For Now

One has heard about this place. This is where the big rock groups play, where little girl groupies jump up on the stage and do terrible things, where you can get high just breathing the air. In we go, The Kid and I, past a flock of scruffies soliciting “spare tickets.” Paranoia! I’ll be the only person in the place without knee-length hair. I’ll be mistaken for John Mitchell. Charles Manson will step to the microphone and announce that a straight has been spotted in Row E, will everybody please kill him. And The Kid—he is not mine, he has been entrusted to my care, how can I take him back to his parents in Connecticut with frizzed hair and needle-tracks all up and down his arms? What the hell am I doing here?

What I am doing is walking into what used to be a fancy movie theater —a “picture palace,” they probably called it when it opened in the 1930s. Now it’s the Fillmore East. Long upgrade through the lobby. We wander a while, looking for a friend who is supposed to be here tonight. Occupancy by more than 2,438 people is unlawful and dangerous.

CS

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C. H. Simonds

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One has heard about this place. This is where the big rock groups play, where little girl groupies jump up on the stage and do terrible things, where you can get high just breathing the air. In we go, The Kid and I, past a flock of scruffies soliciting “spare tickets.” Paranoia! I’ll be the only person in the place without knee-length hair. I’ll be mistaken for John Mitchell. Charles Manson will step to the microphone and announce that a straight has been spotted in Row E, will everybody please kill him. And The Kid—he is not mine, he has been entrusted to my care, how can I take him back to his parents in Connecticut with frizzed hair and needle-tracks all up and down his arms? What the hell am I doing here?

What I am doing is walking into what used to be a fancy movie theater —a “picture palace,” they probably called it when it opened in the 1930s. Now it’s the Fillmore East. Long upgrade through the lobby. We wander a while, looking for a friend who is supposed to be here tonight. Occupancy by more than 2,438 people is unlawful and dangerous.