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?

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.”

Galleries Three

“…where I shared so many cheeseburgers with my hustler husbands…”

Mx. Justin Vivian Bond’s feminine growl echoes throughout Participant, Inc., an arts exhibition space on the Lower East Side. The album is Dendrophile, the artist’s first, incorporating jazz and folk sounds with Bond’s cabaret-style vocals. A needle lays stiff on black revolving wax, making Bond’s voice a soundtrack to his exhibition, “The Fall of the House of Whimsy.”

Bond is a New York performance art and cabaret legend, notable for v’s (Bond’s pronoun of choice, preferring not to use either ‘his’ or ‘hers’) contributions to what’s known as a “radical queer” art culture. V does not so much play with gender as crumple it, rip it up and throw it in the shredder. Considering vself as neither man nor woman nor drag queen nor transsexual nor whatever, Bond simply is. V is a long creature with elegant, elongated features, a sharp, smooth jawline, and a rush of mahogany-auburn hair. Long-legged and glamorous, Bond has sung, acted, and performed all over the world, and was recently described by The New Yorker’s Hilton Als as “the greatest cabaret artist of (v’s) generation.”

Having read an intriguing article about Bond in New York magazine many moons ago, I decided to visit v’s exhibition, “The Fall of the House of Whimsy.” The exhibition is a small series of installations, photos and drawings all inspired by or featuring parts of Bond’s former loft on Second Avenue, which will soon be demolished. It is a flight of colorful nostalgia, all very personal. I felt Bond’s essence radiating through each book on display from v’s home, each ornate gold mirror, each plastic pot of makeup placed perfectly askew on various surfaces. Though I know I may never meet v, I know there is a person reflected in that space who has a penchant for a mixture of old-world meets new-world elegance and scandal—the Marquis de Sade’s Justine occupies the same shelf as books about Lillian Hellman, Weimar Berlin,  and Sextrology. A collage of intricate black and white cut-outs of campy, made-up figures, lithe feminine hands with perfect manicures, and witchcraft symbols are placed in the corner of a mirror. A chair is littered with a barrage of cosmetics the colors of which remind me of a 96-pack of Crayola crayons. Drawings of gender-unspecific faces on thick, textured white paper are drawn with a soft, light hand. An old, brown, scratched Acrosonic piano with “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” from The Sound of Music with Mary Martin as its only sheet music, with a silver, disco-like fabric sign hung on the back of it. After walking around the gallery, I feel like I have known Bond for years, but am walking around v’s house after v has died. There’s a sadness in the collection of objects that reflects what must be Bond’s mourning of leaving v’s beloved home. I just want to give v a hug and say it’ll be okay, that v’s next home will be just as lovely. Because any space that such a person as v inhabits will be full of life and color and beauty.

**

Walking along East Houston Street, my next stop was supposed to be Salon 94, but on my way down Stanton Street I was struck by a gallery whose front was outfitted by an iron gate made of a wild collection of objects, from old toy boats to sun figurines to bicycles. How could I not enter such a space? It was Lambert Fine Arts, a gallery which opened quite recently, in October 2011. Hung on the walls were works by artists Brandon Friend and Jason Douglas Griffin. Friend’s work featured various colored and patterned papers decoupaged into figures and scenes, my favorites of which were an astronaut-like figure assembled on a variety of MetroCards. Griffin’s work also featured scenes done with decoupage and paint, an especially cool one done to show a dj and breakdancer, entitled “Windmills in the City.”

"Windmills in the City" by Jason Douglas Griffin

A very helpful gallery associate named Jean also showed me some of his own work. Outfitted in smart black pinstriped pants, a black sweater, black scarf and black shoes, Jean, originally from Haiti, has lived in the U.S. for 28 years and says every trip to New York is breathtaking. His most recent stay inspired him to do a series of watercolors based on Harlem. Jean digs out a watercolor pad from his bag and removes his creations. Brightly colored and drawn in ink with a loose hand, they feature a character named Queeny, whose exaggerated physical features are meant to act as a critique on the physical representation fed to us by popular culture. Jean’s speech is laid thick with a French but actually Haitian accent (he pronounces his country of origin like saying the letters “I-T.”) It feels like a gift to go into an art gallery and see not only what you’re meant to see but what you aren’t meant to see. I thank Jean and continue on my way.

**

The next stop is Salon 94, a gallery on Bowery and Stanton, for a Marilyn Minter exhibition. Minter is one of my favorite artists, whose brightly colored paintings often feature lushly made up mouths and eyes, sharp stilettos or other figures related to and commenting on the female experience. My favorite in this exhibition, though, was the video she made entitled “Playpen.” In the video, a child of maybe three or four splashes about in pools of silver glittered paint in slow motion. The glittering metallic droplets fly in front of the camera, morphing and changing shape as they hit the floor, long strands of paint flying from the child’s hands and feet as it splashes. I sat there, entranced, watching the paint fly and spray and fall. Was it possible for paint to hypnotize? If so, I could have doubtlessly been convinced I was a chicken and clucked all throughout the gallery.

Something I think people forget is that access to art doesn’t have to cost anything. Galleries are a great way to see both the new and the old in any art form. Not only that, but an educated gallerist can always offer a one-on-one education in whatever you’re viewing. While a museum like Museum of Modern Art is a brilliant American institution, admission there now clocks in at $25 for adults, so attending all the time is not necessarily an option for those starving artists among us. But galleries are always free and abundant, so if there’s not something you’re interested in seeing in one, you can just pop into another and doubtlessly be inspired. Free art for all!