At first I wasn’t going to go to the Occupy Wall Street protests against the banks and greedy corporations that continue to bulldoze the middle class right off the face of the earth. I heard about cops pepper-spraying people, handcuffing them till their hands turned blue and abusing their power to silence people protesting peacefully. I’ve been beaten up by a cop twice in my life and I’m not anxious for the third beating. And I have to admit, the cynic in me said, “What’s it all worth? Can it make a difference?” Well, it’s been going on for two weeks now and I’m curious as to what the scene is like down at Liberty Park. “Boris” asked if we were going to go, and that’s where we’re off to right now. I really wish I had a gas mask though!
Shit, I just walked outside of work and it's pouring down rain. It'll be hard to take pictures down there tonight, so I've decided to go next week. Tonight, I'll improvise and take photos of walking home in the rain and pair them up with lyrics and links to songs about rain. Kind of an artsy-fartsy post tonight. Okay, here we go.
I’m taking tonight off from work, because tomorrow I’m flying back to Peoria to see my family and go to a wedding. I have a car service coming at 6:30 AM, which means I have to get up at 5:30 AM which means I have to start drinking right now to pass out get to bed early. So I thought I’d just take a few random shots around the apartment and then start boozing it up heavily getting ready to go to sleep.
Here's Gumby in his chair. He's going to stay back here in NY and watch my apartment. I hope he doesn't have any wild parties while I'm away.
Gumby in a cup...
Gumby in two cups and Pokey!
Presenting the entire Gumby family! They're bendable and poseable. And they are bad-ass motherfuckers!
And here's Gumby looking down at the two flashlights that Britta and Tom brought me when they were here a little bit ago. I forgot to thank them in that post, so I'm doing it now. Thanks, Britta and Tom! I'll be thinking of you during the next power outtage!
Here's a vintage cover of Creem magazine with Joan Jett on it. I think I've posted it before, but it's worth a second viewing. It's Joan Jett after all!
And while we're looking at cool bands in my apartment, here's the brand new CD by The Handcuffs, "Waiting For The Robot." It's their best collection of tunes yet and you have to own it, that's all there is to it! It's available at iTunes and CD Baby. Check it out or I'll come to your house and drink all of your beer and have sex with some of your food.
I couldn't get a good shot of the cover, so I scanned it in. Very cool! Nice legs...and your's aren't too shabby either, Chloe! Har dee har har! Goodnight everybody and see you tomorrow after dark.
What a fucking week this has been. At least I didn’t have to stay as late as I thought I would, but it was just ten hours of pure stress. And it was that way pretty much all week. Crazy deadlines, crazy work, crazy peole, crazy glue...Crazy Eddie where are you? Yes, I’m losing it. So I thought tonight I’d just wander around and have a few drinks on the way home and take pictures. Ready? Set! Wander...
And off we go. It's getting chilly out here, time to get the jacket out of the closet.
I wonder if that pizza place sells beer. I've walked by it probably thousands of times and have never gone in. Let's go check it out.
Biff alert! They have Miller Lite in here, let's go get the first beer of the evening.
Here's the pizza, now where's the beer?
Here we go, they've got a nice selection of bottled beers here.
I chose a bottle of Peroni and this friendly fellow not only sold it to me, but posed for a picture. Cheers!
I'm sitting at a table and relaxing while watching people buy pizza slices.
Hey here's the Green Tomato, one of my less frequented Fortress of Solitude stops.
Tonight they're speaking my language, let's go on in.
And here we are at my usual streetside table. Gumby's hiding as he's still a little paranoid after that "prank" he pulled.
It's really nice sitting here, drinking beer and watching the world go by. A great people watching spot for sure.
Obligatory window reflection shot!
Here's a guy practicing his ATM moves.
And yet another getting cash for ATM. Are these people porn stars or what?
Okay, I"m really tired, time to get one for the road here.
And here it is, bagged and strawed and ready to go.
Ha, I like this graffiti on the phone booth of a stickman flipping the bird.
And check out the Snapple bottle, that doesn't look like Kiwi Strawberry to me!
And I've got a feeling this isn't lemonade in the Subway cup. Yeeesh!
And here we are, the last stop of the evening, my corner deli, The Blue Valley.
Sip Ahoy! ("Sip Ahoy is a patented Uncle Waltie catch phrase, please get permission before you use it.) Goodnight everybody and see you tomorrow after dark.
Jeremiah Moss put up a great post and challenge over at his blog, Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York. I’ve written about St. Mark’s Bookshop a few times here on this blog and have encouraged people to buy a book there and help keep this East Village independent landmark bookshop in business. All the information is over at Jeremiah’s blog, just click here: Buy A Book Weekend! And then go buy a book, as Jeremiah notes, you can buy one online, so even if you don’t live in New York, you can help out and get a great book by doing so. There’s no downside, so do it now!
I’ve been burned out this week and haven’t gone out in a couple nights, so I thought I’d go out and have a MAD adventure tonight. The only problem was I couldn’t think of a destination to go to, so I turned to my old friend Google. I decided I’d type in “New York place” and go to the first place that came up and here’s the result: So it’s off to the New York Palace, they’ve got a bar, maybe we’ll get a swizzle stick out of this trip!
Okay, out into the night. We'll take the subway to midtown.
Fuck, being a complete idiot and out of habit, I hopped onto a downtown train and here we are at 23rd Street. I briefly thought about crossing the street and getting back onto an uptown train, but you know what? Fuck it, I'm so burned out from this week, let's just see what we can find to do on 23rd Street. Time to improvise.
Alright, let's see what's shaking on 23rd Street on a Friday night in New York City.
Dunkin' fucking Donuts, definitely not going in there.
Here's a man passed out in a taco shop. That's how I felt all week!
I just thought of a place to go to, it's right down the street.
The Chelsea Hotel sign is still unlit and closed. I wonder what the new owners are going to do to it. Time will tell.
And here we are, I thought we'd have a drink at the bar in the El Quijote restaurant. This is a classic place and it's been on the block for 80 years.
Let's go inside, I'm dying for a drink.
I love this place and the food is great here, but tonight it's packed with a bunch of loudmouth after-work yuppies. Ah, fuck it, there's one seat at the end of the bar, I'm going to snag it.
A long shot of the back of the bar.
What a great old cash register.
I accidentally took this flash shot and the bartender ran down and told me I can't take any photos in here.
So it's back into the night I go.
The good news is, The Chelsea Papaya is a block away...
The bad news is they don't serve beer in here.
And it all happened on 23rd Street, on a random Friday on September 9th. Goodnight everybody and see you tomorrow after dark.
Okay, I’ve been a little behind on my blogging here, but there’s been good reason. Work has been absolutely nuts, I had to work late Tuesday and then double back and be in by ten in the morning Wednesday and the whole thing started snowballing Monday night. Monday night was Labor Day and I had the night off from work. For that night’s post, I was going to walk to 14th Street and see if I could get six people to pose for a photo and do my “Six Pack” feature. But as I was getting ready to go, what sounded like a bomb went off and it shook the building I live in. It scared the living shit out of me and about three minutes later I heard another blast go off. Then within a couple of minutes I heard sirens wailing outside. I didn’t really want to go out, I was scared of what was waiting, but I walked down the stairs and looked out my front door. When I looked outside I felt sick. Firetrucks lined the streets, there was smoke in the air and throngs of people were spilling out on to the sidewalk. I could see flames a few feet away in the street. All I could think was that this was September 11th part two. I asked a couple people what was going on and no one knew. Instinctively I grabbed my camera and started taking pictures. I remember thinking, “If a smart bomb went off on my block, this will be one hell of a blog. I hope I live to see all the comments!”
And so, the rest of the evening is documented in the pictures below. To quote Alice Cooper, “Welcome to my nightmare!”
This was the view from my stoop. A little unsettling to look out and see this unfolding right in front of my building.
By now a lot of people are out here and no one is sure of what's going on. I can see a fire a little ways down and every now and again you hear a blast go off.
I just heard someone say a transformer blew up and it was under a car, hence the loud explosion noises.
It's smoky out here and a little nerve-rattling. A little too close to September 11th for this to be going on.
Water from this hydrant is spilling out into the street.
I went up to the firemen and asked if it was safe to be here. The one on the left said it was, but added, "If I were you, I'd get away from this for awhile." I thought that was a good suggestion.
And so off I went from my smoky block...
Out into the night.
And I ended up in front of one of the bars I hit last year on my bar crawl, Bunga's Den.
And there's a familiar face behind the bar, friendly bartender, Mark. Mark was a semi-regular on the bar crawl last year, not only was he on the Bunga's Den post, he was also featured here and here. Mark works every Monday in here, if you're in the neighborhood, stop by and have a drink and say hi.
The bar hasn't changed much from last year.
There's the lit up bottles behind the bar.
Alana was seated next to me and is a flight attendant who lives in New Mexico and is in town seeing friends. We had a nice chat with topics ranging from porn stars on planes, to Joey Buttafuoco to Mexican food.
After a few beers I walked back to my block to see what was happening.
Oh shit, it looks like it's been roped off.
A cop just told me I can't come back on the block, even though I live there. He said it would be opened up again in about an hour, Con Ed is working on the scene.
The cops are turning a blind eye on people drinking beer on the sidewalk until they can go home. I thought about joining them, but didn't really feel like standing and it still stunk of smoke there.
So it's back to the bar I go...
And Mark has a cold beer waiting for me. What a guy!
Okay, now it's closing in on midnight and the block is open. There's trucks and crews working and I see lights, so maybe we didn't lose any power. That would be great!
Fuck, the building is black. No power. I went in and it's hot and smells like smoke.
Oh well, at least I'm not the schmuck who parked over the transformer that blew up. I think this baby's totaled.
And of course people are taking pictures of it. It was probably all over facebook minutes later.
Three words came to mind while standing in my dark, unpowered hot apartment. Washington Square Hotel! It's Biff's hotel of choice when she comes to town, so I know it's nice...where the fuck has Biff been lately anyway? Biff? Biff...Bueller...Bueller...Bueller...
I'm really tired by now and just want to crash.
And here we are, room 907. The end of the night is finally near.
Fuck, I had plans to do something tonight and for once it was slow at work, so I thought I’d leave a little early for once. But then a funny thing happened about a half an hour before I was ready to leave. Work started flying in. One job, two jobs, three jobs and then a pain in the ass job that’s due to be installed first thing in the morning. Now it’s after midnight, I’ve got a ringing, stinging headache and just feel like going home, which is exactly what I’m going to do. I think I’ll fish around for an old story to put up. In fact I know which one I’m going to use. It’s called “Blowing Up The Gin Room” and was first published in NY Press and later in my book, “The Boy Who Would Be A Fire Truck.”
Okay, almost home. What a fucking night.
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Blowing Up the Gin Room In the summer of 1977, I was nineteen years old. I moved out of my parents’ house and into a dump of a three-bedroom house in a somewhat dicey neighborhood in Peoria, Illinois. My two roommates were Chris and Moon, and the main thing we had in common was a powerful thirst for all things alcoholic. Our drinks of choice were Blatz beer and shots of cheap gin.
To fortify ourselves in the midst of so much alcohol consumption, we bought more than a thousand hits of speed and kept them in a large candy dish on a crumbling secondhand wooden coffee table in the front room. Whenever we felt weary from the constant drink-a-thon we called life, we’d pop a couple hits of speed and–boom–back to the liquor store.
Our dilapidated house had a basement that was divided into two rooms. One had a door, but it also had a window on the outer wall. Since the basement was musty and came furnished with a variety of insects and rodentia, we didn’t spend a lot of time down there. We did, however, turn the sealed room into something we called the Gin Room. We dubbed it that because we would take our empty gin bottles and smash them on the cracked cement floor.
After a couple of months, the broken glass was nearing ankle height. It was really quite something to see. Smashing the bottles was a great release when you were about to jump out of your skin from too much amphetamines and alcohol.
Being constantly drunk and raging on speed leads to some weird behavior.Once, Chris and I turned everything in the house upside down and watched the sunrise while debating whether or not it would be a good idea to hang meat from the ceiling. Chris thought roasts would be the best choice, but I thought a variety of pork chops, steaks and hot dogs would be little more eye-catching and fun.
The greatest day in the house happened sometime in August when Moon came home clutching a large shopping bag.
"You’re not going to believe what I’ve got in here," he announced to me and Chris, a curious grin creeping across his face.
"Girl Scouts?" I wondered aloud.
"Fuck you,” he shot back. “I've got enough fireworks here to blow up a tank."
Then he overturned the bag, and the goods spilled out onto the floor.
A friend owed Moon a hundred bucks, and when Moon threatened to break the headlights on his car if he didn’t pay up, the guy offered him the fireworks and the deal was done. There on the floor were M-80s, firecrackers, Roman candles, cherry bombs and things with fuses on them I didn’t recognize. We huddled around the explosive pile, and it became painfully obvious what was to be done.
“Let’s blow up the Gin Room,” I said in quite a noble fashion. Of course Chris and Moon were in total agreement, and we moved the artillery downstairs and set it up on a pile of newspapers that would act as a mass fuse. But first, celebratory drinks upstairs. And a handful of speed all around.
When the beaners had kicked in, we moved back down to the basement and argued over who would light the newspaper. (Moon won, as they were his fireworks, so it was only fair.) The fire set, we quickly exited and watched the action from the outer window. Soon, an orgasm of colorful explosions, smoke, fire and ear-shattering bangs and booms belched out of the room. After a minute, the glass on the window cracked and fell out. After four minutes, it was over. Four minutes. Of pure joy. Pure joy unfettered by the everyday worries magnified ten times by the booze and speed. Worries about money, a busted-up car, a dead-end job at a downtown discount store, running out of cigarettes, the question of what I was going to do with the rest of my life, and the greatest worry of all: would we make it to the liquor store before closing time. Nothing mattered for those four minutes but the colorful explosion in the gin room. It was quite a liberating experience. It was a wonderful life-lesson that had no meaning. I think that’s why it’s meant so much to me as the years have moved on.
It took two minutes to put the fire out on the left wall. The whole room was covered in black soot. In fact, the whole house had a smoky gunpowder scent that we would never be able to totally eliminate. A month later, we were thrown out. We didn’t recover our security deposit needless to say,.
Moon went on to become a financial director for a loan company. Chris went back to college and became a lawyer. I moved to New York and went to work at a shitty night job while trying to peddle my writing.
The talk of the town right now is Hurricane Irene. She’s supposed to hit this Sunday and I was talking to my Dad today and he asked if I had a flashlight. And I don’t. I’m really beat tonight, yes, another shitty night at work. But at least it wasn’t as stressful as the beginning of the week, but I’m really feeling burned out, so I thought I’d just take photos of my walk home tonight and one stop will be at an all night drug store to get a flashlight. It’s supposed to be raining outside, so let’s go out and see a rainy New York night.
Shit, it's dry as the Betty Ford Clinic out here. I was kind of hoping for a rainy night to get some rainy-night pictures. Oh well, off we go.
The Empire State Building is all a-glow tonight.
Iced and proud, say it loud!
Here's the 24 hour Duane Reade, let's see if they have flashlights for the upcoming Hurricane Irene.
Okay, here we are. Hey look...candy!
Dots. As a kid this was the candy I always bought at the movies.
Eccchh! Always hated the Raisinets. Gross. Raisins aren't candy. It's like covering brocolli with chocolate and passing it off as candy. It's just wrong and it should be stopped.
I never liked Goobers either. If you spell the name sideways you get Boogers. Chocolate covered boogers. Goober says hey.
I just asked a clerk about flashlights and was told they don't sell them here. Am I weird in thinking that drug stores should stock flashlights? Oh well, there's one more 24 hour drug store on the block, let's go check them out.
2 Bros. Pizza. I've ragged on about this place, but I do confess to having eaten at one of these places, but always on a walk home after a night of several beers at a bar or two. Let's check it out sober.
There's always a line and late at night the drunk to sober ratio is about 4 to 1.
The slice is happily served up by this affable fellow.
Here it is in all its greasy glory.
It literally defines, "You get what you pay for." The worst pizza in the world. It tastes like tomato phlegm on soggy cardboard. But it's only a dollar a slice!
The view from my sidewalk table at Two Bros. Pizza.
Okay, here we are at CVS. Let's see if they have a flashlight. I want to get home, my stomach feels a little queasy from that slice.
Plenty of light bulbs, but no flash lights. Oh well, I guess I'll go to a hardware store tomorrow before work. Hey, what's that over there...
I had to go into work early today at 10 AM and now it’s over twelve hours later and I just got home from a horrible, stress-filled day/night at work. Usually tonight’s swizzle stick night, but I’m fucking beat so I just came home. I’m too burned out to even write a short story so I looked around my apartment for something to write about and saw the books I bought from St. Mark’s Bookshop last night and a light bulb went off over my head. Then the acid flashback went away and I had an idea. I’ll type a random paragraph from each book under a photo of the book and that’ll be tonight’s entry. I may do this every once in a while with some other books in my apartment, so here goes, what I’ve decided to call: "MAD Looks At Books!”
Just Kids by Patti Smith The Chelsea was like a doll’s house in the Twilight Zone with a hundred rooms, each a small universe. I wandered the halls seeking its spirits, dead or alive. My adventures were mildly mischievous, tapping open a door slightly ajar and getting a glimpse of Virgil Thomson’s grand piano, or loitering before the nameplate of Arthur C. Clarke, hoping he might suddenly emerge. Occasionally I would bump into Gerr Schilff, the German scholar, armed with volumes on Picasso, or Viva in Eau Sauvage. Everyone had something to offer and nobody appeared to have much money. Even the successful seemed to have just enough to live like extravagant bums. Public Illumination Magazine—Staff: Miss Davenport, Mr. Cologne Singer-actress Cher was admitted to St. Monica’s Hospital in Los Angeles on Tuesday, complaining of flu-like symptom's and fatigue. On Thursday the hospital’s chief of pulmonary research, Dr. Paul Belsen, announced the the entertainer had been diagnosed with mononucleosis.
I Slept With Joey Ramone by Mickey Leigh with Legs McNeil The crowd gave it a minute, which was about one whole song. They thought there was a technical problem or something. But when the Ramones began their second song, and it was justl like the first one, the kids in the audience realized that was indeed the show—and then they turned. The look on their faces is a priceless memory for me today, but that night it was pretty scary. Damn, it was only some guys playing music, but the crowd acted like they were stoning a bunch of murderous child molesters. Lucha Libre Masked Superstars of Mexican Wrestling—Photographs by Lourdes Grobet The public still remembered when the Mexican wrestler shouted to her rival, who laid flat on the mat: “Get up you miserable piece of imported trash!” Never before had a Mexican female wrestler snagged the world crown and few expected Molina to change that. Expectations were high that Willimas would triumph. 100 Whores by Mykola Dementiuk When you went out with a whore you never knew what you were going to get—a fucking, a blow-job, or just a stinking hand-job. I’d even gone out with a few whores who just lay there while I felt them up. Maybe it was my nature that they read right off the bat, knowing I was just a plain old wuss and they could get away with anything.
A while back MAD commenter and blogger, Britta commented about her beer fridge and I was curious about it and she sent me these photos of it. Are you like me and are you thinking the following thoughts right now: Party at Britta's! Oh and it was her birthday a couple days ago, so happy birthday to you, Britta! Thanks for the photos!