The New York automat where Allen Ginsberg dated Patti Smith by accident
Sometimes our lives can change in an instant. It is a phrase that movies, music and art have long relied on. The idea of serendipity is a romantic one, but in the case of Patti Smith’s life-changing chance encounter with Allen Ginsberg, that romance never quite took off.
It was November 1969, a harsh winter if you were an artist with no money. At the time, Smith was living in room 1017 at the Chelsea Hotel, the smallest room in the building. It cost her and Robert Mapplethorpe just $55 a week, on the condition that the manager kept a portfolio of their artwork. Stanley Bard, who ran the place, had an unusual way of working. If he liked someone’s work, he would rent them a room for almost nothing, keeping some of their art with the belief that he could eventually sell it to make his money back.
Patti and Robert were getting by, sort of. She worked at a book shop, he made art and occasionally hustled. It was enough to cover the rent, but when it came to fun or even food, it was a stretch.
In Just Kids, Smith captures this strange state of poverty in which they were living. On one hand, they were drowning with nowhere near enough income to actually be building a future. Their diet was basic to the point of near malnutrition. But on the other hand, both could find a sense of romance in it. When they’d occasionally come into some money, and by that I mean a dollar or two, even just found on the floor, she writes of their rare treat of black coffee and a shared doughnut at a local diner like it was a glorious feast.
Dirt broke but living around at the epicentre of inspiration, Smith was happy with her lot and in November 1969, though hungry and cold and stressed about both those things, simply getting to exist around other artists was enough.
Then fate seemed to step in. “Can I help?” Those life-saving words came when Smith was missing a dime needed to buy the simplest cheese sandwich at a shabby automat on West 23rd Street called Horn & Hardart. When she turned around, she instantly knew who he was, later writing, “There was no mistaking the face of one of our great poets and activists.” In that moment, he gave her some money, bought her a coffee and invited her to sit down.
It’s a dream scene. There, Smith was with one of her heroes. 22 years old and still new to the city, still trying to figure it out and find the courage to truly see herself as an artist, the invitation to sit alongside Ginsberg must have felt like an invitation from God himself. As they sat there talking poetry, bonding over their love for Walt Whitman, obviously, Smith was in heaven.
Then he paused. Ginsberg looked at her, squinting a little, then broke the spell. “Are you a girl?”
“Is that a problem?” she replied. Romantically, for the famously gay poet, it was as he replied, “I’m sorry. I took you for a very pretty boy.”
But once the confusion was cleared up, it wasn’t a problem at all for what would become a life-long friendship and mentorship during which Ginsberg would often come in as a saving grace, providing support or inspiration or just a long conversation with coffee.
Years and years on, Ginsberg asked Smith what she said about how they met. “I would say you fed me when I was hungry,” she replied, and is there anything as tender as that? The simplest act of kindness summed up in the simplest phrase, but behind it all, that metaphor of Smith being fed by her hero when she was down and out is a perfect encapsulation of the years that made her.
