Flaming Pablum

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Bankrupt on the Bowery

I have a history of speaking disparagingly about the business endeavors of John Varvatos on this blog (most floridly here, but elsewhere as well). My objections with him and his efforts, though, are basically about fundamental differences in perception. He’s not an evil man, nor has he -- to my knowledge, at least -- broken any laws.

When news came down, last week, that his brand was in serious financial troubles brought on by the pandemic-imposed closures of his clothing outlets (his flagship spot at 315 Bowery, the former site of CBGB, among them), I blithely mentioned on Facebook that I wouldn’t shed a tear seeing that venture close up shop. 

In hindsight, though, that was a callous thing to say, as John Varvatos files for bankruptcy.

Do I like what he’d done with the place? Hell, no, but he didn’t force CBGB out of existence (blame Muzzy Rosenblatt and/or Hilly Kristal for that). And, at the very least, while it’s not the way I would have done it, Varvatos did take pains to recognize the historical significance of the space he came to occupy. It very well might've turned into a bank or a frozen yogurt place.

It’s a tragedy for every business caught behind the eight-ball because of this pandemic. No one deserved this.

More to the point, though, while I may not like John Varvatos’ stuff or “deem appropriate” his handling of certain aspects of rock’n’roll lore, these are ultimately just my silly tastes and opinions. 

He may wear leather pants and sell slavishly overpriced crap in the former space of CBGB, but he’s also a philanthropist with a robust history of giving back. For that, he should be rightfully lauded.

So, yeah, what I’m trying to say is that my arguments against John Varvatos are ultimately just petty bullshit, especially this long after the fact, and I'm sorry his business is taking such a hit. I'm still not about to shop there, but good luck to him.

They Filmed Bands

Some of you might remember a post or two from 2017 wherein I discussed stumbling upon the video archives of one director Charles Libin, a trailblazer in the field of music video, being one of the first bona fide veejays. For a while, there were several of his clips on YouTube, showcasing a trove of period-specific footage of live music and conceptual video. Check out this post for more details, although the videos themselves are no longer embedded therein.

Well, recently, the daughter of Mr. Libin reached out to me with something really cool. Here’s what she had to say…

I’d love to share with you Charles Libin (my dad) and Paul Cameron’s series WE FILM BANDS. Libin+Cameron made conceptual music videos and shot live punk, post-punk, and no wave performances by iconic bands in the 1980s, many of which have never been seen. Fortuitously, I also began directing in my early twenties, the same age my dad and Paul were when they made these videos. In my music video for Princess Nokia’s Green Line, I included their footage of the Bronx breakdancing crew Floor Masters, from their Melon video After the Death.

We felt that, in celebration of the 40 year anniversary, their collection would be a cool discovery for people stuck in their homes.

And here’s a bit more info from the press release:

On March 3, 1979, Charles Libin and Paul Cameron gathered fellow film students from SUNY Purchase and shot the B-52s’ now legendary performance of Rock Lobster at the Hurrah nightclub in NYC. Libin+Cameron’s filming of the B-52s kicked off a series of live performances they captured, including The Cure's first NYC appearance, Gang of Four, Suicide, Polyrock, James White (aka James Chance) & The Blacks), Debbie Harry, Defunkt, Lizzy Mercier Descloux, Kid Creole & The Coconuts, The Plastics, and other ground-breaking bands. Libin+Cameron designed and programmed an immersive video experience with monitors throughout Hurrah. “A fair-haired, soft spoken 22-year old named Charles Libin is credited as the first veejay.” – Daily News, Sept 4, 1981

Friggin’ cool, right?

Anyway, you can check out all this stuff on WE FILMED BANDS.

Goodnight, Jimmy Webb

I first posted this on Facebook, and then took it down, as there was some confusion as to the cause of the great man's demise. In my haste to eulogize Jimmy Webb, it seems I mistakenly assigned the culprit as COVID-19, when more credible sources have suggested it was cancer. In any case, it's a genuine loss to the East Village community he knew and loved ... and loved him back.

The pervasive stereotype of the punk rocker usually involves a joyless, scowly contrarian, more than happy to spit at your feet or engage in a rampant bout of unprovoked pugilism. For decades, Jimmy Webb, whose age-old punk haberdashery, Trash & Vaudeville, occupied a storied perch in the Hamilton-Holly House at 4 St. Marks Place, was the consummate punk rocker, but defied the above stereotype in every manner.

Sure, visually, he fit the bill — garish skin-tight pants, sleeveless t-shirts, endearingly ridiculous brothel-creepers, blinding peroxide hair, leather jacket — but you cannot a imagine a more affable, smiley fella. Welcoming all into his fabled shop — from the local sneery street-urchins to the Upper East Sider dilettantes and all stripes in between — Webb was buoyantly enthusiastic to help you pick out just the right pair of tartan bondage-trousers to go with the vintage-design Dead Boys t-shirt you were buying, and would be damn happy to chat about it with great giggly aplomb with you. No judgements. Just happy to evangelize the scene, the music, the lifestyle. If Jimmy Webb was your ambassador into the rock’n’roll sartorial underground, you could not imagine a more gracious figure to guide you there. The t-shirts may not have been as cheap as I thought they should've been, at the time, but then again, neither was the rent. It was for that reason that Trash & Vaudeville had to leave that spot on St. Marks Place, but Jimmy found a new spot on East 7th Street, and even opened a new venture further south on the Lower East Side shortly afterwards.

Jimmy Webb was also, without the slightest question, the world’s most fervent Iggy Pop fan. If Iggy or the reunited Stooges came to town, you could bet your bottom dollar Jimmy Webb would be there, and onstage with the great man before too long, usually showcasing is full-back tattoo, loudly proclaiming “I NEED MORE” after the Iggy tune of the same title.

Evidently, Jimmy Webb passed away this week. Another tragic loss in a season of unimaginable sadness.

Pour one out for the great man.

Big City Survey: Part II

As I mentioned in the first part, I started answering the individual questions of this survey well over a month ago — back before life as we all knew it came to a grinding halt. As such, the tone of the answers below may be a bit different from the first batch.

Once again, I am not in the city in question, at the moment. About three weeks back, the wife, kids and I took up my family’s kind offer to decamp to my mother’s empty house out on Long Island. Given the limited space of our Manhattan apartment — which was already feeling tiny well before this crisis hit, even after some “creative" renovations — the spiraling uncertainties and the growing predictions of a looming, unstoppable uptick in COVID-19 cases — I felt it was prudent to get my family out of what has since become, by all reports, an unspeakable tragedy — one that we could have collectively been better prepared for had Trump and the rest of his clown car of an administration not dismantled the Nation Security Council’s pandemic response team in May of 2018. But, what’s done is done. There are now coronavirus-treatment tents on Sheep’s Meadow in Central Park and makeshift morgues in the streets. There is continued talk of temporarily burying COVID-19 victims in trenches in city parks.

Out here in Quogue, I would take solace in the notion that we’ve now been out of the city long enough for the incubation period — had we been infected before we left and unwittingly brought the virus with us — to have flowered into sickness by now, and that hasn’t happened. We are all still, to our knowledge, fully healthy. But, that, too, is speculative. We could very well have been infected and continue to be asymptomatic. As such, we are staying inside, washing our hands frequently and furiously after supply missions and, now, covering our noses and mouths when we have to do those runs. Most of all, we’re staying indoors and maintaining physical distance with others in accordance with that elusive goal of flattening the curve. But I cannot — and will not — complain.

I am profoundly privileged to have gotten out, but I miss my city, and I sorely fear for my friends, family and countless independent local concerns still there. I worry constantly about what happens next. As do we all.

As such, here’s the second half of the survey that celebrates my home town.

Favorite Book Shop:
Much as with my favorite record & CD shops, New York’s once great network of small, independent bookstores has also been largely vanquished by the advent of technological convenience. Time was when I would have answered this question with Shakespeare & Company at 716 Broadway, but that closed a few years back and is now a Foot Locker (`cos, y’know … we needed another place to buy expensive sneakers). That was an amazing bookshop, as I discussed here, but it’s gone now. As such, my fallback position is the mighty Strand on Broadway at East 12th Street. A huge, cavernous, multi-tiered hive of all sorts of literature, it is absolutely essential and unfuckwithable.

Favorite Music Shop:
I have already devoted entirely too many posts to lost record & CD shops. It’s a subject that largely defines this stupid weblog. As such, I’ll devote this answer solely to what remans … which regrettably isn’t very much. If I’m hard-pressed to find a specific disc, my first inclination, these days, is to head to Rough Trade in Williamsburg, which has a sprawling and enviable supply of great music of all stripes and is staffed by knowledgable folks (like my good friend Miles). Failing that, in Manhattan, there is always Generation Records on Thompson Street, but their selection is growing somewhat thin, of late. I’m also still quite fond of Downtown Music Gallery down on Monroe Street, in a sleepy patch of Chinatown, but that’s exclusively for deeply esoteric stuff. With regards to all three of these businesses, I have grave concerns about their well-being in the wake of this pandemic.

Favorite Dive Bar:
There remains a great deal of debate about what genuinely constitutes a proper “dive bar,” but I’ll say this — if the bar you’re in has a flatscreen television, it’s not a dive bar. Dive bars are generally dark, decrepit, a little scary and filled with drinkers for whom the clock has little or no importance. And make no mistake — dive bars aren't “punk bars.” Sure, there are plenty of so-called punk bars, but they’re usually fairly stylized, arty and endeavor to create a specific atmosphere (and many try way too hard, in this capacity). Proper dive bars don’t cater to that. There are loads of seedy, neighborhood bars, but that doesn’t make them dives. Proper dive bars don’t cater to being neighborhoody or kitschy or themey. They’re there to profit from despair, not cultivate character. Proper dive bars may indeed serve food, but chances are you don’t want to eat it. Dive bars are purely function over form — places wherein to get blotto drunk on the cheap to help you forget the shittiest of life’s circumstances. There are no proper dive bars in my neighborhood, anymore. None. Being that less and less is genuinely cheap in Manhattan, there are fewer and fewer of these joints. Dive bars don’t exist in nice neighborhoods. They perch on the fringes of civilization. I used to know a couple of bona fide dives on 8th and 9th avenues, where desperately depressed mailmen would drink themselves blind, but I don’t know if they’re still there. The Savoy, tucked behind Port Authority, was certainly one of them, but that’s changed hands a few times since I was last there in the mid-90s. Billymark’s West on West 28th & 9th Avenue was similarly grim, but the last time I looked, it was a good deal more inviting.

Favorite Irish Bar:
My favorite is probably The Scratcher on East 5th Street. Genuinely Irish, but without any cartoonishly cloying blarney aesthetic. Being half-Irish, I’m allowed to say shit like that.

Favorite Date Bar:
Well, I’ve been married for about twenty years, now, so haven’t really been on any dates, recently. When we were dating, the wife and I were quite fond of Johnny’s Bar on Greenwich Avenue, especially if we could sit in the front window. If you’re feeling flush, I might also suggest taking your date to the King Cole Bar at the St. Regis, which has astounding atmosphere (but very pricey drinks). Angel’s Share on Stuyvesant Street (amazingly still there) was also a great spot for dates, especially in that it was hard to find, which made it that much cooler.

Favorite Sports Bar:
Being that I generally don’t give one single crap about sports, I really don’t have one. If I’m at a sports bar, you’re bound to find me at the jukebox, about to piss off several patrons who are otherwise trying to pay attention to their precious ball games.

Favorite Park:
As much as I love Washington Square Park and Tompkins Square Park and Riverside Park, there is only one — 1 — answer for this. Any answer other than Central Park is moot.

Favorite Street:
I have a few, but they’re favorites for different reasons. I love Courtlandt Alley for its atmosphere, vibe and history. I love 13th Street between 6th & 7th Avenues for its overall look and feel. I love my own street, because I live on it.

Favorite Live Music Venue:
I feel like I’m repeating myself, but most of my favorite live music venues are gone. If you’re curious what they might have been, just peruse back under the “Vanished Venues” category. In terms of live music venues that — as of, say, February — that were still in operation, I’d say I’m still quite fond of the Bowery Ballroom. Irving Plaza is reportedly coming back, or at least was before all this bullshit went down. I have not been the re-opened Webster Hall, as yet, so jury’s still out on that, but the building certainly still carries a ton of resonance.

Favorite Movie Theatre:
I love the Quad Cinemas on West 13th Street. Kind of the very last of its kind.

Favorite New York Movie:
Without a moment’s hesitation, “After Hours.” Second place would be “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three,” the original version from 1974.

Favorite Song About New York:
I could make whole playlists of favorite songs about New York, so picking one is not easy feat. Today, I’m going to say “Manhattan” by Cat Power, but that could change in a half an hour.

Favorite Quiet Place in New York:
Maybe the Conservatory Gardens on Upper Fifth Avenue.

Favorite New York Secret:
If I disclosed that here, it wouldn’t be a secret anymore.

 

Big City Survey: Part One

I started composing this several weeks ago, gradually adding to it as time and inspiration allowed. This was all, of course, well before everything turned upside down.

As has been established, I am now outside of the city, isolating with my wife and kids out on Long Island, trying to stay sane and looking forward to better times and healthier circumstances. What things will be like when we all return to “normal” in the wake of this remains to be seen.

In the interim, this is part one of a list of about thirty questions. I only got through half of it. Look for the other half soon, and cite your own choices.

Favorite Building:
There are obviously loads to choose from, but I’m going to go with 644 Broadway at the northeast corner of Bleecker Street, known by some as Bleecker Tower. Completed in 1891, this former bank building is notable for its eye-catching red sandstone exterior, its Romanesque architectural flourishes and its metal tower, now greened with age like Lady Liberty herself. I’ve only ever set foot in it when its ground floor played host to a noxious clothiers whose name escapes me, but I was there in homage to a former incarnation of that space, the Blue Willow, and only then as said restaurant served as the location of the photo shoot the produced the cover shot of one of my favorite albums of all time, that being Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves by Gavin Friday & The Man Seezer.

Least Favorite Building:
There’s now several of them, sprouting up like fucking weeds, but the first so-called “supertall” I really latched my hatred onto was 432 Park Avenue, which thrusts out of midtown like a giant glass’n-steel penis, lording over its surroundings verily like Barad-dûr (look it up). I hate it. It’s an artless rod that plays host to impossibly wealthy oligarchs. It decimates the symmetry of the cityscape. Awful, repugnant shit. Knock it down.

Favorite Landmark:
There are several places that I believe ought to be “official” landmarks (i.e. legally protected) that aren’t. CBGB was one of them, but it’s way too late in the day to be boo-hooing that one. In terms of things that are still operational, visible and/or still standing, I’m quite partial to “the Alamo,” otherwise known “the Cube” at Astor Place, although I feel that’s kind of an obvious one. Glad it’s still there, though. Back uptown, I’ve always been fond of Louise Nevelson’s “Night Presence IV” sculpture on the island at East 92nd Street and Park Avenue. As a child, during snowstorms --- back when it still snowed in New York City – my friends and I would throw snowballs at it. The correct hit would make an endearing bonnnnnnnnnggggg sound.

Least Favorite Landmark:
I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for that stupid bull downtown to fuck right off.

Favorite Local Sports Team:
I don’t have one, because I don’t give a crap about sports.

Favorite Museum:
As much as I grew up wandering the halls of the Metropolitan Museum and the Natural History Museum, I’m going to go with the dark horse and vote for the Museum of the City of New York over on upper Fifth Avenue. It’s amazing. 

Favorite Coffee:
For a start, I hate Starbucks for a number of reasons, but first and foremost, their coffee tastes burnt to me. Stop spending your money there. I’m also not what you’d call a coffee connoisseur. I’m not impressed by artisanal blends or bespoke roasts. Give me a generic, large cup of shitty coffee with milk and sugar, and I’m good to go. I get mine at either the Corner Gourmet on West Broadway & Murray Street or from an endearingly irritable Egyptian gentleman who operates a food cart at the bottom of Greenwich Avenue at Barclays Street.

Favorite Pizza:
Okay, now we’re getting into it. This is an incredibly divisive question, depending on who you ask. Personally speaking, I regret to say that most of the beloved pizzerias of my youth are now all gone. Time was when there were decent options for pizza on practically every other block, regardless of what part of town you were in. They weren’t necessarily top of the line, but joints like St. Marks Pizza on Third Avenue, The Pizza Box on Bleecker, Mimi’s on East 84th and Lexington, or Stromboli’s on University Place were all entirely respectable options for a good slice. And we’re talking slices, here, not sit-down joints – there IS a difference. We’re talking about quick food on the go, not full-on dining experiences. That should be a separate question. In any case, all those spots have vanished. In terms of a slice here in 2020, I’m likely to shoot for Joe’s Pizza just north of Carmine Street off Sixth Avenue, but they’ve been discovered and the lines are crazy now. I’m also fine with Champion Pizza in SoHo at Cleveland Place just north of Kenmare Street. In a pinch, I’ll settle with my local, that being Pizza Mercato on Waverly Place, but it’s very decidedly not my favorite. I could list loads of shitty pizzerias, but who’s well served by that? Also, if you spend your money in any of those 99 cents pizza holes or --- may God forgive you – procure your “pizza” from Domino’s, you should by gored by a disconsolate bull.

Favorite Diner:
Much like the pizzerias (and the record stores, and the book shops), the diners are swiftly vanishing. My local standbys like The University Restaurant on University Place and the Silver Spurs on Broadway are both long gone. My old favorite, The Mansion, on the corner of East 86th and York Avenue, is still there, I believe, but they had a re-modelling some time back that robbed some of its charm for me. The Three Guys Restaurant on the northeast corner of East 96th and Madison Avenue is exceptional. For aesthetics, the Square Diner inTriBeca (65 West Broadway) has all the old school charm you need, but if I’m being candid, my favorite is the Gee Whiz Diner on Greenwich Street at Warren Street. The burgers are what you’re after.

Favorite Italian Restaurant:
My family’s old favorite, Col Legno on East 9th Street, vanished eleven years ago, when owner Chris pulled up stakes and went to go work at a bar in the West Village. Since then, our favorite is really Da Andrea on West 13th between Fifth and Sixth Avenues (just across from the Quad Theater). It might not look like much from the outside, but it’s always hopping when we go, and the food is always amazing. Also don’t mind the oddly named Aunt Jake’s on West 8th Street.

Favorite Chinese Restaurant:
Well, since posting the last installment of the perpetually delayed Flaming Pablum Grub Guide, I did expand my horizons further when the wife and I took a shamlessly touristy culinary walking tour of Chinatown (which I cannot recommend enough). From that, we did glean some choice spots for Chinese cuisine of very specific types (i.e. a good place for dim sum, a great place for Peking Duck, a fab spot for dumplings, etc.), but in terms of an overarching eatery that covered all the bases, a visit this past January to Shun Lee West on the Upper West Side really checked all the boxes, …including my tireless demand for “big fuckoff dragons!”

Favorite Sushi Restaurant:
As cited here, my heart still belongs to Japonica.

Favorite Steakhouse:
I love all steak houses, from the charmingly grotty Sammy’s Roumanian Steakhouse on the Lower East Side through to the higher tiered places like Smith & Wollensky’s. Peter Luger’s out in Brooklyn used to be a big fave. I haven’t been in eons, but I’ve heard reports of diminishing returns in the quality department. Similarly, the last time I went to the Old Homestead over in the Meat Packing District, I was somewhat underwhelmed by the fare. While not solely a steakhouse, the longbone and the t-bone at our local, Knickerbocker’s on East 9th and University Place are both outstanding and highly recommended. If we’re talking super-dupe high-end, Father’s Day-type shit, I’m always down for a trip to Keen’s Chophouse on West 36th off Sixth Avenue. Tons of history and atmosphere, and the food is nothing short of fucking sensational.

Favorite Subway Line:
Hmm. Can’t say I have one. They all let me down, in the end. I suppose the N/R is the best for my purposes. I was born and raised – like Jennifer Lopez – on the 6, but cannot say I’m especially fond of it.

Okay, that's as far as I got. The next batch of questions concentrate on bookstores, bars, live music venues, parks and more, so stay tuned for that, although they'll all be answered through the prism of current experience, so will probably have a more melancholy, world-weary tone. Naturally.

Hope you're all hanging in there. Be safe & healthy.

The Deserter & The Deserted

Rat calling Sinking Ship, Rat calling Sinking Ship, … Come in Sinking Ship!!!

I remember when the darkness closed in after the lights suddenly went off during Hurricane Sandy, my family and our best friends/next-door neighbors hunkered down together that first night and made an evening out of it. The next day, however, they quietly crept out of their apartment and decamped to a spot they have upstate. Circumstances, obligations and limited resources forbade us from following suit, so we stayed put and rode the rest of the week out in the dark. In retrospect, we were mildly inconvenienced, whereas lots of folks in places like the Rockaways lost everything. We had nothing to complain about, other than ennui, really. We’ve joked about it since then, how our neighbors “jumped ship,” but who could blame them? They had a warm, lit house to escape to.

Upon the further spreading of the Trump Virus, we did the same this week, taking advantage of my family’s kind offer to escape the heavy case concentration in New York City (check out the map below, courtesy of this story in the New York Times). I’ve been called out by a couple of select readers on it, but y’know what? If you had the option to get your kids out of a tiny apartment to an (arguably) safer space, you’d do it, too. If you have cognitive difficulty processing the logic of that decision, I cannot help you.

Take even a cursory glance at the media source of your choice, these days, and you’ll doubtlessly see images of normally bustling city streets across the world transformed into vast, empty spaces, largely bereft of another human being. This doesn’t mean everyone’s taking the hint (witness the stubborn influx of party-determined spring breakers in Florida), but the smart ones are refraining from large gatherings. For it to genuinely work, I’d imagine everyone has to abide, but we’ll see, I guess, if the curve is indeed flattened.

In any case, speaking of bustling city streets, my friend Gregoire Alessandrini, who maintains the excellent photographic site, New York City in the 1990s, recently posted a cool new entry. Gregoire lives in Paris, these days, but returned to NYC last summer. Regrettably, we were not able to meet up, but he took the time to revisit some of the places he’d first documented decades ago. See those pictures here.

In the interim, please stay safe and sane and look out for each other. There’ll be more here soon.

Back in Time to `89

As I was walking home from work on Monday night in something of a news-addled stupor, lulled into mental atrophy by pervasive waves of coronavirus hysteria, I spotted something both hugely familiar and entirely incongruous – a old flyer from a long-ago gig by Prong and Live Skull wheat-pasted to a painted plywood wall at the bottom end of Sixth Avenue between Canal and Grand Streets. What the fuck?

Shocked back into the moment by this comparatively ancient artifact, I essentially zoomed out to view it in context. Across the northern end of this plywood wall --- one used to fence in the outdoor shenanigans of Gitano Tulum, a sort of tropical-themed adult playground, complete with palm trees – was a wide array of gig flyers, movie posters and bills, all advertising concerts, events and movies from several decades back. It was like this tiny patch of real estate was stuck in a hole in the time/space continuum.

I took a few photographs (see below), figuring it was for a movie shoot or a television show. The new “High Fidelity” series, maybe?

This morning, as I was walking back by it in the other direction, I saw two people spraying the façade to make it look appropriately “weathered,” and I asked what the story was. Evidently, I was correct – it’s for a forthcoming show or film called “`89.” That’s about as much as I could glean.

I complemented them on their faithful job and kept walking.

Trivial facts: Circa the late 80’s, the building that this particular plot of real estate once hosted (since-razed) formerly played host to Triplets, an ill-fated steakhouse owned and operated by three identical twin brothers whose truly bizarre story was recently the subject of an amazing documentary entitled “Three Identical Strangers.” It also served as the location, earlier than that, for Lou Reed’s video for “My Big Red Joystick,” which I discussed here and here. Across the way was the Moondance Diner, which is now somewhere out west. In its footprint is the looming James hotel.

Here are some of the details. Click on them to enlarge. That's also not how you spell psychedelic. 

SoHo on Screen: Deux

Almost on cue, right after I shared the excellent documentary about the SoHo Memory Project here, I stumbled across the video below posted on the page of a Facebook group I follow. Titled “Walking in New York’s Most Expensive Neighbourhood [sic],” this lengthy clip is a wide-angled 4K video that showcases a rambling stroll around the SoHo of 2020, what the shooter – who goes by the YouTube handle “The 1%”…ugh --- calls “one of the most iconic shopping and fashion district of New York City.”

Astonishingly Trivial Bonus: If you’ve got a lot of time to kill and have a super-keen eye for detail, one of my stupid stickers that I spoke about here makes a fleeting cameo around 16:41 in. Can you spot it?

SoHo on Screen

My excellent blogging comrade Yukie Ohta of the SoHo Memory Project has become the subject of a new documentary.

Unfortunately, at the moment, it's not embeddable, so click thyselves over here to check it out.