A Valentine for Valentines

There will be in the coming weeks, no doubt, media tributes to the rock club Valentines on Albany's New Scotland Ave. I feel a need to offer my own private homage to this location before it moves across town & creates a new history on Central Ave. For me, an aging urban poet on the outside edge of punk, it has been a poetry & music playground, the turned-out sister one turned to after the demise of the QE2. I'm certain that the word/guitar&drums/alcohol energy will continue, as it always has, from here to there. So this is not an elegy, but just a portal to some of my images of what so many of us experienced at this club. I just want to say how much fun I've had on New Scotland Ave. & how much I look forward to doing it again on Central Ave.

You can check out my reports from poetry events at Valentines over the years, including (especially) the Nitty Gritty Slams, here at my Blog by entering a search for Valentines. Just nose around, you'll find some interesting stuff.

I've also created a special set of images on my Flickr! site that includes pictures from my pre-digital film days & the open mics there (pre-Slam) under various auspices & poetry hosts & even some music events. Not to mention the archiving of the texts lost on the bathroom walls. You can also find more shots of poetry events at Valentines by entering the tag "valentines" in the Flickr! search window.

But, as the old saying goes, "If you remember Valentines, you weren't there."