Biograph Times

Foreword by a cartoon dog

2011-11-22T17:06:00.027-05:00

“Have a good time!”

That was my first line on a Biograph Theatre midnight show handbill about six months after the theater opened at 814 West Grace Street in 1972. Eventually, that line became the theater’s motto and I became its only official spokesdog.

My name is Rebus. That’s me in the illustration above, which was lifted from the top of the Biograph’s Program No. 53, published in January of 1980. What does my name mean?

A rebus is a puzzle using symbols. The viewer sees a line drawing of an eye, then a plus sign, then the letter “c”, then another plus sign, then the letter “u.” Decoded that rebus means “I see you.”

If I look familiar, in addition to my work at the Biograph, you may remember me from my breakthrough comic strip appearances in the Commonwealth Times’ special all-comics issues of Fan Free Funnies in 1973, or from my face being on handbills promoting Rock ‘n‘ Roll shows.

First at the Biograph, then afterward in countless projects, I’ve worked for the guy who wrote the stories that follow my comments here. F.T. Rea likes to say he keeps me around, because he thinks I’m a lucky charm.

Well, I know Rea is a little superstitious, but I think his reason for continuing to use me has more to do with real charm. Senility notwithstanding, my boss knows perfectly well that for a good while most folks have found me easier to put up with than him.

Naturally, I advised Rea to put more funny stuff in the stories. But he rarely listens to me, these days. Now that he seems to envision himself as more of a writer than a cartoonist, truth be told, he doesn’t spend all that much time at his drawing board.

To set the stage, the stories start out with an offbeat remembrance of a weekend in May of 1970, about a year-and-a-half before Rea was hired to manage the theater. It was the weekend that followed the tragedy in which four Kent State students were killed by national guard bullets at an antiwar demonstration on campus. Obviously, Rea was reminded of that story by the recent Occupy Wall Street/The 99% protests and the various reactions to them.

On top of the stories about the Biograph, Rea threw in some bogus, er, I say bonus yarns that touch on other places and events from the time period being covered. So, look for mentions of a few long-lost Fan District watering holes and so forth.

The stories in this collection are supposed to be true. Maybe so, but I hope the reader will have a good time reading them, even if they do come off as somewhat fanciful, at times.

Me?

Naturally, I still prefer the illustrations.

Chapter One: Living in the Moment

2011-11-22T13:20:00.002-05:00

The blistering heat added to the growing sense in the air that anything could happen. Before the program of speakers and singers began, as the burgeoning crowd was being funneled into the grassy ellipse south of the White House — the designated demonstration area — the morning’s temperature had already reached the upper 90s.

It was Saturday, May 9, 1970.

Five days earlier four students had been shot to death by members of the Ohio National Guard on the Kent State University campus during a Vietnam War protest rally; three days later two more students were killed at Jackson State.

The White House grounds and Lafayette Park were surrounded by DC transit system buses, parked snugly end-to-end. Cops in riot gear were stationed inside the bus-wall perimeter every few yards.

Estimates ranged widely but most reports characterized the size of the crowd at well over 100,000. Home-made signs were everywhere, including a sprinkling of placards that denounced the mostly young war protesters. The smell of burning pot gave the gathering a Rock ‘n’ Roll festival feel, too.

Unlike the other large anti-war demonstrations of that era, which were planned for months, this time it all fell together spontaneously. People who had never marched in protest or support of anything before had been moved to drop what they were doing, to set out for Washington, D.C. — to live in the moment.

As a convoy of military vehicles drove into the park area many in the crowd booed. When it turned out the uniformed troops were bringing in bottled water for the thirsty, the booing stopped. Dehydration was a problem that cloudless day.

After the last speaker’s presentation the ever-present police stood by watching thousands of citizens spill out of the park area, to stretch a line of humanity all the way around the wall of buses. The idea was that whether he liked it or not President Richard Nixon, who stayed inside the White House, would hear the crowd’s anti-war chants.

The demonstration flowed north, then west, from one block to the next. Long lenses peered down from the roofs of those distinctively squat DeeCee buildings. An untold number of fully-equipped soldiers were crammed into basements, visible in the doorways, awaiting further orders. Many of them must have been scared they might be ordered to fire upon their fellow Americans.

Hippies who had been wading in a fountain to cool off scaled a statue to get a better look. A few minutes later a cheer went up because a determined kid had managed to get on top of a bus to wave a Viet Cong flag. When the cops hauled the flag-waving disposable hero off, a commotion ensued.

Soon the scent of tear gas spiced the air. This story’s teller was making a record of what he saw with his new 35mm single lens reflex.

The next day I was back in Richmond for yet another gathering of my generation. Staged in Monroe Park, Cool-Aid Sunday featured plenty of live music. Information booths and displays were set up by the Fan Free Clinic, Jewish Family Services, Rubicon (a dry-out clinic for drug-users), the local Voter Registrar’s office, Planned Parenthood, Crossroads Coffeehouse, etc.

Although it was not a political rally the crowd assembled in Monroe Park, while much smaller, was similar in its look to the one the day before in Washington.

As I remember it, there were no reports about anyone being seriously injured at Saturday’s tense anti-war demonstration. Then, ironically, a 17-year-old boy — Wilmer Curtis Donivan Jr. — was killed on Sunday in the park in Richmond, when a four-tier cast iron fountain he had scaled suddenly toppled.

The photograph of Donivan falling to his death that ran on the front page of the Richmond Times-Dispatch on the next day, May 11, 1970, is one I’ll never forget.

No doubt, the convergence of strong feelings from the extraordinary week that had preceded Cool-Aid Sunday had set the scene. Shortly before Donivan fell, I remember seeing him on the fountain, seemingly caught up in much the same spirit as the hippies climbing on statues the day before.

Without that week’s unique momentum Donivan probably wouldn’t have felt quite so moved to demonstrate his conquest of that fountain. Witnesses said he was rocking it back and forth, just before it crumbled.

The way that Sunday afternoon’s be-in ended was burned into the memory of hundreds of Richmonders who were gathered in Monroe Park to peacefully celebrate being young and alive.

In those days the USA was becoming ever more bitterly divided over the Vietnam War. Every night on the televised news the death counts were announced -- numbers appeared next to little flags on the screen that represented the armed forces at war. It was a time in which living in the moment was killing off the young and unlucky … wherever they were.

* * *

Chapter Two: The Devils & the Details

2011-09-23T17:05:00.013-04:00

My first good look at what was to become the Biograph Theatre was in July of 1971. Having gotten a tip from a friend that the DeeCee-based owners were considering the hiring of a local manager, I went to the construction site chasing the opportunity.

That day I met David Levy, one of six men who owned the repertory cinema operation that would be housed in the cinderblock building going up at 814 West Grace Street. Of the six, Levy would prove to have the deepest knowledge of film history, as well as the most hands-on knowledge of how to run a movie theater. At 33, Levy, a Harvard trained lawyer, was 10 years my senior.

A couple of months later I was offered what I saw as the best job in my neighborhood, the Fan District. Without hesitation I decided to quit my job at WRNL, a local radio station. The adventure that followed surely went beyond any expectations I might have had about becoming the manager of the Biograph Theatre.

On the evening of February 11, 1972, the venture was launched with a gem of a party. The feature presented that evening was a delightful French war-mocking comedy — “King of Hearts” (1966); Genevieve Bujold was dazzling opposite the droll Alan Bates.

In the lobby, with its cinemascopic view of Grace Street through a glass front, the dry champagne flowed steadily. A trendy art show was hanging on the lobby walls. Hundreds of equally trendy invited guests were there. The local press was all over what was an important event for that bohemian commercial strip, just a stone's throw from the Virginia Commonwealth University campus.

My stint at the Biograph lasted until the summer of 1983. It would be 37 years before the next new cinema would open in Richmond — Movieland, in February of 2009.

During the 1960s, college film societies thrived. Knowing film was cool; it could get you laid. By the 1970s, many of the kids who had grown up watching old movies on television had learned to worship important movie directors.

The fashion of the day elevated certain foreign movies, selected American classics, a few films from the underground scene, etc., to a level above most of their more accessible Hollywood counterparts. Mixed and matched in double features and packaged into little festivals, such was at the heart of a repertory cinema’s style. In that pre-cable TV age, much of the current-release domestic product was viewed by the film aficionado in-crowd as laughingly naive or hopelessly corrupt.

Although none of them had any experience in Show Biz a group of five men, who were all about Levy's age, opened Georgetown’s Biograph Theatre (1967-96) in 1967. They were smart guys who caught a wave. A few years later those same owners (plus one more guy) were looking to expand. In Richmond’s Fan District they thought they had spotted the perfect situation for a second repertory-style cinema in a neighborhood that was being touted then by local boosters as about-to-blossom-into-another-Georgetown.

Local players, filthy rich Morgan Massey and deal-maker Graham “Squirrel” Pembrooke, put up the building from scratch for the Georgetown group. Significantly, Pembroke managed to get a 20-year lease for $3,000-a-month rent guaranteed by a federal program for at-risk neighborhoods, in case the concept didn’t fly.
Thus, when the Biograph closed in 1987 the building’s owners were then able to collect the rent from Uncle Sam until 1992.

Knowing they could walk away easily, if the business fizzled, the new Biograph’s creators — chiefly Levy and Alan Rubin (a geologist turned artist) — inked the deal and borrowed money to buy used seats and projection booth equipment, which included ancient Peerless carbon arc lamps to back up a pair of rugged Simplex 35 mm projectors.

The Biograph’s programs, printed schedules with film notes, covered about six weeks each. Program No. 1 was heavy on documentaries, featuring the work of Emile de Antonio and D.A. Pennebaker, among others. Also on that program were several titles by popular European directors, including Michaelangelo Antonioni, Costa-Gavras, Federico Fellini, and Roman Polanski.

After the opening flurry, with long lines to every show, it was surprising and disappointing when the crowds shrank dramatically in the third and fourth months of operation.

As VCU students were a substantial portion of the theater’s initial crowd the slump was chalked off to exams and summer vacation. In that context the first summer of operation was opened to experimentation aimed at drawing customers from beyond the neighborhood.

The brightest light in our mix of celluloid offerings was a project I had been put in charge of developing — Friday and Saturday midnight shows. Their popularity was waxing.

By trial and error we learned it took an offbeat movie that lent itself to promotion; early successes were “Night of the Living Dead” (1968), “Yellow Submarine” (1968), “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” (1971), and an underground twin bill of “Chafed Elbows” (1967) and “Scorpio Rising” (1964).

With significant input from the theater’s promotion-savvy assistant manager, Chuck Wrenn, off-the-wall ad campaigns were designed in-house to set the tone for the somewhat anti-establishment movies that seemed to perform best at the box office. There were two essential elements to those promotions:

1. Wacky radio spots had to be created and run on WGOE, a popular AM station aimed directly at the hippie listening audience.

2. Distinctive handbills were posted on utility poles and bulletin boards, and in shop windows in high-traffic locations.

Dave DeWitt, now the widely read guru of hot food, produced the radio commercials, many of which were considered to be rather humorous in their day (if I do say so myself). In his studio, Dave and I frequently collaborated on the making of those spots over six packs of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

On September 13 a George McGovern-for-president benefit was staged at the Biograph. Former Gov. Doug Wilder, then a state senator, spoke. We showed "Millhouse," a documentary that put President Richard Nixon in a bad light. Yes, I had been warned by some well-meaning people, supposedly in the know, that taking sides in politics was dead wrong for a show business entity in Richmond. Especially, taking the liberal side.

Happily, my bosses and I blew such advice off and the theater was used over the years lots of times to raise money and awareness for causes.

Also in September “Performance” (1970), an overwrought but well-crafted musical melodrama — starring Mick Jagger — packed the theater at midnight a couple of weekends in a row. Then a campy, docu-drama called “Reefer Madness” (1936) sold out four consecutive weekends.

To follow “Reefer Madness” what was then a little-known X-rated comedy, “Deep Throat” (1972), was booked as a midnight show. As the feature ran only an hour, master prankster Luis Buñuel’s surrealistic classic short film, “Un Chien Andalou” (1929), was added to the bill, just for grins.

Although it should be noted that like "Deep Throat," Buñuel’s first film was also called totally obscene in its day, this may have been the only time that particular pair ever shared a billing ... anywhere.

A couple of weeks after “Deep Throat” began playing in Richmond, it got busted in Manhattan. The national media became fascinated with the film. Its star, Linda Lovelace, appeared on network TV talk shows. Watching Johnny Carson tiptoe around the premise of her celebrated “talent” made for some giggly moments.

Eventually, to be sure of getting in to see the midnight show, patrons began showing up as much as an hour before show time. Standing in line on the sidewalk for the spicy midnight show turned into a party. There were nights the line resembled a tailgating scene at a pro football game. A determined band of Jesus Freaks frequently stood across the street issuing bullhorn-amplified warnings of hellfire to the jolly set waiting in the midnight show line that stretched west on Grace Street.

Playing for 17 consecutive weekends, at midnight only, “Deep Throat” grossed over $30,000. That was more dough than the entire production budget of what was America’s first skin-flick blockbuster.

The midnight show’s grosses conveniently made up for the disappointing performance of an eight-week package of venerable European classics, including ten titles by the celebrated Ingmar Bergman. The same package of art house workhorses played extremely well up in Georgetown, underlining what was becoming a painfully underestimated contrast in the two markets, just 100 miles apart.

Washington was a great movie town, Richmond was not.

Even more telling, over the spring a series of imported first-run movies crashed and burned. The centerpiece of the festival was the premiere of the Buñuel masterpiece, “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” (1972). In what Levy and I then regarded as a coup, gambling it would win the award, we booked it in advance to open in Richmond two or three days after the 1973 Oscars were to be handed out. We guessed right, it took the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, but it flopped in Richmond, anyway.

Management was more than bummed out, we were shocked.

Money had been put up in advance to secure a print, which was in demand because it was doing brisk business in most other cities. The failure of this particular booking and the festival that surrounded it forced a serious reassessment of what had been the original plan.

To stay alive Richmond’s Biograph needed to make adjustments.

After much fretting on the phone line between “M” Street and Grace Street the Faustian deal was struck — another film from the director of “Deep Throat,” Gerard Damiano, was booked. However, this time the film’s distributor imposed terms calling for “The Devil in Miss Jones” (1973) to play as a first-run picture at regular show times, rather than as a midnight-only attraction.

At this point no one could have anticipated what we were setting in motion by agreeing to expand the availability of “adult movies” beyond the midnight hour. For the first time, the promotional copy for an XXX-rated feature was included on a Biograph program and in newspaper ads.

Then an aggressive young TV newsman took Biograph Program No. 12 to Richmond's new Commonwealth’s Attorney, Aubrey Davis. The reporter asked Davis what his office was going to do about the Biograph’s brazen plan to run such a notorious film, especially in light of the then-freshly-minted Miller Decision on obscenity by the Supreme Court. (Miller basically allowed communities to set their own standard for obscenity.)

Eventually, the provocateur got what he wanted from the prosecutor — who had been on the job for just a month — a quote that would fly as an anti-smut sound bite. The other local broadcasters jumped on the bandwagon the next day. By the mid-summer evening “The Devil in Miss Jones” opened in Richmond it had already become a well-covered story.

Every show sold out and a wild ride began: Matinees were added the next day. On the third day all the matinees sold out, too. The fourth day the WRVA-AM traffic-copter hovered over the Biograph in drive time, giving live updates on the length of the line waiting to get into the theater. The airborne announcer helpfully reminded his listeners of the remaining show times for that night.

Well, that did it!

The following morning a local circuit court judge asked for a personal look at what was clearly the talk of the town. Management cooperated with his honor’s wishes and the print was schlepped down to Neighborhood Theaters’ private screening room, at 9th and Main Streets, for the convenience of the judge. We assumed he wanted to avoid being seen by curious reporters entering the wicked Biograph.

As Judge James M. Lumpkin admittedly hadn’t been out to see a movie in a theater since sometime in the 1950s, this particular comedy stag film rubbed him in the worst way. Literally red-faced after the screening, the outraged judge looked at Levy and me like we were from Mars, maybe Pluto.

Lumpkin promptly filed a complaint with the Commonwealth’s Attorney and set a date for issuing a Temporary Restraining Order, in an attempt to halt further showings as soon as possible.

The next day a press conference was staged in the theater’s lobby to make an announcement. Every news-gathering outfit in town bought the premise and sent a representative. They acted as if what was obviously a publicity stunt was actually 24-carat news, because it served their purpose to play along. After DeWitt — who was then representing the theater as its ad agent — laid out the ground rules and introduced me to the working press, I read a prepared statement for the cameras and microphones.

The gist of it was that based on demand — sellout crowds — the crusading Biograph planned to fight the TRO in court. Furthermore, the first-run engagement of “The Devil in Miss Jones” would be extended — it would be held over for a second week.

During the lively Q & A session that followed, when Dave scolded an eager scribe for going too far with a follow-up question, it was tough duty holding back the laughing fit that would surely have broken the spell we trying to cast over the reporters.

The TRO stuck, because Lumpkin still had all the say-so. “The Devil in Miss Jones” grossed about $40,000 in the momentous nine-day run the injunction halted.

Technically, the legal action was against the movie, itself, rather than anyone at the Biograph. Which obviously suited me just fine. The trial opened on Halloween Day. Judge Lumpkin, whose original complaint to the Commonwealth’s Attorney had set the process in motion, served as the trial judge, too.

Objections to that quizzical affront to justice fell on Lumpkin’s stone cold deaf ears.

On November 13, 1973, Lumpkin put all on notice: If you dare to exhibit this “filth” to the public, then stand by for certain criminal prosecution. So it was that “The Devil” was banned by a judge in Richmond, Virginia.

The plot to answer the judge's decree was hatched in early January of 1974 in my office, next to the projection booth on the second story. Having finished the box-office paperwork, your truth-telling narrator was browsing through a stack of newly acquired 16mm film catalogs and probably enjoying a cold PBR longneck. As it was after-hours, the scent of recently-burned marijuana may have been in the air when a particular entry — “The Devil and Miss Jones” — jumped off the page.

It was instantly obvious that the title for that 1941 RKO light comedy had been the inspiration for the X-rated movie’s title — “The Devil in Miss Jones.”

It should be noted that the public had yet to be subjected to the endless puns and referential lowbrowisms the skin-flick industry would eventually use for titles. This was still in what might be called the seminal days of the adult picture business.

The plan called for using the upcoming second anniversary as camouflage. DeWitt and the theater’s resourceful assistant manager, Bernie Hall, were in on the early scheming. Then, in a deft stroke — suggested by Alan Rubin — a Disney nature short subject, “Beaver Valley” (1950), was added to the birthday program.

The stunt’s biggest problem was security. The whole scheme rested on the precarious notion that the one-word difference in the two titles, which spoke of the Devil's proximity to Miss Jones, wouldn’t be noticed. It was something like hiding in plain sight. The staff fully understood that the slightest whiff of a ruse would mean our undoing. Thus, absolutely no one outside our group could be told anything.

No one.

Subsequently, the theater announced in a press release on DeWitt’s letterhead that its second anniversary celebration would offer a free admission show. The titles, “The Devil and Miss Jones” and “Beaver Valley,” were listed with no accompanying film notes; free beer and birthday cake would be available as long as they lasted.

Somehow, a rumor began to circulate that the Biograph might be out-maneuvering the grasp of the court’s decree by not charging admission. The rumor found its way into legit print — the street gossip section of The Richmond Mercury. That was sweet.

The busier-than-ever staff fielded all inquires, in person or over the telephone, by politely reciting the official spiel, “We can only tell you the titles and the show times. Yes, the admission will be free. No further details are available.”

The evening before the event the phones were ringing off the hook. The anticipation was fun, reporters were snooping about. One, in particular, seemed to be clawing his way toward the key. In the lobby, as I manned my familiar post at the turnstile, he said to me, “It has to have something to do with the title.”

He was getting too close; to fend him off I had to take a chance. So I told the guy that what was going to happen the next day would be a far better news story than the story of spoiling it the day before ... if there really was a trick to it.

Gambling that it would work, I asked him to leave it alone and trust that once it all unfolded he wouldn't regret it. Fortunately, the newsman said OK and kept his word. His identity must remain a secret.

Up until the box office opened no one else outside our tight circle appeared to have an inkling of what was about to happen. Amazing as it may sound, the caper’s security was airtight. It was absolutely beautiful teamwork!

The line for the Biograph's special anniversary screening/party began forming before lunch. As the afternoon wore on, with thousands of people lining up, it was suggested to me more than once that we could eventually have a riot on our hands. What would happen if we lost control of the situation?

Nobody knew. That’s what made it so exhilarating!

The box-office for the 6:30 p.m. show opened at 6 p.m. By then the line stretched more than three-quarters of the way around the block. It took every bit of a half-hour to fill our 500-seat auditorium. No doubt, we turned away at least six or seven times that number.

The sense of anticipation in the air was electric as the house lights in the auditorium began to fade. Outside, on the sidewalk, hundreds of people stayed in line for the second show at 9 p.m.

As the prank unfolded in layers only about a third of the crowd stayed through both movies. Afterward, there were lots of folks who said it was the funniest thing that had ever happened in Richmond. Of course, a few hard-heads got peeved. But since admission had been free, as well as the beer and cake, well, there was only so much they could say.

The rush that came from living in the eye of that day’s storm was intense, to say the least. Gloating over the utter success of the gag, as the staff and assorted friends finished off the second keg, was as good as it gets in the prank business.

Meanwhile, thoroughly amused reporters were filing their stories on the hoax. The next day wire services and broadcast networks picked up the story. And, the Biograph Theatre returned to business as usual with an Andy Warhol double feature.

A few days later NPR’s All Things Considered went so far as to compare the Biograph’s prank to Orson Welles’ mammoth 1938 radio hoax. Which was fun to hear. Fortunately, I had the good sense to tell the interviewer that in comparison our stunt was "strictly small potatoes."

Later that same month the staff went back to work on “Matinee Madcap,” a 16mm film project in production. Trent Nicholas, then one of the theater’s ushers and later an assistant manager, shared the directing credit with me. The rest of the staff and several of the Biograph’s regulars appeared as players. The plot, calling for a good deal of slapstick chase-scene footage, conveniently set all the action in the movie theater.

Although post-prank life seemed to fall back into a familiar routine, big changes were on the horizon. With Watergate revelations in the air and the Vietnam War winding down, the interest in politics and social causes on American campuses began to evaporate. VCU was no different. In the spring of 1974 “streaking” replaced anti-war demonstrations as college students’ favorite expression of defiance.

Six months after the theater’s second anniversary splash, the same month that Richard Nixon resigned the presidency, the Biograph closed down for a month to be converted into a twin cinema. With construction workers toiling 24 hours a day that accomplishment remains a story of extremes, to itself. Some of them were gobbling up white crosses like they were Milk Duds.

Automating the change-overs from one 35mm projector to the other was essential to controlling costs. Among other things that meant Xenon lamps, high intensity bulbs that could be ignited by switches, had to replace our out-of-date, manually-operated carbon arc system.

On the day the exchange was made I got to see the same scene projected onto the screen with the two light sources. The light from the old system, which used two burning carbon rods, was whiter and gave the picture more depth and sparkle. The Xenon light was slightly yellow and had a flattening effect on the image.

Not long after that change David Levy split with his other partners. That left four of the original six Richmond Biograph owners still on board. Levy (who died in 2004) went on to distribute alternative films regionally, plus he bought and operated The Key on Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown.

The manager’s job at the Biograph in Richmond became more complicated with two screens to fill. The whole repertory cinema mission was becoming blurred with the passing of time. Following the accumulation of 1974's events, a year of many changes, much of what had appeared to be among life’s absolutes became steadily less clear for the dreamer who had started out believing he could change Richmond by screening great films.

As the edgy punk style began replacing the hippie culture that had ruled the Grace Street strip for the better part of a decade, none of us who were working at the Biograph Theatre had an inkling that the zenith of the repertory cinema era, nationally, was in the rear-view mirror.

In the spirit of a postscript, here's a personal note:

At the press conference in the Biograph’s lobby, I asked for the public to weigh in. Send me your opinions, I entreated my local news audience. I framed it with questions like: Are we right or wrong to fight the Temporary Restraining Order? Is this a freedom of speech issue, or not? Who should decide what movies you can see?

Eventually I got over 100 letters, cards, etc. Some were mailed to the theater, others dropped off. Most were supportive but not all. There were a few letters that were quite entertaining. So, I collected the best of them in an cardboard box (I don't remember what brand of candy came in the box), figuring they might be useful down the road.

Into the same box went clippings about the tumultuous run of “The Devil in Miss Jones” and the Biograph’s news-making days in court. Later on, several stories about the prank from various newspapers from out of town were tossed in.

Then, about a year after the hoopla, the prankster suddenly changed his mind. Caught up in a bad mood — caused in some part by a slipped disc that was dogging me at the time — I sat in my office festering over the idea that no matter how hard I ever worked to put over the greatest art films, most people in Richmond would simply ignore them.

After the twinning of the theater I couldn't watch the movies through a window in my office, anymore. That window was a much-missed advantage to the one-screen setup. A year of prank-driven attaboys had suddenly added up -- I‘d had my fill of it. The annoying thought of being known mostly for my connection to a somewhat creepy, even pretentious, porno movie wasn't setting well with me.

At 26, perhaps I already suspected the Terry Rea of the future might develop an embarrassing tendency to wallow in nostalgia. Just like that, I decided to play a time trick on my future-self by deliberately throwing away those artifacts I’d surely want back … some day.

Perhaps the bitter need my precious Biograph had developed to show trashy movies, in order to be allowed to also show important movies, grossed me out a little extra on that particular winter’s afternoon.

Walking away from the dumpster and crossing the cobblestone alley behind the theater, I laughed at what I had just done; the moment is still vivid.

When I think back about what an effort it took just to keep the Biograph Theatre's doors open in those days, it seems like it was all an elaborate stunt … pranks for the memories.

* * *

All rights are reserved by F.T. Rea
4,190 words

Chapter Three: Discovering the Fan

2011-09-23T17:01:00.011-04:00

In 1973 an ad hoc group of 21 merchants in the VCU area cooperated for a one-time-only promotion that went over quite well -- Discover the Fan. None of the participating businesses are still there and open for business.

Click on Rebus' nose to enlarge the art.

After what had been a dreary return-to-winter spell, on April 14 the weather was absolutely spectacular. For that Saturday afternoon the 800 and 900 blocks of West Grace Street, and environs, were packed with an unprecedented amount of foot traffic. There was live music. Hundreds of helium-filled balloons and free prizes donated by the merchants were given away.

The street was not closed, which meant motorized traffic on Grace was slowed to a crawl all day.

Grace Street was a busy one-way street heading west in those days. There were thousands of ordinary-looking people milling about having a good time. Many of them seemed like tourists. Kids with balloons were everywhere. For one bright day that bohemian strip known for its leftover beatniks and long-haired hippies looked more like a county fair than the hodgepodge of shops and noisy beer halls it actually was.

The handbill above (done by yours truly), with its list of participating businesses, provides a snapshot of the area in what was probably the zenith of the hippie age. Some of the characters who ran those businesses were rather interesting people. Getting them to agree to do anything in unison was a rare feat.

At the time I had been the manager of the Biograph Theatre for a little over a year and the promotion itself was my project. Many people helped put it together, but it couldn't have happened without the help of Dave DeWitt and Chuck Wrenn.

Below is a piece about this event, written by columnist Shelley Rolfe, who lived only three blocks from the Biograph:

Shelley Rolfe’s
By the Way
Richmond Times-Dispatch (April, 16, 1973)

It was breakfast time and the high command for Discover the Fan Day had, with proper regard for the inner man, moved its final planning meeting from the Biograph Theater to Lum’s Restaurant. Breakfast tastes ran a gamut. Eggs with beer. Eggs with orange juice. H-hour -- the operations plan had set it for noon -- was less than three hours away. Neither beer nor orange juice was being gulped nervously.

Terry Rea, manager of the Biograph and the extravaganza’s impresario, was reciting a last-minute, mental things-to-do list. There was the vigilante committee, which would gather up the beer and soft drink cans and bottles that invariably infest the fronts of the shops in the 800 and 900 blocks of W. Grace St., focus area of the discovery.

The city police had promised a dragnet to sweep away the winos who also invariably litter the neighborhood. The day had bloomed crisp and sunny, the first dry Saturday since Groundhog Day. “I knew it wouldn’t rain,” Rea said with the brash confidence of the young. “Lots of young businessmen around here,” a beer drinker at another table said. The free enterprise system lives.

REA WAS assigning duties for the committee that would rope off two Virginia Commonwealth University parking lots that would serve as the setting for a fashion show and band concert. The committee to blow up balloons, with the aid of a cylinder of helium [sic]. One thousand balloons in a shrieking variety of colors. “If we only get 500 kids... two to a customer,” Rea said cheerfully.

“I need more people,” said the balloon task force leader.

Twenty-one businesses were involved in the project. Each of them had contributed prizes, and gift certificates had been put into plastic Easter eggs. An egg hunt would be part of the day, and Rea had a message for the committee that would be tucking the eggs away: “Don’t put them in obvious places, but don’t put them were people can get hurt looking for them.”

“We talked about doing this last summer but we never got it together,” Rea said. There had been fresh talk in late February, early March, and it had become airborne. The 21 businesses had anted up $1,500 for advertising, which was handled by Dave DeWitt, proprietor of a new just-out-of-the-Fan, small, idea-oriented agency.

“Demographically, we were aiming for people between 25 and 34,” Rea said. There had been newspaper advertising and spots on youth-oriented radio stations. “We had a surplus late in the week...” Rea said. The decision was made to have a Saturday morning splurge on radio station WRVA. “Hey,” said a late arrival, “I heard Alden Aaroe talking about it.”

“We wanted people to see what we have here,” Rea said. “People who probably close their windows and lock their doors when they drive on Grace Street and want to get through here as quickly as possible.”

Well, yes, there must be those who look upon the 800 and 900 blocks as symbolic of the counterculture, as territory alien to their visions of West End and suburban existence. Last November the precinct serving the 800 and 900 blocks went for George McGovern, by two votes. Not a landslide, but, perhaps, a trend.

NOON WAS approaching. Rea and DeWitt set out on an inspection tour. Parking lot ropes were being put into place. Rock music blared from exotically named shops. The balloon committee was still short on manpower. An agent trotted out of a shop to report, “They’ve got 200 customers ...” And how many would they normally have at this hour of a Saturday?

“They wouldn’t be open,” Rea said.

Grace Street was becoming clogged with cars It would become more clogged. Don’t know how many drivers got out of their cars, but, for a while they were a captive audience making at least vicarious discovery.

Also much pedestrian and bicycle on the sidewalks. Merchants talked of espying strangers, of all ages. A white-haired woman held a prize egg in one hand, a balloon in the other. A middle-aged man had rakishly attached a balloon to the bill of his cap.

The fashion show went on to the accompaniment of semijazz music and popping balloons, most of them held by children. Fashions were subdued. A dress evocative of the 1840s. Long skirts. Loudest applause went to a man who paraded across the stage wearing a loud red backpack. Everybody’s urge to escape?

ON GRACE STREET a sword swallower and human pin cushion was on exhibition. No names please. “My mother ...” he said. He wished to be identified only as a member of “Bunkie Brothers Medicine Show.”

Discounted merchandise on sale included 20-yesr-old British Army greatcoats and a book fetchingly titled “Sensuous Massage.” Sales resistance remained firm.

On Harrison Street a sidewalk artist was creating. A wino, who had somehow escaped the dragnet, lurched across the sidewalk art muttering. “Free balloons ...” In a shop a man said, “I want the skimpiest halter you have ... for my wife.”

On an alley paralleling Grace Street, a man holding a hand camera and early on a VCU class assignment was directing actors. One stationed in a huge trash bin. “Waiting for Godot” revisited? The second, carrying a an umbrella in one hand, popcorn in another, approached the bin. A hand darted out for popcorn. “I ran out of film!” screamed the director.

Everything was being done again. The actor in the bin emerged, seized the umbrella and ran. “Chase him,” from the direct. Actor No. 2 did a Keystone Kop-style double take, jumped and ran. A small crowd that had gathered applauded.

LATE IN the day. Traffic still was at a saturation level. Early settlers said the territory hadn’t seen such congestion since the movie, “Deep Throat.” Rea spoke of objectives smashingly achieved. Euphoric talk from him on another day of discovery in September. City Hall would be petitioned to block off Grace Street.

* * *

Rolfe’s time capsule presented the neighborhood along Grace Street, adjacent to VCU, on what was a day like no other. A few of the merchants told me they set new records for business that day.

Later in the ‘70s some of the merchants in the area did cooperate to run other promotions. They petitioned the City of Richmond to block off Grace Street a couple of times. But rather than adding to level of safety it seemed to invite rowdiness.

However, the serendipitous level of delight and success enjoyed by the event Rolfe described was never equaled.

* * *

Chapter Four: The Streaking Riot

2011-09-23T16:54:00.018-04:00

Some years turn out to be all about change. 1974 was surely one of those years. It was also a time in which extremes masqueraded as the norm.

The most obvious change in the air in 1974 had to have been the unraveling of the presidency of Richard Nixon. In parallel, the whole culture shifted during 1974, as tastes in music, clothes, politics, movies, drugs, and you-name-it, took off in new directions. It was also the year in which social causes suddenly went out of style.

Going into 1974, no one would have guessed the most popular gesture of group defiance on campus -- the protest march -- would morph into spontaneous gatherings to cheer on naked people, as they ran by. Yet, in the spring of 1974, streaking on college campuses became a national phenomenon.

Richmond’s police chief, Frank Duling, announced that his officers would not tolerate streakers running around in the city’s streets, alleys, etc. He didn’t care whether they were students, or not. But the VCU police department said if it took place on campus, streaking was a university matter and would be dealt with by its personnel.

The relationship between Richmond and VCU was still somewhat awkward in this period. And, leading up to this point, there had been an escalating series of incidents on, or near, the VCU campus. Police dogs had been set loose in crowds; cops had been pelted with debris.

So, Richmond’s police department had some history with what might have been seen as the anti-establishment crowd based in the lower Fan District, leading up what happened on the 800 block of W. Franklin St. on the night of March 19, 1974.

Several groups of streakers had made runs before four streakers rode down Franklin in a convertible at about 10 p.m. The crowd of 150-to-200 cheered as the motorized streakers waved. The mood was festive. I know this firsthand, because I was in that crowd. This scene played out a block from the Biograph Theatre.

Seconds later a group of some 50 uniformed policemen stormed in on small motorbikes and in squad cars from every direction to arrest those four streakers in the car. No VCU cops were involved.

After a lull in the action, the Richmond cops inexplicably charged into the assembled bystanders. A few of those bystanders were dragged into the middle of the street.

One kid was knocked off of his bicycle and slammed repeatedly against the fender and hood of a police car. Others were beaten with clubs or flashlights. It was a shocking.

It was a riot -- a police riot.

When the dust settled 17 people had been arrested. Most of them were not streakers. While I’ve seen some clashes between policemen and citizens over the years at anti-war demonstrations and a few brawls, up close, what happened that night on Franklin St. was the most out of control I've ever seen from a large group of uniformed officers of the law.

Of course, I didn’t go to the Cherry Blossom Music Festival (which was headlined by the Steve Miller Band and Boz Scaggs) on April 27th at City Stadium. That was where the war between Richmond's partying hippies and its police force escalated beyond all previous clashes. When police officers attempted to arrest pot-smoking members of the audience, things got out of hand. Several police cars were destroyed in what turned into a four-hour battle. In all, 76 people were arrested.

This melee put the kibosh on any outdoor rock 'n' roll shows in Richmond, with alcohol available, for several years.

Back to the streakers on campus angle: Richmond's city manager, Bill Leidinger, promised me there would be an investigation into the conduct of the local police on Franklin St. on March 19 by an outside organization.

In exchange for that promise, I didn't go to the press with some volatile charges being made by a guy who said he had photos of the beatings. Unfortunately, he may have talked about them too much. He showed up at the theater, claiming the prints and negatives had been stolen from his car — while he was in a store, briefly — on his way to deliver them to me. It was strange; I had offered to put the stuff in the theater’s safe, because he told me he felt paranoid about it. The cat got so scared he left town.

Leidinger did not make good on his promise. Eventually, Richmond's police department held an in-house investigation of its own dirty doings on Franklin St. It found that it had done nothing wrong. I regretted trusting Leidinger.

1974 was a great year for movies, too. At the Biograph we premiered “Chinatown,” a superb film about corruption. We got it and several other mainstream Hollywood productions that year because Paramount and Neighborhood Theatres were having a feud. It’s still my all-time favorite feature.

Here are some other noteworthy events that happened during 1974:

January 2: President Nixon signed a bill mandating a 55 mph speed limit in order to conserve gasoline.

February 4: Patty Hurst was abducted; eight days later the Symbionese Liberation Army told the Hurst family it had to give $230 million in food aid to the poor.

March 2: Nixon was named by a federal grand jury as a co-conspirator in the Watergate cover-up.

April 8: Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s career home run record with his 715th round-tripper. Later we found out about the death threats Aaron had received leading up to his feat.

April 15: Patty “Tania” Hurst helped her captors rob a bank at gunpoint. Nobody knew what to make of it.

May 15: A.H. Robins Co. yielded to pressure from the feds to take its contraceptive device, the Dalkon Shield, off the market.

July 1: Argentina’s President Juan Peron died. His wife, Isabel, took over in his stead.

July 27: The House Judiciary Committee voted 27-11 to impeach Nixon. Three days later the Supreme Court said Nixon had to surrender tape recordings of White House meetings that had been sought by the Watergate investigation’s special prosecutor.

August 8: Nixon resigned in disgrace; President Gerald Ford was sworn in. Millions of hippies stayed too long at the party to celebrate Nixon's downfall.

August 12: The Biograph Theatre closed to be converted by a 24-hour-a-day construction crew into a twin cinema in four weeks.

September 8: Ford pardoned Nixon, which all but sealed Ford’s defeat when he ran for reelection in 1976.

October 29: Muhammad Ali regained the world heavyweight boxing crown he had lost by refusing to be drafted into the army in 1967. In Zaire, Ali defeated then-champion George Forman by a knockout in the eighth round.

November 13: Yasir Arafat, the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, addressed the UN with a pistol strapped to his waist. Supporters of Israel cringed.

December 12: Georgia governor Jimmy Carter announced he would run for president. Nobody noticed. Outside of his immediate circle of friends and advisers, who could have imagined it would matter?

* * *

All rights are reserved by F.T. Rea
1,181 words

Chapter Five: Birth of the Blockbuster

2011-09-23T16:51:00.004-04:00

The movie business changed during the summer of 1975. A new style of creating, promoting and exhibiting feature films was established when “Jaws” opened in 465 theaters, coast-to-coast, and became a box office smash.

Typically, in those days, major releases opened initially in the most popular movie houses in a handful of large cities. Which meant the advertising buys were all local. The unprecedented marketing strategy for “Jaws” required enormous confidence, because its distributor had to spend millions on national advertising and strike at least 465 prints of the film.

Before that summer was over “Jaws” had already broken all-time Hollywood box office records.

Washington D.C. was a regional hub for film distribution. Part of the strategy for releasing “Jaws” was that the distributor, Universal, chose not to screen the film for bookers and exhibitors in the usual way. Ordinarily, a feature about to be released would be screened a couple of times in a small screening room downtown; it was run by the National Association of Theater Owners and seated about 50 people. Bookers for theater chains would attend the screenings to help them weigh how much money should be bid for the rights to exhibit the picture in a given market. But any industry insider might have been in the audience.

At this time I managed the Biograph Theatre on Grace Street in Richmond. My bosses were located in Georgetown and I saw several movies in the DeeCee screening room over the 12 years I worked for the guys who ran the Biograph on "M" Street.

The first and only screenings of “Jaws” took place about a month before it was to open. It was shown to theater owners and their guests in selected cinemas in maybe a dozen cities on the same night. As I remember it, in DeeCee the function was at The Ontario.

As a treat my bosses gave me four of their allotment of tickets to the screening of “Jaws.” The auditorium was packed and the show went over like gangbusters. The audience applauded as the movie’s credits were lighting up the screen.

Not only was I knocked out by the presentation, I came back to Richmond convinced “Jaws” would be a gold mine. It was the slickest monster movie I’d even seen. The next day I tried to talk my bosses into borrowing a lot of money to put up a big cash-in-advance bid on “Jaws.”

Ordinarily, such a picture would play at the dominant theater chain’s flagship house. I wanted to bet everything we could borrow to steal the picture by out-bidding Neighborhood Theatres, Inc., for the Richmond market.

Well, we didn’t get the money. But it was satisfying watching “Jaws” go on to set new records for grosses. Its unprecedented success put its director, Steven Spielberg, on the map.

After “Jaws” everybody in Hollywood rushed out to try to duplicate the way the producers and distributors had handled it. Thus, in 1975, the age of Hollywood-produced summer blockbusters with massive ad campaigns and widespread releases began.

Another thing “Jaws” did was make guys like me feel intimidated by Spielberg’s outrageous success at such a tender age. I remember reading that he was younger than me.

Although I actually had a great job for a 27-year-old guy who loved movies, it offered no direct connection to filmmaking. At this time I had one nine-minute film and one 30-second television commercial, both shot in 16mm, to my credit. 1975’s Boy Wonder, Steven Spielberg, made me feel like I was on the wrong track.

A few night’s ago I watched a BBC-produced documentary, “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex, Drugs and Rock 'N' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood,” about filmmaking in the ‘60s and ‘70s. It was on Turner Movie Classics. Made in 2003, it was thoroughly entertaining. Directors and other players from that time were interviewed.

Among those who made comments in the documentary were Tony Bill, Karen Black, Peter Bogdanovich, Roger Corman, Richard Dreyfuss, Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, László Kovács, Kris Kristofferson, Arthur Penn and Cybill Shepherd.

Dreyfuss, who was one of the stars of "Jaws," spoke of attending one of those pre-release screenings. He said he totally forgot himself as the actor on the screen, because he got caught up in the experience of seeing it for the first time in a crowded theater.

Actress Margot Kidder (best known for her Lois Lane portrayals in the Superman series of movies) appeared on camera several times. She made a joke out of how Spielberg had begun to fib about his age, once he became so famous. She had known him before his sudden notoriety, so she noticed when he went from being older than her to being younger.

Kidder claimed Spielberg was fudging his birth date by a couple of years.

Well, flashing back on my silly jealousy to do with Spielberg’s rise to stardom, when he was supposedly younger than me, I had to laugh out loud.

Then I looked Spielberg’s age up; he’s older than both Margot and me.

So, I Googled around and found some old articles about “Jaws” and Spielberg. Yes, it looks like Kidder was right. Back in the ‘70s, perhaps to play up the Boy Wonder aspect of the story, Spielberg’s birth date was being massaged. Somewhere along the line, since then, it looks like it got straightened out.

Laughing at one’s own foolishness is usually a healthy exercise. Yes, and when the laugh has been waiting 34 years to be discovered, it’s all the sweeter.

After all, nothing has ever been more integral to Hollywood’s special way of doing business -- before or after “Jaws” -- than making up fibs, especially about one’s age.

* * *

All rights reserved by F.T. Rea
952 words

Chapter Six: Swordfish of '76

2011-09-23T16:48:00.015-04:00

Referred to as the “hippie league” by softball players who played in the polyester-clad softball world governed by recreation and parks departments, the Fan District Softball League had its own style, which leaned toward cotton, silk-screened T-shirts. Its games were played on “open fields,” rather than in softball complexes with fences.

Among other things that meant the Fan League featured a style that put more emphasis on defensive play, rather than simply a home-run derby, with big-bellied Bubbas trotting around the bases. It also meant the league’s activities received less scrutiny by authorities outside of itself, which was then viewed as a good thing.

The somewhat unorthodox Fan League bubbled up out of the pop culture ooze of the summer of 1973, which was the heyday of WGOE, the AM radio station that ruled the Fan District. In daylight hours its sound could be heard leaking out of the shops of the commercial strip of West Grace Street, adjacent to Virginia Commonwealth University. WGOE, inadvertently set the league in motion when its promotional softball team of deejays and some ringers, the ‘Nads, played games against impromptu squads representing a few regular advertisers on the station, mostly bars.

By the next summer teams began to jell, but there was no formal schedule and fields were still being commandeered, rather than secured by arrangement with any proper authority. Some of the games were played at Thomas Jefferson HS and at Hanover Wayside.

By 1975 the name Fan District Softball League had come into use and the organization had its first commissioner — Van “Hook” Shepherd. Cassell’s Upholstery beat the Bamboo Cafe in a one-game playoff for the inaugural season’s championship finale. The four other teams in the league that season were the Back Door, Sea Dream Leather, Uptop Sub Shop and WGOE.

In 1976, in addition to the regular season the league staged two tournaments. Teams representing the Biograph Theatre, Hababas, J.W. Rayle, deTreville, the Pinheads (the VCU sculpture department and friends) and the Rainbow Inn were formed in 1976.

As the years wore on more bars and whatnot came and went. During the first decade of the league’s existence, next to the music and nightlife scene, softball-related activities were at the heart of the Baby Boomer-driven pop culture in the Fan District.

Unlike most softball leagues in those days, the FDSL usually had lots of fans at its games. Of course, the kegs of beer that were around — which meant free beer — had something to do with that. In that time the freewheeling FDSL was the only organized-yet-independent softball league in the Richmond area.

Thus, the Fan League governed itself, made its own schedule, cut its own deal with the umpires, etc. It remained so through its last season in 1994.

On the first Saturday of May, every year since 1980, a softball reunion is held. Anyone who ever played on one of the Biograph softball teams from any year has been welcome, plus their families, friends, etc.

Serendipitously, that first reunion/old timers game was staged on the afternoon in which the Kentucky Derby would be run. The game was played at TJ. Afterward most of us went to the Track Restaurant to join a Derby-watching party already underway.

The reunion subsequently became an institution and it’s been Derby Day ever since. Over the years, the game has moved around to various locations. Several of the guys at the most recent gathering were teammates of mine in 1976, the first summer of organized softball at the Biograph.

We called our team the Swordfish, after a joke in a Marx Brothers movie. That first year the Swordfish played a schedule that was not set in advance. Instead, our practice was to challenge established teams to play us for a keg of beer.

The lucky Swordfish won 15 games of the 17 we played that initial season. In spite of having few experienced softball players on a roster made up of employees, old friends and a few film buffs -- including two French guys who'd never seen a baseball game -- we probably won half of those keg games by coming from behind in late innings.

Typically, our opponents saw themselves as more experienced/athletically superior, which only made it more fun when they bumbled their way into handing us the victory. That first year, it was uncanny how often those supposedly better teams seemed willing to overplay their hands.

Now, having played and observed a lot of organized softball, I know that virgin Swordfish squad was absolutely charmed. In any sport, it was the loosest team with which I’ve ever been associated.

Both of the Swordfish’s losses came in extreme situations. The first was the championship game of one of the two tournaments we entered. Yes, we won the other one.

The second was played inside the walls of the old state penitentiary. Located at Belvidere and Spring Streets, the fortress prison loomed over the rocky falls of the James River for nearly 200 years (it was demolished in the early-1990s).

As it happened the guy in charge of recreation at the pen frequented J.W. Rayle, a popular bar of the era, located at Pine and Cary. During a conversation there he asked me if the Biograph team — I played outfield and served as the coach — would consider taking on the prison’s softball team on a Saturday afternoon. Chuck Wrenn, the bar manager at Rayle, had already told the guy the restaurant's team would do it. So I went along with it, too.

As it turned out the first date he set up was canceled, due to something about a small riot.

OK.

A couple of weeks later the Swordfish entered the Big House. To get into the prison yard we had to go through a process, which included a cursory search. We had been told to bring nothing in our pockets.

As we worked our way through the ancient passageways, sets of bars were unlocked and then locked behind us. Each of us got a stamp on our hands that could only be seen under a special light. Someone asked what would happen if the ink got wiped off, inadvertently, during the game. He was told that was not a good idea.

OK.

The umpire for the games — Rayle played the prison team first, then the Biograph -- was Dennis “Dr. Death” Johnson, a rather high-profile Fan District character, at the time, who played on yet another team. Among other things, Johnson did some professional wrestling, so he was good as hamming up the umpire's role.

The fence in leftfield was the same high brick wall that ran along Belvidere Street. It was only about 230 to 240 feet from home plate. Yet, because of its height, maybe 30 feet, a lot of hard-hit balls caromed off of it. What would have been a routine fly ball on most fields was a home run there. It was a red brick version of Boston’s Green Monster.

The prison team, known as the Raiders, was quite good at launching softballs over that towering brick wall. They seemed to have an unlimited budget for softballs, too. Under the supervision of watchful guards, hundreds of other prisoners seated in stands cheered for the home team. Actually, they cheered good plays in the field and collisions on the base paths more than anything else.

During a conversation with a couple of my friends behind the backstop, I referred to the home team as “the prisoners.” Our opponents’ coach immediately stepped toward me. Like his teammates, he was wearing a typical softball uniform of that era — it was a maroon and gray polyester affair, with “Raiders” printed across the chest in a script and a number on the back.

“Call us the Raiders,” he advised, somewhat sternly, as he pointed to a tortured-graphics mural on the prison wall that said, “Home of the Raiders.” It looked like a jailhouse tattoo, blown up large.

OK ... it was obvious I’d made a not-in-my-house sort of faux pas.

“While we are on the field, we’re not The Prisoners,” he said with, ahem, conviction. “We’re the Raiders.”

“Raiders,” I said. “Right.”

“And, all our games ... are home games,” he deadpanned.

We all laughed, grateful the tension had been broken. He patted me on the back and thanked us for being there, for agreeing to play them.

In a tight, high-scoring affair the Raiders prevailed. Johnson knew how to play to the crowd with his calls, too. Afterward, I was glad we’d met the Raiders.

Now, I remember I was glad to leave, too. Located smack dab in the middle of Richmond that prison was a nightmare in so many ways. Nobody is sorry it's gone.

In terms of winning and losing, the Biograph teams that played on in the Fan District Softball League never found anything close to the success that first team knew. Still, I'll wager most of the guys from the 1976 team remember more details about their meeting with the Raiders than any of the games we won.

As an organization, the Fan League lasted 20 years, which was a wonder in itself and a story for another time.

* * *

Chapter Seven: Time-Warping

2011-09-23T16:32:00.008-04:00

March 1, 1980: “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” broke the record of “The Sound of Music” for the longest-running movie in Richmond.

In 1975 “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” produced by Lou Adler, was released by 20th Century Fox. Adapted from the British gender-bending stage musical, “The Rocky Horror Show,” the movie died at the box office. The critics didn’t particularly like it, either.

The odd-ball story of the movie’s second life — as the cult midnight show king of all-time — began at the Waverly Theater in Manhattan, when during the spring of 1977 audience members began calling out sarcastic comeback lines at the screen. It became a game to make up new and better lines.

Later that same year the unprecedented interaction between audience and screen jumped to other cities, where “Rocky Horror” was also playing as a midnight show — chiefly, Austin and Los Angeles. Cheap props and campy costumes mimicking those in the film appeared.

So, by the spring of 1978 “Rocky Horror” was playing to wildly enthusiastic crowds in a few midnight show bookings. Yet, curiously, it had not done well at others. At this point, what would eventually become an unprecedented pop phenomenon was still flying below the radar for most of America.

A trip to LA in May of that year boosted my interest in the film. As manager of the Biograph, I was fascinated with the potential of “Rocky Horror,” as were my bosses at the Biograph in Georgetown. Their former partner, David Levy, had already booked it for The Key, to lock up the DeeCee market.

Our inquiry hit a roadblock. With all of the existing prints of the movie already in use, the brass at Fox felt unwilling to risk money on striking any more prints to cater to a weird fad that might fizzle any time; there was no enthusiasm for the picture’s prospects in Richmond.

In those days Richmond was generally seen by most distributors as a weak market — not a place to waste resources. Besides, no one at Fox seemed to understand why the audience participation following for the picture had started, or what was making it catch on in some places, but not in others.

Over the telephone, I was told we would have to wait for a print to become available; there was no telling how long that would be.

So, sensing the moment might pass us by, we got creative. The Biograph offered to front the cost of a new print to be made, which would stand as an advance against film rental (35 percent of the box office take). For that consideration we wanted a guarantee from the distributor that we would have the exclusive rights to exhibit “Rocky Horror” in the Richmond market, as long we held onto that same print and paid Fox the film rental due.

Fox went for the deal. Based on the quirky success of the movie in the cities where it was playing well, I decided to use a concept that had worked with other cult films at the Biograph — let the audience “discover” the movie. Don’t over-promote it and draw the sort of general audience that might include too many people who could leave the theater bad-mouthing it.

Instead, the strategy called for attracting the taste-makers, the ones who must see everything on opening night, to see it first. Their endorsement would spread the good word. Accordingly, I produced new radio spots using 20-some seconds of the “Time Warp” cut on the soundtrack to run on WGOE-AM. The only ad copy came at the very end. The listener heard my voice say, “Get in the act … midnight at the Biograph.”

There was no explanation of what the music was, or what the ad was even about. We put out a handbill with a pencil drawing of Riff Raff — a character in the movie — against a black background, with the distinctive dripping blood title in red. The “Get in the Act” theme was repeated. The hook was that none of it gave the listener/reader as much information as he expected. Still, it was more than enough to alert the fanatics who had already been going to DeeCee or New York to see it.

“The Rocky Horror Picture Show” opened June 30, 1978 and drew an enthusiastic crowd, but it was far short of a sell-out. Some of those who attended called out wisecrack lines, to respond to the movie’s dialogue. Most did not. A handful of people dressed in costumes drawn from characters in the movie.

In the next few weeks a devoted following for the rock ‘n’ roll send-up of science fiction and horror flicks snowballed. At the center of that following was a regular troupe who became the costumed singers and dancers that turned each midnight screening into a performance art adventure.

John Porter, a VCU theater major, emerged as the leader of that group; they called themselves The Floorshow.Dressed in his Frankenfurter get-up, Porter missed few, if any, midnight screenings at the Biograph for the next couple of years.

There were a lot of crazy things that happened in the years of babysitting “Rocky Horror.“ Among them was the Saturday night we threw out the entire full house, because so many people had gone wild; bare-chested rednecks were hosing the crowd down with our fire extinguishers. Fights were underway when we shut down the projector and the movie slowly ground to a halt. Everybody got their money back.

Interestingly, after that melodramatic stunt, we never had much trouble with violence to do with “Rocky Horror” again.

However, there was no stranger night than when about six weeks into the run, a man in his 30s breathed his last, as he sat in the small auditorium watching “F.I.S.T.” Yes, that Sylvester Stallone vehicle was particularly lame, but who knew it was potentially lethal?

The dead man’s face was expressionless … he just expired.

When the rescue squad guys got there they jerked him out of his chair and onto the floor. As jolts of electricity were shot through the dead man’s body, down in Theater No. 1 “Rocky Horror“ was on the Biograph’s larger screen delighting a packed house.

The audience had no idea of what was going on elsewhere in the building. A couple of times, I walked back and forth between the two scenes, feeling the bizarre juxtaposition.

Learning just how much to allow the performers to do, what limits were practical or necessary, came with experience. Porter’s leadership of the regulars was a key to keeping it fun, but not out of control. For his part John was given a lifetime pass to the Biograph.

On Friday, March 1, 1980, with its 88th consecutive week, “Rocky Horror” established a new record for longevity in Richmond. It broke the record of 87 weeks, established by “The Sound of Music” at the Willow Lawn in the 1960s.

That night Porter and I were both dressed in tuxedos. In front of the full house he held up a “Sound of Music” soundtrack album. I smashed it with a hammer, which went over quite well with the folks on hand. A couple of the regulars came dressed as Julie Andrews, in a nice touch to underline the special night‘s theme.

That same night Larry Rohr, as seen in the photo above, rode his motorcycle through the auditorium’s aisles at the point in the story when Meatloaf’s character in the film, Eddie, rides his motorcycle.

The late Carole Kass, the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s sweetheart of a entertainment writer/movie critic, wrote up a nice feature on what was basically hokum.

Rohr’s careful but noisy rides happened only on a few special occasions, like the record breaking night. Nothing bad ever happened. One time, after we had just barely dodged the fire marshal, to get Larry in position at the proper time — which underlined the what-ifs of what we were doing — I had a dream that the Biograph exploded. The nightmare scared me so much about the danger of the stunt that the motorcycle rides were discontinued.

Now, of course, it seems crazy as hell that I ever facilitated such shenanigans. In context, over three decades ago, it was just another part of living out the theater’s slogan/motto — Have a Good Time.

While “Rocky Horror” had an underground cachet in the first year or so of its run, its status eventually changed in the staff’s eyes. Rice, toast and all sorts of other stuff that got tossed around — never at the screen! — had to be cleaned up each and every time by the grumbling janitors, who grew to detest the movie.
To keep the peace they got “Rocky Horror” bonuses — a few extra bucks for their weekend shifts.

Once into the third year of the Friday and Saturday midnight screenings the demand began to wither. By then much of the audience seemed to be tourists from the suburbs … any city’s suburbs. The Fan District’s fast crowd in the punk rock scene mostly ignored it. The shows didn’t usually sell out, anymore, but they continued to do enough business to justify holding onto that original print.

No doubt, some number of lifelong friendships stem from the nights the kids were dancing to the Time Warp in the aisles at the Biograph; the five-year run of “Rocky Horror” ended on June 25, 1983.

* * *

Chapter Eight: The Stretch

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This piece was published by STYLE Weekly in 1999.

With the turning of the leaves, The Fan District of Richmond, Va., will again be transformed into a living impressionistic cityscape. As they always do, the season’s wistful breezes will facilitate reflection.

All of which leads to the fact that yet another baseball season has come and gone. After 6,783 games, the last game ever has been played at Detroit’s fabled Tiger Stadium. The Giants and the Astros will be playing in new parks next season, as well. The World Series, first played in 1903, will soon be upon us.

Although baseball’s claim as the National Pastime may no longer hold up, the colorful lore generated by the magic of events at baseball parks probably outweighs that of all the other sports, put together.

I began going to the Richmond V's (for Virginians) games at Parker Field with my grandfather when I was about seven. I eagerly drank in all I could of the atmosphere, especially the stories told about legendary players and discussions on the strategy of the game.

As I got older I began to go with my friends, most of whom played baseball. We usually took our baseball gloves with us to the game. We’d go early so we could watch the V’s warm up. As often as possible we talked with the players. If one of them remembered your name it was a source of pride.

When we cheered the heroics we witnessed and rose for the seventh inning stretch and stayed until the last out, regardless of the score, it was tantamount to exercising religious rites.

A few seasons before they tore Parker Field down (it was dismantled in 1984 and in its place stands The Diamond), I experienced one last thrill at the old ballpark. This was when my daughter, Katey, was about seven or eight.

The home team by then — as it is now — was The Braves. Katey, her mother, and I were sitting in box seats as guests of neighbors who had gotten comps from a radio station. It was Katey’s first trip to Parker Field.

The spectacle itself was interesting to her for a while. As it was a night game, the bright lights were dazzling. The roar of the crowd was exhilarating. Being old enough to go along on such an outing, instead of staying at home with a baby sitter, was a boost to her morale. Nonetheless, by the middle of the game Katey (pictured above at about the age of this story) was getting tired of sitting still and bored with baseball.

During the sixth inning it fell to me to entertain, or at least restrain her, so the others could enjoy the game. I tried telling her more about the object of baseball, hoping that would help her pay some attention to the game.

That didn’t work for very long. She was soon climbing across seats again and this time she knocked a man’s beer into his lap. As the visiting team began their turn at bat, in the top of the seventh, I got an idea and asked Katey if she wanted to see some magic.

Of course she did.

Then I got her to promise to be good if I showed her a big magic trick. She agreed to the terms without qualification. Making sure she alone could hear me, I pulled her in close and whispered my instructions.

The gist of it was that she and I, using our combined powers of concentration, were going to make everyone in the ballpark stand up at the same time. Katey was thrilled at the mere prospect of such a feat. I told her to face the ongoing game, close her eyes, and begin thinking about making the crowd stand up.

After the visiting team made their third out, I cupped my hand to her ear and reminded her to think, “stand up, stand up …”

As baseball fans know, when the home team comes to bat in the bottom of the seventh inning everyone stands up, ostensibly to stretch their legs. It’s a longtime tradition called “the seventh inning stretch.” There’s a mention of the practice in a report about a Cincinnati Red Stockings (baseball’s first professional team) game that took place in 1869.

Tradition aside — when Katey turned around, opened her big blue eyes and saw thousands of people standing up — it was pure magic in her book.

No one in the group gave me away when she told them what we had done. As I remember it, she stayed true to her word and was well-behaved the rest of the game.

It was a few years later that Katey confronted me, having learned how the trick worked. We still laugh about it.

Sports dilettantes today complain that baseball games are too slow and meandering. While I admit baseball has its lulls, nonetheless there are textures and layers of information present at baseball parks that are just too subtle and ephemeral for the lens of a TV camera to capture. To appreciate them you have to be there, and you have to bother to notice.

Sometimes there’s even a hint of magic in the air.

* * *

Chapter Nine: Chasing Dignity

2011-09-23T16:28:00.005-04:00

-- STYLE Weekly 2006

“…Now once more the belt is tight and we summon the proper expression of horror as we look back at our wasted youth. Sometimes, though, there is a ghostly rumble among the drums, an asthmatic whisper in the trombones that swings me back into the early twenties when we drank wood alcohol and every day in every way grew better and better, and there was a first abortive shortening of the skirts, and girls all looked alike in sweater dresses, and people you didn’t want to know said ‘Yes, we have no bananas,’ and it seemed only a question of a few years before the older people would step aside and let the world be run by those who saw things as they were — and it all seems rosy and romantic to us who were young then, because we will never feel quite so intensely about our surroundings any more.”

– from “Echoes of the Jazz Age” (1931)
by F. Scott Fitzgerald

In the summer of 1978, with “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” playing to the delight of a midnight show packed house, a fight broke out in the middle of Grace Street. Insults, rocks and bottles flew back and forth between the two factions of four each: VCU frat boys vs. an Oregon Hill crew. Their battle was unfolding a perilous 25 to 30 yards from the Cinemascopic all-glass front of the Biograph Theatre, a Fan District cinema I then managed.

The box office had just closed and the cashier had started her count-up. At the same time a group of my Biograph Swordfish softball teammates was in the lobby playing a pinball machine. As manager, I felt obliged to drive the danger away, so I opened an exit door and yelled that the cops were already on the way, which they were.

That was good enough for the frat boys, who scampered off. Their opposites simply switched over to bombing me. As they advanced rocks bounced closer. A tumbling bottle shattered on the sidewalk. I closed the door, then a piece of brick smashed through its bottom panel of glass to strike my right shin.

When we lit out after them, there were six or seven men running in the impromptu posse of employees and pinball players. The hooligans scattered, but my focus was solely on the one who’d plunked me. Hemmed in by three of us in a parking lot, he faked one way, then cut to the other. His traction gave way slightly in the gravel paving. As he stumbled to regain his balance I tackled him by the legs.

The others got away. With some help from my friends, we marched the captured 19-year-old back toward the theater. I could feel the adrenaline coursing through my limbs. During the trek east on Grace, the culprit said something that provoked one in my group to suddenly punch him. That, while the punchee’s arms were being held.

A policeman, who had just arrived, saw it. He sarcastically complimented the puncher for his aggressive “technique” before the street-fighting man was hauled off in the paddy wagon. In contrast, I told the vigilante puncher he had overreached in hitting the kid unnecessarily, especially while he was helpless.
Surprised by my reaction, my softball teammate laughed.

Which prompted me to say something like, “Hey, we’re no better than the fascist bullies we’ve claimed to deplore if we resort to their tactics.” He disagreed, saying essentially this — that his summary punishment would likely be the only price the little thug would ever pay for his crime. Another in the group agreed with him. Others saw it my way, or they said nothing.

It wasn’t long after that night I found myself poring over an essay by F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Echoes of the Jazz Age.” The excerpt above is the evocative piece’s last paragraph. During that rereading, it occurred to me the shattering glass door had been the sound of the hippie era ending for me.

Yes, as the '70s fizzled away we baby boomers were about to discover that our sweetest day in the sun -- with its righteous causes and rock ’n’ roll anthems -- had been another dollop of time, a period with its look and sound, not unlike others. In some ways, the Roaring ’20s redux.

A month later I agreed to the court’s proposal to drop the assault charge, provided the brick-thrower was convicted of a misdemeanor for breaking the glass and paid for the damage. A payment schedule was set up. As we spoke several times after that, I came to see the “hooligan” wasn’t really such a bad guy. Payment was made on time. Eventually, he asked for the name of the man who’d punched him. While withholding the name, I agreed with him that the blow had been a cheap shot.

About a year later, on a late summer afternoon, a thief snatched a handful of dollar bills from a Biograph cashier, then bolted out the front door. The cashier’s frightened look triggered an alarm in your narrator’s sense of duty/propriety; her face was quite expressive.

As this happened half of my lifetime ago, I was still young enough to think chasing criminals down the street was normal. Quaint as it may sound now, it seemed then that some collective sense of dignity was at stake.

In short, it took less than 10 minutes to discover the thief’s hiding place, then turn him over to the policemen who’d shown up. During the search I received some unexpected help in cornering the thief. As I had run west on Grace Street behind the 20-year-old grab-and-run artist, another young man — a total stranger — had jumped out of his pickup truck to join in the chase.

Later, when the dust settled, I thanked the volunteer and asked him why he’d stopped. He answered that he knew I was the Biograph’s manager, because a buddy of his had once pointed me out. His friend? It was the same Oregon Hill street-fighter I’d tackled a year before.

My assistant thief-chaser also told me his friend assured him I’d dealt fairly with him. Consequently, a favor was owed to me. Before he left, my collaborator said that in his neighborhood the guys stick together. Thus, he’d supported me in my time of need, to help pay off his friend’s debt. We shook hands.

Over the years what connects those two chase scenes has become increasingly more satisfying. No doubt that’s because so many times over the years, in dealing with bad luck and other ordinary tests of character, I’ve done nothing to write home about — even the wrong thing.

At least in this story, maybe, I got it right.

The point?

Dear reader, in spite of the wall-to-wall cynicism of our current age, there really was a time when cheap shots were seen in a bad light. Moreover, returning favors was part of what held things together. Through the mist of “ghostly rumbles” and “asthmatic whispers,” to some graying hippies, that hasn’t changed.

* * *

All rights reserved by F.T. Rea
1,181 words

Chapter Ten: The Lost Imaginings

2011-09-23T16:27:00.006-04:00

On the occasion of the anniversary of his death, on Dec. 8, 1980, I can’t help but wonder what the founder of the Beatles — John Lennon, a master of word-play and sarcasm — would have to say about today's music, art and politics.

It would be anybody's guess. After all, in his nearly 20 years as a public figure Lennon’s knack for changing before our eyes was dazzling. There's no reason to think such a restless soul wouldn't have kept on changing.

In November, 2008, on the occasion of what was the 40th anniversary of the release of the Beatles’ White Album, the Vatican newspaper praised the groundbreaking British band for its body of work and forgave Lennon for his flippant 1966 quip about sudden success, “[We’re] more popular than Jesus.”

Even the bloody Vatican has changed but peace is still waiting, off-stage, for its chance.

In February of 1964 the Beatles made their initial appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show. At the time most people probably didn’t connect the events, but those two appearances were only three months after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Surely, the somber mood of the stunned nation, still trying to regain its balance, had something to do with why those early Beatles recordings cut through the heavy airwaves with such verve.

Clearly, there has been no explosion in the American pop music scene since them, with anything near the equivalent impact of Liverpool’s Fab Four.

Then, in 1980, the murder of moody John Lennon had an impact on the public few would have predicted. It was as if a world leader had been gunned down on the street in Manhattan.

Lennon’s obvious contributions as a songwriter and musician were huge. However, it was the working class hero’s sincerity, his sense of humor and delight in taking risks that helped set him apart from his teen idol counterparts, many of whom toyed with politics and social causes as if they were merely hairdos or dance crazes.

With the Vietnam War still underway in the early ‘70s, President Richard Nixon looked at Lennon and saw the raw power to galvanize a generation’s anti-establishment sentiments. Fearful of that potential, the Nixon administration did everything it could to hound Lennon out of the country. The details of that nasty little campaign are just as bewildering as some of the better known abuses that flowed from the Dirty Tricks Department in the White House during those scandal-ridden days.

With so many years of perspective on Lennon’s death, I have to say that even if that particular nut-case (a man I choose not to name because I refuse to add in any way to his celebrity) hadn’t pulled the trigger, it could easily have been another one; surely there were other bullets out there with John Lennon’s name on them.

Like the comets of each generation are bound to do, sometimes Lennon burned too bright for his own good. And, speaking of assassinations, at this time I’m also reminded of an item that ran in the Nashville Banner on Feb. 24, 1987. The article began with this:

Two Nashville musicians remained free on $500 bond today after they went on a magazine-shredding tear …to protest People magazine’s current cover story.

The two musicians were Gregg Wetzel, and Mike McAdam. As members of the Good Humor Band they were fixtures in Richmond’s Rock ‘n’ Roll scene in the early ‘80s. By the time the story mentioned above was published, the pair had established themselves as respected sidemen in Nashville — Wetzel on piano and McAdam on guitar.

In a nutshell, Gregg and Mike became incensed at seeing the magazine with a cover story about John Lennon’s murderer. They felt spotlighting the killer in that way might encourage another deranged wannabe to take gun in hand to go after whoever. So they fortified themselves with an adequate dose of what-it-takes — legend has it they were drinking out of an Elvis decanter — and set out on a mission to destroy the cover of every copy of the offensive publication they could find on the strip.

As the reader may know, this sort of endeavor is frequently best undertaken in the wee hours. In the course of their fifth stop, at a Nashville convenience store, the avenging angels were stopped by the cops and charged with “malicious mischief.”

Shortly afterwards, in a interview about the incident, McAdam said at the time, “If another guy like [name withheld again] sees that, he might think he can get on the cover of People magazine by killing a politician or artist.”

Bravo!

Primary among the reasons John Lennon was selected for the kill by his stalking murderer was he had a rare ability to move people. In that sense, Lennon was slain for the same reason as political figures such as Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy. Two thousand years ago Jesus H. Christ was taken out of the game for much the same reason: He challenged people to change; to take a chance on a life based on something better than might making right.

Although Nixon miscalculated Lennon’s intentions, the soon-to-be-disgraced president was probably right about the former Beatle’s potential to focus the anti-establishment sentiments in the air. What Nixon didn’t grasp was that Lennon — in spite of his mischievous streak — was really more interested in promoting peace than fomenting revolution.

“The cops looked at me and McAdam,” said Wetzel recently, to flesh out the 24-year-old tale, “decided we weren’t exactly flight risks and entrusted our transport to the pokey with an attractive female officer, all by her lonesome. On the way to the hoosegow, Mickey hit on the cop. True story.”

After listening to a John Lennon compilation CD, even today, some of his best post-Beatles cuts seem fresh, they still have the feeling of being experimental.

Well into what are strange days, indeed, here on the 31st anniversary of his departure from the realm of the living, this grizzled scribbler can smile, wondering what more Lennon would have imagined.

Peace.

Chapter Eleven: Color Radio

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Pirate Radio in Richmond

On August 26, 1982 Color Radio (or Channel 36) began beaming its signal, via Continental Cablevision’s cable TV hookups, to what its creators hoped would be an eager listening audience in Richmond and Henrico County. It existed as the soundtrack that could be heard when a viewer tuned his television to Channel 36, which was the channel for Continental’s color bars test pattern.

Les Smith signed on with his “Music Appreciation 101,” to launch the station’s existence. In his college days Smith had been a DJ (1969-72) at WJRB, VCU’s radio station. Then he played the same role (1972-75) at WGOE, the daytime AM station that owned the hippie audience in Richmond for most of the 1970s.

Smith probably had the most on-air experience of the original cast of characters who breathed life into the venture, which was the brainchild of Burt Blackburn, who had been a program director at Virginia Tech’s radio station (1977-79). In Blacksburg the cable TV provider had carried Tech’s station on one of its blank channels.

“In June, 1982 [Burt Blackburn] conceived the idea of a ‘radio station’ utilizing one of Continental Cablevision’s empty channels,” wrote Smith in a 2001 remembrance of Channel 36. “He approached Continental’s Virginia marketing manager, Matt Zoller, who liked the idea and encouraged Blackburn to proceed. Zoller himself had been involved in college radio [at William & Mary].”

By the time I came aboard as a volunteer DJ, in October of that same year, the station had situated its studio on the second floor over The Track, a Carytown restaurant (1978-2009) owned by Chris Liles. The studio was made up mostly of secondhand audio equipment acquired by donation or from yard sales. It was linked to Continental’s facility by an ordinary telephone line.

While all the DJs and the staff were volunteers, it was really more like you had to be asked. Donna Parker asked me to come aboard to alternate with her for one shift every other week. Subsequently, my show, “Number 9,” was on the air, I mean cable, for three hours, on alternating Thursday afternoons. Later, when Donna changed the time for her show, I asked Chuck Wrenn to replace her.

In April of 1983 the studio was moved downtown to the second floor of 7 East Broad Street, over an art gallery. The station was acquired by the corporation, such as it was, that owned Throttle magazine and the two entities shared an awkward office space. There were some people who were involved with both volunteer groups. But in the long run the two alternative media entities didn’t really help one another all that much.

At times, Color Radio was as cool as it gets. At its peak, its programming covered 96 hours a week. At times Color Radio was silly and a waste of time, or worse. Always, it danced on the edge like nothing else available to the general public in Richmond at that time, or any time for that matter.

Along the way, I eventually took charge of advertising sales and production, plus promotions, for the station. The handbill above was for a 1983 fundraiser that I booked into Rockitz, to benefit Color Radio. The headliner, 10,000 Maniacs, was a group out of Jamestown, N.Y. that had been building a following from its well received appearances at two of the most popular clubs in the Fan, Benny’s and Hard Times. Lead singer Natalie Merchant was 19-years-old then.

A few weeks prior to the live show at Rockitz, I taped an interview with Merchant for my Number 9 program. What follows is the text of the beginning of that 1983 interview; Merchant starts by answering my question about what it was she and her friends in the band were looking to gain from touring and recording their music.

Was it all for fun, or did they want to spread some message, or get rich, or what? With a rather pleasant mixture of shyness and confidence, she laughed, then dealt with the question.

Merchant: We haven’t yet assumed our adult responsibilities. We don’t have enough income to live away from our parents yet. Sure, I’d like to be independent of my parents. After that, anything … any success that comes, I’ll accept that. I’m not intimidated by the mass media. I think it would be a great tool to reach more people.

Rea: Reach them with what?

Merchant: With what we’re saying … with what I’m saying.

Rea: What are you saying?

Merchant: I write the words. Most of what I’m saying is that music should be instructive.

Rea: Instructive?

Merchant: It should teach you something, even if it’s just building your vocabulary and making you realize you feel good when you dance. Anything you can learn … I don’t know (she laughs). Probably by the time we can reach more people, I’ll be more sure of what I’m trying to say.

Later in the interview, I asked Natalie about the name of the band. She said one of the guys took it from a movie, a 1960s low-budget slasher flick. Ever the incurable movie expert, I laughed and suggested the actual name of the film was “2,000 Maniacs.”

Natalie smiled silently and shrugged, as if to say — 10,000 sounds better, so who cares?

Others I interviewed for the Number 9 show included movie director Penelope Spheeris and former adman and WGOE personality, now known as the Pope of Peppers, Dave DeWitt.

We didn’t know it then, but Color Radio was an aspect of the last gasp of the Baby Boomer-driven, live music scene that had been centered in the Fan District for nearly 20 years. That time spanned the sunset of the Beat Era, through the heyday of the hippies, to the last of the punks at the party. As the 1980s wore on Shockoe Bottom became the happening part of town for clubs featuring live music.

At Color Radio, when the microphones were switched on there was no filter. There was no corporate-think limit. Authorities at Continental Cabelvision seemed unconcerned with what went on. Frequently it was wilder than WGOE had been in its rather freewheeling days in the early ’70s, before it got busted by the Federal Communications Commission.

Unlike WGOE, Color Radio had no FCC oversight. The programming at Color Radio was left totally to the DJs, many of whom were connected to the local live music scene in some way. Several were in bands. Others were Rock ‘n’ Roll promoters, or worked at record stores, etc.

The format, in unrelated blocks, ranged from Punk to Funk, from Rock to Bach and beyond. Some shows were all talk. There were comedy programs and, yes, sometimes things got raunchy, or weird. It was sort of like an offshore pirate station; the ride lasted two years. What follows is a list of the shows that made up the 92 hours of programming a week that Color Radio offered its listeners in February of 1984.

Sunday
9 a.m. – 10 a.m.: World Watchers International
10 a.m. – 1 p.m.: World Traditions
1 p.m. – 4 p.m.: Out to Lunch
4 p.m. – 7 p.m.: Kaleidophonic Merry-Go-Soun World
7 p.m. – 10 p.m.: The Bedlam Broadcast
10 p.m. – 1 a.m.: Fontana Mix

Monday
1 p.m. – 4 p.m.: Like What You’re Told
4 p.m. – 7 p.m.: The Bubba Show
7 p.m. – 10 p.m.: Hardcore Skate
10 p.m. – 1 a.m.: Mark Mumford

Tuesday
1 p.m. – 4 p.m.: Down on the Collective
4 p.m. – 7 p.m.: Big Music
7 p.m. – 10 p.m.: Heavy Metal for Housewives
10 p.m. – 1 a.m.: Beef Lips Special

Wednesday
1 p.m. – 4 p.m.: Life in the Gladhouse
4 p.m. – 7 p.m.: All My Tapes
7 p.m. – 10 p.m.: Tommy the Rock
10 p.m. – 1 a.m.: Blood Blister alternating w/ Georgeann
1 a.m. – 2 a.m.: World Watchers International

Thursday
1 p.m. – 4 p.m.: D-Virg Anti-Fascist Radioshoe
4 p.m. – 7 p.m.: No. 9 alternating w/ Rockin’ Daddy & the Cold Ones
7 p.m. – 10 p.m.: Music Appreciation 101 alternating w/ Test Bands
10 p.m. – 1 a.m.: The Arash Show

Friday
1 p.m. – 4 p.m.: Hardcore Skate
4 p.m. – 7 p.m.: The Hiding from Suburbia Show
7 p.m. – 10 p.m.: Hardcore Hour of Power
10 p.m. – 1 a.m.: Down on the Collective

Saturday
10 a.m. – 1 p.m.: Two-Tone Tony’s Lost Highway
1 p.m. – 4 p.m.: Frontline
4 p.m. – 7 p.m.: Chasin’ the Bird
7 p.m. – 10 p.m.: Music I Like
10 p.m. – 1 a.m.: The Kenny Substitute Show

That Color Radio/Channel 36 lasted two years and nobody got sued, or went to jail, was truly amazing. Although there must have been similar situations in other cities, I’ve never heard of them.

One of the things Color Radio did much more than any other local station in its time was to support locally-based bands. So the low-budget recordings of local bands were played and the musicians were interviewed. Among the popular bands that were part of the music scene based in the Fan during Color Radio’s run were:

Awareness Art Ensemble, Beex, The Bopcats, The Bowties, Burma Jam, The Dads, Death Piggy, The Degenerate Blind Boys, The Good Guys, The Good Humor Band, The Heretics, Honor Role, L’Amour, The Megatonz, The Millionaires, The New York Dux, The Non-Dairy Screamers, The Offenders, The Orthotonics, The Prevaricators, Shake and the Drakes, Single Bullet Theory, The Fabulous Daturas, Surrender Dorothy, Ten Ten, The Tom and Marty Band, The Toronados, White Cross.

Chapter Twelve: The Jellypig Hunch

2011-09-23T16:23:00.005-04:00

When one divines the presence of a specific person in connection with some unexplained occurrence, without any tangible evidence of their involvement, what real trust should one put in such raw instinct?

How much of a hunch is a flash of extraordinary perception? How much is imagination?

In a high contrast crisis, doubting a hunch could get somebody killed. But in everyday life’s ambiguous gray scale of propriety, how much can anyone afford to put at risk strictly on intuition? Hey, if you shoot a guy based on your gut feeling that he was about to kill someone else, with no corroborative evidence, you’re going to need a good lawyer.

The torturous story of why I left my longtime job as manager of the Biograph Theatre began with a ringing telephone on an Indian Summer afternoon in 1981 that I remember all too well. I put the Sunday newspaper aside to pick up the receiver and said, “Hello.”

There was no reply. At that moment there was no reason to think it was more than a wrong number or a malfunction on the line. Yet, after listening to a creepy silence for half a minute and repeating “hello” a few times, I sensed I knew the person at the other end of the line.

As I hung up that mysterious feeling was replaced by a flicker of a thought that named a specific person. Then the notion faded into a queasy sensation that made me go outside for some fresh air. For an instant I thought I knew something there was no plain way for me to know. Moreover, I didn’t want to know it.

My grandmother had told me a thousand times to never go against a hunch. Had I have discussed it with her she would have said a clear message from what she would have called my “inner voice” should always trump all else.

Instead of seeking her counsel I asked only myself: “Why would that person call me, to hang on the line and say nothing?” It made no sense. So, I tried to study the hunch, to examine its basis.

As I walked toward the closest bar, the Village, I was already caught in an undertow that would eventually carry my spirit far away from everything that had mattered to me.

Now I know that my grandmother understood something I was yet to learn -- a hunch is a bolt from the blue that cannot be gathered and investigated. It can’t be revisited like a conclusion. A true hunch can only be felt once.

Yet, for a number of reasons it was easier for me to view my inconvenient hunch as counterfeit. A few weeks later, by the time the calls had become routine, the whole concept of believing in hunches was on its way to the same place as beliefs in the Tooth Fairy and Heaven. A grown man, a man of reason, needed to rise above all such superstitions.

The caller never spoke. Usually, I hung up right away. Sometimes I’d listen as hard as I could for a while, trying to hear a telltale sound. The reader should note that telephone answering machines, while available then, were not yet cheap. Most people did not have one at this time.

After a haphazard year-and-a-half of one-night stands and such, following the break-up of my ten-year marriage, at this same time I had a new girlfriend. Tana was long-legged and sarcastic; she could be very distracting. She was a fine art major who waitressed part-time at one of the strip’s busiest saloons, the Jade Elephant. My apartment was just two blocks from there and she stayed over at my place about half the time, so she knew about the calls.

Tana was the only person who knew anything about it for a long time. She was sworn to secrecy. Mostly, I just let Tana distract me.

Quite sensibly, she urged me to contact the authorities, or at least to get an unlisted phone number. Offering no real explanation, I wasn’t comfortable with either option. Playing my cards close to the vest, I simply acted as if it didn’t really bother me. At this point she didn’t know about the hunch. We spent a lot of time riding our bicycles and playing Frisbee-golf.

As I rummage through my memory of this time period now the images are smeared and spooky. I stayed high more than before. For sure, I’ve forgotten a lot of it.

A few months later my nose was broken in a basketball game, and by pure coincidence I saw my grandmother on a stretcher at the hospital while I was there. Feeling weak, she had checked herself in. Nana died before dawn: March 5, 1982.

Later that morning, when I went to her apartment to see after her affairs, she had already packed everything up. She left notes on pieces of cardboard taped to furniture about her important papers and what to do with everything. A few days later my daughter and I sprinkled Nana's ashes into a creek in Orange County; it was a place she had played when she was a little girl.

Unmercifully, the stalking telephone calls became more frequent. Wherever I went, home, office, or someone else’s place, the phone would ring. Then there would be that same diabolical silence, no matter who answered.

Anxiety had become my familiar companion, although I didn’t know then to call it by that name. While I surely needed to do something decisive about the telephone problem, the energy just couldn’t be mustered.

If someone had told me I was sinking deeper and deeper into a major depression, well, I would have laughed it off -- I was too cocky to be depressed. In my view, then, depression was an affliction of people who were bored. It never occurred to me that pure confidence was leaking out of my psyche, spilling away forever.

Unfortunately, my narrow view of the problem centered around the mystery of who and why.

Part of the persona I had created and projected in my role as the Biograph’s manager was that everything came easily to me. I liked to hide any hard work or struggle from the public, even the staff at times. While I might have wrestled with the artwork for a Midnight Show handbill for days, I would act as if it had been dashed off in an hour.

Looking back on it now, I’d say that pose was part of a cool image I wanted to project for the theater, itself, too.

Living inside such a pretend world -- within a pretend world -- rather than seeing the debilitating effect the telephone monster was having on me, I saw only clues. My strategy was to outlast the caller, to close in like a hard-boiled movie sleuth without ever letting anyone know it was getting to me.

Since the calls started around the time I began seeing Tana, it seemed plausible it could have to do with her. Maybe an old boyfriend? Also, there was my own ex -- maybe one of her new squeezes? Maybe my rather eccentric brother (who died in 2005)? Beyond those obvious possibilities, I poured over the smallest details of each and every personal relationship.

As a theater manager, my movie detective training told me it had to be someone with a powerful grudge, so I created a list of prime suspects.

Misunderstandings with disgruntled former employees were combed through, rivals from various battles I’d fought over the years were considered. And, there were people I had hurt, out of just being careless. It became my habit to question the motives of those around me at every turn. In sly ways, they were all tested.

As I examined my history, searching through any details that could have set a grudge in motion, a new picture of Terry Rea began to emerge. I found reasons for guilt that had never occurred to me before. When I looked in the mirror, I began to see a different man, a self-centered phony.

It was as if I had discovered a secret, grotesque portrait of what was left of my soul, hanging in the attic, like Oscar Wilde’s character -- Dorian Gray.

Then my old yellow Volvo wagon was rifled. A few personal things were taken but they didn’t touch the stereo. When my office at the theater was burglarized, my glasses and a photograph of me were stolen. Of course, I saw those crimes as connected to the phone calls.

Tired of the ordeal and frustrated with me, Tana had been imploring me to have the calls traced. In late September, I finally agreed to do it. A woman who worked for the telephone company told me I had to keep a precise record of the times of all the calls, and I had to agree to prosecute the guilty party if he was discovered. Although it had been nearly a year, I was still holding the mystery close to me and hadn’t mentioned it to anyone at the theater.

As the telephone company’s pin register gadgetry soon revealed, there was good reason for that.

One way or another, I managed to get information out of the telephone company lady without actually getting on board with the police part of it. The bottom line was this -- there were two numbers on the list of traced calls that coincided with nearly all the calls on my record. One was a pay phone in Goochland County, the other was the Biograph’s number.

Several of those calls were placed from the theater, well after it had closed. After looking at the record of the work schedule from the previous weeks, one employee had worked the late shift on each night a call came from the building after hours. Not coincidentally, this same man was the only person who lived in Goochland, twenty miles away.

Most importantly, it was the same man revealed by my original hunch -- he was the projectionist at the Biograph. Now I refer to the culprit only as the “jellypig.”

Why jellypig?

Let’s just say he had a porcine, yet gelatinous way about him. I prefer to avoid using his real name because it suits me. People who are familiar with the cast of characters in this tangled story still know his name. That’s enough for me.

Nonetheless, while all the circumstantial evidence pointed at only one man the thought of wrongfully accusing a person of such a terrible thing was still unbearable to me.

So, I continued to stew in my own juices.

In November, I decided to move, to flee Grace Street for a new pad further downtown on Franklin Street. At a staff meeting, I revealed aspects of the stalking I had been enduring. I explained that for a while, I would not get a new home telephone. They were also told I had proof of who was actually behind the calls, but I said nothing about any of the calls having been made from the theater. Most importantly, I left them to guess at the villain’s identity.

Why?

Truth is, I don’t remember. Perhaps I was hoping to scare the jellypig and make him slink away.

Although the calls at my home ceased to be a problem, a week or so later a weird note was left in my car. Why that became the last straw I don’t know ... but it was.

The following afternoon, when no one else was in the building, I called the jellypig into my office. Sitting at my desk, I looked him in the eye and calmly lowered the boom. It was like living in a black and white B movie. None of it seemed real.

He looked scared and flatly denied it. So, I told him about the traced phone calls. That news deflated him; he collapsed into himself. The bulbous jellypig stared blankly at the floor. Then he insisted that someone ... somebody had to be framing him.

I was flabbergasted!

It hadn’t even occurred to me that he would simply lie in the face of such a strong case. To get him out of my sight I told him he had one day to come up with a better story, or the owners of the theater would be told and he’d turned over to the cops. I can’t remember what I said would happen if he came clean. Most likely, I was still hoping he’d just go away.

Maybe I didn’t have a plan.

The problem with just firing the jellypig right on the spot was that replacing him wouldn’t be so easy. Since late-1980, the Biograph had been operating as a non-union house. Because of an ongoing dispute with the local operators union, I was hiring our projectionists directly off the street.

As it happened, our original projectionist developed a problem with the local union over some internal politics. Later, his rivals took over. They fought. He got steamed and walked out. Which prompted the union to tell me to bar him from the booth. Although I was uncomfortable going against the union, politically, I felt standing by the individual I had worked with for eight years was the right thing to do.

The union’s reaction was to pull its men off the job. This eventually led to me hiring the man who became the jellypig to be a back-up projectionist. For reasons I can’t recall, he was then at odds with the union, too, so he was willing to work at the Biograph in spite of the official boycott.

Subsequently, our full-time projectionist -- whose squabble had created the problem -- left to take a job with another theater that had also broken with the union. Which made it look like the whole town might follow our example and go non-union. Naturally, that put me in an even worse light with the union brass, who blamed me personally.

The jellypig seemed qualified to run the booth, so the easiest thing to do was promote him to full-time when the opening came about. Although I ’d never really checked up on him, like I usually did when I hired people, I put him in charge of the two projection booths.

So, if I fired the jellypig -- summarily and on the spot -- the Biograph didn’t have as many options as it should have, owing to the fact there was a very limited pool of qualified projectionists readily available to a non-union house. We had trained an usher to be backup, but he wasn’t ready to run the whole operation.

It seemed I had little choice but to get in touch with the union for a replacement. Since the theater was in a slump, it was a bad time for operating expenses to go up, and I expected the union bosses would go for some payback with a new contract.

The jellypig rushed into my office the next day with the big news -- he had solved the mystery! In a flurry, he claimed the person responsible for the calls was an old nemesis of his. It was an evil genius who was an electronics expert. He could fool the phone company’s machinery.

It seemed the jellypig's comic book villain had a long history of playing terrible dirty tricks on him, going back to their tortured childhood at the orphanage in Pittsburgh.

Oh brother!

Then, if that wasn’t bad enough, the jellypig told me the guilty one was doing it all for two reasons: One was simply to heap trouble onto the house of the jellypig, who had a wife and kids to support. The other was to hurt your narrator, directly ... since the evil genius knew all.

At this point the jellypig coughed up the breaking news that he had long been harboring a powerful carnal lust for me. Caught up in the moment, the jellypig began to sob, admitting it was all his fault -- he had foolishly shared the vital particulars of his secret craving with the evil one, himself.

OK. I know it makes no sense now, but as I listened to jellypig, along with disgust I began to feel something akin to pity. The selling jellypig assured me that he would do whatever it took to stop the evil genius from bothering me ever again. He begged me, literally on his knees, not to tell his wife or the theater’s owners about any of it.

My mind was reeling and my stomach had turned.

As I told the jellypig to leave the office and let me think, there's no doubt that I should have wondered which one of us was the craziest.

Not surprisingly, the tailspin the Biograph had gone into had become wilder. The theater was loosing money like it hadn’t in several years. As the winter came and went, my spirits sank steadily. It was like being paralyzed so slowly it was almost imperceptible.

During the spring, the two managing partners frequently brought up the subject of selling the Richmond Biograph, which scared me to no end.

In the meantime, the owners told me expenses had to be slashed drastically, meaning I had to let some people go. Who and how many was up to me, but salaries had to come in under a certain figure. So I was given a few days to come up with a new plan that had to eliminate at least one of the two guys who had been there the longest.

Shortly thereafter, I was at my desk talking on the phone to a close friend about how I was putting out feelers for another job, because the Biograph was for sale. Without thinking, I gave him my new, unlisted home phone number, which had been put in Tana’s name. When I hung up, it struck me the damned jellypig might have heard me, if his ear had been up to the common drywall between the booth and my office.

My home telephone rang several times that night.

That very night! It was pure hell. Mustering the coldblooded attitude to fire friends to cut costs wasn't within me.

Then there was this -- if I bowed out of the picture it would eliminate the biggest salary burden the theater had. By this point I had developed a couple of mysterious health problems. I literally lost my voice, due to a vocal cord problem.

Plus, the Biograph’s ability to negotiate with the local union would be less encumbered without me around. Good reasons for me to run away from 814 West Grace Street seemed everywhere I looked. With no plan of where I would end up, I suddenly decided to walk away from what I had once seen as the best job in the Fan District.

So I called the owners to tell them of my decision to leave; they also heard about the jellypig business for the first time. The boys in DeeCee were shocked and urged me to reconsider, to take a month off. They had hired me to manage the theater months before it opened it opened in 1972. We’d been through a lot together.

However, I’m sure they were actually quite torn with what to do with their floundering friend. Clearly, at that time I was not the resourceful problem solver I had been for many years. Beyond that, we could all see fashion was turning sharply against what had been a darling of the ‘70s popular culture -- repertory cinemas.

The future for the Biograph looked dicey no matter what I did. The owners agreed with me that the jellypig had to go ... as soon as possible. I remember mentioning that I had gotten him to promise to get psychiatric help in exchange for me not calling the police.

Without much of an explanation to anyone else, I announced to whoever cared that I was moving on and looking forward to a life of new adventures. Movie critic Carole Kass wrote a small article for the Richmond Times-Dispatch noting that I had “retired.”

Over lunch at Stella’s on Harrison St., soon after my barely explained departure from the Biograph, I told a former Biograph co-worker that maybe I had it all coming to me. Maybe the jellypig had just been an agent of karma. I speculated that perhaps my hubris and nonchalance had all but invited ruin.

She got so angry she walked out of the restaurant. At the time I couldn’t grasp what her reaction meant.

What I couldn’t explain to anyone, because I didn’t understand it myself, was that I just had no confidence. I didn’t know what to do next at any given moment. My gift of gab, such as it had been, was kaput. I stammered. In the middle of a sentence, I would lose my place ... questioning how to end it.

As the summer wore on it turned out the jellypig wasn’t quickly replaced in the Biograph’s booth, which galled me to no end. Apparently the owners were struggling with the union over a new contract.

That’s when I came up with the name “jellypig.” A few weeks after dropping my job like a hot potato I went by the theater to leave off a little drawing for him on the staff message board. It featured a cartoon character I created for the occasion -- the jellypig.

The character was a simple line drawing of a pig-like creature. He was depicted in a scene under a water line, chained to an anchor. He had little x’s for eyes. There were small bubbles coming from his head and drifting toward the water’s surface. The jellypig was almost smiling, he seemed unconcerned with his fate.

The caption read something like, “The jellypig takes a swim,” or “The jellypig’s day at the beach.” That began a short series of similar cartoons, all left off at the Biograph. The others portrayed a suffering jellypig in that same droll tone.

Yes, I did it to get into his head -- let him be scared, for a change.

Although I was no longer in charge of the theater, it was habit for me to have a say in it’s affairs. Which made for some awkward moments, because the jellypig cartoons weren’t funny to anybody but me. It put the new manager, Mike, who had been my assistant manager for five years, in an awkward position.

For about a year I had been doing a Thursday afternoon show on a semi-underground radio station called Color Radio. As a record played, from the studio I spoke on the phone with the jellypig. He was at work. I don’t recall what precipitated the conversation. Anyway, he told me he had blown off the notion of professional counseling. I warned him that he was breaking his bargain. He went on to say that he didn’t need any help, but that maybe I did.

The jellypig revealed to me that he resented the way I had treated him for a long time -- deliberately excluding him from much of the social scene at the theater. He complained bitterly, saying I had stood in the way of his advancement. But in spite of the way I had tried to poison the owners’ minds against him ... eventually, he would convince them to let him manage the Biograph to save money.

For the first time it hit me -- the scheming jellypig’s entire effort had been a “Gaslight” treatment. All that time I’d been playing Ingrid Bergman to his Charles Boyer.

The anger from what I had allowed to happen welled up in that moment. I told the jellypig that after my radio shift ended, I was coming directly to the theater. If he was still there, I’d break both of his legs with a softball bat.

When I got to the theater an hour or so later the jellypig had called in a replacement and vamoosed. We'll never know what would have happened had he been there.

Maybe I would have broken only one leg.

The terrified jellypig worked a couple more shifts in the booth after that day. Taking no chances, he brought in his children to be there with him, as human shields. Then, wisely, he split ... for good. Which meant no more jellypig cartoons.

It took my spontaneous run for a seat on City Council in the spring of 1984 to wrench loose from that unprecedented spell of melancholia. Blowing off my hunch on that first call probably bought me more trouble than any other single mistake I’ve ever made. Tana and I split up in the fall.

All these years later, I wonder if I heard something in that first call. Maybe it was a sound so faint I didn’t know I heard it; almost like subliminal suggestion. Perhaps it was the churning sound of the projection equipment. Although I don’t remember hearing it, it’s the best explanation -- short of parapsychology -- that makes any sense.

My dear grandmother’s advice to trust six-sense hunches now seems like good medicine. Put another way, it simply meant -- trust your own judgment. Believe in yourself.

By the time the Biograph Theatre's pair of screens went dark many art houses not unlike it had already closed all over the country. Behind on the rent, Richmond's Biograph was seized by its landlord and closed forever in December, 1987, two months shy of its 16th anniversary.

Chapter Thirteen: The Sound

2011-09-23T13:40:00.008-04:00

The handbill in this story

This piece was published by STYLE Weekly in 2000.

In the spring of 1984, I ran for public office. In case the Rea for City Council campaign doesn’t ring a bell, it was a spontaneous and totally independent undertaking. No doubt, it showed. Predictably, I lost, but I’ve never regretted the snap decision to run, because the education was well worth the price.

In truth, I had been mired in a blue funk for some time prior to my letting a couple of friends, Bill Kitchen and Rocko Yates, talk me into running, as we played a foozball game in Rockitz, Kitchen's nightclub. Although I knew winning such an election was out of my reach, I relished the opportunity to have some fun mocking the system. Besides, at the time, I needed an adventure.

So it began. Walking door to door through Richmond’s 5th District, collecting signatures to qualify to be on the ballot, I talked with hundreds of people. During that process my attitude about the endeavor began to expand. People were patting me on the back and saying they admired my pluck. Of course, what I was not considering was how many people will encourage a fool to do almost anything that breaks the monotony.

By the time I announced my candidacy at a press conference on the steps of the city library, I was thoroughly enjoying my new role. My confidence and enthusiasm were compounding daily.

On a warm April afternoon I was in Gilpin Court stapling handbills, featuring my smiling face, onto utility poles. Prior to the campaign, I had never been in Gilpin Court. I had known it only as “the projects.”

Several small children took to tagging along. Perhaps it was their first view of a semi-manic white guy — working their turf alone — wearing a loosened tie, rolled-up shirtsleeves, and khaki pants.

After their giggling was done, a few of them offered to help out. So, I gave them fliers and they ran off to dish out my propaganda with a spirit only children have.

Later I stopped to watch some older boys playing basketball at the playground. As I was then an unapologetic hoops junkie, it wasn’t long before I felt the urge to join them. I played for about 10 minutes, and amazingly, I held my own.

After hitting four or five jumpers, I banked in a left-handed runner. It was bliss, I was in the zone. But I knew enough to quit fast, before the odds evened out.

Picking up my staple gun and campaign literature, I felt like a Kennedyesque messiah, out in the mean streets with the poor kids. Running for office was a gas; hit a string of jump shots and the world’s bloody grudges and bad luck will simply melt into the hot asphalt.

A half-hour later the glamour of politics had worn thin for my troop of volunteers. Finally, it was down to one boy of about 12 who told me he carried the newspaper on that street. As he passed the fliers out, I continued attaching them to poles.

The two of us went on like that for a good while. As we worked from block to block he had very little to say. It wasn’t that he was sullen; he was purposeful and stoic. As we finished the last section to cover, I asked him a question that had gone over well with children in other parts of town.

“What’s the best thing and the worst thing about your neighborhood?” I said with faux curiosity.

He stopped. He stared right through me. Although I felt uncomfortable about it, I repeated the question.

When he replied, his tone revealed absolutely no emotion. “Ain’t no best thing … the worst thing is the sound.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, already feeling a chill starting between my shoulder blades.

“The sound at night, outside my window. The fights, the gunshots, the screams. I hate it. I try not to listen,” he said, putting his hands over his ears to show me what he meant.

Stunned, I looked away to gather my ricocheting thoughts. Hoping for a clue that would steady me, I asked, “Why are you helping me today?”

He pointed up at one of my handbills on a pole and replied in his monotone. “I never met anybody important before. Maybe if you win, you could change it.”

Words failed me. Yet I was desperate to say anything that might validate his hope. Instead, we both stared silently into the afternoon’s long shadows. Finally, I thanked him for his help. He took extra handbills and rode off on his bike.

As I drove across the bridge over the highway that sequesters his stark neighborhood from through traffic, my eyes burned and my chin quivered like my grandfather’s used to when he watched a sad movie.

Remembering being 12 years old and trying to hide my fear behind a hard-rock expression, I wanted to go back and tell the kid, “Hey, don’t believe in guys passing out handbills. Don’t fall for anybody’s slogans.

Watch your back and get out of the ghetto as fast as you can.”

But then I wanted to say, “You’re right! Work hard, be tough, you can change your neighborhood. You can change the world. Never give up!” During the ride home to the Fan District, I swore to myself to do my absolute best to win the election.

A few weeks later, at what was billed as my victory party, I, too, tried to be stoic as the telling election results tumbled in. The incumbent carried six of the district’s seven precincts. I carried one. The total vote wasn’t even close. Although I felt like I’d been in a car wreck, I did my best to act nonchalant.

In the course of my travels these days, I sometimes hear Happy Hour wags laughing off Richmond’s routine murder statistics. They scoff when I suggest that maybe there are just too many guns about; I’m told that as long as “we” stay out of “their” neighborhood, there is little to fear.

But remembering that brave Gilpin Court newspaper boy, I know that to him the sound of a drug dealer dying in the street was just as terrifying as the sound of any other human being giving up the ghost.

That same boy would be in his mid-30s now, as I was when I met him ... if he’s still alive. The ordeal he endured in his childhood was not unlike what children growing up in any number of the world’s bloody war zones are going through today. Plenty of them must cover their ears at night, too.

For the reader who can’t figure out how this story could eventually come to bear on their own life, then just wait … keep listening.

* * *

Chapter Fourteen: The Brileys

2011-09-23T13:38:00.005-04:00

SLANT 1989

Richmonders experienced an abrupt change in the standards by which news was gathered and presented 25 years ago. Having terrorized the town with a series of grisly murders five years before, on May 31, 1984, brothers Linwood and James Briley led the largest death-row jailbreak in U.S. history.

In all, six condemned men flew the coop by overpowering prison guards, donning the guards’ uniforms and creating a bogus bomb-scare to bamboozle their way out of Virginia’s supposedly escape-proof Mecklenburg Correctional Center.

While their four accomplices were rounded up quickly, the brothers Briley remained at large for 19 days. The FBI captured the duo at a picnic adjacent to the garage where they had found work in Philadelphia. Linwood was subsequently electrocuted in Richmond on Oct. 12, 1984; likewise, James on Apr. 18, 1985.

While the Brileys were on the run and for some time afterward the media coverage, both local and national, was unprecedented. During the manhunt the Brileys-mania led to stories about them being spotted simultaneously in various locations on the East Coast from North Carolina to Canada. When I noticed kids in the Carytown area were pretending to be the Brileys, and playing chasing games accordingly, well, that was just too much.

My sense of it then was the depraved were being transformed into celebrities so newspapers and television stations could sell lots of ads. Once they were on the lam, if it came to making a buck, it didn’t seem to matter anymore what the Brileys had done to be on death row.

“OK,” I said to a Power Corner group in the Texas-Wisconsin Border Cafe on a mid-June evening, “if the Brileys can be made into heroes to sell tires and sofas on TV, how long will it be before they're on collectable cards, like baseball cards? (or words to that effect).” To illustrate my point I grabbed a couple of those Border logo imprinted cardboard coasters from the bar and drew quick examples on the backs, which got laughs.

Later at home, I sat down at the drawing table and designed the series of cards. To avoid race humor entirely I used a simple drawing style that assigned no race to the characters. The sense of humor was sardonic and droll. I elected to run off a hundred sets of eight cards each, which were put into small ziplock plastic bags, with a piece of bubble gum included for audacity's sake. I figured to sell them for $1.50 a set and see what would happen.

Traveling about the Fan District on my bicycle it took about three days to sell the first press-run out of my olive drab backpack. New cards were designed, more sets were printed, more plastic bags, more bubble gum. A half-dozen locations began selling “The Brileys” on a consignment basis.

Sales were boosted when the local press began doing stories on them. For about a week I was much-interviewed by local reporters. The Washington Post ran a feature on the phenomenon and orders to buy card sets began coming in the mail from Europe.

Reporters called me for easy quotes to fill articles on death penalty issues, as if I was an expert on the subject. That I was opposed to the death penalty seemed to strike them as odd. Moreover, finding myself in a position to goose a story that was lampooning the overkill presentation of the same press corps that was interviewing me was delicious fun. In the midst of a TV news story I announced that T-shirts commemorating the Brileys' 1984 Summer Tour were on the way.

Apart from my efforts, the hated Briley brothers’ chilling crime spree and subsequent escape inspired all sorts of lowbrow jokes and sick songs, and you-name-it, which did indeed fan the flames of racial hate in Virginia.

Naively, I felt no connection to that scene until a stop at the silk screen printer’s plant suddenly cast a new light on the fly-by-night project that summer's effort was. Walking from the offices to the loading dock meant passing through a warehouse full of boxes, stacked to the ceiling. Suddenly, I was surrounded: Four or five young men closed in and cornered me.

Some of them, if not all, had box cutters in their hands; all of them were definitely black. At that moment I felt whiter than Ross Mackenzie. Tension filled the air when their spokesman asked if I was the man behind the cards and T-shirts.

As it was not the first time I’d been subjected to questions about the cards, I quickly asked if any of them had seen the cards, or had only heard about them. As I suspected, they hadn’t seen them.

Luckily, I had a pack in my shirt pocket, which I took out and handed to the group’s leader. As he studied them, one by one, his cohorts looked over his shoulder. I explained what my original motivation had been in creating the cartoons. No one laughed but the spell was soon broken. I let them keep the cards.

Later I was in a drug store, restocking one of my dealers for the cards, when a white lady with blue hair approached me. She worked there and had seen the cards, which she found unfunny. She told me her husband was on the crew that had cleaned up the crime scenes after some of the murders. Then she said if I was going to profit from it, I should be man enough to hear her out.

So, I did. She gave me specific details. It was mostly stuff I had known, or suspected, but the way she told it was brutal.

At this point the success of my absurd art project seemed to be going sour. I got a call from a reporter asking me what I had to say about Linwood Briley having made some disparaging remark about my cards. I got peeved and asked the scribe what the hell anybody ought to care about what such a man has to say.

Like it or not, I had become a part of what I had been mocking in the first place.

Shortly afterward the cards and T-shirts were withdrawn from the market. Unfortunately, without the context of the 1984 news stories being fresh the humor aspect of the cards is somewhat arcane now, because all the images were based on details from those well reported stories.

Three years later I was in the Bamboo Cafe, standing at the bar at Happy Hour, having a beer and talking with friends about sports (probably). A middle-aged man I didn’t know stepped my way to ask furtively if I was the guy who “drew those Briley cards.”

After I said “yes,” and introduced myself, he asked me a few questions about the cards. Then he spoke in a hushed tone, saying something like, “What about those missing cards?”

“Missing cards?” I returned. “Are you asking why I skipped some numbers?

He nodded and reached in his pocket to pull out a full set of The Brileys, still in its original plastic bag.

Wanting to end the conversation quickly -- that he had the cards with him was too strange for me -- I told him the simple truth with no jokes: “OK. First, I wanted to imply there was a vast series out there, without having to create it. Then, I wanted the viewer to maybe imagine for himself what the other cards might be.”

The collector put his cards back in his pocket. He stepped away, plainly disappointed with my easy answer, which gave him no dripping red meat to savor. That night the truth without hype was of little use to my public, such as it was.

Chapter Fifteen: Fan District Bar Obits

2011-09-23T13:03:00.005-04:00

Texas-Wisconsin Border Café

-- Richmond.com 1999

In 1982 three adventurous friends trusted their instincts and put together the Texas-Wisconsin Border Café, a quirky Fan District watering hole known affectionately as “The Border.”

Owners Jim Bradford (depicted above), Donna Van Winkle and Joe Seipel were rewarded with an immediate following. It evolved into an institution known widely for its wacky interior and its diverse crowd; a place where blue collars, white collars and no collars got along famously.

When word got out in early March the Border was being sold, old customers and ex-staffers began making pilgrimages to the place for one last drink, one last connection to a piece of their youth. Although it had been rumored the Border was for sale for some time, what isn’t these days?

When Bradford -- a tireless photo-realistic painter with a curmudgeon’s sense of humor -- died in the summer of 1997, well, the future of the restaurant became much more complicated. Of the three owners, Jim had surely been the one who spent the most time bellied up to the bar, overseeing operations.

After managing the restaurant in its salad days, Van Winkle had gone to law school, become an attorney, and moved to Fredericksburg. Fifty miles is a tough commute for a late-afternoon beer.

That left Seipel, chairman of VCU’s sculpture department, to hold down the happy hour fort in the section of the restaurant known as the Power Corner. Although Seipel’s talent for convivial conversation is considerable, he had taken on time-consuming responsibilities over the years; fatherhood not the least of them.

So, it was time to turn the page. On March 14, the last night of the original ownership’s watch, a bagpiper played “Amazing Grace” to close the Border down. After playing a while for the crowd on hand he marched out the door, bagpipes caterwauling passionately, and it was done.

The scene brought to mind filmmaker Luis Bunuel’s apt comment in his autobiography, My Last Sigh, about a good bar being like a chapel. No doubt, most who were there for the piper’s last mournful note took with them a strong sense of that sentiment.

Then new owners decided to honor a date the old owners had made with Burnt Taters for a March 26 CD release party. That meant keeping the business open under the old banner for a few more days and putting off the renovations. As it turned out, the delay set the stage for quite a finale.

What followed was an auction event on the actual last night of operation as the Texas-Wisconsin Border Café. At six o’clock Page Wilson and Reckless Abandon gave the makeshift stage in the front of the room over to the selling off of the bar’s wild and eclectic collection of wall decorations and art-like objects. They pulled down the framed pictures, the stuffed animal heads, the signs, and you name it. What went on was part wake, part fund-raiser, part souvenir-grab and all party.

The bidding at times resembled a feeding frenzy, as people climbed over one another to throw three figures at stuff, some of which wouldn't go for five bucks at a yard sale. The crowd cheered as each bid drove the price higher.

One rather attractive young woman gladly paid hundreds of dollars for a stuffed squirrel’s butt. A roar went up as she outbid her rivals and everyone ordered another round. The more absurd the prices got the more fun was being had. Since the money raised from the auction all went to the Bradford Scholarship Fund at VCU, more than $10,000, the harm couldn’t be found.

The Border, a happening unique in an age of conformity, will be missed. Don’t expect it to happen again.

Soble’s

-- Richmond.com 2000

Soble’s, home of “the world-famous bacon cheeseburger” for 22 years, is no more.

Paul Soble and his partner, Bruce Behrman, have sold the well-known Fan District restaurant to a group that plans to open a new restaurant under the name, “The Devil’s Kitchen.”

Soble’s, Part One, lasted ten years (1977-87) at 2526 Floyd Avenue in what had previously been the location of Cavedo’s, a traditional neighborhood drug store with a classic soda fountain. Part Two saw the restaurant lose its lease, pack up its patio, and move one block to the south - 2600 West Main Street.

Soble’s had a feel to it that was reminiscent of traditional watering holes in large cities on the eastern seaboard. Its elegant back bar was cluttered with memorabilia that included hundreds of photos of regulars and popular culture souvenirs that documented a generation’s after-dark highlights and next-day hangovers.

The mirrors were covered with Elvis kitsch, dog-eared tickets from NRBQ concerts, High on the Hog backstage passes, postcards featuring shapely derrieres, and silly bumper stickers with slogans such as, “bad cop - no doughnut.”

Perhaps the peak of Soble’s popularity was in the mid-‘80s, when an every-other-Monday jam session evolved into a scene that had a touch of magic. It came to be known as the “Blue Monday Jam.”

As the summer of 1986 wore on, the crowds for the impromptu show began to fill the restaurant and overflow onto the patio and into Floyd Avenue. Jimmy Maddox, a vocalist who accompanied himself on piano, served as organizer and host for shows that included the best musicians in town on a given Monday.

Other clubs tried to copy the concept and attempted to set up nights for jam sessions. None of them were ever able to duplicate the scene that naturally formed in Soble’s.

Behrman confirmed that indeed he saw the Blue Monday Jam as a high water mark in popularity for the restaurant. But he laughed at the idea that the live music crowds of those Monday nights spent a lot of money.

Still, that rowdy scene was part of why Soble’s became a headquarters for a certain ilk. It now joins the Texas-Wisconsin Border Café and John & Norman’s as noteworthy Fan District restaurants to cash in their chips within the last year.

According to Vaughn Turner, a bartender for many years at the Border, the Devil’s Kitchen will serve a bacon cheeseburger of sorts. He also indicated that hot sauces, made on the premises, will be featured in the new operation. Turner is one of three partners involved in the venture.

While there to check out the changes underway, I looked for a bullet hole in the back bar that had been put there during a 1987 holdup, shortly after the move from Floyd to Main. One of the robbers fired a shot at Soble that he was purported to have dodged. I couldn’t find the hole; somebody must have fixed it. It’s hard to imagine Paul ever moving that fast again.

Perhaps it was time to make a change. As far as why he and Soble sold the business, Behrman said, “We both got tired of it and wanted to do some other things. Business was okay.”

Soble’s is on a short list of restaurants that gets, or deserves, an obituary.

Note: Paul Soble died on July 27, 2000.

Chiocca’s Park Avenue Inn

-- Richmond.com 2004

On Monday, Frank Chiocca stood tending bar for his last shift. As he answered a question from a customer the phone rang; another old friend was calling to pay his respects. With the sun setting on what was a crisp autumn day Chiocca was reflective, yet upbeat, in the midst of his familiar five o'clock crowd for the last time.

Chiocca's Park Avenue Inn opened for business on June 18, 1964. It closed for good on November 29, 2004.

According to Chiocca a 1964 bottle of Richbrau, which was then brewed and bottled about a half-mile from his Fan District location, cost a quarter. He chuckled, "Forty years! I didn't have two nickels to rub together when I got here."

To say Frank Chiocca, 79, has the food-and-drink biz in his blood is a bit of an understatement. After returning to Richmond from service in the Italian army during World War I, his father, Pietro Chiocca -- whose two older brothers were already running a restaurant at 812 W. Broad Street called Jimmy's -- became a partner in Silvio Funai's restaurant. The building at 327 E. Franklin St., which no longer exists, had previously been a public library. In 1937 "Pete" Chiocca bought Funai out and renamed the place Chiocca and Son.

Before they left to serve in the American armed forces during World War II, Pete's boys -- Andrew, Joe, Mario and Frank -- all worked in his restaurant, which was across the street from the Richmond Newspapers building.

In 1947 Joe opened his own eatery at 2915 W. Cary St. (in the building that now houses The Track); he called it Chiocca's. In 1952 brother Mario followed suit by opening his version of a Chiocca's at 425 Belmont Ave. His children, Tim and Carla, still operate that basement tavern today, in much the manner it has always been run.

In 1961 Pete Chiocca closed the original downtown Chiocca's. Using the typewriter with which he had created the daily menus for years, Frank then put together a few recollections of his father's place to help columnist Charles McDowell with a piece he wrote paying tribute to the passing of a favorite haunt. According to McDowell's account, Frank's history recalled, "... the prohibition days, the bawdy girls who would occasionally saunter in to catch the eye of a medical student, a lawyer, an artist, musician, and perhaps even a newspaper man. ...and the ever-present gas pilot light at face level near the tobacco case, for lighting one's cigar or cigarette."

Chiocca's Park Avenue Inn was known for its time-capsule atmosphere and its made-to-order sandwiches; the signature sandwich was called "the Masterpiece." It featured an anchovy sauce based on Frank's mother's recipe. Watching his hands carefully constructing a sandwich and arranging the presentation on the plate was always worth studying; he was a polished craftsman.

In recent years his shrinking customer base was made up mostly of young families from the surrounding blocks who eschewed fast food, and graying beer aficionados who grew up in that same area. Now those loyal customers have lost an authentic connection to a sepia-toned time when the Fan District was dotted with Ma and Pa restaurants and small markets.

Moreover, the list of forgettable dives and pretentious hash houses that have come and gone in the Fan during Frank Chiocca's steady 40-year-run is too long for this limited space.

“All things come to an end,” Chiocca shrugged. “Forty years; it’s been a good run.”

Chapter Sixteen: The Last High on the Hog

2011-09-23T12:10:00.011-04:00

Memphis Rockabilly Band onstage in 2006

This piece was published by Brick Weekly in 2007.

Due to the intrusion of an all-day downpour, last year’s edition of High on the Hog (on Oct. 7, 2006), No. 30, was a soggy affair. Two of the bands scheduled couldn’t play under the circumstances. Yet, in spite of the stormy weather, the Bopcats and the Memphis Rockabilly Band performed using a scaled down sound system. Tarps were lashed to the sides and back of the stage to block the wind-driven rain.

A few party stalwarts danced in the mud with umbrellas. The show went on … but perhaps for the last time.

“It was a Nor’easterner that settled over Richmond,” said the longtime director of matters musical, Chuck Wrenn. “We’ll see what the future brings.”

Meanwhile, there certainly will be no High on the Hog 31 this year.

So, the director of matters porcine, Larry Ham, won’t be slathering his Carolina red vinegar basting sauce over slow-cooking pork this Saturday in Libby Hill Park. Moreover, it seems likely that High on the Hog—which for three decades has served a generation as a reliable reunion party—has probably happened for the last time.

The heavy losses sustained from last year’s fizzler meant the handful of friends/neighbors who have staged and financially backed HOTH since its inception took a bath in red ink ... the rainy day fund was wiped out.

Going back to HOTH’s origins, other than Ham, among Wrenn’s chief co-conspirators have been: Bobby Long, Dave O’Kelly, John Cochran, Randy Smith and Steve McKay. For such veterans last year’s weather had to bring to mind another rainy day, 26 years before. 1980 was the year they significantly enlarged the plan for what had originally been a small annual neighborhood party.

Three rousing rock n’ roll bands played on a flatbed trailer in the cobblestone alley behind Wrenn’s 2808 East Franklin Street back yard for what was the then-largest HOTH crowd ever.

Yet, this was a time when one couldn’t get a permit from the proper authorities for such an event. Amplified Rock music simply wasn’t allowed at outdoor shindigs in Richmond, most especially on public property. For whatever reason the cops on the beat chose not to bust it.

When it suddenly began raining, rather than lose momentum by shutting off the electricity and clearing the stage—to wait out the downpour—Wrenn broke out his staple gun and large rolls of heavy-gauge transparent plastic. With the help of volunteers an awning was hastily improvised to keep the rain off the stage. A portion of the yard closest to it was also protected, somewhat.

Then, with the electric guitars of Don’ Ax Me ... Bitch wailing in defiance of the chilly rainstorm, the sense of common purpose felt by those dancing in the mud was unforgettable. The full potential of live rock n’ roll music to simultaneously express both lamentation and celebration was realized.

In 1983 HOTH had outgrown its alley venue, so it shifted gears and moved into the park across the street. The throwdown even went legit. Subsequently, HOTH’s rollicking success and noteworthy lack of trouble planted the seeds for Jumpin’ in July, Friday Cheers and the outdoor music festivals that have blossomed since.

Countless celebrations and festivities have taken place in Libby Hill Park since its original days of being named Marshall Square, after Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall. Following the Civil War the name was changed to Libby Hill Park, after Luther Libby who lived adjacent to the park. Libby is remembered by history buffs for his nearby warehouse that was used by the Confederacy as prison during the Civil War.

HOTH parties, Frisbee-golf games and inner tube rides down snow-covered slopes aside, my own most vivid recollection of that park comes from a late afternoon in the early-80s with a girlfriend. For the benefit of my zoomed-in Super 8 lens, she was doing cartwheels, landing smoothly on her hands, then feet, then hands. As I panned to follow her, my camera angle had the shimmering light on the river in the background.

The HOTH record for beer sales on a Saturday afternoon still stands at 209 kegs; it was some time in the early ‘90s, according to Chuck. At its peak, it took some 350 volunteers to chop the pork, serve the beer, tend the stage, etc. Each year volunteers got a new HOTH T-shirt for their trouble; extras were sold to the public. There have been 25 different models.

What was a beloved local gospel group, The Silver Stars, holds the record for most HOTH appearances with 10 (1987-‘96). The Memphis Rockabilly Band played the gig seven times (1980, ‘81, ‘84-‘87, ‘06).

“The Silver Stars, we got every year we could ... until they died,” Wrenn recalled.

What were locally-based bands with multiple appearances include: The Bopcats, The Good Humor Band, Billy Ray Hatley’s bands, Page Wilson with Reckless Abandon and The Wall-O-Matics. Maybe the three most noteworthy national acts were: Billy Price and the Keystone Rhythm Band in ‘83 and ‘85; NRBQ in ‘87; Marcia Ball in ‘01.

Presented with the prospect that HOTH has run it course, a smiling Chuck Wrenn offered familiar advice, “Don’t forget to have a good time.”

Those coveted laminated backstage credentials, which meant free beer to the wearer, will probably be selling on eBay soon. Who knows what T-shirts will eventually be worth?

Appropriately, as it stands now, the last band to perform was the impeccably authentic Memphis Rockabilly Band. Although it was unplanned, they were the perfect act to play an encore for 30 years of smiles ... one last fast-dance in the mud.

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