Lou Reed's first year in NYC - 1965
Posted: Wed Feb 20, 2013 2:13 amfrom the NY Times
pretty wild and crazy!
My First Year in New York; 1965
By Lou Reed
Published: September 17, 2000
"When I moved into my first New York apartment, my uncle gave me a cot and a folding chair. I had been working as a copy editor for a divorce lawyer for two weeks to build up rent money. With $200 in my pocket, I quit and got the apartment ($45 a month) with a friend. It was one room with a bathtub. The bathroom was in the hall and unusable. We took electricity from the hall lighting fixture. There was no heat, but there was a window that overlooked the street three floors below.
Much of my income came from selling envelopes of sugar to girls I met at clubs, claiming it was heroin. This led to hours of feigned stonedness with those more gullible than I, watching carefully to make sure they didn't OD on sweets. What happened to the original drugs is another story.
I slept in a used Navy peacoat and did what laundry I had at a dealer's house on East Sixth Street, until a jealous lover shot my friend's leg off with a shotgun blast through the door. This caused some consternation in our crowd, and eventually eight of us banded together and moved en masse to a new apartment on Grand Street. There I slept on a small cut-up mattress that rested on the floor. It made me nervous because we had rats and I worried about being bit. At this point the Velvet Underground had sprung into being. The junkies who lived below us honored our first job by robbing the entire band of everything that was not with us at the gig.
The next apartment was on East 10th Street. This was a real apartment, $65 a month. It had a bathroom. I made the mistake of letting Ondine stay there once when I was out of town and returned to find the apartment flooded with water and a comatose body in the bathtub. Jimmy Smith had taken all my belongings. Rotten Rita had carved a poem on the front door, which hung off its hinges. The amphetamine elves had Magic Markered the walls, and the landlord had left the notice of eviction Scotch taped to the working stove. I still had my guitar and my peacoat and my B.A. in English."
Sugoi !!!
pretty wild and crazy!
My First Year in New York; 1965
By Lou Reed
Published: September 17, 2000
"When I moved into my first New York apartment, my uncle gave me a cot and a folding chair. I had been working as a copy editor for a divorce lawyer for two weeks to build up rent money. With $200 in my pocket, I quit and got the apartment ($45 a month) with a friend. It was one room with a bathtub. The bathroom was in the hall and unusable. We took electricity from the hall lighting fixture. There was no heat, but there was a window that overlooked the street three floors below.
Much of my income came from selling envelopes of sugar to girls I met at clubs, claiming it was heroin. This led to hours of feigned stonedness with those more gullible than I, watching carefully to make sure they didn't OD on sweets. What happened to the original drugs is another story.
I slept in a used Navy peacoat and did what laundry I had at a dealer's house on East Sixth Street, until a jealous lover shot my friend's leg off with a shotgun blast through the door. This caused some consternation in our crowd, and eventually eight of us banded together and moved en masse to a new apartment on Grand Street. There I slept on a small cut-up mattress that rested on the floor. It made me nervous because we had rats and I worried about being bit. At this point the Velvet Underground had sprung into being. The junkies who lived below us honored our first job by robbing the entire band of everything that was not with us at the gig.
The next apartment was on East 10th Street. This was a real apartment, $65 a month. It had a bathroom. I made the mistake of letting Ondine stay there once when I was out of town and returned to find the apartment flooded with water and a comatose body in the bathtub. Jimmy Smith had taken all my belongings. Rotten Rita had carved a poem on the front door, which hung off its hinges. The amphetamine elves had Magic Markered the walls, and the landlord had left the notice of eviction Scotch taped to the working stove. I still had my guitar and my peacoat and my B.A. in English."
Sugoi !!!