A Witch, a Leica, and the Real Serendipity: My 1959 Meeting with Shep Sherbell
It was the summer of 1959, and I’d just climbed aboard a crosstown bus on 125th Street in Manhattan — nothing unusual about that, except for the woman who sat down beside me. She introduced herself within seconds and, without a trace of hesitation, told me she was a witch. Not a “phony witch,” as she put it — a real Wiccan. She said it like she was talking about the weather, and I suppose that was the moment the universe decided to rearrange itself for me.
We got off together at Broadway, and she mentioned a beatnik coffeehouse on 108th — west side, somewhere near Columbia. It was called The Golden Apple. So off we went, and that’s where I met Shep Sherbell — or as I first knew him, “Shep,” the wiry young poet-manager with restless eyes and a pre-war Leica IIIc hanging from his shoulder. He told me he was both a poet and a photographer — and it wasn’t long before I believed him.
He offered me a job at the café, a sort of come-and-go position like most things in that era were — paid little, but kept you fed and part of the conversation. He also offered to lend me that Leica, and, over cups of burnt espresso, gave me a few tips about working with light and shutter speed. I took him up on both. Those first rolls I shot at the Golden Apple included our girlfriends — his and mine — laughing in the window light. I still have those photos.
What I didn’t realize right away was that Shep was managing five coffeehouses at once — The Golden Apple, Serendipity, and three others — all owned by Mark Chandler. Shep somehow kept them all humming, moving between locations like a man on a mission.
He even hired me for a side job — to bodyguard his wife Luciana and their two-year-old on their daily trips to Hudson Park. It wasn’t glamorous work, but I liked the duty. I’d sit on a bench near the sandbox while Luciana watched her child play, both of us trading small talk in the late-afternoon light. There’s a snapshot somewhere — Luciana and me at the park — taken, of course, by Shep, with his amazing prewar Leica iiic.
Back at Serendipity — caddy-corner to Bloomingdale’s — the café was struggling until Mark’s sister filled it with her handmade clothes and jewelry. Overnight the place caught fire: color, conversation, music, and art all colliding in a room that had been half asleep. The later owners — the ones who turned it into “Serendipity II” and then “Serendipity III” — may deny it now, but we were actually there first.
Years later, I spotted Shep again — this time not behind a counter but in a documentary film about Greenwich Village, reading poetry at the Gaslight Café. Same Leica, same quick smile. He’d go on to take portrait photographs of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Salvador Dalí and many more, and his book captures the events at the end of the Soviet Union, and his photos of the smoke rising over Manhattan on September 11th have been reprinted worldwide.
When I look at that old Leica iiic on my bookshelf today — the one he eventually gifted me — it’s more than a camera. It’s a bridge between times, between lives. A relic of when New York was still small enough that poets, witches, photographers, and the occasional personal bodyguard could all bump into each other on a crosstown bus, and a single conversation could change everything.
That was my friend Shepard Sherbell — before the fame, before the exhibitions, before Yale Press and the big photo credits. Just a young guy with a Leica and a light in his eyes. And that’s how I’ll always remember him.
Shepard “Shep” Sherbell (1944 – 2018) later photographed the great musicians and political moments of the 20th century. His book Soviets: Pictures from the End of the USSR was published by Yale University Press in 2001. His early years managing Mark Chandler’s cafés remain an unrecorded but vital part of New York’s creative history.
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Here’s the Bardo bus to take us on our video journey today!
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Just this one video today, we’ll be at the workshop!!!
See You At The Top!!!
gorby