Media/Jerry Bledsoe

TBE UNDBBGBOUND'S
'ACE' IN TBB BOLE
"... 'We just want to write,' they say at The Ace, 'and have fun
and smash capitalism and pull the country out of the war.'. "
When The East Village Other, one of
the ea rly underground papers, collapsed
in confusion and bitterness last winter,
The New York A ce arose, phoenix-like,
from the wreckage. The Ace, the city's
most recent, possibly most ambitious,
attempt at an alternative newspaper,
was the idea of Rex Weiner, a sallow
21-year-old city native with long curly
locks and brooding looks.
After The Other folded, Weiner start-
ed thinking about a paper of his own.
So he got together with Bob Singer,
another former EVO writer, and they
called a meeting of all the writers and
artists they knew, most of whom had
worked for The Other. rt was a boister-
ous meeting, as such events tend to be.
Some wanted the new paper to besom-
ber and filled with hard-hitting report-
ing. Some thought it should be highly
political-"OIT the pigs!" Others want·
ed a paper of columnists, a crazy
pape r full of sa tire and spoof. a paper The underground emerges; the scene outside "The Ace's" basement office.
of the arts. " What we came up with,"
says Weine r, " is a blend of all these." Edgar Hoover died, the Ace staff mem- sic came from the radio, and the air
That blend could be more aptly term- bers began drifting into the office. It was pungent with mariju ana and tobac-
ed a mishmash. In the first eight edi- was as if they had been summoned, al- co smoke. The staff me mbers laughed
tions there was little original reporting, though they had not. There was just a and talked. The Wicked Witch o f the
mostly warmed-over news heavily spiced need to be with friends at such a time. West was dead, and everybody was
with personal opinion. There were a The office is a dreary place, smaU feeling good.
few attempts at spoof, some heavy- and dingy, crowded with four battered But somehow a mere party did not
handed satire, a lot of grotesque car- desks, an assortment of decrepit chairs, seem appropriate to the occasion. Some-
toons. Unlike most other underground and two weary, sagging couches with thing more was needed. Some public
papers, The Ace even had television serious gash wounds bandaged by tape stateme nt was demanded. And so when
and sports columns. But essentiaUy it and reopened by abuse. There is but A. J. Weberman, the wire-haired music
was a paper of columnists whose favor- one typewriter in the place, an aging columnist and noted Esquire analys t of
ite subj ects seemed to be themselves. IBM Executive. superstars' garbage, said, ''No, man ,
Since the paper was started wit h a The place was a mess. The walls what we ought to do, see, is hold a
few hundred dollars that the two had were haphazardly decorated with post- mock funeral," the idea was seized
managed to get together, Weiner was ers, handbills, signs, a few scenic calen- with zest.
the publisher, Singer the editor. The dars, and copies of the eight issues of "We could get a coffin, see. 1\ 11d we
first issues were put together in Wein- The Ace that had appeared since its could get what's-his-na111e's hearse. No,
er's Thompson Street apartment with birth. If the floor had ever been swept, it got towed i11. Well, a11y1vay, we co11/d
a bootleg telephone on which calls it was not in recent times. It suffered get a coffin <md carry ii down to the
could be made but not received. After the usual rubble of cigarette butts, beer F.B.I. Building-where is tire F.B.I.
the first issue, the paper fell under the cans, and decaying cockroach carcasses. Building?-and everybody could go by
influence of Al Goldstein and Jim Mixed in with a ll of this were the paste and spit in it, or piss in it, or ... Hey,
Buc kley, publishers of Screw and other and paper remnants from the recent gross, man! Bea11tiful! Somebody's got
such literary efforts (both became Ace assemblage of a 40-foot papier-mfiche to give a eulogy. Right. I'll write a
columnists). The design changed dras· ma rijuana cigarette which had bee n eulogy. No, let me. Somebody write a
tically and color was introduced . A hoisted down Fifth Avenue for a May eulogy. The11 we could take the coffi11
$5,000 no-strings-a ttached investment Day Smoke-In in Central Park. down to the Staten Island ferry and
by a Columbia University student gave The staff itself was now slumped in dump it into the river. Great!
the staff an office in a basement on 17th the couches and on the chairs and What about the media? So111ebody's
Street and the wi ll to struggle on. hunkered on desk tops under the sput- gotta let the media know. No se11se in
Late in the afternoon of the day J. tering fluorescent light tubes. Rock mu- doing it if the straight media don 'I

Photographed by Benno Friedman NEW YORK 55

 ".. .Unfortunately, the trouble with putting
out an anarchic paper is all the chaos ... "
come 10 tell everybody about it. Bui
will they come?"
" They got to give us coverage," said
Weiner_
" lt's too sick, man," said Weberm an,
shaking his head . " They'll say it's sick."
Bob Singer had no t taken part in
much of this discussion. Not that h e
was opposed to the idea. Just that h e
had one of his own. He is a young man
who always manages to look busy and
worried. H e is tall and dresses like
his publisher, in the uniform of the
revolution: boots, faded jeans, blue
work shirt and a denim jacket that is
coming apa rt at the seams. But while his
hair is long on the sides, he is growing
bald on top, which must surely be a
traumatic experience for a long-haired
eighteen-year-old revolutionary.
While the planning for the mock
fune ral was going on, Singer went
out for a while, and when he returned,
he strode purposefully to his desk in
the rear corner of the room and hud-
dled in discussion with Rex Weiner
and a couple of other staff members.
A decision was made.
The Ace would publish its first
EXTRA, a special edition in celebra-
tion of Hoover 's death. It would be
a quickie mimeographed street sheet,
three pages, front and back, to be
passed out free. And it would advertise
the mock funer al. O'Rourke would do
a funny piece, La timer would come up
with an editorial, and " Yossarian "
would produce an appropriate cartoon .
With those editorial decisions behind
him, Singer rea red back in his chair and
pu t his foot on the desk.
" The reason thi s demonstration is
important," he obser ved, " is because
it's the most tasteless demonstration in
years."
The Ace's fu-st special edition would
actually be a face-saving edition. Since
its inception as a bi-weekly, the paper
had not missed a publication date by
many days. But another edition was
now due, and it would not be forth-
coming. The reason was simple: The
New Y ork Ace was broke. The last
issue had been printed on credit, and
the printe r, a New Jersey company,
had refused to produce another edition
until the last had been paid for . No-
body was sure when the next regular
edition might appear. So a mimeo-
graphed extra would fill the void nicely,
and at a cost of only a few bucks, espe-
cially if some movement group could
be found to donate the use of a mimeo-
graph machine.
Underground papers are bom of
"Ii NFW YO RK
anger and frustration, and the best of
them are able to rise above it. The
most eUective of the underground pa-
pers-the GJ. papers, for instance-are
those that have a specific reason for be-
ing, some outside force that binds them
together. But The A ce was not born
so muc h of anger and frustration, al-
though they were certainly there. And
its only reason fot· being seems to be
to serve the egos of its writers and
artists. " It is," says Weiner, " a writer's
newspap er_" Precisely the problem. A
writer's newspaper and not a reader 's.
In its four-month existence, The Ace
had not only failed to win a wide and
ardent readership, it had committed a
worse s~n . It had failed to win adver-
tising. Which was, of course, the cause
of a lurge p art of the present problem.
The return from street sales of The
Ace's 6,000 copies would not even pay
the printing bill.
And while eve rybody waited to see
when the next edition would come out,
Weiner and Singer talked vaguely of
" some mon ey w e're supposed lo get."
It is clear th at the staff members of
The Ace consider themselves the liter-
ary avant-garde of the new generation.
Weiner admits that there is a sort of
Paris-in-the-twenties feeling about the
place. The sta(f members are mostly
young, ambitious, bright, and even tal-
ented. They support themselves by
writing for other papers, such as The
Herald, for rock magazines, and by
hacking for the sex pa pers. But the
things they produce for The Ace are
the things they consider their real work.
" Whatever we do," says Bob Singer,
" we try to do good. There is very
little now that the underground press
can do that's original or shocking other
tha n being a free press, a free place
for journalists to work. There's more
freedom here than any place else . . .
We ca n maintain a good journalistic
reputation and at the same time we' re
free to perpetuate any outrage or bad
taste that catches our fancy."
In one of the early editions of The
A ce, Jim Buckley, who writes a medi a
column, wrote about the new paper.
" What is it?" he asked. " Where's it
going? What's it going to do? ft's an
amalgam of writers bent on one goal-
to wipe out The Village V oice. That's
all. And believe me, Lhat is a worthy
and noble goal- but The Ace's editors
want to push tha t fact to the side and
proclaim The A ce as something bigger,
filling a greater need-although they
don't know wha t it is_"
" A lot of people a re confused about
our goals," ndmits Rex Weiner. "Ace is
creating a new audience. We're writing
what we feel is the temper of the times.
"It's almost like a magazine-I can
see it becoming the paper to read in
New York to find out what's happen-
ing. I see it changing the style of under-
ground papers around the country.
There's a need in New York for a real
newspaper."
Weiner and Singer would like to see
The Ace become successful enough to
support the people who work on it.
" All of us are pretty sick of starving,"
says Weiner. "I don't see The Ace
making us a million dollars. We just
want to write and have fun, and also
smash American imperialism and capi-
talism, and pull the country out of the
war, and keep people laughing."
" I'm really interested," says Singer,
" in what the paper can be historically,
which is a newspaper of the left, an-
archist, alternate culture, which is su-
perior in reporting and litera ry attrac-
tion to any other publication."
A worthy aim, to be sure. But the
trouble with putting out an anarchic
newspaper is all this damn chaos.
It had been hoped to get the special
edition onto the streets on the day fol-
lowing Hoover's dea th. That afternoon,
as Hoover lay in state in the Capitol
Rotunda, Rex Weiner was hunched
over the typewriter in the Ace office.
The writers had brought in their copy,
and Weiner was trying to set it in un-
justified columns for the stencil. He
was making a lot of errors. Since he
was the only person working on it, it
was obvious that the paper would not
be out this day. Tomorrow morning,
Weiner said .
Later in the day, Singer came in and
they struggled with headlines and page
layouts. "Man," he said , " I w ish we
were doing something industrial, mak-
ing tire chains or something."
On Thursday morning, the day of
Hoover's funeral, Rex Weiner shuffied
down 17th Street and opened the Ace
office a little before noon. He went in-
side a nd flicked on the lights and looked
around. He was not feeling well.
The special edition was no nearer
publica ti on than it had been the day
before. " We're having coordination
problems," he said.
A few minutes later, Bob Singer
came in. " Look, man," he said to
Weiner, " we're a little short. We only
got seven bucks in the bank-$6 .99, to
be exact."
Weiner nodded.
" How much do we need ?" said
Singer.
" Maybe 40 bucks."
" Well, I'm not paying it this time."
" l know, man, I'll try to get it."
There were other problems. Hand-
bills advertising a benefit movie show-
ing for The Ace were supposed to have
been plastered around town the night
before. They had not been.
Weiner was disgusted. " Maybe we
can do it this afternoon," said Singer,
and Weiner blew up .
"We got other people on the paper,"
he said, his voice rising. " If they want
to have a effing paper, let them do :1
r
- -
-
-~
effing something! "
Singer could not stay. He had other
work . He is trying to start a new mag-
azine called Speed, and it demands his
attention, too.
The rest of the day did not go well .
Coca Crystal, a girl reporter and mem-
ber of the militant Emma Goldman
Brigade who had recently gained a de- p . .
gree of underground notoriety by re-
leasing rats and creating bedlam at the
S lst Annual Republican Women's
Luncheon in Washington, called to say
she was quitting. She didn't like the
Boodles
way the paper was going; she thought
Weiner and Singer didn't respect the
The most expensive
stuff she was doing, and she feared that
the new girl in the office was trying to
British gin in the world.
move in on h er. Steve Kra us, who at
42 is the oldest Ace writer, pleaded
It costs a little more
with h er over the telephone. " Oh,
Coca, come on. That's ridiculous, you
to taste the very best.
94.4 PROOF· 1003 G.N.S.
dropping out. I mean, we've all been PARK AVENUE IMPORTS CO ., N.Y., N.Y.
together for years on EVO and now
we've got this paper ... I really wish
you wouldn't feel this way. Especially
now, you know, when we're kind of
regrouping. This is not the time to drop Bet
out. I know how you feel, but it's not
as important as keeping together and • you ~
can't~
not letting the paper fall a part."
Weiner was not able to get the
money, nor the paper on which to
print the special edition, nor sympa-
thetic copying facilities. That night he
love just one.
and Singer argued bitterly. They're St. Croix's foremost beachfront
twosome. Stay at one. Ge t all g u est
The mock funeral for J. Edgar Hoov- privileges at the other. Your choice.
er was :iot held at 1 l a.m. Friday as Gorgeous accommodations. Lively In-
scheduled . It would never be held. formal f un and action. And delightfully
Neither did the J. Edgar Hoover spe- cool t radewinds for the most perfect
weather in the Caribbean.
cial edition of The New York Ace ap-
pear that day. It had been scrapped.
" It's the same old story," said Wein-
er. " Nobody did the work on it. As
simple as tha t."
He spent much of that day wandering
around in search of a " drive-away" car Gra~etree
to take him to Miami. He had reports B ay Hotel
that the Zippies were already descend- •
ing on Miami to begin planning activi- B€ACH HOT-eL OF GRAP£TR£E BAY
ties for the Democratic convention and ON THE WONDERFUL BEACHES
he wanted to get there before they OF BEAUTIFUL GRAPETREE BAY.
mucked the whole thing up. P.O. Box " Z", Christiansted.
" This whole week was one of blown St. Croix. U.S. Virgin Islands 00820
things," he said. See your travel agent . write direct or call
HETLAND & STEVENS, INC.
Had the events of the week blown New York: (212) 867-1450
the future of The Ace as well? " I don 't Boston: (617) 266-1370 •Chicago: (31 2) 372·4383
Al so in Dallas, Miami, Ft. Lauderdale and Toronto.
think .i t's significant," said Weiner. The
Ace, he said, would survive. -
NEW YORK 57