By Drew Grant 6:49pm

Price of Punk

Joey Ramone's passport. (Courtesy of RR Auction)

A Return to Rock ’N’ Roll High School With Joey Ramone Auction

It’s rare to find a passport for sale by a reputable vendor, but if you can pass for a young man named Jeff Ross Hyman, then the New Hampshire-based RR Auction has an item you might be interested in. Sure, the current bid is $4,840 for the international identification card once owned by Joey Ramone, but it’s worth every penny.

In fact, each of the 81 lots currently up for auction in the Joey Ramone Collection is a priceless piece of punk-pop history, as evidenced by the bevy of fans lined up outside The Bowery Electric on February 7, hoping to catch a glimpse of the artifacts during a special two-hour display. They might have been surprised by the contents.

Though RR deals mostly in signed items such as: letters, photos and books, according to the company’s vice president of marketing and sales, Bobby Livingston, there’s always room for exceptions—especially when it came to Joey Ramone. Read More

By Ian Blecher 10/23/06 12:00am

Gabba Gabba Goodbye

On Aug. 16, 1977–the day Elvis Presley died–Joey Ramone and a couple of his friends were moping around the Lower East Side, devastated. Still, nobody could think of a fitting homage to their idol. “Then somebody got the idea that we should buy some fresh brains,” said Joey’s friend, DeerFrances, who was there that day. Read More

By Choire Sicha 12/08/03 12:00am

Meet Me On Joey Ramone Place… I Like the Ring of It

This last terribly bright Sunday, around the time church would let out, people in dark clothing began to loiter at the corner of Bowery and Second Street. The focus of their sun-glassed attention was a black T-shirt tied around a street sign on the northeast corner. A few hours later, that T-shirt would be removed, Read More

By Rob Kemp 3/04/02 12:00am

Joey Ramone’s Last Testament

The other night, my band played “I Wanna Be Sedated” while two preteen boys jumped around onstage in front of us, shouting the tune’s words with contagious glee. “Twenty-twenty-twenty-four hours to go / I wanna be sedated / Nothing to do, nowhere to go, oh,” they sang as they bopped, “I wanna be sedated.”

The Read More