Dave Street, educator, author, friend, mentor

November 14, 1949 - April 5, 2022

This entry has taken me longer to write than all of the others. My friend Dave Street (real name David Seth Lichtenstein) passed away in his sleep with a big smile on his face. Dave Street was the most positive, supportive guy I've ever met. We collaborated on a lot of art in the last fifteen years, but I've learned so much more after his passing.

I met Dave through Bobby Steele in 2007, and we hit it off because we're both ballbreakers, we made each other laugh, and we became friends. He was the "punk rock comic", but there's so much more to him than that. Dave wrote lyrics for three of my favorite Undead songs: A Life of Our Own, Put Your Clothes Back On, and I Don't Wanna Feel The Pain Anymore along with a bunch of other ones... Social Reason, The Way We Behave, I'd Rather Do My Drinkin' Alone, Tears On A Pillow, Old Punks Don't Die, and Sometimes You've Gotta Laugh At Yourself. They're all bangers.

Dave was a prolific comic, playwright, songwriter, and performer, but in retrospect feel he was most proud of his work as an educator and his outreach and clean communities programs. Armed with a Bachelor's degree in Education from Kean and a Master's from Rutgers, Dave travelled around giving educational presentations about being a good person, recycling, and the environment at public schools. He wrote a lot of kids books, among them "How The Land of Litter Became the Kingdom of Clean" with illustrations from Elizabeth Anne Chack, "Slam Dunk The Junk" with illustrations by David Cutting, and "Some Ways to be Trusted" with illustrations by Gina Minichino. He also wrote "What The Health, Mommie?" about his experiences dealing with the healthcare system on behalf of his Mom, Adele.

Dave had an uncanny ability to connect to kids through his rapping. I'll never forget his phone call to me "Hey Paul, can you make music for a rap song?" I made him music that sounds like DMX, but he said it needs to be more like Run DMC. Together we made "Slam Dunk The Junk", a rap anthem about recycling, and he nailed it. Now, I thought this was his first excursion into rap, but I am naïve. After he passed away, I came across and preserved a few of his VHS videotapes. The most interesting one was titled "EDUCATION IS THE SALVATION" (SUBSTITUTE TEACHER RAP) THE PLAINFIELD AREA STUDENT POSSE FEATURING DAVE STREET, THE SUBSTITUTE M.C. from 1990.

That smile, that enthusiasm. I miss him. His best friend Carl Bloat and I are working to complete his final work, Waking Up Nowhere, which you can find at www.wakingupnowhere.com. In his dying days he finished a new book, a bunch of new songs, we shot a cool promo video. When Dave got sick, he was in the hospital pretty delirious and I went to visit him. He was hallucinating, totally nuts, he thought he was in the studio with rappers and he won the lottery, but he was still witty as ever, at one point looking at me in my leather jacket saying "Do they make you wear that costume for TV?"

When he eventually improved, he asked me if I had videotaped him while he was all crazy. I told him I hadn't, I didn't think it was right to do that. He looked at me with a smirk and a twinkling side eye and said "you should have taped me, I would've liked to see it." It's taken me 19 days to write this, if I don't drop it now, I never will. Until next time...