Of all the streets in Lower Manhattan, it’s hard to think of one that is as immediately identifiable as Orchard Street, although perhaps not as much, these days. Formerly the main thoroughfare of discount shopping for the Lower East Side, Orchard Street was once peppered with shops on both sides, selling all manner of affordable textile and related ephemera. Flip through any number of images of Orchard Street throughout the centuries, and you’re bound to spot depictions of a strip full of bustling bargain-hunters and street-side merchants hawking their wares.
I was recently struck by one such depiction by a Swiss photographer named Willy Spiller. Captured at some point between 1977 and 1985, here’s a telling portrait of the typical Orchard Street hustle of that era. It’s a remarkable photograph by every standard. Click on it to enlarge.
Curious as to what that particular storefront looks like thirty-something years later, I did a quick Google Maps search, and was again struck, this time by the dichotomy. Here’s that very same address as snapped in 2023
As a dyed-in-the-wool fan of The Clash since first receiving a copy of their debut LP in a box of records shipped to my sister and I from London in the summer of 1977, I have, of course, discussed the iconic sleeve of their third album, London Calling, here, quite a few times.
But a friend of mine online shared the pic above, today, and it struck me that I don’t think I’d ever seen it until now. This is, of course, Clash bassist Paul Simonon in the moments just after introducing the business end of his bass guitar to the unrelenting stage floor of New York’s Palladium, as famously captured on Pennie Smith’s legendary album cover.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere here, the building that had been the Palladium was razed in 1998, and a large NYU dormitory – churlishly named “Palladium” – now stands in its footprint. Adding insult to injury, there’s a Trader Joe’s in its ground floor.
The spot wherein Paul took his bass to task is basically now the where the produce aisle is.
Courtesy of the No Wave page on Facebook comes this time-capsule-worthy gem. Here's the description from YouTube:
1979, NYC. Filmed on a grant from NYU Film & TV, Mr Lonely featured many Mudd Club personalities, even some famous no-shows such as Lux Interior from The Cramps. Shot by the infamous Robert Herman of Hipstamatic book fame, this video was struck from the original work print that premiered in 1982 at The Rock Lounge in NYC. It has not been shown publicly in over forty years. Please enjoy this beautiful fantasy of life, where time stands still forever.
Yesterday, writer Arthur Nersesian, whose first novel “The Fuck-Up” was a big favorite of mine, posted an old image of Astor Place on his Facebook page. That’s it up top. Odd, right? He didn’t slap a date on it but considering the Astor Place Cube (real name: “The Alamo”) was first erected on that spot in 1967, and given the make of the cars pictured in the lot in the background, I’m guessing this could have been taken at some point in the `70s or early `80s, but I can’t be sure.
It’s also striking in that so many of the elements depicted in this photograph are no longer recognizable. I mean, yes, that’s obviously the Alamo on the left side or your screen, and presumably the edifice on the right across the street is the lower façade of the Carl Fischer Music Building, but that parking lot is long gone, as are all the row houses in the distance on the eastern end of Cooper Square. There’s now a giant glass tower – which my kids and I used to refer to as “The Shampoo Bottle” – with a bank on its ground floor where the parking lot used to be. To stand on this very spot and look south today, they would be obscured from view, but the buildings featured in the background are largely all gone anyway, replaced by the space-station-like Albert Nerken School of Engineering and the Cooper Square Hotel, which I once described here as a “priapic pillar of avarice” and a “gigantic robot phallus.” You’re welcome.
In any case, on my way to work, this morning, I tried to replicate the shot Arthur posted. As I mentioned, a lot has changed.
Funnily enough, “The Alamo” was never meant to still be here. It was initially installed for a six-month spell in 1967, but when it was time to move it, the community rallied together to keep it there. Also, it was never designed to be interactive. Artist Tony Rosenthal didn’t assume people would take to spinning the thing. But, of course, spin it they do.
Here's another little fun artifact, an NYU Tisch school student film from 2003 called, simply, “Alamo.” Only 21 years ago, but it already seems like a totally different city. The “Shampoo Bottle” was only just under construction, and the giant “Death Star” monolith that is 101 Astor Place had not yet replaced the humble Cooper Union classroom buildings.
Someone started a thread on the Lower East Side Facebook page that really intrigued me, so I’m sharing some of the cogent info here. I have no idea of the true provenance of some of these photographs, but some are, I believe, “tax photos” of New York City real estate. There’s a great archive of same to be found on this site if you’re curious.
In any case, here in 2024, the southeasterly corner of East 7th Street on Avenue A is occupied by Jesse Malin’s celebrated bar, Niagara, above, which has held court at 112 Avenue A since about 1997. That’s the interior of same right above, which I snapped in 2016.
Prior to 1997, the space was another colorful bar named King Tut’s Wah-Wah Hut, above. I drank within the confines of King Tut’s on several occasions in the very late `80s and early `90s.
Well before that iteration, meanwhile, the space in question was A7, the hallowed ground-zero of what would become known as New York Hardcore, otherwise truncated to NYHC. I’ve spoken about A7 a few times here, notably here, here, here, here, here and here, should you be interested.
But what was there prior to its halcyon days as A7? I’ve never really had a clue.
I am invariably projecting, but I want to say that the first time I ever laid eyes on that corner was as a child at some point in the late `70s from behind the backseat window of a moving car, and spying the cryptic legend “DEAD BOYS” hastily scrawled in spray paint on the wall that has played host to the mural of the late Joe Strummer since 2002. I certainly would love to believe that’s true, but it’s probably just a fanciful mental fabrication fueled by years of reverent mythologizing. I have no idea if anyone ever actually tagged the Dead Boys on that wall, but if you happen to remember that, as well, please do corroborate.
But beyond the Lower East Side’s days as the still-hotly-contested birthplace of Punk Rock, it should be remembered that this part of town has a rich, storied history all its own and played host to countless concerns, over the years, serving several different generations of New Yorkers. It’s conceivably very easy to sit in a neighborhood bar of the moment and forget how many separate ventures have occupied the space, over the vast span of years since the building was erected, ultimately reducing the perceived significance it once being a cultural hotspot of comparatively recent times to a meager footnote. This is not at all to suggest that A7 or King Tut’s Wah-Wah Hut or Niagara aren’t significant to a wide demographic, but rather that it’s prudent to remember one's place in the broader continuum.
To that end, a top contributor on the Lower East Side page named Jarrod Henry posted the picture below, appended with the caption: Mary's Candy Store, later known at A7 (The birthplace of NYHC), now known as Niagara.
Prompted by same, readers chimed with some tax photos of the corner in question, notably from 1938…
…and another from some point in the 1940’s...
In any case, I can find no real record online of a Mary’s Candy Shop, although – really – why would there be? But I wonder what Mary would have thought about all the shenanigans that have gone down in her humble little store front in the ensuing decades.
Someone posted the photograph above on the Facebook group, Manhattan Before 1990, a little while back, and it really put the hook in me. Taken by Frank Fournier, who allegedly says it was captured on Madison Avenuat at 93rd Street in 1977, the picture has haunted me ever since.
For a start, it is, of course, a stunning photograph. But its composition is not what I quibble with.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, many times, while I largely concern myself with downtown doings here, I was originally born on the Upper East Side, however unfashionably square that is, and lived, for a spell, right on East 93rd Street. Moreover, I had several friends who also lived along the very strip this image was supposedly captured (notably Shawn, Pogo, Spike and Peter, as mentioned, respectively, here, here, here and here). I would, have been about ten years old when the photo was snapped and otherwise preoccupied with all things KISS and “Star Wars.”
That said, while I do remember a vacant lot just steps to the north of East 93rd on Madison, it was in no way this vast. The lot I remember wasn’t even half this size, although who knows what sort of lens Fournier was using, much less what his vantage point was? Was he standing on Madison, shooting to the east, or was he in the actual lot and shooting north or south? Either way, I just have no recollection of a big, open space like this that would synch up with any patch on Madison Avenue between, say, East 91st and East 96th.
Today there's a big high-rise halfway down the block (between 93rd and 94 on Madison, on the eastern side of the avenue) that could conceivably fill a space this massive, but I don't believe there is a Park Avenue-facing building behind it that would match up with what's in the photograph.
I realize I’ve been discussing it an awful lot since first invoking it in, gosh …2021, when I first stumbled upon a telling photograph by a tourist named Bo G. Eriksson that was shared in a Facebook group called Manhattan Before 1990, but in the long wake of that revelation, today the corner of Cortlandt Alley on Walker Street played host to an official naming ceremony that re-christened the plot of Manhattan real estate as Charly Garcia Corner. Sadly, the individual who first reached out to me about it – one Iñaki Rojas – was not able to make the trip from Mendoza, Argentina.
Once again, for a more-or-less succinct summary and timeline of all this, click here.
Anyway, today was the big day, so I went on down to check it out. Here are the pics…
Here's the corner, .... all dressed up for the unveiling of the plaque.
Here's me, waiting for things to kick off...
...and then it started to get crowded....
...and then it got REALLY crowded...
...and then a proverbial mob scene.... the Charly Army was out in FORCE!!....
Then came, at long last, the ceremony ... here's Mariano Cabrera, who was instrumental in putting this together....
Here's the formal proclamation (the woman is, I believe, Charly Garcia's sister)...
Here's a view from the east, looking west from Cortlandt Alley down Walker Street....
After the plaque and the street sign were unveiled, alumni from Charly's band came on and played five or six songs from the record in question, that being Clics Modernos, which is a very big deal in Latin American/Argentinian music.
I’ve seen a lot of these individual shots before (some have taken on a legitimately iconic status, in terms of the history of New York City Punk, etc.), but never knew who the actual photographer was. Turns out it was a British photojournalist named Adrian Boot, and I recently stumbled upon his account of his first encounter with Suicide purely by accident. Sure, it’s a great, illuminating read, but it wasn’t until I clicked on the VISIT THE GALLERY (see below) link at the bottom that I saw the full array of images from that early spring morning on the still-squalid streets of 1979’s Downtown Manhattan.
Even if you’re not a fan of Suicide’s singular blend of brazenly forward-looking and bracingly listener-hostile electronic music (46 years on from their debut eponymous LP on Red Star Records, it’s still not for everyone), Boot’s photos of Martin Rev and Alan Vega leisurely loitering around strips of the Bowery, the Lower East Side and areas now referred to as SoHo, the East Village and even TriBeCa (I’m confidently convinced that shot No.1 was taken on Benson Place, which extends off Franklin Street near where Courtlandt Alley ends at the foot of what had been the Mudd Club at 77 White Street) are still eye-opening revelations. Can you name the other locations?
Regular readers may recognize the name Ricky Powell, who I’ve invoked several times here, over the years (notary here, here, here, here, here and this post, wherein the man himself chimed in on the comments). In Downtown NYC circles, he was a known quantity as a photographer, graffiti tagger, personality, and erstwhile comrade of the fledgling Beastie Boys. That latter association probably provided him with the most renown, but he was very much an established figure in his own right.
In any case, Ricky sadly passed away in 2021. Shortly after his death, Showtime released a documentary on the man titled “The Individualist.” Being that I don’t subscribe to that service, I was unable to ever see it.
Until now….
A regular reader named Crawford kindly wrote in …. with a link.
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