BOXES 18-21: A summer in Brooklyn and more.

In the summer of 1968 I got to live in Brooklyn Heights. I was in between apartments, having left W. 13th St. (the girlfriend of the guy I rented a room from was moving in); I had a new place lined up exactly 100 blocks to the north, on W. 113th St., but not until the fall. So it worked out well that a couple I knew, fellow graduate students, were looking to sublet their Brooklyn Heights apartment in that historic neighborhood of mostly pre-Civil War townhouses just across the East River from Lower Manhattan. Theirs was an ordinary apartment in a non-historic building near the Clark Street subway exit, but it was only a few blocks from the Promenade with its spectacular view of Manhattan and, as one looked upriver, the Brooklyn Bridge, with dockyards below and the Empire State Building in the distance.

Spring semester at Columbia had been momentous. In April, after weeks of protests over a number of causes, various student groups occupied campus buildings. Classrooms were completely shut down, with many courses continuing off-campus: my own two classes of first-year English were held in different students' apartments on a rotating basis till the end of the semester. Graduate students and faculty held heated, tension-filled meetings debating over whether to side with the student-occupiers, the administration, or nobody; eventually the police stormed the campus one brutal spring evening.

I took no pictures during those dramatic weeks--I was too busy in the midst of it all. Indeed, I see that I took only one New York photo that semester: I wish I could identify the street, because it might give me a clue as to why I took the picture. If you want to hear more about Spring '68 at Columbia you can always talk to me--but I have nothing to show. (I see that the relevant Wikipedia article opens with the statement, "The neutrality of this article is disputed.")

I did get to Cleveland during spring break, before those big events of April and May. Donya continued to be the slide star:

Well, there was time for one photo of Ellen, Judi and Sue in another vaguely Beatles-inspired shot, and one closeup of cousin Judi:

At the end of the semester I took two more New York photos: one showing the front windows of the W. 13th St. apartment I was about to leave, and one of a couple of odd dogs (miniature greyhounds?) that someone was walking in Riverside Park.

Then it was back to Cleveland, and yet more Donya pics, plus a couple of shots of the nextdoor neighbor kids on their swing. I have no idea why somebody is throwing rose petals at Ellen in a couple of the shots--maybe it was another attempt at an album-cover look.

Back in New York I began my stay in Brooklyn Heights. I see that I took one (dim) photo of the apartment itself, and two looking out a window:

But the great advantage of the place, as I've said, was the easy walk to the Promenade and its panoramic views. It was the summer before I was scheduled to take my comprehensive oral exam, and I found the benches along the Promenade a great place to read. Plus in a way that surprised me, I felt isolated from the distractions of theatre and concerts in Manhattan, not to mention hanging out with whatever friends were spending their summer in NY: places like Lincoln Center and Columbia seemed very distant, even though they were really just an easy subway ride away. In any case, the handsome, leafy side streets of Brooklyn Heights and the stunning views from the Promenade provided distraction enough, along with the opportunity for fascinating longer walks in every direction. Below is the expanse of the Promenade (built above an expressway), with glimpses of celebrity homes to the left.

The view across the river was especially impressive at sunset (I don't think I ever caught it at dawn):

The couple in one of the above photographs are fellow graduate student Dan O'Connell and his wife, who came over for a visit; they took the photo of me at the top of the page. It looks like we walked over to the entrance of the Brooklyn Bridge that evening, or maybe I took the pictures another evening:

Another time, David Hartwell came to visit, and we went for a walk across the bridge, ending up (it appears from the sequence of shots) at the Woolworth Building in Lower Manhattan. I don't know how I took the picture from the middle of the roadway--I don't think it's from a car window, so I must have stepped from the walkway when there was a break in the traffic.

Later in the summer I took a walk around the Brooklyn base of the bridge:

And here is yet other sunset (or two different ones?): a shot of a side street looking toward the Promenade, and one of the docks:

Additional slides remind me that I did get away from Brooklyn Heights a few times other than on foot. On one occasion I went with friends on a car trip to explore Staten Island, with a stop at the Museum of Tibetan Art. We returned to Brooklyn on the Verrazano Narrows Bridge; maybe we took the bridge to the island as well, since I have no shots of or from the ferry from Manhattan. Anyhow, in the photos below you see (1) the bridge in the distance (taken from the Promenade or some other Brooklyn vantage point, I assume). (2) the one photo I took on the island itself--of a shed or shed-like structure, one of the larger mysteries of my slide collection. (What exactly is it? Was there some literary connection? Could it have been part of the museum?) (3 & 4) driving over the bridge. (5) the bridge seen from below the Brooklyn ramp.

I also visited, for the second time, David Hartwell's family beach house in Fieldston, MA. This time another graduate student, Elizabeth Farber, drove up with David and me, and again David's sister Janice was visiting--and their parents as well. That's Janice on the left in the top pictures.

This time I took only a few pictures of the beach itself:

The pic to your left (or third) is looking at the sun mirrored in a smooth sand surface just washed by a wave.

Back in New York I took another walk over a bridge with David--this time the GWB near his apartment. The view looking south toward Midtown Manhattan was almost dizzying:

After we had gotten back to David's apartment in Bard Hall, the Medical School dorm he managed, I took this picture looking out on his balcony:

Next to David is his good friend Paul Williams, the founder of Crawdaddy magazine and friend/biographer of Philip K. Dick; Paul stayed at Bard Hall when he was in New York. The other three--Geoff Nulle, Tom Beeler, Randy Altman--were editors (along with myself and a few others) of the literary magazine of which David was editor-in-chief, The Little Magazine. See here for a brief history of the magazine, which published mostly poetry and fiction. We must have been having our weekly meeting that evening, where we would discuss and vote on the latest submissions.

I see that I was briefly in Philadelphia toward the end of the summer, in the company of Jim Hicks. I may have gotten a ride with him back to Cleveland, or maybe it was just a side trip from New York.

In any case, the last of my summer of '68 pictures were taken in Ohio:

In this group you see yet another pic of Ellen and Donya, plus one of a tree seen through the back-porch screen. The other four are of a concert evening at the Blossom Music Festival, the summer home of the Cleveland Orchestra: the shed from the lawn; a sculpture on the grounds; and (unfortunately dim) two glimpses of a side view from inside the shed.

Actually there is one last slide from that summer, a standard touristy photo from one more high place: the top deck of the Empire State Building. And one more minor mystery: I must have been there with an out=of-towner, since I can't imagine going there by myself or with a fellow student, but who knows at this point in time?

The next post will open with winter in a new apartment closer to Columbia and continue with a few summer side trips before a bigger trip, my first to Europe.