SHOPPING IN SoHo

The Seventies SoHo loft with space enough to casually toss canvases about now goes for $17,000 a month, or $23,000 for the penthouse. Either way, it's a good place to live, or die. Below all of these Viking ranges & awkward couches, one skips down the cobblestone streets to find high-end boutiques, white tableclothed bistros, & women wearing shopping bags like bracelets. In a zone such as this, the shopping trip is a status grab, living through a line of credit, on-line, off-line, thick, black Am Ex.
Lay it onto the counter with a cool “click”.
“This should take care of it.”
One day, I wandered into Dean & DeLuca in dire need of a shot of espresso. The morning espresso or coffee is essential but the mid-afternoon espresso fires up those synapses in the brain for the remainder of the day in the best of ways. The place was teaming with fresh aromas, impeccable displays, eager purveyors yearning for eye contact & a “free” taste, a butcher with a snow white apron devoid of blood & guts -- it was a perfect, gourmet scene. At Dean & DeLuca, everyone can be a “top” chef who uses organic goods that inflate the cost of a meal to the restaurant level. One might call it gastronomical proportions. On impulse, I grabbed a chocolate bar with Hazelnuts (the nocciola flavor, in Italian, to refer back to those days of cookery).
Once in (on) the check-out line, I lusted after a four dollar peanut butter brownie but abstained, thinking that the small chocolate bar would “sorensify my sufficiency”, as my grandmother would say. The shock came when the cost of the chocolate turned out to be six dollars. At the risk of looking like the broke fool I was, I opened my wallet and handed over the cash. Who knows if my stone face & glasses hid my sheepish embarrassment? Everyone has the inherent fear of appearing cheap & a seeker of bargains in a luxury setting. Why shouldn’t a shitty deli coffee & a Snickers bar suffice for all of two dollars? Why didn’t I call upon my acquaintances at Vosges Haut Chocolat for a sampling of nouveau-fusion, miso-truffle delights? Why is New York the most expensive city in the United States? Why am I a corporate whore? Why do I not live in that cold water flat for 80 bucks a month with salsa music blaring & Puerto Ricans screaming below my feet? Why do I live in no man’s land in between Bushwick & Williamsburg? Where does East Williamsburg begin? Where does it end?
Even so, I’ve resolved to pay the dues. As the great Hunter S. once wrote, “take the ticket, take the ride.” The view will always be free.

INT. CAFE DELLE COSE SPORCHEE’. MID DAY

FURAMA sits at a small table flanked by a mixed group of individuals, some are dressed in cowboy attire while others resemble turn-of-the-century Italian anarchists.

The CAFE DELLE COSE SPORCHEE’ is an ornate, wood-paneled place with high nicotine stained ceilings. There is one BARISTA wearing a bow tie, standing in front of a huge stainless steel espresso machine.

FURAMA smokes a metallic pipe ferociously. He puffs like a steam-powered train. The AUDIENCE does not see his face.

In a LONG SHOT, LANGDO enters the cafe, brandishing a single-shot pistol. He is holding it high with his arm at a ninety degree angle.

As if on cue, FURAMA ducks to the side as the bullet strikes a less vigilant & self-aware ITALIAN ANARCHIST in the shoulder.

There is a loud CRASH as the bullet exits the shoulder & smashes a mirror into tiny pieces.

ITALIAN ANARCHIST
Che’ cazzo fa?
(Subtitle: What the fuck is he doing?)

LANGDO drops the pistol casually and queues up at the counter.

LANGDO
Prendo un cafe’ doppio.
(Subtitle: I’ll take a double espresso)

BLOOD spurts all over the table like cranberry juice.

A CLOSE UP on the HAND of FURAMA - ornate titanium ring on the marriage finger - as it reaches for his espresso cup, which is splattered with BLOOD.

Culled from the Vaults

Passages of Relevance

"The alienation of the avant-garde from bougeois taste and morality demanded an alternative society. New York's Greenwich Village became its center...Both a geographical entity and a state of mind, the Village was where individuals could go to reinvent themselves through psychoanalysis, feminism, fashion, revolutionary politics and unorthodox sexual relationships...While the West Village would generally remain a center for the avant-garde throughout the first half of the twentieth century, the postwar era saw a gradual shift of the downtown artistic community toward the Lower East Side, particularly the section north of Houston Street and below Fourteenth Street, bounded by Fourth Avenue on the west and the East River on the east. This shift was precipitated primarily by economics (high rents) but also had roots in artists' resistance to being co-opted by the kinds of mainstream activity commodifying the late 1950s West Village arts scene. The commodification took forms as various as increased police harassment of drug users, organized tours bringing suburban residents wanting to experience bohemia into the West Village for a day, sugar-coated media representation of bohemian theatre and poetry, and deflationary or dismissive attitudes toward the often-revolutionary beliefs underpinning the avant-garde."
-from All Poets Welcome: The Lower East Side Poetry Scene in the 1960s by Daniel Kane

The same result will surely affect "Williamsburg". Just as it did happen in Paris in the 1920s post-Hemingway and Fitzgerald, buses of tourists will flock to experience the hipster neighborhood. This is worries me. However, I am not worried about Madonna claiming "New York isn't what it used to be, it doesn't have that same energy." Yes, this is the truth Madonna. It is a place that is constantly changing and if you seek out that nostalgic spot on the dancefloor at Studio 54, it will not be found. Chronologically, Studio 54 was not much more than a flash in the pan, closed down after an explosive few years from 1977 to 1980...the search for the party continues...

April is the cruelest of them all

I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.

Eliot, T.S. THE WASTE LAND

Spring has begun to "spring", as they say. Things have begun to change. In that same vein, R.J. Reynolds decided to change the design scheme for Camel Lights. The package now has much more of a "retro" look. The "style" is a certain brand exudes is oft talked about. The idle cigarette conversation is a pivotal moment for all social smokers. The smokers are able to discuss all of the cigarettes they have experimented with over their years burning the tobacco leaf, sucking it through a filter and letting it seep into the lungs.
The first time I smoked anything was at age 11. With some neighborhood kids, I found an "Indian Tobacco Plant" perched below a hillside in Playa del Rey. We pillaged the plant and stuffed it's leaves into bags to take home to dry out. A few days later, I removed the leaves I had stored and crushed them up. Taking some old newspapers, I rolled a "cigarette" and stole away into the garage to light it up. The smoke smelled rustic and of nature, and I excitedly puffed hard on the shoddily rolled cigarette, if you could even call it that. Years later, I remember stealing some filter-less Marlboros from my friend's mom and smoking them in a jacuzzi. High school was the time during which I decided on a brand.

Parliament Lights, with its regal packaging, became the choice. They were easy cigarettes to smoke since they pretty much taste like paper. Everybody has an idea of what their preferred cigarettes taste like. American Spirits taste like "chocolate", Marlboros taste like the "Wild West", and Camels taste like "garbage". I found myself casually smoking Parliaments, enjoying the perforated, recessed filters and feeling debonair. The full effect did not take hold until I found myself paired up with a lady, who also smoked "P-funks" - however, never called them that. We sat on my porch in Portland and chain-smoked, argued, and then made up. The bars of Portland invite the bar goer to smoke cigarette after cigarette. It is one of the last places where one is welcome to smoke, drink and cuss like hobo sailors. 1-5 Cigarettes per day gradually escalated to 5-7. Once we went through our nasty break-up, where brutally I damned her life to be "mediocre", I made the switch to Camel Lights.


THE PACKAGING OF YESTERDAY
Camel Lights were a new found joy. They offered more punch than Parliaments. Lights were always the easy way out since you can establish a protectorate between yourself and the evil cancer. The graphic on the box had much more character too it. As opposed to the plain "Royal Blue" of Parliaments, Camel portrayed a camel in profile - once a royal pose - in the foreground of a pyramid and an oasis. Joe Camel was long since banished due to his influence upon the schoolkids below his cartoonish billboards. He was a character of the lost age of Spuds Mackenzie, where these figureheads of sin would appear in nightclub scenes where scantily clad babes would abound, saxophones blow with raspy, sexy tones, and the everlasting party was always beginning. The Marlboro Man was not invited, he was too much of loner. It was an age where Ads were still cooler than you, whereas now, they have moved more into the realm of being "dumber-than-thou".
Today, we as the audience view some hopeless jerk with look of bewilderment trying to parallel park his car and laugh as he hits the cars on either side. We see "normal" looking folk experience awkward circumstances that force them to bashfully look foolish. And then we laugh again at the awkward office interactions. It's ludicrous and nonsensical. Are we altogether convinced? The only thing I've ever been convinced of is ponying up those hard-earned dollars for the Camel Lights. It's a brand to die by. I'm in the same sinking ship as the hotshot businessman who swears by the speed of his hot red Maserati, which will eject him through the windshield into the arms of an oaktree, impaled, bleeding to death. Drive a fast car, cut hard and have no regrets.