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Tag: New York Dolls

New York City, Punk Rock, and Drug-Fueled Tales Through Richard Hell’s Eyes

Seeing the wonderful Susan Seidelman film Smithereens (1982) piqued an interest in Richard Hell, who is oft credited for launching the punk rock scene in NYC, and in particular at CBGB. Hell basically plays a much less successful version of himself in the film. I finished reading his 2013 autobiography, I Dreamed I was a Clean Tramp a few days ago.  Hell helped found the seminal band Television (original called the Neon Boys) with Tom Verlaine, but the two didn’t see eye to eye and he left the same week that Jerry Nolan and Johnny Thunders quit the short-lived New York Dolls. The three formed the band the Heartbreakers (not to be confused with Tom Petty’s far more famous group) and soon thereafter, Walter Lure joined as the second guitarist. During Hell’s stint with the band, they recorded four demos and one live album that wasn’t released until 1991. In early 1976, Hell quit the Heartbreakers and fronted Richard Hell and the Voidoids, another short-lived band with Robert Quine, Ivan Julian and Marc Bell. Their first album Blank Generation was released in 1977 on Sire Records and they followed up with Destiny Street in 1982 on Red Star Records. Some of the timeline of Hell’s memoir overlapped with my coming of age trips to NYC when I was in art school at RISD. I stayed with my older sister who lived in various tenements apartments in the West Village and Soho before it was gentrified. I really didn’t frequent the East Village back then (Hell’s haunts), although I did spend a lot of time on the Lower East Side. The exception was a laughable off-off Broadway production of No Exit at the Royal Playhouse at 219 Second Avenue. I wasn’t the music club type, so sadly I never went to…

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The Demise of Gem Spa is Another Sign of a Vanishing NYC

Like so many others businesses that have closed in the last decades, Gem Spa in NYC’s East Village couldn’t sustain its business and closed in early May 2020. Although they had financial problems over the years, and most recently in 2019 after losing their lottery and tobacco license, the current owners said the COVID-19 pandemic was the last straw. If you read my blog, you may know that NYC is like a second home to me. The closing of Gem Spa feels like one other place of my youth has slipped away. Although I’m also upset that Jeri’s Grill closed in Chicago, NYC will always be associated with a magical time in my early adulthood when I was spreading my wings creatively, intellectually, and emotionally. This was before sky-high rents forced so many businesses to close and prior to gentrification stripped the Big Apple of much of its gritty character. Unfortunately, Gem Spa isn’t the only thing that has changed on this once incredibly hip intersection of the East Village. When I visited in 2018, I thought St. Mark’s pretty much resembled many other somewhat gentrified NYC streets, albeit with a few vestiges of its storied past.   Located on the corner of St. Marks Place and Second Avenue, the beloved and iconic newsstand dates back to the 1920’s. It operated under a different name until 1957 when the name changed to the Gems Spa – at some point the S was dropped in Gem. It was a favorite hangout of Beat poets, hippies, punk rockers, local residents, and tourists. They sold local newspapers and magazines, including a wide array of international and underground papers and magazines, except for pornography. The little corner business was also famous for its egg creams (a NY drink made from milk, chocolate or vanilla…

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