DIRTY IN JERSEY PT. 2

This is a special North Jersey edition of DIRTY IN JERSEY. I ended up in some weird fucking rural town for the Fourth of July weekend. The train ride took like two hours to get from NYC into actual north fucking jersey, like near Buttzville. It’s technically not dirty jersey, but it’s worth noting since we blew shit up.

Fuckin’ swastikas!

Fuckin’ flag burning!

Fuckin’ explosions!

Fuckin’ smoke in the forest!

Yeah hiking!

ANDY FOLK’S INTERESTING THOUGHTS #2

Pizza is Pornography!

Last June dozens of news sources carried the story of a Winnipeg pizza shop that offers different types of ponorgraphic images taped to the bottom of each box so the image is revealed as the pizza is consumed. At first this reminded me of those video-trivia games in hick bars where if you get enough answers right you get to see a soft-core photo of a naked model, or Tri-Lam’s prank in Revenge of the Nerds where, during a college fair, the nerds sell pies with a topless picture of a rival jock’s girlfriend on each tin. Apparently the soft stuff wasn’t the end of this pizza shop’s gimmick, however. Associated Content reports: “The pictures range from softly-lit, lube-on-the-lens pictures like in Playboy, to raunchy, hardcore photos that would make Larry Flynt blush.”

What sounded like a slow news day in Manitoba turned out to be a major business success. Porno Pizza became the hottest pizza joints in town, and owner Chris Wildeman is already opening franchises throughout Canada. Porno Pizza’s triumph can be seen not just as a curious fluke but the logical extension of a phenomenon in which pizza is sexualized. Wildeman himself admits the business angle was not arbitrary, “he came up with the idea for the naughty pizzeria while talking with friends about classic porn flicks, in which ‘pizza delivery guys meet lonely ladies and deliver more than just pizza.’”

Indeed, the pizza delivery boy porn plot is most frequently satired, yet the old classic pervades into contemporary pornographic films. The pizza in these scenes generally acts as a mcguffin, a prop to move the plot along. On BigSausagePizza.com, however, the pizza takes a central role– and not just in one scene, but in all of them. Members of this site actually pay to see sexual situations that always involve a fresh, piping hot pizza. While Rule #34 holds this bizarre fetish is inevitable, the sexualization of pizza evades explanation as merely a fringe fetish.

Consider this now widely-quoted early Stella sketch:

DIRTY IN JERSEY PT. 1

I’m from southern New Jersey. It’s as close to the actual south you can find in the northeast. Everything down there is an outskirt of Atlantic City, and completely divided from the rest of New Jersey, so it’s probably not what you’re thinking.

Picture this, everyone with a real job works in casinos and lives in trailer parks or newer suburban popups. Ladies get fake boobs and spray on tans and get married to dudes with boats who drink beer and go fishing. Oh and everyone talks like a redneck with a philly accent and pronounces “water” like “wood-er” which is frightening to outsiders.

When my grandfather died, he wrote an 8 page letter summarizing the entire history of his time living in Jersey. It’s mostly about growing up as a minority Italian Catholic in a WASP world who didn’t want him. He wrote the letter to my oldest cousin, but photocopied it for the other 18-20, I forgot how many there are. Italians have a shitload of kids.

Here’s an excerpt:
Your Great Grandparents had Nine(9) children. Four(4) died either at birth or shortly there after. In those times medicine was not as you know it. We had asprin. People died from the flu, pneumonia, etc. Hospitals were places people went to have children or to die. Penicillin wasn’t here till about 1942.

As I said, we lived on 6th street. We lost our house during the Depression. So we had to move to Main Street. We moved here when I was two(2) years old, in 1938.

You will have to understand certain terms. South Jersey was WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) country. Foreigners were unwelcome.

Stay tuned, and go blow something up for Amerikkka!

What’s black and white and red all over? My Crass shirt.

I’ve been hard at work on the new issue of Chief Magazine, which is being released in segments all this week. I’ll update you soon, because my photo essay, “Punks del Barrio” from Mexico City will be in it!

Speaking of Chief, during my commute home today, this blogographer had his first bike crash. My back axle bent under pressure, locking my back wheel against my frame. To put it in perspective for the Brooklyn-savvy, I was sprinting to beat the rain going downhill on Leonard at Meserole.
I took such a noticeably bad fall and skid that traffic stopped to see if I was okay. In the midst of an adrenaline rush, I said yes and walked to the L train in the pouring down rain.

My bike and body got pretty fucked up, but my macbook pro which went flying down the street and avoided traffic is surprisingly unscathed. The bike crash ripped the strap on my bag and the computer hit the street and got soaking wet but still works perfectly which is incredible because I don’t have ANY money to replace it.

The real kicker though, is my heel. This shit is totally swollen and it hurts to walk on. I’m planning on spending the next couple days high as fuck on painkillers and playing NHL 98′ on Super Nintendo.

There’s all kinds of beautiful stuff to look forward to, so don’t worry at all. I have some photos of my insane family playing with guns and fireworks in New Jersey, and the Chief staff has a couple of tricks up their sleeves as always. Do stay tuned, but if you get bored check out my Best-of set on Flickr:

MICHAEL JACKSON DEATH SHUTS DOWN INTERNET

Mashable reports that as of 8:45PM EST 35% of all tweets on the twitter network relate to THE DEATH OF MICHAEL JACKSON.  Iran was boring anyway.

While making these in photoshop, twitter crashed and I experienced my first OS X failure, doomsday is upon us! First the celebrities then your parents!

HANK III IS THE PUNKEST MAN IN COUNTRY

Hank Williams III wears a cowboy hat and punk patches, he’s a perfect poster boy for the punk/redneck aesthetic that is so uniquely American. I love him for that. Last night I put on my America/EYEHATEGOD patch hat and made my way over to the Williamsburg Hall of Music (formerly North 6) to check out some true outlaw country.

There was a cool mix of people at the show who didn’t really fit together that well. This beefy redneck with a neck wider than Henry Rollin’s remarked that I was a faggot for taking photos, but he was pretty much correct in a sense. ‘Faggot’ in the working class America vernacular I mean, devoid of homosexuality and strangely acceptable to say about a stranger. I am a skinny culture vulture who lives in Brooklyn and got guestlisted to take photos at a country music show, so keep on slurrin’ REAL AMERICA!, I’m proud to be your token faggot. I’m even happier that you made the trip to Brooklyn from your ranch home for some true fucking country music. Just for good measure though, I chugged some weed beer and made out with this girl wearing a crass shirt.

Hank III knows a little bit about being an American rebel. If you couldn’t figure it out by “the third,” he’s the grandson of country music legend, original Hank Williams.

There was a surprising amount of stage dives and awesome moshing for the fast rebel anthems and ballads to drugs, drifters and sex. And that is great, because the audience was largely made up of over 40s who didn’t seem that mad when crusties bumped into them. Oh, and GG Allin’s brother, Merle was there stirring up a little chaos as well.

I was really impressed by some of the trashy fashions that people were wearing, and I suspect some of them were not as ironic as I thought they were. In a way it made it better though. Scarier, but better. Liking country music and the culture around it is kind of hard to do in Brooklyn. It requires kind of a fetishization of a rebel ideal which judging by the crowd last night, people interpret in a really weird variety of ways.

After the country set, about three quarters of the people there left, leaving a handful of punks and crusties for Hank’s incredible metal side project, Assjack. Hank was on guitar with a GG Allin-esque Gary Lindsey taking on vocals and leaving a bloody mess all over the stage as well as the audience. Nobody really gave a shit though, because they played a really energetic and deeply southern metal set that got everyone super psyched.

After the show, Hank III did a little meet and greet with fans out front, and I got a chance I ask a question that had been on my mind all night.

@wdunleavy: Hank, I’m wondering, do you think your grandfather would have enjoyed an Assjack set? Or would he completely hate it like a lot of your country fans who left this evening?

Hank III: Wow, what a question. Y’know, back in his day (1930s), there really wasn’t a lot of electric on the stage. Honestly I don’t think he would have liked it much. It’s a good thing people die I guess, things change too much to keep up forever and my grandfather was an outlaw for his day.

@wdunleavy: You’re a fucking hero, goodnight.

Later that night, I saw Hank III wasted in the street autographing a motorcycle and a gang of crusties invited us to a party at c-squat. I knew the night was over and I got the fuck out of there. Incredible show, incredible crowd, highly recommended.

* I wrote this review for Brooklyn’s Chief Magazine

I JOINED A BROOKLYN BICYCLE GANG

Photo of the bike pile by Marisa Abaza.

The Bicycle Film Festival said goodbye to New York City this week and moved on to Filthadelphia, the bike culture mecca of the east coast.

I decided to go check it out despite the unseasonably rainy weather that has drenched NYC over the past three weeks. It seems like everyone who rides a bike has been forced to bite the bullet and get soaked this month. It’s that kind of monsoon rain that creeps up on you out of nowhere and soaks you in the ten minutes before it blows over. FML!

We made it late to the meetup spot in the park and spent a little while busting out track bike tricks like this little “swan” move going on in the photo. Apparently everyone biked together from exhibit to exhibit at the festival but we have google maps so we just did it on our own.

For people who don’t own bikes or didn’t want to be seen riding their bikes, there were some pedicabs on hand. If pop culture and current events are any indicator though, you might be better off walking than taking pedestrian-driven public transportation.

Just ask Seinfeld:

and The New York Times:

Drunk Hipsters Go Down Wrong Side of Williamsburg Bridge, Die

There was some radical bike art to be seen, like a pimped out track bike with a sound system and a touchscreen mp3 player attached to it. I tried to take a picture with it but this guy got really angry when I hit play and the speakers nearly blew themselves out.

Fuck yeah, I don’t know how to ride this but it’s a fucking skeleton bike!

My bike art, let me show you it. This was one of the smarter pieces we saw. It’s a bike made out of all individually boxed bike parts that were glued to the table and impossible to steal.

Then there was a MESSENGER-BAG-LOAD of shitty art that cost like $1,000. Seriously, if art is this easy why am I even blogging? Peace the fuck out, internet.

Oh, and the only surviving historical photograph of the San Francisco earthquake of 1906:

My gang and I decided to unlock our bikes from this stool and hit the road, making a little pit stop for viking fast food on the way home. Check this shit out next time it’s around. Biking around Brooklyn and Manhattan is a thousand times more fun than reading about it on the internet. (AND I LOVE READING ON THE INTERNET!)

Jonathan Schipper’s American Muscle

New Yorkers might want to go see this cool art thing. It’s at 191 North 14th Street in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Jonathan Schipper is crashing two American muscle cars in super slow motion and you can hear the glass crack every couple minutes or so. They’ll be turning up the speed and getting drunk at the closing party on Sunday June 28, 2009.

I would ask you to say hello to me there, but I’m not going because I will be outside of NYC for the first time in 7 months. FUCK YEAH

Here’s my photos of the exhibit which I took for an article by my buddy Justin Skrakowski at Chief Magazine.

[...] Chief: How do you feel about the pieces once they’re complete, once they’ve reached their full crash?

Jonathan Schipper: I mean they’re beautiful, they’re still very interesting, they’re sort of more like residue, but the center of the piece is while it’s moving, it’s just completely different.

Chief: The first time we came here a week ago, there was a very foreboding atmosphere, it was very tense [...]

PHOTOGRAPHERS: SUBMIT TO CHIEF PHOTO OF THE DAY

Do you want your photography exposed to like a million people in NYC? Lucky for you, I’m now in charge of curating Chief Magazine’s photo of the day.  Also, be sure to include your name, location, and a web address you would like me to hyperlink!

Please submit a JPEG file of at least 1000px on the longest side to:

POTD@chiefmag.com

MARKET HOTEL MYSTERY

I wrote this post for CHIEF MAG today, and thought you might enjoy a little crosspost action while I sort out all these guest columnists!  Word to the wise, BLOGGING IS HARD WORK!

Rumors abound on the twitternet this morning about a possible Market Hotel closure last night. Apparently two plainclothes cops entered the building, but beyond that it’s unclear what actually happened.

Since we don’t know what really went down, we’ll do this pick your own ending style:
Scenario #1: ‘The Cops’ busted the show promoter (not Todd P) for illegal use of space, alcohol and weed distribution. (turn to page 69)
Outcome: The Market Hotel, and that guy, are totally fucked.

Scenario #2: This didn’t happen, or a one-line email from some drunk kid at the show was exaggerated and misinterpreted on twitter. (turn to page 420)
Outcome: Market Hotel is Fine, we got fooled and rumors prevailed over news again.

Scenario #3: Newly opened, Beauty Bar, and crossover Latin club, Angels, are trying to move in on Market Hotel’s ‘hipster market’. They made up the story and propagated it to give them a bad name. (turn to page 666)
Outcome: Holy shit, a race war is declared on Puerto Rican Pride Day. We’re fucked and it’s time to take advantage of the housing crash and move back to WEST WILLIAMSBURG.

Brooklyn blogs, Free Williamsburg and Assme had this to say:

Ric Leichtung, the promoter from the show last night, just got in contact with me and confirmed that plainsclothes [sic] detectives DID enter the premises around 1 a.m. last night and talked to him, but no summons were issued and no one was arrested. Ric then claims to have shut down the show on his own accord because he no longer felt comfortable, and that the 15 or so kids left exited the building without issue.

Well that’s a relief, IF YA DONT KNOW, NOW YA KNOW

TRIPLETRIPLEUPDATE: For the whole truth, turn to TODD P’s RESPONSE