When I moved to NYC in August 1984, it was into a walk-up one-bedroom tenement where a guy named Jordan lived with his sister. It was on Ninth Street between either Avenue A and First Ave. or perhaps Avenue A and B. The city was gritty. I was electrified. I truly felt this was the beginning of my best life where I’d find all my reasons for being. I wasn’t necessarily wrong. I was definitely naive because of course. I was 23 years old. Ronald Reagan was president (he’d go on to be elected to a second term in November. I vaguely remember voting that year for Mondale and Ferraro but not really feeling/understanding the intensity of politics except for the sense that we hated Reagan and Thatcher in equal measure). Ed Koch was mayor. I once saw him outside Cinema Village on East 12th Street and he was asking people how he was doing, which was his thing.

I waitressed at the Yaffa Cafe on St. Mark’s place and survived on tips, which in the summer/fall months were bountiful given the place was always jamming with a really nice garden out back and a full patio in front. In the winter, though, there was only the inside dining room so a lot of our shifts were cut back. We ended up unionizing after my first summer/fall turned into winter and the restaurant fired us all, so we picketed in the snow. Then the union sued them for our back wages and there was some sort of settlement, which was rad and I felt powerful with the win. Yeah, people power and all that! By that point, I’d moved on to working at the Dojo Cafe down the street.

But before all that hoo-haw with the unionizing, etc., I used to come home from my Yaffa shift around 11 p.m. and dump all my coins&bills onto my fold-out futon in the front living room that had been converted to my bedroom, which was separated from the kitchen by a Japanese screen. The bathtub was in the kitchen and I think I must have survived mostly on sponge baths back then but I have no memory of any of that. I had a tiny black&white TV and while I counted my tips I’d watch reruns of Mary Tyler Moore and Taxi on WPIX channel 11 while sipping some sort of alcohol. I think maybe cheap scotch. I was due to start the fall semester at the School of Visual Arts in their flagship journalism department. Why they had a journalism department? who knows. It didn’t last long but while it did, I attended and got my J degree. There were about a dozen of us tops and the professors were all working journalists. Because I only had two years left to complete my degree, the focus was mainly on getting internships as a foot in the door. I knew where I wanted my foot to land: SPIN magazine (more on that in future posts).

But before I got there, I had a few many roads to travel. I had a boyfriend named Bill who was the drummer in a band called Three Teens Kill Four. The name was lifted from a NY Post headline and they played at all the East Village haunts (Pyramid, etc.) and while I would spend the night occasionally at his studio apartment on First Avenue between 1st and 2nd street, one flight up from an appliance store, I was digging my independence, my everything-available-and-possible mindset. My I’ll-try-it attitude. I don’t remember being afraid, whether it was walking home at night after a shift or after a night out. There were times I one-hundred percent should have been afraid but I don’t remember ever feeling it. I was lucky in that nothing vicious or terrible happened on those walks or adventures into gritty neighborhoods, into apartments where I knew nobody but there was a party going on. I didn’t think I was in Disneyland but in a weird way I thought This will make a good story someday so sure, I’m up for the adventure. I suppose I tried to pay attention to my surroundings but really I don’t think I had any spidey sense at all. Example: Desperately Seeking Susan was filming on St. Marks Place and as I was walking down the street, I saw outdoor clothing racks and I thought a new sidewalk boutique had opened so I stopped to paw through the goods. Then I heard someone on a bullhorn say, Get that girl off the set. and a woman with a walkie-talkie came and removed me. It was then that I noticed all the tripod lights and equipment above my head. I suppose that was a good metaphor for where I was at when I first moved: My focus was primarily trained right in front of me and that’s what I kept my eye on, what I went toward. Then I’d get bumped or reminded to look up, and when I did, I’d be gob-smacked at where I was. I’d turn a corner and the Empire State would be blocking out the sun and I’d think, Oh. shit. I live here.