false arrest in the 50s in chelsea

about the photos
the one arm bandit..
someone had given me this thing out of their basement apt in the 60s...so I set it up in my loft in Chelsea (then the rent was only $125 a month for a double loft...no bathroom...in the hallway..and it was not legal then to live there, but everyone did)I set it up in my makeshift photography studio, I had background paper up and so on...during that time I let Jay Milder use my loft for an after opening party of his show...when I got back the place was filled with people, filled. I had one record on a tiny record player, lp, of Chubby Checker and every one was dancing to it...Red Grooms, John Chamberlain and who knows who else, they brought their own beer. They thought I was an eccentric millionaire who hated furniture. I mean the place was bare, with only one bed in the corner, a futon on the floor. Robert Frank came and so did this man who was like a patron of the arts and from wall street...can't remember his name right now...
in any case, one day I was blasting some music on my JBL speaker someone had given me of Bach...and I went upstairs to visit a neighbor, the painter Zax? when I came down two plainclothemen were in my apt and checking out the slot machine. Hey this works real good they said....do you any shoes to wear you are coming with us to the station downtown. yes, I was arrested that night, labor day weekend, for breaking gambling laws. Imagine this. Also, no Miranda rule then. They took me downtown, I was fingerprinted, interrogated , "what is it you do?" "I am a photographer" Oh another fucking photographer hey?" so the booked me breaking article 80, gambling. I made it to night court, after spending some hours in a cell. There were two guys across the way in another cells and I asked them what they did and they said they kept books...I said I had one arm bandits. In any case the judge heard my pleas for mercy and he said I could go home but needed to get back for a trial. About a month later I went to court. When my case came the judge yelled "Give him a lawyer!" I did not have one. Of course I bought photos of the slot machine (see photo) and the judge looked at all this and said he had a dental appt for an aching toothache and said "I will give him the benefit of the doubt let him go, dismiss the case". I asked if I could have my machine back and the judge said, as he got to go to the dentist "Tell your client not to press his luck." A reporter from the New York Post or Daily News was there and wrote up a story called "Photog takes wrong picture." I was never able to find it. If you find it let me know...

disillusionment

I had this fucking strange dream last night about my moving into a sort of commune (like the 60s) and I could not find my jacket, my wallet, my keys, or even where I was suppose to stay...and when I found the owners, living in the basement, they told me you crashed wherever you can, on any bed on the floor you can find and if you left your jacket with money and all it was probably gone....etc...
I woke up feeling like shit...it was 85 in my apt for some reason....took a good long shower and got back to my sense....then I was scanning this newspaper all about so called healing centers and using animals for wisdom, from horses to eagles to birds maybe even plants...all such bullshit it made me feel noxious....
it was only when I made myself a good breakfast, of toast, scallion and mushroom omelet, chipotle sausage, and black coffee, that I came back to my sense and felt the ground....and watched Cspan which deals with real problems in the world, no hocus pocus.....
most of those workshops with words like shaman, promised to cure cancer, spinal injuries, depression and so on and charge tons of bucks for it...who are the fools who fall for this?

I also felt disappointed that only a handful showed up at the studio and that the film was shown but in such an amateurish way in a off beat station (they do show Amy Goodman on it, the off beat newscaster with a monotonous drone voice) and filmed off the wall projection with the mikes trained on the speakers...I can imagine the quality on the TV at home for that one.
they will rebroadcast it and use the DVDs direct...so that gives me a chance to redo the film again...and give them a more decent copy.
One woman actually called me to say she watched the film and was thrilled to death....a friend of mine.

amigo, la vida es ridiculoso....

carlos del Portlando