Pete Chiarella - A Whole Bag of Crazy: Sordid Tales of Hookers, Weed, and Grindhouse Movies

42nd St. Pete's BIG BOOK OF GRINDHOUSE TRIVIA Gunfighters of the Drunken Master
Gunfighters of the Drunken Master Book Two: Unhappy Hour Grindhouse Purgatory Magazine

A Whole Bag of Crazy: Sordid Tales of Hookers, Weed, and Grindhouse Movies Original publication: 2018 Happy Cloud Media, LLC www.happycloudpictures.net

ISBN-13: 978-1985824133 ISBN-10: 1985824132

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Chiarella, Pete
Whole Bag of Crazy: Sordid Tales of Hookers, Weed, and Grindhouse Movies, A / Pete Chiarella

First Happy Cloud Publishing (division of Happy Cloud Media, LLC) edition 2018.

2018 Pete Chiarella. All rights reserved
Portions of this book were published in a different form in Grindhouse PurgatoryMagazine, 2013-2018.

Cover photo by Janet Decay. Art by Ryan Hose

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

DEDICATIONS
A lot of people have influenced my life, a lot have made it better, a lot have stuck by me, and sadly a lot are no longer here. Please indulge me as I say thanks.

The Good Guys
Mike Raso, Mike Watt, Amy Lynn Best, Paige Davis, Gary Kent, Bud Cardos, Bill Grefe, Ken & Pam Kish, Ross Meyer, A Ghastley Ghoul,

Gary Klar, Lisa Petrucci, Carter Stevens, Jeanne Silver, Sharon Mitchell, Vanessa Del Rio, Beverly Kennedy, The Mummy & the Monkey, Frank Hennenlotter, Todd Sheets, Ernie Peia, Tom Darabaris, Freddy Casier, Diane Reynolds, Pryme Tyme Amy Lee, Sarina DeStefano, Britton

Tallaksen, Bill Lustig, Ken Brunette, Bill Adcock, Josephine Anne Laurent, Cory Ulder, Dr. Rhonda Baughman, Dave Kosake, Mr. Insanity Toby Cline, Bobby Morgan, Josh Hadley, Paul Brown, NYC Police and

Fire Fighters, Martin Hodas, Cheech and Chong, NYC Chapter of the Hells Angels, Tim Thomerson, Rob Feinstein, Mad Man Pondo, Roland Pena, Brandis Martin, Angelique Bone, Mike Gonzo Specht, Susperia,

Lou Stahl, Michele Bauer, Brinke Stevens, Danielle Elizabeth Volpe, Danna Hunt, Rick Bub, Kevin Clement, Tim Lewis, Sid Haig, Bill Mosley, Michael Berryman, Da Hit Squad, and Cat Papamanousakis.

Never to be Forgotten
Norman Brill, Joseph T Chiarella, Rambo, Dave Friedman, Mike Vraney, Ted V Mikels, Frank Gentile, Gunnar Hansen, George The Animal Steele, H.G. Lewis, Doug Gentry, Marilyn Chambers, Linda

Lovelace, Andy Copp, Lisa and Candy, Nino Valdez, Kid Bobo, Robert DiBernardo, Blackjack Mulligan, Frank Zappa, Dr Hunter S Thompson, William W. Johnstone, Tura Santana, George A Romero, Tobe Hooper, Bill Hinzman, Al Goldstein, Jerry Gross, Jack Ketchum, The Christiano

Family and The Chiarella Family.And anyone who ever sat in a 42nd Street Grindhouse, screwed a hooker, smoked some weed, and lived life to the fullest, this ones for you!!!.

I am known as 42nd Street Pete, a character that I created back in 1994, that is a living reminder of that lost decade, the 70s. I had graduated from High School in 1970. I was one of a million or so nameless, faceless kids with no direction and pretty much no future. We all had the ugly specter of the Vietnam War hanging like a sword over our heads. We werent college material; we were clerks, gas station attendants, custodians, the like. Pretty much cannon fodder for the front lines. Most of us knew that we stood a good chance of being drafted and coming back in a bag, so we lost ourselves in the explosion of drugs, alcohol, sex, violence, and music that were the 70s.

Of the thirty-five or so people that I hung out with back then, I know of only five that are still breathing. I didnt exactly get through this unscathed myself. I broke my neck after a friends car, with me in the passenger seat, hit a fire hydrant on Route 17 at seventy miles per hour. During this time in the 70s, I was banged up, cut up, shot at, arrested a couple of times for complete bullshit, and was known as someone you just didnt want to fuck with.

People sometimes have asked me, How the hell are you still around? Simple answer, I always knew when it was time to go home. When shit started to really get out of control I would leave and read about what happened the next day in the paper.

Another thing that probably saved my life was that my system really didnt tolerate drugs very well. Pot was my drug of choice. Mix that with the incredible amount of alcohol that I was consuming on a nightly basis, well lets just say that sometimes I was a human highlight reel of aberrant behavior. For a couple of years I was consuming a fifth of tequila a night and then driving home which was thirty minutes away. To this day I have no points and no accidents. I guess my guardian angels were working overtime back then.

New York City was a big part of my life then. It was the forbidden zone. The drinking age in New Jersey was 21, but in New York it was 18.At age 16, I stood over six feet tall. I was drinking in The West Village at this point. No one ever asked me for ID, ever. As long as I had cash in hand, I got served. No problem. The lure of sex also drew me to the BigApple. The sexual revolution had started and I was eager to join.

Al Goldsteins Screw Newspaper had been the subject of a lot of news programs, so I just had to pick up a copy. I discovered a brave new world of hookers, escorts, underground clubs and more. New York City was a second home to me. I got lost in a neon world of Grindhouses, strip shows, afterhours bars, 24-hour movie houses, hookers, and just out and out weirdness. I never looked back. I survived it and now its time to sharesome of the stories.

The stories are true, the names have been changed not to protect the innocent, but to protect me from reprisals. I do know a lot of things that certain people would prefer not to get out. Too fucking bad. It happened. In some cases, it was documented and this stuff happened thirty years ago, so deal with it. Now on with the show.

Some people ask what influenced my desire to see certain movies. I would have to say that if it was forbidden, I wanted to see it. I was in Catholic school when they were showing Frankenstein around 4pm in the afternoon. This film was Forbidden, capital F, by the school and by the church. You could get excommunicated or some shit like that, just for peeking at it. But several of my classmates had sneaked a peek. Now I wanted to check it out.

To those who lived that era, a television only got twelve channels, of which only seven worked. You either had a big antenna on the roof or a pair of rabbit ears on the top of the set. You had to manipulate the ears to get a picture. You also had a horizontal & vertical knob to keep the picture from rolling, either up and down or sideways. You had no remote and it seemed back then that you were getting up every five minutes to change the channel or adjust the picture. You could also make it lighter or darker. A far cry from the self-adjusting sets we have now down the road.

So I wanted to watch Frankenstein, but couldnt because the school contacted all the parents and banned the film because of violence. Funny thing was that kid shows then were cowboy shoot em ups, jungle adventures (more shooting), and Superman (fighting). But the sight of the Frankenstein monster strangling Fritz the Hunchback was too violent? Talk about a double standard.

Well, through some subterfuge on my part, I got an old TV in the attic working long enough to catch some key moments. I was hooked on monster movies and wanted more. However my Italian Catholic parents werent about to go against the churchs ban on these films. The Church hated this stuff. I made the mistake of bringing an early issue of