Oh shit, Chuck. You are talking to me, buddy.

clearly this is celebration now that fake nick denton outed himself.

The public domain is awash in free content, Nick.

IMAGINE THE MARGINS!

Reads like O Henry.

Ah Manhattan Towne

An Agreeable sight

But's what's this?

Nary a flophouse, drunkard or harlot tonight.

I used to find solace

in this charming gutter

Now only condos, crash mansion,

and whole foods (Shudder)

Ah, ye has such a rich heritage there.

All I have:
The night Chicago died
The night Chicago died
Brother what a night the people saw
Brother what a fight the people saw
Yes indeed.

Indeed.

Oh! the night a strumpet did fornicate with me,
Face to face, astride my velocipede,
As I peddled through the Bow'ry streets
And her billowing skirts hid from view the dirty deed!

Where's Leon Freilich?

This is the second time in a month I've used the word "velocipede" in a Gawker comment.

That has to be some kind of record.

While we're getting sincere (or at least some of us are)...

Here is my favorite thing Joan Didion has ever done. Depending on my station in life, it can be the *only* thing of hers that I like:

"...I want to explain to you, and in the process perhaps to myself, why I no longer live in New York. It is often said that New York is a city for only the very rich and the very poor. It is less often said that New York is also, at least for those of us who came there from somewhere else, a city only for the very young."

-- Joan Didion "Goodbye to All That"

@KarenUhOh: Don't you guys also have "The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald"?

Yet, we must commiserate in this urban hagiography, for we both pale before:

Galveston, oh Galveston, I still hear your sea waves crashing
While I watch the cannons flashing
I clean my gun and dream of Galveston.

It's like having Oxfeld back.

About half of the entire history of NYC guitar rock from CBGBs onward functions as one big modern-day parlor song about how thrilling it is to slum around the LES (or the East Village) (or their approximate outerborough equivalents). Plus ça change...

@social_crimer: Tell that to the countless bent-over elderly folks I see daily shuffling theirselves around the Manhattan.

Oh Bowery, sweet Bowery,
my pearl in the gutter.
This canton of singsongs
melts me like butter.

Your nativists and dead rabbits
brickbat our crania
But sooth, there is sweet release
in 5 cent dipsomania.

Here's one for the modernists among you partial to Cormac McCarthy:

Back in El Paso my life would be worthless.
Everything's gone in life; nothing is left.
It's been so long since I've seen the young maiden
My love is stronger than my fear of death.

@social_crimer: Pah. I remember old Charlie Hoyt in 1912, reciting that ditty on Doyers Street for a pipe of opium. I realised on that windy, wet and wild dawn that I had found my shangri-la. I ain't going nowhere, kid.

@KarenUhOh: Well, we also have this. . .
CHICAGO
HOG Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders: {and inferiority complexes}

My Mom used to sing that to me when I was a bebé. Then years later wondered why I would trash around bars down there back in the early 80's.

+ Watch video

You're right Nick. Things haven't changed much.