Manhattan Memories

Chapter 14: Around the Art Scene

Party Circuit
Manhattan phone book
JW'S Secret Diary

It’s always been my contention that artists are the most significant people in any society, the folk who were able to predict the future albeit in some hard to fathom visual imagery that—usually they could not, or would not explain. Poets, it seemed were so often to be seen as artist’s satellites (pilot fish?), expressing themselves in words as elusive as the images they echoed. The whole ensemble was a bit like trying to decipher the ramblings of the Delphic Pythia or the ambiguous predictions of the Cumaean sybil. The truth appeared to be in there somewhere, but how could it be separated from all the extraneous material?

Having no drawing or painting or poetic skills whatsoever, I was nevertheless drawn to these mysterious beings in the hope that some of the mystique would rub off on me and thus I, too, would be able to be ahead of the game.

I ran a cartoon once showing two paintings on a gallery wall talking to each other, expressing amazement about the pretentious things being said. And that’s the way I so often felt about art critics. In a recent Art News appraisal of a show by sculptor Carle Andre, for example, the reviewer wrote:

    ”..peripheral vision cannot perceive everything in one glance, so the mind’s eye renders uniform what is actually diverse. This is how Andre engages his viewers, forcing them to analyze their perceptions, weed out deceptions, and experience complexity expressed in its simplest terms.”

What he was talking about was some blocks of wood in two corners of the room and a set of copper plates on the floor.

Almost everybody covering the art scene writes like that. Oddly enough, I never found anybody—at least not in those glorious Soho days—who shared what I came to think of as “my beat”. The only other writers around were basically reviewers or critics. The newspapers, art magazines and other periodicals didn’t write about the social aspects of the art scene—just about the art—whereas I felt that although I knew little about art, I was learning a lot about artists.

A true artist, I came to believe was a person so obsessed with a vision, that nothing short of total incapacitation would prevent the dream from being fulfilled. Money was rarely a problem before the late 1970s and few artists would have placed it high on their list of priorities. The main thing was to present the vision.

So what my Soho diaries came to report in the Seventies was pretty much what happened on “the scene” and although this might appear to be a narrow focus, it really wasn’t. To begin with, many of these people—the artists, poets, writers, playwrights, moviemakers —included the brightest minds of the western world, and secondly, while Manhattan was the global headquarters of this genre, the attitudes, viewpoints and reasoning were pretty much the same there as among artists anywhere. Which is to say that concepts, ideas and obsessions were more important than commercial considerations.

Yet almost inevitably, “art” and “commercial art”—hitherto distinctly separate categories—had fused. There had always been artists working in advertising who were as good, if not better, than whose who were elevated to gallery status, and now it became clear that it wasn’t talent that made the difference. Warhol’s sketches of shoes for I. Miller were soon regarded on a par with his more famous work, not surprising seeing as he reputedly was earning $60,000 a year as a “commercial” artist in the days when a good salary might have been less than half that.

Milton Glaser

In my opinion, one of the best artists in America was and still is the indisputably commercial Milton Glaser, best known for his much-emulated I Love © New York logo although his work encompasses so much more from book covers to restaurant designs, from posters for arts festivals to beer cans.

New York, he wrote in one of his books, “has always been a driving force in my life. I've received a tremendous education here. I've had access to things that I would never have had access to any place else. The challenge of competition, the high levels of expectation and many of the best and most interesting people in this field make New York irresistible as a place to accomplish things".

Glaser’s thoughts about an artistic life in the world of marketing make interesting reading.

Our culture, he asserts, “is obsessed by the new. This obsession is driven by economic interests. So as a teacher I can say you must remain open to fresh possibilities. At the same time you must be critical not to simply accept what is new without an historical frame of reference. Much of what is produced, driven by advertising and fashion, is basically ephemeral concerned with novelty. If you are in the design field you have to understand this ephemeral characteristic. There's a lot of work that signals the moment and has no other ambition. It doesn't aspire to become a permanent part of human history. Novelty has always been, and will continue to be, an aspect of work.

"The nature of the professional life means you are constantly working with people you don't know. As in all relationships, there are good ones and bad ones. Through the years I have come to believe the personal relationship with a client is central to the quality of the work produced."   

The announcement that after the tax reforms of 1986, gifts of art to museums declined by 50% caused me to muse once again on the relationship of art to money, The greed of big time art collectors seems to be highlighted by their lack of generosity when they can’t get a tax break, all of which raises thoughts about what the function of museums is actually supposed to be.

At present they are virtually private fiefdoms of self-described ‘experts’ who seek constantly to expand their domains. Leaving aside the whole question of the good that could be done with the huge amounts of money that museums manage to ensnare, it seems relevant to consider what kind of an art education the smaller museums offer.

Obliged to specialize to some extent, to stay within budget, their range is small, sometimes especially so. Wouldn’t it be more beneficial if they were to present a wider picture of the world’s art by showing copies of everything regarded as important? I am probably not the first person and will certainly not be the last person to suggest this. Copies? You sneer. Yes, because first-rate copies are indistinguishable from the real thing—often even by experts, as is constantly being proved.

Sell the masterpieces to the highest buyers. Let them pay for the insurance and the guards to safeguard these precious artifacts. Rich moguls who fork out millions for famous paintings sure as hell aren’t going to let anything happen to them. And the huge sums they have paid could be used support to both artists and museums.

Thomas "King" Forcade

In November 1978, Tom Forçade--"the Howard Hughes of the underground"--invited the manager of his Soho bookstore over to his West Broadway apartment and, while he was talking to his wife Gabrielle, went into the next room and shot himself--with the .32 pistol that he had punctured copies of his magazine with several years before. I heard the news while at Tom's magazine, High Times, and rushed over to St Vincent's hospital to find him unconscious and on life support. He'd been a heavy user of quaaludes  in recent weeks but nobody could really explain this sudden drama. He left no note. "Who knows what devils he had inside him", remarked Rex Weiner, and we recalled the number of times he'd fired all the staff, pulled the phones out of the wall, closed down the magazine or made some similarly dramatic gesture, only to revoke it later. He had been abrupt and abrasive but brilliant, loath to waste time with anybody who was unwilling or unable to match wits with him. He'd been feared and admired, and had created around him a truly alternative society--plus a magazine with hundreds of thousands of subscribers. He had donated thousands to LEMAR (and hired a plane to send us down to its Washington conference). He had financed Alternative Media magazine and was planning to restructure High Times so that the profits would go to Underground Press Syndicate. He was 34 years old.

Two years before, while attending an underground press conference together in Ann Arbor we had gone for a ride in his immense black Lincoln car only to be stopped on suspicion --Tom always looked suspicious--by a motorcycle cop. "Can I see your driving license, sir?" the policeman asked. "Sorry", said Tom, "don't have it". "Well then", said the cop, "what about some identification. A letter or something?" Tom sat firm, polite but uncooperative, denying that he had identification of any kind. It was a tour de force . The policeman was nonplused but amazingly he gave in and waved us along. I had never seen anybody face down a cop before.

Two days after his death, Gabrielle organized a farewell party at the 34th floor restaurant in the World Trade Building to which Tom had made tentative plans to move his office. A score of underground press 'names' along with dope lawyer Michael Kennedy, LEMAR's Keith Stroup, Punk publisher John Holmstrom and writer Ron Rosenbaum came to pay tribute. Gabrielle took the elevator up to the observation platform and threw Tom's ashes from the roof -- "the highest place we could find".

There were parties every weekend in the '70s, filling the vast Soho lofts which artists had discovered a decade ago. These huge spaces--formerly occupied by the light manufacturing companies that had deserted Manhattan in droves—could hold three or four hundred people and few artists had 400 friends. So, in effect, if you heard about a party, you were invited. Hired bouncers were a rarity. The question was, how to discover where the parties were? Obviously some organization was needed, hence the genesis of the Party Circuit.

Our crowd used to meet in Fanelli's on Spring Street early on Saturday evenings. Everybody who trawled the art gallery openings that afternoon had nuggets of information to contribute. Some had actual invitations, if not from the host then at least from a reliable friend or colleague.

But much of the talk was speculation: Susan F's opening had been a lavish one, she would surely be having a party as she did last year? We all knew where she lived on 23rd Street whose address Ray agreed to check out. Shelley was compiling a list of possible locations, confirmed or otherwise, further away. Everybody hated to go uptown merely on chance: if it was a dud tip or a bad party, all that time had been wasted on the bus or subway which could have been spent on a surer thing. Shelley, a keen cyclist, was a key man because he could make the rounds of distant addresses and report back to switchboard with up-to-date assessments of places as far afield as Riverside Drive--an area rich in expansive apartments but whose gatherings were usually sparsely attended (for good reason) .

Jack and Andrew were more methodical, marching up and down the key Soho loft streets--Greene, Wooster and Mercer--in search of signs in doorways ("Meg's blast, 3rd floor") or even following people from the nearby stores carrying bags of ice. Marvin, a literary type, had a whole set of different sources and he would often provide insight into a milieu unfamiliar to the art crowd. These parties would often be smaller, requiring a more discreet approach by obviously uninvited 'crashers'. One learned to have a name or two to drop if one's credentials were questioned by the hostess. At the classier parties, Robert was an expert in reading names on the invitation list upside down and could reel off the name to the receptionist before she checked it herself.

Although the hard core of the group remained the same, it ebbed and flowed with the input of many other informants. Sometimes the party host himself would call us to spread the word about his projected bash; other times a casual tipster would give us an address on the understanding that he could call in to get information on other occasions.

Addresses always needed physically checking out because so often they could be duds: locations that turned out to be parking lots, "pay parties" or those with an early conclusion. And, of course, parties where uninvited guests were unwelcome--and especially dozens of uninvited guests who'd clearly gotten the word from the now-notorious Party Circuit.

So central "switchboard" usually meant me at home with the telephone (nobody had cell phones in those days). When Shel or Jack or Andrew or any one of a dozen others called in with a report, I'd quiz them as to the party's accessibility, size, and approximate duration, passing the updated report on to subsequent callers. By about 11pm I'd close down "switchboard" and set off myself for what was theoretically the cream of the crop, a location or locations where the rest of the gang would rendezvous.

At Susan F's party referred to earlier, for example, we all arrived just as she interrupted the dancing to introduce a Chicano poet who turned out to be terrific--all aphorisms and allusions of meetings and greetings, and a continuous flow of narrative, the ideas cascading as fast as the action on an Indian street. Then he had the chutzpah to take on Shakespeare, conducting an imaginary dialog with the great wordsmith--high flying literary stuff indeed for a Saturday night dopers' party which more usually had no formal entertainment. After that, long past midnight, we were all off to a bigger bash just around the corner at the stylish loft of an adorable dancer/art designer. And so it went, weekend after weekend.

One Monday night, after leaving Doubleday, where Willie Morris had been autographing his tome about James Jones, we all went on to the Drake Hotel for a Playboy party which proved to be astonishingly dull. Most of the action was upfront but we were sat in a back room where Vanessa observed: "I love the way they give the crashers a room to themselves". Said Marvin: "If it wasn't for the crashers, this party would be severely under-populated".  I couldn't imagine what was keeping me there unless it was the delicious aroma of Vanessa--mercifully unaccompanied by her boring husband--whom I had informed  was the woman I most wanted to be trapped on a desert island with. Then, the dullness escalating, a new arrival announced that he'd just been to see Woody Allen's Interiors --a coffee table movie if ever there was one. This impelled Marvin to quip that for tonight at least he was "chairman of the boredom".

Sometimes the parties were a curious mix, a benefit for migrant farm workers, for example, where there was enough food and drink to feed most of Central America. On the way there I said: "Maybe we all ought to kick in a few bucks a week just to know we have a place to go on dud nights".

"An artist's club" said Art Guerra. "A place where artists could give their parties after gallery openings."

"It should have backgammon" suggested Jessica. "It could just be a place to hang around and have coffee".

"Maybe even a live-in super to look after it", I added, "Some homeless bum who needs a free pad and doesn't mind people in and out all the time".

All were agreed that even $10 a month would be a bargain for one hundred of our friends to be members of a private Art Club. All we needed was a friendly landlord who needed to make a rep as an art patron. Surely loft-lord Marty Fine would agree?

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Other Scenes, Michelle Marathon

As I was writing regularly, either a weekly column or one of my self-published 'zines such as John Wilcock's Secret Diary  or even Soho Confidential, the art openings and parties were my biggest source of material. On arrival I'd station myself at some key intersection, preferably sitting on a counter or ledge just high enough to see over the crowd, and chat with everybody who came by. "Did you know that XS…..?" someone would ask, and when I imparted this information to the next visitor she'd say, "Oh well the reason why she told you that, was blah blah blah. By the end of the party the item itself, however, was a finely honed jewel, its facets shaped by many hands.

From my elevated perch I could observe all the arrivals and should an attractive girl in a red dress catch my eye as she entered I could sense the thought going through her head. He told me to meet him at the party here? But how will I find him among this huge crowd?  So it would become an amusing little game to see if I could guess who she sought and locate him before she did.

There was never a shortage of things to write about, but one week, responding to a challenge, I managed to get a column out of reading the Manhattan Phone Book. On page 55 I discovered a Winston Alias, later on two listings for the American Council on Marihuana, a genuine archbishop at 630 Second Avenue, Ethel and Lawrence Ambush, the Academy of Animal Careers, a Mr. Again at 23 Greene Street, Mr. L. Argue on East 13th Street, David Air of Beach Street and Alfie Cockatoo and his Comedy Mackaws . All these in the first 102 pages!  I was surprised how many well-known names were listed: photographer Berenice Abbott, Abdul Karim-Jabar, actress Susan Anspach, Ti-Grace Atkinson, Stella Adler, Hardy Amies, Arthur Ashe, David Amram and artists Kathy Acker, Carl Andre, Arman and a Mr. John Artist with an upstate listing. And that was just the A's. Amusing names, too: Blatas Arbit, Chief Abobargo, Diomedes Abreu, Aliyu, Ago Agopop, Solange Waldestrudis, Epifanio, Hannelore and Schiffer Aesthetics.

1979

Ruth Ann Fredenthal photo by Bruce Strong

Thurs, March 8: Donald Judd's olive green metal sculpture dominated the lobby of the Guggenheim Museum. It looked like half-completed office furniture but had the merit of keeping down congestion at the bar. Longtime Googy boss Thomas Messer, an opera buff, skirted the edges greeting guests. Among the nods he returned was that of Ruth Ann Fredenthal. "He came down to see my work", said Ruth. "Now there's a man with good taste". Between taking her usual photos of elbows, shoulders, ankles and kneecaps, Abby R pointed out the Russian writer Elene Shapova ("the punk Brunhild") who had long fur ears hanging from her cap. Then she identified Diane Keaton's artist escort as Steve Gianakos whose current work is entitled 'How to Murder Your Pet'. "His last work was for a miniature golf course' Abby revealed. "It was a dog into whose mouth you shot the ball; then it came out of its ass".  Around the neck of Olga Osmerkin was a preview of husband Gennady's display of sculptured jewelry (Faber gallery, March 15) but the deep, dark pools that were Olga's eyes were what held my attention. She's an art historian from the Ukraine who, three years ago, was working at the Kiev Museum.

Frid, March 9: Vernita Nemec dropped by to take me to a roller disco party at the seedy Diplomat Hotel at whose entrance we were handed a T-shirt labeled Don Robbie and two group photos of disco dancing guys. Amid flashing lights the sphinx-like Vernita said her palmist told her she had been on the planet for 2000 years. Fiorucci green sheen and Venice boardwalk teenybopper shorts careened all around us. "His name's Mr. Singh and he has to read 1,000 palms to gain enlightenment" Vernita shouted, as a woman in a neck brace glided by.

Sat, March 10: At Landmark Gallery, Millicent Brower introduced me to painter Jean Davidson who'd just moved to a loft at 8th Ave. & 19th St where she was being deafened by police sirens. "Federal Sign & Signal have just perfected one that penetrates buildings" said Milly. "It tests at 110 decibels; the police want everybody to be sure of their presence".  In quieter days Milly lived in a carriage house at 135 E 27th St whose two 10' x 16' ft rooms were connected by a spiral staircase. In this house in the '50s (rent $85) William (The Recognitions) Gaddis met his first wife and Norman Mailer offered me my first joint. Milly's green, yellow and lilac blouse, bought at an off season sale in Palm Beach, contrasted sharply with the plain black number worn by Landmark's bubbly Victoria Oscarron. Her single touch of color--scarlet lipstick--recalled Kurosawa's High and Low, a b&w movie that was subtly interrupted by a single puff of orange smoke. On WBay Leo Castelli walking with his patrician dalmatian Paddy & a startlingly beautiful frizzy blonde rebuked me gently about last week's diary. Not just himself, he said, but all the dealers helped the Teheran Museum of Modern Art assemble a vast collection of contemporary art which, doubtless at this very moment, was being covered to its eyebrows by the Ayatollah's men. At a loft party on Broadway, Marty Fine was dancing with Sharon Wynbrandts whom he's hired to paint his elevator at 644 Bway. "It will look like the mirrored hall at Versailles" promises Sharon. Methinks Marty is trying to soften his loft-lord image.

Sun, March 11: London's Private Eye, never noted for shilly shallying, has a simple explanation for Bianca Jagger's constant jetting across the pond on $1500 Concorde flights. It's not Mick Jagger who is paying the bills, explains PE

     "The Nicaraguan slag is funded by poove New York frock maker Halston who wants her to marry disco-owning drug expert Steve Rubell so that they can all settle down in a Manhattan menage a trois . Halston likes to bend an ear while the pair discuss East African politics."

Mon, March 12: The usual crowd of suspects (Robert Dunham. Marvin, Marilyn, Judson Hand, etc.) were drinking the pale punch at Gotham Book Mart until we split together to crash the party at The Four Seasons for Joseph Heller’s book. When I handed him a newsletter he inspected the byline and remembered me from when we both wrote for The Realist. I also worked at The New York Times ('57-60) and who should turn up but the Book Review's Harvey Schapiro who told me about his forthcoming book of poetry Lords & Nightsounds of which the first line is I hear the music from the street every night... "It wasn't really from the street, if you know what I mean" said Harvey's haughty escort who declined to give her name. Well, as W.H. Auden once said, "poetry is what makes nothing happen". Beside banks of Idaho pansies, got into conversation with the intriguing Donna Ferrato who said she took pix for Soho Weekly News, New York magazine and Plato’s Retreat!  She introduced me to Philip Nobile who writes New York’s Intelligencer column and we all agreed that purple seemed to be the color of the week.  We had seen so much of it around, said MB that we were all suffering from purple sensory overload. Over at the 55th St. Pier, New York 's present editor John Berendt and former editor James Brady were among 2000 guests celebrating the release of Lester Persky's movie Hair . Handed out newsletters to Lester Persky, Milos Forman, Allen Tannenbaum, and Jill Krementz.  Then Henry Geldzahler arrived raving about the film.  “It has depth; it has a moral.  It lifted me two feet off the ground”. The entire pier was decorated end to end with a forest of twigs and boughs....scenic backdrops on the walls.....half a dozen bars.... piles of gourmet food and fabulous desserts, waiters circulating with trays of quail eggs....organ grinder with monkey.... and about half a mile away disco dancing and laser show. Even Warhol was impressed with rumors that United Artists had spent $200Gs on the party. "But the movie will make $85 million" enthused Cultural Commisar Henry Geldzahler. Producer Persky posed Rudolph Nureyev beside director Milos Forman and star Beverly D'Angelo causing all the ppz's to go crazy. Everybody went home with bunches of flowers, including LA Weekly 's Jeannie Johnson who said she was rushing back to catch the party in Century City where Hair opens the Filmex Festival on Wednesday. "They've covered 8 1/2 acres with astroturf" she revealed. "I hope they have more quail eggs".

Tues, March 13: Whatever happened to French movies? they used to be engaging, witty, enervating. But with today's batch I've now seen four in the Carnegie Cinema's current French series and rarely have I found anything to relate to. The prevailing style seems to be the staging of a succession of short, unconnected scenes with minimum, almost meaningless dialog--like blackouts but lacking any real point. "It's because of television, or lack of it" suggests Donald Lyons, a reviewer for Film Comment.  "In the U.S. these grade B, domestic movies long ago passed into the realm of TV". He might have added that lacking the volume of TV that we have over here, French directors have less feedback about societal attitudes. Ellen Roumano was there, as she has been at almost every film festival since starting work on her book. TV, she agreed, has definitely "shaped what people expect in style and content" and she felt that this avoidance of narrative by some of the newer French directors smacked of self-indulgence.

Wed, March 14: Several art gallery openings were scheduled for tonight but for once I'll pass. Somebody should declare a moratorium on any more artifacts being made, especially if they're the product of artists who've mastered the bureaucracy of grants--the worst setback for genuine creativity that was ever devised. Artists and poets are indubitably the most important members of any society--like children they see the future-- but it's their vision, their imagination, their fantasies we need most. What we don't need are any more wooden or metal beams masquerading as sculpture or the bourgeois decadence of Frank Stella's imitation carousel trimmings. How can centuries of tradition and progress have led only to such irrelevant trivialities?

Deirdre

Fri., March 16: Of all the femmes fatale to turn up on the eve of St Patrick's Day, who should call but the indomitable Deirdre who first crashed into my consciousness exactly two years ago when, sporting ankle-length green dress and flowing red hair, she produced a harp, poetry and Irish culture concert at a WBay gallery. "My namesake", she announced provocatively, "was the Irish heroine whose very existence was enough to drive all her lovers mad". Well, what could have been more irresistibly adventurous than a challenge like that? Sure enough she drove me completely bonkers and now here it is two years later and I'm sat in Fanelli's watching the slit in her skirt part like the Red Sea every time she gulps her Guinness. But like the heroine of old, Deirdre speaks mostly in riddles and I'm never at my best in bars where I usually feel like an underwater scuba diver with a weight around my ankle and a tank of air that is fast running out. Survival comes first and with a fond adieu I escape into the night.

Wed, March 21: Most of the crowd at Miller Gallery (724 5th) for Robert Mapplethorpe's decadent photos looked as tho' they'd liked to have been punks if they hadn't been so indelibly idle rich. So different from the literary-to-the-eyebrows folk at the 22nd St. bash for Doris Grumbach's novel Chamber Music (Dutton). NYTimes Book Review editor Harvey Schapiro nudged elbows with publisher Thomas Congdon (a name well known in Nantucket whaling history) who keeps bees in Manhattan and who discovered Maxwell Perkins and Jaws while still in ms. Some bearded loser was beefing about how the Voice 's publisher didn't return his phone calls (he doesn't return anybody's) and B. Dalton's Susan Singleton said they were all in raptures at the store because everybody's favorite saint, Sophia the Sexy, had admired their window display. Over at Cooper Union's Great Hall 70% capacity crowd was listening with surprising patience to art critics reading essays to each other and at 224 Center Street filmmaker Phil Niblock was celebrating the Vernal Equinox with another of his six-hour marathons: explicitly detailed documentation of hands at work--cutting cactus, shaping bamboo, fashioning tortillas--to the familiar oscillating electronic background that gets louder every time you think you can't stand any more. Spring's here at last.

Hannah Wilke Credit: Ronald Feldman gallery

Thurs, March 22:  Any movie star who hangs around bookshops has my vote & lovely Ali McGraw, who turned up for Books & Co’s party for Erica Jong proved to be a real charmer without any of those aggravatingly ‘actressy’ airs.  Jong was kept busy signing copies of At the Edge of the Body, her fourth poetry book which concludes “...the honey’s in the making if you come.”   Gotham Book Mart’s Andreas Brown, wearing a “protect Unicorns” button, stopped by—to check out the competition?—and Rosalyn Drexler fresh from her play The Writer’s Opera, was mulling over the reception accorded to her novel by Publisher’s Weekly which alleged that never had a more “unwholesome, bawdy and disgusting group” ever been assembled.  It’s called The Great Goddess Mother Cult and is about a female punk rock group.  Down at the Mudd Club, Larry Rivers and such Art heavies as Art in America’s Betsy Baker cautiously watched the antics of a man wearing an Earth Shoes sack over his face and other masked weirdoes attending the benefit for Carla Liss’ Paranoids Anonymous Newsletter.  Espying the glamorous Hannah Wilke in the crowd, I enticed her to Raoul’s where, over double espressos, I confessed my long-term infatuation.  “You’ll probably outlast all the others” she smiled sweetly.

Mon, March 26th:  BBC cameras were at Books & Co as Fran Leibowitz read from her work-in-progress.  She spoke about LA where “the most popular form of currency is the point” and where even radio shows have makeup artists; the poor “who usually summer where they winter”; and the subject of getting large advances for books as yet unwritten.  As everybody filed out of the narrow room a man was handing a dollar bill to his girlfriend from an open wallet & the next four or five people to pass reached in spontaneously to take one.  The guy just smiled and allowed it to happen.

Tues, March 27:  Blackout Looting! is the title of the book sponsored by the Ford Foundation for which they gave a party in their tree-filled atrium on E. 42nd St.  The exclamation point makes it sound like a fun new game but the study—by Robert Curvin & Bruce Porter—is a serious analysis of that expensive NYC night.  July 13, 1977, when all the lights blew.  Lawyer Manny Epstein who got the first three alleged looters off the hook—“It was dark; prove it was them” I argued-explained that eventually the DA got smart and told the courts there’d been an undercover cop across the street who saw it all-and prove there wasn’t.  At the Lefebre Gallery endless champagne opened the show of Argentine artist Segui, and at Books & Co, which people still loved, he said, because “on TV there are no mistakes; it’s kind of a mortuary activity”.  Donna, the demon photographer, took me to the opening of the Fun Palace, an enormous disco at 527 W 57th St. whose chief asset is a tatty amusement arcade dispensing free popcorn.  All the paparazzi and Party Circuit crowd were there but most agreed with social arbiter Jonathan Michaels: “Interesting, but only for once”.  Among the hundreds of cavorting guests were a huge whistle and a woman whose tiny black waistcoat exposed tits and pubes in company with a gilded fellow wearing only a jockstrap.  And how typical of a gay disco that is should end with a 40-minute group grope to retrieve coats.

For more Soho diaries please click here

NEXT WEEK:    
Chapter 15: Soho Confidential

Exploring India
The Soho scene
Publisher as Revolutionary?

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