For 6 awful months in 1994, I lived in Jersey City Heights with my best friend Jeff Roberts, right on Sherman Ave, across the street from the loudest grammar school in the tri-state area. I once heard a kid have a crying fit out front while his mom was trying to drop him off -- for 15 minutes you could hear him shrieking, "I hate you!" and "I want to die!" This is back when I used to sleep till mid-afternoon, so even though I thought it was funny that some kid wanted to pack it all in, I needed my beauty rest.
Below is Jeff in 1987. Back then he used to wear a lot of Benetton and OP. He liked wrestling, Megadeth, and Muppet Babies.
But in 1994, Jeff's money ran out (aka his moms stopped giving him any) and he got employment at this chicken joint in Hoboken, NJ named New York Chicken. Now, from where I'm sitting, New York doesn't have anything to do with chicken, and this place had NOTHING to do with New York, but they still had big dreams of franchise expansion as they nestled into the coziness of the Clinton economy.
This is Jeff around that time in 1994, with toilet paper stuffed in his ears. He's trying to be funny, but believe me, in reality this is the portrait of a man slowly losing his mind.
Everyday Jeff'd come home a little bit more of a broken man, smelling of chicken guts and gravy. The upshot was that he'd bring back unsellable half-turkeys for our fridge, tubs of frozen stuffing, and broken pieces of pie-of-the-day unfit for paying customers.
I saved the sticker on top of this post in honor of the memory, a memory of young molecules jittering towards an uncertain future -- but now I also feel extra proud to have a graphic keepsake from that murky, mute 90's era when hues of mustard and burgundy ruled the Gap, and the Gap ruled the school and pants just got baggier and baggier.
Here is another picture of Jeff, wearing his signature baseball cap from '95-'99. I feel like he looks cool in this picture, and I wanted to end it on a high note for the guy. He's got black wax on his tooth, his preferred make-up till about 2001.
 |
| Polaroid! |
