More EV Downtown 81 musings

I remember walking to that market in Brixton down Electric Avenue past the Fridge from your flat in Clapham and Antoinette and I buying snapper and groceries to cook escoveitch fish, rice and peas and for fritters the next morning if my memory hasn't jumbled it all up. It was like a West Indian Eastenders or sommat and great fun.

I also remember a pub you and i drank at at least once in Brixton's high street that was run by a Jamaican woman and they had a normal jukebox with a big as fuck speaker wired to it playing the classics.  Magic.

The footage of Basquiat walking around in the LES with all the rubble and individual building survivors looks exactly like Berlin and Dresden and London after WWII eerily uncanny even in the sunshine.  Every doorway/overhang/nook/cranny that could possibly be used as a shelter from sun/rain/snow/cold seemed inhabited. From 1st avenue east to Avenue C from 14th down to Houston it was largely DMZ/freeforall/NoMan'sLand.....

 I had 2 people at different times ask me if I was John Lurie... In 1981/mid82 we were in Jamaica but was hanging there before we left (Brother Brian introduced me to Stromboli pizzeria, the cheap Uke and Pole restaurants and bars with terrific jukeboxes around TSPark where one Friday night we smoked a spliff and were literally the only people in sight) and right after we returned to NY. I used to see Basquiat sleeping in Thompkins and Madonna in limo and Richard Hell and I mentioned I believe that my brother Brian lived (and was killed) on 9th between B&C and his pals were the Fleshtones and that Brian hung out with some Swami that liked cognac and that Ginsburg was around him etc......Antoinette got pregnant right around the weekend Brian was buried and we were living at the corner of 23rd and Park Ave South (4th avenue always for me) with Bill Laswell on the floor below us and a Nautica model next door who sunbathed topless on our common roof terrace....the East Village is gone, long gone now but it was terrific for a good while - hippies, new agers, punks, skins, fags, Ukes, Poles, Russkies, Ricans, African Americans, Egyptian taxi drivers, man it was cool for while yes indeedy...I miss the intercourse out of it