Rock Concert When our son was 12 we took him to New Jersey’s Meadowlands Arena to his first rock concert – a stop on Bon Jovi’s  Slippery When Wet Tour. Later he told us Bon Jovi wasn’t really a cool band,  and going to a rock concert with your folks wasn’t cool at all.  … Read More

Sex, Drugs & Rock & Roll! It’s all happening again. Right now! It’s the ultimate do-over.  Okay, the sex is likely not the same.  The drugs aren’t, likely, the same.  The Rock & Roll, likely, but may be is, or not, the same.  That is, if you still listen to your favorite golden oldies, dare… Read More

I remember when sex seemed like the border between childhood and becoming an adult, shrouded in mystery and myth, perhaps wonderful and exciting but also dangerous and distasteful.  Information was scant in my middle-America 1950’s childhood, but my mother managed to pre-empt more unreliable sources by explaining the basic “facts of life” in mildly appalling… Read More

    Sex, drugs, and rock & roll. A mantra, a mythos, a marketing masterpiece. It’s a phrase that’s been tossed around like a well-worn beach ball, it’s luster only dulled by overuse. Let’s be honest, it’s about as original as a guitar solo in a Nickelback song. Sex? Sure, it’s a fundamental human urge.… Read More

The desire and frustration built up Read More

I don’t know if I ever would’ve gotten a tattoo if my daughter hadn’t made us appointments with her favorite artist. I agreed to do it, but didn’t know what to choose. I went back and forth between some ideas (Hawaiian sunset! Lavender roses!), but finally decided on a bluebird of happiness. At the time,… Read More

In the early 1970s, I landed back in San Francisco. For three years, me, my partner and her two children had been living a gypsy life, traveling from one collective household to another, from San Francisco to the Colorado Rockies, to western Massachusetts and finally, back to San Francisco. Read all about it in The… Read More

Jessie’s Earrings It’s sweet how a chance word can evoke a flood of memories. My mother Jessie is gone more than 20 years and I think of her I often.  But after talking to a friend about the current rage for tattooing and body piercing I thought of a habit of Jessie’s I’d forgotten. She… Read More

Lydia Before tattooing became as commonplace as it is today –  especially for women  – there was Lydia. And here’s Groucho to tell us all about her! – Dana Susan Lehrman Read More

 In San Francisco in the early 90’s it seemed like everyone from lawyers to street punks was getting pierced and tattooed.   "Body Modification" was the buzzword with tattoo and piercing shops as ubiquitous as Starbucks.   Above a popular sex club sat a large school to train would be piercers. Read More