Flaming Pablum

23 Years Later

What's Your Hurry, Now? The End of Summer Survey for 2024

Yes, I know – technically, the summer has another whole month left to it (the official end of summer is September 22, I am told), but most folks sort of chalk up Memorial Day Weekend as the last gasp. Personally speaking, as noted in the previous post, now that my daughter has left and we’re leaving in about ten days to drop Oliver off for his first year of college, Summer 2024 certainly feels over and done with. As such, I guess it’s time to dust this off. Here we go…

Defining Moment of Summer 2024

This is going to sound super boring, but I can’t really say that there was one. I’d suggest it was either my son’s graduation from high school, signaling the next big step for him or possibly meeting my daughter’s new(ish) boyfriend from London (he turned out to be a nice kid). That’s about it, really.

Best Purchase of Summer 2024

Time for another super boring answer, but I bought a Mag Charger for my iPhone at ye olde Apple Store, and it’s been a complete delight. On a slightly less practical level, I bought myself a new coffee mug I’m quite fond of.

Best Meal of Summer 2024

On the evening of July 13, the same day that someone took a shot at Trump, the wife and I were out at my mom’s place on Long Island and repaired to nearby Baby Moon Pizza in Westhampton for a late-night meal (where Marky Ramone is a regular). We sat at the bar – under a widescreen television endlessly repeating the news of the day – and ate some truly excellent pizza … while politely refraining from any audible commentary about the big story.

Best Concert of Summer 2024

I don’t know if mid-May counts as the summer (I’m pretty sure it doesn’t), but the last show I saw was the mighty Part Chimp at Bowery Electric. They put on an endearingly loud and slovenly performance, and I was very pleased to run into various similarly inclined friends of mine also in attendance.

Best Book You Read During Summer 2024

I didn’t plow through as many books, this summer, as I normally do, but I very much enjoyed Robyn Hitchcock’s memoir, “1967: How I Got There & Why I Never Left,” and I’m currently three-quarters of the way through Griffin Dunne’s “The Friday Afternoon Club.” I also re-read Legs McNeil & Gillian McCain’s magisterial “Please Kill Me” over the course of a weekend, … just because.

Best Movie of Summer 2023

Not a big movie summer, for me, but if I had to pick one, I’d suggest that I quite enjoyed finally seeing “Have You Got It Yet?,” the documentary about Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd, and his slow descent into oblivion.

Best Gift You Received of Summer 2024

For Father’s Day, my wife put a recent New Yorker cover in a frame for me that features an iconic neighborhood fixture.

Biggest Loss of Summer 2024

The passing of musical iconoclasts like James Chance, Pat Collier and Steve Albini knocked the wind out of my sails, especially Albini. I was crestfallen to learn of the incredibly myopic dissolution of the MTV News archives, and I was depressed and disappointed (but not surprised) to learn just recently that St. Vitus in Brooklyn is shuttered for good.

Song That Sums Up the Summer of Summer 2024

I don’t have a grand explanation for either of these, but it’s either “Adrenaline” by the excellently named French trio, We Hate You Please Die, or possibly “Fear is a Man’s Best Friend,” by John Cale. I mostly slept on Cale’s solo career after he was ousted from the Velvet Underground, and lemme tell ya – that was a big mistake. Cale provided the lion’s share of the sneery abrasion and overall weirdness to the Velvets, and they were absolutely never the same without him. He went onto produce fucking crucial records by The Stooges, The Modern Lovers, Nico and Patti Smith, among many others. I’ve only started exploring his sprawling solo catalog, and there is some real gold therein. A friend of mine posted the clip below on Facebook, earlier this summer and it blew me away. Flanked by storied Womble/erstwhile Sex Pistol producer/guitarist Chris Spedding, Cale – dressed like a mid-`70s tennis pro – delivers an emphatic rendition of the title track to his 1974 album that starts off reasonably and slowly becomes droolingly unhinged. Wait for it.

Happiest Memory of Summer 2024

Beyond just spending loads of time with my excellent little family (it’s becoming rarer for us all to be together for very long), I got to meet and chat with R.E.M. at the Songwriters Hall of Fame induction ceremony back in June. That was fun. I was also super pleased to appear in Catherine Araimo’s award-winning “B Sides” documentary.

Saddest Memory of Summer 2024

It hasn’t happened just yet, but I’m expecting to be quite verklempt when we have to say goodbye to Oliver in two weeks.

Scariest Moment of Summer 2024

For a while — not that we’re out of the woods just yet — it was seeming like a fucking given that Trump would be our 47th President. It remains to be seen, but it’s no longer in cement, I’d suggest.

Word That Best Describes of Summer 2024

Stealthy.

The Lingering Ghosts of the Murray Street Tinsel Toads

Murray Street, specifically between Church Street and West Broadway, comes with a lot of associations. Its name became fatefully entwined with the events of September 11th, 2001, when it was discovered that battered landing gear from one of the doomed, hijacked planes had fallen into a narrow alley behind 50 Murray Street. Sonic Youth, who were recording a new album at Echo Canyon Studios just across the way at 51 Murray Street, had to understandably abandon their sessions for a while in the wake of that calamitous event. When they were able to return, several weeks later, all of their instruments were covered with a grim patina of dust and debris. They ended up titling the resultant album Murray Street in observance.

Murray Street was also the home to New York Dolls, a holdover strip club from a less salubrious era of Manhattan, unwittingly named after the seminal proto-punk band of the same moniker. Directly across the street from New York Dolls was a large delicatessen called Amish Market, which stretched between Murray Street to Park Place to its south. Legend has it that rapper Cardi B, having recently dropped out of nearby BMCC (Borough of Manhattan Community College), took a job as a cashier at Amish Market. But after coming in late and lipping off to her manager, Cardi B was fired. Distraught, Cardi took her now-former manager’s withering advice and marched across the street to New York Dolls to get a job as a stripper, a vocation for which she earned considerable renown, eventually turning her penchant for performing into a music career. The rest, as they say, is history.

As neighboring TriBeCa started to further gentrify and essentially widen in size (originally, the southern “border” of TriBeCa was arguably considered Chambers Street a couple of blocks to the north of Murray Street), New York Dolls seemed destined be zoned out of existence, given its location in a burgeoning residential neighborhood. Somehow, they managed to hang on, possibly because the club’s owner bought the building in 2016. The club was re-christened FlashDancers Downtown during COVID and is still there here in August of 2024.

Back in late 2016, meanwhile, I started a job just a block or two to the south of Amish Market and, for that matter, New York Dolls. While I never gave any patronage to the latter, I did initially frequent Amish Market to procure my breakfasts, in the mornings. While a very busy and robust operation (I honestly have no recollection if Cardi B was still working there, at the time – I certainly never knowingly saw her, much less any actual Amish folks), I cooled on Amish Market pretty swiftly. The grill from which one might procure, say, an egg & cheese sandwich never operated with any pronounced stealth or efficiency. In time, I abandoned that option in favor of some frankly lackluster oatmeal but ended up giving that up as well after overhearing someone in my office’s elevator saying that they’d gotten food poisoning from Amish Market’s salad bar. From that point forward, I started getting my grub at the presumptuously named Corner Gourmet deli on Murray Street, on the other side of West Broadway. I know.... fascinating, right? 

Not quite as resilient to COVID as its scantily clad neighbors at New York Dolls, Amish Market closed permanently in 2020, and has been gutted and dormant ever since.

Here in 2024, I don’t have a lot of reasons to walk up and down Murray Street unless I’m bound for Benares, a decent option for Indian food at 45 Murray. But there is still something my eyes catch on almost every time I’m crossing Murray at West Broadway ---- the Tinsel Toads.

Either left over from some amphibian-themed function held at Amish Market’s second floor at some indeterminate point or part of some anachronistic promotion of some kind (maybe a special on frogs’ legs?), there are two silhouettes of splayed toads in silver tinsel still affixed to an upper window just off the corner, and I simply cannot wrap my head around why they’re still there, let along what purpose they may have once served.

Walk around the byways of Manhattan here in the years after COVID, and it’s impossible not to notice the sheer volume of still-empty storefronts and for lease signs everywhere. While, as I mentioned, I was not the greatest fan of Amish Market, its departure was inarguably a pronounced loss to the surrounding neighborhood, and I want to believe a new venture will occupy that cavernous space before too long.

Until they do, the tinsel toads of Murray Street will doubtlessly maintain their strange, silent vigil.

And here's Sonic Youth playing a 9/11 benefit in October 2001. Thurston Moore prefaces the performance with his thoughts about what was happening for them and for NYC writ large, at the time. Worth a listen...

The Rise of a Post-Punk POTUS?

I don’t think I first started hearing it until the rise of George W. Bush at the turn of the millennium, but folks seemed to start pervasively exclaiming that they’d like a president that they could “have a beer with.” That never made a great deal of sense to me. Personally speaking, while I happen to love beer practically more than fuckin’ oxygen, I don’t need the leader of the allegedly free world and commander-in-chief to share my affinity for knockin’ back a few pints. I’d honestly rather have them be so strenuously intelligent, responsible, internationally engaged, and duty-bound that the thought of wasting an afternoon with me in a shitty bar or backyard barbecue with a cooler of cold ones would seem abhorrent. I’d be fine with that and wouldn’t take it personally.

I suppose the projected notion of a beer-swiggin’ president makes the prospective holder of that office seem more relatable and “of the people.” It’s ultimately just a populist ploy to humanize them. Otherwise, that individual might come across like just another elitist politician.

While that may fly with one side the of the fence (I’ll let you determine which one), the other side seems to strive to spin their prospective presidents as cool. Witness Bill Clinton’s cringe-worthy saxophone solo on the “Arsenio Hall” show or the regular announcements of Barak Obama’s Spotify playlists, filled with selections of songs that telegraphed an impossibly eclectic degree of cultivated taste. While I was a firm supporter of President Obama for the entirety of his two terms, I personally never gave a rolling rat fuck what music he may (or may not) have been listening to.

Here in 2024, we find ourselves in an unprecedentedly tumultuous pre-election period, and in the wake of an abominable debate performance, an assassination attempt, a bizarre Republican National Convention, a divisive pick for Trump’s Vice President, Biden’s hotly anticipated withdrawal from the race and his Vice President’s ascendance as the party’s presumptive nominee, we find the same shenanigans at play.

While it was already disclosed and heavily covered that Kamala Harris owns and regularly sports at least one pair of black Converse Chuck Taylors (i.e. the inarguably clichéd but still de rigueur choice of footwear of the insouciant rebel – capitalized on by illustrator Gary Taxali in the print above), a photo has also surfaced of Harris as a younger woman at some point in the 1980’s, wearing a black, high-collared coat with a shorter, period-specific quiff. Lots of enterprising folks have pounced on this and re-branded it as, and I’m quoting here, “Young, Butch & Goth.”

Now, given that Vice President Harris is 59 years old, it’s certainly not out of the question that she may have gone through an angsty goth phase, but … again, it doesn’t really matter, in the grand scheme of things.

If the notion that our current Vice President -- and potentially 47th President -- might harbor an affinity for Xmal Deutschland and Joy Division sways your vote her way, I’m totally fine with that. If that makes you feel better about it all, embrace it.

Regardless, just fucking VOTE, please. 

Glad to See You Go, Astor Place Starbucks

I'm seeing a surprising amount of weepy teeth-gnashing on social media about the closing of the Astor Place Starbuck's, which -- to my mind -- as a single establishment, almost singularly typified the disemboweling of the original character of the neighborhood (later further eroded by Kmart, CVS, Raising Cane chicken, Wegman’s, etc. etc.). I still lovingly remember the Astor Riviera (which you can see here, courtesy of the amazing Glenn Losack) that held court on that corner well prior to the arrival of the Seattle coffee chain.

Someone commented in response to this same topic on a friend of mine's Facebook page: "Vampire landlords are sucking the blood out of this city." While, true, yes, they are, the notion of a fucking Starbucks being indicative of "the blood" of this city made me wince.

I’ve wrung this rant-rag dry, by now, but New York City used to be comprised of an amazing network of independent mom’n’pop ventures, not plagued with endless fast-food franchises and big-box retail outlets. That shit was for the strip malls and the suburbs.

But, sure enough, largely thanks to the efforts of this fucker, Starbucks moved into town in the mid-`90s, and proceeded to spread faster than a spilled cup of pumpkin spice latte.

My favorite memory of the Astor Riviera involves a friend of mine and I ordering a pair of milkshakes there, once, on a hot summer day. An endearingly surly waiter brought them over and plunked them down on our table, only without straws. When we spoke up about needing straws, he took two out of his apron and blithely tossed them in our direction from about a yard away, which reduced us to hysterics. So, yeah, maybe the service wasn’t exactly top notch, but I’d take the Astor Riviera over a Starbucks every single day of the apocalypse.

ADDENDUM: Someone on what used to be Twitter actually typed this with a presumably straight face:

End of an era. For old NYU grads, Starbucks on Astor place and the Kmart by it felt like forever places. St. Marks is also not what it used to be. 

It almost goes without saying that the next occupant of that stately space will be another bank, a fucking cannabis dispensary or yet another addition to the maddening proliferation of fitness outlets that now define "activewear alley" or the "fitness corridor." Fuck all that.

You can see “coming soon – the Astor Riviera” (misspelled as “reviera”) in this clip from “Downtown `81,” starring Jean-Michel Basquiat and, in this scene, man-from-the-past David McDermott.

Meanwhile, my feelings about the departure of Starbucks are best summed up by this clip of the Brothers Ramone.

Some Refreshing Perspective from New Jersey

About Last Saturday

Just because someone took a shot at him, that doesn’t absolve him of his crimes, undo his previous actions or change the fact that he wants to completely upend our democracy. He’s still a deeply horrible, avaricious scumbag.

It’s unfortunate that someone tried to put a bullet in him (let alone someone who was a registered Republican with a legally purchased firearm), but that doesn’t make him a goddamn saint.

About Last Night

If you enjoy laughing to keep yourself from crying, Jon Stewart was absolutely ON FIRE last night ....

Personally speaking, did I think Biden did even a half-decent job last night? Absolutely fucking not. That said, I'd still support him over the alternative EVERY DAMN TIME.

I Read The News Today, Oh Boy ...

Word on the Street