DEMO DERBY Paintings by Jane Dickson / Writing by Peter Nolan Smith

On a summer night in 1969 a high school friend Dave Quaan drove my older brother, next-door neighbor and me to Norwood Arena in his family’s station wagon. The Ford Country Squire hit its top speed of 115 on Route 128. We got off the highway at US 1 and drove south to a ball of light glowing under the stars.

Our destination was Norwood Arena, which featured weekly drag racing and demo derbies. Dave parked the Ford and we hurried into the stands. The first heat started at 7 pm. We bought four beers with a fake IDs and drank them fast. My brother spotted a boy from our hometown. Joe Tully had bullied me in 7th Grade. I couldn't remember why he had stopped the beatings.

Three months ago he had been arrested for joy-riding and his father, a town cop figured a short stretch at Billerica Reformatory would teach his son a lesson, only Joe was not the learning kind.

"You want to start something?" asked my brother. Frunk always had my back.

"No, not now."

The six-footer was hanging with six leather-jacketed thugs. My revenge could wait for better odds.

At 7pm the announcer called the first demo derby with a hoarse throat. Detroit clunkers rooster-tailed across the dirt. Fenders flew in the air and bumpers battered doors. The coup de grace was a rear-end smash into the radiator. After the third heat Joe came over and poked my chest.

"Long time no see."

"Not long enough."I swatted away his hand. "Do me a favor and leave me alone. I'm here for the races."

"Sure, tough guy, but I bet I could win one of these.”

“In whose car?”

“My car.” He pointed past the fence to a 1969 Chevy Station Wagon. “It's faster than any of those wrecks on the track.”

Joe was drunk and I said, “Then go for it, unless you’re a pussy.”

“Who you calling ‘pussy’?” His clenched fists turned white. “I’m no pussy.”

“Prove it.”

“I show you right now.”

"I'll be watching."

Joe staggered underneath the stands shouting to his greaser friends.

“Are you okay?" asked my brother.

“Yes, Joe said he was going to enter his car in the next heat."

"Bullshit, more like he had to puke in the urinal. Maybe he'll drowned in there."

"I should only be so lucky."

Right before the start of the next heat a late entry roared into the arena.

It was Joe’s station wagon.

“No way.” His friends hooted their support, as Joe circled the arena in the immaculate Chevy.

Everyone descended to the chicken wire fence separating the audience from the dirt track.

“This is wicked," Frunk said, admiring my 7th Grade tormentor, and even I shouted for Joe.

"Wicked."

Several seconds later the station wagon was t-boned on its first pass through the Figure 8 and the Chevy 360ed through a puddle of mud.

Norwood Arena liked a wet track.

Joe avoided another collision, but a 64 Ford Fairlane rammed the station wagon against the wall. The cracked radiator spewed steam and Joe crawled out of the wreck with a huge grin. It didn't last long.

“I’m fucked.” Joe climbed into the stands.

“That you are.” I forgave him everything, as a tow truck hauled the totaled Chevy out of the arena.

“But it isn’t the first time I fucked up, so gimme a beer.”

The night Joe didn't have to buy a single beer, but his glorious evening ended upon getting home. The station wagon belonged to his aunt and she was pressing charges.

His father paid for the damages and exiled his son to a military school in thick forests of northern Maine. Winter in Aroostock County was as cold as Siberia. There was no escape, although Joe tried seven times.

After graduation in June he enlisted in the army. His fare-well party was held at Norwood Arena on a warm night.

“I’m sorry,” Joe told me at the end of the night. His hair was crew cut short. He was ready for war.

"For what?"

“Bullying you was fucked up, but no worse than you tricking me into the arena with my aunt's car.”

“Did you really think you could win?”

“Yeah, so I guess we're even.”

“You be safe over there.” Forgiving was easy once you had your revenge.

The following week Joe was airlifted to Viet-Nam. After his second tour he married our hometown’s prettiest girl. Joe became a cop like his old man and they had four kids.

I see them on Christmas Eve and Joe tells the story about the demo derby. We all laugh too, except for his father, because some things are never funny to people who weren’t there.

The Last Days of Babylon from missrosen.com

The Last Days of Babylon
July 12, 2013

Throughout 70s and 80s the Times Square was a haven for XXX theaters, go-go girls, pimps, whore houses, rent boys, hustlers, thieves, dealers, and lowlifes on the make. Police and city authorities had declared the area as DMZ for crime and sex. The 1977 debut of Show World across 42nd Street from the Port Authority Bus Terminal was the high-water mark for Times Square’s Era of Errors. It was bereft of class.

Successive mayors attempted to purify Times Square without success, for the Mafia-owned establishments were protected by the First Amendment. Finally in 1995 Rudy Giuliani enacted adult zoning laws to end the magnificent wickedness and the following year every XXX theaters and porno shops closed on a rainy afternoon with the moving crews loading salacious merchandise into trucks, as the tearful afecionados of sleaze chanted on the sidewalk, “Fuck Rudy G.”

All along the Minnesota Strip pimps in fur coats hijacked teenage runaways straight off a bus from the Midwest and slick hustlers struck cowboy poses on the street corners, while dope-hungry muggers trailed unsuspecting hicks down dark streets. The action should have tapered off Christmas Eve, except the players on the Strip were dedicated to acting naughty and not the least bit nice. Tonight was no exception.

The glowing marquees and flashing neon billboards camouflaged the lurking danger of Times Square. On the sidewalk two young boys were rummaged through a fallen man’s pockets. No one interfered with the robbery and few people made eye contact, unless they loved trouble.

A brutish bouncer stopped a young blonde girl before the go-go lounge, then she produced an ID and danced a seductive Watusi as an audition. The doorman waved the teenager inside the Dollhouse, as Times Square swallowed another runaway faster than a starving shark.

The Dollhouse’s DJ segued from RING MY BELL to BROWN SUGAR and on stage the naked redhead cupped her breasts before a middle-aged man. The plaid-suited businessman was bald and overweight, but the $20 in his hand transformed him to Robert Redford, as he slipped the crisp bill beneath teenager’s G-string.

Times Square’s best pinball wizards gathered around the ‘KISS’, as the champ bumped the machine with his groin and they nodded each time the scoreboard tocked another free game. The champ was on a roll, then the arcade’s front door opened for a frigid draft and a deathly thin player commented, “Damn, one of them Minnesota girls has come in from the cold.”

The go-go girl hooked her arm inside the punk’s elbow. He wasn’t her type, but a woman on her own was a walking target on the Strip and even after 2am Times Square wasn’t ready to call it a night.

Men crowded into a theater featuring the hit XXX film BEHIND THE GREEN DOOR and a pimp strutted across Broadway with two teens in skimpy silks. After midnight on 42nd Street everyone was working overtime.

Artwork by Jane Dickson
Text by Peter Nolan Smith,
from THE LAST DAYS OF BABYLON

see

https://missrosen.wordpress.com/2013/07/12/the-last-days-of-babylon/

Atomic Bloom

Back in the summer of 2014 I bicycled from Fort Greene to Bushwick Avenue. Jane Dickson was displaying a sparse mirrored mural of mythical rock bands at the Silent Barn Gallery. The neighborhood was hard-core without any signs of encroachment from the art phenomena farther to the north. I locked my bike to a gate and hoped for the best. Jane's work hung on a brick wall. My favorite faux-band was THE DUH. Jane greeted friends and admirers. Her work on Times Square, Las Vegas, carnivals and commercial strip malls are well-loved by a large segment of New York and the world. Jane introduced me to people as a great writer. She is planning on using text from my unpublished punk novel MAYBE TOMORROW to add flavor to an upcoming show about Times Square. I had drank heavily the previous night and on Monday hard work was scheduled for the metal shop in Greenpoint. As I said my good-bye, Kenny Scharf showed up at the gallery. I introduced myself and he reacted as if I had been revived from the dead. I said nothing. Some people think I've died, while others are surprised by my appearance. I'm not the man I used to be. Kenny was railing against the radiation plume spreading from the damaged Fukushima reactor in Japan. "The radiation is entering the food chain of the West Coast. My daughter was told to eat sea kelp for iodine, but the seaweed comes from the Pacific. They're doomed out there." "I went through Japan after the quake. No one was traveling there." Narita had been empty. "The Japanese are safer than us, because the wind is blowing the radiation across the ocean." He was right and I thought about the gigantic plastic trash ball floating in the Northern Pacific. It was the perfect breeding ground for a Godzilla-type monster. Kenny invited Jane and me to a disco near his studio. "It starts at 12 and goes till 4." "Sounds like fun." Ten years ago I might have gone, but those hours are deep in my bedtime. I departed from the gallery and unlocked my bike. There was no sign of tampering. My ride back to Fort Greene took thirty minutes. The sky glowed with a pale blue. The color had nothing to do with radiation. At least not yet.

VOYEURS, EXHIBITIONISTS, CRIMINALS, AND MISANTHROPES - Jan 25 Reading at Howl Gallery

January 25 @ 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm

Howl Gallery

6 East 1st Street

Writers Remember Times Square

Noah Prince, Peter Nolan Smith, and Claudia Summers

Confetti lingers in lonely gutters and the crevasses of the sidewalks. It spins upward through spiraling gusts of wind eventually landing again. Aside from your best intentions, nothing escapes the gravity of the neighborhood. —Noah Prince

Times Square as a center of gritty life is long gone, but among this group of writers, it’s not forgotten. Join us for an evening of provocative readings by Noah Prince, Peter Nolan Smith, and Claudia Summers. The Disneyfication of the area is complete, and for many what remains is a memory of a time in the life of New York City prior to commercialization, gentrification, and the gutting of neighborhoods and the colorful characters who inhabited them. Just as Jane Dickson’s paintings describe her experiences of living in Times Square—once a mecca for voyeurs, exhibitionists, criminals, and misanthropes—these writers describe a bygone era of this infamous locale.

Jane Dickson’s exhibition, HOT, HOT, HOT: Paintings of Times Square Peep Shows, continues through February 23.

PARTICIPATING READERS

Claudia Summers is a writer living in New York, a recent MFA graduate of City College. She was the vocalist on the dance club hit “The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight”. She is currently working on a collection of linked short stories set in the 80s downtown art and music scene of New York. She can be followed on Facebook, and her Instagram username is @_claudia_summers_.

Noah Prince moved to Hell’s Kitchen in early ’86 and lived so many events he could never un…live… Times Square was his coming of age. He accidentally began a career in the New York film industry. The idea of writing was nowhere in his path. In 2011 he worked on a television show set in the theatre district. It brought back his memories of the 80s. The thoughts quickly formed a book, Failures at Summer Camp, as well as several short stories from the time. He lives in Brooklyn.

Peter Nolan Smith moved from his native New England to New York in 1976. The city was ablaze like the Goths had just burned Rome, but the East Village was a refuge for young malcontents. A doorman at illegal nightclubs in the late 70s, Smith moved to Paris to pursue writing detective poetry. Nothing came of it other than a few short stories and a failed screenplay. Back in New York he compiled more stories and published in various literary magazines before heading out to Asia for a decade-long excursion throughout the Far East. In recent years he resumed writing novels and collections of short stories without bothering to have them published other than on his website mangozeen.com, living by his old motto: “No commercial value. No sellout.” The author now lives between Fort Greene and Thailand and is currently writing a novel about teenage devil worship in the 1960s.

Details Date: January 25 Time: 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm

The Last Days of Babylon from missrosen.com

The Last Days of Babylon July 12, 2013 Throughout 70s and 80s the Times Square was a haven for XXX theaters, go-go girls, pimps, whore houses, rent boys, hustlers, thieves, dealers, and lowlifes on the make. Police and city authorities had declared the area as DMZ for crime and sex. The 1977 debut of Show World across 42nd Street from the Port Authority Bus Terminal was the high-water mark for Times Square’s Era of Errors. It had class. Successive mayors attempted to purify Times Square without success, for the Mafia-owned establishments were protected by the First Amendment. Finally in 1995 Rudy Giuliani enacted adult zoning laws to end the magnificent wickedness and the following year every XXX theaters and porno shops closed on a rainy afternoon with the moving crews loading salacious merchandise into trucks, as the tearful affectionados of sleaze chanted on the sidewalk, “Fuck Rudy G.” All along the Minnesota Strip pimps in fur coats hijacked teenage runaways straight off a bus from the Midwest and slick hustlers struck cowboy poses on the street corners, while dope-hungry muggers trailed unsuspecting hicks down dark streets. The action should have tapered off Christmas Eve, except the players on the Strip were dedicated to acting naughty and not the least bit nice. Tonight was no exception. The glowing marquees and flashing neon billboards camouflaged the lurking danger of Times Square. On the sidewalk two young boys were rummaged through a fallen man’s pockets. No one interfered with the robbery and few people made eye contact, unless they loved trouble. A brutish bouncer stopped a young blonde girl before the go-go lounge, then she produced an ID and danced a seductive Watusi as an audition. The doorman waved the teenager inside the Dollhouse, as Times Square swallowed another runaway faster than a starving shark. The Dollhouse’s DJ segued from RING MY BELL to BROWN SUGAR and on stage the naked redhead cupped her breasts before a middle-aged man. The plaid-suited businessman was bald and overweight, but the $20 in his hand transformed him to Robert Redford, as he slipped the crisp bill beneath teenager’s G-string. Times Square’s best pinball wizards gathered around the ‘KISS’, as the champ bumped the machine with his groin and they nodded each time the scoreboard tocked another free game. The champ was on a roll, then the arcade’s front door opened for a frigid draft and a deathly thin player commented, “Damn, one of them Minnesota girls has come in from the cold.” The go-go girl hooked her arm inside the punk’s elbow. He wasn’t her type, but a woman on her own was a walking target on the Strip and even after 2am Times Square wasn’t ready to call it a night. Men crowded into a theater featuring the hit XXX film BEHIND THE GREEN DOOR and a pimp strutted across Broadway with two teens in skimpy silks. After midnight on 42nd Street everyone was working overtime. Artwork by Jane Dickson Text by Peter Nolan Smith, from THE LAST DAYS OF BABYLON

THRILLS at Smart Clothes Gallery featuring Jane Dickson

THRILLS June 26 – July 28, 2013 FEATURING JANE DICKSON, LAWRENCE BERZON, CHARLES DENSON, RICHARD EAGEN, HAZEL HANKIN, MARC KEHOE, PHILOMENA MARANO, & MARIE ROBERTS Reception for the artists Wednesday June 26, 6-9pm @ Smart Clothes Gallery,154 Stanton Street, NY, NY 10002 I'm going to see Jane Dickson's work. See you there.