this coming weekend, i will be flying to new york city to partake in a publishing release party for a journal i was published in two months ago entitled si senor. needless to say, i am pretty excited & thrilled to not only to be reading, but to going to new york city for the first time in 17 years! so, i thought i would tell you about my first trip to new york city in 1983, on the highlights that has lived on, long & well with me over the years.
it was mid-summer, 1983, when i decided to take a week's vacation in new york city. i'd always wanted to go there, it was the city that never slept, where all the action was, etc. etc. i was at the time still working as an elevator operator at a bookstore. i couldn't stop thinking or talking about it, as i was so excited. when finally, friday, october 7th rolled around, my last day of work for a week.
i left the next day, saturday, october 8th in the mid-evening, via amtrak from union station in chicago & arrived the next afternoon, 20 hours later, on sunday, october 9th. october 9th was john lennon's birthday. yep, i planned it that way for many weeks. so, the moment i arrived into grand central station in new york city, i grabbed my luggage & schlepped off to the 92nd street ymca on the upper west side. once i checked in & unpacked my camera & a few other essentials, it was off i raced to the subway, to 72nd street, to the dakota building to be exact. i had a felt a few good vibes, during that time, thinking that something good was about to happen.
when i arrived there, it was a mob scene, people everywhere, hanging out in front of the dakota, as if an appearance by someone famous would soon take place. sure enough, my good vibes paid off, when yoko ono, accompanied by then eight-year-old sean ono lennon & personal assistant elliot mintz emerged from the dakota. mintz was carrying a guitar-shaped cake on a wooden cutting board & yoko, smoking a great big brown cigarette spoke to us almost immediately, telling the crowd how much she appreciated our being there to celebrate her late husband's birthday.
then sean, in silence, as instructed by yoko only moments earlier, gave someone close to me a wrapped gift, that turned out to be a cassette tape of a future yoko ono album, which i believe was, season of glass. whilst all of this was going on, i thought it might be wise if i snapped some pictures of yoko & sean & the surrounding events so my parents, friends & co-workers at home would believe me. after a few more minutes, yoko & sean & mintz disappeared & walked back into the dakota building.
other than the new york daily news, i was the only other person at the event that snapped pictures of yoko & sean. i realized that, when someone asked among the crowd if anyone had snapped pictures, to whic h i responded, "i did." i must have collected at least 25 addresses that day, for those wanting a copy of that picture i took. when i saw the new york daily news the next day, i saw the picture that their photographer had taken & it was alright, i thought.
it wasn't until after i came back from my trip & developed my photos, when i got to see my picture & realized mine was so much better than the newspaper photographer's. after friends of mine saw it, they all wanted a copy too. i gather, i must have made close to 100 prints of that photo.
i bet you're wondering; do i still have that photo after all those years? i sure do & keep it in a prominent place in my apartment, alongside of my autographs of hank ballard, carl perkins, pete best, ringo starr & sir paul mccartney! wondering how i got all those autographs? well, those are for another story at another time, but one little word of advice, just be in the right place in the right time in the right frame of mind & you will receive all that you seek.
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