Free City Kid by Nelson George Page B

papers and a policy of reporting a Negro felony every Sunday on page five, and the Times was a huge, unwieldy contraption that was rarely available at ghetto candy stands.
    My hip instructor did a very simple yet profound thing: He read the accounts of a single bank robbery as it was reported in all three New York dailies. In the Times the crime was buried inside in a single column, and was told in the “who, what, where, when” tradition of objective journalism. In the Post the story was near the front, and was highlighted with a bold black headline. In the Daily News it was on the bottom of page three, with a thick, blocky headline, a racy subhead, and a lead that was in a larger type than the rest of the article. As I remember, the Daily News story had fewer facts than the Times or the Post , but did seem more lively than the other, more sedate, reports.
    By pointing out the political ideology that underscored each paper’s editorial policy, this smart soul brother gave me my first lesson in media literacy. I was already interested in writing, but I had never heard anyone break down the many ways in which information was shaped by media bias. I remember that lesson like it happened yesterday—and it informs my thinking to this day. Thank you, President Johnson.

AFRODISIACS
    As a single cutie who loved music and parties, my mother met many men in the sixties and seventies. Black cops in particular seemed to like her. She dated two that I remember: an uptight light-skinned dude named Arnold, who was the first black in his precinct, and was intensely conflicted about his job; and Ben, a big, brown, easygoing gent, who used to stop by our house for bowls of soup on winters’ nights when he was supposed to be patrolling Brownsville’s mean streets.
    Not all the men who stopped by apartment 6C were boyfriends. Post-Nelson Elmer, Ma built a network of relationships with men who became surrogate big brothers, men she could count on, who became role models for me and possible boyfriends for her girlfriends. In the midsixties she befriended a group of groovy guys called the Afrodisiacs 3, who promoted parties. They were all tall, lean, cool as the other side of the pillow, and wore shades as comfortably as tigers wear stripes.
    One of the crew was named Gary. He had a radio DJ deep voice, bedroom eyes, and a luxuriously laid-back manner. Every other word out of his mouth seemed to be “groovy,” “outta sight,” or some other sixties slang. He had one of the first Mustangs to hit the streets, a sleek white beauty he drove with his seat pulled back so far it reached his rear tires. I would have wanted to grow up to be Gary, if his boy E.M., aka Eddie Sawyer, wasn’t around.
    If Gary was cool like Bill Cosby’s Scotty on I Spy , then Eddie Sawyer was a more chilled-out Sidney Poitier. He drove a light-colored Volkswagen Beetle when that car was new to U.S. streets. As an insurance claims adjuster, Eddie wore dark suits, bright white shirts, and razor-sharp ties, and carried an attaché case filled with papers, expensive pens, and a Polaroid camera. Walking up to 315 Livonia, Eddie looked like he’d just been cast as the sepia 007. I really don’t remember Eddie’s eyes since, in my memory, day or night, inside or out, they were perpetually covered by green-tinted shades.
    If Eddie’s demeanor wasn’t already cool enough, his selection of women was always incredible. I remember them always being superfine ladies in hot pants, with long black legs; stylish women, either red boned or dark ebony, with bright orange Diana Ross wigs and frosty blue eyeliner. Eddie had custody of his three daughters by an early marriage but, with the aid of his mother, lived a bachelor’s life that I envied as a child, and tried unsuccessfully to emulate as a man.
    I loved all his women, but none made a bigger impression than Charles. I recall her as a Halle Berry look-alike, with