A Blog about Living in the UK — from a Neighbourhood Local

For more on the pubs and life in the Old Smoke, visit: https://londonletter.substack.com/

The classic sign of the Duke of York Pub — a Free House.

The Duke of York Pub in London’s Kensington neighbourhood.

The Shakespeare Pub in London’s Victoria neighbourhood.

The sign for The Shakespeare, a Green King pub.

The George is a Green King pub and serves primarily Green King draught beers.

The George in North London’s Belsize Park neighbourhood.

The John Snow pub in the City of London.

The John Snow pub sign — a freehouse, meaning they serve all beers.

The Duke of York sign, indicating that it serves Green King beers.

Another Duke of York pub in the City of London.

Letter from The Colonies pub

This Victoria watering hole serves as a reminder of an American's most difficult task: making friends in London

The Colonies is marked as a Public House on an 1895 London map, and is sandwiched between a school and a Roman Catholic Chapel — all tucked away between Victoria and the area surrounding Buckingham Palace. As with the nearby Cask and Glass, the Colonies is a relatively recent name, however, dating from 1976 — 200 years from the date Americans declared themselves free of England. The pub was actually built in the early 19th century and its original name was the Pineapple. It’s not a free house, the term for a pub that isn’t tied to any specific brewery. Rather, The Colonies is now a Greene King pub, which runs more 3,100 pubs, restaurants and hotels across England, Wales and Scotland, and serves its own brand of beer. No Bud, Coors or Miller here, American friends. Best overlook those pilgrims on the sign and move on.

Making Friends in London

The author with Sir John Bird, working on a story about The Big Issue, which Bird founded 30 years ago.

A few years into my time living in New York, I had a friend who worked at Diageo, one of the world’s largest alcohol companies located in London, I expressed a bit of jealousy. I had loved London since the first moment I touched down in the city for study abroad in the summer of 1998: the buildings that dates from the 10th century to the 20th, the extra large and green parks, the classic wood-countered pubs with the funny signs and all the accents bouncing around the place. Of course, back in 1998 at Northwestern, I had an instant community: house in Holborn, friends, activities and, well, a goal. When I told this to my friend, comparing London to New York (New York and I always had a love/hate relationship) he shut me down. “Yeah, London is great, but it’s really hard to make friends there,” he said. “I would just stay put.”

A dozen years and a pandemic later, I live in London, and although I try to keep up with my friend, he no longer works for Diageo and never comes to London. Since I spend limited time in the States right now, we sort of lost touch. But if I saw him tomorrow, I would actually admit that he was right.

When your country is split into two factions — hard-core conservatives and seemingly ineffective liberals — and moving backwards by overturning abortion rights, continuing to propagate racist ideologies, allowing the free sale of every gun imaginable and even baiting anti-gay voters by cracking down on drag queens, the only refuges are the coastal cities. When coastal cities like New York become intolerable because of the concrete, the expense and the crazy, it’s time to look overseas. In 2020, I looked to London. My partner at the time was English, and as a freelancer I could work anywhere. The future seemed brighter and easier on the East Side of the Atlantic.

The author floating on an inflatable swan in Easthampton, New York during the summer of 2014.

In many ways it has been. My girlfriend’s family loved me so I had instant family. She had a job, and I could focus on finding my own. And we got civil-unioned, so I had an imminent visa.

Nevertheless, I crash landed into England. Change for a girl from Oklahoma has never been easy and after 20 years as a New Yorker, the fear grabbed a serious hold of me. Having not had a drink since 2012, when the pandemic rolled around and all of my resources went away — my tennis groups, my running club, my close friends — I started up again. After the move was delayed a month due to a delayed visa, I spent the four weeks in a drunken haze, until the pancreatitis hit me. Three days in Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth hospital set me on the right path — sort of. I vowed to join anything and everything to stay busy, not drink and fill that Manhattan-shaped friendship void.

As soon as we landed a permanent place in London, I jumped into LTA league tennis. Next, I sought out the black-striped jersey of the Fulham Run Club. Then, to round out the athletics, I signed up for a cycling club at a local shop near Richmond Park. Finally, I found lesbian “Meet Up” and enrolled myself and my girlfriend in EVERYTHING. She encouraged the prior and just rolled her eyes at the latter.

With three or four matches a week, I met a lot of people through the LTA around Wandsworth. Tennis is not generally a friendly sport — players can get ridiculously competitive, including me. But I tried to dial it down a bit and gave out my number freely. Nevertheless, after those matches, I never saw any of my opponents again.

On the running front, I joined three: a track session, a rather rainy run around Putney and a 5K in Battersea Park. Still recovering from my hospital stay, I was slow. Fellow runners circled back to ensure I was not left behind, until they didn’t. In Battersea Park, the gun went off and the crowd was 500 meters ahead before I had my headphones in.

The cycling didn’t prove much easier. The London Dynamo — a citywide, multi-level cycling group flat out rejected me after I couldn’t keep up on the Richmond Park Hills during a “trial ride.” The leader pulled out small group over, looked directly at me and said “If you’re having a hard time keeping up, just ride back to the parking lot, grab a coffee and hang out.” I took the hint. Two months later with my new club, I joked that I was better at lapping cars in New York traffic than scaling those hills. Ultimately, however, I left Richmond Park for the skinny 40 mph dudes in tight kit. Regarding the Lesbian Meet Ups, my girlfriend just couldn’t be bothered to rock up at a random park or museum on a Sunday and exchange small talk with a bunch of strangers. When the time to leave for the event rolled around, ultimately, neither could I.

Looking back, however, I think I had actually found my tribe in New York. The city is the land of misfits — the place where everyone who doesn’t belong anywhere else eventually lands. And if anything, I am a misfit.

The author missing some baby teeth and nonetheless making a goofy face at age six.

Despite being a relatively confident child, when 1985 rolled around, everything changed for me. Almost simultaneously, my parents decided to send me from my solidly middle-class parochial school to a tony college preparatory school with many of the offspring of the oil-moneyed families of Oklahoma; I started to put on weight thanks to that thing called puberty; and lastly, my lawyer parents decided to call it quits after 15 years together. I walked into the halls of my new school on the first day thinking my best friends, who also switched schools, would have my back. They didn’t. To make things worse, I didn’t have the Ralph Lauren shirts, the Cole-Haan shoes, the Louis Vutton purses and the TAG watches of my peers. My mother wouldn’t let me wear a short skirt, finding them — even with gym shorts underneath — suggestive. So, I wore mine down to my knees with a slip underneath. My second fashion strike: a Coca-Cola brand denim bag I dragged into school thinking I looked incredibly cool. After a day of lampooning, I came home, ran into my bedroom and threw that thing on the top shelf of my closet. I never saw it again.

To avoid any more scrutiny at school or at home, I decided to shut my mouth, keep mum, make myself as small as possible for however many years I needed. Tennis lessons ultimately became my saving grace. Not only did they help me lose weight and give me some poise, but also, tennis proved the great equalizer in a class-stratified bubble. I started to spend all my waking time out of school on a tennis court: lessons, drills, ball machine, followed by training runs, sit-ups, push-ups and weights — five to six days a week. If agreeing on virtually nothing else, my parents at least were in consensus to keep these going for me. When the cool kids were out drinking at the local parks after school, I was dragging a 40-pound ball machine from a shed to my school courts. The bruises on the back of my legs, my friends joked, made them wonder if I was actually getting beaten and using tennis as an excuse.

It paid off in the end, as I was able to walk on to the team at Northwestern University, a top school in the Midwestern US — a 12-hour drive from home, but still close enough to make it home in a day. But all the striving to play varsity tennis came at a cost: my first semester GPA was a 1.9 out of 4.0, or three Cs and a D. Not only did that report card keep me out of the secret sisterhood of American sororities, but it also kept me from practicing less and my head in the books more. My tennis dream ended, and I finished school a bit lost. I was also facing one of the biggest, most nerve-wrecking reveals of my life: that I was, indeed, gay. Everyone at prep school knew it before I did, but in an effort to not further ostracize myself, I desperately tried to pretend otherwise. I didn’t need another social slight. But in 1999, I came out and promptly moved away.

The author showing off a grand birthday present in the fashion of the mid-1980s: a Coca-Cola brand rugby shirt.

It took a few years for me to come around to the idea of New York. It was loud; it was chaos, often uncontrolled; it was crazy. My first memory of the place was driving out of the Lincoln Tunnel on to 10th Avenue surrounded by walking people during the lunch hour wondering what the hell I had got myself into. But joining up with Columbia Journalism School in August 2001, might have — in hindsight — been the best decision I ever made, aside from leaving Oklahoma. For the first time in my life, I was surrounded by people from dozens of different cultures and in an environment that fostered my creativity, my quirkiness. Although I hated the noise, the traffic, the trash, the crammed spaces and the hustle of it all, I loved my profession. The people were transient but incredibly talented a erudite; the sites were surreal but tangible; and the stories were better than fiction. And at the end of the day, I could hit up a local party or sidle up to my favorite bar and jaw the keep’s ear off.

When it came time to finish Columbia, I decided to remain in New York — my transient home. At first the transition was hard — and within a few years I had to give up drinking, the crutch that carried me through some of my most difficult times — but with each move, from Manhattan to Brooklyn and back, each girlfriend breakup and each personal trial, I made new friends, including through a local running club, where I met two of my very best friends, both significantly younger than me, but with whom I had rapport. The hipster lesbians at Alcoholics Anonymous in Brooklyn could dismiss me all they liked. I was a prep-school kid in an artist’s world, after all. However, I could always go for a run with one of my buddies; it helped my life feel lighter.

At an overgrown tennis court in Dorset, summer 2022.

When the idea of London rolled around, I figured, I built a life in a strange city once, why would this be so hard to replicate overseas? Many people like to speculate: England, even London, isn’t as transient? Hmm, no, if anything, London is possibly more diverse than New York with people coming and going all the time. The English generally keep to themselves, especially when displays of emotion are involved? Sure, but so do the upperclass WASPy Americans who populate many pockets of America. One theory from a friend: England is often rainy and when the sun comes out, they want to spend the days with their friends and family, not a newbie from America. A bit out there, but sure, at this point, I will grasp at straws.

I still have that book Watching the English by the anthropologist Kate Fox, and it may be time to drag it out again. But for now, I just have to content myself with statistics, I suppose. A recent global study of 10,000 people found that Britons have fewer “best friends” — 2.6 on average — than those in other countries, even Saudi Arabia, where participants reported 6.6 best friends on average. I guess then, that the English are just choosier or pickier, however one wants to describe it. That means they likely trust fewer people and it takes them longer to do so. Maybe the rest of us are just less skeptical.

It’s cliche to say that the only constant is change, but in my case, it’s true. Life in New York will never be the same — people move on, friends leave. So I guess I am in London for the long haul — friends or not. If nothing else, I have Bromley, the cat. She’s a local.

Will the author ever make enough friends to have a big dinner party in London? Only Zoltar knows…

Letter from the King's Head Pub in Galway

Located in the heart of Galway City on High Street the King’s Head has been in the center of the revolution for 800 years. Its signage features the head of Charle I, the only English King to be executed during the English Revolution.

King Charles III takes the throne this weekend, but most English miss his Mum

The Kings Head may look and feel like a pub that has been around forever — and it does have links to the 14 Tribes of Galway, as well as the Mayor of Galway. But it became significant, when Richard Brandon, Executioner for the City of London refused involvement in the Execution of King Charles I, the face that adorns the sign today. Oliver Cromwell, the Protestant caretaker responsible for the English Revolution, sent emissaries to Ireland, Scotland and Wales, which his armies had taken over, in search of a volunteer. Behind the home of Peter Stubbers, Galway’s new Military Governor — the first English and non-tribal Mayor of Galway City — lived Richard Gunning, who agreed to do the job. Local legend had it that Gunning was given the property as payment for his part in the execution of King Charles I, “the Price of Royal Blood.”

Eventually, following the English Reformation, Ireland’s independence, “The Troubles,” and other travesties, the Grealish family took over the King’s Head. They uncovered the medieval walls and restored the medieval windows. They brought in Irish musicians to play free, live Irish music seven nights a week, along with regular stand-up comedy and lunchtime theatre. The King’s Head has become the type of gathering and community place that Charles III, newly crowned this past weekend, might actually appreciate, even if it does allude to the downfall of the Stuart monarchy.

The Coronation of King Charles III

Back in London, nearly 400 miles away, the former Prince of Wales was exchanging robes, getting rubbed with oil, being presented with swords and orbs and sceptres and crowns, and eventually, making his way to Buckingham Palace in a 253-year-old Gold State Coach — the one that the late Queen used in 1952. Since that time, Britain has been awash in various controversies surrounding the treatment of various parties surrounding the main event. The Met police detained 52 people associated with the anti-monarchical movement, Republic, on charges of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance just days after striking a deal with the city for peaceful protest. Other protestors against Big Oil and for other causes, also faced silencing in exchange for the perfect pageantry — a specialty of the English. Even Prince Harry left the ceremony aggrieved over his diminished role. The official “coronation photo” shows King Charles with Prince William and Prince George, sans the other son.

Another coronation cake featuring the Coronation designed by Apple genius Jony Ive. The logo merges he rose of England, the thistle of Scotland, the daffodil of Wales and the shamrock of Northern Ireland to form the shape of St Edward’s crown.

Since the partying ended on a week ago Sunday night following the coronation concert, however, the new King Charles is nowhere to be found, begging the question of the kind of king he aims to become: an active one engaged in the day-to-day affairs of government, as his “Black Spider Memos” to politicians and ministers over the years, suggest; one who took a more middle ground, like his mother, or a monarch on a perpetual holiday. Before the big day, all things indicated that Charles, a brooding, self-conscious young prince could the hardest-working king of the 21st Century.

The “work” of a “working royal” has alway been a bit hard to define. The position of Prince of Wales had no specified constitutional purpose or duties after his stint at Cambridge and in the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy, Charles’ staff researched many precedents and possibilities. The Prince once told The Telegraph that it would be “criminally negligent” of him to do nothing, so he started more than a dozen charities, including the Prince’s Trust, and has served as the patron of of others.

Another cake for one of the suggested “garden parties” to be had during coronation weekend. This one represents the St. Edward's Crown, used during the coronation ceremony of Queen Elizabeth.

King Charles III, like his extremely Catholic first namesake, has also spoken out for years on his most passionate causes from preserving monuments to gardening to alternative medicine, often skirting the line of England’s constitutional mandate that monarchs remain apolitical. The danger of this became apparent when in 2019 he fretted that young people weren’t learning the church organ due to lack of access. Two years later, England had International Organ Day and the backing of Andrew Lloyd Webber.

A Greene King ale “with its bright tropical fruit notes and smooth, satisfying finish,” the Coronation Ale — originally brewed in Bury St Edmunds to celebrate the Coronation of Edward VIII — was saved for Charles III

It’s been said many, many, many times — and well documented in The Crown, that perennial thorn in the monarchy’s side — that Charles has often been the “cuckoo in the royal nest,” according to a recent New Yorker essay. The first member of his immediate family to attend college, the king has never been considered intellectual, but reads history — and Shakespeare, as his estranged son, Prince Harry, wrote about in his scathing biography, Spare. He’s also long been an environmentalist, warning of the dangers of pollution and industrial farming in the 1980s. A 1984 article in the Daily Mirror envisioned the future king sitting “cross-legged on the throne wearing a kaftan and eating muesli.” He said of his onetime positions, “Perhaps we just have to accept that it is God’s will that the unorthodox individual is doomed to years of frustration, ridicule, and failure in order to act out his role in the scheme of things, until his day arrives, and mankind is ready to receive his message.”

A set of “unofficial” English humour coronation mugs lining the table of a store in Islington.

But perhaps the most pertinent role for the new king would be as head of tourism — chief promoter of the British way of life, with all its quirks and charms. Although his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, ceded several of the colonies under the English empire to independence, Charles III must prepare to potentially let go of more. Shortly after Charles was confirmed king, Prime Minister Gaston Browne of Antigua and Barbuda said he intended to hold a republic referendum within the next three years. “This is not an act of hostility or any difference between Antigua and Barbuda and the monarchy, but it is the final step to complete that circle of independence,” he told broadcaster ITV News. In March, Jamaica’s Prime Minister Andrew Holness told Charles’ son William that the nation was “moving on” as an independent country, thanks to a survey that showed 56 percent of Jamaicans favoured removing the British monarch as the head of state. In Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves proposed a referendum for July.

The “official china” of the coronation, mass produced and sold in every trinket shop across Wales, England, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Notwithstanding, recent attempts to measure the size of the impact of the royal family on UK tourism have estimated the capital value of UK monarchy as £67.5 billion ($85 billion) and the annual contribution to the UK economy £1.766 billion ($1.9 billion). Visit Britain, the national tourism agency responsible for marketing England, Scotland and Wales worldwide, does not collate statistics on the royal family as an attraction. That said, it has found that 60 percent of overseas visitors to Britain are likely to visit places associated with the royal family. More than a third of tourists visiting London list Buckingham Palace as a ‘must see’ top preference; the Tower of London, housing the Crown Jewels, is reputedly amongst the most visited paid-for UK attractions. Everyone loved the queen (and maybe they will love the king.

A large St. Edwards crown hangs over the city centre of Nottingham the week before the coronation.

“We have observed the power of a monarch in attracting the tourist gaze of domestic and international visitors, albeit difficult to quantify in hard metrics,” the Regional Studies Association, a UK think tank surmised late last year. “We have also witnessed, amongst habitual, dedicated, and enthusiastic “Royal Tourists,” a psychological need for royal narratives and for imagined participation in royal lives that has persevered. 

“Yet, we note tensions within the devolved nations of Scotland and Wales around the transition of monarch.” Um, duh.

Charles advertises for the Peachy King Bar near Covent Garden.

While the average annual cost for UK taxpayers in royal upkeep comes to around £500 million a year, Brand Finance estimates the monarchy’s brand contributes £2.5 billion to the British economy in the same timeframe. So in addition to pontificating on politically correct causes, such as the environment, and occasionally talking the Tories out of a bad idea, the monarchy generates about four times what it costs citizens.

Whether Charles makes more money for England or helps usher in a more progressive, cultured and benevolent society remains to be seen. But he can’t do much worse than Charles I, or Charles II for that matter. Charles I lost popular support over public welfare issues such as the imposition of drainage schemes in The Fens. Moreover, Charles believed in the divine right of kings, thinking themselves above the law. After his defeat by Parliament in the Civil Wars, Charles I was imprisoned and on 20 January 1649 the High Court of Justice at Westminster Hall put him on trial for treason. Ten days later, a large crowd of men, women and children assembled in the ‘open street before Whitehall in anticipation the execution of their king. With one blow of his axe the executioner severed the King’s head from his body, killing him instantly. The executioner held up King Charles’s head for the crowd to see. Some spectators sought grisly souvenirs of the event, rushing forward to dip their handkerchiefs into the royal blood. A week later the monarchy was officially abolished.

The coronation as environmental science fair project. Another sign of monarchial change near Covent Garden in Central London.

Charles II, a monarch in exile until the English tired of Oliver Cromwell, would rule closely with parliament, and returned to popular acclaim. The royalists made new regalia, as the previous crown had been melted down, and the new king returned a flair for public spectacle. But the final phase of Charles II's reign was taken up mainly with attempts to settle religious dissension — to show favouritism to one side or even tolerance was potentially fatal. Charles managed to please no religion, but somehow managed to avert open rebellion.

Because Charles had no legitimate children, there was a widespread fear that his Roman Catholic brother James would inherit the throne. Charles looked to marry off James’ daughter to Protestant Prince William of Orange in Holland to keep the Protestant throne alive. The plan ultimately worked. Four hundred years later, we have Charles III to endure, William, the next in line and as always, the royal drama of family — as well as the King’s Head pubs to watch the telly and argue about it all.

Among the streets of Camden Passage in the heart of Islington, however, the Queen still speaks to the passers-by. This window, a part of an apartment block owned by an American ex-pat, has been devoted to the late QE II since the 90s.

Letter from a London Pub: The Duke of York in Fitzrovia

The Duke of York pub in Fitzrovia, highlighted by the BT Tower. Today it is the only known sign with the mug of Prince Andrew (the actual Duke of York) on it.

Many pub signs around London bear a coat of arms, a symbol of officialdom — a globe a horse, or a bell — or a historical figure. But none probably stands out more than Prince Andrew on the sign of The Duke of York pub in Fitzrovia, Central London. Licensed in 1767 and rebuilt in 1897, the Duke is now a small and popular pub operated by Greene King brewery, tucked away at the top end of Rathbone Street. In 2014, Prince Andrew, or the present Duke of York, gave permission for his likeness to be used on the pub sign. Igor Babailov, a prolific Russian-born American artist known for his commissioned portraits of world leaders and celebrities, painted it; the painting is now thought to be the only pub in the world featuring a likeness of a living member of the Royal Family.

The wartime Fitzrovia literary crowd hung out at The Duke, and had regular encounters with so-called razor gangs. In particular, the novelist Anthony Burgess is thought to have used his wife's 1943 experience of razor gangs forcing her to drink copius amounts of beer in his later novel, A Clockwork Orange. In the 1940s and 1950s landlord Major Alf Klein initiated male customers by snipping off their ties; his collection grew to over 1500. Singer/songwriters Donovan, Ian Dury, Rod Stewart, Paul Jones, Johnnie Ray, and John Lee Hooker were also regulars, as was David "Del Boy" Jason. Despite being stripped of all of his titles in 2021 due to his association with financier and trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, Pince Andrew’s mug remains. In Soho, locals now colloquially refer to the pub as “the Nonce.”

I arrived at The Duke after seeing…

Alice Neel, Hot Off the Griddle at the Barbican

The largest exhibition to date in the UK of American artist Alice Neel features an array of work showcasing the U.S.’s lost heroes.

A self-portrait of Alice Neel done in 1980 — one of only two she ever made. She took five years to complete the work and later, recalling the process, said, "The reason my cheeks got so pink was that it was so hard for me to paint that I almost killed myself painting it."

Describing herself as ‘a collector of souls’, Alice Neel captured New York during a period in which Pop Art emergent and figurative painting was deeply unfashionable. Neel was born near Philadelphia in 1900 and trained at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women. She became a painter in Cuba, with her first husband, and developed a strong social conscience and equally strong left-wing beliefs. After giving birth to two children, one of whom was kept in Cuba by her father (a daughter, Isabella), Neel moved to Greenwich Village in the late 1920s.

Two “peasants” painted by Alice Neel in Cuba in the 1920s.

The Works Progress Administration, the New Deal program to save the U.S. from the Great Depression for which Neel painted urban scenes, saved Neel’s life. In the 1930s, Neel embraced left wing writers, artists and trade unionists through her portraiture. Soon crowned the “court painter of the underground,” Neel’scanvases celebrated the marginalised of society, including Harvard-educated homeless eccentrics like Joe Gould, labour leaders, Black and Puerto Rican children, pregnant women, civil rights activists and queer couples, as well as Andy Warhol after he was shot in 1968.

Neel’s portrait of Joe Gould, the Harvard-educated, often homeless eccentric who claimed to be the author of the longest book ever written, An Oral History of the Contemporary World, also known as Meo Tempore.

While enrolled in these government programs, Neel painted in a realist style and her subjects were mostly Depression-era street scenes and Communist thinkers and leaders.A member of the US Communist Party, Neel and her radical portraits caught the attention of the FBI. In recent years, the politics of her work has given her cult status among a younger generation of artists.

Longshoremen Returning from Work by Alice Neel (1936) part of the WPA.

In the 1930s, Neel moved to Spanish Harlem and began painting her neighbors, specifically women and children. She had two sons and for most of her career, Neel painted in obscurity. In the 1970s, the second-wave feminist movement was rapidly rising, and the problems of the patriarchy were being displayed through critical eyes. Neel was featured in Time magazine in 1970 and she was discovered, then celebrated by many feminists — seemingly an overnight success. Neel participated in an exhibition of self-portraits at the Harold Reed Gallery in New York in late 1980, and came to be laiuded for challenging the social norms of what was acceptable to be depicted in art. Neel died on 13 October from advanced colon cancer.

A dancing scene in Spanish Harlem pained in the 1930s by Alice Neel.

Alice Neel, Alice Neel Paints Scenes and Portraits from Life in Harlem, 1950.

Alice Neel’s portrait of Andy Warhol after his near death from a gunshot wound. Warhol’s shirtless torso reveals wounds that twist and turn, which are fleshy pink.

Save Willie McGee painted in 1950, oil on canvas. Willie McGee was a Black 36-year-old truck driver who was sentenced to death in the electric chiar for the alleged rape of white homemaker in Mississippi, Willette Hawkins.

David Bourdon and Gregory Battcock painted by Alice Neel in 1970.