badassery

CHRISTOPHER STREET PIER*

excerpt from "Dead Frankie"

Not everyone was on the game, just almost everyone. The thing was, none of us quite fit out in the world, each of us a puzzle piece tossed into the wrong box, and we would never fit. We found each other in the gay bar of misfit toys.

Sharon was platinum blonde, a real girl, and a high-class whore. I'm an escort, she'd say. Sharon wore cream-colored vintage panties she swore belonged to Greta Garbo. Real Garbo pussy stains, she'd say, See? She'd lift her skirt for you and point, I'm not lying.

Candy was a towering bottle-blonde glamour-puss in red patent leather platforms, she worked the West Side Highway after dark with her dick tucked neatly and discreetly between the cheeks of her perfect apple ass. Cindy was thirteen years old, short and tough like a bulldog. Eight years old when her mother sold the last of her childhood to a john, after that she turned tricks on Delancey Street with her mother. By the time she was eleven, she walked off Delancey Street and found Candy. Cindy kept a lookout for cops and bad tricks, and in between backseats and blowjobs, Candy taught her about makeup and other things she thought little girls should know. Cindy had very little interest in girlie things, except occasionally, other girlies.

Cowboy was a hustler, and my boyfriend for a week, maybe two.

I'd found my tribe. We were couples and threesomes and foursomes; lost children, throwaways and runaways; hustlers, whores, trannys, dykes, fags and fag hags. We drifted through the gay bars of New York in the 70's, the Ninth Circle, the Haymarket, the Anvil, the Zipper; we invaded Max's Kansas City and the piers at the end of Christopher Street, a knotty mess of pretty boys, trannys, aged queens, whores, and fag hags. 

Memories of Times Square mop man and live sex show performer, Guy Gonzales.

Howard Johnson’s, Broadway and 45th (by Carl Burton 2011)

Tendersweet Clams

Some nights, after I finish filing and clerking at the law firm where I’m a file clerk and where I wonder what it would be like to be a lawyer but never consider law school, instead of taking the train home to have dinner with my parents, I meet Terry the Moose at the Howard Johnson’s in Times Square and we split some of their famous tender-sweet clams on a toasted bun. He cuts his soft eyes down to my own yearning-to-be-famous tender-sweet clam and smiles as he orders for us. Then we go upstairs where he works at the Gaiety Burlesque; dancing for grimy old men sitting in the dark seats of the shabby third floor theater, floors cum-sticky from the grimy old men who jerked off in the dark at the last show.

Inside, I’m standing with my skirt lifted up to my waist. Outside, an iconic stained glass butterfly stands two stories high on the wall, gossamer, delicate, and encased in a thick cocoon of grime. Inside the Butterfly a chubby twenty-something wise-guy wanna-be draped in brown polyester and gold chains is propped up on a bar stool by the cash register, his feet dangling almost two feet above the floor. Little Leo gives me a quick once over, like I’m a used car, and kicks my metaphorical tires. “Ya got good legs?” he asks. Nothing about experience or previous employment. Just, “Ya got good legs?”

NY 77: The Coolest Year In Hell - Part 1 A little history lesson, the foundation of why people flocked here, why this was the creative hub, the birthplace of hip hop, the center of it all. On the brink of destruction, you were free to take risks, try something new. Be yourself.

They said it: "Most people thought that New York City's great days were over. My attitude was fuck 'em."   - Mayor Ed Koch

"New York City was a great place to be if you wanted to be wild and promiscuous."  - Porn Goddess Annie Sprinkle "The Bronx wasn't burning. The Bronx was burnt." DJ Hollywood

Full film here:  NY77 The Coolest Year in Hell

The city had fallen into decay, with too few jobs, money, police, schools, and social services. There was a city wide blackout with major looting, a serial killer on the loose, and the Bronx was burning. And yet out of the chaos emerged one of the most creative times any city has ever encountered. The documentary weaves together the stories of the emergence of hip hop, punk and disco, graffiti art, and sexual liberation...and social issues of the day -- crime, urban decay, financial woes, the infamous blackout, drugs, Son of Sam, the bitter mayoral election and the overall poverty that gripped the city.

Out of chaos came creation. From the South Bronx - hip hop. From the Lower East Side - the thrashing guitars of punk. And all over the city, a disco revolution was underway. Elaborate graffiti decorated the subway cars and break-dancers shimmied in the streets. The sexual revolution was in full swing. In January 1977, most of this existed in its own underground bubble. Yet by the end of the year this artistic expression was on its way to mainstream America.

Interviews with Ed Koch, Geraldo Rivera, Jimmy Breslin, Gloria Gaynor, Afrika Bambaataa, Chris Stein (Blondie), Richard Hell, KRS-One, Grandmaster Caz, DJ Disco Wiz, Legs McNeil, Annie Sprinkle, Al Goldstein, Tommy Ramone, Jellybean Benitez, Lee Quinones, and more. 

Another Day in Paradise

House of Paradise