Hard-Core: Life of My Own

by Harley Flanagan

  And then I won all the respect in the world at school. The teacher came back in and goes to send me to detention, and everyone came to my defense. All of a sudden, I was the man. I guess it was like the victim-turned-aggressor thing. Once I realized I could fight, and I was good at it, I finally found a way to get respect. Like I’ve said, everyone in my neighborhood was in a gang and everyone was a fucking hard-ass. You were just supposed to be tough. And after that incident in school, I was done getting fucked with.

  So, I started fighting a lot. I was at the top of the food chain. And all the Puerto Rican kids at school left me alone, and all of a sudden, all the black kids in my class loved me. It’s funny, I was the only white kid they let sit at their table. They had their own section in the cafeteria where they’d meet up at lunch from the different classes. The first time this one kid, Marc, called me over to them. Him, Melvin Hicks, and Timothy, man, they were the three biggest kids in my class. And these two other guys were sitting with them. It was that same day I fucked that dude up. I was walking through the lunchroom to get my tray and food, and they were like “Yo, Harley!” I was still all heated from the shit that happened in class. I was thinking, “What the fuck is this now?” He was like, “Yo, relax you crazy motherfucker! Come grab a seat when you’re done getting your food.” I came back over, not knowing what to expect, and sat down. And they were like, “Yo man, this is one crazy motherfucker.” They started telling the other guys what happened in class, and all of a sudden, I was in. They were the funniest motherfuckers in school, they were bigger than everyone else, and pretty much the hardest motherfuckers around. A few of them had been left back and had mustaches and facial hair.

  Yo, even the black chicks in my school were feared! They’d get into fights that’d turn into mini-riots. They were worse than the dudes. But anyway, these motherfuckers used to sic me on people. “Yo Harley, go fuck with that dude,” and they’d all stand, watch, and giggle. They were the real hard-rocks of the school. I mean, the Puerto Ricans ran shit and outnumbered everyone, but the black kids didn’t get fucked with at all. And now, I was down with them, after I had proven that I was “the crazy white boy,” as they called me. They also called me “Boulder Head”—after I head-butted a kid in the face and broke his nose—and “Popeye,” ’cause I had a tattoo. I was the only kid in school with a tattoo—you gotta figure this was like fifth grade.

  The funny shit was that I was already in a band, and no one else my age or in my school was. Even the “rock heads” who wore Rush and AC/DC shirts were like, “You’re in a band?” It was inconceivable to them, like I might as well have said, “I’m from fucking Mars.” But then when these punk rock chicks, Stimulators fans like these girls Artificial and Nowhere, these Russian punk rock chicks May and July, Gabby Glaser and Jill Cunniff from Luscious Jackson, and all these other friends of mine who were a lot older than the kids at my school would show up to pick me up from school, all the kids would be like “Oh shit! Who are they?” It’s funny, ’cause I went to school with Huey Morgan of the Fun Lovin’ Criminals, obviously way before he was doing music. But yeah, I bumped into him and Everlast on Houston Street in like 2000, and he started telling Everlast—who I’d gigged with a few years back when he was with House of Pain—“Yo, I remember when we were in junior high and Harley was talking about being in a band and shit. It seemed so insane, we were like, ‘What do you mean, you’re in a band?’ We were little kids and he’s talking about doing gigs at Max’s Kansas City and touring.”

  Up until that point, I had been the only punk rocker in my school. And then in 1980, I was the only Skinhead. Anyway, it didn’t matter. I was done with school, I never went back: I quit school for good in the seventh grade. At that point, I had been left back a few times already. I only went back once in a while during lunch to hang with my friends, drop acid, and fuck with the high school students from Stuyvesant High. And of course, to rob kids from time to time like I had grown up seeing all the kids on my block and in school do. That was just normal pecking order. That’s how shit was.

  In those days, there was a serious rift between rock and disco. It was the white boys that listened to rock, and everyone else listened to disco. Those Saturday Night Fever days still lingered. Rap didn’t really exist yet. My point being, the lines were very drawn. And then you had this little fuckin’ pocket called punk rock. We were like the shit-stain on the wall. Everybody fucked with us.

  Back then, if you were into rock, you were part of the Rush and AC/DC T-shirt-wearing crew. I remember some of the kids were just starting to get into Van Halen. But I could never get past the striped spandex and big hair. I grew up on punk rock—Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious, motherfuckers who looked chaotic. Dudes with chains around their necks, spiky hair, and scowls on their faces. I was into the Bad Brains and Minor Threat: fuck all these guys in fuckin’ spandex, their inflatable dragons, and heavy metal puppets.

  Even as a kid I couldn’t get into it. I’m probably one of the few people that never liked KISS. The whole idea of being “larger than life” was phony and pretentious to me. I was dealing with real shit—like my mother buying my clothes at the Salvation Army and finding furniture off the street that didn’t look so bad. That was my reality—my mother, her boyfriend, and me, all sleeping in the same bed with our clothes on, and under every blanket in the house just to keep warm, ’cause we had no fuckin’ heat in the middle of winter. When you live the way I lived, you’d rather listen to shit like the Dead Boys, Sex Pistols, and the Clash. Van Halen has no interest to you when you have Puerto Ricans shooting at you ’cause you’re funny-looking and it’s dark out, and they don’t give a fuck.

  At that point, I had pretty much become a full-time truant. I used to go on trips to school to hang out with some of my friends at lunch. On one of those trips, I met Chris Wandres or “Little Chris.” This little-ass kid a couple years younger than me was singing a Clash song. I was like, “You like the Clash?!” “Yeah man, they’re fuckin’ great!” I was like, “You gotta come hang out.” And that was it. You gotta understand, back then, if you met someone who was into punk rock or hardcore, there was an instant connection and bond.

  Soon, Chris’ head was shaved and we were inseparable—me, him, and Eric Casanova. The three of us were little maniacs, huffin’ glue, trippin’, gettin’ wasted, and gettin’ in trouble, shoplifting like crazy. We were fucked up, but we had a great time. We used to kick out subway windows, vandalize—stupid kid shit.

  We’d hang out with other kids from my junior high school who’d cut class, including “Puerto Rican George Olson”—the only Puerto Rican I’ve ever met with a Swedish last name. I met him when we got into a fistfight in the fifth grade when I was having beef with the Puerto Ricans. Now we were best friends. Also this Filipino kid, Florencio, who was a master thief. He was tiny and had a filthy fuckin’ mouth on him. And Aram Abraham, this kid from England, who was a fan of the British soccer team West Ham. He loved me ’cause I knew about the Hammers and Skinheads.

  We were little delinquents. If one of us got caught shoplifting, we’d all attack the storeowner. We’d all start knocking over stands of food and chips, and throwing shit in the air and at them. We’d all beat on the storeowner until he’d let whoever he had caught go, and then we’d run like fuck. We’d go down to Chinatown or up to Central Park—always in trouble. We were like the Bowery Boys, a bunch of little maniacs shoplifting, writing graffiti. And these kids knew nothing about punk rock, except for Little Chris.

  LOWER EAST SIDE, OUTSIDE OF C-SQUAT, ALPHABET CITY, BY BROOKE SMITH

  Up until I came back from Ireland, there were no Skinheads in New York. By this point, there was maybe between five to eight Skins in New York, and two of them were from England. At first, it was just whatever of my friends I could get to shave their heads. That’s how it began. I always remembered what the Belfast Skins told me: “Teach America about Skinheads.” The first few friends of mine to shave their heads included Adam Yauch and a few othe
rs who weren’t really Skinheads in the stereotypical “thug” way. They just liked the look and the music. I mean, we were all into the early Oi! style music, Cockney Rejects and bands like that, even though it wasn’t really called Oi! yet. The Two Tone thing was happening, with all the ska bands jumping off like the Specials, Selecter, Madness, and they were all popular with Skinheads early on. But there still wasn’t a Skinhead scene in New York, just a few friends of mine who were up on it. But within a couple years, that would all change.

  In like 1980, there was a loft party in the West 20s, where I was tripping my face off. Some of the Beastie Boys cats were there, and it turns out Richard Birkenhead from Underdog was there, too. Anyway, there were some pseudo-rockabilly cats there playing all sorts of Stray Cats shit, and these dudes were dancing, snappin’ their fingers, shakin’ their legs, and tryin’ to look like Elvis or some shit. You’ve got to remember, I’m tripping my balls off, so they looked even more ridiculous to me. It’s totally comedic and I start breakin’ balls, I couldn’t help it. My mouth was flyin’. I got my hands on a pre-mixed big-ass bottle of Kamikazes—like a fuckin’ gallon bottle—and a friend and I are suckin’ this thing down. So, I’m fucked up beyond recognition. Eventually, one of the dudes, an Italian kid from Little Italy, Anthony, gets the balls to say some shit to me. He was kind of a big guy, and older than me. So I got up, and my gravity knife comes out, blade to his face. Needless to say, he backed the fuck off. So I went back to suckin’ down this bottle of Kamikaze.

  The rockabilly dudes get on the horn and called the Thompson Street Boys, from Little Italy. At least that’s what I heard. I needed to get some air, so I left the party—in the elevator and trippin’ my dick off. The elevator gets to the first floor, and all of a sudden, all these dudes come flying past me—with baseball bats! They get in the elevator and start going up. I was so high, I didn’t even make the connection that they were coming to fuck me up! So I get outside, just hangin’ out, leanin’ on a car with my boy Chris Jones, bullshittin’ with this other guy, T, who stole a big bottle of vodka from the party. All of a sudden all those guys start piling back out from the building, and in the front is the guy who I held the knife to—holding a baseball bat. He goes, “There he is!” I turn just in time to see a bat and all kinds of “trails” because I was still tripping so fuckin’ hard, as the bat came cracking down on me.

  I got fucked up pretty bad. I got my knee broken and got cracked across the face. I took an ass-beating. My friend T knew some of the guys and tried to stop them, and got blasted with a baseball bat a few times. For some reason I remember vividly T holding that bottle of vodka and extending his other hand, going, “No!”—and then just getting cracked across his other arm, the bottle shattering, and him doubling over; and then, another crack across his shoulder. It was a bad scene. The Beasties dudes ran like fuck right away. Me, I’ve never run and left a friend to take a beating; I’ve taken beatings for them. But I’m not talking shit; they weren’t fighters, and never were. They were scared and ran. I’ve had motherfuckers who claim to be hard-asses do the same shit, so like I said, it’s no big deal.

  One of them guineas actually pulled out a fuckin’ whip, and was about to start whipping me with it! And this chick, Tanya, jumped on him, and then a passing cab driver yelled out the window, “I just called the cops on my radio, they’re on the way,” so the guys jumped in their cars and bailed.

  At that point, I was fuckin’ destroyed, blood everywhere. Me and my friend Chris hobbled off to his house. He had run away from home, so his father was not too excited about him showing up, especially since Chris had stolen money and the TV the last time he was there. But I was like, “Dude, we’ve got to go there, I’m a fuckin’ mess. We’ll deal with his bullshit tomorrow.” So he let us in, looked at me, and says, “What the fuck happened to you guys?!” “Dad, I’m sorry, I’ll explain it tomorrow.” The next morning I woke up, and we had spilt a 40 oz. of brew in the bed—so I woke up in this beer-soaked bed covered in blood, my leg was swollen and all sideways, and my head was swollen. And Chris’ father was standing at the foot of the bed, screaming at me. “Where the fuck is he?! Where did that motherfucker go?!”

  It turns out Chris woke up first, stole his dad’s wallet, and his dad had company over, and he stole their wallets too, and split! This is what the fuck I woke up to. I’d never met this kid’s father before in my life. It was such a bad scene. And his father had let us sleep in his bed. I tried to get out of the bed. I stepped on my leg, and my leg just gave out. My knee was broken. So he had to scrape together what little bit of change he had around the house to hook me up with the five or six bucks to get me in a cab to my mom’s.

  It didn’t get too much better for me. I got home, hobbled up the stairs to the second floor, and let myself in. I was around the corner in the apartment, and called my mom. I’m like, “Mom, it looks a lot worse than it is.” I just remember her looking at me and going, “You motherfucker! What the fuck did you do?!” Just when you need a little bit of love! Of course, I went to the hospital and had all the emergency room drama, where I was there all fuckin’ night, and I’ve got cops up the ass trying to get me to tell them who did it. And I didn’t want to say shit, because I knew who he was and I was going to get him back on my own time. So fuck it.

  Needless to say, that was a pretty fuckin’ rough night for a young kid. I was still in junior high at the time. The kid that it had all started with went to high school a few blocks from my junior high. I wanted to fuck his ass up. I remember like a week later, I approached him. I was still walking with a cane. He was leanin’ against a car with two friends lookin’ kind of nervous. I walked up, smiled and handed him an ace of spades, and told him, “Every dog has his day,” and then I limped away with my cane and left him standing there holding the card looking scared as shit. But time went by, he graduated, I dropped out, and I never saw him again until like 20–25 years later, and he was like, “Are we cool?” I honestly didn’t recognize him! Then when I did finally realize who it was, I was like, “Ah fuck it, who cares? That shit was a million years ago. We were kids, stupid shit happens.” But it was a fucked-up night for a 14-year-old.

  A few weeks after that shit there was a gig at Irving Plaza, with Kraut opening up for the Misfits. I was still walking with a cane at the time, so me, Jimmy Gestapo, Paul Dordal and a few others spent most of the show onstage sitting on the drum riser. I remember every time someone we didn’t know would try to stage dive, I’d hook them around the ankle with the handle of my cane, Jimmy would shove them real hard in the back, and they’d bust their ass! It was hysterical. There was only maybe a dozen of us Skinhead types there, but we were totally running the show.

  I remember at one point a fight broke out in the crowd, and all of us jumped off the stage. I remember hobbling to the edge of the stage with my busted knee, hopping into the crowd, and beating the shit out of some jocks with my cane, while Jimmy and my boys were laying an ass-beating on them. By the time the Misfits came on, Paul and me were up onstage on Jerry Only’s mic, calling out the entire audience. Paul whipped a beer mug into the crowd, we were like “Fuck you, we’ll fight all of you!” We were all drunk onstage while the Misfits were playing, singing backup and talkin’ shit to the crowd. It was a great show.

  HARLEY, BY JEANIE PAWLOWSKI

  One of the first to shave his head after me was Eric Casanova. I first met Eric through Jimmy Gestapo. Jimmy was like a brother to me, one of the people I have known the longest, and I can’t for the life of me remember how or when we met; it seems like I’ve just known him forever. Maybe I met him at Max’s. I think Doug Holland brought him there when he was still in his first band, Apprehended.

  I met Eric through Jimmy on St. Marks Place. Jimmy and him were walking east, and I was walking west. I was already good friends with Jimmy, and Eric had spiky hair, a dog collar, and brown construction boots with nails in them. We became best friends right away. I was like, “Yo, we gotta do something about that h
air.” We went by my house, out came the clippers, and the next time I saw him, he had on combat boots. That was pretty much how we all looked in the beginning—shaved heads and combat boots. Eric’s mom Eva flipped on him when he shaved his head.

  You’ve never seen or heard the rage of a Puerto Rican mother like that in your life. She went fuckin’ ghetto-rage mad. The shit she was yelling at him: “You motherfucker! You think you’re gonna shave your fuckin’ head?!” And then she launched into some shit that I still can’t believe she screamed at us and him—it still makes my jaw drop, it was so ill. Launching back into “You motherfuckin’ son of a bitch!” Then all kinds of shit in Spanish, then back to English, and then Spanish. Yo, this woman was hard. She was an old-school New Yorker. She didn’t take any shit, but she had a huge heart. She treated me like a second son.

  I remember one time she pulled a fuckin’ knife on our friend Bubby ’cause he showed up at her door with a mohawk and black nail polish, looking for Eric. She didn’t give a fuck about the mohawk, but she flipped on him for the black nail polish! Bubby was just coming to see if he could get the drums back he’d loaned Eric. She was like, “Fuck that! I don’t know this motherfucker, and he ain’t taking my son’s shit!” She was great.

  Eric lived with his mom, stepdad, and two sisters out by Ocean Avenue. His mom told me that Eric’s granddad used to collect bets for the guys who worked the numbers in their neighborhood back in the day, and for that he got killed. Some fucking scumbags cut his throat over like $30. She found him bleeding to death; this was when she was a little kid. She went through all the gang and drug shit back in the day, she was old-school, when New Yorkers had character. Now that New York ghetto charm is gone. It’s been yuppied the fuck out. There are so few real New Yorkers left or even people who remember what it was like.