Bill Beckman is one of EVO's less credited founders, a talented artist (see drawing) and EVO art director, who, according to Bob Simmons, studied at Yale and the University of Texas. He was known to have a significant side business as a dealer in his EVO days with a celebrity clientele. He eventually relocated to California.
Walter Bowart was EVO’s publisher, visionary, inspiration and founder. Understandably, his memory is summoned in nearly every one of the essays prepared for The Local East Village’s “Blowing Minds” exhibition of Feb. 29, 2012, and in this 2008 obituary, which appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
Lynda Crawford wrote for EVO from 1970 until its demise, and then for the New York Ace, the Soho Weekly News, City Limits, the New York Daily News, the New York Observer, GothamGazette.com, and many other publications. She is also a playwright.
R. Crumb was an early contributor to the East Village Other and Gothic Blimp Works first published several of his most iconic images in the publication. The comix historian Patrick Rosenkranz writes about his work here and Crumb talks about it briefly in this interview with the Paris Review. He recounts his oft-repeated pie-throwing incident in the EVO offices here, in Susan Goodrick’s 1974 interview for D.K. Holm’s book, R. Crumb Conversations. Ray Schultz’s original EVO article of March 3, 1970, describing the pie-throwing is here. His official website is here.
Coca Crystal now lives near Woodstock, New York. If you care to read more about the bizarre sex ads she mentions and you have a tolerance for explicit language and artwork, read D.A. Latimer’s piece, “I Was a Sex Fiend for a Great Metropolitan Newspaper,” from the 1979 booklet “Alternative Media: How the Muckrakers Saved America.” Archived on YouTube.com are the public access television programs that Coca Crystal produced and hosted in the years after EVO. “If I Can’t Dance, You Can Keep Your Revolution” features many of the paper’s near and dear, including the late Tuli Kupferberg, Debbie Harry, Philip Glass, and others. Finally, do read her diary entry for July 6, 1970 about an EVO-styled reporting foray to Washington, D.C.
Kim Deitch has a reserved place at the first table of underground cartoonists. The son of UPA and Terrytoons animator Gene Deitch, Kim was born in 1944 and grew up around the animation business. He began doing comic strips for the East Village Other in 1967, introducing two of his more famous characters, Waldo the Cat and Uncle Ed, the India Rubber Man. In 1969 he succeeded Vaughn Bodé as editor of Gothic Blimp Works, The Other’s underground comics tabloid. During this period he married fellow cartoonist Trina Robbins and had a daughter, Casey. ‘The Mishkin Saga’ was named one of the Top 30 best English-language comics of the 20th Century by The Comics Journal, and the first issue of The Stuff of Dreams received the Eisner Award for Best Single Issue in 2003. Deitch remains a true cartoonists’ cartoonist, adored by his peers as much as anyone in the history of the medium.
After leaving EVO, Claudia Dreifus began freelancing for national magazines, everything from Rolling Stone to the Atlantic to Scientific-American. In the late 1970s, she began doing interviews for Newsday’s Sunday Magazine, L.I., which led to her becoming one of the Playboy Interviewers, something she did for much of the 1980s. “Interview,” her 1996 collection of interviews conducted as a contributing writer for the New York Times Sunday Magazine, is used as a text in journalism classes worldwide. “Scientific Conversations: Interviews on Science from The New York Times” gathers her work, since 1999, as lead interviewer for the paper’s Tuesday Science Section. Ms. Dreifus also teaches foreign affairs and science writing at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. She is a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute, and in 2011, she and her partner, Andrew Hacker, published “Higher Education?”
Joel Fabrikant was EVO's business heavy, adored by Kim Deitch and pied in a fit of pique by the otherwise mild-mannered R. Crumb.
Charlie Frick was a rock n’ roll writer and photographer for The East Village Other. He was a network television cameraman and in more recent years has become an independent media consultant. An original light box is among the artifacts he rescued from EVO’s last office in the Law Commune at 640 Broadway. Writing in 1979 for an Alternative Media Syndicate publication (hence at least one instance of “alternative” language), he described the “controlled artistic anarchy” of psychedelic design.
John Jonas Gruen’s new book, “As Time Goes By,” gathers his portraits of the famous from the 1950s and 1960s. It launches Feb. 2 at the New Museum at an event sponsored by the Larry Rivers Foundation.
Alex Gross, a longtime East Village resident, has written of his experiences with the underground press in the U.S., U.K., Germany, and the Netherlands in his book “The Untold Sixties: When Hope Was Born.” His website is here. Check out page 48 of Bryce Walker’s report in New York Magazine of the June 29, 1970 protests against the Metropolitan Museum’s expansion plans for a glimpse of Mr. Gross - “crimson shirt blazing and his wild hair flying” - during his days as an EVO writer.
He celebrated his 80th birthday this past fall. Alex has ideas of what the EVO of today might look like and to that end, has created some sample pieces, which you can find here. He would like to draw your attention to this flyer, which he distributed at the Feb. 28, 2012 EVO event.
Steven Heller wears many hats (in addition to the New York Yankees): For 33 years he was an art director at the New York Times, originally on the Op-Ed Page and for almost 30 of those years with The New York Times Book Review. Currently, he is co-chair of the MFA Designer as Author Department, Special Consultant to the President of SVA for New Programs, and writes the Visuals column for The New York Times Book Review. His Website is HellerBooks.com.
Joe Kane’s most recent book, “Night of the Living Dead: Behind the Scenes of the Most Terrifying Zombie Movie Ever,” was nominated for a Black Quill Award and selected by Popmatters as one of the Top 10 Non-Fiction books of 2010. He currently resides on the Jersey Shore, not far from Bruce and Snooki.
Steve Kraus has been publishing the New York Good News since the 1960s. Now 82, he has lived just above Café Mogador on St. Marks Place for the past 37 years. He also volunteers for the Jewish Foundation of the Righteous.
Far and away, Dean Latimer was the EVO writer most admired and respected by his colleagues. He went on to edit High Times.
Peter Leggieri edited The East Village Other until 1969 and later operated a sculptor’s supply shop on East 12th Street until 2006. He and his wife, Missy, also an EVO vet, still have an apartment on St. Marks Place.
Dan Rattiner, one of EVO's original signatories and founders in the fall of 1965, worked along with Walter Bowart and Allen Katzman. He is more prominently the founder of the popular East End glossy, Dan's Papers of the Hamptons, and the author of 12 books, including his memoir, My Fifty Years with Farmers, Fishermen, Writers, Artists, billionaires and Celebrities, and Hamptons Too: Further Encounters with Farmers, Fishermen Artists, Billionaires and Celebrities. His EVO essays are from a forthcoming work.
Ishmael Reed’s latest novel is “
Juice!
” published by Dalkey Archives, which he illustrated with his cartoons. He is the editor of “Konch” available at
http://www.ishmaelreedpub.com/
.
Trina Robbins has been writing comics and books for over thirty years. She lives in San Francisco, and loves cats and vintage clothing. If you would like to know more about her, read some of the interviews listed on her website, where you can also purchase some of her books.
Ed Sanders is the author of “Fug You.” In the 1960s, he co-founded the ground-breaking rock band the Fugs, opened the Peace Eye Bookstore, and appeared on the cover of Life magazine. He is a classics scholar, pioneer of investigative poetics, and inventor of musical instruments. Publisher of the Woodstock Journal from 1995 to 2003, he is also the author of many books, including the bestselling Charles Manson expose “The Family”; the ambitious, multi-volume project “America: A History in Verse”; the American Book Award-winning “Thirsting for Peace in a Raging Century”; and the underground classic “Tales of Beatnik Glory.” He lives in Woodstock, New York, with his wife Miriam.
Ray Schultz moved into direct marketing after his East Village Other days and runs the firm Tell All Marketing.
Bob Simmons came to New York in 1965, left for San Francisco in 1966, and now lives in Austin, where he produces many videos.
Larry "Ratso" Sloman is best known as Howard Stern's collaborator on what were then the two fastest selling books in publishing history, Private Parts and Miss America. Sloman also bases part of his roots in EVO history and published some of his earliest articles there. His most recent book, The Secret Life of Houdini, written with magic theorist William Kalush, was a New York Times best-seller and made international news when Houdini’s relative called for an exhumation of the dead magician’s body to test for poisoning, based on evidence of a plot against Houdini uncovered by Sloman and Kalush. Sloman’s previous two books, Mysterious Stranger, a collaboration with the magician David Blaine, and Scar Tissue, the autobiography of Red Hot Chili Pepper lead singer Anthony Kiedis, both made the Times best-seller list. Sloman is currently working with the boxer Mike Tyson on his autobiography. When he's not writing, Larry can be found on the ice, scoring goals at local area skating rinks. His website is http://www.ratso.org.
A.J. Weberman was a writer for the East Village Other. His first article, an expose of the Lawrence Employment Agency, ran in 1966. Later he wrote an underground gossip column titled Bad Vibes, and did numerous articles on rock poetry for the publication. When it closed he stole the Fox Police Lock from the door of the office. In the early 1970’s A. J. Weberman became a widely known counter-culture figure after he went through Bob Dylan’s garbage. He coined the word “Garbology” to describe the journalistic technique of searching through trash for information and called himself a garbologist. He also invented Dylanology - another word he coined – which means the study of Bob Dylan’s cryptic poetry. Weberman was the first to make the connection between Watergaters E. Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis and the Kennedy assassination. He was sued by E. Howard Hunt in an effort to shut him up. Hunt later confessed to his son that he was part of “the big event.” Weberman was able to depose former DCIA Richard Helms, CI/SIG head James Angleton, G. Gordon Liddy, Bernard Barker and others. Weberman worked as a researcher for Sen. Richard Schweiker, (R-Pa) and as a Congressional researcher for Cong. Henry Gonzalez (D-San Antonio, Texas). Weberman has numerous political arrests including one for having tossed a tomato at former President Nixon. Weberman, along with I. D. Beal, was the founder of the Yippie Museum, an educational institution chartered by the Board of Regents of New York State. He is the subject of an award winning movie entitled The Ballad of A. J. Weberman. His revolutionary circle included John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman, David Peel, Tom Forcade, Aron Kay and Phil Ochs. Weberman’s other books are Coup D’Etat in America, the CIA and the Assassination of JFK co-authored by Michael Canfield, My Life In Garbology, The Dylan to English Dictionary, Homothug, The Secret Life of Rudy Giuliani, The Devil and Bob Dylan and A History of Islamist Terrorism in America. He is a Director of the Jewish Defense Organization and a non-leader of the Youth International Party.
John Wilcock, an early columnist for both the Village Voice and the East Village Other, now runs the blog, Ojai Orange, where, along with his musings, chapters of an authorized comic biography by Ethan Persoff and Scott Marshall are being posted as soon as the cartoonist and writer complete each part. So far, the opener, “The New York Years, 1954-1971” hasn’t gotten so far as Mr. Wilcock’s EVO days, but we’ll alert you when it does. His 2010 biography, “Manhattan Memories,” offers more detail on the events above. We’ve excerpted here from pages 40 to 45 with Mr. Wilcock’s kind permission.
Rex Weiner’s articles have appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine, the New Yorker, New York Observer and LA Weekly. With Deanne Stillman, Weiner co-authored “The Woodstock Census” (Viking), a survey of the impact of the Sixties Generation on American society. His last New York publishing job was as editor of Swank.
His screenwriting credits include the 1990 “The Adventures of Ford Fairlane,” based on his original stories. Weiner ruined morning coffee for many entertainment industry executives as a Variety staff reporter from 1992 –1997. He is currently Hollywood correspondent for Rolling Stone Italia and writes regularly for The Forward, for which he is covering the Los Angeles mayoral race, the subject of his next book.
Yossarian, who was born Alan Shenker, is a revered member of the underground comix tribe who, along with Alex Gross, Steve Kraus and Peter Leggieri, is among the few EVO alumni to still call the East Village home. Yossarian got his start on EVO at its sex magazine, Kiss, which was EVO’s short-lived attempt to wrest its once highly lucrative business in sex-based classified ads back from the likes of Al Goldstein’s Screw.