Notes from the Underground

In an article in Esquire in 1971, the writer Ron Rosenbaum called Joybubbles the catalyst uniting disparate phreaks. Particularly after news accounts of his suspension from college in 1968 and conviction in 1971 for phone violations, he became a nerve center of the movement.

“Every night he sits like a sightless spider in his little apartment receiving messages from every tendril of its web,” Mr. Rosenbaum wrote.