Tag: San Francisco

Just A Story

We landed then stopped on a taxiway. An air force officer came on-board and told us there would be no picture taking.

Vandenberg is the military’s space center. This was the height of the Cold War.

F-27

I got an email tonight from an Air Force reservist assigned to Vandenberg AFB. It’s about 3.5 hours north of here on the coast.

Vandenberg reminded me of my weirdest airplane flight ever. I was flying to my cousin’s bar mitzvah in Santa Maria, California from San Francisco. I’d spent a few weeks traveling with my pen pal, David. I was 18. This was my first time away from home alone. My first time out west.

I was booked on Hughes Air West, owned by Howard Hughes. He’d recently bought four airlines and merged them. The flight attendant wore one insignia, the pilot another, the coffee cups showed a third.

Look at the photo above. The plane says “Air West,” but the tail still has the Bonanza Airlines logo on it.

This was a milk run: San Francisco-San Jose-Pasa Robles-San Luis Obispo-Santa Maria. I believe the first leg took under ten minutes.

The aircraft was a Fairchild F-27. It’s a prop plane with the wing over the fuselage. I could watch the landing gear extend and retract out my window.

This was exciting. My first commercial jet flight was a few weeks earlier. Now an afternoon of flying!

The route connected small towns. San Luis Obispo actually had “San Luis Obispo” painted on the tarmac. Too small for a sign.

As we approached Santa Maria the pilot informed us there was fog and we’d be putting down at Vandenberg AFB to wait it out.

We landed then stopped on a taxiway. An air force officer came on-board and told us there would be no picture taking.

Vandenberg is the military’s space center. This was the height of the Cold War. I had long hair. Who knows?

We took off again and headed toward Santa Maria. The plane began to descend, making a sweeping downward oval in the sky. We kept losing altitude for what seemed an eternity. With the wing above, I looked down hoping to soon spot Earth.

We couldn’t have been more than a few hundred feet up when we broke out of the clouds. The pilot gunned the engine simultaneously pulling the gear and nose up.

Truck on the runway.

This day is indelibly etched in my mind.

Stuff You Find When Cleaning–The 35+ Year Old Photo

OMFG–there are dust bunnies behind my desk that have to be twenty years old!

The cleansing continues in my office. OMFG–there are dust bunnies behind my desk that have to be twenty years old! There are plugs plugged in, but connected to nothing. It’s an archeological dig!

Among the artifacts unearthed are some photos which will probably dribble out over the next few days. This one was taken by my friend Bob Lacey in San Francisco sometime in late 1974.

Here’s To The Phone Phreaks

I sent him a shot of record grooves magnified 1,000 times. He’d seen it before, but to quote Dave, “It’s neat stuff.” It really is.

I swapped emails today with Dave Kulka in Burbank. We first met when we were in our teens–a story in and of itself since I lived in Flushing, NY while Dave was a resident of Greenbrae in Marin County just north of San Francisco. Dave’s company masterfully repairs and restores older audio equipment used in recording studios.

record_groove.jpgFor years Dave was a mastering engineer. That’s the person who supervises the process of taking a song from recording to the lacquer masters that produce phonograph records. Knowing Dave, his records on your turntable sounded just like the session sounded in the studio. He is detail oriented.

I sent him a shot of record grooves magnified 1,000 times. He’d seen it before, but to quote Dave, “It’s neat stuff.” It really is.

In return Dave sent me a link about “phone phreaks” and a book being written about them. These were people who:

listened to the clicks and clunks and beeps and boops to figure out how calls were routed. They read obscure telephone company technical journals. They learned how to impersonate operators and other telephone company personnel. They dug through telephone company trash bins to find “secret” documents. They solved puzzles.

model 500 phone.jpgOK–that’s a little on the romantic side, but not incredibly far off base.

The author claims there are still phone phreaks today, but why? Forty years ago making long distance calls was expensive!

There were different rates in effect for different times of the day. People would wait to make calls after 7:00 PM or after 11:00 PM when the rates fell. A daytime call was outrageously pricey!

Nowadays long distance phone calls flow like water from a faucet. Most cell plans don’t even bother to differentiate long distance from local because there’s really no incremental cost in carrying either! Nearly all the costs are fixed whether you make calls or not.

This crime has been solved by pricing it out of existence. Isn’t that strange? That doesn’t happen too often.

The Numbers Are In

Nielen ratings are in for last night’s debate

The Nielsen ratings are in for last night’s debate. I’m confused by the list of stations aggregated which doesn’t include Fox News and MSNBC, both of which would add significantly to the final total.

If these overnight numbers stand, the ratings are well below other recent debates.

OK–I’m a little surprised. I thought for sure there would be a lot more interest considering all the buzz.


DMA Rank Market RTG Rank RTG SHR (000)

21 St. Louis 1 52.1 82.0 649

48 Memphis 2 49.5 67.0 330

26 Baltimore 3 47.1 66.0 515

9 Washington, DC (Hagrstwn) 4 44.6 68.0 1030

29 Nashville 5 44.0 66.0 424

46 Greensboro-H.Point-W.Salem 6 42.2 61.0 285

32 Columbus, OH 7 41.5 63.0 377

43 Norfolk-Portsmth-Newpt Nws 8 41.4 59.0 298

58 Richmond-Petersburg 9 40.3 55.0 211

18 Denver 10 39.7 65.0 586

24 Charlotte 11 39.3 54.0 426

7 Boston (Manchester) 12 39.3 58.0 944

22 Portland, OR 13 39.0 74.0 450

31 Kansas City 14 37.7 61.0 350

16 Miami-Ft. Lauderdale 15 37.2 52.0 573

38 West Palm Beach-Ft. Pierce 16 36.4 55.0 282

27 Raleigh-Durham (Fayetvlle) 17 36.2 54.0 377

51 Buffalo 18 36.1 54.0 230

25 Indianapolis 19 35.3 59.0 379

53 New Orleans 20 34.8 48 209

11 Detroit 21 34.3 55.0 661

59 Knoxville 22 34.3 51.0 185

61 Tulsa 23 34.1 55.0 178

45 Oklahoma City 24 34.0 55.0 231

40 Birmingham (Ann and Tusc) 25 33.5 48.0 245

52 Providence-New Bedford 26 33.5 50.0 211

15 Minneapolis-St. Paul 27 33.4 59.0 569

19 Orlando-Daytona Bch-Melbrn 28 33.4 52.0 479

62 Ft. Myers-Naples 29 33.3 51.0 164

28 San Diego 30 33.0 59.0 349

50 Louisville 31 33.0 48.0 218

17 Cleveland-Akron (Canton) 32 32.9 55.0 505

37 San Antonio 33 32.9 48.0 261

20 Sacramnto-Stkton-Modesto 34 32.7 55.0 454

4 Philadelphia 35 32.1 51.0 941

44 Albuquerque-Santa Fe 36 32.1 50.0 218

23 Pittsburgh 37 32.1 51.0 371

6 San Francisco-Oak-San Jose 38 32.0 62.0 779

13 Tampa-St. Pete (Sarasota) 39 31.7 49.0 569

49 Austin 40 31.6 52.0 201

36 Greenvll-Spart-Ashevll-And 41 31.5 46.0 265

64 Dayton 42 31.4 50.0 161

1 New York 43 31.3 48.0 2317

8 Atlanta 44 30.9 52.0 714

3 Chicago 45 30.7 51.0 1067

14 Seattle-Tacoma 46 30.3 58.0 541

30 Hartford & New Haven 47 30.2 45.0 306

47 Jacksonville 48 30.0 47.0 196

33 Salt Lake City 49 29.9 63.0 261

35 Milwaukee 50 29.2 49.0 262

34 Cincinnati 51 28.3 49.0 256

42 Las Vegas 52 27.9 46.0 196

5 Dallas-Ft. Worth 53 27.7 46.0 671

2 Los Angeles 54 26.4 50.0 1484

12 Phoenix (Prescott) 55 24.8 47.0 448

10 Houston* 56 0.0 0.0 0

Weighted Avg. of 55 markets* 33.2

What Is Journalism?

It’s probably a good time to delve into this because there are two interesting journalism stories.

Who is a journalist? What is journalism? It’s probably a good time to delve into this because there are two interesting journalism stories unfolding today.

Who broke the John Edwards affair? The National Enquirer. Ouch, mainstream media. How’d you let that one slip away? And the Enquirer has been all over this story for a while. They also broke the Monica Lewinsky story. This is not your father’s, “Elvis Spotted At K-Mart” Enquirer.

I heard Steve Plamann, senior executive editor of the National Enquirer interviewed on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” today. He gladly admitted the paper’s sensationalist bent. They are after all, by his admission, a supermarket tabloid. But, does that disqualify them from being taken seriously or breaking stories?

Should the NY Times follow the Enquirer as they certainly do the Wall Street Journal or Washington Post? Do you disregard them at your own risk? I’ll answer my own question. They disregarded the Edwards story and it doesn’t reflect well on them.

Is the National Enquirer journalism? I think they are, but who makes this judgement?

The second journalistic fork in the road has to do with CNN’s decision to rely on more “one-man-bands” populating single person bureaus. Here’s how TVNewser reported it:

“Yesterday CNN announced it was expanding its domestic presence by opening bureaus in 10 U.S. cities. The press release called it a doubling of U.S. newsgathering. But when a 28-year-old company expands you can bet there will be changes to existing personnel too. And that is the case with CNN.

TVNewser has learned that after the announcement of the new bureaus and soon to be added “all-platform journalists,” nine CNN staffers were told their jobs were going to be redefined. We’re told the staffers are not being laid off, but being offered positions in the new structure.

The staffers work in cities including Chicago, San Francisco and Miami. As NPR’s David Folkenflik reported this morning, “let’s be clear [CNN/U.S. president Jon Klein] is only really talking about adding a handful of new staffers. Others will be redeployed in less-covered places like Columbus, Ohio, Orlando and Seattle.””

Is it less journalistcally pure when a single person covers a story instead of a crew? Is there something lost when a reporter also has to concentrate of his/her equipment during the time they used to be concentrating on the person speaking?

Video gear has become smaller, cheaper and easier to operate. I certainly could report and produce a news story on my own, but would that story suffer? I have colleagues who will argue the story will suffer and other friends, like Mike Sechrist, who truly believes we’re foolish to not take advantage of this technology.

There are a lot of constituencies involved here beyond the public who consumes this journalistic product. I am curious to see how this will shake out. This is a time when journalistic traditions might change rapidly.

Dick Martin – The Sillier of Rowan and Martin

The male attempts to find the queen bee, and when he does, they mate in mid-air. Then the queen moves on, taking with her the male bee’s genitalia.

rowanandmartin.jpgDick Martin died this weekend. He was the sillier of Rowan and Martin, the nightclub comedians who become huge stars through “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In.”

I saw them perform in 1975. It was my first grownup nightclub experience.

I was out-of-work and depressed about life. My ‘gold friend’ Bob flew to Phoenix, then we drove through California from San Diego to San Francisco before turning east to Las Vegas.

We hit the Vegas Strip and pulled into Caesar’s Palace. It was ‘the’ place in Las Vegas back then, without question.

We had no reservations and not much money. They wanted a credit card for ID. Bob had none. I had an Esso (now Exxon) card. The room was put in my name.

We spent the next few days playing two dollar blackjack and eating shrimp cocktails. We wanted to take in a show and ended up seeing Rowan and Martin, with opening act Teresa Brewer.

I don’t remember much of Rowan and Martin’s act, except that it began with Dan explaining the mating habits of bees. The male attempts to find the queen bee, and when he does, they mate in mid-air. Then the queen moves on, taking with her the male bee’s genitalia.

Dick Martin paused and pondered for a second, smiled and said, “Only way to fly.”

You bet your bippy.

Blogger’s note: Of course this routine is on the Internet! What isn’t?

Note 2: My friend Bob says, “I remember it very well. Saw Alan King grab a few chicken wings, and I remember how large the hotel room was. It should have been, it cost us $22.00.”

The Announcer Who Wasn’t There

The scores and stats were real, but the flavor of the game was totally the product of Keiter’s imagination.

I was talking with Chris Velardi (anchor/reporter) at the station tonight.

He’s a big Mets fan, so I found it necessary to remind him of their current plight. I’m like a sixteen year old in this regard.

I talked about our MLB video purchase and then he trumped me – he actually bought a minor league video package. Chris Velardi – you are hardcore!

Pretty soon the conversation moved to an announcer I remembered from when I was a kid. Hopefully my dad will leave a comment, because he’s the reason I know this guy.

Back in 1958 (when I was 8), the Giants moved from New York to San Francisco. What had been a three team town, was left with the Yankees alone.

You’ve got to remember – neither team (NY Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers) left because of lack of support. They just got much better deals out-of-town. There was plenty of pent up National League interest and support in New York.

One radio station, WINS, decided it would make the best of the situation and continue to broadcast the Giants’ games. Instead of sending announcers out with the team, then paying for a remote line, they put Les Keiter in the studio.

I remember hot summer nights, driving in the car with my dad. The windows were rolled down. The radio was on. It was a summer of Mays, McCovey and more than one Alou. Juan Marichal was becoming a genuine ‘phenom’.

Keiter worked with a background loop of crowd noise&#185, the sound of a bat, and a reasonably steady stream of wire service reports. He recreated the games.

The scores and stats were real, but the flavor of the game was totally the product of Keiter’s imagination.

Alas, the experiment didn’t last. That Marichal was covered meant it went at least to 1960.

Maybe Les Keiter’s call wasn’t as exciting as the real thing, or maybe New Yorker’s got the message the Giants weren’t coming back and lost interest. The broadcasts ended. Keiter moved on. The Yankees went back to being the only game in town.

Les Keiter is in his 80s now, retired in Hawaii. He spent a few seasons recreating the games of the Hawaiian minor league team.

He’s why I still remember most of the names from the ’58 San Francisco Giants and why I missed a departed team I was really too young to remember.

&#185 – The crowd noise loop was much too short to be used every day, especially with an irritating and predicably timed, “woo hoo” every few minutes.

Too Much Democracy

I read a lot of tech news online. It’s pretty tough to find a technical subject I don’t want to delve into.

Finding these articles can be tough, so like many people I harness the power of the Internet by going to ‘aggregator’ sites. These sites don’t usually produce content on their own. Instead, they link to other sites where the articles are kept.

Originally, my favorite was Slashdot. There were times I’d go there a half dozen or more times a day.

The way Slashdot works is, people suggest stories, editors check them out, they get posted. When first discovered, I liked Slashdot a lot.

Over time it got too slow for me. I’m not talking about how long it took for a page to load. It wasn’t pushing enough links my way.

Next came Digg, a San Francisco start-up headed by Kevin Rose, formerly of TechTV. This site also takes suggestions from readers. Instead of having editors pass judgement, Digg encourages their readers to digg a story (or not). Get a lot of digs and your story hits the front page and gets read by lots of people.

The more I liked Digg, the less time I spent on Slashdot.

Then came Reddit. Like Digg, this site’s content is juried by its readers. What I liked was, more stories made the front page and the lineup was volatile from hour-to-hour. There was lots for me to read.

The more I liked Reddit, the less time I spent on Digg. Even worse (for them), Slashdot was falling off my radar.

Now there’s a problem. A small community, like Digg or Reddit, can easily be overrun by single issue zealots. For Reddit especially, that means supporters of Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich.

Stop – I’m not criticizing either of these candidates. What I’m concerned about is how their supporters have hijacked these sites to get their points across. I want to read tech, not hear about who feels short changed and why.

Having no editor should lead to a democratically juried site. Instead, it’s leading to anarchy.

At the moment, I still read all three. Their order of importance in my life is currently Digg, Reddit, Slashdot… but Reddit is getting very close to dropping to number three.

In That SoCal Swing

I so enjoy LA. Of course, I don’t deal with its weaknesses and frailties on a daily basis.

There were a few stops for me to make today. First, I headed into Old Hollywood to visit my secretive friend. He has an office at small, older, studio complex. These are really more akin to office parks with various independent vendors, usually selling their services to each other.

This is as good a time as any to say how useful my GPS has been. I programmed all the addresses I’d need when I was in Connecticut, then threw it in my bag. I have used it with confidence.

Yes, it tried to have me drive into construction barriers, but for the most part it’s been my faithful friend. It is much more sophisticated than it seemed at first glance. Learning how it works was time well spent.

I left The Valley on the Hollywood Freeway, turned onto Santa Monica and then into a gated driveway. This was “The Lot,” formerly Goldwyn Studios.

It’s funny how a studio really does have a distinctive look, no matter what its size. I’ve been to a few, though briefly. When busy, you’re walking through a movie factory. When they’re not, and this one wasn’t, they are lonely.

Make no mistake, this is an industry town. When you see all the movies and TV shows being promoted, you realize it’s for more than the audience at home.

I’m sure these writers (photo – left) thought I was a company security man, taking photos of them. I passed a number of picket sites including one at NBC on W. Alameda in Burbank.

Burbank was where I headed next. I was going to see David Kulka. Dave… everyone else now seems to call him David… and I met in 1968. It’s a very unusual story.

He and I were BCBDXers. That means we listened to AM radio, trying to find more distant and difficult catches. Dave and I belonged to the same radio club.

Oh – we lived an entire continent apart. He lived in Marin County, just north of San Francisco and I lived in Queens.

Somehow we began corresponding and decided to go to a radio convention together. He was 15. I was 18. We were both leaving home for the first time.

We met in Los Angeles. Within the first hour, jaywalking tickets for both of us outside the Roosevelt Hotel! It was my fault 100%.

This was an amazing adventure, going from LA to Riverside and finally the San Francisco Bay Area and Dave’s house in Greenbrae. His family made me welcome in a way they probably never appreciated. That was huge.

He was a great guy, but 40 years ago the coast-to-coast distance was a lot more daunting. We fell out of touch.

The Internet changes everything. That how Dave and I got back together.

Dave’s house is on a small street that looks like it should be quiet. But this is Burbank. There’s a lot of business being conducted, even on a residential looking street like this. That includes Dave’s company.

In a small building behind the house sits an electronic workshop. It is the product of extreme organization – bright, neat, eat-off-the-floor clean. There were four people working when I arrived. They were mainly fixing audio equipment.

At first glance, this is old equipment. The circuits were hand wired with discrete components decades ago. There are dials and meters. It’s very analog. I worked with some of this equipment in radio 30+ years ago.

The bottom line is, this stuff outperforms much that’s digital. Maybe more importantly, some of it is built in as integral pieces in pre-existing studios and needs to be replaced as-is.

We left the shop and headed to the house. That’s when I saw the first turtle.

Dave’s wife Cholada collects turtles. In a small pond out back is a colony… pack… gaggle… whatever you call a group of turtles. There were at least a dozen, in and out of the water. None of them were in much of a rush to go anywhere.

Oh, there’s one more living thing in the yard. It’s a tortoise. He’s fourteen years old, nearly 100 pounds and lives in a heated doghouse. Pretty standard stuff really.

Dave and I sat and talked. Our lives have taken such different paths. There was so much to learn.

This was such a good idea. I’m glad I went. A case can be made that contacting people you haven’t seen in decades is wrong. No! At least not in this case.

Our conversation reminded me of so many things we had done. The summer of ’68 was intense. So much was going on in my world and the real world. You really should have been there.



Almost Gone

I’m pretty much done packing. The plane leaves at noon.

I hope Stef doesn’t read this. I’m starting to pack like her. No, not clothes, but my stuff weighs more.

For Clicky, I’ve got the tripod and monopod, five lenses and a flash unit. Oh – there’s the Gorilla Pod too. I normally carry three batteries and charger plus 3.5 Gb in compact flash memory cards.

I’ve got a computer and cell phone plus cables for both. Ditto with a GPS unit. And, on top of that, there are the army of power plugs and power bugs.

Stef passed her old iPod down to me. I’ve downloaded enough podcasts to fly to Burma. The iPod travels with earbuds and a cable. Though pink, it is now hidden in a black rubber skin, lest anyone question my masculinity.

This is nuts. All this stuff. Even I can see that, but I’m obsessed. It’s an illness.

The weather has been horrendous out west. San Francisco had 60+ mph gusts on Friday. The system is moving down the coast, though it’s weakening. I expect the pilot will be forced to wrestle the plane to the ground as we land at LAX.

We will chase the Sun, flying west at about 500 mph. It’s a losing battle. The Sun’s faster and won’t be stopping at Midway.

Even with three time zones, the clock will read 4:30 PM when we put down.

My plane flies from Hartford to Los Angeles with that stop in Chicago. Somehow, I’ve gotten it in my head to post a blog entry from my airplane seat as the plane briefly empties while we are on the ground in Chicago. My cellphone will act as the modem, bringing the Internet to my laptop.

Now I’m worried I’ve forgotten something.

Hello I Must Be Going


Sunny Los Angeles. It looks like it’s about to spend an extended period getting drenched. That can mean only one thing. I’m heading to L.A. I leave Saturday.

Why am I going? No real clue. It’s just away. It’s a place I enjoy.

I have some friends I want to see. Probably some photos to take too, if the weather cooperates.

One friend, who I’ll be staying with for a few days, has grown a beard and then removed it since the last time I saw him. He has asked for anonymity on the blog – which will be respected.

I’ll also be spending some time with my cousins in Orange County. I’ve never seen their house, near the retired El Toro Air Station, just inland from Laguna Beach.

Two more stops are planned, both with people I haven’t seen in decades.

Joel lives and works in Malibu. I knew him when we were both disk jockeys in Charlotte and Philadelphia. I have known him under three different names!

Dave, who I first met as I turned 18, is from Marin County, near San Francisco. He runs a business designing, installing and repairing recording studios. He has lived an interesting and exotic life, including lots of time exploring Asia. He and I were ticketed for jaywalking across from the Roosevelt Hotel.

Today, I was trying to think of how many times I’ve been to Los Angeles. Certainly a dozen. Probably closer to twenty. Though I once got lost and ended up driving Helaine and myself through some pretty sketchy neighborhoods, I know my ‘home turf’ of the Valley and West Side reasonably well.

I will be taking Clicky and enough electronic accouterments to choke a TSA agent.

No changing planes, but we are stopping in Chicago (MDW). January and Chicago. Wish me luck!

Ansel And Me

I put a PBS documentary about Ansel Adams on my Netflix queue a few months ago. Netflix doesn’t stock this title… and after a few months, it looked like they never would.

Enter eBay. The disk arrived Thursday and I watched it last night.

Beyond being a photographic master, Adams was an emotionally complex man. His childhood was marked by family financial problems and the San Francisco earthquake. He was conflicted between being a concert pianist and taking photos. He had both a wife and mistress.

I’m glad that I got to understand more about Adams, but I wish this doc would have given me more about his technique. How did he do what he did? Other than a passing mention of red filtering, there was little to help me as a photographer extend Adams’ work.

I didn’t even see my favorite Ansel Adams photograph, a non-panoramic documentary portrayal of a California farm worker’s family.

There was one thing I took from the show – Yosemite. I knew it was beautiful. I had no idea it was that awe inspiring.

Now I’m obsessed with Yosemite. I’ve got to go. It’s not quite that simple.

Yosemite is different at different times of the year. That especially applies to its waterfalls. Many start flowing with the snowmelt in the spring and stop during the dry California summer.

Summertime crowds at Yosemite are large. I’ve got to avoid that.

With the problem of TV rating periods added to the equation, April or possibly early June, seem best.

I’d like this to be a real photography trip. That means lots of walking with my photo bag and a tripod. It also means a methodical approach to the shots I take.

Maybe I’m biting off more than I can chew? Right now, it sounds like a plan.

It’s The Emmys

It’s been a few years since I entered the Emmys. It’s a very weird competition. It’s totally arbitrary. Winning is totally without rhyme or reason. Judges get few guidelines.

Helaine thinks the whole process is ridiculous. She very well may be right.

One year I won. The next year I wasn’t nominated. Honest. Go figure.

I am lucky enough to have seven sitting in a case in my family room. From a practical standpoint, seven is the same as ten or three.

Actually, seven is better than ten. Having ten would make it look too easy.

All of this is the setup for what will transpire Sunday.

Gil Simmons, at my station, has volunteered to coordinate Emmy judging for the San Francisco/Northern California region. I volunteered the location, my house.

It looks like we’ll have six or seven of us watching the DVDs. The more the merrier. I sent a few more emails tonight, trying my best to guilt the last stragglers into coming.

For some of the younger guys&#185, this will be a revealing process. Seeing how the Emmys are judged is helpful when you’re deciding what to submit the next year.

It will be interesting to see how they treat the weather in an area where weather usually isn’t as important. It will also be interesting to ‘take notes’ on how their weather equipment is being used. We mostly use the same, or similar, tools. Sometimes you catch a glimpse of a technique or twist you hadn’t thought of.

Last time I was a judge there were moments when I wondered, “What were they thinking when they sent in this tape?” Hopefully, that won’t be the case again.

&#185 – It has been pointed out, all the weather people in this market are men… white men. That’s becoming more and more unusual.

The Fillmore East

Earlier this afternoon, my Cousin Michael sent an email to me. All it had was a link, the poster you see on the left and this date: May 10, 1968.

Were we there? Did we see Jimi Hendrix at the Fillmore East? I don’t remember.

He responded:

I was. I think you were too. I was 15.

I was nearly 18&#185. That winter and spring Michael and I, along with our friend Larry, spent a lot of Friday and Saturday nights at the Fillmore East.

Actually, when we began going it was called the Village Theater, the same name it had when it was a legitimate Yiddish theater. The name change came after Bill Graham of San Francisco took over.

I’m sure there’s nothing like it now, nor was there anything else like the ‘Fillmores’ then. The theater itself was a large house with a balcony. The seats and carpeting were threadbare and torn. What the Fillmore East had going for it were the acts.

I know I saw Grateful Dead there (on the bill with Moby Grape). I think I saw Cream, maybe Credence too. Even in New York, these big acts really had nowhere else to play. And ticket prices were low – $2 or $3, I think.

What I remember most about the Fillmore East was the Joshua Light Show. This was a multimedia presentation before the word multimedia was coined. It was usually rear projected on a screen behind the acts.

In the psychedelic 60s, Joshua was… well, it was very psychedelic. I marveled at what they did and often came up blank trying to explain how they did it. This was a pre-electronic, pre-computer rough hewn multimedia experience. It was all optics and ingenuity.

I really wasn’t a crazed music fan in the 60s. I covered at work for someone else so he could go to Woodstock, missing the number one event of the decade. Still, being at the Fillmore East transcended the music. It was as much a statement of who I thought I was, as an experience.

If I could step back to ’68 and see myself in that decrepit Second Avenue theater on the (at that time) unfashionable Lower East Side, I’m sure I’d cringe. The past is never kind.

Back then it was totally right. Back then, I was hip. Really, I was.

&#185 – Back then, being 18 meant you could drink. It didn’t mean you could vote. The legal age for voting was 21.

Where Are They Today?

I have heard from lots of people because of this Internet thing. Though some voices from my past have said hello, there are many more I’ve totally lost contact with. Maybe if I mention some names they’ll surface.

Bob Weiss. I’m guessing the last time I saw or spoke to Bob was in the late 60s. He lived in an apartment in Jackson Heights, Queens. We had gone to summer camp together. His father worked at an advertising agency.

Sometime during high school his parents took the two of us to the Village Limelight to see Jean Shepard. In our mid-teens, we watched his live radio broadcast from a bar. At that time, it was certainly the coolest moment of my life.

Bob – send me an email.

Dan Weston. Dan was my roommate freshman year in college. We were on the 3rd floor at 132 Beacon Street. As is so often the case, we didn’t know how good we had it, living in Back Bay Boston as 18 year olds. I last saw Dan sometime in the mid-70s.

I can’t imagine what being my roommate must have been like, but whatever it was, I apologize.

Dan was from Jericho, NY where is father was a dentist. His sister was a harpist. I’m sure his mom was great, but I’ve got nothing on her.

After college, Dan moved to Hershey, Pennsylvania where he worked for the PBS affiliate.

Dan – drop me a line.

Marty Ingber. Marty lived near me in Electchester, the gigantic housing project, originally built by the Electrical Workers’ Union, hidden away in a two fare zone&#185 in Queens. I probably have seen him since 1968.

Marty and I were friends, but we weren’t best friends. However, I had two memorable moments with Marty. Actually, one is sure and the other I think was Marty.

The ‘sure’ moment was when the two of us went to a Mets game at the Polo Grounds. The Mets moved into Shea Stadium in 1964, so it was 1963. I was 13. Wow – that now seems awfully young to have gone with just a friend.

By this time the Polo Grounds, situated on Coogan’s Bluff in Harlem, was pretty decrepit. The NY Giants had moved to San Francisco after the 1957 season. Preventative maintenance was probably the last thing on anyone’s mind for the five years it stood vacant. The Mets were pretty awful anyway.

We bought whatever the cheapest seat was and moved around. We ended up sitting way up high in a virtually deserted area.

At that time a coffee commercial was running on TV with the tag line, “You get what you pay for.” Every time a Met would do something wrong (a constant occurrence) one of us would say the line to the other. We laughed all afternoon.

I guess you had to be there.

This next one I’m not 100% sure about. I think it was with Marty, and it took place in Midtown Manhattan. We were there with my next door neighbor (I was in 5E, he in 5F) Dennis Westler. We were just hanging out in the city.

As we walked past a nice looking office building on Madison Avenue, one of them realized it held the offices of Mad Magazine. We went in. When we got to the proper floor, one of them (not me – I am chutzpah challenged) claimed we were there for a pre-arranged tour.

Whoever it was who came out, took pity on us and showed us around. That was also amazing. There weren’t a lot of creative people to meet, but there was a lot of original artwork scattered around. I remember looking at some original “Spy vs Spy” panels.

Marty – say hello.

I’m sure there are more people from my past waiting to be found, but let me see how I do with these three. I’ll let you know how this turns out.

&#185 – It’s not this way anymore, but you use to pay for each bus or subway ride individually. A two fare zone meant, you lived somewhere where you needed to ride both a bus and subway to get to Manhattan. Living in a two fare zone makes you, by definition, geographically undesirable.