The Press: Underground Alliance

Shoestring papers of the strident left are popping up like weeds across the U.S. Their editors, writers and subscribers represent a curious coalition of hipsters and beatniks, college students and teachers, political zealots and the just plain artsy-craftsy. Their subject matter is largely anti-Establishment protest: they are typically against the war in Viet Nam, against the draft and against the police. President Johnson is their favorite whipping boy, and it is unlikely that he could win them over even if he changed his initials from L.B.J. to LSD.

Until recently, the new papers of the left that have managed to survive have made it on their own. Now, to better their condition, five of them are banding together in something called the Underground Press Syndicate, a vague alliance through which they hope to exchange articles, columns and cartoons, hire one agency to solicit advertising for all of them, and divide up all income. The five:

> Manhattan's East Village Other, initiator of the Underground Press Syndicate. A 16-page tabloid published twice monthly, EVO boasts a circulation of 10,000 after just eight months on the streets. "We are in favor of evolution, not revolution," says Managing Editor Allan Katzman, 29, a poet with a bachelor's degree in philosophy from the City College of New York. "We hope to transform the middle class by internal and external stimuli, by means of media and LSD." Though EVO is obsessed with LSD, Katzman still finds generous space for an avant-garde international survey of the arts called "Voyeurama," a rambling column by John Wilcock (an original staffer on the now middle-aged Village Voice), and a presumably popular feature called "Slum Goddess," which consists of photographs of young girls who radiate "antiEstablishment qualities." The want ads are blunt and to the point. Sample: "Groovy, free spirit chick wanted to share West Village apt. with guy, 27. No rent. 242-8282. Bob."

> The Los Angeles Free Press, another 16-page tabloid, comes out weekly, claimed a circulation of 9,000 on its second birthday last week. Editor and Publisher Art Kunkin, 38, a former machinist who studied at Manhattan's New School for Social Research, sees his paper as "a forum for free expression of critical comment and dialogue." Kunkin keeps a closer eye on local problems than does EVO, started a commendable series of sociological studies of Watts almost immediately after the riots last summer. The Free Press fills its classified column with ads that are often explicit and occasionally written in an unfathomably cryptic private language. Read one such recent notice: "Stepney—San Francisco awaits your September; I bid August—Josie."