Here’s your friendly neighborhood blogger telling you to get out and vote, tomorrow, if you haven’t already. Go exercise that right.
Look, I live in New York City, and it’s pretty much a given how New York is going to go, but I’m voting anyway, if only to cancel out the vote of a certain family member of mine who shall remain nameless.
Where I throw my support (or, in this case, my vehement antagonism) is no mystery, but I am making no predictions, at this eleventh hour, as it strikes me that it could still really go in any direction. I’ve given up on optimism. I also don’t imagine it will go quickly, much less quietly.
Go do your part. Let’s see what happens. If you enjoy the art below, you can get it on a t-shirt, coffee mug or fetching tote bag made by my friend Tod here.
Halloween may be tomorrow night, but it looks like the scary stuff is slated for next week.
I spotted the ominous declaration below on my way to work this morning (this on West Third Street). Several blocks later -- on Greenwich Street in TriBeCa -- I spotted an equally sinister sticker that endorsed a certain candidate being forcibly asphyxiated (I won't post that picture here – I don’t need that heat).
My hopes for next Tuesday passing quietly and in a civil manner are slimming.
I hate to keep apologizing for the slowdown here, as I’m sure most of you probably wouldn’t even notice it if not for me tirelessly pointing it out. There are a couple of possible causes for this.
For whatever reason, I’ve been experiencing a tenacious torpor ever since we dropped our son off at school. It’s a tremendous cliché to suggest that I’ve been stricken by the aforementioned “Empty Nest Syndrome,” but whether it’s that or seasonal affective disorder or that I’ve unwitting ditched my muse or that I’ve simply started to lose my edge --- or all of the above, somehow I seem to have depleted my supply of the idiotic bullshit that passes for “content” here which normally flows out of me like needlessly verbose sewage.
I do have one kind of labor-intensive post in the works, but if I had a dollar for each idea I’ve hatched then summarily abandoned, in the last couple of weeks, I could probably buy us all a nice lunch. I had a post prompted by an exchange in the comments section of Tribeca Citizen about the dispiriting proliferation of cannabis dispensaries in lower Manhattan, but figured that’s more my own grievance than anyone else’s. I had another pointed one about grill-ordering etiquette in Manhattan delis, but – again – that’s all about my own pet peeves. I had a less cantankerous one that looked back at Sounds on St. Marks Place, but somehow can’t bring myself to finish it. I am not feeling especially inspired. Maybe I’m just burned out?
Compounding all this, my lovely wife left for London, last Friday, for the London Book Fair, making our empty nest that much emptier. Left to my own devices, this past rainy weekend, I did all that I could to escape the maddening quiet of our apartment. I was so bored on Sunday morning that – apropos of absolutely nothing – I decided to make a soggy pilgrimage to the Bowie mural in Jersey City. It’s impressive, yes, but in a super random (and not entirely that nice) neighborhood. Moreover, as far as I’m aware, the great man never lived here .. which begs the question … why Jersey City?
On Saturday, meanwhile, upon hearing of a brand-new record shop in Park Slope (Sterling Records on Fifth Avenue at Sterling Place), I schlepped out there to check it out. I wasn’t really looking for anything, but felt compelled to be supportive and buy something, so I bought a fridge magnet with the cover of XTC’s Drums & Wires on it, then proceeded to walk all the way home – all the way down Flatbush Avenue and over the Manhattan Bridge.
Last night, driven by a hankering for South Asian grub, I found myself in one of the few remaining Indian restaurants on East 6th Street, trying to maintain my composure in defiance of a roiling plate of Chicken Tikka that was weapons-grade spicy (a descriptor that normally does not apply to this particular dish). As my eyes and nostrils flowed like faucets, a guy behind me was steadily boring his date into a drooling stupor with Grunge-era conspiracy theories about Whitewater, the Rose Law Firm, and the late Vince Foster. Had I stepped through some sort of tear in the time/space continuum?
Anyway, I’m sure I’ll snap out of it in due course, but please be patient with me in the short term.
Yes, I know – technically, the summer has another whole month left to it (the official end of summer is September 22, I am told), but most folks sort of chalk up Memorial Day Weekend as the last gasp. Personally speaking, as noted in the previous post, now that my daughter has left and we’re leaving in about ten days to drop Oliver off for his first year of college, Summer 2024 certainly feels over and done with. As such, I guess it’s time to dust this off. Here we go…
Defining Moment of Summer 2024
This is going to sound super boring, but I can’t really say that there was one. I’d suggest it was either my son’s graduation from high school, signaling the next big step for him or possibly meeting my daughter’s new(ish) boyfriend from London (he turned out to be a nice kid). That’s about it, really.
Best Purchase of Summer 2024
Time for another super boring answer, but I bought a Mag Charger for my iPhone at ye olde Apple Store, and it’s been a complete delight. On a slightly less practical level, I bought myself a new coffee mug I’m quite fond of.
Best Meal of Summer 2024
On the evening of July 13, the same day that someone took a shot at Trump, the wife and I were out at my mom’s place on Long Island and repaired to nearby Baby Moon Pizza in Westhampton for a late-night meal (where Marky Ramone is a regular). We sat at the bar – under a widescreen television endlessly repeating the news of the day – and ate some truly excellent pizza … while politely refraining from any audible commentary about the big story.
Best Concert of Summer 2024
I don’t know if mid-May counts as the summer (I’m pretty sure it doesn’t), but the last show I saw was the mighty Part Chimp at Bowery Electric. They put on an endearingly loud and slovenly performance, and I was very pleased to run into various similarly inclined friends of mine also in attendance.
Best Book You Read During Summer 2024
I didn’t plow through as many books, this summer, as I normally do, but I very much enjoyed Robyn Hitchcock’s memoir, “1967: How I Got There & Why I Never Left,” and I’m currently three-quarters of the way through Griffin Dunne’s “The Friday Afternoon Club.” I also re-read Legs McNeil & Gillian McCain’s magisterial “Please Kill Me” over the course of a weekend, … just because.
Best Movie of Summer 2023
Not a big movie summer, for me, but if I had to pick one, I’d suggest that I quite enjoyed finally seeing “Have You Got It Yet?,” the documentary about Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd, and his slow descent into oblivion.
Best Gift You Received of Summer 2024
For Father’s Day, my wife put a recent New Yorker cover in a frame for me that features an iconic neighborhood fixture.
Biggest Loss of Summer 2024
The passing of musical iconoclasts like James Chance, Pat Collier and Steve Albini knocked the wind out of my sails, especially Albini. I was crestfallen to learn of the incredibly myopic dissolution of the MTV News archives, and I was depressed and disappointed (but not surprised) to learn just recently that St. Vitus in Brooklyn is shuttered for good.
Song That Sums Up the Summer of Summer 2024
I don’t have a grand explanation for either of these, but it’s either “Adrenaline” by the excellently named French trio, We Hate You Please Die, or possibly “Fear is a Man’s Best Friend,” by John Cale. I mostly slept on Cale’s solo career after he was ousted from the Velvet Underground, and lemme tell ya – that was a big mistake. Cale provided the lion’s share of the sneery abrasion and overall weirdness to the Velvets, and they were absolutely never the same without him. He went onto produce fucking crucial records by The Stooges, The Modern Lovers, Nico and Patti Smith, among many others. I’ve only started exploring his sprawling solo catalog, and there is some real gold therein. A friend of mine posted the clip below on Facebook, earlier this summer and it blew me away. Flanked by storied Womble/erstwhile Sex Pistol producer/guitarist Chris Spedding, Cale – dressed like a mid-`70s tennis pro – delivers an emphatic rendition of the title track to his 1974 album that starts off reasonably and slowly becomes droolingly unhinged. Wait for it.
Happiest Memory of Summer 2024
Beyond just spending loads of time with my excellent little family (it’s becoming rarer for us all to be together for very long), I got to meet and chat with R.E.M. at the Songwriters Hall of Fame induction ceremony back in June. That was fun. I was also super pleased to appear in Catherine Araimo’s award-winning “B Sides” documentary.
Saddest Memory of Summer 2024
It hasn’t happened just yet, but I’m expecting to be quite verklempt when we have to say goodbye to Oliver in two weeks.
Scariest Moment of Summer 2024
For a while — not that we’re out of the woods just yet — it was seeming like a fucking given that Trump would be our 47th President. It remains to be seen, but it’s no longer in cement, I’d suggest.
I don’t think I first started hearing it until the rise of George W. Bush at the turn of the millennium, but folks seemed to start pervasively exclaiming that they’d like a president that they could “have a beer with.” That never made a great deal of sense to me. Personally speaking, while I happen to love beer practically more than fuckin’ oxygen, I don’t need the leader of the allegedly free world and commander-in-chief to share my affinity for knockin’ back a few pints. I’d honestly rather have them be so strenuously intelligent, responsible, internationally engaged, and duty-bound that the thought of wasting an afternoon with me in a shitty bar or backyard barbecue with a cooler of cold ones would seem abhorrent. I’d be fine with that and wouldn’t take it personally.
I suppose the projected notion of a beer-swiggin’ president makes the prospective holder of that office seem more relatable and “of the people.” It’s ultimately just a populist ploy to humanize them. Otherwise, that individual might come across like just another elitist politician.
While that may fly with one side the of the fence (I’ll let you determine which one), the other side seems to strive to spin their prospective presidents as cool. Witness Bill Clinton’s cringe-worthy saxophone solo on the “Arsenio Hall” show or the regular announcements of Barak Obama’s Spotify playlists, filled with selections of songs that telegraphed an impossibly eclectic degree of cultivated taste. While I was a firm supporter of President Obama for the entirety of his two terms, I personally never gave a rolling rat fuck what music he may (or may not) have been listening to.
Here in 2024, we find ourselves in an unprecedentedly tumultuous pre-election period, and in the wake of an abominable debate performance, an assassination attempt, a bizarre Republican National Convention, a divisive pick for Trump’s Vice President, Biden’s hotly anticipated withdrawal from the race and his Vice President’s ascendance as the party’s presumptive nominee, we find the same shenanigans at play.
While it was already disclosed and heavily covered that Kamala Harris owns and regularly sports at least one pair of black Converse Chuck Taylors (i.e. the inarguably clichéd but still de rigueur choice of footwear of the insouciant rebel – capitalized on by illustrator Gary Taxali in the print above), a photo has also surfaced of Harris as a younger woman at some point in the 1980’s, wearing a black, high-collared coat with a shorter, period-specific quiff. Lots of enterprising folks have pounced on this and re-branded it as, and I’m quoting here, “Young, Butch & Goth.”
Now, given that Vice President Harris is 59 years old, it’s certainly not out of the question that she may have gone through an angsty goth phase, but … again, it doesn’t really matter, in the grand scheme of things.
If the notion that our current Vice President -- and potentially 47th President -- might harbor an affinity for Xmal Deutschland and Joy Division sways your vote her way, I’m totally fine with that. If that makes you feel better about it all, embrace it.
I'm seeing a surprising amount of weepy teeth-gnashing on social media about the closing of the Astor Place Starbuck's, which -- to my mind -- as a single establishment, almost singularly typified the disemboweling of the original character of the neighborhood (later further eroded by Kmart, CVS, Raising Cane chicken, Wegman’s, etc. etc.). I still lovingly remember the Astor Riviera (which you can see here, courtesy of the amazing Glenn Losack) that held court on that corner well prior to the arrival of the Seattle coffee chain.
Someone commented in response to this same topic on a friend of mine's Facebook page: "Vampire landlords are sucking the blood out of this city." While, true, yes, they are, the notion of a fucking Starbucks being indicative of "the blood" of this city made me wince.
I’ve wrung this rant-rag dry, by now, but New York City used to be comprised of an amazing network of independent mom’n’pop ventures, not plagued with endless fast-food franchises and big-box retail outlets. That shit was for the strip malls and the suburbs.
But, sure enough, largely thanks to the efforts of this fucker, Starbucks moved into town in the mid-`90s, and proceeded to spread faster than a spilled cup of pumpkin spice latte.
My favorite memory of the Astor Riviera involves a friend of mine and I ordering a pair of milkshakes there, once, on a hot summer day. An endearingly surly waiter brought them over and plunked them down on our table, only without straws. When we spoke up about needing straws, he took two out of his apron and blithely tossed them in our direction from about a yard away, which reduced us to hysterics. So, yeah, maybe the service wasn’t exactly top notch, but I’d take the Astor Riviera over a Starbucks every single day of the apocalypse.
ADDENDUM: Someone on what used to be Twitter actually typed this with a presumably straight face:
End of an era. For old NYU grads, Starbucks on Astor place and the Kmart by it felt like forever places. St. Marks is also not what it used to be.
It almost goes without saying that the next occupant of that stately space will be another bank, a fucking cannabis dispensary or yet another addition to the maddening proliferation of fitness outlets that now define "activewear alley" or the "fitness corridor." Fuck all that.
You can see “coming soon – the Astor Riviera” (misspelled as “reviera”) in this clip from “Downtown `81,” starring Jean-Michel Basquiat and, in this scene, man-from-the-past David McDermott.
Meanwhile, my feelings about the departure of Starbucks are best summed up by this clip of the Brothers Ramone.
Just because someone took a shot at him, that doesn’t absolve him of his crimes, undo his previous actions or change the fact that he wants to completely upend our democracy. He’s still a deeply horrible, avaricious scumbag.
It’s unfortunate that someone tried to put a bullet in him (let alone someone who was a registered Republican with a legally purchased firearm), but that doesn’t make him a goddamn saint.
If you enjoy laughing to keep yourself from crying, Jon Stewart was absolutely ON FIRE last night ....
Personally speaking, did I think Biden did even a half-decent job last night? Absolutely fucking not. That said, I'd still support him over the alternative EVERY DAMN TIME.
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