When he described his pop ideal, Cohn invariably labelled it ‘flash’. The adjective had a peculiarly English application; it was not much used in the pop vernacular of the day by American critics. But it summarized the perfect pop attributes, suggesting in its two syllables the flaring, pulsing surge of the ephemeral pop moment: the splashy, garish display of the pop star; the sharp, concise impression left by the hit of a pop single; the sham, counterfeit emotion used in pop marketing; and the illicit, underworld attraction of flash-men, flash-coves and flash-Harrys who occupied the pop world, especially those trespassers who tunnelled under or climbed over the cultural and social borders of the suburban greylands that restrained others. To have ‘flash’ meant you lived in the moment, without regard for yesterday and without thought for tomorrow. You thrived in an accelerating world, ahead of the game, blazing brightly enough to leave an impression – to have made your mark with attitude and style.
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April 1971 edition of Esquire, ‘the magazine for men’, Richard Woodley provided ‘An Introduction to Flash’ for American readers
The ‘flash’ – what others might call ‘style’ – is important on the street. It’s in the clothes, it’s in the cars, it’s in the eyes, the walk, the talk. “you got to have flash”, Jimmy said. “I guess it’s like acting. We all know it’s acting, but people recognise the flash on the street. People get to know you by the flash. They suspect you’re somebody. Like, a lot of people on the street sort of know who I am. They know but don’t know. They know a little. Who’s that? Somebody will say. That’s Jimmy, they tell him. Oh yeah? The dude will say
Woodley’s piece is the story of a Harlem hustler who sells “top-shelf coke. Super-fly.” Whether or not his article was a source for the 1972 film starring Ron O’Neil, directed by Gordon Parks jr., it was certainly part of the cycle of blaxsploitation. Jimmy tells his inquisitor how the game works and as evening falls he looks down on Lennox Avenue where “the pimps’ Cadillacs were beginning to gather and double-park.” Getting ready to join them on the street, Jimmy primps himself before a full-length mirror,
Touching his Afro, smoothing his trousers, touching the butt of his automatic. He started toward the door, then came back to the mirror. He looked straight ahead at himself, icily. Then he opened the apartment door and looked down the hall. He strode to the elevator, got in, pushed the button, and rode down into the Harlem night.
Though sold as an authentic report, the piece reads more like fantasy and not so very far removed from Nik Cohn’s ‘Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night’ (1976) that formed the basis of Saturday Night Fever. It hardly needs retelling that Cohn was cavalier with the facts about the Brooklyn disco scene and imported the language, style and attitude of Goldhawk Road Mods to boost his story. Woodley’s introduction to ‘flash’ feels like he was doing much the same thing.
The story was expanded for Dealer: The Portrait of a Cocaine Merchant (Hardback 1971 and a 1972 pulp paperback the following year). Yeah, you gotta have flash.