About

I’ve always been a writer, but my journalism career had to wait on my salad days running their course.

I moved to gloriously derelict NYC in 1978 and soon joined the cast of The American Dance Machine in its original Broadway run in a basement nightclub-cum-theater once home to Billy Rose’s Diamond Horseshoe cabaret. “Studying” the show from the house prior to joining the cast, I found myself wrestling a junkie fleeing the place with audience member’s bags from the coat check. Ah, New York!

I wrote my first journalism about AIDS for service mags. I lived and worked in an epidemic epicenter as beloved friends, colleagues and mentors died around us, many tragically young. Writing about AIDS/PWA was a way to fight ignorance and stigma. At the time, I also wrote and developed offbeat programming under contract to Viacom, Paramount Digital, MTV and Bway Video. And I wrote as part of conceptual artworks shown at major international institutions including NY Museum of Modern Art, Yale Art Gallery, The Wexner Center and Museum Boijmans.

My range of journalistic assignments grew as editors assigned me stories on the arts, as well as fitness pieces (due to my dancer background — more than one editor knew me from a popular downtown hip-hop class I taught). The scope of my assignments grew with my relocation to Venice, CA, and more or less culminated in my work for Yahoo! News.