Enquiring minds want to know.

For those of you who just can't get through the checkout line in the supermarket without buying or at the very least glossing through the latest gossip rag I have succumbed to the recent Memeterview that has been meandering from blog to blog. How could I not? When someone as insightful, zany and fun as Lime makes an offer to interview you; it's just as if Brando had made it. And awwaaaaaay we go...

1. What took you to Japan and what has kept you there?

Well, I guess I can tell the truth since the statute of limitations has run out...Just joking.
In all honesty I just got sick and tired of all the bullshit that constantly surrounds you in New York, yet there is one event that added one, if not the final, proverbial straw.
Before I left the city I was a bartender/ night manager of the Border Cafe. A Tex-Mex restaurant on Broadway and 105 st. in Manhattan. It was a nasty place to work. The owner was always dodging one supplier or another to avoid paying his bills. The staff, all really good people, would always be a little nervous around Friday cuz we weren't sure we were getting paid. I busted my ass in that place and turned it from a dog tired restaurant filled with cheap- skate losers into a real hopping bar with live music every week, happy hour and a football pool. Any girl who came in and donated a bra she had was wearing at the time drank for free. (Gimme a break. I was 25 fer chrissake.) We tacked up the bras and some baseball hats that were donated by some customers above the bar and made the place look fun.
The thing put an end to the party and caused me to finally throw in the towel was the Owner's girlfriend. She worked behind the bar two or three times a week, but was completely useless. Mr. Boss man would sit at the end of the bar and they would incessantly bicker about everything, and I mean everything! One night, after a heated argument, she walked off in a huff and when she came back a couple of hours later I told her to fuck off. I said I didn't need a bitch who shafts me by leaving me stranded on a Friday night. I think I called her a fat bitch and it really ticked her off. At the time I didn't give two shits.
I had been dealing with all kinds of scumbags. I'd had knives pulled on me. I was forced to cajole competing coke dealers into putting their pieces in brown paper bags which I kept under the bar while they were drinking or I wouldn't serve them. I had to be a bouncer as well 'cuz the boss was too cheap to hire a doorman. I hated that. It was the most distasteful part of the business. Then there were usual fuckers who would try to skip out on a bill or stiff you on a huge tab.
So I called her a bitch and I lost my job- I lost my patience as well.

Two months later I was in Japan!

Now the fact that in eighteen years I have only seen a handful of fights, and I can count the ones I have been involved in on one hand, is reason enough to stay in this place, but aside from that; it is the constant puzzlement I receive from an adventure in a place so diametrically opposed to the city of my birth. Just click on anything in my archives to see what I mean.

I'll tackle the next question in a few days time.