Adults look to end Johnson 'happenings'

1970

Troubled teens

Call 1970 the year of the troubled teen. Dozens of articles in The Press chronicled the concerns of parents, merchants, police and the teens themselves about sparse recreation facilities, burgeoning drug use and worries about the Vietnam War and the draft.

Riverdale Neighborhood House, the Kiwanis Club and the Riverdale Mental Health Association spearheaded efforts to keep parents informed about the dangers of drugs.

RNH and RMHA went as far as hiring a special youth worker, Pyser Edelsack, to expand North Riverdale-based Neighborhood House’s programming into Spuyten Duyvil. As editor, David Stein had a unique approach to reporting on controversial issues. He gave readers front page space to give their views sideby- side with the experts. An April issue airs a disappointed parent’s review of a drug forum at Riverdale Temple along with a more dispassionate report by Barbara Kinoy, the executive director of RHMA.

When eight youths were arrested during a Labor Day “happening” that attracted hundreds of teens to Johnson Avenue, The Press paired an account of the event from one of the arrested teens with a news story based on the police report.

Two of the most influential figures of the era made an appearance in the area that year.

Noted on a December front page — a sighting of mega-celebrities John Lennon and Yoko Ono at a bowling alley on Broadway near West 242nd Street. The couple told reporter Joseph Gallagher — who called them “the most publicized family for peace in this universe — that they were “presently visiting friends in Riverdale and had come in for an evening’s recreation.” Who were the friends? Probably business manager Albert Klein and his family. Biographers have blamed Mr. Klein’s friction with Paul McCartney for breaking up the Beatles, history’s most popular rock and roll band.