I are writer, NYC bum fights, and other revelations

So I am a journalist. I write all day at work and the last thing I want to do when I get home is write more. So I am starting a blog... let's see how long this lasts.

All right my friends (and enemies) we're starting this SOB off with a bang. Ready your stopwatches... aaaaannnd go.

New York City is rich with history, along with foreigners, homosexuality, horrible smells and apartments the size of my bathroom. There are St. Mark's Place and Bleeker St., stretches made famous by the '60s with their eclectic collection of novelty shops, bars, restaurants, 67-year-old biker women with piercings in the back of their necks, and kick-ass music (though now the very best tunes are on the Lower East Side and in Williamsburg). There is Central Park (the portion between 72nd St and 100th), The Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the South Seaport, the defunct Butterfly Grill (RIP) and Rockwood Music Hall... all of which kick ass.

But, to me, New York is personified by its hobos, winos, and bums (yes there are differences) and, more importantly, the nicknames I give them.

Today's profile: Guitar Hero of Hell's Kitchen (my neighborhood). For those currently residing in New York, head to The Coffee Pot on 51st and 9th to get a look (he disappears from the streets in the winter). The Pot, as I call it, proudly displays on the north wall an 11x16 photo of Guitar Hero taken by an area "artist." Those are rock-star quotes for those of you who can't see me on my couch.

If I had to guess, and I do, I would say Guitar Hero is about 65. He wears a black leather jacket with steel studs on the cuffs and shoulders, a white goatee, black jeans, boots of some sort, and an American flag bandanna around his head, ala Hulk Hogan not Bruce Springsteen. At night he sleeps in a cellar entrance just below street level in front of the building across the street from my apartment.

Why is he called Guitar Hero you ask? Because he f-ing rocks out, that's why!

He always sports an electric Fender as old as my Grandpa Lee would be today. It is supported by a leather strap and an amp that clips on to his belt... that's right, you heard me, an amp that clips to his belt.

In that very same cellar entrance he calls "bed," Guitar Hero mellows during the day, generally just putting out the vibe and conserving his energy so he can pounce on unsuspecting passerby when the time is right. And I do not mean pounce by the general, well, actual definition of the word pounce. I guess it is more of a "spring," as in "spring into action."

Semantics aside, I could spend hours watching Guitar Hero plot the perfect moment(s) to spring from his semi-subterranean hangout, twanging away at his relic all the while - amp off, of course, as to maintain stealth.

It is a thing of beauty, it is. To watch him perfectly execute, over and over again, his sole mission of every day: to envelop with song the select few lucky/scared-shitless hipsters that just so happen to cross his path at the time he deems right to strike... a chord that is.