Urban Honking

Gracias, Shines, for mixing “Face to Face” into this (even if you sampled it years before Ms. On+On went Underground). It’s just that, we never knew. (But they did.)

Ratatat’s remix album, feat Brooklyn Zoo, leaves hot-chills with its locomotive properties. Faves: a funeral-organ version of Ghost & Jadakiss’ “Run”; “Fix Up Look Sharp” (whose original success was based on spaces in beats), whips by in a tilt-a-whirl of just-off, messy rhythm—and hearing Lazer Life whisper “Ratatat” like they’re Neptunesian rock mystics. Where does […]

Scissor Girls live, 1995, Laramie, Wyoming: nuclear. Scissor Girls in Laramie ’05 would likely end the same, but ’95 was three years before the murder of Matthew Shepard, before the town got talking about things, before the diagnosis was gangrene. Laramie ’95: even just riding a skateboard down Grand Ave in ’95 was cause for […]

Watched Game Six down the block from my house in a sports establishment called CHANCES. The experience was epitomized when Luther Vandross’ “Power of Love” came on jukebox during Kevin Garnett post-game crying shots. Sole Lakers fan in bar, talking junk to Timberwolves fan: “My family’s made up of PIMPS; your family’s made up of […]

“The man who wins the pissing contest loses at life.” this has been a public service announcement from the Disciples of Kokopelli

My friend Jen Davison: designer/visual & performance artist. An only child, obsessed with being a twin.

Also, some back history on lowrider culture (which is rooted in post-WWII Mexican migrant worker’s necessity, as an outgrowth of then-emerging American car culture, and a mimicking of paseos.) Cesar Chavez, it must be noted, really did drive a 1940 Chevy with the back-end chopped & lowered; he also began wearing zoot suits after it […]

above strip copyright Dave Gonzales, creator of Homies Excerpt from an interview I had with Ralph Fuentes, editor Lowrider magazine. What got you into lowriders? “For me, it was the love of cars at an early age. My mother says when my toys were old, I would go to my father’s tools and repair my […]

Was the name of an ex-boyfriend’s Sonic Death-loving noize band ca. 2000. Oh Baby was only a side project; his main project was the band “Fuck Yes.” They had better posters than music. In case you are not keeping track of such things, last weekend was the six-month anniversary of Thanksgiving. (Not the band, the […]

amazing email from my friend Marie, who grew up with me in Wyoming, but now holds it down in Severance, Colorado: “Severance is just like 8 miles east of Fort Collins. The population sign says 106, but there are like a couple-thou hicks there now, I think. There are two liquor stores, a gas station, […]