Rush A Homa

The Jewish faith has many holidays. More than Catholics. Certainly more than for atheists like myself. According to the all-knowing AI there are no universally prescribed "atheist holidays," as atheism is the lack of belief in gods, not a religion with its own dogma or culture. However, atheists may celebrate holidays for secular reasons, such as Newtonmas on December 25 to honor scientist Isaac Newton, the secular aspects of Christmas, or the Winter Solstice.

This week those of the Jewish faith celebrated Rosh Hashanah, a two-day observance marking the of the lunar year and also Yashim's creation of Adam and Eve, although that day in front of the 169 bar on East Broadway I argued with Nathan, a religious tribesman, that it was impossible that Adam and Eve were given breath of life on the same day.

"Adam came first, thus proving that the chicken came before the egg. Plus this also explains why pig is forbidden by the Torah." Genesis 2:4-3:24 in the Old Testament.

"How so?"

"Eve was created by Yahweh from Adam's rib. Yahweh performed the same surfical extraction for Adam, except the rib came crom a pig, since they are very close to humans, as evinced by recent attempts to tranpant pig organs into humans."

"That proves nothing."

"It's just a thoeery like Einstein's Relativity."

"You are obviously a thinking man."

"Just the musings of a shabath goy."

"A heretic too."

Hapikoyres. The word came from the greek philosopher Epicurus, an ancient rationalist known for disputing Yahweh's or any Gods' influence on the cosmos, thus suggesting that Man and not animals, plants, planets, or the stars possessed free will. I have followed his teaching of a simple life, but understand that free will only occurs when someone wanders off the path of their life. I had been a drinker for over sixty years. Nothing simple about that I'm sober these years and I asked, "Have you ever blown the shofur." The ram's horn announcing the new year?

"Two years ago."

"Mazel tof."

As with many conversation with Jews these years we spoke about Gaza. I proposed the only answer is peace and justice.

"One deay the Jews will have to atone for stealing the land as they had in Canaan in the Old Testament."

I left Nathan with that sentence.

Next week is Yom Kippur. The time of atonement. Why not this year. Free Palestine.

The Irish Are Coming 2011

After a month visiting my family in Thailand I returned to New York in 2011. On March 17 I extended invitations to a drinking Craic around the East Village for St. Patrick's Day.

"I’m back. Happy St. Patrick’s Day," I announced at the 169 Bar. To most od my friends, however my good friend Jocko Weyland, skateboarder/urbanologist, had begged off joining us with the following words.

"Thanks for the invitation. I’m honored, but I want to hibernate a bit and stay away from the sauce. Too much sauce in Tucson!"

My response was swift, because hibernating during the high holy holiday of hibernian inebreations was a heresy and I told Jocko, "Go dtachta na péisteoga do thóin bheagmhaitheasach."

"What the fuck does that mean?"

"May the worms choke your worthless butt. But no worries. Tuesday evening I had a practice run in the East Village and I woke in a coma yesterday."

"Too much sauce."

"Too much everything."

Tonight is St. Padraic Eve. I'm beer-hungry.

Drinking with two comrades-in-arms.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day to ye all.

The Lent Of No Beer

Lent is the six-week period of Catholic fasting from Ash Wednesday to Easter, allowing the faithful the chance to atone for the previous year's sins by mirroring the span of time the Messiah spend in the desert before He succumbed to the temptations not of Satan, but his own mortal flesh.

While I'm a full-blown atheist, this last Ash Wednesday I decided to give up beer for Lent.

"No beer?" Uncle Drunkey asked at the 169. "Why?"

"Just to see if I can do it?" I haven't given up anything in years.

"So you still drink wine and liquor."

"Not to mention cider," added Dakota, the lead singer of Wicked Womb, from behind the bar.

"Then here we go." I drained my last 'Gansett and ordered a Bombay Tonic.

"Gin's nasty." Uncle Drunkey like his Jamison whiskey. "You know why Hitler didn't drink Gin."

"No." I recalled hearing the joke, but not the punchline.

"Because he said it made him mean," jibbed Dakota with wry smile.

"Too soon," said another drinker.

We told him to fuck off, but it was true.

Gin makes you mean and even worse were the hangovers from the old Dutch spirit derived from juniper berries, even though the drink was initially marketed as a remedy for kidney ailments, lumbago, stomach ailments, gallstones, and gout.

"Gin tonic," I ordered from Dakota.

"Nice death wish."

"No death wish at all." I drank several glasses of gin throughout the night without succumbing the the temptation of 'Gansett' beer. I might have arrived home at a decent hour, however the next morning I woke with a hear-death hangover.

I didn't move out of my bed for the day, but remained faithful to my sell-denial.

No beer.

No stout.

No ale.

No lagers.

No exception.

Last night at the 169 Dakota suggested giving up the ghost.

"I can handle the gin," I slurred from my bar stool.

"Yes, but I can't stand the belligerence."

I wasn't in any mood to hear any drift from a long-haired guitarist and said, "What the fuck you talking about, hippie boy?"

"Enough is enough." Jimmy the bouncer had heard my comment and laid a hand on my shoulder.

"Time for you to go home."

Jimmy chucked me gently out of the bar and apologized, "Sorry, man, but you were out of line."

"It wasn't me. It was the gin."

"Then do us all a favor and switch back to beer."

"I can't until the end of Lent."

"And when is that?"

"April 2nd."

"See you then."

"You're banning me?"

"Not you. Monster Gin."

I understood and nodded my head.

I slept in the taxi over the Manhattan Bridge. The driver deposited me at the Fort Greene Observatory. I tiptoed up the stairs and fell into bed in no condition to take off my clothes.

That Sunday was a long novena of suffering.

My only positive act of the day was to change into pajamas.

I watched crappy films on Netflix and ate a hot dog cooked in my toaster oven. It was my one day off of the week.

Monday wasn't much better, although by evening I regained 30% of my power.

I came home without any alcohol in my shopping bag and called an old friend from Boston. Bishop Ray was high up in the church. He heard my confessions every ten years.

"Are you a little early?" he asked from his sacristy on Commonwealth Avenue near my old alma mater.

"This isn't about my sins."

"No?"

"No, I gave up beer for Lent."

"And everything else?"

"No, I've been drinking gin instead."

"At your age?"

Pay was no tee-totaler, but firmly believed in excess in moderation.

"Yes, your eminence, but St Padraic's Day ids coming next month and I was wondering if I broke fast, would that be bad?"

"Aren't you an atheist?"

"Yes." Proudly.

"Then by the power invested me by St. Peter and his Holy Roman Church I waive the abstinence for Lent. Of course I am required by faith to ask, if you are seeking to rejoin the Church."

"No, your eminence."

"Then go back to your heathen ways. I'm watching the last episode of THE WALKING DEAD."

"Thank you."

"and say one Our Father and Three Hail Marys."

I thought___"

"Five Hail Marys and stay away from Mother's Ruin. It's been the end of many a strong man."

Ray was right.

Gin had killed millions in London.

I hung up the phone and put on my pajamas.

I wasn't drinking tonight.

My heart wasn't in it and I had a funny feeling that tomorrow might also belong to sobriety.

It's not such a bad thing.

Especially when beer was waiting for you somewhere in the future.

169 Turkey

in 2019 I celebrated Thanksgiving at my home away from home.

Everything was delicious.

The 169 Bar.

Thanks to the gracious Charles Hanson and my many friends.

The same goes for 2025.

Peace and love and a big gin-tonic too.

A Long Walk Into Year 66 - 2017

Last year Chef Dave from 169 cooked a Memorial Day BBQ on his roof deck in Bushwick.

I brought a bottle of Chardonnay.

I ate hamburgers, hot dogs, and drank wine, Jagermeister, and tequila.

Someone gave me a magic mushroom.

It had a red cap.

Another handed me a marijuana gummie.

I did them all and left the soiree at 1pm.

It was the first hour of my 66th birthday.

I saw in my 64th birthday at the Little Neck along the Gowanus.

Paige and Steve were with me.

Fried clams and 'gansetts.

They're in Uganda now.

I do miss them, but Africa was 7000 miles from Bushwick.

High.

I caught a bus up Gates Avenue and got off thinking I was close to Clinton Hill.

I discovered my error on the street.

I was nowhere near Clinton Hill.

I shouted for the bus to stop.

It disappeared into the darkness.

Bushwick burned during the 1977 Blackout.

Crack and a 9mm were royalty in the 1980s.

Then the shit stopped and life returned to Bushwick.

But not tonight.

No one was on the streets.

No cars.

No taxis.

I didn't have enough money in my account for an Uber and calculated that my crash pad was an hour's walk away.

I hadn't included getting off on the mushrooms in my thought process and slammed against a chainlink fence. A dog barked from a nearby yard. I wished the pit bull could have walked me home. I was in need of help.

The streetlights were bright.

Too bright.

Only the trees offered protection from their glare and I stumbled along the sidewalk.

Not knowing where was the where I was was.

I listened to Sly and the Family Stone.

Getting ever higher.

A ghost bike haunted a corner.

Someone had died here.

I prayed for their soul and the phantom remained asleep.

I was so jealous.

My feet went left.

My feet went right.

I had lost control again.

The darkness was all powerful this late at night.

Another chainlink fence saved me from collapsing like the World Trade Towers.

My fingers clung to it.

Concrete consciousness was poured into my spine. My legs regained movement and I resumed my trek.

I checked the bus schedule.

They ran once an hour.

I was fucked and only my feet could unfuck me from sleeping on the street.

Even as much as I wanted to crawl into the bushes.

West.

There was too much light.

I sang along to Blue Cheer and tried to dance.

I swirl into a twirling tornado.

My body faceplanted horizontally into a bush sprouting the leaves of summer.

I was getting off again.

Lights shifting colors. Music orbiting celestial.

"Where am I."

I wished I lived here.

I didn't and continued west without any familiar landmark in sight.

Bushes whispered my name.

"Sleep."

"No." I didn't dare look at the time on my cellphone.

It was playing CHELSEA by the Stiffs INC

I pogoed and almost tumbled into the vegetation for the hundredth time.

My arms stretched out like a highwire artist and I regained my balance.

The Great 66.

My birthday and Route 66.

I had hitchhiked the Mother Road in 1972.

At night it was darker than here.

On a nameless street I took off my glasses.

I didn't need them to see shadows reaching for my soul.

I leaned against a fence.

More leaves touched my face.

I thought they were the same from before.

I was wrong.

But right too.

A flower called my name.

A rose.

A fragrance.

I walked again.

West.

The ebony outline of a church tower.

The world bleeding into a blur.

Then again the rose.

More powerful than before and I sang the Jaynettes SALLY DANCES AROUND THE ROSES.

I knew where I was.

Not far from my bed.

Same as the flowers of a Bushwick night.

Resting in peace.

Like the living asleep for my 66th birthday.

I smiled recollecting my 40th in Bangkok.

With cousin Ty Spaulding.

I had made a fool of myself at a comedy club.

Ty said, "Everyone laughed at your escaping the hook."

I was a million laughs back in the last century.

I turned the key in the lock.

The door opened and I was back in 1992.

It was easy to travel time on mushrooms.

46 years from a hop skip and a jump from now.

And then I tripped on a shadow.

I hit the bed like a vampire reaching the grave just before the dawn.

TKO.

Only I was not home.

Just at the 169 and Chef Dave shook his head.

"Old people."

Just like vampires old people hear voices in their sleep and I heard Chef Dave.

I would show him how old I was tomorrow, because then I would be 66 and one day.

I was much younger than that yesterday.

Good at Something - 2024

A proficiency in billiards is the sign of a misspent youth. - attributed to Herbert Spencer, English philosopher after losing 50-0 to a pool shark.

Back room at the 169 Bar 2024

I can hold my own only because I'm lucky with the eight-ball.

Andretta the Giant's Hat

Ellen Von Wirth Party

ANDRETTA'S HAT - Video - 169 BAR

Sadly I lost that hat on a plane from Detriot in November 2021.

Why Detroit.

The Rolling Stones.

Paint It Black you Devils

Modern American Illiteracy # 2

After a four-day stay at NYU Hospital in August I was signed out for release. I dressed in my street clothing, thanked the staff for their care, and descended by elevator to the ground-floor to hit the streets. I spotted a gift store in the main lobby and stopped to get a newspaper or a book having read Cookie Mueller's collection of short stories WALKING THROUGH CLEAR WATER IN A POOL PAINTED BLACK as well as Tim Mohr's amazing history of punk under communism in the DDR.

I was shocked to discover the store offered no newspapers or novels other than coffee table books.

I caught the subway south to Chinatown and stopped in the 169 Bar.

Dakota was behind the bar and greeted me with a smile.

"How you feeling, old man?"

"A little tired, but otherwise not bad," I recounted everything in 100 words or less and ordered a cranberry juice and soda.

"So no more drinking?"

"Nothing if I want to live. It's been four days. The longest I've been sober since my climbing Kilimanjaro before the pandemic. Actually this was the first time I stayed in the hospital since my birth." I said nothing about my condition or future. I had a ways to go before I knew anything, but I mentioned about the gift store's lack of reading material, since Dakota is an avid reader."

"No books?"

"None."

We spoke about our favorite writers and poets; Hart Crane, James Elroy, George Orwell's DOWN AND OUT IN LONDON AND PARIS. The other drinkers at the bar failed to join in the conversation and I said aloud, "America is technically illiterate."

Two out-of-state slummers glared at me. They were in their 40s and one with glasses said with a Midwestern accent, "Everyone who isn't a foreigner knows how to read English and if not English most can read their own language."

"Actually the literacy rate in America is 79% according to Wikipedia." I had checked that site on the subway ride.

"Can't be!," his friend exclaimed and Dakota countered, "I'm a substitute teacher and most students in New York City are struggling with reading, although probably because of the curriculum of Shakespeare and English poetry."

The four of groaned remembering reading the Bard's plays.

"Worse was having to discuss the meaning of it all," said the first speaker, who introduced himself as Blair from Iowa.

"Enough to put you other drama for the rest of your life."

"On the train only a few people read books," said Dakota.

"But they all read and write on their phones."

"Badly." Text messaging has proved that not everyone can write, but they do understand the hieroglyphics of emojis.

"He's right. I can't remember the last time I read a book," admitted Blair's friend, "All the libraries near my town have been closed due to budget cuts and the book selection at Walmart is horrible, plus I don't have the time."

Dakota and I suggested books and I said, "New York's libraries are open, but there are much fewer books almost as if millions had been burned to make space with empty shelves. Even the main library at 42nd Street isn't what it was, because the trustees wanted to open a retail space in the stacks and removed most of the volumes to New Jersey or just shitcanned them."

"Like the crumbling books in the library in HG Wells' THE TIME MACHINE. The Eloi didn't read, because they didn't have to," said Blair about man's future. "We might be like them, but in the movie they were all beautiful blondes raised to feed the subterranean Morlock overlords."

"Ignorance is easier to achieve than enlightenment and oblivion even more so. Dakota let me buy these guys a drink. I can't anymore, so you're my designated drinkers."

They toasted HG Wells with well whiskey and the prurient value of old stroke books with beer.

I told them all about THE ITCH, Steven Hammer's masterful voyage through perversity on Olympia Press.

"I must have read it a thousand times."

"To THE ITCH."

"I just ordered it from Amazon. Thanks for the recommendation."

"My pleasure," I offered leaving the 169. I was heading back to Clinton Hill. I was looking forward to my own bed and a book between my hands leading me to sleep. Nothing too serious. Maybe Ian Fleming's THUNDERBALL. It's always good to read an old friend.

Chapter 1 - TAKE IT EASY, MR. BOND.