Flaming Pablum

SOLVED: The Whereabouts of Wendy's Wall

By its very design, street art is ephemeral. Not necessarily made to last and furtively executed either in haste, overnight or under the radar, it is a guerrilla-style form of expression the very clandestine nature of which is to surprise its viewers and then, in most instances, vanish forever. I’d suggest that huge parts of its appeal are in its fleeting existences and outlaw status. You may not have expected it. You did not ask for it. You cannot control it. You cannot own it. The most you can do is paint over it.

Graffiti is loved and loathed in equal measures by the city’s residents. But despite New York’s own robust history of trailblazing street art, there isn’t really one, formal public record of it. Sure, names like Zephyr, Lee Quinones, Futura 2000 and Dondi are frequently cited by denizens — to say nothing of artists whose work went “legit” like Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf, Richard Hambleton and Jean-Michel Basquiat — but, as far as I know, there is no single tome or collection that authoritatively documents the work of the most celebrated street artists and graffiti-writers. But, I suppose that’s the point. It’s a wild, organic art form. You’re not supposed to be able to institutionalize it.

It’s for this very reason that I’ve been so preoccupied with a certain quest — to find the Plasmatics wall.

I originally invoked it in this comparatively ancient post from a decade ago, but my actual search for the image dates back to 1982 or 1983, after first spotting the art on a wall in Spanish Harlem from within a southbound school bus on the northern reaches of Park Avenue.

It seemed sort of wildly out of place to spot an invocation of The Plasmatics — very much a downtown concern — on a wall up in Spanish Harlem, much less an invocation composed in the signature bright colors and stylized renderings of graffiti, which, in those days, was more steeped in the burgeoning culture of hip-hop than in punk rock. But, again, it’s easy to assign such meaningless parameters for the sake of neatly encapsulating an era. There, for whatever reason, was a colorful depiction of Wendy O Williams and the Plasmatics' logo on a facade north of East 96th Street. Why was it there? Who knows? Maybe whomever spray-painted it was simply a fan.

But, as mentioned in that post, when I sheepishly went back to find it after that school trip, pedaling nervously on my shitty BMX past the “the border” between the Upper East Side and Spanish Harlem at East 96th Street, I couldn’t seem to find it again or, more likely, I wimped out and did an about-face before getting too far uptown.

And that was basically that.

I cannot recall what prompted my penning of the post in 2010 about it other than that it’s always been something I was struck by and remembered. After a while, though, given that I never found any further evidence of its existence, much like that certain “punk” issue of New York Magazine (which I, of course, later found), I started wondering if maybe I’d imagined it, and started giving up the notion of trying to find any evidence of it.

But in already in a few instances this year, for whatever illogical reason, I have stumbled across beguiling bits of Plasmatics trivia that resulted in a series of in-depth posts (all collected here, for your convenience, if you care). in the spirit of same, I figured I’d revive my quest for Wendy’s wall.

For a start, I posted the entry on the Plasmatics fan page on Facebook, asking aloud if anyone else had remembered seeing it. Suddenly the thread came alive with remarks from commenters saying they’d recalled seeing it from the windows of a Metro-North train and speculating as to its possible whereabouts. The problem, however, is that like me, no one had snapped a pic of it. At the very least, I had corroboration of its existence.

Then I went back to the well and started getting creative with Google, entering in any number of combinations like “Plasmatics,” “Wendy,” “mural,” “Manhattan,” “80s,” “graffiti,” “Park Avenue” etc., but continually came up empty. I actually reached out over Instagram to fabled graffiti tagger Lee Quinones and photographer/graffiti-champion Henry Chalfant to see if either of those guys remembered it. No one got back to me. 

I started feeling that old sensation of futility once again until I happened upon one article or another that made mention of an over-promisingly named strip of concrete called — wait for it — the Graffiti Hall of Fame. While not an actual “hall” of any tangible quality, this area was a designated street-art destination established in 1980 on — WAIT FOR IT, ONCE AGAIN — the northernly reaches of Park Avenue. Things were starting to add up. I started Googling “Graffiti Hall of Fame” and “Park Avenue” and scrolling through the ensuing images.

It was almost too easy.

Evidently painted by an artist named Dez, the whole wall came up via another promisingly named entity called Graffiti Database. I was genuinely astonished to have found it. Here’s a closer look at it…

Regrettably, I have no idea who took this photograph or when, but it’s definitely the mural I first saw, although the passage of time rendered the images in my head with way more nuance and detail. I’m still mystified as to the specifics of its backstory, but I can at least now rest, knowing I didn’t imagine it and that I’ve closed the circle on another inane quest.

Here in 2021, the Graffiti Hall of Fame is still a going concern, but the Plasmatics mural was painted over decades ago.

And, once again, for the uninitiated, these were the Plasmatics...

Sad But True

2019:

2020:



2021:

 

Where Smoked Yeh Jong Son?

I suppose I should stop repeatedly mining the Facebook group Manhattan Before 1990, but some great stuff pops up there, periodically, and it’s worth evangelizing. In any case, that’s the initial source of this entry.

In any case, a member of said group named Kathy B. posted the photograph below, and I found it quite striking. Taken in 1986 by one Susan Aimee Weinik, this is a shot of former Palladium doorkeeper Yeh Jong Son.

I mean, it’s a great photograph by any stretch of the imagination, capturing both the stylish insouciance of the enigmatic Ms. Son and some great nocturnal atmosphere of a since-vanished New York City. As if on cue, however, the chatter started, speculating as to the location of the photograph. Many, if not most, seemed to assume that, given Ms. Son’s vocation, it must’ve been snapped within the environs of her stomping ground at the Palladium, that being East 14th Street between Union Square and Third Avenue. Sure, that might’ve made sense in a rigidly linear sort of way, but I couldn’t reconcile that featured architecture, specifically the hulking building in the background.

Acting on a hunch, I took a circuitous route home from my office down by the World Trade Center (notice I didn’t call it “the Freedom Tower”? Nor should you!), and sure enough, I was correct. As just discussed in a relatively recent post about the former site of the Plasmatics World Headquarters on Thomas Street, that large building behind Ms. Son is the western-facing façade of the massive Western Union building on Hudson Street. That puts her having a ciggie just steps to the south of Puffy’s Tavern, where she very well might have been having a post-Palladium-shift drink. To make good on my sleuthing, I captured the exact spot where Ms. Son was snapped smoking.

While I certainly made it to the Palladium a few times, I cannot say I was ever hip enough to be able to recognize Yeh Jong Son at first glance, although I was never stopped from entering the place, so I guess that counts for something. If you want to get a feel for what the interior of the Palladium was like click right here.

Here in 2021, the Palladium is, once again, long gone – razed to accommodate a massive NYU dormitory that churlishly bears the old club’s name. Puffy’s Tavern on Hudson Street is indeed still there, as it has been since about 1945, and it has refreshingly not changed very much.

As to the whereabouts and doings of the sleekly svelte Yeh Jong Son these days, who can say?

Peels Be With You

Quite by accident, I stumbled upon the clip below and was instantly taken back a decade.

The “Peeler Man” was this compelling little character that used to hold court on the northwesterly area of Union Square. This distinguished salesman from the mother country (actual name: Joe Ades) used to sit and regale passers-by with myriad benefits of his revolutionary culinary tool, demonstrating its capabilties on any number of carrots and potatoes. My wife and I used to worry about him. An elderly gentleman like himself should surely not be out on the pavement (literally) plying his wares this way. To the contrary, though, he clearly got a great deal of joy out of it, and probably made a few bucks along the way. I seem to remember my then-future (and now ex) job, The TODAY Show doing a profile about him before he passed, and he was an unrepentantaly happy soul.

As far as his peelers go, we bought one – and we still use it this many years later.

Sadly, Mr. Ades passed away in 2009. But here he was in action…

Going “Home” Again: Re-Re-Re-Exhuming Chantal Akerman’s “News From Home”

It was probably about 2012 when I first learned about Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman’s “News From Home,” a strangely somnambulistic rumination on distance, family and solitude, centered around footage of a particularly lonely New York City captured in 1976. The film periodically appears on YouTube, sometimes in bits and pieces, only to be yanked down at one point or another, probably at the behest of Janus Films.

It’s an odd bit of cinema by any standard, and strangely haunting and hypnotic. Of course, the extra attraction for me is the depiction of a downtown New York City that simply does not exist anymore. Sure, I’ve said that before about films like Glenn O’Brien’s “Downtown `81” and Amos Poe’s “The Foreigner” (just to name two), but where those films have narrative structures — however tenuous — “News From Home” tells less of a definable story. And while I thrill to the shots of, say, pre-gentrification TriBeCa, I sincerely doubt Ms. Akerman chose to include said footage with any intention of preserving the neighborhood as it was for future generations to marvel at. I project that she chose the locations she did to convey an overall sense of desolation and disconnection. In that respect, she completely succeeded.

In previous posts on the film, I’ve mentioned that I’d love for someone to do a shot-by-shot homage to “News From Home," capturing the modern-day iterations of the locations Akerman captured back during the Bicentennial. I sincerely doubt it would have the same lulling effect, although there certainly were moments, in the past year of COVID, when Manhattan seemed to return to the directionless drift of Akerman’s film. By and large, though, the Manhattan of 2021 is an entirely different place. Finding the degree of tranquil isolation that is so overwhelmingly rife throughout “News From Home” would be a genuine challenge.

While it’s still up, travel back to the endless half-light and mournful limbo of “News From Home.”

Back To Fiorucci

This video segment below has been on and off of YouTube for a while and a friend of mine just put it back into circulation, so I thought I’d address it here.

I think the strangest aspect of Fiorucci’s, for me, was its address. Basically right at the southern border of the posh-but-staid Upper East Side (my home turf, at the time), this weird Italian fashion emporium was essentially a dollop of Downtown atop a bland soup of midtown blahs. It was invariably my older sister who came home, one day, with a garish bag full of inane duds she procured at Fiorucci’s. It was around this same era when I was starting to swear off former faves like Pink Floyd and getting into stuff like Devo, The Ramones and the Sex Pistols, while my sister was bringing home records by The Buggles, The Vapors and Blondie. “It’s all punky stuff!,” Victoria said. I felt compelled to investigate.

Once again, incongruously perched on East 59th between Lexington Avenue and the magisterial sprawl of Park Avenue, Fiorucci’s (or, technically, Fiorucci … non-possessive) was an impossible-to-miss source of brave-new-world spectacle, diametrically across the street from the haven of stodgy-old-world knowledge that was the Argosy Book Store. Ironically, here in 2021, Argosy is still there, but that iteration of Fiorucci’s closed around 1987. The space it occupied became several other ventures, notably a William Sonoma. These days, I believe it’s now a Muji.

But at the dawn of the 80’s, it was in full swing. I remember regularly going down to that neighborhood not to shop at Fiorucci’s, but to hit the drearily seedy Comic Art Gallery one block to its south, along the with Disc-O-Mat on Lex and 58th (lionized most recently here). Intrigued by my sister’s claims, I dutifully went down to check out Fiorucci, but it wasn’t quite what I was expecting. Suffice to say, it was way more glitzy n' kitschy than sneery and iconoclastic, but who knows what I’d been projecting on the place. Victoria made good several years later when she steered me toward Commander Salamander in Georgetown.

In watching this quaint clip now, though, one can’t help miss the era when New York was indeed a significantly wilder place, and folks could be so easily stopped in their tracks by the sight of downtown freaks dancing in a shop window. Yes, that’s Klaus Nomi, but that’s also Joey Arias, who appeared with Klaus and Bowie on that fabled episode of Saturday Night Live. Joey lives in my neighborhood, these days. I spoke to him once when our local liquor shop was broken into several years ago. He was a very cool gent.

Enjoy the trip back in time.

Happy Easter

Image lovingly swiped from the Mudd Club Book. 

Charly Clicks With Fran in The Alley

Here’s a convoluted one.

Some of you might remember a couple of posts I devoted to my musician friend Fran Powers, over the last couple of years. He’s based in Okinawa, Japan, these days, but our Fran was previously a figure on the New York City scene, having played in a series of bands, the most notable of them probably being a combo called Modern Clix (pictured above), who played a cool amalgam of punk rock and reggae. You can hear some of their stuff by clicking — pardon the pun — right here.

Not unlike Missing Foundation’s cryptic cocktail glass insignia, Modern Clix had a tenacious presence on the graffiti scene. I recall seeing their symbol, a sort of warrior brandishing a spear, on walls all over the place, back in the day. In fact, a photographer named Tom Langton actually captured one of the ones I vividly remember from a garage door on East 8th Street between Broadway and Astor Place at some point in the mid-80’s. Here it is now…

Sadly, I never got to see Modern Clix perform, but I first got to know Fran from running into him on the street, a few years back, outside a party for Yukie Ohta’s SoHo Memory Project. Fran was waiting for the external elevator I was stepping out of. I recognized him from a series of photographs taken by one Brooke Smith, a former NYHC scenester-turned-actress (you’ll doubtlessly remember her as the poor girl down the well who’ll get the hose again if she continues not to put the lotion in the basket in Jonathan Demme’s “The Silence of The Lambs”) who captured the nascent CBGB scene (which I wrote about here). He and I started chatting and that was that. A few months later, I was sitting at home re-watching my favorite movie of all time, Martin Scorsese’s “After Hours” and — for the first time — realized that my new friend Fran had something of an amazing cameo in the film. As such, I reached out and asked if he’d speak to me about the experience for an interview on this here stupid blog. You can read that right here.

And THEN, you might remember a post from 2019 wherein I posted a NYC-centric video titled “Fanky” by an Argentine gent named Charly Garcia. The video in question found Mr. Garcia performing around various points of downtown Manhattan. The odd thing about that, however, was that some years earlier, Garcia spent time recording in New York, the end results being an album released in 1983 called Clics Modernos or …. wait for it … Modern Clix. Here is the album cover for same below…

That’s Charly sitting underneath one of artist Richard Hambleton’s “shadow men” (who I discussed here). But just to the right of the shadow man is the legend … “Modern Clix.” I am purely projecting, of course, but my assumption is that Charly spotted the words on the wall and just thought they sounded cool. Did he know Modern Clix was actually a band, at the time? Possibly, but I’m inclined to believe probably not.

Okay, so why am I bringing any of this ridiculous bullshit back up again now? Well, because earlier this week, a gentleman on the Manhattan Before 1990 page of Facebook named Bo G. Eriksson posted a pair of photographs he snapped in 1984 on Cortlandt Alley. Now, I have long love affair with this particular strip on TriBeCa, as I demonstrated here, so Mr. Eriksson’s pics immediately resonated with me. But under closer inspection, I noticed something that leapt out at me — the very location of the “Modern Clix” graffiti Charly Garcia posed in front of for his album cover a year earlier. Check out the pics below.

Basically, Charly was sitting on the southwest corner of Walker Street & Cortlandt Alley, just down the way from the Mudd Club at 77 White Street, a venue that was doubtlessly a hangout for Fran Powers and the Modern Clix folks.

Today, this corner doesn’t look all that different. In fact I took a shot of some cryptic graffiti on it just the other day, this is around the corner from where Charly was pictured sitting. Beyond that, there are now a couple of high-end art galleries on this strip of Cortlandt (one, oddly, owned by my former next-door East 12th street neighbor Andrew Kreps), as well as a restaurant called Au Cheval that was been dormant since the beginning of the pandemic.

Here in 2021, there is now a luxury hotel just steps to the west of where Charly sat. The Mudd Club is long gone … reimagined as luxury apartments. Charly Garcia is still at it at age 69. “Shadow Man” artist Richard Hambleton passed away in 2017, and Fran Powers is somewhere in Okinawa, Japan.

Goodbye to The Pyramid

I've written about the Pyramid several times here, over the years, but I was very bummed to learn via EV Grieve, this morning, that the fabled club on Avenue A is the latest to succumb to the financial rigors of pandemic and will not be re-opening. 

While, in more recent years, the venue catered to a seemingly more conventional brand of nightlife (which I lamented here), back in the 80s and 90s, it was something of a remarkable melting pop of disparate subcultures. As I mentioned here ages ago, you were as likely to run into characters like Tommy Victor of Prong or Tim Chunks of Token Entry there as you were to encounter drag royalty like RuPaul or the Lady Bunny. Bands I saw on that tiny stage included Surgery, the Hot Corn Girls, Rats of Unusual Size, Fractured Cylinder, The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black and my beloved Cop Shoot Cop, but it also famously hosted names like Sonic Youth, SWANS, White Zombie and, oh, Madonna and Nirvana -- not on the same evening, mind you, although that wouldn’t have been out of the question, given their forward-thinking booking policy.

For that plot of the East Village, not to mention NYC writ large, it’s a tremendous loss.

Silence & Snow

It’s another busy period at work, for me, so if I’m a little less active here than usual, that’s why. I do have one or two things coming, but first things first.

In any case, here’s a nice, calm palette-cleanser for you: A few short, silent minutes of footage from the West Village -- although, back then, it would have just been called Greenwich Village -- at some point after a snowfall in the 1960s. This find come courtesy of someone on the Facebook group, Greenwich Village Grapevine.

Enjoy.