Up until fairly recently, I had relatively no concept of when I might receive the vaccination. When eligibility was opened up, a couple of weeks back, for those of us 50 and older, I was neck-deep in a looming work project, and figured I’d take care of it immediately afterwards. During that time, my wife got her first shot via Walgreens. Things were looking up.
The work project that was embroiling all five of my senses came and went, and was mercifully a huge success, but like heads of the Hydra, when you successfully cut off one, two grow in its place. Regardless, I dutifully hopped on New York State’s “Am I Eligible?” appointment-scheduling site. This should be relatively simple, I thought.
If you spent your childhood playing video games that required quick hand-eye coordination, those hours of inane time-wasting may have actually trained you well for this particular task. After answering a series of banal questions and filling in a few stats (and proving you are not a robot via your ability to distinguish traffic lights from fire hydrants), you are suddenly off to the races. When the right date pops up – and, really, at this stage, any date is the right date – you have to click two successive boxes with the stealth of a famished cheetah if you expect to score a slot. You can arguably game the system by refreshing the screen at key moments, but more often than not, you’ll be deposited back at the starting point, needing once again to demonstrate that you are STILL NOT A FUCKING ROBOT because you can recognize a crosswalk or a palm tree when you see one.
After several unsuccessful hours of this, I did manage to secure an appointment … only it wasn’t until late May. I was indeed relieved to have that on the books, but didn’t really want to put if off that far, if I didn’t have to. As such, I kept trying for a sooner appointment.
The secret to same, I found, was to drink a huge, honkin’ gallon of weapons-grade coffee, limber up my digits and hop on that website during less-harried hours. I went only at 6:00 AM and landed a new slot in no time. I went ahead and cancelled my May appointment and was ready to go.
Go time for shot #1 – Pfizer – was yesterday afternoon. Having collected all the necessary forms and credentials, I ambled my way up to the Javits Center.
Never a big fan of this particular neighborhood, I have not been up to the way, west Thirties probably since 2015, when I conducted a frankly ludicrous search for a loading dock the fuckin’ Strokes once posed in for a photograph (suffice to say, I had a LOT of free time, at the time). I have no interest in the re-imagined Hudson Yards and, until yesterday, had never laid eyes on the Vessel – to which I say, big whoop. Being that I got to my destination too early (this always happens), I walked around the `hood, trying to reconcile it as the same plot of real estate I’d combed looking for the location of that photograph. It is nigh on unrecognizable.
The Javits Center, however, is still pretty hard to miss. Despite still being about fifteen minutes early, I went on in and started the process.
I’m not exactly sure what I’d been expecting, but it was all remarkably well-organized, and the line moved very swiftly. After an initial stop at one desk for verification, you are directed further down a succession of roped-off lines – as if boarding a plane or a ride at Disneyworld – until a National Guard officer directs you to a station. One gent from behind me scooted in front of both myself and a couple ahead of me, which seemed a bit needless, but he was visibly nervous about the whole endeavor.
After you sit down, you re-verify certain bits of info, get swabbed up and then in it goes. Having watched endless b-roll on nighttime news programs, I was half-expecting an agonizingly slow insertion of a big fuckoff needle, but it was honestly over before I knew what hit me, not unlike a flu shot.
After that, I was ushered over to area filled with folding chairs to wait for a 15-30 minute spell in case I developed some sort of adverse reaction. Mercifully, that didn’t happen, and I was let go to get on with my life until I return three weeks from yesterday for my second shot.
If I can manage to get this done, so can you. Go do it.
The first time I ever set foot in the Brooks Brothers flagship store on Madison Avenue and 44th Street, I was invariably with my mother. As an Upper East Side brat attending a private elementary school of the sort that required the wearing of blue blazers, I was invariably there being fitted for same. Just a stone’s throw from Grand Central Station, Brooks Brothers was this hallowed Manhattan institution, frequented by monied captains of industry, and practically the Kaaba of all things “Preppy.” The store, just like the clothes it sold, exuded an unmistakable air of exclusivity, prestige and privilege. Seemingly erected on that corner not long after the settlement of the New World, Brooks Brothers was an iconic brand that became synonymous with old New York, almost as hallowed a place of worship as St. Patrick’s Cathedral just a few blocks away. As such, when I was a child, whenever I was taken there, I felt self-conscious, awed, undeserving and underdressed.
By the time I made it into my teens, I’d become not so enamored of the place, its pricey duds and the associations that were inexorably entwined with them. While Brooks Brothers clothes were impeccably well made, I largely wanted no part of that image or the mindset that espoused it. As both a cathedral of aspirational wealth and the uniform of the avaricious, Brooks Brothers started to represent everything I wanted to renounce. Somewhat ironically, there was a Madison Avenue record shop I’ve invoked here a few times that I regularly patronized in the early 80’s that was only a couple of doors up from Brooks Brothers. I was a thousand times more likely to be found blowing my dubiously earned allowance on LPs by The Clash and The Plasmatics there than ridiculously expensive neckties at Brooks Brothers just down the block.
But once an Upper East Side kid, always an Upper East Side kid, I guess. While my sartorial inclinations skewed largely towards all things black, augmented by band t-shirts and Chuck Taylors, there has always been a stubborn streak of inherent prepdom to my wardrobe. A former brother-in-law once described my style as one foot in CBGB and the other in Brooks Brothers. I think I resented him for it, at the time, but he pretty much summed it up.
In time, I gradually had a come-to-Jesus moment and reconciled my issues with Brooks Brothers, disregarding any remaining feelings of guilt or disdain upon treating myself to a snazzy jacket there in later life (it helped that, over the years, Brooks Brothers had branched out from its stodgier origins). My mindset, by this point, was that the clothes don’t make the man, they just help him look a little more presentable. Never was this more confirmed for me, however, than in July 2005.
It was a brutally hot day, and I was walking through midtown with my wife Peggy and then-baby-daughter Charlotte. Everyone was getting a little cranky from the heat until Peggy remembered she was carrying a Brooks Brother gift card and rightly assumed the nearby flagship store would be sumptuously air-conditioned. As such, we repaired to the palatial interiors of same to cool off and browse.
While pushing Charlotte’s umbrella stroller around tables draped with immaculate mandalas of pricey neckties, I heard Peggy remark behind me. “Check out that guy in the cowboy hat.” I glanced over and saw a tall gentleman with arms outstretched, presumably being fitted for what looked like a three-piece suit, and — indeed — sporting a jarringly incongruous, ten-gallon cowboy hat. I smirked, but then did a complete double-take.
The cowboy in question was Michael Gira, lead singer/primary mastermind behind SWANS.
So struck by the sight, I actually exclaimed, “Michael?” Through my friend Tod from Cop Shoot Cop, I’d actually met Michael Gira some years earlier, not that I was expecting him to remember me. He looked up and I just told him I was a big fan of his music. He smiled and told me I had a lovely family and got back to being fitted for his suit.
Peggy looked confused. I explained who the nattily-dressed and convivial cowboy was, taking pains to point out that he was the same man who wrote and recorded such zingy chestnuts as “Mother, My Body Disgusts Me” and “Raping a Slave,” which made Peggy look even more confused.
For me, though, the striking thing was that for Michael Gira, there is truly no more abjectly derisive and palpably base word than “consumer,” and yet here he was in the very plush, velvety lap of consumer culture. Now, maybe this was all a middle-finger to the face of that which he so abhors, but it certainly looked to me like he was enjoying himself and indulging. I don’t assume I’ll ever know the whole picture, there.
In any case, that episode totally absolved Brooks Brothers of much of its haughty intimidation for me. At the very least, it decimated any fleeting concerns about Brooks Brothers not being “punk” enough, or whatever.
The last time I went to Brooks Brothers, I went in looking for a Navy Pea Coat for my son. True to form, I found a nice one for Oliver that was a significant step up from the clunky one we’d gotten him at the Gap a year or two earlier and he went on to cherish it.
Today, the wife and I were back in midtown running an errand and found ourselves walking down Madison Avenue. We’d heard that Brooks Brothers was in trouble, but were still taken aback when, upon reaching that iconic corner of East 44th Street, we looked in and saw the flagship store closed, empty and gutted.
Preoccupied with geographical trivia, my 15-year-old son recently hit me with a “did you know?” that prompted a longer debate, that being that there is allegedly a shipwreck dating back to the 1600s embedded in the earth below Manhattan. I scoffed and asked where he heard that, and he dutifully texted me the video below. Now, I have zero idea who “Cheddar" are, but I’m usually a little skeptical about these sorts of endeavors. But, I sat down and watched and it seems genuinely pretty well researched, for whatever that’s worth. Sure, the shipwreck thing is pretty goddamn novel, but there was another fleeting allusion buried (sorry) here that really caught my interest.
As you’ll hear around the 2:42 mark, the young Cheddarette says that there was a “small, boarded up room” with its walls and ceiling “covered in mirrors” discovered about six feet below the intersection of The Bowery and Canal Street. She doesn’t say when this mysterious chamber was discovered — or any other details, for that matter — only that “no explanation has ever been found.”
I immediately hit Google and started searching for more info, but only came up with a Reddit board discussing the very same video. No one else, that I could uncover, ever mentions the strange discovery.
Incidentally, that’s not me in the mysterious room of mirrors. That’s me in the elevator of my dentist’s office in midtown, but I though it fit the bill.
But WHY would there a roomful of mirrors below Bowery & Canal? Who built it? For what purpose? Is it still there? Was it re-sealed up?
This month, my kids Charlotte and Oliver turn 17 and 15, respectively.
Even typing that sentence feels entirely unreal. To me, it was like yesterday that I could pick them both up at once with only a modicum of effort. Were I to attempt that now, it would mean a swift trip to the chiropractor.
But, y’know, as I mentioned way back in 2013, as time went on, I felt less comfortable subjecting them to my weird little whims. They were no longer my models. Now, I can pretty much forget about asking them to strike a pose in front of some arguably significant address that Joey Ramone once slouched in front of, lest I get a lot of eye-rolling and pushback. Charlotte absolutely demands the right to vet any photo I take of her, let alone post. Oliver isn’t quite as bothered, but he still wants to see pictures before they go live, so to speak. Fair enough, but the spontaneity and, sadly, the fun has been largely syhphoned out of it.
My kids have their own lives and their own identities, and while I remain their father, they’re certainly entitled to their privacy. As such, don’t expect another “stop shot” from them any time soon.
It’s been a very tough year for the younger generation, when ya think about it. Both kids have been pretty stoic through it all and have just gotten on with it, but my wife and I feel like apologizing to them every day for missing out on what would otherwise have been pivotal eras for them. They’re both doing exceptionally well in school, and we could not be prouder of them, but these were not the high school experiences they were promised.
Very soon, we start looking at colleges for Charlotte, the prospect of which is too emotionally engulfing for me to even begin to process. And no-longer-little Oliver will follow close behind her in that trajectory.
At that point, I lost the ability to fathom how life will be.
Despite, as mentioned in my last update, finding a large swathe of my first run of stickers missing, pulled down, scratched off and/or, in a couple of amusing instances, profanely defaced, I decided to keep at it. I decided to switch up the design a little — inconsequentially — and continued to furtively smack them up around town. I should re-assert, as this stage, that this is a completely silly waste of time, but I’ve cultivated a taste for it, and fun is in short supply these days, so indulge me.
As before, some managed to stick around (pardon the pun) longer, this time, based on some further best practices gleaned from previous trial and error. Others, meanwhile, continued to vanish from specific spots only a day or so after first being affixed. Why certain points on the map of Manhattan are more diligently preferred (and summarily policed) by the sticker community remains something of a mystery, but that only enhances the challenge. If I could manage to keep my stickers up on certain key streets, …. it was like I won.
This all said, as Blood, Sweat & Tears once so sagely sang, “what goes up, must come down.” It is simply sheer luck — if that’s even the right word — if any of my stupid stickers will stay put for the conceivable future. It’s ultimately a pointless endeavor.
Then the election happened, swiftly followed by all the political drama drummed up by the losing side, culminating with the shameful events of January 6. I probably don’t need to re-hash any of that.
But back on the mean streets of Manhattan, there was suddenly an uptick .. even here in the allegedly liberal bubble of New York City … of propaganda for “The Big Lie.” All around Greenwich Village, I started spying little yellow stickers emblazoned with the laughably farcical legend, “TRUMP WON.” Suddenly, my stickers took on a new purpose, as I demonstrated here.
As such, more recently, if you spot one of my dumb stickers out there, there’s a greater than likely chance that underneath it, there’s a “TRUMP WON” sticker being denied its mission of misinformation. I also started covering up the unspeakable one’s face whenever I encountered it.
In any case, the only reason I’m bringing any of this otherwise juvenile, ill-considered and embarrassing bullshit up now is because I’m now somewhat conditioned to studying the topography of NYC streets as I walk them. I mean, I already was, but my eyes are now trained to seek out stickers — both my own and the work of others — when traversing pavement. I can spy a sticker of mine from practically a block away, at this point. I’m also looking and learning how my peers and competitors are fairing at the same game, constantly trying to unspool the riddle of why some stickers stay put and some vanish instantly.
On Friday, meanwhile, I was returning home from a quick visit to my office down at the bottom of TriBeCa, and was strolling north of Crosby Street (this was the same trek that prompted this post). About a block after I paused at 40 Crosby, I was struck by another sticker that I almost completely missed.
Stuck to a yellow no-parking pylon of some kind was a sticker that, at first glance, looked like the old Canal Jeans Co. logo against a checkerboard field. Canal Jeans used to give away basketfuls of pins with that same design that were invariably later sported on the lapels of every hip kid worth their salt. I still have mine in a mason jar in my closet.
Closer scrutiny, however, revealed different words...
I immediately assumed that this was the handiwork of my fellow NYC blogger, Yukie Ohta of the SoHo Memory Project, who I’ve mentioned many times here (notably here, here and here). I loved the idea of Yukie similarly branching out on the sticker front, especially with a design that spoke so directly to the heart of her whole concept (Canal Jeans was verily a SoHo institution, which you can learn more about here). I also dug the notion of Yukie doing it as, much like myself, she’s otherwise a respectable parent.
I shot Yukie a note, but — it turns out — this was not her doing, which begs further questions which will doubtlessly continue to distract me as I continue to wander these city streets, sticking things on the sides of other things.
For as long back as I can currently remember, there’s been a strange little doorway at 40 Crosby Street that has been an enigmatic magnet for all stripes of street art. Regularly camouflaged by stickers, flyers, graffiti, posters and scribbles, it is a different visual experience every time I walk by it. And when I do, I frequently take a picture for posterity. This week, on my way back from a quick trip to my office, I walked by it, and its dazzling colors stopped me dead in my tracks. Here it is.
So impressed with the image (not that I had anything to do with — I just raised my camera), I posted it on social media and comments immediately came in its wake. More than a couple of people assumed it was CBGB. A third friend suggested it might be the former site of The Magic Shop, the recording studio where icons like Lou Reed and David Bowie recorded. As it turns out, that site (now permanently closed) is on the same strip, but across the street. I still have no idea what goes on behind that door and why the exterior looks the way it does.
About 12 or 13 years back, a compatriot of mine named Tim B., who used to host his own excellent blog, Stupefaction, launched a collective blog called The New York Nobody Sings, which was ostensibly designed as place where the merits of less celebrated songs about New York City could be floridly extolled. Myself and a clutch of other likely suspects regularly contributed to the project until, one day, Tim decided it was time to close up shop. In short order, The New York Nobody Sings stopped singing and vanished from the web. Or so I thought.
As it turns out, just because a website is dismantled, that doesn’t mean there aren't still shadowy vestiges of it still out there. While foraging for content for the officially unofficial Cop Shoot Cop Facebook page (which I run), I stumbled upon the excellent Internet Archive Wayback Machine, a handy little site that does pretty much just what you expect from it. If you have the original URL of the site you’re searching for, you just plug it in and — if the fates are smiling — that lost, inaccessible website wakes from the proverbial dead, more or less.
As such, I dialed up The New York Nobody Sings and was able to exhume a few of the pieces I’d written for it way back when. Many of them are floridly overwritten, but what were you expecting? I've tried to spruce them up with some of my photographs. If possible…. enjoy.
PIE IN THE FACE
I first heard of The Pop-O-Pies in the summer of 1984 during a bike trip through Massachusetts, staying at a succession of slug-laden camp sites and dreary youth hostels. One of the guides was this hirsute stoner named Mike who, upon learning that I was a big fan of hardcore bands like MDC and the Circle Jerks, asked if I'd ever heard of this strange San Francisco punk band renowned for doing idiotic cover versions of the Grateful Dead's "Truckin'." This being an era long before the dawn of the iPod, Mike proceeded to regale me with warbling a cappella renditions of Pop-O-Pies songs like "The Catholics Are Attacking" and "Fascists Eat Donuts." Suffice to say, my curiosity was piqued.
When I got back to the city, I immediately set out to find the Pop-O-Pies on vinyl. In very short order, I tracked down a copy of their 1983 debut, The White EP (featuring the above songs as well as two needless versions of "Truckin'") at long-since-departed 99 Records on MacDougal Street. Not so much a proper band as a loose collective of musicians rotating around one Joe "Pie" Callahan, the Pop-O-Pies fleetingly counted future members of Faith No More, Mr. Bungle and Dead Kennedys in their ranks. Later that same year, The Pop-O-Pies' second slab of vinyl, Joe's Second Record was released on San Francisco hardcore label, Subterranean Records. Along with yet another rendition of "Truckin'" and some truly dubious forays into rap, Joe included a quick little ditty called "I Love New York," sort of San Francisco's answer to The Randoms' "Let's Get Rid of New York."Though the Pop-O-Pies were Bay Area to the bone, the song's lyrical insights totally captured the New York experience. Here they are in full:
You work your ass off around the clock just to pay for a place to live. You think you might have a real good time if you had some time to give.
The people treat you ugly and they act like royal snot. They think it's chic to be a geek, and get taken for everything they've got.
New York, New York, New York.
I pay extra for those piss-stench halls, $10 for a six of Bud. Blow a hundred at CBGBs, just to check out the local crud.
I hate those hipster idiots that cop junk in the heroin parks. And all those idle wealthy brats that hang out on St. Marks.
New York, New York, New York.
OK, I'm a hard core punk from NYU and I can tell first hand about the poor, politically oppressed, working-class peoples of the world. 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4.
Lost landmarks like CBGBs notwithstanding, I'd say the sentiments expressed herein still ring true today. Incidentally, you can find out more about the history of the mighty Pop-O-Pies on their official website.
I WILL WAIT, … EVEN IF IT TAKES A LIFETIME
Personally speaking, I never considered The Bee Gees the enemy. Oh sure, growing up as a nascent rock head in my tween years during the late 70s, I'd been dutifully conditioned by my chosen subculture to hate all things disco (despite the fact that my then-favorite bands in KISS, Queen & Pink Floyd would all cut their own disco-informed singles shortly thereafter), but I also lived in a household with an older sister. Oblivious to the narrow mores and thinly-veiled prejudices of strident rock fandom, my sister had more than her fair share of disco records, most notably the oeuvre of Donna Summer, the fabled soundtrack to "Saturday Night Fever" and several records by the brothers Gibb -- all of which she'd play regularly. I never considered that stuff a threat of any kind. My folks even had an eight-track of one of the `Gees' early, pre-disco albums, that being Idea (the cover of which used to freak me out). So while much of the the rest of the world may have reviled them, I always kinda dug the Bee Gees. It wasn't until the early 90s, however, that I realized that they were prophets.
Let's rewind a bit. In the Summer of 1992, I made the ill-considered decision to involve myself in an office romance. I was working at a glossy monthly magazine at the time -- I was in editorial, she worked in production -- what could go wrong? For a fleeting few, sweet weeks, life was good. The girl -- let's call her Faith -- rented a somewhat squalid apartment over on Upper Broadway, a neighborhood I wasn't at all familiar with. As such, Faith and I spent many a balmy, beatific summer evening strolling up and down those streets, holding hands and gazing moonily into each other's eyes. It was, of course, way too good to last.
In exceptionally short order, Faith decided that it would be a good idea for us to go back to being "friends." Needless to say, I wasn't exactly chuffed with this idea, but what choice did I have? I played nice for a while, secretly crushed that our status had changed so dramatically, but it became increasingly more difficult with each passing month. Having to work together didn't make matters any easier. During my downtime, I found myself taking entirely needless bike rides over to the Upper West Side. My friends were getting concerned. Things reached a fever pitch at the magazine's Christmas party (great choice for a confrontation, eh?) when I dramatically exclaimed my dissatisfaction with the arrangement. It did not go at all well.
Life got quite grim after that. Going to work was a heartbreaking chore. I spent most of my time sulking, listening to Nine Inch Nails' then-recently released Broken e.p. (a fitting cocktail of spite) and wallowing in self-pity. My friends tried to shake me out of it, but it was little use. I was committed to fixing what now seemed hopelessly beyond repair. When I saw Faith at the office, it was dreadful and awkward. On a good day she was passively polite. On a bad day, she was rude bordering on hostile. Still, I was hopelessly committed to putting it back to the way it was.
My friend Rob reached the end of his tether. He and some of my other comrades grabbed me by the lapels and dragged me out one evening to try to knock some sense into me. Over a meal at a cheap-o Chinese restaurant (also on Broadway) during a snowy January evening, my pals read me the riot act, trying to shock some sense into my love-clouded mind. Repairing to a nearby dive bar on Broadway, my boys crowded around me, berating my futile, torch-carrying tendencies as I pumped coins into the jukebox. I still wasn't listening. All I wanted was to get this girl back. Nothing else mattered.
Poetically, "Nights on Broadway" by the Bee Gees -- from their 1975 album, Main Course -- came trilling out of the jukebox. Sure, it's a classic, but when was the last time you really sat down and listened to it? After that rockin', piano-charged intro that sounds like the theme song to a 70's cop show, Barry Gibb and his brothers launched into an uncharacteristically dark narrative that hit me in a whole new way. If you excise that funky bass, those mellifluous harmonies, Robin Gibb's angelic falsetto and those treacly pianos in the middle-eight, what you're essentially left with is the creepy manifesto of the jilted stalker.
Let's review, shall we?
Here we are In a room full of strangers Standing in the dark where your eyes couldn't see me
Well I had to follow you Though you did not want me to That won't stop my loving you I can't stay away
Blamin' it all on the nights on Broadway Singin' them love songs Singin' them straight to the heart songs Blamin' it all on the nights on Broadway Singing them sweet sounds To that crazy, crazy town
Now in my place There are so many others Standing in the line; How long will they stand between us?
Well I had to follow you Though you did not want me to That won't stop my loving you I can't stay away
Blamin' it all on the nights on Broadway Singin' them love songs Singin' them straight to the heart songs Blamin' it all on the nights on Broadway Singing them sweet sounds To that crazy, crazy town
I will wait Even if it takes forever I will wait Even if it takes a life time Somehow I feel inside You never ever left my side Make it like it was before Even if it takes a life time, takes a life time
Blamin' it all on the nights on Broadway Singin' them love songs Singin' them straight to the heart songs Blamin' it all on the nights on Broadway Singing them sweet sounds To that crazy, crazy town
In all his grimacey days, Trent Reznor could never come up with anything as desperate and disturbing as that stuff. It seemed to come right out of the pages of John Hinkley's diary, replete with a disquieting patina of denial on the part of the high-piped protagonist. Whose fault is it? Why, it's those crazy New York City nights' fault, of course. Even more creepy, it seemed that the Bee Gees were singing my own sordid story right back to me in worryingly vivid detail. I stood at the jukebox, staring incredulously into the machine while my friends assumed comedy Travolta poses behind me. It was, as they say, a moment of clarity.
It was obviously a good deal more complicated than this, but I do feel I owe some credit to the Bee Gees in shocking me out of my self-destructive stupor of unrequited love. I moved on. Faith moved on and eventually away. We saw each other again a few years later, and I wondered how I'd ever gotten to that crazy point to begin with. Time healed the wounds. But I still don't think I could have gotten there myself had it not been for the Bee Gees.
Crank it.
HANGIN' OUT DOWN IN THE CITY
In recent weeks, we lost one of New York City’s most beloved bohemians, Jim Carroll. While Carroll is remembered as a renaissance man of effortless cool, he first found fame documenting his life as a delinquent druggie teen (albeit an eloquent one) in “The Basketball Diaries,” a watershed effort that acted as a catalyst for later exploits in poetry, art and music. Beyond its placement in the pantheon of New York City cool for its hip cache, it should also be required reading for its gritty depiction of hopeless teenage degeneracy. Carroll willfully lived through hard times, and captured them vividly.
But Jim Carroll wasn’t the only bad-boy-made-good from New York City’s mean streets. Though his vocation took him off in an entirely different direction, flamboyant KISS guitarist Ace Frehley walked a very similar line. Born only a couple of years after Carroll, one wonders if they ever crossed paths on their respective, substance-assisted trajectories. Though Carroll was from Manhattan and Frehley hailed from the Bronx, might the Catholic Boy and the Space Ace and have encountered one another and compared notes?
In any case, where Carroll exorcised the demons of his youth in print, Ace chose to put them into song via “Hard Times” on Kiss’ somewhat strenuously maligned 1979 album, Dynasty (notorious for the band’s universally-loathed “disco” single, “I Was Made For Loving You.”) Though it boasts one of the lamest, most laughable rhyme schemes in all recorded history, “Hard Times” does manage to paint a convincing portrait of aimless juvenile depravity of the sort still readily on display today. I believe Ace intended the song to be a cautionary tale, being that he asserts towards the tune’s crescendo that he’s finally “on the right track,” but the truth of the matter wasn’t quite so rosy. The notoriously booze-friendly guitar-slinger was ousted from Kiss’ ranks only a few short years after the release of Dynasty, following a 1982 car accident (I’ve heard that he drove his car through the plate-glass window of a Westchester liquor store in leafy Pleasantville, but that might be purely conjecture.) But in 1979, Ace’s hard times were a distant memory.
GET UP, GET OUT…
Sure, there are plenty of Rolling Stones songs that cite New York City ("Honky Tonk Woman," "Harlem Shuffle," "Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo [Heartbreaker]," "Shattered" and, of course, "MIss You" spring immediately to mind), but, to my recollection, they've never cut a song that references such a specific New York address as they did on "Dance Pt. 1," the opening number off their transitional album from 1980, Emotional Rescue. Ten seconds into the somewhat strenuously funky track, Jagger starts lipping off to Keith, rhetorically postulating as to why they're "standing on the corner of West 8th Street and Sixth Avenue." Why indeed?
It's a fair question, I suppose, being that said main drag into the most traveled area of Greenwich Village hardly seems like the hippest stretch of real estate for the fabled Glimmer Twins to be loitering (although they were known to favor a block just across town a couple of years later). I'd imagine the explanation for the location is that portions of the Emotional Rescue album were recorded just up the street at Electric Lady studios. Still, I've always loved the image of Mick & Keith in full on flouncy rock fopp mode, striking any number of ridiculous outlaw poses in front of Gray's Papaya, wondering what to do with their evening.
The previous album, Some Girls, had found the Stones capably keeping up with the times, crafting soon-to-be classic rock radio staples like the afore-cited "Miss You" and "Shattered" that stylistically borrowed from the pulsing disco and raging punk rock of that era. Emotional Rescue, however, was lambasted as more of a forced effort, one that breathlessly strove to mimic the more organic sound of its predecessor. While not as maligned as later tepid endeavors like Dirty Work or the entirely needless A Bigger Bang, Emotional Rescue is rarely touted as a stand-out effort in the burly Stones catalog.
It's rare, but it happens. This is one of those times.
The album was released in June of 1980. At the time, I was thirteen years old and had been sequestered largely against my will to a camp in the verdant environs of Maine called Great Oaks. All of the kids at the camp were split up into a dozen cabins, each named after a state (I lived in "West Virginia," a cabin almost-immediately re-christened "West Vagina" for the purposes of tirelessly prurient juvenile comedy). Each cabin was commandeered by a counselor. My cabin's counselor was a Swedish twentysomething named Eric, who had long, shaggy blonde hair much like that of his more celebrated countryman, Bjorn Borg. Eric was also a Stones freak. While he tolerated the endless airings of Pink Floyd and Ramones tapes that we'd insist on playing, there were fewer things Eric enjoyed more than hearing the Stones. So when he got his hands on a cassette of Emotional Rescue during a field trip, it was pretty much solidified that we'd be listening to precious little else for the remainder of the summer (although Joe's Garage Act I was also a West Vagina favorite, if memory serves). By the end of the summer, I knew Emotional Rescue back to front. To this day, I still think it's an excellent album.
While "Dance Pt. 1" has never been my favorite song on the record (that honor goes to "Where The Boys Go"), I've always dug it. Not just for the shoutout to West 8th Street -- a strip I'd soon-after become a regular on thanks to its then-thriving (and now vanished) network of record stores -- but for its shameless espousal of grooving. While many would decry the band for trying to jump on some sort of disco-rock bandwagon, "Dance Pt. 1" (which was evidently recorded several times -- there are seemingly handfuls of alternate versions floating around out there) is a million times funkier -- and more legitimately danceable -- than similarly-inclined efforts by, say, KISS ("I Was Made for Loving You") or Pink Floyd ("Another Brick in The Wall Pt. II"). I'd suggest that Queen surpassed them in the credible funk department with "Another One Bites The Dust" (released the same year), but blame it on that bassline. And while gratuitously hedonistic, "Dance Pt. 1" still retains Keef's signature dirty guitar, sneerily reminding you at every turn that even when wearing their boogie trousers, the Stones still rocked harder than you.
Twenty-nine years (!!!!) later, Electric Lady still stands on a West 8th Street that is entirely unrecognizable from its 1980 incarnation. Without fail, though, I absolutely cannot cross that corner of 6th Avenue without the opening of "Dance Pt. 1" shimmying into my head. Get up, get out….
OH MY GRACE, I’VE GOT NO HIDING PLACE...
In 1979, I was in 7th grade at a private Catholic boys' school on the Upper East Side. My teacher was this individual I'll call Mr. B, a comparatively hip, young dude whose teaching methods were endearingly less conventional than those of his peers on the faculty. Mr. B's class was a very open environment where spirited discussion was encouraged. A lot of the stuffy formalities of the rest of the school were practically verboten. My fellow students and I were routinely prodded to express ourselves in ways that were unheard of in the rest of the school. If you've seen "Dead Poet's Society," that's a pretty fair representation of the type of atmosphere Mr. B sought to establish. It was a great experience, and we all learned a great deal.
One Friday afternoon, Mr. B had us put our desks into a circle all facing each other (we frequently did this). In the center of the circle Mr. B had a small record player. At the time, most of us were fans of predictable stuff like the Ramones, Black Sabbath, Kiss and the like. Pink Floyd had only just released The Wall, and it was, somewhat unsurprisingly, a huge hit with us, particularly the school-bashing "Another Brick In The Wall Pt. II." Mr. B, however, wanted to turn us onto a record from his relatively recent youth, namely Simon & Garfunkel's 1968 opus, Bookends. We collectively snorted with low expectation.
I had listened to some of my parents' Simon & Garfunkel albums, notably Bridge Over Troubled Water, and found them to be perfectly pleasant, but they didn't speak to my twelve-year-old imagination in the same way that, say, Destroyer by KISS did. In any case, Mr. B dropped the needle on side one and we dutifully listened up. After the few delicate, folky strains of the "Bookends Theme," this unexpected synthesizer blast knocked us back in our seats, followed by a propulsive, loping bass line. The song in question was titled "Save the Life of My Child," and it was uncharacteristically discordant and menacing. We were immediately captivated.
Simon & Garfunkel have written volumes of great New York City songs ("The Boxer," "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)" and, of course, "The Only Living Boy in New York" come to mind initially), but this was different. A dark, cynical narrative about teenage suicide seemingly ripped from the front page of a local tabloid, "Save The Life…" captured that same, strange taste of the city as similarly depicted in films like "The Taking of Pelham 123," "Marathon Man" and "Midnight Cowboy." A scary slice of life from a grim, cynical place. The cacophony and confusion of the song culminate with a teenage boy jumping off a ledge. "At the Zoo" this ain’t.
I went home that day and dug out my mom's copy of Bookends and have cherished it ever since.
MESMERIZED BY WHAT MY EYES HAVE SEEN
A little while back, my fellow contributor EV Grieve and I engaged in a little bloggy competition to see who could cite the most videos filmed in and around New York City. I'm quite surprised that neither of us cited the one I'm presenting below. That might have something to do with the fact that Natalie Merchant is largely frowned upon by tinnitus-addled, beer-swiggin' rockheads like ourselves. That said, I think this video -- and, more importantly, the song itself -- fits this project to a tee.
Sure, Natalie Merchant may be somewhat insufferably pious, but I have a soft spot for this track. I actually saw Natalie perform with 10,000 Maniacs circa the release of their breakout 1988 album, In My Tribe. I was a junior at Denison University outside of Columbus, Ohio and the band played at the Newport Music Hall on High Street (with a quiet, humble and unknown opening act who'd later go onto her own fame and fortune as Tracy Chapman). Immediately following the 10,000 Maniacs' opening number, Merchant informed the gathered throng that Columbus was a filthy city and that we should all be deeply ashamed of ourselves. This castigation prompted a hearty, beery cheer from the audience, much to Merchant's sniffy chagrin. Proceedings went downhill from there, but she still danced like a whirling dervish.
After she unceremoniously dumped the `Maniacs in the early `90s (invariably letting her less-celebrated band mates rediscover the myriad joys of their day jobs), Merchant carved out a comfortable little solo niche for herself, crafting pleasantly plaintive ballads for fans of chick lit, herbal tea and Merchant Ivory films. A good friend of mine acted as a technical assistant on one of her later video shoots and said Merchant spent much of the day berating the crew for smoking. Good times.
So, yeah, maybe Natalie Merchant is indefensibly twee and worthy of strenuous ridicule, but once again, I find "Carnival" to be a keeper, not least for Merchant's lilting vocals but also for its damn fine guitar parts. The song itself, of course, laments the "all that glitters is not gold" fallacy of the urban experience. I can only imagine the city she's so poetically decrying is our own. The video itself features some lovely, grainy, black n' white footage of midtown Manhattan, Chinatown, Tompkins Square Park and Coney Island. Enjoy.
A few years back, I happened on some photographs of stalwart proto-shoegazer band My Bloody Valentine taken in New York City around the time of their watershed 1991 album, Loveless. I was quasi-lucky enough to see them on that tour at the Ritz, on a high-decibel triple bill with Dinosaur Jr. and Superchunk that I am convinced took a palpable toll on my hearing. In any case, in one or two of the photos, the band were depicted standing with their backs against a mosaic pattern that was inarguably the work of Jim Power, an East Village fixture whose signature art adorns many corners of the neighborhood to this day. The thing that was so perplexing, however, was that the picture of MBV also featured these strange, mask-like faces that looked so incredibly familiar to me, but I could not place where they might be. In my downtime, I searched far and wide or a wall with those faces on it, but always came up empty.
Eventually, I gave up and lost the pics in question. Life went on.
Last week, someone invoked My Bloody Valentine in one online forum or another, and up popped that very picture again. Here it is now.
Again, those strange background faces jumped out at me. I knew I’d seen them before, but certainly not recently.
Eventually, I figured it out.
The mask-like faces are no longer on that façade, that being on the southern side of the street on St. Marks Place just steps to the west of Avenue A. At the time, that would have been the side of rock’n’roll bar Alcatraz. It would later turn into a sushi bar and is more recently a taco place called Empello al Pastor.
Like I said, the faces are gone (knocked off by a vandal or Jim Power collector fanboy?), but the rest of the mosaic is still intact. You can see the same side of the patterned dish to the left of guitarist Kevin Shield’s head right above my son Oliver’s head below.
Mystery solved.
For the uninitiated, this is My Bloody Valentine....
More about My Bloody Valentine on Flaming Pablum here….
Back in August of 2019, I started composing another long, detailed post about my years growing up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It was ostensibly meant as kind of a companion piece to a long post I’d penned about my encounters with some (very) small-time crime in that era. This post was going to concentrate on the significance of visiting Central Park during the less advisable hours of the evening, something myself and certain friends of mine used do with blithely idiotic frequency. I’m not sure why, but I believe I abandoned the post because so much of it was wrapped up with my memories of my friend Danny, who passed away in 2018, and reconciling certain stuff was just all a bit too much.
In a nutshell, though, in the process of unspooling those anecdotes about favorite, clandestine spots we used to frequent in the Park during off hours, I was going to underscore the obvious underlying message, that being that Central Park at night — then as now — is nothing to fuck with. The stories of my teenaged exploits in that capacity were not meant as nostalgic boasts so much as evidence of youthful ignorance. While it might sound cliched and/or even quaint, now, the nocturnal iteration of Central Park accrued a certain fearful reputation for damn good reason.
That said, most of my own indiscretions in this capacity usually occurred in strategic locations that were barely a few steps from the street. Apart from the few instances when my late friend Danny and I foolhardily opted to bike through Central Park in the pitch black of night, we were usually to be found in frantic sprinting distance from the relative safety of Fifth Avenue and points east. The deeper you walked into the Park at night, the greater your chances of finding trouble were.
In the ensuing decades since my high school days, there have been myriad instances of crime — from the banal to the unspeakable — that have gone down after dark in the Park. From the The Preppy Murder case in 1986 to the Central Park Jogger case in 1989 to the teenage stabbing case at the Lake in 1997 and countless other less notorious incidents, it has been a haven for foul play. Only a year ago was a man found hanging from a tree near the 74th Street entrance, and only this past September were bodies pulled out of both the Reservoir uptown and Swan Lake down at the southeastern end of the Park.
While inarguably one of the most tranquil and beautiful locations in all of Manhattan, the verdant splendor of Central Park should not lull you into thinking that horribly bad shit can’t happen to you there.
Earlier today, while brazenly wasting time on YouTube instead of working, I came across the video below, presented by a bright-eyed, freshly scrubbed gent named Brian from a channel called Perfect Little Planet. Shot in 2016, this video posits the question: “Is Central Park Safe at Night?”
Let’s watch, shall we?
Before we dive into the meat of this video, how astonishingly annoying is that bit featuring all the "Pokemon Go!” zombies? Jesus Christ!!!
Taking the perspective of the tireless running enthusiast, the video seeks to reassure late-night joggers that Central Park is indeed safe, if you use your head and stick to “well lit” and more populated areas, although one might think that would all go without saying. To be fair, though, just being “well lit” isn’t necessarily enough. There are certain portions of the Park he cites as well lit that are still comparatively remote and Hell and gone from an easily accessible exit back to the streets. And don’t forget — when you’re somewhere “well lit,” not only can you see things, … but you, too, can be seen. That isn’t always an advantage.
When Brian gets to the infamous 102nd Street Crossing — where the Central Park Jogger was attacked and dragged into a ravine in the nearby North Woods — he tidily glosses over the incident by merely alluding to it as “bad stuff.” This feels a bit disingenuous.
Personally speaking, I didn’t embark on a star-crossed running regimen until it was basically far too late, and my middle-aged knees quickly put a stop to all that. As such, I cannot fully empathize with Brian’s zest for running. More to the point, I have nothing against people running in the Park (better that than on the street), but were I asked to opine as to the best times to attempt it, I still wouldn’t recommend after dark. I can also fully appreciate marveling at stirring, vespertine views and empty straightaways as much as the next guy, but they might just come with a terrible price that you could otherwise wisely avoid.
But, Hell, I'm still no expert. I'm sure Brian's intentions are in the right place. But what about you? Do YOU think Central Park is safe at night?
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