Cool Place for a Vampire

Mysteries of The Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk and Bob Maguire's Greater Pittsburgh

Greetings from San Diego! On Monday I returned from a long weekend in Santa Cruz for my niece’s graduation. Congrats Zaira—you did it!

We drove up Thursday and kicked around Santa Cruz for a few days. On Saturday I fulfilled my longstanding desire to see The Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk where The Lost Boys was filmed.

The boardwalk made me deliriously happy. When I was a kid my family went through a stretch of years where we spent a few days at the end of the summer in Atlantic City. We stayed in an old hotel that was popular with displaced Irish-American New Yorkers who liked to get shitfaced and sing rebel songs. I don’t remember if we went with other families or if my parents made friends while we were there but the hotel had a bar and that’s where my parents spent their time while the kids ran wild on the boardwalk. It was called Bob Maguire’s Greater Pittsburgh and it was a total dump. When I read old detective novels and the hero is living in a shitty room at a shitty hotel I think of Bob Maguire’s Greater Pittsburgh.

Yet these are happy memories because my parents uncharacteristically showered me and my siblings with spending money so we could eat junk food, play arcade games, buy souvenirs, or do whatever we felt like doing—all while completely unsupervised. It was the freedom that was so remarkable.

My parents were very strict. My father was a naval officer, my mother was a nurse, and they ran a tight ship. We had to earn our allowances and we generally weren’t given a ton of free time or left to our own devices. Our house had all these rules that no one else we knew had to follow and it could be a heavy, stifling place.

To hit the boardwalk with pockets full of cash was the opposite of that. It felt like a dream. It’s easy to be cynical and think my parents wanted us out of their hair while they got their drink on, but I think they really wanted us to have a good time. My parents were acutely aware that our suburban upbringing was nothing like the way they grew up in Brooklyn and the Bronx. I think those end-of-summer trips to Atlantic City were their way of letting us experience big city life for a change.

The smell of roasted corn and cotton candy in the sea air, the distant shrieks of children on carnival rides, and colorful clamor of games of chance—it all brought me back to Atlantic City.

The boardwalk felt alive with history. Part of it was the shared nostalgia of all those seaside amusement parks up and down the California coast. Part of it is the collective dream of “Santa Clara” The Lost Boy’s vampire haven, which I rewatched last night. The boardwalk is as much a character as Kiefer Sutherland’s David or Corey Feldman’s Edgar Frog.

But it was more than that. Neptune’s Kingdom occupies the old natatorium which was a major attraction back in the day as divers and acrobats entertained the crowds with feats of derring do. I especially loved all the old animatronic attractions. The fortune teller named Estrella with a crystal ball, pirates peeking out of rum barrels, and the utterly terrifying Laffing Sal.

While we were looking at mechanical fortune teller called Ask the Brain a guy rolled up in his wheelchair and said, “I can’t believe it’s still here! This has gotta be 30 years old!”

His happiness was infectious. Even though it was my first time on the boardwalk, it made me happy that all those old attractions were still there, still being looked after, still being enjoyed.

When we stumbled upon a haunted house attraction billed as “Under the Boardwalk” I had to go inside.

“Do you want to check it out?” I asked Nuvia.

“No, but I can tell you do.”

So we went in. Good lord it was terrifying. I couldn’t see. Mechanical objects lunged at me. Strobe lights flashed. Electronic screams pierced the darkness. In the Hall of Bad Clowns the ground gave way beneath my feet and I thought I was going to fall and keep falling. It was so much freaking fun.

Four Books and a Pledge

When I was away on book tour, I thought I was going to get so much reading done. It turns out when you’re driving around from city to city you don’t have time to read and even when you’re not driving you’re navigating and/or keeping the driver entertained. Thanks to audio books, I was able to read a handful of books.

Some New Kind of Kick by Kid Congo Powers

The only thing I love more than LA punk is books about LA punk and Kid Congo Powers has delivered what I consider a must-read. Kid had a knack for being in the right place at the right time and at various points in his career was invited to play guitar in The Gun Club, The Cramps, and The Bad Seeds. But his predilection for knowing when to step out goes all the way back to when he was a teenager hanging out at Rodney’s English Disco. If you know you’re LA punk history you know that many of the movers and shakers in the punk scene started out as a glam fans and Rodney’s was the place to be.

What I love about Some New Kind of Kick is that while Kid could have started with guitar lessons from Jeffrey Lee Pierce, he documents his fandom first: from writing music reviews in the school paper to being the West Coast President of the Ramones fan club. For this zine writer and LA punk fanatic, it makes Kid so much more relatable to know that he was a dedicated fan of the music before he became an essential part of it.

Kid has plenty to say about his involvement in various musical projects. He’s discrete in some places but doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to his drug use. He’s equally candid about Jeffrey’s many ups and downs and the book often reads like a tribute to his troubled friend.

During my event at Changing Hands with Kid, I had the opportunity to ask him if there were any surviving rehearsal tapes from his days in Creeping Ritual, the band that would eventually become The Gun Club. He said not only are there tapes, but the audio quality is surprisingly good. So stay tuned…

My Darkest Prayer by S.A. Cosby

I somehow didn’t get to Blacktop Wasteland or Razorblade Tears while S.A. Cosby gobbled up every crime fiction award under the sun so I jumped at the chance to listen to this reissue of Cosby’s first novel My Darkest Prayer. It’s got a few first novel warts—it’s overwritten in parts and the action sequences are mechanical—but I love how profane it is and the characters are well-drawn and memorable, especially the extremely dangerous Skunk. I’ll be back for another serving of Virginia noir soon.

Beware the Woman by Megan Abbott

I recently read a review that stated that Abbot’s books keep getting better and better but I’m starting to think I feel just the opposite. I love her hardboiled novels like Queenpin and enjoyed some of her more recent books like Give Me Your Hand and You Will Know Me but I couldn’t get into Dare Me.

Beware the Woman is a different kind of novel with a rural setting that I had high hopes for but was ultimately let down by. It centers on a pregnant woman who travels with her husband to visit his father in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It turns out that everyone is super controlling and I didn’t understand why the narrator put up with it. I tried to imagine Nuvia or her sisters or friends in this situation and I couldn’t imagine a scenario where they’d tolerate it for more than a few pages. At times I wondered if the novel was supposed to be set in a different century because the protagonist is so pathetically passive. The best I can say is that the ending is completely unhinged.

Book of Extraordinary Tragedies by Joe Meno

I’m about two-thirds of the way through Joe Meno’s latest and it’s such a joy to read. Book of Extraordinary Tragedies centers on a family that is literally falling apart and facing every economic hardship and health crisis imaginable but is still full of magic and hope. That sounds corny so let me take another stab at it.

Meno is a master of the moment. He’s not a writer who goes on and on for dozens of pages, nor does he do a ton of exposition or editorializing. His stories and chapters tend to be accumulations of scenes that more or less speak for themselves, and when I look back on all the great stories and books he has written I think this is something I’ve learned from him.

In any case, there’s a moment near the middle of the book where Meno returns to characters from the story “Midway,” which won the Nelson Algren Award all the way back in 2003, and I squealed with delight. It was like an old friend I hadn’t seen in ages walked into the room. I can’t wait to see how Meno lands this jumbo jet of a novel but I also want the book to keep on cruising forever.

While I was out on the road this spring I picked up a ton of books from new and old friends and this summer I’m going to try to read them all. I tend to be purpose driven in my reading but reading the work of one’s talented friends is a unique pleasure and a special privilege that I hope to indulge as the night’s get longer and the day’s get hotter.

Razorcake Subscription Drive

Unless you’ve been living under a rock you already know that Razorcake is America’s only non-profit independent music magazine. It comes out like clockwork every two months and I’ve been a contributor since day one.

What you probably don’t know is that printing costs have gone up 30% across the board this year, making the zine more expensive to produce and ship. This is where you come in.

Subscriptions are the backbone of Razorcake. Without subscribers there is no Razorcake. Your one-year subscription will get you six issues of Razorcake. It’s a great way to stay up-to-date with underground music that falls under the category of punk rock. Razorcake doesn’t pander to corporations or fund the magazine with major label sponsorships. It’s 100% indie all the time.

I write a column for every issue of Razorcake as well as the occasional review or interview. You will never see material from Message from the Underworld in Razorcake and vice versa.

To be honest, I wouldn’t have the writing career I have today without Razorcake. It’s where I honed my skills as an interviewer and learned how to write for an audience. I love writing Message from the Underworld but I also love the freedom that comes from writing for a print publication that doesn’t post it’s content online.

I talk to a lot of older punks who lament the death of punk rock or complain how the ’70s and ’80s are gone and they aren’t coming back. That’s true those days will never be duplicated but I’m here to tell you that the spirit of independent music lives on you just have to look for it in the underworld. Razorcake is your passport.

Thanks for reading! I’m going to see some live music later this week so I’ll have an update on that in next week’s edition of Message from the Underworld along with some notes on records I’ve latched onto while I was on the road.