Artist Isaiah Zagar Remembers: A Crime of Real Passion on South Street

Over the decades, a lot of weird things have happened on South Street. But the story artist Isaiah Zagar tells sounds like something a short story writer would invent.

Zagar and his wife, Julia, were among the starving artists that brought South street back to life in the late 1960s and 1970s.

“It was in the late ‘60s,” Zagar says. “There was a bread baker – he had learned baking in prison – on South between 3rd and 4th street".

“Living above the baker in the second floor apartment was a young woman – an artist and designer,” says Zagar.

Zagar says her apartment was invaded in the pre-dawn hours by a burglar who came through a window. His entrance woke the woman.

Here’s where the story gets hard to believe. Instead of robbing the woman, the two made passionate love. In fact, it was the first act in an affair that Zagar claims lasted about two years.

“He hung around until the baby was born,” says Zagar. Yes the cat burglar and the artist produced a love child.

Well, that’s Zagar’s story and the creator of the wonderfully creative South Street Magic Garden sticks by it.