I Saw Genesis P-Orridge Walking Down the Street Last Night

[Genesis was here.]


It was dusk, about 7:45 PM. We were on our way to McCarren Park to listen to Sonic Youth play Daydream Nation to a gigantic empty pool full of cool people. We had waited until earlier this week to try to get tickets so we missed it. It was sold out. We were on our way to the park where we were gonna sit on the grass outside the pool and listen to the show with Chris and a bunch of his friends. (By the way, it sounded good.) But anyway, my wife and I were stopped on Knickerbocker, at the light on Johnson (where Knickerbocker merges with Morgan) and Genesis P-Orridge walked in front of my wife's black car. He looked at us. He looked into my eyes. Should I say he or she? S/he looked sort of like he did on that recent Wire cover, but less like a hooker, and more like that cool old lady that lives down the street who sells you pot and has all these amazing obscure, scary books and stories of living in Morocco and what not. But all the normal kids say she's an evil witch and she likes it like that. It still kind of bothers you though because you are a neophyte and you want everyone to like everyone (even though you are a total freak). Where s/he was walking is technically the East Williamsburg Industrial Park not Bushwick. It's where the loft scene growing up around the Morgan stop is but it spills across Flushing into Bushwick (where we live, a few blocks up Knickerbocker). I wonder where s/he was going? This was my second P-Orridge sighting in the part of Brooklyn that those kids told me is "the wrong part of town, dude" (they barked it at me after spraying me from the fire hydrant as I biked by 'em). The other sighting was while we were switching to the M train from the J train around midnight. P-Orridge and his small entourage sat across from Ivan and I on an empty M train car. They took it two stops to the Myrtle Ave stop and got off. The L train intersects with the M train at Myrtle. I wondered then where they lived. I figured they must live somewhere out here, Bushwick or East Williamsburg, if they were riding the train that far out, to the limits of hipster-land. I doubt I would have recognized him that time but earlier that evening we had attended the COUM Transmissions presentation that was part of that Performa Biennial. They showed some footage of COUM Transmissions performances from the early 70s. It was a casual event. Genesis sat in a chair and talked off the top of his head over what seemed like raw footage.

From 9:45 PM, 7/27/07 to 2:43 AM, 7/28/07

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The thing for me is to try and make things, try and do things and show them to people -- that's what I get excited about.




There is a game afoot here and if enough time goes by I won't remember what it was.

Joey Crack and Chill Will

Who is Joey Crack? I was on my way to the subway a few days ago when I heard all this honking behind me. I turned around to look and there were two hearses. But the honking was coming from the vehicle behind the hearses, an SUV. And behind that was another SUV, blasting music, with a woman hanging out the back seat, driver side window, shaking a Yankees shirt that said Joey Crack at me and this other dude walking down the sidewalk. The other guy was going the opposite direction down the sidewalk and we passed one another just as the woman slowly drove past me. She ignored me (perhaps because I am white, perhaps because I looked nervously away) and shook the shirt at the other dude and said "pick it up!" He sheepishly shook his shoulders at her, a "what do you want me to do" sort of gesture, smiled and kept on walking. The funeral entourage drove past me and I made a mental note to look Joey Crack up on the internet.

What I found on the internet is an article published in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle on July 2, 2007 which says that Joseph Vargas, known around the neighborhood as "Joey Crack", whose last known address was 353 Stockholm Street (I used to walk down that block all the time, for years, it's right by the DeKalb stop on the L train), Bushwick/Ridgewood, NY, was shot in the chest by Dandre Yelverton (of Hempstead, LI). Jaquan Petty was driving the car. All this happened when Joey Crack was at the car wash getting his 2007 Land Rover cleaned. Apparently he took his vehicle there every day. The article says there's a memorial for Joey Crack on the side of the car wash garage. It also says there is one on the corner of Stockholm and Irving, about six blocks from where I live.

My favorite part of the article is this: "A car wash customer who would not give his name added, 'No one’s going to talk. It’s Bushwick.'" And this: "Like many others in the neighborhood who did not want to speak about Vargas, Will said silence is a form of protection in the neighborhood. 'It’s a Bushwick thing,' he said." Will, according to the article, is known around the neighborhood as "Chill Will."

Chill Will and Joey Crack. I wonder if anyone who knows them will ever come across this? I was just walking down the street and using internet search engines...

(And if anyone tells you Bushwick is the new Williamsburg kick them. At best it's the new Williamsburg if you're talking about Williamsburg, circa 1991. In terms of what they mean, the person who says "this is the new that", Greenpoint is really the new Williamsburg. I know what I'm talking about, natch.)