OK. So a while  back a fair amount of well-deserved attention was paid by
this list to the life and works of that undoubted genius, Nicola Tesla.

At the time I resisted the impulse to report on my experiences with the
lunatic fringe of Tesla enthusiasts, because my tale was not particularly
about him, but about that persistent fraction of citizens that this country
seems
to have always produced and nurtured, who turn their uneasiness about the
world
outside themselves into elaborate conspiracy theories of enormous
complexity and penetration into the body politic. We've joked about the
Black Helicopters. In my weaker moments I am likely to characterize Larry's
feelings about modern architecture as belonging to an equally aberrational
belief system. Except that that wouldn't really fit the picture because, in
my experience, one of the important ingredients in a good
conspiracy theory is the coming together of a cohesive community of
socially unassimilated, like-minded believers, who sustain each other
in their certainty, absence proof or the likelihood of ever obtaining it. I
have always
assumed, in fact, that the need to belong to some community, among those
who for one reason or another fail to make comfortable connection with
 their neighbors, often lies behind the dynamic of conspiracy theorists.
A major reason for my assuming this has to do with the Tesla cultists
who I encountered just as I was leaving my teens.

Just at the beginning of my third decade, and the century's sixth, I was
manager on the midnight to 8AM shift of Bookmasters, a large paperback
bookshop in Times Square. This was a time when Times Square was at the
twilight of its career as the haven for a collection of Runyonesque misfits
and characters; more seedy than sordid, more burlesque than threatening,
somewhat like a play with an epic-sized  cast, in  which all the roles,
male
and female, were played by either Burt Lahr, Tiny Tim or Soupy Sales.

Gerard was one particularly odd character, in an abstractly interesting,
but, face to
face, very boring way. He wandered about in an ancient, rumpled suit,
lugging
a large scuffed briefcase containing files pertaining to his business,
which was selling penny life insurance to the night people of the district,
the waitresses, cabbies, bookies, musicians, hookers and pimps, and also a
thousand or so pages of a grandiose and awful narrative poem celebrating
the life of Nicola Tesla, and pointing fingers at the many forces of
government,  industry, and what we now call the media, who he, Gerard, was
certain had conspired to deny Tesla his fame and just rewards. All these
conspirators, he believed, were in the pay of some obscure consortium,
founded by T. A. Edison, and dedicated to his memory. Gerard made it a
habit of stopping in the shop most nights about 3AM, making a desultory
effort at sell me and my crew (mostly stoned junkies of a vaguely literary
bent
recommended to me by the infamous Herbert Hunkie) his policies, and then
engaging in his real business of the evening, declaiming, to a captive
audience,
the latest cantos of the Tesla poem.

Gerard began to work on me to carry a fairly substantial list of Tesla
books,
pamphlets and newsletters, all published by semi-literate inhabitants of
places like Queens and DesMoines, Iowa. He promised that if I would exert
myself, the resultant sales would make it more than worth my while. And he
was as good as his word. Gerard spread the word and we did brisk business
in Tesla materials from the moment we began carrying them. We were, it
seemed,
the only retail outlet in New York, probably the world, for many
publications
emanating from the alternative universe of Tesla studies. Prior to our
efforts
most of these items began their circulation through mail orders and then
were
passed like Samizat among the few who knew the truth.

And now the few had a home. Our Tesla section, tucked away in the rear
right corner of the shop, became the quasi-official home of the society of
Tesla fanatics, not a few of whom were members of the official Tesla
Society.
It was to Tesla cultists, though without dust and must and tweediness, what
the
Anna Livia Plurabellum room at the Gotham Book Mart was to Joyce
worshippers.
Almost every night, always on my shift, Gerard and two or three,
sometimes more, others would hang out in the back, discussing the fine
points of
the plot against Nicola, grabbing items off the shelf and wielding them in
each other's
faces  like rapiers to drive  points home. With some regularity, usually
when some
dignitary of the cult was visiting from DesMoines or Enid, Oklahoma, the
gang would
swell to ten or more, and the noise level would rise above their usual
considerable
ruckusness. Normally the group would assemble for an hour or two. On these
occasions they were likely to remain in all their fervor and clamor until
long
after I departed the premises.

It was this, and an unfortunate and unplanned consequence of my having
wrestled
a little bit of space in that distant corner for their literature, that led
to the great
confrontation between the forces of Tesla and the representatives of his,
and their,
oppression.

I left the shop one morning (through the back door, along the shared
passage
with the porn house next door, and into its Lysol flavored auditorium to
catch
a few hours sleep, while Russ Myers' Immoral Mr. Teas indulged himself up
on the screen; but that's another story) while the grandest assembly yet of
Tesla maniacs was still in full voice. Unfortunately, the Tesla section was

situated right next to the mystery section, and caddy-corner to the
self-help
section, which were, during the morning rush, the two mostly heavily
trafficked
precincts of the shop. The Tesla group, in their intense self-absorption,
paid no
mind to the numerous customers who their noise was disturbing, and their
bunched
mass was preventing others from browsing the shelves. There were numerous
complaints.
Requests were made by the staff, first, for the group to quiet down and be
more
mindful of the needs of others, then, when the first request
went unheeded, to disperse. When this proved useless, someone was sent to
rouse
me from my chaste slumber among the unlikely mountains of flesh. I was,
the shop owner reasoned,  the usual authority figure during the Tesla
crowd's normal gathering
hours, therefore the person most likely to hold their attention and get
across the
order for them to abandon the premises. This was, we quickly learned, a big
mistake.
Authority, for this lot, meant only one thing; paid thugs and lackies of
the dominating
Edison faction. I was also very young and easily wound up. My mild requests
were
met with snarls and mutterings. Unnerved, I became more demanding and
preemptory.
Voices were raised. Threats were exchanged.

Fortunately the day shift was rather more alert and energetic than my
nodding-out
cohort of the night. When the demands to know who "bought me off" escalated
to
gestures of tentative physical threat, I was quickly surrounded by a
phalanx of loyal
bookshop clerks, who held the menacing cult at bay long enough for the
police to
be summoned, and the incident defused by their unquestionable authority.

I returned the next evening to find Gerard waiting for me. An apology was
demanded,
absent which dire consequences were threatened. The absurdity of the whole
affair
infected me and I broke into uncontrollable laughter while waving my hands
in
a gesture of dismissal. A sense of humor is not one of the traits usually
encountered
in folks like this, and Gerard was no exception. He stormed out, a mixture
of anger
and injury stuck on his face (I heard later from a waitress across the
street, a common
acquaintance, that Gerard considered me one of his closest friends, and my
behavior
an act of betrayal. Good grief!).

Gerard made good on his threat, as on his earlier promise. The next night,
and for a week or two thereafter, Bookmasters was picketed by a thin line
of slightly mad looking men, carrying
signs crowded with chapter and verse of the Edisonite conspiracy against
Tesla,
and against those, like us, who were part of the plot against his memory. I
doubt
a single passer-by at that hour of the night had the stamina or the
discipline to
read the full text of even one sign.

I almost quit the job, I got so sick of explaining, night after night, to
those who wandered in,
what the affair was about. Not surprisingly, after the first week the ranks
of picketers
began to thin and finally, with a whimper, devolved to only Gerard, who
bravely continued
his solo vigil for a few nights before giving it up. He never set foot in
the shop again, at least
not during the few remaining months of my employment there. The Tesla
section remained.
Surprisingly, sales remained considerable. We assumed that the cult members
were filtering
in one by one during the day to get their fix. Eventually the shop lost its
lease and was
replaced by an expansion of the Nathan's that had taken over the
Toffinetti's location next
door. The owner of the shop, my friend Sy, told me, years later, that Tesla
sales remained
strong right up to the end.

If anyone has managed to get this far in reading my tale, he or she might
be wondering
why I have taken up so much bandwidth, suddenly, on a very long
contribution to a long
ended thread. Two reasons. First, I just stumbled across a marvelous web
sight, The
FBI FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) Electronic Reading Room. There one
can find
scanned copies of files publicly released in response to FOIA requests.
Along with
Lucille Ball's file, Elvis', Paul Robeson's, Mickey Mantle's, the
Rosenberg's, and Cardinal
Spellman's, two files are devoted to Nicola Tesla, 252 pages, almost an
hour of downloading time.

I've only downloaded the first file, and only skimmed its contents, but it
seems to go directly
to the heart of one aspect of what my old conspiracy friends worried
themselves sick over;
what happened to Tesla's files after his death, and why. Reading is tough
going. These
are scanned versions of, mostly, carbon copies and newsprint. Some are not
legible at all.
Most are as dull as they are eye-straining to peruse.

URL is: http://www.fbi.gov/foipa/document.htm.

A though occurred while looking at this stuff, and some of the other more
political files, that the same observations that I have made, and are
commonly made, about the communities of conspiracy theorists could just as
well be made about Hoover's FBI. As Jane Jacobs said "Community is
everything.

Which brings me to the second reason for my endless post. I have been
thinking a lot about Times Square lately, while all traces of its past
character seem to be erased even as a certain visual
homage is paid to that past as the community gets reborn as the ultimate
urban theme park.

I grew up, after a fashion, in Times Square. In the years before I
discovered Greenwich Village and its intellectual and sensory pleasures,
before I discovered the intense young bohemian ladies of the Upper West
Side, I made Times Square the base camp for all my wanderings around the
city. With the connivance of cops and truant officers (do such creatures
still exist?) I spent as many days in the movie houses of the strip as I
did in school, sometimes seeing as many a six films a day, probably for a
total investment at the box office of $3.00.  Maybe a western, followed by
a revival of a thirties comedy, then a Melville or Clouseau film or an
Ealing comedy starring Peter Sellers, then, possibly,  a war film with Audy
Murphy or Mitchem. I spent hours a week in shootiing galleries, flea
circuses, Ripley's Believe It or Not.
I practically lived in the little R&B record store in the basement entrance
to the subway in the Times building that many, myself included, believe
must be the "sacred store" referred to years later by Don McLean.

I lived on peanuts from the Planter's shop, Pina Coladas, hot dogs from
Nedicks. Nights I went to see musicals with my parents, followed by a snack
at Lindy's. Afternoons I did SRO at dramas. Saw Newman in Sweet Bird of
Youth. The old Garden (Not Stanford White's, where he and Harry Thaw didn't
dine one night, the next one) was part of the spirit of Times Square. It
was seedy and smelled year round from elephant dung and cowboy and Knicks
sweat. Birdland was in Times Square. It had a "Peanut Gallery" where 12
year olds were allowed to sip cokes and listen to Miles and Clifford and
Monk. I sat as the only straight 14 year old in the audience of the Palace
and saw Judy Garland break hearts. I won't go on. Just, I've been thinking
about Times Square a lot lately and told my tale as a kind of wake for it.
And, I have to ask, will there ever be anything like it again? Will there
never be another generation of children as lucky as I was? And, I have to
ask, finally, is there really any such thing as preservation?

Bruce