A picture of another punk rock girl at the time, but very similar garb that I also wore. This is Amy who started the band Nausea around 1987 so there are a lot of pictures of her available. I needless to say was rarely photographed, neither were my friends except for album covers, discography is much of what I have to remember everyone by.

I did end up dying my hair black to deal with the city. But it ended up falling out in patches.

This is a pretty good rendition of what I looked like in the summer. She actually started a bunch of skism for a friend of mine named Kari causing Kari to get jumped in Tompskins Square by 8 guys.

Kari fought them off by grabbing the first guys chain and using it on the rest of them . Kari was 15. In the future I will use a picture of Kari instead.

Big Charlie was a large Black man whose mother was a Native American Cherokee woman who worked in the slaughter houses in the slaughter house district and his father was a black man.

Charlie was not a man as much as he was a mountain. As my room mate he lovingly taught me self defense as an ex-marine he was very kind and always looked out for me.

I thank him wherever he may be.

As one friend said it would take a car.

Big Charlie Hankins was a magical person, taught some stuff from his mother.

A former marine and football player, he worked as a bouncer at CBGB's through the toughest years. Later he als worked as a bouncer at Roseland and other large venues throughout the city.

He refused to work for Madonna because he felt she was cheap, even though he had to take a day of unpaid leave from his security company.

I will always remember him fondly a skinhead under each arm getting ready to pitch them out the door like bowling balls. 

One time a young skinhead tried to take out a gun, Charlie took it out of his hands and removed the bullets before he knew what hit him, "Don't you ever bring this in my club again."

He and Hilly Kristal who ran CBGB's were very kind men who really took care of the kids. One time when the skinheads, lump brains that they are picked a fight with the Losida, the Lower East Side Puerto Rican gang. Big Charlie showed up to watch them get their butts kicked. When the kids ran away, Charlie took up the charge, at which point the entire Losida gang ran the other way.

Rumor has it he was trying to be a Navy Seal at the end of his life, and he had been a full back for Penn State, but got in arguement with the coach who cancelled his scholarship.

One of the darkest days of his life was when he and two friends stepped into an Irish neighborhood in Brooklyn and a gang of right wing thugs hunted down him and his friends with guns, despite having been in Grenada during the explosion,he always remembered the fear shaking in a telephone booth while his friend was murdered in cold blood. An event which shook NY to its foundations.

We really supported these guys because like Chemical Instinct they were a local Jersey act (the singer for CI was a science teacher by day.)

Sid Sludge the lead singer was incredible, slightly disabled he more than made up for the fact with sheer guts and determination to become one of the foremost lead men of the hard core scene, even once being considered to head Bad Brains while HR was in jail.

This guy once tore out a butterfly carb on an old Buick of mine in freezing weather out in the middle of a frozen parking lot. Larry and I had given up, I came to my room for rent in an old row house to find the carb sitting on the shoddy dining room table.

Any of you know what it takes to undo steel bolts in below zero weather will attest. Larry couldn't do it and he repairs street lights in storms for the state.

Great album loved the pictures of everyone on the front, classic, unfortunately the guitarist Michael O.D.ed when it came out on pills so it was a very sober release party puncuated by Claudette a lovely Jamaican woman and his lover up to that point throwing the albums at the audience with a great deal of force.

Claudette was a great friend to me in many dark times although she did a mean trick to a gay male friend at the art gallery we worked at. She was engaged for a while to HR from Bad Brains, but i think she went with someone else instead.

He as well as myself had a real soft spot for her. She was like catwoman, she had not limits for herself. She helped me get over my friend Claire's death who fell to her death under mysterious circumstances with another former friend Sonny, a wall street business man with bad habits in the room.

For webpage, see present day, this is the past buddy!