Tears, Fears, and Tower Records

The news last week about Tower Records re-opening (online) triggered happy memories about visiting their store right by NYU on 4th and Broadway.

I rode the subway down to campus each Saturday my first year in New York, feeling more at home there among the students my own age.

Washington Square Park was like an urban beach where guys with concave chests played Hacky Sack, street magicians worked the crowds for tips, and stoners strummed guitars, singing their parents' folk songs. Poorly.

If needed, my first stop would be a haircut at Astor Place Hairstylists, the New York icon that just announced that it's closing on November 25 after 75 years. Another victim of today's pandemic.

The sprawling subterranean shop was like a daytime club where barbers of all ages yelled at each other in all languages while swaying to booming dance music or Latin rhythms. Magazine cutouts and Polaroids of celebrity clients like De Niro, Warhol, and Sinbad plastered workstation mirrors. The chaotic energy was pure, classic New York. I always felt like I had snuck behind an invisible velvet rope.

After my haircut, I would explore funky vintage stores like Antique Boutique or flea markets in narrow parking lots. I felt very Midwestern, wondering what my "look" should be since I was a fledgling New Yorker. Did I need secondhand blazers? Doc Marten boots? Or should I be Hip Hop Brett?

The day always ended at Tower Records, Mecca for music lovers like me. Bins of CDs upfront in 1989 signaled their growing dominance over LPs and cassettes. Sure, they improved sound quality. But they cost more, and you couldn't put them in a Walkman.

The first cassette I bought there was Tears For Fears' Seeds of Love, an album I still love today, especially "Woman In Chains" featuring the beautiful Oleta Adams.

By that day I had only heard "Sowing The Seeds of Love" on the radio, which sounded more retro, more like The Beatles than their last album Songs From The Big Chair. But everyone's got to keep changing. Who was I to question that.

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l i t t l e b r e t t , BIG CITY

When I left college in 1989, I was a virgin with corn-fed drive and a terrifying secret. It could disappoint or disgust my family and friends. It could even kill me. But I couldn’t hide from it anymore. With "The World's Heaviest Briefcase," I escaped on a midnight train from Lima, Ohio to the YMCA on West 34th Street in Manhattan. Being gay had to be easier in New York, even though I was arriving with no home or job. Right away, a hooker chased me in Times Square, and perverts watched me shower at the Y. I filled payphones with quarters each day, desperately seeking work. Ultimately, I was confronted by my biggest fear when dating my first man – a member of AIDS activist group ACT UP. Could I really survive in one of the hardest cities in the world? Or would I fail and return to Ohio, back in the closet to find a wife and a lawn to mow. l i t t l e b r e t t , BIG CITY celebrates finding your own place in the world. Here I recall and sal

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Little Brett, Big City

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