Another greeting:

Let me get back to the "Outer Boroughs" folk scene in New York City during the 1960s. I know there was stuff happening around Brooklyn College. Joe Elias, for example, was active back then, and he still is, as leader of the Joe Elias Ladino Ensemble. There was also stuff happening in the Bronx. That's when NYU still had what it called its Uptown Campus, now the site of Bronx Community College, and there were some coffee houses scattered about. The Uptown Coffee House, still in existence, may have its roots going back to that era, but I'm not sure.

I don't know much about what, if anything, was happening on Staten Island, but I do know there was quite a folk scene flourishing out in Queens. It was centered on a coffee house called the Interlude, which was owned by a fellow namd Max Heilbronner. He had a partner named Dave, but whose last name I don't recall. The Interlude was located in the corner of a row of storefronts just off the Long Island Railroad station plaza in Kew Gardens, Queens. That's the very spot where Kitty Geovese was murdered in 1964, while at least 38 people saw or heard what was happening, but did nothing.

The Kitty Genovese incident inspired the opening stanza of Phil Ochs' Small Circle of Friends: "Look outside the window, there's a woman being grabbed, he's dragged her to the bushes, and now she's being stabbed..." Phil appeared at the Interlude, as did many of the Greenwich Village folkies (Dave Van Ronk, the Holy Modal Rounders, Eric Weissberg & Marshall Brickman, etc.), but the place also had its own collection of locals. Chief among them, for a while, was Michael Cooney. He came from out-of-town, but chose to live in Queens rather than Manhattan. Kitty Genovese had lived in one of the apartments above the row of stores, and Michael Cooney lived in another of those apartments, possibly in the same building.

Another Interlude regular was a singer-songwriter named Al Kuda, who called himself Al Casey for a while but started working under the name Al Cooper when he landed a gig playing organ for Bob Dylan. Kuda/Casey/Cooper later became a member of Blood, Sweat, and Tears. Among the others were Bob Zaidman (blues, ragtime, and country guitarist), John Kalish (banjo picker), Kent Michaels (poet), George Hirsch (blues guitarist). Another was Pat Sky, whenever he was in town, but he divided his time between Queens and the Village. Interlude waitress Lucy Brown appears in a photo on the back cover of one of Pat Sky's LPs.

There were other places in Queens as well, including a coffee house on Metropolitan Avenue in Forest Hills (maybe called the Metropole?) and another for a very short time on 37th Avenue in Jackson Heights, but those were mostly places to play gigs and go home. The Interlude was the place to hang out.

--- Steve