Lessons learned

I recently revisited an old stomping ground from my senior year of college.  I spent the fall of 1975 working in and for the city of New York.  My internship was with the NYC Department of Civic Affairs and Public Events.  I learned a lot that semester, not all having to do with my major or my internship.

I joined an organized tour of Greenwich Village the first Friday of this June.  It was not the Village I remembered.  Now you have to be a movie star to afford to live there.  And the bars old beatniks, hippies and yippies frequented are now tourist traps.

But back in 1975, a place called Max's Kansas City catered to both a disco and rock crowd.  Andy Warhol was rumored to be seen there, and Patti Smith performed.

So on weekend nights my housemates and I took the subway from Park Slope into the city, to the Village, to catch glimpses of the famous.  What we found were other students doing the same.  Boys from Pratt looking for glamor laughed at us for not knowing how late the club stayed open.  Three or four am--that wasn't tonight anymore.  That was tomorrow.

Another difference was the drinking age:  18.  Don't anyone be jealous of that fact.  The trade off was the draft and Vietnam.

The most striking people I remember from those evenings was the line up of ladies seated at the bar.  All had sequined cocktail dresses, long hair and nails, and adam's apples.  And none of their dates were free.

So as I said, I learned many lessons that fall.  The most important being that my long held daydream of moving to Manhatten after graduation to work all by myself wasn't going to happen.  There was a recession, after all.  And I think I finally was figuring out all I really hadn't learned yet.  I wasn't ready to leave the nest for that much uncertainty.