Flaming Pablum

The Gathering Mourns: A Killing Joke Fan's Lament

Sorry, yes....it's another post about Killing Joke and the death of Geordie Walker. There might be a bit of this, for a while. 

When I learned that John Lennon had died, I’m not sure, but I want to say it was a Monday morning. I remember life coming to something of a standstill. I was in Eighth Grade, at the time, and don’t believe classes at school were cancelled, but I remember every teacher abandoning the script and addressing the event in some detail. I remember a heated debate being waged over whether “assassination” was the right term to apply, given that Lennon wasn’t a titled political leader. I remember thinking, then as now, that said debate was pointless. He was clearly a leader to many. I also remember watching footage of the vigil that went down outside of The Dakota and how a certain teacher of mine commented on how people seemed to burst into tears conveniently right when the cameras hit them.

That point struck me as pretty damn cynical even then, but the whole bursting-into-tears thing over the death of someone you'd never met always did seem a bit strange to me. That said, John Lennon’s music and message clearly touched innumerable lives (and continues to). I certainly don't remember crying, although it did strike me as an incredibly senseless, unnerving loss. In retrospect, though, it seems easier to believe. When you consider how vast Lennon's influence was and, once again, continues to be, it's easy to understand how some could be moved to absolute tears. Hell, about two decades later (well, 2002), I remember getting genuinely misty upon learning of Joe Strummer's death, and I'd certainly never met him.

But the loss of Geordie from Killing Joke took me entirely by surprise. As I’ve recounted here many times before, I was 17 years old when I first heard Killing Joke, and that first taste of their music instantly made them my favorite band, and I mean that very literally. Like, not just my favorite punk band, or my favorite band of the moment or whatever -- my first hearing of "Eighties" in my friend Spike's living room in the Spring of 1984, indelibly marked me as a Killing Joke acolyte for life. Every other music I’d ever experienced was immediately rendered lesser than this incredible sound. I literally ran out the door and across the street to a tiny shop on Cornelia Street in Greenwich Village called Subterranean Records and bought the 12" on the spot, and then feverishly combed NYC's then-thriving network of indie record shops, snapping up every bit of their music that I could put my hand to.

I have loads of "favorite" bands --- bands I'm slavishly devoted to (you may have noticed several posts here about, say, a little beat combo called Cop Shoot Cop), but none of them -- N O N E – have ever come close to Killing Joke. Their music speaks to me like no other, and I have been sworn to them for 39 years. It sounds presumptuous to say, but they have become a part of my very identity. To have lost such an integral component of that life-affirming element that has enriched my 56 years like nothing else is a genuine, palpable ache in the heart.

I cannot say that I truly knew Geordie. I met him -- and interviewed him, disastrously -- a few times, but in the dizzy scrum of post-gig euphoria, I was usually just another sweary, overserved rock pig in a Killing Joke t-shirt under a black leather jacket. Geordie probably had too many of that crowd in his orbit already. I never had the lucky opportunity with him that I've had being able to befriend and genuinely get to know his bandmates Big Paul Ferguson and Paul Raven (I've similarly met Jaz Coleman several times, but I doubt he has the foggiest clue who I am). As for Martin “Youth” Glover – and one mustn’t forget Martin Atkins,  I've interviewed both and spoken to them each quite a few times, and they are both incredibly affable, warm gents. While not technically in the band -- but as vital to the whole aesthetic of Killing Joke as its core members -- visual artist Mike Coles, whose iconic work graces the sleeves of most of Killing Joke’s most impactful work, is a gentleman I’m very proud to now call a friend.

As one of the devoted flock, I would be remiss not to also note that I have been blessed with a collective friendship with similarly inclined individuals in thrall to Killing Joke from literally all over the globe. There are “Gatherers” I can with confidence call genuine friends throughout the States, the UK, France, Germany, Australia and even Japan. I have been offered airport pick-ups and accommodations from certain members of the fold that I did precious little to deserve, and I would happily do so for them, should they ever require it.

The sound, imagery, ethos, mythos, lore, essence, and force that is Killing Joke has informed, enlivened and empowered me for literally every day since that day in the spring of 1984. To think that that's all over is almost too much for me to fathom. With that gone, the lattice-work holding the amazing community I was just invoking together could quite conceivably collapse. Not only can I not believe that I shall never watch the band conjure their alchemic brilliance onstage again, but I cannot believe I’ll never convene with all those like-minded souls again.

So, yes, tears have been on the menu, and that no longer strikes me as an odd or inappropriate overreaction. While many might dismiss it as silly fanaticism or a manifestation of a middle-life-crisis, music does matter. Maybe not to everyone. I’ve seen people weep openly about sporting events – something I’ll never comprehend, but I don’t condemn, dismiss, negate, or ridicule it. Sports, music, art, literature, cinema – these things do matter. It’s not solely entertainment. Killing Joke certainly wasn’t.

After a particularly fraught week involving the contentious fruition of a long-simmering project (it is now behind me, mercifully), I dialed up a playlist of Killing Joke standards I made for my son a few years ago as I walked home from the office, and I’ll be damned if right in the middle of Sixth Avenue in the harried crush of early-evening traffic that tears didn’t start streaming down my face. I am incredulous that this supernatural force that made the music that has enriched my life so much has been extinguished.

I’m going to feel quite sad about that for a long while.

Flaming Pablum en Piedra Rodante

I honestly really didn’t see this coming, but in the wake of last week’s naming ceremony and plaque-unveiling at the corner of Cortlandt Alley and Walker Street, I pretty much thought that was that. As a final coda on my part, I reached out to my friends over at the TriBeCa Citizen and pitched a short piece about it, being that it happened in their back yard. They posted that and it actually garnered a lot of negative comments, specifically ones questioning why Charly Garcia deserved such an honor when, say, Robert DeNiro doesn’t have his own street. Apparently, there’s a healthy degree of myopic xenophobia in TriBeca, but I digress….

In any case, once that story moved off the TriBeCa Citizen’s front page, after a week, I figured that saga was complete.

Well, imagine my surprise, then, to find that Rolling Stone en Espanol devoted its cover to the story, and further augmented their coverage with an ancillary piece that concentrates on how the location of the fabled corner was determined, as well as the crucial story behind the very name Clics Modernos, that being my friend and storied New York City punk rocker, the late Fran Powers of Ultra Violence, Whole Wide World, East of Eden, Box of Crayons and – oh yes, do please wait for it – Modern Clix.

Guess who gets mentioned in that story. I do, that’s who.

Being that I don’t speak a lick of Spanish, however, I’m pretty much relying on Google Translate to make head or tail of it. But you can read it here. 

Better Late Than Never: The New York Never List Strikes Back

Back in the sepia-toned days of 2015, when I was still “between jobs,” I killed off a large swathe of a long afternoon in a dismal coffee shop with free WiFi, banging out a post, inbetween firing off desperate emails to disinterested media outlets, about all the super-fabulous, quintessentially New York-y things I’d ever done. I closed with a stately list of equally celebrated NYC-things that I’d never actually done, despite being a lifelong native New Yorker. I called this post The New York Never List.

Four years later, I updated that list with another list of places and things conventionally considered essentially New York that I’d also never done.

Well, here we are, almost five years after that…..

Last weekend, I was sitting in the library of the fabled Gramercy Park club, The Players, following a nice dinner in their downstairs bar, The Grill. I should point out that I am not a member of this establishment, but my wife and I were there as guests of a couple who are. For those who might not know the place, The Players is a storied Manhattan institution, founded by Shakespearian actor Edwin Booth – older brother of Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth, don'tcha know – as a club for arts and the arts lover. Its membership includes thespians, musicians, writers, artists, and folks from all over the creative community. As such, the building – situated on the southern side of park, abutting the National Arts Club to its west – exudes a formidable aura and every room in the place seems veritably caked in history. I sat across a table from my friend Brian, and over the course of a couple of beers that I really don’t believe we were supposed to be consuming whilst in the stately library, we returned to this topic of places and things that are supposedly singularly New York, that we’d each experienced and a list of things we hadn’t. I rattled off several items from the posts cited above, and Brian countered with his own roster. In the wake of that conversation, it dawned on me that I was due for an update.

Since composing that last update in 2019, …

I have been to the Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn. I was there to see my beolved Killing Joke open for the band Tool. The place is massive, antiseptic and largely devoid of any charm whatsoever – like an airport without planes.

I have walked around Hudson Yards and while I did not enter it, I have stood underneath the Vessel. Nothing about it is compelling to me.

I have been to the new Whitney Museum in the Meat Packing District. I went with my family during the latter stages of the Pandemic, and then again earlier this year to see the Hopper exhibit. It’s alright.

I have now finally eaten at a Momfuko. I can’t lie …. it was indeed delicious.

I have now shopped at Russ & Daughters on East Houston Street on the Lower East Side. I went to buy some chocolate babka for my family, and it’s indeed quite a place, although agoraphobes beware – it gets very crowded in there.

While I’m on the subject, I’d also like to point out that – in addition to the long list from the first post -- I’ve also wandered through the sepulchral gloom of “Sleep No More,” I’ve sampled the slices at Defarro’s Pizza in Midwood, I’ve bought fresh fish at Aqua Best in Chinatown, I’ve said rude words into the Whispering Gallery in the downstairs concourse at Grand Central, I’ve wandered around the grounds of the former Roosevelt Island smallpox hospital, I’ve replicated the cover of David Bowie’s The Lodger in the bathroom of a bar on Staten Island, I’ve uncomfortably watched strippers perform at Scores, Show World and the Baby Doll Lounge, I’ve had too many beers at the White Horse Tavern, gotten into an argument about Scottish pop music at Fraunces Tavern, unwittingly happened upon Alexander Hamilton’s grave in the Financial District, toured the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side, participated in a sing-a-long at fabled piano bar, Marie’s Crisis, watched a jazz combo noodle at Kettle of Fish, took a dispiriting stroll through the Freak Show on Coney Island, watched two drag queens fight with each other at Save the Robots, put quarters in the jukeboxes of Max Fish, the Mars Bars and Alcatraz, visited the miniature model of the city at the Queens Museum, admired the graffiti at 5 Pointz in Queens, strolled around the grounds of the World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows/Corona Park, felt deeply uncomfortable watching someone get a disarmingly emphatic handjob at the Cock in the East Village, and had my sneakers scrutinized at the Campbell Apartments.

Apart from those, however, I still haven’t ridden a Citibike, been to the 9/11 Museum, been to the top of World Trade Center 1, taken an open-door helicopter ride, attended a show at the Apollo Theatre, shopped at Zabar’s, dined at Sylvia’s, watched the ball drop in Times Square, partaken of high tea at the Russian Tea Room, rented a boat at the Central Park boathouse, gone to Elaine’s (which I believe is long-gone, anyway), attended the Christmas Spectacular at Radio City, been on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, stepped foot in the Dakota or Ansonia, stood online for Magnolia Cupcakes or ever perused the galleries at the Frick Museum.

Additionally, however, I have also never seen “Phantom of the Opera,” “Cats” or “Book of Mormon” on Broadway, never consumed the pasta at Rao’s, never visited the raw bar at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. on Times Square, never viewed the city from the deck of The Edge, never had a burger at Junior’s in Brooklyn, never been to the Little Island in Hudson River Park, never been to the Russian & Turkish Baths, and have absolutely never waited patiently for the alleged privilege of eating a cronut.

What about you?

Charly Gets His Corner of TriBeCa

I realize I’ve been discussing it an awful lot since first invoking it in, gosh …2021, when I first stumbled upon a telling photograph by a tourist named Bo G. Eriksson that was shared in a Facebook group called Manhattan Before 1990, but in the long wake of that revelation, today the corner of Cortlandt Alley on Walker Street played host to an official naming ceremony that re-christened the plot of Manhattan real estate as Charly Garcia Corner. Sadly, the individual who first reached out to me about it – one Iñaki Rojas – was not able to make the trip from Mendoza, Argentina.

Once again, for a more-or-less succinct summary and timeline of all this, click here.

Anyway, today was the big day, so I went on down to check it out. Here are the pics…

Here's the corner, .... all dressed up for the unveiling of the plaque. 

Here's me, waiting for things to kick off...

...and then it started to get crowded....

...and then it got REALLY crowded...

...and then a proverbial mob scene.... the Charly Army was out in FORCE!!....

Then came, at long last, the ceremony ... here's Mariano Cabrera, who was instrumental in putting this together....

Here's the formal proclamation (the woman is, I believe, Charly Garcia's sister)...

Here's a view from the east, looking west from Cortlandt Alley down Walker Street....

After the plaque and the street sign were unveiled, alumni from Charly's band came on and played five or six songs from the record in question, that being Clics Modernos, which is a very big deal in Latin American/Argentinian music. 

There might be video later. Watch this space.

The Damned Play Brooklyn

Oliver and I went to Warsaw in Brooklyn, last night, to catch the first of two New York shows by The Damned (the second show, which we’re not going to, is this evening at Irving Plaza). At this stage of the proceedings, I’ve seen the Damned about three times prior to this (once somewhere in Kentucky on the Phantasmagoria tour, when I was in college … we drove from Ohio, once at the New Ritz on West 54th Street on the so-called Final Damnation tour in about 1989 and lastly at Coney Island High on St. Marks Place back in 1998). Having seen the original line-up on that Final Damnation stop (that being Dave Vanian, Captain Sensible, Brian James and the inimitable Rat Scabies), I might not have sprung for this show, but my son Oliver has really latched onto them, and quite enjoys their new album, Darkadelica, which I cannot say I am as familiar with.

In typical familial fashion, we got there early (both Oliver and I are pointedly punctual, whereas my wife and daughter are both fashionably late to absolutely everything), arriving at the newly restored and re-opened Warsaw on Driggs Avenue in Greenpoint – a former Polish community center turned high-decibel hotbed “where pierogis meet punk.”

Both opening bands were great – Brooklyn’s own Baby Shakes and Canada’s Fucked Up. The pierogis were not mind-blowing, but they got the job done. The capacity crowd was fired-up and the Damned were amazing. Vanian hasn’t looked or sounded this fit in ages. They played a huge amount of new stuff I didn’t know, but it was all great.

Oliver had a fantastic time. I have to say that, since Oliver’s gotten more and more into music, we’ve gotten to go to so many great shows together and it’s been so gratifying to see him derive the same amount of joy I’ve always gotten from my favorite music. He cannot get enough of it.

Enjoy the pics…

The Baby Shakes

Damian from Fucked Up...

The Damned...

"Sleep No More" ... 13 Years Later

I’m relatively sure that upon its debut in New York City in the early 2010’s, Punchdrunk’s immersive theatrical experience, “Sleep No More” -- which my wife and I went to last weekend -- was a genuinely revelatory and authentically radical event, rife with disorienting sensory engulfment, sensuous interaction and a palpable element of anything-might-happen risk. Tales emerged of audience members getting lost amidst the sprawling, multi-floored set of impenetrably dark rooms, long hallways, narrow passages and forbidding chambers filled with the unpredictable. The players were rumored to sometimes directly interact with the spectators in disarming manners both unprecedented and intimate. The whole production sounded bohemian, bacchanalian, seductive and not-just-a-little taboo.

Almost thirteen years later, however, it should be noted that the cat is largely out of the bag. In much the same way the equally ambitious, arty and interactive “Blue Man Group” has since become as boldly experimental as a trip to the raw bar at the Times Square Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., strolls through the sexy gloaming of “Sleep No More” have been, shall we charitably say, discovered by the masses. Where once patrons may have felt like they were being privy to a singularly esoteric experience, shuffling through the tiers of “Sleep No More” in 2023 feels more akin trying to walk amidst the hordes along the High Line than slipping into a shadowy realm of avant-garde theatre. Sparsely lit spaces within its interior intended to evoke an atmosphere of sepulchral dread tend to lose their carefully cultivated mystique when you’re sharing them with pushy tourists, incongruously clad in dayglo crocs and Taylor Swift t-shirts beneath the stylish Venetian face masks all patrons are required to wear throughout their three hours in the space.

I originally had much more to say about this, but figured I'd just leave it at that, as many might still be keen on seeing it.

To the Stars, Mr. Pokey

In the window of a stately townhouse on 11th Street west of Sixth Avenue, there has been a tireless memorial for a fallen guinea pig named Mr.Pokey for the last two decades.

When my children were little, they used to demand a solemn moment of silence when we passed this spot. Though he only lived for a little over a scant two years, Mr. Pokey clearly left an indelible impression on the residents of this well appointed home, as they continue to keep the flame burning.

Respect is due. GODSPEED, MR. POKEY!!

Back to Yorkville: 84th Street Bomber Travis Speaks

I’ve written a lot, here, about my time growing up in and around Yorkville on the eastern end of Manhattan’s Upper East Side, over the years, notably here and most recently here. But when I dedicated a couple of posts – especially this one – about my fleeting run-ins with a group of some specific neighborhood youths – technically the 84th Street Bombers, but more colloquially referred to, in certain circles, as the 84th Street Gang – I started to get a pointed uptick in reader engagment. I had quite a few folks write in to say that they, too, had encountered these guys, and shared their own experiences with them. At the risk of sugar-coating this, these stories frequently recounted instances of petty crime and -- wait for it -- violence.

Now, this many decades later, details get hazy, and legend frequently looms larger than actual fact. Were the guys that, say, mugged and summarily roughed-up my friend Spike and I in Carl Schurz Park in the Spring of 1984 the same thugs who put my friend Danny in Lenox Hill Hospital with a broken nose following a confrontaion at Mimi’s Pizza on 84th and Third? Were the guys who hung out, antogonizing passers-by, on the stoop between the Mansion Diner and the Polymorphos candy store on East 86th, just east of York Avenue (worrying steps from my front door) from this same tribe? Was the horde of amped-up, bedenimed nogoodnicks that roamed around East 86th Street on weekend evenings looking for trouble part of this same bunch of fellas? Were the infamous “Red Twins” affiliated with this group? Were any of them bona fide members of the 84th Street Bombers or just a gaggle of ancilary wannabes (like, say, what the Webelows are to the Boy Scouts)? Was there actually a formal structure to this infamous aggregation of disgruntled tough guys?

Around the time I was finishing my junior year in high school, I’m not sure that level of pedantic minutia really mattered to me. All I knew – or thought I knew – was that the neighborhood my mother and I had just moved into, following my mother and step-father’s freshly minted divorce, came with a bonus side-dish of potential trouble. I’d always considered this area of Yorkville, where my grandparents had lived, prior to their inevitable decamping to Florida, as a quaint, sleepy neighborhood. But, as the gormless high-school twerp that I was, in my Catholic school blazer and tie, I was essentially very easily identifiable prey to this gaggle of old-school Yorkvillians, and they, I guess, acted accordingly.

In a nutshell, I suppose myself and certain friends of mine handily embodied the very factors that were argaubly disenfranchising their neighborhood, to their minds. Marked by the mandatory sartorial trappings of our comparatively privileged schools, maybe we personified the gentrification that was squeezing out the working-class families that had otherwise called Yorkville home for generations. Or maybe we just came across as sniveling, hapless nerds ripe for victimizing. It may not be this simple.

I do vividly remember, as recounted here before, petitioning my more street-savvy classmate Bill (immortalized on earlier posts as “Willy”), who allegedly knew and/or actually hung-out with possibly these very same dudes, to help get them off my back. In retrospect, that seems like the stupidest possible course of action. I mean, think about it – if you were a self-styled street hooligan and someone asked you to “lay off” a certain kid, odds are that, if anything, you’d double-down on hassling him, right? Well, mercifully, that didn’t come to pass.

For whatever reason, I stopped worrying about these guys, and they, in turn, seemed to stop bothering to mess with me, although I have no idea why. I graduated from high school and that was pretty much that. Even when I moved back into Yorkville after college (when I started to pursue a career in the not-at-all lucrative field of journalism, I moved back home, for a while, to save money), my sightings of any of these likely gentlemen from just a few years earlier became fewer and further between. They moved on, and I moved on.

Cut to 2008, when, three years after launching this stupid blog, I first invoked that Yorkville “gang” – even then, wrongly branding them initially as the “86th Street Gang,” before my friend Danny corrected me in the comments. I brought them up a few more times after that. And that’s when folks from various circles started to weigh in. Around 2019, a gentleman named Travis wrote to me directly, claiming to have been a former member of the group which he duly informed me was officially named the 84th Street Bombers. We exchanged a few emails, and I’d always meant to post something larger and pester mysterious Travis (who later became a cop and then a novellist) for further information, but I didn’t necessarily want to put him on the spot. Since our initial exchanges had been solely over email and not via the comments section of the blog, I wasn’t quite sure how game he would have been to delve into it all in a more public forum.

My sisters-from-another-mister over at Desperately Seeking the `80s, however, had no such qualms when Travis similarly reached out to them, and they just snagged a robust interview with Travis for their latest “Field Trip” episode (find it here).

As you’ll hear, Travis is a very forthcoming subject, and has great amounts to share about his days with the `Bombers, although – I have to say – Travis’ effusive, good-natured demeanor is somewhat completely at odds with how I’d have characterized the boys in the `hood whose reign of (relative) terror made large swathes of the Upper East Side quietly ill at ease through much of the early-to-mid 1980’s. I mean, put bluntly, the kids who smacked my friend Spike around in Carl Schurz Park were decidely not nice guys. The kids who jumped my friend Danny in front of Mimi’s and broke his nose for – in his own words, “just being there” – weren’t either. I mean, yeah, people change and grow up and settle down, but there’s definitely something of a discrepancy I’m trying to wrap my head around, here. 

Travis promises to be back for a Part Two of his chat with Meg and Jessica, and it’s going to be required listening.

Do YOU remember the 84th Street Bombers? 

56

Today is my birthday.

At the risk of repeating myself, 56 is not a number I am especially psyched-up about. I wasn’t thrilled with 55, either, but at least that was smack in the middle of this group of ten. Now I’m irretrievably closer to 60 than I was to 50, and that just sucks, frankly. Now I realize, it’s all relative and Ted Nugent – of all fucking people – once sagely said “It’s not how old you are, it’s how you are old,” but lemme tell ya – 56 feels old. I feel old. I’m tired all the time. My feet always hurt. The list of things I shouldn’t be eating is as long as my arm. I’m practically deaf. I feel guilty all the time. It sucks. Turning 56 sucks. That’s what I have to say about it.

But, anyway, it being my birthday, I found this stupid survey online, so figured I should take it. Here we go…

Birthday Questions for Adults

1.) If your life had a theme song for the past year, what would it be?
At the risk of complementing the increasingly unreasonable Roger Waters, I feel like “Time” by ye olde Pink Floyd would kind of sum it up. Every year is getting shorter/Never seem to find the time/Plans that either come to naught/or half a page of scribbled lines…

2.) If you could have any superpower until your next birthday, what would it be?
The power to make certain individuals explosively soil themselves at pointedly inconvenient times just by thinking about them.

3.) If you could trade lives with a celebrity for one day on your birthday, who would it be and why?
That would mean I’d miss my own birthday. No thanks.

4.) Be a fortune teller and predict one thing that will happen before your next birthday?
If I was a particularly optimistic fortune teller, I’d predict that Trump will get sent to the fucking slammer, but … we’ll see, I guess.

5.) Create a new holiday in honor of your birthday. What would you call it?
Don’t-Recline-Your-Seat Day

6.) If you could be a kid again on your birthday, what would you do?
I honestly can’t say. Maybe run around without getting tired.

7.) Which 3 historical figures would you invite to your birthday dinner and why?
Robert Moses, Jane Jacobs and Lemmy. It would be interesting to hear their discussion. And Lemmy makes everything cooler and funnier.

8.) If you created a time capsule to open on your next birthday, what 3 things would you put in it?
Three large bags containing sizable sums of money.

9.) If you could teleport anywhere on your birthday, where would you go to?
Why do I need to teleport?

10.) If you had to create a reality tv show based on this past year, what would it be called and why?
I wouldn’t. The world has too many shitty reality TV shows. It would be a grave disservice to make another one.

11.) If you could have any celebrity join your birthday party who would it be and why?
If Iggy Pop wanted to swing by, that would be most enjoyable.

Da Search for Da Bar of Dem Bums

As a revelation that should surprise absolutely no one, I’m not a big sports guy.

Sure, I pitched for the TIME Magazine softball team for 12 years and even became reasonably proficient at getting my pitches across the plate (my nickname on the mound was “Speed Metal,” despite it being, ostensibly, “slow pitch” softball), but, if I’m being honest, my involvement in same had more to do with the promise of beer and girls after each game. Here I was -- circa 1998 or so --  looking suitably awkward and ill-equipped near the pitcher's mound. 

But in terms if watching professional sports of the more celebrated varieties, I have absolutely zero interest in football or basketball. I, of course, fully understand baseball, but don’t really care about it. I don’t mind soccer, and hockey at least has the prospect of becoming entertainingly violent, but in none of these instances am I invested in any meaningful way.

I used to be way more vocal about my disdain for sports, until I realized that no one actually cares about that (nor should they) and that all I was probably doing was pissing off friends of mine who do like sports. So, yeah, I’ve stopped doing that, kinda.

Anyway, a reader named Steven recently wrote in and, along with some encouraging things to say about a few recent posts, postulated an intriguing query. Steven writes:

In the mid 2000s, I went to a show at the Bowery Ballroom with some friends.. went bar hopping afterwards. Ended up late night at a bar somewhere on the L.E.S. that was very cool, and I have not been able to find it again (if it’s still there) or remember the name. A long skinny room with the bar in the right side as you walk in, old but somewhat clean. But what made it very distinctive was it was adorned with Brooklyn Dodger photos. From front to back. Ebbits Field, players, World Series pictures.. I remember the bartender telling me the bar had been a Dodger bar for 50/60 years at that point. Does that ring a bell for you? Not a lot to go on. Just a shot in the dark to someone who seems to know that city inside and out.

Now, again, not being versed in professional baseball (neither National League nor American League … not that I even understand the difference between those two, much less do I care), I cannot say that even if I’d drank myself stupid in the very boozer he’s referring to, would I have probably noticed a hodgepodge of Brooklyn Dodgers paraphernalia adorning the walls.

But this, dear readers, is where YOU come in – who remembers a divey-but-“clean” Lower East Side bar festooned with Brooklyn Dodger ephemera….batter up!!!