Read the Review of “Firing Squad” in “Country Music People” Magazine (U.K.) Out Today!

By Zach Selwyn

I can vividly picture the scene taking place on a Newark, New Jersey street corner in 1922… Prohibition is hanging heavily over every boarded up bar and single family household on the block. The streets are full of the penniless, making bedding out of old jackets on the grey and crunchy dirty sidewalk snow. Children are wrapping up nightly stick ball games to return home for dinner as the streets darken with denizens of the nightlife and small time hoods…

And then suddenly, out of the darkness, trotting up in a horse-drawn buggy, appears Rabbi Levi Zalman, who is suddenly swarmed by scores of men from these homes looking to procure the finest bottle of bootleg wine they can get their hands on. Money is exchanged, prayers are said and the men race home to their families. With every sale, Rabbi Zalman mutters, “Baruch Hashem.” (Blessed be the name of the lord). When it’s all over, Rabbi Zalman rides away a very rich man…

Of course, Rabbi Levi Zalman is not a Rabbi at all. In fact, he is Jack Joseph Brauer, an out-of-work shoe peddler from East Jersey City who has just unloaded his Government-relegated weekly supply of booze for a shade over $5,000.

He is also my great-great grandfather. This was his “congregation.”

Ratified in 1920, the 18th Amendment to the Constitution – which is America’s only Amendment to later be repealed – federally prohibited the manufacture, transportation and sale of alcohol. Of course, this was one of our biggest failures in our short history, and led to the golden age of organized crime, corruption and sheer madness across the country.

Doing some research (And I am not the first to report this – just giving you some background) Jewish households were allowed a certain amount of wine per household per year. To top that off, if you were a Rabbi, and you lead any type of “congregation” (12 members or more) you were allowed to get as much wine as you wanted for religious purposes at any time you desired… So guess what happened? A lot of “new Rabbis” suddenly started showed up.

“There were fake Rabbis everywhere,” my grandmother told me years ago before she died. “If you knew 12 people, that was a congregation… why do you think so many people started converting to Judaism during the 20’s? FOR BOOZE.”

So, when Jack Brauer’s shoe business got hit with hard times in the early 1920’s, he bought some religious robes, sported a fake beard and marched up to the proper Governmental distribution center and bought as much alcohol as he needed… He flipped it in two days and kicked off a successful six-year-run as the biggest “Rabbi Bootlegger” in Newark, New Jersey.

A few years later, when the American Jewish Committee began cracking down on the large number of fake Rabbi’s, my great-great grandfather Jack was NOT on the suspected fraud list. In fact, he continued to support his family until 1931, just before the Amendment was repealed. How? He had the third largest congregation in New Jersey at the time. (Even though it was 95 percent FAKE.)

Now, according to the three part documentary Prohibition by Ken Burns, other religions had these loopholes as well. In fact, Priests were ALSO able to purchase liquor for religious ceremonies. Of course, the government could actually reference records to determine if someone claiming to be a Priest actually was a Priest. But Rabbis? There was NO WAY OF TELLING WHO WAS A RABBI.

Starting to see why I’m obsessed with this stuff…

According to writer Daniel Okrent, “Rabbis were suddenly showing up everywhere. Irish Rabbis, Black Rabbis…” Nobody ever doubted their religious claims.

As is turns out, my grandmother was correct. In the 1920’s, Jewish congregations increased in membership by like, 75 percent. In short? BOOTLEG LIQUOR BUILT MODERN DAY JUDAISM. In fact, I don’t think you can reference a time in history when more NEW Jews suddenly showed up out of the woodwork to embrace Judaism in our nation’s history. No wonder we say prayers over the wine…

A few years ago, my grandmother Florence passed away. Readers of my stories should be familiar with our adventures together in her later years, which included a trip to the Ace Hotel, smoking medical marijuana and leafing through her old photo albums so she could announce who was presently, “Dead.” When she passed, it was a sad moment, and a week later, our family went through her home to get rid of old useless items…(My grandfather’s 5000 VHS tapes of classic movies) and save valuable ones… (My grandma had always claimed that she had hidden “thousands of dollars in cash” all over the house and that it was our job to find it when she died.)

Of course, knowing this, we tore open her home like Jesse Pinkman looking for hidden cash in that drug dealer’s condo in the film El Camino…

My mom and I found some money, but the “thousands of dollars” my grandma promised turned out to be something more like 220 bucks. We also uncovered a lot of jewelry and a stamp collection valued at about $39. So, if you’re the new couple that bought the place? If you ever find some ungodly wad of $100 dollar bills in a crawl space, hit me up…

Aside for a few of my grandma’s stray Vicodin, which I squirreled away in a jacket pocket, the only other item in the home that really intrigued me was my grandmother’s birth certificate. On it was listed her parent’s names and occupations – (Ruth Brauer-Kaplan – housewife. Jacob Kaplan- Dentist) – as well as her GRANDPARENT’s names and occupations… What intrigued me was the job description as reported to the state of New Jersey by JACK JOSEPH BRAUER –

His job: RABBI.

“Wow so Grandma’s story was true?” I asked my Uncle Steve who was helping my mom go through Florence’s old belongings.

“Yes indeed,” he answered.

“So was he really a Rabbi?” I asked.

“Do you know what a ‘Rabbi’ was back then?”

“I’m guessing a bootlegger?”

“It’s great getting to know your family, isn’t it?”

I went into the kitchen and poured myself a large glass of wine. I toasted my grandma on her final journey and raised my glass up to Jack Joseph Brauer – my great-great grandfather who kept so many families buzzed during the dark years of Prohibition…

“Baruch Hashem,” I said.

STREAM ZACH’S NEW SONG “Red Fuckin Wine” NOW!

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Someone get this to Bravo and Andy Cohen… #Ozempic

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Sadly, we had to postpone our summer shows – but we still have our merch! New T-shirts below! $25.00 – shipping included. DM z@zachariahmusic.com for info!

ALSO – our new EP CLOUD ROAD will be streaming everywhere in May 2020… HEADS UP! Early reviews have called it “Mac Miller meets Steve Earle.”We’ll take it!

See you in the FALL!

Z and LR!

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Zach wrote and produced this piece for TBS Digital starring the Sklar Brothers.

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By Zach Selwyn

“Mr. Selwyn – I think you’ve got a chance to make a lot of money in traffic,” the slightly overweight man staring at me from my computer told me. “We loved your audition… Are you ready to become the next LA eye in the sky?”

“Uhmmm… Can I think about this for a couple of days?”

If you are wondering how I found myself in an online interview to become one of those traffic reporter guys with a nickname like “The SKYLORD,” look no further than the current state of the film and television industry in Los Angeles.

About a year ago, as the Screen Actor’s and Writer’s Guild strikes were coming to an end, I found myself pretty deeply in debt. My last job at a startup media company had gone away the same week that I had bought my first ever new car – a Tesla by the way – and my son was getting ready to start college. In two weeks, I had gone from a top creative executive at a media company to an unemployed 48-year old actor and musician… something I hadn’t been in three years. Expenses were high and no TV work was on the horizon. California’s ridiculous non-existent tax benefits on TV and film production had devastated the very industry that this town was originally founded upon. In short, Hollywood moved out of Hollywood.

To give you an example of how unions and tax incentives have fucked up this city, a friend of mine who is an indy film producer, recently told me about his upcoming project about a pack of possessed coyotes attacking hikers high in the Hollywood Hills. I auditioned. I got a great response. I was excited that something was going to be shot in my own backyard. When I asked my friend the producer about the shooting schedule in LA, he was perplexed…

“We’re not shooting in LA… We are shooting in Colombia,” he said.

I didn’t get the part.

So, as usual, I texted everybody I knew in the business and asked for work. Nobody had anything. Some were off trying their hands at real estate. Some were applying at Trader Joe’s. Others said the Apple Store had decent health benefits. It was bleak. So I logged back into my Linked In account and started looking for any job I could find.

One morning I stumbled across a company that was looking for “Voiceover Talent For a Radio Gig.” After filling out an online application, a recruiter named Steve Bunch reached out to me and asked me to record a simple vocal demo. He sent me a voice sample… and it did not take me long to find out that this was not some amazing cartoon voice job on a show like Family Guy… This audition was to become a traffic reporter in Los Angeles. A TRAFFIC REPORTER? Sure, it sounded like an odd job, but in a way it was totally in my wheelhouse. I’ve announced and done voices for hundreds of projects… and let’s just say I was intrigued. Especially when I found out that the gig promised, “AFTRA union pay, 100K, health insurance and a 401 K.”

A 401 K? I thought to myself… Shit, in my 28 years in Hollywood, I had managed to save about $3,200 for my future. If I could guarantee some wealth in my later years? I would talk about car accidents and freeway closures on the radio all day! Who cares if I didn’t know what a ‘Sig Alert’ was?

But first, let’s face it. Linked In absolutely sucks. In the five or six years I have been on the site – I’ve applied for hundreds of jobs ranging from writing to hosting to creative positions and production jobs… During that time I have maybe been given an interview TWICE. There is nothing more disheartening than seeing that 798 other candidates have already applied for the same gig and that they are more qualified than you are. I did get one paid gig from their website… and it involved selling my facial expressions to an AI company that was digitizing actors for $300. Hey, times are tough. I don’t have many other skills beyond the entertainment industry. Plus, I’m not about to start an “Only Dads” account where I do dirty things for old rich men who are into middle-aged Jewish guys. (Although my wife is contemplating a cooking-with-her-feet Only Fans channel called “Bon Appe-FEET.”)

We’ve already trademarked the name.

So, I wrote Steve Bunch back. I was asked to write something about traffic and record it as if I was announcing it on the radio. I researched some phrases and dropped a killer take on some made up freeway bullshit that sounded legitimate. Here is what i said:

We have a SIG Alert off the 405 just before the 101 freeway that’s been backing up traffic for ten minutes – we are GRIDLOCKED and LOADED – also if you’re heading into Glendale look out for that disabled vehicle on the 170 near Burbank- that should be clearing up in just a few minutes- and be careful of some sort of large dead animal if you’re anywhere near the westside around Bundy – there’s your afternoon traffic report- I’m Zach keeping you on track- and as always – getting you safely back… HOME.

Boom. I fucking nailed it. I threw a little reverb on my voice and sent it out to Steve Bunch awaiting an offer to start recording my voice from home for $100,000 a year.

Steve reached out the following day. He said I was a natural. He loved my audition and even remarked that I had potential to be “One of L.A’s top traffic talents…” if I stuck with it. He mentioned the LA legends of the past… like Bill Keene and modern day freeway phenoms like Stu Mundel and Ginger Chan.

“I’m not familiar with them,” I said, meekly.

“You will be.”

Through Steve, I quickly learned that being a traffic reporter involves a hell of a lot more than speaking traffic jam jargon into a microphone. In fact, this job was NOTHING like I had imagined.

“So, here’s how it works, Zach – firstly do you have a car?” Steve Bunch asked.

“Yes, of course!”

“Great… Well, this job requires you to be in-person at the office around 5:15 a.m. every day to get to the morning rush – but the good news is you’re DONE by 10:30… You can go home for a lunch break but need to get back by 1:00 for the after lunch commute. After that you’re pretty much prepping for the drive home around four and then you’re sending out reports until nine p.m.

“So… it’s like a 15-hour day?” I asked.

“Give or take, but you have breaks in between,” Steve Bunch said.

“Uhm… And where is the office, exactly?”

“We’re over in Long Beach by the 405. Where do you live?”

“Uhm, I’m like in Hollywood,” I said.

“Oh, well… you’d probably have to move.”

“Well, I drive my daughter to school and run carpools and like, all that stuff.”

Steve went silent. I heard him take a deep breath as if he had just been wasting his time in talking to me.

“You know, most of our applicants are empty nesters or they have a non-working spouse,” he said. “But if it helps, it IS an AFTRA job… so you would earn union wages. Like I said, there is a LOT of money in traffic.”

“Well, I mean – I can’t just uproot my family to Long Beach,” I said.

“Well, there’s a six-week training period you’d have to attend, most people move and rent places during that time”

“Really?” I giggled. “Six weeks? This whole thing seems pretty simple to me.”

For some reason, that pissed Steve Bunch off. As if I had broken the cardinal sin in traffic talk. He got serious and became slightly aggressive.

“You think this job is easy?” Steve responded. “You try listening to responders and police scanners all day and then writing traffic copy without the proper training. Lemme ask you a question. Do you even know what a Sig Alert is?”

Oh boy. Steve was mad. Here it was, my first job offer in nearly a year and a half and I was mocking the guy trying to recruit me directly to his face. I explained to Steve that I had no idea what the hell a ‘Sig Alert’ was – I just thought it meant that there was like, a SIGNAL that ALERTED you to bad traffic.

“Wrong,” Steve said, almost sounding appalled. “It’s when an incident causes a delay that lasts over 30 minutes or more. In your audition, you said you had a Sig Alert that was only a ten minute delay. That is HARDLY a Sig Alert, my friend. That’s called slight congestion!”

“Oh,” I said, humbled. “I guess there are some things I wasn’t aware of.”

Steve went on and on about obscure traffic factoids that could not have been more boring. I learned that the LAPD invented the Sig Alert in 1955 from a guy named Lloyd Sigmon who they named it after. I learned that a 1124 code meant there was an overturned vehicle. I even learned that CFJDE stood for “Caucasian Female Juvenile Driving Erratically”

“These are the types of things you need to be familiar with,” Steve said. “This is the traffic capital of the world and you have a chance to help these commuters get to their destinations… we’re sleek, organized and we take this job VERY seriously. Starting salary is 55 thousand but it will go up as you work overtime. So, what do you say? Would you be able to start training in the next two weeks?”

Look. I hate turning down jobs. Especially in today’s economy and with my debt where it is. BUT, to logically start every day of my week in Long beach at 5:15 would mean I leave my house at 4:30 a.m. I would never see my wife or my kids again. I would spend my entire life either IN traffic and talking about it. All I could think of was how I once dreamt of hosting the news on Saturday Night Live and now I was going to be telling radio listeners that there was an overturned turnip truck blocking three lanes on the 405 freeway. I politely had to tell Steve that I wasn’t able to take the job due to the long hours and the daily commute.

“Yeah, I understand,” Steve said, sounding defeated. “Seems like less people care about the traffic reports these days… Everybody’s got Waze and Google maps and A.I. and all that stuff… so weird. But who knows… if you change your mind, we may have a spot for you.”

“Sure, Mr. Bunch,” I said. “And thank you for the interview.”

Over the past year, I’ve told this story to a lot of people, many of whom are struggling to make ends meet in today’s Hollywood. Most folks agree that, although it may not have been the best job in the world, it sure would beat digging ditches. I just didn’t know how I would be able to pull it off with my family responsibilities. However, any time I am driving home and I happen to have a radio station playing and the traffic guy comes on and tells me about some lane closure or a deadly crash, I salute him for taking the leap into the world of traffic reporting. I wasn’t able to make it work, but you never know what the future holds. I just wanna be able to spend as much time with my family as possible before I’m an empty nester.

And tonight, it looks like I’m gonna be late for dinner… Seems like there’s a Sig Alert on the 101 South…

Listen to Zach’s Newest album “Rodeo Zach’s Last Ride“

ZACH SELWYN is a humor writer, actor and musician based in Los Angeles.

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My wife and I received an Air BNB request online two weeks ago… It read as follows:

We’re five guys from Germany who don’t do drugs. We are excited to visit LA and really enjoy clubs and West Hollywood.

“What do you think, babe?” My wife asked me. “Should we accept their request?”

“I dunno,” I responded. “Five guys? Clubs? West Hollywood? Sounds like we’re inviting a bunch of Europeans over for a Bacchanalian orgy.”

“You’re an idiot,” she said. “They seem nice AND they said they don’t do drugs.”

“When you have to tell people you don’t do drugs, it means you definitely do drugs.”

“I’m approving them. We can always charge them if they mess anything up.”

I don’t know if I am the only one whose mind works like this, but when I hear that a crew of 25-year-old German dudes want to “go to clubs and enjoy West Hollywood,” I immediately think of that scene in Wolf of Wall Street when Jordan Belfort waltzes into his apartment early from a business trip and finds 25 guys sucking each other off on his $50,000 couches.

When you “Air BNB” your house out, you can’t help but formulate some concerns. We have rented to people of all sexual orientations and we are not bothered by any of it, however, in the six years that we have been doing this, I still haven’t come to terms with the fact that at some point, two strangers from Idaho fucked in our bed the night after they took their kids to Universal Studios.

My wife and I have been Air BNB’ing as long as it has been approved in Los Angeles. We own our house, travel often and don’t stress out when a family of four comes to LA and wants to rent our place for the week. We are often out of town during these times and for years most of our vacations have pretty much been paid for.

When we first began doing this, we rented our place to some younger twenty-somethings and their abhorrent treatment of our property became a serious issue. One six-person rock band from Brooklyn decided that our couch cushions would make fine ashtrays. Following another rental, three bachelorettes from Colorado accidentally left two dildos in my 9-year-old son’s bedroom.

After that, we decided that our home would be rented to families only.

But then we had the request from the five guys from Germany. Since we were going to be out of town that week and we didn’t have any other requests, it seemed like a safe option. Not only that, but the money we would get for the week would sure help us pay some badly overdue bills.

“Fine,” I told my wife. “But if our place gets wrecked that’s on you.”

We traveled to Tucson to visit my mom for a week and asked our dear friend Lauren to help check them in as they arrived. She called us that night with some interesting news.

“They seem sweet,” she said. “It’s weird though… all of them shave their legs.”

“Told ya, they’re male escorts,” I blurted.

“Shut up… maybe they’re like, on a swim team or something,” my wife offered.

“Well, they’re all in their early to mid 20’s,” Lauren relayed. “Good looking guys… but they are using one of your potted plants to put their cigarettes out in.”

I envisioned this happening in my bathroom

500 miles away, I decided to just let it be. There wasn’t much to worry about. I had hidden my guitars in the basement, my vinyl collection was labeled off-limits (A 6-year-old had ruined a treasured Dire Straits LP I had left on the turntable a couple of years earlier) and we had a grand total of $32.16 in cash in the house. My wife’s jewelry was locked away in her closet and about the only valuable thing in our home was a shoe San Antonio Spurs guard Tony Parker had given me about 13 years ago… So what if they shaved their legs and smoked? Outta sight outta mind… We spent the week in Tucson hanging with my mom.

When we got back to our house on Saturday night, we anticipated the place would appear like it always does post Air BNB… Most people do their best to tidy up, take out trash, re-set furniture and clean out their leftovers from the fridge.

Upon entering our house, the first thing I noticed was that the entire place smelled like Axe Body Spray. Like, the entire house. Every room, every hallway, every bathroom… It had a post 9-keg fraternity party eminence to it.

My entire house smelled like this guy

When a toilet paper roll was finished, rather than replace the roll on the dispenser, they managed to just toss the empty cylinder behind the toilet.

We pride our house on our “Kids Art Wall” where we encourage guests to add to the collection. Over the years, dozens of kids have contributed drawings to the wall and it’s a fantastic little abstract collection of developing artistic minds across the world.

Needless to say, these guys didn’t add anything to the art wall.

They also did not bother to turn off any light in the house.

Nor did they take out the trash… at all. In our backyard, stuffed in about 25 paper grocery bags, resided the ruins of their week… hundreds of beer bottles, countless empty boxes of cigarettes, discarded Red Bull cans and bottles of Starbucks Double Shot Cappuccinos. There were over a dozen empty pizza boxes from three different delivery joints nearby and nine discarded Jack Daniel’s bottles… Not to mention the new cigarette butt succulent plant they had crafted. Maybe they didn’t do drugs, but these guys fucking partied.

Birds-Eye View of our new planter

According to my calculations… and to the grocery store receipts I found in one of the random trash bags, these guys lived on beer, cigarettes, pizza, energy drinks and coffee for five days. That was it. There was NO sign anywhere that a single meal other than pizza had been consumed. There was, however, one ominous item listed on a grocery store receipt from Thursday: MAYONNAISE.

“What do you think they bought mayonnaise for?” I yelled to my wife across the house.

“Uggh, there are shaved pubes in the sink!” she responded.

As I went around the house opening every window to air it out, I could only imagine what kind of debauchery these Euro-bros got into in our house. Was there any freaky sex? Any late night drug use? Did they jack-off in every room? After finding a piece of pizza jammed in our pool filter, my wife panicked, called our cleaning lady and told her she would have to work a double shift the next day. After finding an empty carton of cigarettes that said “Smoking Kills” on the floor of my daughter’s room, we decided to sleep on the floor in the one room where we do not allow renters to use rather than in our own beds.

My daughter’s room. Morning.

The next morning, the Axe Body Spray scent was still lingering. We had taken out the trash and emptied the fridge, but our cleaning lady had the hardest job. When she was done for the day, she mentioned that these five guys had managed to use 32 bath towels during their five day stay. 32 fucking towels. When I was 25-years-old, I owned ONE bath towel that I washed like every six weeks! Who the fuck did these guys think they were?

I decided that a quick internet search on these guys might alleviate my concerns. The kid who had booked the place and had been responsible for the payment was listed as simply a “coach” in Munich. Not sure what kind… Soccer coach? Life coach? Sober coach? (Doubtful). Whatever the case, I checked out his Twitter account and he had recently tweeted about his upcoming trip to the United States. It read as follows:

Me and the boys are going to Hollywood to parteeeey with movie stars! Then VEGAS BABY VEGAS! What happens in Vegas STAYS in VEGAS!!!

After realizing that this guy was still quoting Vince Vaughn from Swingers, a 20-year-old film, I felt a small bond with him. He had probably tried to find a decent place in LA to rent, but was met with rejection after rejection by worried homeowners like myself. He was 25 and just looking to party with movie stars and now he was apparently in Las Vegas, most likely contracting that new un-treatable strain of gonorrhea I keep seeing on billboards all over town.

Drug-Resistant Gonorrhea is here!

After a few days, the house felt like home again and my son and daughter fell into their summer routines of Fortnite, swimming and staying up until 11. I thought of this strange world we were subjecting them to… After all, not many kids are forced to leave their houses for Air BNB renters every few weeks. Still, maybe the constant travel and new experiences will teach them more about the world and someday they’ll thank us for forcing them into the car for 8-hour road trips to Arizona… Maybe someday my son and his good friends will go desecrate a family’s house in Germany with their own beer bottles, cigarettes and sink pubes. If anything, these are experiences that not every kid gets to have.

I put my kids to bed and brushed my teeth. My wife and I agreed to watch a new Netflix show and I drank some water. Happy to be back in my bed, I finally felt relaxed for the first time in a week…

And then I found a used condom in the drawer of my bedside table…

ZACH SELWYN’S HOUSE IS CURRENTLY AVAILABLE ON AIR BNB… FOR RESPECTABLE FAMILIES ONLY.

Watch Zach interview BOB DYLAN!

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Out of Touch at The Dream Hotel * 2015 By Zach Selwyn

It was two-o-clock in the morning and I was standing on the street outside the Dream Hotel in New York City when a slick looking hustler in a Panama hat sided up to me.

“You looking for girls tonight?” He said.

“Naah man, I’m just trying to get some air.”

“You sure? Just up those stairs across the street is all kinds of hoes… I’m talking Thai girls, Russians, Mamis… You ever bang a bad bitch?”

“What exactly is a bad bitch?” I asked.

“If you don’t know, then you’ve never banged one…”

I have been in New York City for roughly 36 hours. In that time, I have averaged 4 hours of sleep a night, eaten 7 street hot dogs and drank close to 19 cups of bad deli coffee. I have also realized that I am the most out of touch loser in the city. The average Manhattan man around my age is sporting a hundred dollar undercut and a long beard – which is eerily similar to L.A. (With only a few less Man-Buns). The difference is, these guys are also rocking 3,000 dollar Ted Baker suits and wingtips. As for me, I am wearing a 1970’s – era Wrangler cowboy shirt, some Lee Riders from the early 80’s and a pair of ¾ boots I scored from a TV show wardrobe department about 4 years ago. My hair is pretty tame and I still have Beverly Hills 90210-era sideburns. I’m also wearing a trucker cap that reads “Roy Clark” on it, bellbottoms and a belt buckle that features Chester the Cheetah riding a Harley motorcycle beneath the inscription “Cheesy Rider.”

I feel a little like Jon Voight in Midnight Cowboy because NOBODY is dressed like me. Funny thing is, this is how I have been dressing for 15 years. A few years back, in the early 00’s, everybody started dressing like this. Now, those days are long gone and I’m the only guy on 8^th Avenue wearing a shirt that unsnaps when you tear it apart and a turquoise ring.

And apparently, I have no idea what a “bad bitch” is.

According to the web, this is a “Bad Bitch.”

Apparently, “Bad Bitches” like rolling around in one dollar bills.

I realized I was grossly under-dressed when I attended the first business dinner with the company I am working for. I figured it would be a quick bite at a local bar, but it turned into the type of place where they asked me to remove my hat as I sat down. The next day, at the company’s request, I made my way to a J. Crew to try and find something respectable that I would feel comfortable wearing. I settled on a checkered red, white and blue button-down and some horrendously skinny jeans. The price? $254.

When the sales associate asked me “how my sock game” was, I told him, “Fine. I buy all my socks at Ross: Dress for Less.”

He grimaced.

“How’s your shoe game?” He asked.

“I have these nice ¾ boots,” I said.

“Uggh, please – nobody is wearing ¾ boots anymore,” he retorted. “You need some wings!”

I walked out of the store.

I couldn’t place my finger on it, but Manhattan had begun to seem too cookie cutter. I guess I was aware of the Duane Reade explosion and the Starbucks on every corner, but I was not prepared for the fashion clones that had sprouted up everywhere. Sure I was ten years older than the average guy out on a Wednesday night, but even I could sense a lack of originality. New York City, which was once full of punk street kids, trendsetters and Mapplethorpe-worshipping leather daddies sticking whips in their asses and walking into a Saks Fifth Avenue, had become somewhat tame.

The Business Hipster. Everywhere in New York City.

I recently read an interview with AdRock of the Beastie Boys talking about how the “New York of his youth had disappeared.” I was beginning to understand what he was talking about. Manhattan in the 70’s and 80’s – before the crackdowns and the $8200 a month rent – was an artistic and fantastic place to be. These were the days before the smelly Times Square Jack Sparrows. Before Hell’s Kitchen was a gentrified hipster paradise. In the late 80’s I would visit my second cousin and roll down Canal Street to buy fake Gucci jackets, leather African medallion necklaces and a bootleg cassette of LL Cool J’s Walking With a Panther. The tape-dealers would offer me “smoke,” which scared the crap out of me. At one point, my mom dragged me away from a couple of black guys who were standing around Washington Square Park discussing the new Bobby Brown On Our Own song from Ghostbusters II. I tried to inject some white boy wisdom by saying I thought Bobby should’ve written a second rap verse instead of repeating the “Too hot to handle, too cold to hold” line and they ignored me as if I was “Chester the Terrier” following around the bigger “Spike the Bulldog” in the Looney Tunes cartoons.

I bought a bootleg tape of this for $5 in 1989

The only exception I could find was in the Dream Hotel. The first couple of nights I was in town, I took it easy, stayed in my room, watched TV and had sex with the full-length pillow. However, a hotel room can only hold you captive for so long and eventually I came downstairs to find out where the notorious dark side of this fantastic city had wound up. I now believe it all centers around the Dream Hotel. Within an hour of hanging in the lobby, I was propositioned by more pimps, hustlers, hoes and drug dealers than I have seen in 20 years in Los Angeles. Methy looking skinny teenagers were offering me weed, cocaine and what they claim is “Government pure MDMA.” The lobby was crawling with hookers and late night denizens of the rooftop nightclub, which is named “PDH.” An acronym for what I can only imagine is “Pimps, Drugs and Hoes” based on the army of thick women standing around comparing 9 inch Indian weaves and elastic black twat-length skirts that barely cover their clitori. (Is that the plural for “clitoris?”)

The new Manhattan underbelly had become what Jay-Z sang about in Empire State of Mind. “Ballplayers, rap stars, addicted to that limelight…” Everywhere I went folks were talking about money, cars and rap music. If Los Angeles is supposedly a vapid, material city full of superficial idiots, New York City has embraced a lifestyle full of flashy watches, bottle service, velvet ropes and hangers on… So much so that when I tried to get access to the PDH nightclub on the top floor, the bouncer looked at my “shoe game” and instructed me to “please wait in the other bar.”

I didn’t really want to go up to PDH, but it did seem like it had to be part of my Dream Hotel adventure. So I waited in the bar drinking 17 dollar glasses of shoddy tempranillo wondering how anyone can listen to this much house and trap music in one day. The hotel sort of felt like Miami, but it was 40 degrees cooler and Pitbull wasn’t here singing some shitty song about how “white girl got some ass.”

Club PDH. $2500 bottles. $12 beers.

Finally a large Puerto Rican man came over and told me that since I was a guest of the hotel, all I needed to do was show my room key and I could gain access to the club. I sauntered up towards the door, bypassing the line of desperate gold diggers and club kids and flashed my hotel room key. It was the first time in my entire trip that I had felt somewhat cool.

The nightclub was everything I always hated about nightclubs. Expensive drinks, a DJ mixing Calvin Harris with Blondie, hairy men pouring vodka-cranberry drinks for girls who were most likely being paid to hang around them and intimidating looking security guards who mad-dogged anybody ordering a single beer instead of a 2500 dollar bottle of Grey Goose.

I stayed for 8 minutes.

On my way downstairs, I decided I had to get outside and just see the street. I was sick of the lines, the attitude and the fact that a cast member from Real Housewives of Atlanta had demanded to cut the line… and was placated with a free bottle of vodka. I had to walk to a deli and buy some water and eat a sandwich and try to get some sleep before my work event the following day.

I came back to the hotel with my snacks and drinks – which, by the way, were shoved into about 11 plastic bags by the deli owner as if the plastic problem doesn’t exist in New York – and stopped to listen to the sidewalk pimps do their thing. They were like the dude selling Eddie Murphy’s gold hair dryer in Coming to America. I heard some remarkable stuff:

“You wanna table shower my man?”

“I got one tranny but she visiting her brother at Riker’s right now.”

“Playa, I can get you three at once, but you gotta wear three rubbers.”

I guess Manhattan hadn’t changed that much. Instead of bootleg tapes, men were looking for the booty. These hipster hotels had become infidelity dens and the cops just seemed to look the other way. And as for the falling crime rate – well – as this night was coming to a close, NBA player Chris Copeland was actually stabbed in an altercation outside of 1OAK nightclub just a few streets away from where I was staying.

As I strolled towards the entrance, I passed by my friend in the Panama hat one last time.

“Yo, son – I got you. I know you wanna find out what a bad bitch is,” he propositioned.

“I’m good, man,” I said. “I gotta get to bed.”

I went up to my room and had sex with the full-length pillow.

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