The Nine of Clubs
A memoir.
A memoir.
©2005 All Rights Reserved
Any reproduction is expressely forbidden by the author,
who will take action against those who infringe upon these copyrights.
v.1.8
January, 2005
Who am I?
If you know me, you'll figure it out pretty easily.
If you don't know me... well, it doesn't really matter who I am.
Last night I dreamed of someone I used to know from hanging out at the Nine of Clubs in Cleveland in the late 1980s.
This lead me to do a web search for "Nine of Clubs", and I was very surprised that there are only two references to this old night club on the entire internet. One is a passing reference on another club's web site, and the other is the title of a poem by Dorothy Barresi, a professor in New England (title: "Nine of Clubs, Cleveland, Ohio")!
There are a few hundred internet references to playing cards, tarot cards, and golf clubs that come up when you search for "Nine of Clubs", but I really thought that given all of the blogs and articles and histories and general rambling on the internet about, well, everything, that someone would have mentioned the "Nine-O".
Nope.
While driving around today in my car, thinking of the dream I had, I started getting a little nostalgic for the Nine of Clubs and all the good times I had there, so I decided to write this little memoir and post it to the web. Should anyone else find it, perhaps they'll get some warm-fuzzies out of it, or maybe a laugh. If anyone has any stories, corrections, or pictures of the place that they want to email me, maybe I will get around to posting them here (email address is linked at very bottom of this page). I have a huge archive of stuff from that period in my life, but surprisingly, nothing at all from "the club". I'd love some photos.
| Okay
then... I graduated from Cleveland Heights high school in 1986. My birthday is in the autumn, so I was 18 for most of my senior year, and turned 19 in the fall right after I graduated. At that time, in Ohio, you could get into clubs and bars if you were 19, but could only drink beer and wine - no hard liquor. That didn't matter to me: my first love in life was music, and I loved going out to hear bands. As soon as I hit 19, I could get into the non-all-ages gigs. More relevant to this memoir is this: if there were no worthwhile bands in town, the dance clubs sufficed, as long as they were playing good music. Unfortunately, most of them played shitty music. The Flats were awful and full of idiots who were listening to Jimmy Buffet and the Eagles. The only place to go out and hear relatively good club music was a gay bar called The Ritz. It was across the alley from the old cemetery off of East 9th Street. Fortunately, it was widely known that on Sunday nights, a fairly large percentage of the clientele were straight, so it was 'safe' for a young (straight) guy like myself to show up there. There is a pleasant side effect of being the only hetero guy in a gay bar. All of the girls who didn't want to get harassed by drunken frat boy slobs in the Flats went to the Ritz thinking that they would be immune from being hit on. But, after a few cocktails, when they decided that they were lonely and/or horny after all, they made a beeline for one of the few hetero guys in the place. So I actually did pretty well for myself there, even if some of my punk rock buddies (not to mention my parents, probably) started to wonder why I was going to this 'homo bar'. One night I met two girls there named Tiffany Mosher and Judy Bitsko (now Vozar) who to this day - 20 years later - are still people I can call close friends. I also used to hang out with a guy named Rob Brose. He was a year older than me, and his sole aspiration in life was to be Mad Max. He and I used to drive around among the abandoned steel mills in the Flats and tag them with spray paint, just for kicks. Then we'd go look for girls in the gay bar. Yeah, it sounds retarded, but it was the only place to go! It was with great relief then, that we heard of a new place opening up, called The Nine of Clubs. At this time, the west bank of the Flats was a wasteland. It was still about two years away from being redeveloped, and it was essentially just a big junk yard full of collapsing old buildings. The east bank was where all the yuppie bars were (although I don't think we used the word 'yuppie' yet), although there was one great live music venue there, Peabody's (or Flea-body's as we called it). The Nine of Clubs was located on the then-unfashionable West Ninth St. These days, West Ninth street is a happening place, but back in the late 1980s, there was nothing else on that entire street except for a really shady bath house. The rest of it was abandoned warehouses. Even the street's legendary live punk venue, the Lakefront, was closed by that point. It was in this unlikely spot that the "Nine-O" was spawned. |
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Months went by, and I ended up hanging out with a bunch of freaks at Cleveland State University. We'd all meet in one specific spot in the campus student center, near some windows under a big staircase. It was the Punk Corner, also called Kreepy Korner. There was a big group of us: Lila Waltrip, AJ Kocher, Rob Brose, John Britenstein (RIP), Denny Abarca (RIP), me, Ed Maroli, Jerry Justin, Dot Schneider, Byron Bacik, Ildiko, Sylvie, Rich Hall, Jim Woodruff, and a whole bunch more. All day long, we'd goof off, cut classes, and hassle the jocks from the safety of our fort in the corner under the stairs. People in the group started talking about the Nine of Clubs, but me and Rob set them straight: the place was a zero. However, some time had passed since our visit, so at some point in early 1987, we were convinced by the rest of the gang to go back.
By now the place had caught on with the rest of the club-going public. The crowd was bigger and the music was a little more to our taste than it had been on our first visit. Our posse was hooked. We started going there all the damn time. We were all broke, but that didn't stop us. Wednesdays became the big night out. There was a coupon in the Scene magazine that waived the massive cover charge ($2.00!) on Wednesdays. So we'd grab a Scene, tear out the coupon, and head down to the Nine of Clubs.
Right next door to the Nine was the aforementioned remains of the Lakefront. It had closed by this point and was all boarded up. Next to that was an alley, and then a parking lot. All of the beverage stores at the time carried a disgusting swill called Genesee Cream Ale for about $1.98 per six-pack. We'd sit in our cars in the alley, drinking the Genesee and listening to tunes. If the weather was nice, we'd spend as much time out there as we did inside.
Then we would go inside and do what you do in a nightclub. We had some laughs, danced around like we were possessed, tried to look cool, got loaded, and attempted contact with the opposite sex.
Learning experiences...
Being so young (and frankly kind of dumb), we didn't understand a few basic things, like the wisdom of sucking up to the doorman, the DJ, the manager, and the bartenders. They were just significantly enough older than us that we saw them as authority figures, and therefore treated them with some indifference. It boggles the mind to think that it never occurred to us that the reason the doorman always charged us - even as hard-core regulars - that $2.00 cover charge (if we didn't have a coupon) was not because he was an asshole, but because we treated him with something just short of contempt. It also never occurred to us that the fifteen-cent tip we were leaving on our $1.85 beers was the reason that, as time progressed, the bartenders became surlier and surlier to us, and took longer and longer to serve us. We were cocky little bastards with no respect for authority. When the club closed each night, we were spiteful towards the bouncers for having the audacity to ruin our good time by making us leave. I think it's safe to assume that these oversights have long since been more than compensated for: during the ensuing 15-plus years since then, virtually all people mentioned in this p[iece of writing have spent their fair share of time both working and playing in many bars in many cities all over world, and have most certainly learned proper respect and etiquette. But we had to learn it somewhere!
Nevertheless, a better time was never had for $4 on a Wednesday night. The coupon waived the cover charge, the $2.00 Genny six pack made sure we were well-lubricated before we went inside, and a single beer while inside (all we could usually afford) kept the party rockin'. If the buzz started to fade, we'd get an ink stamp on the wrist and then we'd head outside to our cars to quaff the remaining beers from the six-packs. The ink stamp got us back in to continue the party.
Sometimes, someone would be so broke that we had to sneak them in. One person would go inside, get an ink stamp, and then kill a few minutes. Then that person would head outside, slobber all over his wrist, and then press the slimy mess up against the brokester's wrist. This would transfer enough of the ink to the pauper's begging hand to fool the doorman into thinking the beggar had been stamped. It actually worked, until the staff got hip and started using wristbands instead of ink stamps to identify those who had 'gone out for some air'.
I don't know how the place stayed open as long as it did: we sure weren't spending much money there, and our crowd made up most of the clientele... or so it seems in retrospect.
"I am the DJ, I am what I play..."
Over time, the music at the Nine of Clubs got better, even though they still played a lot of what was then called Euro-Beat (bands like Pet Shop Boys, Stephen 'Tin Tin' Duffy, and Erasure). All the gay stuff. That was to appease the refugees from the Ritz, which had closed. Ah well, the gay guys probably tipped better than we did anyway.
But Industrial music was just exploding, so we were also treated to stuff we liked much, much better: Ministry, Clan of Xymox, Cabaret Voltaire, and Front 242. We discovered a request list on a clipboard by the DJ booth, and the first thing we'd do when we got there was fill it up with everything we liked. In addition to what they were already playing, we exerted our influence and got them playing classic punk like Ramones, Buzzcocks, the Jam, and the Clash, and even some ska stuff like the English Beat and the Specials. When one of our requests came on, we'd freak out and leap towards the dance floor in a sweaty stampede. I pity the fools who got in our way during our madness to jam out to every note of our favorite songs. Suffice to say, all of the Genesee Cream Ale we drank in the alley was worked off, and we always walked out of the Nine of Clubs soaked in sweat.
There were a few songs that they seemed to play every fucking night, for years. Bizarre Love Triangle by New Order springs to mind as a defining tune of that era. I never, ever, need to hear that song again in my lifetime, thank you. We also liked an obscure single by a band called CCCP. I don't think that band ever did anything but that single. How Soon Is Now by The Smiths was, to put it mildly, "a bit" overplayed as well. Of course, Depeche Mode appealed to the industrualoids as well as the Ritz refugees, so they got a lot of play too.
| Of
fine art and Krylon... I'd met a guy called Dave Chercourt (aka "Death Rock Dave" in that era and "Tattoo Dave" nowadays) by that time, at a fourth of July party (1987) at AJ Kocher's place. We hit it off pretty well. My parents chucked me out of the house in January of 1988, so me and Dave got an apartment together. He got sucked into the Nine of Clubs posse as well, so we'd spend some time dolling ourselves up in combat boots, leather, and spikes, and then go out to break things, hassle the frat boys, and raise hell. Rob, Byron, me, and Dave had formed what is best described as ... ..."a social group". The four of us were "YA13H!!!" (pronounced "Yaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!" - the '13' is an exponent on the 'A' - and yes it was an acronym for something... you'll have to guess.). We had a series of seven glyphs that identified us. So we spray painted the YA13H!!! glyphs in the alley next to the Nine of Clubs, as well as the name of the bands we were playing in. I was working on a musical project that I called Alchemy; to this day you can still see the Alchemy graffiti on the wall of the building adjacent to the parking lot next to the alley. Oops, is there a staute of limitations on that sort of thing? I remember one night, we were drinking our beers in the alley, ready to go inside the Nine, when Wattie Duchan - the lead singer of the venerable UK punk band The Exploited - came stumbling up the alley, his famous fish-fin mohawk standing tall and proud. I guess they'd played in Cleveland that night. He was all fucked up. He said something like: "Oi, wot you lot doin'?". We tossed him a can of Krylon, and went at it. The final masterpiece... One day Rob and I were decorating the alley with a Sid Vicious quote (oh, how clever) in orange Krylon, when two undercover cops burst forth from a secret car and shoved us up against the wall. They shook up the paint and aimed the nozzles into my ears. The cop's face was right up next to mine, and he screamed at me: "How'd you like it if I spray paint your brains, motherfucker!". I said that I would not particularly like that. Well.... He let us go; they were after bigger fish. But, we quit it with the urban art after that. Now, so many years later, I am a homeowner in a big city (Chicago), and I get so fucking pissed off at the little gangstas who tag my neighborhood. I want to beat the shit out of those little bastards. If I ever catch the little son of a whore who calls himself "Twist", he will suffer. Maybe I will spray paint his brains. I also get so annoyed that spray paint is illegal within the Chicago city limits, because when I need it for legit uses, I have to drive to the suburbs, all because of the punk-ass kids and their graffiti. But I guess I can't be too much of a hypocrite. All I can say in my defense is that as "YA13H!!!", we never hurt anyone. Sometimes I am amazed that we never got into any real trouble, and that all of the people I was closest to in those years actually went on to do legitimate and useful things with their lives. |
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I met a girl named Linda Ballas, who worked at Hopkins airport. She was 24, and played classical and jazz piano, but also liked Devo. I thought that was cool. On my 20th birthday, I met her at the airport and we had a drink in the airport lounge. She ordered whiskey, so I did too (even though I was exactly one year shy of being legal for it). I'd never had it before. I couldn't drink it! Linda and I went out about eight or ten times, but these dates were spread out over a period about three years. I don't know what our 'deal' was, but I think I was intimidated that she was four years older than me, and she was too shy or demure to persue me more frequently. At that age, four years is a big difference.
Leaving the airport on the night of that birthday date, I ran into my dad, who was on his way home from a business trip!
Linda had a friend named either Millie or Billie. For three or four years, every time I met her, I strained to hear her name. I never did catch it properly. Whenever I talked to her, or referred to her in conversation, I mumbled her name because I was never sure of it! Millie Bille Vanillie's sister started coming out in later years, and she was just about the prettiest girl in history. Is she famous yet? She should be!
Wish fulfillment...
I also ran into a girl called Heather Cummings at the Nine of Clubs in about 1989. She'd gone to my high school, and I had the most miserable crush on her for all of high school, about 1984 to 1986. But I never asked her out. I was far too much of a dork in the early years of high school, and then I had a girlfriend in the later years. After graduation, I didn't see Heather for three years... until she appeared at the Nine of Clubs one night. By that point, I was single, and I also had a little more confidence. We were talking about what we'd been up to for the past few years, and I mentioned that I had some beers in my car (I guess that's what I'd been up to). She wanted to go outside and drink them. Let us assume then, that when you're 20, "let's go drink cheap beer in an alley, babe!" is an enticing offer for a girl to recieve. Well, next thing you know, we were fooling around, and I was so happy, so giddy to be kissing this girl after pining away for her for like six years, that I just started giggling uncontrollably while I was kissing her. She thought I was laughing at her for some reason, and so she split. I never saw her again.
Ah well, there was extra beer, still.
Slush Fund...
One cold winter's night, Byron met me at my parent's house along with an idiot named Mike Mitroff (who eventually lived with Tattoo Dave and I for a few months). All three of us were, for some forgotten reason, especially excited to go out that night. We were all dressed to the nines for the Nine. The weather was nasty, the sort of slushy almost-snow that you get when the temperature is hovering right near freezing.
My old Buick was on it's last legs, and had rusted to the point where the floorboards had big holes in them. If you lifted the floor mats, you could see the street rushing by underfoot!
We were halfway downtown from Cleveland Heights when I drove through a giant marsh of slush in the road. The car hydroplaned, skidded around, and then plowed right through an even bigger pile of slush in the middle of Chester Ave. Just as I regained control of the car, the pressure of all of that slush pushing up against the underside of the car forced a huge soupy mess of snow and mud up through the holes in the floor. The floor mats flew right up off of the floor and into our faces as at least thirty gallons of crud was forced through the perforated floor.
My feet were pushed away from the pedals, which were in turn buried under pounds of slush.
The car rolled to a stop, and Mike had to get out of the back seat and use his hands to scoop enough slush out of the front that Byron and I could free ourselves. We were buried right up to our laps in a dripping, oozing mess! The whole car was filled up with this crap!
We attempted to clean up, but none of us met any girls that night.
Evil Clowns!
Byron and I met a guy called Vic Taylor at the Nine of Clubs. He said he wanted to be in a band like Skinny Puppy. We got together at his place and wrote some songs. I played keyboards, Byron played bass, and Vic sang and played some extra keyboard parts. We got my old friend Alex Shienton (who I'd known since age 13) to play guitar, and a girl we knew (a bartender named Kimberly Winson) found us a drummer named Eric Matthews. We became Evil Clowns (not 'the' Evil Clowns, thankyouverymuch).
Evil Clowns were nothing like Skinny Puppy.
On our best day, our music resembled something between Killing Joke, the Banshees, and Rush(!) with lyrics drawn from B-horror flicks.
Vic was a bit wiser than the rest of us, and had befriended the woman who owned the Nine of Clubs, Dona. After Evil Clowns had gained some notoriety around town, he talked her into letting us play a show at Nine of Clubs. As a dance club, there was no stage there, but there was a balcony overlooking the dance floor, and we made it into a stage. We had to spend all of the money we made from the gig to hire a PA system and a sound engineer. Tiffany Mosher made us a huge banner to hang next to the 'stage'. The show happened to be during spring break, and the place was slammin'. People were packed in there like a subway at Friday rush hour. The club was beyond full, way beyond capacity. Many of our great friends were there, including some who didn't make it to the Nine of Clubs very often, such as my dearest friend Sali Brindo (now Sally Finger) from Chardon and Sarah Corrice (now Farina) from Painesville (her brother Wedge was a musician too). Their (and my) great friend Tisha Hellegers had just moved to Boston, and I think she was the only person of note who missed this gig.
We played our asses off. It was probably the best show that Evil Clowns ever did.
Then tragedy struck: when our planned set was only two-thirds of the way done, Dona told us we had to quit. Our big finishing numbers were still ahead of us. I got on the microphone, and expressed my discontent at the enforced truncation of the set. The audience roared their agreement. They wanted more. But Dona cut us off anyway, and my on-mic outburst had earned her scorn towards me, permanently. Vic was mad at me too - he'd been angling for a DJ gig from Dona, and he suspected that my subversive rant was not going to be good for his future employment (he did eventually get the DJ gig though). It is ironic that of all of the members of Evil Clowns, only I ended up working professionally in the music biz (and I still do). Clearly, I still had a lot to learn about professional diplomacy at that point. Nevertheless, it was a historic gig. After that, a few other bands got to play there, but not many.
One token soap opera, of many...
There was, inevitably, quite a lot of drama over the years.
Here's one story - I'll spare you all further ones.
One night in early 1987, Byron Bacik and I worked up the courage to talk to some girls named Shelly and Nadine. We arranged a date with them. On the big night, Shelly and I really hit it off, but Nadine was a real bitch to Byron all night, and for no good reason. I don't even know why she agreed to the date, because she was scornful to Byron all night. After dinner and conversation, Shelly suggested that we go to a midnight movie, so we saw whatever Freddy Krueger flick was out that year. Then we headed towards Nadine's house to drop her off.
Byron was very courteous, a complete gentleman.
He said "May I walk you to your door?".
She said "Nope!" and ran out of the car.
Shelly and I were slack jawed. He hadn't deserved that. She hadn't even offered a "thank you" for dinner and the movie. Shelly was mortified at her friend's behavior.
Nadine never apologized to Byron, but Shelly and I spent all summer together. Then Shelly told me that she had a secret boyfriend who had been in the army for the past six months, and that he was coming home. She had to choose between he and I, and after two agonizing weeks, she picked him. Worst of all was that I knew the guy, and didn't like him much to start with. His name was Brian Onitz, but we all called him Brian No-Nuts.
A few months later, that Christmas-time (1987), Nadine found me (hammered) at the Nine of Clubs one night. She bought me some more beers (I didn't need them!) and told me that she wanted to explain things to me. She'd disrespected my buddy, and her friend had dumped me for an idiot. I wasn't in the mood for her games. But I was curious to hear what she had to say for herself. So I said "OK: talk". She said that we had to go outside, where it was quieter. That sounded reasonable. Then she said she wanted to go for a drive. I was annoyed, but I drove, wanting to hear her story. She stalled for time when I pressed her to get to her point. Then she ordered me to drive to my parents house (this was before me and Dave got our place). That was weird and suspicious. The only way we'd be able to talk there was if I snuck her into my subterranean basement bedroom. I did. Then she asked for a backrub... and I was pretty hammered...
Well, I didn't learn the inside scoop about the true reason for her seduction until two years later. It turns out that Shelly had been having second thoughts about her decision: Brian No-Nuts had turned out to be a putz (no kidding!) and she allegedly wanted me back. So Nadine figured that, just to be an evil bitch, she'd seduce me to prevent Shelly and I from getting back together. What a truly mean-spirited thing to do to your supposed friend! It probably pissed Byron off a little too, but by that time he was seeing Tiffany Mosher, and they ended up together for several years. Many years later, in the late 1990s, Shelley and I were both living in Chicago, and I spent many nights sitting at the bar she was working at, talking about old times, and drinking free beers (for which I tipped my old flame quite well! Thanks Shelley!). So it all ended up all right, I suppose.
...and then there's Shelly and Nadine's pal Darcy Oster, but to even begin a discussion about my long and strange friendship with Darcy is a real Pandora's box, and one best left closed on these public recollections.
Okay, enough with the soap operas.
| Meet
the New Boss... Sometime later, perhaps by 1990, the Nine of Clubs was sold to some pompous hipster guy, and he renamed it the Alter House... because they played both 'alternative' and 'house' music. Clever. This was the very end of the 1980s, and House music had made its way from Chicago to Cleveland, killing off Euro-Beat. I was never a huge fan of the Euro-Beat stuff, but at least those people wrote songs with hooks and verses and choruses. The House movement birthed modern techno and many other variations of modern club music, and in my opinion it all sucks ass. The new owner also pulled out some of the tables and put in ratty old couches, raised the cover charge, and raised drink prices. A back patio opened, which was nice. They also occasionally let bands play in the basement, which they dubbed Picasso's Grave. The basement had never been open at all in the older days. By this time, the development of the west bank of the Flats was underway, and the east bank was slammed full of people every night. But not with our crowd. We were up the hill at the Nine. New faces... By 1989 or so, a new group of people were coming out. There was Kim Nath and Kim McAnn, their friend Dena Bean, plus Lisa Nihiser and her friend Anissa, Michelle Mooney, Lena and Patty who owned the dance floor, and a multiracial group of guys from the west side: Danny Southgate (black), Danny Rodriguez (Hispanic), Martin Shure (Jewish), John Frint (Irish), Milio (who the fuck knows), Big Black Scott (he was big, he was black, and his name was Scott). These guys all stuck together, more or less. Martin and I became pretty close friends. There was a guy called Brian Barnett too, and a frail-looking kid called Little Dave who was pals with Martin and Brian. There was also a girl named Dawn - the first-ever Evil Clowns gig had been at her birthday party. Vic Taylor's friend Waru was out just about every night too. These people were the crowd the we met up with in the later years. I remember one night, one of Martin's international comrades found out that one of the warehouses almost across the street from the Nine of Clubs had been broken into by unknown parties. The door was hanging open. It was right near the 4th of July (1990?), so a bunch of the guys went up onto the roof of the building and blew off small explosives. The rest of us watched from the street below. One fine summer afternoon, I procured a bottle of Old Grand Dad whiskey. A few years had passed since my date with Linda, the one during which I couldn't choke the stuff down. By this time, I was quite capable, yes sir. Brian and I poured the whole fifth of Old Grand Dad into a gallon jug along with the contents of a two liter bottle of cola. By that evening we had finished it. Whenever Brian took a hit off of the bottle, he made a weird sucking sound. I told him to stop sucking off my old grand dad. For many years after that, whenever we went to get some drinks, we told people we were going to suck off my old grand dad. Last I heard from Brian was about 1993; he'd got stuck in a trash compactor at his job and smashed his leg to smithereens. Raising hell is hard work... After the Nine of Clubs closed each night, we were all too pumped up to go home. In the earlier years (going all the way back to the Ritz era), we'd go get food (if we had an extra $2 in our pockets or purses) at a disgusting all night diner on Detroit Rd. called The Egg Palace or the Big Egg. It was filthy in there, but cheap. They had bizarre and corny slogans on their egg-shaped menu, that we loved. I would very much like to have an Egg Palace menu for memoribilia! Anyone out there have one? One night, a guy who claimed to be in the Navy took offense at the decorations on my leather motorcycle jacket: ribbons and medals that I'd found in a military surplus store. He said I hadn't earned them, and he was right. But he was also an asshole, and I told him so. Unfortunately, "The Admiral" (as he became known to us), was also a regular at the Egg Palace, so I had to high-tail it out of there whenever we saw him coming. In later years, say 1989-1991, the late night spot moved over to the Vienna Deli near the corner of 117th and Detroit. By then, some of us had something resembling an income, so we could afford $4 for an omelette. The whole gang would caravan over there after the club closed, and we'd push all of the tables together and have a big feast. Lots of us simply ordered water, but just enough people got food that the management tolerated our presence. We'd sometimes stay there for hours, almost until dawn. One night I noticed that they had sauerkraut balls on the menu. Lisa Nihiser said: "I didn't know sauerkrauts had balls!". |
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Assault and Battery...
One night, Kim McAnn and Dena Bean and I were leaving the club. Kim had a video camera, and I was filming her and Dena goofing off in the alley. There were two other girls in the alley having some sort of intense conversation. They yelled at me: "Stop fucking filming us!". I wasn't filming them; I was filming Kim and Dena. One of my eyes was looking through the viewfinder of the camera, the other eye was closed. So I didn't see one of the mean girls rhino-charging me. She nailed me in a football tackle on the tarmac and then got up and started kicking me. I eventually writhed away, and she bolted. I have the whole thing on tape; the recorder never stopped. It's all there: Kim and Dena dancing around, being silly, and then - WHAM! Shots of the stars and the side of a building shaking about, all to the sound of my grunting and this girl's boots connecting with my ribs as the camera shakes wildly about, and Kim and Dena yelling at my assailant. Freak-ass bitch.
Damn, did I just admit to getting beat up by a girl?
Younger Women...
There were other girls at the Nine of Clubs, who I had far less drama with than Shelly and Nadine. One night, I saw a girl dancing, and I thought she was gorgeous. Martin went to talk to her. Samantha (and her friend Ellen) were only 17 at the time, out clubbing with false IDs! Ooops! Well, Martin was probably about 20, and I guess I was 22 or so by then. Of course, Samantha and Ellen (or Sam'an'ella) were only five years younger than I, and now that we're in our 30s, five years age difference is no big deal. But things are different when you're so young: the difference between 17 and 22 is a vast, vast gulf of time and space! Sam and Martin dated for a while, and she and I are quite close friends to this day. Ellen too!
One more new face:
A guy named Trent Reznor used to show up now and again. He and I occasionally shot the breeze about music, both of us being very into Cabaret Voltaire and the like. I was working on some material outside of what Evil Clowns were doing, and he was also assembling some work outside of his band, the Exotic Birds (aka Neurotic Nerds!). I went over to his place one day and we played each other tapes of what we were working on. I can't say for certain, but I think we both thought that the other guy's stuff basically sucked. I guess I was the poorer judge of music that day, because the tapes he played me that fine afternoon were the demos for a record called Pretty Hate Machine, and we all know what happened to Trent after that.
Interestingly, our paths would cross again. In 1992 or so, he did a guest appearance on a record by a band called Pigface; two years after his appearance I joined that band and did fifty shows playing keyboards with them (1994-1995). Two years after that, I was on tour with Ministry, programming their samplers. Trent and I ran into each other backstage at a Ministry gig in New Orleans (this was 1996). We had a laugh about that day in 1989 when we sat around his pad listening to Cab Volt and playing each other's cassettes.
That's not all:
After Pretty Hate Machine had come out and hit big, Trent had a guitar player who I knew a little, a nice guy called Rich Patrick. One day, I was walking up the alley towards the club, and I saw Rich in his truck, blasting some music. I asked him what it was, and he said it was the new, unreleased material by a Ministry side project called Revolting Cocks. Now, the YA13H!!! posse liked Revolting Cocks, so I was interested in this new material. Rich said that he got the cassette from the band (an advantage of being in Nine Inch Nails, I guess!) but that I could have it. There was a seriously twisted version of Olivia Newton John's Let's Get Physical on it. Well, Olivia got wind of what RevCo had done to her song and denied them use of the lyric. So the version that was eventually released to the public had a new lyric. I still have the cassette that Rich gave me with the banned version of the song on it. We played that thing SO FUCKING LOUD in his truck's stereo that night! And of course, a couple of years later, in 1993, right after moving to Chicago, on my very first day of work at Chicago Trax Recording, who did I get assigned to work with?
Revolting Cocks.
Destiny, my friends.
Wrapping it up...
As
1991 came and went, the Nine of Clubs and/or Alter House was on its
last legs.I moved to Florida to finish school in February of 1992, and then (with degree in hand) I migrated back north to Chicago in May of 1993.
I visited the Nine-O one or two more times when I came back to Cleveland to visit, but it didn't last long after I moved away (I'm just sayin'). Now the space has been completely remodeled, and it is a porno bookstore. Lots of other bars and clubs have sprung up on the street, and as West 9th and West 6th have been developed into a jumpin' neighborhood, the Flats have collapsed into a ghost town.
So one more tale...
We were in the alley, drinking beer.
Of course.
The whole later-day crowd. Most of the crew went inside, but me and some guy I never met before were still outside. He was a pretty hardcore punk looking guy, with one side of his head shaved, and on the other side his hair was shoulder-length. He had a motorcycle jacket on, all painted with punk band logos, and with metal spikes stuck in it. In other words, he looked like most of my other pals of that era. Two black guys came over and asked us if we wanted some more beer. We did. They said they had cash but no ride, and they'd buy the booze if one of us drove to get it.
It didn't feel right.
My momma told me never to accept rides with strangers, dontchaknow.
Someone else came outside, maybe Milio, or John Frint, and discouraged me and the punk guy from going with the strangers. I didn't need much discouraging. I wasn't going anywhere with these guys. But the punk guy said he'd drive them. A half hour later, he came back, barefoot, jacketless, shirtless... panting, crying, sobbing. They'd pulled guns on him, jacked his wallet and car, and taken his clothes to keep him from getting anywhere too quickly to blow the whistle on them. This bad-ass punk guy had run all the way back from the West Side, a mile or two over the Detroit-Superior bridge, and had been reduced to a sobbing little boy. I don't know if he ever got compensated for the loss of his car, but I do know that he has almost certainly developed an extreme distrust of kindly strangers.
| The
legend... We were kids. We were rude, loud, strangely dressed, often intoxicated, disrepectful, always broke, full of unfocused energy, and kind of weird. If I saw myself at that age now, I'd tell myself to straighten up, get a life, and to do something signifigant with my time on this earth. I did, and so did most of the people mentioned in this memoir, or at least the ones I have stayed in touch with. But I also have no regrets, because as kids, we were entitled to sow some wild oats, have some fun, and get the 24-7 party out of our systems. And we did that in spades. Or, at least, in clubs. There were some other spots to flirt, drink, and kill time in during those years, and we did go to them. None attained the legend that the Nine of Clubs has. One of them was the Aquilon, which was also sometimes called The Lift (only on Sundays). It was a swanky, art deco-influenced place that had big band music on weeknights, trendy Euro club music on Friday and Saturdays, and let us freaks in on Sundays. It was on the top (4th) floor of a warehouse building, and you had to wait for a freight elevator to shuttle people up and down. By the early 1990s, they'd show videos by Fishbone, the Primitives, and Jane's Addiciton on a big projection screen, and occasionally have shows on the (otherwise abandoned) 3rd floor. I saw Ministry and Laibach there. Who knew, at the time, that I'd be employed by Ministry a few years later? There were other dance clubs too, and of course many live music venues (Variety Theater, Phantasy, the Empire - which was in the space the Ritz had been in - Euclid Tavern, Flea-body's), and dive bars like Ernie's Eatery and the Harbor Inn. All of these other places, and more, have stories associated with them, just as the Nine of Clubs does. But if one gathering place that defined my college-age years, it was the Nine of Clubs. My high school years? Well, those years were defined by Coventry, and THAT is an entirely different memoir... |
|
April 06, 2005:
I posted this memoir in January of 2005, and forgot about it for the better part of three months.
Then, during a single week in early April of 2005, all hell broke loose!
First, I found Lena (who, you may remember, owned the dance floor) on the on-line networking site called MySpace. She got me back in touch with Michelle Mooney, who I hadn't spoken to since 1992. Michelle forwarded this memoir to Kim Nath (who I also hadn't spoken to since 1992), who sent me a note from her current home in the UK. Michelle also got me back in touch with my old friend Vic, lead singer of Evil Clowns, who I hadn't spoken to since 1992 (seeing a pattern here?). He is now in Albuquerue and has a band called Brave New World.
Meanwhile, Heather Cummings (now Haberman!) apparently did a web search for "Nine of Clubs" during the same week that all of the above re-networking was going on, and sent me a pleasant note about what she's been doing since she fled my car after I got the giggles. Some lucky bastard named Mark married her.
AND, at the very moment that I was replying to Heather, Dorothy Barresi (the poetess who's poem "Nine of Clubs, Cleveland, Ohio" was previously the only other reference to the Nine-O on the whole internet) was simultaineously writing a reply to the email I'd sent her back in January. Way to be prompt with your replies, Dorothy (haha)! I got it mere seconds after sending the email to Heather.
She wouldn't email me the poem, but you can buy Dorothy's book of poems here.
April 25, 2005:
The mail just keeps rolling in!
Josh Friedman, a fella I knew from the Coventry years - and who also appeared at the Nine of Clubs - wrote to me, as did a gal named Rita and another named Julie. Interestingly, all of them are on MySpace. It's a conspiracy, I tell you.
Rita wrote:
"I started thinking about that blonde guy that was always in the center of the dancefloor ... I think that his name was Jimmy? And about sitting the parking lot in my Mustang and drinking CASES of beer and just hucking the empties into the trunk. Goodtimes!"
Yeah, how could I have forgotten about Jimmy Jazz, who was a tall bleached blonde punker guy who was always loaded, and always dancing maniacally, limbs akimbo, don't get to close or you'll get whacked. Not only at the Nine of Clubs, but at every club and show in town. Like so many other people in this memoir, I wonder what happened to that guy?
Josh wrote:
"... you forgot about some major players: Chris Bates, LuLu, Andy Sickle, Jason Merhaut"
Didn't forget 'em, just didn't know them that well, or not at all.
Andy and I were both interested in recording music and talked shop all the time at shows and parties and things, but I can't ever remember actually ever seeing him at the Nine. Jason was always around but he and I were never close, Lulu and I had a lot of mutual pals but we never really hung out at all - unfortunately, I guess - and I have no idea who Chris was.
That's the thing about memoirs - they're limitied to the memories of the person writing!
Also, there are a lot of people I remember but whom I didn't have stories about.
| October 25, 2005: Things have been quiet all summer, but it seems like Josh and Jason do have quite the fan club: Greg wrote: "I really, really enjoyed reading your Nine of Clubs memoir. Those were the fucking days. I don't think we've ever met, but I knew Jason Merhaut, Michelle Mooney, Josh Friedman, Mike Filly, Bill Kiedio (now Reagan), Eric Freeman, Lisa Nihiser, Jocelyn Taylor (my ex-gf), etc. Never met Trent Reznor, but I (knew) some girls who claim to have slept with him. It's such a small world, who knew? I envy you that you got to see the Nine from the very beginning. I first went in '89, and spent a lot of time there and at the far less cool Alterhouse. I also worked for years at Aquilon for Angela VerDuyn. Lived in Coventry for six years. The whole long-dead scene. Have you been back to Cleveland? It's a fucking shell. Coventry Arabica's gone. The street sucks. The downtown clubs are shit. It's sad. Well, ultimately I just wanted to say thanks for that blast from the past." You're welcome Greg - Glad someone is enjoying my scribbling. Although I confess that I am surprised that Nadine hasn't written me some hate-mail yet... I do get back to Cleve-O now and again to visit my family, and it is indeed pathetic how far Coventry has sunk. I probably spent more time there, from about 1983 to about 1986, than I did at the Nine of Clubs in later years... just haven't gotten around to writing about it yet! I probably should have mentioned Mike Filly myself. A guy named Corey Ferber introduced us. I remember one day Mike came over to my pad, and was geeked that I actually owned a sampler (Emax I, circa 1987). He went on to accidentally break some of my gear (but he paid me for it, being the stand-up guy that he is) and I understand that he ended up sort of a high-profile DJ. Cool! |
|
November 20, 2005:
Got an email from John Cline!
John is/was a bass player who I best remember from the Coventry years, and from one of his many middle-1980s bands, Chemically Retarded. He's here in Chicago now (and guess, what he's on MySpace too!), but last time I saw him was many years ago when our mutual pal Alex Shienton (Evil Clowns guitarist) was visiting Chicago.
John says...
"So I was at work perusing the web, when I read (your memoir).
Interesting article...well written...of course if you combined ALL of the
stories from the Nine, the Lift and Metro...well you could write a screen
play...
Maybe you should...."
Hmmm.... maybe I WILL!
On the same day, Josh Friedman sent me this tear-jerker...
"everytime i read your 9 o clubs memoir get a bit misty eyed
i have a feeling it was the only time in my life i was truly happy
even after i got shot anyone that was a reg there was there for me..
thank you for you memories
for they now rekindle mine !!"
Ya' know, I think Josh is gonna have to get a special place in the Coventry tales, when and if I get around to telling them...!
December 01, 2005:
Some sad news forwarded to me by Kimberly Ross (nee Winson), as well as Josh Friedman, and Michelle Mooney...
Kimberly writes:
"I received some news today about a former clubber that I thought you might find interesting…I don’t know if you knew her, but a girl named Dawn used to frequent the Nine, Aquilon and Coventry. She was Angela Verdyn’s nanny (the owner of Aquilon) and good friends with LuLu—ring a bell? Anyway, she passed away on Thanksgiving. Apparently it was a freak accident; she fell down an elevator shaft. She was at a friend's house and was riding the elevator with some guy when it got stuck. The guy climbed out of the top to get help and told her stay there. She didn't and fell down the shaft. Very sad, keep her family in your thoughts and prayers."
Very sad news for Dawn's family, friends, and those of us who knew her back in the day.
on a lighter note, Kimberly also writes...
"So, are you going to write a screenplay? I would like Julianne Moore to play me."
I had my people speak with Julianne's people, and she's up for it.
A good choice - I can definitely see her in the role of you giving me Celebrator beers (with the little plastic goats on the bottle) at Aquilon...
March 20, 2006:
Lisa Nihiser (now Andrews) and Vicki Semarjian both got in touch recently, and amazingly, neither of them are on Myspace. Both of them are married (sorry fellas) and are living in various cities on the east coast.
Both of them also lived here in Chicago in the middle-1990s for a while.
Jimmy Jazz came up again in their correspondance; Lisa remembers him giving himself the finger in the mirror on the dance floor while shouting "fuck you" at himself at maximum volume. Yeah, that's the guy I remember.
March 23, 2006:
Sheila Grigas writes...
"Oh my God! I was doing a google search and I came across you memoir! You gotta be freakin' kidding me, you just summed up my college and few post collge years! I was actually trying to trackdown some old friends and did a seach for Lisa Nishiser, my buddy from Mayfield High School. And I found her name in your website. Oh- incase you are wondering who in the hell I am, my name is Sheila Grigas (also on Myspace where I have re-connected with many old Cleveland peops!). I was [in Kent circa 1988-1992] and I rember hearing of Evil Clowns (along with local band Domestic Crisis). Anyway- I LOVED reading your memoir. I have been out of C-town now for 7 years and currently live in Denver, but the fam still resides in the Mayfield Hts area, so I go back once in a while..
I should proably get back to work now, but I was so exicited to see "Nine-O" on the website, I just HAD to email you. I'm sure we were drunk together at some Art Party given by some CIA kid or maybe Case punk, or at College Towers in Kent.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane!"
You're welcome!
I definitely went to my share of art parites at Case, and who can forget Studio-A-Rama every summer!
| September 11, 2006: Richard Brown writes: "I just read your write-up on the nine of clubs on one of my "6 degrees of seperation" searches on the Internet. Wow, that brought back some great memories, and some names of friends I haven't thought of in ages! My name is Richard Brown, I was a long-time regular of the nine, from about 88 until the end. I hung out with the "Lestat" crowd; I was the black guy in that band if you remember. I hung with Evan Ford, Jess, and the like mainly, but was friends with everybody. I remember B*O*B the bartender, "Malboro Man" (always wore a trech coat and hat), Black and White Ron the bartenders, Alyssa the DJ, Eddie the DJ (he was either hot or really damn cold), all interesting characters. I was long-time friends also with Martin Shure and others of the "west-side" crew that you mentioned, but have long-since lost touch with everyone. It was really nice reading some of the names again. The people that I still am in touch with are all (mainly) grown up: The band Lestat's members are all married (even Evan!) and raising families of their own, with the exception of Jess whom we can't seem to keep in touch with. I myself married Carrie Chorzelewski, another Nine-goer, and we have two children. I'm a Web programmer here in Cleveland (Strongsville). Martin Shure was a graphic artist in Cleveland last I saw him. I used to run into Tattoo Dave quite often until I got married and became a daddy. Not so much time to hang out nowadays. I remember fondly my days at the Nine, dancing like a fiend, never seeming to tire. It amazes me now that I'd dance from 9pm to 2pm with only breaks to pee and get a new beer. I did that for years until the Alterhouse and my knees brought that to the end. Lots of us moved to the Phantasy Nightclub after the Nine/Alterhouse. That went on for years, at times strong and slowly petering out. Still there are good memories of that place as well. Oh, don't forget the Grid! I (straight as well) went there several times just for the music. I was also a fan of the Ritz before they closed (I saw Bronski Beat there, and one of my favorite bands, Beautiful South). Cleveland is a ghost town now. The space where the Nine was is a porno book store (kind of fitting I guess). I'd love to make a permanent home for us old Nine people; I met some of the most open and earnest people there; it truly was a place unique in the city." |
|
Since writing, Richard has fulfilled his desire, and launched a Nine of Clubs tribute site!
On September 21, he wrote:
"I've set up a permanent home for memories of the Nine of Clubs and that era. Visit: http://www.nineofclubbers.com, and please, add anything you can remember.
I've also linked to your original memoir that inspired me to make the site."
Another of Richard's Lestat buddies got in touch too...
Evan writes:
"Awesome write up...makes me sad and nostalgic at the same time.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane. This is the former Razz from Lestat. Many years may have passed, but I've yet to find another Nine O'.
Evan Nave
www.pksmetal.com"
September 19, 2006:
This guy gives me some pretty solid props on his blog, which to return the favor with honesty, is a pretty cool blog...
http://lostinthe80s.blogspot.com/2006/09/lost-in-cleveland-nine-of-clubs.html
December 30, 2006:
Another nice letter, this time from Matt:
The first time I went to the Nine, also my first club experience, was back in 1988, I was only 17. Halloween was playing and people were going nuts on the dance floor. I was hooked, continuing to go every week up until the end. The last time I went was on a Sunday night as Alterhouse was experimenting with expanding their market. I was dressed in a leather jacket and combat boots, walked into the club and handed the police officer at the door my ID and $5. Why he never told me it was HipHop night I'll never know, but I ended up being the only white male in the club.
My most memorable experience there involved Nadine (not sure if it was the same one). As I was walking out to my car, Nadine rounded the corner behind me and at the top of her lungs yelled, "Hey, my friend likes you." My immediate response was to yell back, "I'm straight." She laughed and said that was OK because her friend was a girl. I ended up going out with her friend a few times.
Nothing ever came close to replacing the Nine of Clubs.
December, 2006
Vicki Semarjian provides some updates...
Dawn Roethel just got married in September and moved from Chicago to Denver. Her hair is still pink, she still has a nose ring and I can proudly say she no longer works at Merry Go Round.
John Anthony D'Amato lives in NYC and does interior design AND hangs out with Jason Merhaut (who also lives in NYC).
You left out our pal DJ Eddie Lengyel from Solon and absolutely annoying and super gay door guy Steven, Lizard and Victor Virus (how could Jimmy Jazz live without him).
Floyd...floyd, floyd, floyd...He used to rub up against all the girls with his road kill self and say 'hi, can we dance? Come home with me. I'll take care of you.' Ewwwww, gross. Funny, though, I took my hubby, sister-in-law and friend to see The Floyd Band and Numbskull in Cleveland. The show was far better than I actually ever thought it would be.
Some other stories...I originally met Byron and his idiot friend Mike at the Cosmopolitan years before. Mike ALWAYS spoke with a British accent (of couse it took me running into Byron in the 90's to find out Mike wasn't actually British). They used to hang with these girls from Mentor Shelley and Racquel. Racquel's brother beat the shit out of Mike and broke his nose. I bet he deserved it.
When Lisa and I were in college, we used to draw portraits of Jimmy Jazz. It was always of Jimmy Jazz giving himself the finger in the mirror with his I am Jimmy Jazz jacket. I remember getting pissed cause he always used to smash into me on the dance floor. One night I had enough and elbowed him straight in the ribs. Everyone thought he would kill me and claimed he had been in jail and that I should go hide or leave or something. His big reputation was clearly a let down because after that, he was my new pal always dancing with me, etc. Where are they now???
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