AADL Talks To: Art Fare

Wed, 11/06/2024 - 11:01am

When: January 19, 2023

In this episode David Friedo, Mary Bleyaert, Paul Wiener, Mary Dolan, and Barbara Torretti talk about the 1970s magazine Art Fare. The group discusses David's initial inspiration for the magazine, which was first published in 1973, how it came about, and its reception from the public. Each recount their roles in the production of the magazine, and reflect on the changes in the Ann Arbor art community and beyond.

Transcript

• [00:00:09] EMILY: [MUSIC] Hi, I'm Emily,.
• [00:00:10] ELIZABETH: I'm Elizabeth, and we're here today with Mary, Paul, David, Mary J and Barbara to talk about Art Fare, the Ann Arbor Arts based magazine from the 1970s, that highlighted local arts and entertainment. [MUSIC] Just so we can put a name to your voices, can each of you introduce yourselves and explain your role with Art Fare?
• [00:00:36] MARY BLEYAERT: My name is Mary Bleyaert, and I was involved with Art Fare because I was a good friend of David's. I was a volunteer. I helped him with layout. He needed help and I was just assistant and a good friend who helped him with whatever he needed to make him produce Art Fare.
• [00:00:54] PAUL WIENER: I am Paul Wiener. I was a writer for Art Fare. Museum, cultural, and some local issues and sometimes an assistant editor and a good friend of David's as well.
• [00:01:09] DAVID FRIEDO: Yes. My name is David Friedo. I came up with the concept of Art Fare Magazine based on the Ann Arbor Summer Art Fair in that era. Do you remember the year?
• [00:01:22] PAUL WIENER: No.
• [00:01:23] DAVID FRIEDO: Anyway, it's probably on one of the page, one of the publications.
• [00:01:27] PAUL WIENER: Yeah, we're going back to the '70s.
• [00:01:30] ELIZABETH: '73, I believe was the first edition.
• [00:01:31] MARY BLEYAERT: Yeah, something like that.
• [00:01:32] DAVID FRIEDO: '73, okay. The Art Fare Magazine, was a play on the art fair that was historically built by the people in the community. And it was a concept that followed with the Ann Arbor Street Fair, which was very popular at the time and a lot of people would show up for it and go to the merchants in the area that went threw open their doors. It was a very close knit, kind of an atmosphere. The Art Fair already was created by the community more or less and then Art Fare Magazine was my idea to spread it around more and you could subscribe to it. It was a popular event and the merchants were very supportive and the community was generally. I found that to be very reassuring and enjoyable.
• [00:02:51] MARY DOLAN: My name is Mary Dolan, and I worked at the Art Fare as a part time. I did a lot of the layout and a little bit of art work. I had just finished a degree at Eastern Michigan before I followed an ad in the paper and then I went to the address and I couldn't believe it was a house. It was called, I learned later a cottage industry, but that was my part in the paper.
• [00:03:29] BARBARA TORRETTI: I'm Barbara Torretti and I really didn't. I became acquainted with David at the end of his time producing Art Fare and the Ann Arbor Entertainer because Mary was my friend and introduced us, Mary Dolan. I've seen the magazines, we have talked about it a lot but I'm here because I'm his wife. [LAUGHTER]
• [00:03:58] PAUL WIENER: Reader, I married him.
• [00:04:01] EMILY: Let's go back to that beginning. You were talking about how the conception for Art Fare came from the street art fair?
• [00:04:09] DAVID FRIEDO: Yes.
• [00:04:09] EMILY: How did you make that leap from idea to print publication?
• [00:04:14] DAVID FRIEDO: It was an accident. I think that's the best explanation. There was no long term analysis of all of this. I was full of energy in those years, so I talked to some people and friends. I don't remember everybody when I talked to you, that kind of thing. But it took off because the Art Fare was really created by the interest in the community and the merchants in the area. And it was a way of promoting the merchants and building a readership around that. Surprisingly, because today, it's gone. It's been long gone. But it represented the interests of the community and their interest in the arts. It played on all of that. It was popular. It was very popular.
• [00:05:24] EMILY: How did people find out about it?
• [00:05:28] DAVID FRIEDO: I bought ads in the Ann Arbor News, not a lot of ads because I didn't have any money. I wrote on the back of the annual gathering that seemed to just spontaneously, just when the art fair took off in the summer, it drew a lot of people. It was a built in audience that I had nothing to do with but I gave it a megaphone and I enjoyed it a great deal. I met everybody around me here today. It was so happy to have their support, even if it was only a comment or whatever and I enjoyed it a great deal, I enjoyed meeting new people and celebrating some of the strengths of Ann Arbor through the fair and so that's where the name came from. It wasn't anything special. It was to do the obvious and it took off, people liked it, thank goodness, in the end. I found it personally energizing and a lot of other people, I think enjoyed it as well. Always took place on sunny, warm days, right in the summer.
• [00:06:58] BARBARA TORRETTI: Hot days. [LAUGHTER]
• [00:07:04] DAVID FRIEDO: It was a lot of fun. I just worked it as much as I could, and I felt very satisfied with it.
• [00:07:12] BARBARA TORRETTI: David, can I ask you a question?
• [00:07:14] DAVID FRIEDO: Yes.
• [00:07:15] BARBARA TORRETTI: Was the paper free at first?
• [00:07:18] DAVID FRIEDO: People could buy it at some of the merchants in the central campus area.
• [00:07:24] BARBARA TORRETTI: Also, in those days, there were corner newspaper boxes, and he had those in town. Also, David had just finished a couple of years before Art Fare started a degree in journalism from Michigan, and had worked for the Flint Journal. Among his responsibilities were reviews of cultural events. He did a review of a concert by Ravi Shankar, and I think that was part of his original concept for the publication.
• [00:07:54] EMILY: Speaking of that, for folks who are unfamiliar, can you talk about what made up the Art Fare publication?
• [00:08:02] DAVID FRIEDO: I could give a shot at that. You could all get a shot at that.
• [00:08:05] BARBARA TORRETTI: Paul might be, Paul.
• [00:08:06] MARY BLEYAERT: Here's one with Paul on the cover.
• [00:08:12] PAUL WIENER: I could answer only in what I can remember, which is not a whole lot. Now, what I contributed was lengthy reviews of films, and books. Some plays, I think. David got me tickets to the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford. I think I did one review of the opening of the Earle, which was a disastrous review.
• [00:08:47] MARY DOLAN: The Earle Restaurant.
• [00:08:49] PAUL WIENER: Yes.
• [00:08:50] PAUL WIENER: Was there when it actually opened, and I don't really remember much of what other people wrote similar things. Mostly I probably wrote about stuff that was happening in town.
• [00:09:05] DAVID FRIEDO: Which comes to mind. If I can jump in here, there are in the Ann Arbor District Library, they have all the issues that everybody worked on.
• [00:09:19] MARY BLEYAERT: I think it was a precursor. I don't know how long the Ann Arbor Observer has been around, but like the middle of the Art Fare would be a calendar of all the events that was happening in May.
• [00:09:29] DAVID FRIEDO: It's a very good point.
• [00:09:30] MARY BLEYAERT: It was sort of a precursor to that. And then it would include local things about people, and events in Ann Arbor, and as well as like a calendar. Just as people would enjoy hearing about closings of stores, and things, he would try to include a lot of newsworthy things about Ann Arbor. His passion was unending. I mean, David, I don't did you have another job then? I just remember him being like really poor.
• [00:09:59] DAVID FRIEDO: I did.
• [00:09:59] MARY BLEYAERT: You did--but it seemed as if--
• [00:10:01] DAVID FRIEDO: I was a writer for the Flint Journal,.
• [00:10:05] MARY BLEYAERT: Oh you were doing that?
• [00:10:05] DAVID FRIEDO: And I did some for the Ann Arbor News.
• [00:10:07] MARY BLEYAERT: I just remember him so poor, and always just struggling comes to mind in frantic, we've got to do this, got to get this done, can you help do this? Can you do that? I mean, it was the passion that it takes for artists. I mean, you really saw it in his heart. It was his heart, and soul. He really worked hard at it, and from people that see that they have copies right now that I'm looking at. It was really quite an endeavor to pull together, and it was really fun and interesting. I think people liked it, but it's really hard to do this stuff on your own, the money wise. Did you used to give copies away? You'd stand up, maybe just free?
• [00:10:50] DAVID FRIEDO: Yes, of course, to spread the word.
• [00:10:53] BARBARA TORRETTI: He's always called it a labor of love.
• [00:10:55] MARY BLEYAERT: Yes.
• [00:10:56] PAUL WIENER: And all the labor was
• [00:10:57] PAUL WIENER: you know, before word processing and [OVERLAPPING]
• [00:11:03] MARY BLEYAERT: We didn't have computers, right? No, I was thinking in the '70s.
• [00:11:07] PAUL WIENER: It was a labor, literally a labor.
• [00:11:10] MARY BLEYAERT: A labor of love, with imagine no computers. Everything done on typewriter by hand.
• [00:11:18] MARY DOLAN: And layout, Mary was talking about the [NOISE]
• [00:11:20] MARY BLEYAERT: He'd lay out on the floor. You'd be like, what's going on here, we're doing this here? It was really, it was
• [00:11:27] DAVID FRIEDO: It was a challenge, and it was interesting, and of course, Ann Arbor had in the summer, there was a lot of activity, and there was a good draw, which has impressed me or suggested to me probably better statement was an environment for that thing. Just waiting in my mind. Not everybody liked it. It brought a lot of people who were interested in the arts to come out, and talk, and it was just a real thrill. The businessmen in the community were behind it. I mean, I was able to sell them on the idea, and we sold enough ads to be able to pay for the printing. The rest, we were all starving artists in a good sense.
• [00:12:19] ELIZABETH: You got to cover a lot of big events that are now considered historically important, like the Jazz Festival--Blues and Jazz Festival?
• [00:12:26] DAVID FRIEDO: Exactly.
• [00:12:28] ELIZABETH: What was that like?
• [00:12:30] DAVID FRIEDO: It was a joy. I mean, from my standpoint. It expressed my genes. I was trained musician, and percussion, or drums. All of that was part of my career. I did go to Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, which gave me my musical base. When I came to Ann Arbor, to me, it was just, it could be something that could bring all the arts together. One of the themes was music, plays, expositions, Night Life. I don't know if you remember that from the ink, and there was an art fair in the summer, so I grabbed that as the title before anybody else did.
• [00:13:26] PAUL WIENER: Spelled it differently.
• [00:13:27] DAVID FRIEDO: Yes. Tell us about that.
• [00:13:31] PAUL WIENER: Art Fare would be F-A-I-R.
• [00:13:35] DAVID FRIEDO: Oh F-A-R-E.
• [00:13:38] MARY BLEYAERT: There's a lot of things here. He has a book review, the true story of the Manson's murders. I mean, I think he would try to draw topical things that would make sensational. I'm not saying national inquiry, but a little bit of that sensational to get people to be dried in about current things. I mean, it was a combination of just trying to interesting articles, response to hell or something happened. I mean, there would just be a pop of fun things to read.
• [00:14:10] EMILY: That leads right into what I was about to ask, which is how did you decide your content? Did writers come to you with ideas? Did you have things you wanted covered?
• [00:14:20] DAVID FRIEDO: I think all of that. A lot of creative people here helped put it together, with their ideas. It was an amalgamation of interests, and also the fair itself was popular, regardless of any publication that was going on. That was really the key. Of course, in the summer, when the weather was beautiful, brought people downtown to the center of the campus, and it was a perfect spot. I've always been curious, as all of it went in the future years, that people weren't coming to downtown. Especially in the one area where the merchants were placed, which is the north side of the campus area.
• [00:15:15] BARBARA TORRETTI: Also at that time, the summer started off with the May festival, that's concert series, The Hill Auditorium. Was it the Philadelphia Orchestra that came for that?
• [00:15:25] DAVID FRIEDO: Big names would come.
• [00:15:29] DAVID FRIEDO: The publication of the magazine was built on the fair that the merchants created because they wanted to attract people downtown. They made money, and a lot of them shockingly to me, who knew nothing about publishing, except I did have editorial and news journalism experience. Thank goodness. The energy there was-- seeped right into the veins of the community. Since then, what has shocked me, I guess is a better way, is that the energy that used to produce this just evaporated, and I thought that was terrible. But I was highly interested in all of that stuff. Today, I don't think it would work because there isn't the same interest in energy.
• [00:16:27] ELIZABETH: That was actually one of our questions was, how do you think the art scene has changed and evolved over the years, and how did the publication itself evolve?
• [00:16:35] DAVID FRIEDO: I think it was just a time when the public was very interested in following what artistic events in Ann Arbor, and the magazine was built off of that. To my surprise, they reacted very positively, and that was energizing for me to go around and find people like Paul Wiener and help him produce interesting article. Anyway, it was exciting.
• [00:17:08] MARY BLEYAERT: This is a December issue, it gets away from the Art Fare itself, but you've got everything in your theater [OVERLAPPING]
• [00:17:15] DAVID FRIEDO: Music, plays.
• [00:17:16] MARY BLEYAERT: Then you've got music for Christmas, Handel's Messiah, you get all these current events. The index is urban design toward better housing for downtown Ann Arbor. There's a movie review, there's an interview with Alex Harvey making music, it really developed into--Scrooge at Briarwood. I mean it really developed into I think, anybody interested, for somebody like me that's lived in Ann Arbor since 1970, you just now, here it is so many years later. It's just fun to go back and think, here's a big article about the Gandy Dancer and taking over the historic preserving of the building. All the things that people got, so wound up about and how it played out and now you look at what people are wound up about, we're all wound up about something at some point. I think it's the history of if you have lived here, it's really fun to go back and just, because you hit so many historical past points. It was a very comprehensive art, current events, what's going on? I don't even know how you found all of that, but you put a lot of energy into a wide variety, a potpourri of articles.
• [00:18:29] DAVID FRIEDO: Yes.
• [00:18:29] MARY BLEYAERT: After you sprung off from. Like I said, again, I don't know how long has the Ann Arbor Observer been around? It's been around for a long time.
• [00:18:37] DAVID FRIEDO: A couple of decades.
• [00:18:38] BARBARA TORRETTI: I think it started right after Art Fare or they overlapped slightly.
• [00:18:44] MARY BLEYAERT: That's true. But they are like I said, they were very they still--could you pick it up to see just like your Art Fare? Now, what happened that the Art Fare went out of business?
• [00:18:54] MARY DOLAN: I have a question. Maybe you can't answer that one, but why was it that you changed the name from Art Fare to Entertainer?
• [00:19:05] ELIZABETH: Are they separate publications or were they part of the same?
• [00:19:08] DAVID FRIEDO: They were.
• [00:19:09] BARBARA TORRETTI: Same thing.
• [00:19:10] DAVID FRIEDO: Consecutively, they were done accidentally [LAUGHTER] as developments changed and my perceptions changed. I really don't have an answer to that question.
• [00:19:24] MARY BLEYAERT: This is a different format even.
• [00:19:27] DAVID FRIEDO: Well, yes.
• [00:19:27] MARY BLEYAERT: It's more of a magazine type than a newspaper.
• [00:19:30] DAVID FRIEDO: That was the first edition and it melded into what? The green example that Mary has.
• [00:19:38] MARY BLEYAERT: Well, this is 75, this is 78.
• [00:19:41] BARBARA TORRETTI: What he told me yesterday was that it was an attempt to broaden the appeal of the publication. He felt I think the name Art Fare was confusing because. [OVERLAPPING]
• [00:19:54] MARY BLEYAERT: He got away from the actual Art Fare as time.
• [00:19:58] DAVID FRIEDO: It was a F-A-R-E.
• [00:20:02] MARY BLEYAERT: That this you decided to move more into broader appeal or the entertainment.
• [00:20:07] BARBARA TORRETTI: The other thing, when he was talking about how business downtown dropped off, I think this was around the time when Briarwood Mall was new, and a lot of the consumers started going out there, and not shopping downtown as much. Parking was free, there was lots of it.
• [00:20:28] DAVID FRIEDO: That's a really good point.
• [00:20:30] BARBARA TORRETTI: I think, Art Fare was an attempt to tell people what was going on in the heart of Ann Arbor. It was also, I think, the first time that a general entertainment and events calendar was produced.
• [00:20:44] PAUL WIENER: In the whole city?
• [00:20:46] BARBARA TORRETTI: In Ann Arbor, I think so.
• [00:20:47] PAUL WIENER: There's so many of them now.
• [00:20:49] BARBARA TORRETTI: Well, now I think [OVERLAPPING].
• [00:20:50] BARBARA TORRETTI: The Observer picked up on it.
• [00:20:54] EMILY: I know Mary, you said you saw an ad in the paper and that that was what brought you to Art Fare. What about you two?
• [00:21:00] MARY BLEYAERT: Well, he and I shared a friend and when I stopped seeing romantically the friend, I was wanting to hang on, and so David and I became friends through that relationship really. He's been a longtime friend, he's just a very entertaining, really caring, neat guy, so you always want to stay friends with him, and now with his wife and him together.
• [00:21:24] EMILY: How about you, Paul?
• [00:21:25] PAUL WIENER: Well, I guess I got involved through an ad, maybe the same ad you saw, but.
• [00:21:31] MARY BLEYAERT: No, I never saw an ad, we were the friend thing, romantic.
• [00:21:35] PAUL WIENER: I was really new to Ann Arbor when I got involved and I was looking for something to do.
• [00:21:42] DAVID FRIEDO: Paul was a very good writer.
• [00:21:43] PAUL WIENER: I've always written for small publications or other, just always written and I met David and somehow he liked what I was writing.
• [00:21:57] DAVID FRIEDO: There was a good connection.
• [00:21:58] PAUL WIENER: We had a good chemistry and we became fast friends. Of course, I've always been into the arts, and in those days, as David said, Ann Arbor was a little more rambunctious.
• [00:22:12] DAVID FRIEDO: Yes, that's a good word [LAUGHTER].
• [00:22:16] PAUL WIENER: The entire style of communicating really has changed since then.
• [00:22:21] DAVID FRIEDO: Enormously.
• [00:22:22] PAUL WIENER: Not just here but everywhere. I think the worst thing that's ever happened to Ann Arbor in 50 years was the loss of the daily newspaper. Because that reflects a whole way of [OVERLAPPING] That's a really good point. Of dealing with your awareness of where you're living. Of course, the Internet is the cause of that. But in those days writing was writing and physical and I always like seeing my name in print.
• [00:22:58] PAUL WIENER: It's what writers do.
• [00:22:58] DAVID FRIEDO: Paul was great at writing about movies. That was his passion.
• [00:23:04] PAUL WIENER: [INAUDIBLE]. I can hardly remember any movies I wrote about.
• [00:23:09] ELIZABETH: I don't know if each of you would like to go through and just say one memory that you have of your time there.
• [00:23:14] DAVID FRIEDO: That's a great idea.
• [00:23:15] PAUL WIENER: Well, I'll just continue and say my main memory naturally was that I was a cover photo [LAUGHTER].
• [00:23:24] EMILY: How did that happen?
• [00:23:25] PAUL WIENER: That was David's idea. I don't have no idea why he decided to do that.
• [00:23:31] MARY BLEYAERT: Does it relate to an article? And then why are--
• [00:23:33] PAUL WIENER: I probably had an article but--
• [00:23:35] DAVID FRIEDO: I think Paul's dress and hair treatment, at the time, was somewhat you wouldn't go to a bank, the cell. But that was that was the thought [LAUGHTER] of Ann Arbor. It was very unusual atmosphere at that time. Young people were automatically victimized by older people that they didn't know what they were doing. The young people were the upstarts, with these crazy ideas. If you didn't understand this, you could just walk around town. You would see examples of it in their clothing, and in their gestures--
• [00:24:24] BARBARA TORRETTI: And their hair.
• [00:24:25] DAVID FRIEDO: And their hair. Oh, that's right. Thank you.
• [00:24:28] PAUL WIENER: [OVERLAPPING] I wasn't that young even then.
• [00:24:32] EMILY: Can you describe the picture since this is just an audio medium?
• [00:24:35] DAVID FRIEDO: These pictures?
• [00:24:36] EMILY: Yeah, that picture right there.
• [00:24:37] DAVID FRIEDO: We have a front cover with a very astute handsome, somebody ready to go to Hollywood, really. He had long hair. Everybody had long hair.
• [00:24:51] BARBARA TORRETTI: Thick, long black hair.
• [00:24:52] DAVID FRIEDO: Yeah, he was smart enough to wear a jacket, which brought him to the attention, I think of what people who would have called themselves at the time, mature adults. See none of us were mature, but Paul's demeanor and everything suggested that there might be something really interesting here. And I think that's one of the fundamental reasons why it didn't last forever. Of course, we all got tired, those of us that--[LAUGHTER] it was a lot of work.
• [00:25:31] PAUL WIENER: But my best memory of this is that one day a stranger on the street recognized me because of the picture he'd seen in a bookstore.
• [00:25:45] EMILY: What did he say to you?
• [00:25:46] PAUL WIENER: Just said he recognized me.
• [00:25:49] BARBARA TORRETTI: [LAUGHTER] Did he ask for your autograph?
• [00:25:51] PAUL WIENER: No, but that's kind of a fantasy that a lot of people might have of my 15 seconds of fame. [LAUGHTER]
• [00:26:00] MARY BLEYAERT: Was this a monthly?
• [00:26:02] DAVID FRIEDO: Oh, it was it was not exactly quite that. Yes, monthly. Let's leave it there. [LAUGHTER]
• [00:26:11] MARY BLEYAERT: I just remember thinking, why are you doing this? You're so stressed out. It's like so much trouble. He was just such a passion, like an artist, you know, like somebody creating. [OVERLAPPING] You saw how stressed he was just like we got to do this, like, so where's this going? What are we doing here? And it's like, it was just really a passion for artists. [OVERLAPPING].
• [00:26:34] DAVID FRIEDO: I was trying to promote artists which were ignored by the general population.
• [00:26:41] MARY BLEYAERT: They wanted it to succeed. But it also, such a one-man show. It's hard to do these things when you're on your own. He was really working hard.
• [00:26:51] DAVID FRIEDO: A lot of people though, Paul is a good example. There were others that helped to their interests, helped to write good stuff that people found attractive.
• [00:27:03] MARY BLEYAERT: It's really when you look at these copies and you see what intellectual and the broad spectrum he covered, so many different topics. I was asking though, how did this end? What happened that fell apart? Or what did how you just stopped or what happened? Do you remember what happened?
• [00:27:23] DAVID FRIEDO: I got worn out.
• [00:27:25] MARY BLEYAERT: I could yeah, that's [LAUGHTER] just like running on a treadmill every day? And it's--
• [00:27:31] DAVID FRIEDO: Yeah. It was--I actually had had to earn money. [LAUGHTER] As much as I would have liked to brag to say that we made all this money, well, we were all doing it basically, I think because it was fun,.
• [00:27:50] MARY BLEYAERT: It was a passion.
• [00:27:51] DAVID FRIEDO: And it was different and it was at a time where young people were askance from the older folks or the people that weren't really interested in liberal activity or thoughts. It's like going into a newspaper and trying to write articles about the president of the bank. You know it's pretty damn boring. With the help of smart writers like Paul and others could write and make what was going on interesting. Then of course, the town carried its weight. The town invented the summer art fair and everything that I did was built on that and attracting all the smart people that were interested in it. It was really a bonanza for me, but I would not have thought about that at the time. As I look back today, it was a very odd number of years where the people were really interested.
• [00:29:08] MARY BLEYAERT: Could you not have sold it? It wasn't an entity. Like I had the search magazine. Does anyone [INAUDIBLE] it didn't have any monetary value to market?
• [00:29:19] DAVID FRIEDO: No, there wasn't enough interest in the business community to really buy into it.
• [00:29:27] MARY BLEYAERT: To pick it up? Yeah.
• [00:29:28] DAVID FRIEDO: It was an historic moment for me. Where I could walk around and get businessmen interested in buying ads in this magazine which was, you know, preparing and thinking about what I was going to do and how I was going to sell was a challenge.
• [00:29:52] PAUL WIENER: Do you remember how much the ads were?
• [00:29:55] DAVID FRIEDO: Frankly, I don't remember.
• [00:29:56] BARBARA TORRETTI: But I think we may have those records at home.
• [00:29:59] EMILY: Did you have a particular pitch you would give? Or did you cater it to the business you were at?
• [00:30:05] DAVID FRIEDO: I would promote the fare and say wouldn't you like to have put a foot on the door of the fare? You could do it through $0.25, no, 20$, 30$, $40, and that was probably the height of it in this magazine, the community was overwhelmed by Ann Arbor's position in the county and farther places--who were the liberals?
• [00:30:35] BARBARA TORRETTI: Well, there was the Ann Arbor Sun.
• [00:30:39] DAVID FRIEDO: Yeah, there was the Ann Arbor Sun.
• [00:30:40] BARBARA TORRETTI: There was a lot of stuff going on.
• [00:30:42] DAVID FRIEDO: The Ann Arbor Sun was kind of iffy-iffy in my opinion. Does anybody know much about it? [BACKGROUND].
• [00:30:52] BARBARA TORRETTI: I wasn't here then. I've only heard about it. It was very liberal publication.
• [00:30:56] DAVID FRIEDO: That was on the radical edge, and I printed or I came up with Art Fare because it was more neutral and I thought that there would be more readers, they could pick this up. Whereas if they went to the local writers who were looking to change the world.
• [00:31:18] PAUL WIENER: More like a hippie newspaper.
• [00:31:21] DAVID FRIEDO: Yeah. That was a hippie, and the businessmen wouldn't have wanted to buy ads in a hippie newspaper.
• [00:31:31] DAVID FRIEDO: I thought I would come up with something that was artistically-oriented, and low behold, I accidentally came up with Art Fare one day.
• [00:31:46] MARY BLEYAERT: Didn't you work for the Michigan Daily also at one point?
• [00:31:49] DAVID FRIEDO: Yes, I did. Yeah, I worked at the Daily.
• [00:31:51] BARBARA TORRETTI: That would have been in grad school.
• [00:31:53] MARY BLEYAERT: But I thought he worked at the Daily...
• [00:31:55] BARBARA TORRETTI: That was at the very end of his career at the university. He was the manager.
• [00:32:01] DAVID FRIEDO: I was a manager of student publication.
• [00:32:03] MARY BLEYAERT: Did you work with Tony Zaret and stuff on the Daily?
• [00:32:05] DAVID FRIEDO: Yes.
• [00:32:06] ELIZABETH: That leads perfectly into our question. What, if anything, did your time at Art Fare bring to your later careers?
• [00:32:13] MARY DOLAN: For me, because, as I mentioned, I had gone back to school, I had five children at home and graduated in '77 from Eastern Michigan. That's when I began working for him. But eventually, in the early '80s, I was hired by ERIM, Environmental Research Institute of Michigan, as a technical illustrator. So I had a little bit that I could put on my resume, having worked for David.
• [00:32:47] ELIZABETH: We also did see some other, not articles but illustrations, in the Ann Arbor News that you had done.
• [00:32:52] MARY DOLAN: I have my own little file that I have kept. Yes, I did some drawings.
• [00:33:00] BARBARA TORRETTI: A cover.
• [00:33:01] DAVID FRIEDO: Excellent Mary.
• [00:33:01] MARY DOLAN: In the Ann Arbor Civic Theater, 49th Major season and that was because of David. I don't know if that was inserted in the paper. Yeah, it was a very good experience for me. What I remember and I'd like to mention is a couple of my boys came and I'm sure they volunteered to help get the paper out. I'm not sure.
• [00:33:30] DAVID FRIEDO: Distribute it, walking around, giving away copies.
• [00:33:33] MARY DOLAN: Not really, they worked in the basement where we were all working, but I can't remember exactly.
• [00:33:39] DAVID FRIEDO: Was it my basement?
• [00:33:41] BARBARA TORRETTI: Yes, David.
• [00:33:42] MARY DOLAN: Absolutely, yes.
• [00:33:44] DAVID FRIEDO: I'm sorry.
• [00:33:45] MARY DOLAN: They have memories of working there. These were also the early years when Borders was getting started. David sold the Borders Brothers.
• [00:33:56] David Freido: Yes.
• [00:33:57] MARY DOLAN: Called Borders Bookshop.
• [00:33:59] DAVID FRIEDO: Yeah, Borders Bookshop. Tom and Louis.
• [00:34:03] EMILY: David, when you were so worn out and Art Fare and Ann Arbor Entertainer had run its course, what did you do next?
• [00:34:12] DAVID FRIEDO: I went to sleep. [LAUGHTER]
• [00:34:16] EMILY: Then when you woke up after a long restful sleep.
• [00:34:19] DAVID FRIEDO: Yeah, that's a good question.
• [00:34:21] BARBARA TORRETTI: You went to work in the PR department at the medical center.
• [00:34:25] DAVID FRIEDO: That's what I did.
• [00:34:26] DAVID FRIEDO: She was a witness.
• [00:34:28] BARBARA TORRETTI: That's when I met him. He was getting a full-time job.
• [00:34:32] DAVID FRIEDO: That's right. I met you going through one of the labs, didn't I?
• [00:34:36] BARBARA TORRETTI: No. You met me because of Mary Dolan. She fixed us up.
• [00:34:42] DAVID FRIEDO: Mary.
• [00:34:42] MARY DOLAN: I think I gave you her phone number.
• [00:34:45] BARBARA TORRETTI: Yes.
• [00:34:48] DAVID FRIEDO: That was one of the best decisions I have ever made.
• [00:34:52] BARBARA TORRETTI: Then he went on, he managed the publications office at U of M-Dearborn and then became manager of student publications here.
• [00:35:01] EMILY: It all circled back to journalism?
• [00:35:03] DAVID FRIEDO: Yes, because that was the fundamental link. The bad news was I had to deal with my brain, [LAUGHTER] but seriously, things came together.
• [00:35:18] DAVID FRIEDO: Yeah.
• [00:35:19] EMILY: So what did you move on to?
• [00:35:21] PAUL WIENER: Well, I left Ann Arbor in 1979, for about 32 years and I became an academic librarian. I had nothing to do with Art Fare, but I've always written and I wrote throughout my library career in other capacities. Then when I retired, we decided to move back here. I stayed friends with David all that time. David became a realtor also.
• [00:36:03] DAVID FRIEDO: I had to make money. [LAUGHTER]
• [00:36:05] PAUL WIENER: Through weird coincidence, he ended up selling me the place I live in now.
• [00:36:13] DAVID FRIEDO: Yeah, that's right.
• [00:36:16] PAUL WIENER: It's just all somehow stayed together like that.
• [00:36:20] PAUL WIENER: Yeah. Having people of similar interests and energy was everything, Mary and all the other people.
• [00:36:29] BARBARA TORRETTI: Well and the the long friendships here.
• [00:36:31] DAVID FRIEDO: Then Paul. Yeah, it's been a great ride. I still feel charged when see my friends.
• [00:36:43] BARBARA TORRETTI: It was fun yesterday looking over the Art Fare. For me, even I learned about a number of people who had worked on Art Fare that I didn't realize had worked on Art Fare.
• [00:36:55] DAVID FRIEDO: I'd like to mention another point is that this was not something that would have landed in a regular newspaper, the Ann Arbor News or the Detroit Free Press. This was something that was quite different and a lot of people who would look at this would not like it, because it was to them, probably something that radicals were doing. At the time that phrase would make people angry, just even having a discussion. Everything's so calm today, people are not [OVERLAPPING]. Well, I'm talking about it, if you walk the walk and go to the diag and everything. Yes, the atmosphere is different. But at the time, there were people, very high moral bounds, that were just angry at young people doing something different. This was built off of that, and Paul, this picture is exemplary at the time. But what people don't know when they see it at the library is that there was a lot of negative perceptions based on his long hair. They don't guess--[OVERLAPPING]
• [00:38:30] PAUL WIENER: You didn't tell me this before. [LAUGHTER]
• [00:38:32] PAUL WIENER: I never heard that before. [LAUGHTER]
• [00:38:38] ELIZABETH: [MUSIC] AADL Talks To is a production of the Ann Arbor District Library.