RUDIMENTS, pt, 1,121
(chocolate beer)
I was mostly co-existing; but there
were things that bothered me, like
chocolate beer, and vanilla wafers
dipped in Captain Morgan. Even in
the weirdest bars and taverns, what
were these people thinking? Over
by Gramercy, at least if I had 8 or
10 bucks to blow I could sit with a
few simple beers and not get too
bothered. Or McSorley's, or Swift's.
Any of twenty. I wasn't any sort
of alcohol sot, but the atmosphere
and/or ambiance in certain sorts
of places caught me just right. This
was all on the proto-verge too of
what later became the 'punk' music
scene, I guess, for rock n' roll,
or however that goes. So, for the
simple taking, there was always
some sort of downtown sideshow
to watch, ranging from Blondie to
Patti Smith to Klondike Kenny, guys
with Mohawks and giant pins in their
ears and stuff. Girls as rough-hewn
as a bad Mt. Rushmore, just slamming
along oblivious to taste or bearing.
At certain moments that entire world
was noise, and nothing more.
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There was this place, down by Swift's
back then, called CBGB. Big, long,
stupid name, one of those ironic things
that once were thought to be funny, like
'Country, Bluegrass, Blues, and Other
Music For Uplifting Gourmandizers.'
I better clarify; the full name was
CBGB OMFUG for any who may care.'
Hilly Kristal was the guy who started
it. At first it had grandeur, the it did
slowly start descending into the usual
nightmarish qualities of all things the
world has taken up with. I paid it little
mind, except for beginning to see the
usual characters and festering alcoholics
and addicts who frequented that area,
now that they had a reason to be there.
Before that it had been, really, nothing
but Bowery swanks, shivs and killers. I'd
frequent that whole load of blocks when
out and about, on foot. There was nothing
to it; at one end, Chinatown, at the other,
depending on definition, St. Marks,
Peter Stuyvesant, Cooper Union, or Astor
Place. None of it mattered, for it was all
the same. Anarchic, free-for-all, crazy
merchandising. with everything splashed
on sidewalks and tables. There was no
beginning nor end, and for me that so
quickly became my defining of NYC;
Tompkins Square and 8th street
notwithstanding. However, if you
were to ask the average tourist from
Bavaria or Illinois or Arizona, what the
defining characteristic of NYC was, for
them, in the travel and visit department,
it would NOT have been this. And there's
the difference - on aspect is lived, and the
other is guidebook and uptown tourist
spend-your-dollars claptrap.
-
Another thing to remember: New York
City was and mostly has been a Jewish
colony of small merchants, and those who
then became large merchants, with all those
stores and department levels and the rest;
all immigrant Jewish names. There's no
getting around that and you can fight it as
you may but my words still stand. What
it meant was that if they could sell you
your own spit back, even if for pennies
on the dollar, they would. Mercantile
doldrums never stopped them and that
sort of plebian commerce was always
their stock-in-trade. The entire city,
back then, was made up of that. I
walked East Broadway so many times
that the Jewish merchants and the
Hebrew-lettered signs for every sort
of small commerce that ever existed are
still burned in my retinas. With that, for
me, came the August '67 heat, smells,
rampant odors of rot and foodstuffs,
the vermin and the waster, the gutters
lined with going-nowhere gray water.
If I had not caught some sort of the
Bubonic Plague during my first fetid
weeks there, it was fairly obvious I
never would. Plus, the things I ate!
The useful life-span of cast-off food,
in 100-degree heat, is, remarkably,
about 40 minutes. Tell that to an
accented tourist with well-heeled
markers of travel and visitation,
enjoying all the pleasures of a
guide-book jaunt through a
living Hell.
-
As I was researching this, I ran
across a few interesting quotes, from
back in the day when all this was new;
when the idea of 'merchandising' and
the selling and marketing of pretty much
useless, redundant and unnecessary
commodities began to be foisted on a
young America. In 1928, a young
Frenchman, traveling America, (his
name was Andre Siegfried), noting
these new changes in the nascent fields
of fashion, marketing, consumer push,
credit, large stares and marts, and
even the ideas of air conditioning
and night lighting - which extended
greatly the availability and desirability
of new-hours shopping on illuminated
streets and in temperature controlled
environments over the course of his
6 visits to the USA, wrote: "A new
society has come to life in America.
The very basis of the American
civilization is no longer the same.
It was not clear to me in 1901, or
1904; it was noticeable in 1914,
and it was pronounced in 1919 and
1925.' In his earlier visits he felt at
home; the country still seemed
linked to Europe and 'the West.'
Now it seemed strange and foreign,
a change he attributed to the rise of
mass production and mass civilization
and to a remarkable shift in what
Americans considered 'morally valuable.'
He continued 'From a moral point of view,
it is obvious that Americans have come
to consider their standard of living as
a somewhat sacred acquisition, which
they will defend at any price. This means
that they would be ready to make an
intellectual or even moral concession in
order to maintain that standard.'
-
Samuel Strauss, a journalist and political
philosopher (born in Des Moines, Iowa,
1870, the son of German-Jewish immigrants;
his father Moses Strauss was a dry goods
merchant who made his fortune through
Iowa's largest millinery operation then
in the west). The son, Samuel, took a
role in developing newspapers, The Des
Moines Register, and in 1902, in NYC, the
NY Globe, which circulation he brought up
from 17,000, to 175,000 by 1910. The
key there was in advertising and the
pumping of material desires through
the new ideas of 'illustrated' news ads. He
coined the word 'Consumptionism,' and
made his peace with the 'corporate
capitalism,' which just then was
combining all sorts of individual, small
scale merchants and stores into federated
chains and conglomerates which - along
with sales and advertising departments -
pumped and pushed a new form of tacky
consumerism, and swept the nation with it;
unsettling thereby many of the original
tenets of the American ways of life.
1924 the great push for acquisition of
goods, fashion, style, and objects had
him writing, in The Atlantic Monthly:
'Something new has come to confront
American democracy, something that the
Founding Fathers did not foresee and
which would have seemed abnormal to them.
That something new is 'Consumptionism,
a process and a philosophy that has
introduced prodigious and astonishing
changes in the United States.' First,
Americans, he wrote, had stopped
attacking 'rich men' who only 25 years
before had been berated as 'malefactors
of great wealth.' Second, Americans were
beginning to focus on 'luxury, and serenity
and comfort' as the essential elements
of the 'good life.' Strauss applauded
all this, and in later years helped build
and originate the interlocking retail
and merchant organizations so as to lock
up the American 'national product'
into ever-expanding layers of dream,
hype, and product. It was the beginning
of the end, but they all applauded.
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PART TWO, NEXT
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