A Man in a Panama on the Bowery

Last week I spotted a man wearing a stiff Panama hat on the corner of Bleecker and the Bowery waiting for the change of lights. I couldn't recall ever seeing a man in a Panana hat on the Bowery. I knew the Boulevard of Dreams from my childhood. I approached the man and complimented his hat. We traversed the avenue together to Bowery Market I asked his name and he said, "Charlie, I do the sound here." Charlie. Sound. The Bowery. "Are Charlie from CBGBs?" I walked with a legend. "Yes." And with that I was transported to another time__ In December 1976 I tramped up the Bowery to my SRO room on West 11th Street. A thin fall of snow covered the sidewalk. I heard a band playing a breakneck cover of the Rivieras' CALIFORNIA SUN from inside a white-stuccoed bar with a white stucco front. I pushed open the wooden door, paid my admission, and approached the stage, mesmerized by the leather-jacketed quartet. In less than a minute I was hooked by the Ramones and remain a punk to this day as well as a hippie. Charlie's sound was a big part of it. The Dead Boys, Ramones, Richard Hell, Guadalcanal, Brenda in the lady's room, Alice funny as hell, Xcessive, Kim,my cousin, the Revelons, a softball game against the Angels, The Johnny Blitz benefit et al Charlie Martin. Long-haired genius. Mono sound run on four inputs with rotary knobs, bass and treble. CBGBs sound supreme. Charlie's now working at the Country Western bar next to Bowery Market. It's good to be back in the City, where ghosts come alive__ The Ramones - California Sun 1976 Thank you, Charlie__

On the Bowery 1977

Walking through the Bowery.

Memories abound from the last century.

In 1962 my father had a business meeting in New York with executives from AT&T. He drove our Ford station wagon with my mother and his two adolescent son south from Boston and we stayed at the Manhattan Hotel on West 34th Street. While he was with fellow electrical engineers we visited the Empire State Building, saw the Rockettes, ate at Tads Steakhouse, and viewed the Statue of Liberty. On the way back by Yellow Cab we rode along the Boulevard of Broken Dreams. A sunny day much like that of the photo.

Spotting a man sprawled on that narrow meridian strip, I asked, if he were dead.

“No, he’s just drunk.” My mother answered with a disapproving glance.

I knew what drunk was since an old man hung out at the gas station in our suburban town. Red Tate. A Korean war veteran. My father, a WWII veteran, sometimes gave him a buck for a bottle of wine. There weren't many bums in my hometown. It was a dry town without any liquor stores, but Red Tate always had his bottle of Thunderbird.

In the next block were three more collapsed men. Lost to oblivion.

I later lived in the East Village and frequented CBGBs, passing countless enlistees to a state of inebriation on the Bowery. I never joined them, but not for lack of trying.

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RED TATE - BAD POETRY by Peter Nolan Smith

Red Tate lies on the pavement Helpless flat on his back If his mother saw this sight Tears would fill her eyes

Red Tate drinks Ripple. Sometimes Thunderbird Red wine dulls his nerves. A bum A tramp. His mother’s second son.

1978

Clicking Your Heels Will Not Get You Home or Kansas

In the Spring of 1962 my father had business in New York City. My grandmother volunteered to take care our my younger brothers and sisters, allowing my older brother and me to accompany our parents to the great city to the south of Boston. Upon our arrival my father drove to the southern tip of Manhattan and pointed out the Statue of Liberty across the harbor.

On our way to the hotel our Ford station wagon proceeded up a broad avenue. Men clustered on the sidewalks and I spotted a man lying on the street.

He wasn't moving and I asked my father, "Is he dead?"

I had never seen a dead person before.

"No, he's a bum. He drinks too much. This is the Bowery. The Avenue of Broken Dreams."

"Why doesn't he go home to sleep?"

"Men like him don't have a home." My father didn't explain why and my mother was quiet. They looked at each other, as if they knew people like the sleeping man. If they didn't, those kind of men never came to our house on the South Shore of Boston, not even Red Tate, who Korean War veterans from our church said that he had been a hero in the retreat from the Chosin Reservoir.

Red Tate lived in the town dump.

He drank cheap wine across from the church.

Homeless.

As I got older I moved to the East Village. I realized other homeless people existed in America.

In the 1980s homeless people clustered throughout the city.

The police evicted them from squats and park encampments. City authorities put them on buses to distant cities. The housing shelter were more like cattle pens. No one was allowed to stay the day. Millions were spent on the problem, but I have never seen any of that money going to the poor, who now are displaced families displaced by luxury condos, underpaid working people, the sick, the unfortunates, the tired, hungry, and lost.

New York City spends $35,000 per annum on the tens of thousands of permanent homeless.

No new no-income or lower income projects have been build in the city. The soul of the city has been sacrificed for greed.

$35,000 a year is enough for a good apartment with money left for food and transportation.

Little escapes the grasp of the bureaucracy or the realtors planning to ethnically cleanse the outer boroughs like they did Manhattan.

I know the feeling well.

I am homeless too.

315 The Bowery Pre-CBGBs

CBGBs existed from 1973 to the summer of 2008 as a mecca for punks.

Prior to Hilly Kristal's leasing the ground-floor and basement of 315 The Bowery, the location had served as a The Palace Hotel Bar for the flophouse above it, housing as many as 600 men every night.

There was life at 315 before CBGBs and there is life after as a clothing boutique, but the Palace Hotel remains the same.

A SRO home for the forgotten men on the boulevard of broken dreams.

But not Hilly.

Photo by David Godlis