Playing in the Dirt of Old New York

Mike Strunk is a forty something Chinese food delivery man who has seen a few things. A man full of stories, Mike would guaruntee an entertaining profile of New York before the Giuliani clean up. I had to wait for him to finish his NES game of Wizards and Warriors before I could have his full attention. Meanwhile, I surveyed the apartment’s stylized accruement of horror movies and retro kitsch. The living room is the epitome of artsy eccentricity, a schlocky haven of grind house sleaze mixed with garish cabaret glamour. Mike and his fiancé, Renee, are gurus of a very particular aesthetic, a nostalgic celebration of pre internet decadence. Posters of David Bowie, Adam Ant, Prince, and Bjork accent, instead of merely cover, the walls. These artists represent a queer, campy, sexed-up fantasy world that is the ethos of the weekly Art Thursdays hosted by Mike and Renee. I became friends with these patrons of kitsch at these Thursday night art socials. I attend to them as both a friend and journalist, interested in witnessing the goings on of what is the ground work of a scene. After Mike saves the last princess, I issue my questions improvisationally. With the exception of the tape recorder, the interview is not unlike most of our conversations:

Me: So Mike… During what time of your life did you live in New York City?

Mike: (deep sigh) …About the time the album Purple Rain came out.

Me: Uhh do you know what year that is?

Mike: I think-I think it was the mid eighties… I think. Yeah…

Me: And can you describe the climate of New York in the mid eighties?

Mike: Uhhh… Something like… ehhh… Any bad—

Me: Did you run into CHUDs?

Mike: CHUDs… Oh many a CHUDs… Anything you would see off a 70’s crime drama—Deathwish, Dirty Harry.

Me: Did you see lots of dead bodies?

Mike: I saw a few. There was one area in the Bronx before the big clean-up, I remember it was called Morrison Avenue, and there was no electricity for blocks and there were pieces of buildings in the middle of the road so you couldn’t drive through there, and you never saw anything there except for mafia town cars or, on occaision, ambulances… on occaision. And there were bodies back there. There was one guy who they caught after a while, and he was just this weird hillbilly that came into New York, and he would go into that area and just kill homeless people.

Me: Whoa.

Mike: And what he would do was he would just kick the shit out of them and then douse them with gasoline and light them a fire live. So they found enough bodies that looked like this, that were killed in this way that the police narrowed it down and they did actually bust this guy. But most people could get away with anything there. It was an absolute wasteland… So yeah I saw one or two [dead bodies].

Me: Did you see any live bodies?

Mike: Live bodies? Lots of live bodies… You mean humans?

Me: Yeah, sure.

Mike: Ummm… Where did I live? I moved out there when I was fifteen years old because I was a creep. And I was nuts. They didn’t have Zoloft back then. And I just dropped out of school and moved up there with a person who lived here in Pennsylvanian who was moving back to his hometown in the Bronx. And he offered me a place with him, and I said sure. I lived up in Pelham Bay, last stop on the 6 train, Westchester Sq. And there were Guardian Angels, and every subway was completely covered with graffiti to where you couldn’t see anything.

Me: What are Guardian Angels?

Mike: Guardian Angels are a group that formed in the Bronx as a kind of vigilante protection group. They ran around without weapons, and they made citizen’s arrest and called the police. They were just a local group that protected their community. You know they tried all kinds of things… the Guardian Angels. In the Italian section where I lived, they really had it figured out best of all because if someone fucked with them, they killed them. And that’s the way things should be in a place like New York City because people are extremely greedy and extremely anarchistic in a lot of these areas and they needed the whip. So they hired Giuliani who’s a complete right scumbag, but, he had a pretty liberal looking democrat smile, which is bullshit, but he would do lots of underhanded things to get what he needed done. Therefore he was perfect for New York City because New York City was insane, and it was fascinating. There were pimps in brightly colored coats and hookers everyfuckingwhere, junkies all piled up on the street, people getting arrested, rows and rows of boxes lining alleys filled with homeless people. Just tons and tons of stuff.

Mike tells me about how he tried out for the band, Anthrax, and how the band members huffed paint and were the worst most bottom of the barrel kind of druggies. He explained how he lost his hair after contracting encephalitis from a near lethal combination of acid binges and cat scratch fever. When I ask him if he thinks they’ll ever get rid of all the CHUDs, he tells me about when his sister came out of the closet, and so to help her feel part of gay community took her to the Stonewall Anniversary Celebration. “It was just unbelievable. There were drag queens on stilts and Liza Minelli singing on floats, people coated in glitter, all kinds of decadent merriment. We were all having a great time until we ran into the church groups near mid town. Up until then it had been a completely CHUD free day. But I got to punch out a minister, and that felt pretty good. But yeah… Almost no CHUDs.”