Once upon a time, before there was Craigslist, a “financially independent” male looking for a slender mistress had to resort to placing a personal ad in alternative newspapers like the Village Voice or the East Village Eye.
Any woman interested in the offer would actually write a letter to a PO Box and wait for a phone call. Very archaic.
This ad ran in the August 1984 edition of the Eye. Hmm, how many responses do you think he got, and did he find the mistress he was searching for?
Those are some harsh words from a columnist for the East Village Eye, who wasn’t too impressed by the music scene that year locally and nationally.
End-of-year wrap-ups like these generally sound dated and pompous immediately after they’re published. (Was Ed Meese truly one of the most overrated person of the year?)
Still, I think the columnist is dead-on with his view of David Bowie and Mick Jagger’s throwaway single “Dancing in the Streets.” It really was the worst video of 1985.
Well, that was the price in the mid-1980s, according to this time-capsule snapshot of what lofts and apartments were going for 25 years ago. It’s from the classified section of the now-defunct East Village Eye.
There’s also an interesting personal ad in the same classified section. I wonder who Krissy Arbus was and if she ever came home.
Cool old ad in the December/January 1986 East Village Eye for They Might Be Giants’ first record, which features the poppy and nonsensical “Don’t Let’s Start.” I think I heard it that spring when it was in heavy rotation on WLIR. (Or was it WDRE by then?)
I called the number for Dial-A-Song but it just rang and rang. To protect any innocent parties who may have that number now, I felt compelled to block out the last few digits.
If this was the summer of 1984 and you identified with the downtown art or music scene, you probably would’ve logged lots of time at these venues. Downtown Beirut is now Standard, the Cat Club was reinvented as a couple of different dance clubs, and one of the still-existing Pyramid Club’s claims to fame is hosting the New York City debuts of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Nirvana.
These ads appeared in the August 1984 issue of the East Village Eye, an alternative tabloid that covered the growing East Village art scene as well as news, music, and fashion from 1979 to 1987.
The Eye is long defunct, but you can view cover art from some of their issues here.
Ephemeral New York 