May 11- 1962.

"... So this cat from Haifa comes in and ..." Hip Bagel 5-12-62.

My friend Schulenberg began keeping sketchbook diaries in the 1950s when he was at UCLA. By the time he got to New York in the early 60s, it had become a habit, and went everywhere with him, like an extra limb. When I met him in ’66 he arrived at the door with it under his arm. After that, I’ve rarely ever seen him without it, not unlike the way you see some people with their cellphones – the difference being that you don’t have to listen to a sketchbook. Instead you look. One of Bob's sketchbooks. I know few people who ever met Schulenberg that weren’t soon looking through his sketchbook. At people they didn’t even know. I’m not quite sure what the fascination is (although I’m sure many of you could explain the curiosity/wonder). As he said on these pages a couple of weeks ago, he thought of it as a document of a time and place. It occurred to me that that might explain our long friendship, a mutual interest in documenting a time and place. I do think that “documenting” business sounds a bit overblown, not to say pretentious. But I’ve lived long enough to know how satisfying it is to experience by reading or looking later. Satisfying for some of us, that is. The time and the place from this particular sketchbook was New York in the late Spring of 1962. John F. Kennedy was President. The nation was in the thrall of him, his family of brothers and sisters, their relatives, the friends, their advisors, and the Wife, the beautiful wife who every woman in America wanted to dress like. Or look like. At the same time it was the coming of age of the hipster, and rock The Beatles were about to come to America and Bobby Dylan, a scruffy looking cool kid with a guitar was playing for nickels practially wherever he could get a gig in the Village. Last night looking through this Schulenberg sketchbook dated May 10 to July 20, 1962 (he has several hundred of them – usually for a month of entries and then onto the new one), looking for an image to share on the NYSD, I came upon a series of pages on a place called The Hip Bagel. The Hip Bagel was started in the early 60s by a man who became a very prominent New York restaurateur, Shelly Fireman. Mr. Fireman later went on to open Café Fiorello at Lincoln Center, as well as Trattoria Dell’Arte across from Carnegie Hall as well as the Brooklyn Diner and Redeye Grill, Shelly’s New York and Bond 45. Today his restaurants employ more than a thousand people.

Hip Bagel 5/12/62.

Hip Bagel 5/15.

Woody Allen gave it a nod in his film “Play It Again Sam” in one of his Woody-esque laments: “I gave her a hoe, affection, security. This was a girl I found waiting on tables at the Hip Bagel. I used to go there every night and over-tip her.” Woody and Shelly the restaurant tycoon aside, when Schulenberg, then in his twenties, frequented the place, it was where the hip hung out for hours and hours, and after hours. It was the Village, man. It was cool. Bobby Dylan lived in the house next door. People used to say if only he could sing, he could be a big star because his songs were so great. So thank god for Peter, Paul and Mary, right? Lenny Bruce used to go there after his stand-up at the Gaslight. Jose Feliciano got his break playing there. Warhol on the moment: We usually worked till around midnight, and then we’d go down to the Village, to places like the Cafe Figaro, the Hip Bagel, the Kettle of Fish, the Gaslight, the Cafe Bizarre, or the Cino. I’d get home around four in the morning, make a few phone calls, usually talk to HENRY GELDZAHLER for an hour or so, and then when it started to get light I’d take a Seconal, sleep for a couple of hours and be back at the Factory by early afternoon. All these people knew each other, or knew each other’s faces the way you do in New York where you see the same strangers day in and day out maybe for years. And many of these people, then in their early to late 20s, early 30s, were developing careers that garnered notice, and in some cases financial prosperity.

Left: Barre losing at Periphery. Right: Treva winning 5/19/62.

Upper right: Miles losing.* Lower right: *I was in the Reserves. I arranged it during a time when there was no war 5/17/62.

I can picture Schulenberg at that table now, sometimes alone, sometimes waiting for someone; often with a group, cuppa coffee before him, sketchbook propped up in his lap or against the tabletop, and sketching away almost imperceptibly, while in conversation or listening to someone else. The sketches where the likenesses are more exact, bordering on portraiture, means he was really listening intently to those around him, taking it all in and taking those images all in too. Many times he’d put a quote around someone’s words probably to remind himself of the person. On a couple of these pages, he identifies “Barre” and “Treva.” Barre Dennen was his UCLA classmate who came to New York to begin a career as an actor. At the time of these drawings he was in the middle of a relationship with an aspiring young singer/kid from Brooklyn with the weird first name Barbra who soon after “made it big.” At that moment, she too was “hip” for awhile there, a hip artist, but then she moved to LA and became a sun-dried chickadee. The Treva, last name Silverman in these sketches, later went off to California where she became a sun-dried sitcom bonanza writer working on a show called “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” And the sketchbook-keeper stayed in Manhattan and made a nice career for himself as an illustrator.

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