LIVING IN THE DUMP
The PUNK Magazine Office wasn’t a trash heap, but the living wasn’t easy
I’m planning a bunch of events and exhibitions to take place over the next year and am hoping to share details with you as soon as possible, but things aren’t ready for an “Official Announcement” yet. In the meantime I thought it would be fun to share a few more “war stories” about what it was like working on PUNK Magazine from 1975-early 1976.
I found the PUNK Dump from a Village Voice advertisement at the end of October 1975, when we were desperate to find any place where we could start a business. It was located at 30th Street and 10th Avenue, which was (like many neighborhoods in Manhattan back then) a slum, surrounded by industrial buildings. Most of the area between 23rd and 34th Street and on Tenth Avenue and further west was desolate, populated by draw queens, hookers and S&M bars. The Trucks, located further downtown in the West Village, was the most popular cruising area for gay men in the early 1970s, but it was quiet outside the PUNK Dump back then.
As the former office for “A&A Trucking,” there were a lot of left-behind office furniture, file cabinets and chairs:
After Ged Dunn Jr. arrived in New York City (after dropping out of Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky) in early November, we spent the next few weeks driving back and forth to Connecticut to pick up furniture from Ged’s family connections.
We each carved out our own small sleeping quarters in the storefront. Ged built up a large loft made of plywood, with a large bed above his office desk on the ground floor. (The desk was loaned to us by none other than Will Eisner, my former boss, who was moving his operation from New York City to Florida.). We used the plywood wall that separated his “office” as a makeshift bulletin board.
I had already taken the office took the space next to it, which had a steel partition separating my office from the rest of the storefront. I slept on a makeshift cot, with a sleeping bag on top of a piece of the steel partition. It also housed my art desk, stereo system and bookshelves (consisting of a few cinderblocks and a few pieces of wood). I hung a blanket up to separate my bed from Legs McNeil, who took a small sleeping space not far away from my cot.
The rest of the office, towards the back of the storefront, housed a large couch Ged managed to get from his family. (That couch would have had a lot of interesting stories about what took place on top of it!) Ged built a small plywood lunch counter behind. This was our kitchen: A fridge, hot plate and sink. We had a “water closet” all the way in the back (but no shower or bath, so we had to take baths wherever we could).
We didn’t have much money back then so we were always looking for free food. Like, we went to Max’s Kansas City once because they reportedly had a decent “free food bar” for Happy Hour. We never went back for it (it gave us diarrhea as I remember), but we tried other Happy Hour food. More often than not, Legs and I would be forced to eat Ged’s favorite cheap meal: Chicken livers. He could buy pounds of that crap from local butcher shops. Ugh. That didn’t last long. (Well, now you can understand why our partnership didn’t last very long!)
When we had a bit of money, we would eat at The West Side Diner, located at 31st Street and 9th Avenue, right behind the main post office building. The James A. Farley Building spanned the entire block between 31st and 33rd Streets and 8th and 9th Avenues, across the street from the famous Madison Square Garden. Now, it’s the Moynihan Train Hall. Next door to the diner was Maggie’s Bar, which became our local hangout.
LINK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_A._Farley_Building
Shortly after going into business, and seeing how the magazine quickly became popular, Ged decided that he needed to hire a secretary. He ran an ad in the Village Voice, and quickly hired deerfrance as a result. Ged’s insistence on hiring a “sexatary” (as he put it, which was sadly part of fulfilling “ye olde” Playboy magazine cartoon fantasy of having a sexy, young woman to “chase around the desk”).
She lasted several weeks but decided to leave for bigger and better (and to get away from Ged), but deerfrance was the first official paid employee for the magazine. She certainly left her mark!
There was a weird incident that I mentioned in the “Best of PUNK Magazine” book that was published years ago (and is now sadly out of print and difficult to find, it’s listed at Amazon for over $200!). So I’ll tell it again:
One night, shortly after she was hired, Ged and Legs joined deerfrance and a bunch of her friends to party hearty! I had other plans, so I didn’t join them, but I saw trouble on the horizon. When I came back to the Dump after midnight, I was shocked that someone had kicked the door in! I was worried that we might get robbed—or worse! This was a dangerous neighborhood.
I managed to lock the door and went to the West Side Diner to get a bite to eat. Shortly after I got there one of the employees who always took good care of us got all over my case: “Your friend came in here and threw up all over the counter and then left!”
I was shocked! But figured that was something Legs did since he wasn’t an experienced drinker. I started to apologize for him, but the West Side Diner guy said: “No, it wasn’t him—it was the other guy! Ged!”
Yeah, it turned out that Ged got so drunk after partying with deerfrance that he went to the diner to eat something to sober up. When that didn’t work, he returned to the office, couldn’t find his keys and decided to kick down the door.
And yes, this is how PUNK Magazine began. And when I wonder why the magazine didn’t become successful? It was fucked-up shit like this.
LINK to WornFree.com PUNK Magazine t-shirts:
https://www.wornfree.com/search?type=products&q=punk%20magazing*