“Cool” and Now

There was a Saturday in February when I tried to remember everything I thought was cool 10 years ago. I walked the East Village, weaving my way in and out of stores bearing everything from boldly colored scarves to Thai hand salve to photography books I’ll never be able to afford. I gripped my leather jacket tighter around me because, after nearly 11 years in this town I still haven’t learned how to attire myself properly on cold days. My thoughts quickly turned to avoiding the patches of ice I’ve slipped on in the past only to fall in the exact same place every time, leaving myself with scars directly under my kneecaps. I remember some of them now, though. I remember flavored vodka sodas at Beauty Bar (agh), lengua tacos from the truck on 14th and 8th at 3am, the house band at the Village Underground. Ladyfag’s Vandam party on Sundays at Greenhouse in Soho. A now defunct Australian restaurant on the Upper West Side called The Sunburnt Calf where we’d sit in giant parties of 6, 8, 10 or more for birthdays or out-of-town-visits or maybe just a Saturday night. Pay-what-you-wish nights at the International Center of Photography. Free lectures at NYU. CHERYL parties somewhere in what were then the wilds of Brooklyn.

Few of these things still exist and my own realms of possibility have also expanded beyond them, but I remember the feeling of chasing cool across New York City. It was a feeling I duplicated recently as I searched for Kim Hastreiter’s The New Now in different locations throughout the East Village. Hastreiter, who in 1984 co-founded Paper, iconic magazine of a very specific New York kind of cool, had undertaken a new project in the pandemic, a DIY newsletter offered for free at specific businesses throughout three three of the five boroughs (Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx). I saw this newsletter popping up all across my Instagram feed, populating the grids of the capital-C chic and cool of New York and I had to have it. It would be not just a historic artifact of New York publishing, but it would be like being in on a small(ish) secret, insiderdom. Something that, as much as I love the life I’ve lived and carved out for myself in New York, is not something I’d ever say I had.

I think often of a Lou Reed quote I once saw at The Andy Warhol Museum when I was living in Pittsburgh: “If you weren’t a journalist, you’d never be invited to anything cool.” For a long time, I fully believed this was true. In many ways, I still do. I have forever thought of myself as a raging nerd, though my obsessions with and passions for cultural arbiters outside “the mainstream” have occasionally earned me opposite designations from others. Over a decade has gone by and I’m still chasing “cool,” a sentiment which I fully realize is anything but. I continually checked Hastreiter’s list of stockists on her Instagram, seeing which stores were nearby and open and supposed to have The New Now. Hastreiter refers to these as “likeminded businesses,” so the list also became a guide of sorts to the life Hastreiter leads, she who in the last 35+ years has become an arbiter of a very New York sensibility.

I perused Dashwood Books, at which I arrived by descending a staircase on the chic, cobblestoned Bond Street, a place I had never been. I marveled at its art books, its collaboration tote bag with photographer Ari Marcopoulous, its smartly designed zines, and in the back, Permanent Paper, another pandemic project, by stylist Masayo Kishi. The large-sized, elegantly designed biannual print magazine is filled with photos by Arthur Elgort, Luis Sanchis, Martyn Thompson, and more that could all be unfolded from the magazine's delicate pages and hung as art work on their own. I had been teased by the images for weeks online and immediately surrendered my credit card after turning its pages. But Dashwood didn’t have the newsletter I originally sought, so I moved on to another bookstore.

Karma Bookstore on East 3rd Street looks almost like an art gallery, unusual to anyone used to braving the stacks. A man with long dark hair in a long camel coat, fancy sweatpants and sneakers assists a customer. I wonder again about what “cool” is. Maybe it’s better to be cool without the quotes around it, to be a more subjective, mutable version of it, than to aspire to a life inside quotation marks. The thing I’ve liked about being a journalist is that I get to be in several worlds but not of them. I’ve never had to commit to a lifestyle because my life is constantly changing, perhaps not unlike New York itself. But I’m still excited about finding the newsletter, and Karma has what I’m looking for on more than one front: both the newsletter and Chantal Regnault’s photography book Voguing and the House Ballroom Scene of New York, 1989-92, which I need as research for my book. These are things I think are cool, no quotation marks. I think that’s how I prefer it.

It also dawned on me, certainly later than it should have, that I was on a scavenger hunt. But in the process I’m tasting bites of New York I hadn’t known before and supporting local businesses. It’s a relief to know that even after a decade there’s still more to learn, that even amidst its constant, and at this point uncertain, changes, New York is not dead. I don’t even know that it’s sleeping. It’s maybe just on a longer coffee break, smoking a cigarette outside, burning down to filter after filter after deep, extended inhales, waiting until it’s safe to come back inside.

Miss Manhattan Hangs Out...at Low Life 8

Somehow, in my 30 years of loving, devouring, and being nostalgic for (despite having never actually lived in) East Village history, I had never been to the Pyramid Club. The Pyramid, the renowned incubator for great drag performers and artists for nearly 40 years, had eluded me for the last eight or so years, and perhaps not by chance. If I’m honest, I was worried I’d arrive at the legendary venue at some point and for whatever reason not fall in love with it as I was supposed to. But then Low Life came along, and I knew I had to go.

Low Life is a variety showcase inspired by the book Low Life: The Lures and Snares of Old New York by Luc Sante. Assembled by Chi Chi Valenti and Johnny Dynell, nightlife legends and creators of the iconic Jackie 60 party, the show was first held in 2007 at Tompkins Square Park to close out the annual Howl! Festival saluting East Village culture. But the show was on hiatus for several years, returning last week for its eighth edition, celebrating legendary East Village dives from The Slide to the Pyramid itself. Hosts Chi Chi Valenti and Paul Alexander (a former Jackie 60 MC) introduced acts inspired by both 1880s-1920s Bowery life and the 1980s Pyramid life, performed by a bevy of New York nightlife stars. Drag queen Sherry Vine, in a wig of blonde curls and a cascading robe of black feathers, sang the 1920s classic “After You’re Gone in a deep purr. Burlesque performer Dirty Martini sauntered onto the stage, cigarette dangling from a long holder, drenched in a velvet robe and glittery eyeshadow. John Kelly transitioned in song from suit and dress shoes to scarf and corset and heels. Heather Litteer performed a monologue after arriving onstage in a trash bag. Poison Eve performed as Tanya Ransom performing Nina Hagen, a teased purple wig on her head, a dress covered in buttons over her torso.

In between acts, Johnny Dynell, in a Klaus Nomi t-shirt and suspenders, spun ABBA and Grace Jones and people danced, toes tap-tap-tapping on the linoleum floor. Later, I shed my coat and scarf and even participated myself. I walked under the crepe paper decorations and Christmas lights and lanterns. I watched as drag queens in towering wigs and heels tiptoed to the bar.

It’s funny, making my way to Low Life that night I was tired almost to the point of tears. Why am I doing this? Shouldn’t I be home sleeping? What is it all FOR? What does it all MEAN? And all this typical tired nonsense I usually dream up for myself when my brain cells are just about to keel over. And yet, arriving at the Pyramid, seeing the show, I forgot all that. I wondered if maybe that’s how everyone felt when they walked in the door, if that’s what kept people coming back all these years. And I wondered why I had stayed away so long.

Follow on Instagram: The Pyramid Club, Johnny Dynell, The Jackie Factory, Sherry Vine, Dirty Martini, Heather Litteer, John Kelly, Poison Eve

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Farewell, Angelica

It's not a secret that New York is constantly changing. It is perhaps a vast understatement at best. Sometimes, the more I see it change, the more I worry about its future. Especially when it comes to places like Angelica Kitchen closing.

I first went to Angelica Kitchen, an East Village vegan/vegetarian restaurant, in 2013. And what's magical about it--or, what was, as today is the last day of service in the restaurant's 40 year history--is that every time I went back, the food was just as good as the first cold winter day I went in there. Right down to my last day there, this past Wednesday, when I walked in after a photography seminar to find the place whirring with people in a way I have never seen before. Normally it's so easy to walk in during the week and have the host seat just me at a petite table for two. I'd sit out, facing the restaurant and read the menu, always thinking I'd get something different...but I almost never did. The Dragon Bowl, a plate of steamed veggies and tofu served with dressing of your choice (I usually got the house-made vegan balsamic vinaigrette) and brown rice, was just perfect as it was and, as my mother often says, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I'd sit and sip my cup of their Cranberte--a blend of teas and cranberry juice-- while I waited for the food to arrive, then delicately work my way around the plate of veggies with a pair of chopsticks until it was all gone.

Angelica Kitchen was, by all intents and purposes of the phrase, a neighborhood restaurant. Though the restaurant was absolutely fantastic, you'd never find it listed in anything like a top restaurant guide. It wasn't fancy, and the service wasn't always great, but it was delicious and reliable, the way your local diner might be. I'm curious about the number of restaurants in the entirety of New York City that have been open for four decades or more, places that have seen history come and go, that made history and made community themselves. Angelica served the community in the quirky East Village, but it also created a community around vegan and vegetarian food when it was still thought of as totally wacky 40 years ago. If you have read this blog before, you know that I'm not a vegan or a vegetarian--I simply love good food; better yet, good food that's consistent and affordable. I've also written before that finding a restaurant in New York that you want to regularly return to (and can afford to regularly return to) is no small feat. Restaurants close here probably literally every month, if not every day. In a city of so many options, you need something that makes people come back and Angelica Kitchen was one of the few places I regularly returned to.

But the restaurant had to close because of rising rents, rents that are rising because corporate chains are moving into the neighborhood. There's no limit to what rent they can pay, and landlords know that. So the independent businesses are bearing the weight of these decisions, and far too many of them--across the neighborhood and across the city--are closing. I have now seen several downtown performers like Tigger! and Penny Arcade accurately describe what's happening to our fair city: it's being infiltrated by the people we moved here to get away from. I'm scared that the closing of a beloved neighborhood staple like Angelica Kitchen will bring on many more and make the city into the suburban shopping mall I ran like hell to escape. Or, as The New Yorker headline so aptly put it this week: "The East Village Loses Another Place for the Young, Hungry, and Weird."

So here I am this Wednesday evening to say goodbye to this place that has kept me company so many nights when I wandered in alone after work or after shopping or just after a long day. I love macaroni and cheese dearly, but when you're in a rough mood and you need comfort food, sometimes the calorie count just doesn't pay. So I'd go to Angelica and treat myself to dinner, and suddenly so much would feel better. Miraculously, though I have almost always been a party of one here, I have never sat at the communal table to the left of the door. Tonight there's a rotating cast of dinner guests as so many other parties of one come in and out to say their goodbyes, too.

I am seated with a woman from Toronto, a man from Israel, and another man from Los Angeles. They have been coming here for five years, 25 years, and 17 years, respectively. We all share our Angelica stories this evening, each new person coming in and saying the same: "I'm so sad to see this place go." In between asking if you could please pass the pitcher of water or is this glass yours or mine? It's a place that has been a part of their lives: bringing new dates there, coming there after breakups, bringing family, friends, or getting take-out at Angelica To-Go next door. Later, a woman and her 20-something daughter come in and sit next to me: the daughter grew up going to music lessons across the street on the weekends, and they would come in to Angelica afterward for lunch. It may not have been the kind of place on a "Top Restaurants in New York" list, but it is definitely the kind of place that occupies a place in people's memories.

Soon my Cranberte arrives and the hot, sweet, tangy drink warms my tongue after a semi-chilly, almost-spring day.  It's followed by my Dragon Bowl, with its chickpeas, tofu, brown rice, greens, seaweed, and squash. I treat myself also to a maple tofu whip--I only rarely got dessert at the place, but I didn't want to leave just yet. A small swirl of the dessert arrives, topped with cinnamon and I take my time making my way to the bottom of its bowl, looking around at the iron chandeliers, the patterned wallpaper, the peach paint on the walls above it. There are still people waiting in line to get in, even though the restaurant closes soon. The man next to me orders a blueberry kanten parfait, a kind of jam trifle in a short glass, and shares with me. It's delicious, I think to myself, as I always did about any of the food there. And not too long after, the host spins the "Yes, We're Open" sign around and it's time to go. I look back, and the words "Sorry, We're Closed" in the window make my heart ache.

Beyond Frank

When EH visits, I like to construct an evening out for her of some kind. As I've mentioned before, she works hard at the hospital and barely gets a day off, so I'm always happy to help her blow off some steam when she comes into the city from New Jersey. One time she came in I was working weekend mornings, and had fallen asleep by midnight. I felt so bad that I couldn't give her her evening out that the next time she came in I promised we would go hard, and I delivered: we stayed out until 5:30am. I pissed off my roommate at the time, a light sleeper, when we came giggling in around 6am, the sun just beginning to peek through the windows.

The last time she came in, though, she wasn't in the mood for a "go hard" kind of evening, and frankly I don't know that I was either. But I would have rallied for her without a doubt! She wanted to "go medium," and we ended up going on a petite walking tour of the East Village, starting with a gallery opening. I asked her what she wanted to eat for dinner, and she decided Italian, so I took her to Frank. I went to Frank for the first time a year or two ago, but for whatever reason hadn't been back since. It's an unpretentious little Italian joint on 2nd Avenue, with tables outside, a bar, and a small dining room that wraps around the other side of a doorway. In true 'EH is Visiting' fashion, we end up being able to waltz right into Frank and sit at the bar on a Friday night around 8pm, prime New York eating hours in which it's often difficult to get a table anywhere, let alone someplace especially tasty. We order what ends up being the perfect amount of food while perched at the bar, first sharing a pear and gorgonzola salad. The sharp cheese is softened by the crisp, juicy fruit, and there's enough cheese left over for us to spread it across the warm bread previously served to us with olive oil. Next up is black linguini with calamari. It's in a tomato sauce that's just a little bit spicy, perfectly tangy, and it presses up gently against the inky pasta and the subtle chew of the calamari ringlets.

We head to Mayahuel a few short blocks away next in hopes of mezcal cocktails, but have to leave our name at the door with a man named Josh. Josh will call me when our table is ready, about 20 minutes. In the meantime, though, EH has the genius idea to get some dessert somewhere, and we trot over to Big Gay Ice Cream on 7th Street between 1st Street and Avenue A. It's a bit chilly out, so magically we don't have to wait in line for more than 2-5 minutes, an impossibility when the summer heat swallows the city. I hadn't been there all summer, waiting on line forever for their delectable soft-serve, and it feels like I beat the system.

We decide to share one of their massive cones, a special that day called the Violet Beauregard. Named for the Willy Wonka character whose greedy noshing inflates her into a blueberry balloon, the cone is dressed accordingly with blueberry sauce, pie crumble, and whipped cream atop vanilla ice cream. No sooner to we begin digging into the cone then Josh calls from Mayahuel--interestingly, his area code seems to be from Utah and I wonder what on Earth a Utahan thinks about New York when they first arrive here. We say we are on our way from Avenue A, when in reality we stand outside Big Gay and finish the cone, perhaps the walking equivalent of saying "I'm in a cab" when you've only just gotten out of the shower. Shortly, though, we click-clack over to Mayahuel and are escorted upstairs to a blue-and-white tiled table. We sip our mescal and the drinks are nice enough--but at $15 a pop, we decide our next venue will be a little different. Inside, there's a little old man with a cane, conservatively dressed, waiting for a sundae. EH and I smile--something like this (read: both an ice cream store called Big Gay Ice Cream and a little old man happily going to it for a cone) probably wouldn't have happened 20 years ago.

Our last stop of the evening is a place I pass the evening before, Huertas. This is the first place we go this evening that I actually haven't been to before, and I'm reminded to add some more new venues to my roster. Huertas is actually a Basque-inspired tapas restaurant, but they also make pitchers of cocktails they call refrescos. This actually means 'sodas' in Spanish, but the pitchers they say are more like Spanish wine coolers. We sit at the bar--magically, yet again, there are two seats waiting for us--and head for a pitcher of Agua de Valencia, made with prosecco and orange soda (but not Sunkist, more European in style--think Aranciata, a bubbly, orange-infused, only slightly-sweet construction). The bartender swirls out a neat twist of orange for each of our drinks and each time we pour a new drink (three times possible each with this particular pitcher…and at a cost of $30 total, practically a steal) a whisk of orange oil enters our noses. Soon, though, the bubbles invade our senses and we teeter ourselves into a cab. It was a night, we'll say, where we went hard enough. Are we getting old, I wonder? Or sometimes are a few good bubbles enough?

Two Fridays

Some good stories that slipped through my fingers the last two weeks...

Friday, February 19
EH only gets something ridiculous like one day off per month, so when she comes in I like to make sure she has a good time. We try to have dinner at Parm, the Italian sandwich shop in Nolita known for its delicious sandwiches, crazy wait times and the fact that they don't take reservations. We slip into the restaurant at a very continental 9 o'clock and the host says there will be a 15-20 minute wait unless we'd like to sit at the bar, which is first come, first serve. We wait five minutes, then two seats open up at the bar, and we sit, high-fiving for our good fortune. Shortly we'll be chowing down on buffalo cucumbers sprinkled with bleu cheese and gorgeous chicken and eggplant parmagiana sandwiches on hearty Italian buns sprinkled with sesame seeds and it will be divine. Then we'll sidle over to Decibel, one of my favorite spots in the East Village, for sake. After a short wait, we cram ourselves into a booth of the room that's splattered from ceiling to floor in graffiti and sip sweet, dry sake brought to us by a man with an undercut ponytail who's wearing a kimono only half-ironically.

We headed over to our favorite cheesy/awful dance spot next, but we found out shortly after entering, looking around, and dancing for a hot minute...that we had become too old for it. Swarmed by early twenty-somethings in button-down shirts and heels too tall for dancing, we sipped our drinks quietly and tried to find a bar where thirty-something men hang out. Interestingly enough, this was a category on Yelp all its own, and soon we were at another bar. The dancing there seemed to have died by the time we arrived at around 2am, but we drank some more drinks and made the most of it, resolving to begin a quest to find a bar for our proper age demographic the next time she came to the city.

Though that might sound like a bust of an evening, the next day we were paid back tenfold. Grabbing two spots at the apparently very difficult to get into Macondo for brunch, we were seated and eating in virtually no time at all. Since we couldn't decide, we ordered two dishes to share: their unbelievable eggs benedict was served not on an English muffin, but on two sweet yellow corn arepas topped with smoked salmon, the traditional poached egg, and a lemon-saffron aioli; and their cheesy, warm polenta with sauteed mushrooms were both to die for.

A round of window shopping was next, though window shopping quickly turned into shopping shopping with a foray into Topshop. The retailer was having its annual 'buy one, get one' sale, in which everything in the sale department is...you know. We ended up making a killing, with two pieces each both under $40 total, an unheardof amount for the store. If I had to sway in heels in a bar I was too old for to get that, it was all worth it.


Friday, February 26
Occasionally I will get free tickets to a concert because I occasionally write about music and occasionally publicists like that. I had gotten a plus one this time, and decided to bring AR with me. We would meet up at the bar Rocka Rolla in Williamsburg, which I had heard of but never been to, and as soon as I walked in, heard the Ramones playing, saw album covers on the walls, and a big neon Rolling Stones lips/tongue logo in the back, I knew I was home. As if by magic, I was able to nab a table in a big ol' booth, trying to get my nose to stop running and sipping the hot tea I brought with me like an old woman. Groups of four and more looked at me and rolled their eyes while I waited for AR in this giant booth by myself, but I greeted their eyes with an internal fuck-you and blew my nose again. I had been working for nearly two weeks straight on editing photos from an event and had driven my immune system into the ground with sheer stress and a good ol' inability to stop working but, as ever, I wouldn't let that stop me from having a good time (seriously, one of these days I will grow up and take care of myself like an adult. But today was not that day!). AR arrived shortly and sipped a giant goblet (yes!) of beer for $3 while I sucked on a cough drop. Magically, as we had to leave to head to the venue, so too did my cold symptoms leave as we waltzed up the street to the concert.

The band playing was, shall we say, not our taste. I think AR and I ultimately decided together they were to Mumford and Sons what Hoobastank was to Linkin Park, using, as AR says, any opportunity to throw Hoobastank under the bus. We made hilarious, snide comments to each other the whole show, music snob nerds being way too critical for no reason. To the band's credit, one of their singers was especially lovely and there was one tune and various parts of other tunes that I truly enjoyed. And I'd say, too, that the ability to laugh like that with AR at the show itself was worth going at all.

AR found another concert for us to go to afterward, at Legion in Williamsburg/Bushwick. We wound ourselves through the bar to a back room with gorgeous, wood-paneled walls and a tiny yet well-lit wooden stage to see the art-rock band Howardian. Somehow, with 3/5 of their band missing they still had a great time, and so did we. The drummer, tickling the snare, mumbled "I am a coconut," from underneath a pile of his hair and it was so weird we loved it.

"How are you feeling?" AR asked me while the band was setting up.
"I am having some trouble breathing!" I said, sipping the cider I probably shouldn't have been drinking and then laughing. Whatever.

We left Legion and bounced into the frigid night, the one I think now (I HOPE now) will be the last of the season. "I'm hungry!" AR said as we walked up Humboldt Street. "Okay," I said. "What around here is open late?" I literally had no idea where we were and I wondered if I had even been to this part of Brooklyn before, but AR used to live off the Graham Avenue L stop so he knew where to take us.

Morelos is a 24/7 Mexican/American diner on Grand Street. We walked in and sat at the counter, passing a giant display case of pandulces on the way in. It reminded me of South Florida and I felt like I was back there for a minute. I wasn't even hungry, but I ordered I giant torta stuffed with beef and jalapeños and avocado and dove in just for the experience alone. We drank tea and talked about nothing and I didn't need another cough drop the whole time.

St. Marks is Dead

Whenever I would come to visit New York as a teenager or college student, a visit to St. Marks Place was always on my list. I had no good reason why, usually; no specific place I wanted to go or thing I wanted to see, but I knew the street was important. I've written before about my longstanding love affair with punk, and I knew St. Marks was one of the streets the punks frequented--I think part of me just always wanted to tread the same ground as they did, to feel the pulse of creative dissonance running under my feet as they had felt it.

To the uninitiated, St. Marks Place is in the East Village, between 3rd Avenue and Avenue A, in Manhattan; it is technically "8th Street" but nobody in their right mind calls it that (unless you are my friend Dan who is visiting from Boston and when he said it I think I visibly winced in pain). It has, as author Ada Calhoun points out in her new book St. Marks is Dead which comes out November 2 from W. W. Norton, often been a cultural hub of the neighborhood if not also lower Manhattan and even Manhattan in general. In this cultural history, Calhoun shows us the constantly changing lives of the street, the births and deaths of each experience of living there even before the street itself existed. St. Marks, one sees after reading her book, is always dying because it is always being born again.

People who lived on the street know the magic of it, too. In fact, one time I was reading the book on the train a woman peered over my shoulder. She had a grey pixie cut, gold glasses, a brown trench coat, skinny jeans and ballet flats and said to me in a German accent, "St. Marks! You know I used to live there! I should read that book." Calhoun writes in the book that for some people St. Marks is a place you live at a certain time in your life, either your best or your worst, and once you leave you don't return for fear of either not living up to those memories or having to relive them. This woman's experience seemed to be positive, though, and I of course recommended the book to her.

The book is one close to Calhoun's heart, one imagines, because she herself is from the street. She was raised there in the 1970s, often considered one of the most dangerous times to be living in the city in the last 50 years. While she shares some of her experiences of these moments in the book, she is still an appreciative narrator, one who inspires further adoration of St. Marks and its history in the reader, especially this reader, who is a raging postmodern history nerd at her core.

Calhoun narrates the history of the street through vignette-like stories she's uncovered, almost like buried treasure or precious jewels, from what is undoubtedly years of intense (and probably fascinating to conduct! I was jealous of all of the documents she was likely able to read and people she was able to talk to to tell each story) research. Through the tales she shares of everything from German boating tragedies to anarchist crust-punks, she reveals the ever-evolving lives of the street she calls America's Hippest. She writes in such an engaging manner that every era of history she covers, from the disrupted lives of the Native American Lenape tribe who populated the area in the 1600s to the bustling "Little Tokyo" as the street is now known, is equally enchanting. While I don't consider myself a revolutionary history buff, I was on the edge of my seat, nose buried in the middle of the book on the 6 train downtown, as Calhoun narrated to me the growth and decline of Peter Stuyvesant's empire.

What's also wonderful about St. Marks is Dead is that the snippets of history Calhoun chooses to share connect to a person's general knowledge of American culture or history, almost filling in the gaps and allowing one to experience "a-ha!" or "lightbulb" moments while one is on public transit, smiling and nodding to oneself, "I see what you did there! Look at you!" One moment in particular for me was when she writes about the Beastie Boys hanging out on St. Marks at Tish and Snooky's Manic Panic, one of the original punk stores on the street. Like, oh, casual, this group of kids idolizing these punk chicks on the street before they became a legendary punk/rap crew. The book is full of moments like these, of the famous and infamous casually spending their time on St. Marks simply because that's where the cool people were and that's why they wanted to be there.

Something else I loved was seeing some of the places or figures from the latter end of the century are still around, like "Mosaic Man" Jim Power whose mosaics still line the streets in the East Village and have for decades, or Gem Spa, the ages-old bodega/egg creamery which Calhoun notes was actually the background of photo on a New York Dolls album (I'm ashamed I didn't know that myself!). And then there are those I got to see before they closed/were removed/became something else, like the black cube sculpture Alamo at the corner of 4th Avenue, Kim's Video, Yaffa Cafe.

Even in the short time I've lived here in New York I've seen St. Marks change. I've seen noodle houses exchanged for new, trendy bars and my favorite, independently-owned frozen yogurt shop go the way of the wind; I signed the petition for St. Marks Bookshop to keep its lease, though it eventually moved instead of just closing; I've eaten at Korean dessert shops that just opened new locations and drunk half-price cocktails at a Thai restaurant that has since closed due to health violations. Like every New Yorker, I have a vision of the street in my head as I walk down it; I can picture where so many of the places Calhoun mentions are or once were. It's difficult to feel like you're a part of New York's history--the city is so big, filled with so many people who are doing amazing and interesting things--but then you see in histories like Ada Calhoun's St. Marks is Dead things that you too have experienced along with so many others, and it makes you feel like you matter, like you're not just another notch on New York's proverbial bedpost.

If you want to learn more about New York and about American culture, then this book is definitely for you. But then, of course, so is a walk down St. Marks.

You can also come see Ada Calhoun read at the December Miss Manhattan Non-Fiction Reading on Monday, December 7! Stay tuned for more information.

A Tale of Two Betties

HanOre and I were trying to think of something to do.

"We could get really dressed up, go to B&H, then go someplace really fabulous with cocktails we can't afford," I offered in half-irony, half-excitement. And HanOre approved! A Monday evening can be really boring if you don't play your cards right, but it looked as though we would be doing just fine.

B&H, our beloved kosher dairy lunch counter (though neither of us are kosher or vegetarian) in the East Village had reopened in August after the sad 2nd Avenue gas explosion a few months ago. All was as it was before, and fortunately the restaurant had barely suffered any damages.

That day, I asked:

"What is our vibe tonight? Bettie Page? Beyoncé?"

The best evenings out, after all, require the best possible costuming. HanOre chose Bettie, so into my closet I dove for something that would pair well with red lipstick and red peep-toe pumps a la the famed 1950s pinup. After a whirligig of flying clothing, a bold, black and white striped dress with a sweetheart neckline caught my eye. Perfect! I zipped myself in and proceeded out into the night, lipsticked and heeled into a neo-Bettie reverie. Though I would have to be careful about gusts of wind so I did not also Marilyn myself that evening.

I arrived at B&H to find HanOre in her own take on Bettie regalia. Next to the restaurant's pale green walls, she was a vision in an indigo blue wiggle dress with cap sleeves, her signature magenta suede pumps, and red lips. Men in flannel and t-shirts sat hunched over the lunch counter while a crew of NYU students huddled together in the back. We were a sight for sore eyes, throwbacks to an era the East Village hadn't known for 60 years. We said our order to the man behind the counter and stood up to take the platter of blintzes (she) and kasha varnishkas (me) from him when they were ready. Diving into our Jewish soul food, we discussed all manner of magazine gossip and news of potential suitors, careful not to smudge our lipstick. Glamour is as glamour does.

Our cocktail adventures brought us to Angel's Share, suggested by HanOre. Up a set of unmarked stairs on 9th Street, there's Village Yokocho, a Japanese restaurant where patrons sit and munch on sushi or udon or what have you, and you walk right next to them as you open an also unmarked wooden door and enter the bar, a speakeasy of sorts. Over the bar there's a mural of cherubic figures and the space itself is a neat little box with small tables and chairs overlooking the street. There's no standing room in this bar, either--that is, it is not an option to stand and that's strictly enforced. Their cocktail menu changes seasonally and includes named cocktails for every major kind of liquor: this is not a place you go for a vodka soda. Well, you could probably have one if you wanted, but you'd be missing the point.

Bartenders in white dress shirts, black vests and bow ties shook and stirred gorgeous constructions. HanOre chose what ended up being a green concoction topped with fluffed egg whites, a sprig of rosemary and freshly shaven nutmeg. It was a sensory experience, tasting the bubbly beverage and inhaling its woody, sweet scent. Mine was a drink called Cheek to Cheek, which included vodka, a wildberry puree, and a mascarpone espuma. The latter was thick, so the cocktail was served with a petite silver spoon. Imagine, a drink and dessert in the same glass! We sat and savored our beverages, crossing our legs and leaning our elbows off the backs of the bar chairs like the 1950s goddess we sought to emulate for the evening. Sounds of 3rd Avenue buzzed past us, as lights from Stuyvesant Square crept in through the window and we continued our gossip. It was a Monday evening done right.

Antacid Punks

At about 9:30pm this past Tuesday, I was heading home from a photography gig downtown. At that hour, the subway is really perfect for people-watching because it's a lot easier to get a seat and observe.

They get on the 5 train at 14th Street, big bags from punk emporiums Trash & Vaudeville and Search & Destroy under her arm, and a giant, 24-pack of toilet paper in a plastic bag under his. They sit down on the train, metal buckles clanging against black leather boots, silver chains jangling from wrists and black leather vests. His black hair is smooth and shiny, separated in the middle and flowing long straight over his shoulders, just barely revealing a runic tattoo on his right shoulder. There's a scrawling in fiery, red letters across the black t-shirt on chest of some metal band I've never heard of, black jeans on his legs. Though he is short for a man, he has no trouble nestling the the toilet paper package between his legs. His nose is pierced on the side, and his lip is pierced in the center, both marked with a silver hoop.

She is tall, much taller than him, even moreso in her platform combat boots. Her hair is jet black, but dyed that way, crunchy with a hair product that forms it into oddly perfect waves down her shoulders and back. Her skin is powdery white because it has been caked with makeup. Black eyeliner lines curve up the sides of her face, and blood red matte lipstick beams off her mouth, in high contrast to her dark eyes. Her septum piercing, a black half-ring, forms an arc shape through her nose. She's also wearing a black metal band t-shirt and a black leather vest. Long feathers hang from her ears. They chat loudly to each other in Spanish.

She opens a bottle of antacid, spills some on her leather boot, and takes a swig. It's cherry flavored. He rips open the toilet paper package and offers her some to clean it up, but she shakes her head, she doesn't need it. Do I have any on my lipstick? she asks in Spanish, pointing to her mouth. No, he shakes his head. She squeezes some antibacterial from a keychain on her black skull purse into her hand and rubs it in. She takes out a granola bar from her purse and offers him some. He shakes his head no, he doesn't want any, and she proceeds to rip pieces of the pink frosted snack into her mouth. She gets some crumbs on the skull purse and brushes them off. He changes his mind and they share.

A person sits down next to her and stares down at the massive tree tattoo running down the length of her upper arm, not looking away for a solid 15 seconds. I notice I'm staring at this person staring at this tattoo, trying to figure out how much time is passing.

Her fingers hold on long black acrylic nails and a bejeweled skull ring. I notice them when she wraps her hand around his knee. There is still antacid on her shoe when I get off at my stop, leaving them to their antacid and granola punk life.

A Summer Saturday

BK and I meet for brunch. We are both flighty birds about town so the occasion for just the two of us to hang out is rare. We meet at The Wayland, a rad spot in Alphabet City that's decorated with exposed brick, books about blues music and portraits of someone's great-great-grandfather nobody ever knew. The tables are thick and wooden and we sit on stools staring at each other, talking about writing, dating, and wherever those twains might meet. It's cooler for a summer day, and the open windows don't make me feel like I'm going to die. BK is halfway through his iced coffee and already he's talking faster, but my pace is much slower. It's one of the few days off I've had since I started working weekends, and I feel myself breathing. I order what the restaurant calls Sausage Bread and Eggs, and really this is the best name for it because that's what it is--thick, crusty bread filled in the middle with ground sausage bits that melt into you mouth and into the yolk of the poached eggs when you break them open. I dip the bread and egg combo into the ricotta/olive oil mixture it's served with and I taste Saturday. I will be back.

After brunch, we walk over to a mural, an alphabet assemblage of street art BK has been wanting to see. As we walk there, a man shouts to me, "Look at this beautiful Jewish girl!" and BK and I both become palpably uncomfortable but don't say anything for a few seconds.

"How did that make you feel? I'm sorry that happened." he says after those seconds pass. "Should I have said something?"

"Uh, no," I said. "I wouldn't have known what to tell you to say." And really, I still don't. It bothers me more to be called out for my ethnicity than my visual appeal and I don't know how to voice that. Why can't I just be beautiful?

We arrive at the mural, which is bright blue painted on brick and shutters and wraps around a streetcorner. From what we can gather, several different artists have collaborated to do different letters of the alphabet in their various styles. We consider each letter carefully as if we've just wandered into a gallery. I like the letter "L" the best, which is formed from a pink leg leading into a pink ankle leading into a red sneaker.

Heading up Avenue B, we stop into a new vintage spot BK has found, the East Village Clothing Collective. It's two floors and independently owned by three ladies, each of whom has a distinct style and a distinct area of the store. The vintage sunglasses are inexpensive ($5-8 each) but the silken Twisted Sister jacket is less so ($100). There are funny polyester cowboy shirts and paisley dresses abound, and The Stray Cats play on the sound system. There's a room with vintage Gucci heels in it that has portholes for no reason and a room in the back where they set up air mattresses and do movie nights for free.

Time has ticked by, and shortly I must be on my way. I am heading out to New Jersey for the afternoon to visit SJT's family home.

I arrive at Penn Station with plenty of time to get the black tea with milk and Splenda I want so badly, but I am nervous, without reason, that I will miss the train. I don't take NJ Transit often and I know trains always (for the most part) leave on time. I get on the train and transfer at Newark Penn Station which, I must say, is the most disgusting place I have been since moving to New York. The length of the stairways smell entirely of piss, and the waiting areas smell like body odor. I moved through each of these with great speed and fear of vomiting and was rewarded with my train to a place called Netherwood waiting for me on the other end.

SJT picked me up in his car, which did not look too much like it belonged to him save for a Renata Tebaldi box set in the backseat. SJT, a self-described "opera queen" named his car Monserrat Caballé, hoping that it, like her, would have a long, illustrious career (he made the mistake previously of naming another car after the singer Leyla Gencer who had a tragically short career; he crashed this car into a tree). On the way to his home in South Plainfield, which he describes as "rather gay," he points out to me that the area was once known as a location for country homes for those living in the city. We pass gorgeous tudor-style mansions that support this. We pass a cemetery on our left where SJT tells me Dudley Moore is buried. "When I was in middle school, I didn't know who Dudley Moore was, but I did know who Liza Minnelli was and I knew they were friends," he said. He was delighted that, upon Moore's death in 2002, the divine Ms. Minnelli would likely be in his very hometown to attend her friend's funeral. Though SJT could not crash the funeral to see her, he did go visit Moore's grave the next day to stand where Liza had possibly stood and take in her "Liza-ness," as it were.

We turn down one street and then another and then SJT drolly quips, "And this is the Burger King," before turning into his driveway.

A crowd of people has already gathered, and we sit in the grass and on lawn chairs in his backyard. It's not too hot, and the grass is cool on my feet.
"Would you like to sit in a chair like a real person, Elyssa?" SJT says to me.
"Oh, no thank you," I say, smiling, because how often in New York do I really get to sit in the grass and look up at the sky?

For an appetizer, we eat chicken and tomato salad made with items fresh from the garden/orchard we are staring at as we eat. During this time, we are invited to remove any books we like (for the most part) from SJT's room: soon he is leaving for Eastern Europe, a months-long tour of his own design. From a hot room decorated with kelly green spongepaint, I remove We Were The Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, Ada, or Ardor by Vladimir Nabokov and The Rest is Noise by Alex Ross. Other people choose Pushkin or Thomas Hardy or a variety of choral selections SJT had amassed over the years that no longer held interest for him. I return with my haul and sink deeper into the sangria AnSha has made, a peach and rosemary elixir she serves from a Mason jar. She has just moved to Williamsburg--I joke how well she seems to be assimilating and we laugh.

SJT's mother has prepared a feast for us this evening, and shortly I stuff my face with what's easily the best lasagna I've ever had. I'm not a regular pasta eater generally and I don't come from an Italian household, so I don't often have the pleasure of having the dish, much less homemade. It melts in my mouth, as do the Penne Vodka and Sausage and Peppers. I eat enough of everything so when I go home to my empty refrigerator I won't even notice for the entire week. Everyone drinks more, sits more, laughs more. We eat sliced peaches from the garden with Friendly's vanilla ice cream for dessert as the sky turns first to a peachy pink, then lavender, then powder blue, then black.

It is time to leave, and SJT and his mother take AnSha and I to the train. NJ Transit is brimming with people heading into the city for a big night out: they wear tight dresses or jeans and some even wear Hawaiian leis, spangled tops and button-down shirts. And AnSha and I can barely stay awake. We lean our heads against the window as we leave first the Metropark station, then the airport, then Newark Penn, and finally arrive back in Manhattan. I find my way home dreamily by 11pm and fall asleep. Who needs to go out when you've had a day like this?

Noreetuh: A Playground for Your Mouth

Not too long ago, a headline from The Village Voice online included the phrase "Hawaiian food." I was intrigued, and clicked to find images of bright yet minimalist presentations of the creations from Noreetuh, a new restaurant in the East Village. Always excited about food that veers away from the ordinary, I added it to a mental list of places to try.

Last week I had the pleasure of being able to partake in an evening at Noreetuh with SJT. I was excited that the menu appealed to him and we made our way there. The restaurant opened last month at 128 First Avenue, between St. Mark's and 7th Streets. It defines itself as "casual Hawaiian," and features a menu created by Chef Chung Chow, a former sous chef at the legendary Per Se, who grew up in Hawaii and spent time in Japan. Chow and his partners Gerald San Jose and Jin Ahn all co-own Noreetuh, which means "playground" in Korean, and which SJT and I would learn fits the cuisine so, so well.

We were welcomed by the host (who I'd later find out was San Jose himself) at the door with a warmth that carried through with the rest of the staff the entire evening. I felt like I was talking to an old friend! Interestingly, that made me even more excited about the food. SJT and I sat down at a sleek wooden table for two and began casting our eyes about the menu. We resolved to share all of our courses, but we had some questions for our waiter (food appreciators though we are, we are not experts). What is musubi? What is a torchon? He answered knowledgeably and kindly: musubi is sushi-like, in that it involves rice wrapped with seaweed, but their version is more of a handroll. I've since learned that Spam musubi is a common Hawaiian snack, though at Noreetuh they prepare it with brined corned beef tongue, cilantro, and peanuts. We will have that please! And torchon, it turns out, is a kind of pate; in this case, made from the liver of a monkfish, served with pear, cilantro, and passionfruit with toasted King's Hawaiian roll slices for spreading. We will also have that, please! For our main course, we decided on the mochi-crusted fluke served with bok choy, kabocha squash, and black bean.

The corned beef musubi was salty, but in a fantastic way--the blend of the seaweed, the brine and the natural meat flavor with the cilantro was killer, and that extra crunch of those slightly sweet crushed peanuts took it to a more thoughtful level and broke up the salt. In the order there were two pieces--I don't know about SJT but I may or may not have actually licked my fingers when I was finished.

The queen of my heart this evening was far and away our next course, the monkfish liver torchon. And to think, at the beginning of dinner I didn't even know what torchon was! The pate was smooth and, to use the waiter's words, "oceanic," in that it tasted slightly of ocean water, but wasn't at all fishy. The buttery King's Hawaiian bread, even as an inside joke of sorts, was a perfect compliment, as were the acidic sweetness of the pear and passion fruit. I had visions of SJT and I popping in there on an evening after work to have glasses of wine (from their extensive wine list curated by General Manager Jin Ahn) and monkfish liver torchon as if we were ladies who lunch having caviar and champagne. But really, the former was just as good as the latter, and at least the torchon had a sense of humor! I found myself carving the plate with my fork so none of it would be left uneaten. Thankfully SJT didn't judge me.

The mochi-crusted fluke was light and slightly crunchy, and it was lively dipped into the subtle squash and black bean drizzles. All of that together on a fork with the tangy bok choy, though, was the best--loud and quiet flavors (and sounds! Ha!) all in one mouthful. "Come to me, bok choy!" SJT said as he scooted a stalk to his plate.

We didn't know if maybe we'd have another savory dish after the fluke, but we decided on something sweet instead, in the form of a brûléed Hawaiian pineapple. Served in a quarter of the fruit, leaves and all, the flesh was scored and topped with lime zest and 'alaea salt. 'Alaea salt is often referred to as Hawaiian salt, and is unrefined sea salt mixed with red alae volcanic clay. We cracked into the top with spoons as if it were creme brûlée--sour, sweet, and fun!

If you have the opportunity, I highly recommend checking out Noreetuh. I love how they take Hawaiian traditions and the cuisine's Japanese, Korean, and Filipino influences and make them their own--for example, there's aformentioned corned beef musubi, but there's also a Spam tortelloni. And honestly, I'd normally be turned off by the sound of anything involving Spam, but after seeing how they look at and prepare food, I'm not scared anymore. I'll even try the tripe, for goodness sake! Noreetuh has earned my trust, my tastebuds and definitely my loyalty.

Noreetuh
128 1st Avenue
New York, NY 10009
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The Drag Explosion

There are several eras in New York for which I consistently have the sinking feeling, "I missed out on this. I should have been there!" Damn late-eighties birthdays. I've written about my penchant for 1970s New York before, but another that constantly makes me shake my fists toward the sky in frustration is the drag club scene of the '80s and '90s, specifically that out of which the divine Ms. RuPaul, Lady Bunny, and infinite others arose. "Noooooo!" I think to myself whenever I see pictures of them pre-fame at the Pyramid Club. "I SHOULD HAVE BEEN THERE WITH YOU!!!"

Since that is not humanly possible, as of this writing anyway, the next best thing is to immerse myself in a world of photographs where at the very least it feels like I'm there. This has been made possible by the fantastic Linda Simpson, who has been doing drag in New York, and documenting her travels along the way, since the late eighties. She has been called "A worldly wit… A kind of mother superior of the New York drag scene," by The New York Times and "The thinking woman's drag queen," by Paper Magazine, and has made countless national television appearances. She currently hosts drag bingo and performs all over New York and surrounding areas.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Linda for the website FeatureShoot.com about some images in the series, those taken of her friend Page in the downtown clubs, and found at my fingertips an entire world Linda had documented in a live presentation she called The Drag Explosion. When could I go??

Well, the truth is there are several times I could have gone, but things like Fashion Week and traveling kept getting in the way. Finally, though, last weekend, I was able to see the final cut of Linda's slideshow--she has been workshopping and reworking the stories she tells and pictures she shows for a while--at The Wild Project, an arts space in the East Village (195 3rd Street between Avenue A and B). It was a perfect venue: not only is it dedicated to developing an inspired community around arts, it's also not too far from where many of the images where taken, the Pyramid Club at 101 Avenue A at 7th Street, which is the venue that first brought drag into the spotlight during the time.

I brought TDS with me, who was visiting from Philly, and we found ourselves a fabulous pair of seats in the center of the theatre. We were two of a few ladies in the audience, surrounded by men--many of whom, we'd discover, had either been there the nights the photographs were taken, were in the photographs themselves, or knew so many people in the photographs they'd clap and giggle with delight upon seeing them, happy little gasps emerging from their lips. It's like seeing a slideshow of photographs of your parents before they got married--everyone has a story about what they're seeing, and you want to hear all of them to learn everything you can about what their life was like before you existed.

All of Linda's photographs, snapped with a simple point-and-shoot camera, capture the bright, bold colors of unbelievable glamour--faces painted stark white, bodysuits in electric purple, colorful eyelashes spilling forth onto faces, bold red lips, bright green eyeshadow and any other color in the rainbow you could possibly imagine plastered onto a human being. It's like my childhood fantasy coloring book exploded onto the screen (I know I've mentioned several times how I was raised on drag, so please forgive me for saying it again. But in case you'd like to remind yourself, here is an essay I wrote about it a few years ago), and was punctuated with stories I could appreciate as an adult. Wild nights at the Pyramid and other nightclubs (and their bathrooms) like Limelight and Palladium, the rough East Village pre-Giuliani, an affordable apartment on 13th Street. The slideshow documents Linda's first forays into drag in New York, all the way through the end of the first spotlighted drag era in the late 1990s.

When presenting The Drag Explosion, Linda also invites active scene performers from the time to tell stories about different photographs in which they appear. The evening I attended, Michael Formika Jones, previously known as Mistress Formika, was Linda's guest. He told wild stories about the fabulous, inventive Jackie 60 parties, his Wigstock performance on the Christopher Street piers, and so much more. I felt like I was there, but was also horribly envious that I wasn't. It was perfect.

If you're interested in a night of wonderful drag history and images, I urge you to check out Linda's Drag Explosion! Check here to see where you can find it next. That is, if you think you can handle the fabulousness.  

Bouts of Punk Nostalgia

In the summer of 2005, I was a rising high school senior taking college classes at a university in New Haven, Connecticut. Because, well, I was a big ol’ nerd overachiever and that was super fun for me. One weekend, we were taken on a trip into New York City, where we could do as we pleased for the day. Picking up a copy of The Village Voice, I remembered that today could be the day I was finally able to visit my hallowed ground, what I felt was the mecca of all I held dear: CBGB.

I have written about my relationship with punk on here before, but just a quick recap: in my private-schooled, uptight-yet-starry-eyed universe, punk became my outlet. I’m not talking about the garbage peddled at Hot Topic, though—I’m talking about the real stuff, the seminal aches and pains borne of the Bowery in New York in the 1970s. This New York became my mind’s playground, a place where artists visual and musical roamed free, where the streets were dirty and covered in graffiti and dear god please don’t eat the chili. In the pages of Please Kill Me: An Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain, I escaped myself and I was allowed to be something other than the over-extracurriculared AP student that I was. If punk was the religion, CBGB was the temple.

But that day in 2005, I made a mistake. A silly one, based less on idiocy than a lack of understanding of Manhattan geography. When I saw ‘Bleecker and Bowery’ as the intersection, I thought that if I walked long enough on Bleecker Street I would arrive at 315, the venue’s address. But the address was 315 Bowery, and I instead wound up somewhere in the West Village. I had already dragged my friends long enough through Manhattan to find an incorrect address that I felt awful to do it to them again. There were already rumors circulating that the club would close down (I still have my ‘Save CBGB’ shirt from when it was under debate), and I knew I may not have another chance. I was right—the venue shuttered in 2006. I never got to see it, and every time I think about it I get a little bit wistful. I did get to see the famed awning on display at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, but it wasn’t the experience it might have been (it’s Cleveland for chrissakes.)

December 2006, still hopeful
even after the venue closed.
Photo by A. Marakov.

In my mind, the ghosts of this punk playground run rampant through the East Village, clinging to it with desperate, white-knuckled grips, urging it not to set up another hotel with $17 cocktails, not another pre-fab glass condo that only a zillionaire from Dubai or a Trump can afford. My impression is not a new one—hosts of New Yorkers yearn for the days when New York, when Manhattan, when Brooklyn meant something else, something other than money and penthouse views. The punk New York is one that brought me here, that wildness and freedom and creative spirit still lives on the streets and causes me to wince every time I walk past the John Varvatos store that CBGB has become (though, to his credit, Varvatos left much of the original stickers and graffiti up to commemorate the space’s past). I refuse to go inside because I worry that part of me will die.

The reason for this nostalgia right now is two-fold. One, I have just finished reading the entrancing Love Goes to Buildings on Fire by Will Hermes. An editor at Rolling Stone, Hermes has penned the history of punk, salsa, contemporary classical, contemporary jazz, and hip-hop in the five years that each developed in New York, all interestingly from 1973-1978. Every step of the way, I was with Hermes at David Byrne’s apartment on 12th Street, at the Mercer Arts Center of yesteryear, at a performance space where the Ramones once held court that is now a designer pet clothing store. I was walking along the streets with Patti Smith, listening to Television with Lou Reed as he watched them play at CBGB, aching as Hermes himself missed the train to what turned out to be one of the most captivating Grateful Dead concerts in the band’s history. In a series of historical vignettes, Hermes shows us the events in New York that led to the creation of these pivotal times in music history. We aren’t just fed facts, but rather see, feel, and understand facets of people’s lives. The text is as much a sociological study as a survey of music history. To be rather general about it, it is a must for anyone who loves New York and the way and the reasons why people create music; it will somehow make you love both even more, when you didn’t even think that was possible.

I noticed myself more voraciously diving into the punk sections, but I am more than a little biased. Once again, reading Hermes’s words, I pumped new blood into my love for the punk movement. And yet, sometimes I wonder what I am doing here in this city that may no longer be a place where a venue like CBGB could survive. The New York that exists in my mind is one that’s different than the one I walk around in every day. Granted, this one is incredibly safer and I am far less likely to trip on a crackpipe in the middle of the street. I can walk around the East Village without fear of getting mugged, for which I am certainly grateful. But the spirit is still alive, isn’t it? That spirit of I can do, I can make whatever pleases me? I can think about work that I like and produce something that is simultaneously in homage and something new, spurred on by my peers who are doing the same? Perhaps that is the energy I feel now, but I like to think a lot of it is leftover from punk, that spirit of DIY and fuck-off-ness I hope has infused its way into my own life in some capacity.

This brings us to the second reason for this perhaps sudden bout of punk nostalgia: the annual Met Ball in celebration of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s latest Costume Institute exhibition, “Punk: Chaos to Couture.” Though I am not often one to comment on current events, this one, as you may have guessed, hits close to home.

The Met Ball is to many the super bowl of fashion, material sister of my other life-blood, style. Highest of high A-List celebrities, fashion and otherwise, are invited to attend in theme of each exhibition. So several celebrities try their hand at “punk style,” some really just going overboard and some showing a sincere effort that elicits at most a regretful “Well, you tried.” But seeing fashion and punk so closely together, not only at the same party but holding hands there, leaves me uncharacteristically numb. I am almost excited, almost jumping for joy that I would get to see so many of my favorite artistic expressions in one venue; and I am almost confused, because punk never was a fashion movement to those who truly started it, those in New York (in case you were wondering, all of this Sex Pistols torn up business was more of a marketing tactic by Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren after he failed to fashionably market his previous band, the New York Dolls). Yes, I think it’s nice that fashion could take cues from Patti Smith because, well, look at her, she’s absolutely stunning—I myself cite her as a personal style muse. But I don’t know whether to celebrate or revile the idea that fashion has taken so many of its ideas from punk. Imagine if you have a ripped t-shirt that you wear because it’s old and you love it and maybe you can’t afford a new one. Then a designer sees you, loves your look, and makes the exact same shirt ripped in the same way but sells it for $400—do you feel honored or exploited? I want to believe the exhibition is tasteful and acknowledges true punk history. At the same time, I feel myself uneager to point my toes toward 80th and 5th and enter the exhibition, for fear it will rip apart and twist the truth to streams of people who don’t know better. What do you think Patti Smith would do?

The Burger That Dreams Are Made Of

Let me preface this by saying I do not normally dream about food.

It is a rare occasion I will enjoy a meal so much that I will go back and eat it again in a dream, let alone in real life. Sometimes I simply am not inspired to do so in either respect.

But I have dreamt about this burger, because I imagine my subconscious felt one experience of eating it in an evening was not enough and it instantly required more.

-

Having the pleasure of dining out with JW, who I had not seen in a year plus, we were initially going to go someplace else in the East Village, when I thought of the burger at The Toucan and the Lion. I stopped in my tracks and gasped. “What’s wrong?” JW said, and rightfully so. It was a simple burst of inspiration that had manifested itself in appearance as a moment of terror. When it dawned on me that this restaurant, where everything I had sampled was simply sublime (in my mind as I write this I am saying the word as the French do—“soo-bleem”), was also close by, I proposed JW look at the menu and see if it was to her liking. It was, and in we went. 

Perhaps I should have written about this restaurant before. Perhaps I should have noted its petite bar snuggled by a long, high-top wooden communal table, its other dining room with lovely little white metal tables, lit by white chandeliers giving off subtly orange light. Perhaps I should have written about the adorable waiters and the air of modern yet casual elegance that pervades the small space. But more ‘perhaps’ than anything, I should have written about the burger.

I first read about this burger in New York magazine, and I thought it sounded strange and weird, a coma-inducing calorie fest that one simply should not eat more than once in a lifetime for fear of one’s health. On Chinese bao bun, the burger is topped with cashew butter and bacon. Maybe it doesn’t sound too wild. Maybe it’s not a violently long list of complicated ingredients that would be of interest to foodies, including words like ‘confit’ and ‘radicchio’. But that’s also what makes it amazing.

Bacon—not too complicated, the candy of meats; sweet, salty, generally delicious and occasionally worth the cult following it has inspired in recent years. Perfectly cooked.

Cashew Butter—Sweet but not too sweet, nutty (duh), and creamy; also not too complicated.

Bao bun—slim, doesn’t get in the way, allows the burger’s flavors to speak for itself. A little bit sweet and doughy-tasting (is that a thing? I’m trying not to sound like a d-bag, but I don’t know if it’s working), but it seals the deal.

Now put those three together and add delicious, juicy ground beef, and you, too, will have discovered one of the keys of the universe. It is a life-changing burger, the candle to which I will hold all other burgers in the future.

Once you take a bite, you just don’t want it to end. Each bite is salty, creamy, tangy, sweet, juicy, and utterly delectable. I wind my way slowly through it, making sure each mouthful has the perfect amount of cashew butter, beef, bacon and roll. Sometimes the cashew butter slides out and you have to redistribute it with a knife. But should you order it, make sure you truly savor each mouthful. Enjoy it with your eyes closed. See the flavors, taste them, smell them, feel them. Eat slowly. Long after JW had finished her equally brilliant Arctic Char, I was just beginning my second half of burger (I cut it so it didn’t squish everywhere), almost laughably savoring each bite. I urge you to do the same. You will not be disappointed.

Or, as JW said, "Maybe that's what love feels like, like you've just eaten a really good burger."

I certainly hope so.

Taylor Mead

A thin, curlicue of a man hobbles to the stage at the Bowery Poetry Club, his cane thumping quietly along the floor. He climbs onto the stage and arrives in his seat, at a small table topped with an even smaller stereo. He pulls the microphone toward his face, obscuring it almost entirely. A bright blue New York Rangers beanie hangs on to his head for dear life, his large glasses resting beneath his beady eyes. And then he talks and talks about nothing in particular.

“None of my affairs are secret. That’s why the Guggenheim won’t give me an award,” he says in a high-pitched but gravelly voice that gets choked every so often by a ball of saliva in his throat.

He is Taylor Mead, a downtown New York legend, an actor known for his performances in independent  and experimental films from the 1960s (when the independent/experimental film movement as we know it today was just beginning) as well as in the films of Andy Warhol, where he was one of the famed Warhol Superstars. Mead is also a writer of things poetry and non-poetry, which is actually how he first made his mark on the 1950s/1960s counterculture. He and his work are considered to be an important link between the Beat Generation and the downtown New York art and theatre culture which arose around the same time. At 86 years old, Taylor Mead still performs at the Bowery Poetry Club every Monday night for exactly 30 minutes, courtesy of Bowery Arts and Sciences.

He reads poetry. “Now I’m going to read some Emily Dickinson for no reason at all except I can’t understand her….She’s so difficult she must be a genius.”

He talks about seeing Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway in the 1950s.

“His sweat dribbled down the walls of the theatre.”

He reads what he calls a “William Burroughs random choice,” from the back of an old, crumpled mimeographed flyer, the front of which reads ‘The Taylor Mead Show featuring Richard Hell,’ a famed New York musician who is said to have coined the term ‘punk’ in the 1970s.

He tells what he calls ‘a fairy tale,’ pressing play on the tiny stereo to release a fury of chaotic jazz into the microphone as he flips through a series of nonsensical and even primitive drawings in thick black ink, tossing the pages to the floor. He reads, “Nuns operate sex factory out of convent” and “Here’s a guy masturbating. It has nothing to do with the fairy tale.” I laugh out loud. 

Unfortunately, very few people laugh with me. Seated behind long white plastic tables, they’re waiting for bingo to begin at 7pm, hosted by well-known drag personas Murray Hill and Linda Simpson. While Mead speaks, they’re talking, texting, eating sandwiches brought in from outside. They look at each other and raise their eyebrows, wondering who is this little old man telling dirty jokes onstage. I want to tell them to stop and listen, even just for a little while, to give him a chance instead of dismissing him entirely. I wouldn’t have known about him at all, either, if it wasn’t for Penny Arcade who said he was a genius and I should go see him. Before I get a chance to say anything, though, he opens his own mouth.

“THIS ISN’T BINGO SHMINGO. SHUT UP.” And they do.

He continues. “Is it time for my dirty poem yet?” he asks the man in the sound booth.

“Yes, I think it is,” the man says, his voice full of appreciation and good humor.

Mead begins to read, saying the poem was lovingly plagiarized by Allen Ginsberg. I am agog that he can even utter such a relationship in a sentence, but I try to listen anyway.

“A whispering rapist roundabout midnight…”

 But before he finishes people begin talking again and he stops reading. “Oh fuck it, it’s too dirty,” he says. Shortly thereafter he hobbles offstage and sits in “his spot” at the edge of the bar. A beer is there waiting for him.

I go and sit with him. I don’t really know what I’m going to say when I first sit down, but then I ask about the poem he was going to read. “It’s my dirty poem,” he says. Sometimes the audience listens and sometimes they don’t, he says. Tonight, though, they weren’t worthy of his poem. He chuckles quietly. “Maybe it’s because of Christmas.”