Request to Add Sixty Inmates to the House of Detention for Men. Currently the population cap at the House of Detention for Men ('HDM') is 1200. HDM is divided into eight housing blocks, each of which has a population cap of 150. One of these, however, houses. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez / oʊ ˌ k ɑː s i oʊ k ɔːr ˈ t ɛ z / (Spanish: oˈkasjo koɾˈtes; born October 13, 1989), also known by her initials AOC, is an American politician serving as the U.S. Representative for New York's 14th congressional district since 2019. Can-Am House Of Detention.avi Can-Am House Of Detention.avi Can.Am.House.Of.Detention.TorrentProject https.
On the last Wednesday of Advent, toward Midnight, I had the urge to and did taxi down to Max’s Kansas City for a nightcap with a lady friend who happens to write a column of witticism and miscellany in an underground magazine for the wealthy. Arriving at a portal which one invariably felt had been entered once too often, we were nevertheless greatly disappointed, almost heartsick, to find the premises dark, the glass doors latched, and an ignominious “closed” sign scrawled on a torn scrap of cardboard the only explanation.
Until his conviction, Mr. Carter remained in the Queens House of Detention, unable to post $25,000 bail. According to Mr. Carter, he had two visits from Mr. Cooperman during the months that the. And when you're an inmate at the Queens House. Of Detention, you follow the rules. Azzara, 42 next month, has been an inmate in the Kew Gardens. Of crack cocaine, his wife said. And like Azzara.
The next morning readers or the New York Times would learn that the restaurant was closed on account of darkness, foreclosed by Con Edison after a series of unpleasant occurrences: the withdrawal of Max’s creator Mickey Ruskin from management and controlling interest: the accession of one Donald Soviero who changed the policy from Steak and Chickpeas to Steak and Lasagna; and the very late recoupment or Max’s by Mr, Ruskin due to an escape clause in Mr. Soviero’s Chapter 11 agreement under which the new owner was entitled to pull out if it happened that his Sicilian cuisine did not reverse the restaurant’s fortunes.
But alas, we no longer read the Times since that publication increased its cost of home delivery, and so we would have no way of knowing, except by grapevine, that Mr. Ruskin had repossessed a restaurant which owed some $13,000 for heat and light, that apparently Mr Ruskin was unwilling or unable to submit to the pains in the ass necessary to raise that much cash, that he had returned the keys to the rental agent, and that most likely we had seen the last of Max’s Kansas City.
“Shit!,” hissed the lady. “How will I ever find N—?” [ed. note: unclear]
The latter was a person whose acquaintance the lady had made in the back room or the restaurant the previous Saturday evening, an acquaintance which had bloomed into intimacy since. And although I had not expected to revive any particular friendships that evening, I nonetheless experienced quite similar emotions.
And as the cold wind blew one wondered where to go. The lady, recovered somewhat from her loss, suggested we give the bar on the next comer a try. “I hear they have a new policy,” she said.
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The Barn at 19th and Park had never had a policy as far as I could tell. A big, empty room with vaguely rustic decor, it had been a faint presence for years, principally when the cigarette machine at Max’s was out of order, but it was, invariably deserted except for a few lonely men at the bar.
Although, if the reader must know, the person my companion had hoped to meet at Max’s was in fact the object of an other than natural admiration, nevertheless the Barn did not appear to be the sort of depths which maintain such desirable denizens. Putting it bluntly but aptly my friend said, “I’ll never get laid again.” Hyperbole? To be sure, but grown from a hideous grain of truth, for it seemed that Max’s was the last refuge for a certain type or variety. Bars, like magazines, breakfast cereals, and just about everything else, were becoming frighteningly specialized. Yes, you have your stewardess bars, your blaring homo discotheques, your blaring hetero discotheques, your after hours glitter clubs, your hooker bars, coke bars, leather bars, up the ass to the elbow bars, but where oh where is the melting pot where something unclassified might turn up, where brilliant conversation might exist side by side with shameless cruising? Where might my lady friend and I both go to have a fair chance for success in satisfying our divergent but mutually supportive habits of social intercourse? Elaine’s? McSorley’s? The Eagle’s Nest? Maxwell’s Plum? Le Jardin? We think not.
Variety, that spice of life, was oddly enough the exclusive domain of Max’s Kansas City. No matter how awful the crowd was, and it was in recent years heavily intolerable, one might still expect the occasional nuggets of intelligence and/or beauty. A Junkie might try to steal one’s coat, the men’s room floor might be awash with urine, the ladies’ room might be filled with preening boys, a person of indeterminate gender might stumble across one’s table in the torpor of a seventh Quaalude, and yet quite often something else might happen to tip the scales of enjoyment the other way.
Max’s heroically mixed quality had, after all, led to such meetings as Alice Cooper and Lou Reed, Candy Darling and Divine, Andy Warhol and Valerie Solanas, Sargent Shriver and Jackie Curtis, meetings which might not have a settings today. And although one could not immediately recall any of the great things which had been said there, one was nevertheless confident that they had been said, and even though in the annals of memory the great nights had all merged into one vague recollection, one knew that there had been nights of greatness. Yes, when it was bad it was very, very bad, but when it was good it was fabulous. What happened?
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According to Mickey Ruskin “any club starts off at the top and works its way to the bottom.” Mickey saw Max’s heyday near the beginning 10 years ago as corresponding to the Golden Age of Hard Edge and Color Field Painting, and his biggest thrill was not when Mick Jagger or Robert Kennedy walked through his door, but when de Kooning slipped in almost unnoticed.
Where the stars gather the mobs are sure to follow and the stars are forced to move on. For years though, Max’s was perversely successful in terms of exclusivity, no because you had to be somebody to get in, but because the stars weren’t bothered, and because of Mickey Ruskin’s lower East Side sphinx quality at the door every night and because of the authority with which he wielded such deadpan phrases as “It’s too crowded, come back in an hour girls.”
“Can I see your I.D.?” or the ever-popular “Sorry, couples only,” to singles and couples alike.
Perhaps Mickey wanted his place in the sun with his children and his wife and his ex-wives and his friends, and found it increasingly boring to come in every night when in his mind he was left with “the hangers-on of the hangers-on.” He was openly contemptuous of the latter day glitter kids and used to throw out the New York Dolls all the time just a year before they became the place’s most famous regulars. But even to the end, Max’s was a place where Alice Cooper, David Bowie, or Mick Jagger could drink in relative peace, and where a good customer could feel at home
Aside from the large debts incurred by Mickey’s failed attempts at expansion (Max’s Terre Haute, a singles-type place uptown, and Levine’s, a Jewish-Canadian cuisine restaurant-bar opened in partnership with artist Les Levine and intended to shelter Mickey’s original painterly crowd after the accession of the Factory demimonde at Max’s), there was also the case of the Max’s Kansas City Credit Plan.
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Many, many people ran up tabs, some great and some small, and Mickey in his ghoulish deadpan would constantly threaten them with the law. 86 or death, but never was it said that Mickey went through with any such measures, particularly with friends and regulars. At any rate, Mickey’s fiscal policies did contribute some fine moments. He knew how to run a joint by barter. It was almost Art Welfare. Plenty of people actually lived off the barbecued ribs, fried chicken, and chile served free at the afternoon Happy Hour. One wonders where they’re eating now.
House Of Detention Cracked
For the last few years, Mickey stayed away from Max’s more and more, holed up in the mountains, flying to the Coast, or touring in Florida with Max’s softball team. Meanwhile, numerous circles and sub-circles of the New York netherworld drifted through that space, making Max’s on Saturday night an almost impassable jungle of the latest mutations in nightlife cultures all decked out in their artifacts. Horrible? Of course, but not without its fascinations, even to the last. Still, the interlude of Sicilian cuisine was not a pretty sight and friends generally stayed away. One did not blame Mickey when, with the help of diarist Rene Ricard, he oh so tenderly took down the historic landmark red fluorescent installation by Dan Flavin from its corner of the back room. That was really the end of Max’s.
Supposedly the big lesson we learned in the ’60s was that Art is Anything. Could that have been a ruse? An excuse for the intrusion of certain techniques of Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism into workmanship and marketing? Obviously if that lesson had been learned well Mickey Ruskin would have been recognized as a Restaurant Artist, he would have been reviewed in the Times and interviewed in Art Forum, and when Max as was beset with financial difficulties, the New York State Council of the Arts would have declared Max’s Kansas City a work of Art, the greatest example extant of The Golden Age of Hard Edge and Color Field Dining and Drinking, not to mention its contributions to Pop Art nightlife, and Mickey could have received grants, and Vice President Rockefeller would own a booth and Frosty Meyer’s drinking tab would have been taken care of in perpetuity in exchange for the fiberglass worm hanging over the middle room, and John Chamberlain and Larry Poons and Neil Williams and all the Abstract Expressionist Heterosexual Alcoholics would have their own bar stools and all they could drink and the Flavin light in the back room could have been declared a landmark by the City of New York and receive electricity free in perpetuity.
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Is the closing of Max’s Kansas City an act of political terror by the forces of Art Detention? Who is Donald Soviero and why didn’t he pay the light bill? If the New York State Council on the Arts, the Ford Foundation, Governor Carey, Collector Rockefeller, or anyone in their league of appreciation were to express interest in Restaurant Art, a first step could be made toward establishing Max’s Kansas City as a Private Non-Profit Funded Institution with credit for all members and Mr. Ruskin as curator. Max’s would be not unlike a museum, to a limited extent the principle patrons of the club would be considered The Collection and to a certain degree they would be on exhibit to the public who would be strictly limited in access, paying full prices, and observing the “couples only” rule whenever necessary.
If you are interested in the ideas of Socialized Nightlife or Art Welfare keep the letters coming. Remember, “Billions for tequila but not one red cent for defense!”
This article from the Village Voice Archive was posted on November 14, 2020
The Coolidge High Five (class of ’75) — Bayray, Romeo, Kidd Funkadelic, Tetragrammaton, and Homeboy — were cozied up around the back table at their favorite Japanese deli, winnowing down vessels of sake and brewskis, and winding down the debate of the day. They’d spent this reunion haggling over future relations with the hiphop nation. For these aging voyeurs of the movement their connection had been thrown into crisis by a recent and desultory gig at the Ritz featuring 3rd Bass, Jungle Brothers, and A Tribe Called Quest.
All the fellas had agreed on one point from the jump. Hadn’t nobody been looking for a second childhood, but when hiphop came along they had no choice but to get down with the program, same as their contemporaries, those equally long-in-the-tooth and atavistic elocutionists from the Public Enemy posse.
“Yeah I regressed,” confessed Bayray. “Regressed like a muhfuhkuh who had neither a law degree nor proper home training. And was ready to fight anybody tried to tell me grow up, stop grabbing my dick in public and yelling ‘Yo, yo, yo, wotup Bee?’ All the hos in the house say, ‘Ladies.’ Excuse me, I mean all the ladies in the house say, ‘Ho.’ ”
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Kidd Funkadelic went for his. “It was like this for me, man: when the US Funk Mob folded, shut down, went bankrupt, got lawsuited tighter than an outta-mating-season mandrill’s ass, what choice did funkateers like us have but to hip, to hop, to up and jump on the boogie of the bangbang boogie to be? If it wasn’t for hiphop, all the brothers that didn’t sound like Michael now would be sounding like Lionel Richie. Or worse.”
Romeo took his cue. “Freddie Jackson. Fat Luther.”
“Yo man, why you got to dog Fat Luther out? If Fat Luther ain’t dope then the Mona Lisa was a man. You know he got soul.”
“Right. Courtesy of Kenneth Cole. But what does the big boy know about gittin’ busy?”
“Word, brother,” came the affirmation from the Darth Vader-pitched pipes of Tetragrammaton. “Yet do I detect a certain disenchantment with hiphop as heir apparent to the funk?”
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“From my perspective,” ranted Kidd Funkadelic, “I’m seeing Black rock on the comeback trail, and you know that’s more me than hiphop. So I’m kinda like, ‘Fuck hiphop.’ It served its purpose in my life and I’m outta here.”
This last statement struck Homeboy like a paper cut on the chin. “Damn if you ain’t about a mercenary muhfuhkuh. I mean hiphop is Black rock too. I still hear more freedom and rebellion, not to mention raw funk, coming straight outta Compton and Long Island than outta Living Colour. Even if Living Colour is more threatening to white boy hegemony by virtue of (a) de-ghettoizing the whole concept of black music, and (b) housin’ that travesty, the Elvis Awards! My beef is, okay, you got De La Soul, Jungle Brothers, A Tribe Called Quest, and that whole new Afrocentric, boho hiphop posse and they’re progressive, but the muhfuhkuhs put on the weakest shows in God’s creation.”
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“Yeeeah,” slid in Romeo, “like that wack overpacked-ass show at the Ritz last month where you had some main ingredients like the JBs, the Tribe-sters, and 3rd Bass. Every one of them said, Throw your hands in the air and wave ’em like you just don’t care.’ That line is older than they are. The new school needs some new lines. And some lessons in showmanship. They got to understand when they step out on that stage they ain’t stepping into the spotlight, they’re stepping into that long shadow cast by the likes of Bessie Smith and James Brown. Because right now it’s all the pimp mentality muhfuhkuhs who put on the most slammacious shows in hiphop, like Big Daddy Kane. If Monie Love hadn’t housed the gig sitting in with the Jungle Brothers, I would have left mad instead of just depressed. Monie Love is gonna be a cold craaazy star! She’s my hero, my idol, numero uno. She’s not a Puerto Rican, but for free I’d chauffeur her limo.”
“I hear these wild-assed West Coast boys Digital Underground throw down live,” offered Kidd Funkadelic. “Their videos are wicked. That album on Tommy Boy, Sex Packets, is a motor-booty affair and a half. It’s like a hiphop follow-up to Parliament’s Trombipulation, right down to that elephantine nose Shock G be wearing. The ‘Humpty Dance?’ That mug drops bass on me like I thought only Bernie Worrell could. And yo, check ‘The Way We Swing,’ how they not only sample Jimi’s riff from ‘Who Knows’ offa Band of Gypsies, but they scratch it up. So bold I forgive the blasphemy.”
Homeboy kicked it. “Yeah, them Digital boys are total fools. Remind me of my glory days as a fiendish Q-Dog frat brother. But now that I’m older, wiser, and damn near senile, I don’t know if I can be down. All they be rapping about is rapping, partying, and fiending for that fantasy drug they’re hyping, Sex Packets. I can relate to them trying to sell people on the pleasure principle over crack — very Clintonesque, right? And OK, they’re knee-deep into funk. I mean ‘The Humpty Dance’ does get your ass wriggling like the Blob was busting down a slob on you in the backseat of a bubble-tire jeep. But I want to know their position on class-as opposed to ass-struggle. They’re not N.W.A., ‘life ain’t nothing but bitches and money,’ but life ain’t nothing but a bowl of orgies neither. Great food jokes, however. ‘I’m spunky, I like my oatmeal lumpy … I get ridiculous. I’ll eat up all your crackers and your licorice. Yo Jal girl, come here. Are you ticklish? … I’m a freak. I like the girls with lhe boom. I once g01 busy in a Burger King bathroom.’”
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“Well, yo, even though I didn’t care for A Tribe Called Quest live, their Jive/RCA album People’s lnstinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm is upliftingly dope. It’s so sweet and lyrical, so user-friendly. You could play it in the background when you’re reading Proust. Their sound is so mind-caressingly mellow, like old Jazz Crusaders with those motivatingly melodic bass lines and chestnut-roasting Fender Rhodes chords. And they rhyme on some truly sui generis themes, like veganism and treating your woman right. Like their song ‘Description of a Fool’ basically busts this muhfuhkuh out for beating on his squeeze. Who ever did that on a hiphop record before? And this other jammie, ‘Luck of Lucien’ is a testament to friendship, especially as far as its being a means for mugs to keep each other on the straight and narrow. It’s about how the Tribe adopted this sorta ignorant lumpen proletariat immigrant muhfuhkuh over from France to keep his ass from falling in with the wrong crowd. ‘Ham ‘N’ Eggs’ is the one about being vegetarians and shit. ‘A tisket a tasket, what’s in mommy’s basket.’ Some veggie links and some fish that stinks.’ ”
“How you feel about ‘I Left My Wallet in El Segundo?'” chimed Kidd Funkadelic. “It reminds me of some classic Frank Zappa, like moving to Montana soon, gonna be a mental toss fly-coon. What I can’t figure out, though, is why my man Q-Tip, ostensible leader of the Tribe, left his wallet behind in the first place. Now that was some nonsense. Like Dr. Seuss.”
“So what’s the consensus y’all? Are these new-blacks the answer? Is hiphop as we knew it on the way out, or what?”
Before anybody could answer. Tetragrammaton went for his, quoting very, very loosely from his latest reading, Egyptian Mysteries, New Light on Ancient Knowledge, by Lucie Lamy (Thames & Hudson, 1981).
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“Brothers listen: there is no doubt that we are dealing here with the incarnation — the becoming flesh — of the divine principle of light. This principle travels in a skiff in which rides Khephri, the scarab beetle, the future rising sun, framed by two Osirises symbolizing cyclic rebirths. The scarab Khephri is the preeminent symbol of the Dwat, the world of metamorphoses. He is found again where the divine entities must make darkness descend — as conducive to the germination of grains as it is to the development of the scarab’s egg enveloped in its dungball.
“In this time we must remember that there can be no metamorphoses without the destruction of the old form. The male with the voice of thunder reminds us that on one level the theme of the Egyptian Mysteries is the regeneration of the sun. This is also the time in which we are told to expect the annunciations of Tait, an Egyptian divinity of weaving. He will declare that the moment for the making of the cocoon, or the mummy’s wrap, is drawing near. Yes, the mummy’s wrap, itself a larval symbol of the transubstantiation of the flesh.”
Surprisingly, it was Bayray who immediately grasped the esoteric significance of TTGT’s ramblings and deciphered for the rest of the posse.
“Yeah, yeah I dig what you’re saying TTGT. That like with the emergence of hiphop bands like De La Soul, Tribe Called Quest, Jungle Brothers, 3rd Bass, who are on that positive path to enlightenment, that hiphop has finally tasted the maggots in the minds of its less-evolved members so it’s gonna rise above it all or drown in its own shit. But even though they’re moving to a higher level of consciousness they’re all still in that dungball larva stage.”
“Brother Black that is precisely what I am divining.” ❖
This article from the Village Voice Archive was posted on November 18, 2020