“It was the summer that Coltrane died. The summer Jimi Hendrix set his guitar in flames and China exploded the H-bomb. There were riots in Newark and marches against the war in Vietnam. The world was on the brink of change. It was the summer of love. And the summer of a chance encounter that would change the course of my life. It was the summer I met Robert.”

I started reading “Just Kids” by Patti Smith last weekend and even though I’m only about halfway through I think it’s safe to say: I like it. A lot. It’s the story of a friendship, Patti Smith’s memoir of her youth with Robert Mapplethorpe and an interesting portrait of a late 1960s and early 1970s period in NYC. Read it!