Flaming Pablum

Whither Thine Cabload of Idiots?

In about 1990, I was writing for a freebie local paper called NY Perspectives (long gone) and was tasked with writing up blurbs for one of their “BEST OF UPTOWN” issues. As such, I typed one up for my favorite local bar, at the time, that being Ryan’s Daughter on East 85th just off First Ave.

Despite it being an overwritten word salad that unwittingly besmirched the street in question, the blurb struck the right chord with Ryan’s Daughter. They were quite pleased and slapped it in a frame that hung in the window for many years. I moved out of Yorkville in about 1996 and probably haven’t set foot in Ryan’s Daughter since then. But, I was there last night with the Desperately Seeking the `80s duo , and spied my ancient blurb now hanging on an interior wall.

It’s still the best bar in the neighborhood.

The Coffee Shop/Diner Dichotomy

The following post is actually an “open letter,” initially composed in response to the latest episode of the Desperately Seeking the `80s podcast, which I’ve discussed here several times before, most notably here. I started writing it and then it got to a length wherein I figured it would make a nice post on its own, so here we are. You’re welcome.

Incidentally, the lovely ladies of the`80s have graciously invited me to actually appear on their podcast. We’re recording that very soon, I believe, so watch this space for that. Hopefully I won’t come off sounding like a rambling, abject idiot, but I promise nothing.

So, without further ado, in response to Jessica’s portion of this latest episode (Episode #60), herewith my response….

M’kay… first of all, I totally recognize the elusive difference Jessica was driving at between the classic coffee shop and the diner, the latter being a sort of less salubrious affair, given its accent on burgers & fries over more delicate fare and the ability to order alcohol, an important distinction, in my latter years of high school and into college.

That discussion immediately conjured up places where I used to be taken as a child. There were at least two or three proper “coffee shops,” as I remember, on Madison Avenue, foremost among them being the one beautifully captured in the photograph above (I have no idea who took it or when, but I'd originally poached it for this old post), which was on the southwest corner of 84th Street, right next to the long-vanished Trans-Lux movie house (the only movie theatre on Madison Avenue, I want to say). For whatever reason, I remember coming to this place with my Dad, who always ordered “cinnamon toast” … which, should that need illustration, was just that: buttered white toast with cinnamon on top. I don’t remember us ever having anything else, but who needed anything else? Inside, it was a lunch place, but it wasn’t tawdry or beaten up, unlike more conventional diners, which were open later. I want to say there was another more haute coffee shop about a block up between 85th and 86th (and this is going way, way back) called The Puffing Billy (named, presumably, after a train), but I can find no evidence of that online.

In terms of all things DINER, meanwhile, beyond what I blathered about in this recent epic-length post, me and my own little gaggle of morons had our specific favorites, those being as follows: The Mansion on East 86th & York Avenue (this was my home corner from about 1984 until 1996), Gracie’s Corner on the – wait for it – corner of East 86th & First Avenue (r.i.p.), The Viand Restaurant on East 86th Street & Second Avenue and then, a little further afield, The New Amity on Madison and east 84th (r.i.p.) and one on Lexington between 77th and 78th that, in more recent years, was called the Lenox Hill Grill, but went by another name back in the 80s. There was also one on Madison Avenue and, like, East 63rd we occasionally went to which was called The New Wave Diner (or Restaurant) – an establishment we appreciated solely for its name.

The Mansion is still there today, but had something of an interior-décor reboot, some years back, that decimated everything I held dear about the place. It used to be comparatively dark inside. You could sit at the counter and enjoy your burger in a sort of atmospheric gloom, as opposed to the gleaming white walls that now frame one’s dining experience. I remember they had stills from “Casablanca” above the counter area, for whatever reason.

When my mother and my step-father split, my sister was already away at college, so Mom and I moved to East 86th Street between York & East End, just up the road a piece from where my grandparents had lived at Henderson House before decamping to Florida. It was the summer between my junior and senior years of high school, so I was already fairly autonomous, and my mom was jump-starting a career as a real estate agent for the Corcoran Group, so I was frequently left to my own devices, which meant lots and lots and lots of visits to the Mansion for any number of meals. It was also a meeting place, a hangout spot and a safe haven, of a sort. For a hot second (and I do mean hot), I actually dated a young lady who worked behind the counter in the early `90s, but it was destined to crash and crumble like a slice of over-toasted cinnamon toast. More about that another time.

One of the cool things about living on East 86th Street, at the time, was the aforementioned abundance of diners and coffee shops. I seem to remember Gracie’s Corner on First Avenue being if not a 24-hr. venture, at least being a very late-night operation, and frequently repairing to its comfy confines for late-night fries with gravy (an homage to “Diner”? Who remembers?) and other inevitably drunken shenanigans (frequently after many an ill-advised hour spent in nearby public houses like Ryan’s Daughter and The (original) Gaf (formerly Pedro’s). I have a somewhat bleary-but-still-cringey memory of my college pal Edgar (not his real name … who, after spending weeks living on my couch, finally rented his own place nearby on East 84th off Second Avenue) basically abandoning a girl he’d been out on a date with (leaving her in my care, so to speak). She wasn’t so much crestfallen as confused. I walked her home, though – something Edgar invariably should have done. But, I digress..

The Viand (and we pronounced it with an inexplicable French accent, ala “vee-OND,” although who knows if this is correct?) was another staple. I remember very many meals at the Viand, either with my college friend Shafe (then-fresh from rural Florida) or my childhood comrade Rob D. Rob was famous for his last-minute veer-offs from convention when ordering, making roundly ill-advised detours into adventurous culinary territory ala “actually….scratch that, I’ll have the Cauliflower Au Gratin!” and other dishes one should ABSOLUTELY NEVER order at a diner.

My late friend Danny (initially immortalized as Rocky, on this post) and I used to frequent that Lenox Hill spot (right next to Lenox Hill hospital, a storied institution Danny was once ensconced in for a broken nose after a fateful run-in with the 84th Street Bombers in front of Mimi’s Pizza on Lexington and 84th). It lacked the homey comfort of the Mansion or the late-night debauchery-friendly vibe of Gracie’s Corner, but it was his local. The New Amity on Madison was a big favorite for some classmates of mine, but trying to have a meal there during the school day was always a nervy affair, as our free periods were only forty minutes long, so you were invariably going to be asking feverishly for a check before you’d finished your burger (or whatever).

Today, once again, the Mansion is still there, and recently made a cameo in “Only Murders in The Building” (although not cited by its actual name). The original Gracie’s Corner is gone, as is most of the block it occupied, but I think its building is still standing. The concern actually moved up the block and what had been The Viand is now called Gracie’s Corner, if I’m not mistaken.

I’m pretty sure the Lenox Hill Grill on Lexington at 77th is gone. The New Amity closed for good last summer. I think what had been the New Wave is still there, but called something else, by this point.

In terms of the cast of characters, my date-abandoning pal Edgar decamped back to his Midwestern hometown in the mid 2000’s. I fell more or less out of touch with Florida Shafe some years back after he got a bit more churchy, so to speak. My great comrade Rob D. got married to my friend J, had a child, moved to City Island, then moved to New London, CT. , got divorced and became an acclaimed writer and an esteemed man of letters, penning the preeminent academic tome on Eugene O’Neil and currently working on another sprawling book about a different celebrated writer. He still orders food ill-advisedly. My cinnamon toast-touting Dad passed away in 2011 and my great friend Danny died in 2018 in his adopted state of Colorado following a few cruel years paralyzed from a tragic bicycle accident.

The girl I fleetingly dated from The Mansion vanished into thin air circa 1993.

Back to Cornelia Street

I think the first time I ever set foot on Cornelia Street (above, as stylishly captured by one Jean-Phillipe Rebuffet) was probably in about 1983, when my geeky grade-school chum and fellow Upper East Sider Spike (not his real name, but immortalized on this post) decided he could no longer tolerate living with his well-intentioned-but-somewhat-smothering mother on East 96th & Park Avenue (an apartment we used to refer to as “Checkpoint Charlie” given its placement on the then-seemingly-perilous border of East Harlem) and moved in to his newly-divorced dad’s swinging neo-bachelor pad at 2 Cornelia Street, a stately tower that loomed over the surrounding byways like a comparatively diminutive Flatiron building.

I can’t exactly say how chuffed Spike’s dad was to suddenly have his petulant 16-year-old son suddenly running amok in his swanky Greenwich Village apartment, but Spike made the most of it, fully availing himself to all the new experiences of the surrounding environs. While I’d dipped my toes in the water, so to speak, it was really Spike who coaxed me downtown to explore all the benefits of the then-still-seemingly bohemian Village. Had it not been for Spike, I’d have probably never discovered record-shopping at Bleecker Bob’s or live music at Folk City or cult movies at the 8th Street Playhouse. And we did all this with 2 Cornelia Street as our base of operations.

I don’t think that arrangement lasted more than two or three years, but that Cornelia Street address still comes with a lot of memories. It was there, for example, during some early Spring afternoon, we were lazing around his dad’s well-appointed living room watching some cable access channel and I first saw the video for Killing Joke’s “Eighties,” which shocked me right out of my lethargy to the point wherein I sprinted out of Spike’s place and sped across Cornelia Street to Subterranean Records (long gone and pictured below, but discussed at some length here, here, here, here, here, here and here) to frantically purchase the 12” single of same. It sounds silly, but this was a HUGE moment for me. It effectively changed my life, actually. 

I remember an evening hanging out in Spike’s room (his bedroom window was on the second floor, over what, for the last several years, has been a sexual paraphernalia/"party" store called Crazy Fantasy). We were enjoying a late-night pie from nearby Joe's Pizza -- and listening, as I recall, to a radio broadcast of a live Twisted Sister concert, as one would -- while gazing out the window across Sixth Avenue, directly opposite the little park that abuts the Washington Square Diner (which, I believe, is officially called The Golden Swan Garden) and the basketball court to its south, formally known, ominously, as "The Cage." It's no longer there, but there used to be one of those free-standing newsstands on the sidewalk in front of both those landmarks. Despite the late hour, the newsstand in question was still open, but was getting ready to close up shop for the night. As we sat there working on our slices, we watched as a group of three or four dubious-looking dudes approached the newsstand with obviously less-than-convivial intentions. Without missing a beat (I'm guessing he'd gone through this before), the newsagent sprang out of his little stand swinging a fucking baseball bat, clipping at least one of the would-be thieves across the gums with an impact we could hear across the avenue and over the shrill din of Dee Snider's voice. It was like watching an elaborately choreographed (and very violent) stage play. In short order the flashing red and blue lights of a police car were splashed across the windows and walls of Spike's place and the street-side show, as such, was over. We finished our pizza. 

But Cornelia Street is still so much more to me than simply Spike's place and punk rock records from Subterranean Records. There was also Le Gigot, a tiny French bistro (that I think is actually still there) wherein I watched my beloved step-father John nearly give himself a cerebral hemorrhage trying to order "just an AMERICAN cup of coffee, goddammit!!" It's also the home to Palma, a great little Italian restaurant and, across the way, the former site of the Cornelia Street Cafe, a very-sorely-missed neighborhood landmark that featured great food and live music in its basement. 

At its southern end, Cornelia Street (which my high-school classmate and native Greenwich Villager Jason C. would continually insist was pronounced like "KORN-ELLA" and not like the female form of Cornelius) t-bones into Bleecker Street at its busiest juncture, where concerns like Golden Disc Records (... later re-christened Bleecker Street Records...gone), Route 66 Records (gone), Murray's Cheese Shop (still there, but different location) and John's Pizza (amazingly still there) could be found. 

So, yeah, much like songwriter Louie Fleck in the last post, I have my own private associations with this particular strip of Greenwich Village. But here in 2023, it seems Cornelia Street has taken on an almost global significance -- one that finds hordes of zealous, crestfallen Taylor Swift fans flocking to an address in the middle of Cornelia Street (23, if you care) that the pop star fleetingly rented in 2016 and evidently immortalized in song. The reasons for this, as detailed in this piece in Vulture, involve Swift's recent breakup with some gent named Joe Alwyn, with whom the over-rhapsodized songwriter previously canoodled, presumably, at the Cornelia Street address. As a result, Cornelia now endures regular pilgrimages from distraught "Swifties" leaving flowers and sometimes loudly imploring their idol to "come out," entirely oblivious to the fact that Swift now lives several blocks downtown in TriBeCa. If her current address is a secret, it's the worst-kept secret imaginable. 

People are stupid. 

In any case, on my walk to work today, I took a momentary detour off Sixth Avenue to stroll down Cornelia Street. Spike's father left 2 Cornelia Street at some sad point in 1986, I believe, and decamped to Shelter Island. Spike joined him for a little while before going to Duke University and then moving into a grim apartment in midtown. He and I had a stupid falling-out in the early `90s, but ran into each other again on the street about ten years ago, but neither of us have called each other since. Subterranean Records, as mentioned above, closed for good in 2008 or so. Le Gigot is amazingly still there, although the Pearl Oyster Bar to its south has closed. Palma also remains, but the space that had been the Cornelia Street Cafe is dormant, gutted and tragic. 

Speaking of tragic, upon walking past the infamous 23 Cornelia, I did spot a sad, solitary flower, presumably left in tribute to Taylor Swift's star-crossed personal life. Ho hum.... One imagines this, too, shall pass. 

"Back Then"

I stumbled upom the video below, over the weekend, and it kind of struck a chord, pardon the pun.

Put together by a songwriter named Louie Fleck, “Back Then” is a music video of Fleck’s memories of the Greenwich Village he used to know, circa 1978-1984, when Manhattan was still, in his own words, “a folky-punky music town.” Set to a slightly incongruous reggae beat, Fleck’s song is a straightforward breakdown of the things he held dear that, by and large, are mostly no longer there.

While I recognize several of the images he utlilizes (I believe he may have even poached a scan I made of an old SPIN photograph of Freebing Records on St. Marks Place, but whatevs … I’m certainly no stranger to liberally appropriating images), I’m sure Fleck’s recollections are just as heartfelt and vital (to him) as the ones I continually cite here are to me, even if the touchstones and landmarks he highlights aren’t immediately familiar to me.

Everyone has their own New York City, here’s Louie Fleck’s….

The Lost Greasy Spoon of Metropolitan Hill

...or Lucklessly Looking for One Loyola Loser’s Lost Lunch Counter

As I’ve invariably mentioned on many posts prior to this, I was kind of an awkward high schooler. Upon my arrival at Loyola School in 1981, I was pretty much a shy, self-conscious, nervous, argumentative and needlessly sensitive kid. Certain other factors didn’t help. I was also a slump-shouldered nerd. I hated sports, collected comic books, played “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons” and listened to a steady diet of Devo, screechy metal, pugnacious punk rock and other music entirely predicated on hostility toward all things popular and mainstream. I was jittery and barely approachable, a lot of the time.

Mercifully, I did manage to accrue a small coterie of very patient and understanding friends who tolerated my thorniness, but I had what I considered a lot on my plate, at the time – my parents’ impending divorce, my at-the-time middling grades, various strenuously unrequited, heroically improbable and forever unmentioned crushes and regular run-ins with various bullies both in and out of school. At Loyola, I was an easy target for some likely lads in my class, given my inability, at the time, to laugh anything off. I didn’t make things easy on myself. Out on the mean streets of the Upper East Side (don’t be fooled, you could get into trouble there, too -– as floridly documented here), my failure to project any semblance of confident toughness made me an all-too-likely victim.

But recently, I’ve been thinking about it, and I now suspect that a major reason I was so tightly wound and on-edge in school, most of the time, was that I was basically perpetually HANGRY.

I first mentioned the roots of this condition in this unlikely post. As an ancillary anecdote to explain the significance of a certain old, since-vanished neighborhood landmark I’d become preoccupied with finding visual evidence of (that being the white, grinning, plaster whale that used to sit atop the awning of a seafood joint on Madison Avenue called Moby Dick), I mentioned my rigidly observed high-school lunch routine, which essentially consisted solely of a worrying paucity of French fries. But let me back that up with some extra context.

At the time, upperclassmen were permitted to step off the school premises for forty-minute free periods. Freshmen were, for whatever reason, not let out, and -- if they didn't bring their own homemade lunch (something I never did) -- had to make do with the very slim array of offerings in the basement-level Student Commons, the heartiest of which being probably the “pizza,” which were frozen rectangles that a genuinely well-meaning lady named Alice blithely chucked in a toaster oven for unevenly inconsistent amounts of time. The end results were invariably mouth-scaldingly hot on the outside, but still frozen on the inside. This entrée was generally accompanied by a can of soda from the battered White Rock soda machine (presumably a gift from a benefactor alumnus) and a Drake’s Cakes selection like Ring Dings or Funny Bones,… vile confectionary products which, in retrospect, were terrible things to put anywhere near your mouth.

But from sophomore year on up, you were allowed to go out. Now, forty minutes isn’t a whole helluva lot of time, but it more or less sufficed for popping over to nearby Madison Avenue to procure one’s lunch at a small selection of concerns. A lot of – if not most – of my schoolmates went to a nearby Greek deli called Neofytos, which sold your basic fare of bagels, egg concoctions and sandwiches. For whatever reason, I wasn’t a big Neofytos fan, as it was usually too crowded and/or filled with individuals I didn’t want to see or talk to. Instead, after I’d swiftly soured on a full school year of one-too-many mouth-scarring slabs of Alice’s “pizza,” I started very regularly repairing to a venture just two or three storefronts up from Neofytos called -– if my own dimming memory is to be trusted -– Jackson Hole Burgers.

Now, look, I don’t claim to be infallible. Ironically, the location of Moby Dick’s, for example, that, in that first post, I placed directly across the street from the establishment I’m now discussing, was actually a block up between 84th and 85th. I am entirely capable of obscuring facts or flatlly misremembering things, and take pains to correct myself, here, when I do. But as I remember it, and this from loyally giving them my patronage for three solid school years from 1982 until 1985 (although I’d imagine it well pre-dated that era), I remember Jackson Hole Burgers, which I’ll describe in greater detail below, as being basically in the middle of the block on the west side of Madison Avenue between East 83rd and East 84th Streets. If you know better and can prove it, now’s your time so speak on up.

While the name Jackson Hole may conjure images for any longtime New Yorkers reading of various other outlets of that same chain around town (there used to be one in nearby Carnegie Hill on 91st Street and Madison, another on Second Avenue, just south of East 86th and a third, across town, on Columbus Avenue just south of West 86th), this was nothing quite so expansive. More of a “lunch counter” than a proper diner or lunceonette, this joint was the quintessential greasy spoon. Imagine, if you will, a cramped, tiny space divided by a lunch counter wide enough, from south wall to north, to accommodate about six patrons, sitting elbow-to-elbow. Behind them there was a narrow space, with another small table for two in the front window. It was not a big place. 

Behind the counter, meanwhile, was a tightly confined (but deceptively efficient) kitchen set-up manned by at least four sullen-but-talkative Greek gentlemen who helmed proceedings as if from inside the claustrophobic iron bowels of a German U-boat. Lined up behind the counter – in their matching short-sleeved, white-collared shirts in various states of needing to be laundered -– they relentlessly toiled and talked continuously in an odd patois best described as Greeklish while manning an incalculably busy grill, a bubbling deep-fryer, a food-prep area and a small sink. From that tight, maddeningly restricted and probably not entirely spic’n’span space, they managed to crank out a truly miraculous amount of (admittedly very greasy) food.

On the far left, against the southern wall, was a register operated by a stout, mustachioed gent who’d ostensibly take your order, if you managed to catch his attention while sharing the inevitably crowded, narrow space behind the folks seated at the counter. It was always hot in there, as was amply evident by the appearance of the kitchen staff. At any point, it seemed likely that this venture’s incredibly busy, productive system might throw a greasy spoke and messily implode, but somehow it all worked. As I recall, true to the concept of “the lunch counter,” they closed up shop by the mid-afternoon. They were predominantly there for your hasty lunch needs, although I suppose they might have served ill-considered breakfast, as well.

If you’re having a hard time conceiving of such a venture, all you really need to do is go to YouTube and search the “Olympia Restaurant” sketches from vintage “Saturday Night Live.” While John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd composed that series of sketches based on a beloved Chicago diner, the same, basic kitchen dynamic was at play at Jackson Hole Burgers and completely spot-on.

Anyway, during my alloted midday lunch periods for five days a week, for 36 weeks of every school year from about 1982 to 1985, I would enter this tiny, smokey closet on the otherwise well-heeled expanse of Madison Avenue, brave the restless rugby scrum of fellow patrons and request an order of French fries to go. That’s it. Just French fries.

I have no recollection of ever eating in-house at the counter – where there was never any space, anyway -- or at the tiny table in the front window. They’d put a batch of fries fresh out of the aforementioned deep-fryer (though Lord knows how infrequently they bothered to change the oil therein) into a cardboard tray with the red-checkered pattern and wrap it up in foil. I’d pay them -- probably no more than a dollar and a half, this being the mid-`80s – and back to school I’d go. Once back in the dank, wood-panelled confines of the Student Commons, I'd dependably pair my starchy spoils with a can of tepid White Rock cola. I’d spend the next several minutes swatting away classmates trying to prize one of my fries. My response was always “no” and/or, more likely, “Fuck OFF,” as, truthfully, when all you’re having for lunch is a side-order of French fries, EVERY FRY COUNTS! 

The photo below, from my junior-year yearbook, was clearly staged for arguably comedic effect, but it was a disarmingly accurate portrayal of my daily struggle. That's my friend Gianni posing as a marauding fry-poacher.

So, as you can probalby surmise from my needlessly verbose portrayal of the eatery above, the place left a pretty indelible impression in my memory. It was verily a huge part of my high school experience

But, … in the same way it probably doesn’t occur to you to take a picture of your favorite lunch spot today, I never took a picture of it. I mean, honestly, why would I? Why would anyone? I should point out, here, that the building that formerly housed this lunch counter was razed, at some point, after I went off to college in 1985. 

But after I posted the follow-up entry last week about Moby Dick’s, I was suddenly struck by an impulse that has driven so much content on this stupid blog. Periodically, I become preoccupied with finding visual evidence of the existence of any number of former concerns around my native Manhattan, usually of a fairly banal and/or super-niche variety. Prime examples of this, beyond the aforementioned Moby Dick posts, include posts about the nearby Trans-Luxe theater on Madison Avenue, the original site of Forbidden Planet on the west side of Broadway at East 12th Street, the Disc-O-Mat on East 58th and Lexington Avenue, Second Coming Records down on Sullivan Street, Freebeing Records on Second Avenue, SoHoZat on West Broadway, Rocks in Your Head on Prince Street in SoHo, Supersnipe Comics on the corner of East 84th and Second Avenue, the New York Comic Arts Gallery on East 58th Street, King Karol Records and Musical Maze on Third Avenue and, of course, the super-elusive Plasmatics mural at the Graffiti Hall of Fame on Upper Park Avenue. There are some that have continued to elude me, of course, like any pics of The Madison Pub on Madison Avenue just north of East 79th Street, any exterior shots of the toy store Rappaport’s on Second Avenue and any evidence at all about a great record store on Madison Avenue near both Grand Central and the former flagship outlet of Brooks Brothers. It’s like they never existed, according to the internet.

In that same way, when it comes to the Jackson Hole Burger place on Madison Avenue between East 83rd and East 84th, I cotinue to come up empty. In my extensive Googling, I haven’t come across a shred of any mention of even the slightest possible existence of such a business. I then thought I might have a shot of finding it on 80s.NYC, a somewhat comprehensive collection of building phototgraphs from the 1980’s, but didn’t realy hit paydirt. There is the VERY slight chance this picture below captures its exterior …

I mean, it’s exceptionally hard to discern, but it might be that storefront with the white signage on the left.

Anyway, my frustration building, I then took my query to the Facebook group, Yorkville East Side of Manhattan in New York City. Now, this was probably destined to fail from the get-go because the greasy spoon in question wasn’t actually in Yorkville, but I figured some folks from Yorkville might’ve been familiar with it. But no real dice. They made several suggestions, but I assure you, I am NOT referring to The Viand or the New Amity (which recently closed) or Soup Burg or Nectar, the place at 1090 Madison where Meryl Streep stalks her little boy in “Kramer Vs. Kramer.” Those were all nice ideas, but they’re all comparatively proper roomy diners, not a cramped little hole in the wall like this place.

What I did learn, during these travels, however, is that just like Carnegie Hill to its north and Yorkville to its east, this particular patch of real estate between East 86th and East 77th between Fifth and Third Avenues has its own neighborhood identity – Metropolitan Hill – thus named, one presumes, for its proximity to the statelly Metropolitan Museum. Who knew? I don’t know why I’d never heard that before, but there ya go.

Anyway, that’s kinda where I am in my stupid quest. I have no proof, as yet, that Jackson Hole Burgers (or whatever else it actually might have been named or informally called) was actually ever there, but I’d swear on my cherished stack of Killing Joke CDs that it completely existed.

And, as asserted in the second graf of this Old-Testament-sized post, I also indirectly blame this establishment for my fraught emotional state during much of my tenure at Loyola School given that, indirectly, they enabled my very worst dietary inclinations and helped me subsist on a dubiously steady regimen of solely starch, salt and sugar, leaving me doubtlessly bleary-eyed and ornery on the best of afternoons.

Regardless, if there is indeed evidence that this spot existed, trust me … I’ll find it. Treat yourself to an order of fries and watch this space.

Meanwhile, Neofytos Deli closed in 2018. Loyola kids (of whom my son Oliver is one) -- to say nothing of Regis boys and Marymount girls -- have precious little in the way of lunch options, these days. 

ADDENDUM: For the benefit of regular reader G (that's it ... just G), herewith the White Rock machine (at left) in question, next to suitably malnourished-looking me:

 

The Fleeting Return of the White Whale

Staying, briefly, on the uptown bent of some of my recent posts (notably the Private’s/80s opus and the Ungano’s search), I thought I’d quickly revisit an old post.

Longtime and/or bored-&-backreading followers of this blog might remember a post I put up back in 2017 about an Upper East Side restaurant on Madison Avenue called Moby Dick’s. My reasons for writing about it involved a cryptic anecdote about that restaurant’s signaure flourish – a large, white plaster whale affixed to its ocean-blue awning – being brazenly liberated from its moorings and summarily pilfered by some naughty upperclassmen at my school for the purposes of paying cheeky homage to a specific English teacher.

I’d long searched the `net looking for pics of the seafood restaurant in question’s old exterior, and always came up empty until stumbling across someone’s vacation video that happened to capture the awning (with fake, grinning sea-mammal still attached). Hence the post.

In any case, I found another arcane memento from Moby Dick’s today that I thought I’d go ahead and share. Someone on eBay is hocking an old matchbook from the place, revealing its old address – 1133 Madison Avenue.

My new quest? To find a picture of that grubby Jackson Hole dinerette alluded to in that original post wherein I used to procure my daily regimen of French fries.

Back to Ungano's

PREAMBLE: I actually started this post quite a while back, but it required a bit of legwork, and then I got sick, so I’m trying to re-visit it now, but it may not be as robust as I was once planning it to be.

POST: Options for witnessing live music of a certain stripe, in Manhattan, are in pretty paltry shape, here in 2023. I mean, sure, there are still a handful of decent clubs and a few comparatively antiseptic live-music venues, but the glory days of legendary hotspots like Brownie’s, Wetland’s Preserve, the Limelight, The Ritz, Roseland Ballroom, Danceteria, the Mudd Club, Hurrah’s, Tier 3, Great Gildersleeve’s, Max’s Kansas City and – oh yes, do please wait for it – CBGB are all but sepia-toned memories of a vanished age in practically a different city.

But there is one more significant place that seems rarely invoked when folks rattle off names of celebrated rock clubs and live-music venues as I just did above. It was only open for business for about seven years and was perched on the otherwise unassuming byway of West 70th Street between Amsterdam and West End Avenues.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I rarely consider this patch of the Upper West Side when I think of carnal rock n’ roll bacchanalia. My knee-jerk associations with this area conjure more of kind of Jerry Seinfeld/Woody Allen/Steve Martin/Tina Fey vibe more than anything else, but as I ventured up there, a few weekends back, several of the neighborhood’s pop-cultural hotspots did reveal themselves to me.

For a start, to the south, there was the Tower Records on the northwest corner at West 66th Street & Broadway. While arguably not as iconic as the flagship store down on East 4th & Broadway, the UWS Tower played a major role for me when I was ravenous music-consuming high schooler. It’s long gone, of course … replaced by a Raymour & Flanagan, of all things. For those who scoff, at the invocation, Woody Allen shot a scene from “Hannah & Her Sisters” in the UWS Tower, so put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Just a few blocks up, of course, there was the similarly inclined HMV megastore, another great music outlet that shut up shop around 1999. I’ve not as many rose-tinted memories of that place, but I was glad it was there, at the time. There’s also that statue in Verdi Square that Blue Oyster Cult posed under (worrying close to “Needle Park,” a block or two to the south in Sherman Square, immortalized in “Panic in Needle Park”). There’s also the iconic Beacon Theatre and the former site of the P&G Bar, where Joe Jackson was once photographed drinking and that fleetingly appeared in the video for “Policy of Truth” by Depeche Mode. Of course, there’s also the subway station and surrounding corners that acted as the location of the first sighting of The Baseball Furies in Walter Hill’s 1970 classic, “The Warriors.” Then, of course, a few blocks up, there’s the Ansonia, which played host to `70’s swinger club Plato’s Retreat and, a few blocks to the East, there’s the Dakota, where “Rosemary’s Baby” was filmed and where John Lennon was shot. Not too far away was also the club, Hurrah, as well. Again, there is absolutely no shortage of pop cultural reference points in this neck of town.

But if you stroll down that stretch of West 70th today, you shouldn’t expect to get a whiff of any of that sorta vibe. Right now, at 210 West 70th, which shares a wall with stately Café Luxembourg to its east (where my mom met my wife’s parents, for the first time, about twenty years ago), you’ll find a dormant space which, until recently, was an Italian restaurant called Tavolla Della Nona. Back in 2015, meanwhile, the space was a steakhouse that called itself Lincoln Square Steak. Prior to that, in 2014, it was a venture called Marka. In 2012, it was an Asian eatery called Loi. In 2009, it was a bar called the Compass Lounge. Earlier than that year, things get a little harder to research, although I did discover that in 1976, the space was a cabaret named Grand Finale, where flamboyantly jazzy piano-botherer Bobby Short once played.

But from 1966 until about 1971, it was Ungano’s. One website I came across described it like this:

Brothers Nick and Arnie Ungano opened their club in 1966—or perhaps earlier, since singer/producer Genya Ravan recalls gigging there in 1964. Rock critic Mike Jahn described the 250-capacity basement venue as "an average-size club with a big back room checked off by four mirrored pillars. The stage is along one wall. Opposite it is a small, raised gallery for the press." Ungano's closed in 1971.

According to the period-specific print ads, Ungano’s played host to a wide array of bands including no less than Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band, Fleetwood Mac, Bob Seger, The Kinks, The James Gang, The Grateful Dead, The Nice, Van Morrison, Mountain, NRBQ, Joe Cocker, The Amboy Dukes, John Lee Hooker, Dr. John, Badfinger and The Nazz. What really caught my attention was that it also hosted Parliament/Funkadelic, The MC5, Alice Cooper, Black Sabbath and The Stooges.

I first got wind of it via the widely circulated recording, Have Some Fun: Live at Ungano’s by the Stooges, which was captured shortly after the band had issued the greatest rock record of all goddamn time, that being their sophomore effort, Fun House. Three weeks later, meanwhile, Black Sabbath … fresh from releasing their own iconic album, Paranoid, graced the stage of Ungano’s, only to – legend has it – plug in their equipment and blow all the fuses in the building out … which, y’know, is fittingly METAL!

Anyway, romanced by the ideas of bands like the Stooges, Sabbath and the freaks in Parliament running amok in a 250-capacity club, I felt the need to go check the place out. Amazingly, even though it’s currently dormant (and, as mentioned, has been about nine-dozen concerns since its Ungano’s days), you can still get a basic feel for what the room was like. Check out my pics below.

Goodnight, Tom Verlaine

I used to routinely see Tom Verlaine around the neighborhood, but one learned pretty swiftly not to bug the man. I once accosted him in front of The Strand like a gushing fanboy, and the sneer I received could have stopped a rhino in his tracks.

My favorite memory, though, was being caught in calamitous summer rainstorm in the late 90s and ducking in out of the maelstrom into Stromboli’s Pizza on University Place between 12th and 13th street (long gone). The only other patron in that tiny space? Yep, Tom Goddamn Verlaine. Remembering the Strand incident, I ordered my slice and left him alone …. only to have him remark in soggy solidarity, “It’s really coming down out there.”

Of his solo stuff, this has always (pardon the pun) been my favorite. Raise a slice to the great man.

The Dueling Delis

During what I think I can still safely call an era of uncertainty, here in New York City, if not the world, it is not at all uncommon – Hell, it’s actually frequent -- to notice any number of age-old, revered businesses that have been operating for decades suddenly vacated, gutted and boarded-up. Whether because of spiraling rents, the rigors of the pandemic, the faltering economy or the changing sensibilities of a neighborhood, certain shops, restaurants, bars, bistros, outlets and/or local services that you’d pretty much expected to always be there will suddenly vanish. No business is safe. Nothing is sacred.

I can’t count the number of times during the last two or three years (to say nothing of the seventeen plus years I’ve been keeping this silly blog) that I’ve been blithely walking down the street, only to suddenly see a beloved neighborhood spot I’ve cherished for ages suddenly and without any warning …. not there. Sometimes it happens like a thief in the night, leaving no trace or explanation. Other times, there’s a weepy note.

This morning, I decided to take a more westerly approach to my office in TriBeCa, veeering off the main artery of West Broadway in favor of the side streets of the Village and SoHo. With my ears filled by the latest episode of Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, and my mind otherwise engaged by the impending duties of the day, I didn’t notice the change right away, but right as I was crossing the intersection of Thompson and Prince Streets in the heart of SoHo, I was stopped dead in my tracks by something.

This intersection has always been a favorite of mine. Up the street to the east just a few steps used to be Rocks in Your Head, a hugely important independent record shop for me which factored greatly in my development as a truly insufferable music snob. It’s long gone now, of course, replaced for a few years by a glum real estate agency and now a bakery that exclusively sells pastry shaped like genitalia. I’m not making that up. On the southeasterly corner of the intersection, meanwhile, was Milady’s – initially an unpretentious neighborhood bar with a pool table wherein I spent many a beery evening thoughout the late `80s and `90s. It vanished in 2014 and the space became a short succession of aspirationally upscale restaurants. More recently, however, it’s reverted back to Milady’s, but with a bit of a bespoke reboot. The jury’s still out on that, for me.

Sure, those spots are significant for me, but the thing that always struck me about the crossing of Thompson and Prince were the dueling delicatessens. With one perched on the southwest-facing corner mirrored by another anchored on the northeast-facing corner, I always marveled at how these two comparable ventures managed to peacefully co-exist in a perpetual state of neighborly détente, like two obstinate nations refusing to recognize the legitimacy of the other or like The Zax is Dr. Seuss’ “The Sneetches and Other Stories’ (look it up). I have vivid memories of myself and two friends stumbling out of Milady’s, one snowy night in the late `90’s, and one pal going to the south deli to buy smokes while the other went to the north deli to buy a sandwich. It was entirely nonsensical, but I loved that about it. It was SoHo … it was unconventional, like that.

But this morning … something was different.

Instead of the southwest corner deli --officially named H&H Kim -- bustling with its usual deliveries of flowers, crates of fresh fruit and cartons of dairy products or patrons popping in and out for cups of coffee and a newspaper, the door was shut and the windows were all papered up. My heart sank.

In the center of the door was taped the inevitable note.

The major difference with this story is that practically for the first time in my recollection, the parting missive is not one tinged with tragedy or regret. While I am saddened by the departure of this longtime business, at the very least, the tale has a happy ending.

Regardless, support your local businesses.

Back Again to The Blue Willow, Just Down from CB's

Here’s a quick follow-up to my last post on the subject in August.

Much as with love, it seems the things you really want only reveal themselves to you when you’re not actually searching for them. In this romantic fashion, another tantalizing morsel about the long-lost Blue Willow on Broadway at Bleecker Street recently dropped out of the sky, and I thought I’d share it here.

It’s usually at this point in the narrative that I point out how strenuously niche this particular concern is, and how I normally doubt anyone is as beguiled as I am by the subject. But upon posting that last entry about it, longtime friend/reader of the blog, Was Proxy, nicely wrote in to share that the Blue Willow had been the location of the first date he had with the woman who later became his wife. I’m taking that as a sign.

In any case, prompted by the recent release of the the 40th anniversary edition of If I Die, I Die by the Virgin Prunes (which I wrote about recently here … and yes, I bought it, making it the fucking fifth iteration I’ve actually bought of this album), I’d been trawling around on the internet looking for pics of the first time I ever saw Gavin Friday perform live, that being from within the iconic confines of CBGB in November of 1989. As long as we’re talking anniversaries, I should note that this past week was evidently the 49th anniversary of the opening of that fabled club. Don’t bother telling Gavin Friday that, though. My biggest takeaway from that evening, beyond it being a brilliant performance — his solo debut, was his remark from the stage about how underwhelmed he was by the stark reality that CBGB genuinely was just a grotty hole in the wall. What exactly had he been expecting?

Anyway, I didn’t take any pictures that night, mostly because I didn’t bring my big, bulky camera (which, as some of you’ll remember, in 1989, was still the only means of capturing photographs). I have very specific images in my head about the show, but have always hoped to find some photographic documentation of the gig. But I’ve always come up empty in that search….

…until today … kinda.

Simply by typing in “Gavin Friday” and “CBGB,” this morning, up popped a link on Google for a website called Concert Archives. While the entry for the gig in question is pretty threadbare, it did contain two images, ironically uploaded by a friend of mine — Greg Fasolino. More about him in a second.

Greg uploaded two sides of a postcard from Island Records that was mailed out in November of 1989 as a special invitation to the gig. Now, during this time, I was still a luckless intern at SPIN (as recently discussed here), and had not yet wormed my way into the good graces of various record-company publicists around town who’d put me on promotional lists like the one Greg was on. That would all come later, but at the time, I’d simply heard about the gig by word of mouth and paid at the door (with my friend Rob B.) for entry.

But the postcard is a puzzle, and I’ll explain why. Here’s the front…

…and here’s the back.

Two things struck me about this. First up, you’ll see that following that November 14th performance at CB’s, there was actually an afterparty just down the fucking street at, appropriately enough, the Blue Willow (which, if you’ve not caught up in your reading, thus far, was the location of the cover shot of Gavin’s debut solo album, Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves, Here that is again.

I didn’t know that, at the time, as I hadn’t gotten a special invitation postcard like Greg had. Moreover, I wouldn’t make the connection between the Blue Willow and Each Man Kills… (as first recounted in my debut post on the subject) until friggin’ 2013. Had I known, I’d have gone down to meet the great man and the significance of the venue would have dawned on me, but `twas not to be. If memory serves, after the show, Rob B. and I repaired to CB’s 313 Gallery next door for beers and I sprang for my first black CBGB shirt, which amazingly still fits today, although it’s currently buried in a drawer in my mom’s house out in Quogue.

But the puzzle is as follows: This postcard is advertising Gavin Friday’s first-ever performance at CBGB in November of 1989. Figuratively turn the card over to the picture side, and you see a shot of Gavin performing next to a cellist, appended with the legend: “Gavin Friday Onstage at CBGB. Photo by Paraic Finnegan.” Has anyone figured out the discrepancy, yet?

How can there be a picture of Gavin allegedly performing at CBGB on an invitation to what would have then been his first-ever performance at CBGB?

Before you recommend it, yes, I’ve started searching for more info on photographer Paraic Finnegan, although my hopes for success are not high.

There is, of course, the possibility that the two images Greg uploaded are NOT from the same postcard. * ADDENDUM: SCROLL DOWN

In later years, I would go onto interview Gavin Friday at the the home of his publicist, then on White Street in TriBeCa, and would go onto see him perform live at Sin-E on St. Marks Place, The Bottom Line on 4th Street and the Westbeth Theatre on Bank Street. As of late 2022, along with CBGB and CB’s 313 Gallery, all of those live-music venues are gone.

Gavin Friday went onto release a string of great solo albums and soundtracks and spent many years being creative consultant to his pals in U2. His most recent project involves writing music for a forthcoming documentary on volatile figurative painter, Francis Bacon. I’m looking forward to that.

As for Greg Fasolino, Greg and I walked very parallel paths. I think he might be a couple of years older than myself, but he was a regular face at many of the same gigs and same anglophilic record shops around town. He also worked for a while at a music magazine called Reflex, which was kind of the rival indie periodical to the one I latched onto while at SPIN, that being the New York Review of Records. Don’t bother looking for either mag today, but that’s a long saga in itself. In any case, Greg and I found each other again on social media, probably a decade ago or so, and have been friends ever since.

In terms of the Blue Willow, meanwhile, as mentioned on that previous post, the douchey menswear concern that previously occupied that lofty space vacated some time ago. The ground-floor space previously occupied by Atrium, KITH and probably several other ventures after The Blue Willow today remains dormant and papered up. But, in walking by that corner the other day, I noticed some rips in the paper and got out my phone, heartened to see that the stately marble trimming that Gavin Friday posed near all those years ago can still be seen…

I also found this. Should have a spare several million dollars lying around, why not treat yourself to a luxury apartment in the building in question (644 Broadway)... they're ....uhhh... quite nice, as you'll see. 

 

More on Gavin Friday & the Blue Willow on Flaming Pablum:

Searching For The Blue Willow

The Blue Willow is Dead

Ghosts of The Blue Willow

Back to The Blue Willow

*ADDENDUM: Shortly after publishing this post, I shared it on Facebook, where Greg Fasolino swiftly replied:

I can clarify all, my friend. The live image is not connected to the postcard at all. It’s a clip from a local NYC Irish-culture newspaper “The Irish Echo.” You can see me in the bottom right of image, watching Gavin perform while sitting at the front table at CBGB.

P.S. I also interned at Spin in 1986-87 and wrote for New (York) Review of Records as well circa 1993-95.

Here's the picture from The Irish Echo, and that is indeed Greg sitting in the very front. The question, then, remains -- what was on the front of the postcard?  Funny you should ask. Greg shared that, too. It's the naked couple from the album cover: 

 

Lastly, here is Greg's own interview with Gavin Friday for the aforementioned Reflex, recorded just two months prior to the gig at CBGB: