Village Voice over: End of an era in New York

As the Village Voice is about to abandon its famous print edition and become entirely digital, it seemed like the right time to look back at the publication that prepared me to work at the JC.

In the spring of 1973, I was broke. I had just moved into my girlfriend’s flat and the rent was more than my student stipend from my dad. I wasn’t about to tell him that I was “living in sin”, as he would have called it, so I needed a part-time job. As a student at NYU in Greenwich Village, I had often passed the Village Voice newspaper office. The leftist paper, famous for battling for civil rights for minorities, women, and gays, and for tweaking the nose of any authority it came near, was just up the street.

I had always been fascinated by newspapers. My dad commuted into New York City from Long Island every day by train and always brought back newspapers, many different ones. As a kid, I read them all. Later, I joined my high school newspaper and eventually became its editor. I discovered the fun in page design, measuring columns and pictures in printer’s units called picas and agates.

This time, instead of walking by the Voice, I stiffened my courage and walked in. Were there any editorial jobs open? I was directed up the tiny lift and met with someone at the top. She said, no jobs here, try the advertising department. I went back down, went through a little old-fashioned wooden gate and into the office of Sandy Fendrick, the scary advertising director. She stared at me with a hawk face and a fierce squint, obviously peeved that I’d interrupted her day. She shrugged when she saw my cv and was about to dismiss me, so I quickly told her about my high school paper. I wasn’t planning on saying what next came out of my mouth: “I know what picas are”. Her face relaxed a bit. “In that case, I think we could use you”, she said and the next day I was ushered into the ad production department in my new job as a type-speccer, at $2.75 an hour.

We designed ads for customers who walked in with reams of copy to fit into tiny ads. We sat with them and laid out their ad, trying to fit all their words and pictures. Then we would ‘spec’ the copy, ie type it up and then mark each line specifying what typeface, size and leading to use. The specced copy and ad layout would then go into a messenger bag to the printer. The printer would typeset the ad according to our layout, and the next time you saw it was printed in the paper.

The customers who came in to place ads were often arts promoters like the loud and garrulous Harvey Fierstein, who later wrote Torch Song Trilogy. He thought it hilarious to grip my leg until I squealed. Many other theatre, dance and music clubs came in. I designed the big weekly ad for the gentle, gruff CBGBs club owner Hilly Krystal, and it was very political exactly what type size each band got. I was in a band too, and I had to resist the temptation to boost us in the pecking order.

Various musicians wandered into to promote their shows, like Johnny Thunders from the New York Dolls, Paul Stanley from Kiss and many underground bands playing CBGB.

Meanwhile Sandy would be on the phone, always shouting. The Voice was so fat with advertising then that she could afford to tell difficult customers to take a walk, and sometimes she did. “You need us, but we don’t need you!” she screamed. Can you imagine that now?

But once in a while the system of sending specs to the printer would go wrong. I designed a meditation ad with the guru in the middle. For a gag, I drew a star on his forehead on the layout. Now, if I had really wanted a star on his forehead, and had indicated this with lots of arrows and exclamation points, the printer would have forgotten it. But this time, some bright spark placed a big ugly star right in the middle of the photograph, and the ad went to print. The paper came out. I kept my head down.

No one noticed for days.

I was just beginning to breath easy when Sandy came charging out of her office, steam coming out of her ears, shaking a copy of the paper, and screamed: “WHO DID THIS AD?”

All the other type speccers cowered and timidly pointed at me (thanks, guys). I stood up and she launched a blistering tirade in my face, turning redder and redder, and finally said ‘SO YOU’RE F–” But before she finished the word, someone appeared at her side and said, “Sorry to interrupt, but we have to evacuate. There’s a bomb in the building.”

So we scampered out, waited for the cops to do a search, which turned up nothing, and by the time we got back in, she’d cooled down. She gave me one of those fierce stares and then made a dismissive wave. “Never mind”, she said, “but no more mishegas like that!”

Up on the fifth floor, the journalists were ferocious. Corrupt politicians and businessmen dreaded them. Muckrakers Jack Newfield, Joe Conason, Alex Cockburn, Wayne Barrett and Anna Mayo made life difficult for City Hall and even Washington. Nat Hentoff fired blast after blast of defense of free speech and the first amendment. After the political tensions of civil rights and war in the 60s and early 70s, womens’ rights became the passion and under inspirational editor Marianne Partridge, Karen Durbin, M Marks and Jill Johnston scorched the air with feminist protest. Later, Richard Goldstein and Arthur Bell led the charge for gay rights. Week after week, they collectively filled the pages with righteous diatribes and exposes. One of them joked that they were there to “excoriate sinners” but I always thought that was a pretty good description of what they did. Music critics like Goldstein, plus Bob Christgau and James Wolcott brought unheard-of underground music to the attention of the world, from Talking Heads and the Ramones to fledgling disco.

The editors and writers’ intense passions boiled over with each other as well. Their meetings could be heard from the next floor down, with people shouting at each other and stomping out in a rage. The arguments would continue in print, with one writing a piece and the other writing a long letter to the editor, slagging it off. There was one fist fight, stopped by a shocked Books editor, who primly said “No violence!”. This was clearly overstepping the tacit limits of disagreement.

Looking back at his career at the Voice, senior editor Ross Wetzeon wrote that his introduction to Jewish culture was on his first day. He found himself having a knock-down argument with another editor, who after a while said to his surprise, “Ah, to hell with this. Let’s go get a beer”. It didn’t matter which editor was Jewish and which wasn’t. Everyone was comfortable with the culture of argue, forgive, laugh, repeat.

There wasn’t much mixing between the different floors on University Place. Classified had the ground floor where customers could walk in and place their ads for apartments, jobs and soul mates. Classified was an important part of the city’s rhythm, as people would queue up at 5am every Wednesday morning to get the first editions and spot an apartment ad before anyone else. There were kinkier sections of the classified and, more than once, very tall transvestites would reach over the counter and grab hapless Voice ad-takers and belt them for misspelling their ad. The cops were called in at least once a month.

Up one floor was Display Advertising, where I worked. Being a good size, I was occasionally called upon to eject unruly customers too.

We had a merry crew of advertising sales people, hip and edgy like everyone else there. Except one new salesman who showed up one day looking very suited and uptown, and was sniffy towards the rest of the sales staff. He soon found himself answering his phone again and again, as someone had placed a classified ad saying “Young beautiful transvestite. New in town. Seeks same,” and put his name and number on it. He didn’t last long.

Eventually I was promoted to art director of the new promotions department, working with genius copywriter Bob Sharff. One of our tasks was to produce a newsstand poster every week. One time, I spelled a star feature writer’s name wrong. He came after me. “Belknap!” he said, “It’s Jacobson, not Jacobsen! I’m a Jew, not a f***ing Swede!” These days on the JC, whenever there’s a mention of another writer named Jacobson, I always quietly double-check it.

The paper’s design was masterminded by George Delmerico and Pegi Goodman, both of whom were super mentors to a young designer learning on the job. One time a murderer had been stalking gays in the Village. He rang our reporter Arthur Bell, who coaxed a confession from him. I designed a newsstand poster, using the photo of the perpetrator in handcuffs, with a headline saying “Voice reporter catches killer”. I took it to George, who said,” Oh, I have an idea for this, let’s do it”— then he looked at it — “YES! EXACTLY LIKE THAT!” That was a good day.

Another successful poster was about a mental patient who had killed someone after being let out of his institution for a day. Photographer James Hamilton and I suggested the same headline to the editor: Murder on a Day Pass. The story went on to win a Pulitzer — with that headline!

The photography in the paper was always star-quality. Fred MacDarrah, on staff since Bob Dylan was unknown, could shoot anything, anywhere in stunning black and white. One day I saw him staring at a magazine with a picture of a drowning man. He told me that the photographer had had time to help the man but shot pictures instead and had won a prize for the photos. “I called that guy up,” said Fred, “and told him you may have won a prize, but in my book, you’re a first-class schmuck.”

There was a tiny lift, which was fine until you found yourself cornered by an advertiser who described himself as paranoid-schizophrenic and the CIA had implanted a transmitter in his tooth.

One time in the lift, Bob Sharff and I had a disagreement which turned into a heated wrestling match with the lift going up and down and us grunting and biffing away, arms and legs splaying out everywhere. No one could get on until we eventually spilled out onto the ground floor. We dusted ourselves off, went to the Cedar Tavern next door and got completely drunk. Argue, forgive, laugh, repeat.

These days there is a Village Voice alumni page online with comments from many people who worked there after I left in 1981. I can tell they have the same irreverent, defiant spirit as ever. Which is why I feel right at home when the JC takes a stand and sails against the wind. Long may she sail — and long may she sail in print!

John Belknap is the JC’s creative director