For Hip Hosts

"RENT GENUINE BEATNIKS," said the ad. "BADLY GROOMED BUT BRILLIANT (MALE AND FEMALE)." It appeared in the Village Voice, parochial journal of Manhattan's Greenwich Village, and it represented an occupational sideline of Voice Contributor Fred W. McDarrah. The U-rent-a-hipster bit began as a joke earlier this winter, but when the first ad drew more than ten replies, McDarrah began to operate for real.

McDarrah advertised beat lecturers, fund-raisers, photographic models, reciting poets (fees: $25 to $50 per evening). While more response came, not all clients were acceptable. McDarrah' turned down an interested trio of amateur photographers who wanted to improve their lens technique with beatnik girls. He had already found the sort of client he wanted when he sent beat Poet-Painter Ted Joans (ne Jones) to Scarsdale, where 32-year-old Joyce Barken, wife of a business executive, had turned her living room into a way-out coffeehouse, filled it up with the square root of society--doctors, lawyers, engineers, brokers.

What did Joans ("My poems are American neo-Dadaism") have to say to such an audience? "I told them what the beats are really like," he explains. "Everybody thinks the beats always smoke pot, smell horrible, and all that jazz. I take a bath every day, man. People also think beat girls like free sex. Listen, some of these chicks are so far out that's the last thing they think of. One I know says, 'Sit across the room; just being near me should be sexy enough.' "

McDarrah claims his talent pool now includes just about all the hipsters in Manhattan except the Kerouac-Corso-Ginsberg sort, who are already approaching their first million and don't need the bread. This week he is planning to supply two beats--one cat, one chick--for a birthday party given by a Madison Avenue adwoman for a fashion photographer.

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