A General Interest Miscellaneous Newspaper The Periodic Journal of Urban Particulars

NOSTRE MANES TOO BIG TO READ SUNT INFANTES. ON THE SUBWAY. ∂ ∂

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VOLUME ONE, ISSUE NO FIFTEEN SPRING 2004 $1.00 IN PHILA. $2.00 ELSEWHERE BEHEMOTH BILLBOARDS PROPOSED FOR SOUTH PHILLY; WHALE OF A WALL-WRAP WOULD BE LARGEST IN NATION

THE PUBLISHING REPORT Old Hollow Husk of Bushels Past May Become Feast For The Eyes hiladelphia’s three new independent publications all have promis- ing content, miniscule budgets and online origins. But besides Mammoth Signs By I-95 P THE TIDEWATER GRAIN CO. ELEVATOR: being produced in the same city, the online art journal Work, the online Would Mesmerize fashion and culture magazine Philth, and the socially committed WISHFUL THINKING’S CONCRETE TOMB B.Informed have almost nothing else in common, which is probably as Million Eyes A Week it should be, as all are driven by their staff ’s desire to present material Can Bush Stop Leaks? that isn’t available anywhere else. BY JESSICA CHIU Work was launched by co-editors Tony Smyrksi and Melissa Farley riving north along Interstate wake of the French Revolution, crip- THE COLOSSUS OF ROADS The President Wets in March. “I hate going to stores and looking at magazines and seeing D95 into Philadelphia, you’ll pling Europe’s capacity for agricul- all the same stuff,” Farley said. “Whether it’s art magazines or enter- see the remains of the Tidewater tural production and trade. The His Daily Briefs tainment magazines, it’s the same artists and the same people. It’s just Grain Co. elevator sitting on the mid-Atlantic states raced to meet Schuylkill Signpost’s 5 Adverts whatever’s trendy at the time and who you know. We want to give peo- city’s southernmost tip, a giant the exploding European demand, To Be Seen From Two Bridges: ple the opportunity to show their work in a painless, harmless way.” block of cylindrical concrete silos and Philadelphia—along with rival Girard Point & George C. Platt SOVEREIGN SOIL SOILED Work’s first two issues are full of fine art submissions from places as packed together like a pipe organ. Baltimore—suddenly became an far-flung as Germany and San Francisco. Recurring tropes include sig- Upon its construction nearly a cen- international center of the grain Condi, Cheney, Rummy nage (both commercial and personal), housing, portraiture, and tury ago, the Pennsylvania Railroad trade. 25 TIMES PERMITTED SIZE moments of decay, where the man-made and natural worlds begin to Company boasted that the In 1815, Philadelphia was twenty Play at War and Lose; Disney Shareholders Meet at 12th & Arch; mix and blur. The two issues have a light touch that’s more curatorial Tidewater would stand “high above years into its international grain Owners Would Fix Up Aging Pier Pass the Pacifiers than editorial, beginning with open-ended titles (“You’re Either In or Who Will Manage Mickey’s Money? the flat lands which surround it … boom when Napoleon was defeated You’re Out,” “Manners Are Free and Soap is Cheap.”) and proceeding the first sign of Philadelphia’s at Waterloo, and international With $15 Million in Revenue; straight to the art. No big preface, no clumsy or fancy frame. A new issue industry which presents itself to demand for American grain sub- ALL MEN CRADLED EQUAL DISNEY VS. EISNER FOR $27B IN CHEDDAR Pledge 110 Jobs in Five Years of the screenzine comes out on the first of each month at www.work- voyagers coming up the Delaware.” sided almost immediately. The vic- mag.net, and they’re strict about the deadline. “It was a couple of hours Today it towers two hundred and torious European monarchies were BY HENRY WILLIAM BROWNEJOHNS BY LOREN HUNT turn to PUBLISHING, page 5 forty-seven feet into the air, with on the brink of a century-long PIER THREE, Phila.—Too big America tells itself things, to CENTER CITY, Phila.—Inside morning and drive two hundred and the golden hue of a thing grown peace, and they erected protective to easily demolish and too old to please itself and to satisfy a civic the halls of the Pennsylvania forty miles to an annual sharehold- quietly impotent. A former fortress tariffs—such as England’s restric- cheaply renovate, the Tidewater vanity; as a nation, it surpasses all Convention Center, the micro- er’s meeting to confront the CEO. of industrial might, it haunts the tive Corn Laws, which prohibited Grain Co. elevator has one last the others for its remarkable nim- phone is slowly moving up the aisle, But this is not a story about most city’s edge, its grandeur frozen the import of all grain, except in asset: high concrete walls that greet bleness as a mass-conscience. Every passed from Disney shareholder to people. It is a story about people around it. Once a technological times of famine—to support every visitor who enters the city thought and gesture you make as an Disney shareholder, finally reaching who own stock in the Walt Disney marvel and a symbol of domestic farmers. By 1820, the from the south. Forty years after the American citizen is figured into the Scene Queens Come Into Their Own a 22 year-old in jeans. Calmly, Company, the thousands who gath- Philadelphia’s dominance as a port, grain trade in Philadelphia and last bushel of grain left its walls, the whole circuit of the American New Jacks Make The Straight Flush loudly, she addresses Michael ered one balmy March week in the elevator was built at the mouth Baltimore was in rapid decline. Tidewater may soon announce mass-mind, and in this way, we are Eisner, chairman and CEO of the Philadelphia to restore their com- of the Schuylkill, within yards of Both cities looked to the expanding Philadelphia’s national preemi- joined together as an enormous, Walt Disney Company. pany’s “soul” and bring back its the main channel of the Delaware, American West for new markets, nence in new industry—billboards. ungainly, admirable, and deeply COAL & COKE FUELED FAME’S FLAMES “My name is Jen Dziekan from “magic.” where it could receive barges and investing in turnpikes and railroads The building’s owner, Preston flawed individual. This is why Longmeadow, Massachusetts, and I It was the cast members at the rail cars by the hundred. Today it heading westward, hoping to reme- Ship & Rail, wants to crown the America is so subject to faddishness own four shares of Disney stock. I Holyoke Mall Disney Store who stands inland, within weak reach of dy flagging demand. But these last- Tidewater’s mammoth concrete and reactionism. As deluded as you bought it not for the five cents you first turned Dziekan on to the an economy at work. Two stray tug- ditch efforts were also thwarted, grain silos with five illuminated may be in your own personal self- give back to me, the thirty-three notion that the company of which boats, the Tenacious and the this time by the 1825 completion of “wall wrap” billboards, a total of perception, so too, is the nation you cents you give back to me, or the she owned four tiny pieces might be Athena, are docked at its pier, the Erie Canal. The canal, the first 38,786 square feet of advertising, are a part of. We are perpetually one dollar that I might get back in headed in the wrong direction. For which is slowly coming apart and successful route between the according to the company’s zoning whispering praise into the mirror. the future. I bought it for a piece of years she had been visiting the sinking into the water. Eastern ports and the farms of the application. That’s four times the We harbor a panoply of nonsensical the magic. store, in earlier days to buy Little The elevator may be my favorite Midwest, established New York size of the largest billboard in impressions of ourselves: that we “I bought it because I love going to Mermaid dolls and picture frames structure in Philadelphia. For years, state’s control of the grain trade for Times Square, and more than half are especially good; that we are the park. I love going to the stores, and Mickey Mouse hats and key- I’ve stolen glimpses of it driving the remainder of the century; by the the size of a football field. Taken especially industrious; that we are and I love feeling that magic. Have chains, and in more recent months into and out of the city. Its present Civil War, Buffalo would emerge as alone, the 14,446 square foot sign especially rational; and, of particu- you been to a theme park lately?” simply to chat with the cast mem- abandonment and position at the the world capital of grain shipment, proposed for the Tidewater’s south- lar import, that we are winners. Most people buy stock because bers, which is what the Walt Disney helm of the city have always made moving 50 million bushels annually. ern face would be the largest bill- Thirty years after we were routed they think it will go up. If their Company calls its employees. She the building seem mythic. By the 1850s, with the competi- board in the United States. Added out of Southeast Asia, the diligent stock has gone up fifty percent over wished she could offer support, but Abandoned buildings like the tion for grain leadership all but over, together, the Tidewater’s five signs history texts have yet to make a the last year, as Dziekan’s has, they the merchandise had gotten too Tidewater are a testament to city the privately held Pennsylvania would be larger than the largest tally in our Loss column. The War aren’t likely to wake up at four in the turn to DISNEY, page 8 history; they are remnants of Railroad Company had begun its billboard in the world, a 34,080 of 1812, Vietnam, Korea—even, bygone energies and the efforts acquisition of most of the state-run square foot sign in Britain. somehow, the Civil War—are all hree years ago, Jonny Szymanski ded white belts. (Also on the menu made by city citizens to keep up canal and railroad system. Many in The billboards would also be sev- framed in the American mind as a T and Peter Sehprish, two gay are white-belted studs; Jonny and Sound Engineer Lays Down SEPTA Tracks with an expanding, evolving global Philadelphia, discouraged by the eral times the maximum size per- Draw at worst, and in many cases, phone sex divas, came up with a Bear have purportedly lured a few economy. Those efforts seem development of the Erie Canal and mitted by a 1991 city law. are believed to actually be some sideline that would soon blossom heterosexual men of prominence CENTER CITY, Phila.—It suddenly hit Christopher Tucker one painfully clear in the spent shell of the declining fortunes of the local Sponsored by City Councilman kind of victory. Likely nine and into a new career—rapping. The from Philadelphia’s independent rock morning last winter as he walked through Market East Station, the elevator, erected in the twilight grain trade, were taking their money David Cohen, the law states that three-quarters out of ten pair would write dirty raps during community, including one of the two whistling after his daily ride from Fishtown. Echoes ... reverberations ... years of Philadelphia’s grain trade. elsewhere—investing in the emerg- billboards can be no larger than Americans would tell you the their breaks, and Jonny would prac- Toxic Twins, into sexual liaisons.) reverb. He noted the location: the foyer just inside the Filbert Street The plan recently announced by the ing manufacturing sector. But there 1,500 square feet. The smallest of Alamo is the site of a great tice on his customers by pretending V.I.P.’s appeal is the same as any entrance. For a couple of weeks he tested the waters, clapping his hands building’s current owners, Preston were some who remained unde- the Tidewater five would be more American triumph, and not a grue- to be “Tilly,” a New York fashion other hardcore rap group—their as he walked through. “The sound is just incredible, man,” he explained. Ship and Rail, to wrap the elevator terred in their drive to return than triple that. The law forbids some rout. We are compulsive win- student and aspiring rap star. lyrics are about their lives, and their “It feels so good. With Pro Tools, music is turning into graphic design. with oversized advertisements is Philadelphia to the lead of more than two billboards on one ners, even when we have been “Tilly liked golden showers and lives are not like yours or mine. Natural reverb gives it personality. It’s so for real.” He spoke with the merely the latest in a long line of America’s grain trade, and in 1863, lot. Preston wants five. The law soundly drubbed. Seeing clear spankings—she was a bad girl,” Their lives are filled with drugs so security guards, who told him he could do whatever he liked so long as attempts to turn loss into profit at the Pennsylvania Railroad con- attempts to cap the total number of through these memes of collective Jonny giggles. “She was really good illicit and sex so promiscuous that he did not ask for money. He returned with two guitars, a harmonica, a Girard Point. structed its first elevator to process, billboards in the city by requiring misperception, I intend to suggest a at cock and ball torture. One time the hardcoreness of it all would four-track, a microphone and a chair, ready to conduct a thorough inves- store, and distribute grain at the foot owners to tear down one old bill- heresy against our self-conception: she told this caller to put Ben-Gay hardly be plausible, were these tigation of the space’s potential. He recorded for four hours, until half an he story of the elevator we see of Washington Street in South board for each new one they build. that we are losing another war—the on a Q-tip and stick it up his pee- transgressions not so elegantly hour past the Gallery’s midnight closing time. “Everybody was totally T today begins in the late 18th Philadelphia. In 1881, long after the Preston can’t comply, as it doesn’t Terror War now underway—and nis and he was crying.” arranged into verse. The seminal cool,” Tucker remembers. “Even the homeless guys were really nice, century, when Pennsylvania, New competition had left Philadelphia own any other billboards. In all, the we are losing it soundly. Donna Wesley, Jonny’s supervisor, V.I.P. song “Straight Boys” may do smiling and nodding.” Tucker says the only spot in the Filbert Foyer’s York, and Maryland were fighting to behind, the Pennsylvania Railroad Department of Licenses and In terms comprehensible even to can still recall her star employee’s for sodomy what Ice Cube’s “Check reverb league is the lobby of the Fine Arts Building in downtown Los dominate the export of grain. built an even bigger elevator, this Inspections (L&I) found twenty- those of us not privileged to audit a quick wit, mesmerizing voice, and Yo Self ” did for gunplay. Angeles. He is still thinking about releasing the Market East tapes, and Philadelphia experienced a stunning one at Girard Point, the site of the six reasons to refuse Preston’s appli- knack for the cadences of climax, is planning a second session. ] —CHRISTINE SMALLWOOD boom in agribusiness beginning in present Tidewater Grain Company turn to WAR, page 2 turn to BILLBOARD, page 7 which won him September 2001’s All ya’ll faggots ain’t shit but queens the late 1790s, but its hegemony elevator. employee of the month award. with dicks / Said you were straight ‘til over the American grain trade was to [ dispatch ] [ THIS NEWSPAPER CONTAINS ] [ terms ] Two years later, the boys’ audi- you gave me a lick ∂ be short-lived. Flush with grain ast summer, we set out to look five year diary ence had grown from an excitable It makes your girlfriend sick—you 2: National Affairs & SEPTA Letters. 12-13: Comics by HIROSHIMA LEMON & brought from the fertile land of L at the elevator up close. curator, n. pool of solitary listeners to a packed traded cunt for dick / You want proof? 3: Interview with Robert Venturi and Denise GARY PANTER. Plea for Subscriptions. Lancaster County and the southern Rebecca, Dan and I wore sneakers Scott-Brown. Report on Produce. 14-15: Sound Advice. N. FRIEDMAN on ... watched T.V. in evening. JANUARY house at the Trocadero. Having Check out your man turning tricks on reaches of Delaware, Philadelphia and carried cameras slung around First there was the feudal Lord, owner 4-5: Toilets About Town. JOSHUA GLEASON DANIEL BEJAR, of DESTROYER & continua- 24TH, 1960: Got up did floor and wash- of land and serfs. This was fine for those joined forces with Bear Smith (the my homemade porno flicks… on REV.BILLY.CAROLINE PICARD on ROY tion of V.I.P article. was a natural hub for the grain trade: our necks. Dan had been to the ing. Mummy has awful cold. Spent after- in the land business, but soon there were pretty boy) and Andrew “Bruce” Uh oh! Thought he was hetero! Now BECKHOFF, keycutter. BEN KATCHOR comic. 16: A full page of HAWK KRALL comics. in 1765, the city exported more than building before, on a trip with noon playing with Mark. Watched T.V. 6-7: Conclusion of our inquiry into grain ele- 17-19: Viewmaster. WILLIAM PYM on ALEX cities, and the cities needed clerks, and the Ryan (the shy mastermind), they he got my number two-hole / dilating. 360,000 bushels of wheat, three friends to see the place and write Did knitting. Went to bed. JANUARY vators & billboard-related affairs. KATZ & K. MOSS,LAURA COXSON on SARAH clerks’ output could not be easily meas- 25TH, 1960: Mummy in bed. I went were now known as V.I.P., the Got your boys’ dick hard so he starts 8-9: Dash Shaw comic & continuation of MCENEANEY,CHRISTINE SMALLWOOD on times the volume shipped from New his name on the walls. He said he ured in bushels and tithes. This called for down in shop to help girls. Terrible acci- malt-liquor swilling, venereal dis- penetrating / Ain’t no use in waiting, Disney Co. article with a useful diagram. ZOE STRAUSS,ARIELLA COHEN on MANAR York City. The terrain between farm could get us near it by car, and then a new form of supervision, the Manager, a 10-11: Paper Tigers. WILLIAM S. LIN on ZUABI. dent down road. Overturned lorry. ease-dodging, unshaven, high- V.I.P.be blatant. and city was advantageously flat, and we’d have to walk. The mood in the Lord whose powers were circumscribed Sheperd’s pie for lunch. Went down again GAY TALESE.MOLLY RUSSAKOFF remem- 20-21: C&C. ROCHFORD’s New Society. by contract. The Manager struts about the to help girls. Watched T.V. Went to bed. strung, gay hardcore rap group. Curious boys. Sorry ladies, what a bers TED BERRIGAN.ADAM FIELED memo- 23: LORD WHIMSY on Absinthe & Flora. specially fashioned canvas-covered car was happy, hopeful. It was sum- clerical office to this day, but even he is JANUARY 26TH, 1960: Mummy still in Within the rainbow of gay stereo- shame. You want names?/ I fucked rializes GIL OTT. 24: The Bureau of Puzzles & Games. wagons routinely brought farmers’ mer and from Interstate 76, the proving too heavy-handed for the delicate

bed. Went down and helped girls again all types, V.I.P. is somewhere between Barney, Charles, Bredan, Fancy, Nez, ∂ wares into the city, where grain was building looked remote and unfail- nerves of the copywriter and graphic New Comics by Dash Shaw, Hiroshima Lemon & Hawk Krall day. Took knitting. Came up and cooked the turtle-necked and tortoise- and Morgan / Thought they were then loaded onto barges and sent ing with promise. designer, who cannot devise next season’s supper. Carrington VC play on very good. bedspreads and sitcoms without creative shelled urban queer, the chisel- frontin’ ‘til they bust up in my organs. abroad. Triangular trade, bringing We ditched the car somewhere JANUARY 27TH, 1960: Mummy still not freedom. These artisans have an even terribly well. Went down helped girls all chested fratgay, and the candy- foodstuffs from the United States between Fort Mifflin and Island softer word for boss: the Curator, collector day. Mummy did a lot of cooking. We lis- necklace club princess. They are “A lot of people say that we write and Europe to the slave colonies of Avenue and walked through a field of people and output, who keeps the cof- tened to play and knitted in afternoon ... equally at home shopping at Kiehl’s shock lyrics,” begins Bear, over a the West Indies, saw the return of of shoulder high grass and weeds. fee pot filled and the heat turned on. ] for facial treatments as they are beer at the Royal Tavern, before tropical products like sugar, for con- We shoved the grass back, walking SIX ISSUES FOR FIVE DOLLARS ADVERTISE IN THE INDEPENDENT Subscribe to THE INDEPENDENT. Includes pinback downing the special at Bob and Jonny, holding a Shirley Temple, sumption or re-export from the in a line, our feet sinking into Reach 10,000 readers with the Newspaper that Gets button and subscriber card. See Page 13 for details. Barbara’s. V.I.P. celebrates any and cuts in: “But that stuff actually northern ports. In the 1790s, ground that seemed to have been Read and Gets Kept. Call 215-351-0777 for details. INDEPENDENT T-SHIRTS: $14 all adornments—tattoos, sequins, Europe’s sporadic military conflicts WHERE WILL YOU BE TONIGHT? 2 styles: Seal in white on black, Flag in black on gray. Ask Floss Daily: A new online events calendar. Email [email protected]. glitter-accented lip gloss and stud- turn to V.I.P., page 15 erupted into a full-fledged war in the turn to TIDEWATER, page 6 Visit www.flossdaily.net. and send in your own listings. PAGE 2 THE PHILADELPHIA INDEPENDENT SPRING 2004

[ stationery ] [ opinion ] THE SEPTA Established 2001 <><><><><><><><><><><> LOSING∂ THE WAR LETTERS∂ M ATTATHIAS S CHWARTZ, Editor & Publisher JACOB W EINSTEIN, Art Director I Write to Strangers S TEVEN S. USHIODA, Chairman, Bureau of Circulation & Advertising They That Give Up Essential Liberty to Obtain Temporary Safety ∂ on the Train JONATHAN SHAININ, Books Editor Deserve Neither Liberty Nor Safety C. THOMPSON, News Editor MOLLY RUSSAKOFF, Poetry Editor NO. 2 & 3: LOVE AT LAST SIGHT CHRISTINE SMALLWOOD, Online Editor from WAR page 1 called Sleeper Cells. Your own neighbor- and if America keeps on fighting those JOHN PAGE, Chairman, Bureau of Information Technology class at West Point: if I am in a fight hood, once so tranquil and sure, is now like him. The empty space of our nation’s [ BY LIZ RYWELSKY ] ∂ with a foe, and that foe causes a certain tense with the possibility that it, too, is institutions already belong to him, by R ICHARD CHARLES, LOREN H UNT, piece of geography—where I once could enemy territory. default, because they do not belong to 2. R7, TRENTON TO PHILADELPHIA, 4:30 P.M. A LLEN CRAWFORD, MARK L OTTO, BENJAMIN T IVEN go—to become off-limits, then I have We are losing the war. We are afraid We The People anymore. Perpetual war My back is to the window. She is sitting & HENRY W ILLIAM BROWNEJOHNS, Contributing Editors lost, in a tactical sense, to that enemy. to go into our own buildings, and the will simply maintain that demarcation— one row behind me, across the aisle. She has ∂ After all, territory is the very stuff of war, danger of doing so is considered so tan- so long as our leaders perceive the threat plush milk skin and dark hair. I want to be her. A NNIE K ARNI, DEVALINA GUHA-ROY & TAMARA M ANIK-PERLMAN, Readers as chips are of poker. And while the lat- gible that the government enforces the of our enemy, they will keep up the bar- She could keep the boy I could not. And if she ∂ ter may be changed for money at the end restriction. We have been beaten into riers. Of course, after a generation or were mine, I could make him jealous with her. H ENRY FLOSS, Chairman, Bureau of Puzzles & Games of the game, the former is converted into submission aboard our means of trans- two, this new America, this America the She bites the inside of her cheek. She is a the bent will of a people—enough terri- portation, to such an extent that we only Lackey to its Enemies, will be such an thinker. No, I think she has a sore she is trying ,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,. tory is lost, and the inhabitants concede allow ourselves to enter a vehicle with a unpleasant place to live that it will not to bite off. 1026 Arch Street to the idea of being occupied. In either friendly plainclothes soldier already seem worth protecting so ferociously. The train stops before pulling into 30th editors@philadelphia (215) – 351 – 0777 independent.net Philadelphia, Penna. 19107 case, territory is a fair first criteria for the aboard. People will find other places more truly Street Station. The departing passengers stand measurement of progress in conflict. The dismal score of this contest is free, where one can go about the mun- in the aisle, waiting. She is standing right in ,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,. And how much territory have we the more difficult to see because of the dane act of living, without feeling tugged front of my seat. I hand her this letter: “You The paper that writes The paper that never sleeps! The paper that answers gained against this group of unnamables, nature of our enemy’s goals. No one by the paranoia of the more powerful. have a perfect face. Email me, please.” She you back! the phone! the Terrorists? Even the one we have a seeks to occupy us. Indeed, we occupy And when this occurs, America the Ideal takes the paper. “What?”—she asks, confused. name for, Osama bin Laden, hasn’t so Iraq, and it might be said that there is a will have been finally abandoned, and She peeks back at me after getting off the train. much as had to change mountain ranges war we have won—except that Iraq was then indeed it will have lost the war, She never wrote me back. TO ∂OUR SUBSCRIBERS in two years. He entered this conflict never our enemy, and now that we have clearly for all to see. already restricted in his movement; he overrun it, its citizens are rising up and I ought to append, of course, my own 3. BROAD STREET LINE,SUSQUEHANNA- Thank you for supporting this publication. isn’t a free man, by any means. And so becoming our enemy. preferences for the outcome of this con- DAUPHIN TO GIRARD AVENUE, 6:05 P.M. when the equation is balanced, this war The actual enemy we are engaged flict. I would like, and soon, to be able to I get a seat towards the back of the car, fac- FRANKLIN SUBSCRIBERS George Nilas SQUARE DEAL must be measured by the places we, the with is bent not on redecorating the go to the top of the Empire State ing the door. She comes in and sits down across Sara Becker Jennifer Hasty SUBSCRIBERS free, can no longer call our own. Oval Office with new, garish flags and Building—and if while I am there I am from me. After my day at work, I don’t have Dan Rottenberg Ed Tettemer Daniel Brook The upper floors of the Empire State enslaving the American people, but killed by an Enemy of the principle of the heart to look up from her feet, but I can Patrick Connolly Megan Driscoll Building are in the hands of Al Qaeda, so instead in simply breaking the mecha- human liberty, I would like my fellows feel her staring at me, and it’s annoying. Erin Connolly RIZZO SUBSCRIBERS Henry George Foundation John W. Plummer Claire McGuire Jill Fink long as they are not accessible to sover- nism of our society. Airplanes fly into and my society to realize that is an accept- Violently, and forgetting my own habits, I Gita Estersohn William Daniel Jr. Michelle Soslau eign Americans with the cost of an eleva- our skyscrapers, and, predictably, we able price for the time I have spent as a write her a letter: “Maybe you want to talk to Taylor Boyd Camela Raymond Mr. and Mrs. C.Counter tor ticket. The crown of the Statue of strip dangerous and anarchic Liberty free citizen of an enlightened society. I me—email.” I hand it to her right before I got George Ross Fisher III Eliot Duhan Marcie S. & Stephen Keith Glutting TC Hatzis Johnson Liberty may as well be strung with Mr. away from all things associated with air- would like to donate my life to risk, so off at the Girard stop. Yukiko Irwin Louis M. Iatarola Sandra & Jeremy Cook Bin Laden’s hammock, for all the pres- craft and tall buildings. Now we are less that the next generation will know what it Three weeks later, she wrote back: David J. Travis Tom Iannozzi Joan Sage ence of American citizens there. The of a nation—both in strict terms of is to be free. And if I were to spout some- Taylor Walker A. Nicely Karen Werne very steps of the Capitol Building are square-footage, and in the pitying eyes thing still more optimistic, I would argue Dear Liz, Rachel Zimmerman Vance Lemkuhl Angela R. Vendetti Nancy R. Ziering Thomas Rodebaugh III now owned and operated by wild-eyed of the world. We still say these self-flat- that if enough free men and women were Perhaps you don’t remember me. I am FREEMASON SUBSCRIBERS Linda Ziering Kaelsie Saravia radicals in the mountains of Afghanistan, tering things about our country, how it is content to be sacrificed in such a way, to the girl on the subway to whom you gave Cary Borish Seth Pollins Laurel Schwass-Drew or so we presume, because they are no the Home of Freedom and the Seat of the cause of passive response, then free- your address. Perhaps I should refresh your Flux Labs S.M. Goddard Walter Bayer longer the property of the free American Democracy, but of course we all know dom’s enemies might even lose the satis- visual memory, in case it’s been too long or Carol Ann Harris Joy Feasley Carrie L. Schwartz Joseph Z. Traub Robin Clark public. And the Mujahideen have now that this is less true than it was three faction of their aggression. in case there is someone else who acquired David Peterson Lois Purvis Aaron Plante Pammela Springfield declared an end to the age-old tradition years ago. All the blood that is spilt as you read your address in a similar way. Anyway, I John Moyer Jeremy Ryan Merrit L. Linn, M.D. of the White House tour. Next, our postal services, our ship- is merely slaking the unslakeable thirst of was the short brunette, black and white Martha Cross Judy Wicks Christopher McKenna Douglas Hungarter Sarah G. Collins If this conflicts with your perception ping lines, perhaps our utilities, will dogmatic autocracy. While Mr. bin clothes, vinyl pants, point-heeled black Nicole DiGironimo Sarah Wood Walter Blake of the front line, keep in mind the efforts flinch under the threat from the Enemy. Laden and his like lay back in their boots. I was actually admiring your patent Matthew Hamilton Adriana DiFranco Sky Kalfus A.J. Thomson of the Bush Administration to pretend And when these things become expen- bunker, they may tally every one of your leather red Reebok high tops when you Kate Duncan Stephen Lehmann Kenneth Rowles all is well. The Statue of Liberty has had sive, impractical, and intensively restrict- soldiers lives as one of their own victims. approached me. That ought to do it. Michael Heinzer C. Cohen James Purvis T. Buchanan Jared Solomon a lot of attention lately for her imminent ed—by virtue of our clumsy and belated And when Mr. bin Laden is long gone, As you can guess, I hesitated about Jeffrey W. White Pamela Winge Aryon Hoselton reopening this summer—but in fact the attempts to protect them—then we will he will still be killing your soldiers and contacting you, but I never threw your Gary & Sylvia Pearlman Carol & Chuck Hirsch CAConrad Lois & Arden Shenker Statue will remain closed, and visitors have yielded still more of our nation- your fellow citizens, simply by virtue of address out. No one has ever done that to Frank M. Pizzoli G.L.B. Walton Steven Dunn David Post John Caskey will only be permitted into the base. The hood. the clumsy reflex he has set into motion. me. Thank you. Holger Reinhardt Eric Maron Carlos Ramirez Department of the Interior is unsure if If a being moves in response to every The zealots will be happy so long as I also hesitated because I thought you Joshua S. Bloom Adam Fieled Jeannine Sofia Michael Barsanti Lady Liberty will ever be habitable move of another—whether it is in mim- there is a fight; fear is only incidental. were just interested in dating me, and I Peter Kuklinski Matthew Stinson Robin A. Dare again. Her website even snidely asides, icry or self-preservation—we call that That it is so useful to our own zealots is thought, if that were the case, it would be Peter Basso Pablo Montagnes William Chanin Rob Riggan Susan Zalenski “Did you know that the sculptor of the object either a puppet or an ape. Neither unfortunate—but the society they are unfair to contact you because I am married Joel Holland Sharin Alpert Sarah Bishop-Stone Statue of Liberty wanted people to view is flattering. Yet every time Mr. bin shaping, where it is so fine to be wealthy and happily so. It’s really deceptive of me Kathryn Lipman George Esworthy Shawn P. Moore Helen Larkin-Hikes his work from the outside? It was origi- Laden utters a noun from his sovereign and white and so difficult to be anything not to wear a wedding ring, but I don’t do Emile Jorgensen Ariel Spaeth Georgia Bartell nally planned to fill the inside with sand cave, whatever he has named becomes else, is doomed to shrivel and disappear it to hide anything. I lost my wedding ring Eben Sheaffer Nick Brown Irwin Trauss Robert Helms Brian Goedde for stability.” You didn’t know that? his. If our satellite hears him say “Yankee in any case. What use is a briefcase full in a really bad break he and I had a few Brian Murphy Julie Sneeringer Yvonne York Joseph Witt Well now you can stop complaining. Stadium,” do you think anyone will be of tax savings if that money can’t buy me years ago. I was pretty wild then. I managed Michael Kmiec Suzibob Foster Moshe Zvi Marvit (And when O.B.L. redecorates with the freely allowed into that amphitheater a ticket up to the crown of the Statue of to lose the car, the ring, and most of my Phoebe Walker Rebecca Rose-Langston Fran McCloskey Danielle Peterson Al Czulada sand he has grown accustomed to, he’ll again? I think not, at least until we hear Liberty? Let the radicals rewrite all the worldly possessions to the Williamsburg, Macdonald J. Daniel Amy Biggers Robert Dobie only be adhering to the ‘original’ plan.) Mr. bin Laden tell us that he takes it documents in the archives—so long as Kentucky sheriff ’s department when I was George Woehlcke DM Stewart M. Quinn The Empire State Building, too, back. Mr. bin Laden wields as much they are losing us this war, none of that arrested for public intoxication. I wasn’t Laura Ettedgui J. Vandergrift rarely gets any credit for being lost to the power over our lives, if not immensely stuff is material anyway. even drunk, but it was hard to convince Shay Myers Joe Matje Aryon Hoselton Terrorists. Visitors to the 86th floor more, than your mayor, your governor, or This a fine time to finally examine them of that when they found me dancing Paul Curcio Derik Badman observation deck might never even your president. the claims we make about ourselves: on top of the said vehicle to Kid Rock at a ∂ notice they are toeing the trenches of the Liberty—real, absolute liberty—can- about our Goodness, which we claim to very early hour in the middle of the woods. War, unless those visitors recall that the not go to war. It can surely be attacked, be the world’s best; about our fairness, I guess mooning them didn’t help either. Information on how to subscribe can be found on Page Thirteen. Building is 102 stories tall. and it has (though a much, much longer which we like to think is unsurpassed; Anyway, they dropped the charges (they And perish the thought that the time ago than 2001), but if it is to remain about our Freedom, about the great lim- had to), and all I got was a concussion and White House would acknowledge its true to its dictionary definition, then itations of which we remain deluded; a fractured leg and none of my stuff back. I CIRCULATION INFORMATION own loss; it has just made a wonderful Liberty must remain inert. For if Liberty and about our invincibility, which has hate cops. ∂ fuss about the resumption of the famous responds to its attacker, then it is in a been American history’s best-kept secret I have since mellowed out, as they say. THE PHILADELPHIA INDEPENDENT is sold at the following locations, and we’re always looking for new ones. tours. Rather tucked away in the press way beholden to that attacker, it awaits ever since we “tied” the British in 1812. Basically, I was writing to find out if Boldface type denotes a new addition. release is that prospective tourists will the next move, it anticipates, and it We have an imperfect record; we may you still wanted to hang out or chat. The only be admitted with a reservation counters. It isn’t actually Liberty any- even be playing only .500 ball. But we truth about me is that if I were single I P HILADELPHIA. Price: $1.00 The Marvelous – 208 S. 40th St. made through their congressional repre- more—it is an aggrieved zoo animal. ignore the losses, mislabel the stale- would probably date women as well as Ministry of Information – 447 Poplar St. Reading Terminal Market – 12th & Arch St. sentative’s office. This hardly amounts If we extend this model to the mate- mates, and celebrate the victories, until men, though probably not at the same Silk City Diner – 435 Spring Garden St. Molly’s Bookstore – 1010 S. 9th St. Mostly Books – 529 Bainbridge St. N. 3rd – 801 N. 3rd St. to public accessibility. What foreign vis- rial world, you might notice that such a they are all mixed into one great culture time. Maybe that offends you, I have no 514 Books – 514 Bainbridge St. Palm Tree Market – 717 N. Second St. itors are expected to do is unclear, and it situation would be terribly costly. It of imagined success. way of knowing. I like to go out, and I am AKA Music – 7 N. Second St. Petit 4 Pastry Studio – 160 N. 3rd St. is a fair principle that ‘public access’ is would mean that, to be free, we must perfectly comfortable going out alone, as Philadelphia Java Co. – 514 4th St. If we were willing to consider the American Mortals – 729 Walnut St. diminished if the public must jump ignore every attack upon us, and simply prospect of losing, as every nation large opposed to always being with my husband Avril 50 – 3406 Sansom St. Rat Pack Café – 631 N. 3rd St. The Bean Café – 615 South St. R.E.Load Baggage – 142 N. 2nd St. through hoops to enjoy it. Call it prior go on being free and enjoying it, embrac- and small has done; and if we were will- or my friends. I like to go clubbing. I am Big Jar Books – 55 N. 2nd St. Retrospect – 534 South St. restraint or bureaucratic booby-trapping, ing the tenuousness of life and certainty. ing to think ourselves blameful (for exam- originally from Texas. I don’t really miss it. Robin’s Bookstore – 108 S. 13th St. Book Corner – 311 N. 20th St. but for all intents and purposes, the We must bury the victims of freedom’s ple, the secret arrest of sovereign citizens I am 22. My husband and I are thinking Bookhaven – 2202 Fairmount Ave. Robin’s Bookstore – 1837 Chestnut St. Café Lutecia – 2301 Lombard St. Salsolito – 602 South St. White House deed remains on the floor foes, and then savor the freedom of our of dozens of other countries and their about moving to Miami. He’s interviewing Café Intermezzo – 3131 Walnut St. Sam’s Place – 405 S. 45th St. of a cave in the Hindu Kush. own lives. We must go back into our indefinite internment and unlawful pun- for a job there this week. If he gets the job, Sher’s Bookshop – 706 N. 2nd St. Café Izmir – 629 Ninth St. So too, with the St. Louis Arch, the buildings, set our children to play out in ishment at a remote military installa- I’ll still be here for another three months or Dave’s Famous Deli – 4th & Bainbridge Space 1026 – 1026 Arch St. Dirty Frank’s – 13th & Spruce Spaceboy Music – 409 South St. Washington Monument, the D.C. Mall, the yard, take our airplanes into the air, tion), then we might have the mental so. I don’t have a job outside of school, but Essene – 719 S. Fourth Street The Standard Tap – 2nd & Poplar the financial district of New York City, and comprehend that every instant of dexterity to correct our faults. It is the sometimes I do modeling for the art The Taco House – 1218 Pine St. Fiume – 229 S. 45th St. and Philadelphia’s own Independence life is fraught with risk. Either we live self-help cult’s most tiresome maxim, but department. Gianna’s Grille – 507 S. Sixth St. Tin Man Alley – 608 N. 2nd St. The Gleaner’s Cafe – 941 S. 9th St. Vagabond – 37 N. 3rd St. Mall. All of these notable locales through it or we do not, but of what we perhaps nothing but this sort of treacle Annie Lennox is my pop cultural icon of Greasywaitress Vintage – Third & Bainbridge Wooden Shoe Books – 508 S. 5th St. remain—nominally—open, but under will have experienced, we will have expe- will bond with the public’s neurons: the choice right now. I used to have really short The Green Line Café – 4329 Baltimore Ave. Words & Whimsy – 1904 South St. such extraordinary measures of limita- rienced it as Free People. We must, first stage is denial, and our first stage has hair and try to look very much like her. I’m & from our fleet of news-boxes Hope on 7th – 701 Bainbridge St. tion and lockdown that ‘public access’ is frankly, permit our liberty to be used lasted two and a quarter centuries. just realizing that there is nothing really all House of Our Own – 3920 Spruce St. E LSEWHERE. Price: $2.00 a kindly myth. Al Qaeda has only against us, if we are committed to pre- We must conclude, as based on the that interesting about me at the moment, so InFusion – 7133 Germantown Ave. Doylestown: Doylestown Bookshop – 16 S. Main Institute for Contemporary Art – 118 S. 36th St. Doylestown: Siren Records – 25 W. State achieved a time-share here, but they serving it. evidence of history, that the United I’m just going to close now. So, if you’re still Joe – 1100 Walnut St. Hatboro: Abby’s Bookcase – 291 County Line Road have most certainly forced our retreat. The only thing the Enemy in the States is not necessarily such a Great interested in hanging out or talking to me, Kelly Writers’ House – 3805 Locust Walk Hatboro: Main Street Records – 11 S. York Road Now many of the temporary barriers Terror War hopes to achieve is to contin- Country. It may be a good one, and we please write back or call me 484-437-[——] The Khyber – 56 S. 2nd St. Media: 20/20 Fusion Café – 2 West Baltimore Ave. The Last Drop – 13th & Pine Media: Koffee Korner – 15 South Jackson St. erected in these places are being made ue fighting. Ultimately, Osama bin are certainly entitled to much affection (cell) or 610-658-[——] (home). The Last Word Bookshop– 3925 Walnut St. New Hope: Farley’s Bookshop – 44 S. Main permanent—with complete disregard for Laden is a miniscule figure in this con- for it. But we are impotent to improve Incidentally, I will be at this spoken Latté Lounge – 816 N. 4th St. Pittsburgh: Three Penny Books – 1827 Murray Ave. public aesthetics, the ‘original plan’ of the flict—he is a small-time warlord who has ourselves until we acknowledge that word event tomorrow night at the South Marathon Grill – 2 Commerce Square Baltimore, MD: Atomic Books – 1100 W. 36th Street Marathon Grill – Suburban Station Brooklyn, NY: Clovis Press – 229 Bedford Ave. designers (unless that plan means weld- terrific press and a good business sense, there is anything to improve. The alter- Cafe, 627 South St. It starts at 8, but I Marathon Grill – 1339 Chestnut Chicago, IL: Quimby’s Bookstore – 1854 North Ave. ing the doors shut), or the effect on the but the same grievances against the con- native is to be improved, forcefully, by won’t get there until later because I have a Marathon Grill – 16th & Sansom Portland, OR: Reading Frenzy – 921 S.W. Oak St. morale of American liberty. Al Qaeda dition of the world as millions of others. others, and by their most inhumane class that ends at 8. I think it would be real- has permanently sealed off the edges and He has no desire to sit where Mr. means. ] ly fun if you came and we could talk. the centers of all our civic forums. And Bush sits now; rather, Mr. bin Laden will Henry William Brownejohns is —Amanda CORRECTION of course, there is the matter of the so- be happy if he dies fighting America, Contributing Editor at THE INDEPENDENT. The Sound Advice section on Page Eleven of Issue of the band Das Damen. In fact, the photograph was I never wrote her back. ] Fourteen contained an erroneous caption, apprearing of an early incarnation of the band, of which Phil Liz Rywelsky is an artist living in immediately below a photograph, stating that the Carter was not yet a member. THE INDEPENDENT Philadelphia. She can be reached via email at musician standing third from the left was Phil Carter, regrets the error. [email protected] SPRING 2004 THE PHILADELPHIA INDEPENDENT PAGE 3

[ opinion ] n 1966, urban architecture was all stark [ interview ] Campus Center, and on the walls inside we Fibs Spike, Whoppers Post Strong Gains marble plazas, sleek glass towers, and have what we call ‘ornamental graffiti.’ These Imonolithic superblocks. Consider the are sayings by famous Princeton graduates— Pennsylvania State Office Building at Broad VENTURI & SCOTT BROWN John Adams, Woodrow Wilson, people like ddressing that constituency of wafflers where they are concerned. and Spring Garden streets. Years ago, this con- ∂ that. That’s a form of graffiti that’s valid. Aand arm-chair CEOs that cannot make This author, it must be admitted, has a crete shoebox was the height of bureaucratic There’s a tradition of classical buildings having a decision until they have seen a graph, the bit of a fetish for charts and graphs. There is taste. Robert Venturi, then a 41-year-old pro- A Conversation with Robert Venturi & Denise Scott Brown words on their façades. U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee something about the abstraction of knowl- fessor with fewer than a dozen buildings to his on Signage, Ornament, & The Sensibility of Whammo TPI: The dominant signs of the electronic on Government Reform has dutifully issued edge, and its regurgitation as lines and bars name, turned this taste on its head with his age are television commercials. How do you the two seen here. and easily-compared geometry that makes book Complexity and Contradiction in put that narrative into buildings? the medulla throb with pleasure. It is old Architecture. Venturi rejected the “puritanically RV: The tesserae2 of the mosaics were per- news, frankly, that the president plays as fast moral language of orthodox Modern architec- manent. Now we have pixels. Our individual and loose with the Truth as any in modern ture,” just as Modernist Le Corbusier had elements are constantly changing, and that history (and Mr. Clinton, let’s face it, set the responded to the Victorian architecture before enhances community. You go to Times Square bar high). But Mr. Bush’s mendacity is the him: “I like elements which are hybrid rather and you see the news. The whole front of a more fascinating when we try and figure out, than ‘pure,’ compromising rather than ‘clean,’ building can contain electronic stuff, talking for example, why June of 2003 obliged him to distorted rather than ‘straightforward,’ about the stock market and what’s happening fib twenty-two times, and yet he was able to ambiguous rather than ‘articulated,’ … I am for in general, newswires. In Japan, electronic bill- hold his tongue in August (perhaps, who messy vitality over obvious unity.” boards convey changing, dynamic information. needs to lie when they’re on vacation?). The next year, Venturi married University They create an aesthetic that is whammo. The Chaos Theory, interestingly enough, of Pennsylvania colleague Denise Scott Brown, electronic medium can accommodate that seems to apply to the President’s disingenu- who would soon join his architecture and whammo sensibility. By comparison, the sub- ousness—it is vaguely cyclic, as if a slow hor- design practice in Philadelphia. They followed tlety of modern architecture is old fashioned. monal ebb-and-flow was choking off his up Complexity with Learning from Las Vegas. Le Corbusier said architecture is the “play of contact with honesty, but then we see a phe- Co-written with Steven Izenour, Las Vegas was masses brought together in light,” with shad- nomenon like November and December of one of the first books to advocate that archi- ows and shades and all that. Now that you have 2003, the only two consecutive months in the tects pay attention to the vernacular world whammo, the context has to work, and the idea term in which no untruths were uttered, and around them rather than trying to impose their of using convention—slightly tweaked and we wonder if he isn’t struggling against a sort own vision upon it. changed, as appropriate—is more valid for These are the visual displays accompany- of mania. Can he kick fibbery like he kicked Where the Modernists stuck to an ortho- today than that of inventing a new vocabulary. ing the committee’s exhaustive database of booze? Ultimately though, like the weather dox vocabulary for how buildings should look We say: It’s better to be good than original. “misleading” statements made by President and the stock market, the Bush and what they should mean, Venturi and Scott Look at Michelangelo, arguably the greatest George W. Bush and his quartet of profes- Administration’s hooey is unpredictable. Brown were willing to accommodate ambigui- architect in history. When he did the dome of sional prevaricators: Secretaries Rumsfeld Who remembers what they were doing in ty, even a sense of humor. Their 1964 design Saint Peter’s in Rome, it was based on the and Powell, Veep Cheney, and Ms. Rice. September of 2002? Mourning? Reflecting? for an egg-shaped fountain at the center of dome of Brunelleschi in Florence, designed The committee’s report cites 237 separate Worrying? Maybe all of these, but you weren’t JFK Plaza was to be ringed with the solemn one hundred years earlier. Michelangelo wasn’t statements, made publicly by the aforemen- likely scheming and plotting a perfectly words “Here Begins Fairmount Park.” being original; he was being good. The very tioned officials, which were “misleading” or a make-believe apocalypse. Unless you were a Approaching automobiles on the Benjamin idea of originality comes out of Romantic art “misrepresentation” or downright “erro- member of the Five Cavaliers; in that case, Franklin Parkway would only have been able to of the 19th century and is old-fashioned. neous,” over the course of just under two you spent September composing more fiction see the words “Park Here,” before pulling into DSB: We are very interested in archetypes, years. It is even so polite to point out that the for the news-columns than Jayson Blair could the garage beneath the plaza. (The Fairmount in typologies. Imagine a toy train that runs database does not include statements that have on a month-long cocaine spree. Park Commission went with a simpler foun- through a small, toy-train town. What would appear in hindsight to be erroneous but were And if the undulating line of Frequency tain and more complicated sign: Gary Indiana’s the post office, schoolhouse, and town hall accurate reflections of the views of intelli- (those are increments of ten!) were not statis- LOVE sculpture.) look like in that little town? Those are generic gence officials at the time they were made.” tical stimulation enough, we are treated, still Venturi and Scott Brown’s designs are all types. When we design, say, a school building, Thus it is a catalogue of unvarnished lies, dis- further, to a categorization of the sort of false over the city, from the lights on the Benjamin we try to keep the generic in mind. tinct from mere ‘slip-ups.’ And, it is worth statements being made, in Figure Two. We Franklin Bridge to Welcome Park near Society BASCO Showroom designed by Venturi Scott Brown Associates, Philadelphia, 1979. RV: There’s a tendency now for buildings mentioning, the report only details those see how Iraq as an “Urgent Threat” apparent- Hill to the ghostly skeleton house in Franklin to be dramatic, expressionistic, original, statements which were in regards to the ly failed in its focus-group tests, clearly less Court on Market Street. They have assumed diction because, at the same time, it also adapt- ing whose shape itself conveys a message. It’s sculptural kinds of objects. But there is anoth- debacle in Iraq. Irate Medicare beneficiaries, favored than the tried-and-true hobgoblins an active role in local and national planning ed an industrial vocabulary. For example, named for the building, made in the shape of a er tradition of the building that is not revolu- middle and working-class taxpayers, union of “Nuclear Activities“ and “Chemical and discussions. Scott Brown was an outspoken Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s building on Park giant duck, where they sell Long Island duck- tionary but that evolves over time and con- laborers, immigrants, minorities, school- Biological Weapons.” The Administration critic of a late 1970s proposal to dig a new free- Avenue looked like a factory. In the early 20th ling, a delicacy. Lucy the elephant in Margate, nects with convention. And it can still be children, homosexuals, heterosexuals, and merely dabbled in lies about Mr. Hussein’s way beneath South and Bainbridge streets and century Europeans, not Americans, discovered New Jersey, or City Hall in Philadelphia could good architecture. assorted other bipeds must look elsewhere for add 14,000 new parking spaces to the neigh- the validity of American industrial architecture also be considered Ducks. Decorated Sheds, on TPI: Has the state of celebrity architecture the Administration’s uncounted fabrications turn to FIBS, page 9 borhood. She has weighed in on the future of as a basis for a vocabulary of Modern architec- the other hand, are simple structures, like the affected your practice? Do you feel as though the World Trade Center site on the Op-Ed ture. The American factory building was old industrial lofts found along rail lines in you have to shock now? And how does the page of the New York Times and prepared an acknowledged as valid. We are now saying that Pennsylvania and New Jersey. These buildings work that you have done in the past influence extensive white paper on the future of Penn’s the equivalent for the 21st century is the let in a lot of light. They’re sturdy and ample. your work now? CITY STARVing FOR SUPERMARKETS Landing. In the early 1990s, Venturi won the American commercial vernacular. Of course When I was a student, I used to say that the DSB: We were once young and struggling, Pritzker Architecture Prize, the most presti- Americans are snotty only bad thing about but Bob was something of a celebrity while he ∂ gious award in the field. Not since the days of about commercial them was that they had was young and struggling, because he had writ- Louis Kahn has Philadelphia been home to architecture, “it’s vulgar, some decoration over ten Complexity and Contradiction in Take-out Triumph & Bodega Boom Leave Room For Small Local Chains architects of greater renown. materialistic, blah blah the doorway. Then, as Architecture. Now we are highly out of fashion In his interview with THE INDEPENDENT, blah.” We are saying we were beginning to in the US, but people in Europe, particularly [ BY ANNIE KARNI ] Venturi offered praise for one of the works of that architecture should study Las Vegas, I young people, are telling us they see our work SPRUCE HILL, Phila.—Willietta Johnson open; the chain’s co-founders have been his forbearers, the PSFS Building at 12th and not go back to Mies’s began to realize that as really important for the future. Few muse- and her daughter make their way down the charged with embezzling $372,000 from com- Market, one of the first Modernist abstraction. We think the decoration over the ums will hire us today. For them, we are used meat aisle at the 43rd and Walnut Thriftway. pany coffers before they did it. But big nation- International Style high-rises. “The big ‘PSFS’ we should embrace an doorway was a much goods, used by other museums. But we work Their shopping cart is loaded with stacks of pig al grocery chains with better credit ratings at the top works very well as an icon,” he said. ideal of the past, where more direct way of sig- for wonderful small museums, and there are ears, pig feet, pork shoulder and neck bones. blame lack of space and city taxes—the wage “It’s vivid, and it also gives information. It says iconography and sig- nifying in architecture other arenas for work. We seldom find these “Where I’m at in North Philadelphia, there tax, the gross business receipt tax—for their “I am the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society nage and symbolism than distorting the new opportunities, they find us. As the font ain’t no supermarkets, just corner stores and lack of desire to reach Philadelphia customers. building. With most buildings today, the archi- were important. Go whole building to dried up for museums, people approached us to Chinese places,” says Johnson. So once a A new $150 million provision in Gov. tect would not be caught dead having a sign on back to hieroglyphics, make it look modern. design campus plans, campus centers, libraries month, she makes the drive to West Edward Rendell’s economic stimulus bill will, them. That’s considered vulgar or commercial. to writing incised upon We’re interested in the and lab buildings. There’s been a huge change Philadelphia and stocks up on meat, vegetables for the first time ever at a state level, earmark The wonderful irony is that the PSFS was very the temple. Go back to notion of doing archi- in the work we do from the 1970s to now. In and bread. some funds for attracting grocery stores and high falutin back in its time.” Classical pediments tecture in a plain, that time our ideas have grown and changed Urban planning experts say grocery stores improving food access. In the meantime, The interview took place at their offices, in that had sculpture in Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi straightforward way, too. Sometimes people want us to design a are seen as leading indicators of the health of a supermarkets in Philadelphia will have to a brick Victorian halfway along Manayunk’s them. You say, “oh in their Manayunk office. then putting an building as we would have done in 1964. They neighborhood. North Philadelphia, by that grapple with market forces if they want to feed Main Street. ∂ that’s art” but it wasn’t appliqué of message on think we will still be doing the same thing. measure, is one of our country’s sickest regions. city residents. Some of the largest supermar- really art so much; it was explaining the reli- the outside. In the end that’s more direct than RV: We are thinking of changing my name While recent years have bestowed upon West kets North Philadelphia are part of Cousin’s THE PHILADELPHIA INDEPENDENT: What gion at the time. Early Christian architecture distorting the structure and function of the to Roberto Venturi because everybody is hiring Philadelphia two gleaming new Fresh Grocer Supermarkets, a family-owned chain of four are your thoughts on living in Philadelphia? and Byzantine architecture are filled with building to convey a message. foreign architects. All the new buildings being stores (a 30,000 square foot location at 40th stores. Owner Steve Cousins said his approach Robert Venturi: I loved growing up in mosaics we now consider to be art, but art was RV: The Decorated Shed is not only com- designed along the Benjamin Franklin and Walnut streets and a 51,000 square foot was simple—undercut the prices of both Philadelphia. It was such a rich environment only their secondary function. The mosaics mercial of course. Nassau Hall at Princeton Parkway are by foreign architects. You men- store at 56th and Chestnut streets), North Center City supermarkets and neighborhood for a kid like me, interested in architecture. were really signs to teach you, a member of an and William and Mary Hall at William and tioned shock. You can say the idea is to create Philadelphia’s luck in luring and keeping super- bodegas with cheap produce and meat as well This was the second largest city in the British illiterate populace, about theology; or to con- Mary College are loft buildings or Sheds of the shock by being original: maybe our approach is markets in its neighborhoods has been harder. as the ethnic specialties demanded by the empire in the 18th century, so it has Georgian vince you to convert to Christianity. Take the 18th century, with ornament around the door to shock by being vulgar— Only six of the thirty-three large super- stores’ mostly black and Latino customers. “It’s architecture. It has a fine Gothic Revival stained glass windows of gothic architecture: or a cupola on the roof that says, “I am not a DSB: —and by being ordinary. markets and fifteen of the forty-five smaller no secret that good prices bring customers,” Victorian period. It has Ecole de Beaux Arts they were beautiful art, but more important, mill, I am not a factory, I am an academic RV: We think “heroic and original” is inap- supermarkets within Philadelphia’s limits are Cousins said. “The stores that were here before buildings along the Benjamin Franklin they offered specific instruction. Now we have building.” Even the Italian palazzo of the propriate. Ordinary can be appropriate. You in low-income neighborhoods, according to a took advantage of the fact that they were the Parkway and fine 18th century houses above accept the conventional and then you tweak it. survey conducted by Drexel University. The only game in town. Now we’re drawing clien- the Schuylkill River. There are great Victorian TPI: How do you keep seeing things result? More money spent on packaged and tele from Southwest Philadelphia and New architects like Frank Furness, whose works anew? processed food at corner bodegas, which carry Jersey because our prices are cheaper.” were being torn down until several decades DSB: I had been looking at popular culture little to no fresh produce and where prices are, For those who can’t afford bodega prices but ago. And there is great industrial vernacular in Africa before I came here, so when I got on average, ten percent higher than at super- don’t live near one of the few North architecture. This city was the largest heavy- here, I went on doing what I had been doing, markets. It is prohibitively expensive for corner Philadelphia supermarkets, the Self-Help and industry center in the world at the time of taking photographs of ads, and industrial stores, which lack the space and refrigeration Resource Exchange (SHARE) food program World War I, so we still have an enormous architecture, and of things that excited me in capacity of supermarkets, to purchase fresh and the Food Trust are the city’s leading alter- number of industrial loft buildings, most of the everyday environment. When Bob and I vegetables in bulk. This steady diet of barbeque native low-income food sources. Philadelphia’s which are empty. People are just now begin- first met he was intrigued by my view of chips and beef lo mein may be one of the rea- SHARE site operates out of a large warehouse ning to recognize the value of these buildings, Philadelphia because I would see things he was sons Philadelphia consistently appears on the on Hunting Park Ave., bathed in the saccharine because they are adaptable, and because they familiar with through my outsiders’ eyes. rolls of the nation’s ten fattest cities. According odor emanating from the Tastykake factory next have become somewhat cheaper to buy. Along When we drove around the city, I would to the state Legislature’s Committee on Health door. At the warehouse, low-cost food, pur- North Broad Street and Girard Avenue, in become a visiting anthropologist, photograph- and Human Services, lack of access to healthy chased directly from the distributor, is packed by areas that have declined economically, there are ing things Philadelphians might miss. food is one of the causes of the public health consumers, who each contribute two hours of fine Victorian houses. These neighborhoods RV: Denise did help me see the ordinary as crisis of heart disease, diabetes and obesity. community service at SHARE. Churches and have a combination of residential and church extraordinary here in Philadelphia. I had a simi- A site purchased by Triumph Baptist senior centers distribute the food packages to architecture from the middle and late 19th lar experience myself, as an American artist Church at Broad and Wingohocking streets people who lack the mobility to bring them- century that should be acknowledged. abroad. And living in Rome for two years helped stood empty for eighteen months before the selves to food. “SHARE uses food as the facili- Denise Scott Brown: Here, in West Mt. Vanna Venturi House built for Robert Venturi’s mother, Philadelphia, 1964. me see the American city and the gridiron plan Plainfield, N.J.-based, Cuban-owned El tator to get people together to work for the Airy, we could buy a beautiful house that we objectively. Being an expatriate allowed me to be Supremo chain stepped in last May. Progress common good, and for that they receive a food couldn’t afford in New York, London or Paris. billboards. We have light emitting diodes. We Renaissance was, in a way, a decorated shed. It stimulated and thrilled by the ordinary of my Plaza at Broad and Thompson streets has been package with a $30 to $35 dollar retail value,” It’s nice to live in a backwater—there’s more have Times Square, the great urban complex of was a kind of generic loft building with classi- own environment when I came back. without a grocery store for nearly six years since says Steveanna Wynn, executive director. room for you. Yet if we had to survive on the our time, the equivalent of the Piazza San cal pilasters1 and columns on the façade, which TPI: By seeing the extraordinary and then a Super Fresh abandoned the site in 1998. (The The Food Trust runs twelve open-air farm- work we get in Philadelphia, we would be a Marco of Venice of the past. The architectural made it a palace. seeing the ordinary? Drexel Hill-based Fresh Grocer is slated to take ers’ markets throughout the city between May very small office indeed. But this would be true effect of our age should not come from dra- TPI: How do you feel about the relation RV: Seeing that the ordinary has a quality up residence there this year.) Hopes for both and November. The Food Trust also convened for many architects, in New York as well as in matic, expressive, articulated architecture. It between graffiti and architecture? to it that is extraordinary as well. ] sites were temporarily derailed by their opera- the Food Marketing Task Force—a group of Philadelphia. should come from the generic loft, the simple RV: We have mixed feelings. I wouldn’t Ariel Ben-Amos contributed to this article. tors; Steve Brown, who opened Thriftway health professionals, food retailers, food advo- TPI: What have you been working on lately? building. What is beautiful, then, is not the want people to put graffiti on buildings we’ve ∂ supermarkets at Broad and Wingohocking and cates, community leaders, and business RV: The issue of signs. We are writing a sculptural effects of the architecture, but the designed. On the other hand, graffiti on ordi- Fifth and Berks streets in 1998, filed for bank- experts—to work together toward increasing book called Architecture as Signs and Systems, signage on the form. We call that the nary—or, let’s say, ‘generic’ buildings—can be ENDNOTES ruptcy protection for the two stores less than the availability of food in Philadelphia by offer- where we talk about the fact that the chic Decorated Shed. Let’s build for the Electronic richly decorative. Graffiti is not necessarily 1. A pilaster is an ordinary column with a cap- two years later. At Progress Plaza, the chosen ing both short- and long-term solutions. ] Modern architecture of the 20th century was Age, and for the Information Age. bad. We feel sympathetic toward the mural, ital and a base, with one face flush against a wall. tenant, a grocery chain called Raspino/Wargo Annie Karni is a student at Haverford connected to the aesthetic of contemporary DSB: We talk about buildings as being which is a kind of high-falutin graffiti. We fin- 2. Tessarae are tiny bits of glass, stone or declared bankruptcy before it had a chance to College. abstract art of the time. But it engaged contra- Ducks or Decorated Sheds. A Duck is a build- ished a campus center at Princeton, the Frist tile used to make mosaics. PAGE 4 THE PHILADELPHIA INDEPENDENT SPRING 2004

CURVED LINES IN THE STRAIGHT GRID

[ fixtures ] There are a number of drinking establish- [ profile ] ments in the city with fine, well-preserved examples of bar trough design. Cherry Street Toilets About Town Tavern (23rd and Cherry streets) has a classic THE REVEREND BILLY ∂ white tile specimen running the entire length ∂ of the thirty-foot Victorian-era bar. It flows THE MYSTERY OF THE TROUGH out of the white tile barroom floor, a depressed Heathen Shoppers Cower Before New York City Street Preacher U-shaped channel. The backsplash (or bar front) at Cherry Street is a formal brown mar- [ BY DAVID HARPER ] ble. A separate ladies’ entrance, which leads into a large room with tables, is separated from the main bar by a doorway. The owner/barkeep has been there since the 1970s and has no knowledge of the trough being used for any- thing other than receiving spit or washing down the floors. Ray’s Happy Birthday Bar at 1200 E. Passyunk Ave., has a unique specimen of a raised, square-shaped trough that makes a per- fect, ninety-degree turn to follow the L-shape of the bar. The trough still contains running water, with two spigots behind the bar that flow into a single drain in the middle of the pipe. Ray’s has a separate ladies’ entrance too, a large room that steps down through a narrow door- way to the main bar. An old photograph on the wall from Ray’s early years reveals that the trough was part of the bar’s original design. The men in the photograph are standing all zipped up, and the trough appears to be dry.The ladies’ room matches the men’s room, two closet-sized [ BY JOSHUA GLEASON ] the trauma of his Dutch Calvinist spaces with 1930s-colored tiles on the walls and n a recent Sunday night, as the upbringing. Now Lanier, a man Talen high ceilings, tiny sinks and toilets and ancient rain outside fell down in heavy greatly admired, was urging him to aban- Ray’s Hapy Birthday Bar, 1200 E. Passyunk Ave., 1938 exhaust fans. Ray’s is owned by 90 year-old Osheets, the Reverend Billy was don the theater for the street. But the Rose Capozzoli, who lives upstairs from the bar bent over his pulpit at St. Mark’s Church specter of the Mouse could not go unan- he year is 1940. You’re standing at a floor, troughs that run for a straight thirty- and still sweeps up most nights after the crowds in the East Village, his body moving in a swered, and Talen soon found himself crowded, smoky old neighborhood bar. foot shot, troughs that make a ninety-degree leave. Her son Lou Capozzoli remembers see- series of semi-spastic gyrations. With shelling out for a portable pulpit and a TYou’re drinking your mug of Schmidt’s, bend, troughs with single drains, double ing the trough used as a spittoon and ashtray, fingers clenched knuckle-white around white collar. In 1997, armed with these smoking a cigar, playing poker, and talking drains, marble backsplashes, tile backsplash- but never a urinal. his microphone, Billy trembled like a vestments and a bible-sized tape recorder, union politics late into the evening. The next es––they all seem to have running water with “Urinating? I might have some customers Pentecostal televangelist, pulsating with Talen planted himself across from the thing you know, the guy standing to your right a faucet at one end for “flushing.” The troughs who seen it, but I never seen it, not in my the power of the Lord. One moment he was according to Billy, the slogan actually read: Disney Store, near an entrance to the N and R unzips his fly, pulls out his you-know-what and were common in other American cities as whole life. My father bought the building in falling to his knees, burying his face in the “Come hungry—Brand-fuck!—leave happy.” trains. “Certainly my first shouts could not be starts peeing, right there at the bar. He thinks well—an old taproom in the Fels Point neigh- 1938. I was born in 1939. Now maybe it did floor, and the next he seemed to hover reck- Downshifting from a shout to a whisper, the heard or even deciphered,” Talen writes. nothing of it. He’s actually pissing all over the borhood on the harbor in Baltimore features a happen, but I never seen it.” lessly above terra firma, his arms failing above Reverend recounted how as he sat there, star- “White noise poured out of my mouth.” He front of the bar, and it’s trickling down to the particularly nice piece of copper––and they Other bars, like Johnny Brendas (1201 his head, as if trying to summon forbidden ing at this foul notion, drinking his steroidal “quickly backed down to talking as if someone floor and running in a steady golden stream have been reported in New York and Detroit. Frankford Ave.) and the U.S. Hotel Bar and knowledge from the air. The Reverend was in coffee, he had “an epiphanous moment.” All at was three feet away … just to come down out of along the base of the bar, under his feet, under Troughs are a fixture in many old English Grille (4439 Main St.), have troughs buried rare form that night. He was dressed in his once, it became clear that this slogan, this the fright.” It was a portentous beginning, for your feet, and on down the line, carrying tobac- pubs, and it’s been said that these handled beneath their footrests, covered up because usual preaching regalia, a standard issue cleric’s seemingly generic bit of advertising rhetoric, Reverend Billy’s arrival marked nothing less co spit and cigar stubs with it. It’s an ugly both urine and tobacco juice; like many of the they kept stools too far away from the counter. collar complemented by a white tuxedo jacket was nothing less than the purest expression of than the inauguration of an alternative theolo- scene—the backsplash on his pant legs, the more refined parts of American civilization, The Fishtown Tavern at (1301 Frankford Ave. and matching polyester slacks. His bleached consumerist logic. “You can’t be happy on your gy; a theology built around the notion that shoes of the guys that didn’t lift their feet in we may be able to blame the Brits for this cul- at Thompson St.) silently hides its U-shaped blonde hair, fashioned in a sleazy rockabilly own! You have to come hungry!” Billy raged, Mickey Mouse is the Antichrist. time. Instead of eighty-sixing him, the bar- tural import. tile trough beneath the barroom floor. coif, pointed insistently upward, as if signaling speaking the proverbial words of the horned The evangelical schmaltz is only the out- tender doesn’t even seem to notice, and contin- In Colonial Philadelphia, the alleys them- According to bartender Geraldine Limper, it the heavens. “I want to sniff your sin!” he bel- marketeers. “But if we come happy, if we take line of what Talen does. At times, Reverend ues talking racehorses with the brazen pisser. selves functioned as big open-air troughs with was made of tile and depressed in a U-shape lowed, his fervent voice washing over the cou- responsibility for our own happiness …we can Billy’s ironic persona walks a fine line between But take a closer look—the entire front of tavern customers stepping out back whenever below the barroom floor, but was covered over ple hundred parishioners strewn about the leave hungry! That’s the inversion of con- humanizing the causes he espouses and neu- the bar is a tile backsplash that drains into a shal- they pleased. The bars that have troughs today two or three years ago. The regulars talk of the pews, each having coughed up ten dollars to sumerism in revolutionary psychological tralizing them a priori. There is a difference low tile trough raised up a few inches above the are mostly men’s taprooms dating to the late old days when men in suits “from the water- come and bear witness. terms!” With this revelation, Reverend Billy between speaking earnestly and speaking from floor of the bar, with a bronze lip along the edge 1800s and early 1900s, times when indoor front” would stand at the bar, no stools, and use Reverend Billy, a.k.a. Bill Talen, has been opened the throttle. As the hum of the choir behind a self-conscious disguise, one that to keep liquids in and serve as a footrest. The plumbing did away with the need to use the it for pissing and spitting. This is the only first- preaching in New York City for seven years moved in from behind, he peppered the vault- makes it easy to enjoy a quick chuckle and trough runs the entire length of the bar, sloping privy (an outhouse with a hole in the ground) hand account of the bar-as-urinal I’ve heard now, railing against the perilous sins of con- ed air with an avalanche of staccato remain oblivious to the sincerity of the politics. very gently from left to right, with a drain at the or duck into the nearest alley. Maybe it was yet. Gerry says she used to watch a mouse scur- sumerism in Disney stores, Starbucks coffee “Hallelujahs.” Indeed, Talen recently confessed to me that lower end and a narrow copper water line at the part of the evolution of the bar restroom, a way ry along the trough pretty regularly and, some- shops, and anywhere else corporations seek to This, my children, was the Church of Stop even some of his close friends still cannot see upper end that flushes the thing out. The whole to move the open-atmosphere of the alley how, seeing it there was okay (because she destroy neighborhoods by serving up handfuls Shopping’s annual Christmas service. In truth, beyond the basic pretense of the Reverend damned room is a walk-in urinal. The men at the indoors, where a privy still stood in reserve for could put her feet up) but if it was behind the of Luciferian temptation. Perhaps you have a better time of year could not be found for this Billy character. “They can’t get past the first bar are part of what is almost a closed-loop sys- more serious business, before the advent of the bar, she’d scream to high heaven. There was a come face to face with his radical proselytizing renegade theological faction to advance its level,” he woefully remarked. But Talen is not a tem: booze in, urine out—a convenience that full-blown restroom. Some Victorian-era bars separate ladies’ entrance at the Fishtown while innocently standing in line for a grande tragicomic diatribe against the dominant reli- man who is content to simply preach to the was once part of the Philadelphia tavern’s classic still feature raised porcelain or metal troughs Tavern, too—the usual side entrance into a mocha. Perhaps he whispered softly in your gion of our times, conspicuous consumption. choir. He diligently sizes up his performances, vernacular architecture. for urinating, not unlike a long claw-foot tub larger room without a bar. The men always ear, “step away from the product,” he might But the story of Reverend Billy doesn’t begin in all the while working to devise new means by At least that’s one theory. The more bar- with numerous faucets and drains, further evi- used the proper corner entrance, just because have said. Perhaps you even saw him get a church, bearing steeple, crowded with a left- which to reach his audiences, be they church tenders you ask, the more varied responses you dence that the alley gutter method migrated they were men and that’s how it was done. dragged out by the cops, down on his hands minded flock. It begins in a theater. Well, a attendees or unsuspecting latte sippers sponta- get. “No, they were just spittoons, back when indoors. So maybe the urinal began as a part of McKenna’s Irish Pub (24th and Brown streets) and knees shouting, “Maybe you think I’m a church that doubled as a theater, but a theater neously confronted with the collar. “I’m con- everyone chewed tobacco,” or “The only reason the bar itself, before seeking the more secluded still has its art-deco ladies entrance sign, but preacher with a church. But I gotta Odd God! nonetheless—an empty theater. And in this stantly trying … to find new ways for people to they had it was for mopping down the floors at confines of a proper restroom and dividing, like there are no troughs in sight and no recollec- I got Mahatma Gandhi and Johnny Rotten empty theater, the old American Place Theater, discover things, and I’m failing a lot. But I’m the end of the night,” or “You bet they peed a worm, into a row of smaller descendants. tions of the trough era. Anthony’s Café on and James Brown coursing through my veins. engulfed by the dead of night, sits mild-man- lucky because now that I’m not waiting tables there—the men used to stand, they didn’t have That these bars had separate ladies’ Girard Ave. in Fishtown has a classic alu- Children! Pick up what is left of your true self nered Bill Talen (stage center), a recovering anymore, I have enough live shows that I can stools, so it was like they were at a urinal.” So, entrances but no ladies’ restrooms may shed minum U-shaped run-of-the-bar trough and and then … then we will run!” By staging such Dutch Calvinist who, drawn by the allure of test my language a lot.” Talen and his wife, which is it? Spit or spit and piss? some light on the matter. This design definite- an intact marble backsplash. Surely there are “necessary interventions,” Talen brings his the Great White Way, left sunny San Francisco Savitri Durkee, the Church of Stop Shopping’s Some clues can be found in the design of ly created a men’s-club atmosphere, and per- many more out there, either covered over with unique brand of agitprop into the smooth for New York in 1993, “with all the expecta- theatrical director, ritually discuss the strengths the surviving troughs that still dot the city. haps was also intended to avoid exposing footrests or awaiting that sad internment. ] mindlessness of the modern retail environ- tions that can be assigned to New York City.” and weaknesses of the performances. “You can Aluminum troughs, tile troughs, copper women to the sights, sounds, and smells of a David Harper lives in Center City. Anyone ment. The purpose of these interventions, He came with romantic visions of the old never know for sure what effect your action troughs, raised troughs that form a step and a men’s room, a place where a guy could take a who can add to the research presented here is invit- according to Talen, is to place “social change Actor’s Studio dancing about his head; he came has. When people stop, are moved, giggle, footrest, recessed troughs that dip below the leak without anyone batting an eye. ed to contact him, care of THE INDEPENDENT. language … where social change language can to find the Mecca of his art form. In many shout at you, stomp out, put their product back no longer be purposeful.” It sounds like a futile ways, it is a classic story, one with which we are on the shelf, accept your research sheet…It’s a endeavor, and maybe it is. But futile or not, Bill all too familiar. Only, in this case, the plot is rife complicated tapestry of responses that audi- Talen’s performances are a refreshing departure with twists. For Talen had the misfortune to ences give you.” Recently, the Church has been Two 19th Century Views From the Files of the Historical Society from your typical activist fare. come to Times Square, the heart of Broadway, staging plays and monologues at the former ∂ At St. Mark’s Church, Talen shone with only to discover that the ambitious theater he site of the World Trade Center. “Last night we humor and charisma, radiating tangled beams had hoped to find was everywhere at siege. chanted inside Ground Zero,” Talen wrote to of uncommon compassion. “We believe in the Worse still was what had taken its place. “It was me in a recent email, “and all we beheld were God that people who don’t believe in God terrifying,” Talen recalls. “The Mouse showed commuters in a hurry. But I think that it was believe in,” he declared, jubilantly. Some of the up in my neighborhood.” That mouse would be very successful, because of how it promised the faithful bellowed and cheered, while others none other than Mickey Mouse, he of the possibility of direct action in that stolen com- looked on in silent, rapt attention. Behind the round horns and slender tail. In the mid-1990s, mons of 9/11.” Reverend, the Stop Shopping Choir, in flow- the Mouse, with more than a little help from The most effective weapon in Reverend ing robes of gold and purple, stood idly by, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, infested Times Billy’s evangelical arsenal is his surreal, yet waiting to break into their next number. And Square, transforming it from Talen’s sacred provocative wit. He wants to “put the odd back on that stormy night, Reverend Billy told the temple of ambitious drama into a crowded in God.” He has been known to call super- congregation a story about a recent pre-dawn urban mall. In Talen’s new treatise on the joys models “state terrorism.” Apparently all the excursion, a search for a cup of coffee in the of not shopping, What Should I Do If Reverend time Talen spent in Times Square, staring at wastelands of Bakersfield, California. It was a Billy Is In My Store, he writes, “When the side- billboards that “seduced” him with “explicit journey that led Billy to an ordinary walks were cleansed of the ‘characters’ who sup- demonstrations of sex” he couldn’t have left its International House Of Pancakes, where, posedly unnerved the tourists, the big mark. Talen has waged an ongoing campaign between gulps of thick, extra-caffeinated brew Broadway houses were cleansed as well. No one to reattach nipples to the Starbucks mermaid, (“You ever drink a cup of coffee that made you caught on that the theater indoors was related which serves as the company’s logo. The mer- reeeal smart?” the Reverend asked), he was to the theater outdoors.” Talen had finally maid, in her original incarnation, was a lasciv- confronted with a “super-laminated” adver- arrived, only to see the object of his pilgrimage iously topless wench with a suggestively split onstruction on City Hall began in 1871 W.C. Allison & Co. office and works. The production around the turn of the century. tisement for a “wrinkle-less croissant” which packed up and carted away. Sidney Lanier, tail. In his book about the company’s found- C and finished thirty years later. The pho- W.C. Allison & Co. produced freight, con- By 1909, the large site had been taken over read: “Come hungry, leave happy.” Now, as the founder of The American Place Theater, and ing, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz wrote, tograph on the left was taken less than ten struction and handcars. The works occupied by the Pennsylvania Rail Road. The Reverend was quick to realize, there was a verb cousin of the great Tennessee Williams, offered “That early siren, bare-breasted and years after the building’s completion. This the areas of 32nd to 31st streets and south University of Pennsylvania’s various parking missing from this little trophy of marketing- Talen a way out. Lanier, in Talen’s words, Rubenesque, was supposed to be as seductive view shows the west side, looking north of Chestnut St. to the Schuylkill River. In garages, laboratories and buildings now speak. Missing, yet still implied. This verb “argued for this project, this character – a new as coffee itself.” But, as the ambition of the towards Broad Street. the late 1800s this area of West occupy the area. was, in fact, the IHOP logo, which lay like a kind of churchless minister…who begins com- mermaid’s employers grew, so did the compa- On the right, the trade card shows the Philadelphia was largely manufacturers and Images and text courtesy of The Historical pontoon bridge of “fat, ballooned letters,” ically and then gets serious.” The idea was ny’s uncertainty about how well the nipples expansive fourteen-acre factory site of the railroad lines. W.C. Allison & Co. ceased Society of Pennsylvania. between the two phrases. In the gospel daunting. Talen was only just recovering from turn to BILLY, page 5 SPRING 2004 THE PHILADELPHIA INDEPENDENT PAGE 5

MUNICIPAL AUTHORITY

from BILLY page 4 would travel in the heartland and overseas. DAMS

Her seductiveness became a liability. Her nip- " A ples disappeared behind six benign locks of ED hair. Talen uses this story as a parable of sorts, C. "T mining both its oddness and its potential political leverage. “I’m a fool,” Talen says, DWARD

emphatically, as if to draw a sharp distinction E between himself and those on the left who often come across as would-be academics. Foolish though he may be, it is a tactical fool- ishness, aimed at tearing down commercial- ized language in order to make what Talen calls “social change language” possible. “There’s been an insertion between ourselves and language,” Talen contends. “The corpo- rate language invasion has actually inserted itself between ourselves and the words we use. So I’m always staring at phrases and trying to figure out ways to …make language foolish again.” Talen’s language is not foolish by virtue of its lack of sense, as is the case with most [ profile ] foolery. His clownish play with language takes they are frustrated and forceful when opening labor. They need corroboration. They need his objects of corporate speech such as slogans, their front door, even if a key is often thrown inherited eyes to acknowledge their inherited marketing jargon, and the like, chews them from a window: the metal begins to bend; it dilemmas. Roy knows what goes on in the post up, breaks them down into their primary ele- The Door∂ on 13th Street records the areas of stress. Every key is like a office, the bank around the corner, the coffee ments (thereby unlocking an underbelly of fingerprint: something individual, something shop down the street—the one with the older rank suppositions) and spits them back out to Expert Locksmiths: The Last Link In the Beckhoff Family Key Chain personal. Roy sees these things, and sometimes guy who winks and grins at the girls—and form entirely different, and often coercive, he recommends alternate methods of even the church with the fellow who got drunk meanings. approach. (last night, can you believe it?) and cussed to [ BY CAROLINE PICARD ] “Take it easy when you use it.” He gives the the priest. n early February, I took the subway out to oy Beckhoff is not a locksmith. His and cheeky witticisms: It’s a good idea to love When the Depression came and his father’s customer the new key with the old. “Don’t jig- He knows the gossip, and then also he knows IGreenwood Heights in Brooklyn to speak father, Max, was a locksmith and part your neighbor but don’t forget to lock your car store shut down, Max took to the streets, mak- gle it so much.” the dreamers. People stop by with their fan- with Talen face to face. He had just moved into Rof the Greater Philadelphia when you’re in church. These are statements that ing keys in a cart. He left Philadelphia to fight “It’s not for me, it’s my daughter.” tasies—stories that Roy will agree to believe in. a new apartment, bare except for a kitchen Locksmiths Association. His mother, Fanny, sell nothing; they are only exemplary of the tall in the war, and when he returned he and Fanny “Well tell her to take it easy, or she might “How did your date with Prince go last table, a futon mattress spread across the floor, was also a locksmith. Roy is not a locksmith. man who sits inside his narrow cell and waits started the family business. Fanny looked after snap the thing in two.” night? Or is it the Artist-Formerly-Known- and, in what appeared to be the makings of a He does not change combinations, install locks to provide the same service he has been pro- the store on those days when Max had to make Customers approach Roy like a palm read- As? I get so confused.” Roy shakes his head. study, a large wooden desk supporting an or understand the intricacies of getting in and viding for, as he puts it, “way too long.” house calls. It was she who insisted on the sec- er or a principal in school. They offer excuses “No, I canceled.” A woman sighs demurely iMac. Savitri, was practicing yoga in one of the out of safes. He only makes keys. There are two phone lines in that cell on ond rotary unit. If the business telephone was about what might have necessitated making a to the sky and shakes her head. “I hadda eat empty rooms. We crept into the would-be When Roy was a boy, he lived in West Oak 13th Street. One is the business line: a black strictly for business then she would need a sec- copy. Often they are elaborate, and the respon- casserole with my mother-in-law.” study on near tiptoe, so as not to disturb her Lane with two older brothers. Each brother rotary telephone from the 1960s called a Space ond line for more personal matters. After Max sible party is rarely standing at the window. “Did you call him?” asks Roy. meditation. Talen had been rubbing sleep from had his own house key. When Roy’s brothers Saver. It hangs on the wall and the receiver is passed away in 1970, Fanny looked after every- “Yeah, I need three copies of these. My “What, to cancel? No, it’s not like that. his eyes when he answered the door, but by the lost their keys, he lent them his, and it was its largest part; there is a separate bell that rings thing. When she passed in 1991, Roy inherit- wife—she smashed the window again.” We’ve a very free sorta thing. No questions.” time he sat down behind the desk he was per- soon lost as well. When their father, the lock- under the counter. The second, an ivory tele- ed the domain. “What?” Roy takes a key from the man’s She shrugs and rolls her eyes, “You know how colating with energy. One gets the sense that smith, refused to make another, all three broth- phone, was put in for Fanny’s social activities. When Roy was a child he did his home- key chain and finds one of the same family it is with artists.” Talen feels every facet of the world around him ers had to sit on the stoop after school. Oddly enough, the old couple still receives work on a stool next to the social telephone. from the wall behind him (cold, cold, warmer, For most employees, Expert Locksmiths to be part of a great and inexplicable drama, a Eventually, the father relented, and entrusted a phone calls. The Space Saver rings. Fanny used to play a game with him. It was the ah! Hot.) stands outside of time. There the world is sus- theatrical masterpiece that he enjoys with fourth key to a neighbor. Roy swore he’d never “Max Beckhoff please.” game of hot and cold. “Here is a key.” She “She got locked out and smashed the pended for a brief interlude, a cigarette break, humanistic gusto. Later that evening, we ven- lend his keys again. “I’m sorry he’s unavailable,” says Roy. would show him a key that needed to be window.” or the awkward five minutes left between tured out to a nearby liquor store. In the midst These days, Roy gets his coffee on Market “Fanny?” copied. “Now, find it.” He would pause and Or: “My son lost his keys and needs anoth- lunch and four more hours of work. Three gen- of browsing the aisles for a bottle of wine, Street every day before taking the left on 13th “May I ask what this is about?” look at the walls lined, as they are, with blanks. er set.” Or: “I need a new set of keys, my dog erations of stories are sleeping in the walls. Talen stopped to watch an old woman perched to open his tiny storefront. Walking down “I’d prefer to speak to them directly, thank The foreign keys are on the right along with ate my old ones. Whole goddamned set, you There will always be doors with keys that get atop a stack of liquor boxes, placing a bottle on Market, he is little more than an ant beside you. Do you know when they’ll be back?” the motorcycle ones, and then range to the left wouldn’t believe it.” lost, and one might be forgiven for thinking a shelf that lay just out of her reach. As he Lord and Taylor’s massive gray façade. Passing “No idea.” in a wide variety of American, or American Roy just smiles. He takes the key and then, that there will always be Expert stood there, beaming like a 5 year-old child, he before the church, he assumes human propor- And perhaps this is not as odd as it seems, imposters made in China. Most of the keys are places it in his machine: something called a Locksmiths. seemed to forget what had brought us to the tions. Some mornings, the customers are considering that Roy’s receipts still have his made out of brass; the stronger ones are made Borkey that sits in a pile of fine metallic shav- But Roy is the last of his line. store in the first place. already waiting for him to roll up the gate. The father’s name printed above the company logo. out of nickel. That childhood game was the ings. The shoulder of the original key is placed “Where do you want to go when you Back at the apartment, Talen read to me sign in front reads: Expert Locksmiths: Max Beckhoff ’s stationery advertises two beginning of Roy’s career. Of course he didn’t in “the guide” and the blank is inserted along retire?” from the new play he has been writing, Death “KEYS MADE WHILE YOU WAIT.” Expert Locksmith locations: 35 S. 13th Street know it would be a career at the time, but that “the cutter.” The Borkey begins to whine like a “Retirement?” Roy guffs. “I’ll be working by Latte, a Tragedy. Talen draws most of his In his key room, five-foot square, he is a and a shop at 16th and Market that closed in is why it was a game. gnat, its pitch marked with various inflections here until the day I die.” inspiration from relatively mainstream theater giant. “The first key is always my best. It’s when 1970. Originally, however, there were three. You can tell a lot about someone when you when the cutter bites into the blank. A dupli- “What about your son?” artists like Tony Kushner, the author of Angels I’m fresh.” Rows of blank keys hold court around The original Expert Locksmith was on 15th see their key chain: whether their key belongs cate is produced according to the original pat- “Will I hand the key over, you mean?” But in America, and Eve Ensler, writer and per- his stool and workbench, waiting their turn. and South Penn Square; it closed in 1968. The to an expensive lock or how many doors they tern and the process is relatively short. Roy he doesn’t say it like a question. former of The Vagina Monologues. These artists, Wedged between a sneaker store and a cel- little room on 13th Street where Roy spends think they might have to open on a regular returns both copies through the Plexiglas. The “Will you?” as far as Talen is concerned, “walked away from lular phone outlet, Expert Locksmiths is just a his days was opened by Max and Fanny thirty- basis; there are regional preferences: price is about $1.50, depending on the key. He “It all ends here.” He points to himself. the longtime dominance of art as psychological bit larger telephone booth. The store is set off eight years ago. Philadelphia uses five and six pin blanks, while doesn’t always offer unsolicited advice. He’s a “And then?” painting, nuanced, objective, decorative … from the street by a Plexiglass window, a small Max Beckhoff grew up in splendor. His New York’s are seven pins. You can see how good man, after all, a man in a confession box “This is it. This is it.” ] [and] ended the notion that theater is per se knot cut into the tall forest of steel and mason- father was both a locksmith and a bootlegger someone approaches a lock, whether they jig- on South 13th Street. Caroline Picard lives South Philadelphia. She depoliticized.” If Kushner and Ensler brought, ry. The window is full of faded photographs and taught his son the art of key making. gle the key backwards and forwards, whether Many of his visitors don’t require his skilled can be reached via email at [email protected]. in Talen’s view, “storytelling to matters of con- science,” then Reverend Billy takes such story- telling out of the theater and into the super- Ben Katchor’s Hotel & Farm Three New Magazines store. Accordingly, Death By Latte takes place inside of a Starbucks café. Starbucks is one of from PUBLISHING page 1 the Church of Stop Shopping’s privileged tar- late this month,” Smyrski admits with a gets insofar as they, in the eyes of the Church, laugh. The screenzine is free and contains no engage in an insidious co-opting of legitimate advertising. coffeehouse culture, or, what Talen refers to as Like Work, Philth is exclusively online, at “the decaffeination of Joe.” In the play, groups www.philthmagazine.com. Philth debuted of three “conversationalists” enter the with a “soft launch,” that made use of the Starbucks one by one and assume positions material that ex-Last Drop manager and cur- throughout the cafe. Casually, these groups rent Bean Café barista Greg Collins and pho- begin impromptu discussions of various issues tographer Stefan Bernarsky had accumulated relating to Starbucks corporate policy, such as over a period of a few months. The magazine the use of genetically modified dairy products, plans to release a formal first issue online in or union-busting. One member of each group early June, and perhaps have enough acts as the proponent of such criticisms, one resources to debut a print version in the fall. the skeptic, the third resting somewhere in Philth’s strongest suit is its photography, between. “We will talk across, talk behind, and which already looks like a professional glossy. talk in front of Starbucks consumers,” Talen B.Informed, a quarterly magazine of says, reading from his script. “It will seem to urban culture and lifestyle, is at once the the consumers as if the building itself is whis- most community-oriented and nationally- pering its conscience.” Talen went on, “The minded of the three. B.Informed runs two placement of the rebel talk must be within events: RocRite, a breakdancing night at the these colonized environments. We must take First Unitarian Church, and Funky them up on their ‘revolutionary’ graphics and Drummer, a deejay night at Siam Lotus. Muzak-ized Bob Marley.” The magazine plans to work with a branch Even Talen’s guerilla pulpit must be sup- of Congreso de Latinos Unidos to produce ported by a private life of food, shelter, and an eight-page community newsletter. belongings, a life ruled by the laws of supply B.Informed began online in March of and demand. “Of course we have to shop,” last year. Their first print issue was released Talen remarked. “I shop. But we have a world- in January. For the new April issue, publish- killing addiction here and when will somebody, er Amani Olu cut the magazine’s price from anybody—how about a politician—talk about $5 to $3 and threw in a CD compilation of American consumption?” On our walk to the 1970s funk and soul. The magazine became liquor store, Talen complained that the New the first hometown publication to finally Press doesn’t know how to market his book. It run a full-length feature on the Hollertronix was strange to hear an avid critic of consumer dance party, all but ignored by culture talk about the marketing shortcomings Philadelphia’s larger media outlets while of his publisher. Later, he told me it was diffi- racking up gigs in Canada and France and cult for him to encourage his friends and fol- acclaim from Vice and The New York Times. lowers to make the $21.95 purchase. He sug- The locations where B.Informed is sold can gested that I steal a copy. ] be found on the magazine’s website, Joshua Gleason lives in Brooklyn, New York. www.binformedmag.com. ] PAGE 6 THE PHILADELPHIA INDEPENDENT SPRING 2004

THE TIDEWATER GRAIN ELEVATOR

bushel capacity twenty times that of the old announced to the public, “expected to prove and cleaned, could be dried by these coolers ly well its first few years in operation. In the From Monument of Commerce elevator. Tracks would be laid to expedite train the most rapid plant ever built for transferring each hour. first four months of operation under Tidewater, traffic, belt conveyers were to be installed with grain from rail to water.” The elevator was built The facility contained 135 circular tanks, the facility handled almost as many bushels of increased capacity, and the elevators would be 500 feet from a 900 foot-long pier, “on both with a combined capacity of 1.1 million grain as it had in the last full year before the To Towering Stone Ruin reinforced with concrete. Finally, all parts of sides of which vessels can dock” allowing three bushels, and a forty-four tank storage annex. acquisition. Confidence bolstered, the PIDC ∂ the facility would be operated electrically. steam vessels to load or unload simultaneously. Scales and hoppers were state of the art, and upped financing and allowed Tidewater to pur- The scale of the Girard Point facility, when The elevator plant itself consisted of a working track was laid to accommodate a record 400 chase a “new material handling system” in order it was finally officiated July 1,1914, far outdid house for the machinery, a track-shed, storage cars at one time. The Morris machinery to to increase the capacity of the facility by sixty HOW WE LOST THE GRAIN TRADE initial projections. The elevator was built for a house and converter gallery, pier, power house clean and sort grain was touted to “bring [the percent; within its first working year, the new cost of $1.2 million in a months-long rapid- and four dryers—built by Morris Grain Dryer grain] to the highest grade” and “re-establish system enabled the unloading of 1.1 million fire round of contract hiring and construction. and Coolers—the largest in the country. confidence in Philadelphia inspected grain bushels of grain, the elevator’s new record for a from TIDEWATER page 1 age tanks to await further distribution. When It was, as the Pennsylvania Railroad Twenty-thousand bushels of grain, once sorted shipments among foreign buyers.” In total, the single day. swallowed by its own overgrowth. it came time to unload the grain, it flowed machinery would have a handling capacity of The last records I could find of activity at Up close, the elevator is staggering in pro- down from the storage tanks into another 200,000 bushels per hour. Three short years the Tidewater Grain Co. elevator date from portion—it is, quite simply, magnificent. The underground storage bin, where it was lifted later, in 1917, Girard Point Storage Company, February, 1980. Pointedly enough, it was a IBRARY first elevator built on the site in 1881 resem- again to the top of the elevator and deposited, L a subsidiary of the Pennsylvania Railroad, paid moment of global unrest that brought the bled a wooden pagoda—a step up from the by means of a loading spout, into a waiting rail the railroad a debt of $1.9 million by turning Tidewater grain elevator back into the news. flat-roofed bins that squatted throughout the car or barge. over the deed to the elevator; upon acquiring Philadelphia longshoremen were ordered by a countryside. The walls of the present elevator, The first steam-powered grain elevator was the facility, the Pennsylvania Railroad expand- federal court to load grain onto a Soviet-bound USEUM AND built at the turn of the century, were poured built in Buffalo in 1842 by Joseph Dart and his M ed it again. The final capacity of the facility ship that waterfront unions had boycotted soundly from cement and girded by steel. This engineer, Robert Dunbar. Until Dart built his nearly doubled to 2.2 million bushels. When since January, in protest against the Soviet is a building of function, aesthetically perfect first elevator, grain had been unloaded from AGLEY completely filled, the elevator held enough invasion of Afghanistan. Complying with the and a testament to the will of engineers it has ships by hand, using buckets; his “elevating leg” H grain to keep Philadelphia’s entire population court, union workers filled the SS Ocean long outlived. Built to be completely fireproof, system could do the job more than ten times as fed for a month. Valour with 35,000 metric tons of corn. every storage bin of its more than one hundred fast. The invention of the grain elevator revolu- The elevator ran without incident for near- Sometime soon after that, the facility was sold cylindrical tanks is intact, despite a ragged tionized the unloading, storage, and shipping of ly forty years. Soon, its gains in efficiency and to Ferry, Inc., based in King of Prussia. In the COURTESY OF black scar that runs down the lengths of four grain, and as Buffalo became the world’s great- ability were running far ahead of the Port of fifteen short years since the much-lauded pur- tanks, left from a 1990 fire. est grain port, elevators were built up and down Philadelphia’s investment in grain. The costs of chase of the facility, Tidewater Grain Co. had Everywhere the air smelled of treated its waterfront. The British novelist Anthony running the facility were eroding profit. The gone bankrupt. Ferry, Inc. never operated the sludge from the nearby sewage plant. Near the Trollope, who visited Buffalo in 1861, com- center of the grain industry had gradually facility. The only public record found at City elevator, the smell was rank, dense; we drew pared them to dinosaurs with “great hungering moved west—to Chicago and Minneapolis, Hall of Ferry Inc’s ownership of the building is shallow breaths through our mouths as we stomachs and huge unsatisfied maws.” “Rivers nearer to where the power of the Mississippi a suit that the company filed against the City came nearer. The structure’s inside is as quiet as of corn,” Trollope wrote, “are running through could be harnessed by flour mills. Big compa- of Philadelphia, to appeal a tax assessment. In a corpse; the air is sulfurous and thick with these buildings night and day. The secret of all nies like General Mills and Pillsbury were May 2002, Ferry sold the facility to Preston methane, complicated by gases that seep from the motion and arrangement consists, of course, founded, and changed the scale of manufactur- Ship and Rail, of Lehighton, Pa. the building’s moldering walls. in elevation. The corn is lifted up; and then lift- ing and the patterns of grain distribution. Dan, being the first to clear the field and ed up can move itself, and arrange itself, and Trucks, improved waterways, and highways he unofficial goal of our trip had been to get inside, called to us as we approached the weigh itself, and load itself.” rerouted traffic away from older ports like Tmake it to the uppermost roof, to stand on building. “Watch out,” he called. “The ground.” In the spring of 1881, the Girard Point Philadelphia. The Pennsylvania Railroad inten- it and take in what we could of the city. Instead, Rebecca and I, at the threshold of entering the Storage Company contracted the building of sified its focus on manufacturing, steel, and we found a staircase inside the hull of one of the track-shed, looked down. There, where rail cars its new Girard Point grain elevator facility to 1934. The ramp structure on the left was used to take grain off ships. It has since been demolished. coal, catering to Pittsburgh, now the center of storage annex’s cylindrical tanks that would had emptied their cargo down between the two local vendors and one Baltimore company the steel industry. Philadelphia’s position in the take us halfway up. The stairwell was airless, rails, lay a grid of rusting beams over an unfor- for a sum of under half a million dollars. No grain market was increasingly peripheral; the clenched with rust, fast with rot and wound

giving drop into decades-old storage bins. longer a serious contender for domination of IVEN city was a victim of regional specialization. upwards into more darkness. Without a word, Later, speaking to a police officer not too far grain shipment, Philadelphia nevertheless T In 1958, a Pennsylvania Railroad official Rebecca and Dan started climbing. I followed, from the grounds, we’d be told that those bins, continued to amass steady profits from grain. identified only as “JBJ” wrote a memo recom- blanching. Eventually, we were deposited into a

the ones we had stood over, now housed legions The new facility was to have two elevators ENJAMIN mending the sale of the elevator to four poten- large room, the first with any light or air; the of “dog-sized rats” last seen fleeing the eleva- built to receive grain by rail and water. Rails B tial buyers—including the Tidewater Grain stairwell verily exhaled into this space. It was tor’s 1990 fire in droves. Rebecca and I made ran straight up to the building, and ships could Company, a Delaware-based outfit that had laid in the thick pipe-work of bins and columns our way gingerly across. Dan stood, hands on be filled with grain by docking within reach of been involved in the local grain trade for a (conduits that may have once been the “inter- hips, peering around the corner of the building distributing spouts attached to the storage quarter-century. Despite having handled 16 stitial storage bins” listed in Girard Point files); into further wreckage. He was looking for a way bins. The masonry foundations were laid by million bushels in the previous five years, the columns that sunk straight back down to the to the roof. Smith and McGow, of Philadelphia, for elevator had only reaped a $111,000 profit main level we’d just left. Square in the middle of It is easy to divine the outlines of the eleva- $40,000; the local firm of Cofrode and Saylor after all charges had been deducted, and the the room hung a ladder that rose up to a sud- tor’s function from its exterior, which is still built platforms for the elevator and pier, as facility had depreciated in value by over a mil- den peal of light—a roof. It was not the roof we largely intact. But the workings of the inside— well as the superstructure of the elevator: lion dollars. The building needed $156,000 in were looking for, the highest point, but it was, the scales and hoppers, the different bins, even things like sheathing windows, shipping and deferred maintenance and more than $475,000 without a doubt, a roof. At the very least, we the electrical winches that rotated railcars in and storage bins, the engine room, shipping worth of work to bring it into compliance with told each other, we’d get a view we’d never seen out of the lot out front—are hard to imagine. spouts, conveyers and gangways. Nearly half a safety codes. Increased labor costs could not be before. Suspended high over a clear drop, with We had hopscotched our way around the track year later, Master and Reaney of Baltimore offset by the combination of increased han- the mid-summer sun coming into what seemed shed; now, coming through the shed into the began to install the machinery: boilers, chains, dling changes and electrical fees, and net oper- like the most tender, most breathable spot in main building, we saw that most of the overhead pulleys, gallows frames, main drying engines, ating income was practically zero. To make the building, I was glad to have come. Once on galleys and sorting machines once housed there receiving and weighing hoppers, scales, dis- matters worse, the mechanical car unloader the roof, we sat there, Rebecca, Dan, and I 1930s WPA Federal Art Project poster View from the Girard Point Bridge, 2004. had vanished. There wasn’t a pulley in sight. The tributing gear, and elevating machines. and dryer would have to be replaced within five scoping out the water and the Girard Point entire building was hollowed out and high in Meanwhile, Cofrode and Saylor had been years. The railroad stood to gain nearly a mil- Bridge that ran by us. We goofed around and the rafters we could see the rusting mess of contracted by Girard Point to lay railway in lion dollars from the sale. “We do not consider took pictures, tried to make what must have machine innards leftover from salvage. It was hemlock and pine caps, secured with pine and it practical,” JBJ wrote, “to continue this facili- seemed an incongruous picture—three dots of hard to imagine that a force of 180 men had bolts. Girard Point, a subsidiary of the ty as a railroad company operation.” living atop a long derelict industrial elevator— once worked controls negotiating the steam and Pennsylvania Railroad, would lay rails. Agreeing to handle at least 20 million more invisible to the freeway. hiss of grain and rail cars into elevating legs for The elevators at Girard Point ran for near bushels a year, four private companies offered The city boasted of its position as a world weighing, cleaning, sorting, storing; working the the expected life span of a wooden elevator— to purchase the Girard Point facility in a joint grain leader well into the 1960s, a century after massive dryers, combating the natural enemies twenty years. Soon thereafter, they began venture. But all except Tidewater Grain even- the fact. In those fading years, officials and of rot, damp, and insects, turning the daily flow breaking down. One elevator showed signs, tually withdrew their offers on what must have investors poured thousands of dollars into of grain into a stream of revenue. early on, of duress in its “trestle legs,” and by seemed then a ludicrous venture. At the time maintaining a marvel of industrial age engi- After reviewing lists of machinery that 1900 one pier at Girard Point had rotted away, of the Girard Point sale, Tidewater was “the neering, as if they believed that the size and went into the Tidewater elevator at the time of spilling the contents of a company warehouse largest grain firm … of its type in the United mass of the building alone could secure their its construction and poring over diagrams of into the river. By 1906 one of the two elevators States.” Raymond J. Barnes, President of place in the global grain trade. But the effort modern grain elevators, I can still only guess at had rotted through completely, and the entire Tidewater Grain, had worked his way up the did little to keep the grain flowing through the precise mechanics of the building, but the facility was quickly growing obsolete in the company ladder, from “errand boy” to “expert Philadelphia’s ports. Every owner either sold basics are as follows: Rail cars carrying raw face of changing technology: Rail cars had in both grain quality and the purchasing and the building at a loss, or went bankrupt as the grain would rotate into the track shed to grown wider, making entrance into the facility merchandising of grain” to president of river of grain slowed to a trickle, and then dis- unload. Grain could be dumped into a base- difficult; boats, too, had bloated and necessitat- Tidewater Grain—and its principal stockhold- appeared. The current owners have their own ment storage pit, or sucked out of the top of a ed wider wharves at which to dock; and grain er. He also held the seat of president of the plan—to take walls that have yellowed over rail car, or from the hold of a ship, by means of traders everywhere were swapping their wood- North American Grain Export Association. from eight decades of weather, and fit them in an “elevating leg,” a system of pulleys and nar- en storage bins for those made of iron. By The grain industry called management at a jacket of brightly dyed plastic. Visitors to row flatbeds—imagine a series of buckets 1911, the facility was shut down; officials Tidewater “able and progressive.” The elevator Philadelphia will be greeted by entreaties for attached to a conveyor belt—resembling a decided to raze the building and construct a at Girard Point was as good as sold. The facil- potato chips and cell phones, images of goods metal chute. Once inside the elevator, the grain new one in its place—the elevator that now ity was purchased for $750,000 in the early made elsewhere and sold elsewhere. In this was sorted (by hoppers), weighed (by scale), stands at Girard Point. months of 1965. way, the new owners may finally be able turn a and cleaned and dried—by mammoth rack After a failed campaign to move the eleva- With help from the Philadelphia Industrial profit on a ruin. ] dryers, large, perforated metal surfaces through tor to a new location, plans began in March Development Corporation (PIDC), a nonprof- Jessica Chiu lives in Philadelphia. She wishes which hot air was blown. The grain was lifted 1912 for a new elevator at Girard Point. The it partnership between the City of Philadelphia to thank Christopher Baer, of Hagley Museum and to the top of the elevator, where another sys- new structure would have an expanded yard for and its Chamber of Commerce, Tidewater Library in Wilmington, Delaware, who helped tem sorted it into the various cylindrical stor- rail cars and a new working house with a View from Pier Three, 2004. The boats, from left to right: Athena & Tenacious. Grain secured enough financing to do extreme- with the research for this article. SPRING 2004 THE PHILADELPHIA INDEPENDENT PAGE 7

[ opinion ] HOW TO LOOK∂ AT BILLBOARDS Your Field of Vision is Not Theirs To Sell

[ BY HOWARD GOSSAGE ]

t is so strange that billboards exist at all. invokes the spirit of free enterprise. Now, it ness. It is this: what threatens outdoor adver- The controversy about whether outdoor should be understood that the outdoor adver- tising threatens all advertising; what discrimi- Iadvertising should be allowed along fed- tising industry is fighting only against what it nates against one advertising medium discrim- eral highways achieves the unreality of a regards as discriminatory regulation. It seems inates against all advertising media. These debate on whether witch burning should be never to have occurred to the industry to ques- propositions are interesting to me as an adver- permitted in critical fire areas. Apparently no tion its basic right to any existence whatsoev- tising man and I would like to dissect them. one has thought to wonder just what in the er. Therefore, when it protests against opera- First, what is the difference between see- hell billboards are doing anywhere. tional restrictions, it is not effrontery, as one ing an ad on a billboard and seeing an ad in a Why do you suppose this is? It must be might thing, but outraged indignation. Its magazine? The answer, in a word, is permis- that billboards have somehow acquired an reaction is that of an old-time cattle baron the sion—or, in three words, freedom of choice. easement across our minds just as they have first time a farmer dared to fence in his potato Through a sequence of voluntary acts you have Would It Be The Biggest? gained squatter’s rights on our visual air space. patch. given the magazine advertisement permission They’ve been there—everywhere—for a long Outdoor advertising is, of course, a busi- to be seen by you. You bought the magazine of The largest of the Tidewater’s five signs would time and we have grown used to them. It ness and as such would ordinarily have a your own volition; you opened it at your own be the largest billboard in the U.S. requires a conscious effort to recognize that a strong case against inroads on its domain. pleasure; you flipped or did not flip through it; This is how it would stack up against the rest of billboard has the same objective status as a However, there is a very real question whether you skipped or did not skip the ads; finally, it the world’s largest: “Jesus Saves” scrawled is possible to close #1. CHINA (RETIRED): 145,238 SQUARE FT. on a culvert of men’s the magazine Near Yangtze River. Taken down in 2002 room poetry; it is entirely. You exer- because it was usually obscured by fog. there by public suffer- cise freedom of #1. BRITAIN (CURRENT): 34,080 SQUARE FT. ance. But there is this choice all down the Present world champion. Near Birmingham. difference: while those line. Seen by 122,000 cars a day. other gratuitous mes- The same is true #2. UKRAINE: 23,044 SQUARE FT. Overlooks Victory Square in Kyiv. sages are accorded the of advertisements in #3. PHILADELPHIA (PROPOSED): 14,446 SQUARE FT. shrugging tolerance newspapers. It is Size of L-shaped sign proposed for Tidewater’s that we grant to also true of radio southern face. Together, the five signs would eccentrics, outdoor and television com- 170,000 Cars A Day Would Pass total 38,786 square feet. advertising has come mercials though in a #4. WASHINGTON, D.C.: 10,800 SQUARE FT. to be regarded as an different way, I’ll #5. NEW YORK CITY: 9,288 SQUARE FT. institution like any admit. Arthur C. Astonishing Adverts At City’s Gate Largest billboard in Times Square. other overtly Clarke, in Holiday, respectable industry. likened TV viewers This is where the con- to “readers who have from BILLBOARD page 1 doctorate in Man-Environment Relations streets, despite a September ruling by fusion starts, for if one become reconciled cation for permission to construct the bill- from Pennsylvania State University, discovered Commonwealth Court that the sign violated accepts this premise to the fact that the boards. that the greater the number and size of signs in city law. An even larger sign still hangs off the all sorts of preposter- fifth page of every Preston has argued that the billboards will an urban environment, the greater the impres- back of the Electric Factory building at ous assumptions seem book consists of an allow the company to fund improvements on sion of disorder and chaos. Seventh and Callowhill streets, despite a worthy of considera- Peter Blake: Highway, USA, 1964 advertisement which the property and bring 110 jobs to the city. “In the research that’s been done on peo- judge’s order that the building’s owner remove tion; indeed, it would they are not allowed Two years ago, Preston, which was already ple’s visual preferences in a city,” Nasar said in a the sign and pay $65,000 in fines. be positively un-American to question them. it has title to its domain. Outdoor advertising to skip.” The fact is that Mr. Clarke and you are renting a portion of Pier Three for its artificial telephone interview. “There’s a consistent pref- Finally, many billboard companies have Outdoor advertising is most certainly an is peddling a commodity it does not own and allowed to skip—to another channel, to Dr. reef-building business, paid their landlord erence against disorderly, bright, large objects been able to skirt the law without fear of institution; but so was the open range. And without the owner’s permission: your field of Frank Baxter, or to bed; you can turn it off $545,000 for the Tidewater property, which that intrude onto the natural environment.” reprisal thanks to weak enforcement measures, just as the open range ceased to exist when vision. Possibly you have never thought to entirely. Or you can throw the set out the win- includes the pier and the elevator. Now it On a recent visit to Philadelphia for a con- especially during the term of former Mayor private interest was no longer compatible with consider your rights in the matter. Nations put dow. You cannot throw U.S. 40 out the win- wants to spend an additional $15 million to fix ference on environmental design, Nasar said he Edward Rendell, now Pennsylvania’s governor. public rights, so it is with outdoor advertising. the utmost importance on unintentional viola- dow, especially if you are on it. Nor can you flip collapsing portions of the pier and use the bill- was impressed by the hand-painted murals he Rendell attempted to reach an agreement with The outdoor advertising industry has done tions of their air space. The individual’s air a billboard over. Or off. Your exposure to tele- boards to raise the money. saw on the train ride in from the airport, and the owners of more than 1,000 small fifty-five its best both to defend itself and to placate its space is intentionally violated by billboards vision commercials is conditional on their “Without putting lots of money square foot signs (known as ‘eight- critics. It has maintained costly legal, public every day of the year. being accompanied by entertainment that is into the pier, the thing will ultimately sheets’) in Philadelphia neighbor- relations, and legislative advisory staffs. It has But doesn’t everything visible violate one’s not otherwise available. No such parity or tit- collapse,” said John Mattioni, one of hoods: Most would be legalized, a few devoted many of its nicest locations to public air space? Not at all. Visibility is not the only for-tat or fair exchange exists in outdoor adver- the attorneys representing Preston, in would come down, and the owners piety, and it must be admitted that “The fam- consideration. The Taj Mahal, street signs, the tising. a telephone interview. The company is would pay the city licensing fees. ily that prays together stays together” shows Golden Gate Bridge, a maze of telephone And this leads us to the other aspect of the currently waiting on a decision from Eight-sheets have been criticized by progress over “The day of judgment is at wires, even a garbage dump—however they intra-advertising controversy: do laws that dis- the Zoning Board of Adjustments the black clergy for carrying alcohol hand!” The industry has even landscaped its may intrude on the eye—are not where they criminate against outdoor advertising discrim- (ZBA) for easements that would over- and tobacco advertisements in areas billboards and put little picket fences around are merely to waylay your gaze; they have inate against every other medium? The answer rule L&I. Since their last hearing, frequented by children. them. All, alas, to no avail. You just can’t other functions as well. A billboard has no is yes–if you regard Outdoor as an advertising Preston’s attorneys have sent a letter to Nine years later, most of the eight- please some people. other function, it is there for the sole and medium, which I don’t. It is not an advertising the ZBA saying that the company sheets are still up and nearly 1,000 are Almost the only argument against outdoor express purpose of trespassing on your field of medium; it is isolated advertising. An adver- would be willing to accept a five-year still unlicensed. In 1999, Rendell advertising one ever seems to hear is that it vision. Nor is it possible for you to escape; the tising medium is something that incidentally easement and earmark the billboard asked Philadelphia Industrial blocks out the scenery and is unsightly. This billboard inflicts itself unbidden upon all but carries advertising but primarily provides revenues for pier repairs. Development Corporation to give isn’t a bad point, but it isn’t as good as you the blind or recluse. Is this not an invasion of something else in the meantime: entertain- The proposed signs are designed Keystone Outdoor Advertising a might suppose. The industry is quick to privacy? I think it is, and I don’t see that the ment, news, matches, telephone listings, any- to be visible from at least a quarter of license to build a cluster of eight dou- answer that less than ten percent of all outdoor fact that a billboard is out-of-doors make the thing. I’m afraid the poor old billboard doesn’t a mile away, from the Interstate 95’s ble-sided billboards on city-owned advertising is in open countryside, outside of slightest difference. Even if it were possible for qualify as a medium at all; its medium, if any, Girard Point Bridge to the east and land along Interstate 95 on Enterprise developed areas. I am not sure what this you to not look at billboards if you didn’t so is the scenery around it and that is not its to the George C. Platt Memorial Bridge Avenue, across the river from the means, for it is possible to drive fifty miles choose, why in the world should you have to give away. ] to the west. One hundred and seven- Tidewater. Rendell’s executive order from New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles and make the negative effort? Moreover, this inva- Howard Gossage worked in advertising in ty thousand cars pass over the bridges promises that “revenue from these never be out of a developed area of some type. sion of your privacy is compounded in its the 1950s and 60s and pioneered the technique of each day, according to the signs will put over $3 million in the As to unsightliness, the industry can prove resale to a third party. It is as though a Peeping advertising that references and slyly mocks its Pennsylvania Department of City coffers” in ten years. That’s a that its billboards are well-constructed and Tom, on finding a nice window, were to sell own commercial interest. He wrote copy for beer, Transportation. small fraction of what the signs would well-maintained. peeps at two bits a head. whisky, magazines and airlines and has been Preston’s plan has some powerful make for their owner, Dominic The real question is: has outdoor advertis- Thus we see that what the industry has to credited with masterminding the public relations supporters. “Who is it really hurting?” Cipollini, who has given Rendell ing the right to exist at all? sell doesn’t really belong to it. It belongs to campaign behind the popular 1960s media theo- asked City Council President Anna almost $50,000 in campaign contribu- The industry says it has. It claims two you. So much for the free enterprise argument. rist Marshall McLuhan. The essay from which Verna in an interview with the Daily Before and after. These court documents filed by Preston Ship tions, according to the Inquirer.The rights, in fact. In asserting the first of these it This brings us to the second line of this passage is excerpted first appeared in the News. Preston Ship and Rail is being & Rail’s attorneys show the company’s plans for the ZBA overruled L&I’s finding that the clasps the flag firmly to its bosom and, in defense. I doubt if you would be aware of this February 1960 issue of Harper’s and was later represented by Mattioni Ltd., whose Tidewater’s southern face. plan would violate the 1991 law, but cadences worthy of William Jennings Bryan, line unless you were in the advertising busi- reprinted in Stay Free. website lists the city’s Register of the billboards were held up in court Wills Ronald Donatucci as “counsel to the firm said the city’s image would be hurt if billboards for years by an anti-billboard community … Mr. Donatucci’s long government service were the first thing to greet visitors at group, the Society Created to Reduce Urban bottles, SmartWrap looks like wide, thin provides insight to the firm and its clients Philadelphia’s southern gates. Blight (SCRUB). Early this month, the On Tomorrow’s Building sheets of clear plastic studded with alien cir- when dealing with governmental and bureau- “The image of your city, especially for Pennsylvania Supreme Court declined to hear cuits—carbon nanotube fibers, photovoltaic cratic agencies.” Donatucci is also Democratic tourists, is conveyed by the areas they most fre- SCRUB’s latest appeal. Walls, Signs & Screens cells, and thin film transistors. The large leader of the 26th Ward, Keystone’s attorney, Carl sheets look like digital afghans to be stretched where the Tidewater is Primavera, said he wasn’t sure May Be The Same Thing across a building’s skeleton. located, was present at the whether the Enterprise Asserting that architecture needs to pay March 10 meeting before Avenue project was still mov- attention to advances in other industries, the ZBA, has received ing forward: “It was on appeal SmartWrap was born out of capitalizing upon campaign contributions for a long time. I’ll have to CIRCUITS STICK IT TO BRICK what Kieran Associate Christopher Macneal from local billboard com- talk to my client, but my sus- calls “transfer technologies,” those products panies, and has asked Verna picion is that they’ll be mov- Dark Age of Stone & Mortar and ideas that can be taken from one industry to oppose legislation regu- ing forward with it.” and applied to another. While dependent on lating billboards in the Should the ZBA Beholds Enlightening Wrapper steel beams to bear a building’s load, past, according to the approve the Tidewater plan, SmartWrap’s flexibility allows it to describe Inquirer. Donatucci did not SCRUB may file suit, From Philadelphia Architects the fluid, swerving geometric forms favored by return several messages left according to Executive contemporary architecture, which are difficult with assistants at his office, Director Mary Tracy. and expensive to execute using conventional who said he was on vaca- The Tidewater sits between two bridges at the city’s southern end. “We’re spending mil- A LONG WAYS PAST TENTS materials. tion. When asked to elabo- lions of dollars to get com- SmartWrap prototype on display at the ICA. While SmartWrap is still years away from rate on the reasons for Verna’s position, chief of quently visit,” Nasar said. “Billboards take away panies to stay in Philadelphia, and at the same being finished, Kieran has exhibited a proto- staff Bob Previdi said Verna favored the ease- from the impression of order.” time, we’re auctioning off our city’s most hile the Philadelphia-based architec- will be able to change color, conserve heat, and type material at the Institute of Contemporary ments because of the Tidewater’s location in an The amount of outdoor signage in important asset—our visual landscape,” Tracy W ture firm Kieran Timberlake weigh ninety-nine percent less than an ordi- Art and the Cooper Hewitt Museum in New industrial area, far away from any homes. “It’s Philadelphia has exploded over the past decade said. “This would be the first thing people see Associates LLP may not have reinvented the nary wall. The walls would arrive at the build- York. The plastic sheeting that coats about where people live. The council president for a few reasons. The development of wall when they arrive in Philadelphia, and the last wheel, they certainly have done a number on ing site on giant rolls, like butcher paper, and SmartWarp can already survive for up to feels advertising in residential areas is an eye- wrap technology, which allows billboards to be thing they see when they leave.” the wall. SmartWrap, Kieran’s “building enve- could potentially be rolled up and reused at the twenty years, but it will take further develop- sore, but this is not a residential area.” hung over and strapped to existing façades like Luz Cardenas, a spokeswoman for Mayor lope of the future,” promises to turn exterior end of a building’s life. Where today’s office ment before its electronic innards will be able But a new study suggests that even bill- banners, rather than pasted onto freestanding Street, said the administration is working on a walls into modular billboards that can light up supply stores and pharmacies announce their to do the same. One place where SmartWrap boards located miles away from any home can frames, is perfectly suited to Philadelphia’s citywide policy to address the billboard issue, and change patterns like screens, and be taken presence with bright plastic signs slapped on does not yet match the performance of heavier do lasting damage to a city’s image. In his book aging stock of giant industrial structures. As of particularly the illegal eight-sheets. down, moved to a new site, and hung up again the crags and cornices of the city’s antiquities, materials is security. A burglar could puncture The Evaluative Image of the City, Professor Jack mid-April, two oversized wall wraps remain “The mayor has asked the managing direc- without crumbling like today’s stodgy stone tomorrow’s walls could be their own signs. a sheet of SmartWrap with a knife and tear his Nasar of Ohio State University interviewed hanging in Center City, despite their question- tor to get together with the city solicitor and and sheetrock. Kieran says SmartWrap could Using the same mixture of polyester and way in, although Kieran is working on a rein- 400 residents and visitors on their impressions able legality. A 6,200 square foot sign for come up with a plan on how the city will han- reach the building market within ten years, and polyethylene that’s found in two-liter soda forcing net layer to prevent this problem. ] of two Tennessee cities. Nasar, who holds a Microsoft still hangs at Eighth and Market dle outdoor signs,” she said. ] PAGE 8 THE PHILADELPHIA INDEPENDENT SPRING 2004 Schism∂ in the Magic Kingdom

from DISNEY page 1 tacky, and the movies it promoted too mediocre, to tempt her any longer. “I keep going back, hoping they will have figured it out THE $27 BILLION MOUSE and come out with something really cool that I ∂ just have to buy,” she says. “It never happens.” During a December mall trip, however, she A Look Inside the Walt Disney Company’s Major Assets learned some news that made her wonder whether the store might finally reverse its sad decline. An outfit called SaveDisney was seek- ing to oust longtime Walt Disney Company CEO Michael Eisner, and the cast members were eager to be saved. “They know the store is doing bad,” she says. “They know it is in line to be sold. They were looking into trying to buy it, turn it into a franchise. They hate Michael Eisner.” The SaveDisney movement seemed like something of a corporate savior, not only of their stores and their cast memberships, but of the whole magical circle of life that brings consumers everything from summertime mul- tiplex tickets to Grammy-nominated original soundtrack albums at the holiday season. Dziekan soon joined the cause. “Cast members at the store say, ‘magic trust and pixie dust.’ It’s a way of saying, ‘We’ll get through this.’” The SaveDisney.com website alerted Dziekan to other disconcerting developments within the Disney empire. Nondescript brown receptacles had been spotted soliciting trash throughout the Disneyland theme park. “Everything in the park has a theme,” she explains. “Adventureland has a jungle safari theme, so the trash cans are supposed to be painted with leaves. But lately you go there and they’re just brown trash cans.” It was not the sort of ordinariness, Dziekan feels, that Walt Disney would have tolerated. “Disney was very … I don’t want to say anal, but he was a particular man. Things had The things at Disney’s core usually bear the ing and uses phrases like “hearts and flowers” to be done right, no matter how long it took or Disney trademark: Disney cruise lines and and “baby and bathwater.” how much it cost. Before Walt died … nobody Disney on Ice and Disney animated movies “I’ve had emails asking me when we knows if he’s cryogenically frozen or not … ” like The Lion King and said movies’ spinoffs stopped cleaning the restrooms,” Roy Disney In actuality, Walt Disney’s body was cre- like the Lion King Broadway production, or tells the audience. “Frankly, I’m also worried mated, but a persistent suburban myth has him the Disney theme park attractions like Pirates about ride maintenance in the theme parks. frozen and buried beneath Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean or Treasure Island and said There’s trash everywhere. Whoever takes over of the Caribbean ride. The noteworthy thing rides’ spinoffs like the Pirates of the Caribbean is going to need to change a lot of light bulbs, here is the leitmotif of the resurrected father movie and Treasure Planet. Finally, there are both literally and figuratively.” redeeming the sins of his wayward sons, which the Disney mall stores at which the accompa- But just when Roy Disney’s grievances are clearly, Dziekan explains, was a power Walt nying dolls, keychains and Halloween cos- starting to seem a bit too micro to be blamed wished he had. tumes are sold. on Eisner’s micromanagement, Disney “He wanted to come back to life to fix all Then there is a middle class of the semi- addresses the macro state of affairs at the the mistakes in his theme parks.” Disney and the PG-13-Disney and the in- media company as he sees it. And so it seemed especially momentous transition-Disney.This includes things that are “Sometimes artistic talent doesn’t adhere to that SaveDisney was the project of a man who clearly Disney but not necessarily labeled as the rules. Sometimes the most talented people shared not only the Disney name but the such: the Steve Martin Queen Latifah odd need to be nurtured. Right now, the second familiar animated eyes, sloping nose and couple comedy Bringing Down the House and anyone tries to stick their little head out of the sunken chin of the father himself, Walt all M. Night Shyamalan movies. There are rabbit hole, they get smacked right back down.” Disney’s nephew Roy. things whose seeming un-Disneyness is so dis- The reporters scribble this down as if it Years of being referred to within corporate tinct they almost have to be Disney: Bad Santa were news to them, as if they were shocked to ranks as “Walt’s idiot nephew” never really and Chasing Amy. Finally, there are things in hear of such mistreatment, having come from bothered Roy E. Disney, who had a castle in transition: some that were once squarely, solid- the nurturing environments of FOX, Condé Ireland, a Boeing 737, seventeen million ly Disney but now seem less so: Hilary Duff, a Nast, NPR, BBC, Knight-Ridder, Asashi shares and a part-time position heading the year ago the face of the Disney Channel flag- Shimbun and The Wall Street Journal. But animation department to console him. But in ship Lizzie McGuire show; today, following maybe it is news, for those companies are not November, when Michael Eisner informed acrimonious negotiations, simply another jail- Disney. Disney is supposed to be different. the 73 year-old that, in accordance with long- bait blonde diva-in-training on Disney’s In the front row sits Jim Hill, a hefty man standing company policy, he was getting too Hollywood Records label. with a gray beard in a gray sweater who, like old to serve on the board of directors, some- In the last camp are things that are almost, Jen Dziekan, is a longtime Disney fan. But Jim thing struck. Perhaps, in the way physical if this is possible, Disney neutral, except that has ascended to a higher and more nuanced resemblance seems to haunt the aimless inher- they all share an annual report and a balance level of Disney fandom that he calls “dweeb- itors of vast power and prestige late in life, sheet and a chief executive officer. Namely, dom,” which has landed his stippled mug on Roy’s iconic name and facial likeness to Walt these things are ESPN, the sports media pow- the front page of today’s Wall Street Journal. finally burdened him to act. He and his long- erhouse that became a part of Disney when Hill can even boast of a personal live interac- time investment partner Stanley Gold, a fel- Disney acquired its parent company the tion with Roy Disney, when Roy called him on low Disney director, abruptly sent angry resig- American Broadcasting Company in 1995. the phone one night in December for tips on nation letters to the company board of direc- ESPN has very little to do with pixie dust or how he should “reach out” to the fan commu- tors and, began an online grassroots move- cast members or “magic” and everything to do nity. This level of mainstream recognition has ment to remove Eisner from power and with making money. ESPN’s cable fees and earned him, at least for today, the title ‘King of SaveDisney For Future Generations. By advertising dollars bring in almost a billion the Dweebs.’ Jim Hill began chronicling Roy December they had acquired the domain dollars in profit to Disney’s bottom line. This is Disney’s coup attempt hours after he resigned name, and by January they had posted detailed a large part of the reason that Comcast, which from the board on the Disney-obsessed site he instructions as to how small-time shareholders spends $2.60 a month giving each of its twen- co-owns with his ex-wife Michelle Smith, could join the movement by mailing their ty-one million subscribers their Sportscenter JimHillMedia.com. He’s waited months for annual proxy forms to Disney’s Burbank head- fix, is so keen on trading her four shares for this meeting. quarters with a vote withheld for the reap- three and a quarter of theirs. The King Dweeb is looking forward to fil- pointment of Michael Eisner. As with the bal- But as Disney’s profit centers have moved ing his dispatches and giving an interview to lots in old Eastern bloc nations, there was no further and further away from its spiritual cen- MSNBC, and enjoying the fact that, for today, alternative candidate to lead the company. The ter, the company’s pixie dust breathing, fanta- everyone is obsessed with his obsession, but the website assured its readers, though, that sy-obsessed investors have not been replaced real treat is putting faces to some of the more enough withheld votes would “send a mes- by Coors-guzzling, sports-obsessed ones. By prolific screen names of the digital Disney sage” to Eisner that he ought to resign. the time Eisner realized the extent of the gap world over cheesesteaks and Atkins-compliant Dziekan waited for her chance to effect between the company’s business and its owner- salads at the Independence Brew Pub. change to come in the mail. ship, Walt’s idiot nephew was already harness- Dweebs, it seems, like to dress the part: But the ballot never arrived. A call to her ing it to his own advantage. Hill’s fiancé Nancy Stadler in a pink terry financial advisor at AG Edwards yielded Disney California Adventure sweater; Hill’s excuses, but no ballot and no annual report. ne day earlier, as Jen Dziekan tries to West Coast correspondent Chuck Oberleitner Time was running out. “It was then that I real- Odecide whether on not the trip to in a gray polo with black Mickey Mouse ized I had to go. I knew that if I didn’t go I’d Philadelphia would be worth the gas money insignia; MousePlanet.com columnist Mark be kicking myself later,” she says. There was lit- and lost sleep, Roy Disney sits in a conference Goldhaber in a company polo shirt replete tle question as to which way her ballot would room at the Loews Hotel, working the media. with rainbow Mickey-head logo; be cast. More than one hundred delegates have gath- JimHillMedia.com columnist Jeff Lange in a ered here today from such exotic locales as shiny brown faux-crocodile watch with gold he Walt Disney Company, which took in Tokyo, Rome, and Vanity Fair. There is a fren- detailing that depicts a golden replica of Walt T $27 billion in revenue last year, is com- zied feel about the place: tripods being assem- Disney’s head in the left corner. Most of the prised of many parts. There are theme parks bled, recording devices prepped, pens scrib- dweebs have never met in person, but they act and hotels and cruise lines, three movie studios bling, flashbulbs blinking, Comcast hovering, like old friends. When all this is over and Roy (Disney, Touchstone, Miramax), and television $27 billion in revenue and possibly the most or Michael or Comcast’s Brian Roberts has operations—local and national, cable and net- iconic corporation in American history in the declared victory, they will still be at the parks work. There are record labels and a book pub- balance. Roy’s partner Stanley Gold begins every other weekend, still be at the theaters for lishing company and the struggling Disney with a chat on a few of the supposed casualties every Disney release, still be online instant Stores. But more importantly for the purposes of Michael Eisner’s notorious micromanage- messaging one another into the wee hours. of this story, there are things that are clearly and ment—the ill-advised acquisition of the Fox The dweebs, like the fans and the cast obviously Disney, things that are moderately Family Channel, ABC’s dismal ratings record, members, loathe Michael Eisner, and they Disney, and things that don’t really seem the company’s falling-out with its digital ani- spend lunch dishily recounting the reasons. For Disney at all, yet contribute to its top lines, its mation studio partner Pixar. Then, Roy takes instance, there was the Eisner brainchild they bottom lines, the stock price, and the dividends. the microphone. He is white-haired and bald- Dash Shaw lives in New York City. His work can be viewed online at www.dashshaw.com. turn to DISNEY, page 9 SPRING 2004 THE PHILADELPHIA INDEPENDENT PAGE 9

from DISNEY page 8 refer to as the “Cake-sicle,” an episode several years ago in which Eisner directed Cinderella’s The Schools Report blue-and-white castle at Disney World to be re-decorated as a “Pepto-Bismol pink” birthday cake celebrating Disney’s fifty-year anniver- HUNTING PARK, Phila.—This year, forced them to hang up posters and pass out sary, complete with inflatable plastic “icing” eighteen high school seniors at the Nueva flyers in the John Street-friendly Kensington curlicues. As the days wore on, these curlicues Esperanza Academy Charter School (NEA) area. I came close to removing the girls, but deflated, and were seen wagging sadly on the undertook an internship program that for they wanted to remain in the internship breeze, semi-bloated, over all of Disney World. some, marked the first time they had ever left because they felt that they were learning a lot “People have their weddings at Cinderella’s their neighborhood near Roosevelt Boulevard from the hands-on experience of working on castle,” Jim Hill explains. (He himself had his and North Broad Street. a campaign, even though they didn’t support first wedding at the Disney Beach Club The students participated in a broad themselves. Resort.) “There were a lot of cancellations after range of projects and internships, including “Getting some kids out of the neighbor- that. People just cancelled their whole wedding assignments at the Lighthouse Community hood was no problem since so many are eager when they saw the Pepto pink.” Center, the Fairmount Health Clinic, to explore, but haven’t yet been given a There are other offenses, all cataloged on Philadelphia Animal Care and Control framework or reason to do so. But other kids JimHillMedia.com: the refusal to pay a retired Association, Solutions for Progress, Girls were quite scared. I had one situation where Lion King animator for his commentary track Action Initiative, and the Puerto Rican a student’s father wouldn’t allow her to go to on a commemorative DVD; the erection of a Federal Affairs Administration. A group West Philadelphia because he didn’t trust the stainless steel panel on the California from NEA has also been working with people there, even though the neighborhood Adventure Park concert hall that ended up Temple University to create the Voices where she would be working was much safer reflecting sunlight into nearby apartments and Organizing Project, a youth activism and than the neighborhood where they live.” killing off houseplants; the company’s mad- advocacy group. The program was organized Some stuents in the NEA program dening inconsistent awarding and withholding by teacher William Johnston, who got the turned their internships into full-time jobs, of press credentials to JimHillMedia.com idea from an alternative school in including two young women, who will be (Hill’s reporters get press access to Disneyland, Milwaukee, Wis. working at Eric Shore’s law offices through but not Disney World or the Disney Cruise Two students were even conscripted into the summer. Thanks to the program’s suc- Lines; it’s “absurd.”) Sam Katz’s 2003 mayoral campaign. Johnston cess—and what Johnston calls “a fortunate Suffice it to say, all dweebs present are in explained: “The two girls were working for a lack of catastrophe”—it will take place again agreement that something at Disney needs sav- strident Katz supporter, and she kind of next year. ] ing. But until today, none has really questioned whether or not Roy is the man to save it. “Did you notice the way they used ‘Carousel of Progress’ as the theme song for the from FIBS page 3 intradentistry? Write us with your own.) The end of the presentation?” Jim asks the table, relations with Al Qaeda—perhaps because most pessimistic of you will think that the halfway into his cheesesteak. “I haven’t heard these are so transparent to anyone who has ever Government has done nothing worthwhile that since the sixties or seventies.” been hit on the head with a history book, or during the pious and dubious reign of George The dweebs erupt into song: “It’s-a-great- perhaps because Mr. Bush just took it for 43. Now that we have some charts, some con- big-beautiful-tom-mor-row ...” granted that everyone knew the Arabs are all in crete morsels of fact, we must admit that here “It just seemed like they were trying to it together. is yet hope. make a very emotional appeal to the fans here,” What America knows now, more or less The Committee on Government Reform’s he cuts in. uniformly, is that there was no Urgent Threat, report (courtesy of the office of Rep. Henry “It’s the Walt Disney Company,” Stadler no Nuclear Activities, no Chemical or Waxman) on the Administration’s fakery counters, perhaps familiar with the argument Biological Weapons, and no link to Al Qaeda. (“Iraq on the Record,” a freely downloaded her fiancé is about to advance. “There are The next step, for any society truly grounded in PDF file), and the searchable database of all thousands of people with an emotional con- the Enlightenment, is indeed analysis. Cold, 237 Official Untruths, can be seen at nection to the company. That doesn’t mean it’s detached, wonderful informative Science. www.house.gov/reform/min/features/iraq_on_ not smart to appeal to them in that way.” (And what do we call the study of deceit? Let’s the_record/ ] “Do you want to know how many times coin it here: fibology? whopperonomy? —HENRY WILLIAM BROWNEJOHNS Roy went to work in the eighteen months before he resigned?” Jim Hill persists. “They know this because they got his computer logs. Last year Disney’s Finding Nemo was actually “imagineer,” one of the casualties of computer Thirty-seven times. In eighteen months. the highest grossing animated film of all time; animators. Later, Roy will shake her hand and People are spinning Roy as this grandfatherly it happened, however, to utilize the computer thank her for her support, despite the fact that preserver of Disney’s spirit, but until he was animation techniques perfected by the Pixar her votes are meaningless next to his own sev- fired, he was too busy with his yacht. animation studio with which Disney just cut enteen million, or Eisner’s thirteen million, or “And it’s not like Shamrock Holdings is its ties. With the rise of three-dimensional the votes of the two billion-plus shares in cir- some nice little family values operation. They’re computer animation, two-dimensional tradi- culation. A pale-lipped Eisner mounts an ane- businessmen too. It’s the classic misdirection tional animation has declined from its 1995 mic rebuttal: technique. ‘Look over here at the kindly grand- peak, when the phenomenal success of The “I think I have to say that the conclusions father while we crush Michael Eisner’s balls!’” Lion King meant middle-tier Disney animators you just heard are fundamentally wrong. I But wouldn’t the dweebs like to see were making $300,000-plus in salary. (So if believe you have just heard rhetoric that Michael Eisner’s balls crushed, after all these they’re starving now, at least they lived well in replaces reason.” He backs up his own rhetoric years? the mid-1990s.) This is an advancement in with an endless speech extolling Disney’s “I’d like to see them fileted,” pronounces technology, the same thing that is behind the financial successes over the past year. As Eisner Chuck. switch from bank tellers to ATMs. rattles off numbers, ratios, percentages, and “I’d rather not see them at all!” adds Nancy Theme parks, on the other hand, have been product names in defense of himself and his coyly, to uproarious laughter. the casualty of many factors. First, in the company, it becomes apparent that if rhetoric Jim Hill won’t voice an opinion. He may attempt to shut one another out, the big theme has replaced reason as a motivational force for loathe Eisner, but Roy will have to do more park companies built too much—movie theater corporate reform, the rhetoric is at least a little than start a website and print a bunch of T- companies did it too, and they’re still reeling. easier to listen to. shirts to earn his magic trust. Then there is the changing travel world. When The votes are tallied. “One billion, seven it’s as cheap to visit Paris or Prague or Beijing million, seven hundred and fifteen thousand, t hurts me to see trash floating in the as it is to visit Disneyland—and the visa does- six hundred eighty two shares in favor of re- “I water at our parks, paint peeling off the n’t take a year to come—theme parks suffer. election. Seven seventy one million, six hun- buildings, cast members telling me that we’ve Finally, when kids grow older younger—that dred and ninety one thousand, two hundred lost the magic … ” is, out of watching animated movies and ninety seven shares withheld.” Fierce frowns Roy’s disembodied voice is accompanied by straight into makeup and the mall and video over laptop calculator options abound. “That the bleating of pre-recorded strings. It is the games—theme parks suffer. All are document- was at least twenty percent,” says one journal- type of music you hear as the sun is just rising ed trends with which other media compa- ist to another. “That’s forty three something again on the poignant new reality of the pre- nies—and toy companies and travel agencies percent,” the other corrects. When everyone happy, pre-ending Disney animated classic, and airlines—are grappling, and are the rea- figures out what these huge numbers mean, before Ariel regains her voice and the spell on sons these companies are making cutbacks and they speak loud and clear. Forty-three percent the Beast is broken. The room is lit in dim, sop- closing stores and planning a little more con- of Disney’s shareholders have no confidence in orific mauve hues, and on the screen flicker servatively for tomorrow. the company’s chairman and CEO to do his slides of the Walt Disney company’s early But this isn’t about tomorrow. It’s about job in a satisfactory manner. It is not a majori- days—animators in high-waisted trousers; fam- Tomorrowland, and “A Great Big Beautiful ty, but it is twice as big as the vote that forced ily photos taken in the original Disneyland. Tomorrow,” and mostly, yesterday. For a few Steve Case to leave the company formerly Eight hundred shareholders sit attentively in yet hours, Roy has transported this capacity crowd known as AOL Time Warner (now, simply, another conference room in the Loews as the back to yesterday, to Disney’s past, perhaps to Time Warner). This last year, Michael Eisner SaveDisney “rally,” basically a video presentation their own youths. gave Disney investors a forty percent return on hosted by Roy and Stanley, begins. Another six And that is Roy E. Disney’s big coup. The their money. Last month, forty-three percent hundred latecomers are sitting on the carpet in audience leaves the mauve-tinted room, of them voted to get rid of him. the hallways, watching a live feed of the pro- imbued in the fuzzy faith that Disney can A few weeks later, Jen Dziekan has ceedings on televisions. Some wear mouse ears, Bring Back the Magic if only Eisner can be resumed her non-Disney life, which includes other carry sequined Snow White bags; many deposed. Roy has taken the power to manipu- listening to Megadeth and Metallica and rid- have red and blue SaveDisney T-shirts. late a crowd into believing they are somewhere ing a motorcycle. Her nemesis, Eisner, lost his Some have come from Ohio and Florida else entirely away from the company that once title as chairman of Disney’s board of directors for this, dressed as if the Loews Hotel were housed the manipulation masters. in the aftermath of the March 3 shareholders itself a theme park, although the closest thing meeting, but retained the title of CEO. He they get is a peculiar presentation by Charles believe our mission has always been to be has pledged to spend more time with the com- Phoenix, the Los Angeles “histo-tainer.” “Ibringers of joy, to be affirmers of the pany’s sluggish ABC network property. Roy Charles Phoenix sports a pair of black Mickey good in each of us, to be—in subtle ways— considers his job only halfway done, vowing Mouse ears and bounds about the stage as he teachers. To speak, as Walt once put it, ‘not to that so long as Eisner draws a paycheck from presents a slideshow of vintage Kodachrome children, but to the child in each of us.’” Roy is the Walt Disney Company—be it as CEO or photographs taken in the early days of the speaking to all the shareholders now, not just custodian of the kingdom—he will be there, Tomorrowland section of Disneyland. the “dissidents” who joined him yesterday, but blogging every plain old trash can, disgruntled Phoenix’s patter often veers into naughty dou- the reception as interpreted by applause is just cartoonist, and lascivious Tigger into a second ble entendre. When he points to a photo of as warm. Again, the venue has been over- wave of shareholder wrath. His website asks four little girls wearing matching mint-green booked. Journalists who didn’t arrive hours the faithful to join him in “round two of the dresses standing in line for a ride behind a cou- early watch the proceedings from televisions in fight to move Michael Eisner from his posi- ple of white T-shirted youths, Phoenix jokes, “I the Marriott. tion—any position—at Disney.” And he still hope they get on with those guys behind them, “We do this through great storytelling, by has Dziekan on his side, at least for now. then it’ll really be Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride!” giving our guests a few hours in another world “I hope we’re gonna hit the climax soon Neither Disney nor Gold nor Phoenix where their cares can be momentarily put and live happily ever after. It’s getting drawn talks about ESPN or Comcast. No one men- aside, by creating memories that will remain out and irritating, like a bad Disney movie. In tions profit margins or projected growth rates, with them forever. This is the core of what a way when you look at any of the movies real- or anything really, besides the halcyon days of we’ve come to call ‘Disney,’ and to my mind, ly, there’s always one bad guy who brings Tomorrowland. And animated films. our single biggest need is to get back to that everything down, and then Prince Charming “It’s so sad to watch this art form (anima- core …” comes and saves the day. Hopefully that will be tion) die before my eyes,” the quote flashes on Jen Dziekan drove two hundred and forty Roy and Stanley, and then everybody else will the video screen, credited to a “Starving miles to be here for this. It was worth it. She is live happily ever after.” ] Artist.” standing two rows behind Roy Disney and his Loren Hunt is Contributing Editor at THE Animation, for the record, hasn’t “died.” partner Stanley Gold, right next to a retired PHILADELPHIA INDEPENDENT. PAGE 10 THE PHILADELPHIA INDEPENDENT SPRING 2004

NEAT ROWS OF SPINES ALONG EACH WALL

[ essay ] us there was no reason we couldn’t write poems little copy shop. Ask them to copy your poems. like this. They were just guys looking around They are nice people and they just opened this [ obituary ] and writing poems. He told us to notice every- place. You should give them your business. Put ∂ Ted Berrigan, Poet thing, read everything, include everything and the copied poems in a manila envelope. ∂ to write incessantly. Ted made you want to be a Continue along to a certain address. Ring the better person, a better listener, more generous bell. This will be the apartment of Bob GIL OTT Remembering a Friend & Mentor and open, because if you were a better person it Rosenthal and Rochelle Kraut. Shelley will be 1950 –– 2004 would follow that you would be a better poet. expecting you. You will love Shelley. She is ∂ Poetry was all about the poet. beautiful like an apple and she has a wonderful [ BY MOLLY RUSSAKOFF ] That summer, Ted plucked me out of the singing voice, clear with a Western twang. Give [ BY ADAM FIELED ] scraggly garden of hopeful poets and decided her the envelope of poems and go home and to champion me. I saw him hitchhiking on wait. I’m pretty sure you will hear from her own journal, Paper Air, which became a University Avenue one day and he crossed the soon.” I think I was wearing a little blue jacket FROM “THE CHILDREN” forum for experimental poetry during its street to walk with me. He told me that he read and a black beret that day. I just had a flicker of run from 1976 to 1990. Ott was also a pub- my work and thought it was terrific. It was like my image standing at his bedside, listening Look lisher, releasing more than twenty books a door swung open and I was enveloped by a intently, my manuscript in a black springboard into my eyes. through his Singing Horse Press. Ott delicious breeze. He and Alice began to spread cradled in the crook of my arm. When I got to The same gradual fire offered both of his literary ventures as plat- the word on my behalf and things changed for Shelley’s place she was screaming at her son. replacing forms for Philadelphia poets— he pub- me. People became curious and courted me. I “Aliah! Aliah!” Aliah was about 3 years old. He has its trace in the music lished local writers beside renowned nation- began to get readings and was asked to submit was thrashing around on the floor and coming which consumes al and international names. Ott received the work to magazines. I decided, with new up to me and saying “Fuck you. You’re shit.” I Editors’ Award from the Council of resolve, to be a poet. told her I didn’t mind. I thought it was pretty all that I am stone Literary Magazines and Presses, as well as I was invited to their going away party the funny. A week later, Bob Rosenthal called to persisting neglicence. fellowships from California’s Headlands night before they left Boulder. It was a small ask if I would read at the church. Center for the Arts and from the crowd, talking and drinking in a living room. I The last time I visited, Ted wasn’t home. It We Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. A tribute ven now, more was the last to leave. When I finally did, Ted was the early 1980s, a year or two before Ted’s take the form volume of essays on Ott’s work was pub- than twenty two-thirds through, gave me a cheap white porcelain bowl to use as death. Alice seemed tired. She was wearing of our uncertainty. lished by Chax Press in 2001, where he was E years after his she would take over an ashtray, and told me to come visit him in jeans and a wrinkled blue camisole. We sat at praised for mixing “democratic invitation death, it’s almost as if I and talk to us about New York. The bowl was a standard issue cere- the kitchen table for maybe a half an hour and A shared vitality and complex investigation.” am the ghost when I writing and read us al bowl. I kept it for many years, until my cat talked. I forget what we talked about. The unspent Ott worked at the Painted Bride Arts remember my brief one of the earthly and knocked it off a chair and broke it. apartment seemed so quiet. No kids, no visi- eye that startles: Center, raising money and creating collabo- friendship with Ted ethereal poems in her I visited Ted and Alice whenever I went to tors, only me and Alice talking. As I was about I find it ever open. rative artistic and educational projects. His Berrigan. I can hardly new book, Alice New York, perhaps about a dozen times in the to leave, she giggled a little and asked me for final post was as Development Director for recall my own substance, what kind of girl I Ordered Me To Be Made. Her voice was clear next several years. They lived in one of those five bucks. I said sure and shelled it out. Liberty Resources, where he worked for the —GIL OTT was, my own voice or the things I said. But he and musical and quaked a little as she spoke. railroad car apartments where each room leads In the end, a body is only a body, regardless benefit of people with disabilities. seems so vivid. Even as it was happening, I Alice became my favorite poet. I was always a back into the next. The kitchen opened onto a of the fact that, alive, it is the temple of the Ott’s poems defy easy categorization or remember this sense of hovering above myself little breathless in her presence. little room with a bed where Ted usually lay, Lord. Ted’s back hurt him. Something was the interpretation. Influenced by the work of and watching. I am ascending the stairwell of Ted was not included in the American propped on pillows. Beyond that, there was matter with his leg. He had trouble breathing. Robert Creeley and William Carlos the subway and entering upon the daylight of canon of poetry during his lifetime, as dictated another room, a living room, which was piled He didn’t take care of himself. He lived on his February, Philadelphia lost the Williams, Ott’s minimalist poetry makes a New York City’s Lower East Side. I am passing by the academy, but he was always a presence in and lined with books. Edmund and Anselm pills, mostly speed, and sugar. There was poet Gil Ott, an artist who few words go a long way. Ott’s poems are the square at Astor Place, turning onto Avenue the literary underground. He inspired and col- were small, maybe five or six, and there was the always a Chesterfield in his lips. It followed his T brought the same passion to most memorable when he breaks through B and then onto St. Mark’s Place. There is the laborated with poets and artists of great reputa- juggled attention that I feel in my own apart- words as he spoke them. The ash would grow strengthening the city’s literary and dis- the opaque surface with an aphoristic awning of Gem Spa, where he is pictured on tion: Jim Carroll, Anne Waldman and Joe ment when I am visited, now that I have kids longer and finally break, falling onto his belly, abled communities that he brought to his punch, as in his poem “The Children”: “We the back of Red Wagon. And the wrought iron Brainard, to name a few. Younger poets are of my own. Sometimes there were other poets delicate as a snowflake. Still, it was hard to own work. Ott was intense, opinionated / take the form / of our uncertainty.” rail and the stone stairs that lead to his build- awed when I tell them I studied with him. As leaving or coming in on the heels of my visit. believe that he would die. It never occurred to and politically engaged. His place among Ott was a poet who thrived on produc- ing. When I ring the bell, Alice’s voice comes he recedes in time, his importance grows. Ted would ask if I brought any poems for him me that his visitors would come to his bedside the better poets of our city is, and will con- ing art in groups, according to his friends. through the intercom. It sounds tinny and Literarily speaking, he was an extension of his and I would pull out a thick sheaf and he and because he was practically bedridden. I tinue to be, unassailable. As Bob Perelman, the poet and University crackled. She buzzes me in. As I climb the cross friend Frank O’Hara, the exuberant chronicler Alice would look at each other and laugh. thought it was part of his charm. I thought he Ott grew up in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, of Pennsylvania professor of English noted, hatches of stairs, two flights, I try to breathe of New York. O’Hara died in an automobile Maybe I was only supposed to give them a preferred it that way. But one day, my mother and moved to Connecticut to attend “Gil’s minimalism came from the passion down the flight of birds that is rising in my accident on Fire Island when he was 40 years small sampling. I wasn’t sure of the etiquette of called and told me that she read of his death in Trinity College. Midway through his not to grandstand.” Indeed, there is nothing belly. I am visiting my hero in his home. old. Ted carried on for another seventeen years, poetry. I always felt a little elated and embar- the newspaper. He was only 48. I don’t know degree, he dropped out and moved to the flashy about Ott’s work; he avoids formality I met Ted and his wife Alice Notley as their singing the same disjointed and earthly love rassed when I visited them. I just loved them so what he died of. He just died of poor health. It West Coast. In the mid-1970s, the kidney and simple rhetorical devices. To read his student at the Jack Kerouac School for song in a different voice. I never heard anybody much. I always thought of Frankie’s refrain in was odd. The night he died, I think it was on disease that would plague Ott for the rest work is to be subtly wooed, to be alerted to Disembodied Poetics at Naropa Institute in talk about poetry the way he did. It was almost Member of the Wedding: “They are the we of the Fourth of July, I dreamed that I was visit- of his life brought him back to the fact that, as Ott puts is in his poem 1978. I was 19 years old. I enrolled in Ted’s psychedelic. Poetry was gigantic. It contained me.” I could not understand my good fortune ing him at his apartment. There was a huge Philadelphia. The illness was a perpetual “Traffic,” “all the art of the moment is open class because I thought he was famous. I mis- everything. He advocated everything, anything in knowing them. poster of Edna St. Vincent Millay hanging on source of frustration to him—he under- for use.” Ott’s poems open a door into other took him for one of the pacifist Berrigan to make a good poem: writing a thousand bad Ted took me under his wing. He said that the closet door. I was very impressed. Edna St. went five kidney transplants before his possible worlds of deep connection and brothers who got so much press in the 1960s. poems, stealing lines or stanzas, whether from people like me needed to be looked after. When Vincent Millay wrote one of my favorite death, but never allowed the illness to engagement. The poetry is consistent with He later told me that he snagged a lot of fans the great renowned or the nearly invisible poets. he recommended me as a reader at the Poetry poems, “Dirge Without Music.” It begins: “I interfere with his literary productivity. the memory the poet left: quietly powerful, that way. Alice was a sort of bonus. He’d I still remember a line he lifted from a student’s Project at St. Mark’s he mapped out each inch am not resigned to the shutting away of loving Ott’s first published poems appeared in open to life. ] brought her and their two kids along with him assignment. “I used to be Phyllis but now I’m of my path: “First pick out seven or eight of hearts into the cold earth.” ] small-press journals. He established his Adam Fieled lives in Philadelphia. to Colorado for a breather. She sat beside him Lorraine.” Sometimes Ted would read to us your best poems. Then go to the corner and Molly Russakoff is Poetry Editor at THE at the front of the class, and somewhere about from a John Ashbery or O’Hara poem and tell make a left. About three doors down there is a INDEPENDENT. Four Poems From the Berrigan Family ∂

LAST POEM MY LADY SHADOW COAXED TO VAPOR LIGHTER THAN AND DUSK LIGHTNING

Before I began life this time My lady shadow I’m stumbling away Hoax of a hallway. What you see as air Carlo Marx was compelled to independently create, I took a crash course inCounter-Inteeligence opening locks. Did you think are mice setting the house on fire but his mind was shockingly cavalier, & he forced a Once here I signed in, see name below, and added I wanted to burn on a different as opener, a mild telling of tales range of autobiographies onto the world. It was a Some words remembered from an earlier time, wheel? She turns her head to the left to counter the shadow reality generous act to leave so much room for so many “The intention of the organism is to survive.” and will have no name. She asserts not speaking. you’d put a dahlia pouring out people. Or am I projecting this idea on him? To be My earliest, & happiest, memories pre-date WWII, I’m going from this hallway I reply. of a firehose rigged to a snow covered the poet, the activist, the queer, rambling They involve a glass slipper & a helpless blue rose jacket minus y John, but I’m punctured adventurer, then elder statesman, teacher, In a slender blue single-rose vase: Mine A harmonica can burn you too by minimal wages, enough to feed religious figure. The man who had done that and Was a story without a plot. The days of my years any good can wound. Leaving, I’ll miss you thousands outside the borders seen that and took that, made his energy fall Folded into one another, an easy fit, in which from whom I can accept nothing angelic of our national clarity pointing everywhere, was easily the guy standing in front of I made money & spent it, learned to dance & forgot, gave a fixed vow precluding illusions to preventative measures against you at a party, telling you Texas Alexander was his Blood, regained my poise, & verbalized myself a place I don’t know who I can be, but my own blowing up of my cells. favorite blues musician. In Society. 101 St. Mark’s Place, apt. 12A, NYC 10009 you can’t give it to me. Yet I’m talking to you. A body is no democracy New York. Friends appeared & disappeared, or wigged out, that play on time hangs this Now his face stares back from his book, & I don’t Or stayed, inspiring strangers sadly died; everyone Are you still yourself, he’d said sarcastically up to walk through, gives away know him, he’s no longer living, his absences are a I ever knew aged tremendously, except me. I remained knowing I was not. Can I glimpse you a smoochy at the world reading gap that many share, but nobody can hold them. The Somewhere between 2 and 9 years old. But frequent abandoning everything yours except that I talk to Miles in a darkness places where he was seen are held by imbeciles. Reification of my own experiences delivered to me little sound, surrounding your wordless core? a blow torch on crystal dum de dum Every laughing moment is a delirious cry of paint. Several new vocabularies, I loved that almost most of all. I’ve caused much to happen to me O hairy claw with blood I’ve never been to the party, the empty glass never I once had the honor of meeting Beckett & I dug him. but was never quite that woman. I thought of you on a loveseat covered with fuckin’ A filled. The pills kept me going, until now. Love, & work, the ding king’s dent magic Were my great happinesses, that other people die the source not a fetish; a shade of stone, like myself overpowered by sentient —EDMUND BERRIGAN Of my great, terrible & inarticulate grief. In my time I know your texture—Are you still yourself? he said— gold-diggers low and away I grew tall & huge of frame, obviously possessed You are, not me. being a creature I can’t relate Of a disconnected head, I had a perfect heart. The end Facing well the ladyless to the language of this relational Came quickly & completely without pain, one quiet night as I path—or is the other a woman we both shelter, parts of animals speaking Was sitting, writing, next to you in bed, words chosen randomly don’t recognize? And wheel, not desire, hating teaching this coiled mortician to bound freshly across the plain From a tired brain, it, like them, suitable, & fitting. purely to turn and convey me. Left, I’m the way. Anselm & Edmund Berrigan will read at Molly’s Let none regret my end who called me friend. doughnut aching to be belted Bookstore, 1010 S. 9th St., on April 24 at 7 p.m. on the freeway with a seriousness little blood clots circle its cutie pie fuzz face. —TED BERRIGAN —ALICE NOTLEY Used with the permission of Alice Notley, executor of the estate of Ted Berrigan. —ANSELM BERRIGAN SPRING 2004 THE PHILADELPHIA INDEPENDENT PAGE 11

WORTH THE TREES & THEN SOME

The∂ Private Investigator While the New Journalists Sought Celebrity, Gay Talese Made a Study of It.

Instead, they employed the techniques previous- and easy access to drugs. interview became the profile’s central premise: THE GAY TALESE READER: ly reserved for fiction writers and playwrights— Arlen, though, fingered Talese as a journal- PORTRAITS & ENCOUNTERS scene construction, presentation of dialogues ist “remarkably meticulous to detail” in an oth- Frank Sinatra, holding a glass of bour- By Gay Talese and interior monologues, shifting point of view, erwise careless age. Born in 1932 to an immi- bon in one hand and a cigarette in the symbolic details—to bring the reader closer to grant father from Italy and an Italian- other, stood in a dark corner of the bar New York: Walker & Company the people and places in their pieces.The style of American mother from Brooklyn, Talese grew between two attractive but fading 2003 New Journalism lent itself well to longer narra- up in Ocean City, a small town in southern blondes who sat waiting for him to say tives, and the formative years of the “movement” New Jersey. His parents ran a custom tailoring something … The two blondes knew, THE KINGDOM AND gave rise to several outstanding books. Truman and dry cleaning business, where Talese eaves- as did Sinatra’s four male friends who THE POWER Capote’s In Cold Blood (1966), an examination dropped on his mother’s conversations with stood nearby, that it was a bad idea to By Gay Talese of two murderers in Kansas, which Capote customers and picked up the art of the inter- force conversation upon him when he called a “nonfiction novel,” is a landmark of view. Talese was shy and insecure, a lackluster was in this mood of sullen silence, a New York: The New American Library, Inc. American literature. Norman Mailer’s stunning student (except in typing class); he hardly par- mood that had hardly been uncommon 1969 work of nonfiction, The Armies of the Night ticipated in activities, preferring the sidelines. during this first week of November, a (1968), a first-person account of the anti- But he often contributed accounts of high month before his fiftieth birthday … Vietnam War march on the Pentagon in school games and social dances to the town’s Sinatra was ill. He was the victim of an review October 1967, went on to win both the weekly newspaper, which published 311 of his ailment so common that most people National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. articles by the time he left for college. It was on would consider it trivial. But when it BY WILLIAM S. LIN Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las the margins of high school society where gets to Sinatra, it can plunge him into a Vegas (1971), a report on the author’s own drug- Talese developed a sense of distance and honed state of anguish, deep depression, n the spring of 1963, Esquire magazine drug-filled journey in the Nevada desert, gained his powers of observation. panic, even rage. published a curious article with a curious widespread notoriety for its obsessive and comic Talese took these skills to the University of Ititle. Called “There Goes (Varoom! first-person voice. But New Journalism’s impre- Alabama where he majored in journalism. He Talese witnessed this scene, at a private Varoom!) That Kandy-Kolored (Thphhhhhh!) sario—its most vociferous champion and most was, again, a middling student, principally club in Beverly Hills, and all the others like it, Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (Rahghhh!) avid practitioner—was Tom Wolfe. Starting because he resisted the formulaic coverage of from afar—hanging back, measuring every Around the Bend (Brummmmmmmmmm- with The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake news that the university preached. Instead of movement, and taking scrupulous notes. Talese mmmmmmm). . . . ,” the piece gave the maga- Streamline Baby (1965), a compilation of essays, embracing the inverted pyramid structure, followed Sinatra to a studio in Los Angeles, 4014 Walnut Street • 215-573-3234 • www.foundationarts.org zine’s readers an unadulterated view of the cus- Wolfe set out to capture American popular cul- where the most salient facts are presented at where he was taping an hour-long television Let’s get ______. Admission is free • Events are open to all ages tom car world in a suburb of Los Angeles: ture in his distinctive kinetic (bordering on the beginning of a story in a succinct manner, special for NBC. A cranky and impatient Thu 4/15, 8pm: Xande Cruz, Batukis, Sat 5/1, 3pm-12am & Sun 5/2, 12pm- “This was a wild place to be taking a look at art hyperbolic) prose. Often, especially in the case Talese was influenced by the fiction writers he Sinatra—still suffering from his cold—casti- Jkau. Brazilian/fusion/Bossa Nova. 12am: Philadelphia Electronic Music & objects—eventually, I should say, you have to of Wolfe and Thompson, the personalities of enjoyed reading in high school such as Irwin gates the director, who sits safely in the control Fri 4/16, 8pm-12am: Gate to Moon- Arts Fest (PEMAF): Industrial dance, base Alpha. Music for Isolation Tanks, ambient, rock, IDM, hip hop, installa- reach the conclusion that these customized the authors dominated the story. Shaw and John O’Hara. booth (“‘Why don’t we tape this mother? … Orbital Decay, Arkitekchur, The Great tion, performance & video artists. Quentini, David Gerbstadt. Ambient/ pemafest.fkon.com cars are art objects, at least if you use the stan- In a spirited (and uproarious) assault on In 1953, Talese squired a job at The New ‘What the hell are you doing up there, experimental/electronic music & fringe Thu 5/6, 7pm: Thuro-bredz, et al. Hip dards applied in a civilized society. But I will Tom Wolfe’s literary reputation in The New York York Times as a copyboy, impressing the person- Dwight?’ … ‘Got a party or something going performance. hop & Soul from local youth. Sat 4/17, 8pm: The Groove. Monthly Fri 5/7, 7pm: WKDU 91.7fm Spring get to that in a moment.” There was no Review of Books in 1965, the critic Dwight nel department director with his quick fingers at on up there, Dwight?’”). Sinatra fails to hide open mic jam session w/ house band Concert, bands TBA. wkdu.org attempt to cover up the fact that this was a Macdonald lumped Gay Talese in with the New the typewriter and sharply tailored suit. He his weariness (“‘Excuse me,’ he said, adding, Decibel & hosts Stephanie Renee & Sat 5/8, 7pm: Penn Ethiopian Student Bernard Collins. Association Celebration. Ethiopian writer scribbling down exactly what he saw and Journalism coterie. So dismissive was turned out to be industrious and resourceful, ‘Boy I need a drink.’”), and ultimately decides Tue 4/20 - Fri 4/23, times TBA: Lost food, music & art. what he thought; the article has a slapdash Macdonald of New Journalism that he labeled using his lunch hour to report stories on a free- to scrap the entire day’s work (“‘Forget it, just Film Fest 9.0. Independent, radical, Tue 5/11, 7pm: Devil Music Ensemble thought-provoking films, directors, performs a live score (props & music) quality that conveys a sense of immediacy. what Wolfe and his ilk were doing as “parajour- lance basis. (He once phoned eighty hotels in forget it. You’re wasting your time. What you speakers, info sessions, workshops. to Robert Wiene's 1919 film "The Cab- That’s because after reporting the story, the nalism,” although he allowed that Talese prac- four days in an attempt to locate a silent-screen got there,’ Sinatra said, nodding to the singing lostfilmfest.com inet of Dr. Caligari". Sat 4/24, 6pm: Sick City and the Thril- Thu 5/13, 8pm-12am: Andrew's Video author, Tom Wolfe, returned to New York with ticed this “bastard form” of journalism “in a actress, and got through in the end.) Soon image of himself on the television screen, ‘is a ladelphia Music Fest pres. Helen Back Vault. Twin Peaks Night. "Fire Walk & the Str8 Razors, Bloody Wall of with Me" & more. armcinema25.com a nasty case of writer’s block. “I had a lot of more dignified way.” But Talese, who started out enough, after a stint in the army,Talese returned man with a cold.’”). Gore, The Blessed Muthas, FiV, The Always good times. Motherfucking Clash. Sun 5/16, 2pm: Sick City Showcase, trouble,” Wolfe later recounted, “analyzing as a reporter at The New York Times in the 1950s to the newsroom as a full-time writer in 1956. There are none of the direct interview feat. The Vapids, FiV, Low Budgets, Sun 4/25, time TBA: Vitamin D Prod. Vat 69, Defiant Trespass. exactly what I had on my hands.” Facing a and eventually moved to Esquire, has often gone According to former Times managing edi- quotes one would expect in a celebrity profile of Happy Hour Mon-Fri 4-6 pm pres. World Music for World Peace Celebration.vitamindproductions.com Fri 5/21, time TBA: The Paul Green tough deadline, Esquire’s managing editor, out of his way to distance himself from the New tor Arthur Gelb’s memoir, City Room, Talese this sort, but Talese was able to infer far more School of Rock. schoolofrock.com Brunch Sat-Sun 11-3 Thu 4/29, 10pm-2am: The Gathering. Byron Dobell, instructed Wolfe to write out Journalists. In his 1997 essay “Origins of a quickly established himself as a gifted reporter about Sinatra’s character and motivations simply Hip Hop DJs, open mic for MCs, graf Sat 5/22, 7pm: Poetry Arts Festival. Spoken word, poetry readings, etc. his notes as a memorandum, which would be Nonfiction Writer,” which is collected along and stylish writer. And he knew he was that by observation. Talking to the people surround- panels, break dancing. Fri 4/30, 8pm: Dragon Claw - open mic Tue 5/25, 7pm: The Syndicate, et al. turned into an article by an Esquire ghost with the best of his Esquire articles in The Gay good, too. After being assigned to the Albany ing Sinatra and watching their interactions with 637 NORTH THIRD STREET & featured poet Devin D'Andrea, et al. Political punk/rock. writer. Wolfe started with “Dear Byron” at 8 Talese Reader: Portraits & Encounters, Talese bureau, Talese chafed at the bureau’s insuffi- him, Talese uncovers a sort of subculture within PHILADELPHIA + multimedia poetry performance. p.m. and typed “like a maniac” through the recounts Wolfe’s public praise for his profile of cient recognition of his talent, and was Sinatra’s inner circle, one with shades of Sicily. TEL: 215.627.6711 night to the strains of rock music on the radio. the boxer Joe Louis in 1962, which Wolfe later recalled to New York. While covering local Sinatra controls his entourage by showing kind- FAX: 215.627.6167 After handing in his notes the next morning, championed as an example of New Journalism. news in the city, he demanded a hefty raise— ness through gifts and personal attention, and Wolfe received a call from Dobell. The notes “I think his complimenting me was unde- from $225 to $300 a week, a bold request for a by responding to mistakes with explosions of WWW. THEABBAYE.COM themselves would be published in the maga- served,” Talese observes dryly, “for I had not general-assignment reporter who could usual- anger. The result is absolute loyalty: As a close zine, with just one editorial change: the line written then, or since then, anything I consider ly expect raises of only $10 to $15. (He got it.) friend confesses to Talese, “‘I’d kill for him.’” “Dear Byron” would be snipped out. The back stylistically ‘new.’” After working at the Times for a decade, Talese put Sinatra under a microscope, with story has become famous, but the funny thing As Michael J. Arlen pointed out in a 1972 Talese went on to produce a series of remark- particular attention to the star’s relationship to is, hardly anyone can remember the article. Atlantic Monthly essay largely critical of New able profiles for Esquire throughout the 1960s, the large group around him, as if Talese wanted Wolfe’s piece exemplified what would soon Journalism, a “vein of personal journalism” had and then became the best-selling author of to study the eye of a hurricane by looking at the become known as the New Journalism. It’s dif- been around in the world of English and such books as The Kingdom and the Power storm’s effect. “For the common cold robs ficult to define New Journalism, which rose to American letters long before New Journalism (1969), Honor Thy Father (1971), and Thy Sinatra of that uninsurable jewel, his voice, cut- national prominence in the 1960s and 1970s, burst on the scene. As examples, Arlen cited Neighbor’s Wife (1980). Amongst his peers, ting into the core of his confidence,” he writes, because it was an amorphous movement—if it the English novelist Daniel Defoe, who Talese was unsurpassed as a reporter, as an “and it not only affects his own psyche but also can even be called a “movement.” (As Wolfe employed an autobiographical narrative tech- accurate and faithful collector of facts. His seems to cause a kind of psychosomatic nasal once pointed out, “there were no manifestos, nique in A Journal of the Plague Year in 1722, astounding reportorial method is on full dis- drip within dozens of people who work for him, clubs, salons, cliques.”) Roughly speaking, New and the legendary New Yorker writer Joseph play in his most celebrated Esquire profile, drink with him, love him, depend on him for Journalism combined the stylistic elements of Mitchell, who introduced a composite charac- “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold.” Talese had sched- their own welfare and stability.” fiction with the reporter’s subjective interpreta- ter, Mr. Flood, in a slew of articles about a New uled an interview with the singer, but was Talese has a gift for inhabiting a subject’s tions of events. The New Journalists sought to York fish market in the early 1940s. Arlen turned down when he arrived because Sinatra mind, forcing the reader to see the world overcome the seeming deficiencies of tradition- likened New Journalism to what he termed the had caught the common cold. Instead of going through the subject’s eyes. Talese achieves this al journalism, which often relied on an objective “New Carelessness” arising out of an era of home empty-handed, Talese decided to stick viewpoint and a “just the facts, ma’am” attitude. failed relationships, sloppily conducted wars, around, and Sinatra’s reason for canceling the turn to TALESE, page 12 PAGE 12 THE PHILADELPHIA INDEPENDENT SPRING 2004

from TALESE page 11 effect through his superior reportorial skills: he can tell you what happened, but he also tells you how his subject felt when it did. The stereotypical New Journalist, on the other hand, might not get past his own feelings. When Talese writes about A.M. Rosenthal in The Kingdom and the Power, his inside look at his former employer, The New York Times,he seems to burrow into Rosenthal’s mind. Rosenthal had returned from a choice post in Tokyo as a correspondent to edit the city sec- tion (he would later become the paper’s execu- tive editor), and Talese sets the scene in the newsroom in 1965, two years after Rosenthal arrived in New York: “Seated behind his big desk in the middle of the newsroom, Rosenthal momentarily looked up from the stories that he was reading and gazed around the room at the distant rows of desks, the reporters typing, talking among themselves, sometimes looking at him in a way he suspected was hostile—they must despise me, he thought, being both irritat- ed and saddened by the possibility, they must really hate my guts.” Talese uses Rosenthal’s inner turmoil as a way of signaling the tensions then afflicting the Times, where drastic changes were underway. As Talese sees it, the unexpected death of pub- lisher Orvil Dryfoos in 1963 ushered in a “quiet revolution” that, among other things, led to a shift in power from the Washington bureau to the newspaper’s headquarters in New York. In part, that’s because the influence of the Washington bureau chief, James Reston, who had enjoyed a close relationship with Dryfoos, would wane slightly. Reston also eventually became executive editor, and was one of the last authentic newspaper stars who acquired nationwide fame through nothing other than his journalistic brilliance. Despite his formidable reputation, however, without the backing of Dryfoos, he would be locked in battle for years with editors in New York, who sought more control over the paper’s coverage of the nation’s capital. This ongoing skirmish was part of a larger development at the Times. The overseas bureau chiefs, whose bureaus had once resembled fief- doms, saw their autonomy and stature reduced by the editors in New York. The paper’s leader- ship hoped to consolidate more power within its hands so that it could respond more swiftly to the quickening pace of life in the 1960s. The leading editors were reacting to the rise of tele- vision, which could deliver news faster than newspapers. More in-depth reporting, interpre- tation, and analysis would be required. The New York editors also called for brighter writ- ing, which would hold the reader’s interest. (This was probably why Talese enjoyed a $75 raise when he was still at the Times.) One of the first serious examinations of the inside of a news organization, The Kingdom and the Power, it could be said, inaugurated a new subgenre of nonfiction: the journalism of journalism. Unlike his taut magazine profiles, however, it is difficult at first to get a handle on The Kingdom and the Power. The book is sprawling, a whirlwind of details; there’s seem- ingly no overarching narrative force, no organ- izing thematic principle, except to catalogue the myriad of anecdotes emanating from the newsroom. Initially, the narrative seems to cen- ter on the dapper and sharp-minded managing editor, Clifton Daniel, whom Talese originally had profiled for Esquire. But the story careens from Daniel to Adolph Ochs (who purchased the newspaper in 1896), then spills into rivulets of mini-profiles of various reporters, editors, business executives, and the descendants of the Ochs family, who would continue to own the paper. The narrative travels forward and back- ward in time, upwards to the executive suites, downwards to the newsroom, and across conti- nents in bureaus around the world. One real- izes, though, that the book mirrors the charac- ter of the institution. Talese shows us just how vast and chaotic and complex and confusing the Times can be, with its offices scattered throughout the globe and all its strong person- alities tangling with each other. To read The Kingdom and the Power is, in a way, to experi- ence the Times. But line by line, chapter after chapter, almost through accretion, it becomes clear by the last chapter that The Kingdom and the Power is really about one thing: well-inten- tioned and ambitious men attempting to change an institution steeped in tradition and resistant to change. It is hard not to sympa- thize with the newspaper’s leaders, who are charged with controlling this massive and unwieldy operation.

n contrast to the dazzling linguistic gym- Inastics and grammatical pyrotechnics that infected the writing of some of his contempo- raries, Talese writes with a smooth, readable style; his prose is clean, elegant, and simple. And the flow of his stories, the casual transi- tions from paragraph to paragraph, the seam- lessness of it all belie the hustle and legwork that went into reporting his stories, especially in a piece like the Frank Sinatra profile. While other New Journalists seemed intent on bending stories to their will, stamp- ing their unique imprints on each piece, Talese instinctively arranged his sentences so that they were put in the service of the story, rather than the other way around. In “The Loser,” Talese set out to acquaint the reader with Floyd Patterson, a former heavyweight cham- pion who couldn’t shake the feeling of losing in the ring despite the material rewards and sub- turn to TALESE, page 13 SPRING 2004 THE PHILADELPHIA INDEPENDENT PAGE 13

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ou may recall that this publication began its short life as an odd little booklet of flimsy, oversized pages, a Ybooklet so curious about its own geographic surroundings that it boasted, flamboyantly and unreasonably, that it was, in fact, a fully-grown newspaper. Like a small puppy strutting around town in a lion’s pelt, this led to some absurd scenes. Speeches were made from the tops of milk crates to stunned commuters on train plat- forms. Quarters were collected in cigar boxes, until the authorities intervened. Steel newsboxes were driven about in small minivans and chained to poles by the soft hands of children. In the darkest hours, tobacco and even black coffee were prepared and consumed. Then it arrived, our very own newsprint baby, kicking and screaming. The first issue showed some promise, but was highly amateurish in its composition and presenta- tion; ten uneven pages riddled with typographical errors and wet with the lather of adolescent manifestos. We promised that we would swallow the city whole, “to capture the doings and dreams of an entire city.” We prom- ised to make THE PHILADELPHIA INDEPENDENT into our city’s last great newspaper. The fever that we felt then still consumes us now. We remain committed to keeping all of these promises.

ut what has changed is the price of raw newsprint (it has increased), our page count (it has more than dou- Bbled), our taste for simple luxuries (a heated office and a minimum wage among them), and our ambitions (a budget for giving fair compensation to our contributors). These have all in turn increased the audacity of our demands on you, the public. We now believe this newspaper to be worth an entire dollar. However, we do not want you to interpret this as the usual ultimatum implied by a price. You have already given us that thing we wanted most in the first place—a loyal readership. Give us but another five dollars, and watch as our next six from TALESE page 12 prehensive account of the Kennedy assassina- harshest indictment, in the words of a former issues make this one look as infantile as our very first effort must look to you now. urban comfort he reaped from the sport for tion under extreme deadline pressure; New member of the circle who recalls her time in himself and his family. The best method to York reporter McCandlish Phillips, a deeply Paris: “The whole life seemed after a while to accomplish this—to provide a sense of intima- religious man whose drive and calm nerve pro- be utterly meaningless.” cy between the reader and the subject—was to duced an amazing story about a member of the You hardly sense such nuance and crafts- allow the piece to be dominated by Patterson’s American Nazi Party and local leader of the manship in most of today’s feature journalism. voice. “The Loser” seems to feature one mono- Ku Klux Klan who was actually Jewish—a We’re inundated with celebrity profiles, most of Get 6 issues by mail ... logue after another; in some sections, the piece secret held so tightly that when the story hit them orchestrated by savvy public relations reads like a barely edited interview transcript: the newsstands the man shot himself dead; agencies. What we get are writers who cop the and assistant managing editor Harrison superficial aspects of New Journalism, describ- “It is not a bad feeling when you’re Salisbury, who gained access to North ing the marble floor of the London hotel lobby knocked out,” he said. “It’s a good feel- Vietnam in late 1966, saw the immense harm where they meet Julia Roberts, say, or obsessing ing, actually. It’s not painful, just a to Vietnamese civilians by American bombs, over the flavor of the cappuccinos they share sharp grogginess. You don’t see angels and filed dispatches that were remarkable for with Ben Affleck in a chic basement café in or stars; you’re on a pleasant cloud. their clear-sightedness and controversial for Boston—all recounted in a perky, self-con- After [Sonny] Liston hit me in their dispute of the U.S. government’s official scious first-person timbre. Now compare that Nevada, I felt, for about four or five storyline. with some of Talese’s Esquire pieces, which are seconds, that everybody in the arena Talese does strike a distant pose in covering a kind of investigation into America’s fascina- was actually in the ring with me, circled his former workplace, but his affection, toward tion with celebrity. Throughout, Talese explores ... for only $5.00. around me like a family, and you feel Timesmen and journalists in general, is evident. questions like: What pressures and burdens warmth toward all the people in the “Most journalists,” he begins the book, does fame impose on individuals from ordinary arena after you’re knocked out ... backgrounds? What effect does fame have on That’s less than FOUR CENTS per enormous page. “But then,” Patterson went on, still are restless voyeurs who see the warts family and friends and associates? How do You will SAVE an ENTIRE DOLLAR. pacing, “this good feeling leaves you. on the world, the imperfections in peo- ordinary people react to famous people? You realize where you are, and what ple and places. The sane scene that is Essentially, what is the magic behind celebrity? Yes, this is quite the SQUARE DEAL. you’re doing there, and what has just much of life, the great portion of the In “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” Talese recounts But wait. It gets EVEN SQUARER. happened to you. And what follows is a planet unmarked by madness, does not an instance in which Sinatra was sitting at a bar hurt, a confused hurt—not a physical lure them like riots and raids, crum- in New York one summer evening, and dozens hurt—it’s a hurt combined with anger; bling countries and sinking ships, of people, “some of them casual friends of it’s a what-will-people-think hurt; it’s bankers banished to Rio and burning Sinatra’s, some mere acquaintances, some nei- As a new subscriber, an ashamed-of-my-own-ability hurt … Buddhist nuns—gloom is their game, ther,” showed up. “This is all they really want- and all you want then is a hatch door in the spectacle their passion, normality ed; they wanted to see him. And for a few you will also receive ... the middle of the ring—a hatch door their nemesis. moments they gazed in silence through the that will open and let you fall through smoke, and they stared. Then they turned, and land in your dressing room instead Talese’s sharp eye cut both ways, however; fought their way out of the bar, went home.” of having to get out of the ring and face he could be as scathing as he was generous. Some of the New Journalists became bona those people. The worst thing about “Looking for Hemingway,” his profile of fide nationwide celebrities themselves. The SIX CUSTOM ENVELOPES losing is having to walk out of the ring George Plimpton and The Paris Review crowd New Heroes had arrived: stylish writers were One for each issue. Envelopes bear the Flying P on brown paper bag. and face those people.” in the 1950s and 1960s, is a touch less reveren- now “in,” boring reporters with stature and tial than the overly saccharine encomiums that authority were “out.” Capote had his masked Talese notes later on that Patterson once followed Plimpton’s death last year. To be sure, balls, Mailer had his women, Thompson had donned a disguise—fake beard, fake mustache, Plimpton, the editor of the venerable literary his drugs, and Wolfe had his white suits. They A PINBACK BUTTON glasses, and hat—and fled to Madrid after los- journal founded in Paris and a successful weren’t just covering the new celebrity culture ing a fight to Liston. In another self-reflective author in his own right, contributed vastly to fueled by the voracious consumerist tendencies Bearing the Pigeon and the Pen, two elements from our great Seal. monologue, Patterson coughs up and then the world of American letters. But Talese, ever of the American public after World War II; repeats the key phrase in the piece: “‘I am a cognizant of issues relating to class and back- they partook in it, and along the way, turned coward.’” Talese captures Patterson’s shame by ground, saw Plimpton and his gang for who into crude caricatures of themselves. This YOUR SUBSCRIBER CARD letting the boxer speak for himself. they really were, “witty, irreverent sons of a development isn’t so surprising considering that Armed with the professional reporter’s conquering nation ... [T]hough they came many of the New Journalists put themselves at The Card confers no benefits upon the Bearer, but only serves to tenacity and detail, and the serious writer’s sen- mostly from wealthy parents and had been the center of their stories. In the end, however, identify his or her elite status. sitivity to form and style, Talese’s work was graduated from Harvard or Yale, they seemed celebrity is usually fleeting, and Talese was aim- sometimes capable of profound insight. In The endlessly delighted in posing as paupers and ing for something more, something less short- Kingdom and the Power, Talese detects the sway dodging the bill collectors.” term. To be fair, Talese was interested in that The New York Times held over the men Talese follows the group’s pranks, parties, celebrities, too—he profiled Peter O’Toole and OUR THANKS who worked there: employment at the Times and privileged poverty in Paris, and then its Joe DiMaggio, among others. But he was also The satisfaction of the devoted patron is usually the most costly of all meant that “doors open elsewhere, favors are collective refusal to grow up in New York a fascinated by anonymous people; during his commodities. In previous ages, it was known only to the nobly born. for the asking, important people are available, decade later. There was the managing editor, early years at the Times and at Esquire, he wrote Even today, some ask that you give thousands of dollars to help a wor- the world seems easier.” And these perks were John P.C.Train, who once displayed a sign that about the editors at Vogue, the head obituary all the more attractive to those reporters who read: “Please Do Not Put Anything In The writer at the Times, and stray cats in New York thy thing survive. We ask for but five, but if you want to give a thousand, came from lower middle class backgrounds, Managing Editor’s Box.” There was Harold City. And he wrote about them in such a way by all means. which meant most of them. The sons of Humes, the magazine’s co-founder, who left that placed a premium on the craft of story- Scottish immigrants, of the rural South, or of Paris and, angered over his demotion on the telling, and that deemphasized his own role in Jews arriving from Europe could establish a masthead of the inaugural issue, corralled the story. Talese was indeed one of the first better life: “In one generation, if their by-lines thousands of copies at the docks in New York, nonfiction writers to have successfully used sty- YES. I LIKE THIS PAPER AND I WANT TO HELP... become well-known, they may rise from the and stamped his name in every issue in large, listic fiction techniques to make his stories Please sign me up for ... simplicity and obscurity of their childhood red letters. And, of course, there was Plimpton, more compelling to read, as Tom Wolfe point- THE FRANKLIN. $1,000 or more My Name: existences to the inner circles of the exclusive.” the ringmaster of the clique, whose energy and ed out, but unlike some of his New Journalist Two perpetual subscriptions (transferable to your Conversely, men who came from a wealthy and organization kept the journal alive. Plimpton colleagues, he realized—at least during the heirs) pin, card, custom poster, t-shirt, custom privileged lineage hardly ever became excellent also ensured that the spirit of Paris wouldn’t early phase of his career—that his subjects and messenger bag, Twelve 3-issue gift subscriptions reporters. They did not hunger for bylines, die years later in New York by hosting famous- the way in which he presented them were more for all of your friends. Donor listing on Page Two Address: beside masthead. already holding established family names in ly grand parties at his apartment. But to Talese, important than the insertion of himself into their possession. Also, hunting down facts and Plimpton was emblematic of the group’s main their stories. Talese writes in his autobiographi- THE FREEMASON. $200 asking personal questions of strangers were afflictions—their misguided romanticism and cal essay, “Origins of a Nonfiction Writer”: Five-year subscription, pin, card, custom poster, activities that were “undignified, too alien to a lack of originality. “They are obsessed, so many t-shirt, six 3-issue gift subscriptions. Donor list- refined upbringing.” All the same, Talese of them,” Talese writes, “by the wish to know My curiosity lures me … toward pri- ing on Page Two beside masthead. records the central burden that many how the other half lives.” vate figures, unknown individuals to THE RIZZO. $50 City / State / Zip Code: Timesmen felt at working at such a distin- Talese does give credit where it’s due. He whom I usually represent their first Ten-issue subscription, pin, card, custom poster, guished, large, and enduring “fact factory”: commends the journal for publishing the work experience in being interviewed. I t-shirt, two 3-issue gift subscriptions. Donor list- They knew they were replaceable. of young talents such as Philip Roth, and run- could write about them today, or ing on Page Two beside masthead. Talese, on the whole, admires these men ning in-depth interviews with established liter- tomorrow, or next year, and it will make THE SQUARE DEAL. $5 Email: for their commitment to the craft of journal- ary titans such as William Faulkner and Ernest no difference in the sense of their topi- Six issues in custom envelopes, pin & card. ism as they toiled in relative obscurity. Part of Hemingway. “But as much as anything else,” cality. These people are dateless. They Check this box if you do not want your name listed as a subscriber on Page Two. the purpose of The Kingdom and the Power is Talese notes, “the Paris Review survived can live as long as the language used to to raise their profiles, to take them out of the because it had money.” Praise in this piece describe them lives, if the language is shade of anonymity that an institution some- always comes wrapped in a conditional clause. blessed with lasting qualities. Send this form with a check or money order payable to The Philadelphia Independent. If applicable, please attach names and addresses for your gift subscriptions. Mail to: times provides (or imposes). He devotes pages “Looking for Hemingway” is a takedown to the journalistic feats of, among others, piece, but it’s imbued with clarity and artful One suspects that Talese’s work will enjoy THE PHILADELPHIA INDEPENDENT BUREAU OF SUBSCRIPTIONS, 1026 ARCH STREET Washington bureau chief Tom Wicker, James technique. Layers of detail are unfolded slowly lasting life precisely because he preferred the PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA, 19107 Reston’s protégé and successor who, during his and methodically like a prosecutor’s brief until, front-row seat to the stage. ] reporting days, delivered a first-class and com- toward the very end, Talese unleashes the William S. Lin resides in Brooklyn, New York. PAGE 14 THE PHILADELPHIA INDEPENDENT SPRING 2004

THUNDERBOLTS FOR NEWBORN COLTS

[ interview ] Nathaniel Friedman: There seems to be ground that doesn’t always include standard ago: that you write the lyrics and the melody, works the Bowie angle to death. this need to figure you out, both among your rock songwriting or pop lyrics. I know the independent of the chords and band parts. DB: Obviously I like David Bowie. I like fans and people who come into more casual wordiness alienates a lot of people, especially DB: It’s getting really bad. Back then I his singing and I like the people he was drawn contact with your music. with the voice that I’ve been given. It’s like “I would come up with the chords to go over the to rip off. It was all open season with him. And ∂DESTROYER Daniel Bejar: A lot of people think that I’m wish that guy would sing less, because his voice lyrics and vocal melody when I had to show it his melodic phrasing—what he would do was some person who can’t step outside of his is driving me crazy.” I’ve actually tried to pare to the band, and then with this last record, glom onto an idea that was out there and make Dan Bejar Pushes Pop Past Gibberish house, or shuns any kind of attention the wordiness down a bit, because it’s the kind there was no band. I was coming up with the it catchier. But as a writer, there’s not much whatsover, which really isn’t true. I’m responsi- of thing that can really kill a song. I’d like chords the day of, in the studio, still trying to really to attract me there. If you think of the ble for about ten percent that. The rest is other things to be as immediate as possible, ‘cause figure stuff out. I know it’s ass-backwards. For record that had the most of that kind of early [ BY NATHANIEL FRIEDMAN ] people. that’s kind of the nature of the medium. At the most songwriters I know, the last minute thing Seventies glam affectation, it would probably odern pop began in the early one-upping Dylan on a regular basis. Bejar’s is scribbling down lyrics in the studio. be Thief. Thief was dabbling in this kind of 1950s when a rash of hopped-up circuitous lyrics offer delirious wordplay, a dev- NF: But I think that’s where a lot of the anti-underground music, or some kind of M rockabilly, country, and jump blues astating wit and a caustic sense of the absurd. force of the language comes from—it has its vaguely political rhetoric. Especially coming singles stormed the castle, discarding carefully Yet while many of them could hold their own own momentum. from a band that no one had heard of, it crafted exposition in favor of drive and fren- on the printed page, Bejar is also fascinated by DB: Definitely with this last record. There seemed that the more bombastic the music, the zied insinuations. Somewhere around this blunt, “Louie Louie”-like choruses and peaks, ended up being a lot more on the record than better. And Bowie, he’s no slouch at that kind time, and certainly under this premise, rock & sandwiching poetic flights between fist-pump- I’d initially imagined. I’d kind of thought in my of thing. I guess I could have gone more for roll proper was birthed, reaching an early pin- ing slogans, catchy couplets, and almost trite head that it would be this stark soundscape Queen, but at the time that seemed out of my nacle with the Kingsmen’s wobbly, unintelligi- plaints. While Dylan redefined what it meant bubbling in the background, and have the reach. ble “Louie Louie.” to rock, Bejar, writing some of the most liter- vocals way up top, almost on the verge of an a NF: Is that an influence or a reference? You That this mush-mouthed rant could find a ate and, at the same time, joyously inane songs cappella record. But we just got too spastic make a lot of references in your lyrics. place in the pantheon cemented pop music’s you’ve ever heard, can exalt and debase himself once we got into the studio—too much fun to DB: I can’t imagine referencing something deeply ambivalent relationship with language. over the course of one three-minute track. be had with MIDI—so that kind of fell by the just for the sake of having a reference. It’s more Pop needs lyrics to sound human, since, after Musically, Bejar is a fractured traditionalist, wayside. that if someone’s flailing about, they’re going all, language is the point at which subjectivity scavenging bits of glam rock, kooky acid-folk, NF: It sounds like the opposite happened. to grab onto things, and part of those things opens itself to mass identification. But often 1990s indie guitar chug, and John Cale-esque DB: We kind of went wrong somewhere, are going to be information that exists in the the lyrics are sublimated into noise for the sake sophistication. Unlike Dylan, however, he didn’t we? Some of them kind of retain a bit of world, and part of that is going to be names of the overall musical effect of a great, bracing exploits their visceral face value while playing that. I mean, that was one idea, and the other and places. I don’t think there’s some puzzle single. Since the mid 1950s, pop has been con- their deeper connotations off of each other. It’s was to take a stab at the style of heavily orches- that if you tie it all together, it’s going to be tent to derive meaning from rhythm, emotion, not only the sounds that come together—it’s trated, European-style crooning. That’s a style solved, because I don’t really think in concep- and texture, reducing lyrics to merely the pho- the context we’re used to hearing them in. By of music I’ve always been into. tual terms. I almost don’t really believe in netic component of that gut-level appeal. letting words-as-gesture pollute his lyrics, and NF: Like? them. It’s a small miracle, then, that the defiantly using genre as a mode of meaning, Destroyer’s DB: Scott Walker. John Cale, he’s done NF: How can you not believe in conceptu- wordy Bob Dylan meant more to the history of musical interplay of high and low, abstraction things that have brushed upon that. He’s a al terms? rock than “Louie Louie.” Placing Dylan above and guts, and thought and immediacy is as specter that looms large over every record I DB: It’s not that I don’t believe in them. “Louie Louie,” though, doesn’t mean he reject- downright revolutionary as any songwriter make, it seems. But what I’m really going for is something that ed the “Louie Louie” aesthetic—he just since Dylan himself. NF: How so? strikes me as poetic. That’s the bottom line: to improved upon it, with “Like A Rolling Stone,” His latest, the synth-laden epic Your Blues DB: The placement of sound, the way he make something that can be moving and that “Highway 61 Revisited,” and “Stuck Inside of is the latest statement from this one-man arranges things, whether it’s a string section or can seem unfamiliar and beautiful at the same Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again.” vanguard. The endless waves of digital key- a rock band. Who else? Crazy people like time. That’s the nature of writing that I like: Dylan’s music was state-of-the-art electric rock, board are at once moving and impossibly Richard Harris. He did a couple records back in putting two things together that seem incon- sometimes steeped in folk’s plaintive assertive- awkward, and a pliant lyric like, “You warn the late 60s, early 70s, with this guy Jimmy gruous. So whether I’m dropping some name ness, often raging like the blues, but always the ladies not to be corrupted by their looks, but Webb, that were very dramatic and heavy on or some quote, it seems beside the point unless vital. His lyrics could afford to explode pop your voice comes out soft and slanted / and you’re the strings. And maybe certain 80s records, that it fits and works with what’s around it. It’s way songcraft because his strong melodies and living off what the government’s granted you / NF: Maybe peoples’ interest in you stems same time, I’m not interested in writing the I can’t remember, which I was listening to then. more instinctual and much less brainy than instrumental racket more than measured up to amnesty from the true thing” tumbles out from their interest in figuring out your music. perfect pop song, so there’s going to be a whole This Night was so rag-tag … in a good way, but people give me credit for. the old standard on their own. These were effortlessly and, more importantly, with very DB: I like to create intrigue and mystery sector of people who are just not going to be such a rag-tag affair that even back then I had NF: That makes your songwriting sound supra-pop songs, staying grounded while the little sense of its own obscurity—but unlike within music and within writing, even on just a down with it. But I think someone like Bob the feeling that the next record would be some- almost naïve. lyrics traced their own highbrow tangents. “Louie Louie,” you won’t get the full story rhetorical level. But people talk about lyrics Dylan once was pretty wordy, and he sold lots thing very constructed and precise. DB: Sure. It’s not like I sit down and come Vancouver indie rock savant Dan Bejar, until after the rush subsides, and you start being cryptic; I don’t really agree with that. It’s of albums. NF: It’s odd to hear you rattle off influ- up with a game plan. I just spill my guts like better known as the enigmatic Destroyer, is scratching your head. ] a style of writing that comes from a back- NF: You said in an interview a few years ences, since so much writing about Destroyer everyone else, but my guts just happen to look

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4/15- Philly Photo Night returns! Thursday, 7-9 p.m. 5/01- GAYETTE: comedy improv, $5 Saturday, 8-10 pm 5/13- Gay Coffee House, benefitting Wm. Way Comm. Center, Thursday 6-9 p.m 5/20- Philly Photo Night, Thursday7-9 p.m. SPRING 2004 THE PHILADELPHIA INDEPENDENT PAGE 15

ANOTHER NAME ON ANOTHER FLYER like this. DB: I thought Streethawk and This Night, from V.I.P. page 1 from internet message boards. Said influence, NF: In an email interview this past sum- actually, were quite different in those respects. happened!” however, took some time to set in. After quit- mer, you called each Destroyer song “a love- Though I think I’m the only one who thinks With independent rock up to its crotch in Coming Into Their Own ting phone sex, Jonny presented Cashman with hate relationship with its own medium.” That’s that. I thought in a lot of ways, those two 1980s glitz and hardcore rappers like Cam’ron ∂ a business proposal to become the firm’s exclu- not conceptual? records were way more personal. donning pink furs, it’s hard to believe it’s taken sive bicycle courier for a rate of five dollars a DB: Maybe I’m wrong, but I still feel that NF: I was going to say that. The depth of this long for the world’s first gay hardcore rap delivery. With her encouragement, he stopped I’m going about things all wrong, and that emotion is the same, but it seems much more group to emerge. Already, V.I.P.’s fan base is drinking and popping Xanax and started timeless music and timeless songs don’t operate genuine in some ways. fighting over who was there first, as if they had attending recovery support groups. She pur- like this, that this style of writing doesn’t belong DB: Yeah, I think there’s less artifice, in somehow purchased futures contracts on the chased him a cell phone on her family plan and in the medium that I happen to really dig some respects. I find that they’re more relaxed group’s musical careers. It was only seven allowed him to reimburse her for the bills. And doing, and in the end it will suffer for it. I guess records. So I would say that’s it’s in me. And I months ago, after all, that Bear quoted the in August, while biking along South Street, he when I wrote that, I was thinking that within think the one after this, I’d like to sit down and female novelty group FannyPack in his online came close to becoming a full-fledged the songs, there are moments where you can maybe not have a fist in the air and a soliloquy testimonial to Jonny—by February, the boys Cashman associate when the locally-produced maybe hear a voice trying to convince another going on all the time. were opening for FannyPack at the Trocadero. reality television show “Ambush Makeover” voice that it’s not the case, or that it is. And that NF: What about the artifice in your style? The following week, one Eric Weiss men- ambushed him. His makeover goal: to become in itself, to discuss that issue within a song DB: It’s there. I don’t really like that. I tioned that between shoots for heavy metal an “office person.” seems like a really secondary, or tertiary, theme. mean, I don’t really like music that is like that. band Clutch and celebrity skateboarder Bam “I got free clothes by Ben Shurrrman. They Songs should be about love, or death, not But at least for this last record, and sometimes Margera, he “might shoot a video for V.I.P.” were really nice,” remembers Jonny. whether they’re the correct vessel for experi- just in general, I can’t help but assume a voice The gay magazine Butt is planning a V.I.P. “When he presented me with his résumé,” mental writing, or some bullshit like that. that’s definitely not my own. It opens up fashion spread. remembers Cashman. “I cried.” NF: Do you do the same things with opportunities for writing that wouldn’t be there “Really? Eric Weiss wants to do a video for But by then Jonny, Bear and Peter were genre? You jump around quite a bit. otherwise. And I am a sucker for anthems, and us? I didn’t know that,” Jonny mused the fol- quickly making their way towards more fabu- DB: I’d actually like things to be a bit more really, really large gestures or brush strokes. But lowing day. Currently, V.I.P. is more concerned lous exploits. They had started, rather inno- cohesive. I always like albums that feel like a I think there’s a misconception that that’s all I with the release of their E.P., tentatively titled cently, “battling” one another at parties when definitive statement. Though maybe they’re really like, when in fact it’s something I dabble the Mad Coke E.P. and also tentatively titled Bear introduced the trio to Andrew Ryan, an boring to make. I think if I had a more specif- in and will occasionally want to try on. I have the Philly E.P., which is being handled by independent rock fixture and musical poly- ic, overarching musical vision, that would be a soft spot for it, though I often don’t like hav- South Street’s Space Foundation Records and math two years their senior. Taken with the different. But I don’t even have the chops to ing a soft spot for it. But I don’t really think it’s should be released by early May. For now, toothsome threesome, Ryan, whose band Illoin pull off one specific style. as present as some people think. V.I.P. is in something of celebrity limbo. Until and freelance web design jobs took up most of NF: Does that go back to issue of you pri- NF: I think people find your music very the E.P.is released, V.I.P.cannot tour, and until his time, agreed to become the group’s produc- marily being concerned with writing things? convincing, even if there is this element of arti- they tour, the group says they are disinclined to er under the name “Bruce.” Although he is DB: It sounds bad, but I don’t really care fice in it. You create very convincing persona. play many more Philadelphia shows. “We don’t straight, he agreed to dress up in sequined hot about music that much. Part of my whole thing DB: That’s something I definitely don’t want to become, like, the Philly party band pants and flesh-baring unitards “for the sake of is sometimes trying to get my voice to do have any interest in, creating personae. That’s because we already sort of are,” explains spectacle.” things which there’s just no way it can do, and partly why the Bowie thing is so unpleasant, Andrew “Bruce” Ryan, the group’s producer. “We’re trying to get Bruce to come over to it sounds bad when it does it. So in that sense, because the thing I can do without from the (Bruce adheres to the straight edge code of our side,” Jonny says, inviting a grimace from I’m kind of invested in music. glam era … is how front and present the arti- sobriety, and claims he is “asexual,” although Bruce. NF: I think you’re selling yourself a little fice and the dramatic personae were. area females say otherwise.) V.I.P.’s first show, an afterparty following a short. NF: Maybe it’s more a truly eccentric per- The fans are restless. There are reports of Le Tigre concert at the Trocadero, was a capac- DB: I mean, I can write a song. I don’t sonality than a persona. Jonny being mobbed for autographs while get- ity crowd success thanks largely to the self-pro- want to belittle myself too much, because I still DB: I have so little contact with what peo- ting his morning coffee at the Bean Café. In motional skills of Messrs. Smith and feel like the songs are way more musical than ple’s perception, I’m in most ways at a loss to 2005, we will look back on this these days as Szymanski. One of the attendees was John tons of the shit that’s out there. Maybe I’m really figure out how the music is received, the first picoseconds of the life of a new star. and try to kill him like Jasper, Texas. He was turizer’s publicist, Nicole Cashman, to com- Stanley, co-owner of Space Boy Records on comparing myself to people that just have a except for the last record, where I know a lot of And we will ask the same questions that the even voted prom king over some football play- plain. (When asked to identify the offending South Street and the owner of a fledgling wide breadth of what they can actually do on people didn’t like it. When you’re toying with astrophysicists ask: How did something so er who wound up at Stanford. My one buddy product, Jonny demurs: “It was an old client. I record label called Space Foundation Records. their instrument, which is definitely not me. creative voices and writing within them, it’s a small get so big so fast? is a football coach, and now he’s sayin’ ‘I told won’t reveal the name.”) “I heard they were a queer rap group, and NF: But all the stuff around what you’re fun mode of writing but it’s also a bit too close The answer begins in Mount Carmel, the you your kid’s gonna be famous.’ In school Jonny and Cashman became fast friends. just the thought of that made me think, ‘I’ve doing. Clearly that’s not just other people to packaging something. It’s like the concept heart of Pennsylvania’s coal country. plays he wasn’t exactly the lead but he was Cashman brought him as her date to a Moore got to see this,’” Stanley says. He met Jonny the browbeating you into letting them do things. comes first and not the writing itself. always the jelly on top of the peanut butter that College of Art reception for fashion designer way many local men have: “Because he wanted DB: No, I mean, I come up with some of NF: But the alternative is that people ’m like the group’s Beeyaawnce,” made the sandwich really come around, you Betsey Johnson, who signed Jonny’s Dolly to have relations with me,” he says, rolling his that stuff. But for instance, I can’t really hold believe that everything in it is personal and “I explains Jonny Szymanski in a nasal, know?” Parton tattoo. When Cashman discovered that eyes. “He’s a persistent little fucker.” my own in a rock jam, and that’s something real. singsong voice that calls to mind both Fran Not that high school was easy on Jonny. Jonny, who was uninsured, was hiding a pus- Stanley, who is gay but prefers “beefier” I’ve always wanted to be able to do and it was DB: That’s the bane of the songwriter’s Drescher and Smurfette. By age 12, the only He was diagnosed with attention deficit dis- laden eye infection behind his oversized sun- men, was not particularly attracted to the slen- kind of frustrating. Or on this record, I really existence—that umbrella of the singer-song- son of Hank and Deborah Szymanski of order and tried to kill himself several times. glasses, she arranged for him to get cortizone der, boyish Jonny. Nevertheless, the two thought that, given the means and the time, writer, stepping into the recording booth like Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania, had come out of The worst of it came junior year, when Jonny shots from one of the city’s best eye doctors. became friends. And Stanley became the sub- and could pull off some really over-the-top, it’s the confessional. You really have to be the closet. By age 13, he had smoked marijua- was sent to a rehabilitation facility in the It was around this time that first Jonny met ject of one of V.I.P.’s four debut songs, ornate, orchestrations. And I couldn’t really do touched with genius to pull that off, at least as na and consumed both whiskey and metham- Poconos after an overdose. (“I just said it was Peter Sehprish at the National A-1 “Chubby Chaser.” The hook, to the tune of the it [without producer Dave Carswell’s] help. I far as I’m concerned. It’s a style that sent me phetamines. And by his senior year of high suicide when I woke up out of the alcoholic Advertising phone sex call center on Seventh Ohio Players’ “Love Rollercoaster,” goes: couldn’t get my brain to think in those terms. running. school, he had already “Chubby chaser dick NF: How do you think people are going to NF: Why is that what people expect from been in and out of waster / the only meat I react to you using so many synths on the new music? With fiction, no one assumes that it’s rehab. “I was the wanna eat is what’s in record? first-person confessional. Drew Barrymore of between your legs,” and DB: Do they sound like synths? DB: Well, because you’ve got a voice, and central Pennsylvania,” the song mentions a NF: I mean … you’ve got a photo on the back of the record. Jonny says. suspicious night out at DB: Do they sound like strings or do they And when you’ve got someone on stage, with a “He was a pretty the Stephen Starr RULEY sound like synths? spotlight on him or her, it’s pretty unavoidable. cool kid considering B restaurant Angelina: NF: They sound like. . . And it’s by far the easiest thing to sell that he spent three quar- “Take me to Angelina /

DB: Do they sound like synth-strings? there is. ters of his life in a day BIGAIL fill me with polenta / A NF: I didn’t realize it right away. I think it NF: Do you ever resent that? care center. His cause you wanna get me had more to do with the nature of the record; I DB: If you can step away from the givens, mother was so over- fatter / instead I’m get- figured out that it was your synthesizer master- there’s tons of stuff you can do with it. I don’t protective. She didn’t ting leaner.” piece after a couple of songs. know if it’s going to be embraced, or if it’s want him outdoors, “I took Jonny to DB: I don’t have the budget to hire the going to sound awkward or weird—it probably ‘cause he might get Angelina to celebrate London Philharmonic. The MIDI Rhodes will. But I think if that’s where you’re playing durrrty,” Hank the three month seemed to be the best option, the only option. I around, in the words, then the music will suf- Szymanski remem- anniversary of his did want to get the least hokey sounds possibly, fer, and the music is what’s got to be there. bers, his voice drag- sobriety! The idea for the most part, knowing always that we’d Without that, you’re screwed. So it’s tough, ging effeminately like that I’d try to fatten probably fall short of something that sounded because that’s really at the end of the day what Jonny’s. Hank, an him up is—I mean, I real. I guess I thought that if the parts them- people are going to latch onto: the catchiness auto mechanic born don’t have the time to selves had enough integrity, it wouldn’t matter of your song, or hook, or bridge. On all lev- and raised in the small do that—it’s just if they sounded more like a synthesizer than els—I’m not just talking about radio. In fact, coal town, divorced Bear (left), Jonny & Peter (center) & Bruce (right) , work the runways at Village Thrift. hilarious,” says like 101 violins. And listening back to some of even more so in whatever the word that people Deborah when Jonny Stanley. Upon seeing the old records that inspired that approach are using today for underground music. Lyrics was 4 years old. After V.I.P. perform the …obviously the orchestra sounds great, but if seem important to me in country music, and in that, the son lived most- song, however, he was as you take your inspiration from what was getting hip-hop. But aside from that, I don’t really see ly with the mother, except, Hank says, “during coma, because it was easier,” Jonny says now.) Street. Sehprish, in those days, was one half of impressed as he was amused, and asked the played and not so much the overall sound of it, how they get you anywhere. In a lot of ways, emergencies like chicken pox.” But Hank, who In another episode, Jonny remembers, a the now-defunct Walkie-Talkies. Both were 20 four men if he could put out their first E.P. on you could walk out with something decent. I I’m in agreement. If I can’t remember the sings and plays covers in Mount Carmel pubs friend of his on the football team with whom years old and gay; both thought they could rap. his imprint. don’t know—it’s not something I’m going to do melody of a song after the first couple listens, and boasts a record collection that’ll “knock he was “fooling around” at a party accused They would take their thirty-minute breaks Another person who attended the show again, probably ever. it’s a bad song. your socks off,” still managed to be a big influ- him of date rape. (“I couldn’t rape a dough- together and write lyrics in the back room. was Cashman, of course, who continues to NF: But this isn’t a self-consciously elec- NF: Is that why there’s no way you’d ever ence on his son. Just last month, in fact, Hank nut,” he chuckles.) Sometimes callers would even ask them to per- employ Jonny in various capacities. Impressed, tronic record. stop being a rock songwriter? and five friends played an acoustic set for a At 17, during that frightful junior year, form. she promised herself that the next time V.I.P. DB: Oh no, god no. I didn’t want to make DB: I really like rock music. And I like bingo fundraiser. Hank sang “Layla” and Jonny’s mother packed his belongings into But with Peter consumed with his band, played at the Trocadero, she would alert the an electronic pop record, if that’s what you these problems; they give me something to “Margaritaville.” Last year, he even penned an garbage bags and told Hank to figure out what Jonny consumed with his lifestyle, and both media. mean; had I wanted to do that, I would have think about, even if they’re not themes that update to Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the to do with their son. Hank then transferred men eager to move on from the phone sex And so it was that some half dozen of gone about it way different. should really move a listener, like I’ve occasion- Fire.” Jonny to his Irish Catholic grandmother’s industry, their rap collaborations languished Cashman’s associates and about a dozen media NF: You’ve spent a lot of this interview ally tried to do. It’s not really something that “It goes from ‘89 and Bush the first to Bush house. “Junior year I was about to throw him until Cashman introduced Jonny to V.I.P.’s figures huddled around a Betsey Johnson- wondering if you’re doing things right. I’m wringing my hands over a daily basis; it’s the second. Nine-eleven, Iraq and out the attic window,” Hank remembers. “But third member, Bear Smith, a wispy, tow-head- bedecked Cashman in the V.I.P. corner of the DB: I feel pretty good about what it is that just the nature of it. Also, the idea of writing Afghanistan, I’ve-got-all-that-I-can-stand,” senior year he came around.” Within a month ed Philadelphia College of Textiles student V.I.P. show with FannyPack in February. After I’ve done so far. That would be bad if I came for a blank page, that scares the shit out of me. he chants. “Now, it wasn’t white rapping about of graduating high school in June 2000, Jonny originally from Nashville, Tennessee. Like the show, Cashman walked up to Stanley. off as doubting my every move, because that’s NF: So singing is the best way to get your gay Viagra and wine. Have you heard his moved to Philadelphia, hoping to study fashion Jonny, Bear was young, gay, and glamorous, and “She said, listen, if there’s anything you not what I do at all. I think in a lot of ways, I’m words across? songs? “Chubby Chaser?”—I guess that’s about design. “He hasn’t come back since,” he says. like Jonny, Cashman would often hire Bear to need, money, contacts, help, money, anything— pretty fearless, but I’m just not sure if that DB: There’s some sort of emotional thrust me because his mother ain’t exactly svelte. It didn’t take long for the fashion design work at events held by her public relations firm. I’ll get it done,” remembers Stanely. “For Jonny comes from ignorance or what. I just write in a that comes across in one direction or another ‘Sucking dicks for drugs’? I shudder to think of plan to wither into phone sex fodder. A friend They met at the opening of the Diesel Store on to have someone who cares about him making very natural way, and it’s only in the actual when you sing a line. There’s also stuff that can what my poor Irish Catholic mother would from Mount Carmel visited Jonny’s apartment Walnut Street, working the door for Cashman. this happen is pretty amazing. They’re almost recording process that maybe I start to have my appear completely banal, that when you phrase it think if she heard those lyrics.” in Philadelphia bearing ketamine, and though Immediately, they despised one another. unstoppable.” doubts, but in the end, I think I have a pretty a certain way can come off as more than that. It was always clear that Jonny was differ- he was fresh out of rehab, Jonny was helpless, “We were the only pretty gay boys in the Hank Szymanski retains his skepticism good reign on it. And then live, that’s a whole That’s the recipe to the classic song. And then ent. “I always had a slight indication that he he says, to say no. Xanax and heroin, too, indie rock scene,” Bear explains. “We were about his son’s chances at celebrity. “If this other can of worms. That’s something I’m still there are things that sound really strange, and you was a little on the sissified side. Though being became vices. “I was a garbage head,” he admits. really jealous of one another.” V.I.P. stuff means less calls for me to send coming to grips with. can sing them in a certain way so that they have sissified and blowing somebody, that’s a big Still, Jonny was a winsome garbage head. Jonny cuts in: “But then we had a menage money orders to his bank account, I’ll be hap- NF: You’ve said that you were self-con- incredible emotional resonance. Ideally, when you leap. He’s still exploring his sexuality, I suppose He won himself a part-time job at Scarlett, the a trois with my boyfriend, and we became best pier than a pig in shit,” he says. sciously dramatic on Thief, and then for this sing something, people understand. ] … ” Hank Szymanski trails off. “He wasn’t cosmetics boutique on 13th Street, drawing friends.” “He’s precocious, but he’s not supercal- new one you’ve said you wanted to go for Nathaniel Friedman lives in Philadelphia. He nerdy by no stretch of the imagination, though. most of his pay in the form of make-up. It was “He has been a good influence on Jonny,” ifragilisticexpialidocious yet,” he says, “But he’s something very dramatic and orchestral, but is can be reached via email at nfriedmatelp@hot- The big strong jock guys didn’t pick on him, a fateful position. After a new moisturizer at Cashman says of Bear, who has spent many on his way to being that.” ] your music ever that understated? mail.com. didn’t drag him on the back of a pickup truck the store gave him a rash, he called the mois- hours diligently culling V.I.P. listener feedback Abigail Bruley contributed to this report. PAGE 16 THE PHILADELPHIA INDEPENDENT SPRING 2004 SPRING 2004 THE PHILADELPHIA INDEPENDENT PAGE 17

ALL IT NEEDS NOW IS A TITLE AND A PRICE

[ profile ]

Zoe Strauss,∂ Photographer FOUR YEARS INTO HER DECADE-LONG SEARCH FOR THE PERFECT CITY SNAPSHOT

[ BY C HRISTINE S MALLWOOD ] Listening to her speak, you might think of Strauss’ work as something that happens to her en minutes after Zoe Strauss and her as she wanders through the city, collaborating six bags, cup of coffee, and slice of with those she encounters—her subjects grant Tpound cake sit down at my table, she or deny permission to be photographed, and gets a nosebleed. “All day has been like this,” always pose themselves. But her ability to dis- she explains as she plugs her nostrils with till the hundreds of bodies and signs roaming Kleenex. “It’s just ridiculous.” around the city into a small number of perfect, Zoe Strauss is a photographer, native of frozen moments, betrays her talent. She’s smart Mayfair, Pa., South Philadelphia resident, pro- enough to make good choices. She doesn’t fessional babysitter, Leeway grant recipient photograph every overflowing trashcan just (2002), and head of the Philadelphia Public because it’s there. Art Project (PAP), which is actually nothing: a She’s also a tough critic of her own work: of name for an organization that does not exist, the three hundred photos she takes a year, she Meteor Shower, 2002 but if it did, would promote and disseminate calls thirty “good” and five “great.” As we’re her art, which she already does. For someone talking, she whips out some shots of a woman whose formal art training is limited to two with lupus smoking crack. Strauss complains photography courses from her high school that the pictures aren’t strong enough, that they Sarah McEneaney days, with little interest in gallery shows, some- don’t make that compositional impact that she ∂ one who sells color copies of her prints for five can identify but not explain. The next day, she dollars each and routinely puts up work on emails me to say she’s changed her mind. telephone poles where it can be lifted for free, They’re great after all. Flipping Kid Paints It as She Sees It PAP makes sense. What makes slightly less Her equipment is basic: a digital camera sense is her intern, Manny Dominguez, “the ten-year project of street photography is cur- have a quality she likes to call “solid.” She talks and a 35 mm Canon. She sends her film out to number one intern of all time,” an “excellent rently in its third year. Beginning in 2000, about “the Big One,” that indefinite, intangi- be developed, and she prefers the 35 mm pho- [ BY LAURA COXSON ] photographer” who majors in the subject at the Strauss has held yearly exhibitions underneath ble, but very present, gut-based capture of the tos to be unmanipulated, made with “no skill.” University of the Arts. His responsibilities Interstate 95 at Front and Mifflin streets. This city that exists both on its own and in the con- Coming from a woman who once created a arah McEneaney paints the world as she and more importantly, honest. mainly involve spending a few hours a week year’s show of one hundred and fifty works will text of her I-95 shows. Her subjects break fake medical company in order to obtain ani- knows it. She paints herself in her studio She rejects the label ‘naive,’ because she helping her organize her prints, files, and living take place on May 1 between 1 and 3 p.m. broadly into portraits, architectural details, and mal organs for an installation in her home, this S painting. She paints herself standing in sees that as meaning ‘dishonest.’ When a critic room. He is unpaid, but “sometimes he gets a Already, she says, the evolving history of the text; three elements that, when juxtaposed desire for immediacy comes across as a mix of her kitchen reading a letter. She paints herself once described her work as naive, she respond- big tip.” As Strauss put it, “when you have a streets, people, architecture, and signs of across pieces, work best when creating a narra- aesthetic philosophy, a politics of access, and holding a petition to ed by painting an whole fake organization, you can have a real Philadelphia is emerging. She mentions Ridge tive. In her yearly outdoor exhibition, she pres- the pragmatism of, as she puts it, “getting it save her neighborhood emotional likeness of intern even if you yourself are completely Avenue, one of her favorite places to shoot, ents viewers with images of public space while done.” “Bring it on,” she frequently challenges from being demol- him. No Title, 1991 is fraudulent.” where the storefronts have changed dramati- they themselves are in public space: a sort of me, or maybe she is speaking to an imaginary ished by a sports stadi- a collection of the “Fraudulent” is only half the story of some- cally even since 2000. By 2010, she has some- experiential funhouse where the images reflect interlocutor. Judging from her photos, it’s clear um. She even gives symbols he embodied one whose work has been acquired by the what arbitrarily decided, the project will be fin- and are reflected by the architecture of the that she herself brings it, every time. ] viewers access to her for her (glasses, Philadelphia Museum of Art ($200 for a col- ished, and she will move on to something new. highway—a source of inspiration to her, but Zoe Strauss will be exhibiting and selling her body in the bathtub, notepad in hand, stern lection of eight prints), but whose “years of Strauss’ photographs chase a mood that she not a subject of her work. Photos of I-95, we photographs at Front and Mifflin streets under and right after a sur- expression, a tie with lying” have made it easy to wrangle her way describes as being intuitive, yet deeply rooted agree, can’t come close to the feeling you get Interstate 95 on May 1 from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. For gery. These intimate the words ‘keep it for- into free museum admission. Her ambitious in the architectures of place. The best ones being there. more information, visit www.zoestrauss.com. moments from her mal no personal everyday life give her issues’), but more work the feeling of a importantly, it is a Details from Under I-95, 2000–2004 visual journal, and her visual catharsis. In it, ∂ viewers the privilege of McEneaney lets her accessing not only heart, or hurt emo- McEneaney’s life, but tions, paint first, and a reservoir of shared her eye judge second. human experience. The painting that The last sixteen most diverges from her years of McEneaney’s cheery studio studies life could be seen at a SPV, 2002 and urban landscapes is recent show at the June 15, 1998, which Institute for Contemporary Art. Unlike references the day McEneaney was raped by a Dorian Gray, the painted McEneaney ages stranger in her home. A ghostly gray female nude alongside the real one. Moving from canvas to clutches her arms to her chest, floating behind a canvas, we watch as she slowly settles into her translucent and shadowy male figure whose fist is house and watches her puppies grow into raised in violence. In the gallery, this painting was healthy dogs. Her collection of pets prance jarring. While the rest of the pieces at the ICA through the gallery itself as well, frozen into portrayed domestic life or views from a window, sculptural likenesses. McEneaney recreates the here McEneaney is confronted by another experience of her own everyday life by focusing human being and the color is washed away. on the minutiae, from a note on the desk to the McEneaney says she mixed the paint for the pine tree outside the rapist’s figure with the window, the things fingerprinting dust the you notice when you police left behind, not walk into a stranger’s wanting to waste “pre- room for the very first cious pigment to repre- time. She is a student sent this monster.” The of the ways in which a follow-up piece, few well-chosen and Revenge Fantasy, 1999, Strawberry Mansion subtly amplified shows Sarah gasping, details can converse pushing out of a swim- with one another, and ming pool. At the bot- quietly form a scene. tom lies a dead man. Born in Munich, She says she was swim- McEneaney attended ming a lot at the time of both the Philadelphia the painting, but could College of Art (now not quite shake the feel- University of the Arts) ing of fear, the sense and the Pennsylvania that the rapist, that her Academy of Fine Arts. past, was everywhere. Under the El Sign at the Filling Station Walking the Dog She managed to grad- Sarah McEneaney uate from PAFA, a Bozeman Hot Springs, 2002 is committed to being school recognized for engaged with both its classical training, emerging and estab- with her own idiosyncratic style that seems to lished artists and galleries. Her works are at deliberately flaunt any academic sanction. the Philadelphia Museum of Art and she is Because she employs the skewed perspectives on the board of Vox Populi. She has created a and bold colors common to folk art, her work living space just north of Chinatown, amid has been sometimes labeled ‘faux-naïve.’ fortune cookie factories and burgeoning loft McEneaney denies she is pretending to be apartments. She painted the mural at 12th anything. “This just happens to be the way I and Hamilton, and her piece, No Stadium, draw,” Sarah says. “I never trained myself to deals with the issues of local development. draw academically.” Also like folk art, Currently she works with the Reading McEneaney is painting the narrative of her Viaduct Project, an organization that hopes life. An artist schooled in tradition, she is com- to create park space in what once was the fortable speaking in her own voice. Like the rusty train trestle that slices through the area Rolling Stones posturing behind the jukebox north of Chinatown. But regardless of her anthem “Honkey-Tonk Woman,” it seems she label—naive, folk artist, outsider, has taken on another voice to authenticate her Philadelphian, autobiographer—it is clear subject matter. McEneaney strives to be under- her life and work belong to this city. She is stood by her viewers, hoping that the works are building a community out of her work and personal enough to be recognized as serious, her neighborhood. ] Girard Avenue Man Coal Couple PAGE 18 THE PHILADELPHIA INDEPENDENT SPRING 2004

IF YOU CAN’T MAKE IT GOOD, MAKE IT BIG

[ essay ] depth. The problem with Katz is that he paint- if you wanted to make art about the investiga- timing for these experiments stunk, because PaceWildenstein, a survey of small paintings ed a “lifestyle,” and it tarnished his art in the tion of form or human psychology (which Katz New York boors like Julian Schnabel were split between the Whitney Museum (and the eyes of critics. ‘Hipster’ was a common critical did), you did so with bricks or aluminum or, I making new paintings with miles more osten- Whitney’s bizarro ashtrays-in-the-elevators THE FATES OF FASHION term used in newspapers and journals of the dunno, dancing about and shouting. tatious gimmicks on an even louder, larger offshoot in Phillip Morris’ Grand Central ∂ early 1960s to describe artists who humorous- Unfortunately, Katz’s painted pastorals of his scale. Having long suffered for seeming too Terminal H.Q.), and a retrospective of block ly and proudly worked with their new, alterna- friends did not speak the current language, and commercial, now Katz was not nearly commer- prints at Peter Blum Gallery. Kids in art On Kate Moss, Alex Katz & the Hard Work of Stardom tive lifestyle. As early as 1965 however, it so he was left out of the dialogue with scant cial enough to be heard over all the racket. schools are looking at Alex Katz books when began to sound like a slur on Katz, mocking his allies and, as a result, scant credibility. He con- What, with Basquiat’s obnoxiously pitch-per- his name wouldn’t even have registered fifteen lifestyle while serving as praise for Larry fect doped graffiti, horny years ago. He had to wait until his late 70s to Rivers’ proud juvenilia, Jasper Johns’ nerdy pop Keith Haring, the pulse see it happen, but everything has finally come [ BY WILLIAM PYM ] riddles, and the wild kitchen-sink sausage links of early House at the around for Alex Katz. itting in the tub last Tuesday with rather maligned American painter. of Robert Rauschenberg. Katz’s reflections on Paradise Garage, and Jeff Kate Moss has been keeping herself awfully newsprint wilting in my hands, I came Katz’s early paintings were explosive. They parties in gardens and lofts and beautiful peo- Koons sucking off histo- busy these past twelve months. She got pregnant Sacross an article about Zac Posen, a neatly straddled the emerging pop and waning ple in beautiful clothes felt like a terrific sum- ry with his roaring vacu- by the rather unsatisfactory and aptly-named pushy and unavoidable 23 year-old fashion expressionist movements with a style that was mer-long party, and this civilized hedonism um cleaner, the 1980s publisher of Dazed and Confused, one Jefferson designer. Posen went to St. Ann’s, a chic and ultrachic and modish but built to last, and it somehow polarized those who R.S.V.P.ed from were noisy times. In the Hack. She writhed on a pole in a clip for a permissive private school in Brooklyn, and delivered something for everybody. Katz’s wife those who pooh-poohed. background droned the Detroit rock band known as the White Stripes. then on to Parsons for fashion, with intern- and lifelong subject, Ada, wore a lot of red lip- In Newsweek, Jack Kroll rhapsodized loudest din of all: cash She recorded a version of the duet “Some Velvet ships and eventually assistantships along the stick and had a gaggle of sizzling friends who breathily on the “epic decorum, the oddly fas- tills ringing up sales all Morning” with Bobby Gillespie crooning as the way. He has been unstoppable since his first appeared to buy tunics and eyeshadow from tidious heralds of the chivalric bourgeoisie that day long on 57th Street. Lee Hazelwood to her Nancy Sinatra. The gen- collection two years ago, when his classy but Mary Quant in mass quantities. Yet Katz’s make up the painted universe of Alex Katz,” The 1990s brought a eral consensus is that she was excellent and sexy exaggerated take on old wispy Hollywood paintings of Ada and her set spoke truthfully while new bug Hilton Kramer asserted in The new generation of artists in all three of her new roles. About a month ago glamor made him darling to new Hollywood and compellingly of the artist’s struggles with New York Times that it was “gossip,” unfit for who simply wanted to she turned 30 and had a party to end all parties starlets and fashion pundits alike. Are his form, composition, color and light, bestowing him to promote. So while Rivers, Johns and paint, without all the in London, which ended near daybreak with a clothes wonderful? Who knows. I’ve only seen ancient qualities upon these women of the Rauschenberg were given free reign to play out reactionary paranoia or pissed Sadie Frost tumbling out of her dress to them up close on girls who aren’t yet comfort- moment. Katz kept conscious company with their peccadilloes on canvas, Katz was chas- tricks that had plagued the delight of the paparazzi. She’s taking private able in high fashion, which in turn makes me an elite set of successful artists and writers and tised for painting and consorting with a partic- their colleagues since acting lessons from Gwyneth Paltrow. She hasn’t uncomfortable. I often hear this chap’s name collectors, intellectual faces who fed his imag- ular kind of person. If you didn’t like them, you Abstract Expressionism. been working much. Indeed the most recogniz- fluttering in the air at glitzy downtown gather- ination and posed for portraits. By reputation didn’t like him. Through reductive criticism— And Katz, quietly, came able model of the last ten years will not be mod- ings, where sometimes he is ‘Posing’ and some- and in the paintings themselves, Katz’s clique a popularity contest couched in reverse class back. Since painting had eling for much longer before she yields the run- times, mystically, he’s ‘Po-Zen’. Both versions appeared to live glamorous and polished, prob- snobbery—the intellectual painter was dwarfed again been reborn, he ways to bionic Brazilian mega-models who are sound goofy to me, especially when dropped by lem-free lives of smiling comfort: garden par- by the social cocktail party man, and his endur- was stripped of the stig- half her age. pretty girls in ruched frocks, but I’m learning ties and seaside breaks and apartments with ing gifts were left unappreciated or forgotten ma he had been accumu- That said, the only ad campaign of the sea- from experiences like these that his stock on big windows; always bright, always flooded by the next generation. Resentment, born of lating since the early son that has really spoken to me features her the New York Hip Exchange is soaring. We with light. They were glamorous and comfort- basic envy, perhaps, fueled scorn for Katz by years of his career. All at and her alone: Kate Moss is hawking Chanel shall decide what to call him later. able people, undoubtedly. critics who held to the myth of a purely demo- once he returned to now, and it is one for the scrapbook, absolute- I’d rather we turn our thoughts to Alex Katz embraced the privileged intellectual cratic art world. Unfortunately, piety has a being a working painter, ly brilliant. Kate models classic pieces on a Katz’s oil painting of the lush-lipped wonder and social standing acquired through his dou- knack for gathering momentum. and his sincerity about blank white background. She wears a mini- that was reproduced in the article and stirred ble blue-chip education at New York’s presti- In the 1970s, his paintings were insulting- Kate Moss, 2003 people and paint was all mum of natural-hued makeup, a world away the water in my brain and bath. Alex Katz is gious Cooper Union and the even more presti- ly thought of as commercial and easy, even at a that mattered. It was a from the pixie-cropped panda she channeled more than three times Zac Posen’s age and has gious sleepaway Skowhegan School of time when Andy Warhol’s bread and butter tinued to work and show every year, notably a time, at last, to enjoy his paintings, and for him for her last Chanel work, the Coco been a studious, successful painter for the last Painting and Sculpture in Maine. He never was often-hacky commissioned portraits of the marvelous set of large paintings at to be a star again. Look for his influence as you Mademoiselle perfume launch of 2001. Her fifty years. His is a sexy palette of limitlessly considered that his equally sincere social and wealthy elite. Warhol was an adorably Marlborough Gallery in 1982, but the 1980s re-evaluate the work of Gary Hume or hair looks untouched, not even trimmed, and it perfect brights and cools. His are portraits of intellectual interests might cancel one another starstruck dead-earnest enthusiast while Katz were leaner years yet. Contemporary art was Elizabeth Peyton, two vastly different artists hangs over her shoulders as if that’s how it men and women that are loving and essential. out. He was an honest product of his time and was handsome and urbane and summered in again fun and brassy after the coldness of the whom Katz had bested (in technique and con- actually fell. She looks, and this is a description They are summations of complete human his environment, taking what he had been Maine, so picking one avatar over the other last decade, but the spotlight passed over our tent, respectively) thirty years earlier. In 1997 rather than an accusation, incredibly stoned, beings that emanate warmth, personality and given, enjoying it and making a concerted, was a no-brainer. With his opulent life, Katz hero once more. He made some uncharacteris- there were two L.A. galleries fighting for brag- even more otherworldly than expected. A few respect. I’m worried you’ll tire of my monthly grateful, academic contribution. Like a swim- didn’t need encouragement, so few gave it to tically duff and misguided paintings on alu- ging rights over who showed Katz first; by of the pounds are left from her pregnancy, and catechisms should I tell you, as I’m tempted, ming pool, every painting had a shallow end him. In the 1970s, intellectual painting like minum cutouts that didn’t make much sense Christmas 2001 there were a mind-boggling in one shot they say hello between the waist of that he is an overlooked American master, so and a deep end, so viewers could paddle Katz’s was in low demand for more reasonable other than being legitimate yelps for attention four substantial Katz shows on the go at once the cigarette pants and the fringe of the bejew- I’ll say only this: He is a relevant, peerless, and around and enjoy themselves at a comfortable reasons. Stark conceptualism ruled the roost, so and half-attempts at getting au courant. His in New York: big new paintings at eled blazer. She has never looked more

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Thursday April 15, 7 P.M.—Poetry Sunday May 2, 2 P.M.—Discussion Poets for Choice Night Philadelphia Social Forum presents a discussion on the Prison Come hear readings by featured poets and share your own System in the United States with a panel including Judith work at the open reading to follow. Sponsored by Temple Trustone author of Celling America’s Soul ($19.95 Infinity) Alliance for Reproductive Rights and Action All donations to subsidize transportation for the April 25 March for Tuesday May 4, 7 P.M.—Non-Fiction Women’s Lives in Washington. Marita Golden author of Don’t Play in the Sun: One Woman’s Journey Through the Color ($23.95 Random House) Sunday April 18, 2 P.M.—Poetry Poetry Ink: 100 Poets Read at Robin’s spotlights poets, pub- Sunday May 9, 2 P.M.—Readings and Discussion lished and not published. We want you all, academic poets, Red Ink: Celebrating Writing of Resistance and Revolution famous poets, free form poets, street poets, unknown poets, word poets you each get 3 minutes, that’s 5 hours of poetry Sunday May 16, 2 P.M.—Readings and Discussion we supply the coffee, you bring the desserts, Book Fair. Celebrating the 200 Anniversary of the Revolt in Haiti SPRING 2004 THE PHILADELPHIA INDEPENDENT PAGE 19

IF YOU CAN’T MAKE IT BIG, PAINT IT RED approachable, and never given away quite so have been erased. Moss, the ubiquitous subject, looking out, enjoying it. When he painted much information about herself. is rendered as shockingly unrecognizable. In Kate Moss, Katz sat with her, enjoyed her THE LENGTH OF Ariella Cohen: Let me start with an obvious destruction. I ask myself, what am I doing to I’ll remind you as I always do, that high her is a blankness, no hint that she’s paid mil- achievement (that she is an ordinary girl with question: Inbetween. How did you come to this improve the situation … but then I feel that my fashion is prohibitively expensive, and also why lions of dollars for the way she looks––but for the world at her fingertips), and turned it into THE GREEN LINE title? role is to be myself, and dream within this crazy bother, when dressing up can be so much more this, there’s a reason. art. It does not look like her at all, yet she was ∂ Manar Zuabi: I chose it so it could be reality. My art is connected to the reality of a exciting than this? Chanel is pretty interesting, In one of the definitive texts on Katz, Ann the subject, ultimately responsible for the An Interview with Manar Zuabi, internationally understood. In one sense, person who lives here, the one who experiences though. Wearing it is a significant rite of pas- Beattie’s Katz by Beattie (1983), the author beauty of the painting. Just as Hiroshi took Inbetween is about the green line, the seam line. politics. sage for a woman, proof of arrival in the top describes the artist’s compositions as the final, Katz up to his office and showed him the view, Palestinian Installation Artist But in another sense I am speaking on some- AC: Let’s go back to the pantyhose. In the stratum of glamour and sophistication. An rather than the first, frame in a film, a fait when you have found something beautiful, or thing very personal. Inbetween is about how I catalog, the curator Danielle Talmour draws aspiring girl should exercise caution, for accompli, the done deal. The portraits’ subjects made something beautiful, whatever it is you experience my life … this work is very much attention to their “conspicuous crotches.” She Chanel will look like mother’s dress-up clothes have already done something and are now pre- do, it is a testament to your own greatness, [ BY A RIELLA COHEN ] connected to that sense of being between so writes “[Zuabi] asks about the herself as a until she has the presence of mind and respon- senting themselves, finished. The artists Joel your own beauty. HAIFA, Israel—In the empty corridor that many choices. woman living in a society sibility to wear it properly. Chanel, the mythol- Shapiro and Ellen Phelan own a Katz painting Now, admittedly, I’ve dramatized Katz’s leads to the cafeteria at the Haifa Museum of Art, AC: Choices? divided between the con- ogy goes, you must earn. Well there’s struggles in the art world. He has never the jagged precision of Manar Zuabi’s Inbetween MZ: The choice to straints of tradition and Kate, with nothing to hide and a six- once been destitute, or short on friends, calls to mind the words of German postminimalist marry.The choice to bring progress, about the posi- teen-year career behind her, looking like or even entirely ignored. I did it, and I Eva Hesse: “I literally translated the line.” a child into this world. tion of women in Arab a normal grown-up person. A person stand by it, to highlight the fact that he Black wool, masking tape and images of Israel’s Then, there are all the society and in modern with bizarrely shaped features, certainly, was consistently accused of having com- expanded post-1967 borders map a temporary ter- things I did not choose. I society…” Were you but a normal person, and she has cer- mercial and social concerns, of being a ritory, describing four graphite routes that reorgan- am a Palestinian, but also thinking about these ques- tainly earned it. Do the math if you shallow society painter. This is an infuri- ize liminal spaces with threads of wool and stock- an Israeli. Inbetween is not tions when you chose to like—I calculate that Kate Moss has had ating fallacy because it has never once ing canopies. A stringy awning of stockings, wool about confusion, but use pantyhose? her photograph taken a million times. been true. Katz’s entire body of work is thread, and silver-headed nails hangs in the rather the paradox of MZ: Stockings are As a human, she’s arrived, and she has based on the fact that everyone is ordi- entrance to the gallery. The floor is bisected by a being both. It is about the something I feel a proximal nothing to prove to herself or anybody nary, and if they so choose they can do single line, drawn in black marker. way that I experience life attachment to; they are a else. She is at peace and the pictures extraordinary things. Katz promotes fab- In Arabesques, the first Hebrew novel written by in these choices, in tem- part of me. I like to feel speak it. ulousness not because it creates an elite, a Palestinian, Anton Shammas writes of bab es sir, porary instances. their material on my skin. “She’s completely ordinary. That’s but because fabulousness makes every- the name of the low-silled windows at the back of AC: Your materials The curator paraphrased what makes her so extraordinary.” So thing in the world, especially you, more Arab homes that function as emergency exits. Bab es transmit that sense of the my words. I don’t think said Alex Katz of Kate Moss upon the comfortable. sir literally translates as “the door to the secret.” By temporary, as well as the Inbetween, 2003 that description is a very release of W Magazine’s 500-page You needn’t be rich and you needn’t recontextualizing movement, Manar Zuabi’s work question of borders and good summation of my September 2003 issue. The mag contains be good-looking. I saw Katz’s portrait of creates such doors to a secret: low windows of wool how people fall between them. How did you work, or what I said about it. Did you notice that Hiroshi, 1981 an epic portfolio titled “The Triumphant Zac Posen at the Armory Show in New thread, apertures that lead to sudden halts and then end up working with pantyhose and wool I am the only Arab whose work is displayed inside Return of a Superstar” that includes portraits that I would like to inherit, 1981’s Hiroshi, and York a few weeks ago, and though it’s far from reroute into alternate passageways. thread? the museum? The other Arab artists have their of Kate by Lucian Freud, Tom Sachs, Lisa it is the done deal at its most literal. It is a por- a Katz classic in the flesh, it pleases me to Born in 1964, Zuabi grew up in Nazareth, a MZ: At the beginning of the project I work in the courtyard, outside. After the curator Yuskavage of Philadelphia, Takashi Murakami, trait of a Japanese businessman in business know that the artist is giving a young man like sprawling city in northern Israel. The year after her looked for materials that would characterize me. invited me to participate in the show, she said to Chuck Close (his gynecological daguerreo- dress with a pomaded helmet of black hair. Posen a chance. The kid may be precocious, birth, Israel rezoned the countryside outside of When we were young, my mother would knit my me “I only have these places for you: the entry types have to be seen to be believed), Richard Through the huge windows behind him but he is trying to take himself to the end of his Nazareth as “agricultural,” outlawing all permanent sister and me sweaters with this wool thread. As passage outside the gallery rooms or the hallway Prince, and assorted luminaries of the fashion there’s a patterned dance of off-white grids, of personality, to escape the trauma of being dwellings on the land. Villages of displaced we got older, she tried to teach us to knit. But I leading to the café.” It was a very difficult decision photography world. So it’s a heavy-hitting squares and rectangles and other odd quadri- young and complete his fantasy world, and that Palestinians moved to Nazareth. By the time Zuabi didn’t want to knit. I always just sat playing, to even participate in this show. But in the end, lineup, then, and Katz holds his own. In his laterals shining from the offices still awake is good enough for me—for now. Being a star graduated high school, the city was Israel’s largest rolling and unrolling the yarn. Now the material the space they gave me fit my situation. I was portrait; her flat skin and golden turpentiney across the street. And it is a beautiful sight, takes work, but look at a Katz composition, see Arab center. feels very close to me. Also, yarn is a material that placed in the corridor, in the passage area. At first transparent swaths of hair are undercut by a what with people working so hard so late, and how complete you soon may be, and get to She studied physical education and painting evokes both construction and destruction. I I debated running the threads across the passage, frame of Prussian blue. She is twisted around it makes for terrific abstract play against the work. Maybe he’ll paint you or me next year. before deciding, at the age of 30, to pursue an wanted a material that was temporary. like a separation wall, like an occupation prevent- and her neck stretches its muscles, and her hair pitch of the night. You will only be lucky Do please continue to write me your let- advanced degree in installation art at Haifa AC: You live as an Israeli-Palestinian citizen ing movement. Then I decided I would choose a creates a deep shadow of blue on her right. The enough to experience a similar view if you are ters—I live at 1221 N. Franklin Street, University. With Inbetween, Zuabi won a place in in Nazareth, the largest Arab city inside Israel, more gentle way, something more beautiful. I eyes are dead-on, and the lips too. Squint your or you know someone who’s worked his way Apartment 3R, Philadelphia, PA 19122. ] Haifa’s 2004 International Triennial Exhibition. during a period of civil war. Where do you see decided to use the ceiling. It is more comfortable eyes or take off your spectacles and you’ll see a up to the top floor of a skyscraper. Hiroshi has William Pym is a painter and curator living in She also has installations up at Haifa’s Beit the role of the artist in this political reality? for low people. It is uncomfortable for tall people. wonderful, complex, abstract composition of made it for himself, and Katz’s portrait cele- North Philadelphia. He has a short and sentimen- HaGeffen Gallery and Tel Aviv’s TmuNa. We MZ: That question touches a very sensitive Everyone must crane their necks to look up. ] only three colors: yellow hair, peach skin, and brates both the singular beauty of the lights tal article about the 1997 album Illumination by decided to meet at the alternative grade-school run place. A normal person aspires to a normal life. Ariella Cohen is a regular contributor to THE the olive background. It is a minimal, pointed- and the beauty of Hiroshi’s hard work. That is The Pastels appearing in the latest issue of Front by her husband and attended by her 11 year-old When I watch the television, I see blood. I see INDEPENDENT. ly reductive portrait—even the famous freckles the fait accompli, making it to the top floor and Row Center, a Providence-based fanzine. son, where she teaches physical education.

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THE KIDS ARE HAVING KIDS

[ society ] bartenders who I recognized from television: sner. After a couple of cocktails, the mayor’s Alycia Lane, Cecily Tynan, and Toni Yates. security detail showed us the door. As we left, Let us hope that he proves as stalwart defend- I noticed big shot lawyer David L. Cohen ing quarterback Donovan McNabb next season (now Comcast Executive Vice President) THE NEW SOCIETY Political heavyweights Senator Arlen emerging from the suite across the hall. ∂ Specter and Governor Ed Rendell attended Having never met him, I shook his hand and the tenth annual Human Rights Campaign’s said hello, as if I were a partner in his law firm. I Go Out So You Don’t Have To Philadelphia Region Equality Dinner on The guard watching this simply opened the ∂ February 28 at the Loews Hotel. The 250 door as Deputy Custer and I confidently attendees were made up by and large of the strode into the suite he had just left. Turns out [ BY BRIAN ROCHFORD ] region’s gay community. If anyone noticed a it was Eagles’ owner Jeffrey Lurie’s suite, and dearth of good looking, well-dressed men he was elsewhere at the time. The irony of get- ike a March hare or a minor league Marnie’s), but I do know white from red. around town that Saturday, I can report they ting kicked out of the mayor’s box and landing shortstop, the New Society is picking Civilized niceties like wine and flowers were at the Loews. in the owner’s box amused us. We celebrated Lup steam and rolling straight into the were not observed before the bestial trysts I with a few more glasses of top shelf liquor. spring social season. Denim and 32º—the witnessed on February 8, when the B ON J OVI U PDATE Working up an appetite, we next started city’s velvet-roped sisters of sneaker-less Philadelphia Zoo hosted a Valentine’s Day Since Bon Jovi had not gotten back to me devouring the shrimp cocktail and the filet swank—hosted anniversary bashes in late tour of the mating rituals of the animals, fol- regarding my offer to be his new best pal, an mignon. We kept the bartender off our trail January. New Society Deputies Kevin Custer lowed by a cocktail party. Our host was Pete offer I tendered when we met at a press event for the first half of the game with generous and Terry O’Brien joined invited guests at Hoskins, the zoo’s president. Zoobilee, the at Tiffany’s several months ago, I headed to tips, sprinkled with well-timed witticisms. He both venues for open bars and butlered hors zoo’s top fundraising event, is scheduled for the Wachovia Center for his Philadelphia eventually realized that we were frauds, but, ANDREW JEFFREY WRIGHT d’oeuvres. How swiftly my deputies have June 10. Later in the month, the Sunshine Soul arena football game. Years of plotting amused by our gall, he allowed us to stay, become acclimated to these sorts of soirées! To Foundation, which grants wishes to terminally and scheming about how to make the press going so far as to pour us pint-sized Cape commemorate Ben Franklin’s 298th birthday, I ill children, hosted their annual gala in Mt. box finally paid off. The box for the Soul game Cods. At halftime, the phone rang. Our time The R.U.B.A. Report had the pleasure of lunching at the Franklin Laurel. The smiles on the faces of these beau- was virtually deserted, although the fans kept in the box was short. Mr. Lurie was on his way Inn Club on Camac Street, home to some of tiful children when told they were going to the faith—the game itself was close to a sell- back, and was not a happy camper as his NORTHERN LIBERTIES, Phila.—The plicated ritual of initiation—signing an orange the finest literary minds in the city. That week- Disney World, as well as the courage and dig- out. (The public’s tastes often outpace those of Eagles were getting trounced. The bartender owners of the R.U.B.A. club, a seventy year-old paper card and paying a $7 annual fee. end was the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer nity of their parents, left an indelible mark. the jaded media elite by months or years. This informed us that we had to scram. He Russian ethnic club on Green Street, are get- Members gather Sundays from 3 p.m. to 3 a.m. singles party at the Penn’s Landing Hyatt. The Pennsylvania Convention Center is as much the case with arena football as it is refreshed our drinks one last time, and Deputy ting ready to sell. to enjoy the club’s amenities: television, table Thirty-minute waits for parking, coat checking hosted the first MardiPaw to benefit local with the music of Bon Jovi himself.) In the Custer violated Mr. Lurie’s bathroom. We “It will be soon now. Maybe six months, tennis, billiards, and small waxed-paper baskets maybe a year. Time will tell,” said Mike of pretzel twists. and getting to the bar soured many guests. SPCAs on February 18. Thousands of party- press box I met another reporter, Bill Feldman exchanged pleasantries with Mr. Lurie as we Shiroky, the club’s caretaker and former presi- It was a rainy Monday night and Shiroky Fortunately, attorney-about-town Dave goers were greeted with protracted coat check with the Northeast Times. William has an passed him in the hall on the way out. dent, who immigrated to the U.S. from Belarus had just finished taking out the trash from the D’Angelo set me up at his hotel room mini- and food and bars lines. This scarcity of basic impressive resume. He has been in the same These fragments and whiffs of distant after World War II. Shiroky has lived in the night before. He was sitting with bar manager bar. Problem solved! But not so fortunate were party amenities helped me and my fellow rev- room with President Bush and Oprah memory filled me with nostalgia as once again, building’s third floor apartment for the last Val Hauber in the R.U.B.A.’s front office, the 750 (mostly female) attendees. After all, elers understand what it must feel like to be a Winfrey, he has also met Bon Jovi, and he is seven years later, I attempted to gain access to forty-two years, and has watched the club’s counting up Sunday night’s bar receipts beneath how will we ever succeed in fighting this dead- stray cat or dog. I happened upon John & Jim 11 years old. O.K., well at least I know where an open bar. Now that I am a society colum- active membership dwindle from about 150 the faded portraits of presidents Washington ly disease if we can’t kick back and enjoy our- Quinn, the good-natured Boston transplants, I stand. The last time I’d made the press box nist, I had to find a legitimate way back to the members in 1960 to twelve today. Any final and Lincoln. Shiroky said he’s watched the bar’s selves along the way? Science, that’s how. lamenting waiting in line for beers. The was 1997, when Deputy Custer and I stormed bar. I ran into that infamous duo the Blues decision on a sale is up to the members, clientele turn over five or six times. On January 27, Walter Staib’s City Tavern Mummers, the lone bright spot at this poorly Veterans Stadium for an Eagles game. Brothers (Jake and Elwood), who had been Shiroky said, but they have already decided on “This used to be a blue collar place. There hosted charming winemaker Kate MacMurray run party, were gracious enough to turn us on Wearing business suits for the infamous summoned up to Bon Jovi’s suite for pictures. I a price. were Russians, Ukranians, Slavs. As the years (daughter of actor Fred MacMurray from the to the giant beer cooler in their staging room. Monday night “Flare Game” vs. San volunteered my services to properly report the “It’s not going to be two hundred or three go by, people move around, there are a lot of well-known television program My Three We Irish always overcome bar trouble. Francisco, and lacking any type of credentials, story. Once there, I planned remind Bon Jovi hundred thousand. Those days are over. The demolished houses. Now it’s a different crowd, price is $900,000. For $1,000,000, you can go mostly Americans. Younger, but still old Sons), for a wine tasting and dinner. It was Fiso on South Street opened and hosted a we also managed to get into then-Mayor Ed of my best pal offer and hopefully extract a ahead take it right now.” enough to drink.” there that I realized that while I am something VIP party; lots of free flowing vodka attracted Rendell’s suite. It was easy. We simply acted as firm date for our next meeting. I still believe When the Russian United Beneficial “Most of the Russians moved out of the of an expert on the effects of wine, I am but an my society hooligans and me. New Daily News though we had been there before, and that the rock star lifestyle would suit me well. Association was founded in 1933, its member- neighborhood fifteen, twenty years ago,” said amateur oenologist, so I contacted highly gossip guy Dan Gross, as well as Philadelphia belonged there. After greeting Rendell,we But the guard to Bon Jovi’s suite, having not ship was almost exclusively Russian and Hauber, originally of Salzburg, Austria, now of regarded sommelier Marnie Old (formerly of Weekly’s petulant scribe Jessica Pressler were bellied up to the bar, and quietly toasted our been informed of the Blues Brothers’ invite, Eastern European. Today, it is best known as a Port Richmond. “In the old days, the men Striped Bass). Marnie invited me out to one of also there reporting. Earlier that evening, good fortune with a couple of top shelf vodka declined to let us in. dim neighborhood bar that is only open for would drink in the afternoon and go home to her wine classes at Panorama. There I learned McFadden’s hosted the Variety Club’s martinis—we knew we could be kicked out I’ll be back. ] twelve hours a week, and requires that drinkers the wife. Now it’s younger people who want to the six primary wine characteristics. Suffice to Celebrity Bartending event. Offensive Eagles’ any moment and weren’t about to squander Please email your positive feedback to rochy- become “social members” through an uncom- be close to the city. Yuppies.” ] say I still cannot not identify them, (no fault of lineman Jon Runyan blocked my view of three our minutes of luxury on a can of generic pil- [email protected].

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WHAT ARE YOU DOING AFTER THIS?

[ careeer ] not going to tell you which band, because— ahh, shit, it’s the damn maid again! Hang on.” More muffled threats on the maid’s life. I roll SPOTTINGS∂ My Phone my eyes, lean back in my chair and wave at Keisha, sitting in the cubicle across from me, [ BY CHARLIE V ] frantically sucking a lollipop and making the Sex Diary raunchiest slurping sounds she’s capable of for ∂ her caller, smiling every time she pulls off a really obscene, wet-sounding one. She catches O. CASE STUDY N 2: my eye and we laugh silently. I point to my Tuning the Air Guitar receiver and mouth the word ‘freak’ for her benefit. She nods like, “oh god, I know.” “Bree, honey, I was just telling this horny [ BY BREE SWANN ] bitch of a maid that I wasn’t here for her to just ude, Bree, I’m sorry, but the use, and she tried to suck my cock again!” Lonny’s maid’s in here trying to suck my back and gosh, his made-up life is so hard. “D cock again and I gotta kick her “Awwww,” I coo sympathetically. While out, again. Can you hold on a sec?” leaning back in my chair, making faces at This would be Lonny, 24, from Los Keisha, I catch sight of the shift supervisor Angeles, California. He follows up this win- walking away from her desk towards the bath- ning opening line with a snort of disgust and a room. This means that my call isn’t being mon- series of muffled crackling noises follows this itored, so I can make sure I’m out of this place winning opener. Then I hear his voice, muffled at a reasonable time tonight. It’s 5:45 p.m., and Charlie V on left, Jennifer Lopez on right Charlie V on left, Vince Neil on right by what I imagine to be his grimy hand over the my shift ends at 6:00 p.m. We are never per- receiver, yelling in plaintive irritation: “God, mitted to hang up on a caller, not even when you nasty slut! God! Just leave me alone! I the phone rings five minutes before the shift already let you suck my cock, like, five times ends and the caller wants to talk for fifteen. If today! Don’t you have work to do? I’m talking I can defuse this call in progress and punch in to my other girlfriend! Jeez! I’m a musician, not my four-digit agent code before the telephone a blowjob dispenser!” rings again, I will be home free. This call began in the usual realm of fanta- “That’s the thing about being a rock star, sy, but has quickly devolved into a performance dude. These dumb horny bitches are always of some sick pathology. I don’t believe there’s trying to suck your cock all the time. I mean, I anyone in the room with Lonny. I don’t even just wanna talk!” Even his frustrated-piece-of- believe he’s calling from Los Angeles. meat whine sounds fake. Something about the way he said it: “L.A., “Hey, Lonny,” I whisper urgently. “Maybe dude. Where else would I be?” we can pretend you’re not a musician, then. Lonny’s back on the line. “Hey, dude, I’m Because all the rock stars I’ve fucked are either back. Did you miss me? What did you say your impotent or, like, so totally premature that it’s name was again?” not even worth it. Or else they’ve just got little, “Bree,” I tell him. I’m a varsity cheerleader little dicks.” with long blonde hair and an ass worth going to That brief fizz the receiver makes over a jail for, “ not that you’ll have to, because I just phone line when the other end abruptly hangs turned 18 last week.” Today my voice is flat as up is a better sound to me, today, than the cardboard. I hope my shift supervisor isn’t lis- sound of my real name being whispered into tening in on the call. It’s been a long day. my ear by the voice of a real loved one. Because “I’m in this really nice hotel in L.A.” Lonny it means I get to go be that person again, tells me. “I’m on tour. I’m in this band, but if I instead of whatever it is I am to some jerk like told you which band, you’d probably start Lonny from Los Angeles. ] squealing and begging to suck my cock and shit Bree Swann is writing a series of phone sex Charlie V on left, the Lone Ranger on right man, that groupie crap is getting old. So I’m case studies for THE INDEPENDENT.

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“You better cut the pizza in four GENERAL∂ ADVERTISEMENTS pieces because I'm not hungry

WANTED: ADVERTISEMENTS, PROJECTS, novel written by Erik Bader, a novel that we (the wants to nominate. In Philadelphia, the caucus will be Can’t you do any better than that? Please. Oh, you’re enough to eat six.” —Yogi Berra PROSPECTUSES, MAPS, PLANS, SCHEMES, unprofessional people behind Fort Saint Davids held from 1-4pm on April 24th at the Ethical a photographer. That makes sense. So, Mr. MANIFESTOS, CHARTERS, CHARTS, DIA- Books) have been promising you (the patient, friend- Society, 1906 S. Rittenhouse Square. For more info, Photographer, I got a question for you. Why are you GRAMS, FLYERS, PLEAS, ASSOCIATIONS, ly, unknown-to-us-now-but-hopefully-soon-to-be- email [email protected] or visit www.gpop.org or call always getting in my face with that telephoto lens? THE FUTURE, &C: DEAR PHILADELPHIA:The our-best-friend reader) for quite some time now. I 215.243.7103. I’m standing under the lights, trying to think of the General Advertisements section of the paper can mean a really long fucking time. But it’s happening. EVENT, 04-30-04: 250 Stenchful bodies, cancerous answer to somebody’s question when all of a sudden, make your dreams come true. This is the place to We’re nervous. People at PNC Bank, people who air, and bartenders with attitude. Gogol Bordello's Pow! Flashbulbs! Clikkity clikkity click! Here come announce what you’re doing, about to do, or hope to give out loans, are sitting in their desks right now, gypsy combat rock meets The Brothers Suggarillo at the cameras! What the heck are you trying to do? do, or are considering doing. An army 10,000 strong rubbing their hands together, greedily, sweatily, wait- Tritone. Friday, April 30. Capture the flea sitting on Treats’s nose? You think will gather behind you. Your in-box will overflow ing for us. And we will come, for the money, because EVENT, 05-05-04: Wanted: People to stop com- you’re gonna snap the world’s best-ever photo of with offers of assistance from heads of E.U. countries. we want to make this book available. Do we have plaining about our Government, get involved instead. Mayor Trapezoid? You think they’re gonna frame If you need it, ask for it. If you have it, offer it up. We future projects? You’re goddamn right we do. If you Make a difference, help the Democrats (and socialize) that shot and hang it in the Philadelphia Museum of are all broken, but maybe running the right General see us, on some barstools, perhaps at Johnny Brenda’s, with Philly4change. April 7th & May 5th, 7 a.m., Art? You think that photo’s gonna win you a Advertisement can make us whole again. The you can ask us about it. There’s no way we won’t tell Fergie's Pub, 1214 Samson Street. Pulitzer Prize? Well, I got news for you. It’ll get General Advertisements are like the NASDAQ of you then, over beer, at the bar. We might even be FILMS WANTED: Street Movies! Outdoor Film clipped and tossed in some archive somewhere and yesteryear, a special place where any kid can walk in drinking wine, in a park, any park, a park near you, Series, July 30-Sept 5, PA. Deadline: May 10. after that, nobody’ll see that photo again. Ever. Not with a half-baked piece of cockamamie (or a legiti- perhaps. You can have some wine and we’ll talk about Scribe Video Center’s 8th year of free outdoor cine- a soul. And your reporter friend? He can write all mate, fully-baked, sober and rational plan) and bluff it. And make sure to bring some more wine, if you ma, brings indy films to Philly’s ‘hoods. Looking for the bad stuff about Trapezoid he wants. He wrote his way to millions. Millions! This all was once a flyer. really want to make a session of it. But here, in this work that addresses social issues, diverse audiences, bad about me last year, and what good did it do? Post your flyer here. Take a breathe and summon the classified ad, it’s just not the place. Anyhow we need and/or appeals to kids. Cats: short, feature, Doc, ani- When he started up last year, I was 13 and 0. And thing into being by enunciating the words that will you. More specifically, we need to take your picture. mation, ex, any style or genre. Preview on VHS or now I’m 14 and 0. I’d find that frustrating, to spend unusual pizza and sandwiches make it real. I urge you, I urge you strongly, to take Are you afraid of cameras? If not, we need pictures, DVD. No Entry Fee. Contact: Phil Rothberg, a whole year knocking a guy down every day, and advantage of this opportunity immediately. Send your pictures of people sitting on hills and people riding Program Coordinator, Scribe Video Center, 1342 wake up a year later, and he’s still undefeated. So FREE GENERAL ADVERTISEMENT to classi- busses and people reading books. And one picture, Cypress St., Philadelphia, PA 19107; (p)215-735- much for the power of the press. It’s your job to ask [email protected] immediately to this one will require all of you. I mean every single 3785; (f)215-735-4710; [email protected]; the questions, and I respect that. Really, though run in our June/July issue. There is no limit on length person reading this classified, even you, the guy who www.scribe.org. you’re a business. You’re as much about the bottom but we reserve the right to edit but only rarely do we doesn’t want to read The Pilot and the Panda and who FOR SALE: Pretty much the entire city government. line as the rest of us. You have to come up with exercise this right. We’re also taking ads for stuff for doesn’t like this ad and is reading it just because he’s If you're in the right party or the right union, know something to keep people picking up those newspa- sale, rooms to let, shout-outs, love yous, hate yours, on the subway and he wants to see the ending even the right people and have a compelling reason why pers and reading those ads. And that’s fine by me. help wanted, etc. Thank you in advance for your though He hasn’t enjoyed a single sentence of this ad your bid should be accepted (read: kickback, pay-for- You have a constitutional role here in the city, and prompt attention to this matter. Use the classified as yet. Even you, man, we need you. Because! Because play, etc.), you can own some or all of the City of I’m all for freedom of speech and the Constitution. a message in a bottle, cast into a gray paper sea; or an we need a picture of people, lots of people, like I said Philadelphia. Some larger agencies, such as the But can you please take it easy with all the FOIAs? inky footprint on a gray paper moon. It matters not, all the people, standing in a field, looking like they Pennsylvania Convention Center, Philadelphia I talked to the Law Department last week. Do you as long as you send your free classifieds to believe in freedom. No signs! No protest signs, and Parking Authority, Delaware River Port Authority know how many FOIA requests you people have [email protected]. Immediately. keep your clothes on. Just show it in your face. Show and the Philadelphia Airport have already been them going through? I know it must be frustrating Now. Thank you for your prompt attention to this that confidence, that determination, that unwavering snapped up, but there are still several choice plums. from your side: “Oh, Mayor Trapezoid, I filed my matter. Sincerely yours, HENRY FLOSS, Auxiliary belief in freedom, in open spaces, in Democracy, I Care to call the shots at a major metropolitan police FOIA six months ago. Mayor Trapezoid, when will Classified Compiler & Comptroller. mean in all of it. All you gotta do is stand there, with, department? Wouldn't you like to be the one to I ever get some answers?” But look at it from our ARTISTS: NEED SLIDES? Need slides made of like, I don’t know, 70? 100? Maybe a hundred peo- decide where, and if, those ratty kids can listen to that side. Somebody’s got to do all the paperwork, and your work? Art of any size, 2-D or 3-D, pho- ple, and we’ll take the picture, hmmm, we’ll take it in punk rock? Licenses & Inspections is a prime acquis- collect all the facts, and that takes time. And your tographed on any size film (35mm-4x5). A must for Fairmount Park, on a nice day, and we’ll all meet each tion. And when elections just aren't going your way in FOIAs are so broad. Can’t you just ask us some sim- applications, grant proposals, galleries, documenta- other and take this picture and it’ll be a picture that your ward, nothing beats a seat on the City ple, specific questions for once? As long as you peo- tion. Good rates and high quality. Can travel to your will be in this new as-of-yet-undisclosed project that Commissioner's Office. Bids are now being accepted ple keep sending us on these fishing expeditions, all studio if needed. Call 267-973-9508 Fort Saint Davids hopes to have out before the end of at 1515 Arch Street. Cash only, please. I can say to you is be patient, and maybe someday ARTISTS WANTED: Register now for the 5th the year. So, like, yeah. Get in touch. Reserve the FOR SALE: HYPNOSIS EQUIPMENT: we’ll get back to you with some answers. In the annual Philadelphia Open Studio Tours (POST), the book and offer us some of your time, one, or both. Philadelphia Hypnotist clearing out stock for new meantime, maybe you should hold off on filing any largest self-guided tour of artists' studios in the city, [email protected] is the place to year. Techno Disk is on sale! A whirling, swirling more FOIAs until we can deal with the ones we got. October 9-10 and 16-17, 2004. Last year more than write for all your questions. And hey: thanks. psychofabulous illusion disk to excite friends and The sooner you quit asking me all these questions, NOW AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK! 150 artists opened their studios to the public. CALL FOR ENTRIES: Submit! to Red Letters: a influence people. Plug in, stare at, feel altered. the sooner we’ll be able to get back to you with the Professional visual artists with studio space in the mail art project. http://20words.org Instructions included. Two (2) disk images to choose answers you’re are looking for. Just give it some time. Philadelphia, PA city limits are eligible; all media, no CALL FOR ENTRIES: Valsalva Maneuver. A from. Originally $29.95, yours for $15.95. Also: PERSONAL: Boo, This is a public declaration of 2 commission on sales. POST provides printed group show at the Ice Box. The Ice Box art space at Silva Ultramind ESP System for sale. Includes 8 love. Since I've been back, I've never been happier. brochures with each artist's name, studio location, & the Crane Art Center is seeking proposals from inter- courses, 1 bonus disk, and 1 workbook. All ten items And our house is a very, very, very fine house. Soon Picture-story collections by maps; POST website presents on-line tour guide with ested parties to design and construct an elaborate cro- are on CD. Original price: $137.50. Take home with with two cats in the yard. From your Little Girl. images of each artist's work; other exhibition oppor- quet course. We are looking for submissions from you for $99.50. Gently used hypnosis tapes: (from PERSONAL: Badass? No, Gentleman Rose. tunities/benefits. Download registration form at web- teams of three to five artists to participate. The gallery Innertalk) Ending self-destructive patterns; Firm Change your business cards to something more apt, Ben Katchor site. $70 fee due June 1 ($60 by May 1). info@phi- space will be divided into ten equal sections, and each body; Creative writing—(from LuminEssence) boo. Your love is the sweetest I've ever known. Maybe laopenstudios.com, 215.574.2143. www.philaopen- space will be allotted to a group. Each team of artists Learning to concentrate; Reprogramming at a cellu- you were bad when they were printed, but get real. studios.com. will be responsible for the construction of a fraction of lar level; Overcoming the self-destruct -- (from You are wonderful. I love you. Geraldine. APARTMENT FOR RENT: Roommate wanted the croquet course, in which they will be at liberty to Alphasonics) Concentration; Self-confidence; Peak PERSONAL: To my landlord: You are at least 70 (male or female) to live in a 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom devise different themes, and structures. Hopefully performance; I love to exercise. Formerly $19.95 years old. (You’re in a loveless marriage. I know house in West Philly. The beautiful, historic home is engaging with the traditions of croquet, the sections of each. Take home for $9.95 each. Buy five for $45.95! because I’ve seen.) You own eight buildings. You’re located on a quiet, family-filled street right next to the course will contain two to three hoops for the play- Two cassette weight loss program with booklet (from raising my rent twenty-five percent. In the winter, I Clark Park. We're three calm, easy going female ers\viewers to navigate. Materials for the course will Alphasonics), going for an amazing $24.95. Email: can see my breath. In the summer, I can’t bring my cat Julius Knipl, Real Estate undergrads looking for one more person with creative be supplied by the artists participating in the show. [email protected]. to work, because she cannot survive oven-like condi- Photographer: energy and a friendly personality to live with us in our The Show will open July 9th and run until July 25th. FREE BAND NAMES: Dense Wavelength, Burning tions. I am not designed for oven-like conditions clean, plant-filled house. Rent is only $400/month Teams will be allowedto start construction of their Times, Why Are You So Needy?, Hans Blix, Scarlet either. Remember me? I am the one who rehabbed The Beauty Supply District (not including gas & electricity) and we will be start- courses on June 29th. About the Space: Located two Fu, The Pox, Lex Loeb, Verizon, Postage & Handling, your whole top floor. I am paying off your mortgage. Julius Knipl attends an evening concert and ing a one year lease in September. Perfect if you don't blocks north of Girard on American Street in Milk Keg, Survey Says, The Panda Express, analog, My blood is mixed in with your mortar, and your heart unwittingly enters the world of wholesale want to pay rent for the whole summer! E-mail Philadelphia the Ice Box is part of a group of buildings The Zorros, The New Draculas, Shitwhistle, Poobis, is made of bricks. Maybe when you die, they’ll put empathizers and chiaroscuro brokers who make [email protected] for more information. being currently renovated for gallery and studio The Lewis Carrollers, The Don Hos, Jackaloaf, The your body and all of your moldy buildings on a flatbed The Jew of New York the decisions critical to the production of aesthetic APARTMENT FOR RENT: Beautiful 1 br. apt. in spaces. Uninterrupted by supports or pillars, the exhi- Mennonite Watchmen, Asscroft, Pelo Grande, The truck and drive them out to the country, and bury you Victorian house, University City. Available for the bition space has fifty by one-hundred foot floor space, Fort Dix, The Annointed, Bugbear, Mindflayer, Saving inside of them, like a pyramid, so you can take them “Katchor’s nineteenth-century carnival of pleasure in all of its forms — from the shape of an summer, approx. 5/13-8/11, 2004. Furnished, incl. and twenty-five foot ceilings. To Apply: Artist inter- Throw, Raistlin Majere with you into the afterlife and collect rent in the spir- hucksters and Kabbalists and pilgrims is a olive jar to the score of a string quartet. 110 pages / 0-375-70098-6 / $16.95 nice cookware & dishware. Hardwood floors, lots of ested in participating in Valsalva Maneuver should HELP WANTED: Nueva Esperanza Academy, a it realm. Until then, there is nothing I can do. delight: you feel that it is a work of singu- light. Spacious rooms include eat-in kitchen, bed- submit a short description of croquet course ideas, a small, safe, and successful charter high school in POLITICAL ADVISOR: Comrade Paulie Answers lar, surreal vision, and at the same time room, living room, and back mudroom. Back yard list of artists involved in the group and phone and e- North Philadelphia is in need of intelligent and com- Your Questions! Liberalism in America isn't dead, it's that it must all be true.” — The New Yorker Pantheon Books with deck and raised bed garden great for bbqs. There mail contact information. Deadline for submissions is: passionate people interested in teaching urban youth. just been away from home for a very long time. Get 100 pages / 0-375-70097-8 / $15.00 at your local bookstore. is free laundry in the basement as well as extra storage April 30. Submissions should be e-mailed to: valsal- We will be hiring teachers of English, Spanish, Math, in touch with the long lost leftist within you. space. Located on a friendly, tree-lined street in resi- [email protected]. Groups with accepted Social Studies, Special Education, and Chemistry for Comrade Paulie can help. Send your questions about or, visit www.katchor.com dential area, 2 blocks from SEPTA trolley and excel- proposals will be notified by e-mail by May 15. the 2004-2005 school year. Send questions and how to be a successful left leaning liberal in America lent restaurants. Penn Shuttle runs to this block. No CALL FOR LIBRARIANS: My name is Cynthia resumes to [email protected]. to [email protected]. He'll send answers, pets. Interested? Contact [email protected]. Wilson and I am pursuing my Masters in library sci- HELP WANTED: Full-time position available in advice and news about his upcoming website featur- Photos available upon request. ence and a photographer. I am also in the beginning busy, upscale optical shop/optometrist's office. ing sayings, books, mugs, T-shirts and more! AUTOMOBILE FOR SALE: This is a 1994 Saturn stages of creating a photo book of images of real Experience preferred, but will train. Must be good PUBLICATION SEEKS CONTRIBUTORS: A SL1 with 155K miles on it. A friend drove it out from librarians. I am very tired of hearing, "But, you don't with people. Sales experience, data entry a plus. Fax Bella Vista resident is searching for contributors to a California and left it here to be sold because he was look like a librarian" and I would like to portray that resume to 215 386-5953. unique publication he hopes to launch before his buying a new car. I have listed this several times, but librarians do not necessarily conform to the stereo- MARKETING: Looking to ramp up sales/revenue death. In search of writers, photographers, musicians, have now dropped the price very low. I am tired of type. So, I am looking for librarians or Masters in at your business? Contact the Willis Agency. Based in artists, and especially bold Web page designers. No dealing with a car that isn't even mine! Car has nor- Library Science students who would be willing to get Philadelphia, we're a small marketing communica- kitsch. Must be intelligent and curious. Must display mal wear and tear, I have driven it a few times with no their picture taken and answer short interview ques- tions firm offering affordable advertising, branding, an informed irreverence for authority of all sorts. problems, but I can make no guarantee. My friend tions. Please look at www.iamalibrarian.com and let public relations, strategy and e-business consulting to State your case by sending a note to i_am_else- drove it from CA with no problems. The trunk latch me know if you fit the criteria and would be willing to businesses of all sizes. Find out how we can help grow [email protected]. doesn't catch. There's a small ding on the front pas- participate. At this stage I am just assessing the your business today. Tel: 215-772-0164—Email: jcw- PUBLICATION SEEKS PATRON: Assificado senger corner of the car due to someone backing into amount of participation that librarians are willing to [email protected] needs your support. You all know and love Assificado, it while it was parked. Nothing major. Interested? give me for this project. MOTORCYCLE FOR SALE: 2004 Yamaha and have grown to count on and trust us for precise Call 215.729.4770. COLLECTORS WANTED: Whether it is rare Virago 250 cruiser, 300 miles, under warranty till and exacting satire and blasphomy for over a year BASEBALL FANS: Confront mathematical books, old photos, or funny erasers, collecting requires mid-August, excellent beginner or commuter bike, now. One day Assificado was in the copy shop and got impossibility with the morning box scores. Be on passion, persistence, and little bit of old fashioned 25" seat, 60+ mpg, low insurance cost, $2,950. For busted , and the free copies ended. People don’t real- the look-out for the Infinite ERA. The Earned Run madness. Whatever your passion, the Rosenbach info email [email protected] ize, but the reason they saw Assificado waiting for Average, the stalwart gauge of pitching perform- Museum & Library invites you to share—and dis- MUSCIANS WANTED: Instrumentalists wanted! them hot off the press every month like that, was ance, spits out a paradox during the beginning of play—your collections and stories on May 12 for a Forming an Afro-Cuban Krautrockvoodoo Big Band. becasue we were ripping off Kinko’s in hella amounts, each baseball season whenever a pitcher allows a run special Collector's Night at Philadelphia's own We have: drummer, bass, vocals, violin, theremin, and working our asses off doing it. We are not asking without recording an out. An positive integer divid- "museum of collecting." Call 215.732.1600, x116 for some horns and synth.) We need: guitar, keyboards, for money here, we are asking for a hook up! Contact ed by zero! More enjoyable than watching the hap- details. www.rosenbach.org more horns, more synth, percussionist. Think a cross us care of THE PHILADELPHIA INDEPENDENT, please. less sports copywriter struggle with the right symbol DESIGNER FOR HIRE: Web design. Figure 4 leg between CAN, Hawkwind, Exhuma, UFO and Thank you. is imagining its implications. A team facing one of lock Print design. Texas cloverleaf. Screen printing. Arthur Doyle. Call Leslie at 610-566-7494. VOLUNTEERS WANTED: The Black Women's an OO ERA pitchers would score until the end of Sleeper holds & suplexes. Logo & identity design For MUSIC FOR SALE: Beautiful, the latest album by Arts Festival Philly 2004 is seeking volunteers, ven- time. Baseball is uniquely appropriate for these sta- more info please visit: Www.timgough.org singer-songwriter Cassendre Xavier a.k.a. Amethyste dors, and participants. If interested, please email: tistical circumstances since it is the only sport with- DISC JOCKEY FOR HIRE: I have 2 turntables Rah, whose music has been featured on WXPN and [email protected], or call (215) 574-2129. out a finite playing field—the perpendicular foul and loads of booty-shakin' beats on vinyl (new wave, Power 99, is now available! Order yours (or "The WANTED: One (1) day spent driving on the streets lines leave home plate and never cross again unless funk/fusion, hiphop, house, and groovin' obscuri- Whittenberg Sessions", or "Live at Cafe Improv") of Philadelphia during which: turn signals will be aided by a bit of non-Euclidian geometry. The slug- ties)I'll DJ your house party or other event for cheap. today! Send $15 per CD (add $2 per order for S&H) used as if they were the natural convenience they were ger knows this. Perhaps facing this existential inse- contact: DJ SPectrogram [email protected] to: Cassendre Xavier, POB 30204, Philadelphia, PA designed to be for both those in the car and, more curity is what drives them to steroids. Something to 4811 Springfield Ave. Philadelphia, PA 19143 19103-8204. Also available, the chapbook "secrets & imporantly, those trying to judge where that car is ponder as you scan the opening week box scores. EVENT: 04-15-04 & 05-20-04: Hard Liquor lies: poetry and other words" ($5), "4our: a CX sam- going to go in the next 30 seconds; drivers will not Play ball! Theater presents on April 15th "The 10 Plagues...the pler" (music CD $5), and handcrafted, scented can- slow mysteriously and/or stop on a whim just to chat BICYCLE FOR SALE: Schwinn Breeze for Sale. Modern Ones", at the Tritone 1508 South St. at 9 dles by Cassendre. Visit www.cassEndrExavier.com up someone who happens to live on their block any- To the guy who called about my Blue Schwinn P.M.ish. Hard Liquor Theater is Philadelphia’s pre- PERSONAL: Urban ursus, built for comfort not way; double-parking on Girard Avenue and/or South Breeze: I lost your number! The bike is still available! mier trashy performance salon hosted by Needles speed, seeks companionship. Young Kauffeehaus Broad Street ceases, thereby diminishing the likeli- Please call again! For the rest of you: $25, okay con- Jones and Psydde Delicious on every third Thursday Juden seeks young lady of inquisitive and artistic per- hood—and actualities—of fender benders caused by dition, funky, old, cute, with basket! Leigh 215-732- of the month. For more info contact suasion to awkwardly court, exchange letters, and to trying to dodge said parked cars; any and all other 4745. [email protected] Our next show is May promenade down architecturally interesting side traffic laws pertaining to common decency and mutu- BOOKS BY SUBSCRIPTION: Subscribe to Clear 20th.."Up against the Wall Mother." streets and alleyways. Reply to yorick @shafted.org al respect are obeyed. Cut Press—Eight bodacious pocket-sized soft-bound EVENT, 04-20-04 & 05-18-04: Free poetry event PERSONAL: I saw you. You were standing on a cor- WEBSITE: Fingertips—An intelligent guide to free books w/dust jackets and built-in bookmarks packed every third tuesday @ the Freinds Meeting House. ner, eating a bag of chips and drinking asoda-pop. and legal music on the web. Visit www.fingertipsmu- with New Research & Popular Literature arriving in 1515 Cherry street. 6:30 P.M. www.museumofpoet- When you were done, you just tossed the refuse into sic.com. Good music, no guilt, no cost. your mailbox over the next several months for only ry.com the street as if it had never occurred to you to do any- WEBSITE: Interested in men’s fashion? Brit & Irish $65! Lyric essays from The Office for Soft EVENT, 04-24-04: Elf Power, Palomar, The Snow thing else with them. You were hot. travel? Charles Dickens? Sir Henry ''Chips'' Architecture, sexy stories from Robert Gluck, an Ode Fairies. Live at the Khyber. Saturday, April 24th, 9 PERSONAL: Let’s lay some basic ground rules. Channon III? All of the above? Read to Certain Interstates from Howard W. Robertson, P.M. This is all off the record. And you all need to know Junto.blogspot.com, powered by Writers The Core Sample Exhibition Catalog, novels from EVENT, 04-24-04: Green Party Presidential Caucus that I’m not able to answer any questions about the Clearinghouse/USA. Free subscriptions. Matt Briggs and Stacey Levine, new essays from April 24th! Want to decide who will be the Green probe. What? Why not? Didn’t you hear what I WEBSITE: IDM is neither sympathizers MP3s at Charles D'Ambrosio & more. Make haste! Collect Party Nominee for President? Registered Greens in said? I already told you why not. I’m not answering www.thnthn.com 'em all! www.clearcutpress.com. Philadelphia are invited to participate in our any questions about the probe. That’s why. But I WEBSITE: This very newspaper now has an online BOOKS, FORTHCOMING: First: The Pilot and Presidential Preference Caucus. Around the State, admire your persistence. You should get a raise. Next version. If you have a computer, go and take a look. the Panda, which happens to be a nearly 700 page Pennsylvanian Greens will be deciding who our state question. What? What grade would I give myself? www.philadelphiaindependent.net. SPRING 2004 THE PHILADELPHIA INDEPENDENT PAGE 23

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CROCUSUPONMYLAPELb PAGE 24 THE PHILADELPHIA INDEPENDENT SPRING 2004

AS HARD AS YOU WANT TO MAKE IT

To our Beloved Agents of the Bureau... LIGHT BULBS & HEAVY PETALS 123 4567 8910111213 answers to last month’s noodle exercise ∂ 14 15 16 C R A B \ B A S S M O R P H [ T HE W INNERS: ] The World’s Most Difficult Crossword Puzzle L O G O E R N E E R A S E 17 18 19 GRAND PRIZE: Top Secret Agent Status, T-shirt, Six Issues E T O N T E A T M E D A L Top Secret Agent Aaron Laufman-Walker W A G G A W A G G A I L L [ BY JASON E. GIBBS ] Top Secret Agent Tanya Nagahawatte 20 20 21 22 O N E S O M O S O M O Top Secret Agent Michelle Grant Top Secret Agent Margo Gustina B B Q D E M M I N 53. Stringed Hawaiian 19. To revise or correct. 23 24 25 26 27 28 ACROSS Top Secret Agent Michael Fahy L O U S N E N G O N E N G O instrument, briefly. 23. Paradise of On the Road. Top Secret Agent Jonathan H. Stanwood A C O C K S E E K E E L S 2ND PRIZE: 1. Gives the go-ahead. 54. An apéritif named after 24. Send forth. 29 30 31 32 B A D E N B A D E N R O O S Secret Agent Status, $5 at Big Jar Books, Button 4. Thick slice. a mayor of Dijon. 25. Fencer’s weapon. Secret Agent Michelle Bland N O R S O N N W A 8. A rain cloud. 55. Chum. 26. Aromatic Himalayan plant. 33 34 35 39 40 41 Secret Agent Vance Lehmkuhl B O R A B O R A T A G Secret Agent Luis Lim 14. Charged particle. 57. Aquilegia chrysantha. 27. A stop sign for instance. R N A W A L L A W A L L A 42 36 37 38 39 40 Secret Agent Gabriel Grabin A S T O R G L O B B Y O B 15. One third of a 1970 64. Oblique. 28. South African currency. Secret Agent Ann Ritter S E I N E E A R L L O R E Pearl Harbor film title. 65. Uncommon. 30. Hinder by prohibition. Secret Agent Heather Rodkey 46 41 42 43 44 S T O O D D Y N E E N D S 16. Quantity. 66. Dismissal from emploment 31. Vin de ____. 17. Convallaria majalis. with "off". 32. Withered witchlike old 45 46 47 48 49 20. Choose. 67. Property, such as a house. woman. Note to the Winners & Other Parties 21. Hoover for instance. 68. Animals often joined by 35. Flying saucers. 50 51 52 would like to take a moment to single out Mr. of their envelopes and parcels, we never would have 22. Four qts. a yoke. 37. Word preceding "Born I Nate Puchalski for special congratulations. Mr. had to institute the foul ZIP code system in the first 23. Viewed. 69. Alkaline used to make soap. is the King of Israel". 53 54 55 56 Puchalski continues to awe everyone here at the place. (We find it to be a shame whenever the flow 26. Short wool fiber. 38. ____ Gras. Bureau with the precision of his penmanship. of letters must submit to rule of numbers.) 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 Packed together in neat, identical rows, Mr. Special congratulations are also due to Vance 28. Trick. 39. "Cyberpunk" Billy. DOWN Puchalski’s letters look like a tightly rolled pile of Lehmkuhl, who spotted a small typographical 29. Current unit, for short. 40. That which is known by 64 73 65 66 nickels or a well-groomed set of teeth. See here: error in one of our clues and to Kristin Murray, 30. Difference between sun 1. Baby or motor are varieties. tradition. who managed to complete and mail in our Issue Six puzzle in just under one year’s time. Jennifer and moon, annually. 2. Popular garden pond fish. 44. Golf accessory. 67 68 69 Hope, Allison Buehler, Josh Kramer, Aaron- 32. Indication for insertion 3. Weekly sketch comedy 45. Mercury model. Laufman Walker, Jamal Haigler, Benjamin of text. show for short. 46. A sandstone derived from Galynker and Marcia Makadon also completed IN A UBSCRIPTION A HIRT OR IVE OUNDS OF OOK last issue’s puzzle without a single error, except for 33. Fib. 4. Telegram sentence ender. the disintegration of granite. W S , S , F P B their relative tardiness. 34. K or Wal follower. 5. Barn attic. 47. Saffron flavored rice Prizes, Instructions, Details, Addresses, Red Herrings & Notes of Cheerful Caution Yours, 35. Large coffee pot. 6. One part of Trivial dish from Spain. he streets are filled with the slurping sounds of things mating, growing and lurking. Fecund odors waft 36. Narcissus obvallaris. Pursuit’s green category. 48 2002 Ray Liotta flick. down the streets, carrying with them the pheromones and pollenized scents of our city’s profligate sta- T Mr. Puchalski, if only every user of the postal system men. Spring has indeed sprung. Everything is in bloom and frankly, we are completely disgusted. The puzzle Henry Floss 41. Western hemisphere gp. 7. First part of an Ebenezer 51. _____ fresh breath. shared your meticulous approach to the addressing Chairman, Bureau of Puzzles & Games is our refuge, that last hygenic realm, as clean and empty as a numbered white square, as virginal and starched formed in 1948. Scrooge expression. 52. Priestly garb. as lady’s hankerchief. We hate to rush you through this most simple and necessary of pleasures, but rush you 42. Hired thug. 8. Pertaining to warships. 54. Superman surname. must, for there are prizes for you to covet and us divvy, for us to mail, for you to tear open, and then flaunt, and then permit the cycle of coveting to begin anew. You will notice that the puzzle is above, and the clues are HENRY FLOSS’ MONTHLY INVENTION HOW TO LIGHT A CIGAR 43. Dash counterpart. 9. Muslim spiritual leader. 55. Not contaminated. (Apologies and respects to Rube Goldberg) ∂ on the left. Well done. A good beginning. The prizes are listed below. 45. Prank. 10. 6.02 x 1023 56. Payer ender. Henry Floss depresses button with right foot GRAND PRIZE: To the correct Puzzle with the earliest postmark, one T-shirt bearing the seal (A), activating bovine wench (B), which twists cow 48. Sound. 11. Wheat that has been par 58. Ten Liters. of The Philadelphia Independent, a six-issue Square Deal Subscription (including a pinback harness and squeezes ripe cow’s mammary glands 49. Metal-bearing rock. boiled, cracked, and dried. 59. Spanish gold. button, a heraldic and personalized Subscriber Card) and Top Secret Agent status in the Bureau. (C). Forced lactation (D) attracts captive baby, who 2ndPRIZE: To the next correct Puzzle, Five Pounds of Book from the The Philadelphia lurches forward (E), freeing captive baby thunder- 50. Spoken. 12. Awkwardness. 60. Not strict. Independent’s surplus library. We will send a selection of offerings. Pick whatever suits you. cloud (F). Scale becomes unbalanced, and match 51. Coiffure sported by 13. A small dagger. 61. Under the weather. TO EVERY SINGLE ENTRY: A pinback button and Special Agent status in the Bureau. falls downward, igniting as it strikes against the sole Send your completed Puzzle to TPI / Attn: Bureau of Puzzles & Games / 1026 Arch Street / Philadelphia, of the shoe on Floss’ ‘hat shoe’ (G), lighting cigar. lions and horses. 18. Gadding about hither 62. Yea opponent. If this device proves unsuccessful, find a blowtorch PA / 19107 with your name, address, and telephone number written clearly on a 3x5-inch index card. And I’d and a friend, or a book of matches. ] 52. Away from the wind. and ___. 63. Watch. be quick about it if I wanted a stab at the Grand Prize.

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