Flaming Pablum

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Theoretically, It Happened on Grand Street

This post was inspired by the most random thing – a quote from President Jimmy Carter, that being..

If you have a voice and an instrument, you are welcome in my home.

A lovely sentiment, right? My friend Frank Coleman posted that on Facebook, and I … being a cheeky fucker … responded with the video below, appended with the legend, “Mr. President, there’s a Mr. Branca here to see you!?...”

I’ve posted that particular video here a number of times, and it always makes me smile. I mean, yeah, sure, on a superficial level, it seems entirely absurd – watching the late Glenn Branca take a battered, long-suffering six-string to task like a man positively on fire in the name of untethered experimental noise ain’t exactly everyone’s cup o’ concrete, but there’s also something so completely beautiful about it.

As a musician, Branca could be a polarizing figure, although I’m fairly sure he felt more alignment with avant-garde conceptual artists than with comparatively conventional musicians. As I mentioned back on this post, I came to own a couple of his records by way of a big crate of LP’s undeservingly bequeathed to me by this hepcat named Arthur who was courting my mother, back in the mid-`80s (he claimed, at the time, that he was “going digital,” and had evolved beyond vinyl, or some ridiculous bullshit like that, and I happily obliged that evolution). It was a gift – albeit with an agenda – that I’d assuredly done nothing to genuinely deserve.

But while I immediately pounced on Arthur’s former copies of beloved albums by Siouxsie & the Banshees, The Fall, SWANS and Public Image Ltd., these oddball records like The Ascension and Lesson No. 1 by this enigmatic Branca figure were just, for lack of a better word, … confusing. I mean, they were certainly compelling, given the sheer expanse of enveloping sound they packed, but a wall of detuned electric guitars playing movements like an orchestra was invariably too heady a horse pill for me to digest, given my stubborn affinity for more traditional rock. I wouldn’t grow to truly appreciate Branca’s music for several years, largely prompted by name-drops and accolades from folks like Sonic Youth and David Bowie.

I think I genuinely decided to give his stuff another shake when I saw a few interviews with the man. I mean, not only was he this strangely hirsute, unshaven, and irascible badass, but he was also completely hilarious (his moments in Don Letts’ “Punk: Attitude” and the otherwise truly abortive “documentary” on No Wave, “Kill Yr Idols” are snide comedy gold). Like his contemporaries like James Chance, Suicide and Lydia Lunch, as well as obvious acolytes like Michael Gira and the late Steve Albini, Glenn Branca suffered no fools, made no compromises, and gave absolutely zero fucks.

I soon learned that, prior to recording and releasing the records I’d come to own via “Going Digital” Arthur, Branca had been part of the whole No Wave phenomenon, given his membership in a band called Theoretical Girls. I’d first become intrigued by the music of the deliberately user-hostile No Wave scene from reading about it, but actually tracking down the records, at the time (this was the mid-`80s, let’s remember) was no small feat. Fate fleetingly smiled on me, however, when I happened upon a long-neglected copy of No New York, arguably the quintessential primer on all things No Wave, curated and “produced” by self-appointed No Wave ambassador Brian Eno, while I was deejaying at my college radio station. Being that the station in question largely accommodated the stridently unwavering listening habits of classic rock retrophiles hopelessly addicted to a steady diet of the Allman Brothers, Joni Mitchell, and the Grateful Dead, it was safe to assume no one was going to miss the LP if I “borrowed” it in perpetuity. Sure enough, when I played its opening track on the air, that night – that being “Dish It Out” by the Contortions, featuring a positively splenetic explosion of saxophone insanity courtesy of James Chance – I believe listeners called in with death threats.

But Branca’s band, Theoretical Girls, didn’t make it onto No New York. Allegedly, Eno’s choice of who made the cut unwittingly drove a wedge into the No Wave community, given that inclusion on the record seemed to establish a sort of tenuous hierarchy. Given that Theoretical Girls were SoHo-based and not Lower East Siders like most of the other bands (in retrospect, a kind of ridiculous distinction, given their geographical proximity), Theoretical Girls were arguably even perceived as outsiders by the outsiders.

For the longest time, the only song I’d ever heard by Theoretical Girls – who also included Jeff Lohn, Wharton Tiers and Margaret Dewys – was a fittingly discordant number called “You Got Me.” Contrary to what one might assume given such a comparatively banal song title, “You Got Me” is not a romantic testament of any kind, but rather a frenzied admission of homicidal mania (“I’m really scared when I kill in my dreams”) that kicks off with a series of staccato bursts before settling into a pounding, jackhammer rhythm flanked by chugging guitars, jittery keyboards and Branca’s anxious bark. Suffice to say, it ain’t yacht rock, but hear it for yourself…

Being one side of a 7” single, the only official, self-issued release by the Theoretical Girls during their brief existence, “You Got Me” went onto be included on myriad punk, post-punk and no wave compilations, over the years, including great ones by Atavistic and Soul Jazz. I don’t think I even heard the flipside of the single, “U.S. Millie,” until more recently, and it is somewhat surprisingly nothing like its counterpart, largely abandoning Branca’s murderous guitar skronk for some stiff-backed, tinny keyboard doodling under Jeff Lohn’s bizarre poetry and a martial rhythm. Hear it for yourself…

In any case, other bits and pieces documenting the brief, noisy existence of the Theoretical Girls surfaced over time, not least Ericka Beckman’s 2010 documentary, “135 Grand Street New York 1979,” which featured footage of Branca & Co. (also in the guise of Branca & Lohn’s pre-Theoretical Girls band, The Static) playing in a cramped little space in – wait for it – 135 Grand Street. Here’s a tantalizing bit of that now. I believe the footage was first intended as part of a German television program…

Ever since first seeing that footage, I’d always meant to seek out more. I can’t remember when I first spied that clip of solo Glenn going bonkers in black n’ white at the top of this post, but I remember being struck that said explosive performance also happened on Grand Street, albeit a few blocks further to the west. I decided to go back to the scenes of the crimes. 

The space at 135 Grand from Beckman’s documentary is today a concern called R. Swiader, a business that describes itself as a “gender-optional, Made in New York clothing line from designer Raf Swiader. It is his vision of a future when everybody feels at home in in their body, starting with their clothes.” If the R. Swiader folks are even remotely aware – let alone if they’d even care – that their space once played host to the racket-raising likes of Messrs. Branca, Lohn, Tiers, etc., they're not interested in discussing it, and there's no mention of it on their website.

The space that played host to Branca’s solo freakout, meanwhile, was at Jeffrey Lohn’s old storefront loft at 33 Grand Street. Lohn would allegedly use the loft as a performance space and invite other neighborhood envelope-pushers like Laurie Anderson and Tim Wright to hang out, watch stuff and be cool. About a decade later, that space would be re-imagined as a bar called Naked Lunch with a William S. Burroughs theme. It was hard to miss their signature metallic cockroach sculpture that hung on the corner of the building at the southwest intersection of Thompson and Grand.

Like all genuinely cool stuff in New York City, Naked Lunch closed in 2013, and was slated to become a more cloyingly chic endeavor (in keeping with the then-devolving character of Soho of the era) called the Regent Cocktail Club, but instead morphed into yet another transient-looking delicatessen. The metallic roach stuck around for several years before mysteriously vanishing during COVID.

Here in 2024, once again, the Theoretical Girls are an element from the past, mourned predominantly by a dwindling nation of record collectors and pedantic music nerds (although original editions of the “U.S. Millie”/”You Got Me” single are asking $150-$200 on eBay). I am unfortunately unfamiliar with the circumstances of the band’s dissolution, but certain sources have made vague suggestions about “external pressures and internal politics.” Make of that what you will.

Branca, of course, went on to cultivate a revered career as an avant-garde composer, continuing to make music until his death in 2016 from throat cancer. Jeff Lohn continues his pursuits in conceptual art and composition, but largely demurred from the public eye. Somewhat ironically, Wikipedia says that he's since moved from SoHo to the East Village. Keyboardist Margaret De Wys devotes her life to being a composer and sound-installation artist and her works have been performed in prestigious venues like MoMa and the Whitney Museum. She apparently lives between Upstate New York and Southeast Nigeria. Drummer Wharton Tiers went onto become a respected musician, audio engineer and producer, performing both as a solo artist and with Laurie Anderson, as well as producing albums by Sonic Youth, Das Damen, Helmet, Dinosaur Jr., White Zombie, Quicksand, Unrest, and Gumball, among many others. As a special note to this stupid blog, it should be noted that Tiers engineered Headkick Facsimile, the debut EP by my beloved Cop Shoot Cop.

In the ensuing years since Theoretical Girls’ fleeting tenure, there have been two distinct compilations devoted to them, strangely divvied up – like their lone 7” single – between Branca’s music and Lohn’s music, almost like they’re two different entities. Personally speaking, I find it hard not to project some hint of acrimony between Branca and Lohn as the reasons behind this arrangement. Regardless, Songs: `77-`79 on Atavistic covers Glenn Branca’s material, with eight suitably bracing tracks by both Theoretical Girls and The Static. Jeff Lohn’s take, meanwhile, is represented on Acute Records' Theoretical Record, a comparatively sprawling collection of tracks. For those who don’t like to get their hands dirty tracking down the physical manifestations of music, I should note that you can find both collections on Spotify. Of the two, only Theoretical Record can be found on Bandcamp. Being the dweeb that I am, I had to have physical copies of both.

While the sound quality on each of these releases bounces between varying degrees of what audiophiles would probably consider entirely untenable, I find both discs to be really exciting, and way more accessible than I’d been expecting, striking a compelling balance between bare-bones punk sneer and art-damaged downtown weirdness. Unsurprisingly, Branca’s tracks tend to be less conventional and more cacophonously pugnacious, but that was kinda his shtick. This is not to say Lohn’s songs aren’t equally challenging (Lohn’s instrumental diversion “Polytonal” is just as headache-inducing as Branca’s “Fuck Yourself”), but when Theoretical Girls lock in together and play as a cohesive unit, like on “Don’t Let Me Stop You,” “Lovin’ in the Red,” “No More Sex” and their Ramones-baiting titular theme, “Theoretical Girls – Live,” the end results can totally hold their own.

To walk up and down Grand Street today, though, with this music in my headphones, it’s hard to reconcile that it all happened here.

CODA: Having fleetingly bribed my approval via an avalanche of post-punk vinyl, “Go-Digital” Arthur did indeed end up briefly dating my mother, but I believe he may have harbored an affinity for certain stimulants that my mother just wasn’t down with, and their short-lived fling fizzled out. Mercifully, he never asked for his records back, although I strenuously doubt that he was ever able to fully replicate his collection on compact disc. I believe he has since passed away.

Exhuming The Moondance

I was beginning to slowly piece together an entry about some comparatively ancient doings along the stately byway of Grand Street (which may still see the light of day) but got sidetracked by another item about a former location near the westerly end of that street, namely the Moondance Diner.

Read any write-up of the Moondance Diner on the web, and you’re likely to see many of the same invocations about how the iconic eatery was featured in episodes of “Sex & the City,” “Miami Vice” and “Friends” and in movies like “Spider-Man” and “After Hours.” I can’t speak for those other dumb-ass titles with any authority, but I’d really like to (again) clear up the misconception that the Moondance Diner ever appeared in “After Hours,” a film which is something of a preoccupation of mine

While, yes, the Moondance Diner was very definitively in SoHo -– the geographical heart of “After Hours” -- not that far from various other neighborhood-specific locations in that film, Scorsese actually filmed the diner scenes (both the interior and the exterior shots) at a diner in Hell’s Kitchen called the River Diner on West 36th Street on 11th Avenue (where John Lennon was once photographed). It certainly would have made more sense to film them at the Moondance, but for whatever reason – he didn’t. So, when you read that bullshit on WikiPedia and/or in any other articles on the subject -- don’t believe the hype!

Now, of course, I already addressed this inanely trivial bullshit in this post from back in 2010, wherein I lamented the absence of the Moondance Diner with juxtaposing photos of the deeply shitty hotel that was erected on its former site. One would think that was the end of the story, right?

One would be wrong.

The way it shook out, the Moondance Diner was allegedly forced to close its doors circa 2007, when they could no longer realistically meet the demands of lower Manhattan’s spiraling rent. The physical diner itself – complete with ornate, rotating-moon signage – was sold and shipped to the wide-open spaces of a town called La Barge in Wyoming, of all places.

That should have been it, but, tragically, the winter climate of Wyoming (where, one assumes, they get a significantly greater amount of snowfall than Sixth Avenue & Grand Street ever does) spelled a comparatively quick demise for the Moondance diner, which closed again in 2012.

On a personal level, the Moondance Diner was a longtime favorite of mine from both when I was a single, beery rock pig on the hunt for greasy food after an evening of ill-advised high decibels and from when I became a doting dad to two little, tiny people. Not only was it an iconic spot on the map, but the food was spot-on. Since its departure, I always envisioned some grand road trip I’d take upon retiring, wherein I’d drive around the continent, visiting bits and pieces of downtown Manhattan’s past like the Moondance Diner, and the bar from the Cedar Tavern (now in a bar in Austin, TX) and the giant lizard from the top of the Lone Star Café (now also located in Texas). That expedition probably won’t be happening.

As of this time last year, as reported in this story in the Cowboy State Daily, the dormant diner was being eyed for re-opening by various parties, but I don’t know if any of that has come to pass since the publishing of this article.

Once again, click on that link for the full story of the fate of the Moondance, … along with dispiriting pictures like the one below.

Lastly, here's my little daughter in front of same circa 2007...

Big Black at CBGB, 1986

I realize I technically already logged my eulogy to Steve Albini, but when has that ever stopped me?

I’ve mentioned him a few times, here (notably here, here, here and again here), but my friend Greg Fasolino was a near “Zelig”-like figure in terms of attending (and, even better, recording) certain gigs back in the day, and he and I share an almost perfectly aligned taste. A great example of this is the clip below.

The summer Greg recorded this video – capturing vintage Big Black at CBGB in the July of 1986 – I would have been sequestered out in a group house on Long Island, washing dishes at Ina Garten’s Westhampton Beach iteration of The Barefoot Contessa. That honestly doesn’t matter, as I wouldn’t go on to first hear Big Black until the fall of 1987, when a friend of mine walked into my shift as a disc jockey at my college radio station and demanded I play the 45 he was shoving in my face (the “He’s a Whore”/”The Model” 7”). I dropped the needle on the Cheap Trick cover and was a convert for life.

Being quicker to the table than myself, Greg not only went to this gig, but he captured it on video -- which was still no small feat, in 1986, if you consider how unwieldy and bulky video equipment was, at the time.

The resultant footage is a revelation. Here’s Steve Albini, looking sorely undernourished, unleashing a ferocious onslaught of visceral noise and invective, interspersed with bone-dry quips of the blackest pitch. It’s also a telling example of what shows in the intimate confines of that fabled room were actually like. Peter Prescott of Mission of Burma/Volcano Suns joins them for later numbers.

I was going to say, “not for the faint of heart,” but given the tragic circumstances of Albini’s death, that seems a bit tasteless … which he’d have probably endorsed.

Rest in peace.

"The Marble Thingy"

I honestly don’t remember for how long it was installed at the Forbes Gallery on lower Fifth Avenue, but it was at least several years. I almost want to say I remember first seeing it when my father still worked at the magazine back in `80s, but I may be projecting. In any case, after my children arrived on the scene by the mid-2000’s, when they became more ambulatory, I used to periodically take them to check it out. 

By “it,” I’m referring to what my littlest used to call “The Marble Thingy,” which was an art installation that hung on the north wall of the Forbes Gallery’s vestibule. We could just duck in and spend time watching it do its thing. By “its thing,” I mean an inventively complicated obstacle course for a series of metal ball bearings, finding them running down ramps, bumping off bells, whirling through shoots and triggering other mechanisms in the manner of something between a gravity-controlled pinball machine and a Rube Goldberg contraption. My kids absolutely loved it, and we could literally spend upwards of an hour in that little room.

My son Oliver was especially enamored of “The Marble Thingy,” and we were rarely able to walk down that stretch of Fifth Avenue, specifically between 12th and 13th streets, without popping in to check in on it. He’d have happily spent all day just watching it.

Unfortunately, like so many other elements of New York City, the Forbes Gallery closed abruptly in November of 2014. The building that had once housed the magazine’s editorial offices and Malcolm Forbes’ stately gallery of artifacts closed up shop for good. The magazine ended up moving to Jersey City (where I’d later fleeting interview for a position as a science & technology editor I had zero aptitude for) and its old headquarters on Fifth Avenue became yet another NYU facility (as is so often the case).

Sadly, “The Marble Thingy” vanished along with the rest of the Forbes Gallery. I would later learn that the piece in question was titled, fittingly, Wallpiece IV by a sculptor named George Rhoads, and it later sold at auction for a figure between five and seven thousand dollars. Regardless, it was priceless to my little boy, and we both still invoke it when we walk down that street.

This isn’t the exact piece in question, but it’s a good example of what it was like.

Tuff Love: The Arc of New York City's Tuff Darts

Invoke the inaugural class of mid-`70’s New York punk bands, and the usual names will probably immediately pop up — The Ramones, Television, Patti Smith, Talking Heads, Blondie, Richard Hell & the Voidoids, The Dictators, The Dead Boys, Mink DeVille, etc. But, it should be remembered, that for every band that managed to vault themselves into that elite class of established household names, there were droves of other bands who — regardless of their merit — seem forever designated with the status of second tier, ancillary and/or also-ran. For whatever reason, bands like The Shirts, The Mumps and The Speedies — to name just three — graced the same stages of CBGB and Max’s Kansas City, but are rarely name-checked with the frequency of their contemporaries cited above. Those are the breaks, I guess.

Another of those outfits who were arguably saddled with second-tier status was a combo called the Tuff Darts. Originally fronted by vocalist Robert Gordon, the Tuff Darts were more of a retro-reverent rock’n’roll band than the more celebrated CBGB regulars, largely due to Gordon’s rockabilly leanings. Though they were fleetingly captured on Live at CBGB, a compilation of seemingly random bands who frequented that now-fabled hole in the wall, Gordon split the ranks for a solo career before the Tuff Darts could release their proper debut album on visionary Seymour Stein's Sire Records. Gordon was replaced by by a character named Tommy Frenzy, who arguably leant proceedings a bit more of a punkier edge.

Personally speaking, I didn’t hear the Tuff Darts until way after the fact. I’d probably thumbed by their one and only album in the racks of any number of record stores. For whatever reason, I always seemed to confuse them with British band The Toy Dolls.

But the Tuff Darts finally got my attention, at one point, when I learned that John, the most reasonable gent behind the counter at Bleecker Bob’s during its tenure on West 3rd Street, was a former member. Full name John DeSalvo, John had been the bass player of the Tuff Darts about a decade or so before my friend Rob and I had become Bleecker Bob’s regulars. We’d adopted the habit of referring to John as “Ringo at the Register,” albeit not to his face, given an arguably similar physiognomy to the fabled Fab. Unlike famously abusive proprietor “Bleecker” Bob Plotnik, John was a markedly even-keel (and super knowledgeable) source of intel, ready to assist and answer any dumb questions we might have sprang on him. It was John who sold us the Now We Are Six ep by infantile noise duo, The Happy Flowers, charitably describing the 7” single as “… kind of not music.” We loved John.

Not everybody loved John, though. Pompous blowhard and self-proclaimed “Dean of Rock Critics” Robert Christgau (who I’ve lambasted before) gave the Tuff Darts album a C (it was Christgau who came up with the “hey, let’s give letter grades to other people’s music” system), saying…

Maybe Robert Gordon left this band to escape resident sickie John DeSalvo, one of those guys who sounds like he deserves to get fixed by the knife-wielding lesbians he has nightmares about. The only way to make their record more depressing would be to add a hologram of Gordon's replacement, Tommy Frenzy, whose slick blond hair and metal teeth now set the band's android-delinquent "image." Then again, you could take away Jeff Salen's guitar.

I can’t say I can credibly cite the exact lyric Christgau is alluding to (although it might be his interpretation of “Slash”), but suffice to say, much like their peers in the Ramones, their British counterparts in the Stranglers and their West Coast contemporaries in FEAR, the Tuff Darts entirely amplified a deliberately outrageous and black-humored aesthetic in their songs. I mean, if you’re taking compositions like “(Your Love is Like) Nuclear Waste,” “She’s Dead” and, God help you, “Phone Booth Man” at face value, you’ve really got to get out more often. That Christgau was so humorlessly taken aback by John’s lyrics is surprising, given his alleged fandom for the Ramones (the lyrics to da brudders’ “Beat on the Brat” and “53rd & Third” are certainly no less violent, tasteless and ostensibly offensive than anything you’d find in the Tuff Darts’ small discography). As such, one wonders how Christgau felt about, say, “I Love the Dead” by Alice Cooper from just a few years before (answer: he found it “tolerable”). And as long as we’re decrying tastelessness, it should be remembered what Christgau wrote about Wendy O. Williams in 1982, which was just as shamelessly misogynistic as any of this stuff, but I digress.

To be fair, markedly superior (to my mind) writer Ira Robbins wasn’t much kinder to the Tuff Darts in the Trouser Press assessment, but what'cha gonna do? 

While the Tuff Darts might have gone out of their way to be “shocking” in a lyrical context, the music contained on that first album is a good deal more conventional, basically concentrating on burly-but-melodic power pop. Some of it wouldn’t have sounded at all out of place played alongside early Kiss records like Dressed to Kill, although I’m sure that assessment would make John wince. At the risk of belaboring the obvious, no one makes music like the kind found on Tuff Darts! anymore. Listening to it through the prism of 2024, it sounds very much of its era (which is a much kinder way of saying “it’s dated”), but for the predisposed, it’s still pretty entertaining.

As I understand it, the band broke up shortly after the release of the record for reasons that I am not privy to, but I’m sure they’re not very surprising. I have no idea when John started working at Bleecker Bob’s, but he was certainly there when I first started shopping in the West 3rd Street iteration in the early `80s.

In later years, the Tommy Frenzy-fronted iteration of the band reformed. Robert Gordon never returned to the ranks of the Tuff Darts, having cultivated a successful career as a rockabilly singer. In 2007, the reunited Tuff Darts actually released a new record, entitled You Can’t Keep a Good Band Down, although it was released only in Japan. Sadly, founding guitarist Jeff Salen died of a heart attack at the young age of 55 the very next year. The band reconvened again, circa 2011 – with John, again, but I’m not sure how long that lasted.

From that point forward, the Tuff Darts trail goes kind of cold, apart from a few re-releases.

I don’t honestly know what John DeSalvo is up to these days. His longtime stint at Bleecker Bob’s came to a close 11 years ago this month, when the shop shut its doors in April of 2013. You can see him all over this video commemorating that sad milestone.

I gather John still works in the vintage vinyl trade. The picture on the right was snapped by former Cramps drummer Miriam Linna, presumably at a record fair at some point in 2018. Hopefully, he’s doing alright.

The world lost a second former Tuff Dart in 2022, when Robert Gordon passed away at age 75.

The New York City of the Tuff Darts era continues to (d)evolve from what it was during their existence. The bars and clubs they drank and played in like Max’s Kansas City and CBGB, among several lesser-celebrated others, are all long gone. The record stores that sold their music are mostly gone (although I did find a lovely re-released edition on 180-gram audiophile vinyl at Generation Records, not that I bought it … I still have my shitty CD version from a few years back). The rock rags that wrote about them are all long out of business. The neighborhoods they formerly stalked are now gentrified and largely unrecognizable.

Well, maybe not totally unrecognizable. The photo of the band at the top of this post was snapped by Blondie’s Christ Stein, who shared it on his Facebook page. That’s John on the far left with his had on the top of the car.

I took one look at this shot and immediately knew the spot. They’re standing in Abe Lebewohl Park in front of St. Marks Church-in-the-Bowery on 2nd Avenue and East 10th Street.

Here’s that spot today.

Lunch in TriBeCa: Second Course

Appetizer:
In late 2019 – just a little before New York City was blanketed with an all-encompassing shut-down over COVID-19 (gosh, remember that?) -- a little vegan concern opened up on Warren Street, down in TriBeCa, just a few blocks away from my office. Dubbed Lekka Burger, this venture served “plant-based” fare, ostensibly disguised as conventional cheeseburgers, not too different from the grub served at Superiority Burger on the other side of town. Always game to try something new and arguably healthier than my usual diet of abject crapola, I gave Lekka Burger a whirl and found their food to be perfectly fine, albeit light years from particularly exciting. As much as I wanted to like and support them, vegan food just isn’t my thang. I remain a carnivore.

Sadly, the COVID years hit Lekka pretty hard, and they never really recovered, finally throwing in the towel in March of 2023.

Entrée:
Having pitched articles at them before, notably about the former site of Plasmatics Headquarters on Thomas Street and about the Charly Garcia Corner on the Walker Street at Cortlandt Alley, I shot my quick post about that 1977 photograph of the nascent Teenage Jesus & The Jerks posing in front of the entrance to 335 Greenwich Street. Imagine my glee when they added a small item about it an In the News post yesterday. You can see that here.

Late last week, meanwhile, I took a westerly detour on my way to the office just so I could walk down that stretch of Greenwich Street. When I reached the portal in question, I duly documented it with a photo of my own.



In the wake of the TriBeCa Citizen posting, meanwhile, I fielded a nice note from a reader named Jean H. who had this to say…

Alas, poor Yorick, I knew them well. Ms. Lunch lived downstairs for a while ( I gave her my bike).. many of those bands, including the Jerks, the Contortions, the Voidoids, Mars, D.N.A., “ practiced”…(smoked, drank, partied) on the second floor of 81 Warren Street. It was wonderful. Those were the daze, my friends…..

I thought that was fascinating bit of intel, so did some further googling, unearthing this nugget, taken from the liner notes of a No Wave compilation, as documented here...

We moved to [painter/musician] Donny Christensen's [later The Contortions] place on 81 Warren Street, just a few blocks away [from Nancy Arlen's loft on Duane Street, ed.], where The Cramps and others were already installed. There we met Lydia Lunch and James Chance, who were squatting next door, and soon started playing together there as well, in Teenage Jesus. This period is well represented by a complete rehearsal set on tape 1 side B."

Don's place was an abandoned old basement storefront with no hot water on 81 Warren Street in lower Manhattan, which then also served as a rehearsal space (named 'The Hole' or 'Home For Teenage Dirt') for The Cramps.

Intrigued, I tried to place the exterior of 81 Warren Street in my head, but had to do some further Googling.

It turns out that hotbed of insouciant, bohemian activity all went down … in the same space recently vacated by Lekka Burger.

Dessert:
Here’s a little taste of Mars, who were mentioned above…. Bon Appetit.

Waxing Hypocritical

In a moment of breathtaking hypocrisy, after spending the last several years lambasting Record Store Day, I took my friend Bruce up on his invitation to hit the shops, as he was searching for the lavish re-release of Nocturne by Siouxsie & The Banshees. Unable to resist the tractor-beam like pull at Stranded Records on East 5th Street, I succumbed and treated myself to the 40th anniversary re-release of the “Body & Soul” and “Walk Away” e.p.s (handily pressed on one colored-vinyl LP) by ye olde Sisters if Mercy.

Did I need it? No. Do I love it? Oh dear God, yes.

Do what makes you happy.

Desperately Seeking the `80s Turns Two: Unanswered New York City Engagement Questions

Last week, after two years of podcasting, my friends over at Desperately Seeking the `80s hosted a little 100th-episode get-together at Bailey’s Corner Pub on 85th and York Avenue, inviting all their friends, supporters, and former guests of the podcast. Ironically enough, while I literally lived just up the road from this bar for well over a decade, this was the first time I’d ever set foot in the place. Y’see, when I first moved into that neighborhood circa 1984, that corner was occupied by a bar called Nash’s Cash Box and suffice to say that, as such, it did not exactly exude an atmosphere of welcoming bonhomie, or at least not to a stringbeany dweeb in Circle Jerks t-shirt like me.

In any event, I showed up, last Thursday evening, and was pretty much immediately immersed in a conversation with Travis Myers. You might remember my gingerly-worded mentions of him back on these earlier posts, but Travis is a former police officer turned novelist and lifelong Yorkvillian who, in his younger days, was a member of the infamous 84th Street Bombers. As such, we had a lot to talk about. We were soon joined by another lifelong neighborhood fixture and a former collegiate classmate of mine, Jennifer G. from this blog. In short order, the three of us were thick as thieves and chatting away. In fact, here’s a pic of we three. I'm the bespectacled psycho on the far right.

But because we were so eyeball-deep in our conversation, our opportunity to answer some of the roaming “engagement questions” that were being posed to all the other partygoers came and went, and we didn’t make the final cut of this week’s episode. With that in mind, I thought I’d address those questions that we missed here and now, so let’s have at it.

WHAT’S YOUR NEW YORK CITY SUBWAY STORY?

At some point in the spring of maybe 1982 or so, a girl from my high school class who, for the sake of this narrative, we’ll call Veronica, was throwing a party and invited pretty much everybody from school. I had a great friend and classmate we’ll call Lionel who harbored a massive crush on Veronica and, as such, really wanted to attend this bash. The only conceivable issue, however, was that Veronica lived way the Hell out in the wilds of Brooklyn, somewhere. As Lionel and I were both haplessly sheltered Manhattan snobs, this was something of a daunting prospect. But, driven by Lionel’s insatiable torch-carrying for otherwise oblivious Veronica, he was determined that he make a memorable appearance, and equally determined that I come with him.

Neglecting to inform any of our parents that the soiree we were planning to attend was in a far-flung province of an ::: gasp::: outer borough, Lionel and I plotted the perilous course of our under-and-overland trek to the borough of kings (“here be dragons…”), suited up in our best early `80s party finery (I believe I wore a Pink Floyd The Wall t-shirt under a blazer) and hit the MTA.

The journey to Veronica’s home was indeed a lengthy ride, with Lionel and I both audibly gasping when the train emerged from the subterranean warren of Manhattan onto the elevated, open-air tracks towards points beyond. But it was hardly the “Apocalypse Now”-styled descent into the heart of deepest Brooklyn we’d been expecting. We disembarked from the appointed station and eventually made our way to the party where -- SURPRISE! -- nothing of consequence transpired. Or nothing either of us had been hoping for, at least.

We nursed our contraband beers and chatted with various folks, but even after a few hours, the big moment for Lionel never came (especially since it was already sort of established that Veronica not-so-secretly liked a slack-jawed troglodyte from our class we’ll refer to here as Finn). As the gathering slowly started to wind down, it became obvious that it was time to go. Not wanting Lionel to have to witness Veronica and Finn become further well-acquainted, I grabbed him by the shoulder, and we headed out the door and back to the subway station for our long trip back to Manhattan.

It was now closing in on midnight as we boarded the otherwise empty train. Tired, bewildered, buzzed and slightly despondent, Lionel and I sat in silence as our subway car slowly headed west towards the portions of our native city we were actually familiar with. Lionel’s disappointment was practically palpable. Unlike several of my friends, I was no great admirer of Veronica’s, but I’d had my star-crossed designs on a different girl from our class … with equally dismal, unrequited results, so I could certainly empathize. No one ever said navigating matters of the heart as a high schooler was easy.

Our muted, melancholy musings came to a jarring halt, however, as we started to pull into another station. The train stopped at an elevated platform with another train across the way. Our doors opened, allowing Lionel and I to see across the platform and into the open doors of the car that was parked parallel to ours. There came the sound of a repeated smacking, like a thick, wet slapping noise, as if someone was punching a large fish. Something was going down.

There were three figures. One was a tall, hulking guy standing with fists clenched. The second figure was squatting over a third figure, repeatedly pounding that third figure directly in the face. The third figure, by this point, was sluggishly supine and badly bloodied, limply continuing to weather the barrage of blows from beyond a place of awareness. An affront had presumably taken place, the damage had clearly already been done, but the administering of the punishment was evidently unfinished. It was far and away the most brazen demonstration of cold, human brutality I’ve ever witnessed, and I had absolutely no concept of why it was happening.

Lionel and I sat watching this carnage with our mouths agape for what seemed like an eternity. There was no one else on our car and no one else on the platform. We assumed there was a conductor at the front of our train, but who knows if he’d seen what we were seeing? Eventually, the doors of our car closed, while the beating on the car across the platform continued in earnest. Our train pulled away from that platform, taking us away from the scene of that unfolding crime.

I don’t believe I felt compelled to visit Brooklyn for several years, after that.

IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME FOR FIVE HOURS, WHEN & WHERE IN NYC WOULD YOU GO?

This might sound ridiculous, but I’d do what my great friend Rob B. and I used to inexplicably refer to as “The Schmoo” and/or “schmooing around.” And let’s say, for the sake of a specific era, we go to 1987.

What this basically means is that he and I would meet at Tower Records on 4th & Broadway and hit that store like a goddamn hammer. From there, we head west to Bleecker Bob’s (118 West 3rd Street), Second Coming Records (235 Sullivan Street), Venus Records (61 West 8th Street), It’s Only Rock’n’Roll (49 West 8th Street) and then grab a slice at Pizza Box at 176 Bleecker Street and discuss our invariably dubious purchases. We’d then cross Sixth Avenue to hit Subterranean Records (5 Cornelia Street), Record Runner (5 Jones Street) and Rebel Rebel (319 Bleecker Street). From there, we’d probably jet down to Rocks in Your Head in SoHo (157 Prince Street), skip over to Lunch For Your Ears (25 Prince Street) and then hustle over to the East Village to hit St. Marks Sounds (20 St. Marks Place) and Freebeing Records (129 Second Avenue).

That would probably eat up about five hours right there.

With the fleeting exception of Record Runner, none of these places still exist here in 2024.

SCARIEST NEW YORK CITY MOMENT?

Well, honestly, that subway story above was pretty damn scary, but at the risk of tremendously belaboring the obvious, there was a certain September morning almost 23 years ago that takes the “Scariest New York City Moment” cake every time. Watching a theretofore permanent fixture of the cityscape suddenly be reduced to ash was pretty terrifying.

IF YOU COULD SPEND THE NIGHT IN A NEW YORK CITY MUSEUM, WHICH WOULD YOU CHOOSE?

I think I’d probably go with the American Museum of Natural History. I mean, I certainly love the Metropolitan Museum, but that’s too cliched an answer. My very favorite museum is the Museum of the City of New York, but that simply doesn’t feel big enough to spend the night in. The American Museum of Natural History, however, is rife with big, expansive, high-ceilinged chambers filled with big imposing animals and things with tusks and unusually sized earthworms and scary tribal masks and big fuckoff whales – the opportunities to freak oneself right out are endless. I would totally do that museum.

TELL ME ABOUT YOUR FIRST NYC APARTMENT?

Because I’m such a pathetic milksop, after I graduated from college, I moved back home (and in with my mom), because I wanted to pursue a career in the oh-so-not-at-all lucrative field of journalism. While this did indeed enable me to land a string of woefully underpaying jobs at places like SPIN Magazine, some tiny independent periodicals like NY Perspectives, The New York Review of Records and a business journal called Venture Japan, and then onto LIFE Magazine and eventually TIME Magazine, it certainly didn’t do me any favors in terms of “my rep,” so to speak. While my mom and I got on famously and she loved all my friends (and, crucially, she took off every weekend for Long Island), I still needed to get the Hell out and into a place of my own.

My first place was actually kind of spectacular. While ostensibly a studio apartment on East 12th Street in a converted industrial space, it had very high ceilings and an elevated loft bed are which acted as sleeping quarters/DJ booth/command center. I absolutely loved it.

I was in that apartment from the mid-`90s until I got married in 2001, and then for another year after that. When it was determined that it would be impossible to credibly rear any children in the place, the writing was on the wall, and we moved out, although managed to stay in the same neighborhood. We’ve been in that apartment, now, since 2002, which is the longest I’ve ever lived anywhere.

Bleecker Bob’s Revenge? Changes on West Third Street

Some might remember, back in September, when I noticed that Miyabi, the Japanese restaurant that succeeded Bleecker Bob’s long residency at 118 West Third Street, has seemingly closed up shop without much fanfare. Apart from my entry, I didn’t notice a single blog post or news item about its sudden vanishing. I mean, it’s not really that big a deal – business ventures close all the time. But it still struck me as odd.

Ever since that September discovery, I’ve been periodically walking past the spot to check on any developments. For the most part, there haven’t been any, although I did notice that the longtime backrub/foot-rub (and invariable hand-job) joint one storefront to its west also vacated its premises, so, I guess you’ll have to get your “happy endings” somewhere else, Greenwich Villagers!

This whole strip of West Third has seen much better days. Ben’s Pizza is still holding court at the east corner at MacDougal Street, but the longtime McDonald’s on the Sixth Avenue corner finally closed and is now basically rotting. The whole block has sort of a vaguely disquieting feeling of lawlessness, although a brand-new deli did just open up on the north side of the street.

Today, meanwhile, as I was walking to work, I noticed a fresh application of scaffolding erected around the former Bleecker Bob’s/Miyabi site, so something is clearly afoot.

Watch this space.

Incidentally, yes, I know – prior it to being Bleecker Bob’s it was Bonaparte’s. Way prior it to being Bonaparte’s it was The Night Owl Cafe.