Shappy's Guide to the Lower East Side

 

Hey y’all. This one is different. My friend Shappy Seasholtz died on March 19, 2022. Shappy was a poet, comedian, and raconteur of the highest degree. I have been struggling with what I wanted to say about him because he meant so many things to so many people. I decided to focus on my favorite night with Shappy. I was in New York to perform at the Bowery Poetry Club. I was staying with Shappy and Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz in their apartment which was full of an overwhelming cache of pop culture memorabilia. Shappy took me out this night, my first real night of exploring NYC in my entire life. I hope you enjoy. 

Shappy forever.

Shappy's Guide to the Lower East Side, Fall 2009

Cristin could not go out because she worked like a real adult. I too, had to wake up early for a gig on the Upper East Side but I was an out-of-towner eager to take in the sites. Cristin made Shappy promise to get me home at a reasonable time and also made him promise not to get too drunk. Shappy promised to only drink white wine. This seemed like an acceptable compromise and we were off to the subway, heading from Astoria, Queens into Manhattan.

After a Warriors-less ride, we found ourselves at our first stop, Bar 13, just down the street from Union Square. This was the home of the Louder Arts Poetry Slam. Louder Arts had the reputation of being the more serious, cool kid slam in the city. I tried to get booked here to no avail. Instead of featuring, I got to watch the show hosted by Gia Kagan-Trenchard with a crowd populated by poets who would go on to write some of the best poetry books of the 2010s. Shappy’s friendly heckling got louder and more frequent as he consumed more wine. By the time the feature, Detroit poet Jamaal May, hit the stage Shappy was 3 glasses in and fucking hilarious. He didn’t need to drink to be funny but it did certainly help him become less inhibited. I also noticed that white wine seemed to get him drunk way faster than beer. 

I thought we’d hang out with the poets afterwards but Shappy grabbed me by the elbow, pulled me down the stairs and out into the Mahattan night. Shappy had enough of the poets: we were headed to the Bowery.

On the street, people were out and about like it was 5 in the afternoon. It must’ve been around 10pm on a Monday when we got outside but people were running around like it was 5 in the afternoon. Adults, teenagers, babies, everybody was out getting shit done. 

It was at this point that Shappy started showing me filming locations of movies I had never seen. When I was at his apartment in Astoria, I could hang. Mostly because it’s the neighborhood GoodFellas was filmed and that’s pretty much the only movie I had watched for the previous 10 years. When he started talking about Annie Hall my eyes glazed over. He was absolutely offended by the fact I had never seen Annie Hall. When I told him I had never seen any film by Woody Allen I thought he was going to punch me in my goddamn mouth.

Shappy dragged me into the Strand because throwing each other into bookstores is the kind of stuff poets do for each other. He rushed me through aisle after aisle of used books until we found the graphic novels. I did not ask him to take me to the graphic novels but there we stood, him telling me which were great, which were shit. He told me I couldn’t leave the store empty-handed so I picked a graphic history of The Beats, Shappy rolled his eyes, and we went to checkout. While waiting to check out, Shappy handed me a Strand tote bag. 

“You have to buy this bag,” he demanded.

“It’s cool I can put the book in my backpack,” I replied.

“Do you want to look like a tourist?” he inquired, “Every New Yorker has a Strand bag.”

“It’s okay”

“Buy the fucking bag,” he said definitively. 

So I did. Begrudgingly, but I did. 

Not more than a half a block from the store did I see somebody hailing a cab, Strand bag slung over their shoulder. Shappy elbowed me in the side and said, “See? I told you!” before shouting, “Mom Jeans!” to nobody in particular.

Shappy was still attempting to amaze me with his movie location knowledge. “Oh, you’ll know this one. Remember that scene in ‘Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist’ when…”

I had to interrupt him to let him know I hadn’t seen that one either.

“You’re killing me Stafford,” he said as he grumbled obscenities under his breath.

What was advertised as a quick walk to the Bowery was actually a dozen block or so excursion that meandered past culturally significant sites such as the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and less culturally significant sites such as the hipster bar whose sidewalk was puked upon by Kirsten Dunst (Stafford, tell me you know who Kirsten Dunst is!).

I was hankering for a New York slice of pizza. I fucking love New York style pizza. Fold it up and take it with you to score dope or whatever it is the kids do on the Lower East Side do these days. I don’t remember the name of the joint we walked into. It was one of those neon-lit, walk-up spots with approximately 450 slices of pizza for the taking that is ubiquitous in NYC. It was while walking into the pizza shop that Shappy adopted his over-the-top, Travolta-esque, New York accent.

“Ay yo, this kid is from Chicago!” he declared, “Time to show him what real pizza is like.”

I thought for sure Shappy was gonna get us murdered but the guys at the shop thought he was hilarious so they started busting my balls. I tried to order a veggie slice and got called a hippie. I tried to pay for Shappy’s slice and they called me a big-timer. I wanted to tell them John Starks is a chump and all they momma’s was trash but I took my pizza quietly and walked off.

Shappy kept turning up the volume. At this point, he hadn’t had a drink in over an hour. Was he still buzzed? Sure but he was pulling his energy from the city himself. He was a Midwest guy showing another Midwest guy around the city he loved, the city we grew up seeing in movies and in TV shows. A city that held so much promise and so much potential that you didn’t have to be looking for it to feel it. I would catch him just looking up and smiling at his adopted city.

We rounded the corner onto the Bowery. We walked past a perfectly fine, non-chain coffee shop.

“This is the coffee shop where all the hipsters hang out and write their shitty screenplays. See? There’s one now,” Shappy declared as he pointed at a wounded and bearded young man banging out a screed on his laptop no more than 2 feet from us.

Just past the empty husk that was CBGB, we found ourselves at the Bowery Poetry Club where I would be performing the following night. Tonight though was an anything-goes open mic. Comedians, magicians, dancers, whatever you wanted to do you could do that night. Shappy was a bartender there so we got in for free and drank for free. I was introduced to the owner, poetry slam legend Bob Holman who was ponied up to the bar looking less like an owner and more like a guy who was casing the joint.

We stayed long enough for Shappy to have a couple drinks and to regale me with tales of the regular patrons. There was a guy who was a part of Warhol’s factory scene. Another guy who put on punk shows in the ’70s. A comedian who used to open for some big acts but could never break through himself.

Though the bar was packed and the laughs were flowing, Shappy stayed true to his promise to not keep me out too late. He failed miserably at the not getting drunk part, but 1 out of 2 ain’t bad. There would be no subway back to Queens. We would instead travel the way God intended all of his children to travel: a yellow cab. Shappy hailed a cab with a nonchalant and natural wave/whistle combo. He was a natural, looking like one of the characters in the movies he loved that I never saw. Our cabbie was a big, quiet guy. The kind of guy who had seen some shit, had probably done some shit, and didn’t want any of our shit. As the cab approached the Queensboro Bridge, Shappy took one last shot at my pop culture knowledge.

“You know the show ‘Taxi’ right?” he asked.

“Yup. Danny Devito, Tony Danza, I know that one,” I replied.

A smile appeared on Shappy’s face like a detective who got the confession he was looking for.

“You remember the opening theme when the taxi is driving across the bridge? He was driving across THIS bridge, heading into Queens from Manhattan.”

With that statement, he stopped talking and began to hum the theme song. Shappy started humming the tune softly. He got louder the further we drove. It became evident to the driver and myself that he was not going to just sing the first part, he was going to sing the whole fucking song. He pulled me into a hug and sang it directly into my ear. It was hard to hear because I was laughing too hard. Laughing in the convulsive way that hurts your ribs, leaves you panting for air, coughing. Shappy timed it perfectly so the song ended as soon as we got off the bridge.

We shared more nights and rides together throughout the years but that’s the night I’ll always hold dearest. That night he taught me to stick to the bit, to never be embarrassed to be awesome, and to always buy a bag when you visit Strand