Back when hippies roamed the earth, Michael Shapiro moved to the Lower East Side, down the block from the Peace Eye Bookstore and not far from the old Frayhayt building. Then spring came, and he was held up at knifepoint and at gunpoint in the course of a single week. He found another place to live. Since then he has followed a veritable dog’s breakfast of trades and professions. He has been by turns a street beggar, a household mover, a taxi driver, a piano turner, a mathematical biologist and a research mathematician.

​

​