West Side Summers: 1984-1987

Richard Grayson started writing a daily diary in the summer of 1969, when he turned 18, and has compiled daily entries since then. In the six volumes of THE BROOKLYN DIARIES, Grayson published selected entries from 1969 to 1980. Now, in WEST SIDE SUMMERS, Grayson describes his summer days living on the Upper West Side from 1984 to 1987. Already a published author, Grayson records his days and nights prowling the streets of Manhattan and Brooklyn. Celebrity watching, Shakespeare in the Park, Sichuan restaurants, a decidedly seedy Times Square, hip coffee shops, literary readings, elderly Jews on the boardwalk, the panic and terror of the AIDS epidemic, homeless beggars, nights with ex-lovers, graduate classes in computers, cash advances at ATMs, Wall Street insider trading indictments, giving and getting interviews, soaring ambitions and crushing self-doubts: this is Grayson's world in the exciting long, hot summers of a Manhattan in the middle of the flashy 1980s.