(Photo by Kavitha Surana)
This morning we noticed graffiti artist Hektad had made some modifications to his 2nd Avenue F stop mural of a giant splattering heart, in honor of the man who fell to earth. A Bowie lightning bolt now pierces the heart, and messages of “Let’s Dance” and “David Bowie Rest Well” are scribbled on the edges. Appropriate, given the subway stop’s proximity to the setting of Lazarus.
Bowie isn’t really thought of as a creature of the East Village, but he was apparently a fan of humble Natori on St. Marks Place. Akio Mokuno, a painter who was a waiter there around 2006-7, told us he’d heard the musician was first introduced to the tiny hole-in-the-wall by his personal manager, who was a longtime regular.
Ever the chameleon, Bowie seems to have been a master at blending into the scene (as we heard earlier this week from Strand employees). Mokuno said sometimes other customers noticed who he was and talked to him, but often they didn’t.
Even Mokuno had to do a double take when he first walked in. “First time, he came by himself with very casual fashion (T-shirt and short pants), so I could not think it was him, but the face was really the same as Bowie,” Mokuno wrote us in an email from Japan. “So I asked him if he was Bowie and he said yes. I told him that I am a big fan of him. Also, I was surprised that such a superstar walked around by himself and behaved like a normal person.”
Sometimes Bowie would bring his friends, sometimes he came alone. According to Mokuno, Bowie was partial to Natori’s spinach oshitasi, gomaae, and simmered pumpkin. “He deliciously ate them and looked happy,” Mokuno observed.
Natori is now closed, but you can still visit another Bowie favorite, Emilio’s Ballato, where a signed cover of Space Oddity hangs on the wall.