THE DECOY SQUAD

Forgot to blog because I thought it was Tuesday, so you get this image-heavy rush-job. I’ve mentioned on this blog just how terrified that Bruce Davidson shot of a man at gunpoint on a train made me when I was younger, reinforcing every rotten apple stereotype that a childhood of obsessing over 1980s VHS sleaze that showed a city overrun by “wallet inspectors” who’d take you for everything you had in front of witnesses (thank you William Lustig, Abel Ferrera, Martin Scorcese and Frank Henenlotter).

That picture turned out to be a member of the New York Transit Police’s “Subway Stars” aka. the Decoy Squad — 24 undercover cops in a variety of disguises; like a crime fighting Village People, to take on the rise in packs of younger muggers hunting prey on the trains. The whole Decoy Squad concept sounds like the plot for a great b-movie and when the team assembled in 1985 in a post Bernie Goetz climate of paranoia, brutality and potential vigilantism (and Davidson’s 1986 Subway book with its glum faces in those tag swarmed surroundings indicates that the trains were no joke back then), it was the subject of plenty of media coverage, presumably for reassurance and political PR.

Bruce Davidson shot plenty of images of the crew at work for a June 1985 New York magazine feature called Hunting the Wolf Packs, with an incredible crew photo of everyone in their disguises, ready to “play the vic” or be a bystander ready to strike. Officer Lyons plays a sleeping Jewish lawyer, Officer Quirke plays a blind man, Officer Doran is a pizza maker returning from his shift and Officer Carter is the undercover man in the satin jacket, Cazals and baseball cap making an arrest in the photo that had me shook. Carter makes plenty more appearances in the images to accompany the article (the black and white images are from 1985 newspaper pieces on the squad), looking cooler than any real world cop has ever looked. It must have been slow, tedious work with quick bursts of intensity.

Entrapment via exposed gold chains and fake Gucci on people pretending to be fake yuppies, dozing Asian tourists, plus gang members looking like they stepped out the Bad video is present in this 1987 footage from a WCBS-TV 60 Minutes episode (scroll down). Allegations of the unit acting illegally with wrongful arrests ended the program in winter that year, but if you were amused by Stallone dressed as an old lady to take down a thief to a Keith Emerson soundtrack in 1981’s Night Hawks or Kramer being saved by a cop posing as a blind violinist on the subway in an early Seinfeld, you’ve got to love the whole Decoy Squad project. Three finger rings and backward hats were an interesting 5-0 uniform for a minute.

JORDAN BEYOND

(Mike Tyson on the hotel room phone in Jordan IIIs circa 1989.)

I’m back from Canada and I can barely see because of the jetlag. The human body is pathetic. So pathetic that I thought it was Saturday yesterday and forgot to update this blog. I can’t say much about my Arc’teryx visit other than that witnessing the factory process upped my appreciation of the brand’s output and that I know more about GORE-TEX taping now than I knew last Wednesday. As a fiend for those Gore membranes in a jacket or shoe, it was borderline Wonka-like to see the processes, even though GORE-TEX itself, minus the shell or lining, is just an anonymous white sheet.

I’d wondered about the jacket Michael Jordan (not a stranger to bizarre sartorial choices) wore on his September 1991 ‘Saturday Night Live’ appearance — a strange green quilted design, but the little Tinker Hatfield piece in the new US ‘GQ’ solves that mystery. “At one point I pushed for a less sporty sub-brand called Jordan Beyond. When Michael did SNL in ’91, he wore a Jordan beyond quilted green jacket. But I couldn’t make it happen. I’ve still got some samples, including a basketball shoe that was perforated like a wingtip.”

Jordan Beyond sounds like the genesis of the XI dress shoe concept and what the contemporary models are working with but it certainly seems to be a little at odds with the Jordan VI aesthetic. One day, I’m sure the ‘Jordan Beyond’ boxset, reproducing that unwearable jacket, will make an appearance. If the JB line had taken off, I’m sure it would have dated badly, but it doesn’t sound too far from the Cole Haan LunarGrand strategy, and I like to think it would have included a suit made of marl grey fleece with giant shoulders and Mike’s pleated dress pant, polo and wingtip steez in the mix too.

IDEA Books‘ mailout is the best out there and some of the oddities they obtain are phenomenal. As well as showcasing a Panini Fiorucci sticker album you’re unlikely to ever see a again, earlier this year they got hold of Vincent Alan W’s (a frequent photographic documenter of gay African-American crews), ‘The Bangy Book/New Yorker Street Boys’ — a compilation of Vincent’s 1988 era snaps of the Bangy/Banjee phenomenon, where hypermasculine goonwear and the “homeboy” look of the time betrayed stereotypes of sexuality (hence the Banjee part of the ball in the seminal ‘Paris is Burning’). The nudity’s going to alienate, but I can’t help but think that Banjee infiltrated hip-hop again during the last decade, resulting in contemporary hip-hop’s mess of big tongued shoes and couture cues. A rarity worthy or reappraisal, just because there’s not enough imagery of this movement around.

(Images lifted from the IDEA Books scans.)

On that 1980’s New York topic, the Leica Bruce Davidson video was cool (and I think I’ve broken down the impact ‘Subway’ had on me in installing a healthy fear of NYC on here before)
but I’d never seen this Bruce Davidson Q&A from last year at the Strand bookstore. Worth 52 minutes of your life.

I MISSED THE OLD NEW YORK…

I used to be terrified of New York City. Admittedly Just Ice and Kool G Rap’s crime rhymes didn’t help my perceptions, gleefully painting a picture of an urban hell in the ’80s, but the picture above was the true scaremonger for me. I mean look at it – isn’t that some guy being mugged at gunpoint on the subway? And the attacker’s so bolshy in the act that he’s unphased by a photographer snapping away? Now that’s gully. Actually, after years with this brutal image etched into my psyche as a textbook example of how hardcore New Yorkers can be, the reality behind the photo proved a little more benign. Still gritty, but hardly the brazen act that had me shook way back in the day.