Following a brief visit to the New Museum this afternoon (2nd and 5th floor galleries closed = brief visit) I decided to try and catch the M103 bus uptown at the corner of Bowery and Houston. It’s a rare warm day (40 degrees, woo hoo!) in the city, and while that’s considered to be fine weather for a long walk home, I was actually a bit over-dressed and wanted to cut the trip short. Waiting at the stop with me, I couldn’t help but recognize a couple of local rock stars: the very handsome Jon Spencer (of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion) and his equally attractive wife, Cristina Martinez of Boss Hog, despite the fact that they were covered up by their “winter uglies” (i.e. bad beanies and, like me, too much outerwear). I have interviewed both Martinez and Spencer on separate occasions for publications that are surely long out-of-print at this juncture, and will confess that while he isn’t necessarily the easiest person in the world to have a conversation with, she is certainly quite lovely. After about 10 minutes of the sun beating down on us, they hailed a cab, piled in with their bags from Whole Foods and sped away. I waited a few more minutes before giving up on the bus and following suit: trudging up Bowery towards 14th Street, navigating sidewalks that had transformed into rivers between banks of rapidly melting snow, and feeling happy about life in general.
