RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,104
(three degrees? the pointer sisters?)
New York City used to baffle me.
Quite often I'd run headlong into
some weird thing that, from my
clap-trap suburban silly-town,
I'd never before come across.
Each year the NYSubway system
would have a contest. I think it
was just called 'Miss Subway,'
for whichever year it was. Mostly
white girls, until about, maybe,
1969 (guessing) they all looked
geeky and pathetic, but in the
standards of those days no
one would have noticed. There
was something they did with
head-shots in those days that
strained the neck of the person
being photographed - it sort
of gave away the stress and
the enforcement they operated
under, and it was very unbecoming,
even if the girl was some sort of
flabbergasting beauty. They used
to all be displayed on horizontal
posters in subway cars, along with
the usual ads for ointments, creams,
beauty treatments, facial surgery,
psychologists, assistance phone
numbers, dentists and bras. How
anyone was supposed to properly
function in such an environment
of seedy crapola, and decide on
which one to 'vote' for as Miss
Subways was beyond me, but in
any case it was all so strange. I
couldn't understand the communal
simplicity which underpinned it.
My idea of NYC, of course, had
been the underside of all that;
some more dark and doubtful
underside of life; Thick black
coffee, and berets and Gitanes,
as it were. By contrast, these
Miss Subway things were the
equivalent of a trashy candy-shop
opening its doors for free pickings.
-
At one point, somehow I had heard,
erroneously, that a girl-group named
'Three Degrees' were Subway Girl
contestants (even though negroes),
who had somehow made it to a
recording contract, and had some
big, crazy, song out called 'When
Will I See You Again?' It was
fascinating to me, even though,
as I mentioned, it was wrong; they
were Philadelphia girls. I don't
know how the stories got mixed.
But, again, like the Pointer Sisters
as well, it was a cultural osmosis
thing which the USA at that time
(it's slightly different now, with all
the Internet and cellphone instant
personal access stuff) majored in.
No matter where one went, there
was presented a specific wall of
junk matter - any person had
to face it. It was, of course, a
massive fraud, ranging from The
Jeffersons to Sanford & Son to
the Strawberry Alarm Clock and
The Monkees. And that was only
the pop culture end. Think of the
same thing underway in intellectual
matters, politics, philosophy and the
social sciences. I was determined
to stand off from all that, and did
so. But, in the back of my head was
my still-stunned observation that
NYC schlock was present and
underway, at all times, in the same
manner as was Avenel and suburban
schlock. There was no distinction,
and geography mattered not. In
1967 that's how it all got profered:
Vietnam, LBJ, the funk of the
'Great Society' subservience stuff,
General Lewis Hershey, dead guys
in Army boxes coming home
lifeless for one of the worst causes
in the whole, entire world. At TV and
theater, morons glibly playing at
Christmas cheer, family togetherness,
and roundhouse punches to the guy
of any intelligence. Empty, vapid
ghettos were NOT just buildings
and places. They were also people.
-
When I close my eyes (proverbially,
not really) I can still see, taste, touch,
and small the NYC of those days. It
was like nothing in the world, nothing
I'd ever imagined or been led to expect.
Most of it was Winter scenes, which are
still good, to me: I'd have endless walks,
in cold, early mornings, dank with Winter
solid wetness, or ice or slush; any of
that sometimes maddening city-interfering
natural phenomena. I'd learn the streets
and alleys, while seeing them in what was
probably their worst exposures : cold and
snow, frost and ice stuck onto sagging
cars, dank, dead piles of black snow
scarred by traffic. Buses, trucks, and
cars, dripping with road-filth. It was a
world apart from any I'd ever had before;
living in new space, like some alien
creature in a new-found environment.
-
I look now! [see link below]! Miss
Subways is a man????
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