Who Walk In Brooklyn

Caz Dolowicz remembers: Drunk in Astoria, again— where Mr. Angry at? Drunk in Bayside— oh, Bell Boulevard brogues, ya’ll slay me. Drunk on Corona Light that one time, what crap— I pissed off the Cross Bay Bridge. Drunk in Douglaston— the bartender played Run DMC Raising Hell repeatedly. Drunk in Edgemere— surf’s the fuck up, sweetcheeks. Drunk in Fresh Meadows— “I go to St. John’s Unversity”! Drunk in Jamaica— Ski Mask Way, just off Sutphin. Drunk in Kew Gardens— talking Tudor-era buggery, cool. Drunk in the Lindenwood Diner— yeah, my girlfriend’s a line cook there. Drunk in Maspeth— meet me at O’Neill’s next Monday? Drunk in Neponsit— & naked on the sand dunes, nice ass! Drunk in Ozone Park— I don’t even know how to pronounce Gambino. Drunk in public housing— QB, bitch. Drunk in Queens Borough Hall— a lot of people are. Drunk again in Rockaway— Beach 116th St style. Drunk in Sunnyside— soak it up with papusas, all hail El Salvador! Drunk at Touch, 23-70 Steinway— my boy’s a bouncer there. Drunk at Utopia Bagels— even at breakfast. Drunk at Vixen, 6007 Metropolitan— va-va-va-voom! Drunk in Willets Point— motherfuck eminent domain abuse. Drunk ex tempore & eating Guyanese fried chicken on 101st Avenue with my ex-wife— extremely weird but true tales of Richmond Hill cupidity. Drunk at the Young Israel Forest Hills Senior League— shalom! Drunk at the Zen Center in Flushing— Zyczymy Smacznego, how could you?!

Caz Dolowicz was born on Sands Street in 1923. A retired New York City Transit Authority Tower Operator, he lives with his wife & two cats in Baa Baa Bay Ridge. Years ago— well… better ask your mom first.

From the rubber room to the recap district, Toad: But where the hell are the rest of ya’ll? Caz Dolowicz is still in Florida, he left a message saying they were out of sausage at Eli’s BBQ in Dunedin yesterday. BZA is on the campaign trail again, last seen looking for Elvis on the jukebox of a Martinsburg, West Virgina Waffle House at 3 am & not heard from since. I don’t know if this is true but I heard Angry M.F. Fisher turned up the Big Daddy Kane really loud in Gowanus last week. Centipede, who lives in that vast part of Bed-Stuy without even one yummy brunch spot (or brunch blogger!), remembers both the Carolina Adult Center & Tar Heel Auto Repair. Despite riding the front car of the GG train often as a kid, Swan is not a foamer, & if he gets off at Queens Plaza & starts walking north, ya’ll better believe he means business, & it ain’t buying your mom crappy brunch or a crappier condo. Ernie Koy Jr. must have siphoned some gas & drove over from the Bronx, because that’s him in the corner, digging through the milk crates now.

Zyczymy Smacznego is hittin’ what? All of ya’ll who walking dogs in the Boogie Down– especially Mott Haven– know that’s where chicken bones come from. This is fact. Shout out to Forest Houses in Morrisania too: huh, no brunch for Mami? Somebody blog that!

Beadel Debevoise spells it out for ya’ll: While these are not, in fact, the end days of ridiculous prophecy, few who love freedom in all its messy possibility would deny it’s been a rough couple decades for American idealism. Bad politics played its part, much as it always has, & shadow armies of the politically correct picked off most of the resistance. For those who knew other eras, it seems rather like a tragedy, & no more so than here in erstwhile Fun City—no peep shows, no smoking & for god’s sake, please no offensive language. Welcome to Sissy Nation: How America Became a Culture of Wimps & Stoopits.

Flung into the maw of election season, Sissy couldn’t be more timely, yet it’s hardly the first occasion John has added gumption to public discourse, nor encouraged the gumption of others. This is key. Sometimes adduced a cynic, the Baltimore-native is really a mischievous anarchist, with a passion for individualism & little tolerance for establishment cant. These qualities were writ large during John’s years as editor of New York Press, where amid the riot of opinion, memoir & criticism, street smart, history minded columns such as William Bryk’s “Old Smoke” & C.J. Sullivan’s “Bronx Stroll” examined the city in ways few others could be bothered with.

Since the Press was sold & John fired in December 2002, the man has not been idle. Among his achievements: blurb writer for Meredith Brosnan’s Mr. Dynamite, one of the greatest NYC comic novels; author of Black Like You: Blackface, Whiteface, Insult & Imitation in American Popular Culture, a uniquely lucid survey of this nation’s– & Brooklyn’s– defining racial dynamic; contributor to the Times, for whom he did a swell Harry Mathews piece & regularly hits the streets as that paper’s “Weekend Explorer.”

Lest John appear shiftless, he also rocked “From Wise Guys to Woo Girls,” the lead essay of New York Calling, & did a couple gigs with his editor, WWIB’s own Brian Berger. Rumor has it that before their Gotham History Center show last November, Berger told John “Hey, I gave you the James Brown slot—nobody can follow.” As Sewell Chan of the Times reported, John didn’t disappoint. Likewise, Sissy Nation has all the fresh flavor of just brewed drip coffee. Your husband will say, Christ, Sally, I used to think your coffee was only so-so. But now… wow! Safe when taken as directed.

FUNNY HOW TIME SLIPS AWAY

Brian Berger: I just rewatched The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) for the first time in a while. Sure, it’s about mob violence, but moreso, it’s about acquiescene. A few years later, Philip Wylie blasts out Generation of Vipers. Whatever else it might be, it’s very disaffected with the post-war American landscape. Enter Sissy. Has America’s embrace of Sissydom gotten worse, do you think, or has changing context & technology made yours the necessary Sissy of today?

John Strausbaugh: Funny you should mention Generation of Vipers. Not a widely-read book anymore – with good reason. I used it as a model of how not to write Sissy Nation. I mean, it’s one of the all-time great book titles, but it’s written so poorly that most of the time you can tell Wylie’s pissed but you can’t make out just what he’s pissed about. Using that as a negative model helped me keep Sissy simple, straightforward and on-track. Continue Reading »

10 Hood Facts

1. Soon they’ll have throwback jerseys for infants
2. Akmed makes the illest eggs n cheese sandwich
3. Change is money too
4. Crackheads think they still look good
5. The ones you love will fill you with slugs
6. You can cash checks, pay child support and buy rims all in one store
7. Everybody know everybody
8. We got our own cable ‘hookup’
9. Police are killing are people everyday and nothing is being done about it
10. Brooklyn is always in the house
– Inspectah Deck, from the liner notes to The Movement 

The Music Director rates this 2002 album four egg & cheese sandwhiches (outta five): peace be unto Akmed too, just a little pepper. Production isn’t perfect but INS is fire & Deck’s next album, sorta an official mixtape called The Resident Patient is even better, copping its title from… Correct: Sherlock Holmes!

Angry M.F. Fisher’s got goat, & grateful she does: Many others, especially in Haiti itself, aren’t so fortunate. Ya’ll who really know BK might be surprised there are an Haitians left down there: 1) weren’t they all “supposed” to have AIDS? 2) Ain’t the rest of ‘em not named Wyclef (shout out to M.O.P.: please drop something soon, homies) now running Flatbush & Canarsie, & rocking the rara scene Sunday nights in Prospect Park? No, no & no. For some of the real there’s Radio Pa Nou, of course, & today, an excellent post by “Maxine” (shout out to Dennis Coles, even if you & Raekwon murked yourselves hating on 8 Diagrams, which both of ya’ll were excellent on)–

I’m telling you now, don’t even fucking read this drop if you aren’t prepared to get angry. Do you know what the fuck is going on in Haiti? People are starving and dying and rioting in the streets over the rising costs of food, meanwhile back at the motherfucking ranch…

read the rest of “Don’t H8 Haiti” over at DallasPenn.com. The only thing I’d add– & I’m not expert, by any means– is that the shameful history of the U.S. in Haiti goes further back than Maxine gets into above. This just in:

Caz Dolowicz explains: Caz here, which this morning is the Gulf Coast of Florida, where my wife (estranged from her family’s Greek sponge fortune, alas) still has a small house under Spanish moss. Nobody calls that Latino, although you can get a great goddamn Cuban from a Bronx-native dude here in Tarpon Springs; somehow he ended up here after bouncing around the world in the Army & thank coqui he did. The Steinbrenners– as venal an American family as there has ever been outside of elective office– aren’t too far away in Tampa & I’ll tell ya’ll the truth: when George finally croaks, all of Florida & New York ought to say good goddamn riddance or, in the street argot of old Brooklyn: see ya’ schmuck. That said, the ’70s & ’80s were a colorful time for sports fans; it’s too bad pre-dementia George didn’t make good on his always hollow threats & move the Yankees from the Bronx, then maybe Macombs Dam Park would still exist. (You can’t hate Bruce Ratner, or oppose the so-called Atlantic Yards– which everyone should– without scorning the Rudy Giuliani, Randy Levine, Mike Bloomberg, Dan Doctoroff & every single baseball Steinbrenner also.) Do I sound angry? Get the fuck outta here, that ain’t Old Caz! I remember fondly the poetry of MC Phil Rizzuto on mic which is why I’m writing from FLA in the first place. Down in St. Petersburg on Central Avenue are plaques commemorating the baseball heritage of the city. One for the 1950 season reads: “Right out of spring training, Yankees rookie Billy Martin makes history with two hits in one inning in his first game. Phil Rizzuto named AL MVP.” I was there.

Caz Dolowicz was born on Sands Street in 1923. A retired New York City Transit Authority Tower Operator, he lives with his wife & two cats in Bay Ridge. When in Pinellas County, like Plies, he is the club.

Swan says “yo, Chango”: While the scumbags of blogidad take big box store tours without remark on the attendant environmental, race & class issues or laud unfathomably ignorant, beyond awful (rhymes with offal) self-negating “real estate art ” at 3rd & Bond, others have taken a different path. Frogg, our second favorite amphibian (after mighty coqui) gets down & dirty– just the way Gowanus demands it. Lost City seems to have gotten “nervous in the service” & wandered a bit from his original bailiwick but, while I don’t agree with everything (fuck Trader Joe’s & the sheeple who worship there), the dude’s peepers are open & transmitting in important ways most ain’t. “Funny” though how few in the blogidad or the preservation community have previously been moved to celebrate the simple beauty of the Botanica De La Milgrosa, 537 Court Street. Will the wondrous, “concerned citizens” (sic) of the Waterfront Alliance or Municipal Art Society raise their voices in unison when some grim reaper comes for Chango? Or are all the gods & goddesses of Santeria too frightening for those who seem most interested in preserving history for white people with money to merely enjoy? Oh, weren’t those working people “quaint”!

Ernie Koy Jr. grabs the brass ring: Yeah yeah, I know it’s trendy to blog about the Bronx now but The Publisher– when he’s actually working here & not reviewing books elsewhere– seems willing to indulge a native son; I trust ya’ll can too. It was, as they say, one of those goddamn days: I locked my keys in Mami’s apartment down in Port Morris; all the computer terminals at the Mott Haven branch of the library (E. 140th St is in the house) were either busted or occupied by folks who didn’t seem to be leaving any time soon; & although I could have filed this from the WWIB offices in Gravesend, I had to pick up my wheels from Mayo, the street mechanic, who was putting a new engine block in the old Toyota pickup I inherited from Aunt Sally back in March. While everybody who is anybody in the blogidad knows there are days you gotta uprock your ebay, sometimes folks need a quicker fix. Note to BZA, when she returns from the campaign trail (photo at right): Uh… I think I know who has your Nana’s old fur (that you left at my house a few years ago.)

Angry M.F. Fisher has the recipe: If music be the food of love, let’s call it that giant buffet on Rockaway Avenue near Belmont. Soul, brother! This might not be the best example to show ya’ll– & nobody is fronting on the ‘Ville, to this day– but to many in Brooklyn, any M.O.P. is that crack: the albums cost about the same but last a whole lot longer. Speaking of long lived ghetto warfare, it appears The Publisher has been moonlighting. 81-year-old Allen Baron, once of New Lots Avenue in East New York but very familiar with Jewish (& Yiddish) Pitkin Avenue, made this picture, Blast of Silence & … M.O.P. may occasionally be silenced (neither their Roc-A-Fella nor G-Unit albums came out, alas), but when heard, they ain’t ever quiet. Welcome back to Brooklyn, motherfuckers– including the other Jay-Z… the kind we like.

The Music Director reviews: One of WWIB’s favorite jazz books is Sidney Bechet’s Treat It Gentle. For those of ya’ll who don’t know, Bechet is one of the towering individualists of the first half of 20th century American music– hear at least his recordings with Louis Armstrong, of Corona via Chicago & New Orleans yesterday. Bechet took a similar route &, although he never lived in the city long, in 1918, Sidney played briefly out at Coney Island with one Tim Bryen: “So to fill in time I went and played with Tim Bryen on Coney Island. We all wore very fancy uniforms and the pay was good.” (Treat it Gentle, page 149.) Tim who? Readers of John Strausbaugh’s excellent Black Like You (2006) want to know, as do many other bold face names in the Daughters of the American Revolution (Park Slope Lodge) list of Brooklyn’s 100 Sexiest Cultural Historians. (John was #8, Brian Berger close behind at #11.) Alas, research suggests Tim Bryen did not exist– an error in transcription or in editing, nobody now can say. J. Tim Brymn, on the other hand… now there was a man! Noble Sissle, with whom Bechet first recorded in 1933 for Brunswick, likewise pissed standing up, even when “Viper Mad,” as when “Pops” Bechet With Noble Sissle’s Swingsters recorded said reefer classic for American Decca in 1938. Swagger jacking “Pops” was no timid move either. Indeed, were he among us today, it would not be for Sidney Bechet whom Straushbaugh wrote Sissy Nation: How American Became A Culture of Wimps & Stoopits. How do I know such things? Listen to John on the Lou Dobbs Show, WJGK 1200 AM, in the 5 o’clock hour for the answers, & if they take requests, there are many worse things to ask for than “Viper Mad.” Tell ‘em The Music Director sent ya’ll.

Zyczymy Smacznego adds: Neil deMause of the Village Voice dug into the latest mess of flotsam at Coney & came up with… well, let Neil give the dope. Mermaid Variety RIP, & in 1982, when The Publisher took that photo below right, where precisely was the “Economic Development Corporation” &, pardon my French, who the fuck really pays them now?