I moved to NYC in the winter of 1992. Before making the move I spent a lot of time in the East Village seeing live music and occasionally puking in a few doorways (ok, one really, and never again). I mention this not to establish some lame sense of street cred but because it happened and because it afforded me a chance to see a lot of great bands in a lot of great venues that have unfortunately gone the way of the dinosaur.

One of these late great venues, and a personal favorite, was Coney Island High. Located at 15 St Marks Place it was home to D-Generation, The Spitters, Smirk, the Turbo ACs and a host of other bands some of whom are still around and some of whom have sadly lost key members to not-so glamorous but decidedly rock star ends and some of whom have simply gone on to form other bands and play other venues.

Coney Island High was huge. Not just in reputation but in actual stature. It had 3 or 4 floors (memory slightly fuzzy here, please refer to the occasionally puking in doorways remark for context). It was all black and red and had tattered red pleather dinette style chairs and cabaret tables. Floors you could dance on, decent sound system (despite Marky from the Spitters' attempts to rip it from its hinges), different style music and a weekly party called Behind the Green Door.

Places like Coney Island High were the reason I moved to NYC. I could actually see the bands I loved in a groovy, funky, more than slightly worn but oh-so-intimate setting instead of just listening to them on a local radio show at midnight on Fridays (yes, that happened). And now? Well, now Coney Island High is a noodle and sushi place in what has evolved into an area commonly referred to as Little Tokyo. See for yourself:

And here it is now...

 

The Gas Station

When I moved to the East Village the adage that applied to the lettered avenues still meant something; "A is awful. B is bad. C is crazy and D you're dead". I lived right around the corner from a place called the Gas Station, because, well, it had been an old gas station. Surrounded by a chain link fence that was stuffed with all manner of found objects, including an old corner/3-legged sofa riddled with cockroaches I had dumped from my 3rd St apartment, the Gas Station had become a hard-core punk bar that played host to a raft of notorious punk bands.

I had some difficulty digging up old images of the Gas Station. I don't own a scanner and am maybe too lazy to go to the trouble of scanning the old photos I have (I'll get around to it), but the Gas Station and its final days are intrinsically linked to the last day and night of GG Allin. The self-proclaimed Anti-Christ and front man of the Murder Junkies played his final show at the Gas Station. What happened next was evidence of a man in decline. He publicly snapped like a cheap lawn chair - running and rolling around the streets of the EV buck naked and covered in shit and blood. I dug up some video footage of GG frolicking in his altogether. It's tough to watch, for a number of reasons, but perhaps mostly so because it's common knowledge that just hours later he OD'ed in his brother's apartment on 9th St.

The Gas Station was razed and a doorman building with a Duane Reade erected in its place. Proving that old punks can never go home again but they can certainly shop there.

CORRECTION: A faithful reader - Johnny Puke, sent a correction to this post. GG actually died in a friend's apartment on Avenue B. The New York Post at the time of Allin's death actually published that he had died at his brother's apartment on 9th Street. All of these were inaccurate. Allin's brother lived on Mulberry Street in '93 not on 9th St.














The Former Gas Station

City Musings...at least our graffiti is clever...sometimes.

A collection of photos from around the City and mostly the East Village for your viewing pleasure...



















A Message of Nope

What used to be and what is now...

For years now I've watched as the City has been systematically denuded of its coolness. The characters have been driven out with the homeless and the squeegee guys. You never see Gene Pool peddling around on his unicycle in his suit made of tin cans or astro-turf. The guy who used to sell stained glass jewelry in his daisy dukes and red cowboy boots (I called him the Wild Man from Borneo) on Broadway between Bleecker and Houston, gone. The Duck Man, once featured in the opening credits of Saturday Night Live, also, gone. And finally, the one I probably miss the most, the Bubble Man, who would walk down West 4th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues with an enormous pickle bucket filled with suds and a multi-holed bubble wand, waving the wand and leaving a tremendous cloud of bubbles in his wake, GONE. In a city as transient and mutable as New York, one has to get used to the fact that some things go the way of the dinosaurs. But I miss the grit. I miss the sense that you had to have balls, bravery or a bit of insanity to live in this City. So as my love note to the City I love and love to hate, I will be posting images and anecdotes about what places and people are gone (CBGBs, the Mudd Club, Mercer Arts Center, Homeless Man, etc.) and what chain, franchise, soulless conglomerate has moved in in their place.

As Lou Reed once said: I'll take Manhattan in a garbage bag with Latin written on the side of it that says "it's hard to give a shit these days..."