[00:16] Meg: Welcome to Desperately Seeking the '80s. I am Meg

[00:19] Jessica: And I'm Jessica, and Meg and I have been friends since 1982. We got through middle school and high school together here in New York City.

[00:26] Meg: Where we still live and where we podcast about New York City in the '80s. I do ripped from the headlines.

[00:32] Jessica: And I do pop culture. So, Meg.

[00:35] Meg: Yes.

[00:38] Jessica: I heard such nice things about the podcast yesterday.

[00:41] Meg: Oh, that's so nice.

[00:42] Jessica: One of our major listeners who loves us, who and who you have met?

[00:49] Meg: Who? Who?

[00:50] Jessica: Elizabeth.

[00:51] Meg: Oh, that's so nice.

[00:53] Jessica: Yes. She was extremely complimentary, and I was a little sour because she was saying that you were. Well, she was just talking about you a lot and not.

[01:01] Meg: Well, you know, my mother talks about you a lot and not out. I think it all evens out.

[01:07] Jessica: So I just wanted to thank Busy for her shout out.

[01:10] Meg: Yeah, absolutely. That's really lovely to hear. You know she was at our live recording, right?

[01:15] Jessica: Yes, she was.

[01:16] Meg: I think we should do another live recording later in the summer. I think we should think about that.

[01:21] Jessica: And I think she needs to be there because she was so vocal.

[01:23] Meg: Oh, my God. She was such a joy. I have something else to talk about before we get started.

[01:28] Jessica: Okay.

[01:29] Meg: Do you remember the film Make Me Famous is a documentary, and we were talking about it a while ago. I'm not even sure we talked about it on air, but it's a documentary about the art scene in the '80s. They reached out and they said, would you talk about it. I was like, yeah, send me a screener or whatever. I watched it this afternoon. It is incredible. My God.

[01:52] Jessica: When do I get to see it?

[01:53] Meg: I'll send you the link.

[01:54] Jessica: Oh, my God. I'm so excited.

[01:56] Meg: I figured you didn't have time to do it today, and they just sent it to me today. But anyway, yay. So it's art history, right? But it's also kind of like a gossip column because all of these artists are talking about each other, and they're sort of, like, bickering with each other, and some of them respect each other and some of them don't. It's amazing. Also, the footage they have of Club 57 and the Mudd Club and Limbo Lounge, it's just really an incredible piece of work.

[02:25] Jessica: Oh, my God. Did they interview the artists at the time or now?

[02:30] Meg: Now about the time. Because the major thrust of it is about Edward Brezinkski, who ran with that whole group of people in the East Village. But while some of them became super famous, he did not. And so it's also a portrait of, they don't say struggling artist, they say striving artist, I think is the word they use. Anyway, it is playing at The Roxy that's in Tribeca on June 22, and the New Plaza Cinema on the Upper West Side on the 24th and the 25th and Alamo Drafthouse on the 26th through the 28th. Highly recommended for all of the people who are in New York City. It's also going to be all over the country, but that's when it's in New York.

[03:20] Jessica: That is so cool. I cannot wait to watch and then.

[03:25] Meg: We can talk about it. I'm excited. My story today, Jessica, was suggested by some friends at Malt & Mold.

[03:44] Jessica: Oh, fun.

[03:46] Meg: Danielle and Steve. Because Danielle grew up in Greenburgh, New York, and she was like, do you know about what happened in Greenburgh, New York? And I did kind of know, but then, of course, when we started talking about it, I was like, you're absolutely right. I have to do this story. This is a good one.

[04:06] Jessica: Oh, my God. Okay.

[04:07] Meg: All right. My engagement question now, we do emails and we leave voice messages and all this kind of stuff. Did you ever write letters?

[04:17] Jessica: Constantly. All the time. And it was something that my mom made sure that my brother and I knew how to do. I was awash in thank you notes and camp letters home and then letters to my friends at camp, like constantly writing letters to friends. And even in college.

[04:38] Meg: In college.

[04:40] Jessica: Well, in college during the school year. Back to you.

[04:43] Meg: Yes, I have letters from you and.

[04:46] Jessica: Letters to college friends during the summer. I even got, this is a real flashback. So dot matrix printers, for those of you who don't know, printer paper was not always as it is right now. It came on one long, continuous sheet that every eleven inches had a perforation so you could rip it off. And it had perforated strips on either side that ran through the whole scroll, that caught into gears on either side of the printer carriage, I guess. So what you could do was write letters on this thing or by hand, not even by hand using the computer, but have these endless scrolls, like something you put.

[05:37] Meg: I love it.

[05:38] Jessica: My friend Gee did that, and I still have it to this day. It's one of my all time favorite things. And it was very creative. There are drawings on it and all kinds of stuff.

[05:48] Meg: Love it.

[05:49] Jessica: Yes. I loved getting them and loved receiving them. Where is this going?

[05:55] Meg: Ooh. My sources are People Magazine, Oxygen, and New York Magazine. At 7:15 on Sunday, January 15, 1989, in Greenburgh, New York, which is half an hour outside the city, a 911 operator received a call. On the other end of the line, a woman was screaming, he's trying to kill me or she's trying to kill me. It was hard to make out which. And then the line went dead. The police looked up the phone number, went to the address, but nothing was wrong. So they figured it was a prank. As it turned out, they had checked an old phone directory and were at the wrong address.

[06:38] Jessica: Oh, gosh.

[06:39] Meg: Yeah. At 11:40 P.M. when Paul Solomon returned home to the correct address, he found the tv blaring and the house dark and his wife,Betty Jeanne face down in a pool of blood on the living room floor. Her autopsy showed she'd been pistol whipped and shot nine times in her back and legs with a beretta. With a silencer, they can tell that.

[07:07] Jessica: Betty Jeanne was maybe living a double life.

[07:10] Meg: Let's find out. The police asked Paul to recount to them every step he took that day. He said he and Betty Jeanne had woken up early on Sunday and that they had made love. I know. I didn't like that. Such a gross. Their 15 year old daughter Kristan, was on a ski trip with friends, so they had the house to themselves. Paul and Betty Jeanne watched old movies and looked at brochures for retirement communities. They were 40, but whatever.

[07:46] Jessica: I have no words for that.

[07:51] Meg: Boo. Sorry. I mean, maybe they just had a fetish for, like, retirement communities, but, are you kidding? You're 40. That's ridiculous.

[08:00] Jessica: As I said, I'm struck down by it.

[08:04] Meg: At 1:30, Carolyn Warmus, a teacher who taught at Greenville Elementary School with Paul, called him. Paul taught 6th grade. Carolyn taught a computer class. Her 25th birthday was earlier that week, and she wanted to celebrate with him. You see, they'd been having an affair for over a year. Paul told Betty Jeanne that he was going bowling with friends, and even though she was kind of pissy about it, at 6:30, he drove over to Brunswick Lanes in Yonkers. He stuck his head in the door to say hi and then headed to the Yonkers Holiday Inn and its restaurant and lounge Tree Tops. At 7:25. The only reason to ever go to Yonkers. Carolyn showed up at 7:45. They had dinner and drinks, and she gave him a blowjob in his car.

[08:55] Jessica: Wait, so all of this is related to the police?

[08:58] Meg: He tells them yes. He just comes clean.

[09:01] Jessica: Wow. You know what?

[09:02] Meg: Good on Paul, I guess. Sure. Good on Paul.

[09:06] Jessica: Could have been wasting a lot of time for the police.

[09:08] Meg: Absolutely.

[09:09] Jessica: Of it.

[09:10] Meg: Yeah. And after the blowjob, he headed home. No, they did not have a room. They had dinner, and then they did it in the car.

[09:24] Jessica: Dinner at the Yonkers what was it, Holiday Inn?

[09:27] Meg: Yeah. Tree Tops.

[09:29] Jessica: Well, then maybe that answers a lot about what is the kind of person who's going to look at retirement brochures at 40? The same people who go to the Yonkers Holiday Inn for dinner and don't bother getting a room.

[09:41] Meg: And don't even bother getting a room. It was a 15 minutes drive from the parking lot to his home. Sorry. I shouldn't laugh. It's awful. All right. Naturally.

[10:00] Jessica: Paul. Come on. All right.

[10:02] Meg: So naturally, police were suspicious of Paul and kept a very close eye on him. And over the next five months, Paul seemed to unravel. He took leave from school, but, oddly, continued to live with Kristan, their daughter, in the two bedroom condo with the carpet stained with his dead wife's blood. It's like, what? Rent a place close by. What are you doing?

[10:28] Jessica: Do something. Poor Kristan.

[10:32] Meg: He told Carolyn he didn't want to see her anymore, but that she could write him if she wished.

[10:39] Jessica: Oh, Paul's a tease.

[10:41] Meg: And Carolyn loved to write letters. She wrote dozens of them, keeping Paul updated on the minutiae of her life. After visiting a friend hospitalized with cancer, she wrote him, quote, "it made me realize how precious each day is. You never know what might happen to you. I hope you're going to allow yourself some happiness and spend some time with me." But Paul started seeing another teacher from the school.

[11:09] Jessica: All class Paul.

[11:11] Meg: Classiest guy we know. And he started seeing a woman named Barbara Ballor.

[11:17] Jessica: Wait, please repeat that name.

[11:20] Meg: I think it's baller. It's baller, Ballor. All right.

[11:25] Jessica: Well, close enough.

[11:27] Meg: Close enough. One night in July, 6 months after the murder, Paul showed up at Carolyn's apartment at 1485 1st Avenue at 77th street. Well, Yorkville.

[11:41] Jessica: My hood.

[11:41] Meg: Oh, I thought you said the hood. And I was like, what?

[11:44] Jessica: My hood.

[11:45] Meg: Got it. Yeah. So she had been doing a reverse commute, which is sort of interesting. It was a temporary job, by the way, in Greenburgh, New York. She was replacing a woman who was pregnant and was on maternity leave, so it wasn't a long term position. Anyway.

[12:01] Jessica: She was a substitute computer teacher. Exactly. Got it.

[12:06] Meg: So he goes to her place in Manhattan. He asked her if she had anything to do with Betty Jeanne's murder. Carolyn said she was, quote, "pleased he felt comfortable enough to ask her that, but that she had nothing to do with it." He believed her.

[12:22] Jessica: Sounds a little cuckoo ka chew. She sounds not quite right in the brain pan.

[12:28] Meg: Well, do you believe?

[12:30] Jessica: See?

[12:31] Meg: We'll see.

[12:31] Jessica: I'm reserving judgment. I'm just excited to hear what lunacy comes next.

[12:36] Meg: Paul did believe her, and they made out as one does. A few weeks later, Paul and Barbara, his current girlfriend, planned a trip to Puerto Rico. But what happened there depends on who you ask. According to Carolyn, Paul left a message on her answering machine saying she should meet him in Puerto Rico. So she did. But when she got there, no one met her at the airport. And all the messages she left at his hotel went unanswered. She called often, leaving different names, but the hotel security could tell it was her and told her to stop. Furious and very confused, she returned to New York. According to Paul, he had no idea why Carolyn showed up on his vacation with his new girlfriend. And he was very disturbed by all her messages. So he and Barbara left their vacation early because they were scared for their lives. When he told Greenburgh police about what had happened, the police decided to do some research on Carolyn. Carolyn's friends from high school and the University of Michigan remembered two things about her. She had unlimited funds and was very eager to have a boyfriend. Her father was the owner of American Way Group of Companies. Oh, okay.

[13:56] Jessica: That's massive.

[13:57] Meg: All right. I never heard of it.

[14:03] Jessica: Amway. Hello?

[14:06] Meg: All right. Yeah. Big deal.

[14:07] Jessica: Yeah.

[14:07] Meg: And he had divorced her mother and married his secretary when Carolyn was eight. She didn't see her father often, but he bankrolled her life. In high school, she offered a friend $100 to set her up with a guy she liked. In college.

[14:24] Jessica: She was like, please be pimpin' for me.

[14:27] Meg: Yeah. And she just bought presents for people. She was one of those. Exactly. She tried to buy friendship, and she tried to buy access to people. In college, she started dating her graduate TA, Paul Laven. When he broke it off to marry his ex-girlfriend Wendy, Carolyn got their unlisted number and started calling day and night. She left a note on Paul's car claiming to be two and a half months pregnant. She wrote Wendy, quote, "let me tell you, with the tan I have now, you've got even more to compete with. Of course, with a body like mine, I'm sure you realized what tough competition you were up against. You're just about out of the running completely now."

[15:13] Jessica: Oh, dear.

[15:15] Meg: Paul Laven.

[15:16] Jessica: And there's so many layers of crazy. And that's like the baklava of crazy. It's so, so disturbing. Okay, I'm sorry. I'm, like, all in.

[15:32] Meg: Yeah. Paul Laven and Wendy got a permanent injunction barring her from ever contacting them again. Do you know how hard it is to get something like that? Maybe not. If you show up with all this evidence. I mean, the judge read that note, probably, and went, oh, my, this is not good.

[15:51] Jessica: Yeah, girls. Not right.

[15:54] Meg: And the police noticed a pattern with Carolyn. When she was at Columbia Teachers College getting her M.A., she fell in love with a bartender. Named Paul? Because we already have 2 Pauls. No, I don't think so. I don't know his name. I know, it's true. It's true. He was married. So she found a private investigator in the yellow pages, Vincent Parco. He specialized in, quote, "unusual and difficult investigations." She asked him to take explicit pictures of her and superimpose the bartender into the photos so she could scare off his wife. So, like photoshop before photoshop, this is.

[16:32] Jessica: Some extremely convoluted thinking.

[16:36] Meg: It's unclear if anything came of that scheme, but she and Parco did stay in touch. In the summer of 1988, Carolyn asked Parco to get her a gun. There were burglaries in her neighborhood, and in addition to that, somebody was threatening her family. A mysterious woman named Jeanne or Betty. Jeanne was her father's former mistress and had tried to run over her sister and had something to do with one of her father's jets crashing. These are all the excuses she gave to Parco to get the gun. I don't even know if she had to give him an excuse. Basically, he got her a beretta with a silencer. She paid him $2,500 in cash. When police checked her phone records, someone had used Carolyn's phone to call Ray's Sports Shop in North Plainfield, New Jersey, at murder. Later that same day, a woman using the driver's license of Lisa Kata bought 50 rounds of 25 caliber ammunition. When Lisa was questioned, she said she'd lost her driver's license in August of 1988 when she was working at a temp job, seated next to Carolyn Warmus. Oh, my God. When Carolyn went to trial, the defense produced a competing phone bill that showed Carolyn had called her mother at 6:44 on the night of the murder, which would have given her a wonderful alibi. The problem was the phone record was forged. Not an easy thing to do in 1990. And Carolyn was eventually found guilty in her second trial. The jury in her first trial deadlocked. And she was also found guilty of possessing forgery equipment, which she'd used to create the fake phone bill. She goes hard, she goes deep. There's a certain amount of, like, don't get on this woman's bad side.

[18:39] Jessica: Because.

[18:40] Meg: She doesn't take the easy way out. The trials were both circuses. In the early days, Carolyn showed up dressed to the nines. In one infamous photo, she's wearing a tight, bright, peach colored skirt suit with a matching hat.

[18:54] Jessica: Oh, stop it.

[18:55] Meg: A hat.

[18:56] Jessica: A hat. A hat tends to be the sign of crazy.

[19:02] Meg: But soon, she started covering her face with large scarves and dodging the media. She was ultimately convicted of second degree murder and served 27 years in Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women. She didn't overlap with Jean Harris, if you were wondering. I was.

[19:19] Jessica: Missed opportunity.

[19:20] Meg: She was released in 2019. And not only does she walk amongst us, she lives in the West Village, but she is giving all kinds of interviews. She wants to be exonerated. She insists she was framed by Paul Solomon. I've watched a number of these interviews, and she's a sociopath. I'm not a doctor, but I don't.

[19:43] Jessica: Think you need to be one with everything you've just presented.

[19:47] Meg: All right, so I did look up sociopathy or antisocial personality disorder, and it presents as pervasive deviance, deception, impulsivity, irritability, aggression, recklessness, manipulation, callous and unemotional traits and feelings of contempt. It is a part of cluster of personality disorders, which includes antisocial, borderline, histrionic, narcissistic.

[20:17] Jessica: FYI, that's a whole other podcast that you and I can get on.

[20:21] Meg: Does this remind you of a movie where you're like, why does this story sound familiar?

[20:27] Jessica: Is this a little Fatal Attraction?

[20:29] Meg: Yeah, but it happened after Fatal Attraction, the movie. Yeah.

[20:33] Jessica: Wow. I will not be ignored. Yeah, well, that's just chilling to the bone. And I always try to think, like, what's the takeaway today? The takeaway is when someone shows you a red flag, run for the hills, don't look back. It's not right. Just go. Just go.

[20:55] Meg: Right.

[20:56] Jessica: That's it. Like, there's no, oh, that seems interesting. Let me see where that's going to go. It will go poorly. Even Alfie agrees.

[21:06] Meg: Do you want to hear another story about her that happened? Okay.

[21:10] Jessica: I mean, come on.

[21:11] Meg: This happened while she was in prison, and it doesn't really have to do with anything. It's just like, whoa. In 2004, she filed a federal lawsuit against the New York State Department of Correctional Services, claiming to have been sexually abused by the prison guards. She said she had been raped and forced to trade sexual favors for basic privileges. And one corrections officer, Lieutenant Glenn Looney, was arraigned in the town of Bedford court on April 15, 2004, on a charge of second degree sexual abuse, which is a misdemeanor. You might think maybe this was a he said, she said situation, but no. Warmus backed her claim by providing prison officials with a sample of Looney's semen that she had kept refrigerated in plastic. Somehow she managed to do that while she was incarcerated. And in 2008, Warmus received $10,000 from the Department of Correctional Services in settlement of the lawsuit.

[22:11] Jessica: I don't know if she's to be reviled or celebrated.

[22:15] Meg: I know, right. What do you do there?

[22:18] Jessica: I'm conflicted. I don't know.

[22:20] Meg: I mean, obviously, whatever. She's incarcerated. So the fact that he had sex with her is just send him to jail. Absolutely.

[22:27] Jessica: But I think that that side story is not a. Yeah, but it's a. She's. She's bone chilling. And isn't her name very close to. What was the name of the woman who was the serial killer who Charlize.

[22:48] Meg: Theron played in Monster Aileen Wuornos?

[22:52] Jessica: Is it the same last name?

[22:53] Meg: No, this is Warmus.

[22:56] Jessica: Oh. So a consonant keeps them, you know, interesting. Fair enough.

[23:02] Meg: Well, anyway, women who kill. Yeah. And actually remember how my mother was like, do any women kill? I mean, she did, in fact, kill Betty Jeanne Solomon.

[23:14] Jessica: She absolutely.

[23:15] Meg: Abso-friggin' lootly. And it was not. All of our other examples of women killing have been more sympathetic people. They've been more sympathetic stories.

[23:24] Jessica: There's not much that's sympathetic about.

[23:26] Meg: No, she's the mad letter writer, and she does. I mean, we could go hang out in the West Village, and we might run into her.

[23:48] Jessica: Okay, Meg, this is sort of an engagement question.

[23:52] Meg: Okay.

[23:53] Jessica: What is an area in New York City that most New Yorkers hate going?

[23:59] Meg: To or through Times Square. Right. Your engagement questions are most often quizzes. What if I had said, like, Soho?

[24:11] Jessica: I would have said wrong.

[24:12] Meg: I know, but I got it. Right.

[24:14] Jessica: But I'm so happy you got it. So, you know, I was thinking about where we hung out, and we've done a lot of talking about where we spent our time, and we've talked about the bars on the Upper East Side, and we talked about people's homes, and we talked about diners. And I was know. And we would go down to the Village to go to Caffe Reggio or.

[24:40] Meg: St. Mark's, too, was a hangout.

[24:43] Jessica: Yes, but we didn't go to Times Square.

[24:45] Meg: Not to hang out.

[24:48] Jessica: Or did we? Well, I did a little bit of thinking about was there a Times Square for me and for my friends? I'm not sure about you, but as I tell you about the few things that I have here for us today, please pipe up and tell me if this is something that you, too, identify with.

[25:15] Meg: Okay?

[25:15] Jessica: Identify is actually like the Peewee's Playhouse, Word of the day, Identify.

[25:22] Meg: Okay, got it.

[25:23] Jessica: Let's go back to Dorrian's for a second. To get into Dorrian's, as I've established, you had to have a friend. You had to have a very pretty, very tall friend who would vouch for your nine year old looking ass to get in. And it didn't hurt that a friend was on the door, all of that. But if you wanted to go further down, just even a couple of blocks down Second Avenue to Maxwell's Plum or Mad Hatter, you needed a fake id.

[25:52] Meg: Yes, this is true.

[25:53] Jessica: You most certainly did.

[25:54] Meg: Yeah.

[25:55] Jessica: And this need, let's say from 1984 on, if you're really advanced in our particular circle, maybe 1983, there was only one way to do it. You would have to go to Times Square

[26:08] Meg: To Playland.

[26:11] Jessica: Yes.

[26:15] Meg: It's funny because I go to Times Square at least once a week, because I have voice lessons and I have auditions in that neighborhood. And so I pass the place where Playland used to be at least once a week, and I always go, oh, Playland, as I pass it by. And it looks kind of the same, honestly, it's like one of these souvenir shops now. It's where you get your, like, I love New York shirts.

[26:49] Jessica: A novelty shop. Which is also what Playland was.

[26:50] Meg: It's a novelty shop. Yeah, ostensibly it was.

[26:57] Jessica: But, I found out some amazing things about Playland.

[26:59] Meg: Oh, my God. Tell me.

[27:01] Jessica: This is gonna blow your mind because I was like, oh, mind blown. Thank you, The New York Times and a few other sources that we can put in the instagram. But the first thing is that I found out that Playland, which I thought was part of like, 1940s sleaze in Times Square, nay, nay, we're going to go way back for a second. In 1909, a new, in quotes "sport" was created, and it was at Coney Island and it was at Fairways and where people you know, like arcades.

[27:39] Meg: Okay.

[27:40] Jessica: And this is pre video games, of course. So arcades were different with different games, but arcades. And that game that was invented was skeeball.

[27:49] Meg: Okay, got it.

[27:51] Jessica: Okay. And if anyone doesn't know what that is, you've got a long, it's like a booth with a long stretch in front of you, and you roll a ball and then it pops up and you try to get it into one of the circles to get a certain number of points.

[28:08] Meg: Yeah.

[28:08] Jessica: So that was all the rage.

[28:11] Meg: It's fun.

[28:12] Jessica: It is fun. Well, in 1915, two brothers who were Princeton graduates and members of the Princeton football team, Bert and quote, Beef Wheeler. Oh my. Decided that they were going to bring skeeball to New York City and they opened Playland. And Playland was originally a skeeball parlor and super popular and not seedy at all.

[28:47] Meg: It's like that ping pong place near you that we pass by all the time.

[28:51] Jessica: Yes.

[28:51] Meg: People are trying to bring back ping pong.

[28:55] Jessica: Well, Susan Sarandon started it right?

[28:57] Meg: Right near me. Spin on 23rd street. I've been there a couple of times.

[29:03] Jessica: Without me.

[29:06] Meg: You didn't want to be there. It's not as fun as it sounds. Maybe it doesn't even sound fun to me.

[29:13] Jessica: Ping pong is fun for, like, five minutes, and then you're like, I'm really tired of picking up the ball that I missed.

[29:18] Meg: Or on a Sunday afternoon at a beach too. That's not a destination in this city for me

[29:25] Jessica: No, nor I. But skeeball might have been, maybe. And Beef and Bert thought that this was going to be a big money making adventure. Adventure for them.

[29:35] Meg: I love them.

[29:37] Jessica: Back to the don't know what year you went, but I trundled my way with someone because there's no way I would have gone along.

[29:49] Meg: I went with Kathy.

[29:50] Jessica: I was just going to say it sounds like something I would do with Kathy, but if you went with Kathy, maybe I was with Sasha. I don't know. So off I trundle. And there was a booth in the back. So I did a little research and I confirmed my memory. I was like, it wasn't like it was a normal part of Playland. It was kind of like a weird nook, but it was a booth. There is a booth with a guy. It's always like, there's a guy who's doing something and he was churning out fake ids, and he nominally asked you for your proper age, and then you were like, I'm 40. And then he's like, here's your id. Like, Mrs. Waxman, whatever name you gave, it's the ultimate McLovin move.

[30:41] Meg: Yeah.

[30:42] Jessica: What I love about it is that we're all these Upper East Siders and I was like, how did we find our way to Playland? So I have a fantasy.

[30:50] Meg: Sorry.

[30:50] Jessica: I have a very rich fantasy that somehow the kids of the Upper East Side, who always need a pedigree for something like the legacy, the lore of the Princeton boys, made its way through the ages. So it was, like, in some cuckoo way, acceptable to go to Playland because it was.

[31:15] Meg: Those. Those ids. I mean, I don't want to burst the bubble, but they looked very fake. And it was only if a place was like, want predisposed. It was just like, as long as you got something. I tried to use mine at the Hard Rock Cafe and we were all, I mean, there were like, I don't know, ten of us there at a big table. And obviously we're all going to be ordering sloe gin fizzes or whatever we were trying to order. The guy laughed at me. He laughed. The waiter was like, scoffed in my face, like, you're going to make me sit here and have Diet Coke all night.

[31:57] Jessica: Well, you were lucky that he let you sit there.

[31:59] Meg: It's true.

[32:00] Jessica: Yeah, I think that's sort of the blessing that he wasn't like, I'm going to separate you from your nair do well friends with better ids.

[32:08] Meg: Well, honestly, it totally got me into bars, but I couldn't even get like a cocktail at a restaurant.

[32:15] Jessica: No, girl, they were serious. I mean, they had like an investor group behind that.

[32:20] Meg: Fair enough.

[32:20] Jessica: Not playing. So Playland continued into the '90s, but the fake ids did not. That closed down mighty fast soon after. Not mighty fast, but soon after we got ours.

[32:38] Meg: Oh, wow.

[32:39] Jessica: And I'm going to now tell you why and what happened. I'm going to read from The New York Times, 1986, September 10. Picture it. Sicily, 1942. The author is Michael Jensen, Jr. And the headline is, despite law, fake id cards appear easy to get. Five months after Governor Cuomo signed a law regulating the sale or production of identification cards, many fraudulent ones are still being sold at Manhattan novelty shops, with many used by underage liquor buyers, according to a random survey of the stores. And interviews with customers from Manhattan are joined by their counterparts from Long Island, New Jersey and other suburban areas in buying what they see as a pass to bars, liquor stores and college fraternity parties. One Times Square merchant said he sold 100 to 150 of the laminated photo identification cards a day. Quote, "there's a major investigation currently being conducted by the state attorney general's office and the New York City Office of Consumer affairs," said Mayor Ed Koch's press secretary, William Roush, who would not comment. Further interest in the identification cards has intensified with recent allegations that minors, many using fraudulent identification, patronized Dorrian's Red Hand.

[34:15] Meg: Oh, my God, Dorrian's again.

[34:17] Jessica: East side bar, where the police say 18 year old Jennifer Dawn Levin was with Robert E. Chambers Jr. 19, on August 26. So this is two weeks later. Not even.

[34:30] Meg: Wow.

[34:31] Jessica: On August 26, just hours before she was killed in Central Park, Mr. Chambers has been accused of strangling her. The police found an altered learner's permit giving her age as 22 among Miss Levin's belongings near her body. Merchants at more than a dozen Manhattan shops either acknowledged to a potential customer over the last week that they sold the cards without the words novelty stamped on them, were observed selling the documents, most costing about $10, to people who later said they were underage. Most of the cards sold simply say personal identification or student identification and list a person's name, address and date of birth. The college of the buyer's choice is typed onto the student id cards.

[35:18] Meg: I remember that.

[35:22] Jessica: Alan Chu, who lives in Chinatown, had just bought an identification card at a booth inside the Playland Arcade at 1485 Broadway. I guess that's where it was at the time. It was originally at 1565 between 42nd and 43rd streets. And said the man who had sold him the card realized that he was underage. The guy said, I'll bet you $100 you're not more than 13 years old. Mr. Chu said. After I got it, I said, you would have lost. I'm 15 and a half, so there. The man who sold the cards at the arcade said he had no comment on the boy's assertions. Another purchaser, Eric, from New Brunswick, New Jersey, who did not want to give his last name, unsurprisingly, said on Friday night that he was meeting a friend in New York City and then driving up to Massachusetts for the weekend. Eric said he was 20 years old and needed an identification card to get into bars in Massachusetts and New Jersey, where the drinking age is 21. Before I move on to my next topic of Times Square, note in a little square next to the article that I just read. No byline, but the headline tests on slain woman said to find no drugs. Jennifer Dawn Levin, the 18 year old who was killed in Central park on August 26 by a young man she knew was not intoxicated or under the influence of drugs that night, according to law enforcement sources. So no matter what, even with that fake iD, not drunk, no.

[37:01] Meg: She just wanted to be there.

[37:03] Jessica: Yep. So that's a little slice of fake ids. And I may have said this on this podcast before, but I was such a dumb dumb that I put my friend Nina's address as my address on my fake id. My wallet was stolen.

[37:20] Meg: Oh, no.

[37:20] Jessica: And then whoever found the wallet found the fake id and sent it to my in quotes "address". I then received the wallet in the mail from Nina's mom, Barbara, with a note. Next time you get a fake id, use a different address. Oh my God. This is the same woman who said to the fur shaming woman you thought wrong.

[37:45] Meg: Oh, I love is she is something else. Did she tell your mother?

[37:50] Jessica: No, never did. Never did. And I know this because I would have heard from my mother now. So there's another little bit of joy that I got from Times Square in the '80s, but then a little bit in the '90s. My last foray there was probably 2000, 2001, and it was a doozy in Times Square, and it had a couple of different locations. Was a gay. Because everything I talk about is gay. A gay dance club that catered to Latin men, some Black men, a lot of Latin. It was because even within the gay community, they were discriminated against and they wanted to have whatever their music was, and a lot of salsa, meringue, which was not disco. And so they wound up putting together their own club. And the first club, first incarnation of this club in 1970 was created under a foreign language school. So it was called La Escuelita. 

[39:00] Meg: Wonderful and that's in Times Square.

[39:02] Jessica: Well, it wound up moving to 39th and 8th, which is where I met it in the aughts. As all things truly fabulous and underground and weird, I was taken by a friend of the podcast, Nick. It was not my usual place because, number one, it was a very small door, not quite Alice in Wonderland, but adjacent with no markings, nothing. A long, long, narrow staircase down into darkness, at the end of which was a giant man who patted you down for a.

[39:44] Meg: You know, that was not intimidating.

[39:46] Jessica: Yes. And as with many things that I had experienced with our dear, good friend Nick, he said, it'll get better. Don't worry. It's fine. It's fine. We go into La Escuelita, and it was like a lot of places that I wound up really loving in the aughts, which I don't think really exist anymore. You were there to dance. There was no bottle service. The drinks were there. But that wasn't the point. If you were a good dancer, you were popular at the club, and being great on the dance floor was what all of these guys were about. Later on in the early, early aughts, the other place I experienced, where I had that experience was Niagara, where people were mostly drug fueled. But it didn't matter your color, what you looked like, your age, if you could move, you danced all night.

[40:48] Meg: Can I ask? Sure. So how do they make their money if it's not about drinking?

[40:53] Jessica: No, it is about drinking. I'm saying, like, now we think of bottle service and that the culture is focused on the drinking and then the dancing is part of it. This was the dancing was there and then the liquor kept you fueled.

[41:07] Meg: Did you pay a cover charge?

[41:09] Jessica: I have no memory of all. I'm sure there was something.

[41:13] Meg: Just curious.

[41:14] Jessica: I'm sure there was something. So, yeah, it was an incredible place. And it was home also to some of the most amazing drag queens. We've talked about the drag balls in Harlem, and we've talked about drag in the West Village. But again, Puerto Rican boys, other Latin men discriminated against, and at La Escuelita were some of the best drag queens in the city, most notably Angel Sheridan. And you can go online and watch some of Angel Sheridan's performances, and they are astounding. And who agrees with me - Michael Musto, who in 1993 wrote this. He said that "she was the best drag queen in New York, an old school diva who's so vital and well rehearsed, she can even breathe life into Bette Midler's version of Gypsy."

[42:07] Meg: Ouch.

[42:10] Jessica: You could hear the snap. Yes, his tongue or fang is dripping. Um, but I was thinking about the name, the choice of name Angel Sheridan. And I was like, is this you know, old movies Ann Sheridan? And then I thought, maybe it's for Sheridan Square, which I think we've talked about on this podcast.

[42:33] Meg: Before we did, we talked about a telephone booth there that when it rang, people would pick it up and someone would say, do you want to come over? And it was part of the gay community, and it was. Trust me, you weren't. Don't go over there. Because then that was the one who.

[42:55] Jessica: Cooked and ate you.

[42:56] Meg: He didn't cook them, but he did torture them.

[42:59] Jessica: Okay, well, six of one, half a dozen of the other. Well, it turns out Sheridan Square had a long history of gay life and utre behavior, which I didn't know. And I found out that gay clubs and restaurants had been in Sheridan Square since the 19th century. And there is a very famous painting of the Life Cafe that shows drag queens and some dissolute folk and some drunks at a bar. And it was nicknamed the restaurant because it was raided so many times and it was filled with prostitutes. And so Sheridan Square's history of prostitution was attached to that. And I think I mentioned this, but if I didn't, I had a moment in the early aughts when I was a bit wild and like, why stop, right? Well, I was passing by Sheridan Square one morning. God knows what I was doing.

[43:59] Meg: Were you coming home from something or were you going to something?

[44:03] Jessica: Was it probably going to work in the cable building on Broadway and Houston? So who knows? Like, maybe something nearby. And during that time, I was in a band and my band was connected to a bunch of other bands, some of which were gay. In that crowd that I first saw outside of Meow Mix, one lesbian band member throwing another one who she was jealous of or there was some romantic tiff, threw her in a dumpster.

[44:33] Meg: Oh, my.

[44:33] Jessica: They did not play. But I was passing by Sheridan Square and I saw one of the hangers on from our crowd and I was like, I'm done. This is. Can't. I'm actually hanging out with hustlers and this is not good.

[44:48] Meg: Oh, interesting.

[44:49] Jessica: Yes.

[44:50] Meg: I mean, it's just a couple of blocks away from Stonewall Inn and The Duplex.

[44:54] Jessica: Yeah, it's just a colorful part of the city. It was just that on a very.

[44:58] Meg: But that square itself is kind of tame looking, but I guess not unassuming. Yeah, exactly.

[45:06] Jessica: But what I wanted to say about La Escuelita is back to the aughts, early aughts, if not late '90s, I was at home one night and I should have been asleep. Like, it was late. And I got a call from Nick who said, get your ass to my apartment on Perry Street right now. And I was like, shut up. He's like, no, do it now. You will not regret it. And I was like, okay. So I threw on my clothes. I think I was living on 13th street. So it was pretty nearby in his apartment. And this is one of those, like, you have to know him to know why this made sense. But he had a gaggle of boys from the Bolshoi Ballet in his living room and they wanted to go dancing. And he was like, whatever happens, it's going to be fabulous. And so eventually they all went to places that had been around forever. I don't know if they still. I think The Cock still exists, but some of these rather hardcore bars. But before any of that, we went to La Escuelita and these boys looked exactly like what they were. They were a fish out of water. They were beautiful, as you can imagine. Truly gorgeous, gorgeous young men. And they looked so befuddled. And we were all standing by the bar, sipping drinks, watching the dancing. And they were watching the dancing a little differently after about 15 minutes, they knew how to dance everything. And they went out and ripped up the floor.

[46:39] Meg: Oh, my God.

[46:39] Jessica: With the regulars from La Escuelita. And they had no idea who these guys were. And it was magical.

[46:46] Meg: Oh, wow, that sounds incredible.

[46:48] Jessica: So those are two of my Times Square stories. And the last thing I know, you must have also gone to was Kaufman's Army & Navy?

[46:57] Meg: Sure.

[46:57] Jessica: And we've talked about the fashion of the time with having combat boots. Yes, it was. And like, coats that are too big for you with the sleeves rolled up and all of that. So Kaufman's Army & Navy, which had been there since 1938, was a hotspot for us to get peacoats, combat boots, oversized military jackets. And who were we imitating with the fatigues? Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver. They outfitted him for that movie from Kaufman's, which is still there. And still outside of the store are the two cannons from the Spanish American War that were stationed in front of Kaufman's and have been there ever since.

[47:40] Meg: Wild.

[47:42] Jessica: Yes. So there you go. That's our little slice of Times Square.

[47:46] Meg: Love it. Thank you, Jessica.

[48:02] Jessica: Okay, what was the weird equipment that Carolyn had in her apartment?

[48:08] Meg: I don't know what the name of it was, but it was for forging. Forging documents and. Oh, my God.

[48:13] Jessica: Talking about fake ids.

[48:15] Meg: Fake ids.

[48:15] Jessica: There you go.

[48:16] Meg: Nice. How do you do it?

[48:18] Jessica: The minute that you said forging.

[48:20] Meg: You were like, I already know the tie in. That's so good. Awesome. I'm going to end today's by making a plea to our wonderful bffs. We haven't asked for something in a been.

[48:33] Jessica: We've been saving up our begging.

[48:36] Meg: Yes. Please write a review for us on Apple Podcasts. It makes such a big, huge difference. If you haven't done it thus far, you'll enjoy it and will enjoy it. Yeah.

[48:50] Jessica: And think about it this way. The more you write, the more listeners we get. The more listeners we get, the more we are likely to have a production deal and advertising, which will keep us going longer and longer. Please do it.

[49:09] Meg: Give a girl a bone. Give a girl. No, I took that out.

[49:13] Jessica: You might want to grow a dog. Yeah, but I don't want to be the dog, either. No bones.

[49:18] Meg: No bones..