Ocean City, Greasy Labyrinth Ocean City, Wherefore Art Thou, Ocean City?

Psychotronic Leaves Paradise

It was a bittersweet day Sunday. The sun was out, Kim Jong Ev and I were feeling the ocean breeze at sweet Chincoteague after a weekend of catching the film "Wanda" presented at the Maryland Film Festival by Pastor John Waters and then stumbling onto the amazing docudrama "On the Bowery" by Lionel Rogosin on cable, but a big part of why we drove three hours to paradise only to have to turn back at night was because Michael of Psychotronic had called me on Friday to tell me he was leaving the island and the upcoming weekend would be the last for him there.


Michael and his wife are moving the shop to Augusta, Georgia and from now on I will only be able to revel in the beauty and rapture of nature at Chincoteague without getting my more urban fix of vinyl in at the same time. I'll never forget wandering the very sleepy main street of Chincoteague six or seven years ago, passing all the pony t-shirt and driftwood shops and then seeing the neon green dripping sign of Psychotronic. I knew about and had read some issues of the cult magazine by that name, but I figured there was no way in Hell this shop in idyllic Chincoteague could be connected to it.


But when I walked in and saw huge posters of "Fantomas" and "The Brain that Wouldn't Die" and the tall rather urbane red-haired gent behind the counter resembling David Bowie was cranking the Pleasure Seekers, I realized I'd stumbled onto some kind of parallel dimension. An amazing perfect place had just gotten more perfect and amazing.

 Michael was gracious to let me know he was leaving (I would have truly wept if I'd found out by walking to its location in a month when Everly and I take our week off there and found an emptied shell) and to give me a last peek at his stock.

 Needless to say I left burdened with treasures. Around twenty classic near mint pulps that included a bunch of Harry Whittingtons and Gulf Coast Girl by underrated underknown Charles Williams, plus a crate of killer vinyl. I added to Everly's and my collection of Louvin Brothers lps with "Country Ballads" on Capitol (mono of course beyotch!) and loaded up on some great jazz, latin and obscure rock for the store. Not to mention five Jon Hassell albums and "Bukowski Reads His Poetry" on Takoma, which will go well with the shelf of Buke we got in over the weekend.

 After a long talk with Michael in the alley while loading and wishing him luck further down South, we ate at the great Vietnamese restaurant a block away and drove to the nature reserve and beach. The reserve wetland was near full up with glittering water, always a comforting sight, especially after the heavy drought year when there was barely a puddle.

 We drove off at sunset as the birds were out in force feasting by the bridges.

Although it's truly sad to see Psychotronic leave Chincoteague, it's kind of amazing it ever landed there  from Manhattan in the first place.  So I will cherish my memories of flipping through albums with a fresh sunburn and looking forward to a night of home cooked seafood from Gary Howards enjoyed out on the screened-in back porch, listening to the frogs and crickets. Starting up a game of Scrabble that falls by the wayside.  Strumming and picking some Handsome Family songs while Kim Jong Ev studies the historical menus of New York restaurants from the 1930s.

 Sundial Books, a very good bookstore remains on Main Street, though, with a strong selection of art, music and film books.

Long live Psychotronic in all its forms!  Long live carriers of physical culture!

Honeymoon

Pictured at left is our little Vortex grill transported to Chincoteague Island so that Lady Rio could whip up on some steaks. And indeed she did. This was on Monday night, our second night there, and soon after these roaring charcoal flames got going storm clouds brewed and in about an hour the overbearing 100 degree days collapsed into the gentle mid-'80s and stayed there.

On the night of July 3rd when the Island was celebrating the 4th, we walked a few blocks from our cottage to a nearly deserted park by the water and watched from our seats on a picnic table three different neighborhoods set off fireworks. Two other couples of varying ages and horniness sat at scattered picnic tables and the cool breezes felt like silk.

Usually fireworks strike me as the clowns of holiday entertainment. Something that everybody is supposed to enjoy and be enthralled by, but for me - and I think a lot of other people, a big old bag of whiff. But on this night with Everly beside me catcalling spanish sailors and taking big wet slurps from her 40 I was able to relax and be spellbound by the upward spiraling electric spiderwebs in the sky.

Once again I was reminded on this trip that apparently if I bike, swim in the ocean and lay around reading on the beach all day I can feel very healthy. My legs felt like vibrating meat tuning forks. Of course at that point it was the final night of our trip, I'd had my last swim while the suave white-haired gentleman set up in a mini-tent behind me played Brazilian and classical music on an acoustic guitar, and the next morning we'd be rolling back to Baltimore praying the car tires would make it.

Luckily there were two flea/antique markets to hit on the way to cushion our return to savage civilization. The first held mainly bootleg versions of bad mainstream dvds, used mom jeans and a tattooist(!) - "good place to get hepatitis," my beloved remarked - but the second, "Blue Crow", had some very cool books at a booth that was going out of business. A beautiful hardback of Breakfast of Champions in pristine, colorful unfaded jacket, a first complete English translation of Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia-Sexualis, a couple of Freemasonry books (hello wackos) and a first edition of Capote's In Cold Blood.



It was a Chincoteague trip of many firsts. My first marriage and honeymoon, of course, and that was splendid - almost as special as seeing a Kid Rock Kid shaped like a '50s rocketship, the kitchen sink bulky baroque kind that was always after Buck Rogers, wearing a Confederate flag bikini. Or as sweet and tender as the elderly gent who looked like Tiny Tim if Tiny Tim had pursued accounting and occasionally had a glass of some sort of juice in the morning along with his fistful of uppers, downers, screamers, marrow pellets, paw paw beans and Ladybugs, having the time of his life with a neon green surfboard.

Of all the treasured keepsakes I have from this physical and emotional journey - the speaking oyster shell, close up photos of a glossy ibis and a snowy egret getting it on, the bloodied cloth Mennonite cap found next to a dented rolling pin in the Mister Whippie parking lot, I think the scarification along the back of my legs that were exposed below my bermuda shorts caused by Everly beating me with wire hangers whenever I tried to turn the air conditioner above 62 degrees will always be my favorite. Like a gory severed head rolling down a thirty foot stone Aztec pyramid, my altered legs will assure a decent crop is harvested by our love.

I will never forget the sweet little girl who was staying in the cottage across from ours with her aunt. Each morning when the black squirrel was cavorting in the willows, the circus of butterflies caught once again in the spell of the Russian Sage bush, my muffled sobbing on the back porch would attract the attention of the youngster as she created internet portals for her various C.E.O. friends from the Cartoon Network.

"Why do you cry so, Mr. Borgnine?" she would softly ask me, having once seen "McHale's Navy" on her grumpy old grandfather's television and now confusing me with the classic old character actor who was built from tubers.

"I'm not crying Portia," I would say, "it's just my allergies. And please stop pressing against the porch screen, Miss Everly will hear you and my allergies might just get far worse. Here, please be a dear child and take this balled up old note to the sheriff at T's Corner, I think he'll understand."

(To be continued.)