Homer Ricks - River To His People

I came back from Thailand to New York in the autumn of 2008. My good friend AP offered me a soft landing after a period of duress after my arrest for cyper counterfeiting Ferrari clothing. A case of mistaken identity and the Thai police let me off with a $100 fine. After spending the most of the pervious two decades in the Far East Fort Greene was a safe place to land, although it was hard so far away from my family. Two wives and four kids back then. I was lucky enough to stumble into Frank's Lounge on Fulton Street. Frank Peerkins had been running the bar since 1972. The clientele was black. Southern black. New York black, but we didn't see too many Philadelphia blacks or honky from Boston, but I was welcome there to drink gin-tonic to my hearts content with the blessing of Homer Ricks, a native of Philadelphia, Mississippi.

"I left that town fast. I said something to a white man and my Momma had my uncle drive me that night to Memphis, where I caught a bus to here. I was 18. I never seen a streetlight before.Another uncle got me a job."

Homer never said what that job was and I never asked, but the well-dressed man was a big fella and had worked as a bouncer at Frank's for many years. He called me White Boy and hated my football team, The New England Patriots. He didn't care much most the Celtics neither, but we enjoyed watching sports of the crappy Trinitron TV hanging at either end of the bar underneath the stalactite ceiling. Frank's was so 1970s.

Like Homer I was there most nights with the crowd; Larry Laker, Lydell, Old Bill, Rosa, Terry, Frank and his wife and so many others. We were friendly, but Homer was a friend to many. Giving. One night I came in after hearing bad news from my family. I needed $100. I got a drink.

"What's wrong, White Boy."

I told him.

He peeled off five twenties.

"You go down to that Western Union on Flatbush and send your children that."

And I did.

And I paid him back.

I moved away in 2016 to Clinton Hill. THe bar had changed. Frank's son had taken it over. It wasn't the same and Homer moved back to Mississippi. We spoke on the phone. Always a good laugh. He loved being with all his children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Not so much with all his wives. He never said how many.

Last week Larry Laker posted that Homer had passed Down South.

Where else?

People wrote their condolence.

I wrote a life well spent.

We can all hope for that fate.

Love you. Da old White Boy.

Nancy BJ RIP 2016

Nancy Reagan supposedly gave the best head in Hollywood during the 1940s.

Old Dutch the President never got any, but she wasn't beyond fellating Frank Sinatra in the White House bathroom.

And more than once.

The ole Cocksuckette died on March 6, 2016.

The Right sang her praises.

We remember her not allowing her friend Rock Hudson get treatment for AIDS and her horrendous JUST SAY NO anti-drug campaign.

May she burn in the Hell of her choosing.

Giving head to Satan ad infinitum.

Willis Reed - The Knicks Legend - RIP

Willis Reed, the New York Knicks' geatest player, passed last week. With him at center the Knicks won two won championships. The team has been cursed under the ownership of the amateur guitarist, James Dolan, but Knicls fans old enough had to have shed a teat remembering Reed walking out of the dressing room before the seventh game against the Los Angles Lakers of the 1970 championship. The crowd in Madison Square Garden went crazy, since the hometown center had torn a thigh muscle that had previously kept him out of game six and he was considered unlikely to play in game seven.

Later he said, "I didn't want to look in the mirror twenty years later and say I wished I had tried to play."

A giant.

RIP Captain.

Tom Verlaine RIP

In the summer of 1978 Television played two shows at the the Bottom Line. MARQUEE MOON had been the best LP of 1977 for us at CBGBs. The first one I missed, because I was working uptown at Hurrah. For the second at the end of July I took off the night and left my apartment on East 10th Street an hour before the announced time of the show
Fifteen minutes later I arrived at the nightclub on Bleecker Street only to discover the show was sold out and there were no admissions.
I explained to the doorman that I was his counterpart at Hurrah on West 62nd Street.
"I know who you are. I'd love to help you, but the two FD are standing inside the door with clickers. They said one more and they'll shut down the show."
"A shakedown."
"Of course."
Every cop and inspector on the city payroll looked to nightclubs as an easy touch. Obviously the Bottom Line's owner wasn't playing that game tonight.
"What about the back door?"
"FD there too."
"You go around the corner and the stage backs up to the wall on Mercer Street. You should be able to here it okay there." You "Thanks."
And he was right. I could feel the bass through the bricks.
They opened with FIRE ENGINE followed by GLORY.

I knew every song and wished I had a beer, but I wasn't leaving my listening post. Not for nothing.

As the band played AIN'T NOTHING a young woman appeared from the alley.
Maria Duvall.
I knew the ingenue from Divine's show WOMEN BEHIND BARS at Hurrah. The Latin beauty was in her teens, but lived a rockers's life. Billy Flicka from Television was her boyfriend and a rich man paid for her acting lessons at Stella Adler. Those didn't come cheap. She glanced down the sidewalk at me and tilted her head with a smile. I thought she had seen something funny, but she walked up to me and said, "I know you. You work the door at Hurrah. Why are you out here? Waiting for someone?"

"No, I couldn't get in. Sold-out."
"Great show, but I've seen them a lot and needed some air." She stepped closer.
16? 17? She played her body older. Stella Adler was a great acting school. "Why are you pressed against the wall."
"I can feel the music. the bass, the guitars, the drums. The vocals I hear in my mind. Try it."
I stepped away and Maris pressed her back to the bricks."
"I feel it too."
The actress pulled me close. The music pulsed through her flesh
MARQUEE MOON and we were one.
I shut my eyes and enflamed my soul with the simple raw elements of rock.
I shuttered against Maria. She slid from underneath me. I struggled to regain my breath. She smiled and walked towards the alley, turning to say, "I have to go, but I'll see you again."
And i knew that was not a lie.

Goodbye Zardoz

On Halloween Sean Connery passed away at the age of 90 on Lyford Cay in the Bahamas. His acting career covered over fifty years with his James Bond role earning him worldwide fame in the 1960s.

"Bond...James Bond."

That iconic line from DOCTOR NO will live on, but Connery was fed up with 007 and abandoned the character in 1972. Roles were slow in coming and in 1974 Connery agreed to play Zed in science-fiction movie ZARDOZ. The title was a play on the words THE WIZARD OF OZ. The film has been ranked by critics as one of the worst films of the 1970s, but I have seen it more than three times and tried to buy a Zardoz mankini costune online several years ago. They were sold out.

A history of domestic abuse have tainted his reputation as well as his repeated remarks supporting striking women.

There is no justification to hit a woman, unless they were like the murderous SMERSH Colonel Rosa Klebb in FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE.

His co-star in ZARDOZ was Charlotte Rampling, cast as an Eternal seeking to escape the apathy of an endless existence.

In the end no one lives forever.

Farewell Zed.

Jacques Leibowitch RIP

Yesterday Jacques Liebowitch, doctor and researcher into HIV, passed away in Paris. His work on AIDS along with that of Dr Dominique Mathez saved millions of lives by detecting tainted blood supplies, lowering the dosage of medicines, and creating treatments to combat the virus' attack on the human immune system.

A true genius.

For the past fifteen years good friend Christine Bergstrum lived with Jacques. He gave love and devotion.

I met him a few times.

A great man who battled 'un virus étrange venu d'ailleurs' or A strange virus of unknown origin to the end.

Jacques Liebowitch has passed from the mortal future, yet his soul survives through his work and life and love, playing guitar through the cosmos.

En Avant.

No Dave's Luncheonette

Wednesday evening I arrived at the Santos Party House at 7pm. Walter Durkarcz the organizer for Mark Kamins Celebration Of A Life had asked me to come in early. Jorge Socarras was handling the guest list.

"How long you want me to do the door?" I asked upon starting the night

"I have some young guy taking over at midnight," Walter assured me and ran off to attend the thousands of loose ends unraveling at crunch time. He was a busy man, as was I once the crowd assailed the door. Santos' security had a system. I was old school. They admonished my letting people skirt their entry policy.

"I won't do it again." That was a lie.

The hours passed quickly without incident. I greeted old friends, assisted musicians to the stage, and talked of Mark. He was the man and everyone wished that he was with us, instead of cached in the Here-Before.

Midnight passed without a young guy replacing me. I hadn't a drink and Walter said there were no drink tickets. My wallet was empty and I scrounged a sip of a beer from a few people. At 1 John Argento the owner of the legendary Danceteria grabbed me.

"Are you getting paid?" John had long silver hair running over his collar.

"No." My most recent attempts to regain my hippiedom had failed in March.

"Then you're coming with me." John liberated me from the door and we went downstairs to the basement bar to drink beer. They weren't cheap. $10 each. John was generous and ordered a couple more for me. A friend came up and John said, "I'm buying what do you want?"

"A water."

Both of us laughed and I said, "Water? Go get it at the cooler."

"More beer for my friend."

John and I conversed past 2am and 3am. Walter joined us at one point. We toasted his successful evening with more beer.

He excoriated me for having earlier written in mangozeen.com that the Boston Marathon bomber was a forty-two white

male from New Hampshire.

"You know it's Islamic terrorists." John was Italian. His family had been fighting the Moors for centuries.

"I do now."

Earlier that evening the FBI had announced that they had two suspects captured on video. They were young.

"I hope they don't see tomorrow." John was dead serious.

"I feel the same way too." Boston was my city and while I support the Liberation of Palestine, I don't condone the killings.

"Let's drink to that."

We drank to freedom, Italy, the Romans, the Celts, the Irish, Danceteria, and Mark Kamins. He offered me a shot a tequila. I refused, which was probably the smartest thing I did all evening.

The club's manager turned on the house lights at 4. We finished our drinks and headed out into the night.

"Where to?"

"If it were 1980, we could go to Dave's Luncheonette for an egg cream."

The diner on Canal Street had been a favorite eatery after the closing of the Mudd Club and we walked to the corner.

"Not there."

"It hasn't been here for a long time."

"Only in our memories. Time for me to go home." John waved down a taxi and I entered the subway.

The Fort Greene Observatory was two stops away.

Getting there took fifteen minutes.

I walked into the door with shoes in my hand.

It was 5:33am.

I have no idea why the trip was so long, but I climbed the stairs to the top floor and crashed into bed like a bag of potatoes falling off a truck. It had been a good night.

Thank you for everything, Mark.

Azzadine Alaia Ride The Stars

Azzadine Alaia was born in Tunis, Tunisia, an ancient city dating back to Carthage.

His family were wheat farmers, but his glamorous older sister nurtured his love of fashion and his mother's friend gave the young man VOGUE magazine.

Elegance extraordinaire.

After studying at Tunis' École des Beaux-Arts Azzadine lied about his age and migrated to Paris, the City of Light, where he was hired to be a tailleur at Christian Dior, because he was an Arab.

When the Algerian War broke out, Azzadine was let go.

"When I was growing up, I never heard the word 'racism.' It was only in Paris I encountered that."

He moved to Guy LaRoche and then onto Thierry Mugler after which he opened his line at his tiny apartment of Rue de Bellechasse.

Within his rooms he dressed the elite and the beautiful.

Marie-Hélène de Rothschild.

Louise Lévêque de Vilmorin.

And the reclusive Greta Garbo.

They rightly loved his sober hue and simple lines.

The diminutive designer was their secret weapon.

Ever the perfectionist.

As he said about another designer, "Karl Lagerfeld never touched a pair of scissors in his life."

Azzadine knew how to snip like a surgeon to frame a woman's body for beauty.

His name was murmured in the 1970s.

People discovered his work.

And they knew his dog.

Patapouf, le etoile de mode.

Le Super Punk.

"I put myself on the same level as everyone else around me - from the directrice to the workman, everyone. Except my pets - they are the Kings; you must treat them like royalty."

I moved to Paris in 1982 to be the physionomiste at the Bains-Douches .

The previous doorperson, Farida, had upgrade her life by haring her statuesque Levantine beauty at Azzedine's larger atelier off the Marais.

As did my good friend, Christine Bergstrum.

The exotic Marpessa.

And the lovely Candida.

A grace d'elle I was invited to dinners at the Rue du Parc-Royal.

Laughter, freidns, good food, the dogs, and the Napoleon de la mode.

It was the best of times and Azzadine voyaged into the heavens after French Vogue honored his genius.

He was a star.

"There is a sensuality about fabric. I think all materials should be inviting when they touch the skin. When I watch children stroking their mother's clothes, I feel that I have succeeded."

"My obsession is to make women beautiful. When you create with that in mind, things can't go out of fashion."

"Fashion will last forever. It will exist always. It will exist in its own way in each era."

After the death of his sister Azzadine retreated from the limelight.

He served his public at his atelier.

I guess he was more comfortable there.

"I would rather die than see my face in a car advertisement."

I feel the way way too and salute the grand master.

I did not know him well, but as a physionomiste I recognized his soul.

Azzedine shared his smile with the world a good smile and for me that says it all.

Bon Voyage, Mssr. Alaia.

You ride with the stars.

Amber Rayne - A Late RIP

From 2004 to her retirement from the Adult Video Industry in 2015 Amber Rayne ran wild as a goddess of lust over the screen of TVs and computers. Her performances covered every genre from lesbianism, no holds barred, and her heart's delight, bondage. Sadly Amber passed from this Earth in 2016.

A victim of a cocaine drug overdose.

This tragedy dumbfounded old school hedonists.

31 and gone.

But she lives on the internet.

Until Hell freezes over, because bad girls don't go to heaven.

Brian Saltern RIP

Brian and I met at the Jefferson Theater where I was doorman at the Weinstein's fabulous after-hours extravaganza in 1980. We remained friends through the years. He let me in where he worked and I did the same. He was a gentleman on every occasion. Sadly he has left this mortal coil at the tender age of 72. I thought he was much younger.

He will be missed by friends and family and especially by his beloved wife, Joan.

Brian will be waiting in the Here-After for us all.

With Art Weinstein.

Brian was his plus 1.

I shall bring the drink tickets when I go.

See you when Comrade.

PRINCE RIP

Prince's first show was at the Minneapolis' Capri Theater on January 5, 1979.

Throughout his long career the rock star performed his music at 1,332 concerts.

I was lucky enough to catch his Palladium gig in December 1981.

Richie Boy, my coke connection, and I was walking down West 14th Street and the concert hall's big security guard, Benji, shouted to me, "Man, you gotta see this show."

"Who?"

"Prince." The giant Jamaican grabbed my arm. "Don't say no or you got someplace to go. You going to see this show."

"I know who Prince is."

He had scored two surprise hits with "Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad?" and "I Wanna Be Your Lover" in 1979 and another Billboard bullet with UPTOWN in 1980.

Then you in for a teat."

Benji led us inside the Palladium and got us beers.

A minute later Prince hit the stage with his band.

We danced to every song.

Richie Boy sold out his stash.

I thank Benji to dragging me to one of the best shows I have ever seen and thank Prince for all he gave us.

Rest in the stars.

Gloria Leonard RIP

The Daily News reported that Gloria Leonard, a ex-porn actress who was also a publisher of High Society magazine, died at the age of 73 in Hawaii.

The buxom brunette was a 35 year-old single mother, when she starred in the legendary MISTY BEETHOVEN.

The nice Jewish girl from the Bronx fought for free speech and National Organization for Women through her magazine HIGH SOCIETY.

Only the Daily News carried her obit.

The NY Times shamefully didn't mention her passing.

She was a good friend to my cousin Sherri.

And a good friend to women.

May she rest in peace.

METAL MACHINE MUSIC

In 1975 RCA demanded an LP from Lou Reed and the ex-Velvet Underground frontman gave Clive Davis METAL MACHINE MUSIC.

"I don't see a single in this." Clive Davis

I doubt he listened to it all, but supposedly only the sound engineer accomplished that stygian feat.

Rolling Stone's review said METAL MACHINE MUSIC sounded like "the tubular groaning of a galactic refrigerator" and as displeasing to experience as "a night in a bus terminal".

Lester Bangs wrote that "as classical music it adds nothing to a genre that may well be depleted. As rock 'n' roll it's interesting garage electronic rock 'n' roll. As a statement it's great, as a giant FUCK YOU it shows integrity—a sick, twisted, dunced-out, malevolent, perverted, psychopathic integrity, but integrity nevertheless." Bangs later wrote a tongue-in-cheek article on Metal Machine Music titled "The Greatest Album Ever Made", in which he judged it "the greatest record ever made in the history of the human eardrum."

METAL MACHINE MUSIC has been listed as LP # 5 in worst records ever recorded by a great musician.

It still sold 100,000 LPs.

I lasted ten minutes.

I doubt many can last longer.

To Hear METAL MACHINE MUSIC please go to this URL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-Vy4VRRO30

Barney Johnson LIVING FOREVER

Last night I attended a wake for a fellow atheist. The service was at a Ukrainian Funeral Home in the East Village. Barney and I had met in 1978. He was my boss at Hurrah, a punk disco on West 62nd Street. He survived the era of erros to be a proudly gay man with beautiful boyish locks into his 60s. I would have killed for his colorist. I was shocked to see him lying in the coffin. Not because he was dead. Dead happens to us all in the Here-Before and to those in the Here-Now and the Here Beyond. More I was aghast at how the funeral beautician had swept his hair off his forehead. Fucking no way. But it was not my place to say anything. Barney was a good-looking gay man dead or alive. More disturbing was the Cyrillic Priest moaning about god and the after-life. Barney was more into after-hours than the after life. I had to flee the viewing room to grouse with my fellow non-believers. 3 out of 100, because the rest of the atheists were respecting the family's faith. I was giving homage to Barney's devout non-belief. After the homilies and tearful good-byes I said fuck it and walked to the coffin. "This man is Barney Johnson. He loved his family, his daughter, and his friends. We met at Hurrah. Barney loved the nightlife and he is loving it in the demi-eternity of the Here-Before." I related how Barney was still alive back then and alive in our hearts of the Here Now and will exist thanks to that love in the Here Beyond." I told a story about tracking him down. Barney was a recluse. I didn't mention that I was trying to score some blow from his dealer. It didn't seem the place or time. I ended my eulogy, but saying, "Barney was a gentleman and a gentleman is someone who makes everyone comfortable." I will miss him forever.

Gore Vidal RIP

Gore Vidal passed away at the tender age of 86. The provocative novelist wrote twenty-five novels on social and historical issues. My favorite book was 1876 about the stolen election between Samuel Tilden and the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, which harbingered the flawed 2000 election between GW Bush and Al Gore, whom was a distant relation. In 1968 I also read MYRA BRECKENRIDGE and was bitterly disappointed to not find a trace of pornography in it. At the age of 16 I was ready for the sexual revolution, for that year was a time of turmoil with Paris aflame, RFK and Martin Luther King assassinated by gunmen, the Tet offensive, the Olympic massacre in Mexico City, and the Democratic Convention in Chicago along with various other act of repression by the right. Gore Vidal confronted his arch-adversery William Buckley during a commentary on ABC news, labeled the right-winger a crypto-Nazi to which Buckley called Vidal a 'queer'. The two were more alike than they wanted to admit and I always suspected that they might have slept together in younger years. Buckley later apologized for the insult, but said that Vidal was an advocated for bisexuality. When William Buckley died in 2008 a journalist asked Vidal for his sentiment at his enemy's passing, "I thought hell is bound to be a livelier place, as he joins forever those whom he served in life, applauding their prejudices and fanning their hatred." Never one to shy from controversy Vidal responded to Roman Polanski sexual abuse case by saying, "I really don’t give a fuck. Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she’s been taken advantage of?" Bruce Benderson wrote of his passing; "Shut up, Gore Vidal, and rest in peace for once. I'm in awe that we've lived to see the demise of that energetic old whore, a Wife of Bath who lived as long as Methuselah and still coveted the limelight. A lousy novelist, because he refused to take second seat to his characters, as all novelists must do, and a provocative essayist, who put strategically sensationalist political commentary that he didn't really believe in at the service of his narcissism and grandiosity--to the great delight of all his readers, including me. “'Gore is a man without an unconscious,'” his friend the Italian writer Italo Calvino once said. Mr. Vidal said of himself: 'I’m exactly as I appear. There is no warm, lovable person inside. Beneath my cold exterior, once you break the ice, you find cold water.'” May you have the last laugh, you old curmudgeon, and finally get a little peace of mind. The New York Times was a little kinder to this ogre of soliptic vanity and reported that "By the time he was 25, he had already had more than 1,000 sexual encounters with both men and women" according to his memoir “Palimpsest.” Many of those were during his war service in Alaska, which was an infamous dumping ground for suspected homosexual during WWII. His longtime companion passed in 2003 and asked “Didn’t it go by awfully fast?” “Of course it had,” Mr. Vidal wrote. “We had been too happy and the gods cannot bear the happiness of mortals.” Mr. Austen was buried in Washington in a plot Mr. Vidal had purchased in Rock Creek Cemetery. The gravestone was already inscribed with their names side by side. I applaud his long life. It was worth the living. To view the Buckley-Vidal 1968 conflict in Chicago please go the the following URL; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYymnxoQnf8

Malpracticed English

>Most writers pride themselves in the mastery of their written language. Words strung together to create a world accessible to the reader. The nuns of Our Lady of the Foothills taught their students the proper spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation with the aid of a yardstick. Mistakes in orthography were punished as ruthlessly as the Inquisition seeking out heretics, however the sisters didn't recognize the shift in the language for the children of the 60s.

Isn't became ain't. What was replaced by huh. Fuck could be used as a noun, adjective, verb, and adverb. No one has ever replaced 'and or but' with fuck, although George Carlin came close.

Marsha, the woman across the aisle from our store in the diamond exchange, constantly bemoans the lack of couth in the spoken language of New Yorkers.

"Animals."

She is right and I avoid the lexicon of bad words in my writing. It's one thing to be vulgar and another to know when to be vulgar, however a greater problem has arose in my writing style, for a French painter, Tristam Dequatremare, commented on my story about choosing the young Jacques Negrit for the door of the Bains-Douches in 1982.

"SOUVENIRS /SOUVENIRS! PETE, send me your texts when there's some french in it before editing , your orthography is awful."

I had to look up 'orthography'. I agree with Tristam. My writing is an abyss of malpracticed English, but I love moidering da Queen's language.

Apres tout je suis americain.

By the way.

Tristam's paintings.

Adorable.