From August 22, 2017:
As long as I have been alive (actually longer), New York’s Village Voice has issued a print edition. I purchased my first issue of the Voice – at the more expensive (out-of-town) rate – as a 13 year old during the summer of 1972 [at a “head shop” in Grand Haven (Michigan) called The Zodiac].
During junior high and high school I found various outlets to obtain that once cranky (yet exhilarating) journal. I would pore over the apartment rental ads in the back dreaming of a life in NYC. (Ultimately I found two rental situations through Voice ads: my very first share in 1983 in the “South Slope” and my current Chelsea digs in 1991.) Rare trips to visit family in NYC in junior high and high school allowed me the thrill of buying the Voice at the local price of 35 cents (the one on the stands upon arrival and the one on the stands the morning we departed). [During my undergrad years at Michigan State, I regularly purchased the Voice at the Paramount News Center on Grand River Avenue.]
Despite their various political idiosyncrasies and contrariness, I was drawn to the compelling prose of Nat Hentoff and Wayne Barrett – even if I didn’t always agree with them In my 9th grade English (1973) class, I discovered that two of Nat Hentoff’s novels were available – I’m Really Dragged But Nothing Gets Me Down (1968) and Jazz Country (1965). Familiar with his work in the Voice, I read both and enjoyed them heartily. In that class one could receive extra-credit by writing to an author and GETTING AN ANSWER. Two weeks after writing to Nat Hentoff, I proudly brought his response (and my reminder to the teacher for my extra-credit). The teacher remarked that I was the only one to avail myself of that option. I shared Hentoff’s views on civil liberties – though never his views on abortion. I was always saddened by his squeamishness with queers. As to Wayne Barrett? Being highly engaged in reform Democratic Party politics, I found his column indispensable.
Upon moving to NYC, I found getting the new Village Voice on Tuesday night was always a highlight of the week – using it to map out my week from the Cheap Thrills section and notices for booksignings and free readings in bookstores. The Voice was a quick run from both my first job in NYC at Children’s Express (Charles Street) and my perch at Village Independent Democats on the other side of Seventh Avenue South (where I was publicity chair and a member of the executive committee in the mid-1980s).
With regard to my own queer identity, a number of writers at the Voice were especially important to me in the early 1970s as I struggled in my teens with sexuality issues. Of particular note are “Lesbian Nation” author Jill Johnston (1929 – 2010) and founding member of the Gay Activists Alliance Arthur Bell (1939 – 1984) who authored Dancing the Gay Lib Blues (1971) and Kings Don’t Mean a Thing in (1978). I was later able to “thank” them for so contributing – through their writing – to my survival
When Bell died in June 1984 from diabetes related complications, I took the morning off from Children’s Express to go to his memorial at a movie theater on the Upper East Side. (At 25 years old – and my chin dropping to the floor – I oohed and aahed at the sight of people I had only read about!) That morning I made the wonderful acquaintance of Marc Rubin (1932 – 2007) and Pete Fisher (1944 – 2012).
With Johnston, that “thank you” was much more personal: At a reading and talk at the 92nd Street Y in the mid-1980s, Cynthia Ozick referred to Jill Johnston as a “weirdo.” Afterward, I let Ozick have it as she autographed her book for me by giving her an earful of a rousing defense of Johnston. I actually ran into Johnston waiting for the light at Fifth Avenue and 14th Street in the spring of 1986: I turned and was surprised to see Johnston and her partner wearing identical white button-down shirts. I immediately thanked her for her work over the years. At the time I was running for office for the very first time (though unsuccessfully): a Brooklyn school board seat. I handed her one of my fliers and grandly opined that there would’ve been no such campaign had it not been for the work of pioneers such as herself. I cited her columns that I read in the Voice as a teenager. Smiling, she responded to my gushing thanks with a wonderfully nonplussed “You’re welcome.”
When I read the pieces in this last June’s Pride edition, I thought about how much has really changed for our community…. That issue had been an annual high point for me during the 1980s and early 90s… One of my very favorite pieces in the Voice was a description of ACT UP in 1987 as “the Jetson’s generation take to the streets” in (what I thought) a wonderful piece by Richard Goldstein. As a bona fide member of the “Jetson’s Generation” (late Boomers), I continued to love it – despite the grumbling of others in the group…
Wow…. three generations as a printed newspaper… You had a great run Village Voice! Good-bye old friend…
Social + Diarist 