Friday, February 20, 2009

King of the kids

I met Charlie O in 1984 my first year of college in Richmond Virginia.

Charlie was the guy in charge of all the punk kids that hung around Shaffer court. He used to call me a hippy and it drove me crazy, still does it, turns out. He was the guy who took care of them and taught them stuff. And they loved him.
















He and his friend Cardin were in town this week for the toy fair at the Javits center. They were there seeking distribution and investors for their super cool new puzzle design called Magmerpuz.
www.magmerpuz.com
















the back
















I waited for them to come out of the subway at West 4th. 

Meeting them in NYC seemed so out of context for how I've known Charlie. I waited under the sign for the Waverly Restaurant. Like a scene from a movie only in a place that I spend so much of my life now that is so much more familiar to me than Richmond.
















We walked around Greenwich Village a bit and drank some beers just like the old days. Cardin wore her crazy hat which didn't really phase the natives but we did get some smiles.
















Now Tom Bailey, he was a hippy. Charlie is starting to look like one too, BTW.
















One of the things Charlie was known for in town was, he was the guy to go to if you wanted to know where the party was or what band was playing that was important to see. So if you walked around town enough eventually you would run into Charlie and he would be able to give you the low down. So when we made plans to hang out on Tuesday he asked me if I knew of anything going on. I said no, of course, because I never know what's going on since Charlie isn't around to tell me.

He said that he had heard that Tom Bailey was playing at Jack's Stirbrew so we headed over there and sure enough Tom was there and sounded fantastic with his trio.































Sadly I had to work in the morning and was feeling quite sick and of course somewhat drunk and had to leave early but I did get a couple of nice shots from the evening's escapades and was able to enjoy a few minutes of Tom's band.

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