musicians under the Arch
Washington Square Park
Greenwich Village
Manhattan
August 1973
A New York Story
This is the second of a two part series; see also the first part, "Before New York"
August 1973
During the first week of August 1973, I drove alone in my car from Chicago to the City of New York. I was 20 years old. I did not fully know it at the time, but I was in the City of My Destiny.
I wanted to permanently leave behind the major, devastating challenges in my life that summer, involving college and my family. New York was going through its own intense problems and it seemed crazy to consider living there. Yet I was inexplicably drawn to the city and the assets it retained, including the most important one of all: possibility.
I said goodbye to my mother and my best friend from high school and college, and I began the long drive alone in the metallic green Buick Skylark my mother had purchased for me only seven months before. I made the trip much longer by adding major stops along the way, where I spent the night in run down "hotels" or even in my car. First was Toledo, Ohio, followed by Pittsburgh, then Washington, D.C., Baltimore and Philadelphia.
As I neared the huge metropolis that was my goal, I took what I knew was the most scenic entrance into the city. Rather than using the Lincoln Tunnel or Holland Tunnel underneath the Hudson River, I drove further north in New Jersey until I reached the George Washington Bridge. I crossed the Hudson and then drove south down the Henry Hudson Parkway which eventually transformed into the old, elevated West Side Highway (no longer in existence as it was then).
I turned onto 34th Street where I got a room at the huge Sloane House YMCA residence hotel (also no longer in existence) on a floor with three dozen or more similar rooms occupied by young and old men. A single communal bathroom contained sinks, urinals, toilets and one large shower room with no partitions. It was affordable and that was all that mattered.
Afterward, I immersed myself in the city. I took pictures of many of the famous places in Manhattan that I had heard about: Wall Street, Times Square, Fifth Avenue and Central Park. I went to the top of what was then called the RCA Building at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, which had an outdoor observation deck. I visited the original World Trade Center which was not quite complete and still under construction. The city was big and busy, with more people than I had ever seen anywhere else. I walked, took the subway and drove into Brooklyn.
view from the top of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, then known as the RCA Building
Midtown Manhattan
August 1973
view southwest from the top of 30 Rockefeller Plaza
view east from the top of 30 Rockefeller Plaza
view southeast from the top of 30 Rockefeller Plaza
view north from the top of 30 Rockefeller Plaza
its construction was not quite complete when I first saw the towers
(a crane can be seen on top of the South Tower on the left)
There was one characteristic that almost described the entire city in my first hours and days. People seemed to always be on the move in greater numbers than I had ever seen before. There were a whole lot of people on the street, going to the subways and commuter trains or walking purposefully to work and passing up anyone who was in their way. They seemed to have little time. Put another way, there was a certain confidence everywhere.
Rush hour started early and ended late with what seemed like non-stop crowds pouring into Grand Central Terminal or Penn Station. New Yorkers bought a quick snack for breakfast on the street or in an express-service restaurant. They carried coffee onto the trains or sipped it when they were on escalators and elevators. A tremendous amount of business was going on and the city was the opposite of slow.
New York was an immensely populated, energetic and, it appeared to me, super-fast city. Not that this was necessarily negative (although it easily could have been to many I knew, who thought cities were nice to visit but no longer the best places in which to live). In some ways it was actually thrilling, if not also a challenge. Who could conquer such a place? Just look at the traffic and the taxi cabs whizzing by, all the things happening at once. There was always something to see or do and things changed rapidly. Just stand on any sidewalk and observe. I was fascinated and I knew that a person would be better off if they knew just what they were doing in a place like this and why they were there. And I thought Chicago was big and busy.
Surely there had to be places in the city where people and events did not run at the speed of light, right? Where?
That’s when, one afternoon, I entered Greenwich Village. Like other well-known parts of New York, I’d heard about this cool neighborhood. The Village was supposed to be liberal and filled with young people in a bohemian, accepting atmosphere. I was not disappointed. It was like walking into another land, discovering a place that was unique to New York City but also completely unlike the rest of the city.
I walked under the iconic Arch in Washington Square Park and saw creative people who were my age in a neighborhood that also contained the buildings of New York University. There were no skyscrapers or office buildings and instead there were music clubs, book stores, restaurants, record stores, art galleries, small movie theaters and stores with clothing and other items that were appealing to students, artists and writers. People played Frisbee. They strummed guitars and sang songs. Street comedians told (raunchy) jokes to crowds, then passed around a hat for donations. Kids and adults jumped into the fountain.
view south from the Arch
Washington Square Park
Greenwich Village
Nevertheless, I had to find work. Much to my dismay, I was not able to do so quickly enough and I ran out of money. I was about to be homeless in a city where I knew no one. I returned to Chicago on Interstate 80 which shimmered in the heat while my tires hit the road for hundreds of miles. I wondered if I would ever see my troubled urban Oz in the future.
But New York, a city I had repeatedly read about in the Encyclopedia Britannica that my mother had bought for me years before while I was still in elementary school, a city I had seen more than any other in powerful movies and TV shows and craved to see in person, a city that was the setting for several classic intense fiction and non-fiction books I had read on all kinds of topics, a city I had finally seen in the most sobering way with its impressive assets and unmitigated liabilities on full display, had a deep and lasting impact on me.
view east in the morning on 34th Street when I left the YMCA and began the drive back home
this was the last photo I took and an image that I thought at the time
would be my final look at the city
I returned to Chicago, more depressed and heartbroken than when I left. It was the last place I wanted to be. My escape from the awful family, college and life problems that I tried to drastically change had failed. My life hit a new low. I was still without a place to stay and at one point life did not seem worth living because there was no visible light at the end of my journey. My mother got help for me that I won't describe here but for a little while I had a roof over my head that was not in the house where my family lived. It still wasn't enough and one night I took drastic action to bring to an end a life that felt pointless. Few would understand what that is like but those who have been through it know what leads to such a conclusion.
I ended up in a hospital emergency room. I was alive because my actions were unsuccessful. I wasn't meant to leave earth at that time. There was more purpose to my life even if it would be a long time before I would be able to see it.
1974 - 1976
As the summer of 1973 ended, more happened (that is told in a different journal). But I slowly began to pick up the shattered pieces of my life. I was 20 years old but I refused to live at home in the suburbs of Chicago after what had happened there had actually made me homeless and living in my car in the first place. It was the scene of the crime.
I lived for less than three days in a suburban house that my mother had co-signed for my older brother, his wife and their kids. He had extreme troubles of his own and intense instability resulting in my leaving there, too.
My future still looked bleak but during that time I managed to get odd jobs including as a suburban taxicab driver, a worker in a hardware store, a worker at a railroad dispatch office and finally a dog catcher for the Anti-Cruelty Society in Chicago. It required me to drive a truck and pick up old and young dogs and cats, some of whom were mistreated, malnourished or diseased, and some of whom were abandoned. I learned how to handle them using special equipment and place them in cages in the truck before taking them to the Society where they would be examined and their fate would be decided. The worst part was that I also had to put many, many designated animals to sleep in ways that I won't describe here. However, the job paid very well and enabled me to get a room in the huge Lawson YMCA in downtown Chicago, where I turned 21 years old in the fall of 1973.
By late winter I moved into Austin YMCA on the West Side of Chicago, where I lived for most of 1974. I took photos of the maids and my fellow residents. I became friends with another guy who lived on my floor. I left the Anti-Cruelty Society and got a job at a large corporate headquarters on Michigan Avenue across from Grant Park. I was a mail clerk but soon they discovered my photography skills and eventually began using me in major ways in the Advertising and Publicity Department.
I began taking night and weekend courses in photography at Columbia College, a major downtown arts school. I moved to Hyde Park YMCA on the South Side of Chicago where I lived during most of 1975. I took even more photos of people I met in the Y as well as people in the neighborhood and once again I became close friends with a fellow resident.
I was promoted on my job and I became the company's staff photographer and audio visual technician for Management Training seminars around the Midwest, while continuing to work for previous departments. I photographed all 350 employees for the company directory and I took pictures at stockholders meetings as well as of the CEO for an article in Investor Relations Magazine, my first externally published photo. I also wrote articles and photographed for the company newsletter. Along the way, I took many photos of coworkers and friends.
By 1976 I had my own apartment on the North Side of Chicago. My life stabilized and began to progress further with a fair income. It was a glorious summer of sunshine and blue skies. I went running along the lakefront in Lincoln Park at dawn, I rode my bicycle after work or went swimming at the Y, and I had good friends and a girlfriend. At 23 and 24, things seemed more secure and headed toward a decent future.
So why didn’t I settle down with the expectation of a normal career? I had apparently solved my problems.
I had the feeling that something else awaited me in life. I had conquered Chicago. I sensed that I needed more, a much larger canvas to create on as well as a place where I could explore who I truly was without anyone's judgment or influence other than my own.
I had been through so much and I still wanted to get as far away from the hurts and pains as possible that had happened in the city of Chicago, a place I loved but also knew was not where I wanted to live the rest of my life. I needed to go where I had maximum freedom to see and experience more than I ever had before and to live where all the choices were my own.
I would never abandon my mother and my younger brother or most other relatives and friends, but if I stayed in Chicago, it would have been more than compromise and a form of suffocation. No one understood and no one thought it made any sense, and I understood why they were skeptical. On a practical level, even I wasn't sure how to go about relocating somewhere else. But there was no doubt whatsoever that I had to try.
February 1977
Three and a half years passed since I first laid eyes on the legendary City of New York. It was time to renew my courtship with the most difficult, expensive, crazy, unforgiving, dangerous, exciting and demanding place in America.
In February 1977, without telling any of my friends or family members, I decided to spend a weekend once again in a city that called out to me like a magnet. I got on a plane and soon I landed at LaGuardia Airport, wearing my Army jacket and carrying a backpack with my camera.
view from the airplane of the World Trade Center and Lower Manhattan
with the East River and Brooklyn (bottom)
and the Hudson River and New Jersey (top)
February 1977
housing projects
(most likely in) the Bronx
February 1977
structures from the 1964 Worlds Fair
Flushing-Meadows Park
Queens, NY
February 1977
Shea Stadium (no longer in existence, replaced by Citifield)
where the New York Mets baseball team played
Queens, NY
February 1977
I arrived in Manhattan and got a room in the West Side YMCA on West 63rd Street between Central Park West and Broadway on the Upper West Side. I put away my few belongings and set out to rediscover a city that had always beckoned to me.
West Side YMCA (darker brown building)
West 63rd Street
Upper West Side
Manhattan
Washington Square Park
Greenwich Village
view north on Thompson Street of Washington Square Park and Arch
Greenwich Village
the New York Public Library and the Empire State Building
Fifth Avenue
Midtown Manhattan
That Friday evening, cold settled down on the city. On Saturday, the temperature hit a low of 8 degrees and rose only to a high of 21.9 degrees. Sunday had a low of 12.9 degrees and a high of 28 degrees. The wind made it seem far colder. I roamed the city anyway, glad to be once again where I wanted to be despite my constantly cold hands, ears and nose.
Eventually, it was time to catch my flight back to Chicago. But New York stayed with me.
August 1977
In August of 1977, I once again decided to take a long driving trip from Chicago, in my very recently purchased new Honda Civic CVCC hatchback stick shift, with stops in Detroit, Toronto, Niagara Falls, Buffalo and Boston, before reaching my main goal: New York City. Exactly four years had passed since I first traveled in my first car to mighty (and mighty challenged) Gotham.
New York City was still a questionable location. Many Americans did not think of New York as an appealing place in those days. It was crime ridden and dirty. Graffiti was everywhere. Times Square was porn central. Drugs were taking over the inner city. Corporations were leaving and the population itself was shrinking. There was rarely any good press about New York.
Yet an astonishing collection of superlatives were still there, surrounded by all the gloom. It was the headquarters of all the major networks which broadcast the nightly news down the street from each other, connecting the city to whatever happened on all of the continents. It was still a world center for the performing arts with more Broadway theaters, concert halls and opera, dance and music institutions than anywhere else. Its icons included the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the New York Public Library, the American Museum of Natural History and many other great institutions. It continued to be the location for countless books, movies and television shows. It possessed the most art galleries and the most artists. Its educational system was the largest and included prestigious universities. The United Nations made it the acknowledged capital of the world and Wall Street ensured that it was the financial capital with by far the largest banks and stock exchanges. It had legendary neighborhoods like Greenwich Village and historic Harlem (which was admittedly in terrible shape at that time), as well as Fifth Avenue, Madison Avenue, Park Avenue, Broadway and Central Park. It had clubs and concerts, arenas and stadiums including Madison Square Garden and Yankee Stadium. It had the largest publishing companies, newspapers and magazines which I knew would be especially beneficial for my photography.
Big is not necessarily better at all. Other places have huge importance and superlatives of their own. I saw amazing value in every other town, city and state I visited and they had an unforgettable, positive impact on me. New York is not for everyone and I didn't ever think my view of it had to be shared by others. I was too realistic about every element of it and how different people see things differently. But for me, so many significant world events always seemed to have a connection to New York. I had to return to it.
I entered Manhattan as I had done a few years before, via the magnificent George Washington Bridge, with the windows open and the song Give a Little Bit (by Supertramp) coming from the speakers in my car, greeting the afternoon sunshine and warm summer air:
...Give a little bit of your love to me
...I'll give a little bit of my life for you
...we're on our way back home...
I reached the Sloane House YMCA on 34th Street where I had stayed during my original visit to the city. I parked nearby and checked in, getting a room on a typical men-only floor with a large, shared bathroom and communal shower. It was the same as it had always been, with a collection of tenants who were not necessarily the kind of neighbors one would want to have. Taking a shower every day next to other guys I didn't know was always an adventure that required being very liberal. It would leave me with several memorable stories to tell, but I was very used to the locker rooms and communal showers in high school and college as well as at YMCAs. It was cheap and centrally located. Besides, I spent most of my time in the city.
Sloane House YMCA
West 34th Street
Manhattan
Then I began to tour Manhattan all over again. I was interested in the look of the city, since I had originally majored in architecture in college before switching to photography. I wanted to capture famous buildings, neighborhoods and districts with my camera. I immersed myself in the city's sights by taking the subway or walking block after block up and down the island.
view south
Times Square
Midtown Manhattan
August 1977
view north
Times Square
Midtown Manhattan
42nd Street between Seventh Avenue and Eighth Avenue
(nicknamed "the Deuce")
Midtown Manhattan
Park Avenue
Midtown Manhattan
Pan Am Building
(now the Met Life Building)
Midtown Manhattan
Midtown Manhattan
RCA Building (30 Rockefeller Plaza)
Midtown Manhattan
Trinity Church and Wall Street
Lower Manhattan
City Hall
Lower Manhattan
view from the top of the (original) World Trade Center
Lower Manhattan
East River bridges from the top of the (original) World Trade Center
Lower Manhattan
outdoor observation deck on the (original) World Trade Center
Lower Manhattan
indoor observation floor of the (original) World Trade Center
Lower Manhattan
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Fifth Avenue
Upper East Side
Manhattan
Central Park
between the Upper East Side and the Upper West Side
north of Midtown Manhattan
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Upper East Side
view northwest of 123rd Street and Lenox Avenue (also known as Malcolm X Blvd.)
Harlem
view south from 126th Street and Amsterdam Avenue
Harlem
Harlem
Washington Square Park
Greenwich Village
Manhattan
view from Washington Square South
Greenwich Village
Manhattan
In the next couple of days, I drove deeper in Brooklyn in an effort to get to know it better (at that time I never would have guessed that in the future I would live in Brooklyn for 23 years). I explored Harlem (again not knowing that in the future I would live there for almost twenty five years so far). I spent time in what was always my favorite neighborhood, Greenwich Village. I went to the top of the (original) World Trade Center. I was not naïve and I was on guard at all times, but the city was also a powerful place that I was drawn to, more than ever.
New York City's densely packed, tall buildings represented an enormous number of companies, jobs and energy. The number of people living in it and in its suburbs, and its sheer physical size accessed by one of the world's largest subway, bus and commuter train networks, required three major airports. It's massive natural harbor and ship terminals were divided by major waterways that stretched far beyond Manhattan to reach out to vast boroughs that ended with miles upon miles of beaches at the Atlantic Ocean. It was the center of a string of cities that stretched from Boston to Washington, D.C., all of which were just a few hours away.
And as represented by the Statue of Liberty, most of its residents were, like me, originally from somewhere else. I knew that it held cultures, languages and people who I was totally unfamiliar with but wanted to learn about.
Of course it came with considerable flaws. It was expensive and, as an understatement, not accommodating. But to be in New York was to be where the action was. It meant challenging yourself to climb, against the greatest obstacles, the highest mountain. Once at the pinnacle, however, if felt like you could see more and farther than in any other city on earth.
Decision
I returned to Chicago with a lot on my mind. Later that month, I drove my best friend Larry and his cousin from Chicago to Southern Illinois University in Carbondale where he went to school. We spent the night in his off-campus apartment and had a great time. The next morning I surprised them and announced that I was taking a side trip to Memphis, Tennessee, where I had never been before, but I would return the next day.
I drove down Interstate 55 where once again I thought and thought for hours at 70 mph in the hot sun. Upon my arrival, I explored Memphis and the Mississippi River. Later I got a room in a YMCA where I thought some more. Something was going on inside of me. I needed to make a decision and pursue a new path.
The next day I returned to Carbondale and confided to Larry that I was going to move to New York. It was unexpected and he didn’t want to see me leave. Somehow, because we were so close, we knew we would stay in contact (eventually Larry did visit me in New York City and I saw him whenever I traveled back to Chicago) but I realized the price I would pay in not being near important friends like him. On the other hand, I knew that my time in Chicago was coming to an end.
Preparations
I started making preparations by getting rid of clothes and furniture in my apartment, and storing my bicycle in the apartment of the sister of a female coworker and close friend. I didn't sign another lease at my apartment and once again I lived temporarily in a room rented elsewhere, this time on the far South Side of Chicago. I was essentially tearing down my life in Chicago in anticipation of rebuilding it somewhere else.
As 1977 turned into 1978, I told a few classmates at Columbia College, and a couple of coworkers on my job that I was probably going to move to New York City although I didn't know exactly when.
There was no one to give advice to me. No one I knew had ever attempted what I was about to do. I simply had to find a way to make it work.
In June and July of 1978, I checked help wanted ads in New York papers that I bought in Chicago. I wanted to know for certain that I would be employed and earning money before I quit my job.
I arranged an interview and flew back to New York. I was hired at a small company located on Broadway on the Upper West Side whose business was typesetting for major publishing companies. The owner, Vance Weaver, took a chance on a young black male with an Afro, from Chicago, decided I had the skills he was looking for, and offered me a job even though I didn't live in New York City. He knew I had to go back and conclude matters and leave my Chicago job where I had been involved in different ways in publishing and communications. I had all the office and business skills he was looking for and he was willing to wait. He told me that I could start within two weeks. It was the opening I needed.
That night, I walked over to the East River and thought about what had happened while listening to songs that marked a very special time. My life was about to change.
I flew back to Chicago and gave notice to my employer. Remarkably, I also left my one year old car with my girlfriend, for her to drive for a few months while I settled myself in New York. I would come back and pick it up the in the coming fall or winter.
August 1978
During the first week of August 1978, I got on another plane and flew to New York City, once again wearing my green Army jacket, and carrying a green duffel bag and a camera bag. I got a room in an SRO (single room occupancy) hotel on Broadway and 88th Street on the Upper West Side (chronicled in the essay "First Day" in another journal). It was just a few blocks from my new job, where I began working the following Monday.
My long courtship of New York City, who has eight and a half million other husbands, wives and children, was not without the most intense effort, but she said yes and accepted my hand in marriage.
I was 25 years old. I restarted my life all over again. And this time, finally, I was home.
in my green Army jacket
on the terrace of the New York Public Library
Fifth Avenue and 41st Street
Midtown Manhattan
November 1979