Indian Larry - Move To New York City

Move To New York City

After completing parole, Larry relocated to New York City where he became involved with the underground scene. The first magazine article about Indian Larry was in Iron Horse Magazine (Issue # 70 November 1987). It featured his 1950 Indian Chief chopper with red-orange flames. It was during this period that people began to call him Indian Larry. In the 1980s he hung out with Robert Maplethorpe and Andy Warhol, who had heard about Indian Larry, and "searched him out", because they found him "so fascinating". Maplethorpe was "attracted to Indian Larry's 'crash and burn'" lifestyle. One of the photographs that he took of Indian Larry ended up on the cover of Artforum magazine.

Indian Larry began working in different motorcycle shops in New York City and New Jersey during the 1980s and early 1990s. Often he would be rebuilding motors out of his apartment. For many years Larry struggled with alcohol abuse and heroin. In November 1991, during a period when he was living around the Bowery, Larry was going through severe withdrawals one night, wandering the streets cutting himself with a broken beer bottle. Larry would later say, "I was homeless, shirtless, penniless, showerless. I had nothing. I had nothing left". According to Larry's youngest sister Tina, (who went on to become a registered nurse) when a cop arrived on the scene that night in 1991 and shined a spotlight in Larry's face, Larry told him, "Just shoot me." They committed him to Bellevue Hospital. It was through Bellevue that Larry got connected up with a drug and alcohol program.

Larry had "1991" and "1994" tattooed on his arm, as he explained that he had to go back after his initial treatment. Larry struggled with a familiar cycle for years. As friend and bike building partner Paul Cox explained: "...he would go through periods of time when he didn't think he deserved fame or whatever, and would sabotage himself by doing drugs. Larry would attack himself internally and head down a self-destructive spiral." It was not until the late 1990s that Larry was finally able to free himself and stop using. Mentioning the long journey that it took, Larry expressed that he didn't think that he could do it all over again. "It was too hard," he said. Larry's friend, celebrity photographer Timothy White, said in the Discovery Channel biography of Indian Larry that "drugs didn’t belong with Larry and I think Larry knew that and it wasn’t until he got to a point that he really realized that — only at that point could he let it all go. And once he did, his life changed completely. It changed completely, like nobody I've ever seen."