Flaming Pablum

Back to Coney Island High

I’ve written long, lengthy, heartstring-plucking entries about both The Upper Crust (most recently here) and St Marks Place (find that here) before, so please avail yourselves to those weepy epistles if you are feeling so inclined. Suffice to say, both are gone, here in 2022.

Earlier this week, I found myself back on St. Marks Place for a reason I can no longer remember. Not unlike certain other byways such as, say, Ludlow Street on the Lower East Side, West 8th Street in Greenwich Village, 21st Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues and/or the westerly regions of Spring Street in SoHo, St Marks Place is a street I have very strong associations with. Like whole nations of other people, for me, this gateway to the East Village used to be a veritable bazaar of cool, bohemian insouciance. Of course, that sounds like a fanciful pastry full-o’-crap today, but it genuinely was this super-cool destination, peppered with so many concerns that exuded its overall punky aesthetic. It was the epicenter, for a long while, of pretty much everything I was looking for from a comparatively underground pop culture that wanted nothing to do what the jocks and the preps and the beautiful kids cared about way north of 14th Street, however ridiculously clichéd that may now sound.

Here in 2022, once again, that St. Marks Place is long, long gone. Between the demolition on its northwesterly corner (still slated to host a sun-blotting corporate tower of some variety) and the proliferation of shoddily assembled and poorly maintained dining sheds, St. Marks Place is in both literal and figurative disrepair. Obviously, this problem isn’t relegated solely to St. Marks (take a stroll south on Thompson Street, some morning, and you’ll encounter a similar situation that affronts the senses), but St. Marks now seems bereft of any of its former character and relative luster. With the possible exception of concerns like Search & Destroy and maybe Funkytown, there’s nothing left for the punks among you, here. All the record and disc shops like Sounds, Mondo Kims, Venus, Free Being and Rockit Scientist are all long, long gone. Ventures that once defined the strip like DoJo and the Grassroots Tavern are similarly missing in action. St. Marks Comics moved to Industry City in Brooklyn, and Trash & Vaudeville moved deeper into the East Village. So much of what made St. Marks Place cool … or even inviting, for me … is gone. It’s a graveyard.

While waiting to hear back from a mercurial vendor, this morning, I was killing time on YouTube and stumbled upon the video below of the Upper Crust in 1998, gracing the stage of Coney Island High, a storied-albeit-comparatively-short-lived live-music venue that used to be smack dab in the middle St. Marks between Third and Second Avenues. Formerly the site that hosted the GREENDOORNYC parties (as mentioned here), the site was acquired by local punk hero Jesse Malin (more about him here and here). I was actually at this show, but Coney Island High was a frequent stop of mine, at the time. Other bands I saw on that diminutive stage include The Damned, The Dickies, Barkmarket, The Dandy Warhols, The Prissteens, DGeneration, The Dictators and Firewater, to name a small few. It was an amazing space that was closed roughly a year after this was recorded by then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in his war on New York City nightlife … as if anyone needed another reason to hate that fuckin’ guy.

In any case, here’s a brief taste of what it was like…..enjoy.

"Watching My Name Go By"

Yep, it's another antiquated documentary about graffiti, this one a British production from 1976. I love the way the voice-over in the beginning pronounced SoHo. The theme music is also sort of strangely unsettling. 

Enjoy.

Exhuming "Mondo New York"

Prompted by an invocation of Tama Janowitz on the most recent episode of “Desperately Seeking the `80s,” I was back-n’-forthing with a friend about the once-celebrated scribe's endeavors beyond the written page, and cited cinematic opuses like the adaptation of her breakout novel, “Slaves of New York” (starring Bernadette Peters … which I briefly discussed without much charity here) and “Mondo New York,” only to check my facts and realize that Ms. Janowitz had fuck-all to do with the latter. Ah, the tendrils of senility are flowering, even now.

Certainly born of the same era and aesthetic as Ms. Janowitz, “Mondo New York” was actually the brain child of director Harvey Keith and writer David Silver. Released in 1988, it featured a series of vignettes starring era-appropriate downtown luminaries like Joey Arias, Joe Coleman, Karen Finley, Phoebe LeGere, Ann Magnuson, John Sex, Annie Sprinkle and Flaming Pablum-favorite, Lydia Lunch, all embroiled in a wide array of diverse scenarios. Sounds promising, right?

To be perfectly honest, I rented it a few years back (having not seen it upon its original release in the late `80s), and I have to say … perhaps it was eye-opening, at the time, but I frankly had a hard time sitting through it. In fact, I think I got irretrievably bored halfway through and abandoned ship. I have loads of time for anything Lydia Lunch is involved in, but she only really supplies a suitably smarmy prologue and then vanishes from proceedings .. unless, of course, she comes back towards the end, but I didn’t make it that far.

In discussing same, I went to try and find just Lydia’s aforementioned prologue, … but actually found the whole film on YouTube, so ….dear reader … take a look and decide for yourself.

Enjoy (if possible)… “Mondo New York” (or while it lasts on YouTube, at least). Because it is “age-restricted,” it is un-embeddable (boo), but find the whole film for your viewing pleasure here.

Bye Bye to the `Boogie

I was really saddened to learn — via NY1, no less — that my friend Elie from Bowery Boogie is discontinuing the long-running blog after 14 years. I first met Elie way back when we both members of the so-called “NYC blog mafia” alongside folks like EV Grieve, Jeremiah Moss, Hunter-Gatherer, Ephemeral New York and a few others. Elie and I both even took part in a NYU discussion panel back 2009, talking about our different approaches in covering our respective turfs.

Where my blog spiraled further into richly overwritten, myopic navel-gazing, Elie’s became a bona fide resource for neighborhood news, expanded its reach with other staffers and actually got in the habit of breaking stories before the “legitimate” media sources were even aware. I was and remain in awe of Elie’s resourcefulness and tenacity.

The internet (and the Lower East Side) will be much less interesting without his efforts. Here’s hoping he’s moving onto more interesting pastures.

Here’s Elie and me at Motor City (long, long gone) on Ludlow Street in 2011.

At War with The Fitness Freaks: The Battle for Bond Street

Regular readers — again, if they exist — might remember a short series of entries I posted here back in 2016 wherein I attempted to divine the exact location of a short lived basement-level live-music venue called Downtown circa 1989. I remembered it as a place on Bond Street in NoHo that my beloved Killing Joke had been slated to play (going so far as having their name cited on a notice board outside its entrance). The venture actually closed before that show could take place. Other folks remembered it as place they’d seen local bands like White Zombie, the Lunachicks and the Cycle Sluts from Hell along with bigger names like Celtic Frost, Clan of Xymox, Cronos from Venom and Gang Green.

Honestly, I don’t think I ever found out much more about the place beyond pinpointing its location as the spot I’d remembered from that aborted Killing Joke gig. It was mere steps to the east of Broadway at Bond Street. here I am in front of it circa 2016.

It seems in the years since its tenure as Downtown — however fleeting that was — the space at 1 Bond Street has undergone a series of transformations, its days hosting loud rock n’ roll now but a romantic, sepia-toned notion for silver-scalped rock dads like myself. These days, it caters to a very different demographic.

As lamented here, in recent years, pretty much the entirety of the surrounding so-called “NoHo” neighborhood has become a de-facto “fitness corridor,” peppered with places like boxing-gym Rumble, David Barton, Soul Cycle, Equinox, Barry’s Boot Camp and a wide host of other workout-centric endeavors. I don’t necessarily decry the concept of physical fitness, I just don’t quite understand the necessity of such a high-volume concentration of said businesses in one single neighborhood.

True to this trend, the space at 1 Bond Street that had, once upon a time, been the rock club Downtown is now an adjunct space of a venture called Crossfit Union Square (who are technically located at the ominous location of 666 Broadway). From that lower-staircase, the clientele of same now regularly meet by the corner of Bond and Broadway, … and wait for their signal.

And when they get that signal — maybe it’s a starter’s pistol or a pertly chirped whistle or a gruff bark from a drill sergeant with a meaty neck — they run. And they run with a gravely humorless sense of determination around the circumference of the block.

The sprint sweatily and shirtlessly with rippling musculature towards Lafayette Street, at which point they turn like harried stags in flight of a hunter’s shotgun to the south and bound with breathy bravado down that stately avenue to the corner of Bleecker Street, where they turn west to lope like charging stallions back towards Broadway. Upon reaching that main artery, they course-correct like hoary steeds of glory to race north with steely focus. At Bond Street, they turn with great, dewy aplomb and complete their lap, glowing with an almost viscous radiance.

All to which I say, … “HEY, WE HAVE PARKS FOR THAT!”

I’m not sure if my handful of readers are at all familiar with the streets in question, but suffice it to say that the byways of Bond, Lafayette, Bleecker and Broadway can be handily described as “busy." Around that single block, highly trafficked businesses like Blick Art Materials, Bond No. 9, Showfields Department Store, Los Tacos No. 1, LeVain Bakery, Aape New York, Le Pain Quoditen, Wendy’s and a City MD (to name a few) all steadily operate. As such, the surrounding sidewalks are regularly teeming with foot traffic. In front of Los Tacos and LeVain alone, aspiring patrons literally line-up in anticipation of their turns. Navigating these stretches of crowded pavement even at a casual stroll can be demanding, lest you collide with an impatient muffin-consumer or taco enthusiast. Now, inject into this equation regular herds of fast-moving, self-absorbed, endorphin-addled fitness freaks and you have a roiling, organic obstacle course ready to detonate at any second.

Once again, I’m not saying anyone should necessarily refrain from working out or seeking to actualize their idealized visions of their healthiest, sexiest selves, but there’s a time and place for that shit, and the already pointedly crowded byways of lower Manhattan assuredly ain’t it.

Take it to the parks, people.

Where Strode the Warriors?

Over on Facebook, my friend and fellow NYHC acolyte Lou posted a shot from a deleted scene from "The Warriors." Lou writes

A scene that never made it into the movie or as a deleted scene. The Warriors walking through The Savage Huns territory. It was filmed in an alley in Soho.

Here's that photo now....

Now, I like to think I'm fairly familiar with the topography of lower Manhattan, at this point, but I can't think of an alley in SoHo that matches this terrain. It's certainly not Cortlandt Alley off of Canal. 

I postulated that this might be St. John's Lane, an alley that extends between Laight Street and Beach Street at the mouth of Tribeca, just steps to the west of Sixth Avenue. There's been a lot of development since 1979, but here's that strip now...

\

What do we think? Weigh-in, Boppers. 

 

"BEST ARTIST" Rene Never Walked Away

I put up a fleeting post about Rene, the “I AM THE BEST ARTIST” muralist (among other things), some time ago after finding a short interview with him wherein he expounded on his hyperbolically self-aggrandizing declarations that were formerly visible on several facades around SoHo like the one above on West Broadway at Grand Street as captured by photographer Leo London. You can see that here.

Beyond those works, though, it should be noted that Rene also acquired a bit of infamy for some of his more provocative artwork, specifically a series of sculptures that featured detailed depictions of female genitalia in the center of a crucifix. Vintage cable-access porn afficianodos may remember a clip on late-night Channel J’s programming of “Midnight Blue” wherein a cigar-chomping Al Goldstein -– dressed up as Jesus, of course -– gets thrown out of St. Patrick’s Cathedral with one Rene’s aforementioned sculptures on his back. I promise you I’m not making that up.

For whatever reason, I somehow assumed that Rene had shuffled off this mortal coil. I’m happy to report, however, that I was mistaken in my assumption, and that “THE BEST ARTIST” is alive, well and still with us. If you’ve got a half-hour to spare, please avail yourselves to this video wherein the man himself showcases his work around SoHo back in the day, and expounds on the meanings behind the messages.

Revisiting "Style Wars"

As long as we're feeling nostalgic....

No Way Back to The Bowery

To this day, toss the word “Bowery” into a conversation with your fellow New Yorkers, and certain indelible associations will invariably spring right up. Some folks will immediately cite “bums” and derelict flophouses. Others might take a higher road and mention myriad retail light-fixture and kitchenware outlets. For myself and several like me, the first and foremost touchstone is, of course, Punk Rock, what with the Bowery formerly playing host to late, lamented CBGB, the veritable epicenter of everything that genre/subculture/movement exemplified (sorry, England). When I hear “Bowery,” that remains the first thing that comes to mind, and probably always will.

There are entirely too many seminal images to pair with this particular association, from early snaps by Roberta Bayley and David Godlis of characters like Richard Hell and the Ramones to iconic photographs of the legions of kids from the hardcore matinee days, many of those taken by photogs like Brooke Smith and Drew Carolan. For me, one of my favorites has always been the shot above by Godlis from 1978. Captured one atmospheric night long after hours, this “No Wave” all-stars team photo features iconoclastic scene-makers and band members like James Chance, Jim Sclavunos, Anya Philips, filmmaker Diego Cortez and others leaning louchely against a car outside of CBGB, whilst the incomparable enfant terrible of that scene, one Miss Lydia Lunch, is perched on the vehicle’s roof. Behind them, the forbidding expanses of Bleecker Street, Bond Street and The Bowery play host to roaming cars with impossibly bright headlights that split the night. The whole photograph just exudes such an aura of impossibly sneery cool -– insouciant punks laying claim to a desolate backwater to make their own brand of noise.

Well, that fanciful depiction was further decimated for me today upon reading, via my comrade EV Grieve, that a brand-spankin’ new J.Crew is opening up a 316 Bowery.

Back to 113 Jane

I’ve written about 113 Jane Street in the West Village here a few times, usually in relation to its former incarnation as the site of so-called Rock Hotel, which hosted a series of notable hardcore punk shows in the early-to-mid `80s, featuring bands like Samhain, Bad Brains, Kraut, the Cro-Mags, Murphy’s Law, Discharge, The Exploited and many more. But while that might be incredibly significant for rockheads like myself, it should be noted that the building has a far richer history beyond once playing host to a bunch of unruly cretins with mohawks.

Originally built in the early 1900’s, 113 Jane Street was initially designed as a residence for sailors, which makes sense, given its placement on the Hudson River. It gained greater notoriety, however, as the hotel that hosted the survivors of the Titanic who soggily arrived at the pier just across what is now the West Side Highway.

By the 1940’s, the hotel basically became a string of hospitality ventures, gradually devolving into essentially a flophouse for drunks, drug addicts and drifters. At some point in the 70’s, the downstairs ballroom was turned into a theatre space. Some years after that, a promoter named Chris Williamson started putting on punk rock shows there, morphing the space into the Rock Hotel, although by 1985, Williamson moved the Rock Hotel series over to the roomier Ritz.

Around the time the Rock Hotel was vacating the premises, a certain aspiring drag superstar was moving in, that being RuPaul. A friend and kindred spirit of maverick videographer Nelson Sullivan (whom I’ve also mentioned several times here), RuPaul gave the budding proto-vlogger a tour of his space in the top tower of the still fairly rough-&-tumble Jane Hotel. See that below…

Circa 1992, the downstairs space turned into a venue called Sweet Jane, a rather lamely obvious nod to the Velvet Underground tune of the same name. Under this guise, it hosted at least a handful of live shows, notably the New York City debut of once-promising Atlanta hip-hop collective, Arrested Development and a typically cacophonous and volatile show by the notorious Missing Foundation. Here’s a noisy little taste of the latter.

This might be purely conjecture, but given Missing Foundation’s formerly pronounced penchant for riot-incitement and wanton property damage, they very well might have been the reason Sweet Jane stopped operating. By 1998, six years later, the downstairs theatre space became the off-Broadway home of “Hedwig & the Angry Inch.”

By the dawn of the 2000’s, however, things took another turn. The hotel was refurbished in 2008 with an eye towards luxurious douchebaggery. The downstairs space was re-imagined once again and turned into “The Jane,” a club that swiftly attracted a new variant of high-volume revelers who eschewed combat boots and drag finery for Manolo Blahnicks and monogrammed billfolds. As The Jane, the venue invited a lot of scorn from affluent, post-gentrification residents who now occupied the newly-tony neighborhood. The club was later taken to task for allegedly allowing in under-age drinkers (gosh, where have I heard that before?) and not having an “assembly permit.”

To be honest, here in 2022, I wasn’t quite sure what was transpiring in that space today, but when I fielded an invite from my sister, this weekend, to come attend a celebratory get-together in honor of my nephew’s engagement to his girlfriend of three or four years, I leapt at the offer. To be clear, I would have happily gone regardless to help ring-in this very happy development, but the fact this it was transpiring in a space that sparked my curiosity made it a no-brainer. 

Imagining that the event was going to be held in the downstairs space that once played host to afore-cited names like The Exploited, Missing Foundation, Arrested Development and “Hedwig,” imagine my bemusement when were informed upon arrival that the soiree was happening “upstairs.” The wife and I boarded the elevator and ended up walking into the very same sixth-floor space that had been RuPaul’s pad as detailed in that video above.

Oh how times have changed. See pics below.