Three members of the West 47th Street jewelry community allegedly came to blows this past week: “TraxNYC” owner and the Akay Brothers. These people deal in celebrity-style bling.
I often wonder whatever happened to “Boris the Jeweler,” the man who used to craft those biggity-huge pieces for the hip-hop community. He also made grills, I believe.
I now remember that my paternal grandfather (The Holy Terror) was proud of his grill. His teeth had all been replaced—or at the very least resurfaced—with gold. They lacked the requisite hip-hop enhancement of diamond studs, but T.H.T. was definitely a man ahead of his time.
I was crossing East 40th Street one day after doing research at the 42nd Street Library when I saw a white luxury convertible with Mike Tyson in it. He was grinning widely, accepting the public’s compliments, absolutely radiating friendliness. Mike had quite a grill.
One issue of The New York Times Magazine devoted itself to hip-hop bling. I read it over and over. All of the pieces shared two characteristics: (1) they were enormous, and (2) they were made of gold and precious stones.
When I stayed at an arts colony outside Chicago, I met a neon sculptor named Evadene I. Judge. She worked as a cab driver for a while and wrote a memoir called From Here to O’Hare. One of her passengers was Mr. T (a former nightclub bouncer born Lawrence Tureaud who later starred in The A-Team and Rocky). Along with my paternal grandfather, he was a bling pioneer, going around weighted down by a multitude of necklaces and hoop earrings. Mr. T once said, “I believe in the Golden Rule. The gold rules!”
At the height of his career, he bought a mansion and grounds in Lake Forest, Illinois (a.k.a. “Tree City USA”). He suffered from allergies and had his contractor cut down virtually all the trees on his property. The town called this event “The Lake Forest Chainsaw Massacre.”
Where are these people when we really need them?