Flaming Pablum

True Then, True Now

Snapped on West Broadway in 1997. I did manage to peel one of these off and affix to my old fridge on East 12th Street. 

Thursday

Since about October or so, the company I work for has been letting those of us who’ve wanted to come back to voluntarily work two days a week in our offices, if we’d like. Given the diminutive size of my apartment and the fact that I frequently have two testy teenagers therein vying for WiFi and elbow room, I’ve taken full advantage of this offer. Surprisingly, however, not many other of my colleagues have, and I’ve frequently spent those two days alone in my office, often going entire eight-hour shifts without seeing another human being.

While at first it felt like a step towards normalcy, the prolonged failure to bring the pandemic under manageable control quickly put a stop to any hopes of a return to the pre-COVID routines. The novelty of going into the office swiftly wore off, but I’ve kept going in, regardless.

But, I’ve not been totally alone. There has been a skeleton crew of regulars from various departments that have also been periodically coming in. As such, we’ve been frequently stopping by each other’s offices to say hi and get at least brief, reassuring moments of human interaction. It’s a small enough organization to really know most of the people on staff.

I have one colleague, whom I’ll call Koby for the sake of this post (not his actual name), who has been doing the same as I have. While he’s not a member of my department, I have worked with Koby on a number of different projects. Since I first got here, he has always been the coolest, most inclusive team-member to work with, and we’ve always gotten on like a house on fire. It’s a nice organization to begin with, but I was always stuck by how nice Koby was to everyone. He seemed genuinely invested.

Yesterday morning, it was looking like another day of solitary confinement until Koby popped his head in my office to say hi. He pulled up a chair, and I happily turned away from the frankly yawnsome project I’ve been working on to chat with him. We had the most banal of catch-ups, discussing the usual COVID-related topics and when we expected the office to officially open back up. These were not pressing issues by any stretch of the imagination, but, again, it was nice to talk and remind ourselves of the regular practices we’ve left behind and look forward to brighter days ahead. After a bit, Koby got up to continue his rounds of saying hi to the paltry few other folks in the office. I thanked him for stopping by, and off he went.

Today, I heard that, overnight, Koby passed away. I don’t know very many particulars, but he was evidently home with his wife, suffered a heart attack and died. By all appearances, Koby was young, healthy and spry, with no readily detectable, health-impairing vices to speak of.

I have been in something of a fog all day since learning this horrible news. Mere hours after blithely shooting the shit in my office, Koby crossed to the other side.

Take care or yourselves and be good to each other.

Rest in peace, Koby. 

Sad But True

2019:

2020:



2021:

 

Going “Home” Again: Re-Re-Re-Exhuming Chantal Akerman’s “News From Home”

It was probably about 2012 when I first learned about Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman’s “News From Home,” a strangely somnambulistic rumination on distance, family and solitude, centered around footage of a particularly lonely New York City captured in 1976. The film periodically appears on YouTube, sometimes in bits and pieces, only to be yanked down at one point or another, probably at the behest of Janus Films.

It’s an odd bit of cinema by any standard, and strangely haunting and hypnotic. Of course, the extra attraction for me is the depiction of a downtown New York City that simply does not exist anymore. Sure, I’ve said that before about films like Glenn O’Brien’s “Downtown `81” and Amos Poe’s “The Foreigner” (just to name two), but where those films have narrative structures — however tenuous — “News From Home” tells less of a definable story. And while I thrill to the shots of, say, pre-gentrification TriBeCa, I sincerely doubt Ms. Akerman chose to include said footage with any intention of preserving the neighborhood as it was for future generations to marvel at. I project that she chose the locations she did to convey an overall sense of desolation and disconnection. In that respect, she completely succeeded.

In previous posts on the film, I’ve mentioned that I’d love for someone to do a shot-by-shot homage to “News From Home," capturing the modern-day iterations of the locations Akerman captured back during the Bicentennial. I sincerely doubt it would have the same lulling effect, although there certainly were moments, in the past year of COVID, when Manhattan seemed to return to the directionless drift of Akerman’s film. By and large, though, the Manhattan of 2021 is an entirely different place. Finding the degree of tranquil isolation that is so overwhelmingly rife throughout “News From Home” would be a genuine challenge.

While it’s still up, travel back to the endless half-light and mournful limbo of “News From Home.”

Pfize on the Prize: Gettin' the Jab at the Javits

Up until fairly recently, I had relatively no concept of when I might receive the vaccination. When eligibility was opened up, a couple of weeks back, for those of us 50 and older, I was neck-deep in a looming work project, and figured I’d take care of it immediately afterwards. During that time, my wife got her first shot via Walgreens. Things were looking up.

The work project that was embroiling all five of my senses came and went, and was mercifully a huge success, but like heads of the Hydra, when you successfully cut off one, two grow in its place. Regardless, I dutifully hopped on New York State’s “Am I Eligible?” appointment-scheduling site. This should be relatively simple, I thought.

If you spent your childhood playing video games that required quick hand-eye coordination, those hours of inane time-wasting may have actually trained you well for this particular task. After answering a series of banal questions and filling in a few stats (and proving you are not a robot via your ability to distinguish traffic lights from fire hydrants), you are suddenly off to the races. When the right date pops up – and, really, at this stage, any date is the right date – you have to click two successive boxes with the stealth of a famished cheetah if you expect to score a slot. You can arguably game the system by refreshing the screen at key moments, but more often than not, you’ll be deposited back at the starting point, needing once again to demonstrate that you are STILL NOT A FUCKING ROBOT because you can recognize a crosswalk or a palm tree when you see one.

After several unsuccessful hours of this, I did manage to secure an appointment … only it wasn’t until late May. I was indeed relieved to have that on the books, but didn’t really want to put if off that far, if I didn’t have to. As such, I kept trying for a sooner appointment.

The secret to same, I found, was to drink a huge, honkin’ gallon of weapons-grade coffee, limber up my digits and hop on that website during less-harried hours. I went only at 6:00 AM and landed a new slot in no time. I went ahead and cancelled my May appointment and was ready to go.

Go time for shot #1 – Pfizer – was yesterday afternoon. Having collected all the necessary forms and credentials, I ambled my way up to the Javits Center.

Never a big fan of this particular neighborhood, I have not been up to the way, west Thirties probably since 2015, when I conducted a frankly ludicrous search for a loading dock the fuckin’ Strokes once posed in for a photograph (suffice to say, I had a LOT of free time, at the time). I have no interest in the re-imagined Hudson Yards and, until yesterday, had never laid eyes on the Vessel – to which I say, big whoop. Being that I got to my destination too early (this always happens), I walked around the `hood, trying to reconcile it as the same plot of real estate I’d combed looking for the location of that photograph. It is nigh on unrecognizable.

The Javits Center, however, is still pretty hard to miss. Despite still being about fifteen minutes early, I went on in and started the process.

I’m not exactly sure what I’d been expecting, but it was all remarkably well-organized, and the line moved very swiftly. After an initial stop at one desk for verification, you are directed further down a succession of roped-off lines – as if boarding a plane or a ride at Disneyworld – until a National Guard officer directs you to a station. One gent from behind me scooted in front of both myself and a couple ahead of me, which seemed a bit needless, but he was visibly nervous about the whole endeavor.

After you sit down, you re-verify certain bits of info, get swabbed up and then in it goes. Having watched endless b-roll on nighttime news programs, I was half-expecting an agonizingly slow insertion of a big fuckoff needle, but it was honestly over before I knew what hit me, not unlike a flu shot.

After that, I was ushered over to area filled with folding chairs to wait for a 15-30 minute spell in case I developed some sort of adverse reaction. Mercifully, that didn’t happen, and I was let go to get on with my life until I return three weeks from yesterday for my second shot.

If I can manage to get this done, so can you. Go do it.

Goodbye to The Pyramid

I've written about the Pyramid several times here, over the years, but I was very bummed to learn via EV Grieve, this morning, that the fabled club on Avenue A is the latest to succumb to the financial rigors of pandemic and will not be re-opening. 

While, in more recent years, the venue catered to a seemingly more conventional brand of nightlife (which I lamented here), back in the 80s and 90s, it was something of a remarkable melting pop of disparate subcultures. As I mentioned here ages ago, you were as likely to run into characters like Tommy Victor of Prong or Tim Chunks of Token Entry there as you were to encounter drag royalty like RuPaul or the Lady Bunny. Bands I saw on that tiny stage included Surgery, the Hot Corn Girls, Rats of Unusual Size, Fractured Cylinder, The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black and my beloved Cop Shoot Cop, but it also famously hosted names like Sonic Youth, SWANS, White Zombie and, oh, Madonna and Nirvana -- not on the same evening, mind you, although that wouldn’t have been out of the question, given their forward-thinking booking policy.

For that plot of the East Village, not to mention NYC writ large, it’s a tremendous loss.

Goodbye to Brooks Brothers

The first time I ever set foot in the Brooks Brothers flagship store on Madison Avenue and 44th Street, I was invariably with my mother. As an Upper East Side brat attending a private elementary school of the sort that required the wearing of blue blazers, I was invariably there being fitted for same. Just a stone’s throw from Grand Central Station, Brooks Brothers was this hallowed Manhattan institution, frequented by monied captains of industry, and practically the Kaaba of all things “Preppy.” The store, just like the clothes it sold, exuded an unmistakable air of exclusivity, prestige and privilege. Seemingly erected on that corner not long after the settlement of the New World, Brooks Brothers was an iconic brand that became synonymous with old New York, almost as hallowed a place of worship as St. Patrick’s Cathedral just a few blocks away. As such, when I was a child, whenever I was taken there, I felt self-conscious, awed, undeserving and underdressed.

By the time I made it into my teens, I’d become not so enamored of the place, its pricey duds and the associations that were inexorably entwined with them. While Brooks Brothers clothes were impeccably well made, I largely wanted no part of that image or the mindset that espoused it. As both a cathedral of aspirational wealth and the uniform of the avaricious, Brooks Brothers started to represent everything I wanted to renounce. Somewhat ironically, there was a Madison Avenue record shop I’ve invoked here a few times that I regularly patronized in the early 80’s that was only a couple of doors up from Brooks Brothers. I was a thousand times more likely to be found blowing my dubiously earned allowance on LPs by The Clash and The Plasmatics there than ridiculously expensive neckties at Brooks Brothers just down the block.

But once an Upper East Side kid, always an Upper East Side kid, I guess. While my sartorial inclinations skewed largely towards all things black, augmented by band t-shirts and Chuck Taylors, there has always been a stubborn streak of inherent prepdom to my wardrobe. A former brother-in-law once described my style as one foot in CBGB and the other in Brooks Brothers. I think I resented him for it, at the time, but he pretty much summed it up.

In time, I gradually had a come-to-Jesus moment and reconciled my issues with Brooks Brothers, disregarding any remaining feelings of guilt or disdain upon treating myself to a snazzy jacket there in later life (it helped that, over the years, Brooks Brothers had branched out from its stodgier origins). My mindset, by this point, was that the clothes don’t make the man, they just help him look a little more presentable. Never was this more confirmed for me, however, than in July 2005.

It was a brutally hot day, and I was walking through midtown with my wife Peggy and then-baby-daughter Charlotte. Everyone was getting a little cranky from the heat until Peggy remembered she was carrying a Brooks Brother gift card and rightly assumed the nearby flagship store would be sumptuously air-conditioned. As such, we repaired to the palatial interiors of same to cool off and browse.

While pushing Charlotte’s umbrella stroller around tables draped with immaculate mandalas of pricey neckties, I heard Peggy remark behind me. “Check out that guy in the cowboy hat.” I glanced over and saw a tall gentleman with arms outstretched, presumably being fitted for what looked like a three-piece suit, and — indeed — sporting a jarringly incongruous, ten-gallon cowboy hat. I smirked, but then did a complete double-take.

The cowboy in question was Michael Gira, lead singer/primary mastermind behind SWANS.

So struck by the sight, I actually exclaimed, “Michael?” Through my friend Tod from Cop Shoot Cop, I’d actually met Michael Gira some years earlier, not that I was expecting him to remember me. He looked up and I just told him I was a big fan of his music. He smiled and told me I had a lovely family and got back to being fitted for his suit.

Peggy looked confused. I explained who the nattily-dressed and convivial cowboy was, taking pains to point out that he was the same man who wrote and recorded such zingy chestnuts as “Mother, My Body Disgusts Me” and “Raping a Slave,” which made Peggy look even more confused.

For me, though, the striking thing was that for Michael Gira, there is truly no more abjectly derisive and palpably base word than “consumer,” and yet here he was in the very plush, velvety lap of consumer culture. Now, maybe this was all a middle-finger to the face of that which he so abhors, but it certainly looked to me like he was enjoying himself and indulging. I don’t assume I’ll ever know the whole picture, there.

In any case, that episode totally absolved Brooks Brothers of much of its haughty intimidation for me. At the very least, it decimated any fleeting concerns about Brooks Brothers not being “punk” enough, or whatever.

The last time I went to Brooks Brothers, I went in looking for a Navy Pea Coat for my son. True to form, I found a nice one for Oliver that was a significant step up from the clunky one we’d gotten him at the Gap a year or two earlier and he went on to cherish it.

Today, the wife and I were back in midtown running an errand and found ourselves walking down Madison Avenue. We’d heard that Brooks Brothers was in trouble, but were still taken aback when, upon reaching that iconic corner of East 44th Street, we looked in and saw the flagship store closed, empty and gutted.

"Everyone is Going to be Severely Burned & Naked": Don Rauf of Life in a Blender Looks Forward

I’ve probably spun this yarn here before, but the first time I ever saw Life in a Blender was at some point in the mid-80s. They were incongruously playing the Museum Mile festival on Fifth Avenue on the Upper East Side (my home turf, at the time), bringing a little Downtown weirdness to the otherwise staid uptown environs. Squeezed between mimes dressed as medieval harlequins and hammered-dulcimer players with ill-considered facial hair, here was this little rock combo playing strange songs about a host of different subjects (ditties later released on their debut LP, 1988’s Welcome To The Jelly Days). I was pretty much immediately hooked.

For any band whose foundation is steeped in a comedic approach, the albatross of predictable descriptors forever hangs heavily on their collective neck. Rarely will one read an invocation of Life in a Blender without encountering adjectives like “bizarre,” “quirky,” “oddball,” “witty,” “wry,” “satirical,” “skewed” and probably one or two “wacky” and “zany” mentions, if you dig deep enough. Sure, all those words have applied to Life in a Blender, at various points over the years, not least for lead singer/songwriter Don Rauf’s unconventional lyrical tangents, emphatic vocal style and penchant for surreal prop use (my particular favorite being a disembodied sheep’s head puppet named “Rugged Rick”).  But to reduce Life in a Blender to merely a “funny” band is a brazen disservice to their finely honed musical chops, their stylistic adventurousness, their wide-ranging field of genuinely emotive songs and their sprawling discography. It may have started off as a gag, but Life in a Blender has evolved into a band that is a versatile force to be reckoned with, if you’re willing to swear off the diet of the insipidly slackjawed soma that currently passes itself off as contemporary pop music.

While I cannot remember the last time he and I were actually in the same room together (although I suspect it was at one of those dusty WFUV record fairs in Chelsea somewhere, wherein we were displaying our respectively idiotic spoils), Don and I have been friends for a while, so when I learned about Life in a Blender’s newest album, the ambitious Satsuma, a lavishly concocted labor of literary love fueled by booze, boredom and books (more about that below) — I figured the time was nigh to add Don to the roster of ignominy that also plagues RB Korbet of Even Worse, Chris Egan of Missing Foundation, Big Paul Ferguson of Killing Joke, Erik Norse Sanko of Skeleton Key and one or two unlucky others. I’m talking, of course, about the Flaming Pablum Interview. Much to his impending regret, Don said yes.

Here’s how it all went down.

Satsuma is something of a departure from Life In a Blender’s normal routine — what prompted the conceptual detour?

It was all a cascading waterfall of circumstances and we were standing directly under it! I had been writing songs for a project called the Bushwick Book Club, in which founder Susan Hwang forces artsts to write songs based on literary works. So the Blenders (Mark Lerner, Rebecca Weiner Tompkins, Dave Moody, Al Houghton, Ken Meyer, and I) had worked up versions of these songs-- “Vacancy for a Bluebird” based on Kurt Vonnegut’s "Man Without a Country," “Soul Deliverer” based on Tea Obreht’s "The Tiger’s Wife," “The Ocean Is a Black and Rolling Tongue” based on Jonathan Ames’s "You Were Never Really Here," “A Party in the Drunken Forest” based on Peter Wohlleben’s "The Hidden Life of Trees" and “Freak of Nature with a Lonely Heart” based on Dean Haspiel’s comic "The Red Hook." Check them out here. 

So we had this unique batch of songs plus one just pure original tune. We might have done more but then the pandemic hit. We might have done a full album but here we were with six great basic tracks and we all said, “Fuck you, Universe. We’ll just make an EP.” Still it’s close to 30 minutes, and if you play it twice, it’s really about an hour long. Then, with all this time in solitary confinement, we decided to make the whole physical package more interesting—We all agreed that the most important thing was that it be abnormally tall for a CD…and so it is. We also feature some bang-up recipes for cocktails based on the songs, and there’s fantastic original art inspired by each song – by James Williamson, Gideon Kendall, Carla Rozman, Nancy Howell, Sky Pape, and Pete Friedrich. We wanted people to have something more than just jewel case and flimsy CD that most artists just poop out in the middle of their sleep.

How did the COVID-19 pandemic inform the recording process?

We started recording before the pandemic and fortunately we had a lot of the major parts in the can. I think we all know what “in the can” means, don’t we? Well it means it was all quite satisfying. One of the main things was –we had gotten all the hornplayers in the can. So there we were….basic tracks done… Al Houghton stark naked..and all Hell broke loose with the virus….and people foaming at the mouth. We were suddenly all turned upside down and torn apart. We were sequestered, banging on our little Zoom windows, and yelling, “For godsakes, what do we do?” So we took our six songs and added overdubs from afar.

Physical editions come with a lavishly illustrated book of cocktail recipes. How did that come about?

Goddammit! It was the virus! We were all running out of oxygen and we knew alcohol was the only answer. So we asked our favorite boozophiles if they wouldn’t mind concocting cocktail recipes insipred by the songs. So Henry Tenney, Bill Tipper, Deb Masocsi and Jason Boyd, Ambrosia Parsely, Franz Teeltlebaum, and Justin Lane Briggs from Barbes all came up with spectacular cocktails, which are all surprisingly healthy and almost potable.

We also know so many great artists. They each made an original piece of art (although I think Peter Friedrich may have just torn a page out of an old Boy’s Life magazine) and if you look at the art while listening to the song, it’s really like living inside your own personal Music Television video.

Where do you stand on the ongoing debate between streaming and the physical manifestations of recorded music?

Streaming on all levels is a horrible situation for musicians. What do the artists get from it? The pay rate is absolutely abysmal. In days of old, we saved our money and bought the music and the musician actually made money that was at least equitable. I feel like there must be some other model that would be more fair. Really the only game in town is Spotify. Our friend Chris Butler of the Waitresses gets so many plays from “Christmas Wrapping” and “I Know What Boys Like,” but he can tell you it adds up to “nanopennies.”  We need to storm the castle with pitchforks and piñatas. Daniel Ek has become a billionaire off of the creative sweat of musicians. The movement asking for at least a penny per stream seems...a step in the right direction. I am twisting Father Time’s arm and saying, “Take Us Back!’ I want pay telephones, vinyl records, calling in to my message machine to find out who might have called, plastering band flyers with wheat paste on to poles, and advertising live shows by printing up and mailing postcards and sending small teams of jockeys into the night with megaphones saying, “ Show! Show tonight! Come and see the live music show tonight!”

How do you listen to your favorite music?

I stream everything I like for exactly .0000003 cents. The vibrations of today’s latest hits are coming through the tree roots if you put your ear down low. I buy the digital downloads and often the CD or vinyl album. There are still a good number of independent record stores in Seattle –so it’s great to go out, and then go in and support them—Sonic Boom, Easy Street, Silver Platters, Fat Cat Records, to name a few.

When was the last time Life in a Blender played in front of a live audience?

We played January 18, 2020 at Rockwood. It’s a great space with a great sound system and the staff is a group of super nice professionals who know how to repeatedly take a kick in the balls. I think Rockwood is accustomed to having bands play there that have a style of music that the great Josh Ozersky called “glummo.” So I think we’re the proverbial snowball down the back of the shorts. They all appreciate the difference and the up-with-people message we bring.

How do you feel about the concept of returning to the live music scenario?

It’s going to be like swimming in lava. Everyone is going to be severely burned and naked. But they will also be a bit cautious as more clubs open because they’re not all certain about the vaccines and the assholes and how safe everything really is. I can picture a performer who tiptoes out in front of a live audience being more reserved. Is Iggy Pop going to sling his torso into the crowd the second clubs reopen? I’m not so sure. And I feel the same way. So….. I think it will be great to get back on stage gingerly!

You’re originally from Poughkeepsie but started the band in Brooklyn, but you live in Seattle, now, right? How often do you regularly convene with the band?

I’ve been lucky to head back to New York a lot. I am a freelance health writer and can do that from anywhere. So I am thankful for that although, you may look at me and say, “Honestly, how can YOU write about health? I mean, look at the condition you’re in.” I can turn my back on the siren call of Poughkeepsie for only so long, and then I must arch my eyebrows and stretch my arms Eastward and give into the irresistible pull. And, again, I think you know what I mean by “irresistible pull.”

I first saw you guys performing in the mid-80’s at a Museum Mile festival in Manhattan. Do you have any memory of that gig? What were your favorite venues to play when you were starting out?

It’s true we somehow managed to play outside along Fifth Avenue for that festival. I think someone from Museum Mile spotted us when we busked in Central Park. Those were fun events because you expose yourself to such a variety of people. And yes, some people don’t enjoy hearing strange musicians exposing themselves, but several passersby would get into what we’re doing. I think it’s always worth putting yourself out there in ways that are not usual.

But of course we played the New York clubs and they were great and many in the 80s. Our home bar and venue was really McGovern’s on Spring Street and I’m still great friends with Steve McGovern (really Greenberg). Steve just let you run wild all night and do whatever you liked. So it was an ideal venue to try out all and everything. (Steve’s quote: “You want to know how to make a small fortune in the music club business? Start with a large fortune.”)

The next best and possibly equal club was CBGBs. Before we ever played there, I was intimidated. Every major artist played there—Television, Talking Heads, Ramones, Blondie, Dead Boys—and the place looked scary! But Hilly was salt of the Earth, with his big slow bass voice, and the staff were all the best, best people. I am still a friend of Alison Aguiar who was a waitress there. And one day I hope that she will think of me as her friend.

On top of those two venues...I did really love all these: Lone Star, Danceteria, Ritz, Tramps, Lauterbach’s (way out in Brooklyn when there really weren’t any clubs), the Blue Rose (up by Columbnia University). I think Brownies was later but I have major love for Brownies.

At the Blue Rose, the owner was a largish woman who looked like Divine. She had dark hair beehived high atop her head. At the end of the bar was a storage alcove, and the bar owner stored her elderly mother there. Her mother was bed-ridden so the Divine-like bartender set up what looked like a bedroom in the alcove. So when you had a drink at the Blue Rose bar, you’d look down to the end and it almost looked like a diorama or a scene from a museum—there was this old woman lying in bed in a set-up that looked like a cozy bedroom—but inches away from her was all the hooting and drinking and loud music of a dark and—at the times—smokey dive bar. Another great club was Siberia half way down the steps to the subway at 50th and Broadway. There’s a pretty great documentary on the place here . That place was a trip.

Satsuma is your 10th album. When you first started the band, did you expect that you would still be recording this many years later?

The personnel has changed but not in eons. We have probably all been together at least 25 years now.… I can’t stop doing this and I’m glad they don’t have the willpower to stop either. I have been so lucky to play with these super humans, who are just amazingly talented and warm, no matter how or where you touch them or how they look. Sincerely, I am so thankful. I can’t ask for a better, more rewarding creative experience. Everything about the Blender is truly incredible. I know we’re not THE most famous band in the world but having the ability to create with people you don’t dislike and perform in front of people who are unlikely to be violently angry is fantastic. Today, when we wake up and say, “We haven’t wet the bed,” we consider that a major victory.

In 2007, you released what I consider to be one of the finest lamentations about gentrification, that being “What Happened to Smith”? Towards the end of the song, the protagonist (you, I assume) wearily resigns himself to “waiting it out by the Gowanus” and opting for the “stench of the canal” over suffering the changes to the rest of the neighborhood. Since that record was released, Gowanus itself has been “discovered” and colonized, for lack of a better term. Do you ever go back to Brooklyn, these days? What are you feelings about it now?

That song could have just as easily been called “What happened to Alex Smith?” Now the song doesn’t quite work because the Gowanus has been all dolled up and doused with perfume—the perfume of young money! At the same time that Gowanus is getting shined up, Smith may be convlusing and unsure of itself. I know, even pre-pandemic, Smith had seemed to be passing its prime. Retail rents had soared so high that shops were going dark right and left. Then the chain of brand-name drug stores and the top-name apparel shops move in. But may rents dip and the social clubs reopen and everyone be sitting in beach chairs in front of their buildings again.

If/when Life In a Blender returns to the stage in the wake of the pandemic, will Rugged Rick be joining you?

I don’t think Rugged Rick will ever read this, so I think it’s safe to say Rugged Rick is an asshole. I suppose Rugged Rick would think the pandemic is the best thing ever—you know, fewer humans is a concept that Rick would support, but it does seem horribly heartless right now to even say that. What I’m trying to say is, I’m afraid Rick will be back and ready to shout at us all and tell what complete dopes we all are.

 

Teenagers

This month, my kids Charlotte and Oliver turn 17 and 15, respectively.

Even typing that sentence feels entirely unreal. To me, it was like yesterday that I could pick them both up at once with only a modicum of effort. Were I to attempt that now, it would mean a swift trip to the chiropractor.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ve probably noticed a decrease in their invocations. Time was when they made for regular fodder here, whether I was ruminating on their strange little witticisms, recounting my own shoddy attempts at parenting, documenting their travels around the city, making them review canonical post-punk albums or having them replicate the poses of various bands from iconic photos and album covers. For a long while, they were my willing little participants and always game for some new form of silliness. All these instances feel like mere days ago, to me.

But, y’know, as I mentioned way back in 2013, as time went on, I felt less comfortable subjecting them to my weird little whims. They were no longer my models. Now, I can pretty much forget about asking them to strike a pose in front of some arguably significant address that Joey Ramone once slouched in front of, lest I get a lot of eye-rolling and pushback. Charlotte absolutely demands the right to vet any photo I take of her, let alone post. Oliver isn’t quite as bothered, but he still wants to see pictures before they go live, so to speak. Fair enough, but the spontaneity and, sadly, the fun has been largely syhphoned out of it.

My kids have their own lives and their own identities, and while I remain their father, they’re certainly entitled to their privacy. As such, don’t expect another “stop shot” from them any time soon.

It’s been a very tough year for the younger generation, when ya think about it. Both kids have been pretty stoic through it all and have just gotten on with it, but my wife and I feel like apologizing to them every day for missing out on what would otherwise have been pivotal eras for them. They’re both doing exceptionally well in school, and we could not be prouder of them, but these were not the high school experiences they were promised.

Very soon, we start looking at colleges for Charlotte, the prospect of which is too emotionally engulfing for me to even begin to process. And no-longer-little Oliver will follow close behind her in that trajectory.

At that point, I lost the ability to fathom how life will be.

Changes on Crosby

I first spoke about this documentary in 2015, when Yukie posted a link to is on SoHo Memory Project that, at the time, was not embeddable. As it happens, someone posted it to YouTube only late last year, so here it is now.

Prompted by my further rumination on Crosby Street, here’s a look back at the strip in question in 1975, and a very different street it was then.

After this was filmed, of course, most of the the manufacturing interests left Crosby Street for good, and it became a haven for artists, only later to become wholly gentrified. For a while after that, Crosby — like the rest of SoHo — became renowned for bespoke retail boutiques and costly residential real estate.

These days, as with the rest of the city, the financial hardships brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic have taken their toll on the businesses of Crosby Street, but it’s still a compelling little street.

But, again, 46 years ago? The living wasn’t quite so easy.