When The City Sleeps

That's me on the left, Halloween 1990, dressed as a burglar and trying to break into the change box at the pay phone that used to be planted in front of the Burger King on Hampton Boulevard right next to Friar Tucks, where our Tuesday night Halloween party was taking place. I think either Mike or S. took the picture, and years later my friend Stan enlarged my comically grit-toothed expression into a circle coming off the original scanned photo. I was twenty-one years old, and the Burger King -- and Friar Tucks -- is now the Ted Constant Convocation Center. But for several years in the early 90's, that was where I lived, ate, breathed, busked for change, washed my hair in the sink, and had the cops chase me into the dumpster for drawing on the sidewalks in colored chalk. One of the many, of course. The beginning of the end.

For about a year we had a weekly Tuesday night "progressive" night with Joe Djing from our shared stash of records, although I think we initially hesitated to use the word progressive --music snobs that we were and all. "Progressive" to me always sort of implied a broadening of the rock/pop format, which though ostensibly "progressive" felt more marginalized to a specific genre. "Alternative" suggests musical genres other than rock/pop, and all other fliers after this one were altered to be called "Alternative Nite", although what was probably considered alternative then gradually grew into mainstream now. This predated Nirvana and Pearl Jam's commercial breakthrough albums, and Nine Inch Nails was only at the top of the college charts. We danced to Fugazi, Bad Brains, Meat Beat Manifesto, Danielle Dax, Ofra Haza, Public Enemy, Dead Kennedys, They Might Be Giants, Ice Cube, Front Line Assembly. We covered the walls with garbage bags and tin foil, strung dried pasta on strings and mutilated baby dolls from the ceilings. The bathrooms were wallpapered with headlines from the Weekly World News, and we threw bang caps on the dance floor so that people couldn't see them when they stepped on them in the dark. It was a great time. It was a creative time. And this flier, this very very first flier drawn by our friend Mark Kinsella, brings it all back to me, twenty years later.

Enough of that. Now time for bed.