bleecker

I came across the photograph above whilst trawling around Tumblr (remember that?), at some point in the last six months, and set it to one side, so to speak. The sheer number of posts I’ve devoted here to photographs and video of the hardcore matinee scene outside of CBGB is entirely too unwieldy to cite here, but it’s all Googlable, should you give a damn.

While this photo -- tragically uncredited and undated (although given some of the band names on display, I’d suggest somewhere around 1982) -- checks the necessary boxes to warrant inclusion, there are other curious attributes to the photo worth mentioning, although I mentioned most of them in this recent post about the very same patch of real estate, involving invocations of Jim Jarmusch's "Stranger Than Paradise," Drew Carolan's iconic matinee photographs and Shepard Fairey's tributes to Blondie and Bad Brains. ADDENDUM: According to photographer Drew Carolan, this photo was more likely snapped in 1984.

Obviously, this photo captures the easternmost intersection where Bleecker Street ends (or begins, depending on your perspective) at the Bowery. The hardcore kids with their backs to the camera are sitting directly in front of the front entrance of what was then CBGB, pretty much exactly where the No Wave all-stars were perched against the parked car in Godlis’ classic team photo below, from just a few years earlier. 

In looking back up at the photo at the top of this post, however, I was struck by the kitchen-supply store that occupied that space on the far, southernmost corner in, again, roughly 1984. One aspect it boldly advertises is evidently an enviable selection of DOUGH RETARDERS. While that sounds like the name of a band that should otherwise be stenciled on back of one of the sitting punks in the foreground, it’s a legitimate baking implement. I looked it up. I’d never heard the term, but apparently dough retarders delay the fermentation process by reducing and maintaining the temperature of the dough in a controlled humidity and temperature environment. Generally, moulded dough pieces are placed into a retarder for a set period of time. So, there ya go.

Don’t bother looking on that corner for your dough retardation needs now, though. That kitchen-supply purveyor is long, long gone. In more recent years, that space played host to a succession of failed restaurants before morphing – to much eyebrow-raising – into an incongruous J. Crew outlet, although I’ve heard that venture is also shortly to vacate the premises. I have no idea what will take its place, although I seriously doubt it will be anything anyone is terrifically happy about.

Despite some financial hardships, John Varvatos still occupies the former footprint of CBGB, although I haven’t set foot in that haberdashery for years.

Where those hardcore kids and that cop are today, though, who can say?

Goodbye to 2023

Alright, it’s only December 19, but the next several days promise to be busy, so I guess it’s time to dust this one off, once again.

WHAT DID YOU DO IN 2023 THAT YOU’D NEVER DONE BEFORE?

Hmmm, well, I had to wear a low cam boot for four weeks, that was certainly a new one, for me. As an ancillary bonus, it did absolutely nothing to solve the problem it was ostensibly designed to remedy, so yeah … how fun.

DID YOU KEEP YOUR NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS, AND WILL YOU MAKE MORE FOR 2024?

I have found that resolutions are made to be brazenly broken, so no and no.

DID ANYONE CLOSE TO YOU GIVE BIRTH?

The wife of a new colleague of mine at the office just gave birth to their second son, which means my colleague will be missing from the office for several weeks in the new year.

DID ANYONE CLOSE TO YOU DIE?

Thankfully, no.

WHAT COUNTRIES DID YOU VISIT?

In June, we went to Italy for a couple of weeks, which I highly recommend. 

WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO HAVE IN 2024 THAT YOU LACKED IN 2023?

I don’t like to dwell on the things I don’t have. That said, I’d love to have an actionable, proven remedy for my stupid foot problem, but I don’t know that it exists.

WHAT DATE FROM 2023 WILL REMAIN ETCHED UPON YOUR MEMORY?

It may sound histrionic, but waking up to the news that Geordie Walker of Killing Joke had died the Saturday morning after Thanksgiving is a moment that will definitely stay with me.

WHAT WAS YOUR BIGGEST ACHIEVEMENT OF THE YEAR?

Oh, who knows? Staying marginally healthy, sane and employed, keeping my children fed, housed and educated and managing to endear myself enough to my wife for her not to want to routinely murder me.

WHAT WAS YOUR BIGGEST FAILURE?

Oh, I’m sure there’s a whole grab bag from which to choose, but, in my opinion, it was an instance wherein I was unable to effectively hide my frustration from an individual who insisted on making last-minute changes to a big, time-sensitive project at the office. While the project was completed on time and received praise from various parties, I was still reprimanded for it, which was kind of humiliating. That still stings.

DID YOU SUFFER ILLNESS OR INJURY?

Back in February, I was struck with a mystery virus that wasn’t COVID, which manifested as a recurring, low-grade fever that went on for two weeks. And, yes, I somehow broke a bone in my left foot, resulting in the avascular necrosis I continue to grapple with.

WHAT WAS THE BEST THING YOU BOUGHT?

Maybe this lovely pair of low-top Chuck Taylor All-Stars I’m currently wearing (brown with gold eyelets). Oh, and I picked up a nice, floor-model front hall mirror..

WHOSE BEHAVIOR MERITED CELEBRATION?

Both of my children continue to amaze me on a daily basis.

WHOSE BEHAVIOR MADE YOU APPALLED AND DEPRESSED?

Regardless of which poll you prefer to pay attention to, Donald Trump still has an astonishingly high degree of favorability among my fellow Americans, which fills me with withering disdain and blistering contempt.

WHAT DID YOU GET REALLY, REALLY EXCITED ABOUT?

My son Oliver has already been accepted at four colleges. We still have miles to go, but that validation (and relief) is really rewarding.

WHERE DID MOST OF YOUR MONEY GO?

If you go back and read my answer from last year about my building being assessed, it still holds true. I’m paying roughly $900 more in maintenance than I would otherwise normally, and will continue to until February.

WHAT SONG WILL ALWAYS REMIND YOU OF 2023?

Probably Depeche Mode’s “A Pain That I’m Used To,” specifically the live version of the Jacques Lu Cont remix that they played at the Madison Square Garden show Oliver and I caught back in the Spring.

COMPARED TO THIS TIME LAST YEAR, ARE YOU HAPPIER OR SADDER?

The past few months have been pretty rough on several people my family cares deeply about, and that’s sadly informed the mood of this season, a bit. Personally speaking, I’m a little bit down in the mouth, these days, and always waiting for the next shoe to drop, so to speak.

THINNER OR FATTER?

Oh, definitely fatter, which I think is symptomatic of my age. If I don’t curtail certain things, that’s only going to worsen, I fear.

RICHER OR POORER?

Until we reach the end of that assessment, I won’t fully sleep through the night.

WHAT DO YOU WISH YOU’D DONE MORE OF?

I wish I’d gotten a jump on certain things sooner. I am becoming more of a procrastinator, unfortunately.

WHAT DO YOU WISH YOU’D DONE LESS OF?

I can be strikingly undisciplined, at times. I wish that wasn’t the case.

HOW DID YOU SPEND CHRISTMAS?

It hasn’t happened yet, but we’re doing Christmas Eve here in NYC, then heading to my mom’s in Quogue on Christmas Day, then back to NYC and then off to my sister-in-law Katie’s in Pennsylvania for a few days, after that.

WHO DID YOU SPEND THE MOST TIME ON THE PHONE WITH?

Absolutely no idea.

DID YOU FALL IN LOVE IN 2023?

I’ve been very happily married since 2001.

HOW MANY ONE-NIGHT STANDS IN THE LAST YEAR?

See answer above. Also, who would answer this question?

WHAT WAS YOUR FAVORITE TV PROGRAM?

They come and go, and I forget (not a good sign), but I sincerely enjoyed the last season of “C.B. Strike” and I’m currently loving “Slow Horses.” Gary Oldman is so goddamn great.

DO YOU HATE ANYONE NOW THAT YOU DIDN’T HATE AT THIS TIME LAST YEAR?

What a question. Well, Donald Trump, obviously, although I’ve always hated him, so that’s not really new. Vivek Ramaswany seems entirely worthy of intense hatred. Seriously, fuck THAT guy. Ron DeSantis is a complete dick, but he just seems more stupid than anything else.

WHAT WAS THE BEST BOOK YOU READ?

I really enjoyed "I Die Each Time I Hear The Sound" by Mike Doughty, but especially loved “This Must Be the Place” by Jesse Rifkin. That kid is going places.

WHAT WAS YOUR GREATEST MUSICAL DISCOVERY?

I hate to say it, but 2023 just wasn’t a good year for me with new music, although my favorite new album from a new band was easily Negative Stars by Skull Practitioners.

New music aside, 2023 was a great year for live shows. My son and I caught Life in a Blender at the Rockwood Music Hall, Jerry Harrison and Adrian Belew at Sony Hall, Depeche Mode at Madison Square Garden, Sisters of Mercy at King's Theater in Brooklyn, Calexico at Le Poisson Rouge, Squeeze and the Psychedelic Furs at Radio City, Duran Duran at the Forest Hills Stadium, The Mission, Theatre of Hate and The Chameleons at Le Poisson Rouge and The Damned at Warsaw in Brooklyn. 

WHAT DID YOU WANT AND GET?

I really wanted my son to be accepted at Trinity Dublin, and he got in. That doesn’t mean he’s going there, but it was tremendously great news that he was accepted.

WHAT DID YOU WANT AND NOT GET?

How come Trump is still not yet in fucking prison?

WHAT WERE YOUR FAVORITE FILMS OF THIS YEAR?

The fact that I cannot remember seems pretty telling, doesn’t it? I didn’t see “Barbie.” I didn’t see “Oppenheimer.” I was profoundly disappointed by “May December.” I’m sure once I post this, I’ll remember one.

WHAT DID YOU DO ON YOUR BIRTHDAY AND HOW OLD WERE YOU?

I turned 56, which is no fun at all, but I had a lovely dinner at home with my wife and son (Charlotte was at school).

WHAT’S ONE THING THAT WOULD HAVE MADE YOUR YEAR IMMEASURABLY MORE SATISFYING?

Trump’s incarceration. I’d have loved it if Oliver and I were able to make it to the Killing Joke show at the Royal Albert Hall in London, back in March, but work demands and school schedules forbade.

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONAL FASHION CONCEPT IN 2023?

Lost without hope of retrieval.

WHAT KEPT YOU SANE?

The need to be there for my family.

WHAT CELEBRITY/PUBLIC FIGURE DID YOU FANCY MOST?

This question always seems roundly inappropriate.

WHAT POLITIAL ISSUE STIRRED YOU THE MOST?

Trump trial(s).

WHO DID YOU MISS?

Each year, more and more of my most admired individuals pass away, and we lost some great ones in 2023, like Sinead O'Connor, Mark Stewart of the Pop Group, Andy Rourke of The Smiths....but this year, absolutely nothing holds a candle to the loss of Geordie Walker of my beloved Killing Joke.

WHO WAS THE BEST NEW PERSON YOU MET?

Probably Mariano Cabrera, who spearheaded the Charly Garcia Corner movement.

TELL US A VALUABLE LIFE LESSON YOU LEARNED IN 2023?

You don’t have to be screaming for it to be broken. Don’t be fooled.

SONG LYRIC THAT SUMS UP 2023.

Absent Friends Shall Live By Love
- Killing Joke

Angler's Angst

As a lifelong, native New Yorker, I’ve never been a fisherman.

Oh, sure, I was taken fishing, during the summers, as a kid, but that was something different. My dear friend Charlie’s father used to insist we join him on some early-morning blue-fish missions out on Long Island. We’d all pile into some wobbly, amenity-challenged boat, and Charlie’s dad would start reeling something in and then frantically hand one of us the rod so we could complete the job. This inevitably resulted in the fish getting away with a mortal wound and/or yanking the rod right out of our inexperienced hands and into the water, which made for rousing mornings of damp, frequently repulsive disappointment.

Charlie’s father also dependably supplied our family with unsolicited amounts of the ocean life he did manage to catch --- meaning that my first brushes with seafood were marred by this particularly oily, unappetizing variant of fish. But in terms of catching fish, I just never got the hang of it, never improved, and never particularly cared to.

Then, around 1980, or so, one of my best friends – Shawn – moved from our shared Upper East Side neighborhood to the unlikely environs of Bozeman, Montana. For a couple of summers after, I would fly out to visit him for a week or two. While he and I had originally bonded over our mutual loves of Marvel comics, “Star Wars” and KISS, since moving to “Big Sky country,” Shawn had embraced his evidently long-repressed “outdoorsy” streak and gotten into stuff like horseback-riding and ATVs (all-terrain vehicles). I was more-or-less good with those hearty activities, but he’d also become absolutely preoccupied with fly-fishing. Here was where we diverged.

I should probably point out, at this stage of the narrative, that fishing was probably always in Shawn’s blood. His grandfather was a world-renowned novelist whose name I shan’t share, but you can probably figure it out (let’s put it this way – the character of Captain Quint in “Jaws” was basically a thinly-veiled homage to the writer in question). As such, Shawn had embraced the discipline of fly-fishing with the same, devoted zeal he had formerly applied to his meticulously fastidious comic-collecting (an endeavor I’d been much more onboard with), going as far as “tying" his own "flies” (i.e. making his own, specialized, bug-emulating lures). It's kind of a big thing, evidently. 

Anyway, I was out at Shawn’s lovely ranch house in Montana, at one point, in the summer of 1981, and, not wanting to be a party-pooper, I mustered up as much good sportsmanship as I could to gamely agree to go properly fly-fishing, an activity for which I harbored no aptitude -- much less enthusiasm -- but hey … I was the City Mouse guest and Shawn was the Country Mouse host. What else could I do?

I was shortly outfitted with a rod, reel, a fly personally tied by my friend Shawn and a ridiculous pair of “waders,” which are basically giant-size, rubber overalls intended to keep the wearer dry while messing about in waist-to-chest-deep water. Now fully equipped and ready for aquatic blood sport, we dispatched to a nearby river – the name of which I’ve long-since blocked – to go cruelly deceive and summarily murder some unsuspecting fish.

I was pretty much immediately uncomfortable and out of my depth (figuratively and literally), standing without a great deal of conviction in cold, murky water up to my waist. Again, though, not wanting to let everybody down, I was determined to follow instruction and give this soggy endeavor a proper try. Having listened to the directives and watched more capable individuals demonstrate, I dutifully raised my rod and reel and prepared to cast my hook-laden fly over the water in a manner that replicated the frenetic, flighty mannerisms of an insect. As I brought my right arm back, I did so without a great deal of thought or finesse, and immediately heard a strange whirring sound.

Time suddenly slowed down to a glacial crawl.

I’d brought my rod back far too quickly and the fly on my lengthy line was now speedily whipping around my head in a sharply tightening orbit, as if hungrily zeroing in on a surface soft enough to puncture.

In these fleeting nanoseconds, I was somehow entirely aware of what was happening, but frozen in fear of making an already dangerous situation incalculably worse.

The hook finally found its target – my cheek, just about a half-an-inch south of my left eye. The sharpest point of the hook plunged deep into my face, and I suddenly felt both a rush of adrenalin, a palpable sting and a pronounced surge of empathy for the average, unassuming fish.

I emerged out of the weeds and onto the banks where Shawn’s mother and younger brother were sitting. “I caught something,” I laughed. I wasn’t giggling out of bravado, but out of the sheer, panicky realization of how lucky I’d been that the hook sank where it did and not slightly higher. Forty-two years after this incident, I still shudder at the thought.

I was quickly brought to a nearby hospital to extract the hook from my face, with Shawn’s parents informing the hospital staff that I was their son – an absolutely heroic lie, given that Shawn and his family all boasted a pronounced family resemblance to each other that my comparatively dirty-blonde hair and summer-burnt skin bore absolutely no kinship to. Mercifully, they bought it, and the offending bit of metal was excised without much incident.

I haven’t been fly-fishing since.

Rum, Sodomy & "The WAAAAAAAIIIIT": Shane MacGowan Checks Out Killing Joke in London, `79

A slightly surreal, bittersweet image to end an awful week on ….

While widely perceived as Irish to the core, Shane MacGowan was actually born in England to Irish immigrant parents and spent most of his life there (which is why such a wide swathe of Pogues’ songs invoke life in London). A fervent and volatile member of early British Punk, MacGowan was as much a face on the scene as folks like Siouxsie Sioux, Billy Idol et al. A testament to how small and incestuous (terrible word, I know) the British Punk scene was, here he is (above) in the attending crowd at an early Killing Joke show in 1979, spotted by my friend Neil Perry from my other friend Frank Jenkinson’s magisterial photo collection, "Killing Joke Picture Book." According to Mike Coles, this venue was called The Moonlight, located in the West Hampstead section of London. Prior to that, it was a venue called Klooks Kleek, which was "a haven for all the early British blues and jazz bands in the 60s."

The late Geordie Walker is the shock of white hair behind the cymbal. Surely, these two have been in rooms together since this photo, right? Michael Coles is in there, as well, just four faces to the left of Shane.

I normally hate all that “rock n’ roll heaven” bullshit (i.e. paintings of Last Supper-style congregations of dead rockers like Freddie Mercury, Hendrix and Jim Morrisson, etc.), but I would be not at all surprised if Shane and Geordie were knocking back a few pints together in the afterworld somewhere as I type this.

Pogue Mahone & Killing Joke Forever!

Here are other shots from that gig, also by the great Frank Jenkinson. Buy his books here. 

Today, that place is called The Rail Way, and looks like this...

Back to Yorkville: 84th Street Bomber Travis Speaks

I’ve written a lot, here, about my time growing up in and around Yorkville on the eastern end of Manhattan’s Upper East Side, over the years, notably here and most recently here. But when I dedicated a couple of posts – especially this one – about my fleeting run-ins with a group of some specific neighborhood youths – technically the 84th Street Bombers, but more colloquially referred to, in certain circles, as the 84th Street Gang – I started to get a pointed uptick in reader engagment. I had quite a few folks write in to say that they, too, had encountered these guys, and shared their own experiences with them. At the risk of sugar-coating this, these stories frequently recounted instances of petty crime and -- wait for it -- violence.

Now, this many decades later, details get hazy, and legend frequently looms larger than actual fact. Were the guys that, say, mugged and summarily roughed-up my friend Spike and I in Carl Schurz Park in the Spring of 1984 the same thugs who put my friend Danny in Lenox Hill Hospital with a broken nose following a confrontaion at Mimi’s Pizza on 84th and Third? Were the guys who hung out, antogonizing passers-by, on the stoop between the Mansion Diner and the Polymorphos candy store on East 86th, just east of York Avenue (worrying steps from my front door) from this same tribe? Was the horde of amped-up, bedenimed nogoodnicks that roamed around East 86th Street on weekend evenings looking for trouble part of this same bunch of fellas? Were the infamous “Red Twins” affiliated with this group? Were any of them bona fide members of the 84th Street Bombers or just a gaggle of ancilary wannabes (like, say, what the Webelows are to the Boy Scouts)? Was there actually a formal structure to this infamous aggregation of disgruntled tough guys?

Around the time I was finishing my junior year in high school, I’m not sure that level of pedantic minutia really mattered to me. All I knew – or thought I knew – was that the neighborhood my mother and I had just moved into, following my mother and step-father’s freshly minted divorce, came with a bonus side-dish of potential trouble. I’d always considered this area of Yorkville, where my grandparents had lived, prior to their inevitable decamping to Florida, as a quaint, sleepy neighborhood. But, as the gormless high-school twerp that I was, in my Catholic school blazer and tie, I was essentially very easily identifiable prey to this gaggle of old-school Yorkvillians, and they, I guess, acted accordingly.

In a nutshell, I suppose myself and certain friends of mine handily embodied the very factors that were argaubly disenfranchising their neighborhood, to their minds. Marked by the mandatory sartorial trappings of our comparatively privileged schools, maybe we personified the gentrification that was squeezing out the working-class families that had otherwise called Yorkville home for generations. Or maybe we just came across as sniveling, hapless nerds ripe for victimizing. It may not be this simple.

I do vividly remember, as recounted here before, petitioning my more street-savvy classmate Bill (immortalized on earlier posts as “Willy”), who allegedly knew and/or actually hung-out with possibly these very same dudes, to help get them off my back. In retrospect, that seems like the stupidest possible course of action. I mean, think about it – if you were a self-styled street hooligan and someone asked you to “lay off” a certain kid, odds are that, if anything, you’d double-down on hassling him, right? Well, mercifully, that didn’t come to pass.

For whatever reason, I stopped worrying about these guys, and they, in turn, seemed to stop bothering to mess with me, although I have no idea why. I graduated from high school and that was pretty much that. Even when I moved back into Yorkville after college (when I started to pursue a career in the not-at-all lucrative field of journalism, I moved back home, for a while, to save money), my sightings of any of these likely gentlemen from just a few years earlier became fewer and further between. They moved on, and I moved on.

Cut to 2008, when, three years after launching this stupid blog, I first invoked that Yorkville “gang” – even then, wrongly branding them initially as the “86th Street Gang,” before my friend Danny corrected me in the comments. I brought them up a few more times after that. And that’s when folks from various circles started to weigh in. Around 2019, a gentleman named Travis wrote to me directly, claiming to have been a former member of the group which he duly informed me was officially named the 84th Street Bombers. We exchanged a few emails, and I’d always meant to post something larger and pester mysterious Travis (who later became a cop and then a novellist) for further information, but I didn’t necessarily want to put him on the spot. Since our initial exchanges had been solely over email and not via the comments section of the blog, I wasn’t quite sure how game he would have been to delve into it all in a more public forum.

My sisters-from-another-mister over at Desperately Seeking the `80s, however, had no such qualms when Travis similarly reached out to them, and they just snagged a robust interview with Travis for their latest “Field Trip” episode (find it here).

As you’ll hear, Travis is a very forthcoming subject, and has great amounts to share about his days with the `Bombers, although – I have to say – Travis’ effusive, good-natured demeanor is somewhat completely at odds with how I’d have characterized the boys in the `hood whose reign of (relative) terror made large swathes of the Upper East Side quietly ill at ease through much of the early-to-mid 1980’s. I mean, put bluntly, the kids who smacked my friend Spike around in Carl Schurz Park were decidely not nice guys. The kids who jumped my friend Danny in front of Mimi’s and broke his nose for – in his own words, “just being there” – weren’t either. I mean, yeah, people change and grow up and settle down, but there’s definitely something of a discrepancy I’m trying to wrap my head around, here. 

Travis promises to be back for a Part Two of his chat with Meg and Jessica, and it’s going to be required listening.

Do YOU remember the 84th Street Bombers? 

Back to El Internacional/El Teddy's

I can’t remember when I first encountered it, but it was obviously at some point in the Eighties. While the original restaurant – Teddy’s – was kind of an old school/old New York Italian joint (see commercial below), it didn’t really become the iconic, visual phenom it was until the space was re-occupied and re-imagined by a concern called El Internacional. In this iteration, the new owners garishly decked the place out, outfitted the exterior with a dalmatian-esque paintjob and dropped a giant replica of the Statue of Liberty’s crown on the roof, an artsy, architectural flourish rivaled only by the Lone Star Café’s tremendous rooftop lizard up and over on Fifth Avenue.

Inside the original Teddy’s….

Regrettably, I never made it into El Internacional – which evidently held onto the place between 1984 and 1986, but when it became it morphed into the hybridized (I suppose) El Teddy’s, I did stop in for a drink, although I remember not being as wowed by the interior as I was hoping to be.

In any case, after spotting this story about its peculiar trajectory, I found myself wondering about the answer to a question I’ve been pondering for eons.

After El Teddy’s closed and the building was razed in 2004 to accommodate yet another yawnsome condo …

…what happened to the crown?

Anyone?

Suicide in SoHo: Redux

I posted about Suicide not too long back, but a gentleman on the Facebook No Wave page named Dan H. just posted the ad below and that sparked my curiosity.

Dating back to 1970 (how’s THAT for proto?), Suicide were already calling themselves Punk. Apparently, they played a gig at an art gallery named OK Harris on West Broadway.

The book “The Downtown Pop Underground” had this to say about it:

One of Suicide’s earliest shows was in 1970 at OK Harris, one of the first galleries to open in SoHo. It was owned by Ivan Karp, an art dealer who played an early role in promoting Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Robert Rauschenberg. “I told him Suicide should play at his gallery,” Vega said, “and to our surprise he said yes, and they printed up postcards and everything saying Punk Music by Suicide. It was a pretty intense show, but we got invited back, even though we freaked everyone out.” The OK Harris show flyer contained the first use of the word “punk” by a band, one of the many ways in which Suicide was truly cutting edge. “I remember seeing Alan Vega around the scene very early on,” said Chris Stein. “Suicide was so groundbreaking, it’s hard to convey how far ahead they were in relation to what was going on at the time.” Debbie Harry added, “As a performer, Alan was sometimes a baffling struggle of danger, drama, pathos, and comedy. He held nothing back from us, and the interaction with audience hecklers was fundamental.” Not only was their music radically different from the New York Dolls, so was their look. “We were street guys, we took what we could get, sometimes from the garbage,” Vega said. “I remember Marty [Rev] went through the trash and other thrift store or Salvation Army type stuff, mainly out of necessity. We didn’t have any money, so what became the punk look was born out of necessity. I cut holes in socks so that my fingers went through and I stretched the socks up to my elbows and had a cutoff pink jacket. That was really something, man! Basically, I just wore what I could afford. I’m not sure really what the fuck I was thinking.” From Chapter 27 of "The Downtown Pop Underground." 

OK Harris was there well into the new millennium, only closing in 2014. Today, the space that had been OK Harris is now a Japanese high-end bakery called Harbs. 

Around the same era, Suicide also played at a venue quite nearby called Blow Your Nose over on Greene Street, which I talked about here. They also evidently played OK Harris again, two years later.

Today, it's very hard to imagine this strip of West Broadway -- just south of Houston Street -- to have played host to anything so radical or even interesting, but these were obviously very different times. 

Here's another taste ... of Suicide. 

On The Last Day: The 2023 Summer Survey

I wasn’t originally going to do another one of these, because … honestly … why would anyone care? But, then again, that same argument could be applied to pretty much every entry I post here, so, fuck it…here goes.

Defining Moment of Summer 2023
At the risk of drudging it all back up, I’d suggest the defining element of my summer involved my stupid, broken foot and having to wear that goddamn boot (see above) for four weeks. The worst of it is that here on the precipice of Autumn, it still doesn’t feel much better. I’m going back to see my quacky podiatrist in two weeks to discuss other courses of action, but it may be high time to find another doctor. Watch this space, if you care.

Best Purchase of Summer 2023
Back in June, we were invited to my nephew’s wedding, which was to be held in late August in Northern California. It was a “black-tie optional” event, so I used that as an excuse to go buy myself a proper black suit, hoping it would help me feel like more of a functioning adult. In it, I kid myself that I look like a reservoir dog, when the truth of the matter is probably closer to a middle-aged head waiter.

Best Meal of Summer 2023
Never mind just the summer, the best meal of my entire life took place in late June at a tiny eatery in Rome called Collene Emiliane. My main course was a dish simply called "Roast-Beef con purea,” which is basically just roast beef with mashed potatoes. I realize how banal that sounds, but it genuinely was the most lovingly prepared, succulent and immeasurably tasty meal I’ve ever consumed.

Best Concert of Summer 2023
Oliver and I saw some great shows, in the late Spring and earlier Summer, notably Depeche Mode back in April and then the Sisters of Mercy in Brooklyn in June. Both of those were great fun, but I’d have to say the best evening of live music I experienced this summer was only a few weeks back, seeing Calexico perform the entirety of their 2003 album, Feast of Wire at (le) Poisson Rouge over on Bleecker Street. They’re an amazing band, and I cannot recommend them highly enough.

Best Book You Read During Summer 2023
I read some fun stuff this summer, including “Heady Daze,” the second installment in the sprawling autobiographical series by Wayne Hussey of The Mission. I also enjoyed "World Travel," a collection of essays from the late Anthony Bourdain, “I Die Every Time I Hear the Sound” by Mike Doughty, “Nothin’ But a Good Time” by Tom Beaujour & Richard Bienstock,” as well as “Sweet Dreams: The Story of the New Romantics” by Dylan Jones. But, far and away, the best book I paged through this summer was “This Must Be the Place: Music, Community and Vanished Spaces in New York City” by Jesse Rifkin. I honestly cannot recommend it highly enough. Rifkin’s attention to chronological detail, musical minutia and geographical accuracy across multiple genres and local music scenes - from bongo-bangin’ folkies through Brooklynite hipster kids and the myriad musical tribes between them — is genuinely astonishing, and handled with a reverence that is inherently readable and illuminating. Even if you’re not familiar with the particulars in question, it’s an endlessly engaging journey. A MUST-READ book, full stop.

Best Movie of Summer 2023
I saw neither “Barbie” nor “Oppenheimer,” and feel not a jot of regret. I can’t actually think of a film I went to (as in, in a movie theatre) this summer, but I did quite enjoy “Squaring the Circle,” the new documentary about the album-cover design team of Hipgnosis. I also quite enjoyed “Living” with Bill Nighy, which was lovely.

Best Gift You Received of Summer 2023
For father’s day, my son gave me a fetching Love & Rockets t-shirt (his latest favorite band).

Biggest Loss of Summer 2023
On a personal level, I actually went to three funerals, this summer, which seemed a bit out of the ordinary. Mercifully, no one in my immediate circle passed away, but these were extended family members (the siblings, fathers and godparents of in-laws, etc.), and I attended to show my support for those loved ones who suffered those losses. Beyond that, I have to say that the losses of both Pee Wee Herman and Sinead O’Connor were both painfully palpable.

Song That Sums Up the Summer of Summer 2023
I don’t know if there’s truly a single song that wraps it all up, for me, but if pressed, I’d say my favorite album of Summer 2023 would be Negative Stars by local noise-rock trio, Skull Practitioners. Their vocals need a bit of work, but they mine a compelling terrain that is reminiscent of several so-called “pigfuck” bands while also somehow calling to mind the noodley prog nuttsness of early King Crimson. On a song-level, though, being that our fleeting time out in Quogue, this summer, was largely scored by the strikingly limited playlist of Sirius XM’s “Yacht Rock Radio,” I’d probably have to cite “Diamond Girl” by Seals & Crofts as the tune that might continue to remind me of this summer. I also listened to the title track of Robyn Hitchcock's Shufflemania quite a bit. 

Happiest Memory of Summer 2023
While we bicker inanely like every other family, the fact that my wife and I had the pleasure of spending so much time with both of our kids, this summer, brought me much joy. We only packed our daughter back off to Scotland this past Friday. Summer is thus officially done and dusted, as far as I’m concerned.

Saddest Memory of Summer 2023
Learning of the sudden and awful fate of Jesse Malin after suffering a spinal stroke really took the wind out of my sails. During the early weeks of the COVID 19 pandemic, when uncertainty held sway, my department at work — all sequestered in our respective homes and duly “sheltering in place” — was tasked with conceiving new content to produce to keep our audience (our creative community of affiliated songwriters, composers and publishers) informed. I pitched a series of short Q&A’s with certain songwriters to see how they were handling the challenges of this new strange era. I got the green light, and started firing off emails to various names. To my very great joy, the very first guy that got back to me was Jesse Malin, who was entirely game. I lobbed a handful of questions over and within a day, he hit me back with some great, thoughtful and inspiring responses. At this risk of lapsing into fanboy hyperbole, Jesse has always been the mover, the shaker and the tip of the spear. A true believer in the music of New York City, he makes things happen, and has kept the spirit of Punk Rock alive in a downtown Manhattan riddled by gentrification. He’s also a tireless advocate for giving BACK, and has been involved in more charitable initiatives than I can count. He’s truly one of the good guys. May he swiftly recover from this latest setback.

Scariest Moment of Summer 2023
Apart from some testy moments when looking at my dwindling bank account, I’m relieved to say that Summer 2023 didn’t come with a great deal of sudden scares.

Word That Best Describes of Summer 2023
Over.