East Village Visit/Pt. 2 of Tribute to Bobby in NYC (Scroll down for Hart Island)

Some of you probably remember my very first post, in which I told how I came to fully learn Bobby's story as an adult after having kept his face and name "bookmarked" in my memory from when I was a little girl and a teenager -- feeling from the very start that he would somehow become important to me.  It was the person I felt the connection to, not the "movie star," even though I've come to appreciate his work and his talent as an actor.  I see Bobby first and foremost as a flesh and blood man, with faults, hopes, dreams, a personality, and a life.  And even though there are far more details about Bobby that I don't know than that I do, I imagine there's not much I could learn from here that would dampen my affection for him.

These, by the way, are sentiments from a woman who works in both the substance abuse recovery field and with the homeless population.  I harbor no illusions about the "darker side" of human nature.  I know Bobby probably had alot of secrets, did alot of things he'd rather no one ever find out about.  He probably made alot of bad decisions worse and stooped to levels he never would have thought he could stoop to in order to support his habit.  But the illness, the addiction, wasn't actually who he was as a person.  It was a mask he was able to hide his vulnerability behind as a tormented teenager, and later must have found that he couldn't entirely pull off even when he tried.

By the time Bobby reached New York City in 1964, I'm pretty sure there wasn't alot left of who he had been before he was fused to the garish mask of addiction.  We don't know alot about his time there, and whether we care to admit it or not, that's probably a good thing.  Those were, in all likelihood, the darkest of days for him.  Did he have any clean time at all there?  His track marks had been healed for six months by the time they found his body, sure.  But evidently, there was methadrine in his system.  Had that taken heroin's place?  He always seemed well-dressed, and was clear-headed enough to read books at the library, according to would-be-biographer Brian Keith O'Hara.  So did he go days, maybe weeks or months, without using?  When he was thinking straight, what were his plans and goals?  Did he know he was going to die?  Why did he never reach out for help at any of the numerous rescue missions surrounding the East Village?  Or... did he, and no one ever knew?  Why did Sharon Morrill leave him in the end, and just when he was so sick?  Did she know he was going to die?  Did she care?  Or had he declined into the shadow of the man she'd known before, and she found it easy to just... move along?  Had he become difficult to live with?

Not that I'm judging a woman I don't know for circumstances I know nothing about, by the way.  I present these questions merely as an example of how little we know -- and probably will ever know -- about the twilight of Bobby's life in NYC.

I didn't visit the East Village while in New York for the purpose of finding answers.  If biographers, old friends, documentary producers, etc. haven't been able to find them, then I know I certainly couldn't. I think I just wanted -- in my old soul's way -- to be present in that lonely place where Bobby probably did alot of suffering -- and just to pay tribute to him as he was then.  Ugliness, warts, brokenness and all.  And I can say this....

As wonderful as it was to go to Hart Island, the East Village meant even more.  Quite unexpectedly.

So!  Enough of my dissertation on old souls, human connection, broken spirits, addiction, sap, etc.  I now bring to you the East Village excursion.

After eating an amazing grilled cheese at City Island Diner and telling my mom all about my feels from Hart Island, the two of us plus Gale took off to Staten Island to catch the ferry back to Manhatten.

Dumb, by the way.  At the end of the night after we went to see a show, we were less than 30 minutes away from our hotel in the Bronx, but after taking the ferry back over to Staten Island, were over an hour away.  It would've made a lot more sense to have just rode the ferry from Manhatten over to St. George's Terminal, then come back again.  Anyway, so there's an NYC travel tip for you regarding what NOT to do.

As I mentioned before, I took with me three other painted rocks to put down at various points in New York in memory of Bobby.  The first one I took to Hart Island, and the second, I placed in a windowsill of the Staten Island ferry.

In Brian Keith O'Hara's travels to NYC about ten years ago to see what he could find out from the older residents who did remember Bobby, he found out Bobby frequented the Staten Island ferry -- a free way (or cheap -- I'm thinking it wasn't entirely free back then) to entertain himself on some days.  I painted a red bird in a tree here, thinking of "freedom".... and how free Bobby might have felt from his troubles on the ferry, for just twenty minutes at a time even, staring out at the water, the beautiful skyline, the bustling activity of the harbor.

Mind you, I know none of these rocks will stay where I put them.  It would probably be an interesting story where they end up.  My focus was on the joy of painting them, and thinking of Bobby when I placed them, having that moment... and of course, having a picture that will last forever.  Even if the rocks themselves end up in a landfill.

So after getting off at Whitehall Terminal, we decided to take the subway to the 8th Street Station to get as close as a subway will take you to East Village.  That, by the way, was absolutely insane.  Me and Mom nearly broke out into a gunfight over whether or not the yellow R indicated on my phone app meant go in the R direction or the R AND W direction.  Of course I exaggerate about the intensity of our disagreement.  But nerves totally run high among a group of country girls navigating a city subway.

By the way, she was right -- we needed RW.  So, after an apology on my part for being stubborn, off we went!  Six stops later, we came up and headed on foot toward E 10th St.

The East Village supposedly had an entire culture all its on in the 60's.  It was an art district, a kind of bohemian area where Andy Warhol's Factory was located, and the New York version of Topanga Canyon was taking form, spearheaded by the East Coast Beatniks.

No one knows for sure where Bobby "lived" here.  I'm not sure if he couch surfed with various friends and acquaintances of The Factory, and how long he stayed in each place.  We know he was found on a cot in an abandoned tenement, but no one knows for sure how long- or short-term a home the flat actually was.

O'Hara once spoke to an older woman who told how Bobby helped her carry her groceries.  He was known among some of these older locals as having been a "nice kid."  He roamed these streets... he got to know people on some level.

When we got ready to turn onto E 10th St., we were met by this sight:

Grace Church.  Built in 1846, this sweet place is still open to the public to come inside, sit in these delightful old-fashioned pews (the kind that have the little gates on each row), and pray or have a quiet moment.  Gale wanted to go in here, and I did too, so we went.

It was beautiful.  And I wondered, did Bobby ever come here to pray?  Cry?  Think about his family back home, and where his life had gone?  He was known to hold a personal faith, even if he may have strayed further from it at certain times than others.  But by New York, he was probably desperate and tired.  Did he find comfort here?  I wondered, and took my own comfort from the idea that, maybe, he did.

Sitting in this old, beautiful, sacred place, the noise from the city around us seemed so far away.  There was alot of gorgeous stained glass... I kind of wish I'd taken a picture of every window.

 

So after sitting in here a little while and then getting back up and looking around, we continued to venture down 10th St.

The foot traffic became a little more sparse as we walked.  It was an absolutely beautiful day, and we passed alot of kids skateboarding, and shopkeepers and restaurant owners coming in and out of their shops to open up these neat little trapdoors right in front of their businesses that lead down into cellars where they stored things.  It definitely didn't look like the wealthiest part of town, but the atmosphere was calm and content.  

I wore some fancy Dr. Scholl's clogs on this little excursion, but the farther I walked, the more I noticed my feet being rubbed raw.  What must it have been like for Bobby to make his treks around this neighborhood, probably often wearing shoes that weren't great?  And in the dead of winter when he was used to sunny California?  I thought about these little things as we pressed on.

Here's an example of the artsy side of the East Village.  There were alot more examples, but my phone battery was running low and I wanted to make sure I had enough juice left to get all the other pictures in that I wanted to take.

By the way, I had the best sort of company to do all my pondering with, too.  My mom and Gale kept themselves busy by looking around and finding their own things to comment on to each other, giving me my space to just muse.  And it was really good of them to walk so far out of the way for me to do all this.  Thankfully it wasn't quite a mile when we came upon Tompkins Square Park.  It was a precious little patch of grass and benches.  We passed a guy practicing tai chi, or tai bo, or whatever it was over on our right, when to our left....

I was coming upon my next spot to put down a rock.  Tompkins Square Library.

Bobby was said to have spent hours here, reading books to pass the time in those later months (again, I credit all this knowledge to O'Hara's firsthand research).  I wondered if it was here that Bobby first encountered the works of Truman Capote, to whom he addressed one of his last letters in a plea to have his life story heard and recorded.  Of course the two shared a mutual acquaintance in Andy Warhol.  But I figure Bobby might have had a respect for the talent of Capote in particular, perhaps because he was familiar with it.

So here's the library as I came upon it.

I don't know why I didn't take a picture of the inside, but when I went in, I was met by an intimate  -- if slightly dreary -- atmosphere, complete with reading stations that lined a partition of the wall, where one could sit in a sort of enclave all to themselves.

We were all desperate for a bathroom at this point, but the rule of the library is, you must either be a child or WITH a child in order to use the one here, so that prompted me to hurry a bit quicker than I would have otherwise.

I left this rock on one of the shelves.

The symbolism here in the keyhole is that I thought of the doors to other places books may have opened for Bobby during the drudgery of surviving the New York streets.  In reading, he could pretend he was anywhere else.

I like to think this may be one of my rocks that will stay safe.  There was alot of homemade art in the library, mostly stuff made by kids.  If someone finds this rock, they may set it up somewhere around, supposing it belongs there.

After looking around for a few more minutes, we left to walk just another short distance to the place where I would leave my final rock -- the building in which Bobby took his last breath.

I had heard 371 E. 10th St. was now a treatment center for men in addiction, so I was kind of sad when what I came upon was an empty building being gutted and refurbished.  I don't know if the treatment center closed, or (hopefully) was just shut down temporarily for construction.  But all there was to see were men coming in and out with loads of bricks to toss into a dumpster which sat just outside.  Here's a pic from across the street:

Sorry it's not the very best picture.  Time of day wasn't really on my side here.

I don't think anyone knows exactly which apartment, on which floor, Bobby was found in, so I don't really have that information.

But the awesome thing was, up and down this block, there were little patch gardens all along the sidewalk.  And in the one that was right in front of the building (you can see it there on your left), I found the perfect place for my final rock:

A starry night sky, for the place he said his final goodnight to the world.  And isn't it cool how that tag next to it reads "Love Grows?"

I wondered if these gardens were planted by the people from the treatment center....

And so.

We went on from there, to eat at an amazing taco place.  We took a Lyft to Broadway, did some shopping, saw Phantom of the Opera... and went on to have a really nice trip.

But the best part of it all was knowing I'd made this trek through the East Village to leave tokens that may go unheeded... but prove that Bobby's life was not forgotten.

I hope you enjoyed this little account of my experiences in NYC honoring Bobby.  I encourage anyone who can every find time and money to go here to do so.  It really does give you a strange but beautiful glimpse into the final chapter of a complicated life.

And it gives a peace, despite the questions that will always remain.

Thanks for reading!