This Ain’t No Disco

My life as a club kid was relatively short. It basically coincided with the year I attended NYU (1981), which allowed me to stay out late, and carried over into my first job at The Village Voice, which allowed me to go to New Wave nights at The Anvil on Tuesdays since I had Wednesdays off.

Similarly, the amount of time I lived in the East Village was relatively brief (the summer of 1980, plus 1981-1987). But, at one point, I was living next to the Fun Gallery (in Steve Buscemi’s old apartment), across the street from Jeff Weiss’s storefront theater, around the corner from PS122, and I was surrounded by dozens of art galleries and clubs.

Both these things were critically important in shaping the person I am today.

So when news of Tim Lawrence’s book, Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor: 1980-1983, popped up in my Facebook news feed, I couldn’t wait to read it.

The book does not disappoint.

I’m not alone in saying that Lawrence has written one of the most comprehensive and exhaustively researched books about this vitally important period in New York’s history.

The premise of the book is that this was a unique period for two reasons.

First, artists felt free to work in different mediums: everyone was an artist, musician, filmmaker and actor.

Second, and perhaps more important, is that this was a period when downtown met uptown, which is to say that downtown’s art/punk scene met uptown’s hip hop scene.

This resulted in an unprecedented outpouring of artistic creation.

And the place where a lot of that creation happened or was initiated was the city’s dance clubs.

I was more of a Mudd Club/Berlin person, but this book exposed me to a whole world I was barely aware of: clubs like The Loft, Better Days and Paradise Garage, that were more racially mixed, as opposed to the predominantly white punk/new wave clubs I went to or the almost exclusively white Saint.

One of the great things about this book is the inclusion of actual DJ discographies from this period. Now I like to think of myself as something of an ’80s music expert, but I usually only recognized about half the songs in these discographies (mainly the punk/new waves ones), and found myself scratching my head at some of the others.

I guess I led a sheltered existence!

But the reason why this book is so important is because it soon becomes abundantly clear that this period of New York’s history was a unique time that will never happen again (although Lawrence tries to paint a more hopeful picture).

In the early ’80s, it seemed like new clubs were opening up every week and that was just normal.

And, before the Internet destroyed everything, the only way to find about these places was by word of mouth, so they had time to grow and flourish before being ruined by yuppies. (I kid the yuppies!)

Ultimately, it was a combination of gentrification and AIDS, among other things, that drove most of these clubs out of business.

Nowadways, I’m ashamed to admit, I’ve become very middle-class, and I can’t be bothered dragging my ass to Brooklyn to go dancing.

And that’s the other thing that was great about the early ’80s in New York: all the clubs were in downtown Manhattan and downtown Manhattan was still cheap enough that you could afford to live there and walk to them.

There’s a passage near the end of the book where Lawrence describes what’s become of some club locations (the Mudd Club is now a luxury apartment, the Loft is now a J. Crew, etc.). It’s hard not to feel nostalgic.

As Lawrence says, “The contrast between the version of the city that used to attract moneyless people who wanted to build a life and the one where the best those without capital can hope for is to commute to its center to carry out jobs that will never enable them to establish a home in its increasingly exclusive landscape is dramatic and continually charges the fascination with this bygone era.”

Only someone who was there will recognize names like Roxy promoter Ruza Blue, Man Parrish’s band Shox Lumania or performer Kestutis Nakas.

Everyone else will have to read this book.

Born at the Wrong Time

I just saw Danny Says, the new documentary about Ramones manager Danny Fields, and, while I enjoyed it immensely, I came away with the distinct impression that I was born at the wrong time.

Fields, for those who don’t know, is one of those people always who seemed to be at the right place and the right time for everything. (It also helped, of course, that he was extremely intelligent.)

As someone who likes to read biographies and see biographical films, there are at least two other people I can think of who seem to possess the same quality (coincidentally, they’re also music managers who were the subject of their own documentaries): David Geffen and Alice Cooper’s manager, Shep Gordon.

In the first chapter of his new autobiography, Supermensch, Gordon describes how, on his first trip to Los Angeles, he pulls into a hotel where Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin just happen to be staying. He eventually goes on to manage Alice Cooper (among others), and that, in turn, leads to a bunch of other careers.

In a similar fashion, David Geffen, after starting in the mailroom of the William Morris Agency in New York (after lying on his resume that he finished his degree), moves to Los Angeles and seems to fall ass-backwards into managing all the most influential southern California musicians of the seventies (Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young; Jackson Brown; Joni Mitchell), before going on to even greater success as a record label owner and movie producer.

As for Fields, he starts out as an editor for various publications (including teenybopper magazine, 16) while hanging out with the Warhol crowd, then becomes a publicist at Elektra Records (where he’s responsible for them signing Iggy Pop and MC5 in the same day) and later, after seeing them perform at CBGB, becomes the manager of the Ramones. He just seems to be at the center of everything that was happening in New York and Los Angeles in the ’60s and ’70s.

Why was Fields so successful, often in spite of his own self-acknowledged shortcomings?

Part of it is because, as the new book Love and Death on the New York Dance Floor, 1980-1983 says in its introduction, the real estate crash of the ’70s allowed artists to live in Manhattan cheaply. Furthermore, they were all clustered together in a few downtown neighborhoods (mainly Greenwich Village and Soho), and everyone, it seems, knew everyone else. New York was a smaller city back then. (The same thing, I suppose, could be said of Los Angeles in the ’70s, with its large musical community centered around Laurel Canyon and the open mic “hootenanny” nights at the Troubadour club, where many of them got their start.)

Part of it was because of the music industry itself, which has changed beyond recognition.

Nowadays, there’s essentially no music press (like everything else, a lot has migrated online) and record companies don’t exert nearly as much influence as they used to. Hell, people don’t even buy records anymore (or CDs, or mp3s).

I feel like I missed out on a golden age, just by virtue of being born too late.

Now, it seems, I spend most of my time grumbling about the good old days and how those days will never return.

Sure, maybe Danny Fields is old now, but at least he has something to show for his life (as do David Geffen and Shep Gordon).

There’s a line in the movie that I think sums up Fields’ philosophy pretty well. It’s when he says, referring to his job as a publicist: “It wasn’t a job. It was a role. Jobs can be replaced.”

Fields created his own career path.

And that may be the secret to surviving in these lean and boring times.

If, indeed, that’s even still possible.

The Guilty Pleasure of “Spring Breakers”

The other night while I was channel surfing, I came across Harmony Korine’s cautionary film about four young women on that annual rite of passage known as spring break. I’d seen the movie before and knew of its reputation before I’d even seen it the first time. Korine wrote the screenplay for the similarly controversial Kids, directed by Larry Clark (another man who’s turned “youthsploitation” into a genre). He’s also known for his visual virtuosity, which Spring Break has in spades. In fact, there’s not much dialogue in Spring Break, but what’s there is “cherce,” as the joke says.

But let’s get back to the story, such as it is.

Four young women (including former Disney child stars Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens) venture to St. Petersburg, Florida for spring break and, along the way, get mixed up with a charismatic drug dealer, played by James Franco. Right there, you have a recipe for controversy.

As I said, there’s not much dialogue in the film and the visuals mostly consist of shots of various nubile young men and women partying and cavorting on the beach and in hotel rooms in skimpy clothes, drinking copious amounts of alcohol and doing large amounts of drugs, all without much consequence (in the beginning, at least). If any parents were watching this film, these scenes alone would give them a heart attack.

It’s kind of interesting to watch these scenes from the perspective of a middle-aged gay man, as well. While I was hoping for more shots of scantily clad young men  (and you do get a glimpse of some young men in jock straps), I found myself mildly aroused even by the shots of scantily clad young women. The fact that I’m middle-aged adds an extra level of creepiness to the proceedings.

But that’s just it. It’s not so much young male or female bodies on display, so much as youth itself, and therein lies the movie’s appeal with older viewers such as yours truly.

There are a couple of scenes that really encapsulate the movie for me.

One is a scene of James Franco playing Britney Spears’ “Everytime” on a white piano near the ocean at sunset while the three young women dance around him wearing nothing but bikinis and ski caps, holding their guns aloft. This scene epitomizes the guilty pleasure/have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too nature of the movie. It’s beautifully shot and perversely reminded me of “The Three Graces.” The Spears song seems to have been chosen as an obvious target for derision by intellectual elites, but it’s an undeniably beautiful song, as well. (Spears’ music seems to play a key role in the movie. In another scene, the girls sing and dance to “Hit Me Baby, One More Time.”)

The other scene that launches this movie into Scarface levels of reverence/self-parody, is a scene of James Franco standing on his bed, displaying his guns and various consumer possessions and saying “Look at my shit!” in a thick Florida accent. (I still think I might make a YouTube parody of this if I can put the right outfit together.)

This role is really a tour de force for Franco and is notable for another reason as well. For all the gay roles that Franco has played, there’s nothing more homoerotic than the scene where the girls make him suck on the end of a gun. (Again, have your cake and eat it too.)

There is some sort of justice at the end of this violent film, but it’s a mixed bag. Mostly, you’re left with memories of the panoramic sunsets, the guilt-free consumption of drugs, alcohol and sex; and the vision of James Franco jumping up and down on his bed and saying “Look at my shit!”

Not Proud

New York City's Gay Pride Parade 2016

I just got back from New York City’s Gay Pride Parade and, I’m sorry to report, it was the worst thing you could possibly say about a gay event.

It was boring.

Maybe I’m just jaded, or maybe my feelings are being colored by my current financial/job situation or the recent mass shooting at a gay disco in Orlando, but I feel like I’ve reached a tipping point this year.

At first, I thought the reason I didn’t see any floats or hear any music for the first hour after I arrived was because it was a deliberate security measure. After all, there had just been the aforementioned mass shooting and, for the first time, police were patrolling the parade armed with machine guns.

Then, when the first float with music arrived shortly afterward, I realized it was because the parade’s organizers had just decided to front-load the parade with all the most boring groups first. I mean, I was happy to see Gays Against Guns (at least that’s political) and I love gay cops and firemen as much as the next guy, but—boring!

Maybe they figured that, since the floats are bigger and more cumbersome to move, they should place them at the end.

Note to Heritage of Pride (the parade’s organizers): this makes for a very boring parade.

This year’s parade was about as exciting as watching traffic try to pile into the Holland Tunnel (and it moved just as slowly).

Now, mind you, I have a very long history with New York’s Pride Parade. I attended my first parade in 1981, back when it used to start at Columbus Circle. I used to join in at the end of the parade—the place reserved for those unaffiliated with any official group—and march until the end of the parade route.

In the years since then (as the parade route got shorter and shorter), I was there every year (except for one year when I went to Los Angeles and missed both LA’s and New York’s parade), watching from the sidelines and lending my support.

I would be there (usually by myself), cheering people on and occasionally tearing up at the thought of all my friends and lovers who were no longer alive to witness this event.

In fact, I had gotten Gay Pride Day down to a science. I would watch the parade from the southeastern-most point at Fifth Avenue and Eighth Street, run home to take a disco nap and then go to the Dance on the Pier (which I can no longer afford), thereby avoiding the entire West Village.

Speaking of the Dance on the Pier: It took me years to build up the courage to go to this event (because it’s so crowded and I’m claustrophobic) and I only went because, when it began, it was a relative bargain.

But after years of price increases and not knowing who was performing until they went onstage (and then finding out it was some D-list disco diva from the ’90s), I stopped going. (OK, I went back a few years ago when Cher performed, but it was Cher!)

Now, the Christopher Street Pier (where the dance started) has been transformed into a yuppified park and the 14^th Street Pier (where it moved) has been torn down to make way for an even more yuppified park, (ironically) financed by gay show business mogul Barry Diller.

But back to the parade.

From a purely aesthetic point of view, I feel like the parade’s production values have gone down in the last few years.

I can remember when every gay bar in New York—back when gay bars were still a central part of gay life—had their own float in the parade. I particularly remember Splash’s float one year, when they had a bunch of hot guys holding cardboard cutouts of palm trees. I don’t even remember what the rest of the float consisted of, the guys were so hot.

I also remember how gay designer David Spada (who died of AIDS) would have a float every year featuring his “freedom ring” costumes of rainbow-colored metal rings and how one year his float was preceded by an elaborate paper dragon. For years, I had a Stanley Stellar photograph (that appeared on the cover of the New York Native) on my refrigerator of some cute guy in one of his outfits.

Another thing that’s changed about the parade is its demographics.

While it’s always been the case that a lot of the most “fabulous” (i.e., wealthy and predominantly white) gays leave town for Fire Island or the Hamptons on Gay Pride Weekend (as they do on most summer weekends), there would usually be at least a smattering of fabulous gays left in town to both participate in and watch the parade.

Now the parade has become the province of predominantly young minority gays. I realize that sounds incredibly racist (and ageist) but it also makes sense, because these are the people for whom it’s still most necessary to march in a gay pride parade. White gays (and, primarily, white gay men) have gotten to the point where they can “pass” in straight society, whereas for a lot of minority gays, that’s still not possible. (It’s worth noting that a majority of the victims in Orlando’s mass shooting were Hispanic.)

Also, the parade has been almost entirely taken over by corporate sponsors. Their floats tend to feature a bland assortment of people dressed in T-shits bearing their company’s logo.

Is this a deliberate attempt to make the parade more “family-friendly” (like the Brooklyn Pride event I recently performed at where my material was deemed too “vulgar”)?

It makes one long for the days when you’d see some leather man sprawled across the hood of a car being whipped by another leather man.

Or that old guy who’d dye his poodle in rainbow colors and prance around with it.

Or, God help me, the Dykes on Bikes, with that old woman whose droopy bare breasts wouldn’t even appeal to a lesbian.

Surely, that would be preferable to floats dedicated to Diet Coke, Delta Airlines and Wells Fargo Bank.

But maybe that’s just me.

Maybe these are just the ravings of an over-the-hill gay white guy, and the young minority gays who are marching in the parade now think it’s great because they don’t know any better.

Yeah, and I won’t come in your mouth.

Welcome to My Midlife Crisis, Part 3: The Clock Is Ticking

Video of Ethyl Eichelberger in "Leer"

 Yesterday I had another one of those days (which I’ve been having a lot of recently): a culture-filled day that turned into yet another reminder of that existential reality: the clock is ticking.

It started out at Howl! Happening, an East Village gallery that opened up in one of those newly constructed luxury buildings that have been popping up all over the East Village lately. The gallery was created by Arturo Vega, the former art director for The Ramones (he created their famous logo, among other things), someone I knew from the years I used to hang out at The Bar on East 4^th Street. The gallery itself is a reminder that Manhattan has turned into a museum, a memorial to all the great things that used to happen here. But the places where those things used to happen have been bulldozed to make way for the yuppie hordes who now live here and are trying to recreate their suburban childhoods.

But I digress.

Anyway, the current show is called “When Jackie Met Ethyl” and it features videos and artifacts from performances by two legendary drag queens/actors, Jackie Curtis and Ethyl Eichelberger. Jackie was, of course, one of Andy Warhol’s “superstars” and Ethyl was an accomplished actor, playwright and wigmaker whom I think I first saw perform at the Pyramid, but who eventually appeared on Broadway and HBO. I was lucky enough to catch one of Ethyl’s last performances at PS122. I’ve been racking my brain trying to remember what it was. I think it must have been Leer, his interpretation of Shakespeare’s King Lear, but I remember that it featured him playing the accordion. (That was one of his trademarks.) He eventually committed suicide after being diagnosed with AIDS.

Holly Woodlawn memorial at LaMama

While I was at the gallery, one of the people working there mentioned that they were going to be streaming a memorial service for Holly Woodlawn (another of Warhol’s superstars) that was taking place at the LaMama theater a few blocks away.

Without even thinking (or having an invitation), I ran out of the gallery to LaMama and insinuated myself into the line of mourners for Miss Woodlawn. (I’d like to think she would have approved.)

The memorial service was a Who’s Who of downtown New York and off-off-Broadway: Penny Arcade, Michael Musto and others. Some of them I knew personally or from their work, others I had only read about (including at the gallery show I had just seen).

Memorials like these are a sort of uncomfortable mix of stargazing, legacy-building and genuine emotion. The memorial service was being streamed all over the world and there were people taking pictures and filming both officially and unofficially (i.e., on their cell phones, for future Facebook postings, no doubt). I must confess that I myself took one photo before the ceremony started, but I wanted to be respectful.

Even though I didn’t know Woodlawn personally (as many of the people in attendance did), I found myself very moved. In fact, there was one point when the Lavender Light Gospel Choir started singing that I began crying uncontrollably (much to my own embarrassment). I think this was because they were singing a religious song (after an amusing rendition of “Walk on the Wild Side”) and, in contrast to all the light-hearted remembrances that had come before, it brought home the reality and enormity of the fact that someone had actually died.

Martin Belk at BGSQD

The final stop on my cultural tour was a book reading and signing by a writer, Martin Belk, who happens to be a Facebook friend of mine and also happens to be one of the few people I know who’s read my book. While we’ve corresponded and I’ve followed his Facebook posts for many years, this was the first time we had actually met. (He lives in London.)

I was very impressed by both the quality of what he read and the mere fact that he had written this book, gotten it published and was now having a reading and book signing in New York City.

Reading his biography in the program afterwards, it seemed to me that he had really gotten his life together and figured out what he wanted to do with it. He’d completed his B.A. at night while still living in New York City, had moved to Scotland to get his master’s degree and was currently working on his PhD.

As my job search slogs into its ninth month, I’ve been having serious questions about my own life choices. I thought that at this point in my life, I’d be doing something much more meaningful and exciting than just struggling to find a job to pay my rent.

And I’m starting to question my artistic choices, as well. I’m not even sure of the best way to express myself anymore.

In addition to writing this blog, I’ve been writing and performing stand-up comedy for the last 15 years. But in the last two months, with all the stress of my job search, I’ve completely lost my sense of humor. (The shitty spring weather we’ve been having hasn’t helped, either!)

My experiences yesterday reminded me once again that we’re all on this planet for a very short amount of time. As my writer friend quoted one of his teachers saying: “You have the rest of eternity after you’re dead to do nothing. But right now, you better get on with it!”

Welcome to My Midlife Crisis, Part 2: The Nostalgia Continues

I took a walk down memory lane today. In fact, every day I talk a walk down memory lane. There are entire neighborhoods in Manhattan that I can’t walk through without a profound sense of sadness and loss.

Today I went to a gallery in Chinatown to see a show by the actor and artist Duncan Hannah, who was in Jim Jarmusch’s first film, Permanent Vacation. The woman running the gallery (who seemed to be about 25) was wearing a T-shirt that said “I’m OK, You’re OK.” I told her that this was the name of a self-help book in the ’70s that I actually read. She was not aware that she was wearing the name of a best-selling book, even though her shirt had the same typeface and logo as the book’s cover.

But this should have been no surprise.

Since I was in the neighborhood, I decided to walk by the former site of the Mudd Club, which now has a plaque to commemorate its place in music history. How many weekends did I walk from my apartment on East Fourth Street to that building down on White Street? Too many to remember. (At a certain point, however, even the Mudd Club wasn’t cool enough for me, so I used to bide my time at my apartment until the after-hours club Berlin—at 622 Broadway—would open.)

Walking north from White Street, I passed another landmark from my life, the former site of the Rock Lounge at 285 West Broadway, the first “new wave” club I ever went to. I was tempted to take a picture of that, as well as of the former site of Sohozat, the book and zine store that used to be on West Broadway across from the empty lot that is now the Soho Grand Hotel, but once you start going down that path, where does it stop?

I passed some newly constructed luxury buildings on West Broadway and spoke briefly to a man who was trying to attract customers to his clothing store. I told him that I live a few blocks away, but that I hardly walk down West Broadway anymore because it’s nothing but Eurotrash. He laughed. (Who among these arrivistes would remember that the Eileen Fisher store was once a Chinese restaurant called Oh Ho So? Who can even imagine a Chinese restaurant in Soho now?)

Continuing on to the West Village, I walked down Bleecker Street between 6^th and 7^th Avenues. I can remember when there used to be a used clothing store near the corner of Bleecker and Leroy Streets (where I used to buy many of my clothes in the early ’80s) and Bleecker Street Records was across the street. It was like a miniature universe peopled by nothing but musicians and music fans! Where are those people now? Do people still wear metal buttons with the names of their favorite bands on their vintage overcoats? If they did, they would look ridiculous on the streets of today’s designer-dressed Manhattan.

Last night, I saw a movie called A Bigger Splash, which features a scene of Ralph Fiennes dancing wildly to the Rolling Stones song “Emotional Rescue.” It’s one of the most thrilling film moments I’ve seen in a long time, and not just because of the wild abandon with which Fiennes dances, but because I distinctly remember buying that album the first summer I lived in New York City and hearing that song brought me right back to that first carefree summer of 1980.

When I look at my life now, I’m reminded of that line from the Talking Heads song, “Once in a Lifetime”: How did I get here?

How is it that I had more fun in New York City 30 years ago when I had less money, than I’m having now?

Maybe it’s because 30 years of deficit spending has finally caught up with me at the same time that the jobs I used to have are disappearing.

Or maybe it’s because New York is just a less fun city.

Welcome to My Midlife Crisis

These are dark days.

I’m currently working as a doorman for one-third my normal salary, because that’s the only job I could get (and I’m probably lucky to have that). I’ve spent the last eight months being stymied by a hiring system that ironically seems designed to keep people like me who “think outside the box” out and to reward cookie-cutter mediocrity (with appropriately mediocre wages).

And every time I open the newspaper or look at the Internet, it seems to be bad news.

Neal Gabler, who was once a TV movie critic (in addition to being a published author), just penned an article in The Atlantic about his financial struggles as a writer and the larger plight of most middle-class Americans today, living from paycheck to paycheck. And this is from someone who’s famous!¹

Another article talks about how the suicide rate in America is at a 30-year high. Because of economic forces (among other things), predominantly white middle-aged men like myself have been killing themselves in increasing numbers (mainly with drugs and alcohol, but also with more efficient methods).²

And at the same time that there seems to be an ’80s revival going on³, many icons of that era—Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, David Bowie and now Prince—are dead.

Meanwhile, in the science fiction-like world of New York real estate, gentrification continues at a blazing speed. The most recent example of this is longtime icon of the Lower East Side, Katz’s Deli, selling their air rights to create a co-op featuring million-dollar studios, while simultaneously destroying every other mom-and-pop store on its block.

And yet, when I walk the streets and look around me, everyone seems to be doing great. Restaurants are full to overflowing (especially now that it’s spring), everyone looks like a supermodel and is wearing the latest designer clothes, my local supermarket is filled with assorted Europeans buying groceries.

“What’s the problem?” you might say.

The problem is that I (and many others like myself) seem to have missed out on this great economy that everyone is talking about.

Sometimes I ask myself, Is this it? Have I just worked my last “normal” job? Am I going to have to content myself with being a service worker from now on? Am I going to have to move into some studio in the Bronx with ten other people?

And what happened to the things that I actually love doing, such as writing and performing? (I can’t perform right now because I’m working nights.) Why am I killing myself just to survive?

And, once again, where’s the outrage? (I’m still getting over Bernie Sanders’s loss in New York’s Democratic primary, despite the fact that Independents weren’t allowed to vote and that 120,000 voters mysteriously disappeared in Brooklyn.)

Maybe people are just in denial, because when something like this happens (i.e., unemployment or underemployment), people seem to think that it’s your fault. As in, what’s wrong with you that you can’t find a decent job, not what’s wrong with the economy or what’s wrong with the hiring system. (Also: It couldn’t possibly happen to me!)

It seems like if you want to get a decent job these days, you have to create it yourself (or, at least, find it before it’s advertised).

Maybe I just need to do a better job of monetizing my “brand,” the way Jimmy Buffet has.⁴ Jimmy Buffet, whom you may recall as the one-hit wonder who sang “Margaritaville,” has turned that song into a chain of resorts and restaurants. Maybe I need to do the same thing with my brand! (Somehow, though, “The Gay Curmudgeon” doesn’t sound like the kind of thing that would encourage people to relax and spend money.)

Because right now all I have is a spectacular sounding career.

And I can’t use that to pay the rent.

1 http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/my-secret-shame/476415/

2 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/20/health/life-expectancy-decline-mortality.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0

3 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/21/fashion/dont-you-forget-about-me-the-formerly-irredeemable-80s-return.html?smid=fb-share

4 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/business/media/jimmy-buffetts-margaritaville-is-a-state-of-mind-and-an-empire.html