Author Archives: Peter

Open City declared Peter Nolan Smith an underground punk legend of the 1970s East Village. The New England native spent many years as a nightclub doorman in New York, Paris, London, and Hamburg. The constant traveler has lived for long periods of time in Europe and the Far East. After a forced retirement from the Schmatta trade in Thailand, Peter Nolan Smith returned to New York to work in the international diamond trade. At summer’s end he resumed the life of a writer. The world’s leading leisureologist is currently based in Sri Racha, Thailand, Fort Greene, Brooklyn, and Luxembourg City. He has no address.

The Unspeakable

November 29, 2024 – 2:46 am
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No Black Friday For Ken

November 29, 2024 – 12:33 am

Every Black Friday American consumerism outgrossed the previous year’s gluttonous excesses, as shoppers descended on the XXXL malls to buy corporate crap at discounted prices. The hoi polloi in the millions fight over wide screen TVs, iPhones, and Barbie dolls. Having never participated in the capitalist frenzy, I left the Fort Greene Observatory on Friday […]

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Oh Mickey, Pride of Man

November 27, 2024 – 8:46 am

Today amos.poe posted on Instagram “A really efficient totalitarian state would be the one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.” – Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932) Marx and Engels were […]

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Bad Mouthing the Eagle

November 27, 2024 – 4:47 am

Benjamin Franklin never proposed the turkey for the national bird. It is a myth, however the turkey of his era was nothing like the domesticated bird slaughtered for Thanksgiving. The wild turkey was a cunning wood creature living in large communes of fellow avians. Huge flocks of brightly plumed turkeys clouded the skies. Benjamin Franklin […]

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Closing of the Smithfield Market

November 26, 2024 – 3:59 pm

Back in the 1980s when I was working the door of Cafe De Paris, after closing my friend David Tidball and I walked south across London to the Smithfield Market. The ancient slaughterhouse was alive with butchers chopping meat and the only pubs open after closing time were those across the street. Beer, blood, and […]

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