Trains, Strains and Flames: Kerouac Festival At A Haunted Hotel

Part 1: The Haunted Hotel

In a coal mining town set into the rolling hills of Pennsylvania, along a train track where a million dollars of coal passes daily, a rust colored Victorian Lady stands. Rising beside the tracks, once a landmark, now a relic, she looms: she is the Grand Midway Hotel, an establishment that once housed rail-riders coming into and out of town, a rollicking bar, and women catering to the miners. Now she is a meeting place for the creative, the odd, the literate and the artistic.

The view from the hotel's porch. 

The brain child of writer/film maker Blair Murphy, who bought the hotel about a decade ago, the Grand Midway is not a public hotel. Only those invited may live there, though one night a week the hotel hosts a music and poetry coffeehouse open to the local public. But a few times a year a small crowd of selected guests meet here for festivals such as the one I am here for right now, Kerouac Fest.

The deer that guard my room.

Above: The Poe Room. Below: the ghost lurking there is just l'il old me. 

The hotel itself hides long halls and a labyrinth of rooms that hold rarities and oddities. Each room has its own theme, sometimes congruent and sometimes not. A room of typewriters; a room with a bathtub laying inside; a room of maps; and my room, the Red Room, with a grand Victorian mirror and Chinese wall hangings. Downstairs the cafe/bar holds a library of books and DVDs: there are reading nooks set into every corner, and a screening room that doubles as flop bedding. The dining room continues the library, book shelves surrounding a grand table and high back chairs that each contain the Hebrew name of God. Cryptic messages are inscribed in every wall, on every stair and in every nook; at least, the ones that are not adorned with the multitude of taxidermy animals that were bequeathed to Blair. My room is entered between six deer heads, three on each side. The reading room at the end of the hall is guarded by a masked coyote, and a model I shot in one of the rooms communed with a bobcat. 

Above: model Brook Elyse did a photo session with me in the Red Room, where I am quartered. (Note my dolls in the lower right). Below, the coal train passes through town just outside the hotel door. 

Coal is still the economy of the town, and the tracks run right in front of the hotel porch. I am told that each of the two trains that pass daily carry a million dollars worth of coal. The train, a mile long or more, cuts the town itself in two as it passes, with no one able to cross the tracks during the train's slow, noisy passage (a local told me the best time to rob a bank is as the train ambles through: the police could not cross the tracks to pursue such an endeavor). During hotel events, a “train-watching party” forms each time the conveyance passes, interrupting anything else going on inside the hotel's myriad rooms. 

The bar/cafe/library.

Of course the hotel gets its nickname, the Haunted Hotel, from the fact that spirits are seen often. Television crews and paranormal researchers have all come, and all agree that there is activity here. Ghosts are said to roam both the basement and the back stairs. Ghosts of saloon girls, drunk miners and hobos are said to wander these hardwood halls, passing among the living who dwell here, wondering at the bohemian atmosphere that has been created. At bohemian events like Kerouac Fest!

Part 2: Kerouac Fest

Preparations for the fest happening when I arrived: Above, the library: that's Margaret vacuuming in her pin-up girl apron and heels. Below, Margaret and Kennedy in the hotel kitchen. 

 And bohemian it is, a celebration of Cabaret, Beat culture, the poetic aesthetic, and artistic expression. I arrived here on Monday, which was good. My first time at the Haunted Hotel, I got to know the place and meet a few of the key people before the crowd showed up on Wednesday evening. I bonded right away with Kennedy, the cook who, ironically, lives a few blocks from me in New Orleans; with poet, model and ersatz cleaning woman Margaret Bashaar; and with Blair himself, the owner and event coordinator of the hotel, and his group of film makers and writers.

Above: owner Blair Murphy, surrounded by lingerie girls. Below: Lucien, the hotel dog, likewise surrounded.

  

Wednesday evening I played a set during the coffeehouse show, open to locals: at midnight Kerouac Fest officially began. Locals left, and the invited arrived. 

The festival is named, of course, for the American beat writer, author of On The Road. The festival is a barrage of workshops, concerts, film screenings and discussions, all punctuated by drinking parties, fire spinning, donut eating and train-watching (at one point the train passed right through a fire spinning session).

A train-watching party. These were happy social gatherings that happened each day of the festival.

There were full blown stage shows Friday and Saturday. Tommy Amoeba played Friday night with a full band. If you've never heard Tommy Amoeba, he is a brilliant absurdist performer. The show was followed by fire spinning (with a train), a set by singer E. May, and a screening of erotic-absurdist films by brilliant Pittsburgh film-maker Rachael Deacon. Saturday night's show featured myself, KabarettVulgare, and singer-performer Phat Man Dee. They were pretty awesome shows. 

Above: film-maker Rachael Deacon in the cafe.

Poet/model/publisher Margaret Bashaar , posing for me (above) and giving a workshop (below) on the subject of Mexican shaman Maria Sabina. It was one of my favorite workshops of the fest.

I was skeptical when I arrived and Blair told me that food would magically appear; but he was right. Each day a feast was magically laid out at each meal. Often it was the amazing Kennedy who was responsible; other times guests had food catered, or arrived with as much food as they could carry. I really ate more this week than I have in the last three months of my tour!

Kennedy cooking. Appreciate her!!

Sign on the bathroom door. It's that kind of place. 

The afternoon before their main stage show, Kabarett Vulgare did a workshop on the science of sideshows. They revealed the secrets of laying on the bed of nails (above and below: those are the real nail marks on Nick Noir's stomach) and walking on ground glass (further below). 

That glass is seriously sharp!!

Kabarett Vulgare on the main stage. Above, MC DeVille; Below: Nick Noir lays on the bed of nails: Macabre Noir stands on him as he does so.

Macabre Noir and Penny De La Poison approach the pile of ground glass. Yes, that's real ground glass, and those are actual dainty girl feet!

...and dainty girl hands!

Macabre Noir is laying on ground glass while being walked upon by the lovely Penny De La Poison.

Myself performing Saturday evening on the Grand Midway stage. No ground glass was involved in my performance. (Photo by Margaret Bashaar).

Macabre Noir is a talented artist as well as a sideshow performer. These are her hand sewn creepy dolls (above): Macabre Noir and Nick Noir after their performance (below). 

Absinthe party in the Poe room (above). Small, intimate gatherings over drinks, like this one, happened throughout the festival. There were also chess games, music jams, films showing constantly, and a general feeling of happy camaraderie.

E. May fire-spinning as the train passes through. E. May and I played a set together Friday evening; she is an amazing singer-songwriter as well as a daring spinner. 

This festival was a dizzying, chaotic, brilliant week for me. I met a lot of very talented people, the small group of Blair's friends and guests who fed off of each others' brilliance and artistic energies. I planned to leave today and head home, but as I write this I am still at the hotel: hurricane Isaac is delaying my travel for a few days. Blair has graciously allowed me to stay on until the storm makes its intentions known. So I will wait here, and see if I feel the ghostly presence as the festival-goers depart.

From the Grand Midway Hotel, this is Kenny Klein explaining it all.

NYHC (then) and NYC (now)

This week my tour schedule drew me back to the land of my birth, my cradle of consciousness, my city-as-muse, New York City. I'm back here at least once a year, and whenever I return to NYC I reminisce a bit, recalling my youth and the New York Hardcore scene (NYHC) of the early '80s. So I thought I'd take you on a little photo tour of NYC (using my camera's phone; sorry for the poor photo quality), and compare NY now to my NYHC scene then. laced with a few stops to recall my teen years as well, also spend in the East Village.

I began by getting off the IRT #1 subway in Greenwich Village, and walking down Christopher Street to Washington Square Park.

Washington Square was once the site of a marshy swamp, and later of a pauper's cemetery. In the days of the Revolution it was used by George Washington as a troop training area, and that's how it got its name. The fountain, above, was built uptown on 59th street, but moved here in the 1870s. Until 1964 the park was simply the arch and the fountain, and Fifth Avenue traffic rambled around it (below). The rest of the park was built in '64. Bob Dylan, Peter Paul and Mary, and Rambling Jack Elliot all played music and sang there in the '60s.

Washington Square before 1964, historic pic from this site.

Being a hot summer day, the fountain is watery and wet, and kids and teens splash around in it. In the fall, winter and spring, the fountain is dry, and becomes a hang-out for skate boarders and hacky sack players. In '82, a lot of Punks would skate there.

I learned to play Bluegrass by playing around the Square with some of the best NY musicians, especially Gene Tambor of the Minetta Creek Bluegrass band. Gene and I played from about '76 through the early '80s in a band called the New York Frets. He taught me nearly everything I know about performing. We would play on the streets of Greenwich Village, either in front of the wrought iron fence around the NYU chapel on MacDougal, or near his house on Bleecker St. There were a lot of weird things going on when one busked in those days. Once while we were playing, a guy began dancing. He took off his shoes and danced barefoot. Then he took off his shirt and danced bare-chested. Then he took off his pants, and danced naked. That wasn't the weirdest part. He then walked away, leaving his clothes in a neat pile in front of the band. (I couldn't make this stuff up...).

Of course people still busk in the Square. Most of it is crappy, but sometimes you hear someone really good. Today was a really-good day. I ran into some of my New Orleans busking buddies just outside the fountain area. Lyle (who plays with me in Odd's Bodkin while in New Orleans), Daniel and Jordan do exactly what I do every year, leave NOLA to tour up north. It was just happenstance that we all ended up in NYC today.

Jordan is playing a musical saw, and she's really good at it. Jason Mankey, who was walking around NYC with me for some of today, asked me "how does one learn to play a musical saw?" I told him that, while I imagine there are Youtube videos about it, one just watches other saw players and learns.

Before leaving Washington Square, I had to walk by 27 Washington Square North...

If you have read my poetry, you know that I've written a ton of poems about a girl named Kate. My CD Little Birds Of Desire is also laced with songs about this mystery girl: Compact, Bonny Kate, and Love Letter To NY are all about her. My reluctant muse Kate grew up right here, on the corner of Washington Square North and MacDougal Street. That was her living room window. The window right above it was that of Luscious Jackson and Moppy Skuds alum Jill Cunniff. The two girls were somewhat inseparable in '81 and '82. My crush on Kate was unrequited, I'm sorry to say. She ended up dating Cro Mags lead screamer/bassist Harley Flannegan, much to my depression and sorrow. Of course, to her credit, I was kind of a jerk in '81.

Jill Cunniff, Luscious Jackson alum, in '82. This was how most of the Hardcore girls looked and dressed, sort of Siouxie Sioux inspired bag-lady chic. Photo by legendary Punk music producer Dave Parsons.

Reluctantly moving on from 27 WSN, I headed down Washington Square North to Astor Place/Cooper Square, home of the Cube. Here are two views of the sculpture that sits at the center of Astor place.

The cube (actually titled The Alamo  and created by sculptor Tony Rosenthal in 1967) is a popular tourist site, and if you push it pretty hard it rotates on its axis, a favorite pastime of drunk NYU students. It's also a popular skateboarding hangout, and in '82 there were always a dozen or so skaters tricking around the thing.

Directly across from the Cube is Cooper Union college, one of the best design schools in America. In '82 Punks used to hold a makeshift flea market outside Cooper Union. Dave Parsons, of Rat Cage Records, would sell Punk records off a blanket on the sidewalk, and Punks would sell their old clothes, belts, and records, books and magazines on the sidewalk.

Today there were two kind of normal-looking girls spare-changing there. (I'm used to spare changers looking like, well, spare changers. Usually Crusties...)

Their sign reads "out of work; boss was a jerk." A sign of the times? When I walked by later there were signs for a poet who would write a poem on demand (a common busking career in NOLA), but I never did see the poet.

I walked down to Saint Marks Place, which in '81 was the hub of NYHC. Here is a pic of Saint Marks in '81, courtesy of Even Worse bass player Rebecca Korbet-Wootton (in center on stairs):

And here's the same street today. The stoop pictured above is just to the left of the Saint Marks Hotel and the Trash and Vaudeville shop (picture below), which was one of the first Punk stores on Saint Marks Place.

Upstairs is Vaudeville, and downstairs is Trash (see below). It was and is an awesome clothing shop, though a bit pricey. Still, if you visit Saint Marks Place, you ought to stop in there. The girl who worked at Trash and Vaudeville in the late 70s was named Angel. She was an early Punk rocker, skinny to the point of emaciated and pretty hyper. She used to rehearse her Punk band in the shop. The first time I ever shopped at Vaudeville Angel made fun of me because I was using my mom's credit card (hey, I was 15!). We became friends after that.

Here's the downstairs shop, Trash:

 The building nest to Trash, the Saint Marks Hotel, is a landmark building, and looms large in the Punk legend. Before the early '70s the building had housed the gay baths. I remember passing the baths in '68 and '69 on my way to shows at the Fillmore East. By the time I moved to the East Village in '72 it had become the hotel. Many Punk notables lived there at one time or another, including Spacely/Gringo, a weird crustie Punk who was often called the "Mayor Of Saint Marks Place." Someone did an indie film about him in around '82, and to promote it they painted a huge billboard of his face over Saint Marks and Third. While there is a legendary Punk presence there, in '82 the Saint Marks Hotel was largely populated by druggies and hookers. There was this one very cute but very strung out little blond hooker with asymmetrical eyes who always asked me if I wanted "a date." Whatever my morality may have been in '82, I never had any money. Poor asymmetrical eyes hooker... Third Ave and Ninth Street was a hooker area then, as was Second and Tenth, so many girls who made a living that way lived in the hotel. Most of the girls were pretty enough (as opposed to street girls since Craig's List made it easy for attractive addicts to hook-from-home). The East Village was pretty squalid back then.  Anyway, quite a few of my NYHC friends resided in the Hotel on and off.

Just down the street from the hotel is the Grass Roots Tavern, a Saint Marks landmark.

When I first returned to NYC after my couple of years in college up at New Paltz, I was looking for the Punk scene. My college friend and Punk princess Nicole hung around the Grassroots, and it was there I first met Bobby Bratz, one of my best friends in the NYHC scene. Nicole and I used to drink there (yes, I used to drink) with my high-school-GF-turned-Punk-buddie Alice.

Nicole died in the early '90s (a lot of my friends died...I'm the only one who isn't either dead or famous these days). Alice speaks to me on occasion.

Moving down Saint Marks, we come to the corner of Saint Marks and Second:

This used to be the Saint Marks Theater. In '73 and '74, you could see three movies there for a dollar (my first date with Alice was seeing Woodstock and the Jimi Hendrix movie at that theater. She left in the middle of the date). I saw a lot of art films there, and by '81 they used to do a midnight show of Clockwork Orange, a Hardcore fave. We would all go on Saturday night, then proceed en masse to A7 (I'll be getting to that in a few moments). 

Kitty corner across Second Ave is the Orpheum Theater. Stomp has been playing there for as long as I've been around the East Village, maybe since '73. I'm not kidding. This is one thing about the Village that never seems to change.

Moving a few yards down Saint Marks, we come to number 74. My teen-aged home!

Today this is the Kaplan House; when I lived here it was the Stuyvesant Residence Home. Long story which perhaps I'll tell one day... anyway I lived here form around '72-76. 

Next door at 78, there lived, in '73, two women who had been former Playboy Bunnies. One had a teen daughter, Kristen if memory serves, who played guitar, so we became buddies. Mom and her friends would throw parties on the roof, and invite the teenaged boys from Stuyvesant residence. Then the women would be topless or nude at the parties. The '70s were a fun era... Kristen's mom would date a lot of the teen boys and move them in when they hit 21 and had to leave the residence home (not me...I was not so lucky. I simply moved in with my girlfriend in the Vassar college dorms).

When you grow up in the squalor and chaos that is the East Village, you really don't know anything else. Now, looking back at my teen years, I often comment to myself "wow, I grew up amidst squalor and chaos!"  It's truly not most peoples' teen experience. I really need to write my memoirs someday...

Across the street from Stuyvesant Residence is the Holiday Cocktail Lounge.

In '81, this Ukrainian bar didn't stand much on legal drinking ages (in the Ukraine there is no legal age limit), so they would serve anyone who could pay. The little Punk girls all drank there, and not one of them was 18 just yet. Next door is Stromboli's Pizza, the best pizza in NYC in the '70s and '80s. I went there today and found that they had built tables and chairs (in '81 we stood outside, eating pizza as we leaned against parked cars), and that the pizza had become a bit mediocre... yet still better than anything outside of NYC and Jersey.

Speaking of food, down First Avenue at 11th Street we come to Veniero's Cafe, the BEST Italian pastry cafe in America!! Really.

Since 1894, this place has served delicious Italian pastries. In '81, the front room staff was all Italian school girls, and the dining room staff was all tall, blond Ukrainian girls.Today I was waited on by a young man of nondescript ethnicity, who served me this:

The iced cappuccino  is iced with coffee flavor gelato ice cream. OMG!!! It's like a cappuccino milkshake. 

Yes, that is a wall of chocolate cake.It extends across the length of the front room, maybe 20 feet. The next case is cheesecakes of all descriptions. Then come the fruit cakes.

Just down twelfth street is my old tenement apartment, where I lived from '79 to about '83. I write about the place a lot...

E 12 st and Avenue A, my home for many years. It was a hideous ghetto then... now it's beautiful. 

Those trees were not there in '81. 

515 East Twelfth Street. The sew-Top Cleaners was a tax service in '80-83. I lived in the back building. There is a courtyard behind this building, and a smaller building in the back of that. It's a nice arrangement, because the front building muffles the noise from the street, and it's quite peacful back there. 

I lived for most of that time with Carol Louderbach. Here's a picture of Carol and her BF Barbara Taylor from around '83:

Carol is the seated six-foot Punk girl. Barbara says Carol's mom was taking the picture, and they couldn't think of anything picturesque to do, so they shook hands. Barbara and I remain friends. She lives in London now with her teenaged daughter. We can't seem to locate Carol. Punks are currently scouring the Earth looking for her, but to no avail. It's a real life mystery. Carol was dating one of the Bad Brains, so I would often come home to find three Bad Brains asleep on my kitchen floor and one in Carol's bed. The Bad Brains were kind of homeless in '82. They mostly lived in the recording studios at 171 Avenue A, where they, the Beastie Boys, the Stimulators and Reagan Youth would all record. Other days it was my kitchen floor.

After visiting 515, I walked across Tompkins Square Park to what used to be A7. On the way I was stopped by this woman. She knew me, mentioned people I knew, that she had just gotten out of jail (intent to incite, I believe, whatever that is), and that she was so glad to see me. I have no idea who this is...

She does have a Baphomet tattoo across her chest... still, I cannot place her.

From the park you can see the building that used to be the center of Hardcore Punk in '82, A7.

The building that used to house A7, seen from the park. A gaggle of Hardcores would hang out here in the park until the doors to A7 opened, usually between midnight and one AM. Then we'd march over in an orderly fashion. Billy Idol used to drink at A7 every night, as did several of the Plasmatics. Bands that played there included the Even Worse, the Moppy Scuds (some of whose members became Luscious Jackson), the Bad Brains, Reagan Youth, the Beastie Boys, the Cro Mags, and the Young Aborigines. I played there regularly with a band called Mara. Here I am in '82 playing on the stage at A7:

Here is the wall art on the building today:

Joe Strummer, immortalized here, was the founder of the Punk band The Clash, as well as a one-time member of Irish Punk-Folk band The Pogues. He was a Punk legend, though he never played at A7. 

The NYHC scene was a time and place in pop culture that will never happen again: the time and place was just right, and when it faded it was gone. I am forever grateful to have been a small part of that time and place. The death of Beastie Boy Adam Yauch this year brought a lot of us Punks together on Facebook, and we all ended up recalling those days and comparing stories (and scouring the Earth to search for Carol). Those of us who survived the era have moved on with our lives, but I think we all cherish that moment in time and our places in it. I still write about it a lot. I have a novel I'm finishing up set in NY in '81. I haven't been able to find a publisher just yet, but Jason Mankey assures me I ought to self publish the ebook. Your thoughts?

I return to NYC each year to see what has changed and what has stayed the same. I'll be hanging around the NY area for another few days, then I'll be heading back to Ohio for Starwood, and to upstate NY for the festivals at Brushwood.

From squalid, chaotic NYC, this is Kenny Klein explaining it all.