The proud refuge of Doc Holliday’s

A few weeks ago, my band was fortunate enough to be asked to play musicin Tompkins Square Park. The four of us arrived punctually (an impressive feat for an old-school punk rock band like ours).

The sun was blazing but standing in the shade brought sound respite. Having consumed copious caffeinated beverages in transit, I headed for where I knew the public restrooms were located.

The men’s room was locked. A nearby restroom was marked for use only by children. It was also locked. Park workers admonished men looking to use the boys’ restroom, and referred people to the closed men’s room even after being told it was locked. A Parks Department employee told me to use bathrooms at a nearby Starbucks or 7 Eleven, and acted as if she were doing me a favor.

Nearby on Ave. A and 9^th Street, there was not a Starbucks or 7 Eleven in sight. Doc Holliday’s was open though.

Even though I long ago left the drinking life, I had the good fortune to drink at many of New York’s most excellent bars before I did. Doc Holiday’s is one of the East Village’s surviving dive bars that did not sell out or lose its character, and has stayed the same quality dive bar that it was meant to be.

As the name implies, Doc Holliday’s could be called a country bar. While by that measure it could easily be lumped in with other “country” bars such as the now-defunct Hogs & Heifers, it’s a bit more subdued and nowhere near the same kind of tourist mecca. It may be a far cry from where David Allen Coe would drink (if anyone knows where David Allen Coe goes to drink when he’s in New York, please tell me), but it’s the closest thing to a country dive bar surviving in the city today.

When a cheesy movie came out about rival bar Coyote Ugly in 2000, Doc Holliday’s celebrated the fact that its name was not associated with such a flop. They had several drink specials and posted scathing moviereviews of Coyote Ugly on the walls of the bar.

For a while when I worked in SoHo, I would bring coworkers to Doc Holliday’s for beer—after the after-work beers we had at work, of course, and it never disappointed me then. I would be one of the last of my party to depart, stepping strongly buzzed into the bright twilight of a New York Friday night, ready to conquer the world some more.

About 10 years later, when I decided to leave the bogus “secret restaurant” located in Crif Dogs rather than take off my hat, I went to Doc Holliday’s where friends were waiting. Three boroughs and many, many drinks later, I made it through that night with few memories but few regrets.

But now I was returning to Doc Holliday’s as someone gone from the drinking life nearly a decade, a frustrated park goer unable to find a decent bathroom. Would I be welcome back to this hallowed place where I had spent so much quality time in the past?

The bartender was chatting with three people at the bar and the place was otherwise empty. There was no crowd to blend into if I pretended to be a customer. She looked to me, expecting me to order a drink. I decided to come clean and admit I was there just to go to the bathroom. I explained my situation to the bartender. Could I use their bathroom?

The bartender told me yes and thanked me for asking. I walked back to where the bathrooms were to find that Doc’s had done some remodeling and the restrooms were not in a state of filthy disrepair. By dive bar standards the new men’s room was pretty luxurious. I left a five-dollar bill on the bar in my way out and got a friendly smile.

I returned throughout the day and was warmly greeted. It was good to be welcome and enjoy the dive bar scene again. Even removed from the drinking life, our bars are cultural markers that can offer a guide to the state of society. Doc Holliday’s confirms there are some pockets of righteous goodness left in our city.  

Punk rock in Tompkins Square Park

This coming weekend two free punk rock shows will be held in Tompkins Square Park in New York City’s East Village.

The shows commemorate the TompkinsSquare Park riot of 1988, when police clashed with squatters, homeless and others that had been camping out in the park. Accounts of that night very but few dispute it involved widespread police brutality. Police lined up on the street for an extended period of time before moving into the park, and they were subject to sustained abuse by activists that did not want them there and saw them as agents of a landlord-controlled city that (to this day) lets property go abandoned rather than occupied while working people struggle to pay rent.

The riots were one of the first instances of widely-publicized videos of reported police misconduct thanks to the efforts of East Village video archivist and neighborhood stalwart Clayton Patterson. His videos showed police covering their badge numbers and chasing down protesters and beating them without arresting them. “Little brother is watching big brother,” he told Oprah Winfrey.

The 30-plus years have done a lot to change the East Village. Tompkins Square Park is no longer a homeless encampment or open-air drug market; it is now a safe place you can bring children. The abandoned buildings and art spaces that were abundant in the late 1980s have been replaced by high-end restaurants and expensive homes. The story is the same throughout the city.

It would be useless to pretend the East Village is the same, but it would be a disservice not to commemorate a scene that produced great art. Even if the crucible that created an esteemed body of art is long gone, the art does not get thrown away. I’m happy that feudal Italian city states no longer wage war on the Italian peninsula, but the art that survives from this period is among the finest in the civilized world.

The scene may be over, but the art endures. So let it be with punk rock. Though please don’t think that punk rock is over or that new generations don’t have the same legitimacy as the old-timers that were there when New York was a shithole. There are excellent bands playing in the city today, comprised of young people who were not born yet in 1988, and they are as punk rock as anyone else. 

And the East Village is still a home for punk rock. The Bowery Electric, located a short distance away from where CBGB once stood on the Bowery, still hosts greatpunk rock shows. Niagara, which his located where punk rock club A7 once stood, has started bookinghardcore punk concerts there regularly again.

And free punk rock still reigns in the park. Full disclosure: my band Blackout Shoppers is scheduled to play the free punkrock show in Tompkins Square Park this Sunday, Aug. 4, with The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, Hammerbrain, Porno Dracula (one of the greatest band names ever, but please don’t Google them at work), Jennifer Blowdryer Soul Band, Ruckus Interruptus, and Young Headlight. Saturday the 3rdhosts the first of the two-part series with Disassociate, the Nihilistics, Rapid Deployment Force and more.

Blackout Shoppers have been rehearsing and sounding good, even judging by my overly critical, curmudgeonly ears. We don’t play as often as we used to and it’s a blast when we can get together and play a show. It was touching when people came out to see us last year when we bidfarewell to Philthy Phill of World War IX. We don’t want to wear out our welcome, but we are playing more shows this year than we’ve played more recently and it feels good to be out there being loud.

See you in the park this weekend.

30 years after the Tompkins Square Park Riots

This past weekend the East Village commemorated the three decade anniversary of the Tomkins Square Park Riots with two days of concerts and speeches in the once-notorious East Village park.

Protests over a 1 a.m. curfew of the park and eviction of homeless encampments there ended with multiple clashes with police and multiple instances of police brutality. It was among the first widely documented instances of police brutality caught on video and broadcast on the news. Angry protesters shouted dire warnings about gentrification, yelled “Die Yuppie Scum,” and vandalized a new apartment building. Police chased people down and clubbed them with night sticks. It was a low point in New York’s history but things would soon change.

I was an angry suburban punk rock high school kid in the late 1980s and I made it a point to go to New York and walk to Tompkins Square Park after the riot. While I made it there, I did not stay very long. The park was still a homeless encampment and drug-invested village of skels and squatters, even with the 1 a.m. curfew. I would walk along 8^th Street and St. Mark’s after visiting a great record store called It’sOnly Rock & Roll that did not survive to the late 1990s.

This year’s commemorative concerts included a reunion of Team Spider, a group I have long admired and followed that embody the best of the East Village punk rock ethos. For about a decade they had an elderly songwriter ZAK, join them for most of their performances. ZAK passed away in 2006. So I made it an imperative to get to the park to see Team Spider.

The fact that I felt safe enough to drive to the East Village in a minivan with my wife and three small children is testament to the radical changes that have affected the East Village in the interceding 30 years. Amazingly, I found a parking spot right alongside Avenue B. I parked right across the street from St. Brigid’s Church. The church has a storied history, including being used as a center for activists during the 1988 park protests. There is personal history there too. I was arrested for taping a flyer to a light post right on the corner outside the church in 2005.

We walked into the park between bands, and someone was on stage making a long-winded political speech. They had been there during the riots in 1988 and now the spirit of resistance was needed even more because Trump is a racist and in league with the Nazis and no borders and die yuppie scum and …I tuned out most of the rambling speech and instead said hello to friends that I saw there. Some of my friends that I know through music have not yet met my children, so it was good to introduce some of my punk rock family to may actual nuclear family.

Team Spider took the stage and rocked. Their brand of ska-infused, politically conscious punk rock is as relevant today as it was when they were performing regularly, and they even updated some of the lyrics to mention Donald Trump instead of George W. Bush. The concert was well attended – Choking Victim closed out the show after Team Spider – and evidence that the spirit of political protest has not been cleansed from our city streets entirely.

But by any measure of anti-gentrification politics, the yuppies have won in the East Village. There are only a few squatters left among the increasingly expensive real estate that have driven out much of the radical politics that fueled the protests. The 1 a.m. curfew on the park is still in effect and there’s a Starbucks where there was once a pizza place not long ago.

After we listed to Team Spider play, we brought our girls to a playground. I took a small detour to meet with old friends at the show, but soon it was time to go for ice cream. I am happy to report that Ray’s Candy Store is still on Avenue A and I and the family got to eat ice cream cones served by Ray himself. We found a bench in the park that was away from some of the homeless congregations that still take up a lot of space there and quickly ate the ice cream, though the summer heat made us all a mess. Soon it was time for home.

New York City has changed dramatically in the last three decades, and it wouldn’t be New York if it was any other way. We won’t always have the same punk rock bands to listen to in the decades ahead, but New York City will always be home to what is interest

Being the oddball in the East Village

The greatest rock & roll band that’s ever existed, TheDwarves, were scheduled to play at Bowery Electric, and it had been too long since I’ve seen them. I bought a ticket online and made plans to travel to Manhattan on a weekend, something I rarely do anymore. But this show would be worth it, I was certain.

I made my way to Bowery Electric, which is on the Bowery a short block uptown from where CBGB used to be.

The Bowery has not been itself for a long time now. It was known the world over as a place for bums. It was the Skid Row before Skid Row existed, and served as the template for the down and out sections of town in art, literature, and life.

I would travel to Manhattan when I could as a suburban teenager in the 1980s and 1990s, and going to the East Village was a harrowing experience. The Bowery was full of homeless people selling trinkets and other junk on blankets. Some of the bums were mental patients on medication that just stared into space. Drunks slept in doorways, crack heads begged for money or cigarettes or robbed you. If there was a Bum Olympics in 1989, it would have been held on the Bowery.

Today there are few homeless charities and even fewer flop houses on the Bowery. Fancy hotels and restaurants dot the Bowery now, and apartments that used to rent for a few hundred dollars a month in my lifetime now rent for upwards of $5,000 a month, if they’re available for rent at all.

That the Bowery Electric still exists is short of a miracle. So many music venues fled Manhattan that had Joey Ramone lived he would barely recognize the street that bears his name. Standing outside the venue, I was mistaken for a bouncer as a young woman began handing me her I.D. I waved her inside, telling her I didn’t work there. Maybe I should have asked her for a $5 cover and then treated myself to something at 7 Eleven up the street.

The venue’s Web site said that the show would start at 7 p.m. and seemed to indicate another show was scheduled to start at 10. I hustled and made good time and got to the show to learn that the first band of the night had canceled and that The Dwarves would not be starting to play until 10 p.m., when the Web site had said the show would end. Even in these modern times, the best shows still run on Punk Rock Time.

I set out for a brief walkabout of the East Village and found myself on St. Mark’s Place, where everything is now geared towards tourists or college students. The Papaya King proved a good find; I was one of two customers there at the time and I enjoyed some hot dogs while watching people walk by, most of them much younger and none of them looking like fellow travelers in the neighborhood for a punk rock show.  

Across from Papaya King, the building that once housed the iconic fashion store Trash and Vaudeville is shuttered and under renovation. I would go there all the time years ago, not to buy things, but to put up flyers for upcoming shows that Blackout Shoppers would be playing. The store is still in business nearby on East 7^th Street, but seeing it pass from its longtime location on St. Mark’s was another illustration of how change has rapidly come to this part of the city.

On 2^nd Avenue between 7^th and 8^th Streets there is still a vacant lot where three buildings were destroyed in a gas explosion in 2015. There were a few curiosity seekers milling about the sidewalk where a chain-link fence keeps people from the lot. The lot is covered in gravel and there were two bouquets of flowers there for the two people killed in the explosion.

I made my way back to Bowery Electric and started running into people I knew. I am not as active on the music scene as I used to be, but I have a lot of friends I made over those years and meeting up with them at shows is always fun. I made my way downstairs where the main stage is set and found a good spot on a low balcony to see the show.

The Dwarves did not disappoint. They played their entire The Dwarves Are Young And Good Looking Album straight through and then played a lot their most beloved songs. Original guitar player HeWhoCannotBeNamed joined them and with Nick Oliveri on bass they can branch out into some of their more aggressive stalwarts. The Fresh Prince of Darkness shreds on lead guitar. Lead singer Blag Dahlia is a sinister master of ceremonies who wears a shit-eating grin. A Dwarves show is a celebration of the nihilistic aggression that made punk rock so phenomenal, but with a humorous twist that prevents anyone from trying to take things too seriously.

At the end of the show I met some more good music friends and made my way upstairs to use the bathroom before I headed home.

When I got upstairs, there was a different scene. The well-dressed hipsters and well-to-do young people with good jobs where in command of this part of the venue. As I stood in line to use one of the single-use restrooms, I decided to stretch my back since I had been on my feet so long. I bent over a bit to put my hands on my knees to straighten by back and the sharply-dressed guy who was next in line took a few steps back, thinking I was getting ready to throw up all over the floor. I thought about making some gesture to assuage his fears, and let him know that I am only a sober middle-aged punk rock fan with a bad back, but why bother? If you’re in the habit of wearing pressed slacks and dress shoes to a bar on the Bowery, maybe you should live in fear of being vomited on.

On my way out, I stopped to shake Blag Dahlia’s hand and congratulate him on a great show. He thanked me and I left into the glittery night of the East Village for the long trip home. 

A Final Farewell to ZAK

Joseph Bernard Zak, more affectionately known as ZAK, was a poet and songwriter who dedicated his life to writing poems and songs.

One day in 1997, ZAK went to a photocopy shop to make copies of some of his song lyrics. At the same time, members of a punk rock band named Team Spider were there making copies of fliers for an upcoming concert. ZAK struck up a conversation with the band and soon had an invitation to come to their show and recite poetry. He began reciting poetry at the band’s shows and Team Spider made him a member of the group. He performed with them for nine years until shortly before his death in December 2006.

ZAK was 80 years old when he died and didn’t join the punk band until he was 71. He was an unlikely and inspiring presence on stage and became a revered figure in the New York punk scene.

He had no real family, having been sent to a boys’ home during the Great Depression by his parents. Team Spider became his family. It was members of Team Spider who visited him in nursing homes when his health began to fail. It is members of Team Spider today who maintain a storage space filled floor to ceiling with boxes of ZAK’s poems and song lyrics.

And it was Team Spider who recently laid ZAK to rest, almost five years after his passing.

ZAK made most of his funeral arrangements himself. A devout Catholic, he arranged for his funeral to be held at Our Lady of Peace Church on 62nd Street. He asked that he be cremated and his ashes be scattered at sea.

Not content to let ZAK’s ashes be spread anonymously or comingled with the ashes of others and unceremoniously jettisoned from a plane or commercial barge, the members of Team Spider early on decided they would spread their former band mate’s ashes themselves. Lead singer Chris Ryan very deftly swiped the ashes from the church at the funeral. The funeral director on hand, who was supposed to take possession of the ashes, caught up with the group outside the church, where he told them it was OK for them to spread the ashes themselves, so long as they did so in a way approved by law etc.

You could say that the arrangements of ZAK’s final resting place were made in PRT, or Punk Rock Time. A boat was chartered in 2009 but fell through at the last minute. Other things got in the way. Chris and his wife Allie were married in 2010. Other members have been busy with other bands. Life just got in the way of putting closure on ZAK’s death.

The band invited me along to help them say farewell, an honor I am very grateful for. After meeting at bass player Dave Satkowki’s apartment, a small group set out by car to the Marine Basin Marina near Coney Island, Brooklyn. It is a small marina tucked away in an industrial part of the Brooklyn waterfront. Chris brought ZAK’s ashes along with flowers and video and audio recording equipment. Team Spider hosts a cable access TV show and documents everything.

We met up with the boat captain and boarded the boat, and soon set out for the Atlantic Ocean. We made our way out of the marina where boats with festive names like ‘I’ll Go’ and ‘Why Not’ rested. It was early October and the weather was summerlike and several people were enjoying the last of the summer season, with many apparently living on their boats.

We motored into New York Harbor south of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and went east past the community of Sea Gate and Coney Island and out into the ocean. We continued on until the nearby boats became fewer and the shoreline farther away.

ZAK’s ashes were put in a basket and covered with rose pedals. A few ashes were saved to be spread in Tompkins Square Park. The basket was set on the deck of the boat next a chair that had a framed photo of the departed on it.

Chris gathered everyone on deck around ZAK’s ashes and portrait. We said a few words about ZAK.

Team Spider guitar player Sam recalled one of his fondest memories of playing with ZAK happened in Tompkins Square Park during an outdoor concert the band performed there. While playing the song, ‘Know That I Love You,’ a group of young punk rockers climbed on stage and surrounded ZAK. They began chanting “We fucking love you! We fucking love you!”

I mentioned how when I first saw ZAK at a show at CBGB, I thought he was someone’s grandfather there to see someone play. I mentioned how ZAK did what he was driven to do creatively, not what people expected him to do as an elderly person.

After everyone had said their piece, the boat’s captain lowered the basket into the water. As it began to sink, one of Team Spider’s members pulled a rope attached to the bottom of it, letting the ashes go in a cloud just beneath the water. The rose pedals floated on the water and we each threw a rose into the ocean.

As we watched the roses and pedals float farther out to sea, the ocean was quiet and calm, and buoys in the distance chimed like church bells.

After a little while, we began our way back. A few of us had to go our separate ways, but the Team Spider members met up to have a remembrance dinner for their lost band mate.

Joseph Bernard Zak was an extraordinary man who lived his life to create and found a family among New York’s punk rockers. The members of Team Spider gave him a send off worthy of the beauty and creativity that he brought to the world.

Know that we love you, ZAK, and always will.

Another NYC Institution Bites the Dust

One fine spring Sunday evening some friends from work and I were drinking our way across the East Village when we decided to have shot at Mars Bar. We were definitely not made to feel welcome there as we didn’t look the part of the Mars Bar regulars, who always colluded with the staff to give a frigid reception to curious tourists, yuppies and others (my friends and I fell squarely in the indeterminate “other” category).

In later times, dressed in a punk or metal t-shirt and putting up fliers for an upcoming punk rock show, the reception there was better, but never 100% friendly. I was never a regular or the kind of disheveled mess that could pass for a Mars Bar regular.

Mars Bar, a definitive New York dive bar, is now closed. It had long been slated for demolition to make way for one of the latest high-priced apartment buildings that are growing in the East Village like a cancer.

Mars Bar took pride in its reputation as a scummy hellhole. Once I arrived there and was greeted by a friend who happened to be drinking there. We made some small talk and I saw a section of the bar that had empty bar stools where we could sit.

“Let’s go sit down there,” I said, motioning to the cluster of empty seats.

“Oh, no, don’t go down there,” my friend warned me. “Some homeless guy took a piss down there.” Sure enough, a second glance confirmed the bar stools were spotted with the territorial markings of the now-departed homeless visitor.

Mars Bars’ bathrooms were among the smelliest and dirtiest I have even been in, and I’ve been in some really disgusting bathrooms. They were even dirtier than the bathrooms at nearby CBGB, which were infamous for their filth.

The jukebox was well-stocked with punk and metal and there was almost always an interesting conversation to be had. You may not always have the best time or the cheapest drinks at Mars Bar, but it would always be damn interesting.

Since I never went there much even when I drank a lot, the end of Mars Bar will not affect me personally. But I mourn for the New York City that we are losing more and more each day. With every dive bar that closes, a city loses a piece of its soul. Mars Bar was a cheap dive, but it was richer in character than most bars in the city, and we need our dive bars far more than we need our office towers and condominiums.