Flaming Pablum

Return to Dirty Old Fun City

Astonishingly persistent readers here might remember a post from -– Jesus -– five years ago already wherein I documented the doings of an intrepidly obsessed cinephile named Jonathan Hertzberg. Hertzberg took it upon himself to compose something of a master-reel of footage from New York City-centric cinema from arguably the most adventurous era, that being the 1970’s (and into the very early 80’s). This was all culled into a frankly overwhelming video series called “Dirty Old New York a.k.a. Fun City.” The end results were a location-spotting NYC blogger’s dream, …. kind of the cinematic equivalent to the Beastie Boys’ sample-heavy watershed opus, Paul’s Boutique.

When I’d penned that original post in 2013, Hertzberg had only completed, I believe, two installments of the series, and I somewhat churlishly whined that he hadn’t included any footage from Tony Scott’s “The Hunger,” Milos Foreman’s adaption of the Broadway musical “Hair” and a host of films from later in the 80’s. At the time, Hertzberg himself wrote in. Here’s what he had to say.

Thank you for words and space you've devoted to my "Dirty Old New York" project! These are fluid pieces and have been updated already a few times with more planned, i.e. "missing" footage could and likely will appear in the updates, like firmware. It's hard to have every wanted film on hand at any moment. I was a bound a bit by availability, quality of footage (rules I broke a few times), and time frame (which I also stretched a bit). In general, I was going for DVD-quality, 16x9 footage from approximately '66 to '84. But, this has stretched a bit into '85. I had to stop somewhere or it would keep going, and I was looking for the gritty '70s-like years for the most part and not the period when the '80s started to look like the '80s as we remember it.

DOWNTOWN '81 appears for a bit in Part I and returns in Part III. SUSAN will likely appear in III. HAIR and KING KONG and some of the others you mention should be in there as well.

Tellingly, it’s taken me five goddamn years to get back on board. In the ensuing half-decade, Hertzberg not only completed his series, concluding with a fifth chapter, but did some specialized cuts as well, concentrating on stuff like recurring character actors, a Super 8 reel of New York footage his father shot in 1969 and other fun stuff, all very much worth checking out.

For the sake of this post, I’m going to embed Part IV of “Dirty Old New York aka Fun City” being that a passage of it enjoyably concentrates on “punk vs. disco,” cannily juxtaposing the strangely parallel exploits of John Travolta’s Tony Manero from “Saturday Night Fever” with Richard Hell from “Blank Generation.”

 

Cool, right, well, click here to go to Hertzberg’s Vimeo page to watch the whole series and then some. Tell’em Flaming Pablum sent ya.

Back to Astor Place

Our good friend Bob Egan of Popshots NYC posted the below photo over on Facebook, and I found it so striking that I was motivated to post it here. Here's how Bob prefaced it...

Astor Place, 1984, from the roof of 111 Fourth Avenue at 11-12th St.

Seemingly a million lightyears from its current, busy, teeming iteration, this is exactly the Astor Place I first discovered in the early 80's. Barren, uncluttered, spacious.... full of elbow room and ripe for exploring. 

 

Exhuming 'Recent Things'

Back in August of 2008, I posted an entry dubbed “Recent Things.” This was essentially just a series of photographs I’d snapped with my still-quasi-new digital camera (not iPhone) to offset a series of photo posts I’d portentuously titled “Things That Are No Longer There,” and variations thereof. I stumbled upon that latter post this morning, and was struck by how many of those things – a decade later – are themselves no longer there … or at least not how I’d left them, so to speak. Let’s review, shall we?

This, as the sign says, was Bleecker Bob's. I devoted almost as many posts to the slow demise of this storied stronghold of punk vinyl as I did to the untimely vanishing of the Cedar Tavern. In any event, it closed in 2013 and, contrary to original plans, did not turn into a rock'n'roll-themed frozen yogurt emporium, but rather a fair-to-middling Japanese restaurant I dined in in 2015. Read that account here, should you honestly care. 

This is a shot of my then-four-year-old daughter Charlotte standing cherubically in front of what had been the fabled Moondance Diner at the bottom of Sixth Avenue, just north of Canal Street. About year after this photo was taken, the Moondance closed (its physical manifestation moving out west to Wyoming, if memory serves) and a giant, fuckoff hotel was erected in its footprint. I sneer every time I walk by it ... which is daily. 

This is the former exterior of Marty's Cool Stuff on LaFayette Street just north of Bleecker. The shop was a complete, unmanageable mess, but Marty did indeed have the odd bit of genuinely ...er... "cool stuff." The only lasting bit of ephemera I have that I'd prized there is this orange metal sign that says "Smiths Overalls." It hangs just above the interior transom of our front door. Today, this is part of the noxious streetwear flagship, KITH. 

This is the former entrance to 9 Second Avenue, just steps to the south of the Mars Bar (also gone, of course) on East First Street. Largely derelict and abandoned by the time of this photo, the building's significant back history was lovingly told in an amazing documentary called "The Tao of 9 Second Avenue." I wrote about it here, but it's well worth seeking out. Today, the spot in this photo is part of a TD Bank branch.  

 

Fittingly just around the corner from the shot immediately above, this is the north-facing exterior of the old Mars Bar on East First Street between Second Avenue and the Bowery. A constantly shifting and captivating canvas for murals and spontaneous expressions of colorful street art, this strip of East First Street was always one of my favorite spots in Manhattan. It's all gone now. What's in this space now is that TD Bank, a chic condo's chilly lobby and -- last time I checked -- a business called The Alchemist's Kitchen. 

Believe it or not, this is Extra Place on the northern end of East First Street, just steps to the east of the Bowery. Yes, down at the end of that arguably forbidding dead end was the rear of CBGB. Many an atmospheric photo of punk luminaries was snapped in this forgotten byway. Today, it's a comparatively straight-laced and squeaky-clean strip of neatly appointed -- but frequently empty -- storefronts.

This last one probably doesn't need a lot of explanation. That's Charlotte, again.

‘I Had Very Little Bite, But I Had a Lot of Bark’: Julia Cafritz Looks Back on Pussy Galore

Some of you might remember a while back when I was trying to track down the location of a frankly incidental photograph of NYC-via-D.C. noise-rock band, Pussy Galore from the very late 80’s. During the course of same -– a search that had me exploring various decrepit, shifty and potentially dangerous corners of a few public spaces around the East Village and greater Lower East Side -– one of the band members depicted actually weighed in, that being inimitable band co-founder and storied visceral potty-mouth Julie Cafritz. You can find that here, if you’re so inclined.

While the alumni of that particular ensemble have all gone onto different things, I still maintain that Pussy Galore haven’t ever really gotten their due, not least in the shadow of more celebrated peers like Sonic Youth and SWANS. If you’re not familiar with them, I highly recommend picking up either of my two favorites, Surgarshit Sharp and/or Dial ‘M’ For Motherfucker. Their music is very assuredly not for everyone, but for sheer attitude and noise-as-catharsis, they’re tough to beat.

Earlier this summer, Cafritz submitted to an interview with the Tidal podcast series, “I’m In The Band,” and it’s entirely captivating. In typical fashion, Julie’s completely candid and frequently hilarious. I love her anecdote about Jon taking her through the rudimentary steps of playing guitar. She’s a complete badass. Enjoy.

That’s Cafritz and Jon Spencer up at the top of this post, by the way. I regret to say I don’t know who the photographer responsible is, but …. quick, who can name where they’re standing?

Here’s a bit of their music with Julie on vocals. I used to routinely sandwich this track on many a mixtape back in the day …. which was usually met with puzzlement and derision.

Lies & Lunacy

 

Remember this photo?

It’s a shot of the Lunachicks captured on East 1st Street circa 1990 by photographer Joe Dilworth.

In May of 2016, I stumbled upon this photo -– undated, uncredited and without any background information -- while researching a long-forgotten rock club on Bond Street called Downtown, and swiftly became preoccupied with divining its location.

Officially launching my search on May 10, I went on to spend exactly one month and a day dissecting every possible clue about the image. I devoted nine separate, wordy posts about it over the course of that month, during which time I also undertook multiple expeditions on foot to various locations, trying to discover the answer. I reached out to former members of the band, fellow photo sleuths and other likely suspects who might’ve had a helpful tip or recollection. Only by sheer luck did I randomly come in contact with the photographer responsible, who shared with me the contact sheet, allowing me to finally connect the dots, culminating in an exhaustive revelation post on June 11, 2016.

Why am I bringing this up again?

Only to call attention to the fact that I spent more time investigating the location of this strenuously trivial photograph for the purposes of a post on this stupid blog than the FBI spent on the Kavanaugh report that the Senate Judiciary Committee is currently reviewing in advance of another vote tomorrow.

ADDENDUM: Some hours later, it's been revealed that the FBI spoke with neither the alleged victim(s) nor the alleged assailant. "Thorough," therefore, is by no means an applicable descriptor to their investigation, by any reasonable standard. We've been had. 

 

'That Ain't Stigma!'

Those in the know have spoken and consensus dictates that, while yes, that’s certainly Stephen Ielpi from the False Prophets making some odd cameos, that other figure in "Desperately Seeking Susan" is definitely NOT Sir Vincent of Stigma from Agnostic Front. Oh well.

Hey, it was just a fleeting fancy. Can’t be right all the time.

In any case, as a mea culpa, let me post this. This trailer surfaced late last year -– cannot wait to see the actual film.

Richard Barone on Bringing It All Back Home to Greenwich Village

I don’t often link to stuff I do at work, here, but being that this one is more topically up my street, I figured it would work.

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing singer/songwriter Richard Barone of The Bongos about his ongoing celebration of the songwriting legacy of Greenwich Village in the 1960’s. He’s bringing that labor of love to fruition, this summer, in the form of an all-star concert at SummerStage in Central Park. Read my interview with the great man here and enjoy the clip below.

Bonus question: Who can name the street Richard's depicted standing on in the album cover photo by Nathaniel HL? Weigh in.

New Pedantic: The Quest to Correct London Calling

As has been long and laboriously established, I am something of an insufferable fanboy for a lot of silly pop-culture things. I revel in minutia, seek out the furthest flung iterations, feverishly scrutinize the incidentals and celebrate the accompanying ephemera. I have still-sealed copies of certain cassettes (!!!) and multiple copies of certain albums based solely on miniscule cover-art differences and track-listing. In some instances, I refuse to part with obsolete versions of certain media despite being no longer able to play them on anything. Yeah, I’m that guy. Sorry.

For whatever reason, I take exception to folks getting their facts wrong about comparatively silly, stupid shit that, ultimately, doesn’t really matter as much as the amount of exasperation I display might suggest. Don’t believe me? Back in 2012, I devoted a post to an error Time Out New York made in identifying a certain location in my favorite movie, “After Hours.” I took Getty Images to task for misidentifying Marky Ramone as Arturo Vega. Hell, I even railed at the New York Times for getting their facts wrong about the various lead singers of Journey …. I don’t even really LIKE Journey!

A big part of this particular syndrome, of course, is the giddy ability to chime into certain conversations to deliver roundly unsolicited corrections (usually prefaced with the cloying adverb, Actually….). In my circles, this sort of irritating behavior involves predominantly music, cinema and New York City trivia, but you’re likely to find equally noxious pedants in virtually every field of human interest. From sports to the stock market and bird-watching to trainspotting, there is doubtlessly a variant of precious nerd, geek or knowitall to suit every subject. I’m sure you know a few.

As I expounded on here, however, I try to stay full aware of these tendencies and keep them more or less in check. This blog, for example, has become instrumental in exercising these demons, as it’s better to use this platform to rant about this type of idiotic bullshit than anywhere else. By doing it here, and keeping it all in perspective, I try to keep it at least amusing and informative, and not misguided and obsessive.

Enter Dave Marin.

As profiled recently in the Wall Street Journal, Marin is a 59-year-old retired salesman from Pleasantville, NY (erstwhile home of Ace Frehley) who is singularly obsessed with an alleged inaccuracy on the sleeve of the Clash’s celebrated third album, London Calling. He is steadfastly devoted to correcting this perceived mistake. “It’s my life goal,” he remarks. Incidentally – and that’s the perfect adverb to start this next sentence, as the subject is the quintessence of incidental -– the correction in question involves the cited date of the album’s iconic cover photo. I’ll let you read the whole article -– which really belongs in The Onion -- but Marin contends that the photo, shot by Pennie Smith at the Palladium on East 14th Street, was taken the day before the notes of the sleeve would suggest. He takes this position because he says he was there and still has the ticket stub.

Now, again, I am the fucking last person in the world who should be ridiculing this guy, but I just find this whole story so tragic. I mean, let’s say he manages to achieve his, once again, “life goal,” and get it officially corrected, resulting in any and all future, tactile re-issues –- should they ever happen -– reflecting his scrupulous amendment. Where does he go from there? I can hear him now. “At last, I can finally sleep at night, now that this great inaccuracty has been righted. Many nights have I tossed and turned, thinking that thousands upon thousands of oblivious Clash-fans were going about their lives blithely believing that Paul Simonon’s bass felt the unrelenting wrath of the Palladium floor on the 21st, when it was actually on the 20th! Those poor, deluded fools!”

It's not even that much of a quibble. I mean, if you’re going to get all super-dupe pedantic about something, at least make it something more substantial than a calendar error. That’s just fucking dull.

That did not stop him from making a video about it…

The thing is, he’s very possibly -– if not probably -- correct in his assertion. But why can’t he just have fun with it?

Speaking of having fun with it, my friend Ned on Facebook suggesting mass knockoff of Marin’s pose. I could not resist, making due with my colleague Peter’s vintage 3D copy of the Stoness’ Satanic Majesties Request.

Fire & Fury on Fifth Below Fourteenth

Just a quick one. A friend of mine posted an age-old photo of ol’ Gene Simmons spitting fire on what was obviously a New York City avenue, and I recalled seeing further images from the same incident on the afore-cited Instagram page, KISS NYC. I started to wonder where that location might be. It didn’t take too long to figure it out. Here are more of the pics from the same day.

Based on the distinctive architecture of the buildings across the avenue from the car on which our Gene is perched, I rightly deduced that this all went down just below the southeast corner of Fifth Avenue and East 13th Street. Based on Gene’s garb, I’m assuming this would have been circa the Hotter Than Hell/Dressed to Kill era of the band, making it about 1974 or 1975.

About 45 years later, The First National Bank across the street is now an administrative building for The New School. At the time these original photos were taken, Gene would have been standing just south of the entrance to the Lone Star Café (although I’m not sure if it had turned into that yet, or not – replete with rooftop iguana – it may have still been the Schrafft’s ice cream parlour). Later, that spot turned into a bar called Mr. Fuji's Tropicana (discussed here), before turning into a deli, closing, gradually eroding, and then getting torn down.

Today, that corner is occupied by a pricey condo with a Brandy Mellville outlet on its ground floor (the one that was selling that curious Ramones shirt). The southern half of the block is occupied by Yeshiva University’s school of law, but I seem to remain a bar on the corner of East 12th Street. Opposite that was the building that housed Forbes Magazine, now owned by NYU.

One wonders what the KISS gents were doing in this patch of Greenwich Village, but who knows. Gene Simmons, meanwhile, is still at it, and by “it” I mean being in KISS and basically behaving like an insufferable jackass. They’re evidently about to launch a massive tour.

Mnemonic Youth

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Say what you want about their music, but you must give Sonic Youth credit for one thing --- they photographed well. Like the Velvet Underground and The Clash before them, for whatever reason, Sonic Youth had a real knack for striking compelling poses and/or just exuding an aura of punky insouciance in many a photo. Not to take anything away from myriad photographers who worked with the band, back in the day, but I largely credit Sonic Youth's own compelling visual aesthetic to the dichotomy between Thurston Moore's gangly height and boyish visage and Kim Gordon's signature, icy cool. Don't take my word for it, do a Google image search, and you'll doubtlessly see what I mean.

As I'm wont to do, I was struck reasonably recently by just such a photograph. I'm not talking about the one above -- that was snapped by one Alan Reevel for a 1986 issue of England's Melody Maker. No, the picture I'm discussing was a portrait of the band standing in front of the gates of a church. What made it significant, to me, at least, is that the church in question was Old St. Patrick's on Mott Street. Back in the early 90's, my friend Sean lived across the street, and we delighted to find that not only was Moby a neighbor of his, at the time, but that both the Beastie Boys and Sonic Youth kept practice spaces in the building's basement. You can actually see that basement in the clip for "Three MC's and One DJ" by the Beasties. In any case, that explains why Sonic Youth might've been photographed on that particular strip. As a side note, that patch of Mott Street also plays heavily in Martin Scorsese's "Mean Streets," as well as the intro for the enjoyable ludicrous video for "Jump Around" by House of Pain.

Anyway, at one point doing during my travels around the web, I came across the photo of Sonic Youth on Mott Street and set it to one side, so to speak. This past weekend, meanwhile, while out walking around Manhattan with my kids, we passed by the very spot in the picture and, as I am prone to doing, I asked my kids to replicate the shot. That they still play long, at this late stage of the proceedings, is a testament to their patience -- witness comparable incidents here, here and here.

The trouble is, when I came back to whichever desktop I thought I'd reserved that original photo of Sonic Youth posing on Mott Street in front of Old St. Patrick's -- I couldn't find it. Did I misfile it? It wasn't on my desktop, it wasn't in my trash. It wasn't in my download folder. Where did I originally spot it? Tumblr? Flickr? Instagram? Facebook? Pinterest? A random Google search? I tried re-Googling, but the image in question never came up. I tried variations like "Sonic Youth" "SoHo," or "Sonic Youth," "Mott Street," or "Sonic Youth" "Old St. Patrick's." I went further down that rabbit hole, Googling "Sonic Youth" "Downtown," "Sonic Youth" "East Village," "Sonic Youth, Lower East Side." Lots of images came up, but not that one. I plugged in years 1986 through 1995. Nothing. I scoured other likely sites. Zip. As is so often the case -- I started to wonder if I imagined it.

So, now -- while not quite as feverish as my search for the location of that Lunachicks photograph, we have an inverted photo quandary. I don't know who took the picture or when, nor where I found it, but I vividly remember a photograph of the -- I think --  Steve Shelley-line-up of Sonic Youth posing in front of Old St. Patrick's on Mott Street in SoHo, relatively similar to the photo of my children below.

Can YOU find it?

Go!

ADDENDUM: The mystery has been solved. Click here.