In 1967, I was living in the East Village on Avenue A and Fourth Street in an aging dinosaur of a building, the Ageloff Towers. This part of downtown Manhattan had been very fashionable in the 1930’s and had already bottomed out when I got there. The deeper you dug into what was called alphabet city, the darker life became. People who lost the fight with life or never even had the fight in them were in the doorways, shooting up in alleys all over this neighborhood.
Puerto Ricans had been migrating to the City for quite a while. They were outsiders on the ass end of opportunity and the vast majority simply wanted to come to New York City and that is where their plan ended. In many cases, hope got lost on the journey. Right up Fourth Street, across First Avenue, the Hell’s Angels lived in one of those broke down brownstones, cycles defiantly parked every which way in the street and on the sidewalk.
Now, you may ask yourself, what was a nice Jewish kid from Queens doing there? Well, we have to go all the way back three years to 1964 when I was a junior at Queens College, After dissecting my first frog in freshman biology, I realized that fulfilling the childhood promise of becoming a doctor was gone forever. The ten-year-old boy who had his first doctor’s office in the partially finished basement of his Queens home, where he treated Robert Ross for a bruised knee, getting pats on his head for his early career choice, was now without a future, without a dream
Wallowing in the uncertainty of my life, I jumped at the chance to work at NBC during their coverage of the Johnson-Goldwater presidential election. The assassination of John F. Kennedy was still a raw wound in the flesh of America and it was a time of crushed dreams for many, particularly young people like me. Most important, it was a job and I could make decent money for a couple of days work. I worked in their election headquarters in a made over studio 8H. I ran errands and got coffee for Huntley and Brinkley, NBC’s star news team.
I was captivated by the excitement and spent six months following that experience trying to get a job as a page at the network. Pages were uniformed ushers, seating audiences at TV shows, interfacing with stars back stage and show business beginners, looking to start their careers. I spent two and half years at NBC and had the time of my life. I was scheduled for evenings because I was in college and I worked the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson for over two years. I got to see George Carlin, Ella Fitzgerald, Sinatra and chatted with Carol Burnett. I was there the night of Frontier Rabbi, ranked at the top of Carson’s ad-libs. I absolutely loved the experience, but still wrestled with a conventional future, having no idea how I could be like those people I saw every time I put on the rayon, double breasted black suit with a peacock on the pocket.
Page life was interrupted by active duty in the Army Reserve, my way of avoiding the Vietnam War or a cold life in Canada. During all this time, from my fledgling medical practice right through my heroic return from military service in Massachusetts, I was living at home. I couldn’t wait to be finished with the rigidity of student life and to finally be grown up, no longer having to call Mommy when I stayed out all night.
I moved into the seven-room cave at the Ageloff, with a bunch of wild guys I had met during my time at NBC. Finally, I was on my own and the independence was intoxicating. By day, I’d put on a cheap suit, grab my new attaché case and take the F train to 30 Rock. I had an office with a window and even a secretary.
Away from the predictable trajectory of a co-star in Mad Men, life was looser and reflective of an era that was taking it’s tie-dye shape right before my eyes. I bought a motorcycle, a 250cc Honda. I went to a hippy store in Greenwich Village and bought a cracked, black leather bomber jacket. I was buying $125 kilos of Mexican pot, wrapped in thick red paper. At night, I’d wander into alphabet city and on one occasion caught The Mothers of Invention at Tompkin Square Park. We’d throw parties at the cave and some would remain in the living room for several weeks.
I ended up saluting convention back then and did everything I was supposed to do. I stayed in the broadcast advertising business for twenty years and by the end, my hair was finally over my collar, I wore sport jackets and even went without a tie on occasion, a stylistic sin. Ultimately, the iconoclast couldn’t be contained.