[00:18] Meg: Welcome to Desperately Seeking the '80s. I am Meg.

[00:20] Jessica: And I am Jessica and Meg and I have been friends since 1982. We got through middle school and high school together here in New York City where we still live.

[00:29] Meg: And where we podcast about New York City in the'80s. I do ripped from the headlines.

[00:33] Jessica: And I do pop culture.

[00:36] Meg: So we're doing another field trip today, Jessica?

[00:38] Jessica: Yes, we are.

[00:39] Jessica: Field trip.

[00:40] Meg: Oh, but before we get into it. Yes? Have you seen what I posted about Sue Simmons after you said maybe there was something about Sue Simmons? And did she ever say anything or do anything? I found the clip.

[00:53] Jessica: Oh, my God. Yeah.

[00:56] Meg: So you need to check that out.

[00:57] Jessica: I cannot wait to see this. I have to know if my memory is correct.

[01:02] Meg: Exactly. So as soon as you watch it, let us know.

[01:05] Jessica: I shall.

[01:17] Meg: So I wanted to give some context for today's field trip so that everybody understands where it came from and where it's going and who these people are. So, basically, on Valentine's Day this year, Joe and I went to Cassidy Grady's Valentine's event in Greenpoint. Cassidy is this wonderful dancer and actor and playwright who's part of this scene of young artists, including Matthew Gasda, who made a splash with his play Dimes Square, which I don't believe you've seen, but you have seen.

[01:52] Jessica: I saw Dover.

[01:53] Meg: You saw Dover, you saw Minotaur. Those are both plays that I was in of Matthew Gasda's.

[01:58] Jessica: Excellent.

[01:59] Meg: That's how I wound up at Cassidy's Valentine's event. So there were a bunch of performances and readings on the theme of love that evening. And Ruby Sutton, who is a young writer, read an excerpt from an interview she did with her Uncle Russell Sharon, who's a visual artist and who was creating work in the East Village in the '80s. During this reading of Ruby's, I was struck both by how he described New York City at the time and mostly by Ruby's connection to it and by the fact that I was amongst this new bohemia, or at least that's how I am experiencing it right now. And hearing how they were hearing about a bohemia that predated even me, us. Good Lord, king. So I reached out to Ruby and we interviewed her and Russell via Zoom, and they were in Minnesota. We began by talking about the weather, and Russell was eating a snow cone made from the snow from his backyard.

[02:59] Russell: Do you mind if I eat my snow? Well, this is actually a lemon concoction underneath.

[03:06] Jessica: That sounds perfect. I haven't said hello. I'm Jessica, and it's so nice to meet both of you.

[03:13] Ruby: Hi, Jessica.

[03:14] Meg: Hi.

[03:15] Russell: Yeah, Ruby can show you just out the window, the landscape is so smooth and gentle looking, feathery looking, because the snow is very light, like feathers and hides everything. It's very quiet, too.

[03:33] Jessica: Very unlike, as you well know, Russell, New York snow, which in about 5 seconds is..

[03:40] Russell: I think it falls as slush. We had some wonderful snowstorms in the city. Usually they would appear on Friday afternoon, so then it would snow 13 inches and people would just sit in one spot and spin 50 miles an hour until the snow melted. That's what I thought. Anyway.

[04:01] Jessica: You were there for the giant blizzard in '77, right? What was that? That was like 24 inches.

[04:07] Russell: A lot. They were hauling it out to the bridges and dumping it in the river. People were skiing. It was really neat. Nature took over. And who was the Governor then? I remember watching the news report. One of the reporters was talking to people, someone in Queens interviewing people. And this woman told him that she did not intend to vote for Mayor Beame ever again. He allowed this to happen.

[04:36] Meg and Jessica: Field trip. Field trip. Field trip. Field trip.

[04:42] Jessica: So one of the things that we talked about during the interview with Russell and Ruby was that, yes, he's eating a snow cone made out of snow from outside his door. And we were sort of laughing about how New Yorkers now are constantly bracing for the next snowstorm or what is it? Snowpocalyse. And like, we get three flakes that come down, and it's like three flakes shuts the city down. And we were talking about how there used to be real snowstorms in New York City. But nonetheless, to Russell, they were still not much. But the one snowstorm that he did acknowledge was a real snowstorm was the snowstorm of '77, which we have talked about on this podcast. I found something out about that snowstorm that I thought was fascinating. What? Jimmy Carter, who was president at the time, declared it a federal emergency, this snowstorm, because it wasn't just New York. It was New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania. Federal? Way upstate New York. Yes. And in fact, where it really hit the hardest was in Buffalo, New York.

[05:53] Meg: I can imagine.

[05:54] Jessica: But what he did and this was what was so fascinating to me, you know, what else was going on in 1977? Not only all the things that we've already talked about, like the Son of Sam and then the blackout and all of that, but it was the energy crisis. So there were these record lows. Like, in Pennsylvania, it was negative 25 degrees. It was colder in Pennsylvania in that one area than it was in Alaska.

[06:24] Meg: And how are they going to heat their houses?

[06:26] Jessica: Well, so he said that everyone had to turn their heat down. So during the day it couldn't be above 65, and at night it couldn't be above 60. And then Canada was bringing fuel in. Yes, Canada, like other neighboring countries, were helping with, like so here we are talking about how beautiful the snowstorm and the people who are skiing, when in fact, there were people dying all over the country because of this event. And in fact, that emergency, which prompted the formation of FEMA.

[07:04] Meg: I was very moved by how close Ruby and Russell are.

[07:09] Jessica: Wonderfully.

[07:10] Meg: What a wonderful relationship that is. What a special relationship that is. It made me think about the people who, not who are a generation ahead of me, but two generations ahead of me, how special that kind of communication can be.

[07:23] Jessica: Yeah, I mean, it's sort of interesting. In my family, my dad was the youngest of four brothers. His oldest brother was 16 years older. So my uncles were much older and were grandparent age for would have been grandparent age, like for some of my friends. And my Uncle Arthur in particular was very close to me and to my brother. And her relationship with Russell made me think about how a relationship with an older, it's like you get all the good stuff of sort of a grandparent, but they're still willing to get into trouble with you, which is really charming. But she was so protective of him, and that's what got me. You could tell she would do just about anything to make sure that he was happy and most of all listened to, which is why I thought this was great.

[08:19] Russell: But, yeah, I've known her all her life, and she's known me all her life, too, but she hasn't known me all my life, but she's heard a lot of stories. I like the idea of that podcast. It's such an interesting balance when one is the art of beauty and high culture, or culture, anyway, and the other is the art of the nefarious sort of sneaky criminal or maybe even murderer from time to time. People who are up to no good according to the Kanachante or the righteous people. And I fall somewhere in between.

[09:06] Meg and Jessica: Field trip, field trip, field trip, field trip.

[09:13] Meg: So in Ruby's interview with Russell, which I'll post, this was something that she wrote for a magazine. He talks about how supportive his mother was of him when he was little, and he liked pink socks when he was growing up, and that was okay by her. And this is a quote from the interview that she had with him. Quote "the place I wanted to find, and the place I eventually did find was a place called New York City, where almost 100% of people would say, wow, I love your socks."

[09:47] Russell: It was never interested at all in toeing the line or becoming a part of the mob or the suburban crowd that imitates rather than originate. The stars were in perfect alignment for something. Once in a while, a major thing happens because everything is making it happen. The rents were really low. There's still a lot of money in the country, so children, young men and women could live off the fat of the land sort of, usually their parents, and I didn't, but a lot did, so there was freedom to move around the country. In my case, I just wanted to find a family of kindred spirits, people who I could discuss life with and philosophy and art, make art and literature here in the middle of the woods. I loved farming, too, but there wasn't anyone I could talk to with any doubt. People would like to talk about. What are we going to have for supper? You try to get them to enter into a conversation about anything unusual, like, they tend to not have a clue. They're quiet. There's a saying that says mind your own business. And that's a prevalent philosophy around here in these two counties, and I really do not like it. I don't think that it builds the community if everyone's ignoring everyone. You know in New York, no one minds their own business. That gets the energy going. It was like heaven for me. Previously, I'd gone to Switzerland. To me, it was like a nightmare. I suddenly understood Nihilism and the desire just to blow everything up. The reason was, you look around, there wasn't a single thing you could improve. You couldn't move anything without throwing everything off balance. Drove me crazy.

[11:53] Meg and Jessica: Field trip. Field trip. Field trip. Field trip.

[12:00] Meg: So when he moved to New York in the late '70s, he worked with Luis Frangella. Am I pronouncing that correct?

[12:08] Jessica: I believe so. Correct.

[12:10] Meg: Who was his longtime partner, and he worked with Hal Bromm. And Hal Bromm also had a gallery at 170 Avenue A, and Russell created his sculptures in an abandoned lot on Avenue A and 11th street.

[12:25] Jessica: Well, I am going to add a little information there. Great. So Hal Bromm originally had his galleries in what would become the booming Soho and Tribeca art scene. Bromm was willing to take risks on these young people, which I thought was really amazing. And think about taking risks on young artists at this time when they're all also dying. Because Wojnarowicz died at 37 of AIDS. Luis died at 37 of AIDS. There must have been an urgency to show their work.

[13:03] Meg: Gosh, I hadn't even thought about that.

[13:05] Jessica: If you're a gallerist and you really care about what you're doing, getting these people into the public eye must have been like there must have been a real sense of purpose.

[13:17] Meg: And he was a young man, too. I mean, they were all coming up together.

[13:20] Russell: This is how we ended up doing that group of sculptures. They were grand sculptures in that little vacant lot on 11th Street and Avenue A. It was full of garbage. People throw the sofas and all bits of roofing, and it was a mess. I didn't get paid to do it, and I really liked making them. It was something unusual. I was showing work with Hal Bromm at the time, and when I told him my idea, he flipped out a little bit because he doesn't like to live under the radar of the law. He doesn't like to break rules because I find him just going and doing it. So we went together to City Hall, which was right down the street and talked to whoever you need to talk to in order to get a permit to fix up a vacant lot. They didn't want it to happen because it would give them some work. And I had the feeling they were fairly lazy. Well, I went down again a couple of days later and talked to the same guy because I was pissed. And I said, we could have such a nice city if you give the artists or creative people, just make it easy for us, give us funds to improve these lots. They were, of course, worried about insurance. I said, well, I'm going to do it anyway. Just going to do it. They didn't care, really. You need to live in a space or be somewhere where you can throw things around, where it's chaotic, and then you can create some sort of an order. I mean, it's magic.

[15:05] Ruby: So he was working with Luis Frangella.

[15:07] Russell: We met at MIT in Boston. We were there for two years.

[15:11] Ruby: They met on the street because Luis Frangella was carrying, he's an Argentine painter, and he was carrying a suitcase in the shape of an elephant.

[15:21] Russell: He and his friend Danny had made these tote bags, they weren't tote bags they were. I have one here of a mini horse. So Luis, when he basically had to escape from Buenos Aires because he was hysterical and rude, and he got a fellowship to the Advanced Physical Studies at MIT, and that probably saved his life. In New York right from the beginning, I felt very safe. I've always been a very gentle, decent, calm person. I don't beat people up. I like to be on the side of the underdog, which is something that Ruby is really good at. If she sees a brute beating somebody weaker, she'll take over. She'll take over, and that will be that for the brute.

[16:16] Meg and Jessica: Field trip. Field trip. Field trip. Field trip.

[16:23] Meg: So, you know, I moved to the East Village 15 years after Russell, and I know I saw vestiges of this world that he describes, but they are much harder to find now.

[16:36] Jessica: Oh, my God. I mean, even the murals that had been there forever have been painted over. I mean, our BFF of the cast, Alex, on his blog, Flaming Pablum he laments a whole lot of these murals around the East Village that they memorialized residents of the area and rappers and rock stars, and they're all gone. It's sort of like taking down the signposts, in a way.

[17:09] Meg: And some of those buildings have burned down or blown up or been torn down and replaced by glasses, glass, high rises. So sometimes I will say, even though I lived in that neighborhood for a decade, I can get a little discombobulated. I'm like, what street am I on?

[17:26] Jessica: Yeah.

[17:27] Meg: Well, when for so long, it wasn't touched because it wasn't considered valuable real estate. But that changed.

[17:35] Jessica: Yeah, I mean, there is an artist who I think is really fascinating. Her name was Candy Jernigan and Candy, her art was all arranging and cataloging found objects in the East Village.

[17:48] Meg: Oh, I love it.

[17:49] Jessica: She had this whole series about all the different crack vials that you could find in the East Village. How they all had different colors, the little tops. And she somehow managed to make it anthropologically fascinating and beautiful. You know, what you're talking about, even that the physical space is so changed. The way that art is made is changed because that isn't there. There could be no Candy now.

[18:18] Russell: So we arrived. We had gone up to New York a few times to look around, see where we wanted to live. But of course, when you don't have any money, you look in the least expensive parts of town. And we wanted to stay in Manhattan. So the East Village had become totally dilapidated. Half of the stores, maybe three quarters of the storefronts were closed. No one was there. And so people walk by and they'd, oh, now what should we do? Oh, let's throw a rock through the window. That was a form of entertainment. And so it would attract all sorts of ne'er-do-wells. And then right on the other side was the Alphabet Street that would go down to the East River. There are the projects down there. I hired some women from the projects to help us do, there were tote bags in the shapes of animals. People loved them. We would do a canvas, we would stencil on the eye, and everybody wanted a logo. It sucked the artist in like crazy. Because the requirements of an artist, one of the main one, is to be with other artists. So you can talk about your work and each other's work and not feel lonely. Not feel lonely because you know a bunch of people who are in the same boat you're in, they're not going to make any money until you're dead, but it's worth it. Everyone knew everyone else. It was like a little town. You meet somebody and you like them right away, almost all the time. They were happy themselves because they had hit the figurative pot of gold, which was they were able to live as they pleased with a lot of encouragement from other pots of gold. They were light and easy with each other. Little romantic interludes that happened quite frequently with various partners. It was extremely promiscuous. I think a lot more drugs than I was aware of.

[20:33] Meg: Well, I was interested, Ruby, because when I heard you read from your interview with Russell we were at Cassidy Grady's Valentine's event, which is a pretty bohemian scene. I came back to New York in the early '90s and I was an actress in the early '90s on like, Ludlow Street. But then there was a period of time where yeah, I feel like things have been a little conventional. What I've noticed recently is this sort of bohemia bubbling up again. And that's where I saw Ruby reading from her interview with you, I was wondering, Ruby, what you thought about that. Do you make a connection with what your uncle is talking about? And that scene that we met each other at?

[21:19] Ruby: Yeah. When I started doing interviews with Russell. We started collecting material in 2020, and I was in Minnesota, and I'd always heard Russell talk about New York in the '80s sounding so mystical and romantic and like things would just happen. And being sort of skeptical or thinking that that would never happen to me, or thinking that it was just a hindsight thing, or because Russell lived through the AIDS crisis, too, if it was so romantic only in contrast to the past, and at Cassidy's reading, I chose excerpts where Russell talked about the community of kindred spirits. And he talks about not having a lot of a strong sense of morality, right? Just don't burn anyone's house down.

[22:00] Meg and Jessica: Field trip. Field trip. Field trip. Field trip.

[22:08] Meg: So he's about to talk about Maryanne Amacher. Okay. Who was an American composer, she died in 2009 and an installation artist. And she's known for working extensively with a family of psychoacoustic phenomena called auditory distortion, in which the ears themselves produce audible sound. She's a pretty big deal. And she worked with John Cage, and she was married to Luis Frangella.

[22:37] Jessica: Wait, wait. I don't understand. She's working with a family of ears?

[22:41] Meg: No, psychoacoustic phenomena. It's a family of phenomena.

[22:46] Jessica: Oh, where the ears make noise themselves.

[22:50] Meg: Yes. Do I know how this works? No, I don't. But what Russell was telling us and what we're about to hear about a little bit, is how interesting it was to live with her.

[23:01] Russell: Our first apartment was found by Luis Frangella and Liz Phillips. Took the train up to New York and wandered around this apartment, $600 a month on 23rd street. It was about 100ft long and 15ft wide, so there was adequate space for everyone. But those tones would carry tones that will break a glass or break various things. When you hear that 24 hours a day, after a while, you start grinding your teeth and chewing your nails and pulling out your eyelashes. So it didn't bother me nearly as much as it bothered Luis. What bothered me was that Luis was having to go through this and he could go over the edge at any time.

[24:00] Meg and Jessica: Field trip. Field trip, field trip, field trip.

[24:07] Meg: Okay, I've got some bio stuff about Luis Frangella, who was an Argentinian figurative postmodern painter and sculptor, and he was an Expressionist. And that's a throwback to the episode about minimalists that we did. Episode 33: Art Crime + Social Climb, because, yeah, around this time, people were getting more Expressionist. And he received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1982, and he died of AIDS in 1990. And I found out that he helped organize the Limbo Lounge, which was a gallery and performance space, and it's where Vampire Lesbians of Sodom got its start in 1984.

[24:55] Jessica: Oh, really?

[24:56] Meg: Yeah. That's a fun fact.

[24:58] Jessica: Oh my God, that is so cool.

[24:59] Meg: And it closed in 1986 and I went on this weird little deep dive. So the manager of Limbo was quoted in the Times around the time that it was closing, quote "We are in a residential area. We attempted to go the legal route and found it was impossible. I was arrested for selling liquor without a license and operating an illegal bottle club." Which is interesting because the space where I've been doing these plays with this group of young people of whom Ruby is one, works like that. I can't give you too many more details because I don't want to get him in trouble. But it operates in a similar way.

[25:45] Jessica: It's the speakeasy of theater.

[25:47] Meg: Exactly. This is also from that article. Quote "New York, as a mecca of creativity and craziness is in decline. This city is out." So the guy was saying that in 1986.

[26:00] Jessica: I think that every generation feels like they've been cheated out of what came before. Like, I know that it's not popular to talk about Woody Allen, but I will say that that movie Midnight in Paris perfectly encapsulates it. That every generation yearns for what came before them and the generation that we yearn for yearns for what came before them.

[26:22] Meg: Well, I think what I'm saying is that I am seeing a similar kind of energy happening right now and I think it is so exciting.

[26:30] Jessica: I would be surprised if it wasn't going on in the city. It's just do you know where to look?

[26:37] Meg: And I just wanted to close out with an excerpt of Ruby reading from her interview with Russell Sharon because it is, I think, so fitting to the work that he was doing and the work that is happening right now in this new Bohemia.

[26:54] Ruby: Another place where Luis and I showed our work early on was called the Limbo Lounge. The Limbo Lounge was started in the early 1980s and run by the three Limbo siblings Michael, Victor and Jeanette. I do not believe Limbo was their given name. Like so many people back then, they decided to choose for themselves. Almost immediately the Limbo Lounge became a place where artists in the East Village would come to hang out. You went because you knew other artists would be there and that at least one of the Limbos would make an appearance. Each of the three Limbos was a natural attraction in their own right. Friendly, gregarious, smart, also kind and good looking. Shortly after opening, the Limbos embarked upon an exhibition strategy. They decided to show a different artist each week. There would, of course, be an opening party. Anyone could come and everyone did. There were always people sitting outside on the steps of these openings not really wanting to enter or not being able to because there wasn't enough space. It was like rush hour on the subway. It was also located right off the park. So you could maybe catch a bird or a squirrel from time to time. I believe any artist who declared him or herself such could get a show at the Limbo. And for a young artist, this could be very useful. Having a show in New York would usually open doors to other cities around the world. Oh, you've shown in New York. You must be a real artist. That was the attitude. In the 1980s, New York was the center of everything. It was the cutting edge. It attracted the best, the brightest, the most peculiar and eccentric, the most colorful and talented people from all over. In all my years in New York, I met very few people who were actually born there. Most were pretty equally accumulated from across the entire face of the earth. There are so many dialects, so many languages, but we could all understand each other easily. Our ears became used to these extreme dialects. We are protected from the outside world because most of the mob, well let's call them the mob considered the East Village to be very dangerous. Many storefronts were closed. The landlords were not maintaining their buildings. There was shattered glass on the street. It was dirty and dilapidated. The landlords wanted some presence, at least on the first floor. So they drove rents down. Everything was rather shabby. No one seemed to care. We wanted and needed a place to work, a place to sleep, a place to meet people, and basically to get on with life. It was a lifestyle that seemed to suit everyone there. It seemed everyone was working all the time and working from a high octane energy derived from inspiration. Discipline was something else. The artists in the East Village didn't really need to draw on discipline, since they were eager to work all day and all night running on the inspiration they got from their work and the encouragement of the community. Go for it, people would say all the time. It was never Are you crazy? Or whoa, hang on. It was always Go for it. Big smile, so much energy. Why not? As long as it doesn't kill someone. Try not to burn anyone's house down. We weren't really bound by a strong sense of morality, so everyone went directly to their core and expressed whatever it was they needed to. After a few dozen galleries opened up, the media suddenly noticed. Then the braver of the art lovers and art buyers started to show, usually in a limousine with a driver. Unlike the galleries in Soho or Uptown, where wine was served at openings in the East Village, gallons of vodka would appear. The vodka was a major attraction, probably almost as big as the art itself. The energy and excitement around these parties was extremely intense and beautiful.

[30:50] Meg: So that was fun, a different kind of field trip.

[31:03] Jessica: It was still a field trip.

[31:05] Meg: Absolutely. And how exciting is it that next week, on Thursday, March 30, we are going to do our first live recording from Malt & Mold on 21st Street and Second Avenue at 07:00 P.M..

[31:23] Jessica: So come on down. Yeah, get your fill of beer and cheese and don't get your fill of us just a little something keep coming back.