This is from a few years back, already, but it speaks to my fascination with street-art/graffiti/sticker culture. Personally speaking, I think it’s kind of offsides for this guy to be pulling down people’s stickers (i.e. defeating the purpose of people putting them up in the first place), but he’s not the first guy to dismantle other people’s street art (or vandalism, depending on your perception/sensibility).
Anyway, enjoy.
As I used to be keen to laboriously point out, I was lucky enough to work for TIME Magazine for twelve years, an experience that introduced me to more great minds than I can quantify and taught me more than any school I might’ve otherwise attended. The friendships I made there and the bonds I share with former colleagues still feel practically familial, and I am genuinely blessed to have worked alongside them.
There was one gent who worked in our art department, meanwhile, who I wish I’d gotten to know better. I worked in the adjoining space of the News Desk, which was sort of the nerve center of the operation, and liaison between the magazine’s editorial staff and its network of reporters, correspondents and bureaus in the field around the world. Edel Rodriguez was a quiet, affable guy, and we were certainly friendly, but we never really sat down and spoke at any great length or exchanged ideas. He mostly kept to himself, which was, of course, totally fine. But in the wake of all that’s transpired since I left the magazine at the end of 2005, I truly wish I’d gotten to know him better.
While I split TIME and went onto MTV News Online (and then various other outlets), Edel flourished in his role as an art director at the magazine, his incendiary, politically charged illustrations gradually starting to routinely grace covers of the magazine. His star rose swiftly.
In more recent years, his artistic commentary on the state of the nation and, more specifically, the Trump Administration has taken on a genuinely iconic quality. Edel’s depictions of Trump’s ever-screaming, orange face has become synonymous with the global resistance to this unfortunate iteration of American government. Edel’s work has been published in the highest echelons of journalism, regularly blazing off the covers of The New Yorker, The New York Times, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, Fortune, Der Spiegel and countless others, earning him several awards. You’ve seen his work, whether you know his name or not.
In any case, you can probably understand now why I wished I’d gotten to know him better. I’ve been a regular follower and supporter of his work ever since. Last night, in the wake of Trump’s frankly ridiculous State of the Union speech, Nancy Pelosi seized a particular moment that caught the world’s attention, and Edel turned it around at once. Once again, I salute him.
Refuse and resist.
Spend any amount of time perusing the photos on this stupid blog or on my Instagram page, and you’ll doubtlessly spot one, specific street making repeated appearances. I’ve always been compelled by Staple Street (see this old post for more extrapolation). Like lower Manhattan’s own version of Venice’s “Bridge of Sighs,” it’s a stately, historic and precious holdover from a vanished age, especially in our contemporary urban climate of avaricious real estate development. To stroll down its narrow corridor is to step back in time.
Staple Street’s signature atmosphere has been catpured in myriad films – from Jim Jarmusch’s “Stranger Than Paradise” through Phillip Joanou’s “State of Grace” to Chantal Akerman’s “News From Home” and countless others. From era to era and decade to decade, Staple Street has inspired and romanced virtually all who’ve passed under its striking, cast-iron skybridge, an architectural flourish dating back to 1907.
If you’re inspired by this post and heading down there now, …. mind how you go. Or maybe don’t wear your best shoes.
Since TriBeCa transformed from a comparatively desolate plot of city south of Canal Street in the 70’s and 80’s and morphed into the monied hotbed of tony exclusivity it is today, there is way more activity in the neighborhood. Where once these streets were deserted and whisper-quiet, they’re now regularly peppered with moms, kids in strollers, sweaty joggers, cellphone-chirping business drones and disgruntled motorists moving their sports cars to accommodate street-cleaning vehicles. And as with any residential neighborhood, there is a large contingent of dog-walkers.
Now, I get it. Dogs, like all of God’s creatures, have to poop. One of the primary reasons I don’t have a pet is the aversion to the task of regularly cleaning up after it. Having already reared two kids out of their toddler years, I feel like I’ve logged enough hours on poop detail.
Evidently, however, lots of TriBeCa residents just aren’t as bothered by that task, which is to say, they blithely ignore what is ostensibly their responsibility as dog owners, seeing fit to let their pooches defecate on the street (crucially without the “and pick it up afterwards” part of the equation). In TriBeCa, it seems the favorite street for that is Staple Street.
It’d be easy to write this post off as me being an anti-pet person. I’m not anti-pet. I’m just not a pet guy. Whatever.
What I am is an anti-poop guy. If you want a dog, that’s great … treat yourself. But do the rest of the world a favor, …. and clean up after it.
And by the way, it’s not just me that feels this way:
Fret not, graffiti fans… this is not an obit nor portentous lament. It's just a rumination on a photo I took.
As I walked south on West Broadway, this morning, heading towards work, it struck me how astonishing it seems the Scrap Yard is still hanging on after all these years. If memory serves, the place was originally called, ahem, Bomb The System … this being prior to the age wherein such monikers riled the sensibilities of the easily alarmed. An endearingly tenacious hive of street art in a neighborhood that ceded its bohemian character decades earlier to become a staid and irretrievably exclusive enclave for monied douchebags, Scrap Yard still flies its freak flag in retina-burning colors and unruly fonts.
Despite being an avid fan of all manner of street art, I feel somewhat regretful to admit that I’ve never spent a thin red dime in Scrap Yard, although I did routinely blow wads of cash at its (I think) sibling operation across the street, that being underground comic emporium SoHoZat (which I wrote about here and then again here). Bomb The System … true to its name … was for the bombers, i.e. taggers and graffiti writers of all stripes. I can only imagine that they changed the name to Scrap Yard in the wake of 2001, but that’s just my speculation.
Once nestled between a greasy spoon diner on the corner of Canal and the vacant lot left behind by the razing of The Church of St. Alphonsus Liguori, the shop that became Scrap Yard has seen massive changes on its home strip of West Broadway. SoHoZat across the way vanished in the mid-1990s. It was replaced by a deli of no great distinction for a while, but is now an animal shelter, of all things. The vacant lot is now home to the sprawling SoHo Grand hotel. The greasy spoon on the corner became a Dunkin Donuts. West Broadway’s fortunes ebb and flow -- and there are more than a few empty storefronts and vacant restaurant spaces, not unlike the rest of the city – but somehow Scarp Yard has managed to stay put. I frequently wish its furtive, niche clientele would leave more of a mark in the surrounding neighborhood, but those days are long gone, I guess. There’s precious little street art left in SoHo, comparatively speaking.
Anyway, like I said, I have no news to share or spread about Scrap Yard. Long may it continue, as far as I’m concerned.
I haven’t done one of these since July, but continuing in the series that started here and then continued here and was last visited here, herewith the fourth installment of examples of the feelings on the streets of Manhattan regarding all things Trump.
Suffice to say, none of them are positive.
..and as an adjacent palette cleanser....
I usually wait until the week after Christmas to post this unwieldy thing, but then figured ... why wait?
As has been laboriously documented in the past, I take a lot of goddamn photographs. Some might say too many. If you already follow me on Instagram, you've invariably already sped by most of these while looking for pictures of other people's food or pictures of your exes or whatever it is you are covertly searching for.
Regardless, do please try to enjoy.
I also changed it to My Year in Pictures, as The Year... just seems a bit pretentious and overarching ... even for me.
These are just some of my favorites.
Peruse through the fourteen years worth of posts here on Flaming Pablum, and you’re bound to find not-just-a-few allusions to, posts about and pictures & videos of the mighty Buzzcocks, inarguably one of England’s finest exports from the Punk years. I first heard them via the inclusion of “Orgasm Addict” on a mixtape a friend bequeathed me circa 1980, and life was never the same. Progenitors of tight, immaculately crafted tunes that seamlessly fused palpable pop hooks with punky pugnacity, the Buzzcocks were, simply put, a perfect band. Beg to differ and be laughably wrong.
I didn’t see the Buzzcocks in their prime, being that they officially broke up in 1981, only a year after I’d first heard them at the age of 13. But they reformed in 1989, featuring the classic line-up of Pete Shelley, Steve Diggle, Steve Garvey and John Maher. My friend Rob B. and I went to their reunion show at the New Ritz in November of that year, and it was one of those rare live-concernt experiences wherein the myth fully lives up to the hype – the band exploded onto that stage like a multi-dimensional Jackson Pollack painting of noise and color. Hands down, it was one of the greatest shows I’ve ever had the pleasure of attending.
In typical form, I’m letting my love of the Buzzcocks get the better of me, as this post wasn’t really supposed to be about them, or at least not directly.
This post is about original Buzzcocks drummer John Maher. I only saw him perform once – at that show at the New Ritz in `89. Stiff-backed and stoic behind a pair of black shades, Maher provided the tireless engine that fueled the band’s most propulsive songs. My favorite image of him is in the live video Auf Wiedersehen, which captured the band’s final, pre-breakup performance on German television in 1981. Maher wore a black ANARCHY shirt (which was sort of cheeky, being that the band’s songs were always more about romantic travails than revolution), black shades and a bowler hat.
After the 1989 reunion, Maher left the band again to focus more on his love of vintage cars – which was also somewhat ironic, given that one of the band’s early singles, “Fast Cars,” lamented the fetishistic materialism of car culture. In any case, the band carried on without him, initially recruiting fellow Mancunian and former Smiths’ drummer Mike Joyce to helm the drum kit. Maher would later join the band onstage a couple of times, but never fully returned.
Along the way, Maher also established himself as a photographer, gaining renown for his work. I stumbled upon his Instagram not too long back and it took me a minute to connect the dots and realize that this was the same John Maher that played on some of my favorite records of all time.
Anyway, quite recently, my favorite things in the world completely aligned, and John Maher commenced a new series (?) on his website wherein he shares images of New York City he took during the Buzzcocks’ earlier tours of the United States in 1979 through 1980.
I posted this on Facebook today, but I might as well share it here, too, because … well, why not?
According to several reports, notably this recent one in Vulture, certain fans have discovered the location of an evidently crucial scene in “Joker” and started to make touristy pilgrimages to the site in the Bronx. I say “evidently” as I still have not seen the film, and have no real desire to. To my mind, as I may have stated here before, we don’t need another telling of the Joker story, in much the same way we do not need another James Bond, or another goddamn “Star Wars” installment. Shouldn’t we all be bored to tears with these mythoses by now? How about new stories, new heroes and new anti-heroes. Just a thought.
In any case, while I might not give a rat’s ass about “Joker,” I really cannot get mad at folks for getting excited about tracking down those stupid Bronx steps, given the fact that I’ve undertaken countless pilgrimages of similar intent to any number of significant locations from photographs, album covers and films, usually in the company of my very patient kids. Many long-time visitors to this blog may remember same.
Here are some you might remember, should you care….Click on them to enlarge.
Word arrived last week that a newly restored version of Glenn O'Brien's "Downtown 81" was about to see the light of day. I think I first saw the film in question at the since-recently-razed Screening Room theatre in TriBeCa in about 2000, or so -- and it immediately made a huge impression on me.
As a time-capsule-worthy document of early 80's New York City, it is, of course, invaluable. Secondly, its soundtrack is entirely awesome -- particularly the live stuff from Kid Creole/Coati Mundi, to say nothing of the vintage footage of bands like Tuxedomoon and DNA. But, speaking in strictly cinematic terms, the film itself is frequently laborious and plodding. While definitely worth checking out for the points expressed above, one should be prepared to be bored to absolute tears during certain passages.
A new restoration of the film also seems a bit odd, as it strikes me that a deluxe, 30th anniversary digitally remastered edition of the DVD only just arrived in 2017. It feels a bit like Francis Ford Coppola's fixation with trying to wring further life from "Apocalypse Now" for the umpteenth time.
As much as I do genuinely love "Downtown 81," there is also sort of an uncomfortably fetishistic quality about regularly revisiting the film in that it plays right into accusations of a variety of brazenly idealized nostalgia for the Lower East Side's "bad old days." Personally speaking, in 1981, I was an Upper East Side teenager who was indeed suitably captivated by all things downtown, but I sure as shit wasn't venturing further east of Avenue A (where much of the film takes place). I do not have that much first-hand experience of the downtown Manhattan suggested in "Downtown 81" beyond what I saw from behind the relative safety of bus windows.
It's certainly easy to fancifully think back to that largely lawless era as some sort of halcyon period, but those who lived through them in real time don't always agree. Michael Gira of SWANS appeared in a podcast this week, and briefly mentioned his time living on East 6th & Avenue B in the early 80s, and doesn't recall it with any degree of fondness.
While times have certainly changed, and many of us do indeed miss the Lower East Side's former identity as a neighborhood more clearly defined by free expression and less staid sensibilities than were found throughout the rest of the city, it's prudent to remember that the L.E.S. already had a character and richly robust history that dates back much, much further than the punks, the poets, the pushers and the provocateurs.
Here's a tantalizing little glimpse of same....
Just to complete the recap...
The flat we stayed in was literally steps away from the current Picasso museum on Rue de Thorigny in the Marais. We couldn't not go, obviously, it being so damn convenient. As cool as it was, however, Picasso strikes me as an artist that has reached such an iconic level wherein literally every single thing he ever did is now treated like absolute gold. This is not to say that his work isn't striking to the layperson, but we didn't see anything within the collection that was especially well known, so the "wow" factor was slightly diminished. Against my better judgment, I was privately hoping they'd be selling beach towels with "Guernica" on them, but -- to the credit of their taste -- this turned out not to be.
Much to the chagrin of my kids, we made it to the Francis Bacon show at the Pompidou. While m'self and the wife are fans of his work, the kids weren't really buying it (nor is much of Bacon's work especially "kid friendly"), but the element that made it especially tough was the crowd size. Enjoying Bacon's paintings is somewhat difficult when you have people stepping on your feet and breathing down your neck. Still, while not for everyone,if you're a fan of the man's stuff, it's worth seeing.
While they didn't necessarily dig Bacon's splattery grotesqueries, the kids did quite enjoy the view from the top of the Pompidou.
While significantly decreased here in Manhattan, street art is still alive and well in Paris...
Oh yeah, and the French don't like him either....
The day before we left, Peggy & the kids went to do some shopping, letting me off my leash long enough to go track down a punk rock record shop I'd read about across the Beaumarchais in a slightly less salubrious area of Paris. I found Born Bad Records in the end, tucked around a corner on a quiet little street. They didn't really have anything I crucially needed, but I bought a t-shirt to be supportive. Vive Le Rock!
I will say this. If you're planning a trip to Paris, you very well may have heard about the Bateaux Mouche, which are those boats that sail around the Seine, giving sight-seers a view of the City of Light from the water. While that certainly sounds nice, lemme tell ya.... if you hate tourists as much as I do, avoid the Bateaux Mouche like the plague. It will put you swiftly in touch with your inner xenophobe in no time. Packed with competing hordes of German and Japanese tourists (the former are way more annoying than the latter, I decided), the experience made appreciating the visual splendor on offer very difficult. Don't say you weren't warned.
So, yeah, Paris was just as magical as we're all repeatedly told it should be. I ate like royalty and regained the fleeting remnants of my sanity that have otherwise been robbed of me by the daily grind. That is, of course, when I wasn't squabbling with my teenage daughter, who took a bit of time acclimating to the pointedly unhurried nature of Parisian living ... something native New Yorkers have a harder time adjusting to. In the end, she was heartbroken to have to leave. We all were.
We will go back.
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