Flaming Pablum

Cash & Hypocrisy

First of all, let me state for the record, that I am a filthy hypocrite.

Secondly, regular readers might remember a post I put up back in March of this year about a guy named Cash Jordan. Cash is a self-described “rental expert” who has taken a novel and presumably lucrative approach to his chosen vocation as a real estate agent and turned himself into a bona fide YouTube/TikTok celebrity. At last glance, his YouTube channel has over 362K subscribers, and his videos – and he is nothing if not maddeningly prolific – regularly accrue views well into the multiple thousands. Whether you like what he does or not, he is inarguably very adept at it.

But as stated back on that earlier post, my gripe with young Mr. Jordan’s work was twofold. I took exception to his rather shallow and seemingly incurious approach to his subject matter (i.e. the residential topography of New York City) and the pointedly alarmist and defeatist sensationalism of his misleading video titles. In a nutshell, Cash rarely seems to give more than a blithely cursory backstory to whatever locale or element of New York City he’s discussing and he frames his videos with shamelessly clickbaity terminology that neither ever really pay off or even hold much truth to them (recent examples include: “NYC is Headed for Disaster …On Purpose,” “New York is Pretty Much Screwed,” “These Apartments are So Rough, Everyone Moved Out,” “New York is Broken … Here’s Why!” etc. etc. etc.) I found this formula sort of vexing.

The fundamental difference between Cash Jordan and myself, I thought at the time, is that when I look at a neighborhood, I wonder who lives there, who used to live there, what used to happen there and how it got to be the way that it is, but when Cash Jordan looks at a neighborhood, all he wonders is who might be able to live there in the future and how might that neighborhood be changed to make even more people want to live in it, preferably under the auspices of his real estate agency.

In the wake of posting my hatchet job on poor Cash, however, I was swiftly taken to task both online and off by readers quick to defend his output, suggesting that these clips were “fun to watch,” “entertaining” and not at all intended to be taken so deathly seriously. Basically, I was once again – as with my dressing down of vlogger Brett Conti –- guilty of being yet another Grampa Simpson, failing to appreciate the clever nuances of Cash’s professional insight. One could argue that this defense is amply supported by his aforementioned legions of viewers and subscribers. They all “get it,” why can’t I?

Well, while I can’t really cop to sensing the “entertaining fun” in the constant denigration of my hometown (especially from someone who invariably isn’t originally from here), I suppose I cannot argue with Cash Jordan’s hustle. He’s clearly found his niche and turned it into a massive success story. Moreover, I don’t genuinely believe he’s a bad guy. While I might quibble with his choice of descriptors, he seems like a smart dude and a devoted family man. And there’s a good chance he is quite invested in the history of New York City and all the inane minutia that comes with it, but it’s just that his videos aren’t about that. I mean, just because he’s keener to talk about rental apartment amenities than vanished records store or forgotten local punk bands – why can’t we be friends?

So, yeah, maybe I was being too harsh on Cash Jordan.

This is where my hypocrisy comes in.

About three or four weeks ago, my manager at work gave me a fifty-dollar gift certificate to the MoMa Design Shop for my birthday. Nice, right? She usually gives me coupons for craft-beer emporiums, so this was kind of a step up. With nothing to do, a couple of weekends back, I suggested to my wife that we should really go and blow that gift certificate before I invariably forget I have it. So, we trooped on down to SoHo to visit MoMa’s shop on Crosby Street.

As we were rounding the corner of Bleecker Street on Lafayette, who should I spot lurking across the street but none other than Cash Jordan himself. Bounding across the road en route to Crosby Street, I barked out his name as I passed him, extended a hand to shake and told him to “keep up the good work,” or words to that effect.

He turned and thanked me as I continued down Crosby. I didn’t stop to engage him on any point, nor take him to task for the grievances with his videos that I’ve shared here because, again, who the fuck am I to do that? He’s the one with millions of views on YouTube, whereas I just have a laughably anachronistic blog with a name that doesn’t even appear in its own URL. One of us knows what he’s doing and the other clearly doesn’t. Not that we’re exactly in any semblance of competition, but Cash Jordan is an ambitious, ever-expanding venture, while Flaming Pablum is a just hot buffet of missed opportunities. As such, I’m officially recanting all the shit-talk I shared about his videos. And all is forgiven to Brett Conti, too (like he gives a fuck). Big of me, right?

Cut to a week later: My friends Eric and Katie meet my wife and I for lunch somewhere in the West Village and Eric immediately whips out his phone, explaining that a day or so earlier, he’d been procrastinating at work and fallen down a YouTube K-hole (do we still call them those?) In any case, in the midst of it, he found himself watching a clip about New York City, only half paying attention, when suddenly he heard a familiar voice.

Apparently, I made it into one of Cash’s video ... fittingly titled with dramatic overemphasis “It’s Over… NYC Isn’t Recovering!”

Look for me around the 09:21 mark.

Sundays on The Bowery: Back to the Matinees with Brooke Smith

Regular readers — again, if they exist — might remember my posts about the photographs of Brooke Smith (yes, she of “Silence of the Lambs” fame, among myriad other roles). Just in case you don’t know what I’m talking about, back in 2011, a clutch of photographs of the nascent New York hardcore scene started making the rounds on the internet (I posted about it here) and they were a remarkable encapsulation of the community, showcasing a warmth and humanity largely absent in the more established accounts of the era.

The pictures in question were captured by the teenaged Brooke Smith who, prior to becoming an actor, became ensconced in the New York punk scene from the early to mid `80s. Not only did Brooke’s photos evoke the energy and atmosphere of the venues and the rough-n’-tumble pageantry of the sartorial and tonsorial trappings of the subculture, they also presented it all as it genuinely was — essentially a congregation of similarly disenfranchised kids who found solace and sanctuary in a welcoming community that thrived well outside of the high school cliques, troubled family dynamics, mind-numbing malls and suburban doldrums they all sought refuge from. As such, even if you weren’t versed in the oeuvres of bands like Murphy’s Law, the Cro-Mags, Warzone, Agnostic Front and Bad Brains, these photographs resonated on countless other levels. Put simply, they acted as a telling glimpse of a time, a place, a neighborhood, a sensibility and a tribe that basically no longer exists.

In an weird way, Brooke Smith's photos established her celebrity beyond her career in film and television, making her something of local punk rock legend. Were that not enough, Brooke was also later the roommate of singer/songwriter Jeff Buckley, and one can’t help but suspect it was her that turned him on to the music of the Bad Brains (whom he’d go on to fleetingly cover). She addressed all of the above in a great episode of Damian Abraham’s podcast, “Turned Out a Punk,” which I wrote about last year. During the course of that conversation, she mentioned that she had it in her head to put a book together of her photographs from the period. I’m very happy report that said book is shortly to be released.

I found this out, incidentally, from the great lady herself. Either she stumbled upon one of my posts or some likely character like my friend Drew Stone might have hipped her to them, but she reached out to me, out of the proverbial blue, to see if I’d like to help spread the word and evangelize the project. Of course I said yes, and posited the notion of a quick e-mail interview. Gamely, she complied. While she quite understandably brushed aside my dumb questions about “Silence of the Lambs” (honestly, can you blame her?), she was thoughtful, candid and forthcoming in her answers. The book’s official website can now be found here, and you can pre-order the book here. Additionally, Smith will be doing a book-signing at Generation Records at 210 Thompson Street on December 3, from 6 to 8pm. 

And now, Brooke Smith now unwittingly joins the ranks of Big Paul Ferguson of Killing Joke, Chris Egan of Missing Foundation, RB Korbet of Even Worse, Erik Sanko of Skeleton Key, Fran Powers of Modern Clix and J Younger of White Zombie as being the latest installment of the Flaming Pablum Interview. Here we go….

These photos started making the round on the internet some years back, and — in certain circles — are now sort of the stuff of legend. What prompted you to finally get this book together?

It’s taken me 10 years to put the book together. I was moving 12 years ago and found a box of old photos I’d taken. A friend saw them and asked if he could show them to a curator friend of his and the next thing I knew, I had a solo show at Primary Gallery in NYC! I wanted SUNDAY MATINEE to be a love letter to those people and that world, and it took time to arrange the photographs in a way that that made sense to me.

Kind of a ridiculous question, but what kind of camera were you using to capture these shots? It sounds quaint now, what with everyone being able to capture crystalline images via their phones, but back in the day, taking sharp photographs required a capable bit of photographic hardware. What was your weapon of choice, in this capacity — and was it a drag to be carrying a camera around (especially in these particular circumstances)?

I had my mother’s old Minolta and one of the only classes I liked in high school was photography. It wasn’t that easy to carry it around with me at first but then it just became second nature. Recently I got a photo pass to shoot AF and Sick Of It All at The Roxy in LA and IT WAS SO HARD! Like you said; the low light and the fast action… It made me think of all the lost rolls of film I had back in the day because I wasn’t very good with the technical side of things, so everything was blurry.

What’s ironic is that now when I’m at concerts I feel conflicted. I see an audience full of phones shooting the show and I feel bad for the bands and the audience. It feels like the audience should be experiencing it in the moment rather than trying to capture it. But I also relate because when I love something I want to try to capture it as well.

How did you first get involved with the whole Bowery/hardcore scene? What first drew you to engage?

I was an outsider growing up in my hometown, in the suburbs of Rockland County. I didn’t relate to most of the kids I went to high school with. I had a lot of anger and felt disillusioned about the world and what I felt was ‘expected' of me. I listened to WFMU and got Maximum Rock N Roll and started going to the east village when I was 13.

All these years later I can see that one thing we all shared was that we had all experienced some kind of childhood trauma. We didn’t talk about it at the time but I find it interesting now to realize that trauma seemed to be a common denominator for all of us. We were the children of alcoholics, divorced parents, and all different types of abuse.

How receptive were your subjects? Obviously, you were taking pictures of your friends in the context of hanging out, but had you any concept, at the time, that you were genuinely capturing a time/place/scene that was something fairly special?

Well, I thought the NYHC scene was something special and you shoot what you know, right? People got used to me having a camera all the time so I think they were more relaxed about it around me.

Of the bands around, at the time, who were your favorites?

Bad Brains, Agnostic Front, Murphys Law, The Cro-Mags, The Mob, Cause For Alarm, Warzone, Underdog, Sick Of It All, Nausea, Scab, PMS…

Depending on whose accounts you read, there is a pervasive thread that suggests that, as time went on, the whole NYHC became less inclusive, especially towards female members of that community. In your experience, did you find that to be true?

Well I was pretty much fully out of the scene by the end of 1986, about a year after my younger brother died in a surfing accident. So if that happened, it was after 1986, because that wasn’t my experience at all.

Are you in touch with any of these individuals today?

Oh yeah! Some of them are still my closest friends who I never lost touch with, and others I found and reunited with more recently on social media. I still feel a deep connection to those people, and I feel like we all still have each other’s backs!

Could a community like the one you captured in these photographs happen again in New York City, in your opinion?

Well I hope that young people will always be starting their own communities. One thing that was very different back then was that we didn’t have cell phones and computers so we really had to get out and go find the action ourselves. It was also possible to live in the city and not pay a fortune for your apartment. There were squats, and rents were cheaper, etc…

For a long time I thought of New York City like it was my ex-husband who was now only into rich people!! LOL. I hated the corporatization and homogenization of everything. Times Square became like Nike-town or something. But then I saw the city change after covid. So I guess it’s always changing, and I somehow take comfort in knowing that NYC was here before me and will be here after me. One of my daughters is at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, and when I follow her on the sidewalk (she walks much faster than me, just like I walked much faster than my mom,) it’s obvious that it’s her city now. And I like that.

Do you still listen to Punk Rock?

I never stopped listening to Bad Brains, Agnostic Front and a few others. I’ve been a huge Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds fan for years. It’s always exciting when you hear music that sounds completely fresh and different. And you know who I find totally punk rock? Kendrick Lamar.

Once again, get a sneak peek at Brooke's book here. 

Kid Oy!

Oh Good lord. 

The once-arguably-respectable periodical that is Rolling Stone just published a strenuously dubious list of what they consider "The Best Concept Albums of All Time" (suffice to say, I have a full skeleton's amount of bones to pick with said roster), but in the process, they cite Kid A by Radiohead (which they rank at No. 14) and link to my now-ancient entry about pop-culture writer Chuck Klosterman's not-entirely-serious theory that said ominous opus predicted the events of September 11, 2001. Oh, exasperation. 

In the 17 years since I first posted that entry, it has become -- as I've alluded before -- the most-clicked piece on this silly blog, routinely cited on countless discussion boards, Radiohead fan site and in otherwise legitimate outlets like Cracked, Noisey and Pitchfork, and invited no small amount of incredulous invective from all conceivable sides of the argument. 

Under normal circumstances, I'm practically giddy for the exposure, but in this particular instance, while I'm not going to recant the post or take it down, I feel obligated to once again point that while, yes, I was initially intrigued and amused by Chuck's theory, I in absolutely no way genuinely espouse it, nor do I honestly care about it one way or the other. 

I'm sure Chuck and Radiohead alike are also quite bored with discussing it. 

Thanks.

I'm Guessing It's a Horse

When I first moved into the neighborhood in the mid-`90s, the space in question was, if memory serves, a futon emporium. At some point well prior to that, it has something to do with the American Association of Lithographers (or something like that). It may have changed hands a few times after its iteration as the futon joint, but it more recently had became a sort of do-it-yourself Italian restaurant called Vapiano, where you could go from station to station and pick out your pasta, your protein, your sauce, etc. That was novel, for a little while, but the bloom was off the rose after in pretty short order, I'm afraid to say.

I’m talking, of course, about the southeast corner of East 13th Street at University Place. Right now, the space in question seems only a breath away from opening as a garishly decorated P.F. Chang’s, a celebrated chain of Chinese restaurants that started in Arizona, of all places. As part of its impending unveiling, the restaurant appears to be about to reveal a large sculpture perched on the steps of its northernly facing entrance, as captured below by none other than the great J.G. “Foetus” Thirlwell (I respectfully swiped it from his Istagram, … and I have to say that I love the notion of Foetus walking around my neighborhood taking pictures).

It’s looking like the wrapping might come off of this sculpture any day now.

But when it does, I cannot help but think that the mammoth sculpture underneath will probably become an absolute magnet for graffiti before its first week is even done. Don’t get me wrong – I’m a huge fan of street art (and am churlishly known to have stuck up more than a few stickers in my day), but I fear the worst for this mighty steed. Shouldn’t they move him inside? Is it too late for that? Shouldn't they have considered that? 

We’ll see.

Re-Exhuming ...If I Die, I Die by the Virgin Prunes

I noticed, quite recently, that this coming November will be the 40th anniversary of the release of the first “proper” album, ...If I Die, I Die, by the Virgin Prunes, a willfully difficult-to-categorize Irish band who emerged in tandem with the markedly-less-complicated U2, back in the very late `70s. I believe I first wrote about my adoration for this album back in the neonatal stages of this blog (which I shan't link to, being that it's a phase of this endeavor which I'm still embarrassed by), which I’m cleaning-up and repurposing here….

I didn't find out about the Virgin Prunes from my usual channels. It was the summer of 1986. I was working thanklessly as a dish-washer at a crappy "gourmet eatery" out in Westhampton on Long Island, scraping burnt croissant crusts off of baking sheets and basically being a surly bastard. Most of the kitchen was a bright, airy place...apart from the dish-washing area, where myself and a couple of other lackeys wallowed in damp, airless squalor, listening to `round-the-clock airings of Black Flag and Iron Maiden (after we'd disconnected the restaurant speaker which force-fed the rear of the kitchen tireless lashings of Sade, Swing Out Sister and the soundtrack to "Annie," as discussed here). It didn't pay especially well, but it was a job.

Every summer, legions of Irish kids would seemingly flock from Dublin to Long Island to snatch up waitressing and au pair jobs, and this particular establishment quickly became a hotbed of plucky lasses with adorable accents. One such young lady was a baking server named Fiona, who lived in a suburb of Dublin called Lucan. In relatively short order, Fiona and I became friendly (and I, in turn, soon developed a bit of a crush on her...to absolutely no effect or great avail whatsoever). In any case, she kept going on and on all the time about this gent back home named Guggi who she completely fancied (even though she allegedly already had a boyfriend who played in an excellently named band called Those Handsome Devils). Guggi was this chap who evidently sang in a band called the Virgin Prunes. Unimpressed, I sniffed that I'd never heard of them. And being that Fiona was otherwise obsessed with Lloyd Cole & the Commotions, I didn't imagine they were, as they say, "much cop."

So, I'm trolling around my usual network of downtown record stores during one of my weekly trips into the city (where my other job as an apprentice to a graphic designer kept me running all around town delivering mock-ups to ungrateful cosmetic companies) and I happened to spy an album cover emblazoned with the name Virgin Prunes. But....what's this? THEY LOOK LIKE SCARY, PUNKY, SCREWED-UP, CROSS-DRESSING PYROMANIACS!!! HOW COULD THIS BE ANYTHING BUT COMPLETELY BRILLIANT!!!! Clearly, no drab, mawkish Lloyd Cole-isms were going to be found here. Fiona's stock instantly rose a few more degrees, and I snatched up a copy of ...If I Die, I Die (great title, too!) on the spot!.

Despite not being able to get my head around what Fiona could possibly have seen in Guggi (himself of presumably indeterminate sexual preference), I was instantly intrigued by this mysterious band with the funny names, obscure language and pointed disdain for convention. Certainly a bit Bauhausesque, but Bauhaus never sounded this disheveled and possessed (except for maybe on "Stigmata Martyr"). As with many of what became my favorite albums of all time, this record literally has a sound that is completely all its own … or if there's another record out there like it, I sure as hell haven't heard it.

Meandering between creepy atmospherics and pounding caterwaul, ...If I Die, I Die is a primal, tribal, nightmarish YAWP of a record, and decidedly not right for every occasion (the album was met by a dependable chorus of "what the fuck is this shit?" by every college roommate I ever had). It's a lot to swallow in one sitting if you're not in the mood, but the single-y tracks (the positively jaunty "Baby Turns Blue" and the jagged "Pagan Love Song") alone are worth wading through the disquieting stuff. There are just some great moments here, from the ghoulish shanty of "Theme for Thought" (boasting the fiendish chorus of Die-d-Die-Die-Die-Die-d-d-d-Die as crooned by a drunken ensemble of evil Leprechauns) to the serpentine guitar stomp of "Caucasian Walk.”

Nothing ever ended up happening between myself and Fiona. She left at the end of the summer to go back to Lucan (and never wrote), but I still felt I got something great out of it. Subsequent `Prunes records didn't quite pack the punch of ...If I Die, I Die (though I later found a whole new appreciation for lead singer Gavin Friday's solo work).

Here in 2022, outside of the “Elder Goth” community (good lord, did I just use that term in earnest?), people here in the States mostly haven’t a clue who the Virgin Prunes were, apart from maybe invocations of their connections to U2. For the longest time, it’s almost as if the Virgin Prunes were this great little secret -– a rarified collective who made a handful of hard-to-find and equally hard-to-fathom records and then seemingly vanished. As mentioned on this post, when Gavin launched his solo career, I was immediately onboard, although by that time, he’d ditched the more theatrically confrontational aspects of his music in favor of a more refined, cabaret approach. There were a few posthumous compilations and import re-issues, here and there (I am not-at-all-ashamed to concede that I have bought If I Die, I Die… in various formats no fewer than four times, and still have all of them) and they even re-convened for an impromptu one off in 2009 (I missed it), but for all intents and purposes, all matters concerning the Virgin Prunes as a going concern were closed.

Or so I thought.

This past June, out of the proverbial (Baby Turns..) blue (sorry), my social media feeds were suddenly filled with sounds and images from the Virgin Prunes as part of a new campaign to advertise that unlikeliest of outcomes, that being that the entirety of the band’s brief-but-unwieldy five-album discography was suddenly available for streaming on a wide array of platforms. They launched a proper website, complete with news, video, a comparatively exhaustive bio of the band (so much for their once-beguilingly impenetrable anonymity) and the inevitable merch store (you can now, for example, procure yourself an official Virgin Prunes tote bag emblazoned with their frightwigged pates and thousand-yard stares). I was initially shocked to incredulity by the manufacturing of actual Virgin Prunes “action figures” until I realized they were just an unaffiliated artist’s novel one-off.

Having taken this unexpected step into the 21st Century (given that the original line-up had disbanded prior to the wider advent of the compact disc), will this dramatically change the fortunes of the Virgin Prunes? Will a new audience of attention-deficit-disordered teens now discover the harrowing charge of “Come to Daddy” or the disquieting list of “Heaven”? I kinda doubt it, but who knows? But if they start anywhere, they should start with ...If I Die, I Die.

Here, from that aforementioned website, is an compelling breakdown of how the album came together, as recounted by Gavin Friday himself.

Enjoy…

Back to Coney Island High

I’ve written long, lengthy, heartstring-plucking entries about both The Upper Crust (most recently here) and St Marks Place (find that here) before, so please avail yourselves to those weepy epistles if you are feeling so inclined. Suffice to say, both are gone, here in 2022.

Earlier this week, I found myself back on St. Marks Place for a reason I can no longer remember. Not unlike certain other byways such as, say, Ludlow Street on the Lower East Side, West 8th Street in Greenwich Village, 21st Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues and/or the westerly regions of Spring Street in SoHo, St Marks Place is a street I have very strong associations with. Like whole nations of other people, for me, this gateway to the East Village used to be a veritable bazaar of cool, bohemian insouciance. Of course, that sounds like a fanciful pastry full-o’-crap today, but it genuinely was this super-cool destination, peppered with so many concerns that exuded its overall punky aesthetic. It was the epicenter, for a long while, of pretty much everything I was looking for from a comparatively underground pop culture that wanted nothing to do what the jocks and the preps and the beautiful kids cared about way north of 14th Street, however ridiculously clichéd that may now sound.

Here in 2022, once again, that St. Marks Place is long, long gone. Between the demolition on its northwesterly corner (still slated to host a sun-blotting corporate tower of some variety) and the proliferation of shoddily assembled and poorly maintained dining sheds, St. Marks Place is in both literal and figurative disrepair. Obviously, this problem isn’t relegated solely to St. Marks (take a stroll south on Thompson Street, some morning, and you’ll encounter a similar situation that affronts the senses), but St. Marks now seems bereft of any of its former character and relative luster. With the possible exception of concerns like Search & Destroy and maybe Funkytown, there’s nothing left for the punks among you, here. All the record and disc shops like Sounds, Mondo Kims, Venus, Free Being and Rockit Scientist are all long, long gone. Ventures that once defined the strip like DoJo and the Grassroots Tavern are similarly missing in action. St. Marks Comics moved to Industry City in Brooklyn, and Trash & Vaudeville moved deeper into the East Village. So much of what made St. Marks Place cool … or even inviting, for me … is gone. It’s a graveyard.

While waiting to hear back from a mercurial vendor, this morning, I was killing time on YouTube and stumbled upon the video below of the Upper Crust in 1998, gracing the stage of Coney Island High, a storied-albeit-comparatively-short-lived live-music venue that used to be smack dab in the middle St. Marks between Third and Second Avenues. Formerly the site that hosted the GREENDOORNYC parties (as mentioned here), the site was acquired by local punk hero Jesse Malin (more about him here and here). I was actually at this show, but Coney Island High was a frequent stop of mine, at the time. Other bands I saw on that diminutive stage include The Damned, The Dickies, Barkmarket, The Dandy Warhols, The Prissteens, DGeneration, The Dictators and Firewater, to name a small few. It was an amazing space that was closed roughly a year after this was recorded by then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in his war on New York City nightlife … as if anyone needed another reason to hate that fuckin’ guy.

In any case, here’s a brief taste of what it was like…..enjoy.

At War with The Fitness Freaks: The Battle for Bond Street

Regular readers — again, if they exist — might remember a short series of entries I posted here back in 2016 wherein I attempted to divine the exact location of a short lived basement-level live-music venue called Downtown circa 1989. I remembered it as a place on Bond Street in NoHo that my beloved Killing Joke had been slated to play (going so far as having their name cited on a notice board outside its entrance). The venture actually closed before that show could take place. Other folks remembered it as place they’d seen local bands like White Zombie, the Lunachicks and the Cycle Sluts from Hell along with bigger names like Celtic Frost, Clan of Xymox, Cronos from Venom and Gang Green.

Honestly, I don’t think I ever found out much more about the place beyond pinpointing its location as the spot I’d remembered from that aborted Killing Joke gig. It was mere steps to the east of Broadway at Bond Street. here I am in front of it circa 2016.

It seems in the years since its tenure as Downtown — however fleeting that was — the space at 1 Bond Street has undergone a series of transformations, its days hosting loud rock n’ roll now but a romantic, sepia-toned notion for silver-scalped rock dads like myself. These days, it caters to a very different demographic.

As lamented here, in recent years, pretty much the entirety of the surrounding so-called “NoHo” neighborhood has become a de-facto “fitness corridor,” peppered with places like boxing-gym Rumble, David Barton, Soul Cycle, Equinox, Barry’s Boot Camp and a wide host of other workout-centric endeavors. I don’t necessarily decry the concept of physical fitness, I just don’t quite understand the necessity of such a high-volume concentration of said businesses in one single neighborhood.

True to this trend, the space at 1 Bond Street that had, once upon a time, been the rock club Downtown is now an adjunct space of a venture called Crossfit Union Square (who are technically located at the ominous location of 666 Broadway). From that lower-staircase, the clientele of same now regularly meet by the corner of Bond and Broadway, … and wait for their signal.

And when they get that signal — maybe it’s a starter’s pistol or a pertly chirped whistle or a gruff bark from a drill sergeant with a meaty neck — they run. And they run with a gravely humorless sense of determination around the circumference of the block.

The sprint sweatily and shirtlessly with rippling musculature towards Lafayette Street, at which point they turn like harried stags in flight of a hunter’s shotgun to the south and bound with breathy bravado down that stately avenue to the corner of Bleecker Street, where they turn west to lope like charging stallions back towards Broadway. Upon reaching that main artery, they course-correct like hoary steeds of glory to race north with steely focus. At Bond Street, they turn with great, dewy aplomb and complete their lap, glowing with an almost viscous radiance.

All to which I say, … “HEY, WE HAVE PARKS FOR THAT!”

I’m not sure if my handful of readers are at all familiar with the streets in question, but suffice it to say that the byways of Bond, Lafayette, Bleecker and Broadway can be handily described as “busy." Around that single block, highly trafficked businesses like Blick Art Materials, Bond No. 9, Showfields Department Store, Los Tacos No. 1, LeVain Bakery, Aape New York, Le Pain Quoditen, Wendy’s and a City MD (to name a few) all steadily operate. As such, the surrounding sidewalks are regularly teeming with foot traffic. In front of Los Tacos and LeVain alone, aspiring patrons literally line-up in anticipation of their turns. Navigating these stretches of crowded pavement even at a casual stroll can be demanding, lest you collide with an impatient muffin-consumer or taco enthusiast. Now, inject into this equation regular herds of fast-moving, self-absorbed, endorphin-addled fitness freaks and you have a roiling, organic obstacle course ready to detonate at any second.

Once again, I’m not saying anyone should necessarily refrain from working out or seeking to actualize their idealized visions of their healthiest, sexiest selves, but there’s a time and place for that shit, and the already pointedly crowded byways of lower Manhattan assuredly ain’t it.

Take it to the parks, people.

Where Strode the Warriors?

Over on Facebook, my friend and fellow NYHC acolyte Lou posted a shot from a deleted scene from "The Warriors." Lou writes

A scene that never made it into the movie or as a deleted scene. The Warriors walking through The Savage Huns territory. It was filmed in an alley in Soho.

Here's that photo now....

Now, I like to think I'm fairly familiar with the topography of lower Manhattan, at this point, but I can't think of an alley in SoHo that matches this terrain. It's certainly not Cortlandt Alley off of Canal. 

I postulated that this might be St. John's Lane, an alley that extends between Laight Street and Beach Street at the mouth of Tribeca, just steps to the west of Sixth Avenue. There's been a lot of development since 1979, but here's that strip now...

\

What do we think? Weigh-in, Boppers. 

 

"BEST ARTIST" Rene Never Walked Away

I put up a fleeting post about Rene, the “I AM THE BEST ARTIST” muralist (among other things), some time ago after finding a short interview with him wherein he expounded on his hyperbolically self-aggrandizing declarations that were formerly visible on several facades around SoHo like the one above on West Broadway at Grand Street as captured by photographer Leo London. You can see that here.

Beyond those works, though, it should be noted that Rene also acquired a bit of infamy for some of his more provocative artwork, specifically a series of sculptures that featured detailed depictions of female genitalia in the center of a crucifix. Vintage cable-access porn afficianodos may remember a clip on late-night Channel J’s programming of “Midnight Blue” wherein a cigar-chomping Al Goldstein -– dressed up as Jesus, of course -– gets thrown out of St. Patrick’s Cathedral with one Rene’s aforementioned sculptures on his back. I promise you I’m not making that up.

For whatever reason, I somehow assumed that Rene had shuffled off this mortal coil. I’m happy to report, however, that I was mistaken in my assumption, and that “THE BEST ARTIST” is alive, well and still with us. If you’ve got a half-hour to spare, please avail yourselves to this video wherein the man himself showcases his work around SoHo back in the day, and expounds on the meanings behind the messages.

No Way Back to The Bowery

To this day, toss the word “Bowery” into a conversation with your fellow New Yorkers, and certain indelible associations will invariably spring right up. Some folks will immediately cite “bums” and derelict flophouses. Others might take a higher road and mention myriad retail light-fixture and kitchenware outlets. For myself and several like me, the first and foremost touchstone is, of course, Punk Rock, what with the Bowery formerly playing host to late, lamented CBGB, the veritable epicenter of everything that genre/subculture/movement exemplified (sorry, England). When I hear “Bowery,” that remains the first thing that comes to mind, and probably always will.

There are entirely too many seminal images to pair with this particular association, from early snaps by Roberta Bayley and David Godlis of characters like Richard Hell and the Ramones to iconic photographs of the legions of kids from the hardcore matinee days, many of those taken by photogs like Brooke Smith and Drew Carolan. For me, one of my favorites has always been the shot above by Godlis from 1978. Captured one atmospheric night long after hours, this “No Wave” all-stars team photo features iconoclastic scene-makers and band members like James Chance, Jim Sclavunos, Anya Philips, filmmaker Diego Cortez and others leaning louchely against a car outside of CBGB, whilst the incomparable enfant terrible of that scene, one Miss Lydia Lunch, is perched on the vehicle’s roof. Behind them, the forbidding expanses of Bleecker Street, Bond Street and The Bowery play host to roaming cars with impossibly bright headlights that split the night. The whole photograph just exudes such an aura of impossibly sneery cool -– insouciant punks laying claim to a desolate backwater to make their own brand of noise.

Well, that fanciful depiction was further decimated for me today upon reading, via my comrade EV Grieve, that a brand-spankin’ new J.Crew is opening up a 316 Bowery.