History: Dropping Acid During Rush Hour Downtown Newark & Surviving The Race Riots
This amazing poster from the old Newark Armory got me thinking. Look at this stunning array of legendary acts on one stage! The era of such package shows, as they were called, is long gone, but it brought to mind my experiences growing up in Newark, being raised by my grandparents and single mom in the absence of a deadbeat dad. She would take me downtown to the Newark Library where one could roam the stacks of books and listen to records in private booths for hours. The Newark Museum was right down the street complete with its own planetarium.
I worked on the corner of Broad and Market, the busy intersection known as Four Corners where President Lyndon Johnson’s motorcade passed by as I sold newspapers and magazines in a newsstand run by a cool character named Haskell Jacobs. I remember running out of the newsstand to shake the president’s hand. I also remember the 1967 Newark riots when hordes of rioters threw rocks through the windows of the massive ten-story Bamberger’s department store. One such rioter stopped at my newsstand with a big rock in his hand, dug into his pocket with his other hand and gave me the nickel for a pink betting slip, Ching Chow. After he dutifully paid me, he threw the rock through a window of Bamberger’s. Minutes later, Jacobs rescued me, slipped me a fiver and told me to get a cab home. That night, my mom and I stayed up late listening to what sounded like gun shots and explosions.
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Weequahic High School on Chancellor Avenue was named after a centuries-old Native American tribe which translates to “the ancient ones.” My first band, The Rock Garden, played Weequahic to a not very friendly reception. (They threw rocks at us.) At graduation in ’68, in our caps and gowns, we smoked pot on Aldine Street, then cheered when the valedictorian refused to give his speech until the U.S. pulled out of Vietnam.
I worked at a Blimpie’s and used to drop acid at rush hour just to wander aimlessly through the bustling crowds of people who I found hysterically funny as they all had to get somewhere in such a hurry. I’d sit in Military Park on Broad Street by myself laughing. There was a bronze statue, “Wars Of America,” created by artist Gutzon Borglum. It was colossal. Soldiers and horses. I’d saunter over to Nedick’s, famous for their hot dogs and orange soda. I bought my pea coat with the deep pockets at the Army & Navy store where I’d stuff those pockets with food I’d steal from a local supermarket (“The People’s Restaurant” we called it) to bring back to a waiting horde of hungry hippies. I bought iridescent pants at Haynes. Or was it Orbach’s? My Beatle Boots came from Thom McAn.
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The movie theaters were ornate, built in the vaudeville era, with their highlighted dome ceilings, balconies, brass railings and huge sumptuous curtains that would open and close before and after each feature. The Adams on Branford Place would always show cartoons before the movie. The Paramount on Market Street was the scene of my school’s Board of Directors meeting that we “revolutionaries” halted by throwing garbage towards the stage. Essex County Community College’s plan was to make a liberal arts campus in the suburbs to leave our school a cheap training ground for local business interests. We threw enough garbage that they never did pass that initiative. We also—truth be told—locked ourself in the dean’s office overnight to protest something (I forget what it was) and we picketed the school, blocking other students from attending class.
I had a radio show there that I called “The Devil’s Ass.” It could be heard about as far as the lunch room. That little radio room was where some dudes offered me a white powder they called “doogie.” I snorted it and threw up. I dedicated my show to furthering the political aims of the Black resistance to collegiate racism. These guys were smart, loud, opinionated, cool and wore dashikis. They would lead the revolution! By the end of the semester , they were all shooting up in the boy’s room.
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My first concert was Vanilla Fudge at Upsala College in East Orange. The first record I ever bought was Beatles ’65. Actually, my mom bought it for me at the Belmont Record Shop on Bloomfield Avenue in Montclair. My first LSD trip was on Pleasant Valley Way in West Orange. Yeah, the same locale that The Monkees immortalized in their song, “Pleasant Valley Sunday,” written by Carole King and her husband Gerry Goffin. I dated a girl who babysat for Irwin Levine in Livingston. He wrote “Tie A Yellow Ribbon Around The Old Oak Tree” that Tony Orlando & Dawn took to #1 in 1973. We would make out on Levine’s couch and once when he got home, he played piano for us.