Flaming Pablum

Who Made the Scene at By Any Means Green?

This will matter to an exceptionally small few of you, but it’s been bugging me, so perhaps it’ll intrigue you as well.

Regular readers might remember an entry I posted back in the fall of 2020 about By Any Means Green, which was a benefit show held at CBGB in the summer of, I think, 1991. I’d stumbled across a poster of it on instagram, and later found a better scan of it on a Jon Spencer fan site. Here it is now…

This artwork, as mentioned in that first post, is the handiwork of “Dirty” Danny Hellman, an illustrator who used to do amazing work for outlets like New York Press and Al Goldstein’s Screw, back in the day. Like I said, Hellman had also drawn an amazing illustration of Cop Shoot Cop and Iggy Pop in 1993 that I bought off of him several years back. To see Hellman reunited with Cop Shoot Cop again warmed my heart, and I asserted that if anyone still had a copy of this poster, I’d pay handsomely for it.

I actually reached out to Danny himself about it, but he conceded that even he didn’t have a copy of it, remarking instead about how he hates having to draw horses. Oh well.

I pretty much figured that was that until spotting a variation of the poster above last week. Beyond being seemingly divorced from Hellman’s illlustration, the details of the gig are different on this bill, finding the mighty Lunachicks occupying the top billing instead of Cop Shoot Cop.

Check it out below, and click on it to enlarge…

Now being that the benefit gig in question -- organized by Marguerite Van Cook and held on behalf of the Park Rights Council to “save Tompkins Square Park” -- transpired a whopping three decades ago this July, information on who played and how it all went down is all a bit hard to track down. But in doing some further creative Googling, I happened on this page, featuring a third flyer advertising the same gig. Once again, click on it to enlarge...

Heightening the mystery further, this fetching flyer –- drawn by John Terhorst, based on an original illustration by James Romweber, husband of event-organizer Marguerite Van Cook, and father of Crosby Romweber, the plucky tyke pictured on the sleeve of Cop Shoot Cop’s 1992 album, Ask Questions Later -- puts the colorfully named Reverb Motherfuckers in the top spot, despite citing C$C at the bottom. The Lunachicks get nary a mention.

So, I’m putting it out there – who went to this gig? Did you? What’s the story? Who officially ended up headlining By Any Means Green?

Today, meanwhile, whether effectively saved or not, Tompkins Square Park is still there, thirty years later. Cop Shoot Cop broke up circa 1995, although the resultant acrimony is largely water under the bridge, at this stage. The Lunachicks reformed quite recently, albeit without guitarist Sindi Benezra (pictured above). CBGB closed for good in 2006.

Back Again to Wendy's Wall

This is not a consequential one, but what the Hell?

Longtime readers – again, if they exist – might remember a few posts last year wherein a serendipitously unearthed a photograph of something I’d long been searching for, that being a depiction and exact location of a graffiti mural of The Plasmatics that I’d seen back in the early `80s from behind the window of a school bus traveling south in Spanish Harlem.

As first invoked here, then brought to fruition here. the wall in question ended up being the eastern-facing façade of a plot of real estate on East 106th & Park Avenue dubbed “The Graffiti Hall of Fame.” After some diligent Googling, I’d managed to pretty much divine the latitude and longitude of the spot and even found a representation of the (presumably) long-one bit of artwork.

Shortly after that, as documented on this follow-up post, I picked up a fetching coffee-table book about the Graffiti Hall of Fame and came across a better photograph of the wall and artwork in question. I reached out to the photographer in question – that being one Martha Cooper – and inquired about possibly purchasing a print of the photograph. Alas, the figure her handler quoted for same was a bit steep, so I didn’t pursue it. Oh well.

In any case, in the wake of that, I did indeed go up to re-check out the spot. As expected, the rendering of the Plasmatics logo (alongside a cartoony depiction of Wendy O. Williams brandishing a signature chainsaw next to Richie Stotts’ signature Flying V guitar, bisected and spurting blood) had long-since been painted over. I snapped some pics, but never got around to posting them here.

Over this past weekend, however, my son, Oliver, and I went back up to that neck of the woods, specifically for the purposes of checking out the Museum of the City of New York’s excellent “New York, New Music” exhibit (which is still there through September, incidentally). On the way, we got off the 6 train at 96th and Lex and walked up to Park Avenue and down the hill of that very tributary up to East 106th.

Here’s that same wall here in 2022. That's me in front, looking like I just spotted something unspeakable happening just off-camera. 

And this, once again, was the Plasmatics…

Astor Place 1983

A photographer named Peter Bennett captured the shot below in 1983, presumably from within (or on top?) of 770 Broadway (formerly Wannamaker's and later K-Mart, and allegedly soon-to-be Wegman's). I spotted it on Facebook, and it stopped me dead in my tracks, as they say.

Here we're looking east over Astor Place and its surrounding, East Village environs. This was obviously taken well before the Cooper Union dormitory was erected in 1992, before the comparatively squat NYU building on the left was razed to accommodate the giant Death Star/Rubik's Cube building went up, before the shampoo bottle condo tower was built in the southernly parking lot, before the corner of St. Marks & Third was razed and before the Gringo mural was painted over. 

This is the Astor Place I fell in love with. Click on it to enlarge. For more of Bennett's work, but sure to check out his website. 

Beneath The Valley of 84 Thomas Street: A Very Plasmatic Sequel

At this risk of creating the impression that Flaming Pablum has become the “All Plasmatics All The Time” blog, I offer this update.

Back in February of 2021, I posted one of a string of deeper-dive entries about minutia relating to the late, lamented Plasmatics, this particular post concentrating on divining the location of their TriBeCa loft, i.e. “Plasmatics World Headquarters.” After a fruitful bit of Google-sleuthing, I determined the former address of Wendy O. Williams and her partner/manager/band-svengali Rod Swenson to have been at 84 Thomas Street, and posted my findings accordingly.

A little while after that, an editor from the TriBeCa Citizen got in touch and asked if it was cool to re-purpose said posts on her website. I said sure, and off we went.

As it happens, it took about exactly a year for TriBeCa Citizen to finally get it on their page, at which point one of their readers, a Bruce E., wrote in about the fifth-floor loft now named Stone Studios, owned by artist Todd Stone. Bruce wrote:

Laurie and Todd Stone have lived there for decades, and Todd is a painter of some renown, having done a series on the World Trade Center after 9/11. Something does not quite match up.

Irked by the notion that my sleuthing was somehow shoddy, I repaired to the internet, and mercifully came up with a new morsel of information. According to the Fall 2019 issue of Downtown Magazine, both the Stone family and the Plasmatics lived at 84 Thomas Street, with a crucial qualifier.

In a story about downtown nightlife in the late 70s and early 80s, writer Matt Kapp wrote:

Rents were cheap, even in places like TriBeCa, where painter Todd Stone moved into a sprawling loft in the late 1970’s. His upstairs neighbors were the punk-metal clan The Plasmatics. “They were the worst neighbors in New York,” he says. “It was World War III every afternoon. And when they weren’t practicing, they were weight-lifting.” Nonetheless, he has fond memories of lead singer Wendy O. Williams (“she was a gusty girl, fearless”) and gives the band some credit for his own creative path, too. “The reason why I am an artist in Lower Manhattan today,” he says, “Is because I could stand living underneath them”

I don’t know which part of this I enjoy more…. the notion of being neighbors with the Plasmatics, or simply the notion of them “practicing.”

So, anyway, there you have it. Both Wendy & Rod and Todd Stone lived at 84 Thomas Street, raising the question: Was “Plasmatics World Headquarters” techinically on the 6th floor, or did Stone Studios take their place after their departure?

While you ponder that, here’s a bit of vintage Plasmatics, filmed at Bond’s Casino in Times Square.

The Walrus Goes to Hell's Kitchen

In honor of the anniversary of the death of John Lennon, a friend of mine posted a picture of the man they’d been given by a photographer named David Gahr. The photo in question was a great shot of the man standing on the median strip of an avenue in, presumably, New York City. Intrigued, I immediately did a bit of Googling to see if I could pinpoint the spot, and sure enough, it was over in Hell’s Kitchen. You can see images from Gah’rs shoot here. But amidst those images came pictures of Lennon standing in front of a landmark near to my heart.

Here’s John standing in front of The River Diner, formerly at the corner of West 37th and 11th Avenue. Why is this significant to me, you ask? Well, this is the diner, as I discussed here, that Martin Scorsese used as a primary location in -- WAIT FOR IT -- “After Hours” (and not, as widely misconceived, the Moondance Diner that formerly stood at the corner of Grand Street and Sixth Avenue in SoHo).

Pour one out for John, gone 41 years today. And, yes, I know the Walrus was Paul.

Lost in OldNewYorkLandia

Tumblr is a platform I don’t find myself using, too often (although I do still maintain my own space there, that being Get Back to Work). That said, there are a few specific Tumblr users who cotinue to raise the bar. One of my very favorites is OldNewYorkLandia, which is an astonishing well curated aggregation of archival images from eons past, mostly all responsibly credited. The one below is one such image, taken by Leonard Freed in 1954 or 1955. This is, of course, Jersey Street in what was then technically known as Little Italy but is now perceived more as just part of SoHo. Indie cinema heads might recognize it from the opening scene of Jim Jarmusch’s “Permanent Vacation” or from the video for “Down By Law” by Madball.

For more amazing vintage New York City pics, definitely check out OldNewYorkLandia, but be warned … it’s easy to get sucked in and spend hours scrolling.

SPINning Out: 102 MORE of The Best New York City Music Videos

This post was started several times over the past four months but was regularly abandoned over the maintenance required to plug in all the links. It was almost aborted entirely in the wake of the week of September 11th, when nostalgia for the way New York used to be reached fever pitch. But since I started it, I figured I might as well finish it. So, here goes. We’ll see if I bring it to fruition this time.

If you’e anything of a regular reader, you might pick up on my frequent allusions to having interned at SPIN Magazine back in the balmy, comparatively carefree days of 1989 (that all started on this post). While entirely true, it should be noted that in the grand scheme of things, I was only at the magazine in its then-grotty office on West 18th Street from about July 1989 until January of 1990, when the managing editor who’d implied that he was going to hire me on full-time was fired. Overall, my tenure at SPIN — while certainly informative for me — didn’t really make too much of an impression on the magazine itself. While formerly toiling paylessly under its auspices, I contributed one small news item about Public Enemy. Big whoop.

But prior to my short-lived, star-crossed few months at SPIN, the magazine had been hugely influential on me. I remember picking up its third issue (with Sting on the cover) in July of 1985 under the misapprehension that there was a feature on one of my then-favorite bands, 7 Seconds (there wasn’t), but becoming totally hooked anyway. Unlike shitty Rolling Stone, here was a magazine that dared to discuss and review bands like Scratch Acid, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, the Sisters of Mercy, Squirrel Bait, the nascent Beastie Boys and the Butthole Surfers. The writing was assertive and irreverent. Their approach was fresh and different — they had Pia Zadora interview Joey Ramone and Lydia Lunch interview Pat Benatar. They periodically gave Henry Rollins the back page to talk about his impressions of Madonna or wax rhapsodic about his then-two favorite records (White Light, White Heat by the Velvet Underground and Funhouse by The Stooges). It was amazing stuff, and for many years afterwards, I was a dutifully loyal reader, even after my brief internship.

In time, SPIN started …er…spiraling, shedding long-time staffers left and right and eventually even jettisoning its longtime editor-in-chief and founder, Bob “The Gooch” Guccione Jr. The magazine lost whatever voice and edge it once had and started following the curve as opposed to staying ahead of it. While everyone I’d originally known from my intern days were long gone, certain other people I’d worked alongside from various other outlets came and went through the outlet’s perpetually revolving door. The last physical issue came out on 2012 before it became a strictly online affair.

Here in 2021, the online iteration of SPIN admirably strives to compete in a vastly different landscape from the one it first launched in, but I don’t know anyone who writes for or edits it anymore, as far as I know. I cannot say that I read it often enough to have a credible opinion about whether or not it’s worth checking out, these days, but I somehow doubt that it pushes any envelopes in the way it used to do.

In any case, blah blah blah …. enough of about me and my experience at SPIN. This post ostensibly had nothing to do with all that, but I’m so damn narcissistic that I couldn’t help dredging all that bullshit back up. No, this post was about how friggin’ anaemic much of SPIN’s more recent ….. or, Hell, not even that recent ... content has been.

What triggered it was a listicle they first posted in 2013 called “The 40 Best New York City Music Videos.” Longtime readers know I used to spend an inordinate amount of time and bandwidth documenting same, so I was of course curious to learn which ones made their list. Somewhat predictably, said list was both rife with cliché and pandered strenuously to certain demographics, although still somehow managed to omit some truly obvious choices like, say, “Waiting on a Friend” by ye olde Rolling Stones. I was, of course, appalled, and planned to compose my own, authoritative list to combat SPIN's blinkered myopia at once.

The trouble was, as mentioned earlier, while I had a fever for the subject matter (however ridiculous), it was going to be a labor-intensive post … all that cutting and pasting of links and whatnot. I kept a running list of clips I thought were worthy of citing, and that seemed to stretch on for days. I’d be out running an errand and something I’d see would remind me of, say, the video of “We Want the Airwaves” by the Ramones (shot on Joey’s rooftop on East 9th Street) or the slow trek through Chinatown in “Coming Down” by the Dum Dum Girls. After a while, the list got pretty long, if not unwieldy, completely dwarfing SPIN’s pathetic list of 40.

But when the task seemed too laborious, I set it to one side and then got back to my life, only to fleetingly invoke it a little while back in this post. It seems laughably unlikely, but perhaps SPIN spotted my invocation of it, because now when you go to their link, all that remains is their one-paragraph preamble. Their list is strangely gone.

So, when you go through my list and wonder where, say, “Love is Strong” by the Rolling Stones, "New York, New York" by Ryan Adams, “Steppin’ Out” by Joe Jackson and/or, good lord, “Empire State of Mind” by Jay-Z and Alicia Keys are, know that I left them out because they were on SPIN’s list, and I didn’t want to be duplicative. Also, “Empire State of Mind” completely fucking sucks and makes me want to destroy the earth.

Here’s my list. Enjoy it or not. I did it alphabetically by song title. There is no hierarchy, although, personally speaking, I like some of these way, way more than others.

ADDENDUM: Some new clips were added on Tuesday, October 12 and Wednesday, October 13. 

“All or Nothin” by Madball - Tompkins Square Park, East Village, Lower East Side

“All That I Wanted” by Belfegore - Pier 25 in TriBeca, West Side Highway

"Ana Ng" by They Might Be Giants - Randall's Island 

“Annie, I’m Not Your Daddy” by Kid Creole & The Coconuts - East River Bandshell

“Bad Reputation” by Freedy Johnston - SoHo, Fulton Fish Market, 

"Bang the Drum" by Railroad Jerk - Riverside Park

“Ballad of the Lower East Side” by Michael Monroe - East Village, Lower East Side 

“Big Apple” by Kajagoogoo - SoHo, Delancey Street, West 4th Street subway platform, Midtown, West Side Highway

 

 

“Brainwashed” by Nuclear Assault - Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn Bridge, Greenwich Village

“Burn Trees” by Missing Foundation - East Village, Tompkins Square Park, Lower East Side

“Carnival” by Natalie Merchant - Midtown, 8th Avenue, Tompkins Square Park, Coney Island

“Chicken Dance” by Life in a Blender - Chinatown

"Close to the Edit" by Art of Noise - The High Line

“Coming Down” by Dum Dum Girls - Chinatown

“Confusion” by New Order - Fun House disco in Chelsea

“Cool Kids” by Kix - SoHo

“Cosmic Slop” by Funkadelic - Central Park, Times Square

“Could Just Die” by L.E.S. Stitches - East Village

“Cousins” by Vampire Weekend - Cortlandt Alley, TriBeca

 

 

“Crazy” by Au Revoir, SImone - An homage to "After Hours," SoHo

“Disconnect” by The Rollins Band - Ah homage to "Taxi Driver," Hell's Kitchen

“Do The Get Down” by The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - All over

"Don't Let's Start" by They Might Be Giants - World's Fair in Flushing, Queens

“Down the Drain” by L.E.S. Stitches - Lower East Side (duh!)

“Down By Law” by Madball - Jersey Street in SoHo

“Dunes” by The Clean - Midtown, NoHo, Greenwich Village, The Bowery, Hoboken 

“Edie (Ciao Baby)” by The Cult - Wall Street, Chelsea, CBGB, Hell's Kitchen, Time's Square, Central Park, Brookyn

 

 

“Electric Relaxation” by A Tribe Called Quest - Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn Bridge, Midtown, Square Diner in TriBeCa

“Enjoy The Silence” (WTC version) by Depeche Mode - World Trade Center

“Forever” by Little Steven & The Disciples of Soul - Times Square, Greenwich Village, St. Marks Place, Midtown

“Fanky” by Charly Garcia - SoHo, Washington Square Park, Greenwich Village, East River Park 

“Funky Man” by Dee Dee King -  East Village, Washington Square Park, the Gas Station on Avenue B

“Green Light” by Firewater - TriBeCa

“Half Asleep” by School of Seven Bells - Union Square, Greenwich Village, Gramercy Park 

“Hell in Paradise” by Yoko Ono - Financial District 

“Hold It Now (Hit It)” by the Beastie Boys - Silver Towers, Greenwich Village, NYU

“Holy Snappers” by The Beastie Boys - SoHo

 

 

"Hot, Hot, Hot" by Buster Poindexter - FDR Drive, Lower East Side, Chinatown, Times Square

“HTP-Brid” by Savages - Subways, High Line, East Village

“I Love You, Suzanne” by Lou Reed - Staple Street in TriBeCa, Midtown

“I Miss The Old New York” by Agnostic Front - Lower East Side

"I Saw The Light" by The The - Various Manhattan rooftops

 

 

“I’m Afraid of Americans” by David Bowie - Greenwich Village, Lower East Side, Canal Street

“Invisible People” by False Prophets - East River Bandshell

“Judas Kiss” by The Del Lords - East Village, Lower East Side

“Jukebox (Don’t Put Another Dime)” by The Flirts - Carmine Street, Greenwich Village

“Jump Around” by House of Pain - Mott Street in SoHo, Old Town Bar & Grill near Union Square, Midtown, Upper East Side

“Just Friends” by Beat Rodeo - Lower East Side

“Just Got Paid” by Johnny Kemp - Greenwich Village, NoHo

“Killing Time” by Clowns for Progress - East Village

“Magnificent Seven” by The Clash - Midtown, Times Square, JFK Airport

“Manhattan” by Cat Power - All over Manhattan (duh!)

 

 

"Mind Games" by John Lennon - Central Park, Midtown

"Minus Zero" by Lady Pank - WTC, The Battery

“My Baby Glows in the Dark” by The Senders - East Village, Lower East Side

“My Night Ain’t Dark as My Day” by The Vipers - SoHo

“My Kinda Town” by The Undead - World Trade Center, Times Square, Medical Corridor, East Village

"New York City" by Joey Ramone - Lower East Side, East Village, The Bowery, Chinatown, Cortlandt Alley, TriBeCa, Times Square, Midtown, Central Park, West Village, Flushing, Queens, Brooklyn Bridge, Civic Center

“NYC 1/25-26/13” by Iceage - All over

“NYC Man” by Lou Reed - All over 

“Off the A-List” by Surgery - East Village, Gramercy Park, Midtown, Lower East Side 

“On the Sunny Side of the Street” by Pizzicato Five - SoHo, Central Park, Brooklyn Bridge

“One on One” by Hall & Oates - Times Square 

“Original Wrapper” by Lou Reed - TriBeCa

 

 

“Policy of Truth” by Depeche Mode - The reservoir in Central Park, East River Park, Meat Packing District, Upper West Side

”Potential for a Fall” by Sick of It All - East Village, Tompkins Square Park, Meat Packing District, West Side Highway, Chelsea

“Punishment” by Biohazard - Brooklyn Bridge

“Que Pasa/Me No Pop I” by Coati Mundi - Washington Square Park

“Rocks Off” by The Rolling Stones - The Bowery

“Rollercoaster” by Everything But The Girl - Greenwich Village, Union Square, NoHo

"Rollerkoaster" by Railroad Jerk - Times Square, 

“Run and Run” by The Psychedelic Furs - Greenwich Village, Gramercy Park, East Village, SoHo, Battery Park

“Sixth Avenue Heartache” by The Wallflowers - Midtown, Upper East Side, Chelsea Hotel, Times Square

“Slash Your Tires” by Luna - East Village, Lower East Side

"Spider-Man" by The Ramones - Roof of 108 Leonard Street, TriBeCa

“Star” by The Cult - Midtown, Lower East Side

"Step" by Vampire Weekend - All over Manhattan

 

 

“Stiff Upper Lip” by AC/DC - Midtown, Cortlandt Alley, TriBeCa

“Sweet Jane” by The Jim Carroll Band - The Bowery

"Summer in the City" by Joe Cocker - SoHo

“Sun City” by Artists Against Apartheid - Washington Square Park, Greenwich Village, Lower East Side

“Swimming in 99” by Golden Suits - Brooklyn, TriBeCa, SoHo, Greenwich Village, Upper West Side, Upper East Side, Central Park

“Tall N’ Lonely Buildings” by Urban Blight - Not entirely sure, actually. 

“The Metromen Take the Ritz” by The Metromen - All over

"These Are The Days" by 10,000 Maniacs - Chrysler Building, Midtown

"These Foolish Things" by James Chance - a Lower Manhattan rooftop

"Time Bomb" by Rancid - Lower East Side

"Titanium Expose" by Sonic Youth - Chinatown 

"Todd Youth" by Jesse Malin - East Village, Tompkins Square Park

“Too Many Creeps” by the Bush Tetras - The Bowery, East Village, Lower East Side

"Trapped" by the Crumbsuckers - CBGB, The Bowery

“Two Princes” by The Spin Doctors - Central Park, NoHo

“Union City Blue” by Blondie - Manhattan from the Jersey side of the Hudson River

 

 

"Vices" by Circus of Power - Pier 25, West Side Highway

“We Take Mystery to Bed” by Gary Numan - Upper East Side, Central Park, Midtown

“We Want The Airwaves” by The Ramones - East Village, Queens

“What Happened?” by H20 - East Village, Greenwich Village

“Waiting on a Friend” by The Rolling Stones - St Marks Place, East Village

“What Will The Neighbors Think?” by Murphy’s Law - East Village

“Where I’m From” by Digable Planets - East Village, TriBeCa

"Why I Drink" by The Candy Snatchers - East Village

"World Order in New York" by World Order - Central Park, Midtown, Grand Central Station, Rockefeller Center, Wall Street, Williamsburg, The Dakota, Times Square, Brooklyn Bridge, Washington Square Park, Flushing Corona Park, Queens,  

“You Remain Anonymous” by Lubricated Goat - Lower East Side

 

 

What am I missing? 

Back Again to Club Berlin

Now, as I understand it, there really was a Club Berlin somewhere in Manhattan in the `80s, although it was invariably before the era wherein I was nocturnally out and about, roaming these New York City streets. The first time I’d ever heard about a nightclub called Berlin was, of course, via my laboriously over-cited favorite film of all time, that being “After Hours.” I’ve devoted more space on this stupid blog to the minutia of that film, so if you genuinely care, please just do a Google search.

In any case, in the film, insouciant, topless sculptress Kiki Bridges asserts that Berlin is on the corner of West Broadway and Grand Street. Today, that particular corner is a douchey restaurant called the Sola Pasta Bar, but back in the `80s, I honestly don’t remember it being anything other than a wall whereupon fabled SoHo artist Renee extolled the merits of his own work (see below as captured by photographer Leo London). That doesn’t mean it wasn’t there, though. More to the point, I’m lazily assuming for no discernible reason that we’re talking about the southwest corner of that particular intersection, and who knows if that’s even accurate?

 

In 2011, meanwhile, I found an odd, cable-access-era video hosted by the late Details editor and nightlife scenester par excellence Stephen Saban called “Dead Clubs,” wherein he rattled off a laundry list of since-shuttered establishments, and I REALLY WANT TO SAY that Berlin … or Club Berlin … was one of them. Unfortunately, that clip is no longer on YouTube. That said, if you want to see it, it’s part of the ongoing “New York, New Music 1980-1986” exhibit. Go check that out for me and see if he does indeed cite it.

In 2015, meanwhile, I interviewed my friend Fran Power, who had a memorable cameo in “After Hours” during the scene in which protagonist Paul Hackett gains brusque entry to Club Berlin and almost gets his head shaved. Here’s what Fran had to say about that.

Where was it filmed?

It was filmed in an empty space that they had made into a club in what is now Tribeca. It was a really dead neighborhood at the time …not a real club.

Wasn't there an actual Club Berlin?

Yes there was a real Berlin club…a girl from one of my bands worked there but it wasn't where we filmed at.

So, yeah, … there’s that.

In terms of the film, though, the location Martin Scorsese used for the exterior shots of Club Berlin was 296 Spring Street on the corner of Hudson Street, just up a block or so from the Emerald Pub, which Scorsese used as the location for The Terminal Bar.

Here it in the film, as spotted from looking south from Spring Street, just a few steps to the west of Hudson.

From at least the early `90s on, that space had become a deli. I took a shot of my kids in front of this same strip pictured above in 2013.

And, as resourced from the great new cinema blog NYC in Film (which I discussed here), here’s a shot of the exterior from 1984, taken from across Hudson Street, looking southwest. Note the checkerboard paintjob. Was that simply during Scorsese’s filming?

Today, my friend Chung Wong posted a great photo on Facebook from 1976 by a photographer named Bevan Davis. This is that same space that would later play host to Scorsese’s location of Club Berlin and that deli, then a bar called JJ’s West, as looked at from Hudson Street looking West.

Today, that particular space is all boarded up with a sidewalk shed. Something in in the works, but not sure what.

The space that had been Emerald Pub down the street remains dormant and derelict. Fran Powers, meanwhile, sadly left us earlier this year.

For a really great, recent breakdown of the "After Hours" locations, check out NYC in FILM. 

ADDENDUM: I did a little further searching around, and came up with some information from this site. For a start, it seems JJ's West was a topless bar (back when New York had such establishments), but prior to that, it was a storied jazz club called The Half Note Club. Says the archives site....

The Half Note Club was one of the premier places to hear jazz in the 1960s, and at least a half-dozen records were “live from the Half Note.” John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Cannonball Adderly, Billie Holiday, and Judy Garland all performed here before it became a topless bar in 1974.  It’s now a deli.

Here it was again as JJ's West...

Salt in The Streets

In 16 years of composing this silly blog, when I’ve been searching for evidence of some great, lost aspect of the Manhattan of my youth, I’ve periodically found interesting fodder in the short, experimental films made by NYU Tisch students. For all their arty pretensions and aspirations of insightful cinematic depth, they frequently come steeped in the visual trappings of the era.

I wasn’t really searching for anything when I happened upon this one, but it’s worth a viewing all the same. Filmed in 1987, directed by one Jason Rosette and shot all over Manhattan,“Salt” is an absurdist short about one man’s delusional quest, that starts on Cooper Square, just across from that squat little Cooper Union building that was later replaced by that space station.

Check it out.

A Way Back to Wendy's Wall

Just a quick follow-up to this revelatory (well, to me, anyway) post from back in April.

Once I gleaned that the original site of the elusive Plasmatics mural from my distant memory was the tellingly-titled Graffiti Hall of Fame on 106th & Park Avenue (this discovery coming courtesy of an uncredited photo on “Graffiti Database”), I started to wonder if I could find any other — and/or preferably better — photographs of the art in question, but tireless Google searches were giving me nothing further on the subject. I mean, Hell, I was lucky to find that first photo to begin with.

Branching my search out further, however, I noticed that there is a very robust subculture of reverent graffiti-centric publishing. As such, when I spotted a fetching, paperback coffee-table book on Amazon that was exclusively dedicated to the very spot where the original mural was, I figured there was a sporting chance it would include another shot of it. And even if it didn’t, I was intrigued enough by the story of the place and its accompanying images that it would be cool to own. Tweny-something bucks later, it was mine. It arrived today.

Much to my delight, fourteen pages into the book comes a beautiful wide shot of the wall in question that was obviously snapped at least a year or two earlier, as the artwork is still vibrantly colorful and unsullied by other tags. This photo was taken by maverick shutterbug Martha Cooper. I remain mystified as to why these artists chose to immortalize the Plasmatics in this manner, but, again, perhaps they were just simply fans.

As a lark, I have reached out to Ms. Cooper to see if she’s consider selling me a print of the photo. We’ll see.

Incidentally, you can check out more of Cooper's amazing work on her Instagram page. Tell'em Flaming Pablum sent ya.