Back to Detroit - Wayne Kramer

Wayne Kramer, one of the MC5's guitarists, after a life of missteps, drugs and jail, righted himself. Since then he's released some heavy hitting albums. They're mixes of protopunk guitar rock, beat poetry over tape loops and pretty instrumentals. I recommend them heartily.

For our purposes I'm posting his video for "Back to Detroit". It's his town and the song is about the lost place that city's become. The video's a little too dark at times but the bleak, hopelessness of the place is conveyed. Enjoy!



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Is Bloomberg (and the rest of the politicians) insane?

When I read that Mayor Bloomberg suggested the Times Square bomber might have been a lone crazy or "somebody with a political agenda that doesn't like the health care bill or something" I was floored. Aside from, at best unintentionally, linking it to the Tea Party crowd, it seemed, well, sort of dumb. Now I don't know that it wasn't a "lone wolf" but I sure as anything don't assume from the start that someone who's put a bomb in TIMES SQUARE near the VIACOM building(hello, South Park) is upset about the health care bill. Not as one of my first choices. Probably not as my eleventh or eighty seventh choice. When someone tries to set a bomb off in a very public place in NYC I think Islamic terrorists. I base on on a vast preponderance of past experience. I may be wrong but my point is that if I were to start looking for suspects I don't think I'd start with the anti-health reform bill crowd.
Now that a naturalized US citizen from Pakistan was caught on a plane ready to lift off to Dubai I'm wondering if the mayor will retract his statement. I hope it does prove to be a lone wolf (though, of course, the possibility of dozens of other similar men acting in a similar fashion in the future scares the bejabbers out of me), but I'm sort of doubtful that he has anything important to offer in the way of a health care bill critique.
Was the mayor trying to allay New Yorkers' fears by making the bombing attempt look like just some run of the mill Patriot movement militia member? Is he worried that if he says it might have been, shall we say, at least related to the larger Islamic terrorist offensive against the West someone will look at him askance? I, surely, cannot see into the little heart of Mayor Bloomberg and discern his motives. I will say, though, that I wish he'd simply said 'no comment', or 'the investigation's proceeding'. Then we wouldn't have the experience of his dismissive little gust of nonsense being revealed as wrong and I wouldn't be worried that he was simply lying or, worse yet, wrong, revealing a lack of understanding of the dangerous situation this city was in on Saturday night. Please, tell us the truth about what you actually know or keep your mouths shut. Don't try to calm us with misdirecting nonsense or scare us by revealing your blinding ignorance.

Richmond Terrace as Classical Playground

Once upon a time, when Staten Island was a playground for the more than moderately wealthy, stately homes and near palaces graced the county. One notable location was Richmond Terrace, particularly between the ferry terminal and Westervelt Avenue. The only remaining evidence of this grand period is the weed shrouded Pavillion catering hall on the corner of Westervelt and the Terrace.
Once several ornate, classically columned and decorated homes graced Richmond Terrace looking northward across the bay towards New Jersey and Manhattan. Staten Island actually had a elegance that seems utterly alien to its car jammed streets and too-small townhouses.
By the early decades of the last century these homes, like the great mansions of the Hendersons, Vanderbilts and Lows were being demolished and their land subdivided. I'm not sure when these building met their ultimate fates but by 1928 the property of 386 and 396 Richmond Terrace is clearly overgrown, the first is for sale and both are in disrepair. I don't know where these wealthy families went or what became of them (whence the Pendletons, Barretts, Hendersons and Jewetts?) but at some point these homes and similarly scaled ones across the North Shore seem to have become burdensome or out of date and they left them to decay and the wrecker's ball.



Democratic Party Clubhouse - Now the site of St. Peter's Girls' School


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386 and 396 Richmond Terrace - between St. Peter's Place and Westervelt Avenue - 5/2/1928 - The former is listed on 1917 maps as the "West Day and Evening School" and prior to 1907 belonged to the Pendleton family. The latter belonged to the Wilkinson family. It's hard to tell without zooming in on the original digital photo but the school building has a sign indicating it's for sale.




396 Richmond Terrace - 5/2/1928 -


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404 Richmond Terrace - southeast corner of Westervelt - 5/2/1928 - In 1907 it belonged to one George J. Greenfield, and between 1874 and 1898 the Wilkinson's owned it. Much later it became the Pavillion, a catering hall where my aunt and uncle had their 25th anniversary party.



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Coolest New Toy

I never see my the comments people make when they make them only noticing them weeks after the fact. Well, a Dave left me information about a NYC website called City Map. Using the clever sliding bar you can see aerials maps of the city from 1924, 1996, 2006 and 2008. You can slide back and forth switching the pictures. It's awesome.
All the big houses I've written about (Ward Mansion, etc.) are present in gloriously blurry black and white. It's the coolest thing I've been shown in ages. Have fun!

Lost West New Brighton

Sorry my only posts lately haven't been particularly Staten Islandy, but, hey, what can I tell you?
I've written about, and posted about, the lost West New Brighton neighborhood now squatted on by the West Brighton Houses. It was several blocks of homes, a church (the original St. Benedicta), and was served by theaters and stores along Broadway and Castleton Avenue. Nearby where the factories and dockyards where the people made their livings. It must have been something until the City decided packing thousands of people in like ants was a better alternative than small tenements and a vibrant neighborhood.




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Shiloh AME Zion Church, Henderson Avenue between Broadway and Richmond Street (no longer exists) June 29, 1931 - This pretty little wooden church has been long replaced with a larger brick one.




St.Benedicata, northwest corner of Staten and Market Streets, August 7, 1930. The intersection no longer exists.


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St. Benedicata stood on the ground behind the seniors apartments on Broadway.



PS 18, northeast corner of Market Street - March 24, 1930


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This beautiful, ornate structure was torn down and replaced with a fairly generic box of brick and cement a block to the north. The cigar store in the pictures left was where the Broadway senior houses shown above are now located.





North side of Richmond Terrace west of Alaska Street, November 4, 1931


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These two buildings (found at the left of the 1931 picture)are the sole survivors from the five originally shown. I'm sure a featureless brick box (the one on the right) is a much better neighbor that stores with apartments overhead.

D & D - an old school fan's dream come true

I was introduced to the original pamphlet-style D & D rules by Densel E. in the Boy Scouts back in 1977 or so. He had Blackmoor, Greyhawk, Chainmail, the whole bunch. I was hooked. Later me and the Neighborhood started playing D & D (which a bunch of us got for Christmas) and eventually moved on to Advanced D & D. I remember walking to and from Smilin' Sunny's on Forest Avenue to buy my copy of the Dungeon Master's Guide.

Within a few years we had stopped playing D & D and moved on to other RPGs. We didn't like the class or combat systems in D & D. In DragonQuest and later in the Fantasy Hero we found better systems (if more complicated). Still, D & D was the first and definitely the one where the experiences, the fun and inventiveness were the best.


I recently was directed to a very cool fantast RPG site called Grognardia. Apparently, over the past few years a movement of "old school RPG" players has grown up. These people long for the simpler days when the first started playing and everything was fresh and very (very) uncommercial.

They remember and long for the days when the art was done by friends of the creators and the text type in rulebooks an modules was out of place. They remember umber hulks and displacer beasts fondly. The campaign worlds were the ones made up at night on pages of graph paper and with colored pencils. Dungeons ofter existed for no reason (except to garner treasure and magic items) in ridiculous locations. There were no endless reams of derivative and poorly written novels or an unending supply of modules set in somebody else's universe. Halcyon days.

As nostalgia overcame me I decided to see if I could download any of the old module covers just to see what I remembered. What I found was pure gold as they say (no, I don't really know where). Somebody posted EVERY old school TSR product. Every terrible Erol Otus picture, every superhero influence Jeff Dee picture. Every beautiful multicolored cover with sword wielding paladins, orcs and axe swinging dwarfs.





For about fifteen or sixteen years I played games on many weekends and countless days in the summer. Those were great times I can never go back to but I would never want to give up.

Anger is an energy (one of those occassional political posts)

Gutfeld makes me laugh and he's right on target. I feel like I've taken crazy pills when Paul Krugman gets worked up over anti-Pelosi literature but earlier wrote that folks should hang Sen. Lieberman in effigy. I worked for NYC City Hall in the last years of Giuliani and constantly saw posters of him as Hitler (which was later done to Bush Jr.).

I'm not against all that sort of juvenile hyperbolic placard waving stuff. If you want to parade around with pictures of your enemy in Nazi garb and expose your dumbocity to the world, go for it. Just don't get your panties all in a twist when the other side does equivalent stuff.

And, NO, I'm not down with rock throwing, fires or going to some dimwitted politician's private home where his family's at. Though, again, seems I recall that was done to McCain, Rove and Wall Street people.