June 7, 2008
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A couple of days before one Christmas in the early Seventies, carefully clutching Andy Warhol’s invitation as an alibi, I crashed the Village Voice’s annual party in what I told myself would be a sentimental farewell gesture before bowing out of the New York scene. I was about to leave the New York, after 17 years, to live once again in Europe. (As it happened I didn’t stay there for very long and was soon back on the Soho scene). The party was my first contact with the Voice for several years because although I been one of the cofounders, and a weekly columnist for the first ten years of its existence, I had been persona non grata over there since helping the East Village Other get started (1965) and my occasional peaceful overtures since, either by mail or by mutual friends, had been coldly rebuffed. The Voice never forgave the underground press for coming into existence, and never forgot my role in helping to midwife that birth. Nobody in authority at the paper made any comment to me at the party but it can’t say that I enjoyed myself very much. What seemed surprising, and depressing, about the party was the caliber of the guests: local businessmen, third-rate political hacks, shyster lawyers, a handful of New School academics and a few rich vulgarians such as Huntington Harford. Because of the poor company and such moody thoughts, I said goodbye to the party pretty early and couldn’t escape the thought that in some ways, my goodbye was to the alternate media in general. It seemed years ago since the underground papers had been alive and flourishing, its’ editors friendly to each other and sharing a common purpose. Enthusiasm was boundless then and we had all believed we were going to turn society around and be ready for our place in the brave new world. But now here was the Voice –- forerunner of the underground press and the best-known exponent of “alternative journalism” in the world --a bastion of the status quo, its staff, contributors and friends all locked into the lifeless literary scene that it tried to bypass when it had started, a generation before. The Voice, of course, had been seen as a model of reactionary politics to most of its successors, the self-styled underground press. But objectively were they any better at this time of history? Some were still bogged down in the dialectics of kill-the-pig, others in the joy of communal living. A number had blatantly sold out to a corrupt rock industry. None seemed to be offering much in the way of practical solutions to the problems we all faced, although who could blame them? For most papers it had been three to five years of constant financial hardship, police and official harassment, internal power struggles and, to a large extent, indifference from the straight community.
Among the successful papers, Art Kunkin’s L.A. Free Press had modeled itself after the Village Voice from the very beginning, and the formula proved successful. Kunkin, an expatriate New Yorker, did for Southern California what the Voice had already done back east: identified and polarized a community that didn’t know it existed until the paper arrived to serve as a clearinghouse. The Freep cut its teeth during a time of social upheaval in the mid-Sixties (love-ins, riots on the Strip, free rock concerts, Leary’s road-shows, the Watts riots, Chicano uprisings, Bank of America bombings) and built up a vast readership with a combination of subversive social comment and racy sexist ads. While Kunkin, a professed Trotskyite, bought an expensive home in the hills, drove a telephone-equipped roadster and milked the paper to finance a printing plant and a chain of bookstores, staffers and contributors were punching time clocks and living on sub-standard wages – if, indeed they were paid at all. People who’d lent money to the paper were blandly ignored, their loans never repaid. Eventually disillusioned staffers split away to form a series of alternative papers, only one of which – John Bryan’s Open City --ever presented a real alternative. (Bryan was done in, partly by lack of support from people who were still faithful to the Freep, but mainly by rock superstar Leon Russell whose nude record ad brought the paper an obscenity bust. Russell not only refused any financial help, but declined to involve himself in the subsequent legal proceedings in any way). Something of a similar nature happened further to the north with Max Scherr’s Berkeley Barb, which along with the Freep, New York’s EVO, Jeff Shero’s s Rag in Austin, and Michigan’s The Paper, constituted the initial membership of the Underground Press Syndicate. Scherr, a forty-ish anarchist who’d been running a Berkeley bar during the emergence of the street scene in the early sixties, threw together his first Barb almost alone, peddled it in the streets and through its influence helped to bring about the cataclysmic events which made the University of California’s Berkeley campus the center of student revolution. The Barb was a hodge-podge of biased reporting, sexual anarchy, Black militancy, activist politics, acid agitation and cynicism. It was usually the sloppiest-looking underground – and always among the most fascinating. But Scherr, too, viewed success in old-fashioned terms: a fat bank account for himself, pittances for his employees. He was miserly, greedy and possessive and eventually many of his staff, too, peeled away to start a rival paper, the Berkeley Tribe, which never matched its parent’s interest or irreverence. (As a matter of fact it was downright insular for a long time, disdaining help from or for people outside the “tribe”). No other underground paper has ever matched the financial success and public acceptance of the Freep and the Barb, although EVO in its early days had probably the best chance of bridging the gap between the freak and straight communities. EVO‘s founder Walter Bowart was certainly the first of the new-style publishers to conceive of a visually revolutionary paper rather than merely using offset techniques to save money while producing the same linear predictable package that the straight press had offered since Gutenberg. (Not many would associate American underground papers with “art”. A handful of North American papers – Oracle, Kaleidoscope, Georgia Straight, Logos, Harbinger, Nola Express, Astral Projection, Other Scenes, Seed. Open City—dabbled with the concept from time to time but it had more adherents in Europe with OZ, Amsterdam’s Real Free Press, Paris’ Actuel and Hotcha! being the stand-outs). With a few exceptions, the underground press in America had barely changed since its inception five years before. All were honorable, all worthy, all had integrity – but somehow the spark had long ago faded. Instead of working to develop a larger community, most papers have decided to settle for the local freak scene: Goddess knows, the job they did was important enough, and the sacrifices most of their editors and staffs made to do it deserved respect, but somehow the excitement and imagination was gone. Maybe, I mused on this eve of my departure, it was related to the down period America was going through. What major changes that had ensued had sometimes lessened the papers’ impact: New York’s once-gutsy Rat was taken over by Women’s Lib Liberation Workshop who, whatever the merits of their case, failed to prove themselves capable of producing a paper relevant to the community at large, rather than merely one section of it. (Sure, a paper run by males is male chauvinist; but the papers run by females were so excessively female chauvinist that even women didn’t read them.) Similar criticisms could be made about papers taken over by Gay Lib, Irish Nationalists, Israeli freedom fighters, transvestites and toenail biters. Nobody would deny that each has a “cause” of some sort to present, but diverting an existing paper’s audience solely to the specific problems of a splinter faction does less for their case than they suppose. To some extent the split that had plagued the movement from the beginning (and maybe every community from the beginning of time) had also polarized the papers. Should a corrupt society be challenged head on and fought at every opportunity? Or should it be ignored and circumvented until it became ineffective because of its utter irrelevance? The problem had surfaced at the very first Be-In in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park in January 1965 when 20,000 heads gathered to celebrate an emerging community that most of the world learned about only at Woodstock three years later. On that winter day in San Francisco, the alternatives were there for all to see: on the one side, Tim Leary, Ginsberg, the rock bands, the Oracle people.... on the other, Scherr and his Berkeley Barb, Jerry Rubin, Mario Savio’s Free Speech Movement. All grooved together, elated by the show of strength and confident about the future. Beneath the surface however, were the arguments: between the Oracle people (“Straighten out your own head, man; don’t confront the enemy and prolong the bad vibes; drop out”) and the radical Berkeley community (“Who’s going to stop the racism, end the war, confront the killers so you people can afford the luxury of dropping out?”). Neither side realized the importance and necessity of the other; both sides were right –and wrong. And since that day the situation had seesawed, first with one viewpoint in the ascendancy, then the other. (Chicago, obviously, was the activist peak; Woodstock the time of the doped-out freak). As I contemplated this history, on the eve of leaving it all behind, the activists were in disarray, disillusioned with the obvious ineffectiveness of protest and demonstrating, devastated by the tactical error of Mayday. Many had left the struggle, and most of those remaining had become robots, repeating endlessly the same motions. The spark had disappeared. The alternative press, obviously, was reflecting this mood – and seemed unwilling to or incapable of making any serious changes. The predominant theme in America had become theft, whether it be of the public at large by bankers and aerospace chieftains, or as individual victims of the telephone company and utility companies. Everybody no matter what their social level, seemed able to rationalize stealing, if only because they were not getting legally what they deserved. I was depressed, disillusioned and ready to try a new life back in England. + + + As it happened my stay in Europe turned out to be brief. Being away from the U.S. made me realize how much I had come to appreciate the American way of life—and how much my psyche needed it. What I had failed to understand was what a prodigious capacity the country had for regeneration, how quickly everything could change (Nixon was gone!) and how—with all its faults—America was probably still the free-est country in the world. And probably the easiest in which to live once free of the shackles of extreme poverty.
From a new base in Tribeca, I was soon back into my old life, although for me, too, the spark of rebellion had gone. I was content to settle into the superficialities of the Manhattan art scene. With the Voice and EVO long behind, I was still writing my column, first monthly for Penthouse and High Times, but after that as a self-published news letter which I gave and mailed to friends around the world. When it wasn’t a report from some place I was visiting on a travel assignment, the column was, and still is, centered around predictions of the future gleaned by regularly reading 40 publications. Not everybody realizes that the daily newspaper is frequently scooped by monthly magazines which expend resources on exploring some issue or country in such depth that their stories spawn news stories—which turn up later on the front pages. The Atlantic is especially adept at this sort of thing and I was reading about China’s climb to super-power status, for example, long before any meaningful newspaper story on the subject. I had been quoting from magazine pieces—stories that I felt had legs, that pointed to the future, that we’d hear more about—as far back as my Voice days, aided by sympathetic publishers who’d add my name to their comp list. Victor Navasky’s Nation was an early one but the granddaddy of them all was William Buckley’s NationalReview which started up the same year as the Voice and has kept up my (free) subscription to this day. I have quoted the Conservative periodical many times, and a few years before Buckley died, I wrote him an appreciative note saying that although I had not become a Republican after reading hundreds of issues of his magazine, I was certainly more sympathetic to the common sense aspects of the Conservative viewpoint than I had been originally. Nobody, of course, has a monopoly on the truth or even what’s the most sensible policy about almost anything. I have found myself agreeing occasionally even with the likes of Dr. Laura or Bill O’Reilly (but almost never with the obnoxious Rush Limbaugh). “People of many political stripes came to see his life as something of an art form” said Buckley’s obituary in the New York Times, which described him as the “liberals’ favorite conservative” and certainly he gained many admirers when he advocated the decriminalization of marihuana. It might be presumptuous to guess that he was a smoker himself, but his tolerant attitude towards this and so many other things pointed that way. In the golden Soho years, my weekly column took the form of a minimag subtitled John Wilcock’s Secret Diary. There was nothing secret about it, of course, because I used to hand it to everybody I met on West Broadway and its environs. It was a 5 1/2 x 4" newsletter on colored paper with a different colored head. It covered a week at a time, and I was always making notes for next week's issue. Most recipients gave me a perfunctory thanks, almost nobody ever made any comments about it either at the time or later, but I was satisfied with the knowledge that it was a beat I had to myself. So far as I could see, nobody else was writing about the ‘art scene’ itself, apart from the prissy reviews in the glossy art magazines. So I may not have been the ideal social historian of that particular scene --but I'm almost certainly the only one.
Sun, Jan 21, 1979: Today was the first time I tried to use my new Citibank cash card but after three or four lines of inventive dialog the machine stubbornly copped out, petulantly declining to explain why it couldn’t complete the transaction. By noon, still cashless, I was on the 8th Ave. subway to Kew Gardens from which the bus to JFK costs a mere 50c instead of the MTA’s current $3.50 train-to-the-plane hype which is no faster. And then to Los Angeles via Braniff’s cheapo ($303 round trip) flight, which pauses at Washington, San Antonio & Austin. My airborne reading included the NY Times review of Kevin McAuliffe’s Village Voice bio called The Great American Newspaper which made the point that the old Voice was “a writers’ paper” – just exactly what me and so many other unemployed writers are waiting to find today. Nobody I know reads the ’79 Voice whose appeal is mainly to out-of-towners, apartment hunters & masochistic politicos. And the Soho News, after five years, is still in the 20,000 doldrums despite its 100,000 press run during the recent strike. Obviously both are vulnerable and thus ideas for new weeklies are floating around. Mon, Jan. 22: Lunch at Musso & Franks – its interior like a cavernous 3rd Avenue saloon – with Eve Babitz, witty chronicler of LA mores (Fast Nights, Slow Company, Knopf) – who’s just completed her first novel, all about a randy Santa Monica lady beach bum. Eve was asked by Saturday Review for a piece about how New Yorkers feel about LA. “But what I gave them”, said she, “was a piece on what NY editors think people feel about LA.” Next, to 5325 Sunset, a rambling old house where Jay Levin (who was hired by Larry Flynt from the NY Post to run the now-defunct LA Freep ) has just published #7 of the new LA Weekly. His cover story about “televangelism” says that some of these high-powered TV prophets (one of whom operates from a giant parking lot into which his adherents drive & listen from their cars) are raking in close to a quarter of a million bucks per day from admiring suckers. They are watched on hundreds of TV stations and their escalating social, financial & political power is frightening. “Have you stopped to think what might have happened if Jim Jones had had a large TV following?” asked one critic. Distributing 60,000 copies each Thursday, the LA Weekly describes itself as the publication of “news, people, entertainment, art & imagination.” Tues, Jan. 23: After lining up for one hour during which I filled in 40 answers to common sense questions (got four wrong) I was told that my new California driving license –the one which bears a color photo & expires on your birthday – would arrive in the mail soon. Former High Times editor Ed Dwyer bought me lunch. He came out here three weeks ago after Tom Forçade shot himself and the trio now running the mag thoughtlessly dumped Bob Singer & made a vapid, young secretary editor. Now working for Hugh Hefner’s Oui, Ed’s searching for writers to help him spend a beefed-up budget for the magazine’s Openers section. Off to Venice where one of the funniest men in America (“I’m listed in Who’s Who as what’s that”), the ex-Swami X, is drawing the same-size crowds on the boardwalk as he used to in NYC’s Washington Square. Swami considers himself more of a philosopher these days – “A philosopher is a comic who doesn’t care if he gets laughs or not” – but astrology rules his life as much as ever. He was the first to mention the latest (post-earthquake) LA paranoia, viz that a tidal wave is expected to hit the West Coast this coming Sunday. A more pressing problem (I said) was how could I learn to stop snoring because my host had insisted on me sleeping alone because it was keeping her awake. Swami called his hypnotist friend, then reported: “It will cost $30 for a one-hour session but he can’t guarantee anything.” Planned to call him back but Swami, his lady Sher and I got stoned together & talked until well past midnight. Stopped at a Jack-in-the-Box on the way home and, crazy New Yorker that I am, sat down inside to eat, listening to the squeaky orders coming over the loudspeaker from drivers waiting behind each other’s exhaust fumes as they inched their way around the building to pick up their food. Drive-ins!--so L.A. Wed, Jan 24: En route to Santa Monica stopped in three separate post offices only to find long lines, one solitary counter open and none of the stamp machines operating. Though discouraged, I was reassured to note that the US Postal Service clearly eschews geographical favoritism, is thus inefficient everywhere. Irresistibly drawn to homemade potato chips on the Santa Monica pier. Ate so many I almost od’d on the damn things, shaken back to life by the sight of a stuffed and lacquered piranha fish being touted as “just what your friends always wanted.” What MY friends want – and kept reminding me to bring – were boxes of See’s chocolates, creamy fudge-filled delights which are slightly cheaper than Beluga caviar. Happily, See’s will mail, although if they have to wait in the post office as long as I did it would be faster by Greyhound bus. Michael Caine was on Merv Griffin’s show tonight, talking about real estate – currently LA’s second-favorite preoccupation (after earthquakes). Having just bought a house 50 yards over the Beverly Hills line into LA, said Caine, he’s been told that prices were high because of school expenditures. But costly as the house was, he said, he’d figured out that what he’d saved in that 50-yard difference was enough to build his own school. Thurs, Jan. 25: “Be It Ever So Humble There’s No Place Like Home” is the hand-stitched motto above the door in the 40-room Playboy Mansion where booze flowed freely at a party to announce that Hair would be the opening movie at the forth-coming Filmex Festival. Producer Lester Persky & director Milos Forman were present as were Buck Henry, Chevy Chase and Murdoch honcho Joe Armstrong. Indoor rose trees, fireplace logs & burning candles were all real as were the flamingoes in the garden. But not a Bunny to be seen. Frid, Jan. 26: LA Magazine’s Geoff Miller took me to the monthly writers’ lunch at the Palm, an overpriced saloon with sawdust on the floor, caricatures on the walls and lousy service. Visiting from NY was US editor Sam Angeloff who said he’d heard Look was ruthlessly buying rack space any oldhow, to make sure the mag had a good send-off next week. But after minimal trade gossip the lunch degenerated into sex talk helped along by Susan Squire (who’d just authored a piece for Oui on current women sex scribes), gossipest Joyce Haber, Oui’s editor Richard Kramer and two editors from Playgirl, one of whom confessed to experiences with a lover who’d applied pepper to her willing, indeed eager pussy. By the time I left to drive to Ed Lange’s nude ranch in Topanga everybody was on their 5th drink. When I came out of the open-air Jacuzzi, Ed told me he’d just lost a case to an uptight neighbor –Catholic, of course – who, along with Mike Antonovitch had been trying to get them closed for 12 years because of the nudity, even though the grounds are fenced in and he can’t see it. “But we’ll win in the end”, Ed forecast. Sat, Jan. 27: The teenyboppers in their flimsy, tight shorts are skating as usual along the Venice boardwalk today. The Swami’s tidal wave? It never arrived. Thurs, March 15: “Leave early” was the advice proffered for today by the Witches Almanac and it seemed like good sense, as swelling crowds burned up all the oxygen at the evening events. Fans mobbed Batman’s creator Bob Kane at a show of his work in West Broadway’s Circle Gallery where a life-sized reclining Cat Woman oil painting was priced at $15,000. Over at Books & Co, on Madison Avenue, publisher Jonathan Williams was celebrating his 50th birthday, and the 28th anniversary of his Jargon Press, with a show of some of his stellar poetry books (Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Joel Oppenheimer, Kenneth Patchen) produced over the years. Opulently dressed crashers poured into the new Encore restaurant at 2nd Ave. & 64th Street. The tiny checkroom looked like Alexander’s Fur Vault. Piles of fluffy salmon mousse and other exotic goodies were being constantly replenished. But how many of the freeloaders will be back tomorrow to pick from a menu which lists Beluga caviar at $31.50 per portion? Last stop was at the Harkness Pavilion where I planned to report on the party for The China Syndrome, but it was being organized by that notorious little creep Bobby Zarem who doesn’t even condescend to answer my letters, much less allow me in to see my old friend Jane Fonda. He sent a minion to the door, a snotty stripling barely out of knee socks, who informed me that only “important” press were invited. (If press agents were compensated according to their limited perception, or even for what they contributed to society, most of them would starve to death). Sat, March 17: Right in the middle of this E. 83rd Street party given by my friend from Mexico, Elias Benabib, who should suddenly become rehabilitated but NYC’s former mayor William O’Dwyer who left the city under a cloud about 30 years ago to become ambassador to Mexico. First a folk singer named Stan Satlin sang a ballad all about how O’D was accused of many crimes but charged with nothing, then he quoted his father as saying: “He was a very good mayor and a crook.” All this time, the benevolent-looking O’Dwyer just stood there and said nothing, which, for a politician on St. Pat’s Day, is certain evidence of rehabilitation. Another guest at the party was Arnold Skolnick who designed the original logo (bird on banjo) for the Woodstock Festival. “Now that they’re planning the 10th anniversary concert for this summer”, he joked, “I’ve got the assignment to make that bird look ten years older.” Sun, March 18: “Unfortunately there is no possibility at the moment of our extending the present coverage of the art scene,” wrote Roger Wood, one of Murdoch’s Aussie editors in response to my offer to write a column for the New York Post. So that’s what it is that I’ve been doing? And here I’ve been thinking that I was writing popular sociology for people of culture and intelligence. Ah well, what do these carpet-bagging Colonials know about art anyway? Mon, March 19: Tall models dispensed daffodils & Margaux Hemingway perfume at London designer Hardy Amies “Rites of Spring” bash at NYNY. The bright lights of some cable TV show – a pseudo-event if ever there was one – illuminated the faces of Elizabeth Ashley, Truman Capote, Ruth Kligman (the secret weapon behind Jackson Pollock & Frank Kline) & Hair producer Lester Persky, back from the LA opening. Before I could ask about the quail eggs he’d been moved on my admirers. Bob Weiner was working on his first column for the new society magazine, Invitation, since leaving SWN in a dispute over money (he wanted his $200 increased to the $350 Doug Ireland is getting). Money was also the cause of a little altercation at the bar where, to host Amies’ dismay, some guests were being charged $2.75 for every drink. Tues, March 20: Evangeline Tabasco peppers are just about the fiercest items you can pop in your mouth & I’ve had a passion for them since Louisiana-born Sam Wiener gave me a jar at Christmas. He called today to assure me he’d replenish my dwindling supply and we pondered why only some people like it hot. Sam adopted Evangeline Tabasco as his alter ego about 8 years ago and has since put on several shows of “her” work, most recently his miniature art museum (at OK Harris) where all the “sculptures” were pieces of pasta or other items available in any supermarket. It’s so beneficial to have an alternate identity – mine is Oliver Johnson – we wondered why more people didn’t do it. I told Sam I’d write about him today & asked what was going on in his life. “It’s my birthday on Saturday”, he proffered, “and I just had my car towed away.”
Frid, March 23: By 2PM I was already over at the printing plant, 47th & 11th, watching the last sheets of my book, Traveling in Venezuela, come off the presses at 4,500 sheets per hour. Next week the pages go to NJ to be bound & the book should be published about mid-April. Containing 200 pictures, it’s obviously the most comprehensive book about Venezuela you could find. At 5:30, I was watching admirers bring flowers & beribboned packages to Sarah Rentschler at her penthouse gallery atop London Terrace where daffodils were starting to bud amidst the tangled sculpture. The divine Sarah was serving wine & that new, pinkish Soho Soda and among the guests was a construction worker named Charlotte who introduced me to her sister, a writer for Home Furnishing magazine who said she’d discovered a smoke detector that started fires. By publicizing the dervishes concert at Cooper Union the New York Times had over-filled the hall & while I was pondering on whether to head for the Institute for the Study of Restlessness (262 Bowery) to see Mary Forrester dance, I collided with a perfect stranger and off we went hand in hand. Wed, March 28 : From the opening song about poisoning pigeons, to the closing number about WACS in WWII (by a comedy group named High-Heeled Women) Homer Rees’ Cabaret was one of Carnegie Recital Hall’s most curious evenings. After monologues by Marvin Cohen & Maurice Edwards and songs in French, German & English, the audience adjourned for wine downstairs and I headed home to write up this final diary. For 49 consecutive days I have been reporting on the vagaries of NYC social life and I need a rest (which I shall take by spending the summer in Greece revising my book about that country). Most of my 400 readers enjoy being part of the diary society & reading about themselves but few (of course) would dream of subscribing. With writing, it was ever thus. In the fall I shall resume this sociological labor of love.
1982 Sat, March 2: Down at the Kitchen, a man in knee-high boots sat in a water-filled boat rowing air. It was an evening of zany events by the Fluxus group, the best international art group since Dada, all of whose members have the soul of a Duchamp combined with the imagination of Ernie Kovacs. In one number, Remote Music, a plaster finger came slowly down from the ceiling & played a solitary note on the piano. At 50 W. 29th Street, Marci Vitous & Cliff Glinn were giving a loft party. Said Marci: “I didn’t get a new job. I’m not having a baby. My husband isn’t getting promoted: I don’t even have a husband. It’s just a mindless, noisy party.” It was great. This time last week I met Sherry Lane, a caricaturist who’s about to begin teaching face-reading course, but as I was looking around the crowded room trying to apply some of the hints she’d taught me, I met a lady wearing a necklace of sharks teeth, and everything else went completely out of my head. Sun, March 3: Seven of Israel Horovitz’s plays are set in Wakefield Mass., where he was born in 1939, and today’s party (at Quinion Books, 541 Hudson) was to celebrate their publication as The Wakefield Plays. “There are lots of people killing each other & nobody hears about it”, was the startling remark reported by one of the guests, Herb Liebman, who said it had spurred him to write a play, Survivors, which had also been produced at the Actor’s Studio (where IH conducts a playwriting workshop). In addition to his autograph, Horovitz was annotating paperbacks with a rubber stamp several of which he kept in a small plastic box. The talk among my friends turned unaccountably to prostitution, legalization of which seems nearer, and I remarked that more & more ladies of my acquaintance seemed to becoming part-time hookers. This clearly emerging trend has something to do with the loss of shame. + + + +
is a phrase that’s always amused me. It’s been defined as “not quite libel” and is usually a derogatory term used by ‘serious’ papers to describe their tabloid rivals. The phrase began during the late 19th century battles between the newspaper magnates Pulitzer and Hearst—neither of them very likeable, from all accounts—when a comic strip featuring a boy in a yellow shirt in Pulitzer’s New York World became known as ‘the yellow kid’ and achieved such popularity that Hearst hired the cartoonist, Richard Outcault, away to work at his New York Journal.
Naturally, Pulitzer hired an artist, George Luks, to create a similar strip to the one he’d lost, so for a while New York had two yellow kids. At any rate, “yellow journalism” became the sneering term for these crass penny dailies and in the modern era has been used for Fleet Street tabloids and their sensational style that so entranced Rupert Murdoch and which he transported to Australia and the U.S. When High Times’ Tom Forçade offered to make me editor of the new tabloid paper he was planning I insisted that it be printed on yellow paper and for a solitary issue (after which it folded) it was. Undeterred, at a later date, I decided to produce my own Yellow Journal, about a dozen of which appeared. I handed it out to friends
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