Just Kids
Rating
The Pequod Review:
Just Kids is a short and pitch-perfect memoir that captures much of what made 1970s New York City so exciting — an affordable cost-of-living that allowed for an artistic lifestyle, the emergence of new genres of art especially conducive to amateurs (Smith herself was accomplished in poetry, acting, and painting before picking up a guitar and three years later releasing her masterpiece Horses), the romantic squalor of places like the Chelsea Hotel, and an open and communal environment that led to serendipitous run-ins with other artists like Allen Ginsberg and Jimi Hendrix. New York City today is not necessarily a worse place than in the 1970s, but many of these traits are now so faint as to be virtually nonexistent.