One Day We Slept All Day & Then Had Soup
On The Importance of Writing & Hell Hole etc
I’ve been spring cleaning and while flicking through a book of Statue of Liberty postcards that I’d forgotten I even had the other day, two loose leaf sheets of pale blue onion paper revealed themselves, trapped inside the pages like a pressed flower from another era. It was a list of New York ‘experiences’ I’d had in 1989, noted down in a list in January 1990 so I would never forget. A lot of things about this list fascinate me now.
The first is how many of the things I can’t remember for the life of me. Then there are the ones that are still so clear. I can’t work out which of these feels weirder. To remember or to forget.
Since finding the list I’ve tried so hard to remember what ‘Hell Hole etc’ was a reference to. Nothing. Nada. Not a blip. I’ve tried Googling Hell Hole New York to no helpful avail - can you imagine?? I found a great description of a wild lockout bar that specialised in down and out alcoholic artists but it closed in 1922.
The other thing that amazed me about this list was how many of the experiences deemed memorable were food based, and obviously eating foods that were wonderfully exotic to me; a Japanese restaurant, coal oven pizza, cous cous, Dunkin’ Donuts, Bagel Buffet. It’s kinda crazy to realise I had never eaten Japanese cuisine or a bagel before the age of nineteen. I had eaten plenty of donuts, but only as an after school treat, not the kind that came still warm in a box of twelve different varieties from a store dedicated to donuts that you could and should eat for breakfast. That really did blow my mind. As did baby/lady sized Budweisers and Millers. My favourite food based memory here is ‘one day we slept all day and then had soup’. Sounds like a great day, or more likely a great night before. I wish I could remember it. Considering I had a baby by the end of that year, it might have been one of the last times I ever indulged in the delightful act of sleeping all day.
I’ve also noted ‘The diner with Roe and everyone else’ but the name Roe doesn’t even ring the tiniest bell. Who was Roe? Will it suddenly come to me while I stand in a supermarket queue one day? Will I wake up in the middle of the night with a burst of explosive memory? It makes me wonder, what else has been wiped from my mind? How much do we forget along the way? If it wasn’t photographed, did it even happen?
Then there’s the shopping. I had heard about Reminiscence from the ultimate NY dream girl, Suzi Sidewinder, and the idea of visiting it made me salivate. A giant vintage clothing store, with bonus weird modern stuff. I must have spent four hours in there going through racks, though my funds were very limited so it was probably more change room fun than purchases. I looked it up online and found it described in a blog from 2013 as “A secret shopping Mecca for Goths and artistic Manhannites”.
I sent a photograph of this list I found to Jane the other night, my school teacher and extended family who I stayed with in New Jersey.
She replied ‘The importance of writing’.
It struck a nerve. Without writing so much is lost in the ether, never to be recovered.
I do remember loving New York department stores, they felt so much fancier and so much better lit than our Australian counterparts. I bought myself Valentino lingerie on sale and a Clinique ‘set’ at Bloomingdales and felt like a million bucks.
C’est Magnifique was a super cool jewellery store opened in 1959, also on my list thanks to Suzi Sidewinder. It was a hangout for in-the-know people, ‘an iconic Village fixture specializing in the creation of imaginative costume jewelry for actors and artisans’, making custom items for Madonna and Jimi Hendrix, and Jim Skull rings for Johnny Depp and Iggy Pop. Like so many of the best places, they were forced to close in 2014 due to sky rocketing rents. Alfred Albrizio III, the son of the original owners, carries on the tradition with his Sterling Assault studio, still crafting iconic silver skull rings and flaming heart pendants.
I started a pensive song I never finished about a waitress who makes a bad move from Jersey to Florida while I was sitting in the car park when Jane took me to Rowe-Manse Emporium in a strip mall in New Jersey, an old school department store with Greek statues out the front, shelves heaving with bargain glassware and ornaments and Tiffany lamps and an expansive gourmet deli section with exotic flavoured jelly beans before that was a thing and a fully bedecked Christmas Village and bored girls working the checkout chewing gum with towering fringes and frosted lipstick. I can still hear the tune clearly in my mind.
‘Well I remember Rowe-Manse in New Jersey, all those girls trying to get close to God, then I remember why I’m feeling so dirty, and that I better get on with the job…’
I wonder if it’s one of those songs that just takes some life experience to finish or if it’s destined to linger as nothing more than a few minutes preserved in melody. I remember I was trying to write something like a female Bruce Springsteen, wondering why there was no women writing stuff like his. I’m sure there were, and I just wasn’t aware, but it’s pretty wild to me now to think that I considered writing like that was a solely male pursuit.
Then there was the pilgrimage to a musical NYC that was actually already gone but the ghosts were still haunting the buildings and I wanted to party with them and soak up the vibes - the Pyramid Club, the Scrap Bar, Nells, the dive bars in Alphabet City… then back, back, back further into the shadows of time, to the Village Gate and the imagined world of candlelit earnest folksingers in black turtlenecks. I wanted to take a little piece of them all with me and keep them in my pocket, for inspiration or something, I don’t know. Cultural touchstones.
Here I am, beaming with excitement in the dirty New York streets in 1989, wearing earmuffs (so cool! I’d never seen any before except in movies!) and vinyl cowboy boots, in a red & black gingham stretch wool backless jumpsuit and leather jacket that both belonged to Suzi Sidewinder. What was in the bag? I wish I could remember. I bet it was something great.
PS Here’s Suzi Sidewinder, my ghostly guide to NYC.
A few extra reading resources on old school New York City:
literally just wrote the book on vanishing spaces in New York and his Substack Walk On The Wild Side NYC features great in depth interviews he did with amazing people like Amy Rigby and Greg Tate for the book that didn’t end up in the book for whatever reason.
This Must Be the Place: Music, Community and Vanished Spaces in New York City
Girl To City by
- a great memoir
The importance of writing. And of writing things down. Or up. To be excavated later.
What we remember and what we forget, very telling. I like to believe I have a pretty good memory but I certainly don’t remember everything. Write it down! Loved this piece, thanks Lo.