Tag Archives: Hoboken

I Never Knew You

It’s been a very rainy Friday. As I lay in bed this morning I thought, ‘now this is the day to stay in bed.’ Of course only a little while after that I got out of bed and started my day. There were plenty of mundane tasks to do, ennui waits. I wasn’t planning on doing much of anything today, it was raining quite hard and here on the sixth floor the wind was howling. A day not fit for man nor beast and here I was deciding which of those I was. I opted for being a man and duly stepped into the shower.

I got a few things off my chest with regards to this here blog. It’s noticeable if you know where to look. I mean, look beyond the obvious. Last night as I was going off to the arms of Morpheus, I came up with some lines for a song. I didn’t get out of bed and write them down, nor did I write them in the notebook I kept by the bed. The pen is there but the notebook is missing, or at least it was last night in the darkness. No, I went to sleep hoping to remember the line.

To my surprise I was able to remember the line so that worked out fine. It’s a good line, not to be revealed here, since I am trying to write a song. I was hoping to write a song for the benefit at Maxwells on the October 25, but it’s not as easy as I had hoped. I have songs in my head all the time and figured it would be easy, using the basic verse/chorus/verse, eschewing the middle eight. There’s still time anyhow. A few covers and an original might just be a few covers and nothing else.

Tomorrow there is an open mike in Church Square Park, sponsored by the Bibliothèque and I might just jump in for the sake of getting my chops. If I do that, I would be following a Flamenco act and possibly a rapper who raps in American Sign Language. And that would be after doing some volunteer work at the bibliothèque. Apparently they were all quite happy with me being there last Saturday so helping out again this Saturday would probably be helpful, but then again, no two days are the same. One day is busy, another day perhaps not so much.

Bill is driving to Atlantic City tonight and doing it again tomorrow night. So things will be quiet and quite dull here. Things just aren’t as entertaining and funny when Bill isn’t around. And once again I got all misty just thinking about him this afternoon. It could have been the rain though, but the rain doesn’t necessarily leave one with a warm heart does it?

Today is my brother Frank’s birthday. 11 years between us. He’s a good guy, but we’re so much alike sometimes that we can’t avoid butting heads. The first five minutes of seeing each other can be very combustible. There is a gathering planned on Sunday afternoon and Bill and I said we would attend. It’s in Saddle Brook, not too far away. It would be good to see family once again before we separate and come together again during the end of the year holidays.

So that’s about it for today I reckon. What’s done is done and of course there is always tomorrow and the day after. So much depends on the weather, both inside and out. But overall things should be alright as far as I can tell, and I can tell a lot…



05 Towers Of London

I Need U Bad

Another weird weather day. Up earlier than usual and out later than that, I was intending to do some busking. It was quite cool out and there were plenty of dark clouds threatening rain. I ran some errands including a stop at Solid Threads, a T-Shirt shop in Hoboken. Rand and Lisa got me a Jersey Fresh T-Shirt for my birthday and it seemed to be a size too small. I had a gift receipt which allowed for a hassle free transaction. There were other shirts I could have chosen from but I stuck with the original Jersey fresh plan.

From there I walked up First Street and walked over to the river. No buskers around, all quiet on the waterfront. I sat and read the Village Voice since I had nothing else to read. There was an interesting article about Fracking and how big business is doing whatever it wants, including fucking up the environment with polluted water and land. And then there is the nasty problem of natural gas being released through water lines, so if you turn on your faucet and no water comes out but gas does a simple spark can blow your house as well as your neighborhood to bits.

Why they don’t research solar power or wind power is beyond me. An inexhaustible supply is there ready to be used. It’s clean and would provide a lot of jobs, but instead we just concentrate on getting more oil from the ground and polluting the air with emissions. This is where a mash up of The Road Warrior and Koyaanisqatsi would make a lot of sense. Living on the top floor of a five story building I can tell you, there is a lot of wind out there. And some of you reading this can probably say there is a lot of wind here.

Back indoors I was surprised to see a friend from Murdoch daze on Facebook. Ulysses Sankitts, my old friend who saved my ass a few times has made it online. I will never forget the first time I met Ulysses, I started working for Murdoch Magazines a day before him. A friend from Maxwells was getting married that weekend and I was asked to DJ. Alas I had no equipment and the wedding day was just a few days away. I didn’t know what to do but I did know Ulysses and his brother Tony were also DJ’s.

So I asked this relative stranger if I could borrow his equipment, I would even give him my fee in exchange for the use of his turntables and PA. To my delight (and surprise) he said yes. That Sunday Ulysses and Tony arrived and delivered their gear and even set it up since I didn’t not know how to do that. It must have been 1987 since I remember playing Prince’s ‘It’ a few times at the reception. Twenty five years ago and here we are friends again thanks to Facebook.

We always were friends though, it’s not like I never saw him again. We became good friends, I crashed at his house out in Queens, partied with him at several clubs and he made a few appearances at parties that I had thrown, including the infamous basement party that must have had fifty people there, with party crashers. He seemed to get a kick out of my friends as did his brother Tony. Anyway he seemed just as happy to find me on Facebook as I was to find him. That Queens posse of Excer, Ray, Pedro and Ulysses is still around. Tony unfortunately passed away early in the century.




It wasn’t all grey…


Runaway Boys