The Hose has run dry.

The infamous Alphabet City gay bar, which opened earlier this year on Avenue B between East 13th and East 14th Streets, has spent months playing host to popular parties like Manthrax, Mooseknuckle and Rocket but is no more.

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There’s a sucker born every minute and fools aplenty. Why else would Jack Menashe, a former owner of the nightclub Lounge in SoHo, purchase the old Limelight, or shall I say “Slimelight,” which was the nightclub run by eye-patched Peter Gatien in 1983 in a supposedly deconsecrated Episcopalian Church on Sixth Avenue?  He’s planning on opening a store called Limelight Marketplace. This is even less savvy a business decision than John Varvatos turning CBGBs into a luxury boutique. Menashe is quoted as saying he’s taking what was formerly a ”blight” on the neighborhood and turning it into a “shopping haven.” Ha! What are they planning on selling—voodoo dolls, eye of newt and some witches’ brew? Or how about the hammer that Michael Alig’s reputedly used on the late Angel Melendez after that ill-fated night at the Limelight back in the ’90s?

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I overslept yesterday morning and woke up to a throbbing headache. Stumbling over to the PC in a haze, I typed the following words into the Gmail chat box I had going with my editor: “I’m going to sue you!” But my nausea returned and I went back to bed to snooze another half hour. Let the editor stew about my threats. It was his fault, anyway.

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Braving nightlife on Saturday is for amateurs. Going out until 5 a.m. on a Monday—now that’s a party. But my pint of Haagen Dazs and Saturday Night Live would have to wait tonight. Sister Morphine herself was playing in Soho at City Winery.

Sister Morphine is the nickname of and song by Ms. Marianne Faithfull, the legendary singer with the whiskey-soaked voice. Her show was sold out, but there were a couple of standing-room only spots at City Winery, a new, 21,000-square-foot bar/restaurant in Soho.

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Meredith Monk performed at the Guggenheim last week in the site-specific “Ascension Variations” forty years after she performed her piece “Juice: A Theater Cantata in 3 Installments” in the same spiraling staircase. Bathed in the golden light of the Museum, singers, dancers and musicians are the artworks and the audience begins on the ground floor of the rotunda, listening to the voices and music above as they wind their way upward. It was a totally New York City adventure, far better than any tourist attraction.

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I was on my way home at about 4 or 5 a.m. from the BowieBall this past Saturday. I'm a frequent late night subway rider. I never feel unsafe but usually the scenery on the subway cars is composed of sullen guys on their way home from a late-night job. They're usually going farther uptown than my own 96th Street stop. Once in a while, you'll get some partiers, but even then they tend to be low energy.

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The annual Gay Pride Parade, which began a year after the 1969 Stonewall Riots, may have once been a protest march, but it's long been a photo op to catch near-naked boys and leather daddies with leashes—not to mention trannies with tiny bikinis. Many grandmothers in wheelchairs were also spotted and quite a few teenagers who, in years past, could have been gay bashers rather than cheerers.

In New York City, even the so-called straights are queer wannabes and it was a feel good day, especially when it started to pour and the skimpy clothes became soggy and see-through as they danced through the streets in the rain. Grand marshalls this year were transexual actress Candis Cayne (currently from the ABC primetime soap "Dirty Sexy Money") and Gilbert Baker, the artist who created the "rainbow flag."

See a few more of the moments I captured on Sunday here.


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I think I was hallucinating at the Bohemian Decadence party in The Bowery Hotel Monday night. Sipping snifters of the bright green Le Tourment Vert Absinthe in the cozy lounge, I thought for a moment I was having visions of the old Lower East Side, the one on the Bowery with the flophouses and bums—skid row—but instead it was actually the turn-of-the century attired performers Amber Ray, Flambeaux, Molly Crabapple and Paul Nathan.

The absinthe itself was trippy but tasty. If you don't already know, absinthe's an alcoholic liqueur made from artemesia abinthium and herbs. Paris Hilton has already been "spotted" drinking the stuff, which is either a good or bad sign, given her kind of hallucinations.


Way back when, like the 1840s, French troops used the stuff as a cure for malaria.  Then punk poet Rimbaud, Verlaine and Baudelaire started drinking it and having visions. We banned it here in the United States but now it's legal and you, too, can scribble poetry and have delusions of literary grandeur.  I was writing witty little literary bon mots on my napkin while gazing at the hot models and some hipster media types like John Holstrum from Punk Magazine, a writer from Penthouse "Forum" (the absinthe made me forget his name), rock photographer John Gruen, and a guy who used to date my girlfriend.  What a crowd!

Nothing like the skid row days when the streets were jammed with slop joints, tattoo parlors, and 50,000 bums trying to check into flophouse. Or was that grizzled dude with the stubble in the corner an old timer looking for free booze and passed hors d'oeuvres?

All photos by Gerry Visco


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Here I was, backstage with Calvin Harris and his band at the Bowery Ballroom after climbing up to the tippity-top of the steep winding staircase where, in spite of the the humidity, he was chilling with his bandmates sipping a brewski in the dressing room before the show. Hmmm. No, there was no party back here.  No posse of arm candy, no illicit substances, no dancing or none of the wild merry-making the 24-year-old Scotsman sings about.

Harris cultivates the persona of a "playah," a heartbreaker and a hipster, getting all the girls, and even creating disco. During his interview he claims it's all part of his act. "I'm not like that at all," he told me, though I wasn't totally convinced. In one of his most popular hits, "Vegas," Harris proclaims, "I've got my car, and my ride, and my wheels (when I go to Vegas), I've got my drugs, and my stuff, and my pills (when I go to Vegas), I've got my girls, and my boys, and my girls (when I go to Vegas)."

Still, they seemed like just regular blokes, a bit shy and polite, standing around in the bright lighting, Harris wearing a goofy pink Fruit Loops T-shirt, another band member in a bright green T-shirt with cartoons of some primeval wolf man and the third sporting a glitzy Ramones shirt, all of them with adorably raffish mops of hair. Harris addresses me with a tentative grin. "Hallo! Right, New York Press.  We spoke on the telephone," he said, recalling his recent interview with me from his hometown, Dumfries, Scotland. "Sorry, my battery went dead," referring to our being cut off. 

"Yes, guys always use that excuse," I joked. Did I mention Harris is 6-foot-5 and, according to his MySpace page, wears a size 12 shoe? Then there's his self-deprecating style flavored by his British accent. Sigh!

Harris, 24 years old, is the newest success story on the electro-dance music scene. Harris and his band had just flown in after a couple of gigs on the West Coast, including the triumphant set prior to Prince's at Coachella. His eponymous CD came out in 2007, and he has another in the works that will be released later this year. The press has labeled him a MySpace sensation, with more than 4 million plays and 2.5 million page views.

"It's not true, I'm not a MySpace sensation – it was just a stroke of luck," he told me. So far, his colorful YouTube videos are approaching 400,000 views, among the top 50 in the UK. Back in 2005, while he was out of work, he put up a few songs on MySpace. Unable to get anyone to listen to the demos he'd sent out, he began staying up all night "friending" everyone in sight, including (luckily) an EMI Publishing executive, who loved his tunes and signed him up, allowing him to quit his job. That was the happiest day of his life.

One of Calvin Harris's most appealing traits is he makes it all look so easy. He claims to have no special talent as a singer nor as a musician and only used his own voice because he couldn't find anyone else at the time. As a teenager, and recuperating from a year-long illness, he spent many hours messing around on his brother's low-tech Amiga music sequencer, creating the sounds which have since made him famous. He considers himself more of a producer and has collaborated and remixed songs with the likes of Kylie Minogue, The Mitchell Brothers, Dizzee Rascal and Sophie Ellis-Bextor.

Harris is proud he's acquired a huge following among pre-teen girls, tweens and teenyboppers.  "They have just as much right to like music as a banker or anyone else," he says, loyal to his fans. Only a few years ago, he himself was stocking shelves in a department store and when he was 17, he actually packed fish into tin cans for a while. "My hands smelled awful," he confided.

Harris is the model for gawky youth everywhere with a dream, a synthesizer and a video camera. Did he create disco? No, but he has created a danceable blend of electro-funk with simple lyrics his fans chant in the "mosh pit," jumping up and down and singing along with Calvin for the entire two-hour show. Alongside the glammed up girls were many teenaged and early-20-something boys. And there I was, twice their age and mouthing the words to "I Created Disco," as I leapt into the air in my Frye boots.

The kids love him because he's unpretentious, and he's one of THEM, a loser who makes good. He mentions his girlfriend and how he enjoys knocking about at home, but in one of his most popular songs, especially with his female audience, "The Girls," he confesses how he can't help playing around and gets all the girls, but whether it's true or not, there's something very appealing about his all-inclusive taste in women:  "I like them black girls, I like them white girls, I like them Asian girls, I like them mixed-raced girls, I like them Spanish girls, I like them Italian girls, I like the French girls, And I like Scandanavian girls, I like them tall girls, I like them short girls, I like them brown-haired girls, I like them blond-haired girls, I like them big girls, I like them skinny girls, I like them carrying a little bit of weight girls."

In his video, he's shown with a bevy of beauties, all of whom are slender and Caucasian. "Calvin, what's up with that?  I thought you liked all the girls," I asked. "And what about the older girls." Characteristically diplomatic, he replies, "Well, you're white, and you're blonde, so I've included you, too." Was he also thinking I was one of those "carrying a little bit of weight" girls? I didn't ask, but said goodbye since they needed to start the show.

After a brief stop in Glasgow, Harris & Co. are off to Berlin where the band opens for Hot Chip on May  8th.


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Memento Mori is a term in Latin meaning we’re all mortal. You never know when your time is up.  Gorgeous, warm, talented, funny, 38-year-old Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge departed planet earth October 9th. S/he passed away from heart failure as a result of an undiagnosed complication in her two-year struggle with stomach cancer. But Lady Jaye lives in perpetuity inside her “other half,” cult figure, musician and artist Genesis Breyer P-Orridge.

In 1999, they created an art project called pandrogyny inspired by the “cut up” method developed by Beat writers Brion Gysin and William Burroughs. Calling themselves Breyer P-Orridge, to transcend limitations of self, body and gender, they cut themselves up into a “third being” resembling each other thanks to surgery and other body modification techniques. In keeping with pandrogyny, both Genesis and Jaye used the pronouns “s/he” and” her.” Hardly your typical couple, they celebrated Valentine’s Day 2003 with matching breast-implant operations.

This celebration of Lady Jaye’s life, will be held at PARTICIPANT INC. in their new quarters on the Lower East Side and is free and open to all. The gallery, known for showing unconventional artworks, featured the art project and performance series of Genesis and Jaye in 2005.  Expect the unexpected, including a room filled with their friends: creative and outrageous performers, musicians and artists.

Not an entertainment event per se, there will be lot of surprise performances including the music and go go burlesque of The Candy Cabaret, comprised of avant-garde guitarist Bryin Dall, Miss Marti, Lady Jaye’s close friend and vocalist of Beaut, performer, dancer and burlesque extraordinaire Julie Atlas Muz, drag performer and personality Hattie Hathaway (AKA Brian Butterick) and controversial performance artist and rock musician Kembra Pfahler, the lead singer of the cult glam-punk band The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black. The evening will showcase documentary video and film footage of Lady Jaye’s performances created by Marie Losier and Laura Parnes; a slide show created by Laure Leber, and other installations.

Along with Genesis, Lady Jaye was a band-member of Psychic TV/PTV3 and Thee Majesty. Known as Miss Jacky and Shecky Domination, back in the 1980s and early 1990s, s/he was an actress and model who performed in the original House Of Domination at Jackie 60.  S/he appeared in Off-Off Broadway theater productions and experimental films and was a member of BlackLips Theatre Cult with Antony of the Johnsons and the so-called “lunatic” Dueling Bankheads. Scott Ewalt met Jaye when they both were in the go-go dance troupe at Jackie 60 and recalled her as “always considerate and always so extremely elegant.”

Genesis and Jaye met each other in 1993 on West 23rd Street in the dungeon of a mutual friend, writer Terence Sellers. “I’d crashed on the floor and woke up the next morning and saw through the doorway a tall slim and beautiful woman in a Brian Jones haircut and 1960s style jeans, smoking a cigarette.” Although friends warned her Genesis was “bad news,” it was love at first sight for both.

An underground legend and worshiped by her fans, Genesis P-Orridge has always lived life on the edge, although living with Lady Jaye transformed her into a mellower being. Once labeled the “Wrecker of Civilization” by the British tabloids, Genesis’s goal has always been to shake up complacency and the status quo. In 1976, s/he co-founded Throbbing Gristle, one of the first industrial bands, coining the term “industrial music.” Psychic TV3 blends psychedelic, punk, electronic, and experimental music. P-Orridge has released more than 200 CD’s to date and has shown her art in numerous galleries and museums. A noted pagan and practitioner of magick, in the early 1980s s/he founded the Temple ov Psychick Youth, a group propounding non-mysticism and channeling sexuality for the creative process. Genesis has always used her body as a canvas and laboratory. In 1989, s/he was profiled in Modern Primitives, the bible for tattoo acolytes, and was a pioneer of tattoos, piercings, scars, cuttings, and other body modifications. S/he spent 18 months removing his teeth and replacing them with gold implants. S/he continues to dress like his late wife and s/he still feels her presence in her house, which is filled with Jaye’s image.

I myself met Genesis and Lady Jaye during an interview at their home in August, observing first-hand the couple’s close bond but was shocked to hear of her death only two months later.  On October 9th, they were at their home in Brooklyn taking it easy before resuming Psychic TV3’s world-wide fall tour. A bit fatigued, Lady Jaye suddenly felt ill and died in Genesis’s arms. Her last image recorded is of her giving the finger into her camera phone.  Although she never made it to 2008, she’d told her other half her slogan for the upcoming year was “Fuck ‘em all!”


S/HE IS  (STILL) HER/E: A Memorial Gathering To Celebrate The Life and Art, Loves and Laughs of Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge 1969-2007 (aka Miss Jackie & Schecky Domination), Sat. March 8th 7 pm, PARTICIPANT INC. Gallery, 253 East Houston St., (betw Norfolk and Suffolk Sts.), free (donations of red wine welcomed), 212-254-4334.



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