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Fashion, music, politics, sports

[August 28, 1967] NYC–the Days are Vacuum-Packed

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[Please enjoy this next installment of the travels of the Journey's resident aesthete, Vicki Lucas. I can't think of a better way to tour our American land in 1967 than her articles…]


by Victoria Lucas

No Time!

I’m just starting to get used to the pace. New York is not San Francisco or Berkeley. I feel as if Alice’s rabbit is screaming “No time! No time.” We are on the go all the time, except for an hour or two hanging with friends.



Alice's rabbit

Like last weekend. It was too hot to stay in NYC, so we made our way to New Jersey, where our VW bus is garaged. We brought some things but had planned to do a little shopping on the way, partly because it would have been too much trouble to carry very much with us on public transportation. We can cook on our little camp stove, and we thought we would check out a couple places as we drove to Mel’s folks’s summer home in Maine, overnighting there before returning. It’s about a 6-hour drive from where our bus is parked.

We stopped briefly in New Hampshire. Wow! What we found there!


Shaker houses

Have you ever heard of the Shakers? A sort of cult of “Mother Ann,” a British woman who prophesied that her religious organization would die out, and it is clear that is happening. After nearly 200 years in the United States, and a peak of around 6,000 Shakers in 21 communities, the streets of these celibate communities are empty, and the few remaining members are sustaining themselves mainly by selling handmade furniture and some of their other first-ever products, such as seeds! I was fascinated to learn that their group was the first to package and sell seeds! They are also the authors of the Shaker spiritual “‘Tis the Gift to Be Simple,” appropriated in Aaron Copland’s “Simple Gifts,” and used in his “Appalachian Spring.” We stopped and toured one of the communities briefly, like a sort of living museum, finding out that they adopted orphans to carry on their traditions, but too many of these adopted sons and daughters decided not to stay.


A smoking mother-in-law

It was weird seeing Mel’s parents. I will never forget waking up the next morning in the sofabed on their lower level, noticing that Mel was up–and that his mother was sitting by herself on a hard armless chair, smoking and looking at me. All I could think of to say was, “Good morning.” (Does it have anything to do with the fact that I’m his 3rd wife? Or that I’m 19 years younger than he?)


Abbie Hoffman

Oh! I almost forgot to tell you. Among the meetings with places and dates emblazoned on mimeographed sheets handed out on the streets of the Lower East Side was one back in July during the Newark riots. We spent 2 days going to meetings to decide how to help the people trapped behind barricades without water and food. But the meetings were anarchic, and everyone had a different opinion and was willing to let the meetings drag on and on as no decisions were made. Finally, after enduring meetings starting Friday at 6 pm and continuing on Saturday, Abbie Hoffman stood up to his full height (quite intimidating, actually) and announced that he had a plan and he was going to carry it out and anyone who was willing to help was welcome. He was going to get a truck, stuff it with food and water and other necessities for those in need and drive it to Newark, going as far as he could into needy neighborhoods. He would only want a few people to distribute the goods, but he would need money. We gave him a few bucks and gratefully departed. Thank goodness someone is willing to step up! The two of us had had no idea how to help.


Aspen, no. 5+6

My man Mel works full time, and I am only part time at Phillis’s place but loving it! When she finally releases the new Aspen “magazine” (culture in a box in the form of a film on a reel and many other bits and pieces) issue (numbers 5 and 6 combined) it will be a square white box with only a little printing on it–in fact, just like the picture above. I had never worked for anyone before whose office was in her bedroom. It’s like this, as far as I can tell: Phyllis (Johnson Glick, but she seldom uses her married name) works as a journalist and editor for Nebraska State Journal, Women’s Wear Daily, Advertising Age, and American Home Magazine (and probably others), so when she is not working at a publisher's office, she works from home. So she gets up, makes her bed, and immediately starts using it as a desk as she finishes her coffee. She does have a little hard writing surface on a bedside table with a lamp, when she needs to write something. She calls me when she is going to work on her new creation, has set up her paper piles on the bed, and is nearly ready to start telling me what to do. I've never met her husband–he is probably gone long before I get there.

About the stapled, wholly paper "magazine" we are used to, Phyllis wrote this in 1966: "Last year, a group of us enjoying the sun, skiing and unique cultural climate of Aspen Colorado, asked ourselves, ‘Why?’" So she started creating something completely different, a magazine in a box with every piece (including ads) separate. Mostly I work the telephone or do the typing at a typing table with a (I think) dining-room chair–she dictates or tells me what needs to be said. If she has dictated it she signs it. There is a lot of telephoning and mailing to do to get the writers to write, the musicians to record, the recording studios to send recordings, and the film people to get their stuff to the copiers and then to us, etc. At the end of the day, Phyllis begins stacking the papers on her bed with sets perpendicular to one another, so she can tell where the different sets begin and should be in a different location in the morning. The stacks are put away off the bed. She tells me when she’s done, and I leave then. She pays me regularly (we both keep track), but I think that if I could afford it I would work for her for nothing–it's such fun to work for such an innovator!

John Cage

Since Mel is not particularly into music, I went by myself to a concert of John Cage’s music in a church. It was free. That is, it was free to me, because I stayed the whole 4 hours. The longer you stayed, you see, the less you paid. If you left immediately, it was pretty expensive. A few people did. There were a lot of silences.

Ed Sanders's Peace Eye Bookstore

And we went to the Peace Eye Bookstore on the lower East Side, Ed Sanders’s place. We met Sanders there but never saw anybody else famous whom we recognized, like Tuli Kupferberg or Peter Orlovsky. We did see an art piece from Allen Ginsberg: a large jar of cold cream, mostly empty. It swung in a small wooden frame from a rafter in the store, which was on the other side of Tompkins Square Park from our place on 3rd Street.

The Tompkins Square Park "Massacre"

We enjoyed the park and went there as often as we could manage. Once when we were passing through, we noticed a large number of hippies with their dogs and children sitting on grass labeled “Do not walk on the grass” (or thereabouts), and as we continued to walk we saw police engaging with some of the people on the grass. Whatever was happening appeared to be escalating. Voices were raised. We decided it would be a good time to go back to our apartment and have some dinner.

When we came back to the park, it was empty, there was debris where the hippies had been, and in a minute there was suddenly a young man handing out mimeographed news sheets, perhaps from the Peace Eye, which had a mimeograph. There had been a large number of arrests, and our presence was invited outside the police station at a given address. It was within walking distance, and we hied ourselves over there, joining a crowd from whom we heard the story: the police brought a van to the park and started arresting people and throwing them into the van. A pregnant woman protested and received the same treatment–everyone was afraid she might have miscarried. Some who didn’t cooperate received blows to the head and were bleeding. As part of the crowd we demanded the release of these peaceful people. We were there about an hour as it got darker and darker. Finally the battered and bloody “criminals” were released, and there was rejoicing. We went back home.

Simon and Garfunkel

As bad as NYC gets sometimes-–the trash, the crime (not hippie protest crime), the police, the subway, the homeless–-there are moments when I feel as if I’m in the right place. Like last evening when we had been visiting Central Park and were headed to our bus stop not far from the East River before going home. Someone had a radio on as the twilight descended. As we neared the 59th Street Bridge, guess what song was playing. Yes, it was. It was “The 59th Street Bridge Song.” And we were "kicking down the cobblestones.” And we were “feeling groovy.” Thank you, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel!



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Fashion, music, politics, sports

[July 26, 1967] We Got Some Kicks on Route 66 (the continuing saga of Vicki and Mel)

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by Victoria Lucas

Well, we’re here! Months have gone by, I know, since my last report to this newsletter about my usual shenanigans, damped last time by my mother’s death but buoyed by anticipating the journey my sweetie Mel and I just finished to New York City.

To me, NYC is “The” City, the literary and musical and cultural center on the East Coast that outshines even “The City” where Mel and I met and where I had lived for a few years, San Francisco. I salivated at the thought of working at a publishing house, going to concerts of new experimental music, and getting involved in the protests here against the Vietnam War.


Route 66

It was exciting, too, because I had never been east of Arizona, or indeed visited any other state except California, or any foreign country except Mexico. Now Mel and I are living in New York City and planning – in a year or two – to travel to Europe. On our way here we spent many hours on Route 66, and yes, and there were some “kicks,” such as going through the Petrified Forest, and eating at diners along the way, but Mel is the one who likes to drive. He will drive just about anywhere just to check it out. In this case there was a lot of the US to check out: from coast to coast.

To avoid getting lost, we visited our local AAA office and consulted with them about the best way to get to New York from our apartment in North Beach. After some deliberation, we asked for a TripTik that took us to Route 66 at Barstow via 101, 152, and 99. From there to Oklahoma City, our little spiral-bound book said, we could experience the historic highway, but the last leg to Chicago seemed a waste of time since we had no business there, so we dropped off 66 at OK City and followed 40 till we could pick up Highway 81 just east of Knoxville. Mel had never been in the south, so it was an adventure for both of us.

Aliens among them


Not that kind of alien.

Just a little anecdote about how alien it was to be in the south, even though we are both white and didn’t have to worry about where to sleep or eat as we tooled along in our green and white VW bus – nothing bad, just alien. We pulled into the parking lot of a hamburger joint – maybe somewhere in Tennessee (it’s all starting to melt together in the summer heat). It was evening and we were looking for a motel to spend the night, since our expenses were being paid by Mel’s company for whom he is now working (with a promotion) in NYC. We both ordered hamburgers. There were few condiments on the table, including salt and vinegar, but no ketchup or mustard. When the burgers arrived, we asked for ketchup.

The waitress looked at us as if we had just walked through a wall. “Ketchup?” she repeated, as if even the word were foreign to her. (Did she want it spelled “catsup”?) Yes, we reiterated that we wanted ketchup. She left and returned with a bottle of the red stuff. We were almost the only people in the place since it was after dinner time, and we heard a lot of giggling of the staff behind the counter. Mel and I looked at each other. In what corner of the world did we find ourselves that ketchup was an unknown and ridiculous accompaniment to a hamburger? This one, evidently.


Ketchup! (or is it Catsup!)

New York City turns out to be alien too, even though there are concerts (YES!), and we have joined something called LEMPA (Lower Eastside Mobilization for Peace Action–spelling out “lamp” in Spanish) to protest The (Vietnam) War.  The streets here in the Lower East Side where we found an apartment (we are saving for Europe) are full of trash, and parking is problematic because any car left on the street overnight is lacking something in the morning that it had had only the night before. Including our van. Watching the van out the window isn’t helpful, because what would we do if we saw someone stealing something? We hear screams at all hours of the day and night. We do not see any police near our apartment. We are looking for a place where we can park and leave the van without its being dismantled like other cars we see on the street, and that won’t be too expensive. Think want ads. Think New Jersey.

The first thing we did after getting Mel to work, finding a place to stay, and moving in, was visit our friends' pad and their business. They share an apartment as a little commune, and on opening the outer door a waft of patchouli incense, dog, and whatever they're cooking caressed our nostrils, with just a hint of grass (shhhh, don't tell anyone about the marijuana) not covered by the other odors, even the incense sticks.

The dog is a St. Bernard puppy. Ideal for a teensy New York City apartment, right? With the dog in the room and more than a couple of people, even in the living room, it's hard to maneuver around it. Its paws are huge for its size, indicating that it's going to be a much bigger adult. They are paper-training it, and it's a very congenial dog. They have that going for them. And they know the "Mamas and the Papas" and have a business relationship with them of a sort I'm not prepared to disclose.


That is a puppy?!?

Their legitimate business, The Bead Game, used to be a pharmacy. There are hundreds of little drawers lining the walls that – up to the day they occupied it after acquiring it – still held herbs and drugs. Now the drawers hold beads of every shape and variety imaginable. Of course I had to buy some. Everybody needs beads, yes?


Sgt. Pepper & friends

And everybody needs Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Ask me how much I love it and whether we brought our record player! I don't know why I love such a peculiar eclectic mix: I don't like Dixieland, blues, soul, gospel, or most popular music, but I love John Cage, The Beatles, Morton Subotnik, Pauline Oliveros, Van Morrison, Jefferson Airplane, The Mamas and the Papas, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Moody Blues, and a bunch of other, less popular bands. Why? Who knows!

New York The Movie


A few blocks from our apartment

When Mel's not working, we're not home listening to music and cooking, visiting friends, etc., we go for walks, sometimes with our friends, sometimes without. We learned not to take notice of the people living in cardboard boxes, the shit on the sidewalk, and to laugh at the evidence of what we started calling "The Mad Pisser." You see, we would get to a corner and there would be a puddle of urine there. We would look around the corner, into the street, back in the direction from which we came–and see no one. No dogs. No humans. Whodunnit!?

But in general there are so many people: people with signs, people without signs, people with and without dogs, adults with children, children without adults. We learned to look at it all as if it were a movie set. This isn't real–not the people living in boxes, not the small gang of children running down the sidewalk and tugging on my purse strap (just in case I was holding it lightly), not the man with dark skin sitting on a park bench as if it were his home porch swing and addressing us as "dude."

Be cool till next time

Stay tuned for the further adventures of Mel & Vicki as we cruise the streets of the Lower East Side evenings and weekends, shower frequently, use pounds of Gold Bond powder to keep the sweat from soaking our clothes, and get together with friends and friends of friends to (smoke dope and . . . ) –oh! I didn’t say that, did I? Not aloud. Not in print! (Speaking of print, we read the East Village Other and the street handouts from somebody’s mimeograph.)


The East Village Other newspaper

And of course I need a job. Wish me luck!



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Fashion, music, politics, sports

[March 24, 1967] One Door Closes As Another Opens (Death and Renewal with a VW Bus)

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by Victoria Lucas

A Door Closes


Ruth Clark Lucas, 1897-1966

Except inside me, the door to my mother is forever closed. If anyone should wonder where I’ve been these past few months, the answer is grieving. In November my mother died and my partner Mel and I drove to Tucson to sell my house (the one I paid the mortgage on while going to Stanford), pick up whatever seemed right, deal with legal and funeral home details, and then drive back to SF again, and our little place at 29 Hodges Alley.

While we were in Tucson the funeral home had a memorial service, and I attended after some consultation (coffin closed). She had so few friends, only from where she worked. When I got home I finally looked at a copy of the death certificate I had acquired. It gave me a shock. It said she died from alcoholism.

Actually, I think it slammed


My pal Joe Bfstplk

I was completely clueless, but my man Mel claims to still be a recovering alcoholic after many years of being sober, admitting that he is still on the road to recovery rather than having accomplished a “cure.” He said he had recognized the signs when we were in the house–a random liquor cabinet full of bottles, all open and most with very little in them, and other things. The house gave me the creeps so bad I insisted we sleep in our van in the driveway rather than in a bed in the house. It was as if the cloud over Joe Bfstplk in Li’l Abner cartoons had escaped and was looming over my old home.

A door hanging open


Why, that looks like our bus

The vehicle we slept in, though, is a door to the future, and I must leave my grief before I get these pages wet. Mel and I had begun to talk about taking the transfer and raise he has been repeatedly offered at his place of work, Hartford Steam Boiler, to go to New York City, as Phase I of our overall plan to visit Europe. In preparation for driving there we bought a VW van from some friends, a Lesbian couple who have settled down and have no further need for a vehicle they can sleep in. Mel and I sold our individual cars. Now we are planning the trip across country.

Magazine in a box in my future?


Aspen Magazine No. 4

Partly to get a taste of New York, and partly because of the contents, I bought a “magazine” produced in New York City that makes me want to look up the publisher when we get to that city of publishers. This one, though, is a bit odd. It’s a “magazine in a box” called Aspen.

The spring issue is just out, and I am really fascinated with the concept and the content of this issue, which includes John Cage and a tiny record with electronic music.


The contents of Aspen Magazine No. 4

The move will mean leaving the publications we’re used to buying, or in my case, writing for, here. (Fortunately, I'll still be able to write for the Journey!)

Goodbye, Barb


The first Barb of the year

The Berkeley Barb has been my paddle in strange waters, sometimes my sounding board.

Goodbye, Oracle


A recent Oracle

And the San Francisco Oracle has been a predictor in uncertain times, a wad of possible futures, many of them hopeful. I don’t know if we will be able to get it in New York. We shall see.

Oh, wait, I forgot that I've already written for The East Village Other, and I've been reading that paper for awhile. And there is so much music, so much in NYC! I'm looking forward to John Cage concerts and St. Mark's Church events, and so on I've seen in the Other, and oh, the museums!


The Guggenheim

Museums and Concerts and Protests, Oh, My!

I especially want to see the Guggenheim both for the art and the architect. And the 59th Street Bridge, just so I can feel groovy! And we'll want to visit friends at The Bead Game (an old pharmacy building with drawers of beads). I've never been to New York before.

In fact, when I think about it, I've never been east of Arizona. Just crossing the country will be, yes, OK, a "trip," a learning experience. We aren't doing a lot of fitting out of our bus, because travel expenses are included in Mel's deal, and so there's money for motels and meals out. We're also taking camping stuff so we can stop at nice places to camp and put up a tent. I was taking a course of allergy shots in SF, so there's a spot in our new Coleman ice chest for my vaccine, and Mel will administer them. We will join protests in New York City as we have here. So much to do, tee do dee, please excuse me. I'm just bursting into song. I'll be happy to report from time to time.

I hope you'll keep tuning in!




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Fashion, music, politics, sports

[October 8, 1966] Martial Law in San Francisco (Hunters Point riots)

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by Victoria Lucas

Matthew Johnson. That was his name. A kid who died because he went joy-riding with his buddies. The last I knew that was not a capital crime. But clearly running from a policeman can be. 

It was this time.


Where "Peanut" was shot

How odd that his murderer had the same last name, Alvin Johnson, the police officer who shot him on September 27. He was 16 and his buddies were 15 and 14. They found the car outside Portola Junior High, and the owner had not even reported it stolen yet. Stories about why the policeman fired and how many times at this kid people called “Peanut” vary. Whatever people were saying, rioting broke out in Hunters Point the same evening. 


The Mayor meets with the people

The Mayor Is Stoned

After meeting with the commanding officer at the Potrero police station, desperate and grieving people went into the streets and began breaking windows. When Mayor Shelley came out to meet them, people threw rocks and a brick, and the lone Negro county supervisor, Francois, got the same treatment. These were people who were extremely frustrated by their treatment by the City and County of SF, and they could contain it no longer. The unrest was declared a riot around 7 pm. 

The National Guard Lands on City Hall

Later in the evening the mayor called Governor Brown to request 2,000 National Guardsmen, who used Candlestick Park and Kezar Stadium for their staging areas. A curfew was drawn around Negro neighborhoods from midnight until morning.  I didn’t hear about any of this until about 6 or 7. September 27 was a Tuesday, and I was at work. I caught a bus home, and I guess then I might have heard something I didn’t understand until I got home and was able to hear some kind of coherent account on one of the NPR stations. Now I have a copy of the SF Oracle, hot off the press, and already there are tear stains on it–mine. “Peanut’s” funeral was October 3, and there were 1,000 mourners. 

We could still be in custody


The SF Oracle's 2nd issue, 1st page

In the Oracle there are further accounts of police cars bristling with guns and bayonets, and the break up of a peaceful protest in the Haight. It could have been my boy friend Mel & me caught up in a singing, happy mob that was herded into police vans by trapping the crowd with roadblocks and armed force. Many nights we go over to the Haight to pick up the Oracle or the Berkeley Barb, buy some tchotchke and dig the scene. This night, an unpublicized curfew started at 8 pm. 

A Poet's Take on Things


Lawrence Ferlinghetti

The first missive on the “Letters” page of this Oracle (page 2) was from Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Here is most of what he wrote: “It looks like the Mayor realizes that the only answer to Black Power is not White Power at the end of a gun. The Mayor didn't do so badly the first day after the riots at Hunter's Point, considering the general spiritual bankruptcy of the Establishment . . . . But if the Mayor had gone on TV and declared that he was withdrawing every armed policeman and National Guardsman from the Hunter's Point area and was instead inviting every minister of every church in the city to come and walk the streets there and talk with everyone in sight, things might be different today. However, we are as far from such soul-action as we are from the Ascension of Buddha on the White House lawn . . . .”

When Will They Ever Learn?

Better than martial law, which we had from September 27 until October 1, with the state of emergency ending Sunday the second–but, as far as I can tell, the curfews, state of emergency and martial law were only for the Negros, hippies, and students. 

Maybe I should repeat that, in case it got by you. Only for the Negros, hippies, and students. Now I ask you, will they ever learn? And who is it who should do the learning?



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Fashion, music, politics, sports

[August 6, 1966] I Won't Dance, Don't Ask Me (Anna Halprin and the Dancers Workshop)

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by Victoria Lucas

Actually, thanks, I'd love to dance

Good day, readers. It's been a long time since I wrote about music in San Francisco, but when I did you might remember that I wrote about the San Francisco Tape Music Center and its experimental music.

321 Divisadero, as their venue is known, is not just the TMC. It also houses Radio Stations KPFA/KPFB (the San Francisco part) and something (on the 3rd floor) called the Dancers Workshop Studio.

But I'm not a dancer

Even after becoming curious about the people "upstairs" – namely Anna Halprin, who runs said studio – I've mostly seen her group dances outside around San Francisco, too busy with other things to get to indoor workshops or to her famous deck in Kentfield (north of San Francisco), built for her by her architect husband Larry Halprin.


Larry and Anna Halprin, architect & dancer

And my boy friend Mel and I have a sort of budget of both time and money that is pretty loose but by which we hope to avoid both bankruptcy and fatigue. (As I've written here before, there is a LOT to do in San Francisco and surrounding area.)

Halprin left the dance of the theatre for the dance of life

Eventually I learned that Anna Halprin studied contemporary dance and started a performance company with dancers AA Leath and John Graham, her daughters Daria and Rana Halprin, and designers Joe Landor and Patrick Hickey. They toured nationally and internationally before starting the San Francisco studio in 1964. There they worked with a dizzying array of avant-garde composers, filmmakers, poets, and other dancers, including dancer Merce Cunningham, John Cage's partner.


Cage & Cunningham pose with artist Robert Rauschenberg

Like Cage, Halprin uses pictorial scores and chance operations, but always with her focus on self-awareness as her pupils perform movements. She's also tackled issues of race and sexuality head on.

Radical refers to "root" & I can dig it

In "Parades and Changes" she introduced full-on nudity to San Francisco audiences and, even more radical, the idea that anyone could dance with "more like 10 seconds" of training rather than the 10 years dance maven Martha Graham laid down.


Halprin during a workshop

Unfortunately, I missed the performances at the Playhouse where I volunteer my time, since they were before my move to The City. After the "Trunk Dance" in 1959, the name of Terry Riley appears on the 1961 program for "Four Legged Stool," and Morton Subotnick and David Tudor (who also acts as electronicist for Cage and Cunningham) created the music for her revision called "Five Legged Stool" the following year.

She eventually realized, according to what I've read, that she wanted to get beyond dance as a performance piece or something based on specific music or a programmed narrative. She worked with Gestalt-psychologist Fritz Perls and engaged with the audience after "Parades and Changes," with a vision of "spontaneity and freedom." That is a performance I wish I had seen – sometimes there are so many things going on that if you're not at the right place and time to see a notice about something you miss it entirely! This is why I buy the Sunday Chronicle with the pink section in it every week–their event lists are pretty thorough. (But they might not cover "workshops.")


Anna Halprin by herself

I hope to still be able to make at least one of her workshops or events in future. Ms Halprin, if you live to be 100 I suspect you will not be able to realize all the talent and compassion within you. Good luck! (And thank you, Ms Michaels, for the honorific "Ms"!)




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Movies

[July 6, 1966] Baillie's Bailiwick–the Other Castro Street

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by Victoria Lucas

Experimental movies on the rise

Mel and I like this little tiny independent theater off Broadway in San Francisco where we're now living. We've seen some great experimental films there, funny and not so funny. From where we live it's only a few blocks to walk, they only show films on weekends, and they don't charge a lot because it's not a tourist attraction, so it's not a big expense or far to go. Many of the movies we see are shorts, as is the one I discuss here.

I just have to tell you about a film we saw there. They show films from Canyon Cinema and other experimental shorts and foreign films. We haven't been to a mass-production movie theater I think since we met. It's been live theater, foreign films, experimental films, or nothing. Neither of us is fond of Doris Day.


The other Castro Street

Anyway, the film is called "Castro Street." Like the music of John Cage, it changed my life. Whereas Cage taught me to listen, Bruce Baillie, the filmmaker of this wonder and founder of Canyon Cinema, taught me how to look *and* listen together, immersing myself in my environment and watching it cinematically, listening to the music life makes (or whatever is in my head). There is music in "Castro Street," bits of Erik Satie, one of my favorite composers, often in my head.

Just in case you're wondering, "Castro Street" has nothing to do with the Castro Street neighborhood in San Francisco, famous home to differently sexed people whose lifestyle is still not legal and still excoriated. This Castro Street is one in Richmond, home to oil refineries and railroads.


Another still from "Castro Street"

Musique Concrete means "Found Sound"

That is what we see and hear in "Castro Street," trains and industrial facilities, but not as in a documentary. There is no narrative, no story, no voices at all, not even anything to hang a story on. Even Canyon Cinema member Stan Brakhage's 1959 film "Window, Water, Baby, Moving," at least has a birth as a bit of a narrative. This particular thing is happening. Whereas, with Baillie, nothing is happening, or, as Cage said in his "Lecture on Nothing," "I have nothing to say (pause) and I am saying it." I like nothing.

It's only 10 minutes. See if you can find "Castro Street" and watch, listen to it. How many stars for this movie? All there are. There's a new one of Baillie's out, "All My Life," and the Ella Fitzgerald soundtrack is fine, but the visuals stand alone without it.


Bruce Baillie

"24 realities per second"

About another one of his films made this year, the 2-minute "Still, Life," Baillie is reported to have written to Brakhage, "The film manages, I think, to suggest how light itself is movement, how color is movement, and how the combined play of light and color reveal that this tableau represents not only a single reality but 24 realities per second. Being is seen as transitory; everything is in the infinite process of becoming." Yes. Oh, yes.

Live long, Bruce Baillie. I'm sure you have a lot more films in you.




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Fashion, music, politics, sports

[June 18, 1966] Avant Radio for "Satisfaction" (Bob Fass on WBAI)

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by Victoria Lucas

"The Man Come On the Radio"

Last time I visited this journal, I mentioned Pacifica Radio and how their broadcast of stories from Vietnam via the Christian Science Monitor is influencing my thinking on Vietnam. But KPFA and KPFB aren't the only public radio stations, and others contribute (read "sell") content to them. I'm thinking particularly of that non-mainstream star Bob Fass, of WBAI (New York).


Bob Fass in the WBAI Studio, New York City

I can't get no "useless information"

I do love surprises–intellectual ones, not generally practical jokes. And Fass is full of jokes and japes and surprises. He's the kind of guy who would invite John Cage onto his show and play Cage's "Silence" (4'33") despite the rules against silence on the radio.It's no wonder his show is called "Radio Unnameable," although I had to look up the label, because I just turn on the radio and I guess it's lucky that I tend to turn it on when he's holding forth. Of course, the show is 5 hours long, emanates from the East Coast, and must be time-shifted, because he starts with "Good morning, cabal" at midnight in New York. So, for anyone tuning in from San Francisco after dinner, as I do, it's just there in the evenings weekdays starting at 9. (I miss him when he's off weekends.)


Fass with SNCC member, Abbie Hoffman

"Satisfaction"

What does he do with those 5 hours? Miracles. I think he would get LBJ on if he could. As it is, he satisfies himself with guests such as Abbie Hoffman, Paul Krassner, Richie Havens, Arlo Guthrie, Joni Mitchell, Allen Ginsberg, Frank Zappa, Country Joe, and many more, as well as random people who call in, sometimes more than one caller at once. Isn't that The Fugs playing right now as I write this? It doesn't matter how long or how short you make your song, you can sing it on his show. Someone you know having a bad acid trip? Call his show and he'll put on a psychiatrist to help you get through it unharmed (don't go outside unless you have a short walk to get help!)


FM Radio at Its Best

"He Can't Be a Man"?

Did I forget to mention that we're talking FM radio here? I recently went into a store to buy a new radio when my old one bit the dust. The salesperson who sprang upon me while I was innocently browsing among the machines wanted to sell me an AM/FM radio. I said no, that I intend to never move out of the range of an FM radio station. (And I almost never listen to AM radio.) Of course, like all the best laid plans of mice and men, who knows what will happen. For now, Mel and I are eating the occasional bit of shark meat on our hibachi that we put outside on our tiny porch, with some vegetables & rice cooked inside on the stove where he sometimes has to warm up his head when his pseudomigraines start. And going to see Carol Doda on Broadway, the occasional experimental movie, play and so on. There is so very much to do here in SF besides radio! But yes, I can get "Satisfaction," on the radio and elsewhere.

Speaking of radio, Bob Fass would be right at home at KGJ, our radio revolution!




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Fashion, music, politics, sports

[April 4, 1966] A Bookstore to Remember (City Lights)

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by Victoria Lucas

I will never forget that afternoon when I first saw Lawrence Ferlinghetti.


Lawrence Ferlinghetti

It might have been a weekend, but I spent many evenings after work in North Beach, either going to see The Committee (improv) at 622 Broadway, a movie at an independent moviehouse, or volunteer at the Playhouse theater.  So I would often pass his bookstore, walking from my apartment (now at Army and 25th) or taking the cable car. It was still light, in any case. He was surrounded by a crowd, but I had a height advantage from the lay of the land at the off-grid intersection of Columbus and Broadway, and he could see me and I him. It seemed to me that our eyes locked and my world changed. (Cue romantic music.)


Cary Grant, Deborah Kerr in "Affair to Remember"

But not for long. (Music stops abruptly with the sound of a needle scratching a record.) He went off with some people and that was that. End of story. My affair to remember (thank you very much, Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr, but no thanks) was with the bookstore and not with the poet. (In any case, I'm now seeing someone, and we're moving in together.)

As for the books, I should admit that I was a virgin when it came to political bookstores. This was my very first time coming into contact with leftist publications and ideas beyond Ramparts Magazine and Stop-the-War demonstrations. That was only foreplay to the heavy breathing of anarchism and leftward utopianism, and the airy sparkle (or existential wail) of life among the poets.


One of Ferlinghetti's books from City Lights Publishers

This is particularly heavy for me since I'm currently working for a band of lawyers who are creating this type of bank card like the Diner's Club or gasoline or department store cards. (They call it "MasterCard," including Crocker Bank.) I am learning far too much about both how lawyers operate (meetings for which I type minutes but that never happened) and how Xerox machines work (some days I'm just all over black plastic dust that doesn't come off easily–one has to stir the stuff occasionally, you see) and how the frequent repairmen do too.

I'm not entirely sure which is the real me, the junior legal secretary or the beatnik-in-waiting. But I'm pretty sure it's the beatnik; like the Zen koan of the man dreaming he's a butterfly vs. the butterfly dreaming he's a man, I think I'm the butterfly.

So walking into that bookstore is an experience both warm and scary, both imaginary and real, the lights glinting off the windows, the chairs all occupied before I get there, the discussions I hear, and the erotic feel of the books themselves. I've learned it's the only all-paperback bookstore, that City Lights became a publisher 2 years after Ferlinghetti opened the bookstore, and that (with the help of the ACLU) Ferlinghetti beat a rap after publishing Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" for the first time ("obscenity"–when even I know it's the government that's the obscenity). (Oops, sorry, did I just violate a norm? It must be the butterfly fluttering inside me.)


The "obscene" book

My affair will only end (and maybe only temporarily?) when I leave San Francisco. I keep coming back to California: born in LA, move to Tucson, move to San Francisco. What's next? Only time will tell.

I digress. I love North Beach. I wander around there every weekend. I think my new boyfriend and I will settle here for a spell close by. And then maybe I can spend even more time wandering from the Spaghetti Factory to City Lights to the Playhouse to The Committee and beyond.


The "obscene" bookstore

In the meantime, I sometimes take the cable car (and/or I walk) to City Lights. After seeing that there was no pressure to buy (an important part of the experience, given my still impecunious state), I take advantage of what appears to be a policy that no one bothers people who read the books or even the magazines. They also have great bulletin boards with notices of readings, concerts, plays, everything that's Going On. The more people inside the windows in the brightly lit store, reading, the more come in from outside–and maybe buy something. I don't buy very much at City Lights, but I am becoming familiar with a lot of titles, a lot of poetry, and a lot of polemics, politics, Asian and Indian religions, new ideas.

As I caress the new ideas, and they sweet-talk me, I still find an analytical spirit within me that doubts that their ideas of the future are any more valid than other promises I've heard. I resist the temptation to embrace them fully, even though I am also pushed into the arms of the left by Pacifica Radio (KPFA/KPFB with studios in SF & Berkeley) and its reports from the Vietnam front sent by intrepid reporters from the Christian Science Monitor who manage to elude the US government and find out what's really happening there. I try to be clear-eyed about what I swallow, but sometimes it's not so easy to avoid becoming emotional about the fate of the human species.

And then there's my new boy friend. Mel is an insurance inspector (steam boiler) who has spent much of his life at sea, a graduate of the Merchant Marine Academy. While having a girl in every port, he became seriously leftist and went to meetings of the Communist Party at one time. (He finally rejected the Party as being too reactionary.) We have both decided, I think, that the only hopeful politics are radical, but nonviolent and seriously sexual.


Sometimes I feel like the City Lights logo

We met because he is a sometime actor and poet who wants to make films. So do I, and we met in such a group–but I want to write for them. In the group we met a filmmaker who only lacked a camera. Marks that we were, we bought him a camera, believing that we would be working together. Guess who absconded with the camera–it wasn't us. So we bonded over the loss and resolved to be less gullible. But we still believe in each other and try not to believe everything we read or hear (or everyone who asks for money).

So Mel has had to put up with my affair with the bookstore–after all, we aren't married (yet). He reads, but he's not in love with print as I am. Meanwhile, please excuse me while I get back to my copy of The Berkeley Barb, for which I occasionally write.




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Book

[January 28, 1966] The Book as Rorschach Test (Flowers for Algernon)

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by Victoria Lucas

The View from Here

[Six years ago, Daniel Keyes made science fiction history with his revolutionary novelette, Flowers for Algernon. The very height of his triumph was the author's undoing; though he has produced several stories since then, none have had the impact as that first great piece. It was perhaps inevitable that he would revisit the well in pursuit of the success that eluded him. Vicki Lucas, a relatively nufan who had not previously encountered Keyes' work, gives her take on the novelization of the original story.]


current edition of Flowers for Algernon

Try as I might, I have great difficulty thinking of this novel as a science-fiction story. It could be conceived of as a psychological thriller, but no one dies except a mouse. It is deeply psychological and delves as far into the brain as anyone can get right now, accepting Freudian analysis as routine, while it is Jung's "individuation" that the main character, Charlie Gordon, seeks without a guide except for his reading.

Epistolary writing rare in science fiction

As far as I can tell from the short biography I was able to get hold of the author's background is steeped in science fiction, horror, and comic-book-hero writing and editing for publishers. Keyes writes in a style unusual in science fiction but more well known in the horror genre, in which the narrative unfolds in a series of letters ("epistles") or reports. His knowledge and expertise in styles may be why he teaches creative writing at Wayne State University now. The epistolary style is perfect for this story, in which so much of the action takes place in Charlie's brain.


Sometimes the brain is a maze

The Experimental as Science Fiction

The reports are "Progress reports" from Charlie, who begins with an IQ of 68, seeks knowledge beginning with reading and writing, and early in the novel undergoes experimental surgery that rapidly increases his IQ to 185. In the 7 months from his surgery to, well, the ultimate failure of the experiment, he traverses a lifetime of knowledge, emotional turmoil, and sexual longing and finally fulfillment (which is why the book is banned in places). The theory and practice of the experiment of which he becomes a part is currently science fiction, although who knows what the future of biochemistry and neurosurgery will bring?

"Pulling a Charlie Gordon"

Charlie struggles with his anger, his longing, his need to be respected, and his lack of discipline that inevitably get in the way of his accomplishing what he finally wishes he had been able to do. His anger is the biggest hurdle, and he never conquers it, despite the therapy in which he participates. At first he is angry because a mouse who has also undergone the surgery, Algernon, beats him at solving a maze. Then he is angry because he does not like the way Algernon is treated and eventually absconds with him. And the list goes on, as he executes a more intelligent version of what the men who worked with him called "pulling a Charlie Gordon," in which he makes a fool of himself. It is the treatment of Charlie by his mother, little sister, other children, people he thought were his friends, and quacks who flim-flam his mother that has earned his anger. And I really can't blame him. Much of the novel details the kind of thing that happens to "morons," who are perceived as less than human and locked away, often in institutions. Late in the book we go along as he tours such an institution, and it is treated sympathetically, with recognition of those who devote their lives to people rejected and ill-used by society. Again and again he is faced by the need to stop being selfish and focus on others, but his emotional maturation cannot keep pace with his too-rapidly growing intelligence quotient.


Algernon at his most intelligent

From "Exceptional" to "Exceptional"

In an early progress report after his intelligence begins to increase, Charlie complains that, "Before, they had laughed at me, despising me for my ignorance and dullness. Now, they hated me for my knowledge and understanding." As he nears the peak of his intelligence, he has spiritual experiences that he describes with elegance: "It's as if all the things I've learned have fused into a crystal universe spinning before me, so that I can see all the facets of it reflected in gorgeous bursts of light," so that Charlie is "living at a peak of clarity and beauty I never knew existed." Unfortunately, these experiences are brief and he cannot learn from them any more than he can quell his anger to prolong a love affair that brings him great joy for a short time.


A Rorschach card

The climb is too quick after 33 years of persecution and pain. The fall, like the falls of all those who seek to climb too high in dramatic terms, is swift and complete. I recommend this book, no matter its genre, and hope that anyone who reads it finds him- or herself touched by the plight of both those who are "exceptional" on the low end and those "exceptional" on the high end.

What will you see in it?

I see five stars.




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Movies

[December 26, 1965] Murders per Minute (James Bond in Thunderball)

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by Victoria Lucas

Bring Earplugs

It was a date. This guy wanted someone to go with him to a Panavision premiere of the latest Bond movie. I should not have complained so much; I should have been grateful that he paid for the movie. But every time the music came back on it singed my eardrums. I had to stick my fingers in my ears since I had not thought to bring earplugs. Next time–if I ever see another Bond film, which I hope I won't have to–I'll bring earplugs.

Shaken, Not Stirred

I know, I know, Sean Connery. He has made his name in these Bond movies. Can't say I understand why. I don't find him at all attractive, and his character's behavior toward women is disgusting. Yes, he rescues some, but he is perfectly capable of rape. In one scene in the movie he threatens a woman with exposure of a secret and exacts his blackmail in a steam room in which all you can see is her hands against the steamy glass. Frankly, I have difficulty telling the women apart in the film–they are all willowy, small, and mostly helpless.

Sharks Win

…although one of the murders (of which there are probably one per minute if you average the whole movie and count the battle at the end) is committed by the woman with whom he is rescued by a military airplane, to revenge her brother's death. Oh, good. Murder leads to murder. It should be said that there is one suicide. And is it murder if a shark eats someone? (I would say not for the shark.)


[The Villain's Villa in the Bahamas–Not Really]

Blood in the Water

I read somewhere that nearly a third of this movie was filmed underwater. The shark mentioned above? It was supposed to be at the estate shown above, but there was a real shark pool kept for filming, and Connery is said to have narrowly escaped being eaten by a shark himself.

Plot and Theme

It is a movie filled with the most murderous, discourteous, illegal, nonsensical, trivially violent and nasty behaviors that I've ever seen before in one place. Car chases, explosions, myriad guns. Not my thing. These movies are probably a young teenage boy's dream: lots of sexy women, fast cars, and fighting (successfully). As for plot, here it is: a Russian (global) villainous group steals 2 atom bombs and threatens the US & UK with them for ransom. Apparently "Thunderball" is the name of a UK national lottery, and Bond "won the lottery" when he discovered the location of the bombs and helped the military prevent their use. Ah, the good governments triumph yet again!


[Sean Connery with his rocket pack]

Summary and Fish

I'm sorry to tell you that this is a very violent film, and between the sexual assaults (by Bond) and torture (by the villain), the puerile remarks from Bond that are supposed to be funny, and the number of murders per minute (at least one), oh! and the music and sounds of a parade that were deafening as well, I cannot recommend this movie. On a scale of 10? I'd give it a 3. (There are some lovely fish and other animals in some of the underwater scenes.)


[Pretty, but I could also just watch Flipper.]




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