Bob Schwartz

Tag: Newark

August 19, 2014

Newark and Detroit: The Long Hot Summer of 1967

Newark 1967

The last post about James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time (1963) skipped a beat about what happened next. What happened in America was the race riots between 1964 and 1966 (including Watts in Los Angeles), culminating with the so-called Long Hot Summer of 1967. During that summer, among the many cities affected, the two disturbances that stand out are Newark and Detroit.

Baldwin did not overstate any prophetic intention in his book. Instead, he simply opened with this epigraph, from which he took the book’s title:

God gave Noah the rainbow sign,
No more water, the fire next time!

Newark, July 12-17, began with the arrest of a black cabdriver for passing a police car. The riots left 26 dead and hundreds injured.

Detroit, July 23-27, began with a police raid of a black drinking club. The riots left 43 dead, 1,189 injured, over 7,200 arrests, and more than 2,000 buildings destroyed.

There are at least three reasons we don’t hear much or talk much about that summer in the context of Ferguson.

We are abysmally ahistorical. If it isn’t in the latest Twitter feed, it may already be old news. Things that happened forty or fifty years ago might as well be from the Middle Ages.

We want to highlight and not overshadow the clear progress that has been made. Progress to be sure, as reflected in the photo of a black President talking to a black Attorney General about the events in Ferguson.

We are afraid. Afraid that the progress we have made may be as illusory as it is real. Afraid that we solved the easier problems, leaving us with stubborn, intractable ones that are beyond comfortable solutions. Afraid that we may not be as good as we think we are. Mostly afraid that history is TMI, telling us way more than we want to know, showing us images not from the distant past but from tomorrow.

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April 21, 2013

Happy Record Store Day: I Like It Like That

I Like It LIke That
To celebrate International Record Store Day on April 20, Ambassador Jack White might have visited I Like It Like That Records & Tapes on Main Street in Newark, Delaware.

The problem is that the second most important record store in my life is no longer around. Hasn’t been for years. And even if it was, I’m not sure Jack White would be there, though he would have been welcome.

(The first most important record store? A hole in the wall in New Jersey, which soaked up every bit of available adolescent cash, like a dealer peddling stuff to an underage junkie. A gateway drug.)

For the record, Newark has a number of musical distinctions.

The Stone Balloon, also on Main Street, was the site of some epic performances by not-quite-yet-superstars like Bruce Springsteen. That The Balloon is now a “Winehouse” says something about civic and commercial evolution, though there’s too much loud laughter to tell that story.

The Deer Park, also on Main Street, is even more important musically than The Balloon. George Thorogood and the Destroyers began as George Thorogood and the Delaware Destroyers, and back then George could be found some Thursday nights at the Park, finishing off the destruction of masses of Newark townies with his guitar.

But this is about I Like It Like That. Main Street had a number of worthwhile places to simultaneously be enlightened and spend/kill lots of time. Two in the pantheon were the world’s greatest and most significant bookstore and I Like It Like That.

Somewhere in space, the sounds of I Like It Like That are still reverbing, though those alien rockers will be missing the feeling of walking through that door into another world (though, technically, they are in another world).

To celebrate, one thing would be a marathon playing of Frampton Comes Alive—the most overbought and traded-in album of all time, at least by ILILT standards. Wah-wah-wah-wah-wah-wah-wah-wah-wah.

Better yet, the name of the store is I Like It Like That. So let’s sing:

They got a little place
Across the track
The name of the place is
I Like It Like That
Now, you take Sally
And I’ll take Sue
And we are gonna rock away
All our blues

Now, the last time I was down there
I lost my shoes
They had some cat
Shoutin’ the blues
The people was yellin’
Out for more
And all they were sayin’
Was, ‘Go man go’

Come on, let me show you where it’s at
Come on, let me show you where it’s at
Come on, let me show you where it’s at
The name of the place is
I Like It Like That

Every record store, past, present and future, is where it’s at. BJL, JG and DC—thanks and rock on.

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