I’ve invoked the Flickr photos of Leo London a few times here. I don’t know the guy. I just happened upon his pics, at one point, and found several that spoke to my own NYC experience, and I’ve been raiding his collection ever since. Apropos of nothing, I was looking at them again and thought I’d re-circulate them. Both the one up top and the one below are Leo's.
Presumably captured while he was an NYU student at the dawn of the `90s, Leo’s pictures detail his various apartments in the East Village and Lower East Side, his exploits at any number of bars and cocktail parties, a few random road trips and his life gigging in a band called, I believe, Lobster of Hate. It’s not that his photographs are anything that novel, but they seem aligned with my own predilections and associations of the New York City of that era.
In much the same way I described their peers in the Tuff Darts, The Testors were yet another band from the inaugural class of CBGB who — for whatever reason — failed to vault themselves out of anonymity and into the history books in the same manner as compatriots bands like The Cramps, The Dead Boys and their more celebrated ilk.
Why that is remains the case something of a mystery, as the Testors — led by vocalist/guitarist Sonny Vincent — pretty much checked all the right boxes. Boasting a sharp look and a taut, edgy sound, the band was a regular fixture at both Max’s Kansas City and CBGB when both venues would have been in full punky bloom. Regardless, despite regularly performing around town and even cutting their own vinyl, the Testors pulled the plug, in 1981, after seven years. Sonny Vincent went onto other things, and the Testors even fleetingly reunited in 2011 for a gig at the Delancey in the shadow of the Williamsburg Bridge, but they never really got their due, to my mind. In 2024, theirs is a name seemingly shared only by pedantic purists, record collectors and greying punk veterans.
Be that as it may, my excellent comrade Jeremiah Moss (he of Vanishing New York fame and now a rightfully celebrated author) made what I’d consider an incredible discovery. Lifted respectfully from his Instagram page, here’s JW’s preamble…
Sometimes, the past is revealed behind a demolished facade. A gorgeous find, as I came across these vintage 1970s posters stuck to a pair of old doors at NYU. One is for the Testors (a 70s punk band formed by @sonnyvincent77) at Max’s Kansas City (!)…
My comrade EV Grieve first reported it back in late October, but I only just noticed that the Overthrow Gym over on Bleecker just west of Bowery — in the former headquarters Abbie Hoffman’s Yippies — has closed its doors for good. Check out EV Grieve’s story for the specifics (took incurred a lot of debt during COVID).
If I’m being honest, I can’t say I’m particularly broken up about it, as I was never really a big fan of the place, given their cloying attempts at establishing some sort of connection between the neighborhood’s punk history and … boxing, first by way of that Joey Ramone mural and later via the auspices of Punk Magazine’s John Holmstrom, although as I said in that post, who am I to begrudge John for making some bucks from his storied art at this late stage of proceedings?
I’m also not exactly heartbroken about the neighborhood losing yet another fitness facility, given the preponderance of them currently occupying multiple spots all over Broadway and Lafayette Streets. Sorry, but good riddance to that stupid bullshit, although who knows what sort of venture will take its place?
If you look in the upper left hand corner of the now-empty storefront, you can even see an invocation of Abbie Hoffman’s era, that being the Yipster Times (just above and to the right of the octopus). Below are some shots of how that space looked in the `90s.
When it comes to what sort of content resonates with readers, here, I’m afraid I’m probably the last person you should ask. All too often, I’ll agonize over a certain entry and post it, only to be greeted with a chorus of crickets. Other times, I’ll slap something up as a lark, and get engulfed in feverish clicks (well, maybe not feverish clicks, but clicks all the same). Why some posts hit their mark more than others completely eludes me. I’m just thankful when it happens.
In any case, as we begin the perilous slide into the gaping jaws of 2025, I thought I’d take a quick moment to look back at some of my personal favorites from the past twelve months. Some got a lot of attention, and some of them simply died on the vine, so to speak. Here are the one I’m most proud of, for whatever that’s worth.
If I’m being honest, I was never that big a fan of late `80s industrial combo, Nitzer Ebb. I mean, I dutifully bought their 1989 album, Belief during my senior year of college, on the strength of their propulsive single, “Control I’m Here,” but they always seemed just a bit too … well, I guess “silly” is the word. At the time, I generally preferred my industrial rock with a bit more gratuitous menace ala Ministry and Skinny Puppy, although – in retrospect – “silly” is a term that could be generously applied around that subgenre. A lot of that stuff still sounds amazing today, whereas other bits … not quite so much.
In any case, by the time of Nitzer Ebb’s next album, 1990’s Showtime, I’d pretty much jumped ship completely, so I largely ignored the single below, “Fun to Be Had.” Also, who needed Nitzer Ebb when the Wax Trax gang was tirelessly pumping out great records by names like the Revolting Cocks, Pailhead, Acid Horse, PTP, 1000 Homo DJs, Lead Into Gold and many others? It should be noted that, in most instances, those records were all more or less made by the same five or six guys, give or take a cameo from Trent Reznor, Cabaret Voltaire, Ian MacKaye, Luc Van Acker et al.
So, I slept on this single in real time which, honestly, doesn’t really bother me, as I don’t think it’s “much cop,” as the Brits say. That said, I happened to spot it playing somewhere during my brief sojourn in Ireland, last week, and it struck me that it’s something of an unwitting period piece for a since-vanished Manhattan.
I don’t know what the director’s vision really was, but herein we see the two main dudes in Nitzer Ebb – Douglas McCarthy and … the other guy … walking around various neighborhoods. I can’t quite pinpoint the first location, but I definitely recognize those distinctive columns that Douglas emerges from. Elsewhere, we see the Nitzers stomping spiritedly across the Brooklyn Bridge, bounding through parts of the Financial District (notably beneath Jean DuBuffet’s massive sculpture at 28 Liberty Street), bouncing around what, at the time, was a comparatively desolate portion of the Meat Packing District, specifically 675 Hudson Street, which I spoke at length about here, in front of the signature orange exterior of what used to be the Great Jones Café on Great Jones Street, and down along what looks like West Broadway between Spring and Grand streets.
Since 2019, the partially completed skyscraper at 45 Park Place in TriBeCa, between West Broadway and Church Street, has been in a dormant state following a Stop Work Order from the DOB issued in December of that year. The unfinished and unsightly tower looms over its surrounding portion of Lower Manhattan like a giant, silent sentinel, with a spindly crane perched atop a thin metal exoskeleton affixed to the building’s westerly wall. On windier days – like today – the crane actively swings worryingly around like a gargantuan weathervane. According to my friends at TriBeCa Citizen, the DOB allegedly makes routine inspections to the site and the crane, although further construction seems indefinitely stalled. TriBeCa residents are understandably displeased.
Adding arguable insult to injury, at some point, in recent months, an intrepid graffiti artist named RAMS somehow got inside 45 Park Place, ascended to its unfinished rooftop, and daringly rappelled down each of the four sides of the tower to leave huge, colorful tags. While an impressive-if-astonishingly-foolhardy feat, the end results lend proceedings at 45 Park Place a further veneer of neglect and decrepitude.
Personally speaking, the graffiti part doesn’t really bother me. If anything, RAMS did the community a backhanded favor by generating a new stir around a problem that continues to be seemingly ignored. By calling attention to it, perhaps there’ll be some movement.
But I’ll say this. To stand on the street and see that massive metal crane swing around in the wind is pretty chilling.
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.
Someone on the Lower East Side: Back in the Days page posted an amazing shot by Dutch photographer Teun Voeten, over the weekend, that I wanted to share here.
This is the southwest corner of St. Marks Place at Second Avenue circa 1987. From about 1957 – although I’ve read that the business itself well predates that year – that corner was occupied by Gem Spa, a newspaper stand and candy store renowned as a neighborhood fixture. Its signature Egg Creams were touted as the best in the city (I cannot speak with any authority about that, but they were damn good), and it was famously immortalized in an iconic photograph of the New York Dolls by Toshi Matsuo (and later recreated by Roberta Bayley). I spoke about those elements back here.
The photo above was taken about fifteen years after that and features the same row of beat-up phone booths that Matsuo had the Dolls pose with. What struck me first about Voeten’s photo were the Rock Hotel flyers on the right, advertising a particular gig in December of 1987 featuring the Dead Boys, Kix, Circus of Power and a band called Hilfiger, which was a combo put together by guitarist Andy Hilfiger -- clothier Tommy Hilfiger’s little brother -- after the dissolution of the short-lived band King Flux, which featured Richie Stotts of the Plasmatics and Marky Ramone of – wait for it – The Ramones.
I was actually at that gig – which I wrote about here -- and still have that very flyer to this day. Here it was in my sorely under-utilized kitchen on East 12th Street back in the mid-`90s.
My memories of the show in 1987 are fleeting. I was home for Christmas break during my junior year of college. It was one of the Dead Boys’ annual reunion shows, albeit one of the final ones. I remember Kix – kind of a hackneyed hair-metal band who I wrote about here – being better than I’d expected. I sadly have no recollection about Hilfiger (sorry, Andy), but do vividly remember Circus of Power (who I wrote about here). Circus of Power always seemed like they should have been a bigger deal, but they were always kind of entirely out of step with the other New York City bands, at the time. Moreover, if I'm not mistaken, the guy in this photograph in the shades, backwards cap, black leather jacket and Ramones shirt looks like the incongruously named Gary Sunshine, guitarist for Circus of Power, although I can't be sure.
The other thing that caught my eye was an invocation to one of my late friend Fran Powers’ bands, Whole Wide World, which you can see on the top right, just above the trio of Rock Hotel flyers.
Gem Spa closed in 2020. The space that Gem Spa formerly occupied is now a coffee shop called Poetica Coffee. The Dead Boys had already broken up, but the death of Stiv Bator in 1990 put a definitive stop to their annual reunion shows. Kix only broke up as recently as last year. Circus of Power technically broke up for a first time in 1995 but reformed in 2014 and are conceivably still at it. Whole Wide World was just one of Fran Powers’ many bands. They independently self-released an LP in 1987 (the same year as this photograph), and it contained a cover of The Nazz’s classic “Open My Eyes.” While he’d long since moved on to other projects beyond Whole Wide World, Fran Powers passed away in 2021.
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