Flaming Pablum

Thanks, But No Thanks ... giving

As Turkey Day looms, the CDC bluntly suggested that no one should travel this particular holiday. Is that a bummer? Certainly, but think about it. We essentially cancelled Halloween, right? No one went — or no one should have went — to parties, parades or trick or treating. It sucked, but it’s what had to happen. Thanksgiving? Same deal. Yeah, it’s no fun, but have your turkey at home and tell Aunt Jean you’ll see her next year. It’s not that complicated, nor is it really that much of a sacrifice.

But, no. If the last nine months have demonstrated anything, it’s that a vast swath of the American populace is stupid, obstinate, arrogant and weak, and determined to fuck it up for the rest of us. It’s poised to make the outbreak after Sturgis seem like a damp fart.

I, of course, would love to blithely assert that we here in New York have it all figured out, but of course we don’t. The infection rate is climbing here, too, which is wholly dispiriting. Schools are reverting back to all-remote learning plans and some small businesses already struggling to keep up with the changing topography are just throwing in the towel entirely. Restaurants across town that have been building, re-building and customizing their sidewalk sheds with heat lamps are feeling the two-pronged pinch of earlier closing-time mandates and the inevitable patron-scaring power of the winter chill, which will put the kibosh on just about any al-fresco dining scenario. When that option is curtailed, there will be more places shuttering for good.

Sure, there is good news on the vaccine front, but effective distribution of same will still take time. And with lame-duck Donald doing pretty much everything he can to sabotage any proactive attempts by the rightfully incoming administration to address the problem Trump has long neglected, downplayed and flat-out abandoned — at the expense of thousands of American lives, let’s remember — the prospects of “rounding the curve” any time soon are not exactly within reach. We still have a ways to go.

Bottom line: Things fucking suck. And they suck because lots of people didn’t listen. They should be listening now. But, some still won’t.

Stay home this Thanksgiving. Cook your own turkey and have a Zoom call with your far-flung relatives. That doesn’t mean you’re “living in fear,” it means you’re demonstrating compassionate consideration for your loved ones.

And wear a fucking mask.

The Schmoo, The Mish & Tim the Buddhist Bootist

I’ve already waxed rhapsodic about downtown Manhattan’s once-thriving network of independent record shops in several weepy, sepia-toned posts about stores like Rebel Rebel, Rocks in Your Head, Second Coming Records, Bleecker Bob’s, Venus Records, St. Marks Sounds, Subterranean Records, Other Music, Bleecker Street Records, Disc-O-Rama and It’s Only Rock N’ Roll and several others. From the mid-80’s until about into the early 2000’s, my best friend from high school, Rob D. and I used to routinely hit these shops on a circuit we inexplicably referred to as “the Schmoo.” If we were “out schmooing,” that meant we were invariably rifling through the bins at any of these above spots — or other’s like Route 66, Rockit Scientist, Kim’s, Golden Disc, Record Factory or Freebeing — trying to meet our insatiable need for new music.

But there were other stops on our circuit, a crucial one being at the Pizza Box on Bleecker Street to wolf down slices while examining our spoils. As with all of the concerns cited above, that — too — is gone. To be fair, a paltry handful of our former regular haunts still hang on today, those being Record Runner, Generation Records, Academy Records and Downtown Music Gallery, but one would be remiss to suggest that their respective prospects were especially promising in 2020. That’s just the way it is.

But from around 1987 to late 1988, we had another regular stop.

If you stand on the southeast corner of West 8th Street on Sixth Avenue — basically right in front of the hulking space that formerly housed a Barnes & Noble and a B. Dalton books before that — and look south, you’ll probably still see a bunch of folks selling dubious shit on the sidewalks. Old magazines, DVDs, vinyl LPs, books and other largely weathered ephemera are periodically up for sale along this strip even today. But back in the 80’s, it was a much more robust ersatz marketplace, one that stretched as far down as the basketball courts on West 3rd.

I don’t remember how we first happened upon him, but Rob and I came to know a young merchant on this strip named Tim. An unassuming kid from somewhere on the Upper West Side — usually sporting a mammoth pair of headphones — Tim was in the business of selling bootleg cassettes. For the layperson, this means illegal live recordings of the same variety that got nearby Second Coming Records in trouble (as discussed at greater length here). We’d show up about once a week and check out Tim’s little briefcase of offerings, immaculately presented in alphabetical order and all marked with the inky font of a thick black sharpie. Like ourselves, Tim was especially besotted with a few specific bands, and his stock leaned heavily in those directions. For whatever reason, his two favorite bands were the Minutemen and the Sisters of Mercy, but he also had tapes by ancillary acts like fIREHOSE and my then-faves in The Mission, along with sundry recordings by bands like U2, The Cult and The Cure. We were very clearly his target demographic, and frequently availed ourselves to his wares.

In the middle of penning this post, I heard from Rob and he informed me that we once went to Tim’s evidently sprawling townhouse on the Upper West Side, but I have absolutely no recollection of that whatsoever. I’m not saying it didn’t happen, but I just don’t remember it.

In any case, the one specific tape I remember buying off our Tim in May or June of 1987 was a pristine, soundboard recording of The Mission playing a gig I very bitterly missed at The Ritz on East 11th Street in just that previous April. I’d missed the show in question being that I was away at school when the band drunkenly plowed into town. Capturing the Mish at the hoary height of their powers, it featured roaring runs through their early singles, a few odd covers and tracks from their debut LP, God’s Own Medicine, including a lungful reading of “Wake,” a throaty middle-finger to their former taskmaster Andrew Eldritch of The Sisters of Mercy. I played the absolute shit out of that tape, taking it with me a bike trip across Western Europe, managing not to lose it in any number of grotty youth hostels along the way. I absolutely cherished it. Much like the XTC tape I discussed the other day, I still have it, although nothing to play it on. But sadly, unlike the XTC tape, I’ve never found a recording of the Mission at The Ritz in April of 1987 anywhere else. Not on disc. Not on YouTube. Nothing.

Anyway, sometime after all this, we again happened upon Tim on Sixth Avenue again while schmooing. At this stage, he mentioned that he was considering giving up the whole bootleg cassette venture. We earnestly tried to urge him to stick with it, but he informed us of a growing spiritual investment in Tibetan Buddhism. In short order, Tim fully renounced his materialistic endeavors, and stopped showing up to ply his cassettes.

We never saw him again.

No More Egg Creams

The space that was once Gem Spa, as photographed yesterday evening. 

Take a Moment...

..to enjoy the season. 

Word on The Street

"New York is a Hell Hole..."

Don't believe the hype. 

The Day After

Author, political commentator and tight-black t-shirt enthusiast Thomas Friedman was on one cable news network or another last week, and made a cogent point. As awful as Trump’s first term in office was, it’s his second term that would do the most damage. The world can overlook his first four years and chalk it up as a mistake. Every nation elects an outlier, sooner or later. But by RE-electing him, we would be sending a message to the rest of the world that we are collectively just fine with what the Trump Administration has been doing for the past four years – and that would effectively seal off the United States’ former status as a global leader.

Ever after last night’s tumult, I realize it’s still early in the process, and there are millions of votes left to count, but the fact that it wasn’t a blue landslide speaks volumes.

To paraphrase what MSNBC’s Joy Reid observed, those of us that were hoping for a cleansing repudiation of Trump’s myriad atrocities – his coddling of white supremacists, his abjectly inept and duplicitous mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, his draconian immigration policies, his litany of petty put-downs, his demonization of the free press, his constant and knowing stream of dishonesty, etc. – WE ARE NOT GETTING THAT. Surely, Biden might still make it to the finish line before Trump in the next couple of days, but that much-sought-after REBUKE of Trumpism is no longer on the menu, which means a vast swathe of the American electorate is perfectly fine with all that. That, to me, is fucking sickening and shameful.

Let’s put that in sharper perspective, shall we? According to the tally of the popular vote as of this very moment... 67,041,757 people are evidently perfectly jazzed-up for Trump go ahead and fire Dr. Fauci and continue spiraling -- without any semblance of an actionable, realistic, science-based plan -- into the gaping jaws of the pandemic. Unpack your bags and get comfortable, COVID-19, … it looks like you might be staying here for good.

Never mind it not being a landslide – it’s currently a narrow, practically neck-and-neck contest. The fact that it’s THIS FUCKING CLOSE has already confirmed that a frankly astonishing amount of Americans are simply A-O-FUCKING-KAY with everything Trump has done, said, threatened, implied, promised and fucking lied about.

Even if Biden wins, we have missed the mark in serving out to Trump what he deserves and what was supposed to happen. He needed be shown up, toppled and humiliated.

We’ve already failed, there.

Goodbye to the Black & White Bar

It’s been a real week of loss for my neighborhood. First came word that the Strand Bookstore was in trouble, which prompted me to take the wife and kids over there for a book-buying bonanza. Then came word that Astor Place Hairstylists was shutting down, which prompted my son to jog over and get one more trim from our favorite cutter Speedy. Then I noticed that Otto, Mario Battali’s eatery in the ground floor of 1 Fifth Avenue had given up the struggle and put a “FOR LEASE” sign in its window. Granted, Battali turned out to be a grabby schweinhund during the #MeToo era, but he recused himself from the operation in 2015. I cannot count how many great meals my family and I had in that space. We are heartbroken to see it go.

This weekend, after yet another trek around the East Village with no particular destination in mind, I was heading back home up East 10th Street. The strip in question has already lost a few businesses to the pandemic, notably the gimmicky Ikinari Steak House, City of Saints Coffee and Turntable Lab. While my kids are very happy that Sundaes & Cones is still hanging on, I was crestfallen to spot yesterday that Jesse Malin’s Black & White Bar is no more. I stood in front of its exterior with mouth agape. The interior has been gutted, and so have I.

I’m told they are “moving,” but there is no destination as yet.

I logged many a happy evening in the dark confines of the Black & White Bar. Subtle, low-key, comfortable and owned and operated by afore-cited NYC punk veteran Jesse Malin, the Black & White Bar was always a perfect destination. Somewhere, I have an envelope of photographs dating back to about 2003 of myself in the company of various members of Killing Joke’s road crew and a couple of erstwhile SWANS being very decidedly drunk within the intimate watering hole.

I will miss it more than I can put into words.

All that was left of it this morning...

Reason & Wrath Over Right-Wing Rotten

It’s the morning after this year’s frankly anemic and depressing Halloween (no trick or treating, no parades, no parties, etc.), and I found myself up at what was going be 8:00 am but turned into 7:00 am due to Daylight Savings. As such, I decided to go for an early-AM walk.

Standing at my front door, I did something of a mental coin-toss and decided to head east, serpentining my way through quiet East Village streets until I reached Avenue C, and then meandering back. While detritus from the last night’s muted festivities were indeed evident, comparatively speaking it might has well have been any other Saturday night. St. Marks Place, meanwhile, is looking its most anarchic in a long time, between hastily assembled al-fresco-dining sheds, shuttered age-old businesses like Gem Spa and Khyber Pass and a robust array of blithely-strewn garbage. I happened to glance up the stoop at the doorway of Search & Destroy as I was heading back west, and noticed a small detail.

I honestly don’t know how often they formally redecorate their exterior, if ever, but only scant weeks ago, in the porthole-like window in the center of their door had been Ray Stevenson’s iconic photograph of Johnny Rotten, glaring with signature punk insouciance under the legend “FUCK YOU, CORONA.”

A little under a month later, however, Johnny’s gone, replaced by the similarly over-rhapsodized mug of his late comrade, Sid Vicious.

I know, I know … big friggin' whoop.

But, I couldn’t help wondering. Might this be in response to John Lydon’s recent espousals of Trump that I’ve been repeatedly wringing my hands about?

I have a couple of regular readers who sounded off mightily on this point, incredulous that, in my last two posts on the subject, I was allegedly treating Lydon/Rotten’s latest stream of half-baked humbug  -- especially his quips arguably diminishing the impact of COVID-19 -- with kid gloves and not asserting the same burnt bridge policy I applied to, say, Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine after he asserted from a stage somewhere to a baying audience that Obama orchestrated the mass shootings during his administration as an excuse to ramp up gun control. Deal-breaking comments, to be sure.

With Lydon, it’s just more complicated. Beyond the seemingly obvious irony and neck-snapping reversals of the guy who penned “Anarchy In The UK” suddenly chugalugging the Kool-Aid of a “law & order”-fixated administration Hell-bent on lining the pockets of the corporate elite, amplifying racial divide, overturning basic human rights, disenfranchising immigrants, manifesting a draconian overhaul of our Supreme Court and basically dismantling our democracy, I’m just wondering if John’s own once-razor-sharp powers of cognition are in decline. I’m just having a very hard time reconciling his lapses in judgement.

Actually, the real reason for this post is that quite recently, I stumbled upon an outtake from my friend Drew Stone’s excellent film, “Who The Fuck Is That Guy?,” an absolutely amazing documentary about storied A&R exec Michael Alago. It is fucking required viewing. In any case, given Alago’s longtime association with John Lydon, Stone sought him out as a contributor fo the film. Lydon — always with something to say — happily obliged with typical aplomb.

In the clip below, however, Stone got Lydon talking about his tenure living over on the western fringes of Chelsea in New York City in the 80s — a topic near and dear to this blog’s heart. He also takes some enjoyable potshots at NYU and Rudy Giuliani.

Listening to the lucid and reasonable John Lydon here reinforces my stated suspicions above, although that’s ultimately all just projection. Who knows what’s a wind-up anymore?

Anyway, enjoy. To be continued.

Goodnight, Mark

If you live, work or spend any amount of time on University Place between 8th and 9th Streets, you’ve invariably heard him. “One penny, ma’am? No one should be hungry.”

Perched on a milk crate behind a large water-cooler bottle upended to accommodate donations, Mark sat for a succession of years outside of the neighborhood Gristede's, chanting his gentle-but-sonorous plea like the verses of an unending song. A large man with rounded shoulders and kind eyes, Mark would bless each and every person who stopped to put change or bills in his bottle, visibly thankful for every cent he received. A neighborhood fixture for at least a decade, Mark was unbothered by shifts in the weather, only retiring when the damp turned into prohibitive precipitation. Where he went when he wasn’t in that exact spot and how (or if) he distributed his ensuing funds remains a mystery not unlike what happened to Al (aka “Rocky”) who used to sit a block to the north. But he bothered no one. He accosted no one. He badgered no one. Every time I dropped money in Mark's bottle, he asked how my kids were — whom he’d seen grow from tiny tots into teenagers. Always a kind word and a gentle, lilting laugh ….and then back into his mantra. “One penny? No one should be hungry.”

This morning, I popped out to Gristede’s to buy some milk for my coffee, and in Mark’s place was a humble collection of flowers and some notes. Evidently, Mark passed away yesterday, although the reasons and specifics of his demise are unknown.

Rest easy, Mark, wherever you are.