{"id":6287,"date":"2011-09-21T08:00:41","date_gmt":"2011-09-21T12:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=6287"},"modified":"2012-03-26T18:15:49","modified_gmt":"2012-03-26T22:15:49","slug":"east-village-other","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2011\/09\/21\/east-village-other\/","title":{"rendered":"EAST VILLAGE OTHER"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

In Patti Smith\u2019s<\/strong><\/span> memoir, Just Kids, <\/em>she hangs around with famous people on almost every page, even when she isn\u2019t famous yet.<\/p>\n

Patti needed 10 more cents for a sandwich at an automat.\u00a0 Allen Ginsberg appeared in back of her with a dime.\u00a0 Ginsberg mistook her for a \u201cpretty boy.\u201d\u00a0 Ginsberg bought her a coffee too.<\/p>\n

Smith dated drummer Slim Shadow.\u00a0 After a few meetings, Slim told Patti he was really Sam Shepard, the playwright.<\/p>\n

Patti ran into Janis Joplin a lot.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Ted Berrigan,<\/strong><\/span> the poet, lived on St. Mark\u2019s Place.\u00a0 Berrigan\u2019s tenement had a clawfoot bathtub in the kitchen.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That was how tenements were built.\u00a0 Berrigan was in bed.\u00a0 It was the middle of the day. \u00a0His wife, poet Alice Notley, said, \u201cWhen Ted gets dressed, you two should go to Allen\u2019s to get the mail.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Ted Berrgian, 1971. (Photo by Gerard Malanga)<\/p><\/div>\n

Alice Notley was addressing Berrigan and me.\u00a0 (I was in Berrigan\u2019s apartment, not Just Kids.<\/em>)\u00a0 Berrigan collected Allen Ginsberg\u2019s mail when Ginsberg was out of town.\u00a0 Ginsberg\u2019s place — on East 13th<\/sup> Street — was neat.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t messy like I had expected.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

I played<\/strong><\/span> harmonica at Grand Central Station to assure myself I wasn\u2019t just another commuter.\u00a0 I checked my bags in a Grand Central locker, then talked to a staffer at the outdoor convention-bureau kiosk.\u00a0 She directed me to the 34th<\/sup> Street YMCA.<\/p>\n

French tourists at the Y asked me why the street was smoking.\u00a0 Smoke was wafting out of sidewalk vents.\u00a0 I figured it had something to do with the subway.\u00a0 (Am I right?)<\/p>\n

A roommate service — Two for the Money — charged $40 to match you with a roommate in New York in 1972.\u00a0 I met Nathan outside the agency, so we didn\u2019t pay the finder\u2019s fee.\u00a0 We wound up on Waverly Place in Greenwich Village.<\/p>\n

There were<\/strong><\/span> a lot of old people in Greenwich Village.\u00a0 Not the best of scenes \u2014 old people.<\/p>\n

So I called Webfoot \u2014 his phone number was W-E-B-F-O-O-T — in the East Village. \u00a0Webfoot said come over.\u00a0 He lived on Second Avenue and was asking only $100\/month.\u00a0 ($539 in today\u2019s dollars.)\u00a0 I spent a night there.\u00a0 He spit blood into the toilet and didn\u2019t flush.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I checked out the NYU bulletin board and found an apartment in SoHo, across from where Ornette Coleman had played a loft concert. $100 for my share. \u00a0A mature woman (30-something) answered the door and said, \u201cLet me make this perfectly clear, you aren\u2019t going to score with me if you move in here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Score?<\/em><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0 Only swingers said score<\/em>.\u00a0 Was this woman getting her news from Playboy<\/em>?\u00a0 Had she missed the whole hippie thing?<\/p>\n

I wound up in a studio apartment sublet on East 13th<\/sup> Street in the East Village for $150\/month.\u00a0 The tenant upstairs was lifting weights, it seemed.\u00a0 I knocked on his door and said, \u201cCan you tell me if you stay home all day and lift weights?\u00a0 I\u2019m laying down $450 for a deposit and rent, and I don\u2019t want to make a mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t lift weights.\u201d\u00a0 He had a weightlifter\u2019s build.\u00a0 \u201cAnd you don\u2019t knock on your neighbor\u2019s door in New York.\u00a0 Where are you from?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOhio.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s in Chicago, isn\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\n

He also said his apartment had been broken into twice, and he had been mugged outside the apartment.<\/p>\n

Maybe the wiser choice was the apartment on Waverly Place in the West Village.\u00a0 I called Nathan.<\/p>\n

Too late.<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0 Nathan had rented the extra room to a law student.<\/p>\n

I saw Patti Smith.<\/p>\n

I saw her in Cleveland.\u00a0 It was her first show in Cleveland.<\/p>\n

Is that worth anything?
\n—
\nFootnote: Ted Berrigan was a visiting professor at Michigan in the fall of 1969.\u00a0 \u00a0 Here’s the syllabus from a class I took:
\n<\/small><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Patti Smith\u2019s memoir, Just Kids, she hangs around with famous people on almost every page, even when she isn\u2019t famous yet. Patti needed 10 more cents for a sandwich at an automat.\u00a0 Allen Ginsberg appeared in back of her with a dime.\u00a0 Ginsberg mistook her for a \u201cpretty boy.\u201d\u00a0 Ginsberg bought her a coffee […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-the-road"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6287"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8830,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6287\/revisions\/8830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}