The View From here- NYC
Finally took my leave of the land of La La and boarded a plane for NYC. Got there right on Halloween afternoon. Weirdness was already in the air. I could almost smell the burning souls of transplanted yuppy NYU students as I rode across the Manhattan Bridge after being picked up at the airport by one of my dear old friend Kembra Pfahler’s band roadies. The guy, a sort of scruffy rock n roll throwback from better days we once knew in NY, drove me in his battered old Death-Van over to Kembra’s blood-red Voluptuous Horror bunker on Manhattan’s Lower East Side — or what’s left of it in the wake of the putrid Post-Giulianni globalist Gentrification program that’s effectively decimated the once-cutting-edge underground gory culture and color of the old hood where CBGB’s is now a fucking Starbucks or something.
The legendary Kembra herself was in temporary exile, staying way uptown in nose-bleed land, while making new art for the Whitney Museum at her glamorous new art studio. So after making myself at home in her empty pad on 2nd and Ave C, I walked straight over to 3rd Street to drag my old black motorcycle out of the backyard by the Hells Angels clubhouse. Squirrels and other lesser rodents were nesting on the engine block, of course, but amazingly, the old Road Warrior started right up, even after several years of weather-ravaged hibernation.
Always one to respect the laws of the land, I screwed an old expired California license plate I had with me on the back and jumped on the old rat-fucker, just like old times. I rode right over to Tony Shafrazi’s art gallery in Chelsea, dodging through the thundering herds of tipsy Halloween revelers and nearly ending up with a grinning, half-drunk jay-walking college student dressed as an unconvincing Grim Reaper as a front fender ornament for the bike. The traffic was apocalyptic, as one might expect in downtown Manhattan on the eve of a pop-culture Satanic hootenanny. Thank god for motorcycles. Somehow I made it to the gallery intact, and just in time for my old friend, the great “lowbrow” painter Robert Williams‘ long-awaited new art show.
All the usual suspects were already in attendance at the gallery when I walked in. My old brother, the great visionary painter Joe Coleman and his tipsy sidekick Whitney were there to drink free wine and pay their respects, along with old-school NY art critic and pop-culture journalist Carlo McCormick, who stood in a corner talking intensely with Jacaeber Kastor from the old Psychedelic Solution Gallery — the same place where I had my own very first NY art show over 20 years ago.
Surprisingly, though there was no crackers, cheese or wine — not even any water. Nothing! What kinda fucking art opening is this? I’m thinking. Still dehydrated from just stepping off a plane from LA I silently cursed the cheapskate gallery owner under my breath as I guzzled tap water by the gallon from the bathroom sink. I would soon get my revenge though by crashing the fancy dinner he held later, along with half the other scumbags in attendence. Hah!
And speaking of scumbags, a lot of NY history was in the house there at Shafrazi Gallery. A virtual Who’s Who of East Coast scumbag royalty. There was my old pal and running partner Steve Bonge, the notorious NYC Hells Angel photographer. The soft-spoken and ultra-cool composerJ.G Thirlwell aka Foetus, was also in the house, along with the ever-present Anthony Ausgang and a nice general mix of all sorts of downtown hipsters, scumbags, grifters, angels and goons.
Across the room I spotted Jamie, the ex-Editor-In-Chief of Juxtapoz Magazine, talking to the underground art magazine’s new owner, a rather square looking middle-aged woman who seemed not to know or care very much about underground art. She looked as if she’d be more at home at an Upper East Side cocktail party than a gathering of outlaw artists and cultural upstarts.
Weird. Is this what it’s all come to now? I guess if you got enough Trust Fund money, you can buy just about anything these days — even hipster street-cred. It’s not too surprising though, as one observes the so-called “lowbrow” art scene steadily cannibalizing itself for pennies on the dollar while hordes of highly derivative and mediocre artists clamor for their coveted 15 minutes of fame and glory; after all, there can only be so many innovative big dogs like Robert Williams and Joe Coleman. After that it’s all basically just a big bottom-feeder fest on some levels. Well, fuck Art and Artists anyway! I’ve always felt more at home around craftsmen and criminals than with culture vultures.
It was still pretty nice, however, to see so many of my old peeps again, and all gathered under one roof — especially while flying by the seat of my pants in that bizarre traveling time-warp state of culture-shock after so many years spent away from the NY scene holed up writing my horrible, obscene novels in Rio.
After the show, most of those still standing around piled into a fleet of waiting limos (all but Bonge and I who followed the bizarre motorcade by motorcycle) and headed downtown to crash the fancy gourmet meal hosted for the artist and “a few friends” by the unsuspecting Mr Shafrazi. Hah!
There at the highbrow Mr Chow’s, the champagne and MSG-laden scallops on the half-shell flowed abundantly as I brazenly stuffed my gut like a rabid pit-bull, thinking triumphantly all the while of the bathroom tap water bar at the gallery. At one point the millionaire art-merchant who gained worldwide fame and fortune peddling the works of art notables like Basquiat to the likes of Johnny Depp, made his way around the crowded joint, going from table to table, smiling and shaking hands all around. Perhaps he was just curious to know who the fuck some of the dangerous-looking hungry freaks he was about to foot a massive tab to feed WERE in the first place.
As the food went down though, I found it in my heart to forgive the illustrious mogul for his bathroom tap-water art reception. By the end of the night the good Mr Shafrazi was bosom buddies with all sorts of questionable reprobates like Joe Coleman, Bonge the Hells Angel, and myself. And so a good time was had by all — especially by the Man of Honor, Robert Williams, whose latest show with Shafrazi was completely sold out, as usual, and deservedly so, even before the prestigious gallery’s doors were opened to the Robert’s rude tribe of friends and the general public that fateful Halloween night.
After the Grand Bouffet. it was off to the Lower East side again, where some of the braver, or more desperate-for-company of us hung out front of the crowded LIT Bar on 2nd Avenue and watched Tweety Bird and the Three Stooges projectile vomit in the general direction of The Giant Cockroach (played by downtown art empressario, Jonathan Levine) before finally calling it a night as dawn rose like a cloud of beery pink vomit over the whole stinking mess of another Manhattan Halloween.
