B Scene Zine, Volume 1, Issue 4

February, 2022

B Scene Zine

The

90s

Iggy Pop's Avenue B

Inside: • Exclusive Photos • Zines in the EV • Sinéad O'Connor • /Life $5+ via Venmo @scotto777

Iggy's Ave B The 1990s, the 20th century’s last hurrah, saw the OJ Trial, a blow job in the White House, riots in LA and Princes Di’s death ride. But mostly, it was a quiet decade, one that seemed a pregnant pause before a raucus new millennium.

In the East Village, there was Iggy Pop, an unlikely symbol of the neighborhood’s transition.

Iggy took up residence in the Christodora House on The B at 9th, where he would stay for a decade engaged in introspection and creation.

Nationally, the 1990s was a decade in search of an identity, a time of relative peace and prosperity, a kind of calm before the storm. The 90s would end on a quiet note as Y2K fears failed to materialize, but the calm would soon be forever shattered by the world’s 9/11 terrorist awakening.

On The B, there was likewise a pause, seemingly in preparation for an explosion in rock music creation that reaffirmed lower Manhattan’s position atop the list of contemporary music incubators.

Life Café was a mainstay of the neighborhood at the corner of 10th and B, becoming the setting for the smash Broadway musical Rent. Zines were all the rage. And Iggy prowled the streets, frequenting Hispanic eateries and friendly bars.

He composed perhaps his most introspective record, Avenue B, from his adopted home here releasing it at decade's end. It would be a fitting bookend to a decade of transition and anticipation.

Cover photo by Blake Little for Virgin Records Haikustrology vy Ron Herczig AQUARIUS Say it: I love you Throw gas on that romance now Just don’t be cloying PISCES You are a humanitarian Sacrifice for love You'll be glad you did.

B Scene Team Editorial: Fucking Scott

Donate Venmo @scotto777

Marketing: Jake Henzo Photo: Daryl-Ann Saunders Art: @Ink_and_Metal_Design bscenezine.com bscenezine@gmail.com Legal: Special K @bscenezine

Photos: @dankirmatzis

Launch Party III

w/ renowned EV photographer David Godlis

@Godlis

B Scenen Zine

A Midwestern Stooge ends up in the EV, with help from David Bowie Iggy Pop’s journey from Ypsilanti Michigan to The B has been widely explored, particularly the critical years between the breakup of the Stooges and his reemergence as a viable solo act, a transition that was largely facilitated by his long-time friendship with David Bowie.

It was Bowie, so the story goes, that scooped up a severely drug-addicted Iggy from the streets of LA and brought him to Berlin where the two produced The Idiot and Lust for Life, two of Iggy’s most acclaimed solo records. Bowie went so far as to tour with Iggy, as an anonymous keyboard player, behind the records.

Iggy toured extensively during this period, including a particularly noteworthy performance at Hurrah, the legendary W. 62nd Street club that first brought punk rock to the Upper West Side. Renowned rock photographer Daryl-Ann Saunders was there, capturing these never-before-seen images of Iggy, including a rare shot of him wearing a shirt.

It would be a decade and six records, including yet another breakthrough with 1990’s Brick by Brick, before Iggy would find his way to The B, where he would spend the next 10 years or so ensconced in the historic Cristodora House at B and 9th.

Hurrah, W. 62nd St., 12/29/79 Setlist, via setlist.fm: 1. Real Cool Time 2. Knocking 'Em Down (In the City) 3. Take Care of Me 4. Dog Food 5. You Really Got Me 6. New Values 7. T.V. Eye 8. Play It Safe 9. Funtime 10. I Wanna Be Your Dog 11. One for My Baby 12. China Girl 13. Five Foot One 14. No Fun

Photos: Daryl-Ann Saunders

Photo: @SteveRapportPhotography Iggy enjoying a pop at 7B Horseshoe Bar, a favorite of his and other rock stars of the era.

The bar with no name came to claim three on a corner of 7th street and avenue B. Vazac’s Hall used to sit above the bar on the second floor of the corner building with a coat check room at the bottom of the stairs where Frank Pentangeli laid “dead” in The God Father II. When the catering hall was all sealed up for apartment use, some started to call the bar Horseshoe Bar because of its horseshoe shape. Some would look up while standing on the corner and simply call their local 7B for our precise location. Rock and Roll was always pumping out the stained glass windows with juke box tunes and The Strokes used to call our bar their Downstairs.

One night I stood in the back of the bar and could do a 360 turn to a laundry list of extremely talented musicians and actors. The Strokes invited their friends to their local, and my eyes bulged to see Beck, The White Stripes, Drew Barrymore, Johnny Knocksville, Jack Black…the list went on that night! They even brought Macaulay Culkin by once and every time he turned his back all my customers would smack their hands to their face with their jaw dropped to the floor. Home Alone hilarious!!!! That’s definitely one of my favorite memories!

The 1994 movie The Paper, directed by Ron Howard, packed the bar with an extensive list of talent. Glen Close was in the bar scene along with Robert Duvall, Randy Quaid and James Alexander.

-- Nicole Hudson

Just a few of the other stars that frequented 7B in 1990s James Gandolfini Sinéad O'Connor Courtney Love Krist Novoselic Mark McGrath Scott Ian Jeanine Garofolo Ben Stiller Supergrass Edward Norton Vincent D’Onofrio Annabella Sciorra David Cross Norm Macdonald

Like our cover photo, this is a publicity shot by photographer Blake Little issued by Virgin Records to accompany the July, 1999, release of "Avenue B." The record was one of Iggy's most introspective, dealing largely with his decade living on The B.

Photos: Stills from Bram Van Splunteren's 1993 interview via Youtube

Iggy’s years on The B, which spanned the decade of the 1990s, were transitional for the former Stooge, as they were for the neighborhood. Both were settling into new roles forged the decade before.

Iggy spent the 1980s crafting a worthy solo career for himself. The 90s began with the critically acclaimed “Brick by Brick,” which yielded his only top-40 hit “Candy,” a duet with B-52's singer Kate Pierson. He followed that up with "American Caesar" in 1993, "Naughty Little Doggie" in 1996 and "Avenue B" in 1999.

The "Avenue B" record was one of Iggy’s most introspective, coming as he was heading toward his 1999 divorce from Suchi Asano after 15 years of marriage. In the song Avenue B, Iggy sings: “And me, I'm sitting in my castle. On the verge of a divorce. And if I haven't got a hassle. I'll create my own, of course.”

The neighborhood meanwhile was coming to accept that there was no stopping the gentrification that had spread unchecked from 14th St. all the way down to Houston. At the same time, though, the period was pregnant with possibilities.

In her must-read neighborhood history book “Meet Me in the Bathroom: Rebirth and Rock and Roll in NYC 2001-2011,” author Lizzy Goodman notes that the 90s presaged a second big bang in the history of NYC rock as important bands like the Strokes, LCD Soundsytem, the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs and others rocketed from the East Village. Of the 1990s, Goodman wrote: “The city felt both expansive and intimate – forgotten by everyone else, it seemed to belong only to us, to the drugs, to the music.”

Perhaps the clearest picture of both Iggy and the neighborhood during this period came from Dutch music journalist Bram Van Splunteren who filmed Iggy on a walking tour in 1993 in what has become classic footage.

“It used to be a lot hairier than it is now. I used to come down here to score drugs all the time,” Iggy said at one point while standing on The B. He noted that the drugs had since moved several blocks away.

Later in the film he admired graffiti on 9th St., saying it’s “a little better quality than the rest of New York.”

He also offered a smiling “fuck it” for some who didn’t like the fact that he lived in the Christodora House, which was still the target of die-yuppy-scum hatred that had simmered since the 1988 Tompkins Square Park riot. “There are a lot of buildings around here that are pretty funky…I live in a nice one and that gets up a lot of people’s tree,” he said.

Van Splunteren told B Scene Zine recently he found Iggy charming and engaging as they walked about the neighborhood. “It was exciting for us to do since he really knew that area very well. It was a great spontaneous idea that was born with Iggy in a great mood and a very interesting neighborhood,” he said.

Two of the neighborhood's finest establishments, Maiden Lane and Three Kings Tattoos on The B at 10th, share a fascinating history with a Broadway connection.

Life Café, which occupied the two spaces until landlord issues forced it to close in 2001 after 30 years on The B, was the setting and, some say, the inspiration for the Tony-winning, hit Broadway musical Rent.

As he worked on Rent in the years leading up to its smash 1996 Broadway debut, composer Jonathan Larson was a regular at Life Café and parts of the musical are set in and around the eatery, including the Act One finale "La Vie Boheme." NYC photographer Daryl-Ann Saunders revisited the location to capture a current view, below, of her earlier shot, above. BTW, that's actor, playwright, author, screenwriter and EV regular Sam Shepard at left in the above photo.

By Happyland’s Heady L’Amour, Porn Free’s Editrix Abby, Lucky’s Proprietrix and Hekate’s Chief Crone.

My 90s were a messy blast: blacked out weekends and bathrooms that wouldn’t pass muster with today’s Department of Health. But they were also a decade of discovery. I got married. I got a couple great jobs: advertising, publishing, bartending. And it was a time in the East Village when everything still felt possible. All my friends were artists of some sort — writers, musicians, performers — and living here was still cheap enough that you could earn money and make your art. For many of us, our art form was the fanzine. Mike McPadden, aka Selwyn Harris, publisher of Happyland (named after the notorious nightclub fire) was a fellow Downtown Beirut boozer. Murtaugh somehow managed to meld music, baseball and mental illness, Mike Diana’s Boiled Angel was declared obscene by the state of Florida and was censored. After being arrested, Diana moved to New York, which refused to extradite him. He was like a matinee idol to all of us. I met Ducky Doolittle when we realized that our post office boxes were on top of each other. The two of us collaborated on a panty fetish zine called Peek! that we wrapped in butcher paper with a keyhole cut out. Zines were a great way to express our collective disappointment in the world around us and, in retrospect, feel a sense of control, as our lives certainly had none. Local indie newspaper NYPress and sleaze rag Screw paid more than a few of us our first legit publishing bucks, which we spent on cheap beer in filthy bars. It was a glorious, grubby, underground time with the smell of freshly xeroxed screeds in our biker jacket pockets.

Does this memory matter?

What dream is authentic?

—Greg Masters One of the more bizarre episodes of the 1990s involved Irish pop star Sinéad O'Connor. After performing an a cappella rendition of the Bob Marley song "War" on Saturday Night Live in Oct., 1992, O'Connor held up a photo of Pope John Paul II and tore it up, in protest, she'd say later, of the church's sexual abuse of children and decades-long cover-up. East Village poet Greg Masters was moved to pen the poem above after watching the show. The episode sparked wide condemnation of the singer and nearly derailed her career. Thirty years later, O'Connor is still explaining her motivation for the act.

Listen and Launch: This

party is live @ Lucky RFN Seattle psych-rockers Sky Cries Mary are giving fans a first listen to their new record Wandering in the Vastness. At the same time, readers are getting their first look at the new B Scene Zine, the Iggy Pop issue you're reading at this very moment. That's right, B Scene Zine is covering the Listen and Launch party live as it's happening on The B at Lucky. SCM front man Roderick J. Wolgamott is busy signing posters and selling CDs, while Fucking Scott and Jake Henzo are doing brisk sales of BSZ Volume 1, Issue 4.

Meanwhile, the Gallery of Weirdos has turned out, as usual, to celebrate everything that's new and good on The B. See and B Scene.

Photos: Daryl-Ann Saunders

East Village resident Jo “Boobs” Weldon is a renowned burlesque performer and the founder and Headmistress of the NY School of Burlesque. She wrote The Burlesque Handbook and Fierce: The History of Leopard Print. Last month, everyone learned how to distinguish leopard from cheetah, jaguar and other big cats when Jo read to a packed, leopard-clad house at Lucky.

Jo Weldon has performed and taught burlesque around the world, headlining events from Coney Island to Sydney Harbor. She teaches students how to strip out of everything from a bath towel to a glittering corset,

Photo: Bettina May

and instructs them in the use of fabulous feathered fans and tasseled pasties!

Costuming is one of her passions, with a special interest in elaborate novelty costumes. Her monster costume includes lizard feet, a long tail and a prosthetic head with an armature inside. This costume also includes lizard-print "assels" -tasseled pasties for twirling on her derriere.

Jo is currently a research scholar at The New York Public Library, investigating sex workers’ influence on fashion and culture.

You can read some of her commentary about sex workers’ influence on fashion at sexworkerstyle.com.

--Melissa Ditmore

37-39 Clinton St Rimm Chae & Kwang Young Chun, Jan. 28 - Feb. 23 Earthly Landscapes: Nostalgia and Prophecy the mountainous landscape spanning across China and Korea as an understated wonder with fundamental components that contribute to a unique regional aesthetic.

Maja Ruznic: Consulting With Shadows Ruznic invokes the profundity of shadows with her palette, evidencing the beauty and clarity that can emerge from literal—and psychological— darkness. “Noticing color at night is like receiving an unexpected gift,” she explains.

The ritualistic nature of her work reflects religious and mythological interests.

188 E. 2nd St. 172 E. 2nd St.

KARMA

22 E. 2nd St. 188 E. 2nd St. 172 E. 2nd St.

Louise Fishman: 1960s: Darkness and Light 22 East 2nd St. Widely known for her gestural markmaking and atmospheric spaces, Fishman’s paintings from 1962 and 1963 showcase some of the artist’s earliest forays into abstraction, beginning with her first abstract painting in 1961.

Both Shows though Feb. 26

155 E 2nd St. Andrea McGinty: Clint Eastwood By appointment only through Feb. 9th Open to the public through March 5.

Andrea McGinty

Andrea McGinty is an artist and writer based in New York. Her found object sculptures and photographic collages revolve around the baseline elements of existence that build the foundation for our relationship to society. The works are made in an isolated state as if she, or the character making them, is trapped alone at home rearranging their belongings in an attempt to find meaning.

156 Orchard St.

Articulated through expansive landscapes, abstract portraits, sculpture, and everything in between, Van Der Plas’ All Art+ Group Exhibition, “Creating Reality,” identifies the artists' innermost visions and reminds the viewer of the cogent possibility to articulate their own.

Creating Reality: All Art+ Jan. 20 Jan. 30

Half Gallery, 235 E 4th St Hiejin Yoo: Solo Show "My work is based on daily observations that I record first in diary form and then translate into large, semifigurative oil paintings on canvas. Mundane events and everyday moments are depicted with large abstracted planes of color and bold, layered marks that evoke the subjectivity of my inner life."

-- Hiejin Yoo

253 E Houston St, ground Wednesday–Sunday, noon–7pm PUNCHLINE, Jordan Strafer, through Feb 6, 2022 PARTICIPANT INC begins 2022 with PUNCHLINE, a solo exhibition by Brooklynbased video artist Jordan Strafer that will premiere the artist’s new video and related works on paper.

Remember when we launched that first issue with the "fuck digital" motto? Well forget about that. Get back issues, the gallery guide, coming events and info on everything else that's happening in the neighborhood's galleries, bars and other venues by visting our website. If it's worth knowing about, you'll find it at:

bscenezine.com

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