Marc Jacobs, Dean Street and my old roommate, part 1

I moved out of my parents' place when I was 18—it had been inevitable given the amount of weed I smoked, their dislike of it, and the entire trajectory of my life at that point. My friend Ralph introduced me to DJ, a 14 year-old drug dealer who lived on Dean Street in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn. He had his own apartment with a single roommate, Jim. There was a tiny room—a glorified closet really—available and DJ rented it to me. Despite his tender age DJ had more of a five o'clock shadow than I did and he also had the low voice of a grown man. His stock in trade was very pure, liquid LSD that he sold in Visine bottles. He had a roaring business going. He cultivated his clientele by traveling around the country, following the Grateful Dead, and selling the acid at their shows. When he was in New York, he shipped his product all over the country by Fedex. I found his whole setup completely mind-boggling, particularly considering his age. The freezer in our apartment was stuffed with bags of sinsemilla buds and bottles of LSD disguised as Visine. It was in that apartment on Dean Street where I came to regard it as normal to drink Jack Daniels in the morning along with lungfuls of sweet, powerful, skunky bud. I was a bike messenger then, working for Streetwise Couriers in midtown. Legend had it that thugs staked out the stairs leading up to the walkway on the Brooklyn Bridge so I rode straight up Cadman Plaza onto the bridge with the cars. The roadway was a metal latticework that caused the bike to shimmy back and forth as though you were on ice. This took some getting used since cars were flying past at 50+ miles per hour with inches to spare and people often yelled and cursed as they flew past. The ascent was a little tough but once you hit the apex and began to descend you'd often keep pace or even pass the cars. It's hard to describe the sensation of flying through the air, high above the river, with Manhattan rushing at you as you scream down the Brooklyn Bridge on two wheels. It's nothing like the slow and polite promenade ride alongside the pedestrians on the walkway above the road.
In those days (pre fax and internet) the bike messenger companies were color-coded: Purple bags were Can Carriers which was the first company I rode for before I was told that Streewise (Orange) was much hipper to work for. They were, in fact, a way cooler outfit.
I discovered that by showing up early, bringing a freshly rolled joint and coffee for the dispatcher I was ensured choice and plentiful runs. Pickups at 430, 444, and 485 Madison all dropping off to the same location, for instance. Black bags were worn by Prometheus messengers, and yellow by Cycle Service who were on 6th Avenue somewhere near Spring Street. Red bags were carried by Mobile messengers. All (and I mean all) of the bags worn by messengers were made by an old Italian man, Frank de Martini, who operated out of a basement shop at 77 Mott Street in a space he shared with a Chinese sprout growing operation. He charged $40 for his bags and they were indestructible. He was also in the business of making canvas covers for boats. His bags were made of heavy-duty canvas (in the aforementioned colors) lined with bright yellow vinyl. There were two straps with buckles and a strip of Velcro under the flap. While they were compact and light, you could fit a truly incredible amount of stuff into these durable creations. Later, when I moved to San Francisco, I bought a dozen or so of the bags and tried to start a craze but didn't stick with it. A few short years later, every fucking body in every city nationwide has a messenger bag of one sort or another and Manhattan Portage and countless other companies crank them out. None of them come close, in durability or functionality to de Martini's creations. But I digress.
I was put in mind of those days when I read the profile of Marc Jacobs in the most recent issue of the New Yorker. To be continued...

Putz of the Day—an addendum

(see Putz of the Day posting)
My good friend Al, with whom I grew up on the UWS, pointed out that it is characteristically New York behavior to take offense at being offered unsolicited advice. This is absolutely true.
There was something quintessentially New York about the way this assbag marched off in a huff after I told him that his shit was at risk. Nonetheless, he was (and very likely is still) a putz for not having recognized that I, with the best of intentions, was attempting to save him from his own stupidity and it would not have killed him to say thank you when he admitted as much by locking up his front wheel after the fact.

Technorati here we come!

The shows ovah, nuthin' to see heah, keep it moving, keep it moving!

Technorati Profile

President Fucking McCain

It is utterly mind-boggling that after the staggering litany of Republican failures over the past 8 years (Iraq, Afghanistan, not capturing bin Laden, Katrina, politically-motivated govt appointments, countenancing torture, lowering taxes in wartime, economic meltdown) that there could be a fart's chance in high wind of another Republican president but that appears to be exactly where we're heading. Why? It seems that the "Democrat Party" (as the Republican pejorative goes), and, more specifically, our boy (no Southern-fried insult intended) Barry, has not one whit of killer instinct. To wit: McCain is so filthy fucking rich that he can't even count his goddamned houses and Obama fails, FAILS, to take him to task for it in any meaningful way. Talk about a soft pitch! He could have had a Fucking Field Day with that gaffe!! These are the same Republicans that constantly paint the "Democrat Party" as the "liberal elite" who are oh-so-out-of-touch with the common man—never mind that most of their policies are designed to FUCK the common man while paying obeisance to the God, guts, and guns rhetoric that continues to resonate with the embittered God and gun-clinging masses. The right has a seemingly bottomless well of vitriol and umbrage, despite having been on top for 8 miserable years. Their pitbulls and harridans (read: Limbaugh, Coulter and Hannity, whose fat, lie-spewing head I would dearly love using for a piñata) continue to spout falsehoods and outrage despite the fact that their despicable team has been in power for the longest fucking 8 years of my politics-observing life. They are amazingly adept at portraying the right as victims despite the right's true position as egregious offenders and victimizers both. This election is the Democrats to lose and from the looks of things they are well on their way to doing so. Unfuckingbelievable.

Putz of the Day (a new feature)

The world is awash with putzes (a Yiddish term for dick but somewhat softer and generally meant to denote a buffoon or twit as opposed to dick which is a mite harsher). I happened to encounter one this evening outside of the wonderful Mexican spot on Amsterdam near my apartment. I'm leaning against a parking meter waiting for my to-go order when up rides dude, I'd say 35-40, paunchy and in shorts with a short greasy pony tail. Not the most attractive specimen and, as I was shortly to discover, with a personality to match. He chains his bike up to the lamppost and I notice that he has quick-release levers on both his wheels. Any streetwise NYC cyclist knows that quick release levers are an open invitation to having your wheels (or seat) stolen. Most New York-proofed bikes even have a short section of bike chain looped around the seat and the bike frame to foil any slimeballs that want to help themselves to your seat. So. Chuckles proceeds to lock his bike to the lamppost through the frame leaving both wheels vulnerable to theft. When he'd finished I said, "are you going to leave it like that?". "Like what?" says Genius. "Those wheels are quick release, anyone can help themselves if they want", I reply. "Well, I wasn't thinking about it until you decided to stress me out about it". At this point I'm realizing that I probably would have done him more good by stealing his fucking wheels and driving the lesson home rather than attempting to school this schlub in the ways of holding onto your shit in NYC. The crime rate is down but, Christ, there are still drug dealers on my block and where there's drug dealers (or just about anywhere, come to think of it), there's people looking for shit that ain't nailed down. Anyhoo. "Well, anything that's not secured will be taken" I said.
"Yeah, I grew up here" he says, marching his pudgy ass into the restaurant. "Me too" I said, though it was hard to believe him given his open invitation to thieves. Less than 30 seconds later asswipe emerges, wordlessly removes the front wheel and re-threads the chain through the wheel and the frame. I watched silently, the muscles of my face palpitating violently as I struggled to maintain my composure and not crack wise. Shockingly, he did not thank me for saving him from his own stupidity, which he further underscored by leaving the rear wheel—more valuable because of the freewheel—unsecured. I thought about opening the rear quick release and pulling the wheel halfway out but I figured I'd let a genuine thief teach him an indelible lesson. You sir, are the Putz of the Day. Enjoy your brief reign before my inevitable next encounter with another Putz returns you to the faceless masses of slovenly cretins whose obliviousness and ingratitude cheapens all humanity.

Gene Simmons: Is there a bigger douchebag alive?

By pure happenstance I have been without a TV for roughly the past 2 years. By and large I find that life is rich and full without one. Once, walking along Haight Street in SF I saw a dead television propped in an open window at street level. On the screen in black electrician's tape were the words "Electronic Life Waster". That made a real impression. This past weekend, I was relaxing at LM's (who not only has a TV, but has cable) when I came across the eminently execrable and mildly entertaining Family Jewels program, featuring the above-referenced Douche of Douches. I have long loathed Kiss and its sub-par (and that's being generous) "rock". Everyone about them sucks: their songwriting, instrumental prowess, and lyrics are all shite of the first order. They have no groove whatsoever. I had the opportunity to validate this long-held opinion a few years back when I saw Kiss on a double bill with Aerosmith at the Forum in Inglewood. Aerosmith was everything that Kiss was not—tough swinging grooves and memorable songs performed with brio and panache. Kiss relied on fire-breathing, blood spitting and wires (for Simmons' demon to fly about) where their music was lacking (which is to say, in every conceivable respect). Kiss had all the rhythmic drive of toxic sludge, painfully oozing from a waste pipe and pooling, unwelcome, in my ear canal.
So there is Gene Simmons on the telly, seated at a restaurant with Bill Maher. When giving his order to the waitress he says, "I'll have the salad, and a lap dance". The waitress, who would have been within her rights to both slap him and report him to management for ejection, good-naturedly says something like, "I can't help you with that last one". This deeply shallow man, who, time and again trumpets his mantra that money is all that interests him, lacks the most basic instinct to treat women—not women that have signed up for leering or wholesale shtupping like his extensively inventoried groupies but a strange woman whom he encounters in public— with even a modicum of basic respect.
All the money in the world has not bought this prick talent, graciousness, or respect for those without his money and the standing and impunity that it buys him. What a fucknode.
And What the FUCK is that dessicated weasel that he has draped over his obviously bald pate?! You would think that all that money could buy him a more convincing hairpiece (or better stylist).
Van Gogh wasn't acknowledged as a great artist while he was alive. One can only hope that the same principle holds in reverse for Simmons and his trail of dross.

William Burroughs and (semi) lost New York City

Returning to New York City after years on the West Coast is akin to returning to a theater seat after a long intermission. The set has changed dramatically and many of the characters have changed or departed the scene altogether. The New York that I left featured hand scrawled signs in the windows of nearly every single parked car reading, Nothing of Value in Car!! As little as a roll of paper towels in view was enough to inspire a crackhead to smash your car window. These days I often see unmolested Mercedes SUVs with fancy child seats left inside in plain view. Back then (70s, 80s and some of the 90s too) iPods would have been unthinkable. A pricey little chochke that renders its wearers unable to hear the stealthy approach of someone creeping up on them? Never happen. If the iPod had come about in those days the number of concussed rubes wailing about being mugged would have been uncountable and unbearable. These days your concussion is more likely to result from being stumbled into by someone paying closer attention to their texting than to where they are going.
One of the marks of a great artist is an ability to make manifest the ineffable feelings that comprise our emotional landscape. I grew up on West 103rd Street on Manhattan's Upper West Side, a street that William Burroughs describes at some length in his classic Junky. I found that he had, with preternatural acuity, given voice to many of the sensations that I experienced time and again as I traversed the area around 103rd Street and Broadway as a boy and a young man:

"103rd and Broadway looks like any Broadway block.
A cafeteria, a movie, stores. In the middle of Broadway is an island with some grass and benches placed at intervals.
103rd is a subway stop, a crowded block. This is junk territory.
Junk haunts the cafeteria, roams up and down the block, sometimes half-crossing Broadway to rest on one of the island benches. A ghost in daylight on a crowded street."

A few paragraphs later:

"There are no more junkies at 103rd and Broadway waiting for the connection.
The connection has gone somewhere else. But the feel of junk is still there. It hits you at the corner, follows you along the block, then falls away like a discouraged panhandler as you walk on."

The cafeteria to which he refers was the Horn & Hardart on 104th and Broadway, just north of the Edison Theater (for a brief history go here: http://cinematreasures.org/theater/6193/) . The subway had a beautiful gothic entrance on the island in the middle of Broadway, since torn down (go to 72nd and Broadway to see a similar one). There was a burger joint called the Red Chimney on the southwest corner of 103rd that made fantastic char-grilled burgers. Just south of it was an old time candy shop run by an old man with an impenetrable old world (German?) accent. South of the candy shop was the Great Shanghai Chinese restaurant and the Daitch Shopwell supermarket. The Red Chimney was in a building (still) called the Marseilles, a glorious building that, at the time, was one of the worst SROs (single room occupancy) in the area; a building from which bodies, prematurely dead, emerged on stretchers with monotonous regularity. There are still a handful of SROs left (Hunters Moon on Broadway south of 99th is one but the neighborhood used to be lousy with them.
Today, there is a Starbucks on the southeast corner of 103rd and Broadway and a Subway on the southwest corner. The stretch of West 103rd Street between Broadway and Amsterdam was incredibly seedy when I was growing up. The north east corner building (now Columbia faculty housing) was a taxpayer with small shops at the street level and the Edison Theater fronting Broadway. There was a liquor store and Chinese laundry in the middle of the block on the north side. The liquor store had a sign saying "we don't serve alcoholics". As a child it was the first time I encountered the word. Junky was published in 1953 and my first memories of 103rd and Broadway are from roughly 10 years hence, but "the feel of junk" that he describes was most certainly still in evidence. Apparently it takes a lot to wash it away.
(beautiful day out, time for a bike ride...more later)

Highway 61 re revisited

There was really no excuse for me, a blues lover from waaay back, not having known that Highway 61 is the main highway running south from Memphis through the heart of the Mississippi Delta, but I didn't. Twin catalysts of longtime curiosity and a show by the Hives at a tiny bar in Oxford moved me to head south over Memorial Day of last year. That was when Dylan's album title and the mysterious geographic mother lode of the blues came together.
You can find a nice little photo essay of my trip here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/deedubnyc/sets/72157600306978872/

a bloodless Radiohead

Saw Radiohead in Camden the other night. Camden is a quaint little burg right across the river from Philly; quite scenic and worth a stop for a cappuccino on your next trip in that direction. I was struck by how mannered their stage show seemed. I've been following Thom and Co since "Creep" hit back in '94 and I've always loved the band and have all their albums. They essentially recreate their studio recordings live (which is hugely impressive and makes me think that those amazing records, with all of those great soundscapes and complex arrangements are probably performed live in the recording studio). In Rainbows is a masterpiece and the performances of "Nude" and especially "Videotape" (I can't listen to that song without bawling) were phenomenal. All of that notwithstanding, the show left me a bit cold. I can't help but wonder if it's not because I saw Iggy and the Stooges just recently and the gut-spilling anarchic raw power of that show was so blinding in comparison. The Stooges were really tight and well-rehearsed but as a performance there was something about it that was hugely compelling. Radiohead, with their gorgeous light show and impeccable recreations of their recorded material somehow seemed...a bit distant.

"the annals of weaseldom"—excoriation perfected

Between Gail Collins and Maureen Dowd (their acidic turns of phrase doubtless fueled by the subject matter of male infidelity), I doubt if anyone could have more perfectly nailed the execrable John Edwards to the cross better. In NYT of 8/9, Collins writes that his behavior represents "a new high in the annals of weaseldom" while in her 8/10 column, Dowd notes that his infidelity was "oncologically correct" coming as it did after his wife's cancer had gone into remission and before it had returned. Their two columns summed up all the ugliness of the events and homed in on their target with richly deserved opprobrium.

Don't blame it on New York, it's YOU!

Why do people behave like assholes and then use the fact that they are in New York city as a justification for their cretinous behavior? This pattern is widespread and I've experienced it several times. Case in point: I was at Big Nick's sidewalk café on Bway (the perfect summer hang) with my pal J and this douchebag is sitting at a table behind us braying into his cellphone at such high volume that, sitting close to each other at a small table, J and I were having trouble hearing each other. After he repeatedly ignored our polite gestures to lower his voice, I finally (after over 10 minutes of tolerating his inane palaver) leaned on his table with one elbow and, glaring with my nose about 3 inches from his, told him that he was insanely annoying and that it was impossible to hear my buddy who was about 2 feet away on account of his unattenuated prattle. He threw up his arms and said, "Aw c'mon man! It's New York!" Right, it's not YOU that's mindlessly shouting into your cellphone, oblivious, it's New York. I honestly came this close to grabbing this little prick's cellphone and hurling it into the street. That would've been great. "You want New York? Okay, how's this asshole?!" He (finally) got the hint and vacated. If you're gonna be an douche, just own it and leave New York out of it.

Iggy and The Stooges at Terminal 5—THIS FUCKER IS 60+!!

Went to Terminal 5 last night with LM to see The Man and had the joy of having my brain turned to jelly by the reconstituted Stooges (more than ably aided and abetted by the rockin' Mike Watt on thudstaff). To say that Iggy Pop is a force of nature is to give nature short shrift. The mad dervish is captivation incarnate and his voice sounds totally fantastic. The first Iggy show I witnessed was mid-80s in Oakland where he opened for the Pretenders who were riding high on a hit album at the time. The first thing Chrissie did upon taking the stage was to get down on all fours and kiss the floor saying, "I want to kiss the stage that Iggy Pop just performed on." She knows whereof she speaks. Ig's legend is amply justified; at 60 his intensity dwarfs that of front men less than 1/3 his age. Completely and utterly spellbinding. I can't imagine that this show was any less intense than a Stooges show during their first go-round. It was that good. From the top of the set and for the next 75 minutes he gave everything and then some. Watt stood right in front of his amp, legs splayed, pumping it out with relentless drive. My friend Vince Meghrouni has played drums on Watt's own tours and Watt holds Iggy in the highest rock regard so for him to be touring with Iggy, well...he's gotta be pinching himself every day. I noticed that when Iggy walked (which wasn't often) that he had a bit of a limp. LM said, "Yeah, if you had a swayback like that for 60 years you'd be limping too." She had expected to be underwhelmed. "Iggy Pop, really? I'm surprised you wanted to see this show." As we walked out onto 56th street with "I Wanna Be Your Dog" ringing in our ears (they did it twice for some reason) she was grinning from ear to ear and saying, over and over, what an amazing time she had had. Fuckin' Iggy, it doesn't get any better. The only band I've seen that comes close is the Hives—Howlin' Pelle will probably be just as great in 40 years.