In 1993 Dutch music journalist Bram Van Splunteren shot this footage of Iggy Pop wandering around his old stomping grounds of Alphabet City, when it was about halfway through its transition from bohemian junkie hellhole of the 1970s to the bougie center of hipster/student life it is today. Depending on your age and attitude, your reaction to the footage might range anywhere from “whoa, it was gnarly back then!” to “Hmm. Looks pretty tame to me.”

Iggy—who used to live in the Christodora building on Avenue B, along with fellow tenants Winona Ryder and author Douglas Rushkoff—starts the tour outside of the Church of St. Brigid across from Tompkins Square Park. Pop starts things off with a bang when he says that “I used to come down here to score drugs all the time.” But the drug action has moved a neighborhood or two south, he indicates, gesturing towards Avenues C and D. By that time the dealers had long ago scooted off his nicey-nice block. (The Christodora building was famously spray painted with “Die yuppie scum” during the Tompkins Square riots, which must have amused the godfather of punk to no end.)

Pop and Van Splunteren stroll down 8th Street towards Avenue C, where they visit Pedro Bakery. Pop gets a bag full of yeasty treats and then (claiming that he never carries his wallet around) makes Van Splunteren pay for it! He also says that whenever his wife at that time, Suchi Asano, was out of town, he gets all of his “sandwiches and cakes and strong coffee” at Pedro Bakery. (He also vastly prefers NYC to LA, which makes him crazy.)

Pop is effusive on the subject of two recent film projects he’d worked on, Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes, in which he and Tom Waits (and every other prominent person in the cast) played comedic versions of themselves, and Emir Kusturica’s Arizona Dream, for which he performed several songs.

Asked about a controversy of the day, Pop says he regards Ice-T, with whom he once shared a bill, as a “gent” and has no problem with “Cop Killer,” because Iggy really really really is not into cops.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘White Christmas’ sung by Iggy Pop
Iggy Pop & Deborah Harry singing Cole Porter, 1990