The man who wanted to land planes on Columbia Street, Part 2

In 1920, his patent was granted by the U.S. Patent Office. That was the easy part. Construction of his new factory on Columbia Street, just south of Hamilton Avenue, complete with a rooftop landing strip, was a tad more difficult. In 1916 the City passed a zoning resolution, regulating all new construction for the first time. Its primary goal was to prevent buildings from reaching heights that would block out light in the immediate area. While the factory itself was of permissible height for Columbia Street, the contraption on the roof might have increased the height to an unacceptable level and the zoning laws provided no exception for rooftop airplanes. Moreover there appeared to be an issue relating to the uses planned within the building itself. Gibbons fought the determination and continued to test the device.

A hearing on the matter in 1920 before the Bureau of Standards & Appeals apparently went against him. In the meantime, Gibbons began constructing a new building at the foot of 24th Street in the Todd Shipyards and announced that eventually the structure would sport one of his landing strips. Finishing another shipyard building at the foot of Clinton Street a year later, he stated he was “perfecting the device.”

In April 1923 Gibbons wrangled a “certificate of merit” from the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce for his business having survived some 54 years and used the occasion to announce that his rooftop landing strip “would soon be placed in universal use.”

In February 1924 another press splash occurred, accompanied by a drawing of Gibbons device atop a large center-City building. Gibbons gushed to a Brooklyn Eagle reporter that his device “can be used on railroad stations, post offices, station houses, hospitals, hotels, police headquarters, fire houses, office buildings, apartment houses.” The airplane receiving apparatus was said to have been patented for use around the globe and examined by military aviation experts “with great interest.” Meanwhile, although Gibbons’ building was stalled at a height of two stories, he claimed it would be completed soon. But aside from regular ads in the paper for his company, Gibbons was not heard from again for the next three years.

Then in May 1927 Charles Lindberg took off from Roosevelt Field in Nassau County on the first successful solo flight across the Atlantic – and the longest to date – landing 2,000 miles away in Paris. Mayor Fiorella LaGuardia, himself a flyer during the World War, was incensed that puny Garden City would be enshrined as the starting point for this momentous event and vowed to build a large municipal airport. A site at the foot of Flatbush Avenue was eventually chosen by a Federal presidential commission in February 1928, later dubbed Floyd Bennett Field. LaGuardia was not happy. He wanted the airfield to be on Governor’s Island because its proximity to Manhattan would help him convince the US Postal Service to abandon Newark Airport as the destination terminal for all air mail drops for the NYC area. It was a matter of prestige. But Floyd Bennett was about 15 miles distant from the main Post Office on West 34th Street, a very long and slow motor trip – even then, traffic sucked – whereas the mail from Newark could be swiftly ferried across the Hudson.

Richard Gibbons to the rescue! He suddenly resurfaced in the press as soon as the Floyd Bennett location was approved by the City in February 1928. The Gibbons solution? He would take delivery of mail dispatched from Floyd Bennett on his Columbia Street roof, elevator it down to trucks below and off they would go to post offices hither and yon. Moreover, Gibbons would deploy his contraptions on as many post office roofs as necessary. Two flying aces from Germany and Ireland would be examining his device shortly at his Columbia Street workshop, he claimed, with a view toward adopting it throughout Europe per a royalty agreement. were unlike anything I’d heard before and, to be honest, anything I’ve heard since: funny, proto–fast folk songs of lesbian heartache and betrayal; grinding punk songs about anorexia and macho hardcore attitudes; a fairly uncategorizable song finding empathy for a misunderstood and maligned Jesus Christ. Interspersed among them were dissonant dirges, babies singing at bathtime, short song fragments and other auditory ephemera. It’s an enchanting oddball of an album. oscillators to his rig. The end result is more than a little like early recordings by no wave legends Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. REMOSS2 (cassette and download out in June via Ramp Local) revisits the tunes from the last album with remixes by NAH, Machine Girl, President Evil, GHÖSH, Avola, Giant Claw, Fire-Toolz, and Bl_ank, adding sexy synths and heavier dance rhythms in ways that are sometimes hilarious and sometimes just great, heady fun. Remix albums often end up as reductive, LCD exercises. REMOSS2 is a strong companion piece and a good excuse to catch up if you missed the previous moss.

All he needed was to get permission from the damn zoning people to finish his damn building!

Alas and alack, it was not to be. Runways on roofs was a bridge too far for everybody but Gibbons. By the time Floyd Bennett opened to freight traffic in 1930, Gibbons had dissolved his business. He died four years later in his bed at 25 1st Place in Carroll Gardens, possibly fantasizing about splitting the atom in his basement. His workshops became an auto auction site and the two story factory became Bruno’s Garage, demolished after WWII to build the Battery Tunnel.

In 1925, T.S. Elliot famously wrote, “Between the idea and reality falls the shadow.” He might have been alluding to Richard Gibbons’ idea to install a landing strip atop a big new Columbia Street factory. The sad reality was that the City’s zoning resolution cast a very big shadow.

A band everyone should like. There was a time, back in the distant 1980s and ‘90s, when recording and distribution outpaced the spread of information. The post-punk DIY movement encouraged artists and fans to seize the means of production and make their own records and zines but there was no guarantee they’d end up in the same places. As a result, there were bands with cool names that you’d never hear and records with cool covers that you didn’t know anything about. That first category, for example, included, for me, Virgin Prunes, whom I recently listened to for the first time after my friend Rui sang me their well deserved praises. They’d always just been one of those names I meant to get, at least to since the Internet happened, and I’m happy at last to have felt their jagged edge.

The only album Meat Joy ever made remained pretty well hidden from the digital age—I’ve only ever found 2 or 3 of the cuts on YouTube and the whole thing never saw reissue or made it to streaming, at least until now. The 1984 slice of perfection will become available to the masses on Oct. 13 as download or LP, with an option for a handmade cover, via Bandcamp. (The band also contributed tracks to at least a couple of indie comps which, sadly, haven’t been included.)

Fronting the group, it turns out, was Gretchen Phillips, later one of Two Nice Girls. And confirming those ancient rumors, the recently departed Butthole Surfer Teresa Nervosa is heard on drums. The band will be reuniting for a couple of Austin dates around the release. If anyone’s driving from NYC, let me know.

Top of the other list was Meat Joy. I knew two people with copies of their self-released, self-titled 1984 LP, each with a different, handmade cover. Story was they were from Texas, and friends with the Butthole Surfers, that one of the Surfers was even on the album, or something like that. There was no way to check, of course, but it all scanned. (I figured out later that the band took its name from a film by the feminist artist Carolee Schneeman. A DC punk band later also used the name.)

One of my friend’s copies eventually ended up in my collection. The cover was a simple cartoon of a wildly happy woman, rendered in magic marker, declaring “Meat Joy—A Band Everyone Should Like” against a background of colorful, diagonal stripes. That gloriously joyful lady wasn’t wrong.

The contents of the white label LP

Mossy songs and the siren who sings them. Last year, the Portland duo Sea Moss set a personal high water mark with their SEAMOSS2. Their fried and blistered beats had never worked better. I’m not sure if their new remix album bests it, but it certainly builds on the fractured grooves. Vocalist Noa Ver sings and screams in a language all her own, frequently distorted by a microphone set against her neck. It’s odd that sirens have been imagined by such human standards; I’d think they’d drive sailors crazy with such alien, animal calls as Ver’s. Drummer Zach D’Agostino adds homemade electronics such as hacked feedback

Youth is wasted on the dumb. Say what you will about Miley Cyrus, and people do, she’s got a hell of a voice and a great sense of harmony. (Check out her acoustic “Backyard Sessions” videos if you haven’t already). And while I’m hardly her target audience, she occasionally lays out a track that I do love. “Wrecking Ball” is truly heart-wrenching, “We Can’t Stop” is a surprising, downtempo party anthem, and her unapologetic, new “Used to Be Young” acknowledges her wild side, doesn’t exactly promise she’s past it and, most importantly, showcases her dynamic voice. She’s going to be around for a long time, and the new single promises to be a staple in her concerts for years to come. Turning 30 last year might have turned her thoughts toward fading youth. Another 10 or 20 years will only ripen the song and wizen her voice.