The Green Fairy Strikes Former Skid Row: Bohemian Decadence at Bowery Hotel
I think I was hallucinating at the Bohemian Decadence party in The Bowery Hotel Monday night. Sipping snifters of the bright green Le Tourment Vert Absinthe in the cozy lounge, I thought for a moment I was having visions of the old Lower East Side, the one on the Bowery with the flophouses and bumsskid rowbut instead it was actually the turn-of-the century attired performers Amber Ray, Flambeaux, [Molly Crabapple] and Paul Nathan.
The absinthe itself was trippy but tasty. If you don't already know, absinthe's an alcoholic liqueur made from artemesia abinthium and herbs. Paris Hilton has already been "spotted" drinking the stuff, which is either a good or bad sign, given her kind of hallucinations.
Way back when, like the 1840s, French troops used the stuff as a cure for malaria. Then punk poet Rimbaud, Verlaine and Baudelaire started drinking it and having visions. We banned it here in the United States but now it's legal and you, too, can scribble poetry and have delusions of literary grandeur. I was writing witty little literary bon mots on my napkin while gazing at the hot models and some hipster media types like John Holstrum from Punk Magazine, a writer from Penthouse "Forum" (the absinthe made me forget his name), rock photographer John Gruen, and a guy who used to date my girlfriend. What a crowd!
Nothing like the skid row days when the streets were jammed with slop joints, tattoo parlors, and 50,000 bums trying to check into flophouse. Or was that grizzled dude with the stubble in the corner an old timer looking for free booze and passed hors d'oeuvres?
[All photos by Gerry Visco]