Favorite Eighties NYC

of the ones I experienced most directly THEN, it'd be Bernhard, Bogosian, Gray, Jarmusch and duh SONIC YOUTH.

I wanted to vote for the guy lighting his cigarette with a blow torch from the opening of SNL during the Ebersol years.

Keith Haring.

robin byrd

pounding nails in the floor with my forehead vs. my head was a sledgehammer

Laurie Anderson

got a free ticket to see her big (post O Superman) show at the Palladium in 82. she fiddled, deadpan-rapped, wowed the crowd and left me cold.

Jean Michel Basquiat

around 1986 i had a fruitless crush on this Britishes woman (tho she disguised her accent). in the course of teasing/leading me on she "casually" mentioned that she'd slept w/J-M B and was worried about his heroin use. Never knew what to make of his work then, now i think it's brilliant. timeless. classic.

Sandra Bernhard

when she made a rock album in the mid 80s i dutifully interviewed her for some forgotten rag. i was nervous- King of Comedy reprise? - but she brought the funny quotes and didn't make me feel like a square heterosexual lug. too much.

Eric Bogosian

he put out a record around the same time as Glenn Branca's early stuff and i was struck by how much closer his monologues were to Richard Pryor standup than to downtown performance art (which often included elements of music, dance whathaveya). he came into his own circa late 80s/1990 and then went off my radar screen. coulda been a good character actor, maybe?

Robin Byrd

her show was amateur-hour unwatchable and basically i would've paid her to stay dressed.

David Byrne

brief interview during the later days of Talking Heads and he was understandably guarded, cautious cagey. saw Talking Heads expanded lineup burn down the house at Forest Hills tennis place in 83. always wanted to encounter DB on the street but no such luck.

Don DeLillo

didn't he live in Westchester or some suburb? not a fan, except for Libra.

Karen Finley

"the yam lady" never understood how one could be a subversive avant-garde artist and dependent on government funding. talk about entitled.

Richard Foreman

saw his adaptation of um i forget which play at Shakespeare In The Park around 1984. the Elliott Sharp of theatre.

Eric Fischl

saw his retrospective/big show at the Whitney probably 87? epater le bourgeois and kind of a one-trick pony imo.

Bernard Goetz

in 1981-82 I frequented a tiny diner on the ground floor of a large apt building on west 14th street - The Courtney. A full dinner - meat veg starch & good cole slaw - cost only $5. Gregarious Greek waiters & grumpy geezer clientele. Fast forward to Xmas 84, when I return from Ohio and spy BG's geeky mug emblazoned on the NY Post front page. OMG THAT GUY ATE AT THE COURTNEY ALL THE TIME. sometimes the big city is a small world.

Spalding Grey

after his local breakthrough but before Swimming To Cambodia became a movie i recognized SG on the E train one evening. He looked disheveled and well lost. not the typical low-key downtown anti-celebrity, he seemed "troubled" in some obvious way i couldn't quite identify. sad.

Leona Helmsley

preferred Crazy Eddie when it came to obnoxious sales pitchers.

Bill Irwin

a name in the air but i never gathered what he did exactly. a post-modern mime?

Tama Janowitz

interviewed her for a little squib at the height of notoriety. expected a snooty hipster but she was a nice girl, smart and funny. is she still writing?

Jim Jarmusch

movies are great. saw his band the Del Byzanteens a couple times, closer to Depeche Mode than DNA. the road not taken?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47vqy5mIWIU

Ed Koch

summer 1981 i lived in a ramshackle SRO (hotplate/bathroom in the hall). after a fire nearly scorched my ass i started apt searching in earnest. looked at two places in alphabet city one evening after work, or tried to. first place was trashed w/holes in the wall. never made it into the second cause the local dealers chased me off the block when they realized i wasn't there to cop. or a cop. trudging westward i crossed ave A and spyed a troop of football-player-sized goons headinf toward me. now what? they were huddled around mayor Ed Koch, campaigning for re-election. how'm i doing he said; how'm I doing i thought smh.

Jeff Koons

never used this term much but he was yuppie scum. everything negative about the 80s. he probably voted for Reagan as an art statement.

Spike Lee

another feared interviewee who turned out cooperative, thoughtful & funny. i got to hang on the set of do the right thing for a day, v v cool.

oh yeah I guess I saw the first of Bill Irwin & David Shiner's theatre shows in the '80s -- great.

John Lurie

never connected w/his "fake jazz" thing but he cut a mean profile. effortlessly stylish.

Robert Maplethorpe

no surprise that his art caused an uproar in my puritanical hometown Cincinnati. kind of symbolized my journey to NYC though i operated in a different milieu let's say. he was a visionary, truly.

Jay McInerny

read BLBC in a day and enjoyed it but felt shitty, depressed and vaguely guilty afterwards. just like snorting coke always made me feel.

David Salle

a big name friend or associate of better-known painters? i followed art in the 80s but can't recall his work at all.

Julian Schnabel

the "plates guy" turned out to be a better film director than painter. don't you think?

Martin Scorsese's After Hours

holds up well. not definitive or iconic but delivers some authentic period flavor and local color.

Rev. Al Sharpton

google his name and Jacksons Victory Tour. should've gone to prison for Tawana Brawley affair.

Donald Trump

ironically his father made a fortune building middle class housing projects in Queens

also became a Republican spy later xp

Robert Wilson

wildly imaginative & creative but always stops short of making sense to my earthbound tastes. genius, emperor's new clothes or both?

David Wojnarowicz

i was obsessed with these short stories he published in East Village Eye, Bomb and the Just Another Asshole anthology. first person monologues and overheard dialogues zeroing in on the lower west side gay underworld and lower east side drug scene. life in the belly of the beast. brilliant, scathing, scary REAL.

John Zorn

admire his tenacity but never connected w/his music, even in my noize daze. like Robt Wilson a lifer.

Is Arthur Russell too 70s?

sorry for any namedropping or humblebragging but this list was like This Is Your Life Age 23-31.

xp

no but Arthur Russell was really low-profile for most of his life. even people on the music scene weren't completely aware of the scope of his accomplishment.

one name left off is Frankie Crocker, WBLS-FM program director and the best radio DJ I've ever heard. He defined the sound of the city 1980-1984 or so.

Love these stories, M Coleman!

And Frankie Crocker and Keith Haring definitely left off in error.

cool thread, thanks for the stories m coleman. voted for wojnarowicz.

this is really great

http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/fales/woj/dscref11.html

cool poll. m coleman, do more.

I saw Ed Koch once... by the payphones of a downtown Chicago hotel lobby about 8 in the morning in 1994. He looked somewhat discombobulated and the longer-than-usual feeling of deja vu I felt trying to recognize this familiar stranger was also a little disorienting. Finally, I remembered something Shirley MacLaine said in her psychic book about Ed Koch's long fingers and yeah, dude was totally Bela Lugosi in that regard.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Foreman ftw along with his right hand man James Urbaniak

always wanted to encounter DB on the street but no such luck.

This thread really brought the lovebug.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

thanks m coleman those were fun to read

No Ugly George, no cred