7-13-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians – Starter Job #146 (The Washington Squares era Starter Job at CFA)

Working in the cable building for David M’s Consulting for Architects (CFA) wasn’t a hard job, just a little frustrating. This was in the pre-internet era, when we did all our work with typewriters, primitive word processors, telephones and fax machines. Sure, it was still effective and work got done and all, but for instance if you needed to get in touch with the boss and he was out of the office, you had no recourse but to say

“Let me take a message and I’ll have him get back to ya.” 

There was a lot of that message taking on the duplicate forms back at CFA. DM was a cool young dude about town who went out to the best restaurants and wined and dined and did other stuff that I’ll only allude to ‘cause I don’t know what’s permissible to say and I don’t really want to bring anybody down. Back then, a lot of partying was in the air, especially for the yuppie class -- like DM -- who had the bucks.

I had access to his big business checkbook and had to keep track of the checks -- though I never balanced the checkbook per se because -- many of the stubs for the checks were blank. I had no idea of the money DM was taking out for his own pleasure pursuits -- or anything else. Sometimes the hired guns or architects would call and ask about payments. I wanted to help, but had to get the boss to go over the billings, what was in the bank account, and then figure out the payments and sign the checks.

I have never wanted to have the responsibility of signing checks for anybody but me.

Anyway, when DM did breeze into the office, he seemed to have a headache and wasn’t very inspired to work on the books and all when I was around. He’d book architects and be on the phone, drumming up more business, but I had no idea when the other administrative stuff got done.

He did pay me every week, though, and I gratefully accepted -- for as long as it lasted.

7-12-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians – Starter Job #145 (The Washington Squares - Sidebar about Syd Straw & another Starter Job. . . )

Anyway, one day, Syd Straw tells me she has a part time “day” job that she really isn’t into. “Hey honey” -- she called everyone honey, sofar as I could tell -- “I’m working for this architect guy who started a temp agency, in the cable building?”

Yeah? I was all ears, as I had a constant need to supplement my income, and after Mickey died at One U. in May 1983, the job there started to really suck. Naturally, we were all in mourning but that puts a pall on business, you might say.

“Yeah, and he needs somebody to come in, answer phones, and help with his filing and stuff.”

Sure, I’ve done that kind of work, I said, and I type like a demon (probably around 40 wpm but not bad for a musician in her 20’s back then). I didn’t mind office work because I knew I had other stuff going for me & so as a rule I didn’t hate my “day jobs.”

So, Syd Straw introduced me to David M., who ran a company that he started called Consulting for Architects (CFA). An architect himself, DM came upon the brilliant idea of representing/hiring other architects out at a rate twice what he paid them (the usual for a temp agency). I was familiar with the temping world as I’d do that on occasion, too, for a company called Accurate Temporaries downtown in the World Trade Center.

The cable building was a large, gorgeous hulking antique on the corner of Broadway and Houston street, and many hip businesses rented offices there. Being only a few blocks from my home at Thompson Street between Houston and Prince, it was a no-brainer: of course I’d work for DM at CFA.

Thank you, Syd Straw - or, thank you, Straw woman!

7-10-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians – Starter Job #143 (The Washington Squares - Sidebar about Syd Straw . . . )

Because I was hanging out with Syd Straw in late 1983 and early 1984, just into the Squares days, several opportunities came my way and I look back and have to thank her.  I met my boyfriend, Rick, because she told me about a party on 8^th Avenue at a friend of a friend’s apartment (it was Rick’s). She never showed up there, but it didn’t matter ‘cause I met a cute guy -- and a good man -- who took a big shine to me and we were together for over 5 years.

I also took on a part time job that I needed to pay my rent for a few months.

Syd Straw was an interesting and fun friend. Tall, gangly, bespectacled, hippie-cute in a skinny, long-haired, Patti Smith way, she had a self deprecating “Aw shucks” manner, was very warm and schmoozy, and always ingratiating. We got along great at first: Syd has a neat sense of humor and can make you feel really good because, as I said, she’s a fantastic charmer and schmoozer.

I’d just get annoyed when she’d break out into these mini-rants with a loud sing-song voice, twirling around while walking on the streets with me, “I have to SINNNGGGG!”  Yeah, I thought, can it, Straw woman “--and some of us, we gots to work/ooh watch me now. . .” from ”Sweet Jane” by Lou Reed & the Velvets. I, too, had to sing -- but wasn’t as good about taking that message to the skies. Besides, I was already in a band that was working hard & moving ahead. Syd was self-grooming for solo stardom (and I admire that -- it’s hard for me to do), and she succeeded in a few years with the Golden Palominos (or the Go-Pals, as the hipsters called ‘em).

(photo of Syd with Bruce on bottom left from CA trip --when the Squares visited John Stewart, in Malibu)