Just Kids by Patti Smith
Summary
It was the summer Coltrane died, the summer of love and riots, and the summer when a chance encounter in Brooklyn led two young people on a path of art, devotion, and initiation.
Patti Smith would evolve as a poet and performer, and Robert Mapplethorpe would direct his highly provocative style toward photography. Bound in innocence and enthusiasm, they traversed the city from Coney Island to Forty-Second Street and eventually to the celebrated round table of Max’s Kansas City, where the Andy Warhol contingent held court. In 1969, the pair set up camp at the Hotel Chelsea and soon entered a community of the famous and infamous, the influential artists of the day and the colorful fringe. It was a time of heightened awareness, when the worlds of poetry, rock and roll, art, and sexual politics were colliding and exploding. In this milieu, two kids made a pact to take care of each other. Scrappy, romantic, committed to create, and fueled by their mutual dreams and drives, they would prod and provide for one another during the hungry years.
Just Kids begins as a love story and ends as an elegy. It serves as a salute to New York City during the late sixties and seventies and to its rich and poor, its hustlers and hellions. A true fable, it is a portrait of two young artists’ ascent, a prelude to fame.
Book Setting: New York City
Brentano, 586 Fifth Ave.
Scribner’s Bookstore, 596 Fifth Ave.
The Dom & Electric Circus, 19 St. Mark’s Place
Tompkins Square Park
Gem Spa
The Fillmore East, 105 Second Ave.
Patti’s and Robert’s apartment, 160 Clinton Hall St.
Hotel Chelsea
Allerton Hotel, 302 W 22nd St.
El Quijote
Patti and Robert’s first studio, 206 W. 23rd St.
Max’s Kansas City
Gotham Book Mart
Wollman Rink
Village Oldies, 149 Bleecker St,
St. Mark’s Church
The Mercer Arts Center, 240 Mercer St.
One of Robert’s studios, 24 Bond St.
One of Robert’s studios, 35 W 23rd St.
The Strand Bookstore
CGBG, 315 Bowery
Electric Lady Studios
Album photo from Horses, One Fifth Ave.
The Bitter End
The Hit Factory, 421 W 54th St.
Reviews
“The most enchantingly evocative memoir of funky-but-chic New York in the late 1960s and early 1970s that any alumnus has yet committed to print.”
— Janet Maslin's top 10 books of 2010, New York Times
“A heartbreakingly sweet recollection of just that sort of vanished Bohemian life...Just as [Smith] stands out as an artiste in a movement based on collectivism, her singular voice gleams among rock memoirs as a work of literature.”
— Boston Globe
“[A] beautifully crafted love letter to [Robert Mapplethorpe]...Smith transports readers to what seemed like halcyon days for art and artists in New York...[a] tender and tough memoir...[an] elegant eulogy.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)