John Arthur Maynard Venice West: The Beat Generation in Southern California, Rutgers University Press: New Brunswick, NJ, 1991. 242 pp., 1967
"(c. 1967) In Venice, meanwhile, one of the beat ethic's more seasoned practitioners, Stuart Perkoff, was making yet another subsidized attempt to lead an orderly, productive life. His father had set him up in a house in Ocean Park; there he and Jana Baragan would live quietly, write poetry, draw pictures, make collages, and learn to live without drugs. Or so the plan went, at any rate. Like all the other plans, it demanded more concessions than he was able to make.
"To sustain his heroin habit, Perkoff had put together a modest scam. His role was to be the man who knew the connection; drug trafficking had become so hazardous in Venice that most reputable dealers worked only through third parties. When a customer wanted to buy, he would take the money and score. He earned himself a "taste" that way, but he also assumed the risk for both parties. With a steady stream of customers flowing through his house, it was only a matter of time before the police realized what he was doing. When they did, they decided to set him up for his connection. There was no hurry about it; they waited three months to issue the warrents.
"Perkoff hardly remembered the specific buys they arrested him for, let alone the phony customers. The warrants were Federal, and although he ended up being convicted of "transporting marijuana" rather than selling heroin, he drew the maximum penalty of five years, to be served on Terminal Island, in the man-made Harbor of Los Angeles.
"After his son's trial, Nat Perkoff drove down from Santa Barbara to clear out the house in Ocean Park. He and the landlord worked all day. There was no time to sort throught the mountain of clutter. Since it all looked like trash anyway, they told the workman they had hired to throw it all out. At precisely the moment Stuart Perkoff's entire literary estate was being rolled out the door in a barrel, Larry Lipton, the man with the perfect sense of timing, happened to be strolling up the front walk. Once he realized what was happening, he refused to stop shouting until the police arrived and agreed to impound everything until Perkoff was released." pp. 172-173