Recently Dead

We'd been sitting on the sad news that Tina L'Hotsky had died, hoping that it was just another rumor of her death and we'd hear from her again as we have done every half-decade or so, like clockwork. But it's dawned on us now that this time it's true. We first heard she was dead (from cancer, of course) in an "I'm told" item in Michael Musto's La Daily Musto blog three days ago (since updated with the Official Death Notice!) and have spent the days between then and now trying to locate clips of stories we'd written about her during New York's downtown heyday when we had an enormous crush on her and she was the luminous, self-proclaimed Queen of the Mudd Club (which no one disputed). "Queen" may have been just a ceremonial title, but it was only one of her careers back then; she was also a super-8 filmmaker, an actress, a writer, an artist, and a driving creative force inside the Mudd at the end of the '70s, which, we had no way of knowing then, would really start something. Tina L'Hotsky – yes, her real name – was beautiful, funny, ironic, mysterious, and as secretly tragic as a heroine in a 19th-century novel. Now, sadly, we seem to have misplaced all our Tina souvenirs but this uncredited photo taken, we're guessing, around 1980. And this note dated December, 2006: "I'm writing the Queen of the Mudd Club book. Kisses, Tina."

Related entries:

1. Recently Dead: LeRoi Moore, sax player and founding member...
2. Recently Dead: Sandy Allen, the world's tallest woman, died...
3. Recently Dead: Oscar- and Grammy-winning singer, songwriter, and musician...
4. Recently Dead: Not a good week to be named...
5. Recently Dead: Bernie Brillstein, the pioneering manager and producer...