Uptown Top Ranking


Once our very clean bus dropped us on 4th Ave & 13th Street we all piled off with our luggage (I had seven bags and an old printer to get home) and took cabs home.

Waking up in my apartment felt luxurious. So did going to Whole Foods to spend $90 on fruit and salads. I've f***ed my back up somehow so I'm limping around like Charles Laughton in the Hunchback of Notre Dame but I'm home so it doesn't matter really. But I'm a gimp, that's for sure.

The two shows this weekend were way uptown near the George Washington Bridge. At the end of the street the venue is on you could see the sunset over Jersey and the river.



...and the GWB itself. Normally I only ever see its faint, strung lights from 6 miles downriver or so.



The shows were at the United Palace Theatre on 175th St and Broadway. It's an amazing place, one of the 5 "Wonder Loews" that Loews Movie Theatres built, one in each borough of New York City. It opened in 1930 and it's garish in its opulence inside.



Here's the foyer. It would have been an amazing movie theatre in its heyday, and could make one now...



This was the first rock show at the venue. The building is used as a church by Reverend Ike who, as far as I can see, offers to pray for poor people if they send him money. (Quote: "Make sure that you enclose your Faith Offering for the Church Ministry, whe you write. Don't ask for "something for nothing." That could bring "bad luck." Let me Pray for YOU, and YOURS, for Good Health, Healing, Joy, Love, Success, Prosperity, Good Fortune, and More Money." In his 16 page full color magazine he asks for money for prayerts on each page and also promises prosperity in return. Reminds me of the old Popes and thier long held practice of simony.... And as anyone who's read the New Testament knows, Jesus was always about the money... I'd go as far as to say the Reverened Ike is a thieving charlatan. Reverend my cock. Didn't Jesus throw the money-lenders out of the temple about this time of year...?)

I think being raised a Catholic and then growing out of that faith has made me sensitive to this kind of tartuffery and bullshit. Click on the photo below to read the "letters" in the parish magazine. I can't do them justice.

Check out the standard advertising 'call to action' underneath the letter "signed" P.W. The whole magazine is full of these faux-handwritten-font asides reminding you to pay....



The whole magazine is full of this shit. Titles like "Even her DOG became a millionaire!" Why would a spiritual organisation have to hard sell the cash benefits of faith? Isn't the reward supposed to be in the afterlife? Isn't living a good life reward enough?

It pisses me off to see people exploited so callously. And while a cold judge could say anyone who buys into this bollocks gets what they deserve maybe isn't appreciating the desparation that people live with and the faith that people hang on to to get them through hard and otherwise hopeless lives. Being middle class makes me forget that not everyone has the choices I have. Shame there isn't a hell for Reverened Ike to rot in. I wouldn't have his thoughts.

We're definitely back in New York. Even God is a graft.