WHERE
THE CLASH MEETS THE ASPIRIN
By Saki Knafo | October 16, 2005
|
Photo
Credit: Betty Alexandra Bastidas for The New York
Times |
She
stood in line at Kings Pharmacy in Williamsburg, Brooklyn,
tapping her foot in time to the monotonous drubbing of a
Ramones bass line. A stud in her nose and a crayon-shaped
bandage on her arm, Malinda Sorci looked right at home in
a neighborhood where 70's and 80's music has come back into
vogue in recent years, rollicking the bar and nightclub
scene.
But
Kings Pharmacy, on Bedford Avenue, is neither a bar nor
a nightclub. In contrast with Williamsburg bars like Pete's
Candy Store on Lorimer Street and Union Pool on Union Avenue,
its name bears no trace of irony: The Pharmacy is, in fact,
a pharmacy, one where Ms. Sorci was buying a box of dryer
sheets.
"It's
sort of out of the ordinary for a pharmacy, but in a good
way," Ms. Sorci said of the store, where customers
can hear punk and new wave classics spanning the Clash,
the Cure and Elvis Costello.
Ms.
Sorci is among a host of Williamsburg residents who have
noted that the music at Kings Pharmacy is extraordinarily
hip; some have even gone so far as to speculate that the
owner is a full-fledged hipster. So it may surprise some
to learn that the pharmacist, Anthony Baglino, 34, was unaware
that 80's music had staged a comeback until so informed
by a reporter.
"Oh,
yeah?" he said, grinning. "Good!"
A clean-cut
father of three from Howard Beach, Queens, Mr. Baglino grew
up listening to alternative rock in the 80's, and said his
enthusiasm for the genre was such that he cried last year
when the old WLIR, a new wave station in New York, went
off the air.
Then
he learned that the D.J. Larry the Duck had a new program
on a Sirius Satellite Radio channel. He said he had begun
playing the channel religiously, even calling in at one
point and winning a chance to meet the British synth-pop
duo Erasure. "It's not like anything really crazy,"
he said of the encounter with his lifelong rock idols. "They
performed for us live, which was great. Then I had to get
to work, so I split."
Work
is where he fills plastic bottles with pills to a soundtrack
of Morrissey and Squeeze. It's also where an actress named
Dixie Fernandez recently scanned the shelves for a bottle
of brown hair dye.
"I
love the music that they play in here," she said, rather
predictably, given her skin-tight bicycle shorts and Velcro
sneakers.
As Kate
Bush belted "Wuthering Heights," Ms. Fernandez,
who grew up in the 80's, plucked a box of dye off the shelves,
saying she planned to restore her blond streaks to their
original color. She drew an analogy between this enterprise
and the local infatuation with all things 80's.
"It's
important to go back to yourself," she said.
Source:
www.nytimes.com
>
More chewing gum news
