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

[00:19] 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 and where we

[00:29] Meg: podcast about New York city in the 80s. I do rip from the headlines and

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

[00:35] Meg: So this weekend, I spent a lot of time with BFF of the podcast, David Levine.

[00:41] Jessica: Jealous. I know Jelen.

[00:45] Meg: He has an exhibition going on at MoMA by think that it's closed, which is a bummer. But he showed he had a viewing of two of his short films at center, the one about his father and Rothko, and is incredible. And, you know, I was thinking we should do a story about Rothko, but the whole thing kind of happened in the 70s, so it's not. Doesn't quite work, but it sets the stage very much for the stuff that we talk about, for sure. The first art scandal.

[01:17] Jessica: We love a scandal.

[01:18] Meg: I know. And then he directed a reading of a play about Helen of Troy, and I played Leda of the. The Swan.

[01:27] Jessica: Yes, I heard about this. When I ran into him, he mentioned.

[01:32] Meg: Oh, right, Yes, I saw him. Where did you see each other?

[01:35] Jessica: Albertine, at that reading that he was telling you about.

[01:38] Meg: He gets around.

[01:39] Jessica: He's a happening dude. Yes, he told me that that was happening. And he was having sort of a laugh. He was like, well, it's. It's quite racy.

[01:48] Meg: Oh, yeah.

[01:49] Jessica: And I was like, so I hear. He's like, well, there's no actual swan fucking. And I was like, that would be hard to do at a reading. Dav. He's like, but just you wait.

[02:00] Meg: The play is fantastic. It's by Stephen Squibb.

[02:04] Jessica: It is really, really good.

[02:06] Meg: And the reading went very well. It was perfectly cast.

[02:09] Jessica: Is there anywhere that people can see BFF David Levine's short that you just mentioned?

[02:16] Meg: I don't think it's being shown right now. I can show it to you. I've got a link to it. I've watched it now five times.

[02:24] Jessica: Oh, well, then it's beautiful. Please do share.

[02:26] Meg: And if it does get, I'm sure there will be another screening of it and we will definitely let people know.

[02:32] Jessica: Cool.

[02:33] Meg: Highly, highly recommended. Beautiful. Well done.

[02:36] Jessica: David,

[02:47] Meg: Question. Yes, for you. I'm like, person in the room.

[02:51] Jessica: Is there anyone else here? Sorry, yes. What is. What is the question?

[02:56] Meg: Did you ever go to Rye Playland?

[02:58] Jessica: Oh, hell, yes.

[03:00] Meg: Fun, right?

[03:01] Jessica: As with most things that I react to. Yes. Fun, yes. Traumatic as well.

[03:07] Meg: Why traumatic?

[03:08] Jessica: Well, I. There are A lot of things that I experienced as a child where I felt overheated, confused and sort of with a mild sense of trepidation. I've never been a rides person.

[03:25] Meg: I am not shocked by that at all.

[03:26] Jessica: No, I don't. I don't.

[03:27] Meg: Guess who is a huge roller coaster person.

[03:29] Jessica: Well, you.

[03:30] Meg: Me.

[03:32] Jessica: Well, there begins the personality analysis for today's podcast. I don't love.

[03:39] Meg: Leland was pretty tame.

[03:41] Jessica: Well, yes, but I was like seven, so, you know.

[03:44] Meg: Did you go to Coney Island?

[03:46] Jessica: Yes. I threw up right after getting off the Cyclone and had sunstroke.

[03:53] Meg: Coney island, fragile child.

[03:55] Jessica: You were. I should really be indoors with a book.

[03:58] Meg: What about Action Park?

[04:00] Jessica: I don't think. Is that the same thing as Six Flags?

[04:03] Meg: No, that Six Flags Great Adventure.

[04:05] Jessica: I've been to Great Adventure, actually. Hilariously, I went to Great adventure in like 1999 or 2000 as the dot com that I was working for. This is during. The bubble was clearly about to burst and two of the guys on the executive team had a photo of themselves taken as they were going down on the flume and they framed it and they were like, the future.

[04:32] Meg: Awesome.

[04:33] Jessica: It's like, that is perfect. But, you know, rye and Six Flags and. What was the other one you just said?

[04:40] Meg: Coney Island, Duh.

[04:42] Jessica: Coney Island. Yes, all of them.

[04:44] Meg: Okay. I need to do a story on Action park because it's so. I mean, it's very 70s, but I think it bled into the 80s and I think we can do it.

[04:53] Jessica: I'm all it was. It was like sort of a. If you can say this, the mom and pop variety. Sort of like Rye Playland.

[05:02] Meg: It was more like a water park, like modern day water parks where you go down the slides rather than you're in a roller coaster, which is kind of a different.

[05:10] Jessica: I just remember their format, their TV ads. Like Action Park.

[05:15] Meg: Yeah, well. And as it turns out, Action park ended up on the news. But that's for another story too, Today.

[05:22] Jessica: Well, how delightful.

[05:25] Meg: Today. My sources are New York Magazine, New York Times, pretty straightforward. On April 17, 1983, Vinnie Davis and Diane Pilati were married at Mount Carmel Church in Mount Vernon, New York. Their reception was held at Marina Del Rey Catering hall and Throgs Neck in the Bronx. A perfect venue for a couple of Yonkers kids with thick pile carpets, chandeliers, and a huge stone fountain. Vinnie and Diane had started dating three years earlier when they were 18. They were from the same neighborhood, but hadn't seen much of each other since they were 12. Or so. One summer day, they ran into each other at Glen island park in New Rochelle where Vinnie was a lifeguard. Diane was wearing a red and white bikini and Vinnie said, hey, good looking, remember me? Take off your sunglasses. Diane replied, and yes, she did remember him. And that was the beginning of their epic romance. There were outings to Great Adventure and Action Park. Their families became very close and together they attended all the christenings and weddings and funerals. They saved up money so they could move in together. And in October 1981, Vinnie proposed to Diane at the Howard Johnson's she worked at in Yonkers, which is a callback to episode 66. She would not be ignored and Playland peacoats and pasa Doable. Remember, she gave a blow job in the parking lot of the Howard Johnsons.

[07:03] Jessica: One doesn't forget that. Okay?

[07:06] Meg: They had such a promising future together and everything was falling into place. Diane was eager to start a family. Vinnie dreamed of being a cop. His father was an NYPD sergeant, and once he passed the test, he was on the waiting list to get into the academ. There was only one real impediment to their happiness. A guy named Richie Saville. Now, Richie was another kid from their Yonkers neighborhood. This area was mostly Italian, Irish and Jewish families who had moved from the Bronx or Brooklyn for bigger houses and yards and nice schools. They were cops and firemen and small business owners. Their kids were first generation suburbanites, so they were just as tough as the city kids. Everyone seemed to have some connection to the criminal justice system, either as a cop or a lawyer or a felon.

[08:01] Jessica: So they all knew each other?

[08:02] Meg: Yes.

[08:03] Jessica: Okay.

[08:03] Meg: Yeah. The good guys mixed with the bad guys and there was no way to tell them apart on site with their black leather blazers, white T shirts and tight black jeans. So while Vinnie went into law enforcement, Richie chose the other path and was at the Fishkill Correctional Facility serving one to three years for attempted robbery when he heard his high school girlfriend, Diane was dating a wannabe cop. Richie was not pleased with this news, and as soon as he was released, he made sure Diane and Vinnie were aware of his displeasure. Richie threatened to kill Vinnie and his family if he didn't break up with Diane. He told Diane that he was going to cut off her fingers, her sister, and throw acid in her face so no one would want her thorough. And Diane feared he meant it. When they were dating in high school, he'd showed up at her home with a bloody brick and told her he just killed someone.

[09:08] Jessica: Oh my God. Wait, what was he in the clink for?

[09:12] Meg: Attempted robbery.

[09:13] Jessica: Oh, yes, yes, yes. Not murder. Murder.

[09:15] Meg: Okay. A few months before the wedding, Richie showed up at Diane's job, accosted her in the parking lot, forced her into his car and brandished a gun while threatening to kill her if she went through with the wedding. Now, Vinnie asked his dad, the Yonkers police sergeant, for help. And things did calm down for a while. But soon after their wedding, the calls and threats started up again. Over the next 14 years, Richie was in and out of jail, and whenever he had spare time, he would harass Diane and Vinnie. It was unclear if he was truly obsessed with Diane or just entertained by making their lives miserable.

[10:01] Jessica: You know, I was about to ask you, what's the end goal here? Like, because clearly when you brandish a gun, say you're gonna cut someone's fingers off and fuck their sister, it's not. It's not wooing someone. And then I was like, oh, yes, psychopath. Okay, that's enough answers for me.

[10:21] Meg: I mean, we've talked about all these different kinds of stalkers, and I think this might be a third category of stalker, which is like, he just thinks it's kind of fun.

[10:32] Jessica: Yeah, A psychopath who needs entertainment.

[10:34] Meg: Yeah. And as opposed to.

[10:36] Jessica: He said he had spared, like, he's looking at his Filofax and realizes he's got a 15 minute window on Tuesday.

[10:43] Meg: Well, actually, that's what his friends kind of said. We'll get to in a second.

[10:47] Jessica: Oh, God.

[10:48] Meg: All right. Also, Richie wasn't the only thing sabotaging their marriage.

[10:54] Jessica: It started off well, but there were internal troubles.

[10:58] Meg: There were internal troubles. Okay. Vinnie graduated from the police academy in the top 10% of his class, but he was assigned to the transit police in District 11 near Yankee Stadium.

[11:10] Jessica: Oh, ouch.

[11:11] Meg: He rode the 6 train from 8pm to 6am back and forth. This is a quote from Vinnie. Everyone down there had a gun and you're riding by yourself. And these big, heavy transit radios didn't work. We can put a guy on the moon, but we couldn't cop in the subway. A radio that worked. If you needed to call for help, you had to hope the motorman or the token booth clerk saw it. Otherwise, you weren't getting any. You were really by yourself. And you had to walk pretty tall because between eight at night and six in the morning, every creature in the world is down there. You want to know what it's like to be a transit cop? Pick the hottest day of the summer. Go out in Your garage. Pee in the corner and stand in it for eight hours

[12:02] Jessica: and get a stranger with a gun in the other corner. Right. Poor Vinnie.

[12:06] Meg: Vinnie was miserable, and Diane was having panic attacks. She was having trouble getting pregnant, and Richie continued to call her and show up at her job intermittently. She began to take antidepressants. She was drinking too much. Frustrated with his 6 train life, Vinnie went a little rogue at work, responding to NYPD calls that he heard on his radio, which royally pissed off his boss, and he became obsessed with Richie sable.

[12:41] Jessica: It took 14 years for this to happen.

[12:44] Meg: This is all within the 14 years. Okay. I am now discussing this time period. It's not like he started to get upset.

[12:52] Jessica: Okay, so I have a question. I have a question. So you haven't mentioned Diane getting an order of protection, or so was that.

[13:01] Meg: Doesn't look like she did that.

[13:02] Jessica: Okay. I'm just curious. Okay.

[13:05] Meg: Yeah.

[13:06] Jessica: And I wonder why Vinnie tried to

[13:08] Meg: get his cop connections to keep track of Richie and talked about him ad nauseam to whomever would listen. So now Vinnie and Diane were a pet project for Richie. It was like he would torment them whenever he got bored. But for Vinny and Diane, he monopolized their life. You know what I mean?

[13:33] Jessica: I would imagine that a psychopath with murderous intentions would be a focal point.

[13:40] Meg: One mutual friend of theirs. Because they have mutual friends, they all run in the same crowd, right?

[13:47] Jessica: Yes.

[13:48] Meg: So the mutual friend said the whole Pilates relationship was a sort of hobby for Sable. He didn't invest a lot of time in it, but he was capable of so much mischief when he was sitting in jail with nothing better to do. And Vinnie was courting Diane, it was a big deal to him, but when he got out, it was only a passing interest. So he'd stop by and rile things up once in a while, you know, make a threat. Sable didn't obsess about Vinnie, but Vinnie certainly obsessed about Sable. So it's kind of like the crazy is contagious.

[14:23] Jessica: It sounds like you're really building up to a perfect storm.

[14:28] Meg: According to Vinnie, quote, my sergeant began to think I was either a nut or a liar or both. It got so that whenever I opened my mouth about this, the whole damn department looked at me like I needed psychological service.

[14:43] Jessica: Not wrong.

[14:45] Meg: And then Richie got himself in some serious hot water. He was arrested for buying two kilos of cocaine for $38,000 from an undercover cop.

[14:55] Jessica: Oops.

[14:56] Meg: Facing more than 20 years in prison, Richie decided to try a career pivot. He was kind of lousy as a criminal, but he was spectacular at ratting people out.

[15:08] Jessica: Stool pigeon.

[15:10] Meg: So he soon was the prized secret weapon of government authorities when they put him in the same cell as crack boss Ricky Jibbens. Richie was able to extract info that led to the conviction of a crooked cop and a mob enforcer and thwarted a plot to kill the mother of the Assistant U.S. attorney.

[15:33] Jessica: What? Yeah, good gravy.

[15:36] Meg: Richie had found his calling.

[15:38] Jessica: I know. Now I'm feeling like. Do we hate Richie?

[15:42] Meg: Yes.

[15:42] Jessica: Yes.

[15:43] Meg: Okay, don't get it twisted.

[15:47] Jessica: Okay, okay, okay. I won't get enamored of his new, clean, ish life.

[15:52] Meg: I mean, I guess you can appreciate his talents and his usefulness, but anyway, I don't know. I don't know. I don't feel like that's necessary right now. We don't have to be fond of him.

[16:03] Jessica: We don't know. No.

[16:04] Meg: He was given Rule 35 consideration. What's that? It's for informants. And it reduces your sentence, FYI, if you ever need one.

[16:15] Jessica: So that was like 35. Like a get out of jail. Literally. A get out of jail free card.

[16:19] Meg: Absolutely.

[16:20] Jessica: Got it.

[16:21] Meg: Ding, ding, ding. Soon, Richie was hanging out at the local Yonkers bar. Vinnie was drunk at a family dinner. When he got the news, his sister's husband said, hey, Vinnie, didn't you tell me that guy Sables in jail for 20 years? Yeah. Well, guess what? He's out. What are you talking about? He's doing 20 on a federal drug rap. He's out and he's hanging out with Jerry, mutual friend.

[16:49] Jessica: Jerry?

[16:50] Meg: Jerry as in Gennaro Vittorio Capo in the Lucchese crime family, who supervised a crew of 10 made men and dozens of worker bees. Vinnie said, tell your friend Jerry to stay away from Sable because I'm going after him and I'm going to take him down. I'm going to find out what he's up to and send him back to prison.

[17:15] Jessica: This is not going to go well for Vinny.

[17:19] Meg: All right. Vinnie realized that Richie must have made some kind of deal to be out of jail so fast. So chances are he was working with the authorities. But he didn't realize just how valued Richie was by both the feds and the mob. To aid in his new role, Richie was supplied with 156 cases of stolen liquor, luggage, sweatsuits, 247 counterfeit Cartier Rolex and Gucci watches and Chanel handbags to lure in the Lucchesis. And they bit bring on the sweatsuits they loved.

[18:00] Jessica: Oh, they loved a Sergio Takini tracksuit like nobody's business.

[18:05] Meg: The feds set him up in a sweet condo, fully miked with hidden cameras. And that's where he got the Lucchesis, talking about all kinds of nefarious deals. Richie was the most popular guy in town and Vinnie was losing his mind. He called his brother in law again and told him to tell Jerry he wanted to see him. Now, this is a quote from Vinnie. They come over and I'm pie eyed drunk. I've got a glass of scotch in my hand, my shirt was off and I'm babbling. I had my beer muscles on and I'm yelling at this huge fucking mobster that he's an idiot and he's dealing with an informant. Well, now Jerry's starting to get crazy because he's finally beginning to get the picture. He starts saying he's gonna kill that fuck. And I said, oh, now I have your attention, schmuck.

[19:03] Jessica: Vinnie does have beer muscles.

[19:05] Meg: I love that.

[19:06] Jessica: It's the beer muscles. I've heard of, you know, beer goggles, but I've never heard beer muscles. And also, isn't the visual fantastic like shirtless Vinnie waving a glass of scotch around and threaten or screaming at a. At a mobster? Yeah, like, this is beautiful. Like, where's Scorsese when you kind of don't need him? Here it is.

[19:28] Meg: Here it is. Richie quickly realized something was amiss when his Lucchese bestie stopped taking his calls and he made himself scarce. But now guess who's in trouble. Our friend Vinny. One morning, he was reading a newspaper article with a headline about a mafia sting. And the last line was, the investigation was thwarted when an unidentified New York City police officer tipped off the mob. Because that's what he did.

[20:01] Jessica: Yes.

[20:01] Meg: He tipped off the mob.

[20:04] Jessica: Yes. Don't have beer muscles or scotch hand or whatever.

[20:11] Meg: So I dropped the paper, I dropped my coffee and I said, holy shit, that's me. Yes, Vinnie, that's you.

[20:21] Jessica: That must have been a very sobering moment for Vinnie.

[20:24] Meg: Vinnie ended up doing 16 months in federal prison for that misstep. Richie went into witness protection in Florida, by the way. And Jerry made a deal, testified against Vinnie, and never spent a day of his 13 year prison sentence. So the cop went to jail and the rats ran free to Florida, America's dumping ground.

[20:53] Jessica: That's. And whatever happened to Diane, Babies stayed with Vinnie.

[20:59] Meg: No, she split up from Vinny. She moved back in with her parents. She tried to sue Vinnie at some point because she said he owed him Money. Nothing good for Diane. Not happy days for Diane, apparently. She hooked up with Richie briefly, too.

[21:15] Jessica: What?

[21:15] Meg: But he had to go to Florida to go into witness protection.

[21:20] Jessica: She hooked up with Richie. All right, first off, great story number two, burying the lead on that one.

[21:30] Meg: That's just a rumor.

[21:32] Jessica: No, I choose to say that it is fact. And. And you know what? Some women like bad boys. But then if that's true, she would have stayed with Vinny, who is in the clink. Diane doesn't seem that stable either.

[21:47] Meg: No.

[21:48] Jessica: Do you think she's just driven mad by this?

[21:51] Meg: Well, Vinny was driven mad. I mean, that's what I thought was interesting about the story. Like, you start off, everything's pretty cool, but somebody else, like, gets in your head, and then you end up doing worse things than that did. Not that what Vinnie did was worse than what Richie did, but just that you end up a criminal as well, being just as cray cray as the things that are driving.

[22:15] Jessica: And no more being on the force.

[22:17] Meg: Oh, yeah. No. So, no, he lost his entire. He basically let this whole situation obsess him to such a degree that he lost his family and he lost his job and he lost his mind, obviously, and he went to jail.

[22:34] Jessica: Cabana. Then she lost her mind.

[22:37] Meg: Yeah.

[22:38] Jessica: Oh, Vinny.

[22:39] Meg: And then Diane's just like, you know,

[22:41] Jessica: I guess I'll just fuck Richie because he's around. He's on my doorstep because he's stalking me. Convenient. I see you nodding.

[22:50] Meg: I mean, he never gave up Richie. I mean, maybe that's the love story. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

[22:57] Jessica: Oh, God, that's so dark.

[22:59] Meg: It's so bad.

[23:00] Jessica: It's so dark. That's the true. Like, let's rewrite this entire thing as, like, a grand romance.

[23:06] Meg: It's a tragedy.

[23:08] Jessica: I think that this is a major case of one bad apple does ruin the whole bunch. Girl, there you go, Osmonds. You're wrong. Your song is in. You know, one bad apple don't ruin the whole bunch, girl. They're wrong.

[23:23] Meg: Yeah, it does. It does.

[23:25] Jessica: So Richie is the bad apple.

[23:27] Meg: Yeah. And it, like other people's crazy can. Well, crazy can catch you. That's my point.

[23:33] Jessica: It's like a virus. Crazy is catching. And you sit in it long enough, you stew in someone else's banana juice long enough.

[23:43] Meg: Actually, you know, our mutual friend, without getting into details, but our mutual friend who we were talking about earlier, who's going through a really hard time right now, whenever I talk to her, I'm like, don't let the crazy make you crazy, because it is. It's like a disease. You can catch it. You can catch crazy, but crazy.

[24:02] Jessica: It's not just any crazy. It's crazy that knows where you live, literally and emotionally. So Richie knew exactly how to fuck with these two. And anyone who successfully gets in someone else's head, they know where that little soft spot is.

[24:20] Meg: Well, and our mutual friend said that the crazy person. She was starting to believe the crazy person said to her. And I was like, oh, no, you do not. No, you are not allowed to believe that about yourself.

[24:31] Jessica: No, no, no. I know that of which you speak. And it's. It's just, you know, it wears you down. It. It. It's emotionally exhausting, and that's when you're vulnerable. You're just exhausted. And Richie sounds exhausting.

[24:48] Meg: Yeah, for everybody.

[24:50] Jessica: But I still can't get over that Diane, like, slept with him, had sex with him. Let's not be coy about it, shall we?

[24:57] Meg: It's a rumor. I don't know if that's true. I don't know if that's true.

[25:01] Jessica: I'm giving you the slow side smile.

[25:04] Meg: But I do know that she's not a fan of Vinny anymore.

[25:07] Jessica: Well, that's also a way to really say up yours to Vinny is to screw Richie. Yeah, like, that's. That's the, like, don't call me again, period, at end of sentence. Wow. You know what else this reminds me of? It's like that. It's the Billy Joel song Scenes from an Italian Restaurant. Oh, Brenda and Eddie were the popular studies in the summer of 75. And it's like, you know, like the two high school sweethearts who think everything's gonna be rosy, but it just can't last the way that they've set it up. Let's get Billy Joel on this. I didn't do weigh in. So you know how usually my segment stems from something that I've been interested in or something that I was on the periphery of? And that's kind of, you know, my starting point. This is a topic I know nothing about. And so I learned something. Okay. I mean, I knew you'll know the little tiny bit that I knew, but I sort of ran across this, and there is a BFF of the podcast who is one of my sources.

[26:24] Meg: Ooh, that's exciting.

[26:25] Jessica: Yes. So my sources are. I don't even want to say yet, because it's going to reveal.

[26:30] Meg: Yeah.

[26:31] Jessica: So when you were a teenager, were there magazines We've talked about this before a little bit, but was there, like, my favorite magazine? Super Cool Magazine? Yeah. What was your favorite?

[26:44] Meg: I did subscribe to Seventeen magazine, and I read MAD magazine, which we talked about a little bit a couple weeks ago. I think that's, I think that was pretty much it.

[26:54] Jessica: I think we talked about this. But I, I fetishized Interview magazine, and

[26:58] Meg: I, I, I didn't discover that until the 90s, really.

[27:01] Jessica: I had a shrine to a variety of pop stars from the COVID you know, they always had these great illustrations. I was, I was thinking about. So I was having a big feminist moment by myself. There have been a couple of things that have happened recently where I've been irate. And so I was thinking about first, second, third, and fourth wave feminism. I don't even know if we're up to a fifth wave yet. And what I was remembering was the 90s riot girls and how important that was for us. And it was our generation that, that did all of that. And, and sort of, you know, they also did zines. That was a big thing. True. And, and then I was like, hey, wait a minute, zines. Like, I always heard about that, and I knew that it was a thing, but I don't think I ever bought one. Like, I had never had anything to do with that. And then I was like, yeah, what the fuck is up with zines? Like, what are those from? And what are those about? And we're going to have a little chat about zines in the 80s.

[28:08] Meg: Excellent.

[28:09] Jessica: For those of you who do not know, a zine is a homemade magazine. It's self publishing before self publishing was a thing. So people who had a particular interest, they were usually involved in some kind of art form, be it fine arts, graphic arts, music, whatever. They would put together these homemade, like, cut and paste, literally cut and paste of images and text that they would type up and assemble and generally bind with staples.

[28:46] Meg: Xeroxed.

[28:47] Jessica: Yes.

[28:48] Meg: Okay, hold on.

[28:50] Jessica: And yes, indeed, they were xeroxed. They were available in, like, music stores or, like, anything. Any place where there was counterculture stuff. You might find this. Anyway, so, yes, I was thinking, how the hell did this even begin? So the quick overview is. Yes, Xerox is what made zine culture exist again. This is a very Gen X thing. It's even featured in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Prior to Xerox machines being ubiquitous, carbon copies were used.

[29:24] Meg: In third grade, I had a newspaper called Megapoo Newspaper, and that was on carbon.

[29:30] Jessica: Megapu Newspaper. Can you find one? Do you have Any.

[29:35] Meg: I'm sure my mom has one. Yeah, I did a few additions.

[29:38] Jessica: That's amazing. Oh my God. So he has carbon copies and mimeographs. And the mimeos were blue print. The print was blue. And they were run off on a machine using a certain kind of chemical that made them kind of damp. And so you get these handed out in class and everyone would instantly smell it. Cause it had this. This very specific and kind of like, I don't know, like addictive smell. So there's that great scene in fast times where Mr. Hand hands out the mimeographs and the entire class in unison puts it up to their nose. But so prior to Xerox machines, that's what people used. And I didn't know this, but Xerox machines were first invented in 1939. And it was from a photographic company that became Xerox. And a guy named Chester patented it. And Xerox paid him his for his patent for decades. So Chester made out awesome.

[30:40] Meg: What a 30s name.

[30:42] Jessica: Chester, indeed.

[30:43] Meg: Bring back Chester. Yes, Or Chester the Molester.

[30:47] Jessica: Yeah, yeah. Oh God, I forgot that.

[30:48] Meg: No, no, no, you can't bring back Chester.

[30:51] Jessica: Any name that can be schoolyard bastardized is bad, bad, bad. But so Xerox machines really started to be used in the 60s. And in the 70s they became like the big investment in really big corporations. It wasn't until the 80s that the technology got ripped off by Japanese companies that were making copiers. And then they were cheap enough and they brought the Xerox cost down so that there was a Xerox machine every place. And again, back to the movies. For those of you who remember the wonderful scene in 9 to 5 where Jane Fonda is in her very first ever job because she's divorced.

[31:36] Meg: The first day of her first job,

[31:38] Jessica: first day of her first job, she has to Xerox a zillion copies on different colored paper and is vanquished completely.

[31:48] Meg: It's a nightmare. It's like that Lucy and Ethel scene with the. What are they trying to do? Is it a donut shop?

[31:55] Jessica: Chocolates.

[31:56] Meg: Chocolates, yeah, chocolates. Very stressful.

[31:59] Jessica: Yes. In fact, I can tell you that it was antitrust laws and court battles that made the patent available to other companies. And the resulting competition devastated Xerox.

[32:11] Meg: But oh, poor Xerox.

[32:13] Jessica: It devastated Xerox and its market share dropped from almost 100% down to 14% of the US market in the 80s. So that's not good news for Xerox, but it was great news for counterculture. So now you could go any place to Xerox stuff. And I recall, and I don't know if you did this, but at my intern jobs in the 80s, like, anything that you wanted to, like, you'd sneak it into the office.

[32:41] Meg: Absolutely. And it was used the office copier.

[32:43] Jessica: And it was considered a really naughty thing to do because that was money. Like that toner costs a lot of money. It did. It did. So that was some office subterfuge. But that's why zines proliferated, even though they did begin in the 60s, but they were few and far between because the copying technology wasn't as available. As a quick aside, it is also due to the Xerox machine that we have Apple. I'm going to read from a paper from Stanford University. The closest thing in the history of computing to a Prometheus myth is in the late 1979 visit to Xerox PARC park by a group of Apple engineers and executives led by Steve Jobs. According to early reports, it was on this visit that Jobs discovered the mouse, windows, icons, and other technologies that had been developed at PARC and then brought on by Apple.

[33:45] Meg: Interesting. Yes.

[33:47] Jessica: So that's a sort of classic Steve Jobs move. So anyway, so I was thinking like, okay, great zines, but what were they? Because I had no knowledge of what. What they were. So I found this great website called gallery98.org that has a whole display.

[34:08] Meg: Oh, they uploaded them.

[34:09] Jessica: Yes.

[34:09] Meg: That's so cool.

[34:10] Jessica: So there was Art Journal, there was Nightlife, Interview magazine was considered one of them. Night Magazine, East Village Magazine. Details, Paper, Flash. Art. Art. Right. A lot of them were titled East Village.

[34:28] Meg: So they eventually became.

[34:30] Jessica: And some of them then became really big.

[34:33] Meg: Right.

[34:34] Jessica: They were taken on. They were purchased by Conde Nast. Okay, exactly. So the point is that everything that we've talked about regarding the East Village and downtown was documented in these zines of the 80s. And we'll post some of them on our Instagram. Amazing. And they can still be found. And zines from the 80s, specifically because of the prominence of the artists who were involved. They came to be very prominent, are now collector's items, and featured in many museums. So I thought that was also very interesting. The other thing about zines in the 80s is that it was the home of punk rock. And it was where people who were either punk rock or punk mentality started to get their. Their word out. Now I have to admit that I don't. To this day, I don't know how to pronounce this person's name. And it's a huge embarrassment. I don't know if it's groaning, grinning, or graining, but Matt Groening. Groaning thank you. Who is the mastermind behind the Simpsons? He started his life in the arts with a zine, and that was Life in Hell. And Life in Hell eventually became a strip as well in the Village Voice. But he was stapling, drawing and stapling as part of the punk scene. And it actually started in 1977, but then went through to 2012.

[36:07] Meg: It notable, I think, how much paper was important in terms of getting information out. I mean, that was really the only way to let anybody know some form of paper, Whether it was a sticker or a postcard or a flyer or something you threw in the mail, it had to be on paper in order for anyone to know anything that was happening.

[36:34] Jessica: Yeah. And they were currency also. It was like they were handed around.

[36:38] Meg: That's true, too.

[36:38] Jessica: And they were the currency of cool, right? Oh, yes. Passes as well. I mean, I still have. I think I have them in a. I know exactly where they are. I have a bunch of passes to Palladium and other.

[36:51] Meg: Oh, you know, Sasha, I forgot to tell you. Sasha wrote in and said she had found. I think it was Sasha. I'm pretty sure it was Sasha said that she had found a bunch of stuff in her basement, you know, all of these artifacts.

[37:03] Jessica: So maybe we should have our own museum of ephemera.

[37:07] Meg: Mmm.

[37:08] Jessica: Another punk zine was Maximum rock and Roll, started by Tim Yeoh, who had a punk radio show of the same name. There was ego magazine, which only existed for one year, which was an art curator and club owner Peter Delsito's brainchild. My favorite zine title, Dry Heave, which was actually from the unlikely punk rock scene of Tulsa, Oklahoma. On and on and on. So if you lived in New York, the question is, where do you find these? Oh, and by the way, one of these. I have the COVID I'll give it to you. One of these zines featured was one of the first to feature the whole story of the death of Michael Stewart.

[37:59] Meg: Oh, really?

[38:00] Jessica: Yes. So callback to that podcast.

[38:03] Meg: But that episode that we did, so

[38:05] Jessica: we're talking about, not only is it art and music, but it was information. Yes.

[38:12] Meg: That's not being covered in mainstream newspapers.

[38:16] Jessica: Exactly. Which is really. And that Translated into the 90s with Riot Girl feminism. And that was where you started sharing manifestos rather than here's the scene. So I thought that was also very cool. But let's get to BFF of the podcast. So There I was looking for more information about zines and I wound up on Ephemeral New York. Our favorite love love. And it had the incredibly useful title, this article, where to buy zines in the 1980s East Village. Perfect, thank you, Ephemeral New York. I'm just gonna read from it because I can't do any better than this. Remember the zine era? Those stapled xeroxed, cranked out in someone's basement, Homemade magazines. One of the best places to browse and discover a new zine was at C. Hugh, inside a gritty basement storefront on East 7th street between 1st and 2nd Avenues.

[39:19] Meg: That's where I used to live.

[39:21] Jessica: I know, I know. That's why I was like, oh, I'm so excited for this punchline. So on your block was the Mecca of zines in New York City. It's hard to imagine now in our message and media saturated world, but see here contained a treasure of independent voices that in an era before blogs, tweets and Instagram would otherwise never be heard. So it's another way to think about these things is that they were tweets. They were, yeah. It was social media, print style.

[39:49] Meg: Absolutely, yeah.

[39:50] Jessica: And this little bit is rounded out with testimonials to the store's incredible variety. And the thrill of discovering something new are all over the web. Just a few months ago, one posted by Alex Flaming Pablum Alex. And I was like, alex, every time I wanna look something up, there you are. So there's nothing that I can say on this topic that will even touch what I know Alex is going to write in. But Alex, do write in or call us because rounding out the information about this place would be fantastic. When I went to Alex's page, there was a little video that took you around. See here? So we'll have a link to Alex's page.

[40:36] Meg: Cool. I absolutely love that.

[40:38] Jessica: You're welcome. Yes. But it's so great because again, for those who are not familiar with what it looked like then, the inside of this store reminds me of every great place that we would have to go to buy vinyl, to buy posters and anything that was music or on paper. And there was a place on Saint. And this is very. This place, even though it was a block over, is very, very reminiscent of the old St. Mark's there is a place on St. Mark's and our friend Rania took me to it for the first time and it was where you could buy stills, remember?

[41:17] Meg: So movies, I was going to say the place that I remember that comes into that category, it was actually over right across from the Bitter End. And it sold stills. Movie stills. Yes.

[41:31] Jessica: And they were, they were. The inside was packed with posters and higher end movie related things and out on the street they had tables with plastic containers like giant Tupperwares filled with what was clearly like the throwaway stuff from all of the movie studios, including scripts. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right. Again, for those of you who don't know, these movie stills were not from the movie, they were staged and in some way meant to evoke the tone of the movie.

[42:06] Meg: Like promotional materials.

[42:07] Jessica: Yes. And I remember one that I bought that was in my locker for an entire year was from Risky Business and it was Tom Cruise topless, back before he was crazy. And it had presumably. And he sort of was looking off to the side and presumably Rebecca De Mornay's hand, her long arm reaching out and clutching him with her long red nails. And it was very sexy to 13 year old Jessica. So yeah, that lived in my locker and if I recall I figured out how to duplicate it in the dark room, which is also where the locker was. Yes. So I took a photo.

[42:51] Meg: Helped you because she was always in the darkroom.

[42:54] Jessica: Although I think it might have actually been our photography teacher.

[42:59] Meg: Vishelbi. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember her name.

[43:03] Jessica: I'm impressed with you. Thank you. Because you're clearly firing on more cylinders than I am. I was shown how to take a photo of the photo and then duplicate it.

[43:13] Meg: Nice.

[43:13] Jessica: And I was like, yeah, clever. Maybe I can sell these. Yes. Side job. Side job. So yeah, so this, this place, the, the. To evoke the, the scene of a place like this where you would find zines, records, ephemera, think dusty, think. You walk in and you sneeze. It's grimy. The floor has never seen a mop. There is a guy behind the counter. The best way to describe him is stringy. His skin has an odd yellow tone from nicotine. Not looking good.

[43:57] Meg: I think now I know what this place was. And I never went inside.

[44:02] Jessica: Was it stringy? Was that what got you there?

[44:04] Meg: I never went inside, but I did.

[44:06] Jessica: It had a lime green door.

[44:08] Meg: I can picture it. And it was down. If it's what I think it is, it was down there. And I thought it was like comic books, honestly.

[44:16] Jessica: Well, could have been.

[44:16] Meg: It could have been. But I was there in the 90s, so maybe they sort of started moving towards comics. I don't know.

[44:22] Jessica: I'm sure that all kinds of print material were available, but yeah, so that's the guy who's totally not paying attention to what's going on and is probably making his own zine while people who look pretty tattered. But we're probably hanging out with our friend Guy, BFF of the podcast, and his punk band. They were basically making zines for each other, and that's who you would find. So anyway, it was a little tiny glimpse into what happened in that world the decade before I had any awareness that these even existed. And I was so taken with the rise of the availability of Xerox machines, which is so corporate, and the rise of independent publishing. I was like, I kind of love that, and it feels subversive.

[45:19] Meg: Absolutely. Okay, so our tie in.

[45:34] Jessica: Okay, this is probably the most tenuous tie in I've ever done, but the image that I just conjured of the guy at the counter at sea here, or not actually at sea here, of its ilk, because I don't want to cast aspersions on anyone. That's the person who Vinnie was avoiding on the train.

[45:59] Meg: Oh, that is very tenuous.

[46:01] Jessica: I'm just saying that's a visual. That's what I've got. What do you think?

[46:05] Meg: Oh, God, I don't know.

[46:07] Jessica: Underground Underworld.

[46:08] Meg: Yeah, Underground Underworld. I love that. That's good. That's good. That might be the title of our.

[46:13] Jessica: Actually, it's pretty good.

[46:14] Meg: Let's just do it.

[46:15] Jessica: Underground. Under.

[46:15] Meg: Under Underworld.

[46:16] Jessica: Underground. All right, well, we just cut a good half hour out of our days.

[46:23] Meg: I know. All right, like, what do you.

[46:25] Jessica: Who knew that this would happen?

[46:27] Meg: But yeah, multitasking.

[46:29] Jessica: That's the word for it.