The King of L.E.S.

CHAPTER NOTHING

 Who could -or honestly should- resist falling down into the guttural throat of a Friday night, inside New York’s blackest-sheep district.

Marveling along the contours of a jewel so hypnotically dark and incalculable… just to become one -for a few hours- with the scandalous and always sincere, New York’s Lower East Side.

Like most of New York’s impatient logic, Houston Avenue cuts Manhattan Island from East to West with the unapologetic determination of Jack Pollock’s violent paint drips. And I figure, there is some wisdom in such violence.

The tangible difference between the South and the North sides of Houston Avenue goes way beyond a mere urban feature.

While the southern portion of the island is known as Lower Manhattan, the guardian and gatekeeper of the century old-day demons, inside the northern side of Houston however, newer, lighter and more agile demons wreak havoc.

As you walk along Houston Avenue from Soho, on the west end, towards the Lower East Side, one feels that, much like it should between  the Atlantic & Pacific oceans, in the cold waters of Antarctica… well here in New York, along Houston Avenue, there’s a spell, an invisible wall, deafening at times.

New York City, Nikola Tesla’s days.

And I think I might have found out why. As it happens, back in the late 1800s, Nikola Tesla had a laboratory right there on Houston Avenue. It burned down in 1895, destroying a considerable portion of his research. God only knows what kind of creepy energy is still at play here today.

South of East Houston, inside the LES on a Friday night, it is not very hard to stump into random pockets of chaos. New Yorkers are fascinating people, pretty peculiar, and I find it is here in the Lower East Side where they are at their purest form. Raw. Unremorseful. Alive like none.  

With a bit of luck, inside the LES, the “incalculable” will soon take the weirdest shape. It will propel your night away from our feared and insufferable narcotic weekend expectations. With another bit of luck, it will help you reset that idiotic neural pathway that had its days counted already.

Chaos could be such a great cleanser sometimes, isn’t it within its constant and unpredictable movement where we identify light, and maybe meaning? Like in the sweet cadence of a vintage movie projector rolling away, we can only understand as we superpose image over image, again and again.

There is magic in the making, but let’s be brutally honest too, there is also some in the breaking.

But if we’re simultaneously able to find magic -or divinity- inside an IG story of a bunch of plastic bags flying at the tempo of the wind… then truly, who the hell knows.

What we do know is that, inside the LES, when some souls step out onto the streets on a Friday night… they do so magnetically drawn -or could we say pre-ordained?- towards chaos or at least its savory potentiality.

And much like in Las Vegas, we never truly know in which form or when chaos will hit us, but what else could we ask for really, aside from the vertigo of randomness.

Our deep intuitive call is to find local superfluous uncertainty to supersede and silence our profoundly existential one. A silent pact to suspend ourselves from the flow of time, in order to appreciate the depths of a moment before waking up back inside the predictable rhythm of normality.

That taste on the tip of your lips, that “je ne se quoi” in the air telling us… just wait it out bro.

Shit will go down… one way or the other.

And then the fuzzy feeling when we know we’re inside a majestic symphony we can touch from the inside, a beautiful maze that we cannot yet read, and that it is just a matter of time, before one gets to witness an unforeseeable equation.

We will then subsequently, say even uselessly, try and make sense of the insensible; now inside the echoes, the smoke and the mirrors as we arrive to the bay of cascading and delicious post-mortems.

Not many things could be as addictive.

What a manic piece of work our brains are right?

CHAPTER BLUE

 Who here dares then, to throw the first stone?  

I bet you won’t, but I do know someone who would. Much like Jesus and his magical bag of fishes, well, but this guy’s bag is a bit different. It is full of first-stones and believe me, he rarely takes a break.

Left and right. Throwing stones. No contempt for consequences. Wherever they may fall, there’s where they were meant to fall. The truest agent of chaos -a human grenade- carrying the wisdom, the power, and the danger of a bipolar lightning bolt.

Drumroll please.

That Friday evening in the Lower East Side, not even a month ago, I found myself walking along the ineffable JM.

This dude takes iconoclasm to a level it should not be taken, definitely not for the faint of heart or not even your average chaos connoisseur. It would make absolute sense to call your insurance broker before hanging out with him.

I challenge you to go to Six Flags, climb up the Kingda-Ka rollercoaster and go “nah… not for me” with the seat belt… you’d feel safer there beltless.  

Honestly, every time I manage to walk away -better said escape- from our quickly-turning-terribly-down outings, I wonder if this time would finally be the last time I’d see him. No joke, I stand on the street and stare at him as he makes his way back into the night.

Kingda Ka rollercoaster 128 MPH in 3.5 seconds

I would openly question how many angels are working around the clock just to keep him alive… at least 4 full-time ones per week? And then a follow-up question… what’s wrong with these angels. Maybe scientology is for real… again my hopeless brain trying to formulate a trajectory to deduct an ulterior -and meaningful- motive to vindicate my intellectual prowess and so refuel my ego. Blab la bla. But then I just feel utterly stupid since I cannot understand any of it.

So I end up writing about it, certainly at least a decent excuse to order some pizza. Writing about it might bring that famous closure all those psychologists talk so fondly about while crossing their legs across from you… but chances are, I’d have to settle again for a gluten-haze temporary type of closure.

Why there has to be a motive… that is what I should be questioning myself, and finally learn to live and enjoy these loose ends. Easier said than done.

But let’s dial back to that Friday night, still a lukewarm one, the very last days of summer, right before the heavy rainstorm stealing away our whole weekend.

Now that I remember, by the end of that night, while I was escaping away… it had already started pouring.

CHAPTER SOMETHING

 JM had previously proposed we attend this punk-rock show over East Houston, just a few blocks away from my hotel and after the show, head to a post-punk / goth party nearby. I was feeling confident we’d had a great time.

We’re both 80s die-hard fans, old school stuff, call it wave-rock or postpunk… or even call it “heavy metal” (?) like one of our younger cousins would categorize-to-dismiss. We’re formally against anything produced this century, and it just feels pretty cool saying it so. 

That night we’d have some drinks, listen to great music and hang out with like-minded genXers and dark-boomers, hands down the best kind of boomers. 

The tickets for the show were 25 bucks each and JM would cover mine, since he still owed me some money from another show we attended in Pasadena, back last Spring. Now that I think of it, I should instead be writing about that other weekend. That was some crazy scary stuff. Too late, raincheck there though.

Anyway, the headliner at the famous LES’ “Parkside Lounge” was a brit punk-rock band (more rock than punk though) from the late 70s I’ve never heard of. JM had authoritatively claimed that they had played with The Clash. Oh damn. Not a bad sign. Sold for me.

Later that night I found that he actually meant that they played “during the same time” as The Clash did. Moreover, the following week back in Montreal I finally researched the band myself and found out that aside from both being British bands, this mysterious new band was from nowhere near the 70s or even the 80s or 90s. It was from the late 2000s! You see, there was quite a divergence. Highly probable JM had no clue who they were either. This he has yet to accept.

The band was called “The Len Price 3”, a strange name, long, sounds like a grocery store special… not the most marketable name perhaps.

The Len Price 3 live

On the other hand, The Parkside Lounge was pretty small, on a street corner. It had some outdoor tables over E. Houston where you’d find the smokers, a bar space in the main area where anyone could fetch a drink and sort of like a big garage at the back where the show was happening. There were no more than 50 people between 40s all the way to their 70s.

Crowd on the much older side, very small place and one unknown headliner. Not the most auspicious debut but let’s not forget, we were still on the goddam lower east side of New York with JM. Money-back type of chaos-guarantee.

It was going to be a night to remember. And like many great nights, they often begin with a round of beers and a crazy German coming to chat with you out of the blue.

CHAPTER SMILES

 If I remember anything from that german guy is that he told us that back in the day, there was a referendum in the U.S. I’m talking early 1900s, long time ago. Back then, the US had to choose an official language, and as it happened, English barely beat German by the thinnest margin, 52-48 or something like that. What a finding. I double-checked later on, and he was right. But that night, the German guy faded after our brief conversation outside the bar when we finished that smoke.

By that time, we were all smiles. We were on our second round of beers and JM’s face had that sweet smile of happiness. Picture Kung-fu panda’s right after having a Christmas meal. Such a smile of satisfaction could not last forever though. We were laughing and meeting new people, the headliner had not begun yet but the bands playing were already ass-kicking.

Kung Fu panda always ready

People that frequent places like the Parkside Lounge have this wolf type of call. I could imagine if we had a bat-signal it would be the hand gesture of the punk-rocker. Index and thumb pointing up and the other fingers half bent. These wolves prefer to walk around the periphery of culture and would immediately befriend anyone, I say anyone, that listens to Joy Division.

Yea! This is it. The Parkside Lounge on a Friday night. What else you want normie? We’ve got punk-rock, beer and beautiful, weird people with a deep disdain for society. A true heaven.

When “The Len Price 3” came on the stage, not even 20 feet away from us, in this car-garage turned garage-club with an 8-feet ceiling, everyone cheered and jumped. Just three guys; voice on guitar, base and chorus and behind both, one crazy-looking drummer. Three-minute songs, why in the world should they be any longer. That was goddam punk rock, and hell with everything else.  

I strongly recommend you this band. So great. I bought the vinyl and right now is not even 5 feet away from me. What a show they pulled. Best $25 you’d ever spend on a show.

Music should make us feel alive.

Music should bring out the crazy child inside every one of us.

Music should be raw. Viral.

May music and the LES… never part sides.

CHAPTER CHAOS

 Overall the show was quite a success. The band did 2 encores, and the crowd was raving. We decided to have one more round of beers at the Parkside Lounge before moving onto the post-punk / goth party, not even 4 blocks away over E. Houston Ave. At one point, I took my beer and stepped out for a smoke with some people while JM was chatting with a group of old friends.

Outside it was super nice, everyone was ecstatic about the show, what a great find was our consensus. But suddenly I saw JM stepping out of the club looking for me, I waved at him, he waved back and began his unforgettable approach.

From a distance we could tell he definitely had more to drink than everybody else, as he slowly meandered towards us like Slithe from the Thundercats, with his big Kungfu-panda smile and his tall pint of beer. Come over you! We shouted at him laughing.

Bit of a context, we were smoking outside standing where the Parkside Lounge daytime tables were typically placed, 30 feet away from the club’s door. Restaurants in New York you know, especially in the LES, do this thing during summer. They put some tables out on the street across the sidewalk, but at night they fold the tables and chairs and stack them up, I guess for the night cleaning crew’s. The concept behind it is nice, in summer is always better to stay outside as much as possible.

The Parkside Lounge

Well, on this fateful night, the Parkside Lounge’s stacked furniture bunch stood between us and JM. Anybody else I know, would’ve circled the stack to reach us, which would’ve taken maybe 3 more seconds. But JM, that night, believed he could incarnate the hypothenuse principle. In what was a very quick affair, he lifted both his arms. In one hand he was holding his beer and in the other one, his joint and so, he decided to go through the stack like a Terminator type of Homer Simpson.

In retrospective, I think that his critical mistake was to lift both arms in unison, and in such a vertical fashion. Like a fat swan attempting to fly or like Nadia Comaneci… 40 years later, going back to the Olympics. Newton’s laws could be nasty sometimes.

The arm holding the cigarette, he didn’t need to lift it, it was more theatrics I suppose. He could have kept it low for any emergency. The hand holding the beer that I understand; the glass was pretty full, and deliciously cold, it was to be protected at all costs.

What followed was one cinematic human deconstruction. It was, hermetically put, unbridled chaos. It could’ve been rehearsed one thousand times, but I swear that the artistry within his fall could’ve never been bested.

It is said that time itself is relative and when we get closer to lightspeed, time slows down. The night JM fell to the pavement felt like a mashup between C. Nolan’s “Inception” and Q. Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” syringe scene. The deafening slow-motion effect that we all felt as his body, along with the beer and joint, could no longer sustain itself anymore and surrendered to the forest of stacked furniture.

As he fell, he met the pavement with the driest drum-type of sound; his full body weight fell first on his knee. Eagle down. Beer and cigarette lost to the streets. We hurried into the stack to clear the space. Girls came panicking offering help, and I rushed them to get us water and towels from the bar.

He decided to stay down for a minute. I kneeled next to him. We smiled. We laughed. You’ll be fine dude. Let’s stay here a while. One by one, the guys went back into the bar until we were alone sitting on the pavement.

THE LES EPIPHANY

 I have to admit one of my most recurrent archetypes, when sculpting for Light2matter, is the fable of Icarus. If you’re a close friend of mine, you’re probably tired of me talking about it. That story is all about going as further up as possible to meet our eventual downfall. It doesn’t get more romantic than that. A beautiful and necessary image; it depicts say, the road up to the top of the bell curve, striving to reach the climax hiding behind the inevitable precipice.

Thie thing though is, I don’t often talk about the Phoenix. Is not as romantic. But I should. The Phoenix follows Icarus, when he has already fallen. Nobody thinks of Icarus once he falls. Nobody cares. I think we just don’t want to see reality face to face. He has met the harsh reality of he who tries.

Facing failure is magic on itself. The courage of the Phoenix to stand up from his own death and crawl his way back from darkness, I think now, is the highest call for any man. Die to resurrect. Die to change yourself. But you must die first.

While Icarus has the impetus and thirst of the young man; the Phoenix archetype is different, its essence is gloomier. It’s about going through the tunnels of our own darkness and daring to stand up.

When comparing pictures of men before and after they go to war you can tell the difference in their eyes. There is a magnetic depth in the eyes of those who have seen and gone through horror.

If JM’s fall was indeed cinematic, his rising up a few minutes later was, if anything, truly inspiring. He stood up still in heavy pain. I wrapped his arm around my shoulders, and we slowly began walking together, talking about the Len Price 3.

After all, the post-punk / goth party was really not that far away.

The Legendary Phoenix

…………………