Flaming Pablum

My Mosaic Valentine

Oddly fitting, so close to Valentine’s Day.

A few years back, I happened on some photographs of stalwart proto-shoegazer band My Bloody Valentine taken in New York City around the time of their watershed 1991 album, Loveless. I was quasi-lucky enough to see them on that tour at the Ritz, on a high-decibel triple bill with Dinosaur Jr. and Superchunk that I am convinced took a palpable toll on my hearing. In any case, in one or two of the photos, the band were depicted standing with their backs against a mosaic pattern that was inarguably the work of Jim Power, an East Village fixture whose signature art adorns many corners of the neighborhood to this day. The thing that was so perplexing, however, was that the picture of MBV also featured these strange, mask-like faces that looked so incredibly familiar to me, but I could not place where they might be. In my downtime, I searched far and wide or a wall with those faces on it, but always came up empty.

Eventually, I gave up and lost the pics in question. Life went on.

Last week, someone invoked My Bloody Valentine in one online forum or another, and up popped that very picture again. Here it is now.

Again, those strange background faces jumped out at me. I knew I’d seen them before, but certainly not recently.

Eventually, I figured it out.

The mask-like faces are no longer on that façade, that being on the southern side of the street on St. Marks Place just steps to the west of Avenue A. At the time, that would have been the side of rock’n’roll bar Alcatraz. It would later turn into a sushi bar and is more recently a taco place called Empello al Pastor.

Like I said, the faces are gone (knocked off by a vandal or Jim Power collector fanboy?), but the rest of the mosaic is still intact. You can see the same side of the patterned dish to the left of guitarist Kevin Shield’s head right above my son Oliver’s head below.

Mystery solved.

For the uninitiated, this is My Bloody Valentine....

More about My Bloody Valentine on Flaming Pablum here….

Jobless, Marooned & Loveless

Valentinnitus

All You Need is Loveless

Central Park ... After Dark

Back in August of 2019, I started composing another long, detailed post about my years growing up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It was ostensibly meant as kind of a companion piece to a long post I’d penned about my encounters with some (very) small-time crime in that era. This post was going to concentrate on the significance of visiting Central Park during the less advisable hours of the evening, something myself and certain friends of mine used do with blithely idiotic frequency. I’m not sure why, but I believe I abandoned the post because so much of it was wrapped up with my memories of my friend Danny, who passed away in 2018, and reconciling certain stuff was just all a bit too much.

In a nutshell, though, in the process of unspooling those anecdotes about favorite, clandestine spots we used to frequent in the Park during off hours, I was going to underscore the obvious underlying message, that being that Central Park at night — then as now — is nothing to fuck with. The stories of my teenaged exploits in that capacity were not meant as nostalgic boasts so much as evidence of youthful ignorance. While it might sound cliched and/or even quaint, now, the nocturnal iteration of Central Park accrued a certain fearful reputation for damn good reason.

That said, most of my own indiscretions in this capacity usually occurred in strategic locations that were barely a few steps from the street. Apart from the few instances when my late friend Danny and I foolhardily opted to bike through Central Park in the pitch black of night, we were usually to be found in frantic sprinting distance from the relative safety of Fifth Avenue and points east. The deeper you walked into the Park at night, the greater your chances of finding trouble were.

In the ensuing decades since my high school days, there have been myriad instances of crime — from the banal to the unspeakable — that have gone down after dark in the Park. From the The Preppy Murder case in 1986 to the Central Park Jogger case in 1989 to the teenage stabbing case at the Lake in 1997 and countless other less notorious incidents, it has been a haven for foul play. Only a year ago was a man found hanging from a tree near the 74th Street entrance, and only this past September were bodies pulled out of both the Reservoir uptown and Swan Lake down at the southeastern end of the Park.

While inarguably one of the most tranquil and beautiful locations in all of Manhattan, the verdant splendor of Central Park should not lull you into thinking that horribly bad shit can’t happen to you there.

Earlier today, while brazenly wasting time on YouTube instead of working, I came across the video below, presented by a bright-eyed, freshly scrubbed gent named Brian from a channel called Perfect Little Planet. Shot in 2016, this video posits the question: “Is Central Park Safe at Night?”

Let’s watch, shall we?

Before we dive into the meat of this video, how astonishingly annoying is that bit featuring all the "Pokemon Go!” zombies? Jesus Christ!!!

Taking the perspective of the tireless running enthusiast, the video seeks to reassure late-night joggers that Central Park is indeed safe, if you use your head and stick to “well lit” and more populated areas, although one might think that would all go without saying. To be fair, though, just being “well lit” isn’t necessarily enough. There are certain portions of the Park he cites as well lit that are still comparatively remote and Hell and gone from an easily accessible exit back to the streets. And don’t forget — when you’re somewhere “well lit,” not only can you see things, … but you, too, can be seen. That isn’t always an advantage.

When Brian gets to the infamous 102nd Street Crossing — where the Central Park Jogger was attacked and dragged into a ravine in the nearby North Woods — he tidily glosses over the incident by merely alluding to it as “bad stuff.” This feels a bit disingenuous.

Personally speaking, I didn’t embark on a star-crossed running regimen until it was basically far too late, and my middle-aged knees quickly put a stop to all that. As such, I cannot fully empathize with Brian’s zest for running. More to the point, I have nothing against people running in the Park (better that than on the street), but were I asked to opine as to the best times to attempt it, I still wouldn’t recommend after dark. I can also fully appreciate marveling at stirring, vespertine views and empty straightaways as much as the next guy, but they might just come with a terrible price that you could otherwise wisely avoid.

But, Hell, I'm still no expert. I'm sure Brian's intentions are in the right place. But what about you? Do YOU think Central Park is safe at night?

Weigh in....

"The Greenwich Village Story"

As recounted in this ancient post, I believe the first time I ever visited Greenwich Village as a snot-nosed Upper East Side kid was at some point in the mid-to-late `70s, when I was taken on an antique-scouting trip with my mother and step-father. Sometime after that, my father (divorced from my mother since my birth) rented a one-bedroom apartment on West 10th Street, opposite a firehouse with a garishly painted (for the era) garage door (more about that here), so we periodically went down to visit him. It seemed like an entirely different city from the one we lived in uptown.

Years after that, my mom befriended an artist character named Irwin who lived on Mott Street, just across from Old St. Patrick’s Basilica. I remember going down there with her to visit, a few times and walking around the Village and SoHo and being completely captivated.

By the early `80s, I was finally let off my leash and started exploring downtown on my own, my principle destination being the original Forbidden Planet on the west side of Broadway at 12th Street (more about that here). My father, by this point, had split from East 10th street, logged a few years in England and repaired back to New York to another one-bedroom apartment on East 74th. But he was working, at the time, at Forbes, which was then located over on Fifth Avenue and 12th Street. I’d go down ostensibly to “visit” him and then run around the Village, hitting Forbidden Planet and a few other likely spots. It was around this same time that a classmate of mine, Walt, moved to Cornelia Street with his dad and discovered Bleecker Bob’s. From there, there was no going back. Greenwich Village and its surrounding environs had all the cool stuff. The shops were cooler. The vibe was more relaxed. The people were freakier. There was more history. There was more to do and see than the neighborhoods I’d already wrung dry uptown. This was the place for me.

That was then.

Today, I’ve lived in Greenwich Village for over 25 years… practically half my life. But the Greenwich Village of today only dimly looks like the neighborhood I was first taken to as a small boy, much less the storied bohemian enclave it was in decades prior to that. Most of the stuff that first captured my imagination is gone. The cool shops are mostly vanished. The vibe isn’t relaxed at all. The freaky people are largely gone. There’s still a lot of history, although many don’t seem to care about it, and the sights and topography keep getting remade and remodeled. For all intents and purposes, it’s not all that different from points uptown — only more expensive.

But despite all the neighborhood's changes and diminishment (and let’s not even get into what the pandemic has done to it), I have no plans to go anywhere else. My kids grew up on these streets. Greenwich Village is our home.

In any case, while this was initially just supposed to be a quick preamble, it’s turned into a dangerously sepia-toned paean to the lost Greenwich Village, weepily composed to tee up the curious film below, “Greenwich Village Story.” Here’s the backstory….

Greenwich Village Story by Jack O'Connell shows the Village in the early sixties, teeming crowds in Washington Square Park, impromptu hootenany sessions, beatnik poets reciting by candlelight in coffee houses. Scenes are picturesque and germane to Jack O'Connell's tale of young love and desire for a place in the arts in Gotham. The film was invited to the Berlin, Venice and Locarno Film Festivals.

Sit back and enjoy a slice of Greenwich Village of yesteryear….

Take It Back to Tumblr

My friend Chung was instigating a conversation on Facebook, earlier today, based around a controversial billboard used to promote the Rolling Stones’ 1974 album, Black and Blue, which featured an image of a woman who’d been tied up and abused. While also comparable to a similarly objectionable billboard the Doors used to promote L.A. Woman (which featured a woman incongruously crucified on a telephone pole), I immediately thought of an old poster I’d spotted promoting a gig by — of all bands — Kraftwerk. I did some quick Googling to find the image in question, but came up with nothing. Then, I remembered that I’d probably put it on Get Back to Work, my ancient Tumblr page.

I started Get Back to Work (or Get Back Vassifer, really) as a complete lark — much like this blog — mostly as a means of aggregating images that appealed to my sensibility. This included album covers, GIFS, flyers, tour posters, promo photos, comics, memes, drawings, weird ads, archival pictures of New York, outtakes, t-shirts, movie stills, foreign movie posters, magazine covers, curious videos, risqué images, sci-fi, monster movies, cool graffiti, interesting book jackets, propaganda posters, Japanese robots, concert shots, ticket stubs, odd postcards, political humor, old New Yorker illustrations, badges, strange animations, unexplained phenomena, prurient doodles, and other bullshit like that, all presented usually without any explanation, in no order and more often than not without any helpful tags.

I occasionally had an agenda. It was a good place to store images, or at least set them to one side for later potential use here on Flaming Pablum. After a while, though, it just became an unwieldy pile of cool stuff collected for no readily apparent reason.

It seems I’ve occasionally added a scant image or two over the past year, but it’s far from a regular stop. But in searching for that Kraftwerk poster (which I eventually found here), I took a long, perilous trip down the rabbit hole. There are some truly great things to be found, if you’ve got the time.

Check it out here.

A Vocation in Location

I used to be a big fan of this blog called Scouting New York, which was run by this film-location scout who’d pinpoint and document famous locations from a wide array of films and point out weird urban anomalies and curious facts. For whatever reason — I believe it’s because he moved to another city — Scouting New York stopped updating in 2015, and I was sad to see it end. Regardless, the site is still up, so I encourage anyone with an interest in that sort of thing to go check it out.

I am happy to report, however, that a (relatively) new obsessively eagle-eyed cinephile has risen to the challenge to pick up where Scouting New York left off. Launched, evidently, in 2016, the straightforwardly titled NYC in Film seeks to accomplish much the same mission, and its attention to slavish detail is encouraging and impressive, not at all unlike the exacting eye for architectural minutia and fine-toothed scrutiny of my pal Bob Egan of PopSpots NYC.

I’d noticed some repeat visits to an old post of mine from 2018 regarding the former site of Disc-O-Mat, a record store I frequented in the very early `80s. Turns out, said post was of some use to NYC in Film, who reference while in the process of divining specific locations from the 1986 thriller, “F/X” staring Aussie Bryan Brown.

I’m late, of course, but I’m glad to welcome NYC in Film into the NYC blogosphere, such as it is — he even takes on my favorite and oft-cited film of all time, “After Hours.”

Beyond The Valley of 84 Thomas Street: The Search for Plasmatics World Headquarters

I put up another entry, a few days ago, about the Plasmatics. Once again, to be writing anything about the Plasmatics in 2021 seems a bit odd, given that the band was basically over and done with well prior to the dawn of the `90s, and because poor Wendy O. Williams took her own life in 1998. They’re occasionally name-checked here and there, as I mentioned in that last post, but rarely with any genuine respect. In the grand scheme of things, their era is over.

Regardless, just like my affinity for Venom, I still harbor fond associations with the Plasmatics. And, also like Venom, while their music may not be have been as timeless of that of some of their peers, I am still invested in the Plasmatics. As such, when the following minutia crossed my screen, I sat up with attention.

In doing research about the sleeve of the band’s late 1981 effort Metal Priestess, which features the giant pentagram recently up for auction on eBay, I was reading the following WikiPedia entry, and was struck by a tiny detail. Here’s the passage in question.

Dan Hartman, who produced acts such as 38 Special and James Brown, among others, had been working on a session in LA when he picked up a copy of Beyond the Valley of 1984 and couldn't stop playing it. It was "ground breaking," he said. "I knew I wanted to meet these people and do something with them." Dan came down to the Tribeca loft where he met Wendy O. Williams and Rod Swenson and a month later he and Rod Swenson were working on the production of the Metal Priestess EP.

To be fair to Mr. Hartman, to have worked with as wide an array of artists as 38 Special, James Brown and the goddamn Plasmatics is pretty impressive. But that’s not what caught my eye. No, the factoid that I latched onto was the allusion of Dan Hartman heading “down to the Tribeca loft” to meet Wendy and her partner Rod Swenson, who was the band’s manager and mastermind.

In all my years as a Plasmatics fan, I had never heard that they were based down in Tribeca. I mean, it never occurred to me. During the band’s gestation and its heyday, the neighborhood in question was still a comparatively desolate no man’s land. I started exploring Tribeca in the early 90’s, and now actually work at the southern end of it. Before the pandemic, I was walking around Tribeca on a daily basis and now actually know the lay of the land fairly well, down there. This all begged the obvious question — where was their loft?

I started doing some creative Googling, and the first thing that came up was this blog post featuring an interview with Rod Swenson that first ran in 2008, the ten-year anniversary of Wendy’s death. In it, Swenson goes into detail about Wendy’s motivations and lifestyle, citing her virulent penchant for anti-conformity and her healthy, toxin-free lifestyle. It’s actually quite illuminating. But the part I was looking for was only fleetingly mentioned, that being that they grew their own raw food in the loft in “what is now known as Tribeca” and that it also served as “Plasmatics World Headquarters.”

Finding a dead end beyond that, I took my query to a Plasmatics fan group on Facebook, which immediately came back with an answer: A fifth-floor loft space on Thomas Street.

Thomas Street is a narrow little passage that extends off Broadway and runs from east to west down in Tribeca. A few steps from its eastern end, 33 Thomas Street … aka the mighty Titanpointe … looms like a forbidding, windowless monolith, towering over lower Manhattan. From there, Thomas slopes gradually to the west, into a tight lane that ends at 60 Hudson Street, the massive former Western Union building, serving as a slightly less ominous bookend with Titanpointe. Between these two spots, Thomas Street plays host, on the southeast corner of West Broadway, to The Odeon, an iconic eatery once formerly frequented by scenester socialites and famously cited in Jay McInerney’s paean to irresponsible `80s hedonism, “Bright Lights, Big City.” On a personal level, beyond going to the Odeon several times, my own associations with Thomas Street are fairly random. I once attended a New Year’s Eve party in the mid-`90s at its eastern end. Just steps to the west of its intersection of Church Street, my friends Rob and Joanne — then newlyweds — briefly flirted with the idea of renting a third-story loft with a big picture window overlooking Thomas, but demurred at the last minute and moved to midtown. I also once logged several laborious hours serving jury duty at 71 Thomas Street, the civil court house just across the street from The Odeon. Beyond all that, though, I’ve always enjoyed walking through Thomas’ canyon-like architecture. It’s just a cool, atmospheric little street.

Ah, yes, …. but WHERE on Thomas Street was Wendy & Rod’s fifth-floor loft?

On that same thread on the Facebook page, Ramones producer Ed Stasium weighed in with more detail:

Rod owned the building, he offered me a floor for the purchase price of $30k in 1979. I certainly couldn’t afford it then. I can’t imagine what it would be worth now.

From here, I hit Google like the ball peen hammer Wendy used to use on unsuspecting television sets. But try as I might, searches like “Plasmatics” and “Thomas Street” or “Plasmatics” and “Tribeca” continued to give me nothing I hadn’t already seen or considered, and no extra details.

Then I had a stroke of luck.

Remembering that Swenson, in the wake of Wendy’s passing, had left the music business and pivoted into a career of scientific academia, I started plugging in his name and suddenly up popped a heady text from some sort of conference in 1989. The text in question was titled "Engineering Initial Conditions In A Self-producing Environment,” penned by one Rod Swenson. If you read it looking for salacious details about the Plasmatics, you won’t find any. What you will find, however, is Mr. Swenson’s old address on Thomas Street, that being… 84 Thomas Street.

To be clear, lest you think I’m overstepping my bounds with my fanboy sleuthing, I’d like to assure you — dear readers — that you won’t find Swenson there today. Prior to Wendy's death, the couple had relocated to Storrs, Connecticut, to be closer to the university Swenson was teaching at.

But armed with my breakthrough information, I took a stroll back down to Thomas Street to check it out.

I’m not sure what I was expecting or even looking for, but today, 84 Thomas Street is an enviable plot of real estate on the western end of the street. The PH apartment — what would have been Wendy & Rod’s place — is listed on the buzzer as something called Stone Studios, although I could find no other information. I wonder if the occupants of same are aware that the space used to be Plasmatics World Headquarters. To see what apartments inside this are like, click here. 

I’m sure the surrounding environs look entirely different from when this address served as same. And I can only wonder what Wendy would have thought about how the neighborhood has transformed (although I can imagine she’d have some choice words for it).

Anyway, case closed. For a closer look at what Rod Swenson’s up to these days, click here. For a snippet of conversation about The Plasmatics by Jesse Malin and Fred Armissen, click here. 

"No Comment": Reacquainting With Squid

I’d like to believe it’s still this way, somehow, but New York City used to be full of genuine characters. Every neighborhood had its own share of local oddballs who provided a bit of distinctive flavor and identity. This was especially prevalent downtown, where a more permissive atmosphere of bohemian expression gave sway to individuals who felt compelled to part with convention on their own terms. One such individual was a street performer I remember lurking around the East Village in the early 90s. People plying their art in the street was certainly nothing especially novel, but this gent was different. He brandished a strange, electrified guitar that was shaped like a fish. From that instrument he coaxed inverted melodies that probably made sense only to him. Sure, it was always amusing to stop and listen to him play for a bit, but there was always the suspicion that he was grappling with some bigger issues, and he gradually looked more disheveled each time I happened upon him. Then, as these chapters tend to play out, he just vanished one day. No more fishy street-side serenades.

In all honesty, I’d completely forgotten about the fish guy until, quite by accident, I stumbled upon the YouTube clip below. A filmmaker named Niels Alpert evidently took a greater curiosity in this gentlemen and documented him in a short series of video profiles, all compiled here. It turns out, he called himself Squid.

Throughout, Squid spins several suitably bizarre yarns, suggesting that he spent some time in prison, but that he had a wife and children somewhere. 

This video was uploaded in 2006, but seems to date back earlier than that. Where Squid is today? I shudder to think, but it's very hard to imagine him walking around the Lower East Side of 2021. 

Who else remembers Squid?

Own a Piece of Gem Spa

For this inclined towards this sort of thing, an organization called Workhouse has put together an auction (culminating on January 7) for various original artifacts from Gem Spa, the iconic corner shop on St. Marks Place. Want the sign? Bid on it. Want the Egg Cream display? Bid on it. Want the Kostabi-painted gate? Bid on it. Want the milkshake machine? Bid on it. Etc.

Here's the official statement:

"Due to Covid, we were forced to close like so many beloved New York City businesses. To honor the special spirit of the shop, we are auctioning off memorabilia, egg cream equipment, and signs from the store. These are the last remnants of an iconic institution and we hope that with this auction, they will find a new home with someone who loves old New York and wants to preserve a piece of precious history."

- Parul Patel, Gem Spa 

 

The Lost Murals of CBGB

Chris Stein of Blondie shared a photo on his social feeds today of some original artwork that adorned the wall behind the bar at CBGB (see that photo above). Here’s what he had to say about it.

These murals were behind the bar at CBGB’s at the far end near the stage. I took this the last week after it was closed . Hilly said he knew some of these guys names, they used to come into the place in the old days. Painted by a local artist in the early seventies, a woman. That’s all I’ve got on it. I’m not sure if they’re still there in Varvatos store, may have been covered up.

I’m assuming that by “the old days” he means prior the venue’s flashpoint as the birthplace of Punk Rock, when it was still a Bowery bar for the skid-row set.

When CBGB was being dismantled, I was still working at MTV News Online, and I *seem* to remember my colleague Chris Harris working that beat, and reporting that much of the original artwork on the walls of the place being painstaking removed and put into storage somewhere. I’m not sure that could really apply to this art, however, as the triptych looks like it was painted directly onto the actual wall.

One imagines they were covered up when John Varvatos moved it. Despite the clothier’s recent financial troubles, his business is still in operation on the Bowery, although I’m rarely in the mood to step inside. Anyone want to volunteer and go check it out?

Goodbye to Sammy's

I had heard about Sammy’s Roumanian Steakhouse probably a good decade before ever knowingly setting foot on the Lower East Side, albeit for one of the most ignominious of reasons.

You see, as a Manhattan brat growing up on the Upper East Side in the mid-to-late `70s, we had cable television. As such, when word spread like wildfire around my grade school that there was gratuitous nakedness to be seen on the cable-access channels if you quietly stayed up late enough, my friends and I took very serious note. If you managed the trick of not waking your parents, you could treat yourself to the prurient idiocy of a legendary New York City cable-access program called “Midnight Blue,” the brainchild of iconic “Screw”-magazine founder/publisher, Al Goldstein. While essentially just a half-hour of grainy raunch interspersed with potty-mouth rants from Goldstein himself and loads of commercials for escort services and the burgeoning phenomenon of phone sex, watching “Midnight Blue” felt like the most legitimately taboo activity imaginable, and most of my classmates and I were furtively regular viewers.

How does Sammy’s enter into all of this, you ask? Well, amidst all that low-resolution sleazery, Sammy’s Roumanian Steakhouse distinguished itself by having the solitary non-smut-related advertisement on the program. In between fleeting segments of porn stars Marilyn Chambers and John Holmes flailing their genitalia around, lurid tirades about bad customer service from Al Goldstein and ads informing you that “the extra E is for extra….” (don’t Google it), you’d see footage of giddy, `70’s-era patrons partaking of steaks with schmaltz in the low-ceilinged confines of Sammy's Roumanian Steakhouse on Chrystie Street. One imagined that after a while night of unfettered carnality at the oft-cited Plato’s Retreat, the swinger set would put their pants on and go enjoy a fine meal at Sammy’s (this may well have happened, but Plato’s was on the Upper West Side, while Sammy’s was Lower East, so it’s logistically flawed). I can still vividly hear the background music used in that stupid ad.

Years and years later, some friends and I went to Sammy’s and partook of its fine fare — which is strikingly different from anything you’d find in a more conventional steak place, all served with schmaltz — liquified chicken fat that comes in a bottle that you’re supposed to pour over your steaks. It looks disarmingly like orange juice. While we didn’t spot any porn stars, let alone Al Goldstein, we did have the pleasure of sharing the space with none other than David Lee Roth, who was entertaining guests at a neighboring table. For a friend of mine’s bachelor party in the late `90s, five of us had a rousing dinner at Sammy’s that culminated with our waitress emphatically giving us the finger, for some long-forgotten reason.

I had a cherished black Sammy’s shirt (“Schmaltz It Up”) that I wore religiously for decades, usually with a pair of tattered camoflauge cargo shorts.

Today, my comrade Elie from Bowery Boogie reported that, like countless other favorites in recent months, Sammy’s Roumanian Steakhouse is no more.

Pour one out with extra schmaltz. New York City is being disemboweled.